Not many businesses here can survive the competitions without providing excellent customer service. Few weeks ago, I ordered a steam cleaner from Amazon, it was shipped via ground UPS. UPS lost the package (might be mis-delivered to a wrong address). When I called Amazon, they immediately sent out a replacement for next day delivery without extra cost and apologized for the inconvenience. There is a reason why Amazon has been a successful business model for many years!
In the digital age, they are a lot more venues for disgruntled customers to blow off steam about bad service or deficient products. Anyone doing business in the current world of instant Internet feedback, whether it’s on blogs, Twitter, Facebook or via other social networks should read : Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000
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After being here for a year, the employees at my favorite grocery stores here knows my name. I love the good deals they offer and their friendliness towards my coupons use. The attendants at the self checkout machines loved to see me getting stuffs for pennies and called me the ” genius who got groceries for free”. 
When I first started doing all the coupon deals last year, the employees were suspicious and checked all my coupons carefully. They were also a couple of instances, I had to call their corporate office to train them about specific coupon use. I was very impressed with their customer service. They called the store, sorted this out with the manager and had him called me to apologize each time.
Right now, they are a lot more people who are drawn to doing all the coupon deals due to the economy. The employees are much better trained, it’s usually a breeze to shop at the stores. When there is a killing deal that pays me to take stuffs from the store, the employees are used to seeing me there everyday spending 2-3 hours at the store. Some of them pulled me aside to ask for tips, they wanted to learn how to do the deals too!
Some employees don’t understand the concept of coupons and they think the store is losing by giving out all the groceries for FREE. Well, I may have gotten the groceries for free, but the store is not giving them out for free, the manufacturers are paying for them! Why the manufacturers are giving them away? The marketers are not dumb, what better way to develop brand loyalty than giving their products out for free to try, then get hooked and pay full price for it later? Fortunately, the store that I frequent has a wise manager who told them the reason they have a job is because they have customers who are happy to shop there and whether the customer pay with cash, credit card, check or coupons, the store sells the products and gets paid in the end !
Stockpiling is an essential part of coupon shopping to save money, as you buy things when they are on sales, not when you are out of them. Instead of running out to the store to buy things at their normal price when running out, I shop out of my pantry and freezer.
The landlord provides us a 2-door refrigerator with the top freezer compartment. We somehow managed to “squeeze” a chest freezer and an upright freezer into our tiny apartment. The chest freezer was from a deal at our grocery store, yes, we got it almost free with coupons!
The outside and inside of the refrigerator.
The refrigerator is usually more packed than this, I am trying to “empty” it a bit before leaving for Malaysia in February. They are more yogurts in a plastic tub that I left them in what people here called the “Polish refrigerator” – the outside freezing cold weather.
The outside and inside of the chest freezer.
We use the chest freezer for meat. They are currently fill to the rim. The hams and turkeys that are free with coupons before Christmas are taking too much space! I have the meat separated by paper bags, one bag for pork, one bag for seafood, one bag for chicken, one bag for turkey and one bag for beef. I still have a few 2lb bags of shrimps and 30-40 bags of Franks I got in March/April 2009 inside there. The meat can last a long time in the deep freezer especially when they are vacuumed sealed.
Really glad I burned some Catalina coupons to get this vacuum sealer. It makes stockpiling perishable food and meal planning in advance much easier. With the ability to pick up fresh, seasonal fruits, vegetables when the stores are running deals or they are abundant of wine tags to get them for FREE. The vacuum-sealing allows me to use these foods when I choose, rather than rushing to use them up or waiting too long only to find they have gone bad!
The outside and inside of the upright freezer.
The upright freezer is currently filled with frozen vegetables, fruits, ice cream, breakfast food (waffles, strudels, breads) milk and pizza. The content varies from month to month as the deals differ. A couple of months ago, when milk was free with coupons, we have lots of of milk in the freezer, and didn’t have to buy milk for the last six months. Everything in this freezer is either FREE or they paid me to take home. What you see is a tip of the iceberg of what I actually bought at the store. When they paid me to bring home ice cream during a promotion in the summer, I bought more than 180 tubs of ice cream but only brought home about 20 tubs, gave/donated most of them away. The ice cream craze got me $200+ in coupons to buy other groceries/necessities.
