#only be limited parking space right? i could take public transport which would take 1 h but i'd have to take the train and

[tkbrokkoli]

aaaaaahhhh guys!!!

[lifeinahole27]

CS ff: “Walking the Tightrope” (Chapter 7/10) (au)

Summary: Killian’s daily routines are a matter of habit. When he wakes up late one morning, his routines all change for the better. Emma doesn’t care about routines, but she does care about Killian, no matter how reluctant she is to admit it to herself.

Rating: E (the content warnings matter this time!)

Content Warnings: Very start of the chapter has mentions of child abuse. Also, a special disclaimer that my knowledge on children’s services and foster custody are very limited. I cobbled together the best I could from Google searches and reading up. And by my estimates, if I hadn’t had a mental collapse two weeks ago, y’all would’ve still been waiting a couple more weeks for the end of this chapter. This fic finally earns its “E”!

A Special Thank You: My continued gratitude to my lovely friends, @captainstudmuffin and @phiralovesloki. And a heap of love to @captainswanbigbang for putting this together and helping me accomplish this.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | 

Find it on Ao3 & FFN!

-x-

Chapter 7: Signs from the Universe

November 16: Friday

Their second date goes even better than the first, with Killian showing off not only the beautiful apartment he scored when he moved (with every room decorated in such a fashion that Emma is almost jealous of the simple and elegant taste he has), but also his cooking skills which are pretty damn impressive if Emma is being honest. 

It probably would’ve gone even better if they hadn’t been disturbed in the middle of their movie. They’d settled into a comfortable spot on his couch, with her cuddled into his side and his hand teasing the skin behind her knee, slowly igniting a fire within her that wanted to burst free. But no, she had to go help with a drunk and disorderly call because the miner they call Grumpy will only listen to her after a certain amount of drinks for some reason. It’s why David has nicknamed her a magical savior when they have to go down this path. 

And now it’s been six days since his breath had stuttered out when her fingers teased the hair on the nape of his neck. Six days since he’d turned to face her in the low light of the room and kissed her in a way that made her feel utterly cherished and also so aroused she could hardly stand it. She’d just been about to act on all of it when her phone rang and she audibly groaned at the absurdity of the timing. 

Needless to say, it’s been a long six days. 

When Friday finally rolls around, Emma is pretty sure she’s going to walk into his office and climb him like a tree if he’s up for it, but when she gets there, Killian is something about ten degrees past distraught.

Pacing the small space end-to-end, his hair is practically standing straight up and he looks like he’s about to explode as he speaks quickly into the phone pressed against his ear.

“His schedule said that he should’ve been on the second or third bus this morning and he would’ve arrived by now had he taken either of them. I haven’t heard from him, his foster parents have called me six times, and we’re all freaking out just a little bit.”

He looks up, his whole body deflating in defeat when he gets the response from whoever is on the other line. 

“Well, can you call the bus station this time? See if they’ll give you any information?” Killian mouths the word “David” when she catches his eye again. “Thanks, mate. Emma just walked in. Call me if you hear something?”

When he hangs up the phone, he drops into his chair and presses his hand and brace (the attachment for his prosthetic is nowhere to be seen) to his face. 

“Hey hey hey, what’s up?” She takes quick strides around his desk to pry his arms away from his face and works on smoothing out his hair as he looks up at her.

“Henry hasn’t shown up. He’s either been taken or he’s run away.”

A lump of fear settles in her stomach. The likelihood that a foster kid ran away is pretty high; she knows the statistics. Shit.

“I have to go. Robin and I are going to check in some of his favorite places and see if he’s here and just not coming to us. I’m sorry to skip our lunch.”

“No apologies needed,” she says, her fingers absently playing with a chain she’s just started noticing he wears under his shirt. “I’ll help any way I can. But I have to go back to the station and get the Bug.”

“Call me if anything comes up?”

She hums her agreement, leaning up to kiss him again before she heads back out of his office and nearly jogs back to her car. 

Driving around town goes quick. She’s not sure the routes that Killian and Robin are taking, and where David is in all of this, but end-to-end she keeps driving for an hour before she finally parks near the public beach access and sets out on foot. 

There’s no one out here, not on a cold November day that’s threatening snow like this one is, but it’s when the terrain changes again that she catches a weird track. It looks like suitcase marks, but that would be ridiculous in most circumstances. Then she thinks back to her conversations with Killian and the suitcase Henry owns from his previous foster family that he would never leave behind. 

She’s not even all the way to the destination she knows she’ll find him when she texts Killian the location, letting him know that Henry is, in fact, safe when she gets visual confirmation. Physically safe, of course. Mentally? She’s about to find out.

Approaching slowly, Emma leans down to get into Henry’s line of vision and smiles reassuringly. She can’t really see him with the way his hood is up and he’s trying his best to curl in on himself.

“Hey, kid.”

“Emma? What are you doing here?”

“Well, you have a lot of people really freaked out right now. I’ve been out looking for you.”

“Is CPS here?”

“No, no one like that. But your foster parents are on their way and Robin and Killian are out looking for you. Are you okay?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Promise you won’t get mad?”

“Is it something you’ve done?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not going to get mad. And even if it was, I would hear you out and really listen before doing anything like getting upset.”

Henry takes a deep breath, and rather than ask anything at all, he finally lifts his head to look at her. With the way he’d been sitting, there had been a shadow over half his face, but now she sees it wasn’t really a shadow at all. Blooming around his eye, the bruise is going to be quite the shiner. 

“Who did it?”

“Mr. Carter.”

“What happened?”

“I asked if we could go out and buy a new suit for the party next month. I’ve been saving up every bit I can for the transportation up here so I don’t have to make the Carters pay for me. But I haven’t had the chance to do any dog-sitting jobs with the edits and my cash is running low. I told him I would pay him back.”

Emma finishes her approach to the playground, hoisting herself up to sit beside him. 

“Would you like a hug?” 

He doesn’t say anything, just nods and tips over when she puts her arm around him, holding him close as he silently falls apart. 

Distantly, she can hear someone approaching, knows that the text notification she’s getting in her pocket is probably Killian trying to get to them. 

“They’re going to take you out of that house.”

“I brought everything with me this time, just in case they did. Or even if they didn’t. Do you know where they’ll send me?”

“Well, we can talk to them and see if they’ll let you stay with me. I have a spare room in my loft. Or David and Snow have a guest room.”

“Do you really think they’d let me stay here?”

“I don’t know. But the least we can do is try.”

“Henry, you’re okay,” Killian says when he finally gets to them. She can see the second Henry looks up at him because Killian goes completely still, his expression flickering between concern, shock, and settling on a quiet rage.

“Did your foster father do that?”

“We’re going to try talking to his case worker and see if they’ll let Henry stay here with one of us,” Emma says. Henry nods at her words, seeming to fold in closer to her. 

“Of course. I don’t know if a couch will work but I’ll happily lend my home to this venture if necessary.”

“Call David? We’re going to want to get ahead of the Carters. We’ll need Archie and Dr. Whale to meet with us, too.”

Jumping straight into action, Killian pulls out his phone, contacting David and filling him in. Without even missing a beat, he helps Emma down when she starts to shift off the platform, holding out his hook to steady her as she lands on her feet.

“I’m handing you over to Emma now,” he tells David, listening for a beat before giving her his phone. 

“Hey,” she says quietly. She turns to watch as Killian helps Henry off the platform. As soon as he’s off the playground, Killian opens his arms in invitation, and Emma feels something in her chest constrict when she watches the way Henry leans into the hug. 

That was David to her, so long ago. It was David that found her in Florida, that picked her up, that helped put her back together. Struggling past the lump of emotion sitting in her throat, Emma turns away and talks to David about their next steps, only moving back towards them when she ends the call. Killian takes the suitcase that Henry had stashed beneath the playground and together they lead him back towards the parking lot.

Robin is waiting for them, looking just as relieved when the three of them appear from the beach access. He, too, goes through the stages of emotions when he catches sight of the bruise, and immediately he turns into some kind of hovering parent. While Henry and Killian climb into Robin’s SUV, Emma goes back to her own vehicle, taking a second after they drive away to take deep, even breaths. There’s a specific type of panic sitting against her breastbone and she wants to cry, to sob out all her frustrations. She only really cries when she’s angry nowadays, and fuck is she angry at this situation. 

From what Killian said, this kid had it all with the previous family. Had a life worth enjoying, only to get stuck with someone that would dare to hit him because he asked for money. She gives herself a shake, finally shifting the car into reverse and pulling away from the beach. 

It all gets a little more complicated than that when they get back into town. The foster parents show up, insults blazing the moment anyone even looks at them, and it’s clear they’re going to deny ever touching Henry in every way possible. 

“Henry is an upstanding teenager with no prior record of running away or violence of any kind. You’re telling me he went out and got in a fight the day he’s meeting with his book editor and then doesn’t bother showing up because he’s rebellious?”

The way David says it makes Emma proud.

There are long chats with CPS after that, with Emma offering her place but being turned down after she describes her home life and schedule. David goes to step up, but it’s Robin that speaks next. 

“We’d like to take Henry in, if that’s something he would be amenable to,” the other man says, gesturing to Henry first. “My fiance and I have plenty of room in our house. I have a son younger than Henry, so we’re definitely not new to parenting. And neither of us keep anything dangerous in the house. No guns, no medications beyond allergy nasal sprays, children’s medicine, and aspirin. We have a liquor cabinet that only has two keys that stay with us at all times. And our schedules are such that Regina or myself can be there when he gets home from school each day.”

“Is that something you’d like, Henry?” Killian asks.

“As long as you’re sure I’m not invading your space,” Henry starts to say, but all the Storybrooke adults in the room speak at once in a rush to reassure him that it’s no imposition. She watches the bashful smile form and he nods his head, accepting Robin’s handshake when he offers it. 

When they’re all wrapped up for the day, Killian lingers back with Emma just outside the station doors. 

“Do you have anything else to finish up with this?” 

“Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow. Plus, David has most of it already started thanks to the digital system. Mostly just dotting some i’s and crossing any t’s that need it.”

His hand tangles with one of hers, and he smoothly lifts it to drape it over his shoulder, stepping into her space a little more after he glances around and confirms they’re alone. 

“Would you like to come to my place? Drink some wine, order some pizza, maybe… stay the night if you’d like?”

“I would, but I’m not going to.” Confusion immediately replaces the sultry look he’d been aiming for. “I want you to go home and sleep. Between the edits and the anxiety over the party next month, and then everything that happened today… Like I said, I always saw you as a neat-stacks kind of guy. And today you were chaos. I have wanted nothing more than a quiet night in with you since last weekend, but you need to unwind and decompress without the use of sex or alcohol.”

He’s looking at her intently the whole time she speaks, a smile starting to pull up at his lips as she continues. Finally, when she’s done speaking, he takes a moment before closing the distance between them and kissing her hard enough that it almost changes her mind. Almost. 

“This is why I like you. You know exactly what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. Would you at least do the honors and drive me home, please?”

“Absolutely,” she confirms, a matching grin on her own face. They move out of the station and towards Emma’s car until Killian stops her short just a few feet away from the Bug. 

“I’ve not had a chance to formally ask, but would you care to be my date to the party? I realize we’ve not been dating long, but I would love for you to accompany me.”

“I’d love to! And tell you what. Why don’t we do that whole pizza and wine adventure on Wednesday? We can decide later if it’s an adult-sleepover type thing or just another date, okay?”

“Aye, sounds perfect.” 

It doesn’t stop her from kissing the hell out of him when they pull up outside of his place, and Killian’s silly grin afterwards is worth the efforts it takes to let him get out of the car without doing it all over again. 

“Goodnight, Swan.”

“Goodnight,” she says back, watching him wearily walk up the path to his front door. She doesn’t drive away until he’s inside and the porch light is turned off.

-x- November 27: Wednesday

Killian Jones is having a shite day. Absolute shite. His computer crashes in the morning, leaving three days’ progress lost to the technological hell he finds himself in. He rubs his eyes when he thinks of the newest corrections he made to the novella, all of the progress lost. He thinks of the press releases he had finally finished drafting up, the wording absolutely perfect. He wishes for rum. Lots and lots of rum, and Emma Swan.

“Hey, you were supposed to - Killian? What’s wrong?” He looks up as one wish enters through the door and he idly wonders if she has rum stashed somewhere on her.

“I’m sorry, love,” he says, roughly rubbing his hand over his face again. “I’ve had a bit of a set-back. I should’ve called.” Especially after what happened last week, he should’ve called her as soon as he realized he was going to have that kind of day. 

After just a moment of lingering in the door, she moves to stand behind him at his desk, working her thumbs into the knots along his shoulders and the base of his neck. He wants to melt into his chair at her touch. His head drops forward and he sighs, letting his muscles relax for a moment.

“I’m beginning to think that bad luck is following you,” she says, her voice low in his ear. He can feel the shiver it causes all the way down his spine and it takes a few quick breathing exercises to stop his body from reacting to her overall attention. 

It’s been three weeks since their first date, and every date after has seemed cursed. There was the one interrupted by a phone call from David asking to help with some kind of public disturbance, and then they didn’t even get to have their date last Friday when Henry went missing. 

“I’m going to bring you some lunch,” she says, giving his shoulders one more squeeze before moving to sit on the edge of his desk.

“You really are a savior, Swan,” he says, grabbing her hand and kissing the back of it softly. The smile she gives him eases a little more of the tension in his body and he gratefully accepts the kiss she places on his lips. 

“I’ll be back in five,” she tells him before heading back out of his office.

By the time she returns, he’s at least recovered the corrections and marks on the novella, which makes his blood pressure return to something approaching normal. The press release seems to be gone entirely, though, so he knows the next few hours of work will be spent trying to recreate that. 

“I won’t distract you,” she says, placing a kiss on his cheek as she sets the bag down on his desk. “Call me later, okay?”

“I will. Thank you, Emma. For all of this,” he says sincerely, wishing their lunch break could’ve been spent together. Instead of a response, she kisses him again, smiling sweetly and wishing him luck before she slips out of his office. 

That’s how they usually do it - in the short time they’ve been together, he’s worked little routines into their daily lives. Emma doesn’t seem to mind one bit, following along with the well-worn steps they go through. And he’s also found that, in the last couple weeks, he isn’t holding as tightly to the strict schedule he used to keep himself on.

He sighs again and opens the bag of food Emma left him, breathing in the smells and resolving to eat before he throws himself into that blasted press release. 

It’s not the same when it’s finished, that much is obvious, but it’s close enough. When it’s clear that everyone else is leaving for the holiday weekend, Killian compulsively saves the file a few times before shutting everything down for the vacation. 

He calls Emma after he gets all his winter gear on, making sure his earbuds are attached and securely in his ears before he slides on his hat and dials her number.

They’d made plans last week - pizza, wine, a quiet night - and he confirms that they’re still on for said plans as he makes his way through the quiet streets of Storybrooke and back to his home. 

“I could’ve picked you up,” Emma says when she realizes what he’s doing, but he brushes it off and asks her what time he should be there.

WIth their plans finalized, he happily enters his apartment with a skip in his step. To be clear, he’s not expecting sex tonight. Does he want it? Yes. Does he think Emma wants it? There have been many clear indications that she does. So, while he doesn’t expect it, he plans for it just in case, making sure to be thorough with his shower.

When it’s just about time, Killian walks over to her place, letting the bracingly cool air calm the anxious pit in his stomach. It’s good anxiety, this time, but it’s still better to not have it at all. 

He beats the pizza delivery man by just a minute, hustling out of the way as Emma moves to answer the door she’d barely had time to shut. 

“Perfect timing,” she says out loud.

It’s the quiet night they’ve both been hoping for. No interruptions so far, no work distress lingering over their heads. Just the two of them, a pizza, and some time. 

The switch flips in an instant - one moment they’re sitting on her couch discussing how their days went and then she’s crawling into his lap, pushing him further into the cushions as they try to devour each other. This feels momentous; they finally get to learn about each other more intimately when they’ve spent so much time learning about each other. 

It’s clear they’ve both been holding back in the small snatches they’ve found to spend together between their dates. When Emma’s hips settle over his, he groans involuntarily. Being underneath her is one of the most exquisite tortures Killian has ever felt and he would give anything to stay right here, with her almost subconsciously rocking her hips against his as weeks of sexual tension finally come to the surface. 

The latent movements suddenly have purpose, the intent obvious when Emma leans back and Killian can see the heat in her eyes that sends tingles along his scalp and down his spine. 

His hand slides under her sweater, gliding along the smooth skin of her back. With an arch of his eyebrow he asks permission without words. When she nods, he deftly unhooks her bra and brushes his fingers up the rest of her spine. 

“Shit,” she whispers, a smile spreading instantly as she visibly shivers. 

Her hands are slowly rubbing down his chest, resting over his belt buckle, and he draws her back down to kiss her again as she slowly starts working the metal and leather apart. Her fingers are just dipping beneath the waistband of his jeans when the door to the loft swings open and someone comes flying through the door. 

“Sorry to barge in but Granny’s all out of holy fucking shit I’m so sorry!”

By voice alone he identifies the culprit as Ruby. 

“I’m just… gonna go find what I need in the kitchen and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Give me a minute and I’ll help you,” Emma finally says, giving him a regretful look as she eases back a little bit. 

“No really, I just need some brown sugar for the apples.” 

When Killian looks over his shoulder, the other woman is holding a hand over her eyes, almost blindly searching for the ingredient in Emma’s cabinets. 

“Hang on, Ruby,” Emma says again, trying not to laugh. “I’m sorry.” Her voice is soft, but she’s grinning. He cups her cheek in his hand, giving her a smile of his own. 

