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bbrandy2002 · 4 years

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My Love

Chapter Six-Monsters

**So I needed a bit more time than I thought to figure out a change I made to this story. Thanks @dcbbw for talking me through my last minute idea and convincing me to go for it. And OMG @burnsoslow who spent soooo much time editing and working her magic and just for always being an amazing tbff.

Warnings: Attempted murder by beating, rape, mention of infanticide, mental breakdown and god only knows what else. EVIL!!!

I have been working on this plot twist for two weeks. Just remember, I told you it wouldn’t always be sad.

*********

Amanda lay restless in her bed with a head full of secrets and a heart full of dreams. While staring blankly at the midnight time of her alarm clock, lit brightly in a reddish glow, she thought about the close call with Liam she had not more than 20 minutes ago. She didn’t lie to him; Riley did give her the key to their quarters. Did she also fail to mention to the king that it was the very same key she used on the night of his wife’s death? Of course. Did she also forget to mention to him that plans have been in place for months to procure certain outcomes in the lives of the Cordonian royal family to benefit others? Absolutely.

Amanda wasn’t here of her own doing. This virtually unknown young woman, who started her life as an orphan and found herself related to a queen, was hopeful that she could complete the mission she was sent here for. If everything worked according to plan, tomorrow would set in motion a series of events that was sure to change not only her life, but that of several others.

Thinking about the busy weeks ahead and a princess that was sure to wake for her feeding soon, Amanda rolled away from the illuminating light of her clock and closed her eyes. She fluffed her pillow and nestled further into it, attempting to clear her full mind for now and get some rest. Just as her body became comfortable and started to relax, she heard the voice of the king speaking through the baby monitor. She opened one eye, wondering why he was still up at this hour, then immediately opened the other when she heard him call out for Riley.

Several seconds passed, and she heard him frantically speaking out for his wife again. The sound of a door swinging open and his shuffling about the nursery stirred her from a pending slumber. Amanda pushed the blanket down to her waist and sat up in the bed, listening closer for any clues as to what the hell he was doing. She didn’t hear the baby crying, but curiosity was getting the better of her when she heard what sounded like Liam doing just that. Amanda rolled her eyes and shook her head while thinking about the utter insanity the King of Cordonia had been over the last month. She hoped that this plan would be worth it in the end, because she had grown tired of the weeping and depressive state he seemed to be stuck in. In her home country, a spouse, and often the offspring, were considered something of objects -- disposable ones at that. Amanda was surprised by his behavior and inability to just get over his wife’s death already.

The former personal assistant who was now serving as Ellie’s nanny, was living proof of what being unwanted and unloved entailed. It was possibly why she didn’t mind being used for this assignment. Being manipulated for the betterment of others was just the price she had always paid to be included and feel needed. It was too bad. Riley never treated her this way; poisoning the queen, who had been so kind to her, was one of the most difficult things she had ever done.

Ellie’s soft cries began to make their way through the baby monitor and Amanda groaned sleepily, knowing the King had undoubtedly woken her up with his emotional breakdown and commotion. She sighed and tossed the rest of the blankets back, swinging her feet to the floor.

Still tying her robe as she entered the nursery, an apologetic Liam was picking up his wailing daughter from her crib. Amanda backed out of the room quietly and planted her back against the wall beside the nursery door. His ass woke her up, he can get her back to sleep.

It was nothing personal against Ellie - she had grown quite fond of the baby. The consequences of Liam’s decisions, however, necessitated these uncontrite and acrimonious feelings toward him. How she would ever be able to pretend to love and care for a man that she loathed had been inconceivable, but she was confident she had played her part well enough - without anyone batting an eye - that she would continue to get away with it.

Amanda stood motionless and silent outside the room while she listened intently to see if she would be needed to assist with Ellie,intrigued to find out why Liam was calling out for his late wife in his daughter’s room.

Liam shifted Ellie from his arms to his shoulder while he rubbed soothing circles over her tiny back. He nuzzled his cheek over her featherlike blonde hair and paced about the room in an effort to lull her back to sleep. Still reeling from the voice of his wife - that he knew he clearly heard - his startled baby’s cries gave him pause.

“I’m so sorry, my princess.” he whispered tenderly. “Daddy never meant to scare you.”

Ellie’s small fist clenched and shook vigorously against his chest, which only enhanced his guilt and remorse. Eyeing the rocking chair next to her crib, he slowly walked back across the nearly dark room while bouncing rhythmically and methodically.

Lowering into the chair, he kissed the top of his daughter’s head and ran his thumb across her cheek to dry the red-hot tears that were streaming down it.

Liam closed his eyes as he moved back and forth with the rocker, continuing to calm his daughter’s fears.

Amanda listened as he spoke to Ellie about hearing her mother’s voice singing and how it elicited a reaction in him he was sorry for. She turned her head away and covered her mouth to stifle her laugh. He told me he was a little paranoid … my ass ... he is freaking losing his mind. She bit her lower lip with exuberance and prowled back to her room in time to hear that the baby’s cries had ceased. Amanda pulled her phone out of the drawer next to her bed and sent a series of text updates before she crawled back into her bed and fell asleep moments later.

**************

Bright and early the next morning, Liam sat alone at the helm of the conference table while he awaited the arrival of the council. He had no desire to attend this meeting, especially on this first day of resuming his official duties since Riley’s murder.

Leaning back in the chair and tapping his fountain pen nervously against the notebook before him, he muddled through the events of the prior evening. He knew what he heard last night. Liam heard Riley’s voice so clearly and distinctly that there was no doubt in his mind that it couldn’t have been his imagination. Her sweet voice was all he had wanted to hear for weeks, and when she wasn’t in the nursery, it shattered him. That brief moment of hope over the prospect that everything since her death had just been a bad dream was swept away like a mighty tidal wave when she wasn’t there. It felt like losing her all over again with a heart that was already swollen with grief beyond what it could bear.

He dropped the pen on the notepad and rubbed his heavily tired eyes; that old familiar sting behind them from weeks of insomnia made it difficult to keep them open. Liam’s secretary refilled his coffee mug while members of the council began to file into the room. Each one offered their condolences or a sympathetic nod as they passed by … with the exception of one.

As the council settled into their places around the table, all eyes looked to Neville for an explanation of this impromptu meeting.

Liam took a sip of his coffee and nodded to the future Earl of Cormery Isle. “Lord Vancouer, you called this meeting. Would you please enlighten the council as to what is so important that it couldn’t wait until later in the week?”

Neville straightened in his seat and plastered on a smarmy grin.

“Your Majesty, it has been over 30 days now since the passing of the Queen. The citizens of my island are becoming concerned that there are no plans in place yet to replace Her Majesty.”

Drake let out a sardonic laugh. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. Tell me you’re joking.”

Hana placed her hand on Drake’s arm and eyed Neville with a wicked glare. “I’m wondering the same thing. What are you trying to do, Neville?”

The members of the council broke out into uproarious chatter while Liam dropped his head and remained outwardly calm and silent. He knew what Neville’s counter would be; it hit him like a ton of bricks at that very moment. Liam knew the law better than anyone in that room; he also knew from personal experience with his father what Neville was about to say.

Neville loudly cleared his throat and drew the attention of the council back to him. “I shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of knowledge of our political system by the people who surround me - especially you, Mr. Walker. Need I remind all of you of the Cordonian law that states that a social season should take place within 60 days to replace a vacated monarch’s position? Here we are, on day 31 since Queen Riley died, without any plans finalized to do just that.”

Once again, all ire fell on Neville as shouts in his direction took over the room.

Olivia slammed her hand on the table and quickly stood, drawing silence and recognition from everyone. “Lord Vancouer! Now let me remind you of what else the law says. The bylaws in section 2709C state that unanimous assent from the council can prolong the social season for up to a year. I see no need at this time to carry out a social season while this country is still mourning the death of its very popular queen!”

“I agree with the Duchess.” Bertrand exclaimed, followed by shouts of conciliation.

Madeleine closed her binder and glanced over to the far end of the table where Olivia was taking her seat again. She crossed her arms and let out a small sigh. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Olivia. There are enough women in this room who can fill in for the duties of the Queen … I understand if I can’t be one of them after what my father has done; however, I’m willing to help out in any way I can.”

Every member of the council had their chance to speak about their concerns, and each member was satisfied that there were enough people willing to step in to ensure that the stability of the crown and country would remain intact.

Drake leaned back in his seat and rested his hands behind his head. “Satisfied now, dickhead?” He grabbed the pen laying on the table before him and clicked the end of it to release the head from its casing. “I say we vote now.”

Neville smirked across the table from Drake while pompously steepling his fingers together. “Yes, Mr. Walker. I’m ready to vote as well. Remember you need unanimous consent from the council, and you have yet to convince me to change my mind. Thank you for not drawing out the inevitable.”

“How about I draw out your throat and shove it up your ass, you useless piece of shit!”

“Drake.” Liam held up his hand and finally spoke out for the first time since the meeting began, having heard enough. He knew Drake could handle Neville, and he usually found it rather entertaining, however, his life literally lay in the hands of the lord from Cormery Isle. It was obvious that the entire council, which also included Hakim, Landon, and Maxwell, was fine prolonging the social season for one year. Even at that time, Liam knew he wouldn’t be ready to marry another woman. There was no one who could replace Riley and he would concede there never would be, He would deal with that issue when the time came and not when he was completely caught off guard.

“Lord Neville,” Liam stated, twisting his wedding band anxiously. “You’ve heard the rest of the council, now I’m asking you to hear me. Your reasoning for holding a social season and having me marry again is no longer valid. It benefits no one in this room, nor Cordonia, and I’ve heard nothing of these concerns you speak of from the people of Cormery Isle. Also, I need to remind you of my infant daughter, who has just lost her mother, and doesn’t need the only parent she has left traipsing around the country when she needs me.” Liam looked pleadingly at Neville, revealing his vulnerability at that moment, hoping to garner sympathy from him. “Can I count on you to do what’s right for Cordonia, Neville?”

Neville fidgeted with his coffee mug, staring at it while he mulled over the king’s words. He looked up, his dull brown eyes looking straight into the bright blue, weary eyes of the leader of his country. He shrugged his shoulders and let out a heavy sigh. “You can count on me, sir.”

Liam nodded in approval and let out the breath he was holding. “Thank you, Lord Vancouer.”

Liam’s secretary passed out default ballots that the council only had to write a simple yea or nay for. Once everyone finished voting, she collected the ballots and handed them to be read by Bertrand.

The Duke of Ramsford stood from his seat and read each ballot’s vote aloud.

Liam glanced over at the empty seat next to him, the placard of his wife still mounted to the table before it. The room seemed to drift away with each vote read, all in his favor, yet he couldn’t believe he was even having to entertain that blowhard’s idea of marrying right now. His eyes met the back wall where the royal portrait of his late wife adorned the golden frame next to his. Her smile, her poise, her confidence gave him strength. Even in such a regal photo, he could see her love for him. God, I miss her so much.

Liam diverted his eyes away from the photo to peek over at Bertrand who was standing, slack-jawed, holding the last ballot in his shaky hand. The look of astonishment on the Duke of Ramsford’s face caused Liam’s heart to sink further into his chest.

He knew in that instant he had been betrayed.

“Bertrand?” Maxwell questioned.

Bertrand looked down at his brother to acknowledge him but quickly turned his attention back to the ballot.

“The last vote …” he stammered, “... is nay.”

With those words, Liam felt like a hand had reached around his throat and started to strangle him.

All glares turned to Neville, who played off his innocence. Chaos and disorder took over the room as members of the council shouted their displeasure at him while he maintained his position with a satisfied smile. That smile only fed into Drake’s anger and disdain for him.

“Motherfucker!” Drake jumped up from his chair, climbed across the table, and lunged at the man who once challenged him - and lost - in a duel. Neville’s chair fell backwards with Drake still taking swings at his face, both men falling into heaps on the floor. The King’s Guards were summoned into the room to quell the violent commotion that had ensued.

Liam’s fate had been sealed by one person: his Judas. The man who moments ago looked him straight in the eyes and assured him he would not do what he just did. The chaos in that room, the betrayal, the thought of having to endure another social season so soon after losing his wife was too much.

Completely dazed, he pushed his chair away from the table and silently walked out.

*************

Liam returned to his office, a shell of himself, and rifled through weeks of paperwork and memos awaiting his return. He wanted to forget what just took place. here was no way in hell he would remarry, and certainly not right now. He ran a hand down his face and grabbed the first file from a stack in front of him, hopeful that if he immersed himself in work, it would take his mind off everything.

It didn’t.

He thumbed through the file momentarily before tossing it back onto his desk. What Neville did was unconscionable and only served to fester his anger. In 29 days, a new social season would start. A new barrage of women would throw themselves at him. He would be expected to plaster on a smile, dine and dance the night away with them, listen to their breakdown of qualities that made them perfect to become his wife - his queen. He would look around a packed ballroom and be constantly reminded that the love of his life was not in attendance, that she was ruthlessly taken away from him, and he would be expected to carry on as if none of it ever mattered.

That was the life he thought he would have before Riley, but she was a game changer. Before her, Liam was prepared to shoulder the duties and responsibilities of the crown, to give up his life to serve Cordonia.

As he stared at the stockpile of paperwork, he processed what the crown had cost him and realized he no longer wanted that duty. He ran a trembling hand through his hair and contemplated his abdication. He believed it was the only course of action left.

He shook his head as he suddenly became aware of the fact his daughter was now next in line, and that was not something he wanted to burden her with. If he gave up the throne, he could serve as King Regent until her 18th birthday, but he couldn’t put her in that position at such a young life. He wanted her to experience life and be able to make that decision for herself when the time came.

As his heart pounded and his breaths became labored, Liam placed both hands on one end of his desk and clenched his jaw before ferociously sweeping his desk clear of everything upon it.

“We have to get out of here.”

**************************

Amanda had received a text from Neville following the council meeting that requested she meet with him. After telling one of the maids she had an emergency, she grabbed her purse and phone and left the baby in their care.

Stepping cautiously into a secluded area of the local park, Amanda stretched her neck looking for the man she had met there several times before. The area was surrounded by trees and brush, and it was a place they could discuss their plans without the watchful eye of bystanders or cameras.

Leaning up against a tree, she pulled out her phone to check if he sent another message telling her he was running late. Feeling annoyed by his unusual tardiness and no text, she began absentmindedly pulling pieces of bark from the tree while stewing in her thoughts.

No one knew she was Amalas’ cousin, nor that she was sent there by her to take on the personal assistant job for Riley. Amalas wanted the alliance and marriage pact between her child and that of the then-heavily pregnant Queen of Cordonia. Amanda was to get in her good graces, report updates back to Monterisso, and help influence Riley’s decision to look favorably upon their country.

Liam’s reluctant decision to enter into an alliance with Auvernal changed everything.

A new plan was put in place, one that was never intended to be deadly. Still, Amalas felt it was a small price to pay to get what she wanted. With Riley out of the way, the Black Widow of Monterisso reached out to Neville, whose ruthless reputation was unprecedented. He agreed to host Amanda during a social season he would push for. Amanda would volunteer saying she knew Riley and had been taking care of Ellie since her birth, feeding on Liam’s sympathies and loyalty to his child. If she could marry Liam, she could funnel money, get favor for Monterisso, and force him to break the marriage pact between Bradshaw’s son and Ellie.

The rustling of brush drew Amanda from her thoughts as she looked up to see Neville plowing through, cursing at the tiny branch that smacked his already-battered face.

Amanda scrunched up her face when she took in his black eye and busted lip. “What happened to you?”

Neville pulled out his handkerchief and swiped away the dirt and broken leaves on his brown suede jacket. “Never mind that,” he replied with a growl.

He proceeded to tell her the social season was a go, and that he had already filled a very-pleased Amalas in on the drive over.

“That’s great! So when do we get started?”

Neville dabbed at the sore on his lip and checked his finger to see if there was still blood. Damn that Walker.

“Don’t get too eager just yet, Miss Talbert.”

Amanda furrowed her brow. “Why? Everything is going our way.”

He pulled his handkerchief out again and tried to control the slight bleeding from his lower lip. “Amalas has one more thing she wants you to do before the social season starts. One more thing to ensure her position and standing with Cordonia.”

Amanda averted her eyes from Neville, feeling queasy after he licked the blood from his wound. “What?”

He smiled devilishly. “Kill Princess Eleanor.”

***************

Liam stormed out of his office and yelled for Bastien, trailing behind him, to have the jet ready. He returned to his quarters, not questioning or caring why the maid was caring for Ellieat that moment. He had hit rock bottom and reached a level of misery that he could no longer sustain. His behavior was erratic as he entered his bedroom closet, pulling out two suitcases and plopping them down on the bed.

