#Sleep Middle East Expo

[as-enterprises]

We invite you to visit us and explore business opportunities, learn about our advanced machinery, and much more. We look forward to seeing you.

[greenbagjosh]

April 2002 weekend in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Hi everyone, bonjour a tout le monde!

I almost forgot to write about my first visit to Canada in April 2002.  I had been to Mexico a few times, but never Canada.  I found a good price for a round trip economy fare between San Francisco, Sea-Tac and Vancouver's YVR airport near Richmond, British Columbia.  

On Friday the 19th April 2002 about 3:10 PM, I took a line bus from my apartment to a bus stop near the Hillsdale Inn on Hillsdale Blvd and Saratoga Drive, and transferred to the KX bus, now the line 398 to SFO.  At the time, domestic United Airlines flights departed from Terminal 3.  I boarded my flight to Seattle about 5:00 PM.  The flight took off about 5:40 PM and arrived in Seattle about 8:10 PM at the "northern satellite".  I would have to transfer to a smaller plane, namely an Embraer E120 propellor plane.  Those were very small.  I took a 9:35 PM plane to Vancouver, the flight was just over an hour long.  I arrived about 10:45 PM at Vancouver, and it was not noticeable that the border had been crossed until the plane touched down.  About 10:55 PM I reached the gate, went through customs and picked up my black checked bag, as it would still be a few months until I would buy my first wheeled bag.  Canadian customs asked questions that seemed a bit unnecessary, but I did fine.  I was able to change money and buy a bus ticket for CA$ 2.00 to downtown Vancouver on the former B-99 line.  A transfer would be free.

The B-99 bus ran most of the length of BC route 99, from Richmond, BC, past Granville Island, to Davie Street.  From there I took a bus 6 to Thurlow Street and waked to Burnaby Street where the Youth Hostel was located.  I had booked a shared bedroom on the third floor.  I went to my room and went to sleep as I was very tired.

Saturday the 20th April 2002 I woke up and went downstairs to ask about a good restaurant nearby.  The front desk recommended Hamburger Mary's, which has since been renamed to Mary's on Davie, which was located on Davie and Bute Streets.  I walked to the restaurant, and it was in the middle of a very eclectic district.  The waiter greeted me and asked me if I wanted to eat inside or "oatside", when he meant outside.  I chose inside.  I had eggs with regular American bacon and a waffle with maple syrup.  

After breakfast I walked back to the hostel, and bought a bus pass for CA $8.00 for the day, and took the B-99 to Broadway in South Granville, then I transferred to the B-98 going to UBC, University of British Columbia through Greektown.  In particular, I wanted to see the Museum of Anthropology.  The museum had many totem poles that were so interesting.  Some had whales, bears, birds of prey, and many other animal forms.  I must have spent about an hour or so there.  Then I took the B-98 to Broadway, and the B-99 to the Granville Skytrain station.  At the time, Burrard and Granville stations as well as others, had free access as long as passengers had their tickets available.  In later years, fare gates were added.  Burrard and Granville station for the Expo and Millenium lines were one platform on top of the other.  Eastbound is below the Westbound platform.  The stations kind of look like those in Milan, Italy, particularly between Turati and Missori.  I took the westbound train to Waterfront.  Waterfront was in a kind of semi-open cut but you could find a place where the train would turn around to head east.  

Some of you may remember the building used for the 1986 Expo.  It is now called Canada Place.  At the time I was there, the building was not opened.  I could only admire the building and contemplate how it looks so much like the Sydney Symphony Hall and was built to resemble a cruise ship.  There was a ferry that went to North Vancouver, and the ferry price was included in the day pass that I had.  The ferry took about fifteen minutes to go from Canada Place to Lonsdale Quay.  Lonsdale Quay had some interesting shops, including a used CD store.  I remember buying a Glass Tiger and Genesis CD, both used, for a good price.  Later that evening I would buy a French-language CD by Céline Dion.

About an hour later, I took the ferry back to Canada Place, boarded the Skytrain eastbound to Braid.  At the time, Braid was the easternmost terminus, and there was no section to Renfrew yet.  I took the Skytrain back to Granville, I took a couple of busses to the Davie and Bute Street area.  I must have eaten a Donair, which is the Canadian equivalent of a Gyro.  Then I went to Cows Ice Cream down Davie Street, for some ice cream and souvenirs.  Although there are Cows ice cream locations in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and three other provinces across Canada, the Vancouver location has since closed, and the only one in British Columbia is in Whistler.  I am not sure why the Vancouver location closed down, but I saw signs that it was about to close for good.  So I am glad I went when I could.  Then I went back to the hostel and went to sleep.  I think it was around 10 PM.

Sunday 21st April 2002, I woke up about 8 AM and went downstairs to buy a bus ticket.  I went downtown to a Blenz coffee shop.  Blenz was at the time the Canadian answer to Starbuck's.  At the time of writing, there exist 59 locations, the majority of which are around Vancouver, some are in Nanaimo, Victoria, Whistler, and Kelowna.  I was unable to find any outside British Columbia, even in neighboring Alberta.

I went back to my room at the hostel, took a shower, packed up and took a bus to the airport.  The B-99 went down to Richmond and the airport.  I was able to check into my flight.  One peculiar thing about Vancouver airport, is that when you check in prior to security, you get your updated ticket, but the staff do not take your suitcase.  You have to put it in the security x-ray machine before passing through the United States customs.  There is a checked bag dropoff only after that.  Vancouver at the time was one of the few airports where United States Customs was located outside of the USA.  

Prior to boarding my flight to the USA, I went to the gift shop.  I had found some nice sockeye salmon and maple syrup.  The salmon was in a vacuum pack, and was perfectly acceptable to import to the USA.  I boarded my 1 PM plane to Seattle.  I would have a longer layover going back.  When the plane landed in Seattle, there was no passport inspection as that was already done in Vancouver.  I am not certain if that is what is done now, but my subsequent visit in April 2003, that was the official policy.

As I had landed in Seattle, and had a long layover until I was to return to San Francisco, I took a ride on the Satellite transport system.  It was fully underground, and operated similar to that of the Vancouver Skytrain.  The main terminal was much larger than the northern satellite.  I returned back as the flight to San Francisco would leave about 3:30 PM.  The flight lasted about two hours and I arrived about 5:30 PM.  I waited for my checked bag but it did not arrive.  I had to make a claim for United Airlines to check.  I took the KX bus back to San Mateo and a line 250 bus to Hillsdale and Norfolk, and walked the rest of the way.  It was okay because I only had my backpack with me.  I would likely have the black bag delivered the next day or so.

Monday 22nd April 2002, as expected, when I was home, United Airlines had delivered the black checked bag.  They also offered me a $250 discount on my next flight.  

So that was my weekend in Canada, which was my first visit.  I would visit Canada again in April 2003, but I would have a rental car.  My next flight would be with American Airlines from San Francisco to Chicago and farther on to Madrid and Sevilla, and back by Miami.  It would be my first visit to Spain since November 1978 so I missed the entire 1980s and 1990s of experiencing Spain.  Spain was not one of the countries that I frequently visited.  

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my personal account of twenty years since my first visit to Canada.  Until next time!  (25th May 2002)

[midrashic]

[headcanon] a map of hidden places i: new york city

{ a map of hidden places }

the first time james visits new york is more accident than anything; there’s a weapons expo and it’s january, and surely new york in january can’t be any more unpalatable than scotland in january. there are restaurants and boutiques whose names were, even then, synonymous with luxury, but james spends most of his time in the hotel room with the nanny playing with the puzzle ball he’d received that christmas. enid takes him to the natural history museum to see the mammoth bones, to central park to stare at the bare, shivering tree skeletons while he mounds old snow into various blobby shapes.

he doesn’t remember any of this; by the time he’s ten, new york is just a vague smear of concrete and solitude in his imagination, a glimpse of a faded marble facade that blends into all the other glimpses of all the other cities of everywhere else his father has ever had a conference.

for years, there’s the odd holiday abroad with his aunt, a trip with a school friend whose father owns a major hotel in the city or something. then there’s the navy. he learns new york in thirty-six hour stretches of shore leave, and he learns new york through the eyes of dozens of royal navy sailors, which mainly means that he learns very fast which bars near the harbor serve something roughly as strong as paint thinner for a measly two dollars per drink, or a dozen for a twenty.

but he learns other things, too. he saves up the days of walking on solid earth for the weeks when his feet won’t touch dry land and wanders into the neighborhoods that his well-to-do parents and guardians never let him anywhere near: bushwick, the lower east side, basically all of the bronx. new york city’s just hit its peak for violent crime, though someone only attempts to mug him once and gets a broken jaw for his trouble besides. the strangest thing for a brit is the gunshots that will ring out randomly, multiple times a night, but that’s true for every american city he’s ever visited.

he experiments with the subway. the tube in the 80s and 90s was no picnic, but hell, he learns, is a suspiciously empty new york subway car.

one strange thing: over the course of one particular weekend, he runs into a girl he slept with on shore leave in kingstown in a pizzeria named something uncreative like “48th street pizza,” an old university professor in a rare book store, a boy who was in the class above him at eton in bryant park, and then the girl again at a bar that night. (there is indeed a repeat performance.) this is a statistically accurate sampling of how often he recognizes a face from his past. back then, it was the third-largest city in the world, after tokyo and osaka, but it could sometimes feel very fatalistically small.

& then he’s in new york fairly often as a junior agent, but he doesn’t really tap the veins of the city until he’s a double-oh.

the thing about new york is that, for all that you tend to run into people you haven’t seen in years fairly frequently, it’s a great place to disappear. there’s no way to cover every possible exit when planning an ambush and a thousand laundromats, bars, and, hell, magic shops to duck into when you’re being tailed. vaguely seedy fleatraps that bill themselves as “youth hostels” where you can rent a room for four months and leave without anyone having asked you your name. the city seems to boast a disproportionate number of people sitting alone in the corners of coffeeshops, bars, hotel lobbies. it’s the first thing he thinks of when the name shows up in a mission briefing or news article: the pure relief of being quietly ignored, of being anyone, of being no one. he kills a drug kingpin and sips espresso at a café patio ten feet away as the police begin to boredly take statements. he garrotes a man in a bodega bathroom and no one notices for three days because it’s always out of order anyway. new york makes it so easy, so very easy to let a face become a file become a statistic. it has a carelessness with its people that he’s used to seeing in the third world, in places where the corruption is overt, in places that don’t even pretend to have a functioning police system. new york doesn’t care about you.

it also makes it so very easy to pick people up.

in a lot of ways, new york is a lot like london. it’s not every city in the world where you can get a sandwich at four am because the son of a bitch you were surveilling spent five hours haggling over uranium shipments with his contact, which was four hours and fifty minutes longer than he needed to spend. there’s a certain level of mercenary profit-seeking required to keep a sandwich shop open all night, damn circadian rhythms.

but new york takes it to excess. in london, you can probably find 24/7 takeaway within a reasonable walking distance, but in new york, you’re guaranteed to have at least five in the immediate neighborhood and eight more if you’re willing to go a little further for a substantial uptick in quality. during a particularly frustrating bit of downtime not longer after the quantum incident, bond strolls into a midnight karate class for no other reason than he’s bored and wants to see what kind of people can only do karate in the middle of the night. it’s a surprisingly friendly bunch, two night shift workers, a sleep-deprived college student, a jumpy little tweaker, and a single mother who decides to do this with her scant two hours of free time weekly. it’s taught by a petite woman who hits with the precision of an architect and used to practice jiu-jitsu competitively until a back strain caused her to switch to a sport with more standing and less rolling around on the ground.

he does try to sleep with her, but they actually end up sharing a platter of nachos in between (fittingly) manhattans at a bar and chatting about differences in karate conditioning techniques and shitty b-movies. the bartender joins in for the latter. he walks away that morning to another endless round of negotiation with the cia feeling strangely refreshed for a man who got no sleep and no sex.

bond ends up censoring his new york reports more than any other locale, not because missions go wrong in new york more often than anywhere else, but because they tend to go wrong in utterly baffling and sometimes embarrassing ways when he’s in new york. in the reports, he changes the timely plague mask-wearing flash mob that allowed him to escape his pursuer to a traffic jam, the girl wearing a dress made of lettuce that beat a terrorist into submission with her tomato purse into a well-placed police officer, the message he got painted on his nails in gold glitter to a simple note (it worked, the fsb searched him and found nothing and apparently manicured men in brioni are common enough in the city that no one even gave him a second look). new york is many things, but it spits on the dignity of the profession.

felix hates new york, hilariously. he calls it “the big asshole.” he hates the garbage sitting out on the streets, the way you can never tell whether a puddle is rain or urine, the flimsy little metrocards, the food deserts, the traffic, my god, the traffic. (bond has to agree: it’s bad. he once walked to laguardia instead of waiting for a taxi.) the only places he hates more than new york are minnesota and south sudan, which are the foreseeable consequences of a boy from texas spending his first winter away from home in the midwest and being a sane person with a functioning sense of smell. but for some reason, international criminals turn up in new york a lot more often than they do in ann arbor or south sudan, so felix has no choice but to spend sometimes weeks or months at a time in his third-least-favorite place in the world.

