Leah’s Cafe

My sister’s boyfriend works in the UK and they have been in this long distance relationship for more than two years. My mother is nagging her to death about the current arrangement. She wants them to get married and my sister to apply for a transfer to work at her company’s headquarter in London.

My sister is very career minded. She has no plan to settle now in the near future yet. She thinks she is still too young to settle down and she wants to give her career more attention right now. Well, she is not exactly young, she is going to be 30 next year. My advice for her was: if she thinks she has met the person that she wants to marry, it’s better for her to start thinking seriously about the relocation.

At the end of the day, whether they decide to start looking for houses to buy or looking for properties to rent would depend on where they work and what are their long term plans i.e. to stay in the UK permanently or to move home after a few years. If both of them are going to work in London and they do not plan to live there for good, I guess they would just look for flats to rent as temporary shelter until they decide where to settle down.

My mother in law is sixty three years old, she has arthritis for many years now. She has been through some medical treatments and taking oral medication off and on, which help short term. When she is in a bad flare up, especially in the morning, with both knees and wrists swear up and in constant pain and fatigue. The ache just dampen her spirit. She just doesn’t have the motivation to do anything.

It hurts so much she doesn’t really want to get up and do things, but she knows she should get up and move around because that’s the best thing she can do. We are heart broken that my mother in law is so debilitated at such an early age. She has had chronic every day pain for so long now, that her tolerance to pain is worn down.

She has gotten some over-the-counter topical pain medications that offer temporary relief from arthritis pain for her. She finds some products have a strong medicinal odor and she doesn’t like them. The topical pain killers come as gels, creams, lotions or patches that are applied directly to the skin over her aching joints.

We recently got a tube of Freeze It Gel from an advertiser. It’s a gel contains Aloe Vera, Vitamin E, ILEX, 3.5% menthol and 0.2% camphor as pain relievers. ILEX is an herbal extract from a South American holly shrub. ILEX is used around the world in various health and wellness formulations. It says can help to enhance the effects of the pain relief ingredients. The label says it can relief sore muscles, muscle sprains, body pain, and arthritis joint pains.

My mother in law has been using Freeze It for a couple of weeks now, she likes the gel because it has a mild flavor, does not emit a strong medicinal odor that she hates. She also like the fact that the gel is water based and does not make her skin sticky with oil after application. Most importantly, it was effective in relieving her joint pain. We can see her smiling and being active in the Church again! If you or your loved ones are suffering from the same ailment, do check out this product!

Went back to my parents’ place for dinner today. Both sisters are home too. They just came back from oversea business trips. Sister number one went to Japan and brought back a bottle of Japanese plum wine for me.

I like Japanese plum wine, it is my favorite alcoholic beverages around. It’s sweet with an almost syrupy consistency. It’s also very flavorful. All these characteristics make it easy to appreciate and fun to drink. The best thing about this wine is, it comes in an easy to open bottle, no need corkscrews.

The bottle that my sister bought as actual plums in it. Actually, depends on the brand, the wine may use white wine or sake as a base. The alcohol content is quite high for non drinkers like us, I think it’s 14-15 %. You can get drunk drinking this.:-)

My 7 years old niece called me today to find out whether I am going back to her grandparent’s house this weekend. She wants me to pick her and her brother up if I do. Apparently her parents are going to travel, she and her 9 years old brother decided that they don’t want to go together.

I think this is the first time they didn’t want to go along with their parents’ traveling plans. They were usually quite enthusiastic about going places with their parents. I wonder that’s an indication that they are trying to exert their independence? :-)

Hubby’s relatives are in the farming business. They own a farming corporation in Illinois. They have thousand acres of dairy farm and corn fields with hundred of hired working on the farms. They raise cattle for the local market and also raise cattle by contract for Japanese farming corporations. So, next time when you eat your famous Kobe beef in Japan, they might be just beef from America.:-)

The farms are all fenced up with agricultural fencing. I remember sometime last year, hubby was robbed in to help mending gates and fences that were destroyed in the storm. As a city boy, that was hard work for him! His uncle had decided to replace some of the very old fences with more durable treated wood products. I guess it makes sense to invest in better quality fencing since the business has been really successful and their children will continue to run the corporation for many years to come.

A friend of ours is married to a Russian girl and he met her through a dating site. According to him, many men in America meet their Russian bribes on this dating site. I asked him why he wants to marry a Russian girl. He told me that they are beautiful and they are not as spoiled as American women. Well, that’s an honest answer from an honest man.:-)

Seriously, the Russian girls are really beautiful, they are usually tall and slim, I have not seen any fat or short Russian girls so far. Sometime I wonder should my my friend who is single in his 40s try his luck with the Russian girls. (Ok, call me busy body) He learned Russian in college and can still speak a little. So, communication should be easier and he would brush up his Russian in no time if romance blooms.:-)

Dad has high uric acid, I am quite worry about the pills that he takes. He won’t change his diet pattern, he doesn’t take much vegetables and like meats only. When he suffers joint pain due to high uric acid, he would go to the doctor and the doctor would give him pills to lower the acid uric. These pills are not exactly kind to the kidney and liver.

I hope he doesn’t reply so much on the pills. But, dad is stubborn and has low threshold for pain (mom always says I am exactly like him in that sense) he won’t listen, and mom just let him be most of the time. Mom may nag us to death but she is not nagging with dad, one thing that I probably have much to learn.

Looks like my parents have plans for the long weekend. Mom has left with her friends going on a tour. She woke me up at 4.00 a.m this morning to tell me that I have to cook my own lunch and dinner because she won’t be around. Argh, I wished she would tell me earlier or leave a note for me, as I just went to bed an hour ago after finishing all the paid posts!

Thought at least dad will be around, but I got up at 9.00 am to find him gone too. Dad didn’t even tell me he won’t be around today! Looks like I am going to be home alone this weekend!

My mother and I are planning to go up to PJ next week to help my two sisters with their move to a new home. They bought a condo together and are going to move in next week.

If we go up on Saturday, we hope to stay till Monday morning. May meet up with some old friends, but don’t think I would have time to meet up with everyone. As my mother and I are going there to help them to measure the windows so that we can sew the curtains. They also need help to scout and shop for some of the essential items. Home ownership is a big responsibility, they surely are overwhelmed with all the miscellaneous things they have to deal with.

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.