Leah’s Cafe

Over the weekend, I spent sometime organizing my fabric stash into the metal cabinet and deciding what to sew in the coming weeks. This materials have been lying around for 2-3 years. Ever since I started the tutoring center and the preschool 3 years ago, I hardly have time, or just too tired to sew. Now that I have sold the business, I want to pick up sewing again. Can you tell from the stash that I am quite a fabricholics?:-)

This materials are stored in a metal cabinet. It’s one of those metal cabinets that you usually see people use in the office for storing documents. It’s very good for storing fabrics. It keeps the moisture away, therefore this fabrics do not smell mushy or moldy after 2-3 years in the cabinet. I learned this storage idea from my sewing teacher, she has a few of this cabinets to store all her materials.

The first digital camera that I bought for myself was a Sony Mavica FD85. I love it! I bought this camera because it stores photos on a FLOPPY. No need to plug into a computer port. It writes directly to a disk which you pop out of the camera and pop into your a: drive. Ok, that was very important to me before memory stick becomes affordable and USB port becomes standard feature. I can get 20-25 photos on a floppy with the right resolution.

The images are sharp and has a 10x zoom and handles crystal clear macro photos. I have had it for about 5 years, it only went kaput the end of last year. Another major plus is the rechargeable battery. If you ever own a regular battery digital camera and you’ll find yourself spend far more on batteries than you ever would have on film with a regular camera. The only downside is that this camera is heavier and bulkier than the cable/memory card cameras.

The second digital camera I bought is also a Sony Camera, it’s a Sony Cybershot W55. It’s a simple point and shot that does it’s job. I have gotten it last month, took tons of photographs with it, but have not print any of them. May be I should get a digital picture frames to save the hassle of picking out pictures to print? I saw this digital frames few months ago, thought it’s quite a cool gadget to display or show off your photographs without having to print them out.

MG, whose blog I have silently read in the feed for a couple of months now, inspired me to write this post.

Growing up a nerd, I went to college majoring in nerdy subjects (math and physics). I graduated with a Bachelor degree and started teaching nerds. :-) I actually enjoyed these nerdy subjects, so I went back to school to do a Masters degree while teaching in a private college.

I was paid a stipend during my study and I get paid doing tutoring and teaching part time and later full-time in a private college. With all this newly found financial independence and the right travel companions, I did quite a few backpacking trips to a few Asian countries. A failed relationship, a traumatic experience with a mentally ill roommate and getting bored with the world of nerds and nuts, I quit my teaching job of 4 years and went to US the A.

I went there as an Au Pair and was just planning to stay for 3 months. But, I met a couple who have adopted a Chinese girl, they wanted me to teach them and a few other adopted parents Mandarin in exchange for money, free lodging and food. So, I extended my visa and stayed for another 9 months.

When I returned, I have decided to come back to my hometown because I felt guilty and wanted to redeem my absence in helping my family to take care of my bedridden grandmother. It was the right time to be back, the 1997 financial crisis forced the government to build more private universities for those sponsored students who previously would have sent to US, UK or Australia for tertiary education. The first private university in our history was started in my hometown in 1997. It paved the way for me to come back to teach right here in my hometown. I emailed my resume to the dean a week before I came home and started teaching engineering math with the university a week after I landed, that’s how desperate they were!

I met hubby in America and we kept in touch for a few years before we decided to end the long distance relationship and get married. We decided that he will come to live here. I have already taught for 4 years in the university, rather bored with my job and saw no future in a place that practice favoritism and has a quota system based on skin colors. In order to get tenure, I enrolled myself for a Permanent Head Damage but changed field to Education instead of science. The superiors and the university weren’t very supportive of that. Which prompted me to venture out to do something of my own.

We started an after school care and a tutoring center. The intention was that hubby would run the business and I continue to teach at the university until the business turned profitable. However, Murphy moved into our spare bedroom unexpectedly, he was not able to run the business all by himself and it didn’t help that he had to return to America for a couple of months to take care of his parents who suffered from cancer. I quit the job in the university prematurely, took over the business and ran it for the past three years. I took a Montessori course, and started a preschool when I took over the business. That was quite an experience. Suffice to say that I am not really the right material to run a business.

I started a blog in the beginning of this year to share about Montessori and accidentally acquired a Page Rank with that blog hosted on blogger without knowing anything about SEO. When I learned that I could make money with the blogs, I jumped on the opportunity. It has been a rewarding venture, monetary wise. With the money that I make from the first blog, I bought this domain and went dot com.

I have since sold the tutoring center, folded up the after school care and preschool. What remains is the “Spell to Write and Read” program that I am still teaching part time, three days a week. I volunteer at an after school care runs by an NGO for a few hours a week and my main income right now comes from blogging. It has been quite a long journey.

