house stuff

So, I've always been partial to Pottery Barn (this being after Rachel on Friends intro'ed them to me)

Have been browsing their site for ideas... and have decided that I like


Furniture like this

And perhaps walls like this either in the living room or bedroom?

Or walls like this?

We've also asked for the ICI paint catalog so we can get a rough idea of the colors available to us. Heh heh, fun stuff.

Bintan trip

So we took a short trip to Bintan (2D/1N) as a replacement to our cancelled Phuket trip. Took the early ferry out to Bintan on Tues morn.. was kinda nice and slow - smaller crowd than usual since it was a weekday.. got to the Angsana resort at 9am or so local time. Managed to check into our room and proceeded to suit up and headed out to the beach.

The deckchairs by the beach were full so we hung out by the pool instead and just chilled.


Chillin in the pool


We started wondering why we didn't just stay at home and lounge by the pool in our condo instead, and decided that perhaps we should make use of the beach since that's what we came here for. So... we wandered down to the beach and took a dip.


Usual attempt at the self-taken pic by the beach


Grabbed lunch and then booked ourselves a massage at the resort spa. T'was the husband's first spa experience - and by the looks of it, he enjoyed it. Thanks Vanessa for the heads up on the good spa treatments! The massages were held upstairs (actually directly above our hotel room) in these open air cabanas. Was surprisingly not humid and pretty comfortable. The massage itself was so relaxing that I dozed off, only to wake up ever so often to prevent myself from drooling.. euuww.

Zoning out after our ginger "back-beauty" massages

Shot of the open-air spa room

Sounding the gong


It started pouring cats and dogs shortly after and so we caught some zzzs and then headed out for dinner.

Walkway in hotel lobby after dinner



Decided to make full use of the hotel facilities in the morning of our 2nd day there.. and headed out to the beach again. Left the resort and caught the ferry home just before the afternoon rainstorm hit again.


day 2 on the beach

Beach before the rain



Overall, a good trip... not too long, not too short. It's amazing how slowly time passes when you're there! I'm pooped and we didn't even do anything over the past 2 days! We got a chance to get away for a bit, feel like we had a bit of a vacation and Kale's farmer's tan is slowly being forced into submission... it's too bad that I have to go back to work on Friday. Bleah. New job for the husband next week though.. big news! =)

hari raya

it's yet another ethnic public holiday tomorrow!! woo hoo, we have to thank our muslim friends for tomorrow's day off work. again, i love the multi-cultural part of living in singapore!

so another busy day of looking at house stuff.. only today was looking for inside-the-house stuff. was kind of fun. we decided to brave ikea, which on a public holiday was probably suicide, but kale convinced me it wouldn't be too bad, cos all the malays would probably be out celebrating hari raya, so that should reduce the number of people at ikea. he was correct, but the other 70% of singapore was still in ikea. man, it was crazy. we bailed out of there pretty quick and headed out to another furnishing outlet store.. much more our pace since we were the only ones there!

we're going to try and catch 'bride and prejudice" tomorrow - a bollywood movie.. should be good for a couple of laughs at least. have my whole day planned out - wake up in the morning, laze around the house while kale's out riding, wait for "kylie in concert" starts on telly at 12pm and then head out to meet a colleague who's now based in indonesia for lunch and then catch the movie and then head out for a nice dinner with the husband. can't wait!! i like knowing what i'm going to do the next day. this way i get to look forward to it!! =) i'm all smiles right now....

house shopping

so, we took the first big step today. we put a deposit down on a house, signed an option to purchase and we should get the keys within 3 months. we're hoping sooner, and it will probably be sooner than that... so we'll see.

i feel grown-up... wow. a house. now that's something.

to celebrate the event, we headed out to a suburban megamall (IMM for the local readers) to mosey around and see if we could get an estimate on the renovation costs which we'd be likely to incur. the house doesn't come with flooring nor any cabinets/bathroom fittings, etc. so we'd have to start from scratch. the quotes we got weren't too too bad.. but it's still pretty daunting.

there are so many options to choose from just in terms of flooring.. and so many options to choose from in terms of contractors - whether to do the whole designer/contractor thing, or just the contractor thing. being the cheapos that we are, we'll probably just spring for the contractor and do some "design" on our own. problem is that the only design we've ever done is of the mechanical nature and not of the interior/artistic nature. well, we'll be an interesting case study of a house put together by a bunch of engineers (kale, me and my dad.. and my sis, the aspiring engineer). my mom's the only non-technically inclined one around here.

we're also getting "free" furniture from people.. my parents are donating a bunch, and kale's friends are loaning/donating a bunch.. i actually think we might not have to spend too much on furniture at this rate.. our friends and family get to redecorate and create space by getting rid of their old stuff, and we get to piece stuff together and try to eke out a comfortable abode. fair game, i say.

fun, fun.. another new project! woo hoo..
speaking of projects, we just got the invites back from the printers and spent an hour tying ribbons.. brings back memories.. =)

real estate

ooooooohhhhhhhhh.... tomorrow's a beeg day, brah! we going to put deposit for a house. a house that we picked out of a f$%(*ing catalog. wow.

so yeah, we's all growed up! *grin*

Guido's chariot

So, for the benefit of family members in the western part of the world (and southern), here are a couple of pics of Kale's fancy new ride. Bear in mind that its first owner was a slightly pot-bellied 55 yr old Chinese man who likes jade and gold jewellery... we call him Uncle Richard aka Uncle Ricardo. He's really nice, and the bike just really goes with his personality (just like a pinky ring)

So anyhow, see if you think the bike is "Kale".. I don't think so.. and if it grew to a point where Kale was becoming "the bike", I think we might be in trouble....


Kale's new ride

Fancy Italian artwork

actual results

ok, so it's a leetle late in coming.. but the official results are in.. the husband made it in 10th overall for the open men's category..

just thought an update may be in order.. not sure if they've managed to iron out the bike split time yet.

New pastime

So, Kale's managed to borrow a tandem bike from a guy who's looking to sell his. The guy lent it to us for the week to try it out to see if we wanted to buy it.

Have uploaded a pic of it below. Have been out on it twice.. it's kinda fun cos i don't need to control the bike (hence, i can go faster than i normally would be able to if i were alone) but it's a really strange feeling riding on the back of that thing. It's almost like you're driving behind a really big truck cos you can't see where you're going. It also causes a little motion sickness just cos everything is just flying by on the sides, and you can't really look out front. But it's still pretty fun, especially when you get going really fast (ok, fast by my standards, I'm sure Kale feels it's like lugging lead along..)


The tandem