How To Decorate a Modern Home Office
Your home office does not have to look bland and unexciting. You can catch up with modern office designs today so you can feel like working to the fullest. Here are few decorating tips that can help you achieve an attractive modern home office:Tip 1: Modern designs today feature clean lines and solid colors. Choose three complementary or contrasting colors. According to experts, vibrant colors can help increase energy levels. They also stimulate better brain activities. You might want to choose vibrant colors or mix 2 vibrant colors with one neutral color.Tip 2: Choose comfortable but stylish furniture. Modern home furniture today usually has an edgy design. Plastic and glass are also quite popular. However, you would also want to merge comfort with style. Choose sensible furniture, office chairs and tables and just enliven it with ornaments and accents.Tip 3: Buy a comfortable office chair. Your office can be the most attractive office in the world but if your chair does not give you comfort, you still would not enjoy working in it. You can find ergonomic office chairs today with comfortable and adjustable features. Choose those that can give you relief from back pain, stiff neck and sore muscles. Also pick those chairs with adjustable seat height.Tip 4: Purchase shelves and storage baskets. Maximize the storage area of your work place. Rather than buy boring file cabinets, why don’t you commission a carpenter to make sturdy built-in shelf with a table for your computer? Use the shelves as a place to store your office supplies and other decorative items such as flower vases.Tip 5: Make sure your office has good lighting. Don’t buy lamps with diffused colors. You need to have sufficient lighting to work properly.Tip 6: The room has to be well-ventilated as well. Choose ceiling fans to add decorative accent to the room. You can also install air-conditioner to keep you comfortable during dry and humid seasons.Tip 7: Place an inspiration board directly in front of your work space. Make cut-outs or print out inspirational words and attach it to the cork board. Make it as colourful and as attractive as possible so it can constantly remind you of your goals and the things you want to achieve.Tip 8: Make sure you position your work area close to the window area. It will balance out the ambiance in the room. You can also look outside the window if you feel tired.
Invest in America’s Greatest Commodity – Family
It’s so easy to get caught up in the fast pace of today’s world to the point of forgetting what really matters. America’s greatest commodity is the family. A nation built on strong loving families is a happy nation indeed. If you look around, it isn’t hard to see many broken families who have fallen victim to that fast pace. Are looking for ways to strengthen your family, build trust in your children, and make your home a firm foundation? Consider the following ideas.Too many parents are letting other people raise their own children. It could be through schools, sports, dance, TV, video games, friends, etc…As parents, it is important that you sit down with your spouse and decide what is family time to you. The problem with letting other people raise your children is that your children are learning life’s lessons from other people and not you.Some parents feel they have to enroll their child in every after school opportunity in order for them to be well rounded. It is good for children to be a part of a team. It can teach teamwork, and discipline, and self confidence in a way that will be very helpful later in life for your child. However if your child is scheduled in too many activities and never at home, how will they learn what home is and how important family is? Family is about teamwork. This is a critical thing to teach your children.As parents, it is vital that you spend time with your children. A parent can be home but still not be available to their children. Computer, TV, cell phones are hard items to compete with but when your children are home, the parent should make sure they are not preoccupied with other things. If you can get your child to talk to you while they are young, then hopefully they will build enough trust to know that they can talk to you about anything during their teen years. When you listen, really listen with an intent to understand. By virtue of the fact that parents were once kids, this gives them the ability to relate and empathize with their children if they will take the time to do it.Plan time that you can spend with each child one on one. Hold a special family night once a week where parents can address family business, or you have a fun spontaneous activity and treats, or have a religious theme to teach them. Whatever fits your family’s needs you can help fulfill by having this time set aside one evening a week.Arrange one meal a day where you sit down together as a family and eat together. Discuss fun topics, jokes, find out more about each other. Make memories and build a bond as you come together at least once a day as a family and make that time sacred. No cell phones allowed! It can be breakfast, dinner, which ever meal will work for your family.Take a family vacation. Don’t let anything get in the way of doing that! You don’t have to travel far you can camp out in the backyard if gas is outrageous and you can’t afford to go to far. Just plan a weekend or a couple of days if you have the luxury of a whole week-great go for it!If you are a religious family and even if you aren’t try having family prayer. Morning when everyone wakes up and then at night before everyone retires. You will be amazed at how these simple type activities can bring a family very close. If you invest the time and effort to build and strengthen your family’s relationships it can last forever. After all when you grow old and gray, all you have left are your children. The return is priceless when you invest in your family!
