About a Nut

I’ve been wanting to try skydiving, but there’s no space to skydive in Singapore, and the paranoid side of me is always thinking something might go wrong and whether the thrill really outweighs the risk. Then I saw this groupon voucher for ‘skydiving’ in Singapore. It’s basically a vertical wind tunnel that’s supposed to simulate dropping from 12,000ft to 3,000ft.

Singapore, the land of manufactured experiences. We have simulated skydiving @ iFly, Flow boarding/Body boarding with simulated waves @ the Wavehouse, and you can even fly a simulated plane at Flight Experience!

The voucher was only valid on weekdays, so we rushed down after work yesterday and ‘booked’ a flight! Their last flight is at 10pm, but you have to be there 1.5 hours prior for briefing and so on.

Simon went before me. He was pretty stable.

I was spinning in there! The key is to be symmetrical. But your brain may think you are symmetrical, whereas your body probably isn’t!

It was an interesting experience, though I wonder if it’s really anything like real skydiving. I thought there would be the feeling of free-fall, where your heart feels like it’s going to jump out of your throat, but I didn’t feel that at all. Maybe I should stick to roller-coasters. Haha.

Watching the video from our free DVD, me spinning and floating around somehow reminded me of the lyrics:

“Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
drifting through the wind wanting to start again?”

I think it would be more fun if I knew how to control going up and down on my own. Doubt I will ever find out, as it really isn’t a cheap sport!

Oh, and apparently, when you enter Sentosa by car during weeknights, it’s only $2 admission fee, and parking is only $1 per entry! Cheaper than parking at vivocity and taking the lrt over!

I’ve realised for some time now, that a hobby of mine has been unintentional profiting me. It’s really almost passive income. Not a lot, but for almost no effort put in, I say bring it on! Since July ’08 till Aug ’11, it’s made me USD$829.09. Currently, it’s bringing me about an average of $1+/day, which essentially makes it >$356/year!

Some years back I started this blog. A friend told me that 1&1 was offering 3 years free hosting, so what the heck, I signed up for it. So for 3 years, it served me faithfully, and after that the trial ended, it didn’t really make much sense to move.

After all my hosting was only USD$4.99/mth, and I’ve this blog, another blog “Singapore Watch“, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t recall hosted on it. I’m figuring with web hosting & domain, the costs is approx USD$77.50 per year.

Here’s the thing though: this blog made crap, cause well, its pretty private. It’s not googlable for one (coded some stuff to stop crawling spider bots), and well, I don’t update that often anyway. Haha. I pulled off ads eventually, so it looks nice and clean. Now my other blog on the other hand, a whole different story!

I started Singapore Watch while I was still in US, and it was suppose to help me keep up and comment on current affairs in Singapore. When I came back, I realised that I really couldn’t be bothered much with politics. There were more interesting issues for me now. Stuff like finance, which banks and credit cards were good, and housing issues. Mostly housing related stuff now, and apparently THAT is the money generator.

I didn’t set out targeting the market, but buying a HDB is Singapore is really a nightmare. Even though HDB has a site with tons of info, it’s not easy to really understand what they are trying to say. So between reading forums, asking HDB officers and reading the damn HDB site, I became quite knowledgeable about this whole housing thing. I started compiling info relating to these, for my own reference, and apparently others found it useful too, and also started asking questions in the comments, which I answered the best I could. Google, Yahoo and all the other search engines started crawling, and viola, I get like 400-800 hits a day.

Now here’s the best part: This year alone, I’ve only posted 12 posts: 7 were copy-n-paste newspaper articles, 4 were my own opinions, and 1 wasn’t even property related. Last year, same thing: only 12 posts. The bulk of my posts was made in 2008/2009, because that was when we were looking to buy our HDB. After that, I only mainly posted news articles pertaining to new HDB rules or property laws. Aside from that, almost no effort on my part. I felt bad initially, like I was abandoning my ‘readers’, but what the heck, this blog is really meant to compile info for my own (future) investments. Any incidentals resulting from it, is just a bonus.

Income: >USD $356/year
Expense: USD $77.50

So that’s essentially it. The day my hosting and domain costs exceeds my revenue will probably be the day I shut down the blog. But I really don’t see that in the foreseeable future.

Lion’s new look is very cold – no colored icons! I miss the colors in the sidebar so I googled, and amazingly, there was a link on how to put the colors back! Happy to have some colors back in finder again.

Saw this ad on a website, and clicked it thinking “Oh, they are selling pet insurance again”, only to find out it links to normal insurances – life, health, fire etc. but no pets!

But the cat and mouse look so adorable, makes you want to insurance them!

Ever since I read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” some years ago, and learnt about assets (things you own that generates money) and liabilities (things you own that take away money), I’ve always wanted to get an investment property.

