A Singaporean In Australia

Lesmurdie Falls

For or against our wills, when Change comes knocking on the door, it doesn't pay to resist.

Because you can't.

It will return in a different form, a more loathsome form sometimes. However, when we embrace Change, Change reciprocates. Each time, Change fuses with us and be part of our lives, for better or worse.

It is a different ball game when we search for Change. I don't mean the type we find resting forgotten on the floor. A search for Change is tough. Unlike that Change that hunt us down, this is not defined by nature and it is in our hands to mold it. Change is neither good nor evil, we must be take extra care while shaping it lest it turns against us.

Fear is the enemy of Change. It will do its best to stop you from reuniting with Change. For each time you find and accept Change, Fear is conquered, symbolically.

Uncertainty is the accomplice of Fear. His job is cast a shadow of doubt , leaving you nonplus and paralyzed. In this condition, Fear appears mightier, more damaging than he is. It gets us every single time without fail, that is the a human being is created to react.

Hesitation is our friend. It protects us from the assault of harmful elements. It freezes us in time so we can search for the most favourable solution to eliminate our opponents, such as Fear and Uncertainty. Without Hesitation's gentle aegis, sometimes we react well due to instincts, sometimes not so. Beyond Hesitation's incredible powers, it is ordinary in other aspects. It does not travel in super speed and can not always come to our aid each time.

I landed during last mid-September. By the time I make the next entry to this series, Winter will be over and I will have come a full cycle of my Perth life. A next cycle beckons. They say that the pace of life is slow in Australia, yet time shadowed past like a master ninja. Over 11 months, I have been injected with Change. Battling at a break neck pace, I did not enjoy Hesitation's intervention so I have to rely on myself to make decisions, in which I think I have made many bad ones, some good ones. I've to accept my own decisions, the sweet and the bitter that come with them. Life is never fair and perhaps it is never meant to be. Neither is it meant to be perfect.

Month 1

Month 2

Month 3

Milestone: Breaking Even

Month 4

Month 5
Month 6
Month 7
Milestone: Renting a House

Milestone: Landing a Permanent Job
Month 8
Month 9
Month 10

I want to share a brilliant writing from someone I do not know. Credit to the original writer of this great article who had removed the link since, for some reason unknown to me. Formerly at this [link] It had since influenced my attitude towards life in a many ways. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

There is a chinese term "Sell life" (chinese language has no past tense or continuos tense for verbs).

Written like this : 卖命

The term means working very hard for someone, usually your boss, your lord, you emperor. But it seldom means its literal term, as in selling your life to someone.

Ironically, as the world gets more urbanized, this term could be seen as a very good description to many peoples' life.

When i was learning economics, i forgot which dead guy mentioned about how any labour/employee/worker should divide his/her 24 hours, but it should be 8 hours of paid work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of sleep. The rationale is the person would have balance his efforts to earn a living with his leisure time. and 8 hours of sleep is just about the rest you need to do what you do for the rest of the day. If you work less, and have more time in leisure and sleep, your quality of life increases. The worker wont complain as long as he earns enough for his lifestyle. The economic theory comes in when you work more than 8 hours a day.

Base on his theory, you should be compensated more on the extra hour of work you put in, and the increase in salary gets more as more hours gets put in. eg. 9th hour increase by 10%, 10th hour increase by 30%, 11th hour increase by 60%. The argument is as you sacrifice more hours of leisure of work, your quality of life decrease in an exponential rate.

We don't need proof in this theory, just see your work life.

Of coz, this theory has some flaws, as some people can finish someone esle's 8 hours of work in half the time etc, so not a good measuring tool.

But the reason i brought this theory up is because, part of this theory applies to almost everyone in the urban working world now, and in a way, you are really "selling your life".

A very good example, no matter how efficient you are, your boss will make you work 12 hours a day. Or, you just can't seem to leave the office because the workload actually needs you to be in office for 36 hours a day.

