Snorkeling is an activity that is best enjoyed and made safer with the right equipment and gear. If you think that masks are solely meant for scuba divers, there are also snorkeling masks meant for snorkelers, too. These masks provide ample protection for your face, nose, and eyes even when exploring shallow waters. They also provide assistance for breathing through your mouth so you won’t have to resurface every now and then just to catch some air.

High quality is preferred

But the best snorkeling masks is not just something that you can buy cheaply because you need to make sure that it is made of high quality materials so it won’t break easily and it won’t come off when you are using it. The right snorkeling mask is something that fits snugly over your eyes and face while keeping the water out. They should also be comfortable to wear over your face. You should still be able to move your head without any restrictions underwater.

Durable but lightweight

The best snorkeling masks is also lightweight but durable, which means that it is not only comfortable but it won’t break or warp easily. If you like swimming along strong currents or rough waters, get a snorkeling mask with polycarbonate lens that are stiff and designed to endure high pressures. The lens should also be shatterproof and waterproof to provide more protection for your eyes, nose, and face.

No allergies

The materials that your snorkeling masks is made of should also be non-allergenic. There are times when the rubber on the frame can irritate your skin especially if you wear your snorkeling mask for extended periods. In such cases, the best snorkeling mask for you is something that has a non-allergenic and soft silicone along the frames.

I currently did a poster project for my 2D art class this semester. I put optional text on it which read:

“the golden flower: NECESSITY IS BIASED”

Why? Because it’s a peeve for me to witness how so many people think they have the right to judge others, especially animals. It’s never okay to treat your pets poorly, kick strays, or openly torture animals. This project was actually a small attempt to make such a statement, but I don’t think I’m ready to create something that’s controversial before I know for sure that I can handle it. I don’t deny that I’ve never been unkind to animals, but I’m learning to care for this world more, as cheesy and corny as that sounds! There’s something about caring in general that makes me feel warm inside, and it feels good.

“… as long as they pronounce it properly.” 

Words spoken by Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady” – both on stage and on film. I’m wondering if that sentiment, however, has spilled over from the French to the everyday person. Why wonder? Well, have you actually read things going on in chat rooms? Or people trying to seem intelligent as they respond to news articles with their oh-so-witty, yet oh-so-meaningless responses (where the meaninglessness of it goes away if you read it aloud)? 

Grammar 

That’s right. I’m talking about grammar. Apparently gone are the days when English teachers beat correct use of language into students’ heads. “Your right!” is an oft-seen response to a correct statement in chat rooms. “There going to have to make a better effort” as seen in a response to a USA Today article. 

If you don’t see what’s wrong with the statements, let us examine the homonym. 

Homonyms are words that sound the same as others, but with completely differing meanings. Facebook Flair (if you’re curious about the name ‘flair’, rent a copy of the movie “Office Space” and it will make sense) is riddled with misuses of homonyms, and yet there are buttons made up that express the same peeve as I have. 

At least some people see it

Has education become that lax that we have to create Facebook flair to point out proper use of grammar? Or is it more that people just don’t care enough about it? I hope it’s the latter. What worries me is that I have seen an increase in misuse of words. I’m more forgiving of it in informal settings like chat rooms and such, but when you receive a corporate memo on letterhead, supposedly from the CEO of the company, and it’s riddled with incorrectly used homonyms, I wonder where things went wrong. 

As annoying, and as misused is the poor, poor apostrophe. When did pluralization result in an S preceded by an apostrophe? “Get your ticket’s here!” What, exactly am I getting my ticket, and does my ticket really need something if I’m going to hand it over to the ticket taker in a matter of minutes? 

The apostrophe is so badly abused that Lynne Truss has written a clever book entitled Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, and has given at least one entire chapter to the apostrophe. (If you pick up the book, the anecdote explaining the title is pretty freakin’ cute!) Beyond that, in 2001, a fellow by the name of John Richards started “The Apostrophe Protection Society“. 

