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When August arrives there's no better place to be than the Scottish capital. The city of Edinburgh is transformed for the festival season, and with performers descending from all over the world, it's no surprise the city is buzzing with energy all month long.
Heading to Edinburgh? Hire a car and do it on your schedule, using our top tips to help you dodge the crowds and get the most out of the famous Fringe Festival in style…
Don't sell out
The most sought-after comedy and theatre gigs will sell out quickly, particularly if the act has received some four star reviews in a trusted festival guide. Luckily, there's a way to work around it. If there's a show you're desperate to see but is all sold out, try calling the venue directly or checking at the box office just before the show. Most acts and venues will set aside a handful of press tickets just in case a journalist or friend of a performer shows up – any unused tickets will be re-released for sale sometimes as close to an hour before the gig begins.
Find cheap tickets
For discounted tickets, make sure you check out the Half Price Hut. Each day, tickets from shows across the city will go on sale for half price for performances that day – everything from comedy, theatre and dance to children's shows become available. If your goal is to see as much as you possibly can while you're in Edinburgh, the Half Price Hut is for you. This year, its headquarters are on the Mound, located just off Princes Street beside the National Gallery. It's open every morning from 10am, and this year is included on the handy Fringe 2014 app (well worth downloading) so you can check out what shows are participating in this special offer.
Go for free
Running alongside the more familiar Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the Free Fringe. You can catch live performances for free around the clock for the entire month of August – magic, music, spoken word, comedy and improv are all on show, and to get involved all you need to do is turn up and get in line. Best to turn up early though – these performances are extremely popular with festival-goers and the most popular performers regularly fill every seat in the house.
Relax in a secret garden
After a long day of show-going, the last thing you want is to fight the crowds just to get a seat or a bite to eat. Away from the well-worn tourist trail there are plenty of exciting pop-up bars and restaurants off the beaten path if you know where to look. Just around the corner from the festival hub of Assembly George Square and the Udderbelly is the Tanqueray Secret Gin Garden – located at the back of 56 North. There are plenty of seats in this charming outdoor space, and hidden away from the busy street it's safely off the radar of most other festival-goers.
If you fancy living in luxury, the Pommery Champagne Bar is just the ticket. Hidden in plain sight on the Royal Mile, the Signet Library has been transformed for the festival season, offering visitors a calm space to relax and enjoy a glass of bubbly or a bite to eat from the delicious menu. To complete the experience, hire a prestige car and traverse the capital in style.
Sneak outside the city
Edinburgh's city centre isn't the only destination for a bit of culture this month. Events like the Fringe by the Sea in North Berwick offer the opportunity to slip away from the crowds and explore this beautiful seaside town. Only 40 minutes from the city, you can grab a hire car in Edinburgh and enjoy the stunning coastal drive. When you get there, the festival's packed programme of music, comedy, theatre and much more has plenty waiting to entertain you.
Do you have any Fringe Festival hacks? Let us know in the comments below.
Travelling to Scotland? Check out our other guides:
The Outsider's Guide to Edinburgh
Scotland's West Coast – Home of the Commonwealth Games
Why you should spend summer in Scotland


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Whilst the vast majority of the recommendations are focused on corporate tax and transfer pricing, there are also specific proposals in respect of indirect tax. Action 1 which focuses on the digital economy, contains specific references to BEPS issues arising with respect to indirect taxation, as follows:
- B2C supplies;
- remote digital supplies to exempt businesses / remote digital supplies to multi-location enterprises; and
- VAT/GST on low value imports.
- The place of supply for B2C services should follow the destination principle, i.e. collection of VAT on B2C transactions in the customer location. To support this change, a simplified registration and compliance regime, similar to the EU Mini One Stop Shop, should be put in place for non-resident suppliers. This is likely to increase the number of local VAT registrations and VAT liabilities.
- For B2B 'remote digital' supplies, the place of supply should be where the customer's business establishment is located (where a business is established in more than one jurisdiction, taxation should accrue where the establishment using the service is located), with a requirement to apply a reverse charge. PwC: Adapting to changing environments: BEPS & VAT - Tax

subset: commoncrawl


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360 Cannon
Played 4620 times
360 Cannon game information:
Death war between you and a great army force in the world. You are having the top 360 canon in the world. Destroy all your enemies in each level to get rewards and awards. You have to destroy enemy Soldiers, Tanks, Ships, Flights etc. Destroy enemy with different powers using your 360 canon. Finish all the enemies within given time duration to move on further levels. The remaining time will be calculated as your extra score. Upgrade your canon with your bonus score. Blast the wave after wave of enemies that are attacking in all the 360 directions.
How to play:
Use mouse to shoot the enemies and spacebar to activate laser powers
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B & R Custom Pits accepts: cash, personal checks (for deposit only),
cashier's checks, & most credit cards.
A Fifty Percent (50%) non-refundable downpayment
is required for all orders not in stock.
Lay - away is available.
Please call or email us for inventory status
Prices are subject to change without Notice


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My neighbor mentioned to me that she would be hosting/attending a few events in the near future and she might want to order some cupcakes. Then she asked if I could make the cupcakes gluten-free (GF). Well…I'm sure I can, but I've never done any GF baking before and I honestly don't know anything about it.
So I Googled around looking for recipes and trying to get a handle on the ingredients common in GF baking. Most regular cake recipes have the same basic ingredients: butter, sugar, eggs, flavoring, flour, leavener, salt, liquid (like milk or water). Luckily, all of those ingredients are already GF except for the flour (and some leaveners are not GF, but many are). I found in my search for recipes that many GF recipes replaced the normal white or cake flour with a GF flour mixture plus xanthan gum as a binder.
I chose a really simple recipe to experiment with – it simply called for a GF flour instead of a normal flour and did not call for xanthan gum. After a tip from a friend on Facebook, Caelan and I headed to the organic section of our grocery store in search of an all-purpose GF flour. I was utterly overwhelmed when I saw all the options. They had every different kind of flour you could imagine. Or, more accurately, they had every different kind of flour I had never heard of: rice flour, potato flour, tapioca flour, bean flour, quinoa flour, spelt flour, etc. But I didn't actually see an all-purpose flour (even though such a thing does exist and I've now learned that it is usually a mix of some of the aforementioned flours). Not wanting to buy 5 different bags of flour (and I would seriously have no idea which ones to choose anyway), I grabbed a bag of brown rice flour and was on my way.
I mixed up a 1/4 batch (6 cupcakes) of this recipe for GF chocolate cupcakes. They looked like regular cupcakes. The batter was similar to regular cake batter. They appeared to bake like regular cupcakes (though for a little bit longer). And when they were all done and I iced them with a chocolate buttercream, they tasted pretty much like regular cupcakes. They were slightly drier and crumbier but if someone just gave me this cupcake to eat and didn't tell me it was GF, I wouldn't know. So I call it a success 🙂
Next time, I am going to experiment with a vanilla cupcake recipe. The ones I found in my Google search pretty much always called for xanthan gum. Though that was available in my grocery store, I really didn't want to spend $12 on an 8oz bag that would last me 500 years. I think I may try to find a smaller quantity from my BFF (Amazon).


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Chick-fil-A is a privately owned and family-operated fast-serve restaurant specializing in chicken-based dishes. With a goal to "Be America's Best Quick-Service Restaurant," Chick-fil-A has steadily grown its brand, expanding from the American South, its base, to a nationwide chain with more than 1,500 locations in 39 states and annual sales of $3.9 billion. Chick-fil-A restaurants offer a large menu, something for everyone in the family, such as classic chicken sandwiches, salads and wraps, sides, desserts and breakfast selections. With its emphasis on family, and its early reputation for outspoken Christian values, Chick-fil-A has attracted broad American appeal.
Facts & Figures
Liquid capital required
$280,725 - $814,650
Franchise fee
Units in operation
Chick-fil-A actively seeks franchisees, and invites accepted new owners to an extensive, multi-week training program before opening a restaurant, as well as offering follow-up support. The company is planning to expand particularly across the American Midwest and Mountain states, as well as in the Northeast, California, Texas and Florida. As a stipulation with owning a Chick-fil-A, the restaurants must remain closed on Sundays.
Chick-fil-A Franchise Opportunities – History
Chick-fil-A's story goes back to 1946, when Truett Cathy opened his first restaurant, The Dwarf Grill, in Hapeville, Georgia. In the early 1960s he founded Chick-fil-A, opening the restaurants in shopping malls beginning in 1967. Since then, Chick-fil-A has grown into the second largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States.
Chick-fil-A Franchise Cost / Initial Investment / Chick-fil-A Franchise Income
Chick-fil-A has a distinct franchise business model. The franchise fee to join Chick-fil-A is a very accessible $5,000. Chick-fil-A corporation will pay for land, construction and equipment for a restaurant, then rent it to the franchisee for 15% of sales plus 50% of pretax profit remaining. Therefore, startup costs are very low, in exchange for higher-than-usual monthly payments.
Chick-fil-A Business Opportunities: Other Information
Chick-fil-A has been a title sponsor of the college football Peach Bowl in Atlanta since 1994, which has officially become the Chick-fil-A Bowl. The restaurant brand's motto, "Eat mor chikin," and its comical Cow Campaign has been very effective in promoting the restaurant.
See what Chick-fil-A is saying
Is this your franchise?
Contact us to unlock your franchise's page to add content and get leads!


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Families in Christ
We have hosted annual events to create valentines to send to military troops stationed abroad, arranged fun movie outings, hosted the end of church program year barbeque in May. In September we have hosted pizza lunches and hayrides at Pine Tree Apple Orchard. In November we have coordinated blanket drives to benefit clients of Bridging, Inc.
All ideas and offers to help are welcome!


