Walking around the Brisbane Truck Show reminds me just how much the trucking industry is about the people. It's not about the trucks, or the trailers, or the goods being transported, it's about the people. There are plenty of characters to meet up with milling around the trucks, all of whom have a story to tell, usually slightly modified from last time you heard it.
Looking in from the outside, it probably appears to be about a lot of equipment and a lot of business. Of course, these are vital elements to a trucking operation, good relationships don't pay the bills, but getting the goods shifted safely and getting paid for it, does.
Then there's the trucks themselves. Many from outside the industry are intimidated by the sheer size of a truck, from the driver's seat of their car. The trucks feel even bigger when you stand under or next to them on a display stand. They are great big bit of very expensive metal, which provoke joy in the truckie's mind and fear in the car driver.
Trucking people also tend to have some pretty robust conversations, there's very little beating around the bush out on the road, on the loading bay and, also, on the truck stand. Truckies aren't afraid to ask the dumb questions and get stuck into the answer, if it sounds a little hollow. The way people within the industry talk to each other would probably not go down too well in other workplaces. There's a robust culture, to put it lightly.
All of this is evident, when walking the halls at the Brisbane Truck Show. The crowd move through the trucks meeting old friends and catching up on everything which has happened since the last show, or acknowledging those we know a little less well.
As someone who started driving in road transport in 1977, this feels like home. This is my tribe and I am stuck with them, whether I like it or not. We talk the same language and come at many issues from a similar perspective. Of course, there is room for a diversity of opinion, but much of this diversity comes from a different interpretation of a set of core values just about everyone involved with trucking can understand.
If the industry has a common failing, it is in being unable to articulate these ideas and values to those outside the tent. Those we deal with, be it the car driving public, the roadside enforcement, consignors and consignees, or whoever, are often bemused or angered by our unexplained actions.
The trucking industry can get over these self-constructed obstacles when needed. This was evident when the industry as a whole got together in the face of the unfair RSRT ruling and had a concise and articulate debate with the rest of society.
People power is there, and very present at events like the Brisbane Truck Show, we just need to work within this culture to get the best out of it, and use it properly.
As a result of an industrial dispute there will be no roadside enforcement next week. Unfortunately, this news comes out of Poland – we Australians are not getting a holiday from the rules any time soon. The strike is a result of an ongoing pay dispute.
I would suggest, if the enforcement officers have been disgruntled for some time, the poor truckies getting pulled up at the side of the road on their way to Warsaw would have copped a few unnecessary fines after coming across inspectors in a bad mood about their wages.
As an industry we have a problematic relationship with those who are posted on our highways to make sure we are all doing the right thing. This is not just an Aussie thing, it is universal. Having driven professionally in Western Europe and Australia, I can say the issues are commonplace. The only thing which changes is the name of the offence and the currency the fine has to be paid in.
Why are we so resentful of the representatives of the 'powers that be' going over our trucks and records with a fine toothcomb? It is hard to get to the core of the issue. Is it because we are all regular lawbreakers afraid of getting caught? No it is not.
One of the issues at the heart of the problem is the fact the vast majority of those on the road are doing the right thing and should be able to go into a check knowing they are squeaky clean. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Dot all of the Is and cross all of the Ts and you can still cop a fine for a minor mistake in recordkeeping or after an over-zealous loader puts a bit too much pudding on.
One contributing factor is our federal system, which has state-based transport authorities working for the state government's benefit. The same issues apply to those truckies criss-crossing Europe, as they flit from country to country within the EU.
The next issue is the problem of 'transit states'. Our transit state is New South Wales. An overwhelming majority of the freight moved on roads in Australia has to pass through NSW at some point. Quite often the state's economy will benefit little from the passing of the goods from, for example, South Australia to Queensland, just a bit of road wear.
As a result the attitude seems to have developed – as is certainly perceived to be the case by many truckies – of getting something out of these truckies passing through, even if it is the odd fine.
The parallel with Europe is again very clear. A lot of road freight in Europe has to pass through France, Germany, and quite often Poland. French authorities have developed the art of pinging truck drivers for small offences for small fines to the point where it is widely regarded as a revenue-raising tactic.
Similarly, French customs will set up shop on the roadside knowing they will be able to catch enough offenders who are carrying untaxed fuel, or too many bottles of spirits or cartons of cigarettes across borders to justify the operation.
Germany uses road charging to top up its coffers, but did use fuel excise fines to do the job for many years. Poland goes through a similar process to get some revenue from passing trucks. A revenue stream which will be curtailed when the strike is in force.
Do Australian roadside enforcement stop us to make money? No, of course not, but the perception is there. This has grown over the years as drivers have worked hard to get everything about their truck and records right, only to get a fine for something seemingly insignificant. Will the introduction of a national enforcement operation solve this issue? Let's hope so.
Like all Federal Budgets, when it comes to the trucking industry it's a bit of good news/bad news. Our elected government 'giveth with one hand and taketh away with another', usually in equal measures. This year seems to have been a little less painful than most.
The big ticket item is not about trucks at all. The commitment to the Inland Rail between Melbourne and Brisbane is all about putting money into the rail industry's agenda. However, the step-change in productivity it will provide will feed into economic growth. What does economic growth mean? A lot more truck movements all over the country.
Of course, a lot more truck movements means a lot more infrastructure capable of handling the extra trucking operations will be necessary. There is some good news on this front with money going into Roads to Recovery, Black Spot, Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity and Bridges Renewal. Whether this is enough is debatable, but it is something.
Also on the agenda from Scott Morrison is some good news for small businesses, and we know the trucking industry is composed – to a large degree – by small businesses. The extension of the immediate tax write-down for asset purchases up to $20,000 is good news for small business, but twenty grand doesn't get you much in the trucking game these days.
Again, Morrison's forecast for the Australian GDP is good news. Despite an expected dip this year, the runes tell him the economy's growth will increase next year and the year after that. Unfortunately, private investment in dwellings is expected to taper off considerably over the next three years.
This is not such good news for the trucking operators dealing with the construction industry. Luckily for them they are running flat chat at the moment, trying to keep up with a lot of infrastructure building taking place in places like Sydney and Melbourne. There's also the Inland Rail coming on stream and a lot of that $8.4 billion will be going on transporting materials into and on sites.
There's also $300 million to be spent on reducing red tape, something which trucking companies spend a lot of resources dealing with. However, this type of initiative usually sees the resources moving from one department to another to create a different kind of red tape somewhere else.
Can we sleep sounder in our beds tonight? Probably not. There is always a catch and trucking has got used to being at the back of the queue on many types of funding or initiatives. The feds normally just ignore us completely. Apparently, we don't vote.
It is the kind of situation many truck drivers dread, something which can play on the mind, the nightmare scenario of turning up as the first person at the scene of an accident. It is more likely to happen to a truckie than any other road user.
Sometimes we are told to not rock the boat, to let sleeping dogs lie, especially on the subject of fatigue and its connected issues in Australia. When addressing the problem, there are two very large elephants in the room we need to acknowledge and also take into account.
For some, fatigue is a problem in the trucking industry and one which must be addressed seriously. For others, fatigue regulations are an issue which must be addressed immediately. Then there are all of the other interest groups with their own barrel to push and they can use the fatigue issue to do so.
The two elephants in the room are our history and our geography. These two cannot be denied and are central to all of the ongoing battles we are having over fatigue.
A large proportion of the people working in the trucking industry are over 55, approaching 50 per cent. This means we started our careers in an industry in which fatigue laws were ineffective and ignored. There were rules in place, but enforcement was almost non-existent and log book fraud was the norm. Multiple log books were easy to access and a simple solution for the driver looking to drive where they wanted, when they wanted.
The culture into which we were introduced was unregulated and breaking the law was regarded as just a part of doing business and also a prerequisite for getting employment. This gave rise to two effects. New recruits had to learn how to break the rules to get the job done and the industry was more attractive to those who like to break the rules. Hence a bit of an outlaw culture existed then and still has its echoes in the industry today.
At the same time, and despite the efforts of a number of yard drivers who seem to be trying to shift their warehouse when slamming into the dock, the major cities in Australia are a long way apart. They are not going to get any closer.
The major centres are a shift, two shifts or, in the case of Perth, three plus apart. The roads are getting better, but the speed limit remains at 100 km/h with little likelihood of rising. Add the usual hassles with loading, unloading and paperwork to the equation and the kind of hours regime we now have in place is just doable, for many.
Now, all we have to do is mix these two factors together and we get a workforce brought up in disregard for the rules mixed with the demands of a modern economy wanting goods moved from capital A to capital B. The outcome is the situation we have today.
Truck drivers have been pushing the envelope of fatigue and how to cope with it for generations and there is a core level of knowledge about doing the right thing, recognising fatigue and resting when tired. To get this to work effectively, and it does for many, the prescriptive rules disrupt the natural rhythms the drivers have come to rely upon. These were developed by drivers trying to survive while being pushed way too hard by operators and their customers.
Perhaps the trucking industry should take a good hard look at itself and decide whether it wants to be part of the solution or not. At root, this is a cultural issue and they are the hardest to shift. You just have to look at the problems of the major footie codes, created by young men with lots of money and access to drink, drugs and women. They are throwing lots of money at it, but the problems continue.
For trucking, we first have to acknowledge the culture and then decide how to change it. Then we have to ensure we don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
Looking around the trucking landscape, it is often difficult to think anything other than confusion reigns. As we seem to stagger from one minor crisis to the next there is never a clear way forward and there are a thousand different voices calling for the trucking world to head in one thousand different directions.
