The Last Unnecessary Purchase

Last weekend I decided that I will quit shopping and save money to pay off my mortgage by not buying unnecessary stuff.

Let me just say this now. CHIPS are necessary. NUTS too. Clothes on the other hand, are not. 

So this arrived two days ago, and it was one of the last few things I ordered. I had one in black and I like it quite a lot. So I got another. For $4. Not a bad deal at all. 

The colour turned out better than I expected. I shall treasure it. It will be a long while yet before I buy any more articles of clothing. 

I also received a box of chips. :D

My mood pic today ~ 

(incidentally, I used to love potato smiles!)

Wednesday is Ice Cream Day

Once a week the ice cream man comes round to my neighbourhood and in the 13 years I've lived here I think I've gone down only ONCE to get some! 

In where I live, the ice cream truck is more of a cart attached to a motorbike, sometimes, not even. Just a cart that the older person will push on foot (it's usually an upwards-of-50-year-old person manning the cart). 

Which looks something like this - 

(image from The Smart Local)

Today during dinner I heard his bell ding-a-ling-ing away. It usually sounds every 5 minutes or so, and doesn't last too long. 2-3 rings each time. 

I thought it might be a good idea to get some ice cream for all of us as 1) I was feeling terribly warm (I blame my hormones and #Perimenopause), and 2) it would be a *special* treat cos our ice cream carts serve them up in a traditional only-seen-in-these-parts manner, and not like a regular lolly that you can buy from the shops. The novelty of it might encourage the mother to eat it, I hoped.

Here, I'll show you - 

You can get a slab of ice cream in a "sandwich" - and it HAS to be rainbow bread!

Or you can get it between two wafer slices. 

(Some people just use them to grip the ice cream and then once they're done they chuck the wafer bits... but I personally like the wafers so I eat the whole thing.)

They're sold for about a buck each, and the ice cream people who make regular tubs of take-home-from-the-supermarket ice cream also makes them in this form, specifically for the ice cream cart vendors - 

I honestly don't know if the recipe is different from the ones we buy in tubs cos THOSE seem to melt really quickly, whereas these, I've found, tend to stand up to the outdoor heat a lot better. It's strange cos I can get a bowl of ice cream out of my freezer and in seconds I'll have part ice cream part milk sloshing about in my bowl, whereas these ones are usually bought and eaten on the go and they seem to last all the way to the end without too much drippage.

There are now online sellers offering the block type for $8 each. I've thought about getting that instead of the usual supermarket tubs but it's a bit problematic to store as it's just cardboard-wrapped.  

Some of the older ice cream carts have an insulated cylinder built in that holds a tri-coloured mixture of ice cream, sans cardboard. It's just a cold vat and the man reaches in and scoops your ice cream straight out of it. Like this - 

(image from Follow Me Foodie)

And I say tri-coloured instead of triple-flavoured because they all kinda taste the same, no matter what bit of colour you put in your mouth. Often each scoop will have at least 2, or all 3 colours rolled into it. You can request for a certain "flavour" or you can ask the man for a "mixed" portion. But there's usually no point as you'll get some of the other flavours in there too, and like I said, they all kinda taste the same anyway. 

These days they give it to you with a plastic sheet for hygiene purposes, but I remember as a kid they usually just had their gloves on as they prepped your order, and then you'd take it from them with your bare hands - no extra bits of paper or plastic hurting the environment, oh no, not us. 

Here's a pic of our post-dinner treat - I told the caregiver to get me one bread, one wafer, and whatever she wanted for herself, cos the mother couldn't decide which she wanted. I figured she could decide later. She picked the wafer. I was stuck with the bread LOL. Please excuse the bite marks... we were halfway through before I thought to take a pic, and yes, the mama finished her slab of ice cream, wafer and all!

This might become a regular Wednesday thing. 😁

My mood pic today ~ 

Tuesday Toons - The English Edition

Here we go everyone. Enjoy! 

1) This was taken off Funny Jokes. For more fun stuff, visit their Funny English Words page.

2) I thought this was kinda sweet 

3) PROnouns must be really good what they do

4) Hahaha - I'd be pretty impressed if a guy did that to me.

5) I'm so totally guilty of this! (Probably why BIKSS sent it to me!)

6) Calvin rocks!

7) Oh if only it were that simple!

