Leah’s Cafe

If you are driving an old junk like we do, you probably know of at least one place that sells recycled auto parts like the midwest auto recycling. When our car needs parts replacement, we often check out this auto recycling places. If we could not find any used parts, then only we would buy new replacements from the guys at the workshop or the car accessories stores.

Most of the time, we are able to find recycled parts with really good price and most of them this parts come with warranties. If you are afraid of getting problematic parts, you  or you can get someone to test drive, visually inspect the parts!

Have you ever bought a watch or clock as a gift ? Some Chinese people may still see it as a taboo in this modern time as gifting clocks or watches rhymed with “paying last respect to a deceased person”. :-)We have wanted to get a watch for my uncle on his birthday because we knew his watch died on him recently. But we were afraid he would mind.

Of course we cannot afford anything expensive, was thinking of getting him a functional watch that he can wear everyday. We are not really going to buy breitling watches or a name brand like patek philippe for him. This patek phillipe watches certainly are nice, but they do not come cheap though! The other day I saw one Patek Philippe - Gondolo 5030 J 18K Yellow Gold watch selling on Ebay for $12k !

Do you know of anyone who owns an expensive watch like this? Personally, I don’t. Even ourwealthy friend who lives in a big mansion and retired at 40+ years old wears a watch that costs a few thousands ONLY. :-)

I shouldn’t have done this, but bad habit died hard. I often read till I fell asleep and leave the glasses beside me. I did that when I was taking a nap on the carpet yesterday.

About 10-15 minutes after I fell asleep, the phone rang and I got up to get the phone in a daze. Guess what? I stepped right into the glasses !!

The frame is a bit bend and the string that held the lower part of the frame is broken now. I hope it can be easily fixed and the string is replacable. This glasses cost me an arm, man. It’s expensive affair to be short sighted, all this money spent on contact lenses and glasses is easily more than what a lasik procedure cost. :-)

While we were at a few government departments getting paperworks sorted out this week, we noticed that the televisions at the waiting area were not showing the television programs like they normally did last time. The LCD screens placed around the waiting area were flashing commercials after commercials.

Many people were actually watching the commercials as they have nothing to do while waiting for their turns. Looks like a win-win situation for the said government offices, by giving permission to the ad agency to do television marketing at the waiting areas, they probably get a kick back plus free supply of big flat screen televisions.

We actually got to know some local businesses that we never heard of through some of the commercials. Isn’t it a good idea for local businesses to get some exposures?

There are more and more vehicles running on the roads and inevitably, accidents happen more frequently. We read in the newspaper and saw on the TV news almost daily that there were some fatal accidents. And, there were quite often involved a truck!

The families who have their loved ones injured badly or died in such accidents may find this a traumatic and horrendous experience! Many may not look into engaging a truck accident lawyer to claim damages while they are grieving. If your loved one was involved in a truck accident in Nebraska, you may seek out the help of a Nebraska Truck Accident Lawyer. Demerath Law has attorneys who are able to offer their experience in handling personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits resulting from such accidents.

It’s trues that money cannot bring the people back to life but any damages claimed will probably make life easier for the surviving, especially if the people who were injured or died were the sole breadwinners of the family.

Part of Illinois was hit by the worst ice storm last week and as much as 12-18″ of snow fall in many parts of Illinois. Temperature fell below O Fahrenheit or -32 Celsius at night!

The big boy was worried how a person who lived in the tropics her entire life (..yours truly) is going to adjust to this extreme weather. I told him jokingly that he can start stocking up  warm clothings and boots made from Emu Australia to keep me toasty.

Or he can get me an air ticket to fly home and stay until the cold winter is over. That way we can avoid turning the house into a big oven and paying through our nose for utility. For all you know, the utility may come up to be more expensive than an air ticket to fly home. :-)

We have not seen some of our rich cousins for years because they usually go for vacation during the festive season and don’t make it to the family gatherings.

They don’t usually come back to our hometown, seldom attend weddings or funerals, so it’s not surprising that the younger people won’t recognize them even if they bump into them on the streets.

I bet they probably book into places like Branson hotels that have golf course, so that their children and spouses are occupied while they play golfs. We also heard that they have gone for skiing trips in Europe during the CNY. Guess the rich doesn’t really need relatives. :-)

Though not a native speaker of English, I do speak and write English well enough for people not to have any problem understanding me in normal day to day conversations. However, I do speak with an accent typical of the people from my home country.

It can be quite nerve wrecking to speak publicly or to give a lecture to a group of native speakers. That’s why I am not looking forward to go back to teach in the university without first going through an accent reduction course to get rid of my accent. Are you in a similar predicament? You may want to check out the accent reduction course at ELT. It is designed to help non-native American English speakers tackle American English language skills and improve their American accent.

I know too well how critical the students can be of an instructor who have an accent. In the former university that I was teaching, we have instructors and professors from many different countries, thus many different types of accents. The students themselves are not native speakers, may speak with an accent and may not speak perfect English (in fact, many of them speak lousy English), but they always blame the accents of their instructors for their academic failures. I won’t want to be the scapegoat and lame excuse for their indiscipline and laziness.