As i went into the housebuying experience a complete property noob, I certainly learnt alot frm it. Catechol's much better, as he has some property agent contacts and a good friend who is a successful property agent, so he's privy to quite a few of their tricks (lesson of the day: Any good property agent will have a basketful of tricks).
I thought i'd write this entry not only cos it's amusing, but also it's a reminder to the future house-buying me: We went into this with the main goal of getting an affordable temporary house with a stringent set of criteria and a good knowledge of what makes property agents tick, and yet.. faced with the pressures of bidding war and the emotional stress of it all, we still almost succumbed to emotion and nearly overpaid for a house before settling on this one (more on that later).
Anyway hope this helps:
The Mie And Liang Unorthodox guide to buying a house:
Step 1: Know your finances
Because the property market is against buyers currently, our plan is to buy a small temporary house first and wait for the prices to drop, our initial plan was to rent but the rental prices are also exhorbitant, the sums worked out to be that buying a 3 rm flat is still most affordable.
Know all the stamp duty, legal fees and agent fees and whatever cash you need to pay upfront, we have met some agents who tried to 'scare' us into buying by calculating amount and saying 'you see, this house cov low already and the upfront cash is still so much. You want to buy another house, the cov might be higher, do you have that amount of cash on hand?", some agents even quoted us the wrong legal fees and tried to con us into giving a larger amt of agent fee.
We initally attempted to apply for HDB loan, but after using up a whole month of patience with emails, phone calls and delay tactics, Liang decided to go for bank loan. Any 'good' property agent will ask you if your bank loan has been settled, and if your reply is negative, they will offer to 'help' you with a recommendation. (If you want me to spell out why this is not such a gd idea, you can ask me in person.)
With regards to which bank loan is the best, I seriously have no idea (refer Liang), I'm sure I had a blank look on my face when the loan officer attempted to explain the terms of loan to me (probably the same blank look whenever Prof C tries to teach during rounds).
Housing loan interest is one of the lowest in s'pore, so we took up full loan and put the money to greater use in investments. (This is obviously quoted blindly from Liang, I can't give u more details cos it was too cheem and I drifted off after the second sentence when Liang was explaining to me.. ssh.. dun tell him that)
Interesting property fact: do you know that if you were to buy condo/private property in geylang, no local bank will be willing to give u the mortgage? Haha they so biased.
Anyway, pls refer to Liang if you have any questions on the finances part of the deal, you know i'm useless in this aspect... yawn.....
Step 2: Know your wishes
According to Liang, in order to not pay premium price or fall madly in love with a house, we need to keep a clear mind and follow strictly a list of criteria (shrugs shoulders)
Liang's wishes:
1) Near his house
2) Reasonable price
My wishes:
1) Either walking distance to mrt OR access to at least 10 bus routes
2) Not lower than 7th floor
3) Near Liang's house
4) Near at least 2 hospitals
5) Within 3 mrt stops to my house
6) Near food (i figured i've had enough of living on top of a hill)
7) Must not be very old
.
.
And the list went on, and new wishes have a tendency to be added unpredictably, so in the end, my wishing rights were stripped and I was only limited to top 3 wishes.
Based on these criteria, we shortlisted a few neighbourhoods to base our search on, but after awhile we realised that most of the flats there are 4 to 5 room flats.
This was also the time when suddenly my dad decide to make known his wishes:
1) Door facing must be certain direction - northeast, northwest, west, southwest (he even drew us a compass and when I expressed my abject horror, he said 'u lucky both u and Liang have same direction so still got 50% of the directions mah')
2) Must not be in 'seedy' neighbourhood
3) Must have some 'greenery' like park or hill around (it's some feng shui thingy, i suspect this is the reason why i need to climb a hill home everyday of my 27 years)
4) Past owners must not have 'bad vibes' eg. divorce. (He even asked me why one couple did not have children even though they were married for 6 years.)
5) Must be approved by Sandy first (apparently Sandy will be able to tell us if there are ghosts around, i think he much over-estimated Sandy's abilities.)
