Pre-fab Roof

These pictures are taken 2 weeks ago. Our pre-fab roof truss arrived in a trunk from Sacramento. The roof dimensions are customized to the house. I was so stressed when trying to finalize the measurement before the framing of the new side complete.

The trusses are pretty cool, it came in a trunk as follows.


Then the operator uses the crane on the front of the truck to lift each segment of the trusses and set them onto the house.


Once they are set onto the roof, they have to be properly secured to prevent them from falling. After each segments are properly secured, the house looks like this.


After that, the contractors spent the next of 2 days installing the trusses piece by piece. That's when Shirley Ave turned from a flat into a pitched roof. Plywood is then installed on top of the trusses, then they stapled the waterproof material on top of the plywood just in time before the winter storm arrives last week. Phew!



While that's all happening, someone just chills...

Framing

These pictures are taken 2 weeks ago when we finished the framing in the new part of the house. Note that the front yard has shrunk.

Pumpkin Carving

What to carve what to carve?

Meeku and Rafiki...
Matt and my pumpkin
Derrick's pumpkin

Amy's pumpkin
The artists with their jack o lanterns

Nangka

Choon Ping and Pei-Sun brought over a nangka (jackfruit) today....

At the store, the checkout clerk thought it was a durian.... and charged them $1.49/lb instead of $1.99/lb....

Look at Pei-Sun cutting up the delicious fruit... We all enjoyed it very much.... It's my first time eating nangka in the US....

Ice-cream

Have you tried these before? Ching Tji says yummy..yummy.
We'll bring you some to HK when possible, okie?

Foundation Done!

Some updates for our renovation project....

After all the sewage and other piping was in place and inspected, the progress for the foundation nearly came to an end as well. The re-bars & other embedded elements were secured in place and inspected by the City last Thursday, before they could pour the concrete in. A special inspection was done on last Saturday as well... meaning our structural engineer came on site to directly supervise the installation of all threaded rods/holdowns into the existing concrete. As shown on the picture - retrofitted sill place anchor bolts into existing concrete with the used of epoxy adhesives.

So Monday, which happened to be Columbus Day, was the official day for the completion of the foundation. The concrete mixer truck came at 3pm sharp. In about 7 minutes, the concrete was poured from the mixer truck into a concrete pumping truck that was connected to a long flexible pipe. The concrete then came out of the tube that was moved, by hand, and by a guy with a remote-control device hanging around his waist (to control the amt of flowing concrete), where a bunch of guys with various tools spread and smooth the concrete. It was quite fun to watch the whole process and indeed every efficient to transport large quantities of concrete over long distances. The last time I saw the process of filling in concrete was loonngg time ago back in Malaysia... using wheelbarrows and buckets. :-/ Shown below was one of the location to be filled with concrete. Can you recognize which part of the house is this? ... thanks to our decision regarding moving the toilet! So mUCh work! ...breaking the concrete, digging, excavating, piping, and finally filling in the concrete.... yes, it's the bathroom & the office! It looks like crap indeed.
After covering up all the pipes, they went ahead to fill in portion of the kitchen/garage foundation. Below is the picture of the foundation at the new addition area.It took them about 30 mins to finish 50% of the area, and another 30 mins to complete the other half.
Another 5-10mins to smooth out the whole area... there you go, our new foundation was done at 4:20pm on Monday! Total of 2 truckload concrete was used for our project. Apparently they dug 2 inches deeper than they should. So our new concrete foundation is 6" thick instead of 4".
I came back again in the evening to pick up mails... and this was how it looked on Monday late afternoon.
When I was about to leave... I saw this 'thing' hanging in the middle of the air at about one foot away from my face. !&%^!#$!@*!! It was a freaking HUGH spider!! The stomach was about an inch big! With the legS and all... it's about 2 inches wide!!! I HATE spider!! Of course... I 'sent him to heaven'.
When I got to the construction site the following day, around 10:45am. they already had the exterior framing done! No photos though... forgot to bring camera. :P But here's a photo of ChoonPing relaxing... after looking at the photos that I took last night.

2 weeks later

We started our renovation exactly 2 weeks ago. Now the demolition is done. The roof is off. And yes, the house looks like was just hit by a hurricane. The demolition actually didn't take very long. It probably took 2 days to strip the siding of the house. Removing the roof took another 2-3 days. So all in all slightly > 1 week for demolition.

With the roof off, the view is very nice. It's like a big skylight!

I lost count, I think we are now on our 4th load.



The front wall was demolished in about 2 days.



We have proceeded laying out new pipes for the house. Preparation work for the foundation has also been started.

