budget 3: craigslist

This is what I always meant to do: Look for used furniture.

Specifically, as we had bought our home at a time of great economic duress, I figured there must be plenty of cafes, restaurants and shops closing down which have to get rid of their furniture somehow at bargain-basement prices.

God knows I wasted heck of a lot of time trying to find out, but I still haven’t got the answer to how to get my hands on all that lovely commercial used furniture, apart from being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people.

On the domestic front, there are plenty of people getting rid of their home furniture.

One place I started checking out was Craigslist Singapore.

Very big in the States as a everything-can-find website, I did an article on it once a long time ago and remembered the address offhand.

Under furniture, what you get there isn’t much. An average of 10-20 postings a day. Not very popular in Singapore.

But I got hooked just looking at the sorts of things people try to get rid of and what they try to get for it.

A fair number of expats used it to get rid of their teak furniture, I noticed a lot of people used it to sell off their Ikea Tromso loft beds (I wonder why, too high maybe?), mattresses, bed frames.

Craigslist is where we got our dining table and how it came to us is an incredible coincidence.

I saw an ad for the table and bench set on Craiglist selling for $500. I'm no expert but I thought such heavy wooden sets would retail at over a thousand, so it was probably value for money.

I’m big on dining benches and it was exactly what I wanted.

I emailed Natasha, who was relocating to Hong Kong, and told her I’d pay $500 inclusive of transport (which I had to arrange for at $80). She said fine.

That day I hopped down to her Botanic Gardens apartment to look at dining set with kids in the morning and paid her $420 on the spot.

And that’s when I found out: That of all the random strangers I contact on the Internet for cheap used furniture, I choose a lady who used to stay in our new home.

Well not in the exact same unit (that would be too huge a coincidence) but a few doors away in the same apartment compound.

She exclaims: “You are moving there? Oh my God, I used to live there and I bought that table then! Isn’t it funny? It was there and it came here with me, and now it’s going back!”

I mean, what are the chances?

That’s why I say, the table is home.



It's a bit of a white elephant at the moment because I have not started cooking meals, it's not user-friendly for the kids and KK complains: It's very hard to sit on. What he does use it for is a dumping ground.

Other used furniture sources I know of (apart from the Salvation Army which warrants another post):

* The expat auction, which Ondine recommended. It’s a fortnightly affair where expats leaving Singapore pool all their furniture (mostly very heavy wood) together for people to bid on. I never had the chance to go for this one but it’s apparently great value, especially if no one else is keen on what you want.

* Classified ads. The garage sales are usually on the inside first cover, 100-something. Problem with this is it requires a great deal of effort to go and check things out at all sorts of addresses.

budget 2: diy wardrobe

We cut off all the carpentry from our renovation budget and shaved off about 10k.

But that meant we had no storage space. At. All.

Pressing was the need for wardrobes.

We could theoretically live out of boxes for a while but when there isn't a proper storage facility it can get tremendously tiring. Kids pulling the clothes out of the boxes, clean clothes getting mixed up with dirty, everything is rumpled and creased.

KK decided to fashion a wardrobe himself, in an awkward corner of one room (which no generic wardrobe would fit into), for the kid's clothes.



Place we went: Ikea (where else?)

Ikea has all these different DIY shelving systems: Broder, Omar, Antonius etc, which have different functions and costs. But all would be cheaper than a custom-made wardrobe (no door though!)

One frenetic afternoon at Ikea - during which we were running up and down examining brackets and dimensions and just cracking our heads - and we decided on the Antonius. Because it's, erm, the cheapest. And clothes aren't heavy so we didn't need heavy-duty shelves.

Total cost of the entire set-up: About $100.

Thank God we already had a drill, courtesy of KK's brother.

This one was all KK's work. I should learn how to drill, but it's loud and looks dangerous and I don't like that.

He took two quick evenings after work to put up the shelves (I made him stop after 730pm because of the neighbours) while I assembled the drawer units (no need drilling).

