daily gripe

leave is for...

leave is for...capturing the moments in life.
god, i love being on leave.

posted by inspirethereal @ 10:00 PM 1 straight, not straightened

just a lot of passing thinking words

crappy DTZ agent...revisited

did i already blog about this? seems like i did but reading back maybe i didn't post it. did i tell you about what an asshole that DTZ agent is? i'm sure that i did but maybe i forgot to mention the latest thing that she 'forgot' to mention regarding the house. she freaking forgot to add the sinking fund cost to the maintenance cost. so when i thought that the amount that i was paying was good value for the area; in fact it is market rate cos that bitch neglected to do the adding.

i had to get awfully surprised by the MCST who told me the actual final maintenance cost. reflecting on the incident, it really isn't the amount of extra money. yeah, i had calculated and set aside the budget etc and being surprised this way with having to re-budget isn't the most pleasant of incidents. BUT the real issue i have here is with that bitch. how many more 'surprises' did she neglect to mention, how much more 'items' has she forgotten to speak to the owner about , etc? i totally am discounting 75% of whatever she has told me and prepared for my interior designer(ID) to tell me more things about the structure of the house as they do the renovation.

and the really lingering irritation is that there is NO authority that i can turn to, to complain and try to give her back the trouble and frustration she has cost me, in terms of time and effort. complaining to DZ is just as useless. the people there don't have any 'control' over their free agents. WHAT A LOAD OF BULLSHIT. DTZ has to be cursed to have this type of agents AND customer service personnel. no wonder, as an agency they cannot be number one, since service isn't a strong point of theirs' even though they are in a SERVICE industry. and this incident has painted the entire industry with the same brush for me. i declare that i have NO faith in the professionalism of the industry as a whole.

wood cut from the same tree cannot be too different when it comes to character and qualities of the tree.

Ba Kwa...and queues

i also wonder why singaporeans will only wait until CNY before queue-ing up for long long hours to buy ba kwa. the other 10 months of the year, these guys hardly make any profit selling the smoked pork but come CNY they cannot get rid of customers even if they had a stick.

btw, there is this shop at Telok Kurau that sells really good non-oily ba kwa. it's next to the hong kong cafe. those interested should go check it out.

offsite...at batam

my office had our annual offsite at batam this year. *pause while name sinks in*yes, batam. *sigh* overall we had a good time, but honestly i would choose bintan over batam anytime of the year. the batam resort where we got like 8 villas just didn't feel the same as having 1 grand villa at bintan the year before.

anyways, quick picture of the folks i work with. we don't always look this good.

a picture of chinatown in the day time a couple of days before CNY

didn't find many good deals this year and i guess it's really proven that unless you know someone who does home-baked goodies, whatever you get at the open market won't taste as nice. =/

posted by inspirethereal @ 5:40 PM 0 straight, not straightened

design & renovation is such a rush!

what a week! in 7 days, we have confirmed the ID firm to handle the design and renovation for the house, going to start shopping for the stuff like the tiles, lights, fixtures etc within the week and then move into the place towards the end of March. it's going to be rush rush rush!

never realised exactly how much goes into renovating a house; it's like advanced managment making sure that all the external factors are all catered for and taken care of. details like applying for renovation permission, confirming the firm, making sure there's enough money in the bank suddenly loom bigger because of the shorter time-frame.

no wonder, they say moving house is stressful. well, fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong and that it will be a smooth move and then looking forward to all the house parties and gatherings after! it will be nice to finally call some place my own as well, i reckon.

btw, tks dear for the great recommendation for our anniversary dinner last week. don't think i mentioned it and i should have; it was a good choice. *grin*

caught this article in the straits times today. such a beautiful moment for the content in question. but i bet they never realised 5000 years later, that they would be a perfect photo opp. maybe the human race has got some hope afterall.

Call it the eternal embrace.

Archaeologists in Italy have discovered a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, hugging each other.

'It's an extraordinary case,' said Ms Elena Menotti, who led the team on the dig near the northern city of Mantova. 'There has not been a double burial found in the Neolithic period, much less two people hugging.'

Ms Menotti said she believed the two, almost certainly a man and a woman, died young because their teeth were mostly intact and not worn down.

'When we discovered it, we all became very excited. I've been doing this job for 25 years... but I've never been so moved, because this is the discovery of something special.'

A laboratory will try to determine the couple's age at the time of death and how long they had been buried.
(article from Straits Times and picture from REUTERS)

posted by inspirethereal @ 11:53 AM 1 straight, not straightened