G Does Gardening

It's hard to appreciate gardening when one was young - it's sweaty, dirty, itchy, and the plants never show any sign of affection, or can never be taught any tricks. But as one gets older, one appreciates gardening for being one of the very few predictable things in the world - it follows a natural course, responds to known environmental conditions, and unlike many endeavors in life - your hard work always translates to results that can be seen. There's also a philosophical aspect of gardening that's fascinating: it's an attempt to guide the course of nature in a humble way. You can't rush things, and you can't go overboard in changing the environmental factors - but nonetheless you bend the great forces of nature in a humble, patient manner, to serve you. It's both empowering and humbling.

G enjoys gardening too. But only the part where she gets to play with water, or shovel the soil.

The little adult

And so she has come to age, some one and a half decade early. She insisted to choose her own cloths, to put on glasses, like dad, and to carry a handbag, like .... eh ... even mom hardly carries a handbag, so I wonder where she got that idea from. Don't assume the bag is just a superficial accessory - in the bag are her toy mobile phone, comb, and other ladies' stuffs.

The teacher at school told mom just last week that G acted and spoke like a little adult. Today, G is still only 2 years and 7 months old.

Another milestone for G - schooling!

There are a few major events in the kids' growing up process that parents never forget - the first time they flip over, the first step, the first word, and of course, the first day of school. Just two and a half years go, I held in my arm, a new born, warm and bloody, fresh from the oven, so to speak, all tightly swaddled up; and now, I am looking at a little girl, in her freshly washed over-sized uniform, carrying a little school bag, filled with a fresh set of cloths, fruits, a water bottle, and boundless excitment and anticipation, all geared up to attend school. Life ahead is a journey of making discoveries, building wisdom, experiencing both joy and grief. It's a going to be a long journey, and having been through that ourselves, how we wish we could walk all the difficult paths for her, and leave her with only the joyous moments. Alas, but she has to walk that path by herself.

And so today she takes her first step out of her comfort zone. And out of ours too.

Discovering the kitchen

 

"Every corner hides a new adventure - I just knew it! ...."

G exploring the new kitchen.

Handwriting

G attempts to write, mimicking Mama's handwriting. On the left is Mama's series of binaries. On the right is G's copy.

G insisting to help

I've noticed how families are getting disconnected these days. During family dinners, you can see each member fully engrossed in his/her own activities - sms'ing on the phone, playing games on the psp, or simply looking dazed and disinterested. Doing things together as a family is now a premium activity.

So I really can't complain when G insisted to help with the window cleaning. This will surely not last forever. In a few years' time, I would have to beg her to turn down the volume of her iPod, or to go out for a family dinner together, or to have a few words during family outings.

I treasure and appreciate every minute of this.

Sparing with contractors

In the last few months we have dealt with a lot of contractors, and I've learnt a lot about how they operate. Not that I am capable of dealing with them without getting my head bitten off by now, but at the very least, I am learning to smell a rat when there's one.

The quality of work differs widely. Our door subcontractor ranked right at the bottom. He was known as the 'butcher'. All the doors were literally mangled into their assigned places, and you can make out how he did it by following the trails of battle scars around the house. My suggestion for him is that he should try his career with more malleable materials next time. You know how frustrating it is to deal with someone that constantly try to meet the expectation by the slightest margin - and if he can't, he tried to lower the expectation? Yep, that's exactly how we felt.

Then there are contractors that considered every appliance comes with loads of un-needed parts that should go straight from the packaging to the dustbin. Oh, so that would be my electrical and plumbing contractors. They left over a trail of unopened mounting tabs, screws, and parts and pieces from the lights and bathroom accessories that we bought. Then when you looked up, you saw the light was mounted with ugly protruding counter sunk screws, instead of the pan-heads that came with the packaging. I suspect it was the trouble with constantly changing the electric screw driver's bits, so he just brought along a pack of screws and use them everywhere that needs one.

Sometimes you'll just have to see the humor in all these. Otherwise your blood pressure will boil trying to get them to put in some effort in their work. I do that by reminding myself that I have chosen the lowest bid - and to some extend, I got what I paid for.

But the quality of one contractor stood out  - that of Mr. Lee from EML. He was highly recommended by my architect, Kelly from Hunters and Gatherers. We used him for all our carpentry work and any visitor to the house will noticed that the quality of the carpentry work exceeds the rest in the house by a large margin. You know you are dealing with a guy that carries a lot of pride in his work when he began to fix problems before you knew it. A week after the cabinet doors were installed, his workers told us that they needed to schedule a date to come back to replace the doors. I was wondering why, and he said the boss noticed the solid doors were warped, leaving a small gap at some of the edges between the door and the cabinet. Honestly, I didn't notice it, partly because of all the other work that were going on in the kitchen. Maybe I would eventually, but he didn't take the chance. So there you are, someone who takes pride in the quality of his work, without the customer having to push for it.

What's the big deal, you may asked - isn't that something to be expected? Just for comparison, the glass contractor frosted the bathroom glass pane on the wrong side. And the bathroom mirror was meant to be mounted on the upper right hand corner of this piece of glass. Despite knowing a mistake had already been made, the contractor proceeded to mount both the mirror and the glass by flipping the glass upside down, and then asked me if it was ok. Because the glass was flipped, the mirror ended up at a height that's worthy for dwarfs. I was so amused by the way the contractor trying to get himself out of this. I asked him: "at this height, can you even see yourself in the mirror?" Then he quietly pull it down and replace it with another.

And there was another that tried to blame his poor quality work on my luck. When he laid the pebble wash in the kitchen, he didn't take steps to protect it from rain. Of course it rained overnight, totally ruined the pebble wash. When confronted about the quality of the job, he explained the rain had caused the damage, and sympathetically told me that heaven was just not on my side. So it was my misfortune that this happened. This is when having an assertive architect helped - Kelly put it very simply across to the main contractor: "it was unacceptable and please re-do everything." So the guys came yesterday to knock out all the pebble wash, and will be returning tomorrow to relay it. I suspect it would have taken the contractor less trouble to put up proper rain protection, or even to knock out the whole thing to re-do it before the rest of the kitchen came up. But  he tried to get away from this. In the end, it caused everyone inconveniences - he had to pay his workers additional days to do this rectification work, and it caused us a lot of delay.

Taking pride in your work is a very simple work ethic. Your teachers taught you that. The army reinforced that. And in your work your boss and peers expected it. But in the world of the contractors, it is something that they happily bet it against your ignorance.

So, if you would like to get a quote from Mr. Lee of EML for your next project, you can reach him at his email.