13 posts tagged “hertford”

"Thank You" to all my friends, you really make me feel that we are bonded, for calling or sms-ing and asking about Ruby.

Geez, what was I thinking!  Guess, I just have to make it sounds right now.

Hehe, my entry, "You're Not Just A Memory" was just a reminiscence of the good old days at Hertford.  It was about the weekly walk where we took Ruby out.  It had always been a wonderful activity where, together with her, we spent quality time talking about anything and everything.  It brought us closer.  It gave us the meaning of love.  At the same time, it was about acquainted ourselves with the neighbourhood.

Those pictures are Ruby's story.  She enjoys her weekly outing.  Oh, you may ask 'why only once a week?'  Healthy she may look, she has a genetic 'Heart Mitral Valve (MVD)' disease.  Basically, it is a terminal illness which afflicts many Cavalier King Charles spaniel where the mitral valve no longer fully closes after each pumping action.  It results in her heart murmuring -  a louder murmur [scale of 1 - lowest, to 5 - highest] indicates a serious progression of the disease.  Ruby has been screened at scale 3.

We are also trying to minimise Hip Dysplasia, an abnormal development of the hip which can produce various degrees of arthritis.  Ruby loves to run and it will not do justice if she is not given that opportunity whenever she is outside the house.  To lessen our conscience, and as she is growing older, we choose to walk her weekly.

Such diseases can be avoided if only breeders are more responsible.  Then again, this is another story.  With her rather-not-so-good health, Ruby is on a daily long term medication to treat the murmur.  Or, at least to stabilise the murmur.  Everyday, she has to be fed with two different MVD medications.  Aggravated with MVD, she had a bout of other health problems.  Her vet suspected of a failing kidney and, unfortunate to her, she has to be given with another daily long term medication to treat and vitalise the organ.

You're Not Just A Memory is a dedication to Hertford.  I just wanted to write it from Ruby's perspective.  She was comfortable there.  Just as much memories to us, Hertford was the rainbow that brought the connection of our existence.  Of life lesson.  Of unconditional love.  Of acceptance.  Of the acts of caring and loving.  Of responsibilities.

She is alright, just a little older and not so much active now.  Hehe, and still greedy and enjoying her durian everyday.  And still wanting to be near human all the time!

Look, how comfortable she is sleeping on the study chair

We have moved in.  Yes, at last!

It was a cloudy morning when the mover arrived at Hertford last Monday, 22 October.  We were worried that it would rain but our prayers were answered.  Just after we left Hertford, on the way to Reiki Sanctuary, it started to pour.  We felt blessed.  Somewhat, we felt Hertford was crying.  It was sad to leave.

The weather changed when we arrived at Reiki Sanctuary.  It was fine.  Looking back, we knew the Universe took care of us.  The rain washed away our past and we were greeted with sunshine in Jurong East.  It signified hope.  It adorned our new journey and illuminated for a magnificent life ahead.  For awhile, it let us to forget about the renovation.

The renovation at Reiki Sanctuary was still not finished on the day we moved in.  They were, supposedly, to complete over the last weekend.  For the last few days, we were unable to unpack much as there would always be some workers around.

Today, we are hoping that all these outstanding works can be finally over.  We have been having the workers, from different trades, attending to their works since early this morning.

List of outstanding works [from previous weeks]:

Additional items:

01.  Fixing of Rinnai Cooker Hood
02.  Commissioning Rinnai Cooker Hood  Requires another commissioning
03.  Create new false ceiling for Franke Island Hood
04.  Fixing Toto's Kitchen Sink
05.  Re-positioning Dining Lights
06.  Fixing bracket for Main Door's lock
07.  Fixing Led Night light under Master Toilet's vanity
08.  Fixing power plug in one of Living Room TV Console  Completed on Friday 24th October
09.  Commissioning TV signal
10.  Change all windows roller balls, including balcony sliding doors
11.  Lay black tiles under the washing machine

The rest of outstanding works [Update]:

