A Singaporean In Australia

To be honest, I doubt most Singaporeans will find gumtree useful, not in the picking up freebies sense at least. In general, we do not like used stuff and I can prove it to you. Or rather, the situation will prove it for me. Just take a walk along HDB void decks during the year end holiday season to Chinese New Year to see how much usable stuff Singaporeans throw away. Don't tell me those were done by the foreigners. It was already a consistent trend all the way back to the 80s, when foreigners were a few and far between as compared to these days. Well, I am not saying there is anything wrong with that. The original point I made was: Read the first sentence of this paragraph.

To me though, Gumtree freebies section has been great because it saved me thousands of dollars. I am not exaggerating here. I can easily list out the most costly items that total a few thousands. If I do it all, it'll come to several. Should I buy all of those brand new, I would be thousands in dollars worse off. No doubt about it at all.

Last weekend I decided to do all over again. Over the years, I have agonized friends by refusing to change my dining seats. Mr Stephen, the donor of those chairs would sigh and shake his head whenever a screw drops out when he sat on a chair.

"Paiseh lah," he would go. "I shouldn't have given you these creaky seats."

One of the seats was broken and little Albany would always remind me who broke it cheerily in her innocence, not realising it was rude. "Auntie M broke it!" she would go, before breaking out in giggles. I would laugh loudly because, well, it was funny and I have low EQ. In fact, I would secretly wait and see which unknowing new visitors would break another chair. If not, it has been fun to see their expressions when they found loose screws randomly dropping if they move the chairs too fast.

Anyway, a generous lady in her 40s offered her dining chairs (above) for free. So I drove all the way down to Singaporean's favourite suburb in Perth, Canningvale, to collect them. Caucasian lady, busty and happy to see me. Nice. I was told that those who contacted her were a pain to deal with. Some wanted only 4 chairs, some asked for more pictures of the chairs, some asked for delivery, some didn't even turn up to collect them as promised. Me? I turned up on time, collected them and left without a fuss. I told myself to never give any trouble to people who were nice enough to give out their things for free. The chairs looked great to me, not sparkling new but good enough for me. They were all sturdy too. My friends would be happy if they read this, especially Auntie M.

I had no time to waste. I needed to rush all the way up north to collect a beautiful swinging chair. Albany was on my mind throughout the journey. Several times when we visited Masters, she would run to one of the swinging chairs, sat on it and refused to leave after that. Trips to Masters always ended up in tears. When the owner told me I could have it, I was elated. One of those would cost me $300 up from the shops and they wouldn't last long at all if anyone put them up free. Wouldn't last even an hour, I bet.

When Albany saw the swing when I set it down, she exclaimed in joy and hopped on to it without invitation. She couldn't stop laughing throughout. I knew it would entertain her to no end for years. Swings have always been her favourite ever since I put her on one of those when she hadn't even learn to walk.

That night when we finally brought the swing back home, Albany couldn't take her eyes of it. During dinner, she suddenly exclaimed, "Look daddy! Lights!"

I turned and was surprised to see what I saw. "Look Albany, lights!" She threw a series of giggles and continued her dinner, pleased. The next day, her first request was to raise the blinds at the sliding door. "It's still there!" she exclaimed and began to hop around on one leg. I wondered when her enthusiasm would die down. Knowing my own daughter, it would be quite a long while.

Sorry about the freakish picture. I live in a twilight zone after all and now you see my point.

I have a odd corner in the house everyone asks me about when they see it. When I told them I intended that as a computer nook, they all gave me an unconvincing expression. One even called it a "Man-cave" and asked me if I am thin enough to squeeze in there to use a computer. I couldn't believe that actually plant a small doubt in my mind such that I took a chair and sat down there staring at the wall. There was more than enough space like I thought. How could I doubt myself and listen to people who didn't know anything about computer nooks.

The problem was, since it was such an unusual dimension, I was mentally prepared that I wouldn't find furniture that fits nicely there. If there is, it probably wouldn't come cheap.

