First HDB House Viewing

[Saturday, 09 December, 2006]

The night before, I did some research and realise doing property was more than just showing potential buyers to the place. I checked for the direction and even bus numbers, including the buses from the nearest MRT station – Paya Lebar. I called Bunnie and Ruoci but none of them picked up the calls. Bunnie called back after some time and I checked with him what was nearby that area.

I arranged with Mingfa to go to the flat at Haig Road to view the condition. As I was hesitating whether to wear formal, time slipped pass. The reason for wearing formal was that Francis had told us he would advertise the flat for us on this day and if anyone wanted to view the flat, I could easily attend to them immediately. However, since there was volleyball at Clementi ITE where Mingfa would be coaching his Zhenghua C boys and Clementi Town girls, I might be joining him if there was no call from anyone; my bag would be very heavy then.

I went to the bus-stop at Apex Tower to take bus 10 and was late for a while. Mingfa got there earlier and told me it was the road where we usually alighted in the past when we went to Chung Cheng High School Main (CCHSM) to play volleyball. By then, I had lost count of the number of bus-stops and was glad since I roughly knew where to alight at.

My direction was quite good this time but could not confirm until I opened my map with the compass. I guessed those people around the bus-stop must be very curious about us. We walked past the Tanjong Katong Girls’ School and Tanjong Katong Secondary School before arriving at Dunman View, the condominium, and finally reached the place.

Corridor

East view of surrounding from corridor. There is a coffee shop around 50 metres away near the centre of the picture.

West view of surrounding from corridor.

Living room.

Living room.

Lamps on the living room wall.

Master bedroom.

Second bedroom.

Kitchen.

Kitchen.

The other side of kitchen (basically only the cabling of the kitchen needs to be touched up).

Bathroom.

Toilet.

Back view of surrounding from kitchen.

Back view of surrounding from kitchen.

Geylang Serai Community Centre.

View from kitchen to living.

Before we entered it, we remembered clearly Francis had instructed us to knock the door first after telling us the Singapore True Ghost Stories. The internal was totally similar to my house but it was slightly a bit smaller. We started taking pictures and Mingfa used his video recorder. We reached through the newspapers and did not find any advertisement about the flat, which was a big disappointment. Before we left the house, I remembered to use compass to find out the flat was facing north. Then, I approached the auntie at the next door to give her my name card. I gave Francis a call but he did not pick up his phone.

It was noon by then and Mingfa had to reach Clementi ITE by 1pm. Since it was too rush, I decided not to meet Bunnie for lunch as planned. Both of us had our lunch at a nearby coffee shop. My appetite was poor. Then, we crossed over the busy road to take bus 197 which came shortly.

Skai Chan @ http://sillydumb.com

Love K800i

[Friday, 08 December, 2006]

My younger brother had been persuading me to get a Sony Ericsson K800i mobile phone for my mum had an extra line to renew the contract. I was not satisfied with my Nokia 6230i for it was quite lagging.

k800i

3.2 Mega pixel camera

After looking at my brother’s K800i, I realised it was really a good phone for it was user-friendly and much faster than my old 6230i. Since I could get the phone for free after selling my 6230i, I agreed.

My mum and brother did the travelling to Chinatown to settle it while I lazed at home. I was not that excited when they got home and it was proven that I was very new to good phones.

My younger brother has been very nice to me.

Skai Chan @ http://sillydumb.com

Pile Things Up

I am sorry if you are looking at my outdated entries so often. Everything drags on as they pile up and sometimes even my calendar on my website is updated only after the events; I doubt many people really bother about that anyway.

My sleep plays me badly that whenever I go to bed early, I cannot doze off, wasting so much time that I can actually pen more things down especially at night when nothing distracts me except my mum. This is a big problem actually for when she knows that I am busy typing or editing stuffs, she continues to tell me stories which I am not interested in. Hopefully in future I will not bother my children like this.

Currently, there are still many outdated entries and even the entry on Peh’s birthday is only updated with half of the photos. As a result, I have to speed up really badly and will not be as detailed as the olden entries. This is really sad for my feeling will not be totally written down, which defeats part of the purpose to blog. As for photos, I will upload them and edit all at a shot, and therefore you can scroll back to my previous entries sometimes to check for update of photos in each entry.

I have a few websites in mind but I guess I have to abandon some first. Currently I am halfway into doing a blog for Huiying because I saw that both her sisters had their own. There is also an important website to introduce about my job as property agent, so that I can easily forward to my friends, which is still at zero pace; or perhaps, I have never even started on it.

I get very irritated for my unfinished work and never want to give up on any. Nobody really understands what I am doing and sometimes I wonder about it as well.

