We are acclimatising

I caught one of those minibuses again today. Despite the stress of not knowing what to call out when you want to get off, as well as the stress from their crazy driving, these minibuses are actually starting to grow on me! They only hold a maximum of 19 passengers, and no one is allowed to stand. So if there aren’t any seats left, then too bad, the driver won’t let you on. So by default, you always get a seat, which is a nice change from the MTR, the underground rail network, where you rarely get a seat! But they are a little pricier though. Today’s trip cost me just over HK$10 (S$1.75), whereas my MTR trip back was about half of that. Although having said that, the cost of public transport is still pretty damn cheap, so it’s not like these minibuses are costing an arm and a leg.

And because they’re insane drivers, and the minibuses are, well, mini, they weave in and out of traffic better than normal buses, so they get to your destination faster.

Someone called something out in English today and I was like woah! English! 😂 But I didn’t catch what they said anyway! 😔 I relayed the story later to N and he suggested that I just call out something random when it’s my stop. So I’m thinking “hippopotamus egg please!” sounds like a good choice 😊 So if you hear that on a minibus, you’ll know it’s me 🤪

Oh and we got a new tv today! Woohoo! We haven’t owned a tv in about seven years 😲 We’ve been renting out apartments that have come with a tv that entire time, and this is the first apartment that didn’t have one. We could’ve asked for one as part of the lease contract, but we didn’t want to delay getting the apartment, given that it was going for a really good price. We’d rather pay less for rent and just buy a tv of our own anyway. So here we are. I assume this will last us for a good number of years now, to make up for the last seven 😊

Kitty’s been eating quite a fair bit lately, I can feel her chunkousness 😂 I’m getting a little worried, as she’s eating about 1/3-1/2 more than what she was eating in SG. Maybe because it was warmer in SG and her body didn’t need the extra layer of fat, but now she’s stocking up?? I don’t know. Let’s see how she goes over the next few days. I may bring her in to a vet for a check-up if she continues her voracious eating…

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Our first night in the new apartment!

We finally decided on what IKEA furniture to buy, and we put the order in late last night. Yayyy! 👏 The earliest delivery date is next Wednesday, which is really just five days away now, but it just seems sooo long to wait. All I seem to have done these past few weeks is wait! 😔 I am getting a bit restless… I really want a table right now. Not having one makes you really appreciate them for their functionality! 😂

We have also almost put everything away in their new rightful place around the apartment. In some instances, just on the floor in the room, as we still need to have a think about what additional furniture we need to store some of our items. The new layout of this apartment means that we have to buy some storage units to better utilise the existing cupboard space, and some rooms don’t have any built-in cupboard space at all. And the cupboards that are here tend to be taller, but not as deep as the cupboards in our SG apartment, so we need to work upwards, meaning that we need vertical storage ideas. Argh, more expenses 😔 But we’ll slowly get the apartment organised. I like to think of it as one long, continuing project 😊

And we’re spending the night in our new apartment! It’ll be our first overnight stay here, so exciting! I think Kitty was feeling it too, she seemed much more relaxed today. She still followed me around for pretty much the entire time I was in the apartment, but there were times when she did manage to fall asleep without me being right next to her 👍

A bit of a freaky day

I got up relatively early again today – and paid the price for it all day. I never felt normal the entire day 😔 Maybe if I had bought a coffee, then that might’ve helped, but I didn’t, and probably suffered even more unnecessarily as a result. So if I somehow magically get up early again tomorrow, I will definitely go and get myself a coffee! ☕️

I ran a few errands in the morning before spending most of the afternoon with Kitty in our new place. We still haven’t moved in 😔 So I hope we can do that either tomorrow or by the weekend, at the latest. I don’t like leaving Kitty all on her own.

Especially after today, when she was acting all strange, miaowing much more than she ever does, and scratching in the bathtub for some unknown reason. It was a bit freaky to be honest, and I was getting a bit worried that she was ill. But after a while, she settled down and returned to her normal self. But those few minutes when she was acting all strange freaked me out 😟

And that was after I had already freaked myself out thinking that I was seeing ghosts wander around an empty apartment across from our building. Omg just thinking about it now isn’t helping matters!

