Category Archives: Commentary

Going in circles

Our spray bottles for cleaning the kitchen counter, pump bottles that come with our body foam, as well as that shampoo bottle are all going to outlast our use of the fluids stored within them. They can be reused – and in reusing them for the same applications, we are reducing their usage. Good for the overall economy in terms of saving resources, for our pockets and also the environment. Except that it is in the interest of the fossil fuel companies to churn out more plastics, for the consumer goods company to create more new packaging and mark up the price of these products, for logistics companies to handle a consistent set of quality, new containers rather than re-used, non-standardized ones.

We’ve created incentives, built our economies around sheer wastage and environmental destruction. Can new business models be created, alongside the harnessing of forces to drive change in consumer culture and consumption practices? Grist reports on some interesting examples recently.

Indeed, we already have vending machines and public water fountains. Why not make soda fountains where people pay for soda that goes into their water bottles? Scoop Wholefoods already tries to retail all kinds of products by having customers bring containers into store where they are filled up.

Laundry detergent, hand soap and all can definitely be sold in bulk dispensed from big containers into the containers brought by the consumers. During the Covid pandemic, Singapore had deployed vending machines and various physical outposts around community centers where Singaporeans could bring their containers to refill and get alcohol-free hand sanitisers. Why not make that the norm?

It will be difficult for the market capitalism as we have evolved it to stomach and put up with all these changes. People want to carry on with proliferation of brands and ‘choices’ – they want to make different containers and so many different kinds of detergent, soaps and handwash that makes it hard to retail all of these in bulk.

Would you rather have more options of soap and less possibilities of a future we would want to be part of? Or less option of soaps so we can choose better futures to exist in?

New site for Mondo Gondo

For those who know, I started a podcast late last year named Mondo Gondo and finished a single season with six episodes and have not revived the podcast since. This was largely because I got busy with my work that involved a bit of relocation early this year. I still intend to keep Mondo Gondo going and have recently invested into centralising all my web content into my self-hosted platform.

Therefore, Mondo Gondo’s website had a facelift. It is much simpler now with less heavy graphics. It continues to hold only the show notes for the podcast and the intention is to eventually get back to creating another season, featuring rants, thoughts and ideas around sustainability, incentives and how we could make the world a better place.

I have some ideas around more in-depth topics on energy, discussing whether hydrogen should be used in residential applications, considering if AirBnB can potentially make tourism and hospitality more eco-friendly, thinking about how we need new models of thinking about infrastructure in order to drive more sustainable development, reconsidering the role of urban centers and more.

It might still be a while more but watch the new site for season 2.

Cheap renewables and surging bills

Even as we see the levellised cost of solar coming down, and increasing penetration of renewable energy, the electricity coming to us in our grids are increasing in prices. At least it seems to be so in Australia. There’s a lot of cost associated with the transmission and distribution infrastructure that needs to be recovered – partly because the growth of intermittent renewables mean that the grid infrastructure will have to be expanded.

But it is not just that; there’s also more padding required in the margins of electricity retailers because the intermittency results in even more volatile electricity prices in the wholesale market. That means that if the retailers are still providing fixed price tariffs and long contracts to customers, they will have to manage their risks by putting higher profit margins into the retail packages.

There is a huge price to pay by the society to eventually enjoy more renewable energy. If we don’t adapt to the intermittency through more adding more flexible generation leveraging on demand response and integrating EV recharging networks into the network operation optimisation (ie. Vehicle-to-Grid systems), we can only expect higher bills. We had better accelerate the transition or we’re soon losing the patience of energy consumers.

Sunny day will come

I chanced upon this brilliant letter penned by Stephen Fry to a fan named Crystal who wrote to him for help in a bout of depression and with no one else to turn to. It was kind of Stephen to have thought through it and replied, kindly and lovingly.

You might enjoy the letter as well as Stephen’s public reading of it in audio form nicely captured in this website stewarding all sorts of letters.

Virtue & values

Virtues are qualities of excellence that may be moral or intellectual; and once, the pursuit of virtues was the making of a purposeful and good life. Yet increasingly, as we welcome new cohorts of adults into our midst, the pursuit of a good life had become more material – especially in the culture amongst the newly developed countries and markets. Despite all the talk about ‘woke’ cultures and all, there is this foundation of material that underlies the material ability (or even authority) to criticise. To the extent that virtue itself is even criticised as ‘bigotry’.

