Chiku Pek*

Yay yay yippee yippee yay!!! *gyrates and shimmies across the room*

I found a location!! Wow wow wow! I'm so excited!

I was really quite down in the dumps on Friday because things just didn't seem to be moving, I was annoyed with myself for slacking off just because the Dolphin was home and was on the verge of sending CVs out to agencies because the Universe seemed to have lost interest. I know...D-R-A-M-A!

An agent had taken us to view Tempco Technominium in Ayer Rajah, and altho it was a nice well maintained building - it just wasn't right for us. Completely off-brand. I suppose the name should have given it away :P

Later in the evening, we had an appointment to see a place in Joo Chiat, which is out in the east. I've been a west side girl all my life, so was mainly focusing on locations in my parts and didn't have alot of expectations for this viewing. BUT I had told myself to see and be open to everything that came my way.

And wow - it was another one of those instants when you see something, or someplace - and immediately a flower blooms in your gut. Do you know the feeling? It's simliar to recognizing a good idea. It was a refurbished pre-war single level shophouse.

A List of Things that make it Perfect

• Space for a kitchen
• A private car park that backs right up to the back door for easy loading/unloading
• It's in an uber-retro neighbourhood that is right on brand - they still have old-skool barbers and Chinese medicine halls right down the street!
  
• The name of the road is Chiku, which is one of my favourite fruits and relevant to the NewBiz
• The space is a beautiful blank canvas on which to paint all my ideals
• I am surrounded by my target market who live in the neighbourhood
• It's just the right size and just the right price
  

The shophouse exterior

A beautiful blank canvas

And guess what? We met one of the tenants (an interior design firm) and discovered he is the brother of one of my good friends and wakeboarding mentors!!! Can you bloody believe it??!

So the Dolphin and I immediately went home and drew up a rough plan.
And then the MooMoo made a FABULOUS suggestion to use the space more effectively and generate revenue in the mornings which I'm super excited about!

Oh! IKEA have this AMAZING tool they use to plan their kitchens and it's perfectly handy for planning any sort of space as well. Check it out, I've been having so much fun with it over the weekend.

And then the next day, I went for my cupcake baking class (still semi-drunk and very bleary-eyed) which I will write about in my next post. It was so much fun!

And today, I'm going shopping for the office! Yay!! I can get my KitchenAid appliances now - and if you love retro reproductions as much as I do, you'll now exactly why I'm grinning like a cheshire!

And...the Great Singapore Sale is on right now this very second!

I'm the luckiest girl in the world!

* For my non-Singaporean friends, the post title is a play on the Singlish (Singapore English) phrase "Chee Ko Pek" which means dirty old man. Hehehe....it's a perfect description for Joo Chiat which turns a darker hue of shady once the sun goes down!