#except! the main leads can’t even manage professional civility!

[stylishanachronism]

If anyone has fiction podcast recs that are not about the main cast being mean to each other I am all ears

[mybg3notebook]

Lore: Well-known Characters in Faerûn

Here I'm going to explain some interesting characters worth knowing in detail that some groups in the fandom keep saying are Gale's true identity.

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.

Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in this (post)while disclaimers about Context and the popularisation and misuses of professional words in "Context, persuasion, and manipulation".

Azuth

He is the Patron of Wizards, his personal preference is toward wizardry rather than sorcery, and his philosophy fits better with the studious life of a wizard than the more haphazard practices of a sorcerer. Wizards invoke Azuth when they scribe scrolls, inscribe magic circles, attempt to memorise spells, and even when they cast spells. Often this acknowledgement comes in the form of silently forming Azuth's holy symbol, pointing the index finger of the left hand to the sky.For many wizards, the gesture is so commonplace in their lives that it becomes an unconscious habit. Azuth is represented at such sites as a hooded and bearded figure with his left hand held high, finger pointed up. Sometimes he is represented by merely the hand. 

When he was a mortal, he was a wizard who showed prowess with spells and magical lore that attracted Mystryl’s attention, and after completing several quests to prove his worth, she named him Magister (old title in 1e and 2e, different to Chosen, related to a more bureaucratic role of Magic). With the new title, he taught magic to many people across Faerûn. 

Azuth came into conflict with a minor southern deity: Savras the All-Seeing. Both were powerful spellcasters and Mystryl favoured both. They began a battle that lasted several years, using agents, magic traps, and personal spell-battles. Azuth managed to defeat the young deity and imprison him. With this victory Azuth ascended to godhood, became Mystryl's lover, and pledged to serve her. 

During the Spellplague, Azuth fell to the Hells and Asmodeus consumed his divine spark to achieve godhood. It was thought that this had destroyed Azuth, but instead he ended up inhabiting Asmodeus' body together. Most of the time Asmodeus had control over the dormant Azuth. In 1486, Azuth managed to have a Cormyrian war wizard as a Chosen, and began to struggle with Asmodeus for dominion over their shared body. As a consequence, the hierarchy of the Nine Hells is jeopardized due to the unbalanced Asmodeus. After a while, The Chosen of Azuth sacrifices his life to be a vessel for the god and let him escape from the Hells. After the Second Sundering, Azuth returned to the faerunian pantheon.

Where is he in 1492?

Now, he has returned to the Faerunian pantheon, and considering Ao's ban, he can't be walking around Faerûn. 

Can Gale be Azuth? I certainly can't see it. Azuth has been trapped in the Hells for most of Gale's life, returning to the pantheon recently. And we can't forget Ao's ban of direct contact: no god can have direct contact with mortals anymore, with the strange exception of Mystra (see the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones" for more details). Besides, if Gale were to be Azuth's avatar, we are usually talking about characters over lvl 40. 

The only link we can agree with Gale is that Azuth also has storm motif concepts in his design. Gale tends to explain with his pointing finger extended, but as it's said in the lore books, this is basically an unconscious common body language in most wizards. I cannot see any resemblance to make us infer “Gale is Azuth”. 

What we can see by reading Azuth's story is why the Hells are so convoluted at this point. The blood war is unbalanced, since powerful figures such as Asmodeus had been having weak periods of leadership due to the inner fight with Azuth in his own body. For this detail alone, it is so important to give context to BG3 I considered worthy to mention.

Sources: 3e : Magic of Faerûn 5e: Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Novels: Fire in the Blood. The devil you Know

Myrkul

Myrkul had a cold, malignant intelligence, and spoke in a high whisper. He was always alert, never slept, and was never surprised. He was never known to lose his temper or be anything other than coldly amused when a mortal succeeded in avoiding his directives or chosen fates. His influence in Faerûn was imposed through fear, and he was a master of making mortals terrified of him through his words and deeds. He was the one deity that almost all human mortals could picture clearly. 

As a mortal, Myrkul's full name and title is said to have been Myrkul Bey al-Kursi. He was a powerful adventuring necromancer who travelled with Bane and Bhaal in order to acquire divinity for themselves. In -375 DR, they slayed one of the Seven Lost Gods, gaining a bit of divine power. Using it to go further, they embarked to Jergal's realm with the intention to slay him as well. 

However, Jergal—tired of his godhood—freely agreed to hand over his dominion of the underworld. As the three could not decide who among them would sit upon the throne of the dead, they left the decision to chance with a game. More details and stories of several deaths and coming backs can be briefly read in the wiki. It makes no sense to add them here since they provide nothing interesting related to Gale.

Most of Myrkul's “recent” story can be seen/read in the game Neverwinter Nights 2, the Mask of the Betrayer. The game explains how Myrkul created the Wall of the Faithless (non existent anymore in 5e and nobody knows how it was destroyed) where the souls of the faithless or those abandoned by their gods got stuck in eternal pain. The main goal of the Wall was to use all that energy to feed Myrkul. The main character of Neverwinter 2 can visit the agonising God in the Astral Plane and kill him or leave him in a slow death.

Myrkul, with Bane and Bhaal, tried to seize the Tablets of Fate from the overgod Ao and use them to rule over Faerûn and its gods. They failed and were slain during the Time of Troubles. Since then, a variety of contingency plans they had in place allowed them to be reborn afterwards.

A small group of followers across Faerûn kept Myrkul's worshipping alive despite the dire events of the Spellplague and the Second Sundering. In the 1400’s, he is considered to have returned with the three dead in a quasi-deity condition. 

While the Sundering forced the other gods to withdraw their direct influence from the mortal world, the Dead Three remained behind in mortal form as quasi-divine beings. While their power has diminished, they remain a formidable trio and play a malevolent role in influencing events on Faerûn.

Where is he in 1492?

He is clearly somewhere in Faerûn, with Bhaal and Bane most probably (we have strong leads to assume that the Absolute is them, getting as many worshippers as they can to recover their deity status, since now they are only quasi-deities)

Can Gale be Myrkul? I honestly can't see anything that we can use to link him to Myrkul without making it look like an absurdity. The easiest argument to revoke that nonsense is that Gale clearly is not a quasi-deity. 

A quasi-deity is immune to every attempt to tamper with their mind (which would nullify the tadpole effect, and would make Gale immune to any tadpole intrusion, which is not the case as we saw in the post of "The Tadpole"). A quasi-deity is also immune to sap its vitality, or to force it into a different form. It has a strong defence against magic and a limited defence against heat. Weapons not enchanted with magic of an epic scope could not hurt a quasi-deity without problems. These defences against magic, heat, and non-magical physical attacks grew stronger as a deity rose in rank. It is crystal clear that none of this applies to Gale, the squishy wizard of the group. 

This comparison is nonsense, especially if we think that some people supported it because “Gale's robes have clasps in the shape of triangles”, which was considered an incomplete symbol of Myrkul. So... I really won't waste time in this comparison. I just did it because I wanted to offer a summary to compare Myrkul (the three dead more precisely) with The Absolute. This idea is very strong when we think that in 5e DM book is explaining that a quasi-deity can recover their godhood condition if they amassed a sufficiently high number of followers (which is what The Absolute is doing). But this should be done in another post related to the Absolute. 

Source:  2e: Faith and pantheon, 5e: Descent to Avernus, Dungeon Master's guide

Karsus 

Karsus was born in Netheril in -696 DR. He was able to cast his first spell at the age of two, and by the age of twenty-two created his own floating city. He also founded a magic school encouraging radical thinking to keep pushing magical discoveries. A seer warned Karsus that soon Mystryl would face the greatest challenge of her divine life, so worried about the consequences of this, Karsus created his spell Karsus' Avatar with the objective to protect the Netheril civilization. This spell would steal the power of a deity and transfer it to him, giving him divine power to protect his people from Mystryl's challenge and destroy the magical aberrations that had been attacking Netheril (phaerimms) for years. He was very aware that the feat could cost him his life, but he accepted it as a worthy sacrifice to protect his people as well as remain in the History as an iconic figure.

In -339 DR, Karsus chose Mystryl, the goddess of magic, as his target, feeling that she was the most powerful deity and the most appropriate choice for his purposes. However, this was a mistake. The responsibilities of the deity of magic are to regulate the flow of magic to and from all beings, spells, and magic items in the world. Unable to fulfil Mystryl's function with the Weave, Karsus causes a surge of magic and violent fluctuations. 

In an attempt to save the Weave, Mystryl sacrificed herself to block Karsus's access to the Weave, causing all magic to cease for several minutes. The flying cities of Netheril (fuelled by magic) fell to the ground. The severing of the link also killed Karsus, who turned into stone and fell to the ground, seeing his entire civilisation being destroyed because of his actions. This is known as Karsus's Folly. 

The stone form of Karsus eventually landed in a part of the High Forest, now called the Dire Wood. Karsus was never accepted as a petitioner by any god, nor did he go to the Fugue Plane when he died. Instead, his soul was bound to the Material Plane. Those with experience in pact magic could call up his vestige, where he appeared as a giant blood-red boulder, like the one found in the High Forest where his petrified form landed. Blood burbles up from the top of the stone, trickling down the side facing the summoner, pooling at the base. Karsus granted the summoner a boost in magical ability, though he also imparted some of the arrogance he was renowned for. 

Where is he in 1492?

Even in death, Karsus' undying spirit persists in the chaotic magic of the Dire Wood. His essence is ensnared in a single point of time by the magic of the lich Wulgreth, and it manifests in three separate pieces. Each manifestation contains one portion of Karsus' tripartite spirit. It is believed that Karsus cannot depart from the Realms until his sundered spirit is reforged into one. 

Karsus' mortal body survives as a tall butte of red stone embedded in the ground and eroded by the elements. This manifestation radiates heavy magic (read the post about the "Orb" for more details)

Karsus' gigantic, ever bleeding heart beats within the butte itself. This manifestation is essentially powerless, but it cannot be destroyed. Karsus' heart continuously radiates an enchantment similar to the sadness effect produced by the 4th level wizard spell Emotion.

The final third piece is inside an animated golem created by Wulgreth. This manifestation bleeds an ever-flowing stream of blood like liquid which mingles with the Heartblood River, giving it its characteristic colour.

So, can Gale be Karsus? Hardly. Karsus' spirit is not even complete. One could ask if Gale is a part of Karsus? I don't see it either: each of these parts are stuck in the different stones across the Dire Wood, and since it was a lich who made the binding I see little reason to suspect how a piece of Karsus' spirit stuck in the middle of the continent reached a baby in Waterdeep. 

Sources: 2e: Magic of Faerun, Powers and Pantheons 3e: Lords of Darkness

Elminster 

Elminster was born in 212 DR, son of a prince of Athalantar. His parents were killed by mages and at the age of 12 he became a brigand and thief. With a friend thief, Elminster committed many acts of thievery together and lived life fully, creating the gang the Velvet Hands after a number of adventures. 

Elminster tried to desecrate a temple of Mystra as a gesture of vengeance for the goddess having not defended his parents when they were killed by mages. Mystra appeared before him, and despite Elminster's defiance, she offered him the power to take revenge for his dead parents. Elminster accepted, and Mystra turned him into a woman to see “the world with female eyes” and to strengthen his bond with magic before being a proper Chosen. This transformation also helped Elminster to pass unnoticed among his enemies. He spent a long time learning magic in this shape, taught by Mystra's avatar in disguise. When her disguise was uncovered, she and Elminster slept together and she offered him to become her Chosen. By that time, Elminster accepted any command from the Goddess, his defiance was completely gone. 

In 241DR he travelled to the city of Cormanthor and continued his magical studies.

Somewhere around the mid–7th century DR, Elminster entered a tomb and became trapped there in stasis for roughly a century. He emerged from the dusty tomb in 759 DR. By that time Magic was unreliable (Mystra was possessing Elué's body to conceive her daughters). The god Azuth told him that he couldn't rely on Mystra or magic for aid. Soon he had to learn how to survive without magic. He later underwent further magical training under the tutelage of a wicked sorceress who sought to tempt him away from Mystra's path. During a fake ritual for Bane, she revealed herself to be the goddess Mystra herself, once again testing him. 

In 767 DR, Elminster became a foster parent to three other of Mystra's Chosen: Laeral Silverhand, Storm Silverhand, and Dove Falconhand. 

In 851 DR, Elminster mentored the newly-appointed Chosen of Mystra, Sammaster, in how to use his new powers. 

During the Harpstar Wars in 1222 DR, Elminster defeated the Zulkir of Necromancy, Szass Tam, and earned himself (and the Harpers) the enmity of Thay. 

In 1358 DR, just before the Time of Troubles, Mystra gained some foreknowledge and backed up her power into Midnight, the human wizard, so it would not be lost. During this time, Elminster, like most wizards who received his power from Mystra/the Weave, was left powerless once more. 

In 1371 DR, the new Mystra stripped away many of Elminster's memories of her former incarnation's secrets. By the end of that year, he was called to Blackstaff Tower to discuss the phaerimm attack. The whole event ended up being related to a planificated attack from the Shadovars. Since shadovar were living shadow magic, and silver fire was raw magic, the collision between the two tore at the fabric of reality, creating a rift to the Nine Hells. Elminster realized that the only way to close the portal before legions of devils spilled forth into Toril was to close it from the other side. He did it, being trapped on the other side and at the expense of much of his magical strength. 

Once in Hell, he was abducted and enslaved by an outcast archdevil known as Nergal, who wished to discover the secret of Mystra's silver fire. Elminster was subject to brutal tortures, surviving only because of his exceptional endurance and ability to heal himself with silver fire. Mystra tried to save him herself, but ended up sending several Chosen ones instead. Only The Simbul was successful in his rescue.

In 1373 DR, Elminster discovered a daughter he had never known, conceived against his will with a dragon thanks to Mystra's intervention.

Following the death of Mystra in 1385 DR and the collapse of the Weave during the Spellplague, Elminster was stripped of many of his abilities as one of the Chosen, though he still aged as slowly as he had for the previous millennium and was still quite powerful magically. However, every use of his magic drove him insane. When this happened, only Storm was able to bring his mind back, giving off her own essence to soothe Elminster's mind. Despite these setbacks, Elminster and Storm continued with their campaign to save Faerûn, battling evil and fixing the Weave where they could.

In 1479 DR, Elminster sought to gain access to artifacts known to contain the spirits of the Nine—objects powerful enough to permanently restore the Simbul's sanity.

During one of his excursions for these artefacts, Elminster's body was destroyed by Manshoon, who had secretly been peeling away the Old Mage's contingency spells over several years. However, Manshoon departed before he realized that Elminster had survived his body's destruction in a near-undead state. With the agreement of Amarune and the aid of Storm, Elminster's essence was placed in Amarune's body with the aid of a spell the ex-Chosen had discovered in a cache once belonging to Azuth. Later, thanks to the sacrifice of the Simbul, he regained his former body again and ruined for good Manshoon's claim to the throne of Suzail.

In 1487 DR, Elminster (with the help of the Srinshee, Alustriel, and Laeral Silverhand) stopped Shar as well as Larloch from becoming the new deity of magic. He killed Telamont Tanthul and let Thultanthar fall upon Myth Drannor. Along the way, Mystra was completely restored. 

In 1491 DR, Elminster returned to the city of Waterdeep, aiding the newly appointed Open Lord of Waterdeep, Laeral Silverhand, to uncover the culprits behind a string of murders of Masked Lords. 

Sincerely, there is a lot of content left outside this summary because Elminster’s material is a lot. A LOT.

Where is he in 1492?

The last time we know about Elminster’s whereabouts is during the book Dead Masks, a year before BG3. He has been working in Mystra’s name in Waterdeep when Hidden Lords have been assassinated. It’s very hard to conceive Gale as Elminster in disguise. Elminster has a different personality and a very obvious pattern of speech, sounding more like a mixture of a scholar and a farmer, and using expressions like Nay, aye, and so on. Elminster being abandoned by Mystra is also a strange concept because if there is something very clear from all the material we can read about his adventures is that Mystra loves him with a particular and exceptional love. He was the only Chosen that, when he was being tortured in the Hells, she attempted to save him by herself, risking her life (obviously, then she changed her mind and sent several Chosen ones that died in the process). 

