BULLy the BEAR

Having owned a pre-loved car for slightly more than a year, I wanted to reflect on whether it's a good way to burn the money and also to gauge what's the real cost of owning a car. I did some calculation before buying, now it's time to check back those assumptions and verify it once and for all whether those assumptions are rubbish or not

*Items that are estimated means that I take the amount spent for 1 yr and divide it by 12 to get an estimated monthly charge

One time expenses:
First car inspection before taking the car: $142
Downpayment: $16,000
Major car servicing: $560

Total one time payment: $16,702

Monthly expenses:
Season parking : $65
Fuel : $260 (estimated)
Cashcard: $50 (estimated)
Insurance: $120
Carpark Coupon: $4 (estimated)
Car wash: $5 (estimated)
Monthly installment: $359

Total monthly payment: $863

Even before the new rules set in, I'm already paying 50% down payment and borrowing the rest. I've the money to pay it all down but I just don't think it's wise. Anyway, the total interest is $1.2k over 4 yrs, so I think it's alright to borrow money since it raises my liquidity, which is more impt for me. My wife and I are sharing the cost, so it works out to be half of whatever is calculated on top.

My share of the one time payment is $8,400
My share of the monthly payment is $430

Is it affordable? I think so. A lot of people who say that they can't pay for a car is because they didn't look at the secondary market. If you need to smell the fresh leather seats of new car, then don't complain that the cost of owning a car is so high.

Anyway, these are the cost. In accounting, there's got to be something to balance the cost. Here's the benefits:


1. Less energy wasted taking public transport and walking

This reason alone is good enough to make me want to own a car. After work, I still have the energy to go to other places. It's like everyday I start off with 100% energy, then as I work, travel, walk...I spent those energy. Having a car conserve my energy level and spend it slower than walk & public transport. I'm not spoilt or anything (most of the time, my wife drives instead of me) but having a car will make the journey much less taxing on my energy reserves. It makes me more energetic once I reached my destination, rather than tired and sweaty and generally worn out.


2. Saves time

I used to take several buses that will reach my destination in 15 mins but with the waiting time added in, I've to go 35 mins ahead. The extra 20 mins goes like this: 15 mins for waiting, another 5 more in case the bus is too full or 2 buses come at the same time or the bus arrives earlier than expected. It's a tremendous waste of my time. When you value your time and energy more than money, you know that that's the time to get your own transport.


3. Ability to go several places in one day

I've not had that experience before, since my family don't ever own a car. I could be in one place having lunch, then vroom to another place to get something, then vroom to yet another place for dinner. Just because I can do so. The kind of freedom that it gives me is worth the money. I wished I had bought it sooner, actually.


The benefits do not have a dollar value, but that doesn't mean that it's not important. The cost has a price to it, but the benefits are literally and metaphorically priceless.

I need to learn how to say NO.

Perhaps it's the up-bringing or the circumstances that lead me to think that being a nice-guy, you have be as agreeable to everyone as much as possible. Even to the extent of sacrificing yourself for the 'greater good'. But experience had told me that there is no greater good to sacrifice, most of the time. Whatever passed off as greater good is just someone's or some group's selfish personal agenda. Hence, whatever sacrifices you made so that there a greater good is served is just pure delusion, mostly on my part, egged on by my false sense of what being a nice guy entails.

I am one who usually don't exert my rights to others. I'll just suck it up. But it's time to change. No point being a nice guy when others don't play nice. AND more importantly, I've to realise that it's okay to say no. I won't become a devil by saying no when I really mean it. I should practice saying no everyday. These are a few examples:


1. Can you help me with this? No, I'm busy.

2. Can you come over at this time because I'm only free at this period of time? No, I'm not available at other times.

3. Sorry I mixed up your orders and added ice to your drink, is it okay for you to take this nevertheless? No, I want it to be replaced without ice, sorry.


I guess part of the reason why others can say no easily is because they are not afraid to exert what is right for them. I always 'system-think' too much instead of exerting my own individuality. I should be more individualistic instead of group thinking too much. Part of learning how and when to say no is also the fact that I become more attuned to what I really want. I want to live a life for myself instead of living someone else's life. I shouldn't take myself so seriously and think that when I say 'no', things will fall apart. Things will most likely carry on with or without my affirmative yes.

Yes, life will still carry on with or without my participation.

I always like to note down the books that I've read and note down the ones that I might want to re-read again. By looking at the books that you've read, I'd like to review the year that had passed in 2012 too. It's a bit late, I know, but better than never, haha!

