The Stride of Two Piggies: January 2012

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Movies Galore and Sentosa Flowers 2012

Guess that me and my dear really took advantage of the Chinese New Year break to slack and enjoy ourselves. We watched four movies in total (Thor, Green Lantern, A Happy Event and X-men: First Class), had two reunion dinners and visited the Sentosa Flowers at Sentosa (naturally).

I shall only mention about A Happy Event as the rest had been released some time ago, out of which, I felt that the Green Lantern was the best, even though it was absurd that the protector need to charge the ring. Imagine running out of juice when the fight was at the climax. Anyway, A Happy Event was a movie about pregnancy and whatever that comes with it. It started off quite cute with the male and female lead flirting using movie titles and eventually getting together. Most fairy tales happily ended here but the journey continued with the pregnancy and the delivery of the baby, to which the movie explored the female lead's emotional and sexual deprivation as a result of taking care of the baby. When her tolerance wore thin, the female lead decided to take a break to think about things and split up with the male lead. Eventually, it was implicitly mentioned that they got back together and they were going to have a second child.

I would say the movie was interesting and probably enlightening as it brought insights regarding pregnancy and its "side effects". This was also what we came for in the first place.

Anyway, we later proceeded to Sentosa Flowers. But prior to that, we had our meal at Carl's Jr, where we discovered to our horror that adverse effects of inflation on the chicken burger. Though the fries were great, but the burger was simply unworthy of its price. For compensation, we refilled another cup of lemon tea. It was also interesting to notice that it started raining when we stepped onto the boardwalk and it stopped when we reached the end (the return journey was coincidentally the same). Probably because of the rain, it was rather humid and sticky during the stroll through the flowers.

Some of the flowers below:
(to be updated)

Monday, January 16, 2012

Updates on Renovation 2

Our current place is now neatly packed with sand and construction materials. I am impressed and I must say their cleaning job is pretty good, especially after the disastrous affair at my place. I shall let the pictures do the talking.

The "cleaned" balcony

The cleared toilet 1

The cleared toilet 2

The service balcony with its supply of sand

The kitchen with another supply of sand

Our bricks

Our tiles

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Wedding Photos Selection

This event was highly anticipated by my dear, for she had been saying that she was looking forward to this for quite some time. Guess that she was wondering how the photos will turn out. Prior to reaching the shop, we both made a pact to not exceed the allocated number of photos that we were supposed to choose. Two hours later, we were proud to announce that we succeeded in doing so by choosing only 34 out of the 200+ photos that were taken that day.

Our first round was merely looking at all the photos that were taken, adding some comments and pre-selecting some along the way. Our second round was removing those that were aesthetically unpleasing which allowed us to have 100+ photos remaining. Our third round was done with considerations to the themes and that there should be a maximum of 4 for each, as we managed to come up with 12 themes. At this point, the number was down to 40. The last 6 was hard to remove and my dear mentioned that I was in fact more emotionally attached to the photos than her (But those photos are really nice). In the end, in order not to succumb to the evils of exploitative business ($80 for one additional photo was definitely absurd), some photos had to be sacrificed.

We asked if we could take some photos of the photos in case we forgot what selection we made and the staff reluctantly agreed. We also secretly took one of us with our photographer, as the staff did not want to make any concession to our request to pass us any copy of that one photograph.

The best I can do to avoid detection...

I hope the albums turn out nice.

Updates on Renovation 1

Our renovation started without our presence due to the nature of our jobs and I was quite amazed that they completed all the major hacking in just that one day. We also finalised our tiles for the floors and walls of the kitchen and bathrooms.

Some pictures from Day 1:

The case of the missing wardrobes 1

The case of the missing wardrobes 2

The case of the missing wardrobes 3

The invisible bed frame

The base essentials of the toilet 1

The base essentials of the toilet 2

The messy living room

The face lift of the non-existent balcony

The "disfigured" kitchen 1

The "disfigured" kitchen 2

The mess in the service balcony

We also took some pictures of the art drawings done by our contractor (or rather her husband). Quite cute actually. And my dear commented that she was trying to resist helping them with the Chinese characters when they were discussing with the worker how to write them.

Masterpiece 1

Masterpiece 2

Masterpiece 3

Masterpiece 4

Hope everything goes smoothly.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Our Contractor... Lina from Home Sweet Home

The search for a contractor started in December and we had met up with quite a few contractors before finally deciding on her. The hunt for the contractor was definitely longer than for the furnitures.

The first one we met was Mr Yong from Asia Renovation Contractor. We were not that prepared but just wanted to have a feel of what the prices were like for the various items. Maybe that was also the reason why the contractor seemed not that committed and gave vague descriptions.

