Tina To's Real Estate Blog

Cover of Plácido Domingo

 

Thanks to Rooftop School and being a proud parent, I have the opportunity to join my son Toby to see the Cyrano De Bergerac.  Honestly speaking, my son who attends 8th grade is not too interested in opera and so are a lot of his schoolmate.  I myself am also very green in this area.

The major lead is the famous Placido Domingo and of course, I am attracted.  It is a final run down performance and so it is free to all students and chaperons.  It is of course of the first class quality of everything: performance, voice, music, story.

I would encourage everybody to take this opportunity to see.  It will be held in San Francisco Opera as follows:

Sunday October 24, 2010 at 2pm

Wednesday, October 27 at &:30pm

Saturday, October 30 at 8pm

Tuesday, Novermber 2 at 8pm

Saturday, Novermber 6 at 2pm

Tuesday, November 9 at 7:30pm

Friday, November 12 at 8pm

Audiences are not allowed to take picture, so excusez-moi that I have no picture to post.  My personal opinion is when compared opera to Eastern opera (Chinese traditional one), I prefered the Chinese one because I feel it is more musical and the dance is very unique.

Please feel free to let me know how you feel if you have a chance to see the one I mentioned.

Related articles

• Plácido Domingo perfect to play Cyrano in S.F. (sfgate.com)
• San Francisco Symphony draws raves in Italy (sfgate.com)

Last week I made use of free family pass again to go to Cartoon Arts Museum which is located at Mission and 2nd Street.  The standard charge for adult is $8 and for kid is $6.  It shows a good cartoon history and have a good deal of collection.  However, there is nothing hands on and not really too fascinating for the young kids.

However, it is free.  So have you tried yet?  If you live in San Francisco, go to any public library and see what is still available for the free activity that you can enjoy with your family within this week.

Go to http://www.sfkids.org/checkoutSF for detailed information.

Thank you for checking in with my blog.

I am a real estate agent who specified in San Francisco and Peninsular area.  I would like to share as much as I can all the interesting local information with you.

“Oh , we are experiencing the worst depression!”  ARE WE? ? ?

If you are Jewish and aged over 50, your parents may had been ran away from the Nazi Camp or forced to run away from homes.  If you came from China and aged over 50, you should have experienced the Cultural Revolution.  The point is if you asked those people, which period is worse, now or then?  What is your hinge?

Yes, we have a high unemployment rate.  Yes, a lot of people lost their homes because of foreclosure.  Yes, the government is keep on cutting budgets.  Yes, our economic growth is a negative figure or close to zero.   But how many years have our ancestors live a “simple” life before the Industrial Revolution kicked in?  Could we call those years the worst?  Would our ancestors said so?

During the 1929 depression, a lot of people hid themselves in the theaters and enjoyed the extra low ticket fee.  A lot of family actually felt those were the time they felt the closest as parents were jobless and had plenty of time with their children.  Can we still enjoy some of those side “benefits” today?

So, cheer up.  This is not the end of the world.  We are not at our worst period and so will not be tomorrow.

Thank you for checking in with my blog.  By the way, if you are thinking of making use this golden chance of low house price, low interest rate in San Francisco or Peninsular, feel free to contact me.  I have over 20 years experience helping people acquire their first home.

最近當我去借書時，無意間發現三藩市居民可以憑有效圖書証去取一個免費旅遊紙，圖書館職員會告訴你有什麼參加的單位尚有位讓你一家人（二位大人，四位低於１８歲小朋友）一起免費去的勝地。地點包括有：免費船河﹑科學館等。。詳細情形請上以下網頁www.SFPL.org/checkoutSF

Recently  I checked into the San Francisco public library and got a free family pass to enjoy an one hour boat ride to sail along the City’s waterfront.  It was spectacular to cross under the Golden Gate Bridge with my family.  The cool part is it is absolutely free and the pass would have cost $70.

