Having put on at least 20 lbs (10 kg) in the past five years, boy, it’s hard to get rid of the extra baggages as we age. Have been trying to control the diet and exercise, as I am too chicken to try weight loss pills. But, laziness and indiscipline often get the better of me. The weight loss plan hasn’t been working.

As the big boy is so much taller and bigger than me, I still look “petite” beside him, one less incentive for me to lose weight. :-) My only motivations left will be to fit in those trendy and beautiful clothings again, on top of getting healthier.

Happy New Year to all! May 2008 be the year you get to have the time to do all the things you want to do. My wish on the top of the list is to clean out the “stuffs” in the house that I’ve been unable to do for the past two years. I either have to give away, sell or just dump many of the stuffs to prepare for the big move in spring.

Didn’t feel like talking, so I hang up the phone and switched off the computer, took a break from blogging and had a pity party with myself. :-) Feeling better yesterday, got up to cook some comfort food and went for a walk in the neighborhood. Finally I am feeling normal !

They kind of told me that I am lucky to be married to an American and could migrate without going through the loops. The thing is, it’s not my first choice to live in the States. True, it’s a great country to live. But, it has also a lot of restrictions of what I can do or cannot do as an alien who speaks with an accent. It’s not easy for me to change the way I speak though it’s not impossible to get rid of the accent with immersion.

Leaving my motherland also means uprooting myself from a culture that I am familiar and learning to adapt to a new culture, getting to know new friends and establish a new social circle. I won’t say it’s an easy thing to do, but it’s probably a necessarily step to keep the marriage going. I just don’t see how the marriage can survive with two people living apart for long term.

I love the current arrangement, teaching 3 days a week at the center. After weeding out parents who wanted nothing more than teaching to the tests in the last two years, I now have a nice bunch of children who are pleasant to have around. With that I don’t mean they are “easy” to teach, it’s the opposite, half of them are children with some forms of learning difficulty and were not able to read despite the fact that they are highly intelligent.

The flexibility of the current situation also allows me to volunteer at the after school care for children of single parents once or twice a week. All this are possible thanks to the opportunity to make money online. The best thing is, I just have to pack up the laptop to change the location of work. I love that, and I wonder how come I never thought of doing things with the Internet since I have been an avid user since the early 90s!

I stopped by the sales office of the service provider, signed the one-year service agreement yesterday. The sales clerk said the installation crew will come to install the phone within 3 days. I am keeping my fingers cross about that.

As for the kitchen remodeling, the guy who is supposed to come back to me with the cost estimation hasn’t called me. I have called him twice in the last 10 days, he gave some excuses that he hasn’t got the list of my tiles selection. (How come?) I didn’t want to have to complain to my uncle whom he works for. But, he is a little inefficient to take more than a week to come out with a cost estimation, don’t you think so?

With such a bad start, I doubt he is going to stay on schedule for the work, and I really don’t know when his workers can “start work”. I prefer the other older man who works for my uncle, he is much more efficient. When we did the tiling for the tutoring center, he was able to give us a cost estimation on the spot, the workers and tiles also arrived the next day after we picked the tiles and everything was done within a week. Now, after two weeks, nothing has been done!

If I have a choice, I would have scheduled the classes on weekdays. But, nowadays, the school keep the children until quite late and the children have multiple classes to attend in a week. It’s a headache trying to accommodate everyone.

In the past two years, parents who want teaching to the tests were weeded out, the present students in the class are quite nice and pleasant to teach. They don’t feel the pressure and they like the multi-sensorial kind of learning environment. They do not just sit there listening, they get to participate and play games.

I went to pick the tiles yesterday. For some reason, the guy who is supposed to give me a price quote hasn’t called yet. Though I am not worried of being overcharged as he works for my uncle who owned the tile dealership. My cousin always gives me good discount for the tiles and get his best man to do the job. But, I would like to know whether the total cost comes out to be within our budget or we can change the tiles if the price exceeds the budget. I must call to find out today.

It was an air condition repair shop that I could trust, I passed the key to the boss and went to the next door’s Indian Restaurant for lunch. I could see 2-3 workers working on my car from the restaurant. By the time I finished lunch, they were about to complete the job. They told me the fan of the air condition was malfunction due to a faulty time relay.( Or something like that? I don’t really understand what they said.:-)) However, I am glad it costs less than 20 bucks to fix that.

I have recently discovered this workshop, the workers and the boss there are honest people. Few months ago, another place told me that I needed to pay 300-400 bucks to get my car’s air condition fixed. In fact, all it needed was a refill of gas and it only costs less than 20 bucks at this place. I would never go back to the first workshop that tried to cheat me. But, this one had a loyal customer now.

I was so exhausted unpacking stuffs, reorganizing the closets, clearing the messes, no energy to blog about the meeting yet. I took a long nap this afternoon and sort of recovered from the exhaustion.

And, these are corners that still waiting to be cleared.

I brought back the metal cabinet to set up a home office.

Just in case you are curious why I am moving and where to. I am moving the stuffs back to our house. In the past two years, we (more like I have been, since hubby hasn’t been around for almost a year) have been staying on the second floor of the premises that housed the preschool. I am moving the stuffs back to our house that has been vacant and neglected for two years. I will be working from home mostly and teach part time at the ground floor of the same premises since we have sold the first floor.

I need to pack the stuffs at the center with a faster pace. I have done maybe 60% of the packing in the last three weeks. It’s very unlikely that I can move all of them out by the end of this week. Will probably have to hire some helpers to help me to move the heavy stuffs too.

I don’t dare to move all the heavy furniture by myself since I hurt my lower back the last time we moved. I wish the man is around to help when he is needed.

I really want to get things moving and hopefully move back to our house by the end of this month. Need to get someone to install new kitchen cabinets, the old ones from the developer are so lousy, they started to fall apart after 3 years!

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!

It’s really that time of the month again, when sugar level plunge, feelings and emotions are chaotic. Sometimes I forget that I am a woman till that day of the month arrives, when I get annoyed super easily, feel frustrated for nothing, get all cranky, disturbed, and worried over a non-intentional word, that the unanswered questions, unseen future could cause much worries and insecurities, that the perceived inattentiveness could bring a massive thunderstorm storm.

It’s also that time of the month when I need all the love, caring and empathy and understanding, solidarity and emotional support, not sweet nothings, buttering or compliments. :-)