steelze

heyy bepgof, thanks for summarising your valuable life experience into concise bullet points for us to disgest. really appreciate your insight especially the part on "Responsibilities require practical experience. Experience takes time" i think this is a good pointer to youngsters like us who are guilty of taking shortcuts in life by job hopping... i get your message and will remember it. thanks! someone once told me this: "If there was a particular house you wanted, or a particular job you wanted, and you didnt get it, the Universal is telling you that it was not good enough and did not match your dream. It is also telling you that it has something BETTER and more worthy of you. Something better is coming... you are allowed to be excited!"

bright, spacious, squarish... what can one possibly ask for... nice sharing!

urs totally no sound ah? probably u r right... my family on /off the switch very fast. cannot imagine myself standing there for 2 seconds, press on the switch and slowly release my finger energy to let the internal switch process "click" before letting go my fingers.. hahaha.. kancheong me..

ok. i got your message. i will discuss with my wife how we can arrange to have my MIL or parents to take care of my kid. thanks for the info.. really scary...

seems like everyone having problem with neighbours, especially the elderly. i wasn't spared as well. mine is a corner unit. everyday going home or office, i machiam have to complete my army days's SOC (standard obstacle cource) except that this new route is shorter in distance. my first immediate neighbour is the corridor unit nearest to my corner unit. everytime when i walk past the door, i have to take a deep breath in and brace myself forward for the next 10 seconds. Reason being, they never bath or clean their dog. the smell is so stong that we have to close our main door when all the time. Additionally, the dog always jump out from nowhere to the gate and bark at us. So many times i were so scared that i lost my head and shouted KNNCCB in front of my family. i dun even dare to invite my parents over because i worry that they will have heart attack when they walk past this SOC route. after clearing the first obstacle, the next unit to clear is a corridor unit besides the lift lobby. Similarly to what you guys have experience, mine is like a mini bugis street guan yin temple owned by this old lady in her 50s. everyday in 4 different timing, she will burn joss sticks outside her door. during the 1st and 15th of the month, she willplay the chanting praying out loud. i also get to know that she doesnt get along with my previous house owner. therefore, from her kitchen and bedroom #2 which are facing my main door, she hangs all kind of funny ornaments like spider-web thingy, some tree branches and bua gua facing directly at my house. I havent asked her to remove the items away as i dun want to create any war btw us yet. just hope that oneday she realises that i am the new owner, not the previous malay onwer...

hi experienced peers out there. we recently hired a maid to take care of our baby and of course clean the house and cook dinner. as we are new to having a maid in our family, can u guys share how you all manage them over housekeeping? currently, i briefly tell her what to do each week. if i forget to tell her, she wont do anything but to play with my baby and watch tv... i am thinking of coming out with a schedule or something, but dunno what is considered reasonable amount of work for her. some background info: mine is a family of 3 with both my wife n myself working. Only our baby and her will be home during the day. ours is a hdb 5i 120sqm. 1 car. breakfast for me and dinner for whole family only.

Hi guys, i wanna buy a iphone dock (best if also can fit an ipad! hahaha) with FM radio feature... there are **** lot of models n brands out there ranging from branded ones like pioneer to those never hear b4 china brands... anyone been using a dock him /herself and will like to share your experience? my bugdet is ard $150. hee, a bit low i know..

thanks mae for sharing the baz zi profiling thingy... it's interesting. i kpo a bit and went to did my profiling too. awaits your expanation on the meaning soon!

waaa.. how come suddenly so many EM doung reno sia... EM selling like hotcakes now ah? I just saw cleong's EM t-blog... super nice also.. i bet yours will also be as nice! faster post photos lah!

waaaa... drooping.. u make me wanna buy EM for my next house...

my ceiling fan is at the centre like your. my sofa is leaned against the wall facing the opposite feature wall with tv console (very typical layout for most of us i guess). i can feel the breeze leh. but subjective lah, maybe u r expecting those big big sea breeze. haha.. i am using kdk56 (4 blades) fan.

ohh.. so near my place at sims drive... hiya, i didnt know geyland serai got such units when we were sourcing for houses last year. ur location is good. 8 mins walk is reasonable. mine is almost 15 mins to aljunied. 490k to 520k is definitely a good deal considering the fact that paya lebar area will be a next BIG hit in property market in years to come. i saw that u have many downlights in livin g room. u may want to consider using clove lighting instead. warm atmosphere and not so heat generating. keke. i seldom on my downlight in my living room because i installed too many (like your case) and too bright. also painful to the eyes. luckly i installed one side with clove lighting. =)

waa.. i love your layout.. where is this unit? mine 5i is only 120sqm. urs really good deal. mind if i ask roughly how much such unit costs now?

hi mae, i came across this situation 2 days after moving in. when i was cleaning the hob after our first cooking, i realised how come my hob can shift one! i realised it was not glued to the solid top. Could it be that the carpenter so blur and forget to silicon it? i called my id and checked. likewise, he gave me the same rational about silicon melting and stuff. but i told him not practical leh... oil will seep in and damage my stuff underneath... so, he arranged the carpenter down to sealed up with silicon... till now, i never regret the decision. seal or dun seal doesn't make the whole hob on solid top ugly leh.. it's more of a practical reason. my previous rented place at kovan melody and my mother-in-law kitchen at country grandeur all using silicon to seal the hob to the solid top. it's a norm conventional practise i guess.

