#and i just got a work email recently about dress code updates and one thing the dress code says is to be mindful of

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Lovebug (8/12)

Summary:  

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Notes: Feedback is very much appreciated :D

Levi put a hard deadline for Wednesday

“Wednesday” he said it again because he couldn’t be too certain how he said it the first time. He was conscious if he were too stiff, it might almost seem awkward. If he were too relaxed, maybe the urgency wouldn’t get across.

The challenge was finding the balance and when his team nodded, their faces unchanging, he realized it had been an easy task. They had gone through that same pattern before, especially before a large-scale quality assurance test, a recalibration of the application.

And the one on Monday was much larger, covering not just fifty volunteers, maybe even hundreds. When it was Zeke’s own connections that had managed to get that many volunteers, they couldn’t afford to delay it.

Levi cleared his throat and continued. “All fixes should be completed by Wednesday. All QA and regression tests by Friday,” Levi added. “The large scale QA test will be happening on Monday. No negotiations. No chances of rescheduling. ”

Aside from the number of volunteers, that QA test should not be anything different. Nothing much changed except perhaps the fact that Levi was in a constant state of compartmentalizing. He was working partly with outsourced labor to complete the code and to make sure someone was testing their new application. He was also working with his own team to make sure they were still addressing issues and realising fixes for the love alarm.

He liked the busy-ness, the need to be constantly thinking about work. Sometimes though, there were more distracting prospects that forced their way into his limited brainspace. And for some reason, his brain space was so willing to accommodate it.

More specifically, to accommodate her. Well, he had no choice anyway. After all, it was her application. It was his brain child but by extension, it was her and Zeke’s property.

He was constantly in a state of stress and Hange’s presence only made things more stressful. But somehow, his brain demanded he forced that extra piece of information, that piece of responsibility, that piece of Hange somewhere in his brain.

Just like he couldn’t say no to Zeke and Hange, he couldn’t say no to the manifestations of his own mind.

She never gave him a chance to say no. After all, she liked working in his office. She had made herself at home on the desk next to him and everyday he was reminded of that extra compartment his brain had created just for him.

All he had to do was enter the room and enjoy the view of her hunched over her laptop like she always was.

First thing in the morning, she was there. After meetings and standups with his team, he would go back to his office like always, and she was there.

That time, all test devices were lined on the desk, the whiteboard that only that morning had been covered with scribbles was replaced with something a little more coherent.

“You’re testing?” Levi sat next to her, counting ten devices before deciding it would be a waste of time to count further. He looked back up at her.

Hange nodded. “You updated the build last Friday right?”

“Just some fixes,” Levi said. The fixes came slowly, with more data being added, with the algorithm being tested here and there. It was still far from perfect though. He scanned the whiteboard just to get an inkling of her own progress. “How many pseudo emails do you have?” He could have counted it himself but once again, he gave up after ten.

“Enough to test on this many devices,” Hange said.

He read them out loud, taking note of the checkmarks..

Wingsoffreedom123

Wingsoffreedom213

Wingsoffreedom231

Wingsoffreedom321

Wingsoffreedom312

Wingsoffreedom132

“Creative,” Levi commented.

“Look, I just need a bunch of emails that are easy to remember so might as well stick to the same combination,” Hange said. “ You get it, Humanity’s strongest?”

Levi cringed inwardly. He should really go around changing that name. “Do you actually use those emails?” He asked.

“Sometimes, when applying for free trials, when making more than one account in websites.” Hange said. “I like keeping my own consumption patterns not connected to ‘Hange Zoe,’ if you know what I mean.”

“At least you’re able to make use of those emails for testing.” Levi pulled his chair a little closer to her and looked over her shoulder. “Is it working better?”

“It rings,” Hange said. “The last five times I tested, they said I was happy.” She chose that moment to click ‘activate’ on the next alarm. As expected, it rang again, the words ‘happy” flashed in the middle of the screen with an ugly smiley face in Arial font right under it.

It was a blatantly horrible sign that maybe they had spent a little too much time on the back end. Front end and user interface could be fixed a little later anyway, Levi reminded himself. He brought out his own test device and pressed the activate button.

The word ‘happy’ flashed across the screen. “Looks like they fixed a lot of the kinks,” Levi said.

“Are you happy?” Hange asked.

Those types of questions were the ones that had him a little more self aware. He didn’t answer immediately, instead, he left his natural instincts speak for themselves. A smile threatened to creep up his lips overwhelming the small part of him that wanted to push it down into something more subtle.

“Levi, are you happy?” Hange pressed, a hint of a laugh in her voice.

He was. He couldn't tell exactly why. Overall, it had seemed much easier, to just let the smile climb up his face so he gave it facility, freedom to move.

And soon, he didn’t regret it. Maybe because his own smile had been the reason Hange’s eyes got bigger before her features softened into something comfortable within a few seconds.

Before Levi could appreciate them a little more, her eyes suddenly narrowed, as if studying him. He noted all of it in her expression, the triumph, the victory lap in her expression, and the sneer particularly evident in her eyes.

He didn’t want her to win that little game they had for themselves. So he turned back, allowing time for the smile to fall into something less embarrassing. “Well, if the application says I’m happy, maybe I am.” He stood up again, holding his laptop to his side. “I’m going out for a break.”

***

Summer was ending soon.

And for Levi, the end was usually accompanied by the relief that he wouldn’t have to brave public transportation under the sweltering heat while dealing with an office dress code.

Strangely, he also found himself a little melancholic as he noted that red leaves were starting to sprout more frequently among the branches. He considered it almost an obligation to take a walk twice or thrice a week, especially during those last few weeks.

He would sit on one of the benches by the garden. To save time, he would bring his laptop every single time and he would always allow himself short in-betweens to enjoy his surroundings after long minutes of staring at the screen.

Like always, the trees were above him and the flowers were in front of him. When he looked down, he even enjoyed the grass and the cobblestone lined paths.

“You take the same route every time.”

Levi looked up, an instinctive reaction to that very familiar, almost intimate voice. “You followed me?”

“What if I wanted to take a walk too?” Hange asked.

“You're welcome to take a walk. I’m just gonna do some work here before going back inside,” Levi said. He looked back at the screen in front of him, trying to find something to make progress with as he monitored the workflow tracker.

Nothing much had changed or was expected to change, his own staff was probably on lunch break. He trusted them enough to be certain they would get most of their work done by Wednesday. And consequently, he was left with nothing much else to do but maybe take a lunch break too.

Hange sat right next to him on the bench and Levi pulled away, far enough to put a good few inches between them. “You’re going out more often now,” Hange said.

“I noticed I’ve been spending too much time indoors. I never really got to enjoy summer for what it was. We only get it three months a year.”

Hange gave him a knowing look. “And you only noticed it now? After living in this city your whole life?” She asked. “You’ve lived here your whole life right?”

“Yeah,” Levi said.

Hange shrugged. “You just never struck me as the type to enjoy weather, or nature in general. Back in the golf course, back in the ocean, you didn’t look like you wanted to be there,” she noted.

“Maybe it’s a recent thing,” Levi said. He kept it vague, not wanting to probe any complex topics when he was grappling with more important complex things.

Hange though, was a black hole of knowledge, a bundle overflowing with curiosity. “What makes it pretty? Why do you like taking walks?”

“Do we have to have a reason?”

“Well ever since I started to work closely with you, I started to notice something too,” Hange said. “You seem happier.”

“Maybe because Zeke is always busy.”

Hange snorted. “You really hate him don’t you?” She leaned a little closer. “And aren’t you at all nervous admitting it to me?” An overly playful demeanor accompanied such intimidating words. It was more laughable than terrifying.

Levi shook his head, unfazed. “I trust you wouldn’t tell him.”

“I wouldn’t,” she admitted. “I don’t blame you though.” She only had to give him an almost pitied look for him to read her mind.

He articulated it for her. “I never really recovered from those two all-nighters cramming an application.” That had been more than three months ago but the memory still burned as a faint memory of excruciating exhaustion and an unpleasant caffeine buzz that took weeks to brush off.

“You managed to impress the hospital admin at least. And we got the funds,” Hange said.

Does that make Zeke any more of an insufferable person? He had hoped to ask that with the face he gave Hange then, one eyebrow raised. If it didn’t send the message, he could easily say it out loud. That one pleasantry Zeke afforded him though that day in front of the convenience store echoed in his head. Even just coming up with an insult sent a wave of guilt through him.

A wave of guilt I don’t need to feel. Levi reminded himself, willing to recall the other instances the blond had been abrasive. Zeke was either a master manipulator or misunderstood. He was a billionaire though, so Levi decided to err on the side of ‘manipulator.’

“The funds go to the company, to the outsourcing activities and to server space,” Levi corrected.

“Don’t you have company shares?” Hange asked.

“A stock option,” Levi clarified. “Something I chose not to take. I’d rather get my money as is. I don’t trust myself to grow something of that much value.” He kept his answers vague, since he never did read the contract closely anyway, it was Erwin who went through the benefits with him.

“Well everyone else in the company who runs on stock options seems to trust you. Zeke’s own investment is riding on your own ability to make a good product...” My PhD dreams are riding on your product. Hange didn’t say that last part out loud but Levi heard it loud and clear.

“Well this pseudo love alarm project, it’s still far from perfect.” For emphasis, he opened up the new project entitled ‘emotion alarm project’ on his dashboard and slipped the laptop screen over to Hange. “Thirty percent done. We barely fixed the interface, just getting the required testing and data done is taking up a lot of resources.”

“I know that and I expected it,” Hange said. “You know, a PhD sometimes takes decades to complete and I’m ready to take that much time.”

“I just wanna manage your expectations. Besides, something about the testing still bothers me.”

“What about it?”

“Remember the first night I made the application?” He stifled a wince at the painful memory. “It didn’t ring… until you came in.”

“Maybe it was a bug?” Hange suggested. “It shouldn’t be too much of an issue right? Since you made a lot of improvements after.”

“I did,” Levi said.

“And it never happened again with the later builds.”

“It doesn’t but it works too much like the love alarm. Do you notice, it always rings when we’re nearby?”

“When we’ve already loaded millions worth of data points. When we’ve overseen that much testing with other people. I don’t think you have to think too hard about it. We just keep improving the application right? Same as the love alarm,” Hange explained.

“Maybe I’m just being cynical. It doesn’t work once and I can never trust it again,” Levi muttered as he scrolled through the tasks for the next release for the upteenth time since a while ago.

“I guess that’s what happens when you’re the one who came up with the project. You can never trust your own abilities to develop?"

"Or because I worked on it, at three in the morning, I tested it. I know how many shortcuts I took with it…" Levi trailed off as he started to focus a little more on the numbers, the titles on the task trackers.

"You know they did the research, the testing, if it works for them, if they have a good success rate, then maybe it works for us too? Maybe the app is right, we're happy when we’re next to each other. Sometimes we’re sad when we’re next to each other and sometimes we're angry. If this application is detecting moods like this… similarly to the love alarm, maybe it means we could--- "

"Get along?" Levi finished it for her. There were only so many things that code could mean anyway.

"Get along.... Or to get to know each other more." Hange said, her voice softer than a second ago. The smile took longer to leave her lips.

Hange though had always been good at composing herself but Levi had months to figure out patterns and trends in the way she navigated the more sensitive topics. He couldn't help but notice the heavy tension, even under the light summer breeze.

Those moments happened too often that Levi had prepared an escape route every time. Business talk. And they had a lot to talk about. "Hange, I wanna ask something about the front end," Levi scrolled back up, towards the top of the task trackers. Dealing with front end was a mammoth task, rifed with two many sub tasks but it was definitely one of the last priorities, if it was even a priority. Levi wasn’t the type to particularly mind releasing an application with a white background and an interface that used the very underwhelming Arial font.

But it was Hange and Zeke’s application.

"Ask away," Hange said.

It came easily after that. The ticket on his workflow tracker had an inkling of a script to follow. "What colors would you associate with emotions?" He asked.

"What?" Hange furrowed her brows.

Levi cleared his throat. Nevermind, it wasn't easy to come up with the question without a little more expounding. "Like would you say red is anger? Blue is sadness? Yellow is happiness?"

"Wait? Why?" Hange asked again. Her lips were curled up just a little higher.

"I'm thinking of the front end of the application. What colors do you see for each emotion?"

"Yellow for happiness," Hange answered easily.

"Not orange?" Levi challenged. He had opened up the task and started to take notes.

"Orange is way too angry for me."

"Red seems much angrier," Levi said

"Red is anger definitely but I'm not seeing bright red, I'm seeing something like orange."

Levi opened up a color wheel. " So this red?" Levi asked.

"No, bright reddish orange," Hange corrected. It may have been a coincidence or just a trick of convenience but a red leaf had fallen on her lap at that moment. Hange picked it up, and twirled it and held it in front of Levi like a token.

“So... autumn red?” Levi asked.

Hange dropped the leaf on his lap. “I guess.” She raised her eyebrow. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Was he giving her a strange look? His mind sometimes formed opinions as he spoke and Hange had always been receptive anyway so he verbalized it, just for her. “When I’m angry, I see red,” Levi admitted.

“I haven't felt really angry in a while, so I wouldn’t know,” Hange said. “Maybe it changed.”

“Sadness?” Levi asked.

Hange turned to him questioningly. “Tell me yours first.”

“Grey,” Levi said automatically.

“Blue,” Hange said, as if it were the truest fact in the world.

A fact Levi was compelled to question. “Why blue?”

“Why not blue?”

“Blue doesn’t seem sad….”

“Why not?” Hange pressed.

“It seems…” Levi started, only realizing seconds later, he was unable to come up with the right words.

“Too nice?” Hange suggested.

