In the summer of 2023, I moved to Singapore. I spent a month looking at apartments and signed a two-year lease on one that seemed to tick the boxes: good location, appropriately-sized for a single person.

Soon after moving in, I had that sinking feeling. I hated it, and nothing could change this. I mentally prepared myself for the two years I’d be bound to it.

Time will fly by. It’ll be fine.

Early on, I stopped trying to make it feel like home. I knew it never would be. The place was too unsalvageably fancy, and I have learned, the hard way, that I am not built for unsalvageable fanciness.

How unsalvageably fancy was it? Let me give you a tour.

The kitchen: a showroom

Who were these built-in appliances for?

• A wine chiller (I don’t drink alcohol)
• A combination steam oven (I don’t steam. I definitely don’t combination-steam.)
• An espresso machine (I didn’t drink coffee at the time)
• A dishwasher (my Reddit searches for troubleshooting advice turned up hundreds of irate comments)

Chrome appliances daring me to stain them with my grubby fingerprints. No thanks.

The bathroom: a fishbowl

Frosted glass walls. Dear guest: sorry for seeing your silhouette while you pee.

Four unlabeled confusing shower knobs, controlling:

• A rain shower
• A waterfall shower 
• Two horizontal jets shooting from opposite walls (torture if turned on before the water warms up)
• A hose, just in case the other options weren’t enough

Did any of this make showering better? No.

The balcony I never used

At the risk of sounding like a whingy poohead, the balcony was:

• Too sunny (I’m a sun wimp)
• Too small for a table and chair
• Too dusty for hanging laundry

It became a holding area for neglected plants my cousins gave me. At least the plants thrived.

Floors I was afraid to live on

Shiny, perfect marble floors.

The following would leave a permanent mark if not wiped up immediately:

• Spilled water
• A tiny piece of purple cabbage
• Vinegar
• Sweat
• Coffee (probably)

Another week, another stain seeping into the marble’s pores to mark the passage of time.

What’s with all the windows?

From the street, the building looked like a spaceship: sleek, dark, all glass. 

From inside, floor-to-ceiling windows meant:

• Blinds up = blazing sun heats the apartment, electricity bill shoots up
• Blinds down = sun heats blinds, releasing a plastic chemical smell into the air, but electricity bill goes down

Only one side of the flat had windows. The deepest part — meant to be my office — was so dark I never used it.

Loft studios: a cautionary tale

Loft studios sound cool. But in practice:

• Mattress on a loft platform = two years of sleeping with my face one metre from the ceiling
• Making the bed = risk of concussion
• No room for a dining table or workspace
• Wasteful air-conditioning = expensive utilities
• No walls. No privacy.
• Could friends stay over? Not really.

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But it wasn’t all bad!

Some really wonderful things happened while I lived there.

1. The groundskeeper gave me a ukulele after he heard a friend and me singing in the shared outdoor space.
2. I swam in the condo pool once and thought I saw a jellyfish. It turned out to be a fallen jacaranda flower, dancing in the water, rendered translucent.
3. I watched a cicada fly methodically into the bell of every jacaranda flower in the landscaping.
4. I rescued a tiny, tiny lizard from a cockroach trap. Olive oil weakened the adhesive. I thought it was dead, but it was alive! It was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen! I let it crawl up and down my arm. Sometimes it came back to visit.
5. Once, as I was leaving my flat, my neighbour opened her door and handed me a cake. Perfect timing — I was on my way to buy dessert for lunch at a friend’s!

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Surely I learned something?

You didn’t really think I’d endure two years in an unsalvageably fancy, decidedly un-Justina apartment without learning something, did you?

Six months in, I started planning my exit. Around the same time, I was fitting out a new office for work, which forced me to think much more seriously about how spaces actually function. (I wrote about that process on the company blog.)

First, I wrote out my use cases for a home:

Then I created a set of filters:

• Location: Near my favourite running loop, away from busy streets, walking distance to groceries, under 30 minutes to the office by transit or bike.
• Condo facilities: Don’t need, don’t care. Plus, they drive up building management fees.
• Balcony: Do not want. Jacks up rent without adding value.
• Floor plans: Square rooms; windows facing different directions.
• Building age: Avoid brand new. Seek dingy, lived-in.

If someone else has already dinged the floor, I don’t have to worry about dinging it myself. This, dear reader, is freedom.

Because I was so specific, it was easy to zero in on the flat of my dreams on PropertyGuru. I only visited one apartment.

I knew it was The One the moment the landlord’s rep opened the door to let me view the flat. I signed the lease that week and moved in five months ago.

Now I finally live in a place that feels like mine.

How nice it feels to finally feel at home!