sick and tired of dumb condo names

from http://zynfandel.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html

thank reason it's friday

doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but at least it's less insincere.

Anyway I'm still in the office and it looks like I'll be here for a while, so no real thanking is taking place yet.

Today's blog post will combine two of my favourite topics - property and bad English. Specifically, it will be about awful names of condominium projects in Singapore. I believe I've touched on this before in an old blog but I think it bears repeating, especially in light of what happened earlier today.

So I picked up the phone and called the sales office of The Merlot, a freehold 42-unit condo in the Novena area. I got one of their flyers in the mail the other day, and it was a very pretty burgundy-coloured flyer worthy of the development's lofty moniker. Except that this aforementioned moniker was apparently not, as I had mistakenly assumed, derived from the wine that Paul Giamatti so scathingly dismissed in Sideways. It is, in fact, according to the condo's salespeople, pronounced "mer-lott", as in: "allo, dis is der mer-lott". I was suitably humbled.

But at least The Merlot is not a misnomer, unlike newly-soft-launched Centris, which turns out to be located in Jurong. It's a $14 taxi ride from my office (or my home) to Jurong, which proves my theory that Jurong, for all intents and purposes, is in fact part of Malaysia. (Don't even get me started on Chua Chu Kang. I navigate in CCK by doing a U-turn every time I encounter a sign pointing to Johor.)

Also, The Merlot actually has vowels, which is more than can be said about 2 RVG, BLVD, DLV, SCK Ville, and to a lesser extent The Nclave.

Then there are the condos that you know are Singaporean because they have names that wouldn't make sense anywhere else in the world. Not that they do here, but no one seems to realise that.

A check of caveats lodged with the Urban Redevelopment Authority over the last 12 months (haha) shows that there are at least 14 residential developments in Singapore that have names beginning with "D'". Working on the assumption that these names are a clumsy way of demonstrating francophilic respect, 12 of these 14 condo names are in fact ungrammatical. They are: D'Dalvey, D'Palma, D'Banyan, D'Cambridge, D'Gallery, D'Lotus, D'Manor, D'Marine, D'Saville, D'Wilkinson, D'Grove Villas, and - my personal favourite - D'Hillside Loft.

(There are also d'istant cousins like De Angelo, De Casalle, De Lente, De Paradiso, and De Royale. And D-Mansions, but I think that one just got confused.)

I like to imagine that one day, probably not too long ago, there was a name-brainstorming session in which someone said, hey, we're in Hillside, all the units in the condo are lofts, and why don't we just throw in a "D'" to keep up with those highfalutin D'Manor dudes?

Except that D'Hillside Loft is actually on Pasir Panjang Hill, there are no more lofts in this particular project than others, and - I have nothing to say about the "D'".

Perhaps to demystify the geographical bewilderment that must necessarily result from projects such as D'Hillside Loft, there has been in recent years the rise of what I like to call the idi@t trend. (On a slight diversion, if you look for "moron" synonyms on thesaurus.com, you learn the very useful information that "an idiot is a stupid person with a mental age below three years, while a moron is a stupid person with a mental age of between seven to twelve years". Who knew?)

Victims of the idi@t trend include: 3@Phillips, 8@Mount Sophia, The Sail@Marina Bay, The Light@Cairnhill, The Oceanfront@Sentosa Cove, The Villas@Sentosa Cove, Le Royce@Leith Park, Spring@Katong, Suites@Surrey, Ten@Suffolk, The Elegance@Changi, The Pearl@Mount Faber, The Serenade@Holland, Urban Edge@Holland V, Viz@Holland, Oasis@Mulberry, Residences@Evelyn, Residences@Limau, and Residences@Novena.

I'm getting a headache.

In keeping with the Frenchy theme is also Chez Bright Apartments, which makes so little sense that I shouldn't even have to end this sentence.

And somewhat further east of the D'evelopments are the Casas. There are at least 17 "Casa Somethings" in Singapore, including the unexpectedly Mediterranean Casa Esperanza and Casa Sarina. But even the Casas are not spared the indignity of cross-breeding, which gives rise to the inspired Casa Pasir Ris - a marriage of Italian and Malay that will probably produce puzzling progeny.

I could go on but my work week is finally over and so off I go to have some fun.

D'fun, I mean. Casa Ciao!