FILAM FINANCE

If you are thinking of traveling to China to watch the Olympics, here is some good news for your: There are plenty of rooms available for the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, with domestic visitors being counted on to make up for an apparent absence of foreign guests.

According to Yahoo News:

Xiong Yuemi, deputy director of the Beijing Tourism Bureau, said Tuesday that 45.5 percent of Beijing’s four-star hotel rooms were booked for the Olympic period. Bookings in hotels with three-star ratings or below were also under 50 percent, though Xiong didn’t offer specific numbers.

She declined to tie the vacant rooms to new visa controls and bad publicity surrounding the games, which open in 3 1/2 weeks. The games are supposed to showcase a new China, but they are also exposing facets of the authoritarian state that has run the country for almost six decades.

This could be the perfect time to get good rooms and good rates to top hotels such as Hilton Head rentals, Sheraton, Holiday Inn, etc. It is still pretty tough for Americans to travel knowing that the dollar is still on the decline and the economy is just not that good this summer

According to the Los Angeles Times, the nation’s unemployment rate has gotten worse in May, jumping to 5.5% from 5% in April– the largest one-month increase in more than twenty years and a further sign that the ailing economy is not yet on the mend.

“Altogether, the economy lost 49,000 jobs in May and 324,000 jobs since the beginning of the year — five straight months of contraction, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The economy must create about 100,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth.

Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, said the report was “the strongest evidence yet that the economic expansion has slipped into a recession of uncertain depth and duration.”

“The situation is even worse than this jump indicates,” Morici said. “A large number of adults have left the labor force in recent years. Factoring in the decline in the number of adults participating in the labor force, the unemployment rate is closer to 7%.”

Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at forecasting firm MFR Inc., in New York, said the unemployment rate may have been affected by graduation season.

“These figures should be taken with a grain of salt, as school-leavers probably skewed them this month,” Shapiro said in a note to subscribers.”

A lot of cities are taking a hit including losses in jobs in Philadelphia , Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, etc.

My nephew’s birthday is coming up the first week of August and we are looking to buy a gift for him. It will be his thirteenth birthday. He stated that he wanted to get either a video game - Playstation CD or MP3 players. So my wife and I went to Fry’s. We actually went to Wal-mart because the price seems to be cheaper there. However, the game that my nephew want is not available so we went to Fry’s Electronics. There are not that many Fry’s stores here in the southland so we have to travel around twenty miles to get there. The game is available and the price is similar to what Wal-mart is selling. The price is $59.99.

Anyways, we were actually looking for a laptop so we really made good use of our trip especially nowadays when gas prices are at a sky high. Actually, the gas prices have gone down by a few cents this weekend for a change.

Well, it is more like we are borrowing her this weekend from my sister but only if she comes with us. She normally have bad moods if she’s not with her parents. If you don’t know it yet, my niece is only two and a half years old and once in a while, we borrowed her from my sister since we do not have any children yet. I brought her to work almost a year ago and my co-workers have been asking when I would bring her again. She only spoke a little at that time and now my coworkers will be surpised as she is already speaking two languages.

My sister told me to get ready to watch a marathon of DVD like Cinderella, The Chocolate Factory, Dora, etc. She will hog the television for the rest of the day so we would not have a chance to watch any shows at all. Good thing we have computers that we can use. Maybe I’ll buy her a DVD player so she can watch those DVD’s there.

My niece favorite clothing is Cinderella and school uniforms (school girl costumes). I know we bought her some clothing before and she wears it even when she is asleep!! The clothing is already worn out as she seem to wear it everyday.

Anyways, we’ll be getting ready to do some baby sitting this weekend!1

One of my co-worker is retiring after working for thirty five years in the company. I mean, thirty five long years. Imagine working for just one company for that long. We had a buffet in one of the pizza places near our workplace and we have one section just for ourselves. It was heavily decorated with balloons, silk flowers centerpieces, banners, etc. There was a big retirement cake and bunch of gifts as well.

The food is ok but not that great. It was an Italian restaurant and buffet might not be there specialty. Although the spaghetti and lasagna are good, the pizzas and other stuffs are not that great.

The retiree’s family were there, too. The husband, who has been retired since ten years ago, and the two daughters that are already grown up. The husband is really hilarious as he makes bunch of jokes with his wife’s retirement. The two daughters were both emotional.

Anyways, it must be really nice to wake up in the morning knowing that you don’t have to go to work.

For the first time in our deparment, we had a picnic. There are only eleven staffs in our unit plus four managers and it has been a long time since a picnic has been held in the department. It was a potluck but we also ordered some tacos as well. If I am not mistaken, the previous manager used to have one annually fifteeen years ago. Having a picnic relieves stress and increases employee morale. It is nice once in a while to be at work and not thinking about work. It is nice to be playing baseball and bonding with your co-workers.

There is a park across our company and that’s where it was held. The only probelem with that park is the restroom is not well maintained and the toilets were really dirty. The city or the county must have not enoough fundings because of budget cuts everywhere.

Anyways, it was really fun and very stress relieving!!

Summer is coming and we would be experiencing a lot of heat waves. A lot of people will be using a lot of energy because of the air conditioner. Because of this, energy cost will be going up. We will also be experiencing a lot of power outage as it seems that there would be an energy shortage again. Yes, those rolling blackouts will be back for sure. It already happened to us at work as there was a black out that lasted for about an hour. Good thing that we have generators. However, the generators only work so that we can have lighting. It did not power our air conditioner and our computers.

So people should be thinking of cutting energy costs such as switching to a more efficient energy lighting. Also, people should be using other appliances such as television or vacuum during the low peak hours such as 7:00 o’clock at night. Also, if you have centralized air conditioning, you might want to close down the air conditioning vent on the rooms that no one is occupying. Or better yet, people should purchase those air conditioning that you can install in your rooms.

With the high cost of gas nowadays, it seems that a lot of commodities are also affected. The best way cut monthly expenses is to limit eating out in restaurants. My wife and I are only eating out if there are special occasions. So for the most part, my wife cooks at home with her recipe book handy all the time. She cooks a lot of Filipino food but sometimes she tries other cuisines such as Japanese and Mexican cooking.

As for me, I brown bag both my lunch and breakfast. If I woke up early enough, my wife would prepare the breakfast and I don’t have to eat just sandwiches or oatmeal. I can actually eat a full breakfast meal such as pancakes, eggs, etc.

I have a couple of friends that are working here as a Telecom engineer. They install and configure different cell sites from all over the United States. There are a lot of traveling involve and the hours are very flexible.

As far as travel expenses, the company that they work for is providing them a per diem for their hotel and gas expenses. With the high cost of gas nowadays, the gas money provided by the company may not be enough for all the traveling that they are doing.

As far as lodging is concern, most of them prefers staying in a condo hotel or “apartel” because of the room amenities such as having a kitchen. Also, condo hotel does not require a lease agreement, they can just rent or stay just like staying in a hotel.

We recently went to Costco and we bought a lot of old DVD’s at Costco. I mean they are not that old and some of those have just been released a year ago. Anyways, the DVD’s come in package of two’s for just $10.99. I mean, you can buy the same DVD’s at Blockbuster and any other movie rentals (video wall rentals) for the same price but the problem with those is that those are used.

If you go to Wal-mart, they also sell DVD’s for five dollars but the selections are really not that good.

Some DVD titles that we bought for $10.99 are:

• Breach and The Good Shepherd
• Fantastic Four and The Hulk
• Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and The House of Flying Daggers

There are a lot more selections and every month my wife and I normally check the store out to see if we can find something that we want to keep. Because, normally we would go to the video store to rent movies instead.