Free Ice Cream!

Today is Free Scoop Day at Ben & Jerry!!!

Quote from their website: "On Tuesday April 17th from 12pm until 8pm participating Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops around the world will be hosting Ben & Jerry’s Annual Free Cone Day."

I'm going home!

Hey!! I just booked for my flight back home in June with a stop-over in Vancouver. My maid of honour is getting married in mid-July and my other friends are getting married on July 1st, so I'm going back for a whole month!

I redeemed my flight using my Air Canada's Aeroplan points and it's costing me a whole $155 in taxes!!! That is so expensive and they don't even give the break down of the taxes!!! The taxes are more expensive when you cross the USA-Canada border. I remember redeeming for flight from Ottawa to Vancouver and it only cost me ~$30-40 depending on how many and which airport I stop over.

This is the 4th North-America flight I redeem using Aeroplan points (25,000 points). I have been member of Aeroplan since May 2000, so 4 flights in 7 years, not bad at all! My last trip was paid using my 30,000 points of Diners Club, which took me about 2 years to accumulate. I also have about 41,000 points with NorthWest Airlines' WorldPerks' and about 15,000 points with United Airlines' Mileage Plus.

I think my favorite points-to-air system is Diners Club. It is really easy to book a flight through their travel agent and there's no blackout dates. I will drop Air Canada (at least not focus on it) and will collect UA's Mileage Plus for all Star Alliances flights because AC charges too much taxes. I'm not liking NWA's WorldPerks' points as there are very little or no availability for flights at 25,000. As for Delta's SkyMiles, it is also a pain to find a good flight back to East Canada because their hub is in Atlanta, GA and flying to Montreal would mean having to deal with a detour.

Hehehe... that was my 2 cents regarding redeeming points... :)

More to grow!!!

2 bell pepper seeds just sprout today :D. There's hope of having bell peppers this summer :D

Spring is here!!

It's that time of the year!!! Husband and I have been waiting for Spring for many months. We have been looking forward to grow vegetables and fruits in our backyard.

Husband and his parents moved into this house last year in March, it was brand new and was finished building in February. The house came with an unfinished backyard. It rained a lot in March 2006, then it was our wedding in May and summer was hot and dry, hence, we didn't have a chance to work on the backyard.

Two weekends ago was the beginning of Daylight Saving Time, I thought it would be a good time to start sowing some seeds indoor. We went to Walmart and got some seeds (it was only $0.10 a pack!!!), some potting soil, and some biodegradable containers to sow the seeds in. We started growing indoors some zucchinis, cucumbers, carrots, string beans, green onions, cherry tomatoes, and bell peppers. Being optimistic you would say? :)

It's been two weeks, 3 zucchinis, 4 cucumbers, 5 green onions, and 3 carrots sprout. We were so happy to see them come to live!!! But also disappointed that cherry tomatoes, bell pepper, and string beans didn't show sign of life. Zucchini was the early adapter, it grew so big that we had to relocated them to a bigger home, which we did it this weekend, we planted them outside. We decided to keep the other sprouts indoor as they seem still very fragile.

On Saturday, we went to Lowe's and Home Depot. We got 1 tomato plant from each store (hybrid cherry tomatoes from Lowe's and "early girl" tomatoes from Home Depot) and some garden soil from Home Depot. We also got a pot of Garlic chives (a.k.a. Chinese chives, 韭菜) from a friend. We transplant all 3 pots in our garden, next to our zucchinis.

Last but not least, there was a citrus plant sale at Costco, so we got a 2-feet tall semi-dwarf blood orange tree for only $17.79. I approached some fellow buyers at Costco and asked them if they succeeded planting citrus. They confirmed that they already have an orange tree and a lemon tree and they grow very fine, so now they are getting a mandarin tree. Our tree will bear fruits, it may just take couple years... Couple years? I don't know where I'll be in couple years!!!

Diet isn't doing good...