Ever since I folded up the preschool, I have taken this blogging a little more seriously. I spent a few hours a day blogging for money and actually making enough to quit my part time teaching if I want to. At the moment, blogging is a job. Since we have two spare bedrooms, I am going to setup one of them as home office. It takes discipline to stay on the chair instead wondering to the kitchen to look for something to eat every few minutes. :-)

I consider myself a small fly blogger and don’t really know much about search engine optimization or generating traffics. But, I am a quick learner and a fast adapter. This is a nice change that allows me to stay home when we do start a family hopefully in near future. I don’t know what future holds, for the time being, I am happy doing what I am doing!

Huh? Terracotta Warriors in London ? You got study history and geography in school or not? Or, are you drunk? Nope, I am not! A few of the original Terracotta Warriors are on display at the British Museum in London at the moment.

Though you can get a glimpse of the magnificent Terracotta Warriors in the British Museum from Sep-Apr, but nothing compares to seeing up close and personal 8000+ of these warriors together in Xian, China. Check out the trips trips to see these magnificent Terracotta Warriors from a 4 day Xian stopover package to full China tours of up to 26 days on dialaflight.com! Choose the tour duration that suit you.

I saw on a few people’s blog about this opportunity, so I went over to check out money4blogs.com and submitted both my blogs for considerations. I got a reply the following day, was offered to put one text link on each of the blog

After putting up up the links, I emailed back to inform I have done that. Today, I received the money in my Paypal account. Just want to share with you so you may know and try out, I am not being paid to write this post.:-)

My little brother just graduated with a degree in Genetics. Despite all the hypes and over-exaggerated glamors in the fictitious CSI, there are not many job opportunities relevant to this field in a developing country.

So he decided to work in the bank while looking and waiting for the right job to come along. He works in the loan department, selling unsecured personal loans. At first, my mother was apprehensive about his choice of job. She was asking:”Do you have to collect debts? Would people beat you up if they are broke and drunk/drugged?” Excuse my mother’s ignorance.:-) We jokingly told her that the banks are licensed loan sharks.

Of course my brother’s job is selling the loans, the approvals are done by the credit control people and the collections of bad debts are done by the debt collectors. In fact, it’s interesting to learn that except for the first month, he had to buy leads of people with credit card debts and called them. He doesn’t even have to call people from second month onwards. People start calling him instead. His clients have introduced new clients to him. His clients are mostly those in SMI (Small Medium Industry). These people previously used credit cards as revolving cash. The interest rates are lower for unsecured personal loans compare to credit card interest rates, which is why the unsecured personal loans are attractive to these businessmen.

Kiasumum wants to know what was my most embarrassing moment.

Being a careless and forgetful person and a daydreamer, I have quite a few incidents like wearing a skirt with the zip opened, discovered the purse was not with me in a restaurant/grocery store.

So, I would tell you my most recent embarrassing moment.:-) It happened about 3 weeks ago. I was at the Wednesday farmer’s market to get some fresh produce. On that fateful morning, it rained heavily early in the morning, so ground got wet and muddy.

The farmer’s market is at an open space doubled as parking space later of the day, it’s surrounded with big drains with a main entrance. Some people put some wood planks about 2-3 feet wide across the drain at a few spots for easier access to the market. I parked my car near one of the “bridges” made of this planks and being lazy to walk to the main entrance, I took one of these bridges to cross. Wrong choice!

What I did not realize was the plank was so slippery, the minute I stepped on it, I slipped. Even though I tried to maintain the balance, I still fell flat onto the muddy ground, literally “pok kai“. There were probably about 100-200 people there at the Farmer’s market, the vegetable sellers helped me to get up and they were all concerned “Teacher, are you ok?” I got bruises on my knees, left elbows and under my left eye, not really deep cut, so just applied some antiseptic and they are all healed now. Argh, that was embarrassing!

And, now, can you share your most embarrassing moment:

Joanne

ParisB

Miche

Have you started planning for the holiday season, it is just a few months away! If you happened to know a procrastinator, I am definitely not one of those people who are ready for the holidays three months in advance. LOL

Anyone of you have finished shopping already? I have been telling myself to get prepared early to avoid last minute rush for years, so far haven’t succeed! But, at least switching to shopping online helps to avoid the last minute crowds.

Do you always search for coupons and discount codes when you shop online? Couponchief.com is one of the sites that you can search for discount codes for major stores like Old Navy and Target for Old Navy and Target Coupons codes. You generally can get 10-35% discount off the normal priced merchandise with these coupon codes. I am going to make a wish list this year, wish me luck and have a stress free holiday shopping!