Tell Me About It

Misconceptions

2009-08-31T16:37:00.000-07:00

Local Car Club

2009-08-19T15:14:00.000-07:00

The local car club, PLR (Professional Low Rider), hosted a free community BBQ event at the park down the street from my house. Enjoy the pics.

Cabo Mama Surf Tacos: The Best Fish Tacos in Cabo

2009-04-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

Took a nice little break from work & school to San Jose del Cabo - or Los Cabos. Found the best taqueria serving fish tacos. (Thank you tripadvisor!) In between eating at fancy schmancy resorts and restaurants, we always craved Cabo Mama Surf Tacos. Serves tortillas in corn or flour with your choice of seafood. Everything extra you see is what I added from their salsa bar. Check the price - $2.00 USD for lunch! hehehe

Know where Cabo Mama Surf Tacos gets their fresh catch from? San Jose del Cabo is known for its sport fishing with some of the riches fishing grounds in the world. Yellowfin tuna, dorado, wahoo, dorado, and billfish migrate from the South Pacific to the Sea of Cortez. uh huh. I thought it tasted like tonga. LOL Fresh and Mmmmm good!

Shrimp Tacos

Fish and Scallops tacos. I'd skip the shrimp and just order the fish. Ask what's the catch of the day.

Cabo Mama Surf Tacos located in the Mega complex at the Fonatur roundabout

"Sin Nombre" Pre-Screens at Stanford University

2009-03-06T09:33:00.001-08:00

"Sin Nombre" Pre-Screens at Stanford University this Sunday, March 8th, 6:00P at Cubberly Auditorium. It's a free screening so best arrive early, as seating is first come, first served and not guaranteed.

I'm thrilled to throw some love for "Sin Nombre", not because Cary Joji Fukunaga's a local Bay Area dude or his first feature debut rocked Sundance Film Festival this year, which took home the Excellence in Cinematography Award and Best Director Award, but because directors all around are showing more interest to shoot on location in gritty foreign places and screenwriters are writing gritty urban dramas. Audiences are exposed to the dramatic realities in harsh ghettos and savagery of stunning landscapes. We've been hooked on the fairytale glamour too long.

I'll throw up a review after Sunday's screening. In the meantime, enjoy the watching the trailer.

Marina

"The Sari Soldiers"

2009-03-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

"The Sari Soldiers", a film by JulieBridgham, will be playing at the Yerba Buena Center on March 19th, 7:30pm, as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. She will be there for Q&A as well.

I have yet to see the film but grew a keen interest in its development. Her mother fed me itty bits of Nepal's modern history and Julie's experience filming in Nepal as we spent weeks screening hundreds of film entries to select for the United Nations Film Festival. Two years later and having a mega exposure of humanitarian films, I still remember her stories. The message is that powerful.

Watch the trailer. Or better yet, get off your lazy ass and go watch the film. Stimulate the economy and your mind. Bring some friends too.

Marina

The Sari Soldiers

A film by Julie Bridgham

US/Nepal, 2008, 90 minutes, Color, DVD, Nepali/English, Subtitled

The Sari Soldiers is a story of six women’s efforts to shape Nepal’s future in the midst of an escalating civil war against Maoist insurgents, and the King’s crackdown on civil liberties
Read More. . .

2009 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Mar 5, 12, 19 and 26
$8 Regular, $6 Student / Teacher / Senior, $6 YBCA Member

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 978-2787

Tina Knows Her Teddy Bears

2008-12-18T13:41:00.000-08:00

Shameless Plug: My niece, Tina Boo, made the front page news. Awwww, I can hear "the mob" squealing!

Palo Alto Daily News 12/18/2008, Page A01

2008 Election

2008-11-03T16:27:00.001-08:00

So When Will the Banks Give Loans?

2008-10-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

President Bush’s failed leadership has proven that we need more than a $700 billion bailout. We need a change in government.

Marina

NYTimes

By JOE NOCERA

Published: October 24, 2008

"The markets had another brutal day Friday. The Asian markets got crushed. Germany and England were down more than 5 percent. In the hours before the United States markets opened, all the signals suggested it was going to be the worst day yet in the crisis. The Dow dropped more than 400 points at the opening, but thankfully it never got any worse.