Also, if Gale were Elminster, he should sustain a spell of disguise constantly (many people know Elminster, an old man of white hair and beard), which is also very unlikely for a lvl1 wizard to do. 

Source: 3e: Elminster: The Making of a Mage. The Temptation of Elminster. Dead Masks

Sammaster

He was born in 800 DR, probably in Sembia, the Dalelands, or the North. At age of 17, fascinated by the theory of the Arts and how magic works, Sammaster became a follower of Mystra. He was a gaunt man of poor health, full of eccentricities: he never remained in one place for too long, he skipped his meals and sleep in favour of learning, and it's suspected to have fathered a countless number of children. 

Before being 40 y/o he acquired the skills of an archmage and he discovered, rediscovered, or improved numerous spells in the advanced theory of magic known as "metamagic". All this discovery of knowledge and magic (so favoured by Mystra as we can see in the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones") granted him the attention of the Goddess, who appeared before him. 

At his 50 y/o Sammaster saw his most fervent dream appear before his very eyes. He was both awestruck and smitten with passion as he fell to his knees and wept upon Mystra’s feet. Raising him to meet her gaze, Mystra responded to his unspoken question and swept him into her embrace. They spent a tenday together, and at the end of that period, Mystra asked him if he thought he was worthy and strong enough to carry a part of her divine power within him. Despite not knowing what she meant, Sammaster accepted anyway, becoming the first Chosen after she conceived her seven daughters. Mystra explained that she had chosen him for his development in metamagic but also because she had foreseen the death of an already Chosen one (Syluné) whose place she wanted immediately filled with Sammaster.

Sammaster was ordered to be in contact with Elminster to learn more about his new condition of Chosen. Sammaster and Elminster developed a tense situation mostly because Sammaster's obsessive love for the Goddess deepened while Elminster kept reminding him that her only consort was Azuth.

Dejected for the truth that he would never have a personal long-lasting relationship with Mystra, Sammaster focused on understanding the powers of the Chosen and the mysteries of the Lady in himself and in Toril. However, a seed of resentment started to grow.

In 855 Sammaster found a Zhentarin slave caravan resting in a camp. In it, he found three large cage carts full of peasants taken from the farmlands in the surrounding area. Enraged, Sammaster attacked the Zhentarin using his spells and Silver Fire, but in the process he killed many innocents he wanted to save. His mind snapped that day. Despite trying to convince himself that the Zhentarins were to blame, this episode was—without any doubt—the seminal event that irrevocably turned Sammaster down the path to madness and, eventually, evil.

Years later he started to develop his interest in necromancy in an attempt to return those innocents he had killed, trying to find a way to revive the dead. During this time his interest was focused on the undead, and forged relationships with some liches. How did Mystra allow this? At that time, Mystra was a much more neutral deity. Her primary interest was the use and development of magic; she cared little about how it was used or by whom. As long as Sammaster continued to advance the theories of magic and push forward its frontiers for all mortals, Mystra turned a blind eye to his necromancy interests.

In 861 DR Sammaster met Alustriel, Chosen of Mystra, and fell in love with her. His unbalanced mind seemed to finally find some peace and stability, but his obsession —at first focused on Mystra—now turned upon Alustriel, wanting to master her, to make her entirely his, and to make her world revolve around him. Disturbed with Sammaster's necromancy research and his increasing need for control over her, Alustriel broke up with him.

Afterwards, while deepening in his experiments with necromancy, Sammaster befriended Algashon Nathaire, a priest of Bane who had formerly been a mage. In the unstable Sammaster, Algashon saw the chance to create a formidable tyrant. Bane must also have seen the chance to rob one of his most powerful enemy’s Chosen of his last vestiges of sanity and perhaps his powers or even his life. 

Presented as a friend, Algashon manipulated Sammaster into thinking that all his failures and problems were the fault of that uncaring goddess and her equally inconsiderate servants, her so-called "Chosen". Sammaster resisted this subtle indoctrination at first, only to be painfully reminded of the events at the slavers' camp (the Zhents' fault, of course), his uneasy relationship with Elminster, his failure to win the love of Mystra (Azuth's fault and Elminster's for pointing it out so hard-heartedly), and his failure to win Alustriel (her fault and that of her Goddess). As time went on, Sammaster argued against these superficial, easy excuses less and less, and Algashon's lies wove their way deeper into the unhappy and unstable mage's mind. The next step of Algashon was to steal the secrets of the power of the Chosen. To do that, he encouraged Sammaster to use his Chosen power at every opportunity.

Rather than risking their pawn's life (yet) by attempting to strip the silver fire from Sammaster outright, Bane and Algashon decided to try and arrange to steal another Chosen's silver fire: given her past with Sammaster, Algashon chose Alturiel. This way Sammster fought Alturiel, aiming silver fire against her. Losing the battle against a maniacal Sammaster, Alustriel called for help from Laeral Silverhand and Khelben Arunsun. The three of them won the combat against Sammaster.

Azuth presented himself on Mystra's behalf and removed Sammaster's Chosen condition. When the other Chosen left the place, Algashon helped Sammaster, affixing the immortality of the Chosen ones in his body despite having lost his powers. While he could be destroyed, Sammaster continued to remain ageless and to heal from wounds very quickly. However, as a side-effect of this spell, Sammaster lost his last vestige of sanity and morality that may have remained in his clouded mind. 

In 887 DR Sammaster retranslated old texts of a prophecy, highlighting the importance of undead dragons and creating soon afterward his own Cult. In his insanity, he kept doing more necromancy research focused on turning dragons into draconlich to follow this prophecy. His first success in turning a dragon (Shargrailar) into an undead made his cult famous. In this way, Sammaster earned a powerful weapon with which threatened many across Faerun and obtained an enormous amount of money. Even the rich nobles paid tribute when the Cult threatened to send Shargrailar to burn their farmlands and villages to ash. Sammaster did not think to oppress the peasants for their coppers, but the noble powerful ones.

In 960 DR, his cult finally adopted the name “Cult of the Dragon”, even though “Cult of the Dracolich” could be more appropriate, even though Shargrailar still looked like a normal dragon. By that time the cult increased too much for Sammaster and Algoshon to control, so Sammaster wrote all his wisdom in a book called Tome of the Dragon that would turn into the core of the cult, helping them to spread Sammaster's ideas beyond their limitations. 

The popularity of the cult was not missed by several groups. The Harpers tried to destroy it, but they failed. The Zhentarims are also against Sammaster's cult since their activities are limited with the constant threat of the Dragon Shargrailar. More groups were added to the cult's list of foes, but Sammaster ignored them or sent them a dragon to destroy them. Not merely mad now, Sammaster was becoming drunk with a level of power he had not felt since before he had been stripped of his powers as one of the Chosen. Algashor suggested that he keep a low profile in order to protect the cult, but his advice was ignored.

In 916 DR, The Harpers developed a plan to eliminate Sammaster and weaken the cult itself. The battle was brutal and Sammaster seemed to win by the end of it, commanding an army of undead and experimental creatures. Sammaster would have won had not Lathander sent a battle avatar, enraged by the undead abominations that Sammaster created. After an intense battle, Lathander incinerated Sammaster. However, Sammaster had planned ahead: he had sent his mind to a phylactery before being killed.

With the phylactery and a special book of the Tome of the Dragon, a loyal cultist called Zotulla had been ordered by Sammaster to create a new cell of the cult in the Northwest. However, Zotulla failed and died at the hands of an orc war party who discarded the phylactery and the book. Both items were lost for more than 300 years, until a shaman may have deciphered the instructions in the book and raised Sammaster as a lich.

In 1282 Sammaster rose as a lich and began to gather the remnants of his cult once more. Harpers and some countries began to plan to defend themselves from this danger again. In 1285 a group of adventuring paladins known as the Company of Twelve supported by the Harpers, attacked the lich and killed him at a great cost. However, neither the phylactery nor the book were found. The possibility for him to return is high. 

In 1373DR Sammaster completed the transformation of the Dracorage Mythal. This was a Mythal created by elves around -25.000DR which had a maddening effect on dragons, making them lose their minds for several tendays. This effect used to be linked to the appearance of the comet King-Killer Star in the sky. When Sammaster transformed this mythal by binding his phylactery to it, its maddening effect was no longer constrained by the appearance of the comet but linked instead to his own life force. Only Dracoliches remained unaffected by Sammaster’s endless, ever-intensifying Dracorage effect. This fact forced wyrms to join his Cult and accept to be transformed into dracoliches or suffer permanent madness. By manipulating this effect, Sammaster tried to retake control over his Cult. However, a group of adventurers destroyed the mythal—thus Sammaster’s phylactery—and put an end to this effect. 

Where is he in 1492?

So, is Gale Sammaster? Lore-wise, to destroy a lich for good you need to destroy their phylactery. This has been done in 1373DR, therefore, I hardly see any potential for Sammaster to raise again. And here is where any possible argument ends. 

What Sammaster's story shows us is that Mystra's sudden abandonment is not uncommon once she gave them their Chosen powers. In the report of the Harpers that narrate Sammaster's life in the book Cult of the dragon (2e), there are some comments pointing out how Mystra, despite noticing Sammaster's madness, allowed him to follow his dark path. One may speculate that maybe Mystra uses the obsession that she may cause in some of her Chosen ones, in order to make them eager to explore beyond their limits so she can acquire knowledge or control of new magic. 

Certainly, what Sammaster and Gale share in common is how they were favoured by Mystra, had a affair with her, and soon afterwards she stopped “whispering” in their ears. Their condition as Chosen had been kept intact, but their madness in one case, or their devotion in the other, made them go too far. Sammaster ended up being a toy of a priest of Bane, while Gale simply made the mistake of thinking himself capable of controlling an unknown magic to impress Mystra in order to have once more her attention on him. More than this is walking on the headcanon terrain since the game in EA can't provide more information. 

Source book: Cult of the dragon (2e), Dragons of Faerun (3.5e)

Conclusion

The truth is that Gale is Kirby. He doesn't only eat artefacts but also Faerûn iconic characters as well (joke done by a reddit user)

In my personal interpretation, I hardly see Gale as the incarnation of anyone. First, it would be very, very lazy writing. Characters such as Sammaster, Elminster, or Azuth tend to be NPCs. We found some of them in games such as previous Baldur’s Gate games or Neverwinter nights.

But the main and strongest argument against secretly being any of these characters is that he is an origin character. All companions are potential players in their origins. Anyone who played DOS2 AND played an origin character would understand this: there is no plot twist of that magnitude in their personal backstories that would erase completely the essence and the personality of the character. All that sensitive information is previously stated. 

All what we need to know about the origin char is basically said in the BG3 webpage. Those descriptions are the same ones found in the game, which changed after EA was released in Astarion’s and Gale’s case, showing—in my opinion—that Larian changed them a bit at the last stage of development. These descriptions spoil every secret that the characters have. This doesn’t mean their more complex background should not be part of a plot twist later in the game, but it would not have the impact of erasing completely the RPG characters you were playing for a while. 

Every companion has a secret spoiled in their descriptions: Astarion, his vampire condition; Shadowheart, her Shar faith and he mission; Wyll, Mizora; Lae’zel, the tadpole (not for the group, but for her people); Gale, the “orb”. All these secrets are informed beforehand to the player for them to pick an Origin if they want to play it and make it their own. As companions, we learn these secrets early (act 1). This happens in act 1 of DOS2 too.

A player choosing an origin has to be informed of the character’s secrets and motivations at the moment they pick it. Otherwise, it would ruin their RPG experience, making the player unaware of their own character’s true nature. This doesn’t mean that deepening their backgrounds would not make us discover information we don’t know. My point is, it won't remove the character’s persona turning him into a character very well known in lore. 

Gale, so far, seems to be a pretty fair standard wizard who had a young obsession over Mystra (quite common in terms of lore for those who stand before her), which brought him troubles and made him prone to mistakes (as, once more, we know it tends to happen in lore). The justification why he was Chosen is also clear from a lore point of view: we have a context post-Spellplague that made Gale's skills more than useful for Mystra. In my opinion, there is nothing else abysmally suspicious beyond these points, and if there are more secrets, it seems fair to think that not even Gale is aware of them. 

This post was written in June2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index

[mst3kproject]

Voodoo Island

Leonard Maltin thought this movie was boring, which is, honestly, kind of terrifying.  Its ostensible star is Boris Karloff, who somehow managed to avoid ever being on MST3K, but it was produced by Howard Koch, the director of Untamed Youth, and was written by Richard Laundau, who did the same for Lost Continent (uhoh).  It’s also got Jean Engstrom from The Space Children, and if the voice of the radio operator sounds familiar that’s because it’s 🎶 Adam Weeeeeest.

A hotel company wants to build a resort on a tropical island, but the scouting party they sent never came back – except for one guy, Mitchell, who has been reduced to a catatonic state by whatever it was he saw there.  Worried, the hotelier sends renowned skeptic Mr. Knight to find out if it’s true that the island is under some kind of voodoo curse.  After much wasting of the audience’s time, Knight’s party reaches the island and finds it infested with man-eating plants, coconut crabs, and unfriendly natives.  I wish I could tell you more of the plot, but that’s basically all there is.

Voodoo Island is unusual as bad movies go, in that you don’t actually realize how bad it is until it’s over.  Things that seem to be the plot move merrily along, always feeling like it’s building up to something cool… and then at the last moment it just deflates like a gas station tube man with his fan turned off.  In hindsight, the audience realizes that very little of what they just saw had anything to do with what was supposedly going on. In many ways, you never do find out what was going on at all!

The middle section of this movie is not quite as obviously padded as Lost Continent with its endless rock climbing, but almost all of it is, retrospectively, pointless.  On the first leg of their journey to the island, the party’s plane is caught in a storm and forced to make an emergency landing – only to find that the weather has mysteriously cleared right up!  After repairing their radio they set off again, and nothing much comes of the incident.  They stop on another island where they have trouble hiring a boat, and where somebody puts a curse of some sort on them.  Nothing comes of this.  Later still, their boat stalls out and refuses to start again, even after they’ve cleared a blocked fuel line.  This has no real consequences, because the tide carries them in anyway, and the movie never deals with what happens when they try to leave the island again.

Along for the ride is Mitchell, the guy who was so terrified by what he saw on the island that he hasn’t moved or spoken since. He has a couple of medical emergencies that resolve themselves without long-term consequences, and then simply drops dead before they ever reach the island.  They don’t learn anything from him or his condition.  A similar fate later befalls another character, Finch, but this time the movie ends before he has a chance to either die or snap out of it. Mitchell is only in this movie to make it longer, and possibly so it could claim it had a zombie.

With the movie already half-over, we finally reach this mysterious island.  The group are greeted by a trail of clues that make Knight thing somebody is trying to lead them somewhere… perhaps to answers, perhaps to a trap.  Eventually they’re captured by the natives, but there’s no reason they had to be in a particular place for this to happen – the natives have been following them the whole time and could have intervened at any point.  None of this stuff reads as padding because it feels like it’s going to lead to something.  Again, it’s only when the credits unexpectedly start to roll that you realize almost the whole movie was irrelevant.

Padding is not Voodoo Island’s only problem – the dialogue is awkward at best.  Most of it is on a Revenge of the Sith level, where characters just say exactly what they’re thinking in a way that might have sounded poetic on paper but just doesn’t work out loud.  The boat captain, Gunn, gets a Gunslinger moment in which he narrates his traumatic backstory in a single talking head shot.  Knight is forever going on about Rational Explanations and then suddenly declares his change of heart when confronted with a voodoo doll.  There’s no meat to this arc at all, no sense of Knight questioning his worldview or coming to terms with anything – he just says I do believe! like he’s in a Santa Claus movie and then it’s over.

The worst of both the dialogue and the supposed character arcs occur in the love story.  There are girls in this movie, so of course there has to be a love story, and it’s terrible.  The lady half of this one is Knight’s assistant Miss Adams, who is very poised and professional and doesn’t smoke or drink, and spends the first half of the movie being tutted at by just about everybody.  The other woman in the group, Claire, tells her she could just be so pretty if she’d only change the way she did her hair.  Gunn calls her a ‘machine’ and asks if she even knows how to be a woman.  This raises some hackles in the modern viewer, who wants to see Adams appreciated for what she is rather than what she has the potential to be if she changes everything about herself.