But with Singapore property prices being so high, and prices rising faster than one can save up the 20% down payment required, (40% now if you own a HDB with outstanding loan), it’s almost impossible to get an investment property unless you make a lot of money. Thus, the only viable alternative was to look across the causeway.

In the past decade, the land near the Tuas checkpoint have slowly and steadily been developed, and new townships created due to the ‘Iskandar factor‘. We first learn about this area because a friend of ours told us that Bukit Indah’s Aeon Shopping Centre had an A&W! Rootbeer Float! They served it in chill glass mugs when we first started visiting it, but later switched to paper cups. Maybe too many of their mugs got stolen. They still serve root beer floats in chilled glass mugs!

Anyway, as a result of our A&W urge, we learnt about the Bukit Indah area, and honestly comparing to “old JB”, near the woodlands checkpoint, this area is really well-developed and appears a lot safer. However, we still didn’t know how safe the properties were, even with it being gated and patrolled. Also, there weren’t any property available near the Mall.

And then Sky Executive Apartments came along. We missed that, but signed up to be informed of the launch of their next ‘luxury apartment’ launch – Sky Loft. The location is awesome – right next to the Mall, that has a new cinema currently under construction. Best of all, it’s super affordable if you compare it to Singapore.

Sky Loft (artist impression)

If all goes well, we’ll be proud owners of a unit here! It’s a 1516 sq feet freehold 3 bedroom apartment, which can be ‘converted’ into a 2 bedroom + studio, and comes with full condo facilities. And all this for the same price as our 99year 904 sq feet HDB flat – just RM$455/sqft!

Can’t wait for it’s completion! We will be on the 22nd floor. It will be rented out when completed, but possibly a future retirement home if Singapore gets too expensive!

Okay. Actually I wanted to take a course at a CC as part of my “30 before 30″ list, but I guess this counts as well.

The Government has this Workforce Skills Qualification (WSQ) program, where they help “retrain Singaporeans” or help them “upgrade their skills” by subsidizing courses.

So I decided to sign up for a course to learn “After Effects”. In order to get the subsidy, I had to answer questions like the following:

- My current job title and description
- My motivation for taking up the course and how the skill/knowledge adds value to my current job
- Do I intend to stay in the Interactive Digital Media Industries for the next 3 to 5 years

After subsidy, I ended up paying only 30% of the total course fee! So it was $400+ instead of $1.4k! For 10 lessons over 2 weeks, 2.5 hours each, that’s about $40+ per lesson.

The course teaches the basics, and it’s kinda weird cause among all my course mates, none of them are editors. There was a IT guy, a student, some staff from ITE, weird mix of people.

After Effects is interesting, but unfortunately, what the course made me realize is that its almost impossible to master. Luckily there are tons of tutorials online. Google is your friend, if you need to find a tutorial to do a certain effect.

Also, After Effects requires other software to create materials – ie. you must have knowledge of other softwares like Photoshop, 3D modelling software etc.

Here are some cool After Effects site to surf:

- AE Tutorials http://aetuts.com
- Video Copilot http://www.videocopilot.net/

This list was written some time back: before I turn 30, here’s a list of stuff I hope to do!

1. Learn how to ride a motorbike
2. Learn how to drive a manual car
3. Go Snowboarding in Korea
4. Go Skydiving
5. Road trip to JB waterfall/springs
6. Try Kite Boarding or Wake Boarding
7. Fly a kite at night
8. Bet on a horse race at Kranji
9. Learn Cantonese/Hokkien
10. Go for F1 night race in Singapore
11. White a short story
12. Take a course at the Community Centre
13. Go NDP
14. Run 2.4km within 15 min
15. Have a kid
16. Visit the farms in Singapore
17. Shoot a gun
18. Buy an investment property
19. Go back to Oklahoma for a visit
20. Visit my twin in California

Tour of the Region

21. Visit Laos
22. Visit Siem Reap & Phnom Pheh (Cambodia) – AngKor Wat/Killing Fields
23. Visit Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)
24. Visit Pattaya (Thailand)
25. Visit Bangkok (Thailand)
26. Visit Krabi (Thailand) – Sun, Sand, Beach!
27. Visit Hong Kong
28. Visit Bali (Indonesia)
29. Visit Jakarta (Indonesia)
30. Visit Yangon (Myanmar)

Cleaning out my room. Saw this scribbled in one of my notebooks. I think I wrote it, though I can’t remember why …

I shall never know

She came in looking fine
Thought to have a sound mind
A pretty face, long straight hair
What was she doing here?

The truth slowly unveiled
As registration was done
To that pretty face laid a tragic tale
That no one can unravel

Something happened
I know not what
But tragic enough
To blow her mind

It may be school
It may be work
It may be love who knows

Registration was done
We looked around
She was nowhere to be seen
I shall never know