Archive for January, 2009

I once read a saying by St. Augustine – “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”  Traveling the world is exciting indeed but not everyone is privileged enough to be able to do that. As for me, I am considered lucky that I have this opportunity of living in a different country and seeing different cultures. But I’d like to see more of the world, or at least of Europe, the continent that we are in now.

Before we made or big move from one continent to another, we had to sell 2 of our cars. It was a loss that we decided that we may not buy a car here on account that we are not going to stay here for a long time and also the cost of maintaining one here.

Nevertheless, when ever we decided to travel somewhere further from the city that we live in, we would choose to go for car rental. Traveling with a car that you drive yourself gives you better control of what are the places you would like to visit and what things you would like to see.

We will be traveling to some other European countries next year – at least that is our plan before moving away from Europe again. France and UK is a must visit place on our itinerary list. Either rent a car from here and drive or we can just call for a car hire France or UK. Learn about touring Europe in a car through car hire Europe blog at europe-auto.com.

Sure it was not too cheap when we rented a car for a couple of weeks, but it is cheaper than having to maintain a car at other times when we could use other cheaper alternatives – public transportation or car pooling to work.

“If there is one thing you can do, that you know you will definitely succeed in doing, what shall it be? And would you be willing to put your all into doing it, even if it requires your full dedication to it?”

Last evening while trying to get some sleep my mind wandered of to the family that I left back home in Malaysia. My father, my brother and his family and especially my mother. Oh how much I miss her!

It has been five years since she left us – going on 6. There would be times I find myself thinking about how she would look like when she laughed, how her voice sounded like, her smell, the softness of her hands, the sound of my name when she called it and so on. I try to commit everything in mind for as long as I could. We never had a video camera then. So everything has to be memorized instead. It is something like a practice for me so that I won’t forget those small things that I usually take for granted.

Life is never ever and ever the same without her.

Some people would say, “You do not need an occasion to give somebody a gift.” It is true. Giving presents without waiting for an occasion is a good practice. It sure would be nice to get a pleasant surprise at times. Nonetheless, it does not mean, you give presents on other days, you do not need to prepare a gift on special days. It  is still expected to give a gift on special occasions – Birthdays, Anniversaries, Valentine‘s day, etc.

My other half’s birthday is less than a week. However,  I have not got him anything yet. I had had a hard time thinking of what to give him for Christmas and have a hard time thinking of what to get him for his birthday (what to give to a guy who has everything he needs?). In fact gift ideas don’t really come quite easy to me. Often times I had to scrounge the internet for ideas and bought the gifts directly from the internet last year.

A website which I recently found interesting for gift searching is savebuckets.co.uk. It is not a web store, but actually more like a combination of price comparison and gift ideas site. Just brilliant.

You browse the website for ideas, once you have decided on a gift that you think might be just the right kind of gift for that special someone, click buy, and they will give you a lists of places where you can buy the item. You can compare the prices and choose the best bargain. Here is a price comparison for an ipod touch would look like:

Some of the stores recommended are well known ones like Amazon and Pixmania  (bought my creative zen from them).

I will continue to search for a gift for my husband. It seems like they also have a list of shops that will deliver flowers to destinations all over the world. I don’t need that for my husband I think. But I’d keep that in mind when I need to send a bouquet or two of flowers to family back home in Malaysia.

A few days ago we could take a deep breath thinking that the gas problem in Europe will soon end. But up to date gas is still blocked and people are still cold.

We are pretty lucky that we are in Hungary and not in other Eastern European countries. At least we still have gas reserves for now. Even enough to help others in the region.

Nevertheless, as the Malay saying goes, ” Prepare an umbrella before it rains”; prepare for the worse. So we may still have to buy an electric heater afterall just in case.

I have been overweight nearly all my teenage life. Thus I know how frustrating it can be when you want to lose the weight so much yet it clings on to you. Often times I cried myself to sleep when somebody commented on my weight. The impact of that period in my life has left a mark that just would not go away it seems. Even now, I am at times overly conscious of my weight even though I am not overweight at all.

Overweight or obesity is a problem in many society. Some people would try everything from exercising to starving themselves and yet they find themselves back to square one.

One method that claims to be safe, quick and easy way to lose weight if consuming diet pills.

There are plenty of diet pills available out there in the market. Some working, and some hoax. So which ones that really do work and don’t? Which ones which are safe? Which ones are cheap?

If you have a sort of ‘diet pill’ in mind, do take your time and stop by consumerpricewatch.net and read what they have to say about the diet pills that are available in the market – Hydroxycut, phentermine, orovo and more.

What I like about the website is the reviews are unbiased. They tell you everything you should know about a particular diet product. For instance, whether it is really safe to consume, the effectiveness, who should not consume a particular diet pill, possible side effect and so on.

For example, here is what they have got to say about the safety of using Phentermine diet pills:

* You should not take Phentermine if you are also taking dexfenfluramine, fenfluramine, furazolidone, guanadrel, guanethidine, or have taken a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) (eg, phenelzine) in the last 14 days.