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We like to think of ourselves as a small but perfectly formed real estate agency. Working to get the exposure, knowledge and expertise you would expect from a large agency, but the service you will only receive from a smaller business built around 100% client focus.
7th and San Carlos Carmel-By-The-Sea, CA 93921, USA


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8701 Camino Media | Bakersfield, Ca
Payment Options
For your convenience, we accept cash, personal checks, money orders, and all major credit cards. We also accept Care Credit, which offers our patients no interest financing options. Payment is expected at the time services are performed. When more extensive dental care is necessary, financial arrangements can be made with our office.
Capital Dental Group is pleased to offer our patients the ability to easily pay their bill online. Please visit www.patientpaycenter.com and enter our statement code KUXY75 when paying your bill. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your bill, please contact us.


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How to Boost Your Local SEO
Even though you are focusing on the local market, you should have an online presence. Today, customers are finding products and services by checking local search engine results. So, if your business is not ranked high in these results, your business will suffer.
Here are some tips to boost your local SEO that will help you leave your competition behind and get more customers.
Optimize Your Website and Content
It is important to have high quality content, not just for search engines, but also for your website visitors. Keyword stuffing is no longer a good way to achieve high search engine ranking; plus your website visitors will not appreciate it. Begin by researching the right keywords. You want keywords that are relevant to your business, but do not have extreme competition. Look for keywords with medium competition. In other words, try and incorporate head terms and corresponding long tail keywords naturally into your content. If you have done research on your customer base, you should not have a problem identifying keywords that they tend to use when looking for a business similar to yours.
Make it a point to include the keyword and key-phrases in the meta title and meta tag description. This also holds true for any image you have added onto your site.
Since you are targeting local customers, your Contact Us page is one of the most important webpages. Mention the name of your business, the address, primary phone number and go sitemap to let local search engines access your website more easily.
Get Listed on Google Places and Local Google+ Pages
Google Places display information on Google search and Google Maps, so that your business can be found more easily by prospective customers. As a result, your customers get access to vital information, such as the address of your business, opening hours and contact details.
Local Google+ facilitates communication between you and your customers and helps your business get more exposure and credibility. When you respond to customer reviews and upload updates to your customers, it opens a two-way communication channel, thereby personalizing the contact you have with your customers.
Get Local Citations
Local citations are extremely important for local search engine rankings. You can opt for structured citations by going in for listing sites, such as yelp.com, yellowpages.com and superpages.com; or unstructured situations, such as blogs, event listing websites, newspaper sites and job sites. Both types of citations are crucial for local search rankings.
Request Customers for Real Reviews
When you do business with a customer, ask them politely to leave a review on your Local Google + page, Yelp page, Facebook page or Superpages page. Make sure you are given multiple options to your customers, but get just one review, so that they are not tempted to copy and paste the review across multiple sites. Remember, the key is to get genuine reviews, be it positive or negative. Make sure you take time to respond to the review and this will boost your credibility.
Off Page SEO
You also need to focus on optimizing your business beyond the website. This will help to maximize the performance of your website in local search engines for targeted keywords. Link building is the way forward. You can do off page SEO by creating interactive and interesting social media profiles, blogging as a guest blogger on credible and authority sites, forum posting and directory listing.
When you are trying to get back links, make sure they are from authority sites, as this will help boost your credibility as well as local search engine rankings.


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The Lion King
|MPAA Rating:
What's this?
|PG Reason for Rating...
|Donald Glover,Beyonce Knowles,James Earl Jones,Chiwetel Ejiofor,Alfre Woodard,John Oliver
|Jon Favreau
|Movie Studio:
|Walt Disney Pictures
|Other Genres:
|Run Time:
|118 Minutes
|Release Date:
|Simba idolises his father, King Mufasa, and takes to heart his own royal destiny. But not everyone in the kingdom celebrates the new cub's arrival. Scar, Mufasa's brother and former heir to the throne has plans of his own. The battle for Pride Rock is ravaged with betrayal, tragedy and drama, ultimately resulting in Simba's exile. With help from a curious pair of newfound friends, Simba will have to figure out how to grow up and take back what is rightfully his.
|Movie Link:
|The Lion King
Below is a list of movies and their upcoming national release dates. Please click on the poster to get additional information about any movie listed. We strive to show all of your favorite motion pictures. However, sometimes it is not feasible for us to play every new release. Please see the Coming Attractions section at the bottom of our home page to see the movies we have scheduled to play at this theatre. Please be aware that our bookings are subject to change at any time.
Ticket Pricing
All shows before 6:00 PM
NEW Early Bird (Applies to shows starting before noon): $5.00 (Does not apply to midnight shows)
All Admissions (Applies to shows starting between noon and 5:59 pm): $6.75
3D Surcharge: $2.00
All shows 6:00 PM and after
Adults: $8.75
Seniors (62+): $6.75
Children (11 and under): $6.75
Military: $7.75 (with valid military ID)
3D Surcharge: $2.00
Bargain Day - Tuesday: $5.00 (2D), $7.00 (3D) (Bargain Day pricing may not be available for all films - film company restrictions may apply. See cashier for details.)
|Ticket prices and showtimes are subject to change without notice. Special events and concerts pricing will be different from above. Please see event showtimes for pricing.


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Tracking conversions from customer notifications
Back in Stock now supports tracking the value of orders placed by customers receiving Back in Stock notifications.
This valuable data helps you measure how well your customer notifications are performing for your business. A conversion occurs when a customer clicks a link from a Back in Stock email notification and subsequently places an order. The total value of the order is recorded as a conversion and appears in your Back in Stock dashboard.
This feature is included on all Back in Stock accounts for the Shopify platform.
More information on conversion tracking
How are conversions tracked?
Back in Stock includes an URL parameter in the customer notification template. Customers who click a link to the store from a Back in Stock email will be identified as arriving from a Back in Stock notification. Any order placed in the next 30 days will be recorded as a conversion.
Can I access the order number or date of the order for a conversions?
When Back in Stock identifies a customer notification converted into an order we store the order amount, date, and order number. The order amount is included in your Customers report. The order data and order number are included when you export your customers report to a CSV file. (See: How to export customer notifications)
Are third-party cookies used for conversion tracking?
No, only a first-party cookie is used. When the customer lands on a store page from a Back in Stock email link a first-party cookie is created with an expiry of 30 days. This is used in the checkout process to tag the order.
Will past orders be included?
No, we are only able to identify conversions from orders placed after conversion tracking has been enabled.
Can I change how conversions are measured?
No, not currently but please send an email to [email protected] with your suggestions so it can be considered for a future update.


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Welcoming career seekers in the Bay Area to the 17th Annual Diversity Employment Day Career Fair at the County of Alameda Training and Education Center. We invite you to interview with the Bay Area's top employers looking to fill hundreds of positions. Employment opportunities include: finance, sales, management, healthcare, engineering, and more! Join us on January 26, 2017 at 11AM to find the job you've been waiting for!
Event Details:
Date: Thursday, January 26, 2017
Location: County of Alameda Training & Education Center
Address: 125 12th Street, Oakland CA 94607


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Export data from a data page to Excel
Discussion posted by pauls1Pega on July 29, 2019
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Reply posted on November 21, 2019 by Dinesha1412
HI Pauls, I configured like as you mentioned. but i was using MSOFileTransferButton for download.But Actually my requirement is to just download the excel. Since the images are not clear i couldn't download the file. But when i ran the activity it...


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A nationally recognized leader in sustainability, Tom Paladino is the founder and CEO of Paladino and Company, an award-winning green building consulting firm based in Seattle, WA. Drawing upon his technical expertise in both architecture and engineering, Tom has integrated building science and business value into the 1,000 green and LEED projects his firm has consulted.
Utilizing his 20 years of experience guiding real estate owners, operators and developers, Tom works with clients to define desired business results and then develop the sustainable strategies to achieve those results across a client's entire real estate portfolio, in order to prove the business case for green building and improve asset value.
Credited with creating the widely adopted Eco Charrette method, Tom and his firm has played a significant role in the development of the LEED® Green Building Rating System since its inception, most recently serving as technical editors of the LEED v4 Reference Guides. Tom served as the Vice Chair of the USGBC Board and co-chair of the LEED Steering Committee, and was honored with USGBC's Leadership Award in 2014. As a former chair of the Seattle AIA Committee on the Environment, Tom helped found the City of Seattle Sustainable Building Task Force, a regional initiative that ultimately led to the adoption of LEED by the City of Seattle, the first city in the country to do so. Tom also served as a GSA National Design Excellence Peer.