Sometimes I do get very hyperactive when I am tired of my unpromising works but no one is really there to keep me entertained.

Skai Chan @ http://sillydumb.com

Formal Wear Full Geared

[Friday, 08 December, 2006]

Mingfa and I were supposed to attend a talk in our office which was actually optional. After repeated advice from Francis, we decided to begin our formal clothes lives.

I had another round of working throughout the night experience and thus was totally shagged out when Vivi called me around noon. She wanted to have lunch with me before going to the Tzu Qing camp for I had told her my initial plan to go to Carls Junior the day before during our date to Vivo City. I thought fast food was for emergency for it was served “fast” and thus was quite meaningless to go there just for it. Anyway, I knew I need to catch more sleep in order to attend the talk in the afternoon.

After waking up at around 2pm, I realised she was not herself – either angry or sad. I called her immediately but she sounded a bit busy that I told her I had to take my lunch first before running late for the talk. I finally put on the formal wear, namely the unworn long sleeve shirt and pant I bought for my job attachment during the polytechnic days. As I took out the new SAF leather shoes, I realised the shoes laces were not tied yet and thus, simply grabbed an old pair of shoes which belonged to my elder brother.

I missed a bus 167 but luckily 196 came soon after. I was early but Mingfa was even earlier as he came straight from his volleyball coaching at CCAB (previously NIE). We went up to the office immediately. He finally got his name cards. I taught him a few items that Francis taught me which he had missed out a few days ago. The sudden announcement of the speaker for the talk falling sick killed the purpose of us going down. However, Mingfa managed to do his finger print for the entering of the office.

We left for Queensway shopping centre together and Mingfa managed to influence me to get a pair of leather shoes. We got discount though for the two pairs of shoes, costing us sixty-five bucks each. It was an investment though the SAF shoes were enough but certainly would not leave good impression for bigger clients. Mingfa started to distribute his name card and I thought it was weird if I were to give the lady mine as well.

Then, Mingfa visited a shop to look for volleyball shoes and wears. In the end, we went down to the ATM machine and he gave me back the money for my birthday. It was kind of “ang bao” from him and some of my volleyball friends who did not buy me any present. I thought it was quite weird to get it for it had been dragged for more than a month.

After that, we departed at the bus-stop.

Skai Chan @ http://sillydumb.com

Movie Date with Vivi

[Thursday, 07 December, 2006]

I had totally forgotten about the last movie date with Vivi; it was far too long ago.

I woke up at around 9am to get ready and later, gave her two calls to finally wake her up and remind her that we had a date at 10am. She even wanted to have MacDonald’s breakfast hours ago and obviously the plan did not work.

Long John Silver’s breakfast

Looks yummy actually

We finally met up around 10.30am at the bus-stop outside Vivo City and went straight to the movie ticket booth. After getting the tickets for the 11.20am “Happy Feet”, we went in search for food. My intention was to share a set of meal at Carls Junior but it was not opened yet. We went to Long John Silver’s instead. The staffs were friendly but most probably because of our smiles. When I asked for “Combo 1”, the boy stared at me and only till this day I knew the combo sets belonged to lunch category. At first I thought I could still grab it at 11am but it took the staffs around ten minutes to prepare and we gave up.

Happy Feet

I was luckily seated between two girls inside the cinema. Vivi was sweet of course but I did not take any peep at the girl on my right side and thus had no comment about her looks. The story was average to me for some parts seemed to be not logical and the stomping of the feet was actually not perfectly rhymed with the sound. I was quite impressed with some of the sound effects though.

Case with six slots inside

Glasses with holes to help to train eyes, selling $2 at Daiso, which Optical shops sell it at least five times more

Nice silver carabineer which actually came in a pair and one was given to my younger brother

Compass with Chinese characters

We went to take a walk after the movie and reached Daiso. I was so pleased for this outlet was nearer to my house compared to the one at Plaza Singapura. We shopped inside for very long for I needed to find files, compass and carabineer, while Vivi needed to get some drawing materials.

It was an enjoyable shopping with her. I supposed it was because I had been telling myself she had finally made an attempt such that her parents would not give a surprise call to her; for the first time I put myself at ease throughout the whole day. This was the result of dating with a girl of a very strict family.

I took her up to the top level “Sky Park” to enjoy a walk which I thought would be nice because of the ambience but she did not seem to like it. She did not even believe me that the water was clean even though so many people were already playing inside it and kids were even wearing swimming goggles. I thought it was a clean and nice place to take pictures but she refused and was safeguarding herself from being pushed into the water by me when she was carrying her valuables.

