Lego Organisations

Date:  Mar 10, 2015

Nowadays kids play Lego very differently.

1.  Daddy daddy, I want you to buy this Lego set for me.

2.  Once they build it.  The Lego set will stay there for months or years to collect dust.

3.  You end up with many Lego sets all fully build with lots of dust on it.

You wonder...

Lego suppose to help your kids creative.  Not to follow instruction and build the Lego set.

Kids should learn how to build things that they like using their imaginations.

Luckily The Lego Movie has taught our kids one important thing.

Master Builder!!!

Is your kid a master builder?  No?  Neh-neh-neh-poo-poo!

Then, the next thing you know… all the kids wanted to be a master builder.

In order to become a master builder, you need to build a correct environment for them to easily become a master builder.

Here is what I did.

A.  Break all the sets up.  Those that is not worth keeping, break them up into pieces.  Of course, those like Star Wars set, if you wish to keep it, don’t break it.  Once you break the Lego set up, you end up with lots of different Lego items.  So, you will need to know how to organise it!

B.  Of course, you can arrange all the same or similar part together.  Such as like this.  But one problem, there are too many different types of parts.  So, it does not make sense to do so.

C.  I used to keep them in here.  But still too many variety makes it harder for you to find the parts.  You simply cannot mix them together.

D.  I try to keep them here too.  It works, but still not enough.  And the container is not so stable.  Sometimes when you bring them around, one of the box lose the grip and drop on the floor, you end up with many Lego pieces lying on the ground.  Haiz. 

E.  It can be a mess to leave on the ground just like that!

Solutions

F.  I found these cabinet shelf at the hardware department of Giant Supermarket.  It is OK affordable (from Giant).  And it is quite useful.  So, I slowly buy a few of them and slowly begin my organisation project.

G.  You noticed those small Lego pieces “stick” on every drawer compartment?  Yeah, to quickly identify where I store all the different Lego parts, I stick one of the same parts outside the drawer.

H.  So, if you need any parts, just go to the drawer and pick.  It is easier this way.  All same or similar parts are placed in the same drawers and each drawers has a marker to indicate what parts it is.

I.  So, how do I stick it on the drawer?

J.  Go to hardware store to buy these heavy duty double sided tape for plastic.

K.  I thought of using the super glue, yeah, Kra-gel.  But better not.

L.  See what I mean?  After you organise it, it is simpler for you to look for correct parts so that you can build something you like using your creativity, and imagination.

M.  Oh ya, forgot to introduce, under these uni-color blocks, underneath it is a House.  Build by my son Jay Jay & his play dates Ashlyn.  Under the big roof, you see table inside the house, you see stairs, and you see people inside.  Got chair, got cupboard, etc.  Beside it is a sky bridge.  Under the bridge is car park space.

N.  I am very happy with my work here.  I will reuse some of the container to place more different parts in it.  And hopefully my son will learn how to find parts to build what he wants.  And thus become a real master builder.  hahahaha

Beginning Homesteaders

It was in 1999 that I relocated from a rural area of Northeastern Pennsylvania to Northeast Florida. I had been planning a move to Florida since my grandparents took me on vacation to Disneyworld when I was 12 yrs old.

I couldnt wait to get away from the simple life, the farms, the endless boredom of living in the middle of nowhere, not to mention the miserable weather. Finally after years of waiting the opportunity arose for me to move. I had put in a transfer request with the airline that I work for and there was an opening in Jacksonville, Fl.

Finally! I was 26 and I was out of there, so long hicks so long cornfields, so long snow! . I arrived at my new home and life was good, i had the beach just s few minutes away tons of things for single guy to do. I was out at the clubs night after night, dragging my poor hungover ass to work everyday and I was having a blast!

I kept that up for a few years and eventually met a woman, fell in love (so I thought at the time). After about a year and a half we split up, two weeks later I get a phone call at work, shes pregnant. I moved back in and tried to make it work but it wasnt meant to be so we went our separate ways. I did however take responsibility for my child and Im now the proud daddy to a beautiful 6 yr old daughter, more on that later.