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In late February or early March, Ali was in his apartment in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, when he got a phone call from a local police officer. "Get dressed, we have to take you in," the man said. Ali took the SIM card out of his cell phone, inserted it into a spare, blank phone, and hid his regular handset. By the time he was done, two police officers were knocking on the door. They put him in a car and drove to a nearby street, where two cars were waiting. The men put him in the back seat of one of the vehicles and got in with him.
"They pushed my head down so I wouldn't see where we were going," Ali, who is around thirty years old, told me. Soon, the car pulled up to an unmarked building. Ali saw two men he knew standing in front: "Their faces were all swollen from beatings. One of them said, 'I told them everything.' "
Ali was taken into a room. "Their boss is sitting there, sprawled out," he continued. "He says, 'You take it up the ass.' I start denying everything." The boss asked Ali about another man, whom Ali knew to be gay. That morning, the man had called Ali and suggested that they meet. "I knew that if they tortured him he'd break and give everyone up," Ali told me. He said to the police that he knew the man only as a business client. "They started beating me. I kept saying that I don't know anything, I've never even heard that there were gays here in Chechnya."
The men took him down to a basement, where there was a large central room, with cells and small chambers around the perimeter. In one chamber, officers dunked prisoners' heads in a vat of ice water; in another, they attached clothespin-like clips wired to a large battery to earlobes or extremities. The cells held men and women, who screamed as they were beaten with fists and batons.
The jailers tortured Ali and then brought him back upstairs to face the boss, then back to the basement for more torture, then back up. Each time Ali was interrogated, the boss demanded that he admit that he was homosexual and give him the names of other gay men. Each time, Ali denied everything. He knew that his phone would yield no information.
Ali lost track of time. Eventually, he was thrown into a cell and left there without food. Ali counted the days by the number of times he was allowed to perform his ablutions, then to drink the dirty water. He had seven drinks of water in all, which means that his captivity lasted more than a week.
Then Ali was released, and instructed not to turn off his phone; his jailers told him to expect a call.
It wasn't the first time Ali had been attacked because of his sexuality. On three occasions, he had been entrapped, beaten, and robbed. Most of the gay Chechen men I have interviewed have stories of being entrapped—usually by someone they met online—and beaten, sometimes raped, and later often blackmailed.
What occurred in Chechnya in late winter went beyond beatings and blackmail. Ali appears to have been one of the first men to be swept up in the recent wave of detentions of gay men, carried out on orders from the top of the Chechen government. Those who were brought in and later released issued dire warnings on Russian social networks, in closed groups for Chechen gay men.
On April 1st, Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper with a long and distinguished track record of reporting from Chechnya, published an article claiming that it had been able to confirm more than a hundred arrests and three deaths resulting from this sweep. A report by Human Rights Watch, issued in late May, suggests that the raids began in the last week of February, when a young man was arrested for using drugs. The police found photographs of men on his phone, along with social-media posts and messages that led them to identify him as gay.
Under torture, the man reportedly gave up the names of others, and the police began arresting them. Some media reports have claimed that Chechnya has confined gay men to "concentration camps," but survivors' testimony points to the existence of half a dozen detention facilities, where men are held for as long as a couple of weeks. In many cases, they are tortured. Some have been released, but others have been handed over to their relatives, who, according to survivors, are expected to kill gay family members. Following media reports of the purges, the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, declared that gay Chechens did not exist. Kremlin spokespeople have for the most part dismissed or laughed off questions about the violence. One spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested to a Finnish journalist that Kadyrov might organize a tour so that he could see for himself whether gays existed in Chechnya—an offer that sounded like a threat.
Chechnya is one of the eighty-five constituent regions of the Russian Federation, and is ostensibly a secular state. In reality, it is a state within a state, run by Kadyrov, who is supported by Vladimir Putin. Kadyrov's Chechnya is a more extreme version of Russia: a mafia state that uses religious rhetoric to enforce control over its citizens. Putin draws some of his authority from a close relationship to the Russian Orthodox Church; Kadyrov relies on a crude homespun version of Islam. Behavior including drinking (which is technically legal), drug use (which is not), women dressing immodestly, women smoking, contact of any sort between unmarried women and men, and open sexual expression is policed by law enforcement and by extended families.
Islam has served as Chechnya's cultural glue for the past two decades. In the early nineteen-nineties, Chechens overwhelmingly supported a secular movement to secede from Russia. Moscow responded by waging war, which, between 1994 and 1996, decimated the region. The next wave of resistance coalesced around the mosques. When Russia launched its second offensive on Chechnya, in 1999, it faced men who identified as Islamic fighters. The pro-Moscow government that was finally installed in the aughts has harnessed much of the religious rhetoric to fortify its own power, while also persecuting anyone who identifies with strands of Islam that it deems radical. While many Chechens have only the most superficial familiarity with the Quran, their daily lives have been profoundly transformed: virtually all women now cover themselves, drinking has been severely restricted, and any hint of sexual expression has been banished.
L.G.B.T. people have been a prime target of Kremlin propaganda since 2012. That year, Putin returned to the Presidency for a third term, amid mass protests. In response, the Kremlin started queer-baiting the protesters. A succession of cities and, eventually, the federal parliament passed bills banning "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations among minors." Television presenters raged against imaginary homosexual recruiters of Russian children. (At the time, I was living in Russia and was active in protests against the regime and the anti-gay legislation.) Anti-gay violence became so pervasive that a café in central Moscow posted a notice saying that attacks would not be tolerated on the premises.
Two days before I interviewed Ali, a Russian businessman named German Sterligov opened his fifth gourmet food shop in Moscow; he also has four in St. Petersburg. All display a sign that says "No fags allowed." Russian media have generally paid more attention to the stores' high prices than to the signs at their entrances, but, on the occasion of the latest opening, a popular online magazine based in Moscow published a column calling the sign out as a poor attempt at a joke. The piece, signed by a well-known book critic, a straight married woman, closed with the words "Sorry to go all humorless on you, faggots."
Vigilante groups that entrap gay men online and then humiliate and torture them on camera now operate with impunity in many cities. According to Immigration Equality, an American organization that helps L.G.B.T. asylum seekers, Russia has consistently been among the top five countries from which their clients flee; hundreds of people have sought asylum in the United States and in Western Europe.
After Ali was released, he went home to his wife, who was pregnant, and their two small children. On the way, he spent the money he had in his pocket—six hundred rubles, a little more than ten dollars—on a bag of candy. When he got home, his four-year-old daughter, whose usual greeting was "What have you brought me?," didn't even look at it. "We just spent two hours sitting there holding each other and crying," Ali told me, and cried again. He told his wife that the police had detained him because they were looking for someone they thought he might know. The story was true, as far as it went.
Many of the men caught up in the sweep are married. There is no blueprint for being gay in Chechnya—most of the men I interviewed talked about times when they were convinced that there were no other gay men in their land—and the pressure to marry and have children is immense. Ali had always wanted children. After his first wife discovered that she was infertile, she left him. In his second marriage, he told me, "Allah gave me children." Ali hoped that having a family "would make me a man." He even thought that it had worked, because he had no trouble having sex with his wife. But when he tried to test his manliness by having affairs with other women he found himself unable to perform. "What do you think this means?" he asked me. "Why don't I have a problem sleeping with my wife?"
Ali was careful to protect his family. "I only ever hooked up," he told me. "I never had a relationship, even though I really wanted to. Because I knew that then there would be text messages and all that. There was this time when this man sat on a bench in front of my apartment building for days on end, waiting for me to come to him, and I so wanted to, but I knew I couldn't." Ali was protecting himself, too: "Many of my relatives are in law enforcement. My brother would have slaughtered me like a chicken."
Ali didn't consider leaving Chechnya. He and his family moved to a new apartment—the move was planned—and he returned to work. A few weeks later, a neighbor from their old apartment building called to say that law enforcement had come looking for Ali. Then he got a phone call from a gay friend, Nokhcho, who said that a mutual friend had been apprehended, and had given up Ali's name and address. Nokhcho said, "You have to get out of here."
Ali told his wife that he had to go to work. Then he drove two and a half hours to the neighboring region of Dagestan, where the chances of being detained by Chechen law enforcement are lower. "But I couldn't pretend to be at work for days on end," he said. He started coming home for quick meals before leaving again for Dagestan or North Ossetia, another nearby region. "Often, I didn't spend the night at home," he said. "And, when I was home, I was afraid to go out to the store, and afraid not to, because how was I going to explain it to my wife? It was clear that they'd get me."
Nokhcho is twenty-eight, university-educated, and uncommonly well spoken. Like Ali, he has a dark trimmed beard and light eyes. Unlike Ali, who has a paunch and came to our meeting wearing track pants, Nokhcho has a gym body and wore a tight T-shirt and jeans that looked made for a dance floor in Chelsea.
Nokhcho has managed to maintain a relationship with a man. His partner of five years is a distant relative—though, in Chechnya, no relative is really distant. Families have vast networks across cities and countries; they take care of one another, fostering orphaned children, providing shelter to relations for virtually any reason, and forming businesses together. The system of mutual interdependence has insured the survival of the Chechen people in spite of the violence of the past. Family has always been central to Nokhcho's life. "I love all those family dinners, all those weekends with the family," he said. "Because my partner and I are related, we are treated like we are brothers, so during all the holidays and family occasions we get to be together." They even shared the responsibility for an elderly grandmother—technically, she was the grandmother of only one of them, but in the family structure she belonged to both.
But families also act as enforcers of ever more brutally interpreted traditional law. Family members carry out so-called honor killings of women who are perceived to have transgressed by having inappropriate contact with men, and they will murder men who have brought shame upon the clan. Nokhcho told me, "If my family found out . . . And I'm not just talking about men—I mean, there are women in my family who would kill me."
Nokhcho was detained in late March. He managed to talk his way out of captivity, but he was sure that it was a temporary reprieve. As a precaution, he cut off contact with all his gay friends—his "girlfriends," he calls them—except for Ali.
In early April, Nokhcho got a call from an old "girlfriend" who had moved to Western Europe. He told Nokhcho to call the Russian L.G.B.T. Network, a St. Petersburg-based organization whose small staff coördinates the work of several dozen even smaller groups around the country. The Network has set up a hotline and an evacuation plan for gay Chechens. Nokhcho said, "I'm, like, 'Is this a setup?' "
Nokhcho called the number and was told that the group could help him leave Chechnya, shelter him in Moscow, and eventually get him out of Russia. Nokhcho called Ali. The two men had been close friends for years, long enough to continue confiding in each other even as their acquaintances disappeared, each presumably given up by someone he had once trusted. Nokhcho told Ali about the L.G.B.T. Network. Ali said, "This is a setup." But they had no other options.
The two men sent the L.G.B.T. Network their personal information, and the group bought them airplane tickets to Moscow. Ali told his wife that he had a job in a large Russian city. Nokhcho's partner stayed behind to continue caring for their grandmother.
In May, a group of Russian activists who work with the L.G.B.T. Network introduced me to a number of men who are in hiding in Moscow; eight of them sat down for interviews with me. As anti-gay violence has spread across the country, the Network has tried not only to document the situation but also to provide some limited services to victims. Staffers set up a hotline for reporting attacks and on two occasions organized what they call "evacuations," in which they help people threatened by anti-gay violence to move to larger, and theoretically safer, cities in Russia. But they had little experience working with any of the predominantly Muslim republics of the North Caucasus, which the activists, like most Russians, perceive as a strange and separate world.
When activists heard about the purges in Chechnya, the Network set up an e-mail address and a phone number for Chechens to call. "These middle-of-the-night calls started pouring in," the person who answers the calls told me. The staffer, who asked not to be identified, had never been to Chechnya and knew little about it before the nighttime calls began. The conversations went on for hours, "because people are trying to figure out if they can trust me."
The Moscow operation is run by a small team, including two lesbians, Olga Baranova and Tatiana Vinnichenko. At the time I visited, they had helped thirty-five people leave Chechnya. Another ten had left independently and asked for help once they had done so. That number continued to grow after I left Moscow. There were also four people with whom the activists had lost contact after buying their tickets.
They didn't have much of a plan for what they would do with the Chechens after they arrived, because it was assumed that they would quickly leave Russia. They did not realize that, even under the best of circumstances, refugee visas to safe countries would take months to process. More than forty Chechens are now living in temporary housing arranged by Russian activists.
Baranova is a thirty-nine-year-old former advertising executive who went freelance six years ago, when she had a baby. A year later, she decided that she wanted to spend time with other same-sex families with children. The Kremlin's anti-gay campaign was getting under way, so Baranova started an L.G.B.T. community center in Moscow.
The center, which opened in late 2015, occupies three plain rooms along a single hallway in a dilapidated office building in central Moscow. There are film screenings, support groups, and two choirs, one for transgender women learning to reach the higher registers and one for casual singers. Now the center also serves as the Moscow headquarters for the Chechen rescue-and-shelter operation. The team includes an administrative assistant, who dispenses aid money raised by people all over the world; a psychotherapist, who works with the escapees; a psychologist, who takes down detailed testimony that will, it is hoped, someday be used to prosecute those responsible for the violence; and a medical coördinator. The escapees' medical needs are vast. Some require care for injuries sustained in captivity; one man arrived with a shattered jaw, which had to be wired shut. Others were unable to seek routine care in Chechnya, for fear of being outed. Baranova said that a number of the Chechens are infected with H.I.V. Most of them have learned their status only since arriving in Moscow.
Baranova has short brown hair and a round face. She uses a kick scooter and a motorized scooter to visit the Chechens, who live in rented apartments within roughly two miles of one another. She comes across as a no-nonsense lesbian den mother. She arrives, greets the men with hugs and kisses and a tender "Privet, moy khoroshiy"—roughly, "Hello, my darling"—and quickly proceeds to go through a long checklist. Are the men taking their meds? Are they following the safety and security protocols? The Chechen survivors fear that Kadyrov's forces—Kadyrovtsy, as they call them—will track them down. Baranova strongly encourages the men to discard their old phones and use only SIM cards and handsets issued to them in Moscow. She sets up V.P.N. Internet connections, to insure that their online communications are not traceable.
Once the team realized that they would be sheltering Chechen survivors indefinitely, they established a system that includes what they call "quarantine." A new arrival from Chechnya is housed alone in an apartment. The staff assess the man's mental state, physical condition, and, especially, his trustworthiness, by checking his story against those of others. Sometimes they also try to determine whether the man has sexual connections to any others in their care—the most direct way of confirming that someone is gay. Still, no one uses his real name. The men are instructed to call one another and the activists by nicknames. (As an extra precaution, the names used to identify the men in this article are different from these nicknames.) Face-to-face contact is limited to no more than half a dozen people. When I talked to the men's therapist, he complained that he has to work with the survivors individually, even though group therapy would be his preferred method for addressing their trauma.
Some of the safety measures are hard won. In May, Baranova was helping a lesbian who came to Moscow with her husband, a gay man. Marrying another gay person has long been a way for queers in Chechnya to create a life. But the relationship was strained, and once they left Chechnya they planned to separate. The woman was terrified that her family would pursue her, so Baranova arranged for her to leave Russia. A few hours before Baranova was scheduled to pick the woman up to go to the airport, she got a voice message from her. She still has it stored on her phone, and I got the impression that she had listened to it repeatedly. It began with ambient noise. "See, it sounds like she is on her way somewhere," Baranova said.
"I'm going to try to get rid of this number," the woman said. "But, if you get any calls from it, please don't take them. Goodbye."
Baranova went to the meeting place that she and the woman had arranged, and waited for several hours. The woman never showed up. In mid-June, news came that the woman had died in Chechnya, apparently from kidney failure. Her friends assume that she was poisoned by her family.
Human-rights activists say that women have not been targeted in the purge. But, as one activist pointed out to me, this in itself is a measure of men's freedom when compared with women's. Women cannot simply decide to travel outside Chechnya, for work or for leisure. When women are targeted for their sexuality, usually they are unable to escape, even if help is available for them elsewhere.
Vinnichenko, the chair of the Russian L.G.B.T. Network, is forty-four. She has curly red hair and wears wire-rimmed glasses. Until a couple of years ago, she was an associate professor of Russian at the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, in the city of Arkhangelsk, where she also ran the local L.G.B.T. organization, Rakurs, or Viewpoint. In 2012, when the political crackdown began, Vinnichenko was dragged into court on charges of failing to register Rakurs as a "foreign agent." She was also the subject of stories in the local media which alleged that the head of the university, a woman, was intimately involved with Vinnichenko and provided cover for "gay propaganda." After a gay male colleague was fired, Vinnichenko quit, and moved to Moscow to live with her longtime partner, a crane operator.
In an upbeat way, Vinnichenko told me about her heart breaking over and over again since she started working with the Chechen men, when she heard their stories, witnessed their tears, and cried her own—and also about experiencing intense shame. "The first guy I was supposed to help, we met in the street, and he comes wearing a hoodie, the hood pulled over his face so that all I can see is the beard," she said. "It's one of those beards—no mustache, but bushy around the chin." Vinnichenko circled her own jaw with her hand. "And we get in the elevator, the doors close, I'm looking at his beard and thinking, It would only take a second for him to stab me to death, and no one would ever know. That's how strong my own Islamophobia was. And, of course, he turned out to be the sweetest kid."
The embassies of Western countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, are among Russian L.G.B.T. organizations' greatest sources of support, both rhetorical and financial. "We are always working with the embassies—they are constantly calling and inquiring about our work," Vinnichenko told me. "So I was sure that when this happened, practically a genocide—well, it's not a genocide precisely but a crime against humanity—we would get humanitarian visas right away." The activists had only a vague awareness of the West's crisis of empathy toward refugees, especially Muslim ones. Most embassy representatives said immediately that their countries would be unable to help.
Vinnichenko recently accompanied a Chechen man to an interview at the consulate of a Western European country that had promised to issue several visas. The interview seemed to go well, but when it was over, Vinnichenko told me, an official said to her that the fact that the man was H.I.V.-positive was a problem. "He said, 'You know, it's an incurable disease. Who is going to pay for his treatment—our taxpayers?' "
Azamat, a twenty-five-year-old, had a rule against meeting other Chechen men. He split his time between Grozny and Moscow, where he worked as a security guard and, later, as a repairman. He met men only in Moscow, and only in crowded places.
Once, however, he made an exception. He saw that one of the members of a closed online community for gay Chechens used "Marcel Proust" as his social-network pseudonym. Azamat loved Proust. The man's name was Shamil, and he lived in Grozny and St. Petersburg, where he studied literature. He and Azamat also shared an obsession with the Beats, especially with Jack Kerouac.
In mid-March, Azamat was out with a friend in Grozny when he got a phone call: "They said, 'There is a dead body and he had your number in his phone. Come help identify him.' " A car arrived, and Azamat was handcuffed and taken to a compound that he described as a "red brick castle behind a green gate."
He was led down a hallway lined with men; he estimated that there were about forty of them, between the ages of sixteen and fifty, most of them in handcuffs. In an office, two men asked Azamat if he knew anyone named Shamil. He said that he had some cousins named Shamil. They showed him a picture of the man who called himself Marcel Proust and asked why Azamat's contact information had been found in Shamil's phone. He recalled, "I told them that the guy used to repair phones and I'd had a Samsung with a cracked screen that I'd taken to him." In a feint of misdirection, Azamat pretended to assume that the men were accusing him not of being gay but of being an adherent of the Islamic State. He figured that his apparent failure to understand would be his best alibi: "I told them that I served in the Army and that my brother is a Kadyrov fighter and I smoke once in a while, so I'd make a crappy Wahhabi. Everything I was saying was true. I mentioned that my cousin was killed by jihadists." Finally, the men let Azamat go, warning him that he would be summoned again.
They came for him the following day. Azamat was outside his apartment building with some friends. Everyone was told to take out their phones and unlock the screens. Azamat quietly stepped away from the group and ran. He went to the house of a man who had been interned in a Russian military camp during the second war in Chechnya and had shared a cell with Azamat's cousin. "I tell him, 'They took my phone and I have ISIS videos and sermons on it,' " Azamat said. " 'Get me out of here.' " The man drove him to a town outside Chechnya, where Azamat got on a bus to Moscow, a twenty-seven-hour ride. There, he stayed with a close friend, a straight Russian man who asked no questions and gave Azamat some clothes. After two and a half weeks, Azamat cautiously made contact with the L.G.B.T. Network.
"Some people say that Shamil is a snitch," he told me. "But I don't think that's him. But he is not among those who've contacted the Network, either. I suspect that he is dead."
When I met Azamat, he was about to fly to Paris—the recipient of the first visa to a Western country that Vinnichenko had been able to secure. All he had with him was a small backpack, which was more than he had when he ran from Chechnya. A representative of a French L.G.B.T. organization would be picking him up at the airport in Paris.
The following afternoon, I met Baranova at a Moscow courthouse. Activists around the world had collected hundreds of thousands of signatures on a petition demanding an investigation into the Chechen purges. On May 11th, a small group had set out on a march to deliver the petition to the federal prosecutor's office in Moscow. The document was on a thumb drive, but several people carried large empty boxes to symbolize the signatures. The marchers were immediately picked up by police. Now, a few weeks later, two activists had been charged with "organizing an unsanctioned action." (In the end, one was fined ten thousand rubles, or just under two hundred dollars, and the other case was continued.)
Baranova was worried that Azamat hadn't shown up at the airport in Paris. He had texted that he was on the plane, but in the morning the Parisian activist texted that Azamat never cleared customs. Finally, Azamat wrote that he had not been allowed through passport control in Paris. "If you only knew how they are behaving," he wrote. "They are very nearly hitting me. Cops are cops anywhere you go."
"You are about to be saved," Baranova messaged back.
Azamat had been at the Paris airport for about seven hours. The activists had been trying to keep destination countries secret, and when Baranova began getting phone calls from French media she cringed. Secrecy seemed particularly important in the case of France, which has a large Chechen diaspora. But several hours later, when Azamat finally cleared customs, it turned out that he wanted to speak to journalists. They promptly reported that the first gay refugee from Chechnya had arrived on French soil and more would soon follow. There went another security protocol.
Baranova often implores the men not to call home, and is usually frustrated. Most of the escapees arrive saying that they can never trust another Chechen. Yet people start calling their families almost immediately, using the new phones and SIM cards, exposing themselves and others to the danger of being tracked. Faced with the uncertainty of getting a visa to a Western country, some of the Chechen men have even returned to Chechnya. Others have entered into negotiations with their families. In one case, a mother went to Moscow to see her son—they met away from the safe house where he was staying—and begged him to come home. She promised to find him a wife; her other sons, according to Vinnichenko, threatened to kill him. "That's how it works," she concluded. "Some family members want to legalize them, while others want to liquidate them."
And still the survivors call home. How could they not? "Ahead of me a dense fog is swirling, behind me stands an empty cage," the men's therapist said to me, quoting a poem by Osip Mandelstam, from 1912. "First, they have lost their families, and they feel thrown out of life itself because the clan has rejected them. Second, they have had to part with their homes, their belongings, and often with their wives and children." He went on, "But behind the recent trauma lurk the traumas of the past, including the wars." Several of the men I interviewed casually mentioned that, as children, they had been injured by shrapnel or had lost close family members in the wars. Azamat remembered wandering around Grozny with his family as a toddler, looking for a place to live after their house burned down during a bombing. The therapist enumerated the sources of trauma that Chechens had suffered. There was the deportation of 1944, when the entire nation was loaded onto cattle cars and sent to Central Asia—and only about half the population survived. There were the decades of living in exile, and the struggle to return to their land. All of that has made family ever more important as a source of stability and identity.
Ali was having his first gay relationship, with a man he had met in Moscow eight years earlier. "We spent that week in seventh heaven," he told me. When Ali left, he promised to stay in touch, but he knew that he was lying. As soon as he returned home to Chechnya, he changed his cell-phone number. A few days before we met, Ali ran into the man at a gay club in Moscow. "He cried when he saw me," Ali said. "And he has taken me in." The man had travelled with Ali part of the way across town to meet me, but could not come to his safe house, because visitors are not allowed. On the way, the two men stopped at a store. "He saw that I couldn't tear myself away from the rings and the bracelets, and he bought these for me," Ali said. He seemed dazzled by the jewelry he was now wearing: a leather-and-gold bracelet, a silver ring in the shape of a bent nail, and another ring, with a basketweave design. It was chunky, manly jewelry, but, he said, "I'd never get away with this in Chechnya."
Ali cried twice while he talked—when he recalled his reunion with his four-year-old daughter after he was released from detention, and when he described how he imagined his future in the West. He would live openly from now on, he said; he was tired to death of hiding. He planned to call his wife and tell her everything—and if she still wanted to join him he would bring her and the kids to the West. He said that the chance that his wife would decide to join him was twenty per cent, if that.
As I talked to Ali, a twenty-one-year-old Chechen named Abdulla came into the kitchen and said, "I've picked up some lipstick." His lips, framed by a thick black beard, were inexpertly painted a bright red. Abdulla had survived a week of torture and beatings before being released into the custody of his family. Fearful that his father would kill him, he ran away, taking two T-shirts, a pair of pants, and his favorite book, a Russian translation of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." Like several of the men, he was suffering from spontaneous muscle spasms, an apparent aftereffect of torture by electrical current. Abdulla's fingers occasionally curled.
Abdulla told me that he wants to go to Canada. Once he gets there, he said, he will learn English and become a drag performer. He has been cross-dressing in secret since he was a child, and has performed for friends in his apartment in Grozny. But the first thing he is going to do, he said, is shoot a public-service announcement. He had it scripted in his mind.
In the opening scene, a man lies on a dirt floor. He has been beaten, and traces of makeup are visible on his face. He is wearing black leggings and no shirt.
When Abdulla described the second scene, he began using the first person. "The L.G.B.T. community walks in," he said. "They tie up the people who have been humiliating me. Then they lift me up and lead me out."
For the third scene, he used the feminine form of an adjective to refer to himself. "There is a crowd assembled outside, they've come to gawk. And I walk through the crowd. I have blood on my face, but I also have my dignity, and I'm wearing heels. One of the girls has a rainbow flag, and I take it and carry it. They are throwing stones at me, but I just keep walking."
At the end, a limousine is waiting. "I get in, I make one obscene gesture at them—and I am off." ♦


