Sunday, September 28, 2014

Permaculture Retreat

I have been wondering how to run my coming retreat.  One of my ideas is to do it as a permaculture village + retreat.




To run as a permaculture village is not easy, it needs someone to be there full time, and I don't think I can do that for now.  As of this, I am considering opening part of the land as a permaculture village to the enthusiasts.  You are welcome to stay for free in return of your work & knowledge.  You will need to work towards of building the village up in a sustainable way.  I will support you monetarily with the materials & supplies.  Does it sound good & fair?  Drop me an email to further discuss.  empiretrio@gmail.com.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Boutel Retreat is coming soon

We have finally found a piece of orchard land, and are brainstorming on ideas of what to build, to do and how to run it.  If you are interested, please feel free to contribute your ideas, knowledge or to join us in building our retreat.

Basically here are the ideas that I have for this retreat:
- eco friendly
- somehow sustainable in design
- fruit forest & kitchen garden
- very unique building design, the more crazy the better.
- we intend to build the cabins ourselves, so we will need someone who share the same interest to join us.

The land is nice, and is currently a durian orchard.  There are quite a variety of fruits already growing there, we intend to add more.  There is a river that runs through the land, and water is crystal clear.  We want to build a natural swimming pool in the river!  There is also a forest reserve next to our land and it is on a hill, so hiking into the hill is possible.  We will need hikers to help create a hiking trail.

We are excited, and we can't wait to get it done asap.  Hopefully, by June 2015 we can host you guys there.

If you are an architect, farmer, artist, and etc, and you think you can help us, or we can help you, please contact us, empireTrio@gmail.com.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Party Spray & Chewing Gum

I have recently understood the reason behind the ban of chewing gum in our neighbor country Singapore.  Chewing gum is super hard to remove and most of the time you can't remove it completely without leaving a tiny bit of it still sticking there.

I know most people are usually responsible type, but the very few irresponsible will always ruin the party for the majority.  So, as a responsible host, please inform your guest to not chew gum in our properties.  If they insist, please insist of them throwing it in the dustbin not at the bottom of sofa, table, chair & etc.

Party spray is yet another really annoying trash to clean up.  It is sticky & hard to remove like gum.  Worse of all, it is usually a lot at many places.

We will impose a RM100 fine for any chewing gum sticking on any place other than the dustbin or party spray we found on our places.


Friday, February 14, 2014

Gift Economy For Artist

I was hopeful and thought gift economy would work out for my model as well.  So far, it hasn't.  Out of the one month test, only 1 person actually gift back.  Few more just left me some gifts.

My conclusions:
- it attracts many people who just want a cheap stay
- many when asked, didn't know what this gift economy was.  When told needed to pay after the stay, just cancelled.  So, mostly just wanna have a free stay.
- actually, the first one was the honest one that actually made the effort to gift back via PayPal.
- some didn't even answer back anything

Maybe it works for other kind of business, but it doesn't work for me, when I am not there.  It might work if I am actually there.

I have changed the gift economy to real artists only.  You will need to gift back a piece of your work, we prefer painting, drawing or something that we can hang or decorate at our place.  Anything environmental friendly is highly welcome.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Gift Economy at EcoZenVilla

I read about an article about doing business the other way, you do the work first, and the guest will pay what he deems is worth.  I have always wanted to do something like this.  Now, I am gonna try it out.

How this works:
- you book EcoZenVilla & stay
- after your stay, you will decide how much or how you would like to pay.  You can pay in money, gift or work.

If you wanna pay with a gift, we prefer art work or something that is really useful.  We don't want to waste unnecessary things as we are environmental friendly.

If you are good at art, you can choose to paint our wall or make some art deco for our house.  We need someone to do our landscape, so if you are good at it, you may choose to pay it back by doing landscape.  Or, you can create a small herb garden at our back yard.  Everything is possible.  We would like to see something creative.

Or you can choose to do charity work.  It can be charity work back at home.  Please email us the charity you have done for this exchange.

I hope this model will work, then I can expand it.