csingeu

i think i know you.

woah! you have a gd camera and the scenery is breath-taking... the pictures look great and of coz, you look great too!

Updates! (25 Jul 2011) Housewarming party (cont) The projector works much better with the curtains down... or at night... in the day... its performance is ermmm... not very gd, esp in ECO-mode... Playing "Just Dance 2!" on the Wii... the kids love it... i think it's a gd work-out game... really can sweat quite a bit... now maybe i need a Kinect too. Garden at the balcony Our balcony is "bustling" with green, after much unwanted "donations" from parents from both sides... but at least, there's some green ard now... MBR table went to IKEA last weekend to get a table for the MBR, as we can't stand having all our stuff lying ard & no proper tv console... The stupid IKEA table which almost took me the whole of last night to fix. My back is aching now. Wife doesn't want a full-size work desk in the MBR. Will get another proper working table for the guestroom/study. For now, I'll work at the dining area (with no aircon). My temp work area My temp work area for now. Bleahz.

Updates! (25 Jul 2011) Housewarming party Dad decided to "help" me throw a housewarming party and invited some relatives over... Sis tried making some cake + cupcake muffins with my oven... tasted pretty alright...

Updates! (25 July 2011) Projector + HTS finally arranged for KEC guy to come down to install the projector (EPSON TW3600) + HTS (Q Acoustics 1000 series) + Onkyo 708 AVR... changed the rear surround speakers to white in-ceiling speakers instead for less clutter... "woody" speakers and tv console... now i just need a blu-ray player and lots of discs... LOL... Arco Lamp Replica The monster-sized Arco Lamp replica is up! It's too big and "crowded" for the living room. So it's now the centerpiece for the dining room. Not too bad.

Updates! (25 Jul 2011) Woah! been a long time since i've last updated... We have shifted in to our new place abt 2-3 weeks back... and here are some pics of after the shift-in... let's start with the home-cooked dinner... Dinner 1 First home-cooked dinner at our new place! Fried luncheon meat + xiao bai cai with oyster sauce + fried eggs with onions. A commendable effort, considering the fact that both of us never really cook previously and the dishes were actually edible. Dinner 2 2nd homecooked dinner. Baked beans with luncheon meat (the half-can left over from the first dinner), and soup (anchovies, fishballs, Chinese cabbage?, enoki mushrooms, chinese tofu). Bloated. Dinner 3 3rd homecooked dinner with some leftovers from the lunch. Fried rice with eggs, sausages, carrot bits. Slightly on the salty side. Need to have better understanding of the condiments used. Some pan-fried salmon and roasted duck leftovers. Baked potato wedges Wife trying out the new Bosch oven... Baked potato wedges with some spice powder and herb flakes on it. Not too bad.

U r right. Tried it on google translate. http://translate.google.com/#en|zh-CN|maisonette

ur living m tv 55" ah? How much? Very big wor... I also no tv feature wall... I'll copy ur idea for cable management if possible. LOL

Wah! So scary! What does it look like? And what prevented it from doing harm to u and ur mum? Last night, me and wife went to my parents' place to see my grandama (they just fetched her out from at ard 10pm, after our last min shopping for toilet rolls and what's not... As she went to sleep early, we stayed awhile and happened to watch incredible tales on ch8... And then we had to walk home ard 11pm... Think my new place really very quiet at night.... Sometimes, at night, I also scared to look down from the windows to the sch downstairs... I scared I see things I'm not supposed to see in one of the classrooms... Given my "active" imagination, I seldom watch horror/ghost movies... My wife also doesn't want to watch with me (if it's showing on tv) coz I prob scared her with my "jumpiness" than the horror movie... LOL

I also heard noises. I guess it's from contraction of materials... But the noise seems to come from above. I wonder if it's the material for the cove lighting L-box, or the metal structure within it.

I think I got similar experience for my first night sleep-over at my new place... Think wait for u to complete ur story, then see if the observations and theories match or not.

Wah. Everything ok or not? I also interested to know leh...