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The Palaszczuk Labor Government's clinical review a number of into serious mental health events has been left in limbo after it was revealed the committee had not met once since the review was announced in May.
Shadow Health Minister Mark McArdle said Labor's failure to act raised questions over the government's commitment to improve the treatment of Queenslanders suffering from a mental illness.
"The review was meant to investigate alleged homicides or alleged attempted homicides involving the mentally ill to examine whether improvements in our health system are required," Mr McArdle said.
"Lately there have been a number of tragic cases which sparked the need for such a review.
"The need for this review particularly hit home for me as I travel to Cairns given the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of the eight children in December last year.
"Critically, it is important to examine the systems in place and the services provided to ensure anyone suffering from a mental illness receives the very best care we can offer.
"The fact the Minister for Health has failed to progress this review in the last five months is appalling."
Mr McArdle said the committee was due to deliver its report to the Government by October but that would now be delayed.
"The Minister's incompetence has meant another four month delay until the final report will be delivered," he said.
"In a further show of disrespect for the importance of this review, the Minister had not even appointed the remainder of the committee until a media outlet started to probe into the progress this month.
"Mental health is not something that should be pushed into the too hard basket.
"The Minister for Health hasn't put enough emphasis on the priority of this review and needs to start doing what he promised in May and get on with the job.
"Queenslanders deserve better than a Government putting an issue as serious as mental health on the back-burner."