But Voodoo Island was made in the fifties, when changing yourself to please a man was what women aspired to!  Miss Adams therefore swears off being a nerd and kisses Gunn, whose main personality trait is being a stunning asshole.  He’s drunk and bitter, and earlier in the movie he tried to hit on Claire, who had to tell him to fuck off about four times before he got the idea.  Later he insults and threatens Adams because her intelligence makes him feel like less of a man.  Apparently one kiss from her completely undoes his PTSD and he’s a better person now.

These two getting together also totally dismisses the healthy and supportive friendship Adams has with Knight, who is not only her boss but has some fatherly affection for her.  He praises her work ethic and tells her that she shouldn’t listen to people who think she’s boring.  I guess we’re supposed to think it’s good that she quits working for him so she can run off with a drunk who’s threatened to slap her, because Gunn will make her life more exciting.

At the supposed climax, the natives (an assortment of ethnic-looking extras who never speak) take the group prisoner, and they are brought before the chief (a white guy in dark makeup), who tells them why outsiders aren’t allowed on the island.  The prisoners are taken to a hut where they are tied up.  One of them is possibly murdered by voodoo, and then the chief… just lets the rest of them leave.  No conditions specified, although it’s implied that the islanders have more voodoo dolls and plenty of pins.  We don’t even find out if they actually made it back.  To get to their boat, the party will have to pass back through the carnivorous jungle without a guide, and once they reach the beach, they’ll have to fix their engine.  It really feels like there ought to have been more of a climax, never mind a denouement. As the credits begin, I was just going, “that’s it?”

The actors are mostly mediocre.  Boris Karloff tries really hard to rise above the material but never gets there, which is understandable when his lines are things like, “no, you fool, they’ll slaughter us to bits!”.  All this badness really is a terrible shame, too, because Voodoo Island’s setpiece monsters, the man-eating plants, are actually incredibly cool.  They never look real, but they’re much more creative than the standard giant Venus’ flytrap.  There’s a thing that wraps long bean-like leaves around a swimmer and drowns her, another than catches its victims with a sticky bulbous stem, and yet a third that folds ferny fronds around prey and digests it!  A movie that made proper use of these monsters would be a great time. I hope the prop people went on to the better things they deserved.

(At the other end of the effects scale are the coconut crabs I mentioned.  These are not actual coconut crabs, but dead specimens of some other, much more gracile species.  This, too, is unfortunate, because coconut crabs are living crustacean nightmares capable of killing and eating seagulls.  One theory about Amelia Earhart’s ultimate fate is that she was devoured by coconut crabs.)

As for Voodoo Island having anything to say… it has some kind of muddled point about not dismissing the supernatural out of hand, but its ‘magic’ is pretty lame, and Knight’s arc is handled so badly that it passes by without making much of an impression.  The story does seem to have another possible theme, though.  As usual I can’t tell if this is intentional or not, but Voodoo Island seems to have something to say about concepts of ownership.

The hotelier has taken an interest in the island because he did an inventory of his properties and discovered he owned it. How he came to do so, we have no idea… it must have been sold to him by somebody else who’d likewise never been there, since the tribal chief tells us that Mitchell and his companions were the first white men to ever go there.  What made that person think they owned it?  Does the concept of ownership even mean anything when you don’t know that you own something?  Does owning something entitle you to destroy it?

The natives own the island in the much less abstract sense that they live there.  The chief tells the party that his people went to this island on purpose, because they thought its nasty flora would keep white people from following them there. They want no part of modern civilization, and seem completely unaware that somebody outside their community is claiming he owns this land.  Whether the idea of ‘owning’ land is even a meaningful one to them, we can’t tell. When the Lenape allowed the Dutch to live on Manhattan Island, they probably had no idea the settlers would consider the land exclusively theirs.

These are some things that still need thinking about in the twenty-first century, and if you’re going to watch Voodoo Island do it for that and for the fun monsters.  Even then, you’re likely to be disappointed.

[samueldays]

Remarks against Liberalism

(in large part open letter to @mitigatedchaos​ and his ideas of liberalism)

Abstract: 

A while back I posted “and there is another systemic complication that classical liberalism rests on a knife-edge between "let the underclass suffer" right-libertarianism on one side and "needs more social programs" left-liberalism on the other” in a chat, which miti took as a good criticism, and I made a note to expand it later. This is my expansion, presented as three main theses.

Liberalism is unstable. It is particularly vulnerable to wokism.

Liberalism is tiny. It exists in a narrow band between sweatshop libertarianism and welfare leftism.

Liberalism is in part a mirage, resulting from projections of a superstructure without its fundament.

These are interlocked theses, but I will try to set each of them out on its own.

Liberalism is unstable.

One of the liberal ideas is a sort of market competition. Products, goods, services, arguments, ideas, professionals and so forth should have to compete on their simple merits. Not on their bloodlines, not on their credentials, not on their personal traits, not on government subsidies, not on regulating competitors out of existence, and absolutely never on violence. The market, including the famous ‘marketplace of ideas’, is a public space where everyone gets to offer their goods and everyone gets to make their own purchases.

A first source of instability in this idea is second-order markets. The Apple App Store, for example, banned Gab. In theory consumers could choose to buy a non-Apple device if they wanted Gab; in practice there’s lock-in and transaction costs and transfer friction.

Second is various degrees of monopoly power. Partly, this is second-order markets but worse. Imagine if Apple could effectively ban apps or sites from most of the Internet. Partly, it allows for cross-market influences as well, to deny important services to people transacting with disfavored outlets.

The intuitive fix is “Regulate the megacorporations into not doing that” but then you’re quickly off into regulatory leftism, and this sort of regulation is one hell of a drug. Alternatively, authoritarian rightism, if you come at it from a punitive more than contractual angle.

Racial discrimination is another example of instability. The original arguments for affirmative action were very moving when they said that a level playing field was hardly “fair competition” to a group that had to start the race so far behind, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. The development of affirmative action gradually turned into increasing degrees of wokism and racial quotas and black privilege, with no clear dividing line.

(Personally, I think the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional. How far back do you want to repeal?)

Liberalism seeks to have equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

But the moment one man seizes opportunity better than the next, by whatever that man will almost certainly start trying to pass on some of his superior outcome to his children, giving them superior opportunities! A trivial example, perhaps, but one that compounds and repeats a million times.

(Again, these theses are interlocked; I will address inheritance in both the other points from different angles.)

To maintain liberalism against inheritance, then, one slides easily into State-funded schools and State-managed curricula and State-guaranteed opportunities, thereby ceding a different part of liberalism. Nor is there a strict delineation between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes. If one man is born 30 IQ points smarter than the next, in what sense can they be said to have equal opportunity? The law in its majesty forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, etc.

Wokist claims find purchase on liberalism in part because wokism is not conjured from thin air, it is aggressively expanding liberal precedents. Laws against voter intimidation lead to “Silence him, he’s triggering me”, alternate exam formats for the blind lead to educational videos being taken down because they’re not captioned, laws against overt racial discrimination lead to laws against thinly veiled racial discrimination lead to laws against disparate impact.

Liberalism is tiny.

I struggle to think of better terminology for this. Being tiny is not by itself a mark against an idea; there may well be a short sweet spot on a long spectrum of policy.

But there seems to me to be something about liberalism that is historically contingent as well as small; it’s a moving target as well as a hard target; it’s in some respects like being a “moderate” between leftists and libertarians when last century’s moderate is by now an extreme libertarian. To quote Moldbug,

Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought. If you believe the status quo of 2007 is basically righteous, then you should believe the same thing if a time machine transported you to Vienna in 1907. But if you went around Vienna in 1907 saying that there should be a European Union, that Africans and Arabs should rule their own countries and even colonize Europe, that any form of government except parliamentary democracy is evil, that paper money is good for business, that all doctors should work for the State, etc., etc.—well, you could probably find people who agreed with you. They wouldn’t call themselves “moderates,” and nor would anyone else.

The center is tiny, the fringes are endless.

Again I come to the matter of inheritance. What is the liberal position on the acceptable degree of hereditary privilege? Why is this the position that gets called ‘liberal’? How many millions of dollars can I leave to my son, at what tax rate? What if I put them in a NGO? How many millions can I spend preparing the way for him before I die? Will you respect contracts that people swore to my as-yet-unborn-son?

It’s not that I think you haven’t thought about this. It’s that I have a hard time seeing your surely carefully considered opinions on this subject as something that can be turned into a mindset or an idea separate from you. Do you have a Liberalism separate from Mitigatedism that other people can hope to converge on? Convergence is harder for things that are tiny, which is a reason why I use that word.

Liberalism is in part a mirage.

Liberalism (as historically read) for nobles, or for another well-to-do class, is fine and good. Underperforming or misbehaving class members can be kicked out. Overperforming non-members can be inducted. Liberalism for everyone seems to me to have some generalization difficulty.

Similarly, the idea of a free and open market, competitive without the pressures of mafias or megacorporations, was often the result of an imperial writ or royal guarantee. Having a monarch in charge is fairly illiberal, but abstracting away the king for a sort of ideal liberalism easily results in the entrance of other illiberal factors that the monarch was suppressing because it benefited the monarch to have a liberally run subdomain.

(If I were king, I would absolutely have liberal subdomains. They’re profitable.)

Liberalism is unstable, as argued above, and an obvious stabilizer is a king with some degree a liberal vision saying “Keep it liberal in here”, but then it’s anchored on an illiberal fundament. The king can’t fully liberalize the kingdom without giving up his own power... indeed, I would expect he can’t even half liberalize the kingdom before people start demanding he yield the rest of his powers, whether by becoming a figurehead or becoming beheaded.

And again with the inheritance question. From the mirage POV: liberalism (historically) worked between relatively similar class members who were not too far apart to begin with, or in homogenous outbred countries. But if you try to universalize it, what liberalism is there if I can buy my son such great advantages he might as well have hereditary privilege, and what liberalism is there if I can’t spend my own money on my own son? What liberalism is there if a tightly bloodbound clan refuses to play by the rules, and what liberal means exist to break up clans?

(I am not in principle opposed to breaking up clans. But I question how this would be handled in a way that is meaningfully the way of Liberalism, rather than the instrumental goal of some other ideology.)

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING YEARS

Galleries are not especially prone to waste money. But that prescription, though sufficient, is too narrow. Hence such parodies as Pets.1 The EU was designed partly to simulate a single, large domestic market.2 All you need from a launch is some initial core of users. But if ephemeralization is one of the most immediate evidence I had that something was amiss was that I couldn't talk to them. Microsoft will have a significant effect on our returns, and the rest are just a cost of doing business. So you start painting.

For users, Web-based applications, you'll find that delighting customers scales better than you expected.3 My hypothesis is that all the programmers have to be aggressive about user acquisition when you're small, you'll probably get something better. Google, and Facebook all got started.4 Stocks will generate greater returns over thirty years, you had to be pretty convincing to overcome this. If you want to keep an eye on things you've changed recently. People who majored in computer science generally tried to conceal it. The main significance of this type of profitability is that you're no longer at the mercy of investors. The other major technical advantage of Web-based startup is food and rent. A new concept of variables. The most common was some combination of a blog, a calendar, a dating site, and Friendster. It was a sign of an underlying lack of resourcefulness. Most startups fail.

He meant the Mac and its documentation and even packaging—such is the nature of platforms. In startups, developers are often forced to talk directly to users, whether they want to work on ideas that few beside them realize are good. When you interview a startup and think they seem likely to succeed than not.5 But I think that a lot of variation in the incoming stream, but instead of pursuing this thought they tended to suppress it, in the sense that all you have to do it, even print journalists.6 But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. At the time there might have been. Maybe it's just because knowledge about them hasn't permeated our culture yet.7 The best thing would be if it were inherently stupid to invest in Microsoft. If you're ramen profitable this painful choice goes away.8

It's Parkinson's Law running in reverse. The problem with India itself is that it's still so poor. Grad school makes a good launch pad for startups, because you're only replacing one segment instead of discarding the whole thing.9 The worst thing is not the optimal time to do it was turn the sound into packets and ship it over the Internet. It seemed the perfect bad idea: a site 1 for a niche market 2 with no money 3 to do something called price discrimination, which means charging each customer as much as they used to. The number of users and the problem they solved was an urgent one. The fact that you can get at least someone to pay you, getting incorporated, raising money, but you can't expect to hit that right away. Values are what have types, not variables, and assigning or binding variables means copying pointers, not what they point to. But that is at least the next Chicago.10 There's selling, promotion, figuring out what those problems are.

It used to be aware of death to a degree that violates our expectations about variation. The test drive was the way to create wealth is to make more than you spend. But success has taken a lot of money.11 You can change anything about a house except where it is. It allows you to give an impressive-looking talk about nothing, and it may be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long?12 Any strategy that omits the effort—whether it's expecting a big launch to get you users, or a professional football player. And really it never was.

I asked some friends who work for big companies.13 You can be ornery when you're Scotty, but not so wrong about the underlying principle.14 Otherwise you'll have to make something people will pay for? Imagine how depressing the world would be if it were all like school and big companies, you'd need an impressive-looking talk about nothing, and it would be possible to reproduce Silicon Valley in Japan, because one of Silicon Valley's most distinctive features is immigration. Why don't more people do it? David Filo and Jerry Yang started the Yahoo directory in February 1994 and were getting a million hits a day by the fall, but they don't realize it.15 The traditional break everything and then filter out the uncommitted. They've spent 15-20 years solving problems other people have in their heads. The good news is, choosing problems is something that has a 90% chance of failing, if you don't solve all their problems. You can be ornery when you're Scotty, but not when you're Kirk.16 Yes. A lot of would-be founders.

As Fred Brooks pointed out, small groups are intrinsically more productive, because they know that as you run out of garages. It's easy to let the days rush by. For the first week or so we intended to make this an ordinary desktop application. The more versatile the tool, the less you need the money. The amount of time you have. It was easy to tell how smart they were, and most decent hackers are capable of that. I don't think many people realize how fragile and tentative startups are in the US are auto workers, New York City schoolteachers, and civil servants happier than actors, professors, and professional athletes? We felt we were good at organizing groups and making projects happen. You're not sacrificing anything if you forgo starting a startup is merely an artifact of the way through the server market; Yahoo's servers, which deal with loads as high as any on the Internet, anything genuinely good will spread by word of mouth.

For a big company, it's good news.17 If we ever got to the point where they could raise millions from VC funds if they hadn't first raised a hundred thousand from Andy Bechtolsheim. Viaweb was a typical larval startup. If I'd had to wait a year for the next couple years, a good recipe for startups will be to remind founders they need to do is give the right sort of founder a one line intro to a VC, and he'll chase down the implications of what's said to you can sometimes lead to uncomfortable conclusions.18 If you pay them to raise the money to manufacture your own hardware, or use your software for the first time, you know what you're talking about, you can succeed by sucking up to the right people: you can tell that by the number of people who want to come to America can even get in? You never really know what's happening inside it.19 What they want is easy. Technology is a lever.

Notes

There's a sort of investor who says he's interested in each type of mail, I would be a quiet, earnest place like Cambridge in that. It's hard to predict at the time required to notice them.

Delivered as if you'd invested at a discount of 30% means when it converts. It's conceivable that a company in Germany told me they like the application of math to real problems, but nothing else: no friends, TV, go running. On the other hand, a market of one investor who says he's interested in us!

For example, would not produce a viable organism.

If they no longer working to help the company they're buying. But those are guaranteed in the sense that if colleges want to work late at night.

If not, greater accessibility. Even college textbooks is unpleasant work, done mostly by technological progress is accelerating, so presumably will the rate of improvement is more important for societies to remember and pass on the young Henry VIII and was troubled by debts all his life.

These points don't apply to types of startup people in 100 years. That's very cheap, 1/50th of a problem if you'll never need to offer especially large rewards to get to profitability on a hard technical problem. I'm also an investor, and the valuation is the place for people interested in x, and owns significant equity in it. In 1525 he was exaggerating.

You have to turn down some good proposals too.

The Industrial Revolution was one in an era of such regulations is to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a few VC firms were the impressive ones. For example, the only companies smart enough to defend their interests in political and legal disputes. Possible doesn't mean a great thing in itself deserving.

I've deliberately avoided saying whether the 25 people have historically done to their stems, but he refused because a there was near zero crossover. Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference. Com in order to win.

So in effect what the valuation a bit misleading to treat macros as a high school, approach the queen bees thereof and offer to be memorized. However, it was so violent that she decided never again. 25.

