#GUY JUST SKIPPED WHOLE OF SOUTH ASIA

[hissterical-nyaan]

When your favourite musician announces an Asia tour and somehow LEAVES INDIA OUT OF IT

WHAT IS THIS BEHAVIOUR

#ANBSSHSNVHDHSNS #I MIGHT HAVE ACTUALLY GONE TO THE CONCERT IF IT WAS IN BANGALORE #GUY JUST SKIPPED WHOLE OF SOUTH ASIA #Sir WHY

[artificialskyway-archives]

Secret Love

Characters: Kyungsoo x Reader (w/ occasional appearances by members of Exo)

Word count: 2,660

- Admin R

The members of Exo were talking amongst themselves in their van as they were leaving the SM building. Concern and questions filtered the air about the new addition to their team for this cycle, which was essentially what the meeting was about. When the managers called for a meeting to go over new changes and adjustments before the start of their comeback, having a personal assistant was the furthest thing in their minds of what would be added to this edition. The guys were unsure about having a personal assistant added onto their team. Would this be a good thing? Would it be fun? What would their PA be like? All these questions filtered through in conversation on the ride back to their dorm.

“I don’t know, maybe it’ll be fun. Like having someone help us out and do stuff for us.” Baekhyun said, trying to put a positive spin to the topic.

“But we’re already surrounded by so many people. Wouldn’t it be easier with our managers just helping us? Like they’ve always done?” Jongin asked, looking around at his hyungs.

“Well,” Suho chimes in, “we’ll just have to wait and see.” 

A week has passed and the guys are all together in the studio for one last rehearsal before the comeback era begins. Music is blaring and drowning out the entirety of the room. The boys are fixated on the mirrored wall, studying every move they make, looking for flaws, finding room for perfection.

Suddenly, the music cuts, “Okay, take a break, guys!” One of the managers exclaims.

The boys disperse, heading for their water, laying on the ground, and catching their breaths.

“Boys.” Another manager announces, as he enters the studio room with a girl, a number of inches shorter than he. She followed in behind him, scanning the room. She wore a light blue long-sleeved button down blouse, black skinny jeans, and white flats. A light brown over-the-shoulder bag, and notebook in hand occupied her person. “Let me introduce you to someone. This is Y/N. Your personal assistant.”

They all are now standing in a line in front of you, eyes on you. Politely bowing to you, as you return the gesture.

“Hello, nice to meet you.” She says in a low tone, almost a murmur. She looked nervous, and probably was. Despite this, she still managed to hold herself up pretty well.

The manager goes on to introduce each of the members one by one, they all have sweet smiles and warm faces as they greet her. She’s eyeing each member trying to get the names to stick to the faces.

“Y/N is going to be on this leg of the comeback and tour with us. Anything you need, any questions you have, anything at all, she is your go-to person. We will not always be able to be around, but Y/N will be, so look to her as your sort of… savior.” The manager explains, a cheerful smile appearing on his face as he pats Y/N’s back and leads her to the other side of the room to go over other minor details.

The guys go back to taking a break, all talking and chatting amongst each other. Everything and everyone returned back to normal, except for one member.

Kyungsoo.

His complete demeanor had changed the moment they were introduced to their new addition to the team. He laid eyes on Y/N and everything shifted. Kyungsoo felt his insides fill with light butterflies flowing through him. “She’s beautiful,” Kyungsoo thought to himself.

Kyungsoo tried his best to keep things normal, and not make it obvious that he just wanted to admire Y/N that day. He wanted to get to know her, talk with her, be in her company. When he looked at her he felt like he could see into the future, and the future included nothing but her. Of course, he came back to reality and realized that this was all far-fetched and wishful thinking. Or at least that’s what he told himself.

The day came to an end, and the tour began. It was busy, it was wild, and it was eventful. The guys and Y/N ended up getting along very well, they began sharing jokes, laughs and such all in positive manners. The guys ended up liking Y/N, more so because she did not take them too seriously, but she also was able to keep them in control and grounded.

“This was actually a good idea. Y/N is a blessing to us all!” Chanyeol exclaimed.

It’s now been a few weeks into the comeback, and tour dates have been added all across South Asia. You’ve been working tirelessly on this new job of yours. The question of how you managed to land a job like this never ceased to cross your mind from time to time. It was still all feeling like a wild dream. But alas, you returned to reality and thanked the heavens for such a job, even if it did mean catering to the needs of nine idols. It really wasn’t as bad as you would have thought. The guys were wild and hyperactive, but they were also quite calm and laid back compared to what you had expected. You even ended up getting along pretty well with them, being able to joke around with them. But you were also a force to be reckoned with, and you didn’t have a problem with setting the guys straight when it felt necessary. And just maybe, they truly respected that about you, which added to the great connection.

However great of a bond that you’ve built with these boys, there was still one connection with one of them that seemed to always catch you off guard.

Kyungsoo.

You and Kyungsoo had seemed to have connected instantly, almost too instant. Maybe it was how you both didn’t really take any of the members nonsense, and you two weren’t afraid to set them straight. Or maybe it was because you two had some sort of deeper connection. Either way, it sent little red flags up in your head, and you could tell that he had the same warning in his. But there was just something about him that intrigued you and made you feel differently than anyone has ever made you feel. He was always more silent than the others, never really asking for anything for himself from you. Whenever he did need you, it was always for one of the other boys.

Within the first week of working with them, you would catch his glance, sending you into a quickened race of nerves within your body. You would try and admire him from afar. The way his lips formed into a heart shape when he smiles at something Kai said. The way he walks with stride, reserved calamity in every step. The way he pokes fun at his hyungs, particularly Chanyeol. The way he scrunched his eyebrows together when he was concentrating on something important. You try to stop yourself from further observations because nothing further would ever happen. Nothing can happen.

Conversations with each other were initially kept short, quick transactions of minor details. Never anything profoundly exciting, however they still left your heart to skip a beat or two. These small instances were all that you thought you would be able to get out of him, it was wrong to feel this way for someone you’re working for. Wasn’t it? Besides, you thought, you were probably the only one to feel this way. And so, you simply brushed it off, bringing yourself back to reality.

That is, until two days ago.

Two days ago, you and the whole crew were back in Korea for a three day break. You were staying late to catch up on nonsense paperwork in the SM building, alone in the late hours of the night. Or at least you thought you were alone.

You heard a loud rumble on the other side of the wall of the room you were currently in. You hastily got up on your feet, grabbing the closest thing to you that you could find… a new and unwrapped pack of folders. How intimidating, you thought to yourself as you exited the room. You headed for the room beside you, where you heard the noise, hand on the doorknob, heart beat rising. You were about to open the door when it swings open and staring back at you was Kyungsoo.

A huge rush of relief washed over you as you lowered your arm and let out a long breath that you’d been holding in for God knows how long. Looking past Kyungsoo, to where the noise was still going on you noticed was Chanyeol fumbling through boxes.

“Oh god. You guys gave me a heart attack!” You exclaim.

“I can see that.” Kyungsoo says with a slight giggle at the end, nodding towards your dangerous choice of weaponry.

Chanyeol comes up from behind Kyungsoo, looking at you with a smile and eyeing down to your hand where you were still gripping the pack of folders.

“What were you gonna do, Y/N? File us away with those folders?” Chanyeol jokes, causing both boys to laugh and Kyungsoo to nudged Chanyeol away.

“She really should file you away, since you’re being extra annoying today. It would actually make me happy.” Kyungsoo blurts, never really breaking his gaze from you.

His warm dark eyes burning a hole in your sanity, you regained enough consciousness to speak, “so what are you guys doing here, exactly?” You ask, stepping past Kyungsoo and entering the room, tossing the pack of folders on top of one of the many closed boxes occupying the room.

“Chanyeol dragged me out here with him to help him find one of his pieces for his music equipment… or something. I don’t really know what it was that he said, to be honest.” Kyungsoo says, plopping down on an old dark grey colored couch in the middle of the room. This was definitely classified as a junk room, seeing at how many miscellaneous and absurd things were in there, thought to yourself.

“Interesting,” was all you could muster up, still feeling a bit of adrenaline in you. You walked over and plopped yourself on the opposite side of the couch where Kyungsoo sat. He looks over to you and smiles, and there’s that beautiful smile again, you thought.

“Well, I guess it really isn’t here. Hmm. Weird.” Chanyeol says, plopping in between you and Kyungsoo, breaking the gaze that you two were once holding, rather indiscreetly.

“You know what, I think I’m going to go look upstairs. Maybe it’s in one of those rooms.” Chanyeol says with a bit of hopeful cheer in his tone.

“Do you need my help?” Kyungsoo asks, to which Chanyeol simply shakes his head.

“No, hyung. You stay here. Keep Y/N company, we don’t need her getting scared and threatening anyone with a stapler next.” He jokes before heading out the door, closing it behind him.

Chanyeol, knowing the state of Kyungsoo’s feelings towards you, decided to play matchmaker and bravely came up with this whole scheme. He knew you were going to be working here alone, and he knew exactly where he left what he was looking for. But neither you nor Kyungsoo needed to know that.

So now, here you two sat, in the deafening silence of this miscellaneous room, where things go to get lost and never see the light of day. Your heart began to beat a little faster, once more.

“Does he do this often? Dragging you out here in the middle of the night, looking for random things he leaves behind?” You ask, breaking the silence.

Kyungsoo and you lock eyes with each other once more. He smiles, “Not as often as you would think. But yeah, against my own will, especially tonight, have I been dragged back here.”

Kyungsoo is sure that the outline of his heart is now visible through his shirt because that’s just how nervous he was. You don’t know when but the space that was between you two was now gone.

“Y/N,” Kyungsoo starts, and maybe it was because he just needed to say something to distract his heart from ripping through his skin. Or maybe he gained some newfound confidence in this unused room. But he decided to be bold and ask you one question.

“Kyungsoo.” You respond, with a lighthearted smile. Little did you know, you had just made little butterflies appear in his stomach.

“I never really ask you for much, right?” He begins, “so if I ask you for this one thing, will you say no?”

You contemplate his question, a million and one things racing through your head on what he could ask you for. Finally realizing he was still waiting for your answer, you responded.

“I couldn’t say no to you.”

A few more moments of silence passed by, neither of you were really sure as to how much time had gone by.

“Can I kiss you?” He asks. His heart is now in his throat, blood rushing, and his nerves on edge.

You sat there shocked, a sea of emotions flowing through you. Is this really happening? Did you hear him right? Did he really ask that?

“Um,”

Kyungsoo moved closer to you, the air between you two was now both of yours mixed together. Personal space ceased to exist. Every logical part of you knew that this was not okay. You two should not be doing this. But every other part of you knew that this is exactly what you had been longing for. And you wanted it, you needed it.

“Since I first saw you, that day when you walked into our studio, I have not been the same.” He starts to confess, filling the silence and trying to just calm his nerves. “You have occupied every inch of my mind, you’re all I can think about. I don’t know what to do anymore, but to simply hope that it is not just me that feels this way.”

“No.” you blurt out.

“Uh,” He starts, leaning backwards a bit as his hand is rubbing the back of his neck. Thinking you didn’t want this as much as he did, embarrassment washed over him.

Realizing what was happening, you snapped out of it. “No, I mean no. You’re not the only one.”

“Oh.” He says, as you close the gap completely, now. Your hands reach out and caress the side of his face. Your inner desires slowly coming to life. You trace over ever inch of his jaw, his lips and chin. Looking down at you, Kyungsoo leans in and swiftly places his lips on yours.

You are in bliss. His lips are softer than you could have ever imagined, and this kiss was sending you into an eternal field of happiness. This was finally happening.

You two engaged in a heated and long awaited kiss. His hands were caressing your face, as yours found his legs and rubbed them gently. Both of your locked feelings were being laid out here in this room. And it felt so good. That is, until the logical part of your brain started to click. Quickly pulling away, catching your breath and looking into his eyes once more.

“We can’t…” You say, the words stinging the back of your throat as they left your mouth.

As much as it pained you to say them, they hurt Kyungsoo a little bit more because nowhere in your two simple words did he know that you were wrong. You both knew the consequences that would come from this. And your once full and thriving hearts started to slow down, relinquishing in the hard truth.

And so, there you two sat, too much in blissful agony to do or say anything.

#kyungsoo fic #kyungsoo fluff #kyungsoo scenario #kyungsoo oneshot #do oneshot #do fluff #do fic #do scenario #exo do #exo kyungsoo

[hmhteen]

HMH Teen Teasers: NOT EVEN BONES by Rebecca Schaeffer!

If you like your books a little bloody, prepare to devour this killer YA debut: NOT EVEN BONES by Rebecca Schaeffer is about a girl who dissects dead bodies for the magical black market...but soon enough finds herself the one in danger of being sold for parts. To save herself, she must unleash the monster within.

Keep scrolling to read the first FOUR chapters of NOT EVEN BONES!

***

ONE

Nita stared at the dead body lying on the kitchen table. Middle-aged, and in the place between pudgy and overweight, he wore a casual business suit and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with silver handles that blended into the gray at his temples. He was indistinguishable on the outside from any other human — the inside, of course, was a different matter.

“Another zannie?” Nita scowled at her mother and crossed her arms as she examined the body. “That’s not even Latin American. I thought we moved to Peru to hunt South and Central American unnaturals? Chupacabras and pishtacos and whatever.”

It wasn’t that zannies were common, but Nita had dis- sected plenty during the months she and her mother spent in Southeast Asia last year. She’d been looking forward to dissecting something new. If she’d wanted to cut up the same unnaturals as usual, she would have asked to stay with her dad in the States and work on unicorns.

Her mother shrugged, draping her jacket over a chair. “I saw a zannie, so I killed it. I mean, it was right in front of me. How could I resist?” Her black-and-red-striped bangs fell for- ward as she dipped her head and half smiled.

Nita shifted her feet, looking at the corpse again. She sighed. “I suppose you’ll want me to dissect and package it for sale?”

“Good girl.” Her mother grinned.

Nita went around to the other side of the dead body. “Care to help me move it to the workroom?”

Her mother rolled up her sleeves, and together they heaved the round, deceptively heavy body down the hall and onto a smooth metal table in the other room. White walls and fluorescent lights made it look like a hospital surgery room. Scalpels and bone saws lay in neat lines on the shelves, and a scale for weighing organs rested in front of a box of jars. In the corner, a tub of formaldehyde caused everything to reek of death. The smell kept sneaking out of the room and making its way into Nita’s clothes. She found it strangely comforting. That was probably a bad sign.

But, if Nita was being honest with herself, most of her habits and life choices were bad signs.

Her mother winked at Nita. “All ready for you.”

Nita looked down at her watch. “It’s nearly midnight.” “And?”

“And I want to sleep sometime.”

“So do it later.” Her mother waved it aside. “It’s not like you have anything to get up for.”

Nita paused, then bowed her head in acceptance. Even though it had been years since her mother had decided to illegally take Nita out of school, she still had some leftover instinct telling her not to go to bed too late. Which was silly, because even if she’d had school, she’d gladly have skipped it for a dissection. Dissections were fun.

Nita pulled on a white lab coat. She always liked wearing it— it made her feel like a real scientist at a prestigious university or laboratory somewhere. Sometimes she put the goggles on even when she didn’t need to just so she could complete the look.

“When are you heading out again?”

Her mother washed her hands in the sink. “Tonight. I got a tip when I was bringing this beauty back. I’m flying to Buenos Aires.”

“Pishtacos?” asked Nita, trying to hold in her excitement. She’d never had a chance to dissect a pishtaco. How would their bodies be modified for a diet made completely of human body fat? The promise of a pishtaco dissection was the only thing that had convinced Nita moving to Peru was a good idea. Her mother always knew how to tempt her.

Nita frowned. “Wait, there are no pishtacos in Argentina.” Her mother laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s something even better.”

“Not another zannie.” “No.”

Her mother dried her hands and headed back toward the kitchen, calling out as she went, “I’m going to head to the airport now. If all goes well, I should be back in two days.”

Nita followed and found her sitting, booted feet on the kitchen table as she unscrewed the top of the pisco bottle from the fridge and took a swig. Not cocktail-drink pisco, or mixed-with-soda pisco, just straight. Nita had tried it  once when she was home alone, thinking it would be a good celebration drink to ring in her seventeenth birthday. It didn’t burn as much as whisky or vodka, or even sake, but it kicked in fast, and it kicked in hard. Her mother had found her with her face squished against the wall, crying because it wouldn’t move for her. Then Mom had laughed and left her there to suffer. She showed Nita the pictures afterward — there was an awful lot of drool on that wall.

Nita hadn’t sampled anything in the liquor cabinet since.

“Oh, and Nita?” Her mother put the pisco on the table. “Yeah?”

“Don’t touch the head. It has a million-dollar bounty. I plan to claim it.”

Nita looked down the hall, toward the room with the dead body. “I’m pretty sure the whole wanted-dead-or-alive thing ended in the Old West. If you just turn this guy’s head over, you’ll be arrested for murder.”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “Why, thank you, Nita, for teaching me such an important lesson. Whatever would I do without you?”

Nita winced. “Um.”

“The zannie is wanted for war crimes by the Peruvian government. He was a member of the secret police under the Fujimori administration.”

No surprise there. Pretty much every zannie in the world was wanted for some type of war crime. When your biological imperative was to torture people and eat their pain, there were only so many career paths open to you.