Fast forward to 3 yrs ago, I had been living in a townhouse in a no so great area of town but still within a mile of the beach. The place next door to me had been vacant for awhile but eventually someone moved in, I knew someone was living there , I would see a car in the driveway but months went by and I never saw my new neighbor. As luck would have it, one day I came home from work and decided to take a nap on the couch. I woke up to about 2" of water covering the entire bottom floor of my house but I couldnt find a leak anywhere. My next thought was maybe its coming from my neighbors place so I rushed around the back to the neighbors patio door and proceeded to scare the hell out of a girl living there. Apparently just as i went to knock on the door she spotted me at the door with one arm in the air looking like I was about to smash the glass.

After a near heart attack by this girl I manage to tell her Im the neighbor and I have a flood in my livingroom and want to know if it was only in my place. A moment later another woman comes to the door, a beautiful blonde in pink PJs. She laughs and says "you about gave my daughter a heart attack" I apologized and explained the situation and found out the leak was coming from somewhere in my place. I called my landlord who had maintenance come over and check things out, turns out a water pipe had broken in the downstairs bathroom just underneath the tile.

Fast forward a bit more. I eventually got to know my new neighbor and I would go over and we would sit out on the patio and talk for hours and hours. One thing lead to another and we eventually started dating, got along really well and we have been together ever since. Needless to say the pretty blonde in the pic is Gena and Im the ugly guy in the other pic. In my defense I had been helping do paint and bodywork on the bike in the background and the pic was after the 3rd 15 hr day in a row

Pay Respect to Dad 2015

Date:  Mar 29, 2015

Dad, your grand sons wish to tell you something.

Your grandsons say: “Gong Gong, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew died on the same day as you.  Buy you died 26 years earlier.

We never miss a year coming in to wash up your grave.

Well, of course, now we have the grandsons wash your grave for us.

Guess what are they doing?

The kids decided to buy you a hut or house.  And a bridge.

Yeap… Your new vacation place.  nice isn’t it?

Here we start the repainting job.

Hard work.  My back is a bit pain after doing all these.

Yup, I have grown older.  45 now.

After repainting, it all look so new.

And it rains.  

OK.  See you next year.

lesson learned

Its been about two weeks in our new place and things are slowly coming together. But, we learned an important lesson the other day. Our dryer kept tripping the breaker for some reason so I pulled the plug and noticed it was warm and melted around one of the prongs. Figuring that probably wasnt good and whats causing the breaker to trip I removed the old cord, proceeding to lose one of the screw down the back of the dryer. I searched everywhere and I couldnt see or hear it moving around so we headed off to Lowes and bought a replacement cord. Lowes, its hard to leave its like being a kid in a candy store. After drooling over everything I wanted I managed to get out the door and replaced the cord, still missing one of the screw to attach the hot lead I searched and searched to no avail. I looked through all of my toolboxes and junk drawer for a replacement and of course couldnt find one that fit.

Just as I was about to give up and drive back to Lowes for a damn screw I tipped the dryer one last time and teh screw came rolling along the inside of the dryer. Success! the dryer worked ....

For about 5 minutes when it tripped the breaker and gena said a spark came out of the outlet. not being one to mess with home electricity and after several warning from family members about burning the house down I had gena call the home warranty company and they sent an electrician. She called me at work and said that the outlet was the problem and it looked like we had a fire in it. He replaced the outlet and checked the other outlets in the house warning us that we have old style outlets that dont meet new fire codes and we should replace them because they are a fire hazard. he also said "youre lucky you didnt burn the house down with that dryer!"

Lesson of the week, when something, especially a dryer on a 220 line trips the breaker, dont pass it off and just reset the breaker without having the problem checked out.

