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a-little-international · 6 years

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The Height of Summer (4)

Summary: She’s a whirling dervish, and he’s trying his best to keep up.

Warnings: a smidge of angst???? mild swearing

Words: 4,103

A/N: that moment when you want shawn to fuck you sideways, but the universe mishears you and sends the semester to do it instead

The Series: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9

Chapter 4 – Shawn

In the morning she was gone, and he was alone again. The hoodie and sweatpants he’d lent her the night before were folded neatly over the back of the couch, the apartment as empty as the void she’d left in his chest. He hadn’t heard her leave, and she hadn’t left a note.

Part of him wasn’t surprised – she didn’t owe him anything, she hadn’t really wanted to stay, it was a Sunday morning and he thought she probably had plans, plans that didn’t involve him – but he couldn’t ignore the disappointed pang that had lodged itself below his ribs when he’d emerged from his room and she wasn’t fingering through his vinyl collection, or swaying around the kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee, or staring out at the view like she had been the night before.

Shawn padded into the kitchen, running a hand through his hair, his fingers catching in the tangled mess of his curls. The two empty mugs in the sink stared at him, asking him to revaluate himself and his feelings towards the girl he’d only known for a week, but who seemed to be slipping into his heart like early morning sunshine through a gap in the curtains.

Shawn turned the kettle on and opened his fridge, trying not to listen to the deafening silence rocketing around the apartment. Usually, he didn’t mind the quiet, rather liked it, even. More often than not, he didn’t even play any music when he was home alone, his brain appreciating the break from the constant noise of being surrounded by a hundred people all day long. But in her leaving, she seemed to have taken his sense of peace along with her, and he hated it. He pulled out a plate of leftover lasagne his mom had brought over during the week and dug straight in without bothering to heat it up, as he contemplated texting her. He had their conversation pulled up, reading through yesterday’s text messages, the playful backwards and forwards as he tried to convince her to join him at Soho House making a hint of a smile pull at the corners of his mouth. He looked at her little contact picture above their messages; it was a selfie Summer took when she first gave him her number at Brian’s party, her grin wide and toothy and full of life.

Before he could even formulate enough of a thought to type out to her, Geoff’s face appeared on his screen with an incoming call. “Hey dude” Shawn greeted, leaning his elbow against the kitchen countertop as he picked at his lasagne.

“And?” came Geoff’s eager response, and Shawn just frowned down at his food.

“And what?” he asked back, reaching up to pull a clean mug from the cupboard, deciding it was probably a good time for coffee.

“Come on, dude, wake up! Did you get some?”

Shawn’s frown deepened as he took a long, much needed gulp of coffee before answering. “Since when,” he started slowly, leaning back against the counter, “do I share details of my sex life with you?”

“Since you brought the best chick along in ages, bro,” Geoff replied matter-of-factly as if that was meant to clarify things to Shawn.

“Well there’s nothing to share anyway so you can call off the dogs,” Shawn grumbled as he walked back into the living room, glancing wistfully at the clothes she’d left behind on the couch.

“You’re seriously telling me you didn’t sleep with her?” the disbelief in Geoff’s voice was so heavy it was almost tangible.

Shawn let himself fall onto the couch, his eyes still trained on the pink hoodie she had looked oh-so small in, that now looked painfully formal in the way it was creaselessly folded. “Nah,” he let his voice trail off, reaching up to poke at the hoodie’s soft fabric.

“How badly did you fuck up,” came Geoff’s response, less of a question, more of a statement.

“I don’t know – I don’t know what happened,” Shawn sighed heavily, turning his head to look out at the city; thick, greying clouds pressing down against the buildings.

He had no idea what was going on with her. Last night had been nice, they’d talked on the couch until the early hours of the morning, laughing as they shoved at each other with their feet, their legs ultimately getting tangled, and it was comfortable. Her wet hair had slowly dried into a wild halo of curls, flowing over the pale pink hoodie which brought out the blush in her cheeks.

“Well, what happened?” Geoff pushed for more, and Shawn rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling.

It was a gentle lull in conversation that had ultimately been her kryptonite, her eyelids fluttering closed as she fell into sleep with such a seamless grace that Shawn didn’t have the heart to wake her from it. He sat admiring her sleeping form for a long while, too scared to move, too scared to wake her, too scared to shatter the peace. She had looked so small and soft curled up in the corner of the couch, her chest slowly rising and falling as she breathed, a few curls fluttering with every exhaled breath. Eventually, he got worried about the way her head was bent, not wanting her to wake up with a crick in her neck and a frown on her face. He had carefully untangled his legs from hers and moved to pick her up, his arms slowly sliding underneath her as he held his breath with caution. If she had looked small on the couch, she had certainly felt smaller in his arms; her tiny frame pressed against his chest, her head resting against his shoulder, her hot breath gentle against his neck. Shawn had carried her to his guest bedroom and put her down with what seemed like more cautious care than bomb disposal experts grant their explosives.

“I don’t know,” Shawn huffed back, straining his neck, “we were just hanging out, it was nice…she fell asleep around three and now she’s gone. Woke up and she’d already left, no note or anything. So, I don’t know.”

“That sucks, dude,” Geoff replied sympathetically, “maybe you should message her or something, make sure she’s okay.”

Shawn let out a long breath, picking up his mug he’d placed on the coffee table next to the couch, “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Maybe she spooked because I put her in the guest bed when she fell asleep,” he wondered, taking another long sip of coffee.

There was a long pause on Geoff’s end, and then, hesitantly, “I mean, it could also have something to do with the pictures of the two of you leaving last night blowing up the internet.”

Shawn’s heart skipped a beat, and not in the same way it had when he first saw her standing in the lobby talking to the concierge wearing that fucking maroon number that clung to her like a second skin, “What?! he replied sharply, sitting up properly.

“Bro, it’s all over twitter, how is your phone not blowing up?”

Shawn rubbed his hand over his face, feeling his light morning stubble scratching against the small callouses on his fingers. “I turned my notifications off the second we went on break.”

He heard Geoff let out a small laugh, “You idiot.”

“Not helping,” Shawn huffed back, dreading having to go online and face the wave of drama that was undoubtedly unfolding. “How bad is it?”

Geoff chucked, “They’re pretty cute pictures to be honest; a bit blurry and taken from the other side of the road so you can’t make out too much, but still cute.”

“Ugh,” Shawn groaned, dropping his head back again, “okay, I should probably, definitely check up on her then. Thanks for telling me, dude.”

“No problem, let me know how it goes. I’ve got to go, but I’ll talk to you later, dude.”

“I will, yeah. See you later,” Shawn nodded as he spoke into the phone before hanging up.

Three hours later and Shawn had still not worked up the courage or the right words to message Summer. He’d tried distracting himself by starting to write a new song – a song he was adamantly telling himself was notabout her – but his eyes kept drifting from the strings on his guitar to his phone. Geoff had been right; the pictures were cute. A little out of focus, but it was distinctly him and Summer leaving Soho House with their wet clothes clinging to them, their hair dripping, their smiles bright. In the first picture, Shawn’s hand was on the small of her back as they grinned at each other; Summer’s head tilted back as he towered over her, her heels swinging on her fingertips. In the second picture, his arm was slung around her shoulders lazily, Summer smiling at the ground as he smiled down at her. He saved the pictures to his phone.

Shawn pulled up Eli’s contact and sent a message to him instead: Hey bro do you know if Summer’s alright?

Eli responded two minutes later: I don’t know???? Did something happen???

Shawn bit down on his bottom lip, his left hand running over the strings of his guitar as he held his phone in his right, unsure of how to respond to that. As far as he knew, nothing had really happened and he didn’t want to start thinking too far into it especially if Eli had no idea about anything, but on the other hand, maybe he would know why Summer had just up and left, or at the very least, what she was up to that day.

Shawn decided to go down the vaguest route he dared, not wanting to share anything with Eli that she maybe wouldn’t want shared: Nah just haven’t heard from her today, do you know if she’s up to anything?

The three dots indicating Eli’s response showed up immediately: I’m not sure but I know one of her brothers is in town so she might be with him??? Have you tried calling her?

Shawn sighed. There it was again. His prompt, his queue, to call her, to actually try and engage with her instead of talking to other people about how he should be calling her. Reluctantly, Shawn typed his response: I haven’t…probably should huh

Yeah probably haha, came Eli’s immediate reply, and Shawn knew he couldn’t procrastinate on it any further. He couldn’t help feeling nervous though, and he didn’t know why.

His finger hovered over the call button by her name and he realised he’d never actually called her before. They’d been texting all week, sending each other silly shit and little tidbits of their days. He knew all about how she had a running joke with the barista in the Starbuck’s by her work and how he called her every season but Summer. He knew how Jackson-From-Accounting had led a financial presentation with his boxers sticking out of the waistband of his trousers on Wednesday. He knew how she and her friend had watched a couple fighting across the street from her apartment through her kitchen window, the pair of them narrating their own version of what was being said, half drunk on a bottle of wine shared between them.

He pressed call and heard her number being dialled. His breath caught in the back of his throat at the immediate sound of her voice, but the tension he’d built up in his shoulders dropped as he realised it was just her voicemail: “Hello, this is Summer Little speaking. I’m sorry I’m currently not available, but please feel free to leave a voicemail with your name and number and I’ll do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.” She sounded so professional, and once again he was taken aback by the contrast between who she was casually and relaxed, and who she seemed to be at work. He had had the same reaction when he saw her walk out of her office building the night he’d picked her up for their date. By how fast the dial tone had switched to voicemail, Shawn could tell that Summer had her phone turned off, so he didn’t bother leaving a message.

Shawn got up and moved to his piano instead, using it as an excuse to stretch out his back. His index finger tapped impatiently on a single key as his mind waited for a melody to form. But all he could think of was how their eyes had connected when he’d pulled them under water. That had been one of his impulsive, split-second decisions fuelled by the crazy bursts of confidence he seemed to keep experiencing around her.

The way she’d looked up at him from the pool with her hair slicked back and hand outstretched and beckoning him to jump in and join her made him wonder if maybe mermaids were real, and then he thought that being drowned by one wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. He certainly always felt like he was drowning every time she looked at him.

Frustrated, he banged both of his large hands down on the keys, the piano letting out a million mismatched notes at once. It was no use; he couldn’t spend another three hours pacing around the condo trying to distract himself from her absence, the image of her curled onto his guest bed with her wild hair flayed out around her like a golden halo permeating his every second thought and it was driving him crazy.

Grumbling, he marched through his bedroom into his closet, pulling a black zip-up hoodie over his shirtless torso and exchanging last night’s basketball shorts for a pair of sweatpants. If pacing wasn’t going to cut it anymore, then maybe running would. He slipped his trainers on and headed outside, firmly lodging in his earbuds and turning up his carefully curated running playlist that helped him drown out everything but the thudding of his feet on the pavement.

Downtown Toronto wasn’t the most ideal place for a run, not with all the stop lights and pedestrians he was forced to dodge, but it kept his brain active and far enough away from any and all thoughts of how she had bitten down on her lip when she told him about how she’d fallen from the top of the cheer pyramid in her freshman year of High School; an incident which incidentally also defined the end of her cheerleading career because she’d been so embarrassed by it.

His heart was pounding, and his blood was rushing, and for the first time in a week it wasn’t because of the sharp way in which her dark eyes flicked up to meet his, or how warm her skin felt every time he dared to touch her, or how her nose wrinkled when she laughed. Shawn headed down towards the harbour-front, which was generally populated with more fellow runners and their dogs than cars and trucks.

Dark Blue by Jack’s Mannequin came on shuffle, and Shawn picked up his pace, shaking his sweaty head of hair as he tried not to think about Summer’s dark blue eyes that and how they always seemed to look black in dim lighting; and he tried not to think too much about how he’d never laid eyes on them in the daylight and how glorious she must look then: radiant and golden and glowing in what surely must be her element.

The stoplights turned red just as he was approaching, so he slowed down, jogging restlessly on the spot as he waited for them to go green again. A hand catching the back of his arm made him come to an abrupt stop. He turned, pulling his headphones from his ears as he looked down at a group of three girls smiling shyly up at him.

“Hey Shawn,” the one in the middle said, clutching her phone in her hand.

He grinned back, straightening up a bit as he ran a hand through his hair self-consciously, “Hey guys, how you doing?”

“We’re really sorry, we didn’t want to bother you but then…well, we just wanted to say hi,” another of the girls said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“No problem, guys, don’t worry about it,” Shawn smiled, shifting his weight around, “did you guys want to take a picture?” The girls all nodded eagerly in unison, smiling widely at him and each other as Shawn leaned down to take pictures with each one.

He was just thinking how this was the best distraction of all, until suddenly it wasn’t anymore: “Not to be nosy or anything, but who was that girl in the pictures from last night?” the girl standing closest to him asked, and he could almost feel the hairs on his back stand up.

A million answers ran through his mind and he didn’t know which one to pick. Of course, people were bound to ask him, of course everyone would want to know. He knew that Summer was a lot of things: fun, bright, beautiful, and currently unavailable. Shawn, however, wished he had a better answer himself, but her question had unleashed a torrent of new ones: who really was Summer Little, what was she to him, and most pressingly, what was he to her?

