Your strange tastes · Funny Money

Nick Bandy

1d • General discussion

Your strange tastes

I've just written perhaps my thousandth email about durian, and it got me thinking...

What kind of weird or frowned-upon food do you like to eat?

For example:

I remember someone who used to drink dill pickle brine from the jar.

What about you?

Email reproduced below for historical accuracy...

###

Subject: How to get kicked out of a taxi

Nhu and I have just stepped out of our taxi into a muggy Singaporean afternoon.

Trembling with anticipation.

The menu plastered to the wall in front of me cheekily declares:

“Hold your breath.”

I refuse.

What should we order?

Stinky Bomb?

Stinky Roll?

Stinky Scoop?

😵

This is heaven.

This is…

99 Old Trees—Singapore’s go-to stall for the freshest, most deluxe-est durians in town.

“What do you want to eat?” my wife whispers into my ear.

“Something that will get us kicked out of our next taxi,” I whisper back.

I’ve written about durian so much in this newsletter that you might easily mistake these emails for blog posts from a globetrotting fruit connoisseur.

I assure you—this is a very serious business publication.

But if you’re new here…

Durian is the king of fruit. The size of a football and covered in spikes, durians resemble medieval torture devices on the outside.

Let’s just say Isaac Newton was lucky an apple fell on his head.

On the inside?

They resemble pungent, creamy custard with the faintest BREATH of onions that, once cracked open, releases their enticing and repulsive aroma like a mushroom cloud in a 3-mile radius.

For perspective…

Every subway car in the city warns:

No Eating ($500 Fine)

No Explosives ($5,000 Fine)

No Durians (Life In Prison)

(No fine for the durians, but you’d better not or you’re very naughty.)

After stuffing ourselves with an absurd amount of fruit, Nhu and I pile into a black minivan headed back to our hotel.

The driver points nervously at the plastic bag in my lap.

“That’s…that’s not DURIAN, is it?”

“No! It’s just bottled water from 7-11,” I grin.

He squints at me in the rear-view mirror a moment before shifting into drive…and pulling a facemask out of his breast pocket.

“Don’t open your mouth too wide when you talk,” my wife hisses, poking me in the ribs.

“We both REEK right now.”

🫢

Some may balk at spending over a hundred bux on a couple handfuls of “aromatic” fruit, especially when 99 Old Trees costs anywhere from 20-40% more than other durian stalls around Singapore.

But there’s a reason this place is so expensive, and the owner tells you at EVERY opportunity he gets.

For example:

Directly in front of the fruit prep area (which you can see with your own eyes), customers can read Old Trees’ quality standards / employee guidelines.

Before packing ANY piece of fruit, employees must run through this checklist:

Black / burnt seeds
Worm damage (gross)
Weevil damage (wtf is a weevil)
Too light
Too dark
Overripe
Underripe

There are pictures and descriptions next to each quality issue, so you’d have to be completely negligent or intoxicated to package a single piece of bad fruit.

Picking perfect durian is wayyy more important than it is for other fruit.

If you buy a bag of apples for $5 and one of them is a little mealy, you’ll probably toss it in the trash and move on with your life.

If you buy a small pack of durian…or even riskier, an entire fruit, which we’ve frequently done…

For anywhere from $20 to $150…

You’re not just going to shrug your shoulders an entire Benjamin Franklin of stinky fruit.

Customers regularly line up at 99 Old Trees to ‘overspend’ on durian because the alternative is essentially gambling that your cheaper roadside fruit will be edible.

In fact…

The amount of durian flesh we’ve thrown away from cheaper vendors across Southeast Asia costs far more than what we would have spent if all of our fruit came from a place like 99 Old Trees.

There’s no shortage of customers (in any industry) willing to pay MORE for quality…

And more often than not, these bigger spenders are higher quality customers.

Wrote a freelancer recently in our community:

(On Upwork) “Produced animated 3D piece for £200 which took me 2 weeks work. Waste of time. Thought it would take me a couple days…client was just so difficult. I promised 2-3 revisions but it just went on forever. I was just bent over trying to please the guy for that good review.”

Could he have avoided this issue if he charged more money?

Maybe.

Some people are just impossible to deal with, but...

If you’re new and you’re not comfortable charging high rates right out of the gate, what can you do?

Well, there’s a reason I harp on ONE thing above all else when you’re starting fresh on a platform like Upwork.

And I’ll reveal it to you when you buy my course, U—

No, the most important thing is actually SCREENING candidates like your life depends on it.

How do you screen Upwork clients?

Well, I’ll reveal it to you—along with the other 4 pillars of Upwork dominance—in exchange for just $50:

https://www.nickbandy.com/upwork-domination

Costs the same as a small box of durian, but you can’t eat it. (Don't even think about it.)

My lips are sealed,