I've read a total of 35 books, way lower than the usual 52 books per year. I know I've said that I no longer want to count the number of books that I've read, but the funny thing is this: when I stopped counting, I stopped reading. Or reading as much. Sometimes the target to always read 1 book a week just makes me scrimp and collect all the weird pockets of time to do some bit of reading. To finish reading a book, you need discipline. As simple as that. A good book will help you to finish it in double quick time, no doubt. However, I realised that before you start to like a book, when the characters are strangers to you and you don't give a shit whether they are alive or dead, you just need to hit that psychological milestone pages before you can get 'into' the book. That requires discipline.

For those parents who dish out ipads and multi-media tablets to kids, beware of raising a generation of kids who can't delay their gratification and who wants instant rewards, especially when it comes in visually appealing graphics and nice sound effects. When you're reading, your mind creates all these itself and there's no need for external stimulus to make reading enjoyable. I feel this is very important to train in the youth these days, especially when it's so easy to get our kicks from the ubiquitous ipads. Something to think about.

Anyway, here's the list of books that I've read in 2012:

Alien Interview - Lawrence R. Spencer

Writing Tools: 50 essential strategies for every write - Roy Peter Clark

Fengshui for the classroom - Renee Heiss

Thick face, Black heart - Chin-Ning Chu

The elements of Persuasion - Richard Maxwell & Robert Dickman

Courage to teach - Parker J. Palmer

The truth about teaching - Coleen Armstrong

Influence - The psychology of persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini

The 22 immutable laws of branding - Al Ries

Guerrilla Marketing for Free - Jay Conrad Levinson

Secrets of building multi-million dollar business - Adam Khoo

The Night Eternal - Guillermo Del Toro / Chuck Hogan

Advertising for Dummies - Gary Dahl

The Fall - Guillermo Del Toro / Chuck Hogan

The Strain - Guillermo Del Toro / Chuck Hogan

I am Legend - Richard Matheson

The Last Colony - John Scalzi

The Ghost Brigades - John Scalzi

Old man's war - John Scalzi

The bed of procrustes - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The sea of swords - R.A Salvatore

The Silent blade - R.A. Salvatore

The spine of the world - R.A Salvatore

The end of days - Zecharia Sitchin

A Thousand Orcs - R.A. Salvatore

The Cosmic Code - Zecharia Sitchin

Wool Omnibus Edition (1-5) - Hugh Howey

A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin

The Chaos Curse - R.A. Salvatore

The Fallen fortress - R.A. Salvatore

Night Masks - R.A. Salvatore

In Sylvan Shadows - R.A. Salvatore

Canticle - R.A. Salvatore

Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Those at the bottom of the list were books that I read in the earlier part of the year, and it's arranged chronologically. The ones I've highlighted are the top 5 worth re-reading again.

Let's see:


1. Wool omnibus (1-5 books)




This one is by Hugh Howey. I don't really buy physical books, but I will buy his books for keepsake. That's how good his works are. I recently also bought another omnibus, a series of 3 books by the same author from Amazon. If you like wasteland, fallout, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it kind of apocalyptic books, this is for you. That song from Fallout by Inkspots kept playing again and again in my head when reading this...tsk tsk... By the way, my list of books to re-read seldom include fiction. This must be one of the rare ones to appear in the list.


2. Secrets of building a multi-million dollar business




I don't usually like Adam Khoo's books, but I think this one is quite a easy read. It's good for people who wanted to have a brief overview of starting a business. If anything, Adam Khoo is a successful businessman located in Singapore. It's good to see what sort of viewpoints or advice he can give to someone starting out in Singapore too. That's plenty of general advice in other books, but this one is local and so it's more tailored to our unique context. I've read this twice already, and I'll probably read this again. It's still in my list of books to read in the future.


3. Guerrilla marketing for free




A marketing guru - Jay Conrad Levinson is the authoritative voice in this aspect of business. It's good for everybody because we're all salesman in one form or another. It gives you ideas - plenty of it - to think about and to use as you see fit. It's very readable, not like those textbooks for formal studies and I'm pretty sure some of the techniques work good too, because I've tried it myself. Definitely a good book to re-read in the future.


4. Influence - the psychology of persuasion




Oh man, I can't recommend this book enough. I've read this for maybe 2 times? Remember this name "Robert B. Cialdini"...if you see his books, just read it lah, can't go too far wrong. If you notice my books list for this year, I've already read another book co-authored by him, called 'Yes!'. If you ever need to persuade people, and we need to do it on a daily basis, then you should read this book. You should read it per year like me, just to remember the lessons learnt.