(bond knows why he really hates new york: in 2003 he was chasing a jewel smuggler and ran straight into a fruit cart. he was washing fruit juice out from behind his ears for a week and he lost the target. after that, anyone would hate this place.)

when bond is in midtown west, he makes a point of stopping by the trenta tre pizzeria, which boasts pizza that isn’t oily, isn’t too chewy or crisp, and boasts a sauce with a salty-to-sweet balance of flavors that make his eyes roll back in his head. he’s had the real deal, pizza lovingly crafted by hand, topped with buffalo mozzarella, and wood-fired in a tiny neapolitan back room. he knows better than to tell an italian--or anyone who he needs to think of him as a well-traveled sophisticate--but he prefers this.

coincidentally, the pizzeria is located next to a bodega that displays its fruit on wooden stands on the sidewalk. behind the peaches lives a cat, well-fed and sleek and a shameless thief of chicken parm pizza toppings. he doesn’t know her name--the owner is from rural ethiopia and doesn’t speak english, mandarin, arabic, french, german, spanish, russian, or any of the four other languages bond speaks--but in his head he’s named her selina after that greatest of feline burglars, catwoman. selina is good company after a violent mission, and almost never sheds on him, which is more than he can say about the other cats in his life. if he lingers after the pizza to pet her a little longer, no one needs to know.

the events, the new trends, the previews, the releases, blah blah blah. the access is touted more than it actually matters. he’s sure that- if he actually lived in new york he would appreciate the convenience of dwelling in the obligatory stop of every tour and the go-to place to drum up media attention. but he doesn’t and he has enough frequent flier miles that his grandchildren will probably be getting complimentary upgrades and if he really wants to be at the premiere of a much-hyped performance of la traviata he’ll make it there somehow. he does notice that the access has given new yorkers a strange sense entitlement--when a fashionable event happens someplace other than new york, the resentment is deeper, the sense of loss sharper--as if everything important should happen in new york. still. he brings home a tea flavored with the newly discovered ruby chocolate months before it becomes widely available as a souvenir for q. there are compensations. 

when q finally punches down his fear of air travel for long enough to make it to new york, bond keeps him out of manhattan. they drift around brooklyn and queens, wandering streets balanced on the knife edge of an existence that is almost suburban--dogs everywhere and strollers between the specialty shops and markets. they sit in a soda fountain famous for its egg creams and share a sundae named after elvis. q orders three different sodas--he’s a connoisseur of exotic beverages--and pronounces the house blend the best cherry soda he’s ever tasted. bond smiles at him around his ice cream float. the place is packed, every seat filled, but here, at a little round table tucked into the corner, he and q might as well be invisible, being aggressively ignored by everyone except the soda jerks. just two people, forcefully alone together. the last two people in the world.

[tearged]

Colombo Again

Actually came back to Colombo like a week a go. Only stayed in East for like 2 days before we had to come back to do some document stuff and others. We left some of our family members and came here.

On the way we saw Sigiriya. Didn't get to climb it but went pretty close Alhamdulillah. Then stopped over at Kurunagele to pray and eat. We thought for brief moment the highway was open but turns out it would open only after a week.

Also started feeling feverish on the way. When we finally got here and went to sleep, I started feeling cold during middle of the night. And pretty much soon after I had fever. I think it took about 4 days to get better Alhamdulillah. Pretty much rest of the family got sick soon after.

Also went to BMICH for a housing expo. Was pretty good.

But that's pretty much it so far.

[extra-fulgadrome]

MVP - a Snapshot of Hana Song

Hana’s grandmother, born Sagong Chŏng-sun, had been a child when the Japanese occupation of Korea ended. At the height of the occupying force’s cultural suppression, Chŏng-sun’s own grandmother had taught her young granddaughter traditional Korean games that would have otherwise been stamped out — games rooted in folklore, some even older than hangul. These were Hana’s precious heirlooms, and many were the days spent cooped up in her mother’s tiny apartment, playing yutnori and gonu with her grandmother while they waited for the rain to let up.

“Halmoni…” Hana had once whined, pushing herself away from the low table to lie back against the threadbare rug. “You never let me win.”

Her grandmother simply gazed down at her, eyes steely and unsympathetic, as she gathered up the spread of playing cards to shuffle.

“If you want to win, work for it, child.”

She wasn’t the sort of person who backed down from a challenge. Bolstered by those words instead of being discouraged, Hana started to match her grandmother’s skill in games with her own cunning, despite the gap in experience. She won perhaps one in every five games they played, and was always improving — and when she won, how her grandmother’s eyes would shine with pride, and the moment wasn’t even spoiled when the old woman would tease her (“Are you getting better or just more lucky, Rabbit?”).

Then, her grandmother’s health took a turn for the worse, and little by little the games they shared became increasingly seldom occurrences, until they stopped altogether.

It was hard going for a long while after Grandmother passed. When Hana looked at the chess set in their once-shared bedroom, the game half played, never to be finished… it was all too much.

Seeing Hana’s despondency, her mother, a serious woman who did not share her family’s great love of games, did an impulsive thing. One late evening, she detoured on her way home from her work and purchased an old Sega Dreamcast from the secondhand shop, along with a handful of scratched CD roms. It was an ugly plastic box, two console generations out of date. Hana had never been too interested in video games — it was one of a number of “boy things” that, like wrestling in the muddy yard and smuggling nude magazines into school, she wasn’t terribly curious about. When she connected it to the little television in the dining room, only half the games still ran. But the dull glow of the television, the bleep-bloops of music, and the click-clack of colorful buttons was engaging enough to occupy those quiet, lonely hours before her mother returned home every night.

Hana wasn’t sure what changed, or why, but at some point before graduating middle school and after she had completed all of her Dreamcast games several times (perfect save files all in a row, one-hundred-percent completion) she found herself standing outside of a gaming cafe. The cafe’s staff charged by the hour to use their high-end PCs, top of the line rigs which outpaced her school’s computers (and the brick of a laptop her mother sometimes brought home, which was little more than a spreadsheet machine) to an absurd degree.

With only vague ideas of what she was getting herself into, Hana sat herself in a plush chair and pulled herself towards the computer, drawing a few curious looks from the largely male customers — curious, but not unkind as she had feared. With bright eyes and a heart full of hope, Hana logged on for the first time.

The subsequent year passed by in a blur, studies falling to the wayside even as she entered high school.

Warcraft. League. Counterstrike. Age of Empires.

A crowd at her back, cheering her on, as she no-scope headshots a platinum-level player from halfway across the map, again.

MMORPG. MOBA. FPS. RTS.

Her mother, face pulled into a frown, asking her why her grades have been dropping, asking where Hana went after school.

Casual. Noob. Hobbyist. Veteran.

When did the games become more than just a distraction, Hana wondered, idly purchasing herself a Starcraft subscription.

Winning got me this far, as she signed on to her first esports sponsorship. How much father can I go?

Then, later, when the MEKA recruiters come, was it in my blood all along?

Life was a challenge, but not one she couldn’t overcome. The training was tough and the hours were long, but it was just as fun as it was exhausting, and she always performed best under pressure.

Hana Song was a excellent gamer and entertainer, well-loved by her fan-base, but D.Va was transcendent. Rising star, liberator, celebrity, soldier. An idol, a warrior. The face of MEKA’s elite pilots, “D.Va” was a household name the world over, proudly and decisively combating the Omnic crisis. All of this came with perks — her mother would never have to work again, and what little time D.Va spent off of the training grounds or the battlefield passed in luxury.

And that was all well and good, but she’d be lying if she claimed any of that was the reason why she devoted herself to the Korean army’s Mobile Exo-Force.

Was it any real surprise that war was the greatest game mankind had ever produced?

Was it shocking, given that it was the favored subject matter of countless movies, novels, video games, children at play, and great works of art? Humans invented war before they’d made the wheel. D.Va turned war into the casual online entertainment of record numbers of steam watchers the world over. The world continued to spin.

There was some controversy at first, the rumblings of malcontent parents worried that their children would be desensitized to violence, but, well. It wasn’t as if she was fighting actual people, was she? Her heart went out to the sane Omnics in the world, the ones who hadn’t rebelled against their programming and spewed out appliances of death and destruction, but the thing that had risen out of the east Chinese sea and threatened to sink the Korean peninsula wasn’t exactly a cute little roomba.

Meeting the Bastion unit that old man Torbjörn dug out of Sweden had made her reconsider her position on Omnics, just slightly.

It had been during a photo-shoot they had met, a joint operation between the South Korean and the United States militarys — the kind of event that the Americans called “cross-promotion” when what they meant was “propaganda.” D.Va’s inclusion was almost an afterthought, pitched by MEKA for her brand’s popularity and to widen the expo’s audience appeal. For the most part, all she had to do was shake hands with shoddy old bureaucratic men and pose with her mech. After a few hours with the photographer the organizers ran out of things for her to do, and she was shuffled off into the gardens outside the building to sip non-alcoholic sparkling cider and be bored as hell while the “adults” talked business.

Then, from a behind a shrub, beeping. “Bwee, bwoo bwoorbweebweep booo…”

D.Va abandoned her empty plastic champagne flute to investigate, because beeping bushes were the most interesting thing that had happened in hours.

She followed the noise to its source, a pristine Bastion unit that she would have balked at the sight of and sounded the alarm… if it hadn’t been very carefully unshelling a bag of vending machine peanuts with its huge robot hands, and feeding them to a family of ravenous squirrels. D.Va vaguely recalled the news that they’d reclaimed a Bastion unit over in Europe, but she’d thought it would be under lock and key in some remote facility, not hanging out in a government park, making nice with the local wildlife.

“Bweep bweep,” the thing chimed, shifting its… optic?… over in her direction. Spotted.

D.Va took a step back, and snapped a twig beneath her heel, sending the rodents scattering. The machine beeped sadly at their departure, and five minutes later, despite herself, D.Va found herself keeping the Omnic company, sitting on its back as it rolled around the park in tank form.

It… Bastion unit E54, was a good listener, she’d give the robot that much. She spilled her guts to the machine about her frustrations and anxiety, and Bastion always replied with the appropriate emotion (if you could call it that) in its signature style. Sad bwoops for D.Va’s worries, curious bweeps when she talked about gaming, happy bwops and beeps when she talked about how proud she was of her progress.

A photo of D.Va in an elegant gown, riding on top of a Bastion unit as it plucked a flower and offered it to her, made its way on to Omnic rights webpages as a sign of peaceful progress between the races of man and machine… then was picked up a few days later by the mainstream media, who smeared her with rumor-mongering headlines like “KOREAN MECH PILOT, LYING DOWN WITH THE MACHINE?” and “SO-CALLED HEROINE OPENLY EMBRACES ENEMY”. It was a short-lived scandal, but those tense few days where MEKA threatened to pull D.Va from the spotlight made her sick with stress until the PR department managed to spin the story in a positive light.

Her fans (with a few crybaby outliers screaming about betrayal, but screw those guys, really) just thought it was a cute photo. Her Japanese audience especially appreciated its “moe factor” and spammed her with fan art.

D.Va was just glad that the experience, which she would remember fondly as the most open she had been since her grandmother had died, had not been entirely tainted by the unexpected aftermath.

From that point onward, however, MEKA was much more careful about where D.Va was allowed to go. Her life became nothing but endless training, drilling, and fighting. If she had thought her schedule had been strict before, the D.Va of a few months ago wouldn’t have been able to imagine what it was like to only be allowed nine hours to herself a day — eight for sleep, one for meals. Perhaps it was MEKA’s way of punishing her, or perhaps they feared an increase in the Omnic’s ferocity after the recent assassination of Tekhartha Mondatta, leader of the Omnic spiritual movement, the Shambali. Either way, with no time to spend on her usual hobby, the most she got in the way of stress relief was reading the travel blog of Mei-Ling Zhou (and a mobile version of  mahjong she played for a little before bed each night, but that was more so her brain didn’t get cobwebs).

Mei was a figure of fascination to D.Va — sleeping in the cold for nine years, only to emerge into a tumultuous world where her organization had been disgraced and disbanded. Having to escape from the arctic tundra with nothing but her wits… then going on to continue the work right where she and her fallen comrades had left off. Saving the world! ...from an ecological crisis, sure, which wasn’t exactly as cool as an evil empire bent on conquest or a dark god from beyond the stars or a demon army, but Mei very much had the indomitable spirit of her favorite video game heroes.  

So when she heard Mei was coming to South Korea to set up a weather data collection device at one of their military bases, D.Va asked — not begged, or pleaded, but seriously and maturely requested for her CO to grant D.Va the honor of acting as an ambassador during Mei’s visit.

Sooner or later the higher-ups at MEKA had to stop treating her like a child. She was fighting their war, they came to her for aid.

They tentatively agreed, provided D.Va remain on her best behavior leading up to the visit. It was like dealing with her mother all over again, and left a sour taste in her mouth as she exited the administration building.

At least the excitement made the coming weeks bearable.

Finally, the day came. D.Va stood tall, dressed in a pristine MEKA uniform, her arms crossed confidently over her chest and her stance wide and strong, as the transport shuttle reached the helipad and touched down. Her first thought, as the scientist clambered out of the craft somewhat unsteadily, was that Mei-Ling Zhou looked different when she wasn’t bundled up in that heavy fur coat.

