Our best man’s wife is giving birth this week. They are expecting a girl named Grace and we all can’t wait to meet her. On the note of childbirth, today I saw an extremely eye opening documentary called This is a film made by Abby Epstein after her friend Ricky Lake (yes, the talk show host) didn’t have a good experience with having her first child in the hospital. It explored the history of childbirth in America and how as a society America has phased out natural births in favor of hospital births with various interventions. It also reveals a startling fact that America has the second highest infant and mother mortality rate out of the world’s developed countries even though 99% of American women give birth in a hospital. In contrast, developed countries such as Japan has a home birth rate as high as 70% and have a lower death rate. Here are some things I learned about the business of childbirth from this film, and it is really amazing. If you don’t want any spoilers or if you feel queasy about this subject you can stop reading right here.

generic viagra no prescription uk – When you see women have babies in hospitals on TV you often see their legs up in stirrups and ten people telling her to push really hard. The film explained that this is the most unnatural position to have a baby because there is no way for the baby to come out when a woman is lying down. A doctor always has to use a clamp, hands, or a vacuum to extract the baby. It is much easier for a woman to have a baby standing up or squatting because gravity helps her do her work and the baby’s head will be lined up with the vaginal opening making the process natural. This made a lot of sense when a childbirth coach showed a fake hip and a baby trying to get out. When the hip is sideways the opening of the hip is angled in such a way that it is pretty much impossible for the baby to fall out. The baby also receives more stress in the horizontal position because it would be pushed up against the hip bone.

generic viagra no prescription uk – This makes sense for the hospital. They want their beds available so they could serve more people and make more money. The result is a great increase in Caesarean section procedures and the administration of drugs that speed up the delivery. They also say that the number of C-sections is higher during 4pm to 10pm because doctors just do not want to stay around. The average vaginal delivery takes 12 hours, but a C-section takes about 20 minutes. So when the doctors and hospitals want women out, they schedule a C-section. The fact is that C-sections are much more risky than vaginal delivery.

generic viagra no prescription uk- A midwife said that her fees are about $4000 for all of her services. Keep in mind that many of these midwives are highly trained and qualified to deliver babies. The main midwife they featured on the film is a certified nurse who graduated from Columbia and had been delivering babies in hospitals for five years before she became a midwife. In contrast, a vaginal birth in a hospital costs on average $13,000 and a C-Section is major surgery that often costs more than $30,000. The documentary also shows that in a hospital they often pump the mother with various drugs that eventually puts the baby in distress and require a C-Section. The caveat is that insurance companies rarely cover home births and midwives because they think it is crock and the hospitals are part of the institution that shun natural delivery.

generic viagra no prescription uk- The film listed the type of drugs they typically use in a hospital and what each of those drugs do. One is the epidural, which takes away pain but also slows down contractions, then there is Pitocin, which is used to speed up contractions and causes pain. So the two drugs work against each other and the hospital would keep on adding drugs until the baby comes or the baby is distressed so they have to do a C-Section. It is pretty scary and there were other drugs used in the past that caused erupted uteruses and babies without arms and legs. The body itself naturally produces hormones that make the birthing process easier and less painful and these artificial drugs really screw it up.

Despite the film having scenes of several extremely explicit home births, it made me less afraid of having a baby because the births seemed less painful and stressful than what is usually shown in TV. In one woman’s birth she just seemed to lay back and sigh and moan a bit and then her baby slipped out into her tub. Then her older child came by and touched the baby and said “eww” like it is extremely natural and cool. There wasn’t any crazy screaming or large amounts of blood covering the sheets and the whole experience seemed beautiful and calm. The film’s message is that women should have a choice to have a natural birth, and it is completely safe as long as it is planned well and the woman doesn’t have any complications. If a woman is enduring a high risk pregnancy, the hospital is still recommended. I don’t know if I would have a natural home birth because it is still pretty scary to me, and I know my health insurance would cover my hospital care. I will try to refuse all those drugs in the hospital, though, but I don’t know what will happen. Anyway, I think a lot of the information presented in this movie made sense, and I will never look at a pregnant woman the same away again. I highly recommend this film, and I think anyone who wants a child in the future should watch it just to see what childbirth is really like.

I read the news almost every few hours, and here are some of the highlights of the business news that made me spit out my tea this week.

generic viagra no prescription uk – Bank of America is taking over Countrywide Financial, and they will be disbursing “stock valued at $10 million for chief executive Angelo Mozilo and $9 million for President David Sambol”. Gee, lets see what the performance of the company was. The stock price went from over $40 to around $6. The entire time the stock was in free fall Mozilo was dumping his shares. There are over by Countrywide currently listed on their site valued at nearly 3 billion dollars. My only question is, how can I find a job where I can be a royal screwup and still get rewarded $10 million? Then maybe I could .