In the Beginning There was Chaos

Soon to be open

So a few things have changed. I dont live in Brooklyn. I live in Taipei, Taiwan and I am pursing food and cooking full force. I am starting a restaurant in The Taipei City Hall section of town, which is fancy to be short. I am not alone here. My pals Catherine and Michael who brought my out last spring are now my partners. I have some other expat and Taiwanese friends here. In fact the whole country is friendly, and loves to drink and eat. I feel pretty good about this move in whole.

So what kind of restaurant am I starting? What will serve? What is it called? All of these facts will be revealed to you in good time. For now lets start at the beginning. My partners found an amazing location which needs renovation. Gutting and revamping has begun. I am told it will take one month. Disbelief is giving way to reality. Construction and labor are affordable and efficient over here. Here is brief tour of what we are working with.

 The front

 The covered entrance, soon to be garden

 Seating area one

 Seating area 2

Counter and kitchen

The nightmare room, or soon to be the vip room

Business in the back 

 Please note the W Hotel in upper left, yes we are fancy.

 Hammer time

Did you see what I see? Use your imagination. Turning raw space into loved and happy space is a great challenge. If inhabiting gutted out dirty dusty buildings isnt your thing, do not proceed to shop for used restaurant equipment. If large industrial spaces with rusted odd and wonderful machines is, then please come with me. My partner, Catherine manged to locate a huge multi-building warehouse of tired and diverse food equipment. Its basically where restaurants go to die, or be resuscitated anew. I like recycling! 

The lay of the land is row after row of different equipment. You could feed all the worlds armies with all this great stuff. 

Koenraad demonstrates the shave ice machine. Ive been wanting to own one of these guys since I first tried mango ice last fall in Taipei. 

And then it really happened. Like meeting your love for the first time. We found our stove. The stove. The stove of stoves. A big 6 burner with 2 door ovens. These are not easy to find new or used. It was there waiting for me under a pile of soot. I am so happy.

Each oven has 4 racks. Each rack is roughly 30x18 inches. Its pretty big. I can really bake with this. I am pumped. Its going to make all the difference in the world.

Stay tuned for more clues about our restaurants identity and menu. Ill try to write some recipe in the mean time. I have so many to share.

p.s. Kitchen equipment photos by Koenraad Hulsker. Thanks Koenraad!

How to Read Nutritional Labels in Chinese

One of the biggest road blocks in my adventure to figure out what Ive been eating here in Taiwan is nutrition labels. The labels offer similar nutritional information as the USA but not identically, and not in the same order, in Traditional Chinese, and serving sizes are metric. There are a few conversations on the age-old Formosa boards that offer some non-helpful tips, and some tips that are totally wrong. No, 7-11 does not list nutritional information in English, *sigh. I also ran across this very detailed but also confusing pamphlet from Hong Kong.

The nutrition labels usually offer the following facts, and typically in this order:

?? (Re4 Liang4) Energy (units = ?? / da1 ka3 / Kcal) 

??? (Dan4 Bai2 Zhi4) Protein (unit =  ?? / gong1ke4 / gram)

?? (Zhi1 Fang2) Total Fat (unit =  ?? / gong1ke4 / gram)

  ???? (Bao3 He2 Zhi1 Fang2) Saturated Fat (unit =  ?? / gong1ke4 / gram)

  ???? (Fan3 Shi4 Zhi1 Fang2) Trans Fat (still legal?) (unit =  ?? / gong1ke4 / gram)

????? (Tan4 Shui3 Hua4 He2 Wu4) Carbohydrates (unit =  ?? / gong1ke4 / gram)

? (Na4) Sodium (unit =  ??/ hao2ke4 / milligram)

? (Tang2) Sugar Not always listed (unit =  ?? / gong1ke4 / gram)

A less than complete list compared to the USA standard. I am not sure why sugar is broken out of the carbohydrate category. I guess you could figure out which fats are unsaturated by subtracting the two listed fats (saturated and trans) from total fat. Noticeably the vitamins and minerals are usually absent. I find foods marketing themselves as nutritious list that out. 