There are lots of reasons the markets remain unstable — fears of a global recession, companies offering poor profit projections for the rest of the year, and the continuing uncertainties brought on by the credit crisis. But another reason, I now believe, is that investors no longer trust Treasury. First it says it has to have $700 billion to buy back toxic mortgage-backed securities. Then, as Mr. Paulson divulged to The Times this week, it turns out that even before the bill passed the House, he told his staff to start drawing up a plan for capital injections. Fearing Congress’s reaction, he didn’t tell the Hill about his change of heart.

....

Late Thursday afternoon, I caught up with Senator Dodd, and asked him what he was going to do if the loan situation didn’t improve. “All I can tell you is that we are going to have the bankers up here, probably in another couple of weeks and we are going to have a very blunt conversation,” he replied.

He continued: “If it turns out that they are hoarding, you’ll have a revolution on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that their tax money is going to line their pockets instead of doing the right thing. There will be hell to pay.”

Let’s hope so.

EPA Rock the Vote Concert

2008-10-10T09:43:00.001-07:00

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Bell Street Park
University Avenue and Bell Street
East Palo Alto, CA 94303

2:00 PM - 5:00PM Pst

EPA Rock the Vote Concert is our creative solution to cultivate local San Francisco Bay Area talents with the use of music and spoken word to engage and incite young people to register to vote. A non-partisan community event sponsored by the City of East Palo Alto's Youth Advisory Council, E-PAY-AC, Peace & Unity, For Youth By Youth, Boys & Girls Club and Job Train's Sassy Youth Advisory Council. BYOP

(Bring Your Own Picnic) and Bring a Friend. What Inspires YOU?

"Meeting the Public's Information Needs in Silicon Valley

2008-09-04T17:19:00.000-07:00

Monday, September 8, 2008, the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy (www.knightcomm.org) is holding a full-day public forum at Google Headquarters (Building 43, Tunis Room, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway) in Mountain View, California. The forum is entitled, "Meeting the Public's Information Needs in Silicon Valley."

The event is one of three such forums being held around the country to give the Commission a deeper understanding of how people in the geographically relevant area get news and information, how news and information is translated into how people engage with information and one another, what needs or subcommunities are under-served in the area, and the challenges and opportunities facing local media.

Monday's forum is divided into three roundtables:
(1) unmet community information needs
(2) media in Silicon Valley
(3) prospects for technology and innovation to improve the local information environment

The day's agenda appears at http://www.informationneeds.org/content/events.

The event is free and open to the public, but anyone who wishes to attend must RSVP by 4:30 p.m. tomorrow (September 5) to Erin Silliman at erin.silliman@aspeninstitute.org.

Reality Can Be a Real Killjoy

2008-09-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Driving myself mad drowning in this year's elections (local, state, presidential....) Love it!

I hope that you won't get suckered in to voting for a candidate just because of one or two policies and disregard real issues/policies that really matter to us as a whole. Don't believe the hype! Life does happen but this is our reality - "it will take to a war on two fronts, an economic crisis, failing infrastructure, the high cost of fuel then cascades down to increase the cost of food and consumer goods, a health care crisis where millions lack health insurance. The list can go on and on. . ." This is OUR problem. Reality bites back hard when it becomes a real killjoy. Stuff like your momma's second cousin preacher's pregnant daughter's sex life is not my problem.

Anyhow, I actually just wanted to share an article with everyone and not so much of the chump change above. hahaha Maureen Dowd is my fave NYT columnist! this has to be one of her best in a long time. Couldn't resist sharing. Enjoy!

`Marina

Life of Her Party

For many years, reality was out of vogue with Republicans. They ignored the reality of Iraq and Katrina, of Pakistan and Osama bin Laden.

When confronted with their colossal carelessness around the globe and here at home, their mantra was, as Rummy put it, “Stuff happens.”

Now reality, in all its messy, crazy, funky glory, has flooded the party, in the comely, crackling form of Sarah Palin.

Unable to stop the onslaught of wild soap opera storylines erupting from the Palin family and the Alaska wilderness, McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt offered caterwauling reporters a new mantra: “Life happens.”

Indeed, it does. Only four days into her reign as John McCain’s “soul mate,” or “Trophy Vice,” as some bloggers are calling her, on the ticket known as “Maverick Squared,” Palin, the governor of Alaska, has already accrued two gates (Troopergate and Broken-watergate), a lawyer (for Troopergate), a future son-in-law named Levi (a high school ice hockey player, described by New York magazine as “sex on skates”), and a National Enquirer headline about the “Teen Prego Crisis” with 17-year-old daughter Bristol.

