A Singaporean In Australia

Showing posts with label Farm Tales. Show all posts

Hi Nix,

Yes, a $120k profit sounds very attractive on hay alone. But in reality, it is not. You see, hay is just one source of income. Its 'profit' would most likely cover the loss or cost of the other sources. We are now preparing the grounds for canola, barley and oats. If those don't come through nicely (due to weather, soil and land pests), and if our sheep don't bear as many lambs as we hope; or some fuckwitt steals our animals and of course, if they die- we could be gearing for loss by the end of the financial year. :-)

I think the heavens have been kind to us. Unlike in Queensland where they have been having a long drought and then a freaking storm, we have been quite comfortable and blessed with enough rainfall.

Come at me, sis

These few weeks, we've been having unwanted visitors- humans and animals. The latter was a herd of huge stompers. Not your singaporeans stompers who take photos and post on the STOMP page for shaming. But these were kangaroos. Now, I know the Greenies and media have been talking all conservation and animal cruelty etc etc etc. What they DON"T tell you is the damage they do to farmland crops and financial loss at tens of thousand dollars. Anyway, we discovered the stompers by the trail and damage they left to the edge of the property. At least 6 paddocks were damaged and Kerry estimated about $15k loss there. She was quite angry (duh!) So it went on to a point where we had to nip the problem in the bud. So two nights in a row, we have been out in the middle of the night, shooting kangaroos. Yours truly the Ah Pui Soh, can't see very well in the dark, and even with night vision goggles, I struggled between reloading, picking up the cartridge, aiming..everything. I think it is time to make a trip to Specsavers.

The unwanted human visitors came with a permission slip. Apparently, they had approval from the government to do some exploratory work. You see, land ownership here doesn't mean you own it. Land ownership is YOU OWN the top layer. The Crown owns everything below . These unwanted shitheads wanted to 'look around' and do some digging. 'Soil testing' was the reason they told us. But later that night in the pub, they confessed to Kerry's son that they were looking for gold. We have every right to be angry but no right to say they can't come. Today is their last day and I hope the kangaroos will tear them up.

Cheers,

Dearest Nix,

It is very seldom you would hear me rant about Sg politics. But education holds a special place in my heart, having being and been a product of the Sg educational system and not having children good enough for it. THis photo in FB almost made me lose my marbles. How dare they put and use the Little India riots as 'history'. Such propaganda is a disgrace. The basic tenets of human rights should be taught to the young , but no! how could they lose a chance for brainwashing? Utter disgrace.

sincerely,

Dear L,

History is the subject I hate most. It didn't help when my first history teacher was a bitter, sarcastic, cynical old spinster who taught us nothing of the subject. I have been called a cynic often but believe me, I am not fit to polish her shoes when it comes to that. We had to go through an entire year appreciating her recitals and learnt how to under line sentences in our text books faster her saying, "Under line, page 200, paragraph 3, sentence 7 to 11."

Miss History did not even bother to impress us with her subjects, perhaps like selling to us why what she was teaching to us could add value to our lives. I had to find that out myself later in life. They said that studying history is important because only knowing the past will we understand our present. So we can create a better future, in theory.

I call that bullshit.

I call that bullshit because humans are known to err repeatedly from the same mistakes since the beginning of human time. Wars. Stock market speculations. Real estate speculations. Worshiping false gods. Voting for duds. Wicked ambitions. Greed. Cruelty. The atrocities continue on generation after generations. Either history teaches us nothing or we never learn. Either way, it is no point learning history for that reason stated above. We need a stronger reason.

Before that, I have only a stronger reason not to study history, at least the history subjects as we know it in Singapore. I wouldn't have a problem with history if textbooks look like that:

Year A: Dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Year B: A meteor hit Earth and wiped them out.

Year C: Human population grow exponentially.

Year D: Concept of God was derived. Earth's age shortened from X million years to 100 years.

Year E: Mankind fight among one another to prove their respective God was the real one.

Year F: Today.

Well, the problem with history was that they would never be factual and straightforward. During my days, we had to study about someone called Parameswara. The only thing we needed to know was who he was, how long was his reign and what he did during those years. But no - human beings like to ask why. That is where the problem begins.

