Laminate flooring or parquet?

Now very stressed ah.. dun know to choose laminate flooring or parquet?

Sat we went to Expo to see the times bookshop warehouse sale, accidentally pass by a renovation fair. So we pop in to see and was introduced to a laminate flooring brand called Excel. It says their laminate flooring can be soaked up to 3 days in water and won't bloat. The sales man also says it is anti-termites, fire resistant etc. One ting we noticed is that the sound insulation is quite good, there isn't much 'kok kok' sound produced by normal laminate flooring. Also, there isn't much floating effect. The 8mm and 12mm ones are quite good. So we get a namecard and discover that they are located at IMM, same building as our ID.

Later i went asking my colleague and read up on parquet flooring. Realise that Indonesia parquet as quoted by my ID may not be a good one because the oil content in Indo parquet is generally lesser than Burmese parquet and thus more vulnerable to termites attack. Burmese parquet will be more ex so not sure if ID will allow us to change without any extra charge. Also, we prefer the patterns on the laminate flooring and parquet design seems quite boring.. not so many choices lor.

Sunday we went to see 2 flats done by our ID. Its only half done, only the false ceiling is done up. Wonder why he bring us there since not fully done leh. But we still like the inverted L box done by him. The 2 flats we seen are very small, 4 rooms one. Our ID says it is of low budget, and cos smaller so v hard to design, whereas our flat is longish and big so should have more room to play with the design.

We went back to IMM to see his amended drawings. He forget to include the chimney hood and oven in his kitchen cabinet drawing again For the feature wall, he didn't really amend the drawing although M asked him to design a more elaborate one. I guess he is really too busy with too many customers. 3pm his other customer came, so we went out to jalan awhile cos we want him to show us the tiles factory again.
We waited until 6pm then go in to pester him again as the tiles factory is closing at 7pm.

He fetched us to the tiles factory, Soo Bee Huat trading, where we take a look at the homogeneous tiles we selected for our living and kitchen previously. Originally i wanted some patterns for the living room tiles, but finally i agree with M that the cream plain one we originally selected still look the best.

For the kitchen tiles, we realise a slight problem. The tiles sides seem to bulge after laying as shown in their showroom. The lady asst told us frankly that that tile we selected has this slight problem. Our ID told us that its the same tile chosen by HDB in their Jalan temternam showflat, and he has not seen any bulging. He seem deep in thought when i ask him if he can minimise the bulging because i really like the tile a lot. I guess i have to depend on his good hands in doing this.

We told him about our decision to change to laminate flooring for the bedrooms instead of parquet. He recommend us supreme brand and show us the sample. M and I prefer the African Black selection. I wanted sound insulation so our ID called Supreme who told them that they can add in a rubber board below to reduce the hollow sound when u step on the board. Our ID intitially say want to charge us extra for the sound insulation but later after negotiation, he say okay not to charge us.

Me not sure if supreme is good or not.. unless can see their live demo.. hmm will consider if can pester my ID to bring us to their factory heee.