generic viagra no prescription uk – Apparently Walmart’s health plan states that if an employee gains healthcare money in a legal settlement, they are supposed to pay Walmart back. So a woman who suffered an accident that made her brain damaged and disabled is being sued by Walmart for half a million dollars. All she has is 277k left in her settlement and there is no way she could pay Walmart back. It is pretty sad and the case is inciting a lot of public outrage. Walmart makes billions of dollars a year, and they have a clause in their health plan that says employees have to pay it back if they had the money? That is a ridiculous health plan. The employee in this case paid for her insurance, and isn’t the point of health insurance to cover accidents? I’ve never bought anything from Walmart, and I probably never will.

generic viagra no prescription ukgeneric viagra no prescription uk – According to the article, “The Fed has worked some positive magic.” That phrase just invoked an image of Bernanke in a pink tutu flying around spreading wads of cash. I wonder when this fairy dust is going to come back and bite us in the rear.

generic viagra no prescription uk – Apparently some supervisor didn’t like the long bathroom breaks his reports were taking. So he distributed urinal bags! Wow, that is really .

generic viagra no prescription ukgeneric viagra no prescription uk – It is kind of funny that the 10th birthday of this little blue pill made national headlines. I don’t see anyone celebrating the birthday of penicillin or digitalis. Anyway, I don’t have anything against Viagra except for all those annoying spam messages that say “xxVIAXXgra”. Oh crap, now my blog is going to get Viagra ads.

I wonder what next week will bring.  Have a great weekend everyone!

I don’t write much about politics, because I absolutely loathe it. I am also not an American citizen so my opinion doesn’t count in this country anyway. Nevertheless, I have no idea why anyone would want to be the next president of America right now.  With everything that is happening, it truly is a horrible time to be president.  Here are some of my predictions of what would happen regardless of which candidate gets elected.

generic viagra no prescription uk – How is it possible that America could wage an extremely expensive war for five years and cut taxes?  I’m not sure how the government does its accounting, but it did borrow a crapload of money from the rest of the world to fund this multi-trillion dollar war.  The war is funded on debt, and Americans have not really started paying for it. The interest on the debt will pile on, and we will be paying for it for years to come.  Taxes will increase either because the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 or because the next president will just have no choice but to raise taxes and pay down some of that debt.

generic viagra no prescription uk- This is really anecdotal, but yesterday I walked around downtown San Mateo and at least three shops and restaurants were out of business.  One restaurant just said, “LOST OUR LEASE” on the door. The recession is really just beginning, and usually in an election year the government does whatever it could to prop up the stock market, but once the next president gets up to serve it will come crashing down.

generic viagra no prescription uk – Of course the NAR is calling a bottom now that housing sales went up a measly 2.9% nationally in February. They are not highlighting the fact that this February was a whole day longer than last year, which means that the month was 3.5% longer.  Prices were down 8.2% and housing sales still declined in the west. I am not sure if the bottom will come in the next presidential term, but the housing market will definitely decline a bit more.

generic viagra no prescription uk – It is unfortunate, but I don’t think the war in Iraq will be over as soon as the democrats promise.  The Americans are just too entrenched in that country to suddenly pull out.

Whoever the next president is, God help him/her.  I really think that a major problem with American politics is that power changes hands every four years so that every president tend to do short term fixes and make his/her four years look as glorious as possible and leave the seething crapbag to the next person in line.   The entire system fits with the American culture of “I want it right here right now”, and that results in policies that borrow against the future. For example, billions of dollars have been taken out of Social Security in the last couple decades to pay for operating expenses. Unfortunately, I don’t think this prevailing attitude and policy of sealing mortal wounds with bandages would change with new leadership.

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My second secret weapon for being a great salesman is “know the product and prepare for the psychological battle”.

Hawaii is a world famous travel destination, and tourists visit from all over the world. They are not only after this Pacific island’s beautiful scenery, but they are also looking for unique things they have not seen before. In a busy market like the one in Waikiki, it is important to understand how to capture a guest’s curiosity. Previously I talked about selling a pair of exercise balls from China. This is not an item from Hawaii, but how did I capture tourists with this product? The following is my “patented” routine for selling these balls.

First, you must get a customer’s attention. I mentioned in that I piqued the interest of a customer by rolling the balls in my hands. Oftentimes, it is curiosity that brings out the potential of making a sale. When you capitalize on that potential, you may be rewarded with a sale. This is how I convert that potential into money.

First, after I get a customer to stop I would give an introduction, “Sir, do you see these two balls? The first is a dragon, and it symbolizes a king. The second is a phoenix, and it represents the queen. In China, this also means power, money, and great fortune!” At this moment, I would spin the balls and let the customer hear them ring. The two balls usually have different bells in them. One would be high pitched and sharp, and the other would be deeper toned. Then I would continue my pitch and say, “the higher pitched tone means “yang”, and the lower pitched ball represents “yin”. In Chinese medicine, you will achieve great health and fortune only when you have a balance of yin and yang.” Additionally, I would start to roll the balls on the back of the customers as a massage if they allow me to.

Then I would conclude my act with this, “Buy these two balls and you will bring home power, fortune, luck, and health!”

