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Reflecting on past times and my development as a person, I cannot stress enough the importance of others in helping to form and even alter my character, and for the better I believe. At the top of this list is my wife, Yoko. Without her, there would have never been a Japan in my future. When I first met her 18 years ago, I could have never expected that she would become my only girlfriend and wife, and that I would have spent 12 years in her country, Japan. And that is the mystery of life my friends. There is only destinies to be fulfilled, if not in this life than in the next. Yoko sees the pitfalls and obstacles in the way, where I normally see open field. But, is not balance achieved through polar opposites juxtaposed in such a position as to balance the fulcrum? That much is true, but what drives me forward on the long road ahead is seeing with my own eyes this other place I have lived for so long, realizing that there are people who come to America not necessarily because life is better in our nation, or that they can make more money. Some come following that America dream, that image they in their own country heard about and learned about and dreamt about from childhood. I think Yoko is this kind of person. I can speak from firsthand experience that the quality of life in Japan is higher than what we are used to in New York, and you would be amazed to hear that it actually costs less to live in today's Japan than in Northwest Queens. I am. Yet, you get all the extras in Japan. You get efficiency, you get cleanliness, you get a sense that the individual cares about their surroundings. People here are not consumed by politics. Work, the environment and the economy are more on their minds. Yoko is different in that sense, because we often discuss the politics of East Asia, including the local government in Saitama City, my other home here in Japan, and our shared experience in Woodside. She reminds me always that it is as much the role of the individual, policing themselves, practicing restraint, respecting others, and a commitment to constantly improve that makes Japan into a marvel of technology and innovation, and makes me feel a little jealous, because it makes Queens and New York look old and behind the times. She tells me that it is as important for us as Americans to learn from the outside as it is for us to go around the world singing our praises and tooting our own horns. While we in Northwest Queens talk a big game, if I may, the community I live in Japan, a place called Kita-ku (actually a comparable location to ours in many ways), actually provides the clean and new buses, a local (and comfortable) town hall where people can interact with the local government, perfectly paved roads that never have potholes, enough housing for all and, I might add, a constant desire to keep improving. I have seen and heard about this same ethic to go beyond happening in South Korea, Taiwan and China. Yoko is the person I needed in my life to remind me that the world does not revolve around America all the time. While we Americans do a lot of talking, others around the world are doing the doing, improving the lives of their citizens, raising the standards of living, without inflating prices, without gouging, without the whining and complaining which leads moreoften to nothing getting accomplished than anything of substance. My friends, I want Northwest Queens to be a model for sustainable growth. I do not want to live in a world where Northwest Queens, or New York City, or America falls behind, because that is what is happening. We are all to blame for the moaning and groaning and the complaining and the harping and, in the end, nothing gets accomplished. Our neighborhoods have become breeding grounds for negative people to promote their negative view of the world on others, hampering progress for all of the souls who live within our district. We are blessed to have people from close to 200 nations coming to Queens as first generation immigrants who can tell us about what works in their nation so that we can pick up some great ideas and apply them right here in the community, but instead we get no real outreach to the greatest resource Queens has, its people. Instead, what we get are those who actively ignore the changes going on in our world and our neighborhood, satisfying themselves with belittling others, creating false impressions about other people and their ideas, ultimately stopping advancement but leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of the people who are sincere, who are positive and want to engage the future with open arms and find solutions. I utterly reject negativity and negative people. There are no islands of knowledge, only walls which prevent its free transfer between people. I hope that this candidacy with break down walls, spur honest debate about the true state of affairs in the district, expose for all to see that our abandonment of the political and governmental processes of this entire district and borough to one party or the other continues to leaves swaths of our borough last on line and frozen in time.