garynbcDiary · 日记

The best method to eat cat fish, rose mary butter fry

 Catfish pan frying is still the best

So we did catch and cook a couple of time for the catfish. I tried pan frying with alone and andrian, then we become more adventurous and tried streaming it couple of times and invite different people to try. Lastly we still think that pan frying with rosemary is the best. A bit 黏牙 like that is the best.



I have been actively promoting the benefit of eating catfish. Many of my friend steer away from it as they find it smelly so they say. Actually they hasn't try eating it before. But I guess is that catfish generally eat waste so they assume the meat is muddy. 

Convince friend to give catfish a try

According to this articles, catfish is low is calories, high in vitamin D, omega 3 and rich in protein.  In fact due to the low cost of production Chinese restaurant those selling 烤鱼, many are using fry catfish as their choice of meat. Thailand people also like to grill them on 2 chopstick commonly found in golden mile (demolished). In fact in Malaysia, a lot of people treat catfish 白稣公 as one of their local delicacy. 


Talking about this week right, I went Labrador park to fish for salt water. Too bad, that day I did witness the oil spill first hand and found 2 otto kanna coated in oil. I really can feel for the marine life as fisherman over harvest fish and constant pollution of sea by big corporate and oil company. The world is so bad and everything is getting from bad to worst. World is not getting to a better place but heading south. I make me really deter of having children as I don't wanna bring another person out to suffer in the world.


Gutting the catfish and review

As compared to Tilapia. Catfish is surprising easy to clean as their guts are cleaner and they don't have to be descaled. Only draw back from the fish is the meat is close to tasteless albeit meat is firm and sometime chewy if you don't overcook it. I also felt that the meat is quite oily and make it very 腻 after a while. Unless of course if the cooking method is rose mary pan fry :)

The first time I gut it is very gruesome so watch with empty stomach.






Not suitable in-service line

 

Jacky went to find Andrian to ask about my temperament issue when I am dealing with retail client. I tend to stick to my principle a lot and unable to 扮可怜 or 博同情. 

I would rather jeopardise the whole deal rather than meeting client at the "middle". 

I acknowledge that I am not very end goal driven. I always do thing without an end in mind. Sort of a very process kind of person.

Jacky came to a conclusion I might not be very suitable to be working in the service line. She asks me to do back my leather project and at least start off with a product. She says since I don't work really well with bosses and colleagues, I am not a very people person as I like to exercise my world view on people around. She recommends that I should at least be enforcing my control on a product as a solopreneur. 

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Brompton P Line

​well. I sold my old superlight raw lacquer for a $700 profile. This bike is so great that both of us has seller remorse over it. I mean I could have profit a 1.3k at least. Show u by ex photo. 


Well. My 3sixty chrome is still with me. Like my 初恋情人. Cannot be replaced even by the atas Brompton. Show u my 初恋. Although she is also available on carousel. 


Now after Jacky gets her red superlight and I buy another P line storm grey. Our collection in garage as follows.

Soon we will need to buy the sets of tools to repair and maintain our bike. Stay tuned. 

using a new blogging platform blogger plus

​I love blogging again. But I hate google blogspot platform. Doesn’t have a good app for me to use to publish my post. 

Let try to upload my Macau trip


Okie. Just realise I need to allow the “blogger plus” have Google drive access to upload picture. 

And lastly I think there is a double up strategy to almost sure win in casino. I play the game big small with near 50% win rate. With enough capital, I can sure win without black swan events. The trick is to only buy 1 option only. Everyday win $100 go home sleep. Eat and drink free inside. Nice!!

Update: 06 Feb 2024. Deleted the useless blogger platform. As the photos need to have certain google access which I am not comfortable with. Decided you know to convert back to blogging using PC.


 This week recap on what's happening. 

Gardening

On my way to renaissance man, I had joined Jacky to do a community work at a community garden. This is to give my to community and also extending my social circle boarder and not confine in just my working networks. Giving back is a good way to feel better about ourselves.

1st week, I met up with Felicia, she told us main tools we need is a shovel and a cutter. She introduce us to the layout of the garden. We helped in washing some veg with ETL solutions. And we get to harvest longevity spinach and eggplant. Then we are tasked to distribute some to the household for presidents to enjoy and raise awareness to the community garden there. Therefore inviting them to come to the garden to ask for more harvest from the volunteers and of course come and volunteer for garden's manpower.






2nd week, as usually we kept our schedule to 9am to 12noon. We started off my restarting the soil for another pod, namely Cai Xin. Felicia shared 

  • the closer the seed are planted, the smaller the root and hence the veg will be smaller too
  • a seed and be harvested 2 to 3 times, rather than rooting it out, just cuts off all leaves leaving 2 smaller sprout for photosynthesis.
  • Cai Xin life cycle from seed to harvest usually is 4 weeks, she manged to harvest it within 18 days
  • To grow healthy plants, need to watch their PH 6.5 which is neutral and the soil quality. Remove pest by covering them with nets.
While she mentioned that she is proud that this community is harvesting at a faster rate due to some special formula of hers. She encourage and motivate us to learn quicker and harvest faster as this community garden is the faster growing within the hundreds of garden around Singapore.

