A Tale of 2 Great SF Bay Area restaurants

Ace! NewsFlash

Exurban Excellence

In Napa and Silicon Valley, celebrations of California’s bounty

On the surface, you could hardly imagine two restaurants more unlike each other, each about an hour’s drive from San Francisco. Manresa is a finely crafted, opulent jewel in Silicon Valley; Ubuntu, 90 miles away, is the vegetable ashram of Napa. But they both celebrate the Californian bounty of ingredients and epitomize the closed loop of top eating places around the Bay Area that have eclipsed the foodie cred of the neighboring metropolis. And their chefs belong to the same talented, exurban cabal: Jeremy Fox, the executive chef of Ubuntu, and his wife and executive pastry chef, Deanie, apprenticed and worked, as a couple, at Manresa for chef David Kinch.

The restaurants’ locations on opposite sides of San Francisco mean the Foxes completely overleapt the urban center of the Bay Area when they left Manresa and moved north to found Ubuntu in 2007. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in other cities with big-time food scenes. I wouldn’t dream of insinuating that Mr. Kinch and the Foxes deliberately chose to boycott the city of San Francisco: Quite probably it’s just a result of the Bay Area’s dispersed nature in general. But they have been able to prosper in places that exist quite independently of the Big Bad City, thanks to wine in Napa and the cybersphere around Los Gatos.

Enigmatic but meaningful names are another thing the restaurants share. You don’t really need to know that Manresa is a town in Catalonia. But it is a strong hint of Chef Kinch’s reverence for the food of modern Spain, its masterful union of remarkable ingredients with an original application of science to the kitchen. Ubuntu is a Zulu word for human solidarity favored by Nelson Mandela. If you know what it means, then you are less likely to dismiss that whole place as a mindless outpost of New Age cookery.

Ubuntu’s chef Jeremy Fox and pastry chef Deanie Fox

Mr. Kinch, like Mr. Fox, has a tight relationship with local agriculture, and he will win oohs and ahs from most of you with his celestial supersalad called “Into the Garden.” But Jeremy Fox at Ubuntu stakes everything on his ability to turn out food of the highest quality and extreme innovation without a shred of meat or fish. In his statement of purpose, however, he is very definite about not running a vegetarian restaurant, but a celebration of vegetables. Ubuntu isn’t vegan, either, but the dishes with egg or dairy products in them are clearly marked as such on the menu. As you sit there, admiring the recycled wood and furniture, feeling pure about all the “biodynamic” effort that you will soon enjoy for a price far below almost any other top restaurant anywhere, you look up and see a lithe human body twisting wraithlike behind a scrim on the floor above. There’s a yoga studio there, and its strenuous spirituality pervades the dining room below.

So does a strong whiff of France. For me, the key to Ubuntu is its worshipful attitude, not to eastern religion or environmentalism, but to the French chef Michel Bras, a Michelin three-star perennial who famously applied the term gargouillou to a deliriously variegated plate of baby vegetables, separately cooked and intricately plated. Gargouillou was originally a peasant stew of ham and potatoes, itself named after a standard French word for belching and stomach rumbling. Mr. Bras’s vegetized purification has now found a New World apotheosis at Ubuntu.

In several other cases, Mr. Fox’s dishes celebrate vegetable karma with a skill he owes to Europe, but the translation of these ideas into (all right, I’ll say it) New Age Californian leads to a farrago of self-congratulatory dish descriptions, with foods and food terms from several languages such as “our log-cultivated SHIITAKE, young RADISH and nori coulis jus roti with akitabare sake, CHIVE BLOSSOM and preserved lemon.” (Capital letters signify an ingredient from Ubuntu’s “biodynamic” garden; price, typically, was under $15 for this horticultural banquet.)

Ubuntu’s food is delicious and provocative, dramatically presented. Take the signature dish: cauliflower in a cast iron pot, served roasted, puréed and raw, with house-made spice, CILANTRO sprouts and brown-butter toast. There are many other celebrations of individual vegetables of equal interest, but we got off the oxcart when confronted with a contradiction in flavors that combined the classic white Margherita pizza’s mozzarella (“hand-pulled,” natch) with “three-day Napa strawberry soffrito.” Our waitress, a penitently failed vegan, said this was her favorite dish and refused to charge us for it when we begged to differ.

