Tiled

I wasnt home for a couple of days. When i came back, i went to see the house the next morning before heading to work. Tiling has finally started! YAAAY!

Speakers are In!

I went to collect our speakers because the contractor needed the surround speakers to be mounted on the ceiling. Man, it was a huge box. Thank goodness they were packed into four modules. I am so glad i have a car. I cant imagine running around without a car man.

Backseat with our birks and the speaker cables. Full house man. I like how the red trimmings on my black leather look.

Simplicity

It never fails to amaze me how construction remains very low tech. Though there are many advances in the construction industry, it remains largely labour intensive. In determining the location of the lights in the various places in my house, the contractor nonchalently pulled out this large pencil with a large tip and started drawing on the wall. Haha. Kinda shocked me.

Subsequently, the aircon guy also started drawing and then the electrician too. Haha.

Taking it easy..

Because I have more than 30 days of leave to clear by the end of this year, I took two days of leave last week to run some errands to choose the right marble for the table, select and purchase all the sinks, toilet bowls, TV console, shoes cabinet, and of course squeeze in a round of golf.

Because the places don't open before 11am, i put in some time for range.

Here's my new bag. I don't think i posted i bought a new bag.

Tiles are in!

The tiles are in! Stacks and stacks of tiles and sand. Bales of trunking.

Taka Sale

I havent gone to the Taka sale for a long time now because of austerity measures to save some money. But this time, we went to buy some houseware. everything was more than 20%, then 10% more discount for Taka card holders. What a steal!

We bought plates, pots, cutlery, cups, golf balls, and a pair of shoes for me (hee hee) and every got free home delivery.

We saw these cup/plate sets and decided to buy. There was actually a boy and girl one. But for some reason, the girl set didnt have discount. So crocodile it is. Haha.

Suckers

We are such suckers. Drink nespresso also must buy nespresso glasses. I dont even drink coffee. I only drink when i go to their outlets because i dont believe in paying for coffee. Just like how i dont believe in paying for salads.

Birks

It has been more than 5 years since i last bought a pair of birks. (birkenstocks, not birkins bag). We decided to order some after collating the four necessary orders needed to get free shipping. We went to the Birks shop at Wheelock to try out whatever we wanted to buy, then order online at 40% cheaper. Poor Wheelock, the shops there like Borders, Epicentre, Birks) are just places for people to go try their stuff out and then buy at somewhere later. The shoes came within 3 days of ordering.

Nicely packed in fours. No wonder you need four to get free shipping.

Why??

I was standing behind the woman when she was trying to maneuver a tin of milk from the MIDDLE of the stack. I really dont know why she had to choose that particular tin in the middle. I was mentally willing the stack to all fall down. That's why i was standing behind her. Haha. Alas, they didnt fall.

Best 3D TV in the World?

Saw this while we were shopping for a TV. It amused me A LOT to see that the "world's best 3D TV right now" is advertised with a hand written note. It even has a typo on the apostrophe.

Tie

I met some China clients today and they gave me a gift. They said it was a tie. Looks pretty decent

Inside, it looks like a Japanese gift. My heart palpitates with some expectation that it wouldnt be crass like most Chinese stuff.

I was wrong. It's very obiang.

I promptly wrapped it back and wondered who i gave re-gift this to.

Hacked

We started hacking last week. Things look bigger and brighter now.

Living Room - Before



Living Room - After



Dining Room - Before



Dining Room - After



Kitchen - Before



Kitchen - After



So far, we have:

1. Decided on a contractor
2. Bought our sofa from Casa Italy
3. Decided on the tiles for the entire house
4. Decided on kitchen sink
5. Decided on the feature walls
6. Decided on the toilet bowl
7. Bought our marble dining table
8. Bought our speakers from KEF
9. Decided on the amp
10. Decided on the location of the electrical points
11. Decided on the air-conditioning system

The last two decisions were worth S$10,000 and they were made within 45 minutes. Pretty scary after i thought about it when i got home.

