Our home’s second year

On a wonderful day today, our home sweet home is celebrating its second year. Yes, we have officially stayed here for 2 years. After just 2 years, my feeling towards my home is still the same. I still love the place. I love my neighborhood. The scenery is still the same. Our home is still surrounded by lush greenery. I still hear birds chirping early in the morning on weekends. It’s so peaceful and quiet. If only we can minus all the children playing outside our balcony. Since we are on the ground floor, that just can’t be avoided. Sigh! Regardless, I still love my home sweet home. Of course, more have changed over the years. From less furniture to more stuff in the house. More gadgets of course. Even though more cleaning and fixing to do, both of us still feel bliss at home. Who doesn’t, right? No place likes home. And after 2 years, my darling still cannot remember the right switches in our master room, always switch on the wrong one for the fan and lights. Hahaha! I don’t know how many years he needs to get it right. Hehe! Wait and see!

To celebrate our second anniversary for our home, there’s a good news today. My application for reducing home loan interest has been approved today. Our original home loan was on fixed interest rate @ 6.39% p.a. Since the BLR has reduced this year, I have asked for lower rate and they are giving me a new revised rate @ 5.75% p.a. I know it’s still quite high but it’s better than nothing for us. By that, I hope our financial planning will be better. Hehe!

This weekend is long holiday weekend. I’m truly looking forward as I will be spending most of my time on my lovely sofa. With my new Vaio, of course. Haha!  Can’t wait…

Our home’s first year

 

Insanity

There are only 2 people who are living in this house. Can you count how many notebooks are there? Are we insane? The worst is none of these are mine. Sigh! They are all my darling. The most insane, obssessive, IT geek husband ever. So you see. there’s no denying that we are not IT techies. Hehe!

 And to make our home more techie, see what we bought? A robot vacuum cleaner. Hehe! 

I have seen similar robot long time ago but never really thought that we would own one. This is not the original brand that created the famous iRobot vacuum cleaner and we were tempted to buy the original actually but the cost is just too high. So, we bought the imitation which cost half the price of the original from HomeFix. And it works just the same. It was kind of cool to have a robot cleaning the house. Hehe! I wonder what my darling will buy next???

 

Steamer, my love…

I have new love in the kitchen. It’s an electronic steamer. I have always wanted a steamer but not the conventional one that uses the wok and cover. I always love the modern electronic one. However, I never buy one because the price is not reasonable in my opinion. An electronic steamer normally costs around RM200 above. Not worth it.

My darling knows what I want (coz I always tell him about getting a steamer…hehe )and he has been collecting his credit card points to redeem a steamer for me. Of course it requires a lot of points to get one and finally we have enough points to get one. I’m so happy. Hu hu!

 I didn’t know nowadays the steamer is quite intelligent with timer and keep warm function.

 My favorite meal to steam is the ‘pau’. Not my favorite dish but it’s my darling’s favorite. I have steamed red bean pau, coconut pau and kaya pau. Hehe! Next I want to steam rice and egg and vege. Hu hu!

 

Reducing loan

Last month while we took long leave during the CNY, we took the opportunity to make a visit to EPF office. Why? To submit our application for withdrawing our EPF money to reduce our house loan. Actually, it was only my darling’s application since I didn’t submit mine. Haha! He has more money in his second account, that’s why. Hehe!

The process was quite simple yet you will need all the necessary documents. First, we had requested our bank (ours is ING, not really a bank actually) to prepare a letter to be submitted to EPF stating how much we still owe under our loan. Beware of the date of the letter as it’s only valid for 3 months from the date issued. Next, what we did was fill up a form from EPF. The normal one that we did even for the first time withdrawal when we bought the house.

We went there quite early and waited for our turn. When we met with the official, she was very polite and friendly, seeing through our document and checking our completed form. Since the house loan was under my name, my darling was applying as withdrawing to help spouse reducing house loan. What I forgot during this process was our marriage certificate. Sigh! We had no choice but to go back home and take our marriage certificate to prove that we are legally married. Sigh! Silly of me. I should have thought of that, right?

Once accepted at the counter, we were given a receipt and told to wait around 21 working days for the cheque. However, I think EPF nowadays is much more efficient. My darling received the call telling him the cheque was ready on barely 14 days. We collected the cheque on Friday but yet to submit to ING. Hopefully, once done, we have shorter loan period hence saving us more on interest. Hehe!