A friend came to town for business. We met up with him 3 times and also met up with another friend for hotpot. So it kinda screwed my diet :(. I weighed myself this morning and gained back 2lbs of the 4 I lost... Oh well... will work hard again soon :D

South Beach Diet - Day 3

Today is the 3rd day of my South Beach Diet. I got up and weighed myself and was surprised that I have lost 4lbs in 2 days!!! Every time I try this diet, I'm always amazed by the results! Ok ok... Don't get your gears in a jam... I know I know... I know it's mostly water and toxin, but hey... it's still very encouraging and makes you feel lighter :)

As I mentioned in a previous post, Starbucks' gave free coffee today to celebrate coffee break. On my way to volunteering, I stopped by the Starbucks' and asked for their free coffee. Not only I got friendly service and free coffee, I was also offered a free sample of their banana nut bread. "Sure!", I said. How can I say no to free banana bread :D Oops, then I realized that I'm not suppose to take any sugar on this Phase 1 of my South Beach Diet. Hmm... The cashier handed me a paper bag with the samples and I took a look in it. There were only 2 1-inch cube pieces, I decided that it won't hurt and ate them.

Oh... I have to tell you guys what I saw at Starbucks! You know the sugar & cream stand for self-served addition to your drink? Well, while I was stirring the Splenda into my coffee, the guy next to me was holding a 16-oz empty plastic glass for cold drink (with Starbucks' label) in one hand and with the other hand, he grabbed the jar of half and half cream and filled his glass. Then he grabbed the cocoa powder and sugar and added them to his cream. This guy just made himself a free chocolate milkshake!!! Ok ok, maybe I should call it a chocolate milkstir!! Euh... that's being creative... I must say... Very original, more original that a friend of mine who orders a mug of hot water so that she can add honey to it and save on coffee. No no, don't think I'm like that... I think she's extremely cheap :p~

South Beach Diet

It's that time of the year again and it's the 4th anniversary. Every year, when the weather starts warming up, I start my South Beach diet. It works!! Well, if you guys think you have few pounds to shed, you can consider it :)

Free Coffee!!!

On March 15th, from 10am to noon, Starbucks Coffees is giving free coffee!!!

http://www.starbucks.com/ourcoffees/coffee_break.asp

Napa Weekend

Hey guys!

My sister and best friend both said that I disappeared for few days. They forgot that this past weekend was my weekend to Napa, a trip that was planned since September!

Back in July, we signed up for a timeshare presentation because it says it will give you 2 nights stay at a resort in Napa. We have heard about timeshare before, but we never really knew what the concept was. It was our first time attending a timeshare presentation, we didn't know what to expect. We spend 3 hrs there asking questions and trying to understand the "deal". My conclusion is if they don't let you sleep on it and think about the "deal", there must be a catch! Anyway, we didn't plan on buying anything, we were only there for the freebies. We got our 2-night package and we left happily. We had to book the resort in advance and couldn't choose blackout dates. So, we booked for after the holidays in February, i.e. this past weekend.

We stayed at The Meritage Resort in Napa, CA. It is conveniently located at the city limit of Napa, just off the Highway 29. It was indeed really nice and new!! Every room had a 32-inch plasma TV and DVD player. Unfortunately, both of us don't drink... and we were in wine country!!! On our first day, we drove to a winery for wine tasting. We didn't enjoy it and didn't plan on buying any. We had a passport from the resort for free wine tasting, but still we decided not to go to any other winery since the wine is meaningless to us anyway. We then went to an outlet mall. It was pretty small and it only took us 2 hrs to go through all the shops. It also rained badly the whole time we were there. We didn't know what to do. So we borrowed two movies from the reception (yes, they have a DVD library!) and watched movies in the comfort of our room.

It was a nice and quiet rainy stay. It was relaxing and I would definitely recommend that resort!

Free Pancakes!!!

More free stuff again :)

Today, IHOP gave away pancakes for free from 7PM to 10PM!!! Yup, it's to celebrate (their?) National Pancake Day (well, it's Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday since tomorrow is Ash Wednesday). Of course, I couldn't sleep on that deal ;) . I went with husband and ordered 2 short stacks (3 pancakes/short stacks), we didn't get a bill as we didn't order anything else. We kindly left a tip and a donation to the Children’s Miracle Network foundation.

http://www.ihop.com/tellafriend.php

On a separate note, I don't think the 6 pancakes were worth the drive and the extra calories. The tip and donation didn't add up to cheap either. I make pancakes on weekends from mix and they come up to almost the same and plus we have genuine maple syrup from Quebec. It was more for the experience since I wanted to try all these American chains. I heard that IHOP overprice their pancakes and I wouldn't volunteer paying $5.29 for 3 pancakes (their regular price for a "short stack"), so it was a nice experience. Talking about trying out American restaurant chains, I have also tried Jack-in-the-Box and In and Out Burger, but still looking forward for my first time at Carl's Jr.