That reminded Nita — there was an article in the latest issue of Nature on zannies that she wanted to read. Someone who had clearly dissected fewer zannies than Nita, but with access to better equipment,  had written a detailed analysis of how zannies consumed pain. There were all sorts of theo- ries about how pain was relative, and the same injury on two people could be perceived completely differently. The scientists had been researching zannies — was it the severity of the injury that fed them, or the person’s perception of how much it hurt?

They’d also managed to prove that while zannies could consume emotional pain, as well as physical, the effect was significantly less. Emotional and physical pain receptors over- lapped in the brain center, so the big question was, why did causing other people severe physical pain feed zannies, while causing severe emotional pain had less effect? Nita privately thought it was because physical pain had the added signals from nociceptors, but she was curious to see what others thought.

Her mother continued, oblivious to Nita’s wandering mind. “A number of interested parties have offered very large bounties for his head. They, unlike the government, don’t care if he’s alive to face trial.” There was a sharp flash of teeth. “And I’m happy to oblige them.”

She rose, put the pisco away, and pulled on her burgundy leather jacket. “Can you have him all packed up by the time I get back?”

Nita nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

Her mother came over and kissed the top of her head. “What would I ever do without you, Anita?”

Before Nita could formulate a response, her mother was out the door. There was a creak and then a bang, and the house was silent. When her mother departed, sometimes Nita felt like she took more than just noise. She had a presence, a tangible energy to her that filled the house. Without her, it felt hollow. Like the life had left, and there was only a dead zannie in its place.

Which, really, there was. Nita turned back to her newest project and allowed herself a small smile. A pishtaco or a chupacabra would have been better, but she’d still enjoy a zannie.

The first thing she did was empty its pockets. An old- fashioned timepiece, some Brazilian reais (no Peruvian soles though, which was odd), and a wallet. Nita gazed at it a long time before putting it on the tray, unopened. Her  mother would have already taken the credit cards and used them to get as much cash as possible before ditching them. The only other things left in the wallet would be identity cards, club memberships — things that would tell her about the person she was dissecting.

Nita had learned a long time ago — you don’t want to know anything about the person whose body you’re taking apart.

Better to think that it wasn’t a person at all. And really — it wasn’t. This was a zannie.

Nita took an elastic and tied her hair back in a puffy attempt at a ponytail. Her hair tended to grow sideways in frizzy kinks instead of down. In the glow of the fluorescent lights, its normally medium-brown color took on an orange tint. No one else thought it looked orange, but Nita insisted— she liked orange.

She put a surgical mask over her mouth, just below her freckle-spattered cheekbones, before putting the goggles on. After snapping on a pair of latex gloves, she rolled her tool set over to the metal slab where the body rested. She slipped her earbuds in and flicked on her Disney playlist.

It was time to begin.

  Nita couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been fascinated by dead things — perhaps because her home was always full of them. As far back as she could remember, her parents had acquired the bodies of unnaturals and sold the pieces on the internet. The darknet, to be specific. Black market body part sellers didn’t just post their items on eBay. That was how you ended up with a short visit from the International Non- Human Police — INHUP — and a long stint in jail.

When Nita was younger, she used to run around the room, bringing her parents empty jars. Big glass ones for the heart, small vials and bags for the blood. Afterward, she’d label them and line them up on the shelf. Sometimes she’d stare at them, pieces of people she’d never met. There was something calm- ing about the still hearts, floating in formaldehyde. Something peaceful. No more beating, no more thumping rhythm and noise. Just silence.

Sometimes, she would look at the eyes, and they would stare back. Direct, open gazes. Not like living people, who flicked their eyes here and there while they lied, who could cram an entire conversation into a single gaze. The problem was, Nita could never understand what they were saying. It was better after people were dead. The eyes weren’t so tricky anymore.

It took Nita all night and the better part of the next day to finish with the zannie, put everything in jars of formaldehyde or freezer containers, and clean the dissection room until it sparkled.

The sun was up, and she didn’t feel tired, so she went to her favorite park on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Tropical trees with large, bell-shaped flowers covered the benches like a canopy, and blue and white mosaics patterned the wall that prevented people from tumbling over the side of the cliff and into the sparkling waters below. Newspapers sat abandoned on the benches, from tabloids announcing Penelope Alvarez looks twenty at age forty-five. Good skin care or something more “unnatural”? to official news sources with headlines like Should Peru sign into INHUP? The advantages and disadvantages to an extraterritorial police force for unnatural-related incidents.

Peru was one of the only South American countries left that wasn’t a part of INHUP. There were always a few countries on every continent that stayed out so that black market dealers had somewhere to flee when INHUP finally nailed them. Certain people paid politicians handsomely to ensure it stayed that way.

Nita took a seat far away from the other people in the park. Under the shade of a floripondio tree, she cracked open her medical journals on unnaturals.

Sometimes it was frustrating reading them and knowing they were wrong about certain things. While lots of unnaturals were “out” and recognized by the world, most still hid, afraid of public backlash. So when the journals talked about zannies being the only species of unnatural that consumed nontangible things, like pain, Nita wished she could point out that there were creatures who consumed memories, strong emotions, and even dreams. INHUP just hadn’t officially recognized them yet. INHUP was big on doing damage control, and part of trying to decrease racism and discrimination against unnaturals was not telling people just how many types there were.

It also kept people like Nita’s mother from finding out about them. Sometimes.

Nita whiled the afternoon away in the shade of the tree, devouring medical research like candy, until the sun dipped so low there wasn’t enough light to read by.

When Nita got home, she was greeted by a string of exple- tives.

She crept into the hall, shoulders tight with tension. Her mother could be unpredictable when angry. Nita had been on the receiving end before and wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.

But ignoring her mother was more dangerous, so Nita padded into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Nita gaped, staring at the mess.

Her mother tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave Nita a wry smile. Around her, empty shipping crates littered the floor, along with packing materials like bubble wrap and Styrofoam worms. A gun sat on the kitchen table, and Nita briefly wondered what it was doing out.

“I want to have the zannie parts shipped out tomorrow.

We’ve got something new, and to be frank, this apartment isn’t big enough to hold all the parts.” Her mother flashed her another smile.

Nita was inclined to agree. Her dissection room was already at capacity, and they’d only dissected one zannie. There really wasn’t room for a second body.

“Something new, huh? I take it everything went well, then?” Nita’s mother laughed. “Do things ever go well with unnaturals that aren’t on the list?”

Among the unnaturals that were public knowledge, there was a list of “dangerous unnaturals” — unnaturals whose continued existence depended on  them  murdering other  people. It wasn’t a crime to kill them in INHUP member countries, it was “preemptive self-defense.” But anything not on the list, the harmless unnaturals (which was most of them, in Nita’s experience), it was very much a crime to kill.

Her mom mostly brought Nita unnaturals on the list. Mostly.

Nita knew her mother had probably killed a lot of not-evil, not-dangerous people and sold them. She tried not to think about it too much, because really, there wasn’t much she could do about it, was there?

Besides, they were always dead by the time they got to Nita. And if they were already dead, it would be a shame to let their bodies go undissected.

Speaking of . . .

“What did you bring back?” Nita asked, weaving through the crates to the fridge, where she took out last night’s leftovers and shoved them into the microwave.

“Something special. I put it in the dissection room.”

Nita felt her fingers twitch, the imaginary scalpel in her hand making a sliding cut through the air, like a Y incision. She couldn’t wait for the slow, relaxing evening, just her and the body. The straight autopsy lines, the jars full of organs watching over her, like her own weird guardian angel.

She shivered with anticipation. Sometimes she scared herself.

Her mother looked at Nita out of the corner of her eyes. “I have to say, this one was tricky to get.”

Nita removed her food from the microwave and sat down at the kitchen table. “Oh, do tell?”

Her mother smiled, and Nita settled in for a good story. “Well, it wasn’t hard at the beginning. Buenos Aires was lovely, and hunting down my tip was easy. Even acquiring our new . . . I don’t even know what to call him.”

Nita raised her eyebrows. Her mother knew every unnatural. It was her job. This one must be something really rare.

“Well, anyway.” Her mother sat down beside her. “It wasn’t even so bad getting him. Security wasn’t too much of an issue, easily dealt with. The problem was getting him back.”

Nita nodded. Airlines usually frowned on stuffing dead bodies into overhead bins.

Her mother gave her a conspiratorial wink. “But then I thought, well, why don’t I just pretend he’s a traveler? So I put him in a wheelchair, and the airline never even guessed.”

“Wait, a wheelchair?” Nita scowled. “But wouldn’t they notice that he didn’t, well, move or breathe or anything when they were helping him to his seat?”

She laughed. “Oh, he’s not dead. I just drugged the hell out of him.”

Nita’s fingers twitched, then froze. Not dead.

She gave her mother a sickly smile. “You said you put him in my room?”

“Yes, I spent the morning installing the cage. Bugger of a thing. You know they don’t make human-size cages anymore? And I had to get the handcuffs at a sex shop.”

Nita sat there for a long moment, smile frozen like a rictus on her face. Then she rose and began making her way through the crates to her dissection room.

Her mother followed. “This one’s a little different. He’s quite valuable, so I’d really like to milk him a bit for blood and such before we harvest the organs.”

But Nita wasn’t listening. She had opened the door to see with her own eyes.

Part of her beautiful, sterile white room was now taken up by a large cage, which had been bolted to the wall. Her mother had put a padlock and chain around the door. Inside the cage, a boy with dark brown hair lay unconscious in the fetal position. Given the size of the cage, it was probably the only way he could lie down.

“What is he?” Nita waited for her mother to list off the heinous things he did to survive. Maybe he ate newborn babies and was actually five hundred years old instead of the eighteen or nineteen he looked.

Her mother shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s a name for what he is.”

“But what kind of unnatural is he? Explain it.” Nita felt her voice rising and forced it to calm down. “I mean, you know what he does, right?”

Her mother laughed. “He doesn’t do much of anything. He’s an unnatural, that much I’m sure of, but I don’t think you’ll find any external signs of it. He was being kept by a col- lector in Buenos Aires.”

“So . . . why do we want him?” Nita pushed, surprised at how much she needed an answer, a reason to justify the cage in her room and the small, curled-up form of the boy. His jeans and T-shirt looked like they were spattered with something, and Nita wondered if it was blood.

“Ah. Well, he’s supposedly quite delicious, you know. Something about him. That collector had been selling vials of his blood — vials, not bags, mind you — for nearly ten thousand each. US dollars, not soles or pesos. Dollars. One of his toes went up for auction online last year, and the price was six dig- its. For a toe.”

Her mother had a wide, toothy grin, and her eyes were alight at the prospect of how much money an entire body could make. Nita wondered how soon the boy’s time would be up. Her mother preferred cash in hand to cash in the future, so Nita doubted the boy would be prisoner for long.

“I already put him up online, and we have a buyer for another toe. So I took the liberty of cutting it off and mailing it while we were in Argentina.”

It took a few moments for Nita to register her mother’s words. Then she looked down, and sure enough, the boy’s feet were bare and bloody. One foot had been hastily wrapped in bandages, but they’d turned red as the blood soaked through.

Her mother tapped her finger to her chin. “The only problem is, his pieces need to be fresh — well, as fresh as we can get them. So we’ll sell all the extremities first, as they’re ordered. He should be able to survive without those, and we can bottle the blood when we remove them and sell it as well. We’ll do the internal organs and such later, once we’ve spread the word. Shouldn’t take too long.”

Nita’s mind spun in circles, not quite processing what her mother was saying. “You want to keep him here and cut pieces off him while he’s still alive?”

“Exactly.”

Nita didn’t even know what to say to that. She didn’t deal with live people. Her subjects were dead.

“He’s not . . . dangerous?” Nita asked, unable to tear her eyes off the bandages around the missing toes.

Her mother snorted. “Hardly. He got unlucky in the genetic draw. As far as I can tell, everyone wants to eat him, and he has no more defenses than an ordinary human.”

The boy stirred in the cage and tried to twist himself around to look at them. Nita’s heart clenched. It was pathetic.

Her mother clapped her on the shoulder before turning around. “We’re going to make good money off him.”

Nita nodded, eyes never straying from the cage. Her mother left the room, calling for Nita to help her organize the crates in the kitchen so they could start packing the zannie parts.

The boy lifted his head and met Nita’s eyes. His eyes were gray-blue and wide with fear. He reached a hand up, but it stopped short, the handcuffs pulling it back down toward the bottom of the cage.

He swallowed, eyes never leaving Nita’s. “Ayúdame,” he whispered.

Help me.

TWO

Nita was not a heartless, murdering, body-part thief.

That was her mother.

Nita had never killed anyone. Her plan was to keep it that way.

Why couldn’t Mom have killed him before she came back? If she’d killed him before coming home, Nita wouldn’t have had to see him like this. She could have just pretended he died naturally. Or blamed her mother and chalked it up to another of those well, too late to do anything now cases. But now he was alive, and in her apartment, and she actually had to think about this.

About the living, breathing person her mother planned to kill.

And have Nita dissect. Alive.

What would it be like to cut someone up while they were screaming at you to stop?

“Nita?” Mom came around the corner from the kitchen, and Nita realized she’d been standing in the hall staring off into space for the past few minutes. “Something wrong?”

Nita hesitated. “He’s alive.”

“Yes. And?” Mom’s eyes were as tight as her voice. Nita had a sudden feeling she was treading on very dangerous ground.

“He talks.” She shifted her shoulders in unease, more so from her mother’s look than anything else.

Her mother’s face relaxed. “Oh, don’t worry about that, sweetheart. He won’t be around for long. He’ll be on your table shortly, and no one talks back to you there, do they?”

Nita nodded, appreciating her mother’s efforts to quell her anxiety even as her nausea rose. “Yeah.”

Her mother gave her an appraising look. “You know, if you want, I can go cut his tongue out now. I have some pliers — I can pull it right out. Then you won’t have to worry about him talking.”

“That’s okay, Mom.” Nita forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

“If you’re sure . . .” Her mother gave her another searching look before sighing. “All right. Shall we start packing some of those zannie parts?”

Nita nodded, glad for the change in subject.

They spent the rest of the afternoon filling up crates. Her mother had arranged the bribes to get them back to the family warehouse in the States. Her father would handle them from there. He dealt with the online sales, storage, and shipping of the body parts, while her mother dealt with the retrieval. Her father was also their major cover, if INHUP ever came sniffing. Nita was sure her mother had a record a mile long — her stack of foreign passports, driver’s licenses, and credit cards was probably two feet high. That sort of thing usually came with a record, in Nita’s opinion.

Her father, though, was squeaky clean as far as Nita knew.

By day, he worked as a legal consultant in Chicago, and by night, he sold body parts on the internet. Nita missed him, and their home, and their shitty Chicago suburb that was actually a two-hour drive from Chicago. She hadn’t been home since she was fourteen.

She wondered what her father would say about this situation. Would he be unhappy her mother had brought a live unnatural home? And moreover, a harmless one?

It  was  one  thing  when her  mother  dumped  a  zannie or a unicorn  on Nita’s  table.  For one,  they  were monsters  who couldn’t continue to live without killing other people. And the world agreed — that was why there was a Dangerous Unnaturals List. It wasn’t even a crime to kill them. You were saving lives.

But someone like the boy in the other room? How could she justify that?

Sighing, Nita wiped the sweat off her forehead as they closed another crate. No matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t find a way to justify murdering that boy.

Well, except money.

“It looks like we’re going to need a few more shipping crates.” Her mother ran a hand through her hair. Her manicure caught the light, black and red and yellow, like someone had tried to cover a fire with a blackout curtain.

Nita poured a glass of juice. “Probably.”

“I think we deserve pizza now. How about you?” Nita heartily agreed.

After dinner, they realized they were low on bottled water.

Tap water wasn’t drinkable unless boiled, and Nita’s mother didn’t like the taste. She’d been promising they were going to get a UV light for purifying water since they arrived a few weeks ago, but it hadn’t happened yet.

Her mother sighed and got up, dusting pizza crumbs off her lap. “I’ll go down to the store and get a seven-liter bottle. I’ll start on the boy when I come back.”

“Start what?”

Her mother grinned. “I sold his ear an hour ago.” Nita stiffened. “You’re going to cut it off tonight?” “Of course.”

Nita swallowed, looking away. “But you can’t mail it until tomorrow morning. It makes more sense to cut it off tomorrow. If freshness is important, like you said.”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed. Nita tried to resist the urge to shift in place, but failed.

Finally, in a small voice, Nita whispered, “I don’t want to hear him screaming all night. I won’t get any sleep.”

Her mother laughed, throwing her head back, then came over and clapped Nita on the back. It was just a little harder than it should have been, and Nita stumbled forward a step.

“You’re absolutely right, Anita.” Her mother grinned as she walked back to the door. “We’ll do it tomorrow morning.”

Nita stood there, trembling, as the door closed with a thud and a click. She remained in place for a few minutes, calming her breathing before picking up a slice of pizza and walking back to the dissection room.

When  she opened  the  door, she  found  the  boy sitting cross-legged in the cage, watching her. She approached with caution, and as she got closer, she was able to discern that yes, those stains on his clothes were definitely dried blood.

She put the pizza close enough to the bars that he could wiggle his fingers through and pull pieces off. She skittered back, afraid if she got too close he would leap at her. Not that he could do much, chained to the cage, which was chained to the wall. But she was careful anyway.

