#i have had some great informative conversations with experts online through asking them for more info when they say something surprising

[wot-tidbits]

10 Years Anniversary

PART 6

The good.

This part is for the good shit. No more bad shit. If you have gone through the shit of the previous parts, there are only good vibes here.

Number 1.

This bloody blog itself.

I did not have that intention but it happened. When I think what kind of blog I would love to scroll for hours in my early days as WoT fan, I could not dream that I had to do the task myself. I still remember the awe and the glee as little kid in toy store when I found out the 13th Depositary or the Theoryland Database. I can only envy my visitors who received new art, new meme, new fan content every single day for the span of years. I can only imagine it as I cannot experience it myself. Yeah, there is fun part as well but mostly I remember the work, the dedication and the motivation, the insanity of running this project. Some days I didn't want to do it but I had to because the stubborn donkey in me wouldn't let me live in peace.

I salute you anonymous WoT fans who had the time of your life around.

Number 2

Cards Against Randland

At my lowest point around 2015 I found activity that gave me the happiest memories and unexpected connection with other WoT fans. This online game helped me so much as I found people I could call friends. Well, some of them betrayed me later but still the pain cannot overwrite the joy of so many evenings having great fun. For some reason I was ridiculously good at this game. I was not being nicknamed Meta King for nothing. Some of these great memories I keep in this sideblog. The best time for me being WoT fan in the community.

Number 3

WoT-Notes

My dedication as stubborn donkey paid off in another format. It is still ridiculous (and borderline shameful) to say this blog is the only place in the fandom where a fan can read some of Robert Jordan's notes without going through expensive trip to Charleston. And also the ridiculous sight of a link for this blog to stay in one line with the greatest names and sites created by legendary fans in this awesome list of WoT content.

Number 4

Robert Jordan's casting

The most visited post and the most notable connection with the title of WoT-Tidbits is the page where I shared one reveal of Terez from her visit through Robert Jordan's notes about his own picks for actors to play WoT characters. The original post of Terez got lost as Google+ was deleted and by pure accident my shared post became the source and the only evidence on the Internet that such list exists. No one with access to the notes hasn't republished the list. I bet many "fans" would love if this list disappeared and certain one fan did not care to preserve it.

Number 5

The German Shepherd

For those who are frequently on Reddit this won't be a surprise. RJ's casting wasn't the only famous link from my blog. My attempt to gather the whole information of the infamous legend of the German Shepherd got copied very often around. I just got lucky to have that brief conversation with Kathy and she was kind enough to answer.

Number 6

The art, the memes, the content

If it wasn't for this blog I would not have this masterpiece of commission of Mat and Tuon in AMOL. It is still surreal to see an idea of mine living and breathing in this gorgeous comic. Meeppodraws delivered spectacularly and I couldn't express my gratitude.

The constant flow of memes was like healing medicine for me to go through all the controversies with smile. So I decided to keep the medicine in one place here.

I love when the fandom cooks content - I cannot choose what to highlight so it is just huge general thank you for the awesome work that you have gifted the fans.

Number 7

Art expert

And while we are on the topic of art. My devoted methodical stubborn work to search for any piece of WoT art caused a weird consequence in turning me into kinda expert on WoT artwork. I collected so many unnoticed and obscure WoT pieces that genuinely if someone asked for art of second or third tier characters, I could pull it out for almost any one as long as it exists. This blog contains the biggest collection of WoT art ever �� at one point I had presented around 90%+ of the latest art pieces. Nothing could escape me. These days the percentages dropped but still this was enough to be one of the most competent people around for help. And help I did after Paul Dose - unknown guy for me who created a card game with WoT concept - who recognized that I might help him and sent me a list of characters to provide him with images for the cards. I couldn’t do everything but still I could help him with most of it. That hunting down the list in my archives was cool memory.

Another anecdote was when someone decided to call me out for not presenting a source for one WoT piece. And their evidence for source was… wait for it… Pinterest. Bloody Pinterest! I had a good laugh. As a matter of fact I have done that search by myself long before that incident and this piece is still one of the few with untraceable history. They tried the wrong guy thinking that I will chicken out not knowing the history of the piece or what is Pinterest.

Number 8

Living up to my URL

When I created my URL WoT-Tidbits 10 years ago it was inspired by the several lucky bast... fans who had the rare chance to get little tidbits here and there from the author at different events and meetings. I read all these reports from fans in the database with “little” jealousy as I could never dream to be in their place. But miracles happen when Brandon Sanderson visited Bulgaria in 2017. This is definitely the highlight of my last 10 years being WoT nerd. Not only I had the chance to see him, to listen to him, to ask him a question but also by the will of the Wheel I witnessed new unknown tidbit about my most beloved book series. And I had the blessing to report it on blog coincidentally named WoT-Tidbits. It was small and uninteresting detail but for me it meant everything. One tidbit was enough to validate the existence of my whole blog.

Number 9

Tad Kendel

I found the proof that Andorans can be dark skinned and I consider it as good shit pointing that Robert Jordan knew exactly what he was doing.

Number 10

Robert Jordan

It is not like I did not appreciate his work before. Just after reading so much slander on his masterpiece by people who call themselves fans, I truly understood his genius - on the surface of so many superficial demands for the books to be “fixed” - I acknowledged how important was his attention to "outdated" details, and how well every of his "wrong" decisions fit in the storytelling. He thought for everything, didn't he? He outsmarted people who complain in their blindness and who demand his masterpiece to bend on their artificial terms. So many so called fans try to speak on his behalf instead of listening to his voice and wisdom, to fix instead of supporting his vision. Many claim The Wheel of Time to be stuck in the regressive 20th century and that modern audience won't get it when in reality Robert Jordan is still so far ahead of the progressive 2024. We do not have to pull WoT behind us, we still has a lot of work to do if we want to catch it ahead of us.

Let the Light keep you safe.

LightOne

[apenitentialprayer]

I hit the breaking point as a parent a few years ago. It was the week of my extended family’s annual gathering in August, and we were struggling with assorted crises. My parents were aging; my wife and I were straining under the chaos of young children; my sister was bracing to prepare her preteens for bullying, sex and cyberstalking. Sure enough, one night all the tensions boiled over. At dinner, I noticed my nephew texting under the table. I knew I shouldn’t say anything, but I couldn’t help myself and asked him to stop. Ka-boom! My sister snapped at me to not discipline her child. My dad pointed out that my girls were the ones balancing spoons on their noses. My mom said none of the grandchildren had manners. Within minutes, everyone had fled to separate corners. Later, my dad called me to his bedside. There was a palpable sense of fear I couldn’t remember hearing before. “Our family’s falling apart,” he said. “No it’s not,” I said instinctively. “It’s stronger than ever.” But lying in bed afterward, I began to wonder: Was he right? What is the secret sauce that holds a family together? What are the ingredients that make some families effective, resilient, happy? It turns out to be an astonishingly good time to ask that question. The last few years have seen stunning breakthroughs in knowledge about how to make families, along with other groups, work more effectively. Myth-shattering research has reshaped our understanding of dinnertime, discipline and difficult conversations. Trendsetting programs from Silicon Valley and the military have introduced techniques for making teams function better. The only problem: most of that knowledge remains ghettoized in these subcultures, hidden from the parents who need it most. I spent the last few years trying to uncover that information, meeting families, scholars and experts ranging from peace negotiators to online game designers to Warren Buffett’s bankers. After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative. I first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a colorful psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Duke was asked to help explore myth and ritual in American families.“There was a lot of research at the time into the dissipation of the family,” he told me at his home in suburban Atlanta. “But we were more interested in what families could do to counteract those forces.” Around that time, Dr. Duke’s wife, Sara, a psychologist who works with children with learning disabilities, noticed something about her students.“The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges,” she said. Her husband was intrigued, and along with a colleague, Robyn Fivush, set out to test her hypothesis. They developed a measure called the “Do You Know?” scale that asked children to answer 20 questions. Examples included: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth? Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001, and taped several of their dinner table conversations. They then compared the children’s results to a battery of psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion. The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness. “We were blown away,” Dr. Duke said. And then something unexpected happened. Two months later was Sept. 11. As citizens, Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush were horrified like everyone else, but as psychologists, they knew they had been given a rare opportunity: though the families they studied had not been directly affected by the events, all the children had experienced the same national trauma at the same time. The researchers went back and reassessed the children.“Once again,” Dr. Duke said, “the ones who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress.” Why does knowing where your grandmother went to school help a child overcome something as minor as a skinned knee or as major as a terrorist attack? “The answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family,” Dr. Duke said. Psychologists have found that every family has a unifying narrative, he explained, and those narratives take one of three shapes. First, the ascending family narrative: “Son, when we came to this country, we had nothing. Our family worked. We opened a store. Your grandfather went to high school. Your father went to college. And now you. ...” Second is the descending narrative: “Sweetheart, we used to have it all. Then we lost everything.” “The most healthful narrative,” Dr. Duke continued, “is the third one. It’s called the oscillating family narrative: ‘Dear, let me tell you, we’ve had ups and downs in our family. We built a family business. Your grandfather was a pillar of the community. Your mother was on the board of the hospital. But we also had setbacks. You had an uncle who was once arrested. We had a house burn down. Your father lost a job. But no matter what happened, we always stuck together as a family.’ ” Dr. Duke said that children who have the most self-confidence have what he and Dr. Fivush call a strong “intergenerational self.” They know they belong to something bigger than themselves. Leaders in other fields have found similar results. Many groups use what sociologists call sense-making, the building of a narrative that explains what the group is about. Jim Collins, a management expert and author of “Good to Great,” told me that successful human enterprises of any kind, from companies to countries, go out of their way to capture their core identity. In Mr. Collins’s terms, they “preserve core, while stimulating progress.” The same applies to families, he said. Mr. Collins recommended that families create a mission statement similar to the ones companies and other organizations use to identify their core values. The military has also found that teaching recruits about the history of their service increases their camaraderie and ability to bond more closely with their unit.Cmdr. David G. Smith is the chairman of the department of leadership, ethics and law at the Naval Academy and an expert in unit cohesion, the Pentagon’s term for group morale. Until recently, the military taught unit cohesion by “dehumanizing” individuals, Commander Smith said. Think of the bullying drill sergeants in “Full Metal Jacket” or “An Officer and a Gentleman.” But these days the military spends more time building up identity through communal activities. At the Naval Academy, Commander Smith advises graduating seniors to take incoming freshmen (or plebes) on history-building exercises, like going to the cemetery to pay tribute to the first naval aviator or visiting the original B-1 aircraft on display on campus. Dr. Duke recommended that parents pursue similar activities with their children. Any number of occasions work to convey this sense of history: holidays, vacations, big family get-togethers, even a ride to the mall. The hokier the family’s tradition, he said, the more likely it is to be passed down. He mentioned his family’s custom of hiding frozen turkeys and canned pumpkin in the bushes during Thanksgiving so grandchildren would have to “hunt for their supper,” like the Pilgrims. “These traditions become part of your family,” Dr. Duke said. Decades of research have shown that most happy families communicate effectively. But talking doesn’t mean simply “talking through problems,” as important as that is. Talking also means telling a positive story about yourselves. When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence. The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.

- Bruce Feiler. Emphases added.

[david-akintunde]

10 Tips To Boost Your Email Open Rates

Here is a simple talisman for success if you’re an email marketer — higher email open rates mean more conversions. Sounds obvious? Even then, many organizations don’t end up writing emails that subscribers want to open. A study by MailChimp found that email open rates are just at 21.33% across all industries.

In a quick glance, this figure looks ok. But is it really? Suppose you have an email list comprising a whopping 15,000 subscribers. With a 21.33% conversion rate, only a mere 3199 leads are ever going to see your emails, and fewer will take any action.

Remember, there comes a point, when it doesn’t matter how extensive your email list is, but how many prospects within that list open your emails. If within the same list of 15,000 subscribers, your open rates go up to 50%, you end up with 7500 leads engaging with your pitch.

So, how do you get here? By following these 10 hacks that are sure to improve your email open rates:

1. Don’t Forget to Segment your Email List

Without email list segmentation, you cannot personalize your emails. While you can categorize your email list under parameters most relevant to you, try these three segments for starters.

Segment based on:

Demography

Challenges and pain points

Like and dislikes

2. Get your Subject Line Right

Your subject line alone is what encourages prospects to open your email. It also helps form your brand’s first impression. So, craft it well! How?

Personalize it for your target audience. Write more than one subject sentence for, say, different age groups, even if the product you’re pitching is the same.

Hold back on using too many punctuations like exclamation marks. You’d be surprised how commonly marketers use more than one exclamation point in subject lines for emphasis. Choose to emphasize with your words instead.

Keep it concise and avoid vagueness.

Draft it in the form of a question, if you can.

Use powerful words and phrases. These stir emotion and arouse curiosity. For example, the image below uses a power word like “sanity-saving.”

Source: Smart Blogger

3. Get your Email Timing Right

Remember, leads will read your emails at different times in different parts of the world. Some will read them late at night, while others will do so in the morning. Leverage whichever email automation tool you use to track the time most of your prospects read your emails.

Once you have an optimal time, send emails accordingly to boost open as well as click-through rates. Also, as a general rule of thumb, avoid sending marketing emails over weekends. Several studies have now revealed that weekends are the most inopportune time to send promotional communication.

4. Get your Email Frequency Right

Nobody, and that even includes you wants their inbox to be bombarded with too many promotional emails from one brand. Not only does this single-handedly bring down your open rates, but the prospect can blacklist you or mark you as spam.

Simply put, strike the right balance with your audience. Generally, sending emails twice or thrice and no more makes for a healthy frequency that doesn’t annoy prospects.

5. Re-engage with the Dormant Prospects

All email lists have prospects who haven’t opened promotional emails from certain brands in months. Your list is likely no different. Weed them out! And scout for new prospects.

But, before identifying and deleting them from your email list, make sure to draft and deploy a re-engagement campaign. Maybe, this campaign contains time-limited offers or personalized deals to re-engage passive leads.

6. Send Emails using an Official Email ID

No matter how small your business is at this point, don’t use your Gmail or Hotmail ids to send out marketing communication. Such a practice will likely land you in the prospect’s junk pile. Use a domain email address that carries your brand name to stay out of spam filters and boost your open rates.

7. Ensure a High Deliverability Rate

Unfortunately, over 20% of marketing emails don’t land up in your prospects’ inboxes. These emails bounce because of:

Temporary server issues on both ends

Sending emails to abandoned or obsolete email ids

Prospects who accidentally blacklist you

Upping your deliverability rate will automatically boost open rates. You can do this by:

Sending reminder emails requesting your subscribers to whitelist you.

Confirm if a prospect has willingly subscribed to your list by asking them to click on a link sent to their inbox.

8. Avoid using Certain Words in Email Subject Line and Body

Stay away from phrases and words that make your email seem less authentic. For instance, “Urgent,” “free stuff for you,” “you have won,” and several others. Think of these phrases similar to swear words in email marketing.

9. Send the Same Email Once More

Sometimes your prospects want to open your email, but they simply forget or get distracted. And, once they do, they won’t revisit your email. To avoid this situation, resend the same email to subscribers who didn’t open your first email.

Don’t worry about being too intrusive here. You’d be happy to know that this is not an uncommon practice used by marketers to boost their open rates.

10. Don’t only Send Promotional Content

Sure, the ultimate goal for your brand is to sell its wares, but this doesn’t mean all your emails must carry a sales pitch. Share informational or educational content to make your email campaigns more engaging. Help them gain light on their challenges through blogs, case studies, etc. When you send a mixed bag of email content, you are more likely to increase your open rates.

Conclusion

With these 10 tips, you can undoubtedly experience higher open rates, eventually translating into more conversions. As for subscribers who, even after all the attempts, don’t open your emails, it’s best to let them go! After all, not all subscribers turn into qualified leads, and that’s ok.

Three Tips For Writing Marketing Email Subject Lines People Actually Want To Open

Sales, marketing and branding expert. CEO of GoPromotional, distributor of promotional products with a focus on online business development.

When was the last time you sent an email? Did you know that, according to Statista, roughly 306 billion emails were estimated to have been sent and received every single day in 2020? There are only about 7.7 billion people on Earth. Let that sink in. Now, ask yourself this: How many of the emails you receive every day do you actually read? More specifically, how many of the promotional emails you receive do you open at all?

With all the benefits of the information age, it’s important to remember that we’re utterly swamped with information to an extent we’ve never experienced before. So if you want to get through to people — if you’re an e-marketer whose goal is to reach as many targets as possible via mass emails — you’ll have to put in some thought and get creative. This is a game of subject lines, and your job is to master it by crafting engaging, inviting, tempting and even daring email subject lines that will grab attention — even if it’s just long enough for a click.

The fear of missing out is your ally.

FOMO is real, and it’s powerful. For the uninitiated, “FOMO” stands for “fear of missing out,” and while it may be a behavioral trend brought about by our rapidly developing internet infrastructure, it is a valuable marketing tool. No matter what you’re missing — a new blow dryer, a different kind of juice or a wedding — the point is that you’re missing something. Maybe you just don’t know about it yet.

FOMO will be of great use to you as you draft up effective subject lines. Don’t just stop with basic additions such as “act fast,” “for a limited time” or “while supplies last.” Go all the way and use numbers. What makes you want to move faster: “while supplies last” or “three hours left?” The fewer details, the better. This is all about getting your target to open the email. Don’t worry about telling them what ends in three hours. Let them find out for themselves.

Less is sometimes more.

We’re all busy. Nobody has time to read your spiel. Yes, that even includes your 10-word subject line. How many of the hundred emails you received today had 10 words in their subject lines? It adds up, and, at some point, it just looks like alphabet soup. Crafting an email subject line is all about visuals. In my experience, a short, quippy subject line can catch the eye of someone looking at their email inbox because it helps break up the sea of text.

Consider shortening a subject line such as “New jeans from Lucky Brand, Calvin Klein, Collection by Michael Strahan and more” to something more like, “Lucky. Calvin. Strahan.” You can call it a laconic method if you want, but when you treat every word like it’s a scarce commodity, they instantly appear more important.

Laugh it up.

I think we can all agree that email is no longer the stuffy, daunting, formal affair it may have once been. Email is something we do without even thinking. It’s on our phones. It’s how we confirm toothpaste orders. It’s like socks: totally ubiquitous. And consider this: More and more, your target audience is made up of people who weren’t even born before email was invented. These consumers grew up in the beginnings of a post-advertising era, when I believe traditional advertising began to lose its grip. They know a promotional email when they see one.

The solution? Laugh it up. Be a little self-aware. I’ve found that millennials and Generation Z pick up on self-awareness, and they appreciate it. Make fun of yourself a little; it can’t hurt. Switch out your stock enthusiasm for deadpan humor. Be honest. Instead of, “This week’s top picks just for you,” for example, you could try, “We want your money.” The content matters, but what matters more is getting your target interested.

Remember, the meat and potatoes are in the body of your email, but the subject is your alluring dessert. You can have dessert before dinner — as long as you eat.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?

Your Email Marketing Is Destined To Fail Without These 3 Essentials

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Think email marketing is all spam? Think again! In a world where marketing pitches come at us from all angles and on every device, email marketing has held steady as the favored channel for consumers. When used well, this platform can help you attract, convert, close and delight your buyers. Don’t underestimate it — your company’s email strategy can make or break you.

When it comes to building a successful email-marketing strategy, there are three specific elements that will help you achieve your business goals or move you further away from them, depending on how well you use them.

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

1. Frequency

Nobody wants to get ten emails a day from a subscription. It doesn’t matter if the content is brilliant, useful or undeniably accurate. Your leads will get annoyed if you send them too much information. Even though they might read it (with some luck), at some point, they’ll feel bothered and eventually click the unsubscribe button.

Avoid losing contacts by not only asking their desired frequency to get your emails, but also by relying on your metrics. Don’t pay too much attention to your open rate alone — look closely at your click-through rate too. This will indicate how interested your leads are and how often they take action to prove it.

While every industry and situation is different, a good place to start with email-marketing cadence is about once per week. This establishes a relationship with your subscribers that can turn into a habit-forming routine. Being too timid about frequency can lead to a sporadic cadence that will end up irritating recipients. If you wait too long between emails, even opt-in subscribers may report you for spam — simply because you’ve let them forget all about you!

2. Relevance

While subscribers may certainly become frustrated by the frequency of your emails, they are more likely to become annoyed if your content is not relevant to their interests and needs.

Relevance is a tricky concept because it depends on many factors like the consumer’s knowledge level, his or her stage in the buyer’s journey and good timing. You must know your audience in order to understand what type of content they want.

Specifically, you need to know what they want from you, which is often dictated by where they are in the buyer’s journey. Are they ready to buy? Are they trying to get valuable information? Are they looking to solve a problem? Are you able to solve that problem?

In every industry, there are two types of buyers: “now” buyers, who are progressing down the purchase funnel, and future buyers, who have no interest in or need for your product currently, but may down the road. For future buyers, the relevance of your content is what’s most important to them; it’s what builds the brand trust that will bring them back to you when they are ready to buy.

Finally, timing is everything. Relevance is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time.

3. Action

We receive emails basically everywhere — at home, work and while on the go. When receiving an email, we may take a look at it immediately, but sometimes it requires further action like submitting a form, watching a video or visiting a website. Try to reduce or streamline required actions in order to make it easy for contacts to follow through at any time of day.

First and foremost, make your offers simple. Your buyers don’t like to be given too many choices; when they are, they often won’t buy anything at all. Even in the physical world, this is the case. In the famous “jam study” by Columbia Business School Professor Sheena Iyengar, for example, she set out two tasting booths for a brand of jam. One table offered six flavors to choose from; the other offered 24.

While the tasting booth with 24 flavors attracted more people, the booth with six flavors sold much more jam — 30% of those who stopped at the booth bought a jar, compared to just 3% of those who stopped at the table with 24 varieties. These visitors were too confused and overwhelmed to make a purchase decision.

The difference between stopping at a booth and buying from a booth is similar to the difference between opening an email and clicking through to an offer. Your email campaigns must be able to achieve both to be successful. The more personalized and concise you can be in your offers, the simpler the choice will be for your email subscribers.

BONUS To enjoy the best email marketing software, click here

[queen-bunnyears]

Murder on your mind ~ Tom Holland

Pairing: DCI!Tom Holland x DI!reader

Summary: Inspired by my love for B99, and my guilty pleasures Silent Witness and Luther. What more can I say. 

Wordcount: 5,4k+

Warnings: This is about a serial murder investigation, so it does discuss murder, violence, a chase, guns and shotwounds, a caraccident, unconciousness. They swear. Mentions of alcohol. A small kiss. 

Okay if you need help understanding uk police ranks, (I did) I looked it up. So we have a chief inspector who in this case is the highest rank. Directly under him come the DCI’s (Detective Chief Inspector). Then a DI, (Detective inspector) and for today the only other rank I use is an officer, which is lower in rank than the others.

“And then the remaining time of today's briefing is for DCI Osterfield, he has a case he would like to discuss,” your boss says. Harrison stands up from his seat, and picks up the clicker for the screen.

“Thank you, Miss Carter. So, anyone who likes to take a guess about the crime?” he asks, and immediately hands fly up. “It was committed just an hour ago. Janssen?”

“Money laundering,” Janssens confident voice thunders through the room. He often wins these betting games, but mostly because nine out of ten times it is indeed money laundering. Harrison shakes his head.

“Too bad, it is definitely a big break in,” Claire says next to you. You shake your head. For a break in he would be talking with the uniform officers, he wouldn’t have needed to discuss it. Unless the stolen items are over a million, but then the news would surely have spread across the city already, and the new apps hadn’t put anything online yet.

“Hostage situation?” Jimmy shouts from the desk behind you. Jimmy always wants it to be hostages, because he is the only negotiator at the station. But hostages are way too uncommon, the chief would have told you about it. You know what it is the moment Harrison points at you.

“Too bad, you are all wrong. Y/n, like to take a last guess?”

“Murder,” you say, clicking your pen and closing your notebook. You cock your head to the side, “And it must be real nasty if you wanna discuss it,”

“Bingo! So we have a big ol’ murder on our hands,” Harrison says, clicking to the next powerpoint slide. A photograph of a bloody crime scene comes up. “And it is not just on our hands,” he clicks and points dramatically to the man who comes up on the screen, “This is Tom Holland, DCI in Southwest London. He is gonna be helping me because,” the next slide shows three almost identical scenes. “It’s a serial!”

“Ohh Tom is a handsome colleague. I would love to do a stake-out with him, if you know what I mean,” Jimmy bends over his desk and whispers to you. You shake your head laughing.

“Jimmy, you have a problem in need of fixing. Have you tried going on a date?” you whisper back. You don’t move quickly enough, and his playful slap hits you on the back of your head.

“For the record, you are way too excited about this,” Claire says, and DCI Osterfield blushes slightly.

“I just want to catch him, and not be a total mood ruiner while informing you,” he replies, clicking to the end of the slideshow.

“Does anyone recognise something from an old case? He works really neat, so Holland thinks it might be someone who has done it before,” The briefing room stays quiet as no one answers. You shrug your shoulders.

“Well please dig in your memory today, anything you remember might help. We have to solve this. I will need assistance, and chief told me detective Y/l/n has just closed her last case. Wanna help me?”

“Yeah sure,” you say, folding your hands underneath your head. The pictures look awful, and nothing like you have ever dealt with.

“Great, we leave for the crime scene after this,” Harrison says, and you nod at him, “Okay, that concludes the discussion. If press asks you about it, direct them to me or to the PR people, don’t tell them anything,” he walks back to his desk while Carter stands up.

“Good luck today, don’t forget to apply for the training day next week,”

“Okay so what is the deal Haz?” you ask. You sit in the car, on your way to the crime scene. He drives, and you drink from the Starbucks cup in your hand, trying to get them to warm up. Police cars are always terribly cold.

“There were three murders last week in Southwest, and tonight one on our area. As you saw in the pictures, it is all done almost precisely the same. So naturally we have to go there, because it’s our area, but the DCI from Southwest will be joining us as well, because he has worked this case for days now,”

“Do you know him?”

“Tom and I were together in high school, and at the Academy. We are good friends. He is an excellent detective,” Harrison tells you. Harrison was in the year above you at the academy, but you never really interacted with classes other than your own. You fall silent, not having much else to say. Your mind goes to the slide show of the victims. All the same position, almost the same place of impact. The photograph of this morning's victim flashes before your eyes.

“Any info on the victim already?”

“Sally Stars, 33, she is a tourist from the US,” you see the image of her again. Small woman wearing a yellow raincoat, lying on her back. Her shoes next to her body, no bag or anything. A big red spot on her chest where the bullet pierced her skin. One shot, quick kill.

“Where in the US?”

“Phoenix, Arizona,” That tells you precisely nothing. Although you don’t know what you hoped for.

“Other similarities between this case and the others, beside how they look?”

“All of them are tourists. It is a drama, working together with all the embassies,” he sounds bitter. The happy, teasing Harrison is gone now. At the station you can joke around, but as soon as you go out it becomes serious business. You hope this case can be solved quickly.

“DCI Holland, please let me through,” you hear a voice say. You look up to see the man from the photograph walking up to you. Removing your gloves you come up from your crouching position next to the victim.

“Goodmorning DCI Holland,” you extend your hand and he shakes it. You put your globes back on while you introduce yourself, “I am detective inspector Y/n Y/l/n. I will be helping you and DCI Osterfield with the case,”

“Great,” he says, before turning away to Harrison. “Please tell me there is anything different on this one,”

“Not as far as I can see Tom,” Harrison says, a thoughtful look in his eyes, “but you know more of the case, does anything seem different to you?” Tom takes his time inspecting the crime scene. He lifts things, ruffles through the bagged evidence and asks for some extra pictures. When he returns to Harrison and you his face looks almost angry.  

“It seems like everything is the same,’ he says, suddenly he slams his hands down, “the fucker did it again. No fucking mistakes, how does he do it?”

“Something will come up,” Harrison says. You look around you, staring at the forensic experts who were bagging the evidence. The answer had to be here somewhere. Then you see a young man bag something a few metres from the body, at the edge of the scene.

“Hey, wait!” you scream, and you walk over to him, carefully stepping on the cleared ground. You almost smiled at what you saw, “Is that a,-”

“A phone,” DCI Holland says and he hurries over to where you are standing. You grab the bag from the stunned mans hands, and take out the phone. It feels icy cold through your gloves, and you see water drops on the side.

“It is soaked from dew and the rain this morning, I hope the lab can get something out of this,” you say, handing it over to Harrison, “It’s turned off, please keep it that way. If they dry it properly it might still work and that makes everything much easier.”

“This is new, the other bodies didn’t have a phone on them,”

“It’s his first mistake,” Harrisons says. You frown.

“Why do you think it is a man?”

“A wild guess, wanna bet on it?” he replies absently. Then he gives you the phone back, “what do you think of this? Does it tell you anything?”

“Old iphone, not a special model, Iphone 5. The case suggests that she is a big Harry Potter fan, that could explain why she was in Londen,” you take the case off the phone and grab the wet piece of paper that sits behind it, “And I wager she has a room in a hotel near Victoria's station. These are directions from there. To the right, past Victoria theatre, and so on. Call the station, they should be able to find the hotel,”

“That’s not right,” Tom says. His mouth is a thin stripe, and his forehead is wrinkled in a frown.

“Sorry what?”

“They already found her hotel room, near Covent Garden,”

“Then were would this lead to?” you wonder, inspecting the note closer.

“That is a very good question.” DCI Holland says, and he walks away. You stare at the piece of paper, as if it would start speaking if you look at it enough.

“Well, let’s go to this adress then,” Harrison says. You take a photograph of the paper and carefully put the phone back in the evidence bag. The ride is quiet, both you and Harrison deep in thoughts about the murder.

“Hello, I am detective inspector Y/l/n, and this is my colleague DCI Osterfield,” you show your badge to the man at the front desk. “We have some questions for you, regarding an ongoing case. Have you seen this woman?”

He inspects the photograph carefully and looks at Harrison. “Yes sir, I saw her yesterday. She came in to rent a safety box for a week. I can show you, although you need her permission to open it, or an official order.”

Harrison looks at you, and you shrug. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Can we see the box please?” he asks, putting his badge back in his pocket.

“Of course sir, follow me.”

“Nothing interesting in the locker, nothing in her hotel room. The first conversations with her family shows nothing of interest. There is no connection between them. Just the tourist thing. So based on that we have to assume he is killing at random,” Harrison is on the phone. He has big blue circles underneath his eyes. Probably matching yours. The second day on a murdur case is always heavy, as most of the evidence is processed, and the first results from the lab come in. You hear some murmurs on the other side and Harrison ends the call. He looks at you.

“Tom is on his way to us. He will bring his map of evidence and everything he gathered with the old cases,” you nod absently, looking at the giant board filled with photos, and the map. Red dots and lines all over the place, but it doesn’t make sense yet.

“Tourists don’t know the city well, so he might be able to guide them somewhere under false pretenses,” you say, “So maybe a cabbie? Who else moves anonymously through the city like that? I wanna see the CCTV,”

“There was no CCTV in the other cases,” Harrison tells you while typing on his laptop, “But we are lucky, they just placed a new camera at the shop across from the entrance of the park. They might have something. The officer should have sent,-” his voice trails off when he opens his mail and sees the file. Behind Harrison you see the door open and DCI Holland walks into the room. Harrison looks up.

“Tom, great, we were just going to watch the CCTV I texted about,” he starts the recording. The street on the screen is empty. “This is 21:00. Forensics guess she died around midnight,”

The screen stays empty as the video goes on to 21:00. At 22:38 a man walks through the screen with his dog. The small clock in the corner ticks through, 23:00, 23:30, 00:00. Just as Harrison wants to stop it you see something move in the corner.

“There,” you point at the bicycle that comes into view. A man is riding it, and when he turns into the park you and Tom see it at the same time. You shoot up, pausing the screen. 01:04.

“That’s her,” Tom says. Limp, on the back of the bicycle sits a woman, “is she conscious?”

“I don't think so, see here, he hits a bump and she doesn’t react at all,” Harrison says, playing the shot again.  

“Does he return later?” you watch the remainder of the video three times, but nothing appears.

“He is smart, uses another exit. Who knows what happened after this, we need more on him,” you say, noting the times and details in your book.

“First we need to know who he is. Did they run facial recognition already?” Tom asks, turning to look at Harrison, who shakes his head.

“No, we are the first to see this material. Get the boss, I want to run this man through the system immediately.”

“I know him,” Carter says. She sits up straight in her chair and starts the tape again. She pauses it right as the mans face is in view. “Jason Sanders, ex police officer. He used to work for me back in the 90’s. He has grown older, but I am like 99% sure it’s him.”

“If he is an ex copper his face should be in the system,” Tom says. You just nod, noting down the name, and opening your laptop to start a google search. Two clicks and you are on his facebook profile.

“Yes he is a perfect match. Look at these pictures,”

“Okay, I want Claire to run a background check,” Harrison says, pointing at her. “Names, friends, family, address, possible gun registration, workplace. I want to know everything you can find. First, run his face through the system, I want to be sure it's him,”

“Sure, that should take about an hour,” she immediately opens her laptop and starts typing. Tom clears his throat.

“So, two of us have to go to the lab and talk with the forensic experts. And one needs to go through the three cases, see if we can find a new link. I have stared at the cases for hours now so I think it’s best if one of you takes a fresh look.”

“I will do it,” Harrison replies just a second quicker than you, “Y/n can go with you to the lab. I believe Henry will do the post-mortem, so she is probably happy to go with you.”

“I will tell you one more time Haz, no funny business between me and Henry,” you say with a stern look on your face, but you smile afterwards. Harrison always jokes about the doctor at the lab who has a small crush on you. In return you tease him endlessly about the defense attorney who is just a bit too sweet and open to Harrison for it to be professional.

“Well if the two of you are done wasting time can we leave, Y/l/n?” Tom is at the door quickly walking outside, but his harsh look doesn’t go unnoticed by you and Harrison. Harrisons shrugs his shoulders and you follow Tom through the door.

“Can you tell us anything interesting?” you ask Henry who is standing in front of a big window that shows the postmortem room. You look inside, shivering at the sight of the body on the table with all it’s organs stashed neatly beside it.

“There are so many interesting things to tell,” he laughs at Tom’s annoyed face, “Let’s get to business,”

“Please,’ Tom sighs, causing you to roll your eyes at Henry behind his back. Henry points to the large body bag on a table in the far corner of the room.

“That’s her. Full postmortem will be done tomorrow, it’s busy, but here is what we already can confirm. Victim is female, nothing weird about her body or anything like that. He probably killed her with that one clean shot. She has been drugged, we found alcohol and ketamine in her blood,”

“Just like the others,” you add. Henry nods and walks through the lab to a screen. He clicks on some buttons. A file opens, and you see a tinder profile and some messages.

“But Jackie ran tests on her phone, and there was a damned good reason he kept the other two.” You look up interested at those words, nodding to Henry to continue, “She was on Tinder, trying to make friends to go out with during her stay. She has texts with a man whom she had a date with last night. He called himself James, and had a random model photo on his profile,”

“Did you run that profile through the computer? Anything?”

“We can’t track the phone that belongs to the profile. We are waiting for access to the profile so we can see his other messages, that should be here later this afternoon. There is a possibility this is the way he finds and contacts his victims,”

“Shit” you say. Tom looks at the text chain unmoving. “Holland, are you okay? This could be a breakthrough.”

“Yes, could be. But we know nothing yet. Nothing is sure,” he says curtly. He walks to the door. “You let us know when the rest of the data is in,” he opens the door, gesturing for you to come after him. You stretch slowly, and smile at Henry.

“Thank you so much for your hard work, this could really mean much for the case,” you say, sending a provoking look towards Tom, “And I am sure my colleague here is just as thankful, don’t mind him, he has a bad day.”

“No problem Y/n, see you later,” Henry replies, sending a broad smile your way. You nod one last time before following Tom outside.

“What was that?” the anger in his voice is apparent. You smile sweetly and pat him on the shoulder.

“That, DCI Holland,” you pause shortly and look him in the eye, “was common decency. Be kind to the lab, and they will be kind to you. That applies to more things actually,”

“Don’t tell me what to do,”

“Don’t be unkind then,” you say, smiling at him, ignoring the irritation that burns within you. Damn that man. But you have dealt with a lot of unkind, bitchy police officers in your days, you won’t let him bring you down. You walk towards the car, grabbing the key from Holland's hand. “I’ll drive,”

Stakeouts are your least favourite part of being a detective. Nothing is worse than sitting the entire day, hoping for something to happen. You always called it the most boring aspect of your job. Even paperwork was more exciting. Problem was, you were very good at stakeouts. You somehow always noticed the change in a pattern that pointed to whatever you were looking for.

You sit across Harrison, your teacups on the table between you. The cafe is extremely busy, but you barely hear the noise around you. Your head is in filter modus. Tinder hadn’t yet given access to the account, so you and Harrison went to the place “James” had met up with Sally. You have been sitting here all day, going over some paperwork to pass the time, and with every hour your hope of seeing the person who pretended to be “James” dies a bit.  

“What do you think will happen if tinder James is not Jason?” you wonder, stirring in your tea. Harrison looks up at your words.

“Well I am sure it has to be him. All the clues point to him,” he says, taking a sip of his tea. “The CCTV, suspects report, psychology sketch, background. His clean kills, any good copper knows how to clean up after himself. And we can’t find him at his home, because his wife kicked him out,”

“Good for her,” you mumble. Harrison chuckles, chugs the remainder of his tea and puts his papers in his bag. “Wait where are you going?”

“To the office. Tom is here to do the rest of the day with you. It’s only two hours.” he says. He gets up and stands up. He walks away, then turns around. He puts his hand on your shoulder. “Try not to kill him please,”

“Ha ha. I will try,” you say,

The hours with Tom are absolutely boring. He doesn’t even really look at you, let alone talk to you. And again, no one shows up. When the cafe closes you and Tom pack up your stuff, and walk outside. Then you feel your phone buzz. The screen flashes; Henry.

“Hey Henry”

“Are you in a car?”

“Almost, why?”

“Get in there and drive to Borough Market,” you turn to Tom and start walking faster.

“Get in the car Tom!” you almost shout as you run towards the driver side. Your emergency senses kick in, adrenaline courses through your body.

“We got to his profile, he has a meeting there in less than 10 minutes. Seventeen year old Canadian girl,”

“Shit,” you curse, and you slam the car door behind you. Your fingers fumble to get the key in the lock, but when you have it you immediately drive away. Tom hasn’t even closed his door properly. You put Henry on speaker and push on the button you put your sirens on. In front of you the cars make way for you.

“We’re driving, tell me everything,”

“We just got access to his profile, and we saw the meeting. At Borough market, 6 PM by the fudge stand. Harrison is at the station, he won’t make it in time. Look for Jason, and the girl has blonde hair, blue eyes. Her Tinder says she is nineteen, but we looked her up and she is seventeen. Harrison told me you two are closer, so hopefully you’ll be on time. He is on his way. I have to go,” you hear the beep that signals Henry has ended the call, and you take a quick left.

“Do you need me to navigate?” Tom asks. He is checking his gun, and picks a weapon stick from the glove compartment. You start to shake your head, but then you nod.

“It’s rush hour, could you check the streets I need to avoid?” you are calm now, your initial surge of energy is slowly leaving your body, making room for your more rational side. Tom is looking through his maps, and reassures you that you’ll be fine with the usual route. No detours.

“Could you check my gun Tom?” you ask, and you lean forward so he can grab it from your belt. He hesitates. “Come on I ask you to. You won’t even touch me. Quickly now ‘cause we are almost there,” He grabs the gun and starts to check it. You see you are getting closer to your destination, so you switch off the sirens. No need to alert everyone you are coming. Two minutes later you see Borough Market appear.

“Okay we both get out and walk to the stand. Do you know where it is?” Tom shakes his head. You park the car, put your gun back in your belt and cover it with your coat. “Luckily I do. Follow me, stay close, we don’t want to attract attention.” You walk towards him and he wraps his arm around you so you are close to him. It is an old tactic, one you have done about a million times with Harrison. You look like an uninteresting couple, and your heads are close, so whispering is easy. Perfect cover. But you feel Tom’s arm burning through your coat. That never happens with Harrison.

“Okay, lead the way,” he says, you shake your head to get rid of your thoughts and you start walking towards the market. You see the fudge stand, but no one suspicious around there. It’s busy, the market is closing soon, and the sellers are trying to sell their last bits.

“Do you see anything?” Tom asks, and you shake your head. You see a plate with testers for fudge and you walk over there. With the fudge in your hand you seize the opportunity to stand still and observe the whole market. Then you feel Tom shake your shoulder.

“There, at six.” you slowly look to your six o’clock, and you see a young girl. “She matches the description. We ought to approach her,” Tom says. You nod and step towards the girl, but then you freeze. At the other side of the market, close to your car, you see a man. Jason. You are sure, and then you see him dragging another young girl with him.

“Tom it's not her, there he is,” you don’t realise you are running until you feel yourself push people out of the way. Jason and the girl are about 50 metres away from you, but there are many people between you. Jason pushes the young girl in the back seat of a car, and you hear yourself shouting.

“Stop! Stop!” You run as fast as you can, but you feel your gut sinking. You are too late. As you see Jason step into his car you memorise his number plate. You try to throw yourself before the car, but you are too late to stop him from driving away. You pull your gun out, but you realise it is of no use in this busy street. You could hit his tires, but then he might swerve and hit some bystanders. You curse loudly.

“In the car, now!” you hear Tom shout from behind you. You start to run again, and launch yourself into the driver's seat. Your sirens blare, your tires screech, but you have him in vision. As you are driving you recollect your breath, and next to you you see Tom fastening his seat belt.

He calls Harrison, who says he can already see your car. Without looking away from the road you ramble the number plate to Tom, who repeats it for Harrison. You hardly hear their conversation, but you do feel the blood pumping in your ears. The car before you is driving unsteady, as if Jason is not yet sure what he is going to do.

“Where is he going to go? It is rush hour, traffic is awful! And he drives towards the city centre,” it doesn’t make sense to you. Until you see him diving towards a bridge over the Thames. Then it clicks.

“Shit, he is going to drive off the bridge!” you shout. You look to your side, and in Tom's eyes you see the same conclusion you just came to. Your mind races, searching for a solution. You see the car before you change lanes. You push the gas harder, accelerating and you also turn to the left lane, “I am gonna block him!”

“Are you sure? We might get hurt,” Tom panics. His hands are gripping on the side of his seat, his eyes wide from the adrenaline. Or fear, you don't know. Before you the car goes to the left, heading straight towards the rather fragile looking railing of the bridge.  

“He will hit the seat behind me, not us,” you say, changing lanes, “I am like 75% sure this won’t end up getting us hurt. Badly.”

“That is not very comforting, Won’t he push us off?”

“No I don’t think so, trust me Tom!” you are driving faster now, and his car is almost near the edge. The last seconds before the hit seem like ages. With a bang the car hits the side of yours, precisely in the backseat of the driver side, as you predicted. You moan in pain as you feel the impact.

“Get out Tom! Catch him.” you scream, trying to cover up the fact that you are in pain. Getting your own door open appears impossible, and you use your gun to smash the window to get out. You feel adrenaline rush through your body, your mind blank, nerves numb. Your moves are by instinct, and when you see Jason run towards you, you throw your body towards him, blocking his way and bringing him to the ground.  

“Jason Sanders, you are arrested on the suspicion of triple murder and attempted murder. Anything you say now can be used later in court,” you say as Tom gets the handcuffs on him. Behind you the other police cars all stop, and you hear Harrisons voice as you shakily get up.

“What was that!?! Y/n that was not safe!” you ignore his worries. First you need to see the girl. You stand beside Jason's car opening his backdoor, and you try to lift the unconscious girl out. Another officer takes it from your hands. “Are you hurt?” Harrison continues as he comes to a halt next to you.

“No I normally leak blood out of my side,” your adrenaline rush slowly comes to an end, and you feel the pain now. Your head feels heavy. “Probably cut it when I climbed out of the window. Also, I might have a concussion from the hit,”

Ten minutes later you sit in the open back of the ambulance. The victim is in the bed inside, and you were relieved to hear she had only passed out from the shock, but furthermore she was fine. After they checked on her a medic found time to stitch the scratch on your side. After their close examination your injuries are deemed minor. A deep scratch that looks fine after it is nicely stitched up and wrapped in bandage. After careful inspection of your head, they conclude you don’t even have a concussion.

But after that, you catch some faint whispers about shock and mental damage as they sneakily look at you. A blanket is wrapped around your body, and a few moments later, you also receive a cup of tea. And another blanket. You are about to run away when Harrison walks up to you. He clears his throat when he sees you, and gives you a quick hug.

“I have a lot of things to say, but none of them matter now. Well done on getting him,”

“Harrison, they keep putting blankets on me, I don’t want the blankets,” you say, shrugging them off and giving them to him.

“You’re in shock” he says, putting the blanket back over your shoulders. You shrug it off again.

“Yeah, not really. And even if, that wouldn’t mean I need blankets, I need booze,”

“Booze and a concussion are a terrible combination,” Harrison shakes his head at your comment.

“I don’t even have a concussion or pain meds. Really, I am fine. Where is Tom? I probably have to say sorry for risking his life.”

“Only if I file a complaint with HR,” Tom's voice makes you sit up straight and look around you. He walks around the corner of the ambulance. “Something I won’t do,”

“Oh great. Well I am sorry anyways. It was way too risky.”

“You executed it perfectly,” he says, a hint of a smile on his face, “Now I believe you said something about a drink, didn't you?”

Harrison laughs with you, but then excuses himself.

“You two go have that drink, I need to fill in all the paperwork. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,”

“Your loss,” Tom says, before turning to you. “Let’s go?”

“Lets go.” You say, smiling as he offers his hand to help you up. You think of slapping it away, but then you feel the stitches pulling in your side and you decide to take up his offer. Just this once.

~ One year later ~

“I can’t believe you had to almost kill him before he dropped his bitchy act,” Claire says laughing as she gives you the paper back. You and Tom shine on the cover of The Guardian, a press photograph taken on the night of Sanders' arrest. “J. Sanders locked up, evidence overload in serial killer case” the headline says. 

After the arrest things moved slowly, Sanders his lawyer was a very persistent man. But now, months later the court case was wrapped, Sanders' guilt proven, and the judge ruled for the maximum sentence. 

“Yes, his resting bitch face was a pain during that investigation,” you chime in, taking a sip from your beer. 

“I am glad I dropped it though,” Tom says next to you, his arm wrapped around you. You smile, pressing a kiss on his cheek. So much has changed. 

[purplesurveys]

1269

Last thing you bought online? Did you like it? OMG OMG so I got Angela an Army Bomb!!!!!! for her birthday!!!! It was HELLLL looking for sealed ones that were already onhand, but fortunately I was able to find one from this really nice seller a few days ago and the shipping was quick as well. I’m just a little worried because the outbox has a little dent on it :( but it was the best onhand offer I could find so I got it before anybody could call dibs. I still hope she likes it! I got her batteries too so that she can try lighting it up as soon as she has it. :D

Could you date someone who didn’t drive (and didn’t show an interest in ever getting their license, either)?  I feel like this is such a petty thing to make a big deal about...if they knew how to commute or any other way to get to their destination, I don’t think this should be a problem. It would only be an issue to me if they refused to get a license in a very I-generally-lack-ambition kind of way.

How would you react if your artwork became famous?  I don’t have any to show off to begin with. I love appreciating art, but creating it was never a forte of mine.

Would you get your nipples pierced?  No, I don’t plan on getting any piercings. How many people know your birthday?  Outside of my family, my best friends. I think everyone else relies on Facebook to be reminded, which is fine with me.

Has anyone ever tried to ruin a relationship you were in?  No. Quite the contrary, really...I was sometimes informed about red flags taking place, which of course my stubborn ass ignored.

Have you ever watched a whole hour long infomercial?  Probably, as a kid. The channel from which I used to watch WWE aired these really long infomercials so I would watch those while waiting for like Raw or whatever show was going on after.

What is your current MySpace song?  I never hung out on Myspace. I had an account, but I was too young for it so it wasn’t long before I got bored.

What is your favorite kind of meat to put on your sandwich?  Pulled pork or fried chicken.

Which one of your exes do you feel like you have the most chemistry with?  I only have one ex.

How do you feel about people who make Facebook profiles for their pets? I find it really cute. But I personally wouldn’t put in as much effort lol.

Have you ever personally known a pair of conjoined twins?  Hmmmmmmmm I don’t think so.

What was the most disturbing thing you have ever heard your mother say? She threatened suicide in front of me and my dad in a very calm way when I was around 11, I think? Maybe 12, idk. I haven’t actually thought about that moment in an extremely long time until this question. I’ll move on now and shove the memory at the very very back of my head before I get sad.

Is there something in particular you like to look at photos of? What is it?  Aside from members of BTS (lol), interior design inspirations.

Chewy chocolate-chip cookies: like or dislike?  Ooh, love. When I bite into a cookie it hassssss to ooze chocolate, otherwise I would be underwhelmed.

If your boyfriend/girlfriend wanted to dress only in the opposite sex’s clothing, would you support that? If not, would you leave them?  Support.

Do you think your grandmother is/was beautiful?  They both are.

Which of your fields of interest are you a total expert on?  Anything that has to do with writing (except poems), I guess? I like being able to give people advice and tips when it comes to that.

When was the last time you got all dolled up?  Last July when we had a big PR media launch thingy and I couldn’t afford to look like shit on Zoom.

Do you ever name objects? (i.e. mp3 players, guitars, cars, etc.)  Never.

Do you have a criminal record?  Not criminal but it’s possibleeeee that I have some kind of record on my license from the time I got stopped by an officer in Alabang, lmao. It was a minor offense from a tiny part of the town so I don’t actually know if they filed it, but it’s possible.

Last person you took a nap with?  I don’t really nap with other people. I hate falling asleep in front of others to begin with.

Does seeing your mother cry automatically make you feel sad as well?  No.

Do you think someone likes the same person you like?  I don’t like anybody.

Do you want your life to stay the way it is right now forever?  No, I do not want to stay in a pandemic and not get to maximize my life the way it’s supposed to be enjoyed forever.

Have you ever been to craigslist.com?  I’ve never checked it out; idk if we have that here?

What about eBay?  I also dunno if they operate here so no, I’ve never bothered.

Have you ever used Nair?  Not Nair, but I’ve used Veet before.

Are you medicated?  Nope.

Do you shape/fill in your eyebrows?  I never do stuff to my eyebrows except shave them.

Have you ever stolen/borrowed clothes from an ex?  Several articles of clothing were left behind here, yeah. I never had the chance to give them back because I stupidly thought we were going to get back together eventually. By the time I moved on the timing was already off, so the clothes stayed with me untillll...just a few days ago, actually – when I finally cleaned up my room and got rid of a bunch of knickknacks that accumulated here over the years, including all her shirts and sweaters and stuff.

Could you make a statement about anything political?  The 2022 presidential election landscape looks like complete shit and I’m nearly at that point where I want to stop giving a fuck about this country’s future.

Do you think you’ve already met your soulmate?  No.

Do you get the feeling something good will happen in your life soon?  I think I’m already living in it, haha.

Do you enjoy romantic movies, even when they’re cliche?  Sure, but cliché is also hit and miss for me. I love Titanic and Love Actually, but I cannot stand movies like Me Before You and The Notebook. I guess it depends on certain executions, like the acting, screenplay, casting, etc.

Have you been to McDonald’s in the past month?  No, not inside. We did drive-thru within the last month, though.

Have you ever slept over at your best friend’s house?  Not at Andi’s, but I have at Angela’s.

How often do you go bowling?  Extremely rarely. I can’t tell you the last time I went bowling.

Last time you were in an apartment?  Like 2007 when I visited my aunt back when she still lived in one. None of my friends have their own apartments.

Have you ever seen a live seahorse?  I don’t think so.

Would you like to have your own yacht? I mean I wouldn't say no if you offered it to me for free, but I'm not exactly interested in one. < Same.

Winnie the Pooh or Tigger?  Tigger always made me laugh as a kid.

What’s the unhealthiest thing you’ve eaten today?  Luncheon meat, I think? I didn’t go overboard with the junk food today.

Has a stranger ever offered to buy you a drink?  Hm, not that I can recall.

What is something you’d be happy to receive as a gift, that doesn’t cost a lot?  A bag of the salted egg chips that I really like costs like 30 bucks, or roughly 60 US cents.

What kind of music does your significant other/crush like to listen to?  I don’t have any irl crushes, can I use a celebrity crush instead? HAHA he’s heavily into jazz and whenever he gets asked for music recos he always gives jazz artists from like the 50s and 60s.

Who did you have your first kiss with? Do you remember what colour his/her eyes were?  Gab. Dark brown.

Are there any themes from TV shows that you like to sing along to? The Big Bang Theory and Friends; and then I also liked humming to the themes of Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and BoJack Horseman. The Phineas & Ferb theme was also a lot of fun to sing along to.

Do you eat dessert after dinner? No, I never do that. I’m usually already full after dinner, and we don’t always have sweets at home anyway.

Have you ever had too much to drink and felt embarrassed about your behavior the next day?  Sure.

When you go out drinking, what do you prefer to drink?  Cocktails. I very rarely go for hard drinks/shots, especially if I brought my own car.

What was the last animal that you saw?  Dog.

What was the last thing that you said to one of your siblings?  I just told my sister I was done using her laptop so she can have it back. My Memories of 2020 DVD turned out to be region-locked so I have to use her laptop every time I want to watch it :(

What is the most expensive thing that you’ve purchased that you paid for:  My Map of the Soul photobook cost me around 5k in total.

What is your favorite messaging program?  Messenger.

Do you eat fast food more than 5 times a week?  Wow no. Aside from being extremely unhealthy, that’s also a LOT of spending??

Have you ever almost drowned?  Yes.

Have you ever learned something shocking about someone through Facebook?  I mean I’ve had to learn about more than one family death through my Facebook feed, which sucks but is nothing I have control over. Otherwise the most shocking thing I’ve seen is probably classmates from high school having their own kids, but at this point I’m used to it already.

What’s the scariest living animal that you’ve petted?  I’m not really afraid of carrying/petting animals especially if there’s a guide or expert nearby, but the most daring one was probably the crocodile I volunteered to hold in Palawan.

Do you remember the first conversation you ever had with the person you currently have feelings for?  Not at all.

Do you dread certain days of the week? If yes, what day/s and why?  I hate Mondays for obvious reasons lol. I don’t know anyone who is actively cheery about reporting back to work.

If you eat oatmeal, do you have it plain or do you have certain toppings that you like to add to it?  I never eat oatmeal. I had that every single day for breakfast from like kindergarten to 4th grade and I vowed never to take a spoonful of it again.

What is the funniest or strangest thing you’ve ever heard somebody say in their sleep?  I dunno. I used to keep a log of the things my ex used to say in her sleep and a great deal of them were hilarious, but obviously I deleted that note a long time ago.

Choose one - Butterfinger, Milky Way, Snickers:  Butterfinger.

Do you use Mozilla Firefox? Nopes.

Who is your favorite person to hug? Angela and Laurice.

Have you ever had to have a mug shot?  Nope.

What was the last thing you carried to your room?  Kimi.

When was the last time you had a late night phone call?  WELL over a year ago.

[denizincarptigiseyy]

5 Ways to Know if Your Product Concept is a Winner

Hundreds of brand-new products launch monthly. Just a fraction of those gets enough traction to be considered effective.

Naturally, there are the exemptions-- the outbreak successes that most of us become aware of: Snapchat, Uber, and certainly Pokémon Go.

Although that's not likely to be your product, you can still knock it out of the park. But how do you test market demand early to understand if your concept is a winner?

Throughout my occupation, I've assisted release a dozen effective software including GoToMeeting, AppFolio, and also ProductPlan. I have learned five effective methods that entrepreneurs make use of to find out whether their product will be successful-- before they launch their product.

These methods won't assure success, but will dramatically increase your odds. In my case, these techniques led to products that today currently create numerous countless dollars in revenue yearly. see also InventHelp gets great inventions from the mind to the market

1. Before Anything Else, Locate an Issue Worth Resolving

Before investing a cent on growth, I speak with 10-20 possible consumers to understand the problem I'm solving. This is before I tell them concerning the product features, prices, or just how it's going to change their lives.

I call these "trouble exploration" meetings. They're comprehensive conversations, often performed personally, and last in between 30-60 minutes. They're developed to not just extensively comprehend the troubles but to find out whether the trouble is worth resolving in the first place. A problem needs to be high sufficient on a consumer's top priority list to be thinking about your item.

For example, in the very early interviews for GoToMeeting we found out that other online conference items were awkward, feature puffed up, as well as difficult to budget. By extensively understanding these troubles, we established a product that was less complicated to use, with fewer features, with all-you-can-use rates. Within a short time, that product became a smash hit success.

In very early conversations with customers as well as capitalists, numerous entrepreneurs lead with the product summary and functions. I think this is a mistake-- by not understanding the problem extensively, numerous products fizzle. I assume the solitary crucial trick to item success is asking the right questions regarding their issues.

Here are some concerns you can utilize to recognize whether the issue is necessary sufficient to solve:

" Just how are you fixing that problem today?"

" What is most irritating concerning your current remedy?"

" Where is solving this trouble on your concern listing?"

" If you resolve that issue, how much money will you save/make?"

" What does an effective year for you look like?"

2. It's Not a Service Unless You Can Offer

Numerous entrepreneurs introduce their item and also after that question why their sales are anemic. Exactly how do you understand beforehand whether consumers will pay for your item?

In my experience, knowing how to sell the item in a repeatable means is more important than the product itself. In a feeling, you're verifying sales, not simply validating a product.

For every single effective item I've launched, I formerly had test-sold the item to a minimum of 20 clients. My belief is entrepreneurs do not need a totally useful item to discover whether clients will purchase. My early examination sales are frequently from a slide deck or a harsh prototype.

By test-selling, you can learn about the sales cycle, whether your target customer is the real decision-maker, whether they have a budget to purchase, as well as better fine-tune your rates. Find out more advice by check out InventHelp inventions

If you don't have sales skills or can't manage denial, get over it, and also pick up the phone.

3. Customer Purchase Prices are the Trick to Success

You have seen it before: Incredible products that release with a bang and then could not attain enough traction to make the numbers pencil out. Numerous business owners don't extensively understand just how they will certainly get customers and then how much those consumers will cost to get.

The guideline is straightforward: A customer's procurement expense needs to be dramatically less than their lifetime value. So numerous entrepreneurs go in blind on these standard metrics when introducing items. There are very easy as well as cost-effective experiments that you can utilize to test purchase prices.

At ProductPlan, before we had created any kind of line of code, we established a touchdown page. This primitive web site was designed to check whether anyone was searching for software applications like ours as well as to find out whether the messaging we had defined resonated with our target audience.

We then drove website traffic to the touchdown web page making use of Google Adwords and LinkedIn Ads. We targeted item managers with search phrases that they might make use of to look for a remedy like ours. Once they pertained to our touchdown web page they were motivated to register for an early version of our product.

The experiment was a success because we discovered a lot concerning the purchase cost-- how much it cost to bring somebody to our website, the clickthrough price on advertising and marketing, what percent of people registered for more info, as well as extra.

Via this process, we might roughly estimate the conversion rates as well as purchase prices for every step of the sales channel.

Maybe extra significantly, these potential customers gave their get in touch with information. We then reached out to them to have much deeper conversations about the problem, item attributes, as well as rates.

It was a goldmine of information, as well as we spent less than $1,000 on this straightforward experiment.

4. Know This: Your Original Product Concept is Possibly Wrong

For every single product I've created, the end product we launched was dramatically various from the original idea we began with. Through meetings as well as experiments, we were able to test our assumptions, throw out poor suggestions, reveal cutting-edge features, and tweak our prices.

When we were confirming ProductPlan, we thought our market would certainly be limited to item managers at the software application business. By talking with loads of product managers we uncovered our market was a lot wider and also included business in media, health care, retail, and extra.

Commonly business owners invest an extreme amount of time on company plans and also spreadsheets that are a work of fiction. Or worse, they release their item based on their original suggestion and afterward lose time as well as resources transforming the item and rates to much better fit their market. That's in reverse.

Business owners can obtain closer to the truth-- and construct a better product-- by examining their assumptions before introducing them. Several misuses the "Lean Start-up" technique to throw pasta against a wall surface and also after that wish that people buy. And also when people do not buy (or buy in low numbers) the business owner wastes beneficial time.

Rotating your item ideas throughout this very early validation as opposed to after you have built the product is considerably more affordable.

The method entrepreneurs can test their presumptions: create them down and then go out to check them to see if they resonate with potential consumers specialists (for example, analysts for the industry, individuals who have been employed by the industry, experts, and so on). A healthy and balanced dosage of suspicion goes a long way.

5. Perfect is the Enemy of Great-- Simply Launch Your Item Concept

I'm a believer that business owners should embark on the cliff. This implies, especially for software, that you must introduce as early as feasible.

Reid Hoffman, the creator of LinkedIn, notoriously stated, "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you have introduced far too late."

I'm not stating that you don't have a terrific first-time client experience. Commonly individuals do not offer you a 2nd opportunity if your product simply does not work. Yet if you are addressing an issue that allows enough, consumers will certainly forgive you if the experience isn't excellent.

With software, in particular, it's feasible to introduce swiftly with a marginal function set if the product supplies adequate worth. If a handful of clients are willing to pay, it suffices and you can enhance gradually.

Launching very early gives you no much better method to determine if you are on the right track. Many entrepreneurs waste time by attempting to assume every situation, please every consumer, as well as make sure every function is included.

A business owner I understand was passionate regarding launching a new mobile application he was certain would certainly be popular. He spent months developing it. He spent countless dollars on mobile programmers and also ultimately took out a second mortgage on his residence to place the finishing touches on the application before releasing. As soon as he ultimately introduced, he was shocked he had so a couple of downloads. It was a depressing, expensive lesson.

Entrepreneurs need to invest even more of their time at the front end-- discovering the troubles out there and validating whether someone will certainly purchase the product-- before they build as well as launch. If you do a reliable task at this front end, the building and introducing the product comes to be so much easier. You're also acquiring evidence for prospective financiers.

There is no other way to methodically recognize with assurance whether you'll succeed. By using these techniques and also launching early you can enhance your probabilities drastically.

https://www.instagram.com/inventhelp/?hl=en

[myheartrevealedocs]

Untouchable- Ch 5: Poison (S1E13)

Summary:  A Spencer Reid x OC fanfic that retells select episodes, starting in season 1, from the point of view of Lydia Ambers, a forensic scientist.

Warnings: murder, swearing, drugs

Ch 4 | Ch 6

~ ~ ~

Rain was such a strange thing in Lydia’s mind. The sound of it hitting the window next to her was soft and gentle, and so many people spoke of it like it was cleansing or refreshing. But all Lydia had to attribute it to was mud and sickness. It didn’t leave her excited for spring. She didn’t think of it as food for flowers or a new start. She thought of floods. Confinement. Tears… 

“What’s up with you?” Spencer asked, startling Lydia out of her thoughts.

“What’s up with me? What’s up with you! You’re late!” she responded, watching him sit across from her at the booth and put down his coffee.

“I just got back from a case last night,” he defended. “I figured you wouldn’t mind if I took a little extra time to take a shower before leaving.”

She looked up at his hair to find it was indeed damp, but it could easily be from the weather outside. “Fine, you get a pass. Also, I don’t need you anyway,” she joked.

His face changed to one of hurt. “Wow. I mean, you don’t, but-”

“Sarcasm, Spencer.” She couldn’t help the grin spreading across her face. “Although, I am doing alright so far. I’m working on these extra assignments my criminology professor gave me. How was your case?”

“It went well. Found the unsub, saved the kid.”

She nodded. “That’s great!”

And they descended into silence, as they had the last time they’d met, both of them working on their own assignments.

After Lydia and Spencer had talked about helping her get her PhD, they’d made plans to meet off hours at a coffee shop so that Spencer could give her some advice for speeding up the college process. It had been terrifying at first. She’d been ready to completely back out, but Spencer had been insanely patient with her, able to convince her (after some rambling and statistics) that she was more than capable. He’d advised her who to talk to and what to ask teachers about their courses and so on to organize her thoughts. And then he just… sat with her as she worked. If she was ever confused on an assignment, he had her back. It was reassuring.

About halfway through their meeting, Spencer had put away his paperwork in favor of a book, but he found his pace excruciatingly slow. He wanted to invest himself in it, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking up at her when he knew she wouldn’t notice.

When she was extremely focused, her teeth would pull mindlessly on the dead skin on her lips. That’s what she’d been doing when he got there and saw her gazing out the window, not even realizing he’d walked in. But he hadn’t wanted to push her on that. And now all her energy was focused on her online work.

He also noticed another small tick when she was struggling with a question, because she always did it before asking him for help.

“How long have you worn a ring?” he asked her, watching her spin it loosely around her knuckle. It was a thick silver band, which was clearly too big for her fingers, and she was constantly switching it between the pointer and middle finger on her right hand.

She raised an eyebrow, but her manor was curious, rather than questioning. “I’ve had this ring since I was 16. Why do you ask?”

“I’ve just never seen you wear it before, is all.”

“It was my dad’s wedding ring,” she confided. “And you’re right. I don’t wear it when I go on cases, because getting latex gloves on and off is hard enough and I’m terrified of losing it.”

He took this answer gracefully, but Lydia could tell he was dying to ask why she had her father’s wedding ring rather than him. And before she could go back to her work, he spoke up again.

“You know, I’ve been really curious about something and you’ll have to forgive me if it offends you, but when we met, I asked you about why you had a limp and you didn’t tell me.”

She silently let go of a sigh of relief that this wasn’t related to her father (or at least, not to his knowledge). “Yeah, sorry about that. I know I was… weird that day.”

“So was I,” he reassured her. “But I’m kinda weird all the time.”

It was a sweet sentiment, but she was quick to shake her head at him. “Not at all. ‘Weird’ to me is far from the definition of Dr. Spencer Reid.”

It was like his eyes sparkled when he smiled at her. She found herself wanting to see it all the time and had to keep herself from staring.

“Right. My leg. Well, in actuality, my foot. I broke it when I was a teenager and it healed incorrectly,” she explained. “The arch is all sorts of messed up. But it doesn’t hurt and I can’t afford surgery anyway so I just let it be.”

“I’m sorry.”

She laughed, absurdly. “What for?”

“You didn’t want to get your PhD, because you couldn’t afford to go through any more years of school than you needed to and now you tell me that you’ve got this limp for the same reason? I don’t want to make any assumptions about your financial status, but I honestly do feel sorry that you think you need to sacrifice these things for it.”

This comment seemed to trigger something in Lydia and Spencer racked his brain for any indicator of what that may be.

“Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” she responded, but it didn’t have her previous spark of interest in the conversation, so he just agreed and let her go back to her work.

~ ~ ~

“You missed the briefing,” Gideon informed Lydia as soon as she picked up her phone. It had been a week since she’d had her second meeting with Spencer and she was sitting in her apartment, working on her schoolwork.

“What briefing?”

“Jet leaves in 30 minutes. You’re needed on a case.”

Lydia scoffed. “Gideon? That’s not a heads up. This would be my 3rd case before my 50 day limit was up, why am I coming along?”

“Do you want the job or not?” he asked, frustrated, but Lydia could tell it was just his impatience.

“Of course I do. I’m on my way. But I know there’s got to be a good reason to call me in after a briefing and against Chief Strauss’s wishes.”

He sighed on the other end before continuing. “We’ve got a poisoning case. LSD. You’re a chemistry expert, so I need you.”

“Reid’s definitely more of an expert than I am. But I’ll do what I can.”

“If we all determined our worth to the team by comparing ourselves to Reid, it wouldn’t be a team… it’d be Reid,” he argued. “I’ll see you on the jet.”

~ ~ ~

“How do you want to handle the press?” Gideon directed to JJ as they all settled down for their flight.

“We still don’t even know how these people got dosed. I think it would be irresponsible to issue a warning without specifics,” she reasoned. “It’ll just cause panic. I did notify the local PD, though, to be discreet.”

“How is it possible that none of these people knew how they got poisoned?” Morgan asked and before Lydia could stop herself, she murmured,

“It’s possible.”

JJ and Morgan both looked at her with concern, the rest of the team just stayed silent and they considered how this case might affect her after what happened with her roommate. The effects of her sudden drugging had been vastly different, but in the end, Lydia could understand the victims of this situation and how they must be feeling now that they’ve come out of their intoxicated state.

Hotch cleared his throat, returning to Morgan’s question. “None of them remembers anything about the day it happened.”

“These people are so messed up, it’s made it difficult for local PD to retrace the victims’ steps,” JJ explained.

“I suggest we split up the victims, see if there’s a pattern in the victimology,” Gideon began.

“Most of them are still in the hospital,” Hotch told him. “I’ll call local PD to meet us there.”

“I’ll check the lab reports,” Spencer offered. “Maybe there’s a clue to the unsub’s motive in the specific nature of the poison he used.”

“Ambers, you’ll go with him,” Hotch ordered, handing her her own file to review the details of the case. “I want you to be supervising the lab tests and keep us updated on everything you find. Especially if any new victims come in.”

“I-” She blinked down at the reports and pictures she’d just been handed. “Unchaperoned?”

“You aren’t a girl in the Regency Era,” Gideon teased. “You can handle it.”

“Don’t break any lab equipment,” Hotch insisted. “But yes, since we don’t exactly have a crime scene for you to analyze and you have experience in the lab as well, I want you there. Don’t worry about having a supervisor for now.”

She nodded, wanting to accept before he changed his mind. She didn’t miss Gideon’s smirk either as she accepted her new assignment. He was excited for her.

And she was kind of excited, too.

~ ~ ~

Spencer kept pace with Lydia as she navigated the hospital for the clinical lab. She was surprisingly confident in herself, finally getting to work a case that wasn’t up to suspect. She didn’t have to wonder about the colors on little girls’ paintings or try to date the wax underneath a satanic symbol. No, labs were natural sciences.

And she was an expert in those.

They were met at the door by one of the biochemists. “Hi. You must be the FBI agents. I’m Dr. Marilyn Keyes.”

“Hello. I’m Dr. Spencer Reid with the Behavioral Analysis Unit and this is our forensic expert, Lydia Ambers.”

Lydia did her best to greet the woman calmly, but her heart rate picked up when Spencer called her their ‘forensic expert’. She made a mental note to ask him about it later, seeing as she definitely was not considered an expert on the team. She was an intern.

“Alright, I’ve got the results from the blood tests here, but there isn’t much to say. The LSD levels were scarily high.”

“Were there traces of any other drugs in their system?” Spencer inquired.

“Only one,” Dr. Keyes replied. “Rohypnol.”

Lydia raised an eyebrow and turned to find Spencer doing the same. “But rohypnol is a roofie. If the unsub’s goal was to give a bunch of people a wild trip, why give them a sedative?” she asked.

“Because one of the most well known effects is amnesia,” Spencer reasoned, but Lydia shook her head.

“I just don’t see what would make a person poison all these people with a strong hallucinogen and then knock them out before seeing the effects.”

“But it didn’t knock them out,” Spencer argued. “They all still went about their day as normal.”

“Mixing drugs to get a precise effect like that is insanely difficult. This guy has to have some background in science.”

“One of the victims, Jack Fisher, got extremely violent and beat his son almost to death.” Lydia’s eyes shot open. This was news to her, seeing as she missed the briefing. “Are you sure there wasn’t anything like PCP in their systems to cause an aggressive outburst?”

Dr. Heyes shook her head. “We only found LSD and rohypnol.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ve been assigned to oversee the lab work on any new cases brought into the hospital and to keep my team informed of the information as it comes in. May I stay in here?”

Dr. Heyes seemed surprised by the request, but nodded. “Of course. I’ll find you a space to set up.”

As she did that, Spencer turned to go. “I’ll go tell the team what we know so far. Call Gideon or me if you figure out anything else.”

“You got it.”

With him gone, Dr. Heyes paused, her eyes wide. “He’s a doctor?” she asked, completely bewildered.

Lydia laughed. “Yes. He’s got 3 PhDs, in fact.”

If Dr. Heyes’s jaw could hit the floor it would have. “And you, you’re an FBI agent?”

“No,” Lydia said quickly. “No, I’m just an intern. They only sent me here because I’m the only one on the team who was trained in a lab setting. I just got my BS in chemistry.”

She decided not to mention Reid’s credentials, mostly because if the biochemist asked why they didn’t leave Reid here instead, she wouldn’t know what to say.

“But you are so young! You don’t even look like you’re 20 yet!”

“I’m 21,” Lydia assured her. “And he’s 24. Which to be honest, is extremely young to have 3 PhDs, but you know, he’s older than I am, so I think him being an agent is less of a stretch.”

“When did you get a job with the FBI?” she inquired.

“After I graduated this past spring. I’d met them while they were working a case and I guess they were in the market for someone knowledgeable in forensics. Here I am!”

It was a lie, at least to Lydia’s knowledge. The only thing she knew about the offer put in front of her was that Gideon fought for her to get it and Hotch’s boss, Chief Strauss, was not pleased that the position existed at all. But Dr. Heyes took the response and left her to pull out her laptop and try to remind herself about everything she learned about spiking and these specific drugs when she went to UCSC.

~ ~ ~

“We’ve found another victim,” Gideon informed her over the phone. “Her boyfriend worked at the cafe where many of the victim’s had been seen the day they were dosed. We brought him into custody, but it doesn’t look like he did it. And, from what you’ve told us so far about the process of creating this mix of drugs, we’ve ruled out a prankster. They're too disorganized to do this. From a look at other factors we think we’re looking at an avenger here.”

“So, someone’s got a personal vendetta against one of the victims and the rest are just collateral damage? Or was this just his test run?”

“My guess, when he gets the person he’s going for, it’s not exactly going to end in a bad trip and some memory loss.”

Lydia sighed. “One hell of a test run. I mean, I’m looking at these results, Gideon. And the statements from the victims. This guy has made quite the concoction.”

“The profile says he may have an accomplice, but if so, he’ll dispose of them soon. If any new cases come in, let us know immediately.”

“Will do,” she said, hanging up on him.

Not 20 minutes later, her phone was going off again, this time it was Spencer.

“Hey.”

“The hospital’s about to be swamped. We’re on our way there now.”

“Swamped? Why?” she demanded, looking up at all the biochemists and pathologists at work. Shit.

“A leak hit the news. They didn’t mention why or how people were getting dosed, only that it was happening. The people are in a panic and many people are going to come in with completely psychosomatic symptoms.”

“Fabulous,” she grumbled. “Well, I can give you the results of any of the tox screens, but they won’t be in for a while. Especially if people start barging in.”

“We’ll talk to doctors and nurses and find out who is definitely not psychosomatic. Make sure that their blood gets tested first.”

“We’ll be ready,” she assured him.

~ ~ ~

“We’ve got a Lynn Dempsey,” Dr. Heyes said, offering up her lab results. “She just got in, tested positive for rohypnol, but negative for LSD.”

“Interesting,” Lydia said, scanning the file. “Maybe she just got roofied?”

“That doesn’t explain her symptoms, though. She was apparently heavily sedated when she got in, but now, she’s struggling to breath. Nausea, difficulty swallowing, and she’s lost control of leg movement.”

“What are you guys thinking?”

“She was taking an antibiotic recently, which, in the case of a severe overdose, could cause these symptoms, but an overdose like that is not an accident. That plus rohypnol is an interesting mixture.”

“Have you guys looked at any biological toxins?” Lydia inquired and she shook her head.

“We didn’t think that was the sort of thing we should be looking for.”

“It’s hard to determine what we should or shouldn’t be looking for. The LSD and rohypnol combination was interesting enough by itself. If this guy’s as good as he appears, I doubt he’s buying drugs from street dealers. He could have access to all sorts of things.”

“I’ll get on it,” the doctor informed her and hurried off.

Lydia grabbed her phone. “Gideon?”

“Whatcha got?”

“Lynn Dempsy? Rohypnol and something else. The lab technicians are working on it now. But, she’s a bad case. Either the target or the accomplice.”

“You get Garcia, I’ll call Hotch. He’s on his way to the hospital now. JJ and Reid are already there, they might have already seen her.”

“Got it. Calling Garcia now.”

She fumbled with her phone some more and got Garcia’s contact.

“Sugar! How can I help?”

“The team’s gonna need everything you’ve got on a Lynn Dempsey. We’re looking for connections to the substances the unsub’s using or perhaps anything to indicate someone wants revenge against her.”

The sound of her furious typing could be heard over the line. “Alright. I’ll send whatever information I get to their phones. Right now, all I’m seeing is that she works for Hichcock Pharmaceuticals.”

“There’s something to that. Let Gideon know. I’ve gotta go,” she finished, seeing Dr. Heyes already on her way back with papers in her hand. “Did you find something?”

“Lynn Dempsey has been exposed to clostridium botulinum bacteria,” she explained.

Lydia’s eyes widened. “Botulism?”

The doctor nodded.

Lydia was up from her seat in an instant. “I’ve gotta tell Reid. I’ll be right back.”

She threw her phone into her back pocket and ran from the lab to get to the ER.

“Reid!” she called once she reached the waiting room. He turned, JJ following suit. Hotch was on a call over the front desk. She ran up to them, not wanting to disturb anyone around them. “It’s botulism.”

“Is that what the lab reports say?” he demanded, pulling her away from the people and into a hallway.

“Yes.”

“Botulism toxin is the deadliest substance known to man. It blocks acetylcholine receptors, paralyzing it’s victims until basically choking you to death,” he explained, knowing Lydia was already aware of this.

“And without an antitoxin, Lynn Dempsey in there is screwed.”

He put his hand up to his chin. “New Jersey is the pharmaceutical and chemical capital of the US. There’ll be quite a few people with access to the toxin. It could easily be ordered in the form of botox.”

“But, it’d have to be purified,” she reasoned. “Lynn Dempsey is an executive assistant. She wouldn’t know how to do that. And she doesn’t fit the profile. But, she does work for a pharmaceutical company, so if she’s the accomplice, they might have met at work.”

He opened his mouth to add to that, but JJ called, “Reid.”

She was standing in front of Dempsey’s room, looking in.

“I think she’s trying to say something.”

He ran over to enter the room with her and Lydia walked over to Hotch to see if there was anything she could do.

“Then, you should look for Lynn Dempsey, 45,” he was saying over the line. “Garcia’s emailing a picture to your phone.”

There was silence for a moment, and Lydia watched JJ and Reid try and piece together what Dempsey was saying to them. But, the doctor had to rush in as her heart rate started increasing quickly.

“Or working with him,” Hotch offered, but Lydia wasn’t sure of the context. “I’ll call you back. Lydia, what are you doing up here?”

She looked up at Hotch and was terrified for a moment that she’d done something wrong. “I came up here to talk to Reid about Dempsey. She’s been poisoned with deadly toxin found in botulinum bacteria. And without an antitoxin within the first 36 hours, she won’t make it. Reid and I were discussing how the unsub might have gotten this toxin.”

“What were you thinking?” he asked.

“Well, Lynn works for a company with access to this toxin, but it needs to be purified from other drugs. She likely wouldn’t have this ability. We were thinking accomplice.”

He nodded. “That’s what Morgan and I were discussing. We found all the victims went to First New Jersey Federal Bank the day they were dosed and from the security footage, it looks like Dempsey was replacing candies from the candy bowl. The CDC is testing the candies now.”

“Alright. I’ll head back to the lab and start listing off any new victims that come into the hospital.”

“Thank you,” he responded and watched her go.

~ ~ ~

“So, if they worked together, let's start with people who fit the profile who’ve had a recent stressor,” Hotch reasoned, the rest of the team together in the station.

“Like anyone fired from Hichcock in the past 6 months,” Morgan offered. “I’ll call Garcia.”

Gideon’s phone went off beside him. He picked it up and announced, “It’s Lydia. Lydia, you’re on speaker phone.”

“Hey, you said you thought Lynn Dempsey was replacing the candies at the bank?” she started.

“Yes, why?”

“I’m looking through the medical records of the original victims and one of them was severely diabetic.”

“He wouldn’t have taken candy from the candy bowl at the bank,” Reid realized.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Hotch said. “We have the candies here and they’ve tested positive for rohypnol and LSD.”

“Well, not that it means that much, but the amount of LSD in the victims was fairly even across the board, but I’m finding vast differences in the rohypnol. It could be that some of the victims didn’t finish the candies and others did, but I think you should look at those tapes again and check if everyone took a candy. Maybe the unsub contaminated multiple objects at the scene?”

“It’s a bank, what else do you ingest that comes from a bank?” Gideon argued.

“I’ll look over those tapes,” Reid offered. “Thanks, Lydia.”

~ ~ ~

Lydia was finally starting to settle down, thinking she’d done her part in the case now that the last of the tox screen tests had come through and they hadn’t turned up with any strange new victims, when Hotch called her.

“Hello?”

“Ambers, we’ve got a guy named Ed Hill in custody. I want you to search his lab for any indications as to what he planned to do next or who his target was. I’m having Garcia send you the address now.”

“Wait, Agent Hotchner-” she cried, knowing he tended to hang up abruptly. Once she was sure he wasn’t going to cut her off, she continued. “I don’t have a vehicle with me.”

“Nevermind, then. I’ll have Morgan get you.”

“Thanks.”

“And Lydia?”

“Hm?”

“Hotch is fine.”

She bit down on her lip to stop herself from grinning like an idiot. “Got it.”

Once he’d gotten off the phone, she closed up her laptop and grabbed her case file.

“Leaving?” Dr. Heyes asked.

“Yes. I’m off to analyze a scene. Thank you for all your help today.”

She smiled. “Thank you for catching the guy who did this.”

“We’re not sure yet-” she started, but left it there, not sure how to continue. Dr. Heyes understood and let her go, but it left Lydia with an inexplicable feeling.

No one had ever thanked her before for her work. Not that she’d done a lot of work before this and when she’d interned at the police station in Santa Cruz, almost all of her time was spent in a lab. But, it nevertheless felt nice to know that people thought she was doing good.

And as she got to the front of the hospital and waited for Morgan to pull up she realized something. While she was here, working for the BAU, she was doing good.

~ ~ ~

The jet was silent on the way back to Virginia. Almost as soon as they boarded, everyone found a spot to rest and had fallen asleep. Lydia had considered shutting her eyes and trying to join them, but deep down, she knew she wouldn’t fall asleep. And without something to distract her, she’d end up letting her thoughts wander, which recently hadn’t ended well for her.

A quick look at the scene and a confession from Ed Hill was the end of the case. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to prevent his suicide, but she had far too much on her mind to dwell on that as well.

Lydia thought about Jenna fairly often, unsurprisingly. She wondered sometimes if she’d been aware of the other two girls’ deaths, maybe she would have been more alert and able to prevent Jenna’s. And she was constantly thinking about what had happened between the last thing she remembered and the time that Jonathan Carrey drugged her. Did she see or hear him before he was able to sedate her? Maybe she’d tried to scream, but couldn’t. Mostly, she wondered if she’d done something dumb, like opened the door for him or simply asked him why he was there.

She knew that in that memory relapse, if she’d called for help, Jenna could have made it out just fine. That was mostly why it hurt.

The other reason was because she had profited so greatly on Jenna’s murder. She’d gotten a job. And it made her feel guilty that any good could have come to her at the expense of another. She just had to hope that Jenna didn’t despise her for it in the afterlife.

But Jenna wasn’t the only death on her mind. Recent events had reminded her of her mother’s death and despite the fact that Lydia had long since recovered from the emotional toll it took on her as a child, she’d likely never have closure over what happened and it was difficult recently to be reminded of that.

But either way, she was glad her job allowed her to give closure to the families of other tragedies.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” Hotch asked, sitting across from her and nodding towards the book in her hands.

She smirked and made the same motion towards the cup of coffee he just made for himself. “Aren’t you?”

“I know I’m going to have a lot of paperwork when I get back. I’m preparing myself for that.”

She closed her book and sat up straighter. “I’m not much good at sleeping without help. I’ve had to take sleep aids for most of my life.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her, honestly.

“It’s never really been an issue unless I haven’t had access to any. I’m sorry you have to stay up late filling out paperwork,” she returned.

“Lydia,” he started after a pause. “I’m truly sorry if I’ve ever made you uncomfortable while working this job. I want you to know that I don’t have anything against you, I was just stressed your first few cases.”

“That’s alright,” she reassured him, quickly. “I’m not upset. I was worried that perhaps I was doing something wrong, but I didn’t realize how much my behavior affected your job. And Gideon’s, although I don’t control what he does. I can’t promise that I won’t end up doing something stupid and getting myself fired, because sometimes things happen, but I promise that I will do everything in my power to make it clear that you and Gideon aren’t responsible for my actions.”

“Well, we are,” he argued, which made her giggle, quietly.

“Besides, I get to call you Hotch now. That must mean we’re best friends.”

“Best friends, hm?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her over the rim of his coffee cup and took a large sip.

They’d settled into silence and Lydia was about to pick up her book again, when he said, “Lydia? I want you to know that I was given access to some of your family history when we were considering hiring you…”

A part of her had been wondering if this conversation was going to come up. Gideon had talked to her about her sister, but he never pushed her to talk about her parents. And Garcia had let the topic go after they had their conversation about secrets, leaving Hotch, who she’d never had a private conversation with before, to be the one to confront her.

“Garcia told me that you’d get the information from her background check,” she agreed. “Why?”

“I wanted you to know that sometimes these cases become difficult when they remind us of something personal. And I want you to be aware that if you are struggling while working on a case or something personal is on your mind, we’re all here for you. The team is just that, a team, and many have been through similar things to you. I want you to know that you aren’t alone in this.”

Lydia could feel tears pricking at her eyes. She didn’t think she’d ever reach the point where she broke down in front of one of them. She’d gotten so good at stopping herself that sometimes it scared her. But the offer was one of pure concern. Hotch had built a family in his team and he was opening his arms to her.

And she wasn’t really sure how to show him that she understood.

“On my first case,” she began, “we took Allison Crawford’s brother into custody. Frank. And he had an orange prescription bottle with him.” She remembered the details slowly, trying to piece together what she was thinking at the time. “And it was weird to see. Because it’s not like I don’t see those anymore, I do. But that one made me think of my mom. And it made me angry.” She shook her head, pulling herself out of the memory. “It was gone before I even knew what was happening. I’m not particularly worried about an inability to do the job. But I guess, that’s something.”

She was grateful to look into his eyes and see that he understood. And it had been a long time since she felt like she could speak openly about her life to someone and not feel weird. Or like a burden. Or pitied.

“It’s the same as when people call me Miss Ambers. I know they mean it respectfully, but it always takes me back to sitting in psychiatry or therapy offices with her. The doctors always called her ‘Miss Ambers’.”

Unbeknownst to her, another person on the plane who could imagine what she was going through had been drifting in and out of sleep and heard her confession. Reid didn’t open his eyes, afraid that she might be upset if she found out someone other than Hotch had been listening. But he took in the bits he had picked up and decided that he would keep collecting pieces of Lydia’s story until he could make out a picture of her life.

[mountainwoman-universe]

Backpacking in the Pacific North West

“You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it? -John Steinbeck

Backpackers in the Pacific North West are the kindest, and most helpful group of people I have ever met. They treat each other as an equal and the Earth with respect while sharing their fondest memories in the tranquil outdoors. I am going to walk you through why I think these backpackers are a fantastic group of people while I analyze who they are in their online community.

The backpacking community upholds values of respect towards others, constant communication, and helpfulness. They expect members of this community to be honest in their adventures and share the hardships along with the highlights of their trip and everything in between. This group values constant communication, responses to the replies they receive, and to share advice to others by commenting on their inquiries and interacting with each other. This is a close knit community that has continued to grow over the years, they are a wall balanced group with all ages and genders included. They trust one another and invite each other to embark on crazy missions throughout the year.

The backpacking community can be intrigued by all sorts of posts. Because this is such a large community, each person individually is swayed by a different rhetorical appeal such as Ethos, Pathos, Logos. The majority of my posts and the ones I have seen have played upon Ethos. My posts have historically asked for advice from the masters of their craft, If you ask, you shall receive in this group and I have drawn out those who are credible and have given me examples that I can trust what they say.

For example, I used this opportunity to gain some advice from these experts on what backpacks I should use just or short day adventures. My post was specific and detailed requesting what information I needed. [Claire Platt] “Hey Everyone! I’m looking for a nice pack for day hiking, my old Columbia pack ripped and I loved it, but thought I would try something new. Ideally it would have enough shoulder support and a waist strap. If anyone has any advice it will be much appreciated! Happy adventuring.” I received incredible responses from the community that included links to their packs and why they specifically liked them. 

User [travis stein] replied “I have a Fjällräven Kaipak 28 I’ve used for years and it still looks like the day I bought it and it is very comfortable.” Link to recommendation  

Another helpful user responded quickly with multiple recommendations, user Tammy Gillett replied, “Are you looking for a women’s specific? And structured or more relaxed? And what size? I had the older version of this Osprey for many years. Actually still have it. Nothing wrong with it. I started doing slightly smaller hikes and learned not to pack so much that I didn’t need to due to bad hips and prior to my two hip replacements. During that time I started carrying this REI flash 22 and love it. It’s pretty basic and unstructured but I’ve been enjoying not such a big structured pack for the shorter hikes. It holds all I need.”

 Link to recommendation .

REI.COM

Osprey Sirrus 24 Pack - Women's | REI Co-op

Link to recommendation 

REI.COM

REI Co-op Flash 22 Pack | REI Co-op

Ethos has been a great way to reach this knowledgeable community because they love talking about what they love and have found works for them. Its harder to reach this community without asking more informative questions, they don't respond well to pathos. Earlier in January I reached out to this community asking for advice on hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in the summer. I mostly wanted advice because it is a large chunk of hiking and I need to train and buy gear for this trip, But I was hoping to get real experience stories. The closest I got to this was a response from [Kim Adkins Spalding] “Following as this is a goal for me and my daughter upon high school graduation.”

Typically this group is full of laid back members who are as honest as possible in their posts, however, there are frequently posts that don't meet the Admins criteria. In October, administrator Matthew Howell posted, “| Posting Requirements | To help with any confusion of what's being asked when sharing your pics to the group, I've highlighted several of my own posts to show as examples. It's not about the exact location, or anything to do with geotagging. In fact, I've never once asked for pics to be geotagged. I just simply would like to know where in the Pacific Northwest your pictures were taken. #backpackinginthepacificnorthwest #postingrequirements #whereinthepacificnorthwest #statethestate.”

This post was created because of an abundance of people submitting posts which were vague about their locations. One of the requirements when joining this group on Facebook is to be as honest as possible, and always tag where your photos are taken. Members are usually good about it, but leaving a place undefined gives this community no insight to where it is to check it out themselves. Keeping things a mystery on Instagram is much different than keeping it secret from a community that is dedicated to exploring, and can be frustrating when users withhold that information.

Additional admin commented on this post, one being David Danskey, “Thanks Matt. I'm on a few other sites and it is not helpful to the group when someone posts a picture and says, "Name this Mountain" or "I'm not giving up my secret location". Those types of posts defeat the purpose of belonging to a group.

It's true that some locations suffer from overuse. That is also helpful information to the unaware reader to know if they choose to go there parking may be scarce and you'll be sharing the trail with a larger number of people.” 

 This group is dedicated to sharing their experiences with the world of backpacking. Matthew Howell created this group because he wanted people who were passionate about the outdoors whether it be day hiking, long trips, questions, concerns, or even humorous posts that would keep the community positive are welcomed. The idea behind this is to create a dedicated network that allows for people to feel comfortable and have an online support system within their network.

This community mostly sees photographs of those who have escaped the confines of their home and got outdoors, they see posts of what is going on around them in the way of events, backpacking places, best times of year to go etc. Though recently snow hit the Pacific Northwest and a humorous post from Matt Bromley captured attention from these packers. “When you have snow in Portland and just have to check how your gear works at 25.”

Bromley took advantage of the rarity of snow in Portland and put his gear to the test. This post hit the community by storm (pun intended) and gave backpackers in this area the same idea, to test out their gear for a cold night.

After all my posting in this community I found that posts that are asking for advice always received an abundance of it. This community has been so helpful in preparation of an adventure, it is honestly amazing how much they care about other people sharing the community. It has been great to see posts of beautiful pictures receiving comments and likes while also seeing people getting involved in the planning process of other people's trips.

Posting on facebook grabs this community's attention better than any other platform. I have found that this is a group of people in different backgrounds such as economic status, gender, age, and experience level. On facebook, interaction is a high and are always very organized. People comment on posts and create their own threads to comment on. The conversations are always respectful, and disagreements are handled in mature ways. Most negative comments are erased by the admin and people are very good about reporting people who are bringing the group down. 

This group is wealthy in knowledge, when I ask for recommendations on equipment I get large ranges of cheap to expensive yet, no matter the financial burden of getting supplies, getting outside nature is free, and getting recommendations of these beautiful places is unmatched from anyone else. This group is a great group to join if you are considering backpacking as a pastime in the future, whether you're green at this adventurous lifestyle or matured, they would be happy to have you and learn from the experiences you have created for yourself. Backpacking in the Pacific Northwest is open to everyone, happy adventuring, and don't forget sunscreen.

Cited

Platt, Claire. Looking for Backpack. Facebook, 2 Feb 2021, 1:44pm, https://www.facebook.com/groups/backpackinginthepacificnorthwest/. 14 Feb 2021 

Stein, Travis. reply. Facebook, Facebook, 2 Feb 2021, https://www.facebook.com/groups/backpackinginthepacificnorthwest/. 14 Feb 2021 .

Gillette, Tammy. Backpack reply. Facebook,Facebook, 2 Feb 2021, https://www.facebook.com/groups/backpackinginthepacificnorthwest/. 14 Feb 2021 

Spalding, Kim Adkins. reply. Facebook, 26 january 2021, 9:00am, https://www.facebook.com/groups/backpackinginthepacificnorthwest/. 14 Feb 2021 

Howell, Matthew. Post Requirements. Facebook, 8 October 2020, https://www.facebook.com/groups/backpackinginthepacificnorthwest/. 14 Feb 2021 

Dansley, David. Post Requirements reply. Facebook, 8 October 2020, https://www.facebook.com/groups/backpackinginthepacificnorthwest/. 14 Feb 2021 

Bromley, Matt. Advantage of snow day. Facebook, 12 February 2021, 9pm https://www.facebook.com/groups/backpackinginthepacificnorthwest/. 14 Feb 2021 

[neakco]

TNA - Ch. 3

Ch. 2

This is the last chapter I will be posting online unless there is any interest in it. I love constructive criticism. I probably should have mentioned this earlier but my computer is broken and everything was typed up on my phone.

Chapter 3

Briar and Azalea entered the Godfrey Enterprises Lobby fifteen minutes before their meeting with Theodore and looked around.

"This place sure has a lot of gold and marble." Briar muttered quietly in Russian.

"You would think this was some cash grab of a casino or hotel." Azalea responded in Urdu.

Approaching the reception Azalea continued to speak in Urdu. "We would like to rent a suite please."

Briar had to turn away so he wouldn't laugh and the poor receptionist's expression.

"I am sorry, but would you be able to repeat that in English?"

Azalea kept her face remarkably straight. "Apologies. We have a meeting with the COO."

The man sighed in relief that she spoke English, "May I please get your names?"

Azalea answered since Briar had barely managed to stop silently laughing. "Briar and Azalea Willowbirch."

The man typed their names into the system before his face paled and his hands began to shake. He slowly looked up at them with false cheerfulness, "I am terribly sorry but you are both banned from the building and I must ask you to leave."

"No worries. Do you mind if we stay just inside the doors as I call our ride?" Azalea smiled brightly but Briar caught the glint of steel in her eyes.

The receptionist visibly relaxed, "Please go ahead."

Briar switched into combining multiple languages once they were close enough to the door, "You would think we were the worst of murderers. So what is our plan?"

"I am going to call our ride." She answered as she pulled out her phone. She then switched over to English for the conversation. "No, I promise we are not running late. In the lobby actually. Apparently we are banned entrance."

Briar heard the sigh.

"We were graciously allowed to stay here while calling for a ride. Though we are now being glanced at suspiciously."

Briar heard a ding and looked towards the opening elevator doors. He grinned as he watched Theo step out and hang up his phone.

"Ms. Willowbirch, I am happy to see you made it. Please grant me a moment to resolve this issue before we head up to my office." He then walked up behind reception and looked over the screen.

Azalea just grinned as she put away her own phone.

"Some ride you called us." Briar smirked.

"I think an elevator ride is still technically a ride, no?" She laughed as the strolled towards the desk.

They were close enough now to hear Theo's quiet conversation with the receptionist.

"You are new so please don't worry about it. Just now you know to check next time."

"Yes sir. Sorry sir."

Theo joined them near the elevator and swiped his badge to call it.

Once the door closed Theo relaxed,

"Apparently you two are highly dangerous and top security is to be called at any sign of you being uncooperative."

"Your father?" Briar asked.

"Just be thankful for the board ruling that he isn't allowed to make any company decisions after an event." The elevator began to slow and Theo again stood straighter, "Follow me and try not to stop."

The twins shared a look but followed silently. They quickly understood as various strong perfumes assailed their senses. A fast look around showed them multiple women wearing heavy masks of makeup and all positioning themselves within Theo's sights. Some seemed enthusiastic in their attempts to garner attention while others seemed like they would rather be doing anything else.

They were almost at their apparent destination when a women physically blocked their path to the door.

"Coffee for your meeting." She fluttered her very long and clearly false lashes.

Azalea blinked slowly, while others wore masks of makeup this women's face appeared to be sculpted of it. She switched to a mix of French and Spanish, "Brother, did we enter a horror cinematic?"

Theo accepted the tray of drinks and ushered them through the door before closing it hastily. "Sadly not a horror, just my life." He then stopped Briar from grabbing one of the drinks. "That women likes to lace things with aphrodisiacs."

Rob laughed from his seat on a side couch near the desk. "Is that the one that tried to feed you bright blue Viagra cookies and claimed they were blueberry?"

Theo sighed wearily as he collapsed in his chair, "That is the one. She just needs one more instance of time fraud and I can finally fire her."

The twins shared a look of concern before taking seats in front of the desk.

"Why can't you just fire her for harassment?" Briar asked with a suppressed shudder.

Rob answered from the couch, "Father's policy, Theo can't fire anyone that father directly hired unless they have 3 non-HR infractions of the same type."

"That isn't fair!" Azalea looked furious and was slipping into an unrecognizable accent, "How did the board allow that?"

"Father has the same restrictions on anyone I hire." Theo passed over a folder, "But you are here to talk business, not hear my problems. I managed to locate your parents arrival to Lattuck after I received your message last night with the date and time your parents initially boarded their train."

Azalea and Briar carefully studied the images as Rob stood up and pointed one out.

"Cameras lost 'em there at Bismark St. Tried to get the cab transcripts but they only uselessly keep those for two months."

"This is more than enough, thank you both greatly." Briar stated as he pulled up a map on his phone and started to marking locations.

Azalea looked at the brothers with a little suspicion, "How did you get this all done in one night?"

Rob grinned, "I stayed up a little late but Theo here came to work at 3 am."

Briar stopped what he was doing and both twins glared slightly at the brothers.

"Trust me you two, it was work on this or spend more time at Godfrey Mansion. We both jumped on the excuse to leave."

"The more I learn about Mr. Godfrey the more I contemplate trace less poisons." Azalea muttered into Briar's shoulder.

"Wait until we locate our own parents before you cause other people's to disappear. I refuse to finish this without you."

Theo chose to ignore the comments, "I am sorry we couldn't find anything more."

Briar laughed, "Are you kidding? We are used to following tattered wisps of month old gossip. This is a great lead."

Rob sat back on the couch, "So why didn't you two just hire a detective? Surely you can afford it."

"There are more than a few reasons but two main ones." Azalea started.

"The first is that our grandfather taught us it is wrong to spend our money for purely selfish reasons. For everything we spend we match it with a doubled donation to charities when we can. It is surprising a lot cheaper to travel and accommodate ourselves compared to hiring a detective." Briar stated.

"And the second is that there were no detectives that took our 16 year old selves seriously enough. Those that did try to humour us were very untrustworthy." Azalea finished.

Rob nodded but before he could respond there was a knock on the door and Roisin entered.

"I know I came in early today Mr. Sapphirus, but I gathered the employee pay statements for you."

"Thank you Ms. Ballantyne. If you wish you can compare them to the time statements online and look for inconsistencies, or you can choose to help the admin staff with their tasks."

Her eyes widened in fright, "I shall work on the comparisons." She smiled briefly at Briar before leaving to return to her tasks.

Rob looked at the door confused, "Shouldn't she be in here working with you?"

"Yes but that requires a desk, and even though I have the space for it I was informed that I am not allowed to move the secretary's desk she is now using in here." Theo let out a growl of frustration, "She apparently has her own desk arriving later today and under no instance shall I bring that one in because it will soon be in use again."

"I may not be an expert, but why does the news of help make you look like you would welcome death?" Azalea asked as Briar began packing away the photos in a small bag.

"Because Father is just going to hire another useless secretary." He sighed.

Rob chose to elaborate for her, "Father got the stupid idea in his head that if he hires enough women that eventually one will seduce Theo here."

Briar looked up rapidly, "What? Why?"

"A few reasons; he wants Theo to work less and figures if he is distracted then he can probably slip some more selfish policies in. He also wants Theo to provide an heir to our family legacy. I don't like women so I am useless to him."

"But adoption is a thing. He adopted both of you." Azalea looked offended.

"True, but he can't have kids. Plus i am sure he adopted Theo because I was such a disappointment.  He would probably disown me if the media wouldn't have a field day."

Theo was face down on the desk and mumbled out, "I just wish father could understand that the restrictions he has placed on those women in their contracts causes me more work instead of less. I spend hours after everyone else has left just doing their jobs." Theo lifted his head to look at Rob, "and I don't care what Father says, you are the best older brother I could ask for."

Rob started to jokingly tear up, "Awww, you are adorable little bro, I love you too."

Azalea looked thoughtful and spoke without thinking, "Why do you not just hire your own secretary?"

She jumped as Theo suddenly leapt up and grabbed her hands, "Please say you want a job!"

Azalea looked towards her giggling twin then back towards Theo's hope-filled eyes. "I wasn't, but I have never been a secretary before. What would the job entail?"

Theo let go of her hands and sat back down to start typing, "You are the perfect fit. I saw first hand that you are skilled at data entry, You have told me before that you helped with your family’s own company when you could, you can be polite to the point that you could probably insult someone and they would thank you. Plus I feel I can trust you not to gossip about company secrets." He grinned as he handed her the contract he just printed off. "And the best part is that hiring you would annoy my father and he can't do anything about it."

Azalea looked up from the paperwork, "Administrative Assistant / Bodyguard?"

"Brilliant right?" Theo grinned, "You would be in charge of the entire Administrations Department, thus granting you access to the whole company’s files. Then by doubling as my bodyguard I get to take you to all my off-site meetings with high-end clients and contacts."

"You are granting me opportunities to find my parents while assisting you?" She looked a little stunned.

"Yes and if you look here," Theo came to her side of the desk to point some things out.

Rob took the opportunity to tap Briar on the shoulder, "While Petal is getting an offer I have one for you."

Briar looked at Rob curiously, "What kind?"

He pulled out a business card, "I own and run Umbra Security. I am need of an eye in the sky. Someone I can trust to run cameras and comms for me and my crew."

"I feel special, but you only met me last night. Why trust me?"

Rob pulled Briar over to the couch and sat him down. "I didn't last night, thought you were pulling a long game. So I did a bit of digging and found your family over in Germany. Your story checked out. The main reason though is that the job will give you access to all the public cams in town and some private ones when we got a special job. A handful of cash won't be enough to bribe you to look away and potentially lose that access."

Briar looked carefully at Rob's face, "Do you seriously not have anyone on cameras already? I refuse to put anyone out of a job just for a golden egg."

Rob took a moment to puzzle out Briar's meaning. "Just another reason you are trustworthy. Now normally I run 'em but sometimes I need to watch my crew around higher paying jobs. Last night could 'ave been avoided if I had an eye. Sometimes I get my man on cams but he is a twig and couldn't win a fight with a kitten." Rob's look grew more serious. "It is rare but sometimes thugs go after the cams. I know that I won't have to worry about anyone getting the drop on you."

"I will take the job on two conditions." Briar held up a finger, "I refuse to use a gun." He held up a second, "I am allowed to upgrade or change the room's security and equipment to suit me."

"What kind of changes?"

"Currently I am only thinking adding a pin pad and hand scanner combo that only looks like it will unlock the door." Briar grinned, "I will probably think of more things once I see the space."

"A red herring." Rob muttered before exclaiming, "I approve." He then held out his hand to shake, "All I ask is that you don't install anything deadly."

Briar shook, "You have a deal Mr. Umbra."

"Excellent, I can start you with Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tonight can be the first shift if you want."

"Sounds good to me, where am I going?"

"It's a little hard to find, so tell me your address and I will swing by before 1900 to lead ya."

"Tranquil Estate." Briar laughed as Rob's eyes widened, "I know I know, my grandfather has the good taste not to name his properties after himself."

Rob laughed with him, "At least one business tycoon in the world does."

Briar looked over to see Azalea trying to fit a large bundle of papers into her bag.

Theo spotted his questioning look and explained, "Welcome package. It has everything she needs in order to annoy my father by following all the rules to a tee. It also includes her own badge so she doesn't need me to call the elevator."

Azalea stood up after succeeding in making everything fit. "If that is everything then I believe I shall go prepare for the battle to make your tower more bearable princess."

"Just don't stab any of the guards, they are prisoners too." Theo spoke through barely restrained laughter.

"No promises." Azalea waved, "See you tomorrow Theo."

Rob left first followed by Azalea and Briar. The latter leaned on his twin and whispered in Italian, " Grandfather would approve."

She chose not to respond verbally and instead shoved him off and went to wait for the elevator with Rob.

Briar chose that brief moment to greet Roisin and see if she would be free that Thursday.

Azalea waved him over when the doors opened and he rushed over with a large grin.

Azalea shook her head, "Come on Romeo, straighten your head back on, we have work to do."

And that is it. This honestly started as a maribat fanfic with Briar as Adrien and  Azalea as Marinette. Rob was Jason and Theodore was Tim. Since I made it into an original I changed a lot of personalities and background characters. All because I wanted to twist the fake dating idea completely. Somehow it turned into a commentary on stereotypes and how it is okay to just be how you are. This covers gender stereotypes and relationship stereotypes. My favourite chapters I have written so far are chapter 7 because I have never written anything like it before and chapters 11 to 14 because they are the serious ones that made me decide to turn this into an original. So again, if you want to see more let me know, if I don’t hear anything you will just have to wait the ten plus years it takes me to get this published.

[stickspoolsclubs]

8 ball pool instant rewards online

Pool has consistently been one of my preferred games. This is just in light of the fact that it is far beyond a game; it is to a greater degree a get-together really. Billiards or Snooker - these are the varieties of the Pool. There is a distinction between the two yet these are essentially pool games. A day or two ago, I asked my teenaged child where he was headed toward and he expeditiously answered that he was set for play a round of pool with his amigos. It helped me to remember my more youthful days when I was an eager pool devotee. Truth be told, I particularly recollect that 8 ball pool lite it is more than one of these rounds of pool, that I met my significant other, Margaret. One of the most mainstream games nowadays among both businessperson and the adolescents is pool or billiards. Be that as it may, frequently you will discover individuals mistaking this for another variety of the game, snooker. I'm going to give you some new pool shooting exercises to rehearse that will assist you with getting more OK with controlling your prompt ball position inside a little objective zone. Nailing a careful situation with the signal ball can be significantly harder than it looks! Players who are simply beginning to find out about how to play pool for fledglings regularly battle to see only the mechanics of controlling the signal ball.

This article will talk about how one can without much of a stretch figure out how to ace the round of pool. With a touch of tutoring and some training, one can be an extraordinary part in a matter of moments. Do you love to play pool, yet loathe that your companions beat 8 ball pool rewards you down constantly? OK prefer to figure out how to play better, so they'll be getting you the beverages? It's not hard, yet it will require a brief period and exertion. It's called pool practice, and it works magnificently. In the event that you follow the straightforward strides beneath you'll turn into a greatly improved player rapidly. Pocket Pool is a moderately fast billiard game that includes putting the balls straightforwardly before the pockets. This article clarifies the reason for Pocket Pool, its guidelines, how it is played, and scoring strategies. What do you need in the method of pool table adornments for your pool room. A few thoughts of the regular frill accessible.

Pool is a round of sovereignty directly from the very first moment and includes cash. It's not as modest a game the same number of others. Not all individuals can bear to get individual tables at their place. The main Expenditure isn't only the pool table however alongside it you likewise require countless essential extras. You can't simply play with a table 3d 8 ball pool having balls on it however you additionally need things like pool capable felt, covers, sticks, chalk, balls, and racks. Some time ago billiard balls were made out of wood, as were most things. It places me as a primary concern of the times of George Washington and his wooden teeth. Be that as it may, as the materials for teeth advanced, so did the materials for billiard balls. Online pool games like snooker and billiards are extraordinary choices for the individuals who need to encounter playing them on a video screen. It is smarter to play these games than burning through your time on interpersonal interaction locales like Facebook and Twitter for thought processes other than business. Virtual pool competitions are so exciting, they test your precision of system, pointing and hitting. Pool Cue Stuff incorporates an assortment of pool frill essential for keeping your pool prompt in great condition. It likewise 8 ball pool pro incorporates a few articles and preparing helps which can help improve your game or help you in your play. At the point when you are hoping to purchase a billiard table, there is something different that you should pay special mind to. The frill that you get for the table are similarly as significant as the table itself. Here are the most significant interesting points additionally getting when your buy a billiard table.

Nearly everybody wants to play pool. There is a major distinction between batting a few balls around at a nearby bar and truly "playing pool". This article will give you a few hints to do the last mentioned. Have you generally admired the bosses of pool like Davies, Reyes, Rodney and other such worldwide players? I am certain you couldn't want 3d ball pool anything more than to figure out how to play simply like them and potentially turn expert! Presently you can change your aptitudes for nothing, from the solace of your home, whenever you wish, with a wide assortment of testing electronic pool games. I was having a grown-up drink with a companion of mine the other night when the conversation of pool came up. I was, for more than 10 years in the APA; The American Poolplayers Association, and an ardent pool shooter. Thus, he was informing me regarding how his sibling had a table in his cellar and... well that is a finished story unto itself... So it got me to considering how I used to place the 8-Ball in on the break 1 out of multiple times and how that may be of some enthusiasm to somebody.

Coin Operated Pool Tables are perfect for having a fabulous time through pool games, to engage your family, companions and children. These pool tables are utilized on business lines and are dependent upon a permit. Bars and entertainment settings in country or urban territories offer to their guests the energy and the sportsmanship of a well known table-played game, called pool or billiard. Need to be an incredible pool player? It's simpler than you might suspect once you comprehend the 3 stages to an extraordinary break. This article gives all the stunts and tips you have to get it going. A great many people see pool games as having gazed just in the ongoing past. In any case, they can be followed back to the old occasions where they were played by lords and most ordinary citizens. Billiards, another term that can be utilized to allude to them, started from Croquet. This game 8 ball pool download apk was played by in France as ahead of schedule as in the fifteenth Century. Different individuals additionally played it in Northern Europe. The Doodle Pool application for iPhone is a fascinating blend of silly designs and billiards, the two of which are progressively well known. Yet, the part is, this iPhone application costs nothing to download and utilize!

There are some key contrasts in the hardware utilized for pool and billiards. As a starting level part in any of the two 8 ball cash tournaments games, you should find out about these distinctions to buy the correct gear. There are a few very surprising varieties while sorting out pool competitions, each with their own standards. It is the gamers want with regards to which they like. It's suggested be that as it may, that each member know about at least the three most normal varieties, being 9-Ball, Eight-Ball and Minimize Throat.

[virtualteambuilding-blog]

Team Building Activities

click to read more Virtual team building

Group Building Activities are animating critical thinking assignments intended to help bunch individuals build up their ability to work viably together. Many group building and activity errands resemble kids games, others are novel, complex assignments and intended for explicit requirements. Increasingly intricate activity errands can include ropes courses, evening exercises, and activities enduring more than a few days.

A few workplaces require to some degree bit of collaboration with the goal for things to run easily and with inspiration to each in everybody. Group building exercises are typically used to make a connection between associates or co worker. Then again, different workplaces need cooperation yet the representatives work independently. Representatives maintaining sources of income like these truly need group building exercises to assist them with remaining related with different specialists.

Group building exercises are frequently utilized in gatherings, introductions, workshops, preparing courses, instruction programs, corporate preparing, with school, high, center, rudimentary and pre school gatherings, sport groups, educator preparing, youth work, and restorative settings. Group building activities can be adjusted for all intents and purposes any setting, youthful or old, enormous or little, and across societies. A significant piece of group building practices is members' appearance and conversation about the action, how they moved toward the circumstance, and potential purposes of learning. For instance, a gathering could be videoed during a movement and the video viewed, broke down, and talked about, to help extricate likely gaining from group building works out.

As the top of the business division of an enormous organization, I'm the one answerable to all, particularly for the presentation of every one of my workers. At the point when deals are moderate moving, I attempt to utilize various impetuses to spur everybody. I used to offer them rewards and prizes for top entertainers to function admirably so as to come up enhancement for efficiency for a brief timeframe. In any case, this sort of thought came about to serious climate around the workplace, which isn't what I wanted for them to do. I need to use a group building exercises so as to work in the workplace, with the goal that my business power cooperate to come up enhancement for efficiency, not to function as person.click to read more Virtual team building

The primary thought that I was reached the human asset division to tell them of my needs to execute group building exercises among my business power. The head over yonder revealed to me that they don't have anybody workers there that had that sort of involvement with training them group building exercises, so she recommended that I utilized outside or different experts for that sort of occupation. I began to contact the names of a couple of nearby firms to get some answers concerning their administrations. I was very overpowered by the determination of group building exercises these counseling firms proposed for my business power.

Representative inspiration profits by group building games, works out, exercises, puzzles and tests. I attempt to utilize free group building games and activities thoughts to heat up gatherings, preparing, and meetings. These free group building games are additionally incredible ice breakers for instructional courses, gatherings, workshops, classes or meetings. Group building games and exercises are valuable likewise in genuine business venture gatherings, where games and exercises help agents to see things contrastingly and utilize distinctive reasoning styles. To guarantee these group building exercises agree to correspondence and separation strategy and law in regard of sexual orientation, race, inability, age, and so on. Albeit a portion of the group building exercises appeared to be excessively extraordinary for our specific needs, many seemed like they would be ideal for us. The best part is that he could show us these group building exercises through the span of a two-day workshop held right in our workplaces. This sounded entirely great, however tragically, I couldn't get endorsement from my supervisor for the spending consumption.

I didn't abandon this; still I began looking for reasonable or free group building exercises online that contained phenomenal group building exercises. I chose to attempt several these first that I discovered online with a proof that this group building exercises function admirably. What's more, I have a superior opportunity to my supervisor of getting endorsement for this sort of preparing in the up and coming.

At long last, I've modified the first round of group building exercises for one week from now. I'm paying attention to in the process very and am investing a great deal of energy in planning on this so I can be fit as a facilitator. I'm exceptionally idealistic about the impacts of these group building exercises will have on my business power. In the event that you help individuals with their life-parity and individual satisfaction they become all the more sincerely develop, lenient, positive autonomous, independent, and so forth. At the point when the individual is alright, so is everything else, including their connections and correspondences at work. Creating individuals includes more than conduct, connections, abilities, information and procedures. It's regularly progressively about helping individuals rest easy thinking about themselves; helping the individual to feel upbeat and satisfied. A decent pioneer can encourage this. Group building doesn't need to include games and activities - group building may be better accomplished by orchestrating different things which have all the earmarks of being detached to work.

Employments like this incorporate assistance arranged callings in places like cafés and specialists' workplaces. The focal point of some group building exercises includes taking the client's viewpoint. Any individual who has visited an eatery and gotten amazing help just to return and not get a similar treatment is bound to leave displeased than somebody who had standard assistance regardless.

Here's my experience when I was working in one of the foundation as a server and I tried to set aside additional effort to oblige clients uncommon solicitations. While this functioned admirably for me autonomously it truly neutralized my associates and there are times that you basically can't suit each ask for. There's an occurrence happened that, one of my standard client experienced an alternate servers they were disturbed when exceptional facilities were not made. The supervisor took care of this circumstance by presenting new group building exercises that included agreeing with the client's position. I figured this obliging methodology would prevail upon the "treat everybody similarly" approach.

I've discovered that through group building exercises I realize how to keep up a steady front for the client is obviously better than making extraordinary facilities that can not generally be experienced. Essentially, the group building exercises fixated on irregularities. Individuals like consistency. Amazements, particularly with regards to suppers, are not generally welcomed. One of the group building exercises worried in a trial. It was a cooking gem. After we done the test, the gourmet expert drew out a similar dish. It had sharp undercurrents that sometimes fell short for the flavor of the food.

The subsequent cooking masterpiece doesn't coordinate the procedure of a decent testing, and the culinary specialist rehashed it. He sent the second and a similar dish and it tasted precisely like the first. I realize that this below average dish wasn't close to as great as the underlying sweet dish yet we enhanced the second since we comprehended what's in store.

The opposite side of group building exercises can likewise help medicinal services laborers keep up steady data to patients. I get baffled when one medical caretaker advised me to quit breastfeeding following a year while a second attendant in a similar pediatrician's office proposed that I proceed. The clashing data imparted to me that this staff truly required group building exercises.

[mattpitman]

The precipice.

Wow. What a week. 

I am not entirely sure where it was more chaotic, in my remote classroom or in the political arena. I gave my thoughts on all of that last week and I’m still very much in the same place. I’m feeling fortunate to live in Victoria, that is for sure. I can’t wait to stroll the busy streets of Melbourne again...

The chaos in the classroom is actually great though. The remote learning environment is a hive of activity. It has been well documented by many in the education sector that the energy and time commitment required of online/remote/continuous learning is substantially more than what many anticipated or had experienced in the classroom. But it’s also, so rewarding! 

There were days it used to feel like pulling teeth when asking for feedback, questions or concerns in the physical classroom, but online, it’s a rush of queries and challenging thoughts. Students are engaging with their content with an enthusiasm that I really didn’t anticipate, and the communication! Students are messaging and emailing ahead of time when they are unable to meet a specific task requirement and providing an alternative. Truly inspiring what can happen when you leave a young person to “fend” for themselves.

There are negatives of course. I am reminded of the distance every time I check in with my students via video conference, that the personal and social component is a large percentage of what makes teaching such a great profession. But while the social distance is substantial at the moment, it won’t be forever, and it will quickly change when it is appropriate and safe to return to schools. The pedagogy however, well that is a completely different story.

With all of this talk about going back to school, I find myself reflecting on this ongoing remote learning experience and how positive it has been for me personally. It has without a doubt changed the way I intend to teach when we return to the college grounds, and I am pretty excited about that. Rejuvenated perhaps is the right word. Much of what I have learned or intend to take back is probably old news, but it has energised me and that is what really counts.

With a looming date for the end of the State of Emergency in Victoria, I can’t help but think that we are on the precipice of great change again in education. This time it isn’t how - as in “how are we going to shift everything online in such a short period of time?”, but what - as in “what are we going to take back with us?”. 

I previously spoke about my experiences and reflected about my own re-working of practice and development of a model for my classes. Some of that is on this blog and also in a couple of LinkedIn articles (here: “You helped me. Thanks”, and here: “I watched my students learn from a distance. It was awesome”). I intend to keep my three lesson model when we return. Today though, I thought I would reflect on my biggest personal learnings and why I believe they will be held very tightly as I jump off this cliff and back into the physical teaching environment - whenever that may be.

1. Less instruction, more construction 

I see myself now as a facilitator, not a teacher. I do not belong at the front of the class as the “expert”. My primary role is to create an environment in which my students can become the experts. Online I don’t set tasks, I share tasks. Online I observe my students challenging, exploring and creating, while providing guidance and feedback where I can from a distance. I have said previously “put away your spoons, the students can feed themselves” and I meant it. Across this journey so far I’ve seen an increase in the quality of work from my strongest students to my lowest achievers, and to be honest those classifications mean nothing in the remote learning world. Where students have wanted to be involved, they have succeeded because this environmental change has supported their individuality.

Part of this I attribute to drastically reducing the amount of content rather than attempting to replicate and mimic the traditional classroom. I think all teachers facilitators would agree, that student feedback is some of the most meaningful. Especially, unprovoked feedback. A number of students have provided me with surprise thoughts, opinions and thanks across the last three weeks and it’s been incredibly meaningful and allowed me to be more productive in my role. They love the more focussed and reduced workload. They have time to work through the content and time to process its application to their world, rather than in service of an assessment task. The return to the physical classroom environment will be a drastic change to what has quickly become habitual, but I intend to maintain the quality over quantity mindset, freeing up time for discussion and conversation. Not all of the time allocated to the lesson has to be “on task”. Creativity, curiosity and critical thinking is not the stuff of textbook questions, it is more exploratory and I won’t be looking backward. 

Less instruction, more construction means less of my voice and more of theirs.

2. Blended, not mashed 

Technology and education have an interesting history. Sometimes it feels forced, other times it is a miracle classes were taught without it. This experience has demonstrated to me that my students are tech-savvy, but also select with the application of their abilities. Today’s young people thrive on choices. They are incredible when you want a video published on social media or a code written for gaming platform but when it comes to spreadsheets or word processing or conducting research on a fixed topic outside of that interest - they may be disengaged.

This experience has shown me the value of sharing a task and giving the students the room to engage with it. Technology used in this way is not forced or out of place, it is ingrained. This isn’t a PowerPoint to support a 40 minute lecture, it’s a recorded 5 minute video, followed by a research question, to formulate a response for the discussion forum and the basis for a class debate. I don’t envisage this classroom to have students in rows of chairs with books and pens. It’s students outside, in the hallway and on the floor, engaging with the content as they choose. This is taking the wins from the remote learning period and applying them to the strengths of the physical classroom.

This is not just lashing technology to the side of the lesson and hoping it stays attached. This is creating a lesson that is designed to give the students control of the pace and allow them to discover with more freedom.

Blended, not mashed means less information and more exploration.

3. Connection instead of direction

In my role as a House Leader it sometimes feels like I only contact parents and they only contact me with concerns or to schedule meetings and of course, at parent teacher interviews. Since moving to remote learning however, I have found that communication between parents, students and staff has been much more free flowing and spontaneous. Perhaps this is because many parents find themselves temporarily working from home also and the barrier of conflicting schedules has been removed. In any case, the level of parent, student and my own engagement is high. I love it.

While I would say I am fortunate to teach secondary education, and a lot of what I am talking about here is framed to that particular environment, the shared responsibility of parents, students and teachers in guiding a learner on their journey has never been more evident. Weekly updates of concepts, tasks and their application have been met with parent support and gratitude. Allowing those parents the intel they need to politely inquire or praise and congratulate their 17-18 year old child in the least intrusive manner possible. At my school we are currently in process of a 3-week parent-teacher interview cycle (via phone) and the conversations have reflected both the parents understanding that the learning is their child’s responsibility but the support is ours to share. Incredibly valuable and rewarding!

Connection instead of direction means less reporting and more supporting.

This is the precipice

Do we jump and be curious and adaptive? Or do we step backward and return to the safety of the land?

I don’t believe there is any long term benefit of returning to the “old way” of doing things. The short term comfort in going back to what we “used to do” will not last. It might be uncomfortable initially, but all forward thinking and future focused movements are slow, painful and challenging for individual's but, the rewards are potentially huge for whole communities.

Going back to a pre-corona model of education would be to the benefit and comfort of certain teachers only. Students would suffer. 

So it is time to consider why we got into this game and whether we are ready to continue changing it.

Will you jump with me?

This is the precipice.

Here’s a few things that have inspired me this past week as an educator and a leader:

Educator Perspectives on the Impact of COVID-19 on Teaching and Learning 

(https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattlukepitman_pivot-state-of-education-2020-white-paper-activity-6661744495702474752-1in6)

Pivot Professional Learning along with Education Perfect ran a series of fantastic webinars this week, highlighting the incredible effort of educators across Australia and NZ. Pivot also, in a massive effort, collected a ton of data and has put together this report. Definitely worth a read, very insightful stuff.

Continuous Learning Toolkit Vol. II | Leading Through Crisis 

(https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattlukepitman_continuous-learning-toolkit-volume-ii-activity-6661169533031723008-sP68)

I continue to be unashamed in how much I love their podcast, but a close second to that is The Game Changers (Adriano & Phil) Continuous Learning Toolkit. This second volume presents a number of innovative and game-changing schools, their models, frameworks and stories. For any aspiring Game Changer this is a must read!

Future Agendas for Global Education: Executive Summary 

(https://issuu.com/4796376/docs/gef.agenda_eng)

Sold to me as “an excellent report that should be read by every school leader and educational policy maker” this summary is a long read but an engaging and inspiring one. Worth your time if you have it and if you don’t, make some!

[cherdocx]

The Potential Of Conversational Commerce | Emily Weiss with Alexandra Shulman | #BoFVOICES 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njfpm6_5fXQ&list=WL&index=3

Emily Weiss:

My background is in fashion, an early 20s measly fashion assistant at some of the best media companies in the world.

I had this incredible exposure to Karlie Kloss when she was 15 and I was tying her shoes, etc - surrounded by incredible women and the thing I always wanted to ask them was, “Who does your hair? What's that lipstick?” - what I didn’t realize is that even though those circumstances were incredibly unusual and unique, that sharing mentality is the most popular way to discover a new beauty product - so today 60% of women in the US say that the number 1 reason they’re convinced to buy a new beauty product that they haven’t tried before is through peer to peer recommendation (which is likely a social media person they’ve never met before but is someone they follow on Instagram or someone they read about on Into The Gloss).

While Into The Gloss pioneered the shift in beauty content from being brand/editor straight to consumer, it put a person in the middle (sharing their routine), which was incredibly unique for media at the time. Certainly YouTube did it first, and beauty is the second most popular category on YouTube right now. I still think what Into The Gloss did still resonates true to our company 7 years later, which is people - people are the unlock to shopping today, regardless of whatever you are considering to buy, you’ve probably read a review about it.

That shift in democracy and giving women voices to be their own expert, and share wherever they are on their beauty journey - is incredibly important to me.

I think in many ways, beauty once had a real stigma around it. Even today, there’s a sentiment often expressed that’s around beauty shaming. When asked about one’s beauty routine, one would say he/she is really low maintenance, when in fact they have an extensive routine/own many products. I think this stigma comes from perfectionism, completeness, and authoritarianism that used to drive beauty purchasing decisions through brands or editors pre-social media and pre-technology.

In this age of sharing, it has really destigmatized beauty, into something where women/men just want to help each other out, as well as saying, I’m proud of where I’m at, to be on a journey, where I have not reached a final destination - in fact, there is no final destination (airbrushed pictures put into media outlets by brands are not resonating, while a User Generated Content picture is resonating).

Even for fashion, we are in an era where information is prevalent, inspiration and fulfillment are all out there/online.

Into The Gloss audience’s household income is a little higher than the Glossier customer’s (because the profiles are of women who spend a lot on beauty). They all share a psychographic more than a demographic, i.e. that desire to share because its helping to share their better decisions.

Instagram followers - we call them customers who haven’t bought yet.

The beauty of today, whether wrt purchases/dating/news, you get to choose now, there’s this power of choice because of social media and technology. Whose story are you going to listen to? Which narrative do you want to believe? You probably aren’t going to listen to the first source of information you access (e.g. the salesperson at Sephora, you probably will look through the internet and find the information yourself instead). 

One of the key learnings from doing hundreds of interviews on Into The Gloss between 2010 and 2013 when we started to build Glossier: there was this incredible breadth of product, i.e. there’s no shortage of stuff but there’s a shortage of context and of integrity (in terms of product and quality, as well as the values that your company/brand stands for). While luxury is a loaded word today, one of the core tenets of luxury is quality (regardless of whether it is a luxury experience or a luxury product).

Original idea of Glossier: let’s create a beauty company whose sweatshirt you want to wear, in terms of the consumer being so aligned with the company/ company is relevant to consumer - so much more than just a product/stuff.

How do you build a beauty company of the future, one that evolves with their customer where the customer is a part of the company/everything you put out, because there has never been a time more than now where the customer is always right.

So the first 4 products for Glossier - the idea is to start with skincare, and then evolve/launching something new every 6-8 weeks, much like a magazine/content (Glossier is actually based on the word ‘dossier’) and to do that in conjunction with our community/build the first beauty lifestyle brand wherein you can be category-agnostic/only hero products/launch very few items (very counterintuitive to a lot of the beauty companies who launch 150 SKUs, make everything with one vendor, have things that are great and others that are not so great) - we wanted to offer this incredible new luxury experience and we were able to do that by going direct to consumer, and not be beholden to retail partners/wholesalers who are going to make your brand become something so that it fits on a certain gondola/aisle of a store. So everything that we’ve chosen to do has been because it’s better for her, and she said she wants incredibly high quality beauty products/ wants to combine 3 aspects to create the ultimate beauty product and those are sentiments that we listened to over years of building Into The Gloss.

How do you make your customer feel involved - simple, just involve him/her. You’ll find ways to actually ask for questions and then build that in to what you do.

Since the beginning, the mandate for Into The Gloss has always been to be inspired, period. Into The Gloss is a platform for talking about the best in beauty and for discovery, as well as to give us feedback, it’s our number one microphone if we want to tell customers/readers when and why we’re going international/why we’ve sold out of everything/ask them what they want in a candle scent - we can gather all that information and share all those stories on Into The Gloss; we actually stopped being a media business when we launched Glossier so we can focus on premium content, on telling women the best about beauty across the world/internet. We’re just going to keep being inspired and talking about things we like - we’re very proud of the products we make, we spend a lot of time working on them.

I believe my job is to be a conduit, my job has always been to listen and make people happy. I love women, people, and the power that people have already. I don’t like the word ‘empowered’ - people are just powerful, period. And we want to help them unlock/realize that power. So my voice is on an individual level, not nearly as important as that of our customers/readers, and that’s the biggest difference between these titans of the industry/pioneering women like Estee Lauder - there was no YouTube/social media then, so their customers had no platform, it was just them and they had an incredible amount of riding on what was their message of what these products would unlock for their followers. The stories and narratives that these women needed to craft and embody were ones that, at the moment worked really well (values/image/social status/aspiration of the time) but today, those values have changed, and our core value at Glossier is inclusivity. My voice is one of many, and even Glossier the company, our voice is one of many - we are not the rule makers, we are just providing product, platform and content so that it become tools for other women to write their stories.

[hocbongguides-blog]

Contemplating Abroad: Getting Started

Choosing if, where, when and how to consider abroad is simpler than you may might suspect!

With such a large number of concentrate abroad program types and goals accessible to you, and the long check rundown of undertakings you have to finish before really heading abroad, it very well may be hard to choose where to begin. Get yourself composed with these five stages that will assist you with preparing for your time abroad.

1. Choose if study abroad is directly for you

Sure contemplating abroad sounds great, yet is it a solid match for you? Initially, ask yourself a couple of inquiries:

Am I open to being endlessly from loved ones for a broaden timeframe?

Would I appreciate investigating another culture?

Will I use study abroad to help shape me scholastically, expertly and additionally by and by?

On the off chance that you answer "yes" to most or the entirety of the inquiries, study abroad is presumably an incredible decision for you. In the event that you answer "no" to a great deal of the inquiries, it may be a great opportunity to accomplish progressively legitimate soul looking before you choose. Actually, concentrating abroad is an interesting, courageous chance to have a go at something new and develop as both an understudy and an individual, and it additionally accompanies a few difficulties, for example, being out of your customary range of familiarity and away from loved ones.

2. Choose where and when to think about abroad

There are such a significant number of goals to browse when choosing where you need to contemplate abroad that it can regularly be a mind-boggling decision. It may be ideal on the off chance that you first tight down the sort of area that interests you the most, and afterward settle on your choice. For instance:

Would you like to be in an English-talking region or some place where you have to communicate in an unknown dialect?

Is it critical to you that you be midway situated to invest energy in ends of the week heading out to close by urban communities?

In light of your answers, you most likely have a smart thought about the characteristics you need in your examination abroad goal. Presently it's simply a question of discovering it! To assist you with finding your ideal goal, you can peruse by nation, peruse by city, think about various program alternatives or pursue understudy bloggers to perceive what it resembles to live in that area.

Next, it's an ideal opportunity to choose when you need to contemplate abroad in your said area. Commonly, it's ideal to choose when you intend to travel to another country at any rate nine months to one year early, if not more. Many investigation abroad projects expect candidates to apply at any rate a half year before the program starts, so having in any event nine months gives you an opportunity to research, discover and apply to a program(s) at your relaxation.

3. Discover study abroad projects

Since you have chosen where and when you need to think about abroad, it's a great opportunity to discover a program. From summer study abroad excursions to semester-long and full scholastic year programs, there are a few kinds of projects to browse as you choose which is best for you. As you inquire about your choices, it's imperative to talk legitimately with the program(s) important to become familiar with what they offer, at what cost, and which enhancements are or are excluded, for example, air terminal get, nearby direction, lodging, and so forth. Get familiar with the investigation abroad application.

4. Converse with your emotionally supportive network

Meet with your scholarly guide to guarantee you can remain on track to graduate on schedule, plan the coursework you have to take before you travel to another country, the coursework you should spare and take while abroad and the coursework that you should take after you return.

Converse with your folks concerning why, when and where you need to ponder abroad. Choosing to consider abroad is frequently a family choice, and having an open discussion with them can support both you and them plan the best investigation abroad outing for you as could reasonably be expected. It's essential to go to the discussion arranged with your focuses, and be prepared with answers to their inquiries.

Global experience can be a major resume sponsor once it comes time to quest for new employment. Increasing a worldwide point of view in the present universal commercial center is significant, and with the chance to assistant while abroad, understudies regularly grow new aptitudes and develop their system of expert contacts.

Investing energy abroad regularly brings about a more elevated level of development and individual autonomy. Understudies frequently gain proficiency with a ton about themselves and what they're fit for by living in a remote domain.

Concentrate abroad is a unique encounter. Enough said. You can visit another nation whenever throughout everyday life, except to live abroad is a one of a kind open door that doesn't ordinarily fit non-understudies.

Inundation is an extraordinary method to learn or improve at an unknown dialect.

For guardians: Questions to ask your kid

What program(s) would you say you are taking a gander at? In the wake of directing some online research or conversing with a counselor, does it appear as though understudies in the past have had great encounters with that program?

Is the nation/city you're thinking about a protected spot to live? What is the wrongdoing pace of the area? What would it be advisable for us to think about the wellbeing framework?

What kind of lodging is accessible to you? Will you be without anyone else to discover a condo, or will your program deal with it for you? Is it true that you are keen on a home-remain (living with a nearby family) or would you incline toward a dormitory setting? What are your choices and what amount do they cost?

What is the conversion scale, and what is the normal average cost for basic items? What amount do you intend to spend on movement, gifts, and so forth.? Are there grants accessible? At last, is it a program as well as goal you/we can manage?

As you and your family talk about your arrangements, keep on staying in contact with your scholarly counselor all through the arranging and application process.

5. Set up study abroad funds

Subsidizing study abroad is regularly a worry of numerous understudies and guardians; anyway it doesn't have to burn up all available resources. Truth be told, numerous understudies can apply their current money related guide bundles toward their examination abroad projects. For certain understudies who pay out-of-state-educational cost, concentrating abroad may really be less expensive than a conventional on-grounds semester. Furthermore, there are an assortment of grant openings accessible as well. While picking your subsidizing alternatives, it's critical to make sure to begin early, request help and look for various assets.

When you have your funds set up for your program educational cost, it's a great opportunity to begin sparing and planning for your abroad day by day everyday costs. As you plan your financial limit, organize what merits burning through cash on and what isn't. For instance, in the event that you can't manage the cost of everything on your list of things to get, okay rather purchase a variety of gifts and spend too much on suppers or would you rather take a couple of end of the week outings to close by urban communities? There are a lot of cash sparing tips that can assist you with minimizing expenses while you're abroad.

Searching for more data?

Look at our Student Guide for more tips about how to plan for study abroad, in addition to point by point data about how to get the best possible travel records, tips for pressing and genuine understudy counsel about how to take advantage of your time abroad. For more in-depth information about stay in Du hoc my . I highly recommend this website stay in Du hoc my

[aro-ace-andi-mack]

I wrote a fic based off of this post. Jonah Beck is autistic, don't even try to change my mind.

This is also based off my own story of self-diagnosis, which is 100% valid, especially since there are many barriers to getting an official diagnosis (money, fear of discrimination, etc). It felt like Jonah would likely go through a similar experience based on his circumstances.

I already posted this on my main @regrettable-username​, but since this is officially my AM sideblog I figured it belonged here. It’s just a short oneshot, and it’s also attached below the break on this post if you want to read it that way!

“Hey, Cyrus, wait up a sec!”

Cyrus turned around to see who was calling out. Rushing out behind him was Jonah Beck, who didn’t even bother to zip up his backpack when the final bell rang. Cyrus reached down to pick up a paper that had fallen out.

“Thanks,” Jonah said out of breath, taking the paper from him. “My head just isn’t really in the right place today.”

“Are you okay?” Cyrus asked. He noticed that the last few days Jonah hadn’t been talking as much when they all hung out as a group, and he seemed to be fidgeting a lot more too.

“Actually, can we talk?” Jonah responded. “Not here?"

“Yeah, of course,” Cyrus said. “The Spoon? I have some allowance left for this week, and we can split some baby taters.”

“I’m not that hungry right now. Wanna just walk around for a bit?”

So the two of them headed down the sidewalk, vaguely in the direction of their houses, but in no particular rush. It took a minute before Jonah said anything.

“Cyrus, you know a lot about psychology and stuff. Have you ever heard anything about…self diagnosis?” Jonah asked quietly.

“Um, I guess it depends on the particular case. But my parents are professionals, so I only know about what’s in the DSM.”

“You can actually access the DSM online for free,” Jonah said. “But it’s sort of difficult to understand. And all the other websites, I don’t know, I was just always told that you shouldn’t believe something unless an expert told you about it.”

Cyrus stopped on the sidewalk, turning to face his friend.

“Jonah, what’s going on?”

Jonah suddenly shifted his eyes to the ground. There was a long pause, and he took a few deep breaths.

“I think I’m…autistic.”

Jonah quickly started walking again. Cyrus stayed for a moment to let the information sink in, then ran after his friend.

“Wait! Jonah!” Cyrus called, until he caught up to him.

“Jonah, I just need more information,” Cyrus said. “Why do you think you’re autistic?”

“I don’t—just, right now, I’ve been looking at this for a while. Ever since my panic attack at your shiva, I started looking things up. I wanted to know why I was having them and how to stop them from getting worse. And when I was looking through everything, I found this Youtube video about autism. I don’t know why I clicked it, but I did. And everything lined up. I like repetition. I’m a picky eater. I always feel like I’m mimicking people. I’m better texting than I am at talking. The first time I met Andi, I wouldn’t even have recognized her if she wasn’t wearing her duct tape shoes. Apparently that's face-blindness. And whenever I’m in any kind of social situation, I have no idea what I’m doing,” Jonah said, his voice getting tired.

“Really? But you’re Jonah Beck, you’re one of the coolest guys in the entire school,” Cyrus said.

“I am Jonah Beck, but everything that I say to people feels like a different version of me. And I make up all these scripts in my head without even realizing it. And even though I know tons of people, and I can have conversations with tons of people, you guys are the first real friends I’ve had since elementary school,” Jonah said.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to doubt you,” Cyrus said.

“It’s okay. I’ve been doubting myself a lot the past few weeks,” Jonah replied.

“Is there anything else I should know about?”

“I think I might have some sensory issues. I know those are a common trait in autistic people, but I can’t think of anything specific for me. Except maybe the food thing. I was so overwhelmed when I saw that table at your shiva,” Jonah said.

“Taste is a sense. Or maybe it’s texture and smell too.”

“I just wish it was more exact. Like, I know it’s supposed to be a spectrum, but I feel like a fraud admitting this to you. And yet, it feels right.” Cyrus nodded. “That’s okay,” he said, “you don’t need to have it all figured out. Have you looked into getting a diagnosis?”

“I want to, more than anything. Even if I don’t have autism I have something. I want to know what it is. And I want to get help with my panic attacks. But I can’t afford it,” Jonah said.

“Do you have health insurance? I can see if my parents cover it.”

“No! If you tell them, then they’ll just talk to my parents about it. Even if we can afford a diagnosis, we can’t afford any therapy. I don’t want them to worry about me, they have enough to worry about,” Jonah said.

“Alright. This is your thing, and I believe you. Just let me know what I can do,” Cyrus said.

“Thanks, Cyrus,” Jonah replied. “You’re a great friend.”

Jonah pulled Cyrus into a bro hug, but Cyrus quickly pulled back.

“Wait, I know some autistic people don’t like to be touched. Is this okay?”

“Cyrus, if I initiate something, it’s fine. But thanks for asking,” Jonah said, smiling.

“Just making sure,” Cyrus said. “Wait, where are we?” Looking around, there were only the same rows of houses that all looked like each other, and the street names didn’t seem familiar at all.

“We got distracted and walked too far, didn’t we?” Jonah asked, already knowing the answer.

“Looks like it. Are you any good with directions?” Cyrus asked.

“Nope.”

"Guess we’ll figure it out as we go along,” Cyrus said.

Jonah smiled. Cyrus was right. As they started walking back, there was only one emotion running through Jonah’s head: relief. He may not know where he was headed, but for once in his life he knew enough about himself to feel grounded. And that was all he ever really wanted.

[rainbowfox20]

Tips from Maddy

Hey there.

So the other day I was having a conversation with one of my coworkers who was talking about her weight loss journey and how she was going about it and immediately I was getting warning signs all over the place simply because I have been through exactly what she is going through and I wanted to help inform her on what can possibly happen if she continues the way she is right now. I had told her a few good tips and tricks which was a lot of information to process so she asked if I could writes this all down for her to which I happily agreed to do. 

As I was writing this I realized that this information could be super helpful to others out there who are dieting and wanting to lose weight. I am no expert in any sense, I’m still learning things out myself and seeing what works but I have learned a lot over the past couple of years. 

So, here I am giving my tips to you guys. I hope that you learn something from this and if you can share this so others can see and learn as well that would make me so happy. 

Again please keep in mind that I do not have any qualifications, this is all my own personal experience and what I have learned from seeing many doctors, specialists, naturopaths (I have seen way too many people to help me seriously) 

Everything that I have written on here are things that I have learned over time as well as try them out myself and see what works for me. Please keep in mind that there will be some things that will help and other things that won’t. I’m always more than happy to discuss anything if you have any questions if something doesn’t make sense or you’re curious about more information.

Typically, when I talk about my diet, I don’t necessarily mean being in a caloric deficit but more about what I eat and my lifestyle in general. I’m not the type of person to eat less to lose weight, I’m more about eating good healthy foods and exercising the right amount for my body to handle without pushing it to the edge. I’ll give you my basic rundown of my history a couple years ago and what I learned from it.

Around three years ago I decided to change my diet and my overall lifestyle. I was 21 years old and weighing around 64kg. Keep in mind around the time I decided to change my eating habits was when I just came back from a holiday in Korea and Malaysia and boy I did not hold back on eating while away. I was young and used to a diet where I ate what I wanted and didn’t think much of it but over time as I got older I noticed that I wasn’t really recovering as quickly after eating junk food like I did when I was a teenager in high school.

Growing up I was never fat or obese in any sense. I was fit, I played hockey and karate and I would happily enjoy sports during school and enjoy walking, riding, anything I felt like I wanted to do. I was never really interested in being super skinny, I had a little fat on my tummy but it never really bothered me until after I finished high school. That was when I became more aware of how other people would look at me, make comments about my body and thus making myself become more aware of my own body.

When I was 21 I didn’t think that “Oh my god I am so fat and imperfect I need to fix this!” it was “I want to change my eating and just become healthier overall” and so I started to change things bit by bit. I cut things out that I knew my body couldn’t exactly handle such as gluten and dairy and noticed changes in my body such as my face was clearing up of pimples and acne. I was losing weight little by little which at the time made me really happy as it was something that has never happened to me before. That is what lead me down the path that I wish I read the warning signs early on but because I had this goal of ‘you must lose a certain amount and then you will be successful’ but didn’t notice how toxic it became.

I became obsessed with exercise. I would go to the gym 5-6 days a week as well as do 2-3 spin classes as well as 2-3 karate sessions each week, on top of working at a restaurant which is a physically labouring job. Yes I lost weight over time and I didn’t think it was bad simply because it was small amounts every month, ranging between ½ - 1kg every month.

Over roughly one and a half years I went from being 63kg to 53kg. I was the lightest I had ever been, and the strongest I had ever been however things caught up to me very quickly. There was a certain point probably one month after I turned 22 when I started to notice my hair falling out. I didn’t think anything of it and just thought “Oh I have long hair and it happens” which was true but I would wake up every morning with hair all over my pillow and sheets, brushing my hair it would come out and throughout the day strands would fall out. I had always had thick hair so I didn’t really notice it until a lot had come out. By that point I had become lethargic and tired all the time, I would struggle to climb a flight of stairs and I could see that my body was taking a big step backwards.

This was when things went really bad.

I had denied it over and over, never daring to say that I have body image issues and everything was falling apart because I wanted to hold onto this little moment that I had worked so hard for was slowly slipping out of my grasp and I tried so desperately to hold it close to me.

Everything came crashing down so quickly I didn’t know what to do.

Over a period of 3 months the muscle that I had built over a year was gone, I had gained around 7kg and I was severely depressed with health issues I didn’t know how to deal with and am still dealing with to this day.

I’m telling you this not to frighten you but to let you know that this can happen if you are not careful when you diet, if you ignore what your body is telling you and keep pushing yourself to that point that you cannot return from. I had screwed up my metabolism, was close to being diagnosed with chronic fatigue and had to deal with the fact that the body I had a few months ago was gone and that I had/have body image issues.

I am someone who is not afraid to talk about my past and I’m willing to talk about myself and my experiences if it means that I can help someone else.

I have come across many people who do all these fad diets and starve themselves which I didn’t go to any extremes but I did limit what I ate at times which is what would have been one of the factors that screwed up my metabolism and caused my body to just go screw you I’m going into survival mode.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to lose some weight and wanting to be fit and strong because that is what you like and you want to feel that way, I’m all about being fit and healthy but you have to make sure that you do it in a safe manner. Do not expect for weight to come flying off and that it will stay that way because boy oh boy that is not the case. It is something that you have to work at all the time, it’s a lifestyle. This is why I like to endorse a healthy lifestyle change, not just diet for a bit and enjoy how you look for a short amount of time.

As I said when I started back then I made small changes such as eliminating certain foods which is a great way to start. Going online and reading all these articles about how to lose weight and doing particular exercises to lose a few kilos is very confusing and quite honestly overwhelming so keep it simple.

One of the important things is that you need to learn about food and not be afraid of it. You need to figure out what your body can tolerate and what it can’t. It’s all trial and error but you will learn over time what is acceptable. Food is energy, the more energy you have the more you can do but the less energy you have the less your body will tolerate. Don’t think that eating an apple in the morning and going throughout the rest of your day on just that single apple will do you any good, quite honestly it will do you more damage not to eat.

If you deprive your body of food your body will go into survival mode and hold onto body fat. It goes into this defensive mode to keep your body alive and if it means storing fat because it can’t trust you to feed it then that is what it will do. Naturally it will eat away at your muscle as well so it’s important to feed your body!

I highly recommend eating a good breakfast, having a decent lunch and eating a small dinner. The reason behind this is because when you wake up in the morning this is when your body wakes up from its rest and will start to get to work. Breakfast literally means to break your fast. Fasting is when you don’t eat for an extended period of time so to break your fast you need to eat. Tada Breakfast!

Many people find that they aren’t hungry in the morning which can be due to a few reasons. One they may have had a large or late dinner and so they aren’t hungry due to that. Maybe they are used to not eating in the morning however they find that they will eat big meals for lunch and dinner or they will tend to snack a lot during the day.

You want to eat like a king for breakfast, eat like a prince for lunch and eat like a princess for dinner.

Meaning eat a big meal in the morning, eat a good meal at lunch and then have a small meal for dinner.

Dinner is the last meal of the day and most of the time after you’ve had dinner you’re going to wind down, enjoy Netflix and then fall sleep. You’re not doing much after dinner, all depending on your life and what your job entails, but for most people night time is time for rest and sleep. The last thing you need is for your stomach to be hard at work breaking down a giant meal that you shoved its way because you didn’t eat enough during the day.

Another thing I want to stress is how much you chew your food. Holy cow I wish I knew this ages ago and it makes such total sense but no one told me before!

Your stomach has acid in it which helps break down your food, more so it’s designed to really break down meats and proteins due to these foods being tough to digest and so it takes longer to breakdown. Fruits and vegetables take a small amount of time and energy to digest but honestly your stomach and digestive system will thank you for chewing your food properly.

I am someone who has working in the hospitality industry for around 8 years and a lot of the time it involves having to shove food down your throat if you want something to eat and continue on with your work as you don’t have time to properly sit and have a meal and you have customers to tend to so of course during these times I have developed a bad habit of chewing my food lazily and swallowing it almost whole but until recently I have been actively trying to change this.

Keep in mind I can eat a lot if I want, and when I say this I mean when I don’t chew and break down my food properly. If you talk to any of my friends they can vouch for me, a lot of the time they question how I can fit so much food into a small body and I would just shrug and say that I’ve always had a big appetite, which is not a lie. Ever since I was little I could fit a lot of food into my stomach but keep in mind I’ve always been an active person so naturally I burn more fuel and so would eat more.

Now that I am more aware of how I chew my food I have learned to slow down when it’s possible for me to do so and really chew my food before swallowing. From this I have noticed that I feel fuller and I’m not eating as much as I used to which makes sense as I have this tendency to overeat but that was simply because I would shove food into my mouth so quickly that my stomach wouldn’t be able to tell me when it was full until it was too late.

So, CHEW YOUR FOOD!

If you’re noticing that you’re not having much energy it means that you’re not getting enough food into your body or that you’re not eating the right kind of food.

Your body needs 11 essential amino acids which in turn makes another 11 non-essential amino acids. These make your DNA and RNA which are the building blocks of life.

These 11 essential amino acids cannot be made naturally from the body and the only way you can get these is through food. I cannot tell you which food hold what properties, this is where you need to do your own research and learn what you can have and what works for you.

I know that for my body I need a 50/50 diet that consists 50% protein/meat and 50% vegetables. This is how my body works, which would be due to my background and heritage but that’s another thing in itself which I could talk about but I am still learning myself so I do not have enough knowledge about it to discuss it. You need to learn what works for you, everyone is different and you cannot do a certain diet that someone else can do because their body may work differently than yours.

I suggest doing the elimination process where you take a specific food such as bread and eliminate that from your diet for about 2-4 weeks and just take note of how you feel. You can eat how you normally eat just take out that one item and then once the 2-4 weeks are done you can try that food again and then see how your body reacts. You’ll be surprised what your body can tolerate after a while. There will be times during this process where you have such strong cravings for specific foods which will make things harder but you need to try as hard as you can not to give in. Most of the time you will stop craving these certain foods after 2 weeks, sometimes it will take longer but again it all depends on you and what your body is like.

Once you’ve tried doing this this is when I suggest going through your notes of what foods you can and can’t have and then create somewhat of a diet plan based off of this to create food that you can eat that will be sustainable. Remember this is a lifestyle change, you want to be able to do this for the long run.

Another thing is enjoy yourself. Please don’t restrict yourself of life’s pleasures. If you want to have chocolate then have it but I suggest doing so in small doses and less often. I tend to have a cheat meal/day one every two weeks. Sometimes it can be once a week, sometimes it can be once every three to four weeks. I honestly go on what my body tells me.

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. It will tell you what it wants.

If it wants to rest, let it rest. If it needs more food, maybe because you’ve been exercising more, then eat more. If you’re really craving a specific food then have it, as long as it’s not every single day it’s not going to hurt.

During a lot of dieting phases we tend to have a weak moment and then we punish ourselves by either pushing our bodies to do extra work at the gym and exhausting ourselves and becoming miserable, or we binge and give up completely. Do not let these moments get to you. Easier said than done I know but we are human and we need to be kind to ourselves.

Another thing I want you to keep in mind is treat yourself kindly. Let me ask you this question. Everything that you tell yourself would you tell it to a friend?

Let me give you an example.

A lot of us who are dieting or look at ourselves in the mirror and notice all the imperfections in our bodies will tend to put ourselves down and we let it happen. We say to ourselves that we aren’t good enough, I am fat, I���m not muscular enough, I’m not good looking, my stretch marks are ugly, etc.

How would you feel if someone said these exact same things to you? I’m pretty sure it’s easy to say that you would feel like crap. So why do we let ourselves say/think these things about ourselves?

Here’s another question. Would you say those exact same things to your friends or family? I’m pretty sure the answer to that would be no.

You know that saying things like that would be hurtful to anyone, so again why do we let ourselves say these things to ourselves.

When it comes to exercise I suggest it’s a good idea to see a personal trainer who can set up a program for you. They will adjust it to what suits you but be honest and tell them whether the program is too much or too little, they are there to help you.

Also when it comes to exercise if you’re wanting to gain muscle you need to eat more protein. It’s pretty simple. You cannot create something out of nothing so if you don’t have extra protein in your body to help build extra tissue in your body then your body will eat away at the muscle you have. Also keep in mind the more muscle you have the more energy you will burn throughout the day so lifting weights and gaining muscle is honestly one of the best things you can do when it comes to “dieting”.

There is no way you’re going to become a beefy body builder unless you’re going to the gym every day and following a strict diet plan, so don’t stress about that. Again enjoy your exercise and try something new and fun.

I’ll quickly recap everything because there’s a lot I went through so here:

-          Don’t be afraid of food

-          Food is fuel = energy

-          CHEW YOUR FOOD

-          Try eliminating food from your diet

-          Enjoy yourself: have a cheat meal/day every now and then

-          LISTEN TO YOUR BODY: it will tell you want it wants

-          Be kind to yourself: don’t run yourself into the ground

 There is still so much that I am learning, I am no expert in any sense so don’t expect a miracle from what I’ve told you. This is what I have to offer and I hope it helps in any way, big or small.