MA Translation Services

Su Zhen asked me to translate her 2 minute commercial from Chinese into English. I said sure, no problem. I figured I could just copy and paste into Google translate and then modify from there. Instead of handing me a flash drive with her text neatly typed, she handed me her handwritten speech. Uh oh!

So was this going to be a challenge? I am never one to turn down a challenge. Step one was to transpose the entire speech into Google Docs. With my MDBG online dictionary, I found as many characters as I could and left blanks for Su Zhen to fill in. I honestly thought there would be more mistakes but I was pleasantly surprised when she handed it back to me with only a few corrections.

Great. But that was only step one. Step two was to not only translate it into English but make it sound like an American wrote it. I copied and pasted blocks of text into Google Translate and then rewrote the sentences so no one would suspect that this speech was originally written by a Chinese woman.

I finished this morning and emailed her the retyped Chinese version as well as the new English version. No feedback yet.

Trail Maintenance

I like to hike on the trail that runs parallel to the bike trail. This trail is on BLM land, same general location as the washing machine pit. But I don't like being poked and bloodied by Spanish Thistle. This type of invasive weed which is native to California has spread all up and down the state.

Spanish Thistle is about as painful an encounter as cactus. This year has been especially wet with much greater than average rainfall in Northern California. As a result the normally small patches of thistle scattered throughout the trail has been replaced by huge fields of thistle, encroaching on my favorite walkways and making hiking an unpleasant experience for myself and Fluffy.

I decided that this situation was simply unacceptable. Today after walking through the trail one more time with Fluffy, I dropped her off at home and loaded up the car with shovel and clippers. Temperature was not too bad, around 86 degrees. Nevertheless, I brought a thermos filled with cold water. I arrived around 1 PM and surveyed the scene one more time before I got to work.

Thistle Everywhere

I thought I could get the whole thing done within about an hour. That turned out to be an optimistic prediction. An hour turned into 3 hours. I was pouring sweat after about 10 minutes and taking cold water breaks about every 5 minutes. The 2nd section had much thicker growth and took longer than the 1st section. I was exhausted but my job was still not done. There was a little rock hump that has always been a pain in the rump to climb up because it is slippery. I chopped down the hump and created a makeshift staircase out of large boulders.

Implements Used

My job done, it was time to go home. I really should have worn gardening gloves because my hands were a bloody mess. I gulped down about a gallon of water when I got home and immediately took a refreshing shower. Ahhhhhh yes.

Chinese MA Meeting

This is my second MA meeting held in Newark which is in the east Bay. Pumpkin and wifey are already in Taiwan so it is up to me to once again gather information.

The unique aspect of today's meeting was the fact that the entire presentation by various leaders was in Chinese. In fact of the 100+ people attending the event held in a hotel ballroom, I was the only white person.  Did I care? No because I have always felt comfortable with people from different cultures. After all, I did live overseas in Taiwan for over a year.

Here was a good opportunity to see how much Chinese I could understand. Fortunately, most of the speakers included slideshows in their presentations which helped tremendously. Aside from the Chinese herbalist, I understood about 90% of what was spoken about. These were people who have achieved high "pin" levels in the organization, most earning between 15K - 35K each month.

For lunch we ate at the Com Tam Thanh Vietnamese restaurant across the street from the hotel. Mm good. I had a regular side bowl of Fa Ah or Vietnamese noodles and enjoyed company and conversation with women in my upline. By this time it was quite obvious that this business is more heavily skewed to female entrepreneurs. Not that there aren't any men, but the ratio is probably something like 70% - 30%.

Once again I was asked to sit for many hours at a time. This is not good. I don't know how I am going to handle these kind of all day events because my butt was getting really sore around 2 hours into the morning session. In addition, someone behind me kept goosing me around every 20 minutes. One time I turned around to see who the offending party was, but I just saw a couple of middle-aged men smiling back.

The meeting ended around 4 PM. We gathered outside to give some feedback. One of the guests expressed his denial that the MA products were scientifically proven to cure diseases. He is of course correct in that the FDA does not regulate nutritional products so claims cannot be verified. But others in the group responded in a way that I found makes a lot of sense and that is to use your own experience to prove whether it works or not. Certainly can't hurt. I added my own little feedback saying that I am glad that I do not have to reinvent the wheel. That little phrase was kind of difficult to translate into Chinese but somehow I managed to stumble through.