Take the Little India Riot for instance. For historical records, we want to know when it happened, where it happened, how many rioters were involved, how much damage they caused. These are more or less the facts that cannot manipulated. The rest of it will be some cockbull stories written by somebody who wasn't even present at the scenes with the information supplied by the "right source." The result: an awfully bias account of "history" that can very well fit the fiction section in the library, right beside, "True Singapore Ghost Stories," perhaps.

Every year during the NDP, Singaporeans had been seen displaying true delight being fed historical lies. Every Singaporean now believes that Singapore was a "fishing village" when the PAP became government and stories in history books in school heavily suggest that the PAP should take full credit for turning turning the "fishing village" to the city as we know it today.

History has always been written by the victors in versions that paint well of themselves. If the Axis Powers won the WWII, we would be reading about how evil the Allies were and the atrocities they did instead of Japanese soldiers raping women and killing babies with bayonets. Not surprisingly, the PAP will be doing nothing different in terms of recording a one-sided version of their success, covering their own crimes as well as the injustice their opponents suffered and over-glorifying their good work in the process.

What really happened during the Bukit Ho Swee fire we will never know because the truths are buried in the historic records that do not tally with the accounts of our old folks told in hush hush tones. One day, our grandchildren will be calling our accounts of the Little India riot bullshit the same way. How badly the Singapore Police Force handled the riot would never come to light again, for instance. Was the Cheng San GRC results in GE 1997 rigged? Not many Singaporeans know long before Malaysia did their "blackout" magic in their GE, Singapore was already rumored to have done so. Again, we will never know the truth.

I see no value in getting our children study "history" or "social studies". The time should be spent on moral education instead. Then hopefully, when the children grows up and join the whites, they will be morally upright enough to provide factual history books for the next generation instead of their self indulging magazines.

Hi Nix,

Terribly sorry for the late reply. Things have been busy. The weather is so hot that we hit 40s a few times this summer so far. With the high temperatures, we are not allowed to work (on the farm). So we had to do a lot of 'chionging' in the wee hours of the morning or late into the night. We are more or less done with harvest now. Good weather over winter and spring reaped good (though not excellent, but better compared to last year) returns on canola and barley. My stock of clover hay sold out within 2 weeks, which was perfect, because we were hit by the 2 days thunderstorm after that. (Wet hay= not good)

I had a chuckle when you mentioned about the lack of picture of Geoff! Geez Mate! The last thing I need is to document it or worse, put it on FB like everyone else with their food; and have animal rights greenies troll me. To be honest, I wished I would have given Geoff a bit more dignity; even though he didn't contribute much in his lifetime.

A note on Lao Fu Zi. I am pleased to report that it has been successfully trained and it is currently serving as a therapy horse. Except that it is currently school holidays, so he is having his term break too. We acquired another two horses recently; one was named 'Alberto' by its previous owner. I hate the name. So I renamed it 'George'. George is such a character. You see, sometimes when you want to inform a horse that you are approaching or about to lead it, one makes a clicking sound with your tongue against teeth. But George responds when I say, 'yo yo'...(literally!) I discovered this during a training session. So in true Sg spirit, I registered his name as 'George Yeo'.

Megawati

The second horse, I named in 'MegaWati'. She is supposed to be a mate for Lao Fu Zi. No megawatts sparks yet at the moment.

Over the holidays, I visited our little island Singapore. Every time I go back, a new building seems to have sprout out like a mushroom. People are grumpier as ever. I ordered my coffee with a smile and 'how are you', I was given the 'Are you on steroids?!' look of disbelief.

Anyway, happy new year to you and Jen. I hope that this year holds for you and your family many blessings and joys, laughter and love. And as for me, our acquisition of 300 sheep finally arrived today. We spent the morning marking them, by dipping their tail ends in ink and deworming them by drenching (pouring medicine down their throats. This is one method. Another method is to put tags on their ears (which is more common in cattle farming). I know it doesn't sound all humane. The photos don't make it better either, unfortunately. Hope it doesn't offend your readers.