As always, let me know if you had a favourite. Have a good week everyone!

My mood pic today ~ 

Mortgage

I have 17 years left on my mortgage repayment. I took a housing loan from a government body when I purchased it as the flats are part of a subsidised housing scheme (80% of our population live in one of these flats). 

At the time I was informed that the interest rate and repayment would not be affected whether or not I made any capital repayment over the course of my loan tenure. 

However recently as I was looking into refinancing my flat I called them up again to clarify, and the person on the phone assured me that it *would*. Which makes more sense, really. However she did say that the monthly repayment amount would not change as the auto-deduction from my back account would remain the same. The only difference is that it would reduce the amount of interest charged per month, meaning a larger portion of that installment would go towards paying off the loan amount. 

Which is fine by me. So even tho some of the private bank loan rates are very attractive, in light of these uncertain times, I'm going to stay with the government loan cos in the event I can't make my payments, at least they're not going to evict me or seize my flat. I think there is a law that says the banks can't either but they're not the government so they're not obligated to "help" me make my monthly payments, while the government housing people are : 

(from their Vision/ Mission / Brand value page - )

"Vulnerable groups in society such as the financially-challenged and the elderly can depend on [us] for extra help."

And to be fair they have been pretty good about helping people in financial difficulty or short-term crises work out a solution in terms of their mortgage payments. 

BUT this means the new mission is to quit all the shopping (like for real!) and throw any extra cash at the end of each month into a separate savings account. And every time I manage to accumulate at least 500 bucks I'll throw it into repaying my loan! 

This girl is on a mission! Yee har!

My mood pic today ~ 

Not a Tuesday and Not All Toons

 Some things that made me smile this week... 

1) I must admit, this one took me a while to figure out cos my brain automatically saw Rabbi

2) I have the theme song in my head right now

3) Groan

4) Oh nurse... I am deathly afraid of injections! 

(BIKSS is convinced this might be a good way to convince more people to get their Covid shots.)

5) Not the funniest, but A for effort

6) Pretty sure I've posted this before. But what the heck!

As always, let me know if you had a favourite. And if you feel like reading something, here's an article about why human penises have no bones. You can thank BIKSS for this. 

