A Meeting Of East And West In Tampines.

[RimBlock 0]

icic. hopefully mine can be completed before december. cos if not, my family of 4 will be homeless. hehe.

i do have a t-blog. but it's still quite empty. not much entries at the moment. http://www.renotalk.com/forum/index.php?sh...mp;#entry575439

concept for my EM will be somewhat similar to my current hse- a 5room. This t-blog was started more than 2 yrs ago.. http://www.renotalk.com/forum/index.php?sh...;hl=blueblue_m6

Great, I will have a scan through your blogs. I am sure there will be lots of useful info in there.

Strangely enough, you mentioning a family of four, my wife informed me two days ago that our family of four will be becoming a family of 5. Very early stages but confirmed. The big question now is boy or girl . My wife is obviously whilst like all fathers I am a bit more .

Anyway, on a different note. I found a couple of good websites with 3d models and have downloaded lots last night. One of them is archive3d.net. I now need to examine, sort and categorise them as the downloaded files have nonsensical names. I also need to check on the quality of the models but they looked very good in the pictures.

I have a wedding banquet for a family member, babies first month for my brother-in-laws new son and a one year celebration from my wifes work colleague all this weekend. Likely to be very busy and expensive .

RB

[JCase 0]

Strangely enough, you mentioning a family of four, my wife informed me two days ago that our family of four will be becoming a family of 5. Very early stages but confirmed. The big question now is boy or girl . My wife is obviously whilst like all fathers I am a bit more .

RB

Congrats mate.

[freshpoison77 0]

Great, I will have a scan through your blogs. I am sure there will be lots of useful info in there.

Strangely enough, you mentioning a family of four, my wife informed me two days ago that our family of four will be becoming a family of 5. Very early stages but confirmed. The big question now is boy or girl . My wife is obviously whilst like all fathers I am a bit more .

Anyway, on a different note. I found a couple of good websites with 3d models and have downloaded lots last night. One of them is archive3d.net. I now need to examine, sort and categorise them as the downloaded files have nonsensical names. I also need to check on the quality of the models but they looked very good in the pictures.

I have a wedding banquet for a family member, babies first month for my brother-in-laws new son and a one year celebration from my wifes work colleague all this weekend. Likely to be very busy and expensive .

RB

congrats!

[kaijia 0]

Great, I will have a scan through your blogs. I am sure there will be lots of useful info in there.

Strangely enough, you mentioning a family of four, my wife informed me two days ago that our family of four will be becoming a family of 5. Very early stages but confirmed. The big question now is boy or girl . My wife is obviously whilst like all fathers I am a bit more .

Anyway, on a different note. I found a couple of good websites with 3d models and have downloaded lots last night. One of them is archive3d.net. I now need to examine, sort and categorise them as the downloaded files have nonsensical names. I also need to check on the quality of the models but they looked very good in the pictures.

I have a wedding banquet for a family member, babies first month for my brother-in-laws new son and a one year celebration from my wifes work colleague all this weekend. Likely to be very busy and expensive .

RB

Congrats!!!!

[RimBlock 0]

Thanks everyone.

RB

[patsy_sg 1]

an addition to the tv drama!!!! Congratulations!!

[RimBlock 0]

an addition to the tv drama!!!! Congratulations!!

You have no idea .

Last week was hectic and stressful to say the least. Saturday night my little one was sick every half hour from 2:30am until 8am. After the initial time, all he had was water which he just kept bringing back up. Believing it to just be some bad food we monitored throughout the night which meant we got a couple of hours sleep before deciding to get him checked out at KKH just to be on the safe side. After about 30 minutes in KKH (including him being sick in the taxi but we had plastic bags ready so no problem), he perked up. He had not yet seen the doctor. After he found the robot cars that take the big trollys around he was almost back to normal and kept on trying to get us to take him to follow them. The little trains that run on the ceiling he also likes but not quite so much. He got seen by the doctor, got some glucose drink which he had to have every 15 minutes and be monitored for an hour and then we could go home. As you can guess. The hour was spent watching the robots and even seeing them go in the lifts and go up and down floors. Son Saturday night he was sick again but not until 5am. Since then he has reverted back to his usual noisy self .

My wife noticed she was bleeding on Monday morning just before going to work so we both jumped in a taxi and straight to KKH both worried for the new baby. She was admitted for 2 days. My older one was at school on Monday and the youngest was at grandmas who is only 5 minutes away from our block. I got a call at work on Monday afternoon from my brother-in-law telling me that his son (who my mother-in-law also looks after has HFM and will be staying home. Bearing in mind that we are flying to the UK in two weeks for our holiday with my family we can not risk the kids getting it. Tuesday and Wednesday I took childcare leave and looked after both the kids (the older one was sitting his PSLE exams that week). Both kids were pretty good TBH so I could also get some housework done.

