Colors In The Morning

Not every morning we could get some beautiful colors in the sky. Here's a shot from yesterday morning around 6:35AM .... Awesome, isn't?

It Takes Five Years

In the summer of 2004, we traveled to the USA and Canada. We visited Victoria Island, British Columbia too, which I believe is the place where we got this chess set from. The top of the base was made of glass so DH carefully hand-carried the box around the airport. We never opened the wrapping, it was in its original box. We never really had the space for that. At some point, DH attempted to bring it to Jakarta to be put in his apartment there, but I think, he did not had enough space and decided to leave it for a while. Then it was forgotten.

I placed the box under the printer for a couple of years to provide base and support and elevate the printer's height to a more comfortable level. It was meant to be temporary but it continued until we moved out of the previous house.

Finally, we moved and had a bigger space, a bigger living room for once. DH opened it one day and put the set on the table in the living room. Nice. They are out after five years in captivity.

Eleventh Morning, 6:22AM

I am still in love with the sunrise and sunset, the picture below was taken this morning at 6:22AM. Gorgeous colors.

Morning number 11. What happened to the first 10 days? I barely noticed that many days have slipped by in front of me. It's so absolutely crazy how fast the time went by. The kids went back to school after midterm break, DH is in Shanghai. Life is good. Have a great week!

After Dinner ...

Chilling out in the terrace, looking at the city lights in the cool and nice evening after dinner.... just nice.

Unpacking Kitchen

This picture was taken on the moving day. As the movers unloaded boxes and placed them according to where they were supposed to be, I began unpacking and sorting too.

But the movers did not bring all of our stuff, so nearly everyday over the next few days after, I still continued with packing things from the old house, bringing them over and unpacking and store them. This way, I was able to remember where things are better and I find less difficulty in finding what I need.

The kitchen looks almost normal now. It is operational, but still need a few minor re-arrangement. We are still waiting for a new dining set to arrive soon as well.

Bread Will Do...

I had an annoying experience last night. We had a very long and tiring day and decided to pick up what could be the last batch of our stuff. It was around 9:30 PM. The children helped us downstairs to carry some stuff up. My 13-year old was the last one at the door between the lift area and the car park, she was keeping the door open for her dad carrying the last piece. She continued holding the door for apparently a man, around late 40's to early 50's, he passed through without a smile and barely looked at the person should be thanking for. What a RUDE man!!! I frowned at him. Then behind her came along a woman, likely to be his wife, just passing through again, without acknowledging anything. A RUDE woman indeed! A very ungrateful couple in my neighborhood???!??!!! The last one passed through the door was a young girl, maybe around 17-19 years old, she said thank you to my daughter. Finally.

It really bugged me that to see adults that are so lacking of courtesy. It is no wonder that the government feels the need for courtesy campaign in the country. Many people are just so ungracious..... and when that involves my family, I have to say something about it. Those two are perfect for each other, but they need to learn their Ps and Qs as well as mannerism.

Just a couple of days after we moved in here, I baked plain bread to be dipped into olive oil and balsamic vinegar and that's just it.

We only stayed here for two nights and we did not have everything we needed. We were extremely busy too. Everybody tried to find something that they could eat in between busy schedule.

Caprese And Osso Bucco

It's Saturday again, time really passed by so quickly these days.

We worked really hard last Thursday. Not only we have been packing and unpacking for nearly a week, our movers, the professional ones, came that day to help us do our big move i.e. big furniture and boxes of books, clothing and manymanymany boxes of non-sense-unnecessary-stuff-but-we-like-to-hold-on-to-God-knows-til-when..... It was work-work-work nearly all day long. By 5:30 PM we were exhausted and hungry and the girls decided to go to La Nonna for more Italian food.

This time, we ordered something we have never had before, Caprese, which is Buffalo Mozzarella served with tomatoes, salad and pesto. We also ordered pizza for starter. Definitely, we overestimated our ability to eat. For my main entree I had Osso Bucco. My gang picked the usual fettuccine, gnocchi and fish. They should try something new..... Anyway, we ended up feeling so stuffed and still achy from working too much.

First Morning

First sunrise in the the new place..... I love the sun rising behind the Singapore Flyer, above the sea..... I think I will take many many many more of this.....

There are still stacks of boxes to unpack nearly everywhere, but we managed to have homemade pancakes and grilled bread this morning for breakfast. Cheers to better life and good health for everyone!

We are waiting for the telephone guy to activate our home phones.

