Selling Condos

The market has been picking up so we decided to put our condo on the market.  Loh and behold within a month we had an offer we could comfortably accept.

This new reality makes life considerably easier as we consider our options for the future, unemcumbered by the need to sell a property.

As a seller one pays an agent 2% of the purchase price as a commission.  In our particular complex there have been several 3+1's sold during the past month but 2 bedrooms units such as ours (2+1 to use their popular title) are harder to find.

In the current market one aims to get over $1,000 per sq foot.  Unlike New Zealand, the property market swings in Singapore are far more pronounced.  Having bought in just before the start of the last boom we have made a nice capital gain over the three years of our occupancy.

The purchaser first secures a fortnight's option on the property and if still satisfied at the end of this short period, the sale is then confirmed.  Most settlement periods after eight to ten weeks after the sale confirmation.

As our buyer has since confirmed, this means that we move out mid June.  The Singapore property market is like riding a wave with larger peaks and troughs than one finds in New Zealand.  We were fortunate to buy three years ago before the last buying frenzy took hold. Fortuitously we are also not selling in a cycle of depressed prices.

Now comes the joy of packing up although in our case we have given the buyer all of our furniture.  To pack furniture and freight it overseas is simply not economically viable.

Another Queenstown Valley Sunday

It's another Sunday but this one falls on the Easter weekend.  Back in New Zealand the local populace are busy killing themselves on the road in the great Kiwi tradition.

Even though the road toll fluctuates there is always a spike in road fatalities at this time.  This is why the traditional Easter greeting often contains the words "have a safe weekend".

Here in Singapore talk of traffic is more about th possibility of getting people of the long haul bus services and on to the MRT thereby cutting down travelling time to and from work by up to an hour.

However this initiative does not meet with universal approval as some prefer the opportunity to catch up with sleep in the relative comfort of a bus seat, rather than becoming a sardine in the morning rush MRTs.

My trips in recent time to have literally been pedestrian affairs;  enroute to the Queentown library by way of circumventing the old Queenstown Bowl building.  The latter has been host to a wild bee swarm for the past fortnight but today the swarm had gone, flushed out no doubt by the ever-vigilant pest controllers.

Further on as I passed under the HDB where, just yesterday, I watched groups of sitting men looking upwards at their caged birds, all of which were in full song.  The bird in question was a small green variety looking very similar to the New Zealand waxeye but with a longer beak.  Here I think they referred to as White Eyes.

The wooden Puteh cages themselves are beautifully crafted as you can see in this example left.

Cat On A Cold Icream Stool

Semi-feral cats can sometimes be seen slinking around the HDB blocks of Singapore and they are not a distinguished breed with their short fur and stubby tails.

I call this feline the Icecream Cat as he can be found perfectly at home next to the ice cream vendor's cart by the Queenstown MRT exit.

He was originally a pet cat who discovered many years ago that there was more to offer loitering with intent near the cart on paved apron outside the HDB, than remaining upstairs with his previous owner.

When the vendor arrives by motorbike and sidecar early each afternoon he watches from afar as they set up their umbrella.  Once everything is to his liking he makes his way to the nearest available stool and waits for the saucer of icecream to be placed before him.

The strutting pigeons have nothing to fear as he has no need to chase them for food;  he is content to take his nap under the umbrella and graciously accept the attention of the doting vendor.

Monkeying About

London Zoo has just announced an exciting new concept; they are going to allow visitors and primates to interact without any barriers such as glass and cages.

Their apparent aim is to simulate an Amazonian ecosystem somewhere near Euston Road.

While I wish them luck in their endeavours there are those of us who can still remember being harassed by troupes of monkeys in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The scenario was not a pleasant one when I experienced this in 1982.

The zoo's director, a Mr Field, is reportedly "evangelical about tearing down the bars and letting the animals roam free".

A good run around Singapore's McRitchie Reservoir pursued by hungry Macaque monkeys is all he needs to bring him to his senses.

5 Singapore tech inventions that rocked our world

I suspect there have been more than five but here they are:

• Creative Soundblaster sound card
• The original Trek Thumbdrive
• Match.com
• MTech FeverScan S3000
• X-Mini capsule speakers

Read the article

and let's not forget the roller coaster at the new Universal Studies theme park!

Here's Lukan At You

Boxes of Lukan mandarins from China have appeared in Singapore as the country gets ready for next week's Chinese New Year.

Throwing the Cultural Baby Out with the Bath Water

The is a report today about an ancient tribal language that has become extinct; its last speaker has just died. What a sad indictment that a 65,000-year link to one of the world's oldest cultures has been broken.

It does however remind one just how important language is to a culture; once it becomes extinct so does the culture itself.