Unlike him and his response to my bench, I felt incredibly proud when I saw the whole thing and incredibly chuffed when I could finally fold all the little pieces of kid clothing into the drawers and hang all the kid clothes on the rail.

The kids? Love it!

They finally have sufficient dedicated drawer space for their own tops and bottoms (2 for Day, 2 for Jo and 1 for Lu - there was never enough space at my folks, it was all a mess), which they love heading to after their baths to neatly remove what they want.

The clothes rail is just the right height for them to riffle through and remove the nice clothes they want to wear. I specifically wanted a thigh-high clothes rail because Jo is very very fussy, and I hated having to carry her for a long time as she pondered her choices. Now she can stand and ponder the clothes before her eyes.

As they grow, KK can move the shelves up along the wall.

They also hide in the clothes. Kids all love to do that, don't they?





Now we need to fix the equivalent of a door (a curtain maybe) to keep dust out. And get a wardrobe for the Big People clothes.

All in good time!

budget 1: bench painting

In doing up the home we admittedly had our own extravagances, for all my griping about the dollar.

Mine was a coral lamp (yes I’m that shallow), which on hindsight I wish I had not gotten because the bare bulb works just fine and we haven’t even put it up because, well. The bare bulb works just fine.

KK’s was the two-door stainless steel fridge, the Tempur mattress and the black leather chair.

Everything else, however, we are walking the fiscal tightrope.

So here’s some of the little things we tried to do to save money.

Most times, it involves a lot of TIME. Because mostly you either have one or the other, isn’t it?

BENCH PAINT

There was an old weathered wooden bench at home sitting outside the car porch which was given to us by the neighbour who didn’t want it. Rain and shine, the wood was split and worn.



KK said: Forget it, it’s rotting already.

But it was just the right height for the kids and I thought it was a versatile bench. Can sit can stand can put our bags. And it's quite pretty. What’s not to like?



So I decided to paint it. Paint is cheap. (less than $10 a tin?)

Anyhow painting a piece of furniture is one of those things that I have to do at least once in my lifetime, might as well make this it.

To cut a long story short, I had to:

* Sandpaper the wood (easy) so the paint goes on nice
* Clean the bench of dust and dirt with a piece of cloth
* Paint the first white layer (primer) and another few layers until all the brown is covered
* Paint the final colour

Took me a week of snatched time during Lu's naps and for the entire week my fingers reeked of turpentine.

The kids got involved. Day helped me sandpaper the bench and I let them both paint the primer which was a mistake because kids being kids, what do they care about being SMOOTH?



So I got big drips of coagulated paint looking like big white raindrops about to fall off the bench and while I attempted to scrape some of it off, I got fed up.

Final colour: KK wanted black, Day wanted red but when I got to the paint shop my eyes couldn’t leave the yellow. So yellow it is.



KK says: Huh? Yellow?

I say: I did the job so no comments please.

He does helpfully (and I am being sarcastic here) add that the paint is uneven and I didn't do a good job and can I please patch up this and that hole / chip. Sometimes...

The bench is still not in its final resting place because we're still moving furniture around. But for a while we sat on it to put on our shoes.

conformity

Something happened in Day’s music class tonight.

Context: He had no shirt to wear (all his shirts were in the other house) and ended up having to wear one of Dee’s shirts – with flowers – to class.

In class, the teacher called everyone out to the front as usual. Suddenly he came running back to me with trembling lower lip and brimming eyes.

“Mummy, they’re laughing at me. I like this shirt but I don’t want my friends to laugh at me.”

Two boys – who are Day’s good friends in class, definitely not the bully types - had jibed: “I’m so sexy.” (whatever that means)

I tell him I understand. That some boys think other boys should not be wearing shirts with flowers on it and that they’re not laughing at him, but at the shirt.

Day, teary, inches to the front of the class again but his arms are crossed over his shirt and as he gets nearer his face falls further. He looks like I’m sending him into battle naked. He runs back to me.

I ask him if he’d like me to help and he says yes.

I bring him to the loo and exchange shirts with him.

He enters the class with his head held high and joins in the fun.