“This really was just a shite day,” he mumbles. “Though I much prefer this nuisance to the other ones my day has given me.” He makes sure she can hear the sincerity of his voice as he rubs his thumb across her cheek. “It’s getting late. I should go.”

“You don’t have to,” she says as she stands and holds out her hand to him.

“No, spend time with your friend. I’ll text you when I get home,” he insists, quickly fastening his buckle as discreetly as possible before he kisses her goodbye. It’s sweeter this time, but there’s still a hint of heat behind it and he’s tempted to throw caution to the wind and stay, but instead he bids her goodbye and accepts the kiss to his cheek she bestows upon him. 

When a moment has passed, one must accept it and move along. He knows a sign from the universe when he sees one. 

The walk home is sobering and lonely, much more subdued than the walk over. Killian has gone back and forth in his life on how patient he can be. There was a long time where he took without thinking of the consequences and hurt some people along the way. But with Emma, it all feels different. He feels like he’s waited a lifetime for her and knows he’d be willing to wait another one for something like physical intimacy when there’s so much more to who she is as a woman. 

It’s this thought that follows him through the door of his own dwelling and he leans against the wood for a moment. Alone in the quiet, he accepts the early bedtime he’s about to have, rubbing his hand over his face. He makes sure to text Emma that he got home before wandering through and flipping on the few lights he’ll need for the process of getting ready for bed. 

His text alert pings in his pocket as he’s shuffling to his room to change, and he smiles when he sees Emma’s name across the screen. 

“Ruby’s already apologized a million times since you left.”

He smiles at the message, knowing that Ruby’s apologies have probably been loud and likely detailed exactly what she thinks she was interrupting. Nevermind the fact that she’d be correct, but he’s sure Emma’s face has probably been a permanent shade of pink all through it. 

They text back and forth while he gets ready for bed, with the time creeping up on when he used to so dutifully go to sleep that he’s surprised he’s not really as tired as he’d expect with the day he had. He’s just checked the locks to make sure they’re secured for the evening and goes to turn out the living room light when he hears a knock. 

Killian takes a moment to stare at the door in question, because it’s almost eleven and he’s afraid there will be another unpleasant surprise waiting on the other side. Moving warily, he slides the deadbolt out and pulls open the door enough to see who’s on the porch. He takes in the sight of Emma standing there, in her pajamas under all her winter gear, with what looks to be an overnight bag slung over her shoulder.

He swings the door open wider with shock on his face, and Emma grins wide.

“Swan? Is everything all right, love?”

She walks in when he motions her inside and sets her bag on the floor by her feet while he locks everything back up. 

“Everything is fine,” she says, waiting until he’s back in front of her before she tugs him towards her by the collar of his t-shirt. She tastes like toothpaste when he kisses her and he finds the same heat that was simmering before is now boiling over.

When her fingers untangle the knots on his flannel bottoms, he thinks there’s something to be said about bad days having better endings. 

-x- 

After Killian leaves, Emma has every intention of listening to her friend’s food-based crisis and spending a hefty amount of time calming down her hormones. But then Ruby starts a string of apologies as soon as Emma turns to her and explains that she didn’t realize Emma wouldn’t be alone and she’s used her key about a million times before without a thought and…

She does listen to Ruby’s food-based crisis and helps with not just the apples, but an issue with the pumpkin pies as well. Ruby and Granny go serious business for Thanksgiving, after all, and Emma is happy to do her duty to make sure everything comes out perfect. 

When the door closes after her friend, Emma wanders to her room to get ready for bed. She changes into her favorite pajamas and heads to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, all while texting Killian. It’s somewhere between doing her mouth rinse and walking back towards her bedroom that she makes a decision.

She’s in the Bug before she knows it, with a presumptuous overnight bag on the seat next to her. The entire drive leaves her jittery, and by the time she taps on his door, she’s almost sure he’ll be able to see her heart rate the moment he looks at her.

Instead, he’s more worried than anything else at first, and she doesn’t really blame him. When her fingers finally get the knots of his pajama bottoms undone, all previous tensions and fears either of them may have felt have evaporated. 

In the back of her mind, Emma knows that she has to be at David and Snow’s at a respectable hour, but she also knows that neither of them have to go to work tomorrow. This thought and all others vanish from her mind as Killian knocks her coat from her shoulders. She thinks her gloves are next to the bag that got left right in the entryway, but how much can she really care when she draws Killian’s shirt up over his ribs and helps him remove it? How can she focus on anything at all when this solid, handsome, wonderful man is looking at her like she’s a delectable treat he wants to devour whole? 

“See something you like, Swan?” The cocky grin she’s gotten used to over the time she’s known him is back on his lips, his hand and wrist shoved into the pockets of his sleepwear while he rocks back on his heels. The husky tone he uses sends heat between her thighs and she’s absolutely ready to explore this brand new territory.

“Maybe,” she offers back. She’s proud that her voice comes out low and seductive, instead of squeaky and unsure. His chuckle is low as he pushes off the wall. 

“I’m glad you’re appreciating the view,” he says as she pulls him against her.

“Maybe isn’t yes, Jones.”

“It isn’t no either,” he reminds her. She bites her cheek to stop from smiling, thinking of all the times they’ve said those words to each other already. At least this time she’s allowed to shut him up with her lips. 

She feels the thrum of tension just below his skin, can feel it in the way he kisses her back with desperation. She lets instinct take over, instead of thought. She doesn’t think about how tired she is from the day she’s had, or how tired Killian might be. Besides, he doesn’t seem tired right this moment from the way his hand is sliding under her shirt, drawing it up and over her head, his hand immediately finding her bare breasts. 

She gasps at the contact, steps out of her shoes and starts nudging him towards his bedroom. He shifts his attention from her lips to her neck, to the spot just behind her ear. She pauses their route to the bedroom to push him against the wall in the hallway and while his hand slips down to her lower back to hold her close, he hesitates for a second.

“Emma, are you sure?”

She doesn’t respond with words, instead choosing to step back and hook her thumbs into the waistband of the flannel bottoms she wore on the way over, sliding them down her hips and letting them fall to the floor. She watches as his eyes sweep down her whole body, sees the muscles of his jaw clench as he swallows and drags his eyes back up to meet hers.

He doesn’t move, and it takes everything in her power not to fidget in front of him with how intense his stare is. There’s something below the surface between them, something she isn’t willing to look at tonight in the quiet dark of his hallway, or even tomorrow in the light of day. It hasn’t been long enough, and she knows she’s not ready. 

Finally, he brings his hand up. He rests it lightly on her shoulder for a moment before softly running it all the way down until the back of his hand moves over her fingertips. He starts again at the top, this time brushing his fingers over her collarbone, sweeping down and just dusting across one breast and then the other, across each nipple, before he continues down. He places his wrist gently on her hip and urges her closer to where he’s still leaning.

“You’re stunning, Swan,” he whispers in the dark. She bites her bottom lip, running her hands all the way up his arms to rest on his shoulders. When he kisses her this time, it has more to do with tasting than rushing, so she sighs into it, into him, pressing against him. The feel of his bare chest against hers is sweet torture.

She pushes at the hem of the sweatpants now riding low on his hips, stepping back to take in the full picture just as he did. Emma discovers that she could stare at nearly-naked Killian all day if she didn’t have anywhere else to be. She’s surprised her glasses, askew as they are, aren’t fogging up at the sight.

They move in tandem this time, lips connecting, tasting, and nipping. He easily lifts her and she squeaks in surprise, her legs wrapping around his hips. 

“Fuck, Emma,” he grumbles, moving swiftly down the hall and settling her onto the bed.

“Exactly,” she whines, accepting the kiss he gives her as he chuckles, his tongue sliding against hers when she opens her mouth to him. When he pulls away again, she’s smiling at him, but the restraint is obvious in the lines around hers eyes.

“Patience, Emma.”

“I think we’ve shown more patience than either of us expected,” she says with a level look. “You locked the door right? None of your friends are going to barge in? Liam isn’t planning any quick visits to see you, right?”

When Killian moves away from her completely, laughing as he goes to the nightstand by his bed, Emma lets her arms fall above her head on the mattress. His bedroom is warm and cozy, and the heat of her skin from anticipation doesn’t hurt either. 

“Fair enough to assume they might, however, I even engaged the deadbolt and if anyone so much as rings the bell, I’ll knock them to the ground,” he tells her, pushing his boxers out of the way before he stands at the foot of the bed. “Now, a woman as beautiful as you demands my full and prompt attention.”

She pushes up to her elbows, obliging and lifting her hips when he taps one to slide her panties off. With those delegated to the floor, he finally crawls back onto the bed but stays near the bottom. She wants him inside of her, and almost tells him so, but the moment his fingers slide along her entrance as his tongue finds her clit, she decides to utilize the patience he just told her to have.

It’s totally worth it.

The man is gifted beyond reason, taking directions to what she likes with the same attention to details he gives everything else in his life. In past experiences, she’s not always been lucky enough to get foreplay like this, and so she’s surprised at how quickly he pulls her up, up, up and over the edge of climax. 

Giving her a minute to collect herself again, she looks down the length of her body and watches with pointed interest as Killian rolls a condom down his length. He catches her eye, shrugging and smirking at what they both recognize as a skill. Shifting again, he’s kneeling between her legs, the tip of his cock just pressing where she is so ready for him. 

Instead of waiting for him to ask, she grasps his hips and nods, pulling him until he’s filling her up. He rests his head between her breasts, hips already rocking just a bit, enough to amp them both up. She tugs him up to kiss him again, silently begging him to move. Finally, he does, pulling out and pushing back in just a little faster, causing her to gasp and break the kiss. He sets a pace that has her breathing harder, even more so when he nips the top of one breast.

“Bloody hell, Emma, you feel amazing,” his whispers hoarsely against the sensitive skin and it further ignites the fire that’s been building since he opened the door. She lifts her hips to meet his thrusts, hands clutching at his biceps where they’re braced on either side of her head. She breathes out a request for more and he complies, moving his hand as he quickens the pace.

He trails a path from the center of her chest, down her abdomen, ending right above where they’re joined so his fingers find and circle her clit in time to his rhythm. She fists the sheets with one hand, the other slipping between them to press against his as her climax rises and breaks, her back arching off the bed, her head pushing back into the space below his pillows and her eyes shut tight. 

She says his name in a sigh as she comes down and he kisses her greedily, his movements getting jerkier as he reaches his own peak. She pushes her hips up, accepting as he settles deep inside of her with a groan as his orgasm takes over and he drops his head to her shoulder. 

With choppy little movements, he comes back down and settles on top of her. Both of them are struggling to catch their breath, but a hazy smile is plastered on her face and she runs her fingers along his scalp while she waits for him to recover. 

It clearly takes some effort, but he shifts in order to drop into the spot beside her. 

“Worth the wait,” he tells her, rolling close to kiss her before he’s rising from the bed to get cleaned up. All she can do is hum in agreement as she stretches in lazy contentment. As he leaves the room, she opens her eyes and realizes nothing is in focus.

“Watch out for my glasses,” she calls after him. “I have no idea where they fell off but they’re definitely not on my face.” He makes a noise of acknowledgement, and Emma lets her body rest in the comfort of his bed for the short time he’s gone. It could be minutes, or it could be hours, all she knows is she could live this strung out on an orgasm every day for the rest of her life and not complain. 

“Found em!” he calls from the hallway on his way back in. He’s grinning when he enters the room, his own glasses perched on his face as he hands hers over. His arms are full of their discarded clothes and her overnight bag.

“I set out a washcloth in case you’d like to clean up at all,” he tells her as he drops everything on the edge of the bed. 

Heaving herself up, she moves to stand next to him, reaching up and pulling him down for a kiss. “Thanks.” She gives him one more kiss and then smiles, turning and helping him sort out their mess of clothing before she goes to the bathroom with her bag to get cleaned up.

She’s barely settled back in the bed with him before sleep overtakes her, claiming her fast after he wraps his arm around her waist and whispers her goodnight. 

-x- November 28: Thursday

When he awakens, it’s to the November sun trying its hardest to break through the clouds. Trying, but definitely not succeeding. Though the weather may be doing its best to soldier on into winter, none of that reaches the warmth and comfort of Killian’s bed, especially when Emma stretches beside him. 

“I’m not gonna lie,” she says as she burrows further under the covers. “If I didn’t have to stop at David and Snow’s and make an appearance at Granny’s later, I would be finding a way to convince you to stay in this bed all day.”

“It wouldn’t take any convincing at all, just for the record. What time is this dinner?”

“Five o’clock. Are you going?”

“And miss my opportunity to listen to you all gripe about how this American tradition is born on the genocide of the people that inhabited the land while still eating turkey and mashed potatoes? Of course I’ll be there,” he says, turning on his side and propping up on his wrist. He fixates for a moment on the way the blankets are leaving one of her shoulders slightly exposed, running his finger along the only bit of skin that’s visible.

“That sounds accurate,” she says, her voice going a little breathless when his hand slips below the blanket to follow the lines of her bicep. “And until then?”

“By my calculations, we can have a little bit of that aforementioned time in bed,” Killian says with nonchalance. 

Emma’s expression morphs into a happy grin and she scoots closer. “If you get me coffee first, there’s a lot of really great ways I can think to repay you.”

“Coffee it is,” he murmurs, pressing forward to kiss her before the moment slips away. 

-x-

Chapter 8

[yourworldmyworldourworld-blog1]

Brazil - Just let go and enjoy

Brazil - Rio de Janeiro & Ilha Grande

So Brazil is my country of origin. So I ended up spending quite a bit of time here. I will then give you a few tips on a few things and a few cities so its not an overload. I am also yet to explore its grandeur in full.  São Paulo, I will save you for later my dear one.

RIO DE JANEIRO

I spent approximately a week in Rio, not followed by collectively so I will write below a quick guide.

Day 1 - if you are arriving by plane I advise you try and get into Santos Dumont which is super close to the city centre. From there you can get the VLT which is just outside the airport to Cinelandia and at Cinelandia you can cross the tracks and get into the underground so you can head southbound to Ipanema. Make sure when you buy the ticket (which will be a card) of the VLT you put enough cash for that day (around R$20 should do). If you arrive early and are staying in Ipanema or Copacabana (which I highly recommend as these are safer areas), go for a walk on the beach.

Botanical Gardens

Day 2 - When I arrived I headed straight to the Parque Lage and Botanical Park by Uber (they also have an app called Rio cabs which also works well and its like an Uber). But that depends when you arrive in the city. This trip could take you half a day or a full day depending how easy you want to take it. The Parque Lage and the Botanical Park are beautiful and you can have a coffee and picnic over there. On your way back you can also go for a wonder around the Lagoa (Portuguese for the Lake). I took the bus back but equally you can get an Uber back. Again make sure you miss the rush hour. As for food I recommend this adorable vegetarian / vegan place near the Botanical Gardens called Prana. 

Mureta da Urca

Day 3 - Wake up early and head to Pao de Acucar. It’s a bit difficult to get there by public transport as you will need to get the tube and the bus so perhaps look into getting a cab there. You can also chose to trek up Pao de Acucar. You can either book with a guide all of it or you can do half by yourself. Equally you can just get the cable car (at R$100 for an adult (you have discounts for students)) all the way up. Enjoy the view and then go for a wonder around Urca, or better yet hand around until sunset to enjoy it at the wall (which they call “mureta”). There is only one bar around there and I advise you buy a few large beers (at R$10 if I recall right) and keep the tickets to reclaim later so you don’t have to queue again. I also recommend you order a portion of pasteis (cheese and shrimp are my favourite although meat is good too).

City Centre

Day 4 - Head out early to Cinelandia and check out the library, the royal gabinet and walk around this city centre. There also should be some walking tours leaving from the square in front of the National Library around 9:30am/10am. You can either walk towards the Tomorrow Museum or you can leave this to another day. Whenever you decide to go to the Tomorrow Museum (in Portuguese: Museo do Amanha), make sure you either buy the tickets for the Museum before or you arrive around opening time (10am) so you are not stuck in the queue for too long. This museum is definitely work it and at R$20 per adult its super doable. Then go and wonder around the market to the left of the museum (in fact between the tomorrow museum and the art museum which are on the same square area) and enjoy the view of that huge wall with these worldly colourful faces. If you have time you can also head to Santa Teresa that same day and do the Ruins Park and the colourful steps (Escadaria Selaron). 

Escadaria Selaron

Day 5 - Escadaria Salaron (Escadaria meaning staircase and Salaron the name of the guy who made it) is the various steps up near Lapa made of mosaic. You have a lot of people there but if you head up to a park called Santa Teresa first you have a nice view of the city and then work your way down. Take your time and enjoy the views. Also be careful as the Lapa neighbourhood near the staircase isn’t super safe. You can then go for lunch at one of the many bars in the Lapa (look up places on Avenida Mem de Sa).

A Day at the Beach

Day 6 - You can look to do go and just chill at Barra da Tijuca beach or Ipanema or Copacabana. If you chose a weekend to go and chill at the beach you will see what Rio is truly like. Make sure you buy some mate (which is a typical Rio drink, sold anywhere really but the best one is at the beach from these guys with these metal like tanks). Make sure you also buy the ‘Globo’ snacks they carry around. Only then you can truly experience the Rio spirit. Also make sure you watch the sunset at one of these beaches as its stunning. Equally head down the Ipanema beach to the Pedra do Arpoador (the Arpoador Rock) to watch the sunset. 