Above you can see the nutrition label for lemon tea, a very common drink in Taiwan. It does not list sugar as a nutritional item, which is a little dodgy in my opinion. Instead it lists total carbohydrates. Knowing that 1 gram of sugar contributes 4 calories we can guess that most of the calories are coming from sugars. Most sweet teas do not contain fiber! 

What is very different if you are coming from the states in serving size. Most often in Taiwan a serving is 100 milliliters (??/ hao2sheng1 /.42 cups) or 100 grams (?? / gong1ke4 /3.5 oz) whether you should actually be consuming that quantity in a sitting or not. For example you would probably not be interested in eating 100 grams of the gooey thick bitter black sesame paste I am using as example here. Alternatively, you would be likely to chug a whole over sized tea carton on a hot day, and may be shocked to realize you drank 6.5 servings. You will probably need to do some additional math as to how much a "you-sized" serving or portion will be. 

Serving size and servings per container are usually not listed above the nutritional facts. Often they are found next door along with ingredients, country of origin, and other details I cant read. Above you can see that the container has 250 ?? (grams) of sesame paste. If you arent confident in recognizing your Traditional Chinese characters go ahead and assume the biggest number is the total grams or milliliter. A containers total weight or volume is also not always listed on the front of the package. Looking to this area pretty much tells you everything  else you need to know. 

A final scenario exists, on occasion food nutrition IS offered in a suggested portion. Here is a can of good ole Quaker oats. It lists 37.5 grams of oats as a portion which would make about 1 cup cooked. You can read up top in Chinese: ???? (mei3 yi2 fen4 liang / every serving) and ???? (ben3 bao1 zhuang1 han2 / servings per container). 

Anyone other special knowledge out there on Taiwanese food labeling? Please share any comments or criticisms. 

General Thoughts For The Weekend

I said at the start I would be writing about other things besides my own system. Well there is after all only so much one can write about a Barrel System on a weekly basis!!!
This week Ive managed to spend some time on the Internet searching for all I can find on aquaponics farming set ups. The basics, Ive decided from all my research, is that it is not to difficult.
The hard part seems to be getting to a proficiency level where what you are doing is productive and economical. In other words it needs to be sustainable. Sounds easy I know but as I read more there are numerous factors in play all requiring to be constantly adjusted and monitored. And each system had its own set of factors with different weighting factors.
Reading the Backyard Aquaponics Magazine has been really helpful. It seems my enthusiasm is increasing the more I read. All the difficulties I read about I am keen to turn into challenges and find solutions.

Another good link was Redheeler Farm

Add in the papers from the University of the Virgin Island and you are well on the way to understanding what it is all about. They really have done some major research into it all.
However I have a long way to get to get a commercially viable system designed with any degree of confidence. Ill now get back to searching the Internet.

In The Beginning

I have for a long time been interested in Hydroponics. even going so far as undertaking a Hydroponics Distance Learning Course from Australia (ACS). Excellent course..
Subsequently I have developed and ran several different systems with the biggest being a 2,000 salad head per week NFT set up in Thailand. All good fun and throughly enjoyed the fruits of my labour. This encouraged me to expand into mushroom farming. Why mushrooms I am still to this day not to sure ! However we got production up to 450 Kg per week, selling to the local market. But my main job got in the way and things moved on. But those are other stories except of the continued need to be doing things in the agriculture arena.
More recently I have been following several Blogs, discussion boards and such like on Aquaponics. (definition below).
I am not going to explain the concept as that is already well covered in thousands of Webs and Blogs through out the Internet, by people who know far more than I ever will.
My decision to take the plunge into this field AS A HOBBY ONLY, was encouraged, no, I should not say encouraged, but confirmed after reading about Travis Hughey and his Barrel-Ponics. The fact that he made available an online simple guide on how to get started did it for me. Travis Hughey
Thank you Travis. So here I am ready to start.

