Asian Tiger

As a young parent, I often rely on my mother for parenting advise when it comes to dealing with my little ones. Call me lazy or call me inexperienced but my mother’s advise always seem to be the correct ones. After all, she did bring me up well and has umpteen years of experience with children.

But alas, my mother does not stay with me. Her knowledge and experience can only be tapped if she’s at home answering my calls. I tried offering/bribing her a mobile phone but she refused to be chained to technology. My wife and I finally thought that it’s best for us to stand on our own two feet when it comes to our children’s upbringing.

We thought long and we thought hard. Where are we to solicit uptodate information about parenting? Where can we read and learn about parenting skills and “best practices” for a child’s upbringing? If we want to buy expensive children items (e.g. car seats), where can we get expert reviews? Trust me when I say that many questions popped in our heads and we have no answers.

We decided to hop over to Borders in search of some parenting books. As we entered through the entrance, a section on magazines caught my eyes (all guys are suckers for gadget and auto magazines ). Along with magazines that interest me were parenting magazines. I took one copy and skimmed through the contents and immediate knew that the questions I asked before had been answered.

Magazines with parenting emphasis provide focus on bringing up children, the best products, experts reviews, latest happenings revolving around children’s growth, best methods for children intelligence and much much more. Children’s health and general disease prevention are also discussed and explained (very valuable content).

I am now a proud subscriber of parenting magazines such as Young Parents and Parenthood. These magazines and their back copies are worth more than what I paid them for.

Tags: parenting, upbringing, magazines, parenting magazines

I am not kidding you. I’ve had thoughts to move to the US. I’m a firm believer that grasses are always greener on the other side of the fence. Besides that, working in the US will help me grow my spending power. Imagine, in the US, DELL computers are only a few hundred dollars. Here, we are playing thousands of ringgit for the same hardware specifications (for foreign readers, average salary for Malaysians are around USD700 per month). How many of us can really afford an iPod? It’s like a luxury for those in Malaysia to own an iPod video.

So, the US seems like a great place but US is so darn big. Where in US you ask. Florida, I say. Florida’s weather is similar to Malaysia and Florida’s got plenty of attractions. Houses in Florida is also relatively affordable (assuming I earn USD). From what I’ve checked on the Internet, a beautifully single storey house/bungalow with a big lawn and no fencing is priced about USD350,000. Mortgage services is also aplenty and we can even check and plan everything from here.

The best part is, companies like 1st Heritage Mortgage Company who specialises as Florida mortgage broker can provide me with the best rates shoud I decide to get a mortgage. The fact that the company is a licensed Florida mortgage lender and have been in existance for 20 years, increased my confidence of using their services. If you visit their site, you will be provided with excellent tools and calculators related to mortgage and it’s free to use.

All I need now is a job in Florida.  Anyone can give me a hand here?

One of my buddies was recently blessed with his third child (a daughter). It is the law of this country to register the birth of your child within 14 days otherwise, a fine will applicable to the parent or guardian.

Though my buddy wanted to quickly register his child, he and his wife could not decide on a name for their newborn. The husband wanted an easy to remember name while the wife wanted unique baby names.

We tried a number of ways to match their newborn with the siblings but the mother was a little bit “stubborn”. Just then, the wife exclaimed “Wouldn’t it be great if there were baby names database online which we can do a search?” I suddenly remembered of a fairly new website that has a comprehensive list of baby names as well as baby names meaning.

Using CompleteBabyNames.com, we were able to sift through a number of names (learning of meaning and also the baby names origin) and finally compromised on an easy to remember name and yet unique.

Hello Elene, welcome to your world.

Tags: baby names