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Las Vegas Vacations - The Best Las Vegas Hotels
Las Vegas Vacations - The Best Las Vegas Hotels It's a fact that Las Vegas gets a lot of people coming to enjoy the magic of this place. They all have different intentions: some have money in mind; There's some fame, and the rest just want a good vacation. Las Vegas offers many possibilities that it is difficult not to enjoy yourself until the end! Judging by the varieties even Las Vegas residents offer, not every inch of this amazing place may be experienced. Therefore, when you plan your trip to Las Vegas, do your homework and know which place offers the best accommodation. Las Vegas hotels have many tourist attractions and spectacular shows tempting to come to millions of guests and visit this charming place every year. Here is a preview of what to expect from the best hotels in Las Vegas. Mandalay Bass Las Vegas Hotel Mandalay Bay Hotel is located in some of Las Vegas' best-known hotels. In addition to the luxurious rooms offered by the hotel, this hotel features a casino for guests. Even the food is popular to be the best in the city and the hotel consists of five restaurants in 10. Facilitated by a swimming pool, this hotel also offers a twenty-four-hour buffet. Another plus point for this hotel is that the service is so incredible! Hotel in Las Vegas, Paris Located in a dull area, the Paris hotel is a bright, bright rainbow that shows Paris in style. With so many awards for the open service it offers, it's hard to understand the downside to this hotel. This finger offers game facilities with delicious food and in return wants some money inside the hotel. Night shows at this hotel brighten up your nights and in addition; Twenty-fouseven hotel room service is available. MGM Grand Las Vegas Hotel MGM Grand Hotel has been set up in some way to leave you looking, opened on the sites it offers your mouth! Offering lions live, this hotel has more than 100,000 square feet of casino playgrounds. The rooms shown by this hotel know what MGM Grand Hotel customers want and how to give. The shows offer delicious food, let alone to ask for more and the hotel even does not plan to leave in the first place. Bellagio Las Vegas Hotel Bellagio hotel is not a cheap hotel to live in and nor is it cheap gambling to play. Often remembered for the fountains located directly inside the hotel, the beauty it offers keeps every view. Everything about this hotel speaks of luxury and luxury. Even the food is expensive but everything they offer is worth every penny you pay, including the whale show at the hotel. If you can afford to stay at this hotel or play, they can't promise anything less than the best. Hotel in Venice Las Vegas Italian hotel themed rooms also offer an Italian interior decorated with Italian art. The Sistine Chapel being painted on the ceilings, when put together in front of you, is a treat for the eyes. Bringing her a full Italian touch, they have the Gondola available inside the mall, which allows them to ride, all the time they sing the gondola. Monte Carlo Las Vegas Hotel Monte Carlo Hotel is popular as the best family hotel in Las Vegas. Accommodation is very good and comes at a cheap price, gambling is also affordable at this hotel. There's even a place to gamble in the same room when your family has their own privacy. Las Vegas offers these top six Hotels in the service of tourists. While they are expensive, they provide every opportunity to make as much money as possible. If you want to have the best of what Las Vegas has to offer, residency is recommended at any of the hotels.
Rachel Schneider ENG 477 Date 1/11/2021 Marsha Blackburn A Writing Portfolio I want to write my own fiction stories one day; I have had a book or two swimming around in my head so I will put the computer to good use and get that typed out one of these days. In this instance I chose my 5 stories and even though one is a marketing inquiry I had fun writing it, so here are my things and some background some of them. Resume: It is a basic one because my photo ones were not particularly good, and this is an honest resume besides the ones I made for class and I did fudge on those. Cover letter: I made up the cover letter though there is a penguin Books but it is always fun to use your imagination! Hike with Drew: I got the concept from a Writer’s Digest and entered it into a contes I never got a response but good practice. Short Story Vegas: Was one I did for another class but in here I changed it and the story was much better the second time. Marketing Flyer: This was fun to do those are stock photos of the dogs and squeaky toys, but I like Pit Bulls and dog toys are fun as well. Scott part 1-This is a story I am working on with another writer, warning its very sexy and some naughty words are in there as well. Writing Samples: I made these three samples up one day because as I have looked for writing work, I have seen people want a sample of your work, so I came up with these. Rachel Schneider 3867 Houghton Ave Riverside CA 92501 📷 951-743-8911 📷 [email protected] 📷 Rachel Schneider 📷 Rachel7Tori-Twitter 📷 📷 Objective To get a career going in the fiction/short story writing industry my imagination can run with any scenario and to write is to live. 📷 Education Bachelor of Arts in English | Grand Canyon University 2017 – 2021 Took 15 different writing courses, creative writing and even two fun marketing classes all to polish up my craft. Carried a 3.0 GPA and did the courses all online as well. No Degree Obtained | Riverside Community College June 1994 – December 1996 Took these college courses but did not finish got 32 Units of Child Development Courses though which is what I was going for 📷 Experience Cafeteria Worker 1 2008 Currently Employed. Cook, Prep, serve food in a middle school setting, also clean, count inventory and do next day prep, cash handling and POS register experience. Bell Ringer | Salvation Army November 2007 – December 2007 Rang bell and collected donations for the salvation Army in front of various stores during the holiday season. 📷 Skills Food handlers Card CPR First Aid certified Grammar Proficiency Spelling Proficiency Can work from home 📷 Activities Have good use of social media and can help update or bring in new followers with my creative writing side. Have a Reddit account as well with 30 stories up on that site. Can speak a little Spanish and Hebrew as well. 951-743-8911 [email protected] 3867 Houghton Ave Riverside CA 92501
Rachel Schneider
Writer
Penguin Books
Dear JENNIFER MCGREGOR,
1/21/2021 Jennifer McGregor Fiction Publisher 4587 Tropicana Rd. Las Vegas NV 89102 I have included my resume for the short story writer for young adult novels. It has been a few years, but I currently work in a middle school, so I do see all the angst and sass that goes with being a young teen. I do hope my writing samples can help me move to the top of the list. I look forward to working with Penguin Books and letting kids know being a teen is hard at first, but it does not last forever. Sincerely, Rachel Schneider Rachel Schneider 3867 Houghton Ave Riverside CA 92501 It had been a long cold winter Drew and I could not get out for a morning hike till today. Being 75 degrees, we did not have to wear many layers. He is an extremely sweet inquisitive boy who always asks a lot of questions. Why does moss grow on the north side of trees” he asks? Its times like this when it would be nice to have my husband here, but he is overseas where the work is. “well, it’s not just the north side it’s on the shadier side because that is where the moisture is.” On we went looking at snails on the ground watching the deer pass by along a ridge. Being quiet as to not startle them. “Mom he whispered it’s a bunny den they are coming out for food, he leaves a few carrot and lettuce scraps from last night’s dinner. I walked down the path and spotted some glorious Blue Jays and a Downey Woodpecker. “Listen Drew the woodpecker is getting the bugs out of the trees.” My sweet Drew was staring at the Bunnies, they are cute and fluffy after all. We followed our path down further after the bunnies went back to the den. The skies were getting cloudy, so I hoped the rain was not going to come back. Though the weather report said there was a chance. My little explorer with his school uniform on was undeterred, I wish I could wear shorts on a 75 day and not be cold, it is always nice to be young. Walking along our path we spot some squirrels running in circles around the tree. “Why do the chase each other like that” Drew asks. “Maybe it’s a game for them like ring around the Rosie.” On we trek to our favorite stream where the deer family are taking their drinks. I tell Drew we cannot skip stones right now we do not want to scare them. We look through the grass for more of his favorite bugs, saw some worms just below the dirt by a tree. Looking up we see a big spider web being made between two branches. The crows were making their calls in the distance. We are finally able to skip our stones in the stream. He gets some great skips going, and we collect some new rocks for our little garden back home. Walking past the stream we climb up the embankment and up along the ridge where we see a Fox off in the distance. He or she walks the opposite direction we are going so it is a relief we can continue to the clearing. Where there are more bugs, rocks, and Bunnies. We pass the Deer family as they run up the hill to were, they mostly frolic or maybe they live up there. We stop for a snack of Apples, Almonds, and some cheese sticks. When we were finished Drew put a couple of slices in his pocket to feed the Bunnies, I am sure. “Mommy we’re getting to the clearing now we can see the Bunnies and the last time Daddy, and I were here I got some neat rocks too.” Drew told ne enthusiastically, I did love his passion for nature, though again my husband is much better at the nature stuff. I am a pastry Chef ask me about desserts and I am your woman, about why moss grows on trees and hello Google. Since Dad is unavailable, I step in and let him explore and see the world outside of the house and off the screen. It is just another half mile and it is on to the clearing. He starts to pull me hand a little harder I know he is excited. We pass under the tree I glance up and see the Fox again. Then we stop and see “Daddy home…… Name: Rachel Schneider Course: ENG 361 Date: 4/14/2020 Instructor: Debbie Graves One Week In Las Vegas The countdown started Friday at 2pm I got the week off from this thing I call a job (just over broke). The car was packed, it was time to hit the road. The traffic was average and climbing the Cajon Pass was not that bad. I stopped in Baker to have my favorite meal at Bob’s Big Boy, the chili spaghetti, no onions. After making my way back on the highway the traffic picked up going out of Baker, through to Primm and Stateline. I had to stop for gas at Whiskey Pete’s, so I also went in and got some snack goodies. My favorite trail mix and some cheese potato chips because vending machines are too expensive. The road was beckoning so off I went, traveling through Jean is always nice, not much to see. A prison, a few remaining casinos, some outbuildings, and a truck stop. There slogan was always fun 40 smiles closer than Vegas. You can get bored so be sure to pack some music you can have your own car concert. “I’ll face it with a grin I’m never giving in, on with the show” (Show Must Go on by Queen) Finally, the Vegas skyline is in sight, the lights are not on yet, but they will be needing to navigate around the strip. I do say a few words the terrible drivers. This vacation was so needed my job is crazy, my kids are older now and do not need mom around anymore. Off they went to grandma’s house and I booked the week at the Delano, it is attached to the Mandalay bay so perfect access to all the fun of the strip, and just enough luxury to not look cheap. Getting the valet to take the car I check into my genuinely nice room I have a great view of the Luxor light (that comes off the top of the hotel) and the Excalibur. Now off to indulge in that genuinely nice bathtub and get some overdue reading done. My bathroom with a view has the Luxor light and that is the brightest light on the Vegas strip it comes right out of the top of the Pyramid shaped hotel. A brightness of 42.3 billion candela, you could read a paper from 10 miles straight up if you wanted to. Once I was well soaked and finished with my chapters it was time to find something to eat besides my snack foods. After cruising the room service options, I settled on some Mexican food of chorizo and eggs with nice corn tortillas. That hit the spot so with the extra energy it was time to get out for a stroll of the property. The indoor pool is nice but small and I want to soak up the sunshine and get some exercise so I shall hit the outdoor pool tomorrow. Back in the lobby I grab those ads for things to do in the city so I can plan out the rest of my trip. There are thousands of things to do in Vegas. Do not be disappointed if you do not get everything done, that is what the next trip is for. I have a beautiful week and I want to have a good time and not have to wait for anybody, I can do what I want. I got those and cruised up through the lobby and toward the casino on my way there I saw a sign for a food and wine festival. With that guy Zac from the travel channel. Thinking hmm I did not know he was interested in food or wine. I went down and found my favorite penny slot game Lucky cat. After 15 minutes I came out putting 20 in and winning 500, so I called it a night and went to the bar to catch a hockey game and grab a fun fruity drink (I like tequila sunrise, (Tequila, grenadine, and cranberry juice). As I am rooting for the Golden Knights (local Vegas hockey team) I looked over to my left and there was Zac from the travel channel, and he likes hockey too this is awesome, and I am trying not to be a fan girl. The game was in intermission and the Knights were winning so it was time for a new fruity drink so this time I turned around to get back to the bar and bumped right into Zac, boy was my face red. After some apologies and an offer to buy my next fruity drink (a Strawberry Daiquiri) it was a yes and I spilled that I was a fan. He told me he does have an interest in food and wine not just chasing ghosts with his crew. We had some great conversation and when the game came back on, we both sat in the booth cheering the golden knights to their victory. Now I am buzzed and standing up was going to be fun, but Zac was a true gentleman and helped me to my feet. He offered to buy me dinner. The Taco Hut was a good place the tortillas were fresh, and the company was so cool. The conversation turned to food, wine, travel, and some stuff about me. The midnight hour rolled around, and Zac had an early morning, so we said goodnight, but he was staying one floor above me, so we agreed to go to the diner in the lobby for breakfast or brunch. At 10am I was enjoying my company and this great stick to your ribs breakfast (scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns and some great watermelon) The food offerings in Vegas are so varied you can get everything from a hot dog and beer for 1.99 at the Orleans, to a 5-star meal at Caesar’s Palace the buffets are great too. Although sometimes you want a nice sit-down dinner. The conversation was effortless the attraction was deep. We made plans to see each