“It’s a nice color. It makes me feel good just looking at it.” It was a pathetic response. With such a complex thought, to even force out of his mouth, he had to channel his inner child, through the most child-like attempts at articulation.

“Okay, I know it doesn’t feel good to be sad but.. don’t you think sadness is a beautiful feeling?” Hange asked.

“No.” It should have been a natural answer. Somehow, Levi felt like there was something else worth listening to.

Hange saw reason to continue at least. “You wouldn’t be feeling sad, if you never felt happy in the first place, if you’ve never felt desire or love. There are feelings much worse than being sad for sure.”

“Like what?”

“Not feeling at all maybe?” Hange surmised. “So maybe the strongest feelings, whether good or bad, are still nice… maybe something worth indulging.”

And it was turning into a philosophy lesson. How many hours had he wasted listening to Hange prattle on about emotions and concepts of love? They weren’t hours wasted for sure, but they did leave him feeling just a little sad at times. Once again, he went back to business talk. Levi looked back at his workflow tracker. “So ‘blue sad, yellow happy, red angry…”

“Do you really think sadness is grey?” Hange asked.

Levi looked up from his laptop and straight towards Hange. "Look, I don't think much about what color my emotions are…” He trailed off. He could have said more maybe. Speaking while reflecting turned out to be a daunting task at that moment.

Maybe sadness was grey. That had seemed like the most natural conclusion at first. He focused for a little longer on the view in front of him, the view of Hange and behind her the open grounds that made way for blue sky and the blue burned into his eyes, enough to make him feel something in his chest then down to his stomach. Before he knew it, he started to entertain Hange’s own idea.

When Hange looked back at him, the open sky behind her, he felt stinging at the back of his eyes, he let his face fall.

The color overall had been burning at first. The more he stared, the more he noticed its more lasting qualities. It turned out blue wasn’t burning, it was subdued, mild. At the same time, the clear endless shade of blue in the sky behind her did wonders to accentuate her features. Enough of a reminder to leave another twinge in his chest, that time it was slightly painful.

A twinge of sadness. Emotions may be difficult to comprehend but whatever clarity that washed over him then had been enough of a motivator to speak up. “I think you’re right, sadness is blue,” he said. A beautiful blue.

He found himself searching for the prettiest shades on the color wheel, looking back up at the sky, then to the yellow streaks from the sun that hit the pavement. He then turned his head towards the garden where red roses grew. From a distance, from above, they were supposed to form a heart.

“Yeah, red and yellow too. Red hurts, it’s glaring, Sometimes yellow is too bright but all together, they make the garden beautiful. Like this courtyard,” Hange said. She stretched her legs out onto the stony path just in front of the bench and shifted her weight to the palms of her hands.

“Yeah, it is.” Levi nodded.

“It’s colorful,” Hange said. “Bright reds, bright greens, bright blues, bright yellows. They’ll all only be here together until the end of summer.” She wrapped her arms around herself, a wistful smile on her face.

“You like summer?” Levi asked. “It’s fucking hot.”

“I like summer and spring. What can I say? I like seasons with a lot more variety of color,” she answered. “ I always get a little sad when summer ends. Surprisingly though, I’m sadder than usual about this summer ending.”

“Why?”

Hange shrugged. “I can’t even explain it for myself. It’s ridiculous that I’m this sad about summer ending. I usually get like this when I’m out of the city but I haven’t even been out in the countryside in a while but somehow, I’m already imaging the larger, wider landscapes up north. I’m imagining how quickly the trees go bald… Green then red then blue. And how quickly skies turn from blue to just a constant gray and when the lakes just freeze over, turning from blue to a more of black… It’s sad to imagine.”

“I can imagine it,” Levi said. He didn’t leave the city often since there wasn’t much spare funds to work with. He was capable of empathizing though, after all the twinge of sadness remained and it had been surprisingly easy to channel it elsewhere.

“There are places up north that have the most beautiful springs and summers but when the leaves change… everything dies much more quickly.” Hange lowered her head.

“Maybe one day, I’ll check it out,” Levi said. He found himself picturing the logistics of a trip already. Having never used his leaves, having built up disposable income through a lack of drive to even form a life outside work, he realized he did have leeway to indulge just a bit. Somehow, Hange’s own thoughts were enough to inspire.

“You haven’t been up north?” Hange gaped.

“I didn’t have much money growing up and there’s no reason to.”

“I should take you up north. You know, the gardens up there, the rolling hillsides. They remind me of Pemberley,” Hange said.

“Pemberley?”

“Pemberley! Mister Darcy’s estate.”

Levi groaned inward. That book again.

“Elizabeth visited towards the end of the book and there are a bunch of old houses around there and when I would walk on the fields, I like to pretend I’m in the book.”

“Relive your rags to riches fantasy?” Levi asked bitterly.

Hange pouted. “It’s not just that. Besides, I wasn’t poor, you know. My parents managed to pay tuition to a good college with no debt.”

Not as rich as Zeke definitely. The banter might just get out of control so Levi went with a conservative digression. “Maybe I’ll go there one weekend, up north before summer really ends.”

“Maybe, I’ll take you there myself,” She said, an excited grin on her face. “Maybe after this weekend or next year if we’re too late. I told Zeke about how I was feeling lately, so for my birthday, he promised he’ll take me up north so we’re going this weekend.”

Levi choked. “Wait, birthday? When’s your birthday?” It turned out to be a burning question, a small fact Levi felt obligated to know. So the answer couldn’t have come any slower.

When Hange opened her mouth ready to speak, the universe decided for them that it definitely could come a little later. His phone rang, breaking that brief silence, prolonging the painful anticipation.

Petra Ral. For some reason, he expected the worst when any of his subordinates called. He answered the phone. “Petra, is everything okay?”

“Sorry about calling. I tried texting you but you weren’t replying.” Petra went straight to the point soon after that. “Some of the members of the other project offered to help out with testing. Do we have enough phones?”

They did have enough test devices, the pile on Hange’s desk was enough proof of that. “Yes we do,” Levi said. They were all in his office. He turned to Hange questioningly. It was her blank face that reminded him, they’d have to look through the phones themselves to see what devices they could wipe.

“I’ll meet you by the office,” Levi said. “Hange and I are going back now.”

He hung up the phone and turned to Hange. “Petra is gonna borrow some of the test devices. You’re okay with that?”

“Sure, I’ll help you wipe them,” Hange said. “Are we going back now?” She seemed hesitant, a closer look and Levi could see a hint of disappointment.

He closed his laptop. “We have to get back to work right?”

“You never even stopped working,” Hange accused.

“I stopped long enough to listen to you ramble on about that damned book and your nice vacations.”

Hange walked on, seeming deep in thought. “Hey Levi… What do you think of Petra?” It was an abrupt digression.

“What about Petra?”

“Have you ever considered dating her?”

Levi stifled a choke, letting it out as a peaceful clearing of the throat. “Why are you asking that?”

Hange shrugged, as she walked ahead. . “Nothing, she seems like a nice person and she seems to like you… Besides, she rings your alarm.” She looked back at him, a playful grin on her face.

Levi sighed. That wasn’t a question he would have liked to broach.

“Well?” Hange pressed.

But maybe he could give some vague answer in exchange for some information. “I’ll tell you. If you tell me something."

"Tell you what?"

"What are your plans for your birthday?”

***

Levi was tricked, treated, bamboozled. Hange had a way with words, a way of just pushing the right buttons. It could have been that or it could have been a series of convenient circumstances and conversation topics that had Levi there, at the front of the mall after work with Petra right next to him.

On the bright side, he had Hange’s birthdate, her plans for that Friday all the way until the weekend. That was enough to satisfy his own curiosity. Over time though he realized, that was all it did.

Was it worth it?

Back when he and Hange had been discussing it, it seemed like a good exchange, she satisfied his curiosity, he satisfied hers. Hange had given her due information. In exchange, she received information on Petra, the long QAs, her alarm ringing, the amount of effort Petra put into her job and just the occasional present that made their way to his desk.

While Hange’s own information went so far as to give the name of the restaurant, the time and the route of their roadtrip, Levi’s own information evolved into something else. Before he even knew it, Hange had created a new agenda of her own.

Your love alarm would ring with Petra right?

It did. Of course, in front of the mall, surrounded by other people wasn’t the best place to test it. There was no reason to either. Ever since Petra joined them more than a year back, the love alarm had always rang and Petra had enough professionalism, enough of a handle on her own feelings to mark it as ‘accurate.’

Admirable? Definitely. Date worthy? Did he ever consider dating her long enough to deem her date worthy? ‘Maybe not’ to both questions.

Have you ever considered dating Petra?  Hange brought up that question during their conversation and Levi felt almost guilty for the straight up ‘no,’ and the shallow ‘she’s too young for my taste’ reason.

She could have been too young. Still, Hange seemed more like a counselor for that exchange and she made some good points.

Assuming the love alarm didn’t have a bug, and the reading was accurate… Hange first set her premise.

The premise could have been accurate. No, it definitely was. Petra’s own approach towards him only served to extinguish any doubts.

Levi and Petra settled for an early dinner at some restaurant towards the end of the mall. Not for the food, nor for the pricing but for the convenience of being able to sit down after the twenty minute walk and a long day up on their feet back in the office.

And Petra had been excited to sit down in front of him. She rushed ahead and slipped into the booth, even before Levi had slipped himself into the small gap between table and chair. He allowed himself enough focus to scan through the menu and digest the names of the dishes at least. He hadn't bothered to even spare a good look at the board outside nor what the hell the other customers were eating and thus, he was excruciatingly slow.

On top of that, he was exhausted from a day of work and most days, he wouldn’t have bothered to go on a date, not with a colleague at that.

It’s not a date. Levi reminded himself. He shouldn’t be dating subordinates. That was another source of stress at that moment.

A few times Levi looked up at the menu, making some ingenious excuse about how he couldn’t decide and how he needed some blank space to help clear his mind before he tried to decide again. Every single time he looked up, he had to internally make an excuse because Petra was staring right at him.

“Have you decided what you want to get?” Petra asked, her voice was a song. She propped her elbows on the table, a rude gesture in most places. She managed to subdue rudeness by propping her chin on top, a look of seemingly genuine interest in her face.

Seemingly. Who the hell was he kidding, she probably was genuine about it. If it wasn’t his own instinct that could be relied on, he could at least trust the love alarm that had rung with no fail since she joined the company in the first place.

“I’ll get the fried chicken meal.” Levi didn’t particularly like fried chicken. He had been a little too self conscious of how long he had stared at her and back at the menu, how long the awkward silence between them lasted and he soon realized, he had to order quickly, even if he didn’t know yet what else he was missing.

“You wanna get tea? We could share a pot,” Petra suggested as she put down her own menu.

Levi could have finished a pot on his own. He wasn’t telling her that though, especially not right after too many close encounters with what could have been inappropriate. “Sure.” Levi nodded a little faster, hoping that was enough to feign excitement.

The waiter came and went with the menus on hand and Petra started to ask questions, questions that were invasive enough that Levi had a hard time thinking two things at once.

They weren’t too personal. In fact, they weren’t about him anyway. Levi started to figure that for himself when he got his bearings. “What about Hange?” Levi asked. He was stalling, finding ways to untangle his hairball of thoughts.

“You were asking me right? About any advice on what to give Hange for her birthday?” Petra asked.

“Yes, I did.” Why did he forget?

Assuming the love alarm didn’t have a bug, and the reading was accurate, that means this ‘love’ between me and Zeke is one sided.

“Well, we could check out a few shops nearby. You could buy her something that could help her with organization. Diaries, bookmarks, pencil cases, wallets…” The list went on and the contents had started to become unbearably boring. Really, would Hange have enjoyed those?

But I don’t think it’s one sided. Love is a choice right? I can choose to love him. So if you and Petra---

Me and Petra. There were too many things wrong with it, a boss and a direct report, a conflict of interest.

But she seems genuine. She seems like a good person. And maybe she could be worth pursuing.

She’s my direct report. He argued then.

But if you decide to pursue a relationship, you can always just reshuffle, right?

Petra continued to talk. “Does she like tea? We could give her a tea bag. The one I bought you last Christmas… it took me months to find it…” She brought out her phone and started to scroll, seeming too deep in thought. She furrowed her brows and bit her lip, as if the extra effort hurt..

An unnecessarily vigorous effort over a simple request from him. Guilt was an unwelcome feeling but it was also incredibly tenacious, like a cockroach. His mind was becoming more receptive to painful speculation as he watched Petra grapple over her choices, and he wasn’t at all being helpful.

Guilt was the rising action. Then everything fell into place soon after, not into place, more like a chaotic order, like a ton of bricks.

And that order made his feelings more intelligible.

He didn’t want to be in a relationship with Petra. That was all there is to it.

Love is a choice right? A tiny glimmer of protest made itself known in the silence. Those were words from Hange, echoed multiple times before in an exact tone and manner only Hange could ever pull off.

Can I choose to love Petra? Levi asked himself then.

Petra was a nice girl. She was helpful. She worked hard. She was competent. More importantly, she was single and she wasn’t married to his very rich client.

Most importantly though, in the grand scheme of all his experiences and emotions, Levi had to point out to himself, she wasn’t Hange.

Why don’t you give her a chance? Hange had asked that then. She goaded him, nudged him and pushed him out of his own office, to follow after Petra had left the office with the devices.

It's frowned upon, boss colleague relationship. Levi had argued.

Something tells me she likes you. Hange continued, as if she never heard of the unspoken taboos of office relationships. Maybe she hadn’t.

