When I left Netccentric last year, Shorty and I had a discussion in planning our finances in the coming years. I was going to be leaving a position that gave me a good income. The new venture we were going to start was unlikely to be able to replace that income entirely at least for the first few years. So we decided that we had to prioritize (in what we both refer to as our “austerity drive”). We won’t take a cut in lifestyle for the things that we really valued like the kids education, having helpers and a driver and a nice van to send the kids around in.

But we will take a cut in the non-essential things.

1. We decided that we’ve been for enough overseas holidays in US, Europe or Japan and we could replace those with holidays in Phuket or Bali instead.
2. We cut down on eating out and ate more at home. When we did go out to eat (for our lunches) we went for hawker food or used discount vouchers from Entertainer or the Maxis app or stuff like that.
3. We shopped less. A lot less. Shorty used to go out often to buy things she liked but she read this article about how to turn her wardrobe into a minimal set of pieces that could be used to create a wide variety and combination of outfits. I on the other hand used to shop a lot but I’ve cut down everything. We no longer buy anything designer unless it’s with a discount and most of my clothes now are from Topman, Uniqlo and the likes. Not H&M because H&M stuff really don’t last long to me.
4. We focus our spending instead on experiences or things that could really help us capture our experiences like the drone I bought.
5. Triggered by our moving into a new place we’re renovating, we decided to pack up and sell a lot of our old stuff. So we’ve been selling stuff we no longer need on Carousell or things like that. Wow the amount of money we raised from all these things that would have otherwise been thrown away surprised us.

It’s been almost 6 months since we’ve made these cuts and here’s what I feel about life right now.

1. I don’t seem to have anymore interest in designer things or nice watches or even nice cars unless I can get any one of those for a really really good deal. I’m a sucker for deals that way.
2. I finally know what really makes me happy. Spending time with the kids, badminton on my weeknights, meeting people and working on my new venture. That’s it. Life suddenly feel a lot less complicated. It’s like I used to have to find a stimulus somewhere whenever I was restless. I felt the need to go for a holiday, or to buy something or to just do something. I no longer feel that and it’s liberating. When I have nothing to do, I just enjoy the moment of doing nothing rather than pressure myself to do something.
3. When I see my friends go for luxurious holidays or buy expensive cars or watches I’ve learned to admire them rather than the tinge of envy I used to feel.
4. When good things happen to my friends I genuinely feel very very very happy for them. When bad things happen to them I feel angry for them too.
5. I talked about how meeting new people was one of the things that made me happy earlier. Because of my new venture I’ve been meeting a lot of new people lately and that has brought me so much fulfillment.

Hello Everyone!

Been a while since I’ve done a giveaway so here’s one courtesy of Milestone Productions.

I’m going to cut and paste the press release here that really describes well what this show is about.

KUALA LUMPUR, 29 MARCH 2017 — This April, international show promoter, event and entertainment specialist Milestone Production will bring you on a ride of a lifetime into a galaxy far, far away. Organised to support United Nation’s International Day of Families, Milestone Production is bringing the critically acclaimed Broadway comedy parody “One Man Star Wars Trilogy” to Kuala Lumpur and Penang. The epic journey across the galaxy will be told through one man’s frenetic talents and energy at HGH Convention Centre Kuala Lumpur on 21 April 2017 and The Wembley’s Grand Ballroom @ St. Giles in Penang on 22 April 2017.

Avid fans (both young & old) will get to relive the epic moments of the first original trilogy series (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi) told through one man’s performing talents. Even if you are not a Star Wars fan, you will be mesmerized by Canadian actor Charles Ross’ talent where he singlehandedly plays all the 40 characters. “Ross makes an impressive Star Wars run in less than 12 parsecs!” quoted Chicago Sun Times and he will wow the audience by singing the music, flying the ships, fighting the light saber battles and condense the Star Wars trilogy plots into just over 75 minutes of live entertainment. Let Ross ; one of the craziest Star Wars fan who have watched all of the series for the 400th time takes you on an epic space journey from mimicking Chewbacca and Jabba The Hutt right down to the battle of Darth Vader versus Luke Skywalker to blowing up the Death Star and the revelation of Darth Vader’s true identity.

