Working as a room attendant

If you are a student, recently moved to a foreign country and not able to speak the language fluently, or if you simply need work whilst you are finding something better, then you could get a job as a room attendant in a hotel. I did this myself for 2 years when I was in college.

The thing that suited me at the time was the working hours. Because I was working on my studies in college, I could only devote a little time each week to a job. Working in a hotel was a great choice, because hotels are busiest in the college vacation times and at weekends. The hours were not too long either so I only needed to work from 9am-2pm, meaning I had a good portion of the afternoons still free.

The pay for room attendants is not so great. You will probably only be paid at the minimum wage, as I was when I worked in this position. If you want to stay within the hotel cleaning business, then it might be a good idea for you to listen out for promotions that are available as these are the positions where you will be able to get better pay.

The room attendant job requires that you clean everything in each hotel room really well. Sometimes you will need to prepare a room for a new guest. This includes putting clean towels, clean sheets, new toiletries if the hotel provides these, as well as cleaning everything that you can in the room. Other rooms that you will need to clean are those that are still being used by guests. The guest will probably go out for the day, and so you will be able to clean the deserted room alone. I was always careful to leave everything that was not owned by the hotel exactly as it was. Sometimes, people would leave their things on the floor or untidy. I would leave these as they are as many people don’t appreciate a stranger touching their things, even if you are just trying to help.

McArdle and Frost - a helpful and honest Chicago personal injury Attorney

I spent a few months in Chicago, Illinois and whilst I was there, I had a leg injury which I sustained because I was walking through Chicago in an evening and fell through a hole in the sidewalk that had been uncovered by workmen earlier in the day, and they had failed to put up a sufficient sign to tell pedestrians to avoid it. This meant that my visit had to be halted and I ended up in a Chicago hospital bed with a broken leg for two weeks and eventually had to fly back home to the UK. I wouldn’t have been able to afford any further treatment if I hadn’t done that, so I had also wasted 2 months that were remaining of my trip, that had been paid for but I was unable to enjoy. I had saved up a long time to make this particular vacation, so I felt that I should get some kind of compensation from the highways agency who had commissioned the work on the sidewalk in Chicago. I contacted a Chicago personal injury attorney called McArdle and Frost. Even though I was in the UK at the time, the law firm were really helpful, and they made sure that I had all the information and paperwork I needed for the case.

Because I was unable to do any research locally for the case, McArdle and Frost were able to help me by contacting the relevant people and researching the injury to make sure that I had a case. They determined that I did indeed have grounds to sue, and so I was able to claim back from the highway maintenance agency the medical costs that I incurred in America, as well as my flight home, and compensation for the months left of my vacation.

McArdle and Frost are a great law firm, who I certainly recommend if you are looking for a reliable and trustworthy Chicago personal injury attorney.

The Build-A-Bear Workshop, Trafford Centre - a great place for kids!