5. Alien interview




Usually this isn't a book that I'll recommend...I'm quite sick of reading about aliens. But this book is special because it's about an interview with an alien that survived the crash in the Roswell incident. You can take it as fiction or fact, it doesn't really matter. It's the ideas that count. The theory that is explained by the alien is so mind blowing that I think it can explain all the sort of things that I'm puzzled about. It's like the encompassing theory to tie up all the loose ends about the different religious beliefs regarding life on earth. Mind blowing, I repeat. It's a very short read, so I will recommend this to anyone interested in the mysteries of life on earth, about reincarnation, about aliens and ancient astronaut theories...very very refreshing read. Again, I stress that there's debate on whether this is real or just a work of imagination...it doesn't matter to me. Either way, I treat works of facts like fiction and fiction like works of facts. The essence is what is important here.


Special mention: Cleric Quintet (Canticle, In Sylvan shadows, Night masks, The fallen fortress and the chaos curse) by R.A Salvatore




The author should be a familar name for those who love fantasy books like the Drizzt series. Having read many books on Drizzt already, I found it pretty repetitive. There's only so much adventure with the infamous dark elf ranger. That's the reason why the Cleric Quintet is so refreshing. It's a very engaging series of 5 books, following Cadderly, the prodigy cleric and his monk wife Danica. If you like the style of writing by Salvatore, this is going to be a great journey for you. Prepared to have nights where you just spent reading so deeply that time seemed to fly past.

I was lamenting to wifey that a lot of things in Singapore had changed, for better or for worse. This  came on the weekend when I visited Bras Basah complex near City hall / Bugis area. I was there, intending to go to one of the restaurants there for dinner and alas, I realised that the restaurant had closed down. It's now changed to some sassy Korean BBQ place that is sprouting out like here and there all over the island. The place is complete with posters of Korean actors and actress with their smiles and poses.


Oh how I missed the steamy hot xiao long bao, the soft twirls of the white buns and the juicy meat inside the Chinese pizza... I would have visited it again if I had known that it's going to close down. But that's just part of life - you had to deal with the uncertainty.

Tian Jin - the restaurant I'm talking about. Photo courtesy of  ClaireChing's blog

I've many memories of that place, having visited it a lot when my wife and I were dating. I bought a few friends there for dinner too, so to me that place is more than just a place for food. It's also a place for small talks and big dreams. It's gone now.


During that weekend, when news of the veteran actor Huang Wenyong's passing reached me, it just deepens this sense of loss. It's a very generic sense of loss of something intimate and familiar to you, a loss of something that will trigger your memories whenever you see it.


Here's a list of 3 things that are precious to me but is now replaced/gone:

1. My primary school - Bedok View Primary school is no longer around. It's replaced by a special needs school for children. Spending 6 yrs of your life in a place means that the building isn't just a building to me anymore, it's like a second home. Near the school compound, there is an ancient tree that is cut off to make way for new buildings around the vicinity. THAT is unforgivable. In my old home, I can see THAT tree from the view through my window and that tree is part of a landscape that is supposed to be FIXED. The tree had been with me since I was near the sand pit playing hopscotch. It's gone now.


2. Marina sq - this place is filled with memories. I spent quite a fair bit of time here while dating. There used to be 2 or 3 food court in that place alone. I wouldn't use 'food court' in the modern sense of the word, it's really just a few plastic chairs and tables with metal frames fixed to the floor...a tad dirty but who cares, the food is great. I used to frequent the one nearer the cinema area, where there used to be a sort of tze char stall, called Ron's seafood. Beside spending a lot of time there with my wife, I also remembered spending a lonely Christmas eve there with a friend. It's supposed to be a group outing, where there's at least 3-5 people attending, but everywhere can't make it in the end. It's not a good experience but it's just my memory. It's gone now.


3. Tanah merah hills - this is the latest invasion of the old and the familiar. This is my neighborhood. I spent a a few decades of my life here and I recognised some of the trees that grew up with me. A condominium that sprang up not too long ago just bulldozed in and literally tore down a big part of that tanah merah hill. Ironically, the name of that development is called eco. It's very very sad when people treasure man-made landscape instead of natural ones...those trees are ancient, and they have to make way for new things to come. Eco my ass...if you have to tear down old trees so that you can plant new ones and call it green living, I want no part of it.


All these small things are pushing me away from this place. Maybe when the proverbial final straw came in, you can see me pushing all these away for good too.

Would you do the same job that you do now, if you do not need the money?

