Gaby's Life in Black & White

At 2 months (8 weeks)
Ugly undefined little blob of cells with lots of space in the waterbag. That white curve is the umbilical cord.

At 3 months (13 weeks)
More human looking now, but could probably still pass off as a rat.

At 4 months (16 weeks)
Definitely human-like in form now. Space in the waterbag is getting tight. This was the gynae visit where he checked for the baby's sex and said, "Well, I don't see a boy. It is more likely to be a girl, but it could still be a boy."

At 5 months (21 weeks)
Very unimpressive sonogram picture from NUH. The gynae at Mount Elizabeth had a better scanner and printer. But notice how Gaby does not fit into one single photo anymore.

At 5 months (22 weeks)
Ah! I like this picture. If you haven't figured it out, Gaby's lying on her back and her head is on the left. The top left series of curves show her side profile. I told Lionel that he may not be the father. ;p Because both Lionel and I have thicker lower lips and Gaby here seems to have a more pronounced upper lip. But she could have taken the Heng grandfather lip -- Lionel's dad's upper lip sticks out.
Can you see her heart? It's quite high up in her chest. That black cavity in her chest. In the live sonogram, you can see it pumping quickly.

At 6 months (25 weeks)

Here we have moved over to Zurich. This is our first visit to the gynae here at the University hospital opposite Lionel's office. They are really thorough here. This is the first gynae visit which left us with not just 1, but 4 photos!!!

Gaby's left footprint!

Gaby waving at us with her right hand and all 4+1 little fingers of hers.

Gaby sucking her thumb?

Gaby's thunder thigh (left) -- taking after Mum.

My Favourite Things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,

Bright copper kettles and warm wollen mittens,

Brown paper packages tied up with string,

These are a few of my favourite things...

So it is about nine on a cool Sunday morning. I am feeling calmly happy because:

1. 
   
   
   The weather's cooled down. And Zurich is a lot more beautiful when I am not a heaving sweaty Pregosaurus.
2. 
   
   
   I only woke up once last night! Ever since I got pregnant, I have not had a single uninterrupted sleep through the night. After waking up at 2am because my pregnancy heat rash was acting up, I slept all the way till 8.20AM. That is a solid 6 hours that does a lot for my mental well-being.
3. 
   
   
   The house is more or less set up and there are no unsightly dirt sections of floor.
4. 
   
   
   Lionel washed the toilet with me last night and he did a pretty good job of getting the metal bits to shine. (I did read that men who helped out in the housework get more and better you-know -- and I can see the logic behind that. Man helps out, woman is happy --> Rolling and tumbling activity)
5. 
   
   
   Lionel's still sleeping -- so I get my quiet morning spending time with myself doing all sorts of mundane things that keep me happy. e.g. emptying and keeping the dishes from the dishwasher, taking more photos for this blog, walking around my home and feeling pleased with it...

In this cheery mood that I am in, here are a few of my favourite places at home:

Upon our fifth trip to IKEA yesterday (no car lah, so the number of trips we make depend on how much we can carry up the bus and tram each round), we finally got Lionel's dream high table and high chair for the kitchen's "balcony". I am taking quite well to this table too since that means I can chop garlic, cut fruits or marinade the meat while without being on my feet for too long at a stretch.

Did I already mention how well-designed the kitchen is? (=

I love this pull-out. Even the trays have adjustable heights which I have made use of, because I am not as tall as the ang mohs here. Can you spot our dozen packets of Bak Kut Teh Spices preciously brought over from Singapore?

I love my utensil drawer!!! We bumped into this assemble-your-own-utensil-tray section at Manor (it's a very affordable Metro, but with much nicer things). Lionel insisted on getting a Silit utensil set that was half-priced, which I still thought was really indulgent initially, but I love the shine it has after being in the dishwasher (because the water is so hard here with the minerals from the Alps or one of the mountains, only dishwashers do a fantastic job of getting all watermarks off).

Below and next to this drawer is our Corelle set shipped all the way from Singapore. It was a lovely wedding gift from Lionel's Cochlear hearing aid provider. Corelle plates look elegantly like glass, yet are deceptively light, chip resistant, unbreakable and dishwasher safe.

For the first time, I find myself using teacups. I have always avoided teacups because of how brittle the handles are, but with Corelle, I love eating my cherries in two teacups. One teacup with my cherries, and the other teacup in the other hand to spit the seeds in. *Red toothy cherried grin*

I am loving the electric stove because it is so easy to clean. I use a sponge and dishwashing liquid to just give it a wipe after cooking. It is unlike the gas stoves with the black pot holders that you have to remove and the nooks and crannies. We hope to get one like this in our new kitchen when we get back to Singapore.