Tourists in San Francisco

Last Black Friday, my husband bought the City Walks: San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot cards. It was only $3.99 on sales at Borders. Since yesterday was Presidents Day and husband had a day off, we decided to go explore San Francisco on foot and make use of these cards to see if they are any good. If yes, then we can consider buying the ones for other cities like Paris, London... if we happen to go there :)

We got up fairly early, had quick breakfast, grabbed our backpacks and caught the 9:54AM Caltrain. We rode for over 1 hr before getting to San Francisco Caltrain Station (4th Street and King Street). We walked up 4th Street to reach downtown San Francisco and continue on Stockton Street and passed Union Square and reached Chinatown. That's a whole 1.6 miles! We stopped at the intersection of Washington Street.

Our first stop was for lunch, we randomly picked a restaurant in Chinatown. I wanted to eat Hong Kong/Cantonese style food - something I really miss. We found this place called "Washington Bakery & Restaurant" (華盛頓茶餐廳) on Washington Street at Grant Street. It is a restaurant where they serve Hong Kong-style Western cuisine. Restaurants like this one are typically called Cha chaan teng (茶餐廳) - something not common and hard to find in South Bay (the neighbourhood where I live). It was really busy, so you really can feel the hongkongese atmosphere. We were nicely greeted by a Cantonese-speaking server. Seeing our backpacks and camera, he asked us where we were visiting from. My husband was proud to tell him we were tourists from Sunnyvale, which is "only" 40 miles away. I think that was funny :). We ordered a house pan-fried egg noodles and a shrimp in egg sauce fried rice noodles, for drink my husband had a Hong Kong style lemon iced tea and I went for a Hong Kong style cold milk tea. Everything was delicious!! We definitely would recommend this place!

After the meal, we walked up on Grant Avenue visiting busy Chinatown. It was so nice, it was so busy and people were happy on this second day of the Chinese New Year. We stopped by famous Golden Gate Bakery (金門餅家) and waited in line outside for about 15 mins just to buy only 1 winter melon pastry (老婆餅) - it was good!!!

Afterwards, we walked all the way to Coit Tower and had a good look out at the city from the hill. We then took some back street recommended by our tourist cards. We walked on Filbert Street from Montgomery Street to Sansome Street. We were astonished to find a flock of wild parrots living in the middle of the city!!! They were noisy, they were loud, they were a good bunch of 20-30 parrots!!! It was so entertaining that we took videos of them. We also saw 2 humming birds, unfortunately, we failed to take good pics of them.

Finally, we reached Embacadero street and walked back to the Caltrain station. We got home just in time for dinner. At night, my pedometer recorded 21585 steps, that's double of my daily target :D yay!! A number I haven't seen in a long time!!

Health Insurance

Yesterday, I went to the career consultants' for a meeting . There I meet people just like me who got laid off. One lady said that her health insurance by her employer is running out, so she is shopping for some coverage for herself and her spouse. She said what she found was $850/month for a couple. Then, another lady in the meeting confirmed that it costs her $858/month from Cobra as well. I was sitting there speechless! Holly Cow!!! It's so expensive!!! I guess Canadians are really spoiled!! $850/month isn't really what the average person can afford. Oh my! J'en r'viens pas encore!

Some random facts

If you watch Hong Kong TV series, you probably recognize this face. It's Gregory Charles Rivers (河國榮, Ho Kwok Wing). He plays most of the foreigner roles. I just found out about him today by accident while browsing some TV shows.

He seems to have been an actor for TVB for as long as I could remember, so I was surprised to find out he's "only" 42. The other surprising fact is that he was a medicine student in Australia before he relocated to Hong Kong. I wonder why he chose to be an actor rather than a physician. He is also active in the Mac circle in Hong Kong and a popular blogger. His personal website is http://www.hokwokwing.hk/ You can even email him!!! (if you want to... :p~)

Import/Export

On Saturday, I went to an Import/Export seminar by SCORE. It was in Fremont, about 25 mins drive from home, so we had to get up at 7am to make it there for 8:15am.

I don't have intention of doing business in importation or exportation, so I just went for general knowledge. After 5 hrs listening to 3 different speaker, I confirmed that importation and exportation are so complicated that it is not something I want :p~

First, there's the financial and trust issues: how to pay the export agent? how to make sure the products will get here? how do you know you will get paid? Then, there's the legal/custom aspect: is this product allowed to be imported from this country? do the labels conform to the local laws?

Hmm... It may be a good way to make money, but it doesn't sound fun at all... so, not doing that for sure!

