As I had said 2 days ago, 18 Dec is the special day of my youngest nephew. This little skinny boy turns 8 years old today and he is so excited about it.
As we have had a birthday celebration for our eldest sister 2 days ago, we made it a simple one today. My sister bought a chocolate cake for our nephew to celebrate on his 8th birthday.
Chocolate Cake :
We also bought his favourite food, ie. KFC fried chicken, for him to eat.
KFC Fried Chicken :
KFC Fried Chicken Sticks :
I had already brought my nephew to the arcade game outlet yesterday to play so I didn’t buy anything else for him. I gave him some money for him to save in his piggy bank instead.
I can tell that my nephew was very happy especially when we were singing the birthday song to him. How I wish everyday is a birthday for everybody!
Today is the birthday of my eldest sister and we have had a little celebration for her. We bought her food that she likes to eat on this special day of hers as on 16 Dec.
We bought a mango cake for her and here is a picture of how the cake looks like.
Mango Cake :
We ordered a buy-1-get-1-free Hawaiian pizza from a nearby Canadian pizza outlet. It took about 30 minutes for the pizza delivery man to deliver the pizzas to our house.
Canadian Hawaiian Pizza :
Crab is our favourite seafood so we bought a packet of Black Soya Sauce Crabs from the nearby seafood house.
Black Soya Sauce Crabs :
Satay is another favourite food of ours so we bought 50 sticks of chicken satay and 50 sticks of pork satay plus 4 packets of satay rice wrapped in pandan leaves.
Chicken Satay :
Satay Rice wrapped in Pandan Leaves :
Cucumber :
My sister bought pastries and buns too for the birthday celebration.
Pastries and Buns :
It is always fun to have celebrations for all occassions. We will have another birthday celebration 2 days later as my youngest nephew will be having his 8th birthday on 18 Dec. I’m looking forward to having fun again 🙂
Christmas is around the corner and most of the shopping centres have displayed the Christmas trees to welcoming its arrival.
In fact, the Christmas light-up at Orchard Road had already been started since the beginning of December. Some of the shopping centres and commercial buildings had put up the Christmas decorations as early as late November.
Yesterday I spotted a tall and attractive Christmas tree was standing in the middle of the hall after attending an Internet seminar. So, I took out my camera phone and got a quick shot of that beautiful Christmas tree straight away.
Beautiful Christmas Tree :
It makes me feel happy to see all the Christmas trees are hanging with beautiful ornaments, decorations and toppers no matter where I go. I think this festive season is going to help boost the morale of everybody and also improve the economy for awhile.
Christmas is a time for us to give and to share the joy. Let us stop worrying about the bad economy and stop tightening our belts for the time being during the holiday season. Just buy if you feel the need to buy. Just give if you feel the need to give. So, be generous and give.
I attended an Internet marketing seminar this afternoon. The title of the seminar is called Internet Wealth Builder. I came to know about this Internet seminar via an advertisement appeared in the Straits Times on Thursday.
Since Friday is my off day and I have the time so I chose to spend my afternoon attending the Internet seminar at the International Plaza. I just wanted to find out what the speaker had to say about Internet marketing or online business venture.
I had attended a few seminars this year and most of these seminars were Internet related. Those Internet seminars that I had attended are Stuart Tan’s Internet Marketing Academy, Alvin Phang’s Internet Business Formula Workshop, Fabian Lim’s Adwords Empire and Douglas Ng’s Internet Wealth Builder.
I have been seeing advertisement popping up in the newspapers promoting Internet wealth and earning residual income online in recent years. Many local and foreign Internet marketers are telling people how easy it is to make money online.
Most if not all of the Internet marketers are claiming that they are millionaires and they can teach people how to make a lot of money using the Internet. It just sounds too easy and too good to be true to earn millions of dollars online. If it were really so easy, everybody would be millionaires and there won’t be so many poor people in this world, right? 🙂
Anyway, I will usually find time to attend the Internet seminar although I’m skeptical about this kind of Internet bootcamp can teach people how to make money and become wealthy. The intend of attending seminars, such as Internet or personal development, is to find out what is hot and what is not in the market.