My mood pic today ~ 

Essential Oils by ECO Modern Essentials

If you like essential oils, this post is for you. 

~~~

I've always enjoyed ECO's oils, even if they ARE a little bit more expensive than the NOW Foods ones I get from iHerb. 

So for basic oils like lavender, peppermint and eucalyptus that I use up really quickly, I prefer to get the larger sized bottles from NOW. But if I'm looking for blends or difficult-to-get oils, ECO has a great selection. I especially like their Clary Sage. It's my all time favourite comforting scent.

They recently had their annual mid-year stock take sale, and I picked up four bottles for $40. 

Escape comes unboxed, and I had already chucked out the Fennel box by the time I remembered to take a pic. So here are May Chang and Women's Blend still in their boxes.

1) FENNEL

I had wanted to try fennel for a while now but have been reluctant cos it was a bit pricey and I didn't know how I'd like it. I'm glad to say I don't mind it, even tho I'm not a fan of licorice, which shares a similar olfactory profile. This is from their website - 

"WARM & CLARIFYING FOR THE MIND & BODY.

The warm and drying nature of Fennel essential oil helps bring focus and clarity to wayward thoughts, and can be useful during times of doubt or decision-making. Fennel essential oil shines in the treatment of an upset stomach, trapped wind and spasming, a remedy for calming the digestive system."

• Help support digestive health.
• Uplifting.
• Great to improve mental clarity and concentration.

2) MAY CHANG

I also had been curious about May Chang. I'd not seen it anywhere else so I took the opportunity during their sale to pick up a bottle. I LOVE IT! I now know why so many people went mad over it. I think it might be one of those oils that I'll always have to replenish and keep "in stock".

"WARM & INVIGORATING FOR THE MIND & BODY.

 

With a warm and uplifting lemon aroma, cheerful May Chang is like sunshine in a bottle. It can be used to create a cheering ambience when diffused."

• Uplifting & stimulating.
• May help with fatigue, melancholy & anxiety.
• Traditionally used as a digestive aid.
• Stimulate appetite.
• Good for excessive oil production on the skin.

3) WOMEN'S BLEND 

They're not kidding - this really is a calming scent. I have it in my diffuser as I'm writing this, with a couple of drops of fennel added to it for good measure. 

CALM, BALANCE & HARMONISE.

ECO. heard the everyday stresses and concerns of the women around them and decided to take action with a beautiful blend of Cedarwood, Lavender, Geranium & Ylang Ylang, created with women in mind to help calm, balance and harmonise.

• Grounding.
• Hormone & mood balancing.
• Calming.

4) ESCAPE

(Limited edition blend) 

If you can't go on holiday, you can at least bring the feels of a holiday into your home. This blend has all my favourites - bergamot, lemon, cedarwood, lime, juniper and May Chang. It smells like a refreshing citrus cocktail on a beach!

DRIFT AWAY.

A complex blend of citrus essential oils, balanced with subtle earthy undertones. A beautiful harmony between delight and comfort, this blend captures the exhilarating feeling of a sweet escape.

• Calming & soothing to the mind.
• Uplifting.
• Create your own sanctuary.

My mood pic today ~

Money Matters (+ Interest Rates)

If you want to know more about what I've been doing with my money, and have an interest in the interest rates of the various investment/saving vehicles I've been dabbling in, read on. Or else come back in a few days for less boring stuff. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I took a day off work today and since I had nothing pressing, decided to take a closer look at all the money-related things I have been meaning to look up and check out. 

First up, the investment/savings account I opened in May. After a month my $100 has earned me $3. That's not bad. I'm just going to leave it to auto-deduct a hundred bucks a month and see where that goes. If things look good and I find myself with more spare cash in the future, I might increase the monthly deduction.

I've also opened a central depository account so I can trade / buy shares. I did this for the specific intention of picking up a new IPO that begins trading on the 17th of June. It's a foodstuffs company and the blogs / articles covering the IPO launch have generally good things to say about it. That cost me $230. I'll know soon enough if I managed to secure any shares.

[Update: nope. didn't get any... #MeSad]

In the meantime, a new hybrid automated/ person-managed investment service has been launched on my bank's mobile app. It allows you to choose the portfolio (local or global) and will allocate your funds based on risk appetite. I chose the lowest risk option and have thrown 1k of the mother's savings in there. I figure it would be a nice way to diversify as she already has some money in fixed / time / term deposit (I'm just going to call it Fixed Deposit or FD for short as that's what we usually call it here).

She's quite interested in this investing lark, to be honest, and was quite eager for me to go ahead and do it. "Put your eggs in different baskets," she said. And yes, when we talked about it she had the presence of mind to ask me about the 1k we put in the FD last July (1.1%). So SHE now has 2 grand in investments / deposits, and I have 2 grand of my own in FD too, albeit one placement has a lower interest rate than the other (1.1% and 0.6%).