He grabbed handfuls of clothes as he raced back and forth between the closet and the bed to stuff them inside his luggage. There was only one thing left he knew to do, and that was for he and Ellie to get the hell out of Cordonia.

With sweat pooling around his forehead, he grabbed what was needed from the bathroom and tossed everything inside with his clothes.

“I’m coming, Liam!”

******************

Amanda whipped her gaze back to Neville, shocked by his statement. “She wants me to kill the princess? Absolutely not!”

Neville laughed with amusement. “Silly girl. You act like you have a choice in the matter. With the princess gone, it breaks the marriage pact with Auvernal. Once you are able to seduce the King and secure the next heir, you will convince him an alliance with Monterisso is in Cordonia’s best interest. Besides, it's not the first time you’ve taken out a member of the royal family … the baby should be a breeze compared to poisoning the queen.”

Amanda turned away from Neville. She had followed her role with precision; she had deceived Riley, and she did murder her. Ellie was different. Despite her evil ways, Amanda did care for the baby, and she hoped to fill the mother role in her life.

Neville placed a commanding hand on her shoulder. “Miss Talbert, are we clear?”

Amanda shook Neville’s hand from her shoulder and turned around to face him. “No,” she answered assertively.

He cocked his head and creased his brows. “Did you just tell me ‘no’? Need I remind you who you are dealing with, and what you have already done for her?”

“I don’t care! Ellie is off limits!”

Amanda quickly brushed past Neville. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back. She tried to twist and turn out of his tight grasp, but he wouldn’t release her.

“Let me go!”

She was becoming increasingly panicky by the struggle and his menacing laugh. With one swift kick to his groin, Neville let go of her arm and doubled over in pain. “You are dead, bitch!”

Amanda took off through the thick brush while Neville limped steadily behind her. Everything went in slow motion as she swiped away at the sharp thickets covered by thorns and tattered sticks. Her breathing and heartbeat increased with each step, while tiny cuts from the bristles scraped across the palms of her hands.

Just as she was nearing the edge where a clearing to the park was visible, she felt the painful thud to the back of her skull.

Amanda dropped face down on the ground while blood poured like flows of lava from the open wound.

Neville looked around to see if anyone was nearby before dealing a series of continuous blows with a large, broken branch, to the near-lifeless body that lay at his feet.

*****************

Liam stopped what he was doing when he heard the invisible voice.

“Riley?”

His eyes darted around the room. Hewanted so badly to believe she was speaking to him.

“I’m losing my mind, Ri! I’m losing my mind!” he wailed while clasping fistfuls of his hair.

Liam’s vision blurred, and he literally felt his blood pump through every vein in his body. His legs wobbled, his hands went numb, and a crushing pressure took over his chest. A sudden knock on the bedroom door caused him to wrench.

“Li! It’s Drake. Let me in, buddy.”

Liam focused on the locked door handle that was jerking wildly as his best friend tried to open it. His body began to sway as the room started to circle around him. He stumbled to the side and placed both palms on the bed to catch his balance.

“Go … away ... Drake!” he yelled weakly.

The doorknob continued to twist, the room continued to spin, his vision became spotty and dark. A cold sweat broke out over his body and sent a shiver down his spine.

“Liam! I’m going to break down the goddamn door! Let me in!”

Liam never heard Drake’s threats. That desperate craving for peace he had longed for finally gave in as he collapsed to the floor.

***************

Neville arched his back and grunted quietly when he finished his climax. He pulled himself out of the woman he had just beaten, removed the condom, and tossed it away from the scene.

He grabbed Amanda’s phone, stuffed it into his jacket, and checked around him for any incriminating evidence he might leave behind. Once Neville was sure the area was clear, he eased out of the thickets and made his way down the path that led out of the park. There was still one more thing he needed to do.

***************

Bastien was able to break down the bedroom door that Liam had locked.

“Your Majesty!” he shouted and ran to assist his King, who lay on the floor unconscious.

The head guard placed two fingers on Liam’s cold neck and waited impatiently for signs of a pulse. Bastien’s eyes widened in horror and looked to Drake, who hunched beside him. “Call an ambulance, now!”

*****************

A park ranger was in the middle of chest compressions on Amanda when emergency technicians arrived on the scene. He moved out of the way and watched helplessly as the young woman he found beaten and exposed in the brush received the first of several shocks by a portable AED device. As it scanned for a pulse, another technician worked to control the bleeding that seeped from her head wound.

“We have a pulse! Let’s go!”

Amanda was strapped to a stretcher and rushed to a nearby awaiting ambulance. As the siren blared and monitors were connected to her chest, the woman’s eyes began to flutter open, much to the surprise of those who worked on her.

Confused by her whereabouts and what was happening, she attempted to speak and lift her head that was already restrained to the stretcher.

“Ma’am, don’t try to move.”

“I … I …” she muttered and tried to gasp for air.

A male EMT looked down into her brown eyes and wiped away the blood that had cascaded into them. Another worker placed a nasal cannula into her nostrils in an effort to deliver supplemental oxygen.

“I … need … Liam.” Her voice was weak but came out assertively.

She could feel the tightening of the blood pressure cuff around her arm and winced in pain. There was so much urgency around her and the pain she felt was unbearable, but there was only one thought on her mind.

“Liam!”

As the tip of a sharp needle pierced into the vein of her frail hand, she blinked back tears. She had no idea what had happened nor where she was, but one thing was for certain -- she knew exactly who she was when asked.

“Brooks … Riley Brooks.”

#liam x mc #liam x riley #choice trh #the royal heir #trr #bbrandy2002 #My Love #rape #beating #attempted murder #king liam

159 notes · View notes

nsylianteng · 3 years

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Notes on Writing That Works (Roman and Raphaelson)

1. The goal is not clarity but effective communication. Writing that works. What does the reader need to know so they can take action in the way you want them to?

2. Beware of “smart talk” which is unnecessarily complicated or abstract or both.

3. Before writing, put down what you want the reader to do, next the three most important things the reader needs to understand to take that action. Then start to write.

4. Once you’ve decided what to say, come right out and say it. Mumbles command less attention than people who speak up. When you say something, make sure you have said it.

5. When you write anything longer than a few paragraphs, start by telling the reader where you are going.

6. Make an outline, use your outline to help your reader, number and underline section headings, summarize.

7. Use short words and short sentences.

8. Active verbs add energy to your writing. Good writers use the active voice. Active voice makes it more personal, a human being talking rather than an institution. Passive voice hides who is speaking, active voice reveals it.

9. Use vigorous adjectives and adverbs that sharpen your point.

10. Write the way you talk. Except if you talk in jargon.

11. Be specific. If possible use numbers to communicate scale.

12. Be direct. Use simple, declarative sentences. Churchill could have said “the situation in regard to France is very serious.” What he said instead was “The news from France is bad.”

13. Strike out words you don’t need. Instead of “in the event of,” say “if”.

14. Don’t write like a lawyer of bureaucrat. If you find yourself writing this way, ask yourself how you would say it to your reader if you were talking to them face to face. Err on being too casual then adjust.

15. A good start in breaking out of bureaucratese is to banish from your writing unnecessary Latin. For example, “re:”

16. Keep in mind what your reader doesn’t know. Never expect people to read your mind as well as your letter or paper.

17. Don’t be pretentious. “The optics of the plan” instead of “how the plan will look”. This style of talk is generally heard among middle managers, welcome from those who have risen to the top who are less interested in impressing people than in clear communications and getting things done.

18. When writing email, cut ruthlessly to get to the essence. Anything over one screen risks not being read. Take out 50% of what you’ve written and you’ll be amazed how your points leap out. Make it brief but complete — “meaty, concise, and to the point”

19. Avoid email tag. Some emails are too short in the sense that it doesn’t provide context which causes the reader to ask for clarification. If you expect a response, set a deadline so it’s not at the reader’s inclination which may be never.

20. Set the right tone. Good places to set them: subject line, beginning or ending salutation.

21. When writing a report: draw conclusions from what you saw or heard, specify how certain you feel about your conclusions. Some will be beyond question, others speculative. Tell your reader which is which.

22. When writing letters, your first sentence should perform the function of a title. Your reader wants to know at once what the letter is about.

23. Letters that ask for something. Say what you want right away, explain why, then say thanks. Don’t start by explaining why you want it or expressing your appreciation. Your reader won’t be interested in either before you reveal what you are asking for.

24. For presentations: Be direct about what your data saying. Instead of “Why Acme?” say “Our edge is service.”

25. Read every word on the screen to the audience, then expound. It’s not unnecessary. Your audience will read it anyway. If what you say doesn’t match what they’re reading, they will be confused. If your style is to ad lib, use key words or phrases instead of sentences.

26. Face the audience when you present.

27. Involve the audience. Use visual devices to present dry information. Invite your audience to answer questions before revealing the answer. Add something unexpected - a tape recording, etc.

28. Edit, Reorganize, Revise, Rehearse. Go through your presentation at least twice.

29. On speeches: Start by figuring out what single point you want your audience to take away. Then start writing.

30. Think about addressing one individual rather than a faceless audience. Think of it as a conversation with a friend.

31. Cross out the first several paragraphs. Your opening is usually halfway down the page.

32. Good speeches alway express a strongly held personal point of view. Ideas you believe in make good speeches. Start with a single point you want your audience to take away then conclude with a memorable way to cement it.

33. No speech was ever too short. Most good talks take less than 20 minutes.

34. Rehearse so you know it by heart so you sound more spontaneous and more confident. Confidence and presence is what sets a memorable speaker apart from the ordinary one.

35. Take the traumatic step of seeing yourself on videotape. An illuminating teacher.

36. The goal of plans are reports is: Action. A plan starts with a clear statement of purpose.

37. Present foundational facts ending in a conclusion. Doing otherwise is leaving your reader with information that, like a Mexican pyramid, doesn’t come to a point.

38. The point of a report is to report what is actually happening and what you think should be done about it.

39. Start a report by: Stating the purpose and why anybody should care.

40. Annual Reports. Write with a specific reader in mind. Buffett says, “I pretend that I’m writing to my sister. I have no trouble picturing them: Though highly intelligent, they are not experts in accounting or finance. They will understand plain English but jargon may puzzle them.

41. Henry Kissinger used to say that State Department memos commonly offer three options: The first leads to nuclear war, the second leads to surrender, the third is what they want you to choose.

42. Think of it as selling, not presenting. Just laying out your views is not enough. You must marshall for logic and passion behind your facts.

43. Tell people where you are going. In the first paragraph, establish both subject and scope.

44. Executive summaries: Include all main points, a sentence or two for each, then let the full document fill in the details.

45. Recommend up front. Then lay out specific reasons in support.

46. But remember, a chain of specifics is no stronger than its weakest link.

47. Proposals and Grants. Make it urgent. “You can make the difference” is one way to get to a “yes.”

48. Create a sense of urgency when asking for money.

49. Resumes. It’s important for your reader to know how far you moved the rock, not how much time you spent pushing it.

50. Write for the eye as well as the mind. Make it easy to read by using headings, breaking up paragraphs, numbering and so on.

Buy it on Bookshop.org

#writing that works

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loptgangandi · 4 years

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OH BOY GUYS HAVE I GOT A MUN-DAY STORY FOR YOU

( tl;dr I was refused entry into my mom’s home country, spent the night in an airport terminal during a pandemic, made friends with the son of one of my mom’s colleagues who just so happened to be in the exact same situation because the universe has a sense of humor, and was eventually allowed into the country because I had understood the regulations properly and the border guards had not.)

So it all started on Thursday, when my mom -- an epidemiologist working on COVID -- told me to come home ASAP because Switzerland (where she lives) was about to close its borders and had already restricted entry to anyone from neighboring states: first Italy, then Austria, Germany, and France as well.

I had already booked tickets for early April, so I called the airline, and they helped me rebook for the end of March -- the earliest I could come without paying huge fees.

Cut to Friday. I wake up to 4 missed calls and a zillion texts from my mom informing me that she had booked me on a flight for the following day -- Saturday.

With a layover in Germany.

As I had spent a good 40 minutes the previous day on the phone trying to avoid layovers in France and Germany, I was a little miffed. And worried. But the airline had assured my mother that: a) the new restrictions on Germany wouldn’t go into effect until Sunday, and b) since airport terminals are international territory, I technically would not have actually been in Germany. After some deliberation, I agreed to come home immediately. As in, Saturday. As in, the next day. The 21st. A day before Switzerland’s travel restrictions on Germany were supposed to go into effect (according to the airline, and I’m not sure what their source was).

You might already see where this is going.

I arrived at Frankfurt airport after a frankly very surreal trip -- both the flight and the original airport, which was a ghost town -- and was told by the gate agents that I couldn’t board the plane because Swiss border control would refuse me. After a bit of back and forth -- during which I switched from English to German, which got them to be a bit more helpful -- they realized that yes, indeed, citizens and residents of Schengen countries (excluding Germany, France, Italy, and Austria) were exempted from the border restrictions. This included me, as I’m a resident of Sweden.

They let me on the plane, but I was seriously worried -- because given the general environment of confusion, I had no faith that Swiss border control would know more than the Frankfurt gate agents. You’d assume they’d be informed on some things, but lets face it -- uniformed and armed people tend not to be very good at subtlety and legal minutiae, so who could know.

The one thing that can be said for the overwhelming, anxious rage I felt when the Swiss border control told me I couldn’t enter the country was that it absolutely K.O’d the part of my brain that tends to overthink my language skills and inhibit my ability to speak languages I’m not fluent in -- and I made my case in very good French. I have never spoken French so well as when I was talking to the cop I’d been palmed off to and explaining to him why I was right and they were all wrong. My mom also insisted on talking to him, and after some hesitation -- which probably had less to do with touching my potentially virus-infested phone and more to do with being on the receiving end of a middle-aged mom’s wrath -- he took the call. I offered to put it on speaker and hold it so he wouldn’t have to, but he took the phone, and argued with my mom all the way through the airport.

He seemed basically sympathetic and like he wanted to help, but his mantra was always the same: “I have my orders, I don’t know anything beyond what I’ve been told and I can’t disobey my orders.” He told mom the name of the organization to call to help out with this, but didn’t have a number for them, and couldn’t provide any other support. He was polite enough, but “polite” wasn’t going to get me home.

Where it got me was locked down tight in the airport international terminal with 10 other people who have also been turned away.

Luckily, the terminal is massive, so there was plenty of room to maintain distance.

The cops assured me that they would handle my suitcase and took my documents -- passport, Swedish residency card, and boarding passes from my trip (so they could make my flight reservations, they said, but there was probably more to it) -- and left me there.

An international airport at midnight during a pandemic is pretty much the definition of a liminal space. Every other seat in the gate waiting areas had a strip of red and white police tape running over it, back to front, and tied off at the top of the seat back to ensure that people would maintain proper distance and not sit next to each other. The music was on at a volume that, during the day, was probably appropriate to be unobtrusive over the ambient sounds of a living airport, but which in a locked-down terminal was unbelievably annoying. The lights were dim enough that there were still dark corners, and you could look around without your eyeballs melting out of your face. The only sounds (apart from the music) were the hum of the vending machines (our only food and drink options until the cafe opened at 5:30 the next morning) and the soft shuffling of people trying to get comfortable and get some sleep on the rock-hard, probably COVID-contaminated seat rows.

We were given nothing. No hand sanitizer, no water (apart from what you could buy from the vending machines), no blankets or pillows. Nothing. We had access to bathrooms with hand soap, but you had to touch the dispensers with the heel of your hand. The paper towel dispensers also weren’t automatic, so you had to touch them to get the paper towels out. There was one janitor who came in around 1 AM to clean the whole terminal, which obviously wasn’t sufficient.

I’m tough. I’ve been in some incredibly crappy situations, and at least we were warm and safe inside, and I wasn’t physically uncomfortable. I had some money to buy water, food, and later in the morning, coffee, and I figured out how to wash my hands without touching anything. But the fact that we were left in an almost certainly contaminated public space with no precautionary measures and no support for an extended amount of time -- 9 hours in my case -- was absolutely infuriating. And dangerous. And I am almost definitely going to get sick, probably because of that.

Which only made me more determined to get home. If I was going to get sick, I was going to do it in a place where I could be taken care of and nursed back to health, instead of someone else’s apartment where I just rent a room and would have had a much larger radius of contamination (my landlady/flatmate has kids and grandkids and is still going to work).

The issue, as the immigration cop had told me, came down to the fact that I had flown in from Germany.

Even though I hadn’t set foot on German soil, I had been in a German airport, and that was apparently enough. If I had flown in from any other Schengen country (apart from France, Austria, or Italy), I could have entered with no problem, since I have Swedish residency.

There was an obvious loophole there: while Sweden had no flights to that city for the following day (Sunday), Netherlands did. Brussels and Czechia did.

