Office finally up

Here are the pictures from the office.

Entry door, portable air-con on the floor.


My desk, with HP 7310 4-in-1 in the corner. Audio recording control room through the window


My filing cabinet, boxes still to unpack and bookshelf to build, studio window on left


My editing and authoring workstation, TV studio through the window on the right

Eternally Grateful

Finally got my office organised. I'll post some pictures shortly. Got 1 proper desk, 1 file cabinet, 1 workstation table, 1 desktop computer, 1 4-in-1 fax/scanner/printer/copier combo, and 1 book shelve (not fixed up yet. Still have some boxes in my room I need to store away. Otherwise, a nice office to work in. Only complaint is that there's not much ventilation, so we put in a portable air-con unit when the heat builds up.

Eternally Grateful

Eternally Grateful
I'm in the process of clearing out the room that's going to be my office for the next 18 months. In the mean time, this is the "before" picture.

View out my window

Here's the view out my window on a nice day. It's the intersection of 101 and 280 freeways in San Francisco.

What do they wear?

Here's Matthew and Nathan in their clothes for the occasion. Matthew in his school uniform (so expensive), and Nathan so cute in his cold weather gear. Enjoy!

Shipment finally arriving

After a wait of 3 weeks, my 16 box shipment from Singapore is finally supposed to arrive tomorrow afternoon. Really looking forward to it now cos we have been living off 2 weeks of clothes for the last 3 weeks.
Also looking forward to getting my 2 computers that I shipped. Hopefully they are ok, including the disk drives.

8th wedding anniversary

Went out for dinner at Banana Island to celebrate, a Singapore-Malaysia-Thai restaurant that's quite good but a bit expensive. We went with the kids and Phil's family. It was great to be able to eat some chicken rice, pineapple rice, Pad Thai, sizzling plate tofu, Satay and roti prata. Matthew particularly enjoyed the chicken rice which I'm sure he misses a lot.

We talked with Phil and Connie about how we met, and how time really flies.

8th anniversary

Today is the 8th anniversary of our marriage. Wow, how quick time flies. I'll try to think of what to do today.

Pictures of the new car

Front of the car


Lots of luggage space


Driver's console


Space for 2 child seats in the second row

Sunday outing

After church yesterday, we went to the Exploratorium (children's hands-on science museum) in San Francisco and to the Golden Gate Bridge. The mayor of SF declared yesterday a family day and anyone who lived in SF could enter a list of museums for free. So we took the opportunity for an outing and to save some money by visiting the Exploratorium, which is a popular attraction. http://www.exploratorium.edu
Matthew had a good time going through some of the exhibits, but due to the free day, there were many families and was quite crowded.
After that, we went to the Golden Gate Bridge since it was very near the Exploratorium, and took a couple of pictures. Then on to Chinatown for dinner at the ABC restaurant, which is a Hong Kong style restaurant we found the last time we were here in August. Matthew really loved the food there and ate 2 chicken wings and half a bowl of Wonton noodles.


The charcoal grey Mazda 5 on the right of the picture. More pictures later when I get them from my friend's camera.

Bought a car (minivan actually)

Had to think very hard on which car we wanted to buy. Before leaving Singapore, we looked through numerous websites to see what kinds of cars were available. New, used and all sorts of financing options. We had to consider what kind of vehicle we should buy, keeping in mind that we are now missionaries. So nothing too showy in case we give the wrong idea. At the same time, we expect to have lots of visitors during our time here, so don't want to get a really small car and then have no space for people who come visit. As we have no maid now, we have to take the kids wherever we go, so we can't buy and small car and leave the kids at home when we pick people up at the airport. On the other hand, with the prices of gas (petrol) nowadays, we don't want to be driving a full sized 7 or 8 seater MPV when we only seat 4 most of the time. Also, we don't need to drive very much except to shopping and groceries and when the occasional visitors come or we go visit someone.