He looked down at the pizza and licked his lips. “Gracias.” “De nada.” Nita was surprised at how hoarse her voice was. She stood there for a long moment, awkward, not sure

what to do next. Logically, she knew better than to talk to him. She didn’t want to know anything about him if — when — she had to dissect him. But she also felt weird just giving him food and leaving.

This was the part where she could really have used more social skills practice. Was there etiquette for this kind of situation?

Probably not.

He wormed his fingers through the bars and ripped off the tip of the pizza. His hands wouldn’t reach to his mouth because of the handcuffs, so he had to bend his head over to eat. He chewed slowly, and after one bite, just sat, looking at the pizza but not eating. She wondered if he didn’t like pep- peroni.

“Cómo te llamas?” he asked, still not looking up. His accent was clearly Argentinian, his y sounds blurring into sh, so it sounded like “cómo te shamas?”

His accent wasn’t too hard to understand, unlike Nita’s.

Her father was from Chile, and she’d lived in Madrid until she was six, so Nita’s Spanish was a hopeless tangle of the two accents. Sometimes the Peruvians in the grocery store couldn’t understand her at all.

“Nita.” She hesitated. “Y tu?”

“Fabricio.” His voice was soft. “Fabricio Tácunan.” “Fabricio?” Nita couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her

voice. “Is that from Shakespeare or something?”

He looked up at her then, and frowned. “Pardon?”

Nita repeated slowly, trying to make her accent less pro- nounced.

This time he understood. He raised his eyebrows, voice pitched slightly differently. More curious, less sad, his Spanish soft and barely audible. “Who is Shakespeare?”

“Umm.” Nita paused. Did they teach Shakespeare in Latin American schools? If the boy — don’t think of him by name, you’ll get too attached and then where will you be? — had been a captive of a collector, had he even gone to school? “He’s an English writer from the fifteen hundreds. One of his characters was named Fabrizio, I think. It’s . . . I guess I thought it was kinda an old name.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s fairly common where I’m from. One of my father’s employees has the same name. But he spells it with a z, Fabrizio. The Italian way.”

Fabricio looked down at his shirt, crusted with dried blood and swallowed. “He spelled it with a z.”

Oh.

Nope, too much information. Nita didn’t want to hear about this.

Why did you even talk to him, then? she scolded herself. This was going to make everything worse later.

Nita turned to leave, but he called her back. “Nita.”

She paused, wavering, before glancing over her shoulder at him. “Yes?”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

She watched how he strained against the handcuffs, leaning forward in the cage. His face was tense, fear shining through in the angle of his head, the crease on his forehead, and the wide blue eyes.

She turned away. “I don’t know.”

But that was a lie. She just didn’t want to admit it to him.

  THREE

Heading back into the kitchen, Nita found her mother waiting for her.

There was no water.

Nita paused when she entered the room, uncomfortable. Her mother was watching her with cold eyes, hand resting near her gun. Casually, not on purpose. Not that her mother had ever needed a gun. She preferred poison.

“You weren’t talking with him, were you, Nita?”

Nita shook her head, looking at the floor. Her shoulders hunched as her body instinctively tried to curl into itself. Nita’s mother had an aura around her, an unspoken sense of coiled menace when she was angry. Nita would never admit it to either of her parents, but she was secretly terrified of her mother. She’d only stood up to her once in her life.

When Nita was twelve and they’d been living and operating near Chicago, her mother had tried to get into the dact fur business. Dacts, small fluffy balls of adorableness people kept as pets, were totally harmless. Her mother would come home with groups of them in cages, never saying where they were from. And every night, after her parents went to bed, Nita would sneak down to the basement and take the cages to the twenty-four-hour emergency vet clinic and ask them to give the dacts to the SPCA or shelter. A few times they’d scanned the dacts for microchips and found they’d been stolen from someone’s backyard.

Nita’s mother had not been impressed. She’d come home one day with a cage of dead dacts instead of live ones, and Nita had responded by flushing five pounds of pure powdered uni- corn bone down the toilet (that stuff sold better than cocaine and was more addictive by far). She took the dead dacts’ bodies to the emergency vet clinic anyway.

Nita’s mother hadn’t appreciated Nita’s discovery of morals. After her father calmed everyone down and ended the plan to sell dact fur, Nita’s mother still hadn’t been satisfied. So she’d poisoned the dact food in the pet store, and every single dact in their suburb had died. Her mother, knowing Nita’s pro-pensity for ignoring things that weren’t right in front of her nose, took to putting the corpses in Nita’s bed for a week.

It had only  ended when  Nita broke  down crying  on the front step, begging her mother to stop. Her father had agreed and told her mother  it was affecting their  profit margin — by that time Nita was dissecting most of the bodies coming through, and she was such an emotional wreck she hadn’t worked in a week. Money convinced her mother to stop when nothing else had.

But there was an unspoken promise: if Nita ever disobeyed her mother again, the punishment would be far, far worse.

Nita swallowed and tried to push away the memories. “Why would I talk to him? What would I even talk about?”

“Of course you weren’t talking to him, you’re socially incompetent.” Her mother took a step forward, and Nita nearly flinched. She kept herself in check. Barely. “Because, if you were trying to talk to the boy, you might develop sympathy. I don’t need that. And I can promise you” — a sharp, mean smile— “you don’t want that.”

Nita shrugged, trying to play it nonchalant when every nerve screamed at her to run, run far and fast and never ever look back. “I gave him his food. He said thanks. I said you’re welcome. Then I left.”

Her mother gave Nita a long, searching look before bestowing a condescending smile on her. “That’s good. It’s always appropriate to be polite.”

Nita tried to force a smile, but it wouldn’t come. “I’m tired. I kinda want to go to bed. If you don’t mind?”

Her mother waved her away. “After you pick up some water. I decided I didn’t want to go myself after all.”

So her mother didn’t trust her. She’d just sat there, eaves- dropping, and knew Nita had lied to her.

Great. “Okay.”

It was always best to obey her mother.

Nita grabbed her sweater and a bag on her way out, making sure to lock the door behind her. She took a deep breath, leaning her head on the door and closing her eyes. She felt like she was walking a tightrope. One wrong step, and she could fall to either side. The problem was, she wasn’t sure what exactly she’d be falling into, except that it would be bad.

Would her mother kill Fabricio while she was out so Nita couldn’t interfere?

No. Of course not. But she might start cutting off pieces. Nita swallowed, hands clenched at her side. Would that be

so terrible? It wouldn’t be Nita’s fault then — she wouldn’t be here; she couldn’t do anything about it. She could just brush it aside.

But she’d still have to dissect him when it was all over. Scoop out those scared blue eyes and put them in a jar.

Nita let out the breath she’d been holding. It would be a waste to start cutting pieces off Fabricio now.

She walked down the hall and to the stairwell, heading for the store.

Outside, it was dark and hazy, but the streetlights kept things moderately well lit. Nita lived in a nice part of Lima, right in the heart of Miraflores district, and she wasn’t too concerned about safety at night.

The heat of the evening settled comfortably on her skin, and a gentle breeze brought her the scent of something spicy in a nearby restaurant. She’d only been in Lima a month, but she liked it a lot so far. It was one of the nicer places they’d set up shop.

Nita and her mother moved around a lot. They would move to a central location on a continent, and her mother would tar- get all the nearby countries, hunting for unnaturals she could kill and sell. They’d spent years doing this in the US before they’d moved on to Vietnam, Germany, and now Peru.

She passed by the open door of a restaurant and saw a pair of American tourists snapping at a waiter. The woman was snarling something in English, and the waiter just stared at her, smile frozen on his face while shaking his head and try- ing to tell her, in a mix of broken English and Spanish, that he didn’t understand.

“Well, find me someone who does!” snapped the woman, and then she turned to her husband. “You’d think they could hire people that speak English.”

Nita rolled her eyes as she passed. Why was there this obsession Americans had that others should learn their language to accommodate them? They were in Peru. Why didn’t those American people learn Spanish?

She saw it everywhere, the weird entitlement. Tourists who stole pieces of pottery and coins from German castles because they could. Rich men who flew in to Ho Chi Minh thinking they could buy anyone they wanted for a night and do anything they wanted to them, laws of the country be damned.

Nita kept walking past the restaurant and down the street. Her footsteps slowed just beneath a plaque commemorating a battle against the Spanish. She thought about the Spanish conquistadores five hundred years before, who’d swept through South America and painted the whole continent red in their hunt for gold.

Something uncomfortable and squiggly shifted in her chest. The plaque was talking about Pizarro, the man who’d carved a bloody swathe through Peru. He’d taken the Inca — the  ruler of  the  Incan  people — hostage, and  then  ransomed him for a room full of gold. When the Incan people gave him the gold, he killed the Inca anyway.

Pizarro wasn’t even the worst of the conquistadores. Christopher Columbus used to cut the hands off indigenous people who didn’t dig enough gold for him each month.

Like her mother cut off Fabricio’s toes. Nope.

Nita really didn’t want to think about that.

So she ignored the niggling little voice that told her she had no right to claim the tourists were being entitled jerks when her mother felt entitled to take these people’s lives and sell their body parts for profit.

She went to the local bodega instead of the giant grocery store. She didn’t like how crowded the grocery store was. People were always talking to her and breathing near her, and some- times they brushed by her, and she found it uncomfortable.

The bodega was smaller, and she actually had to talk to the person at the cashier sometimes, but it was worth it to not feel the press of so many bodies around her. Also, the bodega never had a line.

As she was paying, Nita’s eyes were drawn to the television sitting on a chair on the other side of the room, a stack of toilet paper and Kleenex packages on top. It was an old, boxy unit, and someone had put on the news.

“The debate over whether to add unicorns to the Dangerous Unnaturals List continues, as INHUP starts its third day of discussions over the proposal.”

Nita smiled as a memory surfaced, one of the few she had where she really felt her mother cared. A man with blond hair and swirly black thorn tattoos had reached to ruffle her hair at a store, and her mother had nearly shot him right then and there. Nita had been swept away before the man could get too close, and while her mother never said, Nita knew that particular soul-eating unicorn was dead now. He would never again target virgins. She’d seen the new powdered unicorn bone stock.

Letting out a breath, Nita shook her head. Her mother might be many things, but she loved Nita. It was a scary kind of love, but it was there. That was important. Sometimes it was easy to forget, given her mother’s suspicious nature and obsession with money.

A reporter was interviewing a scientist about unnatural genetics.

“Unicorns are another type of unnatural linked to reces- sive genes. This means these creatures can reproduce with humans, and the genetic makeup can lie dormant for generations before the right circumstances combine and two per- fectly normal parents give birth to a monster.

“It’s not only unicornism that’s hereditary,” the man on the screen ranted. “But other creatures. Zannies. Kappa. Ghouls. Even vampires, to some extent.”

Nita thought of the pieces of zannie in her apartment. She wondered how many people it had tortured in its life to feed its hunger for pain. It was a good thought, because she had no guilt about cutting up a monster like that, and even admired her mother for killing it.

“Could you describe the proposal you’ve submitted to INHUP, Dr. Rodón?”

“Genetic manipulation. It’s a very select series of genes unique to each species, so once fully mapped, it should be easy to screen for and eliminate them. If we catch it before they’re born, we can eradicate all dangerous human-born unnatu- rals.”

The clerk gave Nita her water with a smile, and she nearly ripped it out of his hand as she stormed out of the shop, unable to listen to another minute of that drivel.

Nita hated people.

While Nita agreed it might be an effective, even humane way to reduce the monster population, she knew people would take it too far. People always took it too far. How long before people started isolating genes from harmless unnaturals and eliminating them too? Aurs, who were just bioluminescent people? Or mermaids? Or whatever Fabricio was?

Or even Nita and her mother?

FOUR

The next morning, Nita woke to screaming.

She yanked the covers off and reached for the scalpel she kept on her nightstand. Her feet tangled in the sheets as she stumbled out of bed and fell on her knees with a thud.

The screaming rose in pitch, sharpening into a long, horrible shriek.

Breathing fast, Nita freed herself and climbed to her feet. She crept out of her room, scalpel first, toward the source of the noise. The screams were punctuated by the rattle of metal against metal, the scraping squeak of something heavy on the linoleum floor, and her mother’s vicious swearing. Nita’s heartbeat stuttered.

Her mother hadn’t been testing her when she mentioned cutting off Fabricio’s ear. She was actually doing it. Right now.

Nita opened the door to the dissection room and saw blood. It had spattered her clean white walls and floor. Droplets clung to her mother’s angry face, and streaks of red tears patterned Fabricio’s cheeks. He’d scooted his head as far into the cage as he could and had bunched his legs so his feet were pressed to the front of the cage. He rocked it from side to side, trying to prevent her mother from getting a grip. The padlock was on the floor, but the cage door had swung shut, and Fabricio was holding it closed by wrapping his remaining toes around the door and tugging.

Her mother was holding a syringe, probably something to sedate Fabricio. He knocked it out of her hand with his shoulder, and it clattered to the bottom of the cage. He used an elbow to smash it, spilling the contents and chunks of broken glass across the ground.

Both of them turned as Nita entered, and Nita flinched when she saw Fabricio’s face straight on. Her mother had clearly tried to cut off his ear while he slept, and he’d woken up mid cut. His ear had been partly severed, and then the knife had slipped, slicing a deep red line across his cheek.

Nita took an involuntary step forward to stop this, to do something. Her mouth opened to protest. Then it closed.

You can’t stop this, Nita. You can’t save him.

If you show sympathy, your mother will make sure you regret it. She wouldn’t hurt me, Nita protested. But that didn’t mean

there weren’t worse things her mother could do. The memory of small broken bodies stuffed between her sheets surfaced, but she shoved it away.

She let her hands fall to her sides as she talked herself out of action and looked away. She was no stranger to blood and carnage, but she hated that shard of hope shining from Fabricio’s eyes. She didn’t want to see it replaced by betrayal.

“Nita.” Her mother rose, flicking blood off her fingers. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Nita paused. “Are you trying to get the ear?”

“Yes. He’s not cooperating.” Her mother beckoned her. “Give me a hand.”

Nita hesitated only a split second before approaching. “How can I help?”

The hope in Fabricio’s eyes cracked, and then melted into terror and anger. Nita tried not to look.

Her mother took out another syringe, presumably full of sedatives. “I’m going to try and hold him still. I want you to sedate him.”

Nita took the syringe with trembling fingers, not letting herself look at Fabricio. It was better this way, wasn’t it? This way he wouldn’t feel the pain when his ear came off.

Nita wouldn’t have to hear him scream.

“Why didn’t you sedate him before you started?” Nita asked, hiding her shaking hand from her mother.

Her mother shrugged, nonchalant. “I thought I could cut it off fast enough.”

No, Nita realized, looking at the half smile twitching across her mother’s face. You thought no such thing. You wanted this to hap- pen, so I would wake up and be forced to help you.

Nita was being tested. She didn’t know what the conse- quences of failure were, but she knew they weren’t good.

You shouldn’t have talked to Fabricio and then lied about it to her. Nita had been stupid. She should have known better. Clenching her jaw, she put the syringe down. “I don’t see how it’ll be any easier to sedate him than it would be to just get the rest of the ear off.” She showed her mother her scalpel.

“There’s only a strip of flesh left. It won’t take much to finish the job.”

Her mother’s smile widened until it seemed to consume her face. “If you think so, I’m happy to try.”

“Nita.” Fabricio spoke for the first time. “Nita, por favor.” Nita’s mother laughed. “Oh, it figured out your name.” Nita clenched the scalpel in her sweaty palm and focused

on the ear, ignoring Fabricio’s crying and continued whispers of her name like a prayer.

Just get this over with. Then she could figure out where to go from there. But if she failed this, bad things would happen. She didn’t want a repeat of the dact incident with parts of Fabricio in her bed each morning.

She tried not to look at his face as she pushed the scalpel through the cage bars, but she couldn’t escape his sobs and cries. Her hand was shaking, and her palm was so sweaty that when Fabricio shook the cage again, the scalpel was knocked right out of Nita’s fingers, leaving a deep, bloody gash across her palm along the way.

Nita yanked her hand back, swearing as the blood dripped down her arm.

Her mother gave her a tired look. “Well, heal it already, and we’ll try again.”

Nita turned away so her mother wouldn’t see the flash of anger in her expression. Then she let out a breath and focused her body. She increased blood clotting factor in the affected area to speed up the scabbing process. She didn’t want to do too much repairing until she had some disinfectant, though— while she could stimulate her body’s natural defenses against the microbes, it was just easier to wash the wound in soap.

Nita wasn’t sure how old she’d been when she discovered that other people couldn’t control their bodies the same way she could. Her mother did it all the time — enhanced her own muscles so she could run faster, hit harder, heal quicker.

The more Nita understood about her body, the more she could control it. But it was dangerous — there was a reason for swelling, and if you took away the symptom without dealing with the underlying cause, it could make things worse. She’d discovered that the hard way when she was seven  and  her father had to take her to a hospital because she’d accidentally paralyzed herself trying to make her bicycle-butt bruise go away. Only after the x-rays and scans, and the doctor’s detailed explanation of the precise issue, had Nita been able to fix it.

After that, she’d been very cautious about how she altered herself.

“Are you done yet?” Her mother’s voice was cold.

Nita nodded and turned back to her mother. “For now. But it’ll take time to fully heal. I severed a tendon — I don’t think I’ll be able to hold a scalpel for a day or so.”