Besides, I noticed… You know, you look a lot happier. How that had ended up the conclusion of their conversation, Levi couldn't exactly tell. He remembered looking up at Hange, to hell with how far down his jaw dropped or how wide his eyes were. There was just something special about Hange pointing out something and how quickly something could easily become a certain reality when someone just verbalized it.

Maybe he was happier, maybe he started to appreciate nature a lot more. Maybe he had started to see more color the past few months.

His own recall of Hange, his own thoughts that flew back to her had him perceptive of the variety on his plate, the decorations on the shop for just a split second and when he looked up to Petra, a part of him was at the least attempting to appreciate.

Petra was a redhead, her hair fell in a neat bob that barely brushed her shoulders. Red was a nice color on hair, and Levi only noticed it then. He stared for a while longer, trying to find something to feel, something to think beyond ‘nice.’

Petra’s eyes shot up and she met his gaze. “This is it!”

“What?” Levi asked, almost instinctively. He felt a tad self conscious analyzing the shade of someone’s hair.

“I found the tea, the one I gave you last Christmas. You really liked it right?” Petra asked.

“The Jasmine Pearls?” He did remember the tea then he remembered telling her he really did enjoy it. A part of him had maybe forgotten for a split second that it was Petra who gave it so the question had shaken him more than necessary.

“I was only able to get it from a shipment last time. I had to book three months to get it. But they’re on sale now and---”

“She might prefer coffee though...” Levi said. His own intention had been to find the perfect present, but he ended up feeling guilty as soon as he saw Petra’s reaction.

Her face fell. She turned back to her phone for just a second before fixing her eyes back to his. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for that, I can’t believe I got so excited.” A blush crept up her face.

“No. Don’t think about it like that.” Levi attempted to maintain at least a ghost of a laugh in his tone. The last thing he wanted to do was keep Petra unnecessarily uncomfortable, especially after everything that had happened until that moment.

The air was heavy and he wondered if she noticed it too. She was probably too preoccupied with her own self proclaimed mistakes, very evident by the beet red of her face.

“Let’s go around first. We might come up with something better if we ask around the shops,” Levi suggested. It had been more to comfort her than anything else. The suggestions of a while ago, the list of items had only served to make Levi think a little deeper about it, to the point of acceptance.

Even before they had finished their food, Levi had already concluded for himself, whatever he gave Hange, whether it be a wallet, tea, a small trinket, Zeke had probably come up with a more expensive version, something he probably would have never considered buying himself.

Levi didn’t leave though. Soon after they finished eating, he still accompanied Petra to every shop. He made a facade for himself, a window shopper buying a birthday gift for a good friend, he asked enough questions to engage Petra, everything ending with the conclusion, “I’ll think about it.”

Overtime, he realized he wasn’t thinking too much of what was in front of him. His mind was elsewhere.

Besides, I noticed… You know, you look a lot happier. Hange was smiling when she said it, but the smile didn’t curl the same way the others did. She crinkled her eyes as she spoke but Levi could almost point out the sadness in them.

And he saw it every time he recalled that. What does that have to do with dating Petra?

I like seeing you happy and I think if you found someone to love, maybe you’ll stay like this much longer.

Like what?

More pleasant? Smiling more often? Appreciating stuff outside work?

Hange talked for longer after that but that had worked to motivate him to invite Petra out to get to know her, to ask for advice for a gift for Hange. Somehow, a part of him wanted to take Hange’s advice, stay ‘happy’ so in his own way, he could prove her right and maybe by extension, make her happy too.

But was entertaining a relationship with Petra the right way?

The question burned for longer. Even after they exhausted all the shops and all the ideas that came with it. It was around eight in the evening when they stood by the train station under the mall, exchanging goodbyes. “Make sure to get home safe.” A part of him had considered taking her home. Their trains went in completely opposite directions though.

“Will do,” Petra said.

“We have a long day ahead tomorrow.” They always had a long day ahead but at that point, Levi was foraging for something a boss would say.

“Yeah, I'll make sure to get the testing done tomorrow," Petra said. "What happened today, it definitely gave me the motivation. I had a lot of fun.”

“Me too.” His response was automatic, something he didn’t want to think too much of.

They separated soon after and when Levi boarded the train home, he entertained the question again.

Was entertaining a relationship with Petra the right way to be happy?

I think entertaining love is an opportunity to be happy at least. Hange argued. You don’t have to jump into it but I think building a relationship with someone teaches you a lot and love, it makes life colorful.

Colorful? The trains were grey, the suits of all the passengers were shades of black, grey and the occasional blue. An almost alarming transformation from the gardens, after long days of working with Hange.

A copy of the emotions alarm was downloaded onto his phone and in the silence of the long ride home, he opened it again. He clicked ‘activate,’ the application loaded, no emotion was detected.

It was a fun night right? Levi concluded, there really was some more to improve on in the application. With the amount of testing done, and the amount of data loaded, he also had to entertain the idea that maybe it wasn’t an issue with the application.

Maybe it was his own issue with appreciating, with being open to love. “That’s what you were saying, right Hange?” He whispered to himself. A second later, he thought maybe he had said it loud enough to sound like an idiot.

Before nervousness and overthinking could take over again, he willed himself to mull over Hange’s words like always.

Love is a choice and just be open to it. Even if he didn’t believe it for himself.

***

It turned out, Erwin also knew about Hange’s birthday. And he suggested a basket of fruit as a gift.

Levi had been a little surprised. For one, maintaining partner and customer relations was never part of his job so how the hell was he to know that baskets of fruits and cakes were customary.

And secondly, he was just a little indignant. Erwin was his boss though so he couldn’t tell him that. He complied before going back to his office and booting up his laptop. It felt odd.

The laptop pinged with a characteristic echo and it was much louder in the silence, the almost deafening silence. After all, most days, Hange would have been there to chatter his ear off about her own experience testing.

That day, she had taken the day off. A birthday leave. Just for herself. She took September four and September five off. The fourth was to prepare for the long trip. Then on the fifth, she had dinner with Zeke, in an Italian restaurant on the first floor of a luxury hotel near the city center.

He knew the details, he knew the name. But it has nothing to do with you. He constantly reminded himself, it was only on a good to know basis. Still, he entertained the idea that maybe he could stop by the city center on the train on the way home, just for the modicum of a probability that he did run into them. It was not like he had anything else to do on a Friday night anyway.

But you can think about that tomorrow. Levi scolded himself. Somehow, Hange not being there was making it more difficult to focus. After all, she had been there, every single day before.

Also, how could he entertain multiple other ideas about Hange’s birthday when he didn’t even have a present for her? He had managed to put off Petra’s suggestions lightly, by some distraction from work. He had managed to make a good excuse of the fruit basket, saying that it was better to give a gift as a company.

Really, it had been his own insecurity stopping from putting any money into anything. Zeke could buy Hange a billion wallets, a billion tea bags, a billion fruits basket if it suited him. Then it begged the question for Levi, what could he give that Zeke couldn’t?

The emotion alarm. The answer didn’t come quickly. It came after staring at the desktop screen for long enough to lose grip on the time but after a long moment of doing nothing, Levi eventually brought out a test device and opened the server.

There were three basic emotions. Anger, Sadness and Happieness. Those were the three Hange put into her plan. They were to create the application, test it among patients and study it to see how it could help with more accurate prognosis.

And if he went the extra mile, maybe he could just give it as a late birthday surprise. Or maybe he might end up never finishing it. At least I’d try. That last thought lingered for a second longer and it did its part to send a burst of confidence through him.

He looked through his workflow tracker. No assigned bugs to look into. So he opened a new document, pulled out a paper.

“Hange Zoe, you wanted to test emotions right?” He asked no one in particular. When he was asking questions out loud, ideas ended up flowing much faster. He pulled out a small paper from the post-it stack at the corner of his desk.

“What if we connect it to the web, make a dashboard to display reports, so maybe psychologists have something to look at after testing?” He could have said it out loud. Maybe he didn’t. He had said it loud enough in his head at least to keep his gears moving. “What if we find a way to quantify it?” That last part was ambitious. It would need Hange’s input for sure so he grappled with two ideas, surprising Hange and just suggesting it like a developer.

His ideas were risks, born of long hours of googling enough to maybe bullshit years of studying psychology. Maybe Hange wouldn’t agree, maybe she would. He copied the necessary code from the alarm anyway and decided to just play around with it.

It was a birthday present only he could give anyway.

Another idea popped into his head after an hour more of googling, a much more doable idea. Even before he made sense of it, he pulled another post-it from the side and wrote out the three emotions. Underneath them, he wrote the colors. Red. Blue. Yellow.

Yellow and red became orange. Red and blue became purple. Yellow and blue became green.

He wasn’t a psychologist, he wasn’t a philosopher. He was merely a developer. He was an experienced one at that and with the right amount of free time and the right amount of motivation, he managed at least to pull out a framework and recall the color of the leaf on Hange’s lap.

Red. Yellow. Blue. Orange. Green. Purple. He had enough time to work on some front end tasks that day.

***

He finished it on Friday, the fifth of September, at around noon and maybe he had done a few hours of overtime to get it done, arriving home at midnight just the night before.

It wasn’t perfect but the colors showed up as a big dot under the emotion, and the application would flash in bright shades of red, yellow, blue, orange, green and purple, the latter three a mix of the basic emotions.

It had been a small act of just manipulating the data, loading Hange’s USB full of data to get it to work. Whether it would be accurate, he couldn’t tell but it would be something good to bring up on Monday maybe, a risky birthday present but still, a little risk seemed better than omission when it came to Hange.

The last few parts were a little tests on his end, while testing in between, while signing off necessary decisions for the testing on Monday.

The testing never worked, no emotions flashed onto the screen the few times he tested and every single time, he reminded himself, it wasn’t perfect but maybe Hange would still appreciate it.

By five, he was out, right on time and with his own personal project completed and downloaded into his phone, his workflow tracker empty, and everything ready for the large scale QA event on Monday and he thought himself a little deserving of a little stroll at the city center on a Friday night.

At around thirty minutes past five, he boarded the train, the same route home, stopping five stops shy of his usual stop.

The station at the city center on a Friday night was bustling. It had taken him a good one minute to even push himself out of the train. He only ever managed to get a glimpse of the shops, the city lights beyond the crowds not when he stepped out of the station, but a few blocks after that when for a good few minutes the crowds dissipated into something a little more breathable.

The luxury hotel Hange had mentioned was one, if not the best one in the city and Levi easily picked it out as he stood towards one of the less saturated parts of the crosswalk. It was a skyscraper, the windows were of the modern kind that reflected city lights in a unique way and they covered the building from top to bottom. And even from just his peripherals, he could pick the building out by the strange iridescent flashes of color.

The view was very much worth the price and Levi only had to walk ahead, catch it as a small glimmer behind buildings and crowds to know he was going the right direction, despite having to ride through the crowds.

He arrived at the block, the building only a few feet away, close enough that he had to strain his neck to get a glance of the skyscraper at the top. He looked back down at his phone.

6:30. Hange said they had a reservation for seven. He wondered why he was putting himself through that torture. Would he even get to talk to her? Eventually he realized, might as well make use of that information just to satisfy his curiosity again.

The restaurant was a small place, with glass windows, and if Levi stared long enough he could make out every single face there. For a Friday, it was still empty and he was able to conclude without much of a long glance that Hange wasn’t there.

So he took a good long stroll around the block. He entered leather shops, boutiques that sold branded clothing, staying long enough that the salesman had thought he would have bought.

Thirty minutes passed with a few bumps along the way. Sometimes minutes lasted years, sometimes they lasted split seconds but the bumpy wait was long enough for him to realize that he was doing something completely stupid.

It was Hange's birthday. That was Hange and Zeke's night. All he could give her that day was a greeting, and maybe a basket of fruits, care of Erwin.

So he planned a birthday message, saving it in the drafts. He didn’t have to give her the modified birthday application as a present. He could always prepare a script to pitch his suggested changes for the application on Monday. Disappointment and surrender had him lethargic and for a while after exiting the last store, Levi leaned back on some free brick wall where the space was for rent, a good distance away from the sea of people but still close enough that if he just stretched out his arm, he might just get dragged in.

He leaned back and stared, allowing himself that bout of reprieve as he watched the crowds go by. Crowds of people weren’t anything new, he dealt with those everyday trying to squeeze into the trains during rush hour every morning.

Crowds on a Friday, in the center of the city weren’t something he was completely used to though. He hated crowds and he always strategically timed his personal shopping trips to late afternoons on weekdays, particularly when it was much easier to maintain a comfortable distance from strangers.

When he was observing, time went by at a sluggish pace. For a while, Levi was hypnotized by the strange cadence that accompanied the view. The longer he stared, the more perceptive he became. There was a very big difference between crowds on a weekday during rush hour and crowds on a Friday night moving through a shopping district.

When he was close enough, he immediately picked it out, like a very small diamond in a sea of coal, invisible at first but from the right angle, it suddenly became crystal clear. Crowds in rush hour comprised hard, focused individuals. They were like streams: movements were loud, hard wired towards one direction.

Crowds on a Friday night were more like a river, they were moving but only barely, very subtly. Of course they would, the faces were relaxed, the people were rarely alone. Some clusters in the crowds came as one family, others came in groups of friends and others came in couples.

The more faces Levi scanned, the heavier he became. It dawned on him soon after he was alone in crowd of people and he was fucking lonely. For a second he considered testing his application, he decided soon after that he probably didn’t want a bunch of code rubbing his own loneliness and singleness in his face. For another second, he almost considered inviting Petra over.

Shaking both temporal thoughts away, Levi turned the corner and back to the main road, making some excuse that the main road which passed the five star hotel was the closest way back to the station. It was a valid conclusion at least, the main road was wide enough, and the shops were few and far in between that social distancing wasn’t too big of an issue.