So while my mom contacted the immigration authority in Bern, I booked a refundable flight for 9 PM Sunday evening from Amsterdam to my mom’s city, and would request that they send me to Amsterdam instead of Stockholm. The plan was basically to make a big loop and enter through a country they deemed acceptable. The irony wasn’t lost on me -- that I would risk further contamination by city-hopping in order to loop around and end up back where I started -- but the police had prevented me from just getting into my mom’s car and self-quarantining at her apartment, which had been the original plan, so I didn’t have much of a choice.

All that was left now was to wait -- in a non-sterile, contaminated airport terminal playing the most mediocre pop album-filler of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

The only thing that made it bearable was that I made a friend.

Around 1 AM, a 20-something Japanese dude in dress pants and a polo shirt shows up on our side of the terminal from the opposite end, wanting to know if we were also bothered by the music and if he should call someone about shutting it off. He wouldn’t bother if it was just him, so he wanted to see if it was collective. I agreed, and after a few failed attempts, we miraculously managed to reach someone who said they would do what they could to turn off the music.

We got talking (and moved away from the people trying to sleep), and it turns out that it’s a small world and we were in an even smaller city, because our mothers work in the same department, were extremely close colleagues about 10 years ago, and still work together occasionally. I immediately recognized her name.

Turns out, this dude and I had both gone to school and done the IB in the same city. We both have moms working on COVID, dads living in our countries of origin (Japan for him, US for me), and younger sisters. He had also been turned away, despite having documentation that should have given him leave to enter. So there we were, stuck in that situation together, waiting to be deported and with our passports held hostage by the authorities.

We talked for six straight hours about every topic we could think of. Travel, food, relationships, siblings and family in general, COVID, electric cars, how our respective countries are reacting to COVID, racism and xenophobia (worsened by COVID -- he had an example from that same day), bosses and managers and how our offices are (and, in my case, had been) run, the pros and cons of wearing medical masks if you’re not showing symptoms of COVID, dry hands from all of the washing to avoid COVID, politics, our respective cultures and business cultures, depression and mental illness, natural disasters we had lived through, etc. “Ah fuck I’ve got COVID in my eye” became a bit of a running joke throughout the morning, as we became increasingly tired and our eyes increasingly dry, prompting runs to the bathroom to clear them out and wash our hands. We had both basically resigned ourselves to catching it -- it was just a matter of trying to pass it on to as few people as possible, preferably 0.

Around 7 AM, my new friend -- let’s call him Mike -- points out that a guard is making a beeline towards us, and he’s not holding his passport. I look, and it’s mine, and I prepare myself to argue for them to send me to Amsterdam instead of Sweden. He tells me he had just come over to see me and make sure that I was still there (??? he had my passport where was I going to go??), and he would be back in 15 minutes to let me know whether or not I could enter Switzerland.

I was completely baffled, because that option hadn’t even crossed my mind. I had been operating 100% on the assumption that I was going to be put on a plane. And Mike was happy for me, but also pretty miffed, because they had already booked a flight for him but our circumstances were pretty much identical. He had documentation proving extenuating circumstances, and I have Swedish residency and never set foot on German soil. The only difference between us is that he’s Japanese, and I’m white. I agreed that it was almost definitely a xenophobia thing, and told him that if I got in, I’d vouch for him.

15 minutes later the cop (this one was very compassionate and borderline sweet compared to the ones we’d dealt with the previous night) comes back and tells me I could go through. I gather my stuff, and explain to him about Mike. The cop looks puzzled, but promises that he’ll make some calls and try to sort it out, and I should come with him. He takes me through to get my suitcase and escorts me to the exit, where he welcomes me to Switzerland with a big smile.

I called my mom and settled in to wait for her to pick me up. Ten minutes later, Mike tells he’s also been allowed through. My mom (who had literally rolled out of bed in her pajamas, thrown on a coat and shoes, and jumped in the car) and I offered him a ride, but he had called his mom immediately and she was coming to get him. I didn’t see him again -- my mom arrived before he came through -- but we’ve been in touch, and both of us got home safe.

Now my mom and I are completely self-quarantined with the cats, and honestly, it’s wonderful. We’re not leaving the house except for the occasional walk. I slept 12 hours last night. My mom is plying me with tea to make sure I’m hydrated as we wait for me to get sick, and I spent the 6 hours recording this whole nonsense saga for posterity.

tl;dr I was refused entry into my mom’s home country, spent the night in an airport terminal during a pandemic, and made friends with the son of one of my mom’s colleagues who just so happened to be in the exact same situation

#ooc tag #| cryptid spotting || (mun-day)

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wewererogue · 5 years

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The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people

[by Erwin James / The Guardian, February 2013]

On Bastoy prison island in Norway, the prisoners, some of whom are murderers and rapists, live in conditions that critics brand ‘cushy’ and 'luxurious’. Yet it has by far the lowest reoffending rate in Europe.

An inmate sunbathes on the deck of his bungalow on Bastoy. Photograph: Marco Di Lauro

The first clue that things are done very differently on Bastoy prison island, which lies a couple of miles off the coast in the Oslo fjord, 46 miles south-east of Norway’s capital, comes shortly after I board the prison ferry. I’m taken aback slightly when the ferry operative who welcomed me aboard just minutes earlier, and with whom I’m exchanging small talk about the weather, suddenly reveals he is a serving prisoner – doing 14 years for drug smuggling. He notes my surprise, smiles, and takes off a thick glove before offering me his hand. “I’m Petter,” he says.

Before he transferred to Bastoy, Petter was in a high-security prison for nearly eight years. “Here, they give us trust and responsibility,” he says. “They treat us like grownups.” I haven’t come here particularly to draw comparisons, but it’s impossible not to consider how politicians and the popular media would react to a similar scenario in Britain.

There are big differences between the two countries, of course. Norway has a population of slightly less than five million, a 12th of the UK’s. It has fewer than 4,000 prisoners; there are around 84,000 in the UK. But what really sets us apart is the Norwegian attitude towards prisoners. Four years ago I was invited into Skien maximum security prison, 20 miles north of Oslo. I had heard stories about Norway’s liberal attitude. In fact, Skien is a concrete fortress as daunting as any prison I have ever experienced and houses some of the most serious law-breakers in the country. Recently it was the temporary residence of Anders Breivik, the man who massacred 77 people in July 2011.

Despite the seriousness of their crimes, however, I found that the loss of liberty was all the punishment they suffered. Cells had televisions, computers, integral showers and sanitation. Some prisoners were segregated for various reasons, but as the majority served their time – anything up to the 21-year maximum sentence (Norway has no death penalty or life sentence) – they were offered education, training and skill-building programmes. Instead of wings and landings they lived in small “pod” communities within the prison, limiting the spread of the corrosive criminal prison subculture that dominates traditionally designed prisons. The teacher explained that all prisons in Norway worked on the same principle, which he believed was the reason the country had, at less than 30%, the lowest reoffending figures in Europe and less than half the rate in the UK.

As the ferry powers through the freezing early-morning fog, Petter tells me he is appealing against his conviction. If it fails he will be on Bastoy until his release date in two years’ time. I ask him what life is like on the island. “You’ll see,” he says. “It’s like living in a village, a community. Everybody has to work. But we have free time so we can do some fishing, or in summer we can swim off the beach. We know we are prisoners but here we feel like people.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect on Bastoy. A number of wide-eyed commentators before me have variously described conditions under which the island’s 115 prisoners live as “cushy”, “luxurious” and, the old chestnut, “like a holiday camp”. I’m sceptical of such media reports.

An inmate repairs a bike. Photograph: Marco Di Lauro

As a life prisoner, I spent the first eight years of the 20 I served in a cell with a bed, a chair, a table and a bucket for my toilet. In that time I was caught up in a major riot, trapped in a siege and witnessed regular acts of serious violence. Across the prison estate, several hundred prisoners took their own lives, half a dozen of whom I knew personally – and a number were murdered. Yet the constant refrain from the popular press was that I, too, was living in a “holiday camp”. When in-cell toilets were installed, and a few years later we were given small televisions, the “luxury prison” headlines intensified and for the rest of the time I was in prison, it never really abated.

It always seemed to me while I was in jail that the real prison scandal was the horrendous rate of reoffending among released prisoners. In 2007, 14 prisons in England and Wales had reconvictions rates of more than 70%. At an average cost of £40,000 a year for each prisoner, this amounts to a huge investment in failure – and a total lack of consideration for potential future victims of released prisoners. That’s the reason I’m keen to have a look at what has been hailed as the world’s first “human ecological prison”.

Thorbjorn, a 58-year-old guard who has worked on Bastoy for 17 years, gives me a warm welcome as I step on to dry land. As we walk along the icy, snowbound track that leads to the admin block, he tells me how the prison operates. There are 70 members of staff on the 2.6 sq km island during the day, 35 of whom are uniformed guards. Their main job is to count the prisoners – first thing in the morning, twice during the day at their workplaces, once en masse at a specific assembly point at 5pm, and finally at 11pm, when they are confined to their respective houses. Only four guards remain on the island after 4pm. Thorbjorn points out the small, brightly painted wooden bungalows dotted around the wintry landscape. “These are the houses for the prisoners,” he says. They accommodate up to six people. Every man has his own room and they share kitchen and other facilities. “The idea is they get used to living as they will live when they are released.” Only one meal a day is provided in the dining hall. The men earn the equivalent of £6 a day and are given a food allowance each month of around £70 with which to buy provisions for their self-prepared breakfasts and evening meals from the island’s well-stocked mini-supermarket.

I can see why some people might think such conditions controversial. The common understanding of prison is that it is a place of deprivation and penance rather than domestic comfort.

Prisoners in Norway can apply for a transfer to Bastoy when they have up to five years left of their sentence to serve. Every type of offender, including men convicted of murder or rape, may be accepted, so long as they fit the criteria, the main one being a determination to live a crime-free life on release.

I ask Thorbjorn what work the prisoners do on the island. He tells me about the farm where prisoners tend sheep, cows and chickens, or grow fruit and vegetables. “They grow much of their own food,” he says.

Other jobs are available in the laundry; in the stables looking after the horses that pull the island’s cart transport; in the bicycle repair shop, (many of the prisoners have their own bikes, bought with their own money); on ground maintenance or in the timber workshop. The working day begins at 8.30am and already I can hear the buzz of chainsaws and heavy-duty strimmers. We walk past a group of red phone boxes from where prisoners can call family and friends. A large building to our left is where weekly visits take place, in private family rooms where conjugal relations are allowed.

After the security officer signs me in and takes my mobile, Thorbjorn delivers me to governor Arne Nilsen’s office. “Let me tell you something,” Thorbjorn says before leaving me. “You know, on this island I feel safer than when I walk on the streets in Oslo.”

Through Nilsen’s window I can see the church, the school and the library. Life for the prisoners is as normal as it is possible to be in a prison. It feels rather like a religious commune; there is a sense of peace about the place, although the absence of women (apart from some uniformed guards) and children is noticeable. Nilsen has coined a phrase for his prison: “an arena of developing responsibility.” He pours me a cup of tea.

“In closed prisons we keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had any real responsibility for working or cooking. In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we pay attention to you as human beings.”

A clinical psychologist by profession, Nilsen shrugs off any notion that he is running a holiday camp. I sense his frustration. “You don’t change people by power,” he says. “For the victim, the offender is in prison. That is justice. I’m not stupid. I’m a realist. Here I give prisoners respect; this way we teach them to respect others. But we are watching them all the time. It is important that when they are released they are less likely to commit more crimes. That is justice for society.”

The reoffending rate for those released from Bastoy speaks for itself. At just 16%, it is the lowest in Europe. But who are the prisoners on Bastoy? Are they the goodie-goodies of the system?

Hessle is 23 years old and serving 11 years for murder. “It was a revenge killing,” he says. “I wish I had not done it, but now I must pay for my crime.” Slight and fair-haired, he says he has been in and out of penal institutions since he was 15. Drugs have blighted his life and driven his criminality. There are three golden rules on Bastoy: no violence, no alcohol and no drugs. Here, he works in the stables tending the horses and has nearly four years left to serve. How does he see the future? “Now I have no desire for drugs. When I get out I want to live and have a family. Here I am learning to be able to do that.”

A convict works on Bastoy prison farm. Photograph: Marco Di Lauro

Hessle plays the guitar and is rehearsing with other prisoners in the Bastoy Blues Band. Last year they were given permission to attend a music festival as a support act that ZZ Top headlined. Bjorn is the band’s teacher. Once a Bastoy prisoner who served five years for attacking his wife in a “moment of madness”, he now returns once a week to teach guitar. “I know the potential for people here to change,” he says.

Formerly a social researcher, he has formed links with construction companies he previously worked for that have promised to consider employing band members if they can demonstrate reliability and commitment. “This is not just about the music,” he says, “it’s about giving people a chance to prove their worth.”

Sven, another band member, was also convicted of murder, and sentenced to eight years. The 29-year-old was an unemployed labourer before his conviction. He works in the timber yard and is waiting to see if his application to be “house father” in his five-man bungalow is successful. “I like the responsibility,” he says. “Before coming here I never really cared for other people.”

The female guard who introduces me to the band is called Rutchie. “I’m very proud to be a guard here, and my family are very proud of me,” she says. It takes three years to train to be a prison guard in Norway. She looks at me with disbelief when I tell her that in the UK prison officer training is just six weeks. “There is so much to learn about the people who come to prison,” she says. “We need to try to understand how they became criminals, and then help them to change. I’m still learning.”

Finally, I’m introduced to Vidor, who at 72 is the oldest prisoner on the island. He works in the laundry and is the house father of his four-man bungalow. I haven’t asked any of the prisoners about their crimes. The information has been offered voluntarily. Vidor does the same. He tells me he is serving 15 years for double manslaughter. There is a deep sadness in his eyes, even when he smiles. “Killers like me have nowhere to hide,” he says. He tells me that in the aftermath of his crimes he was “on the floor”. He cried a lot at first. “If there was the death penalty I would have said, yes please, take me.” He says he was helped in prison. “They helped me to understand why I did what I did and helped me to live again.” Now he studies philosophy, in particular Nietzsche. “I’m glad they let me come here. It is a healthy place to be. I’ll be 74 when I get out,” he says. “I’ll be happy if I can get to 84, and then just say: 'Bye-bye.’”

On the ferry back to the mainland I think about what I have seen and heard. Bastoy is no holiday camp. In some ways I feel as if I’ve seen a vision of the future – a penal institution designed to heal rather than harm and to generate hope instead of despair. I believe all societies will always need high-security prisons. But there needs to be a robust filtering procedure along the lines of the Norwegian model, in order that the process is not more damaging than necessary. As Nilsen asserts, justice for society demands that people we release from prison should be less likely to cause further harm or distress to others, and better equipped to live as law-abiding citizens.

It would take much political courage and social confidence to spread the penal philosophy of Bastoy outside Norway, however. In the meantime, I hope the decision-makers of the world take note of the revolution in rehabilitation that is occurring on that tiny island. (94)

#long post #Erwin James #theory #norway #prison

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davidfostercomedyblog · 5 years

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My Trip to Paris: A Review

Like any typical heterosexual male the idea of engagement photos seemed as appealing to me as that of a fantasy football league might to most heterosexual women. Nevertheless, I am happily engaged to the latter, and in cliché fashion conceded to said photo shoot, and have never been so grateful for a decision.

It was a week before our European vacation, and our (French) photographer asked us: “Where will you be staying when you go to Paris?”

“We got a hotel in Nice, Airbnb in Paris.”

“Oh, you better make sure they have air conditioning,” she informed us. “Most Parisians don’t have A/C’s. The units are considered ‘unsightly.’”

Umm… seriously?

The forecast for our upcoming trip was to reach record highs in temperature. Not record highs for July or our particular dates. Record highs. It was going to be 109… degrees! The hottest two days in the history of Paris, on which we’d scheduled a walk to the Louvre, then down the Seine River, and up the gabillion steps of Sacre Couer, at the end of which I’d implicitly scheduled a good night’s sleep, which would be impossible without air conditioning.

I reviewed our booking on Airbnb, and sure enough there was no A/C. When I emailed our would-be host to confirm this preposterous notion she responded: “I have a great fan though.”

Good for you.

Our late cancellation was the happiest we’ve ever been to eat $240. We had a hideous air conditioner in our otherwise lovely, entirely red suede hotel room in Villa Opera Drouotin Montmartre. There was red everywhere. Red wallpaper, red blankets, even a 360 red velvet seat in the red lobby. But it was cool, literally. It was the greatest continental breakfast we’ve ever had in our lives, and we were happy.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival at the airport was the urinals. I’ve never seen bulls’ eyes of such small diameter. Do the French have better aim?

