Alvin Lai

Aren’t you tired of rummaging through drawers of stuff, finding things that you have no immediate need for but feel maybe would be useful sometime down the road?

I sure have.

From old physics textbooks that I might need to refer, perfectly cute looking empty containers that would make potentially nice containers for presents to downright ridiculous spare pen caps just in case I were to lose the one on my current pen (Yes, looking back it was plain silly).

Other than keeping things, there are other ways to get stuff like impulse bargain purchases to storing something you don’t use because it’s ‘too good’, like ‘good china’.

Finally, there is a logical reason to this seemingly absurd behavior.

One of my favourite essayists Paul Graham wrote about accumulating stuff and how it affects you and I today in several different ways:

1. Wastes time
2. Saps your energy
3. Costs you money
4. Chains you mentally

We overvalue stuff

Many things have gotten a lot cheaper, with advances in technology and mass production by the Chinese and Indian powerhouses. However our attitudes toward stuff have not adjusted correspondingly, thus we overvalue stuff.

Paul argues that this mentality affects the poor and I kinda concur.

When I first came to America on a budget with 13 other people, everyone had one mission – to get as much stuff free or at a garage sale bargain from Craigs List or from our seniors.

Fair enough, we saved a lot on the essentials like tables, mattresses, table lamps, and fans. However our garage soon filled up with stuff we got free which nobody really used, but thought would be useful in the near future. When our seniors had to vacate their apartments to return to Singapore, we saw all kinds of stuff being relocated to our almost full garage, for our batch to pass down to our juniors. Believe me, there were hardly any climbing space inside. When our juniors came to scavenge, I saw the same cycle happening :)

Having too much stuff around you is stressful

For the first time after getting rid of a whole lot of dreadful stuff in my room, I feel real peace and serenity in my own room to get stuff done … and blog!

Paul attempts to explain why:

I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what’s around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.

Now I realise why my mom nags at me so much back in Singapore to get rid of stuff in my room – she finds it tiring and depressing with little room for people in a room full of stuff! My mom will be so pleased when I get back, finally she’ll be authorized to dump a whole lot of junk haha..

Is this purchase going to make my life noticeably better?

With all the fantastic bargain sites like Slick Deals, 1SaleADay, Woot within shipping reach here, it’s really tough resisting impulse buys. Likewise other retailers who have spent years figuring how to make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that “shopping” becomes entertainment, or shopping therapy, stress relief, as my dear friend Trina would say :)

A few helpful basic guidelines from Paul to rational purchases:

1. Would I use it constantly?
2. Is it JUST something nice?
3. Worse, a mere bargain?

Food Wastage

Check out this carton containing 6 pint baskets of strawberries Colin and I bought for a mere $8 by the road side on our journey to Los Angeles. It was so fresh with a lip smacking tinge of sweetness that we had strawberry for lunch, a dinner side and supper :)

Maybe not as relevant to stuff in general, but I’d like to include the topic of food due to the similarities of not wasting food to hoarding stuff.

I’m not sure if it’s an Chinese or Asian thing, but not coming from an extremely well-to-do family might have a part to play in this.

I stuff myself because I feel guilty wasting food.

Asian kids might recall their parents chiding them not to waste food with the African kids got no food guilt trip or reincarnation believing grandmas warning us about being reincarnated into a poor desperate starved person (or animal) due to sinful food wastage in the current life.

As a result, I grew up with the habit of cleaning my plate, often stuffing myself to discomfort because of this guilt.

It’s silly, but not without a logical explanation.

Kids my time have little pocket money, and we generally relied on our parents for food. Eating out felt comparatively expensive back then.

As my allowance increased with age and now finally earning my own keep, coupled with the food wastage guilt trip, this mentality has not quite adjusted yet.

To make things worse, American food portions are huge, often twice the size and cost almost twice as much as compared to Singapore dollars.

As a result I put on a whole lot of weight in the first few months I came to California. Now that I’ve kinda settled down, I’ve been jogging almost everyday (weather’s real good here!)

Wow!

It’s great having a peace of mind again and being able to blog effectively. The related thought on food wastage came to me spontaneously as I was finishing off the point about “Is this purchase going to make my life noticeably better?”, isn’t it amazing? Blogging about a topic and having relevant thoughts just appearing out of nowhere?

Superfabulous! :)

A water loving jack russell at Malibu beach.

The gorgeous beach!

First off, it’s really been a while since I’ve updated the blog, apologies friends, mom and pop who have been constantly checking back to see if there’s anything new :)

There’s just so much to do here besides working at a startup company and taking Stanford courses, meeting entrepreneurs, helping out with events & projects and having fun with travelling! Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles to name a famous few :)

I’ve also found time to contribute a theme to an open source project Amahi :

Silicon Valley’s amazing. Lots of unexpected stuff, just a few days ago, a stealth startup entrepreneur I totally do not know sent me a private message on Facebook asking me to meet up at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. We met and had a good discussion on topics relevant to his stealth startup, potentially able to get him on as a mentor for my other friends at NUSEA.

Potentially many things to do here! Must prioritize! :)

A couple of people have been bugging me to show them pictures of what kinda house I live, so here goes :)

Hint: It's somewhere in Sunnyvale, California.