There was another conclusion Levi liked to entertain though. He checked his watch. 7:30.

Hange had said before, the reservation was at seven. He dove into a crowd, while catching a glimpse of the restaurant to the window. Hange was surprisingly easy to spot, maybe because Levi had first swept through the seats on the corner with his vision. He spotted the brown hair, the glasses and a dark purple cocktail dress. Notably, there was no blond companion in front of her.

Zeke was in the toilet, his rational mind justified. “Have fun, Hange,” Levi said. At least he got to see her on her birthday, he allowed himself a passing thought on how well she had dressed up that night, similar to months ago when he had completed the test app. Then he brushed that thought away, looked straight ahead. He stayed with the sea of people, long enough to pass the hotel and as soon as he was a good distance away, he broke away, taking the underground path to the station.

It was still early and the station entrance was surprisingly more peaceful than above ground. He had enough space to open up his phone and check the birthday greeting in his drafts box.

Happy birthday Hange! Excited to continue working with you. See you on Monday for app testing. Btw, thanks for volunteering for the calibration on Monday.

He evaluated for himself that the text was a good balance between casual and professional. Satisfied, Levi clicked send and pocketed his phone as he made his way to the ticket gate.

The next time he opened his phone was in the train, three train stops in when he was lucky enough to catch an empty seat.

Thanks, Levi :)

It was too short of a message for Levi to read through and he was almost disappointed at such a turn out.

What did you expect, an ‘I love you?’ The tremble in his lips was enough evidence, that maybe a part of him did, as embarrassing, as ridiculous of a prospect as it was. He hovered his thumb over the keyboard, letting the weight of the incomprehensible emotions pass before he typed.

See you on Monday. That’s what he had wanted to type, just to keep the conversation going. Hange was still typing though.

Levi was staring at the bubbles above the message box for a good long few minutes. Minutes, it definitely took minutes. Hange was typing long enough for a station to announce a next stop, enough for the train to empty at that stop, enough for it to refill and enough for the conductor to announce the next stop,

The text eventually came. Where are you right now?

How the hell had that taken minutes to write, Levi didn’t know. He wasn’t eager to reciprocate though.

He replied within a few seconds. Why?

Hange took a little longer to reply. The bubble on the screen continued to bounce as Hange Zoe continued to type.

Nothing much. I was just curious. It had taken almost another train stop for Hange to type those six words.

A split second later, another message appeared underneath. Sorry for bothering you. So Hange wasn’t just a slow typer.

It was still eight in the evening, too early that for most, the night hadn’t even started. So Levi took a risk. He left the train at the next stop, boarded the other train that ran through that same line, the train that would bring him back to the city center.

Hange, you okay? He texted.

Hange didn’t reply. There was no bouncing of bubbles above the message box, but he continued to stare, just in case. And that little motion on the screen was a fickle thing.

Sometimes it appeared, sometimes it didn’t.

Hange Zoe is typing.... And sometimes, he stared at it for long enough that it seared into his vision even a minute after it was long gone from the screen.

She never did type anything and maybe he had waited too long for a response. By the time he arrived at the right station again, he tapped his card and exited the ticket gate and ran through the underground. When he reached above ground, he tried to maintain the same speed. That involved pushing through crowds and being a small man, he realized it wasn’t too much of a bother to anyone. After all, with the amount of people huddled in the crowds under the cool air of late summer, he wasn’t the only one pushing.

He didn’t have time to check his phone. And soon, he realized he didn’t need to. He arrived back at the hotel to find Hange hunched over, unmoving in the same seat she had been just a few hours back.

Zeke is in the toilet. Levi told himself. He waited a minute, then another. And when he looked closely, he realized, Hange was on her phone. He opened his phone to see the bubbles bounce again.

Hange Zoe is typing…

Levi was counting minutes, and the bubble never disappeared. He looked back up at the glass door to see Hange was still not moving, still slouched, her head bent over. To the phone on her lap maybe?

He looked back at his phone and concluded then, Hange had been typing for ten minutes.

Maybe Zeke is taking a shit. He set an alarm for ten minutes. The hotel and restaurant bathroom wouldn’t be too far. And no one took a shit for more than twenty minutes right? If Zeke didn’t come back in ten minutes, maybe that meant she was alone.

Ten minutes went by quickly. And a few times Hange had typed, a few times she had laid her phone on the table and leaned back on the chair. A waiter had offered wine once and Hange shook her head.

It would be rude to barge in but at the same time, there were answers he was desperate to get. He sent a message. Are you alone?

The typing stopped for a second. Then it continued for a minute. Then it stopped. Finally, like the sunshine after the rain, a chat bubble appeared and Levi savored the sound for a split second before he took in the contents.

Just one word. Yeah

Where’s Zeke?

He’s not coming tonight.

Levi leaned on the wall just next to the window and typed one message. You need someone there with you?

A few times he glanced back to see a waiter near her, handing Hange a small tray. The bill? He guessed. Hange should be going out soon but she continued to sit, for a few seconds longer.

Her reply came within those few seconds. I don’t wanna be alone tonight.

Levi leaned back on the wall and he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, grappling with the conflict. Should he be happy? Sad?

His phone continued to buzz. Hange had left messages in succession.

Can I stop by?

I know a lot of places won’t be open.

We can get fast food.

Somewhere near your place maybe?

Anywhere that would be convenient for you.

Only if you’re not busy though.

Don’t feel obliged.

A string of messages, longer than he expected.

Exit the shop. Turn right and follow the sidewalk. Don’t cross the street. He was shit at the directions, but he decided for himself, she would ask anyway if she got lost.

It turned out, at the least, the directions sufficed. Soon he was hearing the clack of leather shoes, the rustle of a light autumn coat and Hange’s voice.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was loud and clear even when it was competing with the sea of crowds, the other background conversations, the ads and the sound of traffic. Of course it would be, she was right next to him.

“Are you okay?” Levi asked. It wasn’t the best greeting but it felt like the most natural thing to say.

After all, Hange was smiling but it was an unusual smile. It was one of those smiles that seemed to be carrying a heavy weight. He figured it out after staring for a while longer. it was the weight of her cheeks, the prickling of her eyes. If she let the smile go, maybe everything would have fallen with it.

He gripped her by the hand. “You wanna go somewhere?”

“Let’s get out of here,” Hange said, a noticeable crack in her voice.

Maybe that had been enough to break the fragile smile on her face. In the crowds of people, in the middle of a busy street, there was no time for Levi to check. He thought it the best move to pull and maybe she thought it the best move to follow. She was obedient, predictable and light and he easily brought her farther from the center, towards the quieter parts of the city.

Five minutes of brisk walking, or maybe it was ten and soon, they reached an area with clusters of apartment buildings, residences. There were still small shops, a few restaurants and hole in the wall food stalls, some with lines spilling out all the way until the sidewalk.

At first, it seemed hopeless to find some place just for both of them. With time, Levi started to imagine one particular place that wouldn’t have so many people that late at night.

It should be bedtime for kids already anyway. He thought to himself. And when he articulated it, he was sure, there should be one. And there should be no people.

He just had to find one.

Five more minutes of following the winding roads between apartment buildings and he found one, a comfortable distance away from apartments. They could easily manage a soft conversation with no risk of being heard. He sat back on the swing, taking in the slide, the sandbox a few feet away, the monkey bars and high rise apartment buildings with most windows already illuminated just above them.

Hange had taken the seat beside him.

“Are you okay?” Levi asked again.

“I’m fine,” Hange spat out, only proving she was definitely not fine. There was enough light from the one street light on the corner, the shades of orange, red and white coming from the window and they had all worked together to show a glimmer of Hange’s face, even with her head bent down.

“Are you crying?”

The answer came in heaved breaths. The question must have made her more conscious. She bent down further on the swing. Her bangs covered her face and whatever glimmer he had seen a while ago was forgotten. Eventually, she gathered herself. “Levi, if you ask people why they’re crying, sometimes they just start crying.” She let out another breath.

That didn’t convince him to stop. “Why are you crying?”

“You don’t ask people that.” That time, the words came out a little more seamlessly.

“You asked me if I was crying back then… Back in the office.” Levi never forgot that harrowing experience and it was an easy memory to bring up.

There was silence for a second, save for a few more ragged breaths, the creak of the swing and maybe a few barking dogs from the distance.

Hange broke it herself, her voice much clearer than a while ago. “Sorry, I’m just tired,” she said. “Really tired.”

“Zeke ditched?” Maybe ditch wasn’t the right term. By the time he considered that, the words were long gone from his mouth.

“I knew he wasn’t coming,” Hange said. She pushed on the swing just a little bit, enough to have her swaying.

“Why did you wait?”

“We had a reservation.”

“But if he told you…”

“He told me to cancel it.”

“And your road trip?”

“He said not this weekend. He has a few more meetings and he couldn’t come home on time.” Hange’s voice was alarmingly serious, a sign of acceptance maybe?

Levi hoped not. In a feeble attempt to lighten the mood, he spoke up. “Happy Birthday.”

“I’d rather not think it’s my birthday.” Hange let out a pitiful excuse of a laugh. “How many birthdays do people even get, and here I am wasting one of them being sad.”

“I’m not the best company but I can try to do my part to help make it better,” Levi pulled out his phone and opened his email, opening the apk file he had been working on since that morning. He copied the download link and pasted it on Hange’s message box.

The message was sent quickly and the popping sound from Hange’s phone filled the silence of the empty playground.

“Happy birthday,” Levi said once again with a little more flourish.

“I told you, don’t remind me. Let’s just sit here and talk.” Hange gripped the chains of the swing and leaned back.

“Check your damn phone Hange.”

“Nah… My phone has been chocked full of disappointments since this morning.”

“I sent you your birthday gift through your phone.”

“It can wait until later,” Hange argued.

She was like a five year old child and Levi was starting to give up on even keeping the surprise.“I modified the app,” he said.

“What?” That had gotten Hange’s attention. She pulled out her phone.

“I created another copy of it, played around with the code.”

“Why?” She seemed curious more than anything. Curious was better than sad at least.

“As a birthday gift,” Levi said. “Just open the damn phone.”

Hange picked it up from her lap. A clicking sound as she unlocked the phone then silence and maybe a hint of humming as Hange fiddled with her phone. “I just download it right?”

“No shit Sherlock.” It was a stupid question. Hange had downloaded apk files more times than he could even count.

“Well, you said it’s a new app,” Hange said in defense.

“It is and it isn’t.” Levi moved his head, and it settled as a mix between a shake and a nod. “It’s not part of the original research plan… and I didn’t have much time to test it so it’s not perfect.” He unlocked his own phone and opened the emotions alarm. He stared at it for a second, hovering his thumb over the activate button then he looked over at Hange’s phone. “No need for an email. Just open it.”

“Nothing’s changed,” Hange said.

“Well, I added colors now,” Levi shrugged. “And I tried adding more emotions by playing around with the data, but who knows if they’ll show up.” At that point, he was self conscious enough that he saw it as an obligation enough to manage expectations.

He heard the familiar sound and he was sure Hange had activated it. He activated his own and leaned back on the swing and pushed just a little bit, enough to occupy himself while the alarm read them both.

Hange’s phone rang first.

“What did you get?”

“You added purple?” Hange asked. “What the hell does this mean?”

“Red and blue. So if red is anger and blue is sadness…” Levi started.

“Go on…” Hange said.

“I’m not a philosopher nor a psychologist. You say something.”

“Loathing?” She suggested. “A combination of anger and sadness… It sounds like loathing to me, or indignance.”

His own phone rang, he put the screen up. “I got green. Blue and yellow. Sad and happy. Can someone be sad and happy at the same time?”

“Acceptance,” Hange answered. “Or desire.”

“Those are opposites.” “Opposite sides of the spectrum but they’re the same feelings, they both involve happiness and sadness. Acceptance is sad happiness. Desire is happy sadness.”

He almost regretted asking for Hange’s feedback. He felt her speculation at the pit of his stomach and he only realized when his phone fell to the ground that he froze, lost his balance on the swing for a second. “This hasn’t been tested though so it’s all for fun.” A pathetic disclaimer but it didn’t seem to work. He looked up to see Hange was staring at him.

The tears had dried and her eyes were a bit brighter and she seemed more inquisitive than sad. “You know... " Hange started off slow,  breathless from amazement maybe. She was still fiddling, staring at her own screen. "This might be a good idea for the app. Let's test this again on Monday. Maybe we could add this."

“Maybe. We’re gonna have to revise the plan if we do.”

“Or we can keep it just a personal project but let’s think about it Monday.” Hange stood up. It’s getting late.” She put her hands up and stretched, swaying from side to side.

“Yeah, it’s getting cold too,” Levi said. Summer was ending soon.

“Happy Birthday to me,” she added, the venom from a while ago apparent. She pocketed her phone then held her sweater close. “Zeke said to wait a few weeks. I guess I’m gonna have to wait until next year to enjoy summer up north again. Maybe we can go south instead.” She kept her voice cheery, an attempt to lighten the mood.

A seemingly unsuccessful attempt. “You still wanna see summer up north?” Levi asked.

“I wouldn’t mind waiting. I guess what hurts about it is, I’ve been psyching myself up for days. I bought new clothes. I’ve been packing and I’ve already created a route for us,” Hange said.

“Yeah, you were talking about it a few days back, about how this one garden reminds you of Pemberley.” Levi asked.

“Well, last time I went there was a few years ago… There’s an area that reminds me of Pemberley, another one that reminds me of the Rosing garden---” Hange trailed off.

“I wanna see them all,” Levi said. He never finished the book and he wondered if she noticed. Regardless, he wanted to see it anyway. If there was something Hange could talk about for hours, something that had left her a lump of disappointment, he wanted to see it for himself.