The de-worming process

Louise is an (ex?) Singaporean daughter living in Temora, one of the outskirt suburbs of Sydney. She writes to me occasionally and her emails intrigue me to no end, often include details of her life and work with a great sense of humour. Some of her emails are too good not to share. Though most Singaporeans will not be interested in things like that, a minority like me will. This blog is catered for the minority in the first place. Apt.

Asking the lady to tell me her experiences:

Dear Nix and Jen,

Hello again. I read your latest blog with interest. I certainly didn't know about the 50 points for pure existence. If only our local Woolies or Coles give us those points on flybuys, for simply 'being something' every time we shop with them.

It has been an interesting fortnight for Singapore and Australia. In Singapore, it was a lot of hype and no change. In Australia, it was no hype and a sudden change. On the latter, I much prefer Turnbull over Abbott, for a wide variety of reasons. How has your fortnight been? Mine was twisted. I won't say it was interesting. But extremely twisted and out of ordinary.

It all started out pretty well. I acquired another horse and named it Lao Fu Zi. Its previous owner didn't have time for him so I bought it over. The intention was to train it enough so that it can serve as a therapy horse with the 'Riding for the Disabled'. I strongly suspect that it had other plans. The following night, I was tagged on FB by several people on a status. The status was,"Did anyone lose a horse? I happened to look on my CCTV and saw a horse trotting past our front yard. I drove out to the property and looked. Shit, a fencing had come loose. Lao Fu Zi was missing. So I drove out to search. I panicked in cold sweat because Lao Fu Zi was not tagged yet. And if the pound authority finds him, they would most likely shoot it. The power of FB came swiftly into action. I was informed that there is a horse loitering outside Maccas. Effing hell. So drove over, led it slowly into the trailer (not much difficulty, it must be afraid as well) and brought it back.

Two days later, Geoff the donkey died. No, I didn't kill it, I don't think it was global warming as well. Whatever, it was dead and with my limited knowledge on animals, I know it is going to stink in a few days time. According to the long list of laws on NSW, I am responsible to dispose the dead animal but also to adhere to 1001 regulations. Well so the first step is to move it out of the way from stock and vegetation. All these guidelines are very good at telling you what to do, but they forgot in reality it is not that easy. Firstly, the animal was effing heavy. Then while trying to drag it, its eyes fell out. And the effing crows came and fought to eat the fallen eyeballs. Gruesome side of nature. I am not ashamed to admit that I became revolting sick and the crows ate that too. By that time, a friend of mine came along with a forklift to lift it. One of its legs came apart.

So step two was to ring the vet to determine cause of death. This is to make sure that it was not some infectious and reportable disease. So the vet came, opened up the donkey, it was a heart attack. I asked about disposal. He said he could cremate Geoff at $1200. A candle will be lit in their chapel of remembrance. I am welcome to hold a memorial service for it, and then after the cremation, I would be handled back a box of its ashes with potpourri. There is already a problem with this. I don't have $1200. I don't think anyone would be interested to come for its memorial service. What am I supposed to do with a box of scented 'vacuum-cleaner' dust? The vet suggested that I rang the tip. The tip said they only do stock animals such as cattle, sheep, cows, not donkey. By that time, I felt so screwed up and I still have two halves of a dead donkey sitting behind the shed. I went home and looked up the whole bunch of rules on animal disposal. Thanks to my other half who pointed out that we cannot bury it because our land leads onto a water supply and its carcass poisons it. So the final decision was to burn it. At this point, I applauded at my genius mind. I watched Bear Gyrills so many times. It only takes patience and dry wood to start the fire. Of course, being NSW, you cannot just burn things even if it is on your property. You got to apply for fire permits and put a notice in the papers and inform your neighbours and your local fire department (run by volunteers). So the day after, I surrounded the donkey a nesting of wood chips, pour gasoline and lit it. All day, it spat and crackled and I was pretty pleased with myself. When the fire finally died, I inspected it. The effing animal was still intact, less its fur and an intestine spilling out! Mind you this was already day 4. After I finished with all the profanities, I rang my friend who then brought in the bull dozer the next morning to dig a trench, while I applied for another fire permit and newspaper notice. My logic was if the small fire didn't work, then a bigger fire was needed. Just before I started, I rang the local fire volunteer, who told me that they were all at the pub and too drunk to operate the fire truck. But he was to ring around to see if any mates would help. The undrunken mate turned up and was on stand by. Prior to his arrival, I had seasoned the corpse with my combustion concoction of diesel, engine oil and meths, and even sprinkled a bit of gunpowder. When I lit it, I thought I've gone too far. It didn't just catch fire, it exploded. But after a while, it burnt on nicely, and the undrunken mate kept it under control and steady. It smelt terrible.

