text:
Khawaaga: Eyes Always Watching
Maryah Converse
I rarely felt comfortable in the streets of Cairo, and I quickly came to associate this feeling with an Egyptian word: khawaaga. It described how I felt when I walked down my street, Tahrir Street, an important thoroughfare leading to Tahrir Square. Lined with tourist traps from restaurants to souvenir shops, walking down those sidewalks was a gauntlet of leers and come-ons from shopkeepers, street vendors, beggars and young men in search of a good time.
I always went armored with big sunglasses and one earbud in—still alert to to my surroundings, but enough of a distraction to keep my angry inner monologue from spiraling out of control. I put on my Angry Bitch Face and moved as fast as possible, fists clenched, shoulders tight, braced against the city.
Back in Jordan, where I had recently lived for four years, I could walk into a shop or slide into a taxi, strike up a conversation in my hick Bedouin-accented Arabic, and as I left, the shopkeeper or driver would say, "When I first saw you, I thought you were ajnabiyya—a foreigner." Even in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, I had been welcomed as a cousin, embraced as a guest by the legendary hospitality of the Bedouin.
It was never like that in Cairo. There, I wasn't even ajnabiyya—adj. foreign, literally: from the adjacent place. In Cairo, I was khawaaga—n. rich white European, colonizer, interloper, from the Persian for 'master.'
I didn't know the origin of the word then. I was afraid to truly understand what they meant when they said khawaaga, beyond its association with French and English colonialism, and the Ottoman Empire that ruled Egypt before that. I understood just enough to know it was a label I didn't want.
In Jordan, I had become a sister. In Cairo, I was always a mark.
Once, an Egyptian man with startling dark ginger hair followed me for two blocks and up three flights of my own stairs, waiting for the right moment to brush three fingertips across my ass and run. Returning home from class, I would try to catch a glimpse of my reflection in storefront windows, or find any excuse to glance back over my shoulder to assure myself I wasn't being followed. Unlike most apartment buildings in Cairo, mine didn't have a doorman, and I worried often about the next time the heavy door would close too slowly on the street behind me.
Only when I was up those three flights of stairs with my apartment door closed behind me could I breathe freely, relax my jaw, quiet the angry, defensive voice in my head.
My apartment on Tahrir Street was a refuge, with an ever-changing cast of expat roommates. There was Pip from Australia, doing a gap year internship before law school, and her friend Sylvia, an Italian journalist who crashed briefly on our couch. Then Pip took off for some extended vacations to Ethiopia and across Europe, and while she was gone, Mokhtar stayed in her room.
Tall, slender, soft-spoken, Mokhtar had come to the United States with his mother and several siblings as refugees from the Somali famine in the early 1990s. Now he was a Fulbright Scholar, studying food and agricultural politics in Egypt and the Horn of Africa. In the months before he moved in, he and Pip and I spent quite a few nights at a little street café on tiny pedestrian Al Mahrani Street a couple blocks from the apartment, sipping little cups of coffee or glasses of sweet black tea with mint, balanced on rickety little metal tables, he and she puffing away at sweet-smelling sheesha smoke.
We were often joined by friends of his: other Fulbright Scholars, Egyptian university students and young journalists. They would point at other unsteady little tables and point out this well-known leftist and that provocative artist who were also sipping tea and sheesha with friends.
On one night I remember with particular clarity, it was just Mokhtar and I. He was explaining, I think, about the new regulations that were driving up the price of vegetables, particularly of that Egyptian staple, the tomato. Tomatoes cost eight times what they had just months ago, far more than many families could afford, sparking riots in some of the poorest neighborhoods. Six months later, when revolution erupted just down the street, I wished I had paid more attention to Mokhtar's research.
Instead, I was distracted by a skinny middle-aged man in an especially wide galabeyya, the tent-like ankle-length dress of an Egyptian peasant. The ground-in dirt and grime, paired with unruly, oily hair and the thick, cracked soles of his feet, betrayed his poverty, a man who likely slept on rooftops and rarely had enough to eat. He started juggling metal rods, and then he lit them on fire, still juggling and occasionally lighting his breath on fire, too. I was so enthralled that I didn't notice the beggar behind me, a girl perhaps seven years old with equally oily, unruly black hair and grimy clothes. I didn't even know she was there until she kissed my right ear.
My right fist flew up and over my shoulder, knuckles perfectly aimed for her nose. At the very last moment, I saw from the corner of my eye that she was only a child and stopped. I made contact with her extraordinary wide, copper-colored gaze for an agonizingly long moment, my heart thundering in my throat, my whole body tight and breathless with fear and anger—at her for sneaking up on me, and at myself for such a quick, violent response.
In the next moment, she was gone. I reminded myself to breathe, forced my arms and hands to relax, pressed my shoulders down and back.
Ten minutes later, my heartrate had settled. My anger had dulled, but had also transferred fully onto the little girl who had violated my bodily integrity. I saw her leave with the fire breather, and my fury suddenly rose back up, this time at the Dickensian father who had sent his little girl into the café to beg for change.
Yet again, I was a mark, a source of income by any means necessary.
Whenever traversing the city offered me the opportunity to cut through the downtown neighborhood of Garden City, I took it. Flanked by five star hotels, it was closed to all but local traffic. Concrete barriers and metal bars closed the streets and swung up at the discretion of police in their ill-fitting summer whites and automatic rifles. The curvilinear streets were shaded by hundred-year-old European and Indian trees, their verdant branches woven into each other's canopies. I was insatiably curious for a glimpse into the big houses and their walled gardens, the lives of the rich and foreign, but there were no first or second story windows.
The streets of Cairo were never quiet, but at night under the trees of Garden City, there was only the urgent rustle of bat wings overhead. Except for my favorite Lebanese restaurant and the best fuul iskanderi sandwiches in Cairo, there were no commercial businesses in Garden City, no young men stepping into my path, aggressively hawking their wares, commercial or personal. I could let my guard down and stroll comfortably in the cool shade on an impossibly hot desert day.
Garden City was a neighborhood out of time and place, known by a khawaaga name because it was a living remnant of Italian mercantilism and British colonialism. In 1905, on a piece of land where two caravanserai and a palace of the Khedive Ismail had stood, the Italian engineer Beyerly was commissioned by the British colonial authority to plan Cairo's newest neighborhood. He designed its curving streets according to his Art Nouveau sensibilities, carving the neighborhood into spacious lots for villas with private gardens in the grand Continental style. The Vatican became the primary landlord, drawing up plans for a convent that was never built. Only Cairo's richest elite could afford to call Garden City home.
Today, this neighborhood is where the most security-conscious Western powers have their embassies. The big three—America, Great Britain and Canada—are fortresses, guarded by their own military personnel as well as Egyptians. The American blockade extended for two blocks in every direction, long before there was even a whiff of revolution anywhere in the Arab world. These walls and guns were evidence of a much older mistrust, the fear of another Tehran hostage crisis or Beirut bombing. The revolutions of 2011 only confirmed the fear that Hosni Mubarak had been stoking all those years: Support his presidency and his cabal of generals, ignoring any graft, corruption or human rights abuses, or else! Do you want the Muslim Brotherhood to win and Egypt to become Iran on the Nile?
It was while walking through Garden City with Mokhtar and our friends that I began to understand more deeply the lingering implications of the neighborhood's history, and its present militarization.
We were walking back from another part of the city, down the broad sidewalk of the Nile Corniche. Mokhtar wanted to keep to the riverbank until we came to the Tahrir Street bridge. Pip and Sylvia wanted to cut the corner by walking through Garden City, and so did I. Mokhtar reluctantly followed our lead, but as we walked through the neighborhood, he said, "If you weren't all with me, and especially if I were walking with Egyptians, I wouldn't be able to go this way."
After a long, silent moment, as if he were deciding whether he should say more, he continued, "Once, when I first came to Cairo, I was walking through here by myself. The Egyptian police came at me, like they were going to hurt me. 'What are you doing here?' and 'You can't be here.' Then they demanded to see my ID. I always carry my passport on me for this kind of thing."
That startled me. I never carry my passport with me. I had my American University ID, my Jordanian ID, my Maine driver's license, but I left my passport at home, afraid to lose it or have it stolen.
"So, I showed them my passport," continued Mokhtar, "but they didn't believe that I was American. 'You don't look like an American,' they kept saying. Eventually, they let me go, and I got out of here as fast as I could. I've talked to a lot of Egyptians who say the same thing about Garden City."
I continued to cut through the quiet relief of Garden City, but now always with the niggling disquiet of Mokhtar's reality on my mind. I would be walking down that same gentle bend in the street and remember him quietly telling his story, the memory pressing on the persistent bruise of my khawaaga.
That label was the source and symbol of everything I hated about Cairo—the ogling, occasional groping, the "tourist price" I paid for everything, and especially the calculated looks that followed me in every public space. Yet, hearing Mokhtar's story made it impossible to ignore that khawaaga enabled many of my small pleasures in Egypt, too. A quiet neighborhood, a nice restaurant, a seaside vacation on a clean beach, chatting in the courtyards of American University, a drink with friends on a rooftop bar. All of these escapes were khawaaga, too.
After Cairo, I became a New York City Teaching Fellow. I rented a little apartment, the only one I could afford, in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. Four years later, when I left, it would be the hipster haven realtors now call East Williamsburg—the restaurants and grocery stores catering increasingly to my taste, but the rents doubling.
When I first arrived, though, it was still an overwhelmingly working class neighborhood, with Puerto Rican social clubs on every third block, and almost weekly mariachi bands marching up the street to the Catholic church behind me for a wedding or a quinceañera. At night, especially a Friday or Saturday night, it was not unusual for a car parked below my window to have all its windows open, salsa music blasting on its suped-up sound system, the neighbors dancing on the sidewalk. On the warm June night before the Puerto Rican Day parade, the street below me would be packed shoulder-to-shoulder, end-to-end with people, the Latin music blaring for hours past midnight.
I really liked the neighborhood, and its people. There was a little family-owned bodega across the street, open until nearly midnight with a great selection of Häagen-Dazs pints. Living above the shop as they did, they even stayed open throughout Superstorm Sandy. At the family-run Chinese restaurant down the block, they took orders in Spanish more fluently than in English.
On the next block, there were big, beautiful old trees the length of the street. In pleasant weather, older neighbors set out square plastic tables on the shaded sidewalks to play dominoes. Crowds would gather, picking sides and cheering each other on.
Closer to the subway was Maria Hernandez Park, one small city block of big trees, playgrounds, racquetball and basketball courts, a winding mile track and a labyrinth leading to a mosaic scarlet macaw in the exact center of the park. On warm weekends, the park would fill with families, volleyball nets would appear, and dozens of people would rotate in and out of a pair of side-by-side games all afternoon.
I looked up Maria Hernandez online, curious why the park bore her name. It had been a notorious gang hangout, regularly erupting into sudden violence. Maria Hernandez was a local woman, Brooklyn born and educated, working as a bookkeeper and raising children in the neighborhood with her husband Carlos. She'd had enough. She reported local troublemakers to police and Children's Protective Services, organized block parties and community gatherings, and started a neighborhood improvement society. Meanwhile, Carlos confronted local dealers, often with his fists.
Police were reluctant to intervene at first, but when Maria Hernandez was shot and killed, in a crime probably aimed at Carlos, her death became a rallying cry, and made her neighborhood into somewhere the City was willing to invest time and money. The community she built persisted, even thrived, with the park now hosting those volleyball games, community exercise programs, Evangelical revival meetings, dog runs and running paths, a farmers' market, and monthly visits of the SPCA bus offering veterinary services for neighborhood pets.
Much as I loved my little neighborhood, though, walking through Bushwick was triggering. A lascivious look, the way old men playing dominoes would sometimes call out, "Smile!" or "Look up! It's a beautiful day." I would feel my jaw clench, my shoulders tighten and rise, my fingernails cut into my palms. The feeling wasn't khawaaga, but it had the same effect on my body.
I would turn the corner and make myself spread and stretch my fingers, force my shoulders down, loosen my jaw, focus on the breath. I had been taught as an exchange student that having a bad day reflected poorly on the nation I represented, so just smile until the release of dopamine lightened my mood. It worked often enough to become habit. I hoped that reversing my body language response to unwanted sidewalk attention would have a similar effect, but usually the angry inner monologue would continue to spiral in my head and I'd have to turn up the volume in my earbud to drown it out.
One afternoon at the end of Teaching Fellows summer training, we learned to "unpack the invisible knapsack" of white privilege. In a crowded mid-Manhattan middle school classroom, I looked around a room where I didn't seem to fit anyone else's pattern of experience. We played an awkward "Yes, but…" game. We weren't asked to explain ourselves, but everyone had to speak.
Nearly choking on my heart in my throat, palms sweaty and fingers shaking, I said, "I've been treated differently for the color of my skin, but not in the way you might think." I worried what my colleagues heard in my voice. Understanding? Arrogance? I didn't know how, but I knew I had to articulate this thing I was learning to label "white privilege." I also knew that I had felt it differently than most in the room.
I knew that khawaaga wasn't the same as being Black or Latina or Muslim or queer or trans or disabled in America. I thought of khawaaga first and foremost as a prison, but I knew it could also be a shield, and I always knew that my khawaaga was temporary. My white privilege was by definition a shield, and permanent, just as the oppression of minorities was constant and permanent, an inescapable weight.
My experience of khawaaga did, however, open something of a side door for me into understanding privilege and oppression. In my travels abroad, my white privilege had magnified into American privilege, the advantages it gave me so pronounced that I couldn't fail to see them. At the same time, I also knew what it felt like to live under calculating scrutiny, knowing there are always eyes on you, waiting for their chance. In Cairo, I had felt like a mark for the inalterable color of my lighter skin, lighter hair and blue eyes, but I always knew I could leave the country at any time. To be a Person of Color in America is to be a mark for bigots, law enforcement, and legislators, but to also know that there is nowhere else to go.
At the end of the summer, under mounting pressure from the Teaching Fellows program, I took the only job I was offered, as a special education teacher at what used to be Canarsie High School—"the worst in the city by almost any statistical measure," someone warned me. Three years earlier, under the Bloomberg Administration's education policy, the "failed" school had been shut down, divided into three high schools—one for each floor—and re-opened with mostly the same students and lots of first year Teaching Fellows.
In the school where I taught, the students were almost entirely Afro-Caribbean and from some of the poorest, most disadvantaged neighborhoods in New York City—Brownsville, East New York, Crown Heights, Canarsie itself—that were as under-resourced and dangerous as my own had been before Maria Hernandez, before her courage and before her death. I had never experienced a neighborhood like that, didn't understand what it was like to live there. I didn't know how to earn the respect of these kids, or if it was even possible.
Some of my students with special needs—especially the ones with identified learning disabilities—increasingly sought my approval, stayed after school almost every day to do homework with me. By the end of fall semester, they actually had the courage to raise their hands in our NY Regents chemistry class, and they could usually give correct answers, too.
The rest of my students, though, seemed unreachable. "Why do I have to learn this, Miss? I'll be dead in five years, and what good will financial literacy or a college degree do me then?"
As I walked through Maria Hernandez Park before and after school, usually listening to NPR, I was particularly moved by a series of investigative reports with Propublica about Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injuries in the veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The stories tugged at me. I knew what it was like to be thousands of miles from home, in a place you didn't understand, but there was something else there, something deeper in those stories that called to me.
I taught in Canarsie for a semester, until the principal fired me in a manner that assured I could never teach again—he said so in as many words. Because he and his pit bull of an Assistant Principal were always careful to say such things alone behind closed doors, there was little that the union could do for me. Then he fired my successor, as well as a beloved football coach who had been at Canarsie High School for over twenty years. Not long after, the principal was recorded threatening my co-teacher. Within a year, I heard that he had been removed from two high schools and forced into early retirement for misogynistic verbal and emotional abuse.
One night, almost a year after losing my job, I was crossing Maria Hernandez Park alone in the dark when I heard myself arguing out loud with the Assistant Principal in my head. Once, when I had left my "counseling" session in her office to answer an urgent, stress-induced call of nature, she followed me right into the bathroom stall to continue berating me. That night, crossing the park, I found myself re-litigating that moment, but this time defending myself with the words that had escaped me then.
It wasn't a hallucination or flashback in the sense I had always thought of them—I was aware that she was a character out of memory, my foil in an imagined conversation. Nevertheless, while I could stop myself from speaking my righteous justification aloud, I couldn't make myself stop the arguments. As I continued fighting with the Assistant Principal in my head, my anger, frustration and sharp sense of injustice, and the tightness in my shoulders and jaw, the fingernails digging into my palms, the churning of my stomach were all very real, and not that different from how I had often felt in Cairo.
That night, I realized I had also been dreaming of fighting with her—nightmares that woke me in the middle of the night, furious at the education system, at myself, at the city, at the world. I remembered the sudden disproportionate anger I had felt recently in a casual brunch conversation with friends when it turned to reforming the education system. Those Propublica stories came to mind again, and I realized I was experiencing classic symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress.
I thought about all the times I waited for four or five crowded Six Trains pass me by in the subway, and realized that I always put my back to a wall in a crowd, my back against the door in a crowded train car. I would become suddenly furious when someone misjudged their own personal space and bumped into me. How do they not know I'm there? I would fume. A man would stand too close behind me and my angry inner monologue would spiral suddenly out of control. Occasionally, I would even begin muttering furiously under my breath.
I asked myself if knowing at all times—to the inch!—who was around me and what they were doing or about to do, always knowing exactly how much space I occupied and when it impinged on the space of others…. Was that preternatural awareness what they call "hypervigilance"? It infuriated me that I seemed to be the only subway rider with this precise awareness of others, but what if it were not common courtesy but a symptom of a greater malaise?
It took me the better part of a year to really accept that I probably had Post-Traumatic Stress, that my white-knuckled fists as I walked down the sidewalk or the tightness in my chest on an over-crowded L Train were more than the usual New Yorker annoyance. I started naming my probable PTS in conversation, dismissing it as a product of experiencing the Egyptian Revolution, even though I knew it was the experience of khawaaga, the gauntlet of male attention that had actually disappeared during the hopeful, halcyon seventeen days on Tahrir Square.
Although I have never been formally diagnosed, putting a name to my struggles made them real, put them in context, gave me coping strategies. When the tension started to build in my hands and shoulders, I could give myself permission to put my back up against a wall or get off a crowded train and wait for another. I could talk back to the angry voice spiraling in my head, remind it that I was in America now, that this was an over-reaction. I learned to breathe into the discomfort, name it, validate it, accept it. Eventually, I started to conquer it, to mute, defuse and sometimes even avoid the sudden defensive reaction to triggers. I learned to gauge each day's emotional fragility by how much I worried about being caught in the revolving doors on my morning commute.
I also started remembering my Canarsie students with new eyes, especially the students I hadn't been able to build relationships with, the ones with behavioral, mood and conduct disorders. I thought, too, about the ones who hadn't been diagnosed but were just as quick to anger, violence and defiance. Were they feeling what I was feeling?
For years, I had been saying that a key but underappreciated barrier to peace between Israel and the Palestinians was five generations of population-wide Post-Traumatic Stress. I had never thought about it in my own country. Suddenly, I found myself wondering if this were also true of Canarsie, Brownsville, East New York….
Early in training as a Teaching Fellow, someone had warned us about respecting our students' personal space. "Be careful not to come up from behind and startle them, not to touch or get too close. Some of these kids—all they have is their personal space." That explanation had sufficed at the time, but now I saw these as symptoms we shared. I thought about the little beggar girl in Al Mahrani Street, the sudden, irrational, violent anger I had felt at her, at her father.
I still struggle with crowds, and with irrational anger at the education system. I continue to wrestle almost daily with my white privilege and the responsibilities it implies.
Walking across Maria Hernandez Park at two in the morning, if the cops sitting in their cruiser in the center of the labyrinth barely look up from their paperwork as I walk past, I know it is because of my white middle class privilege. Some nights, I seethe with the unfairness of it all, because every day my students at the old Canarsie High School risk terrible indignities at the hands of the cops, just for walking home from school while black.
When I look at Michael Brown of Ferguson and Eric Garner of Staten Island and all of the others, I see my students, and I see a little of myself. I remember the constant erosion, sometimes subtle and sometimes overt, of my internal sense of dignity and belonging. I feel the prison of khawaaga, the eyes always watching, judging, weighing my right to the space I occupy. In Egypt, I channeled my anger inward—I only remember lashing out that once—but I had only lived with khawaaga for years, not a lifetime.
Yet, I know the feeling all too well, the noose of khawaaga so tight I can barely breathe. No one deserves that.
We are all products of our lived environment, and of the people we gather around us or push away. As I have moved from continent to continent, made friends, lost some, maintained contact with others, it has continually shifted my state of mind. In this essay, 'Khawaaga: Eyes Always Watching,' I trace how some of those shifts happened, geographically and on the inner map of my identity.
Maryah Converse was a Peace Corps educator in Jordan, 2004–2006, and was studying in Cairo during the 2011 Arab Spring. She has written for From Sac, New Madrid Journal, BLYNKT, Silk Road Review, Newfound, and Stoneboat Literary Journal. She lives, writes and teaches Arabic in New York City, and blogs intermittently about the world at bymaryah.wordpress.com.


