Chromilo Amin

Holloween this year was a lot better than last year I would say. It was Camille's first and she wore Kyle's chicken costume from last year. Kyle was dressed up as Zimba from Lion King. Manick, Wheng, Naneng, and Chrissa were with us to experience the fun and excitement our tightly knit neighborhood has to offer on Holloween. The house in the next block always had the greatest display of scary ghouls, music, video display, and fog. He had a ghost buster van parked in front of his house and played the Michael Jackson music repeatedly. Nice speakers. The fog machine was in full effect at his neighbor's house as well so that block was fully encased in mist. Really spooky. Here is a video of it for your delight. We walked around the neighborhood and captured on video other great ghastly displays but have not had time to post them yet. Kyle was on my shoulders the whole time as he was scared of all the masks and displays. He'll be b...

I'm trying to keep to a schedule of 1 blog a week but it is hard, especially with the type of multi-tasking society we have become. I have a young family and am focusing my energy on them instead of blogging or spending time on social media like twitter or facebook. I do have time during my daily commute to work to ponder on some topics for my blog but I think those are the only times I'm willing to invest on this. I have to ditch my smartphone however because it isn't helping with my priorities. Here is a great article by Tim Sanders on time management advice for blogging http://bit.ly/aweNDG . Great read. I do need to concentrate on what's important to me in order to do well and I'll do that after I send out this update :). Kyle and I are watching Barney before he goes to sleep.

We took Kyle over to his first ever Strong Start program help at a local Elementary School. This program is a ministry of education subsidized (free) daycare for 2-3 hours and is similar to storytime at Guildford library. Its not quite like preschool because no teaching programs are offered and not quite daycare because a caregiver/parent has to be there with Kyle. They do have private preschools but for a fee. We looked at two other privately held preschool and am currently comparing prices. One of the preschools we saw was at a home at Morgan Creek area and they charge $19/day for preschool. Another one we looked at was $110/month for twice a day, at a church but this is in a group setting with as many as 60 kids. Not quite comfortable with that yet because I think Kyle may need to start out with a smaller group. I'm also looking at the Child Care Subsidy application forms to see if we can qualify for that. We may be able to save a few by doing that. Anyone have experience with t...

This summer we hit up various places while showing Nang and Kim around. They are leaving in a week and this is the perfect time to go over this we did and places we visited with them. Here is my list of top 6 local summer destinations in 2010. 1) Cultus Lake Find a picnic bench close to the swimming area. Water is nice and warm, scenery is sureal, and its close to water slides. They also have swap meet with tons of vendors selling everyday trinkets. 2) Buntzen Lake Getting to the lake is through dense forest vegetation and its also not too far from civilization. The day we went, there was a fire ban and only propane tanks were allowed for bbq. Good thing a friend brought over some propane tank otherwise we would have starved. Again, scenery was awesome and although there was no cellphone signal by the lake, they have public phones by the picnic areas. 3) Bellis Fair Mall in Washington The closest big mall south of the border. We had our craving for all you can eat buffets, and shopping...

We just finished celebrating my daughter Camille's baptism on July 4. It was a great and holy event, marking my her start in life as a Catholic. There were 7 other babies who were baptised at the same ceremony and Father Obiwumma was inspirational as usual with his long homilies. Camille was very pretty with the white gown Grace bought her along with her cute hair band. Jade and Nick took multiple photos of the ceremony and am very proud/thankful for my two brothers. Dennis, Sonja, Lala, Kuya Ed, Aerie (spelling), Jade, and special addition Kim were attentive as Ninong and Ninangs. Reception at the house was great. It seemed everyone at the church followed us back home. Everyone was hungry and our buffet style setup was great, thanks to Grace's idea of reshuffling where we serve the food. I set up the bouncy castle outside because the sky had just cleared and chance of rain looked slim at that point. It was around 1pm by the time we had food to eat because the lineup to the ...

I was at the Indigo bookstore in Langley today reading a personal finance book written by Charles J. Fahrell titled 'Your Money Ratio$'. Haven't purchased it yet as I am trying to save money. Some of the interesting formulas I learned just by flipping through the pages include the Mortgage-to-Income ratio (MIR) and the Capitol-to- Income ratio (CIR). From what I can remember, the MIR is 1.9 for me and its the amount of mortgage that I can comfortably stomach at my age given my income today. My calculation shows that I should have purchased a smaller house or that I should have purchased when I was in my early twenties because I am nowhere close to having the ideal mortgage balance. The CIR is 1.4 for me and this tells me the amount of RRSPs and group pension that I need to have already saved at my age and my current income level. It tells me that I am below the ideal threshold and should increase my savings percentage to 12% or more. I love reading books like these. Using ...

I thought I would share my private New Year's resolution for 2008. This list was in a sealed envelope and I only remembered the list as I was contemplating on my new ones for 2010. Why a sealed envelope?Traditionally, family and friends would get together on New Year's eve to count down. As part of the count down, I would ask anybody interested to jot down on a piece of paper their top 3-5 next year's resolutions. They would then fold this and tuck it in one envelope I provide, which gets sealed after. It gets opened a year later and the pieces of paper are handed back to their owners unread and in private. I have posted an image of the list that I made because nothing is ever private in my life. Of the 4 items that I had listed, I didn't accomplish even one of them. This is sad but challenging because it makes me want to keep at it for 2009 or 2010 unless priorities change. We skipped making a list for 2009 for some reason. For 2010, we had a quiet New Year's at ho...