Cristo / Christ Redeemer

Day 7 - If the weather is good I would highly recommend waking up early and heading out to the Cristo. I got an a taxi with 99 but you could also plan to get an Uber. I would recommend booking a taxi back. Perhaps speak to the driver or pre-book the Uber as its quite busy and there are less taxis on the way back.

Saturday Markets

Day 8 - If one of your days in Rio is the first Saturday of the month you can head to the Lavradio Street Market. It is a vintage market in the Lapa neighbourhood. There is also the Rio cathedral next door that is a very interesting architecture (built in a triangular manner). 

SAFETY / TIPS

In terms of safely I would say you stay in Copacabana or Ipanema. The Lapa neighbourhood is dangerous although a fun night out. But know that I only went out there with locals I trusted. Rio is beautiful but please be careful because it’s not the safest place so be careful and don’t stray too far from the safe areas (Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana) unaccompanied by locals you trust. 

Other things to do:

Climb Sugar Loaf 

Barra beach

Tijuca Park

Pedro da Gavea climb

ILHA GRANDE

You can take another 3-4 days or even more to head to Ilha Grande which is super close to Rio and super worth the visit.

Day 1 - All you need to do is get the 5am bus to Mangaratiba from the Rio bus station. You can buy the ticket online and get it on the day. I would recommend you arrive at the station around 4am. Once you get to Mangaratiba (a 1.5 hr drive from Rio getting you there around 6:30/7am), head to the port which is about 100m on the same side of the road that the bus will drop you off. There might already be a queue so just join. The boat costs R$17 one way. When you get to Ilha Grande you can buy the return on the day or do what we did which was to get a transfer back that included the boat and the bus back to Rio. The boat to Ilha Grande took around 1hr. When we got there around 9/10am we headed to our camping site. It was called Camping do Bicao. You can chose more expensive options but Camping do Bicao was super well equipped. When you booked with them (at R$30 per person per night for the camping space), you can ask to rent anything from the tent (R$120 per night I believe); mattresses (R$60 per night for a double); pillows and bedding (another R$30 per night I believe). They also have hostel rooms but they go quickly. Everything was clean and super well organised. 

On the same day we arrived we had all our stuff up and organised by 11am. If you rent the tent they help you do it up and take it down for you so you don’t even need to worry about that. We then headed to the Poço (translated to Well but really just a pool of water) which is to the north of the island (20 minutes from the town). We then treked for an 1 hr to the Feiticeira beach and waterfall. Super worth it and doable with half a day. As we came back into town around 3pm we bought some food (I also advise you buy some food in Rio and take it with you as Ilha Grande options are limited and things are expensive). We also booked a tour for the next day called Meia Volta where you do half of the island (that’s what “meia volta” means). Most agencies do the same spots and cost about the same so just ask around and see which one you prefer.

Meia Volta tour

Day 2 - Meia Volta tour. Enjoy and take some food but the boat should have water. Also take a snorkel if you have one. 

Lopes Mendez trek

Day 3 - Make sure you do not miss the trek to Lopes Mendez. Leave early in the morning - say 9/10am. Take at least 1lt of water per person and food. The trek took 2hours but its uphill then downhill. Plus its through the forest so although you don’t usually have the sun on you its pretty humid and super hot. Also make sure you buy your return ticket before you leave (the long boat at 45mins should come to R$15 and the fast boat at 30mins comes to R$25). If someone on the trek tries to sell it for more or doesn’t give you the less expensive options keep walking. Make sure you keep an eye out for anyone selling the tickets and ask how much. We bought our return tickets with a lady at the third to last beach before getting to Lopez Mendez. Normally they keep an eye out and ask people whether they have return tickets. If I were you I would buy the tickets in town for the 5pm slot so you can truly enjoy Lopes Mendez and the other beaches. We arrived at 1pm and realised that 4 hours was not long enough. On our last night we also headed into town to enjoy some music. Be warned that booze is expensive although we managed to find a tiny spot one street away from the Main Street selling stuff fairly cheap.

Day 4 - On this day we headed back to Rio early. We got the transfer (at R$110) including ferry and bus to Rio at 10am. If you decide to stay longer there are other beaches you can explore. 

CRIBSHEET

In Rio Stay either in Ipanema or Copacabana. I rented an air B&B. There are also hostels in Barra da Tijuana which isn’t bad but a bit away from the city centre. 

Places to eat: 

- Mate and Globo biscuits at the beach 

- Jockey Club by the Botanical Gardens

- Prana (address: R. Lopes Quintas, 37) by the Botanical Gardens

- Ella Pizzaria (address: Rua Pacheco Leao, 102) across from the Botanical Gardens

- Puro Restaurant (address: R. Visc. De Carandai, 43) again across from the Botanical Gardens

- Bar Pavao Azul (address: Rua Hilario de Gouveia, 71) in Copacabana. Amazing little bohemian split with amazing “pasteis” (fried pastries) and good vibes.

- Urca Grill (address: Rua Mal. Cantaría, 10). This place you got to go at the end of the day to watch the sunset sat at the wall - you will see what I mean because it will be hard to find a spot to sit. Get some beers and some “pasteis” and enjoy the view and the vibe. 

- Confeitaria Colombo (address: R. Goncalves Dias, 32). This is a century-old cafe with an incredible colonial architecture, amazing traditional snacks, sweets and coffee. It’s in the city centre so perhaps go after a morning stroll / tour / museum visit. 

Where to go:

- Christ Redeemer (half day)

- Mureta da Urca & Sugar Loaf (full day)

- City Centre (walking tour) (half day)

- Escadaria Selaron / Santa Teresa (full day)

[thetrevorcalvin]

1: PROGRAMME  What are the fish Island Agendas and issues and how to adopt them through my proposal

Fis Island is full of economical growth through many factories and creative quarters. Fish Island is a place full of potential. It occupies a strategic position between established communities in Tower Hamlets and the biggest and most exciting urban regeneration project in Europe (The stadium). 

The Area Action Plan (AAP) is a plan to guide the regeneration and future development of Fish Island - the mainly industrial area south of Hackney Wick station, between the A12 road and the River Lea. Figure 1.2 shows the area included in the AAP. 

It forms part of the LDF (Local Development Framework) and delivers the vision set out in the Core Strategy.

The AAP sets out a vision which describes the kind of place that Fish Island could be in the future. The AAP aims to create a balanced approach to regeneration that will deliver about 3,000 new homes - including a substantial provision of affordable and family housing, supported by new schools, open space and health facilities, alongside space for new and existing businesses to grow and thrive.

Fish Island currently has a very small residential population due to the mainly industrial character. Planning policies have restricted residential development, apart from a limited number of live/work developments. Approximately 600 people currently live within the AAP boundary. This is very low for an area so close to central London and contrasts with nearly 9000 people living within 5 just minutes walk of Fish Island. The existing residential population is also relatively young. 40% are aged between 25-49 years old.

DeliveringafuturevisionforFishIslandwill depend on understanding the opportunities and challenges presented by the current context. In summary these include:

The Olympic inheritance – The Olympic Games and Legacy Development will provide a catalyst for regeneration by bringing investment in infrastructure and changing the perception of the area. Inheritance will include a multi-use sports venue, the Olympic stadium and aquatics centre, a combined heat and power station, new or improved bridges, and opportunities for investment in the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) / Media Broadcast Centre (MBC).

Connections – Overcoming the perception and of severance caused by the A12 road will be vital if Fish Island is to become a more integrated place and connect with Tower Hamlets’ communities.

Similarly strong and direct connections across the Lea Navigation, Hertford Union Canal and River Lea will be needed to link Fish Island with the major regeneration opportunities created by the Olympic investment. Maximising the proximity to strategic transport connections such as Stratford Regional and International stations will help to improve connectivity and support future growth.

Character and Heritage – Fish Island boasts a strong and unique character as a result of its historic buildings, interesting streetscape and remaining industrial features. These elements should be seen as a significant regeneration opportunity to influence future development proposals and contribute towards creating a sense of place.

Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI’s) – Over the past few decades the creative economy has spread east from Soho into areas such as Clerkenwell and Shoreditch and now into the East End. There is a significant cluster of CCIs within Fish Island and there are opportunities to consolidate and promote this cluster to contribute to a diverse local economy.

Waterways – Fish Island benefits from being crossed north to south by the Lea Navigation and River Lea and west to east by the Hertford Union Canal. These waterways and their towpaths provide significant opportunities for walking, cycling, boating, transportation of goods and waste, and improving ecology as well as providing a setting for future development.

IMPORTANT NOTE: CREATIVE AND CULTURAL INDUSTRIES IS TO BE A BASE ON WHICH MY PROPOSAL IS TO BE BASED AS I AM TO RESEARCH, DESIGN AND CREATE A FACTORY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF CREATIVE EQUIPMENT: COLOURED PENCILS, PAINT AND PAPER FOR THE CREATIVE INDUSTRY 

Parks and open space – Fish Island is situated between three significant public parks, Victoria Park to the west and the Lee Valley Regional Park and future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to the east. There are opportunities to make better connections to these important open spaces for the benefit of new communities and to establish smaller local parks and open spaces within the AAP boundary.

Development pressure – Ensuring a balanced and managed approach to the release of previous industrial land to ensure that mixed use and residential development does not come forward in a piecemeal way.

Responding to flood risk – The whole of Fish Island is subject to tidal and fluvial flood risk from the Thames and River Lea. This will influence the nature and design of future development in the area. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: RESPONDING TO FLOOD RISK IS TO BE A MAJOR CONCERN IN MY DESIGN PROPOSAL

Supporting new communities – Ensuring residential development is supported with the right social infrastructure, such as schools, health and community facilities in the right locations and at the right time will be essential to create balanced, sustainable communities.

The creation of a factory will develop the economy within fish island and this will develop the surrounding areas as well

THE VISION FOR FISH ISLAND

Tower Hamlets Core Strategy contains a strategic vision for Fish Island. The AAP takes the vision to a new level of detail, taking into account the opportunities and challenges. The AAP vision is based on the fundamental principles of

Creating a well connected place that becomes a joined up part of East London

Making the most of the transformational effect of the Olympic Legacy investment and Stratford City

Managing the release of former industrial land for other uses that contribute towards creating sustainable communities

Retaining a strong identity and sense of place based on the unique industrial heritage and waterside location

Ensuring that new homes are supported with the right infrastructure.

Ensuring the regeneration and development of Fish Island contributes to the convergence agenda as defined in the London Plan

The AAP estimates that about 3,000 new homes could come forward in Fish Island, alongside 175,000sq.m. of new or revitalised employment floor space, creating around 3,500 new jobs.

Mid Fish Island will be the location of the factory that is to be developed.

MANAGING THE RELEASE OF INDUSTRIAL SITES

The sections above explain how existing land use policies could be altered to achieve a better balance of uses across Fish Island by consolidating the Strategic Industrial Location in Fish Island South, designating a Local Industrial Location in parts of Fish Island Mid and South and promoting the existing clusters of creative industries and small businesses.

Managing there development of former industrial land sites for mixed use development across the whole of Fish Island outside of the Strategic and Local Industrial Locations and the Legacy development area will be achieved through the statutory development management process. The spatial approach set out above will be complimented with clear criteria that will be used to assess proposals for redevelopment.

Development within the mixed use area will be expected to provide a balance of residential, commercial, and other supporting uses to create a vibrant and diverse community. Residential-led development will be expected to provide predominately residential which can be complemented by other uses such as community and commercial.

Managing the redevelopment of former industrial land

DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT

Proposals for redevelopment of existing industrial sites outside of the SIL and LIL, for mixed use including residential will be considered favourably if they meet the following criteria. This will be applied flexibly depending on the individual site, subject to other policies in the AAP:

The proposals would maintain or increase employment density - i.e. more jobs would be created) when compared with the existing or last permitted use of the site;

The proposals would retain and/ or refurbish heritage assets including buildings within Fish Island Conservation Area and buildings of townscape merit;

The proposal would provide improved connections and / or enhanced public realm that would help to deliver the AAP vision;

A relocation strategy for existing businesses affected by the redevelopment has been provided;

The development would provide or contribute to the social and community facilities required to support new housing development;

Proposals for mixed use development that include housing would not result in any significant conflict between employment and residential uses (including those on adjacent sites);

Proposals would include flexible work space for small and medium enterprises and/or creative industries.

CREATIVE INDUSTRY AND SMALL BUSINESSES

It is widely recognised that London’s CCIs are both a driver and a consequence of its broader economic success. Over the last several decades, London’s creative sector has spread eastwards. Fish Island is at the heart of a cluster of CCIs, with substantial new areas of space coming forward in the Lower Lea Valley.

Tower Hamlets has the second highest (following Hackney with the highest) number of artists’ studios and groups, with 28% of all of London’s artists’ studio buildings and 43% of units (Mayor’s Cultural Strategy 2010). A mapping audit exercise undertaken by the London Development Agency (LDA, 2009), identified 610 studios (including live/ work) across the Hackney Wick and Fish Island area.

Studio spaces are not only occupied by creative practitioners such as designers, artists & galleries but also by a variety of supporting businesses from printers to financial consultants. The concentration of CCIs and small businesses in Fish Island plays a central part in the future evolution of the vision for the area.

The Olympic Legacy International Broadcasting Centre and Main Press Centre (IBC/MPC), in the London Borough of Hackney, will provide substantial new employment space, which could be occupied by large scale creative media, broadcasting, digital and related uses. Capitalising and nurturing the eastward shift of CCIs is of high importance for Hackney Wick/Fish Island. There is now the opportunity to support, enhance and grow this economic activity, to create an area of international significance. Building on the existing economic assets in Hackney Wick/Fish Island, could attract media businesses to the IBC/MPC, which value the close proximity to the existing CCIs and small businesses for ideas and innovation.

CCIs create local job opportunities; in particular start-up space for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) or the self-employed. They contribute towards place making and the area’s distinct character. Many of the Fish Island’s historical buildings, which are no longer suitable for traditional industrial activity have been adapted to create workspace for CCIs and other small businesses. The reuse of existing buildings, new developments and utilising space for active uses, will promote heritage-led renewal. This approach would support and enhance the character of the Fish Island Conservation Area and buildings of local significance, to avoid the loss of existing flexible workspaces spaces through new large scale developments.

IN SUMMARY FOR THE PROGRAMME ABOUT THE FISH ISLAND AGENDAS  AND ISSUES

Regeneration and future development of Fish Island - the mainly industrial area 

Character and Heritage – Fish Island boasts a strong and unique character as a result of its historic buildings, interesting streetscape and remaining industrial features. These elements should be seen as a significant regeneration opportunity to influence future development proposals and contribute towards creating a sense of place.

Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI’s) – Over the past few decades the creative economy has spread east from Soho into areas such as Clerkenwell and Shoreditch and now into the East End. There is a significant cluster of CCIs within Fish Island and there are opportunities to consolidate and promote this cluster to contribute to a diverse local economy.

Managing the release of former industrial land for other uses that contribute towards creating sustainable communities

Retaining a strong identity and sense of place based on the unique industrial heritage and waterside location

The proposals would maintain or increase employment density

The proposals would retain and/ or refurbish heritage assets hence facade retention

The proposal would provide improved connections and / or enhanced public realm 

The development would provide or contribute to the social and community facilities 

Proposals for mixed use development that include housing would not result in any significant conflict between employment and residential uses 

Proposals would include flexible work space for small and medium enterprises and/or creative industries.

Intergrated area with several uses

Improved infrastructure 

Waterside (canal) environment renewal

[pennsylvaniaprelawland-blog]

The Parking Chair: How Shall We Protect Our Property Rights?

By Ken Qi, University of Pittsburgh Class of 2023

September 8, 2020

When you happen to be driving along the road, trying to find a place to park, you might expect a chair in front of someone’s house. This practice is especially common in the Northeast. [8] The chairs people use to take up the parking places vary from size and style, but they all serve the same purpose: to protect their rights of property by reserving the parking spot exclusively to themselves. However, this practice has been debated for a long time that whether this does protect the property rights or rather it only limits the parking spots available and causes difficulty for drivers, especially when the parking spots are high in demand.

Pittsburgh is a city located in Pennsylvania that has the parking chair tradition for a long time. The first time that I know this practice is during the first meeting of a property law class when the professor talked about the parking chair issues as an introductory problem to make students think seriously about their property rights. Historically, as the population continued to grow people in Pittsburgh moved to suburbs which increased their use of cars replacing their use of public transportation. The number of cars grew rapidly and more cars stimulated a competition of limited parking slots. [1] That is what we discussed above: it results in people trying hard to secure the parking spot in front of their houses, which is the most convenient choice for the owners to park their cars. Not surprisingly, the parking chair causes friction as well. A story was reported that a woman was annoyed by a car owner who removed her parking chair and took the parking spot she cleaned out of the snow for hours. She avenged by encasing the car in a layer of ice including the tires. [3] That’s not nice! However, let us investigate whether this practice is legal or not and whether it helps to protect people’s property rights.

Traditionally, we will not be surprised if someone goes past our houses through the road in the front. Also, if you live inside a district, you will have to go past other people’s property to get to yours. You may think that it is because the road is public that everyone has the right to it. However, when you by a house, usually your property extends until the middle point of the road in front of your house (and the other half of road is owned by the property owner directly opposite to your house). [6] Other people can go pass without trespassing because it is an easement. You can get to your house by passing other people’s properties is also due to the easement. Nevertheless, the problem of parking might not be the same: people do not like someone parking in front of the house, but they are generally OK with passengers. From the fact that the property does include the half side of the road, it seems to be evident that people have the exclusive right of property to not let other people use the side of the road they own, which means that the parking chair could be justified as a way people use to notify other people of their property rights. Nonetheless, we can hear the opposite voice as well. The growing car number makes it harder and harder for people to find a place to park. If everyone is using the chair to occupy the parking spot, a lot of spaces are wasted which makes it even harder to park. The practice of parking chair is not maximizing social utility.