other again after the food contest he was judging was over. Saying goodbye was a bit hard but the hand holding was sweet and made me feel like a schoolgirl again. After saying goodbye and I did watch him walk into the convention hall I went back to my room to plan out the rest of my day. I chose a tour of the Mob Museum, they say that Vegas was built with Mob money, but it was a Mormon founded town that later Hollywood discovered. Then many people in Hollywood who were well connected (such as East Coast mobsters) financed Bugsy Segal to build the Flamingo Hotel. As I was putting my shoes on, I got a knock on the room door and as I opened it, I got some flowers (pink roses) and an all-access pass to the food and wine festival courtesy of Zac. Let us just say the Mob Museum can wait for later I got to go to a food and wine festival and spend the rest of the week with Zac. “hi Zac thanks for the flowers it was sweet of you to remember.” He said, “It’s always right to remember a ladies flower preference because that’s the right thing to do.” Smiling the rest of the day I meet other travel channel celebrities and got to taste some great foods and many different wines. The food and wine offerings at the hotels and restaurants are varied, the Las Vegas area have become very international, so the varieties are endless. The week went by in a blur of food, wine, conversation, and some sweet dates. I never thought I would get over the break-up that happened the week before. Getting a private Vegas tour was something completely special. I did get to see the Mob Museum, Mandalay Bay Fine Art Museum, seven magic mountains, Pinball Hall of fame and a private dinner at the food and wine festival. My days in Vegas were down to one. We had reservations at Rivera right here at the Delano the view is amazing, the food is impressive with Italian and French offers. “I have had a wonderful time this week Zac thank you for mending my broken heart.” He looked at me for a minute and said, “it’s been a pleasure to get to know you and I would not mind visiting your hometown, you always have a reason to come back to Las Vegas. The next food and wine festival is around Christmas, this one will include chocolate.” Hitting the 15 early the next morning I have visions of Christmas, a pass to the food and wine festival, also a brand-new relationship to take back home with me. The End When writing a short story, you want to keep it from rambling and have enough details to keep it fresh. When your reader gets into the story you want them to feel like they are there with you, going to the food and wine festival, on that hike through the seven-mountains or touring the mob museum. The details are the thing to see and make sure to watch out for punctuation and common language. An average short story is within 6,00 words or 24 pages. If you wanted too you could go short-short story and that is between 500 and 2,00 words. That comes out to be 6 pages (Minot, Steven Ch. 7 pg. 41), talk about short stories. The story is all your length and style matter as much as how you want it to come into focus. Minot, Steven and Theil Daniel Three genres the writing of literary pose, poems and plays Ninth edition Pearson Publications 2012 Bouncing Dog Toy Emporium August 18,2019📷📷 24755 Holly Grove Way Brookings OR, 97415 Dear Dogs, Rule the World I am Rachel Schneider from the Bouncing Dog Toy Emporium we make extra bouncy dog toys for our furry friends. We investigated different marketing companies and choose you to do our direct to customer marketing. The way the website is set up the customers can get the product’s directly from you is easier than a multi-level marketing plan. The distribution of Bouncy Dog Toy will be a one level channel, we will provide the toys you market, and we sell them. I would like to get some videos of our company dogs Mac and Stella playing with the toys so you can post on the website. A link for the company can also be included so the consumers know where the toys came from, what they are made of and any other facts about Bouncing Dog Toy Emporium. Sincerely, Rachel V Schneider Mac and Stella company dogs and testers 📷 📷 📷📷 📷A sample of our products, our bounciest toys. Scott’s Story Part 1 I am Scott Thorn, and I am going back to WDU for the first time in 15 years, I went here for a year but after I came out as gay there really were no gay dudes. I am all men but yeah lesbians were all around some BI guys but no real gay dudes. I went back to the mainland and attended Preston University I majored in administration and minored in Literature. I did at one point in my life have a girlfriend and wanted to marry her, but I could not quash the gay lifestyle. That part of my life is over and now the old school offered me a counseling job, have not done this in a while. I get to help students toward there after college career. I sit here on this boat and keeping an eye on my 75 Triumph I have some nerves, but it is mostly about seeing this place again, so as the boat pulls up, I get my bike going and make a stop at my new on campus apartment. Its west facing because I like sunsets more than sunrise, so I did not know it needed so much work. I have some handy skills but a little at a time. The kitchen is decent and so is the bathroom. The floors will need some polish and the deck needs to be stained, this is a duplex, so I hope the neighbors are quiet. It is furnished and done nicely so I cannot complain too much, but back on the bike to see the Dean. I get my bike set with the kill switch and walk up the way to the Admin building, I am pretty much the only one dressed. I am wearing my good black jeans and my dress shirt, in my favorite color Maroon. I do remember this place was obsessed with sex so I will stick out wearing clothes, as I enter the building at least more admin people are dressed. Miss Grant the secretary shows me to my new office, its spacious much bigger that my last one at Preston where I shared a cubicle with another person. I have files from past students and current ones, so I started filing them when Dean Kane walks in, booty shorts and a tank top. “Welcome back to WDU Scott, we look forward to seeing you succeed you come very recommended.” I could hardly concentrate because this Dean was hung but I persevered and said, “Thank you sir I look forward to helping young students find there after WDU careers.” After he left, I had to get my rise to settle then I continued filing and looking through some files. Clarissa Love that was a name that got around even all the way to Preston. I think she does the Jax in the bedroom or something like that. I started looking around and thought I need some life in this office so I asked Miss Grant about decorating and she said I could do what I wanted but no painting, so I went to town and checked out a flea market. I found some pictures of the beaches of Canada, some old homes in the area and a few movie posters from Rocky horror Picture Show (it is my favorite). The flea market said they will deliver to the school tomorrow so I told them I will be there at 9am. Now with my day done I get to the store to buy some groceries and realize this place uses sextons and I was down to my last few, so now I will need to exchange but thankfully a bank is nearby so I can get some of my mainland money exchanged. I pull up to my new pad off load my few groceries and notice some other tenant left beer in the fridge, talk about luck. I got the beer went to the deck and watched the sunset over the sky. It was going to be new here, but I needed a fresh start after getting dumped and losing the job because my ex was in upper management, never will I do that again. I will find someone who does not work in the school system. After I ate a roast beef and cheddar sandwich for dinner, watched some cooking shows it was time for bed. As I was brushing my teeth, I heard the neighbors having sex. Oh, goody they are not quiet. hope they do not have super energy either. Tomorrow is my first full day and I have decorating to do, fantastic they stopped, that is the thing with us older people we do not fuck like bunnies anymore. As far as I know the neighbors are lesbians so who knows. Sample 1- If I try my hardest, I could muster up enough courage to ask the prettiest girl in school to prom. I had a suit; bolo tie and I will shine my old boots up. The thing is my courage is not as strong as my best friend Nick, now there is one brave dude who just asked the girl I wanted to go to prom with and of course she said yes. I gather myself close my locker and put on my best smile for them both. Nick and I high five and I hug her, trying to be genuine but it is hard. I head to my Social studies class and sit down next to Megan she looks at me with some concern I tell her what happened, she then asks me to Prom…... Sample 2-Wishing I did not have to be here I sit at the back of the funeral and think about my old high school principal. I grew up in a small town and everyone knew everyone, we only had one school and you went there for kindergarten through senior year. After my graduation I packed up my old car and headed out to what I thought was the real world. Living in a bigger city only helped spur my loneliness so who says you cannot come home again, well Mom for starters because I abandoned my family, I am not welcome at home ever again (so tired of her drama), so I am staying at Principal Mason’s house yes, the same principal that I am at a funeral for I held her hand as she lay there succumbing to cancer…… Sample 3-If you really want to get over a breakup getting back on the horse will help things along. I thought that too seven lousy dates ago so here I am on date number 8 and I am not seeing any birds singing or rainbows in the sky. He steps away to take a call he is a particularly important lawyer after all (I need to fix my picker) after he comes back, he says it go time the jury has come back so off he goes. I finish my drink and head back to my brownstone close by, I pass the new chocolate shop that just opened, and I get inside and see chocolate heaven. Looking around I do not see him at first but there he is my old college lab partner Sam I just saw a rainbow…….
All of a sudden I got 4 Celebrities and I really don’t need them right now and need to clear my Lobby! These are the floors I currently have so send over a bit you want to convert-I’ll even convert them to gold if needed! Food * Airline Food * BBQ Place (Austin BBQ) * Bakery * Burrito Bar (Chip Throttle) * Cheese Shop * Coffee Shop(Stardollars) * Donut Shop * Frozen Yogurt (Blueberry) * Italian Food (Tortellini's) * Pancake House (IJUMP) * Pub (The Blazin Foot) * Scoops (Hotrock Creamery) * Seafood * Shrimp Buffet (Insect Of Da Sea) * Sky Burger * Smoothie Shop (Jumbo Juice) * Sub Shop (Subdirection) * Sushi Bar (Sa Shaymi) * Vegan Food (Eat Mor Chikn) Retail * Bike Shop (Stay In Ur Lane) * Bling Jewelers * Book Store * Brick Store * Candle Shop * Candy Shoppe * Comic Store * Game Store * Grocery Store * Hat Shop * Joey Bitton * Legit Watches * Mapple Store * Men's Fashion (Small and Short) * Pet Shop * Plant Nursery (Plant N Grow) * Record Shop * Surf Shop * Women's Fashion Recreation * Aquarium * Arcade * Boxing Gym * Broadway Theatre * Casino * Circus * Comedy Club (Lots of Love) * Golf Sim * Haunted House (House of Terror) * Karaoke Club * Mini Golf * Museum * Night Club (Mood Element) * Park (Middle Park) * Planetarium * Racquetball * Tiger Magic * Volleyball Club (Salt & Pepper) * Wax Museum (Madam Corsage) Creative * Ad Agency * Art Studio * Cake Studio (Batter Up) * Chocolatier (Billy Bonkas) * Costume Shop * Creative Ink * Dance Studio (Twist & Shout) * Fashion Studio * Floral Studio (Wat In Carnation) * Game Studio * Metal Studio (Heavy Metal) * Photo Studio (Shoot To Thrill) * Pottery Studio (Kilning It) * Soda Brewery * Superhero Lab * TV Studio * Wood Shop (Lumber Hacks) Service * Bank * Barbershop (Subpar Cuts) * Dentist's Office * Doctor's Office * Doggy Daycare * Fortune Teller (Palm Spirits) * Health Club (Inshape Galaxy) * Laundromat * Law Offices * Pharmacy * Plumber (Drain-Woah) * Recycling * Security Office * Stables * Style Salon * Travel Agency (Travelotiny) * Tutoring Center * Wedding Chapel
Call it a story. Call it a creepypasta. The truth doesn’t need our validation. My siblings and I grew up in Maine. My maternal grandparents lived in Arizona, and so we would only see them a couple of times a year, usually once around the 4th of July, and once around Christmas. Even after Nana passed Pop would still make the cross-country trip. When Pop would stay with us, he would sleep in the downstairs bedroom, which was directly below mine. While one might expect an elderly grandparent to snore, the sounds Pop would make were entirely more unsettling. He would whimper. Pop was a WWII veteran, and he saw combat in Italy at Anzio and Monte Casino. I remember once, as a young child, I somehow produced the naive curiosity to ask him if it was hard for him, an Italian American, to fight against Italians. He responded with only “I’m not Italian. I’m American.” He said it with a grimness that taught me not to ask any more questions about the War. Mom used to say he left something of himself in Italy. Sometimes I think he might have brought something back. Pop loved seafood. Every time he came to Maine, my mother would prepare for him a feast worthy of King Poseidon himself. Every kind of clam and cockle, shrimp, or crab that a Mainer could procure from the state’s coast; it was on our dining table. I myself hate seafood. I often think it might be directly related to me being forced to sit beside Pop for his ocean buffet. The cracking, the stink, the drip of a ruddy bisque off my grandfather’s quivering lip. The way his bony knuckles cracked the lobsters in twain so loudly I often wondered if it was his finger, or the creature’s shell that had given way first. These are my memories of my grandfather, and yes, I still cherish them. The strangeness would begin after dinner. Pop would force my mother, under duress, to save every scrap and shell of seafood left in the sink or on his plate. He had some kind of secret-recipe family stew that he swore by, and the scraps provided the stock which made its base. The soup was a family affair; my brother and I were on onion duty. What seemed like a 50 pound bag of onions would be dragged home from the grocery store. Pop would splay it out across the garage floor, and make my brother and I promise to be extra careful with our chopping knives. It felt like hours. Our eyes would sting and water. We tried every home remedy, nothing worked. Pop always made a solo trip down to the fisherman’s pier for his “secret ingredient”. And yeah, we tried the “We ARE family, we should know the family recipe secret ingredient!” line. “In time…” is all he would say. He would get back from the pier around Sundown, holding only a damp brown paper bag which he never let us see the contents of. He kept the rest of the process to himself. The stew had to simmer overnight. Pop would let us watch him set the burner on the stove, just as low as it could go, and then tuck us in for the night. I still remember that, the smell of brine and onion permeating the house, being tucked into bed by Pop. “You’re safe now” he would whisper. I always thought it was odd, if not just old fashioned. On Pop’s ‘Stew Nights’ something would change. The whimpers I had come to expect, and to listen for, had faded. The thought of what remained still makes my jaw clench when I think about it. Laughter. Not light chuckling. Not benign guffaws. Deep, guttural laughter. I woke my older brother up to confirm my sanity, and he heard it too. We had no idea what to make of it. The first time we wrote it off as some dream. The second time, the following year, was also on “Grandpa Soup’s Eve”. This time, we concocted some convoluted theory about the scent of the stew triggering some jocular childhood family memory which he was reliving in a dream. The third year, having grown older and more confident, we had to see it for ourselves. Grandpa always slept with the window open. He liked to wake up with the sun, and would do his exercises as soon as he got up. We figured peeking in the door had a chance to wake him, so my brother and I figured we could peer through the window from outside and see exactly what was going on. We slipped quietly out the front door, and almost ruined the whole operation immediately. “Shit!” my brother whisper-yelled as he tripped himself onto the damp grass. I heard a spoon go loudly clinking across the front step. “What the hell?”