16 August 2010

A property, a home

Thinking back, the Yishun 5-room HDB wasn't too bad.  There were some hits, and some misses.

The Hits

1.  Access to public transport. Yishun MRT was just 7-8 mins away.  There was also a feeder bus by the next block.

2.  Food.  Coffee shop was at the next block.  A short walk away was the Chong Pang Market and more coffee shops.

3.  Market.  For a wet market, there was the Chong Pang Market, and for supermarket, Cold Storage at Northpoint Shopping Centre.

4.  Sunlight.  Cloth line was facing a generally east-west direction.

5.  Minimum renovation.  Did not need much renovation.

6.  Schools.  There was a primary, secondary school and a Junior College nearby.  Near, but not too near that the noise carried across.  There were also several child care centres within short walking distances.

7.  The Air Force.  Nearby was a military airbase.  So it was quite a thrill each year seeing the helicopters doing their practice runs for National Day.

The Misses

1.  Old.  The unit was more than 10 years old.  After some time, started to suffer from electrical breaks whenever there was a thunderstorm.  This posed a big problem for my refrigerator when we travelled overseas!

2.  Wildlife.  Being a topmost unit, lizards and cockroaches appeared to be the norm.

3.  The Air Force.  Noisy as hell whenever they were flying.  But we did get used to it after awhile.  Possibly this was the cause for dustiness too.

4.  Aircon.  As with most old aircon units, they were in need of some major retrofitting.  They were probably operating at low efficiency.  On some days, we needed the fan to complement the aircon.

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