However, this makes me question about this capitalism world. Everyone is now focus on competition over collaboration. It is a toxic cycle come to think about it. Many will agree that having "healthy competition" is good for the world / corporate / community. But I see this will eventually turns into hurting the world just like all the big corporate did. Nestle, Shell, Apple etc. The uncalled for competition just motivate company to use extreme methods of agriculture, industrialized methods that end up causing issue like carbon footprint.

Within the community is fine, all teams are willing to share tip and trick to help each other. But we just end up creating unreal competition with other communities. Therefore it is not advantages for us to share among inter-community. I hopefully can advocate we should not compete. Focus on the real why you are doing this and like about collaboration instead. Volunteer work wise of working wise.

Week 1 of work

Back to my new job. Love and hate for the first week. 

I love it as they are not as toxic as the place I came from before. Colleague are willing to set aside work and mentor me. That doesn't happen in my previous place. I guess is due to the unreal expectation from the top management. Also from the 奋斗逼. 

I am tore between choosing central area where a lot of experience colleague around or somewhere at the suburb heartland mall where our team starts at the same place and learn together. You know, the pro and con between learning things faster vs taking things slowly.   





Becoming a renaissance man

 Being a renaissance man

3 more days starting new job. 2 more books to go.

  1. Early retirement extreme 
  2. Outlier

Wah, early retirement extreme really intrigue to me read word for word and the concept is very align to mine. As though, the writer help me to put up a more detailed version of what my worldview is. I really recommend this book to people who like to retire early. Comparing to FIRE, although I haven't read it. I would think this is a better book.

In the book is part people into 4 groups. Salary man / working man / business man and renaissance man. What renaissance man is also a polymath, or commonly known as "jack of all trade". This align with me to be a generalist over a specialist. Being a special come with a benefit but people often overlook the cost of specialisation. 

So I advocate being a renaissance man, which the following clip say you need to have 2 things,

  • dedicated learning : Cross learning a skill which can help you to learn another skill easier
  • opportunistic learning : ability to learn things as it present itself and therefore able to learn new things quickly. 
Very good video and I like this speaking cadence which show so much confidence. Love it. 


Being a handy man

I want to research should I invest in bicycle maintenance tools. Which has some cross between handyman tools for general repair. If much item is similar or overlay. I think I will bite the bullet to invest in a set of tools.

These are long term ROI and very possible income generating. I need to start working on some hard skills, technical skills or blue collar skill. 

Everyone is a natural builder. From young as a baby, we smile with curosity as we touch the world around us and realise we are able to touch and modify things. As we grow older, we lose this kind of instint due to the busiest of work. We outsource simple things to others in term of services. To escape capitalism, I want to learn more DIY. 

When I finish my notes on retirement extreme, will share it. Inside a lot of example why we need to be a handyman

Be a generalist

 This weekend got fly aeroplane by 2 group of friends. 

  1. Lilian suppose to meet at SP for singing end up cancelling as her daughter is sick. 
  2. Flo and Herm cancelled Sunday cycling as Herm bike Brompton got gear issue. Same things that the connector just got disconnector. 
Knowing how to fix the Brompton yourself can help to save the $70 servicing fee. This information can be easily found on YouTube provided you have the leisurely of time of not working to study and DIY. Of course I agree the opportunity cost of spending time to research, study, trial and error vs paying for an expert to help you solve the problem. However, as a typical "S" quadrat guy. Learn a general repair skill has the potential to ROI the opportunity cost in your life time. 

I am advocate for general specialist. I no longer see the upside to specialise very deep. Able to know a vest knowledge broadly will help us to see solution from different angles. Your solutions are usually unique and more out of the box. 




Frugal living


End up I need to go through my phonebook to jio friend out for a pint. So hard to find friends now as all has their own group. Meet up with Michael at Bugis and he had been working for grab part time for 2 years. Very powerful, beside his main job, he part time as a grab and all good weeks he can get 1.4k usually in the 800 to 1k weekly. Due to his past 1 year, he say he got 20k annual from grab part time. 

He shown me that he has also upgrade his bike to electrical one. I tried and it was very good and responsive. He is getting fitter which is a good thing. He encourage me to go get the shirt and start doing it now. Well the bundle will need $70 so typically 2 days are enough to break even the start up cost.

I told him I don't really want to do it for the money. I looking more for the experience and also the work out part of the job. We had a small talk which revolve how he is inspired to clear debt, buy condo in the future and a car really soon. I really advice him against it as a frugal woke man. However, he is very quick to dismiss my point of view of course thinking I am a crazy man or a outlier. I really hope I can come out with either a book / podcast / video to advocate the frugal lifestyle. 