We collected my wife on Wednesday and she has hospitalization leave until Tuesday. Thursday I was back to work and got a call telling me that she cannot cope with the kids especially as she was not suffering pretty bad morning sickness which was lasting all day. Friday I took off again fro childcare leave and it was far more of a challenge what with my wife 'requesting' I do many things when she wanted them done and the little one playing up now mummy was home.

The weekend has also been quite hard work mainly looking after the kids. Went to Bedok Res today so the kids could play football and my wife could rest. A good time was had by all.

Now for the good news. We got our 3d back today.

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Common upstairs bathroom

Master bathroom

The only one we need to discuss with Henry is the Mast bathroom toilet. We are both not so sure on the teak laminate front to the cabinet under the sink. We will have to see what other options we can come up with.

For the feature area in the common bathroom, the wall is made up of strips of 'stone' at different depths each about an inch high. It is like little ledges. For the feature area in the master bedroom it is like little cubes all coming out at different depths so again there is the textured effect. Our concern over keeping them clean I think will be unfounded as we can just spray them over when cleaning the bathroom.

Other than a detail on the master bathroom, I think we are both pretty happy with the results. These are the only ones we will have as there is no carpentry in any of the other rooms.

RB

[kaijia 0]

You have no idea .

Last week was hectic and stressful to say the least. Saturday night my little one was sick every half hour from 2:30am until 8am. After the initial time, all he had was water which he just kept bringing back up. Believing it to just be some bad food we monitored throughout the night which meant we got a couple of hours sleep before deciding to get him checked out at KKH just to be on the safe side. After about 30 minutes in KKH (including him being sick in the taxi but we had plastic bags ready so no problem), he perked up. He had not yet seen the doctor. After he found the robot cars that take the big trollys around he was almost back to normal and kept on trying to get us to take him to follow them. The little trains that run on the ceiling he also likes but not quite so much. He got seen by the doctor, got some glucose drink which he had to have every 15 minutes and be monitored for an hour and then we could go home. As you can guess. The hour was spent watching the robots and even seeing them go in the lifts and go up and down floors. Son Saturday night he was sick again but not until 5am. Since then he has reverted back to his usual noisy self .

My wife noticed she was bleeding on Monday morning just before going to work so we both jumped in a taxi and straight to KKH both worried for the new baby. She was admitted for 2 days. My older one was at school on Monday and the youngest was at grandmas who is only 5 minutes away from our block. I got a call at work on Monday afternoon from my brother-in-law telling me that his son (who my mother-in-law also looks after has HFM and will be staying home. Bearing in mind that we are flying to the UK in two weeks for our holiday with my family we can not risk the kids getting it. Tuesday and Wednesday I took childcare leave and looked after both the kids (the older one was sitting his PSLE exams that week). Both kids were pretty good TBH so I could also get some housework done.

We collected my wife on Wednesday and she has hospitalization leave until Tuesday. Thursday I was back to work and got a call telling me that she cannot cope with the kids especially as she was not suffering pretty bad morning sickness which was lasting all day. Friday I took off again fro childcare leave and it was far more of a challenge what with my wife 'requesting' I do many things when she wanted them done and the little one playing up now mummy was home.

The weekend has also been quite hard work mainly looking after the kids. Went to Bedok Res today so the kids could play football and my wife could rest. A good time was had by all.

Now for the good news. We got our 3d back today.

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Common upstairs bathroom

Master bathroom

The only one we need to discuss with Henry is the Mast bathroom toilet. We are both not so sure on the teak laminate front to the cabinet under the sink. We will have to see what other options we can come up with.

For the feature area in the common bathroom, the wall is made up of strips of 'stone' at different depths each about an inch high. It is like little ledges. For the feature area in the master bedroom it is like little cubes all coming out at different depths so again there is the textured effect. Our concern over keeping them clean I think will be unfounded as we can just spray them over when cleaning the bathroom.

Other than a detail on the master bathroom, I think we are both pretty happy with the results. These are the only ones we will have as there is no carpentry in any of the other rooms.

RB

nice 3d drawings u've gotten there!

hope ur son & wife are feeling better...

[RimBlock 0]

nice 3d drawings u've gotten there!

hope ur son & wife are feeling better...

My wife is suffering from morning sickness all day at the moment. Hopefully it will get better soon as it did with our youngest.

My older son now has HFM . She should still have time to recover before the UK flights at the end of the month.

