Life to live and explore

Sister getting me Anais Anais fragrance by Cacherel

My younger sister flew to HK to attend an ex colleague’s wedding reception yesterday. I was just casually mentioned to her that maybe she could help me to pick up a bottle of perfume at the airport’s duty free stores. Didn’t really expect her to call me from the airport this morning, asking about the name brand of the fragrance I wanted.

I have asked for a bottle of Anais Anais by Cacherel. Love this fragrance, it’s sweet, refreshing and flowery. She could only find the Eau de toilette at the duty free stores though I would prefer the Eau de parfum. The last bottle of this fragrance had served me for two years and used until the last drop.

The Big Boy doesn’t really bother about fragrance, he is born with very little sense of smell and can’t really smell  unless it’s pungent like rotten eggs. I am wearing it anyway because I like to smell good. :-)

When bad things happened to bad people

When I learned about the miseries that happened to this person that had caused much grieves in my life in the past, I was almost delighted. I wasn’t feeling revengeful or hoping that bad things would happen to her. But it was just good to know bad karma comes around. It’s bad of me, I know.

Do you believe people reap the negativities that they project onto their lives? Why would a woman who is so blessed, has good education, good job and a super nice husband complains no end about everything?  It’s a pity that she is so busy bitching, wallowing in envy and jealousy, thus she has no time to appreciate  the goodness in her life. I don’t judge my friends, but she is not my friend.:-) I do hope all this bad things that happened in her life will somehow help her to see how pathetic her life has become.

Friend’s mother has lung cancer

SL’s mother was diagnosed with fourth stage lung cancer. The fiercely independent woman decided not to go through chemotherapy or radiotherapy, but seeking alternative treatment. She is going through the all organic natural remedy to fight cancer.

She is still doing fine right now despite of the pain she often suffers. SL and her siblings have gotten her a maid, but she still cooks and washes around the house. She is also active in the Church. Outwardly, it’s hard to tell that she is a cancer patient and the doctor has diagnosed that her days are numbered. You really see courage and hope in her.

My friend said her mom was always so thrifty, she didn’t take the opportunity to enjoy her time or go places with her husband since they retired about 5 years ago. Even if her children wanted to pay for a vacation to the Outer Banks for them, she didn’t want to go because she didn’t want her children to spend their hard earned money!

Meeting up with an old friend

Met up with SL today, we chatted for almost 4 hours! We had our lunch at a small cafe and then adjourn to KFC so that we can continue to yak.

The last time we met were December last year, we had so much to catch up with one another about what happened in a year. Of course, we gossiped too.

SL was my college mate and we were colleagues sharing an office for 3 years. We were friends since our first year in college although we were doing different courses as we lived in the same hostel. However, we didn’t really get to know each other well until we worked together and shared an office. She is married to one of my course mates, brother-in-law of my ex-roommate from hell.  So she understands me perfectly what hell it was to live with a bitch.:-)

Forgiven but not forgotten

When names of people that I have not met nor kept in touch for the past 8 years were mentioned during conversation with some old friends recently, I knew I haven’t forgotten the hurts and the wounds are still very raw.

Indeed it took me a while to forgive them for the hurts I perceived and not to wallow in bitterness for my own good. However, I have decided not to have anything to do with this people because I do not need to be reminded of the bitter experience, I need to move on. May be in future but at this stage of my life, I just couldn’t bear to have bad memories refreshed and raw wounds opened.

Getting online at Starbucks

During my trip to PJ, while my sisters and friends were at work and nobody to meet in the morning, I decided to go to the Starbucks coffee place to get online. I borrowed my sister’s laptop and took a cab to the nearest Starbucks. I have never tried the WiFi service at a public area like this. So I wasn’t sure how to do it.

I ordered a cup of Cappuccino and some sandwiches, found out from the waitress what service provider is providing the WiFi available at the store. It took me a while to figure out how to connect to the network. The connection was good and fast. I think I may try that again one of this days when I get bored working at home.

Imagine sipping a cup of drink at a cozy corner of a coffee place, checking out the travel guides for an upcoming vacation or booking the air ticket. Not a bad idea at all!!