Updates!(Day 91 - 3 Jul 2011) Dining area The walnut and black glass-top table - which is part of the Cellini home package, with 4 dining chairs. I would have preferred the legs of the chairs to be wooden, instead of steel though. the length is abt 1.7m personally, i prefer an extendable table, but my wife is skeptical abt the built and durability of such tables. maybe this is a gd size. at least when placed in the mid of the dining area, it doesn't feel like it's going to block the main entrance or the staircase landing, and the people sitting ard it, should have sufficient sitting space. BUT black glass top is very hard to maintain. the fingerprints and smudges are super obvious. *faint* View of the living rm from the dining area. and the lone standing fan to cool the entire level 1. i think i'll need at least 1 more standing fan here. 1 for the dining area & kitchen. 1 for the living rm. a close-up look at the living rm. no prize for guessing where's my fav seat. i like to sit at the bean bag... and look at the clear blue sky with some mist of cloud floating by... and enjoy the breeze from the balcony... the balcony can do with more "green"... will be looking at getting some "bigger" potted plants for the balcony... it seems a little empty now... the choice of floor tiles for the balcony was bad... it was those rough type... it traps dust like mad... no matter, how i clean it, it still feel dusty and dirty... i'm likely to DIY and overlay wooden deck tiles from IKEA... at least for the mid-section, where people will be walking more frequently. the dining area and living room only have day curtains for now, as the fabric for the night curtains are not ready yet... MBR our MBR sports a very cool neutral look from the walls, to the bedframe to the curtains, to the "dark and small" toilet... we'll have to "brighten" up the place with more colourful or light-coloured accessories and bedsheets... but I must say, it's very conducive for sleepin, esp with the dark grey (>80%) black-out night curtains. and yes, the king-sized bedframe with storage drawers underneath it, is the last piece in our Cellini home package. like i've mentioned earlier, we opted for king-size and was hoping that it will be alright, however, it was based on the mattress dimensions... the actual bedframe was much bigger, and we did not factor in space for the curtains earlier too... hence now, there is no space on the side near the window to have a small bedside table. and we barely have sufficient walking space in front of the sliding wardrobe. the only consolation? we have a king-sized bed lor... my wife would have gone for a divan-style kind... if we had the choice. no pics of the other side of the rm, as it's still quite messy with some boxes which are waiting to be unpacked, and my 27" TV monitor is resting precariously on 2 stacked boxes... we'll need a small tv console or table to place the TV soon...

Updates!(Day 91 - 3 Jul 2011) Living Room My living room is probably the only area which closely matches when I've initially set out to do for the place - that's the modern resort theme - with all the wooden balcony doors, wood & white fabric sofa, and walnut tv console... the sofa from the Cellini home package - which I quite like for the look - but it's super bulky (made the living rm look cramped) and not very nice to sit on... the cushions are very firm... and lucky us, the bean bag we gotten from Cellini (the colour could not be selected and is totally random), we got some quite beigey and fits into the look... though i would have preferred somethin darker, like mocha or so... but at least it's better than dirty yellow or slimy green... and that's the white marble base for my Arco lamp replica (which i have yet to fix up)... will do so after the projector is up... the tv console on the left - which we added on to our Cellini home package so as to get a matching tv console. we quite like the built and look of it. the projector screen is not installed yet... and we haven't gotten ourselves a TV for the living rm... was initially thinking of wall mounting the TV... may consider just placing it on the TV console next time... looking at getting a 46" Samsung LED TV (hopefully <$1.5K)... let's see how much the prices drop by the next IT/PC show in Sep. anyway, i foresee cable management to be a headache.