Just going over our budget, it seems HDB believe we need to repay a bit more CPF from the sale of our current apartment than was budgeted for. Around 20k more . As we are on a minimal reno budget, as you can imagine, the news was not welcome. Luckily we have some cash set aside and so can manage, just. On the good side, we get to borrow less from the bank as the CPF will make the 15% deposit without a cash top-up. My projector will have to wait until bonus time around March.

The first appointment went great for selling. Every thing quick and smoothly. We asked the lady if she could also do our buying appointments. Although she informed us that they should not really pick which appointments to take she would check..... unfortunately she is not working that day and we cannot change the day due to very tight deadlines . Our thanks to her for trying though. We had our first appointment as the first appointment in the day on Saturday so it was peaceful and only lasted around 30 minutes.

This weekend is our first appointment to buy. Hopefully it will be just as peaceful as it is also very early morning. We also need to visit the lawyers after the HDB on the same day.

RB

On our next episode.....

How will the First appointment to buy go...

Will the older son recover from HFM in time...

Will Mrs Rimblock be able to pack all her holiday cloaths in just one car sized luggage bag.

Tune in next time for more fun on the RimBlock Rollercoaster

[leechaorui 2]

My wife is ...

RB

On our next episode.....

How will the First appointment to buy go...

Will the older son recover from HFM in time...

Will Mrs Rimblock be able to pack all her holiday cloaths in just one car sized luggage bag.

Tune in next time for more fun on the RimBlock Rollercoaster

I enjoy reading your T/blog. Very humourous. Three Cheers for you!

[RimBlock 0]

I enjoy reading your T/blog. Very humourous. Three Cheers for you!

Glad to be able to bring a smile . Thanks for the kind words. Much more and I may just have to tell about my trip to Prague (from the UK) with some work colleagues resulting in one guy being blind drunk about the open a hotel room door only to release he was in the wrong hotel and didn't speak Czech. Just of note, we are talking happy and respectful if a bit silly kind of drunk not noisy violent drunk

And for my next story......

Beware Singtel engineers, or subcontractors at least.

We signed up for MIO TV when it first came out and last year decided to get a second box so we had one for the living room and one for the master bedroom.

After a short while the second box kept freezing so we called an engineer to come and have a look. The freezing only occurs on the HD channels and on some VOD programs. It seemed like a classic case of the MIO TV box failing or a bandwidth issue with the telephone line.

The engineer came and checked the cables and proclaimed it was an issue with the line outside our apartment and went away, did some tweeking and then it was all better. THis lasted for around 2 months until it started up again with the hanging. We called again for another engineer and this time 3 turned up together. They tested the internal cables and proclaimed the problem was outside of our apartment. They then disappeared to check the local distribution box. An hour later they called back. Nothing wrong there either so they cannot fix it and we cannot watch the HD channels . Err, no. That's not right... 8|

Today I called Singtel back again, complained again and they are going to send a Singtel (not contractor) linesman to resolve the problem. Oh and the best bit.... weekends fully booked and they only work until 6pm. Half days leave tomorrow...

On a design front,

We have asked to change the laminate for the master bathroom cabinet as we both feel it doesn't fit.

I am considering laying my own cat6 network cabling. I have not got a quote per socket yet but can get the cable for around S$200 for 100mtrs (will do the kitchen, three upstairs bedrooms and the living room with spare I believe). The cable is belden for those who wanted to know. A double socket front is around S$25, the surface mount back is around S$3 dollars and a patch panel for around S$80. Prices come down a bit with bulk buying so I may see if any one else is interested.

Cat 5e stuff is also significantly cheaper;

patch panel (24port) - S$75 (5+ S$70)

Cable belden (100Mtr) cat 5e - S$75

Wall socket cat5e - S$6

Sales are from a locally base international company (I used to use them in the UK) and orders are online.

If people can get the stuff cheaper elsewhere for the same quality then please let me know. I very much dislike places like SimLim unless I know what I want and where to get it from. These are not bought from SimLim. If people would like to purchase some stuff with me then let me know and we can do a bulk buy and maybe get a little cheaper. I may even consider doing some network wiring for others. PM me to discuss if interested.

As I am also going back to the UK I may be arranging to get some light switches, 3 pin sockets, dimmers etc in various finishes (stainless steel, mocha, white chocolate, white, gloss black, matt black, chrome and my favorite... black nickel - see below).

I really love those.

If anyone is interested I will see if I can get a list with pictures and some prices together of the different styles and finishes and maybe we can save together. Remember though that the box behind if it is surface mounted will still be white unless you spray paint it with car spray. If you live in a condo then you could recess in the walls so only the faceplate is seen.