We do not suffer from misinformation, we are not being fed a line to suit someone else's agenda. We are not starved of information, as the powers that be tell us each and every move they are going to make in the near future, but reserve the right to change direction in the future. It's not even a matter of receiving mixed messages, it's just a confusing array of information, supposition and lack of understanding.
The reason for this confusion is clear. we are part of the most diverse industry sector in the country. Not only are there segments divided by what we carry, but also by business model, business size, region, customer base, payment terms, contract – if any, the list goes on.
Not only do we not have a clear idea of who we are, neither does government. It does not have much of an idea of who it is talking to. The big multi-national players in the industry can afford to pay for the kind of lobbying which ensures decision makers are well aware of their position, needs and wants, and know if they are helping the big boys, or hindering them.
What about the rest of us? The RSRT crisis in early 2016 did show us how to get to the point where one message can get to the right people from the point of view of a large constituency in the trucking industry. At the time there were estimates of 30,000 to 50,000 owner drivers in Australia, we still don't know.
Then there's all of the players in between, all those mum and dad businesses who are happy with a few, or a few more, trucks and then those who have grown bigger than that into substantial family businesses. Then again, there are others who have grown to fulfil the needs of a customer or a community. These are all working in slightly different sectors, with their own issues.
If someone working for a trucking company or running one were asked what they needed, they would answer from their specific point of view. Multiply that by 100,000 plus and you would get a spread of opinion, which would veer from one extreme to the other.
Similarly, when it comes to voting, very few of those engaged in the industry would decide which way there vote will be cast on trucking related issues. Why? Because no one has a clear idea on what trucking related issues look like.
In this confusion we have a few voices of rationality, working with some good intentions. Groups like the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator and the National Transport Commission are trying to work towards a workable solution to the myriad problems which face trucking.
That being said, we are still paying a road user charge which pays for more than we are getting. We still have enough variations in regulations across state borders to put a major impost on the productivity of trucking, and ultimately on the productivity of Australia.
How do they get away with it? Because there are no overarching issues on which we can all agree, just lots of small diversions from one single idea of how to change things to make it right. Maybe there is no over-arching issue because it's going quite well for everyone. Maybe not.
There is a way to get what we want and make it clear to the people at the top what trucking needs. To get it there needs to be real well-informed and very honest discussion to come to some sort of reality check and clarification of the issues. We need to be somewhere where consensus reigns.
We need to fight like you mean it. A few of the little issues which have popped up recently should remind everyone involved in the trucking industry just what our place is in the psyche of the Australian nation. Unfortunately, it's not a very good place, if you are looking for fairness and people doing the right thing by you.
No, as an industry, people involved in road transport need to know they are quite a long way down the pecking order. Even the largest transport operators have to shout very loud to be heard, and then may still be completely ignored by governments or other big businesses.
The industry as a whole has to go cap in hand both to those who regulate the industry and to the major customers, who are big enough to generate the kind of revenue a big fleet needs to survive in the contemporary business environment.
Hold on a minute, there is a major industry sector which constitutes 8.6 per cent of Australia's GDP and is being ignored by government? Yes, even though we are nearly a tenth of the economy, we appear to count for very little.
Unlike an industry like farming, trucking is not concentrated geographically in a particular region. The farming community and its environment is the core support for a major political party, the Nationals, who happen to be in a coalition with the Liberals, and in power.
Trucking is not concentrated anywhere particularly and its people are not part of any significant demographic sector. The nearest thing we have to a tribe is probably general small business, a group seen to miss out on consideration at just about every turn.
The only trucking group with any clout in Canberra is probably the Transport Workers Union, it is a player in Labor Party decision making. The TWU also has a problematic and often divergent relationship with those running trucking businesses, as we saw in the battle around the RSRT last year.
So, we have a trucking industry which has paid more than it should in road user charge for a number of years and nobody can do anything about it. Trucks are going to be banned from a wide range of vital routes in and around the Port of Melbourne and be forced onto a toll road at exorbitant rates, just to keep the voters in a couple of the city's suburbs from voting out their local members.
At the same time as this is going on a major stevedoring company, part of a global giant, DP World is feeling a squeeze from its global clients on its finances. It needs to charge more to its customers but it decides this is not a good idea. Instead, it decides it will start charging its suppliers of transport services, the trucking companies, for picking up the containers it has unloaded from its customers' ships.
The trucking industry is trying to make a big noise about this and has managed to get a delay in the imposition of these charges, but there seems to be an inevitability about the way the charges will come in. The big company will have been able to bully trucking into accepting just one of the many impositions it has to suffer.
The trucking industry will have to fight every step of the way to get any improvement in its circumstances. We do not have any chance of becoming electorally significant any time soon. The government will always be able to ignore road transport and get re-elected. Lindsay Fox has been giving it a red hot go in the media recently, but is he going to get a real reduction in the tolls trucks have to pay around Melbourne? I am not getting my hopes up.
Every time NSW's Roads and Maritime Services misrepresent the trucking industry and its safety record, we need to shut down the RMS. The trucking industry needs to make sure assertions about truck safety by the state agency are rebutted every time the, so called, facts are uttered.
What is it which is getting me so annoyed? It is not one single message which has been put out in the media recently, but an ongoing attitude and policy position which has no basis in the cold hard facts.
In the wake of every major accident or enforcement operation the spokesperson for most state road agencies come up with the same misconstruing of the facts. RMS just happen to be the worst offender. The same old lines are trotted out about how unsafe trucks are and how the road agency is going to come down hard on all of these offenders.
The headline number usually goes something like, '250 trucks were inspected by our team today and 30 per cent of the trucks were found to have major defects on their brakes'. This is held up as a major coup for the agency and the state's roads are going to be much safer as a direct result of this action and the fines etc which accompany them.
Where is the basis of this assertion? The spokesperson does not draw a line from A to B to show us how these trucks being defected is going to lead to fewer accidents and fatalities on the road, but the implication this is the case is clearly there.
Let's look at the real figures and then work out how effective this operation has been. In the figures to be published soon by the National Truck Accident Research Centre, in all of the accidents included in the figures, representing a large proportion of the trucks on our roads, only 3.5 per cent of the incidents were the result of mechanical failure. Furthermore, the team estimate 60 per cent of that 3.5 per cent were tyre failures.
This means approximately 1.4 per cent of accidents were caused by a genuine mechanical failure on the truck itself. Not all of these were brake failures (steering would also contribute a few). There fore we have this major safety initiative being heralded by the RMS attacking less than one per cent of the accidents involving trucks.
What are they doing about the other 99 per cent of accidents?
We have to thank the NTARC for highlighting this discrepancy. Owen Driscoll, from NTI, and his team have been pointing out this low incidence of accidents caused by brake defects when the report comes out every couple of years for some time now. It's about time the trucking industry turned round and used its own figures in the general media to blow the bogus claims of the road authorities out of the water.
In the same way the real estate agent will talk about location, location, location, anyone talking about the best future for the trucking industry has to talk about training, training, training. The industry needs to progress, but the workforce is getting older and the supply of bright young talent is dwindling.
Why is the supply dwindling and why are experienced workers leaving the industry? It's because it's not an attractive industry to work in. The best candidates do not put their hand up to join the trucking industry's workforce. Many in the industry expend a considerable amount of energy trying to get out of the game, quite often making several attempts.
One of the major disadvantages to working in the industry is a lack of recognition of the individual's skills and experience. Qualifications also mean it is possible to get skilled and move up the pay scale.
There are myriad reasons why trucking people do not have qualifications and why employers do not expect potential employees to have them. The exception being the tickets needed to work on fork lifts, with dangerous goods, carting fuel etc, etc.
Recognition of skills would work on several levels. One is the satisfaction of the employee, being told you have reached a certain standard and are qualified to handle a particular task, can be very satisfying.
Training isn't unheard of in the trucking industry, but it is definitely not ubiquitous. Work for a big operator, a national company and there will be opportunities to get some training and have a piece of paper proving you know what you're doing.
The reality is most people work for smaller companies, organisations which have little time or funding to educate their workforce. Many smaller operators don't believe in training full stop. They get an employee and get them up to speed with the job in hand and hope to keep hold of them once they are proficient. Help an employee to get some form of qualification and they have something which will help them get another job.
The Australian trucking industry is getting to the point when it will not be possible to function properly as an operation without properly trained employees. The job is becoming ever more complex and sophisticated. The equipment we are using is also much more sophisticated and will only function productivity if used properly.
Probably more important, from the point of view of the employer, is the ever more complex legal environment in which transport companies operate. It is vital everyone in your team knows how to do the right thing and can demonstrate a competence to do the right thing.
Aspects of the chain of responsibility rules, make it imperative to have a properly skilled and trained operative on a task. If an operation cannot demonstrate it is using a team who are well equipped and trained to ensure the safety of a load and the safety of those travelling around it may be liable if something goes awry.
What's wrong with being part of a more professional industry? Why can't we reward those who do a good job with acknowledgement of their skills and pay them accordingly? The art of throwing people in the deep end and hoping they can swim, which pertained when I joined the industry, just does not cut it in this modern litigious world.


