First Day of Renovation

We started the renovation on 21st May. The workers came to hack the floor. We're changing the floor tiles for the whole place except for the balcony (building platform over) and the masterbed room toilet (which has nice tiles that are only 3 years old)

Renovation Part 1 - Pictures of House Before Renovation

Oh my gosh. Preparing for the new house is just plain TIRING! So tiring that we hardly had anytime for rest, let alone blog here. After weeks and weeks of re-fining our requirements, and getting quotes from interior designers, we decided to settle for Ah Soon, a contractor recommended by Jovyn (Gladys' friend that she got to know through talking online about diamonds!).

Indeed, Ah Soon gave a good pricing compared to the other interior designers, and he is highly recommended on RenoTalk Forum. And honestly, even when we talked to the interior designers, because we have quite a lot of ideas of our own, we felt that the IDs were not that much value-add after all. Definitely not worth the price difference.

Ah Soon is not personally handling this project though. He got his "disciple", Alan (a.k.a Ah Huat) to handle our house instead. Our experience with Alan so far has been quite good. Although he's forgetful (understandable since he's handling so many projects), but he's quite helpful too.

Some background about our house. It's a resale 5A unit in Bukit Batok. 132sqm. So it's actually quite big. We bought it partly because of the space, especially when we compared the kitchen to the new flats. The flat is quite old though. 24 years old already.

So, to start off, here's some pics of our house before we started renovation.

This is the main door and the storeroom. Because the main door and the storeroom door is in each other's way, the previous owner just removed the storeroom door. Also, he hacked a hole in the wall into the kitchen.


Here are some photos of the living area. The area behind the beam is actually the dining area, and the three doors are the three bedrooms. We are going to block up the doors to the first and third bedroom, and make the second bedroom into a study room, with a sliding door into the room, and then from the study room, we'll have the doors to the other two bedrooms.


Here, you can see the balcony. The doors are quite ugly, and we're going to remove them.


The entrance to the kitchen can be seen here

These old flats have no windows in the living room other than the balcony windows and this small window beside the balcony. At first we thought of sealing it up, but then when we opened the window, a strong breeze came through and we felt that it would be such a waste sealing it up.

This particular window beside the main door, we will definitely seal up though. It's actually already sealed up from the outside (HDB changed their mind about having this window here?) but then the previous 2 owners did not seal up on the inside.

A closer look at the balcony. This is going to become a cosy corner with a platform next time.

The kitchen. The previous owner divided the kitchen into two: a dining area and the cooking area. We're just going to have one huge kitchen instead, and move the dining area back where it was supposed to be.




The common toilet. Major renovations to this toilet. We're going to do some shifting here and build a shower screen. Only problem is that we'll have to turn the toilet bowl 90 degrees, and means that the side will be very close to the wall.



Bedroom 1 (Masterbed room)

Toilet in Bedroom 1. Looks much nicer than the common toilet, and it has a shower screen



Only problem is the windows (which is also the case in the common toilet). They are the original ones, 24 years old already.

Bedroom 2:

Bedroom 3:

Got our house keys

Not too long ago, we were looking for a house to live in. Now, we finally got the keys to our future home. We got our keys just last Wed (06 May), and I'm just so happy, like I'm a home owner (although technically, it's mortgaged to HDB). I can't wait to get renovation started and move in etc.

But there's a lot of work to do before that! Design, renovation, blah blah... We're only looking at moving into the house in Oct. That's still about 5 months away.

Sad news about Richard Stanley

Heard such shocking and saddening news this morning that the CEO of DBS, Richard Stanley, passed away this morning at 8:45am. It was really unexpected as recently, it was still reported that he was doing fine in his treatment. Things just suddenly turned bad yesterday when he got an infection. Sigh...

A lot of my friends were utterly shocked too when I told them about the news, asking me where I got the news from etc. Many of us were really hoping to see him back in action soon. Now, we can only pray for him and his family, pray that his family will have the strength to go through this tough period.

Additional Housing Grant

Just went for our HDB 1st appointment today and found out that we managed to get $15k additional housing grant! We're totally over the moon now, cos we were initially told by our housing agent that we're NOT even eligible for the grant cos our monthly income is over the maximum, but we insisted on applying anyway (without his help) cos David's only been working for half a yr and our average monthly income over the past 12 months should be less than 5k. Even then, we were just hoping to get the minimum grant of $5k. In the end, HDB somehow calculated our average monthly income over the past 12 months to be $3.7k, and gave us an additional grant of $15k!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

We just feel so blessed. If we had bought the house earlier, we won't have been eligible, cos the policy before 6 Feb 2009 required either of us to have worked for at least 2 years, and have a combined income of less than $4k. If we had bought the house later, we won't have been eligible either, cos our average 12 mths income would have exceed the maximum since David would have worked for a longer period of time. We both agreed that it's God's plan that we bought the house at this time, so we can enjoy an additional grant of $15k, over the $40k tt we're already getting for buying a house near David's mum. This $15k means that we pay almost $100 less per month for our mortgage over the next 30 years!

Thank you God! Thank you HDB! Thank you Singapore! Thank you Uncle Lee! We love you! *muackz* =D

P.S. NO thanks to our agent. =P

All Set...

