06-04 Living

I'm settled here in Singapore with a very nice 3BR/2BA 6th floor flat. My building is roughly 14 stories high, great pool, shitty gym, and full of transient internationals. Some have kids who scream througout the day and night in Japanese while others are truly just dwelling in a rented space, far from Pakistan or Brunei or Newcastle or Frankfort. Passing time in a temporary place, trying to fill their lives with some kind of interim fun in a foreign land as the Singapore time zone clock ticks away reminding them that home is actually thousands of miles away.

Agnes is my landlady and she is rapid response. I put a work order in and she is like lightening trying to fix it. I'm more of the mind to keep a tidy house and maintain a great property for the de facto owner of my flat so his place is taken care of. She mistakenly referred to it as a 'complaint' (cultural nomenclature to blame) while my positioning was as more of a tenant giving her a heads on what an owner would want fixed and in working order for both tenant, property, and landlady. I think she got it. He housekeeper sucks though. All the maid is there for is to clean the flat. I left the ironing board, 15 shirts, and a $20 out the first day for her...she carefully cleaned around the stack, not molesting even one article of clothing, and promptly took the $20. As penance I've decided to spread my time between 2 toilets in protest.

As I mentioned before, the tough part is cooking for myself. That will work itself out in time and I'm definitely not starving. I find my time during the week after work filled with evenings working out, keeping from drinking all the time, and plenty of time fucking around on the internet because local TV absolutely sucks. I've forgone my 42" LCD home theatre system for a 6 channel 22" TV so I'm having withdrawals. I'm about to have Agnes pipe in roughly 20+ cable channels as varied as National Geographic to Eurosports News to HBO in order to curb my panic attacks. I figure just having 20 channels won't keep me inside all that much but with the rainy season in play it's good to have something to do in lieu of praciticing new Hare Kare angles with a dull swiss army knife, throwing chicken bones out the window to try to hit the Singapore STAR team SWAT surveillance trucks, or watching Casino Royale on my laptop for the bloody 12th time. Cable channels basically amount to roughly $40/month which is negligible. I think you get the picture.