Living Life by our "lessons learned"

As we have been living here in an urban city I can’t help but notice some of the things that Singapore does right that our city just doesn’t get.  When we knew we were moving back to the states we were excited, yet we had learned a thing or two.  We had led our lives in a “different” way.  We lived small and simply, without a car and we lived fully!  We experienced life, culture and other ways of living.  Coming back to our home country, we had in our minds that we wanted to continue some of the things that we had “learned”.  Many of our friends were surprised that we didn’t want to move back into our beautiful home.  And let me tell you the house, the yard, and the neighborhood ARE beautiful.  Yet, we wanted something different now.  Our priorities changed, our perspective broadened.  If we were to move back to Charlotte it needed to be different, it needed to encompass some of the new things we had learned on our Singapore adventures.  No longer were certain things important to us.

Some days I look at our new lives here and I think, “ What have we gotten ourselves into?”.  Really, what sane person would move back to their home country and take on the huge task of renovating an old home when you also had to deal with buying 2 new cars, reacquainting yourself with your home city, putting your daughter in a new school and oh yeah, did I mention finding a new source of income?  See what I mean?  Really, sometimes I do think we are crazy.  Yet, as we constantly reevaluate our circumstances we continually make the same choice.  Our little blue house gives us so much more of the “things we have learned” than any other choices did. 

Some of our more seasoned city friends think we should stay here in our little 700+ sq. ft. condo in the city.  To be honest there are great advantages of living in the city.  Like walking out your door to: a plethora of restaurants, the science center, the kid’s library, a park, and lots of incredible people watching.  These things are great, yet living in the city as a family does have its challenges.  First, we are living in an old building in an apartment that is 700+ sq. feet.  We essentially have 2 main rooms: a bedroom and a room for everything else.  Sorry to say, as adaptable as we are, this just doesn’t work for us!  We also don’t have dedicated parking.  As a single person that might be just fine, but when you have to walk a child, groceries etc. 2 plus blocks it gets daunting, not to mention the 4 to 6 flights of stairs that we have to walk up once we get here.  We also worry about our 2 beautiful new cars getting broken into.  Grocery shopping isn’t easy either.  At least we have a grocery store in the bottom of our building, but one shopping trip typically includes more than one grocery bag.  Since our building is old we don’t have an efficient elevator that can wiz you upstairs.  Gone are our Singapore days where the lift took you right to your living quarters.  That was a pure slice of heaven.  And grocery delivery, no such thing here!  Singapore got that part right too.  If you spent over $100 pretty much any store grocery or otherwise would deliver your goods for free.  What an ingenious idea!  If we could get them to do that here I might be able to tolerate things.   Oh, and did I mention the homeless?  It is so sad for us to see the many homeless persons that live in the park next to our building.  It is safe to say that on any given day we will see as few as 2 and as many as 10 homeless persons sleeping and living in the park.  That is another thing we never saw in Singapore.  Not kidding.  Either there weren’t any or the city/country hid them.  With all of the homeless I am honestly more afraid for our safety.  Not to say homeless people are dangerous, but where the homeless are there also tends to be crime.  Again, another thing I never worried about in Singapore.  I felt safe walking after dark in pretty much any part of town and I knew that my family was safe.  I believe this is due to the fact that Singapore has many laws and is adamant about enforcing them.

So, you may think that we wish we could move back to Singapore since they seemed to “get so many things right”.  Not so, we are very happy here in the US!  The idea is to incorporate some of the “lessons learned” into life here like I said.  And I really do like having a yard.  Back to our reasons for moving to our little blue house.

So, a few more observations.  In Singapore I quickly found that living a chemical free life and eating organic was a difficult task.  Chemicals, I think they were everywhere.  Everyone is so afraid of germs and bad smells that everything was over scented and excessively cleaned with who knows what chemicals.  Organic choices were minimal if there were any at all and when you did find them they were typically even more expensive.  As you know Singapore was already expensive.  When we moved there I gave up organic milk, yogurt, eggs, produce etc.  We just couldn’t afford it.  At the market, where I loved to shop, nothing was marked organic, grass fed, antibiotic free etc.  (Common lingo here in the states.)  It took me a while to just let that go and hope that what I was feeding my family was healthy and safe.  Now that I am back, I have gone back to my ways of organic eating and a semi chemical free life.  I am a little more lax about it but with all of the reading I have been doing and hearing about GMOs I feel like I need to be even more diligent about things.  Why is it I worry about things so much more here?  Maybe ignorance is bliss.  Not knowing what is in your food and not having a choice about it does make things simpler, yet I would rather know.  But, what can I do about it?  That is something I have been thinking about a lot.  One solution is to have my own garden.  This is one of the things I missed the most while I was gone.  And, one of the things I look forward to most about having a yard again. 

This week will be a busy week with E’s first full week of school and the hubby and I fervently working on our little blue house with hopes to move in sooner rather than later.  Next week is the Democratic National Convention, which is to be held here in the city.  Since we are in the middle of the city I am sure there will be a lot of interesting things to tell you about.  Till next time!

You have succeeded in life when all you really want

 is only what you really need.  

~Vernon Howard

I'm just a simple guy; I live from day to day. 

A ray of sunshine melts my frown and blows my blues away.  

~Led Zeppelin "Out On The Tiles"