... May General Meeting ...

You know its gonna be real live any time a speaker comes and the first thing they say, or rather scream is WHOOOOOSE HOUUUSE! six house. Charles Lassey of Mili Group Inc, was quite the speaker, a very knowledgeable region 6 NSBE alumni – you would after all expect this from someone who is closing in on a decade of experience in real estate in addition to owning millions of dollars worth of real estate in California.

The icebreaker was entertaining – your basic intro with a couple of questions designed to make it interesting. Now we all know that Seitu and Rommell’s favorite dates are the ones they don’t have to pay for; Angela certainly doesn’t think a date without meaningful conversation is a date and Marcela is sadly letting the outrageous gas prices get in the way of her happy dates – Tiffany on the other hand … slow your roll girl … first date in Hawaii is a little … yeeer.

Charles and Rommell (Rommell was assisting Charles with the presentation of materials) did a pretty good job and they put up a captivating show (not like there were lions jumping through rings of fire or anything). Among the key points Charles stressed on were (and of course this is his opinion based on his experience):

- Ignore all the negative rep. the media is spreading on real estate and real estate investing. The best time to get into real estate is always now

- Shoot to pay the interest and not the principal first

- Borrow smart

- Make sure you get the most bang out of your buck. Financing 10 houses with a million dollars down makes more sense than paying off one house worth a million dollars (There is some math involved in this)

The presentation is available on the NSBE Yahoo Group

As always the meeting was a blast. The nominations went smoothly and speeches/elections will be held during the next meeting. Feel free to nominate anyone or yourself for any of the following positions before the next meeting if you wish to (President, Vice President, Communications Chair, Finance Chair, Membership Chair, Programs Chair, PCI Chair). Look out for the following upcoming events:

June 1^st 2007: Power lunch at Uncle Franks BBQ in Mountain View.

June 16^th & 17^th 2007: Juneteenth festivities at Cesar Chavez park. Silicon Valley NSBE will have a booth and will display a line following robot and hold workshops on sensors.

June 23^rd 2007: June meeting. Nominated candidates will present their speeches and voting will take place. In addition, Michelle Galloway, an attorney and a lecturer at Stanford and Santa Clara University (also a member of the Silicon Valley High Tech advisory board) will give a presentation on patents.

July 7^th 2007: Annual Summer BBQ. Location TBD

... May Happy Hour ...

By Diego Dimes - El Presidente

El Torito was the spot for our second Happy hour. Dave and Busters was suggested again but we decided to try something new. Plus its like pulling teeth trying to get a table at D&B. Jennifer was right on time and Tari was about 2 hours late…anyone surprised? Everyone was scared to be the first one to order a “real” drink until Craig stepped up to the plate. The ice was broken and house margaritas began to flow. On the rocks or blended at $3.95 you got a lot of bang for your buck.


The conversation was stimulating as always (That is what happens when you mix intellectuals and margaritas). Topics ranged from mergers and acquisitions to the Detroit Pistons spanking the Chicago Bulls. The wait staff was kind enough to place us directly in front of the big screen TV. We promptly requested the station be changed from baseball…yawn…to the NBA playoffs. The recent college grads and the seasoned professionals showed up to this one. We are thinking of replacing some of our power lunches with happy hours. What do you guys think?

... May Power Lunch ...

You win some, you lose some. We partly lost one. Maybe we should ban the man upstairs from crying – this rain thing seems to get too much into the way of a lot of thing; traffic, outdoors playtime, makeup, May power lunch coming out party, restaurant seating … Yes. Rain does get in the way of restaurant seating.


Faultline Brewing in Sunnyvale is an okay joint, their portions may be a little questionable … but then again if you are a pig (like me) then everyone’s portions are questionable; but some are more questionable than others but I digress. Faultline is an okay joint … except for the maitre d who was more of an embarrassment to the holy code of honor that all maitre ds live by. Her vision of seating the masses during the Friday lunch rush was exceptionally flawed and for a minute I thought she might want to test the waters that are “how high can my pitch really go”

Rough start – smooth ending. Good conversation as always. Great food. Scratch that. Rationed great food. Sad to see that the famed research triangle park may soon be responsible for poaching Craig but … we’ll try and survive. Got any favorite places you would like to suggest for power lunch? Pass the word on. See you next first Friday of next month.

... april general meeting ...

By Tiffany Taubodo, Communications Chair

Since we failed to observe National Nutrition Awareness Month in March, we decided to recognize it in the month of April. We were greeted with a very warm welcome from our President, Diego Dimes as we realized that the two rooms that we normally hold the meeting in were already occupied. Diego quickly responded and found us another room. Once we secured a room, the breakfast buffet began. The breakfast spread included fresh tasty bagels with an assortment of cream cheese and an assortment of seasonal fresh fruit.

After a nutritional breakfast, our speakers Carolina Brochado and Lorraine Damiani from the Nutrition Education Action Team spoke to us about "Nutrition and Chronic Diseases: "How can you avoid them." They provided us with handouts, showed us serving sizes of food and were very willing to answer all of our questions. For those of you who were unable to attend the meeting, you missed a treat. Please take a look at the following websites to become more aware of nutrition and how it effects you.

www.americanheart.org
www.diabetes.org
www.mypyramid.org
www.dietfacts.com

Following this, we had a programs update. Be on the look out for our upcoming happy hour and elections announcements. The meeting ending with an excellent Unity Banquet slide show presentation and the Ipod Raffle. Seitu has great luck and pulled his own name out of the bag for the Ipod Raffle. Congratulations Seitu!