Our friend Xavier come visit at Nha Trang

 

Hosting Xavier and Wendy from Singapore

As spoken yesterday, we are supposed to blog on a daily basis and today we missed the 10pm blogging time again. Therefore we are supposed to take a picture regardless of what we are doing. Stop and reflect why today we are not on schedule again. 

Today, our friend Xavier and Wendy came over from Bali as they are just starting to enjoy their first trip after Xavier quit his full time job. 裸辞 and join Jackie to do their freelance SAP job. They are super impressed with Nha Trang Vietnam over Bali. They review is that out of their expectation they didn't expect Vietnam to be so clean, road so wide and not too much traffic. Food is very refreshing and cost of living is so low. They had express that they will return to do a long stay if they had the chance.

You see, that's why all my friend ask me why I keep returning to Vietnam. From my blog history you can tell that I am a long time Vietnam ambassador. I had been on and off staying in Vietnam for a period of 2 years. Been traveling south and north. Next stop we will plan for a Da Nang trip next year.

Today we also went to enjoy KTV in Nha Trang. Can sing Chinese song and 240k dong (~$15) per hour and 28k ($1.60) for 1 can of beer. Exchange rate is 100 SGD to 1,900,000 dong. That is super cheap. 

Enough for the ranting. Next week 4th Uncle and Father will fly to Nha Trang and meet us. So stay tuned we will post more of our Vietnam trip here.

Today is Monday hence is our "Me Time" day. We will spend one day away from each other and go experience Vietnam on our own. On track for our changes. Jiayou!!!

We coming back for blogging hopefully

 Finally, its time to come back and blog. 

Currently, Jackie and me is at Nha Trang for a one month getaway. For her is like a remote working for at a different country for her new freelancer job. For me is I am taking a semi retirement break (3 years) since my last job at RHB.

The reason why we are blogging is because we find that we are very lost at Nha Trang without much to do and she mentioned that if I were to be very focus at least on something I seem to be more appealing. As such since we enjoyed Nha Trang a lot and potentially we coming back for a 1 to 3 month short term rental here. We like to set up a good routine for our life. As such

Weekly outlook

Monday - "Me Time" day between 9am to 5pm where we are not allowed to disturb each other, we can work, go excerise, go play or go read book at cafe. Anything is fine but we have to spend time apart. 

Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday - This is our offical 4 days work week, where we suppose to work from 12noon to 4pm religiously. Hopefully we can do the dress up and show up at a cafe to work on her SAP.

Friday - TGIF, our dress down half day work day. Which we suppose to end work at 3pm to go for our date day, ranging for movie, dinner and couple discussion and weekly review.

Saturday - We shall reserve this day for event and meet up with other people and stranger community. This can be for leisure or work related. We shall mix some new blood in our systems.

Sunday - Will be our family day, this day is reserve for us only. We hope to adopt the Jew concept of strict no work day. To detox and what not.

On a daily basis

We like to add exercise and journaling into our daily activities. This is to I'mprove our physical health and mental health. 

We love to do the gratitude journal and daily blogging for appreciation and what not. We set 10pm to do blogging on a daily basis. In the event we cannot come online at 10pm for blogging then we have a take a picture of the day and do a description on that picture. For example:

Jackie is sick with flu and we brought pill at Nha Trang Centre.

Kulai Work Stay 流连宿 打工换宿 - List of place for work exchange

 Last week, we worked on the gardening part and this week we are more into the construction part. The owner Tai Soon will periodically need manpower to help him in building expansion of the guesthouse. 

Most of the time, 1 or 2 volunteers are needed to water and harvest plant in the garden. But sometime he also need people to help in carpentry wood work or brick constructions. Like for example this week, all of us was assigned to dig (executvate), waterproof, laying of brick and mortar and then filling up with sand etc. He wants the pond to have a waterfall and plants growing around the pond.

