decisions... decisions...

Pejam celik... pejam celik... the weekend is almost over. And so is the year. I think this year passed by on warp speed! But unlike previous years... I felt like I did a whole lot more this year. A posting on what/how my year has been is in the offing...

Woke up early Saturday morning to send my car for the routine service. Arrive at the Jalan Ipoh Honda dealership cum workshop before 8am but I was already customer #11. What time did customers #1-10 arrive here? Agaknya subuh buta dah sampai kut... Waited for about an hour before my number was called. Luckily I came prepared... the day's newspaper and 3 biji kuih kept me from dozing off.

"This is your last free service. And today we're going to do a lot of parts changes" the service rep told me. He also explained about doing an air-con servicing which was not covered by the "free" service and how it needs to be done in order to maintain my warranty. I just angguk je lah... whatever you need to do to keep my baby healthy. Called home to ask for someone to pick me up since it would take a while before the car is ready.

I thought of catching up on some sleep while waiting but ended up watching TV. Mama and Papa went to Cheras to send some tiles to Wak who is repairing our house there. Both Ina and Abg were away outstation and Amt was sound asleep. Watched this show on Discovery Living and Health called "What I Hate About You". Doesn't sound so *welcoming* but it was actually quite interesting. It's a reality documentary/show where a couple tapes each other's annoying behaviours with the aim of highlighting it to the other person, and a jury to decide who is most annoying. The *victor* gets to demand the other person to work on the annoying habit and wins a prize. Sounds like a recipe for disaster isn't it? Au contraire... the couple that was on air were very open and recognised their *misdoings*. Perhaps this is only true for this couple, because they're both cool people. Tapi towards the end, sleep did overcome me and I dozed off on the sofa ;)

In the afternoon, while playing around with Facebook, I found a long lost friend. HH is a friend from Melbourne days. He now goes by the name HY... I don't know why. Maybe Y is his middle name? Whatever the reason, I was amused when I read a comment made by one of his mat salleh friends... "You changed your last name. Is that a muslim religious thing?"

Anyway... based on his profile photo and album, HH looks like he hasn't aged a day. HH has a rather demeaning nickname back then... Spaz, short for spastic. I could never bring myself to calling him that coz he's such a nice and berbudi bahasa person. As far as I know, only the guys call him that. The reason for such nickname? You see, HH was shipped off to Australia at a very young age to attend one of the most prestigious boarding schools in ozzie. So when he befriended us Malaysian students at uni, he struggled to speak Malay. I thought it was great of him to get back to his roots... but the guys often took a mickey out of him for the way he pronounced certain words and how he structured his sentences. Determined, HH was able to converse as well as (if you can say speaking rojak Malay the way we do *speaking well*) the rest of us within the span of 2-3 months. He even took a liking to eating mee maggi ;)

HH is always a gentleman. Coming from a privileged family and half blue blood to boot, one can easily assume that he's uppity. But HH displays no such traits. Always genial and respectful, one feels comfortable being around him. I can't say that I was very close to HH, just a casual friend. Last I heard someone talk about him was when he took charge at the helm of the family business upon the passing of his father at the age of 30. Being da boss of a multi million business at such a young age is no doubt overwhelming, but HH seems to be doing ok. If anything, based on his photos, he's enjoying life as well. Good for him :)

The rest of the day and for the most part of Sunday, I was kept occupied being a wannabe interior designer. Was supposed to go see the tingkap - slider wardrobe - shower glass screen man to place an order, but decided to stay at home to rethink about the floorplan and layout of the room. No point placing a custom-made order when I was not sure how I wanted the room to look like. Reason for the change in concept: I was enticed by the walk-in wardrobe at Abg Mur's newly renovated home and Mama's suggestion to change the entrance to the room. My recent visit to Farisa's gorgeous home also put in a lot of ideas into my already crammed head.

My mind just went on an overdrive mode... Armed with those contractor-type measuring tape and IKEA product specs for the wardrobe and shelving units, I spent hours toying with various permutations. No part of the room was left un-measured ;) For the original design, I only played around with the image of how the room would look like in my head. Imagining where the bed would be, the wardrobe, the sofa... But this time round, I decided to be more precise. To make sure that there's a proper flow and layout.

So in the end, I came up with several options...

Option 1 - walk-in wardrobe which is attached to the bathroom, with lots of storage space (actually all floorplans were deliberately designed to provide ample storage space). But this requires a new entrance and new wiring for the switches. I also played around on where the loose pieces of furniture would be placed. All items and room layout are to scale (right down to the exact inch, hehe... I'm a perfectionist who is obsessed!)




Option 2 - also with walk-in wardrobe, but not attached to the bathroom. This one doesn't require light switch wiring changes and will retain the original entrance to the room.




Option 3 - A somewhat walk-in wardrobe which also serves to reduce the size of the room.




Options 4 and 5 - no walk-in wardrobe but aims to provide a separate sitting area.



I need to decide on the design of choice sometime this week because Wak is coming to start work next week. Of course, he can start with the ketuk, pecah, dismantle first but I need to place those custom-made orders in order to receive them in time.

I have a personal favourite but being the *designer* for all, I suka je semua... all have their merits. So regular readers... which one would you choose?