Taking Care

I am ill again. I have been coughing and sneezing for a week now and it got so bad today and my chest hurt and I couldnt breath properly. It scared the hell out of me.

I hate to be sick. I used to be quite healthy and I remember in my previous job, I never took MC in the three years i was there.

I have resolved to treat my body better. I hope to sleep before 11pm every night and eat better. I hope i have the willpower to do this.

Punch

I have been searching for a driver headcover for a long time now but nothing ever appealed to me.

Until today.

It's one supposedly "endorsed" by Muhammad Ali. I thought it was appropriate to signify my drives pack a punch.

Progress Finally!

We are finally good to go for hacking works after getting approval from the MCST to commence. Hacking begins on Wednesday! w00t!

Because of our hectic schedules these few weeks, we made an effort to make some key decisions before all these travelling.

So we managed to decide all the tiles in the house, decided on the sinks, toilet bowls, sound system and sent in the furniture measurements to be customised.

Got the 30m speaker cables from the sound system guy to pass to the contractor.



W00t! it has begun!

Charmed

Sometimes I think we lead a charmed life.

Someone only takes first class now but she wants the overnight kit from Economy class. So i got it for her on my recent trip.

Events Events

So many things happened during this China trip. Someone called me one night and said she got into an accident. Supposedly going quite slow but I only found out when I returned a few days later that she's still suffering from some whiplash.

Then Someone called me the next night so say her mum admitted to hospital for high blood pressure.

Then the taxi I was in while in China got banged by an X5 on the side that I was on. Harrowing and I could have died.

And then Someone flew off to London this morning, leaving me to man the fort.

It has started!

After talking to so many contractors and bringing them to the new place, and after waiting for Hungry Ghost month to be over, we finally confirmed our contractor yesterday.

W00t!

You know you're in the renovation mode when it occupies your mind all the time. So much so that when we went to grab the bride two weekends ago with Sox, the first thing i did when i got into the bride's room was i looked at her ceiling detail and immediately took out my phone to snap.

This, my friends, is a light box.



When I met the contractor to confirm and go through the scope, he told me that the standard distance from the wall to the tip of the toilet bowl is 26". I didnt believe him and he immediately took out his measuring tape and showed me. It's true. 26".

When i was peeing in the office today, I wanted to measure the distance as well. Pity i didnt have the balls to clip my measuring tape to my belt wherever I go.

Speech

Havent had time to update the blog.

Here's a copy of the speech i gave during Sox's wedding last week.

Good evening everyone, I was informed that the bridesmaids wanted to give a speech and I thought that I didn’t want to make the groom lose face, so I agreed to also say a few words. And because I also didn’t want to embarrass myself, I also prepared a script for the first time in my life.

As many might be aware, I’ve known Sox for a long time now, in fact ever since we slept beside each other on towels in XXX pre-primary. Little did I know our lives would forever be intertwined, for better or for worse, because we went on to be in same class in primary school, and secondary school. We went to same junior college and then very coincidentally our army camps were very close to each other. We subsequently went to XXX where no surprises our faculties were just side by side.

Because we shared the same surname, he was always lined up behind me all these years. But that’s all the similarities ended. Because Sox always bettered me in everything. Athletically, he represented the schools in softball and handball and I’d have thought he didn’t have time to study but as it often turned out, he fared better than me academically too. Instead, the activities we indulged in were more sedentary and suited for my fitness level – billiards, mahjong and golf. And certainly one of the greatest blessings that Sox gave me was that he invited me to join him and his parents for their weekly golf games and that opened up a whole new world for me.

Sometimes I think about why our friendship is so enduring. As some of you might attest to this, (and I see my girlfriend nodding her head furiously), I am not the easiest person to get along with plus im also not good in keeping in touch. But over the years, Sox has sought me out time and again to involve me in his life and activities and for that im thankful, especially since he told me quite recently that actually he doesn’t play golf with new golfers.

