prime gods

A lot of people would love to spend their holidays abroad. Who wouldn’t? With only a few days for a holiday, you might as well go out of the country and get to experience what the other half of the world is doing. Still, not everyone could avail of a trip abroad because the cost of the entire trip (airfares, accommodation, city tours, etc.) can burn a huge hole on your savings.

On the other hand, you can always opt for self catering holidays. That is, instead of staying in a hotel and eating hotel-prepared dishes, you avail of self catering holiday apartments where you can cook, eat, drink, and do whatever you want without worrying about the huge bill and getting too drunk because you bought the stuff straight from the grocery store and you’re on your own turf (temporarily anyway).

With this, you do not only get to save on your holiday expense, you also get to save on your “spending money” abroad and even experience local culture. How? Instead of eating in the same hotel restaurant every night, you get to sample all the local restaurants prized dishes, interact with the natives, and perhaps even meet new friends.

So next time you think of going on a holiday, don’t constrain your option to the usual expensive all-inclusive holidays. Be more daring and try a self catering holiday. After all, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. (Helen Keller)”

Funny, I was already amazed at the fact that people actually do play with real money online via poker websites. I was flabbergasted to know that there are actually poker tools for online poker players. Imagine that! Poker tools. Weird.

Then again, I am a card game addict (just not online) and I enjoy winning (who doesn’t?). So I guess I’m not in the position to find websites putting up poker tools weird. In case you’re interested to get your hands on tools like “Hold’em Poker Odds Calculator” and the “New Table Shark table selection tool” for free, all you have to do is sign up for a new account at Pacific Poker or Titan Poker and play the required number of hands.

My partners and I will be having an important meeting sometime early October with a popular clothing line brand who’s considering us for creating their website. We’re planning to rent one of BusinesSuites conference rooms in Columbia. My friend recommended the place and said that BusinesSuites, one of the leaders in the office business center industry, truly lives up to their “Blue Door service” or service that exceeds the expected.

Considering that our October meeting will be a crucial one, availing of one of BusinesSuites conference rooms or perhaps their Columbia Office Space, which also includes a generous variety of professional administrative support services, is definitely a plus in our securing the deal.

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Disclosure: This post features a paid link.

Now that my last day at work is approaching (it’s on September 14, 2007 by the way), I think I ought to start my freedom from boring five-days a week work with a perfect holiday in Europe.

Though tour packages like Austrian holidays are tempting, I prefer to build my own holiday trip. There’s nothing more relaxing than pampering yourself on a well-planned, personalized trip. It’s a good thing that you can avail of “Build Your Holiday & Pack Your Bags!” on some websites which allows you to create the holiday that you desire. That is, you can book cheap flights to a huge choice of destinations and find accommodation to match your type of vacation.

With cheap customized vacations online, why bother with the usual tour?

I recently resigned at my current job as a marketing manager to study PHP and MySQL to create my own website and increase my market value. Schools like http://www.browncollege.edu/ actually offer more than just programming skills should you decide to take Associate of Applied Science in Software Development. That is, you can be a computer programmer, programmer analyst, systems analyst, technical support, or web developer once you’ve finished the course.

However, I’m thinking more of a crash course in PHP and MySQL cause I don’t have enough dough to enroll in any formal school as of the moment. I guess I’ll make do with the online e-books and video tutorials. With my background in HTML and Web Development, I know it will not be that difficult to follow those instructions.

“To have and to hold,
From this day forward,
For better, for worse,
For richer, for poorer,
In sickness and in health,
To love and to cherish,
‘Till death do us part.”

