Where We’ve Been

Singapore: 57 days

Penang, Malaysia: 4 days

Highlights

All the Moving Stuff: We officially landed in Singapore in late October, but the bulk of the moving work has been taking place, slowly and surely, over the past two months. In early November we started apartment hunting. We quickly set our sights on a beautiful new building and signed on the dotted line for a two-year lease (standard here, and absolutely terrifying for people who haven’t made that kind of commitment for literally a decade). By late November, we spent the first night in the apartment, received our shipment from China, bought a ton of new furniture, figured out utilities, got WiFi, and all the rest. The last delivery came in a few weeks ago, and we’re feeling pretty good about all of it. We were quite frugal across most of our purchases but we splurged on a robot vacuum, which has been a game changer, as our white tile floors show every little piece of dust.

(below: our flat in Shanghai before we settled in there)

Low Key Holidays: Thanks to our year-end international move, we decided to stay put in Singapore for all of the major American holidays. We had a pumpkin pie milkshake on Thanksgiving which was an epic meal in its own right. For Christmas we flew one hour to Penang, Malaysia where we camped by the hotel pool, read books and ate street food for a few days. We also had a Christmas-themed milkshake at the airport so I guess we’re on the bandwagon of celebrating American holidays with milkshakes which is not the worst idea we’ve had. And unlike recent years when the flying and travel has made the holiday season less than relaxing, this year we’ve had plenty of time to forget what day it is during the no-man’s land of the last week of the year. It’s actually really nice.

Back to Work: I’d be remiss not to mention that Drew recently accepted a job offer to run a local American-style BBQ restaurant here in Singapore. He’s really excited to dive back into the hospitality world and while it’s a world full of potential lifestyle pitfalls (see our About page when I ridicule restaurants unabashedly), this opportunity should be more interesting and less soul-sucking (my words) than New York City. He’s already online designing T-shirts and trucker hats for the waitstaff and tweaking menu design. I’m gearing up for lots of free evenings, which I am planning to fill with a plethora of new activities (Refresher swimming lessons? An adult show choir? Lectures and movies? Happy hours?). It an exciting new chapter for us both.

Lowlights

Blog Lull: Not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’ve been moving away from the website gradually over the past year or so. While we once found the site to be a creative outlet for us, and brand campaigns novel and exciting, the site isn’t as central to our identities as it once was. I think a key indicator to me has been that I literally haven’t picked up the ‘nice camera’ since the day we arrived in Singapore. Not taken a single photo. And it’s not because I’m not excited about life here, but just that my drive to document and share it has diminished. As we gear up for another batch of travel, I assume we will document it for the site and we will continue to write when we want to, but the pressure is way off. We’re enjoying just being regular old Julie & Drew, enthusiastic but notoriously bad tourists.

I (Won’t) Be Home for Christmas: Ok, I know I literally just said that we’ve appreciated our low-key holidays (and we have!) but we also really missed spending quality time with our families over the Christmas season. We’ve been keeping in touch with very frequent FaceTime sessions and we even dialed into my family’s Secret Santa swap so we could watch our gifts being opened. But when my sister was trying to find someone to take the baby for a minute, I really, really wanted to grab him for a quick squeeze.

White Floors and Magic Erasers: In Singapore, apartments are expected to be kept in pristine condition during a tenant’s rental period. Entire industries have sprung up to help with this endeavor (curtain dry-cleaners, air-con maintenance companies). While appreciated, this hyper-vigilance makes us so nervous. We scour every tiny mark with a Magic Eraser and we run that robot vacuum nearly every day. I noticed a tiny mark on a curtain the other day and have already treated it with two different products. You can come visit, just don’t touch anything!

What’s Coming Next?

In late January, for Chinese New Year, we’re off with friends to explore South Africa! Well, Kruger National Park, mainly, but we found a killer deal on a flight and we couldn’t resist. We won’t cover everything we want to see in the country but we’ll get a nice introduction, and we’re mostly going to hang with friends so the lions will just be background noise. Kidding. We’ve ordered two pairs of binoculars, we’re so pumped. In February, Drew will be in the US for a quick visit to Florida, and then that’s it on our calendar for the foreseeable future. Work. More work. Life marches on.

Happy New Year and peace and love to you in 2020!