XXX, you’ve been a bright spark in Sox’s life and this is very apparent. I see how his eyes light up when he speaks about you and how happy he is when he’s with you.

In conclusion, I’d like to present a song to you both because I just simply thought it would be more impressive than what the bridesmaids would do.

Personal Best

It was quite strange because before we played that day, we said perhaps we can play our own locker numbers (he was 83 and i was 87). I scoffed because i just bettered my personal best from 92 to 91, after being stuck at 92 for a long time.

It was a usual game until the 9th hole where i hit a ball from 100m and it fell right into the hole. No roll no bounce. Straight into the hole. BIRDIE!

Then i went on to hit three consecutive pars.

I ended the game with 8 pars (personal best of 6 pars), and one birdie.

While changing, we realised i actually played my locker number. w00t! 87!!

Welcome Gift

We had actually wanted to go say hi to our would-be neighbours before the renovations to know who they were and also to apologise in advance the renovation noises that will come.

We even bore gifts of gold and chocolate.

Unfortunately, most of them weren’t home on Friday night.

Too bad lor. We bring home and eat.

Choices

Choosing between what suits to wear for the wedding tomorrow.

Siong Weekend

It's gonna be a siong weekend for me.

I'll be best man for Sox's wedding this Saturday. Morning going to grab
the bride, then best man at the church wedding, then best man AND emcee
at the wedding dinner. The bridesmaids want to give a speech so im also
giving a speech. It'd Wednesday today and I haven't penned down the
speech. Then I heard that the bridesmaids want to steal my script so
that they can do better than me. I decided to up the ante by singing a
song with my guitar. Wahahaha. This could potentially be embarrassing.

The siongness doesn't stop here. Due to some changes in schedule, I need
to be in Pune on Sunday noon for a presentation. So I'd have to leave
the dinner at 1130pm, go home, grab my luggage and catch a 2am flight to
Delhi, then take a 3-hour flight to Pune, wash up and do meet my client
for the presentation.

Im gonna be so knackered out by the end of Sunday.

Laundry Box

Ive been a critic of hotel gimmickry and recently i was a recipient.

Check out this huge laundry box that my laundry came back in. Haha. So big. I was so shocked. I thought it was a present. Turned out to be laundry. Bleah.

If it werent so big, id have brought it home.

SICC!

My cousin jio-ed me to join her for a golf game at Singapore Island Country Club. I was quite excited since i have never played many courses in Singapore and I wanted to try.

She asked me to invite a friend but i couldnt find a friend with a handicap.

On the days leading up to the game, i got kinda nervous because i heard her friend is quite good and i didnt want to embarrass myself. I also didnt want to wear too hiong in case the friend thinks im a professional but playing like shit.

Other than the better facilities at SICC as compared to my club in JB, even the buggies are different.

Usually buggies have two pedals - an accelerator and a brake. And on the brake pedal, there will be a button to park.

There wasnt a button to park in this SICC buggy. I kept stepping and stepping but there wasnt any "click" to indicate the buggy is parked. I asked my cousin why.

She said it's auto park. Once it's stopped, it's parked.

AUTO PARK!!! AUTO PARK!!! That's soooo cool!

Anyway, the game went quite well and i didnt embarrass myself so that was good.

My cousin paid for my game ($250) some more. Kio dio!!

Birthdays

I thought i had posted this but it was saved in the drafts folder.
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July is the month of both our birthdays. Sometimes we would arrange to do a mega celebration together but this year we were too busy to do anything so it was quite separate celebrations.

I actually bought her some towels from Roland Garros but i didnt take pics of them. I subsequently also bought her some towels from Wimbledon. So here they are:





When they got delivered, I noticed that there were the words "Christy" at the bottom of the towels. Because there was an option to stitch some initials on the towels, which i didnt utilise, i thought they has mistakenly stitched "Christy" instead. Only upon contacting them did i realise that Christy was the company that produced the towels. kwa kwa.