text:
Please click anywhere to continue browsing our site.
Shop For TiresBack To Tire Brands
The Future In Motion
At Correa Tire, we are a proud provider of Continental tires for customers in Toa Baja, PR, Dorado, PR, Vega Alta, PR, San Juan, PR, and surrounding areas. Customers are bound to find the right tire to fit their budget in our selection of competitively priced Continental tires.
Continental has been a leading automotive industry supplier for over 100 years. Continental was founded in 1871 in Hanover, Germany, but merged with other major companies in the German rubber industry in 1928 to form Continental Gummi-Werke AG.
The company is currently one of the five largest automotive suppliers in the world, and Continental ranks third on the Automotive News Europe list of the top 100 global suppliers worldwide. As of 2012, Continental employs approximately 170,000 employees in 46 countries. Continental is one of the European market leaders for passenger, light truck, and industrial tires.
Shop our online tire catalog to browse our selection of Continental tires.
Every product manufactured by Continental is produced with sustainability in mind, because Continental believes in being environmentally conscientious. Part of Continental's corporate strategy is environmental protection, and the company invests carbon reduction technologies to reduce automobile and industry emissions. Some of their sustainable changes include a state-of-the-art air conditioning system that reduces pollutants, and the reuse of raw materials like natural rubber.
Continental creates intelligent, highly developed technologies for processing, transport, and mobility. A variety of warranties are available for each type of Continental tire, so you will be covered no matter what the road has in store.
As one of the leading Continental tire dealers in the area, we pride ourselves on our ability to send customers home happy. Contact us online or visit us today to learn more about our selection of Continental tires.
As one of the leading tire shops in Dorado, PR, Correa Tire takes pride in providing the highest quality tires for variety of vehicles. Come see us for service if you live in Dorado, PR, Toa Baja, PR, Vega Alta, PR, San Juan, PR, and surrounding areas. We offer a variety of tires, from ATV and golf cart, to commercial and OTR tires to outfit most any equipment. When you need the best tire shop, look no further than Correa Tire.
Dorado, PR
Frente al Aeropuerto Mercedita, PR
San Juan, PR

