Life's a peach!

Blog posts are now few and far between.

Well, I had some trouble signing out of one of my alter-ego gmail identities. Despite signing out from account A using tools from the top right corner, each time I launched Blogger it did a default login to account A for me. This problem persisted for some months. Today I got fed up and deleted my entire browser/cookies/password history from the beginning of time, and then now life is back to normal.

Life is, indeed, back to normal. As usual it dealt me a few curve balls, but nothing too depressing. 
After all, no one ever died from a few curve balls - did they? Let's hope the answer to that is a resounding NO.

My home renovation is almost complete. I only did basic but fundamental improvements, nothing fancy-schmancy. Despite the basic requirements, my contractor is surprisingly bad at doing what he needs to do for me. His name is Mr Poh and he only does a good job for you if you spend a bomb on your renovation. Otherwise, he'll attend to you only in his spare time.

Alas the practicalities of life. 

I can't recall his business' name right this moment, but the next time I do I'll try to remember to share it with this cyber community. Contractors engaged to fix people's roofs can't expect good reviews if the roof is still leaking after the repair, right?

[Update on 7 July 2015: 
My SMSes and my mom's SMSes sent to the contractor to ask him to reply us on when he expects to finish tidying up the loose ends (the problems he caused because he didn't do his job properly) were completely ignored. 

This is not counting a couple more items that are stated on the quotation but not yet started to date.

This contractor started on my renovations since mid-Jan 2015.
We're running low in the Patience department now. 

The business this Mr Poh Ah Tai runs is called Tai Engineering, Biz Registration No. 53119584L, registered office at Rochor Centre, but this could be the address of the corporate secretariat. Running a google search on business phone number +65 65833633, this Mr Poh guy also seems to have registered another business known as Tai Yong Builders, located in Hougang Ave 8. His mobile is +65 98181988.

My overall feedback: Mr Poh's follow-up service is very bad. He tends to over-promise and under-deliver - a big NONO when your business is messing around with people's homes. Also, he likes to make decisions on behalf of the home-owners when it comes down to the finer details like the colour of door panels.

To him, its just work. To me, this is my home. And I'm REALLY PISSED when he leaves it in a half-completed state.

If I had the chance to re-select my contractor - I WOULD NOT CHOOSE TAI ENGINEERING. And this is my recommendation to all of you who chance upon this entry.]


Enough with the negative thoughts. 
I'm off to bed.
❤

Polly the Terrarium Terror

Pushy and I are on another terrarium mission for Christmas. This time we're working on a gift project for a grown-up and therefore do glass encased ones and also experiment with different plant varieties.

My first idea was to work on an orchid terrarium. But it's a more difficult plant to care for than the last ones we had and I was very afraid it would wilt away, so I suggested to get a backup plant. Pushy saw that the African Violet came in a lovely shade of white with blue edges and therefore we made that our backup plant.

At home, I began repotting the orchid and saw that I made a grave mistake. In selecting our orchid we chose a vanda with the smallest flowers. However I made no mental note of the height of the spikes and ended up with an orchid taller than it's container. Amateur! 

I ended up having to pick out the shorter spikes and split the plant into 2 categories - shorter and taller. Taller ones went back into its original pot, shorter ones were shoved into a cleaned out mineral water base which I cut out, together with some dried spagheum moss and charcoal bits.

The entire bottle base with the shorter spikes were still too tall for its intended container, so I went to Youtube and looked up how to trim orchid stems. Finally I ended up with an orchid plant with no flowering spikes, only leaves. It doesn't seem like an exciting Christmas gift, so I think Pushy will be keeping it for his own and while waiting for the new flowering spikes to grow out.

Having disappointed myself with a poorly thought out orchid terrarium, it took me another couple of days to gather courage and make a second attempt with the backup plant - our sweet little African violet.

I went home, whipped out the paraphernalia and began filling out the second jar with charcoal, moss and coloured beads.I eased out the African violet from it's original pot and tried to stuff the soil and roots to for the next layer. Height-wise the plant was appropriate for the new jar, but lo and behold, the width was way too much. Another amateur mistake. 

Very unfortunately, the jar was tall and it was a chore to extract the plant out to  downsize it. Numerous of the its delicate leaves broke in halves and some in entirety. After peeling away all the broken leaves, I got myself a nice size of the plant to fit into the jar. Finally.. something worked!

Now the African violet fits snugly in the jar, but it looks dirty with bits of soil stuck to the top and bottom side of its leaves. I'm still working out a safe way to clean away the soil without breaking more leaves. 

Poor plants. I feel so apologetic to them. Now I will have to monitor their colour and poise to make sure they recover from my unintended mutilation. 

No, my thumbs are not green and I suck at gardening!

Can they survive the Terrarium Terror?

♥

The Defiant Night Guy

Jerry's got THAT right.

The defiant Night guy over here is really exhausted right now, but is refusing to give up on scanning the last 2 pages of Poppadum's crafty posters. Night guy has been Poppadum's secretary over the last 3 days, digitizing all his artwork from hardcopies. 

