The great winter con

I find myself living in a warped parallel reality. It is amazing how the mind can be tricked and conned if you put your thinking into second place.

For the last month or two the shops in Singapore have been undergoing the "end of season" sales and bringing out the "new seasons" clothes. The new season being winter. In a country where the average temperature doesn't move much out of the zone of 28-32 degrees we're being told we're going into winter. Which I thought was pretty stupid of itself, not to mention wasteful on the part of retailers - after all who the heck is going to buy coats and woollies in this place? Then my thoughts go to the long tail of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Who is making the buying and display decisions.

And then yesterday, after 2 weeks in the real autumn of Europe I wake at the usual 5:45 to get the kids to the reservoir for their 6:45 cross country run, and I realize getting into my car that it's light. I check my watch, has it stopped? Am I incredibly late? It doesn't get to be light until 7:15 or so and it's only 6:30.

And I realize damnit we're south of the equator. It's spring going on for summer and NOT Autumn going on for winter.

Living and renting

This may sound strange to normal stable people who live out their lives in one country / village / city, but up to this point we've never lived in a house we've owned and never owned a house that we've lived in.  Which is why having a place of our own that we're not renting out on a permanent basis is a big deal to us.

It's the silly little things.  My son spent the first few days in our apartment saying, "wow, that's so neat, that's so clever, how did they think of that"  Give the credit to swiss building standards, thoughtful design, and the fact that the people we bought the place from lived in it for 10 years themselves and did the investments that people like us, on the permanent renting situation don't invest in.  Particularly things like kitchens and bathrooms.  They'd in fact upgraded both about 2 years ago, and obviously in doing so had thought very carefully about what their needs were and what was practical.  Now I go into our kitchen(s) yes, we have 2 which is just about the silliest thing imaginable, and get frustrated at the cupboards hanging from a hinge, the peeling off bottoms where I've just had to put down the Ikea drawer mats so they don't peel into my utensils, the surface tops that just don't ever quite get clean, the surfaces and cupboards which are all just in the wrong spot or the wrong height or the wrong depth or not practical in some way or another.  Our combined kitchens in our rented house in SG is about 5x as big as the one in CH, but not nearly as useful.  Go figure.

Yes, that thing about size.  Male / female jokes aside, size is a relative concept.  A few days into the holiday, the kids both agreed that they really really liked the place, and the best thing of all was that it was small and empty.  I had to think back to the time that we moved from Spain to HK and were stuck in a Parkview serviced apartment for 2 months.  2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a lounge / dining / kitchen combined and they were as happy as Larry.  I guess it's that proximity thing.  Kids and dogs.  They need company.  They hate being alone.  And all that stuff?  How much of it do we need anyway?  Our friends brought along 2 boxes of Kapla blocks, we had 2 packs of playing cards and I had a book to read for myself (Swiss Watching) and one to read to them (A boy called Mouse), and that was it.  Nothing else.  No TV, no phone, no internet, no computer.  We had the iPad, but they didn't even look at it.

I asked them if they'd like to be in a smaller place in SG.  The consensus was that they wouldn't mind a smaller house if they could keep the big garden and pool.

Then there was the independence thing.  We're near the top of a little mountain, at 900m, and the shops and Funiculaire are about 100m down the hill along a little winding path of about 500m past the cows and a few other houses.  The "oh shit shop" as we used to call it in SA (i.e. a bit more expensive but it stocks everything you possibly could have forgotten and need right away but can't be bothered to go to a big store in the car) opened from 6.30 am (yes, my asian friends who don't get to be able to buy anything before 11am, 6.30 am).  Despite it being nearly pitch dark, and freezing cold (literally, we had to scrape the car windows a couple of the mornings), the kids found it the most delightful challenge as to who would be up first to grab the key and some change to go and get some fresh bread for our breakfast.  Alone.  On their own or occasionally two of them would go down the mountain, cross a road twice, make themselves understandable in Frenglish and foot and hand language, get the right change and bring the goodies back to their lazy elders.  You would have thought they'd won the lottery, so pleased and proud they were.

Our Austrian friends who have moved to Switzerland and were helping me set everything up, said it was no big deal.  Their kids walk to and from school on their own (aged 9 and 11), crossing major big streets on the way.  It's normal there.  The big difference?  The driving.  I LOVE driving there.  Swiss drivers are really really good.  On the highways they're fast, efficient, decisive.  On the byways they are slow, careful and considerate.  At pedestrian crossings they stop.  Even if you're 50m from the crossing and look like you may have an intention of crossing at some point, after you've zipped up the jacket, got hold of the kids hands and said "careful" all that time they're idling there waiting for you to cross.  Of course I felt comfortable with my kids venturing out on the roads by themselves.