Jom Bangkit!

I just can’t keep my mouth shut most times. Gets me in trouble sometimes, but it’s usually worth it.

So, if you’re a young Malaysian who also loves to mouth off sometimes, here’s an opportunity to do your bit for your country at the same time. I append the contents of an email announcing the Bangkit initiative. Go check it out yourself and then get off your arse and do something for the country.



Email sent to me:

Dear Blogger,
You will be aware that there are a number of youth-oriented programs in progress. Many of these are directly aimed at getting the youth to vote. And many of these are getting a lot of visible support from the online and offline communities.
Bangkit, the Youth Outreach initiative of Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia is taking a less direct approach. We believe that youth tend to resist directives, simply because they have had it for most of their lives. Therefore, instead of telling the youth what they must do, we want to ask the youth to tell us what they are thinking about, what are their dreams and aspirations. We believe that, in the process of talking to us, they will engage with us and be primed to catch our underlying message to them - that their future is in their hands.
The Bangkit project talks to the youth in their favourite language - music. By keeping language/dialect and genre open, we are providing a channel for youth from all walks of life. The more talented can speak out to us through their music. Those less talented can tell us what they feel through the songs that they vote for. And, at the end of the day, we will have a Compilation CD that belongs to the Youth of Malaysia and continues to carry their message.
We need you to carry this message to the youth of Malaysia. Tell them about Bangkit.
Don't just publish a single article and expect them to remember Bangkit. That will only get us a spike in visits and then things will die out. If you truly support our initiative, then place a prominent link in your sidebar for the duration of the competition. We need people to keep coming back to catch updates and vote for incoming songs.
Song entries will be received until midnight of 15th May 2010.
Voting will remain open until midnight of 31st May 2010.
Our URLs are http://jombangkit.org or http://jombangkit.wordpress.com
Many suitable graphics are available from our website for your use to create a link. If you need it, the HTML code for the link is also provided. These are found under the "Tell The World" page.
Please help us to awaken our youth and urge them to arise. Jom Bangkit.

Vinegar vs Brasso. And the winner is...

I have a few curios I’ve picked up over the years including some brass stuff I bought from Melaka on whim. These include the whole Sireh (betel nut) consumption panoply.

Just the other day, I glanced at it and realised the shiny bronze colour had been replaced by a tarnished near-black patina. Determined to make it look good again, I resorted to a green technique I’d used before. One that eschews the artificial and environmentally-questionable chemicals that are so popular nowadays for something altogether more natural and completely biodegradable: vinegar.

The only vinegar we had was an old bottle of balsamic vinegar which Mei wanted to replace with a newer one (she reckons it didn’t taste so nice anymore but honestly I can’t tell) and rather than throwing it away, I conveniently grabbed it to do the dirty. Or rather the cleaning.

Balsamic vinegar is supposedly more acidic, so perhaps that would increase its cleaning prowess. Whatever, it did turn out to be particularly staining on the fingernails so I put on a pair of kitchen gloves. I soaked some of the smaller pieces in a thin layer of the vinegar then attacked it with an old toothbrush. It did help somewhat as you can tell from these pictures. I’m not sure why the metal took on a pinkish hue but this could be due to the quality of the metal itself. As I recall, this thing didn’t cost that much so perhaps the metal is of inferior quality. It did take on a used and weathered look which I find quite attractive.

At the supermarket a little later, I bought a cheap bottle of white vinegar and soaked some of the pieces overnight in this, then went at the pieces lightly with a scouring pad. It did wonders! See for yourself…

Just a bit of soaking and light brushing and see the difference. The cover on the left of the toothbrush head has been lightly cleaned while the one to the right has not.

See what a bit of soaking can do. This hasn't even been brushed yet!

And after some light scrubbing just look at the shine!

I’m now wondering what to do about the bigger pieces. I think I’ll soak a cloth in some vinegar and wrap it around the piece for a few hours.

All in all, I feel quite pleased with myself and am looking forward to trying this out on more pieces around the house. Come back here to check on updates to that.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to try a greener way to clean metals and more, check these sites out: the Wikipedia page on vinegar and a site on the 1001 uses of Vinegar. I’m going to try the Scouring Cleaner they teach you how to make next! Oh and my friend Anand says Indian women have been using vinegar to keep their jewellery shiny for years. I wonder if that site listed this tip too...

More on Less Power

Working in a company that helps its clients reduce their power consumption has its benefits. One of which is I have at hand quite a few tools that I wouldn’t normally invest in. A year or so ago we came across the ETrack, a power monitor which was being manufactured and sold by Bridex Harwal. They’ve since stopped production and no longer support it, but we did pick up a few units for clients as well as for our own use.

