50 States Quarters Program

I have been collecting Commemorative Quarters of The United States since summer ‘06. And so far, I have every state for 1999-2007 issuance except for Utah (‘07 issuance). I have never seen Utah yet, but I am hoping I will get it sometime. The program is until 2008, so Department of Treasury issue coins for 5 states each year for 10 yrs.

A nice colleague of mine from School of Public Health gave me a collector’s album as a gift and I was very happy to embed coins in it. Some states were really hard to find;Delaware was the first state and a neighboring state, but took me long time to find it.

Each time I see a quarter coin, I take a look at tail of it and see which state it has on it. This has been an inexpensive and good to expand imagination! Although I have not been to many states, finding a coin makes me wonder about the state and it has been a good hobby. Thank you Department of Treasury!

Relationship with China

Thanks giving holiday is a very special event for America. The first time I ate roast turkey was when I was 16 years old, when I came to California as an exchange student. Host father grilled a huge piece of turkey in backyard a very yummy piece and it was utterly melting. Indeed, it is a very special day for families in this country.

Lately, I read a lot of news articles suggesting lack of dialogue in US/China relationship in both business and public policy levels. Foreign Exchange, Poor Quality of Imported Products is tangible result from lack of understanding.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119603592978703425.html

I just read a WSJ article saying that US vessel Kitty Hawk was not allowed to dock at Hong Kong harbor to have Thanksgiving dinner with their family. Family of crew members flew all the way to Hong Kong to have special dinner, however Chinese government did not approve the request. I am very sorry for everyone who was involved in this.

However, I would like to point out that article’s conclusion was very short sighted and potentially dangerous. The author concluded the article saying that China is not a reliable military partner because Beijing did not approve the dock this time. It is a personal, sentimental reasoning and can not believe quality of the analysis is worth publication. Perhaps high officials in Beijing did not know what Thanksgiving means, or maybe it did not even come to approval process.

The article is perfectly successful in revealing lack of understanding and lack of effort to communicate to fill cultural gap.