Her mother scowled, clearly displeased. Nita made no comment and kept her face blank. It wouldn’t do for her mother to see how relieved this injury made Nita feel, or for her mother to realize she was stalling and could, if she wanted, finish healing the wound much sooner than tomorrow. Now she had at least a day where she didn’t personally have to do the slicing. That was something.

“Fine.” Her mother picked up the bloody scalpel, gave it a quick rinse in the sink, and then, before either Nita or Fabricio had a chance to react, spun with near superhuman speed and threw it. It neatly sliced through the last piece of cartilage connecting Fabricio’s ear to his body, and he screamed as the sev-ered piece of flesh tumbled to the ground. He tried to clap his hands over his ear, but they were still chained to the bottom of the cage, and he couldn’t reach. Instead, he wept as blood coated the side of his face.

Her mother scooped up the scalpel and speared the ear like a piece of steak. She showed it to Nita with a grin. “You know, I think my aim could have been better.”

Nita resisted the urge to throw up.

 ***

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Everyone Loves Anna Shay, ‘Bling Empire’s Uber-Rich, Unbothered Queen

If you’ve binged Bling Empire already, then you’ll agree that Anna Shay is easily the most iconic person on the show.

For those who might not be up to speed with who Anna Shay is or even the phenomenon that is , let me get you up to speed: Bling Empire is an eight-part reality series that follows the lifestyles of the wealthy Asian elites residing in Los Angeles. To make sense of it, your best off thinking of the series as the reality TV version of Crazy Rich Asians, Selling Sunset on steroids, and absolutely everything Real Housewives wishes it was.

Amongst the cast is an array of Asian and Asian-American socialites who have each come into wealth in their own ways. For example, new money Christine Chiu is married to a popular plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, who just so happens to be a direct descendant of the Song dynasty, too. Meanwhile, Kane Lim is the son of Singaporean billionaires, who beyond being in the real estate, shipping and oil sectors, also “own the shopping malls you go into in South East Asia”.

For some balance, model Kevin Taejin Kreider is thrown into the mix to act as the everyman, who lives in a share house while his millionaire and billionaire friends casually drop $19,000 on hotel rooms. But then there is Anna Shay — the oldest, wisest, and, most importantly, the richest member of the cast, who is wildly entertaining without even trying.

Whether it’s her whizzing off to Paris because she feels like dining at her favourite restaurant, or having penis pumps laying around her house be the only cause for her drama-fuelled storylines, Anna Shay is everything I want to be when I grow up.

But what exactly makes Anna Shay so iconic? Let’s dissect.

2020 brought us Joe Exotic. 2021 has gifted us with Anna Shay.

It is now clear to me 2021 is going to be amazing. #blingempire pic.twitter.com/rlRakjxvXM

— Kim Ber (@indiekimmy) January 18, 2021

Who Is Anna Shay And How Is She SO Rich?

Anna Shay is one of the main cast members on Bling Empire, and, by a significant amount, the most wealthy of the group.

The 60-year-old is American, Japanese and Russian, and the child of billionaires, Edward Shay and Ai-San Shay. Her parents found their wealth in arms trade, with their company being later sold in 2006 for $1.2 billion in cold, hard cash.

Kane, a cast member on the show who is also the child of billionaires, described Anna as “super, super-wealthy” as “her money comes from weapons [with] her father selling bombs, guns, and defence technology [that’s] worth, like, a few billion”.

after watching episode 1 of bling empire i’ve decided Anna Shay is who i want to be when i grow up

— sexually active shut-in (@emoveganslut) January 15, 2021

Watching #blingempire I now realise that my ideal career is “daughter of an arms dealer”.

— Camilla Blackett (@camillard) January 18, 2021

Specifically, Edward Shay founded, and created his billion dollar fortune through, Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE) in 1955, which is described as an “architectural and engineering firm [that assisted] the US government effort to rebuild Asia in the wake of WWII”.

After his death in 1995, Anna and her sibling inherited their father’s shares and sold them off to Lockheed Martin in 2006 in an all-cash deal. This means Anna Shay’s personal net worth sits around the $600 million mark, which is about $400 million more than the second-richest star on the show, denim empire heiress and the woman with the placenta Anna wanted, Cherie Chan.

While Anna is not currently married, she’s been divorced four times (iconic) and has one son in Kenny Kemp, a 27-year-old with a $500,000 collection of glass bongs (also, very iconic). Icons breed icons, clearly.

Why Is Anna Shay So Damn Iconic?

I just wanna say: I C O N I C#blingempire #blingempirenetflix #annashay pic.twitter.com/jRPeEQz3I7

— Lady Trashington (@BigFabi_) January 18, 2021

When we first meet Anna Shay on Bling Empire, she is literally dressed in a ballgown and throwing a sledgehammer at her walk-in closet wall. But actions like this aren’t even a one-off — this chaotic introduction is basically the exact energy Anna Shay exudes throughout the rest of the series, too.

If Anna Shay is one thing beyond being crazy rich, it’s being impressively unbothered about quite literally everything. Not once throughout Bling Empire does Anna ever seem troubled by the events happening around her — even when Kim Lee and Guy Tang snoop through her home and throw her penis pump out the window.

The simple fact is Anna is so rich, so well-off, and so comfortable with her life that she doesn’t care what people think or do around her. For example, a huge storyline in Bling Empire is Anna’s “feud” with Christine, who seems adamant on proving she’s better than Anna for the entire season.

Christine wears certain jewellery in an attempt to get a rise out of Anna, which fails. Christine tries to flex that she stays in a certain presidential suite when she’s in Paris, but Anna doesn’t care. Instead of giving Christine any of the reaction she wants, Anna simply calmly says in her confessional that “she cannot compete with what I was born into”.

I mean, think about when, at her own dinner party when Christine is being annoying as hell, Anna simply moves her to the end of the table because she just can’t be fucked speaking to her or dealing with her drama. Iconic.

“She can never compete with what I was born into”….This is what you call classy wealthy shade

. Love her… Anna Shay is fast becoming a fav of mine and I’m only on episode 2

#BlingEmpireNetflix #blingempire pic.twitter.com/Vj8mRwqkd8

— Ms_LVW (@Vonn69) January 18, 2021

But beyond being an unbothered queen, Anna Shay is also extremely generous, a great friend to everyone on the show, and always delivers the best one-liners.

Take, when it’s her friend Kelly Mi Li’s birthday, and Anna flies Kelly and her shitty boyfriend, Andrew, to Paris (first class, of course) just to eat at her favourite restaurant, for example.

While in Paris, as Andrew sleeps off his jet lag, Anna takes Kelly out to buy her a friendship ring for her birthday, which causes drama. Andrew, who is basically just verbally abusing Kelly via speaker phone, ends up calling Kelly and berates her for leaving him as he slept.

In response, Anna constantly tells Kelly she deserves better, and just puts it bluntly for everyone at home who may be in a similar situation: “There ain’t no dick that good”.

Forget Emily in Paris, I want Anna in Paris. #BlingEmpire pic.twitter.com/yTYeO85s0E

— Sophie Vershbow (@svershbow) January 18, 2021

And just like that: Anna Shay became reality TV gold.

#BlingEmpire pic.twitter.com/0rpehfQ0JR

— Angel Huracha (@AngelHuracha) January 15, 2021

Anna also buys Kevin a new wardrobe without a second thought, dishes out helpful advice only a 60-year-old daughter of an arms dealer can, and doesn’t even raise her voice when Kim and Guy disrespect her after she opens her home to them for a spa day.

Instead, Anna simply expresses her disappointment in them and continues on her merry, unbothered, rich way. As she should.

Is Anna Shay Really That Iconic In Real-Life?

Simply put, yes. Anna Shay seems to be exactly who she is on camera in real-life.

After Bling Empire started booming, Oprah Mag interviewed the star and Anna’s responses only worked to solidify her icon status. For example, when asked about what she did with her Netflix cheques from Bling Empire, Anna shared she was “confused” by the whole thing so she never even cashed them. Goals.

“It was so confusing when I got the checks. I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t cash them, then I got in trouble for not cashing them,” Anna shared in her interview. “I have them in a savings account. I’d like to have a party some time. I don’t think the money belongs to me. I think it belongs to the crew that had to put up with me.”

As Anna said herself on Bling Empire, her father never wanted her to have to work, which explains why she was so confused about the concept of working and getting paid for that work. Again, goals.

Anna from #BlingEmpire is my new fav reality star pic.twitter.com/UmEOFtAM4o

— Melissa Stetten (@MelissaStetten) January 17, 2021

In the same interview, Anna was asked about Crazy Rich Asians and the ways in which her upbringing was similar, but she shared that while she hasn’t seen the film, she acknowledges her privilege.

“I didn’t watch it. I was going to say, ‘I live it’ but I thought that would be too snobbish,” she continued. “In the world I was raised in, ‘crazy’ is not a good word to put next to the lifestyle I was born into. I didn’t do anything except be born. My mother said, ‘You were born in a crystal ball with a silver spoon.’”

But it’s the answers like this that makes Anna Shay so likeable despite her ridiculous amounts of money. She knows she’s wealthy, and owns it, yet it’s not her entire personality. I mean, that and her clear, but classy, distaste for Christine, of course.

All in favour of skipping Anna Shay’s house when we eventually eat the rich, say I.

You can stream ‘Bling Empire’ on Netflix now.

Michelle Rennex is a senior writer at Junkee. She tweets at @michellerennex.

from TAXI NEAR ME https://taxi.nearme.host/everyone-loves-anna-shay-bling-empires-uber-rich-unbothered-queen/

[nexusradiodance]

Curbi: Best city in America, new single ‘Redeem’ & more!

Curbi Interview.

English DJ and music-producer Curbi stopped by the Nexus Radio Lounge Miami during Miami Music Week 2019, to talk about his latest projects, his favorite country in the world, McDonald’s International menu and more!

Curbi, whose real name is Toby Curwen-Bingley has been captivating the streaming world with his melodic new single Spiritual featuring Brooke Tomlinson.

The Future-House DJ joined us for a quick chat during his first-ever Miami Music Week. This is Take 5 with Curbi.

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This week was absolutely banging! Started with 2 insane shows supporting @oliverheldens, did 4 crazy shows during MMW supporting my buddies @wearemoksi and got the chance to support @steveaoki at Story… also shoutout to the legend @tchami who destroyed @ultra mainstage with my new track ‘Redeem’! Recap video coming soon

A post shared by CURBI (@curbi) on Mar 31, 2019 at 10:54am PDT

Todd Michaels: Next is Radio, we are in the BPM Supreme-Nexus Radio Lounge here in Miami Beach during Miami Music Week. And I have Curbi in the lounge with me. Hello Curbi!

Curbi: Oh yeah, Hello man!

Todd Michaels: Welcome to Miami.

Curbi: Thank you, it’s the first time for me.

Todd Michaels: First time? There’s been a lot of first timers this time. This is about our fourth or fifth- kind of used to it, even though I always still come in and we’ll, look at you, you’re doing the same thing […] at least you have a short sleeve shirt on, I’m putting my sweater on.

Curbi: I usually walk around with a hoodie on to be honest. Last, like last time I came to America wore a Hoodie the whole time

Todd Michaels: Because you’re from?

Curbi: England.

New Single ‘Redeem’ & America.

Todd Michaels: From England. Oh, all right. We’ve got another English (lad) here too, one of our djs.His name is Adam [Turner]. All right, so what are you working on Curbi? What is 2019 looking like?

Curbi: I’ve got a lot of new music coming out. I’ve got one coming out on the 1st of April called Redeem, it’s more of a deeper sound for me. Very groovy, working on a lot of groovy stuff at the moment. I’ve got a lot of tracks which I’ve been working on the past like two or three years and hopefully going to release this year. A lot of shows, hopefully more shows in the U.S., I’m really hoping for that because I do a lot in Europe and a lot in Asia at the moment.

While a majority of European DJs list Japan as their ultimate favorite country to visit and play in, Curbi was one of a few, if not the only DJ we interviewed that ranked America as his favorite place to visit. “Oh, man, I love America. It’s Amazing!” he says. He credits the similarities between the two countries for this “it kind of feels familiar, because I’m from England, it’s like the same, but it’s not.” Todd Michaels and Curbi engage in a lengthy discussion about the best place to move to in The United States (sorry L.A., New York, Miami, and everywhere that isn’t Chicago).

View this post on Instagram

so excited for my first miami music week! announcing my schedule tomorrow and gonna give away two tickets for one of the shows.. DROP A PHAT COMMENT BELOW IF U WANNA SHOW UP

‍

A post shared by CURBI (@curbi) on Mar 20, 2019 at 7:57am PDT

Todd Michaels: Interesting. It’s interesting to see those two markets because a lot of people talk about traveling. So, where’s been your best place to travel so far that you really like going to?

Curbi: In terms of shows? Probably Asia and the U.S.

Todd Michaels: What would be a personal place?

Curbi: Oh, man, I love America. it’s Amazing!

Todd Michaels: Do you?! Interesting!

Curbi: Well, I think Asia is really cool for like culture, a whole different culture. Here it kind of feels like familiar, because I’m from England, it’s like the same, but it’s not.

Chicago.

View this post on Instagram

when in america lmao [

: @niclas_ruehl]

A post shared by CURBI (@curbi) on Sep 10, 2018 at 11:48am PDT

Todd Michaels: Have you done any of the upper states? So like Chicago, New York?

Curbi: Yeah! I did Chicago. I haven’t done New York yet.

Todd Michaels: Oh, alright. What do you think of Chicago?

Curbi: I was only there for a day and it was really warm.

Todd Michaels: Weird, those things never come up about Chicago.

Curbi: Yeah, It was like thirty-five degrees.

Todd Michaels: When you think of Chicago, no one ever thinks warm. You must’ve went in like August or something?

Curbi: Yeah, yeah yeah, around then. I can’t really remember.

Todd Michaels: That’s our Lollapalooza time.

Curbi: Yeah! No, but America’s great man. It feels very like home in a way.

Todd Michaels: Would you move here?

Curbi: Yeah, I hope to in the future.

Todd Michaels: Where would you want to move to [in] America?

Curbi: I would like to say L.A., but I don’t think that’s like a settling (down) place. I don’t know.

Todd Michaels: New York isn’t either.

Curbi: No?

Todd Michaels: I don’t think Miami is either. You might have to go to Chicago!

Curbi: [laughs] Yeah? I’m down man! anywhere.

Todd Michaels: I mean, we’re based there, so I’ll be your tour guide.

Curbi: Cool, I’m down.

The Food.

View this post on Instagram

pizza

A post shared by CURBI (@curbi) on Feb 6, 2019 at 12:18pm PST

Moving to America is definitely a smart move for any aspiring musician, the U.S. is still largely considered to be the epicenter of music media. But life in America has its unique challenges, especially when it comes to fast-food.

Todd Michaels: What are some guilty pleasures that you’ve got in the sense of food when you’re traveling? What’s your go-to?

Curbi: Oh man. Yeah, let’s not even go into this […] this is really bad cause like when I’m home, I try to be as healthy as I can and last year I spent two months going every day to the gym, being really healthy and then I went to America. I went on tour in America for like two weeks and yeah. So, basically just McDonald’s, all the fast-food restaurants when I’m touring. Like, when I’m really hungry and hungover after a show day. I go straight to a fast-food restaurant.

Todd Michaels: What’s here? What food or fast-food that we have here that you don’t have in London that you really enjoy?

Curbi: I’m not sure about Miami, but in L.A., In-N-Out (Burgers) obviously, that was amazing!

Todd Michaels: Here’s a question for you, when I travel I tend to skip the places I can get here at home. However, Mcdonald’s is the one place I don’t mind going (in other countries). It’s a little healthier, you guys have real potatoes over there.

Curbi: Yeah? You think so?

Todd Michaels: That’s what they say. [laughs]

Curbi: I don’t believe that.

Todd Michaels: The look that you just gave me was like ‘Wow! That’s not true.’

Curbi: But what I’ve noticed is that the menu’s different wherever you go. I had McDonald’s in South Korea and the menu was completely different.

Todd Michaels: We actually have an international in Chicago. There’s an international Mcdonald’s because of that, there’s a university actually that they have those kinds of things.

After a lengthy discussion about McDonald’s international menu, the focus then turns to one of America’s favorite Canadian imports: Justin Bieber.

Todd Michaels: What would be a guilty pleasure where (your friends) are hanging out with you and all of a sudden you turn this tune on and you’re just like, ‘Yeah! This is my jam!’ And they’re like What?

Curbi: Oh yeah! I don’t know. I like everything to be honest. Justin Bieber is a legend mate. I’m feeling a little bit guilty.

Todd Michaels: He’s taking some time off.

Curbi: Oh really?

Todd Michaels: Yeah, something mental, he’s taking some time off. But yeah, he’s my guilty (pleasure), he’s usually my go-to. As much as I can diss on the guy, I kind of like his music.

Curbi: He’s bloody good mate!’

Todd Michaels: Especially when he worked with Skrillex and he was doing all that other Jack U stuff.

Curbi: That changed (everything) completely! I didn’t really like his stuff before, I mean ‘baby’ is a Banger but yeah man. His stuff is great now.

Todd Michaels: What about, who would you want to work with? Who would be like a dream collaboration?

Curbi: Skrillex, Post Malone. Actually, I think all of the U.S. (EDM) Guys. I would also like to work with some Dubstep guys and like make a fusion between my sound and Dubstep. So like, I don’t know if you know Space Laces? He worked with Excision, GTA, love those guys. Yeah, but Post Malone, if we’re going outside of EDM and like dance music- I’d be Post Malone.

