Dream home - Part 2

Ongoing job were carried out as scheduled. Concrete piling done supaya rumah yang di didirikan nanti tegap, tak lah senget kan. No wonder piling is expensive.

Make holes to pour the concrete. The far left side (a big square hole) is where the tiang seri going to be.

I remembered that it was on Friday morning that we have to wake up early to go to the site for Ustaz to recite the doa. Mendirikan tiang seri memang ada bacaan yang tertentu so that it will be blessed by Allah. Before that we had to get ready with all the items that the Ustaz asked us to bring to the site to be buried in the soil. The items were gathered in a white cloth and tied. Also a bucket of salt needed to spread it all over the land.

Ustaz membaca doa tolak bala. It was raining that night, so a bit wet that morning.

We had light breakfast after the ceremony and thanks to Ustaz for coming. We packed up all the things and off we go. Me, go to work. Below picture.....they pour the cement as well as setting up the lower beam.

Kitchen main pipes, toilets are more prone to termites' attraction.

After about a month or so after the contractors filled up the sand on top of the beam, I called upon Bustermite pest control to inject pesticide to kill termites. It's good to treat the soil from any termite infestations. We never know what could happen. Prevention is better than cure.

Inject every corners and in between beams since termites usually came out between these beams.

Look at how they did their work. They injected the pesticide every 12 inch I guessed. They sprayed the top soil and later the contractors covered it with plastic sheet. So, the pesticide will be maintained and won't escape very easily.

A certificate of warranty (10 years) was issued after the job done and I had to dig my pocket to pay them $1200. Bigger house means more money. Was wondering what happened after 10 years????

Thanks to Robert from Bustermite for the pesticide. You can have a look a yellow pages for his number

2nd stage on its way. Wah, so many kayu just to support the upper deck. Now waiting for new metal rods for the upper deck. This house is quite tall. We'll see the finish product.

Car Audio

Car audio is one of my favourite hobby. That is why I like to install it by myself. I don't like the car audio shop to handle my system because I just don't like the way they do things right. I think you know what I meant, but some of them do it smart and customers appreciate it. I noticed some of them are careless, taking things for granted. Loose screws, improper fitting the items into its place and even worse when they plug in wrong cables and a wrong set up of system. I had seen this many times when watching their installation techniques. I felt upset when they bought expensive set up and installed it in their car, unfortunately the sound seemed not right due to poor box enclosures design, cheap wires for amplifiers and speakers and poor installation setting and tuning. I even asked the shop why the sound like this and that.....they informed that they need to add this and that to make it right.....meaning requesting more money from the customer. What is this? The customers are easily being cheated by them since they do not know anything about proper car audio. What a pity.

Choosing, designing and installing car audio is not easy unless you have ideas about electronics as well as good imagination and patience. Although I have no basic in electronics, but I learned things step by step from friends, books, magazine and even website until I was able to install my own car audio. I like my set up to be simple but yet nice to hear inside the car since you're the one who enjoy it. It's like a surround system. I don't need those heavy bass that you can hear miles away, ending up with noise induced hearing impairment one day.

It took almost 2 weeks to complete the installation since I did it myself. DIY is fun where you know all about your systems, you can adjust the tweeters an speakers as you like and design your own system as you like.....zero interruption. This installation was in my Mitsubishi Grandis.

10 AWG power cable was used to power the amplifier. A fuse should be attached at least 30 cm (IASCA rule) or nearer to prevent short circuit and damage the whole system

Head unit - Sony DVD in dash monitor. No digital equalizer or pre-amp since this HU has built in equalizer, so save money. Street wires RCA were used to connect to the amplifier. Hiiii......Malaysian Ambi pur

Guess....what brand is this? It's Focal 6.5" component speaker. Not enough space so the tweeter was mounted outside

MTX 6.5" coaxial speaker for the rear

Roof mounted monitor. Look.....it slides back and forth because the monitor is too big (10 inch). Distance makes it a better view

Soundstream 5 channel amplifier to power front, rear and subwoofer. A 1 Farad capacitor to maintain the power especially the bass...power hunger. I make an enclosed box and placed it at the back with the subwoofer

My favourite RF 10" woofer in a ported box. This box was calculated and cut according to its cubic feet. The correct measurement always give the correct output. The bass produced was awesome. Tweak the system one by one. The sound was just like in the cinemas.