It’s a free country, of course, especially in Northern California, and so we’ll pick the broader spectrum of food on offer at Manresa if forced to choose. The menu changes often in this elegantly restored old house in a quietly opulent town that sports Bentleys and Lamborghinis at the prominently placed car dealership. At the risk of damping your surprise, I will recommend the sterling parade of unlisted small plates that stream out of the kitchen at the start of the meal.

Mr. Kinch has an eclectic, inquiring mind fixated, as I see it, on dramatic flavors and flavor contrasts. My guest, a skeptical visitor from metropolitan San Francisco, was won over by the foie gras with smoked bread “because the bitterness of the bread was nice against the unctuousness of the foie.” We all loved the addition of olive oil to the traditional cakey pastry called madeleine. You could see the same sensibility matching lamb shank against lamb’s tongue.

And then there’s Mr. Kinch’s piscatorial version of gargouillou, “a winter tidal pool” in which abalone, sea urchin, foie gras, shellfish, mushroom and much else lurk. It’s a marvel of peacefully clashing miniatures that rivals the full-size fishy ragout swimming in the great aquarium in nearby Monterey.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

U.S. Family Life 2.0...Online 24/7-ish

Ace! NewsFlash

Breakfast Can Wait. The Day’s First Stop Is Online.

Liz Steyer after breakfast with three of her four children, ages 5 to 16. Laptops and cellphones are banned during meals.

Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.

That was so last century. Today, Mr. Gude wakes at around 6 a.m. to check his work e-mail and his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The two boys, Cole and Erik, start each morning with text messages, video games and Facebook. The new routine quickly became a source of conflict in the family, with Ms. Gude complaining that technology was eating into family time. But ultimately even she partially succumbed, cracking open her laptop after breakfast. “Things that I thought were unacceptable a few years ago are now commonplace in my house,” she said, “like all four of us starting the day on four computers in four separate rooms.”

Technology has shaken up plenty of life’s routines, but for many people it has completely altered the once predictable rituals at the start of the day. This is morning in America in the Internet age. After six to eight hours of network deprivation — also known as sleep — people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and tending to more biologically urgent activities. “It used to be you woke up, went to the bathroom, maybe brushed your teeth and picked up the newspaper,” said Naomi S. Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University, who has written about technology’s push into everyday life. “But what we do first now has changed dramatically. I’ll be the first to admit: the first thing I do is check my e-mail.”

The Gudes’ sons sleep with their phones next to their beds, so they start the day with text messages in place of alarm clocks. Mr. Gude, an instructor at Michigan State University, sends texts to his two sons to wake up. “We use texting as an in-house intercom,” he said. “I could just walk upstairs, but they always answer their texts.” The Gudes recently began shutting their devices down on weekends to account for the decrease in family time.

In other households, the impulse to go online before getting out the door adds an extra layer of chaos to the already discombobulating morning scramble. Weekday mornings have long been frenetic, disjointed affairs. Now families that used to fight over the shower or the newspaper tussle over access to the lone household computer — or about whether they should be using gadgets at all, instead of communicating with one another. “They used to have blankies; now they have phones, which even have their own umbilical cord right to the charger,” said Liz Perle, a mother in San Francisco who laments the early-morning technology immersion of her two teenage children. “If their beds were far from the power outlets, they would probably sleep on the floor.”

The surge of early risers is reflected in online and wireless traffic patterns. Internet companies that used to watch traffic levels rise only when people booted up at work now see the uptick much earlier. Arbor Networks, a Boston company that analyzes Internet use, says that Web traffic in the United States gradually declines from midnight to around 6 a.m. on the East Coast and then gets a huge morning caffeine jolt. “It’s a rocket ship that takes off at 7 a.m,” said Craig Labovitz, Arbor’s chief scientist. Akamai, which helps sites like Facebook and Amazon keep up with visitor demand, says traffic takes off even earlier, at around 6 a.m. on the East Coast. Verizon Wireless reported the number of text messages sent between 7 and 10 a.m. jumped by 50 percent in July, compared with a year earlier.