One of these we mounted in a junction box and it’s our portable power meter which we use to demonstrate how efficient our LED lights or other solutions are. One of the problems the ETrack has is its inaccuracy when measuring very low wattages - we find that anything below about 10 watts doesn’t show accurately. This is a problem because the 6.5W MR16 bulb which we sell to replace 35 - 50W halogens hardly registers on the meter…

On a bit of a power-saving drive, I brought the meter home and started measuring all sorts of stuff around the house. And what I found was quite surprising.

My computer setup is a MacBook laptop with a 17” external monitor, a couple of external harddisks, a little Epson printer and an Epson scanner. I also have an Altec Lansing speaker system, a little box fan and some assorted chargers for camera batteries and so on. Not all the equipment is on all the time and I found that typically, the whole setup consumes about 100 watts when I’m working. The little box fan alone is responsible for about 35 of those watts so the rest of the gear isn’t consuming that much really.

Still, I use my computer sometimes 12-15 hours a day so that’s still a substantial amount of power over the course of a month. As a first step, I cut back on wastage through phantom power. Above my desk is a bank of switches - I’ve now started switching off at the plug devices or chargers that are not being used.

I’ve also changed my sleep mode settings. Now before I put the laptop to sleep, I disconnect and switch off the external monitor and other devices like hard disks. I also unplug the laptop charger and switch that off too so the only power that is being used comes from the battery. I’ll monitor this and update the power savings in a month or so.

The real shock, however, came when I plugged the power monitor in to the fridge. I have an old (about 10 years) Kelvinator which we bought before the advent of energy star stickers. I like the capaciousness of this fridge which comes not just from the large size, but also the adjustable shelves and the very open interior layout. It holds the rolls and rolls of film I have and the bottles of vodka friends insist on buying us quite comfortably alongside the frozen pizzas, tomato and chilli sauce, olives, medicine and other what-nots we insist on cold-storing.

We mounted the power meter in a junction box and use it to measure all sorts of stuff. Came in useful to leave next to the fridge.

As you can see, when the compressor is running, the fridge consumes about 140 watts.

I noted the fridge was consuming about 140 watts when the compressor was running and substantially less when it wasn’t. Then one night when I checked, the monitor showed the fridge was consuming almost 500 watts! It was then I realised the fridge probably had 3 cycles: normal running, compressor cycling, heater on. As I understand it at the back of every no-frost fridge is a heating element which melts the ice build-up. This turns into water which eventually evaporates. I’m not sure if 500 watts is normal for this cycle but it did seem quite a bit.

Even more telling, over the 70 hours I had the power monitor plugged in, the fridge consumed 10.784 kWh. This works out to an average of about 3.7 kWh per day or almost S$30 per month which is almost triple that of a modern fridge. This is roughly equivalent to the amount of power used to boil water in an electric jug. For 2 hours a day, every day...

As the old thing does need some attention (slightly leaking door seals, some minor water leaking and corrosion on the edges of the doors), we decided instead to get a new one and paid a visit to our favourite appliance store, Mega Discount Store and splashed out $1280 on a new Fisher & Paykel E442B which is 3-star rated at approximately 635 kWh annually or less than 1.8 kWh per day. At projected savings of $18 per month, it’ll take almost 6 years to pay it off just in electricity savings, but I suspect we’ll do better as there are only two of us at home (most times) so the fridge isn’t opened with the frequency a typical household would see. Additionally, the old unit is bound to need attention again soon.

The new fridge arrives on Friday and I’ll post the power readings in a month or so.

Meanwhile, if you want to measure the power usage around your house, check out the Kill A Watt meter. AS they say, knowledge is power. In this case, it's power-savings. 

Health and Wellness

I just got an email form my best friend, Gan, who lives in the US now. His Mum had a stroke and fell down in the bathroom in their PJ home. As I write this, I don’t have any more news than that.

Gan and I have been close for over a quarter of a century. His family, likewise, means a lot to me and I’m more than a little concerned about this.

In an email to him, I wrote about how we are, at 45, getting to the point where maladies are leaping form the pages of medical journals into our lives. Which brings me to something else that’s pissed me off recently.

I have Ankylosing Spondylitis, commonly called AS, which is not related to Spondylosis although they sound the same. AS is a form of arthritis which affects the spine and some other bone & joints in the body. I don’t have it especially bad and have become used to the pain and reduced mobility. It affects me painfully primarily in the back but also in the wrists and ankles. Though not painful, my hip movements are also limited.

A couple of years ago I took up a new Personal Accident insurance policy and declared AS as a pre-existing condition and to my dismay, AIA refused to cover any part of my spine.