. In what we at the time took as a clear sign of early onset dementia, a bowl of Pop’s Italian Stew had been portioned, and carefully placed upon the front step, spoon and all. We stopped and stared at the bowl, the bobbing chunks of onion and secret seafood. We grinned with confusion, and disbelief, and continued on with our mission. We could hear his laughter creep around the side of the house. We cautiously approached, our faces nosing up over the ledge of the first story window in unison. There was Pop, back arched, rigid, fingers curled in a twisted grip. His chest heaved with every laugh. His eyes were the worst; rolled back, with only the whites showing. Straight up horror movie shit. We watched, both of us still with fear. In reality we were probably only there for a moment, and then broke away, racing one another back to the front front door in terror. It got worse when we got there. The bowl was empty. Not empty because it had spilled, not empty because one of us dumped it out, it was empty; the spoon placed delicately back beside it on the front step. We looked around into the darkness, still shaking from seeing Pop like that, trying to see if some kind of possum or raccoon might have had their way with the stew. We didn’t see any animals. But we did see a strange shadow that neither of us recognized. The center of our Cul De Sac had a tall pine tree and a squarish, stubby statue of a revolutionary war cannon. Between the two was a third figure that didn’t belong. It was somewhere about our height at the time, maybe 5’7’’. It looked something like a person, but had some kind of hard, twisted shell about it’s upper half. The top half appeared to be patterned with horizontal stripes, the thin blacks legs desencing into shiny leather boots. It seemed to be always moving, weaving itself in and out of the shadows as if surrounded by long tendrils. My brother and I grabbed each other’s forearms. I wasn’t sure if his arm was shaking, or if it was the trembling of my own arm moving his. We stood frozen, it was dreamlike; we were petrified. That’s when we heard the call; like the yawp of a coyote, like the call of a merchant announcing their wares to the bazaar. “Scungilli! Scungilli!” It faded into the suburban blackness, and the call echoed more quietly. We left the bowl and went inside. Pop passed a few years back. Once a year, usually around the 4th of July when he would have visited, our family makes a trip to he and Nana’s gravestone. Him being a veteran, and it being so close to independence day, it’s not uncommon for us to find his gravestone adorned with various patriotic decorations; a flag, a wreath, we usually bring flowers. But there’s one thing there my family can never quite figure out. Almost every year, like clockwork, an empty paper bowl and a plastic spoon. My dad will usually curse out whatever mourner decided to visit on their lunch break and littered. My mom speculates that one of the Boy Scouts groups who laid the wreaths must have brought lunch along, and this one just blew away before they could put it in the trash. But my brother and I, we both know. It’s not the laziness of some graveyard litterbug, or some Scoutmaster with poor reaction time to blame. We both know. We know it’s the Scungilli Man. -W.Gianetta
Update | 8.8.20 | All done! Until next time! Thanks everyone! Hi all, Another day, another rebuild, and these gold bits need new homes. Please make sure I know which bits, how many, and your friend code if it's not in your handle. Thanks in advance for taking them in! =) Bank | 2x Cake Studio | 3x Candy Shoppe | 1x Casino | 4x Clockmaker | 2x Costume Shop | 1x Creative Ink | 2x Dentist Office | 2x Fancy Cuisine | 3x Fashion Studio | 1x Film Studio | 1x Graphic Design | 3x Hat Shop | 1x Haunted House | 1x Italian Food | 4x Karaoke Club | 5x Law Offices | 1x Legit Watches | 1x Martial Arts | 3x Metal Studio | 2x Native Art Studio | 3x Pet Shop | 2x Sky Burger | 1x Soda Brewery | 2x Software Studio | 3x Style Salon | 1x Surf Shop | 4x Tattoo Parlor | 1x Warren Buffet | 1x
what can be going up in this market? and with cheap calls?
coronavirus gives us some no-brainer puts such as airlines, cruises, casinos where crowds gather. i was slow to see that until i read posts on WSB. other than puts, what about calls? some stocks are going up even when the markets are down. other than the virus related medical/pharmaceutical stocks, i think quarantine. what kind of businesses will benefit when people don't go out? i am guessing grocery and food delivery stocks, e.g., KR, SFM, GRUB, etc. why? 1, people have to eat. all those chinese and italian restaurants are all going out of business? or can we just grubhub it? 2, grocery (and food) delivery is a trend even before there is the virus. there is the instacart which is not publicly traded, and then the grocery stores are doing it themselves, like kroger and sprouts farmers market. 3, these stocks still have cheap calls because people are not talking quarantine yet. 4, didn't buffet just buy stakes in kroger? kroger is still making ATH's. i guess we'll see if my guesses are right, very soon.
OBLIGATORY FILLER MATERIAL – Just take a hard left at Daeseong-dong…5
Continuing “Hey, Viv!”, I say, as we’re all being shuttled onto the bus which will take us to our hotel, “Toss me one of those miniatures, if you please. Yeah. Of course, Vodka’ll do. It’s bloody dusty round these parts.” Viv chuckles and asks if anyone else wants anything. He’s a consummate scrounger and somehow sweet-talked a demure and pulchritudinous female Air China cabin attendant out of her phone number, Email address, and a case of 100 airline liquor miniatures. That he looks like a marginally graying version of Robert Mitchum in his heyday and speaks fluent Dutch, French, and Italian might explain his success. I mean, a guy with four ex-wives can’t be all wrong, right? He’s a definite outlier in this crowd. We could be characterized as a batch of aging natural geoscientists who collectively, sans Viv, add up to an approximate eight on the “Looker” scale. Besides the years, the mileage, the climatic, and industrial ravages, it’s a good thing we all have expansive personalities, as most of us are dreadful enough to make a buzzard barf. But, save for Viv, no one presently here is on the make. Oh, sure; we’ll all sweet talk some fair nubile into a free drink or a double when we really ordered a regular drink, but we’re all married, most terminally, that is, over 35 years and counting. The odd thing is that save and except for Viv, none of us married folk had ever been divorced. That is strange, considering that the global divorce rate hovers around 50%, and we are often called to be apart from kith and kin for prolonged periods. However, we are always faithful and committed to our marital units and those vows we spoke all those many long decades ago. But, hey, we’re all seriously male and not anywhere near dead; and there’s no penalty for just looking, right? Continuing. We’re all loaded on a pre-war, not certain which war, by the way, bus which stank of fish, kimchee, and diesel fuel. We really don’t care even a tiny, iotic amount. It’s free transport, we’re tired of traveling, and not keen on walking any further than we absolutely have to. Viv has been passing out boozy little liquor miniatures, and I’ve been handing out cigars since I bought a metric shitload back in Dubai Duty-Free and somehow got them all through customs. We didn’t light up, as there was neither a driver nor handler present. So, we figured we’d all just wait on the cigars, and concentrate on having a little ground-level “Welcome to Best Korea” party until the powers that be got their collective shit together and provided drivers, herders, and handlers. We sat there for 15 long minutes. Being the international ambassadors of amity and insobriety, we started making noises like “Hey! Where’s our fucking driver?” and “I am Doctor Academician! Of All State Russian Geological Survey! How dare you make me wait? ” Suddenly, a couple of characters in ill-fitting gray suits and fake Rays Bans are outside the bus having a collective meltdown. Somehow, someone fucked up and put us on a ‘regular’ bus and not the ‘VIP’ bus. In other words, we got to see what the locals really got to ride around Pyongyang on instead of our supposed to be impressed by the bus that wasn’t there; but was now just arriving. A spanking new purple-and-chrome Mercedes long-haul bus shows up. It even has our group name emblazoned above the placard that normally tells where the bus is headed or who it is for: “’국제 석유 지질 과학 연합’ [Gugje Seog-yu Jijil Gwahag Yeonhab] or ‘International Union of Petroleum Geological Sciences’”. We are brusquely ordered off our present bus and into the opulent, obviously bespoke, bright yellow faux-leather interior Mercedes-Benz Tourismo RH M. It’s so new and so obviously a ploy to get us to think that all things here are so new and opulent, it even smells of that new car, ah, bus, aroma. “Well, we’ll take care of that soon enough”, I muse, as the bus is equipped with ashtrays and we’re going on the scenic route to our hotel, which is only 25 or so kilometers from the airport. However, it was announced that it’ll take us about 2 hours to get to our hotel since we need to see the city in its best light and get a feeling for the town if we should ever find ourselves lost and alone. We all know what’s going on. They’re getting our rooms ‘ready’ for our arrival and need some extra time to make sure everything’s all wired in and transmitting properly. “Guys”, I muse to our new handlers, “I’ve been to the Soviet Union, pre-wall fall. I stayed in places where I was definitely among the first westerners ever to grace their porticos. We’re a busload of natural scientists, of eight different nationalities, covering the economic spectrum from staunch capitalism to sociable socialism to hard-core communism. You even think for a second we’re going to spill any beans about anything you’d find interesting or useful? Think again.” In fact, it would become a running joke between us all to see what sort of fake bombshells we could drop into the normal conversation what would give the listener’s the greatest case of the jibblies. But for now, our bags were all loaded into the cargo compartment of this very, very nice, I must admit, mode of conveyance. Our handlers: ‘Yuk’, ‘No’, ‘Man’, and ‘Kong’, are all seated upfront and please with their latest tally of bodies. We have a couple of shady fellow travelers with the knock-off Ray-Bans and shiny gray suits that just appeared out of the woodwork in the back, seated by the loo, watching over all of us, and we’re going on a fucking city tour, whether we like it or not. We’re all present and accounted for. Let’s keep our camera in our bags for the time being as the drinking and smoking lights had just been lit as the bus fired up its new German-engineered and machined precision diesel engine. The bus rumbled to life and after a moment or two of checking that all dials, gauges, and indicators were where they were supposed to be; without so much as a cursory glance, we pulled out into traffic. Except there was none. Not another bus, pushbike, tap-tap, scooter, car, truck, hover-board, or motorcycle in sight. Nothing. Seems we were a big deal. They shut down the main drag so we wouldn’t be encumbered by such proletariat things like traffic jams or people-things cluttering the roadway, clambering for a look at the Western scientific cadre. So, away we whizzed, sans traffic and into the very belly of the beast, and onward; eventually, towards our hotel. Our handlers were very kind to point out passing scenes of interest. “Look, look! There’s the Potong River. Notice all the lovely birds, ‘eh what? See the Norwegian Blue? Beautiful plumage!” “See here, look. Here’s the Taedong River. Many forms of fish in the river. Maybe we’ll see some fishermen. If you like, we can stop, and ask them about today’s catch.” We all declined, as we were certain that the fish the ‘random fisherman’ we’d talk to was flown in fresh from elsewhere earlier in the day. Besides, we were comfortable. We had our drinks, our cigars, and we were leaving the driving to someone else. After being driven around the city and seeing all the wonderful monuments, like the faux Arch of Triumph, which looks exactly unlike its namesake Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris. The Arch of Reunification, a monument to the goal of a reunified Korea, which, by necessity, is unfinished. Then there’s the Tomb of King Tongmyŏng, where people are lining up, just dying’ to get in. Finally, we all called for our hotel, the Yanggakdo, after yet another mausoleum, the Kumsusan Memorial Palace of the Sun. Arches or tombs. Such a stunning array of monuments and places of less than moderate interest. We were interested in Mirae Scientists street (Future Scientists street). It is a street in a newly developed area in Pyongyang to house scientific institutions of the Kim Chaek University of Technology and its employees. But we were told that it was too late, there was not much there to see, we needed to express written permission to visit, and we’d be going there tomorrow or next week. We wheel into the parking lot of the Yanggakdo Hotel and are immediately unimpressed by the pseudo-Baroque concrete fiasco that appears to stand, wobbly, before us. It’s a page right out of the Soviet Construction-For-The-Masses Handbook. A cold, gray concrete edifice with multitudes of seemingly little, tiny windows. A perfect metaphor for our travels thus far; look at the expansiveness of Best Korean wonders, through this pinhole. However, we judged too soon. We were told to go inside and check-in, whilst our luggage would be de-bussed for us and handled by the expertly efficient hotel staff. The lobby was opulent, tastefully laid out in earth tones of facades of veneers of marble, granite, some garnet-mica schist, if my hand lens doesn’t lie, some Prepaleozoic anatectic migmatite, displaying intricate and intense plication, xenoliths, and graphic delineation of minerals by segregation through melting points. There was a gigantic well-appointed and well kept up aquarium, complete with snuffling sharks and nuclear-submarine sized groupers. Very handsome indeed. Impressions increasing slightly. Then we see that there’s a bloody casino on the