Saturday

Saturday 26 September was a busy day for us - we were running around till we were really tired.  We started in the morning by decided that we should go for our annual vehicle inspection.  We also had to fill up with our bio diesel as our low fuel indicator had come on.  Then HH decided to he wanted to see a house and we also had a wedding to attend in the evening.

We headed off to do the vehicle inspection and I am pleased to say that Goo passed the whole test with a rating of 29 for the carbon emission test.  Last year, we had 13.5 but that low number was because the Goo had gone for its' regular 10,000 mark servicing and the wonderful people at Renault has cleaned out the engine.  This year, we just merrily drove up and they started the test, stressing our already low fuel by gunning the engine to test the carbon emission - SIGH!

We passed the test with no problems - so whoever out there tells us that Renault vehicles are not road worthy or reliable, please keep your comments to yourself.  Our Goo is agent maintained (engine, servicing and washing/cleaning), serviced on a regular basis (every 10,000km as required) and are owner drivers who take care not to stress the vehicle unnecessarily.  I believe that our Goo will drive in excess of 500,000 km before we have to retire it.

Then we went off to pump our bio diesel before the centre closed.  Those people at the test centre really stressed our fuel by revving the engine till we topped up 50 litres of bio diesel.  Our tank has a capacity of 52 litres so it was cutting it a little fine.

We then headed off to our usual Saturday haunt for laksa yong tau fu - if you ever visit us in Singapore, we will take you there to eat.  It's a lovely corner coffee shop that has not changed in the last 30 years or so.  There are those old fashioned stone tables - now topped to stainless steel covers - with beer umbrellas providing shelter from the heat.  Alas the stone chairs or stools are all gone - most probably from use.  We have been eating there for the past 10 years and it hasn't changed - except for a couple of replacement beer umbrellas.

HH then said we had an appointment to look at a house in Seletar Hills, so we headed off in that area to look at this intermediate single storey terraced house.  We signed the lease and that is another posting for another day. 

We then headed off to Toa Payoh to visit the cobbler - to collect my stuff and to repair a couple of pairs of shoes.  It was a long wait at Toa Payoh - I re-heeled and re-soled 2 pairs of shoes,  and collected 1 handbag sent for cleaning, 1 pair of shoes sent for cleaning, 1 handbag sent for dyeing and another pair of white shoes dyed to navy blue - I spent $250 of all that but I was really happy with the money spent.

We went home to rest for all of 30 minutes before we had to start getting dressed to attend a wedding.  We were  truly tired after that hectic day of running around in the blistering heat.  We got home from the wedding around midnight totally exhausted!

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Bread Machine

 

Sometime ago, we bought a bread making machine from Carrefour under their own label called BLUESKY.  We had previously bought a 4 place setting tabletop dishwasher that worked wonderfully so we thought nothing of buying a bread making machine from them.

Today is a public holiday.  We were home in the afternoon when I decided that I should take that bread maker out of the cupboard and make ourselves some fresh bread from a package by Prima Flour - focaccia to be precise. 

Took out the machine and went - oh no!  I had lost the instruction book.  So I started to hunt down some instructions from the internet on how to start without a book.  I had to find out the maximum capacity for the bread pan.  After measuring water and it showed a 12 cup volume, I proceeded to add the proportion of water and olive oil and the bread mix and yeast to the pan.  I was so excited - in 3 hours we would have some fresh bread to munch on!!

The only thing that would have triggered this blackout would have been a new piece of equipment - the bread maker.  HH the resident engineer switched off the darned thing, started the mains and then I started the bread maker - PLOOP!  INSTANT DARKNESS AND STILLNESS IN THE APARTMENT FROM NO POWER!! We switched to another power point - same reaction.  We sighed, looked at each other and decided to head down to Carrefour to get our exchange or refund or whatever.

 

We drove to Carrefour at Suntec City and went to the Information Counter and queued.  When I got to the head of the line, I told the lady there my story of woe - how I was making bread and it just died on me.  I even showed them my bread maker with the focaccia mix in the pan, still warm from proofing and waiting to be baked.  The ladies behind the counter were truly amazed.  They then started looking for the bar code (because there weren't anymore in stock) and the price to arrange for a refund in vouchers.  I had forgotten how much I had paid for the bread maker and when I had bought it and whether I paid by credit card or by cash.  I didn't have the receipt for the item either!!

Anyway whilst they were hunting around for the information, HH and I went to Hans (the Hainanese cafe) to eat our dinner - that is worthy of another blog! - for dinner .

We went back to the counter after dinner and the customer service lady said that they would give me back vouchers equivalent to the price of the machine ($99.90) and could I let her have 10 cents so that she could give me $100 vouchers as a refund. HH and I took the vouchers and proceeded upstairs to look for a replacement bread maker.  There weren't any in stock so we bought an induction cooker for $39.90 from Home (another Carrefour brand) - the regular price being $99.90.  So we now get a test induction cooker at a reasonable price before we make the switch away from gas and hopefully cleaner cooking.

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What's so good about buying from Carrefour???  Well, they have a one-to-one exchange for faulty appliances within one year of purchase with no questions asked. That's what I call good service with no hassle!
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That Washing Machine

Our new washing machine is a real wonder - it washes 8kg so we do less laundry per week so we use less electricity and water.  It also has a timer where we can set it to start at a certain time.  HH was trying to figure out to start it in the afternoon to harness the "heated" water from the sun, then the water heater in the machine does not have to work so hard.  Hmm ...

We haven't tried the dryer function yet because it spins at 1400 rpm so most of the stuff comes our nearly dry.  I think it can go straight to the ironing board, but I am too lazy to do any ironing these days.

OK, it was money well spent even though we went broke just to buy it!

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New Washing Machine

 

This is our new washing machine that is also a dryer.  Two weekends ago, the old washing machine just died on us - we think the motor finally burned out after 7 years.  HH and I contemplated repairing the motor, but figured it was just too much trouble and decided to buy a new one.  Our old machine was a narrow top load Elba machine that had a front load movement and washed only 5 kg of laundry with a max spin speed of 600 rpm.  This new thing is from LG, washes 8 kg and dries 4 kg and has a maximum spin speed of 1400 rpm, so our laundry comes out drier but needs to be hung out to dry.  Sometimes, we also need a dryer, so we decided to get a 2in1 machine.

We could not make up our minds on what we wanted - we spotted an advertisement by Courts for a Sanyo machine that was within our budget that was tilted so we thought we could fit that into the downstairs bathroom that was the designated laundry area.  We could not fit anything in there other than the old Elba or similar type of machine with a footprint of 40cmx60cm. 

I like the front load type of movement or ferris wheel machines as I think they wash cleaner than those top load machines.  We were limiting our choices when we went hunting.  We could look at Bosch, Panasonic,  Whirlpool, Brant, LG and Samsung in front loaders.  The awful part was that their space requirement was 60x60cm. 

The new machines on the market are totally amazing - there's air wash, silver nano wash, ion wash and we were scratching our heads on what to buy.   After walking around Best Denki and Harvey Norman, we settled on this LG that seemed relatively simple compared to those high flying machines - just wash and dry!

Poor HH had to re-arrange the whole kitchen just to fit this new machine in our home.  The cooker was moved, the free standing shelf was moved, the cupboards moved - the only thing that stayed in place was the kitchen sink!!  I couldn't too much to help him because I wasn't feeling well and spent most of Sunday in bed whilst he set himself to rr-arranging the kitchen.

The machine was delivered yesterday and since then, we have been catching up with our laundry.  The good thing is that we can wash more - the bad thing?  We are running out of space to hang the enlarged load :p