Going Borderless

I was in Parkway Parade to meet a cousin for lunch on 26 September – the last day that Borders bookshop was operating. Though I had been told that the pickings were slim, I went in one last time.

The Wheelock Place outlet had always been a pleasant refuge whenever I had some time to kill in town, and Borders was the place where I acquired most of my Murakami collection – all from those ‘buy two get one free’ offers, and got various CDs as well. I’d bought a couple of books at 40 percent off a few months back, too, when the shop was tottering.

Alas, the custom of a frugal Singaporean, who tended to check out discounted sections first, was not enough to keep the place afloat, when they were facing pressure from abroad, so after various closure sales, we got to the last day.

The Parkway branch was a mess, and it took half an hour to find just 5 books that I could live with for $4 apiece. Sort of. There was a memoir about the filming of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a guide to eating in Kuala Lumpur, Schott’s Almanac 2010, O, a Presidential Novel by Anonymous, and a Christian book on prayer for radicals. Worth $20 bucks altogether? I guess.

On the way to pay, I met a girl who also had five books, and I suggested we combine our purchase – 10 books would cost $25. At $2.50 apiece, the books seemed a lot more worth it, and while I was sentimental enough to step into Borders one last time, I’m also rather attached to my money. That is to say, I enjoy being able to spend less. Money is power, but even we don’t have loads of it, the ability not to spend money is also power, right?

So I stepped out of Borders feeling slightly empowered, but later, when I got home, I had something to think about. After toting up the prices on the back of each $2.50 book, the original cost of my stash was $175. My thoughts were, firstly, books are not cheap! Followed by, no wonder Borders died, if they were expecting people to pay $175 for books that I could only sort of live with at $20. Finally, I wondered about the value of things versus their price.

Borders had been a treasured, even valuable refuge in the heart of town, and a good place to look for books and CDs I wanted, but how much was I willing to pay to keep it going? More importantly, what should I do now that it is no more?

The library perhaps – air-conditioned, lots of seating, with the additional benefit of being free. Or perhaps I should go down to Kinokuniya more often?

Pinnacles, here I come

I have wanted to go to the Mulu Caves in Sarawak ever since I read a magazine article about them as a teenager. It was one of those ‘destiny’ moments, rather like the time I opened my Geography textbook in Sec 3 and saw a small black and white photo of Mt Bromo. I just knew I had to go and see it.

The Bromo trip was more than 20 years ago. Mulu took longer – I only made it there last year, when a friend who was at loose ends for a week agreed to go with me, and even planned it all. Unfortunately, she only planned two and a half days at Mulu, and it rained on the evening we went to the bat cave, so I didn’t get to see the spectacle of the millions of bats flying out in the evening.

I also missed the Pinnacles – not the block of flats in Singapore, but those lovely limestone spikes pointing at the sky – it was too long a journey, and my friend rightly pointed out that she wouldn’t make it. She was too polite to say I might not have made it either.

Well, I’m going back again this July to try again, having persuaded a friend in Kuching to see the place for the first time. After the caves, we’ll also take in the Rainforest Music Festival.

Quite an ambitious project – I’ll be almost two weeks away, and the forest trek will be long, and I’m told, muddy.

On the positive side, the cost is low. All the Sarawak costs it will be paid in ringgit, and I have a ringgit account, which will be worth more if I spend it all in Malaysia, as opposed to bringing it back to Singapore – no GST, at the very least. Planning early also helped. I managed to get a return fare on Air Asia for about $175.

But even if I didn’t get the cheap air fare, it would still be time to go. After everything was booked and paid for, I got a bit worried about whether I’d be able to tahan the hike through the forest, especially with camera equipment. Then I took myself in hand - I’m getting on, and not likely to get any fitter if I delay the trip. My ‘long hikes through the jungle’ days are numbered.

I figured that one out a couple of years back when I hiked through the Maxwell trail in Fraser’s Hill, and sprained my ankle fleeing from hundreds of leeches, which thrived in the muddy terrain. As I was limping more than 1 km out of that little scrape, I remember telling myself: “Try to enjoy this – you may never do this again, ‘cause you’re not getting any younger.”

So if it’s something I’ve wanted to do for years, and I can afford it, I’ll do it.