And the final amount spent on all these? $120.

:-)

Dear Louise,

This post is incomplete without a picture of Geoff. Since I have watched my fair share of Happy Tree Friends, I am not exactly turned off by the description of your corpse disposal adventure. I am surprised though, that it took so much to burn a body. No wonder many murderers who tried disposing corpses ended up being caught. The difficulty of a proper disposal of a carcass is underestimated. Now that you mentioned it, I figured out half of the Neurotic Couple, S, is a volunteer at his local fire department. Perhaps he is working on getting to a position where he could sign his own approval to set fires. With the ability to burn corpse on his own terms, he is certainly not a man to be trifle with.

The tale of the runaway horse is something you will have to reflect on. You must have been treating the old master badly, it got pissed off and ran away. Riding for the disabled might have sound too boring as a job scope for this ambitious horse. Maybe you should make a gigantic wheel and get it to generate electricity for you by running on it. I just watched "The Matrix" over the weekend and it gave me bad ideas.

I like your $120 solution. Granted that $1200 could get you fancy value added services, I think it is important for migrants to understand that is a very cheap and a very expensive solution to every (well, most) problem(s) here. We cannot expect solutions to be served on a platter the way we are used to in Singapore. Often, we have to find out the options or even propose an idea. For example, trading in an unwanted used car with a car dealer may be a more efficient solution to dispose a car than to sell it privately when you need another car anyway. Just something a colleague recently did and got a great deal out of it (his car was actually faulty haha).

I still have some of your home made figs chutney. I am going to use a chunk of it on some grilled lamb tonight. Still feel bad about you having to send them over all the way from Temora.

Take care and hope to hear from you again,

asingaporeanson

Asking the lady to tell me her experiences:

Her Canola fields

Wah you flatter me lah. You will probably be the only person who reads if I blog. To be able to write is a talent; and you certainly have that talent. I often wish I have that talent like yours- to be able to reflect and to put it down in words. I struggle even just with my essays for uni. Actually, I started reading your blog when I was living with Tassie. I decided to write to you only after reading about the mothers who wrote to you for advice. I thought my experience living here with a child with autism can help your readers in giving them some directions on services and support. There is really nothing for me to write unless Singaporeans want to hear things like me sitting around in the cold waiting for the sheep or cow to give birth; or the silly gun laws in the country or the Bogans (which I will tell you a story later about one of them) in my town. Now those stories would be too frightening for Singaporeans who are planning their move to Australia.

The resounding theme in many of your readers who ask you migration questions is 'fear'. The fear of leaving and giving up Singapore grips them. What I meant by 'Singapore' includes job, family, stability, starbucks, hawker centres- you get my point. It is absolutely normal to be afraid of uprooting and going to a foreign land. It is definitely good to ask questions, get information, do calculations etc. What is not ok, and shits me the most is Procrastination- and a lot of them do! They talk about how bad Singapore is and how they want to move but 10 years later, they are still complaining. And even worst, they put up posters and captions on fb on how lucky they are to be Singaporeans, and how excellent SG50, and sing count your money Singapore! Then there is the other bunch who made their move, but live among Singaporeans, and then sit around at Singaporean gatherings and reminisce about Singapore their home etc etc etc. I lived in Indonesia for more than 10 years, and I have seen my fair share of hypocrisy filled Singaporean gatherings and attended tons of embassy functions. Please don't get me wrong. I don't hate Singapore. I just dislike the mentality and hypocrisy behaviour. And I disagree with Mr. Goh Chok Tong's statement that I am a quitter. I am not a quitter, in contrary, I chose to leave because there was no job in Singapore for me, at that time.

