Confessions of a Drama Mama

This series is brought to you by Max and Adora, excited homeowners-to-be, and also nervous home-decorators-to-be. Read only if you’d like to join us on our roller coaster ride of buying, renovating and furnishing our home. Otherwise, it will be a very boring series for you.

Enjoy!

OK so we’ve gotten our new flat and we love it. Yay indeed. Now we’ve just settled on a contractor. Well actually, there’s a difference. There are ID (interior design) firms and contractor firms.

Since my mandarin/hokkien is not so good, and I know they will try to cheap me if I can’t really speak it*1, and lagi more if they see Max, all glowing with his halo of richness*2 which will only mean one word to them (KA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), we’ve spoken to 2 ID firms but have only asked them to do the contractor works and my so nice colleague April has offered to help us with some ID work.

So now we’re waiting for our official design to come back, but we already agar-agar know what kind of things we want to do. So now, a few questions face us. Very tricky, some of them:

1. Laminate flooring: Kronotex vs Supreme. Kronotex, I trust their quality cos IKEA uses them for the showroom, which is trampled upon by millions of people and it’s still in good condition. We got a relatively good price from the supplier directly. Supreme was what the contractor (I call him the contractor cos to us, he’s not really doing ID work but only contractor works) quoted us was Supreme. Cheaper, but we’re not sure if he has the colour and texture we want, and if it comes with the extra protection that minimises the hollow sound post laminate floorings give

2. Where got sell main door and grill?

3. Where to buy WOOD ceiling fan? Don’t like aluminium and don’t like plastic. Anyone has recommendations? Anyone has ceiling fan in your homes and can recall where you bought from (from recent purchase, not like parents time)?

4. What is the proper term for ‘granite flooring‘, the kind that some gardens and spas use. We want to put it in shower area for super non-slip.

5. For a wallpapered section behind our bed (check out Goodrich for this!), the wall has 2 different depths. And that’s right where the bed will be. So wondering if should wallpaper the whole wall instead of just the bed area

6. What brand of instant water heater to buy?

7. There are 2 aircon units left behind by the previous owner. Technically we can ask a technician to access them and repair them if necessary. Max says let’s do it to save money. Me, I’m not sure I’d like having someone’s old stuff in my new home

8. Anyone knows where to buy those kind of paper lamps framed with wood, and sometimes the paper is coloured reddish? I know they sell in Bangkok but we won’t really be going for a while.

Edited 07 April 2007: Ta da! These are not the rectangular kind, but still nice hor? This kind la. Where to buy!

But, having said that, to make ourselves feel better, here are the list of things that we already GAO DIMed (and the prices to show you how broke we are so that you won’t ask to borrow money from us and will understand why we don’t really want to eat at expensive places):

1. Fridge $1099 (by installment through Harvey Norman)
2. Washing machine $429 (from BiG)
3. Hob, hood, backsplash, sink, spray $1309 (from Bellari)
4. 32 inch flat screen TV! $1200 (from JVC)
4. 4-seat L-shaped sofa set + footstool $529 + $39.90 + $129 for extra cover (from Seahorse)

And things we still need to get, not in any order of preference:
1. Dining table and chairs (from IKEA of course)
2. Lights (either from IKEA or Balestier Road)
3. Instant heater
4. Bathroom sink and toilet bowl… bathroom accessories
5. Kitchen cabinets (IKEA!)
6. Bed (IKEA!)
7. Ceiling fan (WHERE??!)
8. Shoe cabinet (IKEA!)
9. Bench for wearing shoes (anyone knows where can find, those kind can put things under the bench kind? If not, by default, we will buy from IKEA haha)
10. Table near entrance to put stuff like keys and mail
11. TV console (Guess where? Prob IKEA)
12. Dressing shelf (IKEA)
13. Work table and shelves (Yawn… IKEA)
14. A ‘black board wall’ to be put in kitchen. Anyone?

Alot of things from IKEA hor? Haha. Might as well contribute to my own bonus, right? That’s all for now. There’ll be more to come!

*1: order fish ball soup I can, but to negotiate prices for things I’m not
really familiar with, I can’t. Like how to say ‘I want concealed aircon
trunking’ in hokkien?

