Digging for geoducks: Work is hard, but rewards are big

I was invited by my friends to join them digging geoduck on July 4th. The geoduck is one of the oldest and most impressive clams. It can weigh up to 10 pounds and live as long as 140 years. Its name originated from a Native American word meaning "to dig deep." The place we been is called Lawson's Landing in Dillon Beach, California. Lawson's Landing is a great place for camping, fishing, boating and of course clamming. The clams are found on the mudflats just off the shores of the campground, which means you must have a boat.

We got up on 4 am in the morning, almost 2 hours to drive.  We start to work round 6:30 am. Our only tool was a shovel.  Only problem is that the hole starts to cave in.  So, dig fast, get on your knees reach down and work the last foot with your hands until you can grab it.  The clams we got were decent sized, but not 2 lbs.  If they are that big, they've got to be DEEP!!  Not sure if this is urban legend or truth, but heard a story about guys using garbage cans with the bottom cut out to prevent the hole from caving in when digging for big ones.

We cleaned them by cutting off the long neck, peel the dark brown skin off and cut the very tip off.  Run water through it to get the sand out, split in half and fry them.  They taste very good, considering the smelly dark sand, which they come from.

Just give me a dish of soy sauce, lemon and a plate of thinly sliced fresh geoduck, and I'm happy as a clam at high tide.

It’s really great experience for me. Hope you guys have great holiday. 

Hope you guys also have a great holiday!!

Indonesia Cuisine

Indonesia is a diverse country.  It has over 300 ethnic groups and each province has its individual language, history, and religions.  Indonesians’ mix of Chinese, European, Indian, and Malay has been a major contribution to the diversity of religions.  Even though Islam is the most popular religion, there are some other religions such as Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism that are recognized by the government.  Indonesia also has one of the largest percentages of Muslims in the world.

Similar to other surrounding Asian Countries, Indonesians have three standard meals a day.  An Indonesian meal usually consists of soup, rice, and couple of dishes with red meat, chicken, fish and vegetables.  Indonesia cuisine is a healthy cuisine that includes the use of grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts and fish that are accompaniment served to rice.  Most dishes also incorporate spices, herbs and other seasoning to add special flavor combination to make the dishes worth to try.  Contrasting flavors such as sweet spicy or hot sauce over white rice is a popular meal throughout Indonesia.

            The main characteristics of Indonesia cuisine is spices.  Due to spices trade, many kinds of spices and flavorings were introduced from other countries like India and China.   Spices became an important ingredient in Indonesia cuisine.  For example, soy sauce has a major role in Indonesia cuisine.  Compared to Chinese soy sauce, Indonesian developed their own sweet soy sauce and used with barbecue meat or fish dishes.  Peanut sauce is another key ingredient used in many popular Indonesia cuisines.  Peanuts were used to variety of dishes and used as dipping sauce. Peanut sauce represents as a seasoning rather than a sweet sauce and it balances out with other sweet, sour and spicy flavors.

            Beside spices, there are many other herbs commonly used in Indonesian cuisine. For example, kaffir lime leave is a famous herb that was used in Southeast Asian cuisine such as Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Indonesia.  Kaffir lime leave can be used as fresh or fried.  In Indonesia, the leaves are used in Balinese cuisine and Javanese cuisine which is served with chicken and fish.  Also, the traditional medicine can be made from kaffir lime leave’s juice and rind.  Since the oil from the rind has strong insecticidal characteristics, the rind is used as cleanser for clothing.

            In Indonesia, people usually drink tea and coffee as their daily drinks.  Coffee and tea are usually served hot, and ice tea is favorite amount Indonesian too.  There are many types of fruits produced in Indonesian markets.  Jackfruit, durian, banana, and mango are the most indigenous fruits in Indonesia.  Fruits can be used into Indonesian diet or made into juice and desert.  One of the most popular fruit desserts is called Rujak Medan that is sweet and spicy.  Another kind of fruit dessert is Kolak which means fruit in coconut milk that usually served cold.  Fruit can be eaten as fresh, or mix into thick juices, shakes, salad, and ice cream. Fruits are usually enjoyed in dessert.

