Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.

Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.

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Location:Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.

Build a Bear Workshop at Westfield Doncaster

Kitchen Renovation In Progress!

Soon after moving in, we realized that we would be much happier if we renovated the kitchen. So, we started hunting for kitchen renovators, mainly using google and visited some kitchen showrooms (if anyone's looking, I'd say don't bother trying freedom kitchens. They decided that if we don't increase our budget to match their prices, it's not worth their time coming to quote!). I also found a pretty cool website - serviceseeking.com.au - that we can find tradespeople from. After a couple of quotes we were *almost* going to go with Zesta kitchens - but we thought we may be able to get cheaper appliances compared to the package they quoted us:

Joey wanted the 90cm set, upgrade to a canopy rangehood and add sink and tap, so that was $2420 + $499 + $238 = $3157... and with that, we were still not happy with their oven (we want something that can turn off by itself!) and the sink (we want a double sink, not 1.5 sinks!), so it seemed we needed to find these items on our own.

I therefore went to a Harvey Norman Commercial Division (and btw, they're a separate entity from Harvey Norman retail) warehouse clearance or something, which was in Brooklyn, 45 minutes west of where we are. First problem was parking, didn't realize there was going to be a crowd, so instead of getting there at opening time (8am), I ended up arriving at 10am... and since I was worried about getting fined, I had to park like 10 minutes walk away (which by my standards is pretty far! haha). Anyway, when I got to the building that's when the real wait begun - due to space limitations, there was a queue to go in - probably 5-6 people every few minutes were allowed to enter. I joined the line, which was by then a whole building away (sorry, no pictures - I refused to leave my place in the queue to go take a picture. lol!). So, I was in the line, slowly moving along, for almost 2 hours (yes, no typo errors... two hours.... thank goodness Joey and the kids didn't come. they were at home moving house with Elijah, Sarah and Naomi & friends). While in queue, I was talking to a friendly bloke in front of me, his name's Jason and he's a psychologist. Nice guy to chat with, which made the wait a little more bearable (the cold weather wasn't helping though!). In the conversation, I explained my reasons for being there, and he said if I was renovating my kitchen, I should try calling the guys who do his kitchens (he's done multiple kitchens through them already) - so, that's how I was introduced to Ace Craft Kitchens. Jason must have been godsent, though - he gave up waiting to get in and left after about 1.5 hours in queue. I guess he was meant to be there just to tell me to call Ace Craft =) My shopping went rather well, though. I bought a 90cm set:

- Technika Oven (it has the timers and all!)

- Fisher & Paykel canopy hood

- Fisher & Paykel gas cooktop

- Blanco sink ,double basin with tap (hmm... just realized this may be the wrong way around...)

and it all came up to $1862 including delivery. Quite happy. the gas cooktop was another story on its own though - they had run out of 90cm cooktops while the sales guy was sticking the 'sold' stickers for me, so they agreed to order one... and it turned out the model they promised had been discontinued, so they decided to honour their sale and give me a free upgrade to the current version. That's customer service to be commended!

So, back to the kitchen tale - I contacted Leah from Ace Craft Kitchens, and apologized for the late notice, but explained that Jason asked me to call them and that I was about to book with Zesta unless they wanted to quote right away. Yet another miracle, she kinda squeezed us between the current appointment and delayed the next a little, so James was able to come right away! We were pretty impressed with James as he took very careful measurements, and was able to explain why the sink should be moved to be aligned with the centre of the windows etc. Furthermore, he took out a piece of paper and instantly sketched out - by hand! - the entire kitchen! Amazing. And if that wasn't enough, he came up with a pretty competitively priced quote too! They invited us to their factory, and were willing to wait til 7:00pm so Joey could come after work. We therefore visited their factory a short while later, where they had the computerized 3D image ready for us to view. We discussed on the design, door type, colours, materials etc. They adjusted the computer image to give us a printout, and a few hours later (thanks, Kathy for babysitting Ryan and Noel, it saved them a few hours of misery!), we paid a deposit and booked our kitchen.

We had some miscommunications on what they could and couldn't do and when, but last Friday, which was 14 days later, our kitchen was ready for installation (with the exception of the benchtop that will arrive on Monday) and James brought 2 of his guys - Andrew (who's supposed to be specializing in Ace Craft Dogs, I believe) and Joey (how coincidental is that?!) to remove the existing kitchen, on a Saturday! They finished in a short time, and gave us an 'offer we couldn't refuse' to remove our floor and lay the floorboards too. So, we agreed, and they worked late into the night... James left to get reinforcements and the 2 guys worked from morning til about dinner time ... when it suddenly dawned on us that they haven't had anything to eat! We bought back some KFC buckets to share and when James returned, with another 3 more guys, he even brought our kitchen over!

