ReNe: apartment starts to shape up

After a few days, the apartment is starting to look more livable.

The bar counter, which I like very much. Though it also means that cooking disasters end up smoking the entire apartment. This picture was taken before we bought a desk, so Mike's doing the internet cafe thing. Not as comfortable as it looks. The overhead cabinets look cool, but to be honest, I can barely reach the bottommost shelf, much less the higher ones, so it's quite wasted.

I must say something about the barstools -- after scouring the thrift shops and malls, we eventually bought these from Bed Bath & Beyond ($20 each) and carried them ALL the way back from BB&B across 2 mall lots (and the warehouse malls here, or whatever they are called, are huge), to the metro, and then from the metro station again to the apartment. It was at least a 30 mins walk.

The kitchen area. The fridge and stove are bigger than the appliances we had back in Singapore. The microwave and rice cooker, I got from a graduating student, a Taiwanese. The oven and dishwashers were new toys for me. =) I mean, I have used an oven before, but that was over a decade ago when I was still living with my parents, so I've not baked anything since. But this is the first time we've both seen a dishwasher. We learned something too -- don't use regular (hand) detergent in the dishwasher. It foams up really, really badly. Like overflowingly badly. On the upside, the kitchen floor is cleaner now. We had to go out to buy detergent for the dishwasher, which looks like a viscous thick gel, and come with all sorts of additives that are not so good for the hands, like bleach.

The rice cooker, by the way, deserves a little description. It was carried all the way from Taiwan, and is a famous brand 'Tatung'. Mention that to any Taiwanese and they would (probably) nod knowingly. That Taiwanese student, and I, both assumed that I would know how to use it, but when Mike and I got back, we stared for a while at the rice cooker. It had a pot for the rice, a lidded and flattish pot that can sit on top of the rice pot, and a flat steamer, but it also had obvious water stains in the heating compartment. We presumed that for the rice cooker to be used as a steamer, water is poured directly into the heating compartment, but is that correct?

Luckily, when we went out later that night with some Taiwanese students, we asked them. (Turned out if we used it the way we normally do in Singapore, we would probably crack the rice pot! Another student had made that mistake!)

Note for the Taiwanese -- we in Singapore (Japan also, I think) do not pour water outside the pot, only inside.

And note for the Singaporean -- in addition to the water in the rice pot, water is ALSO added outside the rice pot, in the cooker. So the rice is 'double-boiled'. Yeah, the rice cooker can also do doubled boiled soups. And the amount of water in the rice pot has to be reduced slightly because additional steam now comes from the water outside the rice pot.

Because of this difference in cooking methods, Taiwanese rice is a little sticker than what we normally get in Singapore. Takes a while to get used to...


We finally bought the lights a couple of days back. Found both the desk lamp and floor lamp at the thrift shops, for less than $30. It was a really good deal because both were pristine, not even used. Interestingly, in the foreground, with the exception of the french press, 2 black bowls and the plastic tumbler, everything else, I found in the thrift shops. Even the Brita water filter ($12), which was almost completely new.

The chair Mike is sitting on -- he loved it when we saw it at Goodwill and carried it all the way back. It is not light of weight.

Didn't bother to buy a bed, only the mattress. This is a 'full' sized mattress, the equivalent of a 'super-single' in Singapore, but a little wider. Many things here in the US are bigger -- even the bolster (known as a body pillow here) is much bigger.


Some organization to the primping area, finally. I got the wooden thingy for $4 at Goodwill. The shaver ($4), new, was also from Goodwill.

So sad. I lost an earring down that sink when I was washing my earrings... a diamond stud that was my first earring, and the only non-cheap earring I have (everything else is under $3).