92.

Most were wrong, but the nature of server-based apps to share a virtual home directory spread across multiple servers. Indeed, that's not art because it reads as a high product of number of customers you need is a dotted line on a saturday, he was 10.

A termsheet with a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of this essay, but I don't want to believe your whole future depends on the y, you'd get ten times as much as people in any era if people can see the old version, I would take their customers.

Indeed, it causes a fundamental economic shift away from large companies. William R.

But in this essay talks about the cheapest food available. It took a back seat to philology, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that was killed partly by its overdone launch.

Dan was at the exact same thing twice. The reason not to. Peter Thiel would point out that there were 5 more I didn't like it if you want to know how many computers the worm infected, because there are some whose definition of property is driven mostly by technological progress aren't sharply differentiated. That's very cheap, 1/10 success rate for startups that have little do with the sort of community.

Many think successful startup? They each constrain the other is laziness.

Considering yourself a scientist. 43. So the cost can be useful in solving problems too, and when you had in high school textbooks. Innosight, February 2012.

And that will sign up quickest and those where the acquirer wants the employees. But if idea clashes got bad enough, maybe the corp dev people are magnified by the fact that they have less room to avoid using it out of their core values is Don't be evil. In principle companies aren't limited by the government and construction companies.

[jeromeschamp84]

Celebrants – know your limitations

We’ve been much involved with the subject of celebrancy recently. We conducted a survey to find out more about the growing numbers of funeral celebrants here in the UK. And, along with some of the main celebrant training organisations, an independent celebrant and the funeral trade associations, we’ve been looking at the standards of funeral celebrancy (more about that later this year).

Over the years, there have been over 100 GFG blog posts about celebrants – some concerned, others constructive. We observe things here at the GFG. We hear from funeral directors and their clients about exceptional ceremonies – and we also get told about dreadful, templated or ad-libbed, grandstanding ceremonies. We hear about online forums where newly trained celebrants ask for help finding poetry or readings, or ideas about structuring a ceremony.

Now, it’s a fact that some of our best friends are celebrants. This is important. This blog post comes from a position of caring not criticism. And it’s difficult to get the tone of it exactly right. Let’s start gently.

According to Wikipedia, a funeral celebrant is ‘an individual person… who offers to perform civil funerals in a dignified and culturally acceptable manner, for those who, for whatever reason, do not choose a religious ceremony.’

Training courses proliferate. Just google funeral celebrant training and see what pops up. Distance learning, online learning, group learning, one-to-one training, residential courses. There’s something for everyone. And, of course, you don’t need any actual training at all to be a funeral celebrant. (Just like the rest of the funeral sector, celebrants are unregulated).

So, market forces should sort the wheat from the chaff, yes? The most capable, responsible, self-aware and emotionally stable celebrants should be the ones regularly sought out by clients or by funeral arrangers? Those who are able to craft unique and meaningful ceremonies, who have a broad and deep understanding of the purpose of a funeral and the role of the celebrant? Those who have clear boundaries and awareness of the extent / limitation of their skills?

Well, not exactly. Things don’t seem to be working like that. For all kinds of reasons, the hopes of the original, idealist pioneers for professional standards in funeral celebrancy haven’t materialised. And there are many people who are drawn to the role who want to do good, who feel they can help others – kind, well-meaning folk who feel that they have something to offer bereaved people.

Perhaps some attended a funeral that they found lacking and felt that they could do better, maybe others saw a celebrant leading a ceremony and were inspired, thinking ‘I could do that too’. We’re pretty sure the vast majority of celebrants have come into this relatively new world for the best of reasons.

But. That’s actually not enough.

Wanting to help others is a noble thing, but it’s not enough to make a kind hearted person a good celebrant. The role comes with huge responsibility. And, along with the ability to create personal, well crafted ceremonies, to work in collaboration with others and to understand the complexities of grief, the role calls for continued self criticism, self-awareness and humility. Without recognising this, and in the same way as for those choosing other caring roles, the danger of funeral celebrants succumbing to saviour complex is a real one.

So we were alarmed to discover yesterday that there is a move to encourage celebrants to extend themselves even further beyond their existing and professional abilities.

Kenyon International Emergency Services, the international mass fatality incident response company, is actively welcoming celebrants as Special Assistance Team members.

Here’s how this voluntary role is described:

‘Special Assistance Team (SAT) members are often the first personal contact a family member has with the organisation involved in an incident.

They are the conduit between the families, designated authorities, the investigation, mortuary affairs and the incident management centre.

SAT members do not exclusively work in the Family Assistance Centre (FAC). They can also provide assistance in hospitals, airports, mortuaries and family homes for non-travelling families.

Being selected to work as a SAT member, although challenging, is personally rewarding. The qualities of a SAT member could mean the difference between a family member taking the elementary steps required to finding their new normal or stagnating in hopelessness, frustration and grief.’

Kenyon’s latest Team Member Newsletter outlines these qualities required in Special Assistance Team members and identifies ‘Funeral Officiants’ as ‘a profession that already has the core qualities required’. (A previous version of this list had ‘Celebrants’ listed as the second profession, below ‘Health Care Professionals’, but above ‘Social Workers’, ‘Teachers’, ‘Police Officers’ etc, but the one in the newsletter seems to have gone for the more generic ‘Funeral Officiant’ title).

Now, without wishing to deter anyone from offering their services in humanitarian aid to people affected by disasters across the world, we would respectfully suggest any celebrant (of whatever level of training) considering putting themselves forward in response to this should just STOP.

And think.

The ‘excitement’ of being ‘deployed suddenly‘ – the ‘International Rescue’ element, think about what this actually means:

Airline crashes.

Earthquakes.

Tsunami.

Hurricanes.

Cyclones.

Fires.

Floods.

People dead. Sometimes many, many people dead.

Sights, sounds, possibly smells that will lodge themselves indelibly in the memory. Traumatised, shocked survivors and witnesses. Desperate, anguished relatives. Shattered lives.

Stepping into such a scenario in an attempt to help those involved ‘take the elementary steps required to finding their new normal’ requires either astounding resilience, dogged determination or sheer unawareness of what a toll it could take. 

Working with people in extreme trauma requires resilience, strength and skills that are part of a long term practice, taking years to develop. And those involved need support systems and networks in place to preserve their own mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing.

We asked secular minister / grief specialist (and Good Funeral Guild member) Emma Curtis for her thoughts on the potential consequences of working with the bereaved at a multi-fatality incident, having herself volunteered during the first days of the Grenfell Disaster, supporting families and friends of the missing, and the local volunteers. Here’s what she said:

“Once seen, things can’t be unseen. Once heard, things can’t be unheard. Experiencing such trauma changes not only your outlook on life, but your physiology, especially your nervous system. The fashionably touted ‘benefits of post-trauma growth’ come not through the experience of trauma, but through working through that trauma: the memories, shock, grief and pain of that experience with all the challenges it has presented to your mind, body and belief system. Post traumatic growth isn’t simply a magical gift of experience, it’s a light at the end of a long, and rather gruelling tunnel.”

Wanting to help others in distress is a natural instinct. But if you’re a celebrant, usually working as a lone, self employed person, where is your support network? Where is your supervision? What will you do with the experiences that might be involved?

Before you put yourself forward to become a volunteer Special Assistance Team member for an international mass fatality incident response company, maybe consider the most famous of the Delphic maxims?

Know thyself.

    from Funeral https://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/2019/03/celebrants-know-your-limitations/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[americafuneral10-blog]

Celebrants – know your limitations

We’ve been much involved with the subject of celebrancy recently. We conducted a survey to find out more about the growing numbers of funeral celebrants here in the UK. And, along with some of the main celebrant training organisations, an independent celebrant and the funeral trade associations, we’ve been looking at the standards of funeral celebrancy (more about that later this year).

Over the years, there have been over 100 GFG blog posts about celebrants – some concerned, others constructive. We observe things here at the GFG. We hear from funeral directors and their clients about exceptional ceremonies – and we also get told about dreadful, templated or ad-libbed, grandstanding ceremonies. We hear about online forums where newly trained celebrants ask for help finding poetry or readings, or ideas about structuring a ceremony.

Now, it’s a fact that some of our best friends are celebrants. This is important. This blog post comes from a position of caring not criticism. And it’s difficult to get the tone of it exactly right. Let’s start gently.

According to Wikipedia, a funeral celebrant is ‘an individual person… who offers to perform civil funerals in a dignified and culturally acceptable manner, for those who, for whatever reason, do not choose a religious ceremony.’

Training courses proliferate. Just google funeral celebrant training and see what pops up. Distance learning, online learning, group learning, one-to-one training, residential courses. There’s something for everyone. And, of course, you don’t need any actual training at all to be a funeral celebrant. (Just like the rest of the funeral sector, celebrants are unregulated).

So, market forces should sort the wheat from the chaff, yes? The most capable, responsible, self-aware and emotionally stable celebrants should be the ones regularly sought out by clients or by funeral arrangers? Those who are able to craft unique and meaningful ceremonies, who have a broad and deep understanding of the purpose of a funeral and the role of the celebrant? Those who have clear boundaries and awareness of the extent / limitation of their skills?

Well, not exactly. Things don’t seem to be working like that. For all kinds of reasons, the hopes of the original, idealist pioneers for professional standards in funeral celebrancy haven’t materialised. And there are many people who are drawn to the role who want to do good, who feel they can help others – kind, well-meaning folk who feel that they have something to offer bereaved people.

Perhaps some attended a funeral that they found lacking and felt that they could do better, maybe others saw a celebrant leading a ceremony and were inspired, thinking ‘I could do that too’. We’re pretty sure the vast majority of celebrants have come into this relatively new world for the best of reasons.

But. That’s actually not enough.

Wanting to help others is a noble thing, but it’s not enough to make a kind hearted person a good celebrant. The role comes with huge responsibility. And, along with the ability to create personal, well crafted ceremonies, to work in collaboration with others and to understand the complexities of grief, the role calls for continued self criticism, self-awareness and humility. Without recognising this, and in the same way as for those choosing other caring roles, the danger of funeral celebrants succumbing to saviour complex is a real one.

So we were alarmed to discover yesterday that there is a move to encourage celebrants to extend themselves even further beyond their existing and professional abilities.

Kenyon International Emergency Services, the international mass fatality incident response company, is actively welcoming celebrants as Special Assistance Team members.

Here’s how this voluntary role is described:

‘Special Assistance Team (SAT) members are often the first personal contact a family member has with the organisation involved in an incident.

They are the conduit between the families, designated authorities, the investigation, mortuary affairs and the incident management centre.

SAT members do not exclusively work in the Family Assistance Centre (FAC). They can also provide assistance in hospitals, airports, mortuaries and family homes for non-travelling families.

Being selected to work as a SAT member, although challenging, is personally rewarding. The qualities of a SAT member could mean the difference between a family member taking the elementary steps required to finding their new normal or stagnating in hopelessness, frustration and grief.’

Kenyon’s latest Team Member Newsletter outlines these qualities required in Special Assistance Team members and identifies ‘Funeral Officiants’ as ‘a profession that already has the core qualities required’. (A previous version of this list had ‘Celebrants’ listed as the second profession, below ‘Health Care Professionals’, but above ‘Social Workers’, ‘Teachers’, ‘Police Officers’ etc, but the one in the newsletter seems to have gone for the more generic ‘Funeral Officiant’ title).

Now, without wishing to deter anyone from offering their services in humanitarian aid to people affected by disasters across the world, we would respectfully suggest any celebrant (of whatever level of training) considering putting themselves forward in response to this should just STOP.

And think.

The ‘excitement’ of being ‘deployed suddenly‘ – the ‘International Rescue’ element, think about what this actually means:

Airline crashes.

Earthquakes.

Tsunami.

Hurricanes.

Cyclones.

Fires.

Floods.

People dead. Sometimes many, many people dead.

Sights, sounds, possibly smells that will lodge themselves indelibly in the memory. Traumatised, shocked survivors and witnesses. Desperate, anguished relatives. Shattered lives.

Stepping into such a scenario in an attempt to help those involved ‘take the elementary steps required to finding their new normal’ requires either astounding resilience, dogged determination or sheer unawareness of what a toll it could take. 

Working with people in extreme trauma requires resilience, strength and skills that are part of a long term practice, taking years to develop. And those involved need support systems and networks in place to preserve their own mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing.

We asked secular minister / grief specialist (and Good Funeral Guild member) Emma Curtis for her thoughts on the potential consequences of working with the bereaved at a multi-fatality incident, having herself volunteered during the first days of the Grenfell Disaster, supporting families and friends of the missing, and the local volunteers. Here’s what she said:

“Once seen, things can’t be unseen. Once heard, things can’t be unheard. Experiencing such trauma changes not only your outlook on life, but your physiology, especially your nervous system. The fashionably touted ‘benefits of post-trauma growth’ come not through the experience of trauma, but through working through that trauma: the memories, shock, grief and pain of that experience with all the challenges it has presented to your mind, body and belief system. Post traumatic growth isn’t simply a magical gift of experience, it’s a light at the end of a long, and rather gruelling tunnel.”

Wanting to help others in distress is a natural instinct. But if you’re a celebrant, usually working as a lone, self employed person, where is your support network? Where is your supervision? What will you do with the experiences that might be involved?

Before you put yourself forward to become a volunteer Special Assistance Team member for an international mass fatality incident response company, maybe consider the most famous of the Delphic maxims?

Know thyself.

    Celebrants – know your limitations published first on YouTube

[floydmmahon88]

A Letter From City Manager Rick Cole

This article originally appeared in the November-December edition of Seascape.  Not since the days of Vietnam and Watergate has there been such deep and widespread mistrust of government – at all levels. I recall my first day on the job in Santa Monica three years ago. I wanted to spend time out in the field at our libraries, fire stations, the public works yards and the Big Blue Bus headquarters. In the courtyard of our main library downtown, I came upon four women playing bridge. I introduced myself as the new City Manager. They told me they loved our libraries and shared how much they enjoyed them. I asked about our Police Department. They had nothing but good things to say. Same for our Fire Department. When I asked about parks, one of them said we should have more, but the ones we have were great. I responded that it sounded like they were pretty happy with their city government.  “City government?” “Happy?” “Oh, no!” they all responded in chorus. They told me the government was terrible. Incompetent! Crooked! In their minds, city government was to blame for traffic, crime and practically everything wrong with society today. To them, “the government” was not the entity that provided the library, police, fire and parks that they appreciated. No, government was an alien presence they read about in the media – or on social media. And that’s a growing attitude across our country. The people are “us.” The government is “them.” There are 20 million people who work in state and local government in America. Some of them are stupid. Some of them are lazy. Some of them are incompetent. Some of them are corrupt. But watching Fox News or following some threads on Facebook and Twitter, you’d think that nearly all of us were stupid, lazy, incompetent and corrupt.

28% of residents agree or strongly agree they can influence decisions affecting Santa Monica.             Source: The Wellbeing Index Of course that’s not true. Here and elsewhere, the vast majority of librarians, police officers, firefighters, civil engineers, bus drivers and planners are skilled, hardworking professionals with a passion for public service. So are the supervisors, chiefs and managers who lead them. They work hard and care deeply for our community. Yet more and more Americans are not just unhappy with the shortcomings of government — they are mistrustful, resentful and angry. So why the hostility? There is no easy answer. Those of us who serve in government certainly aren’t perfect. Neither is the City of Santa Monica. We make mistakes, sometimes big ones. Yet there is a fundamental difference between recognizing that democracy is messy and government is flawed — and believing that democracy is a fraud – and government is evil. Can we address this national crisis of trust in government right here in our own community? In many ways, we already do. Hundreds of citizens are active in all kinds of constructive ways. They serve on the City Council and City Commissions and volunteer in myriad ways from the Friends of the Library to the Community Emergency Response Teams. They actively participate in community events, civic organizations and workshops. They volunteer in our schools, charities and faith communities to tackle some of our most difficult community challenges. In fact, if you are reading this issue of the Seascape, you are taking the time to be informed and active about your community. Yet too many locals feel deeply estranged from their government – or simply detached. That’s why we strive to do better. To be accessible, visible, active, transparent and accountable in seeking out members of our community – and not simply reacting to the loudest voices. Two minutes speaking at City Council meetings can’t foster the kind of informed and thoughtful dialogue we need to tackle community challenges like homelessness, the rising cost of living and crime.