London - SA swimmer Roland Schoeman has reached the final of the men's 50m freestyle at the Olympic Games, while Gideon Louw missed out.
Schoeman finished fourth in the second heat in a time of 21.88 seconds, which was enough to sneak into Friday's final.
Louw, who finished fifth in the first heat, just missed out in a time of 21.92.
The men's 50m freestyle final takes place at 21:09 (SA time) on Friday night.


The City of Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power (LADWP) serves more than four million residents with water and electricity. The largest municipal water and power utility in the U.S., the LADWP utility services roughly 680,000 water meters. Faced with the challenges of aging infrastructure and limited budgets, LADWP sought to improve management of incidents such as leaks, outages, or quality issues in delivering water to its customers.
For years, LADWP utilized multiple systems for water incident management customized into their legacy Customer Information System (CIS). One system handled incidents such as outages, pressure variations, or leaks, while a second system tracked issues related to water quality. A third system managed daily planned maintenance and repair activities being performed by LADWP field crews. To replace these functions as the CIS was being replaced, and to streamline its operations, LADWP wanted to find a commercial, off-the-shelf system that would bring incident management for water service to the same level of performance provided to its electricity customers.
In 2013, LADWP implemented the Trimble eRespond® Incident Management solution to merge the three previously separate systems and improve overall incident management and customer relations. LADWP selected Trimble eRespond in part because it was a proven solution for water and wastewater utilities of similar size; it also gave them the ability to leverage LADWP's existing Esri GIS and tie to their new Oracle Customer Care and Billing (CC&B) solution for customer information and billing. In addition, the Trimble system met LADWP's requirement to use a commercial off-the-shelf product.
In addition to using customer calls for incident management, LADWP now has the ability to use Trimble eRespond to blend telemetry data from system pumps and facilities in the future. This information often provides important input into the effort to locate and resolve a leak, pressure concern, or water quality incident. Over time, improved asset management will help LADWP achieve longer asset life and improve overall system operations.
During an incident, crews can use the GIS to map the severity and extents of any spills to assist in notification, repairs, and mitigation work. The spatial data also help to fulfill requirements for reporting water or wastewater incidents to regulatory agencies.
In concert with IBM, as the system integrator and SAP implementation partner, Trimble eRespond was integrated with the SAP CRM, SAP ECC, and SAP BI modules using standard interfaces.
The interfaces used a combination of integration technology, including SOAP-based web services, Trimble eRespond's standard JMS adapter, and direct database connections.
United Utilities decided to create a complete model of their networks in eRespond using the tools within eRespond available for designing and managing a network model. Some utilities link eRespond to whichever system is master of their "as designed" network model data for this information.
The initial network model was created inside a period of four weeks.


As a child, Elizabeth Edsall Kromm had kidney cancer. Surgeons at Johns Hopkins removed her left kidney, and she underwent years of treatment before being declared cancer-free. Kromm again turned to Johns Hopkins when she and her husband decided to start a family. OBGYN Lisa Kolp, who specializes in fertility for cancer survivors guided the couple through treatments, including the decision to use a surrogate. Their surrogate was a few months pregnant when Kromm also got pregnant. She is now the mother of two baby girls, Caroline and Amelia.
I worried about the effects of the cancer treatments I had, and I knew getting pregnant might be an issue. My husband and I went through multiple rounds of intrauterine insemination and IVF. It was hard after that last transfer didn't take.
I always considered alternate means of starting a family. I looked at adoption, at surrogacy. When we decided to use assisted reproductive technology, Dr.Kolp was very realistic with us. She said our chances were slim. When we decided to use a surrogate, she supported us through the process. After interviewing potential agencies and researching the ideal characteristics of a surrogate, I went to a few close friends and I said, "This is a very strange question, but do you have any friends who might be interested in doing this for us?" That's how we found Caroline's surrogate.
A few months into our surrogate's pregnancy, I felt sick. Because of my symptoms, my doctor ordered a nuclear medicine scan to check on my remaining kidney. I had to take a pregnancy test first. It was positive. I thought it was a mistake. I took another. Dr. Kolp saw us that same day for an ultrasound. I was 9 weeks pregnant. She turned the screen to face us and we could see the heartbeat. My husband and I both lost it. Caroline was born first, full term, and Amelia followed 11 days later, three months premature. The babies are both doing well.


RSVP: Yes, pending conflicts with the state's legislative session.
RSVP: There in spirit. He signed a declaration in support.
RSVP: There in spirit. He will join in declaring Aug. 6 a day of prayer, according to Perry's spokeswoman.
RSVP: There in spirit. He is unable to attend, but "hopes the event goes well."
RSVP: No decision yet, but he is interested.
RSVP: Undecided. His office has not responded yet.
RSVP: There in spirit. She will join in declaring Aug. 6 a day of prayer, according to Perry's spokeswoman.
RSVP: Undecided. His office has not issued a response.
RSVP: No-- Shumlin has not publicly declared a religious tradition.
RSVP: No, due to a scheduling conflict.
RSVP: No. He has scheduling conflicts, including a family wedding.
RSVP: No, reportedly due to a scheduling conflict.
RSVP: No-- he'll be at the Indiana State Fair.
RSVP: No-- His state is home to Home Depot, the target of a year-long anti-gay campaign by Perry's sponsors, the American Family Association.
RSVP: No. His office says he has a scheduling conflict.
RSVP: No decision yet. His office has not finalized his August schedule.
RSVP: Undecided. The governor's office has not issued a response.


Once again in April Promar welcomed representatives of the Wild Blueberry Association of North America (WBANA) from Canada and supported their annual attendance at Tokyo's FABEX food and beverage trade show.
This was the final event in a highly successful promotion year for Promar and WBANA, which included highlights such as a trade mission to Canada to connect with the Canadian blueberry industry and a seminar at the Canadian Embassy on research related to the health benefits of wild blueberries.
For many of the 16 Japanese participants, this was the first time they had seen the expansive natural fields where wild blueberries are grown. "We are surprised to see that wild blueberries are grown in such wide open fields with little human input, including fertilizer or agrochemicals. I think consumers in Japan would appreciate wild blueberries even more if they could see how naturally wild blueberries are grown," said one of the jam participants.
Blueberry jam is the second best-selling jam flavor in Japan behind strawberry. Japanese jam manufacturers say they choose wild blueberries over cultivated blueberries for jam production because of the consistent high quality and richer taste. Moving forward, Promar and WBANA are focused on the continued need to educate Japanese end consumers on the characteristics and health benefits of wild blueberries in order to differentiate them from cultivated blueberries.
As Promar moves into the 2016/17 promotion planning season, our challenge is to find a way for everyday Japanese consumers to understand the beauty and expansiveness of Canada's wild blueberry fields that so impressed the Japanese jam industry. Stay tuned for updates this year!
Photo: Members of the Japan Jam Association were interviewed by local Canadian television on their impressions of the harvest.


Symbiosis Institute of Operations Management, Nashik is a part of Symbiosis International (Deemed University). Being just a decade old, this institute has won various awards. This institute provides education in Operations Management. This institute is India's only institute which is dedicated to Operation Management. Through quality education, this institute has been promoting international understanding. SIOM has been consistently contributing towards generating and disseminating knowledge. The learning at this college is ethical and value-based.
Moreover, this institute nurtures the mindsets and skills of the students so they will be able to master the ability to manage ambitious corporate growth. This institute inculcates practical and analytical skills into the students so that they become potential leaders with the broad knowledge. The course offered here empowers the students with sharp engineering and scientific capabilities along with the disciplines of smart business management.
This institute selects only 120 of candidates out of 70,000 Symbiosis National Aptitude applicants. This university offers activities like Art of Living, Yoga, Vipassana, Workouts, and Outward Bound Learning. For SIOM Nashik Admissions the candidate needs to be a confident communicator with an open mind and must be willing to learn and change. These qualities of the candidate are checked by a series of group exercises and personal interview.
The curriculum of this institute includes project management, supply chain management, technology management, quality management and modelling dynamic systems. This institute is B-School with the Best Industry related Curriculum in Operations Management. The curriculum of this institute involves initiatives such as SAP ERP training, APICS certification, Six Sigma Certification, CII Logistics Workshop and SCS training.
The specialization of this institute empowers each engineer with sharp engineering and scientific capabilities. The curriculum is continuously updated with the consent of corporate mentors. Because if its excellent curriculum, the institute has received various awards. It also enables the students to be an effective Techno-Business Manager and a leader.
SIOM Ranking was in India's top 100 B.School survey in the year 2009.
It has ranked among the top 100 Business Schools in Outlook Business's Survey in the year 2017.
In 2014 it was ranked among the top 50 Business Schools in Outlook's 2014 Survey of India's Best Business Schools.
Award for Business School with industry related curriculum in Operation Management.
It was also awarded as B-School Excellence Award for Innovative, Modern and Industry related Curriculum.
Top companies from around the globe visit this institute to recruit the students every year.
In the year 2018, 98% of students who participated in the placements got placed.
Every year 100% students secure summer internships because of the SIOM Placements Cell.
SIOM Nashik Average Package for the year 2017 was CTC of 9.74 LPA.
Multi-National Companies belonging to the field of Consulting, E-Commerce, FMCG, IT/ITES, Logistics, Manufacturing etc hire students from this institute.
Semester Topper Fee Concession for the toppers.
The institute also had offered sports scholarships.
Total 5 IIT students will be eligible for a 20% fee waiver.
The institute also offers the scholarship for the sports students.
The college is affiliated to Symbiosis International University - [SIU], Pune and accredited by NAAC AICTE.
For Symbiosis MBA candidates need to be graduates must be Engineers BE/ B.Tech or any stream from statutory University.
The candidate must be graduate from any stream.
The candidate must score 50% aggregate.
The SIOM SIOM Admission Process includes four rounds.
The first round is the Written Assessment Test. This test is known as SNAP.
Then the second round is Group Exercise.
The third round is Eligibility document verification.
After the verification of the documents, the fourth round is the Personal Interview of the candidates.
The faculty are not up to the mark.
There are last moment assignments which are absolutely useless.
The practical stuff done in some classes could be more refined.
The core subject should be given more focus.
No foreign students come here although there are students who go for foreign student exchange programme.
There is good student diversity, gender parity is low as fewer females opt for operations.
No alcohol or smoking is allowed on the campus.
Hostel facility are below standards as we have to share three bedrooms.
There are separate hostels for Boys and Girls on the campus.
The boy's hostel is 1890.90 SqMt and girl's hostel is 1167.96 SqMt.
It has 24 hours hot and cold water facility.
All the rooms are furnished with a cot, mattress, table, chair, cupboard and book rack.
SIOM Infrastructure includes many other facilities such as Medical and Gym.


