Beijing

It was minus 8 degrees in Beijing. It didnt help that we landed at the tarmac and had to take a mini bus to the terminal. I didnt mind the cold but I always fall in when i go home after cold climates cos I always bring too little warm clothing. I didnt know I was going to stay at Beijing's tallest hotel - Shangri-La Summit Wing - until my driver told me. Sounds cool (Mind the pun). 73rd floor. Brrr... I think the front desk lady mumbled that it was west facing. First thing i noticed - guests to stay here must be high-powered people. They have notepads in the toilet!! There's a lot of bedtime snacks in the room. That's good cos I was super hungry, having missed lunch. I began my day in Guangzhou at 830am negotiating contracts, then 12pm train to Shenzhen to meet my President for a client meeting at 2pm, then 5pm flight to Beijing for a meeting. Then a housekeeper came to deliver newspapers. I saw that she had a box, I asked her what was inside. She said it was the bedside snack. I sneaked a peek and asked to take one more of the muffin thingy. Hee hee. Sometimes it's good to stay at nicer hotels. They arent supposed to say no. I woke up to this view. Pretty crazy even though ive been to Beijing so many times. Stayed in Beijing for one night before taking the red-eye back. My 2 weeks leave began from there!

Package

Im glad the gift i got for someone arrived at the office before I went on leave. w00t!

Deliveries

Last Saturday, we took delivery of most of the major items. Here's the crew fixing the box spring. Dining table is here too: The fridge came. Huge! The guy delivering it is huge too! He's as tall at the box.

Adventure

In order to squeeze more time for my carpenter to do work at my house, I decided to change my flight from 8am to the 8pm flight. Damn, that means that I arrive GZ at 1am. With a meeting at 9am the next morning, I wasnt looking forward to that.

It was kinda fun seeing the carpenter work. The shoe cabinet is now up.



He also found out that he lacked some materials, so we went out to go buy.

A little of an eye-opener for me because the shop was stacked to the max with stuff!



That was my carpenter there in the picture. A simple guy who's fascinated with my travelling. I simply told him that he was his own boss, although his business is smaller. But at least he doesnt have to fly and be away from home to earn his keep.

I didnt expect to buy any furniture from Ikea but some items are just too cheap to resist.

Here's the inside of an Ikea table which confirms the fact that it's largely hollow and filled with cardboard inside:



After the carpenter left, I began to mop the house, twice in fact. I left the door open and my new neighbours came in to say hi and check things out. After they left, i realised I was wearing this shirt (Coincidentally, I am wearing this shirt when typing this.)

Bet he thinks i studied at Harvard. Wahahaha.

ISPs

I have been spending a lot of time at ISPs of late.

The other day, my home's internet went down and after almost three hours at Suckhub, I managed to get a new modem. Those three hours were pretty chaotic which involved one of the CSOs wanting to secretly "give" me a second hand modem because they dont do one for one exchanges anymore. That was kinda weird so i went to inquire at another counter despite having waited 1.5 hours to see the first guy. In the end, i recontracted and got a new modem and even shaved $50 off my monthly subscription.

Then my blackberry had some problem and I had to go change it. That involved one hour of waiting too at Stinktel.

Then we wanted to apply for Mio for the new place. After numerous questions, we managed to get three months free subscription, $250 handphone vouchers, 20% off my handphone bill, free minisim for mobile broadband for ipad, all for internet, mio tv and telephone line. KIO DIO!!

On the same day, we then went to apply for starhub. That's another hour of waiting.

Yes, we are TV junkies.

Today, they're coming to hook up MIO at my new place. YIPPIE! The house feels weird without internet. After 1pm today, it'll be complete.

D&D - Day of Deliveries

No, D&D doesnt mean Day of Deliveries. I was trying to be creative there because I realised all my titles are kinda boring.

We had a D&D the other day. The theme was movie stars but i heard that many people werent going to go in theme. I dhttp://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=14379506#editor/target=post;postID=3706955497730038656ecided to go casual because i wear suits to work every other day and it wouldnt be special if i wore a suit to D&D as well.

I even specially broke out a new Paul Smith shirt that i bought 1.5 years ago. Im glad it fit.

But sheer stroke of luck, I won the 26th prize at D&D which was a vacuum cleaner. I said "sheer" because it was the exact same model of vacuum cleaner that we were eying at the Philips Carnival we went but decided against it in the end.

Here it is at my cubicle:



Then my AV receiver came as well. W00t. Yamaha RX V671 in titanium. W00t w00t!



Then my Airport Express, which i didnt manage to buy at Sitex came as well.

SITEX!

It was SITEX last weekend. I braved the crowds to buy a wireless router, an NAS and even a surge protector. Haha.

Because my Airport Express recently died, I decided to go to the Apple booth to find one.

This scene caught my eye. There was a queue of people waiting for these two guys at a tiny table.



It isnt very clear but the guy in the inside is holding a hairdryer. They, i found out, are pasting protective stickers on new Macbook Airs. The guy on the outside was spraying some liquid glue and wiping the covers to evenly spread the glue out. They look all pro and geeky with a long throng of nerds waiting intently.

I must admit, if i havent already bought my protective sticker, I would have gone home and take my MBA and queued up as well.

Sometimes it's kinda silly really. Spend so much buying on the gadgets then spending more just to protect them and beautify them. Im so guilty of that.

Cabinets are Up!

Red cabinets!








Toilet cabinets are midway through.

All Cleaned Up!

I went to the house today and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was all cleaned up. Probably because they're getting ready to sand and varnish the parquet floor.



It'd be almost impossible to get another shot from this angle because there's gonna be something here in future.

More Things Up!

The more visible parts of the house is now taking shape.