Why would I say you are selling your life here? Many people do not understand how important leisure time is, and the theory of the quality of your life dropping exponentially as leisure decrease is so true. Because of a lack of time, you have to eat non home cooked food. To entertain a client, you have to drink excessive alcohol till late hours and sacrificing sleep. Being too focused in work, you lost the interest to exercise or to engage in activities you will mentally/spiritually enjoy.

1) Eating non home cooked food - You eat more salt, MSG, oil, sugar, and whatever thing that get manufactured due to all the food processing procedures. Don't ever think the vendors in any restaurant actually cares about your health. If they do, they come at a higher price, which you need to pay more out of the salary you earn by sacrificing your leisure time. Which goes back to ...why dun you just cook yourself?

As a person who always enjoy cooking myself, as i learnt more about cooking, i realized that it is so easy and tempting for the fancy deco restaurant operators to use very unhealthy food sources in their cooking. very few restaurants I know use 100% fresh food, there are bound to be some food that they need to use that are pre-processed for longer storage. Any food that are processed for them to store longer have things that are toxic to your body.

Eg. Leave a piece of fresh chicken wings on a table, beside it put some potato chips (processed food). And you will see why the ants and the flies chosed to eat. In fact, some potato chips do not decompose after 5-6 days. Amazing.

In simple terms, i would say this. the time you save on cooking yourself healthy meals to commit to work, are the time you took away from the days of life when you are older. You probably need to spend more on medical costs when you are slightly older, you need to spend more time visiting doctors, and you probably have some conditions (cancer, heart disease, stroke) that prohibit you from travelling too far, learning a new hobby.

You probably shorten your life span. This is why I think people are selling their life to work.

2) Sacrificing Sleep. Many scientific researches had already showed that human needs 8 hours of QUALITY sleep to be optimum. And the best time to sleep, as in your body rejuvenates and recover, is the time from 9pm to 2am. If you are young, energetic, thats fine. You can go clubbing and not sleep during this hour. but if you are above 26 years old, you should really try to sleep between this time as much as possible. if you have never try, you should and you will realize how energetic you would be. Ever tried waking up only feeling more tired and listless after 8 hours of sleep? that's beacuse you slept the wrong hours.

Some researches show the reason why humans rejuvante best from 10pm-2pm has to do with the gravity from the moon. I am not a scientist really but I do know i felt like 18 when i slept in those hours. And these must have been what our ancestors experience and passed down from history to "have an early night". Another proof is jetlag, when your biological "day" become "night", and your body has yet to adjust to the new time when the gravity of the moon is like at 10pm-2pm, you just cant seem to have a good sleep.

Unfortunately, 9pm-2am to many people, are time when they are just leaving office, or still in office or rushing a presentation for the next day. And for every hour you missed to rejuvenate your body, its very likely the machines in your body gets "rusty" earlier than they ought to be.

You probably shorten your life span. This is why I think people are selling their life to work.

3) No time to exercise. The human body that we have, after millions of years of evolution, is designed by nature to be able to

a) Walk long distance, as we were hunters and gatherers.

b) Store energy when food is ample to prepare for the time when food is scarce. We are mammals, we have the ability to hybernate if the situation force us to.

Before you lost the perspective of time, recorded modern human history, is only about 5000 years. So i add another 5000 years for lost record of civilisations like Eygpt or rome or what have you. That is 10,000 years on a very prudent estimate.

The body that we have, from being a chimpanze to a UPRIGHT WALKING human with the ability to use tools, took easily at least 1 million years to evolve. If we want to prolong the working life of this body, it is easier to work around the body that evolve thru 1 million years, than to wait for it to evolve (or degenerate) into something suitable for the urban lifestyle.

Heart disease, a very common condition in the urban people, is a result of our body having the genetic behaviour to store any excess food in our body to prepare for the never arriving time when food is scarce.

So is stroke.

What do victims of these 2 conditions have in common? Not enough exercise to burn off that excess fat in the body.

I am not saying we should live like a cavemen, no. That would be a waste of the human wisedom to bring us to what we are today.

But we cannot forget what our body is designed to live in. Without enough exercises, we WILL get sick. And its gonna take quite a number of generations before our body evolve to be 100% suitable for the urban lifestyle.

