Got the keys!

Received the keys to our home yesterday. The builder provides a personalized name plaque for the house (most people hang this on the front wall of the house). This is what we named it ... get the meaning? hahaha.

We were also given a welcome hamper containing some cheese, biscuits, a bottle of champagne and two wine glasses.

Had been ultra busy coordinating for various contractors to come on specific dates next week but it's pretty much been organised, phew! In the midst of all the hoohaas surrounding our home, I had totally forgotten about our engagement anniversary date on 22 Feb ... yeah, we are hopeless romantics that we even wish each other happy engagement anniversary every year. BUT Kiwi G didn't forget. He left me a card on the table. I was so surprised and touched; especially when he had been sooooo busy lately.

Anyway, we have decided to stay on at the rented apartment until the floor tiling to our new home is completed since the required 21 day's notice of tenancy termination ends only on 14 March. We're probably moving on 10 March. That would give us time to clean up & arrange for steam cleaning on the vacated apartment for handover. It is a requirement for rental properties here to have the entire place spick and span and all carpets steam/dry cleaned or else they won't return our one month's rental bond.

House photos

House is fully completed. Kitchen appliances, fly screens, ducted air-cond, ducted vacuum & light fittings will only be installed after we moved in.

The front door


Completed kitchen minus the oven, cooktop, rangehood and water filter to be installed later


Will show more photos after we move in - a bit difficult to snap photos during the Practical Completion as the Site Manager was waiting for us to finish snapping so that he could lock the doors.

V-Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all. For the first time in our 6th year of marriage, I received nothing from Kiwi G. That's okay Kiwi G, I forgive you, hahaha. I totally understand that he has been very caught up and stressed over the zillions of things pertaining to our home, coupled with a high blood pressure job. I honestly don't know how he keeps his cool and sanity.

Kiwi G took leave today and we spent the whole day together. Firstly, we had to do a joint inspection with the builder for the Practical Completion of the home at 8.00am. Still some red tapes to go through before we get the keys, such as getting the bank's valuer to inspect the home before releasing the final progress payment. Anyway, we finished at 9.30am and went to collect the lights we ordered from a shop a few weeks ago.

We then proceeded to Macquarie Shopping Centre to do some baby, maternity and Daddy G shopping (Kiwi G loves to shop for clothes too yeah, hehe). Bought a maternity top for myself and Daddy G bought a t-shirt+casual shirt for himself. Kiwi G wanted me to select a gift for myself as he felt really bad not having surprised me with anything special today. Aww, that's sweet but that's okay, as I'm a very contented person, I have nothing in mind and I don't fancy chocolates, so I declined his kind gesture. Had a great time looking at baby stuff but refrained from buying any now, not at least until we've moved. Had KFC for lunch.

Got home by 3.30pm and I was buggered; napped till 5.00pm while Kiwi G went to see the doctor to get medication for his eczema condition and visited the hair salon thereafter.

Had dinner (left overs from yesterday, romantic, no? haha), rested and started to clean, vacuum, mop the place a bit for the real estate agent's routine inspection of the apartment tomorrow. Finished our tasks by 9.30pm ... we're both buggered by then.

Oh yes, I gave Kiwi G a lovey dovey card and surprised him with a heart shaped pink icing coated Dunkin Donut last night. Yes, I'm a romantic - it's great to know I could still spring some surprises from my bag of tricks in our sixth year of marriage :) Happy Valentine's Day, my dahhhhhhlinnnnnggggg, if you happen to read this.

Summary of last week

I wonder what happened to the "Title" box on blogger - seems to have disappeared. (Edited on Feb 13, I stupidly picked "no" in the "show title" field of the formatting settings. That explains, my bad!).

Had Yum Cha (Dim Sum) with a new friend last Thursday at the nearby mall. When it came to settling the bill, we were told that we could only do so after we had eaten to at least the value of AU$10 per person. The waitress pointed that "rule" as printed on their menu. Well, it didn't help that neither of us could read Chinese. That's okay, we ordered chinese brocolli and egg tarts to bring the total to AU$27 and off we went, with super full stomachs, BURP!

Watched Memoirs of Geisha yesterday. It was a bit slow and boring for me. Just ok-ish.

Started watching the Winter Olympics. Love figure skating. It will be interesting to find out if Russia or China will take the gold. Can't wait for the Commonwealth Games to start in Melbourne. I love watching artistic & rhythmic gymnastics, swimming, diving and wushu (not sure if this will be included).

Current apartment

Since we'll be happily kissing our current rented apartment goodbye for good, I thought I'd show what it looks like.

Please click onto the photo below for a full sized collage of photos with comments on the apartment's interior:

Believe it or not, we've never used the indoor pool! The pool is very tiny, just like any other suburban apartment pools. If there are more than 3 persons in the pool at any one time, be prepared for a collision, hehe. Most of the time it is filled with teenage kids too ... that's enough to put me off. Suburban apartment blocks here are no higher than 15 storeys unlike those in KL that come with HUGE swimming pools and cafes or eateries. Of course here you can find high rise apartments too but usually within close proximity to the city centre itself.

However, I love this apartment a lot, it is very secure and private (except for the thin walls that couldn't keep out the mating sounds of the neighbours, ewwww). Most of the other tenants (mostly not owner occupied) are friendly, we say "hi" to each other in the elevator except for a few younger gwai pohs and one haggard looking Asian woman with orange coloured hair who are too snobbish to smile or exchange eye contact.

Anyway, the negative side of renting is that like most landlords, the owner of the apartment stinge on repairs that are necessary eventhough the matters have been highlighted the first week we moved in. Oh well, we've done our part, if they like to let the place rot and be held liable for any accident, so be it (for example, one switch has been hanging very loosely from the socket even before we moved in!). The funny thing is, they also send the real estate agent to conduct 3 inspections a year. The last inspection was done in October 2005 and now they want to do another next week ... in a space of 4 months! What the?!!! My guess is that they might take the inspection as an excuse to increase rent. Well too bad, they'd be receiving our notice to cease renting very soon. Good luck to them finding a responsible tenant with just two persons and no kids living in it, with no rent delay or default as well.

Well, alas, the AU$1,180 per month rental we had been paying for this 2 bedroom apartment in the last two years will go towards part of our mortgage from now on, yay!!

Update - Baby & House

I've been in holiday mood for this whole week, knowing that everybody I know in Malaysia has taken the whole week off in conjunction with CNY celebration. Unfortunately we don't celebrate it here ... one can hardly feel it's CNY and tend to forget easily if not for CNY SMS greetings & snail mailed cards received from family and friends back in KL and of course, greetings from bloggers too. We've stopped going to Sydney Chinatown to watch the CNY Lion Dance ... I guess after awhile, you'd get bored seeing the same thing at the same venue over and over for the past 5 years.

Little bubba is growing well. We already know its gender but we'll keep it a little secret from this blog until its birth :) We've decided on its name too "PML". P is its first name, M is the middle name and L is the surname. Yup, no Chinese name just like its father - just not common for Aussie or Kiwi born Chinese to have Chinese names on the birth certificate. I'll refer to it as Baby P from now on. EDD is 10 June 2006.

We've been busy yet again with the development of our house. A picture paints a thousand words, so here goes ... a few before and after photos of the kitchen and main bathroom yet to be fully painted and fitted with the shower screen.