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In the last few days of 2009, I was on leave and planned my days around meeting people. I made a point to take photos with all the people I’ve met and write about them. At the end of 2010, I will look back at this post to see if anything changed, and if we did what we said we wanted to do.

December 28, 2009

Primary School Friend - Xin Yun

I met up with Xin Yun. We’ve completely lost contact ever since Primary School days. Thanks to Facebook, we finally met around 12:30 PM at Sun Plaza after 15 years! We chatted over a burger and drink at Macs’ and recalled the silly things we did as kids – some of them I couldn’t even remember. This shows that females does have better long term memory. It was a 2 hour long chat. Before we parted, we had an agreement to meet up with the rest of the BBSS 6Q (1994) gang.

Secondary School Junior - Tian Yao

Later that day I went to NUS with Tian Yao to meet A/Prof. Ben Leong to discuss a personal P2P project I’m looking to build. We exchanged some interesting ideas and Prof. gave me some homework (!!!). Then we ate dinner at Marina Square and dropped by Yan Po’s house for coffee where the pics were taken.

Poly Friend - Yan Po

Tian Yao spoke about his job hunting process and I guess the last I heard was that he had joined NCS. Not that I would encourage him to, but the pay package seems decent. We’ll see how he’s feels about his job at the end of 2010.

Yan Po’s still doing pretty well in the job I’ve recommended. It’s something new and hopefully he’s learning more from it each day than his days as a phone operator in StarHub. He should (hopefully) get a VMware certification by the end of 2010.

December 29, 2009

Old IRC Friend - Kelvin Koh

This day started with an early lunch (11:30 AM) at Novena Square with Kelvin. We had lots of constructive discussions that I won’t publicly reveal, but a quick summary is to stop slacking and start doing something while we’re still young.

I spent the afternoon finalizing the curtains for my house which should be delivered sometime early this month, then I met up with Francis and Vanessa at Megumi Japanese Restaurant along Sunset Way for dinner. It was a treat to thank me and Yan Po for helping at an event. The wife was with us as well, to join the fun and awesome food.

Business Associate and Talk Cock Buddy - Francis Lo

Francis has big ambitions for 2010 as well and he’s aimed for a brand new car. His ambitions will be kept private and I won’t tell what car he’s aiming for yet… we shall see at the end of this year.

December 30, 2009

Old KHCO Friend - Edelyn Lee

It was a wet afternoon when I met Edelyn at around 2:00 PM. Actually, I can’t really recall how I met her except for hanging out during the 2004 SCO Mega Concert rehearsals. I drove over to Holland Village where we ate fantastic dim sum at Crystal Jade. Ede’s still pursuing her bachelors’ at NIE as a teacher and she’ll be attached to a school this year.

Poly Friend & Financial Planner - Justin Loy

I was 30 minutes late when I met up with Justin Loy for a swim at Queenstown. We barely went around the pool 4 times before we had to leave and meet up with Hanz at a coffee shop where they both had dinner. (I had to run for another event.)

Poly Friend - Hanz Guo

Justin Loy seems to be doing well as a Financial Planner at Prudential while Hanz’s having fun at Fujitsu serving the largest telco in Singapore. Both of them seem comfortable where they are and I wish them all the best in their careers this year!

MDC Folks - Moses, Jia Jing, Yan Hao

Of course nothing beats meeting a bunch of old friends from MDC. We met at 7:00 PM at TCC Clarke Quay and crapped over dinner. Most of them are still studying, with some graduating this year. Moses is on his way to further his studies, however.

MDC Folks - Tian Yao and Andy Chia

Of course, no MDC meeting is without the king of Pop Chinese Flute – Andy’s back in SG for good and he’ll be stirring up more jazzy dizi concerts.

So that’s all for 2009. It will be an exciting year ahead. Stay healthy and happy!

Somehow I think I’m living life on the soft side, or as the Chinese says, 吃软饭. I’m officially in a holiday mood as I write this blog entry while my wife (who’s just right beside me) bashes away at a PCI DSS audit report… I think she doesn’t even notice me blogging.

I’m finally taking a real break from work with a weeks’ leave between Christmas and New Year. Not that I’m the first around here, but hopefully not the last. I spent the last working hours of 2009 actually back in office unpacking, installing and repacking servers each fully jam-packed with twelve 3.5″ SAS disks. They’re really quite heavy – weighing up to 30 kilos each. SAS disks are considerably heavier than SATA ones. Somehow, weight does matter? Shrugs. So if you think I’m really having a good time at work everyday, now you know it’s not always the case.