So here's our dining area, kitchen removed, with an impossibly huge pile of rubble left, and that's James with a piece of our new kitchen.

and here's Andrew and Joey, you can see how dark it is! so yeah, they worked pretty late... (thanks, Simon for lending us the wheelbarrow and shovels... saved alot of time and effort!)

and here's our pre-assembled new kitchens:

And this was today, Sunday (reaaally rare to find tradespeople working on a Sunday too!), James brought the 3 people back again... and here's our kitchen is partially set up...

and the floor's being laid...
they did a really nice job, although the finishing touches need to be added the next trip... probably Wednesday, which was our original planned installation day =)
so, the tale is still unfinished, but this is where we're at right now! James and Ace Craft have really gone beyond the call of duty to provide great customer service and we're definitely happy to refer them to anyone who wants to get a new kitchen (or bathroom, laundry or whatever cabinet-related job).

It is finished!

For those of you who aren't regularly checking on Joey's facebook, we have FINALLY finished the playset we bought for the kids.
It consisted of 32 phases to build. We started it on 16/5/2010, and up til last Friday, we had only completed 8/32 phases, mostly due to the fact that it's terribly cold and the sun sets at about 5:30pm (I audibly dislike winter!).
Anyway, with the long weekend (Monday was a public holiday), we were able to complete the whole thing! We made some unfixable mistakes along the way, buy mostly cosmetic. But after all that, I gladly say, 'It is finished!'


-- Post From My iPhone

Stuck at the airport!

Friday, 4th June 2010. First time we got stuck at the airport - Joey must u've left the lights on or something, the car wouldn't start! And it was like 12:30am too! We were picking Wai Ling & Lai up, and our poor guests had to start their visit here by helping us flag down cars so we can get a jumpstart!
No thanks to technology, alot of people couldn't help coz their cars were computerized and the jump start would have reset all their settings. We finally found a kind soul, though, so we didn't need to call RACV :)


-- Post From My iPhone

Moving is no fun....

this is our 5th time moving in 2 years.

1. Puchong to Petaling Jaya (MV) while waiting for the PR approval
2. Petaling Jaya to Australia (Coburg)
3. Coburg to Heidelberg Height
4. Heidelberg Height to Doncaster East
5. Doncaster East to Donvale

i hope we will not be moving anytime soon for a while ....

God is good he always send helper

when we are in Malaysia moving we have some youth and cell groups member helping and when we are in Australia from Heidelberg Height to Doncaster East Elijah & Sarah is around to help. and this time from Doncaster East to Donvale there are here again to help. I think is fated, they are our official moving buddy. each time they comes we moved. They both help with the packing and moving and Sarah help with the new curtain for the new house both of them are a BIG help.

We also have Naomi & friends helping over a weekend, they came over moved a few car & trailer loads and help to build the patio heater & a big rabbit hutch. btw Naomi is my newly found sister in Melbourne =) We also have Vincent over to help to change the lights in the house. he brought all his tool and lend it to us.

we have boxes and boxes of stuff lying all around the house, we are going to take our sweet time to slowly unboxing them 1 by 1 =)

Ebbie> since we've begun on the thank-you's, I should also add big thank you's to our friends Kathy for helping with the curtains (I don't think I'll ever be able to operate a sewing machine!) and Simon for the trailer - I don't think we could have moved that easily without it!

P.S. Joey, how bout our moves from subang to putra perdana then to USJ court 10? :) and I think PJ again before Puchong... Haha

We got the key to our new place

Sunday - 16th May 2010

We got the keys ......




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Ryan's electronics class

Ryan took up an electronics class in term 1 this year. They had a presentation last Monday to show the parents what the kids have learnt.




I was pretty surprised he could name all the parts - 2 snap connectors, 3 snap connectors, LED, speaker, push buttons, slide switch, blade, battery unit etc!



-- Post From My iPhone

Hope of all hearts

one of my favourite in the album

Verse 1

The world may fail

You will remain

In the midst of the trial

You will always be

I’ll sing Our God never fails

Our God never fails

Verse 2

With hope and light

You reign over all

Though my heart may fail

You will always be

I’ll sing Our God never fails

Our God never fails

Pre chorus

Praise in the morning

Praise in the evening

Praise when im laughing

Praise when im grieving

There will be dancing

There will be singing

Upon injustice we will tell of Our God

Chorus

The hope of all hearts

The hope of all hearts is You

Your love never fails

Your love never fails

Bridge

In the darkness in trial

My soul shall sing of Your mercy and kindness

Our offering of Praise

Our God never fails

Our God never fails

Planetshakers - Even Greater

I BELIEVE IT

VERSE
There is nothing that could hold back Your love
So we will sing to You with all that we are
We are favoured by the Father above
And in the favour we will live out Your love

PRE-CHORUS
It’s Your love we sing about
It’s Your love we’re living out

CHORUS
I believe it, I receive
Everything that You have for me
All my hopes and all my dreams
Are found in You, my everything

BRIDGE
You are the centre of everything
You are the reason why I dream
There is no greater thing to do
Than live a life of praise to You

Planetshakers - Even Greater

BRING IT ON BRING IT ON FAVOUR!