*2: he’s not rich, and we’re not rich, but he’s angmoh, and that’s the perception contractors will get

PS Special thanks to my friend Marnie who has been an absolute angel in this crazy process. Super helpful. So nice this girl

Ladies, have you ever been in that situation? You’ve just come out of a movie, and you’re dying to pee. Your bladder’s almost going to burst because you didn’t want to waste your money on 5 minutes away from the cinema screen to pee.

You rush out of the cinema, look for the toilet, and you see the sign that shows two very stiff characters of opposite gender.

OH JOY!

And then you groan as you have to walk an additional 10 more steps past the guy’s toilets, before you get to yours. And that’s not the worst thing. When you get in, you find a queue of equally needing-to-pee ladies in front of you.

Because men pee faster, and their toilets are nearer, many men tend to
say to their significant others "You always so slow one" / "Everytime
it’s I wait for you. Why take so long? What you doing inside?"

Sounds familiar? It happens to me occasionally, but I’ve always wondered why the hell women’s toilets are always situated further away than men’s. Logically, it takes a woman a longer time getting ready to pee.

Unbutton, unzip, pull up/down, and then pull down one more layer, sit/squat, pee.

Versus

Unzip, take it out, pee.

So isn’t it logical that women’s toilets should be nearer so that if a man and a woman were to both walk to the toilet together, they’d both get to pee at the same time?

There are 2 arguments here. Each seem to have their own logical explanation:

1. The Architect’s Excuse
Ladies toilets require more plumbing because there are more cubicles. And because of that, they are usually situated as far back as possible to utilise wall space. OK, fair enough.

On top of that, the fresher architects (aka newbies), are usually tasked to plot toilets and staircases. Surely much more exciting than the rest of the building. So if you’re asked to do something so challenging, you don’t really feel all so challenged?

Also, they are probably pressured by retailers. I mean, who wants prime retail space to be given up for the world toilet organisation right?

2. Mr Policeman Says
If the gents was situated after the ladies, there’s the chance of sex maniacs pouncing on unsuspecting women as they exit from the toilet.

Oh well. I guess we’ll just have to keep on walking, ladies.

Yet another burning question, answered! Well, kinda. This section was brought to you by Adora’s inquisitive mind

I just heard something on the radio about the prime minister ‘addressing the urgency of having to increase the salaries of civil servants to be on par with the public sector’.

I wonder if I heard it wrong. Increase the salary of penpushers who work (the term ‘work’ is interchangeable with the phrase ‘being at work’) 830am to 5pm. 5pm. As in when the sun is still shining strong.

People who not only leave at 5pm, but are able to claim their taxi fares if they have to go back to the office on the weekend if they are not scheduled to work.

People who copy and paste the standard ‘thank you for your feedback, we will look into it’ and get 21-28 days of annual leave a year and 3 months bonus in exchange for that.

Remind me again, this is an URGENT situation because?

Disclaimer: Come on, it’s the general perception of people working in the government sector ok? I’m not attacking any of you. And it’s not just me who feels this way. And I DO have friends who really do just that – get 28 days of leave, 3 months’ bonus and leave at 5pm every day. They cannot stand the monotony of their jobs and leave within a year (after their 3 months bonus of course).

Max and I were talking about going back in time. If we could choose one day in our past to go back to, Max would choose the day he dropped his lego brick into the elevator shaft at his grandmother’s house. Me, I’d choose any weekday in 1994.

In the 80s and early 90s it was the trend to have kids being taken care of by their grannies. I was part of that trend. In Primary School, my parents would drop me off at Mama House in the morning, the school bus would bring me to and from school, and then my parents would pick me up at night after dinner at Mama House.

When I went to Secondary School, it became uncool to take the school bus and my parents decided I was old enough to be at home by myself. So I began to spend more time at home rather than Mama House. But there were days that I made impromptu decisions to walk to Mama House rather than go home. I enjoyed that flexibility of having a ‘real place’ to go back to, and a ‘back up place’. I knew at that time that if I ever had to run away from home (yet another trend of the times), I would go straight to Mama House. I could feel safe there and because I grew up there, I never had the pressure to act grown up there, I was always a child in Mama’s eyes.

