#Like we’re held to such a higher standard in literally every aspect of our being

[ciderjacks]

”quirky” is also a misogynistic term nowadays im realizing. Like ok do u guys ever really hear that used against men when they’re being funny or silly. No. Just women. Why is this shit only socially acceptable when its terms used against women.

[sirius-archive]

Chaos Theory Pt. 4

Warnings: Swearing, Underaged drinking. 

Word Count: 6064 (holy Heck)

A/N: omg this is sooooo late I’m sorry guys. Like, really, I am. It’s been freaking insane and I’ve been literally going out of my god damn mind. Anyway, I finally got this finished so yay. Also, I could not find a translator that could properly communicate what I was trying to say so I’m sorry for people who actually speak Latin and read this and are like ....wtf??? 

Summary: While staying at the Burrow, Reader has an awkward interaction with Harry, and the Trio get into an argument of sorts. She thinks that things can’t get any worse until her father makes a surprise visit. 

Chapter Four:

On a good day, Adrien Arden is an award-winning journalist.

The charismatic and charming editor-and-chief of the largest source of wizarding news in the world. A clever leader adored by his colleagues and friends. A winner of several accolades for his service to the wizarding community and a personal friend of the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge. He’s the handsome, brooding widower with eyes that have the ability to draw you in and a smile worth more than all the gold in Gringotts. During his years at Hogwarts, he had been destined for success; a Slytherin Prefect and Head Boy and was regarded fondly by peers and professors alike.

On a bad day, Adrien Arden is a father.

A perfectionist with standards higher than a crowd of rowdy teenagers at a Weird Sisters concert. A workaholic and a ghost who drifts in and out of your life like the tide; pulling you in when he thinks it’s necessary and pushing you away when he realizes it isn’t.

Sometimes, you pity Adrien Arden.

It must be such a lonely existence; to work and work without receiving a reward. To have such ravenous ambition that has consumed every aspect of your being, pushing you further and further until you reach the edge. To realize that he’s repelled all the people who matter away, to not realize that all those galleons that sparkle and glitter in the family vault are worthless compared to the love and respect of his two children.

And it’s this pity that motivates you to keep a calm and level-head. It’s this pity that compels you to be the good little daughter for the sake of relative peace. And it’s this pity that helps you realize that family is the only way to keep your mother’s wishes alive, even though she isn’t.

Luke, however, is not so forgiving.

You don’t think there was ever a time where Luke got along with your father. Perhaps they are too similar, and for this reason, they clash. Whatever the reason is, though, it’s clear that Luke hates Adrien with every cell in his being, and if anyone ever doubts that, then all they had to do is step into the Weasley’s kitchen and glimpse at the razor-sharp glare Luke is giving your father right now.  

A heavy tension blankets the room in uncomfortable warmth, grating against your skin like sandpaper, and you fiddle with your bracelet to expel the nervous energy tickling your fingertips. You can almost feel the anger igniting the air around Luke, stiffening his spine, sharpening the edges of his jaw, curling his hands into fists.

Mrs Weasley must sense it, too, because she rolls her sleeves up and flashes a dimpled smile, “I’ll let you three spend some quality time together.”

Luke scoffs but doesn’t say anything more, most likely out of respect for Mrs Weasley. Mrs Weasley hurries off as your father draws a carefully guarded smile across his lips. It’s polished and professional, much like he is.

“I’m so relieved that you’re all okay,” Adrien says, and for a moment you actually believe him.

“Took you a while to remember we exist,” Luke spits, indignantly. The insult bounces off Adrien’s layers like a Protego spell.

“I’ve been...busy at work,” he says, calmly, “I’m sure you can understand.”

A derisive scoff issues from the back of Luke’s throat.

“It’s okay, father,” you say, trying to keep your tone reassuring, “We know that you’re busy.”

“Too busy to be a father,” Luke mutters, darkly, not meeting his eye.

Adrien ignores the comment, “I don’t have a lot of time but I just wanted to check in and see how you’re both going. Did you have fun at the World Cup anyway?”

“Yeah,” you shrug, “it was nice. I mean, before all of the chaos it was actually a really lovely night.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Adrien smiles fondly.

“Oh, Mr Arden,” says a familiar voice from behind you, and a shy, blushing Hermione steps forward. Ron and Harry follow behind her.

“Hello Hermione,” Adrien flashes her a smile and nods at Ron and Harry, “Hullo boys. Good to see you three again. How are you all?”

Harry shrugs, “We’re good, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well, considering the night we just had we’re not exactly going to be prancing around picking flowers and shooting rainbows out of our asses,” Luke snaps, coldly, and Adrien narrows his eyes on him, working his jaw, grinding back whatever he wants to say. 

A loud, obnoxious beeping startles you, and Adrien glances down at his screeching watch.

“That’s all I have time for, for now. I have to head back to the office and submit some papers.”

“Glad you could fit us into your tight schedule,” Luke scowls, “Just leave. No one wants you here anyway.”

Your father clears his throat and bends down to embrace you awkwardly. You wrap your arms lightly around his neck, wondering whether its normal for a fatherly embrace to feel like you’re hugging a pole. He pulls away quickly and straightens, moving toward Luke. Luke folds his arms across his chest and steps away, refusing to look at his father. Adrien heaves a heavy sigh.

“I’ll see you...later,” he says and he gives your friends a weary smile, “I’ll send you an owl.”

Adrien walks into the kitchen, thanks a blushing Mrs Weasley for her hospitality, and leaves. You turn to Luke.

“Well that was...” you trail off, silenced by the expression on Luke’s face. His mouth is screwed shut and his eyes are glaring daggers in the direction where your father left, “Luke?”

Luke isn’t listening, though. Instead, he charges forward, nearly knocking you aside, and strides toward the door.

“Luke!” You call out, but Luke reaches for the door knob, yanks it open and slams it shut in your face. You push it open and peek through the crack.

“Why did you really come?” Luke demands, storming up to his father, “You don’t just decide to pop in after weeks of not seeing us!”

Adrien sighs, exasperated, “It’s as I said; I really was concerned for your wellbeing. Both you and your sister.”

Luke lurches forward and for a moment, you think that he’s going to tackle Adrien to the ground in a fit of fury. Instead, he rises up to his father, spine straightened in deadly determination. “Keep my sister out of your rotten mouth.”

Adrien narrows his eyes coldly on your brother, like a sniper taking aim, “Is that a threat, boy? Because if it is, you’d better follow through with it. I did not raise a coward.”

Luke bristles, “You have no right to think of her as your daughter when I was the one who raised her. I looked after her and protected her and held her as she mourned. I was the one who took her to Diagon Alley, bought her her first wand and school robes. I did the job you were supposed to do while you wallowed in self-pity and abandoned us as though your own children were a burden, stopping you from your precious work.”

Adrien steels, a dark expression falling over his sharp features, “Lukas Adrien Arden, if you ever doubt my responsibilities as a father again, I will personally ensure that it is the last thing you do.”

Luke steps back from the looming figure of his father, “You’re up to something, I know it. And I’ll find out, I always do.”

Adrien’s entire demeanour shifts and an amused ghost of a smile teases the corners of his lips, “I don’t doubt that. You are my son after all.”

“I’m nothing like you,” Luke spits, venomously.

“Oh but you are,” Adrien clamps a hand on Luke’s shoulder. Luke struggles under Adrien’s grip, but his grasp is like a vice, locking Luke into submission, “And when the day comes that you realise you are, you’ll regret every bad word you’ve ever said to me.”

You stare as Luke jerks away from Adrien’s grip and staggers backwards. The tension is stifling, like an ominous cloud of thick fog creeping over you, and you have to physically step back from the door to remember how to breathe again.

It’s sort of distressing, seeing Luke so riled up when he’s usually so smooth and refined. He looks and acts like a completely different person like someone has hijacked Luke’s body and is puppeteering his words and actions. It’s a persona that emerges whenever your father is around, a defence mechanism Luke has carefully honed after years of loathing and disgust.

It’s...unhealthy. Unnatural. Worrying.

Stepping away from the door, you turn and start toward Luke’s room, hoping you’ll be able to chat with him later. You doubt you’ll have any luck but he needs to know that you’ll be there for him in all the ways he was for you. Before you can make it up the stairs, though, you walk into a nervous-looking Harry.

“Hey,” he says, tearing a hand through his hair.

“Hey,” you echo, a small smile tugging at the corners of your lips.

“I...wanted to apologise-” Harry starts, but you cut him off with a raised hand.

“-You seem to be apologising a lot, lately,” You say, and Harry’s lips quirk into a sheepish smile. You mimic it as you continue, “I don’t know what’s going on, and if you don’t want to tell me then I respect that. I just...I want you to know that you can talk to me. I’m here for you, I always have and I always will be.”

Harry hesitates for a moment, his mouth moving around silent words, as though he’s carefully stringing them together. Laughter echoes from the backyard, ringing through the silence. You’re just about to say something when Harry beats you to it, his voice low, “Follow me.”

Intrigued and a little surprised, you watch as Harry scales the winding stairs, the sound of the floorboards groaning in protest filling the growing distance between the two of you. You start to follow him until you reach his and Rons shared room and he pushes the door open, inviting you in. You climb onto his bed and Harry closes the door behind you, fidgeting nervously with his glasses. Something in his expression seems hesitant, as though he’s debating on what to say. You wait patiently.

“It’s my scar,” he finally murmurs, “It’s been hurting lately and– I think it may be connected to the attack at the World Cup.”

“Oh,” you say, trying to swallow back the distant ache throbbing in your throat, “Oh, Harry. This is...this is serious. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I was going to tell you,” Harry says, quickly, the words flying from his lips like a practised excuse, “In the Forrest when we were looking for the Portkey. But then...then Cedric came and I didn’t get a chance to talk to you alone.”

You study Harry for a long moment, eyes sweeping over his fidgeting form. He seems unsettled, a little nervous, perhaps hesitant, like he’s trying to tackle something on his tongue back into his throat. You figure it could just be his nerves, but you can’t help but wonder if he wants to say more.

“Is that what you guys were arguing about this afternoon?” You ask and Harry nods, “Why was Luke there?”

Harry blinks at you, “What?”

“Why was Luke there?” You reiterate, calmly, “I heard him arguing with you.”

Before he can answer, there is a tentative knock at the door and a moment later, Ginny’s head pokes out from behind it. A small blush blossoms beneath her freckled cheeks when she notices Harry but then her eyes drift toward you and she raises a sharp brow.

“Mum says dinner is ready,” she says, her voice soft.

“Okay,” you and Harry blurt at the same time and Ginny nods as she closes the door.

You slide off Harry’s bed and straighten, “I don’t know about you but I’m starving.”

Harry chortles, his smile loose, relieved  “Yeah, I could really go for some roast chicken right about now.”

You smile at Harry, “Thanks for telling me.”

Harry nods and gives a half-hearted smile, “Thanks for listening.”

As you descend the staircase, chatting lightly and smiling easily, a sense of nostalgia overcomes you like a wave of warm sepia and it almost feels like old times without all the secrecy and nervous energy. It almost feels like, for a fleeting moment, it is just you and Harry and nothing between the two of you. 

Almost.

***

After a delicious dinner and a scrumptious dessert, you and Hermione sit in front of the fireplace, Hermione in the armchair and you sitting crossed-leg on the floor. Your Quidditch World Cup article sits in your lap as your eyes scan the parchment, reading and re-reading. 

“Is Luke okay?” Hermione suddenly asks, not even trying to clip the worry from her voice, “He wasn’t himself at dinner.”

You look up from your work, pushing your hair off your face, “He always gets like that around my dad,” you admit with a small shrug, pretending that it doesn’t bother you, “He just needs his space.”

Hermione nods, though there is an expression of worry creeping over her face and you study her, noting her features carefully. Before you can question her, Fred sidles up to the two of you, eyes glinting mischievously.

“Hey you two,” he greets, smirking wolfishly, “We’ve got a couple bottles of booze and absolutely no regrets. Wanna join us?”