Two things:

One, he is at the stage where he minds what his peers say about him, and he really doesn’t want to stand out. He just wants to be like everybody else, and it’d do well for me to remember that just because I sneer at conformity doesn’t mean he wants the same.

Two, we can share shirts. Horrors.

Day is wearing the shirt I was originally wearing, and I'm wearing the offensive flower shirt.

tv-less

KK: “Grrrr! No TV!”

Remiscent of our Coogee days, we have no TV.

We have the connection – the Mio has been up since we moved in, that’s the box below, in between the piano and the chair – but no physical TV.



Why? It's complicated. Comes down to budget, time, and our huge old TV at my folks which KK refuses to cart over and which I'm still pushing for so we're at a bit of standstill.

Anyway. It makes no difference to me since the only thing I watch is American Idol which isn’t on now. And if I had to miss it, I couldn't care less.

It makes some difference to the kids since they do enjoy the tube. But since we hang around my folks in the day, they pack all the TV they can into those hours.

It makes a huge difference to KK. He’s the put-up-my-legs and channel-surf-straight-after-dinner-until-I-sleep sort of guy and he is bereft.

One time he passed by the pub downstairs across the road which has a huge road-facing TV screen, and there was Sergio Garcia, whom he had not seen in a week and missed terribly, playing in some major golf tournament.

He vamoosed straight to the pub after the kids went to bed and disappeared for a good hour or so, came back with Guiness Stout on his breath.

“I couldn’t just stand on the pavement and look at the screen, right?”

The greater rub is, even after we get the TV, he still won’t be able to access his favourite Starhub channels, namely, ESPN, the golf channel and the Premier League games.

SingTel might have gotten the rights to screen Champions League games but he’s not interested.

TV junkies will know, it’s a great adjustment he has to make.

tea party

Little girls like tea parties.

Jo, at the ripe old age of 3 ½, hosted her first after we moved in.



It was the combination of new rainbow-coloured Ikea cups and bowls – she did not allow me to take it out of the plastic on Day 1, refused to let anyone eat or drink from it on Day 2 and it was only on Day 3 that she permitted usage – and the new chairs we got for the kids.

It inspired her.

She decided to have a tea party with her friend, Twee the cat, and “the brother”.

Day declined her invitation which left her one short (he was busy with his “Human Body” book), but she prepared a pudding tower for him anyway and a cup of milk.

For Twee she made fork-in-a-donut.

She sang the birthday song for Twee.

And when I came-a-calling with camera, she arranged all the chairs and food so I could take a picture, and diligently tried to pull up the corners of Twee’s mouth so he can grimace just like her.

mmr reax

Of all the vaccinations the kids have to go through, the one I am most wary of is the MMR – measles, mumps and rubella.

Yes I know all the doctors say it doesn’t cause autism, and that herd immunity is far more important than a pathetic study of 12 kids or what Jenny McCarthy says on the Oprah Winfrey show. (namely, that her son became autistic because of the jab)

Why I am wary, however, is that Day and Jo both had marked reactions to the jab.

They never reacted much to the other jabs, but it was always the MMR – unique because it’s a vaccination containing live viruses – which gave them high fevers.

Day being my first-born, I delayed the jab for him until he was 18 months old.

Jo, I couldn’t be bothered.

Likewise for Lu. The polyclinic called recently and ordered me to drag the baby to the clinic for her overdue 15-month MMR jab, and so I did.

A day after, she was fine and I thought that was it. I forgot it was the MMR.

A full week later, she suddenly woke up with a slight fever. Two days later (of course I didn’t bring her to the doctor, it’s just a slight fever), the fever had reached the point of making her limp.



That, to me, is the litmus test.

Temperature be damned, as long as the kid is limp, it’s Paed time.

At the doctor her temperature was 40.1 degrees Celcius.

The nurse barged into the doctor’s room and said: She is 40.1 degrees. He marched out, ordered an immediate Voren and a urine test.

The Voren antidote was slid up her butt, a plastic bag was capped over the privates to collect her pee, she was ignominously stripped off all her clothes and draped with wet towels, she cried and cried and cried.