Both adults and children have good reasons to wake up and log on. Mom and Dad might need to catch up on e-mail from colleagues in different time zones. Children check text messages and Facebook posts from friends with different bedtimes — and sometime forget their chores in the process. In May, Gabrielle Glaser of Montclair, N.J., bought her 14-year-old daughter, Moriah, an Apple laptop for her birthday. In the weeks after, Moriah missed the school bus three times and went from walking the family Labradoodle for 20 minutes each morning to only briefly letting the dog outside. Moriah concedes that she neglected the bus and dog, and blames Facebook, where the possibility that crucial updates from friends might be waiting draws her online as soon as she wakes. “I have some friends that are up early and chatting,” she said. “There is definitely a pull to check it.”

Some families have tried to set limits on Internet use in the mornings. James Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that deals with children and entertainment, wakes every morning at 6 and spends the next hour on his BlackBerry, managing e-mail from contacts in different parts of the world. But when he meets his wife, Liz, and their four children, ages 5 to 16, at the breakfast table, no laptops or phones are allowed.

Jim Steyer, on the phone with his BlackBerry in reach, and his wife, Liz, have struggled to make their mornings more low tech

Mr. Steyer says he and his sons feel the temptation of technology early. Kirk, 14, often runs through much of his daily one-hour allotment of video-game time in the morning. Even Jesse, 5, has started asking each morning if he can play games on his father’s iPhone. And Mr. Steyer said he constantly feels the tug of waiting messages on his BlackBerry, even during morning hours that are reserved for family time. “You have to resist the impulse. You have to switch from work mode to parenting mode,” Mr. Steyer said. “But meeting my own standard is tough.”

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Engineers, hackers, and Defcon badges

Ace! NewsFlash

Most badges from conferences and trade shows end up in the trash. Not so the badges from the Defcon security show, which are stylized, mysterious, and highly customized electronics equipment designed to be hacked.

Instead, they end up as collector's items. Bidding on eBay for a Defcon 17 badge from last weekend had reached $81 on Tuesday with three days to go, while a 2007 badge was at $33.99.

The Defcon badges and badge hacking contest, both highly anticipated at the conference each summer, not only give the hackers a mental challenge to figure out what the devices are capable of doing, but they serve as tools for participants to demonstrate their talent at coming up with innovative hacks.

"Each year we push the limits of printed circuit board design techniques and try to show off devices and technologies attendees might not have seen before," Joe "Kingpin" Grand, who has designed the Defcon badges for the past four years, said in an interview on Tuesday. "We are doing things on circuit boards now that clearly have never been done before."

This year's badge was the most sophisticated yet. It doesn't just have a circuit board on it; it is the circuit board. It runs on a 3-volt battery and has a built-in microphone and a multicolored LED (red, green and blue) that reacts to sound by changing color and brightness and by blinking.

The microphone picks up noises, such as conversation and music, and the LED pulses to it. The LED will even flash "SOS" in Morse code when the sound is extremely loud for a period of time--an eardrum protection feature that would surely be useful at the Defcon parties where loud Techno music is the standard.

The badge also has a battery-saving feature and goes to sleep if the environment is quiet, waking occasionally to listen for sound before hibernating some more if it remains still.

The microphone is not a recording device (as some suspected), but the badge can be modified to capture sound for playback. One hacker did just that by attaching an SD (Secure Digital) card reader to the back and modifying the code so it would store the microphone input, Grand said. That effectively turned the badge into a bug that could be used to eavesdrop on unsuspecting bystanders.

The design is slick and aesthetically pleasing and the badge itself is thin, light, and not bulky. The front has multiple layers of silk screen graphics.

There are seven different types of badge for the different participants: Human, Press, Speaker, Vendor, Contests, Goon (security) and Uber, which is a highly coveted badge that winners of certain contests receive, giving them lifetime access to Defcon. Each type of badge has its own shape. Like a puzzle, they form an image when assembled all together.

Soldering wires to pins and pads
Grand, whose Grand Idea Studio develops and licenses electronic products, chose an MC56F8006 Digital Signal Controller manufactured by Motorola spin-off Freescale for the processing. He surrounded the chip with test points that provide access to interfaces on the chip.

Hackers can wire three of the test points to the corresponding test points on other badges enabling a multi-badge communications interface for creating a network of badges that can blink in unison. If any badges are connected, the Human badge becomes the master and controls the LED output of all of them.