“Really?” She said. “But with testing on monday… And you don’t seem like the type to---” Even under the dark night, Hange looked flustered, the pink in her cheeks still apparent.

“As long as we’re back before Monday right?” He didn’t know if she would agree. He didn’t expect her to but when Hange was already hovering such a prospect up in the air. When she had misunderstood that last statement to have been an invite, he might as well just play along. And enjoy it. “I don’t see any problem going with you,” he added that last part just to make it a little clearer.

"Like this weekend?" Hange asked, a look of disbelief on her face.

"This weekend." Levi nodded.

“Then let’s go. When do you think you’ll be ready?”

“We could leave right now.”

[emailserviceplatform-blog]

FLODESK IS 2020's MAILCHIMP

Are you looking for the best email service platform geared toward creatives and artists? We're in the same boat, or rather I was in the same boat as you, until I gave Flodesk a try. Finally, there is a product out there that measures up to the prettiness creatives want and the ease we crave. Life is hard. Creating beautiful emails shouldn't be. 

Time-Limited Bonus: I have a 50% off coupon for you guys too! Click here or use code REFERRAL at checkout.

I got late to the email marketing game. I kept focusing on the website that I neglected building a list until recently. Email marketing felt like a chore.  Like worse than detangling Christmas lights from the 90s. Urgh. Thanks to Flodesk, I feel joy when crafting emails. And I've been told that my emails are a joy to receive. 

I was lamenting how overpriced MailChimp had gotten and my fab friend Elisabeth mentioned it in a mastermind group, and we were ALL hooked. The first time I logged in, it was a breath of fresh air. A simple, clean interface focus on helping you craft your message beautifully. They are currently in beta and have a limited 30-day free trial. I'd suggest jumping on quick as you never know when this exclusive offer may end. I transferred all my subscribers over, cleaned house (decluttered for all you KonMari fans) and promptly cancelled my Mailchimp subscription. I touched the screen while logged into my Mailchimp account. Nope, no joy whatsoever. Waves back at their high-fiving monkey. Byeeeee

FLODESK'S EASY-TO-USE INTERFACE SPARKS JOY.

For visually inclined people like myself, we NEED to be able to include photos in our emails. (Shame on you Converkit). With Flodesk, you drag and drop the images. All the crazy resizing and optimization is handled for you. IT JUST WORKS! This platform has got to be the Apple of email service platforms. I mean yes, Converkit works if you can jump through a thousand and one hoops to get that one image loaded with the help of a whole block of code. But, hello world, it's 2020. There has to be a better way for creatives to send out visually stunning mailers. Oh, and you can even include your Instagram feed in the footer which AUTOMAGICALLY updates as you update your feed. HOW.COOL.IS.THAT?

THE TEMPLATES MAKE YOU LOOK FANCY AS.

Think of templates as Instagram Filters. Used right they make everything look stunning. And they made me want to send emails. I mean, it's so easy to make a pretty email! It's like getting that fabulous dress and wanting to meet up with your friends for a girl's night out so you can show off how sophisticated you look sipping your drink at the club. I am a smidge concerned that other emails will look similar to mine because the templates are too easy and too enjoyable NOT to use, but the massive library array of fonts and dazzling design options dampens that fear. 

I no longer hop over to Sketch or Canva. You can change fonts so easily within the interface, and it's so easy to customize the colour palette. I love it when new services make it simple to keep your brand on point.

There are also landing pages, pop-up forms, workflows and automation. I already added an unobtrusive pop-up to my website and saw six new email subscribers just in the first few hours. That's powerful stuff!

YOU CAN SEGMENT YOUR AUDIENCE IN FLODESK.

At the start of my business, this was not important to me, but as I've ventured into different facets of my biz, I realize just how much I need this feature. Most of my email list are folks interested in my sales funnels, but as a creative, there are so many other products and services I do which are not just sales funnels. You can segment your list into the different interests and send out emails to specific audiences, podcasts, interviews or only awesome design deals for clients who need a creative to guide them on their visuals. Everyone has different interests and want to hear about various things, so with the power of segments, I can target those people accurately without inundating their inbox. Convertkit does this too, but Convertkit fries my brain. It's overwhelming. Flodesk gets it just right. It makes complicated things look deceptively simple. It is the Apple of email marketing. It's a beautiful product WHICH JUST WORKS. Or something like that. All of you know what I mean.

ONE FLAT FEE — JUST ONE, ALL-INCLUSIVE PRICE!

Did you get shocked with Mailchimp's recent price adjustment? I know I did. It almost feels as if we're being punished for growing our lists. Hopefully, more email platforms take their lead and offer a "one-and-done" price, it's groundbreaking. With Flodesk, you get unlimited subscribers and can send an unlimited number of emails.

At $38 per month, it's already a HUGE STEAL, but if you use my coupon code REFERRAL, you'll save 50% and get in for just $19 a month! Click here to sign up for Flodesk so you can be grandfathered into this AWESOME price. I honestly don't know how long more they will have this offer.

https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vT1yyuUOsixERT7FmI8zct6-39A8YYE0XtkPVYV1ihMr-h9b1_-swOS8bAFObIGfA6A_9H3sH_srXOa/pub

[wanderer5ao3]

What We Learn Along The Way

Chapter One

The past few weeks had been awful. Izuku Midoriya sighed and scrubbed the heels of his hands over his tired eyes, barely suppressing the urge to yawn.

He glanced over at the clock and groaned. The bright red numbers taunting him with how little sleep he would get tonight. He hasn’t been able to go to bed at a decent time for the past few days, overwhelming stress feeding into his overcrowded brain and making it hard to function, let alone flourish.

He rolled his chair away from his disaster of a desk and rose to his feet, sluggishly making his way to the kitchen. He didn’t turn on any of the lights, his body moving through the small apartment on muscle memory.

There was nothing worth eating in the fridge, same as the last three times he’d checked. He half smiled, huffing out a small laugh. Not sure why I bothered, it’s not like something’s going to magically appear.

He stretched his arms high over his head, grunting as he felt several spots on his back pop. His body ached from the hours he spent hunched at his desk making lesson plans, replying to emails, and grading papers. This was Izuku’s third year teaching third grade at Mayfield Elementary School and he was so close to tenure he could taste it.

Normally he would have all this work done before he left the school, but there was an especially problematic student in his class that was making his life incredibly difficult. They were only two weeks into the school year and there were several meetings with the student and his legal guardian, not to mention the IEP meetings, Principal visits, and trips to the guidance counselors and school resource officer.

Midoriya was at his wits end- he had never dealt with such a destructive force of nature before. Kota Izumi was a very difficult child to reach out to, and not for lack of trying. Izuku was a kind, patient man and did his best to accommodate the needs of his students but it was becoming increasingly difficult to give the other nineteen students the attention they deserved when a single student consumed his time.

Not to mention the fact that Kota often lashed out, pushing classmates, throwing books, even going as far as to punch Izuku in the groin when he tried to pull Kota off another student.

The man grimaced at the memory and grabbed a half empty bag of Doritos from the cabinet. He made his way back to his bedroom, sliding down into the uncomfortable black rolling chair. Staring at the mess of papers covering his desk he sighed and started to sort them into separate piles, paperclipping them together. He was almost able to see the top of his beaten-up wooden desk again when his computer chirped at him.

Frowning, he reached for the mouse and pulled up his email. His large, green eyes widened when he saw it was from the Principal and he quickly opened it.

Kota Izumi IEP Update To: MidoriyaIzuku@Mayfield.edu Cc: BakugoKatsuki@UA.edu From: Shouta Aizawa Subj: Kota Izumi IEP Update

Izuku,

I received confirmation this evening that the special aide Ms. Sosaki requested for Kota has been approved and selected. He will be at the school tomorrow to fill out paperwork and tour the school. He will begin working with Kota tomorrow afternoon under the supervision of the guidance counselor, so Kota will not be in class after lunch. Both Kota and his new aide will be present in class on Friday so be aware there may be an adjustment period. I expect frequent reports on the effectiveness of the aide in keeping Kota in check while allowing you to maintain control over your other students.

Principal Aizawa

 Izuku smiled as he typed out a cheerful response. They had been talking about bringing in someone to deal specifically with Kota for the past week. Kota’s aunt had been very insistent that whoever they brought in was specialized in dealing with the extreme aggression brought on by the recent loss of both his parents.

Principal Aizawa never mentioned the aide’s name, but Izuku just assumed it was the email address that had been Cc’d. He glanced at it again and smiled when he saw his Alma Mater, UA University.

He had finished top of his class in May of 2016 with a Bachelors degree in education and got the job at Mayfield immediately after graduation, starting his first year as a teacher that fall.

He felt a wave of relief wash over him. If the aide graduated from UA as well, he must be good. It was the best university in America and had a very small acceptance rate. He felt better too, knowing that they would already have something in common.

The aide’s primary focus would be Kota, but Izuku couldn’t deny his excitement at having another adult around to give him a mental break from the litany of questions that his eight and nine-year-old students constantly threw his way. He loved his job dearly, but you can only hear the same jokes repeated so many times before you questioned your sanity.

Izuku hit send and closed his laptop, blinking at the sudden darkness. He slowly made his way over to his bed, shedding his clothes as he walked until he was only wearing a pair of dark grey boxer briefs. He flopped down on the bed, the mattress’s old springs squealing in protest, and surrounded himself in his dark blue comforter.

His eyes were only closed for a moment but when he opened them again the room was slowly filling with the soft light of dawn. He bolted upright and reached for his phone, panic gripping his chest.

Groaning, he flopped back down, watching as the numbers went from 6:59 to 7:00 and his alarm shattered the silence. With a roll of his eyes, he made his way to the bathroom and started to get ready for the day. He couldn’t do much about the dark shadows that were starting to form under his eyes, so he focused his attention on the unruly mass of greenish black curls that were tangled and puffy from tossing and turning during the night.

He let the hot water relax his muscles, closing his eyes and relishing the feeling. He ran a large comb through his hair after he conditioned it and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his hips. He wiped the fog from the mirror and sprayed the leave in conditioner his mom had always insisted he use in his damp curls, then left them to air dry.

Izuku mentally thanked his principal for having such a casual dress code for the teachers. He hated wearing collared shirts and working with third graders his nice clothes would just be destroyed anyway. Putting on a pair of dark denim skinny jeans and a white t-shirt that had the word t-shirt written in black across the chest, he then threw on a grey cardigan that was a few sizes too big and pushed the sleeves up to his elbows.

The final touch were his red high-top sneakers with black laces, his favorite shoes since his mom bought them for him in high school. It was such a small thing, but it helped him feel close to her since she passed away when he started college.

His father was never in his life, so he hadn’t felt the loss for him like he did when the cancer took his mom. It was the little things that would remind him of her, they made him smile softly at her memory and helped him feel a little less lonely.

He grabbed a chocolate pop-tart as he headed out the door and slung his laptop bag over his shoulder, patting his pockets to make sure his wallet, keys, and phone were all accounted for. He made his way to the elevator, not wanting to take the stairs down from the fifth floor of his apartment building.

His eyes saw without seeing, his morning uneventful and routine. He wasn’t much of a morning person to begin with, but his recent lack of adequate sleep had been throwing him for a loop.

He was hurled back into reality when he tried to pull into what he thought was an empty parking space only to find that a black and orange motorcycle was hidden by the surrounding cars. Slamming on the brakes a second too late, the front of his car ran into the back tire of the motorcycle, causing the bike to lurch forward.

A tall, leather jacket clad figure jumped back, throwing his arms up in an aggressive way and turned towards Izuku’s car. Green eyes widening in horror, Izuku covered his mouth with his hands and took several deep breaths as he realized what happened and tried not to panic.

The tall figure made his way to the driver’s side door, tearing off the black helmet and revealing spiky ash-blond hair and fierce red eyes. The man’s face was pulled into a furious scowl and the window muffled the sounds of his angry screams.

Izuku’s hand shook slightly as he unbuckled his seatbelt and went to open the door, requests for forgiveness flowing from his lips in rapid succession. The blonde man ripped open the door before Izuku got the chance and grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt, pulling him up and slamming his back against the car.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM YOU PIECE OF SHIT? WHY THE HELL WEREN’T YOU PAYING ATTENTION?”

The blond’s deep voice carried across the empty parking lot and rang in Izuku’s ears as he tried to apologize but the man was speaking over him.

“I’m sorry I’m so, so, SO sorry, I don’t know what happened, I thought the spot was empty and I just pulled in without thinking. Did I wreck your bike? Are you okay? I’m so incredibly sorry…” Izuku had trailed off, mumbling a steady stream of apologies as tears trickled down his freckled cheeks.

The blond paused, confusion passing over his face before being replaced by annoyance. He released his grip on Izuku’s shirt and quickly made his way back to the bike, checking it over for damage. Izuku stood nervously by his car, the back half of it still blocking the aisle.

He didn’t know what to do so he started to run his fingers through his hair only to inwardly curse himself for messing up his curls. When the blonde stomped back towards him, Izuku backed up into the side of his car, preparing himself for another round of angry cursing.

The man opened his mouth only to be cut off by the sound of a long, flat chime that signaled that school was about to start. His eyes hardened, scowling so deeply it almost looked like a snarl.

“You’re lucky nothing’s damaged and I have somewhere to be. You better hope I never see your fucking face again.”

The man stormed off and Izuku exhaled, deflating slightly. With shaking hands, he opened the car door and sat down, reversing from his poor parking job and found a new spot a few aisles over. He grabbed his laptop bag and ran inside, barely making it into his classroom before the late bell.