Just want to blog about how God is good and how his timing always perfects. We have sold our house and manage to buy our new places and our prayer were answered.

Now let me tell you how we actually get in to this journey. Somewhere is February 2010; we are thinking of venturing into property investments and guess what we do not have any capital to do it, so we decided to check how much equity we have from our home. Maybe we can get some capital. So we talked to a few real estate agents to find out what is market value of our house. First agent we talked to from Barry Plant, he came over talk to Ebbie and give an estimate figure from 630K to 660K base on other sold property around the area. I am not so convince so we talk to another agent from Ray White, this agent is very proactive when he came he came prepared with documents and reports in our area. And the reports confirm what the first agent said.

So we are thinking of selling our house now and upsize, we are currently in a townhouse so no backyard or garden, Ryan & Noel has been asking for a new home with backyard so that can play and run around. This is where it all starts. We decided to put our home up for sale (auction). We set our auction date. Set our open inspection date. Reason we go auction is Melbourne has 83% success rate in auction and generally they get about 15% from that want seller asked for. We also spoke to our mortgage broker on our finances, he told use if we can sell our house for 650K we can go for a new place for 730K to 750K. So everything looks doable. So mum taught the kids to pray during meal time and pray that we can sell the house and blessing of a new home & promotion for mummy and daddy. The kid did it every meal =)

The first open we have good results we have about 8 groups came and view the place and there is 5 people show interests. It was a good start. We all are so excited and start planning our weekends to go for house inspection and attending auctions for our new places. We will start at about 9:00am and go from house to house till about 6:00pm, looking at 10 to 15 houses on Saturday for couple of weeks.

Well all our excitements plunge straight down from high to low and down to depressed when our open for inspection no one comes. It just doesn’t feel right. We still go for inspection and hopping that our next open they will be more people comes. Another week passed. We get even more depressed, all the houses that we like and hopping to get are all over our budget. Some house starting prices is 600K to 650K but when it reached the action day it all closed in the range 830K to 860K. There is no way we can afford it. And horror of all horror there is no one showed up for our inspection again. This is really bad …… somehow we can’t attract people to come to view the house. We still believe that this is a year of FAVOUR and it should get better.

Well we continuing open our house and still no one showed up and we slowly stopped searching for houses …. And guess what my company just retrenched a staff in our team. I would say the whole team got shaken and I felt insecure and felt that I might be the next to go. So I decided to look for jobs. I went for 3 interviews. And the whole interview process takes within 2 to 6 weeks. So life goes on day in day out.

Our auction day finally comes 13th March 2010. There is only 2 groups that came. This is really bad. Coz other auction we went to we are talking minimum 30 to 40 peoples turn up but normally only 2 to 4 interested group that will actually bids for the property. We have 2 groups that is less than 5 peoples. 1 of them wants to buy and the other party just said see how. Auction started no one bids and the one that is interested only offer 550K and agent came in and talk to us and said that is the only offer 550K do we want to consider? Of course we said no we told him that is not what we have in mind is way too low. So we told them we will set price to 600K for private sales. The agent left and we just felt that all our afford for the past few weeks like getting the house ready for inspection and spending hours on the road to searched for houses just wasted and all the excitement just disappeared.

That afternoon I told Ebbie to call the agent and tells him that I decided not to sell anymore gives us the bills and we settled it (adv bills). We roughly calculated that this whole event will cost is about 4.5K to try to sell the house. Advertising bill is about $1500 and then we took a line of credit for the 10% down payment for a new home. The fees come up to $2400 and some lawyer fees that come about $600. Well we tell ourselves take it as tuition fees a fee that going to takes us month to cover it back.

Ebbie talked to Dad about it and I am depressed and thinking about the house should we’re advertise and sell it for 600K? So that we can move on … we still make a good sum even if we sell it for 600K is just that we will not have enough to buy our next property. I can’t sleep that night, my mind just wondering around the whole night. The next morning is Sunday 14th March 2010, getting ready to go to church. I told Ebbie we will have to sit down with the agent again and see how should be proceed if I want to sell it 600K and what our next moved.

