Buying two insurance policies

After having a kid, I thought it was due time for me to update my insurance protection. I summed up all my policies and realised that I have a huge shortfall for death, tpd, as well as critical illness. As it is now, I applied for the Mindef Aviva plan to cover this shortfall and am still waiting for them to get back to me. This should add another $700 to $800 per year to cover me until age 65, which I gauge it to be adequate. I'll do a separate post on it when the insurance plan is confirmed. Might be months later, since I likely have to do a health check and all the other documentation.

So that's the easy part. Just spend the money, pay the premiums and lo and behold, you're covered for xxx thousands here and there.

The harder part is this other 'insurance policy' I just started - exercising. I haven't been actively exercising since the birth of my child two years ago. I want to take care of my grandchild many years later, hence it's important for me to maintain good health. I know what motivates me, and that's having a to-do list unfulfilled and waiting for me to do them. Hence, I went straight to get a Fitbit charge 3, which is a fitness tracker that comes accompanied with a great app for use in my mobile phone/desktop. With the app, it allows me to track all sorts of things, like how much water you drink, how much calories you take, how much exercise you do per week and how many hours you sleep. Fantastic. My tracker will vibrate every hour reminding me to move my ass if I didn't hit 250 steps. Yup, every hour it will remind my sorry ass to move, until 6pm.

I started jogging today too after having a break of more than 3 years. Imagine the pain burning through my legs now. I always thought that the IPPT, which is the required annual physical fitness test for all combat fit guys here in Singapore (at least until 40 or when you are in the Mindef reserve), is damaging to my health. I want to run and do all the exercise item, but not to the extent that I had to 'kill' myself to pass. I'm glad all these official tests are over for me so that I can focus on the fitness that I really want. Fitness to me is just this: able to run after my active son without feeling tired and able to live long healthily.

Maybe I will join a gym or something, but we'll see. For now, I want to be sufficiently cardiovascular fit but I think about the gym. Hey, taking care of your health is the best investment you can do for yourself!

Looks like a great start to the year 2019, in terms of coverage lol

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Growing alfalfa sprouts

As you can see from my previous post on growing wheat grass, I'm starting to become a urban home gardener. It's the first step to take control of the things that we eat, which I believe will directly affect our health. There's a lot of advantages to growing your own produce. I think firstly, you'll be able to save a lot of money. After growing some wheat grass and alfalfa sprouts, I realised that the supermarket variety is just way too exorbitant. The quality of the home grown produce is also much better and you get to control what you put in. If you don't put pesticides, it won't have any traces of pesticides at all. If you grow from organic non GMO seeds, the produce will be as such. The last benefit is that there's an immense sense of satisfaction in growing a tiny seedling to eating your own harvest.



I managed to source out a local place where they sell seeds in packets of 1 kg. It's super cheap. On their site, I also saw that they had alfalfa seeds, so I bought a big packet of 1kg for $25. A small packet of alfalfa sprouts (around 150 to 250g) in supermarkets will cost you around $2.50. Some are not even fresh. I figured that nothing much will go wrong considering that the big packet goes for so little and it can probably last me months.



Alfalfa sprouts are super easy to grow. If I say that growing wheat grass using soil is easy, then alfalfa beats it hands down, legs down. For this, you don't even need any soil. Since we're growing sprouts (think 'bean sprouts'), it'll be super fast and you can harvest in 3-4 days time.

The first 12 hours where the seeds are soaked in water and kept in the dark to germinate

The method is really easy - you just soak one to two tablespoon of the seeds into water, germinate it in a dark place for 12 hours to 24 hours in a glass container covered with a filter cloth. After that, just add water into the container and drain it through the filter cloth. It'll not be totally dry - but that's the point. You want to keep the seeds moist but not drown them in water. Keep them in the dark until you see the first inkling of the leaves.

After 24 hours. The roots are out - they really grow very fast. 

Just keep repeating the watering and draining process, keeping them in the dark, until you see the first signs of the leaves. For me, I saw it somewhere between the 2nd and the 3rd day. Once you see the leaves, you can put them under indirect sunlight for the plants for them to make food.

2nd day - Tiny leaves (still yellowish) started to grow

3rd day, the leaves are fully out. I put them in indirect sunlight around the 2nd-3rd day

On the 4th day, the leaves turned a very beautiful dark green colour. You'll know when you can harvest it. I ate it straight off the jar - a very nutty, bean-sprouty taste. Reminds me of Vietnamese crusine or atas burger joints. More of the former. I can imagine putting these raw in some beef soup with rice noodles, very nice!

Just 1.5 tablespoons gave me some much harvest on the 4th day. This is easily more than 3 equivalent boxes found in supermarket

A close up of the beautiful alfalfa sprouts. 

