Dream House ... and nightmares

See my sad face? I have collected alot of "junk" over the last 10 years or so, since coming back from the US. Been staying in this rented double-storey semi-D since 1995 May. So that's 12 years renting a house. At one time, my relatives (especially) and friends kept asking why I don't buy my own house. Afterall, civil servants pay only 4% interest on the housing loan. Belief it or not, I didn't want to buy a house which we don't like to live in. The ones we like are too expensive. OK, OK, my brother-in-law says I am just trying to rationalise my irrational thinking. Well, I finally bought our dream house. It's so big my daughter is getting a lot of exercise cleaning the windows. Talking about windows, I have lots of complaints about architects who design buildings without thinking about how difficult it is to maintain it. We are still figuring out how to clean the windows on the first floor without resorting to spiderman antics. BTW, old newspapers really gets the glass windows sparkling clean.

Anyway back to the sour face (up there). On my right hand is over 15 years of 3.5 inch diskettes which I have finally decided I should send to the recycling facility. That's about one foot high. My daughter commented that all that could go into a tiny thumb drive (or USB drive or pen drive, whatever you want to call it). On my left hand is an old mass-storage device with a capacity of only 44 MB! Yes, the world is shrinking. Hey, that ink-jet printer in the box was bought in 1992 in Seattle. That was used to print my Ph.D. thesis. Hey, shouldn't I keep that? Nah ...

And bags ... too many to count. On the left are many from my attendance at conferences. Conference organisers should stop giving people bags. Just give them a USB drive will all the papers in it. So, those are going to the recyling centre. Those on the right? Maybe we will keep them.

Am on annual leave, cleaning up the new house and moving stuff over in stages. We do it the quick and easy way. Since the new house is just across the main road on the other side, we just take the clothes from the cupboard (hangers and all), put them in big bags, then quickly drive over to the new house and put them on the new cabinets before they get crumpled. Neat huh? I can imagine the nightmare of having to neatly pack and cushion all the breakables in boxes and then moving in a big lorry.

Talking about more nightmares. Our contractors and construction workers are the worst in terms of habits. They buy takeaway food, eat at my house and throw the styrofoam containers in my garden like it was a rubbish dump. Same goes with plastic drinks bags. Cigarette butts. They drip paint and cement on the floor ... but don't worry (they say) they will clean it up later (right!). Do you know that electricians get shocked (electrocuted) all the time? The one working in my house had to go for a CT scan the other day when he got zapped (not in my house, not that it makes any difference).

More nightmares? Have you ever noticed how much your house will cost by the time you pay up, 15 or 25 years down the road? About double. So if you buy say, a RM350,000 house, plus interest and insurance, you will end up paying about RM700,000 or more. Does that make sense? Who's making the money? And we still thinking real estate is a hedge against inflation. Or worst, real estate as an investment. How are the future generation going to afford houses?

Photos courtesy of Vivian.