I am really mad. You cannot blame me when every 2 minutes there’ll be an ‘explosion’ going on opposite my house. Yeah, those kids from the opposite house are playing with firecrackers again. I know today is Deepavali. But then what the heck has it got to do with them? They’re Chinese for Christ sake.

What baffles me even further are those stupid parents encouraging them on. What right thinking parents would allow their children to play with firecrackers? Those little pests are no older than 8. But then they sure hell made more noise than an eighteen year old. Another hour of those noisy crackers my dalmatian will die in fright. Thankfully my poodle fared better.

I am just one phone call away from calling the cops.

I remember having a conversation with an elderly church member who told me the only fear he has is the process of growing old. Beyond that, nothing can worry him. I guess that is the fear each and everyone of us has when we reach certain age and realize that with that, comes certain limitations in life.

The site www.bettercaring.com provides a comprehensive list of nursing home information, health tips and support forum to the elderly or their loved ones. If you are residing in the UK and senior care is an option, bettercaring easily furnishes you with all the information you need to ensure you make the best choices.

For loved ones who are caring for the seniors, the website forum does provide a good outlet for sharing and getting heard. Caring for the elderly is never an easy task. It does help when you get to share experience with people who are within the care system.

A recent comment I made in Mr Endoh’s blog warranted an answer below. I asked the blogger Mr Endoh if he feels vulnerable meeting fellow bloggers in person when he is not one who is shy about exposing himself naked in his blog. No, I’m not talking about the ‘Penthouse’ kind of nudity. (yeah, I wish too :-P) I’m merely saying he is one who is not afraid to write down his inner thoughts and share his insight from virginity to religion.

This is a portion of the reply he gave me..

I don’t think I will feel vulnerable, since I have been honest with things I have written based on my own analysis and understanding. I could be wrong in thinking in certain ways, but at least it truthfully came from my heart. ……

This has got me thinking. Sure, I write alot of stuffs on my blog. I do open up alot when I’m writing to people I do not know. Yes, you can argue bloggers do in time develop a certain relationship with their readers or fellow bloggers. I agree. But then many would agree with me too that blogging acquaintanceship is still different from friends whom we know in person. Especially old friends who witnessed the ups and downs in our life real time. Another difference I can say off hand is the fact blogging on the internet give bloggers the advantage of ‘conditional exposé.‘

I stole a line from a book I read that best illustrate conditional exposé.

Leornado Da Vinci wrote every painter should begin a canvas with a black wash because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. Most painters do the opposite and start with a whitewash and adding the shadows last. Leoarnado knew the value of starting with the shadows. The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see.

Substitute the word painter with blogger and it still holds true. Personally, I believe it is liberating if I can just disregard the fear of people not liking what they see. The truth is, despite all the years, I still have the puppy mentality in me. Puppy likes to please. They’ll do the darnest thing just to be loved… or accepted. If I can overcome the hurdle, I bet I’ll be a much happier person. Not only in the blogospere, I meant my real life.

Damn, then I think I’ll start debating with my cell leader on the issue ‘are Roman Catholics saved?’ I had hold my tongue long enough….

I always thought airfare and the stock exchange sounded as random as random can get. I was dead wrong until I was asked to checkout the airfare for somebody flying in from LAX to Kuala Lumpur.

I can tell you those plane fare are as volatile as the stock exchange. The prices go up and down depending on different airlines and on different dates. You can even sometimes get 65% off a regular ticket if you are lucky. That is a whopping difference.

www.Airvalues.com is one site to go if you are looking for cheap international flights at the convenience of a click. This site has the easiest airfare lookup form around. They don’t ask too many questions and you get your flight options easily over the net. One click to be precise. I got my whole list of airline options complete with pricing at a click of the mouse. With 60 major airlines to choose from and millions of searchable cheap air tickets in their database, finding the best deal is not hard.

Gone are those days where we have to depend on our local travel agent for flight details.

My search result, it’s really that easy.