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A Chinese construction company has used additive manufacturing techniques to print out nearly everything needed to assemble multi-storey buildings, from large-scale structural components to decorative embellishments.
In order to demonstrate the potential of its new building technology, Shanghai-based Winsun used its proprietary 3D printer to produce a five-storey apartment and a 1,100 square metre villa for display at the Suzhou Industrial Park.
The gigantic 3D printer array developed by WinSun CEO Ma Yihe for construction purposes dwarfs the compact devices more commonly associated with the wonders of additive manufacturing.
The printer developed by Ma is itself commensurate in size with a moderate-sized building, measuring 6.6 metres in height, 10 metres in width, and 40 metres in length.
According to WinSun, the printer's computer makes use of a dextrous extruder arm to pour out the building material in multiple layers in accordance with a CAD software template, "much like how a baker might ice a cake."
The building parts are first printed out at WinSun's factory before they're conveyed to the construction site and assembled into multi-storey structures with the aid of steel reinforcing components and insulating materials.
The application of additive manufacturing to the building process brings major benefits when it comes to cost and efficiency – areas of particular importance for the construction sectors of emerging economies like China.
The technology cuts down dramatically on wasted construction material, achieving savings of between 30 and 60 per cent.
According to Ma, the printing medium itself can be considered a type of green building material, consisting of recycled glass, fibre and construction waste that has been ground up and mixed with a base of fast-drying cement and a special hardening agent.
Ma notes that the usage of recycled building materials in tandem with the reduction in on-site wastage has the potential to slash the construction sector's CO2 emissions.
The process also achieves massive reductions in time and labour. It can cut down construction times by between 50 and 70 per cent, and labour costs by between 50 and 80 per cent.
The 1,100 metre square villa was produced using WinSun's technology for little more than US$160,000 – a cost advantage that has already help the company receive 10 orders for the printed mansions.
This is not the first time WinSun has created a global buzz with the application of 3D printing to the blitzkrieg creation of complete buildings. The company made a splash in the international press last year when it printed 10 houses in space of a single day – a feat proving the speed and efficiency of the process.
WinSun harbours even grander ambitions for its proprietary technology, with plans to apply it to the construction of larger structures such as bridges, high-rise buildings and factory complexes.
The company has also entered a partnership with Nile Sand Material Technology to build a dozen "dream factories" using sand as the base material, and hopes to export the technology to as many as 20 different countries around the world.


