#board exams 2021

[jaeyunverse]

only 6 more days for 12th grade to officially finish and my exams to be over. perhaps jaeyunverse comeback with a long fic ????? 😳

[dr-whoopsie-daisy]

Last night I dreamed I got a check for $29,000 due to a mistake made by some company and that's what they owed me.

Pay day is tomorrow and I hope my check is actually accurate for the first time since the new company took over. Because they have actually been overpaying me.

Like can you imagine owing your boss money? That's where I'm at right now.

I also scheduled a week off from work for a few months from now, so first true vacation I'm going to have since... 2018. :)

[phspsintegratedschool]

Enroll your Kid in an Integrated School and Help To Build Their Successful Career

Integrated schools are the talk of the town. Through their comprehensive well-researched curriculum and distinguished faculty, they prepare your kid to excel in both boards and competitive exams. So, are these schools right for your kid? How do integrated schools stand apart? And should you get your kid admitted to an integrated school?

We will explore answers to all these questions from the candid discussion between two friends, Raghav and Dharmesh. Curious to know more? Read on.

Raghav and Dharmesh are colleagues. They have similar designations but work in different departments in the same company. They share one more thing in common. Their kids, Raghav's son and Dharmesh's daughter study in the same class, albeit in different schools. 

So, one day while commuting together to their office, they were gossiping as usual. They discussed a range of topics from job to life before finally focussing on child education. Both of them agreed about the tough competition that kids have to go through. Below is an interesting excerpt from their discussion.

Dharmesh- But, irrespective of the competitive pressure, it is important for kids to have hobbies and take part in extracurriculars to excel. 

Raghav- The idea is good, but it is difficult to follow this in practice. My son, like others, seldom has spare time for those. Instead, he hardly gets any time to even interact with me or other family members.

Dharmesh- what do you say, Raghav? Your son might soon get exhausted and not able to perform to his optimum potential with this system. Haven't you heard, that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy?

Raghav- I know it all too well. But what options do I have? My son is wonderful at his studies and has a zeal to excel. So, he is preparing to score well on both boards and competitive exams. To help him prepare well, I have also got him admitted in 5 tuitions, 1 for each of the science subjects- Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Biology and 1 for English. Besides, he also goes for specific coaching that prepares him for competitive exams. 

Dharmesh- O Raghav! You have unknowingly prepared the perfect death trap for your kid's intellect. You could have easily avoided this nuisance by getting him admitted to an integrated school.

Raghav- Integrated schools?! Now, what on earth is that? 

Dharmesh- Integrated schools combine well-researched curricula and outstanding faculty members to prepare your kid for both boards and competitive exams. The focus of conventional schools is to prepare your kids only for the board exams. That is why you have to give them separate tuition for every subject and also admit them to specialized coaching centers for competitive exams. 

However, this is not the case with integrated schools. The integrated school follows a special curriculum that combines elements of the board and a competitive exam syllabus. Thus, your child prepares for both competitive exams and boards through the school and does not need to go to separate tuitions. 

Unlike conventional schools that still rely on dated methods for teaching students, including the use of chalk and duster, integrated schools use technology to help students learn better. Thus, integrated schools offer multimedia classroom guidance, question banks, performance analysis, and doubt-clearing sessions to help your kid have a definite competitive advantage over others. 

The regular tests and scientific teaching method make it easy to gauge your child’s progress. The teachers then offer your kid-specific guidance to help them overcome their weaknesses and surge ahead. All these steps ensure your child gets the best preparation and also has time to pursue hobbies or other interests. 

Raghav- Wow! What you are saying sounds really interesting. But I am still skeptical. Do such schools actually work?

Dharmesh- The answer to your question is a thumping yes. I have admitted my daughter to PHSPS, one of the first integrated schools in West Bengal and you know pretty well the results of my decision. Thanks to the school and her efforts, she has scored brilliantly in school exams and KVPY. 

Besides, she also has enough time to pursue her hobbies because she doesn't have to spend time on separate tuitions. So an integrated school will work for your son too, Raghav.

Raghav- Yes. Thank you for the suggestion. I will look into it and make my son switch soon.

So, Raghav has finally found the perfect solution for his son. What are you waiting for? Want to know more, or have some specific questions? Get in touch with our experts now. 

[dailysarkariupdate]

Bihar Paramedical Online Form 2023 [ANM,GNM] Exam Date, Syllabus, - DCECE PM, PMM Daily Sarkari Update

Bihar Paramedical Online Form 2023 Short Details : Bihar Combined Entrance Examination Board (BCECEB) Release Official Notification For Bihar Paramedical Courses Such As PM & PMM. Any 10th And 12th Passed Applicant Who Want To Take Admission in Paramedical Courses Like ANM, GNM, Dental & Others They Can Apply Bihar Paramedical Online From 2023. In This Post Some Important Things Such As Bihar…

[latestsarkarijobs]

UP Board 10th Class Exam Date 2023 – New Exam Time Table Announced

UP Board 10th Class Exam Date 2023 – New Exam Time Table Announced

Name of the Post: UP Board 10th Class 2023 New Exam Time Table Announced Post Date: 11-11-2022 Latest Update: 10-01-2023 Brief Information: Board of High School and Intermediate Education Uttar Pradesh (UPMSP) has announced exam date for 10th class 2023. Candidates can check their exam date at below link Board of High School & Intermediate Education, Uttar Pradesh (UPMSP) 10th Class Exam…

[cbsesamplepapersblog]

HOW TO BECOME A CHAMPION IN CLASS 10 SCIENCE BOARD EXAM

[rudrjobdesk]

UP Board Result 2022: यूपी बोर्ड रिजल्ट से पहले पैरेंट्स इन बातों का जरूर रखें ध्यान

UP Board Result 2022: यूपी बोर्ड रिजल्ट से पहले पैरेंट्स इन बातों का जरूर रखें ध्यान

UPMSP UP Board 10th, 12th Result 2022 Today: उत्तर प्रदेश माध्यमिक शिक्षा परिषद (UPMSP UP Board) आज यानी 18 जून 2022, शनिवार को हाईस्कूल और इंटरमीडिएट का परीक्षाफल जारी करने जा रहा है। यूपी बोर्ड 10वीं रिजल्ट दोपहर 2 बजे और 12वीं रिजल्ट शाम 4 बजे जारी किया जाएगा। बोर्ड परीक्षा में शामिल होने वाले छात्र-छात्राओं के अलावा उनके माता-पिता भी आमतौर पर परिणाम को लेकर दवाब में रहते हैं। ऐसे में काउंसलर…

[allthingskakashi]

• Another Time, Another Chance •

[Kakashi x Reader] || 5k

Based on the Fluff prompt: "You have something in your hair... Do you want me to get it out?"

A/n: i received the request for this in 2020,started writing it in 2021 and finished it now at the end of 2022 so this fic has made a very long arduous journey before appearing on your feed today. This is needlessly long (5??? K??? Words???) bc im physically incapable of writing shorter fics. Been super out of touch so i hope this doesn't read like a drag, ending seems a bit rushed to me but i needed to be stopped from adding any more words. thanks so much for reading!!<3

********

You had been dreading this day all week.

Ever since the invitation arrived in your mail, you’d been wrecking your mind, trying to think of excuses— something, anything, to get out of the dreadful misery this day was about to present. Any possibilities of a sudden ankle fracture or an unexpected call to duty, however, were put to rest when you ran into your dear friend, the childhood bosom bud you’d recently reunited with after ten years, on your run to the grocery store this morning— who demanded—well, warned, really— that you “better fucking show up” to what was going to be one of the most important nights of her life.