I took my skills in lecturing as a professor and transferred it to selling products. After my colorful description of the balls many customers seem to feel that if they did not buy the balls they would have lost something. Because I satisfied their hunt for curios I sold more balls than anyone else in the lane. Most other stores do not even sell one box, but I often sold 20 or more boxes per day.

Originally, many Korean shops did not have this product, but as they saw that I sold it extremely quickly they started to add the balls to their inventory. However, they couldn’t sell them as well as I did because they didn’t understand that in selling any product you need a little bit of creativity. Without my stories, their products did not move, and my creativity is not something they can buy.

The Korean salesman next to me saw that I sold the balls by the cases, and gave me the moniker of “number one salesman on Duke’s lane”. Thus some Korean shopkeepers wanted to hire me at a higher salary, but I didn’t agree. The reason is that I liked Peter and the few Chinese salespeople nearby. A few of these Chinese shopkeepers gave me the nickname of “BALL SALES KING”.

Even though fifteen years passed, I still have very fond memories of the marketplace, and the friends I made there.

At that time, the shop across from me was run by an immigrant family from Guangdong, China. Their surname is Lin. The father and mother arrived in America not knowing any English, and could only work in sanitation services. They have four children. The eldest is a man also named Peter. Then there are three women. The oldest daughter is named Ah-juen, the second is named Ah-ming, and the youngest is named Ah-mei. All of them are hardworking and when I just started at Duke’s Lane they helped me quite often. The two eldest children did not go to college. The eldest son Peter worked in a Japanese restaurant at first, and Ah-juen worked for my boss Peter. After they saved enough money, they bought the store across the way from my boss and became shopkeepers themselves. The youngest children Ah-ming and Ah-mei both attended the University of Hawaii. Ah-ming became an engineer and started to work for the government, and Ah-mei majored in international politics because she wanted to be an ambassador.

After I left, Peter Lin bought my boss Peter’s store and another store selling gold jewelry, and his business was booming. I was really inspired by this family from China’s countryside. I saw the spirit of the Chinese people, and their struggles to survive as immigrants in America gave me guidance.

Duke’s Lane was not only the first place that gave me my daily bread in America, but it was also a real life classroom for my daughter. At that time, Hawaii’s law mandated that children under the age of twelve could not be left alone at home. My daughter was only nine, so sometimes after school she would come with me to the store. She witnessed our fight for survival in America. Since America is a free market country that encourages competition, the experience at Duke’s Lane actually helped me quite a bit in my quest for education and employment in the future.

I turned from a college professor to a small street vendor. However, I felt that our living standards were not so bad at that time. Though there was quite a bit of psychological pressure. Here I will address a comment a reader sent to me. Lingling said, “I am very impressed by your courage to go to America, but I am also a little confused. What are you really chasing after with all of your hard work?” I think here I will quote something written by another friend. I really like this section where he said, “When you conquer bitterness and obstacles, obstacles are your riches. When obstacles conquer you, they are your shame.” I think that changing from a real college professor to the Professor of Duke’s Lane is just a set of obstacles to make me stronger. If you think about it, if I did not leave China to come to America, would I have had the colorful experience I had at Duke’s Lane? When we conquer obstacles, we collect experiences of life, and those are priceless treasures.

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I have written about previously, and also shared .  I think most of us saw this coming, and a lot of us will just go on quite unaffected as long as we have a source of income. There are some effects I am seeing due to the recession all around me and I feel like I should address them here.

generic viagra no prescription uk- Unfortunately I am hearing a lot of news about good teachers being fired all across California and student walking out of schools  to participate in protests in the hope of keeping their teachers.  It is a pretty difficult situation for everyone, but with 1 in 240 or so homes in foreclosure, the state of California is losing billions in tax revenues.  The former budgets made in the flush housing bubble years are just not sustainable anymore. The funding cuts are necessary because I heard that municipal bonds are not selling well these days and there just isn’t enough money.  I still think it is stupid to fire good teachers, and I hope it really is the last resort.

generic viagra no prescription uk- The value of the dollar is plunging around the world.  This is going to make travelling quite a bit more expensive for Americans. I know my trip to China later this year will be much more expensive than the past two years.  It will also make everything we import more expensive.  Since we import almost every thingamajig from China and the Chinese Yuan is 12% higher than last year, I expect household goods will increase in price quite a bit. However, it also makes American exports more attractive so hopefully that will make our economy recover more quickly.

generic viagra no prescription uk- This is insane, but last  month I picked up pizza dough for 99 cents at Trader Joe’s, and this month it was 1.29!  The same item increased 30% in a month.  Then I heard on the radio that flour prices are skyrocketing and many bakeries are paying 2 to 4 times what they paid last August for flour.  The reason is that wheat supplies dwindled this year and the demand increased.  Other foods are also getting more expensive because of increased  global competition for food and gas.

I haven’t really heard of massive job loss here in the Silicon Valley…yet.  It seems like companies are hoarding tons of cash, and that could be a good thing.  Today our CEO said that “difficult economic times are times for great companies to shine”, and I agree with him.  Anyway, I feel like my life hasn’t been affected greatly by the current recession, but that may change in the future if food gets more expensive than rent.