Well almost this time...

Yesterday was Sunday. That means the beginning of a sales week for a lot of shops. Our Sunday routine is to read fliers while eating breakfast. Have you ever heard of enviga? We saw a coupon for a free one in Longs Drugs weekly flier... woohoo!! After breakfast, we went to the gym and after gym, we went to Longs and grabbed one each. :) We had to pay 8.25% tax and $0.08 for CRV (deposit for can) which add up to $0.19!

How to get freebies...

Hi all... As I mentioned in one of my recent post that it is fairly easy to find freebies in USA. Yup, that is one cool thing here... buying things that are free or almost!!! Now, you must be wondering how do we find these deals...? Well, we read two websites: www.slickdeals.net and fatwallet

Two Sundays ago after dinner, my husband checked www.slickdeals.net and saw a deal that we couldn't sleep on! So we jumped in our car and went to Walgreens (it's a big drugstore/pharmacy chain in USA).

So, here's the deal:

Purchase $20 in Kimberly Clark products, get $10 Walgreens gift card by mail.
Regular prices count towards the $20 in purchase.

Based on this thread:
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?threadid=442168

We posted on the same thread what we got:
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showpost.php?p=5528443&postcount=25

And we even made a profit of $0.39!!

Bedroom Furniture

It's been so many months since I moved here and we didn't buy bedroom furniture until two weekends ago. We were waiting for the perfect bedroom set, but I guess it's too hard to find something that is modern looking and yet not too expensive. I refuse to have a metal bed - it reminds me of hospital beds from the old days and husband and I hate colonial style. That doesn't leave us with much choices. Ikea have nice modern furniture at low price, however their stuff are becoming commodity and we don't like to have a bedroom set that everyone has.

Finally, after so many months of shopping around, we finally had to give up and chose a bedroom set from Ikea: the Hemnes collection. We didn't buy the bed, only the dresser, the chest of drawers and two nightstands. What we need was clothes storage and bed is not a necessity. We are thinking of seeing how things fit in the bedroom first and/or maybe wait for a sale this summer.

So, we haven't finished assembling all of them. Hope there's enough storage after that :)

Lacrosse Game

On Friday, I went to a lacrosse game. It was another of those deals. The game is free, we only had to pay $4/ticket for TicketMaster fee.

It was my second time going to a ball game and my first time watching lacrosse. It was quite interesting. The rotation rate is quite fast: the players go in and out after being on the field for like 20 seconds. It was funny to watch that, seeing the players going in and out made me related it to a fashion show! I know this is a funny comparison! hehehe...

Hmm, I was quite surprise at seeing these professional players to intentionally hit on each other. I sat too close at saw too well. With hockey, I always wondered if it was just an accident since they could slide, but with lacrosse, I could see them hit with their bat. Hm... I wonder what professional manners and professional practice mean to them...

Big News!

The biggest news since my last post in December is obviously the acquisition of the start-up my husband works for by a network and communication technology giant. This is big news... this is great news! We were on vacation back home in Montreal, when it was officially announced on Thursday, January 4th. We learned it from a 3rd party as his manager couldn't reach him over the phone: we wouldn't answer our USA cell phone to avoid roaming fee.

It was so unexpected that we couldn't get over it for like a week! His stock options are finally worth something! Something he/we have dreamed of since 2000 and something we thought almost impossible after the hightech crash.

I'm not sure how this would affect our life, at least for sure now, we know we'll have more employee & spouse benefits. But what does that mean for our future? I don't know...

Going to the gym again!

One good thing about being is USA is there's often good deals and even freebies. Husband and I managed joined the Discovery Health's 8-week National Body Challenge. Yay! So we are getting free gym at Bally Fitness for 8 weeks! The only disadvantage is that the closest one is in smack downtown San Jose. It is near where I volunteer, so I go there after volunteering, but it is far for husband who works in San Bruno!

The 8-week challenge ends on March 13th. I started being concerned about what to do after that. I stopped going to the gym for about 1.5 year and I felt so out of shape. Luckily, on Saturday, we went to Valley Fair Shopping Center and had a Jamba Juice there. We saw Jamba Juice advertising for their new "light drink" and saw that they were giving away 30-day gym membership and 24-Fitness if you purchase one of their new light drinks!!! We read the fine prints which says, "must be activated by April 30th, 2007". We were so glad and got the light drink. That means, I will have gym until roughly May 2007!

After that... hehehe, I'll look for other deals... :)