When I objected vehemently to all these saying we already have a hard time finding a house, without all his added nonsense, he just very nonchalantly said, "when the house is right for you, everything will just come naturally into place." -_-'++
[Some of his nonsense got to Liang, who got a great kick out of the fact that our final choice is a 'natural west' as he likes to call it]
Step 3: Don't be ruled by emotions
After a long time in fruitless searching through the property ads, we finally chanced across a semi-suitable flat in an area walking distance to Liang's house, and best of all, it is on the 16th floor which is the top floor of the block. [Interesting property fact number 2: why is it that when agents advertise that the flat is above xth floor, the actual floor is x+2 without fail??? Is there some unspoken agent rule??? Liang and i are very perturbed by this.]
i fell in love with the view, fell in love with the neighbourhood though the flat itself is rather rundown. Only problem is... yes... the door. We stood at the door for a good 5 min peering at a compass needle that flickers between north and north-west each second. So I called my dad, and he says if we really like the flat, we can actually tilt the door (thus Liang coined the term 'natural west' and 'fake west') My dad even took a cab down to check out the area and gave his stamp of approval (it's next to a hill). So happily, we put a bid for the flat, which Liang tot was quite a gd bid but I was afraid that it wasn't good enough because it was a good 8000 below the asking price. But becos Liang was so confident (he kept bragging that his Valentine's present to me is a house), I also got quite excited and started dreaming abt the renovation. So of course, we lost the bid. Someone offered cov of $39 000! Naturally, I got very, very upset and disappointed because I guess I really thought that we could get that house. I think Liang felt really, really guilty, because after that he suggested expanding our search to 4 room flats as well.
Step 4: Know your opponent
Between that house and our last choice, we spent countless hours at viewings, I took extended lunch breaks in the middle of a work day, skipped mmed lectures, left early for gatherings, left way early for P's hen night (sorry dear) and almost had to go for second appointment in the sari for P's wedding.
In between, we got played by very experienced agents, agents who instituted a bidding war with some other 'invisible' party, agents who dropped us like a brick once they realised that we have no interest in using their recommended buyer's agent... Through it all, Liang kind of became the emotional one because he felt so bad that he 'lost' me that first house which i liked so much and he became amiable to the ridiculous demands and prices of the various agents.
The last viewing was the most memorable. We actually already had a verbal agreement with the owner of our now house but a new listing in a different block in the same neighbourhood came up and we tot we'd go and see. I made the mistake of admitting that i prefer the new house cos of the view and the renovation. So when the owner made the ridiculous demand of 30k cov regardless of valuation (beware in instances where valuation is not out yet), Liang agreed, and I had to hurriedly jump in and insist on a cap and sort of got into a civilised argument with the owner (who was VERY rude and an absolute b*tch). So without even discussing with Liang, I rejected her. (which turned out to be a very good thing indeed because we later found out that the actual valuation was 10k above what we estimated).
Step 5: 'Fate' might really lend a helping hand
I guess fate dictates that we should stick with our original owner and not back out on him, also as Liang kept emphasising it was a 'natural west'.
The now house is actually in the same block as the very first flat we went to and is better cos it's a corner unit. (So my parents had already liked the place, and after making yet another trip down there to check out the 'vibes' of the door of particular flat, they approved.) But i didn't let myself fall in love with it, partly cos i don't want to be disapointed and secondly, I was freakin pissed off by the seller agent.
She was a total nincompoop and I caught her lying to my face not once but 3 times in the first viewing. When I tried to explain to her that she got her facts wrong about the resale prices of the units in the area (naturally we are familiar since we went to see the very flats that she mentioned), she just looked embarassed then rudely argued with me.
In the course of our dealings with her over the past few weeks, she was rude and ignorant and made a whole lot of mistakes which i need to clean up for her (I was even more familiar than her in the hdb application procedure and form filling... grrrrr).
But whenever Liang complains abt her (he gets very annoyed cos she calls him 'Tan Ah!' on the phone for some weird reason), I would remind him, if not for her laziness and incompetence, we probably wouldn't have managed to successfully close the deal.
I mean, how many agents would willingly let us have a face-to-face negotiation with the seller himself without trying to increase the price and we actually managed to push the price down to 4k below asking? (the seller is quite a nice guy actually, we know cos we spent 2 hours chatting with him to build rapport while the agent just stood by and join us in small talk) And how many agents when they found out that even though we're unrepresented we refuse their buyer agent and still let us continue with negotiation? The best part is, cos she did not have otp on hand, we only had a verbal agreement on the deal, so when we called her again 1 week later, I half-expected her to say that the house had been sold to someone else for a higher price already, but she didn't! She really just close shop and spent the week sleeping at home!