Situated nicely below the stove is a drawer where we keep all the cooking utensils. Yes, Cui, I brought over the white garlic chopper I got you for your birthday but you left behind in Singapore. ;p It is working very well for us here.

Little things make the kitchen experience so much more wonderful. I like having that little white IKEA bin next to the sink, and my hand towel just above the sink so we don't drip handwater all over the kitchen floor. Because we have to pay for our rubbish disposal bags here, we usually have to keep the same bag for about 3 days before it fills up. So to keep the stench at bay, we tie up every day's food waste into little plastic bags (that come when we purchase vegetables and fruits at the supermarket) and put them in the larger paid trash bag.

And Lionel's 25kg gas grill with the 7kg gas tank sitting on our balcony. That door leads to the baby/guest room. Another door (not in the picture) leads to the hall. We're going to have our first BBQ at our place this evening with a fellow bunch of poor Singaporean students. We BBQ on a Bring-Your-Own-Meat basis and discuss where we can find the cheapest meat and sausages.

It's 10.30AM now. It takes that long to get these photos up on Blogger. The sleeping monster has just stirred, scratched his rear, then the top of his head, and lumbered into the toilet. Finally, Breakfast Time!

Lionel Loves his Grill

While a bachelor in Pittsburgh during his undergraduate days, Lionel got himself a gas BBQ grill, which he claims he used almost every week.

He sold the idea of owning one so he can make his burgers, steak and tandoori chicken on it, while adding that it is very easy to clean -- just scrape off the burnt bits into a container and there you have it -- good as new! No washing required.

Hm.

So now that we're back in another ang moh country with the four seasons, a balcony with no HDB ruling about open fires, and a BBQ culture here that does not necessarily involve an occasion, he had had had to get his grill -- even if that meant that lugging all 25kg of it from town to home on public transport. 

And now, at almost 10.30pm, he is still attending to his new toy, trying to put it all together.

So here I am, widowed by a BBQ grill at couple twilight time, writing a blog post about my husband's new love affair.

Ah, he just came in to announce the birth of his grill.

Our New Home!

My apologies for the lack of updates over the week. We have been so occupied building up our lovenest all over again (It has been less than a year since we built our lovenest in Singapore). We collected keys to this lovely 80 sq metre apartment on Thursday. It is considered to have 3.5 rooms. I do not know how that figures out but we basically have a large master bedroom, another room, a nice hall with a fireplace (with chimney and all!), a well-equipped kitchen and a toilet for the whole apartment.

Without a car, moving in our luggage bags, furniture and home accessories has not been easy. It took Lionel and I three trips to bring everything over from our serviced apartment -- that means [down 5 floors, drag bags to tram stop, change tram, climb out of underground tram stop, climb up one level to apartment] x3. We have also made, I believe, some four trips to IKEA and another three trips to this other furniture mall called Conforama. We paid 400 francs to a private company for the delivery of our furniture which came up to about 3000 francs. (You really have to pay to get the Swiss to carry anything for you.) Even then, the ATAX van came with just one nice Turkish man and Lionel had to help him carry some 700kg of furniture up the stairs to our apartment on the second level. The heaviest package was at least 40kg.

During the big move on that fateful hot Friday, all I could do was give the poor men cold drinks and biscuits in between a few trips up.

And from Friday through the weekend, I have been occupied cleaning, organising the apartment and unpacking our stuff, while Lionel has been busy putting furniture together. Fortunately on Saturday morning, Lionel had some help from a Singaporean colleague-cum-friend, Gim Hee, while I have had the lovely company of his wife, Grace.

Before we knew it, the weekend was over, and work started all over again for Lionel. Monday also brought with it the start of my intensive German course. My first two-hour lesson yesterday was the most mentally tiring two-hours I have had in Zurich so far. I am excited that I have a scheduled daily activity that leads to mental stimulation and growth. I am also excited at the prospect that I can soon understand a lot more of what is going on around me -- the sign boards, what meat I am buying, brief exchanges with the cashier, junk mail and all.

Random nugget of information: Burger King does not have the Mushroom Swiss in here, even though it's Switzerland!

OK, enough talk. I know most of you are just waiting for the pictures, if you have not already scrolled down ahead of my rambling.

