Saturday, September 15, 2012

Work is progressing

We went to visit our apartment to be yesterday. I am still not totally convinced it will be finished by 30th September, however there is an ARMY of people slaving on it.

It has been interesting to observe differences in construction methods and… tastes/ style.

In the UK unless you had a wedge of cash you probably wouldn’t have a teak parquet floor – I suppose teak and labour are cheap here. I think the floor will be beautiful.

In the UK you probably wouldn’t get workers hanging off a 6th floor balcony with no harness in order to drill holes for a sun shade. Health and safety hasn’t reached Myanmar to quite the same extent (although there is a fire escape in the building).

In the UK you would probably spend quite a bit of money renovating a kitchen. In Myanmar the kitchen seems to be the maids domain, and not really somewhere anyone spends any time, and so not worth spending any money on. We will probably need to construct more work surfaces just to fit in the “baby”(Gaggia), Ken-Wood and our microwave. Why bring a microwave to Myanmar you may well ask… well because it has an oven setting, and ovens are something most places seem to lack here… we couldn’t spend 2 years not doing any baking so the microwave will be winging it out here soon.

When we did our house back home it didn’t cross our minds to install crazy plasterboard ceiling features… however as you can see in the photos below, no modern apartment in Myanmar is complete without a few interesting ceiling designs. They seemed to have opted for cut out circles and swirls in the living area and chunky block work in the bedroom. I have a niggling fear that they will decide some large over the top chandelier type affair would be the perfect light fitting to sit in the plasterwork. We shall see!

I conclude that even if there are garish light fittings and pink and orange curtains it will still be the nicest place we will have seen by a long way. Roll on moving in day… roll on G&Ts on the balcony… 

  

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