text:
Batman: Arkham Asylum (preowned)
Action, Video Games
Preowned Summer Sale B1G1F
Violence More information
This Preowned game may not include the original box art or manual,
but we all know it's what's on the inside that counts!
On the rare chance your game is anything less than awesome give our Customer Service Team call and we'll organise a free return and replacement.
In Batman: Arkham Asylum, developed by Rocksteady Studios, the player assumes the role of Batman as he delivers The Joker to Arkham Asylum. There, the imprisoned super-villains have set a trap and an immersive combat gaming experience unfolds. With an original script penned by Emmy Award-winning Batman writer Paul Dini, the game brings the universe of DC Comics' detective to life with stunning graphics.
Batman: Arkham City Game of the Year Edition
Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition
Xbox 360 Slim 4GB Console (Refurbished by EB Games)
Xbox 360 Play & Charge Kit
Xbox 360 Slim E 4GB Console (Refurbished by EB Games)
Xbox 360 Slim 320GB Console (Refurbished by EB Games)
Xbox 360 Slim E 250GB Console (Refurbished by EB Games)

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text:
HomeKitReviewsReview: Boardman SPORT/e Hybrid
By Youth Cycle Sport - 0 comments
"A well-designed, hugely enjoyable all-rounder that won't break the bank"
Boardman SPORT/e Hybrid
11.5 kg / 25.3 lbs (without pedals)
Halfords – www.halfords.com
Boardman must surely have sold more adult hybrid bikes than anyone else in the UK. Their flat-handlebar, go-anywhere bikes are a big success. Now Boardman is offering its new SPORT/e Hybrid, a 26"-wheel, scaled-down version of its adult hybrids. The bike sits alongside a road bike and a MTB in the new junior range.
The SPORT/e Hybrid promises the best of both worlds – much of the off-road ability of a dedicated MTB, combined with easy-rolling speed on the road. Our young riders tested the bike in a wide range of terrain. You can watch our video of it in action.
At £300 Boardman's hybrid has some strong direct competitors, from Frog Bikes and Islabikes for example, so we were keen to see how it measured up.
Geometry and Fit
Actual top tube (centre-to-centre)
Horizontal "virtual" top tube (centre-to-centre)
Seat tube (centre-to-centre)
Seat tube (centre-to-top)
Crank length
Handlebar width
Handlebar stem (centre-to-centre)
The bike's frame has a very compact design with a low, steeply sloping top tube, so it is agile to ride on tricky, technical features and there's plenty of standover clearance. The bike is a very similar size to Islabikes' Beinn 26 hybrid and, as a guide, it fits riders typically aged nine to twelve years old – but you should consider your individual child's height when sizing the bike, regardless of their age.
Crank length is good at 160mm so that riders can spin the pedals easily. It's important that Boardman got that right, as some big brands still specify cranks that are far too long for young riders' short legs.
The 540mm-wide flat handlebars and short 50mm stem are proportionally sized too, giving the rider a strong, confident riding position. There's a decent junior saddle fitted from Boardman's E4P finishing kit too.
Overall, the bike has clearly been designed with the dimensions of its young riders in mind.
We weighed the SPORT/e Hybrid at 11.5 kg (25.3 lbs) excluding pedals. That's not bad but it's heavier than its Frog Bikes and Islabikes rivals which both dip under 10 kg.
As another comparison the new £300 junior bike weighs about the same as Boardman's own £430 adult Sport hybrid model. Bike weight is more important to children than adults as the bike itself is much heavier in proportion to body weight.
Frame and Forks
Like the junior road bike and MTB launched at the same time, the new junior hybrid's aluminium frame has Boardman's exquisite smooth welds.
It's nice to see that structural features have filtered down from Boardman's development of its adult bikes too. The way the top tube & down tube join the head tube is a good example, using the latest design techniques to maximise the strength of what is a highly stressed area of the frame.
For a bike that is likely to spend plenty of time off-road, Boardman has sensibly chosen steel as the material for the hybrid's fork blades rather than stiffer aluminium. Steel is a little more forgiving and steel forks will fractionally reduce the buzz felt when riding over bumpy ground.
The frame certainly looks great, with its individually shaped tubes and its mature graphics that echo the senior bikes' branding. If it wasn't for its small size giving it away, you certainly wouldn't think this looked like a child's bike.
The frame has braze-ons for mudguards, a rear carrier and a single bottle cage. Brake and gear cables are well routed out of harm's way.
There's plenty of tyre clearance in the frame and the forks – enough to fit 26 x 2.1" knobbly MTB tyres if you want to use the bike on more adventurous terrain.
The Boardman has a decent pair of wheels, sharing its quick-release hubs and Boardman-branded rims with its stablemates. Our testers rode the bike hard on MTB trails, including using it for jumps, and they also rode it on urban features like sets of steps. The wheels stayed round and true throughout testing. In fact we think that the wheels could afford to use 28 spokes instead of 32, given the light weight of the bike's riders.
The tyres are spot on for a multi-use bike like this: 1.5" wide so there is enough volume of air to give some natural suspension effect, enough tread to grip well in light off-road conditions, but with low enough rolling resistance for the bike to keep up on the road. You could always fit faster slick tyres if your child mainly rides on the road, or wider knobbly MTB tyres if they'd be using the SPORT/e Hybrid off-road.
Like all three new Boardman junior bikes, the rear hub has a thread for a screw-on 7-speed freewheel rather than being a freehub (i.e. where the freewheel mechanism is integrated into the hub itself, and the sprockets are mounted on to it in the form of a cassette). We'd prefer to see a 8-speed freehub & cassette, as that would allow much more flexibility for changing gear ratios.
A freehub & cassette would also allow a much wider spread of gears (e.g. 11-34 teeth) rather than the Boardman freewheel's 14-28 teeth.
We were surprised to see the SPORT/e Hybrid configured with a triple chainset, rather than having two chainrings or even just a single ring. We suspect a triple was specified to give the bike a wide overall spread of gears despite its relatively close-ratio 14-28 teeth freewheel. A wide-ratio 8-speed cassette would have allowed the bike to have a single chainring, simplifying it and reducing its weight considerably by removing the need for a front derailleur, front gear shifter, and two chainrings.
The cranks themselves are from SR SunTour and it's nice to see a respected brand used on a bike of this value, rather than an anonymous component. At 160mm they suit the size of the bike and its rider well. There's a traditional square-taper bottom bracket which is no surprise given the bike's value, but it's from another respected brand – FSA.
The front and rear Shimano Tourney derailleurs are simple but effective and they shift reliably every time.
They are controlled by Shimano Altus trigger shifters. They're very positive units with a nice clear gear indicator which children will appreciate, and very easy shifting – no need for thumbs of steel. They do have large "pods" though which extend quite far behind the handlebars, and a couple of our testers found that their knees hit them when climbing out of the saddle.
Tektro's much-admired V-Brakes handle the stopping, smoothly controlled by levers which are shaped nicely for two-finger braking.
The brakes are progressive & sensitive, and they are more than powerful enough in both wet and dry conditions for a bike ridden by a typical 30 to 35 kg rider.
We liked the smart Boardman E4P "finishing kit" of short handlebar stem, zero-rise 540mm handlebars, and seatpin. All are smart and fit for purpose. They are all sized just right for a small rider's optimum riding position.
It was nice to see a FSA semi-integrated headset too.
The handgrips are curiously narrow – too narrow even for a 10-year-old child's hands, and the brake levers and gear shifters are butted right up against them. That locates the brake and gear controls too far out to the side and makes them awkward to use. If you buy a SPORT/e Hybrid we suggest fitting wider hand-grips and sliding the gear shifters and brake levers three cm further in from the ends of the handlebars. That locates the controls in just the right position for two-finger braking and for using the trigger shifters.
All of our testers had immediate confidence in the SPORT/e Hybrid, and they hugely enjoyed thrashing around on it. The riding position is good and the bike is very agile. Like all good hybrids it's actually very capable off-road and it will often out-perform a MTB in all but the most challenging conditions. Like a cyclocross bike, a hybrid has great go-anywhere capability.
The bike and its wheels are stiff so that it climbs, descends and corners well. At the same time it's comfortable on long rides with a little natural suspension given by the wide tyres and the steel forks.
See our comments about service & support from Boardman & Halfords in our review of the SPORT/e Hybrid's road bike brother.
Value for Money and Resale
Although the bike's price is £300, a British Cycling member who takes advantage of their 10% membership discount and one of the frequent Halfords special offers might pay as little as £250. At that price it would undercut the Frog Bikes 69 by £20 and the Islabikes Beinn 26S by a substantial £100. That would make it a serious bargain, and it's a better bike than any other hybrid that you could buy for £250.
Riding a hybrid off road a lot will take its toll on bearings, cables, and drivetrain components, and the frame will probably pick up a few scratches and dings. But if the SPORT/e Hybrid is cared for and maintained well we can't see any reason why it wouldn't find a buyer easily and fetch a high proportion of its new price.
The particular strengths of this bike are its frame, its geometry and its correct proportional sizing throughout. It's a real blast to ride and it always puts a smile on its rider's face. Yes, we'd prefer different gearing, but if you want a hugely enjoyable all-rounder that won't break the bank then the SPORT/e Hybrid is a great buy.
+ fast & agile
+ value for money and low price
+ proportional sizing
– gearing
– location of gear & brake controls before repositioning
Tags: Boardman, Featured, Kit
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Congress reject the proposed elimination of all long distance Amtrak passenger train service by the Trump administration. The national passenger train network would be destroyed. It would no longer be possible to cross the United States by train.
The Senate DRIVE Act would encourage outsourcing by allowing Amtrak to avoid Buy America preferences on projects of up to $5 million. Maximizing domestic content in infrastructure projects means more jobs. This provision would do the exact opposite.
GREAT NEWS! AMTRAK RIDERSHIP HITS A RECORD HIGH!
record 25.8 million passengers took Amtrak in the last fiscal year, an increase of 1.5 million over fiscal 2006, the national passenger railroad said yesterday. Time for serious thought regarding mass transportation!