Hopefully, careful planning will keep the costs down. Or, I may have to trim the fat to save up for it. One day, however, I will go to Christmas Island to see the red crabs. I’ll go up north (or down south) to see the Aurora, and check out Antarctica. If I ‘m lucky, I’ll see Machu Picchu, Easter Island and the Galapagos as well.

A good first step will be the short flight to Kuching, and then from there to Mulu again.

As Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Life in plastic? Not fantastic

Last week, I called Amex twice – both times to cancel their cards. I wasn’t keen on paying the annual subscription, and they are not my card of choice.

So how on earth did I keep their cards for so long? (We’re talking decades). Most shopkeepers ask if you have something else when you take it out, and, honestly, I mainly use as a bargaining chip when I’m buying a big-ticket item. The guy who sold me my laptop asked if I had a Visa or Mastercard, and I agreed to use it if he would throw in a thumb drive – it would cost less than the 5 percent Amex would charge them for the transaction, and I get a thumb drive – win-win.

Of late, I haven’t been making any big buys. I like to keep my electronics for as long as possible, on account of not wanting to spend money unnecessarily on new stuff when old things still work, and having two usable things means more things to store, since no one seems to want old electric goods these days.

Then, there’s the wolframite question. Wolframite is something that goes into a lot of our gadgets, apparently. It is also a conflict mineral, meaning all sorts of evil men do bad things to other people in order to get their hands on the minerals. I can’t see myself without a cell phone or a computer, but I can use them for as long as possible, and so limit my need for wolframite.

Anyway, the Amex people were very friendly, as you would expect when they are trying to persuade you to keep their card. They even offered me a discount on the annual fee. I admit to a moment of temptation, but finally said, “Na-ah, I think I can do without the card.”

I felt incredibly light after that. One less card bill to have to go through every month, and to have to pay on time – they charge hefty admin fees if you’re late – I hadn’t realised it would feel so good. After all, I still have a Mastercard, so it’s not as if I’m doomed to embarrassment if I don't happen to carry enough cash when I’m abroad.

So back to that important question – why did I keep them for so long?

Well, one was a corporate card, which had a very low annual fee, and it made me glad to think that, if I ran out of cash abroad, they would accept one of my personal cheques and give me the cash in local currency at bank rates. How often have I used it? Just once.

As for the other, everytime I called to cancel the card, they found a way to get me to keep it another year - they waived the fee or some such. But that would be followed by large service charges if the cheque didn’t reach them on time, or if it reached them on time but didn’t get cleared on time.

In the end, all the aggro added up - keeping up with various payment due dates and paying, calling the companies up to persuade them to waive renewal fees... it finally got me to overcome the inertia to clean out the unnecessary cards.

My heart feels lighter, and my wallet is less crowded with cards. The relief is great, but one part of me feels silly - I should have done it earlier.
Still, better late than never. Now, to get rid of other supposedly convenient things that really clutter uo my life...

Love thy nature - or not?

Earth Hour day did not get off to a flying start in my household.

First, Sat was the only day that the repairmen were free to come fix the air-conditioning. I had been tempted to let it stay faulty (and off), but Mum had been having trouble sleeping, so...

The compressor was still under warranty, but I was told that I would still have to pay for manpower and parts – so what use is their guarantee? After being relieved of $180, I realised there was still time to rush down to Ben Foods, a food distributor, to help a friend look for cheap wine.

Of course, that would mean a 55km round trip, which is hardly eco-friendly. Ah well, I did promise.

So it was off to Fishery Port Road, burning three litres of petrol, and expanding my carbon footprint on the round trip. Parking was free, which was a comfort, but I had better make the long drive pay. So I spent $290 on $12-wine, Black Angus beef, wild salmon and all sorts of stuff I would I would normally not spring for, but which I’ve read are good for me (in moderation!), and which, when bought from the importer, were quite affordable. Throw in some imperishables and stuff for a neighbour, and the petrol I burnt wasn’t going to keep me awake at nights – not that I plan to go again for a few months, at least.

After a quiet afternoon, it was time go for a play – all the way to the University Cultural Centre at the UCC! However, the ticket was free, and I have a policy of not turning down free tickets in order to keep the free entertainment coming. By dressing up properly so as not to embarrass my friends, and offering them a lift home, I’ve been invited to Emily of Emerald Hill, Carmen, H is for Hantu and other shows recently. It works out to 2 shows every 3 weeks or so.