As we see that both sides of the argument seem to be plausible, evidence shows that several states have outlawed the practice of parking chair. For example, the city of Washington D.C. strictly outlawed the parking chair and would ticket all the violators. [9] Boston law does not prohibit the practice of parking chair itself but rather sets a limit that the longest time a parking chair can occupy the parking spot is 48 hours after the declaration of snow moment. [5] In Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Parking Authority claimed that the parking chair could be fined to $300 as it contains no magical power. This does not only apply to the chair but other stuff as well: large box, wooden horse, a pallet, etc. [2] Later on, it becomes that it is both legal to put and remove the chair as two sides of the argument come to a compromise. [4]

This is not just a question of property rights. It marks out a fundamental conflict that happens in every field of law—the conflict between justice and social utility. It is just for people to occupy their property and exclude other people as they like, but the maximization of the use of public goods should also be considered. While the moral dilemma seems to be unavoidable, it comes to be the job of the State and the police to decide whether they should suspend the practice of parking chairs according to the different situations the city is facing at different times.

________________________________________________________________

[1]Slaby, MJ, The Pittsburgh parking chair’s history, mystery and rules (Dec. 17, 2018, 7:15 a.m), https://archive.theincline.com/2018/12/17/the-pittsburgh-parking-chairs-history-mystery-and-rules/

[2]O’Neill, Brian, Traditional practice of using parking chairs raises new reservations(Dec. 8, 2013, 12:00 a.m.),https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/brian-oneill/2013/12/08/Traditional-practice-of-using-parking-chairs-raises-new-reservations/stories/201312080078

[3]Kirkland, Kevin, Pittsburgh residents are using chairs, different items to stake out parking spots (Feb 10, 2010, 5:00 a.m.), https://www.post-gazette.com/life/lifestyle/2010/02/10/Pittsburgh-residents-are-using-chairs-different-items-to-stake-out-parking-spots/stories/201002100227

[4]Smeltz, Adam, The Pittsburgh parking chair: It's legal to put it in the street. It's also legal to remove it. (Aug. 24, 2017, 10:32 a.m.), https://www.post-gazette.com/local/east/2017/08/23/pittsburgh-parking-chair-etiquette-squirrel-hill-phillips-avenue/stories/201708230408

[5]Finer, Jonathan, Boston Fights Winter Parking Tradition, (Jan. 1, 2005), https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39654-2004Dec31.html

[6]Singer, J. W., Berger, B. R., Davidson, N. M., & Peñalver, E. M. (2014). Property law: Rules, policies, and practices (6th ed.). New York: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, ISBN 978-1-4548-3761-9

[7] Petichok, Pittsburgh Parking Chair (Feb. 7, 2010), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pittsburgh_Parking_Chair.jpg

[8]Philip Selznick; Martin Krygier; Kenneth I. Winston (2002). Robert A. Kagan (ed.), Legality and community : on the intellectual legacy of Philip Selznick (illustrated ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 153. ISBN 0-7425-1625-3

[9] Tuss, Adam, It's a no-no to mark your parking space after shoveling (Dec. 22, 2009), https://web.archive.org/web/20110611205352/http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1846935

Photo Credit: Petichok

[uicyoulater]

Yonsei How to Pt 19 - Moving and Places to Live

So, you’ve finished your required time in Songdo and you wanna live in Seoul now so that you can go to classes in Sinchon. (or you’re on exchange cause this could be useful too) Should you? Yeah, but you gotta think about some stuff first. I compared Songdo and Sinchon in my last post but I just want to rephrase my comments a bit in this frame of mind and talk about other things that you have to realize about moving.

There’s a lot of stuff you have to consider when you are thinking about moving anywhere. I’m just going to go over my own struggles and say my good old pros and cons about them in relation to the different Yonsei campuses.

1)      Housing – Songdo has both RC and non-RC dorm rooms. They are fairly easy to get for at least a few years and they’re very cheap. Dorm costs also include security, internet, trash, and other utilities. On the con side, if you want to go into Seoul a lot or take Sinchon classes most of the time, the commute is long and you have to get home by curfew and abide by rules. After they finish RC, some students who want to stay in Songdo will move into their own apartments nearby. Housing, though I have not searched for it in Songdo or Incheon, seems to be a little hard to find very close to school if you are not willing to pay key money or want to live alone. People do still do it and you’ll probably get help from sunbaes if you ask or just live a few stations away. Songdo dorms are the easiest option of all if you have classes there. Sinchon is about to launch another dorm complex, but right now your options are SK, I-House, and Muak. Frankly, you’ll never get a room in SK or I-House and I wouldn’t want to. They’re older buildings and mostly house exchange/language students so it kinda removes you from things. Also, exchange students…Muak houses a lot of students, but I’ve never actually been inside so I can’t tell you much. What I can say is that it is at the TOP of the hill and there’s still limited space. Also, all Sinchon dorms also have rules similar to Songdo dorms. Living off campus in Sinchon (or in Seoul in general) is a lot more popular. You can live in your own apartment, a long-term share house, a short-term share house/guesthouse, or in a one room. One rooms are popular and surround the campus. They’re also cheap. But they’re lonely and sometimes a little cramped. If they’re meant for Korean students mostly, they might be hard to get if your language skill isn’t high enough, and if they’re for foreigners mostly, they might be more expensive. Guesthouses and share houses are similar in that they have individual rooms or shared rooms with shared facilities like kitchens, living areas, etc. Share houses are more for long-term residents and will have a deposit and a minimum length of stay, often at least 4 months or 1 semester. Guesthouses you could theoretically live in, but are mostly meant for travelers and not recommended for anyone staying all that long since people are always coming in and out and it might be disruptive if you want to be there more long term. Lastly, we have apartments. Apartments in Korea are on a contract for generally at least 6 months to one year. They could be cheap if you’re just looking at monthly rent but most have Key Money which is a very high deposit. Apartments are also harder to find for foreigners if you have to go through either higher-cost foreigner agents or try to read Korean postings. Low-deposit places will have higher rents or be fairly worn down. If you do want an apartment in Seoul, either get lots of $ from some source or go in with a few friends. You can find all of these places by walking around the campus neighborhood, googling, and Craigslist. If you are trying to decide on a place and cannot visit, ask for additional pictures, what the home rules are, and how things like trash and utilities are handled.

2)      Commuting – When you live in Songdo dorms or Sinchon dorms you’re pretty set when it comes to getting to class. When you live off campus it gets harder. You can get apartments (etc) near the campus gates, but there are no buses that go right into the center of it. You will always have to walk and it will always be uphill at some point in the day. Walking sucks and all of Seoul is a hill. Living farther away from campus will generally be cheaper for comparable housing. I live in Hapjeong in a super modern share house. I love my house and getting to school isn’t that hard. Being 2 subway stations away is just as un-walkable most of the time as living 6 stations away, so waking up only 20 minutes older might be worth a few $100 if you’re willing to live a little farther. You will have to pay for public transport, obviously, so it’s something you’ll have to consider. Living near/in Sinchon, Edae, Sogang, Hapjeong, or Hongdae is a good bet on commuting and just being close enough that getting to school isn’t a whole process. As a student, your transport methods are BMW or bus, metro, and walking. If you want you can purchase a bicycle or other small transportation assistant device without needing a license. You could also purchase a motorcycle, but that would require more steps and, you know, money. Seoul has a bike share program that you can register for by the day, month, semester, year, etc. I pay by the month because when I travel home it’s for at least a month, if not more, and also because I don’t want to pay during the coldest winter months when I won’t be using it anyway. During fall/spring/summer I do recommend it just because it’s cheaper than buying a bike. (There is a 1-day traveler pass option for those who don’t have ARC yet. Good for things like biking at Hangang.) The only problem I have with the biking in general is that I will never travel up the hill to school on a bike and that the bike share program is hard to sign up for and the bikes are fairly basic. I still love it and bike on Hangang at least twice every week in good weather just for fun.  

3)      Getting Your Stuff from Songdo – If you are using the dorm’s break storage service then you’ll need to get your stuff to your new place. If you or a friend can drive you then it’s not a problem. If you can’t do any of that, then you need to find a way. If you have a lot of stuff or are moving multiple people, you can hire a moving company to deliver it to you. You can also ship your boxes to your new address, but that can get expensive fairly quickly. If you have a friend who’s willing to help you could take boxes on the subway, but unless it’s all in suitcases it’s not gonna be fun. If you have 1-3 boxes to move from Songdo you can get a taxi. Don’t take any other people if you have more than 2 boxes. From Songdo to Sinchon is about $35. Just make sure to get a taxi that’s willing to go that far. If you are alone and cheap then this is the best option for that amount of stuff.

4)      Trash Laws – if you live in your own home or a share house you’ll have to deal with trash laws which change depending on the district. Nothing bad, just an aspect of moving.

5)      Changing Your ARC – You will have to tell the immigration office if you move off campus or to the other campus and get the necessary documents on your own within a few weeks. This can be done online, but it must be done as soon as you move or you can get fined.

6)      Informing your School/Bank/Phone Company – Just go into an office location, call a number, or do this online. For visiting your bank or phone company, bring a new proof of residence of some kind and your ID cards. There may be a small fee, but it’s not that hard. Whenever your info changes you should do all of this.

7)      Job Opportunities – There are more employment opportunities in Seoul than in Songdo just because there are more jobs. Songdo jobs have limited perspective workers, though, so they might pay a bit better.

8)      Extracurricular/Fun – Songdo is wonderful and beautiful but Seoul is more fun. Nothing against Songdo, but on the weekends and for a lot of extracurricular people will go to Seoul from Songdo, so I guess that kinda makes my point for me.

9)      Safety/Neighborhood – Songdo has always felt safer to me. There’s not really all that much going on there, so that probably has something to do with it. Seoul is a little bit creepier, especially anywhere near a clubbing/party area. Frankly, I would never live in Hongdae or Itaewon within the actual popular areas because dealing with loud drunk people isn’t fun. Near Songdo, there is a nightlife area near art center station that I would not live in either. I crashed at a friend’s place there once and it’s a nice area, but loud and bright and not good for people who like residential neighborhoods. I live in a super residential area and the only bothersome things are kids playing loudly at the park across the street. It’s comfy and homey and I love it. Smaller neighborhoods also have little hidden gems of cafes, boutiques, and izakayas. Wherever you live, watch out for crazy driving.

 As always, questions are welcome and I would love to offer advice to anyone who wants to find housing in Seoul for a semester or more!

[faceplant-ux]

Big Dog, Big City, Bad UX

Today I confirmed with the ophthalmologist (that’s an eye-disorder-doctor/surgeon) that my 7-year-old Bernese mutt, Astrid, would need surgery. A benign mass has been steadily growing on the rim of her eyelid for several months, and $proghub and I were referred to this specialist after the mass got one millimetre too bold. The most emotionally trying part of the process was not the steep cost, nor the fact that the mass was actually two masses, or what would evidently be a painful recovery period for Astrid in the cone-of-shame. It was getting to the drop-in clinic in the first place. 

Here were the parameters we were dealing with:

First, the ophthalmology clinic of choice received patients from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. 

Second, we didn’t have a car. The TTC (subway system in Toronto) allows pets to travel on leash or in carriers during off-peak hours, defined as “before 6:30 am; 10 am to 3:30 pm; after 7pm”. Obviously it’s easier to bend this rule with a smaller dog in a travel crate. Astrid weighed 60 pounds.

Third, according to Google Maps, it would take me 50 minutes-1 hour to get to the clinic from home by transit. Based on previous rides on that very route, I knew delays and increased traffic would be likely.

Finally, taking an Uber/Lyft instead was estimated to be a 15 minute journey at a budget-friendly price of $18. 

Conclusion: For maximum sleep and minimum transit time, take a Lyft at 7:30 am, arrive at the clinic before 8 am, and expect to wait about 2 hours at most. Cool. 

In the past I had no issues riding in a Lyft with Astrid, so long as I called ahead to let them know I’d have a large dog with me. A driver had the right to decline the ride in the interest of comfort or cleanliness, but so far none of them had.

Except today. I called the first driver right away as soon as we were matched and they apologized profusely for not wanting to take the dog. No hard feelings. But then the driver hid out nearby anyway, and didn’t cancel the ride despite my calling him back asking him to do so. It was impossible for me to cancel the ride now that he had “arrived” and was “waiting”. He let the wait timer finish before cancelling the ride and driving off. Annoying; that was three minutes I had to wait before calling another ride.

The second driver agreed to take Astrid when I confirmed over the phone. Great! He arrived, saw her, and said he had misunderstood, and he couldn’t take her. And then again, didn’t cancel the ride right away waiting for the five minute timer to run out — thankfully he figured it out eventually after rolling down the window to ask if I could cancel it (again, I couldn’t), and cancelled after two minutes.

While writing this post I discovered that I was charged a $5.00 no-show fee for allegedly standing up the first driver, which I had to get refunded from Lyft in the form of credit. 

UX questions abound:

Why was it difficult for both drivers to cancel the ride in the Lyft app? 

In the case of the first driver, did they intentionally let the timer run to 0:00 in order to get a no-show cancellation fee out of me? I would have likely missed the fact that I had been charged a no-show fee.

Why does Lyft’s chat bot automatically issue the refund as Lyft credit rather than a credit card refund? I feel I could have gotten in touch with customer support to get the latter, but $5 was a trivial enough amount to not do so. Are there risks with giving the customer the choice of how they would like to receive their refund?

It was now 8:03 a.m. I called one of the local cab companies. They had always accepted large dogs; I even double-checked over the phone with the dispatcher! The driver arrived after the promised 5-10 minute wait. I herded Astrid into the car and heard the tail end of a conversation over the comm, “—listen if you aren’t comfortable and don’t want to have a pet say something, we’re here to help!” I pretended not to hear. The driver asked if I had a cover for the dog since the seats were vinyl. Um, no? He fetched a jacket from his trunk. “Someone forgot it, just put it under your dog.” Fine. 

It was a silent ride, except for the radio going off again: “How long is your fare?” "I’ll get back to you later,” my driver discreetly responded.

We got to the clinic and it was now nearly quarter to nine. I wiped off the back seats as best as I could and tossed the now furry, dusty jacket into the trunk. Astrid and I entered a packed clinic, the many waiting room chairs full of dogs and their owners. It was something to behold; at least half of the poor canines were wearing cones, and half of those coned canines had eye stitches. What was Astrid in for? I wondered.

The reception cheerfully informed me of the paperwork I had to fill, and as I felt my frayed nerves calming she added, “It’ll be a 3 to 4 hour wait.”

“OK, that’s fine!”, I said in my typical singsong. Yet inside:

I killed time by walking Astrid for about 2 hours. The only place that had set out a dog water bowl was the local cannabis shop. They invited Astrid inside and cooed over her eagerly. That experience alone made the morning much less crappy for me.

The cab ride I had taken reminded me of a time when $proghub was ushering Astrid over to dog boarding, and his cab driver hit another car. He blamed our dog for distracting him, despite her already having long finished her investigative sniffing.

You can provide for a large dog’s every need, but societal discrimination remains:

Finding an apartment that will accept your dog. Ontario law states that “no-pets” clauses are void (huzzah! 🙌), but that doesn’t stop landlords from putting them into leases or denying your application once they find out you have one. $proghub and I are moving to Montréal, and in Québec there isn’t an equivalent law, which means we have to search extra hard for a place that will accept Astrid. Many ads will say 1) no pets, 2) cats only, no dogs, or 3) cats and small dogs under 1x pounds accepted, no large dogs. This sucks because Astrid is non-destructive, quiet, and trained to do her business outside — she’ll even actively seek out *grass* over concrete, which we didn’t teach her — and that is what most landlords want anyway. 9/10 likelihood the yapping dog in your condo is a small one. Bonus points if it’s a Pomeranian or a Shiba. Both are wonderful breeds, but improperly socialized, well...

No dogs in many public spaces. This is more understandable. But how many times have you been in a store and seen a small dog in a purse or under one’s arm? Meanwhile the large dog stays tied to a pole outside, susceptible to theft (especially at risk he/she is outgoing and easily bribed)! 

Lack of transportation options, without a car. A lot of transit systems don’t accept pets unless they’re in carriers, which is impossible with a large dog. Thankfully, GO Transit recently changed their rules after a successful pilot in summer of 2018 where they allowed leashed dogs on their buses and trains with restrictions (pets needed to stay on the lower level of the vehicles, among other common-sense measures). And as already mentioned, the TTC accepts leashed dogs during off-peak hours. My in-laws live in Fort Erie, so if we want to take Astrid to visit them, they drive the 2+ hours to Toronto to pick up the three of us. Except in summer, when GO Transit is running their limited Niagara train service, and we get to take our pooch along. 

Lack of off-leash dog parks. The nearest off-leash dog park to us, despite living in bustling North York, is about a 40-minute walk down Yonge Street, requiring passage underneath a bridge supporting what is allegedly the busiest highway in North America, the 401 (Business Insider). Once $proghub and I decided to bring Astrid to the magical Sherwood Park in Toronto, which took us about 50 minutes by transit on a weekend. Constituents in my neighbourhood petitioned for an off-leash area to be placed in one of the three(!!) parks in my area, all within a 1 km radius of each other, and one of my neighbours, a seasoned arbitrator, even put together some costing for fencing solutions. The proposal was turned down. To add insult to injury last mayoral election, the leading council candidate in my area, a young mother endorsed by the then current, retiring councillor, promised to install a dog park. That dream dissipated once the retiring councillor changed his mind on retiring and promptly beat her in re-election. So many dogs, big and small, in my neighbourhood, with nowhere to play.