My first car accident...

Well, the title about says it all. Last week on my way to school, I didn't even remembered what happened. My brain was empty & blank. Someone hit my car; it damaged the whole back section of the car. That is so scary... At first, I was really upset and worried, but now I'm glad everyone is okay though. I've had a license for about 5 years now without a ticket or accident. My hands are still a bit shaky thinking about it.

After that, I called my insurance company. My insurance guy said that I can appeal the surcharge for my policy, and I have a good chance of winning it. So, it wasn't nearly as bad as I could have been.

That experience thought me a lot about auto insurance and what to do and not do in order to maintain a good insurance record. And I learned my lessons.

The first thing that I learned was to never take my eyes off the road for any extended period of time. Tending to a simple thing like my stereo coasted me big time because subsequently my insurance premium went up. Also, it could have been worse if I was going at speed and became distracted by adjusting the stereo.

The second thing that I learned was to never take anything for granted while on the road. If ever in an accident, always get the other drivers vehicle and insurance information.

Finally, always call your insurance company and file a report no matter the severity of the accident.

I know this accident will remain me all the time when I am driving. Drive Safe everyone! No just say so.

Anyway, I got my new car cause obviously my TOYOYA is gone. 

Good Bye Camry.....Welcome Mini...

I will take good care of you^______^

  

Confucianism and Taoism are two different theories in China. Confucianism focuses on building a good and harmonious relationship. Conversely, Taoism focuses on peace of the soul and nature. For a harmonious society, the values of Confucianism that have to offer in 21^st century are polite, humble, and sincere. In “The Lion King”, the peaceful of the kingdom is based on their love, respect, and responsibilities. This reflects the results of offering the values of Confucianism. Moreover, in order to get back the ecological balance, the values of Taoism that have to offer in 21^st century are respect and follow the nature. The “circle of life” that mentions in the film “The Lion King” indicates that nature has a particular pattern and cannot be ignored. This theory reflects the reason of offering the value of Taoism.

In the 21st century, people care about equality. They want to be treated the same and have the same rights to do anything regardless of the sex, race, and age. Therefore, many countries have set up some laws to avoid discrimination and inequalities among people in order to promote equality. However, I think there are some conditions, which humans cannot control. In our life, people still can get different opportunities by their destiny, faces, intelligence, and abilities. Under these circumstances, they will have different families, careers, wealth, and education levels to make them get a totally different life. Some of them who are smarter or richer will have a comfortable life with a high salary job, a gorgeous house and a high reputation. The rest of them who are not that bright and rich, struggle for their daily life to get three meals a day. Even though there are many organizations are trying to help poor people to modify their living standard, the gap between the rich and the poor does not seem to be diminished. When our world is full of unfairness, I can’t see that there is any reason that we can consider our world as equality.

People around the world come together became a world of mass-culture. I think the two ways that we use to retain our individualities while we are expressing our feelings and learning from each other are stand on the principles that we believe in and never change our viewpoints without a good reason.

From past to present, our world has already changed a lot. I do not think any ancient promise still realistic in the 21st century. In past, our ancestors believed that everyone should have an equal life. Some of the countries tried to achieve the equal environment and they became a communist country. Unfortunately, communist countries couldn’t maintain well. Therefore, most of them have turned away from communism and toward capitalism to create a prosperous country. Because of this strong evidence, it makes me believe that under our competitive world, none of the ancient promise is realistic and suitable.

Game Violence

Today, video games becomes one of the favorite activities of young people. Video games bring to game player a lot of fun, but also bring some negative effects. In fact, according to 35% of children have been affected around world by video game violence.  Violent video game increase arguments with teacher , low school grades and physical fights and a big number of children become hostile, aggressive，because of playing violent video games.                                     

