Chan Luu is CEO of Chan Luu, Inc. Born and raised in Vietnam, Luu came to the USA for college in Boston before launching herself as a designer of jewelry and clothing in Los Angeles. Her designs are now carried by stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and Banana Republic, as well as in high-end stores in London and Japan. We met with Chan Luu in L.A. to discuss entrepreneurship in the design business, how she combines creativity with bottom-line thinking, and the challenges of maintaining a successful enterprise in the fashion world.
Kaizen: Your designs have been worn by many Hollywood celebrities—Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Kate Hudson, Christina Aguilera, Reese Witherspoon, Sandra Bullock, Janet Jackson, and many others.
Luu: It has been happening for a long time and, of course, it's always exciting.
Kaizen: But your story starts in Vietnam, where you were born. Where in Vietnam did you grow up?
Luu: I was born and raised in South Vietnam, in Nha Trang. I don't know if you know that town. It's more toward the center. It's a seaside town, very beautiful. I was born and raised there. But mom and dad had business in Saigon, so I did go back and forth.
Kaizen: What was it like growing up in Vietnam at that time, surrounded by war?
Luu: You know, I come from a country that has gone through many different wars. So Vietnamese people are quite adapted to that kind of life, and in Vietnam the war, the fighting happened only in the countryside and along the borders; so if you lived in a city, you saw some fighting—but not every day.
Kaizen: Did you have a strong interest in fashion when you were growing up?
Luu: When I was a little kid, I already showed a strong artistic side, like form, shape, and colors always affecting me emotionally. Smells too—I was very much into food. I have very skilled hands—I like to do things with my hands. That was developed very early on. I didn't know which direction I'd go, but at that point that was very strong.
Kaizen: Were you interested in business when younger, or did that develop later?
Luu: At that time, no. My parents were very successful merchants. Was I interested in business? No, I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be in fashion, and I wanted to be a painter, and I wanted to be a full-time, fine art artist. Even though I had that kind of normal life, I lived in a war country, so we had very limited exposure to the western world. But I went to a French high school, so I read a lot which gave me exposure to art and history in Europe, especially in France. But interested in business, no.
Kaizen: You left in 1972 and came to the United States. How old were you at that point?
Luu: May of 1972. Almost 18.
Kaizen: This was before the Vietnam War ended?
Luu: Yes, before. The war ended in May 1975, three years later.
Kaizen: Why the USA and Boston in particular?
She sent me to Hong Kong, actually. I didn't have any luggage. I went to Hong Kong and a friend of hers picked me up. We bought some necessary things, and I was sent off to Honolulu. It was the longest flight ever. When I was about to land in Boston, I looked down and said, "Wow, this is not Boston, this is England." So that's how I got out.
Kaizen: You then went to college in Boston. What led you to choose business administration as your undergraduate major?
Luu: At home I was pre-med, kind of. I come from a culture where parents really dictate what you should do, and my mother is big and strong about that, so mother would say "You either go to business school so you can help me later on or you go to medical school and be a doctor; those are your choices." When I told her I wanted to be a fashion designer, she said, "I am not going to pay for you to go to school to be a seamstress." That was how she put it.
So business school it was. Those are not my happy years, and I felt kind of resentful. So I went to the dean of students at the business school and said, "I really want to finish my school sooner than four normal years." He said, "What do you mean? How? You can't even speak any English." It was a semester system, and I suggested I could take six courses per semester so I could graduate in two and a half years. He said he did not think that was possible, but since I was persistent he said, "Okay, show me if you can get a B+ the first semester, and I will let you do it." So I did—I got a B+ and I graduated in two and a half years.
Kaizen: You then moved from Boston to Los Angeles to get another degree, this time in fashion design?
Luu: My mom wanted me to further my education. In my last semester in Boston University, I was accepted to University of Southern California for my MBA degree. That was the plan. School would start in September of 1975, but the Vietnam War ended in May. I was a foreign student supported by my parents, and overnight I had $300 dollars to my name. I needed to find ways to support myself. Another business degree was out of the question. I was devastated, knowing I couldn't go home, scared of the uncertain future in the USA, but yet also excited—for once I was on my own.
Kaizen: What did you do next?
Luu: In the summer of 1975, my parents came over and some life-changing decisions needed to be made. When the war ended, we all got legalized right away. We decided California weather would be better for my parents, so we all moved out to Los Angeles.
Kaizen: When did you first have the idea of starting your own boutique?
Luu: I came out here and my first job was working for a bathing suit company. It's a division of Warnaco called High Tide. They manufacture everything about beachwear, so I got a job there as their vice-president's assistant. Their head designer, Maggie, really liked my sense of style and often suggested I should go and talk to her sister, who was the head of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) school. So I went and talked to her sister, but since I had no money to pay for my school, she helped me to get a basic grant. That's how I started.
Kaizen: How long did that degree take?
Luu: It was really hard for me, because I had to work and go to school at the same time, so it took me a year and a half to finish.
Kaizen: Then in 1982 you opened your own boutique in Rolling Hills Estates?
Luu: While I was at High Tide, my friend Sharon, the president's assistant, was going through her divorce. She and her husband owned a little coffee shop in Manhattan Beach, and since I needed ways to support myself while I was in fashion school, they sold it to me for very little money. The income from the restaurant helped to support me, paid back the coffee shop's loan and the school loan. Those were hard years, because all I did was work and go to school; but looking back those were the happiest times of my life: school was really fun.
While I was living in Manhattan Beach, I shopped a local boutique. The owner of the store always found my personal sense of style was unique. It's a high-end boutique, which offered personal service. The owner offered me a job to work there as a salesperson, and I thought, "How in the hell could I do that? I am going to school. I am working day and night at my restaurant." I said to him, "I really can't." But he was very persistent and said, "Well, if you just give me some time working in my store, you can get half off anything you buy." I was laughing.
So every Saturday I went there for four hours, and I turned out to be the best sales person there. Then my boss decided I should work with special clients by appointment only. He was a very smart man, thinking that since I only could be there four hours a week, that would be the best way to maximize my time.
In no time, I began dressing a lot of celebrities. After I was there for a while, school, running the restaurant, and working part-time wore me out. Something needed to give. So I decided to quit my part-time job, but my boss said, "Listen, my business is really growing and I need a good buyer with a defined vision, a strong sense of style and your name is on top of my list. I want you to be my fashion buyer." I think the offer came at a good time, because I had just graduated from FIDM and the restaurant was supporting me, but fashion was my calling. This buying job would give me exposure to the fashion world, so I went for it. I sold my restaurant and became a fashion buyer. This job was a real door-opening for my career. I worked there for two years, travelling all over the country. Then my boss's divorce put a lot of financial stress on the business, so I decided maybe it was time for me to get out and be on my own.
Kaizen: How did you fund the new store?
Luu: With very little saved money. But as a buyer for two years, I had a really good working relationship with my vendors. And being known as a good stylist, I built up a wealthy clientele. My vendors thought that was a brilliant idea having my own store, and they wanted to help me, because they believed I was a natural with fashion. Many of my vendors shipped me merchandise on credit terms, and I already had a loyal clientele who would not shop anywhere else, so it was an instant success. It was a tiny, little store, 400 square feet, but business was there from the first day.
Kaizen: There are many boutiques in Los Angeles, so what did you do to make yours distinctive?
Luu: From 400 square feet I grew and moved into a store about 800 square feet. I was making a living, but it wasn't something that would secure my future. Then my sister died. The next year I got married. An attorney, my husband taught me a lot about life in America and American history. I adjusted to my new life in the U.S. with his help. I was doubling my store size and having fun dressing my customers. Once I got married, the financial pressure was off, because we both made a decent living, especially my husband who was a senior vice-president of a major bank.
Kaizen: 1996 was an important year for you—the year that you began designing accessories?
Luu: It was actually a freak accident.
It was a time that my dad died of lung cancer. I was really close to my dad; it was a big loss to me. By then, I also knew I needed a change; I needed more creative challenges. A retail store was fun but not enough to fulfill my dream as a designer, a creator per se. My husband was climbing the corporate ladder, which put a lot of stress in our marriage. When my dad passed away and we couldn't resolve our differences at home, I knew I needed a big change in my life. I decided to split and went on my own.
I was quite athletic and adored all outdoor sports. It was a freak skiing accident, while I was confined in bed recovering from a torn ligament, that I was toying with the idea of putting some beads together, making some fun jewelry because I was bored! Although I am a trained fashion designer, I sure was not a trained jeweler! But whatever I created and put in my store, we sold. The experience triggered a strong desire to venture out, testing my talent in the fashion design world, so I did just that. I quit retail, jumping with two feet into the design world.
Kaizen: What was unique about your designs?
Luu: I loved shopping at flea markets, and I still do, looking for good vintage fabric, beads … anything that's intriguing. So, making jewelry out of unusual collectible components created a collection of one-of-a-kind jewelry. A jewelry sales rep took an interest, showed the collection to two reputable high-end shops in Los Angeles, and right away sent me two large orders.
Kaizen: Then you started your design company?
Luu: Yes, in my studio—actually a converted garage!
Kaizen: Was there a key event early on that made you know your business was going to be successful, or was it more a matter of slow and steady growth?
Luu: Actually, it's a long process. I needed to find ways to gain my market shares, since I knew nothing about marketing. So, I began by finding a good showroom in New York to represent me. Once I had representation, I needed translate all my ideas into good products. I must say the experience of working as an assistant to a manufacturer, a salesperson, and a fashion buyer helped give me a sense of how I should approach this competitive, difficult, and complicated market.
Kaizen: Demand for your designs was going up—which is great, but scaling up can be a challenge. What did you do?
Luu: As a rookie designer in a huge market, I knew I was a little fish in a big pond. What helped me was that from experience I could see things from a buyer's point of view, a vendor's, a designer's, and a retail customer's point of view. I knew also that I had to find a niche in the market that was not yet fulfilled. I knew I needed to stay focused, have a point of view, and send a clear message about what my collection was all about.
Instead of using this and that, like most jewelry designers would do creating a collection, I decided fresh water pearl should be my main source of raw material, knowing there was no such collection of just fresh water pearl in the market at the time. It was a good decision. The collection was performing from day one and I made a name in the fashion world.
Kaizen: Was this your business education coming through here?
Luu: Actually, I learned everything through experience. I am a self-taught person with a lot of common sense—maybe because I come from a war country—I was taught survival skills since I was a kid, like if a bomb dropped on my parents, we would be on our own. So, I was taught to always think ten steps ahead. If plan one doesn't work, plan two should be handy. I am structured into that kind of thinking.
Kaizen: Are the best showrooms spread around the United States?
Luu: They are only a few in New York, and I got into the best one. I went and met Jimmy Moore, one of the two owners of Fragments showroom, and told him that I was looking for a showroom to represent my collection. He said, "What material did you use?" I said that my whole collection was freshwater pearl. He said, "I'll take it—we just mentioned this morning that we need a freshwater pearl collection in our showroom." So it was perfect timing.
This is the best jewelry showroom in the world, with good infrastructure, their PR department work with stylists, celebrities, magazines … my jewelry began to be seen on celebrities, movies, newscasters, fashion magazines, pop stars.
Kaizen: At that point, is it under your control who buys your product? For example, do you know when a celebrity wears your product?
Luu: When I was represented by Fragments, if celebrities' stylists pull something, then you kind of know. But once they have credit in Elle magazine and book magazines, then the showroom will let you know. They credit you in the magazine. And that is how it works.
Kaizen: Do you find out about it afterwards or do you get advance notice?
Luu: You kind of know it's coming. Getting your name out there is very important in my business. The fashion and entertainment businesses somehow are connected, because celebrities need to look fashionable.
Kaizen: Is this about when you opened manufacturing facilities overseas?
Luu: No, it started out that I had this idea about hand-painted seashell necklaces. Using my common sense, I figured with all the hand-painted paper mache boxes I collected from India, there must be some good painters in India. Since the Taj Mahal was decorated with inlaid mother of pearl, India should be a good place for me to start using mother of pearl as component, and find some painters to paint it. Pretty crazy ideas, thinking about it now! Well, the idea took off like wildfire. Actress Jennifer Aniston was photographed between George Clooney and her then-husband Brad Pitt wearing my hand-painted seashell necklace. The business really took off. In my business, certain celebrities could really put your name on the map. That was the first trend I created that created a huge momentum for the rest of my career, and because of that trend I started to explore manufacturing overseas.
Kaizen: Now the business operations in India are contracted out?
Luu: They just paint the seashells. They ship them and we put them together—the assembly is here in L.A. At that time, I had to move downtown, because I needed more craft people working for me, and most of my craft people don't drive. So downtown L.A. was the most sensible location for a factory.
Kaizen: The seashell designs went big?
Luu: The seashell collection put my name on the fashion map.
Kaizen: Do you have a sense of how many units of the seashell collection you sold? What is the approximate retail price?
Luu: I must have sold half a million of them. At the beginning, I sold it for $18 dollars and I went all the way to $42. It depends how intricate the work is.
Kaizen: At some point you know the seashell trend is going to end. Are you moving in another direction?
Luu: In our business when a street vendor starts knocking you off, as a good business person, you kind of know that it is time to move on.
I am known to be prolific—creating beautiful things comes very naturally to me. Also momentum is everything. When you create a buzz and everybody wants your product, you have to keep the momentum going, keep creating newness, reinvent yourself, being sensitive about your customers' needs.
Kaizen: Did you end up manufacturing in the Philippines?
Luu: I decided not to, because already I was knocked off from everywhere in that country.
Kaizen: You now have manufacturing facilities in Vietnam and India?
Luu: India became bigger and bigger. I have a factory in India that employs almost 800 people. I don't own it. I collaborated with somebody I met there and we became really good friends—almost like my second family. I am very interested in craft. I like to use old craft, modernizing it into something new. I like to work with villages. I don't understand why, but the villages get along with me really well. We connect really well. Everybody says, "How do you do that? I have not seen anybody connect with craft people in the village like you do." These people are very poor, living in houses with no running water or electricity. But every province in every village has a certain craft and they only know that craft. And they have never had any exposure with the world, so their craft just stayed like that. Everywhere in India, Vietnam, Indonesia, everywhere I have traveled, I have seen this same pattern. But I came in and I gave them my ideas and my vision using their craft. I said, "Okay, using your ancient technique, but do it my way. Do it this way." And these people are like kids in the candy store. They are like, "Wow, this is really beautiful." It's almost like a dance between two people—a collaboration in designing. What I do is very unusual, handcrafted. Every piece is created through many skilled hands. I created a good niche in the market for my products. Since we work with villagers, this line of products feeds and changes many lives.
Kaizen: In 2004 you moved into clothing design, launching your Ready-To-Wear (RTW) Collection. In 2005 you opened your New York corporate showroom, and you followed that quickly in 2006 with showrooms opening in Dallas and Atlanta. Is the RTW Collection a whole clothing line?
Luu: Yes, keeping the same integrity and culture of my company, since we are known for making handmade products. All the garments we make are also hand-beaded and embroidered.
Kaizen: All this growth brings new management challenges for you. With so many locations across the globe and many more people working in your business—were management issues challenging for you?
Luu: Well when my business grew to certain size, I found myself busy running my business instead of doing what I do best: designing. That was the hardest part—learning how to delegate responsibilities. In 2005, I hired a Chief Operating Officer/Chief Financial Officer and Vice-President of Sales. That's the best decision I have ever made for my company.
Kaizen: Since you are still CEO, what percentage of your work week is actually spent on design?
Luu: I design every day. I have many designer assistants working under me; they realize my vision under my supervision.
Kaizen: Your designs have appeared in many magazines—Elle, Cosmopolitan, Sports Illustrated, Vogue—in movies and television shows such as Twilight: Eclipse, Good Morning America. When high-profile exposure happens, what does your marketing team do to capitalize on it?
Luu: The fashion business is very interesting. I think today everything is about social media .We hire a lot of young people in our company, because you do need young influence to keep up with the fast internet business. Facebook, Twitter, blogging are all very important in today's fashion business. If anything catches on, within minutes it could go viral—very powerful and scary!
Kaizen: When celebrities like Hilary Duff, Britney Spears, Jared Leto, Megan Fox, Nicole Richie, Drew Barrymore wear your designs, are there ethics guidelines for using the names and photos of celebrities to promote your products, or is that simply an accepted practice?
Luu: We go both ways. We work with a lot of stylists. When stylists pull our products for their celebrities, sure we could use their name. Also, this is Los Angeles, the closest market to celebrities, great exposure market for your products.
Kaizen: Your lines are also carried in stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Banana Republic, and in high-end stores in London and Japan. But in 2006 you also went online with your Online Store.
Luu: Online business today is the fastest growing retail business, so as a good business person that should not be ignored. We had a retail store before, but we found our online store works so much better for us.
Kaizen: Have you found online marketing to be different?
Luu: It's the fastest growing business I've ever known. It's exciting but it's an endless chase, it's always something newer, faster every day. It's pretty crazy!
Kaizen: Can you project whether online sales or in-store sales will be more significant to you, or is it too soon to tell?
Luu: I supply many stores globally. My online store is growing by the minute but is still small, but I really believe if I do things right, it will become a significant part of the future of my company.
Kaizen: Your headquarters are still in Los Angeles. Do you also have a showroom here in L.A.?
Luu: Yes, my L.A. showroom is my first corporate showroom. It works really well for me.
Kaizen: Do you have a men's line? Or is that market too small or not interesting to you?
Luu: I was asked to design a men's jewelry line for years but was not interested. But just the last two years, all the Japanese pop and rock stars begin to wear a lot of Chan Luu bracelets, which creates a huge demand for a men's line in Japan, a very important market for any fashion designer. So, yes, I have a men's line now.
Kaizen: You create five lines per year? Why five?
Luu: Very standard—Spring, Summer, Fall 1, Fall 2, Holiday.
Kaizen: After the many years of successful growth, what are your annual sales currently, if I may ask?
Luu: I can't tell you the exact number, but it's in the eight figures.
Kaizen: You've been designing for many years now. How do you continue to keep your designs fresh and original? Travel, art, other sources?
Luu: Traveling, art history, cultural influences …. I travel a lot for inspiration. I also am a painter; painting exercises my sense of color, form and shape, one feeds off the other.
Kaizen: You have achieved design success and financial success. Why do you continue to work so hard in your business? Presumably you could relax and work a lot less.
Luu: Knowing me, if I stop creating, my mind might go … sideways! I am in a very good position, although I still work a lot, but every day when I get up and get to work, I get to do the thing I am most passionate about.
Luu: Everything today is where I want it to be. I used to struggle more, before my COO/CFO came along. My biggest challenge in business was hiring the right people for the right job in my company. Maybe I don't have the patience to deal with nonsense. Now it's perfect because my COO handles that part of my business. I still make all the major decisions in the company.
Kaizen: For younger people interested in becoming fashion entrepreneurs, how important are business or fashion college degrees?
Luu: A fashion design degree certainly will help, but business sense is better learned through experience. To be successful in this business, you need to understand the business inside and out.
Luu: Get some experience working for a successful company, stay focused, since you want to be in the trend business, be very aware of what's going on with the media. Stay true and honest to what you could create, because to be successful, you need to establish a "signature" look of who you are. Be prepared to work hard—it might sound difficult, challenging, but it's also very rewarding when you make it to the top.
Kaizen: What would you say to people who have an idea and they want to go in a certain direction, but they are wondering whether they could really make it work?
Luu: If you don't believe in yourself, it is very hard to make it happen. I don't know how other people think, but if I want to do something, I read up about it. Being resourceful will help. Being relentless is the most important quality. I am relentless about how I approach every project; I won't back down because my project meets challenges. Your inspiration should be honest. Try not to be a copy cat—it's an "inspiration freezer," regardless of how big the knock-off market is. Creating is like exercising. The more you do, the more you could do. Be proactive, on your creative journey, there will be many beautiful surprises coming your way.
This interview was conducted for Kaizen by Stephen Hicks. The full interview will soon be posted at our website, www.EthicsandEntrepreneurship.org. For more information about Chan Luu and Chan Luu, Inc., visit www.ChanLuu.com.
Its a pity that she does not know (or maybe she does which makes it even worse) the way her accounting staff treats and speaks to her clients – especially if they are small international accounts. As an individual, she appears to be a genuine invdividual and truly artistic person, however her team carries a degree of arrogance – beginning with her financial controller, that makes one really wonder about her company culture, and how much she values her smaller loyal clients.