Adult sibling rivalry

Many of us have wonderful close relationship with our siblings, still, for many people, discord sown early endures for a lifetime. Plus, as siblings get older and more established in their own lives, it’s so easy to drift apart. Even if you do everything you can to stay close, a certain amount of distancing is almost inevitable.

Unfortunately, while this is human nature, it still stings when the cause of the strained relationship is due to your parents favor another sibling or another sibling’s family. While most parents love their adult children, it’s surprisingly common for people to feel that a sibling is or ‘has always been’ favored by a parent, even if this may not be recognized or acknowledged by the rest of the family.

Whatever the reason, when one or more parents is favoring another sibling over you, either by bragging more about your brother’s accomplishments, paying more attention to your sister, or always taking your brother’s side in a disagreement, it hurts to be the less favored ‘child’ and it can make for a stressful family gathering with raw feelings that can be easily hurt.

Here are some ways we can learn to cope with the hurtful feeling as an adult and it’s not too late to be included in the new year resolution of 2008. :-)

Don’t Take It Personally: Understand that our parent may not love the other sibling more, they just feel closer or more invested in their lives, for whatever reason. They may not even be aware of it, and most likely not doing it to hurt our feelings.

Accept The Reality of the Situation: You will feel better if you accept that you may not get as much support and approval from parents as you want, and that’s alright. If you don’t go to them from a place of need, you will actually have more personal power. It may be difficult to get into this frame of thought, but you’ll feel better after you do. You will even start noticing that you do get from them, and valuing that.

Find Support Elsewhere in Your Life: You need to find supportive people in your life to provide the love, acceptance and approval you may not get from your parents as much as you’d like. While we may not be born into families of people who think like us and share our values, there are many people in the world that can provide the support that our family members may be unable to give.

Don’t Perpetuate Sibling Rivalry: Don’t compete with your siblings and don’t blame them for being favored. Just accept that your relationship with your parents is yours, and keep it separate from your relationships with other siblings

Invest In Your Own Family: Finally, if you have a committed relationship or family of your own, you can focus on providing what you would like to be getting from your family of origin. Focus on what you share and what you can provide to yourself in your own life, and you’ll be better able to accept familial quirks.

What a bus journey

Decided not to drive but ride a bus to PJ. Left the house at around 2.00 p.m on Wednesday,  got to the bus station half an hour later. Bought the 3.30 p.m bus ticket. Since it was an hour of waiting, went for lunch and bought the newspaper to read. By the time I finished both lunch and reading the newspaper, the bus has arrived. The bus left at 3.45 p.m, 15 minutes later than the scheduled time.

The bus got on the highway, I felt asleep almost instantly. About an hour later, I woke up because the bus stopped. Well, this has never happened to me and I wasn’t sure how this could happen. The bus was running out of gas!!!

We were instructed to stay on the bus and waited for another bus to pick us up. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait too long. A bus from the same company came about half an hour later.  All of us got on the new bus and the driver continued the journey. We arrived at the destination an hour later. Phewy….

Running late

I should be getting out of the door half an hour ago and I am still here trying to finish up all the assignments. Talking to the big boy on the phone for more than an hour, and that kept me away from working. The big boy is still dilly dally about filling up a simple one page form. Talked until fire came out from my ears already still didn’t hear, so geram.

Store photos online

I took quite a lot of photos over the last few days! It was taking a while to transfer the photos from dad’s computer to my computer. I have earlier store all the photos in the flash memory and just spent the whole morning working on the computer and doing other things, like catching up on blog posts, uploading some photos that I would like to blog about to the flickr account.

I have started using flickr to store photos so that they do not take up space on the hosting account. It’s easier that way especially when next time try to transfer from one host to another.

Do you upload your photos to a free hosting account? What photo hosting service do you use so that you can share them or use them in your blog posts?

Tidier and cleaner house we have

I think I can say that our house is a lot tidier and cleaner these days than it was two weeks ago!

Last week the part time cleaner came to clean up the floor and the shelves, and I did most of the unpacking this week, in anticipation of my friends’ visit with their two boys. I knew the boys would probably be into everything or popping the pet supplements into the mouth before you know it. So it gave me a good excuse to pick up a few things that had been lying around and the whole house looks tidier as a result.

