Would you want to live with a person who could not keep his promise and lied through his teeth. What is more upset? He is not apologetic and called that “throwing tantrums” when confronted. I could close one eye to a lot of imperfections because no one is perfect, but would not tolerate and are tired of lies and broken promises. Would postpone the move indefinitely, until the issue is resolved and evidences of commitment is there. There is no point leaving my comfort zone and all that I have here for lies and broken promises.

The gynecologist Dr Eugene is a very careful and dedicated doctor. He came to checked on me right after the surgery. The next morning, he also came to ensure there is no blood clot, water detention and other complications. The nurses  encouraged me to wear the TED Stockings during recovery to avoid the danger of pulmonary embolism. They said pulmonary embolism can be significantly reduced through the use of this stockings.

Though fully recovered now and don’t wear this specially made stockings anymore,  I still wear the normal stocking  in the house as the floor feel so cold when you don’t after being used to wear stockings. :-)

The exercises look like some of the pilates exercises. They are not too difficult to follow. I have been doing them for the past three weeks, not everyday, but whenever I remembered. My backache problem hasn’t been bothering much lately, may be the exercises are really helpful!!

We wanted to buy  a gift for the aide in the congressman’s office who helped us expediting the visa petition. He really worked hard to follow up with our case. Without him pushing to expedite the petition, it may be still pending, lying around on one of the shelves in USCIS California Service Center!

Thought of getting him a pewter or some local food, but not sure he will like it? The big boy suggested getting him a box of chocolates. He thinks chocolate gifts are universal, and very few people won’t like chocolates. May be we should take the easy route? :-)

Will be going down to KL this Wednesday. The visa interview is on Thursday, after submitting the documents in the morning, will have a couple of hours before going back for visa interview in the afternoon. Thought may have time to go shopping, can kill time and get the luggage, why not?

The big boy drives a Toyota Camry that he bought from his parents when he first moved back to IL in 2006. We may have to share the car for a couple of months while we decide whether to get a Car Loan to buy a second car. It should not be too difficult to get a car loan with so many online car loans that available to customers nationwide. Guess it will depend on the job and the locality of the job that I will be getting. We may just car pool if the hours are suitable and it is convenient to do so.

I have the apple enzymes and  dragon fruit enzymes we made few weeks ago in the refrigerator and have been taking three times a day,  30 ml each time. At first, I drank the concentrated fruit enzymes directly, but  now I prefer diluting it with 500 ml of water. Can’t really tell whether the fruit enzymes has any health benefit yet, as I just started drinking it 2-3 weeks ago. The first week when I started drinking the fruit enzymes, was feeling thirsty and dried mouth a lot.  However, I do feel more energized lately, and the constipation problem has improved a lot.

He is a Leo who likes places with a lot of actions, entertainment and excitement,. Branson, Missouri, the Live Entertainment Capital of the World, which has  theme parks with exciting rides and attractions, is more like his cup of tea! May be he should check into the various vacation packages available at Branson Getaways.  Apparently, they can even custom design a package to meet your specific needs. Or, if we are lucky we  may win a FREE 3 day 2 night Branson vacation with this entry. :-)

The big boy told me to land on certain days as he may not be able to pick me up on certain days due to working late. Does he think I fly the airplane and have control of the schedule? Unfortunately, I don’t. Going to just grab the cheapest ticket available, don’t care about the day or arrival time. If he can’t pick me up, I am sure I can figure out  a way how to go there on my own. They are airport shuttles and limousines at Chicago ORD airport, don’t they?

Talked to Rani, who was at first hesitant to change the date. She told me they have a couple of complicated cases next two weeks and I may have to wait very long if she scheduled me together with them. I pleaded, told her that our case is very simple. She kind of agreed that our case is simple and agreed to “squeeze” me onto the tight schedule! So, the interview is rescheduled to 08/26/2008, two weeks earlier!!