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Create a personal website with GitHub Pages.
You can use Jekyll with GitHub Pages to help make your site more dynamically generated.
I'm using the end project from the Treehouse Intro to HTML and CSS course.
To start, we'll head to github.com and create a new repo.
We'll name our repository our username, .github.io.
It has to be this exactly or it won't work.
We'll add a short description.
We won't initialize it with a README, and we'll click Create Repository.
even if your repository encode is private, the hosted website will always be public.
I'll change directories into the folder where my project is.
styles.css file, and an images file.
you wouldn't be able to host a Ruby on Rails or Python app, for example.
Also, you'll need your main page to be named index.html.
And initialize empty git repository.
git commit- m, initial commit to commit.
Great, and now we'll add the remote.
And we'll git push origin master.
I can see my brand new portfolio site is ready to share.
If you don't see it right away, that's also normal.
Page's sites can sometimes take a few minutes to build.
push them up to the master branch, and my website will be automatically updated.


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More homes for seniors delivered in Greater Western Sydney
20-28 Brussels Street, South Granville. Photo: Evan Maclean
Five ageing properties in South Granville have been transformed into a new 20-unit development built specifically for the needs of older Australians as part of the NSW Government's pipeline to deliver more than 370 new social housing projects across the state.
Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC) Chief Executive Simon Newport said the $7 million two-storey development on Brussels Street in South Granville, on Dharug country, would house around 25 elderly people in need of housing.
"The NSW Government is firmly focused on delivering additional housing that will give certainty and security to people at risk of homelessness," Mr Newport said.
"In Granville alone, the Government will have delivered up to 220 new social housing units by 2025. Housing renewal is a key focus for the Government in ensuring we maximise opportunities to increase housing supply on government land, particularly for first home buyers and those in need of social housing.
"Senior Australians deserve a comfortable and modern place to call home and feel safe, and this new development's proximity to public transport connections to both Granville and Lidcombe town centres is essential to meeting their long-term needs."
The new development consists of eight one-bedroom and 12 two-bedroom units, 16 car parking spaces, and created more than 30 local jobs for tradespeople during its construction.
"A large proportion of the more than 5400 dwellings in the Cumberland Local Government Area was built in the 1980s, so it has been important to deliver not only new housing, but modern housing that meets the needs of residents and costs less to maintain over the long-term," Mr Newport said.
"The findings from LAHC are being implemented across the state to address the related issues of housing supply, affordability and alleviating homelessness.
For a snapshot of social housing in the Cumberland LGA view the Cumberland – Local area analysis (PDF, 3181.17 KB).


Today between 08:30-17:00 CET This live webstream by the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue brings together a comprehensive spectrum of perspectives and expertise on advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving, and their potential impact on the re/insurance industry.
Which driver-assist technologies are just around the corner?
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To what extent will advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and the developments towards autonomous driving impact the insurance business?
Speakers include Brad Templeton (Robocars), Aria Etemad (Volkswagon Research Group), Anders Eugensson (Volvo), Karl Grey (Zurich Insurance), Jayne Plunkett (Swiss Re), Anand Rao (Pricewaterhouse Coopers), and many others.
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Total 100 questions will be there from these 5 subjects, 20 from each of these. Total time provided to solve the paper is 2 hours.
Full Books of Fsc are to be covered for Sciences (Bio, Chm, Phy). For English questions will be from synonyms, antonyms, grammar and comprehension.
In this session we will provide chapter wise tests of Bio, Chm and Phy (all chapters). These will be online tests. When you will solve the test you will be shown the correct answers and the solutions of all the questions. Moreover a guide on how to solve the intelligence questions (For CMH) along with practice questions will also be provided to the registered students. Notes about general knowledge (For FMH) will be provided. Questions from past papers, which we could, will be shared with the students.
Open the course page ( link : http://oetp.pk/course/online-test-session-for-cmh-fmh/ ), click on Take This Course option, a form will appear, fill and click on Place The Order. Fee details will be shown to you, you will also receive a receipt via email to your email address. Submit the fee in HBL and send a picture of the paid deposit slip via email to us and your course will be approved.
In case of any issue feel free to contact.