bottom floor of the hotel, several bars interspersed throughout the hotel, and karaoke, of which I’m not terribly fond, but some of my European counterparts almost swooned at the prospect. There are a large pool and weight rooms/gymnasia, saunas and places to relax outside of one’s room, but still under the watchful eye of the thousands of ill-concealed video cameras at every turn. “Covert surveillance” may be a thing in Best Korea, but it’s a practice still leaves a lot to be desired. The Eastern Siberian Russians back before the wall fell were more covert with their obvious button audio microphones woven into the fabric covering the headboard of your Intourist bed than the Best Koreans here. Their cameras were ‘disguised’ as flower arrangements, overhead lights, and speakers inexplicably placed into things like standing ashtrays, refuse bins, and randomly placed holes in the wall. The floors were all covered with exquisite what looked to be hand-woven rugs of most vibrant crimson and gold; the usual Communistic colors. Always with some sort of floral pattern or pattern that’s supposed to be reflective of nature, as I was told. Evidently, for workers to remember what nature was as they don’t get out much with 14 to 16 hours workdays here in the Worker’s Paradise. Enough of the travelogue; we all wander up to the front desk, and each with their own passport in hand, request our reserved rooms. We supposed that we would all have rooms on different floors as the reservations were made, expired, re-made, juggled, rebooked, allowed to expire, re-jiggered, and finally formalized a scant week before we left the UK. Nope. No such luck. We were all on the 39th floor. The place boasts 47 floors, of which, the top floor is a revolving restaurant. Evidently, food tastes better when you’re rotating. However, it won’t spin unless you first buy a drink. We had that thing whirling like a NASA centrifuge after its discovery the second night. Yeah, all 12 of us are bivouacked on the 39th floor. A floor with approximately 30 rooms. I guess we could have played “Room Roulette” and see who got which room and who’s luggage. Or we could switch every day or two to drive our handlers nuts. Or, we could just take our assigned rooms, which were conveniently located one empty room apart. Meaning, no one had adjoining rooms. Why? Fuck if I know. We didn’t spend much time in our rooms, and that time was either sleeping or showering. We’d all meet at the bar, casino, restaurant, karaoke, bowling alley (all three lanes) or actual meeting rooms every once in a while when we thought we should get together and compare notes. It was the most inexplicable situation. Plus, we spent an inordinate amount of time waiting on the fucking elevators to take us to our room. These elevators, and if you think you’re going to get a batch of aging senior scientists to schlep it up 39 floor’s worth of stairs, think again; are the slowest elevators in the civilized world. And that was the consensus of scientists representing not only Europe and North America, but Russia as well. 15-25 minutes added to each journey, up or down; stopping on every floor, except 5, on the way down.. Jesus Q. Fuck, dudes. If you can’t construct a bleedin’ elevator that works better than those at the Sozvezdie Medveditsy Guest House in Lesosibirsk, Eastern Siberia; then I suggest you seriously rethink your plans for world domination and new world order. Grako and Erwin once, while waiting for the fucking elevator, figured out that we were earning some US$25 each just to wait for the lift to arrive and take us to our rooms. Every day. Sometimes several times per day. With that, we all agreed to toss our “waiting time” funds into a kitty and on our last day of captivity here, blow it all in the hotel casino. Whatever became of that would be donated to the Koreans we thought most deserving of our largesse. Would it be our handlers? How about the Korean Scientists we’d be meeting? The affable and most accommodating concierge? Or that plucky little Korean charwoman who was always on our floor and kept everything spotless, right down to our freshly laundered and pressed field clothes and newly polished field boots; done without our requesting or knowledge? Only time would tell. It could be a fortune or it could be bupkiss. Just like our expectations of the Heavenly Kingdom where we were currently sequestered. As it was, with our official protestations, they kept only photocopies of our passports as we roundly refused and threatened a full-scale karaoke battle right here in the lobby if they didn’t relinquish our passports immediately. I had broken out my nastiest cigar and was primed to offend. With that, we all had our keys and trooped over to the elevators for our first, of many, inexplicable waits. We made many uncharitable and potentially nasty remarks about the Anti-Western posters that made up some of the wall décor. Once we finally made it to our floor, we all fanned out to find our rooms. Viv found his first and was quite pleased to report to the rest of us that there was a “Welcome” basket in his room. We all hoped that we would be receiving one a well. I was in room 3914; which I considered a close call, but later only wondered as there was no 3913. Upon entering, I saw it was 1980s Hotel 6 opulent, but with an excellent over-city view. True it was late, dark, and the city was only somewhat lit up; I was looking forward to the view of the town in full daylight. The room had a ‘king’ bed; that is if the king in question was Tutankhamen, the stubby, Egyptian boy king. The bed had no mattress pad and no box spring but it was hard enough for my liking. Many of my compatriots didn’t agree and complained bitterly. They eventually received thin mattress pads for all their kvetching. There was an ancient Japanese color television, which only had 2 English language channels - Al Jazeera and the BBC, which was on a dated news loop. Watching the local channel is amusing though; the ads for ‘personal enhancements’ were hilarious, even without understanding a word of the language. There were a couple of chairs and a low table, built-in dresser drawers for our clothes, a rusty and probably unusable room safe with corroded batteries, a small table built out of the wall that would serve as my travel office, and would-you-believe, a rotary telephone; how’s that for nostalgia? There was an old-model radio built into the nightstand next to the bed. I was very surprised to find it not only received AM, FM but shortwave as well. I had brought along a pair of Bose headphones and during some rainy down days, spent many fun-filled, and I mean that sincerely, hours DXing from the comfort of my ‘enormous’ king bed. Beyond that, the room was very nondescript. Like any other of the millions of rooms in hotels around the world that unlike here, aren’t claiming a 5-star rating. I mean, it was clean, if not a little long in the tooth. But didn’t smell too terrible, even after I took care of that with my Camacho offerings. It was utilitarian, everything worked, even the water pressure, which surprisingly could strip off layers of one’s skin if you weren’t careful. The bathroom, though no Jacuzzi, had a large enough bathtub for the occasional soaking period. Western accouterments in the bathroom were also welcome additions. My knees can’t handle the traditional squat-holes any longer. There were an electric teapot and several brands of tea, but no coffee. A quick “Gee! I sure wish I had some coffee!” to the four walls and damned if 30 minutes later, a porter didn’t arrive to replenish my tea and courtesy in-room coffee… There was a small Japanese brand in-room refrigerator which I thought might house a mini-bar. Oh, no! It was actually a complimentary larder stocked with all sorts of Best Korean goodies. Multiple cans of Taedonggang beer. Several bottles of Pyongyang Soju, in various flavors ranging anywhere from 16.8 to 53 percent alcohol by volume. My fridge was skewed towards the right-hand side of the bell curve; the more heavy-duty boozy side. Evidently, my reputation had preceded me again. There was a selection of German-style wheat beers from the Taedonggang Brewery and the more familiar ales, steam beers, and lagers. There were some imported beers like Heineken, Bavaria, Pils, a couple of Japanese brands: Asahi and Kirin, and something called ‘Hello Beer’ from Singapore. There were also ‘sampler’ bottles of Apricot Pit wine, and a couple of high-alcohol fruity liquors made from constituents such as apple or pear, and mushrooms. There were also special medicinal liquors like ‘Rason’s Seal Penis Liquor’. That is going home with me unopened. There were a couple of bottles of local sake, called Chonju. Finally, there was a couple ‘samplers’ of homemade alcohol known as Makkoli. Plus there was something called ‘Corn Grotto’, which for the life of me, looks and tastes much like a very passable Kentucky Sippin’ Bourbon. I put our concierge on instant danger money the very next day. He’s yet to source me more than a fifth of the stuff so far. I found that there is a popular drink here which mirrors the Yorsch of Mother Russia. Beer and soju can be mixed to create *somaek’; a foamy, frothy, funky drink of many flavors, depending on the soju chosen. Is ethnoimbibology at thing? The science of how different cultures drink and the effects of drinking culture on different societies. If not, now I have another Ph.D. to pursue after I endow a chair at some likely Asian university. Anyways, in everyone’s room was a “welcome” basket, just chock full of Best Korean goodies. Postcards, stamps, ads for coin sets, stamp proofs and other goodies that could be purchased at the hotel. There was a field notebook, which I thought was a very nice addition, newspapers, cookies, crackers, biscuits, candies, fruit drinks, and some fresh fruit; although tamarind chewies and durian chips aren’t on my list of personal favorites. There were a couple of tour books, just chock full of staged photos. These were very nice as well, as so far, we haven’t had much time for shopping outside of government stores or smaller family-run shops in town or out in the boonies. A few of us were hungry and decided to see what the hotel had to offer room service-wise. Bupkiss. But, they did have a selection of restaurants. There is a Chinese restaurant, a European restaurant, and a Korean restaurant on site but they all serve the same food...a Best Korean attempt at western food. And it was weird being the only ones in the restaurant even though it was fully staffed. We grazed lightly and decided to do some late-night perambulations around our hotel. Our handlers admonished us to stay within the confines of the hotel, or see them if it was absolutely necessary to go walkabout. In the hotel, we were on our own. We found that there were tunnels in the hotel’s basement. The basement tunnels were a real bonus. There’s a bar with pool tables, a karaoke room, bowling, and a massage parlor, where I was beaten and pummeled into submission by tiny, diminutive, little Korean lassies fully 1/5th my size. It was wonderful. There was a hairdresser’s, who were completely befuddled by my shoulder-length silver-gray locks and full gray Grizzly Adams beard. They did provide a lovely shampoo/cranial massage though for the equivalent of US$2. There were a couple of shops selling Chinese goods rather than local stuff, which was sort of disappointing, a cold noodle bar, and another casino. No shops selling Korean Communist propaganda posters, as I wanted to augment my Soviet-era collection. Perhaps I’ll find something in-country later on. We were shocked to find that the casino had WiFi that was uncensored and we were able to access; after a fee of liquor miniatures and a cigar or two. We were supposed to have access to the global internet, not local intranet, from the universities that we would be visiting. However, all of that was under the heavily squinting eyes of handlers and guys in shiny suits wearing fake Ray-Bans. I still had my secret satellite internet lash-up available, but that was iffy, a pain in the ass to set up, and ridiculously expensive. However, it did work on the 39th floor and the times I used it instead of wandering down to the tunnels, no one appeared to be the wiser. Thus far. So typically, we’d just head to the basement casino with our laptops, iPads, and phones. Bam! Robert’s your Sister’s Husband, we could connect more-or-less free with the outside world; hence how you are reading this now. Herro! “Yes, I’d sure like another beer. This time a porter, if you please.” The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. Or the more they put into locks, the easier they are to pick. Besides, we were told we’d have access to unfettered and free internet. OK, so we just found it for ourselves. Whaddya expect? We’re scientists, motherfucker, back off. Ahem. Back to reality. The breakfast buffet the next morning had a wide choice of Asian and Western food, although the choices seemed to be the same every day. The main event was to beat the Chinese tourists to the egg station every morning. Breakfast always included fried eggs, a limited selection of pork, kippered fish, potatoes, rice, fruit, and a very Titanium-dioxide-white white bread After a while, I took to going to the small market behind the lobby, buying some imported Chinese or Japanese nibbly bits and heading to the tunnels for a few breakfast beers before the long hard day’s work. It took almost a week, but I gained the trust of some of the workers in the tunnels and they showed me the on-site microbrewery at the hotel. It produced very passable, and very, very cheap beers of several varieties. Liquid bread. Beer. Is there nothing it can’t do? After breakfast our first day at the hotel, we were told to meet in the Conference Room “Il-sung” as we were going to have a ‘Welcome foreign imperialist scientists’ introduction and indoctrination. Besides our handlers and the shiny-suit squad, there were several Korean folks we didn’t recognize. These were students, scientists, and scholars from the Kim Chaek University of Technology, Kim Il-sung University, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology; all hailing from Pyongyang, and the University of Geology from North Hwanghae Province. “Oh, marvelous”, Erlen remarked, “It’s going to be a bloody Chautauqua. We’ll be here all day.” “Well”, I replied, “It could be worse. We could be on a bus headed off on another unscheduled road trip.” As we found our seats, our Korean counterparts were busily setting up portable screens, like the ones your grandfather had for showing his 2.1 Googleplex worth of travel slides every Christmas or Thanksgiving get-together. They had a couple of ancient Chinese brand laptops that could have doubled for body armor, they were so thick and heavy. While they fiddled with running cords for the overhead projectors and 16mm film projector; yes, it was going to be movie time as well, the hotel’s restaurant folks wheeled in carts laden with scones, cupcakes, and other sweet sorts of bakery. Another cart was wheeled in with pump-pots of hot water, tea, and coffee. Usual scientific meeting fare. There was one final cart that made the day bearable. It held a pony keg of hotel micro-brewed beer on ice, with several dozen frosty mugs available for all who wanted to partake. There were instantly 12 mugs that were spoken for. I grabbed a cold beer and wandered around the conference room, sipping beer, chewing