We’re now in the midst of a rather rainy and wet spring. Here’s me sharing how our lives have changed since moving to the suburbs.
Bin days
Since 2017, Ben and I have lived together in apartments (‘condo units’ for my fellow Filipinos). This means you either took the rubbish down yourself to the basement dumpster or you threw it down a rubbish chute. There was no schedule to it. You did it as soon as your bins started filling up, and even then, not the soonest.
We now have wheelie bins and are the mercy of bin days. They do it Mondays here, and on the first Monday morning we put the bins out a bit late in the morning and realised at the end of the day that the truck must have come by much earlier in the morning, because a lot of our neighbours’ bins were empty and ours weren’t. We now wheel them out Sunday evening. Because of missing that first bin day since moving in, our bins badly needed emptying just as we were scheduled to be in Brisbane for the week. We actually asked Nikki the favour of driving 20+ minutes from her home just to take our bins out. She put googley eyes on them. Now they’re easier to spot when it’s time to move them back in.
Colder
All things considered, it’s much colder in our house in the suburbs than our apartment in the city. It was a bit jarring the first time realising that, as you descended into the ground floor, you could feel the air getting much colder, enveloping you.
The only rooms on the ground floor are my office and the garage, which is coincidentally Ben’s office. Once, I told my coworker that my office is so cold as it’s west-facing and barely gets any direct sunlight, and it has no aircon. He called it my kuweba. It took me several weeks to realise that I no longer linger in my office precisely because it feels like a cold and dark cave. I’m still in the process of settling in once more, and organising my office into something much more comfortable.
The other bedrooms and the main living area (lounge + kitchen) all have aircon. So, there’s no problem. Ben likes to turn up the heating sometimes and napping. I think he’s simulating the early afternoons back in the Philippines.
Yes, I’m a morning person now
Our bedroom is east-facing (also lights-from-the-train-station-facing), which remarkably makes it so much easier to wake up naturally to the morning light. We don’t have blinds in any of our windows, presumably because this house was built by a budget builder, and the first owner obviously never lived here in the three years he owned the place.
These days, gising na ang diwa ko by 6:00 a.m. I don’t really rely on snooze anymore, and I’m usually up before sunrise. A weekend sleep-in might mean I’m still in bed by eight, at latest. It’s nice. But it also means that even on Friday and Saturday nights, Ben and I tend to retire to the bedroom by ten. We old.
The long commute
We now live roughly an hour from the city. By all accounts, this should be a negative. After two years of pandemic and normalising remote work, who wants to spend their hours commuting?
I enjoy my morning and evening train ride. It’s no different from the bus commute from Mandaluyong to Makati. It’s a great stretch of time to unplug, recharge if you’re an introvert, and see the world pass before you. Myself, I don’t allow myself distractions aside from music, so in a way it’s a great form of meditation and letting your mind process things.
I try to leave the house by seven-thirty. I’m normally in the office little before nine. When we lived in the city and I was only 20 minutes away, I was much lazier and sloppier with my time and routine, and frequently arrived near ten than nine.
I try to be in the office twice a week, sometimes thrice. We anchor it around ‘team days’, and you really do get meaningful catchups with coworkers on the fly.
The distance and commute are honestly enforcing good habits on me.
Great location
Ben and I bought our house as a good decision with the available information we had at the time. We do get little reality checks (perhaps buyer’s remorse?) of our house being not perfectly fit for our needs. Ben’s started to notice shoddy aspects to the build, and he and the Lord both know how much I’ve complained about the smallest things here.
Nonetheless, we’re in agreement that it would probably take a really great house or location for us to give up the following:
- nearest coffee shop only a 10-minute walk away
- Woolies literally a 5-minute walk
- 13 minutes to the train station (I could say ten, but that would be lying and would cause you to miss your train)
- Catholic church only a 15-minute walk away
- ShareWaste host only a block away!!!
- Gym only a 15-minute walk away, and that’s your cardio. No more 15 minutes on the treadmill or ellipticals for me.
We live in the suburbs and don’t need a car for most things. Which is good, because Bluey’s a goner really sick and is out of commission for the next few weeks.
Good-bye, concierge. Hello, parcel locker
Once more, since 2017 Ben and I have lived together in an apartment. Both times, in Mandaluyong and in Melbourne, the apartment happened to have a concierge. Which means unless it was an IKEA truck delivery, we just shopped online to our hearts’ content and didn’t need to care about when or how the package arrived. Concierge would receive it and inform us that it’s there.
Our area isn’t safe from parcel theft. We have a neighbour who’s written a really salty note on their door to the person who stole a package from their doorstep. Also, just last week I noticed our mailboxes had been broken into. Not that we receive a lot of mail that aren’t pamphlets.
I’ve since opened a parcel locker and direct all my mail there. It’s a rather long walk from our house, but it’s doable on a good day. When Bluey was still well, we’d just drive to the locker, which is a great way for me to earn my driving hours.
No yard, no problem
We have a balcony, but no yard. I’m not in want of green space though, because any time I leave the house I get plenty of green even along the main road. Lots of cockatoos around here and they’re always amusing to watch. We’re also right next door to a charming church with a well-maintained yard.
We don’t have a bin for food or yard waste, which is fine because I still have my kitchen compost bucket. My nearest ShareWaste host is a lovely, lovely woman who lives only a ten-minute walk away and who gave me really detailed descriptions of the herbs in her yard I can help myself to. It warms my heart so much. Back in the city, I used to take the 200/207 bus to get to my nearest ShareWaste host in Fitzroy. That took the better part of an hour in all. When we got Bluey, I got really lazy and just drove there.
Between the garage and the guest bedroom, I prefer the balcony for laundry. But it’s only good for sunny days, which means I get really excited for sunny days.
By the way, my sister visited.
I didn’t post much about this because, well, I was having so much fun spending quality family time with Ben and Jenna! We did so many things, went to so many places, ate so much food…
Jenna was barely ten when she moved to the States to live with my mother. In the last decade, we’ve only seen each other face to face during the week of my wedding, which is what? Five days or less? Total combined time of ten hours or less?
I’m so happy to be able to bond with her and pick up that relationship which, for a decade, barely existed in the form of chat messages and birthday greetings. The five weeks she was here meant the world to me. And I’m looking forward to bonding similarly with Pauline and Eliza. Someday.
Jenna was with us during the move between houses and she helped meticulously pack some of the boxes. I still refer to the guest room as ‘Jenna’s room’.
Jenna, here’s my confession—I never cared much for musicals and Hamilton. I went because it meant a lot to you, and I wanted to share that experience with you. I’m so glad I did. I’m still hooked on the music. I played the album so much on Spotify that Google for a time kept defaulting to it when I’d tell her to ‘play some music’. I want to see Hamilton again before they leave Melbourne! I was so hyped and enjoyed it so much that my friend who recommended it years ago messaged me saltily about how he’d been rating it so much in the past and what changed my mind? (Yes, that’s you Chad. 😉 ) Ahaha. ily and imy.