Second was the plethora of friendly assistants at the train station, all of them fluent in English, all eagerly awaiting the opportunity to help even the most dumbfounded of tourists, which pin-pointedly described us. Can you imagine such an experience with a New York MTA worker? They look at you like instead of “Excuse me,” you opened with a derogatory slur and are requesting they literally carry you on their back to your desired destination. Paris: 1. NYC: 0

Next we sat on the train, which was faster and cleaner than New York’s, though that goes without saying, as every train on the planet, I imagine including those of third world countries, is much cleaner than New York’s. Paris: 2. NYC: 0.

We sat next to college kids, two French and one British, who were making fun of American tourists’ stereotypical ideas of Paris being this “romantic town, where everyone just gets cheese and wine and a baguette and eats it all on the streets.” When we got off the train I swear to God all I kept seeing were locals walking along the sidewalk eating baguettes or sitting at outdoor restaurants drinking wine and smoking cigarettes.

Baguettes were everywhere. I saw old men walking along the street chewing away at them, sometimes plain, others with ham and/or cheese stuffed inside. I saw young girls with grocery bags full of baguettes, others with just the one long one they’d need for that evening, way too large to fit in the designer pocketbook held in their other arm. Older women, young men, apparently poor people, rich people, black, white and Hispanic people (just kidding, there’s no Hispanics in Europe) – it seemed everyone had a baguette. I digress.

We weren’t sure if the cliché college kid pontifications were for our benefit, but I chose not to respond, a) becausewe weren’t sure, b) engaging in philosophical debate with college kids makes as much sense as engaging in confrontation with the schizophrenic homeless guy on the 6 train, and c) I was so jetlagged that they probably could have spread brie cheese all over my face and put their cigarette butts out in the mush and I would have let it slide. Whoever can get more than a few hours sleep on those red eyes are as gifted in my mind as Michael Jordan or David Blaine. Finally, the kids’ insults were at “Americans,” which I don’t identify as anyway. We’re New Yorkers - not Americans. There’s a difference.

We were two hours early for check-in, so decided to maximize our tourist time by taking the 20-minute walk from Montmartre to Sacre Couer.

Jesus, was it hot. It was 105 degrees. The walk was perpetually uphill and when we finally arrived there were more staircases than in the MTA’s latest atrocity, the 86thSt. Q train. What a moronic architectural disgrace that is.

We bought water from a local store and the lady didn’t even offer us a plastic bag. None of the stores did for entire whole trip. They all had them behind the counter if you needed, but I never saw anyone take one. Paris: 3. NYC: 0.

I could feel sunburn setting in. I took off my long sleeve shirt and threw it over my head to protect myself. The Asian tourists kept their umbrellas up for protection (though when do they not?), and the Italians were next to naked (though when are they not?). The heat was inescapable. It felt like the temperature was climbing along with us up the steps. Instead of a church, it was as if we were making the pilgrimage in Egypt. We had to take regular breaks and be mindful to breathe and stay hydrated, and constantly remind ourselves: “This is vacation, we’re having fun. This is fun. It’s vacation. This is… this is… this hot as fucking hell. Let’s take a lap around this church and go home.”

Sacre Couer is gorgeous: Incredible view of the city outside, and even better art inside. A local came over and requested I remove my hat, and I wasn’t sure whether my Americanism or Judaism was more apparent. We put hats on intentionally in our place of worship.

Finally checked in the hotel, we passed out for two hours in the coolest bedroom in Paris and woke up rejuvenated. We had dinner reservations at Derriereat 19:30, which was the earliest possible reservation because 19:30 is what time Derriere opens, which is just about the fanciest thing I’ve ever heard of.

Our table wasn’t even ready yet, but the maitre’d was friendly.

“Please, have a seat, we’ll get you a glass of wine and let you know when the kitchen’s open.”

Lovely!

Even my fiancée, who is rouge-exclusive, opted for white because of the climate, and it was the best white wine either of us had ever tasted in our pathetic American lives. Pouilly Fumé, crisp, minerally, dry and perfect and it was 6 euro, half what it would be back home.

We waited and waited, watched a few other parties get ushered into the restaurant ahead of us, and wondered if we should say something. I got up to remind the host of our presence, and he was flamboyantly sweet, super pleasant and matter-of-factly excited to seat us.

Ahh, Europe. Is it possible for a constant intake of alcohol, tobacco, bread and cheese to be physiologically offset by a complete lack of urgency and adherence to time?

When we finally got inside we found an adorable, almost hipstery chic spot that had apparently been someone’s home converted into a restaurant. We each sat in our own cushiony love seat across from one another in a spread out living room/library/game room as an active ping pong table was set about three feet behind my head.

Our waiter, Tyler, was from Canada, hence boasted the perfect hybrid of debonair French style with a western work ethic. We were relieved that he spoke English, but soon discovered so does 90% of the country. Tyler was jovial and handsome and encouraging of our order choices. The duck was insane – the best we’d ever had – the braised beef with zucchini was even better.

“Fuck you,” my fiancée kept exclaiming at how blown away she was by the food. I was happy we were able to show the local Parisians how New Yorkers applaud quality – by cursing it out.

We could have returned the knives, as the meats would have fallen off their bones with even the side of the same soup spoon we used to eat the best Gazpacho I’d ever tasted. With dinner we had the best rouge in the house for only 14 Euro per glass, and as a reward Tyler and the sommelier came over and insisted we all do a shot of rum. We were adequately buzzed with bellies full of beef… and bread. The whole experience was magnefique.

We followed Tyler’s recommendations for the night (we would have followed Tyler into the gates of Hell), on to cocktails at The Little Red Door, and although neither my fiancée nor I are very much into cocktails you couldn’t help but trust in the elitist mixology menu. Drinks were fantastic. We ended up yukking it up with some gay New Yorkers coincidentally seated next to us on the couch, mostly over how superior the culture everywhere else in the world is to America, with the exception of New York – one of my favorite topics of conversation.

We walked the mile home because time flies while walking through any city. We stopped twice for some nightcaps and allowed the city lights to fuel our way. Although New York is the “city that never sleeps” Paris is apparently the city that always eats. 1:00 in the morning on a Wednesday night and it seemed almost every restaurant with outdoor seating was not only open, but practically filled with locals literally and figuratively chewing the fat. Any potential for jet lag and heat exhaustion had been instantly healed by meat and alcohol, but still we were spent, and a had a long next day ahead planned.

It’s possible I was woo’d by the air conditioning as I’m not much of a museum guy, but the Louvrewas great, definitely our favorite tourist attraction of the trip. We’d bought tickets beforehand and it took about 60 seconds to enter. Almost everyone there was quite pleasant, though the best part was the security guards at the Mona Lisa who were anything but. Groups of us at a time were being yelled at for not moving fast enough – like waiting on line to view the classic piece of art was a local crime and we owed a cowering apology while running and ducking for cover. They could have been instantly beamed to the central bookings jail in downtown Brooklyn and not missed a beat. One of them was the first white guy I’d seen in France with that pathologically rosy facial complexion that screamed alcohol, hypertension and New Jersey; and although it was clearly his job there to be an asshole we believed it to be a case of chicken or the egg.

I’d love to tell you it was beautiful, that Monawas beautiful and a magical experience of tourism, but I don’t think I ever got a good look. It was pure chaos, herded into a swarm of fellow tourists, and one of the only contexts where typical Asian good manners actually fell by the wayside as they refused to be denied the perfect photographs. Spun into confusion and shitted out the other side of the room we much preferred the rest of the less popular parts of the museum.

Before leaving my fiancée insisted on taking pics by the Pyramid outside and I… I just cannot tell you how hot it was. There were other people out suffering as well, but most were huddled in the shade, massaging their skulls with frozen water bottles and drinking from another. We muscled through it, took photos with fake smiles, feigning joy or even comfort so that everyone on social media could see that we had fun at the Louvre. Indoors we did. Outdoors was about survival.

Next door we passed by the other popular museum, D’Orsay (What is this, the museum district?), and fiancée asked if I wanted to go in. As I generally visit one museum per decade at home, my rule overseas is one per trip.

We walked along the Seine River,which was beautiful and I imagined on any day under 109 degrees would have been crowded with other cute couples cut from similar cloths. They’d be eating cheese and baguettes, as everyone had instructed us to do, but ours was a different kind of trip, and I’d surely have jumped into the river before sitting along it with quickly melting brie. There were benches where I could picture us sitting, but even the mental effort of creating said picture was burning calories at an alarming pace. We passed through the Tuileries Garden, got a croque monsieur and more gazpacho.

On the way home I bought a suit for our wedding! It wasn’t the plan, but hey… we’re just some hot shot New Yorkers flying by the seat of our pants in Paris. Beautiful pants as it were, as I never thought I could make such a baller move.

Of course going into the store was wifey’s suggestion, but I went along with it. “Should we go in and see if they have any nice suits?” she asked.

“We should go in and see if they have any nice air conditioning.”

They did.

And before we knew it we were whisked away into the back room as if we had a reservation for two. Everyone there’s faces were beautiful and their outfits even more beautiful. I felt a bit underdressed in my Marcus Camby Knicks’ throwback jersey (while sweating like Patrick Ewing) and my crooked Yankees cap, but before I knew it I was Julia Roberts with Roy Orbison blasting in my head, as one of the most charming men on the planet, Tomas, put together ensemble after ensemble, creating his own Mona Lisa out of me.

Me, the sweaty asshole who just walked in the door in his gym clothes. Instead of angry security guards yelling at us, Tomas took his time with me, like a true gentleman, never allowing me to put any of the jackets on myself. His assistant brought us bottles of water and suddenly I began to suspect I was on a hidden camera show and Richard Gere was going to come out of the back room and ignore my sexual advances.

One fabulous suit I tried on was apparently made of some high-quality but more delicate fabric that Tomas warned me of: “A suit like this – you can only wear this to work maybe two or three times a week… otherwise it will not last.”

Two or three times a week? Who the fuck does this guy think I am? I’m sorry, Tomas, I love you, but in case you haven’t heard it’s only about 1% of the professions in New York these days that even require a suit at work… and those guys can afford enough suits to wear them two or three times a year. I’m not worried about it.

After about an hour of trial and error, mixing and matching and texting photos across the pond to Mom and others for feedback, finally we came to a unanimous decision. Tomas even threw in the pink tie from his own personal stash, and when we said Au revoirI could feel that none of us really wanted to. What we really wanted was to buy four more suits, then two giant homes in New York and Paris respectively where we could all live out the rest of our years together as the most stylish commune of love. Unfortunately that’s not how life works. But I found more than my wedding suit in the Paris SuitSupply. I found one of my favorite people, one of my fondest memories from the trip, and finally, a hell of a deal! Weeks later my (Jewish) fiancée did her research and discovered after the conversion rate I’d gotten a $1000 suit for almost half the cost. Paris: 4. NYC: 0.

When we got outside it was still 109 degrees. We went home and hosed down in preparation for another night on the town…

Bofingerfor dinner: An apparently pork forward venue that seemed to specialize in shellfish and sauerkraut dishes. I’d never had to de-shell my own snails before, and if you would have told me at any point in life I would twice in one day feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman I would have at least figured one of the two would involve prostituting myself on Hollywood Blvd. Thankfully, none of the “slippery little suckers” went flying across the room into any waiters’ hands. A now experienced acupuncturist I figured I could successfully navigate this previously foreign task and eventually I was right (although two of them were stuck super deep inside and I resorted to simply brutally cracking them open). Absolutely drowned in the plate’s bath of garlic and oil they were delicious!

The chilled cream of asparagus soup with mascarpone was the best I’ve ever had in my life. I understand this superlative is beginning to sound like a broken record, but hey, we’re discussing food and wine in Paris. It isn’t like I’m telling you I heard the greatest hip hop song of my life there.

Unfortunately the sauerkraut dish was anti-climactic in taste, overwhelming in size. A beast of a platter, and we figured the reason the runner brought burners to light underneath it must have been because no one could possibly finish this plate in less than three hours. Most of my family has hefty appetites and within my family I am generally the one most derided for overeating; but my fiancée and I couldn’t even make a visible dent in the dish. We left full sausages just hangin’ and neither of us even broached the monstrous pork knuckle that looked like too much to tangle with. What was most fascinating was the gentleman next to us ordered the same dish, had it arrive after ours, and absolutely demolished it before we’d thrown in our towel. “Was he overweight?” you ask.Absolutely not, he was handsome and slim, fit. This is Wonderland.

We had nowhere to take our leftovers, but figured better to gamble on running into a homeless person then just throw it out. We saw some poor man seated on the train station floor on our way to Latin Quarters, and bestowed him with what I assume was the best meal he’d had in years.

We passed by Notre Dame, and I felt kind of like an asshole - like the tourists in NYC taking pictures in front of Ground Zero before the new tower was built: Odd locational tone for a photo opp.

Latin Quarters sucked. Think Bleecker Street meets Time Square, and in case you thought bro-douchery didn’t exist outside of America think again. Lots of pubs and sports bars, novelty shops and loud partyers, and you could skip it. A friend of us warned it would be like this but was worth seeing once. Another friend told us of a cocktail bar there on the Holiday Inn rooftop, from which you could see the whole city. Sounds lovely!We passed by only to be told the roof was closed as a result of the heat. Night Deux was a bit of a letdown.

The next day was a more of the same, only to reinforce a lesson that as New Yorkers we should have already known: Avoid tourist traps. The elevator at the Eiffel Towerwas broken which greatly appeased my fiancee’s terrific fear of heights, however I’m still awaiting my refund for the aloof purchase. Champs Elysseswas… ehhhh… like Fifth Avenue meets Soho, but not even the nooks and cranny side streets of old Soho of the 1990’s – more like vomit-up-your-ass chain retail, Broadway Soho of 2019. My fiancée got to take some nice pics of that other humongous fuckin’ old thing, but besides that the marathon distance walking through the desert level heat was beginning to wear on me… and by this time my neurology had shifted to a degree of alcohol dependency which is not my norm. It was time to call it a day and begin the night.

We closed more similarly to how we opened, in a more cultured reverence for gluttony in a local spot we’d been recommended that happened to be right down the block from our red suede hotel room.

Le Bouillon Chartierdidn’t take reservations and had not one, but two lines wrapped on to the sidewalk of mostly locals waiting to get in. We wondered, with gratitude, why our wait was only about ten minutes, and were inadvertently given our answer once inside. It was packed and fast-paced, pretty noisy, though not much to look at. It had the gritty feel of Katz’s Deli or Barney Greengrass and the waiters were curt and void of pleasantries. Ahhh… we felt right at home.

The most expensive bottle of wine on the menu was 23 euro. And it was great! The prices of everything were dirt cheap – like fast food cheap - which only partially explained the line around the block. The duck confit was excellent, as was the whole sea bass (I felt I needed something just a touch lighter than incessant pork and red meat), and I think the whole meal with the full bottle of wine came out to 58 euro. I think it was during this meal that my fiancée began suggesting another “quick trip back” next month. “We can just come for a few nights and eat in places like this!”

We closed the night as we had every other, with drinks on the sidewalk at Café Le Brebant, which faced out on to the corner of the main strip, Poissonniere Blvd., constantly serving us a nice hybrid of the authentic Paris experience with familiar comfort of New York. Also, constantly serving us lovely wines until the early morning hours, though I always closed with a nice, cold IPA in a chilled glass, as I now suffer from alcoholism. The servers were still mostly God-awful and we always had to walk over to place orders, but they were all pleasant and we rationalized it was worth it to be absolved of gratuity.

The next day we took the train seven hours to Nice. It should have been six but Mercury was retrograde and shit was fucked. Nice was OK. Glad we did it – would never do it again. It’s a beach town, which in spite of its historically fancy reputation means the same thing it does anywhere in the world: More plastic surgery, less culture and nuance. Saw some boobs on the beach, but as is customarily the case, none of the boobs you wish to.

The water was beautiful but the rocks were painful and expensive. We had to buy special mats and shoes in order for the beach experience to be at all relaxing and I highly doubt I’ll ever use either again. From now on I’m sand exclusive.

We saw a great band one night, coincidentally named Bofinger, and had one amazing meal at Terres de Truffes, which translates as Truffle Land where they (predictably) put truffles on everything! White truffles over burrata cheese and sundried tomatoes as a “caprese,” summer truffles on the lamb confit and black truffles littered across the porcini mushroom ravioli! We downed a bottle of our new fave, the Margaux, and finished with the crème brulee with truffle infused caramel drizzle. It was fucked. Up.Suddenly we suspected maybe there was reason to come back to Nice after all. That was until my fiancée searched and found the spot had another location in Paris. So like, why ever go to Miami for a restaurant that exists in NYC?

To exhaust a cliché, we loved Paris. Who wouldn’t? Who doesn’t? I’ve literally never heard a negative report. It’s like New York but with its own twist and flare, and without our recently vampired cultural extraction by transplants only to be replaced with the vapidity of chain stores and pharmacies that once were implicitly prohibited from the once greatest city in the world.