But before I let myself run wild for the last few days of 2009, I’ll write a little about work… I’ve been at this job for a little over a year. It’s been pretty nice working around here and I’ve surely learnt a great deal. My colleagues are fantastic – I’ve got a great PM and one thing that touched me was that the sales folks gave us Christmas presents every year! Or at least for the two Christmas I’ve been through. I got cookies from Vivien last year and Winnie gave us Royce chocs this time round… I ate about half the box before I brought the remainder home. Oops, sorry dear.

I’ve also gotten really lucky to have won lucky draw prizes at all the company dinners – I got a Dell Inspiron the last year and a Sony PSP Go this year. The Dell has been put to good use, but the PSP is not really my kind of toy, so it’s going to my sister if she behaves, or maybe eBay.

I’m packing my schedules up for the next week to catch up with some looooooooong lost friends, some of whom I’ve completely lost contact with since we left primary school. Thanks to the power of the Internet and social networking, I’m finally meeting them again after fifteen years! Unbelievable.

And of course in my free time I shall religiously clean the house which has been neglected for the past two months. I also need to learn how to cook more variety of dishes. I’ve been preparing fish dishes so far.

Well, that’s the life of a working house husband. At least for now.

Welcome back…

I know you have been faithful readers.

See? You’re smiling. Stop denying it. You love my blog, don’t you?

It has been a crazy month. I’m part of a small team of three and two of my colleagues went away – one to Turkey and another to reservist so he could help weed out terrorist. I was, of course, left all alone to take on some good amount of work that, well,  came all at the same time. Screw Murphy. Hate that guy.

So it’s December and everybody’s in a holiday mood. I wish I was too, but it’s not quite easy with a fucking noisy neighbour living right upstairs. They make so much noise and vibration by dragging furniture, slamming their doors and let their kids run about into the wee hours that even my window grilles rattle at times. After approaching them three times and calling the cops once, I decided to approach them one last time which ended in a yelling session, with the typical remark from these inconsiderate bastards like “this is my house, I’ll do whatever I want” or “go buy a condo“. Things improved a bit after the yelling, but it still happens. When the night’s all quiet, these sudden bumps and squeaks really make you to jump.

So it seems nothing really changed in 2009 other than my marital status and an empty bank from a property purchase and renovation. It’s time to work out something new in 2010. My public list of items goes like this:

• Get back on track with some research/dev type projects. I’ll be meeting an NUS professor before 2009 ends, so I’ll post an update here.
• Learn to cook now that I’ve got a kitchen to myself. I’ve also promised to post some of my successful attempts out of many other unsuccessful ones.
• Get the wedding banquet done.
• Build new sources of revenue. I’ll start small, but aim big.
• Get back to flying R/C occasionally as a hobby. I’ve stopped flying for the entire of 2009 without even realizing it.

And of course, before 2009 ends, here’s a short to do list.

• Pack up the study room. It’s in an absolute mess now.
• Get another two sets of Wii Remote + Nunchuck since the two I ordered from HK over a month ago didn’t arrive at all.
• Get my old Cello bows rehaired. Already sent and will only be done in January 2010.

Believe it or not, we spent $1,090.55 at Ikea last Saturday. This is our second trip to Ikea, so it’s almost $2,000 worth of Ikea stuff if we added up the first trip!

I’ve decided to bring my Olympus DSLR along, so enjoy the photos that follow.

Every Ikea trip starts with food…

Meatball Spaghetti

That’s Yanpo’s dish.

Stuffed Salmon

Dear’s dish.

Swedish Meatballs

I’m having the most popular dish at Ikea.

Herring Plate

Fish, to share. Unfortunately, I’m the only one who likes it.

Fried Chicken Wings

Who can resist these crispy, oily, golden brown wings.

Feasting in Ikea

Look at these guys. They’re certainly enjoying the good food.

Last Three Balls

The last of the balls before Yanpo had them all.

HZ after a satisfying meal

Dear's new hair!

Yes! Dear got a new haircut on Friday. Looks so cute!

After a very satisfying meal, we went on to shop till we almost dropped. Here’s what we got this round…

• Another small table as an extension to the current one for the study room.
• Another table lamp to go with the new table above.
• A 1 x 4 book shelve to go into the window recess in the study room.
• Another 4 x 4 book shelve for the study room.
• A floor protector for the study room. Expensive but hopefully useful.
• A wine rack! YES! More reasons to stockpile Shiraz at home.
• An armchair. It should stay in the master bedroom for now.
• A small TV console for the master bedroom.
• A sturdy step-stool to reach higher places. This is VERY useful for $29.
• A mirror for the common bathroom. Expensive.
• A water jug for cold water.
• A temporary coffee table, which will become my tool table next time. Pretty cool table for $17.
• Dustbins for the rooms, kitchen and toilets.
• Some toilet accessories.