The home is not fully completed yet, but we are almost there thanks to Lionel's dogged insistent persistence (that I notice is a common attribute among those in the field of Computer Science).

Here is how it starts: You enter from the main door straight ahead to face our short corridor. The entire apartment is effectively a square with this short corridor separating all the rooms.

The first door on the picture's right is the toilet. Opposite the toilet is the master bedroom. Walk a few steps forward. On the picture's right comes the kitchen with the black tiles. Opposite the kitchen is the entrance to the hall. Where this picture was taken from is the other bedroom.

And opposite the toilet is the master bedroom...

Back to the corridor and on your left would be the kitchen. Oh, I love this kitchen. Lionel vows to have our kitchen in Singapore done up like this when we return some four years later.

Lionel plans to have a high table here with two high chairs, so that we can have breakfast by the garden with the morning sun rays streaming in.

Yes, that's me, the fitting the image of the proverbial roleplaying wife -- pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen.

Oh hail the washing machine, dryer and dishwasher! This dryer is so cute. It blows clean dry air out of that holey grill at the bottom. The lint is collected on the inside filter (no surprises here), while the moisture from the clothes -- ah, the water collects in a container on the top left hand corner. We didn't realise it until we found our clothes not drying and an error sign in German and French. Using a mix of Lionel's little German and my little French, we figured we had to empty that container of water.

The kitchen's fittings are all a year old and made of very good stuff. The wood is real solid and well sandpapered with no rough or sharp edges.

Let's get out of the kitchen now and go straight into the hall.

Ah.. That's before all the furniture came in. The rental culture here is such -- the ex-tenant has to remove all his furniture and even light fittings. We told this guy he could leave his lightings behind -- we didn't mind having them and he could save removal costs.

See how close we are to the road! Because of the full length window and our proximity to the ground, I can no longer prance about habitually without being fully clothed. Since I can no longer wear any of my shorts now, I have taken to wearing Lionel's boxers.

Here is what our hall looks like now.

Before we get our curtains, I am using the cardboards from all the furniture to keep out the sun and the stares.

Like our crooked bookshelf? I wanted to have a splash of colours here and there everywhere. So we've got this green backing on the bookshelf, and a bright red clock opposite.

Below the red clock is the fireplace!

Let me tell you about the bargains we got here. That black leather sofa bed cost us only 200 francs. It makes a nice extra guest bed and it is milk and drool proof because it is not made of fabric. The neat glass dining table cost us only 100 francs.

Did I mention the owner of this apartment cum several other units in these few blocks is a contractor? He surprised us by appearing in tattered shorts with paint splotches all over on the day of the keys handover. A very down-to-earth man, I am sure his personality must have played a part in the layout of this flat. The 80 square metres is so well planned that there is a feeling of space and yet plenty of well concealed storage space.

And now, after touring the hall and returning to the corridor, we finally arrive at the other room -- Gaby's room, or our guest room.
  

This room is far for from ready, but there you have it -- a glimpse of it. Baby cot frame and single bed frame.

This post took me the whole day to get up. The photos take a really long time to upload, but I hope you've enjoyed the tour of our humble abode that we hopefully will call home for the next four years.

Our Rental Apartment

Lionel and I, in spite of the open, and more latent, forms of biasness against our Asian race and lack of German speaking abilities, have been offered a lovely apartment after just 4 apartment viewings in a week. From what we have heard, it would have taken most people 1-2 months waiting to get an offer in space crunch Zurich. The government is not building more residential areas to, I suspect, maintain the spaciousness and living quality of the city. (Overcrowding is something that many Singaporeans are complaining of.)

Perhaps it was my pregnant belly that screamed we didn't have much time to source for an apartment, and brought on the sympathies. Perhaps it was Lionel's benign Golden Retriever disposition that made us an attractive tenant. Perhaps the existing tenant showing us the flat put in a good word for us. Perhaps we were the only goons who were interested in that apartment. Whatever it is, there is something really "heng" ("lucky beyond a reasonable doubt" in the dialect Hokkien) about being with Lionel Heng.

Of all four apartments we viewed, we had decided that this one sitting on the first level (which means one floor of stairs to climb) was the best suited to our needs.

In Zurich, most apartments share laundering facilities. Dishwashers (another marvellous invention I shall rave about in a separate entry) are more a basic component of a home than a washing machine. That means for a small block of apartments, there usually is, at the basement, one or two sets of washing machines and dryers. And from what we have observed from the apartments we viewed, there usually is a schedule. It is quite common that each household is allocated two laundry days in an entire month -- any additional load and you may need to make reservations in advanced (if there are still empty slots).