So there you were now, standing in front of your closet which was filled mostly in hues of blue or black, and rolls of what people refer to as “practical clothing”, looking for that one peach-colored dress you had stuffed at the back somewhere after the last time you wore it— the one that your mother had given you many moons ago on your birthday.

If you had known that you would be coerced into attending an engagement party not five days after your return to your village, you’d have delayed your return. But fact of the matter remained that Kurenai was indeed your best friend, and if your being there mattered to her that much, then perhaps you could push your own feelings—and by that you meant your general detest towards weddings and anything involving matters of the heart (Shinobi don’t show their emotions, that’s rule one) aside.  Well, that and the fact that she threatened to hunt you down if you deigned to not show up.

But it’ll be fine, you told yourself. You would go, congratulate the happy couple, smile and nod at the people who approach you, have a round of drinks and appetizers, and slip out as soon as the crowd thickens. All in all, it shouldn’t take more than one, one and a half hours tops. You could do one and a half hours. It’d be fine.

 Forty minutes and heaps of wrinkled clothes scattered all over your floor later, you finally managed to find the dress you were looking for. It’d need ironing and there was a stain in the front, but it could be covered up with the silver butterfly pendant you had. A quick glance at the mirror informed you that the load of laundry you were about to do would have to wait until tomorrow. Your hair was greasy, and you needed to do something about the bags under your eyes.

And of course, a present. You needed to get a present. This truly was turning out to be a massive pain in the ass.

...................................................................................

 With the towel wrapped around your hair, you laid your dress out on the ironing board. You must have been eighteen when you last wore it but thankfully, it still fit. It was a beautiful piece— the fanciest piece of clothing you owned, no doubt, with a sweetheart neckline and lace detailing at the back.

Seeing the dress after so long did open a floodgate of memories…

It had been one week since your sixteenth birthday.

You had just passed your jounin exams.

You could still recall how the air felt that day, grain to grain in your mind. You were elated, you’d worked so, so hard for months. And finally, it had paid off. Anything seemed possible that day. The sky was the colour of water, the sun had never shone brighter. Everything was possible.

Even confessing your emotions of deep adoration to the boy you’d admired all through your young years.

It’s now or never, you’d told yourself. You’d never feel as courageous as you did that day. It was the perfect time.

And so, you’d put on your best dress, picked some daisies from your backyard, and strode off to where you knew you’d find him—the boy whose name cluttered the last pages of every notebook of yours, the one who starred in each of your daydreams— Kakashi Hatake.

You’d found him climbing a tree in the forest, a piece of cloth tied over his eyes and another tying his hands to his back. Chakra control practice.

You still remembered the tremor of your voice and the gigantic gulp you’d taken before uttering the next words. “Kakashi, would you mind coming down for a minute?”

The words were set on your tongue and your little heart banged within your ribs. You’d watched as he climbed down the branches with his eyes and hands redundant with the same meticulousness of a cat.

The moments he had taken to take off the blindfold and free his hands may have been the longest moments of your life.

And then, he’d fixed his dark eye on you, the frown on his face making his annoyance at being interrupted painfully clear. “What is it?”

Now usually, this is the part where you stopped reminiscing and yanked yourself out of the memory. If only you could go back in time, grab your younger self’s wrist, and yank her out of that very situation itself. But alas, that’s not how things work.

Back when the wound was still fresh, you’d replayed the next few moments time and time again in your mind but with the years, you’d mostly succeeded in blocking that part out entirely, as if you could just ignore it out of existence.

You hated to admit it now, but it truly had broken your naive heart into pieces. After all, being met with an impudent “That’s stupid, you shouldn’t” after confessing your admiration to the guy you’d written poems about in your journal isn’t exactly every sixteen-year-old’s dream.

But these were all in the past. Now when you thought of that moment, you just felt pity for your young, foolish self.

If only you could go back in time and…

Regrets aside, you were proud of how far you’d come. There was very little that could faze you now and things like juvenile crushes and fantasies about romance were things of the distant past. You’d burnt your journal not long after that incident—the one filled with poems about how Kakashi’s hair reminded you of the moon.

Eurgh. The thoughts made you cringe now.

It’s not that you didn’t find chances at romance past that one unfortunate incident. You’d left the village at seventeen, and in your ten years of voyage around the world learning about medicine, you’d come across many a man who had shown interest in you. But none had piqued yours.

But now, finally, you were home. Truth be told, you’d missed Konoha. The village, at least. The people…were another question. Once you’d left, you were almost completely out of touch with your friends back here and it had partly been intentional.

Which was another reason why the evening’s ceremony was turning out to be a particularly dreadful affair for you. You hadn’t seen these people in a decade and now to see them all together, at one place, in an engagement ceremony of two of your old classmates…it was all a bit overwhelming. You never were much of a socializer and after that incident, your self-esteem had taken a huge blow, leading you to mostly isolate yourself from your peers. It also hadn’t helped that Kotetsu and Izumo had been sparring that hapless day not far from where Kakashi was and had watched the entire situation unfold in front of themselves, and had then taken the liberty to do a dramatic retelling of the events to each of your comrades, with embellishments and exaggerations added for flair. You had been mercilessly teased, mocked, and ridiculed for weeks.

Sigh.

Was there really no way you could get out of this?

........................................................................................

You stood in front of the big stretch of lush green grass, known as the Konoha Public Park. Yellow lights twinkled in the distance where chairs and tables had been set up in close circles. Rows of cherry blossoms stood swaying along the edges of the park, their feathery pink petals swirling about and settling on the grass under your feet.

Soft music and cackles of laughter flowed into your ears from where you stood now. Right ahead of you was a small arched bridge, hovering over a stream of water. The way the lights danced on the water made it look like little stars were floating along the currents.

The place really did look beautiful.

They must have spent thousands on this thing, you couldn’t help but think. It made sense. Asuma was the third Hokage’s son after all.

All around you, more and more people started to come in—mostly in pairs of two. You still didn’t see anybody you knew yet, and you couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad.

Far in the distance, your eye caught Kurenai, arm in arm with Asuma, throwing her head back and laughing at something he must have said.

Alright.

You took a deep breath.  

Here we go.

Once inside, the sea of faces—some familiar, some unfamiliar was making your mind dizzy. Wherever you looked, it seemed like the throngs of happy couples never ended. Was everybody on some kind of love potion in this town?

Your mind was telling you make a run for it, but it had only been— you checked, twenty minutes. You had already met Asuma and Kurenai and congratulated them, and exchanged niceties with a few other old friends who had come to ask you about your journey.

You had yet to pass forty more minutes somehow and there was only one thing to do—hit the bar.

The bar was a few feet long counter on one corner of the park, stocked with all sorts of premium brands and manned by three people dressed in black and white.

If this was the engagement party, what in the hell were they gonna do for the wedding?

“Hi, can I have a vodka cranberry, please?” you said, sitting down on a stool. This spot provided almost an entire view of the venue and you could see two very familiar-looking guys making their way towards the bar, and judging by the way they were vehemently waving their hands, it looked like they—Kotetsu and Izumo recognized you too.

You had NOT prepared for this.

Thankfully at that very moment, the bartender slid a glass of crimson liquid across to you. The ice cubes bumped around on the surface as you grabbed the glass in one hand and your purse in another, took a quick sip, and made a dash for the farthest end of the park, completely cut off from all the merriness.

Clutching the glass close to you, you took quick, hasty steps–stumbling and tripping your way along the sprawling field, all the while keeping an eye behind you to make sure you weren’t being pursued. The grass was uneven in some parts, and your heels weren’t helping.

