Double Thickness Quality

Pleasantly surprised to find that the Living Room console has double layer frame. 

Her First Kiddy Friend

OO finally made a friend today. Previously all the older kids will ignore her. But today a 4 year old girl Clara took a liking to OO and shared a cracker. OO was bought over in an instant.

I need to teach her not to take food from strangers but oh well it just seems so innocent and heart-warming to see another kid welcome OO.

OO was practically inseparable after that. She would grab Clara's hand and followed her around. She even knows to call her "Jie Jie". Credit to Clara though, she was patient throughout.

I like how OO is making new friends. I was pretty scared she'll get into trouble with other kids when we put her into school but it seems she is sensible around others.

Rivet In Tyre

Just changed tyres a week ago ... And the rear right tyre has a big puncture from a rivet screw today. Sigh ...

Caught In The Act

OO found out how to open the door to the Living room tall cabinet. That was always a design dilemma. Do we build something for the short term where OO can't reach or open, or something more practical for the long run?

"Wah, what's this?"

"So many boxes"

"Let's take them all out, maybe I'll find toys!"

"Wah siao liao~!! Tio Laik!!"

20 months - Early Addiction To YouTube

OO has learned to ask for the ipad to watch videos. She doesn't know what a tablet is yet so she refers it as "star" as we have been letting her watch 'twinkle twinkle little star'. We have been warned that letting little kids watch videos on portable devices is detrimental to their development and creates a bad habit. But we are at our wits end when it comes to meal times. I sympathise greatly with Mama when she tries to feed OO.

So many ballball~ 发达了！

I can get up the master bed myself!

Welcome to Hogwarts~

So many pretty lights ...

I also have a sling bag like Mama

See, no holding~!!

Waaahhhhh, can I dive into the pampers?

Her First Bad Fall

Like every other kid, Emily has her share of falls. Hmmm maybe more than some ... she is a handful. Mostly bumps on her head or arms. Today's fall was another thing altogether.

I brought her to 404's playground for the first time today. I didn't scout it out so we only discovered that it is meant for older kids when we got there. Nonetheless there are slides where she can climb and play. There was another boy there with his grandpa. Emily seemed thrilled to have someone else to play with and kept following him, much to the boy's dismay hahah.

And because she was so engrossed in what the boy was doing she missed the slide's edge when she tried to land her hand and hit her nose instead. She immediately let out a terrible cry, one we recognise that she is in pain. I quickly picked her up and comfort her. Then about 30 seconds later blood started flowing from her nose!

OMG! My mind literally went blank for a second. How did this happen? I immediately ran for our family doctor whose clinic was across the road. When we reached, I discovered the doctor has not arrived so we made a mad rush to another clinic down the row of shophouses.

Thankfully there wasn't anything major. The doctor explained that Emily is still young and hence the membranes are softer and so the fall may have cause the blood veins to rupture. He did a touch test on her nose bridge and confirmed there was no fracture. 

Phew ... I cannot forget myself if any life threatening harm is to come to Emily. I used to think that it is normal that kids fall. But when your own falls badly your heart literally breaks to see her in such pain. Hopefully this is the last of the bad falls *cross fingers.

Saying Goodbye ... 303

Today's the first time since we moved that I am back at 303. The HDB 2nd appointment is this coming Friday so I'm here to clear out whatever remains. And also to take one last good look at the place before we hand it over.

It looks markedly different from how I remember the place to be now that it's just bare walls. The renovation looks dated and there is a sense of tiredness to the space.

I guess our furniture were concealing all the unsightly bits and taking attention away from the dirt.

The most prominent room where deterioration is plain obvious is the kitchen. There are grease on every corner, proof that it is being well used. Since having OO, the kitchen has been a whole lot more heavy cooking. And after a year and a half of neglect, it has dirt and oil in every grout and surface.

The same goes for the toilets. The silicons lining the sink, wash closet, etc have all turn a shade of dark grey and brown.

I suppose it is a good thing that the new owners are gonna do a major overhaul of the place. The layout of the place is close to perfect and so it is only befitting that a new set of renovation helps to bring out the beauty of the space.

"Bye bye 303" *love

Blank Coupons

Blank Ikea Coupons. The printout station ran out of ink. Does these still work?

Loving Slippers Like Mummy

Bedok Kids

"We are now officially Bedok kids!" quip Meimei. That's right, its been a week since we moved and I think we have settled in nicely.

Interestingly, I'm more familiar with this area than I am with the Tampines 201 market. We never really eat or shop there even though we have lived there for 6 years.

As for OO, I think she is loving the proximity of the basketball court where she can kick and chase her ball-ball.

And she is fearless at the exercise park. She can skip the children's playground but every evening trip downstairs entails a detour to the park to play on the exercise machines. I think we might have a future gymnast on our hands :-)

Now the only thing 'missing' is the 216 hawker center. It closed for a 6 weeks renovation the Monday after we moved in. So we are patiently waiting for it to reopen so we can have scrumptious breakfasts everyday!!

A Better View

Apart of the obvious improvements in amenities and convenience in moving to 405, I've come to appreciate that we now have a better view out of our window. And its made more clear when OO would make us bring her to the window so she can check out what was happening at the basketball court in front of our block; or stare into the distant blocks; or simply call out to the many cats and birds on the ground.

OO didn't use to like to stare out of the window at 303. As much as the view was unblocked at the living room, we are staring into the rooftop of the next block just 20-30m ahead. The master bedroom and middle room faced a main road but the view is partially obstructed by the concrete sun shade beam.

405's view is sharply different. This is the view I get from my desk while writing this blog post. It's a view I've always dreamt of when I was young. How nice it would have been if I was able to lift my head and watch the sky when I'm tired from studying or surfing the net on my computer. The vastness of the view is simply unbeatable and I foresee spending many hours staring at the mundane on-goings outside our windows.