The second was Richard, a recommendation by Lay Khoon, a NIE friend of ours. Quite a friendly guy but failed to deliver any quotation to us. He had sent us an email but without any attachment and there was no response after we informed him of the situation.

The third was Ming Hui from Luova Project Services. Another recommendation by a friend and I believed that my dear knew him beforehand. Quite a friendly person but no quotations in the end. Perhaps our budget was too low for his liking.

The fourth was from Steven from Golden City Decor Enterprise. He sounded experienced and straightforward. Did not choose him as his quotation was one of the latest to reach us. By then, my dear already had someone else in mind.

The fifth was Lina from Home Sweet Home Renovation Works. The first female and also the only who sort of understood why my dear wanted the additional wall between the master bedroom and the other room. Somehow, that sealed the deal as after that, it was mainly sorting out the final detailed quotation with her. Quite straightforward as well though she can be a bit careless on the quotation side. She had the most sincerity in wanting our business for she offered to view our flat without obligations so as to give an accurate quote. And even though we did not confirmed with her and we had quite a number of changes, she treated us without lesser amount of sincerity and she also brought us to see her client's place so that we were assured of her workers' workmanship.

The sixth was Florence from Chiam Soon Seng. The office was located in a rather inaccessible place, but she was quite pleasant. Her follow up was rather fast as I asked about the quotation via email. Her quote was the most expensive and thus she was not chosen.

The seventh was Alan from Aian Furniture & Renovation Contractor. He was also very sincere and he was the first to send us his quotation. He was the second to call back to follow up and his pricing is very competitive as well. Too bad we met him after Lina. I guess his luck was bad.

The eighth was Rijal from Pinkk Associates. He seemed creative with many ideas, though they may not be to our liking and he has a preference for expensive designs. He was the last to reply with an indication of a quotation and he wanted to meet us to go through the it. By then, we were already having a busy schedule as school was starting soon and we were in the middle of discussion with Lina.

The ninth was Chew Hin from Zijian Design Pte Ltd. We did not meet up but we sent an email indicating the jobs that we wanted. It was a recommendation from my dear's colleague and thus I guess we were obliged to ask him for a quotation.

Hmm, did not realise that we actually met up with so many contractors. Hope our decision is good. Now waiting for the renovation works to begin after signing of the contract.

Sherlock Holmes 2

My dear and I watched this during the early days of its opening and we both concurred that it was better than the first one, though I only had a vague idea of the first one. We both quite like the intelligent, witty and humourous conversations between the characters.

The show started off with Holmes trying to stop a bomb package from exploding, while trying to arrange a dinner with his love. However, he failed to save the person of attack and his love also got "murdered" in the guise of having a lung failure. Meanwhile, his partner, Watson was getting married. On the marriage day, Watson was separated from his newly wedded wife as he got entangled with Holmes' enemy, not by his own will but rather through his affiliations with Holmes and as usual, Holmes came to save the day by intercepting the soldiers on the train. As a result, Watson partnered Holmes to help him nailed the Professor, whom Holmes believed was related to the various crimes that happened in various locations. Prior to the train rescue, Holmes had also saved a gypsy from an assassination attack.

Through the clues gathered, Holmes managed to find the location of the bomb placed by the Professor's men, only to realise that it was a red herring, a rare indication that Holmes was indeed human after all. Later on, Holmes found out that the bomb attack was a cover-up for an assassination of another person. This clue led them to Germany, where Holmes was captured and tortured by the Professor. Watson returned the favour by rescuing Holmes and they managed to track the Professor to an international meeting as they realised that the Professor wanted to start a war so that he can profit from the event.

At the meeting, Holmes revealed that one of the ambassador will be the assassin. They managed to stop the assassin, but the assassin lost his life. Holmes met up with the Professor and they started playing chess. Holmes later revealed that he had managed to confiscate the Professor's assets as he had succeeded in exchanging his pocket diary for a fake one. This progressed to a fight where both of them fell into the deep ravine. A mourning was held for Holmes as he was presumed to be dead, only to have him returned to disturb Watson, much to Watson's delight.

As mentioned earlier, we both like the witty dialogues, which elicit laughter from us. The iconic playback of the impending sequence of moves by Holmes was also not disappointing and overall, it was enjoyable.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Kitchen Design

Guess this will be what our future kitchen may look like... the colour combi is still under consideration though... hope they do not cost too much...

The dream kitchen...

Sunday, January 1, 2012

家具大采购之五

新年快乐！祝愿大家心想事成！新的一年新希望，今年对我来说会是很特别的一年。装修房子、成为陈太太将是我今年上半年的目标。如果顺利的话，下半年可能可以当妈。当然，在达成这些之前，我们都得做好准备。这当然包括了我们得赶在开工之前买完所有需要在装修之前买齐的东西。还好，我们总算是赶在2011年结束之前完成我们的初步大采购。