Day 10 of the 60DWCC - Dinner at CookHouse @ JEM

I managed to finish my stuff earlier so RK and I headed down to Jurong Point to get both of us an haircut at QCHouse for $10 each.

After our haircut, we headed down to JEM to meet up with THL. Yeah I know, we could have gone to any of the hair saloon at JEM for the haircut in the first place but to what I know, there isn't any $10 hair saloon in JEM.

We took a train from Jurong Point to Jurong East and waited for THL inside the 5th floor foodcourt - CookHouse. As RK was already hungry, I ordered 2 egg prata for him while waiting for THL to arrive. The egg prata(s) are both very well done despite the hefty price of $2.40 each.

THL and I ordered our dinner after she arrived. The food is at most of the stalls are rather pricey but the quality is there. I ordered Prawn Mee while THL ordered some chinese style dish.

Both THL and I really like the Rojak and we both think it is worth the price we paid for it.

After dinner, we walked around West Gate before get a feeder bus home. Before boarding the bus, I bought 2 bowls of beancurd for supper. :)

Transport Expenses: $5.03

Bus Ride:

Home to BL (THL) -> $0.73

JE to Home -> $0.73 x 2 + $0.36 = $1.82

MRT Ride:

LS to BL (Me and RK)-> $1.09

Boon Lay to JE (Me and RK) -> $1.39

Daily Afterthoughts:

While inside the feeder bus, I notice that the route that the bus took was somewhat exactly what I would have taken if I am still driving. Apart from the slow speed plus the longer time it takes for us to reach home, I realized there wasn't much difference between taken the bus vs driving home in a car. In fact, from a financial standpoint, it is quite a waste of money to own and maintain a car since most of the time we are just traveling to nearby malls and centrals. 

But when it comes to traveling long distance, for example to Johore Bahru, owning a car makes perfect sense because we do not have to rub shoulders with strangers inside the very often packed public transport that travels across the causeway as well as not having to stand in the queue for hours (during weekends) at both the Singapore and Malaysia checkpoints.

Do you agree?

Day 9 of the 60DWCC - Bus Ride to Brother-in-law House

After I was done with my daily work and household chores, RK and I proceeded to take a bus to my brother-in-law's house. The primary purpose of the visit was of course to have RK played with my niece RT and also to have dinner with THL's family.

We took Bus 185 and it was a long wait (about 13 minutes) and despite the deafening thunders roaring across the sky, I resisted the urge to grab a cab. The bus came just as I was about to surrender. Phew...

The ride in and of itself was rather comfortable. It was not packed and the journey was surprising short and "painless". :D

Their somewhat "crazy" dog was barking very loudly at us when we were at the door and my niece has to carry it away. For me, I have never really like dogs (especially stupid ones that bark blindly) except for those who has all their teeth extracted and do not have the ability to bark (is there such dog in existence? Toy dog? Heehee).

For many moments I resisted the urge to kick it on its face as it sticks out its smelly and sticky tongue to get "familiarize" with the 2 of us. Yuck! Please forgive my adversity towards this dog because I really could not stand its stupidity when it comes to recognizing people. Does it have to bark whenever it sees us? Does it have to lick our legs every time he sees us? Come on, somebody give that dog some marbles...

RK and I played Monopoly with my niece shortly after we are done with the dog thing. THL came at 6.30pm and we have dinner together. We continued the game after dinner and we left for home at 830pm.

As it was still drizzling outside, we took a cab home.

Transport expenses: $10.30

Bus Ride:

THL to work => $0.73
RK and I => $1.03 + $0.51 = $1.54

MRT Ride:

THL from JK to JN => $0.73

Cab Fare: $7.30

Daily Afterthoughts:

Although taking public transport can be time consuming among other negative factors (long waiting time, become human-sardine during peak hours, risks of getting infected when someone coughs non-stop, standing beside someone who has B.O etc), it is still bearable for the most part especially when there is a huge difference in expenses between owning a car vs taking public transports.

That being said, I am not saying I will never ever get a car again. I am just feeling comfortable right now with taking PT (public transport) and I will definitely evaluate our situation again after the 60 days challenge is over. :)

Trello - An Indispensable Tool That Helps Plan My Daily Life

Ever since I started working from home on my SEO business, Trello has been an indispensable tool that I have been using to plan the many aspects of my life. Trello is 100% free for anyone to use.

Trello allows you to create a board for each area of your life that you need organized. For example, below screen shows that i have a Christmas Shopping List board that I recently created to help give me an overview of the To Do list, tasks that I am currently Doing and things that I have Done.

