Shelf above the kitchen sink

I thought it is a very good idea to add a utility shelf above the kitchen sink unit. I bought the shelf from Ikea and chose a colour that's matching the cabinet below. For the shelf shoulders, I chose red to give the place a bit of colour.
So I ask my own Handyman, J, to fix the shelf. The task proved to be difficult because the walls were so tough. I tried holding the electric drill with J to lend him some strength, and really felt that the job was so tough. Minute after minute of drilling, the vibrations running through your hand muscles, and still making hardly a dent into the wall tile.
Finally the job was finished after 2 hours. Here is the result.
I like it!

My Baby

I've seen rainbows that could take your breath away
The beauty of the setting sun, on any given day
And when it comes to shooting stars I have seen a few
But I've never seen anything as beautiful as you

- From the song, Beautiful As You by Jim Brady

This song is part of a collection of lullabies that J compiled for our first baby, Wei. The CD still exists and is now being played to Baby Xin.

Curtain Problem

The apartment at Cyberjaya has very unusual windows. This is especially true for the first bedroom, so that most standard curtains would not be long enough to cover the full-length windows. In fact, I saw many apartments with curtains that were hanging halfway, unable to reach all the way to the bottom. As the apartment came with curtain railings, I did not wish to change the railing and thought about how I could get curtains to fit without having to ask for them to be custom-made.
So I went to our friendly neighbourhood store, Ikea, to look for solutions. And I found them!
Ikea has these little curtain crocodile clips with hooks. Using these wonder clips, I was able to fit a pair of Ikea curtains that I bought earlier (these were fitting the rod railing, not the hook type), and voila, problem solved with minimal costs.

Kitchen Sink Unit

J and I were torn between leaving the old aluminium sink as it was, or replacing it with the Ikea kitchen sink unit with cabinet that we've bought. At first it didn't look like it would fit very well, what with the big 2-door fridge that we have lined up at the same kitchen area.Then today, J, my renovator and construction worker, decided that he would move the fridge to the living room area, and fix up the Ikea sink unit.My gosh, the job took almost 5 hours. First of all the cabinet at the bottom was very difficult to fix, even with precision tools and all. Secondly, one piece went missing among all the mess, so much so that we thought we had left one piece behind. Then, just as J was giving up, the piece resurfaced, and he was able to complete it.Poor J, he even cut his finger trying to fix this thing. And both of us were so hungry because it took so long to finish. What was I doing all this while? I was cleaning all the windows and the sliding door. Inside and outside. That was no fun too.
Here's a pic of the fridge moved to the living room side. I guess it looked alright, perhaps my tenants would like to get cold drinks while watching tv - like the World Cup.
Sigh - my poor Germany....

Sports Day

Yuan was so excited because she was taking part for the first time. Wei had never taken part because, as he said, he was not fast enough so he was never chosen for anything athletic.
Yuan went ahead in her Aunty van's car because she had to reach the stadium by 7am. J, Wei and I went at around 9am.
Yuan took part in a ball relay event which was fun to watch. Halfway through running our dear Ms. Busybody looked round to see how her friends were doing, and was overtaken. Her team ended at 2nd place, but she was happy anyway.

Continuing work at Cyberjaya apartment

Last night we managed to get another replacement lorry to take the 2nd lot of stuff from my brother's house, and it was delivered this morning. The lorry driver this time is trustworthy, I had left the stuff overnight in his lorry. We got off to an early start today, however, this is the day the aircond contractors were coming for the 3 units installation. It started from 10am and only ended at about 5pm, after which I was left to clean up the mess with J.
Rohaniah, my blogger friend, came to visit at about 6pm. She brought me a piece of curtain for the 3rd bedroom which was unusually narrow and long, and she had it custom-made. The house was still in a terrible mess, and she even helped J put up the Ikea dining table and the white open wardrobe, in her baju kurung and all ;-)
This is the table that Anie helped to put up.
So at the end of today, we actually did very little. The worst part was cleaning the ceiling fans, with that thick layer of oily dust.
Work to be continued tomorrow (Saturday).

Murphy's law

1st July was the day I planned with J to move the furniture items that we've bought into the Cyberjaya apartment. We planned to start the day early at 9am,with a lorry service to pick up items from 2 places. My brother had given me some furniture, and I've also managed to buy most of the items from another expat leaving the country.
9.30am, and still no news from the lorry driver. After calling, I managed to get the lorry driver's partner, but even he couldn't contact his friend. He went MIA completely. So no lorry at 9am. Then after making some frantic calls, the partner managed to get a replacement lorry, but only at 2pm. So we had a little change of plans, instead of collecting the items from 2 places, that lorry was to go straight to the expat's home and pick up the stuff there first, then straight to Cyberjaya. Things from my brother's old house would have to wait.

Finally we reached the apartment at about 4pm. Even after settling all the minor hiccups of the lorry driver not being the same person and the lorry having a different plate number, another major thing went wrong. The bunch of keys of the apartment was missing the Solex lock key that I added. So all the furniture were there, but we were unable to move them into the apartment.

All the big items were all lined up at the corridor. The smaller and long items were all "thrown" into the apartment through the grill door. J went back to our house to get the darned lock key. I waited outside with all the furniture, for almost an hour. It was no fun. Luckily our apartment is close to the end of the corridor, so we weren't blocking any passerbys.