If you think preserving proper use of grammar is a necessity, take a look at The Apostrophe Protection Society’s Examples of abuse images – some are worth a heartier chuckle than others. 

As an aside – a Flair fail I found yesterday while looking for the ones above: 

I can't help but chuckle at the irony of the "your stupid" statement.

I quit smoking 4 days ago. I have been trying to quit smoking on and off for years. I even managed to give it up for long periods of time. For instance, when I learned I was pregnant with my son. I happily quit and I remained a non-smoker until after I was done breast-feeding nearly Twenty-One Months later. 

Then necessity was taken away and life returned to normal. Thanks to a not so happy marriage, stress and depression reared their ugly heads once again and it was easy to go back to the comfort of that addiction. 

The experts say that it takes an average of 8–10 attempts before actually kicking the habit. HOGWASH! Try something like 30-40! IF EVER… 

I know why it’s been the most difficult thing I have ever done, probably because it was the EASIEST thing I ever started. 

I remember the moment well! I was in the USAF and I was stationed at Grand Forks, North Dakota. Yah…No man’s land to be sure…Our base had been on alert for 4 days and I was tired. Those were the days when you could still smoke indoors. One of my fellow enlistee’s was sitting in a booth relaxing, after taking a long drag from his cigarette, he looked up and offered me one…I gave into the temptation of the moment and that was that! I would spend the next twenty-three years of my life trying to kick the habit. 

My life as a smoker hasn’t been a typical one. I suppose I can safely classify myself a ‘Closet Smoker’. I never smoked inside my house, because I couldn’t abide that nauseating smell in my clothing and furniture. Occasionally, I would break down and smoke in my car in a desperate moment, but I never smoked around my son. Strange isn’t it? One can care so much about someone else, and care so little about themselves. I never really understood this concept until recently. 

So, here it is day four…it’s now time to get off my @&#^ and get some exercise, because if I don’t change my routines, I will never make it. By eliminating the old habits, I can slowly begin to replace them with new ones, thereby creating a healthier environment with which to succeed in. I am all for SUCCESS!!! 

The sun has peeked out between the dark, menacing clouds – it’s a great time to bundle up, put on the iTunes and go for a walk…Making certain to avoid the ice, I don’t feel like injuring myself today… 

Many Blessings…..

Tomorrow we finally are able to register our car and it will mark the first time in 45 days that we have been able to operate on 2 cars. Woo hoo! Due to events that were outside our control the title to our car somehow was lost in the mail and finally our state found the title and proclaimed we are officially able to register our vehicle.

There was a time period that I thought we could never get by on just one car. I mean the wife has the places she needs to go and I have mine. Well let’s just say that is not true. Just like in budgeting you learn to prioritize and quickly learn having two cars is not a necessity but is merely a luxury. I never viewed owning a second vehicle as a luxury until recently. Do we have to have a second vehicle? The answers no but it sure does make it convenient.

What is it that we are taught growing up in society? Well that message has changed over time with the growth of the Internet and rural areas gaining access to East coast/West coast living styles thanks primarily to MTV. The overwhelming message I seem to find is that when it comes to clothes, less is more, and when it comes to transportation bigger is better. The mindset becomes that of a materialistic person instead of a humble person.

I’m glad that the last 45 days I was humbled and I can say I will enjoy and cherish having my car back. I cannot wait to get behind the wheel and thank God for the luxuries in life that I enjoy. Maybe you too can step back and think about all the necessities you have in your life which actually are luxuries to many others.

All music is political.  By that I don’t mean that music has to deal with issues such as war, oppression, class, or revolution.  No, music is political because all music presupposes a community of people who come together to appreciate it.  Every performer feels this at some point when he steps out on stage, looks his audience in the eye, and realizes, much to his surprise, that what he is doing is only minimally connected with the notes he’s playing.  What he is doing, when all is said and done, is bringing people together, and their enjoyment of the music has everything to do with how they see themselves together as a group.  And of course, just as with political unions, music brings people together under different pretexts: for some it’s the common bond of aggression, for others it is idealism, for others it is loneliness, and for others it is a desire to find an intimacy they never found in family life.