Rent's $2200 per month, shared among us 6 tenants.

View from outside.

Walking into the gate.

My backyard, got gardener come in every week trim one somore :D

From the main door..

My modest kitchen

Washing machine and dryer

My room upstairs. When we got the place, the room was EMPTY, my room mate and I had to sleep in sleeping bags! We gradually got 2nd hand furniture from garage sales posted via craigslist and made it nice and cosy.

Queen sized spring mattress, with Ralph Lauren comforter, and the reading lamp+chair combination that I've always wanted! :)

My rooom from another angle

The bathroom

Finally, after wading through tons of work and distractions, I found some time to post this up. Enjoy!

Uncertainty was abound during the first week, when we arrived without knowing about anything. But it was also the period where everyone learnt the most about themselves. A wonderful experience!

Takeoff from Changi Airport

Transit in Narita Airport

2 hour wait, with Kaiwei looking funny :)

Esther and Quek

Kaiwei and I were bored so we went exploring.. and found a Akihabara store!

that sells delicious looking cuttlefish!

and some kinda small fish.

Finally, off to America!

Food-fare on board Northwest Airlines.

Some nice looking American bridge

Reach liao woo!

Breath taking scenery outside San Francisco airport

More breath taking scenery outside San Francisco airport

Waiting for seniors to pick us up. Still remember Devika coming to pick me up wearing her act-seh sunglasses :)

What's my first meal in America? In and out burgers!

The burger you guys saw in the previous blog post

Fries done animal style!

Seniors kindly put us (Bernard and I) up at their place, at Bernado's.

Bernardo's damn hip la.

As public transport is virtually non-existent here in Sunnyvale California, the first batch rented a Pontiac — USD$400 for a week man!

Weather's great, nice and cool with interest flora and fauna to see..

Beautiful leaves, aren't they?

The Vine's household, who put up the rest. Wonder what Bernard is really clutching. :)

Driving around in the rented Pontiac

Vine's mini eco-system in a rice-cooker..

David then brought us around in San Francisco..

The car got hyperdrive mode one u know.

You never know how it feels like in hyperspace.

Happy that we came out alive, 70MPH hyperspace haha.

Saw Gap!

The night streets of SF.

Try parking man.

Can eat happy liao :D

Shuyang no look tea pouring

Here comes the food. Jellyfish!

Crab! But still no match for my Dad's :D

The walnut prawns are seriously good.

Pork, I think..

A wholesome spread!

Awesome fish..

I couldn't resist a picture with this steep a car park.

We then drove up to Twin peaks and savored the stupendous scenery..

After staying in California for slightly more than a month, this is my first blog post in Silicon Valley!

Apologies to all you friends out there who keep asking me to update my blog and post pictures!

Here's one for starters — my first meal in california: an In-and-Out Burger!

I have been contemplating real hard whether to migrate my blog to a new platform (Mephisto or SimpleLog) and to remove like 8000+ Trackback spam and 14000+ Comment spam. (Which I have just removed)

I've finally decided to stick with Typo as I kinda like it's interface, not to mention the uber-cool integration with Textmate.

2am and I gotta work tomorrow.. stay tuned for updates! =)

Update: Happy Chinese New Year! Finally migrated to the Mephisto blog engine woo! Pictures coming up soon!

I am so in need of manila folders! See below:

Everyone just tell me to go to either 2 places:

1. Bras Basah
2. Popular

But the problem is, they just dont have these at either!

I need them in bulk, of a few hundred per box. They sell these in the US for US$9 for a box of 100.

And why do I need these, you ask.

For GTD (Getting Things Done)!

And it's kinda dumb shipping paper over continents. :/

I've suddenly realised that this blog has somewhat felt similar to my TJC CG25/00 website, where we had postings of interesting and useful stuff, that I had maintained a while back ago. It was graciously hosted by my army pal Pius (now defunct as he switched from Qala, which offered free webspace to Starhub).

And I'm glad - I've always enjoyed sharing useful and interesting bits to my readers, maybe even in my own personal Slashdot style.

I've even succumbed to buy yet another domain - moonclove.com and got it to point right to this blog in the meantime.

Moonclove sounds nice, I think it sounds cute (don't beat me), catchy and can even represent something whacky as extraterrestial spice or even a nice name for a web application I might develop in the future.

My Moonclove website still ranks 2nd and 4th under google search.

Who knows? Someone might make me a millionaire for the domain name.

Questions Questions Questions

Who am I? What's this blog about? Why should you be interested in reading this weblog? What's in it for you? What's in it for me, the blog owner?

Alvin who?

As most of you would have guessed from the aptly named domain, you should have a pretty good clue of the blog owner's name by now.

He is currently a 23 year old NUS (National University of Singapore) 2nd year undergraduate pursuing a 4 year direct-honours Computer Engineering degree from the SOC (School of Computing).

Yet another blog?

You might be tempted to associate this blog with thousands of other blogs where someone simply publishes his/her daily quirky encounters and thoughts.

Well, don't let that thought mentally fixate just yet.

You might just find something worthwhile and different here.

Okay, why this blog now?

It all started over a kopi break with a good old friend today. We had planned to meet to further discuss a certain topic that ensued his sister's birthday party..

Read the rest of this entry