Archive for August, 2007

A cheap way to travel is to stay at vacation rentals instead of expensive resorts or hotels. But just where do you find vacation rentals located at top resort areas? The best way is to find listings of vacation rentals from the owners themselves.

Take for example you want to find San Diego vacation rental homes. You can check out the Going2Travel Directory of vacation rentals. The directory includes a write up of interesting places to see and visit for each location. Many of the listings come from owners themselves so its even cheaper that way.

Or if you are searching for Newport beach rental homes, you can key in “Newport” in the search bar and you will find many vacation homes and beach rentals to select from.

You can search for vacation rentals from any part of the world using the search tool. The listings are comprehensive with detailed write ups about the homes as well as slide shows and photos where applicable. Alternatively you can browse for vacation rentals by clicking on the world map for your destination of choice. 

I’ve just been tagged by Shooi. That reminds me I have a backlog of tags to do and have almost forgotten them as I have been writing lots of my own posts lately, no time for tags and memes. Anyway this one is easy peasy so I’ll let this skip the queue and do this first.

It’s a very simple tag. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, skim the list and put a * star beside those that you like. (Check out especially the * starred ones.) Write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general. Tag as many people as you want.

1. Look, read, and learn. http://www.neonscent.com/****
2. Be, EXCELLENT to each other. http://www.bushmackel.com/****
3. Don’t let money change ya! http://www.therandomforest.info/******
4. Always reply to your comments. http://chattiekat.com/*****
5. Blog about what you know & love. http://sugar-queens-dream.blogspot.com/******
6. Don’t use filthy language-buy a dictionary. http://shinade.blogspot.com/****
7. Blog about something educational http://climateofourfuture.org/***
8. Be yourself; others will follow http://sfgirl-thealiennextdoor.blogspot.com/ ***
9. Don’t have too many blogs that will become a chore to maintain http://cubicledenizen.blogspot.com/***
10. Keep it simple, user-friendly, interesting and organised! http://erishaling.blogspot.com/ **
11. Keep the blog simple and sweet!! http://www.leslieho.com/ ***
12. Share with others your thoughts and don’t be shy! http://groovy-olives.com/blog****
13. Never ask for link exchange. Blog hop to increase traffic. http://www.jessieling.com/**
14. Don’t clutter your blog with ads all over the place. IT’S IRRITATING. http://oliviasy.blogspot.com/
15. Don’t comment for the sake of commenting. Some looked too fake and its a big turn off! http://sashablablabla.blogspot.com**
16. Share something interesting and you will gain more readers. http://judychow.blogspot.com**
17. Blog real and true story and never copy others posts. http://mylovelymummy.com

18. Don’t blog about things that you don’t want others to find out. You’ll never know who’s reading your blog. http://justmytots.com/

19. Don’t comment if you have not read the post in full. You’ll look stupid (and you are being insincere) to comment something that is irrelevant or out of point to what the blogger has been saying in their post. http://mumsgather.com

Now lets here it from:

Sesame, Doris, Kitty Cat, Shopping Mum and WMD..

Do you stop to smell the roses? Don’t have the time? Why not bring leisure to your home? You can do that with landscaping.

Adding a landscape design to your home and garden is the final and extra touch to your home decoration. It is just the thing to give your home and patio that extra oomph! Afterall your garden or patio is the first thing that greets your visitors when they come to your home. You can get the services of a professional landscaper if you don’t know where to start.

Don’t worry if you are too lazy or don’t have the time to maintain your rock garden, pond or fountain, you can leave that to the Landscaping Company. For a fixed monthly fee, a professional landscaper will do the maintenance work for you.

Thats another dream of mine. To get my home beautifully landscaped. That will surely be the perfect finishing touch. I’ve moved in for almost 8 months now and at the moment landscaping is what it lacks.

Hmm lets see. The last time I checked I had written…..

• 646 blog posts on my Parenting Times blog
• 230 blog posts on my Mothering Times blog
• 20 blog posts on my Quotes Station blog
• 224 blog posts on this blog

That would bring me to a grand total of 1120 posts altogether. Muahahahaha. Can write book already. 

I think I’ve got to join a “Writers Annonymous Club” to talk about my compulsion to write, write and write some more. Lol! Anyone wants to join me? Can share with me your stats anot? Hehe.