“Just a friend,” Shawn smiled through the tight feeling in his stomach.

He was wearing the same pink hoodie she had spent the night in and he felt a little silly. He wouldn’t say he was pining, but he liked how it somehow smelled a bit like her and him and the chlorine from the pool all mixed together. He wanted to say he was wearing it because it was his favourite hoodie, and he never would have admitted that he picked it for her to wear for that very reason either. He looked down at how the sleeves came down to just the right spot on his wrists and thought about how her hands had completely disappeared within them as she waved her arms around animatedly, the extra fabric folding down and swishing about with her movements.

Shawn instinctively reached into the pouch of his hoodie for his phone, before remembering that he’d left it on top of the piano – he’d been checking it so regularly, hoping to see her name popping up, that it was driving him mental, so he’d decided to put it out of his immediate reach. He hadn’t tried calling her again, he didn’t want to come on too strong, wanted to give her the space she needed, especially if she’d seen half of the things going around online.

The tight knot in his stomach had not unravelled itself. If he was being honest with himself, he was worried and disappointed and annoyed at himself.

He was worried that she was upset with him for putting her to bed instead of waking her, or with their situation – whatever it was, he really had no idea where he stood with her – or by the way both his fans and the media had jumped all over the pictures of them leaving Soho House.

He was disappointed because this was not the first time this had happened. It seemed that every time there was a girl he warmed to it was his lifestyle, who he was, and what he did that drove a wedge between them. It was like he couldn’t have more than two great loves in his life. He had chosen music, and it was that choice, that seemed to have robbed him of any chance at romantic love, and here it was, seemingly happening all over again.

He was annoyed because he should have known this would happen, not because of Summer, but again, because of who he was. He should have said something to her, should have warned her that people would take an interest in her if she spent time with him. He should have known that there would probably be someone taking pictures outside of Soho House – there always were, and he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten. He shouldn’t have been so self-indulgent in wanting to watch her sleeping form, in wanting to pick her up and carry her to bed, in wanting to wake up to her the next morning. Maybe if he hadn’t slept in as late as he did, he could have made her breakfast and convinced her to stay.

Shawn watched as the water for his pasta boiled, bubbling slightly over the rim. He poked at the pasta with his wooden spoon, watching it sink further into the pot. The kitchen tiles felt cold against his feet and he shuffled around impatiently, hunger pangs joining up with the anxious twisting in his stomach. He’d decided to try making his mom’s Bolognese recipe, but he knew it was never going to turn out as well or be nearly as comforting. There is always something inherently less satisfying about cooking for yourself as opposed to being cooked for or cooking for someone else. He wondered briefly if Summer liked Bolognese, but quickly diverted that train of thought back to focusing on the boiling water and his rumbling stomach.

Once again, he was acutely aware of how empty the condo was, the soft sounds of John Mayer drifting around through the sound system. Generally, Shawn never had an issue with feeling lonely, but there he was, standing barefoot in his kitchen wearing his favourite hoodie that now smelled just barely like Summer, and he felt deeply lonely. He stirred his pasta again, unsure of when it was really ready. He bet Summer would know, but he stopped himself halfway through that thought again to focus on bursting the big, boiling bubbles in the pot that were now threatening to spill over the rim. Maybe that was the sign that the pasta was done.

After plating up his meal, which barely resembled what his mother would dish up for him, he sat down by the low coffee table, folding his long legs underneath the exact same way he had a child. He was even tempted to turn on some cartoons for the additional illusion of comfort but thought better of it. He quite liked brooding to John Mayer over his own sounds of slurping up pasta. As John sang away about love and heartbreak, Shawn couldn’t help but think of Summer – not that he was in love, let alone heartbroken – but still, she was on his mind, and he allowed it to wander. This morning, when he realised she’d gone without leaving so much as a note he had still been convinced he’d hear from her; they had had too much fun and she seemed much too warm of a person to just ghost him, but sitting there on his living room floor eating his shitty version of his favourite comfort food and feeling desperately lonely and sorry for himself, Shawn started to think he’d never see her again. He couldn’t even remember what the last thing was that they had laughed about. Not that it mattered, he’d only known her for a week and people were constantly coming and going in his life. But then he thought about how he’d never get to see the sunlight bouncing off her golden curls, and his stomach tightened just a little. At least, he thought, he got to watch her dive into a pool and hold her tight in the water and see how her eyelashes stuck together. But he never got to kiss her, and that thought was another kick in the gut. He’d been so close, too; had her backed into her door, her head tilted back as she looked up at him and he knew she would have let him kiss her.

He heard the distinctive sound of his phone buzzing against the wood of his piano, and his head whipped around, mouth halfway through chewing a forkful of pasta. Surely not, he thought, it wouldn’t be her. He told himself to stay seated, to not rush up and check his phone on the unlikely off-chance that Summer had messaged him. He knew it was probably Andy asking something about the production of the next album, or, more likely and much more dreaded, about the publicity surrounding the photos circulating from the night before.

Swallowing his mouthful, Shawn caved in to the urge and scrambled out from under the coffee table, jumping over the couch to reach the piano faster. He picked up his phone and he swore his heart stopped for a beat or two.

10:43PM, Summer Little: Hey, can I call you? - TAGLIST (let me know if you want to be added!)

@crownedbyluke @divergentseagreengirl @lurhemmings @sweetcherrycal @carlaimberlain

#c writes #my writing #Shawn mendes #shawn #mendes #Shawn mendes imagine #Shawn mendes fanfiction #Shawn mendes fluff #shawn fic #Shawn mendes fic #Shawn imagine #Shawn fanfiction #Shawn fluff #Shawn angst #Shawn mendes angst #the height of summer #the height of summer chapter 4 #Youngblood network

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holidaycrazyeqx · 4 years

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How Alcohol Affects Your Performance As A Bodybuilder

Small Cap Bull 3x (TNA) - TNA continues to surge and is trading near $95. Small Cap Bull 3x (TNA) - TNA continues to skyrocket and outperform the trendy boutique market. The company’s heightened stock price also makes acquisitions cheaper. You can make money just once through cleaning out your closet, or you can create a nice little supplemental income by learning to buy items at a low price and selling them for a higher amount. You pay your fund manager to manage your money and if he is good at his job then you can multiply your wealth easily in the long run. There's often a queue on the Sony website weekdays, so if you're after a Sony Direct PS5 restock, then you could be lucky during the days this week. China 3x Bull ETF (YINN) - YINN is red hot and is up 12% from the low last week. Small Cap Bull 3x (TNA) - TNA rocketed higher this week and is now trading near $97. Chipotle (CMG) - Chipotle (CMG) tanked this week after the CEO hinted guidance might not be met.

Chipotle (CMG) - Chipotle (CMG) is trying to put together another rally. Chipotle (CMG) - Chipotle (CMG) is back above $410 but the turnaround continues. Chipotle (CMG) - Chipotle (CMG) failed near the $400 level. Shake Shack (SHAK) - Shake Shack (SHAK) failed near $39 Monday and is pulling back. Shake Shack (SHAK) - Shake Shack (SHAK) failed near $39 this week and is pulling back. China 3x Bull ETF (YINN) - YINN is red hot and is up 11% from the low last week. China 3x Bull ETF (YINN) - YINN is showing signs of life after a soft last few weeks. Small Cap Bull 3x (TNA) - TNA is seeing a pullback right now after hitting $109 two weeks ago. I bought a small position on Friday on the pullback. Small Cap Bull 3x (TNA) - TNA is seeing a pullback right now after hitting $109 in the past week. Small Cap Bull 3x (TNA) - TNA exploded back to $107 this week. Small Cap Bull 3x (TNA) - TNA bounced near $70 this week. Small Cap Bull 3x (TNA) - TNA is climbing back up this week and is near $110 again. China 3x Bull ETF (YINN) - YINN rallied up near $15 on Wednesday.

China 3x Bull ETF (YINN) - YINN dropped below $15 this week and is looking good right now. Watch resistance in the $21's into next week. Watch resistance in the $21's going forward. Tesla (TSLA) - Tesla (TSLA) is now testing the 200 day moving average located around Tesla (TSLA) is a strong buy below $170 going forward if we see the chart break down. Bank of America Corp (BAC) - Bank of America Corporation continues to trade below the 50 day moving average located $16.43. Shake Shack (SHAK) - Shake Shack (SHAK) continues to hit resistance around $38. Shake Shack (SHAK) - Shake Shack (SHAK) is running back up near $38 from $35 just days ago. Tesla (TSLA) - Tesla (TSLA) is now trading back around the 200 day moving average. We had a big technical sell off at the end of the day, basically as you can see on the chart, we tested the 10 day moving average and it was rejected. 1Investments in ADRs can involve special tax reporting and risks, including currency fluctuations and political, economic and social instability.

Hence, this is the best way a person can carry the trading of his securities in the safest and convenient manner. Arrange the boxes in such a way that there is some space between the stack of boxes and the plants. Tuesday there were more buyers than sellers. Top Gold stock for 2011. PZG support at $3.09 on Tuesday but the stock held $3.00. DryShips, Inc. (DRYS) - Shares of DryShips, Inc. jumped over $5.00 on Tuesday and are now back above the 200 day moving average. Tesla (TSLA) - Tesla (TSLA) is now trading back above the 200 day moving average. Netflix Inc is in overbought territory and should be shorted on a break down through the low of the day. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) - Shares of Goldman Sachs Group broke below $140 on Friday as the financials continue to be weak. Will the stock market go up or down on Friday. Keep tabs on the stock market futures which will predict the open on Friday. Western Digital Corporation (WDC) - Western Digital stock Jumps After Raising Its Quarterly Guidance. The Dow Jones and stock Market continue to skyrocket thanks to a Donald Trump victory. Last quarter, this generated $66 billion in sales and $4 billion in profits -- better than recent quarters thanks to higher oil prices.

#boutiques #fig leaf boutique #alka boutique #salt of the earth boutique

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Friday, December 11, 2020

I.C.U. Beds Near Capacity Across U.S. (NYT) In El Paso, hospitals reported that just 13 of 400 intensive care beds were not occupied last week. In Fargo, N.D., there were just three. In Albuquerque, there were zero. More than a third of Americans live in areas where hospitals are running critically short of intensive care beds, federal data show, revealing a newly detailed picture of the nation’s hospital crisis during the deadliest week of the Covid-19 epidemic. One in 10 Americans—across a large swath of the Midwest, South and Southwest—lives in an area where intensive care beds are either completely full, or fewer than 5 percent of beds are available. At these levels, experts say maintaining existing standards of care for the sickest patients may be difficult or impossible.

Poll: Only half in US want shots as vaccine nears (AP) As states frantically prepare to begin months of vaccinations that could end the pandemic, a new poll finds only about half of Americans are ready to roll up their sleeves when their turn comes. The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows about a quarter of U.S. adults aren’t sure if they want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Roughly another quarter say they won’t. Many on the fence have safety concerns and want to watch how the initial rollout fares—skepticism that could hinder the campaign against the scourge that has killed nearly 290,000 Americans. Experts estimate at least 70% of the U.S. population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, or the point at which enough people are protected that the virus can be held in check.

U.S. and States Say Facebook Illegally Crushed Competition (NYT) The Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states accused Facebook on Wednesday of buying up its rivals to illegally squash competition, and they called for the deals to be unwound, escalating regulators’ battle against the biggest tech companies in a way that could remake the social media industry. Federal and state regulators of both parties, who have investigated the company for over 18 months, said in separate lawsuits that Facebook’s purchases, especially Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion two years later, eliminated competition that could have one day challenged the company’s dominance. The applications have helped catapult Facebook from a company started in a college dorm room 16 years ago to an internet powerhouse valued at more than $800 billion.

‘Welcome to Texas!’ (NYT) Long before Elon Musk, the Tesla magnate and billionaire Californian, announced that he was moving to Texas, Marie Bailey, a California transplant now living north of Dallas, fastened a customized license plate onto her very own Tesla, with a message that has become her ethos. “Move2TX,” it reads in block letters, underneath an emblem of the one-starred Texas flag. The news by Mr. Musk, who announced his move on Tuesday, in a snub to California and its strong regulatory environment, added fuel to the longstanding rivalry between the nation’s two most populous states. California, with its steep housing costs, raging wildfires and strict business regulations, has been losing residents to other states, with Texas as the most popular exodus destination. Of more than 653,000 people who left California last year, about 82,000 went to Texas, more than any other state, according to census figures. Or, as The Stanford Review wrote in a nod to the native Texan George Strait, “All of California’s Exes Are Moving to Texas.”

SpaceX launches Starship on highest test flight, crash-lands (AP) SpaceX launched its shiny, bullet-shaped, straight-out-of-science fiction Starship several miles into the air from a remote corner of Texas on Wednesday, but the 6 1/2-minute test flight ended in an explosive fireball at touchdown. It was the highest and most elaborate flight yet for the rocketship that Elon Musk says could carry people to Mars in as little as six years. Despite the catastrophic finale, he was thrilled. “Mars, here we come!!” he tweeted. This latest prototype—the first one equipped with a nose cone, body flaps and three engines—was shooting for an altitude of up to eight miles (12.5 kilometers). That’s almost 100 times higher than previous hops and skimming the stratosphere. The full-scale, stainless steel model—160 feet (50 meters) tall and 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter—soared out over the Gulf of Mexico. After about five minutes, it flipped sideways as planned and descended in a free-fall back to the southeastern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. The Raptor engines reignited for braking and the rocket tilted back upright. When it touched down, however, the rocketship became engulfed in flames and ruptured, parts scattering.