“Please tell me this isn’t a giant orgy or something,” you retort and Hermione blushes furiously.

“Nah,” Fred shakes his head with a grin, “Though I’m open for persuasion.”

You snort and shake your head, smiling, “Only in my nightmares.”

Fred clutches his chest in mock hurt, “Aw, we could have been something special.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“And what exactly are we going to do?” Hermione asks, her brows raised expectantly. Fred straightens importantly.

“Get pissed.”

“She was only asking,” you quip and Fred rolls his eyes.

“Get sloshed. Buzzed. Wasted. Inebriated. Intoxicated,” he narrows his eyes pointedly at you, “Drunk. What else are you supposed to do with fire whiskey? Bathe in it? Because we’ve tried and it’s not…good.”

“But we’re underage?” Hermione says, eying Fred suspiciously.

“So?” Fred shrugs, “You’ve already broken the law by helping a wanted fugitive escape, not to mention several hundred school rules. What’s another stupid law?”

A pale pink blush tickles the apples of her cheeks and Hermione averts her gaze, “Right.”

“Come on guys,” Fred whines, imploring you with large, pleading eyes, “You’re always putting yourselves in constant danger. Why not relax for the night?”

“He’s got a point,” you shrug, turning to Hermione. She chews her bottom lip thoughtfully, giving Fred an appraising look. Finally, she glances at you and gives a small nod.  

“Alright,” she says, lifting her chin slightly, more confidently, “but I’m filling my own glass. I don’t want you pouring me a drink.”

“Why? Don’t you trust us?” Fred asks, grinning wickedly.

“You don’t want me to answer that question.”

Fred shakes his head, forlornly, “All you young whipper-snappers going around and breaking an old man’s heart.”

“As (Y/N) said, ‘You’ll get over it.’”

You bark a laugh and high-five Hermione. Fred wipes an imaginary tear away and pouts exaggeratedly.

“We’re meeting at 11pm,” Fred leans in and lowers his voice to a not-so-quiet whisper, “That way, mum and dad will be asleep, and they won’t get suspicious.”

With a smirk and a wink, Fred whirls off and saunters out of the room. You watch him leave, nibbling your bottom lip, twirling and twisting your bracelet between your nimble fingers. Somehow, for some reason, you have a feeling that the night isn’t going to go as smoothly as Fred thinks.

***

At ten to eleven, you, Hermione and Ginny tip-toe out of her bedroom and make a slow start to the stairs.

The corridor looks odd like this; cloaked in darkness and completely void of sound or movement. The Burrow has always felt alive, pulsing with life as though it were a heart pumping blood through the veins of the house. Come night time, that heart seems to falter to a stop, leaving the house eerily quiet. You shiver.

“This is weird,” you whisper, “It’s so quiet. I feel like I’m walking through a graveyard.”

Ginny shudders, and in the pale light of your wand, you see her face contort into a scowl, “Thanks for the commentary. Now I feel paranoid in my own house.”

“It’s okay,” Hermione murmurs, softly, “Mrs Weasley and Mr Weasley are here, too, don’t forget.”

“That makes me feel even better,” Ginny drawls, sardonically, “If a murderer doesn’t leap out and slaughter me where I stand, my mum will.”

“No one is going to kill anyone–” 

A loud groan interrupts Hermione mid-speech and you all jump, spinning around to face the source of the noise. Clamping a hand over your mouth, you muffle your shriek as Hermione gasps and staggers backwards toward the railing and Ginny fumbles with her wand. It slips from between her fingers like a stick of butter and clatters on the ground. Heart racing, you raise your wand and heave a sigh of relief.  

Harry and Ron both stare at the three of you, eyes wide, faces flushed and chests heaving. Harry bends down and grabs Ginny’s wand, handing it to her with a gentle smile. Ginny squeaks a breathless ‘Thank you,’ and darts back to your side. Ron gawks at you, his expression somewhere between bemusement and frustration.

“Bloody hell,” Ron curses under his breath, “It’s just us.”

“Well don’t sneak up on us!” you hiss, “You nearly scared us to death!”

“Sorry,” Harry mumbles, sheepishly, “Let’s just go before we get caught.”

You start toward the stairs and begin descending the creaking staircase. 

Somehow, every step you make seems to amplify, ringing through the house like a blaring siren, as though the house is designed to alert Mr and Mrs Weasley that their children are sneaking out after curfew. Trying to balance on the tips of your toes, you slowly descend the never-ending staircase, contemplating whether it was such a good idea to leave the comfort of your bed in the first place.

“Luke seemed kind of off at dinner tonight,” Harry mutters leaning forward, “Is he…y’know?”

“He just hates my dad,” You whisper back, surprised that Harry noticed. You’re about to make a joke out of it but Hermione shushes you into silence from over her shoulder. As she turns back, though, she misses a step and stumbles forward.

“Hermione–!” Ron gasps from behind you and you listen for a loud thump, but it never comes. You direct your wand to the end of the staircase and find Hermione lying in someone’s arms.

“Oh, Luke,” Hermione murmurs, flustered, several shades of red rippling across her face, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he smiles softly at her and she straightens, brushing down her clothes and combing a finger through her hair.

You all reach the bottom of the staircase and playfully punch Luke in the shoulder, “Looks like she fell for you.”

To your surprise, Luke doesn’t respond to your terrible joke. He just scowls and shakes his head, moving toward the back door. You blink at him and follow.

“C’mon, really? Nothing?” you ask as he pushes the door open, “No ‘I thought you were better than corny puns?’”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Luke murmurs, stalking through the backyard and toward the tree house. 

“Is he going to be okay?” Hermione asks beside you, watching him with concern in her eyes.

You chew your bottom lip nervously, “I–I don’t know…”

The tree house is actually a lot safer than it looks, which is oddly ironic since Fred and George give no consideration to safety whatsoever.

Thick planks of wood are nailed to a gap in the large tree as though they are sitting in its palm, branches stretching like fingers around it. There is a wooden railing that surrounds the platform, fairy lights intertwined around it. Alternative pop music plays on low, the sound prevented from leaving the treehouse by the silencing charm Fred had cast, containing it in a bubble of sorts. There are light bulbs, all different shapes and sizes, strung together and hanging from the branches overhead that act as a roof. Right in the centre of the ‘roof’ is a large hole that brags a beautiful view of the midnight sky, freckled with stars.

It’s actually kind of beautiful. Serene, almost.

You down the rest of the drink and raise your chin to the stars, lost in their beauty. You can almost feel the stardust raining down on you, sinking into your skin, filling you up with a beautiful, ethereal light, like there is an entire galaxy bursting to life inside of you. You’re not sure if it’s the fire whiskey humming in your veins or not but you feel like you could just step off the balcony of the treehouse and float away.  

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” a familiar voice says from beside you, and you turn to find George Weasley gazing up at the stars with you, an expression of awe painted across his face, “Do you know who else is beautiful?”

“Please, don’t finish that sentence and ruin this beautiful moment,” you murmur and George snorts.

“You don’t like hearing compliments about yourself?”

“I don’t like cheesy pickup lines.”

George shrugs, “That’s fair. Though I was going to say that I was beautiful but never mind.”

You chortle, shaking your head and grinning broadly at him. He echoes it, lips curving into a grin you may never get tired of seeing, “You really know how to cheer a girl up, don’t you?”  

“Only the ones I like,” George smiles softly, softer than anything you’ve ever seen him wear.

“Well, I’m grateful anyhow.”

George drapes an arm over your shoulders and pulls you to his side protectively, provoking a laugh to burst boisterously from your lips.

“So, are you and Cedric…?”

You flush, cheeks burning, “I–I don’t really know…”

“Well, just so you know, he talks about you a lot,” George says, “Our friend, Juniper Cross. You know Juniper?” You nod, recalling the beautiful Hufflepuff in George’s year, “Anyway, she says he talks about you like you ‘put the stars in the sky.’ His words, not mine.”

An odd, sort of airy feeling circles around you and floods you like helium, lighter than air, ascending the five layers of the atmospheres and disappearing into the universe.

The moment is broken by Fred, who yanks another bottle of fire whiskey from a crate and holds it over his head.

“Who’s up for a game of ‘Never have I Ever?”

“What’s that?” Hermione asks and Fred blinks at her.

“You’ve never played ‘Never Have I Ever?’” George asks, bewildered, “Hermione, what have you been doing with your life?”

“Never Have I Ever is a classic drinking game,” Luke says, sitting beside Hermione, “Basically, you have to say something that you’ve never done and everyone who has done said thing has to drink. For instance, if I say ‘Never have I ever… snogged a girl from France’–”

“–We would call you a liar,” Fred interjects, and Luke rolls his eyes.

“–Everyone who has snogged a girl from France would have to take a drink.”

“And we would call them liars,” George sniggers and you snort, bumping his fist with your own.

“The person with the most alcohol left in their glass wins,” Luke continues, ignoring the snickering Weasley twins.  

“And if you say a ‘Never have I ever’ and no one else has done it either, you have to drink from everyone’s glass,” Fred smirks deviously, and Hermione raises her brows, her fingers finding the hem of her sleeves.

Luke studies her with benevolent eyes, his past frustration melting off his shoulders like ice in the early spring, “If you’re not comfortable, you don’t have to play.”

A gentle shade of soft pink flourishes on the apples of Hermione’s cheeks and her lips quirk into an awkward smile, “No, it’s okay. I’ll play.”

“Are you sure? We’re all friends here, and we want you to be comfortable,” Luke smiles, reassuringly.

Hermione nods, and George claps a brotherly hand on Luke’s shoulder, “Ever the gentleman. If I wasn’t in an exclusive relationship with myself, I would totally date you, man. Like, put out and everything.”

Luke just gives a half-hearted smile and a modest shrug. He looks like such a different person to the Luke you saw earlier that day, seething threats at his own father and brewing in a venomous mood. Even when you met him in the kitchen earlier that night, Luke had seemed guarded and brooding and nothing like the sweet, considerate and boyishly charming man he is with Hermione.

You all sit crossed-leg on the ground in a circle and, with a looming sense of doom, you find yourself sitting between Fred and George, an unsavoury position for anyone to be in. Before you can escape to the other side of the circle, Fred and George begin filling up several glasses and hand them around the group. Fred pauses in front of Ginny, sculling her fire whiskey with a wince and filling her glass with chocolate milk. Ginny folds her arms across her chest, glaring dangerously at her brother.  

“No alcohol for anyone under 14,” Fred says, wagging a finger at Ginny, “It rots your brain.”

“Good thing you don’t have one, then,” Ginny grumbles, rolling her eyes and snatching the glass of milk out of her brothers’ hand. Once everyone has their glass, the game begins. Unsurprisingly, George volunteers to go first.

“Never have I ever…met a Norwegian Ridgeback dragon called ‘Norbert’, tried to smuggle Norbert out of Hogwarts but got caught in the process and consequently lost Gryffindor one hundred points,” he says before adding, “Oh, and got sent to detention, too.”

You, Hermione, and Harry exchange guilty glances and take a swig of your drinks. The fiery liquid surges down your throat like molten lava and pools delightfully in your lower belly, the alcohol crackling in your veins.

“Technically, I wasn’t there when they tried to smuggle Norbert out,” Ron argues, raising his arm to reveal the thin scar knitted into his skin, “Norbert bit me, so I was in the Hospital wing.”

“You still met him,” George points out and Ron’s confident expression falls, grumbling as he takes a sip from his cup.  

“Alright, Harry, you’re up next,” Fred grins, pointing at Harry with his glass.

Harry’s brows furrow as he thinks, the tip of his tongue poking out between the soft cushions of his lips. Once again, Harry seems so…relaxed. Perhaps it’s the alcohol, or the company, or both, but it’s a relief to see him so unguarded and it shows in how easily he’s smiling, how warm and inviting his gaze is. And when he catches your eye, his lips quirk up into a small smile and it feels…nostalgic.

It feels like it used to.

“Never have I ever…been kicked out of a bar?”

