I Live Opposite Fong Seng Now roflcopter lolz

I'm enamored with my new room. Totally enamored.

The last time I shifted house was a good 13 and a half years ago, at the end of 1994, settling down just in time to start my primary school life in Tampines. The only memory I have of shifting was when we arrived at our then shiny-new apartment in Tampines, still huge by HDB standards (executive flat... in other words 5.5 room flat.) There were few things to be shifted over - the most obvious moved item was the ancient fridge. Most of the Tampines apartment's furnishing had been bought, not brought. And since we were kids barely discerning of our surroundings, our parents let us play with our construction toy track set in the extended hall area. You remember those - the one where it was a large track, with stations all round, and this little cart would take on different top bodies at different locations of the track to assume a variety of roles - crane, delivery truck, tractor, etc. We'd just set it up, flick the cart's switch on, set it on the track, and gaze at it for an hour or two.

What my parents might or might not have realized, not really interested to find out, was that staying at such a huge place for over a decade would mean filling such a huge place to the brim with items - things we loved, things we kept just in case, things we couldn't bear to throw, things we couldn't be bothered to throw. And when it was finally time to move, to an inevitably smaller apartment (it's futureproofing, not a housing upgrade), it created many days of nagging and downright bad moods. When crunch time came, I went into such a mode of remorseless disposal that I never thought I was capable of. Except for a couple of exceptionally sentimental items, like the 2004 Victoria School yearbook (grad year), items more than one year old were thrown without much thought. I had to make around 4 trips to the disposal chute for the waste I dug out of my wall cupboards alone. I was sorely wrong when I thought I could fit everything I wanted nicely into a single box. Turned out to be two boxes of belongings, another box and a bag full of clothes. And I arrived at my new condominium, Varsity Park, smack opposite NUS Arts (as well as Fong Seng hohoho) to find the various bags and boxes of items that my father had brought in earlier.

Now my room was really filled.

All in all it took about 4 hours to unpack everything, including masterfully sashimi-slicing through ten layers of shrink wrap to get to my table, desktop computer, and speaker system.

Oh my God speaking of speaker system. Being the kind of idiot needy for music to keep me company (yes I'm lonely fock off.), my 2.1 Creative speaker system was the first appliance to be powered. After bickering hard with my mother and coming to a compromise, I finally got to put my subwoofer on the floor where it belonged. Well, near the floor - a stool was the compromise. My mother did not want any unsweepable/unmoppable areas. Previously, it sat at the edge of my table. Result? I have to turn the bass to 8 (max level 10) for decent bass, only to walk out of the room and hear the subwoofer thumping my house down. Here on the floor, level 6 bass depending on the music can get uncomfortable. NTT would know how much bass I need to make me uncomfortable. :)

If you want to hear the difference it makes, you're welcome into my room, by appointment only, and I'll play Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture for you. The one with cannon blasts at the end. I kid you not, the bass shakes my bed.

Having a clean table to start over with also gave me a valuable opportunity to position things from scratch, and this time, I gave optimal priority to placing my speakers far enough apart so that I can have a decent stereo effect to speak of. The moment I set my computer up, I had a bright idea of rewatching Advent Children, what with the newfound effectiveness of my speaker system. So I duly lowered my Roman blinds, finetuned Windows Media Player's TruBass and WOW effects, cranked the volume up, and hit play.

It was so loud it hurt, but Ave Maria it hurt so good.

In a somewhat impulse buy, except without buyers' remorse (unless you count remorse over losing like 16k), my family spent quite a sum on Simmons beds. The bed with the level of firmness I liked best had only Queen size, and I made my parents buy that by some magic of pouting and a huge show of exasperation. But I'm really really thankful and grateful that they bought it. After months of fleeting doubts, I finally see for myself that losing a bedside table in favor of a larger bed was quite the right thing to do. The bed played quite a significant part in loosening my jaw when I walked into my room the morning I moved in.

The only thing left that kept me from unpacking completely was that my father had yet to drill holes in the walls for my bookshelf and shelf. The shelf for obvious reasons - it's suspended, and the bookshelf because it would otherwise be frightfully wobbly, and might just keel over and krush me like a cockroach when I reach up to grab a book.

Quite a few things haven't arrived - the dining table, my dad and brother's computer/study tables, and the sofa set. Again, I made a big fuss when my mother initially wanted to stick to the fengshui master's recommended orientation of my bed facing the window, so that when I slept I could gaze far away into the sky. I quite nearly went into a complete freak out when I saw that she was perfectly ready to get me a new table instead of shift my old one in. Luckily with my dad's coaxing I got my way. Saved them quite some money too.

As for the TV, jeez, Standard Definition looks atrocious on HDTVs exactly as advertised in electronics stores. And I say this with a Samsung HDTV, which apparently has one of the world's leading upscaling firmware.

I however, opened my big spoilt mouth, and my parents bought a HDMI cable for my XBOX 360 (yes I've finally opened it). After having to gaze at Standard Definition all day while tuning the TV channels (parents didn't want cable), I felt my techie heart sigh with ease when I finally saw blessed 1080p resolution. Halo 3? Sweetness.

Oh right! Now that I've shifted, I finally get to pull my silver carousel musical box out that I bought from Hokkaido. It's lovely, I'm looking at it as I type. It was relatively budget though, so it doesn't have that convenient stop lever at the side, and once you wind it it plays through until it runs out of energy. Would have been good if the LED lights went off after awhile too. If I ever fell asleep while watching it I would probably wake up to a melted carousel.

Enamored with my new room. Enamored with my new home. Enamored enamored enamored.

UPDATE
Hokay so the intended Internet network is up now. Thank God for the thoughtful integration of a telephone/data switchbox. In other words, my router sits in my store room, and is technically able to connect via 100mbps Ethernet to every single computer in the three rooms and my Xbox in the living room through the wall socket, without wires crossing the house and threatening to kill you when you trip while holding a... um glass bottle of vinegar. Surprisingly though, when made to do it, the Mio Box-branded 2wire router can send out a pretty strong wireless signal from a simple option on its configuration page. I'm getting a stable 76% strength with my router in the store room with door closed.

Also, after abit of bickering, I reluctantly agreed to change my table's orientation to face the wall, instead of my bed. Reason being my parents feel that it poses a great hazard when the window is left open, and rain pours in, straight down the back of my desktop monitor. Even I have abit of a hard time reaching in to close the window. They will have a harder time, plus they want to do periodic cleaning too. I was pissed that I can't sit on my bed to watch videos now, and that my sound system is facing a whole 90degrees away from me (audiophile horror), but I guess my room was so small, it didn't turn out to be too bad.

Also, of course, my shelf has since been secured, and I've arranged my display items, mini-one-shelf-favorable-titles-only-library of books, and... miscellaneous stuff over six shelves in total.

Anyway. Enamored.