Going back to the old school.

Sun, 13 Feb 2011
3 min read
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So I like my coffee. I like being green as well. I also like being old school (at times).

What happens when we combine the power of these three things together?

We get Captain Planet!

Captain Planet and the Planeteers!

No, silly. We get Chop Hua Heng.

Chop Hua Heng - a shop at Potong Pasir that sells coffee.

Chop Hua Heng is a shop in Potong Pasir that sells pure coffee powder.

That’s right – none of the instant stuff you find stocking shelves in supermarkets.

I don’t know if Chop Hua Heng pure coffee powder is necessarily healthier than what you get when you buy instant coffee.

But I think there are some advantages to buying coffee from a shop as compared to coffee from a supermarket.

For one, you can vary the coarseness of the ground coffee based on your own needs. You can choose to buy:

  • Beans, if you have your own grinder,
  • Normal grind, for which you need either a coffee maker or a french press, OR
  • Fine grind, which works like instant coffee but leaves a sediment at the bottom of the cup (which you don’t drink, obviously, if you don’t like its taste).

The proprietor grinding coffee for me.

I use finely-ground coffee, because it saves time when it comes to preparing a drink.

Another reason for buying coffee from a shop is that it’s much cheaper than the stuff you get in supermarkets – the most expensive type of coffee that Chop Hua Heng sells is $21 per kilogram.

Coffee powder from Bali - $21 per kg.

That works out to about $8.40 for a 400g bottle of good-tasting coffee, which is $2 to $3 cheaper than a bottle of Nescafe Gold.

Of course, there are other types of coffee at various prices. Nevertheless, each variety of coffee trounces its nearest ‘instant’ competitor in supermarket chains in terms of taste and price.

Last but not least, you get to be somewhat environmentally friendly by reusing containers which you might otherwise have thrown away.

This is 1kg worth of Bali Coffee.

The container on the left is a Nescafe Gold container which I’ve been reusing for the last few years. The containers on the right once contained Lunar New Year biscuits. (Unfortunately, I had to use plastic bags and rubber bands to store the coffee before placing them in the red-topped containers, because I gave those away as gifts to fellow coffee-lovers.)

Now, imagine if I had thrown away those containers and bought NEW containers full of coffee from a supermarket every now and repeated the process every two months or so. How much extra waste would I have generated?

So make it a point to visit Chop Hua Heng soon. I don’t know if it’s open on weekends, but I do know it’s closed on Thursdays.

Even if you don’t live anywhere near Potong Pasir, there are still Chop-Hua-Heng-type shops aplenty all over Singapore, so you don’t have to be a slave to commercialised and over-priced coffee anymore.

—

Chop Hua Heng
Blk 148 Potong Pasir Avenue 1
01-27
Singapore 350148

Telephone: 6289 4754

Open from 9am to 6pm on weekdays, but closed on Thursdays.

Laundry day.

Sun, 6 Feb 2011
1 min read
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In which Larebear and Laresaurus get a wash.

In the washing machine.
In the washing machine.


An unhappy Larebear.


Larebear is clean and dry and woolly once more.


The Larenimals and their associates chilling out in the sun.


Larebear spending a contemplative moment by himself.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures of Larebear and Laresaurus.

Ain’t gonna work, man.

Wed, 2 Feb 2011
3 min read
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Letter from the PAP Community Foundation (Bedok Branch).

(image via mrbrown; read the SDP website for more info if you don’t have graphics support.)

Well, if Freakonomics is to be believed, the scheme ain’t gonna work.

In fact, it could potentially backfire on the daycare centre in that the teachers end up doing extra work for no pay (I’m assuming the ‘fine’ goes to the centre and won’t get channelled to the teachers as ‘overtime’ pay).

And knowing how good some Singaporeans are at finding bargains, some parents could very well pick up their children 40 minutes after the official release time to effectively get 40 extra minutes of child minding for free!

That is, the letter illustrates the fine for each five-minute block from 12.05pm/5.05pm to 12.35/5.35pm, but doesn’t say anything about what happens if people come at, say, 12.40pm/5.40pm.

The letter needs an additional clause in the example after the last bullet point that says “and so on” or “etc” or something to that effect to prevent any grounds for quibbling.

But even then, the centre still hasn’t provided a terminal point, or a time limit in terms of how long it will wait for the parent to pick up her/his child.

So what’s a poor childcare centre to do?

It can’t boot the kids out when they’re done for the day (unethical) but the teachers are human beings and need time after work ends to eat/rest/go for courses, etc. too.

I’d suggest they could consider the following:

  1. Send their staff for English language re-training (which I can conduct – for a fee, of course),
  2. Rewrite the letter as part of their homework, this time phrasing it in this manner:
    • Parents to be given a 15 minutes grace period, following which
    • Parents to be fined $50* for every 15-minute block of time in which their child/ward remains at the centre.
    • If the parents have still not arrived after, say, 45 minutes from the time the child has been released, a certain procedure will be taken to place the child in another authority’s custody**.

* The number is arbitrary, but I think it’s sufficiently large enough to act as a deterrent, which is what the centre is looking for, anyway.
** Whatever procedure the centre has for dealing with cases of abandonment or neglect e.g. taking the kid to the nearest police post after the parent has been duly notified or if all attempts to contact the parent has gone unanswered.

What do you think?