In Cuba, Internet Fuels Rare Protests (NYT) In another era, the detention of a young Cuban dissident may have gone completely unnoticed. But when the rapper Denis Solís was arrested by the police, he did something that has only recently become possible on the island: He filmed the encounter on his cellphone and streamed it live on Facebook. The stream last month prompted his friends in an artist collective to go on a hunger strike, which the police broke up after a week, arresting members of the group. But their detentions were also caught on cellphone videos and shared widely over social media, leading hundreds of artists and intellectuals to stage a demonstration outside the Culture Ministry the next day. This swift mobilization of protesters was a rare instance of Cubans openly confronting their government—and a stark example of how having widespread access to the internet through cellphones is testing the power balance between the communist regime and its citizens. The fact that such a large protest happened at all—and led to the creation of a formal movement with a name and a Facebook page—is in itself extraordinary in a country where the opposition is barely existent.

Lockdown Gardening in Britain Leads to Archaeological Discoveries (NYT) Gardeners in Hampshire, a county in southeast England, were weeding their yard in April when they found 63 gold coins and one silver coin from King Henry VIII’s reign in the 16th century, with four of the coins inscribed with the initials of the king’s wives Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. The archaeological find was one of more than 47,000 in England and Wales that were reported this year, amid an increase in backyard gardening during coronavirus lockdowns, the British Museum said on Wednesday. In another discovery, in Milton Keynes, a town northwest of London, gardeners found 50 solid gold South African Krugerrand coins that were minted in the 1970s during apartheid.

As Brexit cliff edge looms, miles of trucks stack up near southern English port (Reuters) Trucks heading towards the English port of Dover were stacked up for miles on Thursday, just three weeks before Britain exits the European Union’s orbit in a potentially tumultuous finale to the five-year divorce, a Reuters photographer said. Logistics groups have reported surging demand from companies trying to bring parts, goods and food into the country before Britain leaves the EU’s single market and customs union, a move that is expected to cause even more disruption in January. The British government has warned that even with a trade deal, 7,000 trucks heading for the Channel ports in south-east England could be held in 100-km (62-mile) queues if companies do not prepare the extra paperwork required.

Eyes on a reset (Washington Post) European leaders plan to use a summit that starts Thursday to agree on a sweeping new strategy to rebuild strained relations with the United States, after four years of a divide-and-conquer approach from President Trump. From rebuilding the Iran nuclear deal to fighting the pandemic to addressing climate change, Europeans are scrambling to seize the moment with the incoming U.S. leader. Because of Joe Biden’s age and history, many here believe he will be more interested in cooperation with Europe than any U.S. president for the foreseeable future, Democrat or Republican. But leaders on both sides of the Atlantic warn that some of the irritants of the Trump years will remain, and other divides could still open—especially on what may be the greatest foreign policy challenge of Biden’s presidency, an increasingly aggressive and expansionist Beijing. European countries vary sharply on how they think they should manage relations with China, and the biggest and most powerful country in Europe, Germany, also has the closest trading relationship with Beijing. European leaders also have become embroiled in an intramural debate about the extent to which they should seek independence from the United States, a goal increasingly pushed by French President Emmanuel Macron and opposed by Germany and others.

Poles voice fears of ‘Polexit’ as govt defies EU over budget (AP) As the Polish government plays a game of chicken with the European Union over its next long-term budget, some Poles are voicing fears that a drawn-out conflict could put their country on a path toward an eventual departure from the bloc, or “Polexit.” Poland’s conservative government, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party, denies that it has ever wanted to leave the 27-member bloc, and popular support for EU membership runs extremely high. But critics fear the combative tone of Polish leaders—who have recently compared the EU to the Soviet Union and used terms like “political enslavement” to describe Poland’s predicament in the standoff—could create momentum, which if unstopped, could accidently bring the nation to the exit door. The fears are rooted in a threat by the Polish and Hungarian governments to block the EU’s 1.82 trillion-euro ($2.21 trillion) budget for the next seven years, including a coronavirus recovery package. The veto threat comes after other EU members voted to introduce a new rule that would allow the bloc to cut funding to EU nations that violate the rule of law.

World’s pharmacy gears up for vaccine race (Reuters) India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, is getting set for the massive global blitz to contain the coronavirus pandemic with its pharmaceutical industry and partners freeing up capacity and accelerating investments even without firm purchase orders. India manufactures more than 60% of all vaccines sold across the globe, and while its $40 billion pharmaceutical sector is not yet involved in the production of the expensive Pfizer Inc and Moderna shots, the nation will play a pivotal role in immunizing much of the world. Indian companies are set to produce eight, more affordable vaccines designed to fight COVID-19. But much of India’s vaccine production could be, at least initially, for domestic use. With nearly 10 million infections, the world’s second-highest after the United States, India’s government is likely to order a huge chunk of the vaccines for its 1.3 billion people.

South Korea to criminalize sending leaflets into North Korea, bowing to regime (Washington Post) South Korea’s ruling party is pushing a law through parliament that would criminalize sending leaflets, flash drives and money to North Korea, in what the opposition calls a “disgraceful submission” to Pyongyang and human rights groups say will stifle freedom of expression and humanitarian work. The move follows pressure from Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who in June labeled defectors based in South Korea “human scum” and “mongrel dogs” for sending items across the border designed to undermine the North Korean regime. She warned Seoul would face a “dear price” unless it prevented this “wicked and sordid act of hostility.” President Moon Jae-in’s government, which has made improving relations with North Korea a priority, immediately began cracking down on groups that dispatch such materials across the heavily guarded frontier. Lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party then introduced a bill to make it a felony punishable by up to three years in prison to send promotional pamphlets and storage devices such as flash drives, money and other financial benefits to the North without the government’s permission.

China restricts US official travel to Hong Kong (AP) China is imposing restrictions on travel to Hong Kong by some U.S. officials and others in retaliation for similar measures imposed on Chinese individuals by Washington, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday. U.S. diplomatic passport holders visiting Hong Kong and nearby Macao will temporarily no longer receive visa-free entry privileges, spokesperson Hua Chunying said. U.S. administration officials, congressional staffers, employees of non-governmental organizations and their immediate family members will face “reciprocal sanctions,” Hua said. Hua said the move was taken “given that the U.S. side is using the Hong Kong issue to seriously interfere in China’s internal affairs and undermine China’s core interests.”

Australia largely beat the virus. But it left thousands of residents stranded abroad. (Washington Post) Australian entry restrictions have stranded tens of thousands of Australian citizens and residents overseas. As a group, they form part of an unexpected phenomenon of the pandemic: displaced people of the developed world. And for Australians overseas or with loved ones abroad, the tyranny of distance—a largely bygone concern conquered by jet travel—is once again very real. There is no authoritative figure on how many people have been stranded as a result of restrictions that countries have imposed during the pandemic. In late March, more than 50,000 Americans were stuck overseas when cross-border travel almost ceased, U.S. officials said at the time. Australia’s situation is extreme, though. The island continent has one of the strictest border closures—residents need special permission to leave, and only citizens, residents and a few other select groups have been allowed in since March 20. Arrivals are limited to about 8,000 a week and they must isolate in a hotel for 14 days at their own expense. Besides allowing entry to travelers from New Zealand, the country has largely sealed itself off. In January, about 2.3 million people came to Australia. By September, the figure was 16,720.

Morocco joins other Arab nations agreeing to normalize Israel ties (Reuters) Israel and Morocco agreed on Thursday to normalize relations in a deal brokered with U.S. help, making Morocco the fourth Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months. It joins the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan in beginning to forge deals with Israel, driven in part by U.S.-led efforts to present a united front against Iran and roll back Tehran’s regional influence. In a departure from longstanding U.S. policy, President Donald Trump agreed as part of the deal to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, a desert region where a decades-old territorial dispute has pitted Morocco against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state in the territory. President-elect Joe Biden, due to succeed Trump on Jan. 20, will face a decision whether to accept the U.S. deal on the Western Sahara, which no other Western nation has done.

#headlines #news

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mariemary1 · 4 years

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The Evolution of Product at Buffer and the Next Step: We’re Hiring a VP of Product

We've been building Buffer for coming up to ten years now. We’re currently a 90-person fully remote team with over 70,000 paying customers and $20M in annual revenue. We’re proud to be a leader in the space of social media management, and to operate long-term as an independent and profitable business. As a company, we’ve rallied around serving small businesses. We’re also passionate about challenging suboptimal approaches to how work happens and how employees are treated. Our current 4-day workweek experiment is an example of that. An important philosophy of our journey has been having the freedom to build our product and workplace the way we'd like to. In 2018, we took an important action to maintain this freedom by spending $3.3 million buying out our main VC investors. After a great decade with many accomplishments and interesting challenges, we’re looking for an experienced and driven product executive to partner with me as CEO to shape the future of Buffer. Before I get into why we’re hiring a VP of Product, I want to share a history of product at Buffer, how our team is set up, and our most recent revenue metrics as these are all aspects of Buffer that I know a product leader will have questions around.

A history of product at Buffer

I launched the first (truly an MVP) version of Buffer in late 2010. In the beginning, Buffer started as a solution to my own problemaround consistently sharing content on social media. Ithen put the idea through a customer discovery and validation process to ensure it was a problem others had, too.We launched with a freemium model and were fortunate to welcome the first paying customer on day three. We then added some focused marketing, and over the course of the first year gained thousands of active users of the product. Initially a lot of our product direction came from those customers, listening to their problems and devising unique solutions. In 2012, it was time to focus slightly more. We narrowed in on bloggers, individuals, and small business owners. We set down our first true product vision, which was to be the sharing standard for the web. We made big progress on this vision, becoming the first social media management solution to create a sharing button and completing integrations with countless news reading apps. During this time, our acquisition and growth strategy was our freemium model. Ultimately we started to realize that this strategy would only truly work if we became a mainstream product used by millions. As we integrated more widely, the signups we gained from those partnerships led to much lower freemium conversion rates. As a result, by 2014, our growth started to plateau and we felt we reached the upper limits of how successful Buffer could become with this approach. Since our product was most valued by and most active among small business customers, we leaned into that and launched Buffer for Business with new pricing plans tiered up to $500/mo. We succeeded in finding a new wave of growth, and the journey cemented our intuition that Buffer wouldn’t find success as a consumer product. This brought a level of focus that was refreshing, and pushed us to add more power to the product. We aimed to do this while still maintaining the simplicity our customers had grown to love Buffer for. In 2015, we explored a team structure with no managers, and this played directly into our approach to product. With more autonomy on our team, we let our product strategy take a truly organic direction. During our period of no managers, we launched several new products. This included a “Buffer labs” exploration where we produced Pablo, our image creation product, as well as Daily, a swipe left or right approach to adding suggested content to your social media queue. Finally, the Pablo team shifted to launch Rocket, our first foray into the ads space. Daily and Rocket were ultimately sunset, and we learned a lot from each of them. In early 2016, we acquired Respondly, a social customer service and engagement product which we relaunched as Buffer Reply. This was our most significant bet and investment to date and took us into the customer service industry for the first time. Customer service had always been a large focus for us as a company, and we were excited to be able to offer a product to help others in this space, too. At the time, the networks were making a big bet on social media becoming a significant channel for customer service. Customer service ultimately did not grow along the path we predicted, and the need for a fully fledged product here was mostly limited to Enterprise scale, which was too mismatched with our existing customer-base and knowledge in the team. We grew Reply from $4k to $70k in MRR, and chose to sunset the product earlier this year. In the process of becoming a two product organization, we saw an opportunity to separate out social analytics from our main product focused on social media publishing and content planning. We leaned into this multi-product strategy and built our third product, Analyze. This separation gave us a better focus on the separate customer jobs and we have been able to grow this into a very successful product. Analyze currently generates over $1.5m in ARR. By the second half of 2018, we had grown to $18m in ARR and over 75,000 paying customers. Still being a small team, we started to feel stretched thin, and we increasingly found product prioritization and pace to be challenges. I partnered with our head of research to run a process to determine a singular type of customer for us to focus our efforts around. We arrived at Direct to Consumer (DTC) brands as a type of customer who has built their business on top of social media and has innovated the most with social media marketing and customer engagement. This newly defined Target Customer for Buffer brought us a lot of focus, but at times felt like an over correction and came at a cost to product improvements for our existing customers, who are small businesses of all types. Something that became clear over a few years, and during our customer research process to arrive at DTC brands as a customer persona to focus on, was that the the world of social media had become increasing visual. To address this shift, we spent most of 2018 and 2019 building out new functionality focused on Instagram. In addition to this work to expand our product offerings, we underwent a significant rebuild project for our main product, Publish. Rebuilds are never fun, but with this now complete we are able to move significantly faster and deliver a much improved user experience. That brings us to 2020. Our current focus is to become a brand-building platform for small businesses, with DTC brands as one of our primary customer personas. This year, it became clear that the multi-product approach was creating friction for customers, so we are working to adjust our pricing and overall experience towards a single solution. We’re in the midst of launching Engage, a social engagement product for small businesses that came out of our experiences growing Reply. Engage will be bundled as part of existing pricing tiers, at various levels of functionality. I’m looking forward to this next chapter of Buffer, and to a future where we can become a comprehensive toolkit for small businesses to build their brand, grow, and create great relationships with their customers. We see a path to 100,000 paying customers and beyond, with many opportunities to solve more problems for that audience.