hi all EM owners. my relative is looking to buy an EM unit at bishan area. she hoping for a direct DIY transaction without buyer /seller agents involved (save $$$ for both sides). if you are interested in selling your EM or aware of friends or relatives who want to sell, please PM me. Thanks!

i face similar problem last year april when i wanted to DIY my purchase. plan failed... still paid the "zero-value-generator" 4k for simple paper work. i think asking your own property agent friends to act on your behalf will help u save a bit of $$$ or even FOC if he is a good friend. alternaively, u buy from colleagues, friends, relatvies or whoever you know directly /indirectly who are selling also and want to save their seller;s commission as bad as you want. =)

sad, i think buyers will always in losing end. during my purchase last year april, i called up this unit (my current place) after seeing the adv on propertyguru. during the viewing, the seller agent knew that i didnt have any buyer agent acting on my behalf. he insisted that he would act on behalf of me as well. omg, isnt this a pure conflict of interest??? i told him that i didnt see any value add from him as my buyer agent since i found and arragned this viewing myself. it's pretty insane to pay 4k for someone to do some paper work. then, he threatened to put off the deal and he said that he was very confident that the seller will listen to him. eventually, we paid him 4k for the buyer commission. during the COV nego, he was always siding the seller's side. he told me that my offer was way below the last offer, but seller hope to sell us because we were sincere.. what bull**** was that... haha.. we settled for a 20k+ COV for the corner low floor unit eventually... after moving in and getting to know my neighbours, i realised the previous malay onwer was actually desperate to sell his unit. he owes hdb quite a huge amount of $$$ from utility bills, cleaning fees and etc. that agent obviously knew about this and painted a rosy picture about high competition for this unit... =(

waaaa! congrats!!!

MK Switches When switching on /off our MK switches, we have to bear with a very loud "TAD" sound. This often frightens our small baby boy who is in deep sleep. we should NOT have gone for MK brand just because the website says it is an Ang Mo brand. Electrican warned me about this before... silly me... =(

yea, mine only rockstone ceiling... it gave me nightmare during the reno when id wanna charge me a lot of $$$$ to grind and make smooth... eventually we decided to plaster it... but since i only moved in less than 3 months, i dunno if plastering is indeed a good solution to these rockstone effects... anyway, i have been following ur reno progress... hope ur hdb permit can settle soon. jiayou!

yea, i have similar bad experience with this type of vacuum door-to-door promoter 2 months ago when we have just moved into our new place. she was referred by my id to do a "free cleaning". at my place, she started all those motherhood preaching about the product and her services... after almost an hour, she still havent demo any cleaning for us. so i told her that we still have many things to unpack (just moved in the prior day) and asked her to expedite on her selling... our baby was crying in the room and needed our attention... Her face turned black when i cut her speech. when i asked her about the free cleaning for my mattress, she unwillingly used the vacuum to wipe up n down 3 to 4 times on my mattress for the sake of doing it... seeing that, i asked her to pack her stuff to leave my house. then she said she needed to use my bathroom to clean her vacuum cleaner... we were kind enough to let her use our new common bathroom. waaa, when she opened out the dust box, it was super dusty and we could see dust mist flying onto our kitchen floor and bathroom. she took her own sweet time of 20 minutes to enjoy our new sink mixer to slowly wash her barang barang. when i asked her how long more she need to wash, she ignored me... wth.. before she left, her boss called her mobile and asked to speak to the customer (me) on my mobile phone. since this was her work procedure, i just assist her. when her boss called, i authenticated myself and her boss asked me to pass my phone to her. waa, from there she machiam using her own phone and chit chat for 10mins. she still had the cheek to ask me to give her 5 referrals. ........ -_-! her packing up was soooo much slower than her unpacking earlier that i buay tahan but helped her pack her equipment for her... eventually, when she was about to leave, she asked me for drink... haha... we gave her 2 packets of wintermelons lah..... bottomline: no free lunch under the sky... (*i scoldeded my ID for this stupid referral )

during my reno, my id told me that to smoothen my rockstone walls and ceiling, it will be more costly than plastering. because labour cost to grind and make smooth the wall is more labour intensive, especially on ceiling... end up i just plaster the whole rockstone ceiling. till now, the plaster still looks good w/o any sign of peeling off... *fingers crossed*

In my previous rented place, the master bathroom was also infested with waterflies. I realised that the root cause was due to the moist and dampness in the bathroom. At that time, the shower mixer (Bravaat brand which i have condemned it after that experience) was leaking water drop by drop in every 5 seconds. We didnt want to repair it since we are just renting the place and will be moving to our new house soon. In the last month, I came out with the idea to place the shower head on the floor with the spray facing upward. Water dripping improved since there was gravity holding back the leaking. That month itself, we noticed so much lesser waterflies in the bathroom. Learning from experience, I am very anal over the dry-ness in my new bathroom to prevent waterflies from infesting. Till now, i have seen a single waterfly in my new bathrooms. *fingers-crossed*

u can try alex window. he gave me the cheapest quote compard to the other 4 quotes i have received. he has a blog with his contact number (alexwindow.blogspot)

haha... good to hear that things r going smooth on ur side.. =) painting is always a problem for most of us... mine have to re-do like times.. haha... yea, agreed.. i a bit regretted nvr plaster wall.. original hdb walls super cui... now wanna plaster also cannot liao.. very mafan... u still have a chance mah if u can... keke.. my house ok.. overall very satisifed le.. slowly adding more furnitures for my baby's room and some paintings... excited to see ur new change! jiayou!