Quick Orientation to Online Gaming
You don’t have to invest in a PlayStation or Wii to enjoy video games today. If you have a computer and a relatively fast Internet connection you can enjoy a growing market of online games that range from the simplest puzzle and card games to interactive games that simulate real-life flight, war, fighting, and even creative scientific and other worldly environments.Free Games OnlineIf you don’t have any room in your budget to pay for your games, you can find hundreds of websites dedicated to free playing. Most will offer a wide range of selection free of charge while reserving the best for paid subscribers. The good news is you don’t have to purchase a subscription in order to play many of the games. The downside is you do have to pay for a site subscription if the one you want to play is not offered for free.Other sites offer completely free games related to other content on the website. They use the games to pull visitors into the site while they are really pushing something else. These are free versions that can be entertaining, but they tend to be rather simplistic and most won’t find them entertaining for very long.Most free versions are basic. You can play card games like euchre and hearts with other people or different versions of solitaire by yourself. You can also find a lot of free puzzle games since they are easy to design and most people wouldn’t pay much to play them.Paid Download Games OnlineThere is also an extensive market for online games that are either downloaded onto your computer or offered through a subscription basis. These games are not free and the prices vary depending on the nature of the game, how it is being offered, and how many other people are interested in it. The more popular games that are plaid through a subscription service with others tend to be more expensive since you have to pay for them on a continuous basis.Most games that can be downloaded onto your computer will come with a one-time fee that allows you to download them and keep them forever. Many free gaming sites will offer their games as a downloadable version which can then be played without Internet access.The best games tend to be the ones you pay for on a subscription basis. These are the more interactive games with advanced graphics and technology. You can literally be transported to a different world with these games. The graphics are unbelievable and they can easily rival the best video games played through television-based games. The difference is you can play with people from all around the world in real time.Paying for Online GamesThose who get into online gaming typically end up paying for every game they like individually. This results in having many different subscriptions to keep up with and processing multiple payments on sites that may not always be the most secure.There are gaming payment systems now in existence that allow you to pay into one source from a local business and then use those credits to pay for online games from many different websites. This is a very safe, convenient way to pay for those online games that give you the most thrill.
Corazon Aquino and Gloria Arroyo – The Jekyll and Hide of Philippine Politics
I am not privy to the internal happenings in Philippine politics. I am, afterall, living about two flight hours away from the National Capital region and an ordinary citizen. My perception of our government officials is based solely on how they were projected in the news media. I guess, if one politician had the bigger cash vault and the better projectionists, then he may also have the more favorable image to the common people. But then again, we have Auntie Cory and Big Sister Glo, the only two lady presidents of the country, so far.Corazon Cojuangco Aquino became the first woman president of the Philippines, and in Asia, in 1986 courtesy of the famous four-day EDSA Revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship which reigned for twenty years. With yellow as her official color and the L hand sign as her symbol, she governed the country for a single term that was threatened by seven coup d’ etat; damaged by Typhoon Uring that devastated the City of Ormoc and left thousands dead; by the sinking of MV Dona Paz which registered the country’s worst maritime disaster; by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 that made billions of losses to the Philippine economy; and several other occurrences that made the Aquino government unpopular. Mrs. Aquino’s term ended in 1992 and, despite clamors from some quarters, she refused to bid for the same post twice.Gloria Macapagal Arroyo became the second female president of the land in 2001, again courtesy of another EDSA Revolution that displaced former movie actor Joseph Estrada from the presidency. Mrs. Arroyo is still encumbent and in her ninth year as Chief Executive of the Philippines. Those nine years were marked by various scandals that mostly indicated the involvement of the President and some members of her family. The most notorious were the Hello Garci episode where Mrs. Arroyo was charged as having cheated during the 2004 election; and the ZTE Broadband deal scandal that had the First Gentleman accused of corruption. There still were man-made and natural disasters. Like the Aquino government, the Arroyo regime became unpopular to the Filipino common people.But Ex-President Corazon Aquino did not become unpopular as a person. She was still a symbol of unity and freedom, up to her death on August 1, 2009. When her presidential term ended in 1992, she continued to remain a political presence because she was always sought either as mediator of conflicts or reliable endorser of political candidates. She had managed to cloth herself with a certain power that the people respects. She became the epitome of moral politics. She was still the people’s symbol of hope and freedom. I may not be an insider. I may have based my comments on the media projection. But I can surmise that she was all of that because of the magnitude of people that came to her wake. It can’t be the work of Mrs. Aquino’s paid publicist, if she had one. The outpouring of love and support seemed genuine. People brought flowers, lit candles, left notes, threw confetti and shed tears for the Yellow Lady. They sympathized with her bereaved family.Thousands of them did. The funeral measured Corazon Cojuangco Aquino’s worth. They adjudged her as “Good.”Current President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is not yet dead. She can’t be measured yet by the same barometer. I doubt if she will benefit from the same deluge of support. But, one thing is sure: many people consider her as an arrogant president. Someone whose greed for power is insatiable. Before the 2004 elections, she made a vow to the people that she will not vie for the presidency again. But, she did and is currently serving a full six-year term. This term is supposed to end in 2010, but her maneuverers are working hard to extend it by way of changing the Philippine Constitution, which the common people are opposing to. Alive and encumbent, but Mrs. Arroyo is being judged as “Bad.” Will her funeral draw the same emotions, the same crowd? I doubt it.