Purchased the air ticket today. I am going home for Chinese New Year! Flight leaves Chicago on 09 Feb and arrives KL on 11 Feb. I have been monitoring the price of air ticket for a couple of weeks, but couldn’t decide whether to go home this year. It’s kind of late, most of the non stop direct flights are sold out. I am going to have stop overs at LA and Seoul and the whole journey is going to be 30+ hours. The return flight is better, only stop over at Seoul!
Liquor is relatively cheaper here in US compare to Malaysia. We don’t drink hard liquor, but like a glass of wine or a bottle of beer occasionally. But I don’t buy the booze unless they are FREE! They are ways to get booze for free, I mainly look for rebates from liquor companies.
The beer companies have rebate forms out throughout the years, especially during special occasions like Superbowl and holiday seasons. You can get beer for free after the rebate, or even make a couple of bucks! For example, Coors had a rebate last month, you buy a 18 pack beer and a $100 gift card, get back $25 in rebate. I bought the gift card with coupons – so no cost, 18-pack beer is about $15 includes tax. I am paid $10 to bring home the beer!
Many people drink during Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year when family and friends gather together. Most liquor department at the grocery stores count on the festive season to booze their sales. The retailers often have sales to bring people in. The manufacturers or liquor distributor often use coupons and rebate forms as marketing tools to promote their products. By taking advantage of all the promotions and stacking all the deals together, getting paid to bring home the booze during this time of the year is not a dream!
We have more than 50 bottles of booze right now, they are mostly wine, some sparkling wine (taste like champagne) and a few bottles of rum. Except for the plum wine from the Asian grocery store (I used it in cooking and marinade) which I paid real money for, the others are all FREE after coupons and rebates.
Some will come in handy as last minute gifts when we get invited to parties or family gatherings. The rest is enough booze to last us for the next year. In fact, we had given away 5 bottles as Christmas and graduation gifts.
There was about 2 inches of snow on the ground when we got up this morning. We did not realize it snowed throughout last night and early morning! That would be the first snow of the year. The weather forecast says there will be snow storm ahead next week!!
When it’s only 1-2 inches of snow, it’s fresh, fluffy and light, it’s easy to get them off the car and side walk. The roof, tree and ground covered with a coat of snow looks beautiful! But, there is no fun when it starts melting, it gets icy, dirty and quite a mess. We are expecting to get 7-8 inches inches of snow next week!
The ground is icy and slippery when the snow starts melting. Our landlord hires a company to plow the snow. That’s the advantage of living in an apartment, no shoveling snow in the winter nor mowing lawn in the warmer months!
Former colleague is coming to America to attend a conference. I am going to fly down to St Louis, MO to meet up with her. Already booked the air ticket! I am excited to have a chance to catch up with a dear friend. She is also bringing me some goodies from home in her luggage. My two sisters got me dried shrimps, ikan bilis, belacan and air-dried pandan leaves. T and I have been craving Nasi Lemak for breakfast!!
The flight from Midway IL to St Louis MO is only about one hour, however it takes 2 hours to drive down to the airport from the boondocks we live. Since the flight leaves at 8.00 a.m, we have to leave the house at 4.30-5.00 a.m!
Today last year I arrived here don’t know what to expect. It was still cool Fall weather when I arrived. Two weeks later, we rushed to the store to get me some thermal wears! It was a lengthy and bitter winter, everyone assured me it’s not typical.
T got me hooked up with the International Cafe, I met many new people and getting to know some friends. Many people asked me what do I do with my free time since I am not employed here. Well, I am actually fairly busy in the last year. First, though I don’t work outside of home, I do work online at home a bit. Since I discovered the big wild world of coupon shopping two months after I arrived here and that has kept me pretty busy, especially when we started selling the stockpile at yard sales and flea markets .