Despite the morning's rough start, class was normal. Kota was difficult but not as bad as usual. Eri had a meltdown when some of the children made fun of the birthmark on her forehead, a small triangular mark that was light brown in color. Izuku pulled her over to a corner and got down on her level, asking her what was wrong.

“They said it looked like a horn, and only monsters have horns!”

Izuku looked away for a moment before an idea popped into his head. “That’s not true, it doesn’t look like a horn Eri. But did you know that there are magical creatures that have horns?"

The girl raised her head to look at her teacher, her small hands fiddling with the long white hair that sat in twin braids over her shoulders. “No, what kind of magical creature?” She sniffled as she spoke.  

Izuku smiled, and leaned closer, as if he was letting her in on an important secret. “Unicorns!”

The girl’s face lit up and she started to giggle. “So, if my mark makes me a unicorn, what do your marks make you?”

Izuku paused for a moment, thinking about what mythical creatures had large amounts of freckles on their face and body. “I’m not sure Eri, why don’t you think about it during lunch and tell me later!”

The girl cheerfully agreed and walked back to her desk. Once everyone was calm again he went back to the lesson. A little while later the bell rang. The students grabbed their money and lunch boxes from their cubbies and Izuku led them single file to the lunchroom. Once the lunch monitors counted all twenty students, Izuku made his way to the teacher’s lounge to have his own lunch.

“IZUKU! Man, you look like crap! You haven’t been sleeping well again, have you?”

A loud, friendly voice jerked Izuku back to reality. The green haired man laughed self-depreciatingly and rubbed the back of his neck. Turning to face the large, muscular redhead who was leaning against the employee fridge, Izuku noticed a few other teachers seated at the small circular table.

The redhead who had spoken to him was Eijirou Kirishima, the gym teacher. He was around 6’5” and pure muscle, towering over Izuku’s 5’9” frame. Izuku was by no means scrawny, he worked out when he could and ran quite often. He just didn’t build bulk muscle as easily as Eijirou did and was much leaner than the redhead.

Glancing back at the table he saw Ochaco Uraraka, a petite young woman with rosy cheeks and short brown hair. She has an incredibly bubbly attitude and her students love how silly she can be.

She taught third grade as well, along with Iida Tenya, a tall man with glasses and blue-black hair, neatly styled in a conservative cut. He was rather strict at times but his students all respected him, and they knew they could always come to him for help.

Then there was Mina Ashido, the art teacher. She had wild pink curls that were never frizzy which brought out Izuku’s petty jealous side and she had lots of dark eyeliner smudged around her bright yellow eyes. She was very interesting to look at, often wearing excessive amounts of glitter and blush, but she managed to make it work. Most of the kids thought she was strange but Mina had a small cult following of students who idolized her.

“It’s been a rough start to the year, most of my students are great but I have one in particular that is giving me a hard time.” Izuku sighed, leaning against the counter that faced the trio seated at the table.

“Unfortunately, dealing with the disciplinary issues is causing me to fall behind on my grading and lesson plans. Which is why I’ve been staying up late to try and catch up. Heh, I wish my lunch break was long enough to take a nap if I’m being honest!”

The green haired teacher had opened the fridge and was searching for his lunchbox when he realized that it was in his fridge at home. Groaning, he swung the door shut and made his way to the table, claiming the empty chair next to Ochaco.

Ochaco placed a hand on his shoulder. “Izuku, did you forget your lunch again?” The young man smiled sheepishly at his friend as she shook her head and softly sighed. She ignored his protests and placed half of her sandwich, her apple, and half of her cookie in front of him. Izuku smiled and thanked her. As he began to eat, Mina went back to the story she had been telling before he came into the lounge.

“So, after Kyoka sent the kids home with the recorders and workbooks she gets like, five calls from pissed off parents complaining about the noise and how dare she assign something so annoying bla bla bla. I don’t know why the parents complain, she sends out an email and sends a note home with each kid.”

Ochaco nodded her head emphatically. “Right! I hate it when they complain about stupid things that we go out of our way to inform them about! Like, no matter how many emails, notes in their planners, or reminder slips I send out I always have at least one or two parents who freak out and claim they had no idea our school had a science fair and that the students would have to participate for a grade.”

Izuku was listening, but his thoughts were on the owner of the motorcycle he had rear-ended this morning. He had been so focused on teaching that he was barely able to think about it but now that he was going over the event he was getting anxious.

 Who was that man? Was his bike actually okay? He didn’t seem like the type of guy to lie to make me feel better, but I’m not sure. I can’t believe I was so out of it this morning, I really need to get it together. I even forgot my own lunch.... That guy was strong. I wasn’t expecting to get man-handled this morning…but I might have deserved it a little for running into his motorcycle.

He snapped out of his thoughts when Iida and Ochaco started to get up from the table and throw away their trash. Izuku glanced up at the clock and sucked in a breath, turning back to his half-eaten lunch and scarfing it down.

The trio chatted cheerfully as they made their way to the lunch room to pick up their students. Izuku was pulled aside by the lunch aide, who informed him that Kota had been taken to the Principal’s office to meet his in-class assistant. Relief washed over the teacher as he collected his remaining nineteen students and led them back to the classroom.

Read more at https://archiveofourown.org/works/15906747

[erminia484blog-blog]

Imvu what if you watch too many videos for credits check out today

Tap Into Millions Of Engaged IMVU Users imvu credits generator eickenbusch.info Unity Weblog

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I checked out IMVU once and did not like it at all. The avatars and the environment are cartoonish a lot additional so than in SL. Even though you can customize your avatar to a certain degree, most of them look alike to me other than for a couple of specifics such as hair color or style and so on. Although SL avatars can look a lot alike also if somebody is relying on prepared created avatar parts, it seemed to me you have a a great deal greater possibility of searching far more person in SL, like humans do in RL.

How To Start A Business With IMVU CREDITS

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The main distinction is that IMVU is a 3d avatar chat software, and Second Life is a virtual globe. IMVU you open an IM to speak to a person in your space, or you can go to a public area (i.e. a chat room) and speak to several folks there as they come and go. Second Life you have a entire planet where you can shop, go purchasing, go to clubs, and so on. Without having ever getting to open up a new window or tab to do so. Second Life has a great deal much less limits than IMVU does.

[charllieeldridge]

11 Unique Gifts Every Traveller Will Love (and Use)

Finding travel gifts for your friends and family who like to hit the road can be a daunting task. Not only do you need to find a gift that they’ll like, but something they’ll actually use. What do you give someone who lives out of a backpack? What can you buy your friend who’s hitting the road for a year? Definitely not a piece of furniture or artwork!

As travellers ourselves who have been on the road for 10 years now, we’ve got the inside scoop on useful and fun items for travel that would make great presents. Whether it’s a birthday, Christmas or a going away gift you’re after, you’ll find some ideas in this article.

In this post, I’ll list 11 unique, fun and practical travel gifts for your special someone.

1. Tinggly

What better gift for someone who loves to travel than giving an experience. When it comes to travel gifts, this unique idea from Tinggly is a good bet. Visit their website and choose a category that’s relevant to the recipient of the gift – “Key to Europe”, “Perfect For Him”, “Perfect For Her”, “Merry Christmas”, “Ultimate Collection”, “Bucketlist”, etc.

  In each category are numerous tours and experiences for your travel loving friend to choose from (in some cases, there are over 700 options). Once they’ve chosen the event that interests them, they have 5 years to redeem it. Experiences and tours are available worldwide, so just ensure that the gift you choose is offered in the country the recipient is going to.

When it comes to travel gifts, you really can’t go wrong with a wine tasting in Tuscany, a helicopter flight over Las Vegas, a day at the spa in Bali or volcano exploration in Hawaii! As travellers ourselves, we can say we definitely prefer memorable moments over possessions.

You can opt to send a physical box to the gift recipient, or send a voucher by email. Click here to learn more about this fun gift idea.

2. JBL Portable Speakers

We’ve tried numerous bluetooth portable speakers over the years, and as far as affordable electronic travel gifts go, these speakers are the best. Everyone has a smartphone these days and connecting to these JBL speakers is easy. Plus, it weighs in at just over 1lb, making it practical for travellers.

Many people like to listen to music while they’re at the beach, chilling out by the pool, or having a relaxing night playing cards with new friends. Bluetooth speakers are a must.

We have the JBL Flip 3 and love the crisp sound this compact speaker gives off, and it’s actually quite loud. However, there’s a new model out now – the JBL Flip 4 and it’s waterproof! Click here to read reviews and compare prices on Amazon.

*Update: December, 2019 – we just purchased the latest model, which is the JBL Flip 5. It’s a little bit bigger, but the sound is great and they are waterproof! Great for taking to the beach or pool.

3. Handpresso Portable Espresso

Not only is this travel gift great for those who love to wander, but it’s an excellent idea for coffee addicts.

If you’ve gone on a long-term trip before, or if you travel on a budget, you’ll know that the coffee available at hostels and guest houses is usually sub-par filter coffee. To get that real latte or americano espresso coffee, you would need to purchase one from a cafe – and to a traveller, that’s an addition on the budget each day that not many want to spend.

Luckily, there’s the Handpresso!

This portable espresso machine can be taken on the go. It’s small, compact and all you need is some hot water (which is found in basically every accommodation), and some espresso grounds (which you can pick up at the grocery store).

You simply add the grounds to a little pod, add some hot water, pump up the machine to build up some pressure, press the release button and voila, a shot of espresso appears. You can then add more hot water to your cup to make it less strong, or, add milk like we do to have a latte.

The only thing is that you do need to be fairly strong in order to pump up the machine (men will have no issue, and women with good upper body strength will be fine!)

We’ve used our Handpresso machine in apartments we’ve rented on Airbnb, while camping, and in various hotels around the world. Click here to see reviews and compare prices on Amazon.

4. Lush Body Care

Whether it’s a man or a woman you’re trying to buy a travel gift for, with products for both sexes, and unisex items, Lush has you covered. During our recent trip to Chicago, we discovered this brand and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Lush products are vegetarian, handmade and nothing is tested on animals. Not only that, but the ingredients are practically all natural (with some safe synthetics), and for the responsible traveller in your life, they’ll be happy to know that many of the items don’t have any packaging.

When you’re thinking about travel gifts, consider the shampoo, conditioner and soap (all of which are solids and have zero packaging). Lush has shampoo and conditioner “bars”, which have no wrapping. They come in a reusable tin can (which you purchase separately) and are perfect for travellers for many reasons.

There’s no plastic waste and since it’s not a liquid, it can be easily brought on board a flight – great for those who fly carry-on. Plus, it takes up less space in luggage than a shampoo or conditioner bottle.

Nick and I both use the “Honey I Washed My Hair” Shampoo Bar and the “Big” Conditioner Bar, and I use the Ultrabland Facial Cleanser as well. I love all 3 products. Click here to learn more about Lush and to purchase items online.

5. Travel Hammock

Travel hammocks are great for those are looking to sleep under the stars, or on remote beaches. It’s also great for campers or for those who like to do some multi-day trekking (provided there are trees around to hang the hammock from!).

A travel hammock is also an excellent travel gift for those who just plan to backpack around. Setting up a hammock on the balcony of your beachfront hut, or bringing it to the beach for a day of chilling out between two palm trees is the ultimate in relaxation.

There are numerous travel hammocks to choose from, just make sure you get one that is lightweight and rolls up into a small package. Travellers like small items! The ENO Eagles Nest Outfitters and Arbor Creek hammocks have great reviews on Amazon. But, you can click here to compare prices and reviews on numerous travel hammocks.

6. Bluffworks Clothing for Men

If you’re looking for travel gifts for men, Bluffworks brand of clothing is a good option. Why? Because they are quick dry and don’t wrinkle, which is a huge issue for travellers. For business travellers, or those who jet-set, having a nice set of clothing in your luggage is essential. Even if the guy you’re buying a gift for plans on budget backpacking around the world, it’s always a good idea to have 1 nice dress shirt and 1 nice pair of pants.

You never know what can happen on the road. We’ve been randomly invited to weddings, found ourselves in the area when a new bar was opening up, and were invited to enjoy a 7 course fine dining meal. Shorts and a t-shirt simply wouldn’t meet the dress code.

Nick has owned the “Original” pants in charcoal for about 6 years now, and he wears them whenever there’s a “fancy” event happening – and they never wrinkle. Click here to learn more about Bluffworks clothes.

Bluffworks pants in action at a wedding!

7. Headphones / Earbuds

Having a set of bluetooth speakers is great, but having your own set of headphones is a must when on the road – they’re incredibly useful. Listening to music and podcasts while bumping along on a bus, chatting to a friend on video calling, or for those flight days when you want to watch a movie, headphones are a must-have and make great travel gifts.

Look for earbuds or headphones that offer noise cancellation and a mic, and also make sure that the earbuds you’re purchasing are compatible with your travel friend’s smartphone or tablet. For example, with the iPhone X, the headphones actually connect via a lightning cord, so regular headphones wouldn’t work.

We have Meze earbuds which give off a unique and incredible sound, and actually, they offer different sized silicone buds, which is great for those with small ears (me), or big ears (Nick). There are numerous option available when it comes to earbuds. Click here to check out Meze and click here to compare other brands and prices.

*Update December, 2019: We now both have Bluetooth Apple AirPods and although we can’t use them when connecting to the TV screens on airplanes, we watch our shows on our smartphones or tablet using them. Plus, when walking and working out, it’s nice to not have cords in the way. Click here to compare the different styles of AirPods. 

8. Carry Case for Earbuds and Cords

There’s nothing worse than getting a new pair of earbuds or a new smartphone charge cord and have it start to fall apart. Sadly, this happens quite often to us and it’s most likely because we just toss our cords into our bags, or into a drawer and don’t really take care of them. Regardless of whether or not you’ve purchased earbuds as a travel gift, consider getting a carry case for charging cords.