Now, AS doesn’t reduce the strength or integrity of the spine. Yes, you get inflammation and pain and in the more extreme cases, some fusing of bones and the resultant loss of flexibility. All this, however, in no way affects you from getting on with life. My good friend, Ray, has AS that is much more severe than mine and it hasn’t stopped him cycling through Vietnam and Laos. More than once.

I presented this scenario to my agent: What if I was involved in a car accident and suffered whiplash? The AS would have virtually no medical bearing on the injury but I would receive no compensation for the whiplash injuries as it is an injury to the neck/spine.

Pisses me off but I already have a few battles on my plate and can’t be bothered to fight this one too.
Meanwhile, my thoughts are with Gan and his family.

Earth Hour: What's the point?

Earth Hour came and went a few days ago and for one hour from 8:30 pm on 27 March this is what I did differently from the day before or the day before that: Nothing.

My hall lights were on, as was the TV. My computer was put to sleep but was still plugged in, its charger consuming a little phantom power. Most of the other stuff in the flat was either off or running as it normally does.

I’m very cynical about Earth Hour simply because I see it as a way normally profligate consumers of electricity assuage their feelings of guilt. For one hour, these chaps get to feel good about themselves by sitting around in semi darkness, patting themselves on the back for saving the world a few barrels of oil. Then at 9:30, weak-kneed and flush with feel-goodism, they switch on their air-conditioners, halogen lights, flat-screen TVs and surround-sound systems, or get out into their three-and-a-half litre BMWs and motor down to a pub in a haze of unleaded to meet up with their similarly self-congratulating friends over a glass of Perrier or Brazilian coffee.

I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work for me.

I’d much rather look at how we can live better and greener the whole 24 hours in a day rather than just that one hour per year. Yes, yes I know Earth Hour is supposed to help bring long-term change, but just ask yourself what long-term change have you effected in your life as a result of Earth Hour?

Dubai reckons it saved 170,000 kWh during Earth Hour in 2009. This is roughly 102,000 kgs of CO2. Nice. Now ask yourself how much we would save if everyone who drives on a PLUS highway drove at 115 km/h instead of 125 km/h (yes, we all want to drive just that little bit beyond the speed limit, and yes, I am being a little simplistic here - bear with me). At the less-fast speed, if you’re driving between Singapore and KL, you arrive just 15 minutes later than at the faster speed, but you would have saved about 10 - 15% on your fuel bill and you would have emitted about 65 kg less CO2 (or about 0.03 kgs less per km traveled).

Now, over 1,000,000 vehicles use the PLUS North-South highway every day. Just imagine if each one could reduce their fuel consumption by 10%. Now I don’t have the figures for how many vehicle-kilometres are travelled on the North-South Highway, but just going by what I think is a conservative estimate of 150 km/car, we get these figures:
150 km/car x 1,000,000 vehicles = 150,000,000 vehicle-kms per day.

Assuming (told you I would be simplistic) an average of 11.3 L/100 km per car (and that’s a conservative estimate), and assuming a savings of 10% of that you would save 1,695,000 litres of fuel each day.

Here’s another very rough estimate: Using the figure of 0.03 kg less CO2 emitted per km, we get an astonishing reduction of 4,500,000 kgs of CO2 emitted each and every day, just on the PLUS North-South highway. Or 187,500 kgs every hour. Much more than Earth Hour achieved in Dubai.
And all it took was a speed reduction of about 10 km/h.

I’m going to write about some of the simple things we can do around the house which can help us save some power and money and will take you through some of the stuff I have done. I’ve still got some way to go yet, but as I said at the start of this post, I’m constantly looking for ways to live greener and better, every hour of every day.

About This Blog

Welcome. I have another blog which started out as a chronicle of my bicycle ride through Malaysia in 2007 - a voyage I undertook to unearth, discover and celebrate the good things about my country of birth. I found much to extol, but increasingly have found the platform a little stifling. There are times when I want to rant and rave that little bit, and my insistence on being faithful to celebrating the good stuff means Celebrate Malaysia! isn’t really the best place to post that sort of thing.

So this is how this blog came about. I’ve always had a bit of a sledgehammer approach to life. My first instinct when confronting something that I find to be wrong, or misguided, is to hammer it into its proper place. How this sits within what I regard as a more than averagely enlightened view of life is precisely what the name is about.

Amarajothy: The effulgence that gives battle and brings mental illumination. Can also mean Light of the Celestials.

So here, Amarajothy has a chance to hammer his way about. To rant and rave when he wants to. Or to, instead, softly put forward his point of view – for Amarajothy has a sensitive, quiet side to him too. Whichever side is presented, Amarajothy hopes he succeeds in provoking some enlightenment, and creating some change.