And that concludes our house buying adventure (well, we still have to suffer through few more appointments with hdb and the nincompoop agent, i just hope she doesn't screw up again. We had to call her a few days ago to tell her to amend her forms cos she filled up the date wrongly).
Oh and the time that i left P's hen-night early and the appointment after P's wedding? That was the viewing for this house... =)
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Little things
I've been meaning to write an entry regarding our hilarious journey thru house hunting, i even have it all framed in my head, but i kept getting waylaid by alot of sai gang at work, more and more presentations to do (i just did one today that my boss dumped on me with just 3 days notice), and helping Catechol with his new stall which is opening soon.
Will try to get down to doing it this weekend (which is my first weekend where i'm not on call or post-call this month).
Just a small entry to whet ur appetite now:
Reasons why I think I am going to enjoy my new house:
1) Walking distance to Liang's place (this is quite important to both of us)
2) Still relatively near my area now (Already my parents have made at least 3 trips, i think my dad 4, just to 'scope out the area' and 'have a feel of the place'. more on their weird antics later)
3) NOT at Rivervale or Punggol (no offense to the pple staying there, but to someone who don't drive, these places may as well be in jb)
4) There is a HUGE hawker with pretty decent food and at least 3 other coffee shops just a few metres away. (Those of u who have been to my hse would appreciate why I'm so happy with this.)
5) Taking into consideration point number 1 and point number 4, I may not need to cook for the next 5 years.
6) There is a soya bean specialty stall in the neighbourhood mall that sells darn good soya bean drink and tau huay. Ever since i've left marine parade where i drink the very nice soya bean everyday, i've been on the search and disappointed time and again for its replacement. I'm now addicted to this new stall.
7) There are some very old-school and interesting shops in the 'mall' including a pet shop and a vet!
8) I noticed at least 2 clinics that open very long hours, and we all know what that means....
9)I will still be walking distance to a pool and a gym.
10) I will be walking distance to K-Box!!!
11) I will finally have friendly and not so suspect neighbours.
Cons:
1) Still pretty inconvenient compared to my house now in terms of accessibility train wise.
2) Nothing beats walking distance to SGH
3) I will be very near Wk's alma mater, whom people say is haunted??!!!
Will try to get down to doing it this weekend (which is my first weekend where i'm not on call or post-call this month).
Just a small entry to whet ur appetite now:
Reasons why I think I am going to enjoy my new house:
1) Walking distance to Liang's place (this is quite important to both of us)
2) Still relatively near my area now (Already my parents have made at least 3 trips, i think my dad 4, just to 'scope out the area' and 'have a feel of the place'. more on their weird antics later)
3) NOT at Rivervale or Punggol (no offense to the pple staying there, but to someone who don't drive, these places may as well be in jb)
4) There is a HUGE hawker with pretty decent food and at least 3 other coffee shops just a few metres away. (Those of u who have been to my hse would appreciate why I'm so happy with this.)
5) Taking into consideration point number 1 and point number 4, I may not need to cook for the next 5 years.
6) There is a soya bean specialty stall in the neighbourhood mall that sells darn good soya bean drink and tau huay. Ever since i've left marine parade where i drink the very nice soya bean everyday, i've been on the search and disappointed time and again for its replacement. I'm now addicted to this new stall.
7) There are some very old-school and interesting shops in the 'mall' including a pet shop and a vet!
8) I noticed at least 2 clinics that open very long hours, and we all know what that means....
9)I will still be walking distance to a pool and a gym.
10) I will be walking distance to K-Box!!!
11) I will finally have friendly and not so suspect neighbours.
Cons:
1) Still pretty inconvenient compared to my house now in terms of accessibility train wise.
2) Nothing beats walking distance to SGH
3) I will be very near Wk's alma mater, whom people say is haunted??!!!
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Wedding Woes #1
Yay i've discovered the trick to blogging at work.. So from now on while i'm waiting for them to trickle in during Sat clinic i can blog!
I've decided to come up with a new category in my blog called 'Wedding Woes' cos i predict there'd be quite a few more woes coming up.
In fact I can think of one right now: "The Losing Weight before Wedding Woe aka the persistent woe"
Anyway, 2 weeks ago Liang and I spent quite a significant amt of time debating a rather headache issue and till the end of the discussion we still can't quite come up with a solution. We debated the issue the whole time throughout walking from Millenia to marina, through shopping around Marina, through queuing for dinner and throughout the whole dinner and yet the issues is still not solved.