It took me a full week to recover from the neurological storm of jet lag and alcohol withdrawal, though having to spend double the price for half the quality wine eventually ensured my sobriety. Sadly the same can be said for our food quality… even in New York! It’s an awful shame the farming practices our government permits in this country, and in my opinion reason enough to kneel for the Star Spangled Banner should you feel indifferent around the racial issues. Never say never, though I still doubt I could ever make a home across the pond, as I just don’t think anywhere in the world can offer the vibe of New York, nor our diversity. It’s possible that Paris and many other cities may come close in cultural diversity, though never in variety of style, subcultures and psychology. This was my one critique from an admittedly brief first visit – that Paris appears a bit more of a one-trick pony than NYC. In fairness, where doesn’t? They probably do their one trick better than anywhere in the world but it’s just not New York. The weekend after I came home I went out to dinner at Kyklades Greek restaurant in Astoria, then took the train uptown to the EPMD concert in the park in the South Bronx, where my boy, Ed and I were two of seven white people of the 800-1000 there. We watched the legends and devoured some dope, authentic Jamaican food for 8 euro (J/K, it was $10). Afterwards we got drunk at a bar by Yankee Stadium and watched the Yanks beat Boston. The next morning my fiancée and I had the best bagels, lox and cream cheese in town at the Upper West Side institution, Barney Greengrass. Our city is dirtier, as is our food. Our leader is dumber, our drinks are pricier. Still it’s always nice to come home.

#paris #france #nice #americans #newyorkers #tourism #travel blog

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xtruss · 3 years

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Nelsy Niño of Colombia’s Instituto Humboldt held a pair of Lafresnaye’s piculets, tiny tropical woodpeckers. Biological collections are part of a nation’s heritage, she says, and likens them to a public library.

Searching for Bird Life in a Former ‘Ocean of Forest’

A century after museum collectors surveyed Colombia’s avian fauna, a new generation of researchers returns to see what remains, and what has changed.

— By Jennie Erin Smith

— Photographs by Federico Rios | August 31, 2021

FLORENCIA, Colombia — In June 1912, Leo Miller, a collector with the American Museum of Natural History, arrived in the Caquetá region of Colombia, where the eastern foothills of the Andes melt into the forested lowlands of the Amazon basin.

Miller was working for Frank Chapman, the celebrated curator of birds at the museum. Chapman suspected that Colombia’s wildly varied topography had given rise to an unusual density of species, and sent collectors like Miller to bring him birds from all corners of the country to study.

Miller set up camp on a farmstead called La Morelia, surrounded by what he described to his mentor as “a perfect ocean of forest stretching out ahead as far as the eye can see.” There, he and his Colombian assistants worked day and night, beleaguered by rain, malaria and insects. By the end of July, they had collected more than 800 birds for Chapman, who was thrilled.

On a morning in early August, a century and nine years after Miller loaded his specimens onto river rafts and commenced his return to New York, a group of researchers tramped through muddy fields to their base camp, a ranch in a rural outpost of the city of Florencia.

The team, led by Andrés Cuervo, an ornithologist at Universidad Nacional in Bogotá, has organized six expeditions across Colombia, collecting birds and data for comparison with Chapman’s; this was the fifth. The undertaking, called Alas, Cantos y Colores — Wings, Songs and Colors — is financed by the Colombian government, with the participation of research institutions in Colombia and the United States. Studies of species from the same place over long periods of time are rare in science, and this resurvey project stands to speak volumes about how tropical birds have responded to changes in land use and climate.

A lot has changed in this part of Caquetá since 1912. For one, the “ocean of forest” has been reduced, after decades of expanded cattle grazing, to mere islands in a sea of pasture. Before arriving, the researchers had pored through satellite images in the hope of finding a forest big enough to sustain the kind of bird life they sought. A patch adjacent to the farm was the best they could do.

This group comprised 10 Colombian biologists and one American. Half were women, most were in their 20s and 30s, and several lived and worked in the Caquetá region. Importantly, the specimens they collected would not leave Colombia. Instead, they would be deposited in the public natural history collections of the Universidad Nacional. Ornithologists like Dr. Cuervo had spent much of their careers studying their own country’s birds in foreign museums. The young scientists on this trip, Dr. Cuervo hoped, would not have to.

Shades of Green

Dr. Cuervo, Ms. Soto and biologists Jessica Díaz and Andrea Morales Rozo check the nets. Mist nets were opened at dawn, checked every 30 minutes until dusk and rolled up at night to avoid catching bats.

The farm’s owners, the Alvira family, had sent their horses into the pasture and allowed the scientists to turn the stable into a lab. Plastic card tables held syringes, vials, glass slides, rulers, scalpels and a lot of forms and lists.

On the packed-earth floor sat a cooler with dry ice and a canister full of liquid nitrogen, which is needed to flash-freeze tissues for genetic studies. The supplies had arrived by tractor early that morning as the team made its hourlong hike from a nearby village. During the group’s previous expedition to a highland forest in southern Colombia, the nitrogen had tumbled off the back of a mule that slipped on the trail, but was saved before it could spill.

Outside in the forest, the team strung hundreds of feet of mist nets — loose, wispy netting that causes birds to become trapped in its pockets — as howler monkeys groaned from unseen perches. At two o’clock, Juliana Soto, a biologist with the Instituto Humboldt in Colombia, carried in the expedition’s first bird, labeled MOR-001 — MOR for Morelia — in a cotton bag hooked to a cord around her neck.

It was a male striolated manakin, with a little green puff of a body and a proud red crest. In Colombia, people tend to call this family of birds saltarines, or jumpers, for the way that males gather and hop from branch to branch to impress an audience of females.

In 1912, preparing birds for scientific study was a simpler process. Birds were shot in the field, with many never recovered. Soft tissues were discarded, and only skeletons and skins were conserved. Each body was dried, filled with cotton and tagged with information on who had collected the bird and the location and altitude of its capture.

The technical and ethical demands of modern science require that greater care be taken with each specimen. A few on this team were veteran ornithologists; others were students, volunteers and newly minted professionals still mastering the challenges of fieldwork. The more experienced members helped the rest.

Andrea Morales Rozo, who teaches biology at the Universidad de los Llanos in central Colombia, guided the team at the nets, from which she skillfully extricated birds unharmed. Ms. Morales Rozo has been studying the blackpoll warbler, a species that migrates between the Amazon and Canada; she was part of a group that recently compared museum specimens and field-caught birds and learned that the warbler’s northward range had shifted by nearly 400 miles in 45 years.

Dr. Cuervo, the expedition leader, offered calm, fatherly support to those at the processing table. It’s not always obvious how best to describe a bird’s colors, for example, and second opinions were often requested. Was a wing “verde café,” greenish brown? Or was it “verde olivazo,” olive green? Was a female bird’s brood patch, the bare skin that warms the eggs, still smooth or becoming wrinkly?

MOR-001 struggled in Ms. Soto’s hand as she passed it to her colleague, Jessica Díaz, a field biologist hired for the expeditions. The bird was photographed and logged. Ms. Díaz labored to extract a tiny amount of blood from its jugular vein with a syringe, expressing the drops into a vial of alcohol. She then prepared herself to euthanize it with rapid cardiac compression, using fingers to apply firm pressure over the bird’s heart. With this technique, small birds pass out within seconds and die in about half a minute. Large birds are anesthetized.

Ms. Díaz held MOR-001 under the table so as not to have to watch; her colleagues did the same whenever their turn came to sacrifice a bird. “This is the not-fun part,” she said, softly.

A few in the group, including Ms. Soto, avoid sacrificing birds, although they believe in the necessity of scientific collecting and participate in the process. “I think it’s hard on all of us,” said Ms. Soto, whose high, mellifluous voice gave her a certain birdlike aura. “But it’s really hard on me. It just stabs me through the heart.” On this expedition, Ms. Soto assumed other jobs on the assembly line: cutting samples of pectoral muscle to drop into liquid nitrogen, calling out colors of beaks and feathers, gingerly tagging a leg.

Each bird was wrapped tightly in plastic and placed on dry ice to await the next, more complex stages of dissection and preservation, which would occur at the university lab. By the time MOR-001 was in the cooler, swathed like a miniature mummy, several more bags wriggled on a wire above the table, and the heat of the afternoon was breaking.

And No Antbirds Called

Ms. Niño, Ms. Soto and Eliecer Díaz, a rancher and member of the Alvira family, in the stable-turned-laboratory.

For long stretches of the next day, few birds came in. The researchers weren’t used to this; normally, they would be too busy to even eat. “Miller said in no location in Colombia did he do so well,” Ms. Soto lamented after one fruitless return from the nets.

A century earlier, Miller had brought back from this site a dozen varieties of antbirds, a family of insect-eating species that need the refuge of the darkness of thick tropical undergrowth.

Most people associate the Amazon region with showy macaws and toucans, but to an ornithologist, the diverse antbirds are among its main draws. In a large, uninterrupted tract of forest, “you get overwhelmed by antbirds, by many species calling at the same time,” Dr. Cuervo said.

But antbirds avoid sunlight. With the forest so exposed, and with so much light now reaching the forest floor, the team wondered whether they could capture any antbirds at all.

Before Dr. Cuervo and the rest of the group arrived, a small advance team had spent days conducting censuses of birds and bird song to better understand the composition of the local forest community. They heard no antbirds. They did hear the buzz of a chain saw.

Census data is an important component of these expeditions, complementing data gleaned from the specimens. Last year, a group of Colombian ecologists successfully compared census data from one forest with Chapman’s specimens, and concluded that the composition of bird life had drastically changed over 100 years. In a forest that once favored specialized species, the all-purpose generalists now dominated.

“But if you’re asking what has changed within a species, you need the actual bird,” said Glenn Seeholzer, a research associate with the American Museum of Natural History who is part of the Colombia team. Species are not static; nor are bodies, behaviors or genes. Beaks grow or shrink over generations; feathers change in color or luster in response to different selective pressures. On a genetic level, the changes can be profound, revealing reduced or expanded diversity, an indicator of a population’s ability to adapt to changing environments.

Scientists are now able to extract some genetic material from old bird specimens by scraping the pads of the toes. By comparing data from birds collected on this trip with Chapman’s, “we will be able to see how the genetic variation has shifted,” Dr. Seeholzer said. “There are very few data sets for wild populations of birds that you could ask or answer these questions with.” Once this series of expeditions is complete, at the year’s end, the collections in both Bogotá and New York “will be much more valuable than the sum of their parts,” he said.

A Wealth of Wings

Residents of Roncesvalles, a rural outpost of Florencia, Caquetá, at a meeting with the scientists. Many families in the region were resettled here by Colombia’s government after being displaced from their prior lands by armed groups.

The researchers conduct careful advance work that begins months before each expedition. This one required even more tact than usual. In this ranching community, Ms. Díaz and two colleagues had knocked on the doors of nearly 100 families, many of them resettled here by the government after being displaced by armed groups. “People were sensitive about us coming onto their land,” she said. “Their land is all they have.”

Another delicate task involves explaining why and how they take birds, which the researchers try to do in as frank a manner as possible. Nelsy Niño, a researcher at the Instituto Humboldt who designs outreach for the expeditions, uses the analogy of a public library when talking to communities or groups of young people. Biological collections are part of the nation’s heritage, knowledge that will be available for all Colombians for generations to come, she explains. “We also talk about collecting as taking a picture,” she said. “A specimen is like a photograph we took of an individual in a specific time and space.”

Ms. Niño and her team return some weeks after each collecting trip to report on their findings and hold workshops, part of an effort to increase interest in bird conservation and bird tourism in the countryside. In recent years, Colombia has promoted itself as the most bird-rich country in the world, but not all of its regions are equally poised to benefit.

Caquetá has been hard hit by deforestation. The region has lost 8.5 percent of its tree cover since 2000, according to Global Forest Watch. Land speculation and cattle grazing, along with waves of resettlement and colonization, have all contributed.

Two members of the expedition, Mauricio Cuéllar and Xiomara Capera Espinosa, both work as birding guides and hope to build interest in the region’s fauna. Here on these farming plots, it was up to families like the Alviras to decide whether to save remnant forests for the sake of their bird life, which they valued. Off and on during this trip, as the rest of the team sat hunched over the processing table, Ms. Niño gently coached the youngest member of that family, the 6-year-old Daniel Díaz Alvira, in bird identification using a guide.

‘A Story of Our Birds’

At the mist nets. From left: Dr. Cuervo; Mauricio Cuéllar, a biologist and birding guide in Caquetá; Ms. Díaz and Daniel Díaz.

Most of the team had read Chapman’s and Miller’s writings about Colombia. Chapman’s 1917 book, “The Distribution of Bird-Life in Colombia,” has been an especially important reference for the country’s ornithologists, virtually all of whom have participated in the resurvey project in some form or another. The roots of the effort date back to 1994, when the ornithologist Gustavo Kattan first used Chapman’s data to show that certain species had disappeared from a forest near Cali.

Dr. Cuervo, who studies the evolution of Neotropical birds, called Chapman’s work “inspirational.” Chapman “laid out a number of ideas that we can now test with modern tools,” he said. “It’s a story of our birds, a history and pattern that you want to understand.”

But it was not lost on this team that both Chapman and Miller expressed racist views. In their books, Black and Indigenous people are disparaged. They seldom named the Colombians who helped them find, collect and prepare their birds, content to label them “unskilled native assistance,” “peons” or worse.

The expeditions straddle an awkward line, being at once a tribute to Chapman’s work and a conscious departure from scientific practices and attitudes that have come to be labeled “colonial,” or at the very least unequal. Even into the current century, scientists in tropical countries have tended to be seen as “the ones that will deal with the permits, the ones who know how to get to the place, and that’s it,” Dr. Cuervo said.

Dr. Cuervo stressed that he did not view this group’s work as a repudiation of their predecessors. “It would be easy to point out all their defects,” he said. “They were writing in their time. In our time, we’re creating a more participatory science, a more global science, with our own diversity and our own tools.”

“We’re not trying to create high-quality bird collections for the sake of accumulation, or out of nationalism,” he added. “We’re doing this because we need this.”

After several days at the Alvira farm, the team changed sites, striking a camp near a more promising patch of forest. Stands of rare palms and bamboo survived in this remnant, which bordered a wide, sandy river. The site was even closer to the old La Morelia estate, and on it they did better.

By the end of their time in Caquetá, they had collected some 400 birds representing more than 100 species. Ten were what they called focal species, which could be compared, morphologically and genetically, with birds in the Chapman collection.

These included wedge-billed woodcreepers, which use their curved tail feathers to anchor themselves to tree trunks; silver-beaked tanagers, whose brilliant white lower bills earned them the nickname come-queso, or cheese-eater, in Spanish. There were scarlet-crowned barbets — small fruit-eating birds related to toucans — and yellow-browed sparrows, an edge-dwelling species that seemed as poised as any to thrive in a new world of micro-forests surrounded by grasslands.

Most of these were common, widely distributed species, Dr. Cuervo noted, and no more than a dozen of each had been taken, meaning that on a population level the collecting was of little consequence. “We don’t deny that there is an impact to the individual bird,” he said. “We remove it. But what we put in the balance is what we can learn.”

It appeared — although the hard work to quantify this had yet to begin — that at least some of the bird life present in 1912 was still hanging on, even in vastly diminished habitats.

But many bird families were missing, among them the antbirds. The group left with just three, of a single species.

— The New York Times

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3monthsineurope · 3 years

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July 27, 2021

On Tuesday, Catherine and I slept in until 10 or so, again. We had heard Chalula bark only a few times, when Nicole was getting her set up in the kitchen, and when they both left for work. Catherine and I were able to keep sleeping, which was nice. We came out into the kitchen and living room and poor Chalula was scared. Catherine went into her closed off area in the kitchen and got her to warm up to us. She peed because she was scared. Poor puppy. She was in a new place and she didn’t know us really at all. But, once she was out of her crate, she was ready to be friendly and not scared. We took her outside and she peed. Catherine so nicely cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, and I started making breakfast. We had bagels with cream cheese again, and scrambled eggs. And coffee, of course!

We played with Chalula and took her out, then got ready for our day. We bought tickets to the Kennedy Space Center! It was about a half hour away, on Merritt Island. We said goodbye to Chalula and hit the road! Catherine was nice enough to drive again, since she was used to Nicole’s car by now. We drove about a half hour, and then paid for parking ($10 to park, but the tickets were also about $60 each!).

It was a hot day! It was 90 degrees and very humid. We walked to the entrance and swiped our online tickets. Walking into the visitor center was pretty cool. They have replicas of rockets and shuttles all around. We walked through a somewhat strange Nature and Technology exhibit, but mostly for the air conditioning. A lot of the center was outside. We walked around the rocket replicas, and eventually found ourselves at the Atlantis Shuttle exhibit. It was actually really cool! They showed us two short movies (seven and five minutes) about the Atlantis Shuttle. It was really cool to learn about it! So much went into making that shuttle. We walked around and looked through the exhibit, and then decided we were gonna call it a day. There were a few more exhibits we could have explored, but sometimes you don’t want to do the whole museum, and that’s okay!

