laremy.sg

I’m not against the pruning of trees, because pruning does help at times in terms of improving the aesthetics or safety of a place.

What I’m against is the excessive pruning of trees all over Singapore that takes place on a regular basis.

(At the same time, I do wish more trees could be planted in Singapore, but that’s another battle for another time).

That tree gave some much-needed shade to Pooters – something I appreciate because I hate sitting on an over-heated seat and I hate knowing Pooters is exposed to the elements.

There are other benefits to trees in our urban environment too: carbon sequestration, reduction in ambient temperatures, etc. Read more here.

That’s why trees are especially important in a place like sunny Singapore and in a world stricken by global warming.

However, I’ve always felt that whoever makes decision like these – e.g. to prune trees excessively – do so in the right spirit: to neaten and hence beautify the place, to prevent tree branches from falling and killing people during a gale or a storm, etc.

Unfortunately, these decisions seem to always be made in a vacuum, without consideration of other important factors like the ones I mentioned above: shade, shelter, preventing global warming, etc.

Why?

I think this has to do with encouraging critical thinking and providing these people with an actual knowledge of circumstances in our world today.

And that’s why it has never been more important for us to move away from subjects taught in the traditional curriculum, to teaching slightly more multidisciplinary and ‘real-world’ subjects like biodiversity or environmental ethics now.

So I like my coffee. I like being green as well. I also like being old school (at times).

What happens when we combine the power of these three things together?

We get Captain Planet!

No, silly. We get Chop Hua Heng.

Chop Hua Heng is a shop in Potong Pasir that sells pure coffee powder.

That’s right – none of the instant stuff you find stocking shelves in supermarkets.

I don’t know if Chop Hua Heng pure coffee powder is necessarily healthier than what you get when you buy instant coffee.

But I think there are some advantages to buying coffee from a shop as compared to coffee from a supermarket.

For one, you can vary the coarseness of the ground coffee based on your own needs. You can choose to buy:

• Beans, if you have your own grinder,
• Normal grind, for which you need either a coffee maker or a french press, OR
• Fine grind, which works like instant coffee but leaves a sediment at the bottom of the cup (which you don’t drink, obviously, if you don’t like its taste).

I use finely-ground coffee, because it saves time when it comes to preparing a drink.

Another reason for buying coffee from a shop is that it’s much cheaper than the stuff you get in supermarkets – the most expensive type of coffee that Chop Hua Heng sells is $21 per kilogram.

That works out to about $8.40 for a 400g bottle of good-tasting coffee, which is $2 to $3 cheaper than a bottle of Nescafe Gold.

Of course, there are other types of coffee at various prices. Nevertheless, each variety of coffee trounces its nearest ‘instant’ competitor in supermarket chains in terms of taste and price.

Last but not least, you get to be somewhat environmentally friendly by reusing containers which you might otherwise have thrown away.

The container on the left is a Nescafe Gold container which I’ve been reusing for the last few years. The containers on the right once contained Lunar New Year biscuits. (Unfortunately, I had to use plastic bags and rubber bands to store the coffee before placing them in the red-topped containers, because I gave those away as gifts to fellow coffee-lovers.)

Now, imagine if I had thrown away those containers and bought NEW containers full of coffee from a supermarket every now and repeated the process every two months or so. How much extra waste would I have generated?

So make it a point to visit Chop Hua Heng soon. I don’t know if it’s open on weekends, but I do know it’s closed on Thursdays.

Even if you don’t live anywhere near Potong Pasir, there are still Chop-Hua-Heng-type shops aplenty all over Singapore, so you don’t have to be a slave to commercialised and over-priced coffee anymore.

–

Chop Hua Heng
Blk 148 Potong Pasir Avenue 1
01-27
Singapore 350148

Telephone: 6289 4754

Open from 9am to 6pm on weekdays, but closed on Thursdays.

While riding along the PIE one day, two thoughts about climate change suddenly popped into my head:

1. Roads = traffic = exhaust fumes = global warming. This probably increases exponentially during traffic jams which occur during the morning and evening rush hours. Why are they rush hours? Because the bulk of the people are commuting to work/school. Why are we still commuting to work/school en masse when technology empowers us to work at disparate locations?
2. Warm temperatures in SG = increase in usage of air-conditioning = increase in electricity generation = increase in both fuels burnt (at power station’s end) and machines working (compressors and the like) = increase in output of heat = increase in temperatures in SG = global warming. Is air-conditioning the only way to reduce temperatures in SG, and on a macro level, the world?

It seems to me that both of these ‘problems’ are caused by sociological factors.

1. People, especially Singaporeans, place great value on ‘showing your face’. So be it for work or for school, the indicator people still stick to in order to measure work carried out or amount learnt is physical attendance. Perhaps this entails a paradigm shift: if we can harness the power of technology to delegate work or conduct lessons, we reduce the need for people to ‘show their faces’. Though it might mean an increase in computing power,  electricity generation, etc. which might also contribute to global warming. But at least there aren’t traffic jams, right?
2. For reasons that I still cannot fathom, we still stick to ‘Western’ dress codes of suits, jackets, long-sleeved shirts, tailored pants, etc. to go to work. Why? It doesn’t make sense to do so especially in our weather. Logically, we should be wearing clothes that aren’t so warm but we aren’t. Inadvertently, this artifically increases our dependence on air-conditioning. So will this blind embrace of ‘Western’ culture secretly be our undoing (and because I cannot resist it: what has happened to our Asian values??? LOL.)?

Your thoughts/comments?

Just a thought: I still see a lot of people using plastic bags, regardless of efforts to encourage the use of reusable bags. The only way we’re gonna get people to use more of the latter (NOTE: I didn’t say stop using plastic bags; the intention should always be to reduce to as small an amount of usage as is humanly possible) is either through:

1. Asteroid,
2. The Internal Security Act, or
3. Money.

Okay, I know I’m over-simplifying, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (because of Jiesheng): human beings are like currents, we follow the path of least resistance. People are gonna keep on using plastic bags until they have enough incentive to stop using them, and the only way we are going to create this incentive in people is through higher rebates.

Methinks it’s a demand and supply thing, and you can probably draw graphs to illustrate, just like you’d do in your ‘A’ Level paper. Comments/thoughts? If there are none, I will assume that I am right (as usual).

Just kidding (about always being right, but am very serious about reducing our use of plastic bags).

Precisely. Why can’t we just tackle the root cause of the problem?