on an unlit cigar, and just trying to be pleasant to our hosts and their scientific guests. I was surprised when one North Korean professor, who spoke amazingly British-tinged English, offered me a light for my cigar. “Is smoking allowed here?” I asked. “Allowed?” he laughed heartily, “My good man, it’s practically a prerequisite.” “Here then”, I said, offering him a nice, unctuous Camacho, “Try one of mine.” Dr. P'ung Kwang-Seon of the North Korean University of Geology became my instant and lifelong friend at that moment. We had a very nice chat, much to the chagrin of the gray suit cadre, who could hear what we were talking about, but probably didn’t understand anything beyond every 8th word. After a while, we were asked to take our seats, after refreshing our drinks, and introduced to the group of Korean geoscientists we’d be interacting with during our stay here in Best Korea. I tried to record every name, but between the students, other scholars, and professors from the various universities, I decided I’d ask for a list of participants once the day had worn on. After all, they had all our names, references, and resumes if the thick folio they kept referring to was any indication. There were a couple of hours of introductions, as every one of the Korean geoscientists there introduced themselves, mostly through translators, told of their personal area of specialty, and their latest work. Most were what would be considered geoscientists, but oddly enough, not one that you would consider a petroleum geoscientist, however tangentially. There were geomorphologists, structural geologists, petrologists, mineralogists, marine geologists, engineering geologists, and seismologists. However, there were no stratigraphers, sedimentologists, paleontologists, or geochemists. We were all geoscientists, but apart from the obvious Korean:English disparity, it was as if we spoke different scientific languages as well. That would be our first hurdle to overcome. They had no oil industry here; none whatsoever, therefore why one would bother with the geosciences that fed directly into petroleum? That, in and of itself, would make it difficult to explore for oil in the country. Couple that with the fact that they’re so insular, think their version of ‘science’ is the best, at least that’s the official line, and think all other’s ‘science’ is capitalistic, substandard, and inferior doesn’t bode well for your country discovering anything either oily or gassy. We were having another conclave around the beer keg, ack, err…a ‘coffee break’ and I mentioned this fact to my scientific colleagues. “Guys”, I need input here, “We’re going to get precisely nowhere if they won’t even acknowledge that they have major problems from the start.” Ivan replies, “Very true. I’ve seen this before back home. You get a group so entrenched in their own little corner of science, they can’t even accept or acknowledge that others exist. Not only exist but actually know more about a certain problem than do you.” Dax joins the fray, “Sure, that’s very true, but who’s going to tell them this unfortunate fact? They could take that as a personal, national, and global insult. Imagine you’re at an international conference and a bunch of foreigners walk in just to tell you you’ve been doing it all wrong for the last 75 years.” I add, “Remember, though. These characters are scientists as well. I think it’ll be a good measure of seeing what sort of science and scientist we’re dealing with here. If they are truly researchers, they’ll listen to and evaluate what we say as for veracity and accuracy. If they’re just a bunch of Commie goons; no offense, Comrade Academician Ivan, they’ll get all pissed off, kick us out, and we get to go home and enjoy our triple Force Majeure pay.” Ivan walks over and deliberately steps on the toes of my newly polished field boots. “In Soviet Russia, field boots walk on YOU.” He laughs in his heavily inflected, and scary, Soviet-era speech… “Yes, I agree”, Joon adds, “But who is going to address this issue with our hosts? Perhaps one of our Russian comrades, as they are, or were, more politically aligned with our Korean friends and perhaps best understand the issue?” Ack speaks up, grinning maniacally, “No, I disagree. We should have the one person here who so encapsulates the ideologies and political leanings that they love to hate here so much. You know; the quiet, diminutive, and soft-spoken North American…” Dax recoils, “Oh, no! I’m not going out in front of this mob of ornery Orientals…” I smile wanly and tell Dax to cool out. “Relax, Dax. They’re talking about me.” “Oh, yes”, a collective group of voices replies, “Yes. Let out fearless Team Leader break the bad news to our Eastern Colleagues. That way we can gauge their reactions to being bounced around scientifically by a member of the Evil Capitalist Cartel.” “OK”, I reply, “I’ll do it. But be forewarned, my fine feathered fiends. I get stuck on a topic that’s not precisely my bailiwick, I’m going to throw your ass to the wolves. Remember, we’re all in this together.” Whoops, and catcalls were reduced to mumbles and ‘Aw, fucks.’. Chautauqua resumption was called and I asked for the floor. It was a bit off the agenda, but since they’ve been chewing the air for the last several hours, they understood it would be appropriate for us to at least try and get a word in edgewise. I downed my beer, and grabbed a fresh one as what I was going to say was going to be harsh, cut-and-dried, and rather pointed. But delivered in a pleasant manner. I hoped. This all had to be filtered through a series of translators, one for general conversational Korean and another for the more technical and scientific transliterations. I realized I was going to be up here for a while. So, I brought a cigar. One way or another, I was going to deliver our pronouncements and hell, I may as well be comfortable while doing it. . “Greetings and felicitations, my Eastern Colleagues. Let me first say how nice it is to be here in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as part of the ….” I’m going to fast-forward through all the flowery bullshit and introductory happiness; I’ll going to just cut to the guts of the matter. “…Now, you do know why there has been virtually no oil, gas nor any other hydrocarbon related deposit discovered here in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?” I asked by way of a rhetorical question. I sipped my beer and lit my cigar. In for a chon, in for a won. I let the buzzing subside on the side of our eastern counterparts. “Because, and please do not take this as insulting or derogatory, but as a statement of irrefutable fact, no one with the proper training nor experience has been looking. You’re historically guilty of applying the science incorrectly and letting dogma and politics guide your search, instead of the scientific method and the facts. Geology, like all natural science, is just as truth based on the facts for a capitalist as it is for a communist. Reality is not influenced by your beliefs, be they scientific or political, secular or spiritual, ‘trusted’ rather than ‘thought’; any more than by your wish that it wouldn’t rain today during a raging thunderstorm.” Little Boy over Hiroshima was dropped with less effect. Our Democratic People's Republic of Korea colleagues erupted into a chaotic mixture of stuttering, internecine yelling, accusations, and sputtering. Calling for decorum, I figured that since I was this far gone, I may as well push the plunger all the way to the bottom. “Gentlemen, I do not denigrate the science of geology as taught and practiced here in Best Korea.” I actually said that, sort of a slip of the tongue. Continuing, “However, one would not fish for Bluefin tuna from a rowboat in a pond with a fly rod. One does not hunt bear in the city with a slingshot. Just as one doesn’t search for oil and gas with mining engineers, geomorphologists, and seismologists.” I let that sink in and after the translation, they calmed a bit and wanted to hear the rest of what I had to say. I could sense a couple was less than thrilled with what I had to say, but forging onward… “One fishes for Bluefin tuna in the deep ocean with huge rods, reels and a specialist boat captained by someone with deep experience in hunting the elusive fish. One hunts bear in the proper environment, the taiga or forest, with the proper tools and guided by one with the education, learnedness, and experience to know how to make the hunt come out successful.” Hit them with some analogies they can relate to and digest. Now, go for the carotid. “Just like one does not hunt oil and gas without stratigraphers, sedimentologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, and other oil and gas experts who have the education, experience, and knowledge to know where to look. Knowing which environment looks most conductive to hide your quarry, if you’ll pardon the pun, and how best to find them, the guys who know how to corral and de-risk them once you find them, and the engineers and technologists who know how to bring them to the surface so they can be utilized.” They had stopped being irritated and were listening in rapt attention. “My colleagues and I have spent the last few days going over, in detail the geology of your country. There is nothing we can see that would preclude the development, entrapment, and preservation of economic quantities of oil and gas. Ture, the geology is quite complex as is the structural history of the entire peninsula. That’s one other thing you will have to accept. Geology doesn’t give the tiniest shit about political boundaries. One must look at the big picture, and that doesn’t stop at some man-made borders. Ignore that fact at your peril, because if you continue to view the geology here as not existing across political boundaries, you are preadapting yourself for failure.” Drs. Ivan, Volna, and Morse make certain that everyone sees the ex-Soviets agreeing with the bushy-bearded, cigar-chomping American capitalist. “So,” I said, hoping to bring this little spit-balling session to a fortuitous close, “If we can have an agreement; scientific agreement, on these points, then I am certain we can find a way forward with not only this discussion but the program we can devise for the best Korean (notice phase shift?) geologists to take the project forward both scientifically soundly and economically successful.” My North Korean counterpart gets up from his seat in the conference room, goes to the keg, taps a couple of beers and walks up to the podium where I was standing. “Thank you, Dr. Rocknocker, for saying what needed to be said”, he spoke in perfect English as he handed me a beer. I grinned and gratefully accepted the beer. “Why, Dr. Chang Kwang-Su”, I said, as that was his name, “You old fraud. You do speak English; and very well, I must add.” “Yes, almost all of us do”, he relayed, “But, as you said, we are most reserved. We were more or less under orders of the ‘most illustrious’, to play coy, and act as if we spoke no English.” “I see.” I said, “I’ve worked in several FSU countries as well as Russia and saw that there as well. I guess old habits die hard.” “That they do, Doctor.”, he replied, “But, we must now tell you the truth. We knew exactly what you said is true, and we agree. We are not as totally insulated from the outside world as some suspect.” “Well, I was going on what your superiors related to us. Like the police that had all their toilets stolen, I had nothing else to go on.” I replied. “Ah, ha! Quite!”, he chuckled, “We had long suspected that we were lacking in certain areas of scholarship. What you said cements that fact as it was an independent conclusion. We can now present that to our superiors with the caveat that unless we bolster work and training in these areas, the hunt of hydrocarbon resources here will be for naught.” “I am relieved”, I said, truthfully. “I was slightly concerned that some might take umbrage to being told their science is not up to specifications. I tried to be the bearer of that bad news but deliver it gently. Here, I find you need that to use that as a truncheon to smack one’s boss upside the head and tell him that an upgrade is required. And fast.” “Ah, so”, he replies, “We are in total agreement. Now that is out of the way, we would appreciate it if you’d help in designing a course of study for up and coming local geoscientists. Then, we can go forward with a great plan to search for oil and gas here in…Korea. Correct?” “Absolutely”, I remarked, “You’ve got over 400 man-years of science and exploration expertise here in this room alone. Let’s shoot for the moon, so to speak. Let’s get you up to speed on scientific journals and articles that are available out there in all of academia and industry. Let’s get you communicating on a global basis. Let’s prove that you can talk science with global scientists and still not have it affect your political or nationalistic aspirations one little bit. Let’s see if we can drag you, figuratively speaking, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.” “Doctor”, Dr. Chang remarked, “You are the embodiment of what we were always told what Americans are. Brash, loud, confident, and evil. Except for evil, you are American as we were led to believe.” “Hey, I take that as a compliment”, I exclaim. “You think that’s bad, I’ve got a bunch of earnest Europeans, raucous Russians, and a couple of cagey Canadians on my side as well. Before we’re finished here, we’ll have you ordering hachee, dining on Caldo Verde, snacking on salmiakki, drinking Russkaya vodka with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, eating poutine, and rooting for the Packers.” “Doctor, I don’t know what half of that means, but I hope it comes to pass. It sounds most fascinating.” Dr. Chang chuckles. The rest of the day was spent with various groups crystallizing and breaking off from the main crowd; then reforming as different groups. This was good, as it showed an interest across not only national borders but across ideologies and scientific specialties. Most everyone here spoke English with some degree of fluency, so the translators were called in only occasionally. I made certain they were included in everything that transpired that day. I want everyone to feel ‘part of the team’. How better to show the classlessness of Western science to include everyone in on both sides of every discussion and activity? To be continued…
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All bits are either all 9's or 9 in their dream job unless they have an (8) beside them then they have an 8 in their dream job. let me know if you want any! 3x hot dog joint 3x rock diner(rehomed) 3x airline food(rehomed) 1x shrimp buffet 2x recycling (rehomed) 3x laundromat(rehomed) 3x surf shop(rehomed) 3x tourist trap(rehomed) 1x legit watches 3x grocery store (rehomed) 3x maple store(rehomed) 3x Joey bitton (rehomed) 3x casino (rehomed) 1x stock exchange(rehomed) 1x billiard hall(rehomed) 2x optometrist (rehomed) 1x indoor skydiving (rehomed) 1x pharmacy(rehomed) 1x pizza place(rehomed) 1x jewelry store (8)(rehomed) 4x book store 2x cake studio (rehomed) 1x cineplex (rehomed) 1x clock maker(rehomed) 1x metal studio(8) 1x italian food (8) 1x fabric shop(rehomed) 1x chocolatier (rehomed) 1x indoorskydiving (8) 1x software studio(rehomed) 1x pancake house (rehomed) 1x golf sim(rehomed) 1x furniture store (rehomed) 1x diner(rehomed) I'll update as I go with which ones have found a home.