We walked to the gift shop and noticed the clouds were looking dark and ominous. Some of the buildings had signs telling us to find shelter immediately, in case of lightening! We spent some time in the gift shop, and it really started pouring. Of course, we didn’t bring rain jackets. We waited for about ten minutes and the rain almost completely let up. We decided to make a break for the parking lot. Thankfully, we made it to the car mostly dry.

Catherine drove us into Cocoa, where Nicole’s school is. We found a Dunkin’ Donuts and each got a coffee and donut. I like to go to Dunkin’ once a trip when I’m on the east coast. I got an iced caramel macchiato and a Boston Creme donut, which is my fave! We took our treats to Nicole’s school and waited for her to tell us what our next move was. She texted us telling to come to her classroom, so we drove through the grounds again.

Nicole’s classroom was getting painted, which was a nice upgrade. We said hi to the previous co teachers we met the day before, and then Nicole decided to sneak out a little early, at 3:45 instead of 4. On our way out of the school grounds, we stopped and got to explore the school garden. This is one of Nicole’s after school projects that she does with the kids. Cocoa is a pretty rough area, so it’s really cool that she/her school provides something like a gardening class after hours. Nicole showed us what she and her kids were growing, including: berries, pumpkins, brussel sprouts, squash, lemon, limes, even some mangrove trees they rescued. We also looked through a butterfly garden/greenhouse. The butterflies weren’t hatched yet, but I was happy to see projects that Nicole is passionate about.

Nicole drove us back to her place and we all got to spend some time with Chalula. The three of us all took turns showering, because we were having a girls night! It takes me a while to get ready, with blow drying and straightening my hair, so it was good that I went first. Oscar and Nicole took Chalula on a walk when Oscar got home from work (he’s a littoral rocket scientist, working for Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos’ space company), and then it was time for girls night! Thank you Oscar for staying home with Chalula so we could have one last night of best friend bonding!

Nicole drove us to a restaurant in Rockledge, called River Rocks. But first, we stopped at Publix to refill their drinking water. I guess Florida doesn’t have good tap water, or at least in this area. They have a dispenser in their house that will do hot or cold water, with those huge five gallon jugs hooked up to it. We sat outside, once we got the restaurant, which was a restaurant part of River Rocks, called The Dock. We were right on a river and it was so nice! The hostesses who sat us were really young, and a little blunt or rude. We sat down and took some photos, then realized it had been 20 minutes and not a single waitstaff had came to us? Nicole had even tried to get someone’s attention and was blatantly ignored. We were hungry and also thirsty! Eventually, Nicole went up to the hostess stand and asked them for some help finding our server. They clearly didn’t believe that we had been seated for 20 minutes, but we had the photos on or phone as the proof of time. Nicole looked over to the hostesses when she was back at the table and even saw then use air quotes while talking to a server. (Remember when I got bad service in Stuart, too?! Come on, Florida, hahah.)

Anyways! We got a server and she was really nice and we were really nice, of course. The hostesses probably didn’t let anyone know we were a new table. We each ordered a drink (I ordered a blackberry and elderflower gin drink), some crab and lobster dip with chips to share, and our entrees. I got a burger with mushrooms, onions, and provolone, with sweet potato fries! I was so hungry, I ate it all. Nicole got a Caesar salad with blackened shrimp, and Catherine got crab cakes with sweet potatoes and grits. We were all satisfied with our food—it was really tasty! Nicole and I each had two more drinks, so Catherine was the driver home.

Once we got home, we all got comfy and hung out with Oscar and Chalula for a bit. We watched the rest of Avengers: Infinity Wars and then Nicole, Oscar, and Chalula were tired and ready for bed. Oscar and Nicole wake up early every day. We said goodnight and did our nightly routines. I talked to Mom for a few minutes, then went to bed. We weren’t going to have much time with Nicole or Oscar the next day, so Catherine and I were waking up around 6:30 the next morning, so we could at least say goodbye. It was a pretty great day! :]

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lindoig1 · 6 years

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Our cruise - Part 1

At last, I can post some narrative about our small ship expedition. It was about 11 days so I will post it in a few separate posts so none are too long.

Thursday. Setting sail. Day 50

Our expedition cruise started today, but boarding was not until 4pm so we took our time getting organised. A late breakfast, packed and reorganised our cases a bit, dallied a while and then walked down to the pub for lunch. It was threatening rain, but it held off and we enjoyed the walk, about 2km each way. When we returned to our friendly B&B, a French couple were just arriving so we let them in with our key. The manager was not there and after a while, they were getting a bit agitated until I found out they both needed a toilet urgently. I solved that for them by pointing out the guest toilet. I also explained the the manageress had told us that she may not be back until we were leaving and the French couple seemed happy to wait. It turned out that they arrived more than an hour earlier than expected and the manageress arrived back about the time they were expected anyway - just as our taxi arrived too.

We were on board by about 4:30 and soon settled in to our cabin, right at the front (forward) at deck level on the starboard side: an excellent position within easy reach of the bar, meals area, embarking and disembarking points and so on, but a bit noisy with the anchor and all the other machinery just outside our window. Most of the other passengers and some of the crew are Aussies so there weren’t too many new accents to cope with.

We had an introductory briefing and a lifeboat drill before dinner and set sail west out of Oban. We had an excellent dinner (all the meals have been great and more than we could eat - but we did anyway) and then a briefing about Iona where we were headed next day.

We all spent time on deck and on the bridge, taking photos of Scotland and birds and were tucked up safely in our narrow little bunks by 11pm with the evening light still streaming in our windows.

Friday. Iona. Day 51

Up at 6:30, only 3 hours too late to see a magnificent dawn. Feasted on breakfast (how do they get the bacon so crisp and delicious?) and got togged up ready for out zodiac trip to Iona. It is 11 degrees outside, but by the time we get rigged out with waterproof everythings, including gumboots, hat and cosy life jacket, we are sweating something fierce. Then we go out on deck and it is cold with a freezing breeze despite the sunshine and we are glad of the extra several layers of clothing, especially when the spindrift catches us as the zodiacs skim the salty water. Despite the warnings, it was a dry landing, and we dump our life jackets in the bag provided and within a few minutes, we are sweating again from exertion as we climb the inevitable hills to wherever we go. This is the pattern every day and despite how clever we try to be, we always seem to be a little too cool or a lot too hot once we are out on the Scottish moors or mountains.

Interesting about the wet landings. They warned us nearly every time we were to go anywhere that it would probably be a wet landing and reboarding of the zodiacs, but I think there were only two landings and one boarding when our gumboots saved us getting wet feet.

Every day, there are planned excursions, mainly to prehistoric or Neolithic sites, but mostly, I just wandered off on my own or with the shipboard naturalist, Heidi, and sometimes a few other foolhardy expeditioners looking for birds, hiking the wilds or simply looking for interesting things to photograph.

We had two or three zodiac excursions each day, usually to land somewhere and enjoy time ashore, but a few times, just for some sensational cruising along the coast. A couple of times, we all stayed on board the ship and it cruised around huge bird colonies on sea stacks, massive rugged mountains of precipitous rock inhabited by tens of thousands of breeding gulls, puffins, guillemots, kittiwakes, terns, shags, skuas and fulmars, all perched precariously on ledges no more than a few centimetres wide, huddling to keep their precious eggs warm and to prevent the predators or gravity stealing the unique life inside.

There is a lot of history wherever we go and although I found a lot of it interesting, it got a bit repetitious for me and I preferred the dynamic of just roaming around looking for things to discover myself, mainly birds, instead of having a story old to me. And although I have the greatest confidence in the storyteller (Carol, our highly experienced onboard stories were often just someone’s educated guesses about what it was people were looking at or how it was used or the possible lifestyle it indicated. It was by no means fanciful, at least most of the time, but nor was it often conclusively convincing to me.. in my complete ignorance, I could imagine scenarios (or is that scenaria?) different from those being put forward as broadly accepted by the experts.

It was birding and Iona’s Nunnery and Abbey in the morning (I hiked the 3 and a bit kilometres to the end of the island and back, taking in some great beaches, stunning countryside and identifying 20-odd species of birds) and after lunch we were back in the zodiacs cruising some gobsmacking caves and coastline as we circumnavigated the island of Staffa. Our little craft were able to get right into some sea caves, including the famous Fingal’s Cave, a veritable cathedral. Thousands of birds were nesting from a little above eye level to the top of the towering cliffs and beyond and being so close to the majestic rock face in our tiny rubber dinghies was truly awe inspiring.

We landed on the island and climbed to a great vantage point where hundreds of cute puffins were breeding. We sat around on the grass at the top of the cliffs and they cam in by the scores settling to land within a couple of metres of us, posing for photographs. I wandered off on my own for a while and found a few more birds so persuaded Heidi to do a bird roundup in the bar for anyone interested after dinner. The total count for the whole expedition to date was 34, of which I had seen 32. A really great start to our trip.

Saturday. Skye. Day 52

We landed on Skye and walked and climbed a few clicks along a largish loch and explored the hillsides. It was all just a casual if energetic stroll in a wonderfully pristine environment. Returning to the zodiacs, I stabbed my thumb on some rusty wire on the ‘safety rail’ and had to visit the ship’s doctor. A minor injury, but it got infected and is now only nearly healed 3 weeks later. It did mean that there. Were a lot of things that were hard to do without putting pressure on it.

We visited a smaller loch after lunch that had been an old Viking settlement and some explored the ruins while others, including me, walked right around the loch and up into the surrounding hills just looking to see what there was to see. I roamed far and wide, mainly on my own, and had a wonderful time.

The ship’s crew are part of a campaign to clean up a lot of the rubbish on the islands so they recruited everyone to collect rubbish and they loaded a truckful back onto the ship to be disposed of in Aberdeen. The island has a history of occupation going back over 2000 years so it was good to free it of some of the recent crap accumulated by 20th and 21st century visitors and storms.

I think that only Heidi and me were really keen birders although there were other who were interested and a little knowledgeable. In the main though, I think they wanted us to find the birds for them and pose them so they could take photos.

I had a sore eye and it turned out be a stye. I used to get a lot when I was young, but haven’t had one in 40 years until Istanbul and then on the cruise. I saw the doctor again and he gave me some antiseptic cream for both eyes and they are now pretty good again. A mystery why they erupted so close together after so many year without them.

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latetothegreysparty · 6 years

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Recertification Part 2

Here is the part 2 to Recertification that the wonderful @owenandameliaforever requested. It’s a short little one that’s just my usual brand of silliness.

Recertification Part 2

“Good morning, Richard, what can I do for you?” Amelia asked as she stepped into Richard Webber’s office. He had paged her and told her he needed her to stop by as soon as she was available. As she glanced around his office, she was surprised to see Owen Hunt siting across the desk from Webber.

“Hello, Dr. Shepherd,” Richard began. “It has come to my attention that you and Dr. Hunt attended the same basic life support recertification class yesterday. It seems that an incident occurred that ended in Dr. Hunt being removed from the class. Would you like to give me your take on what happened?”

Amelia widened her eyes, by now well-practiced at putting on an innocent face. “Oh, I hope you’re not too upset with Dr. Hunt,” she began, throwing a sweet smile in Owen’s direction. “I’m sure he really meant nothing by it. He just got a bit too playful during the class, and the instructor interpreted it as harassment. I assure you that I wasn’t offended, though. I know how he gets sometimes.”

She glanced back at Webber, fully expecting him to dismiss her at this point, but she was surprised to see an unamused glare on his face. “Oh, so then you don’t recall pinning him to the wall by his shirt collar or climbing on top of him while practicing hand placement? None of that sounds familiar?”

Amelia’s jaw fell open as she turned to glare at Owen. “Really?” she said loudly, her voice going up a couple octaves. “You tattled on me? Are you five years old?!”

Owen chuckled. “Says the woman who dry humped me at a CPR class. Are you a hormonal fifteen year-old boy?”

Webber decided it would be best to interrupt the argument before they really got going. “It seems pretty clear that both of you are severely lacking in maturity. I expect far better behavior than this from the heads of departments at this hospital. If you two insist on behaving as if you are undeserving of your titles, then I will treat you as if you are undeserving of your titles. We have a group of high school students arriving in 30 minutes for a CPR and basic first aid class. You two will be teaching it. You damned well better behave yourselves or I will tell Bailey to suspend the both of you.”

At this, both Amelia and Owen’s mouths hung open. They stared for a second, before recovering and gathering themselves. Amelia was about to say something in response, but Webber cut her off. “You’d better get down to the classroom or you’ll be late. I don’t want to hear any complaints. Now get out of my office.”

Both doctors found that their feet were moving before they even realized it. As they stepped out of Webber’s office and began to walk down the hall together, Amelia once again turned to glare at Owen. “This is all your fault,” she hissed.

“My fault?” he asked incredulously. “You’re the one who was acting like a rebellious teenager for the entirety of the course. You’re the one who got me kicked out. You should just be thankful I’m willing to teach this class with you.”

Amelia laughed. “Oh yeah, I’m super thankful. Because you definitely had a choice in the matter.”

Owen let out an exasperated sigh. “Let’s just get this stupid thing over with so we can both keep our jobs. Could you please try to act like an adult for the next few hours?” Amelia said nothing as she stepped around him and walked into the classroom.

Once they’d entered the classroom and surveyed the area, Owen quickly found the lesson plan and began to read it so that he could formulate a plan for how this would work. Once he’d finish reading, he turned to discuss it with Amelia. “So how do you want to do this?” he asked, handing her the lesson plan. Just as she looked down to begin reading, 20 teenagers began to file into the room.

“I guess we’re figuring it out as we go,” she replied, tossing the lesson plan onto the desk and turning to face the high schoolers.

20 minutes later, after introductions had been made and the basic outline of the class had been explained, Owen was talking to the kids about how to assess a medical emergency and decide how to proceed. Amelia had to admit that it wasn’t the most fascinating thing she had ever heard. She might have fallen asleep if she hadn’t been so concerned that it would get her suspended. However, that didn’t mean that she intended to put up with the giggling teenage girls in the back row.

The two girls had spent the last 5 minutes sneaking decidedly unsubtle glances at Owen, turning to whisper to each other, and bursting into quiet fits of giggles. Amelia decided that enough was enough. “Ladies,” she called from across the room. Two pairs of eyes snapped up and met hers. “Could you please focus your attention on the topic at hand and stop giggling about how great Dr. Hunt looks in his scrubs?” Immediately, both girls looked down at the table in front of them, faces flushing furiously. As Amelia turned her attention to Owen, she saw that he also had a healthy blush going. She smirked a bit. He always had been easy to fluster.

“Um, alright, well I guess we should probably move onto learning how to do chest compressions,” Owen said, stumbling over his words. He quickly busied himself with passing out CPR dummies to the students. Amelia couldn’t help but giggle from her place in the corner. The high school students might not have been paying much attention, but she could tell what was going on. He always acted like this when he got flustered or embarrassed. He would always run around like a hyper puppy, struggling to find tasks to complete and ways to keep himself occupied in order to distract himself from his discomfort.

By now, he had passed out all the dummies, but it seemed that he still hadn’t gotten the residual discomfort out of his system. “Dr. Shepherd,” he called. “Why don’t you continue with the next part of the lesson?”

Amelia smiled and nodded as she took her place at the front of the room. “Alright, folks, let’s learn how to do chest compressions. First, I’m going to help you find where you should place your hands when you do them. Everybody take both hands and place them on the bottom of your ribcage,” she said, demonstrating on her own body and waiting for the high schoolers to comply. “Great, now walk your fingers along that bottom rib until they meet in the middle. This is called your xiphoid process. Now hold two fingers together and place them on your sternum so that the bottom finger touches your xiphoid process. Right above your two fingers is where your hands will go when performing chest compressions.”

As Amelia finished speaking, she noticed that a couple of boys in the front row were staring conspicuously at where her two fingers rested and leering. She rolled her eyes. “Yes, gentleman, I do in fact have breasts,” she said slowly. At this, every head in the room snapped up to watch Amelia. Some of the kids had been bored and looking around, but now all eyes were on her, including the wide eyes of Owen Hunt.

“Now that we’ve established that I’m woman, may I continue with the lesson?” She turned to look pointedly at the two boys who had been gawking. When neither said anything, she raised an eyebrow and said, “Excuse me gentleman, do your voices not work? I expect an answer.”

