The probable completion date of our new home is 1 September 2014, which is slightly less than a year after our wedding! (Which will also be his 30th birthday! Eeeee umur dah tiga posen eee hehehe) This is one aspect of our marriage that my mat is especially excited about because he is into home decor and such and he is always telling me how he would arrange this and that and this and that if his current home with his parents were his own, or if my current home with my parents was his own.
We actually struck a deal before we embarked on this wild wild ride of wedding and house planning preparation journey; I am the main in-charge for our wedding preparations (research, shortlisting, proposal submission, etc) whereas he will be the main in-charge for our house planning preparations. So even though I am more inclined to home decor that looks like this, I am willing to settle for home decor that looks like this, which my mat prefers.
He is already planning on
I think the three main reasons why I’m ok to let him make the major decisions for our future home is because:
(1) He is letting me make major decisions for our wedding so it’s only fair he gets to make major decisions for something that he loves, which is home decor;
(2) I don’t really mind how our future home looks like as long as I can go home to him for the rest of my life; and
(3) He’ll be the one who will do most of the housework anyway. Ha ha ha ha ha.
Ok I’m kidding about letting him do most of the housework lah! (Ah kan, takut kena bash kan.) My supermother has always cleaned up after my sisters and I when we were younger so we were never exposed to doing our own household chores… but now I’m learning ok! Thanks to my mat who kept urging me to do so because “your mother isn’t getting any younger” and “you need to familiarize yourself with household chores so that you don’t struggle with them when you live away from your mother after marriage."
Which is why I’m washing, drying and folding my own clothes and cleaning and vacuuming my own room now! I still need some help with washing the dishes and ironing, though. OMG I HATE IRONING!!! It’s so tiring and mundane and lembab. With the exception of my mamat, I hate anything and everything that is lembab ok.
Same thing with cooking OMG COOKING. If it isn’t 2-minute Maggi Mee cooking, then I have no idea and no patience to cook it. (My mat on the other hand cooks freaking awesome cheesy scrambled eggs, creamy chicken mushroom pasta, mushroom soup, cinnamon pancakes, sliced beef tortillas, mee goreng, macaroni goreng… mmmmm…)
I recently saw someone tweeting something about telling mothers to teach their sons on how to do housework chores because their future wives will thank them for it? It’s very true ok. I cannot thank my future supermother-in-law enough for teaching my mat how to cook, clean and wash well (told you I can open a “Saliheen Cleaning Things” album) – he has already promised me that we’ll share our household chores 50/50 fair and square! Needless to say, I am very pleased to hear that!
Kalau lah giving birth pun boleh share share eh…
Anyway, back to our BTO story.
I remember how freaking elated we were when we got the unit – I’ve always been a huge fan of my good old hometown of Tampines (We are a freaking country on our own, yo) and I’ve always wanted to stay put in Tampines even after marriage. My mat was not keen at first but I pushed through with it (as with everything else that he is sceptical about heh heh) and he finally relented. He is still a bittt iffy about it (“Tampines is so far from CBD!“, he cries) but we’ve agreed to take it one step at a time so now he’s looking forward to decorating our future home to his heart’s (and our bank account’s) content.
(We figured a small 3-room flat will be more than enough for the two of us since we’re not planning to have children right after the marriage – we’re planning on waiting for 3 years after getting our flat before starting a family, which freaked me out a little because I realized I’ll be 30 by that time eeeeekkkkksss. We have the option of upgrading to 4-room or 5-room flat once our child grows up and needs his/her space OR swopping our place with my parents (my parents have floated the idea of swopping their 5-room flat with our 3-room flat once they get older, my sisters move out and they don’t need that much space) OR taking over his parents’ 5-room flat if they ever decide to get another place (his parents have played around with the idea of getting another property for themselves). And then there’s that option that we’ve considered but shelving for now until we stabilize ourselves further – migrating to another country. But these are alternatives that we can look at again in the future, which is why I say: We’re taking this one step at a time.)
Our initial journey to getting a unit in Tampines was far from smooth, though. We didn’t get a favourable queue number when we applied for the first Tampines BTO exercise and ended up not getting a unit. It was made worse by whispered news that one half of the couple we knew who scored a unit was a cheating partner and another one of our friends who also scored a unit had to flippantly tell me over dinner that “she wasn’t sure whether she wanted the unit, because she’s not serious with her current boyfriend and they applied just for fun“. I was bitter and frustrated but hard-headed Taurus girl me refused to follow suit with some of my fellow Tampines-residing friends who decided to apply for Sengkang and Punggol, where chances were apparently higher, after their failed applications.
We then applied for another Tampines unit under a Balance of Sale exercise and I was even more hopeful because it is one block away from my parents’ place! One freaking block away aje! Nak pergi rumah my parents tinggal buat standing broad jump aje! But alas, we didn’t get the unit so kirim salam lah eh nak standing broad jump segala.