But also as with political systems, music is not always based in freedom.  In fact, a lot of music is based on the belief that people can’t ever really be free.  A lot of music presupposes the belief that humans are basically animals, competitive by nature, and slaves to their irrational, fragile, and untrustworthy impulses.  Have you ever wondered why people love to listen to a singer sing about being better, tougher, sexier, or more appealing than everyone else?  It seems odd that someone in an audience would want to hear someone on stage waste his time with bragging.  But of course, people love to hear singers brag because it confirms their belief that we’re all fundamentally at war with one another, and that the best we can do in this state of war is to worship the strongest man or woman – our new, American “idol”.  Well that’s the basis assumption of totalitarianism, and of course it’s the basic assumption made by the music industry today about what people are looking for in listening to music.

In 1958, Hannah Arendt wrote a book called The Human Condition, in which she tried to explain why the Western world, despite its numerous revolutions, still experiences politics as a fundamentally dirty business, a realm of corruption from which no true freedom ever emerges.  This wasn’t always the case, she argues.  The ancient Greeks, for example, saw politics as the art of creating something beautiful, a form of free association between men in which they found the fullest expression of their human potential.  The Greeks believed this, of course, because they assumed that people didn’t need politics to address their basic needs – that was the purpose of having a family.  With the rise of Christianity and then capitalism, however, the idea began to take root that people’s needs and desires are infinite, and so politics became thought of as a necessary evil to keep men from fighting with each other over these desires.  Politics thus became the study of necessity, not the study of excellence.

Beauty and art, I believe, are always reflections of people’s attitudes toward their work – and in our society most people work too hard.  Or rather, it’s not that people objectively work too hard, it’s that for the most part they believe that their labor is unending, inconsequential, and futile.  And because they believe that the work they do is basically meaningless, they also believe that true beauty is basically meaningless.  Some people think our culture is obsessed with beauty, but I disagree: I think our culture is obsessed with the impossibility of beauty.  Our love of plastic surgery, makeup, clothes, etc. reveals the belief that no one is really beautiful, so the second-best option is to expertly hide the fact of one’s ugliness.  This is our common political bond: we come together to compare who has concealed his ugliness better.  That’s why we love Lady Gaga dressed in her underwear and covered in blood.  “You see?” we think.  “She was ugly after all, just like everybody else.”

I don’t mean to suggest that we should only like beautiful things or that ugly emotions don’t have a place in music, but I do believe in the power of music to point the way to true freedom, a freedom in which we listen to things because we actually like them and choose them, not because we feel so badly about ourselves that we are forced to seek ugliness outside ourselves so as not to feel totally alone on the inside.  Part of the path to finding freedom in music, I believe, is questioning the “needs” we took for granted.  Do we really need to be successful?  Do we really need to be recognized?  Do we really need to be wanted by everyone?  And sometimes, when we can put these narratives to the side, we rediscover music as something totally new, a rush of sound like what we heard at the moment of birth, free as a bird’s song at the break of day.

Tam Lin is a Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose songs have been compared to those of Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen, David Byrne and Nick Drake. This summer marks the release of Tam Lin’s third album, Begin Again, produced by Mario McNulty (David Bowie, Philip Glass). You can hear his music at http://www.myspace.com/tamlinmusic.

I seem to be on a Ralph Waldo Emerson kick lately. I read this quote by him the other day and it has been haunting me day in, and day out. It reads, “Make yourself necessary to somebody.” There is something so powerful and so true about that quote that rings all the way through to the deepest core of my being. My personality type is very much so that of a people pleaser, and a mediator. The moment I feel like my personality rubs wrong with somebody, I will try to figure it out, and see to it that we will become friends. I don’t liked to be disliked. I’m sure none of you like to be disliked, but some people can take it as it is, and just go on with their lives. I am much different than this. It will bother me to the point of losing sleep. But I wish I lived more according to this quote. Notice it doesn’t say to “Make yourself necessary to EVERYBODY,” but rather, “Make yourself necessary to SOMEBODY.” Face it, you are not going to get along with everyone in your life. It is just impossible. But I really believe that the moment we feel a relationship or friendship of ours starts hitting a deeper point, we will want to make our every action and word necessary to them. And the true friendships will reciprocate in the same way.