After hearing two uncomfortable teens mutter a quiet, “Yes, doctor,” Amelia continued with the lesson. For the next part, she squatted on the ground next to one of the dummies. “Next I’m going to show you how to do this properly. You want to have your non-dominant hand on the bottom and your dominant hand on top. Interlace the fingers of your dominant hand with those on your non-dominant hand. When you push, you want to lock your elbows and use leverage to generate the force, not your arm strength. In an adult person, push at least two inches deep in order to make sure you’re actually compressing the heart. You need to go at a rate of 100 compressions per minute, but we have an audio clip to help you keep time when you guys start practicing. Here, I’ll show you what it looks like.” As she stopped speaking, she placed her hands on top of the dummy and began to compress the chest. After several compressions, she glanced up to look out at the class. What she saw made her roll her eyes.

One of the boys who had previously been leering at her was now staring rather obviously down her shirt. Amelia stood up from her place by the dummy and walked over to the boy. “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice strong and authoritative.

“Um, Johnny,” the kid responded quietly, quickly getting the idea that he was not going to like the interaction that was about to take place.

“Well, Johnny, you should know that people aren’t allowed to look down my shirt until they’ve at least taken me to dinner. Have we been to dinner, Johnny?”

At this point, the kid was shifting in his chair and looking anywhere but in Amelia’s direction. “Um, no, ma’am,” he stuttered.

“Alright then, I guess that means there will be no more ogling today, right?” Johnny said nothing, choosing to merely nod his head as he continued to avoid eye contact. His friend beside him, however, was not nearly as uncomfortable as Johnny. He was smirking at Johnny and laughing, clearly amused at his friend’s discomfort.

Amelia walked around the table to address the laughing teen. “And your name is?”

The boy made eye contact with her and continued to laugh as he responded. “My name is Logan, Dr. Shepherd,” he said confidently.

Amelia was not impressed. “Well, Logan, I’m glad you find this funny,” she began. “I think you’ll find it less funny, though, when I get fed up with your smart-ass attitude and have you doing sets of compressions and rescue breaths until you pass out from the hyperventilation.” Suddenly, Logan was no longer smirking. “Does anybody else have any insightful opinions to add?” She was met with wide-eyed stares from all 20 teens. “Okay, great. Then let’s get started practicing those compressions.”

Amelia walked back to the desk in the corner of the room, huffing as she did so. Webber knew what he was doing when he assigned this as a punishment. There really was nothing quite like a smart-mouthed teenager. She’d consider it a success if she didn’t receive any complaints from whatever high school these kids attended.

As Amelia continued to ponder how annoying teenagers were, she saw a smiling Owen approach her. He waited until he was about a foot away from her to whisper, “You know, you’re really hot when you’re bossy.”

Amelia rolled her eyes. “If you think this is hot then I’ll be a damn centerfold model if any of these kids decides to get sassy again. I don’t have patience for this kind of shit.”

Owen chuckled. “Keep your clothes on, Shepherd. You’re in enough trouble with Webber as it is. The last thing you need is one of these kid’s parents calling to complain about the doctor who threatened their child with cruel and unusual punishment.”

Amelia glared back at him. He said that like he wasn’t in just as much trouble with Webber as she was. She opened her mouth to respond, but he was already cutting her off as he turned to walk away. “Oh, and Amelia?” he said, smirking as he did. “I’ve taken you out to dinner and more many times, so I’m sure you have no problem with this.” As he finished speaking he dropped his head to stare quite noticeably down the V in her scrub top before turning on his heel and walking away. For the first time since they’d walked in the room, Owen was chuckling to himself, and Amelia was standing alone in the corner, blushing scarlet and fidgeting to deal with the way he’d flustered her.

#omelia #omeliafanfic #omeliafic #amelia shepherd #owen hunt #grey's anatomy #greys anatomy

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travelingtheusa · 4 years

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KENTUCKY

2020 Oct 8 (Thu) – We spent the day in the campground. We drove over to the laundry room and did the wash. Paul tried playing with his drone but it was acting up. He’ll have to look at that. I spent the afternoon looking at attractions in Pigeon Forge for our next stop. We move to Tennessee tomorrow where we will meet up with other SMART members for a non-muster.

2020 Oct 7 (Wed) – We sat around the campground this morning and gave the animals a chance to play outside. At 10:30 a.m., we left for Cumberland Falls State Resort Park in Daniel Boone National Forest. Within the park is Cumberland Falls. Rarely, an event that takes place there only occurs in the Western Hemisphere once in a while. It’s called a moonbow. We see rainbows all the time. All you need is sunlight and water droplets in the air. This happens very frequently after rainstorms. Rainbows occur at the base of waterfalls a lot. A moonbow is when the conditions are right at nighttime. Rather than sunshine, it is moonshine reflecting on the water. It’s supposed to be very beautiful to see and open happens when the conditions are just right with a full moon and no clouds.

After we hiked along the falls and river, we drove to the lodge for lunch. The food was very good.

2020 Oct 6 (Tue) – We packed up and left Dry Ridge at 9:35 a.m. The weather was good and the drive was easy. We arrived in three and a half hours at Laurel Lake Camping Resort in Corbin. After the crowded environment with the constant noise, this campground is heavenly. It is maybe one-quarter full with lots of space with all the empty sites. It is a very long, spread out campground with trees and a lake.

We drove into town to the Harland Sanders Café and Museum. It is supposed to be the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant Colonel Sanders opened (before he became known as Colonel Sanders) with a small museum attached to it. The café and museum were closed for renovations; the drive-through was open for take-out. We didn’t want that so we drove back into town to look for a restaurant. The Depot on Main was a bar and café. Paul had a pasta dish and I had their special - Hawaiian Chicken. Our waitress had such a heavy accent, we could only understand about every third word. She was new and slow. I left the restaurant annoyed.

After we finished our meal, we walked down to Sanders Park. There was a small area with a life size statue of Harland Sanders with plaques and bricks honoring donors. Storyboards told the story of Sanders rise to prominence. He had quite a storied life with lots of failures before his chicken franchise made him a millionaire.

2020 Oct 5 (Mon) – We went out to lunch to Beans Café. The food was excellent. Paul had a hot ham and cheese with potato soup. I had a hot turkey melt with bean and ham soup. After lunch, we went to the post office so I could mail off the letter I wrote for the American Legion fund raiser. I called a bus tour company today to complete reservations for our caravan next year. The agent I had spoken with before is working from home so the office had to take the message, then call her, and then she called me. She took all the information and promised to send me an email with the final price quote.

2020 Oct 4 (Sun) – We went food shopping this afternoon. It was hard to find a restaurant for lunch. We finally went to the Waffle House and had breakfast for lunch. The food was good. Afterward, we went food shopping at Kroeger. The store was big. Next door, Kroeger had a liquor store and we stopped there next to get wine and booze. After putting the groceries in our portable cooler, we drove to a winery and did a tasting. It was on the high side - $8 for a flight of 3 wines, $8 each for a glass of wine, and $28 for a bottle of wine to take home.

I called the commander of Rusy Bohm Post back home. They are running a fund-raiser that I just happened to come across on Facebook. I offered to write a letter for him to send out to the membership. He agreed and I spent the afternoon composing a letter. I will send it out to him tomorrow.

2020 Oct 3 (Sat) – I finally got through to the Niagara Falls campground only to find they have raised their rates. We budgeted $113 a night and they said it would be $117.50 – and that’s with a military discount! That’s just too much. So I called a state campground about 15 miles away. They have available sites but we have to make the reservations through Reserve America. The clerk at that site had to make the reservations in groups of 6. They also require the name and phone number of each individual. We have 20 people signed up so far with 2 more spaces available. So I gave the names and numbers of those folks who have signed up for the caravan to date, then gave 2 fake names. We’ll see that goes. As a result, we will save almost $7,000. With that kind of savings, we can hire a bus to take the group to Niagara Falls.

We drove to Williamstown to The Ark Encounter this afternoon. We got $10 off the admission price as senior citizens. In addition, the price included a free dinner, which cost $15 each. It was a pretty good deal. The ark was huge! It is the largest wooden timber structure in the world. It was built to show what the ark was like. There were 3 stories with lots of plaques to read. There were cages with mock animals in them. Most of the animals were extinct as they imagined those were the types of animals they would have had back then. The place was packed! We couldn’t believe all the people who were there. Almost everyone wore a mask in the ark but less than half wore one outside.

2020 Oct 2 (Fri) – We packed up and left Olive Hill at 9:40 a.m. We were third in line for the dump station (a short stop before hitting the road). The drive was pleasant. The weather was good. We arrived at the Northern Kentucky RV Park in Dry Ridge at 1 p.m. This used to be a KOA campground. It is old and heavily treed. The sites are too close together and very uneven. The campground is between a train track and the interstate. There is constant noise. I don’t think we would come back to this place. The wifi is good. We have full hook ups. The pool has been closed for a couple of years. There is a lake with some paddle boats on the shore but they don’t look like they’ve been used for a while.

2020 Oct 1 (Thu) – A transformer blew in the campground this morning so Paul took me out for breakfast. That turned out to be quite an adventure. All the restaurants in Olive Hill (of which there are few) were closed. A donut shop was open but we didn’t like the choices so we drove 20 miles over to the next town to have a meal at Biscuit World. The biscuits were large and flaky – delicious! The rest of the meal was not so good but it did what it was supposed to.

We returned to campground and did the laundry. During a walk this afternoon, Paul stumbled on a site with wood targets where people can throw their knives. He came back to get me and I gathered up my throwing knife set then we went to the site and threw knives at the targets for 15 or 20 minutes. It was fun and very challenging. Afterward, we walked over to the horse stables and fed 3 horses and 2 donkeys some apples.

The campground has been steadily filling up with RVs and tenters coming in. It looks like they will be full this weekend. The maintenance in this campground is minimal. They put papers at each campsite with the name and dates when the site is reserved. Many sites have dates that have passed but the papers are still at the sites. Some sites have garbage piled in the fire pit. I don’t know if the staff is just lazy or if they are operating with minimal staff.

2020 Sep 30 (Wed) – We took a tour of the Cascade Cave this morning. It is a living cave with lots of water activity. That made it kind of exciting. We had to go out of the cave and back in another entrance twice to see everything. There were parts of the wall that had been bricked up by the cave’s owners to prevent unauthorized entry. We enjoyed both cave tours (yesterday and today) very much.

2020 Sep 29 (Tue) – We took a tour of X Cave today. It was a very interesting cave in that it had two rivers running alongside each other, separated by a cave wall. Over time, the wall collapsed and became one cave making an X-intersection with 4 passageways. The cave is still an active one.

I have heard the term “Caveland” used around here. I don’t know if it refers to this area or to the entire state itself. There are over 200 caves in Kentucky; 25 in Carter Caves State Park alone. Only 4 caves are open to exploration over the year – 2 are closed right now because of the hibernating bats.

We had lunch at the lodge. The park is old and all the buildings and facilities show that. The lodge is typical – made of dark wood and beams. The waitress was very slow although we told her we were in a hurry. We ordered vegetable soup and grilled cheese. We got something more like chili with lots of meat in it and the cheese sandwich was barely toasted. I didn’t even eat my sandwich.

We drove into town to mail off some things at the post office. We drove around the area, exploring some of the back roads. The buildings were mostly old and run down. It looked like this might have been a well-to-do area years ago but has fallen on hard times. Probably when the caves stopped being primary tourist attractions.

2020 Sep 28 (Mon) – We packed up and left Meadow Bridge, WV at 9:55 a.m. It was very foggy and overcast and we had rain on and off during the 5 hour drive to Carter Cave State Park campground in Olive Hill, KY. We stopped about 15 miles from the WV-KY border at a Walmart to pick up a few groceries and have lunch. The new campground is not near stores so it is better to get what we need before setting up. Getting into the campground was a little hairy. The road was narrow and had several hairpin turns as we drove through heavy trees. When we arrived at the office, the clerk said we were already checked in and gave us our site number.

The weather was crappy so we stayed in the campground. There are several caves in the area that we will be exploring in the next few days.

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theopenrhode · 4 years

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Galapagos Travel Guide: Evolution at the Equator

Research. That’s the first thing I would advise when planning a trip to the Galapagos. It’s a pricey trip and you want to make sure that you are getting the adventure you envisioned. A few months of planning and it will ‘evolve’ into the trip of a lifetime! The biggest decision is whether you want to explore on a boat or via a land tour. My personal bias is to explore the Galapagos by boat…you have the possibility to explore more remote islands and see more animals and landscapes. With a land tour, you are somewhat limited as you are bound by how far your day trip boat can take you. That’s only the first of your many decisions! Next up will be the wildlife. This is certainly a large factor and will dictate your other decisions. There are distinct mating periods for certain animals, times when the water will have more wildlife, and periods to witness babies hatching. The Galapagos has 2 distinct seasons, a dry cool season and a warm wet season, which will heavily influence this…and influence if you can actually tolerate snorkeling or diving in cold water necessary for some animals. I would consider the final big decision your itinerary. Many are divided into an Eastern and a Western itinerary and one is not better than the other. It just depends on what you want to see. For us, we had our heart set on those adorable Galapagos Penguins so we made sure we chose an itinerary that included Isabela and Fernandina (Western).

Much has been written about the possibility of booking a ‘last minute’ trip. While I think theoretically this is possible, it requires a great deal of flexibility. You’d have to roll up to Quito with cash in hand and be ready for any leftover berths on ships. Not only does this require some luck, but it also potentially means you’d have to forego an island you really wanted to see. Heavily researching exactly what you want and planning can still allow you to get quite a bargain. I would also advise communicating with many tour companies so they can alert you if there is a deal. One of the ships that had the itinerary I wanted was consistently $5000 USD…until one night it suddenly dropped to half off as no one had booked a single cabin. So…keep checking as pricing does change esp as the departure date nears. Noticing exactly when this change happened allowed us to score the prime cabin on the boat…at the same rate as the other cabins. Some of our shipmates tried a last minute deal in Quito and found the same price we paid booking months ahead. We booked with Happy Gringo who were excellent and had scores of amazing online reviews on Tripadvisor. They also sent a flower arrangement to our hotel in Quito for our anniversary…exceptional service and email responses were incredibly prompt. Ultimately, we booked on the Reina Silvia for the first week in December. We packed some wetsuits, snorkels, water shoes and were off! Given my ‘love’ of air travel on South American airlines (see my other posts regarding dear Latam), we have gotten a bit more savvy and now book a mandatory extra day to account for plane delays. This trip on Copa airlines was no different…partially under their airlines control and partially weather. A strong storm in Panama had us divert to a smaller local airport and after a ‘brief’ 3 hour wait on the tarmac, we were cleared to return to the main Panama airport. This, I fully concede, was not under their control. However when our 3:30 flight evolved into 5 PM on the board due to the weather, then 6, we boarded…what Copa really meant was we were leaving close to 9 PM which meant another 2 or so hours sitting on the tarmac. This was especially frustrating as we had taken quite a sprint to make the 5 PM and didn’t have time to get dinner…when in reality, the 3 hours spent on the tarmac would have been much better spent grabbing a leisurely dinner.

Cotopaxi

Arriving at the JW Marriot hotel in downtown Quito close to midnight left little time to sleep before our planned hiking/biking day tour of Cotopaxi. Side note…i book nearly everything through Orbitz to get my Orbucks but we did find a much better price for our day tour booking direct ($30 less per person). We booked through Rebecca Adventure Travel and had a very smooth pickup. Our day included a local lunch and dinner, a hike from the parking lot up to the refuge on Cotopaxi, and a bike ride down. While I am very glad we did this tour…make no mistake, it was a challenging hike. We live at sea level and hiking to 16,000 feet with zero acclimatization was a heart pumping endeavor. We’ve never experienced any challenges with altitude but we truly felt a bit lightheaded and out of breath on a fairly steep hike up to the refuge. If you go, bring plenty to hydrate and dress warmly. Our views of Cotopaxi were somewhat obscured by clouds but we still had a great view of the glacier. Biking down was quite a rush. I’m not sure how safe I felt hurtling down the gravel road on a loaner bike, but we survived! and there was always the option to bail out and hop on the van following us. With only one day before the Galapagos, we preferred this to a city tour, but the trade off was not really experiencing much of Quito. Some travelers we met did have some issues with petty crime in Quito. A backpack was slashed open, a credit card skimmer was used, so be alert. Instead of either Quito or Cotopaxi, I would even consider flying to the Galapagos before your cruise and staying in Puerto Ayora but more on that later.

Hiking and biking Cotopaxi Ecuador Early the next morning, we were off on a flight to the Galapagos! There are 2 additional costs to travel to the Galapagos 1) a $20 tourist transit card that allows the Ecuadorian government to keep track of who travels to the Galapagos and 2) a $100 Galapagos entry fee that you will pay on arrival to the Galapagos. You need cash to pay for these items and I would advise that prior to travel to the Galapagos, you obtain your cash. You’ll need it for these entry requirements, tips for cruise staff, and extra charges on the boat and I believe there are only 2 ATMs on the islands that are rumored to run out of money often. To note, there are no international flights that arrive to the Galapagos. Also note…Ecuador uses the USD as their currency. There are no plastic bags or bottles allowed in the Galapagos so bring a reusable bottle (or most ships will provide one) but you can bring in alcohol and other liquids on this domestic flight.