I got a ride home with Patricia Wang and Coco.

Riding around on a hot day

Next stop was the library to drop off some books and movies that pumpkin was supposed to read and watch.  Riding to the Fair Oaks library is a lot different than going to the Rancho Cordova library. There is Bridge St which is a little steep and of course the chickens. Every time I ride through this area, I am always on the lookout for a wandering group of chickens. Usually I can hear at least one cockle-doodle-do on the north side of the Fair Oaks Bridge.

Speaking of the bridge, it is bikes and pedestrians only and the view of the river and sunset in the evening is enchanting. I stopped briefly to take a picture of the American River below. Isn't that cool? You would never guess that I am in the middle of a large metropolitan area, just minutes from my house.

I started paying Steve Rodriguez, the handyman via Chase's quick pay feature which allows a customer to send a payment via email - kind of like Paypal. Anyways,  because the amount was large, it sent up red flags in Chase's Money Movement Dept. I got a call from Chase asking me to verify some personal info. Well, for some reason, their computer wouldn't take my atm pin so the service representative first asked me if I knew a banker at Chase? What, are you kidding? I avoid going into banks as much as possible. My transactions take place strictly with the atm. The woman insisted that I go into the branch and solve the issue there.
Okay fine. Might as well take care of a few other things as well as long as I am going to be out and about. The weather was hot but that was just too bad. I downed a few large glasses of water and hopped on my bike for the 5 minute ride to the Chase bank on Gold River Express and Sunrise Blvd. I really don't like that branch because the only way to get to it is through a parking lot. Yep, another car-centric strip mall with no bike racks of course. I parked my bike next to the Zinfandel Grille and headed over to the bank.
One thing good about going inside was the temperature was about 30 degrees cooler than outside. Oooh, yea. I plunked my sweaty self down in the waiting area and started looking aimlessly around while I waited. A teenage girl and her younger brother were sitting off to my left. The girl had ear buds on and was texting furiously as her brother watched. Her fingers moved so quickly, I thought they were going to dance right off the phone.
After a short wait, a service representative came over. "Can I help you?" "I sure hope so", I answered. After a lengthy phone call with the bowel movement, oops I meant money movement department, the problem was solved, at least until the next time the flags go up.

After huffing up Bridge Street, I made it to the library. By the time I arrived, I was a sweaty mess. The drinking fountain just inside the entrance was cold and refreshing, though. I gulped down vast quantities of water.

Last stop was Dollar Tree on Madison and Hazel. I happen to like this one because their shelves are almost always full. I locked my bike and went in.  Some kids were running around the store. I guess it was better than running outside in 96 degree heat. I found everything I wanted and then some. As I meandered back to the front holding my green basket, I heard a woman call to one of the kids running around in a thickly accented stern voice. "No Alberto. You deednt leesten to me and now you gonna pay." I looked up and saw a fat Hispanic woman holding an equally fat boy by the shirt. The boy had a terrified look on his face even though he could have been 10 or 11.  With a fat, pudgy hand, the woman smacked the boy on the butt.  Ouch, that must have hurt because the boy screamed in pain.  With the boy crying and sobbing, the fat woman dragged him to the front of the store.  "Nos vamos afuera. Vamonos Alberto..."
I exited the store with a large bottle of purple Gatorade G2 in hand ready to inhale before the harrowing journey down Hazel. Who cares if it wasn't cold. I certainly wasn't complaining.  After downing the sports drink, I unlocked my bike and got ready to hop on. "Excuse me, Mister." I whirled around to see a young boy walking up to me. "Do you know where a bike shop is?" The father was right behind him. "Oh, the only one I know is Bob's Cycles." I answered. The father smiled and said, "You were the only one with a bike." Yes, the only one foolish enough to ride around in this heat.

My little good deed for the day done, it was time to head down the road from hell.  This is the same street where a pebble bounced up and cracked the windshield of our Toyota Corolla only days after we bought it.  Yes, the city is in the process of widening the road through its powers of eminent domain but that wasn't going to help me now. I coasted as slowly and carefully as I could, watching for ditches on the right and speeding cars and trucks only inches away on my left. Last time I checked, the bridge widening project was almost complete and that was going to be my reward.