Observe your relationships in the next few days. Who are the people in your life that you want to be by your side every step of the way? Who would you want to give your eulogy at your funeral? I know that is a somber thought, but it is something to think about. What relationships uplift you and encourage to be a better person and strive for greater things in life? There are a lot of fake people in the industry that I am in. There is a lot of brown nosing and fake promises. At the end of the day, those people aren’t going to be by my side. Their words and actions are like cheap perfume. It smells good at first, but it wears off quickly. Invest in the relationships that will get you through the hardest and ugliest points of your life. Your family, best friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, relatives, etc. Jobs will come and go. Bosses will love you, then hate you. But a true friendship is a foundation that can’t be shaken if it is built on honesty, trust, and great communication. Don’t worry about trying to get people to like you, but make yourself necessary to the people that are a necessity to your life.

-t

Didnt feel to good over the weekend. Im having a bad cold and cough, so I stayed in and watched the Ugly Truth on Saturday night… nope.. Is not a good movie.. It is just akward.

Fisher-Price My Little Lamb Infant Seat

Yay!

An organization will not begin the transformation until it is aware that the quality of the product or service must be improved. Awareness comes about when an organization loses market share or realizes that quality and productivity go hand in hand. It also occurs if TQM is mandated by the customer or if management realizes that TQM is a better way to run business and compete in domestic and world markets.

Automation or other productivity enhancements might not help a corporation if it is unable to market its product or service because the quality is poor. The Japanese learned this fact from practical experience. They could sell their products only at ridiculously low prices, and even then it was difficult to secure repeat sales. Until recently, corporations have not recognized the importance of quality. However, a new attitude has emerged—quality first among the equals of cost and service—the customer wants value.

Quality and productivity are not mutually exclusive. Improvements in quality can lead directly to increased productivity and other benefits. The improved quality results in improvement in productivity, capacity, and profit. Many quality improvement projects are achieved with the same workforce, same overhead, and no investment in new equipment.

More and more corporations are recognizing the importance and necessity of quality improvement if they are to survive domestic and world-wide competition. Quality improvement is not limited to the conformance of the product or service to specifications; it also involves the inherent quality in the design of the system. The prevention of the product, service, and process problems is a more desirable objective than taking corrective action after the product is manufactured or a service rendered.

TQM does not occur overnight; there are no quick remedies. It takes a long time to build the appropriate emphasis and techniques into the culture. Over-emphasis on short term results and profits must be set aside so long-term planning and constancy of purpose will prevail.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

I’m missing having a camera so much. Its like someone cut of an arm or something… been looking at this one. Kind of the same as my old one but a newer version.

I realized last week then one of the guys in my class work at the Adidas Soccer stor at the Irvine Spectrum. We went there to check it out and I left with a pair brand new Adidas Preditor. So… now I just have to find someone to play with.

My and Paige went to Southcoast Plaza on Friday afternoon, they have already all the Christmas decorations ready, never seen so many lights and Christmas trees in a mall before! I didn’t see any Santa Claudes yet, but I don’t think they are far away.

“Monkey” as the girl in my tennis class say when she misses her serve. So this is the third bag I have broken in the last 6 months. It was my favorit and now I dont have any purse any more.. Can we fix this?

Two girls out and about. We went down to Balbo Island.

Weekend finaly! This is pics from last Friday, a week ago. We went to the Spectrum to do some shopping and then we had dinner at Cheesecake Factory. It just happend to be happy hour! Velvet cheesecake!

I love getting mail!

Thank you!

Best chicken sandwish ever!

Watched this movie about a week ago or so, not too great but entertaining for the moment.

The bag I bought at Forever 21 in SB.