Beginning Homesteaders part 2

Moving right along. After about a year of dating, my neighbor she decide she really needed to go back to school and become a nurse like she has always wanted too. To make things easier on all of us financially she and her daughter moved in with me. She concentrated on her nursing school and graduated a little over a year later.

We had been talking about getting a house for quite awhile but neither of us had good credit and didnt think there was any chance we could get a mortgage, we couldnt even get a credit card approval let alone a mortgage. I started working on fixing her credit report, mine is hopeless especially with a bankruptcy on it. After a few months of getting her report cleaned up we saw her credit score start getting better and better.

Eventually it was high enough to get an approval on a home loan. We decided that we were tired of living in the ghetto neighborhood, if you seen the movie "Friday" that the only way I can describe it.

I couldnt believe I was saying it but I actually missed the very lifestyle that I couldnt wait to get away from years ago. We talked about getting a house in the country, growing our own foods, raising chickens and pigs, setting up a solar system and doing as much as we can to be self sufficient.

Another reason for my decision to get away from the city was my daughter, I wanted her to be able to experience things that I did when i was a kid and not being so concerned about her playing outside alone.

We searched and searched for the right place. We found a few that we wanted but they fell through and then one day we were just driving along and spotted a for sale sign in front of a home and we both knew that was the place we wanted.

It was only and acre but laid out like a football field, zoned open rural, right up the road from the inlet to the ocean, close to the beach, totally fenced in and gated and on a dead end street. The home itself, a small 8 yr old but very well cared for singlewide mobile home.






Im Happy to say that we closed on the house last week and life is good.

The intent of this blog is to chronicle the evolution of our small homestead.
Ill be adding a list of our short and long term plans and add photos as we go.

thats all for now.

an added note: the way the blogger is set up it publishes new posts to the top of the blog, to keep it in order I have to change the dates so new posts are dated earlier than old posts

A Good Malay Feast Kedai Makan Rahmat

Date:  Mar 29, 2015

Yesterday, we went into Malaysia to visit my father’s grave.  My dad passed away 26 years ago on Mar 23.  It is before Qing-Ming, therefore, we always came in to pay respect during this time.

The grave is around Kong Kong, which is close by Pasir Gudang,  So, we decided to search on Google places to eat after paying respect.

And we found this place.  Apparently a famous Malay restaurant by the seaside.

Wow!  The restaurant only sell afternoon meals.  And close on Friday.

The restaurant is just like those you find in Batam or Bintan.  But this restaurant sell Malay food.

The restaurant is full of people.  People who is hungry just like us.

The restaurant is just beside a fishing village.  This is where they supply all their sea food I suppose.

Let’s check out what food they serve here...

This is ikan Siakap.

This fish is on EVERY SINGLE table.

They slow fry the fish into very crispy.

Inside and under the crispy skin is very delicious meaty fish.

Every table also have this fry prawns.  Very nice and fresh prawns.

The prawns go very well with this sauce.  Some kind of soya sauce with a bit of Onions, and lime, and chilli in it.

The fish taste great with this home made sambal.

This Tempeh is REALLY GOOD.  It sort of taste like banana, a bit sweet a nice.  Especially mix with the samba chilli.  This is actually fermented soybeans.   

The beef rendang is very tasty too.

The chilli ayam (chicken) sauce is nice.

Fried kampung chicken.

We never meant to be here, but here we are, and it is the only restaurant around where we are, deep inside a Malay fishing kampung.  So, let’s enjoy ourselves.

OK.  The food was delicious.  Even the banana.

There is even TV show recommend this place.

This restaurant is opened by important people in Johor.

It is located just slightly below Tanjong Putri Golf Resort.  Now we ate so full and did not have a chance to eat Famous Mee Soto.  hahaha

This is the address and their name card.

Map behind their name card.

And here comes the bill.  Wow.  79 Ringgit.  About SGD$30 for a nice full table of food.  :)  Good value and delicious.