The Best of Sacramento

Most of the Flash animations I’ve created have been purely for fun, although ostensibly I made each of them to learn some particular aspect of Flash technology. After having studied Flash fairly intensively for 6 months, I posted them to my online portfolio, and then began searching for Flash jobs. What I found was that a sense of humor has very little place in the increasingly money-driven world of Flash development.

Which brings me to the subject of this article. I realized that I was limiting my self-marketing options by not creating and posting examples of strictly commercial Flash, such as banner ads and web pages. After all, that’s where the money is. But what could I use for inspiration in this endeavor? What could I advertise through the magic of Flash? How about Sacramento?

So what are Sacramento’s good points? Perhaps the most common way of answering this kind of question is the familiar “10 best restaurants” or “5 top hair stylists” – such commercial lists abound. So instead I’ll just concentrate on two things free to the general public: The Sacramento Public Library and the American River Parkway.

If you read as much and as often as you can, the Sacramento Public Library is the place for you. It used to be the case that in order to get rare, technical, out-of-print, or scholarly books, you’d have to get library privileges from your local university. But now that the Sacramento Library participates in LINK+, you have access to almost any book. LINK+ is a networked catalog of over 5 million books from participating libraries in California and Nevada, such as the San Francisco and Berkeley Public Libraries. This service is the answer to a reader’s prayers.

Staying in the forefront of the digital revolution, the Sacramento Public Library also offers free computer use and Internet access, online catalog search and requests, online technology training classes, online employment resources including live interview coaching, digital book downloads, live chat with a librarian or a tutor, and even texting a librarian!

The Sacramento Public Library also helps build a sense of community. There are ice cream socials, the “One Book Sacramento: Connecting Our Communities” project, baby and toddler play groups, family game nights, movie matinees, and a total of 29 safe and welcoming locations for Sacramentans to connect year-round.

When you put your book down and want a breath of fresh air, the American River Parkway offers a wealth of outdoor pleasures. You can walk, jog, skate, bike, or launch your boat along 23 miles of trails running beside the American River from Beals Point in Folsom to Old Sacramento.

On any given day you may see turkeys, jack rabbits, hawks, ducks, geese, turtles, quail, a solitary coyote running along the river, or even a family of river otters slowly swimming past – a true mood elevator. As you wander through oak groves, deer grass and coyote bush, you’ll get a better perspective on life – in particular, life in Sacramento.

Click here to view my American River Parkway Flash advertisement.

Getting Hired in the Internet Age

As digital technology becomes more fully integrated into daily life, the Internet is powerfully impacting the way Americans search for jobs, as well as the way applicants are evaluated for employment.

In pre-Internet days, applicants learned about openings from job boards at specific locations, for example, their college placement office or the lobby of a state agency. Applicants had to call, write to, or visit many different locations to apply for jobs, making for an extremely time-consuming and cumbersome process. The positive side to the physical job search was the possibility of actual contact with an employer. Even if all the applicant did was call a prospective employer and ask if they were hiring, or drop off a resume, there was the chance of making a positive impression on someone in office and perhaps getting an interview.

The Internet offers a very different experience. A job applicant can search for jobs from the comfort of his or her own home. It’s easy to google a corporation to learn about company culture and current openings, or find jobs through aggregate web sites such as Indeed or SimplyHired. Although going through the registration process with prospective employers can be tedious, with multiple log-ins, passwords, and profiles to manage, the experience of applying for a job without leaving the convenience of your home can be encouraging. However, there’s the danger of a deceptive feeling of accomplishment that can make a job seeker slack off – after all, it’s simple to visit 5 or 10 sites a day, fill out some web application forms, and sit back with a false sense of well-being. But once you realize that the average applicant will receive perhaps one response for every 10 web forms filled out or emails sent, despair can set in.

Don’t panic. Here are some pointers to make the digital world work in favor of your job search.

• Create a web presence using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. As more and more employers use these sites to screen prospective employees, it’s important to identify yourself as a participator in today’s world.


• Be aware of the public nature of your postings on social networking sites, and make a positive web presence. This goes beyond just making sure you have no potentially offensive material posted on your profile. Take advantage of the opportunity to present yourself as intelligent and articulate.