Imagine my delight when I found someone giving away a desk in good condition in gumtree. Immediately, I texted the lady and asked her for dimensions. I couldn't believe my luck. It was a perfect fit for the computer nook. So I replied, "May I have it please?" when I really meant, "I WANT IT NOW!" I was prepared to drive there if she gave me the green light. However, it was already 8pm. She told me to try 10am in the following day instead. I had to brave the rain to get it back the next morning but it was worth it. Just look how spot on the dimensions were (left). There was even a section that slides outward intended for the keyboard.

I requested to Jen to make a makeshift curtain with a tension rod so that the nook could be veiled during gaming time. She predicted that the kids would eventually find me out and start crawling into the place to huddle around, treating it like a clubby house. Hmm, looks like that child gate is going to come useful in the future.

Other mentionable stuff I got for free are such as a swing set, a 6 seater dining table and matching chair set, solid kids table with 4 sturdy tiny chairs, a queen size wooden bed frame that will look great after I restore it for the guest room.

If you are a pissed poor peasant like myself, you can consider borrowing some good will from the community here to start off life. It may take you as long as 8-10 years to settle down fully. Try your best to pay it forward by giving away things that you don't need. That way, the spirit of sharing will grow. I cannot say enough how grateful I am to Perth gumtree's community.

Thanks Nix 

Yeah many reasons to move, though as the years pass, the other countries increase the requirements and difficulty. On the flip side, more and more reasons to move out as Sg is just getting worse by the day in terms of crowds, personal freedoms, human selfishness, etc...

Btw, a question for you - regarding your kids education, are you concerned on ensuring they get exposure to Chinese language? I am wondering, as a cheapo myself, if I ever am able to move out, I surely won't pay for any extra enrichment classes, since I don't even do it now in sg. But I do want my kids to be at least able to read, write and speak Chinese.

Sorry if this is too personal a question, and please feel free not to answer if it is.

Regards

EL

Hi EL,

I don't find this question personal. In fact, I would like to bring this to the table because I found this a common problem that Singaporean parents face here.

To be honest, I don't worry about such things, because there are bigger problems to worry about here. 

From my observations, my daughter's spoken Mandarin is not as good as me than when I was at her age. I would say she is slightly behind now. Since Albany is not in Primary School yet and all things being equal, the reason can only be the fact we communicate less in Mandarin with her than my mother used to with me.

I wouldn't recommend sticking your children with other kids that speak a lot of Mandarin just for this reason. We are migrants in Australia. It is our responsibility to integrate with the local culture. We should be moving to China, if we want the best development for our children in this area.

Nix

Foreword

Thank you AK, for sharing.

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By the time I reached this stage, I was a piece of tired rag. I was going through a busier period at work, had to handle both Savvy Steve's houses and I was expected to cook or man the toddler when the wife couldn't cope. The good news was, I lost all the weight I gained the past year just in time for late Autumn. It was the time the weather starts to get cold during the transition into Winter. If I did not reduce my flab adequately, I will be unable to squeeze a thermal layer into my pants when the morning temperature goes flat 10 or below.

I visited Savvy Steve and told him about my problems, "Hey Steve, could you get the flat off my care?"

Savvy Steve took a deep suck in his expensive looking cigar, glinted at me and paused for a few seconds, for effect. "No," he said. "You promised to look after my house, didn't you?"

"But now I have two of your houses to look after," I protested.

Savvy Steve held his hand up and stopped the conversation, "Say no more. You solve your own problem, you hear?"

I shrugged and left. That night, I told Jen I had to stop working on Savvy Steve's house and return to his townhouse to freshen up the place in order to drop the hot potato. The state of the house left me overwhelmed. Albany's hand marks were all over the walls, unwashable unless a great deal of time was put into it. Even so, the after effects was still unsatisfactory to me. The bath was in a mess, but at least there was a good chance to restore its gleam. I left the kitchen to Jen, who needed to combat the grease that we were too lazy to clean off regularly. We spent about 16 hours, split over a week, in order to get things to our acceptable level.