A moment later second thought was she’s so cute! Round face! Big dewy eyes! And she was so short D.Va could reach down and scoop her right up! The MEKA pilot approached the older woman, smiling brightly.

“Zhou-Seonbae! Welcome to sunny South Korea,” D.Va said, bidding Mei peace with a gesture — or, as D.Va preferred, V for Victory.

“Hello Miss Song,” the woman said, in mildly accented hangul. Then, switching to english, “Just call me Mei, if you don’t mind!”

“Only if you call me D.Va!” she chirped, and Mei smiled back at her as she hefted a large metal case out of the cabin. She was strong for such a little woman.

They thanked the shuttle pilot, and D.Va escorted Mei to a waiting car and their security escort. The ride over to the cellphone tower where Mei would be installing her probe was only twenty minutes travel the base’s airport, but the short journey was full of happy chatter. D.Va confided that Mei’s travel journal was a source of great personal inspiration to her, and the older woman introduced her to Snowball, Mei’s cute little drone.

“Snowball… that’s nun mungchi, in hangul.”

“Nun mungzhe…?” Mei said, consideringly, patting the little bot on its round head. Snowball’s blue LED eyes swiveled around to look at her. Adorable.

“Nun mungchi.” D.Va held up a finger, her face serious. The spitting image of a patient, if strict, teacher.

“Nun mungchi.” Mei repeated earnestly.

“You’ve got it!” D.Va said, delighted. Mei put her hand on her chest and beamed, as if receiving a great honor.

“Niiirn miiirrchiii,” Snowball whirred cheerfully, bopping the car’s roof in its excitement before careening back down to the seat below, blue eyes spinning cartoonishly.

They were still laughing when their car pulled up to the tower.

At the end of Mei’s stay, the two women parted with great reluctance, both promising to stay in touch. D.Va couldn’t have been happier to count Mei among her friends, and refreshed from the time she had spent getting to know her hero, plunged back into her training with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

Just in time, too, as MEKA mobilized in response to one of the worst Omnic raids yet, spearing farther inland than even the most pessimistic estimate predicted. The enemy forces had quickly spilled over into unevacuated civilian territory and time was of the essence. They deployed at four in the morning to hold down the line in Daegu while the infantry set up a defensive perimeter. Her orders were to cut the enemy off from encroaching further, to minimize damage whenever possible, and to defend fleeing civilians.

As D.Va touched down in Daegu and began to repel the machine invaders, she saw there weren’t many people left to defend.

This battle, she thought grimly, as she gunned down a line of drones as they swept through an abandoned playground, is not exactly livestream material.

Hemmed in on all sides, D.Va made a tactical retreat and found a vantage point from which to target her foes at more of a distance — everyone knew the high ground was most advantageous. Her fusion cannons were essentially buffed shotguns, the wide spread of buckshot not meant for precision shooting, but she would manage. The targeting system of her mech got a real workout as she sniped stragglers from the Omnic’s main forces (“Boom, headshot!”), eventually drawing their attention all over again.  Nowhere to go, she switched mental tracks to tower defense game and activated her mech’s defense matrix, unleashing a strategic barrage of missiles. Soon, the twisted bodies of the Omnic assault forces lay strewn around the pitted street, their zerg rush at a merciful end — for now.

“...multikill,” she panted, the fusion cannons mounted in her mech’s arms smoking, the barrels white-hot. Any more and the metal would warp — not that it mattered much now, seeing that she was down to less than three-fourths of her ammo capacity. A bead of sweat dripped down her face. If she were being honest, that had been... a real pinch.

Time to restock.

“Need a supply drop,” she said into the comms, waiting for confirmation from command. A minute passed in worrying silence.

“This is D.Va, requesting a resupply drone. Please acknowledge, over.”

There was no response. She switched to the encrypted channels, trying again to reach command to no avail, before attempting to contact the various squad captains.

Nothing.

“Is it broken…? Well, that’s just my luck!”

Even in the privacy of her thoughts, she refused to acknowledge the bleak alternative.

A plan started to come together. Under the circumstances, D.Va would have to make her way over to the supply depot on foot... so to speak. She boosted into the air, intending to take the rooftop route, collateral damage be damned. It was just a few short miles to the north, along the perimeter.

An unexpected burst of fire caught her mech across its visor, the heavy steel slug sending a long hairline fracture through the supposedly bulletproof polymer. She wheeled around to face the source, spotting an airborne Omnic with a mounted railgun of all things. She strafed left, aiming carefully for the machine’s rotors, but it simply tilted away, her barrage deflected harmlessly by its armored shell.

...OP, plz nerf.

Not missing a beat, she fired her last missile at the hovering Omnic, but the distance was too great — it simply swiveled its body 360 degrees clockwise on an axis, the missile sailing harmlessly through the spot its bulk had been occupying a nanosecond previously. Just as she began contemplating activating her mech’s self destruct sequence and booking it, the readout on her HUD indicated a swarm of enemies was approaching from the southwest. Fast.

“Ah, shi-bal…”

No choice now, she would have to make a break for it—

“I’ve got you all in my sights.”

A splash of light in the alleyway where the Omnic hoard was approaching, and one by one the enemy’s icons flickered out, leaving just two — the flying railgun in enemy-red, and the unknown combatant in grey, who was approaching her position now. Were they friend or foe?

As the grey icon came nearer, one thing was clear: they were about to walk right into that railgun’s line of sight, and it was almost done charging a second shot.

Time to be a goddamn hero.

“STAY BACK,” she shouted, the mech magnifying her voice, as she grabbed her light gun from its holster and activated the self-destruct subroutine. The mech launched forward and she launched back, and she was briefly airborne before landing on her heels, digging into the asphalt even as she tried to gain some distance. The timing was crucial, and she knew it by heart, but this was cutting it a little close—

The fusion reactor detonated, shattering a block’s worth of glass and decimating the aerial Omnic.

Well, if anyone asked, she’d just say an Omnic did it.

D.Va, upright and unharmed, popped her gum and turned to face the stranger, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She narrowed her eyes.

“I know you,” she said in english. “The American vigilante… Soldier: 76. Is that right?”

His weapon, which had been raised in alarm towards the explosion, slowly lowered as he took her in. She kept her grip on her light gun tight, but let her arm hang at her side. This guy could be dangerous, could be an ally. She would have to play this by ear.

The masked man grunted by way of greeting, then relaxed his stance. That was no way to react to a warrior of her caliber, but if he wasn’t going to take her seriously as a potential combatant, she would happily take advantage of his oversight. Moreover, now that D.Va could get a good look at him, he seemed injured. There was no visible blood, but he was favoring his left leg… a sprain or break, perhaps.

“You’re that… actress.” Tch.

“I’m a proud soldier of the Mobile Exo-Force of the Korean Army, and you are wanted by the UN for questioning.” He ought to know his place, this old man.

“You, a soldier?” He shook his head, and without the benefit of seeing his expression, it was difficult to tell if it was in disbelief... or amusement. “Your country drafts middle schoolers, now?”

“I am a mech pilot with hundreds of confirmed kills, and unless you can withstand a direct hit from a weapon that damaged tech developed on a multi-million dollar budget, I also just saved your life.”

Perhaps he was shocked into submission, or perhaps he was grateful but too proud to admit it, but regardless, the old man had nothing to say to that. Cool and professional despite her distaste, she approached him from his injured side and offered him her shoulder. Grumbling, he slung his gun around his back and wordlessly accepted her aid, leaning on her as she supported him. Soldier: 76 was heavy, but D.Va didn’t just train in mech piloting. No, she was also quite talented on the track, in the obstacle course, and (naturally), on the range. With her free hand, she twirled her gun.

“You’re a decent shot, right, 76? Try to keep up. It’s a long walk to the perimeter.”

“Hmph. We’ll see who slows down who.”

The destruction of Daegu was a huge blow to the people of South Korea, who had grown comfortable and confidant after MEKA began its initiative to outfit its mechs with pilots and repel the Omnic invasion. Morale was especially low in MEKA’s headquarters, the mood desperate and mournful since the confusion caused by the communications blackout (which resulted from an Omnic hack) had seen many young pilots killed. The populace’s faith in MEKA was shaken, just as those pilots who had managed to survive the disaster where shaken by the loss of their comrades in arms.

It wasn’t the first time they had taken casualties, but never before have they been so numerous.

D.Va felt a wave of pity and understanding for the dissolution of Overwatch, an event of which Soldier: 76 had spoken to her about, just a little, as they fought and fled their way through the streets of Daegu. It had been what little information she managed to get out of him, between his long bouts of gruff silence, occasional condescending remarks, and even rarer praise.

For her part, D.Va was keeping busy with disaster relief. She, along with a bulk of the MEKA recruits, had volunteered their time to the recovery efforts. Command had cleared them for this duty almost almost as soon as they put the request in, probably just because it was a good idea to stay visible to help PR, but who knows? Maybe they thought it would lift their spirits.

As much as D.Va believed this was valuable work, however, it just depressed her. The sooner she was allowed to fight again, the happier she would be. No matter what that Grandpa: 76 said, she knew her place was on the battlefield.

For now, at least, she could occupy her time constructively. It was better than sitting back at base, doing nothing. Yesterday she had cleared a street of rubble, today she assisted the paramedics with search and rescue. Tomorrow she might help with handing out supplies...

Her mech beeped twice, and a bell icon appeared at the bottom of her HUD. A call, nonurgent.

She pressed the receive button, accepting it immediately.

“D.Va,” she identified.

“It’s Maeng,” came the familiar voice of her fellow recruit. “We’ve got a VIP waiting in the market district. You mind playing babysitter until we can get a security detail on him? My shift is just about over and I wanted to grab a bite before I get some shuteye.”

“Yes, yes,” she replied, as he pinged her the VIP’s location on her minimap. “You can always  count on me to make a good impression!”

Her usual cheer wasn’t quite there, but Maeng still thanked her before he exited the call. He was a sweet kid, and it was heartbreaking the way he hadn’t been sleeping since the incident. It was the least she could do.

D.Va headed over, detouring briefly to assist with an electrical fire that had broken out, before arriving at the designated area. Exiting her mech, she checked her hair in the glossy reflection of its visor, winking at the cute girl mirrored back at her.

“Oh my gosh,” went a warm voice behind her, from inside a large emergency tent, “I mean, I knew you were from here, but I never thought… well…”

That voice was… familiar.

The man stepped into the light, and D.Va’s eye widened. The Brazilian DJ smiled sheepishly, scratching the back of his head as he walked… no,  skated forward.

“It’s so cool to meet you. Wish it was under better circumstances, but I’m a big fan, D.Va!”

“You’re Lúcio! The Lúcio,” she exclaimed, a disbelieving smile pulling at her lips. That Maeng could’ve at least warned her…!

Lúcio blinked at her, then grinned goofily. D.Va trotted forward giddily, and the two shook hands enthusiastically.

“Haha, you’ve heard of me? Man, that’s wild. People know me even in Korea, huh. Makes me feel even better about doing this charity concert, if people won’t be wondering ‘who’s this guy?’ the whole time, you know?”

“Of course we know you! Synaesthesia Auditiva has topped the music charts here for months and months now! A lot of us followed you even before that, on the internet.”

“I’d been told global reception was pretty good, but you know, there’s a big difference between being told and seeing it for yourself, I guess! I probably don’t even have to say this, but you’re really big in Brazil. The kids call you Coelhinho, and I’ve even seen people with tattoos of your logo, believe it or not.”

“Oh, I believe it,” D.Va said confidently, putting her hands on her hips. Lúcio laughed good-naturedly, doubling over and shaking his head so all his funny dreadlocks waved around. When he rose, D.Va couldn’t help but think that he was awfully tall. She stood up straighter, feeling her face light up just a little bit.

“So you’re doing a free concert?” she asked, leading them back to the seating in the tent. Folding chairs. Not the most comfortable or appropriate thing for a pair of international celebrities, but that was life.

“Yeah. I’ve done this a couple of times before, like during that hurricane that wrecked Georgia and Florida, or when that bad earthquake hit Italy. Trying to use the power of music to lift spirits, you feel me? First time I’ve ever had a concert in Asia, though.”

“I’m sure the people here will be happy to have you play for them,” D.Va said. She meant it, too.

“I’ve got a fundraiser going online right now, too, and it’s going pretty good. Hopefully I’ll be able to give a little more than good vibrations,” Lúcio said, smiling conspiratorially. “I’d give you a sneak peak at the set I cooked up, but I can’t even get ready until the power in this area comes back, and the last guy told me it might be a while.”

“...probably a few hours, at least,” she admitted.

The conversation lulled into a slightly awkward pause, as they both smiled and tried not to look at each other. D.Va didn’t understand why she was being so silly about this — she had met scores of K-Pop artists and famous actors, so she shouldn’t be feeling this flustered. She stared at the dusty ground, and traced a line in the dirt with her foot. It gave her an idea.

Finally, she broke the silence.

“Lúcio, have you ever played gonu?”