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7,000 🇺🇸🇨🇦 flights Travel restrictions ✈ 1⃣0⃣0⃣ places to go International rules
Celebrity Cruises CEO: New ship Celebrity Edge will be transformational for brand
Gene Sloan
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Celebrity Edge isn't just another new ship for Celebrity Cruises.
The soon-to-debut, 2,918-passenger vessel is designed to be transformational for the brand, says president and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo.
"We wanted to really catapult (Celebrity) forward with this new design," Lutoff-Perlo tells USA TODAY in an exclusive interview in the ship's soaring Grand Plaza.
Debuting this week at Florida's Port Everglades, Edge is the prototype for a new class of vessel that will transform not just the line but the industry, too, Lutoff-Perlo suggests. Celebrity already has ordered four of the ships to roll out between now and 2022. The line currently operates nine large ships, not including Edge, and three tiny vessels in the Galapagos.
"We believe there will be a lot of people talking about it," she says.
USA TODAY EXCLUSIVE:First look at Celebrity Edge
Offering a striking profile when seen from a distance, Edge boasts outward-facing cabins that are fronted with wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling glass – a new concept for ocean cruising made possible by redesigning the internal architecture of the ship.
"It took a lot of re-engineering (and) ... a lot of different thinking," Lutoff-Perlo says. "It took a lot of people telling us 'I don't think we can do that.'"
Dubbed Edge Staterooms with Infinite Verandas, the new cabins have balconies that are incorporated into the main cabin area. Bi-fold doors in the rooms either can be completely closed, creating a traditional room area separated from a balcony area, or left open, creating a wide-open indoor space that is about 23 percent larger than traditional balcony cabins.
The glass walls at the end of the Infinite Veranda cabins slide down from the ceiling at the push of a button, descending to the level of a traditional balcony to create a balcony-like feel.
Lutoff-Perlo says outfitting Edge with the Infinite Veranda cabins required adding about 2 percent more volume to the vessel than otherwise would be needed.
"That was a big deal," she says.
The creation of the Infinite Veranda cabins was just one of several major initiatives designed to orient Edge to the sea to a greater extent than traditional cruise ships of its size, Lutoff-Perlo says.
Also noteworthy was the creation of a three-deck-high, plant-filled lounge, dining and entertainment venue at the back of the ship called Eden that is partially encircled in glass. Offering unusually wide-open views of the ocean, it's full of seating nooks facing outward to the sea.
Another innovative new feature of Edge is Magic Carpet, a 90-ton platform the size of a tennis court that is cantilevered over the ship's starboard side. Painted tangerine, it moves up and down the side of the vessel serving functions that range from a lounge to a restaurant to a tender-boarding platform. When used as a lounge or restaurant, it offers stunning views out to sea and back to the main part of the vessel.
Lutoff-Perlo says cruisers are demanding more interaction with the sea.
"Everyone tells us the one thing they would like is a closer connection to the sea, and a closer connection to the ports that we visit, which is why we made the ship more outward-facing," she says.
Lutoff-Perlo notes lounge chairs on the ship's top decks face toward the ocean and not the inside of the ship as is typical in the industry. It's a little change that makes a big difference in how passengers experience their surroundings while at sea, she says.
At the top of the ship, another unusual new space, the plant-filled Rooftop Garden, offers passengers a garden-like outdoor venue to watch movies under the stars. It also is home to a grill where passengers can grab a bite while enjoying the sea breeze.
"All these things that we have done are purposeful in that regard," she says of the efforts to orient the ship to the sea in a greater way.
The focus on giving passengers more of a connection to the sea was the impetus for Edge's name. The idea is passengers are taken to the "edge" of the point where the ship meets the ocean like never before.
Scheduled to sail with paying passengers for the first time on Saturday, Edge is Celebrity's first new ship in six years and the first prototype for a new Celebrity vessel to debut in a decade.
Lutoff-Perlo notes the line went back to the drawing boards for a lot of the ship's onboard offerings. Nearly everngle restaurant on Edge – and there are nearly a dozen of them – is a new concept.
Instead of a single large main dining room, Edge offers four smaller main dining rooms, each with its own decor and culinary theme. Named Tuscan, Cosmopolitan, Normandie and Cyprus, the eateries serve a common menu augmented by a handful of specialty dishes that are unique to each venue. Tuscan serves some Italian dishes, for instance; Normandie's specials have a contemporary French flair.
Lutoff-Perlo notes the theme of each of the four restaurants offers a nod to the older ships in the Celebrity fleet. Cosmopolitan has elements that evoke the main dining rooms on earlier vessels. Tuscan draws inspiration from the Tuscan Grill eateries found on some Celebrity ships. Cyprus, which serves Greek cuisine, is an homage to Celebrity's Greek heritage.
"We've taken much from the fleet," Lutoff-Perlo says. "Yet we've transformed the experiences in a unique way."
Edge arrived at Florida's Port Everglades last week after a 15-night journey from the shipyard in France where it had been under construction for more than a year. It's scheduled to sail its first cruise with paying passengers on Saturday and be christened in early December.
Edge initially will sail to the Caribbean out of Port Everglades before moving to the Mediterranean for summer 2019.
In the Caribbean, the ship will operate seven-night trips starting at $1,049. In the Mediterranean, it'll mostly offer 10- and 11-night voyages starting at $1,899.