No, it's not abt the guest list (we haven even opened that pandora's box yet), it's not abt the 'pin4 jin1' (yet another Pandora box, but smaller), it's not abt what should be the even more pressing housing issue (a very tedious process but i'll blog abt it later), it's not abt the also very pressing issue of Liang's new stall and the million and one things we need to discuss abt that. Usually when we put our minds to it and seriously brainstorm abt something we can arrive at a mutually agreeable decision quite quickly, this is one time when we are really at our wits' end.
Ladies and gentleman (I assume only got 1 gentleman reading my blog), introducing .. The JieMei Issue. Or rather The Lack of Brother Issue. Because it's really really not possible for Liang to think of 8 suitable, sporting xiongdi candidates.
My solution of the two rounds of gatecrashing, you can imagine, was met with quite alot of reluctance. But even if i can eventually get him to agree to it, there's just too much logistics involved. Not to mention the whole timing issue. Knowing my dad, if the 'auspicious timing' is going to be 7am in the morning, you can be sure everything must be ready by 6.59am, no room for allowances. Which prob means all the gatecrashing must start at 6am. And also it's not going to look too nice in the photos with 8 jiemeis and 4 xiongdis.
Liang's suggestion was that since there's 8 jiemeis, it would make numerical sense for 4 of the Jiemeis to 'double' as xiongdis so that there would be equal numbers of people on both sides of the gate. I just gave him a look -_-" and din bother giving a reply to that.
Then i thought we might divide the games into two separate days, like what P did with hers. He's agreeable, but thinks most likely he'll have to do the unofficial games alone, cos even if he's got really good friends, it prob wun be fair on the friends to get sabo-ed on TWO occasions. But i thought that just looks too sad (and also too much like gang bullying).
Liang then suggested that perhaps he could hire some musclemen/stuntmen to top up the remaining xiongdis haha, which i have to admit, that idea warrants some consideration.
Sigh........ so in essence, I'm still at a loss what to do
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Verbal Prelude to our Wedding Photography
There are many couples and brides-to-be out there who wished to document down their love story. Or more like they want to note down for all posterity the hard work done for their wedding preparation so that few yrs down the road they can look back at their blog and sigh, "dear, see last time I did so much research work for our wedding, don't you think it's your turn to do the dishes now??!!"
As you can see, I'm not a very bridezilla kind of bride, you can even say that i'm way at the other end of the spectrum (i suspect i may be even more chill than zh abt her wedding). To me, the best part abt planning a wedding is firstly, the excuse to go on a expensive long holiday ie. the honeymoon, and, the pre-wedding shoot. But i do want to note down some parts of the wedding process and I definitely, definitely want to record our househunting process (for the reasons stated above).
So for chronology sake, I thought I'd just blog abt the pre-wedding shoot first, skip the nitty-gritty wedding planning details all together then jump straight onto the house-hunting part. (I'm also gonna skip the proposal story since most of you know it already and SOME of you even embellished it quite a bit).
Anyway, you know that my pre-wedding photoshoot has been done already, like way before the actual planning for the wedding. i blame it entirely on the lousy leave system of my previous posting.
You see, initially Liang and I had saved up and planned for a 2 week New Zealand trip and i had even begged Sm for her itinerary and planned out the entire road trip route and hotels when I found out that my leave which I requested for in march has been rejected and 14 days of leave has been given to me in january instead. Since there is a policy of 'take-it-or-leave-it-and-dont-expect-me-to-give-you-another-day' instituted by the leave monster, i took the leave indeed.
However, because it's holiday period for the locals then, hotels/rentals/everything prices rose by more than 1.5 to 2 times. We decided to forego New Zealand, and Liang suggested going Taiwan again. So i thought, might as well use the new zealand budget and settle our wedding photography there too, sort of like a working holiday.
Liang was for the idea, so i started my research with one major obstacle. Most of the taiwan bridal studios have their websites in traditional chinese and their only way of communication to them is via email! (which i assume needs to be written in chinese too??) So not having much of a choice we went into the only singapore based Taiwan shop who very importantly can do all the liasing for us, spoke to someone there for an hour, saw their gorgeous photos and paid the deposit after much much bargaining. Thereby saving Liang from the ordeal of what most bridegrooms must go through: the dreary trudge through all the studios of Tanjong pagar road.