What to do? The solution to all my big-dog woes is to be less eco-friendly, of course! 

Seriously though!  If I buy a house, which occupies more land per family than an apartment, I can avoid all pet-landlord issues by not having a landlord!  Since public transit and cabs/rideshares don’t perfectly accommodate my dog, I can save the frustration by having Astrid drool outside the window of my very own Bonewagon!

Sounds ridiculous, right? For the first 3 years of Astrid’s life, we lived in a large 2-bedroom apartment with plenty of space for her to roam. Around the back of the building, there was a large, forested area that she happily explored (and pooped in). The vet was a very short walk away, cabs or friends’ cars were available for short journeys and driving lessons, and the in-laws lived much closer so picking us up took about half the time.

However, circumstances changed, as they do. We moved back to Toronto for me to finish my degree. The cost of rent in Toronto was nearly twice that of Waterloo, and our living quarters changed from about 1000 square feet to 615. Because of the extensive, pet-friendly transit system and the cost of practising driving with the car share, I let my G2 license expire rather than practise intermittently and nervously towards my full G license, since we wouldn’t be buying a car even if I had attained it. Of course Astrid was coming with us — we weren’t going to be one of those families that abandoned their dog through moving. 

Our building is extremely pet friendly, housing Great Danes, Labs and Huskies, and even a sweet, massive Saint Bernard, along with many more “apartment-sized” breeds. Without a doubt, the community is richer for it. People know each other by their dogs’ names. Lobby bathroom accidents are extremely rare. When a resident puts their old dog to sleep, the loss is also felt by neighbours, because you’ve seen that dog for the past few years. You’ve watched them become all warty and grey and scabby and slow — they’d wag their butts when you’d pet them, in spite of their arthritic hips.

Owning a large dog is a pretty normal North American thing to do. I just wish that as dog owners, we didn’t have to jump through so many hoops in order to enjoy the friendship of these unconditionally loyal creatures. With all the shit we humans put ourselves through, we could use the extra love.

Dog tax:

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/air-pollution-how-does-londons-new-emissions-zone-compare/

Air pollution: How does London's new emissions zone compare?

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Media caption3D map showing London air pollution in 2006

London’s tough new Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) is the latest – and one of the strongest – steps yet taken to limit emissions of pollutants from cars, vans and trucks. So how does it compare with other cities in Europe and the rest of the world?

CAZ? LEZ? ULEZ? What do they all mean?

These are all different ways of describing geographical areas of cities or towns that have placed restrictions on the use of vehicles, with the goal of tackling air pollution. A CAZ is a clean air zone, a LEZ is a low-emissions zone. Now we have London with the world’s first ULEZ, or ultra-low emissions zone.

Image copyright Getty Images

In the UK, CAZs are areas that can decide to use charging as a means of cleaning the air, but don’t have to. If they do impose some form of charging for the most polluting vehicles, they are called a LEZ.

Across Europe there is less clarity about definitions, and LEZ is the term widely used to describe around 250 areas in different cities, with considerable variation.

“Not all LEZs have been created equal,” said Yoann Le Petit from the research group Transport & Environment.

“In Brussels, in terms of coverage, it’s quite a large LEZ, but in terms of ambition level, it’s very low. It started last year, banning Euro 1 cars (registered before 1992). These are very old vehicles; you hardly see them on the street.

“You also have a very high ambition LEZ in Madrid and the one just introduced in Stuttgart, but there is no agreed definition of what an LEZ is.”

Who’s got the most restricted areas?

Across Europe, Italy has the most low-emissions zones – some of them permanent, many of them seasonal. There are also around 80 in Germany, 14 each in the Netherlands and the UK. France has also 14 LEZs, but most of these are emergency schemes that are enforced on a daily basis when there are pollution peaks.

What’s happening in the rest of the world?

There are initiatives under way across all continents. Some are more successful than others.

Image copyright Andrew Hasson

Image caption Mexico city has struggled to achieve major reductions in pollutants

Tokyo was one of the first cities to ban diesel vehicles, starting back in 2000.

Seoul in South Korea only introduced measures in 2017 to ban diesel cars that failed to meet emissions standards.

Bogota in Columbia has been working since 1974 to get cars off the streets. Every Sunday sees large numbers of roads closed until 2pm. They have also attempted to restrict cars based on number plates with less success.

Mexico city has also developed restrictions based on number plates and by banning cars on Saturdays. However, a study from 2017 says that it hasn’t worked as well as hoped because people car-pooled, used taxis or bought extra vehicles.

In the US, San Francisco has plans to ban cars on Market Street; and Los Angeles, Denver and Charlotte are thinking about how to reduce emissions in the future. But no American city has yet banned diesel cars in any form.

Surprising lessons from the world’s oldest LEZ?

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption The city of Gothenburg in Sweden has one of the oldest LEZs in the world

One of the most curious things to come out of the introduction of a LEZ in Sweden in 1996 was the demand from trucking companies to make them bigger.

“Before the introduction, some hauliers were really angry about it,” said Anders Roth, formerly the civil servant in charge of the Gothenburg LEZ.

“Then they realised it wasn’t that bad and the big hauliers who invested in new vehicles realised they could make more money from having a good environmental profile, and they wanted the zone made bigger.”

The world’s first LEZs for vehicles were introduced in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Malmo and Lund in Sweden back in the mid 1990s. The restrictions put in place were targeted at the most polluting diesel trucks and buses in the city centre. Essentially, any vehicle over 3.5 tonnes.

Private cars were not included; they’re still not banned.

“The next step would be to include cars, but that’s a more controversial question in Sweden. We already have congestion charging in Gothenburg and Stockholm, but politicians are reluctant to enforce more regulations,” said Mr Roth.

He believes that because the Swedish cities started earlier, they have had to place fewer restrictions on vehicles to achieve cleaner air.

“We started early and people got used to it and now it’s normal – people would think it would be silly to take it away.”

He’s a supporter of the London ULEZ.

“I think that’s the best way to go. You don’t have to ban vehicles totally if they are not really bad; you can have the same effect but without the same high cost for society.”

Do these restrictions make a big difference?

Undoubtedly all the zones are having an impact – but the scale of the difference varies, depending on the type of pollutant. They’ve worked well with diesel particulates which the World Health Organization has linked to cancer.

“They have made a huge difference with all forms of particulate matter,” said Lucy Sadler, who previously led the London Mayor’s air quality team and now runs a website that collects information on how cities are tackling air pollution.

“Nitrous oxides (NOx) are harder, no thanks to vehicle manufacturers.”

“If you look at Milan, which has a low-emissions zone and a congestion charge combined, they’ve reduced NOx by 10%, they reckon. That’s huge in a city because there’s not that many things you can affect.

“A low-emissions zone won’t be a single magic wand, but it can usually be the biggest single measure.”

Is London’s new zone really the “toughest” in the world?

It’s very hard to say definitively as different cities have different levels of restriction. Certainly, it is one of the most ambitious among the world’s largest cities. But some critics say that it could be tougher by banning polluting vehicles instead of just charging them.

Some experts believe this is down to the level of authority in the Mayor’s hands.

“In London they have the power to charge for it; others have the right to ban,” said Kate Laing from C40 Cities, a group of major world cities committed to tackling climate change.

“But if you are willing to drive and pay the charge three days a week instead of five days a week – that is still making gains in air quality.”

Apart from London, two cities in Europe are said by observers to be the most restrictive.

In Madrid, there is a zero-emissions zone since last November, about the same size as the new London ULEZ.

To drive into the Madrid zone, you have to have authorisation and that is only given to zero-emissions vehicles such as electric cars. However, residents are given an exemption that they can continue to use their existing cars until they get a new one.

It is more relaxed for residents, say experts, because it was introduced with much less lead time than London,

“Madrid is a small zone but it is very ambitious,” said Yoann Le Petit. “They could already see a NO2 reduction of around 40%. Even outside the LEZ, they saw a slight decrease in traffic, as people know they won’t be able to go through the city centre. They even saw a slight increase in business in the zone.”

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Media captionAir pollution: What are the effects on humans?

Oslo also has very ambitious plans. The city has already removed 700 car parking spaces to create bike lanes and small parks. It also has a zero emissions zone in the centre of the city.

Do local governments make money from these schemes?

According to experts, low-emissions zones don’t make money.

“The more you enforce, the more expensive it gets,” said Lucy Sadler.

“If you fine someone £40, it won’t cover the cost to enforce it. They don’t make money. It’s a myth that some organisations like to promote, but it’s absolutely not based on fact.

“Combined congestion charging is different. Across Europe, London is best-practice as the money raised is spent on local public transport. In other countries, it’s not the case.”

Where do we go from ULEZ?

To zero, most likely. The direction of travel is to increase the size of low-emissions zones, and then, over time, to go to zero emissions. This means that only electric cars, or vehicles powered by battery or hydrogen, for example, would be allowed in.

“Zero is a big step from low. It will require serious investment in electric vehicles and hydrogen, and shifts towards more walking, cycling and public transport,” said Kate Laing from C40 Cities.

Image copyright Barcroft Media

“In London, the Mayor’s transport strategy is to try to achieve 80% of trips across London in walking, cycling and mass transport by 2040; the ULEZ is feeding into a long-term vision of the city by 2040.”

This thrust is not just because of air quality; it’s also down to climate change. Emissions from transport are proving very tough to curb, and will require continued restrictions on internal combustion engines.

“Increasing numbers of cities are saying zero-emissions zones,” said Lucy Sadler.

“In terms of where we are going – this is the final destination,” said Yoann Le Petit.

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathToldnews.

[punalavaflow]

State House District 1: Incumbent to face first-time candidate

Editor’s note: This is one of a series of intermittent stories about contests in the Aug. 11 primary election.

The state House District 1 Democratic primary race pits a 10-year legislator against a community activist who’s running for office for the first time.

State Rep. Mark Nakashima, a 55-year-old former teacher, said he’ll be “standing on the record that I’ve compiled over the last 10 years” representing the sprawling district that encompasses Hamakua, North Hilo and a portion of South Hilo.

His opponent, Koohan Paik-Mander is development director for Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action and former coordinator of the Asia-Pacific program at the International Forum on Globalization, a San Francisco-based think tank co-founded by her husband, Jerry Mander. She was instrumental in pressing a civil lawsuit over the county’s plans for Kukuihaele Park and in protesting wastewater discharges at Big Island Dairy, which was fined $25,000 in 2017 by the state Department of Health, and is the subject of a federal lawsuit.

The winner will face Republican Brian Evans, who’s unopposed on the GOP ballot, in the Nov. 6 general election.

Two accomplishments Nakashima pointed to are helping raise the minimum wage in Hawaii for the first time since 2007 and state investment in workforce development, including the creation of advisory committees to advise the state’s labor director on jobs in health care, agriculture and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

“The last of the increases happened this year, when the minimum wage went to $10.10,” Nakashima said about the minimum wage hike.

He said workforce development initiatives included creating microgrants “that allow for … responses to workforce needs in a particular area, for example, phlebotomists, pharmacy technicians (and) agricultural workers.”

The 57-year-old Paik-Mander describes herself as “heavily involved in sustainable agriculture” and wrote on her campaign’s Facebook page that Nakashima has given the dairy “a free pass to pollute and disfigure beautiful Hamakua.”

“What I’m seeing is our state making a lot of pronouncements about sustainability about this year or that year and resilience,” Paik-Mander said. “But I’m seeing actions that are actually going in the other direction. Like having the first factory farm in Hawaii be right smack dab in my district, making people sick. And the state has basically been turning a blind eye in the Department of Ag.”

Nakashima disputes Paik-Mander’s “free pass” assertion and said he continues to consult with DOH “in regard to the safeguards that need to be put in place” regarding the dairy.

“Kupale Ookala has since decided to file suit in federal court, which kind of takes it from the legislative arena into the judicial side,” he said. “We continue to monitor, we continue to ensure when there are issues that are brought up, we follow up with the Department of Health to ensure that things are being followed up upon. I recently went to a meeting with the new management, who sounds like they are taking steps to try and change the way that they are running the dairy and ensure there are no releases of wastewater.”

Nakashima was one of three Big Island representatives who cast a vote to increase the transient accommodations tax, or TAT, to bail out the troubled Honolulu fixed-rail transit project. Senate Bill 4 also gave counties the authority to add a surcharge to the general excise tax, with proceeds earmarked only for capital costs for the public transportation systems.

“The transient accommodations tax is paid when you stay in a hotel room,” Nakashima said. “In my mind, that would insulate our residents from having to pay this additional tax for Oahu rail. It’s limited to those who stay in hotel rooms. And unless you vacation at home, you’re not paying the tax. And also, you can decide how much you’re going to pay for the tax by the amount you pay for your hotel room.”

Paik-Mander said it wasn’t in the best interest of constituents “to give away our much needed share of the TAT to fund an Oahu project that we will never use or benefit from.”

“And that particular bill indicated some sort of mitigation for the damage, that we would be allowed to raise our GET tax. That’s no consolation for the loss of our TAT tax …,” she said. “But to rub salt into the wound for me … Mark Nakashima introduced a bill to exempt the Hu Honua Bioenergy facility from having to pay its GET tax. So this, to me, was a disservice and injustice to the constituents of District 1, both coming and going. And I pledge to never pass legislation that will be that flagrantly in violation of the best interest of constituents.”

The legislation Paik-Mander referred to, House Bill 584, passed first reading in 2017 but wasn’t heard by any committees. The bill was held over until this year’s legislative session, where it was approved by the House and passed first reading by the Senate, but didn’t receive a committee hearing.

Nakashima said Hu Honua is needed, especially since Puna Geothermal Venture was shut down shortly before its wells were overrun by lava.

“Up until just recently, 30 to 40 percent of our energy was renewable. It was geothermal,” he said. “And now that the geothermal plant has closed down, we’re back up to almost 90 percent fossil fuel. I think fossil fuel is the most damaging to the planet in terms of the greenhouse gases. … For the near term, burning trees is still considered a renewable resource because you can plant more trees. In fact, part of the program is that they have to continue planting trees. In that way, the effects of greenhouse gases is kind of negated because the gases created are being absorbed by the new trees.”

Nakashima supports the building of the Thirty Meter Telescope, saying it “offers us the opportunity to learn a lot more about the universe that we live in,” and Maunakea “is the best place to allow for the continued exploration of and quest for knowledge about deep space.”

Paik-Mander, on the other hand, said she’s “pro-science but anti-colonization, so I support the people who want Maunakea to remain TMT-free.”

A ballot initiative in November’s general election will ask voters to create a surcharge for public education funding by targeting “investment real property” valued at $1 million and more if the owner doesn’t qualify for a homeowner’s exemption. If it passes, the surcharge amount would be determined by the Legislature.

“As we look at our tax structure and the purposes that we spend those taxes on — primarily, it’s the general excise tax, the income tax and the real property tax — there is a need for an adjustment and refocusing on what those taxes are and what they’re paying for,” said Nakashima, who supports the ballot measure. “I can see the possibility the initiative could provide us the opportunity to have that discussion about re-balancing and re-purposing of our major taxes.”

Paik-Mander noted the initiative’s vagueness but said she’s in favor of an education surcharge.

“Just the mere fact that 27 percent of the state’s land is owned by people that don’t even live here, and that we have one of the lowest investment property taxes in the United States — there’s definitely room to create equity in our society. Because right now, the gap between haves and have-nots is growing, especially on our island and especially with the lava evacuees.”

Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.

The post State House District 1: Incumbent to face first-time candidate appeared first on Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

from Hawaii News – Hawaii Tribune-Herald https://ift.tt/2vmn6GW

[interplanetarypodcast]

Podcast 25

Happy Birthday

Quote sent in by Mary Valiakas

”You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut

An exclusive look at Jeff Bezos’s plan to set up Amazon-like delivery for ‘future human settlement’ of the moon

“Blue Origin has been circulating a seven-page white paper to NASA leadership and President Trump's transition team about the company's interest in developing a lunar spacecraft with a lander that would touch down near a crater at the south pole where there is water and nearly continuous sunlight for solar energy.”

The memo urges the space agency to back an Amazon-like shipment service for the moon that would deliver gear for experiments, cargo and habitats by mid-2020, helping to enable “future human settlement” of the moon. (Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, owns The Washington Post.)

“It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay,” Bezos said in response to emailed questions from The Post. “A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this.”

So SpaceX, NASA (although they insist that it’s just a feasibility study) but also;

ULA

Tory Bruno, the ULA  chief executive. “This administration, near as we can tell, feels a sense of urgency to go out and make things happen, and to have high-profile demonstrations that are along the road map to accomplish these broad goals. … There is an opportunity to begin building that infrastructure right now — within the next four years.” 

Bigelow Aerospace

Robert Bigelow, maker of BEAM, said his company could create a depot that could orbit the moon by 2020, housing supplies and medical facilities, as well as humans.. “Mars is premature at this time. The moon is not,” he said. “We have the technology. We have the ability, and the potential for a terrific business case.”

Bezos added  "I think that if you go to the moon first, and make the moon your home, then you can get to Mars more easily."

Water is vital not just for human survival, but also because hydrogen and oxygen in water could be transformed into rocket fuel. The moon, then, is seen as a massive gas station in space.