The badges, which were manufactured in China and held up in U.S. Customs until shortly before the show started on Friday, include a Static Serial Bootloader that allow attendees to load on their own programs and firmware. All it requires is a simple connection to a PC and a terminal program, like HyperTerminal, to upload custom code, Grand said.

He designed in some hidden features, as well. For instance, if a certain frequency of high-pitched sound--a 1,000 Hertz sign wave generated from a computer or iPhone, say-- is emitted near the microphone, the badge will blink a secret in Morse code. The message is the URL for a formerly secret Web site that has additional information on the badges.

While this year's badge was designed as a sound-activated LED gadget, last year's badge functioned as a TVBGone, able to remotely turn TVs off, as well as a file sharing device. They had an SD memory card so that badge holders could transmit files and receive them from other badges over infrared. In 2007, the LEDs scrolled a programmable message on the badge.

With the contest, Grand and other judges, including Defcon founder Jeff Moss, are looking for the most creative, unique or mischievous badge hacks and modifications that weren't intended.

The first place winner of the Defcon badge hacking contest went to Zoz Brooks, who has a Ph.D in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and was one of Grand's co-stars on the Discovery Channel TV series "Prototype This."

Brooks modified a hat into an anti-surveillance device by wiring up the brim with LEDs. When you turn on a device controlled by the badge all the lights blink at a certain frequency that generates enough optical noise to defeat facial recognition systems.

For the second part of his project, Brooks modified a badge from last year's Defcon to create a device that can help someone escape detection by infrared motion detection sensors that are temperature sensitive. He added a temperature sensor to the badge that indicates when the room is warm enough for someone to start moving so as not to trigger the motion sensor. A motor on the badge controls two foot-shaped pieces of plastic so that they move at the pace needed to evade detection--two inches per second, giving an indication of how slow someone's feet need to move.

The second place winner of the Defcon badge hacking contest went to a group that created what they called a "Sound-Fearing Blimp." They wrote custom software for the badges and hung three of them to the bottom of a toy blimp. Each badge measured the sound level coming from its microphone and set the speed of its individual drive motor accordingly, steering the blimp away from areas with greater noise levels. The badges were connected together to communicate between themselves.

Third place went to "Solder Guy," who added a speaker and keypad and turned the badge into a multi-function dialer that in the vein of classic phone phreaking could be used for making free long distance calls as a blue box. "He didn't demonstrate that part because technically it would be illegal," Grand said.

One of the more unusual of the 23 contest submissions was a badge as polygraph device. It used galvanic skin response and measured the heart rate to try to determine whether an individual was answering honestly or not to questions posed.

"It didn't place, but it was neat," Grand said. "They tested it on me (with only about five questions)...and it seemed to work. It was convincing."

This article was originally posted on CNET News.com.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

SUNY Plattsburgh scholarships for Int'l students

Ace! NewsFlash

State University of New York at Plattsburgh (SUNY Plattsburgh) delight in welcoming international students from around the globe to its campus: an academically-challenging, beautiful, safe, and friendly place where professors and staff will help students discover their full potential.

SUNY Plattsburgh is home to a vibrant community of renowned teachers

and nationally recognized scholars, dedicated to engaging students and

helping them to succeed.

The college comprises three academic divisions:

* Arts and Science

* Education, Health and Human Services

* Its AACSB-accredited School of Business and Economics

The University offers nearly 60 bachelor's degree programs.

Biochemistry, biology, business, communication, environmental science,

hotel-restaurant management, nursing, and psychology are popular

majors.

All accepted international students are considered for financial aid

based on family income and resources, as well as academic achievement.

The average scholarship amount granted to international students is

$5,000.

Contact:

International Student Services

State University of New York at Plattsburgh

Kehoe Administration Building, Room 209

101 Broad Street

Plattsburgh, New York 12901 USA

Phone: (518) 564-3287

Fax: (518) 564-3292

E-mail: iss@plattsburgh.edu

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

FLORIDA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: ENGINEERING CO-OP PROGRAM

Ace! NewsFlash

New Cooperative Education Program in Engineering!

Florida Institute of Technology announced a Cooperative

Education option for engineering majors that is available to

international students. This program utilizes traditionally delivered

classes, on-line classes and three semesters of work experience.