We have a fan in the kitchen!



Feature wall is up as well! Think the contractor didnt indent enough bricks for one section. Hee hee.



Lights are also up in the main areas.







The last set of lights cost us a bomb. Glad it looks nice.

Carpentry

The carpentry is in!!

Cashing Out

Ive used up so much of my savings that i have emptied my coins piggy bank to bring to work to pay for my lunches.

Progress

Although it doesnt look like much, but there is slowly but surely some progress.

Some of the lights are up, so i can go inspect at night, rather than using my handphone.

Anal Much?

Sometimes I am not sure if i was being too detailed or anal about some of the portions of the house. When i embarked on this journey, I never thought I'd be deciding not just the colour of the paint, the size of the cupboard but also how many drawers, how long the handles will be, the shape of the handle, then multiplied to the rest of the house.

I managed to get to know the distributor of some rather nice switches and took it upon myself to choose and buy them directly from them, rather than from my contractor. Saved us a couple of hundreds as well.



As it turns out, the first to be done is again in the yard area. Haha. So i ended up switching on and off, on and off just to hear the click. Haha.



Then the light went up, so the incessant on-ing and off-ing went on again.

My Contractor Part II

My contractor's name is Alan.

However, when i was  making the first cheque to his company, he told me to spell it as "Aian Construction..."

I asked him if his name was really Alan and if it was actually Ai An.

He said when he was registering his company, he wrote it as "AIAN.."So the registrar thought it was an "I".

My confidence was momentarily shaken abit at that point really. Haha.

My Contractor

 My contractor is quite a nice and responsible guy. He's kinda odd in that he almost never answers my calls but he'll call back quite promptly. It's almost like he's trying to help me save on my outgoing calls. I could sense a change in him from the time we signed him up as compared to the time we were considering him. More wisecracks and more firm, as compared to everything ok ok.

It's fine as long as he delivers but i do wonder if I, being in business development, am like that as well. Behaving differently before and after the deal is signed. Food for thought.

I felt that the renovation costs were quite decent, considering the extent of work we were looking at. However, it still made me 不平衡when i saw him drive to my house in a S-Class Merc. I chuckled when i saw he zenged it with some blue LED lights in the grill. You cant take a beng out of a contractor I guess.

One day, he surprised us when he brought a rather hot lady to our meeting. Introduced her as his "PA". We werent too convinced. Haha. She's too hot to be a contractor's PA, not to mention her very nicely manicured fingers.

I managed to secretly take a picture of her at our house once. The picture doesnt show clearly but the black dress is actually very sheer and the inside part is super short! Naturally, i dragged that meeting.



 A somewhat related post to this post is found here.

Glowing

That room is so green that it looks like it's glowing from the side. Im not sure if i can describe this properly, but the side of the door frame is actually painted white. It appears green because of the "glow" from the other room!



This toilet is also green.

False Ceiling

Sometimes it's pretty amazing what goes on up the ceiling which is unseen.

Shaping Up

Slowly but surely, the house is taking shape. Because i go there everyday, I know what is done on a daily basis. A lot of the time, the work done isnt really one where i can "experience" the house, i.e. hacking, tiling, more hacking, laying cables.

So you can imagine my excitement when i finally could switch on the tap and wash my hand and also flush the toilet. Hee hee. Even though it's the yard toilet, it was fun!

Drumming Around

I mentioned in my previous post that I went to Guangzhou a few weeks back.

In my client's office, I saw these.




According to my client, these are the drums that Jackie Chan played on/hit on during the opening ceremony of the Asian Games, recently held in Guangzhou. Dont know how true cos i cant seem to google that fact. But what the heck...I touched it when my client wasnt looking and thought i felt a special aura.

Packed Packed Packed

It's been some time since i posted. It felt like a logn time but i just checked and saw that my latest post was 6 Nov. That isnt very long ago.

It's been a hectic few weeks. As the year's ending, Im trying to sew up a couple of deals that have been dragging. It's been frustrating that some of my deals are scuppered by a myriad of reasons - changing of officials for that particular city, lack of financing, bureaucracy, etc. Bleah.

Some might have read my FB status the other day that i made a rather last minute decision to go to Guangzhou. Such a whirlwind trip and we managed to sign an LOI within 17 days of the first meeting. That's quite a record. Now, I hope they sign the full documents soon.

On the flipside, I finally sealed a deal after more than 18 months of dragging and changing. So that was two pieces of good news in a short time.

All these, while trying to juggle meeting contractors and inspecting the house, and still squeeze in some golf.

No wonder i dont have time to blog.

Phillips

There was a Phillips sale over the weekend. It was supposed to start at 9am at their Toa Payoh factory so we headed there by 8:30am. I even skipped my saturday weekly morning golf for this. There was already a queue at 830am when we arrived. Some smart asses, including us, decided to skip the queue and wait in the indoor air-conditioned area of another building. By 9am, some asses, including us, decided to wait at the gate instead of joining the queue, with the hope that they would open the big gate. They didn't. It was a MAD frenzy to pay. In the end, we got: 1. Cordless phone 2. Rice cooker 3. Kettle 4. Table lights 5. Air fryer 6. Hair dryer

Expensive Expenses

This year hasnt ended but i think I have already spent a lot of money. Pretty scary really. This year's big items include: 1. House!! 2. Renovation! 3. iMac 4. Mac Book Air 5. Blackberry 6. Guitar 7. Country Club Renewal Siong man. Time to replenish my savings next year.

Solar Torchlight?

Many jokes have been made about solar powered torchlights, and this is the first one I've seen. Since it's supposed to be used as an emergency light, with the crank shaft to turn to create kinetic energy, i dont know how one would charge it in the sun in case of emergency.