Here’s a unique wedding gift idea that may actually increase in value over time. Yes, thats right. A thoughtful gift that may increase in time makes the gift more memorable over time. You can get a single framed share of stock from Shareinaframe. This is a framed certificate of stock of a real publicly traded company. It’ll definitely be a gift talked about and remembered by the wedding couple in years to come. Forget about boring dinnerware or household appliances.

On the other hand, if you are the groom, you can choose to give this gift of stock to your groomsment instead. A share of stock in a frame will make a unique groomsmen gift for each of your groomsmen. You can choose the stock of any publicly traded company, perhaps one that matches the interests of your friend. Have fun selecting different stocks for each of your friend and have them compete to see whose stock rises in value first.

One year after the wedding is over, comes the first wedding anniversary. Did you know that the first wedding anniversary is sometimes called the paper wedding anniversary? It is symbolized with the gift of paper. Can’t think of a unique anniversary gift for your spouse? A framed paper stock certificate makes the perfect paper gift. Just pick your stocks, select the frame that you want and you can even add a personal engraving to your gift.

The stock certificates are real legal documents with professionally rendered artwork. It will be a nice way to tell someone how valuable they are to you. In fact it will make a unique gift for just about any special occassion you celebrate.

This post is for those who write sponsored posts and have to maintain several blogs.

Now that you’ve started writing paid posts and maintaining several blogs to maximise your earnings potential, you’ve got to work really hard to maintain those blogs. Your regular visitors are not going to read each and every one of your blogs even if they love you. So how do you make your visitors stay longer? Regular as well as Search Engine Visitors? You link to your own blogs, thats how. (Another reason why you would want to link to your own blogs is to benefit from your own page rankings).

I just discovered that  you can use the Google Reader sharing tool to do this. I read that its a good idea to subscribe to your own blog rss feeds to be indexed or found by the top 3 search engines ie Google, MSN and Yahoo and thats what I’ve done.

After subscribing to my own feed using Google Reader, I can select or deselect recent blog posts from my blogs and share them. I can put a clip of my shared items anywhere I like on my blog. I’ve put them at the end of single posts as well as on my sidebar. You can check out the end of this post if you’re reading this single post or the end of my sidebar if you are on my homepage. (You can check out my Parenting Times blog or Mothering Times blog for more examples.) Visitors can click on any of the post headings that interests them and be directed to my other blogs or they can click “read more” and be directed to a url with all of my shared items there. You can see posts from all of my blogs listed there. There is even an rss feed for my shared items.

You can choose from a number of colored formats you like for your clip. I chose none so it blends seemlessly into my blogs in terms of size and color. You can share anything, not just your blog posts. You can share any link that you like with your friends or relatives by emailing them the url to your shared items or placing them on your blog the way I did.

I simply love Google. I use quite a number of tools in my Google Account. I have Gmail, Blogger and Google Reader. I also use Webmaster Tools and Analytics to monitor my stats. I like the Query Stats in Webmaster Tools. It shows me my top search queries and my average top position on Google search result pages. I subscribe to Google Alerts and I have a personalised iGoogle page. I am using the Beach Theme for my iGoogle and I love it. The sun rises and sets on my desktop according to my time.

This is what I do when I don’t write paid posts. I fiddle around on my blog to see how I can improve it.

Independent Note: A superb business web hosting always considers the traffic aspect of the website. Renowned companies like linux shared hosting or lunarpages do their best to facilitate the webmasters by providing several free webmaster tools. If you’ve taken the services of a cheap hosting server , then it’s preferable to use Google webmaster tools. The yahoo hosting tools are good, too but Google tools are easier to use for beginners.

My house is totally devoid of greens. How nice it would be to surround oneself with greens and growing things but I have none of that. Only concrete and tiles. However having and maintaining a garden takes a lot of hard work. It requires effort to water and weed. Effort and time which I don’t have at the moment. I don’t even have a small patch of grass and I worry that putting potted plants on the tiles will require lots of cleanup of soil residues and leave a mark on the tiles.

Someday, I wish to have a herbs and spices as well as a vegetable garden and lush green plants and flowers too. Flowers of course. My mum loved flowers too. I remember we had carnations and bunga rayas and roses and morning glories and some other dunno what you call them purple flowers which she said you could use the die to make some kuih. After she died the flowers died too.