In the meantime, I'm waiting for my bank account to be linked to the central depository account (I rang them up today and the guy said it will be activated in 5-7 working days. Hurray!) so that I can apply for some government savings bonds for the both of us.  The minimum sum is $500; it offers guaranteed capital, step-up interest rates over a 10 year maturity period, and the min. interest rate (ie. for year 1) is 0.36%. Which is still way higher than the 0.04% she's getting in her savings account. 

There's a calculator online to check what the average rates are if you redeem the bond before the 10 years is up. Here are some figures. Feel free to skip this bit - 

Redeeming it in 3 years gives us 0.5% p.a., 6 years - 0.92% and holding it the whole10 years - 1.57%. 

In comparison the FD rates are 1.1% p.a. for the first 2k that we put in, for an 11-mth tenure, and the third grand got me 0.6% p.a. for an 8-mth tenure. That's the longest tenure available currently since they changed the terms in the 3rd quarter of 2020 cos #Covid. 

BUT if you opt to renew the principal (with or without compounding the interest) they'll offer the same rate and tenure at point of placement.

I went hunting online for FD rates a minute ago, and the highest rate today is 0.75% for a minimum placement of 10k for a 2-year lock in period. That sucks. So yes, government savings bonds for me please. I would have hit the same interest rate by year 4, and I don't need a 10k lump-sum. 

The plan is to wait a few months and take another look at the savings bonds being offered and see how the interest rate on future offerings fare. I may take up some more if the numbers look better. 

For now, my next step is to re-finance my flat. My interest rate is fixed at 2.6% but private banking loans seem to be a lot more attractive at the moment. If I were to apply for a loan with my bank I would save about 1k a year on lower interest payments. That seems like a very sensible thing to do. 

Well, I'm off to look at mortgage brokers and more articles on interest rates.  

My mood pic today ~ 

Honey Cake

The time now - Sunday Night.

Got hold of an extra bottle of honey from the food rescue team. 

Decided to make a honey cake. 

Looked for a no-mixer easy honey cake recipe on the web and ta-da!

You throw in the dry ingredients, then you dump in the wet ones. Mix with a whisk (or a hand held electric whisk) for a few minutes till everything is combined, and pour into a grease lined baking dish. 

I pulled out my electric whisk but, to be honest, I needn't have bothered. It came together quite easily to make a smooth batter. 

I drizzled some of the honey over the batter as the author suggested but I think I might have preferred NOT to have the caramelized glaze on the top.

Instead of all purpose + baking soda + baking powder I just used self-raising flour. 

I also forgot the vanilla extract.

I was too lazy to dig out the brown sugar so I just used castor sugar all the way.

Instead of coffee or tea I used milk. 

Instead of orange juice I used whatever mixed fruit juice I had in the fridge. 

I cut the recipe by half but I know I didn't measure everything accurately. It was more like "Well, that's a little more than half a cup but that's ok; that's not quite 1 cup but who cares; 1 and a half eggs? Let's just use 2." 

And it still turned out great. I had two slices straightaway! 

I hope the mother will like it - I'll let her have a slice for breakfast.

If you're tempted to try this recipe, let me assure you it's a NON fussy cake so I highly recommend that you go for it. Even with all the slightly-off measurements and substitutions it came out fantastic. 

Note - it DOES rise quite a bit so do follow her advice and don't go past halfway full. Also, here's a tip - I used baking paper to line my dish for easy removal. Way easier than the butter and flour-dusted method.

Tipped out of the baking dish (bottom up) and cut into thirds

Sliced and turned the right way up again

My mood pic today ~

What I'm Addicted to Right Now

I've been listening to My Dad Wrote a Porno non stop! 

From their website - 

Imagine if your dad wrote a dirty book. Most people would try to ignore it - but not Jamie Morton. Instead, he decided to read it to the world in this groundbreaking comedy podcast. With the help of his best mates, James Cooper and Alice Levine, Jamie reads a chapter a week and discovers more about his father than he ever bargained for.

The dirty book in question is Belinda Blinked, written by "Rocky Flintstone".

Reviews on the book are more about how awesome the podcast is than about the book itself... 

Here's the summary from the wiki entry - 

My Dad Wrote a Porno is a British podcast hosted by Jamie Morton, James Cooper, and Alice Levine. 

Each episode features Morton reading a new chapter of an amateur erotic novel, titled Belinda Blinked, written by his father under the pen name Rocky Flintstone. 

Morton, Cooper, and Levine react to the material and provide running commentary. Cooper and Levine are hearing the chapter for the first time, whereas Morton usually reads the chapter before recording the episode. 

As of 2021, the series has had over 280 million downloads. 

On 11 May 2019, HBO aired a comedy special of the show which features a "lost chapter" from one of the books. The special was filmed over two nights in front of a live audience at the Roundhouse theatre in London.

The response to their podcast was so phenomenal that they wrote a book! 

It's been the most hilarious thing I've heard in a long time! 

If you're into Brit wit, and don't mind dirty language (you're reading here so I reckon this point is pretty much a given), go listen to My Dad Wrote a Porno. I the Podcast app on my iphone and Google podcasts on the lappy (if you've never used this site before, click on the up/down arrow to see the list oldest-first so you can start at the very beginning - you'll need to listen to this one chronologically.) But I think you can find it on pretty much any podcast app.