The UK's sugar tax has driven the popularity of sugar free alternatives, which has subsequently fuelled the growth of canned carbonated soft drinks. Sugar is the number one health concern for consumers for the fourth consecutive year, according to Nielsen consumer research (2018), with half of British shoppers wanting to purchase healthy products.
Market research conducted by Nielsen showed soft drinks were the second fastest growing super category this year, with cans experiencing a 4% sales increase versus last year (Units, MAT September 2018), meaning cans now account for 20% of soft drink unit sales.
There is also a clear trend of consumers moving towards larger single can multipacks; 330ml can multipacks (large packs of 24) experienced a rapid 15% growth as shoppers switch from large multi-serve plastic bottles.
Mixers in cans increased by 39% (Units, YA 2018), as people see cans as an affordable yet premium pack format that fits in with their lifestyle. The can sizes available are great for mixers too, as a 150ml can is an ideal amount of mixer to be used for one drink. There is no need to leave half empty bottles or having to use flat tonic for the next drink.


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Q: How do I reproject a raster image in geoTiff format in python? I want to reproject a raster image that is given as a geoTiff file into another coordinate system. The map is in WGS84-Pseudo-Mercator.
But when I run the following code I only get a white image as my output raster. How can I fix this?
import rioxarray

rds = rioxarray.open_rasterio("path_to_raster.tif")
crs = "EPSG:4978" # this depends on the exact projection you want to use
projected = rds.rio.reproject(crs)
projected.rio.to_raster("path_to_enu_raster.tif")

A: Well I found a solution by trial and error. This code works for germany:
from osgeo import gdal

filename = "berlin.tif"
input_raster = gdal.Open(filename)
for epsg in ["EPSG:4839", "EPSG:3068", "EPSG:25833"]:
    gdal.Warp('output_raster' + epsg + '.tif', input_raster, dstSRS=epsg)

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TENA Serenity Ultra Plus Heavy Absorbency Economy Pads, Latex-Free, 15"


text:
S.Korea says Delivery Hero must sell unit for $4 bln Woowa deal approval
SEOUL, Dec 28 (Reuters) - South Korea's antitrust regulator said on Monday Delivery Hero must sell its South Korean subsidiary to win approval for a $4 billion takeover of Woowa Brothers that would have given it a near monopoly in the country's food delivery market.
The ruling from the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) is a setback for consolidation in the world's third-largest online food delivery market, as competition heats up amid accelerated demand triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Berlin-based Delivery Hero agreed last year to buy Korea's top food delivery app owner Woowa as it expands in Asia's fast-growing but crowded market. For Woowa, the buyout is a lifeline in an intensely competitive market.
But the KFTC said it would only approve the takeover if Delivery Hero sold its entire stake in its Korean unit, which owns the country's No. 2 food delivery app Yogiyo.
KFTC said the combined market share of the entity resulting from the takeover, if the unit was not sold, would be 97% of food delivery transactions as of July.
The regulator said it feared a "decrease in consumer benefits and a rise in restaurant fees" as a result of the deal as it was currently structured.
South Korea's food delivery market ranks third after China's and the United States', Euromonitor data showed, and is expected to grow 40% this year to about $15.4 billion.
The number of delivery app users exceeded 17.8 million in August, according research provider Nielsen Koreanclick, more than one-third of South Korea's 51.8 million population. (Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates)


The Torch Trophy Trust would like to express their condolences to the family of Jimmy Hill OBE, who died on the 19th of December, aged 87.
Famous for his playing career under Brentford and Fulham, his managerial work at Coventry City, and his subsequent impact as Chairman of the Professional Players Association, Jimmy was also recognisable as the presenter of Match of the Day.
Jimmy served as a Trustee of the Trust between 1999 and 2012.
He is survived by his wife, Bryony and his three sons and two daughters.


An exciting clash was eventually won by the home side.
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Following first half goals from Andre Poko and Henri Saivet, the visitors dragged themselves back into the game with two strikes after the break.
Lossemy Karaboue scored on 65 minutes before Salif Sane drew the side level on the 79th minute.
Yet with just four minutes of normal time remaining Cheick Diabate snatched the winner which leaves Nancy one point outside the relegation zone with two games remaining.
Bordeaux broke Nancy fans' hearts as a late winner leaves the away side on the brink of relegation in Ligue 1.


In addition to air, water and soil pollution, and the societal, social and ecological burdens coal mines and other coal power plant facilities create, coal-fired power plants also weigh heavily on national economies through various state subsidies and incentives.
Major state budget spending directed at investments, such as stack and flue purification systems, desulfurization units and boiler improvements, were only a part of the benefits provided to companies that had won the privatization bids. Soon after, with the amendment to the Electricity Market Law, privatized energy generation facilities were kept exempt from environmental regulations, and the postponement of environmental investments enabled new operators to make very significant savings.
Despite important subsidies such as guaranteed fixed-price, capacity payments and tax exemptions, private coal-fired power plant operators are facing serious financial risks. Most of the companies that took over the the power plants' operations are currently having a hard time in repaying the foreign currency debts they acquired during the 2014 privatization period. Furthermore, even though these facilities generate electricity from domestic coal, the fact that they are import-dependent for machinery, equipment and sub-industry products increases their foreign borrowing cost.
The capacity allowances, which were paid to these three coal power plants to enable them to keep a certain capacity in operation pursuant to the Regulation on the Electricity Market Capacity Mechanism that entered into force in January 2018, cost the state budget approximately 134 million TL for the months January-July.
Renewable electricity prices falling quicker than expected and emission restrictions implemented in several countries within the scope of climate change and air pollution measures constitute additional risks for the investors who are currently facing financial difficulties. These trends and recent financial analyses indicate that the stranded asset risk is not limited to new coal-fired power plants but also valid for these power plants that were privatized close to retirement.


Dr. Kannankeril is a DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) Doctor trained by the Autism Research Institute helping patients and their families in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia areas.
Offering Biomedical Treatment of Autism, ADHD, Asperger's, and PDD.
As a Naturopathic Physician, Dr. Kannankeril's goal is to address the underlying cause of your child's condition, which is often multi-factorial. She then treats using a biomedical treatment approach.
As a DAN! doctor, Dr. Kannankeril's treatment is always individualized and can include nutritional counseling, heavy metal detoxification, essential fatty acid balancing, anti-fungal treatments, nutritional supplements, botanical medicine, hyperbaric oxygen treatment and homeopathy. Her treatments are highly effective and, when followed, improvements are often observed in the first month of treatment.
See Dr. Kannankeril's page at the Autism Research Institute for more information on treatments offered.


text:
.administration-example h1 {
  background-color: purple
}

.admin button {
  margin: 5px 0;
  padding: 20px 10px;
}

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text:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<title>java.lang (Java Platform SE 7 )</title>
<meta name="date" content="2014-12-18">
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Overview

Package

Class

Use

Tree

Deprecated

Index

Help

Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 7

Prev Package

Next Package

Frames

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All Classes

Package java.lang

Provides classes that are fundamental to the design of the Java
 programming language.

See: Description

Interface Summary

Interface
Description

Appendable

An object to which <tt>char</tt> sequences and values can be appended.

AutoCloseable

A resource that must be closed when it is no longer needed.

CharSequence

A <tt>CharSequence</tt> is a readable sequence of char values.

Cloneable

A class implements the Cloneable interface to
 indicate to the Object.clone() method that it
 is legal for that method to make a
 field-for-field copy of instances of that class.

Comparable<T>

This interface imposes a total ordering on the objects of each class that
 implements it.

Iterable<T>

Implementing this interface allows an object to be the target of
 the "foreach" statement.

Readable

A <tt>Readable</tt> is a source of characters.

Runnable

The Runnable interface should be implemented by any
 class whose instances are intended to be executed by a thread.

Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler

Interface for handlers invoked when a <tt>Thread</tt> abruptly
 terminates due to an uncaught exception.

Class Summary

Class
Description

Boolean

The Boolean class wraps a value of the primitive type
 boolean in an object.

Byte

The Byte class wraps a value of primitive type byte
 in an object.

Character

The Character class wraps a value of the primitive
 type char in an object.

Character.Subset

Instances of this class represent particular subsets of the Unicode
 character set.

Character.UnicodeBlock

A family of character subsets representing the character blocks in the
 Unicode specification.

Class<T>

Instances of the class Class represent classes and
 interfaces in a running Java application.

