Author: omaha

Categories
advice and tips

Self identity

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Serenity became 4 years old a few months ago, and we are actually expecting our second child this July. Being the 1st generation Chinese immigrants in mid-west, we have some unique challenges such as being the minority in the community. This is not the case in the pre-school/toddler community we sent Serenity to (Hope Montessori at Creve Coeur). But it’s not always the case. I recall, once when Yoyo was still very little, probably one year old, we went to a mall play ground, and a Caucasian girl (about 10 years old) came over to play with Yoyo, but her dad called her back. It seems to me a race kind thing was going on (from the expression). This is fine with me, my personality is I don’t care too much about discrimination other people say/express towards me. But nonetheless, I don’t want my daughter felt that way when she grows up.

Economy condition
Beside race, another common thing is different economy conditions among families. For us personally, we really work hard to send her to the private pre-school. It’s not a small change for us. I wishes my app store or google adsense revenue could make up some of those some day 🙂

Fun aside, once I talked about private school option with a fellow parent (his daughter is my daughter’s good friend in the class). And one worry from her dad, is if we send our kids to private school, will they feel so removed to ordinary people’s lives. Note both of us have fairly humble up-brings. We don’t want our kids growing up having no empathy for people are less fortunate than us. This is a very good point I did not think much before the conversation. Interestingly enough, I heard discussions on similar topic lately with my coworker, one reason they decided moving to new school district is that new school district demographics matches their background better. Not too affluent like some other districts 🙂

I will update more as I have more thoughts on this topic.

Categories
Fun

St. Louis farmers market project

Reading Time: < 1 minute

The summer is coming. Since we will be free on Saturday mornings, I plan to take my daughter to all the farmers’ market in the area. We have been to Tower Grove before; Creve Coeur just opened the farmers market at the same time (Saturday morning) at the Parkway north middle school parking lot: 181 Coeur De Ville Drive (intersection of I-270 and Ladue Road). I heard Ellisville has a farmers market too, it’s Thursday 4 to 7:30 pm. Ferguson always has already a good one. Then there is Kirkwood.

Btw, I will update the “To Market” app once I got all the facts correct for the markets in the area.

(Update 05-24-2014) I submitted the 2014 update (v 1.2.4) to the app store a few days ago.

(Update 05-26-2014) I found stltoday has a google map for all the farmers market in the area. Here is the link.

(Update 06-03-2014) The update is available at the iTunes App store.

photo

Categories
kids

Kindermusik and Team Central Gymnastics

Reading Time: < 1 minute

This is the end of school year, it is also the busiest time for parents and kids. I just realized it this year. As this past week we had two activities for Serenity: besides the Spring musical, we had Spring Performance at Team Central Gymnastics. Yoyo has done this for a year now, I knew she might not be talented in this, and we sometimes skipped classes (especially in the cold winter), but we got to finish it with a strong note.

spring_performance_team_centralIt’s also a bit emotional to say goodbye to our Kindermusik teacher and friends. We have done this for last 2 years, since Yoyo was 2.5 years old. I recall at one time when she was transitioning from toddler class to pre-school at Hope, the only class she likes to go is Kindermusik.

Related articles

    Categories
    Fun

    Spring Musical

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Serenity’s school usually have this Spring Musical, in which each class will take turns and sing two songs. Each year they have a theme. Last year it was about Season. In the May of St. Louis, the weather is almost like summer. Some classes picked Summer, Spring, or Fall, Serenity’s class picked two Winter songs, which I think is quite unique. Here are the two song: Winter Wonderland and A Marshmallow World.

    Winter Wonderland

    A Marshmallow World

    This year’s theme is transportation. Next Wednesday evening, they will have the magic Spring Musical again. I know the songs their class will sing. “Life is a highway”. She has being sing that for a while.

    And “on the road again” by Wille Nelson

    Interestingly, both season (change) and road trip are metaphors of life path, or growing. They are all good picks. And last but not least, the song we all sung together last year is the Circle Game by Joni Michtell. Don’t know about this year’s pick.

    Also, this time I asked Serenity how the teachers picked the song. She said the teachers googled it 🙂

    Categories
    advice and tips kids

    Mall playground, park playground

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    (Update 08-30-2014) We went to St. Louis Outlet Mall (the mills) again today. The playground is busier today as this is labor day long weekend. But still fun. We also explored the mall a bit more this time.

    photo

    (Update 07-20-2014) We went to St. Louis Mills today, as I felt it’s might be a better fit for my older daughter as she is 4 years and 4 months old. I vaguely recall they have a playground, last time we visited there (a year or two ago), Serenity was not quite there yet. Today it’s no question she is ready for that. The plus side of this playground is it’s both big, have a fence around it, and it’s indoor (good for summer and winter). The two new outlet malls in Chesterfield don’t have big playground like the one in Mills.

    (Update 05-10-2014) We went to Chesterfield mall today, specifically the playground, as our little guest has allergy, we try to play inside. Personally I prefer Chesterfield mall over West County mall for the playground, it has more room.

    (Original 05-04-2014) I have not been to the mall much recently, but the past Friday evening we went to mall to pick up something, and let our daughter playing in the playground for a while. Two things made me uncomfortable: one little boy, who is still in diapers, was a bit aggressive, he pushes my daughter and other kids, while his parent does not care much until I complains. Also, there is a “Asian child fund” charity, presumably they see me as asian, asked me for donation, which is fine by itself. I am not comfortable though, is when they showed me the list of money other people gave (don’t know if this is true or not). It’s just not the right way to ask for money, in my opinion.

    Yesterday evening (Saturday), after dinner we went to Beirne Park, and we enjoyed it as usual. Personally I think the atmosphere at park and at mall playgrounds are different. Obviously it’s not a fair comparison too, as the park playground is much bigger. But at least the parent can watch out the kids and teacher them if needed.