Of course the test showed her urinary tracts were fine, no infection.

Then the doc asks: Did she have a jab recently?

Ah.

But JUST IN CASE (paeds always love this clause), I left with Augmentin antibiotic (which I thankfully did not open), loads of suppositories, Progesic, Bufen.

That night her fever left and never returned.

I’m glad she fought the vaccine and survived.

loneliness

Man how incredibly lonely it has been the last few nights and how incredibly lonely it will be.

KK has an occasional habit of falling asleep with the kids. He just does. This week he does it even more because he has no TV to keep him up.

I can never bring myself to fall asleep with the kids unless I am dog tired.

I don't notice it back at my folk's place. Mum sleeps past midnight, bro is genetically programmed to keep vampire hours, just like me.

These few nights, everyone is asleep by 9pm.

It's just me and the comp (first two days I did housework as the quartet slept) and stillness.

snapshot

1.20am.

Can I pry my eyes open when Lu waltzes into my room bright and cheery in the morning at 7am?

The head is heavy.

I have been sleepy since 8pm. The eyes were heavy.

I played dead to put the kids to sleep because for some strange reason Lu has developed a ferocious addiction to me and KK won't do it and of course there's no one else in the house, is there?

Great chance to sleep but I can't because work beckons.

I stumble out at 1030pm.

Work beckons but I have to do the laundry.

Midnight, Jo wakes up screaming. She pees all over.

I clean her up, hang out the clothes. Improve all sorts of odd places to hang clothes because I have no clothes rack.

It's Coogee all over again only... this time I have WORK to do.

And for some odd reason - maybe the house is good for me - all sorts of work has been pouring in which I am loath to take up because new home (with 3 kids) equals new routines equals lots of diligence and planning and (once again) boundless enthusiasm.

I want to do a Coogee and forget about the work. But no, because of the three figures in my bank account.

So many articles I have done about the importance of retirement planning for women (because we do live longer and earn less). I am way way short.

I'm rambling, the worst sort of blog post, I think.

But I like the new desktop PC my brother got for me which is why I am just typing and typing nonsense.

He waltzes into a shop which I would normally never walk into, in Sim Lim Square (the shop is piled full of boxes), grabs an A3-sized piece of paper with tiny print Classified-Ad-like, purposefully highlights what I gather are computer parts (it's just a lot of numbers and capital letters like DHV3546), hands it to the gophers who take 2 hours to put my new computer together. Price: $1010.

It's a blank slate and that's what I like about it. There is only one icon on my desktop which says "Data". ONE!

I tell him what I want: Microsoft suite and photo software, he chucks it in. That's about it. A streamlined customized hopefully lasting machine.

He says shop-bought desktops are full of crap, to cater to every Tom Dick and Harry who buys the comp. Well my Mac was full of crap and icons I never touched. I'm getting old.

Well thank God for my brother. What he did for me is something I would never be able to do.

I notice every one who goes in a young boy, up to 20-plus. Amazing. I shouldn't stop Day from hanging around the computer.

HOME

Only the second post with its title in caps, I reckon moving into our new home is as big an event as Sydney.

We (plus kids) are on our own.

We moved today.

Move meaning Stay There Overnight, but most of our stuff remains in my folk’s place, to be moved over in dribs and drabs. (It can’t be moved over all at once because we have to wait for more money to buy wardrobes before moving the clothes, wait for more money to buy a study table before moving the computer etc)

It was a bit like staying in a hotel, and a bit like camping.

Very novel, enjoyable but having to make do with a lot of things.

We don’t have a TV, telephone and Internet connection yet: The SingTel folks have discovered that some sort of main line is too old and damaged for us (that’s old apartments for you) and have to replace it before activating our Mio.

The kids love the place.

Lu, especially, wanders around on her own smiling and squealing, poking at corners. We think it’s because she can basically see us wherever she goes, unlike the house which is so big she often loses us.

Jo always poos when she is there, which is I think a good thing because she is always having constipation issues, and she also tends to sit by herself in little corners just day dreaming or doing her own thing.