Buy Family Dinner?!? Just spend it on what I want instead!
I originally shared this on EntitledPeople Was catching up with a friend from university and she passed on this gem. She had a mini-family reunion and flew to visit her Mom and Sister (and family). She brought her kids with her and they used to go to a buffet in a local casino until the casino recently shut it down and they were excited that there was a casino in her home town that had a nice buffet. Since her mom, sister, brother-in-law and their kids were there too, she invited them to join and offered to pick up the tab. Her sister (EP) and brother-in-law agreed to the invite and together they looked at the buffet site online the day before and saw it was “Italian food” theme night. They also saw that the cost was kinda high and the total bill for nine people would be over $200. My friend wasn’t too thrilled about that, but it seemed like a special occasion and was just going to bite the bullet. The next day, the family was spending time together when my friends sister approached her. I wish you could hear my friend retell the story but the dialog was something like this: EP: So....I’m a Little worried about going to the buffet tonight... Friend: Oh really? Why? EP: Well I’m worried about the gluten because of my allergies. Friend: Oh because it’s “Italian Night”?? EP: Exactly! Friend: That does suck, but I’m sure they will have a lot of stuff that you can eat, plus it’s really for the kids. EP: I guess....but hey, here’s an idea! Do your kids eat Chicken Teriyaki? Friend: (confused) Ummm...no I don’t think so. Why? EP: Well how about instead of going to Buffet, why don’t you take us to a really expensive sushi restaurant instead! Friend: (completely confused and a bit stunned) ....But you know I don’t like seafood, my kids don’t like it and our Mom doesn’t like it. In fact, only you and Brother-in-law eat sushi. EP: Well...yeah but our kids will probably like it and then I don’t have to worry about gluten and it’s great sushi! And since you were already going to spend that much on us we could go some place really nice! Friend apparently got pissed and took dinner off the table. Apparently EP was telling their mom she didn’t get why Friend was being so selfish and how she and Brother-in-Law were really looking forward to Sushi. TL;DR - Friend was going to take a lot of people to a restaurant that was going to cost over $200. Her Entitled Sister instead wanted Friend to treat her and her husband to expensive Sushi instead.
Here is how to make the most of a one-week Mediterranean cruise and see as much of Europe that one can possibly manage in one week. I planned our cruise to minimize any unpleasant surprises and yet leave room to be spontaneous and adventurous. This article is not about cruise ships and you do not have to be a fan of cruises as my trip was mostly on land other than the overnight cruising. I felt that at the age of 57, I had delayed Europe long enough and with my busy business schedule, the cruise was the only way to get a snapshot of three countries and six cities in 10 days total, plus two days for flying from and to Canada. My wife does not like cruises, and I was left to travel with Lucas, our seventeen-year-old! In August 2018, Lucas and I flew to Barcelona, Spain, the embarking port for the Norwegian, Epic cruise ship. It was our very first time on a cruise and our very first time to Europe except for England. I do not recommend August or July for this trip as it is high season for local tourism, and it is too hot to walk the cities (well too hot for me). However, if you have kids in school, then you understand that it must be summer, unless you choose to go without them. Our ship would mostly cruise at nighttime giving us a full day from 7 am to 6 pm in most cities. That was perfect for me because there is only so much staring at water I can enjoy, and spending time in a tiny casino or eating non-stop are not my kind of pastime. If you are a cruise fan, then Norwegian Epic is great. They have about 10 wonderful restaurants, a superbly well-organized huge buffet with great selection of international food, a nice water park on the upper deck, and even a youth club with games, music, and dance to keep your teens entertained. Every evening after our long city walk, Lucas and I enjoyed a nice meal after our shower and then watched a show or a musical performance before we hit the sack in our comfortable balcony room. I do not like closed spaces and a balcony room was well worth the small difference in price, even though we did not have much time to be on the balcony. Epic was also completely renovated in 2015, which meant it was clean and up to date on amenities. Always check the year the ship was build or was renovated before committing to a cruise. Our cruise had stops in these cities: 1- Barcelona, Spain - embarking a. visit Gothic centre, La Rambla, La Sagrada Familia church, Park Güell, 2- Naples,Italy a. Rented a car and drove to Sorrento (an hour drive) 3- Rome, Italy a. Took the train to the city centre and then the city tour-bus to Vatican City, San Angelo Castle, Piazza di Spagna – drove past Colosseum 4- Florence and Pisa tower, Italy – walking tour, site seeing 5- Cannes and Nice,France – walking tour, site seeing 6- Mallorca (Majorca), Spain - took a taxi to Palma Nova beach, swam and chilled What to pack? We traveled very light with one carryon and a backpack. The backpack was for our extra stuff and NOT for touring the city. I do not recommend walking with a backpack, even less in the summer. Other than the usual travel items, here are some essentials I had to buy. 1- Light and cool walking shoes that were comfortable for walking and cool for summer. I bought a pair of nice leather sandals with good support and solid straps for walking. Also packed a pair of dress shoes for evening dinner on the ship and exercise shoes that I never used! 2- Summer shirts. I ordered some European collared Linen shirts. They look nice, are cool, and comfortable. www.bensherman.com has a good selection of those if you live in Canada or USA. Pack lots of tees for less formal places. 3- A couple of dress pants (linen and or khaki) for the evening restaurant and shows and dress shorts for long walks. 4- Beach sandal and swimming trunk for the Beach in Mallorca which I ended up buying in Cannes 5- Your credit card, Euro currency, and travel documents of course. Leave them in the safety box in your room and only take what you need for the day. Barcelona, Spain: We arrived Barcelona three days ahead of schedule to experience one city for more than just a day. We stayed at the Boutique Hotel Violeta (http://violetaboutique.com/home/) in the centre of the city and only three blocks from the Plaza Catalunya. It was the best and most centric location in my opinion. I loved the hotel. Violeta was a small hotel that reminded me of my apartment in Buenos Aires. The hotel is in a residential apartment building where they had turned two floors into hotel rooms. The Gothic architecture offered us a giant completely renovated room with a very high ceiling. We had two queen size beds in our room, a sitting area and plenty of open space. The reception was extremely helpful with information, and being small, made check-in a breeze. Violeta Boutique also included a European coffee and pastry breakfast but if you wanted an American breakfast, there was a small cafe next door on the street level and plenty of other options within a three-block radius. Our three days in Barcelona coincided with the Fiesta de Gracia (thanksgiving!) which was a 20-minute bus ride from Plaza Catalunya. I had bought a 10-ride Metro-Bus pass (Credit card size) from the Metro (subway, underground) station at Catalunya. Fiesta de Gracia was in the Garcia neighborhood where all the streets were colourfully decorated by the residents and live bands played all night on the streets and restaurants had set outdoor patios. The music was free, the food was reasonably priced, and people were jolly. It was my second favourite part of our time in Barcelona and we went there two evenings. Barcelona Gothic city From the airport, we took a bus straight to Plaza Catalunya (Plaça de Catalunya) in 20 minutes and then walked three blocks to our hotel. I had the hotel directions Googled (searched) in advance. I am fluent in Spanish (the Argentine version) so taking public transit was natural for me. Although Barcelona is a destination for international tourism and most people in the industry seem to speak English. I bought a SIM card for my phone (which was unlocked in advance) at the airport for €30 from Vodafone (https://www.vodafone.com/) that gave me 10 Gig of mobile data covering most of Europe for up to a month. It did not include coverage on the cruise ship. La Rambla and the old Gothic city in Barcelona were 10 to 15-minute walk from our hotel or Plaza Catalunya. You want to spend half a day walking this area, watching the beautiful shops, the narrow streets of Gothic centre and try a street café or restaurant. La Sagrada Familia is a must see for its architecture alone. We took a bus there, but you must purchase tickets in advance if you plan to go inside on a specific day and skip the long lineup. This is another half-day venture unless you want to tour the outside which is fascinating enough. I found it amazing to see how much craft and detail was offered to decorate the exterior of the building. It is no wonder that the new extension brings a modern and plain contrast that just does not quite match the elegance and masterful craftsmanship of the old. https://preview.redd.it/vtg8evyjdv851.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=777149d10c02a875134f6fab5d5ae73072cbf3b7 Park Guell is another 20-minute bus ride to the higher altitudes of Barcelona. It is a beautiful park with some very interesting structures left behind. It was a good half-day break from the city to relax and enjoy the nature. You can also see the entire city from the top. Restaurant can be pricey in the touristy Plaça de Catalunya area. I managed to venture a couple of blocks off the main streets and find some local small restaurants. We had a great satisfying meal at a fantastic price and mingled with the residents. I even found a little Italian owned pizza place! Of course, we also tried the more refined tapas restaurants. After all, we were tourists. Naples, Italy: The longest leg of our cruise was from Barcelona to Naples which took a full day at sea. That was perfect because it provided us the opportunity to navigate the ship and the amenities, learn the evening programs, browse the list of restaurants, and to start our reservations. I did not think that Naples had enough to interest me for the whole day and I hungered to see the Amalfi coast. Amalfi coast was too far for a day trip, so I decided that Sorrento and maybe Positano would be close enough. I rented a car from Hertz in advance which was a five-minute walk from the port. The car cost me about $150 Canadian, tax included! Luckily, I still remembered how to drive standard transmission (stick-shift). We made it to Sorrento on the scenic highway with no problem. Traffic did slow at some points giving the driver (me) an opportunity to enjoy the scenery. About 10 minutes before arriving, atop the hills on the narrow road that took us to Sorrento, I found a little space to park the car and breath-in the fresh view of Sorrento waterfront. We could see the sail boats floating on the Mediterranean blue water, and the colourful little houses built on the slope of the hill from the top all the way to the sea. The buildings were in so many colours as if the quaint Sorrento were architected by Michelangelo to be lived by DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. Sorrento from the road top Sorrento was so beautiful that we spent the entire day there. We parked the car in an underground parking across to Gran Hotel Europa Palace (www.europapalace.com) on the hilltop. We must have spend about 45 minutes roaming the exterior of the hotel, admiring the architecture and the impressive iron gate, and then spending time on the back patio taking a closer look at the colourful buildings on the hill rolling down to the water. There were stone walking paths from the houses to the water where a giant deck with seats and shades turned the sea into a giant public pool. Sorrento Hotel The ladies in reception were extremely helpful offering us information and allowing me to charge my mobile since I had forgotten my charger! According to one of them, the German war maps were still on the lobby walks behind the giant paintings at this fortress (now hotel). I wanted to go down to the waterfront for lunch. So, the nice lady called her friend, the owner of a restaurant on the waterfront, and they sent us a car at no charge and after lunch they drove us back. The ride to the water was through narrow winding streets of Sorrento. After lunch we took a walk along the harbour and watched the sail boats rock on calm waters. I would like to spend a week or more in Southern Italy some