I finish my birthday budget with Montbell rain trekker jacket

Today whole day we are out for walking. As of now I had walked 22k steps. On average we walked > 20k per day. 2 reason really. Firstly, is that I ate too much from all the cheap bento from 7-11 and Lawson. And secondly, transportation is expensive so we save more by walking more.

Today my iPhone 13 mini start to have pink line flickering and purple tinting issue when facing bright sun. Dying soon. Walking around the 中古 street to find iPhone and MacBook Air. But japan keyboard layout a bit different from us so didn’t plan to buy these electronic in Japan. Unless 20 years ago, I will import docomo Japanese phone to play those with annetanna one and have to hang keychain and strip one. 

Finally today I buy finish my bday present. The rule is like this, every year we both have $300 birthday budget to buy things we like. Why this is better for us:

- as a minimalist we don’t like to be burdened with stuff which is not useful

- as a frugal man, I don’t buy anything at all, having this rules made me spend at least once a year

- we don’t like surprise and would rather have the money and decide our own present for the year.

- reduce the stress to do shopping for present but left not appreciated

My brithday is in Sept and Jackie’s in March, so we have basically 6 months each to buy our present and in the event if we cannot decide after 6 months, the balance will be pass over to the other people budget as penalty. So today buy finishing up my budget is a good thing for me.

Sitting outside Montbell to change into the rain jacket and Jackie’s toe socks

So this year my birthday present is as follows:

1. Nike short
2. Green long pant i am wear (in pic above)
3. Leather handmade wallet
4. Qiaodan short 
5. Montbell side sling 
6. Montbell Rain Trekker Jacket Men’s

Thanks Jackie :)

Our video of us doing the handmade money clip is up below:

 This week recap on what's happening. 

Gardening

On my way to renaissance man, I had joined Jacky to do a community work at a community garden. This is to give my to community and also extending my social circle boarder and not confine in just my working networks. Giving back is a good way to feel better about ourselves.

1st week, I met up with Felicia, she told us main tools we need is a shovel and a cutter. She introduce us to the layout of the garden. We helped in washing some veg with ETL solutions. And we get to harvest longevity spinach and eggplant. Then we are tasked to distribute some to the household for presidents to enjoy and raise awareness to the community garden there. Therefore inviting them to come to the garden to ask for more harvest from the volunteers and of course come and volunteer for garden's manpower.

2nd week, as usually we kept our schedule to 9am to 12noon. We started off my restarting the soil for another pod, namely Cai Xin. Felicia shared 

• the closer the seed are planted, the smaller the root and hence the veg will be smaller too
• a seed and be harvested 2 to 3 times, rather than rooting it out, just cuts off all leaves leaving 2 smaller sprout for photosynthesis.
• Cai Xin life cycle from seed to harvest usually is 4 weeks, she manged to harvest it within 18 days
• To grow healthy plants, need to watch their PH 6.5 which is neutral and the soil quality. Remove pest by covering them with nets.

While she mentioned that she is proud that this community is harvesting at a faster rate due to some special formula of hers. She encourage and motivate us to learn quicker and harvest faster as this community garden is the faster growing within the hundreds of garden around Singapore.

However, this makes me question about this capitalism world. Everyone is now focus on competition over collaboration. It is a toxic cycle come to think about it. Many will agree that having "healthy competition" is good for the world / corporate / community. But I see this will eventually turns into hurting the world just like all the big corporate did. Nestle, Shell, Apple etc. The uncalled for competition just motivate company to use extreme methods of agriculture, industrialized methods that end up causing issue like carbon footprint.

Within the community is fine, all teams are willing to share tip and trick to help each other. But we just end up creating unreal competition with other communities. Therefore it is not advantages for us to share among inter-community. I hopefully can advocate we should not compete. Focus on the real why you are doing this and like about collaboration instead. Volunteer work wise of working wise.

Week 1 of work

Back to my new job. Love and hate for the first week. 

I love it as they are not as toxic as the place I came from before. Colleague are willing to set aside work and mentor me. That doesn't happen in my previous place. I guess is due to the unreal expectation from the top management. Also from the 奋斗逼. 

I am tore between choosing central area where a lot of experience colleague around or somewhere at the suburb heartland mall where our team starts at the same place and learn together. You know, the pro and con between learning things faster vs taking things slowly.   

Internet review

Before I buy something online, eat something or watch a movie; I had the habit to search for review online. I almost enjoy the process of researching for review more than buying the item or experience. 

Sometime it will just cause me a lot of dilemma and confusion, even it will make to procrastinate on taking action or avoid doing it all together.

However, I am a very compare dot com kind of guy. 

I know a lot of reviews can be brought or fake, however it didn't know that review market had evolve to a state where most of the review are fake. 

At the end of clip, she mention that although it seems like the review system had benefit the food store, user and the broker. However, in the long run, it is damaging to all parties.

1. Restaurant have to particulate in rhetoric star rating system, waste energy and money
2. Broker / Platform that contain fakes review in the mix and lose real client base
3. User long longer able to get real information on platform

I should remind myself not to get too involve in comparing different product. Goes with the middle option to save more opportunity cost.

Blogging

Blogger is very hard to use and it don't have a app to do it. Wordpress had gotten better over the years.

3sixty

My brakes cable replacement parts had arrived. Thanks Jacky for the help. Too bad she is down with COVID also. It was so hard to avoid. Even I catch it when I go golden mile.

This weekend might go out for a foldie ride on Sunday. This bike is really good and I like it after 1 year still. Although the ride frequency reduced but the need to use it once in a while is always there. If I take care the bike and dry and oil it. I can last me a life time. So it is a 1k well spent.

In between job, 2 months break

Today after watching Samurai Matcha, I got inspired to start writing my online dairy. I guess I still love my blog. 

Travel

I am midway between my job. Now taking a short 2 months break. I did travel a bit after COVID reopen. In case you had missed out my Selangor Trip and Dalat Trip. The motive behind these trip is first, relax and secondly, introduce Jacky to micro retirement. From blogging for many years, I realise it is good to have records over the years so we had started both a channel on Youtube and a mini project for podcast. 

Capitalism

Today I was telling Jacky about capitalism market and how they suck you in to keep purchasing things that you end up throwing out a while later. I was trying to avoid falling into all the marketing and selling technics in recent years. Take for example that, fashion industry was so saturated so capitalist designed fast fashion that promotes planned obsolescence which phrase out product in a certain life span. Fast fashion had been known to cause depletion to our earth natural resources. 

Living a frugal life

• Spend only on my needs not want, when I want to buy something I usually delay my purchase, only if I sleep over it and I had the urge I will return again to buy
• When buying I always avoid single purpose products, there needs to be multi functions
• Instead of buying for comfort, I buy for value. Looking for potential ways the item could ROI or be monetized in other ways

 Gig economy 

Recently, we had plans to move from E to S quadrant. For the lower and non guaranteed income, we hope to exchange for anatomy, flexibility, diversified, purposeful and aligning to vision type of life. I had borrowed the book "The Gig Economy" on Kobo. This E-reader is better than kindle due to the app is able to connect to local library via overdrive to read infinite books. So far I had read 2 books. Barefoot investor and 中国历史一点通