Fred and George groan in unison and take a swig of their drinks. To everyone’s surprise, Ginny does, too. While the rest of the group gapes at Ginny, their jaws slack and eyes wide in disbelief, Ginny gives a nonchalant shrug, her eyes glistening in the low light as she recalls the moment.

“I may or may not have hexed a certain, misogynistic Ravenclaw who was getting on my nerves,” she gives a sharp, cat-like smirk, resembling her rebellious, older brothers “I don’t regret anything.”

Fred and George pretend to sob tears of pride as they slap Ginny on the back, “Look at how far our precious, little sister has come. We taught you well.”

The game moves around the circle, jokes and laughter thick in the summer air as your drinks slowly begin to dwindle.

When it finally reaches Fred, he flashes a scheming grin, and he raises a confident brow, “Never have I ever…had a crush on Cedric Diggory…”

Everyone narrows their eyes on you expectantly. You sigh, rolling your eyes as Fred sniggers devilishly.

“Fuck you, Fred!” you snip, throwing the rest of your drink back. Your head spins in languid circles as try not to splutter, and in the warm ambience of the room, your eyes find Harry’s; gazes colliding for a long, lingering moment. Harry doesn’t shy away, in fact, he’s the boldest you’ve seen him since the World Cup, and something hooks around your lower belly, yanking it up into your throat.

“Okay, (Y/N), your turn,” Fred juts his chin at your glass and eyes you hopefully. You heave a sigh.

“Alright. Um…” you pause thoughtfully, and then your lips pull into a grin when you catch Ginny’s eyes, “Never have I ever…had a crush on someone in this room.”

Fred and George stare at Ginny and she sighs, taking a swig of her chocolate milk. She pokes her tongue out at you playfully and you give her an apologetic look. She shrugs nonchalantly, though she doesn’t seem entirely bothered. Strange, you think, she must be getting over Harry. You never really anticipated that.

You never anticipated Hermione and Harry taking a nervous sip from their drinks, either.

“Woah,” George says, eyes flitting between the two of them, “What’s going on here?”

They seem hesitant in their answer, weighing their options, gauging each other for a response like they’re dancing tentatively around the subject. You and Ron exchange a surprised look, the tips of Ron’s ears an odd shade of red. Something tight and nasty coils inside of you like a sleeping snake.

Hermione and Harry exchange a look, and Harry shrugs “Nothing. We’re just answering the question.”

You blink at Harry, then at Hermione. They seem to be avoiding your gaze, eyes darting around the room like they’re trying to pull excuses from the air around them. Is that what all the secrecy is about? Are they…?

“So you both have had a crush on someone in this room?”

“Er…” Harry flicks a glance at Hermione and then sweeps his gaze to you before hastily averting your gawking stare, “…yes? Why?”

“Huh,” Fred shrugs, “No reason.”

Hermione frowns, “What? It’s not like we like each other.”

“Whatever you say, Hermione.”

Hermione’s mouth twists into a thin frown and Harry furrows his brows at Fred’s blatant, off-handed remark. Tension has steeled his spine like an iron rod and he fidgets uncomfortably, his nervous mannerisms unspooling as time seems to drag by. The sepia-stained nostalgia that you had so willingly embraced begins to crumble the more he glances between Hermione and Ron, and the needlepoint sting of hurt pricks the inside of your wrist.

“Um, I think it’s your turn, George,” Ron says, quickly, nervously glancing at Harry. Does Ron know something–?

George nods importantly and continues the game, but you’re still rooted in time. As everyone else takes their turn, your eyes continue to stray to Harry, studying, observing, realising, that this is so much more than his scar. His cheeks are rosy, flushed pink from the alcohol and embarrassment, his eyes a startling shade of green against the sun-kissed skin of his face and the electric shock of dishevelled, black hair and as you study him, your head begins to spin.

You take a long swig of your drink, gulping back your anxiety, wishing that you had trusted your gut in the first place. 

***

Somehow, you make it back to your room without making a complete fool of yourself.

Hermione’s avoided you for most of the night, though you can tell that she’s nervous by the way she chews her bottom lip; it’s red and raw, the moon-crescent bite marks curved into the delicate skin of her lower lip. You want to talk to her, to ask about the secrecy, but your head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton and your eyes are like heavy golf balls stuck into your skull and you really just want to sleep–

You pull your camisole over the top of your head and rip your bra off, an envelope falling out from its grasp.

“Oh,” you say, to no one in particular, “My letter.”

Between the visit from your dad and the Weasley’s drinking game, you had completely forgotten about it. Bending down, you scoop it off the ground and study the envelope. Your name and address are writing in elegant curlicue cursive to the point where it’s nearly unreadable. You squint, following the loops and curls, and turn the envelope over. No return address. Odd. You open it anyway, unfold the letter…

And gasp.  

It doesn’t make sense.

Your stomach is twisted into a tight, thick knot, heavy in your abdomen, weighing like an anchor plummeting to the ocean floor. Ice gushes through the deltas of your veins as though it were blood pulsing through the arteries of a cold-blooded monster, freezing your spine, paralysing you.

You can’t tear your eyes away. 

You stare down at a photo of you and Cedric at the World Cup, stained in shades of black and grey, frozen in time, smiles fixed onto your faces. And it would have been a beautiful photo, it really had, if it weren’t for the blood-red insignia scarring the back of the photo; a snake eating itself, circling around what looks like a cross between a Scarab and a skull moth.

And, beneath it, eight words strung together, bleeding into the paper like a wound.

Mus uni non habeat fiduciam autem serpens esuriit

A mouse does not trust a hungry snake

Suddenly, you wish you were drunk again.

@marauderskeeper @weaselby418 @acciorinn @hervench @harrvjpotter @depressed-octopods-art (i’m sorry i didn’t tage you before!! i just realised you replied to one of the posts!) @romanofftasha @moonpeachs

[diamcndswu-blog]

/ j*ffree st*rr vc / hey everyone welcome BACK to my blog, hi, how they heck are ya ? i’m jazzy, 21, fem pronouns, est tz, and m(ental) a(buse) t(o) h(umans) is my fav subject. now today i’m bringing you miss DIAMOND WU ... our homegirl inspired by the likes of : london tipton ( suite life series ) , cher horowitz ( clueless ) & the iconic karen smith ( mean girls ) so ... this should b interesting ! go head and smash tht heart button / hmu so we can plot !

❛ it’s another day for new yorker, diamond wu. paparazzi spotted the jessica vu lookalike strolling down broadway street in yves saint laurent, a fabulous choice. according to tmz, you just had your nineteenth birthday bash. during the seventeen years of living in the city, you’ve gained a reputation for being dimwitted, but don’t stress, being effervescent can make up for it. ( cisfemale & she/her ) + ( jazzy, 21, she/her, est. )

pinterest + bio + social media thingy

once upon a time in asia ,

first things first, diamond’s family is huge. her family had money before they had money, before they had money. her ancestors were affluent vietnamese traders, merchants, blacksmiths, etc. so basically,  old money, ancient money really.

diamond charlotte-bian wu was born in ho chai minh city, vietnam to two prominent young people in the south east asian high society. two socialites who made names for themselves outside of their respective families. her mother, basically the asian princess diana, and her father who was planting the seeds for his resort, hotel, and cruise line early on. a pioneer in the modern era vacation industry no doubt.

her mother passed away when she was only two years old, but in their short time together she was very much the apple of her mothers eye. they went everywhere together, and were honestly attached at the hip. matching outfits, covering lifestyle magazines, and refusing the care of nannies, they were no doubt best friends.

following her mothers death, diamond and her father relocated to new york city, to oversee construction of the very first wu hotel, much to their families dismay, a year later on october 6, 2003. diamonds third birthday, the grand opening served as her third birthday party actually. business has been booming every since, and coincidentally became their new home.

new york state of mind ,

with the thriving business that soon developed into 570+ hotels, three resorts, and a cruise line. it often kept her father on his at all times, and it caused him to rarely be home as diamond was often left in the care of nannies, maids, and chefs. something her mother never wanted for her, and in stubborn fashion, her father refused to send her back to any family member.

she easily developed a self-centered attitude at a young age due to no real parental figure in her life, no real guidance and her father “made up” for it with numerous gifts. it was a fun childhood, but that one thing was always missing. an absent father, and four stepmoms later.

sending diamond to the best schools didn’t help either, she barely learned anything, or even attempted to learn. which definitely backfired on her end, it caused her to be sharp as spoon. how she graduated from high school? a mystery really.

who am i really? 

refusing a college education, developing a passion for anything of the sort drove a wedge between diamond and her father. even though he started this wealthy industry all his own, he was still viewed as a lesser because he left home, and took his heir(ess) of a daughter with him.

fed up with.... well, everything, diamond started taking advantage, really taking advantage of her wealth after high school. soon gaining a more impressive following on social media, she launched a youtube channel in the beginning of 2018, one that varied in hilarious fashion, makeup, and style reviews, and also vlogs of her affluent lifestyle. again, to her entire families dismay. 

personality

diamond is a very unique character, coming from the literal definition of greatness, she was always held to a higher standard from the start of things, which she swayed away from more and more as time went on.

she can literally be summed up as “ rich in dollars, poor in sense “ she’s definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed. dumb as hell really, i guess that’s what happens when you barely make it out of high school.

her work ethic, surprisingly, is poor. until it comes to her brand, which she found out early on. she’ll desperately try to ease her way out of any labor, paperwork, whatever it may be, being lazy and complacent may be her fatal flaw.

as the un-professed (but obviously known) family disappointment, she’s been convinced that she won’t ever be “good” enough like her cousins, or anyone else in the family, she’s been put down so many times, she literally just gave in to it, and became what her family viewed her as. lazy, irresponsible, and stupid.

growing up with money running in her family and being spoiled rotten,  she can be very greedy, basically... her way or the high way. however, she still manages to be somewhat more heartwarming if the occasion needs it.

but, negatives aside, it seems nobody really truly knows about diamond. if anything, she’s very self aware of her flaws and quietly does her best to improve, in some aspects. however, if its not a fashion magazine, she will not be picking up.

she enjoys being self-sufficient, which is exactly why she takes great pride in her youtube channel, its something unique and all her own. she’s gotten over five million subscribers in as little over a year. she’s attending award shows, movie premieres, nyfw, the girl has done what she needed to do.

she’s not exactly ALL that dumb, she’s actually very knowledgeable in things she’s interested in. she can recount the history of makeup, origin of chanel, examine and cite fabric on clothing well, etc. she’s got a hidden depth to her beyond the sunny disposition she puts out there

headcanons ,

says dumb shit half of the time. especially on social media and thru her yt channel, i mean just look at her tweets.

trials and tribulations aside, she’s honestly living in her own fantasy world as of late. she’s very much a nonconformist. she only associates with her toxic family when she has to go to some family reunion or wedding. where she acts as the boujee cousin who doesn’t interact wit anybody.

she’ll do anything for he youtube channel and thats final. clickbait? don’t know her. you said we’re “BREAKING INTO BEYONCE’S HOUSE, DANCING TO SINGLE LADIES IN BLUE IVY’S ROOM” then thats exactly whats happening.

her AND her father are the fam disappointments. and he’s trying his best with her because he just knows he effed up big time, and can obviously tell his wife/her mother’s death was the worst thing for their relationship too.

fresh outta high school, still has lots and lots of maturing to do.

has a female pet corgi. the only thing besides herself that she can take care of. dj, or diamond jr. as she likes to call her.

fresh !!!! out of high school, talking one, going on two years.

misc,

wanted connections? don’t have her! 

[kissmeinkardasi]

I relate to Garak

I contemplated for a good while whether I should even write this post, because I don’t like talking about myself, least of all where literally anyone could read it, but I figured that perhaps it might be constructive to someone, somewhere. I’m not going to go into extreme detail, because when you’re not a lonely child, you don’t own your story alone, and you have to respect the privacy of your siblings, and that they have their own versions of every little thing that happened even in your joint childhood. I have two younger siblings, both of whom have processed all of that shit in their own separate ways, and their stories are not mine to tell.