During sermon time in church I have called from our agent, so we told him we can’t talk will call him back. After church we called him back and he asked if we can come into his office. Since I wanted to talk to them on our next moved so we decided to go. When we get there and seated down. He shows how the sales contract. He manages to negotiate with the buyer that offers 550K to increase another 40K to 590K. We are shocks we told them not to do anything yesterday afternoon and he still takes his time on Sunday morning to get us the contract. He said is still 10K less to 600K and to help up he decided to cut down his own commission to help us up another 2K so total will be 592K. That is a WOW ! we signed it an sold our house anyway, now we are about 58K short coz we were planning to Sell it for 650K from the starts. But I felt that we should have let go and move on. So we did it.

Now we are homeless and we need to start looking for our home now. We told the agent now help us to find a new home ASAP. We are doing a loan portability we need the old & new home to settle on the same days to save 20K (another long story). Monday 15th March 2010, agents show us a home in Donvale and it has everything we wanted and this house is not on the market yet. The seller just want to test the market and see if the is any interests.

We like it and we decided to make an offer for it. Ebbie asked the agent how much should we offer. He told us not less than 650K and we asked again? How much should we offer? His partner was smiling, giving me the impression (If you asked an agent how much, of course the higher the better, coz that what they earn in commission). Our agent replied just offer 660K and his partner got a shocked looking face. BTW our agent name is David, David told us the seller might counter offer and we shall see what the counter offer is. Tuesday 15th March 2010 David came back and told us the seller said if we are willing to up another 15K to 675K the house is ours. So we agreed to will buy it for 675K. So we sign the contracts. So now we have SOLD our home and BOUGHT a new Home. We are now happy and everything should goes smoothly till the settlement date.

We truly believe that God Favour is upon us. A few days later we meet up with the seller again so I asked them where they are planning to move to. What is their plan? They replied they are now homeless; they are not sure why they sold the house so quickly. Their plan was to test the market and get show of interest then later auctions it. Later we talked to David our agent, he told us the private sales offer is just for us and if we didn’t take it they will not received any other private sale offer and sell it on auction. This is 100% a sign of FAVOUR !!!

The journeys still not ended yet, while our mortgage broker settling our finances for getting a loan for the new house. I got a call from 1 of the company I went for interview earlier; they offered me a Job and better pay. Ryan & Noel prayer all come to pass, they prayed that we can sell the house, buy a new place and get a promotion. It was like everything fits into place perfectly,
We talk to our mortgage broker that I will be switching job will there be any problem with our loan application. His replied YES if I switch jobs there is 90% chance I will not be able to get a loan. Well the good news becomes not so good news. If we can’t get the loan we can’t buy the house and we have to go back in to renting. =( until I have 2 months payslip then look for houses again. and by then we are not sure if we even able to get a good deal. I am 100% sure that God bring us this far he will not abandon us. So I typed my resignation letter plan to submit the next day.

The following day, I spoke to my manager that I want to resign as I had a better offer from the other company. So he asked what if they match it will I stay. I replied I might, and he goes and talk to the director and came back and said the company will match it. will I stay ? I told him I would like to but I know that currently we are not getting much project and I need assurance that I will not be retrenched in next few months. So we go and talked to our director and he give me an assurance that if there is another redundancy it will not be me, in my heart I was Praising God! So I stayed back and I got my increments and assurance for job security. So I have to call the other company that offer me the job that I am very sorry that I can’t accept the offer due to my situation that I am in the middle of switching houses I need my loan to be approved, the director said he understand and he really wanted me to work for their company, he told me just go and settle your stuff and keep in contact and let him know if I am planning to look for jobs again after all my house stuff.

Everyone tells us that switching job & switching house at the same time is CRAZY. Yeah is Crazy for a natural human thinking but not for GOD. I learn this during the Planetshakers 20TEN Conference. When we pray, we pray that HE give us TREE (end result) but God gives us seed. He want us to sowed the seed and watch it GROWS.

I am convinces that from the start God has planned all these for us to get a new house and an increments so that we can pay for the new home. He just want us to be able to see how he do it step by step clearly that his hand is at work and he is in controls and he is provider and we need to do is sowed the seed with FAITH and see it GROWS

God Is Never Late; He's Seldom Early; He's Always Right On Time

Noel's pony ride in Philip Island

It's $20 for a pony ride, unlimited rounds as Long as daddy's willing to walk :)




They did 4 rounds! :)

-- Post From My iPhone

Thomas the train!

Ryan and Noel with Thomas at Emerald Station.


-- Post From My iPhone

The Journey Continues

it has been a while since our last blog and our journey has move on to another level. we sold our home last sunday 14th March 2010. and bought another place 16th March 2010.

this is our current house plan that was SOLD

this is the house plan of the house we just bought. well get ebbie to write how this journey started. as i she can explain in more details.