  -  Left with the Main Entrance  Completed on Thursday 23rd October

03.  To fix electrical items - Left with Kitchen area  Completed today
04.  To commission electrical outlets - Left with Kitchen area  Completed today
05.  To measure boxing up of lights and to order the Acrylic light shades -  Delivery on Saturday  Still Outstanding
06.  To fix Guest Toilet granite top
07.  To fix Guest Toilet vanity wardrobe  Completed today
08.  To fix Guest Toilet lock
09.  To measure for kitchen solid top
10.  To install kitchen solid top
11.  To final coat timber stain for balcony  Completed Thursday 23rd October
12.  To touch up [paint] - interior and exterior - Left with Living Room, Kitchen and Guest Toilet  Completed today with outstanding touch-up at MBR Toilet
13.  To fill up holes at false ceiling and paint - Left with Kitchen area  Completed today
14.  To fix taps and mixers at kitchen, master and guest toilets  Kitchen mixers completed today
15.  To install lock at main gate
16.  To fix curtain rods and curtains - Scheduled for Tuesday 28th October
17.  To fix glass at Master Toilet
18.  To fix glass at Guest Toilet  Completed today
19.  To fix mirror at Master Toilet
20.  To de-wax and polish floor tiles
21.  To clean windows
22.  To fix kitchen back splash [wet and dry areas]  Completed today
23.  To commission Daikin Air-con
24.  To install doors for kitchen top hung cabinets  Completed 24th October with 1 piece outstanding
25.  To install doors for kitchen tall cabinets  Completed 2th October
26.  To rectify [re-laminate] Master bedroom door
27.  To 'iron' laminate at Main Door  Completed today
28.  To clear all debris
29.  To re-laminate Guest Room door

This is my last entry from Hertford.  Soon, the PC will be switched off and time to open up the chasis and clean all the internal hardware.  It is the usual ritual - all items from Hertford go through a 'good bath', sort of a cleansing and detoxification procedure, before they are moved to Reiki Sanctuary.

I love you, Hertford.  I just love you.  It has been a wonderful 20 years here.  This is the place where I grow - a place where you allowed me to grow.  This is the place that I walk into my spiritual life - a place where you opened the Heaven's Gate.  This is the place that I learn about love.  About relationship.  About celestial insights.  Hertford provides it all.  Quietly, she opens all kinds of life experiences.  She has been very unconditional.

I have no regrets.  She came to me when I wanted to grow.  When I wanted to gain my independent.  When I wanted to reward myself.  She allowed me to experience life, to take small steps as I moved on.  Over the years, she heightened my awareness.  Going through all emotions and the challenging senses of my mind.  I embraced love.  Hate.  Joy.  Sorrow.  Peace.  Solitude.  They are life greatest values.

I learned about family value too.  The importance to love my late parents - and respecting them without judgement.  To be grateful for who they were.  I learned how to love.  How to appreciate another being.  And, accepting each one of us to be a teacher.  To learn from each other.  To learn to let go my expectations.

As I bid my farewell, in all my sadness, you will stay forever in my heart.  I am praying for you.  For the next few months, you will house new souls.  I am sure you will provide shelter to these people.  You will continue to give your love to them.  It will be no less because you are just you.  And when the day comes that you will be gone forever, I pray that it shall be without pain.  That you, by that time, have reached your earthly time.  What shall remain is your earthly delights.  A place where life starts.  A beginning for better things to all the souls that you housed.

Thank you for everything, Hertford.  I am sure you have sensed my thoughts and emotions for the last few months.  You stood tall for me.  You provided strength.  You kept me peaceful.  You processed new linings of hopes.  You conceived my magnificent path ahead.  You just wanted to keep me safe.

When the new day starts, as I wake up in Reiki Sanctuary, it will just be memories.  It will, definitely, be a good one for me.  I will continue to grow but it will be different this time.  What you have put in my heart shall serve for better purpose.  My deepest gratitude and love to you.

Thank you for loving me, Hertford!

Ma!!!!!!!!! It's mess again!!!!

Now that we get a clearer direction and a firm commitment from Uncle Chong, we are making plan to move out of Hertford on 6 October.  We have managed to get an extension of stay here in Hertford up to 8 October.  Though, we need to pay rent for over staying.  Also, we decided to be part of  the Yellow Ribbon Project by engaging the mover.  

Since the mover has given us the boxes, it is pack, pack and pack days ahead.  It wasn't easy when we started to pack.  We tend to get sentimental almost at all the items and kept contemplating whether to bring them over to Reiki Sanctuary.  It slowed our packing.  It got us emotional.  It brought back alot of old memories.  It is often a natural human behaviour - when attachment has become a life, the letting go is hard.

It just needs someone to jolt you.  Was taking a break and chatted with the young wise friend and these statements were made:

JH  :  Out with the old.  Old one don't go ... new one don't come

How true!! -  It's Law of Vacuum!

The mess in Hertford now:

Pre Move Mess

Pre Move Mess

Pre Move Mess

From Hertford to Reiki Sanctuary, we are filled with mess.  We keep telling ourselves that it's a pretty normal thing since we are moving out.  And, at the opposite end of our life now, Reiki Sanctuary is undergoing major renovation to get ready for us to move in.  Which, the day could be anytime towards the end of this month.  It's a matter of weeks now.  It will be the start of a new life.