Anyhoo… That’s enough talk on the supernatural….!

I tidied up our bedroom, so at least we can now sleep on our bed. We had a ton of stuff just dumped on the bed yesterday when the movers came, and I put most of it away today, so at least we have somewhere to sleep on now for when we finally move in!

She didn’t even let me finish making the bed before she jumped on it 😂

And then in the evening, we went back to IKEA to finalise our decision on what dining table and chairs to buy, as well as a work desk and chair. I think we’ve visualised most of the apartment now, we just can’t afford to buy it all in one hit! So we’re just going to buy the essentials now, and then we’ll slowly add to it over time. So perhaps in a few months, our entire apartment will look like it came straight out of an IKEA catalogue! 😂

Excited!

Our furniture arrived today!! They arrived at around 10:15am, and pretty much as soon as they got there, the guy handed me a checklist and asked me to tick off each box as he brings them in, to make sure that we receive all 59 boxes. I still can’t believe we have that much crap 😳 But anyway, moving right along… 😂

They were concerned that the bedframe wouldn’t fit into the lift in the building. And when they tried to put it in, it actually didn’t fit. So they had to get N to come down and give them the go ahead to take it out of the box and try to fit it in to the lift just on its own. And can you believe it: it actually just fit, with literally one inch to spare 😲 How insane is that! If it wouldn’t fit, they would’ve had to carry it up the stairs, and we were told that lovely service would cost around HK$200 (S$35) per floor. And we’re on a pretty high floor, so if it didn’t fit in the lift, it would’ve cost over HK$5,000 – or almost S$1,000 – to carry it up 😲

Our mattress is apparently slightly larger – and thicker – than the bedframe, but at least it’s more flexible, so they could actually squeeze it into the lift 😅 Gosh, that would’ve been even more painful to carry up the stairs! So if we had to get them to carry up both the mattress and the bedframe via the stairs, it would’ve cost almost S$2,000 for the privilege. O-M-G. Sooo lucky we got both pieces up! 🙏

So all our stuff is in HK now! 👏 Despite having 59 boxes, it actually doesn’t look like too much stuff, once everything is out of the boxes. Plus we still have to cull a bit, as we didn’t really finish that in SG. We also have to sort out where everything goes in the new apartment, and put things in their rightful place – or at least, in the correct room, to start off with. And then after the sorting and culling, we can figure out what storage units we’ll need. But despite all this stuff that we need to do, it’s just sooo nice to have all our stuff in the apartment! It feels more like home now, and as a result, both of us are much more excited about this move 👍 Even Kitty seems to feel more at home too, which is great.

And then tonight, we went out for dinner with a few of N’s workmates. That was fun, and it was good to meet a few new people in this city too. One of the guys likes to go hiking, which is perfect, as we were thinking of doing more hiking here, as apparently HK has a few good trails. So we may have a new hiking buddy! 😊

So overall, I think today, more than any other day so far, we were both excited about this move to HK. Here’s to new adventures in this city! 🥂

Still trying to settle in

I went back to IKEA again today. Gosh, how long will it take us to decide on a work desk and chair?!? 😂 It’s not just the colour now, but also the depth of the desk. Because rooms in HK are tiny as, if I get too big a desk, then it may just:

1) Overpower the room and look like it’s too big in the small space that we have for it; and

2) We won’t have much space to put anything else in there! 😒

But at the same time, I want to be comfortable working on the desk, I don’t want to feel too cramped working on something that is too narrow 😔 So I think I just have to get over the fact that the desk may overpower the room, and I just have to learn to deal with it. Welcome to HK! 😂

