The story of my new bed

Ah... can you believe it, a king size bed that fits into this little room of mine. Well, the reason I blog this up is not to brag about a BIG bed but rather the effort to bring this 6ft by 6.3ft monster up to the second floor of my room.

At around 6pm today, the furniture people came with my bed. Well, actually this is really the first time seeing the actual bed itself as I ordered it merely based on a catalog while I went for lunch at nearby McDonalds last weekend. It was a good buy though; the king size bed frame cost me RM990 while the King Koil matress is around RM1600, it also comes with 2 free pillows, 1 bolster and 1 bed sheet. I'd reckon that since a bed is going to be a resting place for me after a hard day work in the office - I think I should deserve something better for myself right ? (Overall I've heard that there are some people who paid RM3000 for a bed that gives out funny sound when you jump onto it)

Upon parking their lorry outside of the house, the furniture people came down with 2 big piece of cardboxes (6ft in length) that requires skillful manipulations to go up to my room. Why ? The staircase height is only around 5ft 10inch (Remember, it's less than 6ft). Good thing those 2 boxes were rectangle in shape hence it's considered a breeze to move it up because the height of the boxes are around 4ft only. Next, the matress; measuring at 6ft by 6.3ft. As we approached the staircase, we were already sweating and puzzled as how can this big guy fits through the gap that is less that the size of the width or height of it ? Since it's a matress, we fold it ! With my dad and myself go help the 2 poor chaps we finally managed to get the matress up to the room. (Boy, was I worried that the matress could not enter through the room's door !). Finally is the most challenging part of it; the bed frame that supports the matress - same size but it's not bend-able !

We tried turning upsize down, inside out, backside front and we never managed to get through the staircase... My dad even suggest to disassemble it and bring it up in pieces ! So after giving it some thought (and some dump and bright ideas as well), we finally decided to haul the bed frame through the balcony from the back of the house (through the washing area to the 2nd floor). While the 2 guys pushed the frame up from ground floor, I am supposed to lift the frame while leaning behind the pillars from the second floor. I nearly broke my finger when the whole frame stuck onto my hand while lifting it up ! Good thing those 2 chaps helped out just in time to get me out of that mess. I guess no one would wanna see a customer with broken fingers before they can sign your delivery order right ?

After all the parts are in place, the next step is the assembly portion of it. The manufacturer actually did not provide the assembly instructions to these guys at the furniture shop, what's worse is that these guys had never assemble such bed before ! There were stands and lots of screws, washers and nuts - while it also drives us nuts as well ! Finally, we took around 1 hour just to figure out which part goes onto where by just looking at the catalog diagram. Irony eh ? But heck, this is the final result, the whole operation took us merely 1 hour or so only - in which I considered as quite a good success. Yes, money can buy many things, but I'm sure it cant buy the dedication of the 4 of us (me, dad and the 2 person from the shop) to see the final result.



PS: I'm going to jump onto this big guy after this blog ! WOHOOO ! *Yawn...

Visit to Sintok 01-06-2005

Greetings from Sintok, a town that is quite close to the northern border of Malaysia. My destination this time is the northern university of Malaysia - UUM (Universiti Utara Malaysia)

This university is located in the state of Kedah. A state that is rated as the rice bowl of Malaysia, a lot of the land in the state had been used for rice plantations and when it's harvesting time, the scenary is wonderful (The plant would be yellowish in color and when the sun shines through it, it's like a bed of gold !). Anyway, the largest city in Kedah is Alor Setar - That's where the airport is though

This is the university compound. I've heard that the university had also covered quite a large area as there are a lot of land to spare. The university was officially launched by our former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohd. For your information; our former PM also originated from Kedah.

This is the computer center - the place where I perform my presentation on that day. Well, it's taken in the evening hours - most of the IT staff had went home already (not as busy as the time I arrived earlier though)

This is the adjacent building to the Computer Center, translated as "Faculty of Quantitative Science". Beats me what they study inside there though... I'm just an IT guy...

After the presentation, we were taken to a visit to our partner's office. They are actually the computer hardware provider for the students in UUM. Of course they do research in my company's product as well..

After the meeting, we were invited to try out the "Cendol Pulut Buah" that is located just around the corner of their office. The famous cendol that is being served here comes with glutinous rice (pulut) and durian meat (the buah). However we choose to pass on the durian as we still need to board a plane back to KL and do not wish to be thrown out of the plane because of bad breath...

Ah... the cendol pulut buah... Minus the durian...

We took the last flight back to KL at 9:35pm and I'm back home, I must admit that I am never so happy to see my bed. Exhausted and satisfied about the trip but I had also learned something along - Never to make a day trip to anywhere far and remote (if possible).