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Palouse History
Sharing What Palouse Heritage Does
Recently, Palouse Heritage was generously invited to present about our work at the local Rotary chapter in Colfax, WA. We were extremely grateful for the opportunity to share. Our farm manager, Andrew Wolfe, delivered an excellent talk on who Palouse Heritage is, what we do, and why we do it. Here is the an excerpt from his presentation.
We are Palouse Heritage, a venture aiming toward the reintroduction of landrace grain flours and malts, grown here in the Palouse Country, for health, hearth and heritage. Some here may know the story of the Volga Germans, as some of you are surely kin, and it is difficult for me to say who we are without recalling from where we first came.
In the 18th century Catherine the Great, Tsarina of the Russian Empire, extended an invitation to foreigners to possess, inhabit and cultivate the fertile lands of Southern Russia that would later claim the title of the breadbasket of Europe. Our story follows a number of pioneering families who, considering the opportunity, ventured from their homes near and around Frankfurt Germany to make their new lives in Russia. Here they would fashion their lives much as they did in Germany, doing what they knew best, tending the earth and raising crops. As political instability and religious persecution loomed heavy by the 19th century, these humble farmers looked yet again toward new horizons that, by the 1880's, would lead them to the great northwest.
Led by a vanguard traveling by wagon and rail to Northwest destinations in the 1880s, members of the Ochs, Scheuerman, Kleweno, Litzenberger, Pfaffenroth, Schmick, Helm, Weitz, and other families would find their solace at "The Colony." The Colony, as they fondly referred to it, soon developed into a thriving settlement that provisioned families coming from the Old Country to their new home on the Palouse. Scores of new arrivals stayed while adjusting to life in the new land, and today many thousands of residents in the Northwest and beyond can trace their origins in the country to this time of sanctuary along the placid Palouse. Parents described it as a "Land of Milk and Honey" for children who tended the colony's dairy herd and raided bee hives along the river. The newcomers used farming methods of medieval origin—long, narrow Langstreifen fields (akin to English furlongs) in three-crop rotations (Dreifelderwirtschaft), a shared "commons" (Almenden) for grazing and gardens, and harvests with sickle and scythe. In 2015, descendants of the Ochs and Scheuerman families reestablished The Colony as Palouse Colony Farm and tend now to the land our ancestors once did.
We aspire to capture the sentiment of the "commons" once again in a modern and complex era. Though, before anything can be done, we must first grow grains. At Palouse Colony farm we grow landrace grains or, as I am fond of saying, "we grow the grains God made." These landrace grains are ancient pre-hybridized varieties ("races") of wheat, barley, oats, rye, and other grains which nature has caused to flourish in areas ("lands") throughout the world where they adapted to local environmental conditions. Genetic diversity and natural selection have conditioned these landrace varieties to be remarkably resilient and quick to adapt to new locations. Through often painstaking efforts we have found, reintroduced and caused to flourish many of the landraces which the very progenitors of our blood had grown in the soil of which we are now stewards. Varieties like Palouse Heritage White Lammas, known to history as "Hudson's Bay Wheat," originated as a landrace in the Celitc Aisles and is the original cereal grain of the Pacific Northwest. Palouse Heritage Red Walla Walla is a soft red landrace wheat hailing from Great Britain that was sown and thrived from Walla Walla to the Palouse after 1890. Palouse Heritage Bere Barley is a landrace from the Orkney Islands and the "grain that gave beer it's name." Palouse Heritage Purple Egyptian barley is a hulless, glassy purple barley with its heritage in Egypt and raised by our Russian ancestors in southern Russia. The list goes on. At Palouse Colony Farm we aim to reintroduce the flavorful spectrum of these lovely forgotten varieties along with their tremendous health benefits back onto the northwest dinner table. Through cooperation and partnerships with area malters, millers, bakers, brewers and distillers, we aim to offer our kaleidoscope of grains in the form of healthy flours and delightful beverages, bringing something truly unique to the market place, while tending the land responsibly and sustainably.
The pioneers and explorers of our area embraced a sentiment of community, their lives and livelihoods were often predicated by it. The experience of the entrepreneur strays very little from this idea; leaning on friends, neighbors and partners to the end of reciprocal benefit. Borrowing from contemporary agrarian visionary Wendell Berry, having a neighbor is preferable to having his land. In this sense we like to place ourselves in the boots of our pioneer forebears; inviting others of like mind to co-opt in the prospect of mutual success, in the pursuit of "the commons" while sharing common cause in health, community, relationships and sustainability. We revere the memory of things worth remembering and the preservation of things worth preserving. We do it to create sustainable grain economies that seek to respectfully feed body, mind, and spirit.
We do what we do for success, not just for ourselves, but for those around us. We do what we do to make real for others what we have known and what is continually revealed to us; that we live in a remarkable earth with spectacular diversity and creativity—the hallmark of our Creator—and what's more is that it was meant for us. For health. For hearth. And for heritage.
Tagged: Volga Germans, Rotary, Landrace Grains, Palouse History, Palouse Country, Palouse Colony Farm, Catherine the Great, Sustainable Agriculture, Old World Farming, White Lammas Wheat, Red Walla Walla Wheat, Scots Bere Barley, Purple Egyptian Barley, Craft Malt, Craft Brew, Artisan Baking, Milling, Wendell Berry
Memory & Story, Sickles and Sheaves
Sickles and Sheaves — Farming, Faith, and the Frye (Part 2)
This blog post is part of a series I (Richard) am writing about my past life experiences that helped develop a love and appreciation for agricultural heritage in general and landrace grains in particular. The series is called "Sickles and Sheaves - Farming, Faith, and the Frye" and you can view the other parts of this blog series here.
Palouse Harvest Memories
Richard and Don's grandfather, Karl Scheuerman, during harvest
When I once asked Grandpa Scheuerman for explanation of harvest operations in bygone days, he retrieved his leather-cased sack-sewing needle—still razor sharp after many years in retirement, and an old photograph from his bedroom closet. The image (shown below) was labelled "Lautenschlager and Poffenroth, 1911"—surnames of familiar relatives, and I instantly recognized Grandpa standing under the wooden derrick clasping the handle of a pitch-fork. He then patiently described the role of each member of the substantial crew and introduced me to terms like derrick table, header-tender, hoe-down, and other agrarian vernacular from the steam-powered threshing era. Many farm families treasure such pictures today, and I have unrolled many that stretch as wide as a kitchen table. Grandpa delighted in relating tall tales of bygone August "thrashin' weather" happenings—when the Moore brothers threshed a thousand sacks of grain in a single day the same harvest season R. R. Hutchison took that picture, the bumper crops of 1908-1911, and how Black field hand Otis Banks could lift a 120-pound sack of wheat with his teeth.
Among the few books I recall in my grandfather's home were a Bible and ancient three-volume New Testament commentary in German, while our father's most frequented volume may have been the weighty and exceedingly smudged parts manual to our dilapidated International-Harvester Model 160 pull-combine. I felt a bit embarrassed in a day of efficient self-propelled machines operating in every direction that in the 1960s we still resorted to an exceedingly faded red Rube Goldberg contraption of sprockets, pulleys, and straw walkers that Dad patiently guided through the seas of wheat during our annual month-long harvest. But the good feeling of accomplishment swept across all the crew with the cutting of the final swath that vanquished any boyhood unease over lost grain, equipment collisions, or other mistakes in the field. "No one should be deprived of harvesting," artist-folklorist Eric Sloan observed in his illustrated 1971 rural memoir, I Remember America. "Beyond the value of feeling the fruition of nature all about you, there is the satisfaction of beholding the results of your own efforts."
Don and Richard "helping" during harvest
Richard and Don's father, Don Scheuerman
Like most boys in wheat country, my brother and I started driving truck in the harvest field on teen farm permits that legalized our trips throughout the day to the Endicott and Thera elevators to unload grain loaded into our faded red and blue '56 Chevy truck and older black Ford. The obligation came with explicit warnings about harvest time dangers—field fires, equipment collisions, and tragic combine tip-overs on steep Palouse hillsides that claimed the lives of more than one boyhood acquaintance. While periodic visits to the field by friends and relatives provided welcome breaks in the daily routine of waiting for the several "dumps" needed to fill a truck, considerable time for other pursuits is available when waiting alone in a draw of stifling heat or on a breezy hilltop. Perhaps our mother's example had led us to be readers of paperbacks available on a large revolving rack at the local drugstore. While my brother was attracted to Ian Fleming spy thrillers, I found myself introduced to new worlds of former experience through historical fiction.
1925 Scrapbook of Country Poems Fragement (Vol 2, Winter 1925, Private Collection)
The Galilean archaeological dig in James Michener's The Source (1965)—a thick book I thought would last all summer, acquainted me with Stone Age wadi life in the fictional village of Makor where the Ur family matriarch comprehends the value of planting grains for self-sufficiency while the men travel widely to hunt. Having grown up hearing many tales of our Norwegian-born Sunwold great-grandparents on the Dakota frontier, I was also incredibly captivated by Ole Rølvaag's stirring and often disturbing scenes in Giants in the Earth (1927) in which Per Hansa and his wife, Beret, struggling against storms, locust plagues, despairing homesickness, and the mystical universe of Old World thought. The Hansas, in turn, led me to meet Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson in a subsequent summertime encounter with Vilhelm Moberg's magisterial four-volume Emigrant Series (1949-1959). The books dramatize the 1850s Swedish farmer immigrant saga of home building and barn raising, and planting and harvesting in Minnesota Territory. Experiences described on many pages reminded me of family tales my grandfather often spun about Palouse "sod-bustin" days as he rode in the harvest truck with us to see the hills of his youth—
"He liked to sit at the window and look out at his fields; this was the land he had changed. When he came the whole meadow had been covered with weeds and wild grass. Now it produced rye, wheat, oats, corn, potatoes, turnips. The wild grass had fed elk, deer, and rabbits; now the field yielded so much there was enough for them as well as for other people."
Tagged: Palouse Country, Harvest, Family, Bible, Eric Sloan, Agriculture, Palouse History
Palouse Colony Farm Officially Recognized as Washington State Historic Site!
We're pleased to report that our Palouse Colony Farm was placed on the Washington State Historic Preservation Office Register for the original barn and outbuildings and the property's role in Pacific Northwest history as an important "clearing house" for German immigrants from Russia arriving in to region from 1880s to the 1910s. State Preservation Officer Mike Houser made the presentation at the October, 2016 meeting of the Governor's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
Richard and wife Lois (right) at the State Historic Preservation Meeting, Tacoma
The barn (c. 1895) is the oldest building at the farm, which also includes the house and blacksmith shop, which was established by a German immigrant families from Russia's Volga River region who arrived in the Washington's Endicott-St. John area in 1882 and established the colony in 1889. The location became a thriving settlement that provisioned families coming from the Old Country to settle in the region, and according to historian Richard Sallet, some 100,000 first- and second-generation Germans from Russia followed to live in Pacific Northwest by 1920. Colony founder parents described the Palouse as a "Land of Milk and Honey" to their children who tended the colony's dairy herd and raided bee hives along the river. The newcomers used farming methods of medieval origin—long, narrow Langstreifen fields (akin to English furlongs) in three-crop rotations (Dreifelderwirtschaft), a shared "commons" (Almenden) for grazing and gardens, and harvests with sickle and scythe.