This style of vow has a romantic elegance to it, which can also send wedding jitters to the bride or groom (especially the “’Till death do us part.”). Although wedding days should be a day of romance and fun, for bride and groom as well as for all the guests, you can never be too prepared. “Runaway Bride”, “Miserably Jilted”, “Rained out Wedding”, “Ruined Dress”, “Lost Rings” and other infamous wedding devastations do occur. After all, some events are just beyond our control.
For those planning out their weddings, make sure to include Wedding Insurance in your list. You wouldn’t want all those many months and money you spent preparing for it go to waste with a simple wedding mishap. Not just for bad weather (but that may be covered), a Wedding Cover protects your deposits, attire, photographs and much more.

“There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage (Martin Luther).” Start it out with a worry-free wedding day.

Being a self-confessed OC (obsessive compulsive), I am very particular about ensuring everyone’s safety. This is why I always have a mini-first aid kit on my bag wherever I go and I always make sure that I have the phone numbers of the appropriate and important help lines.

Still, I’m not confident about just having those numbers. I prefer to know where the nearest hospital or police station is at all times. Then again, I do not have a photographic memory. And during emergency situations, some people have a tendency to panic and have a mental block. As of the moment, I’m not sure if I’m one of those people.

You can just imagine my relief when I found out about Direct Alert. It’s a wireless two-way home Emergency Response System that relies on two main components – a control panel and a personal help button. In case of emergency, instead of having to make a 911 call, all you have to do is just press your personal help button to send a signal to Direct Alert’s Emergency Response Center that help is needed, then a trained professional from Direct Alert’s Emergency Response team will communicate with you through the two-way voice panel to ensure that you get the help you need without delay.

This personal help button can be worn as a watch, a medical alert bracelet or necklace, or simply as a pin on your clothing. This is the perfect system for anyone who may need help in the event of an emergency, like seniors who live alone, or are alone at times. What’s great about this is that it is water resistant so you can wear it in the shower or bath, and it only cost $39.95 a month (plus tax) to rent their system including monitoring fees. I’d say $39.95 is a very good deal for ensuring one’s monthly personal safety.

I have a huge budgeting problem. Everyone’s saying that with the salary I’m earning, I could already feed an entire family. Still, I’m not able to stash some cash. I have two savings accounts which both have a minimum maintaining balance. But other than that, I don’t have any extra cash.

Where does my money go? Let’s see, there’s insurance, phone bill, weekly grocery, transportation, meal allowance, some loans… and soon, I’ll probably be paying for mortgages.

My mom, who was very concerned about my lifestyle, told me a very good advice which got me to rearranging my budgeting, “There are three types of things we spend our money on – needs, wants, and luxuries. Spend your money wisely by buying only your needs and occasional wants. When you have enough savings, then you can pamper yourself by buying those luxuries stuff.” I heeded her advice. Right now, my savings accounts are slowly but steadily gaining numbers.

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Disclosure: This post features a paid link.

As I’ve mentioned before, and all my friends can attest to this: I am a discount addict. Some even call me the bargain princess, and I am proud of it. I mean, why pay for something that you could have for less, or even for free?

Being a certified discount addict, imagine my giddiness level when I found out about a Firefox extension that alerts you with discounts just before you buy! Yep, it’ll tell you discounts like jewelry tv coupon before you purchase any item. You can add the extension here: http://www.retailmenot.com/firefox.php. I saw this in RetailMeNot, a coupon site internet that is a very useful Web 2.0 or social networking site because every one of the discounts you see there is rated by the community on its effectiveness.

I wonder what discount plugins I’ll discover next?

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Disclosure: This post features a paid link.

Who says Wikis are just for encyclopedic information? For Wikipedians out there, check out ShopWiki.com. It’s a shopping search engine with wiki buying guides that are created, edited and moderated by the ShopWiki community. It doesn’t matter if you’re a consumer or merchant – anyone can use the wiki guides and contribute to their buying guides (For merchants, it has to be written in the No Point of View tone though).

With ShopWiki crawling the Internet for products that are actively for sale from retail Web sites to include in their database, you are sure to find specific products on the Internet with ease. Whether you’re looking for cameras, home theater systems, or a personal audio and video, ShopWiki can help you find it.