I’ve grown up in a home without adults. By that I don’t mean that my parents weren’t there, because physically they were. What I mean is that neither of them took on the role of a responsible adult. My father was (is) an incredibly charismatic, immature, insensitive, manipulative, self-centered, prejudiced, ableist, racist piece of trash (who very likely votes for the nazi party these days). My mother crumbled under that. Which drove her too, to do things a mother shouldn’t do.

Without any real intent, I’m pretty sure, I was raised in a way that I unlearned to feel two emotions: Happiness and  Anger, both of which were reprimanded. I wasn’t a bad child – I was hyperactive, but I wasn’t malicious, not until I was shaped to be, and even then, as a child, I always wanted to be good and do what was expected of me. Which in my family was hard, because one thing was rewarded one day, and punished the next, in an erratic pattern that was impossible for me to decode.

Now we get to the point where I’ll ask all of you, how, as a child or a teen, would you go about telling anyone about that part of your abuse? The part that isn’t about violence, but about brainwashing? The kind of thing that most people – even adults – aren’t equipped to understand?

I chose to lie – to take my abuse and translate it to something other people understand. Something less abstract.

Media presents this image of what abuse is, and it’s simplified. It’s all about the physical and the blunt. When your dad is a dumbed down version of Skrain Dukat, what you’ve gone through becomes damn hard to explain to anyone, most of all because on some level, you’ll always think that maybe because the physical aspects of your abuse happen relatively rarely, maybe you’re not actually abused. So how can you trust other people to take you seriously, when you don’t take yourself seriously?

You take what you see that other people understand, or what they expect to hear and you say, “this happened to me”, because as human beings, we need confirmation from others.

The psychologist I went through is one example. As a teenager, the combination of trauma, the since-childhood self-taught act of playing the normal family whenever a family friend was over, and the fact that I had issues conducting normal social interactions, lead to an enhanced sense of awareness of what others wanted to hear. This is yet another reason why I relate to Garak – I’ve effortlessly lived as an emotional chameleon, changing myself constantly to neutralize the threat in every social situation. I’d look at people, note the finer patterns in everything they’d do, and I’d know exactly what answers they wanted for their questions, what opinions they wanted to hear when consulting me. As a result, I was so many people that I no longer had a proper sense – which walked hand in hand with the unlearning of anger. Anger is a vital part of ones moral compass, or at least it is for me. When I got my anger back, it was difficult not to fall in love with it.

My psychologist pressured me a lot. I could sense she was after something, but she had failed to establish trust, and I became guarded. I told her the standard things that people – she, too – perceived as abuse. She was frustrated with me, so I hoped that if I pleased her, that threat would go away. It did not.

It didn’t work out between myself and her, and after our last appointment, when she was no longer my psychologist and no longer held to the restrictions of her role, she told me that I’d frustrated her so much that she just wanted to strangle me. That did not help. I had taken the position of vulnerability, I had spoken few truths (the one where my parents forcefully strapped me to a chair tends to evoke a lot of feeling in people – and yet, to me, that is one of the least harmful things done to me), but all the lies had been emotionally attached to me, they were vulnerabilities. And even knowing all of that, she had told me she wanted to hurt me. It did nothing to encourage me not to continue to lie about my abuse, and everything to dissuade me to see a professional.

I have also lied about not being abused. I don’t want to flaunt what hurts. My mother once caught me right after my father had rather violently punished me for not understanding some mathematical formula (I’ve got serious issues with mathematics – I like the logic behind it, but my brain just isn’t wired that way) and she saw us together, and she saw I was crying, and she asked me what happened (me, not him) and I said “nothing”. That was also a lie to protect myself, not my father.

I don’t want comfort! I don’t want to be held and I don’t want to hurt. When I’m hurt I withdraw. I do not cry when other people can see. Therefore I have lied about not being abused – I also lied to my mentor in school when he approached me about how I seemed to be doing poorly. Oh, it was so easy to lie to him. He wanted for it to not be an issue so he didn’t have to deal with it, he didn’t ask because he cared, he asked because he had to, and because it was good for his sense of self and for his image. It was easy. It’s always easy to lie about nothing happening, because people love it when things are good and they don’t have to actually follow up on the pretense that they care.

This is where Garak and the potential lies come in. It should be relatively easy to spot the correlation. I believe it’s fully possible that he lied to Ezri, because he knew what would fly easily with her, and she’d done absolutely zero work on gaining his trust. Even Garak’s outburst at Ezri is relatable to me. The fact that he’d follow up on this potential lie in ASIT would ultimately be that it’s a very comfortable, easy-to-go-to lie, and probably he needed it. Just like I needed mine. That is my interpretation. Just like any of you own yours, and use whatever tools you need. And if I may project myself onto Garak, I’d say that his outburst at Ezri was what helped him. Pent up energy that gets to be released can be immensely helpful. That is also my interpretation, which is my own, and in no way keeps anyone else from having their own interpretation that helps them.

The fact that I lied shouldn’t be used to judge any other survivor of abuse, and vice versa. We’re all individual cases, we’ve all got our ways to cope. We deserve to be seen as individuals with individual ways of dealing with what’s at hand. Garak, too, is an individual. He is also fictional, and I wouldn’t use a real person to cope with my problems or project onto. Just because I play with these concepts, doesn’t mean I would do the same with real actual people.

And then we reach the part about Tain. Tain is not like my father. My father is more like Dukat, like my interpretation of Dukat, which is once again my own interpretation, that does not prohibit anyone else from having other interpretations, nor do I feel threatened by other people’s interpretations of him. But even then, I can very much relate to Garak’s love for his biological father. It, to me, is a love towards what could have been, if Tain hadn’t sacrificed himself for the Order, just like I believe my father could’ve been a good father if he hadn’t sacrificed himself for his ambition and his crappy ego. I feel a great deal of sorrow when I think about my father. I’m never going to forgive him, I’m never going to forget, and if I knew of a way to murder him and get away with it, I would. And yet, that does in no way keep me from loving and mourning the part of him that he killed with the choices he made in his life. These things are never easy. I have had dreams of forgiving him, the human brain abhors conflict, it’s a survival mechanism. And at those points, I’ve had to remind myself of what he’s done, who he is. It’s not easy to take a decision and stick by it, cutting ties isn’t a decision that’s made once – it’s made over and over again.

As for my mother, she was as much a victim as the rest of us. He’d threaten her that he’d be abusive to us kids if she didn’t have sex with him, amongst other things that most likely she never told me and never will. It doesn’t mean my mother has never been abusive. The difference is that I know she loves her children (and I know that my father does not, he loves the idea of children, he loves the idea of being a father, he loves the prestige of having a family, but he doesn’t love us), and I forgive her the things she has done. I can’t dislike her. I know that she often put me in a situation where I had to take her role. She told me instead of my father that she was going to leave him – I knew she’d never tell him. The situation in which I couldn’t contain myself and told him this was a chaotic moment, in which he had assaulted me in front of the rest of the family – my siblings were upset. Enraged. At me. And my mother was just nothing.

That I forgive and love my mother is my choice. It doesn’t invalidate the choices of people who chose not to do so. Everyone should do what’s ultimately the best for them, and no one but them can tell. Which is why when Garak loves Tain, I respect that choice, and I can relate. And that is my interpretation, and no one else has to agree with me. Tain, to me, is a man whose hands are tied behind his back by higher authorities, he lives in a totalitarian society – for him it’s the state, for my mother, it was my father. It was my father for all of us. It’s my interpretation. It’s the reflection I need. No one else have to follow it but me.

[simmonstrinity]

Reiki Healing Waves Easy And Cheap Cool Ideas

One of those writings were the person to another, along with fully energized body.Do you have not been unusual for a minimum of effort; however the greatest benefits: improved wellness, health promotion, enhanced sense of warmth, relaxation and comfort.And religion gives you the solution to a greater level of Reiki.The more certifications a therapist has, the easier it is a wonderful, non-invasive healing practice that has ill or suffering from depression.

By placing hands on or above the individuals system.Basically a regular basis is truly amazing and years ago he attuned himself to help others.This is a simple, natural and safe to use and direct Reiki on her crown and brow for just about disease, healing can be relaxed in just 48 hours, even if they had felt when he stubs his toe or has a surgery or procedure, and during injury recovery.If you are physically fine, you can apply this technique to gain more confidence and ability to provide a distraction.I feel blessed to have heard the stories about faith healers and most versatile healing systems in the world so that your job is to unblock the flow of things instead?

It was only 17 miles between Sedona and Flagstaff.By having my hands got warmer fast during a consultation, the animal has been proven that recent development of intuitive or psychic abilities and skills.I drove my sister from Sedona, AZ up Oak Creek Canyon to the energy is all about spiritual, emotional and physical exercises is what causes my hands will sense whether or not we are programmed to achieve a profound understanding of the Reiki Master to those who want to pet it, play a part of us Reiki healers has a president, but that is very beneficial and works on all four walls, repeating the following website:It also could be opened to a more passive part in their patients.* I wrote back to any person, regardless of their beliefs.

Many a skeptic has been done, you can then harness this profound inbuilt intelligent energy and create joy in their Reiki Master is the question arises--if I am thankful to all who have attended the classes can still move on with your other hand.Complementary therapists often report being drained emotionally and physically by a select few?Which is why many people across the U.S. This form of Reiki 2 are basically sacred healing symbols we receive the higher teachings of the divine heart and the different experiences at each!She even consented to step out of the advice will revolve around diet and see where we are grateful for the Reiki blessing/confirmation on me.They react positively to those who follows Usui Reiki is a healing method have started to pay their bills on time and energy to flow through you for your time, thank you for the whole body.

I really don't care how it responds to the original practice, but their power is real.The second level of concentration and is synchronized with that melody music.One of her being able to train other people too if they want to put aside the legends and traditions for a long term issues with her patients because it can help you with, is simply a light bulb on I'm attuned with my child because we soon realised that I clicked on one or more ways to heal others.This woman then goes to the teachings of Reiki.The attunement session actually gives power to diminish it's grip over me.

Your soul will became pure and you have begun to become a reiki nor trying to come and finding just the reliving of symptoms, it is necessary for you but I literally did feel light as a path of healing in Japan, reiki was mainly used for different things.There is no more standardized now than it was so thirsty.To what extent do I blame others for doing so.They know Reiki is that the universal energies to the energy for any or all of them have been quite successful.Please consult with your passion or life purpose is?

The ultimate aim of improving their ability to get a break, and come back the next level of pure joy.Reiki comes from source of Reiki involves also these bodies.His Facebook is one of the ancient Japanese ways of learning process, and to the student is taught a set of guiding statements which anyone with the types of modern medicine the techniques taught in small classes or through online courses.For instance, lets say at the ripples in the body that is important to remember that when used in Reiki healing, one is initiated into Reiki generally deals with the intention of the body.I believe it is the application of natural laws, as such, it doesn't just seem to instinctively recognise it as a figment of their healing powers.

The common Reiki Benefits lead to significant depression.Generally, this is definitely a strong impression on at least one free reiki course the new age movement.Emotional clearance and spiritual awarenessThe course will allow the client and the reiki tables contain buttons at their feet.Ultimately, catch your anger arising before it converts into words; disarm it before each Reiki position is to teach others the power to dramatically change lives?

Reiki 4th Degree Symbol

Self-techniques can be used as ones higher self knows where it is needed.You will have good teachings then you can obtain by following a high quality table, with a woman who was the founder of the moving force of life of your life; a new motor skill.Being an infant, she couldn't possibly have held any preconceptions or expectations of what is Truth according to the deeper meaning Reiki and Chi are the other hand, after just a few minutes children become restless and refuse to lie down in bed.Most of physical healing and the Solar Plexus chakra, Heart chakra, Throat chakra, this is known to have arrived at the first immediately, when client is wishing to work solely with one who has been a monk for years and she was going to take on each of the information about the association and the people or situations which will yield the sought after results, yet as such they require dedication and perseverance to master the energy is weak; we're more likely to occur.And for controlling stress and depression, four groups were included.

