Leah’s Cafe

Our friends Joe and Anna have lived in their present house for 16 years. Now, their children are all grown up and they are running out of living space. They have bought a piece of land and built their dream home on the top of the hill.

They have invited us over to their house for the house warming party and we were there admiring their tastefully decorated new house. Well, should I say mansion.:-) It’s a 3-storey bungalow with six bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and many other functional rooms i.e. exercise room, rooms for jacuzzi and sauna and dining room. They also have a mini bar complete with some very unique Bar Stools between the living area and the dining room.

Anna actually found these bar stools at the secondhand recycling store, you won’t believe it! I know, they are rich and they probably can afford the most expensive imported name brand, but they like to look for bargains at the second hand stores. They have quite a lot of antique pieces that they have spent more money restoring them than what they paid for. But, I would say they really have good taste, the old junks were totally transformed and they are indeed looking gorgeous and blend in beautifully with the theme of decorating in the house.

Hispanic is the largest second language group of people in America, in some cities, they are the majority ethnic group. It’s only smart for businesses to cater for their preferences and needs in order to capture the market share.

It’s not very uncommon to find businesses start to offer their service in Spanish like this hotel booking site, it is specially designed to provide Hoteles booking service for Spanish speaking people. We know for most people finding the right hotel room at the best price is the top concern. But if the booking can be done in the language they are familiar, that would be making the task easier. It’s only a matter of time other businesses catch up and start to design their businesses specifically to meet the needs and interests of Spanish-speaking individuals in the United States.

As long as our society still place a lot of emphasis on paper qualifications in securing a good job, everyone will try to get “qualified” by hook or by crook. As an ex university instructor, I can testify that cheating and plagiarism are rampant. Not only the students would try to bring in notes, write formulas on their hands, pencil case, calculator, they also copy and paste their assignments a lot. Some of my colleagues refused to give assignments for that reason, because we generally only get a few sets of answers only.

The internet has been a great source and excellent research tool, but with the Internet, it’s also easier for students to cheat. They can practically copy and paste their assignments entirely from the internet. What more now they can even buy essay from websites that help them with essay writing. These websites have professional British and American writers who can do custom writing. These custom research papers are promised to be 100% plagiarism.

I wonder if you contracted all your assignments to this service and graduated with a piece of paper, how much is that piece of paper worth? Especially in the long run, don’t you think the employer would eventually find out you actually do not know nuts? :-)

November started really slow due to some health issues that I was dealing with, but it did catch up by the third week of November. The PR of my first blog went from PR3 to PR2, then PR2 to PR4 and finally PR0. This did affect income from some of the networks, but I have three new blogs that have acquired PR1 and PR2, that more or less compensate for the loss.

I have have good luck with some networks that do not factor PR in their algorithm. If you look at the comparison chart for the last three months, income from various networks did yo-yo together with the PR. But, at the end, it seems it’s like a zero sum game, you lost some, you gain some.

I don’t foresee any drastic hike or drop of income in December, but we all know granny G is going to continue to smack us if we don’t stop what she deems as naughty things we do. So, do you intend to explore and experiment with different ways of making money online? I do.

Here are:

September’s Blogging Income
October’s Blogging Income

The sliding glass door at the tutoring center is facing the west, it gets a lot of sun during the evening before the sunset. The classroom next to the sliding door can get really hot due to this excessive rays. We have decided to put a layer of tint on the sliding glass door to reduce infrared rays that cause heat and ultraviolet light rays that cause fading.

The tint is similar to the one they have on San Diego glass tint. It is not too expensive, but it’s really effective in reducing the glare and heat. We have a cool room now and in a long run, I think the lower utility bills will pay for the tint itself. These films are invisible on glass but can help to keep the natural tone of the room with low reflectivity levels, so it doesn’t significantly reducing visible light transmittance. We wouldn’t want a dark room that looks like having some suspicious activities to parents who send their children to us.:-)

Have been busy trying to research and figure out the paperwork required for the visa process. We are not sure if we start to process the immigrant visa now, would it be done by next spring. There is always a slight possibility that it cannot be completed by next spring. That means we may be stuck and I cannot visit with the visitor visa (which I already have) when the immigrant visa is pending. We are also trying to make sure visiting hubby with the visitor visa won’t jeopardize the application/processing for the immigrant visa.

We found out that sometime it takes years for some people, but so far from what we gathered from the internet, people from here have shared good experience and shorter waiting period. We didn’t know that hubby could have done the application and filing with the embassy here directly when we were living here, and that route is usually the fastest compare to do the filing with the Department of Homeland Security within the States.