It was a really fun and unique experience, the photoshoot. We settled everything in 3 days. 1st day - gown choosing, with help from their really chio and cute assistants. 1st day evening - meet up with photographer, called Lin-Sir who told us not to drink water that night and then in his next breath gave us tourist info and directions to a nearby night food street. Very conflicting. 2nd day- photoshoot. 3rd day- choose photos. Rest of the trip - tour around taiwan.
On the day of the shoot we had to wake up really early and for some reason, I was feeling quite nervous so only managed to gobble down half of a sandwich and some soup. Then it was the long long process of hair and makeup, during which i had a nice chat w the MUA and her assistants (there were 2-3 pple working on me at once) and they complimented me on my good command of chinese *smug look directed at Liang, who fell asleep prob because he was too bored and couldn't contribute much to our conversation due to his inferior chinese muahaha*
When I jerk him awake an hour later, I had on full makeup and my hair looking like Medusa's in rollers. He took a bleary look at my face and gave quite a frightened start. Hmmph... quite insulting, i tell you.
We then hired a cab for the day and our first stop was this huge park that had ponds and hills, forests and parks. And I really learnt to appreciate the magic of the camera. I mean, we can be standing on a man made footpath over-looking an obviously man made pond, but Lin-Sir and his assistant, who is called XiaoZhi (too cute lar all these taiwanese names) constructed a swing from a tree branch in 10min and they managed to make it look all natural and fairytale like. There was this shot where we were basically at this tiny lavender grass patch in the middle of a business district next to the mrt station, and he actually managed to make it look like a huge lavender field. Amazing!
And by basically following his instructions blindly, like "hold her hand like this, and "look at him like that" and "look at the ground" "look at that tree and smile" "look at XiaoZhi's hand" while I'm thinking 'why the heck am i smiling lovingly at somebody's hand", we actually managed to take alot of great shots.
After what felt like a million shots and getting in and out of the cab a hundred times to go to different small areas of the park, we went back to the studio, where i was immediately shooed into stuffing myself into a very tight corsetted 2nd gown. Then while working on my hair and make up again, they gave us a delicious looking bento which I unfortunately couldn't eat much of, due to an extremely tight dress and sitting ramrod straight for the MUA doing my hair.
The weather was holding up pretty good, since the sun was out and even though it was supposed to be winter, it was actually warm enough to be prancing around in evening gowns.
And so the day continued with more cab rides, more gown and hair change.
Until our second last venue of the day which was supposed to be 'sunset at the beach'. Gorgeous scenery, but it was starting to get cold. So it was a matter of wrapping myself up in a shawl that they prepared for me, hiding behind Catechol from the very strong seabreeze, then when Lin-Sir had the perfect angle, run to the spot, smile, try not to shiver too much, and then run back again to XiaoZhi and the shawl.
By this time, I am getting extremely tired, had a splitting headache from the cold wind and was feeling rather car sick, so it was a grumpy me during the last gown change stop in the studio. I was feeling too ill to speak to Catechol even though he kept smiling at me cos I was looking very 'bride-like' in a proper wedding gown with veil.
After a number of studio shots i was bundled again in the shawl to be brought to the last photoshoot venue, which was 'Night scene at Love River' (i requested for a night scene cos I thought it would look quite romantic, boy did i regret my decision).
Accompanied by encouraging words from passersby like 'Jia you! Xin1 niang2 must be very cold', and 'Xin Niang hen3 piao4 liang4. jia you' , I braved the winter air in my thin gown but you could tell the smile was certainly strained. And during the cab ride, I just felt so sick and nauseous, be it from the numerous car rides or the tight gowns that i've been wearing the whole day, the moment I reached the studio I just ran into the toilet and threw up every pathetic thing I ate the whole day including my breakfast. My theory is that my gowns were so tight that it was impossible for peristalsis to occur.
Very much later, after we had finished the process of choosing our photos, Catechol commented that because they know our AD date is more than one year away, and I kept asking them if there's any way of photoshopping tummies and fats (sadly no) and my episode of vomiting, they may suspect that there might be *ahem* another reason behind my predicament.
Anyway, despite all that, I really had fun and we ended up with a really gorgeous set of photos.
