Monday, July 9, 2012

Raclette party, Cheese and Wine


One of my colleague and her boyfriend has invited us to a Raclette party this weekend at their condominium unit in The Bayshore. Raclette is a dish based on heating the cheese and scraping off (racler) the melted part. We had basically melted the cheese in a modern electric raclette machine (from France) and poured on small boiled potato and had some meat to cook and eat together. The dish is best when it is snowing outside but we tried to simulate the conditions with an air conditioner.

One of the disadvantages of living in Singapore is the price of wine and cheese I guess. Wine is very expensive thanks to the tax on alcoholic beverages and if you would like to continue the lifestyle in Europe here you will pay a quite big amount of your salary to drinks. Cheese is expensive because it is somehow exotic here. Locals usually do not like and eat cheese.

The raclette party with all these cheese and wine was quite a feast for me since I do not drink a lot here and eat cheese a lot. This machine is something I will look for if I go to France one day.

Raclette Machine
Raclette Machine
The Bayshore is this project composed of high rise condominium towers directly opposite the newer Costa Del Sol. Before Costa Del Sol was built, the units in The Bayshore had a sea view but now most of them are blocked by the Costa Del Sol. If you are like me and find the sea full of those commercial ships quite a tiring view, this is not a big deal but if you have paid the premium for the view, it would be quite annoying. This is one of the things to check in Singapore before buying a property. A typical agent will never hint you that that view which makes your potential future home or investment may only have a few years of life left. They usually market it as if the surrounding area is forested or a protected national park while the empty plot next to your condominium may be the plot for the next project.

The Bayshore is a quite nice condominium. It reminds me the Gardens of Babylon indeed.  The units are small as typical for relatively new projects but this makes them affordable for sale and rent (the project is 13 years old). It has a very large resort style pool and you can have direct access to East Coast Park. It is 5 minutes of drive to the airport (my colleague’s boyfriend is a pilot) and 15 mins drive to the city.

Negatives. If you do not drive it is quite far away for you to go to the city and it is not very near to nearest MRT (Bedok MRT Station). It looks peaceful but actually one negative thing about this condominium project is that it is crowded (1,038 units!).

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