Let me know if you gave it a go and whether you enjoyed it. 

My mood pic today ~ 

It's Happening Again and Updates

Dad had a long battle with dementia and I'm seeing the signs in mum. 

Yesterday she got grumpy and angry at me, for brevity I won't bother with the details. Suffice it to say she ended the conversation by looking away in a huff and so I took that to mean I was dismissed. 

I headed down for a smoke and when I came back up I said that I was going to take a nap. I told her and my caregiver that the bowl of porridge on the table was for her dinner, and since she didn't feel hungry just yet, I was going to leave it there and when she felt like she was ready she could just help herself. 

I said this just regularly, I didn't spit it out at her or nothing. 

As I stepped into my room I heard her say to my caregiver in a shaky voice "So she's not going to feed me anymore now?"

And it was a mix of anger and hurt and when I turned around her face had contorted into one of those about-to-cry expressions. 

My heart broke. 

I approached her and sat beside her, explaining that it wasn't that I didn't want to feed her no more, but that she had insisted a couple of minutes ago that she didn't want to eat and I should leave her be. So I just got dinner ready and put it there so that when she DID feel hungry she could go ahead and eat. 

She reached for me and said in a teary voice, "I'm hungry now, now I want you to feed me." 

(My caregiver is a softie... when I looked across at her I saw that at this point she was tearing up too... sheesh.)

And so I sat with one arm around her and held her dinner bowl with that hand, while I held the spoon and fed her with the other. Yes, she's so small now that I can wrap one arm behind her and my arm would be able to reach around to the front of her. 

Then she began to cry, like properly, and said something about how the TV show she was watching was stupid and made her sad and reminded her of "the old days" so I switched that off and put on a travel documentary (Thank God for BBC Doc!) on Youtube to distract her. With the necessary "there, there"s and *pat* *pat*s to make her feel better. 

She ate all her porridge and then I gave her some sweet beancurd dessert, since she wasn't paying attention to me, being engrossed in her show about Armenia - The Land of Noah. She kept saying she recognised this or that place cos she had been there with my sister - she hasn't. But whatever floats her boat right? Heh. See what I did there? (Noah? Ark? Boat? Geddit?) 

Moving on. 

Her sundowning is getting more obvious, and I don't understand how the psycho-geri doctor woman could have said "let's not go there just yet" when we're already there. Argh. 

Anyway, since there are no meds (not at this stage) anyway, it's not like I really need to insist that she be diagnosed. 

I know what I'm dealing with cos I've seen it up close and personal once before... and this is pretty typical of early stage dementia. So I'm buckling up for the long haul. 

I'm finding myself being super busy again now that she will only eat if I feed her, so I'm going to have to be home at mealtimes as much as I can, made somewhat easy now that we're in lockdown (albeit not a strict one) and dining out has been cancelled for the time being. 

And that, my friends, has been the reason I've been away from here for the last few days. That and the fact that I was busy with level 1 of my Lifestyle Medicine course thingamajig. I finished! I passed! With flying colours! I shall give it a while before starting on level 2. I also got some good news - the student that said he was quitting has decided that he doesn't want to quit after all. So that's a bit of a relief.

I would like to take the opportunity to apologise for not visiting your blogs regularly, even BIKSS has been getting only 10% of the usual barrage of texts that I flood him with. 

I daresay he might be sending me more texts than the other way around - which is definitely not normal for us.

Meanwhile, I wore the scarf clip to work today and got a compliment from my colleague. It's pretty awesome. 

My mood pic today ~ 

De-Stuck, Tee-Tuck

The boss man brought me some Amitiza. I thought I would wait *one* more day before resorting to drugs. 

Thankfully on Friday afternoon I had to detour home on the way to get cheese cos there was an urge to purge. 

And I finally managed a regular poop. 

HURRAY! 

The pain started on Tuesday.  So it took about 3 days till all that fiber, fruit, magnesium and other bits  worked themselves through my gut. 

No wonder they say it takes up to 72 hours for what you put in one end to come out the other end. 

In other news, the T Shirt loop / centre-bar scarf clip arrived! It works great! 

I've just stuck it on to the shirt I'm in right now. No fuss, no tying, no pulling and stretching. Hurray!

My mood pic today ~ 

Stuck

Step 1 - Fruit and Veg

Step 2 - Water + + + + + +

Step 3 - Senna Tea

Step 4 - More Fruit and Veg

Step 5 - Probiotic Drink

Step 6 - Quinoa, Broccoli, Orange

Step 7 - Magnesium Glycinate tabs

Step 8 - Told the boss if nothing happens by tomorrow then I'm going to need some "un"natural intervention cos all the natural things haven't worked. 

No more rice and noodles for me. That's been the only change to my diet. And then this happens. So, I'm sorry, mum, but I'm not going to finish up your leftovers for you no more, it's messing with my system BIG time. 

My mood pic today ~ (see picture up top!)