On the first day that the boys were here, they made quite a few messes on the floor. Then, my friends helped to vacuum the floor and the carpet when I went out to buy some grocery. Most of the stuffs in the kitchen are still lying around, pending for the renovation work to complete. I think the clutters can all go into the storage cabinet once the renovation is done. Since I would be moving again in a couple of months, I won’t be getting any shelves or some type of storage system to put away or rather hide away stuffs.

Our neighbor home is still vacant

On the right of our house are a couple who have retired from full time work, they have recently get back to work part time, 2-3 hours a day, just to pass time and earn some pocket money.

The neighbor on the left is a bachelor whom we understood was going to get married when he bought the house. Except for a short while that he moved in and lived here 4 years back, the house has been vacant since he moved out. We have seen people came knocking at the door and came over to ask us where were the occupants. So, I guess the man is hiding from all his debtors?

There were no “On Sale” sign put up and an elderly couple whom I believe are the man’s parents would come with a part time cleaner periodically, they would clean the house and the yards. The house is still in very good shape, I think they originally wanted to sell it, but it looks like the real estate market in this area is really sluggish, they have not been able to do that.

I was talking to the parents of this neighbor the other day and they told me their son has gone to work oversea and won’t sell the house because he plans to come back to live here one day. I do think they are bluffing me to cover up about the running from debtors part. Well, if they ever do sell the house, I hope we get good neighbors. That’s all I ask.

What do this doctors have in common

We have several doctors in the bible study group that we belong. With this doctors, they talk a lot about medical things and they sometime didn’t realize people in the non-medical field might not understand all the medical jargons they use. Since this doctors are all golf enthusiasts, they like to talk golf too.

They might not know much about the xbox 360 or video games in general, but they are very crazy about golf, they would bring the golf equipment to work and go to the golf course straight after work. I know two of them were really good and won some hole-in-one prizes before. They can get so excited talking about their favorite sport, you will see them getting up demonstrating the proper golf swing at the dinner table while we were having supper after the bible study. Their wives said they even bought “How to play golf” DVDs to learn from the pro. If they are any Internet savvy, they would properly find out this online golf lessons and learn to improve their golf swing.:-)

When I feel like cooking

I don’t always cook a proper meal when hubby is not around, it’s too much work to cook up a storm just for one person.:-)

But, the other day, I find enough ingredients in the refrigerator to cook 3 dishes, so I decided to cook a nice meal for myself.

    

 

The down side is, I have to eat this same things for 3-4 meals. (I still have a little bit of left over of the bitter gourd in the refrigerator!)

Blinds for the backroom

Apart from the kitchen renovation project that currently in progress, I have been doing some small sewing projects and start moving the furniture around to give the house a new look. We aren’t going to buy any new accessories for any of the rooms since we will be moving again soon.

We do need blinds for the back room windows though, the evening sun can really heat up the back room that we currently use as a store room. Perhaps we need to look around for discount blinds?

Would like to sew up some covers for the dining chairs and teak patio furniture though. Have sewn some new curtains for the bedrooms last year, so this year properly don’t need to sew any more curtains.

Undecided about gift for hubby

I’m trying to think of what to get hubby for Christmas.Hubby had sent me some money, he said I can buy anything with it.But, I’m just not sure whether we should even exchange gifts at all.

We are saving money for all the filings that we have to do and for the move to IL. The expenses of the migration process would be several thousand dollars by the time we are done!

If I were going to get hubby a gift I thought of maybe getting him a new pair of shoes he can wear in the snow. His current shoes are new and they still works. But it would be nice to get him a pair of nicer looking shoes. Can’t afford any of the designer shoes saw online, unless if I can find a discount code on Coupon Money for that particular design. Or I could send him some money, he could go find a similar pair at the discount store, I think it would be a gift that he would appreciate. What do you think?

We pretty much want each other for Christmas and it’s too bad that we have to wait for a few more months.

Walking around the neighborhood

I have started taking walks around the neighborhood in the morning. I am enjoying getting out for a walk after I finished some work on the computer, then come back to continue.

We live in a nice gated community with very good neighbors. My next door neighbor are a couple who have retired from full time work. But, they recently started working part time for 2-3 hours a day, to pass time and to make some pocket money.

