Throughout my life I have been fortunate enough to have meet a plethora of people form different walks of life.  Some from the poorest areas in Mexico and some so rich that it would take their great grandkids grandkids to spend all their money, some closed minded to the point of tyrant and some so open minded that most would call shameless, yet the people that have stood out as role models to me have been those individuals that have accomplished greatness within their selected area of profession and have overcome the worst adversity that any human can over come…a tough childhood.  As for tough childhood I mean growing up without parents, a mother that showed little or no love, or a mother that she herself was a child.  Now that is rough, living in the Projects is heaven when you are surrounded by love.

Those that know me, know that I have no tolerance for people that take no responsibility for their own actions, those individuals that act without care of consequence and that blame their parents, their employer, and the entire world for their own bad decisions and short comings.  My professional role modes all have one thing in common regardless of their childhood experience and lack of maternal love/support they all loved their families and had a strong believe in family unity and all had a personal internal power that has driven them to be the best.  They have never blamed anyone for anything bad that has happened to them and have always taken full responsibility for all their own actions.  They’re honest hard working productive members of society that all even at an age when most of their peers are/where retired they are/were still tireless creating change and making our world a better place.

Now don’t think for a moment that I relate to my role models because I had no love as a child, I was blessed with a loving and wonderful mother and my biggest role model as my father.  Yes I am and always will be a daddies girl what can I say, even at my age I still can not stop talking about him and feeling like a 5 year old when I am around him. My dad is my hero and my source of inspiration.  I almost quite my job today on the spot because they pissed me off so much and the first thing that came to mind is what would my dad do in my situation.  Well in fact he would have told me “do it, if your not happy send them to hell life is to short to be misrable” yet he would have stuck it out and been the better man, so I calmed myself down and stopped from making a spontaneous decision without a plan of action.  My dad always had a plan of action, he was always two chess moves ahead of everyone else and that is what made him the best at what he did and allowed him to accomplish great things in his life.

See my dad was raised by his aunt because my grandmother as wonderful and loving as she was she herself was a child when she had my father.  My aunt Carmen was a great lady and loved my father as much as a real mother would but the fact that he was not living with his real mom and just visited a few hours during the week made her a stranger and a different world all together.  At the age of 12 he moved with his real family to a new city miles away from what he knew and for the first time he felt like such a stranger in a new life that he was not accustomed surrounded by people he knew where his family and loved because they where his family but know nothing about.  It was no longer just him he had siblings now, and he no longer lived in a big house he now lived in a one room house, the culture shock was so great he actually considered killing himself.  He recounts that he actual placed the barrel of a rifle up to his chain and as he was getting ready to pull the trigger the image of a childhood crush saved him…thank god for puppy love.

My father started working at the age of 14 to help his family out financially and did not stop working until a stroke in 2001 forced him into retierment and has had him laing in constant pain ever since, yet his attitude was and has remained of doing your best, taking responsibilities for your own actions, and that regardless of what life has dealt you with life is so dame short to be miserable.

This morning I came accross the same homeless couple from last week, the ones walking in no clear direction.  Well today they had ditched the shopping cart and where pulling a pair of suitcases in the same direction as last Thursday.  For some reason they still looked lost.

Don’t be lost…take control of your life!

Yesterday morning I was walking north bound on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. I had stayed the night over at the Palomar Hotel on 4th and Market and I was head towards work at 101 California St. As I was walking I came across a homeless couple walking in the opposite direction, “were where they going” I thought to myself. Life was dictating my direction on this sunny San Francisco morning and it seemed that life was also dictating this couple to wander aimlessly. This is where I started to think that most people allow life to dictate their direction (romantics call it destine), yet we have the power to change that and it seems that people forget how powerful humans really are. Matt and I are looked at and judged by others for our nomadic lifestyle and people cannot comprehend why we decide from one day to the next to just quite our jobs and move to another city without a job, without a house, and without knowing anyone. Yet I think that we are the only ones that are making a conscious choose to dictate our direction to create our own destinies. On a daily bases life does tell us which direction to walk in, in fact yesterday morning I would have preferred to walk south towards the beach instead of north towards work, but I have decided to be a productive member of society so I have a job and responsibilities.