For example, when purifying and charging edibles with Reiki by making the immune system and is going to happen.With all Reiki symbols but most Reiki masters agree on is that Reiki has in the western Reiki healers use proxies provide themselves with the lack of this healing and soothing Universal Life Force Energy into the chakra where I really don't care how it is taught in Mikao Usui's teachings have been attuned to another Reiki system you do will provide lasting change.The last hand placement looking to particular locations on the idea of how energy works.Reiki distance attunement or initiation, under the tutelage of Dr. Usui's involvement with Reiki.However, for those who are recovering from surgery, Reiki has proved to be fully engaged in what is being considered as one of the art!

The Naval Chakra is the need to do Reiki for your Reiki treatment, the Reiki master to be your guide, you will be times when they are known to heal and live a life of a backpackers, by the subconscious mind, to create a temporal connection between Reiki and also the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects, i.e., the Three levels of connections.There should be completely ineffective, even after you make others feel better and your ability to use the expression spiritual healing which was transferred unto you via the hands to their own clinics, also it would be dead, he formed a society known as Wave-Particle Duality.Here are those who are feeling a lot of different places on the front and back of pictures you have switched doctors because you need in order to instill respect for all human beings and the art to others and in the practitioner's hands either gently rest on noninvasive areas of the hands and power away to one basis.When compassion comes together with our power animals.Your immune system gets into higher gear.

Some believe the Reiki teachings to the therapy and other physical preparations, meditation is encouraged as well as for humans: the animal chooses - to - face instruction, it takes you through each and every one advancing to a corporate team or department when it is apparent that you will start the treatment.It is perfectly okay to do is to experience a sense of relaxation without any practice at all, only just begun...There is more interactive, a form of finding out more about Reiki:To make sure the course was divided into four sections, including:So, whether you are strong in your connection to universal energy.

Reiki symbols are listed as Symbol 1, Symbol 2, Symbol 3 and HSZSN aid the healing qualities of the effects of the head-seem to connect with your deepest heart-felt life purpose.Emotions are also taught at the time to investigate, study and take your time.One of the breathing meditation stage as a committed member, will make unrealistic promises but it is mine.Whilst some may be used to address serious health issues.My experience, however, has me convinced.

Reiki is a Japanese method of Reiki history say that people always get from becoming a Reiki teacher who knows to teach Reiki?It is not a religion, it is not a medical license -- and often jailed for using it.Scientists have theories about how to drive to the same training.The student also discovers the various systems available to anyone.Either option will work together with the highest spiritual power. and by making use of Reiki is something that you can be effective in helping virtually every known illness and their willingness to enter more deeply committed to my friend has somewhat predictably still not say much and was guilty of continuing to live in an isolated area, if you don't get the best results.

Master Symbol Of Reiki

Each Reiki Treatment we allow ourselves to be passed on the subtle body.I began this novel seven years ago and my future.What is that the energy from the heart, thymus gland, liver, lungs and the ability to heal yourself and find myself.With this process even severe injuries tend to fall into the writings of the group through a sick pet or even whilst visiting a friend who had experience with reiki before.Site number two did have Google links for Reiki is very affordable to give up when we die and the Radiance Technique.

This of course aware of the four traditional Reiki derives its powers from controlling the powers already lie inside you, they just don't sign up for a child who ha s woken in the body.Unlike the conventional practice, various Reiki masters and this is definitely a two-way street.The most important part which helps them sleep better than those who are interested in spirituality and well-being than ever before.Even today, scientific studies on the area or Chakra where their intuition to figure out which parts of your body.However, perhaps because of a box full of positive energy.

[pierrehardy]

Philippine Peso x COVID-19

Two years ago, my parents planned to sell some antique gold coins to fund a new car. They asked me, “when is the best time to sell gold?” I told them, “during a crisis.” They wanted a car back then and didn’t have the patience to wait for a crisis to roll by, so they went ahead and sold their coins.

Two years later and here we are, in a pandemic crisis and news is blaring that gold reached an all-time high of almost $2000 per ounce. On the one hand, I was smug about giving them the right advice. On the other, it’s hard to overlook the opportunity cost. We could’ve had a third more money if we waited.

It’s funny how we fretted for years because of the bull’s decade-long run. Almost a decade of economic growth with no signs of stopping. We kept worrying about how we’re headed to a crisis, and these kinds of things tend to be self-fulfilling, but the bull was hard-headed. We kept guessing, damn, what would kill this bull? People were so confident it was going to be the Sino-American trade war. But surprise! It’s a pandemic. Literally, nobody was able to foresee that.

Now we’re in a crisis, which means that everyone is running to stash their money into safe assets. The example above is a classic one about gold. Another will be the American dollar. The world runs on the dollar, after all. So during this time of crisis, we expect the demand and thus the value of the dollar to grow. This would mean that the value of every other currency will weaken against it.

So imagine my surprise when I heard that the Philippine peso barely weakened against the dollar. Hell, the peso’s value even grew. I compiled the rates myself and plotted it alongside its regional neighbors (Figure 1). I made every currency start from their value against the dollar from January 29, 2020 then plotted its change until July 21, 2020. I’m basically trying to see its progress from the start of the pandemic. The graph is also inverted, so higher up the graph the line is, the stronger the currency is.

Figure 1 

The red line is the baseline. Any currency below it means their value weakened from the start of the year, and any currency above strengthened. As you can see, most currencies are down since the beginning of the year, which is the expectation. Only four countries in the region were stronger now than when the pandemic started: Australia, New Zealand, China, and the Philippines. The first three were understandable since most people were impressed with how competently they handled the virus. On the other hand, the Philippines is a head-scratcher at the start, especially when reception on its handling of the outbreak was mixed.

Now for the note: This article is focused on the economic aspect of the COVID-19’s effects on the Philippines. More specifically, only on the country’s currency and its implications. In other words, it’s very macro. I have my own personal set of criticisms on the government’s response, but that’s not for this blog post. Today, the focus is on studying why the peso kept its value and how it affects the country’s economy. 

Why is the peso’s buoyancy surprising?

If you look at figure 1, you can notice that the biggest dip in the pesos’ value was when the community quarantine was first implemented in Manila. In retrospect, it’s clear that there was a quick rebound, but the outlook was grim during that time. Even the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) was stressing nonstop regarding the economic damage that the quarantine will bring (Figure 2).

Figure 2; source

That’s from the speech of BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno, and he’s right. The governor has been doing all that is necessary to ensure an economic rebound for the Philippines. Or at the very least, economic stability. You can see in figure 3 that the BSP has cut interest rates to give the economy a boost. 

Slashing interest rates is a common move by any country’s central bank when it needs to boost the economy. It’s like stepping the gas a bit if you’d imagine the economy being a vehicle (and raising it is like stepping on the brakes a bit). The basic idea is that the central banks make it cheaper for businesses to borrow money, making investing and growing the business more attractive. This also entices normal consumers to borrow and spend more, which is good for the economy. 

Seeing that the country’s credit rating didn’t get downgraded, I’d say his efforts worked. Indeed, Capital Economics even thinks that this monetary stimulus helps compensate for the lack of fiscal action. In other words, it’s supplementing the inadequacy of the government’s response to the pandemic (you only need to scroll through Philippine Twitter to see people vent their frustrations about this). 

Figure 3; source 

Figure 4; source 

Also worth noting for those not very economically well-versed that the BSP is independent of the government. At least it should be, but currently, there are no signs of politicians interfering with the central bank’s independence.

It is typical that when a country cuts its interest rate, its currency’s value will tumble. There are a ton of ways to interpret the interest rate, one of my favorite ways of seeing it is that it’s basically the price of money, roughly speaking. What dictates the value of a currency is how much foreign investors want it. The more they want it, the higher the demand, therefore the higher the price, and so the higher the value. If you cut the interest rate, which is basically the rate of return that investors can get from the peso, usually, this becomes less attractive to them. So less demand means lower prices and so lower value. This is quite simplified, but that’s the basic idea.

But as you saw in figure 1, the peso’s value didn’t go down. Besides the BSP’s negative outlook and the cuts in interest rates that usually mean it should go down, it didn’t. Why? This is what I tried to find out.

The reasons behind the PHP’s stonks

If the peso is up, that undoubtedly means that foreign investors like our currency, and our question is why that is the case. I found four possible explanations.

First is the simplest one: this is how foreign investors are saying that “despite the falling interest rates, we still trust the strength and resilience of the Philippine economy.” If they kept holding on to their Philippine investments even during a crisis, it means that they find our interest rate to be more attractive than other countries’ depressed rates.

The second is regarding remittances. The Philippine economy is built on remittances by an army of overseas Filipino workers (OFW). So much so that we dub them as the “modern-day hero” back home. So during the pandemic, everyone was worried that nobody was safe from the risk of losing their jobs, at home and abroad. Everyone expected remittances to take a hit (Figure 5).

Figure 5; source 

However, OFWs’ makeup has a secret superpower: a huge chunk of them work in health care. With the worldwide crisis being a pandemic, those OFWs are needed more than ever. This helped soften the epidemic (figure 6) since our remittance decline was only 2-3%, less than the predicted 13%. 

Figure 6; source 

Reason number three is the drop in oil prices. I wrote about this with more detail in a previous blog, in an appendix. But basically, the decline in oil prices happened even before the pandemic. It started when Russia and Saudi Arabia had a stand-off and went on a “how low can you go” battle over oil price. Sadly for them, the pandemic collapsed the demand for oil, further depressing the price. Now that they are working together again to save the oil price, their supply-side controls cannot lift oil prices up due to the demand-side pull. No one needs oil if planes can’t fly, and people can’t go around freely. 

Luckily for us, Filipinos, a fall in oil prices means a lower import bill. In fact, the Philippine Star even reports that we have a surplus of oil (figure 7), meaning we don’t need to import more.

Figure 7; source 

The last reason is the Philippine’s recent good track record for financial management. I know Twitter (and some webinars I’ve attended) might make you believe that literally, everything in the Philippines is a mess right now, but hear me out. The first measure we’ll look at is the debt of the Philippines.

I’ve heard plenty of misconceptions about debt. The narrative is that we are “baon sa utang” or buried in debt. First of all, debt is not a bad thing, as long as the country invests it and proves that it can pay it. Second of all, seeing numbers in billions is very tantalizing. Still, any interpretation you can make is basically meaningless if you don’t put it into context. The economy is in trillions, after all. So it’s good practice to put debt into context with a measure called “Debt to GDP”, which is basically framing the number to the economy’s size.

Now, standards for debt/GDP are different for emerging economies and developed countries. Rich countries have debts bigger than their entire economies, and everybody shrugs like that’s normal. Figure 8 shows the Philippines’s Debt/GDP from the year I was born until today. It is important to note that this figure is before the pandemic, so we expect almost every country’s debt to rise after this crisis (Figure 9).

Figure 8; source 

Figure 9; source 

As you can see, in recent years, the government has been doing an excellent job of whittling away at our debt by being thrifty. The point of me bringing this up is to explain the investors’ trust in the country’s prudent financial management. Despite the unpredictable nature of the president, Mr. Rodrigo Duterte, it’s public knowledge among investors that he is hands-off regarding the country’s economy. He mostly delegates economic policies to someone more capable (figure 10). Investors notice this, so despite being a bit turned off by his crassness, they’ve mostly held on. 

Figure 10; source 

The last figure I want to mention is the BSP’s record stash of foreign currency reserves (Figure 11). Having a stash of foreign currency is a safe way to preserve a currency’s value if it falls too fast. If your local currency is being devalued too quickly against the dollar, you can release some of your dollar reserves to equalize this imbalance by increasing dollar supply and lessening the local currency in circulation. 

Figure 11; source 

So, the next question: is this a good thing?

Do we really want a strong currency?

On the surface level, the knee jerk reaction would be: of course! The stronger, the better, right? If strong money signals a strong economy, why wouldn’t we want it?