What's really helpful is that it also allows you to change the title of each cards (To Do, Doing, Done etc) on the board. You can have up to 7 cards on each board and you can create unlimited boards (actually I am not sure if there is a limit because one can only have so many boards - I have about 10). On top of that,  I am able to label each of the tasks within a card in accordance to their importance. See below for an example.

Apart from helping me track my To-Do lists, Trello also has a notification feature which will send off an email to my inbox to remind me of important tasks.

I guess that most useful feature in my opinion is the fact that Trello allows you to collaborate closely with your colleagues, friends or family on projects, outings and what not as it allows you to assign tasks to them if they are a member of your board.

Trello has been an instrumental tool that I use on a daily basis for my business and I hope you will also find it useful too. If you have any useful tools that you have been using, I would appreciate if you could share it with me too. :)

Day 8 of the 60DWCC - A Week Has Gone By

The entire morning and afternoon went by pretty fast as we follow through the daily routines.

I am now able to go for a run almost everyday except weekends and I  am feeling more energized as I work my way through the day while still handling the household chores and preparing lunch and spending time with my hyperactive 7 years old son.

For dinner, we decided not to eat out this evening. We bought dinner home, dropped by the DVD rental shop and borrowed 4 DVDs. The DVD rental rate at this shop is pretty affordable and since it is so near to our place, it is never a hassle for us to borrow and return the DVDs. We will usually borrow DVDs for shows that we missed out on cinemas.

Transport Expenses: $1.46

Bus Fare:

To and Back from Boon Lay (THL) => $0.73 x 2 = $1.46

Week One Expenses on transportion => $54.07

Daily Afterthoughts

A week has past and I must say the 3 of us are doing well. We are now pretty familiar with most of the bus services that are connected to our place as well as all the complicated MRT lines.

Most importantly, our total expenses over the past 7 days comes up to a whopping $54.07 only. Had we not sold our SUV, our expenses would have been estimated at around $400 when you factor in daily cost of season parking, ERPs, parking fees, petrol consumption, road tax, insurance and so on...

At this rate, one can easily foresee that we will be able to save up to a minimum of $1400 a month on transport expenses and we will be able to channel this amount of month elsewhere. E.g. A family tour every few months, enrichment lessons for RK, more frequent eat outs at restaurants etc. On the flip side, we are obviously less mobile now and we have to be more conscious about weather forecast, mode of transportation and routes before we set our foot out of the house.

Day 7 of the 60DWCC - A Hefty Meal at Ichiban Sushi vs A Full Tank of Petrol

As it was school holidays, RK and I stayed at home most part of the day with the exception of me going out for my daily morning run and getting lunch from the nearby food stalls.

We spent most part of the morning focusing on our own stuff - with me working on my projects and RK playing his games and exploring new countries and terrains using the newly installed Google Earth apps on his handphone. For his age, he does amazes me on the sort of things he has very keen interest in - things like getting to know the largest known planet in the universe, the largest known number and all the geographical information like the largest continent on earth and so on. In my opinions, he has already outgrown his age with his super mental capability. He has never fail to amaze me with the types of questions he has been asking me.

RK: Hey Daddy, why is Googolplexian the largest number in the world? How many trillions are there in a Googolplexian?

Me: Huh...

RK: Daddy, how many seconds are there in a month? Do you know?

Me: Please use a calculator...

RK: Why use a calculator?

Me: ???

It was not until late afternoon that I have some spare time to accompany RK. He was watching his favorite TV shows on Okto and I watch the show with him. Did you know he could remember most of the TV programs from Okto channel? Incredible...

6.00 pm - We went out to meet THL at Jurong Point for dinner. We waited for her outside Ichiban Sushi restaurant. While there was no much of a queue outside, the restaurant was already full and we had to wait for 25 minutes before we were shown to our table.

As we were very hungry, we ordered quite a fair bit of food and RK alone ate a few plates of sushi from the sushi conveyor belt. The food came shortly and we devour the food after THL took some last known pictures of them before they enter our hungry tummy. :D

Micro Chargers 

We bought a set of Micro Chargers from Kiddy Palace for RK as Xmas gift since he has been pestering us to buy for the past few months. He was over the clouds when I bought the upgraded version, much to the dismay of THL who preferred him to get the smaller version that is easier to setup and keep. Anyhow, he was very happy and we told him that we will wrap it up and he can only unwrap and play it 9 days later (Christmas Day).

We took bus 198 and walked home.

