Archive for October, 2011

Yesterday, I had one of these…. You can only take one of these if you are prone to sweating when eating it. Never attempt to eat it during a business lunch or in front of a client, customer or boss. Eat it only with close ones and remember to bring lots of tissue.

Then I doused it with one of these. The fire quickly fizzled out thankfully. Fortunately my stomach made it through the abuse of fire and ice.

This morning it feels a like there is some leftover flames and snow though but I would do it all over again….

Recently, we were invited to a late night wedding dinner which we declined. The person who invited us wanted to know why we would not let our maid put the children to sleep while we attended the wedding dinner. She seemed surprised. I am surprised that she is surprised.

To me the duties of a maid is that of a domestic helper. They are not nannies and not trained to be nannies. Quite often I see pictures of smiling maids carrying baby sized dolls as part of their training. I think it takes more than that to be able to handle babies, toddlers and kids. The main duty of a maid should be helping around the house to ease housework burden. Sometimes it may be necessary due to circumstances where the maid has to help out in looking after kids too but I think sometimes people forget that the important word is “help out”.

Sadly, quite often I see the maid ‘taking over’ the duty of a parent in feeding toddlers, bathing babies, changing infants and sometimes even helping older children with homework etc. They have become almost like substitute parents. Sometimes I see maids walking around the mall wearing the baby of her employer in a sling. Isn’t it strange that this special place next to mummies bosom that should be exclusive to mums and dads only is being substituted by another? It does not seem right to me that even such a personal ‘task’ is ‘delegated’ out to maids.

Just yesterday, I saw a very young maid chasing two toddlers around. She was obviously unable to handle them and she does not have the authority to scold or discipline. The kids were uncontrollable.  Where was the mother? She was chatting nearby. She only called out to the kids once after a very long time despite them getting into a lot of mischief while the maid tried to pick them up and carry them away from trouble again and again.

Maids are for helping ease the burden from housework so that we will have more time with our children. They are not supposed to look after our children for us so that we will have more time for ourselves. So my friend, I am sorry I can’t attend your wedding. I know my kids are older now but I will not let someone else put them to bed. Neither will I leave them at home alone at night for several hours with just the maid while I am out enjoying a dinner with my spouse.

I don’t think I am being overly cautious either. With kids, it is always better to err on the cautious side. We brought them to this world and it is our duty to protect and look after them until they are able to look after themselves. Out of topic here, recently, sister’s Filipino maid ran away after 6 months. Sister is not as cautious as me. She allows the maid to go out on errands with just the driver at times. Recently, the maid, my very old disabled dad, his nurse and the driver were out. The maid took RM300 to buy necessities for dad from the pharmacy while they were out. They waited and waited for her at the car but she never came back….

Google+ is now open to public and everyone can sign up for a Google+ account now. I love everything Google (accept my fluctuating Google Page ranks) however I do wonder whether Google+ is too late now that everyone has their feet firmly tied up to the Facebook boat. Will they jump ship? Only time will tell.

At the moment, it doesn’t look that way because Google+ does not appear to offer many extras to ordinary users like me. It will really need to be extra special for people to abandon the FB ship. Twitter and FB is different but Google+ and FB is too similar, so its either one or the other.

I have both because it simply means another extra outlet to post my links and improve my traffic and get backlinks for my sites but if you are using it for networking with friends and family, you won’t need 2 similar social network platforms! Are you really going to migrate all your posts, photos, etc? Why should you? Unless Google+ really offers extra pluses.

Will Google+ give Facebook a run for its money? Will it outdo Facebook the way Facebook almost killed MySpace and Blogs? Only time will tell. In the meantime, if you want to give Google+ a try and yet remain on FB, you can marry the two either by adding Google+ into  your facebook or add your Facebook into your Google+.

It is rather quiet over at Google+ at the moment. Its only been 2 weeks since Google+ is open to everyone so lets give it a little time. Hopefully it won’t fizzle out the way Google Buzz did almost without a Buzz.

You can follow me on Facebook or Google+.

I have mentioned before that its sometimes takes me only 5 to 10 minutes to write a blog post, especially a blog post without pictures. Well, it takes me a whole morning to write up a Squidoo lens. Phew! Writing Squidoo Lenses is hard work.

Take for example this post. I am in a hurry as I am rushing for some other task, so I can finish this post in 5 minutes flat because my thoughts are pouring out faster than I can type. On the other hand, it took me the whole morning to produce my latest Squidoo lens for little Bob the Builder Fans. Bob The Builder Online.

That is not all. Once a blog post is published, I promptly forget about it. However once a Squidoo lens is published, I come back to it often to tweak it over and over and add stuff and more articles in it constantly to improve my Squidoo rank. It is an ongoing thing.

Hmm…. it had better be worth my while! Still, I enjoy it and I guess that is the most important thing of all. I can’t decide which I enjoy more. Blogging or Building Lenses. I guess I enjoy blogging for writing and Squidoo for the images and what I can do to make it look nice.

Right. Times up. For the record, this post took less than 5 minutes.

I’ll be loving you eternally….. With a heart thats true eternally….. While doing research (yes, I do research) for my Squidoo lens on the Top 10 gifts for Women, I learned about Eternity Rings.

What is an Eternity Ring? The meaning of Eternity Ring

In the Wikipedia, an Eternity Ring is defined as “a lady’s ring, worn on the hand, comprising a band of precious metal (usually gold) set with a continuous line of identically cut gemstones (usually diamonds) to symbolize never-ending love, usually given from a husband to his wife on the occassion of a significant anniversary. Ooooh… how perfectly romantic and pretty too. I want one!

I suppose this  Yellow Gold Diamond Eternity Band Ring best fits the above description of an Eternity Ring.

However, even though I generally prefer gold to silver, I find this White Gold Diamond Eternity Ring above much more attractive and lovely. I wonder if I will ever get one from my dearest. Well, a girl can always dream. I might as well dream along with some romantic I love you music. Here’s Eternally by Engelbert Humperdinck. If you’re a girl reading this, you can dream along with me. If you are a man reading this, well, its time to go shopping.