* The program maintains a traditional four- year degree plan. The

difference in this program rather than the traditional program is that

all students will have a mixture of work experience and classes

through the summer terms

* Students will attend college for the entire first year and last

year. During the second and third years, students will alternate

four-month periods of classroom studies and employment

* An engineering student could earn $30,000+ from three

co-op/internship experiences that can be applied to the cost of

attendance

* The program can be well suited for transfer students with less than

one year of transferable credit or more than two years of transferable

credit

* The program also allows students to take advantage of the Fast-Track

Master's program. An engineering student could achieve both bachelor's

and master's degree plus one year of paid, hands-on experience in five

years

* International students will not lose out on post-degree curricular

practical training while participating in this program because the

work experience is a curriculum requirement.

* FIT offers scholarships up to $22000 per year.

For further information, contact:

Florida Tech Office of Admission

150 W University Blvd., Melbourne, FL 32901-6975

Phone: (321) 674-8030 * Fax: (321) 674-8004

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Discover Huntington Beach 2009

Ace! U.S. Lifestyle & Culture Insights

A California Beach Town Reinvents Itself, Again

In Huntington Beach, Calif., volleyball games are part of the scene.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S iconic Huntington Beach Pier is essentially a boardwalk peninsula, an ambling parade extending a third of a mile into the Pacific: fishermen, seal watchers, teenagers swinging shopping bags, retirees taking measure of a distant oil rig, boyfriends informing girlfriends they could totally dive into the water if they wanted to. Then, every so often, they all stop talking and look over the side.

That’s where the heart of this Orange County city resides, an ever-present pod of surfers bobbing patiently on either side of the huge wooden structure. The surfing never stops, but periodically an especially fine wave is met by an especially fine rider, and everyone admires the show. As well they should — these wet-suited specks in the water are what sunny Huntington Beach, incorporated a century ago this year, has built its latest identity around.

What was once simply a surf city in the U.S.A. has rebranded itself Surf City USA, after a heated legal battle with Santa Cruz over the coveted title. With the reinvention has come a flurry of development, designed to capitalize on the city’s reputation as a surf capital. May saw the opening of the Shorebreak, a chic 157-room boutique hotel with a surfing theme, just across the road from the postcard-perfect waves themselves.

The Shorebreak is the cornerstone of a larger commercial development, jamming stores into two blocks near the city’s most vibrant intersection: Main Street and the beach itself, an eight-and-a-half-mile stretch of gleaming, “Baywatch”-caliber sand. The city is trying something tricky: to build a four-season travel destination around an activity that mostly involves floating on molded foam. Of course it’s the lifestyle associated with surfing that defined the place for so long.

For years this was a community of little bungalows with wet suits drying on the railings, of jobs at the drugstore and summers spent barefoot. To visit Huntington was to witness another take on life itself, where the pace was slower, where professional aspirations were often eschewed for simply hanging 10 as much as possible. It wouldn’t last. Bob Bolen, a local resident, said he started surfing here 50 years ago. From 1960 until 1980 he ran a popular surf shop in what was then a sleepy beach town. Finally he saw the writing in the sand. “There started to be more money in real estate than surfboards,” he said.

Mr. Bolen now runs Huntington Beach Realty. The walls of its casual office on Main Street are crowded with surfboards and mementos of surf competitions past. (A customer can exit with either a new board or a new home.) But beneath the laid-back décor is a deeper truth about this midsize city: It’s seen wave after wave of transformation. “This place is a chameleon,” said Mr. Bolen, who also designs and shapes boards. He said he remembered a time when town officials tried hard to discourage surfing, keeping boarders off crowded beaches or requiring that surfboards be made shorter and shorter. Some officials thought surfing “brought the wrong element,” Mr. Bolen said. “Now we’re ‘Surf City USA.’ ”

The element brought today is the kind you might have thought existed only on TV. The young people drifting in and out of the stylish clothing stores and coffee shops around Main Street make for fine gawking, with their plentiful hair product and impossible tans. A perfectly good afternoon can be spent copying their moves: volleyball on the sand (the nets are set up), picture-taking on the pier, a stroll at the restored Bolsa Chica Wetlands a few miles north, casual dinner, a beach fire at one of the countless fire pits and finally shouting to be heard at Sharkeez, one of the rowdier bars in the area, where every other person looks as if he could have starred on “The O.C.”

