cornetto

actually u can consider getting quote from inzen cos pricing is more reasonable. we fini our reno almost 2 mths ago wif roy. he tries to give more expensive tiles w/o asking us to top up. workmanship not bad, esp kitchen which is our fav. not much rectification required too. we went thru 20+ IDs before settling on him ultimately...

i have black glossy laminates for my kitchen. no obvious scratches at all.

little things my darlin does for me to show his love: 1) he "disturbs" me by giving me hugs & kisses & good night greetings without fail every night. sometimes even when i'm alr asleep... 2) he gets me a glass of water when we get home 3) he waits up for me whenever i go out wif frens till late 4) he tries really hard to knock off on time just to accompany me to have dinner everyday 5) he holds my bag for me whenever we go out 6) he makes me laff by putting on shrek ears okie lah my guy is not rich but he is generous towards me & tt's more than enuff for me...

sales & service position is out for me. u linda chua??

same here...wish to have a dog or cat but HB dun allow... tt's why me end up do gardening...

sometimes good sometimes bad. but most of the time is good lah.

proposal is impt. agree wif singhao on the effort & sincerity. if a man doesnt even save up to get a ring to propose, means no effort put in. but then again, if after marriage, the guy treats the woman like sh*t, what's the point of the proposal? just wanna lock up the woman?

work in orchard? which bank? dun tell me it's hsbc hor. pay good?

nice place! congrats for finding ur dream nest =)

so smart!

hmm impossible one. cos me work in financial institution.

tendered liao? hmm not having garden leave?

oh no... we slept on the bed before we ROM & even moved in to new home... any issues?

i'd be terribly bored if i retire now. even though now in office oso bored lah hahaha

temptations in the sales line are always greater...

hmm i work in shenton & am sick of travelling back & forth to my home in khatib everyday. how i wish i can find a job up north! haha...

how much is it?

curious to know where u meant by ulu... indeed tuas to bt batok quite near... so u always hang out in the west area??

karen where u working at?

i think $2K is more than enuff. then again, diff pp got diff tastes in lights

agree on that. but can appeal for higher valuation one meh?

What's yours is mine, what's mine is all mine? By Andy Ho, Senior Writer May 30, 2007 The Straits Times THE male sole breadwinner model is now a minority in Singapore, with more women, including married ones, in the workforce. But has this translated into more egalitarian ways in which couples handle their household income? A mid-decade mini census called the General Household Survey in 2005 showed that dual-career couples made up 43.8 per cent of all married couples in Singapore, up from 40.9 per cent in 2000. In 2005, about 35 per cent of such dual-career couples saw the wife accounting for half or more of the total pot, up from 31 per cent in 2000. This was especially true for better educated couples in their mid-20s to mid-40s. In 2005, husbands were the sole breadwinners in just 35.7 per cent of couples, down from 40.2 per cent five years earlier. (Only the wife was working in 5.5 per cent in 2005, compared with 4.7 per cent in 2000.) Generally speaking then, with more dual-earner families and a partial decline in tandem of the traditional male breadwinner model, women are contributing on a more equal basis to couples' joint income. Such figures do not shock but, like policymakers and economists elsewhere, the Department of Statistics census assumes that members of a household share essentially the same lifestyle. So it did not inquire into what happens to the money as it enters the household, the different ways in which couples organise and manage the fund and how unequal access to money for discretionary spending may have an impact on an individual spouse's well-being. It would shed more light if it had looked, in addition, into how couples view money subjectively, how autonomous their discretionary spending might be, the types of bank accounts they have, who handles money on a day-to-day basis, who pays the bills, who does the shopping, and so on. Many of us are afflicted with similar blind spots. My wife and I, for example, were (naively) shocked when we read recent reports in The Sunday Times of couples who kept their finances separate. We felt that since we were a joint item in everything else in life, why should money be any different? My married sibling was equally amazed when we asked who paid their individual credit card bills. She could never imagine how a couple would view these as joint payments: 'What he earns is his - as long as we're covering the bills between us. It's the same with me. I work hard, it's my money, so if I want to go out and buy a new pair of shoes, I'll do so without asking anyone for permission.' There was also a desire for financial privacy: 'I don't want him to know everything about how I spend my money - just like he doesn't too.' They had apparently kept separate bank accounts from way back and thought it was perfectly natural to do so, exactly the way my wife and I felt about our joint accounts, which we have had from the very beginning. We then found out from church friends that, as The Sunday Times had reported, there are also partial pooling arrangements in which couples have a joint account for household expenses - especially for buying or renting a property - but also keep a significant proportion of their income independently. They contribute roughly equally - or proportionally if there is a great disparity in income - towards the joint expenses. One husband told us that if he bought anything for joint use from his own money, he paid himself back from the joint account. A wife said she was not averse to reminding her husband to reimburse her if she had lent him some money while the husband said he had no problems with being reminded to pay her back even if it were just a fiver. (Shocking!) While some couples engaged in detailed accounting, others were content with just roughly balancing their spending over time. Yet others saw boundaries between joint and separate money as blurred, saying that as long as the expenses were paid, it was not very important who did the paying. But this seems to be more the case if the wife is earning more. Still, some couples treat their money more collectively than their separate bank accounts would imply. For example, some directly access each other's separate accounts through Internet banking and debit cards. Generally, those who do not pool their money say it is all about equality and independence. Having a sense of autonomy and control as well as avoiding a sense of dependency and rejecting the tradition of husbands controlling the purse strings seem important to helping them maintain their individual identities. Many say that although the money they earn is theirs, they also see it as being there for their spouses to use. Although most do not ask their spouses for permission, they would discuss sizeable discretionary spending with each other to varying degrees. But no couple linked separate finances to the quality or happiness of their relationship. Yet the person with overall control of money can decide how much is to be allocated, and for what purpose, and may be able to veto his or her spouse's leisure spending, say. Where both incomes go into one pot, both spouses (in theory) share management and control. With equal contribution to a partial pool, however, the spouse who earns less will be left with less money for discretionary spending. This means that gender inequalities generated in the labour market are insinuated into households as well. That is, since men generally still earn more than women - and wives are more likely to use their own money on extra food and family items - the partial pool may not be, in practice, more egalitarian than the old male breadwinner model. It gets worse if women were to leave the workforce to provide child care or elder care. For even those who intend to return to their careers later, there will be a period when they are not contributing financially to the pool, so it would be a period of dependency. Of course, even when couples pool all their money, the spouse who earns less may feel he or she has less of a right to decide on spending and so reduce his or her personal spending. Thus what meanings individuals ascribe to the money in their various accounts - perceived ownership of money and other assets - may be more important than the types of accounts they have. Is there any direct correlation between such matters and marital bliss? Conventional wisdom suggests that unions of equals make for the best marriages, but a 2006 study of 5,000 couples by University of Virginia sociologists showed that, even in the United States, the single most important factor that determines whether wives are happy is how emotionally engaged their husbands are. Not money and its control, not the division of household chores or, indeed, any other measure of how egalitarian a marriage is or is not. So boys, you can breathe easy now. andyho@sph.com.sg

our 5I flat plastering only cost us $1.5K. but anyway, like what waileong said, screen would be more suitable.

can post pics for us to see as well?

it's abt egos. men always have bigger egos.