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.

What’s so significant about having a place to stand?

Sun, 9 Jan 2011
2 min read
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This is a question from Formspring that deserves a blog post to itself, much like the one about the point of learning literature.

For context, I often use the line “All I need is a place to stand” in the About Me portions of my social networking pages.

The question of “What’s so significant about having a place to stand?” comes from a student who wants to know why I place so much importance on the above-mentioned phrase.

Before I explain, though, I’d like all of you to read the following pages before coming back here:

Now, Archimedes was a mathematician who is believed to have said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth”.

This is with reference to the law of the lever, where one can use a small effort to move a great load, so long as the distance between the effort and the fulcrum is sufficiently longer than that between the load and the fulcrum.

However, we can also interpret “move” as a metaphor to mean ‘affect in an inspirational manner’ – something which Archimedes’s findings have done for the world.

Therefore, I am leveraging on (pun intended) Archimedes’s metaphor to explain my own ambitions in life; ideally, I’d like to do what Archimedes has done and change the world with a small idea one day.

Before I can do that, however, I need to find a niche or an area in which I can make a difference. Once I find this niche/area, I know I’ll be good to go.

Hence, “[a]ll I need is a place to stand”.

TL;DR: Don’t be a lazy shit – just read the damn post.

Everything is text.

Mon, 10 May 2010
2 min read
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Everything is text.

So I’m filing medical certificates and letters from parents, and I come across a document which a student passed to me some time back as proof of her/his absence from school.

This document is an important one; it marks a point in the life of someone the student knew.

I hold the document up to the light, to differentiate between fine print and photocopied smudges.

I read the document, and then I read the document again.

I do some calculations, then it hits me: said student’s life story is contained within the digits that have been inked on the document.

I wonder what the limits of professionalism will allow me to ask said student.

I remember that it is not within the limits of the job to wonder.

The document returns home, slipping into its plastic folder like a late night out at the clubs.

The folder, like its compatriots, is crinkled. Each bears its owner’s name, scribbled with a marker on a white sticker, pasted on the top right-hand corner of each clear sheet.

I carry on sorting the stack of papers that sit on my desk, sheaf after sheaf a demonstration of  presence, of absence, slotted into its assigned vault.

The bell is going to go in a few minutes. There is marking to be done when I go home from work. There will be papers looking for lodging tomorrow.