There is no shop within walking distance and I have to drive out 10 minutes to the nearest store to get grocery and daily needs. They are some really luxury homes with beautiful gardens, I do walk slowly and looking at those gardens.

There is a very nice and well maintained children playground with jogging track around it. I don’t jog but sometime walk on the track. In fact, they are jogging tracks all around the neighborhood. The management team had planted a lot of trees and flowers at the common areas around the neighborhood, they really did a good job, we are very happy with them.

One of this days, yeah, one of this days, I must get back to swimming again, what a waste to have a community pool within 1 minute distance but never really use it!

Work still in progress after a week

After starting the renovation work a week ago, the kitchen renovation work is still in progress. The workers have done the concrete and need one more day to do the tiling. They were waiting for the concrete to cure and that would take 2-3 days.

But, now it’s a week later, they didn’t show up to finish up the work. I called the contractor, he gave me the excuse of the rain, but they aren’t working outdoor, what has it got to do with the rain?

Anyway, he promised his workers would show up on Monday! Crossing my fingers.

Waterproofing your basement

Are you dealing with a damp basement? First you have to determine the source of your problem, it could be a water leak or high humidity. You need to tackle it before it leads to mold, mildew, or other biological growth. This may cause other problems, depending on the severity, this conditions can lead to rot, structural damage, premature paint failure, and a variety of health problems.

The excessive dampness can come from a leaking pipe, toilet, shower or bathtub. If that is the case, you need to repair the leak first. If the leak has caused substantial water damage or mold you will want to hire a contractor who specializes in mold remediation and water damage repairs. However, normal daily activities like showering, cooking and drying clothes can also the cause of higher than usual basement humidity.

It can also cause by water seeping in from outside through a leak in the foundation, small gaps around windows or doors. You would need to hire contractors specialized in waterproofing. If you live in Connecticut, Lower New York, Westchester County, Orange County, Nassau County and Rhode Island, you can seek the help of the CT basement contractors to do the necessary job.

Friends are visiting

My friends TJ and WT will be here visiting with their two children, I got to get the guest room tidy up for them. :-) They were here twice this year, this is the third time in this year they bring their children to visit, we really appreciate their effort to keep in touch and to keep us in prayers.

They are certainly our most faithful and kindest friends who have been with us through thick and thin, and are always there for support. It is our privilege to have them as friends.

The monster in law

We grew up in a very close knit family and have loving relationship among all my five siblings. Currently only my brother and I are married, the others are still unattached. I still enjoy good rapport with the unmarried siblings, but I can’t say the same for the married brother.

He is married to a self-centered and money minded woman whom all of us cannot stand. The other siblings don’t dare to point out or say anything because they are younger sisters and brother. I used to take her nonsenses and treat her as part of the family too. But, after all the rocks she threw at me when I was down, I don’t really  give her a damn. Since I am the eldest and the more vocal one, I  would point out to her when she tried to take advantage of me. My brother listened to his wife and hasn’t talked to me for a while.

Older friends

It’s interesting to me when I noticed that my circle of friends is so different compare to, lets say 7-8 years ago. Before I was 30, most of the people I associated with were peers.

After moving back to this small town when I was 30, I have to start all over in getting to know new people. I realized that many people I associate with right now tend to be much older than I. They are either closer to 50 or have retired from full-time work! One of the reasons is because they are more elderly people in the bible study group we belong than the younger ones.:-)

The older people tend to be more patient and they are less competitive. They have years of wisdom behind them, and if they are willing to share with us, we would be benefited so much from them. Peers who are at the same age tend to like to compare and compete, people get envious or jealous about one another and start all the bitching and back stabbing, especially among the women, sad to say.

Do you buy gold as investment?

If you are over 40 and you still believe in UFO and social security, you need to go for a brain scan! It’s better that we do not hope for the government who can’t keep its books to take care of us, we need to invest part of our earnings to build up nest eggs for old age.

The question is what kind of investment vehicle do we use? We currently have some money invested in mutual funds and stocks. But, we are rather disappointed in the ups and downs of the stock market and are on the looking out for secured investment that gives a more consistent return.