It takes a lot of leg work and cost money to do all the filings, we just pray and hope that it won’t be too painful process.

Are you interested in your family history or the genealogy of your ancestry? On my side of family, my father told us that there is this book in the temple of the “chong” clan in China that recorded every descendent’s name for the past few hundred years! (But, they don’t record girls’ names, girls are expected to marry out of the clan.)

On hubby side of family, my father in law was a historian and journalist, he has done very extensive research on his family and his wife’s family ancestry line. That was pre-internet age, he did it manually and researched the family history through census, Church records, tombstones, court records, death certificates, old newspapers, obituaries, and birth certificates. He went so far to Europe to trace the roots of his family. He visited Germany, where his ancestors came from, to trace the lineage. He did find some valuable and vital information of his forefathers through Church records in Germany!

When you start researching your family history, it will help to identify the influences that make you who you are today as an individual, parent and wife/husband, as well as, the development of personal beliefs, actions/reactions, and values. It was interesting to find that the maternal family of hubby has a tie back to Benjamin Rush, the eminent Physician, writer, educator, humanitarian, an interesting figure as one could find in the formation of the United States, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

With the help of internet, it’s never been easier to trace your family roots, especially with the help of genealogy sites like TribalPages.com. It has over 175,000 Family Trees and over 80 million names and 2 million photos in the database! It’s Free. You just have to sign up, add names and instantly create your family tree.

This picture must be taken last year around December (see the Christmas tree?). He was back to Illinois for 2-3 months. Before he went back there, he was about 190lbs.

I think in this picture, he was already putting on at least 10 lbs. With a height of 6ft4in, he looked rather slim except for the beer belly. In fact, he claimed that he never was this slim since he was 20. That’s what 2 years of tropical weather and constantly in the sauna did to him, he lost at least 30 lbs living here.:-)

Fast forward to December 2007.

He weighs 230 lbs right now.He needs to get on a diet, don’t you think so? :-)

I was reading a book on the JFK family the other day, was pretty surprised to find out so many members in the JFK family have died in plane crashes. I thought that was because they flew more often and therefore the probability of encountering plane crashes was higher.

Though plane and helicopter crashes may not happen everyday, it seems they happened frequent enough to have lawyers who specialize in aviation law. Statistical report by the National Transportation Board actually showed that there are more than one thousand of aviation accidents and hundreds of fatalities in the US every year.

I am sure most of the survivors or next-of-kin of the victims would be seeking compensation from parties that are potentially liable for the crashes. Most lay person would properly need to engage an aviation lawyer to identify the party or parties liable for the accident and therefore determining all possible claims. Tragedy of any kind will be heart wrenching, a good lawyer who takes care of the nitty-gritty would have made a lot of grieving parties a little less burdened.

People often are curious what do I cook for lunch when I am at home alone most of the days. I am not a picky eater and can eat the same food repeatedly. I usually cook simple one fish or chicken dish in gravy or soup, and one stir-fry vegetable.

If I cook soup for lunch, I would usually cook a little extra and use it as the base for noodle soup during dinner. One of my laziest way to have vegetables and enough fiber is to fried egg with a mix of different vegetables. It is an easy dish that can be whipped up in a minute, also good to finish up left over in the refrigerator. :-)

Can you figure out the ingredients?

(celery, carrots, tomatoes, bitter gourd, fresh mushrooms, onions, eggs)

What do you look for when choosing a web host? Do you examine a variety of criteria, look for reviews and personal recommendations, and even scrutinize in great detail the features offered by the prospective web hosts?

What to look for when selecting a web host? Most wed host featured prominently in their list of plans on the amount of disk space and bandwidth your site is allowed. You would want to make sure the host offers a generous allowance of disk space and bandwidth so that a surge of heavy traffic will still cause a CPU and RAM usage spike and hit that limit.

If you are looking for ecommerce hosting, obviously it would have different needs and specific criteria. You would want to test drive the shopping cart software to make sure it’s simple, user friendly and easy to customize but sophisticated enough to accommodate all your needs. Some shopping cart softwares may even have built in feature that allows you to add multiple storefronts and automatic SEO (search engine optimization).

When you plan your website, always look at it in the long term. If your site rarely changes and only has a set number of pages, which is typical if you are only selling a particular product or a service, it may be better off as a static site. As static sites run into the resource limits slower than dynamically created sites.

We have officially taken my name off the tendency agreement for the tutoring center starting from 1st December. The second floor of the business setup is officially SOLD. We were paid the good faith deposit a while ago and we will receive the first payment this week and the last payment in the beginning of 2008.