Yet if you really reflect upon what virtues really are, they can hardly be considered bigotry. Someone who values certain character doesn’t necessarily have to judge the lack of it. One who is constantly in pursuit of that excellence and tries to uphold a high standard knows more than anyone else how difficult it is. Bigotry is more the sense that high standards should come easy for everyone and hence look down upon those who do not exhibit those standards.

To those who quietly recognise that the good life is meant to be lived and not ‘earned’ through material possession or collecting achievements. Thank you for soldiering on and showing the way.

Final Rush

Haven’t been blogging because we, students are now preparing for the final rush. I probably wouldn’t be blogging at all for the next 2 month so don’t expect any updates soon. I’ll be coming up with a new design here to incorporate my design for a few new and pretty nice sites I have designed for my projects.

This final rush that we are all in for would take roughly another month, ending sometime early November. Hence, this blog can be considered ‘shut’ for the next 2 months. We still have no ideas for erpz.net. So I guess the frontpage would linger for a long time – it looks nice anyway. Bye, for now!

On MSN

You know talking on MSN can pose quite a lot of problem. When you are not looking at the person, you’d feel strange when you are telling a joke and you can’t see the response. Then you probably go, “LOL”, or “Bleah”. Or maybe you decide to invent your own ‘random’ expressions – like “Vookibookk”, “Voogunihsabunda”.

Or perhaps others that do not start with ‘V’, like “Juulorubo” or most importantly, terms that cannot be pronounced, “Xusnaiur”. Then, you can give it a pronunciation yourself and no matter how well others may think they can read it, you say it’s wrong. And if you are really happy, you can fiddle with some punctuation and then you get stuff like “!Xusyllaernaiur”.

I was really inspired by this guy I was talking to, on MSN. He goes by a strange name, and a rather interesting appearance and [almost] commented that: “This dumb looking blog wif (sic) some green creature on the right muz (sic) be owned and authored by some dumb good-for-nothing guy who has nothing better to do in his damned boring life”. I must say…I agree with him absolutely!

Youngsters these days are really funny on MSN. They go “bleah” or “LOL” for almost everything that you tell them before giving their actual reply. It is as though they are having hiccups on MSN (except they don’t go ‘hic’)! And they substitute some of the most important key words used for communications with these ‘random expressions’. Here’s an example:

Vib: Hi, long time no chat

*Insanity: bleah -> ‘Bleah’ here meant: “Oh, hi!”

Insanity: Who are you?

Vib: Oh, it’s me. Vib.

Insanity: bleah. is that so? -> ‘Bleah’ here meant: “Vib. I haven’t talked to you?”

********
I don’t think you want to know the contents here.
********

Vib: Bye then!

Insanity: bleah -> ‘Bleah’ here meant: “Bye then. See ya!”

*Insanity happens to be the nick of the guy I earlier mentioned. Interesting.

You see, these teens are really good at saving time (and words). Just one word to replace so many. We don’t really need languages anymore. *LOL* (Followed by a series of ‘bleah-ccups’) MSN is really a interesting place to hang out if you have sufficient contacts like these – and I really mean ‘Insanity’. I owe you one for giving me the inspiration to type all these crap. I think you should also go and start a blog so that you have a chance to open fire at this post of mine.

Fun with Sketching

Not the boring sabbatical that does absolutely nothing, but a nice blog that discuss issues seemingly pertinent to all our lives since we are all Singaporean(s) [students]. If I am not wrong, this is a WACOM tablet powered webcomic: The Students’ Sketchpad. I must say the stuff there are really well-drawn and there’s also interesting content.

Sketchpad

There tonnes of Singapore students out there expert in Arts, and I am quite sure I won’t be able to outdo them in practical arts, so I think I am better off in the Academic Arts stream in future. Then I will once again fall into the trap and become another student manipulated by the ministry as mentioned in one of their comics. I will be fooled to participate in the mini-education-ratrace and be following the ‘syllabus’ and tricked by the ‘charisma’ of the teachers into entering the politically-correct carreers such as doctors, lecturers, teachers, lawyers (not as welcomed), accountants and engineers.

Hey, artist these days get paid quite well. Of course, you have to be really good. And using a WACOM tablet and illustrating such comics probably means professionalism in Singaporean context. Nah, don’t fault me for over-generalisation – Singaporeans are like that. ‘Not all the Hwa Chong type are very Chinese’ – a statement to counter the Singaporean-styled generalisation that Hwa Chong people are always Chinese-type.

This advertisement is brought to you by Vib – do go and take a look at that blog.

Further Findings (3 September 2005):

I realised that they aren’t using WACOM, they are working with a tablet. I guess I was acting a little too pro when I made that guess. I found out the truth here.