Those who come to Surf City for the surfing will find it astonishingly easy — at least the setup part. Boards and wet suits can be rented on the beach at reasonable rates, and surf lessons are offered there, too. (If you’re staying at the Shorebreak, “surf butlers” will attend to these needs for you.) When you’re done shredding, pay homage to your forebears at the nearby International Surfing Museum. The action shots are wild, but even better are the memorabilia documenting the very beginnings of the sport, in a dramatically different America. (For more local history, stop in at M. E. Helme Antiques, in a historic building first owned by one of the city founders.)

Old-timers point out the irony of a surf town where the real estate is too expensive for a surfer’s lifestyle and where slick surfing apparel shops have nudged out the original quiet funkiness of the place. But a person can lose his mellow worrying about lost mellowness, and, anyway, Huntington has always been reinventing.

Before anyone was catching tasty waves, they were raising horses and barley, as part of a Spanish land grant. What was Shell Beach in 1890 became Pacific City in 1901, then Huntington Beach just a few years later, a gesture to Henry E. Huntington and his Pacific Electric Railway, which was extended here. The would-be resort town became an oil town in the ’20s, and was not a surfer’s mecca until decades later. Now it’s back to a resort town.

How do you preserve a city’s slow-paced, small-town, wave-loving appeal, while scaling up so that more people can enjoy it? That’s what city planners are asking themselves, and it’s worth a trip to see how they’re answering it. On another level, meanwhile, there is the charm of seeing lives lived differently from how most of us live ours. The veteran beach bum and the studly lifeguard still call the place home, as do the bicyclist carrying a surfboard under one arm, and the middle-aged woman walking her Pomeranian while puffing on a joint at noon. Few of these people wear shoes, and the deeper message of Huntington Beach abides: You don’t have to wear shoes, either.

WHERE NOTHING IS FAR FROM THE BEACH

WHERE TO EAT

Zimzala (500 Pacific Coast Highway; 714-960-5050; www.restaurantzimzala.com), part of the Shorebreak Hotel, serves coastal Mediterranean cuisine in one of the more stylish settings in the vicinity. A risotto of diver scallops is $26.

Duke’s (317 Pacific Coast Highway; 714-374-6446; www.dukeshuntington.com) has a Hawaiian surf theme and serves seafood (and steaks) on the beach beside the pier. Roasted firecracker ono is $24, subject to availability.

Sugar Shack Cafe (213 ½ Main Street; 714-536-0355) is an old, family-run favorite for breakfast and lunch. Get a table on the patio and watch the Main Street strollers.

Pete’s Mexican Food (213 Fifth Street; 714-960-8797) is a spartan, hole-in-the-wall place offering quick, simple surfer fuel. Most dishes are less than $10.

WHERE TO DRINK

Sharkeez (211 Main Street; 714-960-5282; www.sharkeez.net) is worth a visit if you’re the sort who wonders what spring break in Daytona Beach is like. Loud and cheesy but eye-opening and open late.

Huntington Beach Beer Company (201 Main Street, Suite E; 714-960-5343; www.hbbeerco.com) is a second-story brew pub with a more civilized glass of beer.

WHERE TO STAY

Shorebreak Hotel (500 Pacific Coast Highway; 714-861-4470; www.shorebreakhotel.com) offers a boutique atmosphere within a minute’s stroll from the pier. Rates start at $199, but check for specials.

Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa (21500 Pacific Coast Highway; 714-698-1234; www.huntingtonbeach.hyatt.com) is as fancy as Huntington gets, with pools and fountains and a walkway to the beach. Rates start at $255, but check for specials.

The 17-room Sun ’n Sands (1102 Pacific Coast Highway; 714-536-2543; www.sunnsands.com) is perfect for those seeking easy ocean access and the kind of old-school beach motel charm where Dinty Moore stew is sold in the office. Rates start at $99.

SURF AND STYLE

Zack’s (405 Pacific Coast Highway; 714-536-0215; www.beachfoodfun.com) is right on the sand, near the pier, and rents whatever beach equipment you’ll need, by the hour or the day: surfboards, $12 an hour or $35 a day; wet suits, $5 or $15 a day; bikes, $10 or $30.