Updates!(Day 91 - 3 Jul 2011) Kitchen View from the dining area View from the kitchen windows all the electrical appliances are finally in place... cleaning up the kitchen was really a pain-in-the-a$$... the insides of the cabinets and drawers were all dusty, so are the exteriors, and also the tiled walls... and I felt the carpenters did a pretty sloppy job installing the chimney hood would have preferred the electrical cables for the chimney to be concealed properly... or at least inside some trunking... oh well... the gas pipe issue was sort of resolved, by "clipping" the flexi-hose to the back of the wall... (will take a pic of it, if i remember tonight) the dangling white rope on the 2nd pic, is for the pulley-type laundry system. and the bottle of CIF on the counter - that's like the ultimate stain buster - a must-have in all household, i feel. and we managed to get a pull-out spray kitchen tap! (online from ebay!) which was within the height limit, due to the dish-drainer above it... it was something like 53-cm... the one we actually wanted was ard 71-cm... our Electrolux washing machine. my wife has already given it a test run... she seems pleased with the results. I'm still quite clueless abt all the functions. need to read the instruction manual, i guess. our Hitachi fridge. due to the low sewage pipe just above it, the clearance on the top was very little (~ 5cm or so)... according to the instruction manual, it's best to be at least 30cm clearance from the top, 10 cm from the back, and 5 cm on each side... if not the cooling might not be optimal... and may affect the lifespan of the product... currently, nothing inside, except for some bottled drinks... i guess only, after we've lived in for a while and actually, start cooking, we can then find out how "functional" the layout of this kitchen... one thing for sure though, the bottom cabinet space (which the microwave oven is seated on) is pretty much wasted space, due to ermmm... "poor" design consideration on our part...

Updates!(Day 91 - 3 Jul 2011) despite not fully recovered from my poor health, we managed to clean up, unpack and eventually moved in to stay for our first night at the new place ytd. my wife was really excited abt it. for me, it still feels a little surreal... it's like a refurbished flat, but not yet a home... i suppose the "accessorizing" and "personalizing" part hasn't quite started yet... will feel more homely, when more things (hopefully not "junk") are added... first off with the boring stuff... Utility Rm the utility rm, which is big enough to be a maid's rm or a small study area, will be used as our main storage area. I just hope we don't end up hoarding a lot of stuff. Took my wife quite a bit of time, to clear our the left-over stuff (spare tiles, paints, some equipment and discarded cardboard, etc) from the store... The 2-door cabinet and the chest of drawers were from my wife's ex-office... they were pretty new, considering it was only used for abt 2 yrs, before they disposed them before moving back to their new office, from the temp office. The 2-door cabinet, is currently, used as our shoe cabinet; though not an ideal one, as i suppose proper shoe cabinet would require "breathing holes" for the shoes. The chest of drawers is very useful for organizing stuffs. . Will be converting one corner of this rm, to house all my networking stuff (once I get the OpenNet reinstalled... argh) I'm expecting it to be slighting cramped soon, once we get our 2 new bicycles in.

I only have myself to blame... as i took the measurements myself. instead of basing it on the actual dimension of the bedframe, i based it on the mattress dimensions... and this model that we've picked... had extra skirting/sideboards on each sides (abt 10cm extra on each side)... and it definitely, eats into the limited space for walking... now that our curtains are up, and we've tried to shift it near to the window side... the walkway between the bed and the wardrobe is still "acceptable"... if we had casement doors for the wardrobe... i don't think we can open them... Called up the gas people; i'm surprised they have no idea what i'm referring to. Went down to Kong Tai (the neighbourhood electrical appliance shop, which i've gotten my stuffs from), and they were helpful enough to contact the Rinnai supplier for the "elbow connector" (apparently, that's the term used). and somehow, they don't have it too. luckily, Kong Tai has their own contractor contact, who happens to have this part, and he's PUB-licensed to carry out the modification, for $50... I doubt the part cost more than $10... but since I don't know how to change/modify it and do not want to risk a gas leak, I rather pay the $50 and get the "professional" to do it. it was an old injury from my army days... carrying heavy load, and jumping off 3-tonner trunks, etc... most of my buddies, either have back, knee or ankle problems... did a MRI scan in my army days (towards the end of my 2.5-yr of NS), the doc told me that 3 of my discs were damaged (1 totally worn out, 1 had lateral shear tear, 1 was budging out)... and from the scan, it looked pretty serious and that i should be experiencing pain or numbness in my lower limbs... maybe due to gd luck or so, i'm still pretty alright, except for some occasions, when it presses on my spinal nerves, the pain can be excruciating and i'll be lying in bed... the misalignment usually happens, when I'm too tired out... carrying heavy stuff, using the wrong technique or if i'm sleeping or sitting in a "bad" posture for too long... the core muscles supporting the spine get weakened/strained, and the disc may just shift out of position. but on and off, it happens... just that, these few weeks, it's quite frequent... i've seen my TCM sinseh for abt 3 times in 2 weeks... usually, it's maybe like once every 3-6 months...