“Nope,” he replied, flashing a winning smile. D.Va liked that smile. She liked it a lot.

“It’s a traditional Korean game — a little bit  like tic-tac-toe. Here, let me show you…”

Happy Birthday, @cervamater. Keep on shining, starlight.

[bloodontheclocktower]

UKGE, USA, and Stats Stats Stats!

Hello! Evin here again with another update for where we're at with Blood on the Clocktower. Given that a huge part of this year for us is about getting out to heaps of conventions and different cities and sharing the game with as many people as possible, much of this post is about where we've been and where we'll be.

But, there is a tidbit at the end about where we're at with that statistics we've been recording on each game we play.

PAX East and USA Wrap-Up

Steven and Eden, Blood on the Clocktower's creator and our Management Minion, both returned from PAX East and the United States just full of awesome vibes. Eden got back here first and by far my favorite story from her was a tale of something that has never happened in a game of Clocktower before: A new player sat down and PAX East and, completely without prompting, began to intensely roleplay her character (the Virgin).

Just to be clear: Blood on the Clocktower is not an RPG.

Eden was running the game and called for 'Eyes open' on the first day, and this woman launched into “I awake yawning from my slumber in my comfortable bed, the sun streams in through my windows...”, and she committed to this so hard that all the other players started role-playing their characters – and their bluffs – as well. Completely unnecessary but kind of fantastic.

After PAX East in Boston, Steven went on to run games in (and have a rad time in) New York and San Francisco. My favorite story from him was that when he was running games at MIT, someone leapt up from their chair after receiving the Chef's information (who learns how pairs of evil players are neighboring each other) to calculate on a white board the statistical probability of the minion sitting next to the demon.

The MIT games group loved Clocktower so much we left a copy of the game with them and they're running a bunch of games now. Plus, there were heaps of people Steven and Eden met at PAX East who were keen to run games in Boston, so if you're in Boston keep your eyes peeled on social media or MeetUp for details of more games soon.

That, and he enjoyed Sleep No More in New York as much as I did. That show is rad. Seriously check that out.

More expo updates and cool game statistics under the cut!

UK Games Expo and Summer in the U.S.

No sooner than Steven and Eden are back from the U.S., I'm going over. In two weeks I'll head out of Sydney for three months to hit a bunch more conventions to demo Blood on the Clocktower and run games in even more cities.

First up, I'll be making a brief detour through England to demonstrate Blood on the Clocktower (with some assistance from our friend Sarah) at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham from June 1-3. We'll be at stand 2-B19 in Hall 2 for anyone who wants to come and play. See us and some of the other great games that will be at UKGE on @Slickerdrips' preview list.

I'll be in New York City from June 4-11 and will run a few games while I'm there (if I'm not at Sleep No More every night), then it's off to Columbus, Ohio where I'll be living for the summer.

I wanted to show a picture of Columbus, but wanted it to be in theme with the game, so I Googled ‘Columbus Ohio Gothic’ and voila. It’s in the Short North Arts District.

Here are some of the highlights of where I'll be then, and where you can play Blood on the Clocktower:

Origins Games Fair runs in Columbus from June 13-17. I'll aim to run a game or two during that week, and we'll be featured in the BoardGameGeek Origins Livestream on Wednesday June 13 at 2:40pm!

I'm looking to be in Toronto, Canada, and run a game there over the July 20-22 weekend.

I'll be demonstrating at GenCon in Indianapolis with my friend David from August 2-5. We'll be running as many games as humanly possible so come and get stuck in.

Some time over the summer – possibly in August but possibly another time – I'm getting down to Nashville to run games at the Meeple Mountain Nashville Game Night. I'm particularly looking forward to that trip because man have I heard some great things about Nashville.

August 31 to September 3 will see me in Seattle, Washington, running games at PAX West before heading back to Sydney (possibly via New Zealand – so shout out to us if you're in New Zealand and I can try and run a game for you there).

Oh, and, just a little further on PAX – We plan to be at every PAX for the rest of the year. PAX West, PAX Australia, and PAX Unplugged. We are all about PAX. PAX is awesome. Hey come to PAX, it's awesome.

FREAKING STATS! (We Love Stats)

About a year ago we made the decision to start recording statistics on the games of Clocktower we played. There have been well over a thousand games played at this point and we had a good feeling that the game was balanced at a 50/50 win rate for Good and Evil, but we wanted to be certain. Plus there are other things we wanted to be able to figure out – such win rates for individual characters, which character the Drunk thinks they are in each game, etc.

For each game we record when it was played, the team that won, how they won (in case of a character-based victory condition such as the Mayor or the Saint), the number of players in the game, what characters were in it (including Fabled and Travelers), and a few specific things like the identity of the Drunk and the character the Philosopher chooses to turn into. As the game’s getting more known and more popular we are developing a pretty massive data set.

After a year of recording stats we've logged over 350 plays of the first three editions – Trouble Brewing (266), Sects & Violets (60), and Bad Moon Rising (31). Trouble Brewing has logged so many more plays because it's the simplest version and the one we put new players through when demonstrating the game.

Happily, our suspicions have so far been thoroughly confirmed: The win rate between Good and Evil within each edition, and overall, is very close to 50%.

Trouble Brewing – 132 Good wins and 134 Evil wins:

Sects & Violets – 31 Good wins and 29 Evil wins:

Bad Moon Rising – 15 Good wins and 16 Evil Wins:

This means that when you pull your token out of the bag at the start of the game, whether it's red or blue, you have as much chance of winning as anyone else there.

See you in the U.S.

If you're at any of the conventions or any of the cities I mentioned over the summer, please come say hi to me and play a game. I’m very friendly and keen to meet people.

There'll be plenty of action in Australia over the middle of the year too – more details will be in a future post and on our Where to Play page.

Until next time,

Evin Donohoe Social Minion for Blood on the Clocktower

[orbemnews]

With hair loss on the rise, Asia's men grapple with what it means to be bald Written by Oscar Holland, CNNHong Kong Despite his father having an “m-shaped” hairline, Alex Han from northeast China never thought he’d experience hair loss in his 20s. While studies have suggested almost all Caucasian men will eventually face some degree of male pattern baldness — and around half can expect to lose their hair by middle age — Asian men, and East Asians in particular, have historically experienced the lowest incidence of hair loss in the world. A 2010 study from six Chinese cities found that fewer than 3% of men aged 18-29, and just over 13% of those in their 30s, experienced male pattern baldness. Earlier research from South Korea suggested that only 14.1% of the entire male population was affected, while Japanese men were found to develop male pattern baldness approximately a decade later than their European counterparts. But as Han, now 34, later discovered, genetics isn’t everything. Stress, poor diet, lack of sleep and smoking can all contribute to hair loss. And with lifestyles in China changing dramatically in recent decades, so too are the country’s hairlines. “I was prepping my masters entrance examinations and there was a lot of pressure, so I probably didn’t sleep very well,” Han said in a phone interview. “At that time, (my receding hairline) was under control, but after three years in Beijing getting my masters, I moved to Germany for PHD study … and not only me, but other Asian students there, had a problem with hair loss.” Commuters crowd the subway in Beijing in July 2008. China has traditionally had some of the world’s lowest rates of baldness, though changes to people’s lifestyles are contributing to an increase in hair loss. Credit: Guang Niu/Getty Images It’s an issue faced by many in Han’s generation, and younger. A 50,000-person survey by the China Association of Health Promotion and Education reportedly found that the country’s 30-somethings were going bald faster than any other group. Almost a third of respondents who were born in or after 1990 reported thinning hair, according to Chinese state media. A similar poll by Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University reportedly found that an astonishing 60% of students had experienced some degree of hair loss. Chinese state broadcaster CGTN went so far as to describe hair loss among the young as an “epidemic.” But lifestyle changes have been accompanied by transformations in both technology and disposable income. Hair transplants are a viable solution for a growing number of men, and the Chinese market for the procedure is expected to hit 20.8 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) in 2020, more than four times what it was four years ago, according to market research firm Statistica. Han opted to travel to Thailand for the transplant, which sees thousands of hair follicles grafted from other parts of the body — such as the chest, or back of the neck — onto the head. The eight- to 10-hour procedure cost him around $9,000, though he found clinics in China quoting “a sixth of that.” The transplant may take months to take effect, though Han expressed hope that he will “see the results and see my hair return to normal in the next two or three months,” adding, “then I’ll behave as if nothing has happened.” Navigating stigmas Han’s fears mirror those experienced by men with receding hairlines around the world, namely the impact on his confidence, professional prospects and first impressions. “Hairstyles, for me, are critically important for men’s first impressions,” he said. But losing your hair may be especially difficult in countries where it’s less common. The male beauty standards in East Asian popular culture — from Korean K-pop to Hong Kong’s movie industry — often favor big hair and boyish looks. “In Asian cultures the younger generation really like idols like (Chinese pop band) TFBoys,” Han said, adding that standards for white or black men are often different. For 37-year-old David Ko, a Seoul-based reporter who has previously written about his experience of hair loss, the lack of visibility of hairless men in South Korea “certainly plays a role in people feeling uncomfortable about going bald.” “Whenever there is a precedent, people tend to feel (more confident) to follow,” he said in an email interview. A man looks at a robotic hair transplant machine at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai in 2019. Credit: China News Service/Visual China Group/Getty Images A Korean study in the International Journal of Dermatology found that balding men were considered older and less attractive by 90% of non-bald respondents. In 2018, National Human Rights Commission of Korea had to urge employers not to discriminate against hairless men, after a building management company was accused of asking a job applicant to wear a wig during his interview and rejecting him on account of his bald head, according to the Yonhap News Agency. (The unnamed company denied doing so). Studies in the West — while not always positive about how baldness is perceived by others — suggest that the stigma may be lessened in countries where hair loss is more common. Research from the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, found that men were perceived as “more dominant, taller and stronger” when participants were shown their photos with the hair digitally removed. Chinese American entrepreneur Saul Trejo, who has lived in various cities around Asia since 2011, began losing his hair while studying in Beijing. The 30-year-old said he “definitely noticed” the lower proportion of bald men in the city, compared to the US, and “it probably bothered me, but I tried to not let it.” He also found that people were more comfortable than those in the West to pass comment — even if in an entirely observational way. “People will tell you straight out,” he said in a phone interview from Taipei, recounting instances when his loss of hair was casually pointed out to him. “Normally when they’re saying it they’re not trying to be mean, they’re just commenting, so I can’t be mad. But you remember. “I tried to shave my head, but I didn’t think it was suitable for my head and body shape,” he added, naming Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and actor Jason Statham as non-Asians who can pull off the look. “I think Asian people, including myself, tend to be a little slimmer, so if I had to choose between bald and slim versus bald and athletic, or even muscular, then I think it looks better with the more size you have.” In 2018, Trejo underwent a hair transplant in Bangkok, where he was based at the time. While it took almost a year to see the final results, Trejo said his new hairline is “a major blessing,” that “massively improved my dating life.” Before-and-after images shared with CNN show a remarkable amount of hair restoration at the top and sides of his head. Chinese American Saul Trejo, pictured before and after undergoing a hair transplant in Thailand. Credit: Saul Trejo The doctor behind Trejo’s procedure, Damkerng Pathomvanich, is a leading researcher into hair loss. He said that the number of hair transplant clinics in Asia is “skyrocketing,” and that business among Chinese patients at his clinic is “booming.” “We published data (in 2002) showing an alarming increase in male pattern baldness in Asians,” he said over the phone, naming diet as a key driver for the change. “I had a lot of Caucasian patients saying to me, ‘You Asians don’t go bald,’ but it’s not true.” Alternative approaches There are cheaper and less invasive treatments on the market. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba stocks thousands of restorative shampoos, serums and sprays, and has reported that more than 70% of customers buying anti-hair-loss products were born after 1980, according to the South China Morning Post (a newspaper owned by Alibaba). Drugs like minoxidil and finasteride, available in the US since the 1980s and 1990s respectively, appear to be gaining traction in the region too. Sales of the former, which is commonly traded as Rogaine, are expected to grow 5% per year in Asia Pacific from 2018 to 2024, according to an industry report by Global Market Insights. A judge examines finalists at a 1957 baldness competition in Japan, where rates of hair loss have historically been among the world’s lowest. Credit: Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Then there are also purported natural remedies. In traditional Chinese medicine, for instance, various herbs and plant extracts have long been touted as solutions to hair loss, though their effectiveness remains a matter of debate (one of them, polygonum multiflorum, or tuber fleeceflower, can even induce hepatitis if over-consumed). In Korea, meanwhile, houttuynia cordata — also known as fish mint, or chameleon plant — can be brewed into a black liquid that is applied to the scalp, according to the journalist, David Ko, who received some from his concerned mother-in-law. “I used it like a shampoo whenever I washed my hair,” he said. “After wetting my hair, I poured a handful of the plant-steeped water on my scalp, finger-massaged my scalp for about one minute, then rinsed it off with fresh water. “But as time went by without seeing any clear sign of improvement, I got so tired of the remedy that I dumped more of (it) on my hair each time to finish the jar faster and get the practice over with.” He then tried other suggested home remedies. “My wife also nudged me to sprinkle some sea salts over my scalp instead of the plant water, and one of my co-workers told me her balding father benefitted from eating lots of black sesame seeds as a snack.” Related video: Beauty is protest for young North Korean women While New York dermatologist Norman Orentreich is widely known as the father of hair transplants, Japanese doctor Shoji Okuda is believed to have performed the very first procedure in 1937 (though the breakout of World War II meant that his research was largely overlooked). With baldness on the rise in Asia, it’s perhaps no surprise that the continent’s scientists — Japan’s and South Korea’s in particular — are again leading some of the field’s most promising research. A ground-breaking Japanese study, published last year, grew hair follicles from scratch using stem cells. They were then successfully transplanted onto the backs of mice, though any resulting therapies remain a long way from ever being approved for humans (and in many countries, stem cell treatments are either highly restricted or completely outlawed). Other novel responses to hair loss are now available in Asia. Scalp micropigmentation, for instance, involves tattooing thousands of tiny dots on patients’ heads to give the illusion of shaved hair. A South Korean study in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Dermatology described the process as “one of the most effective treatment methods” for hair loss, reporting an average satisfaction rate of 4.8 out of 5 among the 80 patients interviewed. Like ‘a triad’ But, still, Asia poses unique challenges for receding men. Undergoing the scalp tattoo procedure requires patients to permanently sport a shaved-head look, which, as the Korean study suggested, may be “stereotyped in Asian cultures as (being like) a gangster or criminal.” According to Ko, however, such labels are a thing of the past. “Back in the day, when young males shaved their heads, seniors would mildly chide them with a totally unproven and absurd hypothesis,” he said, suggesting that elders once saw a skinhead as a sign that someone was a rebel, or had “a problem with society.” “Nowadays (these attitudes) almost never exist, but it is still true people look at bald males with a certain awe.” A model with a shaved head walks the runway at China Fashion Week in 2017. The rise of street style may be helping popularize the skinhead look. Credit: Visual China Group / Getty Images Eric But of Synergy Model Management, which has offices in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, said that clients are still often looking for Asian models to be “cute (with) long hair — that Korean drama, perfect boyfriend kind of look.” But while he distinguishes between shaved and bald heads, the modeling agent said that the rise of street fashion is gradually normalizing the skinhead look in Asia. “For our parents’ generation, a skinhead in Asia is kind of like a gangster — if you want to be a triad, or if you go to prison, you have to shave your head,” he said over the phone. “But now, for people born in the ’90s or later, they see having a skinhead as a streetwear trend. And streetwear is massive in Asia.” Even in the home of coiffed K-pop, visibility may be growing gradually. Ko cited restaurateur Hong Seok-cheon (below), rapper Gill and actor Kim Kwang-kyu as examples of a slowly-growing number of high-profile bald celebrities in South Korea. “It would be more helpful if there were more Koreans with hair loss — if there were more cases (people) could look up to and think they are not alone out there.” Top image: Chinese artist Fang Lijun pictured with one of his paintings, which since the 1990s have often featured bald-headed protagonists. The artist uses the hairless figures as symbols of disillusionment and rebellion in modern China. Source link Orbem News #Asias #bald #grapple #hair #Loss #means #men #Rise