However, the consulate is open for immigration visa related matters only on Mon and Fri 2-3.30 p.m. Left PJ at 1.00p.m, decided to take a train down to Ampang Park and walked down to Jalan Tun Razak. The US embassy is about 10 minutes walk from the train station. The sun was so hot, really regret didn’t bring along an umbrella. It was 5 minutes before 2.00p.m at the entrance of the embassy, the guard let me in for security check. The woman guard ran my handbag through the machine (like the one at the custom). She pour  everything  inside the handbag into a basket. Then she put everything back to the handbag except for the hairpin and earphone. She kept these in the basket and gave me a number for retrieving them later. She asked me to take a sip from the water bottle and switch off the handphone. There weren’t many people inside the embassy, was out of the consulate office within 10 minutes.The interview is scheduled to be on September 09 2008. Plan to call the consular office on next Mondayto reschedule to an earlier date, since I have all the documents ready and medical examination is going to be done today.

Armed with the medical forms, took a cab outside US embassy to go to the panel doctor at Bangunan Ming  near Bukit Nanas. The doctor took some history, did some routine physical examination,  and gave me a jab for Mumps, Measles and Rubella (MMR). The biggest challenge during the medical check up was to find the well hidden veins on my hands to draw blood for HIV test! He spent about 20 minutes poking at five places n my left and right hands!! The X-ray has to be taken at PKNS Building at Jalan Raja Laut, took another cab to go there. Was able to get everything done before 4.00 p.m. Walked down to Masjid Jamed station to take a train back to PJ before the rush hour office crowd, reached PJ at 5.00p.m sharp. Took about 4 hours and cost about USD90, now the mandatory medical examination for the  immigration visa application is done, one less thing on the to-do-list.

The package 3 returned contains the visa application form DS-230 part 1 and a checklist that indicates the availability of civil documents thus readiness for visa interview.

If the consulate receives the package 3 documents on Tuesday, I supposed they will schedule the interview and mail out packet 4 this week.  So, I am going up to KL on Thursday and go for the medical check up and vaccinations on Friday.

It was raining cats and dogs on Thursday and Friday, guess the mailman couldn’t go out to deliver mails on his bike. In fact, on the way to buy bus ticket, I dropped by the post office at 4.30 p.m on Thursday to check whether the mail  was there. The mail room supervisor told me the mail man has already left for home! The supervisor swore mails from KL would take two to three days to reach my parent’s place. But, this one has taken five days!

There is really nothing they could not email in the packet. Packet 3 documents include a cover letter, a check list, an immigration visa application DS-230 form (which can be downloaded from US State Department’s website)  and an instruction sheet about photo format.

The DS-230 and  the checklist need to be returned to the consular office. So, going to the post office on Monday to mail it by express mail. Hopefully, they will receive it the next day and packet 4  will be ready for pick up on Friday. (The consular section open for Immigration Visa related matters on Monday & Friday only) Packet 4 contains the medical check-up and interview appointment letter. Will need to go down to KL for the medical check up as the panel doctors are in KL and Penang only. It depends on the interview date, if it’s not too far apart, will just stay on for a few days.

We dream of a day that we can retire early, take up a less stressful job or live on a part time pay. One thing we know, with the high inflation rate and the pathetic interest we get for putting our money in the bank, that’s probably a far fetched dream!

We certainly need to learn more about other investment vehicles that bear better returns. Do not think we have the time and patience to invest in individual stock, but we like the idea of mutual funds and foreign currencies deposits. Anyone heard of trust deed investing? Diamond Bay Investments claims that real estate trust deed investments can  produce a margin of return as high as 12 % and has a low margin of risk. Do you think it’s a viable for retirement income?

At the meantime, the big boy is still taking his time to put together all the documents that he has to mail out. It’s true that he had a food poisoning and has been not feeling well this week. But, he has been told what to prepare six months ago! I would expect he has everything in the envelope and just have to drive to the post office to mail them out now. Apparently not!

Too much stress to deal with a procrastinator, good thing my friend Pauline is here visiting over the weekend, a distraction that keeps me occupied instead of feeling upset over his idiotic inaction.