text:
Khizr Khan's emotional speech at the Democratic National Convention last week was a glimpse into the painful reality for families of slain soldiers. Khan's son, Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in 2004 while serving in Iraq. More than a decade later, their grief, as Khan recalled his son's sacrifice onstage alongside his wife, Ghazala Khan, was evident.
But not everyone was moved by their suffering. Donald Trump, whom Khan forcefully condemned in his speech for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, implied in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that Ghazala "wasn't allowed" to speak onstage because of her religion. He later reiterated in a statement that Khan had "no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things."
Trump's blatant disrespect for the Khans provoked severe rebukes from both sides of the aisle. Among those who spoke out was John McCain, whom Trump previously derided for being a prisoner of war. He issued a statement criticizing the GOP nominee:
In recent days, Donald Trump disparaged a fallen soldier's parents. He has suggested that the likes of their son should not be allowed in the United States — to say nothing of entering its service. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump's statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers or candidates.
It isn't the first time McCain and Trump have clashed. Last year, Trump said of McCain being captured and tortured while serving in Vietnam:
He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured.
The real estate mogul was widely denounced then for his comments that seemed to dismiss the sacrifices of American soldiers and their families. So it was no surprise that Trump's contempt towards Khan and his criticisms were taken personally by many families who have experienced the same kind of anguish — particularly by Meghan McCain, the Arizona senator's daughter.
In one frank tweet, Meghan McCain succinctly put Trump's remarks into context:
Trump has spoken ill of many groups in the course of his tumultuous presidential campaign. But in a country that views its military with reverence — albeit with a troubling sense of disconnect — his comments are making it increasingly difficult for those who have turned a blind eye to his many other controversies to continue supporting him.
Thankfully, a number of people like the McCains are speaking out against the Trump campaign's divisive rhetoric, including such names as Heidi Klum, J.K. Rowling, and London mayor Sadiq Khan.


text:
What is hydrojetting?
Hydrojetting is the process of using a high-pressured flow of water to scour the interior surfaces of the plumbing pipes, removing scale, grease and other debris that's built up inside the pipe walls over time. As opposed to rodding, where a plumber uses a tool to power a hole through the buildup, hydrojetting achieves a comprehensive cleaning of the pipes.


text:
Manufacturer Caneline
Designed by Welling / Ludvik
Cut is a series of stools and tables made from laser cut aluminium sheets, welded together and powder coated. It is created and assembled to optimize the use of the material, and minimize waste material. Cut is designed for both indoor and outdoor use.
Stool: 430 x 340 x 760 mm
Stool low: 420 x 330 x 660 mm
Table: 1200 x 600 x 1050 mm


text:
The Greenville Restaurateur Who Built An Empire And Is Selling It To His Staff
Jun 17, 2019 04:10 PM EDT | By Staff Reporter
If you ask where to dine in Greenville, S.C., the answer is likely to be "one of Soby's places."
Soby is Carl Sobocinski, who opened his first restaurant, Soby's New South Cuisine, in 1997. It was one of the first smart dining places in the South to feature modern twists on local specialties, with a friendly atmosphere.
Since then, his Table 301 group has grown to include seven restaurants, a food truck and a catering business.
Campbell Soup To Sell Danish Snacks Manufacturer To Ferrero Affiliate For $300 Million
Campbell Soup has announced it will sell its Danish baked snacks manufacturer Kelsen Group to CTH Invest, a Belgian holding company affiliated with the Nutella maker Ferrero, for $300 million. The transaction is subject to customary purchase price adjustments, and it is expected to be completed in the first quarter of fiscal 2020.
New Whiskies Well Worth Buying This Summer: Brown Is Beautiful
The newly appointed editor-in-chief of Esquire Magazine, Michael Sebastian, recently told the press that he wants to get away from the idea that the magazine's reader is "a middle-aged white guy who likes brown liquor and brown leather"). Which should send chills down the ad dept's spine working on those Scotch and bourbon accounts!
To Celebrate National Michelada Day On July 12: Everything You Need To Know
Adding a squeeze of fresh lime and a dash of salt to a lager or pilsner has long been Mexican tradition, and in the 1980s, this practice evolved into the refreshing beer cocktail known as a michelada. The popularity of the drink grew across Mexico and, thanks to the influx of immigrants, it translated well to restaurants and bars across the U.S.
Rosé Wine: Is Oak-Aged Rosé Wine Gilding the Lily?
Rosé wine is made in almost every region in the world, from many different grape varieties. And rose-colored wine is produced in a sweet, dry, sparkling, and even fortified style. Yet the classic style of dry rosé wine from Provence sets the trend that many other wine-producing regions around the world want to emulate.
Pastry Chef Dominique Ansel Celebrates 15 Years In NYC With A Sweet Tribute To The City
Dominique Ansel moved from Paris to New York City to work at Daniel Boulud's French flagship Daniel as the executive pastry chef, a position he held for 6 years. Fast forward 15 years later, and Ansel has become a household name after the invention of a certain croissant-donut hybrid, and his namesake bakery has expanded beyond SoHo to include branches around the world.
This Is Where The Piña Colada Was Born
As if you ever really need an excuse to order a piña colada, today is National Piña Colada Day, so go ahead and order that creamy, sweet, cocktail-meets-dessert libation that is best served on a sunny, tropical beach somewhere exotic.


text:
Campaign Goals
Tumi began its partnership with Wpromote with a very clear goal in mind; to double the number of Facebook "Likes" within 6 months. Without increasing their spend, Tumi wanted to increase efficiency and they were relying on our expertise to do so, lowering Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Like (CPL). In addition, they wanted to build brand awareness through YouTube by increasing the number of subscribers to their Case Studies page within Tumi's custom channel.
Wpromote built out Facebook and Display advertising campaigns to drive Facebook "Likes" and YouTube case study subscribers.
- Used targeted Facebook Ads to promote Tumi's "Bag of the Week" giveaway
- Used heavy segmentation of key demographic, interests and "Likes" of similar brands
- Highlighted messages that friends made about Tumi through Sponsored Stories
- Created Sponsored Stories that targeted new potential fans, showcasing posts made about Tumi by friends
- Developed Keyword Contextual Targeted (KCT) campaigns in Google Display that targeted "themes" such as "business travel"
- Built ads specifically pushing "topics" in the GDN, directing users to Tumi's case studies page on YouTube
Wpromote hit Tumi's 6-month goal of surpassing the goal of doubling Facebook "Likes" in just over 2 months and improved CTR by over 82%.
Tumi is getting 129% more fansper month at a 50.7% lower cost per "Like".
About Tumi
Tumi (NYSE: Tumi) is the leader in premium travel, business and lifestyle accessories. As an internationally recognized fashion empire, Tumi appeals to the world's most sophisticated consumers with its high-quality fabrics and excellent design. With Tumi you are sure to get functional superiority, best-in-class quality, technical innovation and outstanding customer service.


text:
3d Car Simulation Description
Play online some of the best simulation 3d car game here on brightestgames.com. Try out this new car simulation game called 3d Car Simulation where you are free in the streets of the city with a sports car driving experience is designed to make your stay enjoyable time when removing. To play the game the Unity Player must be installed on your computer. To start the game after the installation is complete you can log in by clicking Start Game. 3d car simulation game hope you enjoy playing the best.
new racing games, shooting games, car games, bike games and sport games are added weekly!
Copyright 2017 Brightest Games
Privacy Policy / Contact Us


