Its been a while since my last post...work has kicked in and its kind of interesting how work gets in the way of blogging. Correlation does not equal causation, but they might be one and the same in this case. Here are some updates and noteworthy observations:
Furniture has been bought and placed. I think I mentioned that we bought a bunch of stuff at IKEA and then cancelled like half the order the night before it was shipped (Kara and I liked some of the furniture at Court's better). I might mention that all of the stuff was already loaded on the truck and ready to go. I showed up at IKEA about 30 minutes before closing without a receipt, paid $35 administrative fee since it was so close to delivery time in order to cancel shipment of some of the items. But they meticulously identified all the pieces that were associated with the cancellation, pulled it off the truck, transferred it back to IKEA (the shipping people are sub-cons that work right in the IKEA), and I got my refund done the next day. We went to Court's and thoroughly enjoyed our retail experience there. There was a guy there that worked with us as we wandered through the whole store getting furniture, home furnishings, bedding, etc. He spent the better part of 4 or 5 hours until the job was done. Fascinating thing about the retail process here. While there is "upselling" there is no high pressure, vulture salesmanship. The gentlemen in the audience will know what I'm talking about....walk into a Best Buy stateside and you get assaulted by a salesperson within milliseconds of walking within 50 feet of the HDTV section. I spent about 45 minutes walking around looking at HDTVs and was almost left unbothered the entire time. There was the occcasional, "hi, how you doing?", but never the full on sales assault until I engaged with them. However, once you engage, the salesperson wants you to know that they understand the product. You can't get them to shut up. The salespeople are REALLY, REALLY familiar with their products (the HDTV guy, the Vacuum Cleaner guy, the Bed guy, the Pillow gal, the Coffeemaker guy, the Desk lady, the phone guy, etc.). You get the picture. They really have a sense of pride when they explain their product to you and can match you up with the right model for what you need. And of course, the really good ones can subtly influence you towards a slightly higher model that is more expensive than the original item you are looking for. Also, if you don't have a clue as to what you need, they never steer you towards the most expensive model....they usually start much closer to the entry level. This kind of sales psychology works well against me because I'm always wondering why they didn't steer me upstream. The retail experience doesn't end with payment. It continues with the delivery/installation teams. We had no less than 10 different teams delivering, assembling, installing, and placing stuff from 2 different stores. They all call you in advance of arrival and I couldn't understand any of them on the phone. Clearly, the better English speaking occurs on the retail floor and not in the field. I would finally figure out that the guy on the phone is a delivery guy and just say, "Delivery? From Courts? We are at home!" I quickly learned that all they want to know is if you are home or not and that you are not going to screw up their delivery schedule.
While we are on the topic, delivery is a pretty common benefit that many restaurants especially McDonalds, Chili's and others practice although the price you pay can vary from restaurant to restaurant. Also, while it is commonplace in many places in the US (not Austin), the local cold storage (a.k.a. grocery store) even delivers. Getting groceries has its own set of challenges. At this time we are trying to do this SGP experience without having to buy/lease a car. So the cold storage is about a 15 minute walk from the condo....the only thing is that while walking there isn't a big deal, walking back with your groceries presents some interesting challenges. So we definitely take the cab back. The cabs in SGP are pretty awesome...definitely cheaper than taxis back home and much cleaner. There is one large cab consortium that we favor...its called Comfort/City Cab. They accept NETS which is Singapore for DEBIT CARD (but only for Singaporean banks). They also accept major credit cards (for a 10% fee) but its nice that they give you payment options. The coolest thing is they have an iphone app which allows you to book a cab from your phone and they come to your location to pick you up. Make sure you note the cab number that they send back to your screen so don't get into someone else's cab. Also, once you get booked, they now have your cell phone and can call you if they get lost. And they will call you...they never give up because its their job and thats the right thing to do. The locals here are instilled with a lot "stick-to-it-iveness" and "doing things the right way".
One of those things is if you move to Singapore is to make sure to GET A PHONE RIGHT AWAY. CELL PHONE OR LAND LINE...and it has to be a Singapore number. It makes everything so much easier...it gives the delivery people and cabs a way to contact you. In fact, the one department store where we bought a bunch of stuff that we needed delivered almost couldn't process our order because you need a local 8 digit phone number You can make do without it for a cab by calling them directly but you can't use the cool iphone app with a foreign cell phone. We were holding out on the cell phones because we were going to unlock our iphones and swap SIM cards. This would allow us to use our iPhones that we bought in the US over here on SingTel or StarHUB. Unfortunately, we are going to have to pay to get out of our contracts, then once the AT&T bill clears, AT&T will request the unlock code from Apple and then we can use our beloved iphone 4 over here. Well, I went to the local StarHub office (they are our cable/internet/phone provider and they also do cell phones) and was hoping to get a cheap or free phone with our contract until I figured out the iPhone thing. Well come to find out, if you sign up for a 2 year contract you get a FREE iPhone 4S! Unlike back home where you have to shell out several hundred dollars for a top of the line smartphone on top of your contract. Hello StarHub!, Good Bye AT&T! And the overall pricing structure was cheaper than what we had with AT&T for comparable service, plus we get to call overseas (landlines and mobile) as part of our plan! That rocks. Unfortunately no free overseas texting, but its only 15 cents and all incoming texts are FREE so once you get our numbers, feel free to text away. US cell companies are looking somewhat more like the evil empire these days, but I think we knew that anyway. Another benefit is that the phones over here are all unlocked, so we can use them on any supplier once we get home. SWEET.