• Join business oriented social networking groups such as LinkedIn. This is a natural extension of business and personal contacts to the web, and allows employers to get a quick and positive idea of you.


• Refine your resume so that information can be correctly parsed for the employer’s database. This will save you the time and effort of having to clean up information fields before submitting your application on-line.


• Surf the web to learn about a company before writing and submitting your cover letter. A relevant, targeted cover letter may be your best shot at getting the job you’re after.

My Family Business

Some years ago, my sister and I attempted to start a business, selling tea and coffee gift baskets online through Amazon. This was not a successful venture, monetarily speaking. But looking back at the project notes, product photos, and web pages, I feel something suspiciously like pride.

Originally our motivation had been to provide the highest quality tea, coffee, and treats at a reasonable price, beautifully packaged and promptly delivered, that would be a joy to open and taste. This would be a concrete example of "providing a service," since the sender's love and kindness would definitely be communicated through our products. In addition, it would give my sister and I a chance to work together.

We carefully chose the ideal tea (Taylors of Harrogate), chocolate, and cookies, selected quality packaging materials, located distributors, purchased insurance, and created our account with Amazon. We soon realized, however, that small-time business people such as ourselves would always be undercut by large companies selling lower quality products.

After a few months we shut the business down. But when I look at the photos we took of our gifts, it all comes back to me and I'm glad we made the attempt. I learned a lot about purchasing goods and working with distributors, about maintaining a business web site, and about customer relations. And we got to finish all of the left over tea, cookies, and chocolate!

Coffee and Tea Travels

I first went to Japan with my husband to teach English. We had been living in Portland, Oregon when he got serious about the idea - he had long wanted to go, and finally replied to an advertisement for a Japanese language school that appeared in the Portland Oregonian, sending a photo and a voice tape along with his resume. When he was hired, I also applied to the same company, and we were set.

But I was panicked. I remember being down at Powell's City of Books one day, trying to talk him out of the plan. We were in the travel section, where I was researching our destination in Japan: Asahikawa, located on the northern island of Hokkaido. Asahikawa holds the record for Japan's coldest recorded temperature -41 degrees C (-40.6 degrees F). How were we going to survive there?


Chiroru, established in 1939, is Asahikawa's oldest coffee shop.

The climate wasn't the only challenge. There was also the matter that neither of us spoke, read, or could understand any Japanese. I envisioned spending the winter locked up in an apartment with huge snowdrifts blocking the door, completely cut off from the world. At that time, in 1989, the Internet was just taking off in Japan, and it cost a small fortune for dial-up access. (Plus if you think you have problems communicating with your ISP provider now, try doing it in Japanese! We did in fact eventually buy a computer, a Mac Classic, but only used it for creating English lessons.)

As it turned out, my husband went to Japan about a month before I did. He would pave the way for us there, and I would have at least a little time to spend with my family before leaving. It was a month of terror. As I tried to study easy teach-yourself-Japanese-in-a-week language books and find a new home for my cat Smith, my mind was either raging or numb. Fortunately for both me and Smith, my sister finally took her in. It was wrenching to leave them.

I don't remember much of the flight overseas, but I recall the first coffee shop I went to upon arriving in northern Japan. The main office of our school was in the city of Sapporo (that's right, just like the beer!), which is about an hour and a half from Asahikawa by train. We were required to do about a week of training at the main office before beginning to teach on our own. My flight arrived in the evening, and I was due at the office the next morning. So many teachers were being processed through the English school, that there was actually an apartment for new arrivals. I must have fallen asleep immediately, and awoke a couple of hours before my guide would pick me up.

Waking up for the first time in a foreign country clearly calls for one thing - caffeine. I therefore set out on foot to find some. I didn't have to walk far. Zoning laws in Japan allow small businesses to operate in residential districts, and there was a coffee shop just down the street. Fortunately for me, most menus in Japan have colored photographs illustrating each item. Otherwise I would never have been able to pronounce my order: kohee (coffee) and hotto keki (hotcake). The hotcake was small, round, and rubbery - the coffee was the absolute best I'd ever had.