Three Trolleys of Goodies

That’s a lot of stuff! The shelves and armchair are the most expensive stuff of them all. The others are less than $50 items.

Finally, I’m getting a Wii to keep us entertained on weekends!

A quick check on the to-do list:

• Pass ah fen a hamster – done.
• Grab the side table we ordered from Defu – done.
• Pay the balance for the sofa and dining table and arrange for them to be delivered next week – half done. More screwups with the delivery.
• Grab the trolley, TV and sub woofers from parent’s office. I left my new TV there for storage – done.
• Bak Kut Teh at Jurong East for lunch at 1300 hrs – failed.
• Clean the living room, and maybe three bedrooms if they get dusty again – done.
• Figure out where to mount the bathroom accessories, and what else we need to buy – half done. We know what we want to mount, but haven’t figured what we need to buy.
• Assemble the Ikea lamps – done.
• Set up the home router. It’s going to a Linux box with Vyatta, then I can establish an IPsec Site-to-site VPN! Whoopee! – Not done!
• Hopefully a karanguni drops by so I can get rid of the old ceiling fans – didn’t happen.

Leaving Sakae Sushi at TradeHub.

When Ferren arrived at Jurong East, she found that the entire hawker center was under renovation, so we ate Sakae instead of Bak Kut Teh.

Duckie smiling on the way to the new house.

Even Duckie’s excited about the new house.

Study room cleaned and ready.

This is the study room with Ikea chairs and tables, all set up and ready for use.

Watching TV in the living room after a tiring day.

We watched G-Force and some crappy YouTube videos in the evening after two days of cleaning.

Sincere thanks to Hui Zhen, Ferren, Yan Po, Wen Xi, Chrispin and Sheng Xuan for helping clean the house. Every little bit counts!

Unfortunately, I left my DSLR in the new house. I will get some photos and post them up tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here’s what we accomplished today (Saturday).

• Cleaned up the store room and moved the mess in the kitchen over.
• Cleaned up all three bedrooms, kitchen, windows and grilles. Thanks ladies! Fantastic job.
• Built the Ikea furnitures – a study table, two office chairs and a side table with drawers. Some instructions are wrong, especially the cheaper furnitures.
• Installed the almighty lock that only requires one key for all! Whoopee. How I wish my car key could be used instead.
• Set up the bed in the master bedroom.
• Carpenter dropped by to inspect the work done on Friday.

Here’s the agenda for tomorrow (Sunday).

• Pass ah fen a hamster.
• Grab the side table we ordered from Defu.
• Pay the balance for the sofa and dining table and arrange for them to be delivered next week.
• Grab the trolley, TV and sub woofers from parent’s office. I left my new TV there for storage.
• Bak Kut Teh at Jurong East for lunch at 1300 hrs.
• Clean the living room, and maybe three bedrooms if they get dusty again.
• Figure out where to mount the bathroom accessories, and what else we need to buy.
• Assemble the Ikea lamps.
• Set up the home router. It’s going to a Linux box with Vyatta, then I can establish an IPsec Site-to-site VPN! Whoopee!
• Hopefully a karanguni drops by so I can get rid of the old ceiling fans.

I’m still thinking if I should start moving some old books and computer equipment. Maybe my R/C stuffs can go over too.

The audio system will go over next week before the weekend, that’s for sure!

More shopping list for next week.

• A stool, just to facilitate cleaning some stuff that’s higher than us.
• A (cheap) bicycle? Just to get to and fro the in-law’s place and Bukit Panjang Plaza.
• A mini TV console for the master bedroom?
• Another Ikea side table for the master bedroom?
• Subscribe to StarHub TV and Internet! (Sorry SingNet, your marketing and helpdesk just fails me.)

The renovation has already started as of this posting, but I was too busy to blog about it, so I shall backtrack a little and start with the house still in original condition.

We bought this flat off the resale market from a local chinese lady and got our keys the day after our ROM. We liked the flat because it’s spacious and all square with no weird corners. However, the original renovation was extremely distasteful and a major overhaul was required.

Living room, main door and bomb shelter.

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Hello folks. It has been a long time since I last blogged. I’ve lost touch with the world. Now that I’ve found some time, it’s good to start again. I’ve had quite a lot of ideas I wanted to share, but never had the time to write about them.

I’ve decided to migrate to WordPress for good. My old blog is still available, but I won’t be updating it.

Since I created QQBlogs, why WordPress, some may ask?

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