So imagine our horror at discovering this laundry culture here. In Singapore, just Lionel and I have enough changes to do our laundry about three times a week. What more with baby coming along with her reusable diapers that we would have to change at least 6 times a day, and cutesy clothes soiled hourly with milk and drool.

This apartment in Schwamendingenstrasse (very cute sounding name if you actually read it out loud -- almost sounds like word from a child with a lisp) was the only apartment that made me feel completely at ease as a full-time housewife. It has a washing machine and dryer included in the kitchen. The kitchen was freshly renovated just a year ago too. Lovely! -- considering that my full-time homemaker status requires me to prepare all our meals everyday and I foresee myself spending half my waking hours in the kitchen.

Here is the street we will be living on.

Our bedroom faces the bus stop -- that was my only reservation about taking this place (not that we had much choice anyway; we were told to just grab anything that we got offered). However, I suppose the sound of gentle braking and the pssst.. of the bus letting its suspension go when it stops will only be a bother in summer when we like our windows opened. Once winter comes, the double glazed windows will be pretty shut most of the time.

Oh, and this apartment is the only one with a real fireplace -- like the kind where you burn real wood and the smoke goes up a chimney. Grin... We cannot wait to try that out in the bitter cold of winter, after we get a day's worth of fire insurance first, says Lionel.

More pictures to come when we have our apartment filled with budget furniture from IKEA and this even cheaper place called Conforama.

Bigoted Housing Agent

In our search for an apartment to rent, we had this rather shocking experience with one agent. When Lionel first told me that he had received a rejection from one of the apartments we viewed because we did not speak German, I thought, oh, that was nice of the agent to at least explain why we did not get it. However, when I read the e-mail, I was quite offended by the tone taken by Herr Bruno Rigoni.

Sehr geehrter Herr Heng,

in einem eng umworbenen Wohnungsmarkt wie Zürich, sollte man zumindest versuchen – in der vorherrschenden Sprache zu kommunizieren. Es ist zwar weltweit bekannt, dass wir Schweizer - mehrere Sprachen sprechen – so auch englisch. Wir werden deshalb ihre Bewerbung nicht weiter verfolgen, denn es gehört auch zu unseren Aufgaben, die passenden Menschen - für unsere Liegenschaften auszuwählen.

Freundliche Grüsse

Bruno Rigoni

Loosely translated by Google Translate, this reads:

Dear Mr Heng,

In a tight housing market courted like Zurich, you should try at least - in the dominant language to communicate. Although it is known around the world that we are talking Swiss - several languages - including English. We will therefore not pursue their application further, because it is also our job to the right people - to choose for our properties.

Kind regards

Bruno Rigoni

I could not believe my eyes at first. It did not occur to me that anyone would bother taking the time to compose an e-mail to express his bigotry so directly. He was reprimanding us for not attempting to use German in our application. Lionel had being writing short e-mail in simple German during initial correspondences, but in the final submission of documents, English served us well to make sure nothing was miscommunicated. And considering that it was our first week in Switzerland, as well as the fact that English is a language taught in schools here, I am stunned at such close-mindedness in what is supposed to be a world class city.

Hallo Gaby! (In 3 months' time)

Gaby, you're coming out in 3 months' time! Dad and Mum can't wait for your arrival!

$Money $Money $Money

Day 11 in Zurich

In Singapore, our dual income as graduates settles us very comfortably in our homeland. In addition, the monthly instalments of our HDB flat (government housing that more than 80% of Singaporeans live in) come directly from our CPF (something like a compulsory retirement savings plan where about 20% of our pay ends up under the government’s lock and key till we hit the retirement age defined by them, or otherwise for repaying our housing loan). So that leaves our cash pretty much free. Supermarkets are affordable, and eating out even more affordable and convenient if it is just the two of us. Then there are the two mummies’ condominium facilities we can run to for a swim or gym workout, or the mother-in-law’s place for dinner twice a week. We were also fortunate to have been spoilt with a car Lionel’s dad got him. While we were not entirely flamboyant with our spending, there has never been a real need for tight budgeting either.