Aline, my friend from Vietnam had done a similar thing which is very good I think. Can copy her style.

Outlier is a good book, recommended. 10 hours rule in the core teaching and even Ali also recommend it as a very easy to read book which are being listed in the top 10 for a reason.

Feeling inspired. 


Internet review

Before I buy something online, eat something or watch a movie; I had the habit to search for review online. I almost enjoy the process of researching for review more than buying the item or experience. 

Sometime it will just cause me a lot of dilemma and confusion, even it will make to procrastinate on taking action or avoid doing it all together.

However, I am a very compare dot com kind of guy. 

I know a lot of reviews can be brought or fake, however it didn't know that review market had evolve to a state where most of the review are fake. 


At the end of clip, she mention that although it seems like the review system had benefit the food store, user and the broker. However, in the long run, it is damaging to all parties.

  1. Restaurant have to particulate in rhetoric star rating system, waste energy and money
  2. Broker / Platform that contain fakes review in the mix and lose real client base
  3. User long longer able to get real information on platform
I should remind myself not to get too involve in comparing different product. Goes with the middle option to save more opportunity cost.

Blogging

Blogger is very hard to use and it don't have a app to do it. Wordpress had gotten better over the years.

3sixty

My brakes cable replacement parts had arrived. Thanks Jacky for the help. Too bad she is down with COVID also. It was so hard to avoid. Even I catch it when I go golden mile.

This weekend might go out for a foldie ride on Sunday. This bike is really good and I like it after 1 year still. Although the ride frequency reduced but the need to use it once in a while is always there. If I take care the bike and dry and oil it. I can last me a life time. So it is a 1k well spent.




In between job, 2 months break

Today after watching Samurai Matcha, I got inspired to start writing my online dairy. I guess I still love my blog. 

Travel



I am midway between my job. Now taking a short 2 months break. I did travel a bit after COVID reopen. In case you had missed out my Selangor Trip and Dalat Trip. The motive behind these trip is first, relax and secondly, introduce Jacky to micro retirement. From blogging for many years, I realise it is good to have records over the years so we had started both a channel on Youtube and a mini project for podcast. 

Capitalism

Today I was telling Jacky about capitalism market and how they suck you in to keep purchasing things that you end up throwing out a while later. I was trying to avoid falling into all the marketing and selling technics in recent years. Take for example that, fashion industry was so saturated so capitalist designed fast fashion that promotes planned obsolescence which phrase out product in a certain life span. Fast fashion had been known to cause depletion to our earth natural resources. 

Living a frugal life

  • Spend only on my needs not want, when I want to buy something I usually delay my purchase, only if I sleep over it and I had the urge I will return again to buy
  • When buying I always avoid single purpose products, there needs to be multi functions
  • Instead of buying for comfort, I buy for value. Looking for potential ways the item could ROI or be monetized in other ways

 Gig economy 

Recently, we had plans to move from E to S quadrant. For the lower and non guaranteed income, we hope to exchange for anatomy, flexibility, diversified, purposeful and aligning to vision type of life. I had borrowed the book "The Gig Economy" on Kobo. This E-reader is better than kindle due to the app is able to connect to local library via overdrive to read infinite books. So far I had read 2 books. Barefoot investor and 中国历史一点通

COVID make me positive

 This week I was tested positive for COVID.



My first instinctive thought is the fear of horrible lung infection and long term organ damage the virus can do to my body. I guess many will feel the same way. The worries, fear or pressure may be overwhelming to a lot of people. I can see some few might even suffer from depression from his unfortunate mishap in life.

However, this fear lasted only 3 minutes within me. Fear I believe is due to the natural human defend mechanism when facing dangerous situation that we naturally comes out with some worst case scenario to better prepare our brain.

But what went through my thought was, my belief system that our life is all being watched over by an good person. Many call that god while I just call it a good person. They will watch over us and make sure they will provide us the best possible outcome for us. All choice that you make regardless of good or bad ultimately is the only choice that you will make to lead you to the best outcome.

The virus was cast against me so that my body will build up the natural defend mechanism probably to protect me against another bigger problem. Which otherwise will kill me in an instant if not because of this COVID experience.

Measurement of time in second, measurement of length using metrics, measurement of wealth using dollars. How funny all this are just man made. And if we are always worry about how young, how tall and how successful base on these metrics. We just leads ourselves to misery. No one cause us to feel sad. We just allow ourselves to be measure against other's expectation. Hard to describe but 你懂的

I was shocked how come I can be so positive as if I can’t even be scared in front of this kind of life and death situation what else can hurt me anymore. I felt invincible.

The reason I am sharing how I mitigate stress and pressure is because I felt a lot of people are always worrying too much. While a lot of illness is cause by stress and pressure itself. And it was only amplified by our own mind. So nice if I am able to advocate to people how to be as positive like me.