How our product team is set up

We’re primarily structured around the customer jobs we are focused on: Publish, Analyze and Engage. We also have two “shared services” teams focused on authentication, billing and onboarding (Core) and our iOS and Android apps (Mobile). Most teams have a Product Manager, Product Designer and somewhere between two and seven engineers depending on the needs of that product area. The VP of Product we bring on board will manage Product and Design, and initially have six direct reports (four PMs, Head of Design and Partnerships Manager).

Our current financial metrics

We’ve been profitable since 2016 and in 2018 we chose to leverage that profitability to buy out a portion of our investors in order to retain control over Buffer’s path. We reached $10 million in ARR in May 2016, and $20 million ARR in March 2019. Here are our most recent revenue and product metrics from June 2020: MRR: $1,704,768 ARR: $20,457,216Customers: 69,596 ARPU: $24.50 Customer Churn: 4.76%Net MRR Churn: 3.95% LTV: $515 Revenue: $1,679,591 Operating Income: $235,375 EBITDA margin: 14.01% We have a dedicated revenue dashboard (a work in progress!) where you can see revenue over time. Here’s what that looks like:

The COVID-19 impact Many businesses have been impacted by COVID-19, including us. Buffer is in a strong financial position, we’ve thankfully had no impact on jobs and have remained solidly profitable. The shareholder update we sent in April shares a complete picture of our approach in the midst of the pandemic. One thing I talked about in that update is that sometimes the best thing we can do for our small business customers isn’t immediately profitable for Buffer – including our COVID-19 support programs for customers with financial challenges. I have no doubt that we’re doing the right thing by focusing on people first. One of my business philosophies is that if we take care of our teammates and our customers as best we possibly can now, we will succeed in the long term. This graph of our MRR in 2020 shows the impact we’ve seen on revenue:

Though we have experienced some anticipated decline, we are happy to see that it has started to climb again and as I mentioned, Buffer has pulled through in a strong financial position. We’ve spent the last few years building up to our current financial security, which means we can weather extreme levels of uncertainty. We’re fortunate and grateful to be in this position, and are proud of our financial diligence.

We’re hiring a VP of Product

At this point in the journey of Buffer, I’m excited to bring on board a VP of Product. Before I share more of the reasons we came to this decision, I want to share a key area of weakness up front. While we've made great strides over the past few years, and we have a majority female leadership team, our current leadership team lacks diversity. There's no doubt that as a result we lack key perspectives and have unconscious biases as a company. It’s a priority for us to change this dynamic and include within our leadership team backgrounds that have been typically underrepresented in tech. This will serve our customers and our team more fully than we have been able to so far. Since we don’t grow our leadership team often, this is a rare opportunity for us. In addition to looking for a talented product leader, we also want this teammate to bring a new perspective to our leadership team and culture. Making sure we speak to a slate of diverse candidates is critical as we look for our VP of Product. Below are a few reasons I came to the decision to look for a product leader: Being a product-minded CEO can become a weakness As a product-minded CEO, my journey has followed from my innate energy and passion for product development. An engineer by background, I shifted to product development early in our journey, and found a lot of enjoyment in crafting the experience for customers, which I believe has played a large role in where we are today. Unfortunately, what can happen with a product-CEO, is that product can go from being the strongest area of the company to one of the weakest. At a certain point, product must scale up and become operationalized, and those strengths must become part of how the overall team functions. I believe in recent years we’ve seen some deterioration of product where other areas such as engineering have grown stronger, due to my desire to hold on and shape product more than is appropriate for the size have grown to. I’ve recognized that I need to take a different approach to fulfill the vision and goals I have, in order to keep the product as a core strength of ours. It needs to happen through someone else, rather than through me alone. I’m looking to bring more balance to all areas of Buffer I believe for a company to thrive, all areas in a company need to work in harmony and that my role as CEO is set down vision and support all areas. Over the past few years, I’ve been very focused on product, which has caused an imbalance in how much I’ve been involved in other areas of the company. This is to the detriment of our customers, team, and all stakeholders. By inviting this functional leader to our leadership team, it will mean I can be more equally balanced across all areas of Buffer. We will be able to push forward, and I can work more closely with leaders to set vision and strategy, across all areas in tandem. Therefore, bringing on an experienced VP of Product will help us level up as a product organization. We will be able to introduce more streamlined processes, and by having a person dedicated to this area solely, we will improve the way product interacts with other related and interdependent areas, such as engineering, marketing, and advocacy. We’re looking for outside perspective For this role, I am making the choice to bring in someone from the outside instead of considering someone growing from within the company. This is new for us, and I’m excited for the opportunity for growth we have with a fresh perspective on the executive team. In our journey so far, we have overwhelmingly had leaders grow from individual contributor roles into senior leaders. I believe that it’s beneficial to have a majority of leaders grow from within the company as there is a clear alignment of our values, empathy towards team members, and a sense of loyalty towards our mission. With that said, having 100% of leaders grow from within creates a lack of diversity in our mindset and approach. Without outside experience, we will have knowledge gaps as a leadership team, and can become set in our ways. The VP of Product role is an excellent opportunity for us to find someone with some extensive outside experience. A key thing we will be focused on in our hiring process is that a person’s external experience is compatible and additive to Buffer’s approach and values.

More about this role

For this role, I’m seeking a partner in product strategy and execution. Since product is at the heart of Buffer, this is one of the most important roles and one which will make decisions impacting all other areas. We’re looking for a product leader with deep product management and design fundamentals and expertise, as well as strong people management experience and stakeholder collaboration. I’m aiming to find someone that can both tap into the insights that I have to offer and stand strong and push back when they believe I shouldn’t be involved. It will be helpful for a potential VP of Product to have experience in a smaller company environment, and ideally has led a product team through significant growth, for example growing a SaaS product from $10m to $50m or more. The other key difference with Buffer is that we’re focused on SMB, with a large number of paying customers and free users, and we have no sales team. This changes the type of work involved at the product leadership level, and this will be something the right person is energized by. The new VP of Product will have the opportunity to craft a unique strategy to help us serve customers, differentiate Buffer, and see great growth over the next 5 to 10 years. Joining Buffer at the leadership level is a rare opportunity. We’re a highly customer-focused team and are squarely on a path of long-term sustainability. This is an opportunity for a great product leader to play a key role in creating much more value for customers and building something special that endures. I’m looking forward to meeting people who are up for this challenge. Please reach out through this job posting to apply and someone from our hiring team will be in touch with next steps. If you want to recommend someone who you think would be great for this role, please fill out this form.

More about Buffer’s journey

If you’d like to learn more about Buffer’s journey over the years, here are a few podcast episodes where I’ve talked about starting Buffer, fundraising, transparency, and profitability.

SaaStock: Building a remote, profitable, transparent and sustainable company with Joel Gascoigne, CEO of Buffer

20VC: Buffer’s Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC

Product Hunt: Distributed teams, extreme transparency and buying out your investors

Thank The Evolution of Product at Buffer and the Next Step: We’re Hiring a VP of Product for first publishing this post.

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margaretbeagle · 4 years

Text

The Evolution of Product at Buffer and the Next Step: We’re Hiring a VP of Product

A history of product at Buffer

How our product team is set up

Our current financial metrics

We’re hiring a VP of Product

More about this role

More about Buffer’s journey

If you’d like to learn more about Buffer’s journey over the years, here are a few podcast episodes where I’ve talked about starting Buffer, fundraising, transparency, and profitability.

SaaStock: Building a remote, profitable, transparent and sustainable company with Joel Gascoigne, CEO of Buffer

20VC: Buffer’s Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC

Product Hunt: Distributed teams, extreme transparency and buying out your investors

The Evolution of Product at Buffer and the Next Step: We’re Hiring a VP of Product published first on https://improfitninja.weebly.com/

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rajakolagatla · 8 years

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Taipei Daries

I landed at around 1pm in Taipei. Along with my flight, couple of flights also did a touchdown, making it a long queue for immigration check. I could see only 2 Indians (including me) in the 10+ immigration check queues for international visitors. It looked like a preview of my next three weeks stay in Taipei.

Immigration check took only 20 min despite long queue, no questions were asked since I am on visiting visa (or may be my company name is well known there :)). Airport has couple of ATMs and I took money from Bank of Taiwan, right side of the exit. As advised by my colleague, I withdrew 6000 NT Dollars, which were sufficient for next 2 weeks (I did shopping on my credit card and used cash for every other transaction). You can either visit the prepaid taxi stand or ride with the Taxi drivers, who will be waiting in visiting area and request you to come along with them. One of the drivers approached me while I was waiting in ATM queue and I obliged to ride with him. Although it took more than 15 min to withdraw the money, he waited patiently. I was charged 1000 NT Dollars (INR 2200) for a 30 minute and 45km journey, not bad for Mercedes S-Class.

My accommodation was in Fuzhong, Banqaio district, New Taipei City. New Taipei City is the outskirts of the Taipei and is well planned and well connected by MRT (Mass Rapid Transport). Although cards are accepted everywhere, Taiwan is cash driven economy (you know where I am mentioning here). Per-capita income of Taiwan is high (39600 US dollars and ranks 29) and it reflects in Taipei. I was told by my colleague that the real estate prices in Taipei has been sky rocketing since last decade. It reflects in your hotel charges:).

Surprisingly, food isn't very expensive. Good (not plush) restaurants charge 150 NT for a good meal (which is very much like India). If you are a vegetarian, Taipei is a hard city to survive, hardly anything is vegetarian there (even the croissants will be stuffed with meat). Since language is an impediment, you need to be choosy while going to restaurants - most of the restaurants won't have even English menu – Google translator doesn’t pick up some of the local dish names. I managed to tell in Mandarin - 'No Beef' and 'No Pork'. Taiwan's staple food is rice with lots of meat (pork, lot of sea food and chicken) and boiled vegetables. Hence fried rice is common in every restaurant and you need to tell them to exclude pork / beef. Taiwanese prefer local food although there is fair share of westernized restaurants. Don't expect to find any spicy here, except spicy tofu. You can try out fried dumpling or spicy dumpling (again non-vegetarian), fried noodles.

If you are vegetarian, you need to survive on fried rice with vegetables, noodles, tofu and some bland curries. Salzeria is one Italian chain of restaurants where you find not-so-westernized Italian food (in fact it was my go-to restaurant when I ran out of options) or you can go to Thai food restaurants (again it is hard to find unless someone helps you out). If you are sea food fanatic, you find sushi express everywhere and can add other sea items to any dish you order. If you are rice eater (south Indian), you can try Vietnamese Pho (rice noodles), Korean Bibimbap and Japanese rice bowl (called Duong here). Japanese restaraunts I tried are Yoshinaya and Sukiya. Both of them don't have English menu, you need to ask for Ji (pronounced as shi, mandarin word for chicken) . McD, KFC and subway are quite common, but does *not* serve vegetarian. Mos Burgers are good try too - I found them fresh compared to McD and have one chicken option :). During my stay of 2 weeks, I found only one pure vegetarian restaurant, that too in a hospital basement, next to my work place :). Most famous Indian restaurant according to google reviews is Fusion Asia Indian restaurant, near Da'an district, which I haven't visited. I visited one Indian restaurant near my work place (Sagar India restaurant as per google, but photo says otherwise) - you need to take exit 1 of Dongmen station and take a right, walk for 100 m and you will see the restaurant on the left. It was a decent restaurant I would say, since I went with limited expectations, but found it bit expensive.

If you are okay with beef, don't miss beef noodles here and dumplings (ah there are 100's of varieties). Dumpling restaurants, we tried near Dongmen station are said to be very famous and we have to wait for 20 min during lunch time. If you have appetite for Taiwanese food, try Din Tai Fung, whose branches are found all over the world, which is famous for Xiaolongbao (bigger than size of dumplings, tastes like kudumulu in Andhra - http://mommyfood.com/recipes/sweets/kudumulu). Another food item you can try is Taiwanese naan (similar to paratha in India) - similar to street food in India, served with egg, different kinds of sauces.