In recent years we have reestablished the farm to grow landrace grains using the same Old World farming methods used by the farm's original founders.
Palouse Colony Farm and Heritage Grain Plots (Turkey Red wheat, Scots Bere barley)
Tagged: Palouse Country, Palouse History, Palouse Colony Farm, Pacific Northwest History, Volga Germans, 19th Century History, Germany, Russia, Landrace Grains
Karl Scheuerman
The Eastern Palouse Uplands
"Morning Mist" curtesy of John Clement (photo taken at the eastern Palouse uplands)
The Palouse River headwaters are born in the clear stony brooks of Idaho's Hoodoo and Clearwater mountains and fed by tributaries emerging from the Thatuna Range located between the river's north and south forks. These eastern uplands are composed of the western buttes' parent belt quartzites and argillites that rose with the Rocky Mountains when the Cascade Range had not yet emerged above the Pacific waters. In the formative processes of this early Mesozoic Age of explosive Rocky Mountain strato-volcanoes, hot magmatic fluids under great pressure penetrated this younger earth's crust and brought certain metals in gaseous state nearer the surface to form soluble compounds like gold chloride and aluminum-iron silicate. In places where water penetrated to great depth these compounds dissolved, mixed with the magma, and were forced through fissures with other solubles like silicon dioxide, or quartz, to create veins containing precious metals and alamandine garnet crystals.
Where this petrographic drama transpired under ancient weathered surfaces as in the Hoodoos, these deposits were worn by water until soft yellow flakes, larger nuggets, and violet-red gemstones fell out into streams which usually held these heavy particles near their sources. As in other high places along the Pacific Slope, indications of this placer gold in North Idaho resulted in nineteenth century regional rushes as prospectors flocked to the rumored El Dorados. Dodecahedron-faced garnets and rainbow-colored "harlequin" opals have also been sought in the eastern Palouse as the region's only semi-precious stones.
Tagged: Palouse Country, Palouse History, Palouse River, Geology, Gold, Garnet, Opal
My Personal Connection with Landrace Grains
Somewhere in one of the outbuildings on our small Palouse Country farm in southeastern Washington, our parents kept a scythe (pronounced sigh, or sithe) in semi-retirement. The old implement appeared only when barnyard grass and weeds needed to be cleared, or when Dad thought his two sons had unnecessary time on their hands. We didn't have a tractor-powered sickle mower like some of our neighbors, though a thoroughly rusted reaper-binder from our grandfather's day rested securely in the branches of a cherry tree on the hillside just above our house. The dilapidated contraption with wooden reel, drive chains, and sprockets was an object of endless boyhood fascination. Although the machine had been abandoned long before Dad took over the farm in the 1940s, he had somehow mastered the elegant art of binding sheaves for decorative use or for us to enter into the Palouse Empire Fair, which to this day still has grain sheaf competition.
Our old scythe's serpentine handle seemed taller than I stood so was awkward to handle. But Dad could adjust the weathered grips, which he called nibs, and would offer refresher lessons in swath, rhythm, and sharpening before sending my brother or me out to battle formations of wheatgrass and Jim Hill mustard. "There's a right way, and a wrong way," was his familiar refrain while demonstrating many tasks like this one for our rural edification, and as if watching some peculiar country dance he showed how to keep the heel down with each measured step to avoid sticking the point of the blade into the ground.
Located between the small rural communities of Endicott and St. John, Washington, our place was deep in the Pacific Northwest's Palouse Country—a legendary grain district known for steeply rolling hills and a favored destination for landscape photographers from around the world. I suspect farms like ours held in common with many others a peculiar geographic nomenclature necessary for communication about what had happened long before, or what needed to be done with scythe, hoe, or other tool. Far behind the house we had the Huvaluck (Hessian dialect for "Oat Hole," from Hafer, German "oat"), Windmill Hill, and Spud Draw where our clan had planted potatoes in an endless furrow during the week of Good Friday for at least three generations. The head of the draw led over a narrow hill aptly named The Saddle. With only a half-section, our farm was small even by 1960s standards but there could be no doubt where we might be directed to tend a thistle patch or harrow or rendezvous with the combine to unload grain since so many named features existed on that tussled 320-acre half-section.
Volga German Scything Scene (1768)
Concordia Center for Volga German Studies, Portland, Oregon
Over time I came to understand my father's and grandfather's familiarity with the land's every twist and turn, and eventually my own, in terms that defy analytics. Nature writer Barry Lopez characterizes such natural relationships in Home Ground as "the unembodied call of a place, that numinous voice" when a hill, draw, or untilled sodpatch wildlife sanctuary seems to become "something that knows we are there." This mystical relationship fosters a deep connection with landscape that predisposes some to feel a kinship of comfort and familiarity with certain other places—in my case the undulating Hessian Vogelsberg district in central Germany, and the steeply rolling Bergseite of southern Russia's black earth Volga region; places inhabited by my ancestors long ago. People have perceived these forces since time immemorial, and they continue to inspire. The Lake District sustained Wordsworth like Suffolk enlivened Constable, and the Great Plains fed the souls of Willa Cather, Ole Edvart Rølvaag, and Hamlin Garland.
The broad hill rising westward from our house toward the entangled cherry tree reaper was steep enough to accommodate a spacious root cellar attached to our ramshackle porch. The cellar had been built not long after our paternal Russian-born German great-grandparents arrived in the Palouse in the early 1890s, so we were warned to stay out due to threat of collapse from the weight of the ground above. Our elders called these places zemlyanka, Russian for "earth-home," which likely were successors to the medieval German grubenhaus ("dug-house") their ancestors had fashioned in Hesse. Our people had lived in such places when first immigrating to Russia from Germany during Tsarina Catherine the Great's reign 250 years ago. Some even inhabited such dens after arriving in the Pacific Northwest until a proper family home could be built.
The young are disposed to explore, so in our youth we ventured inside the cellar periodically to see dimly lit evidence of life from yesteryear. An exceedingly dusty pituvfka kitchen worktable stood against one wall with two rounded flour bins suspended beneath, and some old glass canning jars remained on wooden shelves. Most had long been empty, but a few held grain safeguarded by our grandparents. Perhaps these were remnants of the Hirsche Brei ("millet porridge" in Hessian) that Dad remembered eating with honey as a boiled wheat breakfast mush in Depression days. I learned later that usu Leut ("our people") had brought ancient landrace grain seed from Russia's Volga region and the Ukraine, varieties named for colors of kernels and glumes like Russian "Turkey" Red and Odessa White wheats, Purple Egyptian Hulless barley, and Green Russian oats. Perhaps the cellar had also served as Grandpa's seed vault.
Tagged: Agriculture, Family, Purple Egyptian Barley, Turkey Red Wheat, Volga Germans, Concordia Center for Volga German Studies, Palouse Country, Palouse History, Catherine the Great, Hesse, Germany, Russia, Odessa White Wheat
Feature Article in The Whitman County Gazette
Palouse Heritage was privileged to be featured in the latest issue of the Whitman County Gazette: http://www.wcgazette.com/
If the article is no longer available on their website, you can read the full excerpt here:
Return to Palouse Colony Farm
By Kara McMurray Gazette Reporter
Palouse Colony Farm circa 1910
Richard Scheuerman grew up about two miles from a farm known as the "Palouse Colony," a farm between Endicott and St. John that was settled by German immigrants from Russia in the 1880s. "It was kind of a legendary place as a boy growing up," said Scheuerman. Scheuerman said he was always interested in knowing more about the people there. "I enjoyed talking to older people. Even as a boy, I started visiting with elders of my grandfather's generation who lived there," he recalled. "It was all just very fascinating." Scheuerman found himself learning about the "Old World agrarian methods" these farmers brought with them. It was a history he became hooked on. A recent business endeavor has brought Scheuerman to re-establish the Palouse Colony and its Old World farming methods as Palouse Heritage. "An opportunity came for us to acquire the property about two years ago," said Scheuerman. "I have always kept interested in researching about the Palouse country. It was a special opportunity I didn't want to pass up."
Richard's wife Lois and his brother Don Scheuerman are also part of restoring the Palouse Colony Farm, as is Rod Ochs. The Scheuermans and Ochs are all descendants of families who once lived at the farm. Richard said those involved in helping to restore grain varieties have been Alex McGregor, the McGregor Company and Andrew Wolfe, his nephew. Additionally, farmers Joe Delong of St. John, Tom Schierman of Lancaster and Chuck Jordan of Winona have helped. Richard called the effort so far "a learning experience." "We're always finding new things," he commented. "It's been a wonderful adventure just learning about this. It's kind of all coming together."
Richard told of how the German immigrants brought grains with them from Russia, including Turkey Red, a form of hard red winter wheat. Prior to the introduction of Turkey Red, soft white wheats were mostly used in bread production in the Pacific Northwest. "Until immigrants came from Russia, people made bread out of the soft winter wheats," said Richard. "The Turkey Red revolutionized this. Virtually all breads today are made from hard red wheats." Richard called the flavor of the grains now being grown again at the Palouse Colony "very distinct." "The flavor is incredible," he said. "We're calling it 'flavorful authenticity.'" Bringing back different grain varieties has been an experience right out of history, Richard said. "None of these have been grown for probably a century," he said. "We're seeing this unfold as living history, and friends are bringing out old recipes that were handed down." Richard said they are not seeking to replace "modern hybrid" grains, but said there is a place for both. "Modern hybrids produce higher-yielding crops," he said. "There's a place for both worlds with markets internationally and with distinct flavor grains."
Richard said that Don is also working on brews. "Don has been interested in the malting grains. He's working with some craft malters and brewers," said Richard. The brews are not quite ready, though. "The malt grain is being used in Spokane to create craft brews," said Richard. "We're trying to decide if we are ready to scale it up to production. It certainly tastes wonderful." There are 40 acres on the property that are being farmed now. Richard said the property was also recently designated as a state historical site. The flours Palouse Heritage is developing will be available in December, and the availability of the brews will be announced at a later date. To learn more about what Palouse Heritage is doing and the history of the Palouse Colony, go to www.palouseheritage.com.
Article courtesy of The Whitman County Gazette
Tagged: Palouse Country, Palouse History, Landrace Grains, Agriculture, Old World Farming, Volga Germans, Craft Malt, Craft Brew, Flour, Palouse Colony Farm
2016 Spokane Food and Farm Expo
Palouse Heritage had the opportunity to present at the 2016 Food & Farm Expo in Spokane. Our co-founders, Richard and Don Scheuerman, participated in the event along with several of our friends and partners who have joined us in the effort to raise awareness about the benefits of landrace grains.
Richard taught one of the classes at the event, titled:
Heritage and Landrace Grains: Restoring the soil, our health and flavor with heritage and Landrace Grains
You can watch his lecture below. The accompanying PowerPoint slide deck is available by clicking here.
Tagged: Agriculture, Landrace Grains, American History, Pacific Northwest History, Native American History, Events, Presentations, 19th Century History, Health, Craft Brew, Craft Malt, Milling, The Bread Lab, Washington State University, Palouse History, Nutrition