I like to visit the Trafford centre in Manchester, England for my special occasion shopping, and a few months ago, I took my 8 year old niece with me. Almost in the centre of the precinct is a Build-a-Bear workshop - a store that sells teddies, with accessories that you are able to purchase to go along with the bears.
Like most kids her age, my niece loves teddies and as we neared the store, she got quite exitable about going in, so by the power of pester, I was literally forced to pay the store a visit.
As you walk into the store, you quite literally walk into a different world. The store is set up to deliberately encourage you to move clockwise around the store, picking up more things to buy along the way.
On the left as you enter the store, you will find a few ready made bears, although mostly you will notice the various bucket like holders filled with empty carcasses of teddy bear skins. I think if I'd visited the place when I was my niece's age, I'd have been scarred for life!
Anyway, this is where the fun begins. You choose from one of these bear skins. Each is roughly £10 to £15 for a 12 inch tall toy. You take the skin to the next stage of the workshop, which consists of an overly happy member of staff who encouages you to act rather stupid before you help stuff the teddy. I witnessed the 40something year old woman in front of me acting like an 8 year old, making a wish and dancing around before placing a heart inside the bear, feeling glad that the toy was for my niece and not me!
When it was my niece's turn, the store assistant gave her a little heart, told her to rub it to make it warm, make a wish then pop it inside the teddy. My niece loved this part, and she even helped press on the pedal that powered the stuffing machine.
Once the whole stuffing process was over, we were directed towards the rear of the store. There we found accessories such as hats, sunglasses and even rollerskates for the bears. Continuing in the clockwise motion, there were bathtime accessories, bedtime accessories and all sorts of outfits for the bears including daytime and career based outfits.
Just before you reach the checkout, there are some touch screen computers where you register the bears 'birth' and sign up to the build a bear club.
By the time we got to the checkouts, I was tired. I'd been begged into allowing the purchase of over £50 worth of bear stuff, and then we had to spend a while at the checkout whilst the cashier made up the bear's house. This was a cute and sturdy carry box almost like you would get at an expensive pet store to take home a rabbit.
All in all, this is a great experience for kids and the store is certainly well laid out. Everyone moves in the same direction around it so even when the store is busy, other people dont really get in the way. The staff are friendly and happy to help and I wasnt that upset about parting with so much cash because my niece had had such good fun. I recommend this store if you are going to visit the Trafford centre.

Mazda Interplay/323 Car Review

Mazda Interplay/323, classy cheap car of my choice For me, owning a car has become a necessity, because it's important for transportation to the place I work. With consideration to the contents of my wallet customizable, easy and rather classy, ​​I finally chose the Mazda Interplay/323 1995. I bought this car two years ago, until now the condition of the car was still good and fit. For my area standards in Bogor, Indonesia, this car has enough prestige and a bit classy, ​​especially for the lower-middle-class people like me. 323/Interplay car is easier and cheaper for only Rp. 35 Million or equivalent to U.S. $ 4,000, compared to the same class cars like the Honda Civic, Toyota Corola, or i301 BMW, Mazda Interplay/323 more clearly conformed to me. In terms of technical specifications is also more economical and simpler than the type of a car. Initial output digital speedometer, the shape of the box really. Who's new @ speedo analog tacho. Headlights thin sweeter. Moreover, very easy and comfortable when driving on a highway by user like me who just recently get a driver's license. Overall, Mazda Interplay/323 Handling is very good, enough power, just a little slow acceleration. Mazda brake gently but grip, coz disc brakes on all wheels. Spare-parts is not hard to find, because mazda ford can substitute with the same type. In short, Interplay/323 Mazda is a car of my choice, in accordance with the conditions and my situation.

The Rio laser hair removal system for hair free skin

I have visited a salon on several occasions to have wax hair removal treatments, which are painful, but they do last for a few weeks. The problem is that I keep having to go back to have the procedure repeated. The beauty therapist at the salon recommended that I try a few laser hair sessions, which are considerably more expensive, but overall will last far longer than waxing, and can even have permanent hair removal effects. After I had had 3 of these sessions on my upper lip, I was very happy with the results and found that the hair was not growing back at all. I wanted to have the treatment on my legs too, but this would cost considerably more, and the therapist said that I would need at least 7 to 10 sessions and probably even more.

I decided that the salon treatment was too expensive for me to justify at about £30 or upwards per session, and so instead I decided to purchase a laser hair removal system that I could use at home. The Rio Scanning Laser Hair Removal system was the perfect buy for me. It claims to remove up to 20 hairs at a time. There is a more expensive model, which supposedly removes up to 80 hairs at a time too. The one I purchased was about £80 from my local catalogue store.

The unit comes with a DVD as well as an instruction manual, which I found was really helpful. It takes a little practice to get all of the hairs, and I find that it helps to trim the hairs to practically stubble before you start using the unit. The hairs wont fall out immediately. I find that a little gentle exfoliation 24 hours after I have done the treatment helps loosen the hairs. It took a few months, but eventually I managed to get rid of most of the hairs, and all in all, it’s cost less than it would have done if I had gone to the salon for a few sessions.

