General

Pursuing Higher Education With PLUS Loans

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When I was in college, there weren’t many options for me to choose from as I am from a not that well to do family and studying in college itself was a luxury! How I appreciate that to enable me to attend college, my parents had to take out a loan to finance my education. Luckily, the plus loan application was not complex at all and we successfully applied for a parent plus loan.

It did not matter what my parents financial standing were but of course, that was the deciding factor in our part in taking out the PLUS loan. It is said that even Bill Gates, rich as he is, could even qualify for PLUS loans. Isn’t that funny?

I found that even for people who did not really need a Federal plus loan were taking it out because of the very attractive interest repayment rate and terms. Many of these investment savvy parents were able to earn more money elsewhere and use returns from there to service their loans plus the interest and with access too.

Believe me, it isn’t easy to find interest rate as low as 6.5% plus non-income sensitive loans. It was also an advantage that the loan was taken out by my parents and not myself. I feel that it is unfair to burden a student with a loan at such a young age. Everyone should have a shot at tertiary education irrespective of financial background. Don’t you think so?

Blogging

Who Says Blogging Is Easy?

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Whoever said that is wrong! It may be easy to write one or two posts in a day but try writing multiple posts daily in a long stretch of time and see what happens. A friend of mine, whom I shall not disclose because he is one of the most popular bloggers in Malaysia, was shocked when I told him that I have to write more than ten posts almost daily. He went like this, “How to write? Why last time never hear you complain?”

Well, last time I did not complain because I had so many posts in drafts that I could go without blogging for one or two days and still have plenty of back up posts to publish. And then I was so busy that I did not have time to write anything and just kept publishing my drafts till they were exhausted. Since then, which was three or four weeks ago, I never recovered my momentum.

And now my friend proposes to come to my hometown for a visit and I told him not to because I have too many posts to write daily that I won’t have the time to meet up with him. And he doesn’t understand why!

Blogging is not easy, especially for one who blogs for pay. Besides writing, we need to network, build back links, socialise with other bloggers, link bait and what not. It’s a three person job and I am doing all these alone. So yeah, I don’t even have time to socialise with real people anymore!

Charity

For A Charitable Cause and More

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There are many ways for us to contribute to charities and the best is to contribute to a cause that we personally believe in. That being said, there is no need to announce to the world when one has contributed to charity. This is just my opinion.

Just this morning, I came across BetterWorld.com, a website that sells mostly used books and some new titles. This is no ordinary online book store, though.

For every sale that is secured, BetterWorld channels the money to fund literacy around the world, plus create jobs in health care in Indiana, USA. Besides doing a little in our part to fund literacy and care for the environment, we also get to buy the books we love at a very reasonable price. This is indeed good news to all book lovers because we get to buy something we love while helping out with the cause.

As if that is not enough, when we buy from BetterWorld, we get to enjoy free shipping within the United States or pay only $2.97 for international shipping. I think that with this extra savings, we can buy a couple of books more!

Computing & Internet

Malaysian Bloggers Community Forum

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Well, I thought I’d give this a mention since I just joined the forum a couple of hours ago. This forum is set up by Daryl W.T. Lau of My List fame, with the intention of allowing Malaysian bloggers an opportunity to converge in their very own virtual playground. However, I am sure that non-Malaysians are welcomed as well.

This forum is very new so there aren’t that many postings going on but this is want community-ship is all about. Everyone goes in and contributes something and build the board from scratch.

Daryl says that the forum is not monetized and not linked from his blog but will only be introduced via email, blogs and word of mouth. True enough, there were no advertisements or affiliate links that I could see.

When I first accessed the forum, I felt lost because I could not navigate to other threads. And I was thinking that the forum is not so user-friendly and here I am a retired forummer losing her way in a forum.

However, once my account was activated, the whole forum was accessible to me. Ah, I did not know that most of the board is only opened to registered members. So if you want to join us at the all new Malaysian Bloggers Community forum, go to http://earn-money-blogging.com/forum and register yourself. It is FREE!

General

Recommending Champori

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The other day, I was running some advertisements on my blog here and I saw one on either eczema or psoriasis. I am not sure which as we are not allowed to click on our own ads. It caught my eye because I recently had a a scare by one guy that I met who had a terrible skin condition that made one side of his face so red and raw looking. I was afraid that it could be passed on to me if I were to shake hands with him.

So I went online and came across this website www.champori.com which carries organic herbal remedies specifically for eczema and psoriasis.

Some medical practitioners would use steroids and allergens to cure these but Champori is mild enough to babies yet strong enough for adults made from Tibetan recipes since skin conditions are known to Tibetan monks for generations already. It is no wonder that success rate is high, based on the photos on the website.

I am going to recommend Champori to the guy whom I met recently. He has all to gain anyway since they are so confident that Champori works with their money back guarantee.

Computing & Internet

Pretty Pissed Off

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Last night, I reserved an opp and wrote it up as soon as possible. However, I was unable to publish my post on my Blogger blog. I went to the log in page but the log in box was not there! How the hell could I input my log in ID and password? I thought it was a temporary glitch. Time passed while I kept refreshing my page. I tried to go to Gmail and Google Adsense but the pages were not able to display. Only Google Search worked but it was very buggy.

I thought that Google was down and if it was, they recover quite fast because they are so efficient. So I wait a little bit more. I tried to access Blogger on my other computer but the same thing happened, without the log in box.

I used Google Search to look for an answer and to check if anyone faced the same problem. There were many people who also could not log in to Google services but their problem was different and it happened last month and that problem should have been fixed. I tried checking out some forums to see if there were complaints but there was none!

I sent my friend an SMS text and asked him to try accessing the various services and he said that he could access them and that it could be my Streamyx problem since he is using Maxis and Celcom broadband connections.

After one hour, I decided not to wait further and went ahead to published my post on my other blog. I was so upset because the post fit so well into the theme of my Blogger blog and it is just so out of place in my other blog but I had no choice.

After publishing and submitting my opp, I restarted my computer and then I had no problems with Blogger, Gmail and Adsense. You say %$&$($)&% or not? Was it Streaymx problem or my computer?

If it was computer problem, how come both computers also could not access Blogger earlier? If it was Streamyx, how could the problem be solved when I only restarted my computer and not the modem?

UUgghhh!!!

General

Broadway A MUST

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What is a trip to London if there is no Broadway? Many of my friends go to London BECAUSE of Broadway. I have had friends complain that they did not manage to buy any tickets while they were in London and were told that tickets will only be available NEXT season. I mean like, DUH? Do they expect us to go to London every year?

My friends, go purposely make a trip to London for Broadway, utilizes Broadway Ticket Brokers to secure the much coveted tickets and then plan their trip AROUND those dates. You may think that these must be rich folks but they are not. Rather, they are so passionate about theater that they are willing to adjust their holidays around the availability of Broadway tickets.

If I have the chance to go to London, I too would be planning ahead and buy my Broadway tickets through Broadway ticket brokers first before booking my flight!

Random Thoughts Off My Mind