For the whole of last week, I was busy with writing assignments that this blog was not updated as frequent as it should. After posting my bids in GAF, I got a client from India who contacted me for this project. Yes, the money comes in nicely and I have been paid USD36 yesterday for a whole week of writing. I wrote and revised about 10 articles for her. She has constant job which is good and is earning about USD450 a month as a writer. Due to her overflow work, she contacted freelancers like yours truly who just started a new stint. Since the money is more than my Adsense from my 4 blogs, obviously I took the opportunity to keep myself busy with writing. At least I can still depend on the internet for some part time work.
It is enlightening to learn that Darren Rowse of Problogger.net has shared how he earned a 6-figure income a year from blogging. Check out his site here. However, you need to note that when Darren writes a post, he gets hundreds of comments and thousands of visitors. Here he talks about how he earns the money from Google Adsense, plus a host of other affiliate programs that pays him so well. For some people, making money seems akin to drinking water and is so natural for them, while for others, like yours truly, are just beginning to grasp the enormity of the opportunities from online writing. At the moment, I am maintaining 6 blogs and it is not an easy feat. I need to discipline myself to write and not to surf around too much while looking out for material to blog on. Previously it was so easy peasy, just write 1 post and copy it all over my blogs. But I have received feedback that this is plagiarising my own blogs and will affect my search engine rankings. So, here I am blogging almost every day and hoping for more visitors to come by. Comments are most welcome but may be deleted if consist of negativism.
Here is an interesting YouTube on Tic, the first hamster and Tac the second hamster. The video above has OVER 3,000,000 views since December 31, 2006 - incredible! Enjoy. I used to keep a pet golden hamster, a gift from my second sister during my varsity days. It helps to relieve stress from all the studying and I loved petting its fury pelt, warm body in my hands. But I also had to clean its cage weekly and shampoo it at the same time. While cleaning its cage from its droppings, I would put my pet hamster, affectionately called Hammy in a pail so that it won’t escape while cutting newspapers into stripes and mashed it into a ball as blanket for it when it curled up to sleep at night. I even bought a mini battery-operated clip fan for it.
I have been to Penang Hill 2 years back and did not know that there is an English restaurant called David Brown. As I went to the tourism web site to check it out, I was amazed to find the interior decoration modern with a touch of class and obviously it has been renovated, a far cry from the Bellevue hotel that sits atop the hill. Bellevue hotel is run down, the furnishings are old-fashioned and very minimally furnished without an air-con. The next time I go to Penang Hill, I will make sure to make a stop in this swanky collonial style David Brown’s Restaurant. The details are below and call up first to make a reservation and for directions to get there.
David Brown’s Restaurant & Tea House
Lot 400, MK 17, Daerah Bart Daya
Strawberry Hill, Bukit Bendera,
11300 Ayer Itam, Penang
Tel: 604-828 8337
Fax: 604-826 6337
I had a very good weekend vacationing in Dorset Hotel in Larut Road, Penang. It was located just opposite Kentucky Fried Chicken’s outlet in a colonnial bungalow. It was also conveniently located opposite my church known as Georgetown Baptist Church with English services at 9:00am, 11:00am and Hokkien service at 4:30pm by Pastor Yeoh Guan Hock. That’s one of the reason why I booked this hotel instead of staying in Vistana Hotel like last weekend. Our church service venue has been changed from Relau to Larut Road in town. This is a much bigger place and better location which is quite established. Below are the photos taken from my camera.
View from our hotel room in Dorset Hotel.
See the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet at the bottom. Another view from our hotel room.
Writing table with lamp and mirror.
How comfortable the huge sofas in the lobby.
Bathroom of our hotel room. There’s a basket of freebies like shampoo, shower cap, cotton buds, sewing kit and soap in the corner.
When you render favours to a friend, don’t expect anything in return. Don’t even have ulterior motive when you give favours. I hate it when people demand a RM250 chinese new year hamper just for some simple favours done in the past. What the heck! And you are not even Chinese. And when you comment in my blog, you had the cheek to point out mistakes like misalignment, etc, etc. When I visited your blog, it is no better. You got your side bar truncated as well. You see the dust in people but is blind to the stumbling block in your eyes. So, I rather you don’t visit my blog and get jealous of the food pictures and hotel stays that I get, because this is my very own blog and I am at liberty to post whatever I like.