I spent the afternoon with Kitty again, much like I have been every single day since she arrived in HK. I had to leave to go meet a friend for dinner, but every time I got up from our little spot on the floor, she’d get up too and follow me to wherever I was in the apartment. Poor little one 😔 She’s going to be all stressed out again tomorrow too when the removalists come. But hopefully after that, things will start to feel like normal again, and she can return to her usual grumpy, aloof self. As much as I like her being all sooky and wanting my attention, it also makes me feel bad every time I leave the apartment and leaving her there all by herself. At least when she’s her usual self, I know that she’s ok to be by herself in the house when we’re not there. But she’s not quite there yet, unfortunately 😔

We went and had dinner with a friend from Melbourne, who’s in HK today just for a stopover. She’s on a girls’ trip, and three of her five friends that were on the trip with her came along for dinner as well. They’re all very friendly and chatty, so that made it really easy for a quiet person like me! I just let them take turns talking and telling stories the entire evening, which was great 😆

I have to get up early tomorrow to get to our apartment by 9am. Gas people are coming sometime between 9am-5pm to check the gas meter, isn’t that a lovely window. The whole freaking day 😒 But the removalists are coming around 10am, so I want to mop the floors before they get there anyway, just so that the place is clean when they lay the furniture, as no doubt the floors underneath the furniture won’t be touched again for at least another 1-2 years while we are still leasing the apartment! 😂

Still in limbo

I found this cafe called The Flying Pan, which basically serves breakfast 24/7!! 😲 😲 How awesome is that?!? You can come in anytime, day or night, and have breakfast. And their prices are also quite reasonable. Their servings aren’t huge, but that’s perfect for me anyway. I will definitely be a regular at this place! They also have a stamp card for regulars, where they give you a HK$50 voucher or something after you receive ten stamps. If I’m going there anyway, I may as well pick up a stamp, and eventually score a voucher as a bonus 😊

We went to check on Kitty after brunch. Kitty seems somewhat ok, but still quite sooky; she will follow us around the apartment whenever we’re there with her. She ate most of her food today, which is good. Maybe that’s also a sign that she’s feeling more comfortable in her new home 🤞

I think I have decided to get the black desk and chair for my/our home office, and have this rug in the room as well. Would that work? I don’t have an eye for these things 😔 We’ll go check out the desk again at IKEA tomorrow, that’s more important than the rug anyway. And then hopefully we can order it then as well, and they can deliver sometime this week, as I really want to start getting back into my trading – really, just a state of normality, whatever that means in HK for us! We’ll have to work towards what that is, but I’d like to be able to even just do that, because we’re not even quite at that stage yet. Still about one more week of being in limbo, I reckon. Just have to hang in there for a little bit longer…!

Convenience

I went back to IKEA again today, my new favourite hangout 😂 I still can’t decide on a work desk, so I keep revisiting their workspace area to get inspiration. I think I’ve finally decided on the type of desk and chair, now just need to decide on colour. I used their IKEA Place app to place the desk and chair in my designated office, which was pretty cool. It really helped to visualise things, which I’m not very good at doing. What do you think??

All black/grey or with a bit of cream??

I was hoping they’d have their rugs available in the app as well, to give me the full picture of what the room would look like, but apparently that one I have to visualise all on my own 😳 But the app is already pretty cool, so I’ll have to play around with it some more to figure out what dining table we’ll get 😊 It might also help when our existing furniture arrives too, to get a better idea of what would complete the living area.

I ordered home delivery tonight, and the place that I ordered from is 400m down the road 😲 How lazy am I?! I could easily have just walked down! But I think that’s just the way it is here, everything is just so close. I am starting to understand what people mean about the convenience of this city. I have a feeling that everything we do on a day-to-day basis will effectively be within a 1km radius from home. Literally. It’s pretty insane. And there I was thinking SG was easy and convenient. This city is even more so!

I also discovered that there is a heating function on the aircon units in the apartment 😅 I am not used to sub 30°C weather anymore, nor do I like it (so you can imagine just how much I disliked the weather when we were living in Melbourne!), so I am very happy to have this function on our aircon units! 😂 But I will be glad to be able to wear scarves and jeans again. I loved my scarves in Melbourne, and judging by the weather this past week, I think I’ll get to wear them again here in HK 👍🧣👖