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      estimated_bandwidth(QuicBandwidth::Zero()),
      packets_reordered(0),
      max_sequence_reordering(0),
      max_time_reordering_us(0),
      tcp_loss_events(0),
      connection_creation_time(QuicTime::Zero()),
      blocked_frames_received(0),
      blocked_frames_sent(0) {}

QuicConnectionStats::QuicConnectionStats(const QuicConnectionStats& other) =
    default;

QuicConnectionStats::~QuicConnectionStats() {}

std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const QuicConnectionStats& s) {
  os << "{ bytes_sent: " << s.bytes_sent;
  os << " packets_sent: " << s.packets_sent;
  os << " stream_bytes_sent: " << s.stream_bytes_sent;
  os << " packets_discarded: " << s.packets_discarded;
  os << " bytes_received: " << s.bytes_received;
  os << " packets_received: " << s.packets_received;
  os << " packets_processed: " << s.packets_processed;
  os << " stream_bytes_received: " << s.stream_bytes_received;
  os << " bytes_retransmitted: " << s.bytes_retransmitted;
  os << " packets_retransmitted: " << s.packets_retransmitted;
  os << " bytes_spuriously_retransmitted: " << s.bytes_spuriously_retransmitted;
  os << " packets_spuriously_retransmitted: "
     << s.packets_spuriously_retransmitted;
  os << " packets_lost: " << s.packets_lost;
  os << " slowstart_packets_sent: " << s.slowstart_packets_sent;
  os << " slowstart_packets_lost: " << s.slowstart_packets_lost;
  os << " slowstart_bytes_lost: " << s.slowstart_bytes_lost;
  os << " packets_dropped: " << s.packets_dropped;
  os << " crypto_retransmit_count: " << s.crypto_retransmit_count;
  os << " loss_timeout_count: " << s.loss_timeout_count;
  os << " tlp_count: " << s.tlp_count;
  os << " rto_count: " << s.rto_count;
  os << " min_rtt_us: " << s.min_rtt_us;
  os << " srtt_us: " << s.srtt_us;
  os << " max_packet_size: " << s.max_packet_size;
  os << " max_received_packet_size: " << s.max_received_packet_size;
  os << " estimated_bandwidth: " << s.estimated_bandwidth;
  os << " packets_reordered: " << s.packets_reordered;
  os << " max_sequence_reordering: " << s.max_sequence_reordering;
  os << " max_time_reordering_us: " << s.max_time_reordering_us;
  os << " tcp_loss_events: " << s.tcp_loss_events;
  os << " connection_creation_time: "
     << s.connection_creation_time.ToDebuggingValue();
  os << " blocked_frames_received: " << s.blocked_frames_received;
  os << " blocked_frames_sent: " << s.blocked_frames_sent << " }";

  return os;
}

}  // namespace net

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
layout: post
title:  "Ants: Chapter 2"
date:   2011-02-23 18:50:07 -0400
categories: ants story
---
Thomas was desperately trying to stay afloat in in the now shallower side of his pool. A week after his infamous black ant hallucination, his mother had been convinced that he badly needed "motivation" for working out. As if she ever bothered to stray from her day to day routine to even visit the gym!