You must be thinking now, "I got conned into reading this whole lengthy, boring, wordy post and there's not even a single wedding photo to see?!!!"
Sorry folks, no revealing of photos till the actual day. In fact to date, only my parents, his mum, 2 relatives and ...... Wk has seen the album! And only because she offered to send me home from dinner in exchange for seeing the album (you could also say that she kidnapped me).
So see ya at the wedding.. grinz
As you can see, I'm not a very bridezilla kind of bride, you can even say that i'm way at the other end of the spectrum (i suspect i may be even more chill than zh abt her wedding). To me, the best part abt planning a wedding is firstly, the excuse to go on a expensive long holiday ie. the honeymoon, and, the pre-wedding shoot. But i do want to note down some parts of the wedding process and I definitely, definitely want to record our househunting process (for the reasons stated above).
So for chronology sake, I thought I'd just blog abt the pre-wedding shoot first, skip the nitty-gritty wedding planning details all together then jump straight onto the house-hunting part. (I'm also gonna skip the proposal story since most of you know it already and SOME of you even embellished it quite a bit).
Anyway, you know that my pre-wedding photoshoot has been done already, like way before the actual planning for the wedding. i blame it entirely on the lousy leave system of my previous posting.
You see, initially Liang and I had saved up and planned for a 2 week New Zealand trip and i had even begged Sm for her itinerary and planned out the entire road trip route and hotels when I found out that my leave which I requested for in march has been rejected and 14 days of leave has been given to me in january instead. Since there is a policy of 'take-it-or-leave-it-and-dont-expect-me-to-give-you-another-day' instituted by the leave monster, i took the leave indeed.
However, because it's holiday period for the locals then, hotels/rentals/everything prices rose by more than 1.5 to 2 times. We decided to forego New Zealand, and Liang suggested going Taiwan again. So i thought, might as well use the new zealand budget and settle our wedding photography there too, sort of like a working holiday.
Liang was for the idea, so i started my research with one major obstacle. Most of the taiwan bridal studios have their websites in traditional chinese and their only way of communication to them is via email! (which i assume needs to be written in chinese too??) So not having much of a choice we went into the only singapore based Taiwan shop who very importantly can do all the liasing for us, spoke to someone there for an hour, saw their gorgeous photos and paid the deposit after much much bargaining. Thereby saving Liang from the ordeal of what most bridegrooms must go through: the dreary trudge through all the studios of Tanjong pagar road.
It was a really fun and unique experience, the photoshoot. We settled everything in 3 days. 1st day - gown choosing, with help from their really chio and cute assistants. 1st day evening - meet up with photographer, called Lin-Sir who told us not to drink water that night and then in his next breath gave us tourist info and directions to a nearby night food street. Very conflicting. 2nd day- photoshoot. 3rd day- choose photos. Rest of the trip - tour around taiwan.
On the day of the shoot we had to wake up really early and for some reason, I was feeling quite nervous so only managed to gobble down half of a sandwich and some soup. Then it was the long long process of hair and makeup, during which i had a nice chat w the MUA and her assistants (there were 2-3 pple working on me at once) and they complimented me on my good command of chinese *smug look directed at Liang, who fell asleep prob because he was too bored and couldn't contribute much to our conversation due to his inferior chinese muahaha*
When I jerk him awake an hour later, I had on full makeup and my hair looking like Medusa's in rollers. He took a bleary look at my face and gave quite a frightened start. Hmmph... quite insulting, i tell you.
We then hired a cab for the day and our first stop was this huge park that had ponds and hills, forests and parks. And I really learnt to appreciate the magic of the camera. I mean, we can be standing on a man made footpath over-looking an obviously man made pond, but Lin-Sir and his assistant, who is called XiaoZhi (too cute lar all these taiwanese names) constructed a swing from a tree branch in 10min and they managed to make it look all natural and fairytale like. There was this shot where we were basically at this tiny lavender grass patch in the middle of a business district next to the mrt station, and he actually managed to make it look like a huge lavender field. Amazing!
And by basically following his instructions blindly, like "hold her hand like this, and "look at him like that" and "look at the ground" "look at that tree and smile" "look at XiaoZhi's hand" while I'm thinking 'why the heck am i smiling lovingly at somebody's hand", we actually managed to take alot of great shots.