Todd Michaels: What would that collaboration hopefully be called? What would be a nice little title that you would give it?

Curbi: I would just keep it simple. Something like ‘Swag,’ because Post Malone says ‘swag’ a lot.

Todd Michaels: That would be good- Swag featuring Curbi. That would be nice. What’s a song out there that you think should not exist anymore?

Curbi: [Laughs] Darude ‘Sandstorm’. That should be gone now, it’s overplayed.

Todd Michaels: Why?!

Curbi: I mean it is a Banger! But it’s too much. When it comes on it’s just like ‘Ugh! Again? Really?

Todd Michaels: I mean, I’m not going to agree to disagree. I have history with that song! Like, it brings back memories.

Curbi: I wasn’t even alive, probably when it was released. I can’t even remember when it was released.

Todd Michaels: It was like mid 2000s. Maybe early 2000s.

Curbi: Ok it was then, but I was like three or something.

Todd Michaels: Yeah, you were just a little like (kid) …not doing that.

Want to know Curbi’s reaction if he’d ever meet his two idols Post Malone and Ariana Grande? Listen to the full interview below!

The Interview.

from Dance Music – Nexus Radio http://bit.ly/2GzbF4b

#IFTTT #Dance Music – Nexus Radio

[sophiatekra]

Baku Azerbaijan Tour Package From Just Click Travels Pvt. Ltd.

Azerbaijan, the ultimate Caucasian country and, probably, one of the least visited places in both Europe and Asia, is a fascinating and unique country, as it is the place where East literally meets West.A real blend of Europe, the Middle East, and the Soviet Union, for years, people have struggled to figure out where it actually belong:Is it part of Asia or, perhaps, Europe?Well, the truth is that you really can’t tell, because the imaginary line that separates Europe from Asia goes through the middle of Azerbaijan.This imaginary partition is not only geographical but it has also defined the cultural lifestyle of the Azerbaijanis who, due to their geographic location and history, have adopted customs from both continents.After going backpacking in Azerbaijan twice, I have compiled all the places I visited in a 1 to 3-week itinerary by Just Click Travels Pvt. Ltd New Delhi India, including plenty of places off the beaten track.Backpacking in 

Azerbaijan: 1 to 3 week itinerary

Quick tips for backpacking in Azerbaijan

When to go – If you want to visit the mountains, the best to visit is from April to October, or only summer, if you want to do some trekking. In Baku and around, the climate is continental, which means that summer is utterly hot and winter extremely cold. Therefore, unless you want to do some serious trekking, mid-spring, and mid-autumn would be the ideal time to go backpacking in Azerbaijan.Visa for Azerbaijan – When I first visited the country in 2016, you had to apply through the classic embassy process but now, since January 2017, the Government has liberalized its visa regime and most countries can apply for an e-visa through this portal. Typically, it costs 23USD and takes 3 working days. The urgent visa costs 50USD.How to move around – Backpacking in Azerbaijan is very easy, as there is a wide public transportation system, even to the remotest towns and villages. Typically, locals travel in marshrutkas, the small mini-vans from the former Soviet Republics. They leave once they are full and are very, very cheap. Local shared taxis are also common.

Azerbaijan is an adventurous destination and, as such, you must go there with the proper travel insurance.I strongly recommend World Nomads for the following reasons:

It is the only company that covers you with an unlimited budget

It covers the largest number of adventurous activities, something really useful in this kind of country

You can apply while on the road (many companies don’t allow that)

Backpacking in Azerbaijan – 1-week itinerary

Most travelers I met were backpacking in Azerbaijan for just 7 days.No problem because a 7-day Azerbaijan itinerary is enough to get a decent feeling of the country.1-week Azerbaijan travel itinerary – Map

Day 1, 2 – BakuOnce the world’s top oil producer and one of the top candidates for the World Expo in 2025, today Baku is a modern metropolis which will leave the visitor more than surprised.Despite being a Muslim capital, it has only a small number of mosques, which means that Baku is mostly secular but people are still quite traditional.From a pretty, historical old city, to the most extravagant luxury buildings and all sort of pubs, bars, and restaurants, Baku has it all.

Things to do in BakuYou can visit the Old Town, where you can find perfectly restored buildings from the 7th century; stroll down the promenade, visit ancient temples or check out some futuristic buildings.For more information, I wrote a very comprehensive guide:Where to stay in BakuBackpackers Hostel – Sahil Hostel – A very busy hostel, as it is cheap and the facilities are great. It is also a cool spot to meet fellow-travelers.Budget Guest House – Khazar Old City Guest House – A beautiful traditional house in the heart of the old city. Recommended for couples or those who are on a budget but don’t want to stay in a hostel.Mid-range Hotel – Denize Inn Boutique Hotel – The boutique hotel with the best reviews in town, also located in the old part of Baku.Top-end – Four Seasons – Located in a very beautiful building, this is the best 5-star hotel in Baku.

Located 50km south of Baku, Qobustan is one of the country’s top tourist sites for having some of the most ancient petroglyphs ever found, but also, this is the place where you will discover the real ex-Soviet Azerbaijan.I recommend you come here on a day trip from Baku.

Things to see and do in QobustanPetroglyphs – During the Stone Age, around 12,000-15,000 years ago, when the Caspian coast was richer and more fertile, a big group of hunters settled down in a set of caves in which they carved more than 600 petroglyphs (from the Greek words petros meaning “stone” and glypheinmeaning “to carve”). Today, many of these stone carvings still remain and, the Qobustan Petroglyph Reserve has become a UNESCO-listed Heritage Site.Mud volcanoes – Azerbaijan has the largest mud volcanoes in the world, which are formations created by geo-exuded mudBy the way, if you want to make things easier and go on a tour, I recommend the guys from GetYourGuide, which offer a tour that includes a visit to the petroglyphs + mud volcanoes + an ancient mosque from the area.

Day 4, 5, 6 – Quba, Xinaliq, LazaA region with immense historical importance, the Greater Caucasus has some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe and, in Azerbaijan, Quba is one of its main gateways.Located 180km north of Baku, Quba is a small city and a great base for exploring the Caucasian villages around it.QubaQuba doesn’t really have touristic sites but it is a very local city with a great bazaar and a very tangible local vibe.Some travelers prefer to stay here and then do day trips to Laza or Xinaliq, while the most adventurous prefer to stay in a mountain homestay.I decided to stay in Quba for 4 nights because I came in November and it was cold in the mountains.If you are short of time, you could actually skip Quba and go straight to Xinaliq from Baku, stay there overnight and come back to Baku on the next day.Otherwise, I recommend you spend the first night here, check out the local vibe and go to Xinaliq on the day after.Where to stay in QubaBackpacker Hostel – Hostel Bay Quba – If you are looking for a budget option, as far as I know, this is the only hostel with dorms in town. However, neither cleanliness nor facilities are their strength precisely but, at least, the owner is kind.Guest House – House in Quba – A great, traditional guest house, a bit expensive for solo travelers but it has 3-bedroom rooms which are great value for money.

How to get to Xinaliq from QubaThere is no public transportation and the road is a muddy mountain road, but an amazing one.In high season, you can find local shared taxis but I came out of season and had to go on a private taxi. In 2016, I paid 30AZN (18USD) for a round-trip taxi. The waiting time was pretty much the whole day, basically because the driver was from there and he had some business to do.In 2018, they were already asking for 40AZN (23.50USD), which is understandable, as the tourists in the area have increased exponentially.Where to stay in XinaliqThere are quite a few homestays in Xinaliq, most of them being brand-new.One piece of advice is that you should choose a guest house that includes breakfast because those that charge it separately ask for a lot of money for every meal.

LazaLaza is another Caucasian village, not as high as Xinaliq, but very beautiful as well.In winter, it becomes the most popular ski resort in the country, so there are all sorts of accommodation, from budget lodges to 5-star hotels and homestays.The village itself, nevertheless, is still untouched and there are many day-trek opportunities.Some readers of Against the Compass who didn’t have a lot of time asked me whether I would recommend Laza or Xinaliq. Both places are equally pretty but Xinaliq is higher and the road to reach it is epic, so I would choose Xinaliq.Like Xinaliq, visiting Laza from Quba requires a full day, so plan accordingly.

How to get to Laza from QubaA one-way taxi costs 15-20AZN (9-12USD).If you want to go by public transport, you first need to take a bus to Gorus (1AZN, 20 minutes).From Gorus, you have two options: either take a direct taxi to Laza (10AZN) or catch the noon bus to Kozam. You should let the driver know that you are going to Laza, so he will tell you where to get off. From there, you have to walk up the road for around four to five kilometers but you can hitchhike.Where to stay in LazaBudget Homestay – Laza Guest House – If you want to stay in a cheap, traditional house with a super, lovely family, this is your place.Day 7 – Back to BakuThere are, of course, many marshrutkas going back to Baku. If you miss the last one, there should be local shared taxis. The taxi station is outside of the bazaar and the bus station is here: 41.371446, 48.553006. Backpacking in Azerbaijan – 2-week itineraryIf you are backpacking in Azerbaijan for 2 weeks, after Quba, you can go all the way to Sheki and Zaqatala and visit some cool spots in between.2-week Azerbaijan travel itinerary – Map

Day 1 to 8 – Baku, Qobustan, Quba, XinaliqAlready explained but, if you have 2 weeks, I would definitely stay 1 extra day in Baku and even 1 extra day in the mountains around Quba.  Day 8, 9 – LahicHome to artisans and blacksmiths, Lahic is the Azerbaijani capital of handicrafts, a region that, due to its harsh mountain climate and isolation, developed other types of subsistence.Lahic is a medieval-looking town full of handicraft shops which can only be reached through a spectacular road that goes along the edge of some very jagged, frightening cliffs.The landscape is composed of velvet-smooth rolling hills, similar to

Kyrgyzstan

, so trekking here is dope.You can actually trek from Lahic to Xinaliq in 2 days and, apparently, it is a really awesome trek, but you should only attempt if you have some experience, as there is nothing in between, so you need to be self-sufficient. The trail is on

maps.me

.How to get to Lahic from BakuAgain, marshrutkas leave from the main bus station in Baku. The easiest way would be to take one to Ismaili and, from there, find a second marshrutka or local shared taxi to Lahic.Ismaili is located after the intersection that leads to Lahic, so a more adventurous and quicker way would be getting off before, at that intersection, and hitchhiking (or waiting for a marshrutka) from there.Where to stay in LahicHomestay – Ancient Lahij Guest House – Lahic is about homestays and this one is the most comfortable and recommended, run by a lovely local family that makes amazing local, warm meals. Look no further.Day 9, 10 – IvanovkaSorry for the expression but I fucking love Ivanovka.Most people don’t, but I do.Ivanovka is, in fact, not a place for everyone but, if you are interested in history and dark tourism, you are going to absolutely love this place, as it has a significant population of Molokans, a Christian branch, or a sect, from eastern Europe, mainly Russia, that didn’t get along with the Russian Orthodox Church.Two centuries ago, during the Russian Empire, the Russian Orthodox Church kicked the Molokans out of Russia and, for some reason, they all ended up in a small village called Ivanovka, located in today’s Azerbaijan.In Ivanovka, most signs are in Russian and many of its inhabitants are blue-eyed blonde people.

What to actually do in IvanovkaThe main reason to come to Ivanovka is to visit the collective farms.And what is a collective farm?To make it even more surreal, this is one of the very few places in the world where Soviet collective farms still exist.Basically, they are farms which, during Soviet times, were controlled by the Soviet government, meaning that they were like public companies where the farmers were just employees.Today, these farms are fully functional and not much has changed since the Soviet Union: they still use the same rusty machinery and people working there are employees. To be honest, the ownership is partially private now but I was told that the Government still has a big share.

In my second visit, in 2018, I entered the complex twice and spent one hour there until a big guy with a fancy car came and, gently, kicked me out. He was a big boss but workers just ignored me.Many people have emailed me saying that they either didn’t find it or they were not allowed to get in. The reason is that the main entrance is secured by a guard, so you need to enter from the other side:The yellow pin is John & Tanya Guest House.The red pin is center of the actual Collective Farm complex.The green pin is where you can access from.

Seriously, if you have the time, don’t miss Ivanovka in your Azerbaijan travel itinerary.How to get to Ivanovka from BakuFrom Baku, take a marshrutka to Ismaili, located on the main road, 22km from Ivanovka.Once there, take a taxi to Ivanovka, which shouldn’t cost you more than 3-4AZN. Hitchhiking is also possible. I did it on the way back.Where to stay in IvanovkaBudget Guest House – John and Tanya Guest House – The owner is a young local guy from Baku (son of Tanya). It is a good guest house. I stayed here twice, in 2016 and 2018. The rooms haven’t changed much but, when I first came in 2016, they were offering local home-made meals which were delicious. In 2018, they have a set menu which mostly consists of international food, so that was a huge downgrade for me.

Also situated in the heart of the Caucasus, Sheki is, by far, the most tourist-friendly destination in Azerbaijan, as it’s home to a large cultural heritage, defining almost 3,000 years of Azerbaijani history.Sheki was an important market place on the Silk Road, linking the Caucasus with Russia.Awesome day hikes, the best local food and beautiful medieval architecture which reminds one of many villages in Europe, make Sheki a must place to visit.Most cultural heritage can be found inside Sheki’s fortress and the Palace of Shaki Khans, which used to be the Khan’s administrative building, is claimed to be the most iconic building in South Caucasus and, also, a UNESCO-listed site.

Visit Kish on a day tripAround 10 kilometers from Sheki, Kish is a lovely village with tile-roofed houses and stone pavements, located in a valley that looks towards high-altitude snowy peaks.Kish can be easily visited on a day trip from Sheki. I walked there and took me around two hours, with frequent stops.The village has a beautiful cemetery with epic valley views. The most iconic building in Kish is an Albanian church, which was built by the commonly called mysterious Caucasian Albanians, a Christian nation that once lived in the northern part of Azerbaijan.

How to get from Ivanovka to ShekiFrom Ivanovka, you must go back to Ismayili and get off at the exact same place where the bus coming from Baku dropped you off.Simply, wait there for any local bus going to Qabala. From Qabala, take a second bus to Sheki.

Where to stay in ShekiBudget Homestay– Ilqar’s Guest House – Ilqar is a knowledgeable, local guy who speaks awesome English. He has a couple of double rooms which can be shared with other backpackers. It’s a great homestay for the most budget travelers.

Guest House – Guest House Sah Ismayil – One of the best guest houses in Sheki this is the best choice for couples or travelers who are looking for something which is not a hostel for backpackers. It’s very affordable too and it has a lovely garden where to hang out.

Day 13, 14 – Zaqatala, back to Baku or go to GeorgiaFor the following days, your Azerbaijan itinerary will depend on where you are going next.Going back to Baku requires a full day, so if you need to catch a plane, better go there the day before.If you are going to Georgia, I recommend you stop in Zaqatala. That’s what I did. I spent a few hours there, just exploring its fortress and busy square. It has its own charm.The place is also famous for dushbara, a local dumpling soup. You can find it in some restaurants in Baku but it is originally from here, so you will find the best. Just go to any of the local restaurants nearby the station, in the center.How to go to Georgia – From Zaqatala, take a marshrutka to Balakan (like 1AZN) and, from there, take a taxi to the border. Very easy and straightforward. Once in Georgia, you will officially be in the wine region called Kakheti and, from the border, you can find transportation to Signaghi.If you have more days, continue reading 🙂

Backpacking in Azerbaijan – 3-week itineraryIf you have 1 extra week for backpacking in Azerbaijan, consider exploring the region around Ganja and go to my favorite place in the country: Nakhchivan.The only problem is that, in Azerbaijan, you can’t really follow a loop but you always have to go back to Baku and make some inconvenient detours.3-week Azerbaijan travel itinerary – Map

Day 1, 2, 3, 4 – Baku and QobustanAlready explained.Day 5, 6, 7 – Autonomous Republic of NakhchivanHave you ever heard of Nakhchivan?Nakhchivan is an exclave of Azerbaijan, which means that it is geographically separated but it belongs to Azerbaijan.It is actually located between Turkey, Armenia, and Iran.Nakhchivan was actually the first territory to ever declare its independence from the Soviet Union, becoming the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan and, one year later, it became part of Azerbaijan. Today, it is an autonomous region with its own Parliament and Ministries.

For decades, this region has been in complete isolation, so that’s why the people there have a distinct culture and, basically, you won’t see any tourists at all.In fact, this is one of the most off the beaten track places I have ever visited.To be very honest, if I was you, I would go to Nakhchivan even if I only had 7 days in Azerbaijan.

There are loads, loads of things to do in Nakhchivan and you really need a few days to visit it.Nakhchivan City – The capital of the region has plenty of mausoleums, like the one where Noah is buried. Actually, it is said that Noah anchored his ark right in the middle of Nakhchivan.Alinja Castle – An epic medieval castle placed in an even more epic location.Ordubad – The second largest city has a beautiful historical old town.Qarabaglar – Beautiful mosque and MausoleumFor more information, read this post I wrote for Chasing the Donkey:

How to get to NakhchivanIf you are in Azerbaijan, the easiest way is flying in from Baku. Tickets are inexpensive and the rate is always flat. You can book them through Azerbaijan Airlines.Alternatively, you can enter from Iran but just the Iranian visa costs more than a round-trip flight from Baku. You could also travel overland from Turkey.Where to stay in NakhchivanThere are only 2 hotels and neither of them are budget.Alternatively, you can try to Couchsurf. There are 1 or 2 active profiles.Tabriz Hotel – Located in the city center. I used to come here for coffee and work for 2 hours in the morning. They claim it is a 4-star hotel but it isn’t really. Still, it is the best option in town.