It seems like a long time since Vice President Dan Quayle denounced Murphy Brown for having a baby out of wedlock, bemoaning a “poverty of values.” It also seems like a long time and another McCain ago that Republicans supporting W. smeared the old John McCain by spreading rumors that he had fathered an illegitimate black child.

This week, the anti-abortion forces celebrated the news of Bristol’s pregnancy, using it as further proof that their beloved Governor Palin who will no more support sex education than polar bears was committed to the cause.

Since John McCain played craps first and sent the vetters to Alaska afterward, Republicans have been defending Governor Palin by saying that, while she has no foreign policy experience except, as Cindy McCain pointed out, that “Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia” she has a lot of domestic policy experience as a supercharged P.T.A. and hockey mom.

As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd’s old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah’s messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans unlike the lofty Obamas.

Read More. . .

Let's Stay Focused!

2008-09-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin is the latest G.O.P. distraction. She’s meant to shift attention away from the real issue of this campaign — the awful state of the nation after years of Republican rule

Head for the High Road

By BOB HERBERT

Published in NYT: September 1, 2008

The Democrats need to be careful about the intensity of their criticism of Sarah Palin.

She may look like an easy target, an appalling lightweight who will send serious voters scurrying to the more substantive Obama-Biden ticket. And the temptation to get on her case probably became greater with Ms. Palin’s disclosure Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

But the Democrats should not push this stuff too far. Ms. Palin is a lot more appealing personally than the often testy guy at the top of her ticket. And the inescapable reality is that there are millions of voters who identify with her, and may be quick to resent attacks that they perceive as bullying or overkill.

Here’s the deal: Palin is the latest G.O.P. distraction. She’s meant to shift attention away from the real issue of this campaign — the awful state of the nation after eight years of Republican rule. The Republicans are brilliant at distractions. Willie Horton was a distraction. The chatter about gays, guns and God has been a long-running distraction. And we all remember the Swift-boat campaign.

If you want a real issue, forget all of the above and revisit Monday’s front page of The New York Times. Hundreds of families are being forced out of their homes each month in Louisville, Ky., because of mortgage foreclosures. With record numbers of poor and homeless students, the public schools are struggling.

The crisis has only been made worse by fiscal difficulties facing the schools. Higher energy and other costs, combined with a $43 million cut in state aid, have left the school system in a sorry state.

The reason this should be high on the presidential campaign agendas is that the problems in Louisville are widespread. As Sam Dillon of The Times reported: “As 50 million children return to classes across the nation, crippling increases in the price of fuel and food, coupled with the economic downturn, have left schools from California to Florida to Maine cutting costs.”

Even as these districts are cutting back, wrote Mr. Dillon, “the number of poor and homeless children is rising.”

That is the kind of substantive issue the Democrats should be focused on: how to educate America’s children and improve the quality of their lives; how to bring health care to those going without; how to put America back to work.

To their credit, Senators Obama and Biden seem unwilling to jump aboard the bash-Ms.-Palin bandwagon. Both have been exceedingly mild in their comments about the Alaska governor.

Last week’s Democratic convention dramatically illustrated the most effective approach available to the party. The convention built in intensity night by night with featured speakers who focused powerfully on substantive matters.

Bill Clinton may be wildly unpredictable, but last Wednesday he was magnificent, laying out the challenges that will face the next administration.

Listen:

“Our nation is in trouble on two fronts. The American dream is under siege at home, and America’s leadership in the world has been weakened. Middle-class and low-income Americans are hurting — with incomes declining; job losses, poverty and inequality rising; mortgage foreclosures and credit card debt increasing; health care coverage disappearing; and a very big spike in the cost of food, utilities and gasoline.

“And our position in the world has been weakened by too much unilateralism and too little cooperation, by a perilous dependence on imported oil, by a refusal to lead on global warming, by a growing indebtedness and a dependence on foreign lenders, by a severely burdened military, by a backsliding on global nonproliferation and arms control agreements, and by a failure to consistently use the power of diplomacy, from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America to Central and Eastern Europe.”

Respectful criticism of Sarah Palin is fine. But the great issues of this campaign loom like giant redwoods over the pathetic weeds of politics as usual and the myriad distractions that have turned one presidential election after another into a national embarrassment.