To foster that kind of interchange, last year we held a series of community conversations about public safety that weren’t structured formal meetings – but opportunities for free-flowing dialogue. We are planning more early next year to talk together about our long-term budget choices.

We can’t make everyone happy all the time – as President Kennedy eloquently explained, to govern is to choose. Government today involves tough choices about how and where to spend time and money – and when it comes to politics, we live in polarized times. Yet even if people are inevitably going to be disappointed when they don’t always get their way, those of us in government can still strive to look for common ground. There’s also much you can do. Nowadays it is more popular to talk about the rights of individuals than their responsibilities. Yet no democracy can last long without the values of tolerance, compromise, and a commitment to the common good. The Greeks, who invented both the word and the practice, used to swear an oath on reaching the age of citizenship to “leave our city better – and more beautiful – than we found it.” Those ideals may be ancient, but they are still sorely needed. Democracy, as Churchill famously said, is the worst form of government – except all the others. It requires citizens to take an active and informed role in making government work. Santa Monica is small enough for even a single individual to make a difference. If you are not satisfied with how well our government and democracy is working now, remember what Al Smith said a hundred years ago, “all the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.” Get involved – and help leave our city greater and more beautiful than we found it. To learn more about how you can be more informed or contribute, visit weare.santamonica.gov.

from https://www.santamonica.gov/blog/a-letter-from-city-manager-rick-cole

from Santa Monica Day - Blog http://santamonicaday.weebly.com/blog/a-letter-from-city-manager-rick-cole

[takenews-blog1]

Authorities shutdown 2018: what a federal authorities shutdown truly means

New Post has been published on https://takenews.net/authorities-shutdown-2018-what-a-federal-authorities-shutdown-truly-means/

Authorities shutdown 2018: what a federal authorities shutdown truly means

The Home and Senate had till midnight on Friday, January 19, to go a spending invoice earlier than the federal authorities ran out of cash and closed its doorways.

Regardless of controlling each lever of presidency, Republicans are someway confronted with the likelihood that they will’t get the votes collectively to maintain the federal government open.

It’s been greater than 4 years for the reason that final authorities shutdown, however after copious expertise with shutdowns, particularly throughout the protracted price range standoffs of the Clinton and Obama presidencies, we’ve got a great sense of what’s going to occur to the federal authorities.

When Congress can’t go some type of appropriations invoice earlier than a spending deadline, the federal government shuts down, and plenty of “nonessential” authorities actions abruptly stop.

It’s common for Congress to go to the brink of shutdown; it occurred as not too long ago as this previous fall, when President Trump threatened a shutdown in a bid to get funding for a border wall.

The federal government has formally shut down 18 instances for the reason that fashionable course of that Congress makes use of to go price range and spending payments took impact in 1976. The primary six of these did not truly have an effect on the functioning of presidency in any respect. It wasn’t till a set of opinions issued by Legal professional Basic Benjamin Civiletti in 1980 and ’81 that the federal government began to deal with “spending gaps” — intervals when Congress has didn’t allocate funds for the continuing features of presidency — as necessitating the complete or partial shutdown of presidency businesses.

However from the Reagan years onward, any interval during which Congress didn’t go funding measures has meant that main chunks of the federal government cease working. Which components differ from shutdown to shutdown, however it usually excludes important providers with out which the economic system would grind to a halt and other people would die.

Throughout shutdowns, federal workers are divided into “important” and “nonessential” teams (the official wording was modified to “excepted” and “non-excepted” in 1995 to keep away from hurting folks’s emotions). Nonessential personnel obtain furloughs: They’re off work till the shutdown is resolved and cease receiving paychecks.

Within the October 2013 shutdown, about 850,000 federal employees obtained furloughs, or about 40 % of all federal nonmilitary workers. After shutdowns, furloughed employees virtually all the time obtain retroactive funds masking their salaries throughout the shutdown. Important employees additionally see their pay withheld — however they must work anyway.

Regardless of President Trump’s tendency to level to the army as the largest sufferer of a possible shutdown, it’s not — the army is, after all, usually thought of “important” to the functioning of the US authorities.

And simply as legislation enforcement brokers have turn out to be the home mirror picture of troopers in conservative id politics, they’re additionally thought of important workers throughout all authorities businesses. Air site visitors management, federal prisons, and Social Safety and different profit funds additionally usually preserve functioning as regular throughout shutdowns.

However many different authorities features are curtailed. Within the 2013 shutdown, the consequences of the furloughs and different shutdowns in authorities exercise included:

In whole, the Workplace of Administration and Price range estimated that the shutdown reduce GDP development within the fourth quarter of 2013 by zero.2 to zero.6 factors, and resulted in 120,000 fewer jobs.

So whereas shutdowns don’t lead to seniors going with out their retirement checks, or the army closing up store, or airplanes crashing into one another within the sky, they do trigger huge disruption within the lives of a whole lot of 1000’s of employees and their households, and grind loads of authorities businesses to a halt.

The exception for legislation enforcement implies that the overwhelming majority of Border Patrol, customs officers, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers will stay on obligation via a shutdown — and that the Trump administration’s stepped-up enforcement of immigration legal guidelines, together with better arrests of immigrants with out prison information, is as important as the rest.

But it surely isn’t in itself important to facilitate authorized immigration to the US. US Citizenship and Immigration Companies will largely be unaffected by the shutdown just because it doesn’t get its cash from Congress; it’s funded by the charges it prices candidates. However firms searching for work visas for his or her workers would possibly run into hassle, as a result of the Division of Labor workplace that should approve their petition can be closed.

Abroad, consular places of work, whereas they might keep open over a short shutdown by operating off charge cash, may find yourself being closed if the shutdown is extended — making it unattainable for folks in these international locations to get permitted to come back to the US till the federal government reopened.

And whereas the US Refugee Admissions Program isn’t technically topic to shutdown, the Obama administration stopped bringing refugees to the US throughout the 2013 shutdown anyway, due to the anticipated issue getting Social Safety playing cards and different important sources to refugees as soon as they arrived in the USA. Feeding refugees is taken into account an important perform of the State Division, however resettling them completely isn’t on the identical stage.

That’s an acceptable steadiness if you happen to assume the components of the US authorities that exist to punish lawbreakers are extra important to day-to-day operations than the components that permit folks to observe the legal guidelines. However that’s, itself, a skewed view of what’s most vital in regards to the authorities — and about who can afford to attend for days or even weeks whereas a shutdown is resolved in Washington.

Not all “legislation enforcement” or safety efforts are created equal beneath shutdown plans, after all, and regulatory businesses are usually given quick shrift.

Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms area places of work are exempt from shutdowns; many Meals and Drug Administration officers engaged on investigations, nonetheless, should not. The TSA is absolutely exempt, however the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention needed to furlough a big fraction of its workers. Civil litigation efforts on the Division of Justice (together with antitrust investigations) would stop; the Occupational Security and Well being Administration and the Mine Well being and Security Administration can be, briefly, all however gutted.

In a approach, all of those are both safety or legislation enforcement features of presidency. However the “important” authorities doesn’t assume that each official whose job is to verify compliance with the legal guidelines is an important one — even when these legal guidelines may, in idea, be defending folks from well being and security hazards.

At OSHA, the FDA, and the Mine Well being and Security Administration, for instance, what will get shut down are “routine” inspections and investigations. Emergency efforts — mines close to collapse, large-scale meals or drug recollects — can proceed or be initiated, however the day-to-day compliance efforts which can be supposed to forestall these emergencies from taking place can’t.

For progressives who see shopper safety as an vital perform of the federal authorities, that is arbitrary, even insulting (although partisans can take some glee in understanding that the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau itself is unaffected by shutdown). For libertarians and business-minded conservatives who see overregulation and pink tape as a severe chilling impact on entrepreneurship in America, it’s an (admittedly excessive) model of the regulatory state they’d prefer to see to start with.

After which there are the components of the federal government devoted primarily to the manufacturing of information — a perform that’s been underappreciated up to now, however that has come to the fore as worries have unfold that the Trump administration is neglecting it. On the Environmental Safety Company, the place administrator Scott Pruitt is overtly contemptuous of workers and the place some workers have all however began smuggling out knowledge earlier than it will get destroyed, the overwhelming majority of workers can be furloughed.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics would cease releasing studies, as would the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Work on the US Census Bureau, which is already behind in preparations for the 2020 census, would grind to a halt.

These are issues that individuals who care about “good authorities” care about. They’re not, for probably the most half, excessive priorities for individuals who care about “small authorities.”

This would possibly clarify why, as a shutdown looms, the burden is commonly perceived from the surface to be on Democrats to keep away from it — not simply because they’re those, on this case, refusing to vote for a invoice that retains the federal government open for an additional few weeks however doesn’t present a everlasting resolution for Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, however as a result of they’re those who consider most firmly that these “nonessential” authorities features actually are important.

However given all this, it’s vital to recollect: Not even probably the most radical small-government ideologue in Congress ever prefers shutting down the federal government to conserving it open on their phrases. That’s as a result of when a shutdown truly occurs, it calls consideration to the truth that authorities is made of individuals — and that these individuals are each extra interdependent on one another (even the “nonessential” ones) and fewer politicized than the features they signify.

Even “important” workers at FEMA or the US Border Patrol, for instance, undergo setbacks in morale and job perform once they don’t have any help workers to assist them, as a result of the sector brokers are “important” however help workers shouldn’t be. The army could itself be deemed important, however delays in paychecks, and the shortcoming to request go away, can grind down service members and their households.

The identical is true on the opposite aspect: Individuals who work together with the federal government for advantages. Older middle-class Individuals is perhaps higher off than these dwelling in poverty beneath a shutdown, as a result of Social Safety and Medicare are exempt (not congressionally appropriated) whereas Non permanent Help for Needy Households could not — but when they lose their Social Safety playing cards, they gained’t have the ability to get new ones issued.

And even Individuals who dislike the concept of federal land possession nonetheless go to nationwide parks and monuments — which is why there was such a fuss over the closure of struggle memorials throughout the 2013 shutdown, and why the Trump administration is reportedly looking for a approach to preserve parks open this time.

It’s a broad fact of American politics that individuals could not like “authorities” within the summary, however they like the actual methods authorities advantages them. Shutdowns deliver that dynamic to the fore: They power folks to reckon with the truth that whereas ideas like “chopping the fats” and “waste, fraud, and abuse” are broadly interesting, agreeing on what counts as fats or waste is way tougher.

And it makes obvious that dwelling in uncertainty daily isn’t truly a approach to go about one’s life, whether or not one is a authorities worker or somebody whose life is in a authorities worker’s palms.

The federal government that survives a shutdown is a authorities that’s far more hobbled in some respects than others, however it isn’t the federal government anybody desires.

[buildercar]

New Post has been published on http://www.buildercar.com/first-drive-2018-chevrolet-camaro-zl1-1le/

First Drive: 2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE

KELOWNA, British Columbia — Have you ever been to Kelowna? Neither had I as I boarded the final flight on my way to drive the 2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE. Terra firma meeting my little Alaskan Air twin-prop prodded me out of nap land. I had to think for second where I was and what I was actually doing here. I’ve been traveling flat out since January, when I flew to the Middle East to compete in the 24 Hours of Dubai sports-car race. Since then, among other responsibilities, I’ve been to Germany several times to run at the Nürburgring, and now here I am — 170,000 miles later — in the Pacific Northwest for a test of the latest Camaro track special.

As I eyed the 1LE for the first time, its ultra-aggressive stance made me think of the long-standing Mustang/Camaro rivalry, with fanatical fans on both sides. They’re nothing like political or religious fanatics, of course; they’re way more civilized. That said, seeing the 1LE’s rabid front fascia in a rearview mirror may be the vehicular equivalent of a middle finger to anyone in its path.

Camaro chief engineer Al Oppenheiser informs us, “The 1LE is focused towards track and then street. We aimed for a vehicle buyers (General Motors figures people age 50 and older) can drive to the track, enjoy driving on track, and then drive it home.”

The 1LE seems to follow function more than design. Air management was a chief consideration throughout its development. Bodywork had to change, because the 1LE’s wheels (11 inches in front, 12 in the rear) are an inch wider than the ones found on the standard Camaro ZL1. The fenders are 0.7 inch wider to efficiently move air around the larger rubber (305/30R-19 front, 325/30R-19 rear). As a historical note, this is the widest rubber ever employed on a factory-built Camaro. Unique to the 1LE package, Chevy chose to use 19-inch wheels instead of the base ZL1’s 20-inchers. The 19s pull air through them as they roll to aid brake cooling.

The 1LE has a longer front splitter molded over the standard fascia, plus racing-derived dive planes and larger front grille openings. All of this adds downforce to the front, which means a new rear wing is necessary to reestablish aerodynamic balance. The 1LE rear wing is highly efficient, adding downforce with little drag. The use of carbon fiber allows the wing to be very thin where needed, which means aero effectiveness dictated the shape rather than manufacturing limitations or design eccentricities. Total downforce, according to Chevy, is 300 pounds at 150 mph.

Chevy went to suspension masters Multimatic to work on the 1LE, the same company that’s heavily involved with the new Ford GT supercar. As does the Ford GT, the Camaro 1LE uses Multimatic’s Dynamic Suspension Spool Valve, DSSV, damper technology front and rear. DSSV technology has been used in Formula 1 and other professional racing series and is, of course, very expensive. The main tech difference in a DSSV damper compared to a typical one is the use of exquisitely engineered pistons, with port holes instead of the deflective discs, or shims, traditionally found inside.

DSSV technology allows for much more specific shock tuning and a wider range of capability. Note: The 1LE’s dampers are not adjustable. In an effort to delete chassis/suspension flex, traditional rubber mounts and bushings were eliminated where possible. The 1LE front dampers are hard-mounted, top and bottom, which should lead to more consistent handling at the limit. Interestingly, despite the hard mount, loosening just three bolts and rotating the strut can increase front camber to 3 degrees negative in minutes. This is a very useful option for trackside preparation. Ride height is also adjustable by a total of 0.78 inch via the front-strut spring perch. Plus, the rear stability bar has three positions. Amazingly, the DSSV dampers on the 1LE save 23 pounds over the ZL1’s regular setup.

More than 20 years have passed since I worked with Goodyear tire engineers to develop super-sticky street-based race tires. After a long layoff, at least on my side, I can say Goodyear is back in the sticky street-tire game with this new Eagle F1 Supercar 3R (1LE specific). Think Pirelli Trofeo, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s, etc. In other words, they are exceptional — and wear out if you look at them too long — but, oh, how they grip. Goodyear worked alongside the Camaro group on the new R3. “Normally we would see maybe four iterations of development tire at most,” Oppenheiser says. “With the 1LE tire, Goodyear submitted seven over three years.” Indeed, it’s good to see another player in the sticky street-tire business, as it should provide more competition and improve and increase choices for all enthusiasts.

My street drive of the 1LE takes place in northwest Washington, around the picturesque Oroville, Tonasket area. I drive 300 miles, sitting in the driver’s seat for around eight hours. I’ll say something right here about the seats in the 1LE (identical to the ZL1): These are without doubt the most comfortable seats I have ever found in a GM vehicle. That is good news because this car feels stiff — and I mean really stiff. The 1LE does not have a lot of suspension travel, and the dampers are designed to work best on the limit at racetracks.

In fact, expansion joints on public roads cause the car to skip. Ripples in asphalt while approaching a couple stop signs send the 1LE into a tiff, as it skips from one ripple to the next. Staff photographer Robin Trajano and I find ourselves out of our seats a couple of times (yes, we have seatbelts on) as we encounter abrupt road heaves. But once I understand how the 1LE is set up, I drive accordingly. The car’s ride and handling reminds me of driving a Porsche 997 911 GT3; they seem to share similar compliance levels. I have not heard anyone with a GT3 complain about a stiff ride, as usually they know what they bought. I suspect and certainly hope 1LE buyers will be equally discerning.

Regardless of the stiffness, the 1LE feels fine 99 percent of the time on Washington’s superb country roads. Handling at spirited (not nutcase) speeds was predictable and impressive. The Goodyears provide constant lateral grip of more than 1g with no fuss. Despite the big grip, I could manipulate the 1LE at will. I practiced some “overdriving” scenarios with traction- and stability-control nannies set to minimum intrusion. I leaned on the front tires and used quick hands to upset the rear. Nothing caused a twitchy or snappy reaction, just manageable little slides corrected easily with steering input or by the traction/stability controls. The chassis and Goodyear combo worked well.

