Dinner at Julia's

Party at Julia's House

Southward Hose Storefront

In the house.  Shoes are left at the door.

This year we were invited to the home of Julia Lon for a New Years dinner party.   

She , and her husband Franco, are the owners of Southward Hose & Engineering and has been a good friends since we came to Malaysia.

The party was an open-house which was frequented by neighbors and extended family members from the other end of Malaysia.

Julia did all the cooking because as she said “all the caterers were already taken”.   

The food was great and there was also a family sized Prosperity Salad.  

The Prosperity Toss

Tossing the Prosperity Salad supposedly brings luck and wealth to the tossers.   

Beer, wine, and Whiskey were plentiful which was a nice change from the normal Muslim alcohol-free dietary standards.  

Most Malay-Chinese are Buddhist but there are a few Christians.  Julia is Buddhist.

Now for the Salad Dressing

We were welcomed like family and even though we knew her sons from the store, it was nice have longer chats and meet her parents, cousins, and other friends.  

She was born in this area and grew up here so she had plenty of local friends visit.

Outside dining in the 'Front Yard'

The Chinese work ethic is very driven to succeed and be rich.  The most common thing we were asked by the young kids was what our jobs were, how much does a yacht cost, and how are we able to sail and travel like we do.

For us, it is always nice when someone welcomes travelers who are far from home to participate in a small part of their lives and culture.  We have had this experience from Panama to Fiji to Australia and it really makes you feel like part of the community.

We hope to be able pay it forward to other travelers that we meet in our future.

Add caption

CNY 2020

Joss Incense Sticks

100 meter Prosperity Salad

A quarter of the Malaysian population is of Chinese descent.   

Needless to say, Chinese New Year is always a big deal.   

We have seen some nice celebrations while we have been here and this year was no different.   

The entire Spring Celebration takes over 2 weeks.

The area where we are (Sitiawan) is kind of rural and small town so public CNY events are not super huge but they do a good job.

This year there were Giant Joss Sticks that were lit at midnight New Years Eve. 

They finally burned out a day later.  

The higher the toss, the better

There was fire dancing at night on the floating pavilion at the Marina Island Hotel.

Tossing of the Prosperity Salad (Yusheng), Lion Dances, and fireworks were also done by the ferry terminal to Pangkor Island.   

Tossing the Prosperity Salad supposedly brings luck and wealth to the tossers and the higher you toss, the more luck and wealth.

.   

Fire Dancing on the floating pavillion

Drummers at Marina Island

Dancing Lions,

Remnants of the Prosperity Tossed Salad

Smoldering Joss Sticks.  Almost finished

Detail Sanding – The Arsenal

Bosch - Modified Chinese - Hutchins - B&D Mouse and  2"

It is always best to use the biggest sanding pad possible to minimize the amount of ripple in the surface.   The 8” sanding/buffing grinder works well for this.

When the surface gets more intricate and curvy, a smaller disc has to be used otherwise the edge of the sander will cut too deep into the gelcoat.  I have 5” and 6” pads in both stick-on (Velcro) and glue-on pads that can be put on either my electric or pneumatic sanders.

One thing about post-sanding the gelcoat is the amount of dust created.  I really like to wet sand since it minimizes the airborne dust and also washes the dust out of the sandpaper, making it last longer and work better.

 

Hutchins 7544

As explained in a prior post, using an electric sander with water is not such a big deal because of our power setup.  However, since now have an air compressor, the pneumatic sanders are lighter and definitely  the way to go.

Water Injection Adapter

I bought a Hutchins 7544 water injected pneumatic sander since it seemed like a good way to go.  These cost $350 on Amazon but I got a used one on ebay for around $100.   It worked well and can be used with all pad combinations 5”/6”/Stick-on/Glue-on.  After seeing how it was designed, I felt that and random orbital with vacuum extraction could be used as a water injection sander. 

The Hutchins has a small tube that injects the water through the holes in the sandpaper.  Most of the time, I use sheets of sandpaper cut and glued on to the disc so the water just runs out from around the disc and onto the surface anyway which works fine.

Internals of the Chinese Sander

My hack was to connect the water hose to the vacuum port and pump water into the sander.  I bought a $35 Chinese sander for the modification.  It worked well but works better if you sand with the water tube up so the water runs down onto the surface.

2" Pneumatic with velcro and glue discs

Sometimes a 5” disc doesn’t quite cut it so I bought a 2” pneumatic sander.  This is ideal for most small radius corners and close in edging.  This sander doesn’t have any real way to inject the water so I tried attaching the water hose to the frame but in the end, it was much easier to just hold the water hose and dribble it on the surface.   

These sanders come with Velcro pads which are fine but since I also need glue-on, I took a razor blade and cut off all the Velcro,and melted the remaining bits with a torch to make a glue-on pad.  Both pads have worked great except for some cheesy sandpaper from Amazon that just gets destroyed within a minute from the vibration.