ClassLoader

A class loader is an object that is responsible for loading classes.

ClassValue<T>

Lazily associate a computed value with (potentially) every type.

Compiler

The Compiler class is provided to support Java-to-native-code
 compilers and related services.

Double

The Double class wraps a value of the primitive type
 double in an object.

Enum<E extends Enum<E>>

This is the common base class of all Java language enumeration types.

Float

The Float class wraps a value of primitive type
 float in an object.

InheritableThreadLocal<T>

This class extends <tt>ThreadLocal</tt> to provide inheritance of values
 from parent thread to child thread: when a child thread is created, the
 child receives initial values for all inheritable thread-local variables
 for which the parent has values.

Integer

The Integer class wraps a value of the primitive type
 int in an object.

Long

The Long class wraps a value of the primitive type long in an object.

Math

The class Math contains methods for performing basic
 numeric operations such as the elementary exponential, logarithm,
 square root, and trigonometric functions.

Number

The abstract class Number is the superclass of classes
 BigDecimal, BigInteger,
 Byte, Double, Float,
 Integer, Long, and Short.

Object

Class Object is the root of the class hierarchy.

Package

Package objects contain version information
 about the implementation and specification of a Java package.

Process

The ProcessBuilder.start() and
 Runtime.exec
 methods create a native process and return an instance of a
 subclass of Process that can be used to control the process
 and obtain information about it.

ProcessBuilder

This class is used to create operating system processes.

ProcessBuilder.Redirect

Represents a source of subprocess input or a destination of
 subprocess output.

Runtime

Every Java application has a single instance of class
 Runtime that allows the application to interface with
 the environment in which the application is running.

RuntimePermission

This class is for runtime permissions.

SecurityManager

The security manager is a class that allows
 applications to implement a security policy.

Short

The Short class wraps a value of primitive type short in an object.

StackTraceElement

An element in a stack trace, as returned by Throwable.getStackTrace().

StrictMath

The class StrictMath contains methods for performing basic
 numeric operations such as the elementary exponential, logarithm,
 square root, and trigonometric functions.

String

The String class represents character strings.

StringBuffer

A thread-safe, mutable sequence of characters.

StringBuilder

A mutable sequence of characters.

System

The System class contains several useful class fields
 and methods.

Thread

A thread is a thread of execution in a program.

ThreadGroup

A thread group represents a set of threads.

ThreadLocal<T>

This class provides thread-local variables.

Throwable

The Throwable class is the superclass of all errors and
 exceptions in the Java language.

Void

The Void class is an uninstantiable placeholder class to hold a
 reference to the Class object representing the Java keyword
 void.

Enum Summary

Enum
Description

Character.UnicodeScript

A family of character subsets representing the character scripts
 defined in the
 Unicode Standard Annex #24: Script Names.

ProcessBuilder.Redirect.Type

The type of a ProcessBuilder.Redirect.

Thread.State

A thread state.

Exception Summary

Exception
Description

ArithmeticException

Thrown when an exceptional arithmetic condition has occurred.

ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException

Thrown to indicate that an array has been accessed with an
 illegal index.

ArrayStoreException

Thrown to indicate that an attempt has been made to store the
 wrong type of object into an array of objects.

ClassCastException

Thrown to indicate that the code has attempted to cast an object
 to a subclass of which it is not an instance.

ClassNotFoundException

Thrown when an application tries to load in a class through its
 string name using:

 The forName method in class Class.

CloneNotSupportedException

Thrown to indicate that the clone method in class
 Object has been called to clone an object, but that
 the object's class does not implement the Cloneable
 interface.

EnumConstantNotPresentException

Thrown when an application tries to access an enum constant by name
 and the enum type contains no constant with the specified name.

Exception

The class Exception and its subclasses are a form of
 Throwable that indicates conditions that a reasonable
 application might want to catch.

IllegalAccessException

An IllegalAccessException is thrown when an application tries
 to reflectively create an instance (other than an array),
 set or get a field, or invoke a method, but the currently
 executing method does not have access to the definition of
 the specified class, field, method or constructor.

IllegalArgumentException

Thrown to indicate that a method has been passed an illegal or
 inappropriate argument.

IllegalMonitorStateException

Thrown to indicate that a thread has attempted to wait on an
 object's monitor or to notify other threads waiting on an object's
 monitor without owning the specified monitor.

IllegalStateException

Signals that a method has been invoked at an illegal or
 inappropriate time.

IllegalThreadStateException

Thrown to indicate that a thread is not in an appropriate state
 for the requested operation.

IndexOutOfBoundsException

Thrown to indicate that an index of some sort (such as to an array, to a
 string, or to a vector) is out of range.

InstantiationException

Thrown when an application tries to create an instance of a class
 using the newInstance method in class
 Class, but the specified class object cannot be
 instantiated.

InterruptedException

Thrown when a thread is waiting, sleeping, or otherwise occupied,
 and the thread is interrupted, either before or during the activity.

NegativeArraySizeException

Thrown if an application tries to create an array with negative size.

NoSuchFieldException

Signals that the class doesn't have a field of a specified name.

NoSuchMethodException

Thrown when a particular method cannot be found.

NullPointerException

Thrown when an application attempts to use null in a
 case where an object is required.

NumberFormatException

Thrown to indicate that the application has attempted to convert
 a string to one of the numeric types, but that the string does not
 have the appropriate format.

ReflectiveOperationException

Common superclass of exceptions thrown by reflective operations in
 core reflection.

RuntimeException

RuntimeException is the superclass of those
 exceptions that can be thrown during the normal operation of the
 Java Virtual Machine.

SecurityException

Thrown by the security manager to indicate a security violation.

StringIndexOutOfBoundsException

Thrown by String methods to indicate that an index
 is either negative or greater than the size of the string.

TypeNotPresentException

Thrown when an application tries to access a type using a string
 representing the type's name, but no definition for the type with
 the specified name can be found.

UnsupportedOperationException

Thrown to indicate that the requested operation is not supported.

Error Summary

Error
Description

AbstractMethodError

Thrown when an application tries to call an abstract method.

AssertionError

Thrown to indicate that an assertion has failed.

BootstrapMethodError

Thrown to indicate that an invokedynamic instruction has
 failed to find its bootstrap method,
 or the bootstrap method has failed to provide a
 call site with a target
 of the correct method type.

ClassCircularityError

Thrown when the Java Virtual Machine detects a circularity in the
 superclass hierarchy of a class being loaded.

ClassFormatError

Thrown when the Java Virtual Machine attempts to read a class
 file and determines that the file is malformed or otherwise cannot
 be interpreted as a class file.

Error

An Error is a subclass of Throwable
 that indicates serious problems that a reasonable application
 should not try to catch.

ExceptionInInitializerError

Signals that an unexpected exception has occurred in a static initializer.

IllegalAccessError

Thrown if an application attempts to access or modify a field, or
 to call a method that it does not have access to.

IncompatibleClassChangeError

Thrown when an incompatible class change has occurred to some class
 definition.

InstantiationError

Thrown when an application tries to use the Java new
 construct to instantiate an abstract class or an interface.

InternalError

Thrown to indicate some unexpected internal error has occurred in
 the Java Virtual Machine.

LinkageError

Subclasses of LinkageError indicate that a class has
 some dependency on another class; however, the latter class has
 incompatibly changed after the compilation of the former class.

NoClassDefFoundError

Thrown if the Java Virtual Machine or a ClassLoader instance
 tries to load in the definition of a class (as part of a normal method call
 or as part of creating a new instance using the new expression)
 and no definition of the class could be found.

NoSuchFieldError

Thrown if an application tries to access or modify a specified
 field of an object, and that object no longer has that field.

NoSuchMethodError

Thrown if an application tries to call a specified method of a
 class (either static or instance), and that class no longer has a
 definition of that method.

OutOfMemoryError

Thrown when the Java Virtual Machine cannot allocate an object
 because it is out of memory, and no more memory could be made
 available by the garbage collector.

StackOverflowError

Thrown when a stack overflow occurs because an application
 recurses too deeply.

ThreadDeath

An instance of ThreadDeath is thrown in the victim thread
 when the (deprecated) Thread.stop() method is invoked.

UnknownError

Thrown when an unknown but serious exception has occurred in the
 Java Virtual Machine.

UnsatisfiedLinkError

Thrown if the Java Virtual Machine cannot find an appropriate
 native-language definition of a method declared native.

UnsupportedClassVersionError

Thrown when the Java Virtual Machine attempts to read a class
 file and determines that the major and minor version numbers
 in the file are not supported.

VerifyError

Thrown when the "verifier" detects that a class file,
 though well formed, contains some sort of internal inconsistency
 or security problem.

VirtualMachineError

Thrown to indicate that the Java Virtual Machine is broken or has
 run out of resources necessary for it to continue operating.

Annotation Types Summary

Annotation Type
Description

Deprecated

A program element annotated @Deprecated is one that programmers
 are discouraged from using, typically because it is dangerous,
 or because a better alternative exists.

Override

Indicates that a method declaration is intended to override a
 method declaration in a supertype.

SafeVarargs

A programmer assertion that the body of the annotated method or
 constructor does not perform potentially unsafe operations on its
 varargs parameter.

SuppressWarnings

Indicates that the named compiler warnings should be suppressed in the
 annotated element (and in all program elements contained in the annotated
 element).

Package java.lang Description

Provides classes that are fundamental to the design of the Java
 programming language. The most important classes are Object, which is the root of the class hierarchy, and Class, instances of which represent classes at run time.