* People with severe high blood pressure, an overactive thyroid, glaucoma, heart or blood vessel disease, or severe narrowing of the blood vessels should not take Phentermine.

* Some people may have allergic reactions with any of the ingredients in Phentermine.

* Phentermine should not be prescribed to women that are pregant or breastfeeding and should not be prescribed to children under the age of 16.

Diet pills are something you will feed your body. Therefore you need to learn about them and find out whether they are really suitable for you or not is very important.

So if you have a diet pill in mind, check out what they, at consumerpricewatch.net has got to say about it.

I happen to stumble upon an interesting topic on my rounds of online reading. The 100 days resolution.

Each New year we often find ourselves determined to accomplish something for the new year (or to bring forward the unaccomplished resolution from last year), just to end up neglecting our resolutions not even a few months after we’ve promised ourselves to do it. Don’t most of us do that?

So instead of a 365 days challenge, why not make it 100 days?  Take a big piece and cut it into small chunks. One small step at a time, and when gleaned together they make one great achievement for the year.

I myself will conceive a “100 day challenge”. What will it be? Give me a wee bit more time to figure it out.

I grew up in a family of smokers. Most if not all the males in my family smoke. The females on the other hand, are non smokers – I will explain a bit later why. Smoking, despite all the disadvantages it gives to the smoker and second hand smokers ( and now third hand smokers) – expensive, wasteful, unhealthy – is a popular activity all over the world. Reading about those people who still smoke despite all the campaigns against it, I really cannot comprehend why people still want to smoke.

Many heavy smokers started off at a very early age. Most when they were in their early teenage years. This I can see even with my father and my brothers. The all started since they were between 14-16 years old.

Why did they start at such an early age? Due to peer pressures, the influence of movies, and – in my opinion the ultimate reason-  smoking considered as normal.

Smoking when considered as normal is embraced easily. This, I feel can be seen both here in Hungary and Malaysia. As I said earlier, I grew up in a family of smokers. I was a second hand smoker nearly all my life. My brothers succumbed to the habit yet my sisters and I did not. None, with an exception of one or two of my female friends smoke. The culture in Malaysia does not condone the fact that a woman smokes. It’s taboo.  Compared to the Hungarian counterparts, out of 10 women I see on the streets of Budapest, I would be able to see perhaps 7 of them holding cigarettes. Even my mother in law is an ex-smoker. Due to the gender equality which Hungarian women enjoy more, the culture does not see the need to bestow an invisible rule that women should not smoke, thus making smoking as a normal thing for both women and men. So what I am saying is, if not for the culture difference, due to the ‘normalcy’ of smoking; my sisters, myself , along with other females in Malaysia who live in  a ‘smoking environment’,  would have a higher chance of being smokers ourselves.

Ireland was the first country in the world to enforce nationwide ban of smoking in workplaces in 2004. Even after a year of the implementation of the ban, they saw a tremendous effect. 80% Irish ex-smokers confessed that the Law helped them to quit, and 88% claimed that it help them to be ‘smoke-free’.

When people smoke less, children will be  much more protected from having the idea that smoking is something normal.  Perhaps the chance for our younger generation to touch a cigarettes at such an early age would be lessen.

Message to smokers:

I was doing my daily rounds of reading, searching for writing ideas when I finally find myself reading about how webcams came about.

The first webcam, called the CoffeeCam, was switched on for the first time in 1991. When I read the the name – CofeeCam – I asked myself, “Why CoffeeCam?”. Well, I found out that was what it was created for! A coffee pot in a room called the Trojan Room located in a computer laboratory in Cambridge University. The camera was focused on a coffee pot, showing its present state (with coffee or empty) to help people from other parts of the building avoid making needless trips to the coffee room just to find it empty. (That’s just so geeky) So was it really to avoid pointless trips to the coffee room or just plain laziness?

Picture credit:wikipedia.

Anyhow, webcam technology  was further developed through the dream of the Porn industry to transmit “LIVE” images through the internet. So they hired a developer to create a software. Thus the “Live streaming video” came about.

The technology is still going through an ongoing development. Now, not only individuals but Businesses also benefit  from it by using online meeting software to assist them with online conference, conduct online training classes and much more.

Sure glad that the Geeks were too lazy to walk to coffee room. If not we would not be enjoying our webcams today. Or maybe the technology would have been found a little bit later.

I am with NewGenerationHosting for nearly half a year now. I did a lengthy review about them the first month of using. The post can be found here.

I have a couple of blogs hosted with them. Another blog hosted on another hosting provider. Yesterday I asked them whether they would transfer that particular blog for me. A few minutes after I sent them the support ticket they answered my question, saying that they would gladly do it.

You see, some hosting providers will not transfer individual blogs. They would only transfer the entire cpanel only. I have two domains on the other hosting and only want to transfer one over. Other hosting providers wouldn’t do it for me.

So they did everything yesterday. By this morning I checked everything is tranferred and my blog running smoothly, nobody even noticed the transfer. They did everything.

After 6 months of using their service, paying less than $2 a month to host with prompt support, my verdict? NewGenerationHosting.com rocks.