Farewell Bahamas, Hello Singapore!

In case you haven't heard, Jill, Oliver and I have left The Bahamas and are now living in Singapore. We left The Bahamas at the end of April, spent a few weeks in Canada and have been in Singapore for just a bit over a month now. I am truly sorry for not doing a better job at keeping some of you informed. But it's been an incredibly busy few months closing up shop in Nassau and getting settled in Singapore.

Let's review what's been going on with our life:

Jill got an offer from a friend back in February to work in Singapore. They had some negotiations, we discussed it as a family and she decided to accept in early March. Since then, it's been full speed ahead with moving.

Leaving The Bahamas was sad for us. We enjoyed four wonderful years there. The people were nice, the weather was great and Oliver was born there. The Bahamas will always have a special place in our heart. But, opportunity was knocking at our door...

So, we left Nassau on April 22nd after some tearful good byes with our friends, spent two weeks in Winnipeg, Toronto and Waterloo visiting friends and family (sorry we didn't see all of you as our schedule really didn't allow much time to visit) and made it to Singapore on May 5th.

Since arriving in Singapore, we've really put on the afterburners and got a lot accomplished. We now have a permanent residence, bought a car, got some furniture, enrolled Oliver in daycare, opened up bank accounts, telephone accounts, etc. and found Jill an obgyn. Yep, we're expecting a baby in August!! That kind of added to the mad rush from Nassau to Singapore. We don't know the sex of the baby yet. The expected date is August 22nd. Jill and baby (fetus?) are doing fine.

Oliver has been really great during this whole transition. It's been over 2 months since the movers took our stuff from Nassau and it's not until the end of June when they'll be arriving. So, it will be 3 months that Oliver have been without most of his toys. We've discovered an amazing thing that kids don't really need a whole lot of toys to keep themselves entertained. Just one suitcase full of toys is enough for Oliver this whole time. I'll need to remember that come Christmas.

We enrolled Oliver in a daycare. Here's a picture of him in his uniform.



He's attending it full time from 9am to 5pm. He seems to be enjoying it although there are days when he refuses to go. It seems to coincide with days where he wakes up in the middle of the night from a wet diaper. The diapers here seems to be a bit smaller than those in North America so he's been wetting his bed a lot lately. Hmmm, sorry Oliver, we'll try not to tell this story on your wedding night.

Our new place is very nice. It's a 4 bedroom, 2,500 sq.ft. townhouse in a very nice area of town. It is a 10 minutes walk to Oliver's daycare and to the MRT (subway) station for Jill to get to work. It's a small complex so we've been finding it easy to meet people here. We live near the Novena MRT for those of you tracking using Google Map. I'll send an email with our contact info since I don't want to publicly disclose all that kind of stuff on this blog.

Jill is enjoying her new work. It's something different (but still actuarial related) and there's lots to learn with the Asian market. It is definitely a good career move for her coming here. We hear people can work very long hours in Singapore. So, we're hoping this job will not be like that and she can still maintain a good balance between work and home.

As for me, I've been looking after most of the move from organizing the movers, arranging our flights, selling old stuff in Nassau, buying up new stuff in Singapore, finding a place to live and so on. It's about 3 months since we started the move process and the only thing now is waiting for our shipment to arrive (which is beyond my control). Not bad if I can say so myself for moving half way around the world so fast.

Now that we're all settled into a regular routine the baby can arrive and mess it all up again :)

That's it for now while I think of something else to write up. Cheers.