    Water outage
    This past Wednesday we had an water outage; this is the first time I experienced this in the condo/maybe in the US. Personally I am not too upset by this, because back in China we had those kinds of things more often when I grew up (power/water outage). I joked we need to go to hotel if we don’t have water. But everyone in the neighborhood was asking each other about what happened. Water was restored after we came back from dinning outside. Yesterday (Saturday) we received a letter from the condo management co. explaining about what happened: it was essentially a clerical/communication mistake, the water company thought we did not pay the water bill, and we have already paid actually. This made me to think: this water company monopoly thing does not help, say if we are not happy with the water company, we can not switch, because they are the only provider.

    Farmers market
    Creve Coeur opened its own farmers market. I saw an interesting comment written a while ago.

    My apps free for a week
    myNestEgg

    ToMarket

    collegeFund
    The last app (collegeFund) has a problem I know of, and I already submit the fix/update. It will take some time for App store to review and make it to the store.

    Categories
    Fun

    I enjoyed the time spent driving Yoyo to/back from school

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    She will ask a lot questions on the way to school, as the iPhone/iPad/work takes over my spare time these days, I did not get a lot quality time with Yoyo alone. Driving her to school and take her back to home provide good opportunities for communications. She will usually have a lot of questions on the way to school, probably because her mind is more active. She will ask questions on everything, e.g., cars, planet, plants, flowers, some of which I can not answer, and I will tell her to ask teachers. Sometimes she will say “grown ups don’t know everything, but teachers do”.

    On the way to home, sometimes she will talk about things at school. Not always. Sometimes she will say “just sit there”. Obvious she was kidding, as I knew they do a lot things at school, and Serenity is busy most of the time. She will talk more sometimes before sleep.

    Teach the right thing
    Serenity likes to be the roles in the story these days. Here is what she usual says: I want to be everyone on this book except the one does not look nice. So today when she says this: I want to be everyone on this book because everyone is pretty. I was pleasantly surprised. Now I reflected a bit I know her teachers have told the kids the right thing 🙂

    Categories
    advice and tips Fun

    Kids Summer Camp in St. Louis Area

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    It’s finally spring time here, which also means summer is around the corner. And we need to get kids into summer camp, instead of let them glue to Netflix or iPads all day 🙂

    There are quite a few summer camps in the area, some are almost full time (like regular semester), some are more short. And I recall YMCA has some discount a few months ago for early registrations (early Feb), don’t know if they still have it.

    There is also a kids summer camp at St. Louis Community College Meramec. There is this Missouri Science Camp, which is being held at Rolla, MO, where I went to graduate school.

    I know Ladue News has a nice summary for the summer camps, but I could not find it online. IndependentSchools (the association of private schools in St. Louis) has a good list too.

    Categories
    advice and tips finance iOS iPhone app

    Small changes coming to collegeFund app

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    I was listening/reading two stories on the college debt (source: NPR) and the financial well beings of millennials (source: fortune/cnn), which lead to to add some new features to the collegeFund app. The app was essentially a college savings (529 plan) and I did not thought too much of this college debt problem at the time the app was conceived 3.5 years ago. At the time I opened 529 plan for my daughter, and started put some money into it.

    A lot has changed in my personal finance and to the economy in general. Now I felt for a lot of people, college debt is like a mortgage, it’s just something they have to bear with, and manage while go on with their lives. Btw, I saw another good resource for college debt here.

    I just updated the app, submitted to the app store, it’s under review now. Here is the screenshot. Let me know if you have any questions. Email me at minjie dot xu AT gmail dot com.

    collegeFund_iPhone5_screen

    (Update 05-10-2014) I made couple more updates to fix bugs I introduced when adding this “debt free” tab/screen. It’s mostly settled now. I am thinking other enhancements, along with myNestEgg app.

    Categories
    advice and tips finance

    Redeem British Airways Avios Points for Free Flights

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    From my limited experience BA Avios points are difficult to redeem for international flights, esp. from where I live STL to PVG Shanghai. But I also heard BA miles is very efficient for the US domestic flights, the trick is also to find them. So here is how I did recently, for one way STL to LGA (New York). I used AA advantage account to search award flights first (note AA is the BA partner in the US), and I saw some openings. Then I go to BA site, search the same date, I got the award seats.

    I have not done round trip or multi-stop in this case. This is something I will try next time.

    (Update 04-20-2014) Today I booked the round trip ticket for STL to CLL (College Station, Texas), it costs 36,000 points plus $20 for 2 tickets. This is compared to 22,500 points + $7.50 for three STL to LGA (New York) tickets. It’s a bit more expensive for the round trip tickets, even considering breaking it into 2 legs, it’s 9,000 points per leg.

    Also, I noticed the points guy has some good stuff (this one and this one) about redeeming BA Avois points.

    Categories
    Uncategorized

    Exchange Euro into US dollar

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    I have a need to exchange some euro into US dollars. I did some research online as I recall previously I did not have very good experience on this. Saw a few articles (such as this MSN one, and this independentTraveller one). They are relevant but not totally applicable, I think they are more geared toward international travelers. Anyway, I compared 3 banks in St. Louis area, Bank of America (BoA), Regions, and US bank. On April 4 Friday, the rate I got was 1.2943, 1.27xx, and 1.18xx. The rate at US bank was a bit low, which is contrary to the results from the previous MSN article:

    “…Among the 15 largest U.S. banks, the exchange rates ranged from 1.3000 at Citibank to 1.4400 at U.S. Bank…”

    I eventually went to back to the BoA I checked out in the morning. And finished transaction.

    PS, the previous experience I mentioned was due to the fee charged. They usually waive fees once the balance is over certain amount. This is true in most places including China.