How does Poppadum churn out these masterpieces at such a super-human pace?
...........Is what Night guy needs to know.

Now there are just 2 sheets to go... And the rebellious dual purpose HP scanner decided to go on strike so Night guy had to go reset it. Night guy is scanning the pages of artwork in high resos and therefore it takes gazillion minutes to do a single scanned sheet.

Night guy is a little cranky right now... Morning guy is SCREWED by Night guy.. Once again.

♥

Me Need Workstation. Need Bad!

I am, rather frequently, an impulsive animal. I mentioned previously I have a multitude of hobbies. Well I am the Jane-of-All-Trades and Mistress-of-None. I still go back to each one of them from time to time and each of my hobbies have begun vying for space to be present at my makeshift work table so I can pick them up and continue working on them from where I last took off. 

De-clutter, de-clutter, de-cluttttter!

Scene from my make shift work table from my last major project. It's an old mahjong table! Huat ah..

I am wistfully wishing for a new work table. Wouldn't mind this baby from Ikea.

Love the idea that this work station can be closed up to keep out the dust. For craft work however, this table may be a little narrow so I'm still browsing. Still it doesn't resolve the issue of my cluttered-ness. I wonder if there really is a cure?

In the meantime, the mahjong table and my bedroom floor are my best resources. Can you tell I'm bravely defying the thought of procrastinating creative work through the excuse of having no proper work table?

Here's an example of how I am scanning Poppadum's craft work for administrative purposes. He's recently into lettering and borders. Isn't it neat?

♥

Life is Fe-Fe-Fe-Irony

Tonight I nurse my ulcer, it's now a funny colour.
It hurts me when I talk, so I think I'd rather not.

I start a new brog entry, to earn myself a penny.
And tell you something hairy, that makes me not so merry.

I bought a brand new mattress, it's thickness is the fattest.
From a humble and honest brand - it's made by Maliland.

The mattress is very firm so I don't have to squirm
To get a good position, to sleep in good condition.

But the mattress is very high, to it Nagalot decries.
She thinks it's very strange, and wants me to exchange.

I kept it stubbornly, and enjoy it with glee.
But just when all was well, my bed starts to rebel.

It's frame suddenly collapsed, and made my anxiety relapse.
Like in a conspiracy - Oh life is irony!

♥

Browhaus Brow Resurrection

After contemplating the above-named treatment from the above-named shop over numerous sporadic moments across a span of a year or so, I nose-dived into its Raffles City basement outlet and got myself involved with 7 + 2 sessions (the 2 being "complimentary" follow up sessions offered during the Singapore Sales period) at a price that I wish-not to disclose or in any other way remind myself. All price information is easily retrieved from multiple public sources.

All that action happened before I left my previous employment, as a vain excuse to pamper myself a little better after being booted from the job.

New beginnings, new brows. Intriguingly named Brow Resurrection, I envisaged a phoenix emerging from the ambers, with its wings looking curiously like a pair of wispy, brand new brows.

6th November was my first consult with a Miss Lydia at the store. I requested for a set of Korean brows that's all the rage now. L carefully painted on a suggested brow shape with a fine ink brush for my go-ahead. Then L explained that because I had once before done another brow embroidery job with a different brow shape, the colour (though much faded) shows up as a shadow. The brow shape she's suggested had to overlay the bluish-grey shadow and had to consist of a stronger tone of brown.

I was pretty happy with her efforts and agreed with the brow shape so L proceeded to apply a layer of numbing gel. It was chilled and supposed to make the treatment significantly painless. The application required a sitting time of 10-15mins so during the wait one of their customer relations cum sales guy appeared and did a lengthy briefing of the dos-and-dont's, and made me sign some acknowledgement and indemnity forms. His fringe was funny and I detected a hint of cigarette breath while he talked. Glorious!

Numbing gel settling in

The next step was for L to colour in the drafted brow with the 'organic-semi-permanent-deep-brown' dye that the shop was so proud of. Thankfully the numbing gel worked - what I felt was a series of needles pricking lightly into my skin. And then the numbing effect wore off.. and then it really hurt! 

At this point I'd like to recommend for the boys and girls who plan to undergo this treatment to do a thorough check on the symmetry of your brows after the colouring is completed. Despite the skills and experience of the beauticians, they are having to work with your face tilted to one side only and with the lighting focused on one part of your face more than the others.

Well it happened to me that my after my first round of pricking my brows were not symmetric. I pointed them out to L and she made a few extra pricks to balance out the height of the brows. And then I thought it was a rather good job done! It was a good job done that hurt-a-hella-lot at the end!

Feeling wounded, I was easily persuaded to purchase a post-treatment kit that consisted of a soothing liquid and a water-proofing balm. L explained that the kit would last me a few months as it could be used after future follow up treatments. I decided very quickly that for that money to be apportioned over the months it was okay. POW!! Extra money thrown in.