To be efficient in work, we take a cab to meet a client even when his office is just 10mins walk away.

To be on time in work, we take the lift and not the stairs even when the office is on the third floor.

To finish never ending work, we have no time for proper exercises, thus lead to our body functioning in the wrong environment it is suppose to be in, thus resulting in getting many medical conditions.

You probably shorten your life span. This is why I think people are selling their life to work.

A few very good gauge of whether you are selling your life is as follows.

1) When is the last time you cook your own meals? Stop slaving your mum to cook for you or she is selling her life to you. Your maid probably could not care much how healthy you are. If you are rich enough to hire a maid who can cook delicious and healthy meals, I am sure you are in the category where you do not need to spend more than 8 hours in work.

My standard, you should cook at least 4 days a week.

2) When is the last time you sleep early? Pubbing and clubbing is fine once awhile, if you are young (18-22) you can do more often. Any older and you are still sleeping late, you are selling your life, either to your boss, or you are "borrowing" the time for a longer lifespan to be spent late at night.

My standard, sleep before 10pm at least 4 days a week.

3) When is the last time you have a proper exercise? A proper exercise is defined as having your heartbeat rate increase at least by 50% (compared to the heartbeat rate when you are awake and doing nothing strenous) and maintained it for at least 45mins. It can be jogging, skipping, swimming (highly recommended). Choose something you enjoy doing.

4) Think about the 8 hours theory by the dead economic guru. 8 hours 1 day for exercising, for cooking your own meals, for researching how to cook a nice and healthy meal, for researching on the food choices you should make, for researching on a new hobby, for spending time on a hobby, is barely enough.

Life is precious, don't sell it.

I slept late last night. That was a mistake because today was the day I covered the most distance on road during work. I drove a total of 160km. That was nothing compared to the professional couriers or interstate truck drivers or even bus drivers. Considering I had to stop at 6 locations and perform different tasks at each one, while stopping twice in the factory to juggle work flow, it was a rather tiring.

The final location I had to go was the Port of Fremantle. That was my first visit to this place. There was a crate who came from Singapore that I had to pick up from here. On the way to the port, I drove half asleep along the entire Leech Highway from Perth Airport. I tried many methods, slapping my face, pinching places, winding down the window, music, turning down the temperature, turning up the temperature, nothing really worked. I almost dozed off at every red light I stopped at. The strong sun light didn't help matters, forcing me to close my eyes more often than I preferred. Finally I made myself to the port in one piece. Loading of the damn crate took a while as there were large trucks before me which took seemingly forever to fill up.

When I finally received my pallet of steel, I drove off gratefully. I could call it a day when I unload that in the factory. I was knackered. I needed a rest badly. Driving home would be another 35km. On the way out, I took a glance at the ocean along the coast road of the port. That place was just our PSA region. Containers lined up everywhere, with forklift and cranes constantly in action. I decided to pull over and take a breather.

Breather

I climbed up the monster and sat on the crate and gazed into distance. The afternoon winter breeze worked through my hair, whatever left of it. That essence of nature rejuvenated me in an instance. It was a surprising experience. I shut my eyes for a few seconds to allow other senses to take over the sensation. The ocean was calm today. The waves beckoned gently like an elderly and swished in serenity. For a moment, I could not hear the occasional vehicle passing by behind me. Only birds, the wind and the ocean. I could hear the ocean whisper. That's why you are here.

Another rainbow, hidden behind the dark cloud

I drove back without the weariness that plagued me the entire afternoon and subsequently home. On the way, I dropped by Angel's abode to pick up home-made delights. Though the journey back from her place to mine wasn't that long, somehow I ate 2 coffee cupcakes along the way. They were good. Gotta conjure out something with my cauldron in return. Need to obtain some skele bones, unicorn horn shavings perhaps.