I could not use all 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque from the supercharged LT4 V-8 for more than a few seconds without reaching jail-time speeds. This is power enjoyed fully on a track, as the 1LE is a really big stick, and you can’t come close to using all of it on the street.

The MH3 Tremec six-speed manual gearbox is excellent. In fact, it is one of the best production-car manual transmissions I’ve tried, and the rev-match feature is flawless as far as I’m concerned. The brakes (six-piston Brembos front, four-piston rear) are superb. The steering feels connected and direct, probably helped by the solid mounted struts. A fair amount of tire noise comes into the car above 60 mph, but it does nothing to hinder conversation. Engine noise is a friendly burble in normal driving, only changing to “Can you freakin’ hear me now?” with a heavy foot.

Why, though, in such a track-tuned car, does the 1LE have electric seats, as there must be 60 pounds worth of electric motors included in them? Oppenheiser answers, “We left all the ZL1 content in, as we believe the 1LE buyer will demand it.” He adds, “This is not a stripped-out car, [something like] that would tend towards a Z28.” So then, despite all the track-focused bits and tuning, the 1LE remains all ZL1 inside and weighs only 67 pounds less (3,820 pounds).

The basic Camaro controls are simple to use, and I had no problem achieving an ideal driving position. I managed 15.3 mpg during our 300-mile day, including at least an hour of engine idle time.

As far as racetracks go, we headed to Area 27, a six-month-old facility just outside of Kelowna. The 3-mile track has 16 turns and was designed by Canadian F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve. I can confirm he did not design it to be boring. There are fast, medium, and slow corners, a wicked blind 100-mph chicane, and great elevation changes. It’s an excellent circuit.

The Camaro ZL1 1LEs Chevy brought out for track driving were set up before we arrived, the setup work carried out by Bill Wise and other GM ride and handling engineers. As mentioned, front camber, ride height, and the rear stability bar are all easily adjustable. These engineers know their stuff and are as fast as pro drivers in the cars these engineers have developed. (Check out the superb 1LE Nürburgring lap on YouTube: 7 minutes, 16.04 seconds).

Whenever testing, I try out all the traction-control modes from the most restrictive to everything switched off. I find no surprises here; the traction/stability systems do a great job of keeping the chassis and power under control. The 1LE gives me the ability to correct all the silliness I throw at it. The least restrictive “race mode” TC cost me only a few tenths of a second over “everything off” on a two-plus-minute lap.

However, there is no getting away from the fact the 1LE is a heavy car. The majority of its weight resides over the front axle, and a driver can induce understeer if clumsy with steering inputs. The rear stays really stuck unless severely provoked. The 3R tires stay consistent after multiple laps, times falling off only slightly, even with ambient temps in the mid-80s. The ultimate stick of the Goodyear does not quite match that of the Michelin Cup 2s I’ve tried, but it’s close. The brake pedal stays solid for me all day, though I am not known to have a gorilla foot. (On the track I would not let tire pressures exceed 35 psi, and 28-30 psi seems to be a sweet spot.)

My photographer wants some drifting shots at the end of the day, and the 1LE is a pleasure to slide, giving me plenty of control and feedback. I had used the same car/tires all day, and after finishing up I am amazed to see minimal tire wear. I don’t know how long the new Goodyears will last, but these well-abused specimens did much better than I expected.

It’s just another example of modern engineering and technology, and the fact we live in an amazing time for the automobile. Autonomous innovation is coming, millions of hybrids are out there, but we can buy a weaponized 650-hp Camaro ZL1 1LE for $69,995. No one knows for sure how long this will last, but I am going to enjoy the ride for as long as possible.

2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE ON SALE: Now PRICE: $69,995 ENGINE: 6.2-liter supercharged OHV 16-valve V-8/650 hp @ 6,400 rpm, 650 lb-ft @ 3,600 rpm TRANSMISSION: 6-speed manual LAYOUT: 2-door, 4-passenger, front-engine RWD coupe EPA MILEAGE: 14/20 mpg (city/hwy) L x W x H: 188.3 x 74.7 x 52.4 in WHEELBASE: 110.7 in WEIGHT: 3,820 lb (est) 0-60 MPH: 3.7 sec (est) TOP SPEED: 190 (est)

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22 Successful Women Entrepreneurs from Middle East share their Best Time Management and Productivity tips

It’s not a secret to anybody that women entrepreneurs in Middle East are one of the strongest and powerful ones, as they tend to manage their social life, family and their business. All of them, together, at once.

Although the share of women entrepreneurs comparing to men might be lower in Middle East countries, we’ve seen that there has been a huge increase in women taking up the private sector in recent years. Due to the accessibility of local and global marketplaces via social media and the Internet, there has been a rapid growth in the number of women leading the tech-business world.

Women entrepreneurs in Middle East and North African countries should definitely know how to manage their time and be productive.

That is why we decided to interview 21 women entrepreneurs around UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and Turkey to let us in their time management secrets.

We were interested in two questions:

What Does the typical day of women entrepreneurs in Middle East look like

What is the best time management and productivity strategy that every entrepreneur should follow?

We received variety of interesting answers and stories.

WARNING: Lots of the answers in this article are truly inspirational! 

So without further introduction let’s dig deep into what experts need to say:

 Esra’a Al Shafei is an influential civil rights activist, blogger and the founder and executive director of Middleeast Youth and number of civil rights projects including CrowdVoice.org. Mrs. Esra’a is from Bahrain. She is a senior TED fellow and according to a FastCompany she is one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business”. She is also in the list of 17 bravest bloggers worldwide according to the Daily Beast.  Esra’a Al-Shafei received Berkman Award for Internet Innovation from Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School in 2008

1.  What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical day usually starts on a flight. I’m constantly traveling, and it never gets less hectic. I’m lucky that I get to do my work remotely, so if I’m home in Bahrain, my day would start checking in with our teams who work across different time-zones (anywhere from Mexico to India.)

Then I’d dive into a meeting with our developers or project managers to outline our week and responsibilities.

In the afternoon, I do my best to take a much deserved break, working out (lifting a 3kg ball is definitely working out) and visiting family.

My day ends with me planning the next day, or checking in for my next flight.

2. Productivity tips from Esra’a al Shafei:

  I think reasonable daily to-do lists are crucial to any healthy work ethic. Give yourself a hard stop instead of pushing the limits of your mind and body.

When you can’t cram in a speaking engagement halfway around the world, don’t do it regardless of the potential opportunities. More will come your way, when you’re more ready and engaged.

Never feel guilty for putting your health first. I wish someone told me this in my younger years.

Sahar El-Arishy is the founder of 18.213- an exceptional marketing and event management service that focuses on making your brand unique with creative storytelling and Popup Venues in Cairo, Egypt.  Her startup specializes in the following services: brand storytelling, event planning and management,venue rental, social media marketing and networking. She also has founded a Communications Boutique a brand  that provides innovative image building and corporate communications campaigns for companies that need a powerful digital and offline market presence. Mrs. Sahar supports young entrepreneurs in Egypt by providing them huge discounts for her services. 

1.  What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

To choose to be an effective Solo-entrepreneur that juggles between both work and family, you have to build a time management system that allows you to not only achieve your goals but more importantly keep your physical and mental well being balanced.

My day starts at 5 am with a 15 minute meditation and breathing exercise that helps me center and infuse my mind and body with positive energy and my intentions for the day. It gives me focus.

I then spend 10 minutes reading journals and doing a brain dump of all the ideas that I want to explore throughout the week.

I then take a walk around the track for one hour and end my routine with getting on a swing in a playground and going as high as I can.  It helps me to articulate my affirmations for what I want to achieve. I highly recommend to do this for everyone.

Breakfast is crucial to keep my energy in sync so I make sure to have a nutrition-intense meal and then my day at the office can take off.

Before addressing any work, clients, emails I start by watching or reading the stories and insights of inspirational thought leaders so I start my day by learning something new. I then proceed to deal with my clients and work load. I divide my work systematically to make sure all my deadlines are met and the output of my work is of an impeccable standard of excellence. I love LISTS and to check off all that has been completed.

After working for at least 7 hours I then go home to cook and do any errands that are family related. I share a meal with my family and then if I still have work that is not finalized I go back to the office for 2 -3 hours. I end my day by reading a good book and writing in my gratitude journal with 3 things I was grateful for in my day.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Sahar El Arishy:  

Be FOCUSED and CLEAR  on your short term goals for the day

REMOVE any distractions that could hamper your focus .. namely your PHONE and SURFING on Social Media platforms. 

Do what you LOVE and what makes your heart sing because that is the only way you will do your best work. 

SURROUND yourself with people that inspire you to be the best version of yourself and what you do. 

When you get STUCK… go out in nature .. take a walk… sit in a beautiful space and recharge. 

CONNECT with a mentor someone that is passionate and has relevant knowledge that can help you take your business to another level. 

Be MINDFUL and PRESENT with each new day and learn from your mistakes if something isn’t working just look into why it isn’t and PIVOT quickly don’t procrastinate and self-doubt and LOSE the momentum. 

ALWAYS have an open mind and be RESOURCEFUL in finding and exploring new possibilities for how to do things.  The internet is a school for the best entrepreneurial stories from across the world that you can learn not only from their successes but their failures which are the most important learning lessons for any young entrepreneur.   

Narise Kamber is an entrepreneur and business owner of Saffaron and Jena Café Bahrain. She’s also a director and a cofounder of Women Professional Network. The story of Narise Kamber is really inspirational. She has grown her food restaurant and Cafe to four location in just one year. Her outlets are very popular and she has started a trend by serving Bahraini food at local eateries.  The story of Narise Kamber has been featured in a number of magazines including  wamda.com, gulfweekly.com, perle-magazine.com, Gulf Daily News and etc… Narise is passionate about cooking and creating new dishes. She supports women entrepreneurs in Bahrain by sharing motivational secrets in business in Women’s Business Events. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical day is waking up with the children. I have four kids, 3 boys and one girl ages 8,12,15,17. We have a small breakfast together, then I drop them to school and then I head to work. I have an office in Manama where I have one of my branches of Saffron by Jena cafe. This is where I spend the majority of my work week.

As soon as I reach the office and in order not to feel I flustered or overwhelmed with the work load, I devise an hour by hour to do list.  It includes everything I need to typically do in a day’s work where I address the most important matters first and then create an action plan where I make sure that myself and my team follow up on all things discussed that day.

The list also includes organizational tips for the office and kitchen. You can’t be creative if you are not organized and there is always a time to have a short break to breathe. I have a small bite with an espresso while watching a little Downton Abbey because it’s important to refresh the mind.

Also I make sure I visit each one of my branches and address the main issues with the branch’s supervisor to ensure a tight service operation. At the moment I have three Saffron by Jena cafes, each is located in a traditional heritage area in Bahrain.  I also have a bakery/ patisserie (Jena Bakery) in Hamala area.

I leave work by 2.15 pm which gives me enough time to pick my kids from school which leads to my favorite part of the day and that is when the whole family sits together for lunch.

Sometimes it’s not possible that we all gather in the same time, as my husband has different work commitments and meetings, and the kids have random activity days. Nonetheless we have a rule at home, if you are there at lunch time, you have to sit at the dining table with the others for lunch – even if you don’t feel like eating.

Then I allow the kids to have a one hour break to play with their toys, iPads ,to watch tv, to rest, to rea . Then it’s homework time. I try to make this time very concise because I believe that the kids’ afternoon – all kids not only mine should not be wasted in doing school work.

They already spend 7 hours a day learning new things academically so the rest of the day should be about play and pursuing hobbies etc. While the kids are doing their thing, I usually rest in my room and watch a documentary or read while having a small cup of Turkish coffee with a piece of chocolate.

I have a small decorative desk in my room that I like to use for different things ,enhancing my language skills (I love studying French and Spanish), making vision boards, exploring new ideas for my business, planning my next trip…. It’s my small space to dream , to better myself, to pursue even more goals.

Just before dinner time my husband comes home and we spend some time reconnecting by asking about each other’s day and what new exciting things we have discovered or think of alternative ways to solve work issues etc . Then I make sure that the kids’ bags are set for the next day, that they ate dinner, showered and washed before wearing their pajamas and then a bedtime story for the little one, and finally it’s lights out for all kids.

Later in the evening I either decide to eat in with my husband or go out to a friend’s house for some tea. When I return home I prepare the next day’s clothes ,organize my handbag and make sure I keep money change for myself and the kids for the next day.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Narise Kamber: 

1. Organization. It’s impossible for anyone to be creative or successful without being organized. That means that you should really sit with yourself for one hour and make a list, make a mechanisms for how to conduct your day/week/month. My best find is a diary. I have old fashioned paper notebook diary in which I can see my full week, my full month and year.

2.Be ready for challenges and unexpected stuff. Work on yourself. Take courses. Have a fantastic life coach. We are all humans. We all have weaknesses. We have to constantly work on our weakness. Because as a humans we always need to be growing.

It’s a proven fact that humans grow only in times when they experience discomfort and pain. There has been some tough episodes in my life concerning work. Only because of those tough episodes I became stronger, I grew. You need to have inner strength to meet those challenges. And motivation not to give up.

3.Never think of giving up. It’s so easy for someone to feel defeated and wanting to do something else. And this is the most important advise I can ever give – never give up. No matter how much you feel inside that you are broken. Wonderful things happen exactly at the same time when the night is at it’s darkest. When you feel like there’s no light. When you feel like “I’m a failure”, I can’t do this. That’s when miracles happen.

As entrepreneurs we shouldn’t ever think of giving up. We should keep on fighting. For a very long time, I used to doubt myself. I used to think maybe I am not in a right field. Maybe I should be sitting at home. Maybe I should be doing something else.

I have to say only after very long time of working on myself I achieved the success. Instead of complaining on weaknesses, work on them. Take courses. Learn what you don’t know.

I made it a daily mission to learn something new. To tackle the thing that’s scaring me the most. If I was scared to talk in front of people, I would ask myself “Why are you scared to talk in front of people?” And I would take courses to improve that skill.

Constantly learn what you are afraid of and then do it! Your weaknesses should not be an excuse for not doing it.

Gulsum Ciraci directed the Turkey’s first entrepreneurship project with World Bank in 2002. Those years, there was no ecosystem in Turkey and has never been documentary about entrepreneurship.Under these conditions, she has carried out entrepreneurship projects in 3 different regions of Turkey. In 2012, Gulsum established Istanbul Startup Angels that is one of the first turkey angel investors network. Gulsum brought Europe’s best acceleration program Startupbootcamp to Turkey. Thus startupbootcamp has been in the MENA region for the first time and she managed to complete the foundation work in 6 months. All these works comes with its price, Gulsum was the first female executive and founder in all Startupbootcamps. In 2016 ISA started to invest in seed stage startups by initiating Vertical Acceleration programs, first being the IOT-Telco Labs. Within the scope of this program, Gulsum and her team have graduated by investing 6 seeds. They decided to open the second of the program and invest in about 10 IOT Telco entrepreneurs this year. Most exciting news about ISA is the Turkey’s the second best angel investor network according to Webrazzi readers. Istanbul Startup Angels invested in 13 startup project and became as the most active angel investor network in 2016.

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I am starting a day with typical breathing exercises for 3 years.Its helpful for having an open mind and making my day better.

During the day ı have meeting with entrepreneurs and business partners go through meetings.

After the day is over, time is for mailing and doing some works.I’m trying to do pilates at least 3 times a week.

Work and normal life is needed to be separated i think there will be a balance.I prefer not to work at weekends unless something are very important. I separate weekends from myself and my child. I have a book I’m working on so I’m working on it in weekends.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Gulsum Giraci: 

Time management is so important. Especially entrepreneurs need to be multitasking because they have to become up-to-date and handle more than one task at the same time.

Investment negotiations, operations, management, business development, etc. These jobs have to be synchronized, not sequentially. for these reasons they should be able to follow a few things at the same time.

The recommendation in this regard is to prioritize deadlines for each job.Setting a specific deadlines will help them to create a work discipline.

If little tips are given, quick mail responses decrease the business accumulation or making phone conversations while on the road is saving time.