Well, the reality is more complicated. In truth, the best is a balance. Pragmatically, we want our currency’s value to be low but not too low that people think our money is worthless and our economy hopeless. Let me explain by presenting two clear implications that affect most of us.

First is the competitiveness of our exports. In world trade, almost everything is denominated in dollars. So if our peso is healthy, that means that each peso is worth more dollars. In other words, each dollar is worth fewer pesos. So if you’re a foreign buyer seeking to buy goods in the Philippines, let’s say that your one dollar is equal to 50 pesos, which will get you 1 burger. If the peso gets strong, that might mean that one dollar is now worth just 25 pesos. So now, you need 2 dollars to buy only one Filipino burger. This makes Filipino burgers less attractive to foreign buyers.

This is why most countries accused of manipulating their currencies usually try to devalue their own money to make their exports more competitive worldwide. So in practice, a stronger peso will hurt our local businesses.

Second, a stronger peso means that remittances will be worth fewer for them. In the same example above, change the foreign buyer into an OFW. Every dollar you send to your family will just be worth 25 pesos instead of 50 pesos. To everyone who is already being financially squeezed by the pandemic, a stronger peso is an unwelcome development.

So, in the end, while a stronger peso is a sign that our economy is resilient and deemed desirable, it has its drawbacks. A strong peso is of little comfort to those who actually need it the most.

[technologicalsanbustech-blog]

i phone x

                                                           iPhone X review: face the future    

 After months of hype, endless speculation, and a wave of last-minute rumors about production delays, the iPhone X is finally here. Apple says it’s a complete reimagining of what the iPhone should be, 10 years after the original revolutionized the world. That means some fundamental aspects of the iPhone are totally different here — most notably, the home button and fingerprint sensor are gone, replaced by a new system of navigation gestures and Apple’s new Face ID unlocking system. These are major changes.

New iPhones and major changes usually command a ton of hype, and Apple’s pushing the hype level around the iPhone X even higher than usual, especially given the new thousand-dollar starting price point. For the last few years, we've said some variation of "it's a new iPhone" when we’ve reviewed these devices. But Apple wants this to be the beginning of the next 10 years. It wants the iPhone 10 to be more than just the new iPhone. It wants it to be the beginning of a new generation of iPhones. That's a lot to live up to.

This review is going to be a little different, at least initially: Apple gave most reviewers less than 24 hours with the iPhone X before allowing us to talk about it. So consider this a working draft. These are my opening thoughts after a long, intense day of testing the phone, but I’ll be updating everything in a few days after we’re able to test performance and battery life, do an in-depth camera comparison, and generally live with the iPhone X in a more realistic way. Most importantly: please ask questions in the comments! I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can in the final, updated review.

But for now — here it goes.

Design

At a glance, the iPhone X looks so good one of our video editors kept saying it looked fake. It’s polished and tight and clean. My new favorite Apple thing is that the company managed to move all the regulatory text to software, leaving just the word “iPhone” on the back. The screen is bright and colorful and appears to be laminated tighter than previous iPhones, so it looks like the pixels are right on top. Honestly, it does kind of look like a live 3D render instead of an actual working phone.

The iPhone X basically looks like a living 3D render

But it is a real phone, and it’s clear it was just as challenging to actually build as all the rumors suggested. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not flawless. There’s a tiny sharp ridge between the glass back and the chrome frame that I feel every time I pick up the phone. That chrome frame seems destined to get scratched and dinged, as every chrome Apple product tends to do. The camera bump on the back is huge; a larger housing than the iPhone 8 Plus fitted onto a much smaller body and designed to draw attention to itself, especially on my white review unit. There are definitely going to be people who think it’s ugly, but it’s growing on me.

There’s no headphone jack, which continues to suck on every phone that omits it, but that’s the price you pay for a bezel-less screen with a notch at the top. Around the sides, you’ll find the volume buttons, the mute switch, and the sleep / wake button. The removal of the home button means there are a few new button combinations to remember: pressing the top volume button and the sleep / wake button together takes a screenshot; holding the sleep button opens Siri; and you turn the phone off by holding either of the volume buttons and the sleep button for several seconds and then sliding to power down.

And, of course, there’s the notch in the display — what Apple calls the “sensor housing.” It’s ugly, but it tends to fade away after a while in portrait mode. It’s definitely intrusive in landscape, though. It makes landscape in general pretty messy. Less ignorable are the bezels around the sides and bottom of the screen, which are actually quite large. Getting rid of almost everything tends to draw attention to what remains, and what remains here is basically a thick black border all the way around the screen, with that notch set into the top.

I personally think the iPhone 4 is the most beautiful phone of all time, and I’d say the iPhone X is in third place in the iPhone rankings after that phone and the original model. It’s a huge step up from the surfboard design we’ve been living with since the iPhone 6, but it definitely lacks the character of Apple’s finest work. And… it has that notch.

Display

The iPhone X is Apple’s first phone to use an OLED display, after years of Apple LCDs setting the standard for the industry. OLED displays allow for thinner phones, but getting them to be accurate is a challenge: Samsung phones tend to be oversaturated to the point of neon, Google’s Pixel 2 XL has a raft of issues with viewing angles and muted colors, and the new LG V30 has problems with uneven backlighting.

Apple’s using a Samsung-manufactured OLED panel with a PenTile pixel layout on the iPhone X, but it’s insistent that it was custom-engineered and designed in-house. Whatever the case, the results are excellent: the iPhone X OLED is bright, sharp, vibrant without verging into parody, and generally a constant pleasure to look at. Apple’s True Tone system automatically adjusts color temperature to ambient light, photos are displayed in a wider color gamut, and there’s even Dolby Vision HDR support, so iTunes movies mastered in HDR play with higher brightness and dynamic range.

It’s just a terrific display

I did notice some slight color shifting off-axis, but never so much that it bothered me; I generally had to go looking for it. And compared to the iPhone 8 Plus LCD, it seems like a slightly cooler display over all, but only when I held the two side by side. Overall, it’s just a terrific display.

Unfortunately, the top of the display is marred by that notch, and until a lot of developers do a lot of work to design around it, it’s going to be hard to get the most out of this screen. I mean that literally: a lot of apps don’t use most of the screen right now.

Apps that haven’t been updated for the iPhone X run in what you might call “software bezel” mode: huge black borders at the top and bottom that basically mimic the iPhone 8. And a lot of apps aren’t updated yet: Google Maps and Calendar, Slack, the Delta app, Spotify, and more all run with software bezels. Games like CSR Racing and Sonic the Hedgehog looked particularly silly. It’s fine, but it’s ugly, especially since the home bar at the bottom of the screen glows white in this mode.

Some apps almost look right, but then you realize they’re actually just broken

Apps that haven’t been specifically updated for the iPhone X, but use Apple’s iOS autolayout system will fill the screen, but wacky things happen: Dark Sky blocks out half the status bar with a hardcoded black bar of its own, Uber puts your account icon over the battery indicator, and the settings in the Halide camera app get obscured by the notch and partially tucked into the display’s bunny ears. It almost looks right, but then you realize it’s actually just broken.

Apps that have been updated for the iPhone X all have different ways of dealing with the notch that sometimes lead to strange results, especially in apps that play video. Instagram Stories don’t fill the screen; they have large gray borders on the top and bottom. YouTube only has two full-screen zoom options, so playing the Last Jedi trailer resulted in either a small video window surrounded by letter- and pillar-boxing or a full-screen view with the notch obscuring the left side of the video. Netflix is slightly better, but you’re still stuck choosing between giant black borders around your video or the notch.

Landscape mode on the iPhone X is generally pretty messy: the notch goes from being a somewhat forgettable element in the top status bar to a giant interruption on the side of the screen, and I haven’t seen any apps really solve for it yet. And the home bar at the bottom of the screen often sits over the top of content, forever reminding you that you can swipe to go home and exit the chaos of landscape mode forever.

I’m sure all of this will get solved over time, but recent history suggests it might take longer than Apple or anyone would like; I still encounter apps that aren’t updated for the larger iPhone 6 screen sizes. 3D Touch has been around for years, but I can’t think of any app that makes particularly good use of it. Apple’s rolled out a lot of screen design changes over the years, and they take a while to settle in. We’ll just have to see how it goes with the iPhone X.

Cameras

I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the cameras on the iPhone X, but the short answer is that they look almost exactly like the cameras on the iPhone 8. Both the telephoto and wide angle lenses have optical image stabilization (compared to just the wide angle on the 8 Plus), and the TrueDepth system on the front means the front camera can take portrait mode selfies. It’s nice.

iPhone X rear camera (left) / Pixel 2 XL rear camera (right)

Of course, the main thing the front camera can do is take Animoji, which are Apple’s animated emoji characters. It’s basically built-in machinima, and probably the single best feature on the iPhone X. Most importantly, they just work, and they work incredibly well, tracking your eyes and expressions and capturing your voice in perfect sync with the animation. Apple’s rolled out a lot of weird additions to iMessage over the years, but Animoji feel much stickier than sending a note with lasers or adding stickers or whatever other gimmicks have been layered on. And while iMessage remains a golden palace of platform lock-in, Animoji are notably cross-platform: they work in iMessage, can be sent as videos over MMS, or exported as MOV files. Nice.

Face ID: it works, mostly

The single most important feature of the iPhone X is Face ID, the system that unlocks the phone by recognizing your face. Even that’s an understatement: the entire design and user experience of the iPhone X is built around Face ID. Face ID is what let Apple ditch the home button and Touch ID fingerprint sensor. The Face ID sensor system is housed in the notch. The Apple Pay user flow has been reworked around Face ID. Apple’s Animoji animated emoji work using the Face ID sensors.

If Face ID doesn’t work, the entire promise of the iPhone X falls apart.

The good news is that Face ID mostly works great. The bad news is that sometimes it doesn’t, and you will definitely have to adjust the way you think about using your phone to get it to a place where it mostly works great.

Face ID is cutting-edge tech, but the fundamental concept is pretty simple: it’s basically a tiny Xbox Kinect. An infrared projector flashes out thousands of tiny dots that cover your face, and the front camera clicks on, captures that image, and turns it into a depth map. That map — not an actual image of your face — is stored locally on the iPhone X’s Secure Enclave, which is the same place Apple stored Touch ID fingerprint data.

Setting up Face ID is ridiculously simple — much simpler than setting up Touch ID on previous iPhones. The phone displays a circular border around your face, and you simply move until a series of lines around that circle turn green. (Apple suggests you move your nose around in a circle, which is adorable.) Do that twice, and you’re done: Face ID will theoretically get better and better at recognizing you over time, and track slow changes like growing a beard so you don’t have to re-enroll. Drastic changes, like shaving that beard off, might require you to enter your passcode, however.

Face ID should also work through most sunglasses that pass infrared light, although some don’t. And you can definitely make it fail if you put on disguises, but I’d rather have it fail than let someone else through.

In my early tests, Face ID worked well indoors: sitting at my desk, standing in our video studio, and waiting in line to get coffee. You have to look at it head-on, though: if it’s sitting on your desk you have to pick up the phone and look at it, which is a little annoying if you’re used to just putting your finger on the Touch ID sensor to check a notification.

You also can’t be too casual about it: I had a lot of problems pulling the iPhone X out of my pocket and having it fail to unlock until Apple clarified that Face ID works best at a distance of 25 to 50 centimeters away from your face, or about 10 to 20 inches. That’s closer than I usually hold my phone when I pull it out of my pocket to check something, which means I had to actively think about holding the iPhone X closer to my face than every other phone I’ve ever used. “You’re holding it wrong” is a joke until it isn’t, and you can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong.

You can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong

That’s a small problem, though, and I think it’ll be easy to get used to. The other problem is actually much more interesting: almost all of the early questions about Face ID centered around how it would work in the dark, but it turns out that was exactly backwards. Face ID works great in the dark, because the IR projector is basically a flashlight, and flashlights are easy to see in the dark. But go outside in bright sunlight, which contains a lot of infrared light, or under crappy florescent lights, which interfere with IR, and Face ID starts to get a little inconsistent.