The modern generation of Singaporean's have largely lost the ability to speak in their dialects and for a couple of generations the focus promoted by the government has been on both Mandarin and latterly, the up-skilling of English.

I can't help but think that something of the richness and diversity of Singapore culture of old Singapore has been lost as a result?

To try and revive aspects of a culture once much of the old traditions have been lost is extremely difficult.

For example, the retirement of of the old hawkers often means that the original recipes are not handed down. The modern imitations of classic South East asian cusines found in the food court chains somehow never live up to the original.

In neighbouring Malaysia the Orang Asli (original peoples) are suffering as a result of the all pervasive oil palm industry. Maha Meri art is recognised as part of the world's heritage and can fetch thousands of US dollars but the tribe's access to the rare woods they need for carving has been increasingly cut off.

There is more to these ancestral spirit carving than making money. Through them the culture of the tribe survives.

I saw similar trade and spirit cultures in the Sepik region of Papua New Guina when I lived there in the early 1980's.

In our rush for modernity let us not lose the cultural traditions and practices that made us what we are today. If you don't know where you have come from you will not know where you are going.

Food of the Ancients

Quite by chance I came across a translation of one of the most famous cookbooks of all - Apicius; a collection of Roman cookery recipes, compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century AD.

I doubt if many of the recipes will ever make their way to the Margaret Drive Hawker Centre but one never knows.

The list of culinary delights includes: Grilled Sow's Womb, Roast Loins Made Thus, Milk-fed Snails and not forgetting the various laxative vegetable recipes. The latter no doubt taken after attempting to digest the sow.

Approaching the Chinese New Year the price of local sweet meats has already risen and will continue to do so. Bak Kwa will be at apremium in Singapore.

For the next two weeks though I will be back in the land of my birth, after nearly four years away. The diet of milk products, crusty bread and fresh seasonal vegetables (per chance the odd avocado?) will make a pleasant change.

And if we thought the Singapore MRT was crowded..

Thoughts From The Shaky Isle

One does not acquaint Singapore with earthquakes but judging on the results of the past week this perception could well change.

We have had two solid tremors felt in various parts of the Republic and all thanks to the major quakes in neighbouring Sumatra, some 530 kilometres away.

Coming as I do from the 'Shaky Isles' of New Zealand I am no stranger to these but the sensation of experiencing an earthquake does not get any more pleasant with age.

We were trained at a very early age to get under a door frame (or failing that a strong table) whenever the ground started to rumble and rock. My Singaporean colleagues however have had no such training, as the look on their faces clearly showed when we experienced the second quake one morning.

Several just sat at their desk with frozen expressions of uncertainty no doubt wondering why I had leapt from my seat and was heading for the nearest door frame.

Suitable door frames are hard to find in Singapore. For a start most buildings are not made with wood and secondly most have partitioned spaces so solid rooms are anything but.

Interestingly given the geology of the country not everyone felt the tremors. The first big Padang 'quake took place without us feeling it in our condo whereas people on the East Coast and Raffles Place felt the full effects and evacuated their buildings.

Another worry must be the reclaimed land upon which a significant part of Singapore is built. Liquefaction is a major destroying force during earthquakes and reclaimed land however well compacted is very prone to this.

The vision of the soon to be launched Integrated Resort (pictured) half submerged would give new meaning to the title of 'Marina Bay Sands'.

I expect through that most new structures have been built to withstand the earthquakes of the strength we might experience here. Fortuitously Singapore does not stand on a major fault line unlike its near neighbour, Indonesia.

It is just a matter of time (and a short time at that by all accounts) that the pent up pressure of the Indian/Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates on the western side of Sumatra will be released in a major 'quake of nine magnitude.

Professor Kerry Sieh of Nanyang University's Earth Observatory has publically stated that the recent quakes are 100 times smaller than the big one when it comes; a less than comforting thought.

Some twenty years ago I saw a map of the faults lines that criss cross New Zealand's capital city Wellington. At the time I raised the question with a colleague "Could an earthquake somewhere else trigger an event in another location"?

"No" was the unequivocal reply, "Such events are very specific to the location".

It would seem now that his analysis was flawed as scientists have recently discovered that the major 2004 earthquake in Sumatra may have weakened the San Andreas fault, 8,000km away in California.

If this is indeed the case being a mere 500 kilometres away from the Big One when it strikes is not that reassuring.

I shall be stocking up on half price moon cakes to tide me over such calamities should they occur in the next fortnight. The Autumn Festival concluded last night and the cakes in question are always heavily discounted after the event.

Additional back-up mechanisms to be installed at S'pore Flyer

Additional independent back-up mechanisms are going to be installed at the Singapore Flyer, over and above the current standby generator, to ensure the wheel keeps moving - Straits Times