Here is the deal:

Visit any San Francisco Public Library
Choose a Participating Attraction
Use your San Francisco Public Library Card to check out a Family Pass
Confirm the days and hours the selected Participating Attraction is open
Take the Family Pass to the Participating Attraction
Enjoy free entrance for 1 to 2 adults accompanied by 1 to 4 children
Program Valid through December 31, 2010

To check the availability of pass and participant attractions, please go to:

http://www.sfkids.org/content.aspx?id=12432

Important things to remember, each family can only get one pass per week and each library only carries one of each of the above attractions and it is of course on a first come first serve purpose.
So hurry and enjoy your free trip once a week with the whole family.

In case you are thinking of what you want to send your girlfriends/ motherfriends

you may like to send this one.  I recieved this one from my friend and I think it is amazing.  Please click onto “rising mother of the year” to see.

rising mother of the year

When I received the notice to appear for jury duty, I would say why me again, why not strike the lotter but the jury?  Fortunately, not all U.S. citizen react like me and some, in fact, welcome jury duty.

As a self-employed person like myself, I would not get any compensation from my boss?  I am my own boss!!!  That may explain one reason why I do not welcome to serve my jury duty.  However, today, I attended my annual jury duty.  ( I mean annually because I never miss one in any one year.)  I roughly counted and do a quick statistic about the attendees. In total, there are roughly 140 attendants, only 14% of paid employees ( I do this by observation that only 2 persons in a 14 persons roll asked for jury duty excuse paper to be submitted to their bosses) and another 14% are seniors (also by judging from their outlook).  So the rest of attendees are either self-employed or unemployed.

Lucky enough, I was allocated to the courtroom right away with about 69 others.  Another 31 attendees out of this 70 were selected randomly into the panel for further questioning about their suitability to be the jury.  The judge read out the case, introduce the prosecutor, the defendant, and the defendant’s attorney.  Also all names related to the case were read and any attendants who claimed to be related to these people would be excused.

This was a criminal case and no matter what when the case had not be finalized, we swore that we would not discuss it.  But this case will be ended in one week and it was a small case “a car was broken in and the owner claimed to lose$400, nobody was injured and the suspect was caught”.

When the group in the panel was questioned about their previous experience of vandalism, 10 out of the 30 had and some of them had been vandalized more than one time but still claimed that they would not be biased by their previous experience.  Do you think so??  If I were them and I had time, I would say the same thing too because I wanted to help to put justice to the victims including myself.  However, when I was later chosen, I declared myself not able to be fair and would be biased by my beliefs.  I believe the police had made great efforts to catch the suspect and provide proof, I would drop dead if the suspect was proved innocent no matter what.  In that sense, I will not be a fair judge.  I have preoccupied idea already.

To guard democracy and fairness, the government spends thousands of dollars trying their best to provide fair judge.  Some people think that is a waste of public money, some not.  What do you think?

By the time I posted this article, it had been one month from my jury duty date and should not be interfering with the court decision.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

REO  is the short form for Real Estate Owned.  The real meaning is the lenders, usually the banks, have taken over the properties and are actually owners of the properties.  When the properties put up to the market for sale, the lenders/banks had already come up to an agree upon for sale price so usually if the buyers offer the asking price, it will be approved.  However, some lenders/banks will still listen to the sale experts marketing strategy, i.e. to ask for a ridiculously low price to encourage strong competition and thus beat up the sold price.  Anyway, the buyers involved usually can close the escrow within a reasonable time like a normal sale.

Short Sale means even after the sold price of the property is still too short to pay the mortgage.  In this case, the individuals are still owners of the properties and not the lenders.  However, since the homeowners cannot bring additional money to pay back to the bank/lenders, the sold price has to be approved by the lenders.  Since in this case, it is the homeowners who initiated to sell the property to avoid foreclosure, the lenders/banks involved had not yet came up to an agreed upon price prior to the property put for sale in the market, every offer has to be reviewed by the lenders/banks involved.  Thus it usually takes a much longer time for closing.

Going Green is not only a fashion but a MUST.  But everyone without asking knows the issue is always about money.

If I come to you today and say, “Hey, I will install the solar energy for your home and gaurantee you will save 25% in your energy bill for free, will you do it?”  I bet, everyone will say YES and find no reasons to object.