text:
The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Elle Fanning!
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it's unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the "natural wonders" of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It's only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who's not such a freak after all. And it's only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet's world grows, Finch's begins to shrink.
This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.
Includes a PDF Help Line Resource Guide and a Note Read by the Author.
Since Christy and I decided to do another buddy read...we also decided to do another co-review/discussion for you guys. We both thoroughly enjoyed All the Bright Places and we want to talk out all of our feels. We hope you guys enjoy this one just as much or MORE than our last.
WARNING: You guys should definitely proceed with caution because there more than likely will be spoilers ahead. So, if you haven't read the book, you probably don't want to continue.
General Questions
Did the book engage you from the beginning or did it take a while for you to get interested?
Erica: Actually, no. I felt the beginning of the book was a little slow for me. I'm not sure why I thought this, but it took me a good 100 pages in to fully be engaged.
Christy: I feel like was I was engaged from the beginning, because from the moment I picked it up, I didn't want to put it down.
Which character did you enjoy the most?
Erica: Finch, hands down. His personality was so unbelievably amazing & he just made me laugh, smile, and feel so many things.
Christy: Totally agree with Erica on this one, Finch was by far my favorite. He had such a great sense of humor, and a great personality that it was hard not to fall for him.
Do the characters seem real and believable?
Erica: Yes, the characters to me seem real and believable. They have real life problems that I have seen in people around me. I thought Jennifer did an amazing job at making them believable.
Christy: Definitely! The things that are going on with Finch and Violet are things that happen everyday, but they are things that a lot of people don't like to talk about. So I applaud any and all of the authors that are willing to bring these issues to light and show that no one has a perfect life, and it's really hard to have that perfect day.
What passage stood out to you the most?
Erica: This part just stuck out to me because you could see the pain Violet was going through. Then Finch gave her this and that was beautiful to me.
No more winter at all. Finch, you brought me spring.
Christy: This passage stood out so much to me.
"I know life well enough to know you can't count on things staying around or standing still, no matter how much you want them to. You can't stop people from dying. You can't stop them from going away. You can't stop yourself from going away either. I know myself well enough to know that no one else can keep you awake or keep you from sleeping."
What did you think of the ending, do you think there should be a second book?
Erica: I definitely do not think there should be a second book, this book ended great. I am hard to make happy with endings, but this one was perfect to me.
Christy: While I would love to know what happens to Violet in the future, I think the ending was done perfectly.
If you could ask the author one question, what would it be?
Erica: What made you choose the names for the two main characters? -- I absolutely loved both of their names and want to know why Jennifer chose them.
Christy: Was All the Bright Places always supposed to end the way it did? Or did you start out thinking there would be a different ending?
Who would you want to play the main characters in the movie?
Erica: Okay, I know Elle Fanning is already chosen to play Violet, but I'm going to pick someone different.
Okay, so you guys may judge me for choosing Elle's sister, but I think Dakota would also be an amazing choice.
And Adam Brody for Finch, I am not so sure about this one myself, but I had a hard time so I just went with him.
Christy: Okay, I suck at these so I'm totally cheating and stealing Erica's Finch ;) And Chloe is such an amazing actress that I think she would be a great choice for Violet too.
If you could sum up the book in three words, what would they be?
Erica: Heart-breaking, compelling journey.
Christy: Emotional, Gut-wrenching story.
What did you find to be the most heart-breaking moment?
Erica: The most heart-breaking moment to me was when no one would search for Finch. I mean they did for such a short amount of time, then gave up. Okay, I get that he did this plenty of times before, but not like this...it was just so upsetting to see some of his loved ones give up so easily.
Christy: When Violet sees his car and his clothes, and she just knows. That's where I completely broke down.
All the Bright Places Questions
What did you think of the relationship between Finch and Violet?
Erica: The relationship between Finch and Violet was beautiful. They, to me, were just polar opposites, but also one in the same. They complemented each other so perfectly, yet fit together like puzzle pieces. I know it may not make sense to you, but all in all, they
were are perfect.
Christy: It was perfect, and I loved them together so, so much. In a world filled with people that just look through you or only see what's on the outside, they SAW each other and they GOT each other, if that makes sense? And to me, that was beautiful.
What did you think of Finch's parents?
Erica: Okay, I may just ramble on here, but damn...they just ticked me off to no end. How could parents care that little? I understand his mom was heart-broken over the divorce, but c'mon, he's your child. His dad may have some issues of his own, but to care that little just infuriated me. I could keep going on and on but I'll cut it short and say they were not my cup of tea.
Christy: I loathed them. I know his mom was going through a hard time but there's no way in hell that I could be so distant from my kids and while I can't sit here and say that I would have seen all the signs if I were her, I hope that I would. But his dad? He was a sorry excuse for a dad, if that's what you'd even call him.
Do you feel like things could have ended differently?
Erica: I absolutely do think things could have ended differently.
Christy: Yes, I feel like if the people around him would have woke up and paid attention and saw the signs that something isn't right, it could have ended differently. And I think that's what makes so much more devastating, knowing it could have been different.
What did you think of the overall ending?
Erica: The overall ending, like I said above, was perfect. I loved how she went to the rest of the places and found each thing that he left behind. That was the right way to end their story.
Christy: I agree with Erica 100% on this one. I loved the fact that Violet went through the rest of their journey and saw the things that Finch left behind, I felt like it gave her some closure, and it was the perfect ending.
Do you think Finch meant to kill himself or was it an accident?
Erica: I kind of feel like it was a mixture of the two. I feel like he wanted to just get away for a bit, but then nobody came after him. He kept leaving hints behind like he wanted to be found, but no one came. Some people may think that the hints were too hard, but I definitely think that Violet could have figured them out a lot sooner. Though, when he went into the hole, I feel like that was his end. He wanted to find the bottom (that he knew he wouldn't find), yet he continued to search for. Once he went down there I think he pushed himself too hard, he knew that, and wanted to come back up, but couldn't.
Christy: Once again, I agree with Erica. I think it was a mixture of suicide and accident. Throughout the whole story we get these hints, and Finch thinks about suicide quite a few times, but he always backs away at the end and wants to live. I think that he wanted to be saved, he wanted someone to pay attention and to pull him back from the edge, but no one was. I think when he went into the water, he was searching for the bottom, and he wouldn't give up until found it. I kind of think he knew what the outcome would be, only because of the fact that he was sending the emails to everyone, but I also think he was hoping for someone to save him.
Final Rating
Erica: Yes, the beginning was a little slow for me, but it was still a 5 out of 5 stars from me.
Christy: Definitely gets a 5 out of 5.


text:
We deliver measurable ROI in learning and development through global best practice and innovation, ensuring people performance and competence whilst managing more effectively and efficiently to reduce costs
We offer a radically common sense approach to people development that changes behaviour, makes learning stick, gets results and wins awards.
We specialise in leadership, management, sales and service training and executive coaching to help drive business results
We design and deliver award-winning products and solutions that enhance the performance of your organisation.
We create bespoke apprenticeship programmes that align to your business goals and deliver improved outcomes for you, your people and your customers
We are a leading organisation for fire prevention and protection, providing assessed, accredited and assured fire and multi-service training for emergency services and the private sector globally.
Experts in Managed Learning Services
Experts in Behaviour Change
Experts in Digital Learning
Experts in Apprenticeships
Experts in Fire Protection
Brilliant individuals lead to brilliant teams: that's the belief at the heart of every successful L&D programme. But at Capita Learning we don't just make that ethos come to life in our work. We've built it into the very fabric of our company.
Capita Learning is a new sort of L&D business. We're able to offer market-leading end-to-end learning and development services because we unite unique brands under one common aim: to deliver outstanding performance results. We improve organisational performance, delivering measurable ROI in learning and development. We effect transformational programmes that deliver strong behaviour and performance change.
We deliver business process outsourcing (BPO) to significantly reduce costs through improved efficiency in the management and administration of learning.
We are learning experts and our specialist teams and businesses can meet specific needs or work seamlessly together in a single solution to a client challenge