Following is we are all getting ourselves dirty to maintain the fishing pond and remove some soft soil at the bottom (something like compost) and this soil will be used to build a outdoor oven for making plaza. So the intnetion to use soil over concrete is that in the even they decided to relocate or remove the oven, soil can be easily turned back to soft soil and removed. 

Beach

• Sea Turtle Research Unit (SEATRU), Terengganu Malaysia

• Laguna Redang Island Resort, Terengganu Malaysia
  

• The Gingerbread Cafe, Tioman Malaysia

• Tioman Dive Buddy, Tioman Malaysia

• Udive Tioman, Pahang 打工换证

• Barat Dive Centre, Tioman

Kulai Work Stay 流连宿 打工换宿 - Week 1

I am too busy to break down the experience at work for lodging program day by day so I decide to you know, compile and share these few days together.

Paku Pakis free veg in wild

Paku Pakis (Diplazium esculentum) is a type of wild grown fern and we were taught to harvest these fern from the wild and turn that into a dish that many Malay will enjoy. They have different grade depend where you harvest it and they also can be found in Singapore as the name 过山猫. You can cook it with salted egg as well. 

This aunty has a nice online cookbook for instruction how to cook sambal with Paku Pakis she can follow back easily in the future. Recommended format which I can try in the future.

Belacan and flour for fish bait

I was trying to hand reel catch fish at the local river at Kulai. Ah Ong shared with us that instead of using white bread as bait, we can try belacan mix with flour. I didn't think of that and I realise that belacan is made of shrimp paste and that why it will attract fish. 

Concrete Mix for basic construction

Well, as we all know that I studied civil and environmental in poly. Other than the short time (2 years) in Semborp I don't get to really practice my trade. Even during my ID time last year, I didn't really get to do site supervision job.

Then out of the blue, I got the chance to help out in the farm for the construction of swimming pool, waterfall and a outdoor baking oven!!!! OMG, who in the right mind build these things at home?? Don't worry Durian Guesthouse 流连宿 will be so crazy enough to build all these using raw material.

And we got to experience doing cement mix and concrete curing ourselves and do the whole 流水线 by ourselve. 

Thats all for today. Next week I update more on my work stay

Kulai Work Stay 流连宿 打工换宿 - Day 1

打工换宿

Okie, exciting. My friend Ben for the ID firm recommended me to try 打工换宿. Interesting concept from crouchsurfing!!! You can literally work / volunteer and exchange for lodging at different country, hence experience different culture from different country. Therefore, we decided to start our first experience at 流连宿.

流连宿

This self sustaining farm at Kulai is owned by Tai Shun. He used to work in Singapore as a mobile phone retailer and other job for many years but he ends up returning to Malaysia to start a homestay. His idea is not to keep chasing for the money and wants a farm that is fully substainable. He learn all the skill like electrical, plumbing, construction, carpentry and gardening from all around the world. More of his stories can be seen here. 

Direction

From Queenstown MRT to Kranji MRT > take SBS 170x to JB central > T30 bus for 40mins to Kulai. I went during Tuesday afternoon 12 as it was off perk and so it took me 2 hours to reach Kulai bus terminal from Queenstown MRT. No jam and straight through.

Day 1 

Banana tree only grow one branch of banana and they will weed. You can cut off the stem and sucker will start to grow from the base near to the original plant.

Compost method using permaculture, which instead of more modern industrialization method, permaculture is adopting a more traditional or natural method。

Good place as a 2nd home

Crystal shared that Kulai is a good place to start a homestay beside the hot and sunny weather which is the cons.

• - 40mins drive to JB if you want to enjoy some city time
• - 15mins drive to JB airport (small) which connects to the rest of malaysia via domestic flight. 
• - as a semi rural area, they still have good amount of facilities like police, fire, school and hospital around.

Brompton weight saving

 Jackie plan to make her Brompton lighter. The weight seems negligible, but every gram shave off from mean money out of pocket.

This post is to provide reference in the future for all the weight comparison. Will update as and when.

If useful can reference as well.

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.