Lately I’ve been absent from my day job, trying to pursue my lifelong lost dream of becoming the world’s finest interior designer.

Ok, well maybe that’s not entirely true, but it is true that I have been involved in designing the new office space for my day job. It may sound pretty simple and all, but once it comes down to the finer details of it all, it’s one heck of a task.

This job is special though. With no outside help from agents or design experts, this project is left to the hands of a contractor, his contacts, family members’ efforts, and well… me. Let’s put things in perspective here first:

The new office space is situated in a fully detached, 4 storey. The top two storeys are rented out to tenants, and the company will take over the first floor and the basement. These two floors basically started from scratch: an empty room with nothing more than the windows.

To have to make these two rooms into a fully functioning office space is one project that can be heaven if everything goes smoothly, or hell if things don’t add up.

Today’s meeting with the contractor proved to be pinnacle in the design process. The contractor was apparently working from a different layout plan than what I was working with. So while I was busy trying to put office furniture in the room, the contractor was busy making rooms and storage spaces where I had tables and cabinets. It was all a big mis-communication somewhere along the lines.

Although things got sorted out, it was quite the event. So you may be asking yourself, why am I doing this to begin with?

Why not? It’s a perfect opportunity to be able to do something that you rarely ever get to do. And although it comes with its stressors, I find it the excitement overpowering these. It’s actually quite fun to be able to decide what goes where, what furniture to buy, what colour to make them, what fabric to use, what materials to make these walls from, etc.

There are so many options that it can literally make you go crazy. But with a little organization and some help from professionals in the industry, all will be sorted out by the end of it all. The most exciting part is to see your vision come to fruition. Of course, if it doesn’t turn out the way you intended it to look, then that’s another story.

All in all, it’s been a darn good experience for me, and one that I will take home so that once it comes down to designing my own space (when will that happen?), I will have fond memories of all the ups and downs of this project.

So all I can say is, if you ever have this opportunity, then take it with open arms and see what you end up with. At the very least, you can call it “art” and say everything turned out just perfectly!

It’s not a sharp pain. It’s more of a waning pain that lingers on and strengthens in a sinusoidal wave. And it hurts big time. That’s when you know you have something wrong with your teeth.

As my luck would have it, it had to come at a time when I was undergoing another life-changing experience. I suppose this toothache kept me somewhat distracted from my latter event.

Did I mention I wasn’t insured? Yeah, that hurts my wallet just as much as this tooth hurts me.

So I finally had my root canal procedure done a week or two ago. I recall there being a lot of drilling, pressure, numbness, and all the dentistry good stuff. It was a good thing they froze me well so that I couldn’t feel a thing.

The entire procedure took a good 2.5 hours in all. This entailed removing my old cracked cavity, polishing up that area and the new cavity around it, looking for and removing 3 nerves in my tooth, polishing and filling those cavities up, and finally placing a permanent filing on the tooth.

A crown was highly recommended to finish off the procedure, and I was kindly informed that this would again entail a lengthy procedure and that I would have to come back again another time.

Why wait? I thought to myself. So I booked the appointment for a week later, which was today. After a good 1.5 hour visit to the dentist, more drilling, polishing, drilling, poking, and who knows what else he was doing in there, I came out with half my mouth frozen and a temporary crown over my tooth. My dentist also informed me that he had to remove some of my gums surrounding my teeth in order to take a good mold for the crown. The actual porcelain crown takes 10 days for the lab to make and deliver to the dentist. So, even after 3 visits, $1500, hours of under the drill, knife, suction, and whatever else they poke and prod me with, I am still not done my complete root canal procedure.

I swear after this is done, I will promise to take better care of my teeth so as to avoid having another one done. Not only does the entire procedure take long, the soreness and the pain in the interim are more than enough to make me care more.

Remember to floss, brush with a SOFT bristled toothbrush, and if you’re up to it, use a mouthwash like Listerine or Scope to kill those germs in your mouth.

Lesson learned. The hard way.