Most of us are petitioning or being petitioned for a spousal or fiance(e) visa. It’s quite ironic that fiance(e) who is not married yet can get a visa faster than spouse. But, fiance(e)’s visa doesn’t come with work authorization and they have to go through adjustment of status, which is a pain, dealing with USCIS again.

Many of them couldn’t work right after marriage as the work authorization and adjustment of status can take a while to process. A Brazilian woman I met on the forum, her paperwork has been pending and she has been waiting forever, she was bored to death at home. She decided to go to school just to kill time. She paid a few thousands to attend one of the beauty schools, learning the whole thing from shampoo to manicure, pedicure, cutting, coloring, chemicals, facials, etc. She is hoping once her paperwork gets approved, she can find a job immediately with her new qualification.

The next step is to wait for the consulate to mail me a package of forms and a checklist for documents submission. At the same time, the big boy has to mail the Affidavit of Support package which will contain the I-864 AOS form, his tax transcripts, pay stubs and employment letter to me. He also needs to mail all the proofs of bone fide of marriage.

I have him mail me the letter that has my name on his health insurance plan, the statements of the checking account to show co-mingling of our finances, photos and affidavits from his parents.

See, all the hoops and loops we have to jump through in order to prove to Uncle Sam that we are a genuine couple, not of a sham marriage. All due to some black sheep who use sham marriages for green cards, honest people like us got stuck and scrutinized to no end.

He is also hitting a bump on the road trying to get an employment letter from his corporate office. They are so ridiculously paranoid about giving out such a letter. Guess they are afraid that it can be used against them as guarantee of employment or salary!

That’s America! Everyone is trying to cover their arses for fear of litigation or being sued!

We hope we would be able to save for a house in these few years. We might even consider buying a piece of land and custom build our dream home. Do you dream of building a home one day? We do. Hopefully, we could find someone to build a new custom home that meets our wants and needs at a reasonable price. Have you heard of Schumacher Homes? Apparently, not all south carolina home builders are the same, the company is among the few that can combine custom and value!

The DS-3032 is a form for the visa applicant to appoint someone to be an agent to receive mails from NVC.  Usually people just appoint the petitioner, a family member or a friend with a US address to receive the mails to avoid delays due to international mailing system.

 Looks like NVC is pretty efficient! They have generated the form and bill two days after the file got into their system, and it took 4 days for them to arrive in the mail!!

We also learned that they have used options screener to assist them in analyzing the market. As the analytical mathematical type of people, we are actually quite interested to learn more about the method and the software.

There are also going to be a lot of adjustments. The cold weather is one big obstacle to overcome. Would not be able to drive immediately too as IL is a state where they do not recognize International driver license. I would need to go for classes and test in order to get a IL driver license. The big boy also need to put me on the car insurance before I can drive. That’s going to cost a bomb, as I have to start from scratch, without American driving experience, I am considered a new driver!

It tookONLY two days for them to generate this two documents in the system after they received the file on July 15 2008.

Gambatee, NVC is efficient!

We personally do not know many doctors who are also tech-geeks, it’s kind of surprise to find out that more than 50% of doctors own a PDA or smartphone. In fact, one of the PDA medical software companies - Epocrates has a medical reference software that used by over 500,000 healthcare professionals!

The drug drug reference guide is available for multiple devices. The same company also has a free online drug reference tool for medical websites, an online drug reference, which can be accessed from any Internet-connected desktop. You may check out www.epocrates.com/products for more information and to learn more about mobile device compatibility.

*This announcement was paid for by Epocrates.

At the same time, I have been calling NVC voice response system a few times a day to check whether a case number has been assigned. Finally, today, at slightly after midnight Eastern time, the voice message changed! Woohooo, a NVC case number has been assigned and enter into the system!

It took four days, if not counted Sunday would be three working days! Good job, NVC !

And the old lousy CIS has no update yet!