Frequently it is necessary to represent a value of primitive
 type as if it were an object. The wrapper classes Boolean,
 Character, Integer, Long, Float,
 and Double serve this purpose.  An object of type Double, for example, contains a field whose type is double,
 representing that value in such a way that a reference to it can be
 stored in a variable of reference type.  These classes also provide
 a number of methods for converting among primitive values, as well
 as supporting such standard methods as equals and hashCode.  The
 Void class is a non-instantiable class that holds a
 reference to a Class object representing the type void.

The class Math provides commonly used mathematical
 functions such as sine, cosine, and square root. The classes String, StringBuffer, and StringBuilder similarly
 provide commonly used operations on character strings.

Classes ClassLoader, Process, ProcessBuilder, Runtime, SecurityManager, and
 System provide "system operations" that manage the dynamic
 loading of classes, creation of external processes, host
 environment inquiries such as the time of day, and enforcement of
 security policies.

Class Throwable encompasses objects that may be thrown
 by the throw statement. Subclasses of Throwable
 represent errors and exceptions.

Character Encodings

 The specification of the java.nio.charset.Charset class describes the naming conventions
 for character encodings as well as the set of standard encodings
 that must be supported by every implementation of the Java
 platform.

Since:

JDK1.0

Overview

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Index

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Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 7

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For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java SE Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.
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text:
Geeta says, "Mahto family is not her's": Sushma Swaraj
Samachar Plus | India | 26 October 2015
pakistan,	Sushma Swaraj	AIIMS	Geeta	CFSL	DNA Test
New Delhi: A deaf and mute girl Geeta, who was stranded in Pakistan more than a decade ago, has now returned to India finally on Monday where she will soon reunite with her biological parents. But a twist has come in her reunion as Geeta has refused to recognise the Mahto family, that had received her at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, after meeting them.
Speaking to reporters in a press conference with the 23-year-old fortunate Geeta, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said Geeta has refused to identify the Mahtos from Bihar, who had claimed her as their lost daughter. "Geeta says the Mahto family is not hers. We will still do a DNA test to establish the truth," Sushma said.
"Geeta as of now is refusing to recognize her family after meeting them. Geeta says the Mahto family is not hers but because the blood samples have gone we will wait for the DNA test reports," she said.
"To remove all doubts that may arise due to the long time that has passed, we will do the DNA test. No matter if we find her (Geeta's) parents or not, she is a daughter of India and we will take care of her. For now, she is being sent to Indore," she added.
The Union minister, who was instrumental in getting Geeta back, said she will be kept in an institution in Indore while the DNA tests are done. "Four couples from different states have claimed Geeta as their daughter. We are investigating every claim," she said.
"Today is a very memorable day, our daughter Geeta is back in India. I am very very grateful to you (Bilquis Edhi) for taking care of Geeta in Karachi," Sushma said, addressing the philanthropist family from Pakistan which had provided shelter to Geeta while she was stuck there years back.
Meanwhile, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has deputed two doctors to collect Geeta's DNA samples to determine her parentage and the results will be known after 15-20 days.
"We have deputed two doctors to collect the DNA samples of Geeta from the hotel where she is staying. These samples will be sent to the AIIMS Forensic lab and Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) for carrying out necessary tests to determine her parentage," said Dr Sudhir Gupta.
According to Dr Gupta, they have already collected the samples of the family which claimed Geeta as its own on October 24 after the Ministry of External Affairs wrote to the hospital. The Ministry had asked it to collect samples for DNA test to confirm if Janardhan Mahato, who claims that Geeta is his first born Heera, is indeed her father.
Reportedly, Janardhan Mahto had earlier said that they lost Geeta years ago at a carnival in Jalandhar, Punjab. He believe that Geeta is their lost-long daughter Heera.
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Audrey Maskiewicz, a libero for the San Dieguito volleyball team, plays with a permanent rod in her back.
Audrey Maskiewicz experienced increasing back pain in seventh grade, but it was another year before her chiropractor finally diagnosed the problem.
It wasn't a pulled muscle or a broken bone as some had thought.
Maskiewicz, who had begun playing volleyball three years earlier, discovered her pain was the result of a condition she's had since birth. It was scoliosis, commonly known as curvature of the spine.
No one in her family has ever had it.
"I didn't know what was coming," Maskiewicz said.
Because the condition was not discovered years earlier, the curvature had progressed far enough to limit some options for treatment. Doctors decided to insert a permanent rod alongside the backbone to correct the upper part of the spine.
Asked when Maskiewicz had her surgery, she knew the exact date.
"It was June 17, 2015," said the 5-foot-4 libero, who earned a berth on the junior varsity volleyball team as a freshman at San Dieguito Academy. "I was a sophomore and my first thought was this was going to cost me an entire season.
"I was horrified to think about losing a season, but I was having a lot of back pain and after a few months I knew I had to have the operation.
Now a senior at San Dieguito, Maskiewicz returned to action with the Mustangs midway through the season last fall.
Though she wasn't sure she was totally healed, Maskiewicz couldn't wait to get back on the court.
Her hesitation lasted one day. Once she was cleared to play, she was all in, rejoining the JV.
Now her sights are set on the varsity.
Her doctors have not placed any restrictions on her as she continues playing volleyball.
With college on the horizon, Maskiewicz has already made the decision not to continue her playing career after high school.
Having a rod in her back — she was assured it won't set off metal detectors at the airport — made her realize there really is more to life than just volleyball.
"I like doing so many other things," Maskiewicz said. "I want to be a doctor one day. I've changed my mind a bunch of times, but I've thought about being an occupational therapist.
"Without volleyball, I can concentrate on my future by throwing myself into my schoolwork. I've also restarted singing and I work at Jamba Juice as well.
Above all else, Maskiewicz understands just how lucky she has been as an athlete.
"I feel really lucky," she said. "I felt terrified at having the surgery, but it changed me as a person.
"My mom (Katy) says all the time that she knows how much stronger I am now.
She tells people all the time it's from a shark bite.


text:
Betty Wayne Allison
Steans Music Institute/ Singers ...
Steans Music Institute
Rachmaninov: Songs (12), Op. 14
Composer: Sergei Rachmaninov
Artists: Betty Wayne Allison (Soprano); Adam Nielsen (Piano)
Venue: Ravinia Festival Grounds: Bennett-Gordon Hall (Highland Park)
Recording Date: Thu 11 Aug 2011
Spring waters (Floods of spring) (2:07) N/A
Rachmaninov: Songs (6), Op. 4
IV - Ne poy, krasavitsa, pri mne (4:22) N/A
Rachmaninov: Songs (12), Op. 21 N/A
The Answer (1:44) N/A
Lilacs (1:42) N/A
Larsen: Try Me, Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII N/A
Composer: Libby Larsen
Artists: Betty Wayne Allison (Soprano); Ileana Montalbetti (Soprano); Adam Nielsen (Piano)
Recording Date: Mon 8 Aug 2011
Katherine of Aragon (2:41) N/A
Anne Boleyn (4:31) N/A
Jane Seymour (2:23) N/A
Anne of Cleaves (1:19) N/A
Katherine Howard (3:57) N/A


