Entries Tagged as 'General'

Isis repairs almost completed

The car repair workshop, Mova, reported that the car is almost ready, having been re-assembled. Photo below is from workshop manager.

Still need wheels alignment check, road test after alignment and water leakage test. Then to check if the wing mirrors can be repaired cheaply, as the motors burnt out a few years ago.

Probably get the car back early next week. I will need to fix the spoiler myself, as the ‘holes’ in the mounting tape for the bike rack must be cut to fit, the mechanics wouldn’t know where.

Update on the Isis repairs

YowCH visited Mova workshop with Esther and David for an update on the car repairs after the accident on 30 August. Mova’s workshop is far-far-away at Fan Yoong Road (Boon Lay industrial area).

The panel beating, welding and body alignment has been completed. The car is in the spray-shop and the parts are in various stages of painting (touch-up putty, polishing, primer, painting). Here’s the view of the boot, looks rather well repaired:

And the inside has been stripped for repairs of the parts and for painting.

The door has been imported whole from Japan, including the rear window. We were a little worried about the loss of the 3M tinting, but this window comes with the original Japan tint.

The rear bumper was crushed, this is the new piece. The front bumper was repaired, touched up and painted.

Lastly, the right fender has been bent back to shape, touched up and primer done, to be painted soon.

It will be about 1 more week before the car is ready for collection. Probably about $15,000 in repair costs. Esther and dAvid had a great time learning about panel beating, welding and painting.

YowCH’s HTC One M8: Android 4.4 problem

Trouble: Kit Kat (Android 4.4) restricts apps from writing and accessing the SD Card directly as a form of security. You can Google “Kit Kat SD Card” and learn about this issue. One example is here.

After transferring most of the files and data from the “Desire X” to the new “One M8″, YowCH spent the night shifting manually data from Whatsapp, YouVersion Bible and Docs-to-go files. This is problem as the data will reside on the phone and when the phone crashes, the data is not on SD card hence not independent!

Rental car cannot start, changed to Stream

This morning, the rental Wish cannot start, probably starter motor died as battery is fine.

After 2.5 hours of towing and getting a replacement, we now got a black Honda Stream, newer unit and nice drive.

Rental car after accident

We are now driving a rather old rental Toyota Wish, rented from Mova (the workshop for the car and also for the insurance claims) as the post-accident Isis will be in the workshop for 2 weeks plus.

Accident on AYE, boot crushed

YowCH drove Esther to church on Saturday afternoon, and after dropping her, met with a multi-car accident at about 3:00pm on the AYE towards City, just under the Buona Vista flyover. Car 1 (blue taxi) braked hard (probably due to the other 4-car accident further to the front). Car 2, silver car, swerved right and avoided the taxi. Car 3, YowCH, braked, swerved left and was hit from behind by car 4 (yellow taxi). When YowCH got down, there was actually car 5 (maroon taxi) which hit car 4. There was only YowCH in the car at the time, and the speed was about 80-90km/h as the road was rather crowded, with good distance between cars.

The damage on the blue taxi was minimal, some paint scratches from YowCH’s front right bumper. The yellow taxi’s head was pushed in, having crumpled our boot. But the worst seemed to be the maroon taxi, with the hood popped and the radiator leaking.

On survey, the external damages:
Rear – tailgate and bumper.
Front – bumper right (scratches), fender bent a little, rim scratches.

Internal damages:
Rear – floor bent, seat stuck, plastic panels bent and broken, reverse light wire damaged.

Thank God no injuries, and all involved will report to insurance to take care of it. Car repair will take 2 weeks or so, and YowCH will rent a car in the meantime. We are also thankful to all the friends who offered assistance upon hearing this.

Esther’s piano grade 3, bed bugs killed

Thank God, Esther got Merit for her Grade 3 piano. Probably lost most points in the sight-reading section.

We lifted up the bed, saw a nest of bugs and eggs, and proceeded to steam them all to death! At least 95% cleared, sleeping in peace now.

Follow-up killing of bed bugs

Our bed bug problems are not yet over, although the intensity has gone down. Esther’s room is cleared, Joseph’s bed (upper bunk) is cleared and David’s bed (lower bunk) has some. Samuel’s bed has one or two every now and then, but the worst is our bed, and we get numerous bites every night.

After a few round of poisoning, we moved on to buying a $100 steamer:

This is a typical clothes steamer, used for steam-straightening of clothes, but works well on the bed bugs. You point the steam at them, they breathe the 100°C steam and cooks themselves to death. Cooks even the eggs.
Here you see Grace, Esther and David hunting bed bugs. Nice to see the bugs dropping dead when we apply the steam.

Hopefully, we eradicate the bugs within the next few days.

Dinobots!

We have finally opened the Dinobots and they are now standing proud in our glass cabinet.


July updates – Samuel, LV, food, toys

A little update for early-July:

Samuel’s teeth is erupting, and he feeds happily on durians!

Learning Vision KKH is moving to Alfa Centre (across Bukit Timah Road) as KKH needs more hospital space. They had already moved several admin departments away, and now the childcare has to go. The Centre is on ground floor, and only 350m away but without covered walkway, it can be tricky during rainy days. Taxi is also a big concern. Driving distance is about 2.0km more!


Here are some views of the inside, Samuel is already using the facilities during the open house on 5 July, that’s Joseph in his new classroom, the new toilets and an underground (basement) playground.

After the Learning Vision open house, we had lunch at Tekka Market, nice raw-fish porridge and Sri Lankan rice.

Lastly, our friend, Paul, brought back from the USA our Transformers orders, the Transformers4 Dinobots (Grimlock, Strafe, Slug, Slash and Scorn), Bumblebee and Drift. Half the price compared to buying in Singapore, and some of the models are not even sold here yet.