 

Title Transfer

It was just only 2 years ago that we forked out a chunk of our cash when we bought our house. Just barely live here for a year plus, we now have to fork out another chunk of cash to do the Memorandom of Transfer (MOT) of our Strata Title. Sigh! Why now? In this economy, we have to spend so much. Why not give us another few more years? Sigh! What to do?

We received the letter from the developer just yesterday, telling us that the Strata Title is ready. We are to liaise with the lawyer and bank to do the transfer. I was actually shocked. My darling was even more shocked than I but he’s more concerned about the money we have to pay to do so. We have always known that soon we have to pay when the title is ready. However, we are not ready. Never thought it would come this fast. Sigh!

Without wasting much time, I have made the necessary inquiry. Find out what we have to pay and how much roughly we have to pay. There’s lawyer’s fee, MOT stamp duty, registration fee and other misc. I have been told the amount is around RM4k. Sigh! 4k!?!? Can’t you believe it? And the worst is we only have 1 year period to do this. How I wish I can dilly-dally about this. Sigh!

 

A way to start new year

Happy New Year. I know it’s been 5 days since but I bet you still feel or rather hope you are in holiday mood.

Let’s get back to reality. Holidays are over. It’s back to work with normal school days traffic jam. Sigh! No more procrastination with workload. They have been piling up since before X’mas, to be honest. Hehe! I have a lot to catch up today. Or else soon my head will be on the platter. Hehe!

Anyway, I’m happy to share how satisfied both of us are last weekend. We did our spring cleaning and reorganising at home. At last. I had always wanted to tidy up the small room where we store our stuff. I wish to have a table there to do my filing too. Of course I made my wish known to my darling and we started planning how we wanted to do it.

 This was how our so-called store room looked like before we did the reorganising. That’s my darling’s beloved mountain bike that was supposedly to be mine. No more mine. Hehe! This photo was taken at least a half year back, so you can imagine more stuff we put there since then. We basically couldn’t see a clear walk way inside the room, believe me. Hehe!

 This was how my second room looked like. We have quite some boxes that I hadn’t really look into since we moved in. I wanted to move all these boxes to the small room so I can have bigger space in this second room for yoga practice. Hehe!

 Voila! This is how our small room looks now. Isn’t it tidy and cosy?

 All stack up nicely now. I finally have my makeshift table.

 It’s portable and made up of two Ikea wall shelves actually. Hehe! We bought the shelves thinking to decorate the wall but at the end we couldn’t bring ourselves to drill holes on our lovely walls, so those shelves were being left useless in the room. Finally, we found good use out of them.

 Finally I get more space in this room. I keep my yoga mat here too. Getting ready to start my yoga session again. Hehe!

We had sweep and mop the floor after all the reorganising. Threw away at least one big box of rubbish. What a way to start new year, right? We are gladly satisfied with ourselves. Haha!

Next, I want to clean up my kitchen cabinet. Wish me luck…

 

They look nice

Remember our new bedsheet set we bought recently. My darling couldn’t wait any longer and we have changed to our new bedsheet. Here is how it looks like:

It’s quite colorful but my darling said it makes the room looks smaller because of its dark color. For me, it doesn’t really matter. I love it all the same. Because it’s blue. Hehe!

Few weeks ago, we went to Ikea to look for X’mas present. My office is going to organize X’mas exchange gift lunch party. Other than X’mas gift, I found a portable computer table for my darling.

This is my darling’s new workplace at home. It’s definitely better than him sitting on the floor working. He he! These are the only white color furniture we have. All others are black. They look nice anyway. Haha!

Then one day while we were shopping at One Utama, we came to the hardware shop and we found something amazing. Probably many already know such a thing but to both of us (the dumb dumb) it was amazing.

 It’s a wireless door bell. Hehe!

 Here is the receiver which makes the sound. My darling put it in our room so that I will be able to hear it. Haha! It doesn’t really matter actually. Our home is small, so no matter where he puts it, I can still hear it. Hehe!