I’ve just found out about this product called the “Nest” which is a silicone carry case. This practical item is extremely affordable and incredibly useful! Click here to learn more about the Nest. *Update December, 2019: While most people have AirPods these days, this “nest” is still a great idea for lightening cords which always get tangled in purses and backpacks.

9. prAna Clothes

Another clothing company that is an excellent travel gift. This time, however, it’s for both men and women. The travel, adventure and yoga clothes that prAna makes are practical, stylish and ethical. This brand cares about fair trade and sustainability.

I personally wear the Halle pant on about 95% of our flight days and I’ve always worn them when trekking – they’re stretchy and comfy. I also own a sporty tank top, a cotton t-shirt and a hooded sweater, while Nick has a polo shirt, a dress polo and some loose cotton yoga pants. The clothes have lasted us for 6 years so far and are still going strong!

I wholeheartedly recommend this brand as a gift for the traveller in your life. Click here to see prAna products on Amazon. Or, click here to head to their website. *Pro-tip, prices are cheaper on Amazon.

Stopping for a water break while trekking Torres del Paine in Chile – wearing Halle Pant

*Update December, 2019: I fell off my bike and got a hole in my Halle Pants that I’m wearing in the photo above. So, after around 6 years I finally had to purchase a new pair, this time I went with black but in the same style. And, they are still built just as well as when I purchased my first pair 6 years ago. Also, for those women who are tall like I am (5’10”), these pants come in a “tall” length!

10. Water Purification Products

When it comes to travel gifts, this might not sound like the coolest idea out there, but it can be a lifesaver and is something that travellers need to have in their bags.

When travelling to more offbeat destinations where the drinking water is questionable, it’s imperative that water from the tap is purified before being consumed. Similarly, when you’re camping, cycling or trekking in the wilderness and the water source isn’t safe, it’ll need to be purified. We used a SteriPen when trekking in remote locations in Kyrgyzstan and it worked very well.

Not only do products like SteriPen or Lifestraw remove harmful bacteria and microbes from water, but travellers don’t need to purchase bottled water, which helps to save cash and the environment. There are a few brands out there, but SteriPen and Lifestraw are at the top.

Camping and trekking in remote destinations? Water purification is a must

With SteriPen, you simply fill a (reusable) bottle with 1 liter of water and “stir” the pen around for 89 seconds. As you stir, it gives off UV rays that kill harmful bacteria. Once you see a smiley face on the device, the water is safe to drink. There are different models of SteriPen, some charge via USB, others with batteries.

The Lifestraw is only good for one person as it is a personal straw, which has a filter inside of it. It’s small and lightweight and is a good option for drinking straight from streams or puddles in emergency backcountry situations – it also filters out debris. I think of it as more of a survival tool, which could be a cool travel gift if someone is going on an expedition. Click here to learn more about the SteriPens available and click here to learn more about Lifestraw.

11. Games (fun travel gifts!)

If you’re looking for fun travel gifts, then obviously purchasing a game (or 2) is a good idea! If the person is travelling solo, then games for 1 or more are preferable but consider games that can be played with a group over a few beers.

We always have games in our backpacks and play when we’re waiting for flights, for our meals to show up, or when we’re in our accommodation. Keep in mind that travel games need to be somewhat small and lightweight.

For us, our go-to travel games are Cribbage, a simple deck of cards (to play shit head, rummy, bullshit, twos…and numerous drinking games!), pass the pigs, dice for playing Yahtzee.

Our latest purchase is Bananagrams which is kind of like Scrabble but without the board, and it’s more fun. Other hilarious adult games include Cards Against Humanity (a great way to get to know people – and their sick humour), and The Game Of Nasty Things (travellers would just bring the cards and not the actual box, obviously). We recently purchased Skip Bo and played it a lot together during our trip to Ecuador and Peru.

Bonus #12: Mini Projector Screen

We recently picked up a cool Aaxa mini-projector and we’ve been using it a lot. At 400 lumens, it’s bright enough to display with a little bit of ambient light and with a resolution of 720p it’s surprisingly crisp, even when displayed at 75″ on a wall.

The best part? It literally fits in the palm of your hand! This little thing would be an ideal holiday gift for that person who travels on a budget and loves watching Netflix. It’s affordable, sleek, useful and very portable.

Happy Gift Giving!

There you have it, 12 fun, unique and (more importantly) practical travel gifts. In reality, no matter what you give your travelling friend, I’m sure they will love it. But hopefully this article gave you some good ideas for products that can actually be taken on the road. Every time your friend uses your gift while they’re away, they’ll think of you. Happy gift giving!

Are there some cool travel gifts that I missed? Leave a comment below!

*Note: this post contains some affiliate links to Amazon. If you purchase a product using our link, we receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!

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new employer says I can’t wear my wedding ring, does it look bad to send emails late at night, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My new employer won’t let me wear my wedding ring

I’m getting ready to start my new job in a fast-moving but rather conservative industry. I’m starting as an assistant but have the possibility of advancing up to management throughout my career here. Last week, I had a meeting with the woman who is going to be my supervisor and we finalized things like my salary, work hours, etc. She also spent a significant amount of time making sure I understood the dress code, as it is very strict, even stricter than many other offices. There were things like only certain colors of clothing, absolutely no nail polish, minimal makeup in only natural colors, no heels over two inches but no “casual” shoes either, etc.

One of their rules is that, while some jewelry is allowed, it can only be either gold or silver in color and absolutely nothing else. Here’s the thing: My wedding ring is purple (amethyst encrusted). My husband got this ring for me because he knows I dislike gold and silver jewelry and prefer colors, and it’s also my birthstone. My supervisor pointed it out during our meeting and said, unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to wear it during work hours. I was a bit taken aback but did not argue.

Now that I’m getting ready to start, I don’t know what to do. On one hand, rules are rules. On the other hand, it’s my wedding ring and it’s very precious to me and I never take it off. I also don’t want to go out and buy some arbitrary silver ring to wear in place that means nothing to me. It would seem silly to give up this great job over a ring, but I just don’t know. If it were any other piece of jewelry I wouldn’t care, but not this one. What should I do?

That’s a ridiculous rule and I can fathom any legitimate business need for it, other than that they have a need to be overly controlling.

I’m curious to know what would happen if you say, “I understand your rules about jewelry, but this is my wedding ring and I don’t take it off. I’m certainly willing to abide by the dress code, but it’s not an option for me to remove my wedding ring. What’s the best way for me to proceed, given that?” They may say that yes, they’re going to require you remove the ring if you want to work there, but I’d like to make them say it out loud because it’s ridiculous.

But if they do, then you’ll have to decide if you’re willing to remove it for work every day (and also if you’re willing to work for people who give adults rules for rules’ sake).

2. Does it look bad to send emails late at night?

I have a question about a seemingly minor behavior – time of emails or general tech correspondence. I have a work phone for a new job, and my work email is web-based, so could be accessed on any computer. So my question is, how bad does it look to send/respond to an email after work hours? I am generally forgetful, and the smaller a task the more likely I am to forget. Randomly, at 10 p.m. I will remember, “oh shoot, I didn’t tell Jane that Wednesday doesn’t work and Thursday would be better.” How bad is it to send these emails after hours? Am I overthinking it, or will it look really unprofessional for people to have emails that are time stamped at 10:30 p.m.?

It’s usually fine.

If you’re doing it a lot, it’s possible that your manager might at some point check in with you about your workload and your hours in order to make sure that you’re not overloaded and/or to make sure you know you don’t have to respond to emails late at night. But if you choose to do it because it makes your life easier, it’s fine.* Some people do, some people don’t, and it’s generally no big deal. (That said, there are some offices where this would stand out as unusual for their culture, but even then, if it’s just occasional it still shouldn’t be a big deal.)

* Caveat: If you’re non-exempt, you’re supposed to be paid for that time, so that’s something your manager might care about.

3. My husband says he can’t call the daycare run by my employer

We’re enrolling our children at the daycare that is run by the hospital where I work. We had a question about the kids’ physicals for the enrollment, and I suggested that my husband call the daycare since he had some free time. He said that he didn’t want to do that because the daycare is a benefit provided by my employer, and it would be comparable to me trying to set up health insurance through his employer. He went on to say that they would wonder why I wasn’t the one calling and that it could get back to my manager and reflect poorly on me.

I thought this was crazy, and no one would think any more than that this is a dad with a question about his kids’ daycare. It wasn’t like he would be asking about payroll deduction or anything related to my job. Which one of us is right?

You are.

This would be like if your kids were insured through your husband’s work plan and you thought you couldn’t talk to their doctors or take them to medical appointments because the insurance was through his employer.

This is a daycare. It would be really odd if they were only supposed to talk to one of the parents of the kids in their care. It’s 100% fine for him to contact them. If it somehow got back to your manager (which would be odd to begin with, because why would anyone take up your manager’s time reporting to her on the minutia of her employees’ daycare arrangement?), she would care precisely zero amount. Tell him to make the call.

4. Why can’t I take unpaid leave?

have a question regarding “required PTO usage.” Let me start by saying that I work in Texas, for a “not-for-profit” ministry (nursing care home associated with a church). I am a non-exempt hourly employee. I work a set rotation, same set of days on/off in a row.

My employer requires us to utilize our PTO hours for any and every request off we submit if the day in question falls on one of our regularly scheduled days. In addition, if we call in sick or can’t make it to work, we are required to utilize our PTO hours for missed time on one of our regularly scheduled days. I’ve been told in the past that this is to inconvenience the employee because the facility has been inconvenienced by our call-in.

I feel that my PTO is to be used however I deem fit (within the law) as it is my PTO and if I want to take an unpaid day off or I call in, I should be able to save my PTO for when I want to use it. Honestly, to prevent my check from being short I will probably use my PTO hours anyway, but I guess I don’t like being told that I absolutely have to, especially when I would prefer to take a one-off smaller check this time to save my PTO for my vacation time.

Can you clarify the law on this policy so that I can provide it to my employer in the possible case that I am entitled to take an unpaid day?

What they’re doing is actually legal — and pretty normal! It’s very common for an employer to not allow unpaid time off and to require that you use PTO when you miss work. The reason for that isn’t generally to inconvenience you, but because they hire you to be at work a certain number of days per year. For example, if you get four weeks off a year, they assume you’ll be there the other 48 weeks — and they plan their staffing accordingly. If everyone can just take unpaid leave whenever they want, in addition to their PTO, then suddenly they have people present for fewer person-hours per year than they planned on and they can end up understaffed. (Sometimes you can take unpaid leave for exceptional situations, like sickness or an emergency or even a wedding, but it’s common not to offer it in less extraordinary circumstances.)

5. Should I be the one to make sure my staff knows when people will be out?

I have a team of three who I manage at an off-site office. Normally, this is totally fine and they are a strong, autonomous team. However, something came up recently and I’m not sure what I should do.

“Endora” asked for Thursday off. “Tabitha” asked for Friday off. Both requests were granted and added to the system. On Thursday, “Samantha” called and asked where Endora was. I said that Endora was taking a planned day off and that Tabitha should have things under control. But Tabitha hadn’t shown up yet, and despite the days being communicated in advance and marked in the system, Samantha had no idea that Endora would be out.

The way I see it, we have a system in place for dealing with vacation, and it’s not up to me to make sure the three of them discuss their vacation days with one another. It’s up to them to use the system and communicate with each other about their days off, as needed. Or should I expect to take a hands-on role in making sure that everyone is aware of everyone else’s vacation time? That just seems like micromanaging to me. At the same time, this was kind of a mess to deal with, and I don’t want a repeat.

You don’t need to be the one making sure everyone is aware of each other’s vacation time, but you do need to be the one setting the expectation that others will do it. In other words, you need to tell your staff that it’s their responsibility to inform their colleagues ahead of time when they’ll be out. If they’re not in the habit of doing that, and it seems like they might not be, then it would be smart for the next few months to remind them about it whenever you approve vacation time. (You might take this opportunity to think about whether there’s anything else that you want them to do ahead of being out as well, like set up an out-of-office auto-responder or so forth.)

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update: should I take off my engagement ring for job interviews?

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from Ask a Manager https://ift.tt/2LXTFBh

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Traveller letters: The truth about the 'stupid American' stereotype

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/traveller-letters-the-truth-about-the-stupid-american-stereotype/

Traveller letters: The truth about the 'stupid American' stereotype

There are a lot of overweight Americans – just like Australia. 

STARS AND GRIPES

I am writing in response to recent letters in Traveller letters describing travellers’ experiences with ignorant Americans.

I spent three weeks travelling around California, Utah and Arizona whilst based on the outskirts of Healdsburg in northern California.

During that time I encountered many ordinary Americans, none of whom had never heard of Australia, confused Australia with Austria or believed that kangaroos hopped down George Street, Sydney.

Yurts, Tash Rabat Valley, Kyrgyzstan. Photo: Alamy

Without exception their faces lit up when I told them that I came from Australia. A large percentage of the people I encountered had fathers who had served in Australia during the war.

I had set off for the US believing the stereotypical American was fat, ignorant, badly dressed and loud. All of these proved to be false, though I did observe an awful lot of overweight Americans which seemed to prove the truth of that stereotype until I returned home and found that there appeared to be just as many overweight people here.

In my travels I have found national stereotypes to be generally false and would urge travellers not to judge a whole nation by a the deficiencies of a few.

You will now receive updates from Traveller Newsletter

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Michael Cullis, Denistone, NSW

LETTER OF THE WEEK: TAKING SILK

In 2010 I was lucky enough to take time to travel in western China and the Silk Road countries of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on a small group tour with World Expeditions.