The least she had allowed him to do was spend 20 minutes a day in the pool. Unfortunately, their pool's "shallow" side was consisting of five feet of water and Thomas was rather short for his age. Rather than risk drowning, he clung to the sides, making sure his face stayed above the water level.

Luckily, his mother was not watching him that day. If she was, there was no doubt she would disapprove of him wasting time doing nothing but soaking himself in water. He looked around to see the easiest way to get out of the pool when he noticed several dark spots on the surface of the pool. Taking a closer look, he realized they were ant carcasses.Was it possible that he, in fact, hadn't been hallucinating about the ants after all?

…

The colony was devastated. They had lost the most recent battle, with at least 50 dead and more injured, most of them in the Great Waters. Unfortunately, without wings, they all drowned.

Annetta was still on forage duty, looking for bits of food to feed the soldiers with. She knew that this was an  important job, but it was so tedious!

Sensing a rustling in the grass ahead of her, she peeked and was relieved to see that it was just the medical adviser, Left. He wasn't a bad ant, but he did have a strange sense of humor at times that she usually found serious. She hesitated and then scurried up to him.

"What are you doing outside the Hill?" she asked.

"There was a soldier coming back from the Waters. Apparently, he broke two back legs climbing out, though how he could possibly get out after falling from such a height is a mystery. Perhaps the white witch saved him." he joked.

Annetta remembered that story. All the ant larvae were told it when they were in their infancy. Once there was a mischievous ant who ventured too far from hill. She fell into the Waters, and no one expected to see he ever again. However, the ant came back a few days later, claiming to have been saved by some mysterious white object.


text:
Firstly, it's not even obvious how to simulate Leonardo's strategy efficiently. It can be done though. First, you need to be able to tell, for each request, what the next request of the same colour will be (we'll see why later). This can be computed by making a backwards pass over the data, while keeping track of the last seen request for each colour. Now we can implement Leonardo's strategy in a forward pass. Over time, let's keep track of the next time each colour will be needed. After each request, we need to update this for the just-requested colour to the point to the next instance for this colour. Each time Leonardo requests a paint colour that isn't on the scaffold, we can examine all the colours on the scaffold to determine which will be needed the furthest in the future. That would still require O(NK) time, but we can keep the next-needed-time for all the scaffold colours in a max priority queue. Since keys need to be changed as we go, a multi_set is a good choice in C++ for O(N log K) time.
With that in place, it's straightforward to implement the cases where we have at least ceil(log K) bits per request, because we can just encode the index of the colour on the scaffold to replace. However, to solve subtasks 4 and 5 you need something smarter. The key point is that you don't have to exactly implement Leonardo's algorithm. Let's do a thought experiment: Leonardo has two shelves on his scaffold, top and bottom. The top shelf contains the colours he will use at least once more before they're taken away. The bottom shelf contains the colours he knows will be taken away before they're used again. Since he knows the sequence of colours and he assumes his assistant follows his strategy, he can arrange the initial K paints on the right shelves, and every time he uses a paint he also puts it back on the right shelf. His assistant will only ever take away a colour from the bottom shelf, and Leonardo will only pick up paint either from his assistant or from the top shelf.
And now for the key observation: Leonardo never looks at the bottom shelf. Thus, it doesn't actually matter which colour the assistant takes off the bottom shelf. If he instead takes away an arbitrary colour from the bottom shelf, the set of top shelf paints will still be exactly as before, step after step. The only possible difference is that a requested colour might turn out now to already be on the bottom shelf, but this can't happen because it would contradict the optimality of Leonardo's strategy.
Thus, it is sufficient for the advice to provide enough information to know which colours are on which shelf, and the assistant can pick bottom-shelf colours arbitrary to take away. We need K bits to indicate the shelf for each of the initial K colours, and we need N bits to indicate which shelf each paint goes back on after it has been used. N + K bits is enough to solve all subtasks, and in fact subtask 5 can be solved with only 125000 bits.
Jousting tournament
There are a number of observations one can make. Firstly, let's say a knight is a candidate for a tournament if he either participates in the tournament or in another tournament whose winner was a candidate (recursively). Then it is easy to see that the candidates for a tournament form a contiguous interval of the original line of knights, and that the location of the interval is independent of the ranks of the knights. Computing this interval efficiently is not completely trivial, but let's come back to that and assume we know the candidate interval for every tournament. We can also see that the winner of any tournament is the candidate with highest rank.
Suppose the popular knight is a candidate for a tournament. We can immediately determine who all the other candidates for that tournament are, regardless of exactly where he is in the line. We can also compute whether he will win. Now, for each tournament going backwards in time, we can compute how many times he will win if that is his first tournament: if he loses it will be 0, otherwise it will be more one that the number for the tournament he advances to. We can also find the leftmost slot (if any) he could occupy that doesn't require advancement from a previous tournament. We then pick the tournament with the highest such score and take the leftmost slot (breaking ties leftwards as required).
Done naively this will require O(N2) time, which should suffice for the first 2 subtasks. We need a few operations to make this small enough to tackle the final subtask. Firstly, we need to be able to determine the candidate ranges. This can be done with a binary indexed tree. As the tournaments are played, store an array of N values in a BIT, where each value is 1 for knights that haven't competed or that had the lowest index (not rank) of all candidates in their last tournament, and 0 for all others. For a new tournament (S, E), the first candidate will be the first knight whose (inclusive) prefix sum is S+1, and the last candidate will be one to the left of the first knight whose (inclusive) prefix sum is E+2. Binary searching for a given prefix sum can be implemented in O(log N) time, but we also need to find the bits to zero out in the BIT. These can be found by keeping the locations of all 1 bits in a linked list. Each bit is zeroed at most once, so this process takes O(N log N) time.
For each tournament, we also need to know to which tournament the winner advances. This can be computed at the same time as the previous step, by storing the tournament index in the linked list and building a tournament tree as we go.
Finally, we need to be able to determine the winner of each tournament, assuming it contains the popular knight. For this we need to determine the maximum value within a range of values. This is the standard range max query problem, for which there are a number of O(N log N) and even O(N) algorithms to answer O(N) queries on N items. A simple one is to precompute for each element the maximum of the next 1, 2, 4, 8, ... elements in O(N log N) time, which then allows queries to be answered in O(1) time.
UPDATE: a commenter made a good observation: we don't care about the ranks of the other knights, only whether they are higher or lower than that of the popular knight. The range max queries can all be done on a boolean array, which is simpler. For example, by precomputing prefix sums one can determine the number of higher-ranked knights in an interval, and the popular knight will win a tournament if and only if the corresponding sum is zero.
Ideal City
This one had me totally stumped yesterday, but I woke up this morning with what I think is a solution. It depends on a conjecture. Let's call the x-weight of a path the number of horizontal steps, and similarly for y-weight. Let's call a path from A to B x-shortest if it has minimal x-weight, and let the x-distance from A to B be x-weight of this path (again, similarly for y-shortest and y-weight). I conjecture that the distance from A to B is the sum of the x-distance and the y-distance. Put another way, I conjecture that the shortest path from A to B is both x-shortest and y-shortest. I can't formally prove it, but the intuition is that any x-shortest path can be "straightened out" until it matches a shortest path, because there are no internal obstacles to get in the way.
Given that, we can separate the problem into finding the sum of x-distances and the sum of y-distances. Let's look at just the y-distances. The city can be divided into contiguous horizontal strips. Consider each such strip as a node in a graph, where two nodes are connected if the strips are directly connected. In fact, the graph must be a tree, since a cycle would imply that the city is not ideal. Also, travel within a strip is free when computing y-distance, so the y-distance between two blocks is equal to the number of tree edges between their corresponding nodes.
Computing the sum of all distances in a tree is a more conventional problem with conventional recursive techniques. For each subtree, compute the sum of all distances within the subtree, the number of blocks, and the sum of distances from every block to the root. When merging two trees at their roots, these values can be computed in O(1) time for the combined tree using the values for the original tree and the new subtree, so the process takes O(N) time.
UPDATE: I realised that this construction can also prove the conjecture (as did a commenter). Consider the shortest path, and assume it is not y-shortest. Project it onto the tree of horizontal strips. It is then not a shortest path through this tree, since all y steps are projected to steps in this tree. But a non-shortest path through a tree must visit some vertex twice, which means that the original path exits some strip and then re-enters it. We could then shorten the path by short-cutting directly between the exit and entry points along the path.
ffao said...
I may be wrong, but isn't the fact that the graph is a tree a proof of your original conjecture? As, on a tree, any two vertices have a unique path between them, any vertical movement that doesn't take you from one strip to the next strip on that path will eventually have to be undone, that is, it could never be present on an optimal route. Do the same thing to a graph of the vertical strips to prove it for the x-distance.
Nadeem Moidu said...
Is the following observation correct for "Jousting tournament":
As long as some candidate is above the late knight, we don't care what his actual rank is. So we can replace everyone's rank as 0 (knights lower than the late knight), 1 (late knight) or 2(knights higher).
So the range maximum query reduces to finding whether a range is completely filled with 0, which is simpler.