I like how the manufacturers have thought about the safety of this product. Of course, children are really inquisitive, and the laser on this can be very dangerous when not used correctly. The unit is stored in a case which has its own key, so I like to lock it and then store the key completely away from it, just to keep the little ones away. I completely recommend the Rio Scanning x20 laser hair removal system.

L'Oreal casting creme for luscious black hair

Although I now have blonde hair, I did used to dye my chestnut brown hair black. I have only ever used one black hair dye, and that is purely because I fell in love with the first ever hair dye I ever used – I guess you could say it was love at first dye.

I had decided to dye my hair black when I had got bored of my own natural hair color. I had previously used semi permanent hair dyes, but this time, I just wanted something a little more risky and permanent. I didn’t want to choose a cheaper dye as I was worried about damaging my hair, so when I saw that my local boots store had the L’Oreal casting crème gloss on a half price offer, I decided to try this.

The first thing I can say is that this stuff is really easy to mix and prepare for your hair. It took me about 30 seconds. The dye uses a simple bottle system that has a seal half way down. The top compartment contains the dye and the lower compartment contains the cream. When you are ready to dye your hair, you simply twist the bottle in a screw like motion. This breaks the seal in the centre and allows the color to meet the crème. Just shake up the bottle and voila! The cream is now ready for use.

I found the crème was easy to apply and had quite a nice smell to it. I left it in my hair for about 40 minutes before washing it out as instructed. The dye comes with an additional conditioner which has a lovely fruity smell and made my hair so soft after it had dried.

Because I was inexperienced with hair dyes at the time, I left bits of dye behind in the shower/bath and when I returned to the bathroom, I noticed there were dark grey patches all over the inside, which never came out, regardless of the scrubbing that I did in my efforts to remove it, so if you are going to try it, please remember to clean out the bath or shower well afterwards!

Anyway, everyone commented on how beautiful my hair was and even as the color started to fade, new red hues and other colors started to appear in my hair. I completely recommend this hair dye for beautiful coverage and if you are looking for a gentle hair dye.

The HP4200 laser printer for a fast way to print

At my workplace, I am responsible for ensuring that all the printers are running properly and that they are compatible with the computers themselves. One of the main brands of printer that we use is HP, and the main model of printer that I usually choose is the HP4200 laser printer. This is quite a large and bulk office printer, which I like because it has plenty of paper trays and expansion options.

At the bottom of the printer there is a deep A4 sized paper tray. This can happily hold about a realm and a half of paper, which is great for printing those huge mail merge documents. The front of the printer has a door that flips down to make a second paper tray. Confusingly, the lower paper tray is named by the printer as ‘tray 2’ and the door tray is \tray 1’. Tray 1 is used mainly for envelopes. There is a slider on the paper tray to let you align the envelopes, and then all you need to do is choose the type of envelope that you are using and it will print perfectly every time.

My main annoyance with these printers is how frequently the fuser unit fails. The fuser unit is a replaceable part that costs about $150 to replace. When it fails, it stops fusing the toner to the paper, causes paper jams and often makes a loud crunching noise when printing. It is really simple to replace though, as it is accessible through a removable door at the back of the printer.

To save money on paper, this printer has the option of adding a duplexer. This is just placed in the back of the printer. I always forget to enable the duplexer in the printer, so if you have installed a duplexer in a HP4200 and it is not printing out, then you should check that you have turned the duplexer on in the printer settings.

All in all, I like this printer. It prints really quickly and it seems to do well with remanufactured toners too, which saves a fortune on toner costs.

Using Paypal as a Great Choice for Online Money Management

I have used Paypal for over 4 years now. It is by far the best online payment system I have ever used. I have been scammed before by a credit card only payment site, but I have never had this misfortune with paypal.

Signing up

The sign up process is really simple. You need to use an address to sign up with, but you don't need to set up a bank. I initially created my account with no bank attached and used my work address because my partner uses another account with my home address and i didn't want to confuse the two.