Besides, have been donating tons of the dairy products and perishables that I got for free to the food pantry and shelter. Before I got my driver license, T helped me to drop off more than 200 bags of cheese and a few hundreds cans of refrigerated dough(to make biscuit, crescent roll and dinner rolls) at the women shelter.
I also join the area woman center and volunteer there. I do the layout and typeset for the bi-monthly newsletters. Actually, they invited me to be part of the Board of Directors, but I wasn’t sure I have time for greater commitment, so I didn’t go for the meeting last month.
We have gone to the flea market a couple of times and were doing extremely well. We started our tables at about 6 -7 a.m, by9.30 t0 10 a.m., we were SOLD OUT. If we are able to go there twice a month, it’s better than me working part time! What would you do? Slave at a minimum wage job and let Uncle Sam takes 1/4 of your pay, or have the stores pay you to shop?
I may eventually go back to school to get a teacher certification, so I can tutor math part time or teach full time in a public school. I would love to go for a Montessori certification, but there is no authentic Montessori school at this small town where we live. However, during my initial inquiry at the university near us, was told I first have to send all my certs and transcripts to an agency for evaluations. I am yet to dig out all the certs and transcripts to do that!
All in all, I am thankful to God for all the people that He put in my path during this whole year, it has turned out to be nothing I would have anticipated, but a detour that has wonderful scenery anyway!
The van would not start two weeks ago. T didn’t close the door tight and left the light on overnight. thus exhausted the battery. The neighbor’s boyfriend helped me to jump start the car, but it went dead again as it did not recharge enough before I turned off the engine.
T brought it to the workshop to recharge the battery, but was told he has to replace the whole battery. Despite me telling him there was nothing wrong with the battery, T and his dad decided to get it replaced and also “fixed” the alternator. The repair bill came up to be $330++.
The mechanics must have thought they got some dumb big fish, they also “discovered” problems with the shocks and recommended flushing the break fluids. They gave an estimate of repairs, came up to be a few dollars less than $1000!
Though equally ignorant about cars, I knew better not to trust mechanics! I told T no where we are going to spend so much money repairing a car that only cost $3500! So, T talked to his coffee mate, the retired policeman recommended him a mechanic whom he said is honest. T sent the car for him to check the shocks. Guess what? The second mechanic found nothing wrong with the shocks and whatsoever.
Now they have me thinking: we might not even have to replace the battery or alternator! For all you know, all we need is recharging the battery for 5-6 hours!!
I think people were just being nice when they told me this year’s weather is not the typical. It’s so crazy, after a long and bitter winter (snow in April!!!), spring never arrives, cold spell in the middle of summer, Chicagoland’s weather is just so unpredictable!
Despite all that, I am surprisingly adjusting better than I thought. I have been keeping so busy with all the part time adventures, kind of panicking at the thought that summer is ending SOON! Time really flies, next month will be the first anniversary of my move to America!
The front of the apartment building.
Another view of the apartment building from the mail boxes.
Each apartment gets a mail box. Most houses here are not fenced, but our neighbor had “privacy” fence (see behind the mail boxes)
The front porch, entrance to the apartment building.
Our doorway, and steps leading to our upstairs neighbors. Our apartment is actually a few steps below the ground (Which is cooler in the summer)
The laundry room. It’s the room behind the stairs in the picture, which is in between two apartments.
There is no washer/dryer hook up inside the apartment, so we have to store away our own washer and dryer in the garage temporarily. This coin operated washer and dryer are provided by the landlord. We share with the neighbor on the ground floor, the other two neighbors upstairs have the similar setup.
Another room next to the laundry room. Look nice and neat outside.
That’s how it looks inside, quite a mess! The landlord provides and maintains the water softener.
The Kitchen.
Kitchen cabinets are boons for disorganized messy people, all the “stuffs” are tucked away in the cabinets, what you don’t see.
The hallway. Master bedroom and bathroom on the right, second bedroom, linen closet and storage closets on the left.
The bathroom.
Laundry supplies stash under the bathroom sink.
Paper products stash in the storage closets.
The walk-in closet inside the master bedroom.
Did I tell you I love this closets that keep the mess concealed behind the closed doors?
More pictures are coming………..
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