day. I forgot to mention that my cousin lives in Naples working on his PhD. He was our translator for the day. This was our first encounter in forty years (that is a sad tale that should not ruin this travel story). On the way back, we sat in a very nice café in Naples and had an amazing coffee and pastry before heading back to our ship. Italian pastry is the best, with my apology to mom and all the Persians. Sorrento harbour Rome, Italy: The port for Rome is in Civitavecchia, an hour drive from Rome. A tour purchased from the cruise would have been around $300 CDN per person. I like to think that I am adventurous and enjoy experimenting the local ways as much as I can. However, I understand that you may think that I am just cheap. I am fine with that. My son (Lucas) and I took a five-minute bus ride to the train station and paid €10 each to take the fast train to Rome. I love trains a lot more than buses. We could have ventured Rome with local transit; however, our time was limited and we could not afford any time asking for directions. If I recall accurately, the daily hop-on-hop-off city tour was about €20 per person. To visit Rome and only spend one day should be a crime but a snapshot to calm my itching curiosity was the deal I had taken. I would say that Rome and Vatican City would require at least a week. There are many ancient Basilicas other than St. Peter’s each offering a unique history and that alone is well worth a week for me. The bus passed by the Colosseum, check mark. We were heading to the Vatican City knowing well that we may not make it inside. After all, Vatical city is a day by itself. The bus dropped us a few blocks away in front of San Angelo Castle also known as Mausoleum of Hadrianhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_Sant%27Angelo. The castle was a tall cylinder-like giant stone building walled all around like a fortress. I thought we would take a quick tour of the place at €15 (it was free for minors “Lucas”). We ended up spending over two hours admiring the decorated walls and ceilings with painting that were full of stories, and the museum items there were placed in its numerous rooms. We climbed many rocky stairs all the way to the top of this tallest structure in Rome, ventured the narrow hallways and took some pictures on the roof. San Angelo Castle The entrance to Vatican City was a ten-minute walk. Before crossing the bridge over Tiber (Tevere) we sat on the patio of a river-side food booth to have a snack. We walked to Vatican City and spent an hour in St. Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro) observing the architecture, the elegantly attired Guards, the crowd lining up and the shops that lure the tourist. We took the tour bus back to Piazza di Espagna. This was the cleanest, most modern, and prettiest part of the city that our eyes had seen in the past few hours. The bus left us on the upper escalation of the Piazza where I took some pictures before descending the steep long set of steps into the centre of the shops and restaurants. We walked for about an hour window shopping and then found a restaurant patio in a pedestrian intersection. It was a touristy area but still reasonably priced. We certainly could give ourselves this one treat before heading back to the train station for our hour and twenty-minute ride back. Piazza di Espagna Total cost of our Rome venture including transportation, admissions, and food (for two) was €150. Lunch was the biggest expense. ** Picture Florence and Pisa, Italy: Another restaurant and show evening aboard the Norwegian Epic, and we arrived in Florence (port of Livorno) early morning. Getting to Florence by public transit was too complicated. A car ride from port of Livorno to Florence was about 90 minutes and to Pisa around 30 minutes. I was lucky to find a private mini-van taxi (a brand new eight-seater Mercedes) that needed two more passengers to get going. At €50 per person to take us to Florence and then Pisa and back, it was a great deal. This deal could have been booked online in advance for €40. A lesson learned here. The other people sharing our ride were a family of four from Montreal, and a mother-son pair from Los Angles. Everyone was very reserved and quiet. Lucas and I sat in the front with the driver and I spend the entire trip learning from our friendly driver. Florence is beautiful and quaint. However, I thought I had enough architecture in Rome and did not feel like lining up for an hour to see another church. We took a walking tour of Florence and had a meal at small sandwich joint run by two very funny and entertaining ladies. They offered a great selection of artisanal sandwiches, but almost two years later now, I cannot remember what I ate. Pisa was another little town walled all around. I can imagine the great length the leaders had to go to protect people from attacks and we so often take our freedom for granted. Of course, we must protect ourselves from partisan politics and corporate lawyers, but that is easily manageable. At this point of the trip, I had enough sight seeing. I would have been good with a video of Pisa on YouTube. Here is a picture of the magnificent but defected marble structure. Florence Residents sunbathing in Florence Pisa Canes and Nice, France: Canes, France was physically the most beautiful city on this trip, in my opinion. It was manicured clean and peaceful. Canes did not have a port for the cruise ships, hence we had to anchor in the sea and take the emergency boats to the shore. The emergency boats were giant, and each held about 200 people. We had a short time here and we were tired. I should have taken a tour bus, but my sense of adventure (or cheapness) had us walking up the steep and narrow winding street and then back down to the city centre for a bite. I found a small sandwich shop to share a ham and cheese baguette and a couple of drinks with Lucas. In my broken French, I asked the young lady behind the counter if she could cut the baguette in half for us and she gave me a stern “Non”. I am not certain whether that was a lack of courtesy or I had crossed some religious or cultural boundaries. It was simple enough to split the baguette with me hand. We should have continued our tour of the city and stayed in Canes as I had advised our friends from Quebec. However, a sudden urge came over me to take the train to Nice. We did, and Nice’s downtown and beach area were beautiful to walk; however, the injustice I did to my own principals of travelling is unforgivable. The whole day was just too rushed and consuming. Canes, City Market Mallorca (Majorca) Spain: The trip from Canes to Mallorca was the second longest leg of the cruise. We arrived Mallorca around 1 pm giving us roughly five hours on the Island. After seven days of walking the cities in the heat of August, even the young Lucas was exhausted. The port in Mallorca was not walking distance to any interesting place and Lucas wished to spend the day at a beach. Great idea, I thought. I Googled the most scenic beaches nearby and Palma Nova was the second choice but the only feasible option due to our limited time. We had a brief line up for a taxi right at the port. There was a family of five from Peru from our cruise in front of us in the lineup and they could not all fit into one taxi. I invited the grandpa of the family to come with us since they were heading to the same beach. Grandpa was a good companion and an opportunity for me to learn about Peru. We agreed on a time for going back together and then split to our ventures. Palma Nova was perfect to spend a day. The beach had the right amount of crowd and was decorated by some rocky hills on one side for us to take a walk in between swims. The water was perfectly tempered, calm, and clear blue. There were no high rises nor big tourist hotels on this beach and plenty of restaurants and shops. For lunch we crossed the street on the beach to a patio and I shared a nice pizza and drinks for €12. We paid €15 for the bamboo umbrella and two chairs to have our spot on the beach and about €35 total for the taxi ride back and forth. That brings our total to €62 for a beautiful relaxing day in Majorca. Palma Nova beach, Mallorca I would like to spend a week in Mallorca. There are many scenic quaint towns and beautiful beaches to enjoy. If you are interested to know more, you can search for Palma, Sóller, Valldemossa, and Pollença. All these are on the west side of the island and within an hour drive from Palma. I would stay in Palma and make day trips to each of these towns. If you are a tennis fan, then you will probably add Rafael Nadal’s academy (https://www.rafanadalacademy.com/en) to the list, which is about an hour drive east of Palma. Palma Nova beach, Majorca Our last night on the cruise was concluded by a beautiful three course meal and listening to a live band on the middle deck’s lobby. There was a talented singer among the passengers and a few great dancers on board who joined the performance. It was a great way to end the cruise. We arrived Barcelona early morning, well rested, with a fresh shower and a full tummy. We found a taxi and headed straight to the airport to catch our noon flight back to Toronto without rush. I suppose my project management trainings mixed with my entrepreneurial nature, made a perfect schedule for the trip. You can check out www.pmi.org if you are interested in formalizing your skills for time and budget management.
I've decided to clear out my storage tower so there's a long list of gold bits below up for grabs. Please help to find them a good home! Note: The list will be updated constantly as I still have a queue of gold bits waiting to move in. Drop me your friend code, the bits you want and the amount. Request away! :) Airline Food x2 Animation Studio x2 Aquarium x1 Arcade x2 Art Studio x1 Asian Cuisine x4 Auto Dealer x2 Bakery x5 Bank x3 Barber Shop x1 Bike Shop x4 Billiard Hall x1 Bling Jewelers x1 Book Store x4 Bowling Alley x1 Boxing Gym x2 Broadway Theatre x3 Candy Shoppe x3 Casino x1 Cheese Shop x5 Chocolatier x1 Cineplex x3 Circus x12 Comedy Club x1 Costume Shop x1 Courthouse x5 Cyber Cafe x4 Dance Studio x2 Day Spa x2 Device Repair x6 Diner x3 Doctors Office x7 Fancy Cuisine x2 Fashion Studio x1 Fire Station x2 Floral Studio x1 Fortune Teller x3 Frozen Yogurt x5 Game Studio x1 Glass Studio x3 Golf Sim x4 Grocery Sore x1 Haunted House x2 Health Club x9 Hot Dog Joint x3 Italian Food x5 Jewelry Store x7 Joey Bitton x4 Laboratory x4 Laundromat x1 Law Offices x1 Legit Watches x5 Mapple Store x2 Martial Arts x7 Mechanic x4 Mens Fashion x4 Metal Studio x3 Mexican Food x1 Mini Golf x4 Moroccan Cuisine x3 Music Store x3 Native Art Studio x9 Night Club x1 Optometrist x2 Paintball Arena x1 Pancake House x3 Park x2 Pet Shop x2 Pharmacy x1 Photo Studio x2 Planetarium x1 Plant Nursery x6 Plumber x2 Pottery Studio x3 Private Eye x5 Recycling x1 Rock Diner x9 Sculpting Studio x1 Seafood x2 Security Office x3 Ship & Print x3 Shrimp Buffet x3 Smoothie Shop x14 Splash Zone x1 Stables x2 Stock Exchange x2 Surf Shop x3 Tailor x4 Tea House x3 Tech Store x8 Theater x6 Tiger Magic x4 Toy Store x8 Travel Agency x1 Tutoring Center x2 TV Studio x1 Vegan Food x1 Warren Buffet x7 Wax Museum x4 Wedding Chapel x5 Womens Fashion x2 Wood Shop x1
What Returning to Work Will Look Like in Offices, Cafes and Factories Around the World
Expect lots of temperature checks and one-way routes. ‘As we experienced in China, this will be a journey.’ Wearable social-distancing buzzers. Masked blackjack dealers. Drive-thru electronics purchases. From cubicles to factory floors, cafes to clothing boutiques, businesses around the world are dreaming up creative ways to reopen, attempting to start revenue flowing again while minimizing the risk to customers and employees. The global economy is riding on their ability to pull off that delicate balance. A new flareup of Covid-19 cases could shutter offices, stores, restaurants and manufacturing plants once again, further choking off the flow of goods and services and threatening more jobs. Some governments, such as China, are providing rigorous oversight of the process. Others, including President Donald Trump’s administration, have offered looser guidance and are entrusting businesses to monitor their facilities. Scientists are still studying how the virus is spread, and whether keeping people six feet apart is enough, adding to the risks. The companies’ plans rely on a steady supply of masks, gloves, thermometers and tests that is likely to strain budgets and manufacturers’ ability to keep up. Social distancing will be built in, with people divided by barriers and kept apart from colleagues and customers, a U-turn after years of movement toward open floor plans. Some companies will monitor employees more closely than ever before, while others will let workers choose how much protection they need. The way we work, shop, travel and eat in 2020 – and probably beyond – is being plotted out in boardrooms around the world. Here are the changes companies are contemplating for their workplaces in the coming weeks.