For All You Jerks Out There

2008-08-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

I have a bitch of a friend (or two, okay maybe three) that is in a position of power. After reading Sutton's article (see link below), now I know why the bitch reminds me so much of high-school. Grow Up!

Are You Being A Jerk? Again? If you are, it may be because you're following a bad leader.

[Written by GSB professor Robert Sutton.] (Business Week, Thurs, 8/14/08)

A particularly amusing study?undertaken by Keltner, Gruenfeld, and another colleague?shows that giving people just a little more power than their colleagues causes them to eat more cookies, chew with their mouths open, and leave more crumbs.

Read More. . .

Today's Inspriration: Obama!

2008-07-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted to cry when I saw the picture of Obama in Germany. Look at that crowd!

"Police estimated that more than 200,000 people came to watch the speech, according to The Associated Press."

I haven't had time to write anything for months! Promise to start REAL blogging versus cut and pasting articles to share. all the best, Marina

"Obama said that people of all nations must stand together to face challenges of the 21st century, from terrorism to global warming to genocide."

Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto?

2008-07-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

Nairobi is home to a digital brew that invites optimism about its chances for creating unusual innovations. The city has relatively few wired phone lines or networked personal computers, so mobile phones are the essential digital tool. Four times as many people have them as have bank accounts. Text messages are far more popular than e-mail. Safaricom, the dominant mobile provider, offers a service called M-pesa that lets customers send money with text messages. Nokia sells brand-new phones here for as little as $33.

America's most walkable big cities

2008-07-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

"As gas prices drill deep into U.S. pockets and people cast about for ways to drive less, a company has ranked the 40 biggest U.S. cities based on their "walkability."
San Francisco tops the list, thanks to eminently walkable neighborhoods such as Chinatown and the city's financial district, with a score of 86 out of a possible 100 points."

Read More. . .

This isn't surprising at all. I heart San Francisco!

USDA Alerts Consumers of Bad Meat

2008-07-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

"Beginning next month, consumers will be able to check an online list of stores that sold or stocked recalled meat. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) secretary Ed Shafer said the move is designed to prevent stores from continuing to sell tainted food and, also, alert consumers who might be at risk if they shopped at certain markets."

Finally! They should do this with other foods too. USDA doing a better job that the FDA, that's for sure.

Read More. . .

Everybody's Business: Lessons in Love

2008-07-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/business/13every.html?em&ex=1216267200&en=ff5eb790af565bed&ei=5087%0A

Everybody’s Business

Lessons in Love, by Way of Economics

By BEN STEIN

Published: July 13, 2008

AS my fine professor of economics at Columbia, C. Lowell Harriss (who just celebrated his 96th birthday) used to tell us, economics is the study of the allocation of scarce goods and services. What could be scarcer or more precious than love? It is rare, hard to come by and often fragile.

