Many of you were here when I was honored to become the first President to help celebrate Diwali -- the Festival of Lights. (Applause.) Some of you were here for the first White House celebration of the birth of the founder of Sikhism -- Guru Nanak. (Applause.) Tonight, we gather again, for the first state dinner of my presidency -- with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mrs.

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Along with the house went birth certificates, bank records, computers carrying vital information for the Kristoff's Steak Escape Restaurant, one of which likely went up in flames with the rest of the river walk.

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Worse, even for fairly straightforward matters such as licensing a business, selling a house or registering the birth of a child, a number of different agencies requiring a plethora of different forms may be involved.

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That was a huge huge learning experience and that was a kind of a rehearsal for then doing this Farallones Institute -- Integral Urban House at Berkeley -- which Fine Homebuilding magazine called "the birth of green", which was a nice thing to say because it wasn't particularly pretty!

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