House-hunting with our parents

Yes, the whole house-hunting saga is not over. The whole world (which means our parents and leo's grandma) are still at it.

So to appease the higher powers, we went looking at HDB showflats yesterday - taking our parents along on different trips. Actually our parents are very easy-going people, so it's not a chore bringing them along. It's just that...well...I wish I could just stay home and nap. House-hunting gives me a headache - must check the facing lah in case the afternoon sun floods the place, must make sure don't have certain kinds of neighbours on the same floor lah, must make sure this and that lah. Sian man.

Fortunately, yesterday was quite a hilarious experience. Because we realised why some units in a Woodlands cluster were still vacant after about five years.

Imagine a block with corridors on every floor. Ok that's normal. This block, however, is built in a circular fashion, such that all the corridors are facing one another. Similar to the NTU hostel where when you come out of your room, you can see all the other doors of the rooms of the corridor that runs in a cirle. And when you look down from your corridor, you see a little garden or patch of green that forms the centre of your block. Which also means that when an outsider looks at the facade of the block, they don't see the corridors. They have to walk under the block to its centre (where the garden is) and look up to see the corridors.

So anyways, I think this design gives the residents such a "sense of privacy" they hang EVERYTHING over the the railings of the corridors and even on the railings of the stairways!!! Mattresses, blankets, UNDERWEAR (yes, I saw many hangers with those things), shirts, jeans, whatever you can find.

leo and my mum said: "Wah lau, like kampung!"
And then later leo added: "Like domitory!" before checking the label of a shirt hanging on a railing and asking me if I wanted to take it home. Hee.

And then all of a sudden we heard a chorus of barks reverberating in the block. Like, really reverberating. It was then we realised that because of that circular enclosure, the echoes of any noise you make are magnified by like, I don't know, a hundred times? Goodness me. Knowing how families often fight in HDB flats, I think hor, if got people quarrel, everybody can hear very clearly lor. Extra clear.

Wah cannot cannot. This place, cannot live.