My right template column that is. Hope nobody is expecting something else…. I’ve been looking at my right side column and it looks wrong. I guess the right column is too short and is making my template a little weird with a funny green thing hanging in mid air.

I’ve been thinking what I can do to the thing. I wanted some pictures but I try not to put ads there. I know many blogs look tasteful with ads, but since I’m already doing a little PP here, I don’t want to look like a money face.

Talking about ads on blogs, I have nothing against them provided they are tastefully done. Really, I don’t have much issue if it’s not exactly in my face. I can always ignore them and not click. The kind of ads that irritates the hell out of me are those that are pushed right into your face. I don’t know what those ads are called. Sometimes when you go into a blog, those ads will pop up in another window right in front of you. I hate that.

Some of the blogs I visit uses them. If you are one of them, I hope you can reconsider if you care zit about your readers. It’s just plain rude to have the thing pop up in another window and even more rude to have your readers close the damn thing everytime they visit your blog. In all honesty, unless it’s one great blog, I won’t even want to go again.

I had a few of them sitting on the shelves collecting dust. Really, some I bought more than 6 months ago and I did not even flip a page. I guess that is what happen when you force yourself to do things you don’t want to.

I love fiction. I love romance novels. I love mystery. But, in view of the fact I’m no longer that age where I should be daydreaming about being abducted by long haired, dark and handsome pirates with killer abs and wide strong chest, I forced myself to read up on financial books. I reckon I should wise up a little in my old age.

I bought a few financial books and the only one I can finish is Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The rest? It’s collecting dust. The worst part? I don’t even have a maid.

For the average household, there will be months financially speaking tighter than others. I always tell my sister if you want to go shopping and don’t want to mess with the crowd, go the week before the end of the month. There will always be less crowd in those shopping centers to contend with. It is the time people run out of steam awaiting for their next paycheck.

Cash advance or Payday loans are loans available specially for a quick financial fix before you get your next paycheck. These loans are never intended to be a long term debt. It should rightly be a quick fix for people who just need the extra cash to make it through before their next payday.

www.paydayloanquotes.com provides free online Payday Loans service by connecting people with their network of licensed money lenders. Loan application is done online and a quote will be given in a matter of minutes. Each borrower is accessed individually and no collateral or credit check are necessary. There are of course terms and conditions to apply.

My blogging friend over at Blogsreview came up with a good question. Why do we blog?

Firstly, Why do I blog?

I wouldn’t be half truthful if I did not say I relish the possibility someone will listen to what I have to write. Honest, in the beginning, the allure of being heard is just too tempting for an introvert like me who don’t exactly have a social life. I am an opinionated individual to begin with. So what is better than getting to voice my opinion on cyberspace? Actually there is… getting paid to do it. OK, OK, its not exactly what the blogging purists had in mind … But then if you want the unadulterated truth, here it is.

Having said that, I still hold on to the notion you can still be true to your postings even if you are getting compensated to do it. It is not that hard. My rule of thumb is, if I don’t believe in the product/service, I don’t pimp it. It is not really worth getting your integrity down the dumps by earning a little extra dollar. I don’t care what other bloggers are doing, it’s their life. I don’t judge and I sure don’t care. This is mine. There is a line I will not cross.

What do I hope to achieve by blogging?

I am really fortunate to have met a few good blogging friends. Some I had the privilege to meet in person, others through email correspondence. This has to be the biggest joy getting to know people who clicks with you. Secondly, I do hope to earn a little side money to foot my electrical and domain hosting bills.

WTH? That’s it for your paid post money?

Not exactly the most ambitious and motivating person around, right? True. That is why you won’t see me preaching the Gospel of easy blogging and good life from paid posts. I’m not exactly those motivating speakers you find giving speeches at those million dollar table. I’m just not that ambitious and I’m not good faking it. That is why I can never do direct sales.
I’m just happy to be meeting great people and making a little to help with the bills on the side through my blogging journey.

How much time do I spend doing blogging related work?

