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.

This n That

We've been busy as a bee! Our house will be completed in a few weeks. We're looking at moving by end February (bye bye landlord!). Lots of things to arrange and coordinate such as phone, electricity & gas connection, lights, floor tiling + floating floors installation, insurance,etc which are just the tip of the iceberg. More vital things to be done after we moved in such as fencing, retaining walls, driveway, patio and lawn. Have to start packing already.

Updated layout - again??

Changed the blog layout yet again. My fingers sure are itchy. Updated the About Me, Pls don't tag me and Pls don't link me sections. When I am in the mood, I will play around with blogspot (challenging - as it is not exactly html friendly) with slightly different designs ... AGAIN, maybe, hehe. Kindly hit the refresh button on your browser if the updated sections show "Page not found" or "Access not permitted", thanks.

His & Hers PC

How we keep our marriage happy without fighting over PC time *LOL*

Yuppers, we each have our own separate PCs, a shared laptop (mostly used by Kiwi G) and a couple more spare PCs for guests. To avoid the hassle of having to pull cables all over the apartment when using the laptop to surf or access the other computers remotely outside of the study, Kiwi G has a wireless network set up.

When people sees our study, they'd usually ask, "what do you guys do??" Well, it's just how we like things to be. I for one, do not like to share my PC as I do all my work on it and am so used to filing things my way. The same goes with Kiwi G, he doesn't like his folders rearranged, etc. and uses his PC as a stress reliever (play games - Doom being his latest craze, read up on his tech things, maintain our private website, etc etc). However, we don't keep any secrets between us, on our PCs. I can access all folders, emails and files in Kiwi G's PC and likewise, Kiwi G is free to access mine anytime.

We just like the convenience :D

The New Year cometh!

New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have come and gone - boy, those two days were outrageously hot; weather wise. NYE temp was around 40+C and yesterday was 45C!! Fried! The thought of stepping out of the apartment or taking a drive was a big turn off, so we just stayed indoors, feeling lethargic. Thank goodness today's temp is a high of 25C, a far cry from yesterday's. My tip: Try not to visit Sydney between the months of end Spring and end Summer ie Nov - Feb, unless you enjoy the possibility of exploring the city under the scorching heat of high 30+C to 40+C.

Another year has passed, congratulations, everyone gets a promotion; at least age wise, hehe.

Happy New Year 2006!

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year 2006!
May lots of happiness, love, good health and success be upon you.

This is an old animation I drew for my other website in year 2001 - too lazy to draw a new one for this blog, so I just updated the texts. For the curious, it is drawn using a pen tablet, with Adobe PS. Animation is done with Extensis Photo Animator.

Humility, a dying trait

Just because one doesn't talk (or rather, brag) about ...

• the thousands of dollars you give away to charities annually; others assume you do not give any at all
  
  
• work experiences with some of the top guns in MNCs; others assume you have never worked in the corporate world
  
  
• paper qualifications; others assume you have none and just got lucky
  
  
• achievements and aspirations; others assume you are a loser
  
  
• choosing to delay important actions before executing them at a more suitable time; others assume you were incapable all those while
  
  
• current earnings; others assume you are on the dole or welfare

It's interesting what society perceives by the surface.
So why keep quiet and not spell it all out to the world?

Humility is a dying trait - some people prefer to keep it alive.

Ooops, I'm hungry, time to eat the left over nasi lemak I made last night.

New header

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas.

Changed the header to welcome the new year. The fireworks photos were actually taken in 2003, at an open air Beetles (not the original band of course) concert in Darling Harbour.

I remember going to my first New Year's eve there, it was super crowded and impossible to find an open space to snap photos of the fireworks unless you camp there to book a good spot early in the morning! Once was enough for me. Never been back since. It was a nice experience though.

This n That

There won't be anymore work done to the house until the second week of February. This is due to the standard annual construction industry workers union shutdown from Dec 22 until end January. I really can't wait to move in by March 2006 so that we can concentrate on servicing the mortgage only and not pay rent at the same time like how we do now, which is a killer. Meanwhile, money continues to flow out like water. Heard that the double storey house next to our new home has just been sold. The asking price was AU$498,950k.