Chance Of T-storms

It's been cloudy and raining nearly everyday over the past few days. According to weather forecast, we won't have any sunny days until Sunday. Everyday for the rest of the week, we will have some 20-40% chance of thunderstorms. The view from our place has been pretty much like the picture above. Heavy clouds hanging over......

Today is D-day. Or the M-day? We are moving house!!!!!

Walking Back....

Song of the morning: Brand New Day by Joshua Radin. I so need this......

Before the scheduled arrival of the people that were supposed to install the curtains in our new place, we went for a Japanese lunch nearby. It was around 10 minutes walk from where we were at. We also walked back to our place, just along the Singapore river. It would be a nice walk when it is cool and shady, but not at noon and the sun shines above.

The place was good for ramen, but I had no knowledge on that, so I order a bento set consisting of sashimi and tempura. The set came with salad and cawan mushi, both of which were letdowns. Dessert was sad, after a long while, it was two slices of small unhappy watermelon. I am not excited about overall service and the food quality and will do my best not to go there anymore.

Filling Them In...

We are filling the kitchen cabinets, up-down-wherever while trying also to remember where things are, so that we won't have to open every single cupboard and drawer in the kitchen when we look for something.

We have quite a bit of space in the kitchen, especially we also have an extension built along the yard adjacent to the kitchen. We have started bringing in kitchen supplies and whatever kitchen related that we could grab so that the kitchen can be easily utilized after we moved in.

Light Them Up

More stuff have been moved today, the best we could. It's super tiring for all of us that do not do so much physical works like this before before we do what we've gotta to do.

We did not intentionally look for these lights. We stumbled upon them during our search for dining light. We thought they were pretty and not too complicated or way over the top, compared to our likings, like some others that we saw.

These lights made using Swarovski crystal beads really caught our eyes, but back then we did not think that we had a place for them. There was one with three cluster with a round base that we thought we could use for our dining area, provided that they were bigger or had more clusters.

Finally, there's a perfect spot for the dream lights, it's in the entrance area to light the console table underneath.

Evening From Dining Area

It was a full packed day. We spent hours waiting for some furniture to come and kept ourselves or more accurately myself, busy, cleaning whatever needs to be cleaned. We managed to have two trip there, taking as much the car could possibly handle and store them in the new place. The picture above was taken when the sun was about to set, it was actually not dark yet but the camera setting made the picture looks that way.

The little expert in the family said that "It's half an hour before the sunset!" I am not sure how she plucked the number. Who cares? I think we will take more pictures of this.

Waiting For Deliveries...

Saturday, we got a bunch of things coming to the new house today.

I heard it before, I read it before, expectation can lead to disappointment, subsequently bring unhappiness. But I feel I have the right to expect that everything was soooo.... nearly completed by 10 Oct, after the deadline was extended from end of September, to early October and further to 10th. I only heard about the slight delay last night, which did not give me much time to get disappointed anyway. There's one though, bugging me. The items in K's room are supposed to be movable, but they are not quite so. There are apparently cables going through the bed, to the side table and up through the desk, restricting the movement of the said furniture. Having said that, removing and placing curtains on that side of the glass wall require one to be all over the bed, table and desk.

Earlier on, I have specifically to the retarded designer to make sure that I will have easy access to the curtain.... and boyyyyy..... he was so nice and supportive. Too back it was just gesture and he has not been seeing and heard much lately. Déjà vu. This happened to us 13 years ago when we built our first landed house in Jakarta.

When I was growing up, my mom and my sisters always cooked the dishes again and again. I do not recall them trying some new dish. Now I am living on my own and have my own troops that are more open to try something new, especially after going to school the whole day and ended the day with swimming training until 6PM, they would be more willing to taste new things on the table.

I saw this pizetta on Martha Stewart Show that I recorded and watched when I had time, sped it up to the cooking segment. I thought it would be interesting to try. The original recipe is with fresh rosemary, but yours truly does not buy rosemary from the supermarket here as they cost a fortune. I have some dried ones, but I used dried basil instead and black pepper as the recipe suggested. The topping is mainly sliced potatoes mixed with olive oil, more black pepper and salt. Finally, sprinkle some grated parmesan cheese generously. It's all good!

The original recipe is here.

The Story of Storage Room...

We have a storage room under the stairs in our new place. It is reasonably big enough to store a few things here and there. Maybe we can put our filing cabinet there. We have one at present, but with the explosion of the paper that we deal with, we will need another one in no time.