Wow, lots to think about. We wanted to buy a Japanese car, so that it has good resale value and is reliable. So we looked at a used Toyota Sienna (7 seater), which is a about US$24k new and a 4 year old is about $17-18k. Also looked at the Toyota Matrix, which is a 5 seater with a large cargo space for about $16k new (new model, so not many used ones available).
Finally looked at the Mazda 5, which is the newer model of the car we drive in Singapore, the Mazda Premacy. It's a 6 seater here, instead of 6+1 in Singapore (the +1 being a small seat). Went down to the car dealership on Jan 2, which was a very wet rainy day. Took a drive around and it seemed pretty good, since we were quite used to the car already, with some nice new touches, like a sliding back door, which is extremely helpful in loading and unloading Nathan in his car seat into the back seat without the cumbersome door getting in the way. With 6 seats, we can take up to another 2 passengers, but without too much luggage space. However, we thought it was a good compromise between a smaller car and a full sized MPV. Since this is a new model, there were no used ones available, but the pricing was not too bad. We bargained hard, especially trying to understand the financing. The thing about the US is that your credit history is very important. Almost everything you want to order long term is dependent on your credit history. From getting a credit card to subscribing for cable TV. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a credit history, so it was hard to find any financing. At the end, we got financing for 15.9%!! So we tried to put as big a downpayment as we could afford and then finance as little as possible. The good thing about the car financing here as opposed to Singapore's is that you are not locked in to the term of loan. That means that you can refinance the loan at any time. I asked around and the advice I got was to just take the loan for 6 months and then refinance it at hopefully lower rate when we get a better credit history. It's important to get some decent credit history here, even if you don't want to buy a lot of things.
So now we are driving a new Mazda 5 which we are very thankful for. Will upload pictures later.

Yong Fa passing through

Yong Fa came through SF today. Arrived in the morning where I picked him up in the new Mazda5 we bought 2 days ago. Went to pick up my insurance papers and buy takeaway lunch before heading back. Took him around the church to see the different areas, including the lighting and studio areas.
Just sent him back to the airport 1/2 hour ago for his midnight flight to Dallas.

Pictures!

Finally uploaded my pictures.

Family picture at parents' Christmas / farewell party for us on Christmas night.


Li Soon feeding Nathan on the plane


Our bedroom before moving in


Kids' room after installing the double deck bed


Matthew at computer


Matthew with computer and new DVD TV


Hallway outside out rooms


Li Soon cooking in kitchen


Kitchen 2


Camera control room 1


Camera control room 2

New Year's Eve

Spent the morning relaxed while waiting for Ikea to deliver the double deck bed. I cooked breakfast of instant noodles with egg and hot dog omelette, hard boiled egg and oyster sauce veggies.
The delivery came around 12 and Matthew helped me to set up the double deck bed. Took about 3 hours. Li Soon cooked lunch at 4pm which consisted of leftover Teriyaki Chicken, rice, vegetables.
Everyone bathed after that and went out for dinner with Rev Chanson Lau and his wife Genevieve at 530pm at a Thai-American restaurant near the Pacific Coast beach. It was all dark, so we didn't see anything of the beach. Matthew slept right through dinner.
Came home after dinner with lots of leftovers. Everyone was tired, esp Li Soon who went to sleep at 9pm. We slept in the kid's room with the new bed, but Nathan was not used to the new room and took quite some crying and time to put to bed..... finally.
I woke up at midnight just in time to cross over to the new year. The rest were still sleeping.... Matthew just woke up now.

Shopping list for a new home

Been doing a lot of shopping and packing the last few days in between of taking care of the kids, packing, etc.
So been shopping at Target, Ikea, a small Vietnamese store, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Ranch 99 supermarket, Office Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond and others. So what does a shopping list for a new home look like? Here's a brief rundown.

From Ikea.
Double Deck bed for the kids, boxes for storage, floor mats, 3 level document tray, AA batteries, high chair, bedroom slippers, batteries, backpack for Matthew for school, shoe rack, storage boxes

From Target.
Pillow, Thermos Flask, bedsheets for 5 beds x 2 sets, lightweight comforter, Play-pen for Nathan, jacket with built in speakers for Matthew (on sale), small CD player, hot dogs, ham, 5 gallons of milk, detergent, shampoo, hair gel, baby bath soap, ziplock bags, clingwrap,

From Ranch 99.
Rice, rice cracker, chicken frozen, chilli sauce, dishwashing liquid, corn oil, instant noodles, soap, ziplock bags, spinach, pak choy, apples, oranges, tofu, oyster sauce, soy sauce, eggs, japanese rice, seaweed, salt and pepper, rice krispies.

From Best Buy.
20" flat screen combination DVD/TV, Star Wars DVD(ep 4,5,6), Star Wars game (for Matthew's entertainment), AAA batteries

From Radio Shack.
Power strip, Indoor VHF/UHF antenna (for the 20" TV above), Power cord

From Vietnamese general store.
Small tub for bathing Nathan, small stool, lightweight stroller, claypot, hot water boiling pot, laundry bag, toiletries set, wok, dustbin with cover, slippers, toilet floor mat

Bed Bath & Beyond.
Hairdryer, woven basket, pillow, indoor/outdoor thermometer

Office Depot.
School supplies for Matthew, Christmas bear for Nathan (he loves it)

Walgreens.
Cough mixture, Vitamin C, Halls and Fisherman's Friend throat drops

Cingular Shop.
Family mobile phone plan for 2

SBC Global
New telephone line and DSL (installation on 10 Jan 2006)