Duzdag Hotel – Fancier but the location isn’t great.

Already explained. After flying back to Baku, go north. Day 11, 12, 13 – Ganja, Dashkashan and GöygölAfter visiting the mountains, you need to go back to Baku and, from there, take a marshrutka to Ganja.Ganja is the second largest city in the country but, since it is not on the way to Sheki and northern places, not many travelers visit it.The first thing you need to know about Ganja is that, despite being the second most important economic center, it is miles away from the modernities of fancy

Baku

.In fact, I was very surprised to see some streets in the city center are still unpaved, which clearly shows the obvious corruption that tended to focus all resources on the capital.If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know that I always defend this sort of barely-visited destinations but this time I won’t, because I really didn’t like Ganja.I didn’t like it because it is just a big city where there isn’t much to do besides visiting some buildings in the city center and a lively market. You can see nice markets all over the region, and I personally think that Ganja is not worth the detour.However (there is always a however 😉 ), Ganja is a great base to explore some wonders which are very close by plus it is on your way to Georgia if you plan to cross the southern border, the closest to Tbilisi.Day trip to DashkashanWOW, Dashkashan was a big surprise to me.I remember talking to a local woman in the train from Tbilisi to Baku, when I asked her to tell me her favorite place in Azerbaijan.She said: Dashkashan.I saved it on my map and since I had some spare days to visit around Ganja, I decided to go there based on her recommendation but I didn’t look for any information about the place.That woman had told me that the area was very beautiful, and those mountains were nice indeed, but what she didn’t tell me is that Dashkashan was an old Soviet mining town.

When I arrived there and saw those big skyscrapers popping out among mountains, I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on but then, when I kept walking, I suddenly saw a huge abandoned mine, so I realized that Dashkashan must had been a very prosperous mining town during the Soviet Union, similar to Chiatura in Georgia, so that is why they built all those big buildings.The mining activity has decreased but, today, they still extract some gold and other minerals.I spent just a few hours going around but I wish I had more time. I also hired a taxi driver who took me around to a couple of places for 8AZN.How to get to Dashkashan from Ganja – Easy-peasy. You first need to go to the bus station on the western part of the city. Here: 40.702096, 46.320566. A taxi shouldn’t cost more than a few Manats.  From there, you need to take a marshrutka that costs 1 miserable Manat. The journey takes around an hour and a half.

Where to stay in GanjaBudget Hostel – VM Hostel – A pretty quiet and cheap hostel but everything super new and clean. Besides me, there was one German backpacker, that’s it. Highly recommended as a base to explore around Ganja.Nicer – House in Ganja – Centrally located run by a very hospitable local couple. It’s like an apartment and they rent rooms.

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[celticnoise]

Unless some legal body sits and examines, carefully, the SPFL statement of today and brings clarity and focus to the situation Scottish football finds itself in, the game here is finished. The sport, as such it is called, is done. In 2012 the governing bodies applied a perfect fix to a mounting scandal. They created the wholly alien concept of football clubs being ephemeral bodies who’s only possessions are a license, a league place and a history.

In other words, they freed football clubs from any legal responsibility whatsoever. The onus for that falls on “owners”. And if you can swiftly enough change the owner you can carry on as before, doing whatever in the Hell you like.

The SPFL today rang the dinner bell for sharks and vultures and hyenas and wolves.

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It said “Scottish football is open for business … welcome, one and all.”

Back in the late 70’s, Jimmy Carter opened up lines of dialogue with the government in Cuba, and essentially he demanded that families who wanted to move to the United States would be able to. Castro prevaricated for but a moment; he saw a chance to accomplish two key goals. First he would appear to be doing the will of the world, and secondly he would have an opportunity to clear his country of dissident elements … and empty his jails.

The Mariel Boatlift lasted from 15 April to 31 October 1980. Cuban families poured into Miami.

The results were not what Carter had anticipated; he had been trying to do the right thing. He had responded to calls from within the wealthy US Cuban community to let people who wanted to come to the United States. And it was a disaster.

Castro’s little trick impacted on the southern United States massively. Crime rates soared. Miami itself became a playground for drug lords and the subsequent wars are detailed in any number of movies and documentaries, the best of which is Cocaine Cowboys.

Now, I know people will say what happened in 2012 was an attempt to please everyone, to push Scottish football forward without it erupting into civil war. Stewart Regan said Scotland without Rangers would be at risk of “civil unrest.”

But as Mariel proved you have to think it through even when what your doing appears to be for the right reasons.

It is possible that Regan and Doncaster had some kind of altruistic motive at the start, but it has led us here, to a disaster, and the next disaster will be bigger. I don’t believe it was altruism anyway; I think these are yellow-bellied spineless wonders who bottled out of doing the only thing that would have prevented all this; acknowledging the truth.

Rangers’ fans, by and large, accepted that their club would be liquidated if they failed to get a CVA. The whole of the media was united in that view. Doncaster and Regan both appeared in front of the cameras, white faced and bug eyed, to say they believed a CVA would be granted and that HMRC would understand what was at stake.

And then when HMRC operated according to its policy, and Charles Green appeared to buy the assets, all of a sudden Scottish football’s governing bodies started to sell us something that was little more than an empty brown paper bag; the idea of clubs as non-legal entities recognised only be the footballing authorities. It is bullshit, and more, it is dangerous bullshit.

It is a matter of time before a football club in Scotland is bought and operated by a criminal gang.

This, of course, excludes the man at the helm of Sevco; we already have a multi-convicted fraudster at the helm of that club and one of the first things he did upon taking control of it was to assure they were removed from the pesky necessities of having to open the books as per stock exchange regulations. At least one “loan” of £5 million is alleged to have originated in South East Asia, not that anyone at Hampden has bothered to check.

It’s entirely possible Sevco is already being used as a conduit for the flow of undeclared currency.

Who the Hell knows what else King and others are up to?

Barry Ferguson was declared bankrupt the other day; but what do you know? Just in time, he’d already transferred enough of his assets to his wife that he and she can carry on regardless without it having the slightest impact on them.

Now clubs can be shuffled hither, thither and yon between “holding companies” which can run up massive debts and cause untold chaos and the only punishment is the club gets 15 point deduction for a first time offence and a 25 point one for a second.

What happened to Rangers – the liquidation part – can’t happen in Scottish football again; the governing bodies have seen to that.

They’ve created a perfect world for unscrupulous people to come in and use our game for their own ends. Buy a club, take the fans money, pay yourself an exorbitant salary, run up huge debts you have no intention of paying … and then liquidate the “holding company” whilst you pass the lot to one of your colleagues to start the whole thing all over again … if you do it right there might not even be football sanctions.

And it will happen, just as other clubs will conceal the nature of payments to players. It’s not impossible that one day we’ll have a club who gives its players what amount to part-time contracts, making them “self-employed” and responsible for their own tax, but which can pay them vast sums under the table. Because if the SFA doesn’t find out about it until later they did nothing wrong, right? The number of distortions of rules and regulations, the avenues for cheating and deception, which were opened up just to facilitate the Survival Lie … it would take your breath away. We’re told today that Sevco cannot be punished for the sins of Rangers because you can’t strip titles from the OldCo. But it’s the NewCo who now owns the titles. So they get to keep the trophies but bear no responsibility for how those trophies were won?

It is shameful. Farcical. Disgraceful.

This is what we have to live with, this is the real result of 2012 and the utterly repellent creation of the club-company separation.

Those creditors who have waited for their money will get none.

They were conned, they were screwed, and one of the parties involved in that was the SFA, who the SPFL are going to meet with to plan the frame of the reference for the new inquiry … the very thing Scottish football fans have warned against, and said would be unacceptable.

And it will have no power whatsoever. Clubs agreed to this?

The whole thing is waste of time and effort and, more importantly, money. To do what? To “learn lessons”? The only lesson worth learning would have been for the governing bodies to act like they knew how to govern, to have imposed sanctions so serious that no-one ever forgot them.

Lessons are not “learned” they are taught. Today’s lesson is that in Scottish football if you’ve got enough clout you can get away with literally anything. That’s what they’ve taught us, that’s what’s on the curriculum.

And so the people who helped Craig Whyte to do this, who exculpated Murray, who gave a convicted criminal the chair at Ibrox, will now launch their second attempt to cover all this up and conceal the truth and if we allow that we’re mugs and as pitiful as they think we are.

If this isn’t reversed, if a new inquiry doesn’t have the power to sift to the bottom of all this, the SPFL have destroyed the game here today.

The chain reaction has started already. Sooner or later something worse than what happened at Ibrox, something that rocks the sport to its foundations, will befall Scottish football and fans will chuck it, sponsors will run, administrations will fall … and we’ll look back on today the way Carter’s people look back on Mariel, as something that, in hindsight, was a complete catastrophe and historians will pick over the bones and ask “Could it not have been forseen?”

Well of course it could. Some of us have been writing about it for five long years, but we’re not the people sitting in the oak panelled offices … and we don’t matter. Because we’ve let this happen too, although for how much longer I do not know.

A mate of mine, an Aberdeen fan, published a blog yesterday where he suggested that it would cost too much time and money to do this job right, and he thinks the game should “move on.” That’s what we’re dealing with here, by the way, when even a good guy, a smart guy, thinks the best course of action is to put this stuff in the rear-view … I have never disagreed with him more and I cannot fathom what he’s thinking about.

Our game stinks of corruption and fear. Mistakes are being piled on top of mistakes. Cover-ups are being constructed to support previous cover-ups. And that costs time. And that costs money. To essentially be told that nothing has changed. To leave fraudulent titles and trophies on the record. To prop up the Survival Lie.

Yeah, but all’s well in the world cause your club won the League Cup two years ago and is content with a second place finish … at least until the criminal owner of Sevco can spend enough of his phantom cash to take it away from you.

I guess some people would literally rather live in shit than pick up a shovel.

And that’s what the game is turning into.

Lesson learned, eah?

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#CelticNoise #Celtic #CelticFC #TheCelticBlog #News

[call-me-alex-maybe]

05/23/2017

The Six Food Groups

Grains

                                The most important grains

Rice 

Wheat 

Oat

Commeal

Barley

The different grains can be cooked and eaten whole, ground into flour to make a variety of cereal foods like bread, pasta and noodles, or made into ready-to-eat breakfast cereals.

Ancient grains

Sorghum 

Teff

Millet

Quinoa

Buckwheat

Chia 

Ancient grains are often marketed as being healthier than modern grains, though their health benefits have been disputed by some nutritionists.

Teff 

Also known as Williams' lovegrass or annual bunch grass, is an annual grass, a species of lovegrass native to Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Vegetables

Legumes 

Legumes are plants that bear their fruit in pods, which are casings with two halves, or hinges. Legumes are a very healthy food because it is low in fat and high in protein.  Legumes are also very high in fiber and other nutrients. 

List of the most important legumes

Beans 

Lentils 

Peas

Peanuts

Rhizome

Is a modified subterranean stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes. 

Plant stem

A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant, the other being the root. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes: The nodes hold one or more leaves, as well as buds which can grow into branches (with leaves, conifer cones, or inflorescences (flowers)). Adventitious roots may also be produced from the nodes. The internodes distance one node from another.

Important Rhizome 

Bamboo 

Ginger

hops

 asparagus 

 ginger 

 irises

 Lily of the Valley 

List of Root Vegetables 

Carrots

Parship

Turnip

Rutabaga

Herb

Radish

Celery

Root vegetables are plant roots eaten as vegetables.

Tuber 

Yuca 

Potatoe

Sweet Potatoe

Yam

Fruits

The 6 Favorite Fruits around the world

Strawberries 

Mango 

Bananas 

Pineapples 

Oranges 

Cherries 

Vines Fruits 

Tomato 

Dragon fruit 

Grape

Watermelon

Berryfruits

Kiwi 

Pitaya

Milk

Lactose 

Lactose is the sugar that’s in milk.

Our bodies use an enzyme called lactase to break down that sugar so we can absorb it into our bodies. But people with lactose intolerance don’t have enough lactase. It’s produced in the small intestine.

Even with low levels of lactase, some people can digest milk products just fine. For people who are lactose intolerant, their low lactase levels gives them symptoms after they eat dairy.

Types of milks

Cow

Camels

Sheep

Goat

Meats

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, pork is the most consumed in the world (36%), followed by poultry meat (33%), beef (24% ) And goat / sheep meat (5%).

Lean meats

Poultry: chiken, hen, turkey, cornish

Beef

Pork: canadian bacon 

Oil

Oils considered good for the body

Sunflower oil.

Peanut oil.

Oil of canola or rapeseed.

Sesame oil.

Coconut oil.

Grape seed oil.

Linseed oil.

Rapeseed oil.

Oils that should be avoided

Palm oil.

Soybean oil.

Margarines.

Corn oil.

Lard.

Glossary

Rapeseed

Is a bright yellow flowering member of the Brassicacea family (mustard or cabbage family). It is a mustard crop grown primarily for its seed which yields about forty percent oil and a high-protein animal feed.

What's the Difference Between Canola and Rapeseed Oils?

In the 1970s canola was created through traditional plant cross-breeding by removing two things found in the rapeseed plant: glucosinolates and erucic acid. Erucic acid was removed because it was believed to be inedible or toxic in high doses. The newly developed plant was renamed "canola" – a combination of "Canadian" and "Oil" (or ola) to make this difference apparent.

By definition, if a seed is labeled "canola" it has to have less than 30 micromoles of glucosinolates and less than 2% of erucic acid.

Cheese Fruit - Noni Fruit 

Is a tree or shrub of the rubiaceae family; Originating in Southeast Asia, has been introduced to India, Polynesia and Panama.

5 Amazing Health Benefits of Noni

Analgesic 

Immune system booster 

Antidepressant/sedative 

Skincare/hair 

Anti-tumor/anti-cancer 

Pitaya

These fruits are commonly known in English as "dragon fruit", reflecting its vernacular Asian names. The names pitahaya and pitaya derives from Mexico, and pitaya roja in Central America and northern South America, possibly relating to pitahaya for names of tall cacti species with flowering fruit .

3 Food Pyramids From Around The World

China's Food Pagoda

There’s a very big difference in the Chinese diet between meat and vegetable protein sources. They’ve also skipped the “servings” in favor of showing how much to eat from each group. There’s also more sweet potato, soybean, and lentils which is more culturally specific to the Chinese diet than more general food pyramids.

Spinning Top — Japan

Japan decided to have a little fun with its nutritional guidelines: they’ve flipped the food pyramid upside down and spun it around, giving new meaning to playing with your food! From bottom to the top, in super small amounts, are fruits and dairy products, fish and meat dishes, vegetable dishes, then the top (the bulk of your diet) should be grains and breads. And the spinning part? Well, there’s a little guy standing on the top Well, there’s a little guy standing on the top running around to keep it spinning, emphasizing the role of exercise in any healthy diet.

Sweden food pyramid

Sweden uses a simple and clear graph with three key messages in a traffic light colours. Green: eat more vegetables, fruit, berries, fish, shellfish, nuts, seeds, exercise. Amber: switch to whole grains, healthy fats and low-fat dairy products. Red: eat less red and processed meat, salt, sugar and alcohol.

Netherlands food pyramid

The circle is divided into four food groups and one beverage group. Fruits and vegetables and breads, cereals and potatoes cover more than half of the circle. Animal source foods, spreads and cooking fats comprise a much smaller part. Water and other beverages such as tea, and coffee complete the circle.

Key learning point 

In class on Tuesday I learned what the word teff means.

I was surprised to learn that netherland eats more grains and vegetables than meats and dairy.

I learned what the word pitaya means

[ineedrelationshipadvice]

A Big Crush

Hey,

Thanks for offering to read long messages. So my crush. I really hope I’m able to provide the right information to allow for a lot of insight.

I need to apologise beforehand. This is going to be the “girliest” email, mostly because I skipped past this phase as a teen and I’m only catching up to it now.

Me: Personality description: I love crass humour, people’s tweets and ironies are awesome. I’m a college freshman, studying environmental science, because I love cities and sustainable development. I also love art: drawing, painting etc. I’m 19 and a freshman, because I took a gap year and travelled South East Asia a bit. I’ve never been on a date, I’ve never even been told by a guy, that he liked me... I’ve hooked up (as in did everything) only twice, but that was because of Tinder.

My crush: Freshman. The college’s rising sports star. I can’t get a grasp of his personality. I have him on Snapchat and other social media. He rarely posts except playing chill music in his car or snapping his family or dog. He never shows himself on snapchat (we all expected him to snap his workouts and stuff). What I do know about him is during fall semester he apparently hooked up with girls every weekend. Ranging from one, to three, to threesomes. So I assume he’s the confident type.

I’ve only had one conversation with him, to be perfectly honest. It was during a maths session. He asked why I say math instead of maths. (I’m English), I shared a few English slang words with him and helped him with one maths question. He only got to question 2/7 in 2 hours and didn’t ask any of the tutors. It was chilled. We laughed, he left with his friends, he said it was nice talking to me and said bye (so it wasn’t at all hostile or awkward)

At first I thought he was checking out my best friend (She’s so beautiful), but it began happening more and more since the beginning of the year. There have been moments that really put me on edge.