text:
The new year is approaching and I am finding myself reflecting on an incredible 12 months. Incredible, surreal, gratifying, crushing, uplifting, concerning and more. This year I've basically been a homeless nomad as I've traveled the world to conferences and meetings. I've spent 14 hour stretches on planes, stayed in everything from crappy random motels all the way through to mansions in high-rise buildings.
I have loved every moment. It has been life changing.
I owe a lot of people a great debt. They helped make this year possible. I am going to invariably miss some of them here, but I'm going to try to name them anyway.
Nik Seirlis
Nik was the guy who believed in a 10 year old kid doing work experience in a computer store. He listened to my complaining one rainy night 3 years ago and said "Kid, you need to stop doing this small time stuff and think bigger". OK he didn't quite say it like a cowboy, but you get the drift. Nik continues to give me a firm kick in the arse every time I start to rest on my laurels. He helped me get the courage to start this journey.
He literally got on a plane with me in '06 and we went to Silicon Valley together. Nik's personal success set the bar for me in my own life and continues to inspire me.
Ashley Angell
If Nik helped me start the journey, then Ashley packed his bags, sold out his family and joined me on the road (figuratively). Ashley and I co-founded Faraday Media together, dreamt up APML and Data Portability together and have had countless discussions about social media, friendship, partnership and much much more. '
Ashley has that rare quality that you need in a business partner to be able to switch contexts. We each explicitly switch gears from 'Friends' to 'Founders' to 'Board Members' and emotionally and logistically bucket our discussions. Having worked with countless partners and friends, I can't tell you how important, and how amazing this skill is.
Thank you my friend!
Steve Kelly
Steve Kelly funded the journey. He is Faraday Media's angel investor and still funds aspects of the company to this day. His dry wit, calm attitude in the face of adversity and generous spirit have made it possible for Ashley and I to ride out together.
Ben Metcalfe
Ben is a unique guy. Dude is maybe a better word. When I first met Ben with Nik Serlis in 2006 his first words to me were 'Why would I want to download THAT" referring to our then windows download product. I took an instant dislike to him.
Right after that, though, Ben showed his true nature. He and Sofia totally set us up in the Valley. They introduced us to almost everyone we know today. They showed us the sights, explained the culture and not only pointed us in the right direction, they took us by the hand and lead us there. Within a day I was having drinks with one of my heroes in SF city - Stowe Boyd.
Stowe Boyd
Stowe has been my inspiration for quite a few ideas over the last couple of years. What I call Edge Theory, Streams and even some of my ideas on the Attention Economy have been inspired by him.
Stowe continues to be an inspiration and I'm grateful to be working with him even more closely today!
Daniela Barbosa
Daniela is beautiful both inside and out. She is my co-conspirator, my collaborator and my friend. Along with Ashley, Marjolein and Elias (and many others not on this list) she helped me co-found and more importantly operate the DataPortability project. Without her, Elias and Marjolein (in the early days) it would have literally imploded under its own weight.
She has been unwavering in her loyalty and commitment and for that I will be forever grateful.
Marjolein Hoekstra
As I've described before Marjolein is a quiet supernode of the social media landscape. Her emotional and logistical investment into all this 'Chris' in the last couple of years has made it possible to keep up with our community, related posts and people and ideas and trends. Marjolein uses her news radar skills and her countless browser tabs to find gold nugets in a raging river of noise.
I wish I saw more of her these days.
Elias Bizannes
Like I said above, Elias is one of the people who co-founded DataPortability with me. More importantly, however, he has been compeltely piviotol in turning the project into an organization. While we don't always agree, we always respect what each of us brings to the table. And he brings a lot of HARD, detail orientated work. Like with everyone on this list, I could not have done significant chunks of my work this year without his help.
Martin Wells
Martin is almost as much a philanthropist as he is an Entreprenuer. I first glimpsed Marty's name on the '2 Web crew' website. An Aussie cabal of Web 2.0 leaders. They were once a pinicle of 'in crowd' for me to reach out to.
Reach out I did, to many of them. None responded with the generosity and common sense advice that Marty did. He not only elevated my thinking, but challenged me to think even more. He challenged me to stop thinking and to act.
He almost flew back to Australia to drag me to the Valley this year. I'm so glad I came.
Beyond the professional, however, I'd like to think that Marty and I have become great friends. He opened his home to me for many months and I will always love spending time with him, his wife and kids.
Robert Scoble
I met a lot of my heroes in the course of this year. Some were great, others were disappointing.
Scoble is exactly as you'd imagine. In the best way possible. He is constnatly swamped by people wanting his attention. He has a million incoming messages at any given time. And he tries his very hardest to give every single person SOME time. He sees us all as equals in a giant conversation.
His laugh is infectious and he is ALWAYS smiling.
His faith in me during his Facebook crisis helped propel the DataPortability project to a new level and his friendship through countless conferences and meetups (We'll always have Amsterdam Robert hah) have turned amazing nights into surreal moments frozen in time.
It's all just too much fun.
Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington is an amazing person. Number 100 on Time's top 100 list this year (Lucky the list didn't stop at 99 hey Mike?). That is seriously an amazing achievement.
Too many people assume Mike's success is undeserved in some way. They are dead wrong. Mike works his *$@#ing arse off - often to the detrment of his health and his relationships. He gives TechCrunch everything.
When Mike invited me to stay at his home I was blown away due to his noteriety and 'power' in the valley. When I actually came to stay, however, I was blown away by a more important fact.
One of his first words to me were "I don't want my shit on Valleywag". In that moment I realized that he was taking a big risk letting me into his home and life - because any minute thing in his life could be blown out of proportion.
The most amazing thing I learned about Mike was that he still LOVES startups and helping people succeed. I would have never expected that.
Everyone wants something from Mike because they see him as a ticket to traffic or success. After spending a lot of time with him, I'd be happy to just call him a friend.
His faith and support of me at the start of the year will always be remembered and I am forever grateful.
Bill Hudak
I was introduced to Bill Hudak by Martin Wells. Almost instantly Bill, Marty and I became a crazy trio of Aussies. Bill isn't an Aussie though. He is an American trying to be an Aussie. Oi, Bugger!
Bill is a valley boy - born and raised. He knows everyone there is to know here. He walked me into meetings with people I couldn't believe just by making a phone call. He is super smart and super funny.
But more importantly than any of that, just like Marty, he opened his home and life to me. He lent me his car (A Pontiac Solstic no less) for countless months and litterally enabled me to speak to the people I needed to speak to.
I am proud to call him a friend.
Khris Loux
I met Khris just before a trip to Amsterdam. I really got know Khirs on the flight to Amsterdam and the ensuing 4 day Next Web Conference. When I say got to know him, I mean we laughed our arses off, took over the town, met the most amazing people and imagined the future of the web together.
Khris finds business value the way I find architectural value. He is the ying to my yang when it comes to startups. He too opened his home to me when I stayed in the valley. But more than that, he opened his mind!
As I've posted before, I've been offered a lot of gigs this year, but JS-Kit, lead by Khris, was special. I can't wait to see what Khris and Chris can pull off in the new year.
In conclusion
I owe all these people, and countless others, a lot. Their faith, support and efforts on my behalf have made everything possible. I look forward to helping them to continue their journeys next year, and meeting more amazing people in '09.
I'm sorry if your name does not appear here, my fingers are about to break and it's Christmas Morning - I need to run!
Thank so much everyone.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.


text:
Happy New YEAR! Whew...can you believe January is almost over and that this is my first blog of the year? I most certainly can't believe it! Well, before I completely wrap up 2015 and move right along into 2016, I have a couple of things I'd like to share (as I write this blog listening to Deniece Williams - Black Butterfly - maybe I'll embed it so you can too).
First, let me say, THANK YOU. You...the readers have made my 2015 absolutely FANTASTIC. From Faith-Her Love Story to CREE to The Storm Series, you've supported my love of romance and allowed me the flexibility to spread my wings & grow as an artist writing stories of beautiful - proud BLACK women.
There is no ride like the one of being an independent author. It's riddled with unbelievable highs and rife with incredible challenges but even on my most difficult days...I hear you all cheering me on, and it gives me that extra boost to write stories that I hope will make your heart sing! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Now, on to 2016...
I will continue to write about falling in love! My heroines are African American women who are sexy, powerful, and intense. Sometimes, that woman has a quiet strength and other times she's a bit more aggressive! My hope is to cover all of us because we are all things in real life ☺!!
So, in 2016 look out for The Right Side of My Pillow (coming soon - Jade has a story to tell), 2 EXCLUSIVE FREE reads for my subscribers, and much much more! Stay tuned...
Love always,


text:
Sharon Warten
The past few months I have been feeling quite down and low. I go through a lot of highs and lows but especially because I had to give up my favourite outlet to relieve my anxiety. Jogging was something that was part of my daily structure and routine. As of December I had to stop because my osteoarthritis in my knees and hip was just to much to ignore anymore. My body was really unhappy and didn't quite understand why I all of a sudden stopped. It really created havoc on my energy levels and on my digestive system causing constant bloating.
Which brings me to today. I have started slowly back at speed walking and doing cardio on my fave P90X app at my own pace paying extra special attention on what I'm doing. I was looking at some of my favourite bloggers Instagram posts and noticed a lot of them spoke about this coffee they were all drinking. It is called SKINNYCOFFEECLUB. I decided to try it out but not for weight loss, I just wanted my sluggishness and bloat to disappear without drinking harmful energy drinks.
I started drinking it a couple of weeks ago and I can honestly say i'm very happy with the results! Energy levels increased and my bloating has pretty much disappeared:) I would recommend this to anyone who wants that extra boost for their metabolism.
I'm so happy to let you know that friends and family can receive a 20% discount to try SKINNYCOFFEECLUB all you have to do is use my discount code in checkout. The code is stylistsharon I really hope you try it and let me know what you think.
Skinny Coffee Club is organic and boasts a range of ingredients, these ingredients were chosen because of their fat burning properties by putting the body into a thermogenic state as well as boosting antioxidant levels in the body so it removes free radicals allowing your body to absorb nutrients from your food and making weight loss easier when combined with a healthy eating lifestyle.


text:
Mike & Ericka's Entertainment Center
Pictured in stained maple.
65" x 24" x 26"
Pictured in maple with a dark walnut dye and polyurethane protective topcoats. This entertainment center boasts plenty of storage using adjustable shelving. It also has a 2" recess behind the case with integrated cable management and is very easy to move for cleaning or component changes using the hidden casters below.
Available for commission in a variety of domestic hardwoods (quotes often depend on wood preference, finish and timeline). Contact GlessBoards via email for a quote at email@example.com


text:
Designed for Flos
The magic of Shade is achieved by avoiding the conventional way of using mains power from the ceiling, and with it intrusive fittings and flex. Instead, power derives from an LED floor fitting shining an uplight into the paper shade, which in turn is suspended from the ceiling with next-to-invisible, capillary-thin wires.
Paul Cocksedge adds: 'Shade started as a purely practical problem, how to rid ourselves the clutter usually connected to light fittings. The solution actually turned out quite mysterious, almost dream-like. It utilises floor and ceiling both, but appears unconnected to either...!'