The worldwide energy crisis and inflation have caused our cash depreciated its value quickly. In fact, saving money in the bank gets us negative gain after considering the inflation rate. That’s why many people would buy gold coins and gold bars for investment and to prevent further depreciation. Prices of many precious metals including gold have gone up a lot in the last two years. Do you think it is worthwhile to invest in this precious metals when their prices are at their record highs?

Shopping for clothes

Went shopping and bought a few tops, a pair of jeans and a pair of khaki. I really like the jeans, it fits really well. I am quite particular about the jeans I buy and it’s not always easy to find a pair of fitting jeans that I like, yet comfortable to wear.

You can tell the tops are all summery, either sleeveless or with spaghetti strips. Actually, the light blue top with spaghetti strips is nighties. No school girl costumes in the lot though, he, he…

 I didn’t pay regular price for these clothes, they were on sale for at least 50%.

What we think of credit cards

We have a credit card for the convenience of occasionally purchasing something online or through phone i.e. purchasing air tickets and as an emergency backup when we travel. Everything else we use cash. We find out when we pay cash, we can “feel” the money leaving us and therefore spend less.

This is not true with when you use credit cards, flipping a credit card up on a counter registers nothing emotionally. Statistics show that people tend to spend 12-18% more using credit cards. This is money you could have saved.

For us it’s important to cut out habits or behaviors that make us spend more. We do not believe that one can build wealth with 0% credit cards. We do that consider transferring debt in between 0% balance transfer credit cards as managing debt or finances.

The average family today carries $8,000 in credit card debt according to the American Bankers’ Association, that show that many people do not pay off their balance each month. We believe the multi-billion dollar industry exist for a reason, and we don’t think we’re going to win at their game. In another word, we don’t think we can beat the credit card companies.

Happy 25th anniversary

My friend MK and his wife are celebrating their 25th anniversary this week. In this age and time, I bet staying married for 25 years is a reason to celebrate!

Let me tell you, my friend MK is not exactly the kind of person who is easy to live with.:-)The fact that they are still talking with one another after being married for 25 years is enough to impress me. For people who have married for two and half years and can’s see each other eye-to-eye majority of time, it’s a lot of lessons for us to learn.

See you next year

Today we have the last bible study group meet for the year. We aren’t going to meet for bible discussion until next January. Though we are probably going to meet at the church Everyone is excited about the coming Christmas party that they are going to host.

WE celebrated 3 people’s birthdays tonight. Looks like we have a lot of year end baby in the bible study group. MK said 50 is the old age of youth but the youth of old age. Can you guess how old is MK? :-)

Free online dating

Internet has become a popular medium to meet people and find love, especially more people are spending more time on the net socializing.

Though it’s convenient to meet people at the comfort of your home through a dating site, common precaution and common sense still prevailed. I am not saying meeting someone online is dangerous. In fact, I greatly endorse this convenience way of finding love through free online dating because it is very economic and low maintenance and has virtually no pressure.

All you have to do is to sign up, create a profile by writing an introduction about yourself and may be upload your best pictures. Then,the system will start matching you with people who share some common things with you. Or you can also contact people you find interesting in the listing. You can also use the free chat with your new found friends.

What are you waiting for, my single friends?

Work on counter top starts today

After much delay, the workers finally showed up today to start working on the kitchen counter-top. They would need at least 3 days to finish the work.

While they are working on the counter-top, I would not be able to cook. So, it would be a lot of eating out this few days. I store up some bread, crackers and noodle, they can be  saviour when I am lazy to drive out to eat

House warming party

I am back at my parents’ place tonight. Was invited to a house warming party of a relative. Went together with parents. I didn’t know that they have invited so many people for their house warming party, there were easily 200 people there for the buffet dinner!

The host is my father second cousin’s wife. Her husband has already passed away several years ago. The family is very productive, they have gone to the 4th generation in their family. My relative has so many grand children and great grand children, we wouldn’t know who is who. Whereas, my parents only got two grand children from my brother.

Met two of my school teachers there, one is the daughter in law of my relative, the other one is her niece. Learned that they both have retired last year! They both have adult daughters in their 30s. They were fresh from teachers college when they taught me in elementary school. How time flies!