We went to Kumo for dinner. At the advice of the server, we decided to let the chef decide the menu for a budget that we want. We gave him a budget of $350 and it was some pretty good food.




For my birthday, it was a gastronomical journey starting with Ricciotti.



Then the next day was lunch at Ritz-Carlton. They had a promotion where if your surname starts with a particular letter on that day, you get a 35% discount. It was a buffet and the food was so-so only. I think im losing interest in buffets fast!



We were supposed to go look at some home theatre systems after lunch but then Someone planned a surprise!!

Wahahaha.

Turned out to be a one-night stay at Meritus Mandarin hotel. No wonder she insisted on driving that day. Hee hee.

Then to cap it off, we had dinner with some old friends on Saturday night at Paradise Inn. The food there is quite good really.

Maths?

I might have mentioned this before but surely i can mention this again.

I topped my level in mathematics in Sec 2. So i consider myself pretty decent in maths. And i remember that sec 2 maths was all about quadratic equations and indices. Although i was good at that, i always wondered how i'd ever use it in real life.

Almost 18 years later, i got my answer.

I mentioned in my previous post that i submitted my resume to a headhunter and they wanted me to do an online test. I was told to allocate at least 30 mins. That's fine because i did a 2-hour test before i got my current job.

At the start page, i was further informed to have rough paper and a calculator (???) ready.

It was 120 questions and time limit of 30 mins.

As i was cruising through the first 60 questions on reactions/feelings to situations, i started getting the maths questions which was quite tough! I begun to sweat. I managed to quickly cut and paste:

"We change a (sufficiently large) square into a rectangle by making it 7 cm less wide, and making it 7 cm taller. How much does the area change?"

Woah. That was quadratic equations 101. The answer i got eventually baffled me and i double and triple checked. Same answer. Oh well.

Then there was another question:

There were 10 apples and you took 3 of them. How many apples do you have?

Tricky eh?

Mooncake Box

While in Shanghai, i also took the opportunity to visit my friend who's working there.

Decided to buy them a box of mooncakes.

Nowadays mooncake boxes come in all shapes and sizes. I decided to buy this one which is quite unique.


Inside with the 8 mooncakes.


Once you're done with the mooncakes, take out the partitions and wahla! You have a wine carrier.

Shanghai Shopping!

Spent the weekend in Shanghai. A bit sian since i had to miss my golf game.

Decided to get up from my fat butt and went to search for some Grohe sanitary fixtures.

After numerous haggling and currency conversions, i decided to buy them!



Here's me doing a stock take:


All packed up and ready to leave the shop:


As per my previous post, i also took so much toiletries as i could from the hotel and put it in the box. Hee hee.

I was actually afraid that id be taxed for my purchases in Singapore. Heng never.

Tada! Opened it at home.



After clearing out the Grohe stuff:

Plunge?

i recently took the plunge and submitted my resume to a headhunter who had an opportunity for me.

It wasnt so much of a plunge because my resume is always ready but it seemed quite daunting psychologically.

I really hate the feeling at this stage. The one where i cant concentrate on my current job and feeling restless to hear back on the new opportunity.

Bleah.

Weird Gifts

In a continuing series of weird gifts following four dozen mangoes from s mumbai client,



someone gave me two pairs of shoe trees. And they're used ones. But i figured it's fine as long as i didnt go licking the trees.



After looking at the pic of the trees again, i realised that they look like mangoes too.

Contracting

Finding a right contractor is very difficult.
It's almost like finding a fling or an escort. You're trying to find the
right person whom you're comfortable in having a short-term relationship
with, and having a creative mind to come up with fanciful ideas and yet
attend to your every whim and fancy. All these at a price that you hope
to be as low as possible.
Tough sia.