I think Meimei disapproves that I carry OO to stare out the window so often. I get it, it's like being a couple of vagrants wasting their time away staring into nothingness. But for the moment, I'm ignoring the criticism and enjoying the view. Much work and money has gone into this move, I'm gonna enjoy it as much as I can.

Immediate Defects

I don't believe any contractor can ever achieve zero defects on renovation. Some defects you just do see or don't surface until you start using the place. I'm somewhat calm when there is something that is not right. So long as the ID acknowledges it and promises and eventually fixes it I don't give the ID too much heat that thing were not perfect from the moment we move in.  It will set me off though if he tries to give a crap excuse. 

In Norman's case, I cannot say it was totally easy with him but only on a few rare occasions did he give me a bad explanation. He was mostly upfront about the defects and always offer to fix them promptly. And such was the case with our plumbing. Just a day in and there were leaks.

The common bathroom sink was leaking badly. There is a pool of water after a day's use. How the plumber miss this is beyond me ... surely you would have tested?

There is also another leak in the master bathroom. The bidet was dripping water and that was with the water control half turned as recommended by the toiletries vendor. This wasn't the plumber's fault but more related to a product defect.

Nonetheless Norman promised to send the plumber first thing Monday morning to have a look and rectify the leakages. These are the only major defects that surfaced right after the move. I'm sure we would find more over the course of the next couple of weeks as we use the place more.

The Big Move - Into 405 We Go!

We arrived at about 1.30pm and the movers begin their unloading.

Again everything was being loaded into trolleys and moved to the lobby. Every soon the lift lobby was filled with towers of boxes.

Another team came up to lay cardboard to protect the flooring. Soon enough the place was filled with boxes. Every room had at least 10 boxes and we had to leave the storeroom boxes at the area beside the kitchen entrance as the boxes were too tall to fit into the shelves.

In all it took about 3 hours and when we were finally done it was close to 5pm. Again the baby cupboard took a long time. The supervisor who dismantled the cupboard couldn't figure out how to put it back. And when he eventually did with the help of 2 of his colleagues they broke one of the supporting bars at the back of the cupboard ...

There was nothing we could do. We didn't get insurance but even if we did the premium and excess are going to take a chunk out of the payout for the cupboard. So the extra $60 we paid for the cupboard assembly is as good as money gone down the drain. So much for one of the best movers in Singapore. Total bullshit.

But we are not getting angry over this. Today is our grand day moving into our new home. No sense trying to iron things out with the movers. I'm taking the high road and just telling myself we are never moving so they are only going to make money off me once, that's it. If anyone asks me in the future about Shalom, I'll just relate our experience and warn them against this mover.

We ended the day with our first dinner at 405 with takeouts from JinLong. Phew! We have finally moved in! What a relief!

The Big Move - Out Of 303

We were up till 3am last night ... There is just so much loose items to pack that we gave up sorting the items nicely towards the end of the night and simply chuck them into the boxes. We'll have to sort them after we move. We have close to 90 boxes to transport ... I cannot understand how we managed to amass so many things over a relatively short 6 years.

We woke at about 8am and sent OO over to parent's place. I came back close to 9 with breakfast and the lorries from Shalom are slowly arriving.

The movers were efficient, moving the boxes and large items out quickly. The bottleneck was the lift and slowly the boxes start to pile up at the lobby.

However when it came to baby's room we were given told that we had to pay another $80 for the dismantling/assembly of the 3 door cupboard. What? Why do we have to pay extra? We are already forking out $1,476 for the move and now while moving things halfway you are asking for extra $80? This sounds like the racket I've been reading online about where movers try unscrupulous tactics to elicit more fees.

Shalom's surveyor was at our place to view all our furniture and it was stated clearly that the $1.4K included necessary dismantling/assembling of furniture. The movers stopped everything when we told them we were not going to pay and the supervisor ask us to contact our surveyor Alan. We couldn't get him on the phone and had to call the office to contact him instead. Eventually we reached him and he insist we have to pay but offered a discounted rate of $60.

Now ... what were we supposed to do? Today's the big day for the move, half  of our items are already in the trucks. We had to suck it up and curse our silly belief that a so-called 'big' company mover like Shalom will not pull a fast one like the smaller Ah-Beng movers.

They eventually got everything into the truck at close to noon. Gosh ... 3 hours to get all the furniture and boxes into the trucks, which means it take the same or more to move things into our new place. We break for lunch ... I bought 10 packs of chicken rice for everyone. I know it may seem silly to be spending extra bucks for the movers after the nonsense they try to pull, but better do this and hope they don't try other games. After the cupboard they may try other tactics, I'm trying to prevent them as much as possible by getting on their good side and play on their 'compassion'. Hopefully treating them to lunch will help. Haiz ... it's going to be a long day ...

A Maze Of Boxes

Meimei has been diligently packing the place while I was in Australia. Her focus was mostly on the study and the kitchen where she had to direct Mama and maid on how to pack the pots and plates.

Since coming back to Singapore late week, I've been packing every night. The entire house is in a mess and the boxes covered a good part of the study and living room. When OO saw the study being filled with boxes, she let out several sad cries. The study has been one of her play spots so to see it covered with boxes seemed to overwhelmed her.

The living room begin to fill steady the past week. It's a challenge to walk around and more so for OO who isn't used to so much clutter. We are moving tomorrow and we still have many stuff lying around the house. The heavy stuff are already in the boxes and now it's just couple of the loose items plus mostly OO's stuff we will be packing. Tonight's gonna be an all-nighter to get as many items as we can into the boxes. Jia-you~!!