The Mess in Hertford:

Mess in Hertford

Even our plants are dying!

Our Dying Plant

And more mess in the Study Room

Mess In Study Room

For now, we hope the mess is not an excuse for our laziness, of not leading our normal life, but an excuse for a conscious effort of clarity and focus.  That we create a positive energy of detachment and to think that we are conserving our energy for a proper time, nearer to us moving out, to sort things out.  We are, definitely, not accustomed in the beginning.  Mess is sprouting anywhere and everywhere and at all time.  Perhaps, it is reflecting our initial thoughts of confusion.  Of the anxiety of new possibilities.  Of uncertainty for the infinite correlation.  Of a new orchestra of space-time events to bring about the outcome that is intended for us.

We let our mind to detach from the daily consciousness of orderliness.  And attachment.  This is to release us from becoming a prisoner of helplessness.  Of hopelessness.  Of mundane needs and trivial concerns.  Of quiet desperation and seriousness.  In relinquishing our attachment to the daily chores, to the tidy Hertford that it used to be, we are stepping into the consciousness of an unknown territory of mess.  We open our mind into the field of all possibilities.  We are inviting the magic of life, the celebration of opposites, the exhilaraton of spirits and the exultation for the law of vacuum to come.

The mess has been an endless sight right from the very beginning when we decided to uproot.  It takes a certain amount of realization, and faith, that we are going to release many things and replace with something of equal or greater value.  It is the letting go that is a little hard.  Perhaps, this is the unknown energy that results in us to let Hertford in a such a messy place.  It is our attachment to all the things in here.  For they have served us well.  With their love.  With their abundance.  With their joy.  We have greatly relied our entire life to everything within.

While Hertford is all about letting go, and detachment, Reiki Sanctuary overcomes the mess in a more dynamic development.  Renovation works, that filled with lots of dust and chaotic renovation materials, are properly planned.  Thanks to Chiauw who insisted to all the contractors that they tidy the place at the end of each working day.  Everyday, the contractors will pile their things in one place and to sweep away the mess they created.  It is the way we want it too.

Simply, it is about awareness for creating space.  The universe cannot put good into our hand, only until we let go of what we are holding in it.  The nature of the universe, being filled with infinite abundance, shudders a vacuum.  It always will fill it with something.  Just like when we walk down the beach, we leave footprints in the sand.  But give the wind and the waves a few minutes, and those tracks will be filled in again.  Just as vegetation will cover a field and an agenda expands to the time budgetted for a meeting.

When Chiauw got all the contractors to co-operate, there is a tide of positive energy filling into the vacuum and the consciousness to attract the space for peace of mind instilled.  What we like about her style is, she allocates and demarcates each trade into one room for the workers to place their things at the end of the day.  Like the left-over unfinished paints in the guest room, the unfinished works of the ceiling guys in the living room and the unfinished works flooring contractors in the dining area.  It is in an organized mindset, and planned intention, that the law of vacuum resonates to the fullest.

The Mess in Reiki Sanctuary:

Paints

False Ceiling Boards

Flooring Stuffs

It is such a practice that will give way to better outcomes.  Better rewards.  We are, through her systematic acts, surrounded by good things everywhere.  It is, definitely, a self fulfilling breakthrough for us to achieve our dreams.  And dreams are a reality to those who believe in them.  We do! 

The Law of Vacuum loves space and, forever, waiting to fill it up.  If we want greater good, greater prosperity in our life, we have to start forming a vacuum to receive it.  We have to get rid of what we do not want and to make room for what we want.  This philosophy applies to all of our personal style, our personal growth and for our self development.

To make room for all things good, we must learn to give up and to let go.  As we give up and cast away old ideas and attitudes, old possessions, and put in their place new ideas, our conditions will steadily improve.

Do not hinder our advance or stop it by holding onto the old.  We just have to embrace the new.

As we advance confidently in the direction of our dreams, and endeavour to live the life we have imagined, success will come to us unexpectedly in common hours.

Early August 15th, 2008.  Time was about 4 a.m.

We were awaken by thud sounds of electrical explosion outside the house.  Initially, we thought it was some kind of 'TV crime scene with police shooting robbers'.  We dismissed it.  We wanted to continue the good night sleep.  And the thud sounds continued.  It was getting louder.  Dogs started to bark.  We heard more noise.  This time, we had to dragged ourselves out of the bed.

Our friend, and also a neighbour, was knocking at our door.  She was shivering, and obviously scared, of the event that had just taken place.  We are, naturally, often afraid of fire.  An element that we often associate as a threat.  Just diaganolly across our place, a house was on fire.  By the time we were out of our house, the fire had engulfed the burning house.  No one was hurt but definitely it brought grief to the house owner.