Taipei is full of coffee shops and Starbucks is found in every nook and corner of the city. I found Louisa coffee is good and serve all types of American coffee. I frequented Oklao coffee too as it was near to my work place- they don’t serve cappuccino, but latte was fine, not so much milk like in India. Make sure to tell to add some sugar otherwise it will be very strong for you J

I found Taiwanese people friendly, calm, patient and willing to help. Hardly you find good English speaking citizens, but they were always willing to help. I was amazed at their discipline in MRT, where they rush to form queue on the right hand side of elevators / stairs and leave left hand side completely for people who are in hurry – wish we could learn from them. Taipei MRT is world class and

follows the color coding system like any other Metros in world. You hardly find dirt in the cabins or stations as the drinking / eating is completely banned. You can purchase Easy card which can be topped up at any station and also can be used in regular grocery stores. Commuters wait for the people to leave the train and then get in, they strictly follow queues. Frequency of trains on all the lines till 10PM is quite high, train every 3-5 min. Information kiosks / maps are present at every station detailing the site seeing places in that area. All the must-visit places are connected by MRT. Like all the south Asian nations, Taiwanese are data savvy and gorge on video games. You see people glued to their mobile phones in MRTs, buses, while walking and crossing the road too :). Whole Taipei (including MRTs) is covered with 4G and touch amazing speeds. Data plans are very cheap and most of the service providers provide unlimited plans at decent prices (1100 NT). MRT has good connectivity all over the city and touches most of the site seeing places. During the 3 week stay, I boarded bus only couple of times. Every

MRT station is equipped with good information, signs (in English) of nearby places.

Taiwan weather is highly unpredictable, because of the tropical climate in the island – you never known when it will rain. Always keep an eye on the weather forecast whether it is going to be sunny, rainy or cloudy. My visit is during winter season – although the temperatures don’t fall below 12 deg C, because of the wind, the real feel was well below 10 deg C. Better to carry umbrella without always.

Must visit places in Taipei (not according to priority):

1/ Baiteou hot spring - Red line and branch out to Xinbeitou. As suggested by my colleague: If you want to try hot spring bath, there are quite some hotels around this park, they offer “2

hours hotel room” for hot spring bath. In Chinese it pronounced as “Pao Tang” for this kind of service.

The price are quite different, Most expensive is Kagaya, pretty decent. Also the most traditional one is this : http://www.longnice.com.tw/. With reasonable price, old but historical. I haven't tried hotels though, but public hot spring was fun. Walk along this place till the temple on the hill will be good.

2/ National palace museum and Shilin official residence near Shilin station. National palace museum is must see. Lots of historical things and it is a huge one, might take more than half day to visit all the rooms. In fact, this museum has more collection than the national museum in Beijing. Shilin official residence was okayish, gardens were good.

3/ Longshan temple - not very big, but most popular temple in taipei. Actually you find so many temples since Taiwanese are very much religious. You find same as in Bylukuppe, Karnataka and rituals looked pretty much like india (India is birth place for buddhism :)).

4/ Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial hall, huge sprawlin garden in centre of city - make sure you go up to the monument. I couldn't enter the memorial hall as it was closed due to some agitation in-front of the building.

5/ National Musuem of history - i felt it was okayish.

6/ Taipei 101 - similar to Willy's / Sear's tower in Chicago - once upon a time tallest tower, now pushed to 5th. You can see the Taipei's sprawling concrete jungle from observatory at 88th floor. If you have full pocket, you can empty it by buying expensive gifts on the deck. Entire area is good for branded shopping, taipei 101 mall itself is very good. You can spend half day for this.

7/ Taipei Zoo and the Maokong Gondola - good one day outing!

8/ High Speed Rail (HSR) from BanXiao or Taipei main station - I haven't tried it though.

I would suggest to take the city tour (although you may not get the english speaking guide), but many places can be covered at a stretch.

Like all the cities, Taipei also suffered due to exploded urbanization post 1970 – several tribes, places on outskirts lost their independence and lot of people migrated from rural places to work as bonded laborers contributing to city’s skyline. Details are seen in the museum near the Baiteau walkway. Despite wide main roads and busy traffic, Taiwan government has made sure that dedicted cycling paths are marked in main city. Govt provide bicycles at most of the MRTs (UBike, which can rented using Easy card and costs 10NT per hour at most places) and can be left at different destinations. There is a dedicated bicycling path on the banks of the rivers that cut through the city. I rode 8 km stretch near the zoo (http://kitchen.j321.com/taipei-cycling-bicycle-bike-rent-hire-path-taiwan, check the Jingmei River Bikeway (Muzha)).

Me and my colleague's observation is that branded sport shoes are cheaper compared to India and you find lot of models, that are not found in India. Pineapple cakes are very famous here and must takeaway. Iphone and HTC mobiles are cheap here :) and you can go to syntrend mall in Taipei, where each floor is dedicted to different gadgets for more options (although on higher end). Branded shopping can be done at Megacity mall (opp Banxiao station) and QMall (on top of Taipei Main station) - street shopping (not at all low quality) can be done at underground malls at Taipei Main station, Zongshan stations. Taiwanese regard Jade as one of the ornamental rock (it dates to their historical times, also main land china is one of the highest producer of jade) and you find all kind of expensive ornaments made of jade in the local market – they are heavily expensive, one of the Jade ornament, which is termed as luck bringing shape is being sold for 42K NT, which is hardly of size 3 cubic cm.

To summarize, taipei:

Must visit places: Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial hall, National palace museum and Taipei 101

Must eat: Beef noodles, spicy / fried dumplings

Must buy: Pineapple cakes, High end electronics

Finally, when Cathay pacific airlines CX405 took off on Thursday (28 days after when I landed), the words in my mind – Xièxiè Taipei!

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Command and Conquer Remastered Collection Review — Construction Complete!

June 5, 2020 1:00 PM EST

Command and Conquer Remastered raises the bar for remasters. This is the definitive way to play these RTS classics, and they still hold up decades later.

1995’s Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn was instrumental in kickstarting the real-time strategy genre into popularity for the era. The prequel/spinoff Command and Conquer: Red Alert from the following year improved on many of its features and aspects, catapulting the series even further. Command and Conquer Remastered Collection has now brought these two classics together and has proved to be a joy to review, doing its utmost to push the bar for remasters higher. While the RTS genre has waned in attention and popularity in modern years, these two classic games still hold up well and the remaster is commendable indeed.

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“The teams at Petroglyph, Lemon Sky, and EA have gone above and beyond to make this the definitive version of these classic games.”

Command and Conquer is a top-down real-time strategy game. You control one of two factions per game, each with different units and buildings. You’ll then gather resources, build your base, and amass an army to defeat the opponent. Simple enough in concept, but there’s plenty of opportunity for deft maneuvers and tactical outplays. There’ll often be lots going on that demands your attention, so trying to put out all the fires and keep track of everything will demand a player’s skill. It’s for this reason that the Command and Conquer games still have an active fanbase more than two decades after its release.

Both games featured in this collection have been freeware for a long time, and multiplayer matches are still played via open source ports such as OpenRA. If nothing else, Command and Conquer Remastered could have simply provided a new coat of paint with official multiplayer servers and called it a day. Thankfully, this is not Warcraft 3 Reforged; the teams at Petroglyph, Lemon Sky, and EA have gone above and beyond to make this the definitive version of these classic games.

Included in the collection is every bit of official content created for every version of Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert. All the campaigns, expansions, secret missions, and console port exclusive content is present and correct. Everything’s collected in a convenient Mission Select option, so you can jump in at any point you’ve reached to try out branching paths. All told, there are about a hundred single-player missions across the two games to take part in. There’s even more maps to use in skirmish or multiplayer modes, and a map editor if that still isn’t enough.

On the remaster front, just about every improvement possible has been incorporated. The graphics have been overhauled and brought up to high definition without losing the details or charm of the original. I was afraid that the overhauled graphics would have that distinctly bland “mobile game” quality to them, but this is absolutely not the case. Plus, like the Halo: The Master Chief Collection, you can swap between the new and original graphics with a button press while still maintaining the improved resolutions.

“All told, there are about a hundred single-player missions across the two games to take part in. There’s even more maps to use in skirmish or multiplayer modes, and a map editor if that still isn’t enough.”

Modernisation has been applied to the controls and sidebar layout, too. The original games still utilised left click to select and issue orders, but you can now change that to modern controls as you see fit. There are fully customisable hotkeys, even for accessing captured buildings and tech. The construction sidebar now more closely resembles that of later games in the series, dividing unit/building types into tabs and allowing build order queues. There’s also more gameplay information viewable from the tab, such as time to build, power consumption, unit strengths/abilities, and so on.

Improvements have been made to the game’s audio, too. Given how iconic the soundtracks for Command and Conquer are, each song has been remastered and brought up to high definition by original composer Frank Klepacki. Further, you can toggle to listen to the original low-fi versions if you so choose. There’s a customisable jukebox which includes OST versions, remixes, and bonus tracks by the Tiberian Sons cover band. Songs from both games can be listened in either, and the jukebox settings carry over between them. I’ve had my own jukebox open in the background while writing this review; the music is varied, but it’s all quite excellent.

To make this as definitive as possible, Command and Conquer Remastered comes with a bonus gallery. Every single player mission will unlock a bonus on completion, ranging from development photos, green screen takes, or alternative song mixes. I genuinely found them to be an interesting look at the behind the scenes process for both the original and remaster, so this was a welcome inclusion. So overall, this is a fantastic remaster that ticks about every box for content that could be delivered.

Even little details have been retained or touched up. The Westwood Studios logo video has been returned and brought up to high quality, despite the company going defunct early into the millennium. There’s a fully reimagined version of the original installation process on first startup, since Westwood put effort even into those. Full Steam workshop support is already integrated, with maps and gameplay tweaks ready to go even now. If ever a remaster was also a love letter to the original games and their fans, this would be it.

Of course, there are still imperfections. The original uncompressed recordings used for mission briefing cutscenes have been lost, as was documented in a prerelease video. So while there have been attempts made to upscale the compressed versions with some success, plenty still look blurry and indistinct. It’s better than it was in the 90s, but those not prepared for it may be in for a shock. Nonetheless, the cutscenes do what they need to do: give the campaigns a little more structure and presentation. It doesn’t take high definition to make Kane a fantastically charismatic antagonist, after all.

With all that said, these games are well over two decades old. Graphics and controls have been modernised and made more responsive, but the gameplay mechanics and mission design remain the same. Most of the idiosyncrasies and exploits of the original versions carry over here. Tiberian Dawn still requires buildings to be placed adjacent to existing ones, but placing lines of sandbags can overcome this limitation (as well as confound the AI). Harvester AI is still pretty stupid, and the enemy will bumrush you with everything they have if you so much as look at their harvester funny. Some missions see the AI outright cheat by having them place multiple buildings at once. And of course, the best strategy is still to capture and sell enemy buildings with an APC rush full of Engineers.

“Graphics and controls have been modernised and made more responsive, but the gameplay mechanics and mission design remain the same.”

Resource collection is also slower in Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn when compared to modern RTS games. There’s only one universal resource — Tiberium, which is converted into credits — and a single harvester load amounts to 700 credits. Until the harvester returns and starts unloading, you’ll not be receiving any income. That said, a new Harvester is 1400 credits. Contrast that with a Medium Tank for 800, a War Factory for 2000, or a Rocket Trooper at 300 credits, all of which you can have building at the same time.

This means that some late-game missions can become a real war of attrition between you and the AI. You’ll be trying to deny or destroy their harvesters and trade efficiently from a less established position, so it can be slow going. Red Alert took some steps to address this, and it’s an improved game for it, but be warned. There’s a reason most later RTS games made the resource gathering incremental, as opposed to the build time.

I also experienced one consistent technical issue throughout my playtime. For whatever reason, there’d be a brief moment of stuttering and frame drops when a new unit animation played for the first time in a session. It happened in both games but was especially noticeable in Red Alert, making the early experiences irritating but gradually smoothing out. The other journalist I spoke to experienced no such error, though. I couldn’t find any solution through the settings, and it otherwise ran flawlessly at 60 FPS on my RTX 2070 Super. It’s a mild issue, but an obvious one, so hopefully it’s corrected by patches or is just an isolated instance.

“The end result is a passionate love letter to two true classics of gaming history.”

For all the flaws and ways in which games have progressed, Command and Conquer Remastered is excellent. I personally grew up with both games, so I was looking forward to re-experiencing them again. There were any number of ways that this project could have failed to deliver, but the end result is a passionate love letter to two true classics of gaming history.

Fans of Command and Conquer or Red Alert should be quite pleased with how this came out. It might have a few dated mechanics that can turn off newer players, and the fundamental game remains unchanged from previous experiences if you didn’t care for those. Regardless, this is truly the definitive package for series fans, and newcomers wishing to experience the early days of the RTS genre should find plenty of enjoyment here.

Will this mean we can finally see a proper return of the franchise after the most recent and disastrous efforts? Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell. But until that time?

June 5, 2020 1:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/command-and-conquer-remastered-collection-review-construction-complete/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=command-and-conquer-remastered-collection-review-construction-complete

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itsfinancethings · 4 years

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When Dai Yufan began developing a fever and painful cyst, her first thought was to see a doctor. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, visiting her local hospital seemed scarier than her symptoms.

“So I tried an online health service,” says Dai, 27, an office worker in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. “I asked about my condition via an app and [a doctor online] suggested some medicine and other treatments.”

While the coronavirus has stretched medical services around the world to breaking point, the virus has also fostered a boom in online medical services, known as telehealth. The industry is predicted to be worth almost $30 billion this year in China alone and has the potential to transform Chinese healthcare by reducing strain on urban hospitals and providing a stop-gap solution for rural dwellers.