My nExT PrOjECt

Honda Civic was equipped with JVC DVD double din. I just changed the front and rear speakers. Thinking to add in subwoofer.

DLS component speakers. I got it cheap B$150 only...hehehee

Enough for now then........

Here are some tips for you whenever you want to install car audio:

1) Look for shop that really knew about car audio. I suggest to go to known car audio retailers such as Everstrong, Car Quest, Blaupunkt and so on. Others you can try and have a glance thru it. Some retailers want to dig your pocket money, so be careful. You should know with whom you're dealing with.

2) Loan from bank is the most dangerous deal. Keep away is a good idea.

3) Go for a better brand if you can, but again look at your budget.

4) Simple set up is always the best choice.

Learning tree school graduation day

Friday, 26th November. Kena pergi ke International Convention Centre (ICC) Brunei for the KG3 graduation day. Anak ikut persembahan buat masa tu. Jadi bunga matahari. Kengkawan dia pun ikut serta pada hari tu. Good to show their talent. Borrow a Nikon D90 from my sister to shoot the event.

Preparation before the show

Students are sitting waiting for their certificate to be delivered

Principal giving a speech

Line up onto the stage

Dancers show their talent on stage

Their dancing performance

Fashion show. 70-200mm lens

Dream Home - Part 1

It has been a long time lah tak update blog ni. I sold my camera D90 except my lenses. Looking to get a new FF type, but have to wait lah. Buat masa ni, pakai camera handphone je and my old nikon point n shoot camera.

Cerita pulak pasal tanah.....Actually the future house was located in Tanah Jambu, but because of a big argument with the developer we ran away. This contractor is a big liar and not responsible to their customer. They had increased the price of the house from $130k to $145k. Due to their insincerity, we only paid their house plan and no more longer with them. , bought a land in Jangsak last year and now it's time to build a house. The land itself is not that big, roughly 0.1777 acres got it from a broker via my colleague. Boleh lah untuk satu buah rumah. Lagipun, it's near to town and mesjid. One thing it's a very busy area: main road frontage. Nevermind lah as long as I'm happy.

Lucky that the land is a flat area, only some bits of uneven surface. Neighbours bagi tahu, dulu tempat ni bekas padi. Sekarang dah jadi lalang, kena lah tebas. Penat juga menebas lalang pakai mesin sikut. It's not an easy job really, mata pisau pun boleh tumpul. Before the grass was cut by an Indian guy. I paid him $70 for that. After clearing it is now easy for me to find the land marker (a marker that shows your land area).

Image from a computer. Looks nice isn't it.

House plan took nearly a year to make it officially approved by Jabatan Perancang. This is because of so many issues involved i.e. from the irresponsible architect and its style slow.com, uncooperative government section, excess road clearance to the house and so on. We are the ones who had to chase all the way up to the finish line. To make it short, Alhamdullilah it had settled now. Thanks also to my wife's friend that had managed to approve the house plan on time for me to grab the HOS loan. Satu hari je lagi to end the 5 years agreement, if not I will end up with frustration...rugi lah after 5 years, my loan entitlement shorten to 48 months. Nasib memang baik.

Back to the house story. We went to 7 house contractors (no need to mention lah). The house was about 2370 sq.ft. They gave us the price from $106k to $145k respectively with their fully imagination and style of creativity and thinking. I took that as an advantage. I don't know whether it's true on what they had mentioned.....hope it's true. 2 contractors penipu besar, 1 pula cakap besar, 1 lagi was out of the box (takut juga), the other one was quite expensive. 1 contractor honestly speaking that he was unable to do it due high price. So he asked me to go to his brother. From there, we meet him and now we stick to this contractor since his price was not that bad after all and had a good knowledge of building a house. He's a good house contractor and he kept his promises.

After signing between HOS and the bank (took almost 4 months though), the building of the house begins.

Will update the blog again and more photos soon.