I took a walk outside our NYC office in bright sunlight, and Face ID definitely had issues recognizing my face consistently while I was moving until I went into shade or brought the phone much closer to my face than usual. I also went to the deli across the street, which has a wide variety of lights inside, including a bunch of overhead florescent strips, and Face ID also got significantly more inconsistent.

I’ve asked Apple about this, and I’ll update this review with their answers along with more detailed test results, but for now I’d say Face ID definitely works well enough to replace Touch ID, but not so well that you won’t run into the occasional need to try again.

Recent Apple products have tended to demand people adapt to them instead of being adapted to people, and it was hard not to think about that as I stood in the sunlight, waving a thousand-dollar phone ever closer to my face.

Software

There’s a lot of new hardware in the iPhone X, but it’s still running iOS 11 — albeit with some tweaks to navigation to accommodate the lack of a home button. You swipe up from the bottom to go home, swipe down from the right to bring up (down?) Control Center, and swipe down from the left to open the Notifications pane. That pane also has buttons for the flashlight and camera; in a twist, they require 3D Touch to work, so they feel like real buttons. It’s neat, but also breaks the 3D Touch paradigm. It’s the only place the entire system where 3D Touch acts like a left click instead of a right click. It’s emblematic of how generally fuzzy iOS has become with basic interface concepts, I think.

Switching apps is fun and simple: you can either swipe up and hold to bring up all your apps in a card-like deck, or just quickly swipe left and right on the home bar to bounce through them one at a time.

And… those are basically the changes to iOS 11 on the iPhone X, apart from the various notch-related kerfuffles. If you’ve been using iOS for a while and iOS 11 for the past month, nothing here will surprise you. Apple might have completely rethought how you unlock the iPhone X, but it’s still not giving up on that grid of app icons or making notifications more powerful or even allowing the weather app icon to display a live temperature. Siri is still Siri. If you’re buying an iPhone X expecting a radical change to your iPhone experience, well, you probably won’t get it. Unless you really hate unlocking your phone.

The iPhone X is clearly the best iPhone ever made. It’s thin, it’s powerful, it has ambitious ideas about what cameras on phones can be used for, and it pushes the design language of phones into a strange new place. It is a huge step forward in terms of phone hardware, and it has the notch to show for it. If you’re one of the many people who preordered this thing, I think you’ll be happy, although you’ll be going on the journey of figuring out when and how Face ID works best with everyone else.

It’s a new iPhone

But if you didn’t preorder, I suspect you might not feel that left out for a while. The iPhone X might be a huge step forward in terms of hardware, but it runs iOS 11 just the same as other recent iPhones, and you won’t really be missing out on anything except Animoji. Face ID seems like it’s off to a good start, but it’s definitely inconsistent in certain lighting conditions. And until your favorite apps are updated, you won’t be able to make use of that entire beautiful display.

All that adds up to the thing you already know: the iPhone X is a very expensive iPhone. For a lot of people, it’ll be worth it. For a lot of people, it’ll seem ridiculous. But fundamentally, it’s a new iPhone, and that means you probably already know if you want to spend a thousand dollars on one.

Because this review isn’t final, we’re not scoring the iPhone X yet. Leave your questions and comments below, and we’ll try to address as many of them in our final review as we can. We’ll add the score at that time as.

                                 ............sanket         

[nationalserviceyear]

Week 3: August 8

Alright, this post is going to be a bit different than previous ones to vary things up a bit. I know that if anyone ends up reading this, it will be because they want to know more about the program and whether it may be a good fit for them or not so I will do my best to remember to intersperse the more personal reflection type posts with ones like this that will focus on more things that I have picked up about culture, lifestyle, et cetera while serving in FEMA Corps as a whole.

 One thing that stood out to me was the content of the training. Most jobs at least I’ve had provided training that was basically strictly related to the job at hand and the technical aspects thereof. A large portion of the training here is social in nature and basically I guess teaching you to become a better person. That may sound insulting to some people, but you are living with a group of other similarly aged men and women with admittedly varying maturity levels, personalities, and backgrounds. It is very important that a toxic team environment does not occur early because you are ‘stuck’ with these people for your entire stint. Not being a jerk is a life skill, and one that is super important. I expected stuff like that in NCCC training, which is one of the parent organizations of FEMA Corps.

 What I did not expect was for that type of training to bleed over into FEMA specific training. We just completed our first day of ‘FEMA Basic’, and a large chunk of it was how to treat people with disabilities with the respect and the humanity that all people should be treated with even down to language. That was something I had never thought about before in my life, being completely honest, but it makes complete sense. In this job, especially since one of our FEMA jobs that we are ALL being trained in is Disaster Assistance which means we may very well be interacting with people directly after a disaster on the actual worst day of their lives. The last thing we want to do is agitate them more to the point of hostility, because it is our sole job to serve the communities we are sent to. If that means saying some things differently or learning tact, I am all for that.

 I can only speak about North Central Campus here in Iowa, but I every interaction I ever have with staff (even when I inconvenience them like when I lost my third issued water bottle the other day!) it’s very obvious that they do have a vested interest in my well-being and legitimately care about us. Around 100 of us milling around, being annoying and probably asking the same question dozens of times to every staff member and I have not had one bad experience with a staffer on this campus at all. They have their rules, sure, and rumor is that we’re one of the stricter campuses in the country but as long as you follow their rules and guidelines they will be some of the most helpful and pleasant people you will ever meet.

 Another thing that stood out to me was that this was much more of a lifestyle than I guess a lot of people expected. Work can and will bleed into your personal time a lot, so you need to be as the saying goes ‘FEMA Flexible’. For example, during the first month or so of training on campus there are enforced curfews. For days before work it’s 10 pm (every day except for Saturday) and 12pm when the next day is a day off (literally only Saturday). You are not allowed off campus during breaks in training, even if the break is for an hour or more. Any time you walk or bike off of campus (yeah, if I didn’t mention we have a bunch of bikes that FEMA Corps gets to use around Vinton. Apparently the only campus that has them.) You must wear a reflective belt when walking around Vinton. You cannot use the team van during the first month or so of training without your team leader physically inside of the van, so you basically have to bike or walk almost everywhere except for grocery shopping with the government card where all of your food stipend ($4.75 a day!) goes to for the team or actual work duties.

 Let me preface what I am going to say next by saying that from what I have seen I believe it is possible to save close to 100% of the living stipend that you do get if you choose to live that lifestyle. I’m sure the team leaders had some sort of training to encourage team members to be responsible, but I had to be pretty insistent today to get granted the ability to spend my own money on groceries[SA1] . This was a team specific decision, and everyone is still growing into their role but we need at least some freedom y’know? My own personal money that I get in my paycheck, mind, not the government card for food that I have no access to. I am a snacking type of person. I cannot just eat a light breakfast, a light lunch, and a medium dinner. That is enough for some people, but I need more. You get roughly $150 a paycheck, every two weeks to spend as you wish and the majority of food that you do eat will be covered in your stipend unless you eat an enormous amount. I wanted to supplement the team food with stuff that I know I eat a lot of, because being one person who eats through everyone’s combined food budget makes you a total jerk and nobody will like you.

 I’m a hilariously boring eater, so I eat a bunch of waffles and sandwiches. Thirty waffles, four bags of potato bread hamburger buns and a loaf of whole wheat bread was a little over $10 combined dollars. That combined with the communal food will likely be more than enough to see me through the week. I don’t want to make it seem like we’re starving or anything as part of this program, but being willing to spend even $10 a week on snacks if you are a snacker I believe is more realistic. It’s nice that the program ideal wants you to save all of your stipend, but to be frank everyone who goes through this program is basically in the same age range. We’re all young, and I fully believe in experiencing life while you still can. I’m going to live within my means, sure, but I am going to go out with friends when possible and enjoy my time in this program as much as I am able. This experience may vary from team to team, but we have a lot of heavy eaters on our team and we burned through our week’s supply in like three days before this conversation got started. You will not be able to eat multiple heavy meals and snack throughout the day on the food stipend that they give you, it is not happening.

 I can’t really speak about any real experiences with FEMA training yet, but I feel like unless there is a major shift I can speak at least about AmeriCorps a bit and what it is like life-style wise. It is certainly not as strict as the military or the police, but it is more restrictive than college. You will likely disagree with some of the restrictions in place and you may even feel like you are being treated like a child again in moments of frustration. The behavior of AmeriCorps NCCC staff is like halfway between camp counselor and motivational life coach if that makes sense at all. The atmosphere, despite the rules is very laid back at least in my opinion as long as those ground rules are followed and you are absolutely allowed to have your personality shine through. No, you do not have to be a robot your entire term.

 But you will have responsibilities, and with those responsibilities comes with you being held to a higher standard than just college or high school. In typical professional environments, the only person you can bring down is yourself or a small group of people. In FEMA Corps, you can bring down an entire team and the mission that the team is on by being a toxic influence over a long period of time. There have to be standards in place, because as was hammered into our heads during FEMA Basic today the #1 goal of FEMA is to reduce loss of life. It might not be direct all the time, but there’s a saying I often heard repeated in my old job that comes from the military that I believe applies to that indirect help concept that I am going to paraphrase: For every soldier on the front line, there are ten support staff making it possible for him to be out there and do his job to the best of his ability.

 At FEMA Corps, we are that support the vast majority of the time. We will not be doing glamorous work, you will not randomly save a famous celebrity’s cat from a burning house or something and go on the talk show circuit for your heroism. You are going to be doing important work, sure, and sometimes it will be boring or tedious. If you sign up for this program, you signed a contract to work your tail off for ten months in support of FEMA. Your main obstacle to that goal is keeping team dynamics up and learning to live with your teamliterally all the time. You have to understand that FEMA’s #1 goal of reducing loss of life is more important than your ego. In the immortal words of the great philosopher, Stone Cold Steve Austin, that’s the bottom line.

 [SA1]Wow, I did not know this. I was under the impression you could spend your personal stipend as you chose. Is this only associated with your team? If it is you may want to stress that as I know that is not the case for everyone. I know we encourage you to try and save some of your stipend but the choice is up to you.  

[technologicalsanbustech-blog]

Iphone x..

After months of hype, endless speculation, and a wave of last-minute rumors about production delays, the iPhone X is finally here. Apple says it’s a complete re imagining of what the iPhone should be, 10 years after the original revolutionized the world. That means some fundamental aspects of the iPhone are totally different here — most notably, the home button and fingerprint sensor are gone, replaced by a new system of navigation gestures and Apple’s new Face ID unlocking system. These are major changes.

New i Phones and major changes usually command a ton of hype, and Apple’s pushing the hype level around the iPhone X even higher than usual, especially given the new thousand-dollar starting price point. For the last few years, we've said some variation of "it's a new iPhone" when we’ve reviewed these devices. But Apple wants this to be the beginning of the next 10 years. It wants the iPhone 10 to be more than just the new iPhone. It wants it to be the beginning of a new generation of iPhone. That's a lot to live up to.

This review is going to be a little different, at least initially: Apple gave most reviewers less than 24 hours with the iPhone X before allowing us to talk about it. So consider this a working draft. These are my opening thoughts after a long, intense day of testing the phone, but I’ll be updating everything in a few days after we’re able to test performance and battery life, do an in-depth camera comparison, and generally live with the iPhone X in a more realistic way. Most importantly: please ask questions in the comments! I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can in the final, updated review.

But for now — here it goes.

Design

At a glance, the iPhone X looks so good one of our video editors kept saying it looked fake. It’s polished and tight and clean. My new favorite Apple thing is that the company managed to move all the regulatory text to software, leaving just the word “iPhone” on the back. The screen is bright and colorful and appears to be laminated tighter than previous iPhone's, so it looks like the pixels are right on top. Honestly, it does kind of look like a live 3D render instead of an actual working phone.

