KBox KLunch 29 March, 2008
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, For Him For Her, Leisure & Games.add a comment
KBox is the name of a karaoke service provider here in Singapore. And KLunch is one of their lunch promotion that includes 3 hours of singing, 1 bento lunch set and 1 drink. The catch is you have to ‘check in’ between 11am to 2pm, so if you check in at 1pm, you get to sing until 4pm. The good thing about this deal is that it is available every single day, yes including Saturdays and Sunday. And it’s pretty cheap too! If I remember correctly, it’s $10+++ per head. Just last weekend, Dear1 and Dear2 went for one of our regular karaoke sessions and paid $27 total for 3 hours of food, drinks and songs. Gee…
I enjoyed going to karaoke with Dear2. I really like Dear2’s voice and really enjoyed Dear2’s singing. But sadly, I can’t really sing that well. More often than not, Dear2 can’t even guess the song I’m humming, and it’s not because she doesn’t know the song. =( But I still like going to sing with my dear, and just to sing that few songs that I know my voice range can handle.
As for the lunch set, Dear2 dun like it too much, so most of the time, she’ll just eat slight more than half of it and I’ll finish the rest, which is an excellent arrangement in my opinion. Firstly, I like to eat (yum yum yum) so I dun mind eating my dear’s share of the lunch set (hehehe…). Secondly, I dun need to put my horrible singing to the mic during the time I’m eating (and I will try to eat as slowly as I can). Thirdly, I get to listen to more of Dear2’s great singing. See! So many plus points. Gee…
I sure hope this KLunch thing is here to stay, otherwise it’ll really burn a hole in our pockets visit these karaoke places. The reason it is so cheap is because of the awkward timing. I dun think many ppl wants to sing in the morning and around lunchtime, which is why they need to lower the price to attract more customers during this kind of down-times. We dun really mind the timing that much. It’s more of enjoying singing with each other at a value for money pricetag. If I’m not wrong, the price is $25+++ on weekend nights after 7pm and *without* a dinner set! See the difference!
Sometimes, I just so happy that I found Dear2. That we have a common understanding on the ways we want to spend our money, our time, and to make the most out of a simple and happy lifestyle. Thank you dear dear.
-Dear1
Major wedding events confirmed 21 March, 2008
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Dollars & Cents, Wedding.add a comment
Wedding date confirmed – Free
Wedding venue confirmed – $3000 deposit
Wedding Photo Shoot + Bridal Studio confirmed – $2988 (excluding GST) paid in full by installments
Yeah, things are really falling into place now. This time round, while sourcing for our wedding packages, we did not visit as many places as we did for our renovation. In fact, the photoshoot (PS) and bridal studio (BS) deal was the first and only one we visit, and we confirmed them. Partly becos their service is good, we feel comfortable communicating with them and it was a recommendation from Dear2’s cousin. I think sometimes, it is not necessary to get the best of the best deal out there on the market. Anything reasonably price with good service is sufficient. This cuts down valuable time wasted traveling all over the island to hunt down the best deal.
Now that the major events are booked, we need to get down to the details. For this, we’ve come up with a list of things to prepare and do. The list is a combined research from wedding magazines, wedding forums, experiences from married relative and friends, and some personal thoughts. It’s not exhaustive, but at least it helps us get settled and organised.
A big component of the preparing for a wedding is the finances. While the bulk of the banquet payment can be made after collecting the ang baos on our wedding day, the deposit itself is no small sum. And not to mention that we, the couple, do not get to keep all the ang bao monies from the banquet night. We need to come to an arrangement in a 6-party-talk. The 6 parties are, both of us, Dear1’s parents and Dear2’s parents. There must be some agreement as to how many tables are a ‘gift’ to the bride’s family, who pays for the remaining tables, who keeps the ang baos? Chances are that relatives give their ang bao directly to the elders, while friends put their ang baos in those sweet looking ang bao boxes at the sign in counter. It might be a bit of awkwardness if we need to retrieve those ang baos from our parents to pay for the banquet. After all, some great grand uncle who used to bring my father out to movies with he was a child might give a $1000 big ang bao just for his favourite nephew, my dad. This kind of things can be tricky.