Fires are themselves an expand of vibration of our collective consciousness to change the way in which humanity functions and relates to each other.  Whenever we witness a fury fire, in a similarly way, we view the world in its current state noticing the calamities, the war, the poverty, the disease, the grief.  There is always the tendency to lose hope to humanity, both individually and as a species.

Like a prophecy, the fire ceased and a new world will be born.  For all these years in Hertford, the fire was of completion and of new beginnings.  As we are preparing to move out, the fire was the sphere of our reality.  All that we see around us is of the same beginnings, the same energy and the same creation.  It was a message - it is up to us, the people of earth, to change our consciousness and live in harmony with each other and our environment.

This message is very important.  The significant of the fire is about the time we need to decide what reality we leave behind.  That if we continue to destroy vibrational energies and thought forms that we create further imbalance to our souls.

It is through the realisation of fire that our wisdoms contained within can be activated.  It is when this happens that we change our reality and step into a new world.  As we are awakened and recognize the damage, we are being given the consciousness in changing the way we live.  It is up to us to choose whether we continue along the path of destruction, fear, anger and greed or change our choice to follow the path of universal peace and harmony.  We must raise our consciousness and the way in which we perceive the world.  How we perceive the people around us.  How we perceive the people that affected us.  How we perceive the people that shape our identity.  How we perceive our lives should be.  How we make choices.  How we want to live.

With fire, a column of light is created.  And this light is an opportunity for a change of our past choices and beliefs.  As more lights are activated through fire that the golden light of peace shines through.  It is a universal attempt to raise our consciousness and assist us to live in a more harmonious, joy filled and loving way.  It is about how we must incorporate these qualities into our lives we walk and live in into a good way, honouring each other for the beauty that we are and living in balance with lives and earth.

Fire

Fire and Neighbourhood

When I am supposed to be happy that renovation and hacking have started, that our general contractor is doing a pretty good job and Chiauw is getting very much excited, my energy has just sapped.  On my worst day, I couldn't even stand for 5 minutes at a time.  I literally could barely do what I need to do.  There's fogbank coming into my head.

I have moment of strange feeling of exhaustion infiltrated like a dark spirit.  I remember this exact feeling back to those days when I was searching for meaning of life some 15 years ago.  Everything around me halted.  There were plenty of questions and the unseemingly internal restless emotional turmoils.  And when I wanted it to stop, I simply created a sanctuary within myself.  I stopped my social life.  I shunned my friends.  Loneliness was the only friend that I endeared.

When I got a new place, 'sanctuary' came to mind to describe the new home.  It will be a safety haven, a sacred place and a right of asylum to my soul.  I didn't think much that the energy will manifest all over again.  Something is definitely happening yet I am lost with baseless rationale.  In emptiness, I am filled with acute restlessness.  Joy and sorrow, peace and trouble, love and indifference - they are thinly separating my senses.  There are works to be done.  There are people waiting for my attention.  There are problems that need to resolve.  Yet, I choose to procrastinate.

Hertford is crying and, probably, she is praying for a new life for me.   She is aware that she will be gone .. and forever.  That before I am totally uprooted to the next sanctuary, she has to replay my past emotions.  Yet, I am soaking in this restlessness helplessly.  I am reaching out to the rainbow and, still, I find it is a long call to reach the light at the end of this tunnel.

Perhaps, I am desperate this time round.  With her departure, Hertford is probably asking me to focus on new goals and to envision what is truly important in my life ahead.  Guess, I am just selfish.  Or am I lost and confused?

I have started my journey and made to rethink and making choices.  At this end of this turn, I am praying harder that my life choices are wiser.  That the restlessness will not be ocean deep.

For now, guess, I am just afraid.

In an unusual way, our completion date transpired via a telephone call rather through an official HDB letter.  I have been religiously checking on 'My HDB Page' - an online HDB e-Services, for the last few days and there is no indication that the resale complete date has been scheduled.  The last check at 5 p.m. still showed the same old status where the resale application has been approved.

HDB Sale Approval

What's a synchronicity!  Yesterday, I was checking with another friend who applied for resale flat and he had been scheduled for the second appointment mid next week.  His 1st appointment with HDB was two weeks after ours.  He received an official letter from HDB about three days ago.  That is, supposedly, the standard practice - buyers/sellers will be notified at least a week in advance.

At about 5.45 p.m., I received a call from Mr Wong - the seller's agent, informing me that HDB has scheduled the resale completion on Monday, 9 June.  Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!  A check at our mailbox showed no letter.  Ah, and within an hour from my last online check, the status has changed.

HDB Sale Completion