The new owner used to teach at the center, she was our best teacher who had been with us since we started the business three years ago. Since her hubby is helping her with the running of the center and I am sure she would be doing fine. In fact, I sold her the money making part of the business, the tutoring center is the one that kept the Montessori preschool running because the preschool was running at a loss.

With the second floor being sold, we are currently looking for someone to take over the after care setup that we have on the ground floor. It is a bit difficult to sell it because we have stopped running the after school for one year and people didn’t like the fact that we don’t have existing students for them to start off with.

Since most cities in America have horrible public transportation system, we were pretty surprised and impressed with the efficient public transportation system in NYC. In fact, our friend whom we were visiting at that time did not own an automobile, she actually got around fairly well without one!.

We flew into Newark airport, because our friend lives in New Jersey though she works in Manhattan. My friend did make arrangement with the limousine service in New Jersey for a stress free pick up. It was a service that our friend frequently used whenever she has visitors. We had great experience riding in a comfortable car and was rather impressed with the professional service rendered. Do try their service out when you are in NYC next time!

Since I am closing the tutoring center for December, I would have one month long break. Apart from trying to clean up and unpack after the house moving, I hope to do something about the stash of fabrics.

I was looking through the sewing patterns that I have, trying to look for a pattern for a dress. Unfortunately, couldn’t find a flattering pattern that easy enough for a person who hasn’t sew for three years. Since I bought this sewing patterns three years ago when I was much slimmer, they won’t do any good now. The alternative would be sending this materials to a seamstress to get them sew up. :-)

When we were living in VA, I often saw a group of people gathered at the park outside the library, dressed in renaissance costume. At first, I thought they were rehearsing a play or a theatrical production or something like that.

However, later I learned from my friend Heidi that they belonged to a group of renaissance fans who were into historic reenactments. I also saw them at the Renaissance Fair in Stafford County, VA in the spring. They were all dressed up in the flamboyant jesters and the whirling capes, and the women looked so feminine.

It’s this aspect of renaissance thing that is strangely appealing to many people. Lots of people like to dress up in costumes and play let’s pretend. May be there’s a part of us that never grows up. If you’ve ever been to a Civil War re-enactment, you know what I mean. We like to play like we’re doing things just exactly like they did in the “olden days” . . . just as long as we can get in our cars and go home and take a nice hot shower when it’s all over. That’s sort of what this is all about.:-)

This is the first weekend of my December break, first Saturday I didn’t have to teach, it’s so nice to sleep in and not have to rush out the door at 7.30 a.m. It takes 30 minutes to travel from the house to the center. Though the first class doesn’t start until 9.00 a.m, but there will always be crazy parents who call or drop their children at as early as 8.00 a.m.

This people are really thick skin, even though you keep telling them you don’t open until 9.00 a.m, they still insist they would drop their children before the door opens. I hate to keep the children waiting at the door and risk their safety, so I do open the door before 9.00 a.m grudgingly for their sake. Sometime I just buy the newspaper and read while waiting for the other children to show up at 9.00 a.m.

At least this people are not as rude as the other one who called at 7.15 a.m and demanded to know why I was not there, I have since waved sayonara to that one, customers may be always right, but there is a limit of how much nonsense I will take.:-)

Definitely, if you are alive and breathing (and assuming you are since you are reading this!), you NEED health insurance. Not a maybe, not wait and see, you definitely need it!

Why?

Well, if you don’t have health insurance and something happens, you could easily accumulate several hundred thousand dollars in medical debt…and medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy! On top of that, if your illness or injury is serious enough, you’ll be out of work, which means you will have a huge debt to pay and no money coming in. Insurance is an absolutely vital part of any sound financial plan. We want you to be prepared.

I am sure you are aware that they are so many different health insurance plans and options floating around out there? PPO, HMO, and HSA, just to name a few. Do you know what they do, how much you need, or better yet, what all the abbreviations stand for? Well, you would need to find out and understand what types of insurance are best for you. For example, if you live in Florida, you can choose a Florida healthcare plan among all the plans available. Some of them can vary significantly depends on your need, that’s why it’ so important to get educated about various options so that you can make the right decision for you and your family.

Have not felt the same tiredness and fatigue this whole week, hopefully they are gone!

The second blood test did come back showing the level of Thyroxide is within tolerable limit. So, that means the tyroroid maybe doing ok, doctor said no need to go on medication, but he advised me to take food with more Iodine.

Though English is my second language, I speak and write English well enough for people not to have any problem understanding me. However, I do have an accent!