One Man Star Wars Trilogy has been performed across the globe for the past 16 years. In fact, Ross has even met George Lucas and received endorsement from the Star Wars creator himself for his production. If Lucas Films itself has given its support to Ross’ endeavours, you can be sure it is worth your time.

It is finally the time for fellow Jedis and Padawans to go onboard the Millennium Falcon and let Ross take you on a journey to a galaxy far, far away. Proudly presented by Milestone Production, tickets for One Man Star Wars Trilogy are now open for sale. Tickets for One Man Star Wars trilogy are priced from RM80 onwards with multiple categories available. Ticket prices are not inclusive of 6% GST and RM4 ticketing fee. For more information please log on to www.milestone-entertainment.com or www.ticketpro.com.my directly to purchase your tickets. 

I have 3 pairs VIP tickets (each ticket is worth RM213.90 each) to give away. If you’d like them please send me an email at lengmoublogs@yahoo.com.

No contest no nothing; Just a gift for you guys for following my blog, and for a little support to our arts and theatre scene here in Malaysia. Thank you Milestone Productions for bringing in all these acts.

Update: WOW! Lots of demand for this. Sorry guys all tickets have now been given out.

This week my friend invited me over to his factory in Ipoh to learn about a whole new business. The business of carpet manufacturing.

This factory I went to has been there for like 40 years or so passed down from his father to him. In a few months time he’ll be moving into a new factory with really nice facilities but I’m glad I managed to visit this one before he moved.

To see where the business was conducted out of for the past 40 years or so.

This is the raw product that he receives from suppliers. Wool.

He then has people that takes this wool and then turn it into ball yarns like this.

Once that’s done it’s all stored.

All with different colours to cater to different designs.

Now comes the hard part.

A projector is used to guide the skilled worker to design the carpet.

Each different colour in the heat map above is marked by a different number to indicate a different colour that goes with the design.

Once the initial part is done it’s hung up on the wall like that.

The workers then use these gun-like equipment to shoot through the yarn to form the patterns of the carpet.

Until it becomes something like this.

My friend’s company supplies carpets to palaces, hotels, homes or offices all around the country. I always thought that most of these carpets just come off some kind of conveyor belt in a factory but actually they’re all hand-made (with the help of some equipment). It takes a lot of work and about 3 months to train a worker on how to do the job before he or she can actually do it.

This is close to the end product of the carpet..

The worker in the blue shirt is using some kind of shaver to create the different gradients that we see in a carpet. Looks like a pretty stressful job to me since a mistake or so could really mess up the entire piece that went through the previous process.

The carpet industry in Malaysia is a challenging one though. The challenges faced are competition from the cheap supplies of China to competition from wood floors or vinyl floors that are easier to maintain and repair.

Carpets though have its strengths. It makes a bedroom feel a lot more cosy and it helps to absorb noise of say high heels walking in a public place.

With all the challenges in the business though there must be some reason (apart from money) that motivates my friend to work. So I asked him what is the thing that satisfies him the most about this business and he said that the carpet is normally the last thing that is put into a room after renovation. Once you put in what seems like the last piece of the puzzle, the room looks very very different than what it looked like before… and complete.

Before we left Ipoh, my friend brought me to the site of his new factory.

A much bigger and nicer place where his carpets of the future will be made.

My Dad doesn’t generally like to appear on my social media platforms but I just couldn’t resist this picture of him and Fighter. In this picture, he’s showing Fighter some video of some animals playing some musical instruments and Fighter seems really happy about it.

I quickly whipped out my photo and took this picture to capture the moment. It’s at this moment I thought about my childhood days, when my Dad took care of me and did all these things with me. I’ve seen many things that made my Dad happy in life. The times when he bought a new car, or when his friends praise him or many other things. But the one thing that consistently makes him happy is his kids and now his grandkids.

This happiness spills down to me too. Many things make me happy in life, but nothing makes me happier than time with my kids. Ten years ago I couldn’t imagine how my kids would look like or be like. Now I can’t imagine my life without them.

