Tales of an alien living in a small town in the Midwest of America
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!