So I started the long drive to UCC, after reminding Lena and Mum to turn off the lights during Earth Hour, which I was going to miss.

It was a good show, but all in, a lousy showing from me on Earth Day.

I’m making up for it, though. I still gather empty plastic bottles for my neighbour to reuse, and I’ve got some friends doing it for me – it’s amazing how people who won’t keep their plastic bottles for recycling on their own will do it to oblige you. Anyway, the more bottles saved from the landfills the better.

And I think I’ll try to have an Earth Hour every quarter, perhaps – on a cool night when fans are not really necessary. Using the candles rescued from other people’s waste bins of course – some after a candle-light vigil, when they wanted to junk the half-burned candles, others that had served as decorations in homes, which were about to be thrown when they looked worse for wear. All still can be lit, so why waste them?

CNY – Painting the town green

I think we’ve tamed the beast that is Chinese New Year. Whereas in the past, we used to visit too many places, exhaust ourselves and eat too much, we’ve trimmed the visiting to more manageable levels, bought less food and drinks, and so come away from the holiday much healthier and happier than before.

Did I say tame the beast? Maybe not completely, if you consider the sort of waste that we generate with our merry-making.

To save effort in washing, some meals were served with disposable plates, bowls and cutlery. And it was so easy to just hand someone a tin of beer or soft drink, or to pour drinks into disposable cups, to spare the host some drudgery.

As a person who once wanted to run away from the festivities because of the drudgery of cooking, cutting, serving and washing up, I don’t blame anyone who opts for convenience.

However, this year, I decided to see how I could spread the greenish message a bit.

Everywhere I went, I asked my hosts to put their plastic soft drinks bottles into bags for me to take away for recycling or reusing. The same went for the beer tins and empty wine bottles.

No one turned me down, though they were a tad bemused at first. Someone asked, ‘surely all this gets sorted out by the garbage people?’ Alas, no. It just goes to the incinerator with the rest of the stuff and gets burnt. That’s why they ask us to sort things out and throw them into the recycling bins.

Recycling the aluminium tins goes a long way – depending on who you ask, it either requires 95 percent less energy to make a new tin from recycled material than from mining the stuff, refining it and so on, or the energy taken to make a tin from scratch can be used to make 16 tins from recycled aluminium.

I managed to pass that little tidbit on to one or two people who asked me why I was doing this.

The plastic bottles went to my kind-hearted neighbour, who washes them out, fills them with water and puts them out for workmen to take – when she stopped once, they started knocking at her door to ask for water. This reusing works even better than recycling, though it isn’t quite as good as reducing, but who can reduce drinks during the New Year?

The tins were passed to the karang guni man, so he can make a couple of bucks as well as recycle them. The glass wine bottles were put out for the recycling truck.

Getting a few dozen tins, some wine bottles and plastic bottles recycled may not seem very much, but I’m hoping that, after a few years, I won’t be the eccentric relative anymore, and that more of the people who obliged me this year will be doing this themselves.

Now won’t that be a happy New Year?

CNY

Chinese New Year is at hand again. The realisation hit home when an innocent trip to the supermarket “for a few minutes” took over an hour. Confronted with all the usual New Year “must-haves”, I spent a lot more than originally planned (not just in time, either), but since it was for a festive occasion, no hard feelings.

I’m not against rice, oranges and dried mushrooms, or my family’s special pressure-cooked beef recipe, but this New Year, there are a few traditions that I’m not going to observe.

Firstly, no new clothes. The fresh togs made sense in the old days, when people only got new clothes once a year, but nowadays, we get new clothes anytime, and since I don’t need any more clothes at present, I won’t buy any. It makes sense to save a bit, too, given that the price of food is going up, so the other New Year shopping costs more.

Secondly, I’m not going to bother with the turning on the lights to welcome in the New Year – waste of electricity.

No need to get new ang pow packets from anyone – I still have from last year, though, in order to fill them, I queued at the bank for 40 minutes for new notes (I did some other banking business as well, of course, so as not to waste the trip).