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December 14, 2017 – Comcast Newsmakers – Equal and Competitive Pay for Women
Janet Altman on the Competitive Business Advantage of Equal Pay for Women
20% of women in Miami-Dade County still live in poverty. That figure is according to the Florida Commission on the Status of Women, and it's a number that one local organization is hoping to bring back down to zero.
In this edition of Comcast Newsmakers, Janet Altman, Board Chair of The Women's Fund of Miami, discusses how her organization is tackling this challenge.


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From GalleyCat:
"This will be the writers' year, man," Quentin Tarantino cheered as he accepted the Best Original Screenplay prize at the Academy Awards for his film Django Unchained. Screenwriter Chris Terrio won the best adapted screenplay Academy Award for his Argo script.
This morning, GalleyCat editor, Jason Boog, will talk about the screenplay winners along with a team of Oscar experts in a Google+ hangout. Here's more about the virtual event:
Join KCRW's 'The Business' producer Darby Maloney, TVNewser's Alex Weprin, FishbowlLA's Richard Horgan and GoldDerby editor Tom O'Neil for a post-Oscars Google+ hangout. What book adaptations were snubbed? How did TV news cover it? Learn more about the history of the awards show and get the L.A. perspective. All this and more on Monday, Feb. 25 at 11:30 a.m. And we want to hear from you. With the hashtag #mbhangouts, send us your questions and comments on Twitter, Facebook or Google+


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Mamma Chia Organic Chia Squeeze
Spotted this new item, the Mamma Chia Organic Chia Squeeze in Blackberry Bliss flavor, at Costco. This is yet another one of those portable food pouches.
It markets itself as a vitality snack that contains Chia, Fruits and Vegetables. It contains 1200 mg Omega-3 and 70 calories per pouch.
Ingredients: Hydrated Organic Chia Seeds (Water, Organic Chia Seeds), Organic Grape Juice Concentrate, Organic Blackberry Puree, Organic Blackberry Juice Concentrate, Organic Purple Carrot Juice Concentrate, Citric Acid, Organic Natural Blackberry Flavor, Organic Natural Blueberry Flavor.
Other details:
– Certified Organic
– Certified Kosher
– Non-GMO Certified
– Vegan
– Gluten Free
– BPA Free
The Mamma Chia Organic Chia Squeeze is available in a 12-pack of 3.5 oz pouches and is priced at $11.99.
Unit price is $1/pouch.
Item number 794993.
Inventory and pricing at your store will vary and are subject to change at any time.