Our arrival to the Galapagos was smooth and we were immediately met by our tour guide after claiming our bags. It was nice to know our next 8 days were planned to perfection by our guide and we would’t have to do much rather than photograph and relax! The airport is located on the tiny Baltra Island. Thus, to travel to San Cristobal, where most ships depart, or to find a hotel from which to explore, you’ll need to catch a ferry over the Itabaca Channel. Our tour guide seamlessly arranged this (as would all of the cruises), but it’s easy to navigate on your own if you were not doing a cruise. I assumed we would hop right on the boat, but we instead enjoyed a leisurely first day before boarding the boat around 5 pm. Read the full article here: http://champagnetraveling.com/galapagos-travel-guide-evolution-at-the-equator/ #Galapagos #galapagosislands #galapagosisland #galapagosjogos #galapagostortoise #galapagosEvolution #galapagosshark #GalapagosOnly #galapagosnationalpark #galapagoslife #GalapagosPenguin #galapagosgianttortoise #galapagosreptiles #galapagoscruise #galapagostravel #galapagossealions #galapagosunbound #galapagosiguana #galapagosflamingo #galapagosdiving #galapagosdeals #galapagosday #galapagoscamping #galapagosbirds Immediately after arrival to the main island of San Cristobal, we boarded a shuttle and began our true Galapagos adventure. First stop: El Chato 2 Ranch, a private ecological tortoise reserve. Within minutes of exiting the bus, we had our first Galapagos animal encounter! We saw close to a hundred of these giant tortoises gradually working their way through this very large reserve snacking on grass and calmly observing us. Our next stop was a delicious outdoor lunch at Rancho El Manzanillo. To complete our day of giant tortoise amazement, we stopped at the Charles Darwin Research Station where they are working on tortoise rehabilitation, monitoring animal migration, and much more. Our guide allowed us to stroll from the research station through the town of Puerto Ayora before boarding our ship. Our 15 minute walk took us through the main street in Puerto Ayora filled with countless trendy appearing restaurants, shops, and boutique hotels. We regret not being able to spend more time here. If we were to recreate our trip, we’d maybe try to fly into town a bit before our ship departed to explore the research station and Puerto Ayora further. We booked our flights through Happy Gringo but you can book flights to the Galapagos independently (which possibly would be cheaper). This is a great (and maybe the only stop) for souvenirs as the other islands are not really inhabited (except by the wildlife!). I grabbed a t-shirt from the aptly named Darwin + Wolf Clothing Store.

Reina Silvia

Next up, embarking on the Reina Silvia. This is a somewhat older ship with excellent upkeep with 6 cabins for 12 passengers, a crew of 7 plus our guide. Our cabin was the cabin located on the top floor which was great for avoiding noise from the engines though it could get a bit more listing with any rough seas. Each cabin had a private bathroom and plenty of storage. There was also a main dining area where you shared 3 tables with your shipmates and a communal lounging area on the towp deck. Finally, the zodiac boat to travel to each island was located at the stern. Any shoes worn exploring were left on the back of the boat to keep the boat free of dirt and debris. Many opted to go barefoot on the ship, but I wore either flip-flops or deck shoes as my feet are always chilly. A few other words about daily life on the ship…each day our guide would post a detailed itinerary of the next day's activities including meal times, excursions and what equipment might be needed. For example, landings from the zodiac are either “dry” (they’ll bring you up to the rocks where your feet will stay dry) or “wet” (you’ll hop off the zodiac at the beach directly into the water). Snorkeling gear (free) and wetsuits (paid) are available though we chose to bring our own. Water temps vary based on the time of year. In December, I snorkeled with a 1 mm wetsuit and was quite comfortable…some without wetsuits appeared pretty cold though my husband just wore a rashguard and was fine. Finally, the cuisine was surprisingly delicious for a 2 person operation in the middle of nowhere. We had 3 meals and 2 snacks daily and there was free beer in the communal area and soft drinks. Food was incredibly plentiful…we hardly used any of the snacks we packed. Water is filtered and tastes fine. We typically bring a few crystal light packets just to have some variety in flavor.

Floreana

Day 2: Floreana was the next island and was a very busy day. Most days were incredibly full with a daily snorkel and one or two short hikes. The wildlife on this adventure was the most abundant of any of our travels. Flamingos, marine iguanas, sea lions, blue footed boobies, sally light-footed crabs, more tortoises, and the galapagos penguins all greeted us on Floreana. There is also the famous Post Office Bay where an 18th century tradition continues to this day. Postcards are placed in a wooden barrel and travelers find a postcard located near their home and hand deliver on their return. Each night we’d hop back on the ship for a delicious dinner and the ship would set sail for the next island. Most passengers were asleep very early…there is definitely no nightlife on the ship! We stayed up later than most which allowed us to edit some photos and enjoy the sea air as we cruised under hundreds of stars.

Isabela and Fernandina

Day 3-5: Isabela and Fernandina were our next days. Isabela and the island of Fernandina are located far west in the Galapagos and are really only accessible by cruise ship. Marine iguanas and the penguins are most abundant here. A highlight was pulling up on the zodiac to an island teeming with hundreds of blue footed boobies mingling with marine iguanas, penguins, and pelicans. We also had the opportunity to snorkel with penguins and marine iguanas. It’s a crazy experience to see these tiny dinosaur like creatures swimming toward you. Our favorite moment of Isabela though was a playful sea lion who followed us along the shore chasing our boat until he lifted his flipper in a goodbye wave. Sea lions have quite the personality! We also fell in love with a baby sea lion who entertained himself by tossing a piece of seaweed in the air and falling over trying to repeatedly catch it. My personal favorite Galapagos animal though is still the waddling 20 inch tall Galapagos penguin. It’s a trial of persistence trying to capture a photo of a penguin swimming underwater. They are stealthy and streak through the water much faster than a lumbering human in flippers! On day 5, we gathered with the captain as we watched the GPS flash zero as we crossed the equator from the south to the north. The crew had a generous serving of appetizers and snacks and we sipped champagne to celebrate the occasion.

Isla Santiago

Day 6: Isla Santiago: In Isla Santiago our weather was very windy and we got a great kayak workout in battling the currents and wind. Sea lions were abundant here as well and many baby sea lions were nestled in and nursing with their mothers.

Santa Cruz & North Seymour

Day 7: Most of our Galapagos days were filled with volcanic rock and craggy landscapes, but our final day included a stop on the northern shore of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz has a beautiful white sand beach and we got to walk along the soft sand to a lagoon filled with flamingos and get to partake in a bit of swimming. Our final snorkel of the trip was in the rougher waters off North Seymour to try to see sharks. We saw many resting along the sandy ocean floor but failed to see the elusive hammerhead shark. North Seymour itself has a plethora of birds…painting every rock surface of the island with a white bird poop. We witnessed the magnificent frigate bird whose male will puff out its red chest to a balloon size to attract females. Our final day was just a trip to the airport to depart. This day involved a lot of waiting. We were at the airport hours before our flight left. As we were unsure what time we would return to Quito, we booked a final night at the Quito Airport, before our international flight left the next morning. Downtown Quito is somewhat of a distance from UIO (Mariscal Sucre International Airport), so we elected to stay at the Wyndham Airport Hotel. This hotel was beautifully modern and when we experienced our first mini earthquake at 3 am, it was also structurally very solid!

The Galapagos is truly a must visit destination. The wildlife is otherworldly and it is a privilege to be in their presence. In our opinion, a small ship cruise is the best way to experience the islands. It allowed our group of 12 to easily embark and disembark each zodiac excursion onto the islands and our ship could explore the more remote locations. You’ll take too many photos but it’s hard not too with so many perfect moments.

Champagne Splurge

The cruise itself is a bit of a splurge as there aren’t really any inexpensive Galapagos travel options. However, our main splurge was our hotel in Quito. As we arrived on Thanksgiving, we wanted a little nicer accommodation so we could celebrate. The JW Marriott was beautiful and covered in roses. Who knew that Ecudaor was one of the world’s largest flower exporters?

Insider Tips

After our share of South American airline travel, I think we’ve learned it’s best to budget in an extra day of air travel in case of delays. We’ve yet to seamlessly arrive to a South American destination without a hiccup.On our ship, all cabins were the same price even thought they were of varying size. Definitely ask your tour operator for advice on which cabin to book so you can nab the best one.Most Ecuador travel agencies will ask you to pay in cash or bank transfer. You could pay with a credit card for a supplemental fee (2-3%). I was a bit leery of forking over thousands to an unknown tour agency so chose to pay the additional fee so I had some recourse in case of trouble. Happy Gringo, with whom we ultimately booked, were fantastic however and that probably wasn’t necessary. You’ll need cash in the Galapagos and ATMs are not plentiful, so make sure you have cash for the Galapagos entry fee and tourist card (totaling $120 together) and tips for the cruise crew. If you do hike Cotopaxi, you may want to acclimatize a bit first. Otherwise, you’ll be huffing and puffing the whole way up as we did! This is definitely a trip for a waterproof camera or GoPro equivalent. There is as much to see on land as underwater! Read the full article

#Galapagos #travel #wildlife

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cutiecrates · 5 years

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Cutie Reviews: Kawaii Box Sept 18

HAPPY LATE EASTER EVERYBUNNY!

This months theme: Travel with Sumikko Gurashi!

This months word: Hikouki - Airplane

Inu Sticky Notes & Unicorn Washi Tape

Our first items are these sticky notes that come in a variety of Inu and Neko styles. There are 30 pieces in all and they stand 50mm x 90mm. Each one costs $2.60 on the Blippo website. I think these are the standing sticky notes, base on how it looks.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It’s very cute, and I love the detail. Pen just glides on it very nicely. But I did notice you have to be careful tearing it and take your time, otherwise it rips and you don’t actually get any of the stickiness, which is also very light. I found this out after wasting 2 of them.

Our next item is this cute pastel Unicorn washi/masking tape. It’s 1.5cm x 5 m length and costs $2.90.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

This one actually left me a little conflicted. I love unicorns and pastels, and the design is pretty simple, but cute, but I noticed that unless you have something white beneath the tape, it’s extremely translucent! And even then it’s still a bit hard to see!

On the plus side, if you write on it, you will see it very easy.

Sparkly Deco Tape Set

This next item is a whole set of deco tapes. Now, if you’ve been a long-time reader, you may recall a set I got like this a long time back. I thought the little tapes were cute, the little tape dispenser was adorable... but it BROKE on me the second I very gently opened it up.

So when I saw this, I was both excited, and a bit worried <3< especially because I’m convince this is one of those dollar store products. On Blippo, each set costs $1.80

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I am happy to report that this time that didn’t happen. So they either change something, or my first one was faulty. I was pleasantly surprise, although the tear is a little messy and you might be better off cutting these with scissors. I think the tapes themselves are pretty decent, and even though they’re small, you get a nice amount.

Sumikko Gurashi Winter Plushie Charm

Our next item is this kawaii Sumikko Gurashi cloaked plush charm. Each main character is available and wears a cloak that has a string bow on the front and a string strap with a felt “companion“ matching the character. Each character also wears a cloak based on someone else- except for Ebi, who wears her own cloak.

The chain is attached to this part of the character, rather than the cloak; I assume it’s to make sure they don’t slide out of it if you were to take it outside or attach it to a bag. On each of their tags, they also have little images and descriptions about the character you got, which I think is a nice touch.

Each one costs $6.90 on the Blippo website. But as of this moment they aren’t available.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I love the concept! I think it’s very cute, and I think they executed it very well. However, this is probably just me, but I think it’s kind of weird that this is qualified as a charm plush when the chain is beneath the cloak. I mean I can see why they did that, and I love the idea of dressing it up whenever I want, but I feel like if you use it as a charm, you could easily misplace the cloak.

I also notice a small amount of accuracy issues with the characters. Like compare Ebi up above between her plush and cloak form. She has her normal black mouth on the cloak, but the actual plush has a pink nose/mouth. I also notice Shirokuma has no nose but his cloak does, Neko is missing his markings, etc. That might not bother a lot of people, but it bothered me a tiny bit.

Gudetama Transparent Delicacies Sticker Set

Available for $2.90 on the Blippo website, this Gudetama set of transparent stickers includes 20 styles of sticker per set/pack (4 in total), and there are 60 stickers per set/pack.

And yes I did count just to make sure. There are 20 different stickers, and I think there’s 3 of each to equal 60.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

These are translucent as you can see, and they almost match the level of the unicorn tape- but they are WAY more defined than it was. I love them, and I’m pretty sure any Gudetama fan would enjoy these too! I like how you can see how they would look wherever you’d put them before application.

Sumikko Gurashi Traveling Around the World Badge

Our next item is this really cute badge, base on the traveling Sumikko Gurashi theme. Each costs $1.90 and there was 8 different types.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Although I favor Neko and Shirokuma, I think this is actually really cute. They were all cute actually, if I had somewhere to put them I’d probably buy all 8!

I have one issue though. I don’t know if they’re all like this or if it’s just mine- but I notice the fastener on the back is very flimsy and wriggles up and down, making it a little difficult to hold and un-fasten and fasten. Not impossible, just a little bit of a hassle.

Sumikko Gurashi Traveling Around The World Medium Notepad & 2 Unicorn Pens

On occasion we get these items in Kawaii Box that surprise me by it’s quality, and this is the one for this box. Not only is it sturdy an super-cute, but it features designs on both the front and back, a sheet of stickers,a shiny spine, and 4 sets of page designs, one of which is horizontal rather than vertical. Each notepad has it’s own set of designs too!

On the Blippo website, there is a variety of these available for $4.80.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I really really really REALLY love it! If you like Summiko Gurashi I’d recommend!

Besides this cute notepad, we also get 2 unicorn pens, which is a surprise because we normally get 1 per-box.

I’ll start with the pink tubed pen, which features 0.5mm pen and an LED unicorn on top. It comes in this pink tube, white, and lavender (which features a pastel mane in comparison to the other two) and costs $2.90.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It smears just barely until dry, and I think it’s a pretty cure and simple pen. The unicorn on it is cute, but it’s one reflective looking solid piece, meaning the horn, mane, and ears are attache. The mane looks fine, but the ears and horn are kind of weird from the front and back, to me anyway.

The other pen is fairly similar, but features no LED, has a different texture, and the unicorn is completely molded. It’s also a gel pen.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Out of the two, I noticed this pen isn’t as lasting as the other (just barely though), but it’s way more smooth when writing and right after writing I rubbed my finger on it and got no smudges. I also really like the more details on this one, so out of the two pens I favor this one.

Oddly enough though, I couldn’t find this one on the Blippo website. I spent 20 minutes looking and didn’t see it. I would assume it was around the same price as the other one though.

Happy Nikukyu Paw Gummy Candies - Cola

Our last item is this pack of adorable, cola-flavored paw gummies. I've gotten one or two bags of these before, but as obsessed with Cola as I am- I was definitely anticipating these, and their scent is heavenly~

Each bag is about 90-something kcal, and on Blippo they cost $3.60.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

They’re so soft and squishy, it almost feels like you’re chewing on a real cat paw (as cringey as that image may be), and they taste very good. The only thing I can really think that's noteworthy to mention is that they have a "coating" to them, which may leave a bit of... grime in your mouth while eating these. But I feel like it would only bother some people.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ I really liked everything in this box. I wasn’t super-excited or anticipating this review because nothing really excited me an I didn’t have much to do with the stuff- but I thought thee quality and details really made up for last time.

Price - ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ If by some chance I added up right (and remember one item I couldn’t find) then this box came up to about 30 dollars! And keep in mind a few items are on sale right now. That’s about 10 or so dollars more then we actually pay, so I think this was a really good deal!

Theme - ♥ ♥ ♥ The theme was about... half-included this time around. I wasn’t displease by it, but I can’t say I would have guessed it if I was asked to. I know they could have done better.

Total Rank: 7 out of 10 Cuties. I really wanted to like this box, and initially i did until I was forced to really look at it. Usually the quality is really good, so I was kind of disappointed I found so many little problems with a lot of the items. I really liked this box. It didn't excite or entice me in any shape or form- but I love the items we got and the quality was great! I had very few complaints an even then they didn't hinder anything.

♥ Cutie Scale ♥

(I decide to skip the cutie scale for this one only because I’m not feeling well an I wanted to get this published before I went to bed. Until next time, stay cute!)

#kawaiibox #blippo kawaii shop #kawaii box #sumikko gurashi

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