Day is probably the most himself, doing his usual thing and hankering for the Internet so he can surf.

KK kept throwing the bathroom door wide open as I bathed and said: “Wow! Such privacy!” The irony.

little miss contrary

Possibly looking her sweetest and prettiest ever.

These days, however, she is Little Miss Contrary.

All day long, it’s No. And not a flat one too, but a long drawling miao of a “Naaaooow” that goes down the scale.

I put my arms around her at night and she gives me a little slap before turning away. “Naaaooow” she says.

I shove a spoonful of nice wholesome rice in her face, trying very hard to make her forget that she just saw her sister chewing on a jelly. “Naaaooow” she says before chasing Jo.

Jo snatches a toy from her. “Naaaooow” she snarls before smacking her sister on the arm. (of course Jo then screams at maximum capacity right into Lu’s face, which makes Lu cry and me roll my eyes)

Sometimes Lu says it in Hakka. “Um-MAI!” she says when her Por-por (whom she doesn’t like) tries to carry her.

Then again it could be MINE which is another hot word. “MINE!” she yells, cradling the biscuit container she managed to acquire by climbing on a stool.

“MINE!” she yells, as I carry her and she lunges for some tasty tidbit from the closed fridge (which she can’t see yet but she knows it’s there), her chubby claw opening and closing.

“MINE!” she yells, when she stumbles on my mobile phone (which is always lost in the house) and gets her death grip on it.

Ah. I strive to remember her Sweet Days.

durian night

The iconic Indian barber shop in Siglap where Woffles Wu and SR Nathan used to cut their hair, and where photographers loved to go to capture one of the last slices of vintage Singapore (and where Day used to cut his hair) has been replaced by a Durian Café.

Left fallow and rotting for months, when I passed by one day a few weeks ago, I could not fail to notice that the entire façade of the old shophouse had been painted neon green, luminous yellow and hot pink.

Then the stands came out with racks of durians. The final piece was the humongous fake durian which was installed just a few days ago, dangling beguilingly to all the car drivers stopping at the red light to drop in at the Durian Durian Cafe.



This shop has drawn nothing but flak from my father, who goes on and on about what a preposterous business idea it is to try and fleece people into paying to eat durian in a café when they can eat it at home, plus the parking sucks.

But KK, intensely curious, had been bugging me to try it for days.

Tonight, we did.

Sans car (the car owner, KK's friend, has returned from overseas for a week), we pushed the kids in their prams and walked over.



Fascinating place.

With about six tabletops with velvet stools, each table came with its own tissue box, plastic bin (for durian shells and seeds) and the wash basin was most prominent.



Durians included D24s and Mao Shan Wangs. Mangosteens, rambutans and chikus were also present.

In the glass display case were durian puddings, durian Swiss Rolls, mineral water, coconuts and cooling drinks (presumably to dispel the heatiness).



We got ourselves one tiny seed-packed Mao Shan Wang for $10 and two Aloe Vera drinks for $3. KK slurped the first seed, looked at me and said: One is not enough.

We didn’t get anymore, on account of my slightly sore throat. But he swears he is coming back for more of the (probably overpriced) fruit.

Kids? Day ate a seed or two but he wasn’t too keen.

Jo, as it turns out, is not a durian fan. She can eat it if she has to, and smell it with no problem, but doesn’t enjoy it. So she hung on to her Aloe Vera.

* The barber hasn't gone far, he's just moved to the other side of the road.

almost home

Almost home. I think.

I never want to clog the blog with things not related to the kids, but the renovation process has been – in one very understated word - unpleasant.

The kids don’t know, of course. To them, it’s been a joyride.

These two (Day and Jo) have literally been with me everywhere: Buying bookshelves (Book Binders), picking out toilet tiles (somewhere in Bendemeer), buying appliances (Euromark at a Toa Payoh warehouse), buying chairs (Gnee Hong at a Ubi warehouse), buying a dining set (an expat’s house next to the Botanic Gardens), buying a light (Strangelets at Amoy Street), buying mattresses (Seahorse at Suntec).