Nugi nugi xxxx@xxxx.com

to me

nix,

you should not migrate to perth coz Singapore is now the richest in the world according to yahoo news below

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/s%E2%80%99pore-is-now-richest-in-the-world.html

*****

Dear Nugi nugi,

You know what? Upon receiving your email, I booked my air ticket immediately to head back to Singapore. I could not afford the ticket to board the next available plane. Obviously. Because I have not been living in the world richest country for almost a year. So that would be delayed till September. I would be in Singapore soil by then. Hopefully I would have a job waiting for me and get rich in no time.

By the way, you probably did not read my blog right from the start. I don't blame you. My content could blind eyes, I wouldn't re-read it myself. Just read my personal all time favourite post, it pretty much tells the whole story.

I came to Perth to work, live and play. In this equation, money is not. It is also important to note that the equation was slightly different for me when I was in Singapore where slogging (S) precedes W. That might be for you, but it isn't for me. What I wanted very straightforward, I call this the Living Quotient (LQ) whereby,

LQ = W + L + P

Since you are into statistics, I'll share with you something freshly out of the oven, released today by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

2012 World's top 10 most liveable cities: [source]

1. Melbourne, Australia.

2. Vienna, Austria.

3. Vancouver, Canada.

4. Toronto, Canada.

5. Calgary, Canada.

5. (equal) Adelaide, Australia.

7. Sydney, Australia.

8. Helsinki, Finland.

9. Perth, Australia.

10. Auckland, New Zealand.

I reckon I am doing fine plying my trade in a country with 4 cities within the Top 10 Most Livable Cities chart. Using the Pareto's Principle, I am focussing on 2/3 of the Living Quotient by making sure my L and P is well addressed while ensuring W does not turn into S.

I am willing to be convinced otherwise. Since you have motivated me to book an air ticket back home, meet me up in September and show me where the money is. I can't wait to be part of the richest country in the world leh.

Final update on The Barry White Project

UK guy came over tonight and handed me A$150. I would not be seeing Barry White anymore. That was our agreement. I could have gotten more money by stripping more parts off but I decided to call it a day. I gained 150 bucks and my parking lot, UK guy gained the rest of Barry White. I was reluctant at first because there were parts that I needed myself but never got around dismantling them due to the lack of tools. Never mind. What was decided was decided. My friend Patrick had trained me to become a very decisive person.

There were a couple more parts left in the garage. I took them out in my free time before UK guy towed Barry White off. No idea if they would be sold. If they do, that will add a little bit more to the stash. We'll wait and see.

UK guy though, spent a good 20 minutes chatting with me before I saw him for the last time. He told me how the homeless in UK will never starve. I raised an eyebrow at his tall tale. "No way," I said. He widened his eyes and reinforced his points with hand gestures. "At the end of each day the bakery section of Tesco will sell bread for 2p each. Nothing over 10p," he said. What P was he talking about? Penny? Pence? Whatever. He made it sound cheap. "Beggars," he continued, "could easily get a few pounds a day without much problems. That could get them a week's supply of bread if they buy them at the end of the day."

Ah.

UK guy went on comparing prices of regular meals between the UK and Perth. Food really sound affordable there. He even joked that he could buy Margaret River wine, grown, fermented, bottled in WA, cheaper in UK than in Perth itself. Only that it was fact, he insisted. He couldn't stop when he started talking about cars. I knew about this one. Singaporeans who came to Perth screaming, "Cheap! Cheap!" autonomously when they saw a car gave me a little blush. These weren't cheap. Our cars in Singapore are ridiculously expensive. To the Poms, cars in Perth are ridiculously expensive. Even a A$2,000 Daihatsu Cuore was expensive to UK guy. He claimed he bought one for 650 pounds. Different perspectives. Demonstrated once again, the world is not black and white. It has many shades of gay.

As I bid UK guy goodbye and shut my door, I pondered for a while and tried to imagine the scene if Breadtalk tried selling their leftover bread for S$0.02 per piece instead of throwing them to the bin. Will the homeless even get their hands on a single piece to munch through the lonely night? Maybe, if they can squeeze past the Merc driving, Zara carrying crowd.