So I've added a Ticker Factory counter to countdown to our wedding, cos we've already booked the venue for our church wedding (Church of St Mary of the Angels) and wedding dinner (Orchard Hotel)! Our wedding date is now set to be on Saturday, 24 July 2010! Can't believe that we were SO Singaporean about this. Kiasu to the max. =P

It seems like such a long time before our wedding actually takes place, but at the same time, it feels like we don't have enough time to get all that we have to do done! 16 months and 3 weeks for us to:

1) Go for the 1st appointment for our house
2) ROM
3) Collect keys
4) Renovate the house
5) Clean the house
6) Move into the house
7) Design and make wedding/evening gown/suits
8) Take wedding photos
9) Food tasting at the hotel
10) Do up guest list
11) Look for emcees
12) Send out invitations
13）Plan our honeymoon
14) 过大礼
15）安床
16) Complete many other miscellaneous tasks while working full time...
17) Get enough sleep to look good for our big day


Looking at the list of things that we have to do, I don't even know where we're gonna get started, and task #17 will probably be left undone. (-_-;) Oh well, at least we're gonna be married at the end of it! =)))

In need of a break...

It's been AGES since I last blogged.

After I came back from Sydney, I started work almost immediately. Perhaps it's cos of how laid back life in Sydney was, I had a really hard time coping with the fast pace of my work. Still struggling to cope.

Right now, I think that I've been so overwhelmed that my mind has finally decided to switch off. Happy feelings don't last. Sad feelings don't stay either. Memories don't remain in my head. I have a hard time recalling what I did over the weekend. At the end of the day, I just feel complete numbed, and my mind is blank. I'm in desperate need of some time to get away and relax...

How could I have been so STUPID as to think that I could cope without taking a break from Nov 2008 to Apr 2009, after slacking in Sydney for 9 months?? All I can do now is to hit myself on the head and drag myself through these last 6 weeks before my annual leave. =(

Hog's Breath Cafe... Not to my liking at all. But nice outing

Last Sat, we went to meet up with Gladys' USYD classmates at Vivocity. Had dinner at Hog's Breath Cafe, and what a disappointment it was.

Although we ordered medium rare steak, the first time it came, it was well-done. Of course, we rejected it and asked for it to be changed. The second time it came, it was medium-done to well-done still. Finally, the third time it came, it was still OK (medium rare to almost medium-done, but we felt that if we rejected it again, we'll never get our food). By that time, the rest of the group were almost done eating!

And honestly, the steak wasn't nice. Definitely not worth the price that we paid for it. Mind you, Hog's Breath does not charge cheaply.

And then there's the bill. I paid with my AMEX card and so was supposed to enjoy a 10% discount. When the bill came, I decided to check my bill properly. On the bill, it came up to about 190+ (after discount), but on my AMEX bill slip, they charged me 200+! I was quite pissed by then. After the waitress brought the bill back, I went over to the counter and asked for the manager. The guy at the counter just raised up his hand like saying he's the manager (very unprofessional way). So I complained about the food and the bill, and all he could say was "I'm so sorry" in a rather insincere manner. So I complained further saying that they charge us service charge, and yet give us this. I don't know what I'm paying the service charge for. Again, all he did was to say "I'm so sorry" in an insincere tone again. Finally Gladys also couldn't take it when he presented the bill to me again, and also commented that "Wah. Service charge of $16+, so much." Finally he mentioned that what he can do for us if we want is to take off the service charge. So of course I told him, yes, please do that.

No more Hog's Breath Cafe at Vivocity for me anymore. Bad experience...

What was good though, was the gathering. And we took so many photos!

As usual, the photographer is missing from most of the photos. :)



Strong wind... from the ventilator.






Rather random shot of a kid playing.

Ermm.... What are they doing?!?!

Just a sample of the many photos we took that day. I conclude that photo taking is the number one activity whenever this bunch of girls meet. Haha.

Looking back on 2008

OK. I know that it's already mid Jan 2009, but although I've always been wanting to post this entry, I kept forgetting or pushing it back due to other stuff.

2008 has really been an eventful year. On a global scale, there were all the crisises that happened: China earthquake, India terrorism holdup where a Singaporean was killed, beginning of the Financial Crisis, just to name a few. In my memory, there has never been such a scary year, with so many major events happening. One major event which was not bad was the US Elections where Obama came out as the first black president of the US. Hopefully he'll be better than George Bush.

In my personal life, there had been so many events too. Gladys went overseas for studies and came back. I finished my HYP and graduated. I went on to finally joining DBS, on the Management Associates Programme, and made a bunch of new friends. Gladys and I developed to a further level in terms of our relationship, and actually made the decision to buy a house! OK, the house buying part was actually in 2009, but the decision and the search started in 2008.

No matter what, life still goes on. 2008 has been a year of changes for the world, and for the two of us as a couple and as individuals. How will 2009 be? I can only hope that it'll be better, as well as work on making it better.

One slight disappointment with iPod Touch

After all the fun and joy with the iPod Touch, I finally found one thing that I'm really, really disappointed with. Random acts of setting the wrong date and time on the iPod Touch. After doing some Googling, then I found out that it seems to occur whenever iTunes is open when Windows go to sleep or hibernate mode, wakes up from sleep or hibernate mode, and the iPod Touch is synchronised with iTunes in such situations.

In order to prevent such a thing from happening, I can't leave iTunes open if I'm charging the iPod Touch for a long period without using the computer (in case the computer goes to sleep with iTunes still open, and when I wake it up, the connected iPod Touch will immediately sync with iTunes), and when Windows wakes up, I'll just have to close iTunes and open it again before I plug my iPod Touch in.

The amazing thing is that it's such a common problem that has been around for a long time, yet Apple is doing NOTHING about it. Sigh... Sad.