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Women Veterans Back The Blue I've Got Your Six Colorful T Shirt

Hand In Hand with Strength of Our Economy May Now Action Begets Action over the past Few Months We Learn What Essential Rising to the Challenge Not to Leave Learned Who Is Essential to Just the Wealthiest among Us President Who Fights His Fellow Americans Rather Than Fight the Virus Killing in Our Economy It’s the People Who Put Their Own Health Risk to Care for the Rest of Us Day at MVPs and Nurses and Doctors Utility Workers Truck Drivers and Grocery Clerks Childcare Workers the Parent Teachers and Mail Carriers Autoworkers so Many of These Essential Workers Lost Their Lives to Come Nearly Always and Healthcare Workers by the 170 000 People across America Including Five year old Girl Named Skyler from Detroit Guzman Is a Women Veterans Back The Blue I've Got Your Six Colorful T Shirt Police Officer Is a Firefighter Generation after Generation Nation Has Been Defined by What We Can Learn What We Fail to Do so for Skyler for Her Parents in the Memory of All Those We’ve Lost but His Heel As One Nation Let Us Find Strength to Do the Work Nodding Then Israel Will Remember Every. Me know and I will blame it will on the you know about anyone and invite friends data had a bad evil conflict items asked mashed and maybe a will kind of felt like that will be the can and 80 minus the ditzy to not to headings keep needs using expensive. And that’s important because life testing being done is not as they being done number one of the covert 19 virus number two in saliva or respiratory fluids and thirdly the virus dies the quickest in the presence of direct sunlight under these conditions and when you look better look at the aerosol as you breathe it put it in a room 7075 20 many low humidity last half life is about an hour yet outside cussed down woman and half very significant difference when he gets it with UV rays to present while are many unknown links in the covert 19 transmission chain we believe these trends can support practical decision making to lower the risks associated with the virus if I have my while I

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All things kinematic think he’s gonna make you the vice president by will be doing the lid to a Women Veterans Back The Blue I've Got Your Six Colorful T Shirt media is until Thursday he’s taken for this campaign needs to let you know I you can run indisputable whatever the hell is you could run that the Democrats he got the fake is being used upon and yet they correct their own pot and then you have the rhinos in the rhinos have the van and a cigar rhinos that I’ve eaten so badly over the age of the rhinos of people to do the every one of those guys just about IP because they all represented a client in the primaries and is saying he did a good job is a smart guy like you but every one of those guys take God not smart people but he wants to terminate religious liberty destroy the suburbs of the strike and saving the suburbs I’m getting right of the right I’m getting rid of the regulation project see a beautiful house congratulations you like having a nice project next year has set up a cell and with it comes plenty of crime that’s why they keep saying we only think he’s. Ross also goes to stark industriesand purchases some sonic add ins to help against the hulk regattas some less heavy news that she’ll agent whose colson’s friend melinda may starts datingand when she marries this dude called andrew garner’s now heroesand weird more crazy stuff has been happening for a while so she’ll start up the idea of the avengers initiative this program is designed to bring together a group of remarkable people so when humanity has to face a threat that’s too intense for regular old shield in the military they can help defend the planet experiencing this up as the director of shieldand so is getting eyesand people of potential interest for starting with bruce banner he goes in undercoverand finds banner in a bar somewhere which to me doesn’t seem the patient should be if you’re trying to stay calm but whateverand since into shield agents with the most generic names possible petersonand johnson to get the context banner but it goes a little sidewaysand better hoax outand runs away meanwhile back at youand century afterlife human young child called catcher can control her powersand is causing a lot of damage she runs awayand ends up in the middle east were filled colsonand the women they are simply shield to take her down is forced to kill small child to save the day which is obviously a little upsetting so she retires from fieldworkand takes a desk joband also causes her marriage to kinda fall apart now there’s this fun michael keaton type guy called adrian toombs living a good life for the wifeand little daughter called lives family is everything to tombs to support his family he starts the tomb salvage company which cleans up messes left behind by big incidents which seems like a pretty good idea as the world is getting moreand more superhero eand where their superheroes there are classic cities okay this time I start to get a little muddled here I know there’s a bit of a debate over which year the original aromatics basin but for a number of reasons that don’t really want to get into company in 2009 some people say it’s only like movies released some people since 2010 I personally think it makes no sense if it’s in 2009 especially in relation to iron man twoand other future films I meant to his sickness afterwardsand it features the stark expo 2010 so anyway you should matter that much but it is worth mentioning is still being a billionaire playboy at one point he gets into a bar fight get some assistance from his best friend james rhodes rhody a little later he was in order for something but what I status get it for him because he’s too busy sleeping with reportersand you know doing tony start things despite his playboy in us he also has something of a relationship some kind of flirtatious thing going on with his assistant pepper potts also he’s got a bodyguard called happy to see you know to start industries is still in this morally great business of selling weaponsand tony doesn’t really care because billionaire life but no but I saying the strategies the company for less than legal means he starts equally sign weapons to a terrorist organization called the 10 rings inand also pays the 10 rings to kill tony when he goes to afghanistan because I know but I can when the company tony free however they only kidnap tony once they realize who he isand manny build them weapons to use in the whole process tony is mortally wounded but his life is saved by fellow captive hellionsand mental health ins inputs electromagnet in his chest which keeps the shrapnel in there from killing in which tony benson turns into his dental pet project the arc reactor 10 rings also demand more my for staying because of who they had to kidnap vocalsand sent by shield to go talk to stijnand lindsay is back to shield offers to god himselfand save stark button cure for whatever reason tells them not to start building the weapons that the terrace demanded over three months stark with the help against them as a weapon I suit of armor that he can use to escape which is powered by that arc reactorand is just over this time start also earns a bit more humanity while this is happening natasha romanoff now a great agent of shield is sent out on a mission to escort a scientist in a run hydra sends out the winter soldier to kill the scientist he does so by shooting through them enough after those few months stark uses the armored suit to bust out of prisonand kill some terrorists escapes but yes it is killed along the way start crashand the desertand picked up by the militaryand taken home tony’s a changed man now so people stuck industries on the weapons business which obadiah is pretty pissed about thatand also you know tony is not dead then he is running the company yet tony also get closer to pepper spray a new art directorand start continue to refine his armor make you much slicker matter more weaponsand doing a little hot rod written there eventually he turns into what becomes known as the iron man suit this does take a few months so while all this is happening a woman called colleen wing who is pretty proficient in martial arts comes to america from japan she needs the crew to one of those ancient hat membersand gets recruited as a member of the hand but she’s under the impression that the hand is a good organizationand doesn’t know about all the mass murder of kellyand now the sweet mullet is putting a takeover of the world the first he’s got to get this extreme misting perfectand he needs firebreathing henchmen so he finds a bunch of army veterans who suffered serious injuries to be his test subjects injects them with extremistsand some are successful they grow back last lensand their super grateful some are not successful thoughand explode in a very painful way also at some point here in asgard double click a guy called in near tries to overthrow dennis king but he stopped by thor just a typical day for those guys now back on earth the 10 rings find stocks first armor suit that he escaped with lying around in the desertand they start piecing it back together stijn shows upand sees itand thinks back use thisand so start building his own giant iron man suit all of this is happening continues to make a suit way better now can flyand she repulsed blasts in STUFF he also gets a fancy ad about the systemand into jarvis after his dental butler theory is still quite intrigued by the sole tony stark character solutions vocalsand into talk to stark about this whole situation but stuck ambos moss tony also finds out that some of his companies weapons are still terrorists in afghanistan certifiesand kills a bunch of them because he can is a little brush up in the militaryand canada has revealed his buddy rhody that yeah he’s ironman pepperand finds out that stijn’s been working with terrorists sustains like well that everyone knows a bag I now let us look at tony myself yells exceeds by tony so live closeand goes with pepper to discover stains own iron man suit turning it back to full strength puts in a suitand instead have a consistency punch up stark winsand stained eyes the next day at a big press conference stuck supposed to tell the world that iron man is some kind of robot bodyguard they built but he goes a little off script I am guessing is more in touch with shield while stark is getting this press conference at the manco that guy how stark screwed over all those years ago who is now out of prison dies while watching it is on I think of us take revenge on the stark familyand in a surprisingly short time uses his dad’s old art director blueprints to make his own arc reactorand uses that to make an even cooler iron man suit just kidding he makes some electric lips after the press conference nick fury approach to stark himself this time about the avengers initiative is a guy with a super high tech suit could be useful the time is like air now thanks as he’s leaving starks house cure and tells them don’t need natasha romanoff or this one goesand also helps train this random guy called hendrix to be an agent of shield unimportant detail but it happened all this time jesse don’t forget bruce banner still running the military ultimately ends up in rioand start working at a soda bottle factory all the while stirring to contact a scientist called samuel stearns was trying to find a cure for this whole whole thing is to keep a low profileand figure out how to return to a normal life so she was getting mighty busy these days not only to have the soul avengers thing planned but they also start a project tahiti shield still has that creek corpse just lying aroundand after testing it they discover some of its bodily fluids have a healing effect they can bring someone back from the dead fury orders this project we started with phil colson in charge to extract some these fluids in the event that an avenger is killed in action needs to be brought back to some of the sun dying shield employees but it doesn’t go super well because they start going insaneand drawing maps about underground cree city cyclesand like well this program sucks let’s shut it downand so they do stark stone during the life of being a billionaireand also superheroand starts helping establish world peace as iron man going aroundand being a terrorists he also tries to have a relationship with a woman called lena as you know playboy however the 10 rings find out about thisand kidnap lena’s son afterwards blackmailing her in his dealings ireland blueprints for them however to find out about this because of the situation thenand saves her sonand then stop seeing each other is like how you come back from that stark is like seeing his assistant pepper potts does well peace mission continues as he stops group of 10 rings dudesand hackers from selling as weapons in italy also recovered some stolen paintings because why not messages continues to fight the 10 rings especially in afghanistan as he doing this serializes the corpus arc reactor is slowly poisoning him so he start searching for a cure over in brazil bruce banner is working at soda bottle factoryand one day he asked because his hand so some of his super blood goes in one of the soda bottlesand kill stanley which gets the governmentand military write on the sent now back over to hydra they’re working on yet another super soldier program because that seems to be all they can do after rascal serumand making roma peopleand after their attention to making a superpowered army by combining the super soldier serum with gamma radiationand some of that sweet extremist tech that they somehow got their hands on basically taking every superpower giving thing the mcu entering it in a big melting pot it’s called the centipede program that’s led by john garrett from before you must use it for his own purposes since even with the parts his health is failing also with the program you can plan your either let’s hide or see everything you doand also can kill you if you start doing something wrong another very kinsman like almonds lena starts running the stark expo 2010 to shove a budget attackand relationsand whatnot shows up in the flash to really be the tony that the world knowsand loves my cousin all great for tonio as he also has to govern the senate some of whom are members of hydra is there like the government you have your suit because it’s really dangerousand tony’s like hello claims that no one is close to kings techand he’s created well peace so the government should shut up testifying against him is the somehow smug or induce your tony stark justin hammer is rival in the tech world get out of thereand make up about the ceo stark industries okay nothing start to get a bit more complicated because the three different plot lines all happening at once so hang on lake erie sends natasha romanoff to go undercoverand keep an eye on tony understand the 10 rings are pretty sick of our menacing at their livesand so they get anton blanco was completed his arc reactor based whips away into the monaco grand prix which tony will be attending back in brazil the army’s tract number spends locationand attacksand where he lives the command of a mobile on ski first comes the hulkand runs away waking up in guatemala the next morningand deciding he should go back to his old university to look for more data on finding a whole cure because he just can’t take this anymore roadie who is now also that she needs a strike in the study to work with the governmentand starting to get mildly heated between them romanoff arrives at tony’s place is of the pill in a woman’s coffee unstuck steam so she starts throwing up so natasha can deliver some files to stark yourself to natureand acts exactly how you inspect them to tell youand goes to the monaco grand prix as promisedand stripper places a guy in the race is a guess you do that when your superhero is having a fun time driving when ivan manco shows upand these car in half luckily tony’s gotten on the go armor with himand he defends himself later tongue the bank on prisonand getting really nothing out of it this public display of other art directors being out there though but the government even moreand tony’s ass justin hammer sees thisand breaks I got of prison when him to make iron man like machines for hammer tech so he can upstage tony stark thank you goes along with this but really dispels bunch drones so he can later on post some sweet sweet revenge tony starting poison buys arc reactor in the publics against in the government on his backand himand his best friend are on great terms tony’s life sucks right now is this it was a big drunken birthday party for himself which ultimately ends with himand roadie getting the students who fight roadie not being told the drunk guys off of the suitand gives it to justin hammer unaware of what hammers actually doing behind the scenes meanwhile agent jasper said well she’ll agentand another undercover hydrogen is ordered to keep track of bruce banner one exterior goes to help start with his are correct poisoning also there are big disturbances in the atmosphere on this time in the southwest us caused by some commotion away in asgard which will get you that this concerns some people including astrophysicist jane foster she get in touch with another astrophysicist called xl bigand go to new mexico to check it out she’ll discovers this is happeningand keeps an eye on them now way back across the universe in asgard authorities finally of the age where he gets to be the new king even though he’s areaand a spoiled bratand locus jealous but hay is getting corrugated it’s his big day but it gets interrupted by the frost giant sneakingand owns vaultand trying to take away that casket of ancient winters point is that was really upset that his days ruinedand also that the frost I spokeand we know so that is bossy consisting of f than the warriors interchangeable coffee oppenheim to fight the frost giants for what they did this is specifically against oden’s instructions but again thor is dumband arrogant a fight starts but only comes aroundand breaks it up is pretty mad at the door so takes away all his godly powersand his powerful hammer mule near creekside note the owner was made from the core of a dying starand helps to control his lighting powersand also only be lifted by whoever’s worthy of it store down to earth new mexico specifically is harold’s land somewhere nearby as well as activity theory since vocalsand down to new mexico to check out all the business on his way their closest oxen armed robbery at a convenience store because he’s just not good back to start tony’s hang on a big doughnutand has a talk with a fury who wants to help them also natasha romanoff reveals himself as black widow to them justin hammer starts upgrading the armor really gave themand changes it from this to this while that’s happening tony discovers a map of the old stark expo at secret formula for making a new element that his dad left him all of those years ago which is also the perfect replacement for his arc reactor somewhat conveniently so yeah that’s fixed tony’s no longer dying now you just worry about the crazy russianand the smarmy businessmen at this point bruce banner is also gone back to the old university hang out with an old friend of his now justin hammer showing off his ivan banker design drones at the stark expo but vanco goes for zone motives of killing starkand hijacks the dronesand sends them after tony also hijacks the war machine armor with roadieand it is chase during which tony says a little kid is a fan of his called peter parker come in to play more later eventually ready to control the soup back in himand tony team up to destroy all the drones while black widowand tony’s bodyguard happy fightsand I got henchmen eventually tonyand 35 vancoand a giant iron man type suitand blowing them upand killing him by combining the repulsive powers hammer gets arrested gets a kissand really gets the armor kind of soup from not okay when the question meanwhile back in new mexico jane foster xl bigand jane’s friend darcy find thor all powerless like in the desert daysand then set into the hospital she also started asking thor’s hammer mule near owner realizes how big business in the situation could be so also sends clint barton to help closeand with it the escape from the hospital using his asgard trainingand meets up with janeand they start having a little bit of a romance back in asgard loki discovers that he is not shielding sonand I frost giant which makes them pretty upsetand falls into a deep sleep that has to take once in a while called oden sleepand locus is playing a treacherous plan to get owns approval back which involves the frost giants to attack inand then saving his dad’s life is adopted that not his real dad back with banner bruce meets up with bettyand they get back together however in the process the military figure out he’s thereand have for the locationand the loss gets injected with a version of the super soldier serum things to ross tobin take on the whole which means he can survive this sort of thing seeing gen. Help ourselves otherwise all the chocolates would just end up sitting in his cupboards for a year and he wasn’t about to get kids year old suites come next Halloween we basically had the jackpot thinking we could just rinse the old fellow of the suites and make up for the paltry amount we collected over what had been an unusually fruitless trick or treating session only he said there was one small problem since he was getting on in years and then get out much his oldest grown up son had come by to drop off all the suites along with his usual weekly shopping then without having thought it through his son and put all the suites in the top cupboard of his back pantry one that was way too high for him to reach without doing is back in if a couple of us were willing to help them reach the cupboards and take a few tens of supreme in the process suites were ours all of them 90 you’re thinking God’s name is daft enough to just wander into a complete stranger’s house in the middle the night apparently we were and See Other related products: I Don't Understand Your Specific Kind Of Stupid But I Do Admire Your Total Commitment To It T-Shirt