I just make a donation of just 1k RM to the Thai orphans through Pastor Cheah Chee Moon. His dream is to ensure the homeless children under his care in Chiang Rai, Thailand, acquire a sound education. To achieve this, the 46-year-old Penangite recently embarked on a fund-raising mission to collect money for the schooling expenditure of the 56 children in his centre, called Agape Home. Riding a 30-year-old Honda Cub, Cheah travelled from Thailand to Singapore through the west coast of peninsula Malaysia.
“I am hoping that people will generously donate a ringgit for every kilometre covered.” said Cheah, who expects to have ridden about 6,000km by the time he returns to Thailand. Cheah’s involvement with orphaned and destitute children in Thailand began in 1984 when he went there as a missionary worker.
He found that there were far too many of them, some ending on the streets after both their parents succumbed to AIDS. “Some of these children were also HIV-positive and needed special care,” said Cheah. “My heart went out to them and I decided to take up the challenge of giving them a better life.”
He added that these street children had little opportunity in life and no way of acquiring an education. After years of working hard as a missionary to take care of their needs, he set up Agape Home several years ago to take in destitute children and give them a proper education.
According to Cheah, he wanted the children in Agape Home to go as far as possible academically. “Once they are well-educated, they will be able to take good care of themselves,” said Cheah, who runs the home with the help of four workers. He said homeless children had better opportunities in Malaysia compared to Thailand as there were many centres in Malaysia catering to their needs.
Cheah can be contacted at 016-408 3401 or call 012-227 2289 (Pastor Albert Ong). For security purpose, I am not putting the bank account number here or the bank account name. Just send Pastor Cheah a message and he will sms you the banking details to make the donation for a worthy cause helping the orphaned kids.
Chap Goh Meh represents the fifteenth and final day of the Lunar New Year period as celebrated by Chinese communities. The term is from the Hokkien dialect and refers to the fifteenth day of the first month, which is the occasion of the first full moon of the New Year.
The occasion is marked by feasting and various festivities, including the consumption of tangyuan. In traditional Chinese culture, it is also celebrated as the Lantern Festival or the Shang Yuan Festival. In Southeast Asia, however, it coincides with the Chinese Valentine’s Day. It is also when young unmarried women gather to toss tangerines into the sea, in a hope that their future spouse will pick it up – a custom that originated in Penang, Malaysia. In the past, this was also the only day that unmarried ladies could be seen with their partners.
Here is a youtube video showing the queue to New Creation Church about one and a half hours before the service starts. Imagine such hunger to hear God’s word being preached by Pastor Joseph Prince, a modern day very annointed prophet and preacher. And they are not queuing up for ang pows or some free gifts from Her World magazine.
In fact, one of the shop owners got so curious what people are queueing up for that she decided to join in the crowd and then became a Christian and accepted Christ into her life. That’s the living testimony of how people came to know this dynamic church that preaches to the whole world, United States included via satellite TV. And this was my former church when I was still in Singapore. I really missed not being able to attend in person the 4 services on Sundays. If you happen to be reading this and is in Singapore, just check up on newcreation.org.sg for the time of the service and make sure you don’t miss it. I promise you won’t regret it.
Here are some photos taken around this season at various places to whet your appetite. I shall be going to Haadyai from tomorrow morning until the third day of Chinese New Year. In the meantime, there won’t be any blogging as I take a break. The van will come and pick us up at around 6:00am tomorrow to Lee Garden Hotel in Haadyai. My parents plan to get lots of cashew nuts which are cheaper there. Happy Chinese New Year to all my readers!
Shop selling all kind of Chinese New Year paraphernalia.
Red pussy willow. Commonly used to decorate homes during Chinese New Year.
Turquoise intricately designed antique bowls.
Pots of kumkuat that resemble mandarin oranges are a hot buy.