text:
John Niero is a native of Toronto, Canada, where he received a Bachelor of Applied Arts from Ryerson University with a major in Photography. He then worked as a fashion/beauty and music photographer in L.A. While doing his own home renovation, during which he reconfigured and designed many elements, he became interested in furthering his design education. He enrolled at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and graduated with Honors in 07, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree. While in school, he completed an internship at designer Karim Rashid's studio in New York. Upon graduation, he launched his company just not normal (www.justnotnormal.us) His designs appear to be minimal and with clean lines, yet there is always more than meets the eye.Looking deeply, different elements can be discovered. This discovery process creates intrigue and engages the observer with the product and its design. Ultimately, his designs are not what they may initially appear to be – they are just not normal.Despite being early in his career, Niero's designs have already received numerous awards. While still in school his flex stacking chair placed second in the International Woodworking Fair competition in Atlanta, Georgia, in August 2006. J-low chaise and table/ottoman debuted at the Salone Satellite of the Salone del Mobile in Milan, April 2007, where it was well received. Subsequently, J-low chaise and table/ottoman won the ICFF Studio Bernhardt Design competition, leading to its North American debut in New York in May 2007. In 2008, his second furniture collection made its debut at the Salone Satellite in April and at the ICFF in May. Later that year his flex too chair, from the same collection, was selected among the Top Ten Chairs at the Promosedia - Salone Internazionale del Sedia, in Udine, Italy. His zipper silicone luminaire received first prize in the FLARE Architectural Lighting Magazine's Progetti di Luce 2008 design competition, selected from over 200 proposals submitted by young design professionals and students from around the world. John Niero debuted his third furniture collection, stance and totally batty, at the Salone Satellite in April 09, and at the ICFF in May 09. syncopation, licensed by La Cividina, also made its debut at the Salone del Mobile that same year. elle, licensed by Loewenstein (a division of OFS Brands), debuted at NeoCon's World Trade Fair in Chicago, in June 09, where it was awarded Gold in the Best of NeoCon Seating: Sofas & Lounge Chair category. Most recently he received the Interior Design Best of Year 2009 Merit Award, Product Design, Seating: Contract/Lounge.
Inspirations and Influences?
Inspirations come from all over, such as the vibe I get from visiting a new city, discovering new areas in my home city of Los Angeles, viewing an exhibit at a museum, walking through nature. They seem to culminate at about 2 a.m., while I am sleeping.
Project you are most proud of so far ?
I have two: J-low chaise and monkey around. J-low chaise was my first project where I reinterpreted a primitive handcrafted African tribal chair, using advanced computer software and a CNC (computer numeric controlled) machine. The contrast between the ancient hand-crafted wooden seat and the modern plastic J-low chaise and table/ottoman speaks to the tension between old and new, past and future, while maintaining an essential aesthetic link.monkey around consists of objects/elements that I do not like, such as chandeliers, crystals, patterns and florescent lights. I utilized these elements/objects to create something that I DO like and that is fun and interactive. It reminds me of what a painting instructor once told me in class when I stated that I did not like a particular color, "...in the right painting that might be the perfect color..."
Favorite cultural hotspot ?
Milan - the Big Olive. An international small city where there is a high concentration of extremely talented people pushing the envelope.
Dream dinner guest would be?
Vivienne Westwood because she just rocks.
Making something that is inspiring and that has not been done before yet can be manufactured for a mass global market.
Other designers you admire?
- Petra Blaisse for her incredible sense of materials, light and shadow, and her ability to transform a space to create a lasting experience for the observer.
- Patricia Urquiola for her use of scale and materials, and because she brings fashion into the design world.
- Konstantin Grcic because his designs are stripped to the bare essentials, are strongly engineered, and yet have an unexpected quality to them.
What stood out this year in his opinion at ICFF?
Design Glut's plug in candles by Liz Kinnmark.


text:
Uncyclopedia:Hall of Shame
"The venn diagram of 'people who know mediawiki' and 'people who are funny' are two separate circles on opposite sides of the universe."
Here at Uncyclopedia, the only thing we like more than voting, whoring ourselves around to get votes from voters, making sure the vote score is up-to-date on articles we've written that are being voted on, having the most number of votes (or at least having more votes than someone else), and receiving awards from voters as a result of having received the most number of votes, is seeing our names in print for the achievements we've received awards for.
Some strongly feel that this is because Uncyclopedians love lists almost as much as they love votes, while others argue it is a logical extension of the fact that lists are comprised of individuals who've become notable as a result of being extraordinarily talented vote whores.
Whatever the truth, everyone can agree that it's nothing to be proud of. So welcome to the Hall of Shame, and please, hang your head accordingly.
The VFH Hall of Shame
For writers who've scored a hat trick (3 features or better) in the game of Uncyclopedia. Not listed? Add yourself.
The VFP Hall of Shame
For artists who've scored a hat trick (3 featured images, or better) in the game of Uncyclopedia.
|Awards, Decorations and Honours
|Order of Uncyclopedia · Awards, Decorations and Honours · Admin Rank · Ninjastars
|Ranks &
|Writer of the Month · Uncyclopedian of the Month · n00b of the moment
Potatochopper of the Month
Foolitzer Prize
|VFH · VFP · Best of · Top Ten: 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013 · 2014 · 2015 · 2016 · 2017 · 2018 · Hall of Shame
|Prix citron
|Useless Gobshite of the Month · Useless Gobshite of the Year · Sandwich of the Month · FFS
|Events citron
|Poo Lit Suprise · Aristocrat's Turkey Day Ball · The Article Whisperer
Happy Monkey Competition · Other competitions