But oh, how different it is here. To begin with, I, being the accompanying keychain spouse, am no longer working and drawing an income, but yet continuing to require food, shelter, clothing, toilet paper and love. Although Lionel gets his full salary and an overseas allowance, that is just enough to feed, shelter and move the two of us about in Zurich – that is if we are extremely cautious about our spending. Furthermore, with our baby girl due in October, it’s 2.5 of us now, and soon to be three mouths to feed, three bodies to clothe, and according to one of the baby books, some 5000 diapers to purchase and pollute the land with.

The 10,000CHF cash that we nervously carried over from Singapore sublimated in less than two weeks. Here is how our five-figure sum, which we thought would have been a comfortable amount, magically disappeared:

• 2x one-year tram/bus passes: 2 x 693 = (1386)
• 2x three-year half-fare passes which allow us to buy other tickets that our current pass doesn’t cover for half the price: 2 x 350 = (700)
• One month’s rent of the 22 square metre serviced apartment that sits five levels above ground, with no lift (2380)
• One month of intensive German class for me. The class runs two hours every weekday for four weeks (650)
• One month’s rent for the more permanent two-bedroom apartment we are very lucky to get selected for (2210)
• And the corresponding deposit for this apartment (3100)

There! These are the big ticket items sans food and daily necessities. These already add up to 10,426 Swiss Francs (CHF). In case you’re wondering, the exchange rate loosely translates to 1CHF to S$1.25. So 10,000CHF here would be worth about S$12,500.

Now that we're 10,000CHF poorer, we still have got to set up our home here all over again – furnishing our rental apartment with the bare and baby necessities. Well, luckily renovations are not the norm here and our status as a poor student’s nuclear family affords us no pressure to prettify our home with expensive aesthetics.

Arriving in Zurich...

When we applied for our resident's permit, the lady there got very confused about our first names, last names and marriage names. We ended up getting these names on our temporary passes. I told Lionel this is probably the only time he'd have his name married to mine.

I am surprised too that there is still this expectation that I take on my husband's surname in a modern city like Zurich. A banker opening our account at UBS congratulated me on my pregnancy. Somewhere ten minutes later in friendly conversation, he asked if we were planning to get married. *Griin* He later revealed that he had assumed we were not married because I was not sharing Lionel's family name.

We could not move in earlier to the serviced apartment as almost every housing contract here starts on the 1st of the month.

As such, we spent our first few days, which happened to be the last three days of June,  living in a budget hotel in the red light district, Langstrasse (whose name even resembles Singapore's red light district, Geylang). The small unit at EasyHotel had the bare minimal -- only one bed and an aeroplane size toilet plus a shower area. There were no side tables, dressing table or even a chair in the room. There was, however, a television, which we could have access to by paying 5 francs in exchange for the remote control. To the envy of all Singaporeans, that 5 francs gave us access to the World Cup.

I can't recall which Latin American country won during those few days. The streets were filled with jubilant shouting and honking in celebration. Being on the second level (what they call the first floor here) certainly did not help us get over our jet lag.

It was also so warm and there was no form of ventilation in the room. So we had to have the windows opened, but alas the windows kept swinging shut. So we had to improvise by wedging the rubbish bin at the window to keep it open.

In the red light district, most inhabitants are not native Swiss. Most of the affordable food we could find there were kebabs and Indian food -- which was pretty much our diet for those couple of days.

This take-out meal of tandoori chicken cost about 10 francs.

The portion here is surprisingly not huge. In fact, the Indian food here comes in smaller portions than what we get for Indian food in Singapore.

On another day, we had takeout from the major supermarket chain, Coop. Coop and Migros are, respectively, like the Cold Storage and Fairprice of Singapore. But because eating out here is rare, most people do grocery shopping as a daily activity. So stores from these two chains are found at almost every alternate tram/bus stop in the city area.

This meal was recommended as a cheaper meal alternative. Yet, the pasta with cream and mushrooms cost us 9 francs, while six chicken nuggets cost 4 francs, and a pathetic calzone with only cheese inside was another 2.80 francs.

Oh, and finally, you can never have too much of McDonalds' when all else seems foreign. McDonalds', in spite of its evil empire and all, never fails to warm my tummy and my heart when I am in a foreign land. It's consistency and predictability (afterall, a "cheeseburger" can be ordered in any country speaking any language) always provides a place of refuge for my displaced sense of being.

After several days in Zurich, McDonalds' was the first to provide us with a drink that included ice. In the heat of summer, Lionel was so touched by such a gesture that he could not resist the urge to get a second ice tea, shortly after he had savoured the first cup with more passion than he regularly embraces me with.