And they enjoy it Everywhere. From flinging themselves on the mattresses to merrily traipsing all over the expat’s house to Day helping himself to loads of complimentary sweets and drinks at the Euromark warehouse sale, they’ve just had loads of fun.

Us, the empty wallets are a grim echo of our financial state post-Sydney. We move in sans wardrobes, bedframes, study table, TV, etc. KK gamely says: “I’ll wait for my bonus then see how.” Ho ho ho.

With some minor knocking still left to do, plus a broadband and TV connection (Singtel Mio), I’ve been bringing the kids up to just soak it up.

What will possibly ultimately be Day's room. I am most sore that they lopped off six vents to create the door but for harmony's sake, I acquiesce.



Jo snacking on honey stars as the noisy cars and motorcycles trundle past outside. (Yes the perils of living by the road side)



From the toilet throne, I see all the way through to the balcony. And I suppose whoever is outside can see all the way in if I didn't close the door!

plain jane

Day asks me an odd question.

"Mum, why don't you wear necklaces or earrings so you can look nice?"

I want to say: "Erm, because I don't need to impress you or your sisters or even papa, for the matter?"

Anyhow both he and Jo have completely bought into sexual stereotypes. Completely.

Jo says things like: "Boys. Cannot. Wear. Pink!" And she is big on pretty things, hairbands, earrings and the like.

One day I'm sure she'll come up to me and ask me why I don't doll up more.

night screaming

“Yeee… YaAAGH! No… NO… enormous eyes! NO MUMMY NO!”

That’s Jo in the throes of a nightmare.

She periodically gets them, from about the time she was, oh, two?

She tosses, she turns, she screams in her sleep.

Her eyes never quite open, she never really seems to wake up, she just screams the house down for 10 minutes before the wind suddenly goes out her sails and she collapses back to sleep.

Day and Lu amazingly sleep through it. Or they roll around a bit and settle back in. They’re used to it.

When it comes around, is when she doesn’t nap in the day and she goes to bed very fatigued. (Mums will all know, a very tired child does not get a good night’s sleep.)

Or when she goes to bed upset. Or when she is sick.

It could also be night terrors, which from what I know hits kids between 2 and 6 and which they generally outgrow.

She is impossible to wake up during these fish-out-of-water episodes (she thrashes madly) and she recoils from touch, which is characteristic of night terror.

But she also calls out random things like “… Enormous eyes!” (which I am certain comes from the description of the giant in the “Jack and the Beanstalk” book) which tells me that she is having a nightmare. No?

In any case we just stand by to make sure she is safe.

Whispering sweet nothings, touching her and trying to wake her up make her scream louder and sometimes she screams out “NO!” in seeming reaction to our attempts to sooth her.

Day and Lu, if they do wake up at night, they fully wake up and whine for us. It's not a case of what appears to be internalised terror behind closed lids.

aimless art

What does it look like?

Day's moved on. From obsessing over planets to Everything about the Human Body.

It started when he fell down and scraped his knee one day, and I distracted him with a little tale about how an army inside his knee is coming to the rescue.

Then he started asking more and more questions. I threw him another old encyclopaedia with lots of pictures and now his best friends are lymphocytes, killer B cells, macrophages, neutrophils, suppressor T cells and God knows what.

(Again it's all these info-packed subjects which he relishes)

I am hard-pressed to answer his questions because I know nuts, but I try. Read all the boring encyclopaedic info (like one of those dreadful press releases I have to plough through), then spit it all out.

"Ooh! The neotrophil has a big mouth to gobble up the virus! Aah! The macrophage has tentacle arms to catch all the nasty bugs!"

KK quips: "Better he be a doctor than an astronomer!"



Jo's started writing words! She appears to be Little Miss Neat (like Day) with a penchant for perfection.

When she writes with her right hand the words look right (the word "Jody).

When she writes with her left (she then writes from right to left), the words are a mirror image. (the beginnings of the word "Clothes")

There's our whole family and what gets me is she says Lu is a spider with four legs.

That's her right in the middle with her bum sticking out, arms raised, dancing.