I think it is no harm learning new things and exploring into the Internet marketing world. I take it as an opportunity to meet more people, to know the market trend and to get more exposure by attending seminars.
I went to Orchard Road recently and was impressed by the Christmas decorations and lighting over there. The Christmas lightup looks so beautiful especially in the late evening.
A quick shot of the Christmas Lightup along Orchard Road :
You can see that many people, including tourists, were very excited holding camera in their hands. They were so busy taking pictures with their friends and families. Probably this would be their memorable moment to be shared with their loved ones by capturing the beautiful night scene at the Orchard Road.
A tall and beautiful Christmas tree :
We have two more weeks to go to welcome the arrival of Christmas 2008. Let us make our countdown now…………..
I have been seeing a “listen now” icon showing up at the start of the posts of many Blog sites that I have visited. Then, I came to realise that this is a unique free service provided by Odiogo (pronounced as “Audio Go”).
Odiogo — a service to voice your content :
What the Odiogo feature does is to convert text to speech. In other words, it can take Blog posts and create audio podcasts out of them.
I think this text-to-speech feature is pretty interesting. It is going to help people with learning disabilities such as Dyslexia and visually impaired to know what is written in the Blog post by listening to the audio after clicking the “listen now” icon.
My 10 years old nephew is a Dyslexic person who has problem in recognising words. I’m sure this Odiogo feature is a great help to him if he visits my Blog and tries to understand what I have been writing in my Blog posts so far especially to find out whether I’m writing something good or something bad about him 🙂
Here is a guide to show you on how to install the WordPress plugin of the Odiogo Listen Button if you are using the WordPress platform for your Blog.
My family and I visited the E!Hub located at Downtown East again yesterday. This was the second time that we had been to E!Hub since November. We saw the Ferris Wheel there and it looked really beautiful with the lights on while turning.
Here is a picture of the Ferris Wheel :
Our plan was to have a fun game at the bowling alley. As it was a public holiday (Hari Raya Haji) yesterday, there were many people there waiting for their turns to play bowling. We made our booking and got our quene number. We estimated it would take about 2 hours to reach our turn so we decided to come back later.
Then, we went to the Rink to have some fun. It’s a 2,000 square feet ice-skating rink made of synthetic material which looks like real ice. We rented the skates and bought our gloves before entering the rink to have an hour of fun.
The Rink at E!Hub of Downtown East :
Having Great Fun Ice-Skating On The Synthetic-Ice Rink :
Everybody was so tired and hungry after the ice-skating so we went to have some food first before going on to our next game. We went to the Super Dog fast-food restaurant and were greeted politely by the crew. Their greeting was “Welcome to Super Dog!”. My nephews and I just found it funny and giggled. It reminded us of the cartoon character showing in the cartoon network that always says : “Stupid Dog!”.
My family and I went to the bowling alley after having our food. We booked one lane for 6 persons to play. It was really fun to have the children around playing bowling with us.
See how my niece made her strike :
We had great fun yesterday at the E!Hub. We really enjoyed the ice-skating on the synthetic-ice rink and bowling at the alley. How I wish everyday is a holiday!
When I was connecting my optical mouse to the USB port of my laptop a few days ago, I noticed that the mouse icon was not moving no matter how I moved my mouse. I landed my finger onto the touchpad of the laptop and the mouse icon was responding well.
I checked the device configuration by clicking the “Control Panel”, “System”, “Device Manager”, “Mice and Other Pointing Devices” and I can only find the “Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad” but not the “HID-compliant Mouse”.
I pulled out the USB connector of the optical mouse and then connected it back again but the mouse was not working. I shook the cable carefully and it was intermittently working by emitting red laser light. This was a complimentary optical mouse that I got during the purchase of my NEC Versa E6210 laptop. Hmm…I knew it was time to buy a new one.