What's the health benefits of eating alfalfa sprouts? Here's a few that I googled:


1. Full of proteins. Each serving contains 3g of proteins. Vegan eat this for protein as opposed to meat.

2. Can ease chronic constipation and digestion problems

3. Cholesterol reduction abilities - it can reduce both total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein (the bad cholesterol) without affecting high density lipoprotein (the good cholesterol).

4. Reduces cholesterol plagues in heart arteries

5. Contains Vitamin B and K. Esp the latter. It is one of the most concentrated sources of Vitamin K found in nature.


I'm not sure if all are really true. Anyway, it taste good and is easy and cheap to grow, so what's there to lose?

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Wheatgrass: from seedlings to harvest

Not sure if you've heard of the benefits of drinking wheat grass. Apparently, it's good for the health, but of course there'll be naysayers who say that it's over-rated. Whatever the case, drinking it certainly won't cause harm, but might or might not have a good effect. Good risk-reward LOL!


Anyway, I went to Katong flower shop near my place to look around for some Chinese new year flowers. Having no intention to get anything, I was surprised when I came back with 40 dollars plus of stuff. I bought a start up kit for growing wheatgrass for $16 and felt cheated. Inside came with two plastic trays, similar to the ones that you can get from eating salad takeaway. There's also a packet of soil, but filled with tiny flakes of some shiny metal, presumably to add some minerals into the soil for better plant growth. Inside is a small packet of seeds. The seeds are rather large, something like soya beans size.


After germinating the seeds by placing them in water overnight, I transferred them to a soil medium. They germinate really really fast. Just overnight, you can see the roots coming out. This is what it looks like after 1 day in the soil:

These baby shoots are very reactive to the sunlight. I read them I should place them in direct sunlight; just near a light source will do. They can see them moving towards the window (on the left), pointing towards the sun. I was visibly excited of course, having last grown something in primary school. What did I grow? Bean sprouts obviously!

On the 2nd day, they grew up to about 1 inch already. That's very very fast. By this time, the soil are no longer loosely packed because all the roots interweave to form a very tight netting of roots and soil. I water them about twice a day, but I did spray them with some water occasionally when I walked past them.

This is another shot of them. There's always this tiny drop of water just right at the tip of each blade of grass. I'm not sure what those are.

On the 4-5th day, the grass are about as tall as the ones you can buy off the shelves. But I read that I must wait until the blades of grass starts to divide at the base near the roots. That's when they have reached their peak nutritional value. No signs of these yet.

Actually having a living plant in the home has a very nice feeling to it. The green gives a very vibrant energy to my home. It makes me happy just looking at them basking under the sun. This is also a very satisfying plant for a beginner like me to grow because not a lot of things can go wrong. Besides, they have a very short payoff period - in about 7 to 10 days, you can harvest the wheatgrass already.
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A tray of the wheatgrass, plus a small amount of water, when blended will give about two shots of wheatgrass juice. When I want to juice it then I'll harvest it, instead of harvesting them first and putting them in the fridge. The whole process is really very satisfying - from the seeds germinating to the first planting, to seeing how they grow rapidly and basking in the sun to harvesting them. I guesstimate that I will have about 3 days worth of wheatgrass juice from all my harvest.

This is what is looks like after juicing them. I decide to blend them and just add some water to make it blendable. The fibrous husk will be left inside the blender, together with the juice, and all I have to do is to run them through a sieve. Pressing the husk hard onto the sieve with a spoon will squeeze the remaining water out of it, to give this beautiful dark green essence of awesomeness! You can add some lemon or honey to it, but I prefer to have it raw.

Take note of some known side-effects:


1. You can feel nauseous after drinking. I did feel a little, but I thought nothing of it until I read some articles online about the side effects. Nothing serious, it all dissipated after some time. I need to do some more testing to see if I'm nauseous because of the side-effects or it's just that the taste is not very appealing to my untrained tongue.

(Note: After 3 days of drinking raw wheatgrass juice, I think the nauseous felt in the 1st day is just an odd occurrence. Maybe I'm already used to it already)

2. You can have diarrhea. I didn't have any, but I read that drinking lots of it can cause a laxative effect.

3. Do not drink it if you've allergic reactions! This can cause your throat and face to swell, and it's no joking matter. Check it out first before you consume. If you're allergic to grass, or wheat, or gluten, you might want to dab a bit on your lips without drinking. If nothing happens to your lips after 30 mins, then consider drinking a sip. Wait another 30 mins and drink in progressively bigger portions. It's a method to test whether something is poisonous to your body or not.


On a side note, my chilli seeds are sprouting! That's after one week of waiting! Imagine this, the wheatgrass take 7 days from seeds to harvest while the chilli seeds take 7 days to just germinate, haha! Different plants, different timing :)


Oh, and I've also ordered a huge pack of seeds locally for $10 in a 1 kg packet. Going to try mass cultivating soon ;)

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