Philip Anderson

My primary life study has been about love. Second comes economics, so here, in the form of a few rules, is a little amalgam of the two fields: the economics of love. (I last wrote about this subject 20 years or so ago, and it’s time to update it.)
•
In general, and with rare exceptions, the returns in love situations are roughly proportional to the amount of time and devotion invested. The amount of love you get from an investment in love is correlated, if only roughly, to the amount of yourself you invest in the relationship.
If you invest caring, patience and unselfishness, you get those things back. (This assumes, of course, that you are having a relationship with someone who loves you, and not a one-sided love affair with someone who isn’t interested.)
•
High-quality bonds consistently yield more return than junk, and so it is with high-quality love. As for the returns on bonds, I know that my comment will come as a surprise to people who have been brainwashed into thinking that junk bonds are free money. They aren’t. The data from the maven of bond research, W. Braddock Hickman, shows that junk debt outperforms high quality only in rare situations, because of the default risk.
In love, the data is even clearer. Stay with high-quality human beings. And once you find that you are in a junk relationship, sell immediately. Junk situations can look appealing and seductive, but junk is junk. Be wary of it unless you control the market.
(Or, as I like to tell college students, the absolutely surest way to ruin your life is to have a relationship with someone with many serious problems, and to think that you can change this person.)
•
Research pays off. The most appealing and seductive (that word again) exterior can hide the most danger and chance of loss. For most of us, diversification in love, at least beyond a very small number, is impossible, so it’s necessary to do a lot of research on the choice you make. It is a rare man or woman who can resist the outward and the surface. But exteriors can hide far too much.
•
In every long-term romantic situation, returns are greater when there is a monopoly. If you have to share your love with others, if you have to compete even after a brief while with others, forget the whole thing. You want to have monopoly bonds with your long-term lover. At least most situations work out better this way. ( I am too old to consider short-term romantic events. Those were my life when Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were in the White House.)
•
The returns on your investment should at least equal the cost of the investment. If you are getting less back than you put in over a considerable period of time, back off.
•
Long-term investment pays off. The impatient day player will fare poorly without inside information or market-controlling power. He or she will have a few good days but years of agony in the world of love.
To coin a phrase: Fall in love in haste, repent at leisure.
•
Realistic expectations are everything. If you have unrealistic expectations, they will rarely be met. If you think that you can go from nowhere to having someone wonderful in love with you, you are probably wrong.
You need expectations that match reality before you can make some progress. There may be exceptions, but they are rare.
•
When you have a winner, stick with your winner. Whether in love or in the stock market, winners are to be prized.
•
Have a dog or many dogs or cats in your life. These are your anchors to windward and your unfailing source of love.
Ben Franklin summed it up well. In times of stress, the three best things to have are an old dog, an old wife and ready money. How right he was.
THERE is more that could be said about the economics of love, but these thoughts may divert you while you are thinking about your future.
And let me close with another thought. I am far from glib about the economy. It has a lot of pitfalls facing it. As workers and investors, we know that many dangers lurk in our paths.
But so far, these things have always worked themselves out and this one will, too. In the meantime, they say that falling in love is wonderful, and that the best is falling in love with what you have.
Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.

North Korea off US terrorist list

2008-06-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/world/asia/27nuke.html?ex=1372219200&en=846e520900d34ca6&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

TOKYO — North Korea took a major step on Thursday toward re-integration into the world community and rapprochement with the United States by submitting for outside inspection a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear program

The Bush administration almost immediately announced it would remove the country it once described as part of the “axis of evil” from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Here's a pod about North Korean defectors who escaped to South Korea

Traditional Ta Moko

2008-06-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Body Implants

2008-06-10T15:11:00.001-07:00

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2008/5/12/lifeliving/20747261&sec=lifeliving

What do you do when the pain you endured for hours while straddling a roller chair at the tattoo parlour no longer sets you apart from the crowd? Do you go get bigger tattoos, more piercings or go for something more extreme?BEAUTY isn’t just skin deep anymore.

For a small community in Singapore, it’s under-the-skin deep. Tattoos and piercings aren’t enough for them. This is not for the squeamish: What they do is customize their flesh with “body jewelery”.Implants of silicone or Teflon beads are inserted under the skin, forming raised designs and patterns.Yes, it is very painful, and also potentially hazardous to their health as infections can easily set in.

Obama's Victory

2008-06-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/04/AR2008060402360.html

From hundreds of supporters crowded around televisions in rural Kenya, Obama's ancestral homeland, to jubilant Britons writing "WE DID IT!" on the Brits for Barack discussion board on Facebook, people celebrated what they called an important racial and generational milestone for the United States.

"This is close to a miracle. I was certain that some things will not happen in my lifetime," said Sunila Patel, 62, a widow encountered on the streets of New Delhi. "A black president of the U.S. will mean that there will be more American tolerance for people around the world who are different."

Ti Leaves

2008-05-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

This guy is funny... educational.. and very very funny.

Polyfest 2008

2008-05-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

There is something to admire about the NZ Polys.

Just be YOU. Keepin' it real. Keep it moving.

Tongans at PolyFest

Samoans at PolyFest

Cook Islands at PolyFest

If at First You Don't Succeed, You're in Excellent Company

2008-04-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Resilience involves a lot of sacrifice.

I've always known that I had it in me to do great and wonderful things - if and when I try hard enough. I've known this as a young child. But what I didn't know was that certain individuals were not comfortable with my resilience. Or they just couldn't endure the pressure of the heat.

I often stand in the center of the fire and watch them - my family and friends - shrink back.

If at First You Don't Succeed, You're in Excellent Company. [On the "self- efficacy" concept first described by psychology professor Albert Bandura in the 1970s. Quotes Bandura.] (Wall Street Journal,Tues, 4/29/08) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120940892966150319.html