Category Archive

The other day I looked out my window and my dwarf rhodies were covered with bees.  I got to thinking about all the news stories I’ve heard or read where it’s been reported there’s a decline of honeybees.  They certainly have found me (maybe it’s because I don’t use any chemicals in my yard!)  However, I know it’s a serious problem and it will affect us all from the top of the food chain on down. We rely on honey bees to pollinate and they are responsible for 1/3 of our food supply.  When they’re in trouble, we’re all in trouble.

Häagen-Dazs® has created a new flavor-Vanilla Honey Bee-to help provide monies to protect the bees and do research on pollination.  They have a great interactive website where you can create your own “honey bee” to your likeness or someone else’s (this is the one I created to look like someone but it isn’t me!) and it gives food facts about bees.  CLICK HERE to view.  They’re asking for all of our help to make sure they survive and to buy this flavor ice cream.

It’s summer & hot here in Portland, Oregon, so let’s do our part and eat Vanilla Honey Bee Häagen-Dazs® ice cream!  Get your kids involved on the website as well…they will enjoy it.

(For more local and national real estate news, click on my monthly newsletter - JUNG’S JOURNAL - on my website www.bettyjung.com).

There’s a saying in the real estate industry that 20% of real estate agents do 80% of the business. Or perhaps you’ve heard when lenders loan on new construction they want no more than 20% of the value in land and 80% in the value of the house. Has anyone ever said you should focus 80% of your time and energy on 20% of work that is important?  Even Ronald Reagan has been quoted as saying: “That person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend or ally and not a 20% traitor”.

Have you ever wondered where that 80/20 rule came from or never knew there even was a “rule”?

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923 — his photo is at right) created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth.

After Pareto made his observation and created his formula, many others observed similar phenomena in their own areas of expertise. Quality Management pioneer, Dr. Joseph Juran, working in the US in the 1930s and 40s recognized a universal principle he called the “vital few and trivial many” and reduced it to writing. In an early work, a lack of precision on Juran’s part made it appear that he was applying Pareto’s observations about economics to a broader body of work. The name Pareto’s Principle stuck, probably because it sounded better than Juran’s Principle.

As a result, Dr. Juran’s observation of the “vital few and trivial many”, the principle that 20 percent of something is always responsible for 80 percent of the results, became known as Pareto’s Principle or the 80/20 Rule.

(For more local and national real estate news, click on my monthly newsletter - JUNG’S JOURNAL - on my website www.bettyjung.com).

No, this isn’t a typo but the heading is in a foreign language! I get questions almost daily about the origin of my name. I was born on a barge on the Danube River in Southern Germany.  In the last 20 years, I haven’t had a lot of people to converse in German with unless I went home to Los Angeles for a visit. Yes, I’ve been to the Oktoberfests in Portland, Mt Angel, Los Angeles and Germany.

For years I have been looking for German-speaking Oregonians. I did find two groups called a Deutscher Stammtisch (loosely it means a group getting together to drink beer and speak German!). However, both of those groups were Americans speaking German and during the entire evening only spoke English. That was fine for them but not what I was looking for. Recently, I met a German-born Mortgage Broker here in Portland who also missed her German culture. She went on a quest to find a group and she did. Apparently, there are 25,000 German-born Portlanders. Where are they? 

There is a website Meetup.com that serves all of the United States and connects different languages and cultures together if you are looking to reconnect with your past.  Even if you are not a “native” of that country, there are groups that get together for the sole purpose of learning the language or to continue speaking it. I have an Italian friend who belongs to a group like this and when they get together it’s everything Italian! So have some fun and learn a new language…“it’s a small world, after all”!  AUF WIEDERSEHEN!!!

(For more local and national real estate news, click on my monthly newsletter - JUNG’S JOURNAL - on my website www.bettyjung.com).

If your kids are bored or complain they don’t have anything to do this summer, you might introduce them to NASA’s website.  You can subscribe to receive daily images from NASA’s Image Gallery via email of the galaxy, planets, earth or space.  The pictures are incredible!  There’s also a student’s section for them to learn even more.  Plus, there’s a NASA Kids’ Club to play fun games. Two examples would be to follow the Phoenix Mars Lander or see an amazing and interesting star like - Pipsqueak.  Read more from the NASA website (www.nasa.gov) below about this incredible force.

Pipsqueak Star Unleashes Monster Flare

• For many years scientists have known that our sun gives off powerful explosions, known as flares, that contain millions of times more energy than atomic bombs.
• But when astronomers compare flares from the sun to flares on other stars, the sun’s flares lose. On April 25, 2008, NASA’s Swift satellite picked up a record-setting flare from a star known as EV Lacertae. This flare was thousands of times more powerful than the greatest observed solar flare. But because EV Lacertae is much farther from Earth than the sun, the flare did not appear as bright as a solar flare. Still, it was the brightest flare ever seen from a star other than the sun.
• What makes the flare particularly interesting is the star. EV Lacertae is much smaller and dimmer than our sun. In other words, a tiny, wimpy star is capable of packing a very powerful punch.
• How can such a small star produce such a powerful flare? The answer can be found in EV Lacertae’s youth. Whereas our sun is a middle-aged star, EV Lacertae is a toddler. The star is much younger than our sun, and is still spinning rapidly. The fast spin, together with its churning interior, whips up gases to produce a magnetic field that is much more powerful than the sun’s magnetic field.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU….HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR 64 BOX™! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!!