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Drunken Meet & Greet and Bill Maher

When I saw on the TER board that the NYC Meet & Greet would be November 9th, I decided I would definitely plan to tour the city after the expo.  I had never been to on and figured it might be worthwhile to network.   A previous client and I decided to see each other before the Meet & Greet started.  He was a client I actually met in Vegas, but he's an Italian from NY/NJ, and we really hit it off.  He fell ill the last time he was in Vegas, and had to go out of town for work when I was in the city in October, so it was really nice catching up with him.  

We discussed politics, and obviously we had to discuss Trump, and I said, "I know you hate him as much as me."  

He said laughing, "I don't think I hate him as much as you do."  But we agreed that we both think he's a moron.   He identifies as being a moderate, and he is a gun owner, but he agreed there is no need for people to have automatic weapons.  There was common ground that we found on different issues, and he was happy to find out that I'm not one of those extreme liberals.   We head to the M & G together, and we order some drinks.  We evaluate the crowd, comparing ourselves to the others. He is attracted to my mind and knows I have a good heart, and I appreciate his attractiveness to me is more than just a superficial one.   I did spot a young woman, who was either from somewhere in Asia, or she was mixed.  She talked to us for a moment, and I found out that she was new to the business.   We notice an older white woman who has a long, furry, pink coat on.  She introduces herself as, Diana Love.  At some point, I get a glimpse that she's topless underneath.  My client misses it, but later on she decides to change, and strips down by the window, in front of everyone to put a top on.   We also spot another tall, sexy black lady.  My client says to me, that he thinks, she is probably the one who said, "I'll be the tall one," on the reply back to the invite.  He says something to her, and I comment on how I like her bracelet, and she walks over to us.  She says her name is Autumn, and we talk to her for a bit.  We have a couple more drinks, and then my client heads out because he has work in the morning.   I continue to stand at the bar.  I'm watching over Diana's drinks as she excused herself to the bathroom.  An older man comes up a few feet behind me.  I can smell rotten food in his mouth and I'm not even facing him.  Thankfully, he didn't start talking to me.  And I kept my back to him just so he wouln't feel inclined to strike up a conversation with me.  I think I would have gagged if I had to lean in to hear what he might have tried to say to me.   I take my drink and I find Autumn again, sitting on a bean bag chair in the back corner.  She's from Toronto and says I should tour there.  I tell her I have one fan who keeps telling me to go to Toronto, but because I know it's legal there, I wouldn't know how I would do.  But she says, I would do well because there's not many tall, beautiful, fit, Asian women there.   I'm drinking my third Tito's and tonic, when Diana asks if I want do a shot with her.  I agree to and also ask for a water shortly after.  Diana, Autumn, and I are not cool enough to be invited to the after party, which I believe was designated for VIP clients and the ladies they picked up there.  Diana and I do a second shot with Autumn and I finish my third Tito's and tonic.   Another couple ladies invite us to go to a club uptown.  I get another drink for some reason, and we climb into an Uber, and head to the club with drinks in hand.  I drink half of mine and offer it to the woman sitting in the middle in the backseat with me.   Then the liquor finally hits me.  And I realize the only thing I ate was an egg and cheese earlier that afternoon.  I don't want to be the messy drunk girl at the club, so at Third Avenue and E. 40th Street, or somewhere around there, I remember E. 40th, but I can't remember what avenue, I tell the driver and the ladies in the car, I'm going to hop out and go back to my hotel.  They were cool about it, and I got myself a cab back downtown.   I was sleepy in the back of the cab, and definitely feeling the vodka.  I was happy I decided to go back to my hotel. Impressively, I remembered to get a receipt from my cab driver before climbing out.   My suite had one and a half bathrooms.  The half being right near the room door as you enter.  I quickly stripped off my coat, dashed to the bathroom, took off my shoes as I was on the toilet, and then passed out on the floor for a bit.  I don't know how long I was passed out on the floor.  It wasn't for the whole night.  At some point, I got up, somehow managed to unzip my dress without too much struggle, and fell into bed naked.  I think I drank the water in my water bottle before passing back out and filling it up again, knowing at some point, I would need to drink more water during the night.   I think I woke up again around 8 AM, saw a text from Autumn earlier in the night asking if I got back okay.  I replied back to her telling her how I passed out and then proceed to order breakfast.  I waited for the delivery, ate, and then went back to sleep. I was definitely hung over, and decided to get my day started around 11:00.  There was a possibility I was going to have an appointment.  I checked my emails and my texts, and decided to get into the shower and get ready.  But of course I didn't end up seeing anyone, and despite being mildly hungover, I would have preferred to go to the CrossFit gym than gotten ready for no one.  It was 34 degrees on Friday, so I didn't even leave my hotel.  My friend mentioned she was headed into the city to run errands, but she and her husband were exhausted afterwards, since they were toting around their three month old, so I didn't get to see them to get some weed or meet up for dinner. I ordered some takeout and depressingly wondered why I have whole days where I have zero appointments.   I went to bed around 1:30-2:00 AM, set my alarm to go the gym.  I paid for a week pass thinking it would be less expensive if I went every day, but I ended up only going twice.  Apparently, I needed to catch up on sleep, and I think my self-doubting thoughts kept me up that night, so I didn't get up until 10:00 AM.   I didn't have any appointments for Saturday, since I was initially planning to leave that day.  But when I heard that Bill Maher was going to be at Madison Square Garden that Saturday, I told myself it would probably be a cool memory to see him in New York, despite having seen him at the Mirage in Vegas this past year.   I was hoping to pick up an appointment since I had nothing on Friday, but that didn't happen either.  I got ready, just in case, and waited.  Later in the afternoon, my friend said they were headed to her father's in the city and asked if I could meet them there.  I waited and didn't hear from her again until after 6:00 PM.  I told her I couldn't stay too long because I wanted to smoke before the show, but she said I could smoke there.   My Uber ride took forever because of traffic, despite only going up fifteen streets, and over another avenue east.  I got up to the apartment, and was not surprised to be greeted by another dog I had not met before.  A little puffy, cinnamon Pomeranian barked at me, and I knelt down for the dog to sniff me saying, "Oh, I don't know who you are." My friend laughs her infectious laugh, "That's Rocco.  That’s my sister's dog."   "Ah," I say, but I would not have been surprised if my friend said that this was her fifth dog. "Do you have any papers by chance?" my friend asks me. I purposely brought my Raw rolling papers and a lighter with me.  "Yes," I say.   My friend hands me a paper bag with a snowman stamped on the outside.  Inside is my edible Peanut Butter crunch chocolate bar and a small mason jar of my eighth of weed.   "Do you happen to have a Ziplock bag?" I ask.  "Hmm, I'm going to have to figure out where to put this going into the show." Luckily, my friend has a Ziplock bag that a bracelet was in, and asks if I want Saran wrap it too because it is strong weed.   "Yes, please," I reply.  "I think I'm going to have to stick it up my pussy."   She gives me a piece of Saran wrap, and I wrap it up tight.  I look at the edible bar as my friend rolls a joint.   "I'll usually eat a whole one," my girl friend says. I see on the label that it's 225 mg.  "Oh, fuck, no.  There's no way I'm going to eat this whole thing.  I'd be melting into the floor."  I pretend to drool and slide to the ground.   The bar is broken up into nine equal squares.  I try to just take two of them, but the way it breaks off, I end up having a third of the bar.   Her mother-in-law is there and us, ladies, smoked the joint on the balcony, while her husband held the baby.   It was soon 7:15, and I knew I should order an Uber and head out the door to get across town to MSG.  I say goodbye to my friend and her family and before going out the door, I quickly shove the Saran-wrapped weed up my pussy. After the hassle of getting into Madison Square Garden, anyone who's attended a show there, knows the arduous process of going through security and getting into the theater.  I beep when I go through the scanner, and the security guy with the portable metal detector asks, "Do you have any metal on you anywhere?"   "Uh, all over," I say, "I have piercings."   "Yeah, that will sometimes do it," he says as he scans over me.  He lets me pass and I get into the line for the theater and then quickly find the bathroom so I can pull the eighth of weed out of my pussy.   It's past 8:00 PM, probably closer to 8:15 by that point, so I bypass the lines to get snacks because I still have to find my seat and I don't want to miss the show, despite knowing I would have cottenmouth.  Luckily, I had some gun and swapped pieces midway through the show to help with the cottenmouth a bit.   I find the section my seat is in and walk down to the row, since I went by myself I only ordered one ticket, and was hoping I would be somewhere near the end of the row so I wouldn't have to walk by a bunch of people.  I got to my row, and there were two ladies at the end, a seat with coats on it, and then a few more ladies.  I figured I was the seat that had the coats on it, but I told them my seat number, and the ladies at the end moved in, so I got to sit at the end.   I thought Bill's show was funnier than when I saw him in Vegas.  Maybe it was the weed, maybe it was the edible, maybe because I was in New York City in Madison Square Garden.  I did feel he performed more to the crowd in New York than he did in Vegas, perhaps because he knew the majority of us were intellectual, New York liberals.   I left MSG, attempted to figure out where I was.  I always get a little turned around whenever I leave there, found a CVS to get some potato chips and drinks, ordered an Uber and waited.  I don't vividly recall the CVS stop, since the edible was really hitting me then, but I knew how important they were going to be once I was back in my hotel room.  My Uber was five minutes away still, and then a cab pulled up letting other people out and I asked him to take me back to my hotel and cancelled my Uber. I got back to my hotel, ordered off GrubHub from Bareburger, I was in a veggie burger and french fry kind of mood. I also ordered some brussel sprouts, that were also delicious.   My girl friend asked about the show and said they were back in Brooklyn and were watching Bill Maher.  I recalled that I had not watched the previous night's 'Real Time' because HBO didn't come through on the TVs and I fell asleep before they posted it on HBOGo.   I pulled it up on my laptop, told my friend it was great to see her and about how I pulled the weed out of my pussy before the show started, but when we were exiting from the show the people around me were commenting on the skunk smell.   I laughed and ate my way through 'Real Time.'  I put on an episode of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and passed out on the couch.  I woke up an hour or so later, stripped off my clothes, didn't wash my makeup off, and went to bed naked again.   I think I was definitely weed hung over the next morning.  I set three alarms for 8:30, 8:45, and 9:00 AM.  I got up before the 9:00 AM one went off.  Got up, went the bathroom, checked out how my makeup lasted, decided to wash it off and do natural makeup, and then went to the bagel shop around the corner that I had been visiting all week.  Got my last lox on an everything bagel and ordered half a dozen.  I had to go to Duane Reade again and buy more Ziplock bags to take them home.   I unwrapped the weed, rolled myself a small joint, and then started packing all my stuff.  I needed/wanted to smoke on one of the balconies I had before I left.  I was aiming to leave my hotel at 12:30 PM, and got down to front desk and checked out by 12:25.   I waited for my Uber driver, and by watching his route on his way to me, I had a gut feeling he was somehow going to fuck up on the drive to Newark.  Before we got on the thruway, I asked him which way he was going and made sure he was taking the way that was the fastest to get there.  But then we missed the exit that took us to the airport, and had to travel in the opposite direction before we were able to turn around, and then we missed another way we should have taken to go back around, so then had to travel further in the wrong direction.  And then he had his blinker light on for way too long, and I notice all these cars pass by us.  I look at his speedomoter and he's going 17 mph under the speed limit.  I have to point to what exit we need to go, and repeat myself several times to go to Newark Airport.   "Go where?" "Straight!" "Where?" "Straight ahead!  Look at the sign that says Newark Airport!" We putter along going 15-20 mph under the speed limit.  Thankfully, I left with plenty of time to get my bags checked and get through security, and I smoked that joint before leaving, or else I would have been even more pissed.  But the last five minutes were excruciating as I watched several vehicles zoom on by us.  