China already has over 1,000 telehealth companies, according to data firm Tianyancha, including some run by tech giants JD.com, Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba. Dai used the Good Doctor subsidiary of Ping An Insurance, which claimed in September to have 300 million registered users. All are seeing a boom in consultations due to lockdown measures.

Before the pandemic, JD Health took 10,000 online consultations per day. But as hospitals and clinics became swamped with suspected coronavirus patients, that has rocketed to 150,000, with JD Health’s own pharmacy delivering medicines directly to patients’ homes. Xin Lijun, CEO of the $7 billion-valued company, says the convenience of telehealth will remain attractive after the crisis abates.

“People have developed the habit of getting diagnosis and treatment online,” Xin tells TIME. “This greatly reduces the pressure on traditional hospitals.”

China’s healthcare system has made vast strides over the past few decades. Public sector spending on health care increased almost 14-fold between the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the end of 2018, according a March 2019 report by the WHO and World Bank. Nearly every Chinese citizen has some level of health insurance, with patients contributing an average of 32% of their treatment costs compared with 60% a decade ago.

But problems persist, especially as a severely aging population increases demand for treating chronic conditions such as arthritis, cancer and heart disease. China has only 1.8 doctors for every 1,000 people, compared with 2.4 in the U.S. and 2.8 in the U.K. Compounding matters, China’s doctors are unevenly weighted towards specialties to the detriment of primary care.

While the U.S. has a dozen family doctors for every 10,000 citizens, China has just 2.2, meaning specialists at Chinese hospitals are overburdened with general duties. Chinese patients typically queue up for many hours at highly ranked hospitals even for minor aliments but remain suspicious of underutilized local clinics. According to the WHO and World Bank report, China’s healthcare is too “hospital-centric, fragmented, and volume driven.” The system is also becoming too expensive to sustain, with healthcare costs growing 5-10% faster than GDP.

Online consultancies can help solve many of these issues, explaining why so many companies are aggressively exploring the space. Baidu Health boasts over 100,000 doctors from across China who offer online consultations 24 hours a day. The platform was made free to those with pneumonia symptoms during the pandemic and had handled over 54.5 million enquiries by Apr. 26, including 400,000 from outside China.

It’s also a boon for China’s overworked and unpaid doctors, who are able to supplement their income via online services. Dr. Qiao Guibin, director of Thoracic Surgery at Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, works for Baidu Health part-time. By encouraging patients to stay at home during the pandemic, online healthcare also reduces the chances of cross-infection of both patients and doctors.

“Online medical treatment may have saved a lot of lives during the pandemic,” says Qiao.

And not just in China. Qiao even treated a patient in Canada who had contracted COVID-19. “He was very anxious at first,” say Qiao. “But I reassured him that as a young man he shouldn’t worry too much, because 80% of people do not need medicine and COVID-19 [as a viral disease] is self-healing.”

Qiao checked in with the patient daily during his quarantine and heard a few days ago that he had completely recovered. “He is very grateful.”

There are also mental health benefits for patients isolated from friends and family due to lockdown measures. When Cai Anqi, 23, a public health student in London, developed a fever she naturally worried it might be COVID-19. However, the U.K. government’s guidelines were simply to self-quarantine unless her symptoms severely worsened. Wracked with worry, she instead turned to China’s telehealth provider WeDoctor.

“I described my condition: fever, dizziness, and runny nose, but without a cough. The doctor’s advice was to rest more, eat nutritious food, drink more water. She said as long as I don’t cough, it should be fine, as a cough is the main symptom of COVID-19. After her professional advice, I didn’t panic so much. After a few days following the doctor’s advice, the fever was gone.”

The U.S. is also trying to boost the sector in response to the pandemic. In March, President Trump advocated waiving certain federal rules to allow doctors to provide care remotely using video chats and other services. “What they’ve done with telehealth is incredible,” Trump said.

Across the U.S., telehealth provider Amwell has seen an increase in patient volumes of around 150-300% generally and up 700% during the early days of the outbreak in Washington State. Some individual hospitals have increased demand for Amwell’s services 20-fold in an effort to shield front line medical workers. Amwell CEO Roy Schoenberg says telehealth has proved particularly valuable in “geographic care deserts” and for elderly patients with mobility issues.

“We see this application of the technology as critical for democratizing healthcare and ensuring that all in need of care can access it, during COVID-19 and in the future,” he tells TIME.

Telehealth also allows patients to choose doctors based on their experience and patient reviews. Dr. Liu Yafeng has 18 years’ experience working as a gastroenterologist in China’s Hebei province, where he also ran the local hospital’s oncology and ICU departments. But while he might handle 30 consultations a day at a bricks and mortar hospital, he can manage about 200 online. It cost just 10 renminbi ($1.40) for an online consultations via JD Health or 15 renminbi ($2.10) for a 15 minute voice consultation. Liu has made 15,154 online diagnoses since joining the firm, with a 99% patient satisfaction rate.

“I get a greater sense of accomplishment because of all the positive feedback I receive from patients,” he says.

Still, significant challenges remain: “The biggest challenge of telehealth comes from diagnosis, which often requires specialist equipment,” says Liu. “It is an emerging industry and may take a long time to solve this problem.”

The concerns are echoed by the patient, Dai.

“I will still use the online health service after the pandemic, but I don’t think I trust online doctors’ diagnosis quite as much as a proper consultation,” she says. “I still feel distant from the online doctor. After all, he doesn’t know all my problems.”

—With reporting by Zhang Chi/Beijing

#IFTTT #Blogger

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newstechreviews · 4 years

Link

When Dai Yufan began developing a fever and painful cyst, her first thought was to see a doctor. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, visiting her local hospital seemed scarier than her symptoms.

“People have developed the habit of getting diagnosis and treatment online,” Xin tells TIME. “This greatly reduces the pressure on traditional hospitals.”

“Online medical treatment may have saved a lot of lives during the pandemic,” says Qiao.

Qiao checked in with the patient daily during his quarantine and heard a few days ago that he had completely recovered. “He is very grateful.”

“We see this application of the technology as critical for democratizing healthcare and ensuring that all in need of care can access it, during COVID-19 and in the future,” he tells TIME.

“I get a greater sense of accomplishment because of all the positive feedback I receive from patients,” he says.

The concerns are echoed by the patient, Dai.

—With reporting by Zhang Chi/Beijing

#Blogger

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cutsliceddiced · 4 years

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New top story from Time: What Asian and Pacific Countries Can Teach the World About How to—and How Not to—Reopen Our Economies

It’s early morning on Shanghai’s West Bund, and the lawns of the waterfront area are filled with picnickers savoring the annual cherry-blossom bloom. Parents push strollers through carpets of flowers while students sprawled on the grass share bottles of chilled cava. After three months of strict stay-at-home orders because of the COVID-19 pandemic, residents of China’s biggest city have re-emerged blinking into the light. “It’s crazy; I’ve never seen it so busy here,” says Sally Zhou, as she queues for coffee with her French bulldog. “People are desperate to get outside and enjoy themselves.”

Even as COVID-19 spreads across the world, nowhere has replicated the scale and intensity of China’s unprecedented lockdown. The epicenter of the outbreak, Wuhan, was sealed off and other cities placed under quarantine. The world’s No. 2 economy froze completely. Those sacrifices have now enabled China to slow new cases to a trickle. Wuhan discharged the last of its hospitalized coronavirus patients on April 27, and although many are skeptical of the government’s reported case numbers, authorities clearly feel confident enough to allow certain schools and businesses across China to reopen. Sales at major online retailers grew around 10% year-on-year in March, according to China’s Commerce Ministry, partly in response to a flurry of cut-price deals designed to rekindle demand. On April 22, President Xi Jinping emphasized the imperative to restart China’s stalled economy. “Great advances in history have come after great catastrophes,” he said.

For much of the world, the catastrophe is still ongoing–at least 3 million cases and more than 200,000 deaths in more than 200 countries and territories as of late April. In February, the world marveled as China threw up temporary hospitals in Wuhan; now, similar facilities sit in London’s largest convention center and in New York City’s Central Park. Medical masks, long de rigueur in Asia to guard against infection, are now worn by most venturing outside in much of the Western world. The new hot spots of the virus have armed themselves with defenses pioneered in Asia: the potent trident of social distancing, widespread testing and protecting frontline medical workers.

The coronavirus is far from defeated, but in many places, the initial surge in cases has abated and focus has turned to the fate of the global economy. The IMF estimates global GDP will shrink 3% this year and that contraction may continue into 2021, which could lead to the deepest dive since the Great Depression. The U.S. economy shrank 4.8% in the first quarter, and J.P. Morgan predicts a 40% contraction in the second. The number of Americans claiming unemployment is now 22 million.

With statistics like these, some feel as if the cure may hurt more than the disease. Protests have broken out in the U.S. against lockdown measures, which are already being rolled back in states including Georgia, Montana and Tennessee. But health officials warn that easing measures too quickly risks a W-shaped recovery, where a resurgence of cases causes a second economic decline soon after the first.

There’s no playbook for successfully lifting lockdown. But several East Asian countries are further ahead in the game. How they are faring offers invaluable lessons in the effort to balance public health and economic recovery.

It was about 4 P.M. on March 7 when Park Hong-cheol, 42, received a call from his local health authority in South Korea informing him that a colleague in his office had tested positive for COVID-19. He quickly donned a surgical mask and drove to Sejong City’s Public Health Center. After he filled out registration forms, hazmat-suited staff performed a COVID-19 test through a crack in his car window. Afterward, officials sprayed disinfectant on his car’s exterior and Park drove straight home, obeying strict instructions to stay indoors and avoid human contact. “By the time I awoke the next morning, I had a text message saying that I’d tested negative,” he tells TIME.

At the start of the coronavirus outbreak, South Korea had been caught off guard; a slow initial rate of infection quickly metastasized in mid-February. But unlike in the U.S., which confirmed its first COVID-19 case one day after South Korea, a robust public health response kept reported cases under 11,000. Compared with the U.S., South Korea on a per capita basis tested three times as many citizens.

The ability to test and trace every infection and their contacts is one of six conditions the WHO says should be met before any society can reopen, and South Korea shows you don’t have to be an autocratic system like China’s to introduce these kinds of expansive measures. By April 24, more than 589,000 Koreans had been tested in the same way as Park Hong-cheol, in large part at drive-through and walk-through facilities that delivered quick results. The government provided free smartphone apps that relayed emergency SMS alerts about spikes in infections in neighborhoods, and updated national and local government websites that tracked cases. Infections with only mild symptoms were treated at temporary facilities to allow hospitals to concentrate on the most acute cases. As a result, South Korea successfully flattened the curve in 20 days without extreme draconian restrictions on freedom or movement. “The faster we find the contacts, the better we are able to stem further spread of the virus,” South Korean Health and Welfare Minister Park Neung-hoo tells TIME. Still, he adds, “finding a midpoint between economic activities and containing an epidemic outbreak is a delicate balancing act.”

Swift, decisive action has no doubt lessened the economic hit South Korea will have to bear (although its economy still shrank 1.4% in the first quarter of the year). Park, the Health Minister, says test results that arrive in minutes, not days, are “critical” to effective contact tracing. Then anonymized GPS data from an infected person’s cell phone can be used to automatically alert via SMS those people who had recently been in the same vicinity to get tested themselves. Other methods use interviews, security cameras and credit-card data to trace infected people. Hong Kong and Taiwan have enjoyed similar success.

The U.S. is poorly positioned to follow. For one, problems in the supply and capacity of testing kits mean it typically takes several days for results–and that delay exponentially increases the potential for infected people to expose others. For another, there are only around 2,200 professional contact tracers in the U.S., and health experts say 100,000 more are desperately needed. In China, around 9,000 contact tracers were employed in Wuhan alone.

There are also privacy issues; Americans generally don’t want their telecom companies to share their GPS data with government agencies, even if rendered anonymous and used to fight an extraordinary health crisis. Apple and Google are currently collaborating on an app that will use geodata to facilitate contact tracing–but, they insist, on a voluntarily opt-in, self-reporting basis.

And the app may not be ready for weeks, “It is very, very difficult to get people to opt into anything,” says Kai-Fu Lee, a venture capitalist; former Google, Microsoft and Apple executive; and author of AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. “It begs the question of which is more important: personal privacy or, during national pandemic emergencies, to use data in a restricted, anonymized way for public health.”

The government of Taiwan made its choice early. The island of 23 million realized it was extremely vulnerable given its position just 80 miles off mainland China, where 850,000 of its citizens reside and another 400,000 work. But in addition to early screening and detection, emergency powers also enabled smartphone location tracking to form “electronic fences” around people under quarantine, imposing steep fines if they leave home. Thanks to these precautionary measures, Taiwan has had fewer than 500 cases to date.

Yet even the most efficiently staged recoveries can prove fragile. Singapore, an affluent city-state of 5.6 million, was initially commended by the WHO for its widespread testing and comprehensive tracing of close contacts. Singapore requisitioned 7,500 hotel rooms to quarantine new arrivals, including some at the storied colonial-era Raffles Hotel. Sure, room-service menus were off-limits–simple meals on trays were provided instead–but the state still picked up the tab. On March 23, the island permitted schools to reopen, confident the virus was under control.