If you asked me a year ago if I would be training for a marathon I would be like “NO FUGGIN WAY!”.

So why am I doing it now?

Because of these guys.

My EO Forum mates. They all decided they wanted to check something off the bucket list this year which includes a half marathon in a month’s time and a full marathon by the end of the year. That’s crazy because that takes training and while I enjoy cycling training… running is super boring to me.

Still… out of not letting my friends down I decided to do it.

So just yesterday we invited another friend named Keat (on the left in the picture above) to share some tips with us on how to prepare for a marathon. Keat is a season Iron Man, Marathoner and Century Rider. He has done everything.

He gave us a lot of tips but here’s what I’m going to list down.

1. Have a running schedule

He came up with this running schedule for us. That is how many KM to run each week which include some weeks of less running for recovery.

The first thing I noticed about this schedule was “Wait.. when do we actually go for a practice run of 42KM ?”.

The answer though is never. Keat said that marathon runners don’t run 42 KM on their training rounds because it just takes too much out of the body. The most we ever run is 32KM and that’s like a couple of weeks before race day.

This was a paradigm shift for me because I thought running and endurance was all about doing more and more distance each time. What I learned though is that when it comes to training, it’s not about distance, it’s about consistency.

2. Vaseline up your nipples and your thighs. 

It’s called chafing. Because apparently the friction you get on your nipples from running for hours causes your nipples to bleed. That’s pretty scary.

3. Stretches after a run are very important to prevent injury.

I do some stretching before a workout but I never really used to do a post run one because after a run I just feel like sitting down and chilling. That’s wrong. There are a lot of basic stretches we can find on YouTube and that’s something we gotta do to prevent injury.

4. Drink before you’re thirsty. Eat before you’re hungry.

On a long run we normally need to bring our calories with us that come in the form of gel, energy bars or fruit. Always eat or drink before we actually get hungry because by the time we do it’s too late. Keat also recommended recovery drinks like Endurox so I went out to buy some today.

5. How to trick the mind and fight the mental war

42KM is a long way to run and sometimes our mind gives up before our body does. Keat said what he did was to break down the whole route into 10KM and then 5KM and then 2KM segments so that it’s mentally easier to keep it up.

He also said that if we’re not running to get the best possible time and just want to complete then don’t be afraid to walk.

6. Don’t save on a good pair of running shoes

I learned this the hard way actually. I went for a 10KM fun run and ended up hurting the sole of my feet. So I searched online for the best running shoes in the world and bought any pair that I could find in Malaysia.

And that’s my key takeaways from the session.

“FATS! Please throw out all your old stuff or sell them before I do it for you”.

That was when I realized my wife was serious about her spring cleaning warpath. So I went online to start selling stuff.

I’ve sold stuff on many different sites like Mudah but this time I decided to try Carousell. I proudly put together a collection of things that I thought would sell and even threw in some stuff that I thought won’t sell.

Here are the things I put up for sale. Try to guess to see if it would sell or not and I’ll give you the answer below.

1. A pair of authentic G-Star jeans – RM100

I went through a phase where I loved designer jeans years ago. So I bought a number of jeans like this. When I put them on again I was like woah fug… they were all baggy and stuff which probably was more acceptable then but not in 2016 or 2017. Maybe the trend of baggy jeans will come back again in a few years but not for now.

I thought nobody would wanna buy it so I was going to sell it for RM25. Then Shorty stopped me and said “What? At least RM100. Trust me. I know fashion”.

So guess if I had any buyers for this pair of jeans at RM100.

The answer is….

No.

In fact I had no interest so I dropped it to RM80 and then to RM50. And still no interest.

2) My old Crumpler laptop bag – RM 20

Shorty was initially offended when I decided to put this up for sale. She said the bottom part was all torn… who would want to buy such a thing?

Well I believed that everything has a price. And it was a good functional bag. So I posted it up along with clear pictures of the torn part at the bottom.

Guess if I managed to sell it?

SOLD! For RM20!

3) Mont Blanc Watch Winder – RM90

I actually won this when I won the Prestige 40 under 40 a few years ago but I’ve never really used it. I didn’t want to throw it away because it was still brand new and it’s a really nice thing. Just not something I use. So I decided to put it up for sale for RM90.

