There are two locks on our mailbox. I have the key to one of them, the mail man can open the other one. This way, it is possible for the Singapore post office to deliver letters even when the slot on the mailbox is closed up, which is what many people do to shut out advertisements. But because Kai greatly enjoys to fish flyers out of our mailbox and dump them into the nearby dust bin, we are open to the world.

Our apartment building (The Centris) sits on top of the Jurong Point shopping mall. All three floors (not four, as I wrote before; there is no second floor between the first and the third) are connected to the Centris by an elevator right outside our door. It is kind of cool to be in the middle of a mall, swipe a card key, step into a special elevator next to the regular mall elevators, and be home. Less cool is the relentlessly looping Für Elise (just the opening) in that elevator.

Jurong Point has a post office, branches of five local banks, three educational institutions, seven pharmacies/convenience stores, five supermarkets (one of them 24-hours), five shops for books and stationary, ten for children's goods, one for pets, six for computer accessories, ten for household appliances or furnitures, one hundred and fifty for clothing, fifteen for health and fitness, twenty-four for hobbies, gifts and novelties, thirty-one for watches, jewellery, and eyewear, ten for sportswear, thirty-seven salons and cosmetics stores, a medical centre, and ninety-three restaurants (including a Japanese street)

There is also a Community Hub, which houses among others Kai's daycare centre (My First Skool), and the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (which may or may not have had a hand in naming that skool).