Leah’s Cafe

Wow, I managed to stay away from all my blogs for the entire CNY holidays and that’s a whole week! It’s a miracle… LOL! Well, I have decided to take a break from blogging, relax and spend more time with family and friends during the festival.

It’s been a pretty relaxing and fun CNY for me. The week just went by so fast that I didn’t really have time to even enjoy it. In fact I don’t even remember what transpired … LOL! Some more, I forgot to bring the camera for all the gatherings and outings, so didn’t snap any photo at all.

While there are still a lot of people on their CNY holidays, myself included, most adults have started work, children have gone back to school. While I still have three more days of the holidays left to enjoy before going back to the tutoring center, I am back to all the paid posts that have waiting for me here. :-)

Seven years ago, when I was back to my hometown and the big boy was still living in CA, we kept in touch with IM, email and phone calls for three years until we decided to get married.

During the first year of the separation, we discovered that there were VOIP calls services online in Beta stage, we tried out a few of the services. But the noise was so bad, even with the noise canceling headphones, we couldn’t figure out what each other said most of the time.

This time that we are separated again, the VOIP technology has improved tremendously and becomes much cheaper than the conventional long distance calls. Even without using the noise canceling headphones, we can hear each other crystal clear. In fact, the noise canceling headphones have been lying there collecting dust this days.

When I was 13 years old, I often couldn’t see clearly what was written on the blackboard in school. I told my parents about it, they just dismissed me because they thought I wanted to wear glasses for the vain reasons, not until that incident happened.

It was in the beginning of the year, the new English teacher gave us a test, she wrote the questions on the blackboard. Since I couldn’t see clearly, I asked my friend KF to help me to copy the questions. Being a good friend, she obliged. When my friend passed the paper with the questions back to me, the teacher saw it.

She thought we were trying to cheat in the test. She took our papers away and gave each of us a big fat zero. We tried to explain to her what was going on but she wouldn’t listen. My parents of course learned about that when the report card was sent home. My dad brought me to an optical shop to get a pair of glasses the same day!

Being a careless teenager, there were numerous pairs of glasses broken, frames bended or misplaced over the years. They were no $ 8 Zenni Optical Rx Eyeglasses and they cost a few hundreds bucks per pair. Till today, my parents still joke that they have spent all their retirement fund replacing glasses for me. :-)

Before noon on Wed, I rushed out of the door and drove about 60 miles to the nearby town and didn’t reach home until 8.45 p.m that night. The trip was to conduct a demo of Spell to Write and Read for a few mummies.

It is a short trip and it shouldn’t be too tiring because it was an informal class. But I came home totally exhausted, went to bed right after taking a shower. It took me two days to recuperate from the tiredness!  Five years ago, we drove up to Cameron Highland, Ipoh and Penang,  it wasn’t even this tired. Age is really catching up with me. Driving and running around tired me out this days.

There are more things that needed to be done before the pending move than I expected. Since this is a permanent move, they are a household of stuffs to get rid of, financial matters to settle and not forgetting the arrangements to ensure a smooth transition of the business to the new owner.

There are currently about 50 students enrolled in the Spell to Write and Read program. I will be still actively teaching them until the teacher whom I am training now is ready to take over the classes. Hopefully, she is able to take over the classes and continue on after I leave. It will be quite a waste if these children just stop using what they have learned in the class because there is no environment for them to practice.

Anyway, today will be another day of running around in the afternoon. Need to go downtown to close the CDS and share trading account that have been dormant for a while, need to mail the books out and do some grocery shopping for CNY. Need to go shopping for new clothes and shoes. So used to wearing flat comfy shoes for the last few years, of course won’t be getting anything like the Manolo Blahniks heels.:-)

It seems time really flies, half of the day is gone and I have not gotten much things done. Went out this morning to meet up with the landlady to pass her the documents that she wanted. Waited for her more than an hour, tried to call her cell phone but seemed like the phone was out of battery. She must have forgotten about the meeting.