Singapore has been a perfect shower of blessings. Our geographical position and deep waters allowed us to become the gateway of continents. We are positioned strategically in a location such that we are shielded from rough storms, destructive wind and water. Being just above fault lines of the tectonic plates, we are seemingly immune to any significant threat of the earthquakes that our Southern neighbour faces regularly. In addition, with good governance for nearly half a century, Singaporeans today have so much confidence for the future.

We may have become outrageously optimistic. These days most of us concentrate on building our careers and acquiring properties. The government has taken care of us so well that we need only to focus on these and nothing else. In rWe expect the authorities to keep the country as safe as yesterday, maintain good ties with our neighbours so that we will never need to take arms. Keeping us well fed, is a basic expectation we have on our government.

I mean, who actually worry about food crisis in Singapore? We have been taking things for granted that there will be food on the table as long as we have the money to pay for it. Over time, it has became a negative national mentality such that even our leaders appear to slacken over the urgency of solving our food issues. What food issues, you might ask? The same issues as we have for water, my friends - that our government is still proactive and show a sense of urgency in addressing our water supply for the future.

Likewise, as we don't have enough water to sustain our population needs, we don't have enough food. During the 1960s, we had some 20,000 farms occupying over 14,000 hectares of land. Fast forward to present, we hardly produce anything except for some farming activities in small pockets of our land. While it is hard to argue that land is so scarce in Singapore that we have no choice but to rezone agricultural land for industrial and commercial purposes, we seem to forget to address the critical food shortage issues that followed. AVA did not deny this. An extract from their website:

Much of our supply of fresh food is derived from a few major sources. Any disruption in supply from such sources can have severe impact on our food supply. Efforts to raise levels of self-sufficiency will be limited by the scarcity of agricultural land. It is thus critical to continually identify new sources of safe and quality food to prevent over-dependence on a few sources. This may involve facilitating overseas investments in food production, the transfer of farming technology and the extension of laboratory services to the region.

While we took clear initiatives to solve our water shortage issues such as investing in desalination technologies (Newater) and building of the Marina Barrage to increase our water catchment area by more than 15%, there is hardly any taken to address our chronic food shortage. In the 2008 food crisis, it was revealed that our only strategy was stocking up 6 months supply of rice and keep our fingers crossed. What crisis? Some of us may ask. Many of us probably didn't even know there was a food crisis. Like I mentioned earlier, most of us are in the state of apathy to care about issues closely related to our lives and choose to leave them at the hands our others - that "Somebody will solve the problem" mantra. Nothing's wrong with that. To each his own on how to live one's life. At the very least, I thought we should at least check if that somebody is really solving the problem. Just in case.

Is there a looming food crisis or am I over-reacting? The threat of an upcoming food crisis is very real. Just last month in July, continental United States just experienced their hottest month on record, beating the devastating Dust Bowl summer of 1936, this led to a drought expected to be the worst since 1956. Food production yield is going to be the smallest in years. Such harvesting problems are not limited to the US but on a global scale. Cocoa is set to be under supplied in just 2 years as large numbers of Cocoa farmers fled their farms in Ivory Coast. For the record, Ivory Coast supplies 40% of the world cocoa demand. Apart from global adverse weather conditions, political unrest in food producing countries, there are other factors that Mother Nature challenge farmers across the world as such disease and infertility. Economic food models, monopolisation of transnational agribusiness interests that place economic interests above the good of the community, hoarding of food and the speculation of food futures did not help matters.

Instead of exposing ourselves naked at the mercy of the impending full blown food crisis, what have our government done to protect Singaporeans from it?

Mr PM came out late last month to warn the public of rising food prices and asked Singaporeans to be prepared. What could we have done better here than offering nothing but a warning to the public? From the 1980s when most of our agricultural land made way for industralisation, we had 3 decades to come out with measures to protect ourselves from the food crisis we would have comfortably deal with today. Our investment juggernaut Temasek Holdings, chose to buy toy trains and buses instead of securing sustainable food producing initiatives for our national interests. Other than buying up shares of food producing companies, we could send at least send a battalion of Singaporean farmers overseas, provide them with farm land lease assistance and secure food supply contracts in a win-win arrangement. Oh wait, do we still have Singaporeans who know how to farm?