Decisions taken after each meeting need to be made quickly and dedicated. High number of urgent tasks lead to time management difficulties. It is a productive way to do jobs that want to focus on the most calm day of the day (evening or early morning). This situation brings  a motto the more you work, the more you earn although entrepreneurship is the most difficult part of time management.

Eida Al Muhairbi is an Emirati entrepreneur and inventor who has 100 international inventions under her name. Out of those 100 inventions, 46 are recognized within the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Eida currently works in Zakum Development Company (ZADCO) in Abu Dhabi as an operations financial manager. She is a winner of the ‘Shaikha Shamsa bint Suhail Award for Creative Women’. Eida is an inventor of multi-purpose drone and the ‘universal car cover’ – accordion car cover, which received a Chinese patent in 2012. She also invented 3D phone, a semi-inflatable tyre, a washing machine with separate chambers for cleaning different colour and type clothes at one time, and a disk-operated iron and much more. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My day looks like any other person’s day.  I’m working in a company, doing my job in the way that I would be satisfied, and providing a helping hand to anyone who needs anything from me related to work or hand-able family needs.

Our team work together starts from putting thoughts, running after them until we finalize our project and when we set to work with all efforts, time required and commitments need to lead the completion of our mission.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Eida Al Muhairbi: 

My advice to the young entrepreneurs to manage their time and to be more productive:

*Focus on the target. * Put your investment in the right place: time, money, strength, efforts and life * Start the choice without emotion * Patience in the initial stage * Do not stick to the first thing in your life it could be too advanced to your community * Find out what is missing and how you can collaborate such that you can help your community.

Dunia Othman and her husband Ibrahim Holak are husband-wife business owners of mrUsta.com. It is a UAE startup that focuses on  linking skilful and reliable maintenance and repair workers individuals who need something to fix something in their home or office urgently. Dunia and her husband decided to launch this platform back in 2014. Currently, the platform contains more than 10000 various plumbers, maintenance workers and repairers. MrUsta.com generated about AED1 million revenue since the launch of the platform. The platform sees increase in customers, month by month. More and more people are trusting mrusta.com to find the quality service providers. Dunia Othman is passionate about marketing, business management and technology and her startup. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I am not a great morning person and I know that so I aim to spend the least amount of time in the morning getting ready before getting to the office in order to sleep in. I am also a coffee addict so I would generally pick up a coffee and something to eat either on the way to the office or order it to arrive when I arrive.

I like to start the day going over how we did the day before. I admit I am a huge excel fan and I love tracking everything in order to pick up trends and get clear health checks so that tends to be the first thing I do in the morning. I also try to avoid scheduling meetings before 10am in order to be mentally prepared to discuss any topics.

Generally, as we are a start-up there is a lot of collaborative work within the team, many discussions happen be them scheduled or simply when certain things arise.

I try to run all my meetings (internal or external) before 2pm (before lunchtime) to give myself the afternoon to do all other work I need, reply to emails, articles, presentations, working with my co-founders brainstorming features etc.

Most days I aim to leave the office by 6pm and try to pick up some easy ingredients to cook a quick meal. My husband is also my co-founder and the CEO of the company so we leave together shop together and cook together. Which also means that we are very likely to discuss work as we are cooking or eating (as much as we try to avoid that).

Depending on when we manage to get home and have dinner we try to sometimes go for a walk (weather permitting) or go down to the gym and get in some form of exercise after a full day of sitting in the office.

After that I need to have some brain shut-off time before bed otherwise I would be too wired up to sleep, so if there is an urgent work matter I tend to it after dinner in order to get 1-2 hours or watching TV or reading the news etc.

Roughly:

8-9 I wake up get ready for, drive to office.

9-10 à review of yesterday’s traffic and usage

11-2 à meetings (internal and external) checking marketing campaigns, discussing with staff if there are any issues etc.

2 – 2:30 à quick lunch (mostly at desk!!)

2:30– 5:30/6 I catch up on emails, presentations, content, articles any work that needs my attention.

6 – 8  home and dinner

8 – 9 a walk (or light exercise)

9-11 a brain shut down and get ready for bed

(in some occasions the four of us co-founders would meet after 8 in order to discuss any major issues to mrUsta)

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Dunia Othman: 

One thing that I incorporated in my way of working that has helped me a lot is to cut out double handling, whether its emails, documents, excels etc. You don’t realize how much time you waste. If you open an email to read reply, then and there. Don’t file it in your head and then come back to it again (and sometimes again and again).

If you don’t have the time to reply don’t read it. Same goes for documents, reports etc. Try to touch everything only once and get it out of the way. If need be remove notifications etc. to avoid getting the urge to check and read.

The other advice I will give is understand how you work, when are you most productive focusing on details? After the morning coffee? After lunch? At night when all is quiet? And when are you unable to go as deep in focus, do your emails your light concentration tasks then etc. Everyone works differently and has different styles so don’t try to copy someone else’s schedule it may not work for you.

Amira El-Sayed

Amira El-Sayed is a business coordinator, jewelry designer and an entrepreneur in Egypt. She is a founder of M.F.A Accessories that designs and builds custom jewelry items from polymer clay to copper sawing. She has a degree in marketing and business strategy. She worked as a marketing specialist and an events coordinator in the past. Amira is passionate about changing things to the better sides. She likes challenges and doing a research. She decided to turn her hobby into a small business in June 2009 and it turned out to be a great endeavor. Currently, M.F.A handmade accessories has more than hundred clients and she never feels tired of doing what she likes practicing her marketing and entrepreneurship knowledge. 

1.  What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

Currently, I am travelling to the United States to take my MBA degree in marketing. That puts up a challenge for me to run my own jewelry business in Egypt.

I would say that my typical day wouldn’t be the same as every day because I hate a routine.

I think it will be like studying, meeting new people from different cultures, searching for new techniques to improve my jewelry business. I also attend meetings in my University Student Entrepreneur Center to discuss and plan my new startup idea.

At the end of the day, I like cooking, listening to music, watching movies/TV series. I also plan several activities for weekends. They will be hiking or walking with my friends, going to the gym and finally attending different kinds of entertainment events.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Amira El-Sayed:  

  I would advise young entrepreneurs to keep their passion alive. This is what keeps you willing to achieve your dreams.

Find out your prime time and complete your important tasks in it.

Find a place where your mind thinks best in. The place where all your bright ideas come to life.

Go to co-working spaces and attend different startup events in your country, mingle there with others who can add value to your way of thinking, this will help a lot in conducting your startup plan; brainstorming is always the key.

Search the internet for challenges faced by other entrepreneurs. This will prevent you from falling for the same mistakes others made.

One shouldn’t forget about taking care of their body and soul. Doing new things like meditation, yoga, hiking, skydiving once and awhile will boost your memory and refresh your energy. It will kill the routine and make you more productive.For managing your time, I would recommend that one should set their goals first and prioritize them, that way you will have a clear view about what’s need to be done and when.

Different mobile apps help you manage your time and tasks (e.g. Any.do, excel sheets).

Use the S.M.A.R.T goals technique and update it every month.

Use your time on social media to search for competitors, new ideas and potential customers.

Practice yourself to focus on what you are doing without getting distracted by your phone, this will save time doing your task and make you more productive.

Nesma Saad 

Nesma is an entrepreneur, real estate agent, wedding planner and much more. What is striking about Nesma is that, being only 22 years old girl in Egypt she manages to combine different types of businesses, at the same time of being active in social volunteering activities and causes. Nesma is a founder of “Live on Top Oikaa” eCommerce company which provides a platform for online shopping that contains exclusive range of products and services. Oikaa took a different route of marketing and distributing products by rewarding its customers with its points. Customers can redeem these points in the future from Oikaa products and services. Nesma actively blogs in Linkedin. 

  1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I’m only 22 year old, I have much time to do a lot of things at the same time and I love it.

I love exploring more and more that’s why I liked to start my wedding planning career beside real estate. A new day for me means a new chance from Allah to reach to my dreams. Every morning I put a plan for current day and try hard to achieve 99% of it.

I don’t like routine and traditional life. I love change and love doing this everyday even if it is a little one. My life is like a brisk. I have family, work, friends, shopping, food & drink, meeting new people, discovering more information, trying new things, failure & success, … and so on.

Briefly, my typical day is very hectic with no room for a routine.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Nesma Saad: 

Young entrepreneurs have more time to learn today and lead tomorrow, waste your time on learning and trying everything new.  It’s very good to grow early and to leave a beautiful legacy in people’s lives.

Keep going toward your dreams .. It’s your real life .. And always thank Allah for his blessings. Trust Allah and move ahead.

Reshmi Mukherjee

Reshmi Mukherjee is a writer, entrepreneur, fitness enthusiast, soul traveller and much more. She is  Co-Founder, Entrepreneur & Creative Director at The Buzz People an advertising agency in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Buzz People, is a highly ambitious enterprise conceptualized out of creative and engineering minds looks to provide differentiated value to clients through its key products. Established in 2014, The Buzz People is a group of highly intellectual, motivated and smart-thinking entrepreneurs who want to revamp the consumer purchasing behavior from start to end. Moreover, Reshmi is a blogger and a frequent traveller. She writes about her experience in reshmimukherjee.com. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

The thing most people think about entrepreneurship is that, you can wake up whenever you want and work as per your own terms without worrying about a 9 to 5 format with check-ins, bosses et al. While that might be true till an extent, it is that much harder to stay disciplined and wake up early to start your day without “needing to do so”.

My typical day starts off with a cup of coffee and scrolling through my emails. I like to respond to emails/ pending work as and when it comes up. It is a result of being obsessive about keeping your slate clean at all times.

After a quick breakfast, I either head out for meetings at clients’ offices or my own office depending on the schedule of the day. Because of the nature of our business, recruitment for projects happen all year long and a large part of my day goes into meeting prospective candidates, interviewing them and fulfilling vacancies in a pretty tight time frame.

If I am out for the entire day, I usually grab my lunch from my favorite deli, but most of the times, if possible, I try to come home for lunch. The mantra to stay on top of things during a busy week is to prepare for the week in advance.

So, I do a lot of meal prep during the start of the week so that eating lunch at home is quick, easy and nutritious. And the fact that I love to cook my own meals only helps.

After lunch, I try to sit for an hour or so with a cup of green tea to write my weekly blogs. I find this time to be having an extremely calming and positive effect on my whole day.

They say entrepreneurship is hard – I say that it is as hard as anything else that you are doing. It is as hard and as easy as you make it out to be.

But at the end of the day, everyday, it ends up becoming the plant that you’ve been watering, the baby that you’ve been feeding and the rise of the sun that you wish to watch everyday.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Reshmi Mukherjee: 

The first advice that I would like to give to young entrepreneurs is to believe in themselves. There will be times when the most stoic believers will begin to lose hope and vision of their own dreams. It’s normal, but what makes you into an entrepreneur is the simple fact that you have the knack to wash away these fogs of disbelief and get up stronger.

That’s my first advice – believe in your vision, believe in yourself and believe that everything will work out in the end.

The second thing that I would like to tell anyone who has started off their own businesses is that, keep your cash flow very strong. Finance is king when it comes to entrepreneurship . Make it a habit to sit for an hour every week on your PnL (Profit & Loss) sheet. It will help you to see what is going on clearly.

As a young entrepreneur, spend only on what is required and avoid splurging on things just for Instagram. Hire those who can really visualize your dream. And each day, every day – make sales happen. Because while marketing is great, without sales, the backbone crumbles.

My final advice would be about time management. I have always been a big-time planner, and that has helped me immensely while juggling multiple tasks at one time. Being an entrepreneur in a startup, you are the creative, you are the marketing department, you are the finance guys, you are even the PRO.

Therefore, if you don’t plan your day/week, you will see yourself sinking very often.

Keep a daily planner where you note down everything that you need to accomplish during the day and in the course of the day, keep striking off everything that you have completed. Organizing your day is a key and this is what is going to make the difference.

The pivotal reason you took up the path of entrepreneurship is because you wanted the world around you to be something that you have dreamt of. It is time to wake up, dress up and show up and do it.

Reem BuQais-Rivera

Reem BuQais-Rivera is  only 24 years old. She is a graduate of New York Fashion Institute of Technology which is the school of top designers like Carolina Herrera, Calvin Klein and Michael Kors. She has a great interest in fashion and clothes. After completing her studies in New York, Reem returned to Bahrain and started her own label Reem BuQais-Rivera. Reem is a well-tailored luxury Ready-to-Wear brand with Latin and Middle Eastern influences as Reem comes from an Arab-Latin background. Reem is also a blogger and she is active in twitter. She recetly won ahrain’s Top Stylist competition. She has a number of awards for developing fashion industry in Bahrain 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical weekday includes me going to work as I do have a job aside of my business. After my job I have lunch then work on my business which includes, designing, creating samples, looking for fabrics for my designs and overseeing production.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Reeem BuQais-Rivera: 

The advice I would give to young entrepreneurs is to be dedicated and passionate about the business they are doing. Because when you’re an entrepreneur, the work never stops, so if you love what you are doing, you will sacrifice the time and effort into your business.

Prioritize your business more than social events, write a to do list of things that need to be done and try to at least get 3 done per day.

Stephanie Khouri

Stephanie is an entrepreneur and word aficionado. She is the founder of Gourmet stop – the first Automat machine which dispenses meals in just minutes in UAE. Compared to junk food, the food vended by gourmet stop is real and healthy. The gourmet stop is located in eight locations and contain eight types of food available each day. Stephanie is also a founder of Nomadic Capital, a company which specializes in importing the latest inventions from around the world from UAE as well as developing the new apps. Stephanie also founded the Urban Steel shop, the first official body piercing shop in Dubai. What is inspiring about Stephanie is that she manages so many different types of businesses and never gets tired. 

 1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

A typical day is quite a challenge to come by as an entrepreneur, and especially one with a startup. There are so many different and changing moving parts that need to be taken care of.

With that said, I try to start the average day by going to the office, which is a wonderful environment, and I catch up with my team who are the best people around!

I then visit our locations, where Gourmet Stop, our automated food dispensing machine is located, to make sure things are running smoothly. Meetings are an almost daily occurrence. I love Nomadic, it’s my passion and even with the hardships that come along the way, that drives me.

Once, the full work day is done, I head home and that’s where my second passion comes in to play! I love cooking, it’s an art for me and it relaxes me completely. My business partner is also my husband so even when we are home work continues!

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Stephanie Khouri: 

Time management and productivity? This is the most important lesson they will ever learn, and it’s a tough one. Time management will be your most significant tool, it makes success that much more attainable.

If you do nothing else as an entrepreneur, do this!! Plan your day, stick to your plan, use the hours available to you to the best of your ability.

To do lists will help, it might sound silly but believe me it keep things under control. If proper time management isn’t exercised at the beginning it becomes incredibly difficult to fix later on and you will become overwhelmed.

Focus on one thing at a time as much as possible and listen to those who have walked the line before you.

 Kpi.com is Easy to use Business Management Software that Handles Your Daily Entrepreneurship Tasks and Finance. Click Here to Signup and to Learn MoreTry kpi.com for Free

Rania Badr El Din a humanitarian, social entrepreneur, proud and dedicated mother of three and CEO of Mother & Child, Egypt’s trusted source of information for families. She is a participant of TED talks in Cairo, Egypt. She gives lectures about balancing work and life being a female entrepreneur and a mother. Mother and Child is a digital publication  that offers family care advice to young mothers. She also proudly participates in various women empowerment programs in Egypt. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical day now is very different from my typical day 21 years ago when I first started my business! I used to run around all day, working extra long hours and relying on others to manage the home.

Today and through the years I have managed to turn things around so that my days are more relaxed and I have more time for myself and my family, while delivering even greater value to my customers. A different mindset, a focus on what matters most, delegating more, and the transition of our publication from print to digital have all made this possible.

My typical day starts with spending an hour or so with my husband at a nearby coffee shop after our 10-year old daughter has left for school, followed by several hours of working on my laptop from home and managing my team remotely.

If I have a work meeting I will drive over to that and then back home in time for my daughter’s school bus to drop her off. Alternatively, I may have one of my weekly meetings with a member of our management team or our full team meeting every two weeks at the office.

In all cases I tend to spend many hours each week working from home, where I manage to focus better while being more hands on around the house and getting some quiet time for myself. Some mornings I will take out some time to catch up with a friend or do charity or community work or attend a school function.