With a lurch of your heart, you felt your toe hit what must have been a rock. In seconds, your glass was flying from your hand as you attempted to steady yourself, only to feel your body crashing into someone else’s with a thump.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, I’M SO SORRY,”, you screamed out, before looking up to glance at the unfortunate bystander whom you had no doubt doused in your drink. “Please let me-”, you started, but your words dissolved in your throat.

Your drink was fine.

The glass was intact.

And holding it was none other than Kakashi Hatake– the last man you ever wanted to see, let alone crash into.

Great.

Okay, deep breaths. Maybe he won’t even recogn–

 “Hello, y/n.”

 Ah, perfect.

Words, words, words. What are some words?

 “Kakashi”, you heard yourself respond. Thank God.

Within the walls of your brain rang a thousand different sirens.

“I heard you were back in town, you look well”, said the man in front of you, whose figure towered several inches over your head.

You didn’t remember Kakashi being quite so tall. But then again, the last time you’d seen him, he’d only been a boy. His gangly limbs had grown into muscled arms, his once gaunt torso, now broad and firm–even beneath the dark grey suit that he was clad in right now.

You hoped you didn’t look too floored.

“Yes. You too”, you managed, looking back at him, ensuring to not look too surprised, or more accurately, awestruck with him.

In the absence of the headband, Kakashi’s silver hair– free and silken, caressed his eyebrows. His face, though covered in its majority by a mask, had sharpened along the edges, in contrast to the boyish softness it once held.

With most of his face covered, you couldn’t help but look him in the eyes.

Surely you were immune to him by now? He was handsome, yes. But so, what? You’d seen handsome men before. Been in their company, spent time with them, studied with them, lived alongside them.

Kakashi was no exception.

If he had any similar feelings of astonishment in seeing you after all this time, he didn’t let it show.

“Anyway, I better…”, you muttered, proceeding to reclaim your glass from him, and stepping aside to move past his still surprisingly tall figure. “It was good to see you”, you said, without looking back.

Barely had you taken a step when the voice behind you called out.

“Not even a thank you for saving you from public humiliation?”

And there it was. The cockiness.

Perhaps he hadn’t changed that much after all.

Sighing to yourself, you turned on your heel to face Kakashi, fixing him with a glare.

“Thank you so very much”, you drawled, flashing him your phoniest smile.

Kakashi sniggered, speaking through a smirk as he bridged the gap between you. “Now, now, y/n. That didn’t sound very sincere”.

He was clearly enjoying this. Embarrassing you once in this lifetime must not have been enough.

And could he stop saying your name?

But you were no longer an infatuated doe-eyed little girl who blushed and fawned upon him. And you wanted that fact known.

“Don’t you have something better to do rather than being a pain in the ass?”

An impish glint peeked through Kakashi’s dark eyes.

“Pardon me, I didn’t realize I was being,” he paused before adding, “a pain in your ass”.

You didn’t enjoy the way his enunciation of the last two words made you squirm. You needed to get away from him. Fast.

But fleeing would be cowardly. And more importantly, why would you? He no longer had an impact on you. No, you were going to stay right here, look him in the eye and face him.

“What are you doing here anyway, Hatake?”

“Same thing as you are, rejoicing in the union of my closest friends.”

You scoffed, repeating his words back to him, “rejoicing in the union of your closest friends?”. “I’d have thought these things are beneath you.”

The smirk was unrelenting on Kakashi’s face. “You must not know me very well then, Y/n.”

There it was, your fucking name again.

“Y/N! Kakashi! There you both are, I have been looking all over for you!” shrieked Gai, coming towards you with hurried steps. You had already exchanged pleasantries with him earlier in the evening, and unlike some others you had encountered, Gai remained exactly the same as he had been when you last met—warm, generous, and very, very spirited.

“Yes”, you retorted, “and I’d like to keep it that way. Now if you’ll excuse me”, you said, turning around to walk towards the centre of the park, where a buffet table had been stationed, with sweet and savory items laid out across its stretch.

Once again, however, your attempt for departure was interrupted.

“Is everything okay?” you asked, as Kakashi stepped up beside you.

“Yes, yes, everything is fantastic! Don’t you worry, Y/N. I was only looking for you to ask you to join us. All of us back there have been playing some very fun games, and you are missing out on all the fun!”, Gai said, pointing behind him to a gathering of people.

“Oh um, I actually…” you started, ravaging your brain for an excuse, but you knew it would be as fruitless as telling Gai that a thousand push-ups a day was way too many push-ups.  

“No excuses, Y/n!”, “You too, Rival!” Gai added, cutting Kakashi off in the middle of an unoriginal excuse about requiring to use the washroom. “Come on now, over here”, Gai ushered, leading you towards the gathering as you and Kakashi followed with thwarted faces.

Taking a large plentiful sip of your drink, you kept your glass aside, hoping it would be enough to fuel you for whatever lunacy lay ahead.  

If only you could go back to the moment in time when you made the decision of coming here and smack yourself in the head.

“Well, what are we playing?” Kakashi asked without fervour, standing beside you with his hands in his pocket as he soaked in the sight in front of him. Multiple pieces of paper had been cut into squares and piled up on the grass.

“I’m glad you asked, Rival! Everybody, gather around please!”, Gai called, as each pair of eyes fell upon him. “For our next game, we’ll be playing Paper Dance! Please form yourselves into groups of two, pick up a piece of paper from the ground, and position yourselves on it. Please remember that both partners must be standing on the paper at all times! When I say start, the music will begin and you will have to dance, maintaining your balance. Once the music stops, the paper will be folded into half and both partners will stand on the halved paper. The music will begin again and when it stops the next time, the paper will be folded into a quarter, and the same will keep repeating until there is only one remaining couple on the floor! As the paper keeps getting smaller, one partner is allowed to pick another up to make space, however, the minute either partner falls off the square, the team will be disqualified! Is everyone clear on the rules?”

A booming roar answered Gai as everyone around you hooted and scrambled to pick up papers for their teams.

You hesitantly picked one up yourself, but there remained one simple problem. Everyone around you had already found a partner, barring only…Kakashi.

Without sparing him a glance, you approached Gai, but before you could get a word out, Gai spoke.

“So sorry, y/n, but I will be the coordinator for this game, to make sure nobody is cheating. Kakashi there seems to be without a partner as well, so you can pair up with him, over here Kakashi!”

“Wait, but–”, you interjected, but Gai had already pushed you and Kakashi together, signaling the DJ to start the music.

“Everybody in their places…and start!”

An upbeat lyric-less melody engulfed the expanse of the park.

As if being shanghaied into attending a wedding and bumping into Kakashi in a less than graceful encounter wasn’t enough, you were now being made to DANCE with him, smack in the middle of the Konoha park, in the audience of hundreds of people.

This evening was truly shaping up to be the stuff of nightmares.

The only advantage in all of this—if you had to choose one, was the fact that in front of you, Kakashi looked quite uncomfortable himself, try as he did to shroud it.

Every pair around you had their arms linked—chiming to the tune, swaying and spinning, throwing their heads back in laughter. The contrast of your partnership as compared to every other team on the floor was like fire and ice.

Tapping your toes in reluctance, you put as much space as possible between you and Kakashi on the small scrap of paper, looking everywhere but ahead.  

“Kakashi! Y/N! That’s not dancing”, Gai interjected, coming around to you. “Put some enthusiasm into those youthful bodies of yours and shake it out!” he added, belting out a serpentine body roll for demonstration.

Flashing him a thumbs up, you pretended to pick up the pace, only to revert to your designated foot taps the moment Gai turned to the pair next to you. Your eyes fell upon Kakashi in a reflexive glance, and you found your dance partner staring right at you, his face an expression of curious amusement.

