A little better, s’il vous plait

I was a little embarassed when I brought some friends out to dinner couple of nights ago, at a pretty well known restaurant serving chicken rice in Serangoon gardens. We were early and the waitresses were happy to serve up quickly.

More diners came and soon all the tables were taken, and the room was loud with lots of chatter. .. above that chatter was the occasional (rather too often) drop of utensils and used plates into the wash bin that was in a corner of the room.

We might be in the middle of a good story and then a loud “thump” “clang” of stuff being dropped into the bin. .. I saw my guest “jumped out of their skin” at each crash. It was disturbing for me to see such inconsiderate behavior by the waitresses, but I dont think they deliberate did that. This is a restaurant with 1st class food, 2nd class environment and 3rd class service… very sad… I dont think we will ever go back there again, despite the best tasting chicken rice in town.

Another discovery, my visitors (mostly from the US) actually prefer to eat at hawker centres rather than mid range restaurants or air-conditioned foodcourts. Can you guess why? How about these reasons: 1) Bad enclose acoustics resulting in very loud chatter and loud dish dumping noises 2) Too crowded and even if seats are available, its usually near a central dish dumping station or else its in the alley way or worse, near the toilets…. under the exhaust air vent from the toilet itself! 3) Too business like.. no local charm in the food that is served.. food are prepared by uniformed robots in branded chain food outlets.

We might be better than most… but there is alot of room for improvement… dont you think..? Starting from our expectations. If we take everything now and think it is good enough, then we will never get there.. .. very sad..

Building a mast for S/V Calliste

Self hoist up the mast

Its alot more complicated than my pictures will show.. but I am putting these pics here, in case you are thinking of building your own mast too.

Its not that we want to build a new mast like its a hobby thing, but that we had no choice. Calliste’s mast was damaged in the Tsunami of ’04. We found that we couldnt afford to replace it by paying a professional boatyard and Doug wouldnt trust them around this region to do it properly. As is, he found many faults with the original mast from forespar. Hes dissapointed that pro riggers didnt know or just didnt care to make it right.

Doug taking notes at the loft office

……….The mast is a the most important structural fitting on a sailboat. It is the main “engine” and produces no carbon emissions, runs quietly, dont need no greasing and certainly no constant need of refuelling…. but.. mast making cost as much as buying and installing a new engine, and the sails are about as costly as diesel.

Work laid out on our finger between Calliste and Eleanor

Just setting it straight, sailing is not free energy.. after you add up the cost of the setup, it is surprising how much you will have to pay for it. … I should say, wind is free, energy and propulsion is not..

Workshop to machine the parts

This time, Doug is determined to do everything the “right way”. Given our limited finances and facilities, it was a challenge right from the beginning.

Lets start with setting up the workspace to actually fabricate your own mast. .. the 1st being the computer, internet and forum. Do as much research as you can, join the rigging forums, hook up with people who have done rebuilding their mast, buying parts and locating materials. The information that we gotten are aplenty but may not be complete, so we had to fill in some blanks.. and then figure a way to correctly produce the bits and pieces and then mounting… blar blar..

Working at our pontoon office.

Okay, next the workspace. .. its all over the place. We have the desk at home, the cabin onboard Calliste, the container workshop, the finger between Calliste and Eleanor, sometimes the gangway and even up on the mast. ..

Putting it together.. it fits! Spreader, baseplate and thru-bar

Alrighty, what have we got so far..? After 3 years of working on it.. almost full time … Here are some of the bits and pieces.

The spreaders were purchased from Rolly Tasker in Phuket. Baseplates and thru-bar were machined from flat stock T6061 aluminium which we could get easily from a stockist near our place in Singapore.

Doug made his own endcaps too!

These spreader endcaps were machined right here in Sebana… DIY by Doug… They look like a pretty close fit to me.

Dry fitting the mast splice.

We wanted a 1 piece mast without welding, but thats not possible. No company will make a 45ft aluminium extrusion and even if they did, it will be impossible to properly anodize that length. Our previous mast was welded and painted, something that Doug does not want in this “perfect” mast that is working for.

Checking the angles .

It was a surprise to us, but really, splicing better than welding in many ways. .. and many high performance racing sailboats have spliced mast and performed very well under great load.

well.. I think we are getting there… soon we will be able to anodize… which is another topic on its own..

… perfectionist is not quite enough to describe Doug… hmm… I wonder what is the word that would better describe his incredible desire for building everything perfect? Help me guys!

A very windy day

Sailboat, para-boardsailing, and wind surfing.

It has been a unusually windy week. Almost non-stop blowing of 15-20 knots for 4 days, even blowing quite hard through the night. This is the North East monsoon season, but I dont remember if we ever had this much wind..

This guy was air borne for 5 secs!

So anyway, the wind is in and the wind-lovers are out! Pardon me, my poor camera cant take good telephotos at dusk. Insufficient light for focussing.. I think.. I dont like the dull bluish tint on these shots…

Look at this guy, hes airborne! No wake under his board, that must be fun. .. only 5secs…. what do I know about boarding and parasailing..? Nilch..

Retired, for the day.

He has had enough, I suppose.. seems tired but reluctant to leave. Still a lot of good wind to go surf in…

Retired para kites.

Resting kites laid out on the square of the park, while the “regatta” is still going on. I didnt think there were that many in this club..

Pleasantly surprised I am, on this nice evening walk along Changi coast road.. my regular fortnight walk, coming back from Sebana on the Belungkor – Changi ferry.

Para-sailing regatta?

A layman’s case against the rich and powerful

If you dont already know about this case, do a search on Prita Mulyasari to read all that has been going on for more than a year now. I am happy to have read on 29/12/09, that she has been acquitted of the charges laid upon her. Follow this link and read the good news, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1027504/1/.html .

Over the New Year’s weekend, I had been thinking, why do I care about this woman and her plight? Other than sympathy, which makes me happy for her, why does this news affect me so much that I kept thinking about it? I may have gotten it all figured out by now.. not sure.. but I think case is a milestone in civil rights awareness in a developing country that is brought about by information technology that enabled Facebook. It gives me comfort to know that at least some good is coming out of the rapidly advancing technology…

I have for a long time, felt that my involvement (being part of the team that work on the 45nm, 32nm, 28nm and going into 22nm) with developing technologies was not leading to “goodness” in society. Everywhere I see kids (and adults) playing with electronic gadgets.. and shutting the rest of the world out of their minds.. and I think to myself, that when they are in a crowd, they are really alone in their world… That is sad, really. I should think, that there is a time to be alone, and a time to be alive. A time to see the world thru your very own eyes, beginning with your immediate surroundings.

Are we going into a age where our answer to “why do we have friends?” is “so that I have someone to send SMS to!” . Or are we going towards having no real friends, but have thousands of imaginery friends on Facebook? I thought we were… so like I said, I was really quite happy to know any case where technology made a real positive difference in someone’s life.

New moon New year!

Moon rise over Sebana on New Year's Day!

Today marks the 1st yr anniversary of funvinyldecals blog… and so I feel the need to commemorate this by posting a good picture here.

To the new year! Cheers everybody.