trisected

Tag: moving

  • Sick moves mate

    Moving into a new place brings some troubles. More joy, but a little bit, some troubles. Dust is really the main culprit. I have a really bad allergic reaction to dust, and it gets me rubbed the wrong way round all day long.

    Last night, I thought it was a genius thing to unbox and try and sort all or most of my clothing. I’ve quite quite a collection of many things, and these collections have been either in shelves or boxes for the last three years. We’ve been living with an open wardrobe, so dust lands on our clothing really easily. At the same time, I had other clothing stored in my family house. And last night was the day that a lot of this clothing said hi to each other.

    They also said hi to my allergies that were dormant for a lot of the past few years – not living in air conditioned rooms meant that the natural air flow was always there. It was an allergy party last night, and it last all the way to this morning. I went to church with a mask filled with damp tissues of snot. I thought I was able to survive it, but lo and behold, I started sneezing during church itself.

    I left the service soon after, and cancelled my plans for the rest of the day. I missed a lunch I had really been looking forward to, and spent the whole day just sleeping, trying to get better from it.

    Currently I do feel better, but that little bit of me is just breathing very carefully, just in case it reignites some sudden sneezy trend that might catch my nose unguarded again. It feels dicey, but at least I’ll be able to breathe comfortably for now.

  • Moving on

    We’ve just moved!

    Clarice and I have spent the past few weeks packing on end, and just trying to survive our day to day. It’s been quite insane, and there’s always this idea of needing to move looming over our heads.

    “Have we packed enough for today?”

    “Did we forget anything?”

    “Will our movers be able to shift this? Will our friends be able to help? What will fit where?”

    The list of questions that we kept thinking through kept growing bigger and bigger, and there were a number of nights that we just had to call it quits. We’d did enough and there was not much more that we could do other than to just sleep on it.

    And now we’ve moved!

    Now on the other end of things, we’re living in boxes. I’m currently surrounded by a wall of boxes and bags. But I finally got my computer out. The keyboards are near me, but I don’t have the right cables, the right table set up that I’m happy to work on just yet, so I’ll make do with the iMac’s bluetooth keyboard. As long as it types for now.

    I’ve got videos that I’ve filmed and placed online, but I just haven’t finished the captions for them yet and I don’t know if I can publish them yet. But there’s no one holding them back other than me. I guess I’ll need to find some time to sit down and plan it out.

    Emotionally, I miss my neighbours. I miss my old place, and the familiarity it held. It really wasn’t the best place in the world. By stark contrast, I have air conditioning in every room now, and proper lighting. My previous place had no air conditioning, I had to place in my own standing lights, or suffer the wrath of the florescent tubes. And the amount of space that I had to rededicate over and over again for the different hobbies I had that were growing. All that just really added up together.

    I’m sad to have moved, but I’m glad where I am now too. It’s a weird bittersweet feeling.

    I am a lot further away from the city center, but that also means that I save in some ways. The temptation to go shopping often, or to spend on boutique brands and gourmet food drops tremendously because there’s just not that much of that nearby where I now stay. It’s not shabby by any means, but it just isn’t that city center quality of dining and entertainment.

    I really feel so in between about the move, but as the title states, it’s time to be moving on. I’m now here, present and real life is where I currently type this post out.

    But moving on is not easy, and I want to capture this emotion in writing with some of my own reasoning for now. Hopefully when I reflect on this in the time to come I’ll make a little more sense of it.

    Here’s to the new life in the new place!

  • Growing up Part 982345897234

    I don’t think anyone ever prepares you for the multiple times that you have to go through different changes, learning different things and different parts of your life. I guess some people warn you, like your parents, or family members who are concerned enough to say something. But it’s not like we actually listen to what they’re saying, we just think that they’re raining on our parade.

    I’m not going through any bad patch right now, but I was just thinking about the things we’re told to look out for when we’re growing up. In Singapore, we’re always told to make sure that we eat right, that we take care of our money well, and to be careful whenever we move around. That’s the simple stuff. The harder and more intimate ones are about how we need to look out for people who are trying to make buck out of us, to remember to care for our parents and family members, or maybe just to learn how to be a human being.

    I’m going to receive my BTO keys tomorrow. For those who are not from Singapore, these are the Built To Order housing units. Most Singaporeans live in a HDB Apartment, standing for Housing Development Board. It’s public housing, but because of how it’s made, it’s the standard form of living for us. A BTO would mean that I’ve got to put a downpayment of a certain amount of money, and then wait for the apartment buildings to be built. Considering it’s public housing, we’re encouraged to use our government reserved money, and that is under the care of the CPF — Central Provident Fund. This basically takes a portion of our pay, and places it into a government owned banking system. Every citizen has their CPF, as employers need to also pay a certain amount into their employees CPF.

    So after all the acronyms, what basically happens is that they will take our CPF to pay for our HDB apartment BTO. I don’t physically have to pay a cent, but instead the government sorts out the money on their end, based on these amounts that are transacted into the different funds. Thus, public housing.

    It takes an average of about 2-3 years to build a BTO apartment, but because of the pandemic, we’re hitting the 3-5 year mark for some apartment buildings. I had signed the downpayment in 2019, and now we’re at the 2022 mark, which gives us about three years of waiting so far. I’ve grown quite accustomed to where I currently live, because it’s really central, and there will definitely be another range of posts about moving away from where I live. After all, all my keyboard videos and this entire journey started from this room, in this space.

    But yeah, moving, leaving spaces, owning my own space, that’s really part of growing up nothing can really prepare you for. I feel just at a weird state of uncertainty that I’m quite cautious about, not fearful, just sad to leave.

    How would I prepare myself to move? The emotional separations and change, not so much for the actual shifting. Those things are easy to do. It’s always the heart things that take a lot more from me that I prepared for.

    It’s tough to grow up.