Huntington Surf & Sport (300 Pacific Coast Highway; 714-841-4000; www.hsssurf.com) sells all manner of surfing and skating apparel, in addition to actual boards. Look the part without actually playing it!

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

USA's Asians Go West

Ace! NewsFlash

In a twist, USA's Asians head to the Mountain West.

Migration is fueling diversity in areas that have been mostly white

LAS VEGAS — Dozens of workers line up for a buffet catered by Satay Malaysian Grille, a popular Chinatown eatery here. They carry plates piled high with Asian delicacies to nine rows of long tables facing a dais. By the time the employees savor mango-sticky-rice treats, their luncheon speakers are introduced: a local TV reporter, a former school administrator, a bank founder, a magazine publisher, a chamber of commerce executive, a local politician.

Only one is Anglo. The rest: Chinese, Japanese, Thai — all Asian Americans.

This event isn't in Las Vegas' Chinatown district but in a meeting room at one of the pillars of the local business establishment: Nevada Power. The lunch, held so the utility's workers could hear voices from the Asian-American community, is a reflection of the explosive growth and rising clout of Asian Americans in Nevada and other inland Western states. They've become a powerful voting bloc that's being wooed by presidential candidates — and an economic force that businesses are catering to.

This decade, the Asian population has grown at a faster rate than that of the Hispanic population in 14 states — including Nevada, Arizona and Texas — as well as Washington, D.C.

In a surprising twist to historical settlement patterns, growing numbers of Asian Americans are beginning to bail from the places that have long been their main gateways to the West: California and Washington. Wearied by the same crushing home prices, poor schools, jammed freeways and persistent crime that have sent millions of other Californians packing, Asian Americans are moving to spots in the West they hope will produce better lifestyles — namely Las Vegas and Phoenix.

The Asian migration is fueling ethnic diversity in places that have been overwhelmingly white. Since 1990, Nevada has had the most rapid growth of any state in the number of Asians and Pacific Islanders. The number jumped 174% in the 1990s and 67% so far this decade to about 211,000, according to 2007 Census Bureau estimates. Asians now make up about 8.2% of Nevada's 2.6 million people — a higher percentage than the national share of 5.4%. Most live here in Clark County, where Asians are the fastest-growing minority.

Arizona also is registering significant growth among Asians, a trend fueled largely by an exodus from California and Washington. They're leaving for lower cost of living, warm climates and better job markets, a reflection of the migration patterns that have made Nevada and Arizona the nation's fastest-growing states throughout much of the past two decades.

Asians are doing what middle-class whites have been doing for decades: moving to more affordable parts of the West, says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. "California is losing Asians, and the main destinations are other states in the Mountain West," he says. His analysis of Census data shows that since 2001, 86,000 more Asians left California for the inland mountain states than vice versa. "It started with whites, followed by Hispanics, and Asians are now continuing that trend," Frey says. "It means a place like Las Vegas is becoming a microcosm of growing America."

Pauline Ng Lee, a Chinese-American bankruptcy lawyer, moved 10 years ago from Los Angeles' Hollywood Hills section to Summerlin, an upscale community on Las Vegas' west side. "We moved into a neighborhood where more than 60% of the residents were from California, either southern or northern," she says. "We came out for two reasons: My husband had a great opportunity … as a physician, and the cost of living was so much lower."

In the first quarter of this year, for example, the median sales price of existing single-family homes in the Las Vegas area was $247,600, compared with $459,400 in the Los Angeles area, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Ten years ago, Las Vegas' Chinatown was less than three blocks long. Today, it stretches almost 4 miles along Spring Mountain Boulevard. It's beginning to spread out on either side. Business after business, restaurant after restaurant crowd strip malls and office buildings. Signs in Korean and Chinese adorn the facades. Newspaper racks offer publications in more than a half-dozen Asian languages. "The traditional Chinatown area is really becoming an integral part of our broader community," says Maureen Peckman, executive director of The Council for a Better Nevada, a group of business and civic leaders concerned with quality-of-life issues. "That's the hallmark of a maturing community

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Bangkok & Phuket

Ace! NewsFlash

SECRETARY CLINTON IN THAILAND July 21-23, 2009

"I bring greetings from President Obama and a message as well from the American people: We are committed to a broader, stronger, and deeper relationship with Thailand. We are, as the minister said, historic treaty allies. We are fellow democracies, we are strategic partners, and above all, we are friends."
-- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's Remarks with Thai Deputy Prime Minister Korbsak Sabhavasu
(July 21, 2009)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is focusing on improving relations between the United States and Southeast Asia during her visit to Thailand as she leads the U.S. delegation to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Post-Ministerial Conference and the ASEAN Regional Forum.

