garynbcDiary · 日记

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. 

GLIENDESIGN (@gliendesign) • Instagram photos and videos

GlienDesign - YouTube



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.