Leah’s Cafe

Have you ever worked together with your spouse? Or do you plan to work together in future so you can spend more time together?

Running a business with my spouse certainly was a challenge. During 2005-2006, we teamed up to run an after school care, a preschool and a tutoring center. The business is housed at a building near town and we return to the house at the suburb every evening.

There were many nights had too much paperwork to get done in the office and we periodically stay at one of the spared rooms at the center when we were too tired to drive home. The business got us practically stuck with one another 24/7. While working together has always been a part of our relationship, it isn’t always easy. It can get complicated. There are a lot of nights I went home at 10 p.m, and I wasn’t always glad to see him, I am sure he was the same.:-)

While working together can be a strain on relationships, I think sometimes the situations can work, but just like any marriage, it takes work. The issues and frictions caused between couples who work together are essentially the same as in any relationship. Decision-making, power and gender roles all come into play whether a couple is part of a business or not. I think it’s about keeping the dialogue open. In fact, the time couples spend together at work can work to help develop stronger relationships instead of breaking it down. Easy than say eh?

Hubby is planning to return here. We are discussing about how he is going to make a living here. He would rather look for a job outside than working at the center, but it’s probably not easy for him to find a job immediately. So we will have to work together as reading tutors until he finds a new job. We try not have to see each other 24/7, as we had a lot of disagreements and got on each other’s nerves working together last time.

We were running the after school care, preschool and tutoring business before he returned to see his parents in IL. Now that I have folded up the after school care and preschool, the only thing he could help out at the center would be teaching the Spell to Write and Read program. I hope it will work out this time as we do not have so much workload and the business is debt free, so no financial pressure with the enrollments.

Already bad that there was a little girl murdered and another went missing, it’s awful to find that they are one and the same! I really hope the police force is going to work hard to find the killer and bring the sicko criminal to book. Meantime, we need to keep all our children safe!

Excerpt from The Star:
DNA tests: Body found in bag is Nurin (update 3)

PETALING JAYA: Selangor police have said that DNA tests on the body found stuffed in a sports bag on Monday in Petaling Jaya show that it is that of missing girl Nurin Jazlin Jazimin.

However, the police proposed a second DNA test be conducted to confirm this after eight-year-old Nurin’s parents refused to accept the positive DNA results released here on Thursday.

Selangor police chief deputy commissioner Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar said the DNA results released by the Forensics Department at about 2pm on Thursday showed a match between the DNA of both of Nurin’s parents and that of the body. more news

I recently met a 12 years old boy who can’t do simple addition and took a few minutes to figure out a question like: what is the sum of 3 + 8! He has been sent to many Math tutors over the years, it’s sad that he never learn his most basic operations. His mother asked me whether I can help him to prepare for his school exams. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to teach him fractions, percentage or angles when he can’t do simple operations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

The only way for him to proceed is to go back to the very basics, to learn the basic operations, decimal system and simple geometry before he can move on. Can that be done in a traditional classroom setting? Not a chance that could happen in a crowded classroom! He certainly need an innovative tutoring environment and more hands-on approach that work for his lack of attention span.

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I feel very blessed to be born in this wonderful and great country. However, like any other places, we have our share of grumbles and grievances towards the people who run this country a.k.a. the politicians. One things I am deeply concern is the rampant of bureaucracies and corruptions. You may think the media’s recent report of misuse of fund is news, but it’s a yearly report, every year the same report was presented. The oppositions would make some noise about it, the media may or may not publish it, but the people are forgetful, another trivial issue would be raised to divert the people with short attention span, and very quickly nobody remembered who are supposed to answer to this queries.

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The majority of people who are educated and professionals today are from a humble roots. A few of the doctors in the cell group I belong shared about how grateful they are for being able to be trained as doctors in the 80s with very minimal fees paid. They were doctors who have made their millions and live comfortable lives right now. They said they were able to get trained as doctors though they were not from a rich family.

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Growing up in a small village in the 70s and 80s, I am equally grateful for the “free” education provided by the government. It enabled my parents who were mere farmers to send five children to college. I remembered we hardly have to pay any fees back then. The text books were free and the headmasters were not pushing workbooks for commissions. Throughout my school years from 7-18 years old, my parents just had to pay a yearly fee of about 10 bucks and a few more bucks for the writing books.

Anyone remembers there were even free lunches/snacks, free dental care, free optical service provided by the government for school children? If you don’t have slightest idea what I am talking about, either you are too young or you live in a city/town. :-) This programs are for rural schools, so if you have attended schools in towns and cities, you might not get such facilities. I could still remember the dental nurses came in a van on Wednesday and Friday. The government clinic would send their nurses to test our eyesight’s once a year. Well, we were a very much under-developed country in the 80s before Dr MM pushed for industrialisation in the mid 80s? Sadly, not many people remember our humble roots and greedy and power hungered politicians are not the only ones to blamed.

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Do poor people and less fortunate people in this country have the same opportunities today? What I am getting at is: there are clearly a lot of money being pumped into education and poverty eradication every year, but how many low income and less fortunate people in the society continue to struggle without much help? We don’t see many average low income people benefited from the all this tax payers money. Basically, we don’t see the money translated into programs with purposes. All we heard were a few millions here and there being spent to build white elephants and to rectify mistakes that they could have avoided in the first place i.e. leaking roof, falling ceiling and cracking highway.

My late grandmother who had enough of poverty and starvation back in China said we are in a land of abundance, a land of milk and honey. Her rational is that you can just pop some seeds on the ground and things start to grow. But, urbanization also means more people have abandoned the land to move into the city. It ended up that self sustainable living is longer possible and they have to subject themselves to the oppressive capitalist world to fulfill their basic needs. I am hardly surprised when statistics said the majority of the poor are in the cities!

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I have avoided writing such entries for a while, because I am just a mere teacher who has no solution to what’s going on. But, I guess I am expressing my thoughts and reminiscence about the good old days of this country. And, the post is also to serve as a reminder to myself: use the vote to show my disapproval in the coming election. Though it will not make much difference in the overall climate, we all need to exercise our right to voice out our disapproval as rakyats (people of this country)

How many of us periodically backup the data in our PC? I bet most of us are not so diligent to do it as often as we should. Most of the time we think it’s too troublesome and too time consuming to do it. But, would you do it more often if you have an easy peasy way to backup the data on your PC ?

IBackup.com offers online storage where you can store your data online with a drag-n-drop interface. It works like a mapped drive or a folder on your computer in the familiar explorer interface. Check it out if you are looking for ideas to store your important data.

I stayed up late to write paid posts last night and only got up at 8.30 a.m this morning. Found out there was no electricity supply, so I happily went out for a walk and after that stopped by the grocery store to pick up some grocery and had breakfast there. By the time I reached home, it was already 11.00 a.m. Still no electricity!

I spent another hour cooking and eating lunch, then trying to take a nap. But the darn phone kept ringing ! Who keeps calling with a private phone number? I do not answer phone calls with numbers I couldn’t see as it usually ends up being a “you have been selected” phone calls from credit cards or insurance companies.

Needless to say I wasted the whole morning without getting anything done. At 1.00 p.m, I was wondering how come power failure lasted so long, feeling perplexed, I went to ask the next door neighbor when the electricity would be restored. He was giving me some kind of puzzled look. Then, I looked into his house, saw his television was turned on. How come he got electricity and I didn’t have?

My kind neighbor reminded me that maybe the fuse went off this morning during the thunderstorm. Aaah, how come I never thought of that!! Unbelievable, I was so dumb.

Anyway, that was my exciting day so far. Now I’m busy playing catch up on all the reserved/assigned paid posts on the montessori blog!

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