kids and watches

I used to have a lot of fancy watches. I’d buy and collect them everywhere I went. They have really nice ones in Hong Kong and I remember buying quite a few.

I think in my time, we valued watches more and would often look forward to receiving a watch as a gift. Of course, they weren’t Hamilton watches or anything, just cheap watches that ran out of steam pretty quick.

My kids are not big on watches and only wear them to school. These days, they’d rather receive iPods and cell phones to watches. Buy them a watch and it’s like they’re stuck with some boring piece of junk. Kids!

choosing less expensive eateries

Confession, although I did say we were going to try and cut back and not eat out so often, we’re still doing it. Can’t help it though because we’ve been out almost every day during these holidays so it’s more convenient to eat out.

But we are seeking out less expensive eateries and avoiding those with a posh ambience and fancy Votive candle holders for cosy candlelight dinners.

And I would say, inexpensive restaurants are popping up all over the place and even the usually classier establishments seem to be offering set meals and freebies to attract more customers.

So are you choosing to spend less on eating out or do old habits die hard for you ?

travel easy

Many of our friends have gone overseas for holidays. Tis the time of year, I guess, and a necessary expense for the sake of meeting up with family and friends once a year.

Some of my friends who have recently returned from the States were caught in bad weather. True, isn’t it, how global warming seems to be playing havoc with our weather these days and causing unnecessary air travel difficulties.

I still prefer ground transportation because even if you’re stuck, you can still walk or choose some other mode of transportation to get around.

That’s why many of our friends used the Go Airlink Shuttle when they were in New York recently. They offer affordable and reliable JFK Airport transportation which is great for overseas visitors who aren’t familiar with the area.

They can hop on their share-ride airport shuttles and private vans to any place in New York City and the surrounding suburbs and of course, to the airports.

It sure beats trying to find your way around using a map which is what you have to do sometimes in cities where such convenient services are not available. Glad all my friends are safely back thought with lots of adventures and stories to tell.

geek meet

My son met up with his old friend from school yesterday. With both of them in college now and pursuing different courses, they have a hard time arranging for a common time to meet up.

My son will be starting his new semester at college next week while his friend has just completed his college exams and started his vacation last week.

So they were out for a full six hours yesterday at the mall but they did no shopping at all. They spent the entire time playing pool, watching a movie and eating out.

They traded stories about their favorite websites and how much notebook computer memory they’ve got now that they’re online so much doing their research and term papers.

Trust these two geeks to talk about nothing else. but. technology! I wouldn’t fallen asleep if I’d been there But it sounds like they had a great time and that’s all that matters when good friends meet.

waiting for prices to fall from the roof

One of our cars is getting old and becoming quite costly to maintain. We’ve been wanting to buy a new car but we just can’t seem to agree on which one to buy.

Over the past half year, there’ve been lots of car promotions at the malls and we always stop by to check them out.

Our half-hearted attempts at seriously committing on any one car so far is partly because we’re hoping (and waiting) for car prices to drop next year when the economy is expected to further deteriorate (which we hope won’t happen).

Okay, wait, if car prices drop, will we be paying less for car insurance then? Hmm, we have to get some car insurance quotes to study and make a comparison.

See, there’s a lot more work to buying a car than just grabbing it off the shelf , the reason for our dire procrastination.

wedding invitations by the half dozen

You wouldn’t believe the number of wedding invitations I’ve received in the month of December alone! Quite honestly, I didn’t think this would be such a popular month for weddings.

Or maybe people just want to get this big-ticket item done with before the brunt of the economic downturn hits next year as predicted. Well, whatever!

Thing is I’m not having such a fun time since I have to shop for wedding gifts in addition to my year-end and Chinese New Year shopping. Duh!

One of my friends commented that while life insurance quotes are easy to compare online, shopping for a wedding gift requires quite a bit of thought and you have to consider what might be useful to a newlywed couple moving into their first home.

That’s the hard part, I think, because I always like my gifts to be practical and well thought-out. Since the internet connection is so slow these past few days, I’ve been hanging out at the mall looking for wedding gifts.