Smile

This picture blew me away...it is just so lovely!

Vintage Map Cuff Links

We don't really have a cultural tradition of wedding gifts here in Singapore but I was thinking these vintage map cufflinks were really neat. They are sold by Anne Holman on Etsy and if I got them for Z. I guess the two places would be Singapore and Purdue.

The way she makes them is that she has a varying collection of antique world atlases The maps are protected and set behind a magnifying resin. Settings are approximately 1/2" in diameter and are gently oxidized leaving a rich blackened surface

The thing is, I guess these would be a lot more significant later on in life, after all, it'd be more interesting to have more places to choose from like birthplace, hometown, honeymoon, where you met, where your children were born, or the city you alway dreamed to visit... I guess we don't have quite enough history to make these a really special choice.

It's coming along!

Slowly but surely. The painter did a great job, the electrical guy, not so. He wired four lights to one switch (all the lights in the living and dining room), then left the second switch doing nothing. His guys keep coming back but it's not exactly clear what they do each time. The painter guy also had an accident, he swopped the colours of the bedroom and the living room (they were a close shade, so it took me a little while in the apartment to notice) but at least he was nice about fixing the colour and the good thing is at least I saw it on the walls and got to make a last-minute colour change decision in the process.


We were particularly happy with the fans and lights as we sprayed them black ourselves. Or at least we did with the lights, Z. came up with the brilliant idea to take the existing fans down to a car workshop and have them sprayed matt black. It was much cheaper and we didn't have to buy new black cafe fans.


This is the kitchen. The colour is known as Aquatint. I keep calling it Acquafresh. It's a really small space but the colours make me smile, it looks vaguely retro. I think the red kitchenaid will be happy here.

We went to Ikea today and although we really loved this Swedish designed table ($950- how is that cheap?) we found a black one of a fairly good size, in the As Is section for $120. We also picked up a wardrobe with a sliding door which was on their weekly special and a couple of other larger-ticket items like the seagrass rug.


I always loved Ikea but these couple of weeks, I've found things not to like. For example, their inventory stock is really, really low. I'm not sure if they've seen pullback from the economic environment (doesn't sound likely) but there were lots of items that we just completely out of stock. The prime example were those black spotlights, they only had white. Then the lighting, the black ones were again out of stock (thus we had to get yellow ones and spray paint them). Then, we were looking for lampshades, each of the designs we looked at (there were three) were all unavailable.

I wanted the rug in the largest 3x2m size, also unavailable and they didn't know when a shipment was going to come in. We wound up having to purchase it in one size smaller, which really doesn't look as good. (I'm contemplating buying a second rug). It was somewhat ridiculous. Then their returns policy. How can you possible only return something in it's original condition and original packaging when you have to assemble and affix most of the things you buy there? We have two larger black lights that went onto the ceilings before we realized they were way too large. I guess those are other items will just wind up completely wasted, which is a shame.

In the midst of renovations....

We are in the midst of renovations and as is the case with all of these works and all contractors, it is running delayed and slowly, even though this is such a small job! This is the main living room, now with the wall removed. Now we know why the contractor was so cheap- he is not of great quality and his men lack common sense! The floor where the wall was, has yet to be ground down after more than a week and a half and the floor has not been cleaned or mopped. The plugs are still trailing wires and the sockets that were drilled through the wall into the balcony were moored in the middle of the wall, rather than at foot height!

Hopefully, this will look better after these two days, when the painter has been in. My favourite thing about this room has to be the view of the trees beyond it and I'm glad we got a higher floor, I visited a lower floor unit and you could hear the noise when the grass was being cut in the garden! This room will be a light sand brown.


This is the bedroom, not much has been done here but they still managed to get the entire floor dirty. The fans are the ones from the living room, we had considered replacing them with black cafe ceiling fans but we didn't know what to do with the original fans. So we took them to a car workshop and had them sprayed a matt black for a fraction of the cost of new fans. Clever but so much more work! This room will be a light, mossy taupe colour.

We've got a neat bedroom set complete with king-size mattress which is great but the downside is it needs to be collected by this Friday and I seriously don't think the room will be in a shape of cleanliness to receive all the furniture. My travel this month and the flu has really been ill-timed, if not I could actually do something to help the situation but there's little that can be done about cleaning the place now.


This is the walkway between the living room, bedroom and kitchen, which you can see at the end. I think the construction stage and the mess is most visible from here. There's still a lot to be done and a load to be cleaned up!


This is the kitchen, where most of the cabinetry work is being done. I bought a retro looking light from Ikea which hopefully will not be too hot, since it's encased in a round glass shade. I am excited about how the kitchen will look but we have yet to find a washer or a fride. Still, plenty of listings.


Another picture of the kitchen.


This to me, is the worst part of the black and white, the very basic toilet and shower- in this case, when you shower, the entire shower area/sink area would get wet, which is so basic and bizarre. (Sorry, the picture is really bad, I have no idea how I managed to also photograph the house keys).