So now you tell me, am I super dumb dumb that I had never seen a wireless door bell before? Haha! It’s amazing how technology evolves…

 

Bugged

Our home is bugged. By zillion of black ants. I can see them everywhere. I see their trails in the kitchen one day, in the living room another day. And they can suddenly disappear too. I hate them. It’s disgusting. I had the shock of my life last Saturday when I found them in my wardrobe. Ewww! Damn scary, ok? I couldn’t believe my eyes that those zillion ants were making nest in my wardrobe, full of my clothes. Ouch! It’s my worst nightmare.

Thank God that I have my darling with me. Or else I couldn’t imagine what I would do. He helped me cleaned and cleaned. Of course, he grumbled and grumbled while helping me. Said I have too many clothes and yet I complained not enough. Girls are like that, no? We always feel we have not enough clothes. Right? Anyway, he spent 2 hours cleaning up the mess. I had no appetite after that. Seriously after seeing all those ants with their eggs, I didn’t feel like eating anymore. Damn disgusting. And it’s probably all my fault. I put too much clothes in the wardrobe. Now my wardrobe is as empty as new. All my clothes have to be packed into clean plastic bags to prevent fungus and ants. Sigh!

Maintenance of home sweet home is definitely and absolutely not cheap and not easy.

 

Esprit Home

We have bought new bedsheet set. Hurray! We have wanted to buy second set from Esprit long time but normally it’s just damn expensive. Since Isetan was having sale, my sister-in-law went and helped us buy one set.

 This is how the overall set looks like. My darling loves colorful and I think this is just what he wants…

 Of course I love blue only. As long as it’s blue, I just love it. Not bad hor??? This is the bedsheet color.

 This is the quilt cover. It has different patterns on each sides.

Now guess the price for the set. Normally, they sell separately the quilt set and bedsheet set. But now they bundled them together in one price. Just imagine if not for sale (and it’s member sale somemore), the total price for two set can be up to thousand. Esprit stuff is that expensive and if not for my darling, I wouldn’t know such things exist. Hehe!

 This price is on the quilt set and the price on the bedsheet set has been removed. Can you believe it? These two sets are priced at RM898. Lucky for us, for just that Friday, for Isetan member, we get 50% discount. Wheew! So the final price is RM449. If we go other day during the sale, we can only get 20% discount. So to us, this price is definitely worth it although I would say RM449 for bedsheet set is quite a sum. Doesn’t matter la. I just love it because I can tell you this. I didn’t know Epsrit bedsheet is so comfy until I try other brand. We have bought Aussino set before for RM80. Definitely cannot do. No No. So at last we have our Esprit again. I can’t wait to see it on the bed. Haha! Wait until CNY we must…Hehe!

 

My Sofa Day

I don’t normally online on weekends because I normally spend my weekend either outside of the house or in the bedroom. Even if I’m in the living room, I rarely online cause I’m lazy. But I’m truly enjoying my online time since yesterday. Why I enjoy it? See this photo then you will know…

This is my favorite pastime at home. I called it my sofa day as I don’t get to sit on m precious sofa every day. Sigh! Long story but I truly enjoy my sofa day whenever I get the chance. Hehe! I normally spend my sofa time watching DVDs. However, for the last two days, I have spent my sofa time online instead as you can see in the photo. The LCD TV has become my monitor and I have the wireless keyboard and mouse to control. All these are my darling’s idea of course, even before we moved in. It’s definitely cool to have a 32″ TV as monitor but I only have one problem. Sometimes I can’t see cleary if the words are too small. Sigh! I guess I have to make do. Hehe!

Here is my another enjoyment since the last two days.

 Ice-cream…yummy

I’m not a sweet-tooth person, I can tell you and I don’t snack much. But I just love Haagen-Dazs ice-cream. Who doesn’t, right? I got it through my sister-in-law during Isetan member sale. Buy 2 free 1. I have wanted Rum raisin but since they don’t have it so I got the coffee instead. It’s so yummy. The coffee aroma is so strong. Emmm…yummy…And I get to eat it all myself as my darling is not a coffee person. Just right. Haha!

At this moment I’m writing this, my darling is still sleeping. He got rashes all over his body since yesterday. Pity him. The reason he got rashes is this:

 

I introduced him to Corona during our Bali trip and he quite likes the taste. He insisted we bought one bottle back home during our grocery shopping some times ago. We just drank it on Friday night and the next morning, he got all the rashes. Sigh! No more Corona for you, my darling. Let’s get back to our Shandy. Hehe!