Musings

Continuing from the previous post.:)

The Ikea sofa (Win). We’d been thinking of replacing our living room sofa barely a month or two after its purchase from the furniture warehouse 3 years ago. The old sofa set fitted looks wise with the decor of the living room, but sitting on it felt like lying in bed with a porcupine. It’s a wonder neither of us developed a bad case of rash.

We procrastinated over purchasing a replacement sofa though on account of the fact that it was going to be a huge waste dumping something we’d just bought. So we bore with it for nearly 2.5 years until we decided we had enough and picked up a 2 + 2 corner sofa Ektrop series with Idemo Biege. And life has never been so good thereafter.

The Sigma 18-250mm (Win). This was a hard decision. I’ve taken around 9000 pictures using the old Nikon 18-55mm VR lens and despite its plasticky and almost fragile build, it’s amazingly sharp and very reliable. Unfortunately, I kept finding myself wanting a bit more range on the zoom end, and the whole thing about changing lenses wasn’t working very well for me when I was traveling alone. Nikon had its 18-200mm VR of course, but it was going for an arm and a leg and had a couple of design issues.

I’ve had a lot of luck with Sigma lenses, so as soon as the 18-250mm optically stabilized lens was released and the first reviews positive, I ordered one from B&H Photo-Video in August this year for SGD885. 2 months later and about 2000 photos later, this lens has proven itself to be a keeper. The Nikon 55-200mm was sold away, and the Nikon 18-55mm is now a backup lens.

The Nikon MB-D10 (Win). I haven’t blogged here about my purchase of the vertical hand grip for my D300. The grip costs about SGD380 at shops here in Singapore, but it’s made of the same tough and high quality material as the rest of the D300. I found an online shop based in Malaysia selling the same unit for just a shade under SGD300 though, so didn’t hesitate in picking it up right away. The MB-D10 is now a permanent attachment and hasn’t left the D300 since purchase. No more flapping chicken wings when taking portrait shots.. hooray! :)

Part 3 and the concluding post in this series next.:)

I blogged here 8 months ago about our quest to find a new replacement sofa for our living room but never really got our hearts into it. Oh, we went by Courts and Ikea a couple of times and saw a couple of models we thought could be suitable but kept putting off a purchase.

Necessity eventually got our procrastinating selves into action. Specifically, the zipper for the fabric cover of our sofa broke yesterday afternoon when I was trying to send the whole thing to wash. So, we took off for Ikea again, and found one that we both liked: a 2 + 2 corner sofa Ektrop series with Idemo Biege colored covers. OK so I said before I didn’t want another sofa with fabric upholstery, but leather was bringing around other challenges in maintenance.

The thing is a lot larger than the old Beng Tuan cheapo the Ektrop is replacing and the TV area is now sort of partitioned off by the huge sofa. But then again, it’s a lot more comfy with more legroom for my corner. The new sofa arrived this morning – just 17 hours after making the order. The cover looks a little crumpled though since it came packed in boxes. Damage was $1099 + $97 for delivery and assembly.

Now we have to figure out what to do with the other sofa that’s now lying upside down in our living room!

I blogged six months ago about gradually changing our furniture.:)

Now, just explaining things a bit again; we didn’t have much of a budget to work with when we were planning for our first home, especially after taking into account that most of my personal savings had been exhausted from the Ph.D program. It was thus a huge blessing that the family (also a Christian couple) we were buying our home from had kept very good care of the unit.

We spent just over $7K in renovations: just polishing of the floor places, installation of the door and window grills, repainting, replacement of bathrooms and kitchen fixtures and lighting. I didn’t do any hacking of walls and the like, and the one ‘indulgence’ we had was the choice of colors, which Ling has blogged about here then. Our renovations were, in short, quite minimalist.

Now as for furnishing we scoured the newspapers every weekend looking for bargains, eventually hitting a Macpherson warehouse, Beng Tuan, where we bought at least three quarters of furniture in the house: all the stuff in the bedroom, the living room and kitchen. The only room that wasn’t decked out with Beng Tuan furniture was the work room (with the exception of the green chairs), which we filled out with IKEA furniture.

Now fast forward to 2.5 years. Most of what we got at the warehouse has turned out pretty alright… all except for the cheapo fabric sofa which isn’t really comfortable. So, starting this month we’re keeping an eye out for a replacement sofa set. Pretty low key requirements: they just have to fit into our living room space, have a foot rest, and definitely no fabric sofas this time.:)

We were passing by IKEA @ Tampines the other evening while driving home from work when Ling remarked that the Swedish budget home furniture store was having some kind of clearance sale. I shuddered, involuntarily, as should any full-blooded man when he hears a woman say the word ‘sale’ somewhere in a sentence:)

But there are often great bargains to be had at IKEA. Our first home at The Rivervale is devoid of expensive furniture. Heck, the most extravagant electronic gadget in the living room is actually the chiller aka air-conditioning for the fishes in the aquarium. Everything else in it we got at budget either from IKEA or from the Beng Tuan warehouse. We didn’t have much of a budget 2 years ago while building up our home, but I’m guessing that in the next few years, we’ll most likely start slowly replacing furniture items one at a time for better versions. E.g. the sofa we’ve got is a cheapo that really needs replacing since we lounge on it whenever we watch TV.

In any case, there are home planner software commercially available that can cost quite a bit. So it was quite a pleasant find on the IKEA web site that they’ve got their own free and downloadable home planner software for users to try out. OK so all the stuff in it is IKEA furniture, and not unreasonably so. But it’s still a hoot to play around with.

The software is available here.:)

Fish & Chips @ Ikea

Going by Ikea for a Friday evening dinner has become a semi-regular sort of event for us these days. Two of the accessories in the master bedroom bathroom: the floormat and the shower curtain, comes from the Ikea catalog. These items accumulate dirt pretty quickly, so it becomes necessary to replace them every 2-3 months. We’ll usually take the opportunity to have dinner at the store Ikea cafeteria too.

The both times I’ve reviewed food at the cafeteria – once for their very popular meatballs, and then also their chicken & fries – have garnered pretty good ratings of 3.9. This time round though, the fare was less impressive. We both had Fish & chips. For $4.50, I got two sizable and meaty sticks of fish, and a nearly as generous portion of fries.

Unlike many foodcourts in malls that offer Western fare, the fish was actually meaty and the deep fried skin crispy , and would had been quite delicious were it not for the fact that the fish was only lukewarm. Ling remarked ruefully that it seemed that this particular set is going through mass production, and the almost cold fish pretty much ruined its taste. The fish tasted almost rubbery even. We did both agree though had the fish meats been fried and prepared on the spot, as it is commonly done in foodcourts, the food would had been fantastic. So, a pretty disappointing experience, and similar to what we experienced at Courts several months ago – precooked fish & chips.

• Taste: 5 / 10
• Value: 4.5 / 5
• Overall: 3.2 / 5. Edible of course, and still bearable if you mow through your fish really quickly before it gets completely cold.