The newly paved resting area at the sidewalk marks the newly improved Leland Street which is the major commercial area of Visitacion Valley district in San Francisco.
On September 25, 2011 (Sunday) from 10am to 4pm, the annual Visitacion Valley Street Fair finally come out. Due to budgetary reasons, there was no street fair last year. ... [Read More]
The newly paved resting area at the sidewalk marks the newly improved Leland Street which is the major commercial area of Visitacion Valley district in San Francisco.
On September 25, 2011 (Sunday) from 10am to 4pm, the annual Visitacion Valley Street Fair finally come out. Due to budgetary reasons, there was no street fair last year. However, this year what I saw was still a major cut in the entertainment sessions as I did not seen any blow up play structure at the Bank of America parking lot as seen in the past Street Fair.
In 2006 and 2007, I had participated in the Street Fair and held up a booth there. I got a lot of interested parties looking at the house pictures that I posted up and received a lot of inquiries. The most welcomed one is the give away of the pocket diary and one old lady had literally lined up several times to get it. I understand in the relatively poor area, many visitors liked to check if there were any “free” giveaways. I remembered one year PG&E had given away free night light and Pacific Medical had given free emergency pocket packs. This year, I did not see too much “free” giveaway but the weather is blessing, not windy.
Many non-profit organizations play a significant role in improving the livelihood of Visitacion Valley. One obvious result is the improvements on Leland Street. Currently San Francisco Water & Sewer Department had started updating all the sewers at Sunnyvale Street. Visitacion Valley is notorious for its high crime rate. Although there are many, many plannings in the development lining for this district, the most important issue is still how to lower the crime rate in the area. Do you have any suggestions that we can do to help?
San Francisco is a multi-cultural city full of immigrants from all over the world. Like many other Chinatown all over the world, the Chinatown at San Francisco is within a few minutes walk from downtown San Francisco where major headquarters and offices located. This town is a major first stop from Chinese new immigrants to ... [Read More]
San Francisco is a multi-cultural city full of immigrants from all over the world. Like many other Chinatown all over the world, the Chinatown at San Francisco is within a few minutes walk from downtown San Francisco where major headquarters and offices located. This town is a major first stop from Chinese new immigrants to land. Here they can speak Chinese, buy foods imported from all provinces of China and find a reasonable price logging. It also has good public transport linked to different parts of City for their work. No wonder the house price in San Francisco is comparatively speaking stable. Every year the 15th of August in Lunar Calendar is Mid-Autumn Festival. This year it falls on today, September 12, 2011 that is one day after the 9/11. In spite of the potential danger of going out on 9/11, lots and lots of people still enjoyed walking.
I feel very grateful that my son, unlike other teenagers, did not share the not so good American culture of “independence” and still willing to walk the fair together with me. He enjoyed watching all different Chinese cultural stuff and volunteered helping to carry the “goodies” I bought. I remember when I was at his age, 14, I did not have the concept of going out with parents is shameful or sign of independence. The big issue in the American education is lack of moral training. I can understand this might be difficult of USA is the mixing pot and people from different cultures barely mixed like salad. However, there are some special moral concept about relationship between parents and children from China that categorize that children should pay special respect to parents and elderly. I have followed this concept and I never talked back to my parents even though I did not agree to their points of view sometimes.
Putting on my hat of “realtor”, it is truly amazing how the real estate price had been supported by streams of new immigrants. I have many clients who literally shipped their money from China to buy real estate properties in San Francisco and nearby cities. No wonder, the house price at the Sunset district of San Francisco seems have not dropped much, maximum 20% which is nothing in comparison with other places.
Thank you for checking in with my blog and feel free to contact me if you have any real estate needs or opinions about this blog.
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I have never thought of the difficulty of filling up the choice of school form. When I was a student, the first time I faced it, I was only 12 years old but my parent let me make the choice. So I fill out the school from their commonly known ranking as my ... [Read More]
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I have never thought of the difficulty of filling up the choice of school form. When I was a student, the first time I faced it, I was only 12 years old but my parent let me make the choice. So I fill out the school from their commonly known ranking as my choice. That is, the school that has the highest academic score be the first choice and then next and so on. I was sent to my 13th choice because my result of the public exam I took was bad. But if I were smart enough, I should have chosen the sister school of my elementary school. That school did not rank the highest but is definitely a good school and much better than the one I was sent to. This was my choice of school story in Hong Kong.
Many, many years past. I choice the school for my son. Instead of making all the choices, I only made one, Rooftop Alternative School. If my boy could not go to that particular school, I would send him to a private school. Fortunately, he got into it and more fortunately, he likes it, enjoys it all the years from kindergarten to 8th grade.
According to the school counsellor, every student should have 3 plans: choices of public school, choices of chartered/alternative schools and private schools. My son has opted out all chartered schools and I have opted out private schools. Although private schools offer sliding scales for people who cannot afford full fare, most students are from rich families and the feeling or the threat of being ”high-nosed” by the schoolmates are high. Choosing schools are not solely to get the best acadmemic or other programs, it is also about choosing learning environment and other psychological reasons. My son agrees with me at this point. So he chose several schools that he was interested in and shadowed them. He made his choice accordingly.
I have interviewed several parents about how they did they fill in their forms and got these answers: one only filled in 4 public schools and all of them were hot and popular, her son finally got into the last choice: the other one filled in 3 schools but repeatedly filled in all these 3 to take up the spaces of choices. My fear is if I did not put in any one of the less popular school, my son may be thrown to the least wanted school. Therefore, my son agreed to fill in one rising but not popular neighborhood school. To be continued . . .
Thank you for checking in.
Tina To, realtor serving San Francisco and Peninsular for 20 years+