“Killer moves”, he jibed, but before you could retaliate, Gai’s voice interrupted the music. “And…stop! Amazing everyone! No couples have been disqualified yet, so before we start the next round, everybody please step down from your papers, fold them in half, and retake your positions on them.”

You and Kakashi stepped down from the paper at the same time, each bending down to fold the paper. Your head bumped against his and you jumped back, going back a few steps and letting him do the task as you tucked a loose strand of hair back in place.

Having folded the paper in half, Kakashi stood with his hands clasped in front of him, waiting—almost daring, you to step over first. Looking him in the eye, you stepped onto the paper, the space on which had significantly reduced now.

You felt yourself gulp as Kakashi came forward.

“Ready everyone?”, Gai’s voice rang in the background.

Your feet were touching, your face inches from Kakashi’s chest.

“Start!” called Gai, as a different, less upbeat melody spilled from the speakers.

The scarcity of space made it impossible for you now to look past Kakashi’s figure. With your face mere inches from his chest, you could make out the distinct cliffs of Kakashi’s collarbones peeking through the open top of his shirt. A silver chain peeked through, glinting under the canopy of lights overhead.

Kakashi swayed lightly to the tune, his movement so minuscule as to be missed by anyone not standing centimeters away from him.  

The song playing was familiar to you. It was the instrumental version of your favourite song from your teenage days. There had been many a night you spent writing poetry, this very song playing in the background as you scribbled away.

Droplets of sweat had begun to trickle over your back. The air felt thickened with the smell of chrysanthemums and nostalgia.

You persisted, focusing your eyes on a singular button of Kakashi’s suit, counting the seconds in your mind and waiting for the welcome interjection of Gai’s voice.

A soft warm breeze jostled through the crowd, leaving Kakashi’s hair ruffled. He reached up to pat it back into place, nimble fingers brushing past your forearm as he did.

Explosions like fireworks erupted through your pores where his fingers had trailed.

Your throat seemed to be getting narrower and narrower.

Without a thought or a moment’s realization, you felt your feet trampling away from the muddy piece of paper underneath and over the grass, sprinting, carrying you away. Away from the insufferable melody, the sickening smell of flowers, the disgusting exhibit of affection displayed by couples in each corner, the wretched black mole on Kakashi’s chest under his right collarbone where your eyes kept dragging.

Heaving as you caught your breath, you seated yourself on a wooden bench at the edge of the park. Your heart hammered in your throat as you tried to make sense of what had transpired. Somewhere in the distance, you could hear a faint voice, “Y/N! That is against the rules! Sorry, Rival, I am afraid I will have to disqualify you too.”

Multiple pairs of eyes had turned to look in your direction. You must have looked insane. Running across the field like that, matted hair sticking all over your face. You really had a penchant for embarrassing yourself, it would appear.

This was all too much, all of it. The wedding, Kakashi, your stupid fucking heels that made your soles ache.

Much to your relief and fortune, a woman’s voice replaced the maddening sound of the song blasting through the speakers at that precise moment. It was time for toasts.

Undoing the straps of your shoes, you laid your bare feet on the grass, leaning back to rest your head on the bench.

It was a clear night, the stars shining with all their might, as if in celebration of your friends.

You closed your eyes. The cool grass was soothing underneath your aching feet.

“Are you okay?”

Ugh.

You opened your eyes to see Kakashi standing over you, looking down with an expression almost resembling… was it concern?

You didn’t think he was capable.

“What now?”, you sniped.

Your patience was running thin, you needed to be away from here.

“You left this”, Kakashi said, holding out your glass of vodka cranberry that you’d kept aside earlier.  

“You seem awfully attached to my drink”, you jabbed again, but Kakashi ignored it, coming around to take the vacant spot beside you.

“What happened back there?” he inquired, turning his eyes on you as you looked down at your feet.

What DID happen back there?

“Nothing, I just…felt dizzy. Didn’t get time to have lunch today”, you lied, although only partly. You had, indeed, not gotten time to have lunch that afternoon, you were too busy scouring the market for an appropriate gift, all to ultimately settle on the quaint night lamp that had caught your eye in the very first shop you had visited.

“Hm, then this may not be such a good idea”, Kakashi responded, keeping the crimson-filled glass beside him on the bench.

Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed Kakashi gesture to a server standing a few feet away, holding a tray filled with what appeared to be dumplings.

“Wait, are those dumplings?” the sight of your favourite snack provided the ideal distraction from the less-than-savory thoughts that were beginning to nestle inside your head.

Your stomach growled in agreement, as you realized how hungry you had been.

You piled six onto a small plate and watched Kakashi carefully place two into one of his own.

“God, I missed these”, you exclaimed through a mouthful as Kakashi thanked the tux-clad server, before turning to his plate.

“They do NOT make dumplings like this outside of Konoha”, you added, smacking your lips and digging into the next one. “I need to make up for all the time I lost not eating these.”

Kakashi let a smile slip, watching you in silent amusement. “Well, it looks like you need these more than I do,” he said, offering you his plate.

You couldn’t help but gape.

Was Kakashi Hatake being nice?

“Uhh…”, you hesitated, but Kakashi’s eyes looked entirely genuine, much to your shock…and despair.

He was making this rather hard.

“Is there any reason why you’re going out of your way to be nice to me and following me around like a puppy dog the entire evening?”, you blurted, expecting Kakashi to retort with a brazen remark, an insult to match the ones you had been hurling at him all evening.

Instead, he shrugged. “Got some making up to do my own”.

The words made you turn. The air between you had shifted. “What does that mean?”

But just as easily, the tide had rolled over. “Nothing”, Kakashi said airily, piling his dumplings onto your plate.

You studied his face once more to make sure this was not some juvenile prank. In his eyes, you read only kindness.

“Well um…thanks”, you said, putting your seventh dumpling in your mouth.

Kakashi gave a wave of his hand. “I owed you one.”

Still ruminating about his earlier comment about having things to make up for, you asked, “For what?”

“For freeing me from the torment of dancing for another second.”

The mole under his collarbone made a flashing appearance in your mind and you looked away, coughing on your last bite.

“Right, uh yeah, no biggie”, you said, clearing your throat. “Anyway, I uh, am gonna take a lap around the park, the toasts are over, and Gai looks like he’s about to start up another game again. I’d rather not be in the vicinity while he’s recruiting participants”, you added, slipping back into your shoes.

You wanted to get away from him, you needed to get away from him.

You had spent the last ten years of your life keeping Kakashi Hatake from your mind, and your last ten minutes had been spent studying his hands as they rested on his lap.

And recalling how his fingers had felt against your skin.

You stood up, looking back to take his leave, but something in his eyes rendered you powerless over yourself. Because the next words you uttered were, “Do you wanna come with?”

With his tone the embodiment of nonchalance, Kakashi accepted your gracious offer, yet something in his demeanor made you glad that you’d asked.

Once on your way, however, you found yourself at a loss of words. The scent of Kakashi’s perfume clouded your mind—an aquatic smell, subtle yet lingering.

In an attempt to avoid any further unwanted invitations, the two of you kept to the edge of the park, seeking concealment underneath the shadows of the cherry trees that lined the perimeter.

“Pretty night tonight”, you commented without thought. The silence had become too dense.

“Yes”, Kakashi nodded in agreement, looking up at the sky, “Lot of stars.”

“Mmhmm” you mused in response. “Very starry.”

Petals of cherry blossom had littered the ground, carving a pink, velvety path of their own.

You spent a few minutes walking in quietude again, before Kakashi broke the silence. “You know, if you look close enough, you can make out the Six Paths constellation in the sky tonight.”

“The Six Paths constellation?” you asked eagerly, grateful for his intervention.

