Living ‘The Sims’ life

We’ll finally get our new place in about a month’s time.

To think of it, we are only half way through the whole house-buying process. It started with two months worth of house viewings from June and we finally found the ‘Right’ one in late August. A quick negotiation ensued and the deal was finally clinched a week after we viewed the house. We were fortunate to find a direct seller, thus leaving out the housing agent, from the process.

After the first appointment at HDB, we realized that we could bring forward the Completion date from the traditional 6-8 weeks. So, after a little bargaining with the owners, we brought the waiting time down to 5 weeks. Well if you’re already confused with the house-buying process, just wait your turn, it will come clear when your turn comes to buy.

So, we spent the past two weeks scouring exhibitions, furniture malls and the neighbourhood Courts Superstore. It’s always exciting picking the furnishing for a new place. Just like playing ‘The Sims’ but without the cheat codes to expand my shrinking funds. Since we are moving in without the renovating phase, we need only to concentrate on the essential furniture and appliances first.

We started off by paying a visit to the ‘Home Living’ Exhibition at the Expo. Before that we didn’t think that there was much to know about mattress design. That was until the sales reps started to convince us that terms like Pocketed Spring, Memory Foam, Negative Ions, and Orthopedic Designs are important know-how for selecting a mattress that will serve us eight hours each day. So much for the art of sleeping!

We finally settled for a full foam mattress utilising space-age technology, ie. with a layer of memory(visco-elactic) foam on top. It’s a different feel from the common pocketed spring design, so much that you can literally melt into the bed. The debate is still out there on the effectiveness and durability for such a design, we will just have to experience it to know. Anyway, we also had time to pick a bed frame with sloping compressed cushions as headboards (good for sitting up to read or watch TV).

Lots more shopping will be required but we will bide our time and just enjoy the process.