Saturday, June 29, 2013

Good quote

Renowned Jungian psychologist James Hillman once said,"You have to give up the life you have to get to the life that's waiting for you.'

Complete power of our lives

Whatever our lives are right now, we have allowed it to happen. By choice to endure or to change, is the only way to gain full responsibility and power over our own lives.

My new house to furnished

I got my house in 2nd October 2011. And I haven't been able to post the before and after pictures.

Let me try to recall the entire process. :)


These are pictures of our empty new house. It is a new house, so there are many things that we could skip already. So its not as difficult as renovating an old house. The walls are all plastered straight, the white paint is new, the windows let lots of sunlight in, which is one of my favorite parts of the house. :)

This is the main door.

I invite Goddess KuanYin in to help me bless the house before I go in. :))

The view of our living room. I love it, gives me a big area of sky that I can just stare at for hours. :)


The back of my living room.

Sneak peek into my small kitchen.

The view at my kitchen area. I love this view as well coz I can see Guang Ming San from here. 

A close up view on the blocks and beyond.

Given by Qing Jian, on electrolux microwave and oven.

I'm taking a picture in the masterbedroom toilet. Yes you heard me right, masterbedroom TOILET. So bright with windows right???

Master bedroom toilet too.

Master bedroom.

Common toilet

Common room 02. As you can see we already have some white shelves delivered to our place and some Ikea boards(I think they used to be doors of wardrobes that we bought for $20 per piece for our bay window)

Common room 01: we already have the curtains and fans up. :)



And after long months of thinking, discussing and debating, we finally finished furnishing our flat! :))

Our living room. We used a beige color sofa, and a light cream color wallpaper. I want to have a feeling of "Home" when I come back, so neutral colors were adopted. 

This dining table is from Cellini. Glass top with wood-backed chairs. The wood fits our TV consol beautifully. And the dining light that we picked out fits the theme simply beautifully. Although the dining light looks small in this picture, but its actually nicely sized with the table, but its position is a bit off, so we did some adjustments with the lighting later on with the electrician.

As for the kitchen, there wasn't much to be done, as just added the kitchen light, cheaply from Ikea. It looks like it belonged there even before we came in.


This is a closer up look of the TV consol. We got this also from Cellini. Their wood is beautiful and we could not resist getting this piece.

The 2 side lamps adds to the sleek looking TV with the minimum frame like a picture frame, and sets the mood to chill out and feel of the hotel rooms that I have been to before.

Overlooking out to the view. Creamy pastel color curtains day curtains (thin fabric so as to let the light though, I love my living to be bright and airy) was chosen to also give the mood of soothing feel. When the wind is blowing, the curtain sway with the wind, and I get sleepy sitting on the couch!



Our sofa is a little big, and the space to put a table in between the TV consol and the sofa is rather tight, so Naguchi table was chosen as a piece in our living room as its made of glass, transparent, and doesn't look too bulky. I love the wooden legs beneath the Naguchi table that is spreaded out so artfully yet balances so well. 

The white carpet was chosen to put beneath the Naguchi table to give a sense of function area, to link the sofa with the table as a piece and to add to the light, airy feel of the whole place.

Master bedroom: I initially wanted to buy a woody bedframe to unify most of our furniture, but decided to reuse back our old bed frame instead. We bought 2 Ikea carpets and put them side by side. As a big one would costs almost twice the price, I remember we got them both for a steal at only around $200 that covers the entire bedroom floor! I love the bedsheets that have pictures of bamboo and the lush materials for the serene soothing feel for my sleeping room.

LED spotlights was used at the window bay so I can use it when I'm up reading. The curtain fabric we chose a black-out goldy color one tone fabric, but with some wrinkles to give it some lush texture. We also added a bay window cushion tailor made that costs around $400, which is totally worth it.

The wallpaper we chose was a brown color with a slight texture to it, giving a feel of how I normally liked in hotel rooms.

I'm a Buddhist, and I love water feature, thus, when I saw this water feature in I WANNA GO HOME, I felt that this is it, as this costs only around $120! My friend came to my house and thought this was made of copper and thought this was really expensive. Hhahaha, I have a good vibe of getting expensive looking things with a cheap price tag! ;)

My balcony, sometimes I just like to lay here to relax and chill and stare out into the different building lighting and see the moon and stars above.