Anyway, I decided to leave the papers in the mailbox for her to pick up and came home. It was almost noon by the time I got home. The big boy wanted me to call him back as we didn’t get to talk this morning when I had to rush out in a hurry. Before I know it, it’s well past lunch time and time to get ready for my class in the afternoon. Sigh…

Had a headache, spent half day not doing anything. Saw some opps available, but too tired to sit down in front of the PC. Did spend the second half of the afternoon finishing up some tasks that are due today.

Haven’t gotten out the cave for two days, so decided to drive out for dinner. The girl at the Thai restaurant recognized me and remembered I was there last week (Guess not many women ate at the restaurant alone). She asked whether the food was any good. Yeah, I like the spicy Thai food there, but it gave me a little stomach upset tonight. It doesn’t feel quite right since I got back from the restaurant!

Though I started the lazy weekend on slow speed, gotta do some house cleaning and tidy up the mess too since the part time cleaner did not show up on Friday.

So the day went into high speed after brunch. Get the laundry out and cleaned up a little but didn’t finish the job.:-) But I ran a blogathon for 2 hours, churned out quite a few paid posts on various blogs. It’s quite a productive weekend, I must say.

It has been months that I have a chance to sleep in during the weekend, it’s such a luxury and nice feeling to sleep until you are awake naturally.:-)

Started today slow because I didn’t get up until 10.30 a.m. Went for a walk, the weather is really good. Too lazy to cook, so just grabbed two slices of breads,  ate them with orange juice and a bowl of cereal, that’s my boring brunch of a lazy weekend.

My friend Anna is organizing a Valentine’s dinner and inviting all the couples in the church to join her and her husband for a romantic dinner and dance. She has booked the upper floor of the magnificent Majestic Hotel in town and got a very good rate for the candlelight dinner. It’s a pity that the big boy is not here and we won’t be able to join them.

Well, though we are currently being separated physically by circumstances, we still do exchange gifts on Valentine’s day. The big boy usually gets me some romantic Valentine’s gifts (a.k.a. junks), whereas he usually gets practical gifts from me.

Haven’t decided what gifts to get him. Did find some Bestbuy coupon codes and Target coupon codes online. If I decide to order things from Bestbuy or Target, this online shopping coupons will be handy to get great gifts.

My consolation for this year’s Valentine’s Day is : this is going to be our last year of being separated on Valentine’s day and the reunion has a date.

Since the part time cleaner couldn’t come this week, I got to get my bum off the computer chair and start cleaning and organizing today. It seems like I have tons of errands to run in the afternoon too.

I need to stop by the bank to deposit a check received a week ago and got to stop by the post office to mail a parcel to an ex-student who had requested some materials. The CD writer at home won’t work, need to stop by the computer store to ask the guy there to duplicate some audio files for the classroom use.

Also need to get the ball rolling for a few other things i.e. take the passport sized photos for renewing the passport and background check required for the Visa application. The first form that we need to file is still pending waiting for me to gather all the documents.

I must be really, really tired last night, I was sleeping through the night and didn’t wait up at all, not that I have a little baby to be fed every hour (LOL), but I usually woke up a few times throughout the nights and went to the bathroom at least once before the day breaks!

Yesterday was a long day for me, after teaching non stop from morning to evening, I drove down to meet up with a friend. On the way there, my car was stalled right in front of the stoplights, in the middle of a junction! It was running out of gas!

I have noticed that the gas was running low the day before and did make a mental note that I need to fill up the tank. In fact, I reminded myself that fateful morning to fill up the gas tank on the way out, but I forgot totally about it even though I passed by numerous gas stations as I drove around town.

The sky was getting dark and looked like it was going to rain, after checking my patek philippe watch (Ok, ok, I don’t have one of those expensive patek phillipe watches or breitling watches , it was the clock on my trusty old cell phone … LOL!), I called my friend to let her know that I would be running late. Then, I quickly got out, walked to the nearest gas station which was about 10 minutes away.