It turned out, however, that authorities had paid little attention to Singapore’s million or so low-paid migrant workers, and all the while COVID-19 was flourishing in their cramped dormitories–the largest of which house up to 25,000 workers. Over a week in April, case numbers rocketed by more than 250% to over 10,000–the highest tally in Southeast Asia. Ripon Chowdhury, 31, a shipyard worker from Bangladesh who has lived in Singapore for 10 years, was sharing a room with 15 others when the virus tore through his community. “It’s just too crowded,” he says. “If one person gets it, then all of us will, because we’re sharing a toilet, shower and kitchen.”

Singapore shows that any response to this indiscriminate virus must be inclusive. Americans on low incomes who cannot work from home and lack comprehensive health insurance have proven particularly vulnerable, as have elderly people trapped in care homes. But the virus cannot be banished from society by prioritizing the young and affluent. In Singapore, like the U.S., rich and poor take the same public transportation, use the same ride-sharing apps, prowl the same malls. “The virus doesn’t respect community barriers,” says Christine Pelly, an executive committee member of Singapore’s Transient Workers Count Too, a nongovernmental organization. “We benefit a lot from [low-wage workers]. We should look after their well-being more closely.”

Singapore is not the only Asian nation to have suffered a “second wave.” Japan was one of the first nations affected, not least because of the stricken Diamond Princess cruise liner docked south of Tokyo. But early on, it was actually Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido that was worst hit. Home to 4% of the population, the province roughly the size of Maine had a third of Japan’s 206 cases at the end of February, mainly owing to Chinese visitors to the Sapporo Snow Festival. A state of emergency was declared Feb. 28, with schools shut and residents ordered to stay at home.

But as cases mushroomed in urban areas like Tokyo and dropped in Hokkaido, the island’s authorities grew concerned by the economic toll. Kazushi Monji, the mayor of the town of Kutchan, some 50 miles from Sapporo, tells TIME the shutdown had a “serious impact” upon the local economy with restaurants empty, hotel reservations canceled and practically no new bookings. On March 19, Hokkaido lifted its state of emergency after just three weeks.

“People in Hokkaido became so happy, relaxed and relieved–walking around, going for drinks, attending business meetings,” says Dr. Kiyoshi Nagase, president of the Hokkaido Medical Association who helped coordinate the local COVID-19 response. Quickly, the situation spiraled with a flurry of new infections. On April 12, a second state of emergency was imposed. “Now I regret it,” says Nagase. “We should not have lifted the first [order].”

For chef Koji Yorozuya, whose parents started the Wafuchubo Mikami Izakaya in Otaru, northern Hokkaido, 20 years ago, the lockdown has become the “most severe crisis in the history of our restaurant.” Normally, all 40 seats would be occupied with customers enjoying warm sake alongside dishes of sashimi, tempura and grilled seafood skewers. But health regulations have forced him to shut up shop, and he now serves only taxi deliveries. “Honestly, I want the restrictions lifted as soon as possible because I am afraid of losing my restaurant,” he says. “But in terms of public health, I am also scared. I don’t know what the right answer is.”

As Hokkaido demonstrates, a town or province that has conquered its infection rate can relapse with alarming ease. Kazuto Suzuki, vice dean of international politics at Hokkaido University, says his province’s experience shows that the piecemeal opening up of U.S. states is “very dangerous … even if you control the first wave, you can’t relax.” In Texas, state parks have already reopened and nonessential surgeries resumed. On April 24, Oklahoma’s nail salons, spas, barbershops and pet groomers were allowed to resume work. Georgia’s gyms, bowling alleys and tattoo parlors flung open their doors the same day. “I’d love everything open,” Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman recently told CNN. But individual states’ actions pose a serious risk to the rest of the U.S. “The whole world is on fire with coronavirus,” says Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and co-author of Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs. “So all 50 states are going to contribute to each other. We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”

The question every country has to answer is what recovery looks like in a post-coronavirus world. New Zealand has had extraordinary success in conquering the virus, partly as a consequence of its isolation and low population density but also because it introduced strict lockdown measures and all but closed its borders. Now, daily new infections are down to single digits and it’s poised to banish the virus completely.

Still, the banning of all foreign nationals is having a catastrophic effect on the country’s tourism-reliant economy. Over 2019, international tourists to New Zealand spent just over $10 billion: the sector employs 8.4% of the workforce. All this has now evaporated. “The economy can survive without international tourism, but not as we know it,” says Brad Olsen, senior economist at New Zealand’s Infometrics consultancy firm.

Economic superpowers are no less at risk. China’s economy contracted 6.8% in the first quarter of 2020. Although domestic demand is now picking up again, China’s exposure to the global marketplace will mean the pain lasts for some time–and will have unpredictable repercussions. The dearth of demand for goods by Americans sequestered in their homes, for example, means Chinese factories run at reduced capacity, slashing the demand for energy, which helped crude-oil prices plummet below $0.

After the 2008 financial crisis, China invested in its recovery through infrastructure. It plowed $586 billion into government projects like highways, metro systems and airports, and poured more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the U.S. used in the entire 20th century. One result of that spending binge was soaring national debt, but it also resulted in millions of jobs in the short term and an enhanced foundation for every Chinese business to operate.

Beijing now appears reluctant to repeat that feat, but it might work for the U.S., which has so far focused on injecting liquidity into bond markets, making grants to small business and sending $1,200 checks to individuals. Analysts say the U.S. needs to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to fix its creaking roads, railways and airports, plus upgrade to next-generation technology like 5G. Economists say infrastructure is an equalizer that empowers all businesses–big and small–and should be prioritized over bailing out lenders once again.

It’s early, but already clear that one legacy of the coronavirus will be a changed economic landscape. Almost half a million companies in China declared bankruptcy during the first quarter of the year. How many American firms fold depends on choices made today–by officials, and by people anxious for answers. The only thing worse than closed doors is a public too terrified to walk through open ones.

–With reporting by STEPHEN KIM/SEOUL; ABIGAIL LEONARD/TOKYO; AMY GUNIA and HILLARY LEUNG/HONG KONG

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

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kerahlekung · 5 years

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Boycott Non-Muslim Products...

Boycott Non-Muslim Products....

Do You Own Enough Products Or Have Financial Muscle To Go To War?...

A campaign to boycott non-Muslim products, believed to have been quietly unleashed by opposition UMNO Malay nationalist and PAS Islamist parties has spread like wildfire, at least on social media. On the surface, it certainly looks like a declaration of war against the minorities in the country, especially ethnic Chinese whose prowess in the business world is unparalleled. Since the spectacular defeat in the last May general election, UMNO, the supposedly backbone of the Barisan Nasional coalition, has been happily stirring up racial and religion sentiments among the Malays that the Muslims and Malay Rulers have lost power to the “Chinese, Christians and Communists”. The goal was to spread hatred among Malays against Chinese and Hindus. According to Malaysiakini portal, a Facebook group that is pro-Muslim business has seen its members grown from 10,000 to over 1-million in just 2 weeks. That’s a jaw-dropping 9,900% jump in membership. Chinese and Hindu haters, of course, celebrate the achievement as if they have won the FIFA World Cup. They have taken to social media to gloat about their “power”. That’s fine. What is amusing though, is the confusion over the scope of the boycott. Apparently, the boycott campaign started when the Islamic Consumers Association of Malaysia (PPIM) suggested to the Islamic Development Department that halal certificates should be issued in the native language of the product’s manufacturers so that consumers can identify if they are Muslim or otherwise. So, initially they wanted the Muslims to boycott non-Muslim products. Then, for obvious reasons, they changed their mind and clarified that it was a campaign to buy Muslim-made products first. But as far as emotional and gullible UMNO and PAS supporters are concerned, their understanding remains – boycott everything produced or made by non-Muslims. Period. Can they make up their mind? There was no such thing as being half pregnant. Why can’t they just go full force in their campaign against non-Muslim products? What is so hard in determining whether products made or sold by non-Muslim are either “haram” (forbidden) or “halal” (allowed)? Are they saying there’s such thing as a quarter-halal or half-halal?

Malaysia Halal Logo

Yes, it’s perfectly alright if the ignorant and narrow-minded Malays choose to boycott non-Muslim products. But as they soon found out, more than 90% of products is made or produced by the so-called infidel “kafir” non-Muslims – either local Malaysian Chinese or the Chinese from mainland China. And they hadn’t a clue that they have very little leverage against the non-Muslims. The “nasi lemak” breakfast consumed by Malays every single morning, and lunch and dinner thereafter, contains onions, shallots, garlic, chilli and other spices imported from India. And most of the Malaysian importers are companies owned by minority Chinese, including NSK Trading Sdn Bhd, the favourite wholesale store where Malay-Muslims seek cheap groceries. Did the Malays know that NSK (New Seng Kee) is a Lim’s family business first started at Chow Kit in 1985? Another Malay’s favourite destination, Econsave Cash & Carry, is a Malaysian family-run retail brand owned by ethnic Chinese. Econsave’s history goes back to 1955 when Lai Poh Tian sold the family’s only cow and borrowed some money to sail to what was known then as Malaya. Today, supermarket chain Econsave, infamous for its “Compare Our Prices” slogan, is a multi-billion business with 57 retail outlets providing jobs to more than 6,000 people, mostly Malays. Yesterday (September 3), general manager Mas Imran Adam lodged a police report against two Facebook accounts which had spread lies that the supermarket did not sell Muslim products in its outlets. The ignorant Malays who falsely accused the Chinese of being racist probably hadn’t a clue that Econsave actually has a Muslim general manager in its payroll. Not that Econsave would go bankrupt with the boycott, but sure, go ahead with the campaign and let’s see who will be the first to be jobless and unable to put food on the table for family members.

Giant Hypermarket

Alternatively, the idiotic Malays eager to boycott non-Muslim products can go to Aeon, Giant or Tesco. But all those hypermarkets are owned by foreign non-Muslims. Giant, founded in 1944 as a small grocery store in Kuala Lumpur, was owned by the Teng family until 1999 when Hong Kong-based Dairy Farm International Holdings bought a 90% interest in the chain. Tesco is a multinational retailer from the United Kingdom while Aeon (formerly Jaya Jusco) is owned by the Japanese. Do you realise that even Sogo, arguably the most favourite shopping heaven for the middle-income Malays, actually belongs to another Chinese kafir called Andrew Lim? Sogo is no longer owned by PERNAS Corporation or Sogo Japan since 2002. In 2002, Mr. Andrew initiated a management buyout and KL SOGO today is a 100% Malaysian (Chinese) wholly owned and operated, but with a franchise agreement with Sogo Japan to allow the continual usage of the Sogo name. And you don’t need a rocket scientist to tell which race constitutes the majority of the staff of Sogo in Malaysia. So, go ahead and boycott Sogo. In the food business, Malays’ favourite restaurants such as KFC, McDonald’s, Texas Chicken, Burger King and whatnot actually belong to foreign non-Muslims but operated by local fast-food operators through something called franchising. Starbucks Malaysia is owned by Berjaya Group tycoon Vincent Tan, whose empire included convenience store 7-Eleven. That’s right. In case the clueless Malays didn’t know, employees of 7-Eleven – mostly Malay-Muslims – are all under the employment of Vincent Tan. How about “99 Speedmart”, another local convenience store brand so successful, it opened its 1,000th outlet in August 2017? Unfortunately to the racists and extremists of UMNO and PAS, 99 Speedmart is another Chinese success story.

Support Malay product...😅😅😅

The founder of 99 Speedmart is Lee Thiam Wah, who has been wheelchair-bound since eight months old, and had only 6 years of formal education. Sales revenue of 99 Speedmart reached RM3 billion in 2016 – up from RM2 billion in 2014. In comparison, Tesco Malaysia only posted revenue of RM4.45 billion in the financial year ending February 2017 with 71 outlets. KK Super Mart, a 24-hour mini-supermarket chain which was a favourite target among robbers, was founded by Douglas K.K. Chai, obviously another ethnic Chinese. KK sells both Gardenia (owned by Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary) and Massimo (owned by Robert Kuok) bread. So, will the Malays buy Gardenia bread, knowing very well it would enrich the Chinese owner of KK? But do you also know that in 1969, together with Sye Slocum and Jim Humpries, two Americans with vast experience in bakery, Malaysian Chinese Wong Tze Fatt co-founded the Gardenia brand of beverages, bakery and creamery food products? Yes, Mr. Wong, who was murdered in 2004, was the Chinese millionaire who started Gardenia brand in Sabah. Robert Kuok’s empire is not limited to Massimo bread only. The consumer brands associated with the billionaire include Shangri-La hotels, various brands of flour, Marina frozen food, Seri Murni, Krystal and Neptune cooking oil, Jordan toothbrushes and oral care products, Snow brand infant formula, Goodmaid household cleaning products, Kart’s frozen food and the list go on. Interestingly, Golden Screen Cinemas Sdn Bhd (GSC), Malaysia’s largest cinema exhibitor with over 41% market share, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of PPB Group (a member of the Kuok Group). Perhaps the Malays should boycott GSC and go to TGV for movies. However, TGV is owned by tycoon Ananda Krishnan, another non-Muslim. The only Muslim-owned cinema – MBO – was already sold to private equity firm Navis Capital Partners by then-owner Abdul Rashid Abdul Manaf. However, due to pressure from increasing costs and slowing revenue growth, even Navis is looking to dispose of its MBO business in Malaysia. Does this mean the Malays will boycott cinemas entirely in the name of Muslim dignity?