“Yeah, up there”, Kakashi pointed at the bejewled satin sky. “The brightest star there in the middle is supposed to mark his Third Eye, the smaller, dimmer stars on each side his eyes, and the one at the bottom the tip of his beard”

You halted to look, glancing in the direction of his finger before glaring back at him.

“You just made that up.”

Kakashi looked back at you, the thinly veiled smirk on his mouth giving way to a hearty chuckle, “I did”, he admitted sheepishly.

You couldn’t help but laugh along.

“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” you chided through a chortle.

When Kakashi laughed again, the stars dimmed.

“I missed it, you know?” you confessed absent-mindedly, “The village. The…people.”

“The dumplings”, Kakashi appended.

You laughed again. “Most of all the dumplings, yes.”

A long subdued, familiar sensation crept up your neck like the arms of an old friend.

A breeze passed through.

Petals from the blossom branches rained upon you in a tender, pink shower.

Kakashi’s gaze was soft on yours.

“You have something in your hair,” he said, nodding towards your right. “Do you want me to get it out?”

“Oh um…” you fumbled, reaching up for your hair, but stopping midway. “Sure.”

Kakashi stepped closer, reaching across to touch a pink petal lodged over your ear.

Inside your chest, your heart hammered. It had been for a long time, you realized—growing louder with each thrum.

Once.

His fingers whisked past your cheek.

Twice.

Kakashi smiled down, silver hair gleaming like moonlight.

Thrice.

Your eyes widened.

You had been wishing to go back in time all evening, but you failed to realize until now that you had done just that.

Kakashi held the petal out to you, the flower blushing a pristine pink in his palm.

And with the next thrum of your heart, you were sixteen again.

[yuurei20]

Meet the Seiyuu: Azul Ashengrotto

Azul’s VA Tamaru Atsushi first became interested in voice acting while studying for university entrance exams, when he would listen to radio shows hosted by voice actors in order to relax. 

He enrolled in a voice actor training academy during his second year in university while majoring in electronics and IT. His thesis was on learning support tools for satellites; he studied at both schools simultaneously. After graduating he was accepted to his first agency through an open audition for aspiring voice actors. 

In an interview Tamaru says that he was the only new actor they accepted who had yet to have a lead role in any project. He says his first job was not voice acting, but for study materials.

I am not sure if this is the same project he mentioned in the interview but I was able to find a 2019 English conversation study guide, “Handsome English Conversation Phrases”, for people studying English as a second language.

In a 2021 interview Tamaru said he can be a perfectionist and struggle if he doesn’t feel he'll be able to do something to perfection.

When he first started out he was very nervous in front of senpai VAs and would obsess over being polite and any bad feedback he received on set.

His voice acting debut was 2009 anime “Kupu~!! Mamegoma!” at age 23. 

Tamaru voiced Kunimi Akira in Haikyuu!!, but actually auditioned for the role of Kageyama Tobio.

In a 2015 interview he said that his hobby is board games and that he enjoys Dominion and Settlers of Catan.

When asked, “What kind of role would you like to try in the future?” in the same 2015 interview Tamaru responded, “It is something I’ve never done before, but I would love to play a villain. I don't think my voice is suited for a villainous role, but I think I might have a chance if it were a colder-looking villain.”

He has had lead roles in 17 different anime series, 25 video games, over 30 drama cds including Jewelpet, Aikatsu!, Meganebu!, The Irregular at Magic High School, The Asterisk War, Seiren, A3!, Gundam Build Divers, I-Chu, Build Divide, Gakuen Heaven 2, Touken Ranbu and more.

Both Tamaru and Floyd’s VA Okamoto voice characters in “Variable Barricade NS”, for the Nintendo Switch, while Tamaru and Jade’s VA Komada voice the lead characters in drama CD, “All Our Love and Youth”.

An amazing person has put together a compilation of voice clips from 21 characters that Tamaru has voiced, viewable here.

A photoshoot of Tamaru modeling for Jade’s voice actor Komada Wataru (who is both a voice actor and professional photographer; he has done similar photoshoots with Crewel, Trey, Kalim and Rook’s voice actors)

More of Tamaru and Jade’s VA Komada Wataru, on an episode of Komada’s now completed “CanCamp” show.

Tamaru visiting the Twisted Wonderland exhibition and posing with Azul’s display:

Prism Paradise Winter Live

Posing with Azul’s Glorious Masquerade banner in Shinjuku Station

On his twitter he posts pictures and information about the projects he appears in, as well as Twisted Wonderland rolls. Here he wishes Floyd and Jade Happy Birthday.

Tamaru with Jade’s Komada and Floyd’s Okamoto

Singing Tamaru in a promotion for the A3! Blooming Live Concert DVD

Tamaru has appeared on Episodes 9, 10 and 11 of Crewel’s VA Ito Kent’s monthly YouTube show “Good Boy”: Episode 9 ・ Episode 10 ・ Episode 11

[accurateme]

I am just not being productive right now. With exam just around the corner, it's making me stress even more. Also, NTA just reduced so many chapters today (some of which I was so good in) and I think it's now or never. I don't want to just lose my time and regret afterwards. I still have time and I will try to do my best.

Also, I am thinking to start something like '100 days of productivity' challenge. I probably won't make it through 100 days but I've got nothing to lose right now. It will include everything I am preparing for right now. Be it JEE, CET or even boards. I have got so many practicals to complete and there's one thing I've learnt in the past year which is: Don't neglect boards.

So the things I want to do tomorrow:

• Haloalkanes and Haloarenes questions

• Vectors 2021, 2022 PYQs

• Liquid Solutions revision

• Collision PYQs

• Rotational Motion, Gravitation revision

[i-need-some-advice-on]

How can I cut off one person from a group of friends and keep the others?

One of my friends (Abby) has been quite bitchy to me since my birthday last year. They've always been a bit abrupt, but I didn't know them very well or hang out with them very much until mid 2021. At that point, a group of five, including me and Abby, started doing a group activity once a month.

Until December 2022, Abby's abruptness wasn't too much to handle and rarely seemed vicious.

It started when I said that I was on the waiting list to see a specialist for an autism diagnosis. She said "You don't have autism" in a really dismissive way. BTW, she's not qualified to diagnose this and has not told me that she has a diagnosis of autism. Also, in my country, you don't get on the waiting list without first seeing your GP and doing a initial exam and providing testimony from longtime friends/family.

The other person there, who was a friend of Abby (not me at the time), had to defend me by explaining that not all people with autism look like Sheldon Cooper because I was too shocked to say anything.

Since then, Abby has also complained that she finds it stressful to plan stuff with me. (She wanted to watch this specific film and I couldn't find it at the library or on streaming, so I wanted to know if she wanted me to buy it and she kept saying "Can we talk about this later?" The problem is that it would take two days for the dvd to ship and it was a week between her asking me to watch this film with her and the date we picked.) I struggle with plans being changed at the last minute, like for instance if the film hadn't arrived, and we had to move the day we were watching.

She never told me that her cousin had the dvd and she was just borrowing it from her. If she'd said this, I wouldn't have sent her a few separate messages trying to get her to respond about whether I should buy the dvd.

Abby spoke about someone she knew with diagnosed autism and how they had been telling her about their plans because they like to make plans in advance. I said that I could relate to that and she said to me "it's not the same".

Despite me saying that I have problems with plans being cancelled, especially last minute, she has cancelled on me several times for individual meet ups. Once, she said she was just leaving the house and then rang back five minutes later to cancel because she had anxiety and another time we were supposed to watch a film over Zoom when I had Covid. She rang me and cancelled at the time we were supposed to start. There have also been numerous times when we were going swimming that she's cancelled within an hour of our pool booking.