The big question though was who would want to buy such a thing? Are people who would buy a watch winder shopping online for second hand stuff like this?

So did I sell it….?

SOLD! FOR RM90. One guy came about and said that he was buying it for his Dad’s birthday.

4) Authentic pair of True Religion Jeans – RM80

At one point I loved True Religion jeans. So this is the same story as the G-Star one above.

So did I sell it?

Nope. Not a peep. Crickets.

5) My old Adidas running shoes – RM40

These shoes are quite a number of years old. I’ve been running in them for a while and my feet hurt from them when I started to do longer distances. So I ended up buying a new pair of shoes (Nike). I had no use for these shoes and they were taking up room in my shoe cabinet so okay… I put it for sale for RM40. And the answer is….

SOLD!!

6) My Scott Addict 10 Road Bike – RM 5,500

Love this bike when I used to cycle. It has taken me for rides over thousands of KMs in its lifetime. It’s also heavily modded. The bike alone costs RM10K but I think all the add ons probably bring it to like RM15K or so in total. I put it on sale for RM5,500. That’s 66% lower than what I probably paid for it and…..

NOT SOLD!!! Not a single offer.

7) My Sony PlayStation 3

Since I don’t play console games anymore I thought I put this up for sale for RM650. The answer….

NOT SOLD!!!

8) Bunch of old cycling jerseys – RM50

Okay… I don’t know who would buy cycling jerseys that I had worn and soaked with sweat over a number of rides. But these cycling jerseys were taking up a lot of space.

So I put them all up and decided to test the market.

SOLD!! In fact I offered the guy more jerseys and some cycling shorts (I thought hey who would buy my shorts since you know… people go commando in cycling shorts). But he took it. For RM80 he bought almost every cycling jersey and shorts I owned.

He told me that he took it then and sold it to his bicycle group of friends for a profit. So probably a good deal for him.

Okay so of the 8 of the above.. how many did you guys get right?

Coming back from Singapore by car last weekend, Shorty was suffering from a very quickly escalating condition of UTI (urinary tract infection). The symptoms was pain, which she was feeling and her constant need to go to the bathroom. Which made us thankful that Malaysian highways had so many rest stops.

When we got to KL we immediately went to see a doctor. The doctor told her to pee in a cup. When she held up the cup for me to see, I had a shock of my life. Her pee was the colour of Ribena.

The doctor confirming that it was UTI offered her an injection to cure the symptoms. He felt that she would hesitate an injection like any normal person but little did he know, Shorty wasn’t normal. You see, Shorty has a phobia for taking oral medication and given a choice she would rather take an injection any day. Heck if Panadol came in the form of an injection she would stop up a rack of them at home just for herself.

As we stood outside the clinic waiting for our Uber that rainy day, Shorty looked at me and said “Thank you” (for taking me to the doctor).

I said “What are you thanking me for? It is my duty. Through sickness and in health right?”.

It was then that I was reminded about what many marriages have… what Shorty and I have. Before you find the one to settle down and get married, relationships were all about discovery, about fun and sometimes about the petty little fights that help us know each other better. After a long relationship though there’s always that fear about taking that next step. Is the one I’m going to marry the right one? What is it like to be with one person for the rest of your life?

The latter question is the one most guys go through and here I am, married for almost 5 years now and I’m actually really happy that I am. I don’t see marriage as me being with one woman for the rest of my life. It’s like over the past 5 years, my wife has become a real part of me. Conjoined to me like my personality is, my soul and my heart. If she’s happy I’m happy. If she’s sad I’m sad. If she’s sick I feel sick too. What marriage gives us isn’t really variety, nor discovery nor many of the other things we had when we were just dating. It gives me much more than that.

It gives me a sense of partnership that have a commitment to be together through thick and thin. That through our kids we have a common goal in wanting to raise them well and give them the best. That life is not just about me anymore. It’s about us. It’s about family.

Watching the rain fall that day outside the clinic with my wife standing next to me I thought to myself that it’s been almost 5 years of marriage now. I hope the next 30 years are just as good.