Now, the government of San Francisco has passed something SIMILAR, but of course, not exactly.  How about if I tell you after you install your solar energy roof etc, the money you save on your utility bill will be sufficient to pay back the loan you get from the government?

This is still in a very initial stage and nobody has applied the funding yet.  In short, anyone can go to www.greenfinancesf.org and apply online for “going Green on your home”.  The application fee is $300 and to hire an energy auditor to put up a proposal is “free” according to one of the approved auditor I talked to.  However, the audit process might take several hours and is not a simple clip broad type of inspection.  The current interest rate posted on the website said 7% and the paid back period will be spread according to the expected life span of the new instrunments such as solar panels of the roof (approximately 20 years) and the repayment is by paying the special tax portion of the property tax.  This 7% can also be treated by mortgage interest and claimed deductible from the ordinary income tax portion.

If you live in San Francisco and is interested in this kind of improvement to your homes, I urge you to go online and dig into more details or attend the public meeting.

I was inspired by reading the book “Journey of a Thousand Miles: My story” by Lang Lang.  I read this in Chinese version.

For those who are not interested in music, particularly piano, may not know who is Lang Lang.  Lang Lang is the youngest famous pianist in this century so far.  I am not going to summarized his story because you can check it out from his book by which I believe should be the English version and/or should be the original.

Lang Lang won the first place as young as 5 years old.  After he watched the cartoon “Jerry and Tom”, he could replay the background music when he was only 3 years old.  Before he could read words, he could read notes.  He was recognized and had been set a goal as “the great pianist” as young as he was 3 years old.  I said set the goal because this goal was not set by him but by his parents.  His parents had sacrificed a lot to help him to reach where he is now.  Aged 9, Lang Lang left his mother and moved to Beijing together with his father.  His mother had to stay at work in Sheng Yang to support them financially.  In order for Lang Lang to be further trained and reach his parents? Lang Lang’s? goal, Lang Lang’s father became Lang Lang’s full time supervisor – to supervise and gaurantee Lang Lang had practised to his maximum ability and strength.  Lang Lang had practised mimumum 7 hours daily, 7 days a week since childhood.  All Lang Lang has is piano practice and nothing else. 

Lang Lang is very talented but unfortunately to say, Chinese has too much political reasons to restrain his growth and development.  Lang Lang’s father finally took Lang Lang to USA and Lang Lang’s talents and efforts had successfully earn himself the scholorship into the famous Musical Institute at Philapdelphia.  He later became very successful and recognized by the world.  HOWEVER, WHEN HE WANTED TO RETURN CHINA TO PERFORM, HE HAD BEEN VIGOROUSLY REFUSED TO DO SO.  The reason is he had not earned enough competitions and was not famous in China.  In China, an artist’s role has to be realized by the number of  trophy that artist has. !!!

The real reason:  Lang Lang is not from a rich family.  He does not has any Chinese official to back him up.  In the strong sea of competition, not only in piano, or in music but in all areas, athelets and other competitors may be pre-selected already.  If Chairman X’s son has certain talent, the selective board should make him the first place and if only the first place can join the international competition, then he has to be the one and try all the streams to block other OSTACLE “Lang Lang” OUT.  As throughout this book, you will see Lang Lang had met many people (all are Chinese, a few even his teachers)  said “Lang Lang, for sure you will not win!”  trying to down put him, making him not to win.

I, myself, am Chinese but fortunately I was born and raised in Hong Kong.  I could not say that I have the best education, but I have the freedom to speak, to think and to act.  I bet Lang Lang, in some way, is quite disappointed with his ‘MOTHER” – China because only recently his talent and achievements were recognized.  China, actually, has the resources and abilities to help Lang Lang to achieve what he acheives today, but refused to do so despite Lang Lang and his father’s vigorous efforts.  I feel shame on this and the pain is, this has not ceased yet.

China has literally abandoned Lang Lang in his early years.  On the other hand, it is America who saved him and allowed him to be what he is.  This is many Chinese’s American dream and this is also many immigrant’s dream.