An Immigration Bonus for Singaporeans? -
Making the Foreigner More Acceptable

By Yolanda Chin, Nadica Pavlovska and Norman Vasu

Synopsis

In order to make Singaporeans more receptive to foreigners, it may be worth considering making the benefits of their presence more tangible to Singaporeans through an “Immigration Bonus” for citizens from a revenue pool of immigrant labour levies.

Read the rest of it [here]

******

NTU assembled a team to look into recent symptoms of xenophobic sentiments. It seems apparent the issue is real and fast growing into potential problems that affect Singapore from moving forward with the government's immigration policies. It is good to know the government is paying due recognition to this issue instead of brushing it away as noise.

The solution proposed by the research team is straightforward - to make Singaporeans appreciate foreigners by introducing an 'Immigration Bonus'. This is to serve as an important signal to Singaporeans that their fortunes are intertwined. The more immigrants Singapore takes in, the more "Immigrant Bonus" each Singaporean will receive. Singaporeans will thereafter see the tangible side of the influx of foreigners and accept foreigners. That's the plan in briefs.

Before Singaporeans start celebrating, we have to note that the study emphasized that the amount of "Immigration Bonus" will be nowhere as much as the normal GST Bonus we receive from time to time. This is due to the fact that the revenue for "Immigration Bonus" is derived from the levies collected for Work Permit and S Pass Holders as well as other new related levies that may be implemented for each employer who hires a foreigner. Though the bonus will be a small fraction of the GST bonuses, the research team reckoned the symbolic value of the hand out is the key.

Like how the Carbon Tax introduced in Australia will please the environmentalists and not necessarily anyone else, this initiative will please some but not all. Having said that no policy is aimed to please everyone. If this can potentially get a group of Singaporeans to raise their thumbs at immigration policies, the government will deem it worth trying.

If it happens, take the bonus and place it in a safe corner your pillow. You will not miss out much, given the meagre interests that banks offer these days. The smell of this cold hard crispy notes will remind you every night this money comes from. It comes from your physical discomfort of the growing population density, less space being allocated to each Singaporean for relaxation. Free space will be a rare commodity. The value of land will rocket. Landlords will increase rental in tandem. Businesses will pass the cost back to consumers like you and me by increasing the price of their products and services.

It comes from the increased competition in the job market, where it is harder to convince the Singaporean boss to hire you. You need to justify your merits and cost in each interview. The foreigner needs only to justify his merits. Common sense tells us which is the easier task to do. The Singaporean will need to learn how to sell himself better in future.

It comes from levies. Levies come from employers. Thinking along the Singapore government's line, Where is the money going to come from? Where are employers going to pay the levies from? From the company's profits? From the employees' pay increment in the following year?

It comes from employers charging their clients more. Take a case study of a Singaporean buying a HDB flat. HDB will tender the project. All contractors in the building industry hire foreign workers. They would have factored in the cost of foreign levies in their total project cost just like any other overheads. The building cost of each HDB flat will therefore increase. Guess who pays for it?

To me, we should not monetise immigration issues. Period.

Even if we really have to, we should pick an avenue which makes sense. The idea of imposing levies on employers do not work so long as they could regard levies as part of the running cost of business and pass it back to the consumers. If we have to insist on implement the idea of "Immigration Bonus", the levies should come out of the foreigners' pocket and not the employers' in the form of higher income tax. It is apparent that isn't going to happen. So remember to leave your "Immigration Bonus" in the corner of your pillow. Every night, smell it long and hard and think about how much you have to pay this scent of cash.

Before I did my National Service, my group of close friends visit me at my place often. For some reasons I couldn't figure out, they stopped coming after that. They must hated me so. Not true because we still meet up pretty often, sipping Teh-O at kopi-tiams, joking nights after nights away. I must be a terrible host then. If I could remember correctly, after some time I stopped inviting my friends to my place except for bigger occasions such as Chinese New Year. It was a viscous cycle, the more I got snubbed, the more the fear to invite again and the less I get to learn to be a better host. Judging by the way no one turns up to my place after I extended invitation twice today, it looks like I never improved for the past decade. Wouldn't be long I stop doing it altogether.