We both love our families and our friends that we have back in our hometowns, but we also love to meet new people, explore different cultures, be stimulated by new things. The world is so large and it has so much to offer that it’s a crime to stay in one place your entire life. Life is there for you to do with it as you please, be whom you want, when you want, and where you want it. To see people at least in the U.S. strapped to their dead end jobs, miserable quality of life, and a sense of hopelessness is beyond Matt and I. Life is not the boss you, you are the boss of your life.

One thing is damn right clear life may dictate which direction I walk in today, but I decide in what city I walk in tomorrow.

What are you letting life decide for you?

I’m not one to tell people what they can and cannot do. Heck if they want to consume drugs go right ahead, go all out for all I care. I’m not against the consumption, people have the god given right to think and to make a choice. I’m against the industry of drugs, the industry that has been created due to the lack of legalization. An industry that is destroying families and entire countries with corruption and death like Mexico and Columbia, this industry is violent, corrupt, and ruthlessly savage.

As some of you know, I grew up in Tijuana, BC and as a child I would play out on the street as late as 11pm during the summer months. It was a quite city back then. Native Tijuanenses are nice hospitable, noble, hardworking Mexicans just as you would have found in other small cities and towns throughout Mexico in the 70’s and even till this day. Yet in the late 80’s there started to be a change not only in Tijuana but in the whole country. DRUGS started to be a big business and a few business people with connections started to see how easy and lucrative this industry was. By the early 90’s Tijuana was not as safe as it was but as long as you did not go looking for trouble you where fine, trouble stayed away. The first time there was a public act of violence the whole city was in shock. In the past people had gotten gun down in front of their homes, on an empty road, or taken to an isolated area and got shot down execution style. Although this time a drug runner pulled out his gun and shot a guy while inside a crowed trendy club in Pueblo Amigo a highly trafficked shopping mall and a place that I frequented just about every weekend during the summer months with my sister Julieta and all my college friends. This was an isolated incident but it scared people enough that the place closed down because people stopped going. Saturday night was suppose to be a day that you hung out with your friends, drink a few wine coolers, and flirted a little with the cute boys, it was defiantly not suppose to be a day where you had to worry but who is carrying a gun. By the late 90’s there where shootings between drug lords and their rival gangs fighting for the control of the market. See Tijuana is the largest port of entry in the world he whom controls Tijuana controls a very large part of the U.S. sales.

In 2000, my family as so many other fortunate families had to relocate to San Diego, CA due to the unsafe and dangerous environment that was on the rise. I say fortunate because so many others are unable to immigrate or relocate and take their families out of harm’s way. They are force to live among the increasing violence and corruption. For my family and I, the scariest part and the breaking point of our move was that we lived right next a drug lord, whose home was a corner house, the same color, the same street number, and he had three daughters…way to close for comfort especially when revenge killers just kidnap, rap, mutilate, and they do not ask for ids. Oops we hit the wrong faee from mily. So my parents packed up their bags, put their home up for rent and over the boarder they went.  A rent sign went up, because we still have hope that that wonderful city that saw my siblings and I grow up into hard working productive members to socity will once again be free one day.  Free from the violance, free from the murders, free as it once was noble and welcoming to all that wanted to call it home.

Now in 2009, people don’t even flinch when they hear gun fire or hear that there was a 3 hour shootout between police and drug gangs. It’s the inevitable truth of the daily thread of life in Tijuana. There are beheadings on a daily bases and the saddest thing is that its only going to get worse before it gets any better. Unless drugs such as marijuana (the major drug being sold and grown from Mexico) becomes legalized. With legalization comes better control, it would be an industry protected by anti monopoly laws. The same thing that happened with the left on the band of alcohol would happen with drugs.

Currently there are towns in Mexico where farmers are forced by the drug cartels to grow marijuana. Farmers are not able to grow corn and beans to feed their families anymore. They are being exploited by the drug cartels and getting paid very little or nothing at all. For others their lands are being taken away and the lucky ones are killed while the others are being put into modern day slavery. All this because it’s an illegal substance and because someone wants to light up. Simple supply and demand, and there will always be a demand.