Unfortunately, I saw Mr Daniel's idea of cleaning shower glass a month too late. Else, I would be able to do a good job in half the time I spent using normal shower glass cleaner. Removing mold in grout or silicon was also a time sink. Frustrated, I told Jen, "We are going nowhere. I will restore the place by adding things instead of removing."

Before long, I went back to Savvy Steve's townhouse with a 15L of basic paint that costed me $36.00 and a 270mm sheepskin roller that costed $25 or so and came with a tray and a few more accessories in a set. I brought along the beautiful blue cutting brush I promised to save after the last painting job. The sheepskin roller was recommended by Cedric when I bumped into him and his beautiful wife at Spencer Village. We were amazed at the odds of meeting there and sat down for a meal together. That sheepskin roller was an expensive roller that I planned to use for a few jobs in future. Most importantly for now, it would save me the time I badly needed by aiding me in painting Savvy Steve's townhouse.

The painting took me 2 weekdays and 5 hours and 2 hours on a Saturday, a total of 7 hours. I noticed my speed increased tremendously due to the familiarity of work as well as the new sheepskin roller I invested in. The roller has the ability to take in a lot more paint and spreads the wall more efficiently than a normal roller, speeding up my work significantly.

When Jen turned up, I asked her if I needed to go one more coat but she said it looked great and it wasn't necessary. Eventually, we got Old Fart John to take a look and he, too, gave the thumps up. Old Fart John was confident to find interested parties to occupy the place. That should keep Savvy Steve's mouth shut for a while. There might be troubles later on, we would just have to play it by ear. For now, I needed to focus on Savvy Steve new place and I couldn't stretch my physical limits for long.

Before we left, I took one last look at the lovely place we called our home for 3 years. The memories came back furiously. Albany was so little, so cute when we first moved here. We celebrated our birthdays, watching her grow significantly each year. It provided me quiet refuge as I combat cancer, watching over me during countless nights of worried sleep. It sheltered us through the cold days of Jen's miscarriage and recovery. It shared our happiness when little Anthony came along and grew into a healthy chubby baby. The place would always hold a special memory in a small corner of my heart. We have not seen the last of it, I am sure of that. For now, it is goodbye and thank you. 

Encouraged because I made the best pavement of my street, I proceeded to remove the temporary path I did at the garage when I first started paving. I managed to pick up some "half pavers" from a nearby dump. They were left behind in excess by tradies who had finished their work at another house. With that, I was able to complete that area not only in a shorter duration but achieving a better finish. When Stephen heard about it, he laughed and said, "Smart."

However, such a short cut was limited to how many suitable pieces I could find in the dump. I decided it was finally time to do something about that problem and went to the tool shop. A wet saw that cost thousands to buy and tens to rent was out of the question. If I had that much money to burn, I would buy a car and crash it into a tree. At least that my money goes out in a bang. I reckoned I could spare a few bucks for a good blade that might help me cut pavers apart with my bread-and-butter tool, the angle grinder.

So I came across that blade they called "Diamond," I supposed that would be a woman's favourite blade. 

It looked like that (left). What do ya think? A beautiful solitaire isn't it? With all the hardness, high clarity and shit, no less. Unlike useless diamonds that are shoved into the cabinet for the rest of their lives, that blade would become a cheap solution to my problems. Well, not as cheap as I would like. I had to pay $30 for one. The great news was, it was built to last, unlike the metal cutting disks that I have been accustomed to.

I realised I could cut the pavers as thinly as I needed. I could also make notches to fit pavers into any crevices that I came across. The sound it made was a little loud and the dust it caused was quite alarming but not surprising. It wasn't a wet saw after all.

I was astonished how long I endured paving with just a hammer and chisel. It wasn't all that bad. I enjoyed the simplicity of the work. I wanted to prove that it wasn't necessary to over-complicate the method to perform a simple task. It was also an example I would use to refute the textbook mentality of Singaporeans that make us think doing any job requires a strict following of an SOP or a method statement, while failing to understand the logic behind the recommended steps.