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Last week, I critiqued Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, for using a crude and derogatory term to describe a U.S. Senator. Today, Ethics Dailiy picked up the issue with an article about the offensive statement. During a lecture at Criswell College, Land called Senator Chuck Schumer the "the schm*** from New York." Such crude language is inappropriate, especially coming from a religious leader's mouth during a sermon to the next generation of church leaders. However, Ethics Daily pointed out an additionally troubling aspect of the remark. The word is Yiddish slang and the Senator that Land attacked is Jewish. Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics offered his concerns:
When a Baptist preacher slurs a senator of Jewish faith with such a degrading word in a lecture to theology students, he discloses a hostility towards Jews and may communicate that using Yiddish insults against those of Jewish faith is acceptable for ministers. ... The fact that he has had a month to think about what he said and has not issued an apology or at least a retraction suggests a disturbing insensitivity and an indifference to crudeness.Parham is absolutely right. Land should publicly apologize for his remarks, as should Criswell College leaders. If Land is going to lead the SBC's organization for issues related to ethics, then he should avoid crude and offensive insults.


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Lake Superior Project
LSProject: Could Grand Portage mercury levels be linked to the fur trade?-
The Grand Portage National Monument area has higher levels of mercury than other parks around the Great Lakes.
LSP: The Role of Collaring in Moose Research-
The moose population in northeast Minnesota has been in decline over the past decade. In this edition of the Lake Superior Project, Dr.
LSP: The Environmental Cost of Road Salts-
We often rely on road salts for winter driving safety, but their use is controversial. In this edition of the Lake Superior Project, we learn about the impact of these salts on the environment.
LSP: Words for Water-
Words for Water is a gathering place for people who value the Lake Superior Basin and its fragile ecosystem.
LSProject: The Important Role of the Lake Superior Binational Forum-
While there are many individuals and organizations who are doing their part to preserve Lake Superior, the Lake Superior Binational Forum works to bring all those voices together to plan and protect o
Split Rock Lighthouse remembers the Edmund FitzgeraldWill Moore-
The annual Mustering of the Last Watch ceremony for the crewmen aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald is held at Split Rock Lighthouse in Two Harbors, MN on November 10th.
LSProject: Fish Are Important for Superior Health-
Sawtooth Mountain Clinic and Grand Portage Health Service launched a project last spring to look at how women on the North Shore are consuming fish.
LSProject: Changing Lake Levels and the Economy-
You might have noticed that water levels on the big lake have been way up this year. But is this just part of the lake's normal trend or is it an anomaly?
LSProject: Tar Sands Expansion on the Great Lakes-
Many of us are unaware of the potential impact the current oil boom may have on our area.


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On behalf of the Tampa Bay Nitrogen Management Consortium, please find attached the 2012 update on water quality and seagrass resources in the Tampa Bay estuary. This update has been developed in accordance with the compliance assessment adopted through FDEP's Tampa Bay Reasonable Assurance determination on December 22nd, 2010 (Link to FDEP Final Order) and the federally-recognized TMDL for Tampa Bay (Link to EPA TMDL). The formal annual compliance assessment utilized by the Consortium is detailed in Section VIII.B. of the Final 2009 Reasonable Assurance Addendum: Allocation and Assessment Report (Link to Final Document).
In summary, chlorophyll-a concentrations in the four major bay segments of the Tampa Bay estuary were below FDEP-approved thresholds. The thresholds were adopted as part of FDEP's 2002 Reasonable Assurance determination for Tampa Bay and, at that time, it was determined that Tampa Bay's seagrass restoration goals could be achieved if annual chlorophyll-a concentrations remained below the thresholds. This nutrient management strategy has been utilized by the TBEP and Consortium in their Annual Decision Matrix reports for Tampa Bay since 2000 (Link to 2012 Update Report). Furthermore, recent estimates from the SWFWMD indicate that baywide seagrass coverage increased by 1,745 acres from 2010 to 2012 (Link to SWFWMD Estimates). With this latest estimate, Tampa Bay now supports 34,642 acres of seagrass – the greatest amount since the 1950s. Clearly, implementation of the Consortium's approved nutrient management strategy continues to be a successful, adaptive management approach for the Tampa Bay estuary.


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Spiced appie pie with caramel sauce
So my plans to make Lebkuchen bars had to be postponed. Still remembered the recipe of spiced apple bars from Tuesdays with Dorie. I still made some changes so it turned out into a kind of spiced apple pie with caramel sauce. It is one of the most delicious apple pies I've tried and my addiction to spieces was satisfied!
What we need:
170 gr of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
100gr unsalted butter
200gr light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon dark rum
1 Granny Smith apple
a handful of raisins soaked in rum
a handful of chopped almonds
for the caramel sauce:
3 tablespoons heavy cream
70 gr of light brown sugar
2-1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
What we have to do:
1. Mix all dry ingredients.
2. Melt the butter and mix in brown sugar. Remove from the heat, when it cools a bit, add eggs, vanilla extract, rasins soaked in rum and chopped almonds. Then start adding dry ingredients and mix it all. Finally add peeled and cubed apple.
3. Pre-heat the oven 180 C and place the batter into a buttered and floured baking tray. Bake for 20-25 min. Let it cool and then add pour the caramel sauce and after 15 min serve.
4. To cook caramel sauce, melt the butter and mix in the sugar. Then add cream and simmer for 5-6 minutes. Remember it is very hot, so resist the temptation to lick the spoon!!! Enjoy!!!


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October 09, 2016
27 Ways to Inspire Students to Innovate (Infographic)
Educator Mia MacMeekin made this infographic about ways to inspire students to think more deeply about how innovation applies to them. It's a helpful way to begin a conversation about what it means to innovate, a word that sometimes seems to belong in the adult domain of business and is estranged from how students think about living their lives.
This article appeared on Mindshift on November 29 2013 and was written by Katrina Schwartz. The infographic was produced by Mia MacMeekin.


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Training net templates and education flash templates will completely suit the needs of college, school, musical faculties' web sites, and so forth. The Role of Moral and Performance Character Strengths in Predicting Achievement and Conduct among Urban Center Faculty Students by Scott Seider of Boston College, Jennifer Ok. Gilbert of Vanderbilt University, Sarah Novick of Boston University, and Jessica Gomez Of Boston University that was conduct by In Press, Lecturers Faculty Document.
Thirty-four p.c of schools with 1,000 or extra students reported student disrespect for or assaults on teachers not less than as soon as per week, compared with 21 {68923f03e1b91b743cfdf96f22e35ef248cf5a337d81f74bb8a08d4e6754a93b} of those at schools with 500-999 college students, 17 {68923f03e1b91b743cfdf96f22e35ef248cf5a337d81f74bb8a08d4e6754a93b} of these at colleges with 300-499 college students, and 14 {68923f03e1b91b743cfdf96f22e35ef248cf5a337d81f74bb8a08d4e6754a93b} of those at colleges with lower than 300 students.
The few researchers who examined the affect of addiction, psychological sickness, continual illnesses, or mortality amongst parents on students' school achievement suggest it has a substantial impact (33,34)," in keeping with Dr. Nicholas Freudenberg and Jessica Ruglis within the article titled Reframing College Dropout as a Public Well being Concern.
With hundreds of requirements-aligned sources, Discovery Schooling Streaming Plus provides you with the instruments to show your students to think critically about the content material they use, see, and experience in their day by day lives and to ask questions in regards to the world around them.
Freshmen who indicated that training costs were a 'very important' issue of their college selection reached a report high of forty six{68923f03e1b91b743cfdf96f22e35ef248cf5a337d81f74bb8a08d4e6754a93b} – up practically 15 percentage points since 2004, in response to the survey of the nation's first-yr students performed by UCLA's Greater Schooling Analysis Institute.


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(Image courtesy of Colson Griffith-Flikr - Creative Commons License)
When former Soprano's star, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, publicly revealed her 15-year MS diagnosis in this week's People Magazine and on Good Morning America, the news spread through the MS community like wildfire. Reactions were quite positive but many people wondered why it took so long for her to openly discuss living with MS.
Jamie-Lynn is one of 2.3 million people worldwide who live with multiple sclerosis, a progressive disease of the central nervous system that damages the insulation around nerves and results in a variety of symptoms. Some symptoms may be "invisible" such as numbness, tingling, impaired vision or pain, while others may be more noticeable, such as impaired mobility, weakness, tremors, or cognitive difficulties.
At the age of 20, Jamie-Lynn experienced heaviness and tingling in her legs, symptoms that led to her MS diagnosis. "It was a shock. I didn't feel sick. My ideas of MS were limited. I thought it meant, 'Wheelchair.' I thought it meant your life was over," she told People Magazine. As a public figure with invisible symptoms, there was no obvious reason to reveal her diagnosis so Jamie-Lynn kept it a secret with the full support of her family and close friends.
A few years later when Jamie-Lynn experienced other symptoms such as weakness and incontinence, she was still able to hide her diagnosis. But now Sigler, 34, says, "I can't walk for a long period of time without resting. I cannot run. No superhero roles for me. Stairs? I can do them but they're not the easiest."
An award-winning actress, Jamie-Lynn remains human; she is "one of us." I remember keeping my own MS secret for a while after diagnosis. I selectively chose who to tell and kept the news from my musician colleagues. Why? I didn't want to be viewed as weak, flawed, or incapable of continuing to perform at a high level. I imagine that Jamie-Lynn had similar concerns.
So why talk about it now? Deciding to use a diagnosis to help others is a brave thing. Talking about MS isn't easy for many of us, including those of us who do so frequently and publicly. MS is a private matter, a private experience, and a private journey, even if shared with supportive friends and loved ones.
"I'm never going to know why I have this until I live my truth. But it doesn't define me," Sigler said. "I know that there are a lot of other people out there struggling. If I can finally be okay and open and honest that I have this, maybe I can inspire other people to do it, too."
And Sigler's announcement has certainly inspired people to talk about their feelings and to offer support. Here are a few comments shared in a popular MS Facebook group:
- "Sopranos was one of my favorite shows. So proud of this courageous young lady. Some of the quotes from her People magazine interview really hit home for me. I carry this 'secret' with me too. Her words made me ask myself why I am so uncomfortable talking about it. And I have had this dx also for just shy of 15 years."
- "Yes!!! I loved the Sopranos too!! Her story was soooooo real to me & how my MS is. I too was Dx 15 years ago. Although she has her own life to lead, I hope she will continue to put herself into the media for us as a voice!"
- "She talks about feeling ashamed of MS and I totally get that feeling but am unsure why I do? Do we think that we are supposed to be perfect human beings? Does MS come with a 'shame symptom'?"
In addition to contemplating our own emotional reactions to Jamie-Lynn's announcement, many people living with MS offered her support and encouragement, and wanted to know more about her experience with MS.
Although it was Jamie-Lynn who said, "I don't feel so alone," I believe that many of us feel the same, often. We may not be an actress like Sigler, a country music singer like Clay Walker, a news anchor like Neil Cavuto, a race car driver like Trevor Bayne or Kelly Sutton, a media personality like Jack Osbourne or Montel Williams, a Miss America contestant like Ramsey Carpenter or Michelle Tolson, or a politician's wife like Ann Romney, but we each have an important story to tell when the time is right.
If you are struggling with the decision to share your MS story, I suggest that you consider WHY you want to tell others you have MS. Will it be to not feel so alone or to help others feel less isolated in their experience? Is it so that you can receive the accommodations you need at work to be able to continue doing your job to the best of your ability? Is it because you want to bring awareness to the disease?
Whatever your reason for talking about MS, or not talking about MS, I ask you to share your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook. It is by sharing a bit of ourselves that ultimately connects us and strengthens our MS community. This is how we each can become the ultimate 'superhero.'
For More Helpful Articles on Living with MS:
Invisible MS Symptoms Can Cause Frustration and Mask Disability
What to Know About MS in the Workplace


