Valen’s Vanity Square

The day after Christmas, seems to be a nice day to go for shopping or have a get-together with friends. But instead I’m sitting at home waiting for the delivery and installation of a water heater we ordered two days ago.

Yes, finally, we are getting a water heater for the bathroom in our bedroom! That is after 3 years we moved into this house.

If installing a simple, cheap water heater took 3 years to accomplish, imagine how many years I have to wait if I want to install tv mounts. Even the electric hair curler that hubby promised to buy for me - last year - is no where to be seen yet.

Oh my, it’s already 3 pm, and there’s still no sign of the water heater. Better call up the shop!

Hubby has gone outstation for a night, so I’m staying over at my mom’s place, and get to play with my cute baby niece.

One thing that I’m worried about now is the water tap in my house kitchen sinks. The tap drips even we turn the knob so tightly. The dripping has been going for quite a while, sometimes slightly faster, sometimes slower.

Hubby hasn’t done anything about, and I have been too tired after work to nag him to do something about it.

Oh well, cheap taps are like that. I bet branded fixtures won’t be like that, haha! For instance, Franke sinks and faucets are known to be of good quality, and come with good designs.

But then, it may have nothing to do with the brand. May be it’s just certain parts and connections have gotten a bit loose. Whatever it is, we can only figure how to repair it tomorrow when hubby comes back from his meeting at Awana Kijal.

Sometimes we resort to magazines for ideas on home decor, what type and color of sofa set to put in the living room, or which patio furniture to place in the garden, to create the style and ambient we want.

Besides reading up magazines or interior design related reference books, checking out photos on internet actually helps a lot too. For one, you can get ideas from photos of celebrities’ home. While we may not have big mansions like they have, at least we can make one part of our house looks beautiful and a nice place to hang around.

For example, Eva Longoria has a nice, cozy kitchen in her beach house that I wished I could have, while Meg Ryan’s new home is simple in white and light color furniture that looks so clean and peaceful. Good to come home to such a place after a hard day’s work.

I don’t know them personally, haha, but I saw those photos of their house from magazine and on the internet. I know, I’m a nosy woman who likes to peek into other people’s house and examine their taste. Haha! Well, are you not one too? ;P

I don’t read newspapers everyday these days, so I only knew about the burnt down of the big furniture mall located beside the highway only few days after the incidence. We used to pass by the furniture mall every day on our way home.

Well, we still pass by the mall everyday, except what left of it now is only rubble and black ashes …

I don’t know if it’s merely ‘coincidence’ or… bad luck? News about furniture malls being burnt down are NOT news in our city. It happens relatively frequently, as compared to fire of factories or buildings.

Anyway, not that the furniture sold in the furniture mall is super duper beautiful or what, just that they are relatively cheaper than those carrying Italian names, so more people can afford buying from them.

Speaking of furniture, the specialist doctor I interviewed for an assignment the other day, has a very nicely decorated office. I’ve never met a medical doctor with such good taste. His office is appropriately placed with contemporary modern furniture, retro lamps and chairs, and a corporate-style leather sofa with metal frame. Just what I like.

I think the next time we want to replace our old furniture, we will not go to IKEA or furniture malls any more. It’s time to upgrade our ‘taste’. Of course, before we can do that, we need to ‘upgrade’ the amount in our bank account first. Haha!

Hubby finally bought a painting that is big enough to cover up the front window downstairs. Why cover it up? Well, that’s what our Feng Shui Master told us to.

The place where the window is now, was used to be the wooden door. Since we are not supposed to use that door as our main entrance, we made it into a window. Now, we can’t even use it as a window, meaning it has to be kept closed all the time.

Best is to seal it up of course, but we don’t want to complicate things (and certainly don’t want the construction part), so the way to go around it is to buy a painting and hang there permanently. Haha!