The car wash boy at the gas station gave me a mineral water bottle, I filled it up with gas and walked back to the car. Can you imagine the embarrassment of standing in the middle of the road, pouring gas into the car, with people from all directions of the junction looking at this silly woman? Well, there was nothing I could do about that, so I tried to do it as fast as possible and prayed that I know none of the people in the cars. LOL

Hmmm, the car wouldn’t start even after pouring one bottle of gas inside. So, I got out, walked back to the gas station, thicken my face, asked for another bottle from the car wash boy. He gave me a coke bottle this time. So, I filled up both the mineral water and coke bottles, walked back to the car, poured in the tank, tried to restart the car. It still wouldn’t start. I started to get a little panicky, especially when the LED street lights were turning on and the sky looked like it was going to fall.

I was telling myself that it was the last try, I was going to call my brother or my friend to pick me up if it still wouldn’t start. But strangely enough, it got started and I went to meet my friend, almost an hour late. My feet were sore and whole body was aching, all the walking back and fro between the car and the gas station were strenuous!! Needless to say, I slept like a baby last night…

We just ordered the doors for the kitchen cabinets (to replace the old ones that rotted away). The workers will be coming to install them this week. I am so excited that the kitchen remodeling is coming to an end and we can bid Sayonara to messy kitchen.

We have shopped around and got a good deal from this place that we finally placed our order. We are mighty pleased with the whole doors shopping experience and very pleased with the efficiency of the sales clerk. Who doesn’t like to walk away with purchases feeling satisfied and being treated like a customer should? They can pretty sure we would recommend them to others in future. I wonder if some of these wonderful shopping experiences stem from these stores hiring a mystery shopping company to gather customer feedback. Word of mouth is the best advertisement any store can get, so it would be great if the stores can tailor make a satisfying customer experience that make them come back or recommend the services to others.

Now, maybe some stores should get a mystery shopping company to wake their horrible front office staffs up from their slumbers?

Do you ever think about what might happen to you as you get older? No, I don’t mean wrinkles, backache and so on. I mean, do you wonder if you’ll be able to continue living on your own in a house, apartment or condo ?

Does the prospect of ending up in a nursing home come to your mind? When you have lost your mobility or can’t really move around - even in wheelchairs or something, you don’t really have a choice, even if you don’t want to be in the position of having others care for you.

My parents in laws are both cancer survivors, but they are healthy now and are quite mobile. They moved into a retirement community recently. The retirement community is set up so that people are living in apartment like dwellings - similar to if they were living on their own. The only major difference is that everyone who’s living in the retirement community is around the same age, the meals are prepared for them. The retirement  community also has a communal area where community related activities are organized and the residents can socialize with one another.

Whether you are living on your own or living with relatives, that’s fine if you are able to cope with it. But, if you don’t have enough people in your lives to visit you as often or you are feeling lonely,  living in a retirement community is not a bad idea at all. What do you think?

I met up with an old friend cum ex-colleague recently, she told me about a sad news about our old boss. Well, before I came back to my hometown and before I started my own preschool and tutoring business, I used to work in private colleges. My ex-boss was a very nice and kind woman that I have a lot of respects for.

I worked under her for about 4 years. She gave me a lot of opportunities, training and exposures outside of teaching. One thing that I always heard while I was working with her was, people like to gossip about her tall and beautiful daughter who was a teenager at that time didn’t look like her at all. People forgot that she has a good looking husband, her daughter must had gotten the good gene from her father.

Anyway, it was a totally shocking news to me that this beautiful young lady had died in a car accident recently! She must be in her mid twenties, just started her career and had just started a relationship or maybe looking forward to get married, everything must be looking so bright for her.

I haven’t seen my old boss for some time but I know she must be really devastated with the loss. Furthermore, she has only one daughter, who was like a precious diamond holding in her and her husband’s palms all the time. Apparently, her daughter met with an accident in the middle of the night on the way home from a pub. She had an head on with the other driver who was driving under influence.

That guy was eventually charged in the court and put into prison. It was too much for my boss and her husband to deal with all the legal things after the loss, they have engaged reliable Lawyers to follow up with the case and the insurance claims.

It broke my heart when I heard this news. I’d always been very close to my old boss. It always felt like she was my mother the way she always mentored me when I was working with her. I’m still shocked by the news, and I’m hoping that it isn’t true. I certainly hope that they have hired the best lawyer who will do a good job of at least getting them the right compensation, though their precious daughter’s life can never be compensated in ANY ways!