Finally I got home and splashed gallons of cold water on my face. Journey complete.

Wearing a Tie

I can't remember the last time I wore a tie. Could have been over 10 years ago. But Su Zhen persuaded me to upgrade my exterior look for a Home Business Presentation or HBP. The meeting was scheduled for July 7th at Qun Yu's and Wang Jun's house in Folsom. They asked me to prepare a short speech on why I decided to sign up as a MA UFB. Yes, there are a lot of acronyms here but that is how they talk about it so I might as well learn it as well.

So I am supposed to give a speech at someone's home in front of people who I don't really know and wear a tie and button down shirt to boot. This is not normal for me.  The day of the meeting, I quickly put something together but there was no time to practice so I printed it out to read when called upon.

After the speech I stuck around for a little while longer and met Gary, a Harvard educated doctor who told me that all the world's diseases can actually be distilled down to one disease which is a failure at the cellular level to either absorb the right nutrition or get rid of waste. A very controversial take on modern medicine but this theory is the premise that through nutrition and lifestyle changes, most problem diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes can either be controlled or prevented from occurring at all.

Fluffy's Muscle Spasms

Today I took a walk with Fluffy to Bel Air via the American River Parkway back end trail behind Gold River. There is a secret path I go through which helps me to avoid traffic. It actually goes through a junkyard.  Previously, going through that path meant battling with Spanish thistle and prickly bushes. That was clearly unacceptable for both me and Fluffy. I resolved to fix the problem and one Sunday a few weeks ago, I brought my heavy duty clippers. In the space of about 20 minutes, I had cleared the entire path of all problem branches and thorns, making it a pleasant route to travel.

I noticed that since I cleared the path, there appears to be much more traffic through that area.  The grass looks more flattened than before. But I am digressing. The real reason for my post was what happened after Fluffy and I exited the path and continued on cool, wet grass. All of  a sudden, Fluffy dropped to the ground and rolled around. This is something she loves to do in cool grass which looks like some type of celebratory squirm. I watched in delight as she wiggled back and forth in the grass. After a couple of minutes, I lightly pulled on the leash to get her back up but when she started walking, she began dragging  her right hind leg. Then she tried to hold the leg up. Then her left leg started dragging. I had her lie down on her back so I could check her out. Was it a thorn? I checked both her legs and paws. There was no thorn or prickly thistle in her fur. I held her leg up and it started to spasm. Then her other leg started to spasm. This was strange! What was  happening. I had her get up and we continued on. I watched carefully and after about 2 minutes, the limping disappeared.

A Second Business

Today I went ahead and signed up to be an "Unfranchise Business Owner" with a company called Market America. What is MA? It is a product brokerage company. What is a product brokerage company? They have a web portal in which people can purchase two kinds of products and services. First, they have their own branded products in nutrition, cosmetics, household goods and other daily use products. They also allow their partner stores to advertise and sell through the MA portal. This is the product brokerage aspect of their business. All the well known web based stores such as homedepot.com, macys.com, walmart.com, sears.com and thousands of other stores are all accessible through the portal. So why go to walmart.com through the portal? Why not just go directly to walmart.com? The reason is that by navigating to the partner store through the portal, the consumer can get cash back. In addition, just by referring the portal to friends or family, a user who has signed up as my preferred customer can get a .5% referral fee on all their referral's purchases. Wow, that sounds good.

So what makes this business different is that in addition to getting people to sign up as preferred customers, you leverage your efforts by signing up distributors below. Sounds like multi-level but it is setup in such a way that anyone can potentially make a lot of money, not just the people at the top.

Commitment to make this business work and actually turn a profit takes about 2-3 years. Seems like a long time but it isn't that long and the investment is not that high. There are a lot of seminars and meetings to attend to stay on track.

I signed up on Cindy's behalf. The signup process involved Cindy's friend from church named Su Zhen and her upline distributor, Wang Jun. Both of them came over and walked me through the sign up process online.

What we got immediately was our own web portal. I also had to order product and setup auto transfer since there are minimum quantity requirements that need to be met each month.