Well, you see, I am not as reckless or foolish that I make myself to be. In this case, I was also concerned about the quality of work I did. I wanted to avoid the issues of bad paving work, such as uneven pavers after a period of time or even cracked pavers. The first question I asked myself was, should these pavers go crocked down the road, do I know how to fix it? I did a test and found that it wasn't all that bad. It is as simple as breaking one of them, fix the uneven sand before and replacing the broken paver. All I needed to do was to ensure those cases were kept to the minimum, if not completely eliminated.

With the new blade, I was able to cut even wafer thin slices off the stone if I needed to. It was impossible if I wanted to do the same using the cave man method.

Obviously, it gifted me the ability to cut not just a straight line but different shapes and sizes to accommodate whatever obstacles I might need to pave around.

Lastly I would like to drop a note regarding the compaction of sand. I had tried doing the same for dirt. Most of us the call the dirt, sand. That is because they look just like sand. However, construction sand has different properties that are important. When it comes to paving, the key property is the ability to be compacted many times it's natural volume. There is also a popular myth that it is of absolute necessity to use a mechanical compactor to compact the sand in order for it to withstand load without some pavers going uneven in the long run. That might not be true, as I found out.

I left an area of sand that was leveled but yet to be paved over the weekend. It rained on Saturday. By the time I returned to work on it on Monday afternoon, I realised the surface of the sand was hard and firm so much so I couldn't even leave a clear dent in the sand when I punched on it lightly. Meanwhile, the dirt surface nearby sank immediately as I stepped on it, proving how different both materials were. These screenshots are evidence of what I described:

I put my whole weight on it, leaving no footprint when I lifted my foot

Any engineer will know a point load creates more pressure than a uniformly distributed load (UDL). For simplicity's sake, imagine if I put a piece of plywood over your feet and get a 70kg man to stand on the plywood. Ouch? Now imagine if I get a 45kg woman wearing high heels stepping on your foot with the heel. Double ouch! No doubt about it. My point is simple. If I can stand on one leg on the sand, compacted naturally by rain, without leaving a mark on it, I will never dent it standing on the stones paved over the sand tightly locked together. I wouldn't say that in certainty if you drive a car over the pavement everyday. However, this should be enough to withstand the load from any human being walking or jumping on it.

Unless you are damn fucking fat and you like to dance on silts. 

Feeling bad for my visitors, who had to walk on dirt to my door, I placed some pavers in front for them to play hopscotch. They ended up more like wading ducks but all of them still looked please when they finally made it past the River of Lava to Castle Safety. All except one.

By that time, Duchess of the Brook was heavily pregnant. (Now she is supremely heavily pregnant) So I understood that hopscotch did not appeal to her. Initially, it wasn't in my plans to do anything outside the house. Obviously, anything inside the house was a higher priority. The place had to be made functional before the external area should be looked into, with the exception of the laundry area of course. However, I might have to make another exception because if pregnant guests started to trip all over the place, lives might be at stake.

Since safety is #1, I had to attempt another paving project. One Saturday night, I decided I had the energy to do something and so I did. Just the week before, Steph painstakingly made two trips between our places to offload his stash of pavers in my garage. There was about 300 pieces of them for me to use. The problem was, they were of a higher quality than mine. So I couldn't mix them up together to pave up larger areas. However, I could use some for a location such as the front walk way. The rougher surface of Steph's premium pavers would also provide a higher co-efficient of friction for wobbly pregnant women who might come that way. There would not be any valid reason to complain thereafter.

In less than 1 hour, I was able to set up the lines, smooth out the sand, as well as laying the outline of the first colour. I was mighty pleased. There was a marked improvement ever since I did my first temporary paving at the garage link. Still, I couldn't do any odd shapes for this pavement. Chiseling these were out of question because these were right in front of the house. As sloppy as I might be, I refused to do a bad job at the front of my house. That was the last frontier, as far as how I was willing to let my pride down. I wanted to do the best walk way to the front entrance on the entire street.