After what felt like a million shots and getting in and out of the cab a hundred times to go to different small areas of the park, we went back to the studio, where i was immediately shooed into stuffing myself into a very tight corsetted 2nd gown. Then while working on my hair and make up again, they gave us a delicious looking bento which I unfortunately couldn't eat much of, due to an extremely tight dress and sitting ramrod straight for the MUA doing my hair.
The weather was holding up pretty good, since the sun was out and even though it was supposed to be winter, it was actually warm enough to be prancing around in evening gowns.
And so the day continued with more cab rides, more gown and hair change.
Until our second last venue of the day which was supposed to be 'sunset at the beach'. Gorgeous scenery, but it was starting to get cold. So it was a matter of wrapping myself up in a shawl that they prepared for me, hiding behind Catechol from the very strong seabreeze, then when Lin-Sir had the perfect angle, run to the spot, smile, try not to shiver too much, and then run back again to XiaoZhi and the shawl.
By this time, I am getting extremely tired, had a splitting headache from the cold wind and was feeling rather car sick, so it was a grumpy me during the last gown change stop in the studio. I was feeling too ill to speak to Catechol even though he kept smiling at me cos I was looking very 'bride-like' in a proper wedding gown with veil.
After a number of studio shots i was bundled again in the shawl to be brought to the last photoshoot venue, which was 'Night scene at Love River' (i requested for a night scene cos I thought it would look quite romantic, boy did i regret my decision).
Accompanied by encouraging words from passersby like 'Jia you! Xin1 niang2 must be very cold', and 'Xin Niang hen3 piao4 liang4. jia you' , I braved the winter air in my thin gown but you could tell the smile was certainly strained. And during the cab ride, I just felt so sick and nauseous, be it from the numerous car rides or the tight gowns that i've been wearing the whole day, the moment I reached the studio I just ran into the toilet and threw up every pathetic thing I ate the whole day including my breakfast. My theory is that my gowns were so tight that it was impossible for peristalsis to occur.
Very much later, after we had finished the process of choosing our photos, Catechol commented that because they know our AD date is more than one year away, and I kept asking them if there's any way of photoshopping tummies and fats (sadly no) and my episode of vomiting, they may suspect that there might be *ahem* another reason behind my predicament.
Anyway, despite all that, I really had fun and we ended up with a really gorgeous set of photos.
You must be thinking now, "I got conned into reading this whole lengthy, boring, wordy post and there's not even a single wedding photo to see?!!!"
Sorry folks, no revealing of photos till the actual day. In fact to date, only my parents, his mum, 2 relatives and ...... Wk has seen the album! And only because she offered to send me home from dinner in exchange for seeing the album (you could also say that she kidnapped me).
So see ya at the wedding.. grinz
Friday, February 11, 2011
A Full Circle
I was going to blog abt something else altogether today but reading my previous entry, I got reminded of how depressed I am 3 months ago, and I just need to write a 'reply' entry to that previous one.
I learnt alot in the past 3 months. Medically, I learnt what I needed to know to survive on call, but most importantly, I re-familiarised myself with the little intricacies of ward work and how to run around efficiently, how to deal with the many idiosyncracies of ur various bosses and how to joke around with ur colleagues that just make u feel better abt ur day.
Now that i'm in a new place, I think I can look back and say that things aren't that bad after all. Of course, nowadays I'm in a generally happier mood so maybe that may have tinted how i remember the past few mths. Cos whenever I bump into my ex-colleagues now, they invariably say things like 'hey you look so happy now' or 'your hair is down!!' or 'you look different!'
Haha
But I suppose I just want to say, that no matter how bad things may look initially, your coping mechanism will eventually kick in, and you may find yourself enjoying your work even, like how i did in my last month.
And also, the only thing that beats your con telling you at the end of the posting that you've done well, is the fact that it is the same 'dementia-prone' con who gave you hell and made you feel like crap in your first week of work.
I learnt alot in the past 3 months. Medically, I learnt what I needed to know to survive on call, but most importantly, I re-familiarised myself with the little intricacies of ward work and how to run around efficiently, how to deal with the many idiosyncracies of ur various bosses and how to joke around with ur colleagues that just make u feel better abt ur day.
Now that i'm in a new place, I think I can look back and say that things aren't that bad after all. Of course, nowadays I'm in a generally happier mood so maybe that may have tinted how i remember the past few mths. Cos whenever I bump into my ex-colleagues now, they invariably say things like 'hey you look so happy now' or 'your hair is down!!' or 'you look different!'