I really do appreciate your direct opinion in telling the readers the reality of living in Australia and the pure grit to start all over again in job search- something that doesn't appeal to many. Sometimes, I wonder if it is enough to turn them off by just telling them that the average cost of chicken rice at the nearest asian restaurant is $23 and most mee pok tastes like rubber bands. Eating out is a luxury here - even in a small country town. After rent, fuel, groceries, there isn't really much left to go out.

On the lighter side, let me tell you about something that happened to one of our town bogans, Rob. who is also a friend of ours.

Rob broke his collarbone from a series of mishaps. While Robbie is sulking on his own, the rest of us are having a very good laugh at his expense. It all started when he brought his motor bike into the lounge room, so that he could clean it. Annie his wife told him several times not to do that; the old sod insisted so because it was cold outside. For some reason that day he decided to clean the engine, so out came the rags and the gasoline. When he finished, he decided that it would be a good idea to start the engine to make sure everything was ok (in his lounge room, for pete's sake!). So he climbed on and started the engine. Unfortunately, the bike started in gear and crashed into the glass doors to the deck, with Robbie still hanging on the the handlebars. Annie, the poor love rushed from the kitchen and found him badly cut from the broken glass and rang for the ambo. The emore people cleaned him up and he had over 50 stitches. Annie brought him home in the arvo and put him in bed, while she cleared the mess up; and dumped the gasoline down the toilet. The fat bugger woke up to have a smoke and decided to have a crap as well. And halfway through it, dumped the cigarette in the toilet bowl and promptly caused an explosion. Poor Annie ran to the bathroom, found Robbie screaming in pain, trousers blown away, burns on his buttocks. She said she almost felt embarrassed having to ring triple zero again. Coincidentally, the same ambo people from the morning were on call and arrived to attend to them. They quickly loaded Robbie onto the stretcher and began to carry him out on the street to the ambo. One of them asked Annie what had happened and she told them.The two started laughing so hard that they dropped Robbie's stretcher and broke his collarbone.

Another tale from a country town :-)

Notes for noobs:

arvo = afternoon
ambo = ambulance
bogan = australian beng

Hi Nix,

How are you and how is Jen coming along? We have been ok here. I am getting better by the days. Still a bit achy but needing less painkillers now. Hope Spring has found you guys well. Just want to share what's been going on at the farm.

made sausage with Tom, Dick and Harry

The time has come for us to slaughter some of the animals; there are a bit too many of them for me to handle alone. After thinking about it for half of winter, we decided that the 2 calves, Mayweather and Pacquiao and the 3 pigs- Tom, Dick and Harry (full sized) had to go. I don't have much cash for them to go to the abattoir. Once again, we rang Aaron the mobile butcher. Aaron goes around the rural country to butcher animals on the property. He also cuts them according to specifications, so that it is up to the farmer to sell or keep for personal consumption. Kerry, my good neighbour decided to chip in her lambs (sob!) as well.

Early Saturday morning, Aaron rocked up on the farm all smiles. I am convinced this guy had teeth whitening done! He set up his work stations in the shed. Within 30 mins, he was ready for action. We gathered around to join him for a short prayer for the animals; even though none of us are religious. I confessed that I am usually a wimp when it comes to the slaughtering part. I went home- leaving Aaron to work on the slaughtering. I was told that it was done quickly and the animals did not suffer for too long. Kerry said that the animals took their last breath within a minute. Anyway, so when I came back, Aaron was already skinning the animals. It is very important that there is dignity to the animal's life and nothing is wasted from that animals. Aaron's skills were excellent. He made sausages from the pigs' intestines. (He cleared out the gunts in it by washing it thoroughly. After drying it, pork mince were inserted into it.) He even made different flavours for the sausages.

Pictures attached.

Take care,

Lamb chops for lunch

Pacquiao cuts

other cuts of Pacquiao

mayweather left to dry

Workstation in shed, Mayweather on table

Tom, Dick and Harry

Sausages from Tom, Dick, Harry left to dry

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