Category: Manny Kagan

Things have changed dramatically in the last 55 years. One of the changes is that no one asks me for the time anymore, since most people can check the time on their smart phones. A few years ago, I stopped wearing a wristwatch or what it became to be known as a “timepiece”. But the wristwatch is still a coveted item. Online I discovered that there are at least 8 timepieces that were sold for over $1 Million. Mind you, they just serve one purpose—to accurately show time.

Then there is the new “hot” item on the market, the Apple Watch, whose price can go from $349 to $17,000. It can have multiple functions, but can we live without it?

Watches evolved in the 17^th century from spring-powered clocks, which appeared as early as the 14^th century. So perhaps before that, humans did not have a concept of time the way that we have today, divided into hours, minutes, and seconds. The Torah declares that there are seven days of creation. We began to measure the month cycle by observing the moon. It required two witnesses to announce the appearance of the new moon to begin a new month.

But when did we originally begin to measure time? When I googled “who created the concept of time”, I found many articles, but not an answer. I found one article in the Scientific American, which posed the question, “What if time was an illusion?”

According to an article that appeared in the S.F. Chronicle titled, “Nearly a third of world’s population now overweight”, the study showed that “there was a strong link between income and obesity; as people get richer; their waistlines also tend to start bulging”. In another article, the SF Chronicle reported that “Obesity costs U.S. health system $150 billion a year”.  To paraphrase Mark Twain (he was writing about smoking): “to lose weight is easy, I’ve done it thousands of times”.

The basic rule to losing weight or changing any habit is to visual ourselves the way we wish to be. And this is tough. Why should we change something that gives us pleasure, like eating cake, drinking sugary drinks, or any other activity that supposedly are not good for us?

For my pants, I found a very simple solution—a tailor. It costs me less than any meal in a restaurant ($10) to make them an inch wider. Some people choose different programs which help control their waistlines. One of them is called iWellness Plan.  If you want to check them out, please call Jennivine Lee.

Recently, a client who was getting a purchase jumbo mortgage, had to pay off his two car loans to enable him to qualify. Often, paying off one’s debt has to be done before a loan is submitted to the lender for bank underwriting.

But what if the available cash is only enough for the down payment and closing costs?

Then borrowers need to get money from friends or relatives, and apply for a new car loan to repay their debts, after the mortgage loan is closed. To improve their cash flow, some clients use refinancing to pay off their car loans.

But what if you are planning to buy a new (or used) car?

The first step is to do the research and then shop around. When my wife recently decided to change her Mini Cooper to another car (after the dealer told her that she needed to spend a significant amount cleaning the carbon build up in the engine), we called my friend Dave Sutch—an excellent car broker with whom I consult with before I buy any car. Not only did he give us good advice, which resulted in Elfa getting (and loving) an electrical Smart car, but he also arranged for the selling of her previous Mini. The fee we had to pay him was worth every penny. You can also use the online services, Calypso, which help with the buying and selling of used cars.

As I watched them move throughout the stage, I noticed that one of the young dancers had a dark spot on her shoulder and some more on the side of her arm and on her chest. Since she was the only one who with these markings, my photographer’s eye and attention became fixated on those dark spots instead of her dancing (I suspect that she was a good dancer to be a member of the Batsheva). This was not skin pigmentation or blemishes, but a form of self-expression through adornment of the human body with tattoos.

When we were leaving the center, there was a young man holding the door for the women to get out. He was obviously well mannered and practiced in the art of chivalry (that I wrote about before), and I couldn’t help but notice that his strong arm was covered with tattoos. As I observed him, I saw that other parts of his body were adorned with tattoos as well.

In modern times, it seems that a lot of people in different age groups are willing to adorn their bodies with some pictures, designs, poems, and decorations for different reasons. Perhaps, one day there is going to be a doctoral dissertation on the subject of the reasons why people are using their bodies for their canvas. Tattoos go back in human history since at least the Neolithic times.

I thought about this while visiting the top of the hill in Mount Davidson Park, recently.

I left my house at 8am on a Sunday morning. It was foggy; everything at that time was grey, and I knew that there was not going to be a beautiful sunrise to capture—but did it matter? This time I decided to take another route through the neighborhood to reach the more barren side of the mountain. When I came to the foot of the mountain, I noticed an opened garage door in one of the houses with a little girl calling out—“chirp, chirp, chirp”! I thought perhaps she was calling for her dog, named Chirp who had run out. When I asked her about whom she was calling to, her mom stepped out from the garage and told me that the girl was talking to an owl, and then pointed up to the wooden likeness attached to the balcony of the house across the street.

“No!”, the girl interrupted. “I am talking with the real birds.”

I looked around. There were none in sight, but there was chirping coming from the near-by tree.

While continuing my journey up the hill, I enjoyed the view of the trees barely seen through the fog. Old tree stumps with the wrinkled surfaces, a dead moth with the intricate stripes on the wings laying on the ground. I noticed people walking their dogs, wildflowers blooming, and the rooftops of the houses below. When I reached the bench I always sit on, beneath a dead tree, the bug that I wrote about before was not around. I just sat down and listened. I heard an airplane flying above, noise from the traffic from the busy street below, a motorcycle rumbling somewhere on the other side, then suddenly bells chiming from a nearby church announcing the 9am hour, and then the steps of someone walking on the gravel on the other side of the hill, a hooting sound, that sounded like a real owl, and constant chirping of the invisible birds in the bushes. I was there as a part of nature—present, not interfering. Simply observing what was happening around me. Noticing the drops of fog on my camera, slight movement of the grass in front of me. There was a small plant which grew under the dead branch, a silhouette of a person in the fog, and brown gravel under my feet. Later on, the fog will disappear and everything which exists and pulsates underneath the hill will become visible again. Life never stops, even when we are not around or do not notice it. But can we become like children again and chirp with real birds?