Though we have thought of taking some wedding photos and send out some Wedding Announcements when we first got married. But I was too busy with the business to organize it and the big boy was procrastinating it, as usual.:-) Maybe we should have the wedding once we move back to IL? Is it hard and time consuming to organize a wedding ? Even if we do decide to have one, we definitely are not planning to have a big event, just a private church wedding, maybe.

He said he planned to talk to the congress liaison officer at CSC later in the afternoon to push for an approval. So I asked him to send me an email if there is any update. I went to bed right after that as it’s already midnight over here.

When I woke up two hours ago, I turned on the computer and checked the emails like I always do every morning. I saw an email from Erik and wondered whether it’s good news.

Wooohooo, the I-130 petition is APPROVED !!!!

I am so happy, I just couldn’t sit down to do any work whole morning, I have been jumping here and there!!!

The procrastinator and the inefficient CIS are responsible for this long separation. However, I couldn’t be more grateful that I am able to earn money online after selling off the business and waiting for this gruesome process to complete. After all, I have a mortgage to pay, it will be impossible to get by without an income for extended period.

My neighbors and friends are often curious what how do keep myself busy at home if not “working”, even my parents got upset at first thinking they have an adult daughter unemployed at home. I tried to explain to them about the online income from blogging and ads, but they are kind of skeptical, thought it’s a scam or fraud too good to be true.

When I started a blog in beginning of 2007, it was a simple gesture to share about Montessori education, I do not know many people were making money through their blogs. Of course there was very little understanding of how people can get paid blogging. It’s by accident that I learned about the opportunity to make money with my blogs and the existence of blog ads. I do believe that blogs have a lot of potential to be the new media that reaches out to people. Of course a lot of businesses are quick to smell it and started to advertise on blogs. Last year, in 2007, we had a lot of businesses advertised for Halloween costumes months before Halloween and Christmas season started well before the Fall. If you have not heard of it, you better learn what’s it and how you can be part of this brave new world.

Don’t know what else we can do to get this process moves. Of course the big boy is partly to blame for not paying attention to details and make mistakes after mistakes on the paperwork. Frustrated.

As I was going through the photos, it reminded me of some of the vacations and places that I have been to in the last fifteen years. These photos brought back some memories of some backpacking trips to some Asian countries and trips to places in America.

My friend Heidi even created a scrap book for our vacation in Cape Cod and Disney World many years ago. The scrap book brought back some fond memories of the Province Town and Disney World. The Cape Cod trip was an unplanned one. We were visiting her parents’ house in Connecticut and it was a spur of the moment decision, her mother suggested we went up to Cape Cod, and there we were at the Province Town! Heidi and her husband could probably afford to stay at one of the better posh places , but knowing how careful they were with money, they wouldn’t pay so much for a place to sleep! We all stayed at a motel for two nights, with me sharing a room with the couple and their daughter, and her mother shared another room with her sisters and their children.

But the trip to Disney World was a planned vacation, we booked the hotel and buy the discount Disney World tickets online before we left for the trip. If you are looking for a place to have a wonderful time with your spouse or family, Disney World is always an excellent choice.

They have wanted to visit me after the surgery since they have not seen me for weeks at the home fellowship. I did inform Jo about the backache when I couldn’t attend the bible study.

As a technical guy, writing is not his cup of tea! I can foresee he will need much help and guidance when the time comes. The Capellaís Online Writing Center will probably comes in handy for him. The online resource center for academic writing is on the website of Capella University, a university that offers many online college courses.

The online handbook is organized around the writing process covered various topics i.e. Annotated Bibliography Guide, Grammar, Business and Technical Writing, APA Style and Formatting, Undergraduate Writing Resources,How to Get Your Work Published and Academic Integrity.

**This blog post is based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com

Other than trying to earn extra money to cover the extra expenses, you might want to check out how you can lower the payment amount of your mortgage and auto loan. Is it possible to lower my payment? You may ask.

We do not have an auto loan currently, so we are not sure what you can do with it. But, we recently requested for an interest reduction with our mortgage lender and were granted a two percent interest reduction that resulted in about one hundred bucks saving per month.

It was such a boring wedding dinner. I don’t even know the bride and the groom!

