Rants of life » Work From Home

Decorate Your Home Office

shoppingmum — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:31:09 +0000

I don’t have my own office here but we will set one up in the new house. I think it’s pretty boring if I don’t decorate the room, so I think I will get some mini pots of flowers and some green plants from the market later and place them on the table and racks.

It would be advisable to rest our eyes for a while after looking at the computer screen for hours. Looking at the green plants and pretty flowers will not only rest our eyes, it’s therapeutic on a hectic day too. But one thing about the flowers is I will have to change them often. It’s bad to have rotting flowers in the room that doesn’t smell nor look good. So, I will be busy changing the flowers then.

Links for Old Posts

shoppingmum — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:34:32 +0000

I didn’t write as many paid posts as I used to a year ago so I didn’t put high hope on blogging for money anymore. As I said before, I don’t do much for Adsense and I don’t feel like crapping too much on the cyberspace too. LOL!

Nonetheless, I found another opportunity of making money from my old posts which are offered with some links. I didn’t expect to see this coming, so it’s something great for me. Those links are not generating a lot of money, but it’s better than nothing at all.

Of course, I’m hoping to get some button ads or sidebar ads too. Let’s see if BDMM has anything for me.

Home Office Furniture

shoppingmum — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:35:58 +0000

We didn’t rent a big house in Bangkok, thus the rooms are kind of small to me. However, I can’t complain much but try myself to optimize the space for a home office as well as the kids’ study room. I certainly cannot go for fancy home office furniture like this, even if they are discount furniture.

What I have in mind is shopping at Home Depot for something simpler but comes with lots of storage. The tables have to be smaller too, and I have to squeeze in another kiddie table for my kids. Honestly, I’m not sure if there will be any space left for walking, but I will try my best to set up a little reading corner for my kids. Gee, how I wish we can move into a bigger house sooner!

Working From Home Is Not Easy Too

shoppingmum — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:03:22 +0000

After 2 weeks of separation, my kids are clinging to us like crazy. I can’t hardly do anything much for the past 3 days and once they were in bed, I was too tired to work on my blogs. I told hubby that we might be facing the same problem later when the kids move over to Bangkok because they might have some problems trying to adapt to a new environment and they might be as clingy as now. We are trying to set up a home office, but I wonder if hubby and I can do any work at all if the kids haven’t started school.

We definitely need a wireless router so that we can get online anywhere in the house, just in case sitting in the room is totally impossible. But then again, let’s see how my kids can cooperate with me after a few days. They missed us too much and it’s understandable that they react like this. However, mommy needs to work!

My Dell Battery’s Dead

shoppingmum — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:11:12 +0000

I can’t believe this. A day before I’m flying off the Bangkok and my laptop battery’s dead. It’s fully charged but it can only stand less than 10 minutes, are you kidding me? Furthermore, I bought the extended battery which lasts longer. Gee…

I can’t find the battery parts from Dell official website, I don’t know why XPS is not listed there. But my friend gave me the hotline, and if you ever need to call Dell Support, here’s the number: 1800-88-1306. If you have your express code, you will be able to speed things up.

The personnel was very helpful and after confirming that my battery is really dead but still under warranty, I’m getting a replacement for free. So, I’m pretty pleased with the after service.

But for the next few days, I have to rely on my adapter. If not, I can’t do anything with my blogs!

Freelance Translator Job

shoppingmum — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:20:30 +0000

My friend told me that she did a job as a translator for a day and the pay was great. Too bad I can’t speak other language well, if not I would love to look for a job as a part time translator. She can speak and write in Japanese, so it’s not surprising that it’s easier for her to get some offers.

She told that there are local networks of translators but maybe they can’t get as much as she’s getting now since she’s a freelancer. Anyway, freelance job offers a lot of freedom. I would prefer freelancing than working for others too.

eHomemakers

shoppingmum — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:33:27 +0000

I saw trying to find some work from home opportunities and I came across eHomemakers, which is a community network that promotes working from home, teleworking and SOHO. There isn’t a lot of work from home websites that based around our region, so I decided to read more about the website.

I found that the website has some great articles about scams. I was “cheated” into one too and it’s a painful process of recovering emotionally about the money I lost. LOL! So before you jump into the wagon of working from home as promised by most MLM companies, take a look at those articles. Don’t follow my foot step.

Coping with Kids and Work At Home

shoppingmum — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:27:22 +0000

I am really busy today but I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing totally because my door is always open for my kids. I don’t have my own home office set up and I can’t just put a “no disturb” sign at the door. My kids have rights to come into the bedroom as usual.

Besides that, I have to coach my boy on his homework for a while, but luckily it only took me 10 minutes. He can do his work on his own as long as he understands the instruction well. On top of that, I still had to mingle around cleaning the potty, bathing, dealing with dirty bottom and etc. So, work from home is like multitasking, you have to keep yourself cool and sober all the time!

No wonder some women would rather work out. At least they can concentrate more on their work and dress beautifully every morning.

A Home Office in Separated Room

shoppingmum — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:16:57 +0000

I’ve been thinking about getting a house with 4 rooms and convert one of the rooms into a home office for hubby and I. But if I’m not mistaken, all of the houses we found in our ideal neighborhood in Bangkok only come with 3 rooms. In that case, I can only use our bedroom as the office, as the other rooms will be used by the kids and maid or guest.

One of the disadvantages of using the bedroom as home office is I can’t simply invite anyone in for serious business talk. Who knows? We might need to talk to some salesperson whom we intended to hire to run the sales for us. We can’t talk Thai so for the time being, we have to rely on someone who can speak well.

Besides that, I might not have enough space for the office furniture on top of my bedroom set. I have to make sure that the cabinet knobs can be locked too as we might have some important documents that we have to keep at home. I can’t just keep them in my closet!

Seriously, having a home office in the room is not my cup of tea. I have been blogging in my room for a year, and I know that I really want to do this in a proper home office now.

Setting Up A New Home Office

shoppingmum — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 03:19:03 +0000

I’m in the midst of sorting my stuffs and packing up some of the things that hubby and I can bring over to Bangkok in 2 weeks. We will be there to look for houses, and if possible, rent one too if the price and house condition meet my requirement. Once we get the house, I will set up our home office as soon as possible.

Firstly, we need BIL’s help to apply for the phone line. Without the phone line, I can forget about internet and doing anything else. After that, I have to set up a little corner in my master bedroom as the office. We don’t have extra rooms in the house as those units only come with 3 rooms. One of them will be occupied by my kids and the other by a maid or guests, so I am left to no choice but use my own room again.

I will shop for a office table, and hopefully, it’s big enough for my laptop, printer, fax machine and other stuffs like papers and stationery. We are running on a tight budget on this move, so I hope to more most of the things over there, instead of buying all hte new office equipments. Thus, I can forget about having a trip to Branson Missouri because we will need every penny we have to set up the business and settling down.

Seriously, it’s going to be very challenging for us for the first few years, and I hope that things will be better in time.