Multiple email addresses

I use a couple of different email addresses, so I like the ability to add different email addresses to be able to receive money with paypal. They do all seem to use the same password. I cant work out if that's a bad thing or not.

Limits

I use paypal to be paid for my online work. I then just use this money to buy presents and treats that I wouldn't buy with the earnings from my regular work. This was the main reason why I didn't link my bank account otherwise, I would start using my bank balance before I know it. If you don't link a bank account, then you should be aware that you will probably be subject to limits. The limits depend on your primary currency. The limits I have on my account are:

- sending limit - this includes any balance that you spend on purchases online, e.g. eBay. it resets annually

- withdrawal limit per month - this limit is reset every month and is the amount you're allowed to withdraw to a bank account

- withdrawal limit per year - this limit is reset every year and again, is the amount you're allowed to withdraw to a bank account

- Receiving limit - reset annually, this is the amount you can make through selling online, or receiving money.

If you wish to raise the limits, there is a button on the limits section of paypal. You need to add your bank account and contact information. I did this recently. They call you and you have to use an automated service to verify your account. You can then raise the limits completely if you wish.

TV Show Review - The X-Factor USA - great entertainment

The X-Factor USA is a new American talent show where the contestants can compete to win $5million as well as a recording contract. This format has been used successfully in the UK for a number of years under the producers Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell who have both proven themselves to be excellent talent scouts.

The show features a panel of four judges and the line up for the 2011 season features Simon Cowell himself, after he left his previous role on te UK show to be a judge for the American x-factor. He is great fun to watch and has a name for being quite a nasty character for the acts that he doesnt think are very good. Other Judges include Paula Abdul who is a singer from the 80s, Nicole Scherzinger who was in the group called the Pussycat Dolls and is now a solo singer as well as a man known as L.A., who has worked with many singers in the past to help them to launch their career.

The show starts by giving the viewers a glimpse of the auditions for the show. The auditions are held all over the states and the best and worst auditions are aired. This is one of my favorite parts of the show as I like to have a giggle at te acts who are misguided and believe they have the ability to sing when really tey just cant. The judges opinions are also interesting to hear especially when they disagree and often they will have arguments.

After the auditions comes the bootcamp where the best of the auditionees are cut down further and split into girls, boys, over 25s and groups. Te judges are ten each given a random group to mentor and coach.

Each group then goes to their mentor's house and the groups are all cut in half again. Sometimes I feel that the judges make the wrong choices and send the wrong acts home.

At the live shows ths is where the competition really takes off. Each week, there is a thee and each contestant mst sing to stay in the show. The public votes off the act they like the least. The judges have ther own competition between themselves to see who will be the mentor to have the winning act.

All in all I think this is a great show that shouldnt be missed!

The Nokia N73 - All you need in a mobile phone

The last mobile phone that I owned was a Nokia N73, which I used for 2 years. Although it isn’t as high tech as some of the other phones that I have owned, I enjoyed using it as my mobile.

The last time I checked, this phone was still for sale at about $80, which isn’t bad at all, considering that I paid about 4 times this price when I bought mine on a pay as you go deal 3 years ago.

I like how the Nokia N73 just looks like a phone. There’s not particularly anything fancy about it. Its just a screen and buttons. The model I had was silver although you can get it in black too. My only problem with it being silver is that I found that after a few months, I’d managed to wear scratches in the back, which ended up making a dull dark patch. It’s a little on the heavy side if you compare it to more modern phones, but I preferred the slightly chunkier design of the phone as I found it easier to hold as I was typing out text messages

There is a rear camera on this phone. It is 4 mega pixels and it used to usually take pretty good photos for me. It doesn’t have a flash on it, so it isn’t great in the darker lighting. The pictures tend to come out looking a bit grainy in the dark. The video quality isn’t the best on this phone. It didn’t seem to pick up sound very well. As far as I can tell, the front camera is VGA quality only. This means that the quality isn’t very good at any time. I couldn’t eve use it to do my makeup. This is certainly one of the worst features of the Nokia N73 for me.