The whole event was so comical, should I say? The guests were mostly the groom’s parents’ friends and relatives, the host and hostess acted like they were the focal of the day. They sang, danced and the groom’s mother went from one table to another like a butterfly!

Can you imagine those houses that were submerged in the water to the roof? Surely it will be a hell lot of work to clean. Many of them will probably need to hire a disaster cleanup service to help with the cleaning up. It will take time for people to restore their home and hopefully they have insurance to cover the damages.

After one week of torture, realized that this had to go. Have been doing better this week, at least went to bed on time instead of staying late on the phone stressing the big boy.

She sent a text message this morning, told me her husband has agreed to do the proof reading for her. That’s good!

We need to shut off and stay away from the computer and take a break from this madness for a couple of days! It would be nice to get away and join the African hunting safari trips organized by T.Jeffery Safari Company. But, nothing of this sort will happen for a while as I am still recuperating from the recent surgery. I wonder what kind of animals are available on this hunting trips. The only kind of animals we would like to shot right now are the dumb immigration officers who asked us to wait thirty days for an “expedite” request.

Thirty days for an approval or rejection decision on an expedite request certainly does not sound like there is any expedition involved. Even if they approve the “expedite” request, it will take further processing to approve the actual petition.

This stress gets in our marriage when we have splitting perspectives on the process, he thinks he is doing what he can and I am upset with the slow and lack of action. It’s impeded further with someone who doesn’t want to learn about the process and do the right things to get it done in the shortest time possible.

It’s true that not everyone is born with the ability to balance the check books manually. I know for sure that we have one who need help. Where do you get your business checks and accounting software? Have you heard of VersaCheck software? May be it’s worth checking out if you are struggling to balance your check books. :-)

Since her cell phone plan is registered under my name, I have to go to the service provider to get the new SIM card! We were surprised that it took a couple of minutes to get the new SIM card. In the old days, one had to wait in line and could take up to an hour. Now, you just go to the customer service counter without taking  a number to join the line, she just gave you a new SIM card and logged that into the system!

We have thought of hiring a part time help once or twice a week. As not everyone is comfortable with a lived in maid, I know my mom would not feel convenient to have another person who is not a family member living in the same house.

After filling up two pages of form and send them in in March, the papers just sitting around gathering dust for 3 months? Looks like until someone comes along to dust the files, we will hear nothing for a while !

When she went to Japan last year, she spent hundreds of dollars buying all sort of chocolates and gourmet cookies for us. The Japanese are really good at packaging their products. They put the chocolates in beautiful boxes and gift wrapped them nicely. In fact, we still keep most of the pretty boxes that used to keep the chocolates, though we have finished the chocolates long time ago!

However, I have been looking out too see whether there is any AC unit at the freecycle group. Yesterday, someone wants to give away one and he lives a few blocks away from our house. Perfecto! The big boy is going to pick it up this evening. See, we save money and also save the AC unit from the landfill!

I told her not to worry as I have an emergency fund that can be used for raining days. It’s important to have an emergency fund so that we do not have to rely on loans when the unexpected happens. Taking a loan helps you to get through an emergency, but save up an emergency fund and be prepared for the unexpected that life throws at us helps us get through life. :-)

She is doing so much better now. She couldn’t walk without her left leg in pain. Last two days she was able to walk around and even do some housework as she feels better. Though being told by the doctors to rest more, she still gets up at 6.00 a.m and start buzzing around the house. That’s mom.

Looks like the owner had all the bathroom fixtures in working condition and the previous tenants had already installed blinds for the windows in the living hall. All we have to is to get blinds or curtains for the windows in the bedrooms. But, it will probably take a few months for the big boy to get some blinds or curtains. How long do you think it will take him to finally get them ? It took him more than a month to finally order the laptop, after I have forwarded the shopping cart on Dell to him!

Mom thinks the acupuncture session really helps to relieve the pains, so we  have since gone back there for the third session today. Hopefully this non evasive method works and saves mom from going for a surgery!