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Well, another year just went by in my life. Last night, a couple of my friends took me out to dinner to celebrate. It’s really great to have a group of friends whom you’ve known for a long time and see how everybody’s grown in life. Some of us have kids, others just got married and some getting married soon. Very nice to reminisce of old times and have fun together :).

A birthday is usually a celebration of life, what you’ve accomplished so far, wisdom of another year spent on earth, and time for reflection. For me though, the last few years was just a reminder of what I have NOT accomplished, and if it weren’t for my family and these good friends of mine who celebrate with me, it wouldn’t really mean anything.

The truth is, I’m not really satisfied at where I’m at in my life at this moment. Sure, I have a wonderful wife and 2 kids, nice life as it’s seen from an outsider point of view. But I just feel that I’m not in the position I’m meant to be at this time. Somehow there’s a feeling of many many missed opportunities the last few years, that there should’ve been something different, that somehow I made a few wrong choices in the past.

I see people everywhere building careers, businesses, families and think, all these people at my age, some at managerial positions in big companies, some self made millionaires, some strong families, enjoying life etc etc. And here I am, almost 30 years old (not yet ), no career, no business of my own, no sense of accomplishment, no mark in society, and I think my wife and oldest son would agree that I’m not being the best family man I can be towards them right now.

One of the reasons I agreed to go back to Indonesia, was to fix some of these issues. I wanted to start something on my own so I can be successful financially, enjoy quality time with my wife and kids and in general make a mark in life, contribution to society, do what I’m meant to be. But even this presents its own burdens; trying to find funding to start a business, finding the right partners and business to do, high medical and educational costs, safety, no support net but yourself, and so many more …

Birthdays are a time for reflection, and in reflecting, I find that life just doesn’t get any easier. It’s as if, once you hit adulthood, there’s no more fun and games, you’re in a war to accomplish your purpose in life, and choices made, good or bad, will affect whether or not you can accomplish that. Right now, I’m just hoping that I’m making the right choices in life and the bumpy road ahead won’t break down my spirit.

Well, well, that’s my reflection for this year. By the time next year rolls around, I’ll be in Indonesia and doing something to try and achieve something meaningful. Maybe the best thing is not to look back, but to look forward and keep on going. Wish me luck.

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My wife just had her laser vision correction done at LasikMD. The procedure itself according to her only took about 5 minutes or so, but the preparation and recovery time included made it total almost 5 hours.

When I picked her up after the procedure, her eyes were very sensitive, sore and it was hard for her to even open them. Apparently this will be the norm for the first 6 hours after surgery. There are a couple of other issues during the next while that she has to follow such as:

• - Wearing black sunglasses ala Stevie Wonder for quite awhile :).
• - Using eye drops on the eyes every 15 minutes for the next 24 hours, and as needed till about 3 months from now.
• - During naps and sleep time, she has this gel that she has to wear and a pair of glasses that will prevent accidental scratching.
• - The eyes cannot be touched by water for at least 1 week, which is quite hard for her because it means taking extra care and time to wash her hair. The doctor recommended wearing swimming goggles anytime she’s near the shower :).
• - Regular checkups tomorrow, 1 week after, 1 month after and 3 months after.

All in all, I think it’s a great technology to have, allowing people with vision problems to have it back to perfect 20/20 vision. It’s not a cheap procedure (they start at about $490 per eye, and gets more expensive if your eyes are worse), it cost my wife almost $800 CAD per eye, totaling $1600 (not including insurance).

A piece of advice to anyone thinking of doing this: try negotiate the price. My wife tried to ask for a better price and couldn’t get any, but while she was talking to another patient this afternoon, she found out that the person forced the issue, and got a reduction in price + a 3 year insurance. That person then added $100 to make it lifetime guarantee (meaning if the eyes get bad again, the procedure is free for as long as you live). The price my wife was told was an extra $400 for a lifetime guarantee, so she didn’t go for it. If she got the deal that person got, she would’ve been able to get the lifetime guarantee for $1700 CAD.

[eminimall products="lasik"]

Tags: Lasik, LasikMD, Laser Vision Correction

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I come from Indonesia, where like in most Asian countries, we negotiate almost everything before buying. In lots of cases this takes lots of time before a deal can be reached. Of course, it’s become a habit of many Asian people, and it carries over to when they’re older.

Yesterday, I mentioned that an offer was made to our condo unit.Well, today I’m gonna be talking about negotiating vs time wasting due to that offer :).

In buying and selling, of course there will always be negotiation about compensation, price and details. My problem is if one part of the negotiators try to lowball the other by making unreasonable demands and thus waste time for both sides. This promotes feelings of distrust and hostile intent. In such cases, negotiation becomes an act of war, where both sides try to destroy the other by getting a one sided deal.