I can still remember the walk there from school. I would walk through St Pat’s just to pretend not to look at boys but still look (and of course none would look back at me). The whole walk would take about 15 minutes if I walked leisurely. Sometimes I’d drop by the provision shop on the way back to buy ice cream.

Turning into Jalan Baiduri, I’d make my way towards the house with blue windows. I still remember having to put my wrist through the gate with many square holes to unlatch the gate. If the front door was closed, it meant that Mama was not napping on her day bed (with the glucose tin, oily with her hair oil, as her pillow) and that she was probably in the kitchen preparing dinner. She often prepared dinner at 4pm so that she could watch her cantonese show at 6.

I’d walk along the side of the house (it was a terrace house) and I’d have to shout out ‘Mama!’ to announce my arrival. If I didn’t, she’d get a shock and I often got scolded for that.

I’d hold my school shoes and socks in one hand then walk through the kitchen, past the dining room with the huge (really huge, like 10 people could sit there very comfortably) dining table and the small store area under the stairs (where my bicycle was stored), and into the living area (where there was the sitting area, and the mahjong table that was converted into a normal looking table when not serving its purpose, and the trophy cabinet filled with my dad’s running trophies and my ko-chic’s swimming trophies - above it was all the wedding photos) and I’d dump my school bag on the mahjong table.

At about 5ish, Kong Kong would be home. His eyesight at that time was already failing so he would sometimes buy fruit that was already starting to go bad. And Mama would scold him for that. She’d always shake her head at me, saying ‘ta bai ah neh kuan!’ (always like that). I’d always felt that they were very well matched - he was more slow mo and mild mannered, she was more garang and kanchiong. I think I take after her.

I never had any planned agenda at Mama House. I could do my own thing and I never had to worry about homework. I could go cycling, I could nap, I could rot in front of the TV, I could just sit at the booth seat in the kitchen and talk to Mama.

Until my parents came back at 7ish for dinner, I was completely free. Of course I was always happy to see them but for those few hours, I could enjoy just being free from everything with people that didn’t give me any pressure and people who accepted me as who I was and left me to do my own thing as they did theirs. I wasn’t a kid they had to look after, I wasn’t an adult they had to harp on. I was at a perfect age and I was with the perfect people who recognised it.

I’d love to have a time machine that can just bring me back to those days just so I can relive them and those those people how much I now appreciate them.

I’ll get straight to the point. At our D&D yesterday, there were 5 male strippers. Uh huh. 5 guys from South Africa.

Well I’ll be frank. I’ve never been a big fan of parties, and I almost didn’t want to go for the D&D but I went anyway to show face. And I just kept staying another 5 minutes, just really, to show face. But when I found out that there were going to be male strippers, I thought hey, how often do we get to see that? So I stayed.

So, alot of hype, alot of excitement, alot of screaming. But maybe it was just me being a Mrs now, or maybe it’s just me who’s always been a prude, but even though I found it to be an interesting experience, I wasn’t thinking of when and where their next performance would be.

Yes, I was seated right in front (but only because the rest of my gang was up front, and I didn’t want to be left behind with some scary drunk uncles), and I was clapping and screaming "TAKE IT OFF!!!!!!!!!" (but that was only cos of the atmosphere. It’s not like I expected to see 5 dangling kukus)

So, yes, they had nice bodies, but no I didn’t fantastize about going home with any of them. In fact, I really remember thinking ‘nah, I don’t find any of them particularly handsome’.

Which brought the conversation over the difference between male and female strippers. There is nothing sexual about male strippers, I think. OK wait, correction. For female strippers, it’s all about the sexy factor. Male strippers perform more for entertainment purposes.

At a female strip club (having been to one in Perth makes me some kind of expert) you will find men of all ages sitting around, trying to act cool. At a male strip show (I can only say show cos the closest I’ve been to a club was going all the way to "Club 281" with Max and his friends in Montreal in the freakin cold winter only to find it closed), women are screaming and laughing and clapping and just enjoying the show. Whether or not they go home for some action after is another story.

I guess that reason is clear because the committee (made up of some err, slightly more mature and conservative people) chose strippers of this gender, and not the other, right?

But, just in case you needed to see. Click on the images to make them er, bigger.