The Office
Seats on the shuttle bus to Unilever’s Shanghai offices can be reserved using a chat group. Employees must be masked to board, and they sit on alternating sides, one person to each four-seat row. Upon arrival, each worker scans a QR code and fills out a health status report to get a daily pass to enter. Then comes the temperature check and the hand sanitizer. Inside the office, movement is tightly regulated. Employees keep their masks on and are encouraged to use the stairs instead of the elevator, with spritzes of hand sanitizer before and after touching the regularly disinfected handrail. In the canteen, a single person is allowed at each four-seat table. Such measures might seem predictable in a centrally controlled society like China, but some version of them is starting to appear in the West. At Britain’s former state phone monopoly, BT Group Plc, call center workers sit two meters apart, and walkways are designated as one-way to keep people from brushing past each other. Temperature checks are becoming routine at Sistema, the Russian conglomerate, which also says it’s developed its own two-hour test for Covid-19. Employees who come to the office have been tested in the past couple of weeks, though as many as half of the call center workers at MTS, the mobile network controlled by Sistema, are operating out of their homes.
More Room
Flexible space operator Knotel, which runs offices for corporations including Uber and Netflix, says workplace design has to change. Offices will likely be less densely populated, and altered to make them “antiviral,” according to Amol Sarva, Knotel’s chief executive officer. “Things like ventilation, UV light, density screening, video monitoring, and temperature monitoring, cleaning protocols — those are all going to have to change,” he said. “Certainly there’ll be more space.” In China, Cushman & Wakefield has helped move nearly a million workers back into 800 million square feet (74 million square meters) of office space. The company is creating a Recovery Readiness manual for landlords and tenants, based in part on its experience in China, that includes colored carpets to create visual boundaries around desks, plexiglass shields between desks that face each other and signs that direct walking traffic in a single direction.
Fewer Meetings
Even when people do come back to the office, meetings will be limited, and large gatherings are out of the question. This week, Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg canceled all physical events of 50 or more people through June 2021. The vast majority of employees are required to work from home through May, and those who need to carry on doing so will be able to work at home through the summer. The road to normalcy may be much longer than that. At Abcam Plc, a British protein research company, 40 out of 300 China-based employees started returning to work in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hong Kong on Feb. 14. Two months later, the company is running split shifts to maintain distancing for the roughly 50% of employees based in manufacturing, logistics and essential lab work.
The Factory
On Feb. 10, Winly Automotive (Wuhan) Ltd. was assigned a checklist from the government. To reopen, the company would be required to have a one-month stash of masks and sanitizer, take a photo of the supplies, and send it to officials before submitting to a detailed inspection. “The policy has been constantly changing,” said Wang Xuepan, one of the plant’s managers. “It’s very difficult for us to handle.” In the Seattle area, Boeing Co. has worked with the Washington state labor department on a plan to reopen its factories. It will be doling out cloth masks to most workers, saving the gold-standard N95 masks for a select few in more hazardous conditions. Unlike office drones, factory workers have to show up in person to get the job done. Figuring out what basic protections they’ll need is part of the challenge. At Boeing, industrial engineers are analyzing the sequence of work on its assembly lines to find ways to spread apart workers.
Taking the Temperature
Airbus SE has divided employees at its plants into red and blue teams, who don’t see each other because they use different routes to enter and exit buildings. Volkswagen AG is allotting more time between shifts and reducing expectations for production because it takes longer for people to move around each other at a safe distance. Ford Motor Co. is experimenting with wearable devices that would buzz workers if they get too close together. While the virus can be transmitted by people with no symptoms, many manufacturers are doing temperature checks, whether with thermometers, thermal imaging cameras or — in the case of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV in the U.S. — reusable forehead strips. Fiat Chrysler, whose CEO Mike Manley is one of the executives talking with Trump about reopening the economy, is requiring workers to fill out a health questionnaire two hours before reporting to work each day. They must bring either a hard copy, or scan a QR code with their phone, to prove they aren’t displaying signs of illness or exposure to the virus, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg. Workers can’t enter the plant without it. Some companies are closing cafeterias in favor of vending machines. Dongfeng PSA in Wuhan is handing out prepared lunchboxes to employees, who must eat at least 1.5 meters apart with their backs to each other. Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. said Chairman Li Shufu wrote a song to keep workers motivated through such dreariness. “A world full of expectations/Turned to dust of yesterday,” the lyrics go. “Their sorrow flowing into the sea/But the flower of love is quietly blooming.”
The Airplane
When air travel resumes in earnest, it’s likely that hand sanitizers, face masks and thermometers will become standard at most major airports, said David Powell, medical adviser for the International Air Transport Association, a trade group. All three have shortcomings, but can also reassure passengers, he said. The International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets global flying standards, wants to establish a “public health corridor concept.” Under such a plan, major airlines, airports, public authorities and other parties would adopt common protocols for screening, boarding, in-flight procedures, arrivals, customs and baggage. “We cannot all just stop flying,” Ansa Jordaan, the group’s chief of aviation medicine, said during an April 15 webcast. Emirates Airline said this week it was the first to conduct rapid Covid-19 blood tests, with results available in 10 minutes for passengers flying Wednesday from Dubai to Tunisia. It plans to extend the procedure to other flights, according to Chief Operating Officer Adel Al Redha. Other carriers are attempting less invasive measures. Etihad Airways, another major airline in the United Arab Emirates, plans to deploy touchless self-service devices at its hub airport in Abu Dhabi to identify travelers with medical conditions, including the early stages of coronavirus. In the U.S., American Airlines Group Inc. plans to continue spacing customers apart during boarding and flights, conducting extensive cleanings of aircraft and reducing food and beverage service to limit contact, CEO Doug Parker said in an April 15 video message. “When you do fly, aircraft cleanliness and social distancing matter greatly,” he said.
The Store
In China, it’s become standard to have your temperature taken any time you want to go shopping. Visitors to the Wuhan International Plaza luxury mall are checked for a fever at the door, before they queue up to be served one at a time at Louis Vuitton. Levi Strauss & Co. disinfects its Chinese stores three times a day and requires temperature checks for customers, who are expected to wear masks before entering the store. Fitting rooms and products that have been tried on are disinfected each time they’re used. It’s unclear whether practices implemented in China will make their way to other parts of the world, though several companies said they’ll learn from their experience in Asia.
Drive-Thru Shopping
Another technique is to keep shoppers out of the store altogether. Dixons Carphone Plc, the electronics retailer, is considering plans for contact-free “drive-thru” style stores to limit the risk of coronavirus for staff and customers. Shoppers would park outside, call the store to select items to buy, use a contactless system to pay and then open their trunks so staff could deliver the products. Salespeople at luxury retailers in China were already using social media to engage with customers before the outbreak, but they’ve stepped up the effort since, adding clients on WeChat and sending them information about the latest trends. Louis Vuitton tried showcasing its summer product line in a livestream show on March 26 featuring a social-media star, but was ridiculed for the quality of the video. Sometimes there’s no substitute for personal contact.
The Restaurant
Buffets and salad bars will be re-thought, and self-serve drink stations may be “a thing of the past,” said Taco John’s CEO Jim Creel, who added that other changes are afoot at the 387-store chain. Taco John’s popular salsa bar — around for the past 15 years — may be removed. “We hope we don’t have to take them out — that we’ll be able to figure out a way to make them still work — but I’m afraid the fear factor our there will force us to go to a pre-packaged option.” A test of self-ordering kiosks may also get pulled back. “It was a good idea three months ago, but not so good today,” Creel said.
Phone Pay
In China, restaurants and even bars have opened back up in Shanghai, with varying limits on seating arrangements – some allow six to a table, others only one. In Beijing, restaurants are doing temperature checks. In Wuhan, most places are still delivery-only. “In the short run, as dining rooms open back up again, you’ll probably see many restaurants space their tables a little bit further apart,” said Jack Li, CEO of menu researcher Datassential. “You’ll see more restaurants try to adopt phone pay. So not having to hand your money or card to anyone. You’re certainly going to see more places continue to do things like contactless delivery.” Starbucks Corp. is taking a store-by-store approach to resuming business activities in the U.S., with services limited to drive-thru, delivery and takeout via mobile orders and contactless pickup. “As we experienced in China, this will be a journey,” CEO Kevin Johnson wrote in a memo to staff on Thursday.
The Menu
Chains are cutting back menus, focusing on products that sell best and are easy to make. Romano’s Macaroni Grill has pared down its menu to 70% of what it used to be, saying goodbye to pizzas and calzones recently. McDonald’s all-day breakfast menu is gone. Fazoli’s Italian restaurant chain is trying to secure Purell sanitizing stations – four for each store — along with “millions” of alcohol-based wipes for re-opening the dining rooms of its 216 locations. The company is also re-thinking bathrooms and looking into touch-less soap dispensers. It’s an investment, but a worthwhile one, says CEO Carl Howard. “I want to let the consumer know I’m doing everything I can to keep them as safe as possible,” Howard said in an interview.
The Arena
Large public gatherings aren’t top of mind yet in China, but Trump and the people who run the U.S.’s biggest sports leagues appear aligned in their thinking that live games, at least in some form, are a critical part of helping the country recover. “The progression needs to be open outdoor sports first, golf, tennis, swimming so that we can start to test the waters — that I’m fine with,” said billionaire Mark Cuban, who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. One obstacle may be local politicians. When UFC floated plans to host an event this weekend on tribal land in California without spectators, it was pressure from politicians, including Governor Gavin Newsom, that led to its cancellation. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has reportedly discussed the possibility of prohibiting large gatherings like concerts and sporting events in the city for another year.
The Movies
That said, there’s billions on the line for sports leagues, sponsors and media networks if the games don’t resume soon. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, has said that that the only way to do that this summer is to close venues to fans and keep all the players, coaches and referees isolated from society. Cinema owners are also waiting to see when health officials give them clearance to open up. Cinemark Holdings Inc., the third-largest U.S. movie chain, has been in discussions with major film studios about when to release blockbusters again. The chain’s management thinks they could begin bringing back staff starting in late June, then build up a marketing campaign for a broader re-opening on July 1. The experience won’t be like it was before coronavirus hit. The chain will either have to limit the available tickets for each showing, leaving about half its seats open. Or it may eliminate reserved seating, so customers can voluntarily spread themselves out when they arrive. Cleaning will have to be ramped up, and opening hours may be limited to accommodate the changes. “How long that will take? We’re not completely certain,” said Mark Zoradi, Cinemark’s CEO, on a call with analysts and investors on Wednesday. “But we’re planning on anywhere from one to three months to light up that engine again and then to begin with higher profile, new product.”
The Casino
Las Vegas casino executives have discussed opening with as little as one-third of their rooms available, with limited entrances where guests’ temperatures could be checked. Casino employees would wear masks and gloves, and gamblers would sit at least a chair apart at blackjack tables. The moves are similar to what is already occurring in Macau, the world’s largest gambling market, where casinos closed for 15 days in February and reopened under tight restrictions. The companies are also discussing enhanced cleaning techniques, something unions have requested.
Fun Parks
The $19.3 billion U.S. theme park industry is also making plans, though no one knows when gates will reopen. When they do, employees may be wearing masks and temperatures may be checked not only at the entrances but inside as well, said Dennis Speigel, a theme park consultant in Cincinnati. Operators may also institute virtual queues, where guests snag a place in line through an app and come to ride when it’s their turn. “The theme park of the future is going to have to take a much different turn, from distancing to wanding to cleaning,” Speigel said. “I’ve never heard the fear in the voices that I’ve heard. Nobody knows what they’re going to be doing.” Bloomberg News - With assistance from Thomas Buckley, Thomas Seal, Dana Hull, Natalie Wong, Julie Johnsson, Charlotte Ryan, Christoph Rauwald, Kyunghee Park, Gabrielle Coppola, Shiho Takezawa, Tian Ying, Chunying Zhang, Keith Naughton, Mary Schlangenstein, Justin Bachman, Layan Odeh, Jordyn Holman, Deirdre Hipwell, Robert Williams, Kim Bhasin, Jinshan Hong, Claire Che, Leslie Patton, Kelly Gilblom and Christopher Palmeri.
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