Over the next several hours the pain gradually crept up as the numbing effects wore off completely. And then my brows throbbed and swelled up. I didn't even even dare touch my brow by accident.

About 2 hours after treatment

The worst experience post-treatment is that I'm disallowed from washing my brows for the next 5 days. Rationale was that with the dye being natural and organic it gets washed off pretty easily. To allow time for my skin to absorb it I needed to leave my brows untouched while they performed their natural peeling after being stabbed repeatedly. Also during this period I should apply the post-treatment product twice daily to retain the dye for as long as I could.

Obediently I let all that happen to avoid the need for scheduling a follow up that is too closely spaced to the first one. It was a rather traumatising experience for me. 

Day 16 - Blog conclusion

Now at Day 16, the dye has significantly faded. I stopped applying the post-treatment product. The skin is no longer feeling injured and I can scratch an itch on the brow bone as per normal. I did however notice that there is still asymmetry in my brows. One being more rounded and than the other. The issue didn't fall away together with the dead skin during the peeling phase.

I think this is how it's gonna look for the next several weeks. It doesn't reduce my effort in colouring my brows since I need to continue to mask the asymmetry. This I will not miss in asking L to fix in our follow up appointment.

How Glorious!! So do you think it was worthwhile...?
♥

Insomnia

I wistfully wish to fall asleep, it's terribly hard right now.

A pain it is to count the sheep, in place of pots of gold.

My mind is cluttered my mood is bleak, tomorrow's plans will be a mess indeed.

I earnestly beg to find some sleep, before dawn arrives and daylight peeps.

Send me my pots of gold, lay forth my pots of gold.

-- written on my Kindle Paperwhite Experimental Browser
<3 p="">

Life's-Little-Inconveniences: Dry Wet Wipes

Ever so often I have visitors coming by my desk not to say 'Hello' but to open my foot-locker middle drawer to pull out my packet of wet wipes to wipe their greasy hands.

How nice.
With my O.C.D. tendencies I feel my mental scale tipping over from the 'TOLERATE' marker to the 'NO MORE MISS NICE POSER' marker.

I'm certainly amazed that these visitors have developed an acute familiarity on the arrangement of my drawer and the contents within. I'm even more impressed when they display no shame in helping themselves to stuff in my drawer. But the thing that makes me F-L-I-P is that after they are done ravaging my wet wipe pack, they carelessly close the sticky flap leaving HuMonGous GAPS at the side.

AND - to you out there who have general intellectual capabilities - Tell ME, what makes wet wipes wet??
-----> MOISTURE, innit??!

AND - to you the same bunch of fellas - Tell ME, what happens when you leave GAPS in the wet wipe packs?
-----> Horror of Horrors.. My wet wipes DRY OUT!!!

HoBoy. Am I ANNOYED on days I have greasy fingers and reach for a wet wipe only to find it totally DRIED OUT! D-R-Y as a bone! My wet wipes, all of it WASTED!

AND because I want to avoid gaps, I even add sticky tape on the sticky flap. But guess what, Mr I-Don't-Care still leaves gaping holes in the wet wipe pack.

AND because they don't bother to ask, they don't realize I ALREADY have an opened pack of wet wipes. So they reach into my drawer to open a brand new pack. And then there was Two. TWO half packets of wet wipes drying out simultaneously.

Gaaaaaaaaah Losers leave my wet wipes alone if you can't keep them proper!


Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.............. I HAAATE YOUUUU

xx

Bobbin' It

I now know how bad I am at using the sewing machine.

I spent my entire night playing with the bobbin!! 

I did only one dart!!

Dreadful.. Dreadful.. Inconspicuous but utterly irritating machine part! GRR.

It's time for someone to reinvent the bobbin compartment.

REVOLUTION!

It will save us multiple frown lines on the faces of billions...

♥

I-N-S-O-M-N-I-A

Sigh this is bad.


I'm having a little trouble here. Have been unsleepable for the last several hours. Got up and did my laundry instead. 


"Hello body-clock, you are a mess right now."


"Yeah.. well.. you can say that again.."


"Okay. Hello body-clock, you are a mess right now."


* eye-roll *


\(=_=)/


Meanwhile, Insomnia à l'acappella, a seemingly popular tune with acappella practitioners.





♥

I'm not an anti-social animal!

If you know me you'd know I'm designed to eat, drink and be merry.

For the benefit of those who don't know me personally, let me just share with you that I'm a person who likes to eat, drink and be merry. And I believe I do a good job of eating, drinking and being merry.

I'm not an anti-social animal! I have my demands for respectable social time! With friends and especially family. Don't keep me chained to my desk!

Oh wow I'm soo sleepy right now I'm dozing off with Koollie in my hands..

Night night everyone!
Night night PushyP!

Zzz.

Tab Tab Tab.

Yeah my phone is large, isn't that bleeding obvious. 
Just to bring to your attention it's also a really small computer.


Now that's all cleared up, can we move on with life and talk about something else?
♥