Manda

Age: 24
Height: 5’8"
Bust: 34C,23,32
Home: Flushing
Umodels.com

This blonde beauty may be a cheery Australian but her heart and her stomach is in our Queens land.

Manda loves Hellman’s Mayonnaise. She puts on it anything that passes muster.

What she didn’t realize was that Hellman’s was created in Long Island City. "Bring out the Hellman’s…Bring Out the Best."

We met at the Flamingo Café, "by the big road" as Manda calls Northern Blvd. Despite the blonde stereotype, Manda is a bright, spunky woman who happens to be a very new resident of Flushing — since the recent tragedy.

"I love New York, it feels like home," said Manda, a native of Sydney.

She has taken a liking to living in a house in Flushing. "It’s a quiet way of living… people aren’t living on top of each other."

Chinese restaurants on Main Street and playing golf at Kissena Park have become part of her activities. She also loves squirrels. She often walks around feeding peanuts to squirrels in her neighborhood.

Manda has done photo shoots for swimsuit catalogs, print editorials, lingerie and calendar work. Recently she did a promo for Naked Juice in the Hamptons with Michael Schneider, president of UModels.

She had plans to go to Egypt for two weeks for the International Modeling Show but the World Trade Center prevented that.

For a gig at 92.3 FM KROCK’s Dysfunctional Picnic at Jones Beach this summer, Manda wore a big hat, a g-string and colorful body paint.

Some guy showed up in her dressing room wearing a robe. She asked him if he was here to get body painted. His response was, "only if you paint me." She started painting until the other models realized it was Dave Navarro, guitarist for Jane’s Addiction and they were all over him.

What does Manda look for in a guy? It’s not laughs. "No, I can get that from a movie." He doesn’t have to be intelligent, but he does have to share her fondness for Formula 1 Racing. She’d rather go out with a nice guy than one who’s nasty and gorgeous.

Looking for political excitement and controversy? Forget mayoral run-offs and Giuliani’s threats to alter the term-limits law. Just look at what’s going on with the Green Party.

In the first Green Party City Council primary in New York’s history, District 20 candidates Paul Graziano and Evergreen Chou ended up tied - 17 votes to 17 votes on Primary Day. Thirty-five Greens actually voted in the district, but the tie-breaking voter mistakenly voted for both Graziano and Chou, voiding the ballot. The 14-member Queens Green Party Political Committee tried to break the tie with a vote on Oct. 9, but the election ended up tied again seven to seven. Eventually, in a second vote, Graziano won nine to five.

"My voters were told the Green party didn’t exist," Graziano said of Primary Day. "Poll workers need to take a test before they become poll workers. They should have known about the Green primary. Either they were asleep or didn’t attend the classes."

Problems like these were echoed by Green Party officials, who believed that the party was "disenfranchised" in citywide primary elections by poll workers and by the paper ballot, which all Greens must use in primary elections.

Naomi Bernstein, of the Board of Elections, said, "The main reason that Greens use paper ballots is because in some districts, the number of registered Greens is one or two. It would compromise the confidentiality and security of the election to have them vote on the machine."

According to a statement by Craig Seeman, chair of the Green Party’s state committee, the Green Party is thinking of suing the Board of Elections for discrimination after paper ballots were discovered missing in 50 districts.

Trying to push for an Olympics games in a city hit hard by terrorism might seem a more daunting challenge than the toughest sport in the games themselves.

But the committee putting together the bid to bring the 2012 Olympics to the Big Apple did not miss a beat — they are pulling on the nation’s and the world’s heartstrings to make New York a symbol of resolve against terrorism. Already in the worldwide competition, the mayor of Rome has removed his city from the bidding in favor of New York.

The New York Committee may be getting universal sympathy but there’s one little problem. The high-gloss, full-color proposal as well as a boxed set presentation distributed to promote the NY bid featured a cover depicting a swimmer in the river with — guess what in the background — the twin towers of the World Trade Center!

Should the expensive package be republished? Or should a see-through insert be placed on top to memorialize the tragic events of Sept. 11 and capitalize on the genuine sympathy the world has for New York right now?  Or should the impressive package be allowed to stand unaltered? These seem like small concerns considering the big issues facing the families and rescuers dealing day by day with the aftermath of this disaster. But 2012 is a long time away and the cutthroat worldwide battle to hold the games is coming close.

Maybe the ashes of the twin towers could in the end help lead New York City to the summit of Mount Olympus.

The Prez & the Queens fireman.

The photo of President George W. Bush with his arm around a firefighter at Ground Zero will be etched in the memory of a nation for a long time to come. That fireman made it to the cover of Time magazine.

If you look closely at the helmet of the firefighter you will notice the number 164. That’s the Ladder Company 164 on 244th Street in Douglaston.

The firefighter is 69-year-old Bob Beckwith who retired in 1994 while at the Queens Ladder Co.

Beckwith’s retirement however, did not stop him from rushing to the scene of the World Trade Center disaster.

He was helping in the rescue efforts when the President visited the site.

"I’m just a symbol because I happened to be there," he said.

Community School Board 30 (Astoria/LIC) displayed extra sensitivity toward students in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center.

The family of a fourth-grader told the Tribune that word of the attack and collapse of the Twin Towers went out to schools with some instructions.

Each school sent staff to classrooms, where they took the teachers outside to notify them, the family sources said. When the teachers returned to their classes, they asked if anyone had relatives working at the Trade Center.

"They made it seem like part of a lesson," the sources said. "And when the youngsters left the classroom, they were escorted to guidance counselors, etc. They were asked to participate in a group activity while school officials contacted parents, many of who were on their way to the schools to pick up their children.

While the schools were trying to protect students from horrible news – that a relative may have been trapped inside the buildings – the classes began lessons on terrorism and its deadly effects.