The band on mariguana and other drugs is a big busness for both the drug cartels saling it and the governments preventing the sale. It’s a win/win for all the people on the top. Presidents look good, politicians make money, cartels make money, and the people are let with the aftermath and an inhumane quality of life.

If you want to stop the spread of rabies you don’t kill the bitten, you kill the dog.

Don’t turn your back on the problem…speak up!!!!

Will its official, we are moving to the East Coast.  A native California girl in New York…wow does the term “Culture Shock” come to mind.  I’m scared because it’s the biggest move I have done, but I’m so excited because its a new beginning.  A new city, new people, and eventually a new job…its all going to be so exciting and new.  Matt and I are living our dream of traveling the world, there are so many places and so little time.  Granted we have not lived outside the U.S. yet, but we are making our way closer and closer to Spain, England, and Tokyo.  From New York only a short 6 hours plain ride will take us to Madrid. Just a skip, hop, and a jump we are there…soon very soon.

I really hate to do the laundry, especial when I have to go to a laundromat or like now that I have to share a laundry room with the people in my complex.  I swear this place is ghetto.  People here are so rude and such pigs…its absolutely disgusting to wash my dirty underwear in the washers and dryers here…how ironic right.  I mean my clothes are already dirty yet I don’t want my dirt to touch their dirt.  It’s just that there is detergent spilled all over the washers and the inside reams are full of gunk…I swear it looks like a petri dish with week old fungus.  Then there is this heavy smoker guy you can tell when he comes to do his laundry because as soon as you open the dryers the stank of tobacco just slaps you in the face.  Gross and absolutely disgusting.  But what really pisses me off is how rude these people are, they leave their clothes in the washers for hours not caring that others have to use them, they just leave all their crap all other the damn little laundry room.  Damn lazy beotches.

Is the sock monster for real???

When I was a little girl I lived in the city of Tijuana, B.C across the boarder from San Diego, CA and I really hated the cops there.  I was just 5 years old and I wanted them dead.  Pretty harsh words for a 5 year old, but they just instilled discuss in me.  Their corruption and their abuse of power was worn on their sleeve like a badge of honor.  Why you may ask that I felt this way at such an early age, well nothing happens without a reason and they gave me plenty of reasons to feel this way about them.  Always stopped us on the road for no good reason but to ask for a bribe for infractions that never happened.  Not responding to emergencies on a timely bases.  Having our home broken into more then a dozen times and half of those by them.  The sad thing is that I as a child had the opposite opinion about the police in the U.S. yet as an adult I see that its all the same everywhere.  Some are just more obvious then others with the abuse of power that they display.  See in the U.S. a cop will never tell a 5 year old that just witnessed a drunk politician crash into the car that her father was driving on their way home that, “we are arresting your daddy and if he doesn’t pay what we want him to give us, he is going to stay here and you will not be able to see him”.  Yes that is what the baster kept telling me and I would just reply “my daddy is innocent and he is not going to pay you anything because the other man was drunk” see I always talked back especial to the cops because I had no respect for them.  But in the U.S. I did they where suppose to be the good guys, I remember watching shows on TV where the cops where always arresting the bad guys and saving women out of burning cars…heck I was addicted to shows like Chips, S.W.A.T. and Kojak.  Its very disappointing to see videos of police brutality, because for very video we see how many acts of brutality don’t we see.  People are getting killed by cops and the fact that they are under traumatic stress or pumped up on adrenaline is not an excuse.  Yes you are probably saying, “well cops get killed too”, yes they do…but the killers are bad guys they are miscreants and some are just plain evil.  Besides policy are to serve and protect or are they not, and sometimes that protection is even protecting the bad guys from themselves.  Act like the one in Birmingham, Alabama should not happen for no reason, that guy could have been dead and kicking his ass the way those cops did just proved that they are just as savage and unable to control their barbarianism as any ruthless scoundrel.  One just has the licence to kill and a badge to prove it.

If cops are just mere human, what do you think about Robocops serving and protecting?

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I read a post from The Elkhart Project blog on MSNBC website, it was about the federal stimulus program and how the government is spending the money, on what seems to many, frivolously. At the end of the article people wrote their point of view which is expected especially on such a debatable topic. As I was reading the comments I read the following from urcorrect:

 “The stimulus is not going to help with the recession, thank the NAFTA program which has caused at least 20k jobs in El Paso. Ex. Lee, Wrangler and Levis closed there 14 manufacturing facilities in El Paso and moved oversees. Thanks Clinton for NAFTA program”.