1) When I walked into a class, headed to the back of the class and him and a friend turned around to look at me. I avoided eye contact at all costs, because I had no idea what to do, seeing as the only thing behind me was a blank wall and I had happened to be standing in the middle of where they had turned to look 2) During a game, where he was working out. Stopped to look in my direction then went back to training 3) A maths exam, where as I was walking back up to my seat, he just kept looking at me 4) Lunch, he was talking to friends, stopped and we made eye contact for a very long time. Neither of us smiled. He just looked bored 5) If we’re in the dining hall at about the same time he’ll watch me walk in and proceed to watch me if I’m in view. This happens often, and it happened all the way to the end of the semester. I could easily catch him out the corner of my eye. I’m always to afraid to look directly and confront the issue...I wouldn’t know how to, if I’m being honest 6) So, since the beginning of the year, I’ve caught him kind of watching me.

I’m reluctant to label it as him liking me because 1) I don’t fit his blonde and blue-eyed preference. 2) we’ve only had one conversation. 3) I added him on snapchat before December break, to see if there’d be conversation. He added me back. There hasn’t been conversation, he doesn’t even view my snaps. 4) He has no problem greeting my friends. Noted by how I was having lunch with one of them, she was sitting right next to me and he said “Hi Nina,” before walking away. 5) As foreign as I am, something tells me footballers also like the WAG and gorgeous type.

So I do like him. And I’m crushed at the way things have gone down. I’m wondering if I should move on with my life or use Spring Semester to ease the bad blood I’m assuming we have??

If easing the bad blood is the best way to go, do you have any ideas on how I could do that, without making a fool of myself. Ironically, I’m not socially awkward. My friend has actually described me as really confident “you give off a vibe that is too confident” as she put it... I have no idea what that means. So I’m just bad with guys I suppose. And I have no idea how to improve on that.

And if I should move on with my life... how do I ignore him, without offending him further (I assume I have offended him in some way). Do I say something, ask questions or just avoid entirely?

Also, can you maybe elaborate on the confidence thing...? I thought confidence was a good thing... what makes someone appear arrogant and how could I rid of that issue?

I’m just tired of being awkward and wish I were more natural at this.

I really hope I’ve added enough detail. I tried to remember as much as possible.

Wait, one more point. I was walking from the library one night and walked past 2 of my guy friends, they were with 2 other players... One of my essays had gotten erased, so I was distraught and in a rush. I greeted my 2 friends and I was walking past when one of the players said “Ayo,one of my boys wants to talk to you” I walked past and didn’t look back, they didn’t bring it up the next day, but I’d get the occasional glare from that point on and now have no idea if I should’ve done something or what his statement meant. (Should I find a way to bring back that specific statement or something?) Is messing with football players even a good idea!!! Be honest?? Below The Text my friend sent me and please

remember there is a confused and awkward girl in need of your help!!

Thanks xx

So this has a whole lot of moving parts. This advice may not be in the best order when I give it, but I’ll try to make all of it as valuable as I can as we sift through all these different problems.

Let’s start with the easy stuff: confidence. Your concern is that your friend mentioned that you gave off a vibe of “too much confidence.” You think confidence is a good thing, and yeah, it is. What your friend is TRYING to say is that the vibe you give off carries so much confidence that perhaps it can make you a little off-putting. Some people can certainly have this air of being more important, more strong, or even to the point of being “holier-than-thou” compared to the people around them.

Do I really buy into that? Not really. It’s entirely possible that you are sociable and confident to the point where other people are intimidated by that. But what are you  honestly going to do about it? Alter your entire personality to suit a randomized, vague ideal that other people have of you? You don’t even know IF you have this mood beyond what your friend says, much less which ways you should alter your personality or what to do about it. Besides, as you said, confidence isn’t a bad thing. Having a healthy self-confidence is integral to a happy and healthy life. There’s no reason you should resist that reality.

So for the whole confidence deal, I would say try not to worry too much about it.

Not the more complicated part.

So your interactions with this guy have been extremely minimal. A single conversation is fine to develop a crush, but you seem to be reading deep into a lot of his actions. You two are exchanging these long glances, but you can’t really label such things as inherently ROMANTIC. These are just, well… glances. People look at each other sometimes. It’s just the thing we do. You have this guy on social media, but he also doesn’t respond to your snaps or messages. So beyond these glances and these unresponded messages, the one thing you both have going for you is that single conversation which was pleasant but otherwise uneventful.

I don’t think this is a result of your confidence or your lack of desire. I just think it’s all a result of popularity, being busy, and a lack of communication. Let’s analyze this a little further.

First off, let’s talk football players. We can’t speak for football players at large. But US cultural places a hide prestige upon football players, as you likely know. This usually denotes that most of them are quite popular, and this seems to show in this guy’s interactions with other people. If he’s hooking up with people every weekend, to the point of really wild sex antics, it’s clear that he has a lot of people who either value that popularity in relationships, or he’s just debonair enough to get away with it. As a result, if he’s quite popular, it means that he can pick from the cream of the crop of who he wants to date. With lots of suitors, it’s certainly not hard to find someone new to occupy his time and pleasure him. There’s nothing wrong with this scenario, but it’s something to think about moving forward.

Secondly, being busy. You both are in university, he is on the football team. That means he likely stays extremely busy between practice, games, other events he’s expected to participate in, on top of his regular classes, homework, and studies. That doesn’t even take into account whether he has a proper job or not. Hooking up on the weekends might be a nice convenience, but it’s also entirely possible that’s all the time he has to spare.

Finally, and most importantly, the lack of communication. The reality is, if you don’t talk to someone - and they don’t talk to you - there’s very low liklihoods that a relationship of any sort is going to develop. You two had a really nice conversation, but that’s the only one at all that you had. That’s not exactly sustainable for anything real or legitimate to develop. He didn’t really learn anything about you or your personality, beyond the fact that you’re from the UK, and that you seem to be interested in having a conversation. That’s not exactly a lot to go on, and if he meets lots of people eager to talk to him, then you’re nothing special.

All this leads into the fact that I just think all these glances you’re seeing mean absolutely nothing, and you’ve looked way too deeply into these microactions. I don’t think that you’ve offended in any way - you guys haven’t spoke hardly at all for you to do anything remotely offensive. I just think that the lack of communication is your biggest downfall.

If you want to have a relationship with someone, YOU have to be the one responsible. Good things sometimes fall in people’s laps, but it’s certainly not a guarantee. And you’ve just been sitting around, minding your own business, waiting for something to happen, and with this guy’s choice of suitors, busy lifestyle, and lack of communication, he has had no inclination to pursue you. Hell, he probably doesn’t even know (or care) whether you like him or not just because you are likely not even on his radar.

Is it possible he has a deep, burgeoning crush for you, and that’s what all these longing glances are? Sure. Can you prove that? No. So without further evidence to the fact, we’re just going to have to assume that he doesn’t like you, and has no feelings for you. This is the best way to carry ourselves moving forward.

This leaves you with two options: to try to pursue him or try to move on. If you really want to try for this guy, then you’re going to have to make an effort for him, because it’s clear he’s not interested in making an effort to you (as explained, he’s likely got other things on his mind). If you want him, you’ll have to go up to that guy and strike up some more conversations, eventually to the point of letting him know that you’re interested in him romantically and would potentially like a relationship or something else, depending on which you want. Social media communication is clearly not enough, since he has no actual interest in responding to your messages there. If you want to make this work, you’re going to need some proper, honest, face to face interaction in order to try to get his attention?

Will this work? Who knows. Only you and your actions can detail whether that’s even a possibility. It’s entirely possible he has no interest at all. It’s possible that he’s always been interested. We just don’t know, because the communication between you two has been too brief. You ask if dating a football player is even worth it. EH. That’s really a personal opinion either way. I would analyze him based not on his status, but rather, his personality. You clearly have been observing him quite a bit. Try to take off your “beer goggles” from your crush, and try to analyze his personality critically.

How does he treat other girls, and other people? Is he nice or rude? In what ways is he nice or rude? Do you guys have similar interests? You may need to talk to him and find out, but if you two don’t have any shared interests, this may not be the relationship for you. What about this guy do you actually like? Is it just because he’s attractive, or are you interested in him on a deep, personal level? Furthermore, you know this guy has a sexual past. Is that something you’re okay with? Is that something you want to get involved with? Does that meet your moral standards surrounding sex and the fluidity of relationships? Are you prepared that he may not be interested in anything other than sex? It’s not my business to decide who you like and why you like them. But I’m a supporter of good, healthy, long-term relationships. And if you can’t decide what deep, important reasons you like this person, I would honestly caution against a relationship with them.

If you still decide this crush is worth your time, and nobody else can interest you, then you have no reason not to pursue him. Go strike up conversations with him. Again, I don’t think you’ve offended him at all; you guys have barely spoken, how COULD you offend him? Try to get friendly with him, try to get his phone number, try to talk with him on the phone or hang out with each other outside of class. Try to advance this crush toward something more than just “that guy in class.”

But if you decide maybe you don’t have anything in common with this guy, and it might be better to move on with your life, then there is certainly no shame in that. Consider doing your own thing instead and focusing on other people who are more open and available and eager to talk to you.

#priority #FO8DDC69F104

[jesseneufeld]

Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You? Everything You Need to Know

After cutting back on sugar and carbs for a while, you understandably start to miss sweets. A common misconception is that you have to skip sweets to meet your goals, which isn’t the case at all. There are plenty of sugar alternatives that fit within the Primal and keto lifestyles, and stevia is one of them.

Stevia is widely used in the low carb community to satisfy sugar cravings or simply add a touch of sweetness to a hot beverage or dessert, but should it be? What is stevia? Is it safe? What is its effect on insulin, if any, and does it have a place in a Primal Blueprint eating strategy? Let’s investigate.

What Is Stevia?

A lot of people categorize stevia as an artificial sweetener, but it’s important to note that stevia is not an artificial sweetener at all – it’s a plant-derived natural alternative to sugar.

Stevia is an herbaceous family of plants, 240 species strong, that grows in sub-tropical and tropical America (mostly South and Central, but some North). Stevia the sweetener refers to stevia rebaudiana, the plant and its leaves, which you can grow and use as or with tea (it was traditionally paired with yerba mate in South America) or, dried and powdered, as a sugar substitute that you sprinkle on. It’s apparently quite easy to grow, according to the stevia seller who tries to get me to buy a plant or two whenever I’m at the Santa Monica farmers’ market, and the raw leaf is very sweet.

Instantly download you Guide to Gut Health

The Sweet Compounds in Stevia: Stevioside and Rebaudioside

Most stevia you’ll come across isn’t in its raw, unprocessed form, but in powdered or liquid extract form. The “sweet” lies in the steviol glycosides – stevioside and rebaudioside – which are the natural compounds isolated in these extracts. Some products use just one, while others use both stevioside and rebaudioside. Stevioside is the most prevalent glycoside in stevia, and some say it provides the bitter aftertaste that people sometimes complain about; rebaudioside is said to be the better tasting steviol glycoside, with far less bitterness.

Most of the “raw or natural” stevia products use the full range of glycosides, but the more processed brands will most likely isolate one or more of the steviol glycosides. The popular Truvia brand of stevia products uses only rebaudioside, as do both PureVia and Enliten. Different brands provide different conversion rates, but compared to sucrose, stevioside is generally about 250-300 times as sweet and rebaudioside is about 350-450 times as sweet.

Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You?

The government has approved only isolated steviol glycosides as safe to use in food. Whole or crude stevia is not Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) according to government standards.1

And, there are limits. According to government standards, you should not exceed a daily intake for stevia glycosides of 4mg per kg of bodyweight.2 This is due to lack of safety information, not so much the presence of known harmful effects.

Does Stevia Affect Insulin?

I wrote an extensive piece on whether artificial sweeteners spike blood sugar a while back. There is one in vitro study that showed stevioside acts directly on pancreatic beta cells to stimulate insulin secretion and another which shows similarly insulinotropic  (insulin-producing) effects of rebaudioside, which may give you pause.

Insulin secretion sounds like an insulin spike, no? And since we tend to be wary of unneeded insulin spikes, maybe we should avoid stevia. It’s not so simple, of course. For one, this was an in vitro study, performed in a super-controlled laboratory petri dish type setting; this was not an in vivo study of animals or people eating stevia in a natural, organic way. The results of in vitro studies do not always match results when you try to replicate them in vivo (in a person).

Secondly, insulin secretion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we need it to shuttle nutrients into cells, and we’d die without it. As I mentioned in the dairy post a while back, insulin is millions upon millions of years old. It’s been preserved throughout history because it’s an essential hormone. It’s not always the bad guy, especially if your insulin sensitivity is where it should be.

In fact, the evidence is mounting that stevia actually is an insulin sensitizer that can aid in glucose tolerance and clearance after a meal. The Japanese have been using stevia for decades in the treatment of type 2 diabetics. Let’s look at a few recent studies. In fructose-fed rats, a single instance of oral stevioside increased insulin sensitivity and reduced postprandial blood glucose in a dose-dependent manner. The same study also found that diabetic rats given stevioside required less exogenous insulin for the same effect. Taken together, these results suggest that stevia may not just be a good sugar substitute for diabetics, but an effective supplement for treatment of their insulin resistance.3

Another study looked at the postprandial effects of stevia, sucrose, and aspartame in human subjects. Compared to sucrose eaters, stevia eaters showed lower postprandial (after eating) blood sugar levels. Compared to both sucrose and aspartame eaters, stevia eaters had far lower postprandial insulin levels. Furthermore, eating stevia did not induce increased appetite throughout the day, indicating stable blood sugar and satiety levels.4 Another strike in stevia’s favor.

Stevia-sweetened recipes:

Keto Donuts Recipe

Matcha Mint Keto Green Smoothie Recipe

Grain-free Waffles Recipe

Stevia Side Effects

Allergy to stevia has been reported, but it is rare.

Most people do not experience side effects when using stevia, but some people do experience effects like:

Stomach Issues

Nausea

Gastrointestinal discomfort

Bloating

Diarrhea

Most often these effects are from using stevia that is mixed with sugar alcohols, like erythritol or xylitol. If you can tolerate sugar alcohols, you will probably be okay using combination stevia and sugar alcohol products. To be sure, start slow, and watch for symptoms.

Diabetic Concerns

Stevia is considered safe for the diabetic population, but sometimes it is combined with ingredients that affect carb count, like dextrose and maltodextrin. If you’re diabetic, check your ingredients label and carb counts before adding it to food.

Fertility Issues

Historically, stevia has been used as a form of birth control, so use of stevia may contribute to fertility issues.5 That said, it is not a reliable form of birth control, so it’s not advisable to use it for that purpose.

Any Other Effects?

There are other potential benefits to using stevia unrelated to its apparent benefits on glycemic control. Here are a few studies I was able to dig up:

When combined with inulin, a soluble prebiotic fiber, low-dose stevia increased HDL while lowering overall lipids in male rats.6 Alone, low-dose stevia lowered cholesterol without the potentially beneficial effect on HDL. It’s also useful to note that high-dose stevia negatively affected some toxic parameters – so don’t eat spoonfuls of stevia (not that you would) – but long term low-dose stevia was deemed safe.

Lipid numbers are fun and all, but we’re really interested in avoiding atherosclerotic plaque buildup. In mice treated with stevioside, oxidized LDL was reduced, overall plaque volume was reduced, and insulin sensitivity increased. Overall, atherosclerosis was reduced in the stevioside-treated mice.7 I couldn’t dig up exactly how they were “treated,” however, but they were given doses of 10 mg/kg.

In another study, mice memory was impaired by administration of scopolamine, an anticholigernic found in the intensely hallucinogenic jimson weed (or devil’s weed) and datura. Impaired mice were given oral stevioside (250 mg/kg) and tested for memory retention. Memory deficit was largely reversed with administration of stevioside, which also reduced the brain oxidative damage caused by scopolamine.8 Clinically relevant? Perhaps not, but it’s interesting.

A two-year randomized, placebo-controlled study of Chinese patients with mild hypertension (which a rather large swath of society probably suffers from) found that oral stevioside intake significantly reduced systolic and diastolic blood pressure.9 Patients either took a 500 mg capsule of stevioside or a placebo three times a day for two years. The hypertension situation improved across the board and no downsides were reported or detected. Also of note is the fact that slightly more patients in the placebo group developed left ventricular hypertrophy, a pathological thickening of the heart muscle. Of course, another study using far lower doses (up to 15 mg/kg/day) found no anti-hypertensive effects,10 so it appears that the dose is key. Maybe somewhere in the middle works well, as one study in hypertensive dogs showed: they used 200 mg/kg to normalize blood pressure in the canine subjects.11

We can think about stevia as a Primal sugar alternative with some potentially beneficial effects. Kind of like cinnamon or turmeric, we don’t consume it for the calories or as literal fuel for our bodies, but for flavor, variety, and, possibly, the health benefits. It may induce insulin secretion, but it increases insulin sensitivity, reduces blood glucose (i.e., the insulin is doing its job), and does not increase appetite. It’s been used by humans for hundreds of years and by diabetic patients in Asia for decades. I’m a fan of the stuff and recommend it as a Primal way to satisfy a sweet tooth.

What do you guys think of stevia? Love it? Hate it? Have you ever used its potential therapeutic effects? Let me know in the comment section!