[expomahal-blog]

Automechanika Dubai-The Middle East's Leading International Trade Fair for the Automotive Industry targeting Trade Visitors from Western Asia, Eastern Europe, the CIS and Africa at United Arab Emirates(Dubai) 2019-June

health Fairs, whole food Trade Shows 2019, June, China, Guangzhou

Sleep China-China (Guangzhou) International Health Sleep Expo at China(Guangzhou) 2019-June

Sleep China-China (Guangzhou) International Health Sleep Expo trade show event mainly focuses on:

health events, whole food Exhibitions

related products/services/industry/business. This trade show opens top business opportunities to exhibit products and services from health Exhibitors, whole food Trade Shows industry.

Find More Details about Sleep China-China (Guangzhou) International Health Sleep Expo event...

We help you to grow your business by providing the required contact details of all companies participating in this event and you can download the same data in excel format using the above links. Location of the Event: China(Guangzhou) Year-Month:2019-June Official Website:Event Website source https://www.expomahal.com/2019/07/automechanika-dubai-middle-easts.html

[xsnore]

Innovators to exhibit at Sleep Expo

At Sleep Expo Middle East, Gourdie said they will showcase two types of the anti-snore pillow. One is the Hollow Fiber Anti-Snore Pillow, and the other ... from http://bit.ly/2UyFWKt For more interesting news and snore solutions & tips, , please visit my website at Good morning snore solution from Blogger http://bit.ly/2X5bnsz https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[narcissistpsychopath-abuse]

Sam Vaknin, Member of the Organizing Committee of

30th International Conference on Public Mental Health and Neuroscience, Dubai, June 2019

https://mental-health.neurologyconference.com/organizing-committee.php

Membership in the Organizing Committees of Scientific/Academic Conferences

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html

7th International Conference on Brain Disorders and Therapeutics, Brussels, September 2019

10th EuroSciCon Conference on Psychiatry, Psychology, and Brain Studies, Paris, April 2019

22nd World Congress on Psychology and Behavioral Science, Amsterdam, September 2019

6th International Conference on Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Management, London, April 2019

Modern Trends in Health Economics, Healthcare, and Technologies 2019, Venice, May 2019

9th Global Experts Meeting on Advances in Neurology and Neuropsychiatry, Melbourne, July 2019

4th World Congress and Expo on Dementia and Neuroscience, Kuala Lumpur, November 2019   Brochure

World Summit on Psychiatry Disorders, Mental Health, and Wellness, Philadelphia, June 2019

Neurology and Brain Disorders, Dublin, June 2019

Sleep Disorders and Psychiatry, Vienna, July 2019

Conference on Neurology and Psychiatry, Prague, April 2019

Mental Health and Wellness, London, September 2019

Psychiatry and Mental Health 2019, Dubai, August 2019

International Conference on Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, Berlin, July 2019

30th World Summit on Positive Psychology, Mindfulness, Psychotherapy, and Philosophy, Chicago, March 2019

Global Conference on Addiction and Behavioral Health, London, UK, August 2019

2nd International Conference and Expo on Clinical Psychology, Paris, France, January 2019

World Brain Congress, Dubai, UAE, December 2018

Positive Psychology and Happiness 2019, Dubai, November 2019

30th International Conference on Public Mental Health and Neuroscience, Dubai, June 2019

31st American Psychiatry and Psychology Congress, Orlando, Florida, USA, March 2019

27th Edition of International Conference on Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience, Zurich, Switzerland, February 2019

29th International Conference on Adolescent Medicine and Child Psychology, Rome, Italy, December 2018

4th International Conference on Clinical and Counselling Psychology, Tokyo, Japan, August 2019

International Conference on Addiction and Behavioral Science, Dubai, June 2019

5th International Conference on Mental Health and Human Resilience, Barcelona, Spain, March 2019

International Conference on Applied Psychology, Psychiatry and Mental Health, Los Angeles, USA, November 2018

29th International Conference on Psychiatry and Mental Health, Singapore, September 2018

31st World Psychiatrists and Psychologists Meet, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, June 2019

Global Conference on Nursing and Healthcare, Rome, Italy, June 2019

28th International Conference on Nursing Care, Vienna, May 2019

4th World Congress on Psychiatry and Mental Health Nursing, Rome, June 2019

3rd International Conference Clinical and Counseling Psychology, Singapore, August 2018

Psychiatry 2018, Rome, Italy, July 2018

30th World Psychiatrists and Psychologists Meet, Osaka, Japan, October 2018

Conference Schedule Scientific Program OCM certificate Presentation Applaud Certificate Conference Book

35th International Conference on Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine, Brussels, Belgium, November 2018 Abstract

28th Conference Nursing Practice 2018, Dubai, November 2018 Conference Brochure

[priyankaganguly-blog]

Snoring Control Devices Market – Revolutionary Scope & Need 2025

Global Snoring Control Devices Market: Overview

Snoring control devices are used to help people who snore because of nasal obstruction. There are a variety of snoring control devices available that range from mouthpieces to chin straps to anti snoring pillows to nasal devices to pills and sprays. These devices are either insertable or are used topically to help with unobstructed flow of air through the mouth and nose.

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Global Snoring Control Devices Market: Key Trends

The increasing demand for homecare settings is the primary factor driving the global snoring control devices market. Elderly and severely ill individuals are unable to make frequent visits to hospitals and thus need monitoring devices that are suitable for homecare use. The availability of devices that are suitable for home-care provides convenience to these individuals to monitor their health in a cost-effective manner.

With the growing popularity of online sales channel, consumers can purchase anti snoring devices such as chin straps and nasal strips that saves visit to healthcare centers or physicians.

In terms of product type, the snoring control devices market is segmented into mandibular advancement device, nasal devices, expiratory positive airway pressure devices, tongue stabilizing device, and chin straps. Among these, mandibular advancement device stood as the leading product segment in the recent past. The advantages of mandibular advancement device include cost-effectiveness, availability of custom-made devices, and elimination of need of surgery for snoring treatment.

On the basis of end-user, the segments of this market are hospitals, home care settings, and sleep labs. Of these, hospitals stood as the leading end-user segment in the recent past. The high volume use of these devices in hospitals for sleep disorders and the high revenue generation by large hospitals are contributing to the growth of this product segment.

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Global Snoring Control Devices Market: Market Potential

With technology penetrating practically every walk of life smart bed is the answer to adjust sleeper’s body to stop snoring. It has been designed to adjust for different body positions and even raises the sleeper’s head to clear airways if it detects snoring.

The Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed comes in the midst of a new movement for sleep tech gadgets. They are designed to help time-starved consumers get best possible sleep amid their busy lives. The product was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2017 in Las Vegas and is expected to register booming sales next year.. The expo is the technology industry’s yearly event for showcasing latest gadgets.

Global Snoring Control Devices Market: Regional Outlook

The global market for snoring devices is analyzed with respect to the regional segments of North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. Of these, North America is the leading market for snoring control devices due to financial assistance from government for research and development of innovative devices and favorable regulatory framework for the same. The rising incidence of sleep disorders and lifestyle changes are also contributing to the growth of this regional market.

The region is followed by Europe in terms of revenue contribution to the global market. Asia Pacific is expected to emerge as the fastest growing market for snoring control devices over the forecast period.

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Global Snoring Control Devices Market: Competitive Landscape

The leading companies in the global snoring control devices market include GlaxoSmithKline, ResMed, and MPowrx Health and Wellness Products. Other prominent vendors include Apnea Sciences, Sleeping Well, SNOREDOC, TheraSnore, ZYPPAH, AirSnore, MEDiTAS, Sleep Tight Mouthpiece, SnoreMeds, abd VitalSleep.

About TMR Research

TMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in today’s supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients’ conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.