 So I naturally had to rely.

 “urcorrect, your not so correct. Thanks to NAFTA we are polluting Mexico and we are killing their people. In the town of Reynosa, Tamaulipas children are being born with deformities thanks to the manufacturing plants that moved there form the US. Not to mention the profit that US companies are making by paying workers there $8 per day and no benefits. The only thing they are getting in return is slave labor and polluted air, water and land. It’s not Clinton you should be mad at, but the good old corporate fat boys and the American people in general. We are now the beneficiary of cleaner air, water and land beside the goods that we are buying for cheaper so we are just as culprit. Don’t throw the rocks then hide your hands. Just because you did not pull the trigger don’t make you and less guilty”.

 If NAFTA benefited someone it was definitely the U.S. why else would the U.S. government agree. Seriously do people like urcorrect think that the U.S. got the short end of the stick and do they really think that once again foreigners are taking over their livelihood. Stop blaming others for our shortcoming and start accepting that no one takes anything away from anyone that did not want it in the first place. Sure I know that the 20k employees that lost their jobs did not directly ask to loss their job. But for years the U.S. government has been pleading with Americans to get educated to start to move towards careers in the sciences and technology they have been telling the American public that the labor intensive jobs would be moving out of the U.S. due to the move towards a global economy. Ignorance is no excuse and just because factory workers where not continuing to educate themselves its not Mexico, India, or China’s fault that they lost their job its their fault for not wanting to better themselves.

Besides, like I responded to urcorrect, our consumerism is polluting the world. Thanks to our demand for giant screen tv’s, gas guzzlers and our so many other demands we are exploiting other countries, their people, their land, their air and water. It seems that the more we move into the future the more we continue to repeat history. A global economy is just another form of colonization just at a larger scale.

Are you prepared for a global economy?

I love Gordon Ramsey he literally kicks ass.  “This is a f*@&ing disgrace” he yells out from his kitchen when something is not up to his standards and his standards are no joke.  His work ethic, hunger to succeed, and standards of excellence for himself are to be admired and are reminisced from a era in which America was made great thanks to hard working people with those same qualities and determination to succeed.  People like Gordon Ramsey’s inspire and motivate me to look within side myself for that same passion and hunger to be the best at what ever it is I’m doing.

I unfortunately keep seeing that the world around me people act with a sense of entitlement that is just sicking.  Why?  It’s sad for me to see how we as a society enable the weak and stupid call them disadvantaged and allow then to live a quality of life that is undeserving, yet we call people like Gordon Ramsey a-holes and try to knock them down at all costs.  We think that by protecting the weak we are doing a good thing, but we are not its survival of the fittest and we are messing with nature.  The weak and stupid are going to out number us and what the hell are we going to do then.  I see myself living in a world like in the film Idiocracy (2006) where in 2505 the president was an ex-wrestler named Camacho and they where watering their crops with an energy drink because water was only used in toilets.  Our standards for education are something to be ashamed of, our standards for health are deplorable how is it possible that Americans consume a ridiculous amount of medications and not to mention energy drinks, our standards for employment are a joke everyone lies on their resume and there is no way for a company to get an honest answer from a previous employer because they are afraid that the lazy ass that they had to fire because they did no work will sue them.

Instead we lower our standards to the lowest common denominator, because we want to be all inclusive and not hurt anyones feeling.  We do not want to discriminate, well the hell with that I say, not if we want to continue to evolve as humans.  We should learn from people like Gordon Ramsey and raise the bloody bar people are more resilient and far more capable then society wants to give credit.  Take Kyle Maynard a young man that was born with congenital amputation of the forearms and lower legs is a Champion in Wrestling and just debuted as a MMA fighter has proven that humans have the ability to over come any obstacle to get what they really want.  There is no excuse for failure.

We need to read more, learn more, work more, strive to be better every freaking day.

So would Gordon Ramsey ask you to “get the f*%$ out of my kitchen you lazy cow” or would he give you a job offer…well that’s if you knew how to cook of course?