Now, the next step is to frame up the painting. There goes hubby’s money. Well, he has allocated budget for this purpose anyway. Even though there are a couple of home electronics items that we plan to buy, such as a plasma TV, but nothing is more important than our house’s Feng Shui.

Since when we became so superstitious….

What is going on? Is this a season for house renovation or what?

While my neighbor on the left is still not finished with his mega renovation project (almost 2 months!), my neighbor on the right just started a kitchen extension project! Can you imagine, there is drilling and hammering noise coming from the front and back, left and right? That really sucks, right?

Then, the house two doors away is also having some construction work going on, the house that is back-to-back to my left neighbor also had some sort of knocking and drilling thing taken place yesterday.

Why is everyone renovating their house?

Not mine of course!

An acquaintance of hubby at work, let’s call him Mr X, has recently moved into a new RM2 Million worth of bungalow with his family. According to hubby, this bungalow was not a ready-made property, but Mr X actually hired contractors and designers to build it from scratch!

Hubby visited Mr X’s house and described it to me the details. He kept saying that how huge the bungalow is, how well designed the interior is, and what a good sense of style Mr X has, blah blah blah. But I just couldn’t imagine it, until I saw it featured in one of the local most popular home ID magazines latest issue. Wow! It really is huge! And the ID is very modern contemporary, very tasteful and creative. Not that I think Mr X could actually come up with all those ideas himself, but the fact that he was able to accept them considering that he is a typical conservative type of businessman.

From the photos in the magazine, I could say that everything in the bungalow are new;from furnitures to home electronics and decor items, they all just look sparkling new. There is even a sound-proof karaoke room, okay? The room set up is totally like one of those in the high-class karaoke club with dark-colored theme and cozy lighting.

I told hubby, if you ever set a goal to buy a bigger house, please make it big - as big as Mr X’s 2 Million bucks bungalow, haha!

Stress is over!

Parents in law came for dinner at our place tonight. While hubby was the one who did all the cooking, I was the one who cleaned the house and assisted him preparing the cooking ingredients and setting up the table. After PIL went home, we allowed ourselves to take a breather by watching TV before cleaning up the kitchen. Luckily there’s not much of leftover food, as I let mother-in-law took most of the pork stew while I just kept enough for my lunch tomorrow. My fridge is already small, I don’t want to stuff it anymore!

My fridge is more than 5 years old. Quite ‘young’ actually. It still works normally despite being moved twice (from KL to Penang, and back to KL again)! I will use it until it no longer function, or when we feel that it can no longer cater the amount of stuffs we need it to keep. Haha! By then, my new fridge will not only be larger, but it will be one of those that can dispense cold water from this little compartment at the front of the fridge, without having to open the fridge door. I think that will be very cool!

Of course, high-tech fridge like that will need more care, such as replacing its water filter (e.g. water filter 4396508 for Whirlpool and Kitchenaid models) once in a few months to ensure the water dispensed is clean and safe to consume.

Speaking of clean, I need to get myself clean up now. Can’t go to bed with a greasy face.

Any one who comes and visit me, please do not expect to enjoy even moderate standard of TV entertainment at my home

Besides that we don’t subscribe to ASTRO, we also have limited ‘viewable’ channels. The channels - TV1, TV2, TV3 - are always blur. At least NTV7 and 8TV - my two favorite channels - are much clearer. Still, when there are vehicles passing by our house, images on TV will go through a transient distortion. Funny though TV9 is the clearest channels of all. Too bad I don’t watch that channel.

Well, thanks to our old fashioned external TV antenna that looks similar to this one (got this photo from the internet) …

Serious, this is how our TV antenna looks like! But no matter how we adjusted the antenna, we have never got a clear channel since we moved in. Haha!

So, every time hubby asked whether we should get a Samsung LCD TV, all I could answer was: “It doesn’t match the antenna.” I think we probably will never get a new TV until hubby decided that we can subscribe to ASTRO. What’s the point of having a big screen, LCD TV if we are not able to watch crispy clear images on the TV, right?