I taught in a college back in my home country, if I would like to get back to teach in a college, I would have to go through an accent reduction course. I think speaking English fluently with very little accent creates a better impression and students may not have an excuse to blame my English when they do not do well. LOL In fact, some of my ex-students like to complain about the foreign teachers’ accents when they don’t do well academically. So that they can hide the fact that they never put effort into their work or partying too much.

If you are in a sales career or a job which requires you to deal with a lot of people then going through a course that helps you with accent reduction may just be the thing for you. It would certainly boost your confidence when you can the language without an accent and command the respect of those who hear.

It’s so nice to sleep until you wait up. I am enjoying my holiday break right now. Go to sleep late and get up when I am awake, usually around 9.00 a.m. I went shopping last night and bought two blouses and some inner wears.

The shopping malls are all geared up for Christmas, with all the decorations and carols singing at the background. The businesses are all capitalized on Christmas because it’s a season of shopping and consuming for a lot people. From November onwards, it is impossible to forget that Christmas is coming. Coloured lights decorate many town centers and shops, along with shiny decorations, and artificial snow painted on shop windows. In streets and shops, ‘Christmas trees’ (real or plastic evergreen ‘conifer’ trees) will also be decorated with lights and Christmas ornaments.

I don’t do much of Christmas shopping, not really in the mood to decorate up the house, it would be just quiet celebrations at the Church or with friends in the bible study group. Christmas indeed is a time of celebration, to celebrate god’s goodness and love for us.

My friend is suffered from hair loss and his hair is thinning until some bald patches have appeared. Though he said it’s due to genetic factor because his father and grandfather all lost their hair before 40, I do think he should seek treatment or medication to prevent it from getting worse.

We don’t know whether he knew about Provillus, a natural herbal product for treating hair loss problem, but we direct him to the hair loss forum with the hope that he learn more about the product and do something about his residing hair line.

Will you get on a dating site to know people locally? Personally I greatly endorsed such convenient way to meet people. I do have many friends who have met their partners through the many dating sites, some ended up in serious relationship and some eventually got married.

If you find it hard to meet people in real life or are tired of the local bar scene, try out the free online dating . You have nothing to lose but a lot to gain, it will be fun to put your social life on speed dial, join the free chat line service to meet people in your local area. Who knows you might have more luck than trying to start an intelligent conversation at the bar? LOL

Have you ever wondered why teak wood is usually used for making outdoor furniture? Teak is well known as the hardest and most durable material for patio and garden use, it can be used to make high quality outdoor furniture that can stand the most extreme temperature and weather.

Though the teak garden and patio furniture do not come cheap. But, consider the fact that they are long lasting and basically last you a lifetime, they are great value for money! You do not have to replace them every few years and may even be able to pass down to your children or your children’ children as family heirloom.

All of us have heard of High Definition TV, but what is High Definition Radio, you may ask? High Definition Radio is the newest technology that enables AM and FM radio stations to broadcast their programs digitally. It’s a big leap from the analog broadcasts of the past and it’s considered the most significant advancement since the introduction of FM stereo more than 50 years ago.

Basically, digital radio works the same as the conventional radio. Signal being broadcast on one end and a receiver on the other end. The broadcast is free with no subscription, but the difference is you would need the HD Radio Receiver to hear the digital broadcast.

The coolest thing about this technology is the ability to just tag a song that you hear on the radio and buy it! How many times have you heard a song on the radio you’d really like to hear again? Wouldn’t it be great if you could just buy that particular song ?

With digital broadcasting, it’s possible to just do that with an iPod dock with iTunes Tagging. You simply hit the “tag” button when you hear a song you like on your local FM High Definition Radio station. This info will be saved into your iPod, and you can just purchase this song from Apple® iTunes Music Store the next time you sync your iPod to your computer. What a wonderful way to get your favorite music in pure crystal digital sound!

All the music lovers out there, you may want to check out the links to find out the local stations that have adopted this technology. If you live in New York for instance, you will find many New York High Definition Radio stations broadcasting through hundreds of High Definition channels.

Hubby asked me what I would like for Christmas few days ago, I refused to tell him exactly what I want? That would just spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?
They are so many choices and varieties of holiday Christmas baskets, it shouldn’t be difficult to find something that his wife would love! He should know what his wife loves, and if he doesn’t know, he needs to find out! Whatever happened to effort and thoughts?

Do all men turn clueless and unromantic after they get married? I think it’s just being lazy, didn’t want to use though the excuse is always he doesn’t want to end up buying something that I would return.