“Blue Moon is all about cost-effective delivery of mass to the surface of the Moon,” Bezos wrote. “Any credible first lunar settlement will require that capability.” 

NASA’s Kepler provides new data on TRAPPIST-1

Last month, researchers announced that TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool dwarf star approximately 40 light-years from Earth, hosts seven planets that are probably rocky, including three in the habitable zone. The discovery was made by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in combination with ground-based telescopes. TRAPPIST-1 has also been under observation by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope since December 2016. On Wednesday, March 8, NASA released new data from Kepler’s investigations of the dwarf star to the scientific community.

The Kepler spacecraft, now operating as the K2 mission, collected data on the star’s small changes in brightness due to transiting planets during the period between December 15, 2016, and March 4, 2017. These new observations are expected to help scientists to refine previous measurements of six of the planets, pin down the orbital period and mass of TRAPPIST-h – the seventh and farthest planet – and learn more about the host star’s magnetic activity.

Observations of TRAPPIST-1 weren’t always planned for Campaign 12. The initial coordinates of the patch of sky to be observed during Campaign 12 were set during October 2015 before the planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 were known to exist.

When the discovery of three of TRAPPIST-1’s planets was announced in May 2016, teams at NASA and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. reworked the calculations and rewrote and tested commands that would be programmed into the spacecraft’s operating system to make a slight pointing adjustment for Campaign 12. By October 2016, Kepler was ready to observe TRAPPIST-1.

“We were lucky that the K2 mission was able to observe TRAPPIST-1,” said Michael Haas, science office director for the Kepler and K2 missions at Ames. “The observing field for Campaign 12 was set when the discovery of the first planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 was announced, and the science community had already submitted proposals for specific targets of interest in that field. The unexpected opportunity to further study the TRAPPIST-1 system was quickly recognised and the agility of the K2 team and science community prevailed once again.”

Could fast radio bursts be powering alien probes?

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has looked for many different signs of alien life, from radio broadcasts to laser flashes, without success. However, newly published research suggests that mysterious phenomena called fast radio bursts could be evidence of advanced alien technology. Specifically, these bursts might be leakage from planet-sized transmitters powering interstellar probes in distant galaxies.

"Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a possible natural source with any confidence," said theorist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking."

As the name implies, fast radio bursts are millisecond-long flashes of radio emission. First discovered in 2007, fewer than two dozen have been detected by gigantic radio telescopes like the Parkes Observatory in Australia or the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. They are inferred to originate from distant galaxies, billions of light-years away.

Loeb and his co-author Manasvi Lingam (Harvard University) examined the feasibility of creating a radio transmitter strong enough for it to be detectable across such immense distances. They found that, if the transmitter were solar powered, the sunlight falling on an area of a planet twice the size of the Earth would be enough to generate the needed energy. Such a vast construction project is well beyond our technology, but within the realm of possibility according to the laws of physics.

Lingam and Loeb also considered whether such a transmitter would be viable from an engineering perspective, or whether the tremendous energies involved would melt any underlying structure. Again, they found that a water-cooled device twice the size of Earth could withstand the heat.

They then asked, why build such an instrument in the first place? They argue that the most plausible use of such power is driving interstellar light sails. The amount of power involved would be sufficient to push a payload of a million tons, or about 20 times the largest cruise ships on Earth.

"That's big enough to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances," added Lingam.

To power a light sail, the transmitter would need to focus a beam on it continuously. Observers on Earth would see a brief flash because the sail and its host planet, star and galaxy are all moving relative to us. As a result, the beam sweeps across the sky and only points in our direction for a moment. Repeated appearances of the beam, which were observed but cannot be explained by cataclysmic astrophysical events, might provide important clues about its artificial origin.

Loeb admits that this work is speculative. When asked whether he really believes that any fast radio bursts are due to aliens, he replied, "Science isn't a matter of belief, it's a matter of evidence. Deciding what's likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It's worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge."

The paper reporting this work has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available online.

NASA Seeks Information on Commercial Mars Payload Services

The agency issued a request for information (RFI) Feb. 27 seeking information on private ventures planning to send spacecraft to Mars in 2020 and beyond that would be willing to accommodate NASA instruments and other payloads on their missions. Responses are due March 28.

“Furthering NASA’s human deep space exploration goals will require a significant amount of scientific research, and opportunities to collect data on Mars have been rare,” NASA said in a statement announcing the RFI. “Evolving capabilities in the private sector have opened the possibility for NASA to take advantage of commercial opportunities to land scientific payloads on the surface of the Red Planet.”

Organizations planning such missions should provide “details of your planned mission, including payload accommodation locations on your transportation vehicle, estimated mass and volume that may be available, and your schedule for the Mars mission,” the RFI states. “Provide information to aid in understanding the probability of success for your planned Mars mission.”

FRIED EGG? FLYING SAUCER? NOPE. JUST COOL NEW CLOSEUPS OF SATURN’S MOON PAN

Closeup photos taken by the Cassini probe of the the planet’s second-innermost moon, Pan, on March 7 reveal remarkable new details 

side view of Pan better shows its thin and wavy ridge likely built up through the accumulation of particles grabbed from Saturn’s rings. The ridge is between 0.9 and 2.5 miles (1-4 km)

There’s good reason to believe that Pan was once part of a larger satellite that broke up near Saturn long ago. Much of the material flattened out to form Saturn’s rings while large shards like Pan and another ravioli lookalike, Atlas, orbited within or near the rings, sweeping up ring particles about their middles. Tellingly, the ridges are about as thick as the vertical distances each satellite travels in its orbit about the planet.

Today, Pan orbits within and clears the narrow Encke Gap in Saturn’s outer A-ring of debris. It also helps create and shape the narrow ringlets that appear in the gap It’s lookalike cousin Atlas orbits just outside the A-ring.

Neil Armstrong Biopic 'First Man' Gets 2018 Release Date

"First Man," the upcoming biographical film on the life of Neil Armstrong, has a release date: Oct. 12, 2018, according to Deadline.

Based on the book "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong" by James Hansen, "First Man" will chronicle the life and career of the first person to walk on the moon. Actor Ryan Gosling ("La La Land") will portray Armstrong in the Universal film, which will be directed by Damien Chazelle ("La La Land"). Hansen's book is being adapted for screen by Oscar winner Josh Singer ("Spotlight")

talking of movies

Spuds on Mars: Potatoes Can Sprout in Red Planet Environment, Study Suggests

Potatoes may be able to feed real-life Red Planet explorers, just as they sustained fictional astronaut Mark Watney in the book and movie "The Martian," an ongoing experiment suggests.

On Feb. 14, 2016, researchers at the International Potato Center in Peru (known as CIP, its Spanish acronym) planted a potato tuber in a cubesat-size container that mimics Martian temperatures and atmospheric conditions. The potato sprouted, as you can see in this time-lapse video.

CIP scientists characterized these preliminary results as "positive" and said they plan to perform more experiments. [How Will a Human Mars Base Work? NASA's Vision in Images]

"If the crops can tolerate the extreme conditions that we are exposing them to in our cubesat, they have a good chance to grow on Mars," Julio Valdivia-Silva, a research associate with the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in California who works at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lima, said in a statement.

Time Crystals Created, Suspending Laws of Physics

NASA Mission Named 'Europa Clipper'

NASA's upcoming mission to investigate the habitability of Jupiter's icy moon Europa now has a formal name: Europa Clipper.

The moniker harkens back to the clipper ships that sailed across the oceans of Earth in the 19th century. Clipper ships were streamlined, three-masted sailing vessels renowned for their grace and swiftness. These ships rapidly shuttled tea and other goods back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean and around globe. (Cutty Sark)

In the grand tradition of these classic ships, the Europa Clipper spacecraft would sail past Europa at a rapid cadence, as frequently as every two weeks, providing many opportunities to investigate the moon up close. The prime mission plan includes 40 to 45 flybys, during which the spacecraft would image the moon's icy surface at high resolution and investigate its composition and the structure of its interior and icy shell.

Europa has long been a high priority for exploration because it holds a salty liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust. The ultimate aim of Europa Clipper is to determine if Europa is habitable, possessing all three of the ingredients necessary for life: liquid water, chemical ingredients, and energy sources sufficient to enable biology.

"During each orbit, the spacecraft spends only a short time within the challenging radiation environment near Europa. It speeds past, gathers a huge amount of science data, then sails on out of there," said Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Previously, when the mission was still in the conceptual phase, it was sometimes informally called Europa Clipper, but NASA has now adopted that name as the formal title for the mission.

The mission is being planned for launch in the 2020s, arriving in the Jupiter system after a journey of several years.

JPL manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Launches

Song sent in by Chris Carney

Spaaaace X From Electric Cars to Massive Rockets Spaaaace X Moon Missions, Mars Ambitions Spaaaace X Elon Musk, Launch Date Busk Spaaaaace X Recycled Boosters, Heavy Falcons Spaaaaace X Sounds like a Strip Club in Star Trek.

[circlho333-blog]

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De Blasio Could Save Lives by Closing New York City’s Streets. Why Won’t He?

I was walking down the sidewalk in my neighborhood in central Brooklyn when two older women turned the corner in front of me. They both wore masks and latex gloves. They were in conversation, but walked about six feet apart. They had been walking along an avenue with wide sidewalks, but turned onto the sidewalk I was walking along, which was just a few feet wide. As we walked towards each other, it became clear we could not all walk along the sidewalk while maintaining social distancing. I had two options: walk as equidistant between them as possible, perhaps two feet or so from each, or walk into the road.

I repeat this calculus every trip outside dozens of times. I want to be a good pandemic samaritan, but I also don’t want to get hit by a car. And every time this happens, I wonder to myself why roads haven’t been blocked off for pedestrian use.

In 2017, after Mayor Bill de Blasio was re-elected for his third and final term, he decided to make the theme of his lame duck term “the Tale of Two Cities.” It was fresh, original, and not at all a lame throwback cliché, just like de Blasio himself. He explained that there is the rich New York and the poor New York. Little did he expect that an entirely new and unprecedented type of Tale of Two Cities would take place during his term.

Thanks to coronavirus, there is now an empty New York City and a crowded one. The empty city consists of the office buildings, bars, restaurants, libraries, tourist attractions, and streets. It is an object of great fascination for those of us grappling with the blood draining from a metropolis that used to be debatably worth paying exorbitant rents to access. We hope the empty city is merely falling asleep like a limb awkwardly tucked under a torso and the blood will come rushing back to it once it shifts position. But with each passing day we become ever so slightly less sure of this, partly because of a lack of confidence in de Blasio himself to roll the city over.

That lack of confidence stems from what’s happening in the other New York City, the crowded one: grocery stores, hospitals, the living room in our cramped apartment shared with two roommates all of whom are now working from home until further notice or unemployed with nowhere to go, the park where everyone goes to get fresh air and exercise, the playground where kids expend a fraction of their pent-up energy, and the sidewalk which is less than six feet wide, making social distancing a physical impossibility.

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, for which New York City has become the national epicenter, this tale of two cities is, to a large extent, inevitable and necessary. But there is one thing, one very obvious thing, the city could do to ease some of the crowding in parks, sidewalks, and playgrounds.

The city could close a portion of its more than 6,000 miles of streets to through traffic and open it to people.

The benefits of closing off many streets to traffic are obvious to anyone who visited the Prospect Park loop during the last week. It has been packed with joggers and families to such an extent that it’s not possible to maintain six feet of distance from anyone else. Many neighborhood playgrounds and parks around the city have a similar problem.

While parks are too crowded, streets are virtually empty. In the days immediately following a state executive order limiting business activity, traffic plummeted some 35 percent and it has further declined after the state issued a shelter-in-place order days later. According to urban mobility app Citymapper, only about five percent of trips normally taken in New York City are being made today.

Thanks to this lack of traffic, I now jaywalk across major thoroughfares like Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues without breaking stride—a death sentence during normal times—because there are so few cars. Residential streets are even more desolate. The one I live on would regularly experience traffic jams a block long during rush hour. This hasn’t happened in weeks. On Monday afternoon, a car passed my window every three to four minutes on average. Closing off some streets would have zero impact on traffic because there isn’t any.

Instead of taking this painfully common sense solution at face value—one public place is very crowded, another very empty; let us redirect some of the people from the crowded space to the empty one—and executing it, the city has spat in common sense’s face and shoved it to the ground for good measure. Here, I’m referencing de Blasio’s threat to close not the streets, but parks and playgrounds if they continue to be too crowded, which of course they will, because people have nowhere else to go for fresh air and exercise since the city won’t close off streets. (On Tuesday, the city announced the closure of 10 playgrounds "where we have consistently found a lack of regard for social distancing." Closing playgrounds may in fact be good policy because of all the shared surfaces; parks less so.) It’s a vicious cycle that feels aggressively hostile towards those of us cooped up in something smaller than a mansion on 88th Street.

But it’s not too late to do the right and obvious thing. The good news about closing off streets to most vehicle traffic is it takes little more than a few road cones.

The half-baked idea I thought of a week ago and haven’t immediately thought of a reason why it wouldn’t work—which I guess makes it pretty well-baked by now— is to close off every fifth residential block to traffic. This can be done by placing two orange traffic cones at each end of the block, far enough apart that emergency vehicles and local traffic can still get through but close enough together to force drivers to slow down and see that people may be using the street.

New York already does this, to varying degrees, with two different summer programs: Summer Streets and block parties. Summer Streets is a Department of Transportation program that closes off seven miles of main roads from the pitifully narrow window of 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on three Saturdays in August. Block parties, which are more in line with what I’m talking about here, merely require a permit in order to close off the street and are limited to one day. The day of the event, the police put a barricade at either end of the block or someone from the block association parks their car across the crosswalk. Fun ensues.

Safe streets advocates have been calling for expanded Summer Streets and block party programs for years, because, as DOT’s own website puts it, “Summer Streets is an annual celebration of New York City’s most valuable public space—our streets.” It seems that if it is truly our most valuable public space, we ought to enjoy it a bit more, especially now.

To be far fairer to de Blasio than he deserves, I will mention the city did recently close off a few blocks per borough—a grand total of 1.5 miles of road—for four days precisely this reason. It is astounding, though, that the city thought this would aid in social distancing one iota. How did they figure closing off four blocks in Bushwick would make the slightest difference in a borough of 2.5 million people?

It’s not at all clear what the Mayor is afraid of, as there has never been a better time to do this, both practically and politically. During these “normal times” to which I keep referring but am increasingly unable to clearly recall, every effort to close streets to cars is typically opposed by a cadre of conservatives: local businesses who think it will hurt their bottom line, crotchety residents who are worried about their parking, and occasionally local politicians who are worried about getting the votes of the people who are worried about their parking.

But these are not normal times. Most of the crotchety people who are worried about their parking have long since gotten in their cars, left their parking spots, and driven far away. Or, they have realized there is nowhere worth driving to and, with alternate side parking suspended, don’t plan on moving the car any time soon. The business owners who normally worry about their bottom lines have much bigger worries about their bottom lines at the moment. All of the usual opposition is either nowhere to be found or no longer opposed.

When I asked the Department of Transportation about all this, it directed me to City Hall, which did not respond to a request for comment. It’s a shame, because closing off hundreds of streets could go a long way towards closing the gap between the new tale of two cities. You’d think de Blasio, of all people, could understand that.

De Blasio Could Save Lives by Closing New York City’s Streets. Why Won’t He? syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[charllieeldridge]

Living in Rome: A Guide For Digital Nomads

Imagine starting your morning with a shot of espresso and a freshly baked cornetto before making your way to your co-working space. Your walk takes you down a winding cobblestone path, past colorful Reinassance buildings and trickling fountains. After work, you plan to head to the local market before meeting up with some of your new friends for refreshing afternoon Aperitivo.

If you plan to live and work in Rome, your days could be spent doing exactly that. This is one of the best places to visit in Italy, for sure. 

After living in Rome for several months, I can attest that Rome is one of the best places for freelancers and digital nomads. Not only is the cost of living in Rome relatively affordable, but you’ll also have the opportunity to meet plenty of expats just like yourself.

If you’ve ever considered moving to Rome, then this article is for you. I’ll cover why you should live in Rome, how to find accommodation, and where to book a co-working space. I’ll even give you a few insider tips on where to eat and what to see during your stay.

After this article, you’ll be on your way to a new, unforgettable journey in Italy. Here’s my digital nomad guide to living in Rome. 

Cost of Living in Rome

Although it’s considered one of the most expensive cities in Italy, Rome can still be affordable. Here’s a breakdown of expenses that you should take into account when living in Rome.

Accommodation Costs in Rome

Generally speaking, the closer you live to the historic city center, the more expensive your rent will be. If you don’t mind taking the tram or subway, you can find a cheaper apartment in the suburbs or outskirts of Rome.

Depending on the neighborhood, renting a private studio or 1-bedroom apartment will cost around 800€ – 1400€ ($880 – $1,545 USD) per month, including utilities. Shared flats are cheaper, and you can expect to pay anywhere from 400€-1000€ ($440 – $1,100) per month. Keep in mind that furnished flats will cost more.