We got this chairs at Ikea As-is corner, for around a cheap $50+ each. And the Ikea table costs only $25.

This is one of my favorite piece in my house. Guess what is this space initially?? Its a window! That overlooks out into a blank wall, complete with bay windows! So we thought, since the window looks out into the blank wall doesn't make much sense, we decided to change this space into an altar. On top I have my Amituofo in the middle, accompanied with Di Zang Wang Pu Sha on the left, and Zi Zai Kuan Yin on the right. And also a small Zambala slightly in the front.



The milo color was chosen as a background after long hours of debating which is the best color. It brings out the whiteness on the Amituofo in the middle and both Boddhisattvas on the right and left as well. I have a friend who came by to our house the other day, and commented that this is the most stylish and new type of altar that she has ever seen. Made her feel like having one too in her home. LOL. :)

And now for the Ikea doors that we bought from As-Is corner for $20 per piece.
Wanna know what we did with it??
Da-dang!! We asked the carpenter to help us cut it and glue it properly to our bay windows as he was making our altar. This extra bay window fixing is completely free, so we got both bay windows covered nicely for $40! An actual bay window would cost around $400 to cover with some wood. 2 bay windows would costs around $800. And we got both ours for only $40. I'm still amazed at this super idea.

Overall, we completed our renovation complete with furnishings for a steal at under $30k! It includes everything, even the mattresses, TVs and sofas, vacuum cleaner and washing machine and even lightings, etc!

So now I am helping my friend revamp his place. :) Hopefully it turns out well and I shall post the pictures here on my blog. But as we are under a very tight budget, there is very little things that we could change. But I'm helping him to change it to a better, more comfortable environment as much as I can. :)

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Lesson that I learnt from Trading - I can't handle my fear

Recently, I was out of a job, my previous company went bankrupt, and I got a contract job that promised to turn me into a permanent job soon, but it didn't materialize either, so I told myself that I would just try to go into trading.

So these couple of weeks I just went into contra trading. And I lost terribly in it.
Whilst losing money, I finally realized some things about myself.
Its really all over my life, as I begin to see, but its really apparent when it comes to trading - money.

1) I can't deal with my fear to think rationally.
2) I don't have enough faith in divine help.

So many times, I always go to one of the websites to look for help (its a divine lot website, I always believe the truly sincere can definitely get help from divine on all matters). And several times, during the contra trade, I would ask for advice. This particular trade yesterday, I bought in at $0.570 on Monday. But it begin dropping on Tuesday. I drew a lot, and on the money part, it says - "You won't be much affected, and if you are hoping to make big buck out of it, you won't be able to make much out of it though."

So I thought, maybe then I can at least sell at $0.575, meaning I only earn $40 after the contra money.
(At least this part I did decipher correctly)

Then it suddenly dropped to $0.555, and lower.. I tried to go chanting to distract myself from selling it and making a loss. Halfway through the chanting, the immense fear of losing a big bulk of my savings came.. I can't handle it, I actually stopped my chanting halfway, and made a beeline for the internet. Once I saw the price dropped to $0.545 $0.550, I panicked and got angry and cut everything. Realizing my loss of $560, including my trading fees.

And the very next day, this particular counter went right back up to $0.575 $0.580.

And I thought, wow the lot is really accurate.
But I didn't have enough faith to hold through.

And I stopped my chanting to cut my losses. I can't deal with my fear and have a leap of faith.

So after these few weeks of contra trading, I have decided to go back to my long term investing.
Anyways, my first lot about my contra trading is an analogy to a person who is wealthy and retired, but decided to open a restaurant with a group of friends because of the boredom of retirement. And in the end his money is all cheated. And he lives with regret.

自足常乐。 That's what's the lot is all about. :)

Sunday, June 02, 2013

看破,放下

“看破,放下 - 能解决很多人生的问题。
但不是每个人都做得到。

如果不能看破,看淡。
如果不能放下,放轻松。”