When the workers were still there, they store the lights in that room. There are more than 90 lights altogether. Definitely plenty. The person in charge of putting the light points, I guess, love lights. Everywhere is light. Every a couple of step is bright light. I am just glad that we were able to choose those that are visible ourselves, including the garden lights and the dining light.

The room has been cleaned, all lights are up around the place. It is still empty at the moment, but in a matter of days, we will have the room filled. Excitement. I am about to explode. Back to packing.

Turn It On....

Don't blame us for thinking that our interior designer just like to finish things quickly. with little interests in our preference. He practically says: "that's good..." to nearly everything or "how about this?..." pointing at a plain rectangle stainless steel steel lamp for the wall of the staircase.

He also thought that the color that he picked and we agreed on, for our stairs, was good. It turned out to be too reddish, stuck out to be out place in an area where the railing is black (The color he picked without our permission/approval), the wall is lily white, the doors around are deep dark brown and the floor of the steps are light wooden color. What a %$@#&! I have asked the contractor to stain the wood to darken the handle of the railing in order to make it darker and look more compatible with the rests.

Don't blame us for saying that he is lacking of interest in our project for whatever reason he has. He has miscalculated my daughter's room size before and misinformed us on the size of the area that could have resulted in us buying furniture that would not fit. We can't understand why he could not check his note book before he opens his mouth. I guess, that's because he could not be bothered to.

It is only a good thing that we have little trust in him that we measured the place ourselves before we buy anything for the spots that we are interested in filling. Many times, we proved that he was wrong.

The garden lamp above is one of the two that we pick ourselves and they are just so prettttyyyyyy... Love it. Looking great up high there in our little garden.

Cleaning In Progress...

It's Monday again. The last week of school before the break, before the moving weeks. Yes, weeks, because I think it will take more than one week to finish. We will engage a professional mover for bulky items, I have to confirm with them very soon. We do not have too many bulky items, since we bought many new ones to replace the existing ones to accommodate the changes in the new place. Besides,... some things gotta go anyway, being used for too long.

We like the idea of moving things gradually too, once the place is ready, which is supposed to be this weekend. With that, we can place things in the new place almost simultaneously as we are leaving the current place. Which makes me a little tad down... I hate to leave this neighborhood after living here for more than 11 years....It is always hard to say goodbye.

The new place is being cleaned, finishing up works are in progress. I want this whole renovation to be over with quickly. I do not want anymore hiccups. Please-please-please. So tired of waiting and feeling unsettled. Ten more days to go!

First Time In Geylang...

The search for a light for our dining area led us to Geylang. A place that is so well known for its red light district, the food and maybe a few other things that I am not aware of. Someone told me once, there's a shop that sold all lights from Italy... Hmmmh...., Italy. Sounds good, just what we were looking for.

It's my first time going there, or our first time! We turned on our GPS system to make sure that we did not get lost. The problem is, we had no idea where the shop is located. We also found out that there are so many sub-streets that carry Geylang name. We decided to leave, but suddenly we saw some shops that we could check out.

DH's eyes were mainly on rows and rows of restaurants that sell all sort of food. The building and its surround, for me, really make the place qualified for being called Chinatown. At times, I felt as if we were in some small towns in Malaysia.

We found no lights that we liked over there. We also receive some bad news about some significant withdrawal of in our fund and added to that the restaurant that we headed to for lunch, was fully booked. We could have waited for 15 minutes, but DH has completely lost his appetite. The weather was hot and humid. We finally had our lunch at MacDonalds'. Even the Mac Chicken that I had didn't taste good.

In The Terrace ...

We went to the site to check out the place after church yesterday. It was hot, naturally, as it was half past noon. The kids in the picture were checking out the terrace by the dining area. It is an open space and basically was hot, hot, hot!

The picture was taken from another terrace by the living area, which was equally hot!

I Don't Hear Them Calling Me...

It was a nice sunny day. The sky was clear and the weather was the usual hot. We had a few hours that I had to spend on a potential curtain vendor for the new house.

It was not something that I was fond of doing but a job must be done. This is the second supplier that we spoke too. They have a large collection, but unfortunately they do not have the quality that we feel comfortable with and many designs that we fell in love with easily.

To begin with, we have so many rooms to furnish, living room, dining room, entrance and kitchen. Those are downstairs. For upstairs, we have four bedrooms and a family/study room. So many factors that we need to consider too. Every room has different needs.

It was very time consuming to pick for many different rooms that we have, but after more than two hours to nearly three hours, we were done. Just felt relieved that it was DONE. We thought that we like the first one that we spoke to even though they quoted such high price. Now... waiting for their quotation.