I tell you it’s way longer than what I put in when I was working for people. I comment, socialize, do paid posts and reply emails…. it comes to about more than 8 hours a day. Though I can take a napping break at my whim. It’s not too bad when you’re enjoying what you are doing. It was longer when I first started paid posts. But now I’ve found my balance between paid posts, blogging, personal time and Astro, I’ve pretty much settled in.

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This is one of those post I did spontaneously and enjoyed totally. Anyone wanting to take up on this challenge, visit Blogsreview and write down your post link to share your thoughts.

Honestly, I do understand why people don’t buy online. There are a hundred reason they are going to tell you from how unsafe online credit card purchases are to ‘what happen if I don’t like it?’ I had grew tired of explaining to them your card information is no safer being used over the net than handing the card to the waiter when you ask for your bill.

But, for people who relish the simplicity of browsing and purchasing items online like me, especially during the big holidays like Christmas and New Year, it pays to checkout those coupon codes from CouponChief. The coupons are free. Really, many people are still skeptical about the possibility of getting great deals from free coupons. I guess it’s human nature to question the inevitable.. how can anything good be free?

Better believe it.

I bought my clothes and shoes with Land’s End coupons. I get 70% off at times. I get great Old Navy deals too and this is one of the few shop that carry my size. Ahem, I’m no size 4 you know, I have to shop around alot to find clothes that fit. Nowadays, I just buy online.

When I first started this blog, the first thing that came to my mind was is this really necessary? Honestly, is there a point for bloggers to start more than 1 blog?

This is one of the great blogging mystery to me seeing folks starting their own blogs like starting a stamp collection. Really, I’ve been through that before when I started this blog.

Should I start another blog? Do I need another commitment to add to my list of blogging headaches?

Sure, it’s not too hard to start another blog, but then the headache starts when you have to actually update your blogs. The question of quality and content usually comes up. Can I be fair and devote as much attention and love to all the blogs? Yeah, I’m sounding like a parent contemplating should I have another kid. There’s not much difference in that analogy when you come to think of it. Maintaining your blogs are like taking care of your baby. You nurture it and watch it grow. The similarity ends there. While your real kids will stand on their own 2 feet one day, your blogs are going to depend on you for the rest of its existence. So I say taking care of blogs are more time consuming and much harder than taking care of your baby. The frightful thing is this blog baby is not going to wean off your breastfeeding in another 6 months or 12 months…. it’s going to go on forever.

So ultimately I asked myself, you crazy? Is it worth it?

The truth is, it’s never going to be worth it if you measure it in terms of your time spent. This is where I guess passion comes in. People do things they like without asking for returns. Same here. Unless you are thinking of monetizing all your blogs for making money, it’s never really worth it….. provided you are driven by real passion. Period.

People had been telling me it makes better sense to get my own domain. Something to truly call my own. People are just people, if you listen to something long enough, you’ll start believing. I’ve nothing against free blogging platforms, they serve their purpose just as well. If you want the satisfaction of truly owning something by paying for it, then get your own domain and hosting plan by all means. It’s a personal choice.

So, I have more than 1 blog…. what then? Frankly, the only thing I can think of is to differentiate and categorize my blogging contents into different blogs. My blog contents are less messy when I concentrate each on certain category. The biggest plus is …. blog readers.

Many times we tend to put up the same people on our blogrolls on all our blogs. If, my blog now strive on different content, I would like to filter my readers according to their interest too. Let’s say one blog I write about parenting and the second blog I write about reviews. I cannot assume people who were interested in my parenting blog share the same interest with me on my review blog. That is why, I try to have different people on my blogroll on my different blogs. I don’t just copy and paste the same blogroll and apply to all my blogs.

Hopefully by filtering readers based on their interest, each blog can have their very own community of readers. Of course I’m not discounting the fact there are readers out there who share both my interest. In that case, I don’t mind putting them on both my blogroll. In a way, I do hope I can expand my readership based on my different blog category and not just the same group of readers overlapping each other on my blogs.