Thanks all for your kind concern. everyone, pls take care, and recover fully soon (for those who are still recovering). I think the cleaning, packing, unpacking is not doing me much gd, due to all the dust and stuff. as for my uncle's demise, he had been suffering from kidney failure for quite some time, and his health was not too gd. just that his death came too sudden, leaving behind his wife and 2 daughters (barely 19 and 21?)... I'm going to pop by the polyclinic with the GP's referral letter, in hope of getting an appt to see some back specialist in SGH or so... i would like to do some MRI scan and an re-assessment of my back's condition, and maybe get enroll into some long-term regular rehabilitative care program... i used to go for the physiotherapy sessions at SGH... they have those interesting machines... for heat & electro- therapy and also a manual traction device (which vaguely resembles some medieval torture device) that helps to stretch the spine and relieve tension in the lower back... followed by some back strengthening exercises, with the gym ball and some giant rubber bands... but each weekly session was abt $50... then i was still in NS, so it was fully covered... and i stopped once i left the army... now that i'm insured for such treatments, i thought it might be gd to utilize the "coverage"...

hey bro Kobelala! Your place is really very nicely done up. waiting to see the pics, with the furniture in.

wah mae29... your ID really very gd leh... the gaps for my aircon trunking also not covered up... i might have to DIY myself... after I shift in... bit by bit ba... may have to pick up some handyman skills from RimBlock... he's pretty gd at all these stuff (i've seen what he was doing to all the trunking in his kitchen, when i visited him the last time...)

I'll be in Tianjin and Suzhou from 17th to 22nd Jul... study/work trip... need to write report and do presentation when I'm back in SG... argh...

I'm in bad health recently... last Sat, saw TCM for my backache problem; need to "push" back the misaligned disc... Mon, saw GP for throat inflammation and lung infection, on 2-day MC and antibiotics course... Wed, went back to office, feeling just as bad (due to office aircon & a lot of sick ppl ard), body still aching... Today, went to see GP to get another 2 more days of MC to rest at home... and just came back from TCM to realign another disc (which has been causing me to have backaches for the past few days)... mae29 was still cautioning me abt taking care of my health... and so fast, something happened... on another sad note, my uncle just past away in msia ytd, and my parents and my sis went back to attend to the funeral, except me, as I wasn't feeling well and in the midst of shifting house... yes... movers came ytd and shifted the boxes over... my wife was "unemployed" for this week, and took the opportunity to do some unpacking... our furniture came... and boy... they were huge... totally underestimated their bulkiness... slight tingle of regret... coz it made the space look smaller... and my king-sized bed-frame... i can only double-face-palmed... curtains are partially up (as the fabric for the night curtains for my dining/living rooms are out of stock at the moment)... got the LPG and the hob set up... but realised the gas pipe is in the way of my drawers underneath... I wonder if there's some kind of right-angled or L-shaped gas connector, i can use... and where i can get them from... unpacking and cleaning... it's quite a chore... esp when i'm not in the best shape now... just feel like lying down whole day and rest my back... no more pics for now... as i intend to get everything up and going first... esp with the furniture... we are still hoping to live in this weekend... but we haven't gotten our quilt & quilt covers, and fitted bedsheets, and some trivial stuffs... house-warming gatherings will likely to be in Aug or so... as i'll be away most of Jul...

woah... really troublesome buyers, eh? hope everything turns out alright in the end.

Hey Ely! I totally agree that it makes the balcony more cosy. As my lights for my balcony are quite bright (they are meant to be utilitarian kind, in case I want to organize some outdoor-ish BBQ grilled food session at the balcony, which I'm sure my wife would disapprove of, due to the hassle and cleaning up, after that), I'm looking at maybe some solar-powered lights... For the wicker ball lights, are they weather proof? And also, are they suspectible as a dust-magnet?

Friends78's?