text:
Living in the shadow of the Khmer Rouge
by Hannah Fleming
It is my family's second day in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We are four pasty foreign intruders, standing before a bridge that will lead us to Terabithia, or perhaps to glimpse the faded footprints of Angelina Jolie's stunt double from "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." According to Kong, our tour guide, Angelina Jolie is somewhere outside of the city, in a Cambodian-style house with her adopted Cambodian child.
Angkor Thom, which means "great city" in Khmer, is the last capital of the Khmer empire, and seemingly the most intact. The city walls, surrounded by a moat, enclose a square with some of the most intricate carvings of Hindu gods and goddesses, mythological and other-wordly beings, that we will see in this lifetime.
Kong walks ahead of us on the dirt path. He has a strong square jaw (a characteristic of the Khmer people he often points out in carvings) and wears long pants and a pressed yellow shirt—a tour guide's uniform. It is 90 degrees and humid. The only evidence that this fazes Kong are a few beads of sweat that have begun to form against the dark hair on his forehead.
He describes the figures that still guard the ancient city: the first two rows of statues carry the body of a serpent, a seven-headed naga, positioned in an attitude of a tug-of-war. He says it's not uncommon to have naga balustrades lining the approach to a temple—their purpose is to link the world of men with the world of gods. The real tug of war occurs between the ensuing figures that face one another. On the left there are gods. On the right there are demons. We tourists walk somewhere in between.
Kong pauses in the middle of the bridge, luckily in the shade, and nonchalantly points out bullet holes in the stone armor of one of the guardians.
"Target practice for Khmer Rogue soldiers," he says. I expect him to follow this comment with "strange country" in his usual sardonic tone, but this time his eyes are somewhere else, as though he's waded through the rice fields and can't seem to find his way back.
Christmas in Cambodia is not understated—it is peak tourist season. In Siem Reap, there are plastic Santa Clauses and reindeer littered on hotel lawns, colorful stars and icicle lights you would expect to find on the front porches of western homes. My family and I are staying at a hotel with a sign that says "Have a Khmerry Christmas," and though I didn't shudder then, I'm shuddering now.
It's been more than two decades since the Khmer Rogue, when the Communist Party of Kampuchea came to power, but for those familiar with its history, the word Khmer evokes images of scenes from Joffé's 1985 thriller "The Killing Fields." Though I had little prior knowledge of the Khmer Rogue, it's the first place my mind went after talking to Kong about his childhood. He was born towards the end of the U.S. bombing mission in Cambodia, 1973, though he doesn't know his exact birthday.
"I chose the second of February, it's my makeup birthday," Kong says. "I was born in the battlefield so they don't really pay attention to the real date of my birth, they just want to survive through the war."
It is December 25, 2015. We are sitting at a table in a restaurant called The Khmer Cooking Empire, filled with American and British families drinking Chang beer. Outside, the front lot is crowded with white vans, and to the side of the building tour guides lounge in hammocks in the shade of sugarplum trees.
Kong explains that Cambodian people don't celebrate birthdays. The new year falls on April 13th, and every new year you are considered a year older. Kong has a family name—technically his name is Pen Kong—but his mother destroyed all pictures and family documents after his father was taken into a rice field and shot. This was 1975, at the beginning of the Khmer Rogue years. Middle class civilians, foreigners and essentially anyone perceived as a threat to Kampuchea were often invited to "join the new government," which was code for certain execution. The "new government," often referred to as the Angkar, never confirmed his father's death.
"I was only two years old. I don't know my father's face—we have only one picture remaining today," Kong says.
What happened next is a series of movements and false promises. According to Loung Ung's renowned memoir "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers," the only real incentive to trust the word of a Khmer Rogue soldier was to avoid death. When her family was forced to flee from Phnom Penh, they were told it was because the United States was going to bomb the city, and they would be able to return home after three days. Three days turned into an eight-day walk to a dusty village, surrounded by rice fields as far as the eye could see. Here, the Ung family waited to be torn apart.
Kong's family experienced a similar forced migration. "Three children, and my mother. We tried to lie to the new government that we were only laborers during the ex-government," Kong said. The truth is that his father was a police chief, and if anyone found out, they were in grave danger. His family complied as much as they could.
"So we were sent north and then we went east of town. It was 17 kilometers east of the town of Siem Reap today, but in those days it was like dense jungle zone," he says.
This is a time that Kong refers to as "the prison without walls."
"When [the Khmer Rogue] wants us to move, we had to follow. If they felt they couldn't control us in one place, they sent us to another place so they could control us better," he says. If you appeared unhappy you were in trouble, meaning "instantly dead or in prison, or punished to work overtime in the rice fields."
Eventually, the family was at the mercy of the Angkar's various agricultural institutions. His older brother collected cow dung, his older sister looked after cattle. His mother was sent to a work camp where she was only able to see her children once a month. Three-year-old Kong was forced to hide in the jungle situated next to the labor camp. Though he wasn't working as a laborer like his family, he was privy to the conditions of the camp: collection and reallocation of old clothes, human waste remixed as topsoil.
During the day, his brother and sister worked. "At night, we slept together in a small shelter this high from the grass." He gestures about two feet above the tablecloth. "We used only one blanket that we took from the town, and a very old pillow for three people. It was hot and humid, but at night we're more worried about the cold. Sometimes in the mornings in December it got so cold we had to burn a fire." He pauses. "Sleeping wasn't a problem…the problem was we had nothing to eat."
Of the 1.4 million to 2.2 million deaths estimated during the Khmer Rogue years, half were executions, and the rest were from starvation and disease. It was all part of the philosophy: the Khmer Rogue believed that one individual should not have what the rest of the country does not have. If everyone is supposed to be equal, then everyone should starve.
"You have no right to own anything, no right to grow your own vegetables, no right to a farm or animals, nothing," Kong says. "You work in a collective farm, you eat in a collective kitchen." Unfortunately the collective's cauldrons of rice gruel contained little to no nutrition, coupled with the fact that portions were miniscule at best. Since Kong was too young to receive his own portion, his brother and sister snuck some of theirs to a hiding Kong when they could.
"We all heard the story of the kid who tried to steal a piece of fruit, and he picked up the fruit and ran off with it. And the Khmer Rogue soldiers found out and they killed him and threw him in the water," Kong says.
More often than not, he was left to fend for himself. His body swelled from malnutrition.
"Swelling was also caused by eating poisonous food, like cassava," Kong says, referring to a woody shrub he attempted to eat. Kong often ate scorpions, centipedes, crickets—whatever he could find. Though crickets and other insects are often considered delicacies, eating them alive is another matter.
"You know the buffalo frog? We had to go in the well to get it. They live in crab holes and they come out, so we had to go into the well to catch it." Kong's mother would often catch them for him when she visited and showed him how to do it.
For three years, eight months, and 20 days Kong survived in the jungle. Though it should have been twenty-three days—Vietnamese forces liberated Phnom Penh, the capital, on January 7th, 1979 and Siem Reap, north of the capital, on January 10th, 1979.
The lunch rush is waning at the Khmer Cooking Empire. British tourists have packed into vans, and children follow them, selling bracelets and English books on Angkor Wat. Kong looks uncomfortable. He's prefaced our conversation by telling me he hasn't told his sons most of this story yet, and he's not eager to relive it. But even with the severity of that time period—three years of a young life—Kong is able to joke about the three days that made him tougher than everyone in Phnom Penh. When he was reunited with his siblings and mother, they made their way home, only to find it "totally eliminated and destroyed," Kong says.
"During that time we built a new hut again, but we were poor. We went back to a primitive lifetstyle."
They lived on a plot next to his uncle and aunt. His mother opened a grocery shop and provided for the family—only she was paid in rice. Kong shrugs. "Better than the hell," he says.
When the Angkar was overthrown, Cambodians (then, "Kampucheans") hoped that peace and liberty would return to their country. What took its place was not a new government by and for the people of Cambodia, but an illegal Vietnamese occupation green-lighted by the Soviet Union. It would last until 1989. During that time, Kong was fortunate enough to go to school and miraculously avoided the draft.
"The school was in the Buddhist temple. We had no books—we had wooden planks. Only one or two teachers survived and they taught a kind of primary school," Kong says. He reminisces about the teacher that beat him so hard, he wet his pants. It was a small price to pay: Kong's eldest sister could not go to school because she needed to help his mother earn money while his brother was drafted, and became a tank driver for the army.
"We call it draft but it's more like they go to catch and say 'Stop—come to the bus, come to the truck.' And you don't tell anybody," Kong says. He was lucky because his uncle was the chief of the village police: unlike Kong's father, he was not appointed by the government, but was in charge of protecting the village and settling local disputes.
"The information of the draft came to him. So we had to hide ourselves in several ways. First: we don't go anywhere alone with our information. We knew who they were looking for, we knew the negotiator and then I lied about my age. So at least if we were caught, we'd have many different reason to stay away from the front line," Kong says.
His reality became somewhat of a military base—there were soldiers constantly coming into the school. At home, he learned to disassemble weapons. "We had to learn to stand straight, move left, move right, like a soldier," Kong says. "Everybody learned to be that way."
Having survived the Khmer Rogue and ensuing military occupation, Kong decided he could survive a few disagreeable tourists. He'd worked as a bartender and an election supervisor at the UN, and became a tour guide on November 1, 1993. He says he's been in the same place since—but now has a wife and four sons. Kong later emailed a picture of him surrounded by his four boys. The caption read: "I am the fifth."
* * *
On our last day in Cambodia, we drive past the Swiss free hospital. Men and women stand in line or generally mill about, children play games in the grass. A sign reads "Severe outbreak of dengue fever." I decided if it was this crowded on the outside, the inside must be stifling. Kong confirmed this, telling us that when his wife was pregnant with their twins, the two of them slept on the floor for a week in order to receive a cesarian section from a doctor they could trust.
We pass the hospital, and enter onto the road that leads to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and a myriad of other ancient marvels.
Driving through Cambodia is like driving through the Mississippi delta on a tour bus, trying to ignore groups on the front porch drinking forties. Like a two-week UNICEF program in Jamaica where you barely scratch the surface of the country, but don't leave without putting your arm around a cross-eyed child for a picture. Unlike central Siem Reap, the Cambodian families who work under red and yellow awnings and live in raised houses near the main road aren't putting on a brightly-colored show for tourists—and they certainly they aren't retreating to their air-conditioned flats to drink Johnny Walker and watch re-reruns.
There is evidence they do drink Johnny Walker. Kong points out the Cambodian gas station, where the bottles are filled with gasoline. It's twelve dollars, Kong informs us, for a one liter red label of whiskey. The discarded whiskey bottles are re-filled with gasoline and sold for one dollar.
"Strange country," Kong says for about the third time during that car ride. Though current political prisoners might warn Kong against speaking out, he's not a politician. He reiterates his distaste with the Cambodian government on a whim: it is an autocracy. A small economy with little transparency. I asked if he's optimistic that he will see the country develop any faster in his lifetime.
"We're waiting for this Prime Minister to be out of power, and after that we don't know what will happen. It's difficult to guess. I'm optimistic, but it's slow. In my lifetime I'm not sure if we can avoid the autocracy or not. They give you peace, at the very least. But when we ask questions about the corruption, they don't answer. If you ask about that, they tell you about something else," he says. "They mock you: 'Oh in 1970 you were just empty handed and now you have everything, you see?'"
The truth is that 80 percent of the population in Siem Reap are farmers, and many others work in the tourism industry. We're about forty minutes north of Siem Reap, heading towards a fishing village that Kong assures us welcomes visitors. It's late in the afternoon, and the light is golden: all around us are rice fields, as far as the eye can see.
A small piece of Cambodia today rests in this fishing village. My family and I, now beet-red intruders, ride on a speedboat on the river, passing floating chicken coups and alligators in pens, front porches where women are washing clothes. On one dock, there's a circle of shirtless old men drinking Angkar beer after a day of fishing.
We dock and join the men on the adjacent platform, and I squirm a little bit, trying to decode their stares and understand how they must feel with tourists constantly passing through their home. I ask Kong expressly if we should even be here.
He laughs, taking off his Monaco sunglasses. "They're very happy," he says.