A Japanese coffee shop always serves coffee and tea, and will also serve a variety of entrees and meal "sets" - morning set, lunch set, and dinner set. My favorite was the morning set (also known as the toast set), which is typically served with your choice of either tea or coffee, and some combination of Texas toast, boiled egg, salad, and miso soup.


The Takeda coffee shop in Furano, Japan.

I also lived for about two years in Furano, a little ski town located in the middle of the island of Hokkaido. Furano has a population of approximately 26,000, and is a tourist destination for skiers in winter and bikers in summer. The Takeda kissaten (circled in red) is located near the main train station, and was my favorite coffee shop in Furano. Besides serving the standard coffee (kohee), black tea (kocha), and green tea (ocha), it also featured lavender tea (shown with Texas toast set). This coffee shop was just one of many that provided a refuge during my time in Japan.

Japanese coffee shops, or kissaten, as they are called in Japan, are the most amazing places. In a sense, each individual coffee shop is like a tiny theme park. There are as many motifs as there are coffee shops: classical music, Americana, traditional Japanese art, and so on. The combination of ambience, service, and world class coffee and tea provide a refuge to each visitor, or okyakusama.


A great example of Texas Toast, served with lavender tea.

The Perfect Cup of Tea

I've often heard it said that it's impossible to get a decent cup of tea outside of England. People who say that have never been to Japan. In fact, Japan is peppered with tiny tea and coffee shops serving not only premium grade teas, but in the finest imported bone china. Tea is served either by the pot or by the cup, and teabags are never used. For a single cup of tea, preparation is taken very seriously. First the water is brought to just under a boil. Then the teacup is warmed. Loose tea is measured into a strainer, and a small amount of the hot water is poured through it to remove tea dust, which is then discarded. Finally, the strainer is positioned over the teacup and the perfect temperature water is poured through the strainer into the warm cup, creating an instantly drinkable pristine and powerful cup of tea.

Tea and Strong Bones

For years, many women have relied upon calcium supplements for strong bones. However, a recent government study suggests that calcium supplements offer only limited protection against broken bones.

Joan McGowan, director of the musculoskeletal diseases branch of the National Institutes of Health, was one of the researchers involved in the study, and was interviewed about it on CBS's Early Show.

One recommendation from the study was that people get their calcium and vitamin D from the foods in their diet, not supplements, which has always been the government's position, according to McGowan. She added that supplements be considered as an alternative to food sources.

This study is interesting in light of recent studies showing the benefits tea may confer upon bone health.

In a recent article on WebMD Medical News, it was reported that a study from England showed that tea may build and strengthen bones -- protecting women against osteoporosis. If milk is added to the tea, the benefit is boosted even more. Although several studies had cited caffeine intake a risk factor for osteoporosis and hip fracture in women, at least two European studies have reported that tea drinking protected against hip breaks.

Click here to read more about tea bone health benefits on WebMD.

Click here to read more about the calcium supplements study on the Early Show's Health News.

Darjeeling Tea in Furano

Me dressed in kimono at Kazuko Araki's home in Furano.

I was first introduced to Darjeeling tea while I was working as an English conversation teacher in Furano, Japan. After the last class of the day was over, the office staff would sometimes head over to Woody Cafe, a second-floor walk-up coffee shop. The seating area couldn't have been more than 200 square feet, with a little bar in front of the kitchen. There the "master" would stand, slowly peeling cucumbers into pleasing designs, and listening to a jazz LP from his extensive collection.

We would seat ourselves, and the waitress would come to our table for our beverage orders, asking "O-nomimono wa?" After fumbling through the Japanese pronunciation of Darjeeling, which comes out something like DAR-U-GEE-RING, I would be presented with an expensive cup of the musky brew. Expensive in two senses –– the cost of a single cup of tea was ¥400 –– somewhere around $4.00 -- and it was served in an expensive Wedgwood or Noritake cup and saucer.

With its musky grape-like flavor, Darjeeling soon became my favorite tea, and I'm still drinking it now that I'm back home. Although Darjeeling is available from Peet's and other specialty merchants, it can sometimes be difficult to find on the supermarket shelf. In California try Raley's supermarkets, and look for Twining's brand in the bright purple box. You won't be disappointed.