Day 1 - Demolition

After all the preparation and moving this week. The demolition started today. Pictures were taken ~3 hours into the process.



The patio trellis has been removed.

Look at the picture before.

Transplant

We are almost ready for our home renovation project. One of the most challenging thing is saving the plants. So last weekend we transplanted this 6ft tall Camelia plant in front of our house.

2 hours later...
Moved it into a pot! Hope it survives...

Why does Rafiki think he can get away with anything?

June 30 to August 31

This has been an unusually busy year for me. Wedding (not mine! Ah girl and Matt's), travel, work, ... as I looked back, I now realize I have traveled closed to 90,000 miles.

While some may think this is cool (as I once thought), it's rather tiring. Jetlag, lack of appetite, homelessness, loneliness, etc. Of course the upside of heavy traveling means top status at hotel chains, airlines, etc. With the latest trip to NY, I finally made Emerald with oneworld alliance, allowing me to check in at first-class desk and use their lounge even when I flew heavily discounted economy class. ;-)

After attending the wedding in late June, I rushed back to NY to get ready for my ultimate move to Hong Kong. Attached are some pictures taken since June 30, that provided some insights to my life over the past 2 months:

New York

View from my apartment rooftop

Movers packing up my “stuffs”

With a Platinum status at SPG, I was able to score some nice upgrades during my stay in NYC:

Room with a view at the W Union Square

A suite at W the Court (that's bigger than my previous apartment), with a view of the Chrysler building.

Multiple suites at the Sheraton NY, with a small view of Times Square and Central Park. Also received a bottle of wine and fruits after an issue that came up during my stay.

I have stayed in NY for many years, with the last five years at my beloved new apartment close to Times Square. So it absolutely crushed my heart to leave NYC for an extended period of time.

Enroute to Hong Kong

Since CX introduced flat seat in their business class last year or so, I've been fortunate enough to be on them on numerous occasions. The flat bed was quite comfortable, but the food was not that good. I missed the good food and excellent service on JAL.

Hong Kong

Upon arriving Hong Kong, I was put up in a temporary service apartment in Lan Kwai Fong. Apartment size was good, but no where close to the 1,000 sq ft they claimed!

Since I needed to get a new cell phone, I decided to go with the iPhone offered by “three”. Couldn't get the 16G phone as there's a waiting list. I am not a very patient guy, so 8G it is.

Bangkok

In exactly a week, I had to go to Bangkok. Attached was a view from my club room. I loved Bangkok, and their Thai service. But what I enjoyed most was the mangosteen in my room! After having one, I couldn't resist but went out to get a bunch more from the wet market that night.

Singapore

Singapore had changed a lot. In fact, I really enjoyed my short time there as well. I was at the Fullerton Hotel so it was a very short walk to the Merlion. The exterior of the hotel reminded me of Hotel Excelsior in Rome (shown in the third picture).

Hong Kong

The Chinese food in HK was mouth-watering delicious. I have found my new favorite dish ... the “flying goose” of Yung Kee. I also had to take picture of the T-shirt of Tsui Wah since it reminded me of NY.

Equestrian Event

Since the Olympic's equestrian event was held in HK (Shatin), I was able to go watch the jumping event.

Enroute to Tokyo

The next morning, I left for Tokyo. I was able to fly my first international first class ever due to a very unique situation. Cathay's first class was truly amazing! And, what surprised me was that the seat was really at the front of the airplane. I wondered if the pilots were up on the upper level? CX's first class had the most beautiful airplane restroom I ever seen, with a few windows looking out to the blue sky when you fly.

Tokyo

None of my pictures of Tokyo came up good enough to be posted here. But I did enjoy the Tokyo Conrad, which had good service and a huge room.

Enroute to New York

This was the highlight of my trip. I was very excited to try out JAL’s new JAL Suite in their First Class. Service, as expected was impeccable. I changed into the relaxed dress provided before the plane taking off and was able to truly relax my flight. When I was ready to go to bed, the flight attendant would come make my bed. They would bring along a tempur-pedic mattress to put on top of my flat bed, and along with that a down duvet and another down pillow.

While the experience was superb, I found CX's first class suite to be better designed than JAL's. I was suprised I would come to this conclusion.

New York, New York!

I didn't expect to be returning to NY this soon. I always love New York!

Taipei

I spent last week in Taipei and fell in love with the country. Its people were very friendly, and the food was cheap and good. I stayed at the Hyatt by Taipei 101, so I couldn't help but took a few shots of the world's tallest building. I also frequented 3 different night markets.

On my way back yesterday, I ran into street demonstration, so I snapped a shot from my taxi cab.


Back to Hong Kong

Now I am back here .... and still suffering from jet lag!