Transport expenses: $4.01

MRT Ride
LS to BL (THL) = $0.73
LS to BL (RK and Myself) = $1.09

Bus Ride
Bus Fare for THL -> $0.73 = $0.73
Bus Fare for RK & Myself -> $0.73 x 2 = $1.46

Daily Afterthoughts:

The money we spent for the hefty meal at Ichiban Sushi could have been otherwise spent on pumping up a full tank of petrol for "XL". Not sure about THL, for me I definitely feel that it is more worthwhile to fill our tummy with good food (our stomach will at least appreciate in size...LOL!) than to feed overpriced petrol (in SG context) to a car that has a depreciation value.

No matter how I look at it, I still feel that I have made the right decision in selling away our 2.4 litre SUV which had been a very expensive beast to maintain. The next car, if we ever get one again, will definitely be of a small engine capacity and more fuel efficient.

Day 6 of the 60DWCC - Stay Home Sunday

THL and I both agreed that today will be a stay-at-home day. Beside it being a family day where we watch TV shows, DVDs, playing the latest mobile games together, it is also a day for us to catch up with our household chores.

9.30 am - The day started off by THL making us a delicious breakfast and despite the fact that the waiting time was long and food quality was not restaurant standard by any stretch of the imagination, the food tasted really good and before we knew it, the food was already inside our stomach queuing up for digestion. :)

I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon working on my projects while THL worked on the household chores. As RK has already finished his homework, he was allowed to indulge himself in the world of mobile games, Youtube movies and Handheld games. Yeah yeah, I know...these are unhealthy stuff for a 7 years old kiddy but then it is school holiday you know. :D

3.30 pm - For lunch, we had porridge (prepared by THL again). After the meal, I took a nap while she watch her favorite TV show till 5pm.

Since it was already quite late into the evening, I  went out to the coffee-shop nearby and "packeted" back our dinner. The Zi Char stall inside that coffee-shop served really mouth-watering food in our opinion.

After dinner, we ended the day watching TV shows and we also managed to catch up with a HongKong drama series (DVD) that we have been watching over the past weeks.


Transport Expense: $0.00

Daily Afterthoughts

Today, we would have driven out for dinner (for convenience sake) if "XL" is still around although there are some Sundays where Ling would prepare dinner for us. Even though our expenses on food are very likely to rise this month, it is still very much cheaper than the monthly and daily expenses (petrol, car park fee, ERP, season parking etc) we spent on "XL".

Day 5 of the 60DWCC - Postive Adaption Process Begins

Welcome to Day 5 of the 60DWCC. 4 days have past and the 3 of us are still alive. The world did not end like we expected. Hurray! :D

We left the house at around 1pm. We took a feeder bus 335 to Jurong East Interchange and took a MRT ride to Clementi. We waited for a shuttle bus to Grandstand which was estimated to arrive at 1.45 pm. Upon reaching Grandstand, I went to settle some stuff with one of the car dealers and we had our lunch at Curry Garden after that.

The food at Curry Garden has always been nice and this time round we ordered some Naan, butter chicken, a very delicious curry prawn dish to share as well as 2 egg prata for RK. It was a very fulfilling meal.

We took the shuttle bus back to Clementi and we shopped for a while at BHG inside Clementi Mall as THL needed to get a pair of black working shoe. RK and I went down to 7-eleven to get a Pink Dolphin drink to quench our thirst. After THL got her stuff, we went down to the basement to et some dessert before taking MRT ride to Jurong Point at 4.15pm.

As we had earlier arranged with my parents to meet up at Jurong Point for a meal together (my mum's birthday), we waited at for them at Mos Burger. They came at 6.20pm and we went up to the Soup Restaurant at 2nd floor for dinner while waiting for my sister to join us. We ordered 6 popular dishes that we have tried before. 

After the meal, we took bus 187 home alongside my parents and sister. We got some stuff from NTUC on our way home and I was glad the 5th day ended without any form of emotional hiccup. :D

Transport Expenses: $8.93

Bus Ride:

Home to Jurong East Int (3 of us) -> $0.73 x 2 + $0.36 = $1.87
Boon Lay Int to Home (3 of us) -> $0.83 x 2 + $0.41 = $2.07

MRT Ride:

JE to CL (3 of us) -> $0.83 x 2 + $0.41 = $2.07
CL to BL (3 of us) -> $1.17 x 2 + $0.58 = $2.92

Daily Afterthoughts

The 3 of us are certainly getting used to taking public transports like Bus and MRT and I have a strong feeling we may no longer need a car after the 60 days challenge. We will see how it goes.