Guess who turns 50 this year? An American classic….the first 64 Box™ of crayons debuted in 1958 and had a built-in sharpener. Do you remember colors like burnt sienna and cornflower? I know I had a 64 Box™, did you?

Recently, the Crayola® Company asked children across the U.S. to pick new colors that they felt would be “hot“ in 2008. What’s so interesting about this is the colors the children picked out drew on everything from children wanting to play their part in protecting the planet to believing that they could become famous just like the everyday people who achieve stardom on reality shows. It shows what has value and importance in the lives of our children today. Further, the choices that children made for the new colors reflected how harmony in the home and family are at the top of their list.

“Everything you can imagine is real.” - Pablo Picasso

The 2008 collection has 8 new colors and names. Reprinted in part from the Crayola® Factory they are:

• “super happy“ - kids don’t want to worry, they just want to be happy.
• “fun in the sun” - riding bikes, playing soccer, skateboarding, and gymnastics - kids said this color means exercise and keeping fit are important and fun.
• “giving tree” - it’s a colorful truth that kids are thinking green too, and want to play a part in protecting the earth.
• “bear hug” - a hue of harmony as kids want their homes to feel warm and loving just like a great bear hug.
• “awesome” - means kids think school is cool and getting good grades feels awesome.
• “happy ever after” - kids want to make a difference and create Cinderella moments for others, so everyone’s story has a happy ending.
• “famous” - American Idol and shows like it inspired this hue as kids believe they can become celebrities just like everyday people who become stars.
• “best friends” - this shade of purple reveals who kids’ real BFF’s are - their parents and spending time with them is what they enjoy most.

(For more local and national real estate news, click on my monthly newsletter - JUNG’S JOURNAL - on my website www.bettyjung.com).

Recently fellow Real Estate blogger Teresa Boardman posted that Fridays are her “fun” days and that Friday she was playing in the dirt. When I read her post I realized not only did I become a gardener at age 8, but I think I also became a real estate agent around the same age.

“Play, learn and pass it on”. - Dusty Skye

All these years I’ve wondered whether I garden because I love it or garden because I have to maintain my yard. When I was a little girl I played in the dirt on a vacant lot next to our home. I built a play house with extra wood, all the sheets of plywood I could find and I planted flowers (most likely weeds).

You hear about “doing what you love” or are passionate about for work. Donny Deutsch on The Big Idea TV show said “pay attention to your kids’ dreams and passions, and how they play, because one day they could become the next Bill Gates”. Like the words in the Honda Accord commercial ….”Hold on tight to your dreams!”

A friend of mine played with match boxes and built houses when she was little. Today she’s an architect and builder. Another friend of mine built those small model airplanes that come out of a kit. Today he has a company producing large remote-controlled replicas of World War II planes. The son of a woman I know used to play with small cars all the time and today he loves selling cars.

We were immigrants and didn’t have a lot of money. I didn’t have dolls to play with. As a kid my imagination was in full gear and I figured out a “game” of my own to play with the limited resources I had. My mother went to the bank and I’d pick up those deposit and withdrawal slips and take a stack home. I made up “clients” and had customers who made deposits and withdrawals at my own bank with names I had given them.

Maybe I didn’t exactly become a real estate agent at age 8, but business was definitely on my mind at that young age. Later in school, I won the Bank of America Business Award (did they know I took their bank slips home??)… I guess I was destined to be in the business world or own a business of my own. On second thought, I did build a house with those scraps of wood on that vacant lot!

Perhaps your child’s play will be the beginnings of becoming a real estate agent (heaven forbid!) when they grow up or maybe they’ll be the next Bill Gates! Maybe you’re unhappy with your current job. I heard today that 84% of workers are unhappy with their jobs - that’s 4 out of every 5 workers. Ask yourself what did you love to play when you were a child and maybe you should be doing that instead?

Today’s Monday….it’s my “fun” day and I’m probably out playing in the dirt!

(For more local and national real estate news, click on my monthly newsletter - JUNG’S JOURNAL - on my website www.bettyjung.com).

Recently, our Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors’ - Million Dollar Club asked its members for story submissions about something “funny” that has happened while selling real estate. They’ve asked for other stories in the past but not the funny ones. I’ve had lots of things happen, as you can imagine in 33 years. I’ve had some dangerous, some “not so” funny, some frightening, some sad and some funny things that have occurred.

The one that popped into my head the minute I read their request happened to me in the mid-1980’s. I had just purchased a brand-new red Mercedes, on my way to meet clients and had a new silk suit on. There was just enough time to get my car washed before I had to meet them. I remembered hearing “don’t forget to close the sunroof”. Well, it obviously didn’t register he was talking to me…..and minutes later water rushed into the car. Thank goodness it was just before the soap starting to come in that I did manage to close “the sunroof”. Drenched and with minutes to spare, I rushed home to change, redo “the hair!” and was able to meet my clients on time.

Later in the week one of the Realtors® in my office brought in the “funnies”. Apparently in the Hi and Lois cartoon, Lois had done the exact same thing!

I still think of that whenever I get my car washed so I don’t make that mistake again.

(For more local and national real estate information, check out my monthly newsletter - “Jung’s Journal” at www.bettyjung.com).