I think not many people would say yes, after all, we have to be practical and not follow our passions all the way to the long kang, especially if our passions cannot support ourselves financially. It's kind of sad, isn't it? Life is not too long nor too short, and here in Singapore we spend a good part of our lifetime educating ourselves. Thereafter, we spent another good part of our lifetime working, likely in a job that if we can afford to do so, we'll never do it willingly.

I'm sure you've heard many times about following your passions, and then the money will follow you. I won't say it's false, but sometimes, the problem is that our passions are really not marketable, or that we're really not good at something even though we're passionate in it. Kinda sad, but that's reality.

Therefore, I'm extremely fortunate that I stumbled upon something that I like to do and will continue to do so as long as I'm able to do so. I like teaching. It's not so much about loving the subject that I teach (some subjects I don't even like it myself) but more about teaching people. I love teaching young people. I love the sudden sparkle when they heard something for the first time, or see the world in a different lens that they've never used before. That is electrifying and very addictive to me. I feel more energised after teaching. When I feel depressed, I feel better after teaching. I really think that teaching is the way that I got myself out of depression in the past.

I wrote this article because the last few days, I knew of this very intelligent primary school girl who is suffering from mild depression because of stress in an elite school. It was so bad that she had to take MC to recover from all the issues from school. This is a complex issue revolving around low self esteem and inability to take failures. I was asked to help her out and I think I did something meaningful to at least let her forget her troubles for a couple of hours. I let her play with LEGO, something that girls of her age is not familiar with.

I did it out of instincts, even though I was asked to help her out on maths, which is the area that is causing her stress. But I thought that the root problem isn't the math itself but something deeper, so the best way is to use a non-threatening environment to tackle the root problem - low self confidence. What is LEGO if it's not a toy? So after conducting the lesson and letting her build a model of a race car, I guided her to come up with theories and then testing it to see if it's true. I want her to experience small failures in a very safe environment, where there are no marks or exam papers for everyone to see her failings. She also had some problems fixing the LEGO bricks (usually girls don't get to play with LEGO, so that sort of hampered her ability to connect the bricks compared to boys of the same age), so solving her own problems independently with my supervision will create that kind of safe environment to fail.

My idea is that the confidence and self esteem is like a muscle. To train it, you got to learn how to fail in small ways and progressively fail in bigger ways without letting that negative feelings overwhelm you. After all, to be successful in life is to be progressively defeated by bigger and bigger obstacles. If not, you're not growing.

I hope I've made her day. She probably had no idea that she taught me a lot more than I taught her.

Hi folks,

Those who had been to my site at bullythebear had always found that the cbox is one of the best things that this site has to offer. You can see a lot of people who came from all walks of life coming together to talk about almost everything. I had met a lot of people from different age groups that I would never had met if I had not the fortune to set up this cbox. I do hope that you would find it as meaningful and fortunate as I had.

Due to the nature of the cbox's structure, there had been quite a number of irritating incidents where you find regular nicknames being imitated. I think that's very irresponsible because there are some people who would use this as a way to create all sorts of mischiefs. In order to better regulate the authenticity of the users identity, and also to make this community an extension of the face to face meet ups that we have every now and then, I decided to make this cbox a little more exclusive.

New users who wishes to join the cbox can no longer log in directly. Instead, he/she now has to email me (my email is all over the place, do take some effort to find it!) and I'll assign the nicknames and password. This way, there will be less bot spammers and less human spammers, besides the obvious advantage of regulating the authenticity of the user identity.

Obviously this would create more work for me, but it's alright. I'll strive to reply the requests from new users as soon as possible, within 24 hours maximum, so that you can participate in the cbox as soon as possible. If the nickname is not used for 3 months consequentively, it would be deleted automatically and the user will have to re-register again so as to free up the nickname to others.

I take these steps to regulate the cbox to make it a more enjoyable experience, not to monitor your ip or your real name or any other nefarious schemes. Rest assured that whatever information you shared to be a registered user of the cbox will be not be used for any other purpose. You have my word of honour on it :)

LP
Blogmaster of bullythebear

Hi folks,

This is a follow-up post after the call for donations to support the cbox contribution fund. First of all, thanks for all the contributors who funded the cause. I seriously didn't think it would work but if we don't ask, we would never get it, right?

A total of 8 contributors made the donation. I don't think I should put down the list of contributors because some of them privately messaged or emailed me, so I guess it's good to keep the names hidden this way. A total of $101 is collected (you know who the $1 belongs to, haha!). This sum is more than enough to cover 4 yrs of cbox fees, if they don't raise it further!

What am I going to do with the excess cash? Don't worry, it'll be used to do things related to the website for the service of the regular users :) Thanks for all the support folks!

LP
Bullythebear blogmaster