Watched Harry Potter a week ago. I'm not a fan but it was entertaining nevertheless. As I looked back into my movie tickets scrapbook, I realized that we went to the cinemas for 9-10 movies a year. But I bet that pattern will change with the arrival of G&G junior. A few people have asked if we have watched The Chronicles of Narnia & Chicken Little - well not yet ... simply because they won't be released until Dec 26 and Jan 1 respectively. Don't forget yeah, Australia usually release movies only after the rest of the world has watched them!

Speaking of G&G junior, we went for a routine check-up yesterday. All was good, baby growing well and am scheduled for another ultrasound in 3 weeks by which time we would be able to know its gender. I'm 4 months preggo todate (huh?? where has time gone??) but already, I walk like a duck sometimes.

I also happened to watch a documentary on TV lately - showing a full frontal vaginal birth (I bet this would never be aired on Malaysian TV). It wasn't gross but it certainly looked awfully painful, yikes!!!

That's all the blabbering for now. Merry Christmas!

House progress

Met another neighbour from a nearby estate yesterday. A 60+ year old guy of Dutch origin. He came up to us to say hi and wanted to know what we thought of the builder we are using, as he too is considering the same builder for a new house he will be building at a different estate. We'll be seeing him and his wife next March as he has already invited himself to our new home, haha.

After that, we went to one of our favourite mall near Macquarie Uni, for some last minute Christmas gift shopping. It was crowded alright. Can't wait to be able to put up a Christmas tree at our own home in Dec 2006 :)

Some photos...
Roof tiling has been completed almost two weeks ago.
View from the main entrance door.


Looking into our lounge area from the main door entrance


Our love nest - the master bedroom


View of the meal and rumpus area

News

Could it get any worse? NZ posters call for 'white power'

Get the latest scoop at Sydney Morning Herald

Racial tension :(

The recent and ongoing racial riots & violence in Cronulla, South Sydney is sickening. It's not the first racial tension that's happened in Sydney for the past few years. Earlier, there was the riot with the Aborigines and not so long ago, Vietnamese were rallying for a local politician to step down for making racist remarks. Never in my life have I seen so much racial tension and violence, first hand.

Cousin sis

I got a surprise phone call from my cousin sis this afternoon. We were and still are very close, like sisters. I miss her soooo much!!

Chicken

Skinning chicken is gross, well at least for me it is. I often use chicken drumsticks (I don't eat pork or beef) as a soup base and would skin them to reduce the amount of fats in the soup. Sometimes I use chicken back bones too and I skin them also. Aiyeeeeeee very gross but I have no choice. I admire the generations of our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers who must have gathered so much courage to slaughter live chickens by the neck ... I still remember how my mom did it, blood splattering everywhere, yucks! I am sure if they had a choice like how we do now, they would not have done it. The things that mothers would do to cook yummy meals for their children. Aren't we all lucky these days? By the way, I only know how to make three different kinds of soup, ie lotus root + peanut, ABC and watercress soup - how embarassing.

Anyway, I usually buy chicken meat from this particular Red Lea Chickens outlet at Westfield Hornsby shopping mall, located just about 5 minutes walk from our apartment. One could get almost anything from this mall.

House progress III

The weather has finally been good, bright and sunny but a tad too hot, I got sunburn standing in the open space observing the progress of our house! Summer has just begun on Dec 1st.

Brickworks for the garage completed. Front view of the double garage. Braces have been attached to the roof in preparation for roof tiling which we hope will take place this week.

Close up view of the double bay window looking into the kitchen and rumpus areas

Yesterday, we bought 110m² of 500mm x 500mm (approx. 20" x 20") polished porcelain floor tiles for our rumpus, family, kitchen and lounge areas.

We're not going to have the decorative feature piece like in this photo below as that piece alone costs AU$499 on sale (normal price AU$799)


We are going to have laminated timber floorings for all bedrooms as tile floorings would feel like ice during winter. No pictures of the laminated timber floorings as we have yet to buy them but we've already seen and decided where to get it from.

JVC Everio G series

This is what we've been waiting for ... a 30 GB hard disk camcorder! JVC Everio G series looks tempting but we've blown our budget this year. It'll have to wait till some time next year *wishing hard* It'll come in handy when we make home movies on DVDs to send to family and friends especially with the coming new addition to the family.