Kenaz's 2nd BD party

Kenaz turned two.  We had a party in the front quad.  It was a beautiful day for a party.  We sort of had a blue theme going for us.

 I got a street-BBQ vendor to come to our complex and provide BBQ chicken, beef, and squid.  The Chicken was excellent.  The squid was pretty good.  The beef sucked.  But overall very fun.  We go too much food because I thought lots of people would come out of their appartments and walk downstairs to get food... I would end up feeding the whole complex.  But many people are away on vacation, so this did not happen.  We also served home-made salsa, and my tuna-fish w/ cucumber dish.  And Haga made cookies, but she forgot to take them outside, so in the end I ate most of them.

Our Piñata became a most popular event which many kids are looking forward.
Haga made the Pinata.  She possibly over-engineered its construction, cause it was near impossible to break appart.  

How come everytime we do Pinata some big old kids try to get in on the action?  Anyway, it was a good party.  We had about 14 adults, more or less a good mix of Americans, Japanese, and Chinese. (It was funny when Akiva called people over to do the cake, he yelled "Get over here!" in all three languages).

Kenaz is very happy to receive his favorite airplanes from Grandpa and Grandma.

Unfortunatly, Kenaz was a little sick and just overwhelmed with being the center of attention.   But when we openned up presents he became much happier.

Solution for the Economic Crissis

My boss says that most of what comes out of my mouth is stupid, but a say so much that usually there is a gem hiding in the garbage. 

I'm pretty freaked out by the economic crisis and feel pretty powerless to do anything about it.  But I just had a thought on how to fix it.  Its really a stupid idea, but I would like to hear the opinion of my readers.

As I understand it, the crisis on Wallstreet is very similar to the crisis with milk in China. Some complete assholes..some pig fuckers who are unconnected with the human race...decided to put melamine into the milk so they could make an extra buck.  Government people, paid off by the pig fuckers, looked the other way.  Companies looked the other way.  And then people got sick.  On Wallstreet, some pig fuckers made idiodic debt derivative instruments which went bad.  These debt instruments are connected with "good" debt, and thus it is hard to seperate it out and hard to value any of the debt products its attached to.And then other idiots actually created insurance products to protect against this un-valuable debt going bad...which did go bad.  Government, paid off by the pig fuckers, looked the other way.

Now the government wants to capitalize the banks with a boat load of tax money, and they have to give the money out to every bank, so that people don't start thinking that any particular bank is in trouble, hence needing the handout. So pig fuckers get more money.

But this whole chain started because the real estate bubble burst.  It gets worse because unemployment rises.  People get scared, so don't by houses.  So the value of houses falls below the value of the debt.  And people default on the debt.  Which is tighed up with good debt in the financial system like Melamine in milk.  A big difference is that China can through away the tainted milk, but US can't just through away the tainted debt.

Now for my stupid idea.  What if...what if the government enacted really really tough NATIONAL environmental standards on new housing developments for the next three years. And put all sorts of administrative blocks on building new houses. I mean...what if the government artificially froze the SUPPLY of houses for short period of time. At the same time, loosen restrictions for foreigners WITH MONEY to immigrate to America.  For the next 6 months, all they need to do to get a greencard is buy a house.  Oh...and if they come from China they also have to pass a driving test.  No new supply (or at least, the perception of no new supply), with increased customers (or at least, the perception there of) should drive home prices up.  Thus, decrease home foreclosures while increasing average prices.  Less foreclosures means that a greater percentage of the bad debt derivatives are actually good debt.

Could this work? Would this not make people think that what they have is more valuable or will become more valuable? It would not even have to be all over...target restrictions in States that have high foreclosure rates. 

My BD

On my birthday, we went to a Shanghai Science and Technology museum.

[Jesse]To get there, we took the Express train to Shanghai, ate Burger King, walked .5 kilometers through the underground shopping center the entrance to Line 3, then switched to Line 2 at Central Park Pudong, took that 1 stop, got off the subway, then walked through the underground shopping center, then walked down to the sub-floor of the Museum, bought tickets, walked back up to the front gate, then went into the Animals Exhibit. Kenaz and Akiva wanted to be held most of this trip.[/]

Kenaz liked this part of exhibition very much. He didn’t want to move. He kept pulling our arms and pointing to it.

[Jesse] We are worried that Kenaz will become a gangster or have some other problems. He really liked this.[/]

Akiva liked a robot show most.

[Jesse] Word of advice to other parents who are reading this...the Robot Show is dark and a good place to close your eyes for a 20 minutes. Its a little loud, but you can probably tune-out the robots singing "We are the robot friends"...especially if you don't understand Chinese. You may need the rest before continuing on, or before walking down stairs to the West side of the museum, then walking across the museum to the East exit, then walk from the exit through another underground shopping center in order to get to the subway entrance. Why did they design it this way?[/]

Akiva and Kenaz have own strong opinions and they are very stubborn like their daddy. Some time I get very exhausted to dealing with them but I am very lucky and happy to be able to celebrate my birthday with my family.

[Jesse] And I am so lucky and happy to have such a warm, passionate, practical, young, and sexy wife. [/]

Went to Shizilin with Kenaz (and update)

Last weekend Haga took Akiva to a park with Akiva's friend and Japanese parents. I took Kenaz to Lion Forrest Garden. That's the garden with the stone (actually mostly concrete, but hey I'll buy the illusion) maze. Kenaz had a great time.

About the milk scandal...

We have always used Wyeth and Dumex brands, which advertise that all the milk powder (but not vitamin addatives) are imported to China. I called Wyeth the other day and they said they told me they did a complete audit of their China facilities and found no trace of any bad stuff and their product nutrition value has always been up to the labeled standard. I did not call Dumex yet, but I am not too worried. I am more worried about chemicals and garbage in all the other stuff we eat.

This Melanine is not just in milk. Its in lots of wheat and soy products too. We do not drink soy milk every day, but most of what we drink has been made from fresh beans, so no worries there either. Most of the poisened children are in Beijing and one other province. This means that, although this shit has continuously seeped into the food supply, there were two large batches which in quantity. Same thing happened in 2004.

We drink some milk in coffee...not enough to cause problems. We add fresh milk to the children''s formula...not alot though. They have two bottles a day, or about 16 onces. And often one cup of yogurt. The fresh milk and the yogurt we get is from an organic brand which has a good reputation. But they found the Melanine in the Beijing-bottled products of that brand as well. Overall, I think we have protected ourselves well and there is no reports of people getting sick from the fresh milk or more expensive brand baby powder. Melanine is most dangerous for younger kids anyway.

Still. I would like to find, and then slowly kill all those fuck-heads who are responsible for this. Who is responsible? Well, there are the bad guys...the pig-fudgers who put this stuff in the milk. There are probably a lot of them in different places. No ethics at all. Then there are the local officials who colluded with the bad guys. Then there are the QA people in the milk companies who didn't check. Then there are the purchasing people who bought the milk, probably knowing that it was too cheap to be right. And the upper management of those companies that didn't approve the funds to buy the testing equipment (need somewhat expensive equipment...but not that expensive), and the supervisors who didn't bother to check up on the purchasers, or got paid off not to check up. Off with their heads! Pig-Fudgers all of them!

In Yokohama 3

Great grandmother came.
Akiva and Kenaz got a lot of presents


We went to a beach town, Miura

and had a sashimi buffet
and all you can eat ice cream
Kenaz had all flavors
We did sparklers.