Ok, before we move onto pictures, here is how you can contact us:
Mailing address:
5B Balmoral Park
The Solitaire, #04-05
Singapore
259830
Another cool thing to note is that zip codes here are for a much smaller area than back home. You could give 259830 to a taxi driver and they would likely be able to get you within 100 meters of our place I'm pretty sure. The building next door has a different zip code from us.
Phones:
Home office 512-772-5930 (note: another one of the worlds greatest inventions is VOIP...this is my Vonage line that I used for work...brought it over here and plugged it in and I use it as if I were in the US. This also allows anyone from the states to call us without having to dial us internationally.)
Home 65-6685-5391 (I know some of you are just dying to make an international call instead of just dialing the 512 number. If you are curious, here's how...just add 011-65 in front of our home number 6685 5391. The phone is pretty quick to rollover to voice mail so just be patient, we'll pick it up.
Mobile 65-9067-1094 (me), 65-9067-1107 (Kara) (if you need to contact us via mobile, the previous directions on dialing internationally....from US dial 011-65-xxxx-xxxx)
Our emails are the same (thechuzoo@yahoo.com or ben.r.chu@gmail.com)
A couple of quick notes.....Singapore is 12 hours ahead of US EST. That would be 13 hours ahead for Austin and 15 hours ahead for the left coast (California). In simpler terms, using New York as an example, when its 3 pm on Thursday, that would make it 3 am Friday in Singapore. I'm using UPS store to forward mail and we still have Pest Control done at the house.....so we get some calls from them at weird hours. Best times to try us are in the mornings stateside 8-10 am EST. Texts to our cell phones are free if you have an international data plan and want to text.
FACETIME on iPhone/iPad
OOVOO video calling (download the program for PC/laptop, also an iPhone app, let us know what your id is; I think you can find us under thechuzoo or chuzookeeper)
We still have our email and facebook accounts so y'all can keep connected that way.
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| Our first ride on the MRT...Singapore's rail system...clean, cool, efficient and nothing like the NYC subway. |
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| Aaron posing with very large wall mural of a LEGO character. |
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| Getting fingerprinted at the Employment Pass Services Center |
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| Fun things to do with new trash cans |
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| Pretty tasty breaded chicken joint (the good places have long lines). This is an entire chicken breast (both of them) that gets flattened, breaded and fried. |
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| There are your typical burger joints just like back home...Carl's Jr fries being sampled by Kelsey |
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| Night time at the Infinity Pool on top of Marina Bay Sands |
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| Typical multi level shopping mall in Singapore....there are tons of malls, the entire country is a retail trap. |
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| I got turned onto Pocari Sweat in my many travels to Japan in the lat 90's...its a Gatorade-like drink thats big in the far East. No, its not bottled sweat from some guy named Pocari. |
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| The fish section in one of the grocery stores (also referred to as a Cold Storage). Fish all over the place. |
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| Noodle and bao-tze. Trust me....its good. |
Movie Theatres - Kara took the kids to see a movie and she said it was the coolest theatre ever. You book your seats online (what a concept...you get to pick the EXACT seat(s) you want to sit in...the upside to this is that you get a gauge of how many people are going to be at the showing). It was clean, cool and about as much as we pay back home.
Bedding - They believe in comforters here and fitted sheets, but they don't have flat sheets...not in the hotel and we couldn't find any in the stores...at least not in the packages of bedding we got for the beds. This sort of makes sense because its just another thing you would throw off of you once it got too hot at night.
Taxi drivers - The most honest cab drivers in the world. They always check the route that you want to go home because they don't want you to even think for a second that they would take you a longer way. They double check to make sure that the route they select is ok with you. And you don't have to tip them.
Olympics - No NBC over here, so we miss Bob Costas manning Olympic central. However, they do carry the live feed from NBC so we get to see a lot of preliminaries....its not too bad. We are getting our daily dose of USA Swimming and Michael Phelps. Oh, by the way, Singapore won a bronze in Table Tennis!
Clothes - Expensive. And cut for your typical rice-eating Asian that have pencil legs. Normally back in the USA I think they cut the clothes bigger so you think you are actually smaller than you are....its sort of like the typical American cut is a "husky" cut. Well, over here, they cut it precisely and that means you are going to wear a little larger size than you did in the USA. And, no, I haven't put any weight on.
Dress code - At IBM Austin they have a really relaxed dress code. You can wear shorts to work. I had to go the IBM office here (my typical office is at the supplier site) to do some paperwork. Unfortunately our pods with our clothes hadn't arrived yet so I only had shorts and a polo. I didn't think it was a problem but the next day I got an email from my boss explaining the dress code here. Guess what? The dress code didn't include shorts. Oh well.
Ok, thats the latest from us over here. We have school starting soon, we are likely joining the American Club and swim team, so there will be lots more news coming down the pipe. We also have friends from Shanghai coming to visit at the end of this month, and Dakota and Max will be en route to rejoin us. Lots of things to report on soon.
Take care and y'all be careful out there.
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