We are hopeful that the owner will sign the contract on apartment #2 on Monday. He was supposed to sign on Friday but he didn't. He is giving us a fixed budget where he will replace some things, buy new things, add things ( per our selection); do general cleaning, clean the AC system... the list goes on. We now have to create the list of what we want.
We spent nearly 5 hours on Saturday in a furniture/everything else store and at a different, larger ACE home center located in Alam Sutera which is in West Jakarta.
These are a smiling people! Everywhere we went smiling clerks were eager to wait on us, help us, guide us to their product. I don't know if it's cultural or if they are really that happy all the time. And, it is expected that you smile back. My jaw hurts!
On Sunday we spent some time at an electronics store looking at other items: refrigerator,water dispenser, microwave, iron, slow cooker, vacuum... I can't even remember. We are simultaneously looking at items that we will buy ourselves.
We have discovered that in the electronic stores, there are tons of clerks ready to help you, some from the store but also they had representatives from the different brands. You have several staff ready to help you with Samsung and a different group for Hitachi and a different group for LG. And all of the stores are organized by brand not by category of item. For microwaves, you go the LG microwave section, then to the Samsung microwave section, and so on. Same with vacuums. Electrolux vacuums in one location, Panasonic in another. Modena in another. It's all very confusing.
If that weren't enough activity for the day, next we met with our realty agent at the apartment and went over prioritizing the list of things we need done and tried to draw some sort of a floor plan of the apartment and measured a couple of specific walls for furniture placement. We also had to decide where to put wallpaper and/or paint. Selecting those items will come after the contract is signed. We're still trying to figure out if we want to replace the drapes and sheers. The current ones are not very attractive and selecting paper and paint to go with them will be tough because I would pick a different color palette. However, replacing the drapes is $$$ so we will see.
After this exhausting weekend, I found the energy to make salmon for dinner with a side salad of cucumber, yellow pepper and carrot and red rice. I managed to get the salmon perfectly cooked in a skillet and used a little butter and dill (I just found dill in a grocery!) and salt and pepper to finish it off. Yummy!
After that, I tried valiantly to take packaged peanut butter cookie mix, add the ingredients and then cook them in the microwave. Well, didn't turn out as well as the salmon. I tried cooking them on a plate, on the grill plate, tried the dual mode: grill/microwave. I threw away quite a few, but managed to get a "few" cooked and not burnt. I guess I will just have to wait for a real oven to do any baking and buy baked goods. There are certainly a lot of choices and they all seem to be absolutely delicious.
If any readers have a fool proof recipe for cookies in the microwave, however, please send them our way!
Today I did re-confirm that apartment #2 has a real oven!
Are they grinders?
ReplyDeleteNo. We had purchased ground salt and pepper so we got these cuties. Maybe some day we will add to the family and get grinders.
ReplyDelete