One reason for violent video game change children to hostile is that most video game based on violence and easy to affect children to think that violence is the best way to solve problems. Children enjoy their game world play with gun and many kinds of weapon to kill others. They learning things fast, spend times on video game makes them learn a lot of things from games, especially the violent things. It is why a lot of arguments with teacher and fighting happen in school. They learned the best way to solve problems and used in real life.

The other reason why violent video games increase aggression is that there is lasting effects for aggression. Violent video games not only affect children when they are playing violent video game, but also affect children when they keep thinking about details of the violent video game. In one study, the researchers randomly assigned college students to play one of six different video games for 20 minutes. Half the games were violent (e.g., Mortal Kombat) and half were not (e.g., Guitar Hero). To test if ruminating about the game would extend the games' effect, half of the players were told over "the next 24 hours, think about your play of the game, and try to identify ways your game play could improve when you play again." Players may keep thinks about the details of the video game, it increase aggression long after the game is turned off.

There are more and more children that are influenced by violent video game. Some of them already pay a price for their aggressive behaviors and keep got low grades in class. It becomes a big issue around the world. The parents and government have the responsibility to limit the violent video game, because the violent video games have more negative effects on players.

California’s economy is one of the largest economies in the U.S, and it is the eighth largest in the world. It is one of the busiest states in the United States. California’s economy specialized on trade, business services, education, health services, international commerce, hospitality, agriculture, and high-technology. It produces at least half of fresh fruits in the United States. Many top  ten companies such as Facebook, HP, Apple, Google, and etc  have their offices in North California, especially in Silicon Valley, Santa Clara, and San Mateo country. For this reason, many people have been coming to the state to find a job and settle. However, in 2009 it faced economic crises which significantly hurt the state’s economy. Today California still goes thought hard time. The state’s economy growth slowly, but it’s still   unstable because the government face a huge deficit with which they don’t know what to do. Many people lost their job; some school and colleges reduced their class size and closed some classes. Some people are suffered by this terrible economic situation in the state. The solution that government found for this problem is raising taxes because it has always been the major resource of state’s budget. So each year they keep going to raise income and sale taxes and cut the budget. The State Government is hoping that raising taxes will eventually help to cover the deficit and recover economy.  Today California has the highest income taxes and second highest sale taxes in the United States. In November 2011 the Gov. Brown suggested a new proposal of  raising income taxes on millionaires in a purpose to avoid additional  budget cutting of public service. As everything this proposal has advantages and disadvantages. Different group of people will get benefit from it or will be hurt by new taxes.

     Hello, everyone. I am the one who love shopping, like other woman :) I always think shopping can brighten up our day with all those colorful apparels, shoes and accessories. When I feel low and upset , you don’t have to take us to meditation center. I just need to go shopping. Today, I want to take about my shopping experiences.

     Amazon is that you can see the customer is the center of this business. I have ordered an incorrect product once, but was easily able to contact the seller and get my money refunded. Great company that is loyal to their customers.

One of my positive retail experiences that I have it happened last year. I bought a road race set in Toy r us, for my ten years-old brother's birthday. The next day, he and some friends were playing with it. One of the cars was missing, We looked everywhere; I think one kid took the car, but we could not prove it. I called the toy company and asked about buying a new car. When I told the Customer Service representative what happened, she offered to send a new car for free. She said no kid should have a birthday gift stolen.

     I also have some worst shopping experience. Once, I went to Best Buy to look for a replacement TV remote. One of the representatives who came up to me asked me what I was looking for. I asked him about some of the features for the various remotes and the guy says "Honestly I don’t know anything about these, but who do you get your TV service through”. Not only did he not help me, but also he has been trying to sell me things I don’t want. He didn’t even offer to send someone over that could answer my questions. Of course, he keeps standing next to me and trying to talk about my TV bill – and I just want help to find the right remote.