The 16th annual ASEAN Regional Forum, being held in Phuket, Thailand, includes the foreign ministers of 10 ASEAN member countries, as well as representatives of 17 dialogue partners from other Asian countries, the United States, the European Union and Russia. Clinton traveled to Bangkok for bilateral meetings with her Thai counterparts prior to attending the ASEAN gathering, where she met with Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya to underscore the importance of Thailand-U.S. alliance and bilateral relationship and to share perspectives on common interests in the region. She visited Bangkok from July 21-22 and Phuket from July 22-23.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

INT'L LEGAL STUDIES-FULL TUITION SCHOLARSHIPS @ American University

Ace! NewsFlash

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL STUDIES PROGRAM ANNOUNCES FULL TUITION SCHOLARSHIPS
American University Washington College of Law

3-5 full tuition scholarships, one full scholarship still available
for spring, 2010.

ILSP Alumni Fund Scholarships

The ILSP is proud to announce the Alumni Fund Scholarship program. The
ILSP Alumni Fund offers 3-5 full tuition scholarships to newly
admitted LLM students who display rigorous academic dedication to the
advancement of issues in international law.

Scholarship applications must be submitted with a completed LLM
application. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

To Apply: Please answer both of the following questions:

1. Briefly describe a current regional, international or
country-specific legal problem and offer your solution to the problem
(no more than 750 words).
2. How will you contribute to WCL as an ILSP Alumni Fund Scholar? (no
more than 250 words)

* Submit a resume and your essay responses to the Assistant Director
of Admissions at llminfo@wcl.american.edu. All submissions must be
electronic via email. Hard copy submissions will not be considered.
Please be sure to put your full name on each document that you send.
* Students must be admitted to the ILSP program to be considered for
the scholarships
* Awards are announced 1-2 months after the deadline. Incomplete
applications will not be considered.

Deadlines:
May 1 for students entering in the fall
October 1 for spring 2010

The Alumni Fund Scholarships are only offered to students who begin in
the fall (excluding spring 2010). ILSP Alumni Fund Scholars Receive:
- Full tuition
- Meet faculty hosts
- Meet top legal scholars from around the world

Attention: Students MUST have submitted a complete application before
they can be considered for the scholarship. Please take into
consideration that this could effect your deadline for scholarship
submission.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Summer Giveaways for Online Practice Tests & Bonus Prizes from Team Ace!

Ace! NewsFlash






















Lucky Hands drawing the winners for Team Ace! to announce our Summer Giveaway Campaign to launch Online Practice Tests

... and The Winners are:

SAT
Naphatsorn Laohajaroenyot, CMIS
Patthararit Maboonsaksit, PRC
Phurich Pusapanich, PTIS
Thitiphan Sonsubanan

GMAT
Aphiradee Yuangsri
Somruetai Thantakitti

GRE
Benya Lertsuwan
Dr. Orawee Chinthakanan

TOEFL
Saranya Panpawanrat
Narusan Dhanvarjor

TOEIC
Watcharakorn Torkittikul
Angkana Thongkam
Athitaya Kadtasema


CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL AWARD WINNERS from Team Ace!

In appreciation of the strong response to our Summer Giveaway Campaign, we're also pleased to announce additional BONUS PRIZES OF TEST PREP SCHOLARSHIPS FOR ALL CONTESTANTS (excluding the main award winners listed above). Team Ace! and our Test Prep Experts will help you improve your test scores, and our EducationUSA counselors will guide you toward the best university programs in the U.S.A.


We'll be in touch to notify you of Scholarship awards and invite you to visit our Ace! @ Nimman center for personal consultations.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***