We had been planning to do something about it but we're still a bit stuck on what can be done. I had wanted to mirror up the entire wall behind the toiletseat, while Z. felt that changing the toiletseat and cover would help. We looked at another unit, which had swapped the position of the shower head and sink, a very clever idea that prevents you from having to brush your teeth in a dank corner with the wet shower floor but it might be costly and in addition, be just too difficult to manuevere the change in piping.

Yellow Fever

I often think to myself, that I am not a very typical Asian bride. I suppose I was never meant to be but then, I was born and brought up in Asia. I understand American-Asian friends wanting the modern, shabby chic wedding, or the luxe Miami white feathers wedding, after all, they've had their whole lives to assimilate and adopt American friends, customs and tastes. But at what point did I start to not really prefer what those around me, seem to naturally do?

Just the other day, I came across the most brilliant black, white, caramel and orange themed wedding. I really loved the colour combination. In fact, I love all the offset colours, the seafoam green, the khaki tan, pale grey stone, dove grey, gunmetal grey, the pale maize yellow, the mustard yellow, the chatreuse and citrine greenish-yellow, all these colours that don't qualify for quintessentially Asian weddings, which are always, always about red, brightness, chinese motifs, formality, gloss, showiness and jewellery.

Even if I were to go with red or pink, I would probably meld them into shades of peace, fuschia and blueberry. But why should I think them contrived? Hardly a month used to go by that my mother would wrinkle her nose at my colour choices and say "well, I hope that turns out well in the photos". And likewise, I would find myself wishing that my parents, that society at large, would buy-in more to ideas like earth tones, or DIY, or thinking about your guests rather than just shooting for quantity in guestlist. Why on earth, I questioned, would my mother suddenly insist that I print pink invitations, when she knew darn well that I had never liked nor worn pink in my life? And why, couldn't I have in-laws, to whom the concept of "a colour theme" at their family tea ceremony wouldn't have been like selling french classes to aliens?

Once in awhile though, I would reflect and step back from all the wedding planning madness and realize, in a sense, they too, are stuck with me. I'm sure they wouldn't have preferred nor wanted a daughter who had such a strong and worse, independant make-up, not just in aesthetics but in decisions and actions. I'm not sure how they would have manged it in their own way but I do know that they've given their best over the course of their parenthood and although they don't ask for little in return, I'm sure nothing led them to expect that I would be so...different.

A living room set

My friend J has such great taste, this was a room from her house before she moved. When she did, she took just one of her two living room sets with her, so the grey sofa and blue arm chairs are coming to live with us in our little fixer-upper.

We welcome Mr Grey Sofa and Misses Blue Armchairs, particularly because I think grey, black and blue is a colour combination I would never have chosen. It's quite sophisticated, so I'm very glad she did. Hopefully they won't be too massive for the room, this was a big house!

Our Humble House

Exciting news...we bid on a rental unit, a little black-and-white colonial walk-up in the Newton area and won! This place has got a great location, right near a 24 hours food center and opposite the MRT station. It is also opposite a community center so maybe we can take some classes there, a short hop away from the main retail Orchard Road drag and the unit is fairly breezy as it looks out to greenery at the back.


That's the campy sell of living there, the idea that this is something we can do once, while we are young, fit and keen. In reality, the place is pretty old and small. The blocks next door, along Monk's Hill road are much more spacious and large and it was after seeing a friend's place there that I first started stalking these units about 3 years ago. The thing is, they are virtually on rent control, or a guide rent that moves by annual CPI, so the there's very little turnover.

This year though, there has been some in part because the market-driven bid prices have gone up. There was one 4 bedroom unit, which would have been lovely but in truth perhaps a bit too large for us, a few 3 bedroom units which I didn't like the layout of and quite a few of this one we got, which is a 2 bedroom unit. Tiny but we'd like to think, with character. Right now though, it's just raw and rather in need of work.


One nice thing is that there is a good mix of neighbours, they are all fairly young and some of them are pretty posh (we spotted some really nice cars in the carpark and golf sets outside the apartments, projection tvs, bookshelves on consulting and math) and they look like fun, usually either housemates or young couples. Some even invited us over for dinner when we said we were new here.


This is one of the two bedrooms, though it will not be for long. We are knocking down a wall between the small frontal living space and one of the bedrooms to create a much larger living/dining room. Usually the government rental company is really sticky about renovations but during a dry spell in the property market, they themselves experimented with different layouts in this block and the one they chose for 3 units in the block was this bigger living area concept. So ours will just be a 4th similar unit.


The room that needs the most work really, is the kitchen. There is nothing in it but a sink. For someone who likes to cook, that's kind of a tragedy. We will probably concentrate the bulk of the renovation cost (taking down a wall and electricals isn't very expensive) in fitting out a proper countertop with drawers and a cooker hob. Zhan really likes the concept of a fixer-upper, we did fix up the apartment before but I guess this is our first semi-permernant home. He's been scouring the online markets for home items and we've been quite lucky in our search so far. The fun thing is that we can almost look at things that we would never otherwise have had in the house, or salvage items like old dining tables.

More to come with the contractor starting work in the unit today...