House House House

Zoomed by bt timah road, I just looked at all those houses in amazement. Some very pretty, some ugly, and some not extroadinary. But the thing is, with all these houses and how much they cost, how could an average singaporean afford them? And the answer to this, C says is , CANNOT. Cannot as in , no matter how many times I would stand under the lamppost in Geylang, still won't earn enough monies to afford those houses in bt timah or chancery.

Moral of story? Those places are not for average Singaporean. Next lifetime lah.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

Cheap Date

So the hot topic of my future (and now imaginary) apartment remains a topic of interest for my good friends. Women, it seems, enjoy mentally decorating other people's apartment. Frankly, we could never have enough - even our current houses, we are imagining, or planning, how to redecorate, buy new stuff, redesign it. The concept of wanting More is embedded in our DNA. hence, MORE storage space needed.

So I tell C, from this point onwards on our dates we can spend only $20 since I have to save monies so agressively. So we're debating what we can do for $20.

1. 2x weekday movie tickets. $3 left for popcorn.
2. Go to night safari. C gets in free as he is friends of zoo, I try to pretend to be under 12 yrs to get child price.
3. Round trip in monorail to sentosa. $5 left for fried rice?
4. I'm out of ideas...anyone?

Think hawker dates are cheap? Think again. When the bf has a tendency to +, ++, +++ i.e UPSIZE the meal portions, plus extra ingredients. $20 is a tight limit. You can see the hawker uncles and aunties eyes so delighted when my bf orders from them.

I dunno how long our $20 dates can last, we only had 1 date so far. But I suspect bf will soon complain of malnourishment.

And the formula for Area is...?

Back to the point on storage space. The whole trigger for me to want to buy my own apartment is...lack of storage space. So really my apartment needs to satisfy these conditions:

1. space for yoga studio
2. space for walk-in wardrobe cum storage. Ultimate aim - boutique style open display. Showcase!
3. Large kitchen. I'm not greedy, something the size of my current kitchen will do (which is even bigger than most private apartments!)
4. large bathroom, enough for bathtub, separate shower stall, 2 basins, the bowl.
5. private room for dogs
6. bedroom (I dont' mind small, but C will definitely complain).

And as I told C, my walk in wardrobe must be well designed with 'potential for expansion'. C rolls his eyes, at this rate, he said, might as well I start off with a 3,000sq ft apartment. It ain't all gonna fit, he said.

Maybe i need to move to australia, some remote suburb in order for all this to happen, on a limited budget.

This would be ultimate. Move to Australia just because I ran out of storage space. I can see my friends' eyes rolling to the back of their heads and getting stuck there.

Maths Problem

My last post on buying an apartment certainly got a lot of comments. Friends are already imagining in their heads what they want in my apartment. Hello, it's living area convert to yoga studio, and 1 room for sleeping, 1 large kitchen, 1 resort style bathroom. That's it. Oh, and 1 room for my dogs lah.

Now that I'm paying attention to focusing on achieving this 'dream', I can't figure out how the heck people can actually afford cash for downpayment on private. The sums are staggering (10%? 20%?), not to mention more cash needed for renovations, and so either people who can afford this much cash are cash-rich from high salaries/ bonuses; don't spend on shopping; struck lottery; inherited lotsa money; invested aggressively in stock market.

Have to start from scratch since broke from Birkin, HK and Viet holidays.

1. Save 4k/month for 2 yrs(alamak. How??)
2. Can't lose my job in next 25yrs.
3. Can't full time teach yoga (cuz yoga doesn't earn much money).
4. Feed dogs more scraps. Sorry no more beef steaks. Or let them turn vegetarian.
5. I convert to full vegetarian. Cannot eat anymore seafood.
6. Pimp the boyfriend out? He can be a good social escort.

Any other ideas? Maybe my banker friends and math teacher expert friends can comment.

More Storage

I *seriously* need more storage space. Having spring cleaned in the past 2 weeks and thrown out a lot of old stuff, I still have stuff lying on the floor in my room, and am still out of space. Mightly wierd considering now I co-own the house but only have my room as my own personal space. So I mention gaily to C, perhaps I should get my own private apartment. Then I should get something with a huge hallway so I can teach yoga, a spacious kitchen for my DREAM KITCHEN, a resort style bathroom. Where is space for bed and dogs, C asks? Anyhow, his eyes rolled so much it got stuck at the back of his head I think - here he is thinking his demented girlfriend is thinking of buying an apartment just cuz she has no storage space. (Reminder to one and all who knows the story of how I remodelled my bedroom cuz I ran out of RAM on my PC).

C's answer? Option 1 - Garage sale. Option 2 - when Bro decides to move out and get married, knock down the adjoining wall to our rooms and convert to a walk in storage.

But I don't think that's the point.

Actually now I'm quite taken with the idea of having my own yoga studio cum apartment. Anyway the long of the short is, I need moolahs for downpayment, and I'm working on saving enough so I can put down for an apartment in 2yrs time. Focus. Focus.

Unfortunately that means No more Birkin bags, and No more Tod's.

(psst, but surely when Tod's on sale it doesn't count right?).

The Checklist

Think it's time to take stock of my life and what I've done so far. When I was very young, I wrote myself a checklist of Things I need to accomplish in life. Well as I remember here it is -

1. Amex card, Citibank card, UOB ladies card - check.
2. Graduate from tourism and/or Business - check.
3. MBA - check
4. own dogs - check
5. 1st car is BMW - TBD
6. own apartment - TBD

Notably missing from checklist is the famous Birkin bag, which was ironically, only a late discovery and focus of committment some 5 yrs ago.

At this point the BMW seems like a faraway reach, maybe I should change to a BMX instead. :P
As for the apartment? How many birkin and tods bag I need to sacrifice before I got enough money for the downpayment? Not to mention many more sacrifices for THE DREAM KITCHEN.

Strike lottery soon I hope?

Reality checks

Men from Mars, Women from Venus. Guess you could say men are also reality checks, and vice versa. I returned from Vietnam with 20kg in baggage, C was surprised - what the heck do I have in there? Well, there was 5 bottles of B&BW handwash I asked my american friend to bring which is probably 2kg.

C's response (together with an expression that says, "EH?") - BUT WHY? The soap in america is more soapy is it?

Next was about my beloved Precious bag. So C tells me, while I was away, some photo in newspaper where all the socialites were photographed with their various exotic skinned birkin bag. So his take is, moral of story, want to be tai tai, must have EXOTIC birkin bag. He looks at my bag and comments, "yours, entry level one ah?".

Ahbish.