I’m not buying any New Year tidbits like pineapple tarts or kuey bangkit – friends and family often give, and if I buy some as well, it will be too much. And if no one gives, I’ll live with it. After all, there are lots of chocolates and stuff in the house if anyone comes to visit, though my brothers have agreed that, to put less stress on Mum, we’ll accept guests at my oldest brother’s place.

That takes care of the “no”s. There are other New Year traditions that I support. I’ll be paying off my bills before the end of the year, we’ll be eating the reunion dinner together – again at my brother’s place, in order to lessen stress.

The house is being cleaned, though some of the stuff is not being thrown away – it’s good to have a clean house, and I now have things to pass on to others who might want them, instead of throwing them.

I’ll also be cooking some hou see fatt choy, because everyone in the family likes it.

Here’s the recipe. Like all traditional recipes, there is no set amount of ingredients. Just add more of whatever you like.

Dried Mushrooms
Fatt Choy (Nostoc flagelliforme)
Hou See (dried oysters)
1 -2 pieces Dried scallops or other shellfish (optional)
Oyster sauce
A couple of cloves Garlic, finely diced

Method:
Pour some boiling water over the mushrooms. Do this twice and let them soak for 15 minutes after the second wash. Reserve the water – which is why you wash twice – the first time to get rid of grit and dirt.

Pour some boiling water over the hou see to wash them. Do this twice and soak the second time. Reserve the water.

Do the same for your dried scallops or shellfish if you have any.

Pour some water over the fatt choy and let stand.

Fry the garlic for a couple of minutes in a saucepan or a pot. Add the oysters.
Cut the stems off the mushrooms and cut the bigger mushrooms in 2 to make them bite-sized.

Add the mushrooms.

Add the water. Leave to simmer until oysters are soft.

Add the fatt choy. The stuff soaks up water, so don’t feel shy about adding some boiling water if it dries up.

Add oyster sauce to taste.

Wants vs Needs

It’s a new year, and newspapers and magazines are filling column space with suggestions for meaningful resolutions, tips on how to keep our resolutions, and explanations on why we fail to do so.

I’m not a big fan of new-year resolutions because I think if we see something in ourselves that we want to change or improve, why wait for a new year? So the process of self-improvement goes on throughout the year.

However, I’ve been puzzling over the question of wants versus needs for a couple of months now, so the timing seems good to tackle that popular save money resolution: “I’m only going to buy things I need, rather than things I want.”

Sounds good.

The question is, what constitutes a bona fide need? At base, it means simple food and drink, a few pieces of clothing and maybe some shelter.

This doesn’t quite cut it in Singapore, where we factor in transport, work clothes, and morale boosters as well. Who is going to argue against having cheerful surroundings for mental well-being, or recreation? Here is where the going gets murky, and where I got stuck late in 2010.

I went to a talk at the photo festival and met a photographer who had just upgraded his camera, which was already one model up from mine. I made him an offer, and got myself a used camera which was better than mine, so well-kept it was like new, and which came with extra batteries, a bag, and a storage card. All for $400.

However, that good deal was followed a by a sale which offered a $900 tripod for $355 – which required a tripod head for $316 (it was another sale, but I don’t know the markdown).

I was still reeling from the expenditure when my brother, who’d gone to KL, phoned to ask if I wanted a set of extension tubes (for macro photography) for RM600. Since I have a ringgit account, I thought, gulp, why not?

One can say that, as an enthusiastic amateur photographer, all these things are terribly useful. In fact, when a friend got access to a lovely spot from which to see the New Year fireworks, he told us not to bother to bring our cameras if we didn’t take along a tripod as well.

However, it was a huge outlay in such a short period of time, and prompted the musing over wants and needs.

Since I hardly make any money out of photography (the grand total from dSLR photography stands at $115), it can’t be justified, but once you get a dSLR, surely it doesn’t make sense not to get anything other than the dinky kit lens that comes with the body?

And what about deciding not to buy any books, CD or clothes this year? On the surface, it sounds fine –I’ve got lots of music to listen to, books to read and clothes to wear. But if there’s a warehouse sale... Certainly, it’s a good place to look for useful stuff, at good prices.

I suppose one sign of something being a need is when it is used – if you need it, you use it. So I plan to use whatever I buy this year, or give it away as a present.
A friend just suggested I try to earn twice as much as the cost of the item when I buy something that falls into the grey zone. Not a bad idea, and just in time for the new year, too...