Main sports toto

British India, Mr. D.I.Y., Secret Recipe and Chicken Rice Shop are just some of the local brands owned by local non-Muslims but flocked by Malay community all the time. From Chatime to Tealive, those Malays hooked to bubble tea would form long queue just to get their kicks, despite the fact that the Taiwanese-born tea drink is not a Muslim product. Hilariously, every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, the Malay-Muslims would religiously queue at Magnum, Sports Toto and DaMaCai to try their luck betting on 4D numbers or Jackpot. Clearly, these are not Muslim products, are they? You can bet your last penny that those Malays, including police officers, can never abandon or boycott the non-Muslim product called betting game. Perhaps there’s a reason why Kelantan is in such a sorry state, despite being ruled by the PAS Islamist party based on the strictest Islamic Law. Jobs were scarce and the state has recorded the highest number of HIV or AIDS cases in the country. They have no idea how the world trade works so much so they probably thought condom is another type of flavoured chewing gum. Smartphones from Huawei to Oppo to Vivo to Xiaomi – even Apple – are all made by non-Muslim Chinese. From lighting bulbs to fridge to TV to every single electrical appliance at home, nothing escapes China. And when all those components arrived at Malaysian ports, they readily go to mostly Chinese-owned warehouses or shops, thanks to their well established business ecosystems. Two different Chinese-owned tyre shops, less than 200-metre apart, sell a same brand and model of tyre at an unbelievable price difference. One shop sells at RM145 a piece while the other at cut-throat prices of RM210. Besides operating costs and expenditures, business strategy and supply chain contribute to the dog-eat-dog business world even among the Chinese. Malay-Muslims should co-exist with non-Muslims for their own good. They’re simply not built to excel in the world of trade and business. From a complicated product like halal airline Rayani Air to a business as simple as Digital Mall in Pertama Complex, they had tried but failed spectacularly. Rayani Air, proclaimed Malaysia’s first “Syariah-compliant” airline, had gone bust just 110 days into operation.

After Rayani Air goes bankrupt in 2016, not only were the workers’ salaries not paid, more than RM1 million was deducted from more than 500 employees’ salaries but not credited to employees’ accounts. So much for a Muslim product called Rayani Air. Perhaps running an airline is too complicated for them. Sadly, the same fate hit Malay traders selling basic IT products. A Malay youth, Shahrul Anuar Abdul Aziz, who was charged for stealing a mobile phone that triggered a bloody racial riot outside Low Yat Plaza in 2015, was acquitted by the Kangaroo Court in 2018. Three Chinese handphone salesmen were arrested by police instead and were fined RM1,800 each for committing assault. As a result, UMNO set up Digital Mall to rival Low Yat. Today, after “handout” free rental runs out of juice, all the Malay traders at the 4-storey Pertama Complex are eating dust. If they can’t even survive selling ready-made branded IT products without handouts, exactly how could they promote non-existent Muslim products? Get the gist? To talk big about boycotting non-Muslim products is one thing. But to actually do it is another thing altogether. You can only start a trade war or boycott if you either own the technology or knowhow of certain products (as in the case of the U.S.) or you have the financial muscle to engage a trade war (like China). Trump can hurt the Chinese flagship Huawei because America owns the technology. China can hurt American farmers because it has tons of money to buy more expensive soybeans from Brazil. The silly group of Malays yearning to boycott fellow Malaysian non-Muslim products have none of the above. They neither have the replacement products, nor the deep pocket to teach non-Muslims a lesson. The biggest joke was when UMNO’s newspaper – Utusan Melayu – and PAS’ newspaper – Harakah – ran into debt. Those newspapers are Muslim products, obviously. While financial-stressed Utusan has total debts of RM139.19 million as at June 30, PAS stunningly owed NAJ Press Resources (M) Sdn Bhd, a Muslim-owned printing company, a staggering RM3,053,204.59. Harakah reportedly had fled and is now being printed by a non-Muslim-owned business. So much for inciting Malay-Muslims to boycott non-Muslim products. - FT

youtube

Excellent. Must watch on hate crime debate at the UK Parliment. We should learn from them how to stand against hate speech...

British MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi launched a scathing attack on PM Boris Johnson over his past remarks on Muslim women. He demanded an apology from Johnson and said that such remarks have led to a surge in hate crimes in the country. Mr Dhesi received applause from fellow Opposition Labour party MPs. Dhesi, who is the first turban-wearing Sikh MP in British history also challenged the British prime minister to order an investigation into alleged Islamophobia within his own Conservative Party.

Politik sempit dan rempit...

1. Hari ini 62 tahun yang lepas buat kali pertamanya Bendera Malaya atau Persekutuan Tanah Melayu dikibarkan selepas bendera Penjajah British, Union Jack diturunkan.

2. Di Stadium Merdeka, dengan disaksikan oleh Raja - Raja Melayu dan ribuan rakyat berbilang kaum, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj telah melaungkan laungan MERDEKA !!!

3. Perundingan Kemerdekaan tercapai apabila Raja - Raja dan sebahagian besar masyarakat Melayu BERSETUJU memberi kerakyatan kepada pendatang dari China dan India yang dibawa masuk oleh British dengan syarat penduduk asal negara, Melayu/ Bumiputra diberi sedikit Hak Istimewa.

4. Kegembiran mencapai Kemerdekaan terbantut apabila rusuhan kaum berlaku pada 13hb Mei 1969.

5. Kesan dari rusuhan itu maka syak wasangka dan tuduh menuduh di antara 3 kaum utama berterusan sehinggalah ke hari ini.

6. Bak kata Tun Dr. Mahathir, Perdana Menteri bagi kali 2, dan yang mempunyai pengalaman luas selama 22 tahun sebagai Perdana Menteri, bukan senang memimpin sebuah negara berbilang kaum seperti Malaysia.

7. Umpama 'Menatang Minyak Yang Penuh' , masing - masing kaum sering berkokok dan bertindak bagai cuba 'Menegak Benang Yang Basah' TANPA PEDULI perasaan orang lain.

8. Tanpa disedari pihak asing telah berjaya meniup api perkauman di kalangan rakyat ketika itu.

9. Ia ditambah pula oleh beberapa faktor dalaman yang tidak sabar melihat perubahan kepimpinan.

10. Adalah tidak adil sama sekali menuding jari menyalahkan satu kaum atau parti semata - mata sebagai punca utama perbalahan kaum itu sedangkan 'Tepuk Sebelah Tangan Takkan Berbunyi'.

11. Kini selepas peristiwa berdarah itu berkubur genap 50 tahun lamanya namun perpaduan dan kerharmonian berbilang kaum mula menghantui kita semula.

12. Berbagai isu yang sepatutnya tidak berbangkit telah dengan sengaja diperbesarkan sebagai tajuk perbincangan utama oleh mereka yang mempunyai motif tertentu.

13. Kebebasan bersuara disalahgunakan secara berleluasa oleh media cetak dan elektronik dan oleh segelintir pengamal - pengamal sosial media yang cuba menjadi juara yang dipanggil 'loud minority' yang TIDAK bertanggungjawab.

14. Sepatutnya mereka membantu menyejukkan suhu yang sedang membara, BUKANNYA 'Menyimbah Minyak Ke Dalam Api'.

15. Mereka yang mempunyai cita - cita dan gelojoh, berharap kepimpinan negara hari ini boleh ditukar ganti dengan angkara tersebut.

16. Bagi mengelakkan pergaduhan kaum dari berlaku, Mufti Perlis telah menyarankan agar corak pentadbiran Saddam Husein dilaksanakan.

17. Walaupun Saddam dianggap sebagai 'kuku besi' namun ketika itu jarang sekali kedengaran perbalahan serius diantara berbagai puak dan Pemisah Kurdish di Iraq.

18. Tun Hussein Onn, Bapa Perpaduan, pernah berpesan "Jangan sampai anak cucu kita mengencingkan kubur kita dek kerana kegagalan mengurus negara dalam keadaan porak peranda".

19. SEBENARNYA MENGURUS NEGARA TAK UBAH SEPERTI MENGURUS KELUARGA KITA SENDIRI.

20. Walaupun Zakir Naik telah memohon maaf namun serangan berterusan oleh DAP dan pelampau Hindu sebenarnya cuba 'Menutup Pekung' yang LEBIH BAHAYA :-

i Kenyataan terbuka Pemimpin Tertinggi DAP yang juga Menteri Sumber Manusia, M Kulasegaran bahawa orang Melayu adalah pendatang sedangkan orang India adalah penduduk asal negara ini.

ii. Wathya Moorthy yang pernah menuduh bahawa rakyat Malaysia keturunan India di sini dianak-tirikan, namun beliau tetap dilantik sebagai Senator dan Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri yang menjaga hal ehwal perpaduan.

iii. Dr. Ramasamy, Timbalan Ketua Menteri Pulau Pinang adalah seorang lagi 'extremist' yang berkiblatkan politik perkauman yang sempit.

21. Negara sepatutnya mempunyai pemimpin - pemimpin yang bersikap sederhana dan toleransi BUKANNYA sikap pelampau yang ditonjolkan oleh mereka.

22. Pelampau Cina pula melalui Dong Zong terus berkeras asalkan mereka berjaya mendapat apa yang mereka rancang.

23. Setiap kali Pilihanraya Umum diadakan, mereka akan mengemukakan berbagai tuntutan berupa 'ugutan' atau 'blackmail' jika mahukan sokongan pengundi masyarakat Cina.

24. Dunia dan masyarakat Cina tempatan tahu dan sedar bahawa kaum Cina di Malaysia menikmati kemewahan ekonomi dan kesejahteraan hidup, adalah dengan sikap bermurah hati penduduk asal.

25. Mereka memilih menutup mata bahawa sekolah aliran Cina dan India TIDAK dibenarkan wujud di Indonesia dan Singapura, begitu juga di Thailand.

26. Mereka juga sepatutnya berterima kasih dan menghargai dengan bantuan kerajaan yang menelan ribuan jutaan ringgit yang diberikan sebagai bantuan kepada sekolah sekolah mereka selama ini.

27. Sebenarnya apa yang sedang dimiliki oleh kaum Cina dan India dalam bidang pendidikan di negara ini adalah TIDAK MENGUNTUNGKAN mereka! Kedudukan ini serupa dengan kewujudan sekolah sekolah antarabangsa yang diterokai oleh sebahagian besarnya dari kalangan kaum pendatang.

28. Belum pernah perbalahan antara kaum utama berlaku sejak peristiwa berdarah 13 Mei 1969 tapi kini dengan isu - isu yang berbangkit ia mula menimbulkan kegusaran di kalangan rakyat yang cintakan keamanan!, lebih bahaya penyakit benci membenci ini diperturunkan kepada anak - anak muda yang tidak memahami sejarah.

29. Memahami kelemahan dan kegagalan orang Melayu itu sendiri, UMNO dan PAS pula membakar semangat kebencian terhadap kaum lain dengan menggunakan isu perkauman dan agama, sedangkan berbagai bagai dasar dan agensi diperkenalkan bagi membantu kaum Melayu dan Bumiputra. Sayangnya, semua ini masih belum berjaya mencapai apa yang diidamkan oleh semua.

30. Mereka lebih mementingkan kedudukan diri dan parti masing - masing dari kepentingan masa depan anak bangsa Malaysia itu sendiri.

31. JANGAN MENGOTORKAN LEBUHRAYA MALAYSIA BARU DENGAN MENABUR SAMPAH SARAP.

32. JANGAN AMALKAN POLITIK SEMPIT DAN REMPIT WALAUPUN PUN MAJORITI KITA TAHU MEREKA INI ADALAH KELOMPOK YANG KECIL YANG DIPANGGIL 'LOUD MINORITY', jika tidak dibendung dan lebih baik lagi dihapuskan sahaja, ia pasti membahayakan pengguna yang lain. Mereka ini sebenarnya sedang cuba untuk meruntuhkan apa yang telah terbina selama ini.

33. Kepada Perdana Menteri, Menteri Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri dan kepada Ketua Polis Negara, ingatlah, jawatan yang dipegang ini adalah satu AMANAH yang pasti dipersoalkan diakhirat kelak.

34. Semoga kita dapat membuang segala yang KERUH dan jadikan sambutan Kemerdekaan kali ke 62 Tahun ini sebagai titik permulaan Malaysia yang kita benar benar cintai. - Tamrin Tun Ghafar

Ini contoh orang Cina berjiwa Malaysia,jom tolak perkauman!

Masa untuk Mohamaddin ni ditolak ke tepi...

Rumahku,Syurgaku...

Menjejukkan hati...Comel!!!

cheers.

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