stlplace

Category: Life

  • It’s a joke

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    Here is what I saw from the Visa Bulletin, I expect lots of angry people, epecially those guys (gals) did not submit theie EB based cases in last 2 or 3 weeks.

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    The sudden backlog reduction efforts by Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices during the past month have resulted in the use of almost 60,000 Employment numbers. As a result of this unexpected action it has been necessary to make immediate adjustments to several previously announced cut-off dates. All Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices have been notified of the following:

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  • Vaccine shot and Health care

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    I am getting the Hepatitis B vaccine shot lately, already got two shots done, and will have the last one in about 6 months. Each shot cost me $35.00. Note this is the rate at County Health Dept, other places will be more expensive. Vaccination is not my favorite thing when I was a pre-school kid, I remeber I used to run around to avoid the village doctors giving me the shots. Because the doctors are friends of my mom, they used to laugh at me all the time. But I got all the shots regardless and continue to receive free shots in primary school, middle school.

    vaccine pic

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  • Getting Married: US version

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    In about a month, I am going to come back to China and get married. Since I have been in the US for almost 10 years, attended couple weddings, I have some ideas about the financial side of the wedding here.

    Registry: when I first heard of it in 2000, I thought this is probably one of the best ideas about “giving gifts”. Here is how it works: the bride and groom made up a “wish list” of the things they want, give it to Wal-Mart, Target, Macy’s or Amazon, also they notify their friends about this. Their friends will buy the stuff from the list. But on second thought, after I made to couple weddings, I feel Chinese way of giving “red envelop with money inside” is better. Because sometimes the couple really don’t know what they want, also they can not expect everyone pay $100 for gifts, so they end up with many $20 things which are not really useful. On the other hand, with the cash (small amount putting together), a couple can do the things they want.

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  • Rich Dad Poor Dad

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    Tomorrow is Father’s day. My parents are wonderful parents, they did all they can to support me and my brothers’ education, under difficult circumstances. But everyone has his/her limit, my dad is no exception. I think from “personal finance” point of view, my dad is a good saver, but he does not know much about investing (that’s understandable because when he was young there were no stocks, bonds). He does not like debt (even borrow from relatives); and he does not like risk either. Thus I don’t need to worry him buying Chinese stocks these days. Good.  

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  • Front Bumper Problem

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    (Update June 6) The bumper is on the way now. It’s from: USAUTOPARTS NETWORK, 17150 S. MARGAY AVE, CARSON CA90746, as shown from agsystems. Not UPS or Fedex.  

    (Original June 5) No I have not involved in car accident or anything. I merely demaged the front bumper because of my own carelessness: in the parking lot. Last time when I did the demage to the left side, I fixed it by putting a washer underneath and fastened it. But this time I demaged the right side. I tried the same trick but it did not work. So I went to the bodyshop. The quote is $825 (minimum) for replacement and paint (include labor).

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  • Education: a Universal Problem

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    When I was in Shanghai in March, I watched a special program on China-CBN (Di Yi Cai Jing) talking about “school for migrant workers’ kids”. Not surprisringly, the schools’ condition usually are much inferior to same level schools attended by “city kids”. The Shanghai Municipal Goverment gave 60 m Yuan this year for the “migrant kids’ school”. This is nice, but not too enough to cover all the kids, because they are millions of migrants workers in Shanghai, and I believe there are at least one million kids attending those schools (so roughly 60 Yuan per kid).

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  • Tragedy in Virginia Tech

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    By now we all know what happened in Virginia Tech, a big public university with good engineering reputation in Blacksburg, Virginia. Although many people are really angry at “how can this happened again, even after the Columbine”, I think right now the proper thing to do is: give our thoughts and prayers to the people lost their loved ones. After all, life is the most precious thing.

    I never visited Virginia Tech, but I visited Richmond, the capital of Union, a few years back. I did like the hills and natural scenes there.    

  • Second Opinion

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    These days the health care system, and the hospitals in China are under a lot critism. I believe the system got problem. There are some bad apples among doctors, and other people who are supposed to take care of patients rather than “take advantage of” them. Read this story from Wang Jianshuo if you have the patience. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. (more…)

  • How Much Have I Changed in 6 Years?

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    I have started working for about 6 years. Although I worked for the same employer and stayed in the same city, I can tell some of my changes in all these years.

    First is hobbies. I used to be crazy about the cars. I can tell the most cars’ make and model on the street, except some classic models in 50s and 60s. I spent a lot of time on the web reading all the reviews, checking out cars in the dealers’ parking lot. And once I even bought and returned a car. We all know returning things to stores is relatively easy in the States, but returning cars is not, and I highly recommend readers not do that. This hobby faded away since I bought my condo, and I started looking more carefully about my personal finance situation. I think I still like the new car smell, but if I have to take a loan with interest to buy it, I won’t.

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  • Affordable Luxury in the United States

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    I first heard about this “affordable luxury” term when I bought my Nissan Altima GLE, with sun roof and leather seat, about 6 years ago. The Nissan salesman told me Altima is an “affordable luxury” car. By that he meant the car has the features I mentioned above, plus alloy wheel (looking good), and the price is affordable (MSRP $22015, I got it for $18789 after $1400 rebate).

    In recent years I feel this affordable luxury concept has penetrated the consumer markets very well. Here are just a list of things I think can be applied this flag (I may update this list from time to time).

    Youth Apparel: Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, Aéropostale, and Urban Outfitters. To be honest, I can not tell too much difference among the “A” stores, but Urban is more for college kids because I felt back to fraternity once I visited store.

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