Haha
But I suppose I just want to say, that no matter how bad things may look initially, your coping mechanism will eventually kick in, and you may find yourself enjoying your work even, like how i did in my last month.
And also, the only thing that beats your con telling you at the end of the posting that you've done well, is the fact that it is the same 'dementia-prone' con who gave you hell and made you feel like crap in your first week of work.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Starting over
Leaving behind OPS to work 14hr days with no lunch and no pee break and standing on your feet ALL day and being scolded by your very bizaare boss or worse NOT being scolded by your very nice boss even though you are obviously crap at your job and making alot of mistakes in presenting cases (I haven presented crap in 2yrs) and forgetting blood test results and doing HO changes ON TOP of learning MO stuff and dealing with the stupid stupid stupid COW and dealing with expectations and not knowing how to manage simple things is making me slip from euphoria for the past year right down into depression now.
I have LOA, insomnia (I sleep 3 hrs everyday only becos I wake up at 3am in a panic and fearful abt the next day], anhedonia, unwillingness to go out and meet friends and tearful moods.
And i haven't even gone through my first call yet.
As such, despite this being my birthday today, somehow it didn't feel like it, and in fact i forgot that it was my birthday until 2 days ago when my mum passed me my red packet.
But my dear gal Wk said something today that brought alot of comfort to me and I remembered that in my first HO month I also had a very tough time.
So I searched through my blog archives and came across this very paragraph that I myself wrote describing that:
"You may be worked to the very core of your being, you may be hanging to the last threads of your sanity, you may go home in tears everyday, you may see nothing ahead of you but day after day of non-stop work.
But once you get out of this darkest times of your life, the relief and the incredulity at actually coping with your work and finishing ahead of time is the best gift you can ever receive."
Pray for me that I don't kill someone in the meantime. I know i am.
I have LOA, insomnia (I sleep 3 hrs everyday only becos I wake up at 3am in a panic and fearful abt the next day], anhedonia, unwillingness to go out and meet friends and tearful moods.
And i haven't even gone through my first call yet.
As such, despite this being my birthday today, somehow it didn't feel like it, and in fact i forgot that it was my birthday until 2 days ago when my mum passed me my red packet.
But my dear gal Wk said something today that brought alot of comfort to me and I remembered that in my first HO month I also had a very tough time.
So I searched through my blog archives and came across this very paragraph that I myself wrote describing that:
"You may be worked to the very core of your being, you may be hanging to the last threads of your sanity, you may go home in tears everyday, you may see nothing ahead of you but day after day of non-stop work.
But once you get out of this darkest times of your life, the relief and the incredulity at actually coping with your work and finishing ahead of time is the best gift you can ever receive."
Pray for me that I don't kill someone in the meantime. I know i am.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Free time
I know I've been neglecting my blog.
It's come to that point when I actually feel guilty everytime I look at it, which explains my absence from my own tag board.
Anyway as you all probably guessed the sole reason I've not been blogging is cos I've not been doing anything productive with my brain lately, as such there is a direct co-relation with me not blogging (I only blog when I'm supposed to be reading up/studying for exams).
I'm blogging now because I've come across quite alot of free time when I've been relieving at a particular clinic.
So I've decided to spend my time wisely by blogging in betw giving mcs like nobody's business (I tend to be more lenient with mcs when I'm out, in hopes of promoting business to that clinic. And I only ever scold ns boys when I'm back in home ground, i think those clinic-hopping ones must be very confused with my about face).
Over the past numerous weeks relieving, I have also done quite alot of research in helping Liang's business, research on all the confusing new hdb rules, research on possible short trips during my upcoming oct leave with friends and research on 2 separate 10day vacation itinerary. Don't ask mewhy they call me to go help out when there's really not much help needed, we've asked each other umpteen times but no omegas an answer.
Yes, what does it say abt me if I have no ideas whatsoever regarding the actual wedding or housing but I've got the nitty gritty of not one but TWO honeymoon plans all written out already? [two plans because the second plan is for back-up just in case the first one can't go through if there are leave conflicts]
In fact if there is any way of circumventing the whole wedding issue and jump straight into the holiday part of the deal I would be all for it.
Ok I shall abruptly end my blog here cos everyone else has left and they're closing up.
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