Reading your cover story, “The Stan Plan” (Traveller, August 4) brought back great memories of that trip.

While I had long anticipated the exotic nature of Kashgar and the west of China, I was smitten by the soaring snowcapped mountains, cold, clean rushing mountain streams and lush green landscapes of Kyrgyzstan (pictured), the landscapes so beautiful you could be forgiven for thinking that you were somewhere in the Swiss Alps.

Being treated to a musical soiree, during a fantastic lunch, by locals using their traditional musical instruments and participating in felt making with locals were absolute highlights. Uzbekistan too was a highlight with the beautiful madrassas, markets and history of Genghis Khan, Timur, and Tamerlane. The Registan, although largely re-built was humbling, and the locals were welcoming and friendly. Our guide who was an Uzbeki working for Ak-Sai Travel, was absolutely outstanding but the thing that stood out was the culture.

It was not a luxurious tour. It was gritty, dirty and dusty with long travel days but was jam-packed full of history, culture and eye-watering landscapes and one which I will always remember very fondly.

Vicki Copping, Oatley, NSW

TOMB DOOM

Make of it what you will: as stated  in “The Stan Plan”, the Soviets opened Timur’s crypt in Samarkand in 1941, despite a warning we were told of disaster if the tomb was violated.

Two hours later Samarkand was advised that Nazi Germany had invaded Russia.

Greg Cornwell, Yarralumla, ACT

TASH DASH

I’m just back from Uzbekistan and further to your cover story, Samarkand and Bukhara are more easily reached by fast (230km/h) train from Tashkent.

Rural roads range from terrible to high-quality freeways. Nukus has a gallery full of Soviet art but beware of sandstorms as they contain toxic chemicals left from Soviet weapons testing around the largely dried up Aral Sea.

Stay in the old part of Khiva – walking  at night was wonderful. The country was safe, clean, had no graffiti and the locals were very welcoming.   

Peter Milne, Ormond, VIC

BETTER SHRED THAN READ

We were alerted during recent travels to not carelessly discard boarding passes, due to the risk of privacy breach from the encoded information.

Confirming this, a simple barcode scanning app showed the six digit e-ticket code of an international boarding pass, which if coupled with a surname grants access to relevant aspects of the itinerary and whatever personal information has been entered online.

Our boarding passes are now retained for shredding.

Michael Daly, Hampton, VIC

TAKES THE CAKE

Nina Karnikowski ends her description of a night of indulgence in Parte Vieja, San Sebastian, with a hint of the cheesecake that’s to come, but she doesn’t mention where to get it.

No pintxos crawl is complete without a slice from La Vina (one serve more than enough for two). And do ask for the jerez (sherry) to pour over the cheesecake. It is better than any cheesecake I’ve ever tasted.

Joanne Karcz, Dangar Island, NSW

GUARDED THOUGHTS

My husband and I have just been travelling through Greece and Scandinavian countries where we have watched many changing of the guards displays with Athens the most flamboyant and fun by far.

They are a huge tourist attraction and very interesting from the point of view of pride displayed and different national styles. Wouldn’t it be great if Australia had one? I wonder what a distinctly Aussie one could look like?

T. Podmore, Cremorne, NSW

HEAVEN AND HELL

I hope no one needs this but it is good to know that fast, efficient and transparent emergency medical service is alive and well in New York City.

On our recent trip I availed myself of my American Express travel insurance and had a pleasing experience with CityMD in Hell’s Kitchen.

I received an appointment within an hour of my phone call, had a consultation, received a referral to Lenox Hill Radiology that afternoon and, by the evening, I had positive follow-up from CityMD.

Whilst our insurer was not able to recommend a specific clinic, our hotel concierge did and I’ve definitely put CityMD contact details in my phone.

Beth Sywulsky, Bywong, NSW

WHAT A POSER

Taking selfies may be the way to remember an experience for some but then they would miss out on the fun of asking someone else to take a photo of you.

I have only been refused a few times, generally along the lines of “I don’t know how to use your camera but my son/daughter/friend does”.

Pick you mark carefully: 80-year-old Japanese women aren’t good photographers. Communication without a common language is not a problem.

Yet without asking for a photo to be taken of us we would never have got to Furano in Hokkaido, Japan, to see the beautiful and free gardens.

A Singapore family showed us their pictures while we were talking, the desire for a photo bringing us together.

The best shot was by an Australian who seeing the view and the angle took a magnificent picture of us sitting on the edge of the Victoria Falls.

The interactions with others is often what gives us the most pleasure in travel.

Claire Rodier. Glen Waverley, NSW

Send us your travel-related opinions and experiences

Letters may be edited for space, legal or other reasons. Preference will be given to well-constructed and formatted letters of 50-100 words or less. Email us at travellerletters@fairfaxmedia.com.au and, importantly, include your name, address and phone number.

Read more Traveller Letters

Aug 17 2018

Source: http://www.traveller.com.au/traveller-letters-the-stupid-american-stereotype-h13s51

[raystart]

A Driver’s License Can be Revoked for the Elderly, but Artistic License? Never.

She was due for retirement. Try telling her that.

Louise Fili, the designer behind logos for Tiffany & Co., Good Housekeeping, Paperless Post, and Sarabeth’s was, as always, a font of great ideas. “I think you should be focusing on the great octogenarians out there — Seymour Chwast, George Lois, Ed Sorel, R.O. Blechman, Bob Gill, Henrietta Condak, Sara Giovanitti…there are so many,” she said in her graceful decline to be a part of this story. “I will be happy to participate when you update the article in, say, 20 years.” Fili is 65, the touchstone — albeit arbitrary — retirement age. Time will tell. But that’s an offer she can make confidently.

Artists exist in careers without reply-all emails about the break room fridge, or dress codes, or — and most importantly — without punch clocks. They are timeless talents.

In 1972, at 90 years old, Pablo Picasso painted “Facing Death,” a self-portrait; he died the next year, having painted since 1891, when he was 9. I.M. Pei, the architect, is set to turn 100 this year as he works on 28 projects in six countries; he’s been working since his designs first caught fire in 1949. “I know how lucky I am,” Roger Angell, then 93, wrote in The New Yorker in 2014, “and secretly tap wood, greet the day, and grab a sneaky pleasure from my survival at long odds.” He has been contributing to the august magazine since 1944, most recently about the Chicago Cubs’ World Series victory, their 108-year championship drought being one of the few things in this world that predate him.

Now 94, Norman Lear is rebooting his 1975 sitcom classic One Day at a Time for Netflix, a Latina spin anchored by Rita Moreno, the 85-year-old EGOT superstar, who plays a 73-year-old sexualized grandmother. Hayao Miyazaki, the anime demigod, has came out of retirement to turn a 12-minute short film titled into a feature-length project, as you do at 76 years old.

There is an element to vocation beyond Western raison d’être, the French “reason for being” mired in Enlightenment sensibilities, that approaches the looser Japanese concept of ikigai, which can be translated as “a reason to get up in the morning” but was best described in a 1990 article in the Japanese business publication The Nikkei (formerly The Nihon Kaizai Shinbun) as “the process of allowing the self’s possibilities to bloom.” That process is itself a craft. Sorry, Tim Ferriss, there is no Four-Hour Ikigai.

These are all-work-and-all-play lives lived in the livelihood of humanity’s lifeblood: art, creativity, design. “To create is to live twice,” Albert Camus famously mused. While that wisdom may have been a gesture at the metaphysical immortality of fame and legacy and the stuff of lifetime achievement awards, it can also be taken literally as the doubling — or more — of creative professional lives as compared to the workaday world’s corporate drones, to say nothing of the relatively fleeting glories afforded professional athletes, dancers, and porn stars. A driver’s license can be revoked for the elderly, but artistic license? Never.

“To create is to live twice.”

“It’s not about doing something well over and over. It’s about doing something new over and over,” said Ivan Chermayeff, the 84-year-old graphic designer behind iconic logos for Barneys, Mobil, National Geographic, NBC, and the Smithsonian. “People who want to retire want to do other things. Travel. Plant a garden. I don’t. I’ve been doing those things every day my whole life. It’s a good racket,” he added from his office, with Wally, his Australian labradoodle barking in agreement at his feet.

Ivan Chermayeff, image courtesy of Chermayeff.

Chermayeff noted the physical costs of activity outweigh the mental and emotional costs of lethargy. “I have a bad knee but thankfully it has very little bearing on graphic design abilities,” he said. 

“I was a professor, a teacher. I just stayed in offices. It was awful,” said the prolific architect Daniel Libeskind, 70. “I have lived in reverse, my active period coming after the introspective, reflective period. With architecture, I fell into a new dimension. I made my first building when I was 52! Instead of withering me, time gave me a sense of flowering, of growing. To be honest, I don’t think of aging. There is an immortality to being creative. You are like God, who is the poetic symbol of creation, the poetry of creativity. As your work continues, you become younger. You discover youthfulness — braver, bolder, more confident, more adventurous. You discover possibilities.”

Daniel Libeskind at the Roca London Gallery. Photo courtesy of Libeskind.

Not that it’s easy. “You have to make a conscious decision early on that the suburbs and its finished basements aren’t for you. I had an illegal apartment for ten years, 1971 to 1981, $50 a month in a garret at 55th and 7th. I paid another $50 a month for a work space. So I was free,” said Larry Hama, 67, the comics superhero who single-handedly revived the series G.I. Joe and Wolverine, among other feats. “I’ve had years without any work. But I still did what I wanted. The only difference is I got paid during the working years, which was nice, but it wasn’t the reason I worked.”

There are, of course, life hacks to this Fountain of Youth.

For Libeskind, it is thermodynamics: A body in motion stays in motion. “I’ve lived in 18 cities,” he said. “Sometimes without knowing the language. Sometimes without having a job. Warsaw, Berlin, New York, São Paolo, Milan. They contribute so much energy to your mind. I’ve never been one for the beach or solitary walks in the woods.”

“As your work continues, you become younger. You discover youthfulness — braver, bolder, more confident, more adventurous.”

For Jonas Mekas, 94, the filmmaker who founded Film Culture magazine in 1954 and what would become the Anthology Film Archives in the 1960s, it is cultivating prickliness — not antisocial, just countersocial. “I was an urchin, a sea urchin, covered in spikes. Society could not swallow me. I did not fall into its holes. And those of us who escape enjoy a camaraderie. We don’t have to talk or get together. But we show other people what life is. We lure them into life with the things we make,” he said.

“You want what? That I go to the beach? I hate the beach. For one thing, it’s hard to get an espresso at the beach. And what is there? Ugly, grotesque people indulging their laziness while they cook and bake in the sun like slugs. That is joy? That is freedom? I don’t blame them for retiring at 65 because they have lived as robots in mechanical, menial, tedious tasks. They deserve a few years trying to feel human after all of that. They took my humanity and my youth in the camps. I was 17 in Lithuania and the next day, on the other end of the war, I was 27 in Brooklyn. I will never lose my youth again. I’ve worked too hard all my life to be this young,” Mekas says.

For abstract artist Carmen Herrera, as she puts it, “my bus was slow in coming.” She first sold her paintings in 2004, when she was 89. But what a ride it has been since then. Last year, at 101 years old, she had her first museum retrospective, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her secret is her stealthiness. “I was liberated by being ignored,” she said. “I was free to do as I wish.” Not to suggest too much whimsy; asked her morning routine, she laid out her breakfast: “Cafe con leche, toast, butter and jam, orange juice, and work.” And work. As if it were a chewy bagel or bowl of porridge. She devours it. And it nourishes her. But at her own pace. She takes all week to read the Sunday New York Times, favoring the alchemy of its stories over the checklist of the task. Asked what advice she would give youngsters — y’know, people with mere double-digit ages — she spoke in her native Cuban Spanish: “Patience, darling, patience.”

Carmen Herrera in her New York studio. Image courtesy of Herrera.

For Hama, it was saying yes. “Whenever the train got into the station, I got on board. And wherever it took me, when I got there I didn’t want the guided tour,” he said. “I was in an elevator in 1974 and a woman asked me if I was an actor. I said no and she asked ‘Do you want to be?’ And later that day I was in an off-Broadway production of Moby Dick put together by the starlet Jean Sullivan. I was on M*A*S*H and Saturday Night Live. They needed guys and I raised my hand.”

How do you retire from saying yes? “I can’t imagine retiring, and I have a great imagination,” he said. “If I go to the beach and try that, after an hour or so I just feel inert. Life is for action. Wander. Wonder. Surprise yourself. That’s the only adventure. You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket. I’ve done, I think, 239 issues of G.I. Joe and never ended with a coming attractions of the next issue because I never knew. I don’t know what’s on page three until I’m halfway through writing page two. And I guess I’ve lived my life like that, too,” Hama says. 

“Life is for action. Wander. Wonder. Surprise yourself. That’s the only adventure.”

When he was a child, Mekas’ home would be visited by an old man who climbed his roof and stood on his head on the chimney. He was 100 years old and his upside-downness had a profound impact on Mekas. 

“You’re asking all the wrong questions. You’re asking why I’m active at 94. But why are people living like they are already dead at 60? Or 40? Even 30?” he said. “I am not the abnormal one. I am normal. I am alive. This is life. They are the abnormal ones. They just don’t see it because they happen to be the majority, sadly. They believe in patterns that suck out their energy — ads and transactions and labels and paperwork and technology that all tell them they are not enough, that they are behind, that they are lacking. What is retirement or even vacation except a stupid trap built to justify the first trap of this draining existence? I reject it! Instead I choose art! Art and the avant garde is the difference between making a life and mirroring one.”