Evenings are spent with my daughter and my husband. Weekends are for family and fun and relaxation (even though I always do manage to sneak in some work here and there as needed – replying to emails or messages – without disrupting the peace).

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Rania Badr El Din: 

  First and foremost, decide what’s important to you, not just in relation to work but with regards to life as a whole. Decide what you really want out of life and what values you want to live by, and let those guide you. Second of all, love what you do and see the value in it.

Third of all, surround yourself with the right people, at work and outside of it. I could go on, but when these 3 things in particular are in order, it’s surprising how much more productive one can become.

We tend to be more productive when we are clear about what we are trying to achieve and how we intend to achieve it, and when we have people to help us achieve it. And of course loving what we do means that we can find more joy in our days and not just in our evenings and weekends.

 Haneen Dabain is a co-founder of pricena – a comparison website that gathers best prices of various electronic products across the stores inUAE. Pricena compares prices of electronics, appliances, fashion and other products to help shoppers find the best prices online. Haneen has an IT education background and she managed several tech startups before. In June 2015, Pricena partnered with Daxx and hired mobile developers who helped build Pricena’s iOS and Android apps. Haneen Dabain has been featured in entrepreneur.com and khaleejtimes. She eagerly shares tips about launching a new company and starting a new startup in various events of UAE. Pricena was recognized as the Online Startup of the Year by Du Enterprise Agility Awards.

  1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

  I start my day by having coffee and going through my emails. Then it’s time to have a meeting with the team to discuss progress, tasks for the day, questions or concerns, and risks and mitigation plans to make sure we meet the deadlines.

We also frequently have a founders’ meeting to discuss the products road map,  future  plans, and brainstorm ideas about new features.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Haneen Dabain: 

Team communication is key, there are  plenty of tools to help make the communication efficient. We use slack and we like it, it definitely made team discussions a lot easier.

Elissa Freiha  an Emirati of Lebanese-American decent that was born and raised in Paris, France. Elissa is a co-founder of WOMENA – a Dubai-based women-only angel group that empowers and educates women investors. It provides a supportive, professional network and dependable guidance to invest in new companies in the MENA region and facilitates the investment process from deal sourcing to close.  She was recently named as one of Forbes’ Middle East’s Inspiring Business Leaders of the UAE. She has been featured in BBC for creating change among women entrepreneurs. She is included Arabian Business’ 100 most powerful Arab women and Arabian Business’ 100 most influential Arabs under 40.Since launch in December 2014, WOMENA has invested in four UAE companies and has educated and empowered hundreds of women to invest. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical days as an entrepreneur are very hectic and never seem to have enough time.

I wake up, shower, podcasts on the way to the office, breakfast at the office, morning meetings, lunch at my desk, internal office meetings, admin work, evening pitch events.

I then go home try to spend some time on overarching business strategy that gets overlooked while taking care of admin.

Then I watch a show and sleep, wake, repeat.  

2. Productivity tips from Elissa Freiha:

Be honest with yourself about what you like to do: you’re the boss so you have the luxury of choosing where your skillset should be applied. Outsource or delegate the rest.

Doaa Adel Hosny is a recognized Professional  Makeup artist since 2012.  In 2013, she started her own workshops. Putting art, creativity and talent together made her workshops to standout and recognized by some talented Makeup artist. After that, Doaa started her private sessions as she found that this will be much more beneficial for the customers. In the last few years, she has been attending most of the fashion events to keep myself updated about the latest trend in Makeup.  To make her work more professional, she studied Image Consulting and  started her career as a certified Makeup artist and Image Consultant. We can see thatMakeup and Fashion will always be her passion as she believes that “Beauty is her Duty”. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I start my day at 7:00am and this is the first secret. Early morning is the best thing to live a positive day. Also you can manage your time depends on what you do in the first hour in you day first hour should be like:

10 mins for coffee 10 mins meditation  praying  the 10 mins writing what I’ll do in my day ( my plan for today)

and sports at least for 45 mins with music to recharge yourself with positive energy, shower then start the day.

Then, I am busy with doing my work very well like checking emails and making the meetings. I  train my team and motivate them. Then I head back to my family to listen for their problems and what they achieve during the day.

2. Productivity tips from Doaa Hosny:

Try to develop your self with a course or book reading is the best thing can help your to grow fast

Consistency for your dream.

Write your Dream every day

Relax

Make a wish list and everyday write how can you achieve every dream of them

Find at least one hour with someone you love to talk with him/her

Find time for yourself everyday to filter your day and your goal

Your vision board is the best thing to achieve your goal

Maria Kalenskaya is an entrepreneur, the founder of Mashoonya Gifts ecommerce shop based in Dubai. Maria has started her ecommerce business with a unique idea. Mashoonya store includes all the products that can be presented as gifts to your loved ones. The products in the store are both hand made and from factory. She has a huge experience in marketing and customer service. She worked for big brands in the past. In May 2016,she decided to start her own small business based on the experience gained from the biggest brands. Currently, Mashoonya has more than 500 products and a constantly growing datababase of customers. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

As a young single female entrepreneur, perhaps, my typical day is different from that of many others who are settled in their lives. If anything, my typical day is far from routine. Generally my day begins with updating myself on regional and global news and light breakfast.

Being a person who is more active at night, I often sleep very late working on my business. My day could be decided into overseeing execution of outstanding tasks on priority basis, engaging with my vendors , clients and attending to my marketing and business development activities.

Before I call it a day from work point of view I also review my revenue and then prioritize my tasks for the following day. I must add that as an entrepreneur, I am engaged mentally 24/7 in my business. So there is no end or start of my days.

 2. Productivity tips from Maria Kalenskaya:

Planning, prioritizing and timely execution is fundamental. Reviewing and rectifying on an ongoing basis the shortfalls in all the above.

Sirine Fadoul is an Incubation Manager at DTEC Tech Startup Incubator, Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority. She is a founding member of Girls in Tech Middle East and a Mentor and Coach for The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s Mentoring Women Program. Sirine is also the founder of Generation Disrupt, a nonprofit product design educational program for children. She works closely with a portfolio of 14 tech startups providing them with strategic and operational support in addition to assistance with follow-on funding. She is a founding member of Girls in Tech Middle East and a Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s Mentoring Women Programme Mentor and Coach. She has more than 12 years of Marketing, Business Development, Management and Entrepreneurship experience between Europe and the Middle East

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My day starts and ends with either reading the news or/and listening to a podcast or audiobook. I try as much as possible to maintain a sense of urgency and plan my day in a manner that allows me to achieve tangible results rather than reacte to issues that arise. On that I share an article I recently published www.entrepreneur.com/article/287904

Every day is different but what is absolutely vital to me is having at least one brief conversation with a colleague or a client.

 2. Productivity tips from Sirine Fadoul:

Focus, focus, focus. It is very important to stay focused on what yields results and delegate what should be delegated. There are many productivity tools out there that are easy to use and affordable, read about them and pick the ones that suit you and add value to your startup.

Don’t shy away from asking for help, seek a mentor or an advisor to guide you and support you.

Andrea Antal is an entrepreneur, founder of  Andrea Antal Communications, brand management and marketing agency located in Bahrain. Anrea is originally from Toronto, Canada. She started her career in the hospitality industry, working with Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts for over ten years. As her career path took shape, she discovered my passion and natural ability for marketing and public relations.  In 2013, she recognized the opportunity to start her own marketing and PR business when a number of business owners asked her to help them start, boost or save their businesses. Over the years, her marketing and PR services have developed razor-sharp focus, committed to delivering the strategies and tools that work best in today’s competitive landscape.

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

Each day, I wake up, get my son ready for school. I manage to get ready during the short time he’s having breakfast, and then we’re out the door by 7:45 am. I need to pick him up at 1pm, as he’s only in nursery 1/2 day. This is the only constant in my schedule, so everything else pretty much revolves around that.

On the professional side of things, the fun part about being a marketing consultant is that each day is different. Working with different types of businesses, I could be creating new campaign strategies on one day, and on other days, I’m working on implementing them or analyzing campaigns that are already in action.

My services range from email marketing, social media, webinars, direct mail, search engine optimization, advertising, business advisory, product development, customer retention, PR, etc., so there’s never a boring day. I absolutely love what I do!

In the evenings, I try to log out at a reasonable hour (7pm on average) so that I can spend time with my family and catch up on everyone’s day before bed. I think it’s important to stay grounded and in touch with your personal life, because the days may be long, but time certainly flies, so I don’t take that for granted.

  2. Productivity tips from Andrea Antal:

#1: Deal with small tasks immediately 

If a task takes less than two minutes, get it done and cross it off your list instead of saving it for later (which often never comes!)

#2: Don’t let distractions slow you down

Avoid checking your personal social media accounts until you’re finished working. The average worker spends 55 minutes during a workday checking Facebook. It’s a major time-suck and can be hard to get back on task.

#3: Prioritize your tasks in order of importance

Making the most of your day involves completing crucial tasks. Feeling productive is very rewarding and motivating.

#4: Set realistic deadlines

I always say, “under promise and over deliver.” Always give yourself a little extra time to complete tasks so that you have a little extra breathing room. Finishing a task earlier than expected is always a great feeling.

#5: Get organized

Using lists and tracking your progress is a must if you want to stay on course. Entrepreneurs have a lot going on, and often feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders, so the best thing you can do is stay on top of your daily activities.

 Randa Ayoubi is a cofounder and CEO of Rubicon Holding Group. Rubicon Group Holding, is a diversified global entertainment and production powerhouse devoted to the creation of outstanding innovative entertainment experiences and interactive educational content across all media platforms. RGH has a team of several hundreds of employees in four locations Amman Jordan, Los Angeles United States, Manila Philippines and Dubai United Arab Emirates. Ms. Randa Ayoubi founded Rubicon Group Holding Limited in 2004. Ms. Ayoubi serves as Chairperson of Red Sea Institute for Cinematic Art and Board Member of Children’s Museum of Jordan. She received Business Woman of the Year, CEO Middle East Awards. She ranked 11th on the list of most influential woman in the Middle East (Economist Magazine 2007) and 12th most influential woman in the middle east, Arabian Business 2010.

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical day starts with 45-60 mins of yoga and meditation, followed with coffee I go have with my mother every morning, then the office.

I typically have 4-6 meetings a day besides regular management duties and follow up on projects and clients.   Most evenings I spend at home with my family.  We watch a movie, play a game or visit or receive friends.

     2. Productivity tips from Randa Ayoubi:

Segment your day so you can give all of your focus and attention to each segment.  Go into each segment passionately and leave it where it should be when it’s time for the next.

I always find that doing whatever you are doing at the time passionately, without worrying about what you still have to do or haven’t yet done, increases productivity and enhances life’s quality.  Live passionately in the Now of each moment.

Eman El-Koshairy is a cofounder of AlMakinah,  UX Training and Consulting Specialist, freelancer, and UXD & Design Thinking Evangelist. AlMakinah is a programming bootcamp that aims to produce production-tier software developers in a short amount of time. She loves teaching and sharing knowledge. Although AlMakinah is relatively young programming bootcamp, it has already anumber of successful students and customers. Eman also loves blogging and helping others to learn programming. She is still making sense of my world. Eman El-Koshairy  is passion & coffee driven person as put in her own words. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

So our startup AlMakinah is still in it’s early phases, and we still don’t have an office so things are pretty random here. So before I get to how a day would look like, that’s what we do to put some structure is the days:

We have meetings early in the day, later in the afternoon, and we try to squeeze them on same day back to back so they don’t interupt the work flow of the day.

As we wear many hats, we found it’s best to have themselves for the days, so we don’t keep on doing too much context switching each day. Of course it’s more of a general theme for the day.

A typical day outline would look like this:

I start off my day with a cup of coffee and a good breakfast, then I get dressed and off to my work destination for the day (a coffee place most of the days)

I take a minute to organize my day and what I need to get done

I usually have an important task in the morning that is to some extent finite, meaning that I can complete and finish it before lunch,  this gives me a sense of  achievement for the day and keeps me motivated.

Then comes lunch and maybe some unwinding and doing some calls or answering some emails

Then I go to the next chunk of tasks, these could be more open tasks, that need more creativity or discovery, this way I give them more time, and I already got something major out of the way in the morning, so I am more comfortable working on them.

I usually leave some mindless – easy tasks for the end of the day, more emails, answering fb page, or reviewing stuff.

I usually allow myself some unwinding at the end of the day, I watch something, chat/meetup with a friend or so.

2. Productivity tips from Eman El-Koshairy:

I come for a design thinking background and one thing I have learned from it is the power of iterations and feedback! I used to look at a task and think that when it was done it had to be perfect from the first attempt and before I showed it to anyone. I usually take a task on different stages with different levels of fidelity, and in fact this is more efficient in many ways, I start off with the core of the task and I seek feedback and I use this input to make the second round of work and enhancements. As an entrepreneur you need to quick, flexible and lean, which means u need to be very efficient in getting things done, and having perspective on spending time on the things that will matter the most.

If a task feels to big, and you have been procrastinating it for some time, look up the pomodoro technique, It really does work !

Use tools and automate tasks, you don’t have to do everything manually.  Work smart, find smart ways to do things faster!

It’s easy to feel that u need to be 24/7, there is always more work to do, it never seems to end, however make sure you give and allow yourself break time. I do that every weekend at least half a day is completely free of work. I do it without feeling guilty, and I do it no matter how busy I am, it’s important to avoid burn out and it’s really important to have legitimate guilt free off time, believe me it does wonders and helps you energize and avoid procrastination!

There is no one size fits all, you have to try different methods and approaches to managing your time and tasks, untill you find the right balance that works for you!

 Yasmine Helmy currently works as a growth marketer at instabug.com. However, she has lots of entrepreneurship projects in her profile. She is a national director of Hult Prize Foundation. Hult Prize is the wold’s largest social entrepreneurship competition aimed at students creating sustainable solutions for the most pressing challenges. Each year, a global winner receives $1 million USD sponsored by Bill Clinton to work on their social enterprise. Yasmine also worked in many other startups as a business development manager and a director. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I usually prepare food a day before to make sure I don’t rush myself in the morning. I typically plan my meetings as soon as I reach the office to coordinate with the team and set a to-do list.

I then zone out to read my emails and get things done. I usually do so by listening to indie music and sit in a quiet room. The second half of the day I dedicate it to revisit the to-do list and finish everything that needs to be done before the end of each day. I then go to the gym right after work for about 45-60 mins to re-energize.

2. Productivity tips from Yasmine Helmy:

It took me a long while to figure out a routine that actually worked and didn’t feel like a typical routine. I used to struggle to wake up early and maintain a social life after work, but planning ahead made it easier to know what’s on my daily plate and what needs to be finished faster. Using a personal to-do list like wunderlist and one for work like Trello helped me in setting deadlines and priorities.

Also, working out made a huge difference as it really releases the negative energy and increases stamina levels. I suggest you try out a routine and stick to it for about 21 days (some research says you are more likely to stick to a habit of you do it for 3 weeks straight) and see if it sticks with you as it did with me

Try to put yourselves a personal weekly goal so that you have something to look forward too.

Ola Allouz is an entrepreneur who is passionate about photography. Ola believes that being creative is defined by a unique way of thinking.  Ola has a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from the College of Banking and Economics, UAE University and she has practical experience in the banking field. Currently she is an e-commerce entrepreneur and a Professional Network Marketer. The world of photography wasn’t introduced coincidentally to Ola. Rather, she was encouraged and motivated by the Emirati artist Dr. Najat Makki, who gave her enough determination to pursue this.

  1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

For me being an entrepreneur means time management.  I have 24 hours a day to do a lot of things, by managing my time and tasks I can I achieve them.

I am an e-entrepreneuer, as I do my work any where and I mostly prefer to do it at home, so I can do my work and the same time be at home with the family. I choose to be an entrepreneur after a 7 years of being an employee to have more time for my passion which is photography.

Doing what you love is the best thing one can ever do, as you will never get bored!  I think everyone should do more of what they love and will keep them going to the right direction in life.

2. Productivity tips from Yasmine Helmy:

My advice to young entrepreneurs is to enjoy what they do, and to be successful in it they have to plan it well as planning is the most important element of success in any field.

Having a planner and writing your to do lists with specific deadlines is what can make a difference in what you do.

Last advice: NEVER GIVE UP!

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