173 Chin Swee Road

The Landmark Tower - 37 stories tall

It is time to tell you a little bit more about Ana and Simon’s new home for a year. The address was already provided to you the last time. The building where they now live is a condominium from the 1980s - More specific from 1986 – actually it’s newer that their apartment in Munich (1983), but for Singapore standards that is already old school. It was built on the other side of a Singapore park that includes a hill which somewhat blocks the view downtown. 

 However, they were pretty lucky that the apartment in question is located on the 29^th floor. Thus, they overlook the hill and have a pretty good view to the Central Business District (CBD) overlooking Chinatown and also having a glimpse of Sentosa Island – Singapore’s getaway island with resorts and amusement parks. 

Sunset over Sentosa

View direction CBD

So the Landmark Tower has really two sides. On the one hand, it offers the “relevant” amenities to qualify as a condominium, i.e. a pool (quite nice, 25 yards long), some sports facilities (a squash court, ping pong, a basketball court) and a barbeque pitch. Also, it comes with a doormen and a lobby that reminds you of a hotel. On the other hand, it is from the 1980s and unfortunately, not much renovation has been done ever since. One can be pretty sure that the building was initially highly popular with the expat communities but over the years, many of them have moved to newer condos (resort looking), giving way to “the locals”. So it is quite a diverse place and Ana and Simon have already met their Chinese neighbors :-) and other American and European expats. They rented the apartment directly from the owner and furnished. Renting from the owner saved them the agent fee which was nice. However, having said that not much has been done in the building since the 1980s, Ana and Simon have all that they need: One large living room (similar to size as the one in Munich for those who know the Munich apartment – for everyone who was wondering about a visit – we do have space :-)). a bedroom with a built-in closet, of course, they also have a bathroom. The balcony hosts their kitchen as well as the laundry machine – but no worries (it is covered), and they enjoy their dinners (when they eat at home) with a wonderful view of downtown. 

Chinatown at night - on the left, you can see the equivalent of the London Eye in Singapore

The pool, looked at from 29 stories up

After a few weeks living here, Ana and Simon are quite happy. A metro station is a ten minute walk away (or one bus stop) that brings Ana in two stops to work and Simon in 6 stops to INSEAD. As mentioned before, Chinatown is very close and in general, living here actually facilitates not being sucked into the “MBA student bubble”. What is that, you may ask? Well, more about INSEAD, the start of Simon’s studies and Ana’s time at Mercer in another blog. 

They certainly hope that you enjoy the pictures of their new home :-)

Many hugs from Singapore

Ana and Simon