And now a word from Sean...

Décor of Despair

A few months ago Tiffany teased you with the tale of the furniture in the serviced apartment we lived in for the first month of our Singapore experience. Since I was the primary victim of the couch I thought I should be the one to share the story with you. Before I get started, one side note. When we came here for our look-see, Tiffany and I considered a high rise apartment with a beautiful view of the parks surrounding the Orchard Road area. It was nice, but cozy (1200 sq ft). We opted for something larger so the monkeys would have room to roam. It was a good choice. Our serviced apartment was about that size and the boys (not to mention Tiffany) would get stir crazy in about two or three hours, which fortunately was the gap between their naps. The best indicators of when they were going to melt was whether their toys were evenly distributed through every room and if Liam was stationed by the front door desperately trying to pry the door stopper off the wall.

Which brings me nicely back to furnishings, with only one more aside. Door stoppers in the US are springy and make a lovely “boing” when experimented with. The boys had just discovered these in the US before we left. In Singapore, door stoppers are about twice that size, solidly attached to the wall with a ball at the end, and magnetic (doors stay propped open until closed). This is less entertaining for the boys from a musical perspective, but provides a more significant challenge to their destructive powers. The score to date is door stops 0, twins 0. I hope they lose interest before they score.

Right, furniture. So we’ve never been fans of modern-style furniture. I’ve always found it pretentious and uncomfortable. I’m okay with the first, but the second gets in the way of my (and Liam’s) laziness. When we arrived at 6 am on our first Saturday in Singapore, the apartment had a variety of furnishings. Most importantly, it had two cribs and a double bed, but most strikingly a couch and rug in the den area. They almost defy description, but I’ll try and then you can look at the pictures.

The Rug of Clinging – Okay, the visual here was only part of the annoyance. Imagine a rug laid out with a tic-tac-toe board of concentric squares in seventies colors. Avocado, burnt orange, and brown. UG-LY. The part that really got to Tiffany was the material. I still don’t know what to call it (some sort of crazy, cheap acrylic-T), but the largest portion was made of a green material that shed fuzz, green fuzz, on every creature that came near it. I think I actually saw it leap onto Graeme at one point, but that wasn't necessary because guess where the boys chose to play? On the rug. The fuzz got EVERYWHERE, and we do mean everywhere, on the boys. Bath time became more like sheep sheering.

The Couch of Camouflage – When you see the pictures, you’ll wonder why I didn’t call it the Couch of Seizures, but the truth is that no one had a seizure. It’s basically a white loveseat with small black and white circles and squares. Ugly, but not dangerous or so I thought.

The couch was hosting hostile organisms. I got my first clue from the fact that every weekend when I got back from Hong Kong, I thought I’d caught a cold from the travel. I’d take Claritin and wait out the symptoms. By the time I was back in Hong Kong, I’d be better. The first week I spent entirely in Singapore, I began to suspect I might be allergic to something in the apartment. I was sitting on the loveseat working one night when I looked up and noticed a water stain on the plaster ceiling above me. It looked old, except for the middle which looked darker. I stood on the couch and did what any American man would do. I poked the spot.

One eyeful of plaster later I realized that part of the very high humidity in our apartment was not just from living on the Equator. It was then that I thought to myself that the couch had always seemed a little damp. Looking to my right like a man about to be killed in a horror film, I realized that the trail of spots on the wall were not a result of flinging food by the boys, but the journey of the mold from the ceiling leak to infest the arm of the couch I was standing upon. Insert scream of terror here. Oddly my microbiologist wife was not nearly as appalled as I was. I think it has something to do with who was actually having the allergic reaction (no, I just wasn't surprised based on the strange smell of the couch-T).

The story continues…I will post an epilogue to this one later.