I will also put up my network diagram maybe tomorrow for my home plans with a central movie store (NAS) streaming to each bedroom, the living room and maybe the kitchen as well.

Right, midnight has come and gone.

Off to sleep

RB

[neubie 2]

On a design front,

We have asked to change the laminate for the master bathroom cabinet as we both feel it doesn't fit.

I am considering laying my own cat6 network cabling. I have not got a quote per socket yet but can get the cable for around S$200 for 100mtrs (will do the kitchen, three upstairs bedrooms and the living room with spare I believe). The cable is belden for those who wanted to know. A double socket front is around S$25, the surface mount back is around S$3 dollars and a patch panel for around S$80. Prices come down a bit with bulk buying so I may see if any one else is interested.

Cat 5e stuff is also significantly cheaper;

patch panel (24port) - S$75 (5+ S$70)

Cable belden (100Mtr) cat 5e - S$75

Wall socket cat5e - S$6

Sales are from a locally base international company (I used to use them in the UK) and orders are online.

If people can get the stuff cheaper elsewhere for the same quality then please let me know. I very much dislike places like SimLim unless I know what I want and where to get it from. These are not bought from SimLim. If people would like to purchase some stuff with me then let me know and we can do a bulk buy and maybe get a little cheaper. I may even consider doing some network wiring for others. PM me to discuss if interested.

As I am also going back to the UK I may be arranging to get some light switches, 3 pin sockets, dimmers etc in various finishes (stainless steel, mocha, white chocolate, white, gloss black, matt black, chrome and my favorite... black nickel - see below).

I really love those.

If anyone is interested I will see if I can get a list with pictures and some prices together of the different styles and finishes and maybe we can save together. Remember though that the box behind if it is surface mounted will still be white unless you spray paint it with car spray. If you live in a condo then you could recess in the walls so only the faceplate is seen.

I will also put up my network diagram maybe tomorrow for my home plans with a central movie store (NAS) streaming to each bedroom, the living room and maybe the kitchen as well.

Right, midnight has come and gone.

Off to sleep

RB

i think the hype about cat6, being a newer standard (ratified standard? ), pple tend to go for them just becos of futureproofing... given good cat5e cables, they are able to achieve sustained gigabit thru puts w/o problems at all, that's provided all routers/switches/bridges/terminals all are running at GE speed. i think for video streaming, got to get a more powerful CPU-based NAS else for multiple video streams...

very cool chromed switches, but it will look very nice when mounted flush to the wall, w/o the ugly square box behind...

Edited October 21, 2010 by neubie

[gimz63251073 0]

Hi, nice switches there!

locally we usually go to choo chiang for the best deals. (electrical hardware shop)

www.ccm.sg

prices there much cheaper than outside. Rowell branch is a better outlet in my opinion. Avoid the Geylang branch unless u have no choice.

Cheers!

[RimBlock 0]

i think the hype about cat6, being a newer standard (ratified standard? ), pple tend to go for them just becos of futureproofing... given good cat5e cables, they are able to achieve sustained gigabit thru puts w/o problems at all, that's provided all routers/switches/bridges/terminals all are running at GE speed. i think for video streaming, got to get a more powerful CPU-based NAS else for multiple video streams...

very cool chromed switches, but it will look very nice when mounted flush to the wall, w/o the ugly square box behind...

Future proofing is certainly what I am doing it for. What with Cat6 certified (hence the price premium of the cable, sockets etc) currently up to 10Gbit it means I am all up and ready for the new fibre networking and the heavy bandwidth availability they will be bringing.

Cat5e also depends on the quality of the cable, equipment and the installation. One point of note for installation is to try not to run the data cables with power cables..... how many people have their network cables in their power cable trunking for their sockets or lights ? I know the electrician who put in a cable for me for my last reno just put it the power trunking .

I may also put a groove behind the laminate flooring skirting to run the cables there (data) rather than have more trunking on the wall. It will also make the cable runs shorter. I can do it with a router myself if needed.

I already have a DLink-323 NAS (great bit of kit) so I can just share the media out and have the local media players play it. No transcoding needed on the NAS. I also have a virtulization box which I could always host freeNas/mythTV/XMBC etc on if I wanted to go that way in the future.

locally we usually go to choo chiang for the best deals. (electrical hardware shop)

www.ccm.sg

prices there much cheaper than outside. Rowell branch is a better outlet in my opinion. Avoid the Geylang branch unless u have no choice.

Have had a browse through the catalogue on the site and there are some interesting bits there. Any idea of prices for the networking stuff etc.

Thanks

RB

[RimBlock 0]

Some more light switches I quite like.

Catry ranges;

Normal rocker switches and sockets

Touch sensitive glass fronted light switches