Abby also has been bitchy about me going to an animal sanctuary in a foreign country and getting a picture with one of the wild animals. (I know that animals should never be used for entertainment, but the sanctuary makes a lot of money to look after the animals by charging tourists for a minute long interaction just after the animal has been fed.)

She's also been very vocal about thinking I'm a bad person for going to a murder mystery event at a bar which is (probably) named for Jack the Ripper. The bar is not themed for Jack the Ripper and is actually based around horror movies. When I told her that, she just said "I've made my point and dont wish to talk about it anymore".

She's also snapped at me quite a bit for things like tapping the best card to play in a board game after she specifically asked and the other players were trying to stick by the rules.

So does anyone have any tips about cutting Abby off and keeping the rest of my friend group?

.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Melissa Koenig

Published: Apr 3, 2024

Seattle Public Schools is dismantling its gifted and talented program, which administrators argued was oversaturated with white and Asian students, in favor of a more “inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive” program.

The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year due to racial inequities, the school district notes.

The program will completely cease to exist by the 2027-28 school year, with a new enrichment-for-all model available in every school by the 2024-25 school year.

“The program is not going away, it’s getting better,” school officials said on the district website.

“It will be more inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive.

“In particular, students who have been historically excluded will now have the same opportunities for services as every other student and get the support and enrichment they need to grow

The enrichment program currently only allows students who placed in the top 2 percent on standardized exams to be placed in the Highly Capable Cohort to receive enriched learning.

The students would then be sorted into one of three elementary schools, five middle schools and three high schools.

But in 2020, the Seattle school board voted to terminate the program, after a 2018 survey found that the students in the Highly Capable Cohort were 13% multiracial, 11.8% Asian, 3.7% Hispanic and just 1.6% black.

Nearly 70% of the students were white.

“Numbers would suggest that within our city … predominantly white children are more gifted than other cultures and races, and we know that is absolutely not true,” Kari Hanson, the district’s director of student support services, told Parent Map at the time.

Under the new program, dubbed the Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model, teachers will be required to come up with individualized learning programs for all 20 to 30 of their students — a task for which, they argue, they do not have the time or resources as the district faces a $104 million budget deficit, according to the Seattle Times.

The district said it is working to provide teachers with curriculum and instruction on how to make it work, but an estimate from 2020 suggested an enrichment-for-all program would cost the district $1.1 million over the first three years.

One teacher said she worries it will become more difficult under the new program to teach math to students with a range of abilities, and that the whole-classroom approach won’t properly prepare students for Advanced Placement math and science courses.

Parents also expressed their concerns that the new model could lead to children getting overlooked.

“It seems to me that kids on maybe both extremes are going to be underserved,” Erika Ruberry told the Seattle Times.

Karen Stukovsky, who has three children in the gifted program, added that each teacher “can only do so much differentiation.

“You have some kids who can barely read and some kids who are reading ‘Harry Potter’ in the first grade or kindergarten,” she said.

“How are you going to not only get those kids up to grade level, and also challenge those kids who are already easy above grade level?”

Some parents of black students in the program even argued against ending it.

“My request is that you please consider the disservice you would be doing to the minorities that are already in the HCC program,” one father said at the school board meeting to approve the new program in 2020, according to the Stranger.

“The program does more for black children, particularly black boys, than it does for their peers.”

But then-school board vice president Chandra Hampson shot back: “This is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.”

Over the past few years, though, more and more minority students have joined the ranks of the Highly Capable Cohort.

In the 2022-23 school year, 52% of the students were white, 16% were Asian and 3.4% were black, according to the Seattle Times.

==

“inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive”

Translation: underperforming students of all races will be told they're just as good and as special as the high-performing students.

The entire concept of "inclusion" is idiotic. It originated as making sure that students had access to the education they were entitled to, such as making sure kids in wheelchairs had access to the school's facilities.

But it's morphed into the notion that there's unfairness or even bigotry if average or under-performing kids aren't included in an advanced or gifted program. That there's something wrong because everybody doesn't have the same result. But the idea that everyone is entitled to be "included" in everything is completely insane. Instead of having a separate program to uplift the mediocre students, the programs for the high-performers are scuttled and they're brought down to the lowest common denominator. This is what "equity" does.

DEI is just smug racism.

[dailysarkariupdate]

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VKSU Part 2 Exam Form Online 2023: नमस्कार साथियों साथियों आप सभी को बताते चलें अगर आप भी वीर कुमार सिंह यूनिवर्सिटी आरा के छात्र एवं छात्राएं हैं और आप भी अपने द्वितीय चरण की परीक्षा को लेकर फॉर्म भरना चाहते हैं तो आप सभी के लिए बहुत ही अच्छी खबर है क्योंकि आप सभी का जो भी छात्र एवं छात्राएं अभी तक अपना विश्वविद्यालय में फॉर्म सबमिट नहीं किए हैं  VKSU Part 2 Exam Form Online 2023 VKSU Ara Part-1…

[paulinedorchester]

We Followed Our Stars, by Ida Cook. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950; rev. ed., Toronto: Harlequin, 1976. Reprinted, as Safe Passage: The Remarkable Story of Two Sisters Who Rescued Jews from the Nazis, with a new foreword by Anne Sebba, Toronto: Harlequin, 2008; reprinted again, as The Bravest Voices: A Memoir of Two Sisters’ Heroism During the Nazi Era, Don Mills, Ont.: Park Row Books, 2021.

Overture of Hope: Two Sisters’ Daring Plan That Saved Opera’s Jewish Stars from the Third Reich, by Isabel Vincent. Washington, D.C.: Regnery History, 2022.

As soon as I learned of Isabel Vincent’s book, I knew that it would need to be read with great caution. That feeling was reinforced when I read the “about the author” blurb on the book’s dust jacket. Then I looked at the bibliography, and wondered if I really needed to read it at all. (Here I must stop and thank the collection development, acquisitions, and cataloguing staffs of the Chicago Public Library. This is the second time in less than three years that they’ve purchased a book at my request, and in both cases they’ve managed to put it into my hands in less than a month.)

Why the unease? To begin with, Regnery Publishing’s stable of authors includes Ann Coulter, Ted Cruz, Newt Gingrich, David Horowitz, Sarah Palin, and similar types.

Second, it turns out that Isabel Vincent isn’t a historian: like Lynne Olson, she’s a journalist writing about history. Not only that: Vincent is an investigative reporter for the New York Post! One has to wonder what the phrase “investigative reporter” actually means in the context of that truly filthy tabloid, a jewel in the crown of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. On the other hand, I must say that Vincent seems far more comfortable using primary sources than Olson does — her research for Overture of Hope included examining 33 archival collections in seven countries. As well, the book carries an endorsement from the historian Blanche Wiesen Cook, who is not exactly a darling of the right.

Finally, the Cook sisters’ story is far from untold. I’ve known of them for at least the past several years, although I’m no longer sure how I learned: I could swear that there was an article about them in Opera News four or five years ago, but I can’t locate it. In any case, as early as 1950 Ida Cook wrote a memoir of their exploits (revising it in 1976), which is why this is a review of two books, not just one. She was the subject of a 1956 episode of This is Your Life. In 1964 Yad Vashem honored the Cook sisters as Righteous Among the Nations. They were interviewed in McCall’s in 1966 (the article was reprinted the same year in The Australian Women’s Weekly). They also inspired an essay in Granta in 2007, and I found a goodly number of other newspaper and magazine articles about them while searching for image files to use in this post.