No matter, it wasn't that I was watching spiders spinning webs the entire day. Time passed so quickly that I lamented quietly to myself by the time I sat down for a breather. I woke at 0700hrs and probed around the garage without brushing my teeth. Managed to break my one and only ratchet during the stupidest attempt to remove a nut from Barry White. Such a disgrace as an ex tank mechanic. Later in the day, I added another 135 piece tool set to my collection which costed me A$30.00.

The rest of the morning was spent doing something unusual. Weeding was hard work but rental house inspection is due in 2 week's time. Jen and I were tearing greens off the ground like angry birds. I reckoned it was therapeutic for the stressful or angry to do some weeding from time to time, and fun for people who weren't. Such as Jen and I this morning. The fresh scent of broken weeds may have some calming effect on humans, the repetitive movement provides some exercise good for busy working people who don't get to exercise otherwise. On top of that, the satisfaction by actually something useful, visible and apparent, can't do anyone harm. Having said that, I don't expect invitations to do weeding for I can't take away other people's precious therapy time like that. Unless I am being paid.

Jen asked sweetly in the morning, "Can you do meals on weekends?"

So I did. Risotto for the first time for lunch, Teriyaki Chicken, steamed eggs and pickled carrots for dinner. I received favourable reviews for the effort. No pictures to show for real hungry people do not stop to take pictures of food.

In the evening, I learnt that simple things could be difficult to do if there wasn't any guidance. Such as changing a car wiper or a headlight bulb. It felt good to figure it myself without searching the internet or anything. Just the good old learning to learn way but I couldn't help agreeing myself that these would take me just 5 minutes of less if someone simply demonstrate how to do them. That is why we pay so much for education and that was why I wasted all the money my mother invested in my education by not paying attention in school.

I took some time to clean parts of Goldilocks' engine compartment. It looked dire. I wouldn't stand a chance if I wanted to find a buyer for her in future with the state things. I got to start taking care of her. Other than fixing up the brake pads and CV joints, there appeared to be other problems. A leaky engine, a loose power steering belt to name some, which I have not figured how to rectify. There was even one very loose cable that I didn't have a clue what it was. There is a lot of things to learn and too little time to do it.

Update on The Barry White Project,

Over the week, I had gotten my butt out and stepped up on The Barry White Project. I received almost no interest in other car parts I had listed but there were a few inquiries on the engine. I invited one of them to come over, since the rest were all half hearted time wasters. The buyer is a Brit. (He couldn't escape my Aussie detector machine).

Fortunately for me, a random buyer rang me about a seatbelt. He was quick and came over before the Brit guy did. Within 5 minutes, he dismantled the seatbelt because I removed some components before he came. It was the fastest A$20.00 I made in my life. Fortunately for a guy who knew what he was doing. Then it was the wait for the engine buyer to come.

The plan was to move Barry White to his house where he had all the equipment to remove the heart of Barry White. Then he would move the remains of Barry White back. I agreed and assisted him to load Barry White up his trailer. He told me a used trailer costed him A$4,000 and a new one would be about A$10,000. Hmm. A$10,000 for that junk? I could weld that with my 3rd rated skills given some scrap metal and machine. Even if I buy brand new tyres and fit them up, I would not need to spend A$10,000 for sure. I will not be buying a trailer for a few good years, I'm sure of that.

It was sad to Barry White leave the place. It reminded me of my first and only van that I owned in Singapore, which I used for my wedding and eventually sold because HDB didn't allow me to park in the carpark without car insurance. I was prepared to pay parking for nothing during my absence from Singapore but not more than S$2,500 a year for insurance and road tax combined. It was a sad, sad day when I left my Kangoo to the dealer. It didn't hurt as much the second time with Barry White. Perhaps it was not the end yet. Barry White will be back soon, heartless.

I received A$250.00 for the engine. A total of A$270.00 for today to add on to the Barry White fund.

Past Rants