I was lucky enough to be able to place all the pavers from edge to edge without the need to cut any pavers, other than 1 small piece at the drain pipe cover. I promised myself I would sort those problematic edges once and for all when I could. The kids were already asleep as I was still out there in the dark, assisting by only a light bulb in the veranda and my trusty hammer. Jen would come out occasionally to give her opinions and encouragement. By the next morning, it looked pretty good. I thought I had completed the job until Stephen reminded me I should run a conduit under the pavement for future reticulation purpose. Damn!

Fortunately, I found a conduit lying somewhere in a skip bin nearby and I could use it to stand work immediately. That probably saved me $10-20 if I were to buy a new conduit somewhere. I did the final adjustments of the pavers before smothering them in fine, white, cleaned sand (free but don't ask). The final outcome was pretty good.

To my annoyance, I didn't see any pregnant ladies stepping on it ever since. However, I was glad I did that. It was a great, great feeling walking through that every day I come back from work. I walked along the entire street spying on the neighbours' front pavement. Indeed, I had the best one. 

The builder asked me if I wanted "window treatment" for only a low price of $1,500. Simi si window treatment? Jen nudged and whispered, "Curtain nah." The sales consultant said, "We will be giving you aluminmum Venetian blinds with a large colour selection. My mind wandered off to the rental house we used to live in Gosnells before I met Savvy Steve the Evil. Didn't remember which goondu went to twist the ends of Venetian blinds slabs. They became permanently crocked. Why did anyone expect me to pay $1,500 for shit like that? Sure, they had options. They could provide anything you asked for, at a higher price of course. I didn't want to find out.

I spent less than $200 at the last HDB flat using IKEA curtains. They didn't look great but were functional for 4 years and counting. I wouldn't expect to shrink the budget to that level here. I would also like to try something different. I declined the window treatment offer by the consultant. I did no prior market research but I was sure I could do something better at a lower price.

Some friends recommended cheap sources. However the drawback was that I might not be able to get the correct size I needed. Thus, I would need to perform all the alteration myself. As I hardly have enough time to finish the core tasks, I decided to look elsewhere. Somehow, I came across a website that claimed to provide good window treatment with customised sizes. I took a quick look at their products. Everything was clearly priced and I didn't have to ask for a stupid quote. What a find!

Over the few days, I kept putting pressure on Jen to order from them. I decided on roller blinds. Hardcore full block out ones, because I needed an option to live in darkness. There was a 60% sale on one of the fabric (not so nice colour of course) and I decided to take advantage of it.

"You going to fix them yourself ah?" Jen asked.

"Of course, I am going to fix them myself," I replied. There was a reason why shitty aluminum Venetian blinds could cost me $1,500. The legendary labour charge, what else?

I was slightly nervous about ordering them online. It wasn't a few dollars' worth of goods after all. Fortunately, they arrived after 1 week. I was really happy. Everything seemed great. We decided on roller blinds. Well they looked pretty neat, no flaps flapping around, something different for a change.

I took 3 days to finish all the blinds. 1 Saturday and 2 afternoons after work. I didn't realise I had that many windows around the house. The first few installations were difficult because of the angle I was forced to drill, due to the position of the hole I needed that was almost at the edge. It took me a while to get the hang of it, as well as getting familiar with drilling and installing screws in bricks instead of the usual concrete walls we had in Singapore.

It was a surprisingly satisfying experience, if you could imagine the first blind I installed was in the late afternoon, at the window facing North-West. Imagine how pleasing it was to close the blinds, totally blocking out the strong sunlight in early Autumn. That gave me the motivation to move on from one window to another window.

I didn't spent a single cent on the paving jobs so far, because I was using pavers left over from the builder and discarded sand from the sites nearby. However, these blinds put a further dent in my war chest by $650.

Savvy Steve was pleased when I met him. "You didn't spend that much building my house, did you?" I shook my head silently. Though I might not spend a lot, as compared to the others, there price I had to pay was still the same. It was heavy like lead, trust me on that.