Food Costs in Rome

One of the best things about living in Rome is eating local cuisine. Fortunately, Romans take their cooking very seriously, and there are plenty of dining options for every budget. On average, you can expect to pay the following prices when eating out in a restaurant in Rome:

3-course meal for two people at a mid-range restaurant: 70€ ($77)

Fast food meal with drink: 6€ ($6.60)

.5 liter of local beer: 3€ ($3.30)

Bottle of wine: 20€ ($22)

Bottle of water: 1€ ($1.10)

If you are sticking to a budget, don’t worry; groceries in Rome are much cheaper than in other parts of Europe. Not to mention, there are tons of markets throughout the city that sell fresh, organic produce of the highest quality. If you plan on cooking while living in Rome, you can pay the following prices for grocery store ingredients:

Loaf of bread: 1€ ($1.10)

Local cheese: 2€ ($2.20)

12 eggs: 2.50€ ($2.75)

Bottle of wine: 5.00€ ($5.50)

Bottle of beer: 1.10€ ($1.20)

1kg chicken breast: 3.80€ ($4.20)

Going out for drinks in Rome can be cheap, if you know where to go! Hotel bars, touristy areas, and cocktail lounges sell drinks that are just as expensive as other parts of the Western world. However, you can still find affordable bars and lounges that sell cheap drinks.

Cocktail in mid-range bar: 10€ ($11)

Cocktail in expensive bar: 15€ ($16.50)

Glass of wine in mid-range bar: 4€ ($4.40)

Afternoon apperitvo: 5€ ($5.50)

Transportation Costs in Rome

If you live in the city center of Rome, you’ll have plenty of public transportation options available. It’s important to note that tourists and foreigners are not allowed to drive in the historic city center of Rome. However, you can still take buses, trams, trains, and taxi to most destinations around the city. Note, there is Uber in Rome, but you are only able to order Uber Black, Uber Lux or Uber Van.

Single ticket (1 zone) : 1.50€ ($1.65)

Monthly ticket: 35€ ($38.60)

Taxi (1 mile): 6€ ($6.60)

Best Neighbourhoods in Rome

Within Rome’s city limits, there are 14 distinct neighborhoods – or riones, as the locals say. Each rione has a unique identity, and it’s up to you to decide which one fits your style and budget. Here are some of my favorite places to stay in Rome.

Trastevere

Located on across the Tiber river, Trastevere is considered Rome’s most picturesque rione. With ivy-lined brick buildings and charming courtyard cafes, Trastevere oozes with Italian style and atmosphere. At night, the neighborhood becomes one of the hippest nightlife areas, with students, locals, and visitors spilling out into the street with glasses of wine. Even though you’re a 10-minute walk from Centro Storico, you’ll feel as if you’re miles away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Monti

A stone’s throw from Roma Termini Station is the quaint Monti district. Dotted with boutique stores, hip cafes, and small wine bars, this cozy neighborhood attracts visitors and locals alike. At night, you’ll find plenty of local Italians sitting outside in one of the squares, listening to music and chatting with friends. This is a great place to live if you want to see the cooler, artistic side of Rome that most tourists overlook.

Centro Storico

If you want to be in the center of it all, there’s no better rione than Centro Storico. Home to jaw-dropping attractions like the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain, Centro Storico is the heart of the city. There’s no shortage of restaurants, shops, or bars. However, there is one downside: you’ll be sharing your space with thousands of other people!

Testaccio

Tucked away in the south of the city is the residential neighborhood of Testaccio. Although you may see a tourist or two around, this is an excellent option for people who want an authentic taste of real Roman life. You’re still within walking distance of Centro Storico, but you’re lightyears away from the hectic and slightly chaotic masses of crowds. Foodies will also love being right next door the famous Mercato Testaccio, which is open every day except Sunday.

Co-working Spaces in Rome

Before you start working as a digital nomad in Rome, it’s crucial to find a reliable and functional co-working space. Fortunately, Rome has dozens of fun and unique co-working offices to choose from.

Millepiani – Located south of the city is Rome’s award-winning co-working space, Millepiani. Monthly prices start at just 75€ ($82.75) a desk and come with free internet, printing, meeting room usage, and even an on-site kitchen. If you’re looking for a space bursting with creative atmosphere, then Millepiani is the spot for you.

FAMO COSE – Situated in the heart of Pignento, FAMO COSE is not your average co-working space. They cater to creative and hands-on freelancers by providing photography darkrooms, 3D printers and scanners, and even carpentry and welding tools. A one-month membership starts at just 150€ ($165) per person.

Cowo 360 – As one of the more traditional spaces in Rome, Cowo 360 is an affordable option for digital nomads. Desks can be rented hourly, daily, or monthly, which is ideal for those needing a bit more flexibility. They also host a variety of events, such as networking meetups and instructional courses.

Finding Rome Accommodation

In a city with almost three million residents, finding the ideal apartment can prove challenging. However, there are several Rome accommodation websites you should use to help you with your search. These English sites cater to foreigners and expats needing both long-term and short-term stays.

SpotAHome – think of SpotAHome like a long-term Airbnb Rental. All furnished flats are individually rented by the owner. What really makes SpotAHome stand out is that a SpotAHome employee personally verifies the flats that are listed. Some employees also shoot walk-through videos, so you know exactly what you’re renting. This is the service I used while living in Rome for several months, and I couldn’t have been happier with the flat!

NestPick – is an English website that aggregates thousands of furnished flat listings for Rome. Their easy to use search system allows you to filter between different neighborhoods, and desired move in and move out date. Learn more here. 

ZappyRent – whether you’re searching for a shared room or a private flat, ZappyRent has a wide selection of apartments in Rome. You can filter by size, budget, and location. The best thing about ZappyRent is that it’s completely free to use! You can rent a flat directly from the owner without paying extra fees or commission prices.

Top Things to Do in Rome

Once you arrive in Rome, you’ll probably want to head straight for the ancient Colosseum or Roman Forum. After all, no visit to Rome would be complete without visiting these iconic landmarks! However, if you look beyond the major tourist attractions when travelling Rome, you’ll find that the city is teeming with unique attractions around every corner.

Here are some of the best touristy (and non-touristy) things to do in the Eternal City.

Campo de’ Fiori and Mercato Testaccio

As one of the oldest markets in Rome, Campo de’ Fiori is a lively place in the center of the city. This market operates from 7 am to 2 pm Monday through Saturday, and sells everything from fresh flowers and vegetables to Italian spices and souvenirs. Although it’s more touristy than other markets in Rome, its Campo de’ Fiori is still a great place to watch Roman daily life.

For a more authentic market experience, head to Mercato Testaccio in the charming Testaccio neighborhood. Attracting a local crowd, Mercato Testaccio sells a variety of goods, including clothes, kitchen supplies, and fresh produce. Don’t forget to stop by Mordi & Vai, a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop that’s possibly more famous than the market itself.

Villa Borghese

If you’re looking to escape the hustle of the city, head to the top of Villa Borghese, one of the largest parks in Rome. Home to lush gardens, world-famous museums, and sprawling grass fields, Villa Borghese is an urban oasis where you can unwind.

Stop by Galleria Borghese, which contains a vast collection of artistic masterpieces from Bernini, Rossi, and Rotari. Or bring a picnic and a bottle of wine and soak in the sun for a relaxing afternoon. Make sure to stop by Viale del Muro Torto for an unbeatable and dramatic view of Rome.

The Vatican

Whether you’re admiring the Sistine Chapel or marveling at the grandiose St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Vatican is a must-see while in Rome. This tiny city-state is home to the Roman Catholic Church and attracts millions of visitors every year.

If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pope, then you’re in luck! The easiest way to see the Pope is during the Papal Audience, which takes place every Wednesday at 10 or 10:30 am. It’s free to attend, but make sure to come early to snag a good seat.

Baths of Caracalla

Dating back to the 3rd century, the Baths of Caracalla is one of the best-preserved ruins of a traditional Roman bathhouse. In fact, the blueprint of the baths influenced many other notable buildings that were built around Rome.

During your visit, you’ll be able to walk the same path as the ancient Romans. Visit the swimming pool, on-site libraries, and even a frigidarium – or cold room. You’ll even have a chance to see the colorful mosaic tiles and statues that once adorned the walls of the bathhouse.

WiFi and SIM Cards in Rome

With a SIM card, it’s easy to stay connected to family and friends while living in Rome. You can buy a prepaid SIM card at the airport, or in a mobile phone store like Vodaphone, TIM, or WIND 3. You’ll need to make sure your smartphone is “unlocked” so that you can add an international SIM card. 

If you’re staying in Rome for an extended period, you’ll need to top up your card. All you have to do is visit a tobacco shop, newsstand, or supermarket to add more money to your SIM card. Keep in mind that most places only take cash in Euros. Foreign credit cards might not be accepted.

WiFi is also readily available in most tourist areas. Cafes, restaurants, and hotels offer free WiFi to patrons. You might be able to find city-wide hotspots in Centro Storico and other popular neighborhoods.

Best Restaurants in Rome

There’s no doubt that Rome is home to some of the best restaurants on the planet. Whether you’re eating homemade pasta from a family-run restaurant or sampling traditional fried artichokes and risotto balls, Rome has something for every taste.

As a rule of thumb, you should look for smaller restaurants away from popular tourist attractions. Restaurants located near the Colosseum, Pantheon, and Trevi Fountain tend to be overpriced and less authentic compared to other restaurants in Rome.

After living in Rome and eating my way through dozens of restaurants, I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite places.

Roma Sparita – Tucked away in the back streets of Trastevere, this charming establishment still manages to keep its old-school Italian charm. During the summer, you can enjoy your meal in the sun-soaked terrace out front. You can’t go wrong with any dish here, but take my advice and order the cacio e pepe, a simple Roman pasta dish made with pecorino cheese and freshly ground pepper. It’s by far the best version I found in Rome!

La Salumeria – For the best selection of cold cuts, cheeses, and sandwiches, head to La Salumeria next to the Sant’Angelo bridge. This deli-style restaurant serves gourmet charcuterie boards filled with homemade jams, Italian cured meats, and mouth-watering cheeses. If you don’t see a mix you like, you can also customize your own platter with your favorites.

Pizzarium – Located near Vatican City, Pizzarium takes pizza to the next level. The brainchild of famous chef Gabriele Bonci, Pizzarium whips up unique flavors that change by the hour. These rectangular pizzas are cut and sold by the weight, so go ahead and try as many types that you want!

Osteria del Sostengo –  You know you’re in a good restaurant when the whole place is overflowing with locals! Osteria del Sostengo has all the features of the perfect Italian restaurant – friendly service, fresh meats and pasta, and a neverending list of wines. The only downside is that the place is so popular that you’ll probably end up waiting a while for a table.

Transportation in Rome

Getting around the inner city of Rome using public transport is relatively easy. One ticket allows you to take most methods of transportation, like buses, trains, and railway trams. Tickets can be purchased from the machines in the metro station, or in a tobacco shop or newsstand.

While transportation is cheap in Rome, it may not always be on time or reliable. It’s not uncommon to wait for a bus or tram for 10-20 minutes after it’s scheduled to arrive. If you need to be somewhere urgently, I recommend taking an Uber or Taxi.

Although Rome is a sprawling metropolis, it’s actually fairly easy to get around on foot. Starting at Roma Termini station, most attractions and neighborhoods can be reached within 15-20 minutes. Not only will you save money by walking, but you’ll also get the chance to see some of the city’s hidden streets, buildings, and sights.

The underground train can take you to most places in Rome, with the exception of Centro Storico. The two main lines are Linea A (red) and Linea B (blue), which intersect and meet at Roma Termini train station.

Obtaining a Visa for Italy

If you plan to stay in Rome for an extended period, you might be required to get a long-term visa.

Canadian and US citizens can enter Italy and stay for up to 90 days for the purpose of tourism without a visa. However, you will be required to obtain a visa if you plan to stay in Italy longer than three months. If you plan to put down some temporary roots in Rome, this might be an alright option for you. 

British citizens can also live in Italy visa-free for up to 90 days. However, it is unknown how Brexit will impact visa procedures in the future. Specific details for British citizens will be released once Brexit has been finalized.

In Italy, long-term visas are classified as D visas. There are different types of D visas, depending on your reason for staying in Rome. If you come to Italy for work, then your company will sponsor a work visa or EU blue card. Another option is to enroll in university or school in order to receive a student visa.

Digital nomads starting their own business can apply for two different visas. Italy offers self-employment visas, as well as start-up entrepreneur visas.

The visa application process can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. For this reason, I recommend applying for your visa months before you plan to move to Rome.

Pros and Cons of Living in Rome

Living in Rome as a digital nomad can be a life-changing experience. But just like any other country in the world, there are several strong advantages and disadvantages to keep in mind.

Pros of Living in Rome

Amazing, mouthwatering food around every corner

Centuries of history and culture in one of the world’s oldest cities

Creative and affordable co-working spaces

Lively nightlife and bar culture

Cheap transportation

Easy to travel around Italy and other places in Europe

Cost of living is lower compared to other parts of the world

Cons of Living in Rome

Tons of tourists everywhere (especially during peak summer tourist season)

Can be difficult to obtain a long-term visa

Traffic can be bad

Foreigners are not allowed to drive in the city center

Petty theft and pickpockets are common

English isn’t commonly spoken outside of hotels and restaurants

High unemployment rate for locals and expats

Final Thoughts

With over 3,000 years of history, art, and culture, Rome is a breathtaking city for all types of visitors, travelers, and digital nomads. Between the iconic landmarks, historic ruins, and charming cobblestone alleyways, you’ll always have something to see and explore in Rome.

As a freelancer, Rome is also one of the best places to live. This welcoming city has a variety of co-working spaces where you can mingle with other creative nomads and expats from around the world. Housing, food, and transportation is also more affordable than other countries in Europe, which is ideal for those looking to save money or stick to a budget.

So why not spend a few months living in one of the oldest and most fascinating cities in the world? After all, you’re in Rome; enjoy delicious food, soak in the lively atmosphere, and do everything exactly as the Romans do!

Images in this post courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Living in Rome: A Guide For Digital Nomads appeared first on Goats On The Road.

Living in Rome: A Guide For Digital Nomads published first on https://travelaspire.weebly.com/

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[lisarendallblog]

How to Maximize Your Tax Return: 12 Proven Tips

The best way to maximize your tax return is to take advantage of tax credits and tax deductions. If you do that, you’re more likely to get a refund on your small business taxes. This is good news for small business owners, who often feel as though every other payment they make is to the IRS or their state department of revenue.

Many taxpayers who are not business owners deliberately have more tax than necessary withheld from their paychecks in order to get a large refund in the spring. While getting a sizable refund right as holiday bills are coming due is nice, there are more effective ways to use your money. Especially for business owners, overpaying estimated taxes just to get a refund is not the best use of your cash. Plus, in general, a C-corporation is the only type of business entity that’s eligible for a business tax refund. 

Here, we’ll cover the business deductions and tax credits you should take note of in order to maximize your tax return.

How to Maximize Your Tax Return: 12 Proven Tips

1. Review your personal bank and credit card statements.

While we know we shouldn’t commingle business and personal funds, most business owners make at least an occasional company purchase using their personal bank account or credit card.

Take a bit of time to review your personal bank and credit card statements each month to help you identify business expenses you might otherwise miss. If your PayPal account is tied to one of your personal accounts, review your PayPal activity for business purchases. Also double-check for recurring subscription fees, which may have posted to your personal accounts.

Your bookkeeper or accountant will know how to record these expenses in your books so that they can be reflected on your tax return as a business expense. If possible, make sure you save the receipts for the purchases or a paper trail showing that they were used for business reasons.

2. Update your mileage logs.

A friend once told me she didn’t bother to track her business mileage because it was more trouble than it was worth. I asked her how much she drove for business. Her estimate was around 200 miles per week. At the current standard mileage rate of $0.535/mile (in 2017), 200 business miles per week would equate to $5,350 in business tax deductions (assuming my friend took two weeks off during the course of the year)! That is a sizable business deduction and could be the difference between owing taxes and receiving a nice refund. A number of smartphone apps can help you track your business mileage and automatically update your mileage logs. Even if you have kept paper logs up to this point, take the time to update your records so that you can claim this expense on your business tax return. There are two options for deducting business mileage. The first is to take the standard per-mile deduction rate, which the IRS adjusts each year. In contrast, you can claim deductions for the actual expenses associated with business use of your car (e.g. parking fees, tolls, fuel, etc.). For more business owners, the standard deduction works out to be more beneficial.

3. Prepay some expenses for the upcoming year.

Running up expenses on unnecessary purchases in order to save money on taxes is not a good tax strategy. In most cases, the tax savings are not worth the cash flow crunch. However, if you have adequate cash flow, prepaying expenses for the upcoming year can be an effective way to make sure you get more money back on your tax refund as long as you are a cash-basis taxpayer (and most small businesses are). Some expenses you might want to consider prepaying are professional membership dues, insurance expenses, and software service or support plans. Prepaying these costs can often result in sizeable cost savings on these expenses in addition to minimizing your taxable net income for the year. Again, only consider this option if you have adequate cash flow in your business. On average, each dollar a small business owner spends on a business expense results in about $0.30 in tax savings. If you run your bank account balance down too low in order to avoid taxes and then have to borrow money to cover your expenses, your tax savings will soon be decimated by interest fees.

4. Check for applicable business tax credits.

There are a number of tax credits available to businesses, and these aren’t all limited to large corporations. Tax credits are even better than deductions because they slash money from tax bill. $1 of tax credits means you can subtract $1 from your tax bill. Deductions, in contrast, lower your taxable income.

These are some of the tax credits available to small businesses:

Qualified Research Activities Tax Credit – You can claim this tax credit if you’ve spent resources developing software, applying for a patent, or other kind of research.

Work Opportunity Tax Credit – Credit for businesses that hire employees with significant barriers to employment, such as former felons or food stamp recipients.

Disabled Access Tax Credit – This is a federal tax credit that can offset the costs of making your business accessible to persons with disabilities.