This phone does use the Symbian operating system, which I haven’t had great experiences with in the past, although this phone seems to handle applications pretty well and the internet runs at a reasonable speed too. It does help too, that this phone has 3G capabilities.

Although this phone is becoming a little dated now due to the rapidly changing world of technology, it is a good choice if you are looking for a conventional phone that is easy to use for making calls and sending text messages.

Amazon Kindle 3 ebook reader review - Turning Heads as well as Pages!

I have been a frequent book reader for years now, and I’m always reading something or other, whether it is fiction or not. Recently though, I just don’t have the time or the energy to carry books around with me, and I don’t have the space in my home to store lots of books to read when I finally get around to it. As well as that, I’ve been doing a course for university lately and all my books have been given to me online to save paper and printing costs, so with all these points considered, I decided to buy a kindle 3.

It took me quite a while to decide that I wanted a Kindle 3. I already have a laptop, but it just isn’t practical to pull out my laptop whenever I need to do reading, and I guess I could have chosen a tablet, but I already have an iPhone which does all those little jobs that I would use a tablet for anyway. I realized that the best thing to do for a book reader would be to choose something that was built for purpose, and something that was not going to constantly be a distraction for me to do other things apart from reading.

I love how the Kindle 3 battery power lasts for ages. I can be reading for a week, and still have plenty of battery power remaining. I do only use my kindle 3 to read rather than using the WiFi or any fancy settings like that, so I guess I save power by keeping the WiFi switched off.

Another thing I really like about the Amazon Kindle 3 is that it has a matte effect screen and the way that it displays the text is formulated especially so that you can read in the light of the sun. I have problems with my eyes, and when sitting in the sun, the bright illuminated white pages of books used to give me a headache. With the Kindle 3, there is no light glare, and no fade like you would have maybe with most of the mobile phones on the market. I find reading in darker rooms is just as easy as there is a backlight feature.

The Kindle 3 is a light weight eBook reader that is capable of holding thousands of eBooks. WiFi lets you connect to the internet too in order to download more eBooks if you need to.

Technics Highlighter Makeup Review - Great Value for Money!

I have used the benefit high beam and moon beam in the past and loved the effect that they give my skin, but they are very expensive, and I just cant afford to replace expensive makeup products like that when they run out. I was so excited when I saw the Technic Highlights in my local body care shop. In fact, I actually thought when I first looked at it that it was the beneft high beam. The container looks just like it. Apart from the fact that it says ‘Highliights’ on the side rather than ‘high beam’, there are no other differences. At £2.50, this is 10% of the cost of the benefit version! I grabbed it and ran to the checkout like an excited puppy that had just found a dinosaur bone!

So when I got home with the Highlights, I gave it a go. I put on my foundation as I usually would, and then got the highlights ready. The applicator is a little brush, like the kind that you get in a nail varnish bottle. I don’t like to put this directly on my face, because I don’t want the makeup that is already on my skin or any bacteria to contaminate the makeup. Instead I just dotted a little of the highlights on my fingertip.

I was surprised at how similar in colour this is to the benefit alternative. It is very light and pink in colour. It has a shine to it, although it is not a glittery shine so even if you are older, you can still use this and not look like a teenager trying to look sparkly at a disco.

It took me a few goes to apply it properly. The more expensive highligher products blend into foundation really nicely and you don’t need to worry about the foundation sucking all the effect out of the product. The Highlights is defiantly not as well made. I find that it is best just to dab the highlights across my skin over and over rather than use a blending motion. That way it manages just to sit there and not disappear into the foundation,

I’d say that you need to us a little more of the highlights to make the same effects as you would with the more expensive alternative, but even so, this is still far cheaper. After I had practiced for a few times, I manage to get pretty much the same effect as with my expensive product. This lasts for ages too. I am still on the same pot of it and I’ve had it for 9 months now. I certainly recommend it.