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...

How does your garden grow?

Mum lives in a house with a small garden, and a few years ago, I decided to use the space to try to ‘preserve’ some edible plants. I’d noticed fewer and fewer of my familiar childhood plants, in favour of ixora of all colours with no nectar – sterile hybrids developed by scientists.

So when I found someone with bunga telang, I asked for a plant, and grew it on the fence. Bunga telang is the blue flower that cooks use to colour their kuey. Then there was leftover serai, or lemongrass, after cooking, which went into the ground and did quite well – well enough to invite the neighbour, who makes great rending, to come over and help herself whenever she wants. Ditto with leftover tumeric.

The guidelines are simple – don’t pay for plants wherever possible, and don’t pay for pots or fertiliser whenever possible, either.

So far so good. Lots of plants have come my way for free. Ditto with pots, as long as you’re not too fussy about how pristine they look. People have moved, and had to give away their plants. That’s how I got my limau purut (kaffir lime) plant. In fact, I even got a second one when another friend moved, and passed this on to my sister-in-law.

At the garden fest in 2008, they were giving away Indian borage, which grows very easily. That went into a pot. Some sugar cane growing wild that I spotted on a walk has been doing well in a corner. Too well, actually, since I don’t actually eat the stuff, and when they grow, the canes are leaning against the fence and threaten to bring it down. Thankfully, we’ve found someone who likes it.

Other stuff includes curry leaf, pandan, and dill, which grows so easily from cuttings anyone will give you some. Very nice with tuna sandwiches and fish dishes, too. And a belimbing plant, courtesy of an aunt with a proper tree. This might give fruit when it grows up in a few years.

Bizarrely enough, some friends once gave me a grape vine. It has given lots of leaves, which I have never tried to turn into dolmades (one day, I swear I will!), but this year, it finally squeezed out a bunch of 5 grapes, which something ate before I plucked them. Another lot of 3 grapes has disappeared, but I hold hopes for a third bunch of 4 whole grapes. I think I should just use the leaves for dolmades.

One of my happiest finds was when I visited an aunt who was about to move, and found bunga kantan. Also called torch ginger, the bud is used in rojak, but I prefer it in a prawn dish. The plant is huge, but I don’t mind, since it gives me the occasional bud, reminding me to start cooking. Those without the plant, don’t despair – its available in Geylang Serai market, at about 50 cents each.

Here is the recipe:

1 torch ginger bud, sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic
3 onions, chopped
Assam (tamarind) juice
2 limau purut leaves thinly sliced
1 stick serai
1 red chilli, chopped
Prawns, peeled
Salt and pepper to taste

Fry the onions, garlic, lemongrass, limau purut, torch ginger bud and chilli. Add assam water,simmer a while, then add prawns. Add salt and pepper.

A big hand for 2nd hand

Second-hand has a bad name – one thinks of faded clothes handed down by older siblings or cousins.

However, I believe that Singapore has changed since those bad old days, when buying a second-hand car put you in real danger of being stuck with a lemon. Just as car technology has improved, so that one can buy ‘pre-owned’ vehicles without worrying about having to push, Singapore has prospered to the point where we get rid of things that are not only still usable, but are well within their better days.

Oddly enough, the line: “This is really well-made, and will last you a lifetime” is still a clincher whenever a salesman tries to sell us something, but we seldom keep anything for a lifetime. Instead, we get bored, or something newer and nicer hits the market, and we decide to upgrade.

That’s fine if you can afford it, and I understand it – I like getting new stuff myself. However, I try to make sure that some of my ‘new’ stuff is second-hand.

This makes financial and ecological sense. Second-hand costs a lot less, since most people like and can afford new, so low demand keeps prices down. As it has already been made for someone else, you save on the world’s resources as well.

It makes eminent sense when you’re trying out a new hobby, for example, or something that you’re not sure you’re going to keep up. So when I decided to dip my toes into dSLR photography, because everyone was telling me I’d be better able to realise my ideas with a bigger camera, I bought my equipment second-hand.

For $1,000, I got a then-entry-level Canon 400D (the 450D had not come out yet), with an 18-85mm zoom lens, instead of the dinky 18-55mm kit lens that came with most cameras. It seems someone had bought this nice equipment, then decided quite quickly that it was not for them – either they wanted something more sophisticated, or they preferred the simplicity of a compact camera after all.

Either way, I got to enter the brave new world of dSLR photography at a lower price, with equipment that was maybe a couple of months old, and which had not been used much. As I said to a friend, worst come to the worst I lose a few hundred dollars palming the camera and lens off to a third owner. He said the worst scenario he could think of was I drop the stuff and break it all. Whatever – if it didn’t work out, it would cost less.

I find that going pre-used is also good for clothes, books and knick knacks. Maybe it’s because I like the St Michael’s Church jumble sale, and am a fan of the National Library Board’s annual Book Exchange. But actually, it doesn’t really matter that the book you’re reading has been through someone else’s hands – after all, we borrow books from friends or the library.

As for clothes, well, we don’t give away old, worn-out clothes anymore – we hang on to those comfy old friends and wear them at home, or sleep in them. But we have clothes that are mistakes, or which for some reason we hardly wear, and these we give away to make more room in our closets. The other week, I was given a large travel bag of clothes, among them a pair of Guess jeans that still had its price tags on. I passed some clothes to two other people, and have plenty left for myself. We’re all happy.

I bring this used goods habit a step further, and am happy to accept furniture. In fact, when our sofa started getting flat and uncomfortable, I let it get out to my network of friends and family that I was looking out for a new sofa set. A couple of months later, sis-in-law told me that her neighbour was looking for a home for her sofa set, and would I take a look?

It was great – comfy, the right height for our short legs, and a nice dark brown. Free, too. It only cost the price of getting the Helping Hand people to transport it over to my place, and cart my old set away. The Helping Hand guys were cooing over the nice leather as they wrapped it my ‘new’ sofa set in plastic to move it.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a repository of other people’s junk. I only accept things that will be useful to me. In fact, when someone is moving, with lots of stuff on offer, I tend to step aside if someone else shows an interest in something I like. Well, I do have lots already, and don’t mind being a recipient of last resort.

So I can testify that the second-hand route is a great way to save money, save Gaia and enjoy your creature comforts. The things are unlikely to be really old, and, more importantly, they are new to me.

BTW: The library is having a sale of books on July 10 and 11. At Singapore Expo Hall 6A, 9.30 am – 8pm