Praise IKEA!!!

Besides phones, our other big goal for Saturday was to find places to sit and a surface from which to eat.  Michelle, our Real Estate Agent, had suggested IKEA, but we decided to look at some of the malls closer to home.  We know what IKEA has to offer, but wanted to see what local Singapore stores carried.  We went to the local mall, and went into sticker shock again.  We saw 2 leather sofas that we liked, both on closeout from their original prices of $25,000.  That was considerably more than we wanted to spend for 2 to 5 years of sofa!  Even looking for wastebaskets, all we could were stainless steel ones for $90.  A Britta pitcher was $80.  We needed lots of things, and were not willing to pay those prices.  So we headed to IKEA.  IKEA is fairly new to Singapore, and Saturday is shopping day, so it was really crowded.  Still, we were able to go through the store, finding things like hangers, a hamper, pitchers, kitchen utensils, plates, glasses, and folding chairs.  And we didn't need to take out a mortgage to pay for it all!  We didn't place our furniture order, though, because we saw that if you ordered furniture during the week, you could get a $50 gift card.  So we waited to place our order, but we did have some chairs to sit upon.  Plus, we were sure that that IKEA would be a regular destination.

There was a giant queue for taxis, that I jumped into while Rich was paying.  We spent the next 45 minutes inching forward.  Rich's coworker had told him of "Call a Cab".  You call a certain #, give them your location, and they'll send a cab for you.  At peak times, you have to pay $3 for this service.  Saturday at IKEA is definitely a peak time!  The $3 fee didn't deter us, but the fact that we were still using US cell phones gave us pause.  However, as we made our way to the front of the queue, we saw that every cab that was coming in, was already hired.  Luckily, one cab had a customer that was a no-show, so we were able to take that cab - if we were willing to pay the $3 surcharge.  It was well worth it!