My Old USB Optical Mouse :
Actually, I can just use the touchpad of the laptop since the mouse was not working. However, I just don’t like to use the touchpad because I find it difficult to maneuver and it slows down the process of using the laptop. Sometimes, it requires the use of both hands just to drag and drop things. It makes the user feel like a handicap without a mouse when using the computer.
I think retractable mouse is not so durable as compared with the straight-cable mouse but I still like it because I find that mouse with retractable cable is easier to manage than those with long and messy cables.
So, I went to the Challenger IT store to select a mouse. There were many colourful and fanciful mice displaying at the Challenger. These types of mouse were more enticing to the school children than to the adult. I spotted a black and glossy USB optical mouse with a retractable cable. Then, I made my purchase straight away.
My New USB Optical Mouse :
My niece and nephew find my newly-purchased USB optical mouse very stylish and attractive. It has a black and glossy surface. I like the look and feel of the new mouse. It definitely looks nicer than my old one. Don’t you agree?
I guess most of the people have heard about blogging but might not know exactly how to set up a Blog. My 14 years old nephew told me that he is learning how to set up a free Blog on Blogger.com in his school.
You see, even youngsters know how to set up a Blog and this is going to be a trend in our society as the government is advocating the use of information technology (IT) in our daily lives. This is going to help in the growth of economy for making full use of the IT and its infrastructure in the long run.
In this Blog post, I’m going to show you how to set up a free Blog on Blogger.com which is managed by Google. It is usually easier to set up a free Blog by following those instructions prompted on the screen than to set up a self-hosted Blog if you do not have the technical know-how to do it on your own.
I personally prefer to use a self-hosted Blog to a free one as I like to have full controll over my Blog and I can do whatever (legally, ethically and morally, of course) that I want to. Anyway, for a start, I’m going to tell you the pros and cons of using a free Blog hosting service before showing you how to set up a Blogger Blog.
A free hosting service is a web hosting already provided on behalf of a free, reputable service provider such as Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Multiply.com, etc.
Pros :
It’s free! It’s a good choice if you are on a budget. Meaning to say you save US $8-10 per year for a domain name and US $7.95 per month for a web hosting service if you were to use a paid self-hosted Blog (just like this Laingan.com blog).
Cons :
Your content resides on someone else’s server rather than on your own and you are subject to the service provider’s terms of use. Meaning to say this party has the rights to shut down your profile and you could lose all the information you have created.
Steps To Get Started With Blogger.com Account :
Step 1 : Go to www.Blogger.com to set up a free account. Step 2 : Click on the “Create Blog” orange arrow. Step 3 : Select a name. Step 4 : Select a template.
Note : Your Blogger web address is in this format ==> http://www.xxxx.blogspot.com where “xxxx” denotes the name that you have chosen for your Blog.
Don’t worry if you still do not know how to set up a Blogger Blog. I have a video clip for you to follow. Start your blogging journey right away as it is easy. Enjoy blogging!
I have not been updating my Blog for a few days as I was busy reading ebooks which were purchased during the Thanksgiving sale.
I think it is a good bargain for purchasing stuffs during holiday seasons. Reason being that retailers or online marketers know that most people tend to have a good mood and are more willing to buy things during holiday than on normal days.
One of the marketing strategies to get more people to buy things from them is to give discount such as buying two ebooks for the price of one or things like that. The psychology of the buyers or consumers is that they are saving a lot of money to buy on-sale stuffs especially when the world economy is slowing down.
To be honest, I share the same sentiment so I have purchased two ebooks for the price of one recently. Actually, I longed to purchase the ebook a few months ago as I was really interested in knowing what it was all about. So, I waited for the ebook to go on sale and bought it on the Thanksgiving promotion.
Now, I have finished reading the ebooks and have the time to update my Blog again. Stay tuned.
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