text:
package com.sina.weibo.sdk.openapi.legacy;

import java.net.URLEncoder;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.net.Uri;

public class ActivityInvokeAPI {
    /**
     * 调起新浪微博客户端的发送微博界面,完成发送微博工作
     * @param activity
     * @param content 微博内容
     */
    public static void openSendWeibo(Activity activity,String content){
        if(activity==null||null==content){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://sendweibo?content="+URLEncoder.encode(content)));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
/**
 * 调起新浪微博客户端的发送微博界面,完成发送微博工作
 * @param activity
 * @param content 微博内容
 * @param xid 签到时 的地点id
 * @param poiId POI点ID
 * @param poiName POI点名称
 * @param longitude 经度
 * @param latitude 纬度
 */
    public static void openSendWeibo(Activity activity,String content,String xid,String poiId,String poiName,String longitude,String latitude){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://sendweibo?content="+content+"&xid="+xid+"&poiid="+poiId+"&poiname="+poiName+"&longitude="+longitude+"&latitude="+latitude));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 调用当前用户的周边的人的界面
     * @param activity
     */
    public static void openNearbyPeople(Activity activity){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://nearbypeople"));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 调用当前用户的周边的微博的界面
     * @param activity
     */
    public static void openNearbyWeibo(Activity activity){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://nearbyweibo"));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     *通过昵称 打开个人资料页面
     * @param activity
     * @param nickName 昵称
     */
    public static void openUserInfoByNickName(Activity activity,String nickName){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
//        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://userinfo?nick="+URLEncoder.encode(nickName)));
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://userinfo?nick="+nickName));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 通过uid打开个人资料界面
     * @param activity
     * @param uid
     */
    public static void openUserInfoByUid(Activity activity,String uid){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://userinfo?uid="+uid));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 打开微博客户端内置浏览器
     * @param activity
     * @param url 要打开的网页地址
     */
    public static void openWeiboBrowser(Activity activity,String url){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://browser?url="+url));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }

    /**
     * 打开微博客户端
     * @param activity
     */
    public static void openWeibo(Activity activity){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://splash"));

        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 打开摇一摇界面
     * @param activity
     */
    public static void openShake(Activity activity){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://shake"));

        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 打开通讯录界面
     * @param activity
     */
    public static void openContact(Activity activity){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://contact"));

        activity.startActivity(intent);

    }
    /**
     * 打开用户话题列表界面
     * @param activity
     * @param uid 用户uid
     */
    public static void openUserTrends(Activity activity,String uid){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://usertrends?uid="+uid));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 打开私信对话界面
     * @param activity
     * @param uid 用户uid
     */
    public static void openMessageListByUid(Activity activity,String uid){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://messagelist?uid="+uid));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 打开私信对话界面
     * @param activity
     * @param uid 用户uid
     */
    public static void openMessageListByNickName(Activity activity,String nickName){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://messagelist?nick="+(nickName)));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
    /**
     * 打开某条微博正文
     * @param activity
     * @param blogId 某条微博id
     */
    public static void openDetail(Activity activity,String blogId){
        if(activity==null){
            return;
        }
        Intent intent=new Intent();
        intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.DEFAULT");
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("sinaweibo://detail?mblogid="+blogId));
        activity.startActivity(intent);
    }
}


Are you letting fear dictate how you build your Network Marketing biz? Break through it with one of the most popular speakers and trainers of our time … the great Todd Falcone, author of Fearless Networking. Don't miss this incredible opportunity to learn from the Fearless Networker himself, Todd Falcone. He's laying it all out on this week's episode of the Network Marketing Heroes Podcast, hosted by Richard Bliss Brooke.


Welcome to Davao City Golf . com, Davao City's 1 and only local resource for golf course reviews, information and discussion.
Glad you made it to Davao City's premiere location for golf. We are a locally run and operated website dedicated to golfer who is looking for a course to play that fits their ability / budget. Ever notice when you make a Google search for golf in Davao City or something similar, that you get very little information on the state of golf in Davao City. We found that to be a problem.
We thought to ourselves about what we would want to know about a course and what was important. We then set out to get the facts for ourselves. Lets not trust what the "marketing" material for each site has to say, we have played every course in town why not share our experiences with others. Especially the visiting golfer to Davao City. How do they know where to play, the internet is just about their only resource to find a good course, that is a good value, based off what they are looking for.
We are in the process of getting every single course in town up and reviewed. It will take some time, check back often to see the updates or simply put your email address up in the upper right corner of the site and join our mailing list. We will let you know about the updates to the site as they happen.
Golf Reviews – We send a member of our staff out to play the course. He pays for the course from his own pocket. We don't ask the course if it would be a good time for a review?!? That just doesn't make sense, if you call up the course to play 9 times out of 10 they are not going to tell you whats wrong with the course. Fortunately we have played all these courses many times. We have seen them in good condition and in bad. We know if it is always in the condition being reviewed or if it was something temporary. The reviewer then comes back and writes his review and assigns ratings based off of his recent experience and his overall experience at the course. Remember we are not getting anything from these course, we pay our own way, we have no incentive to write a "favorable" review. We are going to tell it to you how it is, if the course doesn't like it, let them address the problems and we will be more than happy to re-review the course. Also keep in mind that we are not "visiting" reviewers, we play this courses year around, not once and that's it. The rating system we use covers all the bases needed to make a informed decision before making and tee time and spending your time and money.
1. Course Conditions – The top reason to visit a course, we let you know if the course ready for a PGA event or if its just barely staying alive.
2. Difficulty Level – This is a very subjective rating, we not only rate how difficult it is for us, but take into consideration the average / visiting golfer that may not of played there before. Our reviewers handicaps range from Scratch (0) up to about a 17 so we are not just giving good advice but useful advice.
3. Pro Shop / Restaurant – Here we let you know if this is somewhere you can get the equipment you might need to complete your day and we let you know how the food stacks up to the competition.
4. Value for Money – Another rather subjective rating, we try to take all the other ratings into consideration when deciding what we think is a good value. Is the course in perfect condition, but very expensive? We take our experience from all over San Antonio and compare that criteria to the rest. It may be in perfect condition but the readers would like to know if their is a course in almost perfect condition and much cheaper? This is the information you are not going to find anywhere else on the web.
5. Location – Is the course 50 miles outside of town?, well let you know. Sometimes the location can detract from the value or add to it. There maybe courses with perfect conditions, a good price, good people but be 40 miles outside out of town. Sometimes this makes sense when choosing a course. When deciding what courses we were going to include we pulled up a map and took all the courses within 1 hour drive from downtown. We stopped short of Austin.
Course Information – We try to provide as much information about the course that we can, making DavaoCityGolf.com truly a one stop shop for your golf informational needs. We provide course contact information, a score card from each and every course, course layout, location of the course with full direction capabilities, if the course has the ability to take tee times online, we connect you to their service and photos of the course so you can get a idea of what awaits your on your next golf outing.
Readers Top 10 – We have a page dedicated to the top 10 golf courses in Davao City ranked by YOUR ratings. We compile all the reviews and ratings that our readers have submitted and put them in a Top 10 format for easy access.
DCG.com's Top Picks – Since we constantly play the courses in town, we can keep tabs on how they change for the better or worse over time. We have 3 special categories in the above Navigation Bar. The first is DCG.com's Top rated course. We took everything about our experience with the courses over years and and narrowed it down to 1. This course will not disappoint. The second is DCG.com's Top Rated Value. One usually expects that if the green fees are expensive the the course should be excellent condition, this may or may not be true (well let you know in our review :), but there may be in town that "hidden gem" that is reasonably priced but never fails to please. We'll let you know when a course is a excellent experience but easy on the wallet 🙂 The third is the best "driving range" in town. Did you know that we have 4 driving ranges in Davao City??
Driving Ranges – In addition to reviewing EVERY SINGLE course in town, we are reviewing EVERY SINGLE driving range and practice facility. We will let you know if the facility is worth your hard earned time and money.
SubCategories – We have subcategories that sort the courses by different criteria. There are sorts by Cost and Quality, each have breakdowns of different levels.


Join me, with Author & Futurist Steve Sammartino, Uber's State Manager Kate Debenham, and R/GA's Sam Maguinness to talk about the Future Of Transport at hashtag#Pausefest. We will cover off everything from underground tunnels to interstellar travel. Thursday 7th at 4:10pm.