The pregnant monster in me

Today I woke up around 11plus (don't judge please - I have been having insomnia during pregnancy so I turn in late) - stretched my legs only to experience a reallllly bad muscle pull. Yeeeouwchhh! Had to self-massage since Mr. J was at work. :( Felt super hungry and weak almost immediately even though my first meal of the day was right after subuh after Mr. J has left for work. Foodpanda has been my go-to app recently. Looked at all the available food for purchase. Was inclined towards ordering Nene chicken but the minimum order was at least $18. What can I order with $18?! Delivery charge is an additional $3. While deciding, my energy level has reached weaker than weak and I have turned slightly cold turkey-ish. Had to "rush" to the kitchen and poured the Cocopops cereal messy in the bowl together with my fresh meiji milk. One serving wasn't enough. I had two. And a packet of chocolate biscuits. Still feeling hungry now. :/ *inserts cold turkey*

Regret I still have not made myself any frozen lauk. Could have been a saviour at times like this. (Notetoself#1 for next pregnancy perhaps - frozen lauk for 3rd trimester onwards. Or maybe purchase tingkat meals eh? Hee).

My hungry episodes for third trimester is tahap critical. I must ensure I have food and drinks by my side in the room. So whenever I wake up hungry, be it the morning, afternoon or late hours in the night, food and drinks will be readily available within reach. Yes, I've turned to a pregnant monster. I don't know how I'll be when baby's out and I need to breastfeed. Mummies say breastfeeding has turned them to monsters too. :/ Maybe I'll have a pantry of food inventory at a corner in my room eh? That sounds like a good plan. Haha. Gemok jugak aku nanti tau.

But first, before we angan-angan with all the food and pantry dreams, we need to start packing. Yes, pack to move lah. We need to start somewhere. Notetoself#2.

Oh and packing reminds me of the hospital bag. We have packed most of the stuff in "the bag". We will be using the Avent goodie bag that we got from the first breastfeeding class we attended. It's big enough for all my hospital essentials. Notetoself#3: Insya'Allah I will be sharing on the stuff that I pack in my hospital bag in another entry - for the sake of easy reference in the future.

My body is still giving me signals on hunger. Grrr. Gtg and make myself something easy. Oh, baby... Please don't tell me you're a big eater?

Just a last note to self for this entry - You've turned 35 weeks and 5 days as of today. Dah besar anak Mummy/Ibu. :') *rubs tummy & wipes imaginary tears*

Financing our upcoming home: Part 4 - Executing the solution

A recap on the earlier episodes of this entry:

Part 1 - The harsh reality
Part 2 - The headache
Part 3 - Finding solutions

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Now we move on to executing the solution:
Without wasting anymore time (since time wasn't on our side - what's with the counting down to my EDD & the key collection happening roughly around the same time), we went down to A-X-A Customer Service counter on the 15th of Sept to terminate/surrender our policy. To our pleasure, we found out that we have earned quite a fair bit with our investment (Alhamdulillah) during the investment period of May-Sept this year. Jadilah eh..... even though investment kita tak berpanjangan lol. Yelah, sebenarnya hasrat kita untuk masukkan CPF dalam our CPFIS is so that HDB doesn't wipe out everything from our CPF-OA to zero, and stash it somewhere else. Tapi ternyata, we still needed that sum to finance our HDB. :p Issokeh, we learn...we learn.

Actually, if you ask me, it is possible to do an investment with CPFIS, but that is if memang kita nya gaji maha besar/I am still working, and the balance in our CPF-OA is enough to finance the balance payment. Because in order to invest into CPFIS with our CPF-OA, the balance in our CPF-OA must at least be 20K. We cannot suka-suka invest everything and leave the CPF-OA empty. That's the limitation that we learned when we did ours.

Taking up loans from banks/relatives were also suggested to us, but Mr. J and I memang bertekad that we wouldn't want to take up additional loans. Say no-no to berhutang if we have other safer avenues to tap into. Like what R.udy M.arican advised in one of his R.udyR.illa episode, "Biar makan nasi, telur & kicap, asal tak berhutang". Yep.

Okay, let's go back to surrendering our policy:
We were told that the process would take around 7-10 working days for the funds to be credited back to our CPFIS account, that was parked in OCBC bank. We will then receive a notification letter by A-X-A to inform us that surrender is successful and thereafter, we will need to follow up with OCBC personally to credit it back to our CPF-OA account. A bit leceh ah but no choice since this is our only resource so far kan.

So anyways, we later received the letter from A-X-A on the 22nd of Sep, after surrendering on 15th Sep. Not too long a wait huh :) Alhamdulillah.

To cut the long story short, we then headed down to OCBC the next day to request for a transfer back to our CPF-OA account by signing a manual transfer form & was told that it would also take around 7-10 working days.

Fast forward to the 27th of Sept, we received a text message from CPF Board that the amount was successfully credited (or refunded) back to our CPF-OA. Alhamdulillah syukurrrrr!

So in summary, the whole process of surrendering our policy and crediting the funds back to our CPF-OA did take up about 2 weeks. Good to plan ahead and give another week extra as a buffer time.

For now... we shall wait for the mid of Oct - which is EXACTLY next week! :)

P.s: Let's just pray I don't give birth before that lah eh... Be a very very obedient baby and make your appearance only after we have received the keys from HDB k little one. Thank you!

Financing our upcoming home: Part 3 - Finding solutions

You may click on the link below for the earlier parts of this entry:
Part 1 - The harsh reality
Part 2 - The headache

After you have done recapping/To continue from where we left off...

We dropped another email to our OIC to raise our concern & enquired with her on how to finance the balance amount for key collection. I received a call the next day and she told us that the balance, if our CPF-OA is insufficient, is to be paid ONLY by NETS (subjected to daily withdrawal limits imposed by bank) or Cashier's Order on the day of key collection. I reconfirmed if it's possible to pay the balance required via GIRO instalments - she said No.

Note: The GIRO instalment is only valid for approved HLE loan should our monthly CPF contribution to finance the monthly HLE isn't enough.

Meaning:

DESCRIPTION	AMOUNT
Amount to be paid monthly for HLE	1,000.00
Total CPF-OA contribution	(700.00)
Balance to be topped up/paid by cash (GIRO)	300.00

Ohhhhh gitu rupanyaaaa....

So...

Backtracking to my ending note in Part 2, we actually have invested both our CPF-OA (leaving only 20K balance each in our CPF-OA) to our CPF Investment Scheme (CPFIS) account with A-X-A in May this year (through a random consultant that approached us at Singpost pfft). But Alhamdulillah, ada jugak lah hikmahnya. After recalculating our CPF-OA & the amount in our CPFIS account, insya'Allah it was enough to finance the balance payment. The only thing we needed was time (around 2-3 weeks) to credit the funds back from our CPFIS account to our CPF-OA.

So, during the phone conversation with our OIC, we asked for a deferment of the key collection date and managed to push it back to mid Oct! Hopefully the funds are credited back into our CPF-OA by then.

*fingers crossed*