Contact:

TMR Research,

3739 Balboa St # 1097,

San Francisco, CA 94121

United States

Tel: +1-415-520-1050

Email:sales@tmrresearch.com

[caveartfair]

This Art Fair Is Offering Aston Martins Alongside Alex Katz Paintings to Drive Sales

Vintage cars at The Bridge, Bridgehampton, New York, 2018. © Photo by Rob Rich/SocietyAllure.com, 2018. Courtesy of The Bridge.

Among the dozens of contemporary art expos on the global fair circuit, The September Art Fair at The Bridge—which just completed its second edition last weekend—stands out for a number of reasons. To start, it’s an outdoor art fair free from the confines of the exhibition center, with blue-chip galleries hanging works in storage containers, jerry-rigged to provide ample lighting. And it’s not just any outdoor location: It’s held on the sand dunes of a golf course with a one-time $1 million membership fee and annual dues and taxes that top $80,000 per year, a location that makes it impossible to detect from the surrounding roads. And unlike other art fairs, the public cannot buy tickets—attendance is by invitation only.

But the strangest thing about the fair, which is commonly referred to as “The Bridge,” is that art by Wolfgang Tillmans and Alex Katz plays second banana to the 150 vintage cars spread out on the golf course next to them, many of which are worth millions of dollars each.

The art fair–car fair hybrid comes at a time when the contemporary art world is taking increasing notice of the overlap in clientele between the two luxury goods. Last November, Sotheby’s put the 2001 Ferrari that won Michael Schumacher in that year’s Grand Prix smack dab in the middle of its contemporary art evening sale. The gimmick worked: The car sold for $7.5 million, well ahead of its $5.5 million high estimate.

The fair world also cast a strong vote of confidence in the car market in August 2017, when Art Basel parent company MCH Group announced that it was launching Grand Basel, a car fair that held its inaugural edition this month in Basel, Switzerland, and will also take place in Miami Beach and Hong Kong, though not at the same time as those Art Basel fairs.

Installation view of Tom Sachs, Building #3, at The Bridge, Bridgehampton, New  York, 2018. © Photo by Rob Rich/SocietyAllure.com, 2018. Courtesy of The Bridge.

Also last August, RM Sotheby’s—the separate auction house for car sales, created when Sotheby’s bought 25 percent of RM Auctions in 2015—sold a 1962 Ferrari GTO at an RM Sotheby’s auction in Monterey, California, for $48.4 million, the most ever paid at auction for an classic car. Art reporter Judd Tully noted that it had been backed by a financial guarantee, just like marquee lots at a contemporary fair.

The Bridge fair, which ran from Friday through Sunday, was founded by retired commodities trader Robert Rubin, who is uniquely well-equipped to straddle the world of car collecting and art collecting: He buys both luxury items, simultaneously a gearhead and a good pal of the artist Richard Prince. He also had the perfect location for it: a golf course on a plot of land southwest of Sag Harbor that he purchased in the 1980s—this despite playing the game for just a few years and pronouncing Jack Nicklaus’s last name “Nick-o-laus.” The golf course, which he opened in 2002, is also called The Bridge, and the fair serves as a bit of promotion for the expensive and exclusive club. When it opened, the original one-time membership fees were $500,000; a source at the fair said that today, they’ve been upped to $1 million.

Rubin first founded The Bridge as car fair in 2016. Sensing an opportunity, he teamed up with Max Levai and Pascal Spengemann of Marlborough Contemporary to add blue-chip galleries to the mix in 2017, creating what was perhaps the first art fair and car fair combo. In 2018, despite local expos such as Art Hamptons and Art Southampton canceling their editions, Rubin soldiered ahead.

“The addition of the art fair to the car show added a new dimension to the party—with double the galleries, and more cars, it should be even more fun,” Rubin said in a release announcing the 2018 fair. Last year, there were six galleries, and this year, there were 12.

A visitor to the fair checks in and is taken by van down a winding road deep into the 513-acre tract of land, and up a hill where an overpass bears the logo “CHEVRON GASOLINES”—a remnant of the site’s former use as, funnily enough, a racetrack. On the green—beyond a 40,000-square-foot, glass-lined modernist clubhouse designed by Roger Ferris of Roger Ferris & Partners—were hundreds of cars flanked by auto enthusiasts donning white as if the dress codes of Labor Day need not apply. At the front were vintage European makes, a petite Bugatti with bug-eyed headlights next to an Aston Martin seemingly airdropped in from an early Bond movie. There was a line of Porsches with colors that popped against the green grass: ruby, lemondrop, aquamarine. Then the American muscle cars, the Cameros and Stingrays and Corvettes, added even more machismo to a dude-heavy day.

View of exhibition containers at The Bridge, Bridgehampton, New York, 2018. © Photo by Rob Rich/SocietyAllure.com, 2018. Courtesy of The Bridge.

Informational material provided by the fair indicated that a few of these road-ready works of art could be in the price range of prized lots at Monterey or big sellers at Grand Basel. There is a 1957 Maserati 300S, only 26 of which were made, and the 1965 Shelby GT350, a souped-up Ford Mustang originally made strictly for racing, only 36 of which were ever produced. The 1952 Chrysler SWB Ghia Prototype Coupe was a risky experiment, an attempt by Detroit to match the coachwork of the shops in Italy, but despite getting fawned over at Pebble Beach, it was never put into production. The prototype at The Bridge was the only one ever made.

The gallery booths were installed a short jaunt down from the clubhouse and the cars, at the top of a hill and set on the gravel abutting a sand pit. It looked like some strange future shantytown, the storage containers dotting an alien landscape. But inside these containers, the galleries did not disappoint.

With the autumn equinox upon us in not a week, East Village gallery Karma presented a booth where all the work was related to the moon, including artists repped by the gallery—such as Paul Mogensen, Mathew Cerletty, and Matthew Wong—as well as a Ralph Albert Blakelock landscape from the 19th century. A small Gertrude Abercrombie not in the excellent show currently up at the gallery shows a cat with especially excited blue eyes, and a full moon in the background; steps away is a Nicolas Party painting of a more coy-faced feline, this time with sapphire-colored fur, again with a full moon looming overhead.

The gallery’s owner, Brendan Dugan, said it had done pretty well as the end of Saturday drew near—cue the moon—and there was a full day of the fair still to come Sunday. Over at the 303 Gallery booth, an Alicja Kwade work had sold for $42,000, and at Marlborough Contemporary, fairgoers gawked at a glorious large Alex Katz painting, Ada Smiling (1993). Meanwhile, a rock sculpture by Lars Fisk—the artist who designed the storage containers guests stood in—sold by Saturday.

Peter Coffin, DeLorean, 2014. © Photo by Rob Rich/SocietyAllure.com, 2018. Courtesy of The Bridge.

David Zwirner brought an extension of the Wolfgang Tillmans show that opened at the gallery in Chelsea last Thursday, and successfully sold five of them, at prices between $10,000 and $35,000. Morán Morán, showing at the fair for the first time, lugged out east a massive Torey Thornton work that co-owner Mills Morán described as “a museum piece.” It’s called Coagulated Foundation Tucked Into Petri, Night Night (current)(bar code) (2018), and the canvas was taking up the whole wall, featuring pillars upon which Thornton had spray-painted the names of his favorite bands and musicians.

Perhaps the priciest work of art on view was Tom Sachs’s Building #3 (2018), a massive installation the artist had created over the course of two-and-a-half weeks over the summer. It’s up a hill, and upon approach, it looks like a NASA science hut in Antarctica, a giant dome atop a flag-spangled base. Inside, there are benches that can seat six and bunk beds that can sleep two. There’s also a mirror where one can retouch their makeup with Chanel products, and a fully stocked bar with bottles of vodka and mezcal, though the mezcal was finished by the time I left the capsule.

The work is being offered by Vito Schnabel Gallery, and I had the idea that some collectors might be put off by the $525,000 price tag—not to mention the fact that any buyer would need the exhibition space to install a 20-foot-wide, 13-foot-tall work. And yet the gallery had fielded a number of interested parties throughout the day, according to one of its dealers.

Despite the success of some galleries at The Bridge, it may be a little early to proclaim that the world of car collectors and art collectors have officially fused. Dealers said that while a few new faces wandered in to look at work and announced themselves as car collectors, the artworks that sold went mostly to established clients of the gallery.

The art and car scene melded just for a second, at the end of the day, when I spotted the one car in the art fair area: a work that Peter Coffin made for “LIVING,” a 2014 show of his at Red Bull Art Space. The sculpture is a vintage DeLorean that Coffin covered in sloganeering bumper stickers, giving a new sort of message to the can made iconic by Back to the Future as the strange car that Doc Brown turned into a time machine by installing the flux capacitor. As the storage containers got locked up, Coffin hopped in the driver’s seat, and with the winged doors still high up in the air, revved the engine of the artwork and drove off out of the art fair.

from Artsy News

[arushisoni-blog]

Physical Fitness Equipment Market Industry Growth Report by 2025

Global Physical Fitness Equipment Market: Snapshot

Continuous research on human body structure has paved way for technological advancements and innovation of fitness equipment, thus escalating the development of the global market for physical fitness equipment. Technological advancements include the incorporation of several components in a single unit, ensuring miniaturization at the same time. The expanding presence of internet is facilitating the greater access to training tutorials and expert opinions. This, in turn, is stoking the growth of the market. However, the high price of these equipment is restricting their widespread adoption.

On the basis of product, the global physical fitness equipment market can be divided into strength training and cardiovascular training. The market will witness a sharp rise in the demand for fitness equipment for strength training in the coming years, thanks to rising disposable income and growing youth population. These equipment are used to improve muscular strength and enhance one’s personality and appearance. The cardiovascular segment will account for a substantial share in the market. Health benefits such as heart rate conditioning, fat burning, metabolism improvement, and body toning are driving the adoption of cardiovascular fitness equipment.

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Based on end user, the market can be bifurcated into health clubs and home. Health clubs will be a major revenue contributor during the forecast period. The competitive benefits offered by health clubs such as gym training and diet plans are resulting in the greater footfall, which in turn is triggering the deployment of physical fitness equipment. The growth of the home segment can be attributed to the increasing health awareness and busy lifestyles. However, problems related to space at houses can limit the segment from realizing its utmost potential.

Physical Fitness Equipment Market: General Outline

According to World Health Organization (WHO) report, approximately three million individuals die due to obesity and its related disorders, which include cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, stroke, and others. Increased weight related diseases have triggered the market for physical fitness equipment. There has been a considerable rise in demand for treadmill, exercise bike, steppers, free weights, weightlifting machines, home fitness products, and fitness monitors in the recent past.

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The U.S. records for the highest number of overweight population, while South East Asia has the lowest obesity rate. It is also worth noting that higher income groups contribute to obese population, in the developed countries. Reduced physical activities in the young age groups, and inactive lifestyle has increased weight related issues, these factors have pressurized government and other institutes to increase awareness regarding physical fitness.

Physical Fitness Equipment Market: Inclusive Insight

The primary target of the physical fitness equipment market is the younger population, however a considerable amount of demand is generated from those falling in the old age bracket. There is also a high demand for home physical fitness products, due to the busy and hectic lifestyle of consumers. Exercise bike and treadmills are major contributors to the market. According to statistics published by Fitness Expo, over 15% of the population uses treadmill. Cost effective, easy functions, and wide availability are a few drivers for the treadmill market. Improved technology, and advanced ergonomic products have also assisted the adoption of home physical fitness products.

With the advent of physical fitness monitors that track number of steps taken, calories burned, and stairs climbed, sleep monitors and others, have helped in tracking performance regularly. The physical fitness market is also booming due to miniaturized devices, attractive designs, and synchronization with smart phones that act as motivators. Various governments have also taken initiatives to curb obesity by subsidizing gym memberships, also increased importance for physical fitness in school is another driving factor for the market.

Physical Fitness Equipment Market: Regional and Segment Overview

With availability of drugs in the market, and methods such as bariatric surgeries, one can see that physical fitness prevails as the primary method to maintain physical health. Due to high rate of obesity, and higher disposable income to buy expensive fitness devices, North America clearly emerges as the leader of the physical fitness equipment market. There is a growth in the market for home fitness equipment segment as opposed to the gym physical fitness segment.

China records for the second largest obese population after the U.S. globally. According to University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 46 million obese and 300 million overweight individuals were recorded in China.

Physical Fitness Equipment Market: Key Market Players

Key players in the physical fitness equipment market are BodySolid, Cybex International, Inc., Heinz Kettler Group, ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., Keys Fitness Products L.P, Life Fitness, Magnum Fitness Systems, Paramount Fitness Corp., PowerSport International, Reebok International, Star Trac, Technogym, Nautilus, Inc., and Tunturi OY Ltd. Fitbit, Jawbone, and Nike are the leading players in the fitness monitoring devices market.

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The study presents reliable qualitative and quantitative insights into:

Market segments and sub-segments

Market trends and dynamics

Supply and demand chain of the market

Market valuation (revenue and/or volume)

Key trends/opportunities/challenges

Forces defining present and estimated future state of the competitive landscape

Technological developments

Value chain and stakeholder analysis

The regional analysis covers:

North America

Latin America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East and Africa

About TMR Research

TMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in today’s supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients’ conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.

Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.

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