Now, moving on to the PS and BS. Back when we were sourcing for renovations, we make it a point to never pay the amount in full so that if there is any dissatisfaction, we can still get a discount off the final payment. I think this completely slipped our minds this time round as we paid the BS and PS package in full. The hasty decision to pay in full is becos we wanted to capitalize on the 0% 12 month installment plan. After all, it’s always beneficial to take a interest free loan. Increase our total assets and make better use of it. Even putting that sum of money in a savings account will at least earn us some miserable interest of 1 year right? But of course, there are better investment instruments. Anyway, renovation is a big expense, in the magnitude of $20-30k but this BS+PS package is only $3k, even if we need to bargain for discounts at the end, I dun think it’ll be significant, I’ll rather ask for more free gifts than haggling over the price.
Still lots of things more to do. 6 months to wedding. Time to start dieting.
-Dear1
First sun this year 15 March, 2008
Posted by dear1dear2 in Around the House, Dear1.add a comment
Our kitchen window faces the north. This implies that if we hang our clothes out to dry, there should be sun coming from both sides of the window, and so we should have no problem drying our clothes any time of the day as long as there’s daylight. True. But with one condition. And that during the correct half of the year.
It so happens that our window is not facing the north exactly, it’s slightly tilted. Coupled with the fact that Singapore is not exactly on the equator either. And the fact that the earth is tilted on it axis and revolving around the sun. All these factors contribute to the phenomena that the path traced by the sun from sunrise to sunset slowly oscillates throughout the course of the year with a period of 1 year. And our window can only receive sunlight when the sun’s path crosses onto our side of the building, which is about half a period, that is 6 months.
And so, we were all happy about how the sun is always on our side last year, until about Oct when the sunlight suddenly disappeared. It was then that we realized this phenomena explained earlier. Now, in mid March, the sun has returned to our side, finally! First sun this year!
With the constant rain these few weeks and without a dryer machine at home, we really needed to bring our clothes out to sun to get that fluffy and fresh smelling texture in our clothes. The past 6 months had been only airing to dry outdoors, now finally we get our 6 months lease of sunshine. Must wash more bedsheets and cushion covers. Hehehe…
Another interesting thing I noticed since becoming an assistant-house-husband, is that people staying in high floors get more period of sunshine on a annual basis. The reason being, the lack of sunshine is actually cause by our own building. When the sun’s path oscillates about our building, its our building that actually cast the shadow across our kitchen window. That said, people staying in higher floors are subjected to lesser shadows and hence get to enjoy more sunshine over the span of the year. People staying on the top floor probably get sunshine the whole year round regardless of any oscillation effects. So the point to note is, higher floors get 1 more advantage to their already plenty advantages, and that is good sunshine all year round. No wonder everyone likes to stay in high floors. But their evaluation price is higher too, good for owners, bad for buyers.
That’s it, I’m off to put more clothes out to dry.
-Dear1
Wedding planning 7 March, 2008
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Wedding.add a comment
Dear1 and Dear2 ROM’ed in 2006. Now, almost 2 years down, we’ve finally started our sourcing of wedding venues for our banquet. We decided that we wanted a restaurant type of place rather than a hotel ballroom. The reason being, after attending so many hotel ballroom weddings, we feel that the food is not up to standard, the quantity is a bit on the low side, and the temp/part-time waiters serving at hotel ballrooms just wasn’t professional enough.
But restaurants has it’s own set of problems. The area tends to be smaller so it couldn’t accommodate our requirement of 40 tables. The ambiance may not be good enough or may even be too Chi-na-ish for our liking. The day use room and overnight hotel room may also be a problem if the restaurant is not situation in a hotel.
So we decided to set off to look for 2 possible types of venues. First, a hotel ballroom that is served or catered by a resident restaurant. Second, a restaurant that is situated within a hotel that is big enough and can make necessary arrangements with the hotel for the rooms.
We started our search 3 weeks ago on an impromptu session initiated by my dad. Earlier on, we’ve already shortlisted a few place which we would like to visit but never got our lazy bums off to go. On that day, my dad says he is free that afternoon and would want to drive us to visit a restaurant which he thought was quite good. Immediately, we agreed, and we brought our list of restaurants along too.
After visiting the first restaurant, we drove around town to visit all the other restaurants that we’ve shortlisted. In totally, I think we visited 5 to 6 places that afternoon, very fruitful indeed. For the remaining places in our shortlist, I called them up over the phone and had a short chat with the wedding coordinator there, but decided that we won’t make a trip to their place after all, mainly due to capacity problems.
Of the places we had visited, it was quite clear which one caught all of our eyes. I shall leave it at here for the moment because we have not confirmed the venue yet. This weekend, we’ll be visiting this place again, and if everything is alright, we’ll go ahead and book the place and date for our wedding! :D
Starting from this post, I’ll create new category where we’ll write about anything related to our wedding.
-Dear1