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InterPlaNet (IPN) will serve as a backbone for a future inter-planetary system of Internets, said Cerf during a visit to Bangalore, reports Indo Asian News Service.
Google vice president and Internet evangelist, Cerf co-wrote the TCP/IP protocol which underpins the Terran internet in the 1970s and began work on the InterPlaNet in 1998.
A collaboration between NASA and the Advanced Research Project Agency, the InterPlaNet project is underway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Houston, Texas. The InterPlaNet protocol is designed to cope with delays caused by the vast distances of space, with data taking up to 20 minutes to travel between the Earth and Mars depending on how far apart the two planets are.
"…As part of the NASA Mars mission programme, the project aims to have by 2008 a well-functioning Earth-Mars network."
In 2004 the rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, broke Martian data speed records by sustaining a 256 kbps uplink to the Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor satellites orbiting above. Mars Odyssey had the faster link to Earth – 124 kbps at the time – but it has dropped as Mars moves further away from the Earth.
In the 1970s, data from NASA's two Mars Viking landers trickled back from the orbiting satellites at 8 kbps, via a 16 kbps uplink from the Martian surface. [Source]


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Chemical Analysis Laboratory
In this laboratory, using advanced equipments and devices, elemental analysis of materials is performed with precision up to ppb, which are described below.
۱ X-Ray Fluorescent X-Ray Fluorescent Device
This device is used to measure quantitative and qualitative elements and analyzes solids, powder, liquids, melted tablets.
۲ ultraviolet spectroscopy UV-Visible Spectrophotometry
To measure the elements that produce color solutions, they are used quantitatively and qualitatively.
۳ Atomic Absorption Spectrometer Atomic Absorption Spectrometry
This machine is equipped with a graphite furnace system and a water heater system that can analyze the elements quantitatively and qualitatively and is accurate to ppb.
۴ Indactively Coupled Plasma Induced Plasma – Atomic Emission Spectpscop
Or ICP-AES This device has the ability to measure quantitatively and qualitatively the elements and has a wide application in the analysis of minerals.
۵ C / S Analyzer for measuring carbon and sulfur
This machine is used to measure carbon and sulfur elements and its precision is 50 ppm for carbon and 5 ppm for sulfur.
۶ Flame Photometer Devices
The device is used to measure the concentration of elements such as sodium, calcium, barium, lithium and potassium in water.
۷ Microwave Oven Microswitches
Preparation and dissolution of the material for analysis under high temperature and heat, which is performed quickly, is the application of this device.
۸ Parts Analysis of Precious Metals Fire Assay
In this section, various furnaces of precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum are extracted and determined, which includes melting, coplanar and separation stages.
۹ parts of sample preparation
Using the equipment and devices in this section, such as jaw crushers, cylinders, and LM2 and LM5 powders, which have the ability to powder the sample of about 4 kg, samples are prepared and sent to the relevant parts. . 10 different equipments
There are a number of other devices that are used in this laboratory, which include kilns and ovens, a melting sample for XRF, a tablet press for XRF, a tetramizer, ph meters, a phoemix melting machine, a water meter And multiple scales and a very accurate scale with a precision of 0.1 μg or 10-7 g.


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The 2012 CI trip is coming!
Here is our 2012 seminar promotional poster!
For those of you at unable to read Chinese, the tagline at the bottom says, "Who is willing to stand in the gap?" It is a reminder that God is looking for people who will live according to His ways, and the need to stand firm, even when society is pulling the people around us away from what is right.
The two cities listed on the poster are:
Tainan: January 17-21
Taipei: January 31-February 4
In addition, in the week between our two seminars, we will also be going to Hualien to hold a camp for children from smaller, underprivileged communities at a school. Last year was the first time we held a CI in Hualien, and it was a joy for all of our teachers being able to teach the children there.
For those who are not currently in Taiwan, and who are interested in coming as teachers, I'd encourage you to apply ASAP, because last year we had to turn some people away. Please contact the International Department at IBLP Headquarters for more information.
For those of you who are in Taiwan, I will be releasing more information about how to apply very soon.
Also, this coming year happens to be the FIFTEENTH year we are holding Children's Institutes in Taiwan! Because of this, I wanted to take extra time in the preparation to think about where the CI has come from, how the CIs have changed over the years, and the future direction of the Taiwan CIs. To help crystalize my thoughts, I'll be writing periodic blogs about the various random questions, ideas, and critiques that I have about the ministry.
If you have been involved in the CI ministry in the past, I'd love if you would follow along, and join in the discussion. Also, please keep the trip in your prayers.
Timothy Chen