This just scratches the surface. There are many more tax credits available to small businesses. Taking the time to learn about tax credits your business might be eligible for is a great way to make sure you receive the most money back on your tax refund. Your tax pro is a great resource—ask them about any credits you might be entitled to take, either for the current year or future years!

5. Contribute to a retirement plan.

The best tax strategies let you retain the greatest amount of your money. While you won’t have access to these funds right away, maxing out your retirement plan contributions is a great way to shelter your money from taxes while making sure you will be provided for in later years. Contributions that you make to a 401(k) retirement account or Simple Individual Retirement Account (IRA) are pre-tax, meaning that the money is taxed only when you make withdrawals later.  And don’t forget your employees! The amount your company matches for retirement contributions is also a qualified business expense under most circumstances. The tax deductibility of your retirement plan contributions depends on your investment instruments, so check with your investment advisor or accountant before employing this strategy.

6. Remember your home office deduction.

Like the business mileage deduction, the home office deduction is a frequently forgotten way to maximize your tax refund. In addition to an allowance for the square footage of your office space, you might be able to claim a portion of your homeowners insurance, utility expenses, and depreciation of your home as business expenses. In order to qualify, your home office must be used exclusively for business purposes, so you won’t be able to deduct the square footage of your living room even if you work from your sofa on the weekends.

7. Don’t forget other common deductions.

The home office deduction is a common one, but not the only deduction by far. There are several other common deductions that you are entitled to take as a business owner. For instance, expenses while traveling for business are deductible. These include airfare, transportation, lodging, and meals. If you dine regularly with clients, those expenses are also deductible. Don’t forget the deductions for business use of a vehicle as well. Most ��necessary and ordinary” expenses in the course of business can be deducted.

8. Incentivize employees.

Bonuses, gifts and awards, and the annual company picnic not only promote goodwill with your employees, but they are also legitimate tax deductions. The rules for these, as well as numerous other incentives, can be tricky, though, and some incentives are taxable to your employees. If you want to maximize your tax refund while simultaneously building your reputation as a great employer, review this IRS publication to determine which incentives you want to provide to your team.

9. Write off bad debt.

Before closing your books for the year, take a survey of your outstanding accounts receivable and determine if anyone who owes your company money is unlikely to pay. As long as you took reasonable steps to collect the debt, the IRS lets you write this off as bad debt. If the customer does end up paying you, you would simply account for the income in the following year’s tax return.

10. Deduct equipment purchases and leases.

The Section 179 deduction for equipment can provide big tax savings for small business owners. Currently, this provision lets you deduct up to $1 million on each piece of equipment that you purchase or lease. You can take the deduction all at once, instead of slowly depreciating equipment over time. The Section 179 deduction is available for office furniture, machinery, off-the-shelf software, and more. You can spend a maximum of $2.5 million on equipment for the year, before the deduction starts to phase out.

11. Make sure you have the right business structure.

While you definitely don’t want to change your business structure at the last minute, making sure you have the right business structure is important. The tax laws differ substantially for different types of business entities. For example, pass-through entities, such as S-corps, sole proprietorships, and general partnerships can claim a 20% deduction of business income. C-corps can’t take such a deduction and pay a flat 21% corporate tax rate. The structure that’s best for you depends on many factors, and your accountant and lawyer can help you walk through the different considerations.

12. Get help with tax strategy.

Do you really want to spend a beautiful spring weekend poring over tax documents and tinkering with tax filing software? Certified public accountants who specialize in taxation, enrolled agents, and other tax professionals spend a good portion of each year studying changes in the tax code and learning about new tactics to save their clients money on their taxes. And they can usually prepare a small business tax return in a fraction of the time it takes a non-tax pro. While you should be aware of the basics of the tax code and tax credits available to your business, spending hours trying to decipher complex tax issues and navigating tax return software is not the best use of your time. Use the services of a tax professional to minimize your tax burden (and maximize your tax refund). Bonus: The amount you pay to your tax preparer to prepare your business tax return is a legitimate business deduction!

Maximizing Your Tax Return Requires Smart Strategy 

Large tax refunds are a pleasant surprise, but they are not common for small businesses. Only C-corps are eligible to receive business tax refunds. Getting a refund could also indicate you could use some tax planning or even cash management coaching. Deliberately overpaying your taxes to get a large refund is essentially giving the government an interest-free loan, when you could instead use that money to grow your business, save for your retirement, or invest in new opportunities. Similarly, running up a bunch of unnecessary expenses in order to save money on taxes is also a poor use of your cash. While no one likes to pay taxes, owing taxes—or not getting a large refund—indicates that you have properly managed your business finances and have a profitable business as well. Your accountant can help you form a smart strategy that makes sure you’ll pay as little tax as possible while also managing your business’ cash as responsibly as possible. Smart strategies such as these trump a large tax refund every time.

The post How to Maximize Your Tax Return: 12 Proven Tips appeared first on Fundera Ledger.

originally posted at https://www.fundera.com/blog/money-back-tax-refund

[sowecanrememberourtrips]

Tokyo (2018 & 2019)

This entry is split into 2 parts: for a rather thorough trip in 2018 and a more casual trip in 2019. Both took place in September for less than a week.

2018 TRIP:

A 5D4N trip in the first week of September 2018. This is our second time to Tokyo, after a previous trip which saw us visiting Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo.

WEATHER:

A typhoon that affected Osaka and Kyoto was not an issue, and neither was an earthquake that hit Hokkaido and Sapporo. Amazingly, it did not even rain during our trip despite weather forecasts predicting so. However, Tokyo was very hot and humid on some days. The heat was quite unbearable on a Saturday when we explored Harajuku.

TRANSPORT:

Took ANA airlines to Narita Airport, and the Express train towards the city

We bought a 3 day metro pass. You must have your passport with you when you buy this metro pass sold at specific metro stations. Buy as soon as you can, if not it will be troublesome to buy tickets whenever you take the train.

ACCOMMODATION:

Innsomnia Hotel. 2 types of train stations near this hotel. The one about 6min away is a Tokyo Metro station named Tameike-sanno. The nearer one 2min away is Akasaka station. Depending on our destination, we used either of these stations to set off each day.

There’s a trendy and popular Unir cafe next to the lobby on the ground floor, and hotel guests can get free coffee daily. The hotel barely has any facilities, and the tiny gym had no free weights. However, our room was large, with a proper sofa and TV area apart from the bed. Bathroom was old though. Location-wise, it’s in the Asakasa area, which is quiet on weekend mornings, but vibrant at night without being overwhelming. A pleasant stay on the whole.

DAY 1:

21_21 Design Site: a hip art exhibition space located within Midtown Garden. There is a nearby mall with many food options.

Ninja Akasaka: dinner at this incredible ninja-themed restaurant. Waiters are literally dressed as ninjas, and the place fascinates with its interior design while serving excellent elevated Japanese food. A must-visit even though it’s pricey.

Mixology Akasaka: had post-dinner drinks here. Small but cosy bar, serving creative drinks.

DAY 2:

Ueno Park: a scenic and spacious public park ideal for long walks. A lake covered by lotus leaves was stunning. There are torii gates for good photos too

Kyoshuku Toban: simple lunch at a classroom-themed restaurant. slightly amusing due to the setting, but don’t expect great food.

Senso-ji Temple: one of the more famous temples in Tokyo, which we did not visit on our previous trip. expect many tourists, but still worth a visit as the temple is in the heart of an area that’s charming in the evening

Don Quijote, Asakusa: An entire building dedicated to this budget shopping chain, where we bought things like caps for low prices. This whole Asakusa area is surprisingly vibrant at night.

DAY 3:

Bills Ginza Tokyo: high-end restaurant where we had fluffy pancakes for breakfast. gorgeous interior and excellent service, but pricey

teamLab Planets Tokyo: a highlight of our trip. Basically, we spent a couple of hours being fascinated by art and light installations in a warehouse-like facility. For example, one huge room had water that came up to our knees, and we were fascinated by images of colourful fishes projected onto the water. Another room was charmingly filled with giant white balls we had to push around, and another required us to lie on the ground and look at a dome-shaped ceiling that had all sorts of images projected onto it. We had to queue to buy tickets and wait to enter. This seems to be a very popular attraction in Tokyo this year, and there is more than one venue for the experience. Google “teamLab Planets Tokyo” to find out more.

Maricart Roppongi: THE HIGHLIGHT OF OUR TRIP. Basically, we made a booking with this Maricart company before flying to Tokyo, to dress up as Mario characters while driving go-karts around downtown Tokyo. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you should try if you have a driving licence. You must also apply for an International Driving Permit before making the booking. We booked a 2hr experience, which included rental of the Mario/Luigi costumes we wore to drive, watching a quick instructional video, driving on roads and EXPRESSWAYS (!!!) during peak-hour traffic on a Friday evening, and a short toilet break at DiverCity Tokyo Plaza. It’s not an activity for the faint-hearted, as we literally drove next to all types of vehicles on the expressways. Driving at 60-70km/h on a go-kart that’s so near to the ground can be quite daunting. There were 4 other tourists, and 2 staff at the head and end of our convoy to guide us on the roads. Note that we were neither given safety helmets or had seat belts. BUT it was so fun and exhilarating, and I’ll remember this experience for life.

DAY 4:

Hedgehog Cafe & Pet Store HARRY Harajuku: Spent an hour petting and feeding hedgehogs in this cafe. The hedgehogs are as cute as you would expect, but after a while, we felt bad for disturbing them just so we could take photos.

Takeshita Street: Began exploring Harajuku from the entrance at this street. We spent several hours in Harajuku, eating, shopping and exploring. Expect trendy shopping options and fashionable Japanese shoppers.

Tower Records, Shibuya: walking distance from the famous Shibuya crossing. Bustling downtown area that’s great for a night out.

Kitsune: LGBT-friendly establishment that served excellent and creative sushi dishes. It’s also a dance club, but we did not stay on to party because the music was strangely soft.

DAY 5:

The Salty Sun: Australian cafe within Akasaka Biz Tower, where we had a satisfying breakfast

Shinjuku: shopped around Keio Mall and had lunch at another nearby mall named Mylord. This is a very busy shopping area, so expect crowded train stations, but it’s a good place to spend a few hours shopping and eating from mall to mall. (Note to self: Southern exit of train station area brings us to Takashimaya/Times Square area, which we visited during our first trip to Japan, but not this time)

2019 TRIP:

A trip from 9th - 13th Sept 2019. This is my third time to Tokyo, which explains why I took a more casual approach to planning and sightseeing.

WEATHER: 

The powerful Typhoon Faxi hit Tokyo on the night before our early morning Delta Airlines flight. Historic winds were reported. Although our flight was not cancelled, a very epic experience awaited us at Narita Airport. To cut the long story short, we were stranded in the airport after arriving around 2pm. The airport was cut off from the rest of Japan, with no trains, buses or taxis allowed to leave or arrive at the airport. We experienced a lot of uncertainty and tension, only managing to rush onto a final train that left the airport at 10pm. This chaotic day made international headlines, with media eventually reporting that as many as 17,000 passengers were trapped in the airport, with many having to spend the night there. On the bright side, weather was kind to us for the rest of the trip. Sunny, but not as humid as it was in 2018. We barely experienced any rain too. Normal weather led to Narita Airport functioning normally when it was time to go home.

TRANSPORT:

For this trip, we flew by Delta Airlines. Air ticket cost was reasonable at $544.30 and we were happy with the overall service. Unfortunately, Delta Airlines has made headlines for ceasing business in Singapore by the end of 2019.

Due to the airport chaos, we did not manage to get a 3 day metro pass upon arrival this time. We simply bought train tickets whenever we had to use the train during the trip. However, being in Tokyo for a third time has made me better at using the trains now. In general, just remember that the JR line is the most common one, but there are other lines run by other companies. The next thing to note is that standing at the right train platform doesn’t mean you will board the right train. This is because there can be limited express trains which skip particular stations. You need to pay attention to the screens on the platform or on the train itself, to ensure that you do not board these limited express trains by mistake, if they are going to skip the stations that you want to get to.

ACCOMMODATION:

In relation to what I just wrote above, I think it’s better to book hotels that are near JR train stations. For this trip, I booked 2 such hotels, which made getting to tourist areas and back to our hotel more convenient than it was in 2018. 

First hotel was Hotel Niwa Tokyo, in the Shinjuku area. Second hotel was Hotel Shibuya En, in the Shibuya area. Both these areas are served by JR train stations of the same name, and are popular tourist areas. So in terms of location, we were happy with both these hotels. 

Hotel Niwa Tokyo cost about $200 a night (we booked 2 nights) and Hotel Shibuya En cost about $300 a night (we booked 3 nights). Hotel Niwa Tokyo’s room could be bigger, but there was a fitness room with treadmills. Hotel Shibuya En’s room was bigger, and bed was excellent. But room toilet was very small, and there was no fitness room. However, the basement of Hotel Shibuya En has one of the best eateries we went to on this trip, named 35 Steps Bistro, which we highly recommend for a modern and chic izakaya experience.

DAY 1:

Shinjuku: Takashimaya/Times Square area, where we spent several hours shopping and browsing the many floors of Tokyu Hands. The food hall basement of Takashimaya is always worth checking out, and we stumbled onto excellent coffee at the trendy Blue Bottle Coffee Shinjuku Cafe. It’s easy to stroll from one mall building to another in this shopping area. 

Tokyo Dome: We spent the evening here, basically a stadium and amusement park area rather near our Hotel Niwa Tokyo. Dinner was excellent fast food at Shake Shack Tokyo Dome (no queues like in Singapore), and the area was conducive for an evening stroll, looking at ferris wheels and people coming to watch baseball games in the stadium.

DAY 2:

Shibuya: Loft Shibuya is the largest branch of Loft in Tokyo, which is a lifestyle store I love that also exists in Bangkok. It was within walking distance of our Hotel Shibuya En, and one of many shopping highlights in a bustling shopping district. The world-famous Shibuya Crossing is nearby too, along with Tower Records Shibuya, Mega Don Quijote (basically a massive Don Don Donki) and the usual high street fashion options like Zara and H&M. It’s possible to spend hours in places like Loft and Mega Don Quijote, if you’re excited by their wide range of products and often reasonable prices.

Food options are aplenty too, since there are so many malls and streets that make the area vibrant. Dinner was a cosy basement eatery named 渋谷 居酒屋　��四六屋 near our hotel.

DAY 3:

Harajuku: Breakfast was at the hipster haven named Bills, located in Tokyu Plaza Omotesando Harajuku. In 2018, I visited the Ginza branch of this same cafe chain. The famous fluffy pancakes are available in both, but note that this Harajuku branch is less posh than the Ginza one, understandable since Harajuku is popular with youths and Ginza is a more high-end district.

The afternoon was spent exploring the streets of Harajuku. Harajuku is a sprawling area which you can spend hours exploring. There are busy areas with throngs of tourists and tacky food or clothing options, but there are also quiet lanes with tasteful shops. If you’re travelling in September, dress light on the day you are visiting Harajuku, because it can get very hot and it’s not the kind of area with huge air-conditioned malls to hide in.

We then popped over to Meiji Jingu (Meiji Shrine), right beside the Harajuku train station. This is a good place to retreat to when you feel overwhelmed by the Harajuku crowds. It’s also arguably one of the most famous shrines in Japan, offering you a relaxing walk below tall shady trees, before you end up seeing the main shrine buildings further in. For each shrine I visit in Japan, I tend to partake in the common rituals of washing my hands/face at the water points at the entrance, followed by praying/clapping/bowing after throwing coins at the main praying areas.

Dinner was at the excellent 35 Steps Bistro I mentioned earlier, coincidentally at basement of our Hotel Shibuya En. Dishes like cheese tofu with honey, dry udon with kimchi, were innovative and impressive. Exact address is 1-1 Maruyamacho, 渋谷区 Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-0044.

DAY 4:

Akahibara: a district famous for selling all types of electronics and gadgets. Basically shopping haven for geeks and gamers. We walked around casually after alighting at the station, bought wireless chargers, and ended up visiting one of the shrines nearby. Lunch was a highlight, when we had an excellent French-inspired set lunch at a lovely cosy restaurant named Nous (2-10-8 Sotokanda, Chiyoda 101-0021), run by a very competent pair who seemed like husband and wife.

Asakusa: The afternoon was spent here, mainly visiting Tokyo’s oldest temple named Senso-ji and the streets surrounding it. This temple is very crowded, with tourists wanting to take photos with the iconic red lanterns, and buying snacks from shops lining the streets. The surrounding area is full of shopping lanes to explore too. There is also a Don Quijote (basically Don Don Donki) in the district.

Roppongi: Ended the night by taking a train here. Instead of exploring the usual high-end mall area, we ended up walking along the streets, and selecting a BBQ eatery to have dinner in. Normally, people come to this area for the high-end shopping. This area is relatively near Shibuya, which is why we chose to end our day here. Asakusa and Akahibara are significantly further from Shibuya.

Note: Because of being stranded in the airport upon arrival, we only arrived at our first hotel around midnight on Day 1. So what was technically Day 2 is described as Day 1 here. Our last day was also mainly spent making our way back to the airport from Shibuya by the Narita Express train, so I did not include details here.

Random thoughts:

Comparing Seoul and Tokyo after visiting both in 2019, I’ve realised that people in Tokyo are really much nicer. This applies to service staff in shops and eateries, strangers on the street or commuters in train stations. Food quality and variety is also definitely better in Tokyo than Seoul. However, Seoul is superior when it comes to buying facial products and hipster cafes.