Ida (at left; 1904-1986) and Louise (1901-1991) Cook seem to me slightly too young to be classed with the hundreds of thousands of British women for whom marriage became, if nothing else, a simple numerical impossibility in the wake of the First World War and the influenza pandemic that overlapped it. Nevertheless, that’s where Vincent situates them. The daughters of a Customs and Excise officer, they had both entered civil service themselves by the end of 1920, as typists. They were then living with their parents and younger brothers in Wandsworth, London, but the family had moved several times while they were growing up. During a stint in Alnwick, Northumberland, they attended The Duchess’ School, where music was one of their exam subjects: Louise was a pianist and Ida was a violinist.

Their passion for opera seems to have come about more or less by accident. One day in 1923 Louise, who worked for the Board of Education, wandered into a lunchtime lecture on music being given on the premises, returned home in a daze, and announced that she simply had to have a gramophone. She proceeded to buy one on an installment plan, along with ten records. (These would have been 78rpm discs, with a single track, three or four minutes long, on each side.) They were mostly of instrumental works, but also included recordings by two sopranos, Amelita Galli-Curci and Alma Gluck.

These quickly eclipsed everything else for the Cook sisters, who pooled their savings to buy the cheapest available tickets to three performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden: they saw Tosca, Rigoletto, and La Traviata, all excellent ways to get started with opera. I was startled to learn that the Covent Garden opera season was only two months long in those days; apparently, the opera house was used as a dance hall during the rest of the year.

When the Cooks learned that Galli-Curci was to give five concerts in London in late 1924 (her first appearances in the U.K.), they bought tickets to all of them. After the first one they wrote her a fan letter, enclosing a handkerchief that Ida had embroidered, and received a letter back by return post, inviting them to come back stage and say hello after the last, which they did.

Having learned in the meantime that Galli-Curci confined her operatic engagements to the Metropolitan Opera, in New York, the Cooks decided that they would travel there to see her perform — and figured out it would take them two years to save up the money that they would need in order to do so. They wrote to Galli-Curci about their plans, and she urged them to contact her when they had an itinerary. She would reserve seats for them, she said. (Galli-Curci's behavior wasn't unusual at the time, at least for singers who could pick and choose their engagements. As late as the 1970s, Dame Janet Baker was appearing in opera only in England, while continuing to tour all over the world as a concert artist.)

And that’s exactly what happened. Their arrival in New York, on January 4th, 1927, attracted the attention of The New York Times; and when they went, as instructed, to Galli-Curci’s agent’s office they found main-floor tickets to several performances waiting for them, along with Galli-Curci’s husband, Homer Samuels (a composer and pianist who was her recital accompanist), who invited them to dinner at their apartment a couple of nights later. They asked the Cook sisters to visit them in Autumn at their home in the Catskills, north of New York City — and that happened as well, though it took another two years of saving to bring it about. Ida’s account of this visit in We Followed Our Stars is not to be missed. She makes it sound like Downton Abbey on a smaller scale. (I feel compelled to add, however, that her description of Catskills social life has absolutely nothing to do with my understanding of what went on there, as recounted by my mother, who spent many summers at Catskills resorts during the 1930s and 40s. See also the films Dirty Dancing and A Walk on the Moon.)

They paid for all of this fun by scrimping and saving, skipping many lunches, and getting up before dawn to join the queue to buy cheap tickets at the Royal Opera House, where they made many like-minded friends and had the opportunity to meet world-class artists arriving for rehearsals. As we’ve seen, they were very outgoing — or at any rate Ida was outgoing and Louise was nearly always willing to follow where her sister led — and by 1934 they had befriended, and been befriended by, Galli-Curci, Ezio Pinza, Rosa Ponselle, Elisabeth Rethberg and — most crucially, in view of what was to come — Viorica Ursuleac and her husband, the conductor Clemens Krauss.

As the years went on, however, a new source of income emerged. Ida Cook was clearly a born storyteller. She had written articles for The Duchess’ School Magazine as a student; in 1928, as an old girl, she sent in an account of her and Louise’s trip to America, which was published, along with an article in the Daily Mail. After the Catskills visit, she sent an article on that experience to Mabs Fashions, a magazine that published sewing patterns, romantic fiction, and non-fiction on whatever topics seemed likely to interest their audience, including travel. This, too, was published, and the editor, a Miss Taft, invited Cook to lunch. (Vincent refers to the Mabs Fashions article, but doesn’t quote from it, as she does from the Duchess’ article, or even supply its title. From this I surmised that Mabs Fashions is poorly documented, and sure enough, WorldCat shows only scattered holdings in fewer than half a dozen libraries in the U.K. I can tell you that it was a monthly, and that it seems to have run from 1924 until some point in the mid-1930s, but much of its contents appear to have been lost to history. That’s a real pity, as it sounds very interesting.) Miss Taft asked Cook to write additional travel articles for the magazine. “Apart from the American journeys, a very short trip to Brussels was the full extent of our foreign travels,” Cook recalled. “But I said, ‘Yes, certainly,’ bought a series of guidebooks and set to work.”

A year or so later Miss Taft offered her a job at Mabs Fashions, as fiction sub-editress. This was a big leap — Cook had a responsible job in the Law Courts, with an assured pension when she turned 60, and in fact had just been promoted — but she decided to take the offer, even though she didn’t know what the position entailed. Her account of this experience is very funny, and I won’t spoil it for you, except to quote her about one part of it: “On press day I was faced with ... adding perhaps five hundred words to a story, without altering its sense, and so that no one could detect the ‘joins’. This was the only part of my work at which I became adept.”

Indeed, she became so adept that after several months the long-suffering Miss Taft asked her to write a story of her own. And then another, and so on. One of them grew into a novel, Wife to Christopher, which appeared in 1936 and was the first of Ida Cook’s more than 120 romantic novels, written over the course of 50 years, all under the name Mary Burchell.

(Above, from the Daily Mail, August 6th, 1936, left, and the Aberdeen Press & Journal, August 12th, 1936. Images ©The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.)

In short order, she was earning as much as £1,000 per year. That money was going to prove very useful. (All of her novels were published by Mills & Boon, which later became an imprint of the romance giant Harlequin, thus explaining We Followed Our Stars’ reprint history.)

“I realize now that, even though we were in our late twenties, we were not entirely grown up,” Cook wrote of the plans she and her sister had been making during the first half of the 1930s. Indeed, when Englebert Dollfuss, the Austrian chancellor, was assassinated on July 25th, 1934, their main concern was that this might disrupt their planned first visit to the Salzburg Festival. (It didn’t.) They were no more politically aware when, during a visit to Amsterdam near the end of that year, Ursuleac asked them to “look after” a friend of hers: Mitia Mayer-Lismann, a German pianist and educator, who was soon to visit London to give a series of lectures. The Cooks assumed that this meant showing her the sights, which they did. When she asked whether St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey were Protestant or Catholic, they wondered if she was a Catholic and shouldn’t have been taken to see a Protestant church — so they asked.

What they learned was that Mayer-Lismann was Jewish, and it was she who explained the Nuremberg laws to them. Her other purpose in visiting the U.K. was to see if there was any way of moving there with her family. The Cook sisters offered to do what they could to help. The U.K. wasn’t making things easy for would-be refugees from the Nazis (nor was any other country), and half of the Cooks’ work as the decade went on would consist of cutting through reams of red tape. Word of their willingness to do this spread through the Jewish communities of Germany and, later, Austria, keeping the sisters active until just days before war was declared.

The other half of the task was helping those for whom they were able to secure visas to smuggle out whatever portion of their assets hadn’t been seized by the authorities, which by this time consisted mostly of furs and jewelry. This was a genuine cloak-and-dagger operation, if only because it involved making repeated visits to the countries in question at a time when the authorities there were beginning to view British visitors with suspicion. It was at this point that Clemens Krauss got involved: he kept the Cooks informed about when and where he was conducting what, so that when they were questioned at the border they could say that they were going to hear Krauss conduct this opera in that city on that date.