The iPhone X basically looks like a living 3D render

But it is a real phone, and it’s clear it was just as challenging to actually build as all the rumors suggested. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not flawless. There’s a tiny sharp ridge between the glass back and the chrome frame that I feel every time I pick up the phone. That chrome frame seems destined to get scratched and dinged, as every chrome Apple product tends to do. The camera bump on the back is huge; a larger housing than the iPhone 8 Plus fitted onto a much smaller body and designed to draw attention to itself, especially on my white review unit. There are definitely going to be people who think it’s ugly, but it’s growing on me.

There’s no headphone jack, which continues to suck on every phone that omits it, but that’s the price you pay for a bezel-less screen with a notch at the top. Around the sides, you’ll find the volume buttons, the mute switch, and the sleep / wake button. The removal of the home button means there are a few new button combinations to remember: pressing the top volume button and the sleep / wake button together takes a screenshot; holding the sleep button opens Siri; and you turn the phone off by holding either of the volume buttons and the sleep button for several seconds and then sliding to power down.

And, of course, there’s the notch in the display — what Apple calls the “sensor housing.” It’s ugly, but it tends to fade away after a while in portrait mode. It’s definitely intrusive in landscape, though. It makes landscape in general pretty messy. Less ignorable are the bezels around the sides and bottom of the screen, which are actually quite large. Getting rid of almost everything tends to draw attention to what remains, and what remains here is basically a thick black border all the way around the screen, with that notch set into the top.

I personally think the iPhone 4 is the most beautiful phone of all time, and I’d say the iPhone X is in third place in the iPhone rankings after that phone and the original model. It’s a huge step up from the surfboard design we’ve been living with since the iPhone 6, but it definitely lacks the character of Apple’s finest work. And… it has that notch.

Display

The iPhone X is Apple’s first phone to use an OLED display, after years of Apple LCD's setting the standard for the industry. OLED displays allow for thinner phones, but getting them to be accurate is a challenge: Samsung phones tend to be over saturated to the point of neon, Google’s Pixel 2 XL has a raft of issues with viewing angles and muted colors, and the new LG V30 has problems with uneven back-lighting.

Apple’s using a Samsung-manufactured OLED panel with a Pen-tile pixel layout on the iPhone X, but it’s insistent that it was custom-engineered and designed in-house. Whatever the case, the results are excellent: the iPhone X OLED is bright, sharp, vibrant without verging into parody, and generally a constant pleasure to look at. Apple’s True Tone system automatically adjusts color temperature to ambient light, photos are displayed in a wider color gamut, and there’s even Dolby Vision HDR support, so iTunes movies mastered in HDR play with higher brightness and dynamic range.

It’s just a terrific display

I did notice some slight color shifting off-axis, but never so much that it bothered me; I generally had to go looking for it. And compared to the iPhone 8 Plus LCD, it seems like a slightly cooler display over all, but only when I held the two side by side. Overall, it’s just a terrific display.

Unfortunately, the top of the display is marred by that notch, and until a lot of developers do a lot of work to design around it, it’s going to be hard to get the most out of this screen. I mean that literally: a lot of apps don’t use most of the screen right now.

Apps that haven’t been updated for the iPhone X run in what you might call “software bezel” mode: huge black borders at the top and bottom that basically mimic the iPhone 8. And a lot of apps aren’t updated yet: Google Maps and Calendar, Slack, the Delta app, Spotify, and more all run with software bezels. Games like CSR Racing and Sonic the Hedgehog looked particularly silly. It’s fine, but it’s ugly, especially since the home bar at the bottom of the screen glows white in this mode.

Some apps almost look right, but then you realize they’re actually just broken

Apps that haven’t been specifically updated for the iPhone X, but use Apple’s iOS autolayout system will fill the screen, but wacky things happen: Dark Sky blocks out half the status bar with a hardcoded black bar of its own, Uber puts your account icon over the battery indicator, and the settings in the Halide camera app get obscured by the notch and partially tucked into the display’s bunny ears. It almost looks right, but then you realize it’s actually just broken.

Apps that have been updated for the iPhone X all have different ways of dealing with the notch that sometimes lead to strange results, especially in apps that play video. Instagram Stories don’t fill the screen; they have large gray borders on the top and bottom. YouTube only has two full-screen zoom options, so playing the Last Jedi trailer resulted in either a small video window surrounded by letter- and pillar-boxing or a full-screen view with the notch obscuring the left side of the video. Netflix is slightly better, but you’re still stuck choosing between giant black borders around your video or the notch.

Landscape mode on the iPhone X is generally pretty messy: the notch goes from being a somewhat forgettable element in the top status bar to a giant interruption on the side of the screen, and I haven’t seen any apps really solve for it yet. And the home bar at the bottom of the screen often sits over the top of content, forever reminding you that you can swipe to go home and exit the chaos of landscape mode forever.

I’m sure all of this will get solved over time, but recent history suggests it might take longer than Apple or anyone would like; I still encounter apps that aren’t updated for the larger iPhone 6 screen sizes. 3D Touch has been around for years, but I can’t think of any app that makes particularly good use of it. Apple’s rolled out a lot of screen design changes over the years, and they take a while to settle in. We’ll just have to see how it goes with the iPhone X.

Cameras

I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the cameras on the iPhone X, but the short answer is that they look almost exactly like the cameras on the iPhone 8. Both the telephoto and wide angle lenses have optical image stabilization (compared to just the wide angle on the 8 Plus), and the TrueDepth system on the front means the front camera can take portrait mode selfies. It’s nice.

iPhone X rear camera (left) / Pixel 2 XL rear camera (right)

Of course, the main thing the front camera can do is take Animoji, which are Apple’s animated emoji characters. It’s basically built-in machinima, and probably the single best feature on the iPhone X. Most importantly, they just work, and they work incredibly well, tracking your eyes and expressions and capturing your voice in perfect sync with the animation. Apple’s rolled out a lot of weird additions to iMessage over the years, but Animoji feel much stickier than sending a note with lasers or adding stickers or whatever other gimmicks have been layered on. And while iMessage remains a golden palace of platform lock-in, Animoji are notably cross-platform: they work in iMessage, can be sent as videos over MMS, or exported as MOV files. Nice.

Face ID: it works, mostly

The single most important feature of the iPhone X is Face ID, the system that unlocks the phone by recognizing your face. Even that’s an understatement: the entire design and user experience of the iPhone X is built around Face ID. Face ID is what let Apple ditch the home button and Touch ID fingerprint sensor. The Face ID sensor system is housed in the notch. The Apple Pay user flow has been reworked around Face ID. Apple’s Animoji animated emoji work using the Face ID sensors.

If Face ID doesn’t work, the entire promise of the iPhone X falls apart.

The good news is that Face ID mostly works great. The bad news is that sometimes it doesn’t, and you will definitely have to adjust the way you think about using your phone to get it to a place where it mostly works great.

Face ID is cutting-edge tech, but the fundamental concept is pretty simple: it’s basically a tiny Xbox Kinect. An infrared projector flashes out thousands of tiny dots that cover your face, and the front camera clicks on, captures that image, and turns it into a depth map. That map — not an actual image of your face — is stored locally on the iPhone X’s Secure Enclave, which is the same place Apple stored Touch ID fingerprint data.

Setting up Face ID is ridiculously simple — much simpler than setting up Touch ID on previous iPhones. The phone displays a circular border around your face, and you simply move until a series of lines around that circle turn green. (Apple suggests you move your nose around in a circle, which is adorable.) Do that twice, and you’re done: Face ID will theoretically get better and better at recognizing you over time, and track slow changes like growing a beard so you don’t have to re-enroll. Drastic changes, like shaving that beard off, might require you to enter your passcode, however.

Face ID should also work through most sunglasses that pass infrared light, although some don’t. And you can definitely make it fail if you put on disguises, but I’d rather have it fail than let someone else through.

In my early tests, Face ID worked well indoors: sitting at my desk, standing in our video studio, and waiting in line to get coffee. You have to look at it head-on, though: if it’s sitting on your desk you have to pick up the phone and look at it, which is a little annoying if you’re used to just putting your finger on the Touch ID sensor to check a notification.

You also can’t be too casual about it: I had a lot of problems pulling the iPhone X out of my pocket and having it fail to unlock until Apple clarified that Face ID works best at a distance of 25 to 50 centimeters away from your face, or about 10 to 20 inches. That’s closer than I usually hold my phone when I pull it out of my pocket to check something, which means I had to actively think about holding the iPhone X closer to my face than every other phone I’ve ever used. “You’re holding it wrong” is a joke until it isn’t, and you can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong.

You can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong

That’s a small problem, though, and I think it’ll be easy to get used to. The other problem is actually much more interesting: almost all of the early questions about Face ID centered around how it would work in the dark, but it turns out that was exactly backwards. Face ID works great in the dark, because the IR projector is basically a flashlight, and flashlights are easy to see in the dark. But go outside in bright sunlight, which contains a lot of infrared light, or under crappy florescent lights, which interfere with IR, and Face ID starts to get a little inconsistent.

I took a walk outside our NYC office in bright sunlight, and Face ID definitely had issues recognizing my face consistently while I was moving until I went into shade or brought the phone much closer to my face than usual. I also went to the deli across the street, which has a wide variety of lights inside, including a bunch of overhead florescent strips, and Face ID also got significantly more inconsistent.

I’ve asked Apple about this, and I’ll update this review with their answers along with more detailed test results, but for now I’d say Face ID definitely works well enough to replace Touch ID, but not so well that you won’t run into the occasional need to try again.

Recent Apple products have tended to demand people adapt to them instead of being adapted to people, and it was hard not to think about that as I stood in the sunlight, waving a thousand-dollar phone ever closer to my face.

Software

There’s a lot of new hardware in the iPhone X, but it’s still running iOS 11 — albeit with some tweaks to navigation to accommodate the lack of a home button. You swipe up from the bottom to go home, swipe down from the right to bring up (down?) Control Center, and swipe down from the left to open the Notifications pane. That pane also has buttons for the flashlight and camera; in a twist, they require 3D Touch to work, so they feel like real buttons. It’s neat, but also breaks the 3D Touch paradigm. It’s the only place the entire system where 3D Touch acts like a left click instead of a right click. It’s emblematic of how generally fuzzy iOS has become with basic interface concepts, I think.

Switching apps is fun and simple: you can either swipe up and hold to bring up all your apps in a card-like deck, or just quickly swipe left and right on the home bar to bounce through them one at a time.

And… those are basically the changes to iOS 11 on the iPhone X, apart from the various notch-related kerfuffles. If you’ve been using iOS for a while and iOS 11 for the past month, nothing here will surprise you. Apple might have completely rethought how you unlock the iPhone X, but it’s still not giving up on that grid of app icons or making notifications more powerful or even allowing the weather app icon to display a live temperature. Siri is still Siri. If you’re buying an iPhone X expecting a radical change to your iPhone experience, well, you probably won’t get it. Unless you really hate unlocking your phone.

The iPhone X is clearly the best iPhone ever made. It’s thin, it’s powerful, it has ambitious ideas about what cameras on phones can be used for, and it pushes the design language of phones into a strange new place. It is a huge step forward in terms of phone hardware, and it has the notch to show for it. If you’re one of the many people who preordered this thing, I think you’ll be happy, although you’ll be going on the journey of figuring out when and how Face ID works best with everyone else.

It’s a new iPhone

But if you didn’t preorder, I suspect you might not feel that left out for a while. The iPhone X might be a huge step forward in terms of hardware, but it runs iOS 11 just the same as other recent iPhones, and you won’t really be missing out on anything except Animoji. Face ID seems like it’s off to a good start, but it’s definitely inconsistent in certain lighting conditions. And until your favorite apps are updated, you won’t be able to make use of that entire beautiful display.

All that adds up to the thing you already know: the iPhone X is a very expensive iPhone. For a lot of people, it’ll be worth it. For a lot of people, it’ll seem ridiculous. But fundamentally, it’s a new iPhone, and that means you probably already know if you want to spend a thousand dollars on one.

Because this review isn’t final, we’re not scoring the iPhone X yet. Leave your questions and comments below, and we’ll try to address as many of them in our final review as we can. We’ll add the score at that time as well.