By the third time, I was subdued and jaded by the whole process and we decided to make two changes to our application method:
(1) We decided to apply for 3-room flat instead of 4-room flat because the latter was always grossly oversubscribed and made our chances slimmer (kalau kasi badan kita slimmer takpe jugak, ada jugak untung) – this was also a good move because it meant that we can more than afford the flat; and
(2) We decided to put my mat’s name as 1st applicant, instead of mine. It started off as joke about how we’re doing it wrong because him as the “ketua keluarga” should be listed the 1st applicant but we decided to run with it because out of the two of us, he is always somehow luckier when it comes to booking flights and rooms and such.
(We’ve travelled to Phuket on $60 flight tickets and Bangkok on $140 flight tickets – during peak periods! – thanks to his luck when booking flights. Lucky bugger once scored two-way flight ticket to London via SQ at $1200 when he wanted to visit his brother!!! Somehow there’s always crazy flash sales going on whenever he’s lurking on flight websites seh. No prizes for guessing who’ll be in-charge of making bookings for our honeymoon!!!)
Alhamdullilah, berkat kegigihan dan doa restu ayah ibu, we scored a 3-room unit on our 3rd try on our 3rd year and 3rd month anniversary! 3 turned out to be such a lucky number for us in our BTO application! Even our ballot number was 30. (It would have been better if our ballot number was 3, of course, but hey not like I’m complaining heh heh) We would have even chosen unit #13-333 if the block was attractive but it wasn’t so we settled for another block and another unit. Whatever it is, tetap Alhamdullilah!
But the best part of our whole future home journey? Our BTO is located directly opposite where we first met – Temasek Polytechnic. Romantic fanatic pe?! We’re already planning on taking leave and having lunch in the school and reliving our poly days once we move in to our new home. Heehee.
(Sesiapa yang dulu dari our poly, korang kenal ‘Mushroom’ tak? Ah kat situ ah aku selalu tunggu kehadiran bakal laki aku masuk sekolah pastu stalk dia dari belakang hahahahaha what what not my fault my mamat is blessed with a very sek, uhmmm, posterior ok. Hahahahaha! As you can see, way before I stalked wedding vendors, I sharpened my skillz by stalking my eyecandy in school mua ha ha ha)
My mat was especially pleased and said that it was a blessing in disguise kita tak dapat our first two applications because he loves the current location of our BTO due of its proximity to some road or expressway (I am clueless about roads and expressways, sorry) and we’re directly in front of a mini hub consisting of 4 coffeeshops, 3 supermarkets, 2 fast food restaurants, clinics, atms, bookshops, bakeries, minimarts, hair salons, video shops, etc! Very convenient! Plus, we’ll also be very near to our favourite chendol and bubble tea stall, the awesome Penang A1 Chendol shop! (If you’re ever around the area, please, give their popular favourites a try. Their drinks are awesome gilz, I tell you.)
With the signing of our lease agrement, we recently talked about our living arrangements after the wedding while waiting for our new home to be completed – we’ve always had vague ideas on how it would be but never really got down to discussing details – but even after the recent discussion, we’re still quite stuck on how to go about doing it. He prefers if we stay with his family because his parents’ place is 10 minutes away from CBD which will really ease our trips to and fro our offices – something that I am totally fine and agreeable with.
Unfortunately, both of us also agree that his room is too small for the both of us. Can you imagine – his bedroom is 1 freaking third of my bedroom ok?! Baju baju aku je dah take up half his room, mana nak sumbat katil, rak buku, almari baju?! Takkan nak pasang atas dinding kan?! My bedroom, on the other hand, is very spacious and “boleh buat golek golek main badminton” as quoted by one of my girlfriends (can’t really remember who it was but I think it was Kartika!) and can fit both of us and more. Unfortunately, he grumbles about the 30-minute rides to work and back… although my argument is: Get used to it because you’ll be living in Tampines come 2014!
My mamat has also suggested renting a room while waiting; but I’m not keen on that idea at all because it is so wasteful to pay $600 – $800 rent every month when we can save that money for our future home!
Our current position now is still unclear but it’s something like this: I’m ok to live at his parents’ place while waiting for our new home since we only need to squeeze in his room and make do for less than a year (and since BTO units nowadays are so freaking small, it might do us good because after almost a year of squeezing in a teeny weeny room, our tiny 3-room flat might not seem so tiny after all ha ha ha) – but he needs to ask his parents first whether they’re ok with it in the first place. Check check mak bapak dia nak dia berambus dari rumah dorang hahahahaha cerita sedih pe kalau gitu
Ok I know this is not a wedding-related entry but sooner or later the content of this blog will change direction anyway because as exciting as our wedding preparations are, there are bigger and bolder adventures out there for us to experience and conquer once this whole wedding preparation journey runs its course. I’m still undecided whether to end this blog after the wedding is over and done with or continue writing our grand new adventures of home-building and child-bearing days (insya Allah). But that, my friends, is another decision for another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment