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d1find · 4 years ago

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FAHM20 - OCTOBER 22ND, KATIE MCCOLGAN

Meet Katie McColgan, a third year at Northeastern University from Abu Dhabi, UAE.

What is your favorite Filipino dish/dessert?

My favorite dish is called Ginisang Upo, and it's one of the few Filipino dishes I ate in my household growing up. I didn't even know the same until college when I was asked "my favorite filipino food". In my house, we just called it upo soup-o. My favorite dessert is probably Halo-halo because of the sentimental value it has. Whenever I have Halo-Halo it reminds me of the time my mom and I shared one while sitting in a small Filipino convenience store/market in Orlando and she told me about how when she was growing up her older siblings would get her halo-halo as a treat. It's just a nice memory for me, and a DELICIOUS dessert :)

How has being involved in D1 and your respective Filipino cultural organization impacted your life and how you view Filipino culture?

Joining a Filipino organization in college was the first time I had ever had a community of Filipino-Americans outside of my own family. Barkada immediately became sense of home and family and has encouraged me to explore my own family's history and culture, and at the same time has given me the opportunity to learn about so many other people's experiences. Self-Identity is a complicated subject for anyone, and as a mixed-race kid growing up in an international community, I felt especially lost. Within Barkada, I didn't feel as lost being able to explore identity and culture with others going through similar experiences to my own. Filipino culture wasn't something I felt close enough to growing up, and even now it's not something I can truly claim as my own, as a second generation mixed Filipino-American. But I have come to realize that instead of trying to become "Filipino-enough", I can spend my time learning about why culture is so important to our community and my family, why our history and traditions matter, and how to empower others in my community to be proud of their own identity. Since joining Barkada and the D1 community, I've been able to connect more to my mom's side of the family, and my own curiosity has excited them to share more and more of their own stories and traditions with me. It makes me really happy to see how proud they are to talk about Filipino culture and to be getting to share it with me.

What do you think is the most common misconception about being Filipino?

Filipinos have the stereotype of being "hospitable" and "welcoming", which isn't a bad reputation to have, however that's not what it means to be Filipino. It's such a general statement that is often thrown around, but it erases so much of what else it can mean to be Filipino. Filipinos and Filipino-Americans have had such a complicated history of colonization that contributed to the reasons that they are seen as "hospitable" - the ideal nurse, nanny, service worker - that were taken advantage of by colonizers. But Filipinos are so much more than hospitable. We can be caring, family oriented, and self-sacrificing, but we can also be driven and ambitious and strong beyond belief. Filipinos are complex, more than one thing at a time, and are always pushing the boundaries of what other people think it might mean to be Filipino.

What does activism look like to you and what do you think Filipino Americans can do to be more engaged in activism? Activism is being educated about what is going on in your community (whether in the broad or narrow sense of the word) and then taking action to make changes - whether these changes effect you or not. Activism isn't always easy, and a lot of us may think that our actions are not powerful enough to make a real difference. But activism is about how communities can come together and advocate - it's not something you can do alone. To me, activism is supporting one another, lifting others up, and empowering people in your community to take a stance in what matters to them. Filipino Americans were some of the most powerful activists in American History. They fought for their own communities and human rights when the United States treated them as second rate-citizens. Today, Filipino Americans can uphold this legacy by first acknowledging the history of Filipino-American activism in this country, and then by learning about how their voices matter in today's America. Activism is for everybody, not just those directly impacted, not just those who feel the need to be woke. Activism isn't exclusive of race, gender, religion, ability, sexuality or anything else. Filipino Americans have a strong voice in this country - and there's the history to prove it.

#fahm

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twaaaaaa · 8 years ago

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Update on athletics, goals and life in general

This post is long-winded, vulnerable and brutally honest. You’ve been warned.

So this season was a total bust.

I set out on the 2016-17 season with pretty clear goals: go less intense than last year, concentrate on just a few half-Ironmans and build up to an Iron in April at a pace that wouldn’t burn me out like what happened to me last year. Simple, right?

And then life got in the way.

For various reasons, I missed two half-Irons in the fall. (The first was a trade-off - cancel my vacation but take a promotion at work. The second was a missed flight.) No big deal, right? It’s a bit of missed momentum, but nothing that can’t be recovered from.

And then I just couldn’t bring myself to switch into Ironman mode. I couldn’t split my sleep schedule in two for three days a week, even though I was now working saner hours and regular weekends. I couldn’t wake up at 3:30 a.m. to run. I skipped the extra swimming sessions I promised myself I’d do. I didn’t feel that drive, that motivation, that hunger. I didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but I was burnt out.

It’s a weird thing to admit to myself even now. In theory, I still love triathlons. The community is wonderful and they’re a huge part of my identity. Race days still excite me. But just like injuries in endurance sports, burnout builds up over time and with repetition. I just couldn’t do the grind anymore.

And the burnout wasn’t just athletic. Life was getting in the way too - there was massive anxiety over my job, which turned out to have a good cause. In April the company I work for laid off almost half its staff and offered the rest of us contracts that were tough to swallow - and then gave us three days to decide on them.

Going through the buildup to the contract decision day made me realize something else: I don’t really have a support system left in Abu Dhabi. It’s a consequence of expat churn in a country of 89% expats, and the social instability that comes with it. One of the major challenges of the place is rebuilding your friend group every six months or so when your friends move to new countries or emirates, or just cycle out of your social circle in general. All the people I was talking with about the career anxiety were already overseas or expecting to leave the UAE this year anyway.

The other source of emotional burnout was the relationship side of my life. Without going into too many whiny details, there were three women who came into my life, sequentially within a few short months who independently made me think that finally, I had found someone I really liked who would turn into the kind of relationship I’d been hoping for. After nearly three years of being single and mostly dateless. And so I invested a lot of time and energy into each one, only to have things fall apart with them for reasons beyond my control. One had mental health issues and took herself out of the dating pool entirely, one had physical health problems and too busy a schedule, and one just went from full-throttle to ghost in the span of a week.

One massive disappointment like that I can handle and recover from. But three in a row hit, plus the existential anxiety about my job me hard and sent me to a bad place for a while. That was at the end of my usual UAE racing season, and by that time my training was so bad that I had downgraded my hopes for the post-season race to a half-Ironman a month later than the Iron would have been, and then just nothing at all. I don’t want to use the word depression, because it hasn’t been diagnosed by a doctor, but it was hard for me to get out of bed in the morning and I just shut down for a little while. My nutrition lapsed and I lost too much weight, which for me makes for a downward spiral. My boss even pulled me aside and told me he was concerned about my performance at work.

The expat life ain’t all sunshine and roses, despite what my Facebook feed makes it look like.

I managed to pull myself out of that spiral with a vacation and a visit from my parents. Nothing makes you get out of bed and scramble to get your life looking like it’s together like the fear of disappointing your mother. After they left I realized I had to do something to keep myself from sinking back into that same rut.

It started with the nutrition. I started planning a week of meals at a time and prepping them on the weekends. I know how losing weight from poor nutrition affects the rest of my life, so that was the clearest first step to get out of this funk.

And then April came with the contracts. I was offered one but found it unpalatable. It took me literally until the final hour to decide whether to take it, though, because it’s been four and a half years since I came here and being an expat in Abu Dhabi has become part of my identity. I went through a lot of soul searching, which could be the subject of another long post, and had a few serious what-if discussions. But in the end, I realized that the terms of the new contract would just exacerbate the problems that led to the rut I’ve found myself in these past few months, and cut off the ways I’ve been able to cope with them.

So I turned it down. My contract expires June 30. And since UAE residence visas are tied to employment, I’ll most likely be leaving the country and probably heading back to the US.

There’s one other major thing that happened as part of the contract decision. (Warning: more relationship complaints ahead.) There’s a girl back in my hometown who is everything I want in a girl. I’d been harboring a massive crush on her for years - by far bigger than anything else I’ve felt since the last breakup - but never made a move because I lived overseas and she either had a long-term boyfriend (complete with a joint mortgage and two dogs) or had broken up with the boyfriend and was still reeling. Still, we talk almost every day, spent all the free time we could together when I visit home and I’d seen some encouraging signs from her. Hell, when my parents came to visit she got up at 5 a.m. to buy a box of fresh donuts and drop them off with my parents so they could bring them to me on the plane. And it would have been more than a year since they had broken up by the time I got back to the US in August if I turned the contract down. Plus, the Tampa-St. Pete area where she lives is one of the places I’d like to find a job in.

I didn’t hang my decision on what she said, but I’d be lying to myself if I said it wasn’t a factor I had to consider. So I asked her what she thought. Unfortunately through text and not voice - I tried, but she literally fell asleep on me as I was about to bring the topic up. Snored and everything. I asked her if she would want to give dating me a shot this summer if I were to turn down the contract.

And she said no. She wasn’t attracted to me, she never had been and those donuts were something she’d do for any friend. And I was such a close friend to her that she didn’t want to risk messing up the friendship.

It hurt. God, did it hurt.

And it led to more soul-searching. I’ve always struggled with being the guy that girls love to keep around as a friend, that gets told that any girl would be lucky to have him, but never gets seen as an actual relationship prospect. Meeting people through Tinder or other dating apps helps with that, as it frames me as a romantic prospect in the girl’s mind from the get-go, but even after a few dates I usually ultimately get the same speech: “You seem like a great guy and I want to keep you as a friend, but I’m not attracted to you that way.”

This is not Nice Guy whining. The problem is not with the girls and their attitudes towards me. The problem is me, and whatever it is that doesn’t get them to see as boyfriend material.

To be brutally honest, I think one of the main factors in that predicament is looks. Something I’ve also struggled with for a long time. I don’t remember the last time I got complimented on the way I look, but I know it’s been years. Years. And there aren’t a lot of simple ways I can improve them anymore. I dress in clean, styled, well-tailored clothes. I have a haircut that I’m finally happy with and I keep current with my grooming. I even had Lasik, which got rid of the glasses and the tired eyes from contacts. Effort has certainly been made. And I don’t consider myself ugly - just not attractive.

But I’m still skinny, as is pointed out to me so many times per week. That’s what happens when most of the calories you consume are burnt up in long-distance endurance training and racing. And it’s been brought up as a factor in dating rejections. “I could never date a guy who weighs less than I do” is something I’ve heard a few times. The one that echoes, though, is from a fellow triathlete: “You don’t look athletic enough for me to be attracted to you. Now tell me how your Ironman went.”

The thing is, in long-distance running and cycling skinny means fast. It’s all about the power-to-weight ratio, and though I may not have much power I have even less weight, which makes me sleek and speedy, especially in the hot, flat places I race. That’s what I’ve tuned my body for over the past decade. God, it’ll be 11 years this weekend since I started riding seriously. And I’ve been skinny my entire life before that. Sure, I have leg muscles from all the cycling and running, but that doesn’t count for much.

And yeah, it’s shallow. But I’m in my 20s, where dating and relationships are still heavily influenced by looks and shallow aspects and everything else you notice on first and second impressions. I really do think that the combination of unassuming looks, introversion, aversion to drugs/alcohol and genial personality tip the balance toward the benign “he could be a great, caring friend” side of the scale as opposed to the “he could be a hot, loving boyfriend” side. But what would that scale look like if my looks went from unassuming to “wow, he’s hot.”

So let’s review where I’m at right now:

Dissatisfied with life. Possibly mildly depressed.

Burnt out from endurance training but still love the sport.

At a transition stage in life for the next six months. Belongings like sports equipment and clothing will be discarded or packed, and housing may change a few times.

Likely moving to an area where racing happens in the summer, not the winter like it does here.

Which means an awkward summer and fall where my normal endurance training is at a trough and everyone else is at their peak.

Likely moving to a new area, which means a whole different set of friends and potential dates.

Nutrition is actively managed with weekly prep sessions.

Solution to one of the main stressors likely involves changing myself physically, in a way I haven’t been able to because of endurance training.

Need a change.

Take all these factors together, stir them up and bake them for a few weeks of overthinking while on vacation and you get this:

Time to hit the gym.

For the past month I’ve been going down to my apartment’s gym three times a week and following the Starting Strength full-body routine. I haven’t ridden a bike or run or swam since February, apart from one crazy mountain bike race I did in Poland a few weeks ago. I’ve taught myself the basic lifts using Youtube and taking advice from a few friends who know about these things, and apart from that I’ve told almost nobody. I don’t intend to talk about it on Facebook either. I want to see who notices when I start to gain.

Because make no mistake, upper-body hypertrophy is the main goal here. There will be other benefits that hopefully will help in the long run, but first and foremost I want my shirts to not fit anymore. I want to stop poking extra holes in my watch bands. I want to catch people checking me out in the grocery store. I want to feel confident taking my shirt off at the beach or pool. I want to smile at myself in the half-length mirror in the morning.

I want people to think I’m hot. I want people to tell me I’m hot. I want to think I’m hot.

This doesn’t mean I’m taking up competitive bodybuilding or lifting. The long-term goal is still endurance sports. This move from cardio to the gym will last until winter, when it’ll be time for base miles and the start of the next (northern hemisphere) racing season. The goal is to be at the right weight and muscle mass by then, and then I’d focus on maintaining the gains while rebuilding endurance.

The gym should help in a few other ways. Having a stronger upper body will mean a much stronger swim, which has always been my weakest event. The core strength I’m looking to develop should help on longer bikes and runs. And I’m still working out my legs (even adding rotations on the leg machines, because my upper body can’t bear enough squatting weight to tire out my leg muscles yet), so the added strength there should help with technique stabilization and injury prevention.

This does mean I’ll lose cardio endurance, so I think realistically I’ll have to take a year or so to build up to half-Iron strength again, and two years to Iron strength. But my body knows what it’s like to have that much endurance already, and regaining is always easier than gaining for the first time.

Nutrition-wise, I’m ramping up the calories and shifting from a carb-based goal to a protein-based goal. I still have to drink my weight-gainer protein shake after I finish typing this up. My weight still fluctuates and I’m not always perfect in following my nutrition plan, but I’ve still weighed more this month than I ever have before. From age 16 until March my weight stayed mostly between 127 and 133 pounds, sometimes getting as high as 136. This month I hit 139 - so, so, close to the 140 mark. It’s down to 136.5 again now, but I hope to hit 140 on at least one day next month.

The gym focus also means I’ll be able to train consistently even as I move homes and do God-knows-what with my bikes and equipment. It’ll be good to have that kind of stability, even if I have to switch to bodyweight exercises for a bit.

It’s also refreshing to go back to the novice level. I’ve never gone consistently to the gym before, so I’ve had to teach myself everything. I had to figure out what my weight limits were, what exercises to do, what program to follow and even how to work some of the machines. I haven’t had to learn anything new in triathlon for years, by comparison. And I’m already making small gains.

I went to a triathlon team meeting for the first time in a while this weekend and opened up about the gym focus (though now all the reasons behind it). They were supportive and a few said I looked a little bigger - though that may have just been my clothing choice that day.

I’ll likely be leaving the UAE for good in July or August. It’s the middle of May now, which gives me about two months to gain enough to make an impression on those who last saw me in December. And six months until November kicks off the training season for 2018. This is new territory for me, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to grow by then.

But I know that I will be growing. I’ll be moving forward towards my goals.

And for endurance sports as well as life, momentum is a good thing.

(If you came here through Facebook, please don’t mention the relationship, job loss, country switching or gym focus on the comments about the post. I’m not keeping it a total secret, but I don’t want to broadcast it to the public yet.)

#triathlon #Ironman #life #goals #fitness #gym #lifting #Starting Strength #rant #update #I've been needing to get this off my chest for a while #As you could probably tell from the 2800+ wordcount

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radthursdays · 7 years ago

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#RadThursdays Roundup 09/21/2017

An old building stands in a field of rubble, mid-demolition, a remnant of “Old” Shanghai. Behind it rise glittering skyscrapers. Source.

Issues

How to Help Residents of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands Recover After Hurricane Maria: These organizations are helping with immediate needs—like food—and long-term efforts, including rebuilding.

What Liberals Get Wrong About Identity Politics: "While the terms identity politics and intersectionality have taken hold of our discourse, the substance of these theories has been left behind. We haven’t taken the intellectual contributions of black women seriously enough to engage them beyond empty sloganeering. And since these concepts have been reduced to catchphrases, everyone has been free to fill in their own meanings. Not only does this make for a poorer debate, it replicates the circumstances which made the Combahee River Collective and their theory of identity politics necessary in the first place. The Combahee River Collective was assembled to define a radical vision for black women’s freedom—and thus, as they believed, all people’s freedom."

Swords Into Marketshare: "Many queers certainly know about surviving trauma, right? And yet the primary focus of the LGBT movement has been fighting for the 'right to serve' the imperial agenda of the U.S. military, and not the necessity to challenge its tyranny at home and abroad. On the day after Trump announced his impending ban, I turned on Democracy Now, my daily news source, and watched an interview with a woman described as the 'first infantry member to reveal she is transgender.' On her eighteen years of military service, including three tours of duty in Afghanistan, she added: 'In the military, we focus on job performance. And that’s the only thing that matters, it’s how well you can do your job.' No one asked: As someone whose job is literally to gun people down, what exactly do you mean by job performance?"

The Dog Delusion: Why must everyone love dogs, exactly?: "I do not mean that loving a dog makes you deficient, or that human-dog connections are without beauty, substance, or gravity. I just wonder if there’s something dangerous about championing a dependent, hierarchical relationship as an ideal realization of love or friendship. It seems to me that what is both most challenging and most appealing about love is the willful surrender to the thrall of a fallible, mutable being who is one’s equal and not one’s subordinate. Owning a dog is an inadequate dress rehearsal for playing the stalwart of a person who has bad days and bad breath, divergent taste in movies and restaurants, who suffers career setbacks and loses loved ones. Taking care of Fido shouldn’t be equated with devotion to someone who is not so easily cornered into contrition, schooled into obedience, or bribed into silence."

A plastered white wall with sharp, broken glass protruding from the top. Dark red hills rise in the background. The wall surrounds a private home in Cape Town, South Africa. Source.

It’s Literally Because White People Are Racist

No easy answers: why left-wing economics is not the answer to right-wing populism: “The bigger issue is that America’s welfare state is weak for the same fundamental reason that Donald Trump captured the Republican nomination in the first place: racial and cultural resentment. That profoundly complicates efforts to make left-wing populism successful in America.”

The First White President: “That black people, who have lived for centuries under such derision and condescension, have not yet been driven into the arms of Trump does not trouble these theoreticians. After all, in this analysis, Trump’s racism and the racism of his supporters are incidental to his rise. Indeed, the alleged glee with which liberals call out Trump’s bigotry is assigned even more power than the bigotry itself. Ostensibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by arguments about intersectionality, and oppressed by new bathroom rights, a blameless white working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an orcish reality-television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in picture-book form.”

White Supremacist Violence Has Been Building Since 9/11. Just Ask This Victim’s Family: "The regulars — nearly all of them white — still enter his store with a smile, greet him by name, ask how business is going, and jokingly gripe about the price of cigarettes. They don’t treat Sukhwinder any differently, and he treats them the same too. Over his years at the store, even during the especially tense months after 9/11, Sukhwinder has encountered few outwardly racist customers. Every now and then, he hears a slur from a drunk stumbling in or from a shoplifter who got caught. If others are in the store, usually at least one person shouts down the racist. Once, when a shoplifter punctuated his racist tirade by bolting out the door, a customer chased him down and held him until police arrived. Surely, some of those men and women who’ve defended him voted for Trump. Sukhwinder still believes they’re good people, and that’s what troubles him: That people he considers kind and reasonable could accept Trump’s ideas reflects the extent to which anti-Muslim sentiment — and by extension white racism — has infiltrated mainstream culture."

A stony-faced person stands, armed and in all-black riot gear, on a pile of rubble. The intimidating figure is a security guard at North Mara Gold Mine, Tanzania. Source.

Art

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene: Book review. “As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene.”

Khandayati. Turning objects of oppression into spinning weapons: “Maya Jay Varadaraj sees the glass bangles as gestures and objects that condone the oppression of women and normalize violence towards them. While studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago under the guidance of Ilona Gaynor, the young designer developed a project that uses ordinary household objects to reduce these bangles to dust and then transform them into chakras. A chakra (or chakram) has the same circular shape as the bangle but in the right hands, such as the ones of the female goddess Durga, it becomes a throwing weapon, a symbol of female power and energy.”

Show Us the Money. Portrait of financial impunity: “If there’s one art space in Belgium that never disappoints it’s FOMU, Antwerp’s photo museum. One of their current exhibitions draws an often startling portrait of the 1% and of the complex infrastructure that shields them from scrutiny.”

A person pilots a luxury racing boat, rocketing out of the water at high speed, near Abu Dhabi, UAE. Source.

Even More Reading

#HeretoStay: 14 Things to Read as You Stand By Undocumented Immigrants: "In the wake of the end of DACA, we’re sharing poems, essays and stories written for and about undocumented immigrants."

Anxiety, Betrayal, and Limbo: A DACA Reading List: "Here are 10 reads — some long, others less so — to help understand DACA, the hundreds of thousands of people protected by it, and what they have to lose when it ends."