I think a garden would be nice for the kids too. Its like a life science class to watch the seeds that you plant grow. Cutting the grass would be a nice family activity too. I remember we used to cut the grass with our dad in our small rectangular patch of green grass in our one storey rented house. And dad used to enjoy making bonfires from the tree that grew just outside our house but you can’t make bonfires now of course. Hehe.

Yes, I wish to have a garden someday but that is just a dream for now. Maybe I should start with a small indoor herb garden. Anyone knows how to start one?

One of the ways to promote your blog is to submit your blog to a blog directory. Should you submit your site to a free directory or a paid directory? Should you use automated submission software? How do you know if the directory you are submitting to is a low quality or a high quality web directory? Is PR or Alexa ranking a good indicator?

You can find out all this information and more on the Alive Webmaster Blog. The blog may be for Web Directory Owners but it still contains useful information about blog directories for the blog owner. 

After reading up on the information available, you could also consider whether its worthwhile to do a paid submission on the recently launched Alive Blog Directory. The Alive Blog Directory is an extension to the Alive Web Directory but it is specifically for Blogs. It offers a comprehensive selection of Blog Categories, deep link submission options and more. Do check it out if you want to promote your blog using a blog directory.

Mr MG had craving for Dim Sum just like a pregnant woman. Hehe. So we went in search for Dim Sum for several Sunday mornings. Now that the kids are older, we wanted to take them out too, to experience different foods and different atmospheres for eating. And Mrs MG is one happy woman for eating out because eating out means Mr MG helps in the feeding (hehe) and theres no cleaning up afterwards. Woohoo!

Our search for Dim Sum led us to….

1. Damansara Jaya. This is near Atria. Dunno whats the place called but its got Dim Sum in its name and its a corner lot so you can’t miss it. All you need is to drive round one circle to find. Hehe. Sorrylah, I’m no food reviewer, so I didn’t take down names, addresses and photos. The place was packed on a Sunday morning around 10-11am. There was no place to sit comfortably. So we gave that a miss as the kids would not enjoy that.

Updated: Check out ugwug.blogspot or mr-penman.blogspot for a review of the place.

2. Damansara Utama. Next we went to Damansara Utama near the Uptown area. Again, the place has Dim Sum in its name and its a corner lot too. This time we found a place to sit. It was comfortable and cooling, not like the other place. You order the Dim Sum from a menu and it was not crowded so it was nice for a Sunday brunch. However the varieties were limited although the food was not too bad.

3. Paramount. This time I remembered the name of the shop. Hehe. Its called Restaurant Key Way. Its opposite the Paramount post office and the Giant supermarket that used to be Paramount cinema. Like the first one, it was packed around 11am. However, a table was promptly set up for us on the walkway so it was not too bad. The other place had tables close together. The tables here were further apart since it had overflowed out onto the roads and pavements etc so they had more space. The servers came over carrying aluminium trays of freshly steamed and fried Dim Sums. Lots of variety here and you’ll certainly eat more than you can take in as the servers come round every 1-2 minutes. Be prepared to have your conversations interrupted several times as they serve you. This is truly fast food. The food comes as soon as you sit down. Haha. The lady who came to collect the payment shared with us that the crowd comes in late these days unlike the old days where you had to wake up very early if you wanted to eat some Dim Sum. Hey. Who wants to wake up so early on a Sunday morning?

Updated: Ok. I’m a dunce. I got the name of the place wrong! Hahaha. Go to Nick Tay’s The Reflector to find out the real name of the coffee shop and to view some more yummylicious pics of the Dim Sum. (I curi the pic above from his blog. If you are on a diet and want to have a virtual Dim Sum feast, go to his blog.)

Another Update: I got the name right after all! Went there on another occassion with dad and found out that the owners of the 2 side-by-side restaurants share the rental and thus both sell the same dim sum to customers under 2 different names. I guess that means business must be really good and seating places were limited making them come up with such a novel idea.

4. Summer Palace in Damansara. Beside the NKVE on the way to Damansara just after the toll. We went there to celebrate with Dad on Father’s Day. If you don’t like coffee shop Dim Sum, you can head here for aircond restaurant Dim Sum but be prepared to pay more then.