This morning, the other agent presented the offer from the people interested in buying the unit, and it was so far below market value, it’s not even funny. Case in point: there is another unit for sale on the same floor as us, smaller and lacks a couple of features that our unit has such as in suite storage and outside the bedroom laundry. That condo is almost $20, 000 lower in price than ours. Consider that the offer these people made was $20, 000 BELOW THAT OTHER UNIT’s price. In essence, they’re making an offer for our unit at a price about $30, 000 below the market value.

I understand the need to negotiate better pricing, but in cases such as these, negotiating turns to time wasting, since we have to counter, then counter, then counter and so on. If it weren’t for the patience and advice of my wife and our agent, I wouldn’t have even dignified that offer with a counter, telling them to come back when they’re serious. I mean, can’t people realize that this is wasteful of time for both sides? The sheer idiocy of some people just escape my thinking. If the offer were reasonable, I would’ve countered with a lower price, but just for that insulting offer, I’d probably turn this into an act of war

Tags: Negotiating, Negotiation, Time Wasting

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Well, our agent just confirmed that there’s an offer on the table for our condo. It’s quite interesting because so far there have been only 2 agents who’ve shown our place, and these people making the offer were the first ones who saw it. Talk about love at first sight

We’re gonna hear the offer tomorrow afternoon, fingers crossed for a good offer and quick sale.

Tags: Realty

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For the last few days, I’ve been trying to find a quote to send all our packed stuff (clothing, books, photos etc.) to Jakarta via sea freight. The quotes are around the $1200 – $1700 range for 5 boxes of 18" x 18" x 22", door to door delivery. I’m not sure if that’s a good price or not, considering we could probably purchase everything in the box for that price (I guess it’s still better than us trying to balance carrying 5 boxes and 3 luggages going back to Indo ).

The most interesting part was that one company suggested I talk to Fedex. I always thought this wouldn’t be much help, thinking that air freight would cost a ton of money (I did the online quote, and it turned out to be almost $5000 !!!). But anyway, I called in and talked to a rep, and to my surprise, he brought the price down to about $1700, door to door delivery within 1 week!. A very interesting quote indeed. So, we’re still deciding on whether to send it Fedex or just try to get the cheapest sea freight shipment.

Next up, flight tickets

Tags: Fedex, Freight

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Man, just when everyone started feeling better (we were all taking turns getting the cold and cough), suddenly on Saturday, both our sons got sick. The older one kept on vomitting through the night and couldn’t eat or drink anything, and also had the fever, while the little one has a stuffy and runny nose.

We took them to the doctor on Sunday, and apparently there’s no infection in either of them, but needed to monitor their temperatures. I’m not too worried about our baby because it just looks like the common cold, but our older son keeps saying his tummy hurts. I know it’s probably the stomach flu and he’s hungry from not eating for 2 days, but just worried that it might be appendicitis. So, we’ll see if he still complains about his stomach this afternoon, if so I might need to take him to his pediatrician.

Oh boy, the joys of having 2 kids

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Just wanted to let everybody know what’s going on in my life right now. A couple of interesting things happening, so here they are in no particular order:

My plan was to take parental leave from work beginning at the end of January, but my manager was kind enough to buy out my contract since she said I probably needed the money with another baby. So they bought out my 4 months left on my contract, and told me to call back in a few months to see if there’s any other contract that can be offered to me, which brings me to my next point.

We’re going back to Indonesia for good within the next few months. It’s becoming clear that raising 2 children here is tougher than it seems, and my wife can’t stand it anymore, so the decision has been made to leave Canada sometime in September or even before then. I’m still not sure as to what I’ll be doing in Indonesia yet, possibly start some IT consulting company, but by God’s grace I’m sure I’ll find something that can be done

In relation to that, we’re in the process of trying to select agents to sell the condo, and also find people to sell all the stuff we can’t possibly bring along. These include, but are not limited to: the piano, unopened book rack, mattresses, TV, furniture and tons of other small stuff. If you feel you need something (or even if you want to buy a condo), give me a call, I might have it

Also in preparation for that, I’ve decided to study for the PMP certification, so I might have it handy should I need to open an IT Project Management company in Indonesia. It might take a couple of months of study, so I’m thinking of studying in June/July once the baby is a bit grown up and my wife can handle taking care of the two kids alone.

So, a couple of life changing decisions made, an interesting and quite tiring last few months, but I’m really looking forward to this new chapter in life.

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Me and wife:

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Anyway, after making sure everything was ok, we proceeded to run to try catch the last GO train (it was still about a 5 – 10 minute walk away, and we only had less than 5 minutes). Man, it was cold and I’m rather out of shape; that run really took my breath away quite literally

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