As a side note, Ida’s new prosperity allowed the Cooks to buy a long lease a one-bedroom apartment in Dolphin Square, which had just been built (and where their neighbors included politicians, spies, and Oswald Mosely). Ostensibly, this was so that they would have a crash pad in central London after late nights at the opera. In reality, it served as a dormitory for newly-arrived refugees. Ida recalled that at one point there were twelve people sleeping there.  

While Ida seems to have been the family dynamo, Louise’s contributions shouldn’t be overlooked. One of her hobbies was teaching herself languages; she learned German at top speed in 1937 in order to facilitate the sisters’ work. She also put all of her (apparently quite generous) allowance of vacation time during that period into the rescue effort, and also seems to have been the uncredited co-author of, or at least an essential consultant on, Louise’s novels.

At this point I’m going to stop summarizing the Cooks’ story and tell you that if you’re going to read either or both of these books, you should begin with Ida Cook’s memoir, if only because it’s a primary source. It’s also a very useful insight into how an opera buff’s mind works.

Both authors provide their readers with excellent summaries of political events in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1939 — and both do so without ever talking down to their readers or implying that they shouldn’t need to provide them with this information, which is quite an accomplishment. Cook can be vague about the dates and chronology of personal events, while Vincent simply is vague on music in general and opera in particular, subjects in which she clearly has no genuine interest. (As Fred Cohn points out in his review of Vincent’s book in Opera News — which is how I learned of it; here’s a link, but I’m not sure that it will work for non-subscribers — her subtitle is a complete howler: there were no “stars” among the Cooks’ refugees; in fact, many of the people they helped weren’t involved with music at all. In spite of this, the Library of Congress has classed Overture of Hope as ML (Literature on Music).) As well, Vincent gives short shrift to the war years. (Louise was evacuated to Wales with her office; Ida was an assistant warden in a Bermondsey air-raid shelter, while continuing to write; the Royal Opera House became a dance hall year-round.) On the other hand, she provides us with a firm chronology of the Cooks sisters’ pre-war lives, and she also reveals the hard facts of how the people whose escapes they facilitated fared, which are not happy stories in all cases.

It is also Vincent who relates that Clemens Krauss fared badly in denazification proceedings. Despite his efforts on behalf of his Jewish associates and their families (as well as many complete strangers), he was widely denounced in 1945, and it’s undeniably true that he displayed a Machiavellian streak that led him to consolidate his artistic influence by securing the directorships of both the Vienna and Munich State Operas under the Third Reich. He ended up being banned from conducting for two years, but Vincent documents that just about all of his denouncers were his professional rivals. (The same thing frequently happened in France during the search for collaborators.)

Finally, Vincent quotes extensively from a film treatment that Ida Cook wrote, based on We Followed Our Stars, that is languishing in Joshua Logan’s papers at the Library of Congress. That document needs to be plucked out of purgatory and produced. Right now!

[theilustrado]

How to be a US Pharmacist if you’re a Philippine Registered Pharmacist.

(Overview of the process ⬆️)

Maraming nagtatanong sa page ko kung paano daw maging US Pharmacist as a Filipino Pharmacist. Kaya, I'll just create a one big post about it. Oo nga pala, it's really hard to get a work visa/sponsorship from the US kung foreign pharmacist ka.

So, kung wala kang way na makapunta ng US to legally work (like a petition, etc) it'll be difficult (Unlike sa mga nurses). I'm no visa expert and won't be able to answer any at all.

but if you're already in the US (as a citizen/permanent resident) and you have a BS Pharmacy degree from the Philippines, here's for you!

First, let's talk about qualifications:

1. You have to be a licensed pharmacist in your home country first. kailangan, board passer ka muna sa Philippines. HINDI REQUIRED ang ANY work experience to qualify for the exam.

2. Your education should be a MINIMUM of 5- years if you graduated after Jan 1, 2003. Kapag 4 years lang natapos, you'll have to go back to school for another year (CLINICAL PHARMACY) or PharmD (plus 2 years). NO EXCEPTIONS. again, di naman mandatory ang pharmD. Okay na yung clinical pharmacy. Also, Not MS/PhD kasi i-evaluate siya case by case and hindi guaranteed to qualify.

Pero kung grumaduate ka before ng Jan 1, 2003, you can take the exam with a 4-year degree as long as you passed the other requirements like TOEFL, good standing w/ your license sa PH, etc.

After meeting the education requirements, no need to study again in the US.

For me, I graduated sa CEU-Manila noong 2015. Kulang yung 4- years na degree ko kaya I went back to school noong 2020-2021 (Clinical pharmacy). I'll link below my experience a full-time student sa Philippines while also working full-time in Texas.

Let's talk about the exams you need to take:

1. TOEFL (ENGLISH TEST) - there are minimum scores you need to achieve. Kahit offered ang TOEFL sa Philippines, it's only acceptable by the US kapag tinake mo siya mismo sa US territories or parts of Canada. You can take this exam with a US tourist visa. TOEFL ha, not IELTS. You can take this anytime kasi 2 years naman ang validity niya.

2. FPGEE (Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Equivalency Exam). Itong exam na ito ay para sa mga Pharmacists educated outside of the USA. Kahit sa Philippines ka grumaduate, or UK, or Canada, Australia, SAME EXAM for EVERYONE. You need to pass this exam in order for you to INTERN sa desired state mo. This exam is usually administered ONCE A YEAR DURING FALL. You can take this exam with a tourist visa. Btw, it is important to say na kahit na qualified ka na to take the FPGEE, it doesn't guarantee your US tourist visa acceptance. kaya plan accordingly.

question about how to apply? please join the PH FPGEE support group. I already posted the detailed instructions on how to file your application. here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/filipinofpgeesupport/

Next step is INTERNSHIP. Once you passed TOEFL and FPGEE you're given an FPGEC certification which is a requirement for foreign pharmacists to start Internship! With internship, US tourist visa is not allowed anymore. You need to have a work visa na. Yung required hours ay depende sa state kung saan ka mag-wwork. Example sa California ay 1500 hours. Sa Texas ay 1740 hours. CHECK your RESPECTIVE state's Board of Pharmacy.

3. NAPLEX (North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination). Ito pa lang mismo ang US Pharmacy Boards. I've shared to you my experience when I took it. Ito yung exam na tinatake ng mga FPGEE passers after internship and PharmD graduates ng US. Please see my posts about sa details ng exam and my experiences. I'll link them below.

4. The last exam is MPJE/CPJE. Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination® aka the LAW EXAM. Kahit naipasa mo yung NAPLEX pero hindi yung MPJE, you won't be able to practice as a US Pharmacist. This is a very tricky exam and it should not be taken lightly.

after you take these exams + Internships, you're now a US Pharmacists!! Good luck everyone and I encourage you to read the official BULLETINS only from the NABP site. Sila lang ang naglalabas ng official requirements and wag maniwala sa mga sabi-sabi.

If you have any questions except VISA, feel free to message me as I have taken all the exams na. I'm here to help yo Pero before you ask anything, please read this "frequently asked questions": https://theilustrado.com/faqforcc Any repeating questions won't be answered kasi nakalagay naman na diyan. 🙂

Here are the links: I included the review duration, review materials, prep, experience, etc.

Philippine Pharmacy board exam experience 2015:

Clinical Pharmacy 5th year 2021:

FPGEE 2002 experience:

US Pharmacy board exam 2023 NAPLEX experience:

Helpful Filipino US Pharmacists groups:

PH FPGEE support group

Filipino-American Pharmacists

Official USA Pharmacy website for FPGEE :