5. I couldn’t find the old Dim Sum place in SeaPark PJ and I haven’t tried SS2 or Taman Megah.

If anyone knows of anymore good Dim Sum places, please share with me so that I can help to satisfy someone’s craving for it. Lol!

 

Does your spouse read your blog and how do your feel about it?

Mine does not. At first I was very disappointed that he did not. I was so hard up for him to read my blog that I went to the extend of emailing him entire blog posts complete with comments. Hahaha.

I thought that if he didn’t read my blog, it meant that he did not care about what I thought. I also thought that it meant he didn’t support my blogging hobby. In fact, at first he told me it was a waste of time and he didn’t understand why anyone would blog.

I thought it meant that he was not interested to know another part of me ie the part that comes out in writing. We all have many personalities and I believe the part that comes out in writing may not necessarily be the same as the one that gets portrayed in person. Sometimes the part that comes out in writing is a deeper more meaningful personality. Sometimes in writing you see more of a person.

In that same vein, I tried to encourage him to have a blog because I wanted to know him better. I wanted to read his thoughts because he is not very expressive. (like most men.) If he had a blog, I would probably read it word for word, post for post and try to dissect it. Maybe thats why he dare not have a blog. Hahaha.

So, I was disappointed for a while but not anymore. I don’t know when the change occured but all of a sudden, I saw it in a different light. I saw that the fact that he didn’t read my blog meant that he wanted to give me more personal space and as a matter of fact it has given me more personal space. Now I can rant as much as I like. Hahaha. But I seldom rant about him lah. Not because I fear he may be reading but I feel something as personal as a husband and wife relationship should be left that ie personal. I only talk about him if its something good that I want to share or remember and not because I fear that he may be reading. Thats why I have a Marriage and Relationships category. It would be something general though but in relation to a personal experience. Although I must say that many times I have been tempted to sit down here and bang away at my keyboard when I am really mad at him! Hahaha.

So although I wouldn’t mind if he did read my blog, now I’m actually glad he does not. So I never have to deal with him questioning me “How come you wrote that?” “Wow, you spend so much time blogging?” (He’d probably say that about me taking pics and posting up my kids crafts. Check out our latest craft here: Chain Paper Dolls. Hehe.) etc. So I’m perfectly fine with him not reading my blogs now. This way, I never have to worry about him misreading or having my blog post misconstrued by him. I think people who know you well may actually read more into what you have written. But I still admire those spouses who are close enough to blog together no I should say I admire those spouses who can blog together, for not blogging together does not mean that you are not close. I think that blogging by one spouse can sometimes lead to some misunderstandings or issues so what more when both parties blog.

Speaking about spouses reading blogs, I wonder whether parents should read their children’s blogs. Almost all of my nephews and nieces have blogs but their parents don’t read them simply because they’re not very computer savvy and don’t know how to find their blogs in the first place but some of them would like to read just to know their child better and to know whats going on.

I guess that if my children are older and have blogs I would want to read them. I don’t think its an invasion of their privacy because it is afterall a public blog. If you post something in public then you must be prepared for everyone to read what you have written, not only those who don’t know you personally. However, I know of many children who hate having their parents reading their blogs especially mums.

I don’t mind if my siblings read my blog but I don’t think they have the time to follow my blog that closely since they’re not bloggers themselves and they all have their own lives to lead.

As for friends, I don’t mind if they read my blog since its just an extension of me and I have nothing to hide. Sadly though, I don’t have that many close friends whom I care enough to give away my personal thoughts to and thats why I keep the url to myself instead of sharing it freely.

And if I had a boss, no, I would not want my boss to read my blog! Nor would I want any colleagues to, even if I don’t rant about work. I believe one must keep work and personal life separate but thats just me. Others may feel differently.

What about my children? If they are grown and they would like to, I certainly wouldn’t mind them reading my blog. I think they would find the archives about bring them up quite funny. Too bad I don’t post pictures, otherwise they would find it even more amusing or perhaps they may go “Awe mum! Why did you pose that naked pic of me?” Hahaha. Mums, have you thought of that?

Independent Thought: If you really are the kind of person who loves to stick with their memories, and often does an online file sharing, then it’s good to have backup computer files of your blog on your pc. Keeping a blog backup is like a memory bag always there for you and your loved ones. Try to install some data recovery programs for the purpose of data recovery , on your pc that are compatible with your blogging soft ware.