Any babe wants to volunteer to be my model for photo shooting then?

Soon, it marked the end of our Vivo City outing, which I had waited ever since the opening months ago. I went to the Seah Lm food centre to get my bunch and both of us went to my house for a short beauty sleep. And since I was so lack of sleep, it was almost impossible to drag myself up when she tried to leave by herself. I dragged my feet to at least send her to the bus-stop and continued my sleep after that.

Skai Chan @ http://sillydumb.com

The Beginning of Work

[Wednesday, 06 December, 2006]

I could not get to sleep again and even so, I woke up before noon for Francis suddenly called me. After kind of “slacking” for so long, the call brought so much excitement to me.

I reached office before 1pm and Francis started giving me some directions. I had quite a number of questions to ask him but he seemed too busy to be distracted. I finally got my “key” to the office, which was accessible every hour of the week except that during Sundays, they would not switch on the air conditioners. It was a cool system anyway with fingerprint system.

I asked Francis about renting of HDB flats and he told me it was difficult to get “lobang”. This piece of news was quite sad for I wanted to help my mum’s friend to get a bigger space and also Ouxiang who wished to move after getting employment.

Later on, we went down for lunch together with Benson and Thomas. Francis introduced us agents from other company whose company just moved office to our building. I kept quiet most of the time as they were talking in Hokkien instead of mandarin or English. I did not eat anything for my stomach was not feeling well again.

After that, Thomas drove off to settle his stuff while both Francis and I took Benson’s car to Holland Road. Francis had just rented out that bungalow, which was a big figure, and wanted to teach us some basics to bungalow.

The place was still under renovation for the new tenant requested some old stuff to be replaced. It was a well designed house full of “character” with walk-in wardrobes and even Jacuzzi inside the bathroom. I did not really like the swimming pool though as the trees had covered a portion of it and thus making it look so untidy.

We waited outside for Thomas and Mingfa as I sweated for I did not know if we were delaying Francis. Thomas arrived first in his car and Benson left later. Mingfa was taking a cab and the driver was not sure of the road, which caused the long timing. I felt it was quite a wasted trip for Mingfa did not go up to see the whole place which defeated the purpose of his journey down, wasting the cab fare.

Anyway, Francis handed the executive of a flat in Haig Road for Mingfa and I to sell. It was a JTC property and commission was pathetic low. If any agent was to co-broke with us, we could not even get more than $300. However, I was satisfied enough to start working after “rotting” for so long. I described myself as “rotting” for nobody really understood my time spent on web design and other stuffs were kind of useful in some ways.

We took Thomas’ car back to office. Francis told us to get an Order to Purchase form from any HDB office and I was quite confused for he could easily point out that there was one branch so near our office. I supposed it was training. I went back to office to check the price of the flat. Then, Mingfa and I had a little bite at the cake shop downstairs before we went to the HDB branch office to make a mockery by requesting for “order to purchase” form instead of “option to purchase” form.

After that, we went our own ways. Since it was hot, I went back to the office to enjoy the air-con while I read through the documents, which was quite alien to me. I tried the software to search for rental of HDB flat and later a quite pretty girl was using the computer besides me. I left soon to avoid embarrassment for I did not really know how to use the software.

Skai Chan @ http://sillydumb.com

To Chinatown and Plaza Singapura

[Sunday, 03 November, 2006]

My younger brother wanted to accompany me to shop for pants but I realised I already had one pair while my elder brother had more for me. I dropped the idea of spending money when I was not earning.

Singapore Public Transport Map for $6

We went out anyway, with my mum. First stop was at Chinatown where he bought his new phone using my mum’s M1 line to renew contract. We took a little walk at the Popular bookshop upstairs and I bought my public transport map. The map was cool and I knew it from the Shopping King, Gilbert. It was a good investment.

Next, we took the NEL to Dhoby Ghaut and went to Plaza Singapura. Sadly, I was not even sure of how to get there directly from the underpass and saw to my lack of knowledge when my brother led the way.

We went to the food court where they took their early dinner whereas I took nothing for my floated stomach. It had been for weeks that my stomach was giving me problems which seemed like indigestion. After sitting down, I got much better but at the expense of watching my mum eat the spaghetti with fillet.

After eating, we went to the Daiso, which was the main purpose of the visit. This $2 Japanese shop was a huge attraction the famous IMM and this branch eventually brought convenience to many people who stayed further from Jurong East. It was not as big as the main outlet but the labelling of goods was better. However, the best thing about this Plaza Singapura’s Daiso was that there were more cute shoppers.

My younger brother went to meet his platoon-mates after that and I went home with my mum.

Skai Chan @ http://sillydumb.com