The Devil Has Six Legs

Hi folks,
We've been living in Singapore for a month now and I thought it was time to give you all a general update.
By now we've all more or less acclimatised to the weather. In the mornings once the kids are off to school and Holger has gone to work I turn off the air co, open the windows to try and catch a breeze and the air co doesn't usually go on again until around dinner time. Of course we still feel the heat if we are outside, but then so do the locals - Holger takes a perverse pleasure in pointing out locals who are also dripping in sweat when it's really hot and humid outside - I guesss it makes him feel less of an outsider to know that we aren't the only ones finding it hot!
Carl seems to feel the heat a bit more than Niels, although with his fair colouring (just as 'strawberries and cream' as the day we arrived) it's not surprising. Niels has tanned to a deep brown all over now thanks to the hours he spends in the swimming pool and playing outside at school. Only his little bum is still white when he jumps in the shower at night!
I am trying to be healthy(er) by swimming for half an hour most days and I'm definitely fitter. On the days Carl goes to pre-school on the bus with Niels I'm in the pool by 7.50 which is great, just me and the birds and the sun still to come up over the trees. It's a lovely peaceful way to start the day.
We continue to be amazed by the wildlife - although there isn't that much in our central city location what we do see is fascinating. The large gardens bordering one side of our condo are a haven for all sorts of living things, not all of them cute and furry. I was heading off to catch a taxi with the boys in the weekend and by the fountain at the lobby entrance we spotted an ENORMOUS locust sunning himself. No wonder they say those things can be roasted and eaten, there must be as much protein as a KFC Hotwing on one of those suckers. It had vibrant yellow splotches on a glossy black background and the Carl especially couldn't believe what he was seeing. There are a few squirrels leaping around in the trees outside and judging by the noise at times some frogs as well. However the most infamous and numerous of Singapores wild creatures had remained thankfully absent...until today.

This morning is the first time Nancy, our new cleaner, came to work for us. She cleans for a French couple upstairs and was recommended to us by Sedu, the friendly Indian ex-police security guard at the condo next door who knows everything about everybody here. He and I usually chat while I'm waiting for the school bus in the afternoons and he is a wealth of information about everything from the best parks to visit, to the shops to stay away from to avoid being ripped off as a foreigner - graphically demonstrated by drawing his finger across his neck to illustrate how ruthless they are! He is also full of interesting tid-bits about the residents of both our condo and next door's, and gave me Nancy's phone number to arrange for her to come and work for us.
So this morning I was tidying up before she got here and had just finished when there was a knock on the back door and there she was. We met last week already to get to know each other so I told her to come in, we started chatting and because my hands were wet I grabbed the tea towel which was hanging on the oven door. Something HUGE and dark coloured flicked off the cloth, collided into my arm and then hit the ground and honest to God I saw the worlds biggest ugliest cockroach anyone has ever seen. How something that big could move so fast is beyond me but in the blink of an eye it had shot across the kitchen - narrowly avoiding Nancy's feet - and disappeared under the fridge. Of course I did what any sane person would do and SCREAMED. Nancy just looked at me and asked in her gentle calm voice "where's the bug spray?" Using the two functioning brain cells I had that hadn't seized up into panic mode I remembered a big can of industrial looking insect spray that fortuitously was in the apartment when we moved in and thrust it into her hands. She calmy set about nuking THE ROACH FROM HELL from various angles as it tried to scuttle away while I stood there ready to leap up onto the bench if it should head my way and wondering if it would be rude to just flee the property and let her deal with it.
The thing is I am not normally a squeamish person. I have kept rats and eels and Axolotyls as pets, I've patted snacks and possums and don't mind catching spiders and lizards to release them outside. But there is something so abhorrent about cockroaches - even though they don't bite or sting, just the disgusting hunchback shape of them and their scuttly crawly legs, those quivering antennae and the horror stories people love to tell about how if you squash them a million fertilised eggs will burst out and how they will be the only living things to survive a nuclear war...it all just adds up to make them my No.1 pet hate. The devil has six legs and a shiny brown shell.
As I am writing this (at the other end of the apartment with my feet up on my chair) I can hear Nancy cleaning in the kitchen and can only hope that:
a. She doesn't think we are disgusting filthy people who live with cockroaches. After all, given the size of the bug I woudn't be surprised if someone came and painted a cross on our door with the word 'unclean' scrawled in red underneath;
and b. She doesn't think I am a complete head case.
When I rang Holger at work to tell him he thought it was funny, at least until he heard how upset I was. He reassured me that there are cockroaches everywhere in the tropics (which I know is true), that if we really were being invaded or facing a major infestation we would have seen more of them, and that of course we can expect to get the occasional one (which I know is also true). However I am a long way from seeing this as funny, especially since one of the reasons we choose this apartment is that it's fairly new at just two years old and therefore in theory cockroach free.
Anyway, I'm off to the supermarket to buy some traps and sprays and anything else I can find to kill bugs. I'll post again when I'm in a more rational state of mind.

Cheers,Joanne