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i guess i was really high during the post xmas party party at sam's place. most of my shots were blurred. HAHAHAHAHA
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
so lazy to blog about the past few days...
i think carolling at pan pac and copthorne went well. HEEHEE
reunion carolling was fun after seeing so many familiar faces. my maroon shirt and black pants and blazer are uber smelly now. HAHAHA
went to bottletree village this morning and met this very kind lady. she drove me around the park on a buggy! hahah it's my first time riding a buggy! woohoo hahahha
cheerleading is tiring...
yay now that carolling and the flights are booked, i shall focus my attention on the vc/vjchoir xmas party on the 30th dec first. :D pls come pls come!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
okay it's 90% now after the third elbow from jamie. HAHAH
anyway i am pian ti ling shang now after doing basket toss during cheerleading. toes, neck, hand, cheek, shoulders...WAAAAH.
i wanna talk about how much i love VC. but you guys should know such stuffs usually stay in my heart.
anyway just realised that cheerleading pracs take place everyday after school reopens. YAY. i love cheerleading! shall not make ppl like kim min lose morale by telling her how much i look forward to pracs. :P
okay wait for hair to dry.
anyway it just started to rain........at 4am!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
thanks to my friends.
carolled at selaseh park and rivervale tonight. well not very organised i think. hmmmm paiseh to everyone who had to be aimless and not knowing what to do except wait for that one or two minutes. SORRY!
oh yah have to thank sheena for coming down to sing with us! and kenny for rushing over at the last minute! hahah so sorry to have to make u eat dinner at 11pm! thanks sandy for always helping to organise and be decisive. thanks suelynn and marcus for always being there and waiting for me. HAHAAHA oh and thanks emma (a.k.a. emmasik), for making that few mistakes on stage. it's okay one. :) and thanks to our ferry-godmothers (sam and joyce) and ferry-godfather (asik a.k.a. emmasik) for ferrying us around the sengkang estate. thanks for letting us make use of you! hhahahhahahahahaha KIDDING!
okay luckily everything went smoothly.
went to jalan kayu to have supper! wooo took lotsa photos and had roti prata and tau hway. :D and 14 of us had to squeeze into 2 cars! hhahhhaah. oh in the end emma was kind enough to come back and send us back home... THANKS!
Friday, December 19, 2008
aieks forgot to bring back the usb port to transfer photos from my phone to my comp. ARGH.
(but kapoed them from alicia's and jerrick's blog. still waiting for alan's photos. HAHA)
before that i went back to hall in the morning to get my laptop. bought waffles and bubble tea for meself and ykx. heeheee. oh man cheerleading pracs are getting more and more xiong. SHIT.
after breakfast went to copthorne king to met arlene there and take a look around.
passed ah ma, alicia, jerrick, alan and irene my cards le. YAY. :D
HAPPY now. :)
5 minutes to blog about these past 2 days.
ok had a bad day yesterday. waited from 9.30am to 5pm for my shooting from tanglin dhq to hta. but got turned down around 2 metres from the range cuz my hair length was not acceptable. F!@)#!(@#)!($)!$!)$(!)$!($
oh saw titus and khairul and zhang and cash over there and i think we talked alot about training and npco life in the van.
okay that's about pretty much that happened yesterday i think.
am back in hall now to bring my laptop back home. :D going to copthorne later.
who knew that it can get so busy during the hols?!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
okay time for blogging!
wow had a long day.
went shopping at nie bookstore in the morn. then got a call from sis saying that she got a venue for vc's xmas party! woo hoo! bottletree village at khatib. sounds good!
watched little nonya just now. not bad. even after missing so many episodes i still managed to catch what's happening. :)
oh will need to plan for the xmas party VERY soon.
and ppl pls sign up for carolling.
and need to book air tix with ace99.
okay jiayou!
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
oh jianhao's photography skills suck. :( can't take indoor photos for nuts.
okay things are getting a little more organised.
shall be less lazy you dumbass.
oh the train to yishun.oh we are featured!!!! we realised that the least expensive ticket to our concert in korea costs 30,000won, the most expensive being 80,000won. WOW!
oh yes and finally.... HAHAHAH
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
went to the library in the afternoon to borrow korea travel guidebooks. heehee shall drown myself in them and bring out the tour guide in me. :D
then went to vch to perform for the world youth choral festival. it was kinda screwed up at first as the seniors didn't really know whether to wear or not to wear the suits and gowns for the soundcheck cuz i thought that we could turn up in our slacks. oh well we took 5 minutes to dress up. GOOT JOB. :D i guess our performance was ok.
Anyway i always loved impromptu singing. the no man after the concert was not bad. ;) and we took lotsa photos. to be posted up as soon as i kapo them from facebook. :D
oh we went to thai express after the concert and talked about yc's choral sexual experience with oliver. HAHHHHHAHAHAHH damn hilarious.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
hahah derrick gave me a call yesterday night, and asked me if i was going to take photos this morning for netball. AHAHAHAH yah so i lan lan have to go to hall this morning lor. reached my room at 9 plus, then we helped venetia and shu xuan to fill up the entire bucket with water. anyway our netball girls are qiang. they won against hall 12 by more than 15 points i think. HAHAHAH
went for choir prac at 1 plus as i had nothing to do in hall. it took my 22 stops to reach bedok from boon lay. saw CHEAM at bedok!!! hahahah then i tapao-ed ahballing to eat at siglap. hehe
oh conflict of interests. TOTAL CONFLICT!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
tk came to my house at 10plus to practise our duet song. heeeeheee then we watched half of harold and kumar 2 before leaving for ocean butterfly at 2.30pm. heeeheee i guess everything went ok except that a few lyrics didn't come out properly from my mouth.
went to maxwell food centre for some fish porridge with teck kuan, and teck kuan had to make ham chim peng at this store whereby the auntie just threw in the dough and he had turn them in the oil himself! hahah oh and i helped everlyn to tapao FIFTEEN goreng pisang for her crew mates. HAAHAHAH this is called HUI LU. :D
then waited a long time for the very singer audition to start. saw hong jun yang and xu huan liang inside there. i think i barely sang for 30 seconds before the bell sounded. oh well. wonder how things went. PRAY HARD FOR ME!!!
yup and so i was late for dinner with alicia, jerrick and agus. HAAHAAHHA really very very full from dinner, but i am glad that my old-lady-with-mole joke went well during dinner. HEEEHEEE aiyah so sad for alicia that many people are leaving again...:(
oh man have to return to school tml to help derrick with photo-taking...BAHHHHHH
can't believe ziyi initiated a class outing. STUNNED-ED. our 61st month anniversary. :D
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
oh yes finally finished ykx's xmas poster design. yay. didn't sleep much yest though....heehe
went to take photographs for netball girls this morning. YAY hall 3 won against hall 15! :D
erm was watching one litre of tears with barney and ah boon separately just now. :.( poor aya...hmmmmm we should all be more brave and not cry. HAHAHAH
going back home in a while. YIPPIE!
Monday, December 08, 2008
girls are nasty. and sweet. and nasty.
okay went to joshua's house with sheena this morning. heeeheee kapo-ed a few dvds from him. WOOHOO. then we played guitar hero. HAHAHA first time playing guitar hero and i assume i am quite pro at it. HAHAHHA okay then we had chicken rice, and continued to play risk. OKay one thing i hate about risk is that it shows the evil scheming side of ur dear friends. HAHAH don't play risk with me pls. i hate the backstabbing and plotting. HAHHA oh but the war music part was really COOL!!!! hhaahahahaa especially the battle of greenland and central america. HAAHAH okay maybe we should play it again. :D
okay then rushed back home for practice with teck kuan for our auditions this wednesday. must practise more!!! teck kuan really improved ALOT ALOT ALOT!!!
yup was most reluctant to go for cheerleading practice, but since ykx is my friend i shadn't pangsay her HAHAH learnt CHAIRS today. wow. nv knew i could support someone with just one hand. GO, TECHNIQUES!
hmmm my sis went diving so alicia and leroy came over in the morning. haha promised to help her look after them but i guess i woke up a little too late. HAHA luckily mom and dad were there to help out... hehehe
went for choir prac, then went to changi chalet to celebrate shawn loh's birthday. HAHAH met andy, samuel, alexko, yy, daniel, and fabian poh over there. yah had quite a fun time playing citadels and indian poker. HAHAHAHA took the 1-hour 59 bus ride home...WOO HOO.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
went to marie's place to gym in the morning at 10am. WAHHHH couldn't really wake up at 8. AHAHAHA anyway the run was goot. :D and the view from her condo was goot. can see the ECP!
choir prac was quite messy initially cuz we couldn't really find a room big enough to accomodate 60plus of us....yah mainly my fault for taking things for granted. OK WILL LEARN THIS LESSON WELL! yup luckily we had 01-02B until 4 plus, then we went over to this kindergarten room to practise. alright the 3 songs for the concert are ALMOST memorised!
ooo just had a nice shower after bbq-ing and talking at sue lynn's. we initially decided to go town to have dinner after choir prac, then we realised that marcus and sue lynn had asked us to go for a bbq at sue lynn's, hahaha so asik drove us to carrefour and bought food there before proceeding over. oh i was acting alto while singing joy to the world. my first attempt was not bad at all! :D
Friday, December 05, 2008
badminton with daniel wasn't very fun except for the hitting of high balls to each other. hahaha. damn my badminton skills SUXXXXXXXXX oh and i must wear shoes to play badminton next time.
met jiasheng and pock thong at amk s11 for dinner just now. oooo fish and chips was GOOT. :D hahah after that we sorta bummed around amkhub for a while...HEEHEHEE
oh man i need to memorise my scores. :D
and so it was kaili who tapped me at citilink mall! been trying to figure that out for weeks. HAHHA
and so are we named 3+1 now? what a weird name. HAHAHHA kapo-ed some movies from daniel's hard disk onto my harddisk. yay i love my 320GB external harddisk. then suhui, kim min and wen si came over and we watched love actually in my room with good food like BBQ Lays, Carrot Cake from Cedele, and Jam Biscuits from Marks and Spencer. after the show i was trying to be sacrificial but they didn't want to let me sleep on the floor. oh well. HAHA xie xie ni men. slept at 4 i think.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
cheerleading prac was ouch, oUch and more OUCH! hahaha
had senior flyers from hall 13 to demo to the girls how things should be done, and we did some shoulder stands and extensions and pops. pops were fun but difficult to execute.
hhaha come join cheerleading boys and girls!
oh everlyn, yongkai and xuwei came over to my house on monday to make pizza bread. HHAHHA okay i guess i am getting outdated. but still it was nice and fun!
Monday, December 01, 2008
and so the few of us got pangsay-ed. in the end only 4 ppl came to my house to make dinner.
we had pizza bread for dinner (hhahah simple!!!). everlyn was here earlier and tried to find some songs to sing for talent quest. then yongkai came with his ben and jerry's. xu wei arrived at 7 plus after he was done with OBS. hahahah lyn, xianhui and vanessa PANGSAY-ED. tsk tsk tsk. oh we saw lyn at ntuc at j8. talked for a minute before she said that she was very tired and wanted to head home to sleep. WEIRD GIRL. HAHAH
finished watching red cliff and baby and i in the morning. NOT BAD AT ALL! :D


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It's been a long time since I posted…I've been a little busy with Fashion School. And while, we sew all the time, I miss sewing for myself. A lot of the sewing we do are samples and muslins. One month until summer break, and my sewing to do list is huge.
Before fashion school I never drew anything by hand, so Illustration and Design class was very challenging for me. After my second semester I started to feel more confident, but I still have a ways to go. This is my final illustration project from last term. Over the summer I will try to make a few of these; starting with the bomber jacket.
Another thing we do in fashion school, is make a bunch of mood boards. At first, I was unsure of this process, but now I enjoy making them a lot. This collection was inspired by consumption. We live in a disposable culture, where it is cheaper to buy something new, rather than to get it repaired. People today own a lot of stuff; and this has spawned a whole culture of decluttering, and organization. I'm exploring the contrast between chaos and order, the difference between hoarding and collecting, and the hypocrisy of selling minimalism. Did I even need to explain? It's all clear looking at the collection, right?
My favourite part of this project was designing the print. I just ordered it from Spoonflower, and I can't wait to see it. I'm trying the modern jersey for the first time, hopefully it'll work for my jacket.


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Have No Fear: How to Effectively Deal with Obstacles and Difficult Conversations and Win Clients
Most of the challenges salespeople experience around taking action have their root in some fear. They fear having conversations around the commitments they need and they worry about coming off as aggressive or self-oriented. They fear discussing price, believing it puts their opportunity at risk. They fear telling the client they can't have what they want without a greater investment or challenging the customer's beliefs.
This keynote provides the sales force with a deep understanding of the major fears salespeople face and how to effectively face those fears I a way that strengthens relationships.
- Understanding how fear works and why it prevents action
- Identification of the 7 major fears salespeople must overcome to produce breakthrough results
- The language choices that allow salespeople to act in spite of their fears and gain trust at the same time.
Book this keynote