text:
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Raley's raises over $3 million for local food banks
Grocery retailers ramp up COVID-19 vaccine distribution
Schnuck Markets serves up Restaurant Selections meal program
Krasdale Foods promotes Cynthia Ramos to chief sales officer
Publix expands COVID-19 vaccinations to over 100 pharmacies
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10 top trends in the supermarket meat aisle in 2020
UNFI's Better for All initiative sets 10-year targets in waste reduction, climate action and food access
UPDATED PACKAGING BRIGHTENS TOPCO'S DAY
SKOKIE, Ill. -- Topco Associates, the retailer-owned cooperative of private-label products, attributes an 8% to 10% rise in sales of its nonfood lines to newly redesigned packaging.The company also plans to add 90 stockkeeping units this year, about 75% of which will be new items and the remainder line extensions, said Curt Maki, Topco's vice president of nonfood.The new packaging and labels were
Joel Elson 1 | Apr 26, 1999
SKOKIE, Ill. -- Topco Associates, the retailer-owned cooperative of private-label products, attributes an 8% to 10% rise in sales of its nonfood lines to newly redesigned packaging.
The company also plans to add 90 stockkeeping units this year, about 75% of which will be new items and the remainder line extensions, said Curt Maki, Topco's vice president of nonfood.
The new packaging and labels were designed to be user-friendly and to draw shopper attention to Topco's 1,700 Top Care health and beauty care items and Top Crest general merchandise. The Top Care name in a green teardrop on the old label has been repositioned more boldly on the carton in an upscale graphic.
Among the packaging enhancements, an e-mail address and a toll-free telephone number to the customer-service department were added for better communication with customers who have questions about the products.
To instill a higher level of confidence in the Top Care and Top Crest brands, Topco repositioned its product-guarantee seal more prominently on the redesigned label. While the products have always had a guarantee, "it was hidden on the back of the packaging," commented Maki.
The new labels also mimic the national brands in color. The Top Care selection of cough and cold and analgesics, for example, "could actually have as many as 20 to 25 different color schemes, because we're going after national brands like Advil, Tylenol, Bayer and others," he added. "We're trying to line up against the national brands."
Maki said the key to building store-brand sales "is making a statement that the products are of a quality level similar to the national brands. Also, the upgraded packaging is no longer plain white and has become more acceptable for a consumer to buy it."
Approximately 75% to 90% of the lines with Topco's new packages are now on retailers' shelves.
"In HBC, we wanted internal analgesics and cough and cold categories completed first in time for the fall cough and cold season. On the general merchandise side, batteries and film were critical since these are pretty big lines for us," said Maki.
In addition to the HBC items, Topco is preparing to launch two new Top Crest disposable-food-storage containers, which will retail for $1.49 and $1.99. They will be introduced as advertised specials for $1.
Maki, who is a pharmacist, said that over the past several years private-label HBC has gained in consumer confidence, especially for internal remedies. This has been partly promoted by the use of generics in the prescription-drug field.
"The health maintenance organizations and third parties dictate the generic version, and this has carried over to the over-the-counter side as well. Consumers are much more accepting of the store-brand HBC," he said.
Also contributing to better sales of store brands, retailers are giving private-label nonfood greater prominence in ads, in-store displays and promotional events that stress value, quality and variety, Maki said.
Topco member chains like Fry's Food Stores of Arizona, Phoenix, and Jitney-Jungle Stores of America, Jackson, Miss., raise awareness for Topco in ads and store circulars that regularly tout the name.
"They carry a very comprehensive selection and promote heavily, including buy-one, get-one-free, 25%-off the whole category and theme events like baby care," Maki added.
Retailers can nearly double their profits on sales of store brands over the national brands. Store-brand nonfood carries 35% to 60% margins, compared with 25% to 35% margins yielded by the national brands, Maki pointed out. Category growth for Topco is projected to come from vitamins, nutritional supplements, herbs and antacids. Another good bet for growth is smoking-cessation nicotine patches, Maki said.
Topco retailers on average typically devote about 160 linear feet of space to HBC, and about 100 linear feet to general merchandise, Maki said.
"Overall, HBC display space seems to be growing as retailers begin to focus on whole-health trends," Maki said. Topco is considering enlarging its offering of Top Care herbals. "When you start looking at vitamins, nutritionals and herbal products, private label has a huge share of that category," Maki pointed out. For the period ended Jan. 3, 1999, private label represented 28.2% of the vitamin category, a 10.2% increase over the previous year, according Information Resources Inc., Chicago.
Maki said store-brand HBC can aid in establishing a retailer's whole-health strategy. "Supermarkets must develop some type of identity in the store, either as a whole-health concept, a natural-store-within-a-store format or a vitamin section with a boutique look," Maki stressed.
He cautioned against just "stacking products on a shelf and letting them sit there like a can of beans. Whole health means a lot of point-of-purchase materials, signage and attractive fixtures."
The vitamin and supplement sections Maki has observed at some retailers "seem a confusing mish-mash."
Topco recently lost two members -- Dominick's Finer Foods, Northlake, Ill., and Buttrey Food & Drug Stores Co., Great Falls, Mont. -- due to industry consolidations. "The buying group is pursuing regional supermarket chains that wish to maintain their identity, but still want to leverage volume and get all the services of the large chains," Maki said.
Currently, 30 supermarket chains own Topco and participate in its nonfood programs.
Hy-Vee set to launch rapid antibody COVID testing


Name the nuda, living in ubon ratchathani 28 years old, height 153 10(weight 36 kg shape, thin white, yellow single without children do not smoke do not drink education diplomas in business administration, computer branch agriculture rice career, rubber, chicken raising the free time activities running,batmith, remodels and it makes me feel chill out and feel good for the body. on holidays, if not traveling, will clean the house, wash clothes, watch TV, read the grow books, samosas shower for dogs, take care of trees and samosas kitchen garden, cooking and dessert,i have a dog.
My name is ann I'm 28year old I got one son.
I' m not perfect. Yes! No body . until you close up or you see my life style.
cheerful bright seriously in the story of love.
A simple sincere movements to anyone who love the fact is not leaving.
As a Ajarn be merry, bright, smiling brilliantly.


I have taught many undergraduate students who were struggling to pass their final exams, helping them to achieve higher results than expected. I taught people one-to-one and groups as well. My approach is based on providing you with all the theoretical knowledge needed to solve exercises and then pass the exam. My specialities are automation & control and robotics, and I have 7 years of experience working on Matlab, so I could help you to solve easy and complex problems. We can also organise introduction courses to Matlab if you are not familiar with this software. I could introduce you to programming in C language. Slides with theoretical knowledge and exercises to approach programming for the first time will be provided.


Life can be challenging, and it's easy to feel trapped – by our circumstances, our personal history and conditioning, and our daily struggle to change. But what if we could break free from these constraints? Fortunately, an emerging worldview is providing us with the path to to achieve just that! Quantum physics reveals a world that is extraordinarily interconnected and exists in a state of pure potential. We, too, can live in that place of potentiality. In The Possibility Principle, psychotherapist Mel Schwartz shares his revolutionary approach to integrating the core principles of quantum theory – inseparability, potentiality, and uncertainty – into an accessible and practical method for personal empowerment.
A prodigious writer of more than 100 articles for Psychology Today, Mel blogs prolifically, contributing regularly to his A Shift of Mind Blog.
He's a member of the Association of Humanistic Psychology, Association of Transpersonal Psychology, and Society for Consciousness Studies.
"The insights to be gained from The Possibility Principle are enormous as you will see. Mel Schwartz draws breathtaking parallels between the quantum reality and our human experience, revealing powerful lessons for living to our greatest potential. He shows that consciousness is fundamental, and that our minds and hearts are shared, as one. The implications for human welfare are profound.
The Possibility Principle is profound yet reader-friendly, well-grounded but very, very wise. According to Mel Schwartz, our lives are in tatters as a result of clinging to 17th Century paradigms to cope with 21st century crises. His book, The Possibility Principle clearly describes the havoc wrought by a worldview that reinforces competition and separateness while neglecting compassion and cooperation.
Schwartz insists that humanity is playing out the wrong game plane and calls for nothing less than new ways of thinking that will turn around both individual lives and the world-at-large. This move from a deterministic, mechanistic worldview to one that is participatory has incredible implications for our personal lives and for our mental and emotional health, and the very foundations of society.
Purchase The Art of Intimacy and/or DVD here.
Join the conversation on Mel's Illuminating the Possibilities Blog.


Innovative "two-minute" response technology streamlines monthly payment financing options and approvals for a variety of commercial, industrial and municipal energy improvements.
HBC Energy Capital (HBC), a division of the National Energy Improvement Fund (NEIF), has introduced its new online portal for rapid processing of Energy Efficiency financing for commercial, non-profit and municipal energy improvements. The online portal can be used by both contractors and customers to customize lease, and loan financing options and eliminate first cost barriers to improvements such as lighting, HVAC and renewable energy. Project size can range from less than $10,000 to multi-millions.
With simple input and in less than two minute's time, users can create a financing estimate pulling from a matrix of HBC's lender partners' rates, indicating the best monthly payments available for the project. Estimates include a monthly cash flow analysis and are presented in a clear, easily understandable format for both contractors and customers. Financing applications can be quickly completed through the online portal, which manages all documentation and procedures required throughout the lending process.
This enhanced automated platform, coupled with HBC's dedicated energy lending specialists, is a one-stop shop financing solution for commercial, non-profit, and municipal energy efficiency projects. HBC works with a network of qualified energy contractors as well as with utility commercial DSM and other programs.
To get a closer look at the portal's functionality, read more.
Users interested in creating a finance estimate will find the portal integrated into the HBC website. It is not necessary to be a registered user to create an estimate. Non-registered contractors can create an estimate here. However, interested contractors can quickly create an account that allows them to track and manage potential, active, and past project estimates and applications. To log-in or register, go here.
Once logged in, financing estimates can be created in two-minutes with simple inputs about project size, incentive amount, etc.
An example of a financing estimate.
Utilizing the best available lender rates, the online portal allows contractors to review and select a financing terms with the most attractive net-monthly cash flows.
Contractors can keep track of multiple finance estimates and financing applications as they move through the lending process. Representatives from HBC will be with you every step of the way to ensure your project continues to progress, all proper documentation has been uploaded, and that communication between the borrower, lender, and contractor remains open and active.
2017- It was a very good year!


Specializing in brands and marketing communication for clients in the luxury yacht and associated industries, The Superyacht Agency, based in London, combines strategy with industry insight and creativity. One of their clients is the Marina Port Vell in Barcelona, now One Ocean Port Vell. The idea was create a premium lifestyle publication for yacht owners, captains, crew and guests docking in Barcelona. I was contacted by the agency to write articles for Superyacht Magazine.
Carmina Rotger – High-end fashion accessories boutique specializing in jewellery, scarves, hats, and bags.
Nino Álvarez – Specialized menswear boutique.
Colmado Murria – Unique delicatessen in a beautiful Modernist setting, one of the last "true colmados" in Barcelona.
Sombrerería Mil – A range of hats for all occasions, the store first opened in 1815 and is now in the fourth generation.
Marcos Frutos – Entrepreneur and travel enthusiast.
There are only three editions of the magazine at the moment; as a freelance writer I was commissioned to write articles for the 2nd and 3rd editions. The aim was to focus on specific individuals and their role in Barcelona. Historical establishments that offer tradition and luxury, family enterprises that have weathered the changes throughout the years. I interviewed each person, digging into their emotional essence and passion, to create articles that pull the reader into the curious and mesmerising bubble of Barcelona.
I always find the experience of writing features to be insanely strange. Receiving the article brief, researching the person or company in question to get a general feeling, compiling the list of questions, and finally meeting a complete stranger to delve into their life… Pulling at them to reach the emotional bits and pieces, the elements that make them tick. Going back home, to the silence, organizing the answers, slipping into their skin, constructing a life with words. Thinking of the reader. No matter how many times I write features, the process never ceases to amaze me.