15 Indigenous Feminists to Know, Read, and Listen To: "From Sydney Freeland, a Navajo filmmaker who focuses on stories about trans communities, to Sarah Deer, a Muscogee (Creek) lawyer fighting violence against Native women, these activists, writers, creators, and scholars fight for justice for Indigenous people and for the voices of their communities." Indigenous People’s Day is tomorrow, September 22!

10 College Courses to Read Along With This Semester (From Your Couch): A list of books to read from the syllabi of a few amazing-sounding classes: Futurities; Black Science Fiction; Wondrous Literatures of the Near East; Wonder; Pleasure, Power and Profit: Race and Sexualities in a Global Era; America’s Queer Canon: from Melville to Moonlight; Black Women Writers; An Introduction to Latino Literature and Culture—Latina/o Literary Worlds; Border Literature; and Language, Identity, Power.

A group of refugees crowd a tiny inflatable raft, propelled by people with paddles. Source.

Direct Action Item

We are surrounded by the evidence and infrastructure of inequality, though perhaps we don’t (or try not to) notice. This week, make an effort to face these artifacts head-on. Consider documenting what you see, and take a step toward actualizing a world that values everyone.

If there’s something you’d like to see in next week’s #RT, please send us a message.

In solidarity!

What is direct action? Direct action means doing things yourself instead of petitioning authorities or relying on external institutions. It means taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be empowered, because you are already powerful. A “direct action item” is a way to put your beliefs into practice every week.

#radthursdays

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jamieclawhorn · 8 years ago

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Is Mediclinic International plc a screaming buy as shares surge 20% higher?

Shares of private hospital operator Mediclinic (LSE: MDC) soared nearly 20% in early Thursday trading after news reports in the UAE showed Abu Dhabi authorities plan to do away with a 20% surcharge for insured citizens seeking treatment at private clinics. This would understandably be a boon for the likes of Mediclinic, but is it reason enough to buy its shares?

First off, the effects of this regulatory roll-back would be beneficial but not game changing. This is because its UAE hospitals accounted for just 15.6% of group revenue in the year to March, far below the 50% contributed by Switzerland or 30% by South Africa and Namibia.

But any positive news for UAE operations is welcome as they have struggled mightily in recent quarters following the merger with Al-Noor hospitals in 2015. This combination failed to pan out financially, leading to high levels of indebtedness and causing many doctors to leave, a situation that has yet to be fully corrected.

The biggest shame is that the company’s operations outside the UAE are performing very well. Its large Swiss operations enjoyed a 3.5% year-on-year rise in revenue and a respectable bump in EBITDA margins to 20%. The South African division also performed well with a 6.8% rise in annual revenue and EBITDA margins of 21%.

However, until the company can turn around its Emirates hospitals good results from other regions will remain obscured. While those regulatory changes may help, we’ve yet to see whether they alone will finally make the Al-Noor tie-up seem reasonable. With the company’s shares valued very highly at 21 times forward earnings and net debt a whopping 4.45 times 2016 EBITDA, I’ll be giving Mediclinic a pass.

Slow and steady wins the race?

The FTSE 100’s newest member, medical supplier Convatec (LSE: CTEC), will be hoping to convince investors it is a more reliable way than Mediclinic to cash in on ageing Western populations and increased rates of chronic conditions.

The company’s ostomy bags, wound dressings and infusion sets for insulin pumps are all items that will be in increasing demand in the coming years as patients live longer with conditions that would have led to significantly shortened lifespans even a few years ago.

But as an investment, Convatec doesn’t look like as much of a sure thing. The company was brought public by private equity owners who left the company saddled with debt, subdued profits and low growth. Thanks to IPO proceeds, net debt of $1.5bn is down to 3x EBITDA from its previous 6.9x EBITDA. But this level of indebtedness is still high considering net cash from operating activities was a meagre $75m in 2016.

Furthermore, year-on-year revenue growth of just 4% on a constant currency basis, and 2.3% on a reported basis, illustrates the problems management will have in growing what is already a massive business with $1.6bn in annual turnover. Designing and selling necessary but low margin medical supplies isn’t a bad business, but it’s certainly not a high growth one. With a mountain of debt, low growth and little cash flow, I’d steer clear of Convatec, especially with shares pricey at 20 times forward earnings.

If Convatec's tepid growth doesn't interest you, I recommend reading the Motley Fool's free report on one share that has more than doubled sales, earnings and dividends in just the past five years. This stellar performance has led its shares to increase 200% in that period and the Fool's Head of Investing believes that they could triple again in the coming decade.

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