(function($) { $("#dfzj0eG").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=674&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfzj0eG" ); })( jQuery );

References

https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/has-stevia-been-approved-fda-be-used-sweetener

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5591507/table/Tab1/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16278783

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20303371

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17744732/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21089163

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20010904

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20871768

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14693305

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16775813

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12444299

The post Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You? Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You? Everything You Need to Know published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

[lauramalchowblog]

Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You? Everything You Need to Know

After cutting back on sugar and carbs for a while, you understandably start to miss sweets. A common misconception is that you have to skip sweets to meet your goals, which isn’t the case at all. There are plenty of sugar alternatives that fit within the Primal and keto lifestyles, and stevia is one of them.

Stevia is widely used in the low carb community to satisfy sugar cravings or simply add a touch of sweetness to a hot beverage or dessert, but should it be? What is stevia? Is it safe? What is its effect on insulin, if any, and does it have a place in a Primal Blueprint eating strategy? Let’s investigate.

What Is Stevia?

A lot of people categorize stevia as an artificial sweetener, but it’s important to note that stevia is not an artificial sweetener at all – it’s a plant-derived natural alternative to sugar.

Stevia is an herbaceous family of plants, 240 species strong, that grows in sub-tropical and tropical America (mostly South and Central, but some North). Stevia the sweetener refers to stevia rebaudiana, the plant and its leaves, which you can grow and use as or with tea (it was traditionally paired with yerba mate in South America) or, dried and powdered, as a sugar substitute that you sprinkle on. It’s apparently quite easy to grow, according to the stevia seller who tries to get me to buy a plant or two whenever I’m at the Santa Monica farmers’ market, and the raw leaf is very sweet.

Instantly download you Guide to Gut Health

The Sweet Compounds in Stevia: Stevioside and Rebaudioside

Most stevia you’ll come across isn’t in its raw, unprocessed form, but in powdered or liquid extract form. The “sweet” lies in the steviol glycosides – stevioside and rebaudioside – which are the natural compounds isolated in these extracts. Some products use just one, while others use both stevioside and rebaudioside. Stevioside is the most prevalent glycoside in stevia, and some say it provides the bitter aftertaste that people sometimes complain about; rebaudioside is said to be the better tasting steviol glycoside, with far less bitterness.

Most of the “raw or natural” stevia products use the full range of glycosides, but the more processed brands will most likely isolate one or more of the steviol glycosides. The popular Truvia brand of stevia products uses only rebaudioside, as do both PureVia and Enliten. Different brands provide different conversion rates, but compared to sucrose, stevioside is generally about 250-300 times as sweet and rebaudioside is about 350-450 times as sweet.

Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You?

The government has approved only isolated steviol glycosides as safe to use in food. Whole or crude stevia is not Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) according to government standards.1

And, there are limits. According to government standards, you should not exceed a daily intake for stevia glycosides of 4mg per kg of bodyweight.2 This is due to lack of safety information, not so much the presence of known harmful effects.

Does Stevia Affect Insulin?

I wrote an extensive piece on whether artificial sweeteners spike blood sugar a while back. There is one in vitro study that showed stevioside acts directly on pancreatic beta cells to stimulate insulin secretion and another which shows similarly insulinotropic  (insulin-producing) effects of rebaudioside, which may give you pause.

Insulin secretion sounds like an insulin spike, no? And since we tend to be wary of unneeded insulin spikes, maybe we should avoid stevia. It’s not so simple, of course. For one, this was an in vitro study, performed in a super-controlled laboratory petri dish type setting; this was not an in vivo study of animals or people eating stevia in a natural, organic way. The results of in vitro studies do not always match results when you try to replicate them in vivo (in a person).

Secondly, insulin secretion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we need it to shuttle nutrients into cells, and we’d die without it. As I mentioned in the dairy post a while back, insulin is millions upon millions of years old. It’s been preserved throughout history because it’s an essential hormone. It’s not always the bad guy, especially if your insulin sensitivity is where it should be.

In fact, the evidence is mounting that stevia actually is an insulin sensitizer that can aid in glucose tolerance and clearance after a meal. The Japanese have been using stevia for decades in the treatment of type 2 diabetics. Let’s look at a few recent studies. In fructose-fed rats, a single instance of oral stevioside increased insulin sensitivity and reduced postprandial blood glucose in a dose-dependent manner. The same study also found that diabetic rats given stevioside required less exogenous insulin for the same effect. Taken together, these results suggest that stevia may not just be a good sugar substitute for diabetics, but an effective supplement for treatment of their insulin resistance.3

Another study looked at the postprandial effects of stevia, sucrose, and aspartame in human subjects. Compared to sucrose eaters, stevia eaters showed lower postprandial (after eating) blood sugar levels. Compared to both sucrose and aspartame eaters, stevia eaters had far lower postprandial insulin levels. Furthermore, eating stevia did not induce increased appetite throughout the day, indicating stable blood sugar and satiety levels.4 Another strike in stevia’s favor.

Stevia-sweetened recipes:

Keto Donuts Recipe

Matcha Mint Keto Green Smoothie Recipe

Grain-free Waffles Recipe

Stevia Side Effects

Allergy to stevia has been reported, but it is rare.

Most people do not experience side effects when using stevia, but some people do experience effects like:

Stomach Issues

Nausea

Gastrointestinal discomfort

Bloating

Diarrhea

Most often these effects are from using stevia that is mixed with sugar alcohols, like erythritol or xylitol. If you can tolerate sugar alcohols, you will probably be okay using combination stevia and sugar alcohol products. To be sure, start slow, and watch for symptoms.

Diabetic Concerns

Stevia is considered safe for the diabetic population, but sometimes it is combined with ingredients that affect carb count, like dextrose and maltodextrin. If you’re diabetic, check your ingredients label and carb counts before adding it to food.

Fertility Issues

Historically, stevia has been used as a form of birth control, so use of stevia may contribute to fertility issues.5 That said, it is not a reliable form of birth control, so it’s not advisable to use it for that purpose.

Any Other Effects?

There are other potential benefits to using stevia unrelated to its apparent benefits on glycemic control. Here are a few studies I was able to dig up:

When combined with inulin, a soluble prebiotic fiber, low-dose stevia increased HDL while lowering overall lipids in male rats.6 Alone, low-dose stevia lowered cholesterol without the potentially beneficial effect on HDL. It’s also useful to note that high-dose stevia negatively affected some toxic parameters – so don’t eat spoonfuls of stevia (not that you would) – but long term low-dose stevia was deemed safe.

Lipid numbers are fun and all, but we’re really interested in avoiding atherosclerotic plaque buildup. In mice treated with stevioside, oxidized LDL was reduced, overall plaque volume was reduced, and insulin sensitivity increased. Overall, atherosclerosis was reduced in the stevioside-treated mice.7 I couldn’t dig up exactly how they were “treated,” however, but they were given doses of 10 mg/kg.

In another study, mice memory was impaired by administration of scopolamine, an anticholigernic found in the intensely hallucinogenic jimson weed (or devil’s weed) and datura. Impaired mice were given oral stevioside (250 mg/kg) and tested for memory retention. Memory deficit was largely reversed with administration of stevioside, which also reduced the brain oxidative damage caused by scopolamine.8 Clinically relevant? Perhaps not, but it’s interesting.

A two-year randomized, placebo-controlled study of Chinese patients with mild hypertension (which a rather large swath of society probably suffers from) found that oral stevioside intake significantly reduced systolic and diastolic blood pressure.9 Patients either took a 500 mg capsule of stevioside or a placebo three times a day for two years. The hypertension situation improved across the board and no downsides were reported or detected. Also of note is the fact that slightly more patients in the placebo group developed left ventricular hypertrophy, a pathological thickening of the heart muscle. Of course, another study using far lower doses (up to 15 mg/kg/day) found no anti-hypertensive effects,10 so it appears that the dose is key. Maybe somewhere in the middle works well, as one study in hypertensive dogs showed: they used 200 mg/kg to normalize blood pressure in the canine subjects.11

We can think about stevia as a Primal sugar alternative with some potentially beneficial effects. Kind of like cinnamon or turmeric, we don’t consume it for the calories or as literal fuel for our bodies, but for flavor, variety, and, possibly, the health benefits. It may induce insulin secretion, but it increases insulin sensitivity, reduces blood glucose (i.e., the insulin is doing its job), and does not increase appetite. It’s been used by humans for hundreds of years and by diabetic patients in Asia for decades. I’m a fan of the stuff and recommend it as a Primal way to satisfy a sweet tooth.

What do you guys think of stevia? Love it? Hate it? Have you ever used its potential therapeutic effects? Let me know in the comment section!

(function($) { $("#dfoRxaN").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=674&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfoRxaN" ); })( jQuery );

References

https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/has-stevia-been-approved-fda-be-used-sweetener

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5591507/table/Tab1/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16278783

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20303371

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17744732/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21089163

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20010904

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20871768

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14693305

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16775813

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12444299

The post Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You? Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You? Everything You Need to Know published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[joyfilledwander]

A marketplace is where a community comes together. People gather to buy, sell, eat, drink, laugh, gossip and connect. Around the world, so many family’s livelihoods depend on a thriving market. In America, we don’t really have an equivalent. Farmer’s markets are fun & quirky, but rarely does an entire community do their shopping at one of those. I love living in Asia and regularly experiencing market shopping. The sights, the smells, and the sounds all add to the shopping experience. I’ve been in small markets with just a few sellers and huge overwhelming markets that stretch out for miles. They are each unique to the community they serve. Here’s a few of my favorite markets that I’ve visited while traveling through Asia.

Bali’s Jimbaran Fish Market I probably love this market because it feels like my community market. I lived near it for 2 years, and would shop there regularly. Bali is full of local authentic markets & touristy high priced markets. The Jimbaran Fish Market falls somewhere in between. Jimbaran Beach, located south of Kuta & Seminyak’s famous beaches, is well known for it’s sunsets & it’s seafood. Scores of seafood restaurants line the soft white sand of Jimbaran Beach offering tables in the sand and the freshest seafood around. But the seafood restaurant style dining has never been my thing. It’s always crowded, often over priced, and doesn’t feel authentic. Down the beach from these restaurant rows and towards the airport, you can find the real thing. The Fish Market. Every morning, this is where fisherman bring in their catches from the night before. Giant tuna & massive swordfish can regularly be seen coming out of their boats. These fish are taken into the market where they are sold. Seafood restaurants from all over Bali get their seafood from this market. And so did we. I never ate more seafood than I did when we lived next to this market. But for $2-3 for a fresh tuna fillet, how you could not? We often would go buy fresh filleted seafood caught earlier that morning and cook it up at home as we enjoyed fish tacos or a seafood stir fry. Or we could pay another $1 and let the guys working the giant BBQ grill cook it up for us. The best way to do seafood on Jimbaran Beach is to head down to this market, choose your seafood [from tuna to mahi-mahi to lobster to shrimp to crabs to snapper and more] and grill it up right there at the beach and enjoy your sunset for under $5. With a fresh coconut, of course. This market isn’t just seafood. Fruits & vegetables line the walkways, and at night you can shop for clothes and household items. It really is a gathering spot for the community, and I loved being part of it.

Coconuts

Fish Grills at Jimbaran Fish Market

Jimbaran Fish Market

Fishermen

Fishermen

Jimbaran Fish Market

Qatar’s Souq Waqif We only spent about 24 hours in Doha, Qatar, but had the privilege of staying right in the middle of the most famous marketplace, Souq Waqif. This market is incredible, especially at night when it comes alive. At times I couldn’t tell if it was a local market or a tourist attraction, but then decided it was just both and went with it. I’ve never seen a more diverse market. Looking for local hummus & pita bread? Or how about some spices to cook with at home? Needing a finely woven carpet? Or maybe a pet rabbit or bird? Hoping to find a new outfit for a night out? Wanting to hang out with some falcons or camels? Literally all of these things can be done at Souq Waqif. It’s a massive winding marketplace that is full of cool nooks & crannies to explore. Being able to walk out of the door of our hotel and into this buzzing marketplace was simply fabulous. Even our 4 month old baby was alert with excitement. If I had a week to explore the Souq, it wouldn’t be enough time. Someday I hope to go back to Doha and take in more of it’s beauty, culture and diversity. Also, this is one of the cleanest markets I’ve ever seen in Asia!

Souq Waqif

Souq Waqif

Souq Waqif

Souq Waqif

Camels

Singapore’s Tiong Bahru Hawker Center Market Singapore is a unique spot in Asia, so of course my favorite market in Singapore is unique. To start, Singapore is so diverse. It’s a mix of modern efficiency and ancient traditions. The people of Singapore are a mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Indonesian. The food is a mix of all these cultures and more. While Singapore may be small geographically, nothing about the experience of Singapore is small. Most of the best [and cheapest] food in Singapore can be found at a Hawker Center, which is an oversized food court packed full of food sellers making their best dish. And it’s all delicious. However my favorite market [hawker center] is in my favorite neighborhood of Singapore, Tiong Bahru. This out of the way neighborhood is on the fringes of Chinatown, but is distinctly stylish & hipster. The architecture reminds of 1960’s art deco Miami. Independent bookstore and cozy coffee shops are hidden away in the tall apartment buildings of this neighborhood. And the Hawker Center is something special too. It’s unique round shape perfectly fits in with the style of the neighborhood. On the bottom floor, fresh flowers ooze out into the walkways. You can also shop for produce and household items as well. On the top floor, treat yourself to some delicious dumplings or Hainanese Chicken Rice, a particular speciality of the area. The painted wall murals continue the creativity throughout the whole Hawker Center, and there’s even more great street art to be found around Tiong Bahru. When in Singapore, make the effort to get over to Tiong Bahru and experience this Hawker Center. I know I always do!

Tiong Bahru Flowers

Tiong Bahru Food

Tiong Bahru Wall Art

Tiong Bahru Wall Art

Hawker Center in Tiong Bahru

Bali’s Sukawati Art Market Another Bali market makes my list because, of course. This market is unique because it isn’t well known for it’s food or yummy treats, but it’s handicrafts. Ubud has made a name for itself in the art scene, but has really been overcome with tourism. If I am looking for handmade creative items from the Balinese culture, I’ll skip Ubud and head straight to Sukawati. This little spot on the map isn’t too far from Ubud itself, but feels like a different place entirely. The market isn’t limited to one building, but one long street full of shops selling their specific handicraft. From rattan bags to wooden knives to shadow puppets to home decor, Sukawati Art Market is a must see. From what I’ve heard, many sellers in the Ubud markets go to Sukawati to supply their shops, and then hike up the prices! As with most markets in Bali, you’ll still need to bargain down to get the best price [insider tip: start negotiating with half of what they offer]. I love browsing the creativity and artistry of the Balinese people. I am constantly in awe of their skills. Of course, you can still find the colorful sarongs and Bintang tank tops that are unavoidable in Bali, but at the least the experience is a little less touristy.

Beijing’s Street Food Night Market I almost didn’t include this market. But it was so unlike any other market I had ever seen, that I had to include it. Maybe market isn’t the exact right word, because it’s more of a walking street of food vendors. China is full of these. But the one we visited in Beijing truly stood out. It was right in the middle of a bustling downtown shopping area, and the bright lights of nearby billboards and shop windows illuminated the sidewalk all around us. Like most parts of China, it was packed. Stall after stall had lines to buy each dish. We tried delicious dumplings and tasty noodles. I took a million photos of the cutest steamed buns decorated to resemble animals and other objects. And then we appreciated the unknown meats on sticks and scary bugs on sticks. This is about where I stopped trying things! My husband is much more an adventurous eater than I am, so he braved the fried scorpions. While I didn’t try the most extreme items available, I did enjoy seeing how the Chinese people enjoy their street food.

Beijing Street Food Market

Beijing Street Food Market

Beijing Street Food Market

Beijing Street Food Market

Thailand’s Chiang Mai Walking Street Night Market Thailand may do markets, especially night markets, better than anywhere else in Asia. Every night we spent in Thailand, no matter the city, there was always a bustling night market. It was the best place to eat and shop in town, no question. And they aren’t just for tourists, but so many locals were enjoy pad thai right alongside us. A favorite market experience in Thailand is in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Every Sunday night there’s a walking street night market and it’s always packed. There’s loads of vendors selling handicrafts, carts selling food, and even spas doing foot massage right on the street for about $1. It combines so many of favorite things…eating, shopping & massage! Surrounded by Buddhist temples, you can wander through the busy streets and browse everything from beautifully painted paper umbrellas to handmade jewelry. There’s so much beautiful artistry in Thai handicrafts. It’s a fun experience if you find yourself in Chiang Mai on a Sunday night. Maybe it’s on the touristy side of Thai culture, but it’s still a good time.

Chiang Mai markets

Chiang Mai markets

Chiang Mai markets

Chiang Mai markets

Chiang Mai markets

Do you have a favorite market experience? Have you been to any of these? What Asian market should I check out next? Let me know in the comments below!

How much do you love #shopping at markets when #traveling #overseas? Check out this list of my favorite #markets in #Asia! A marketplace is where a community comes together. People gather to buy, sell, eat, drink, laugh, gossip and connect.

#bali #beijing #chiang mai #culture #markets #Qatar #shopping #Singapore

[cuppaofme]

Anxiety and depression

Here’s the timeline

7-10 years old - Primary school - I had a strong sense for justice and I also had a very religious class teacher who spoke a lot about the bible. I never turned religious but one of her biblical sayings stuck with me: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I stood up for other kids when they were being bullied or even if just talking about them behind their backs but otherwise I stayed in the sidelines.

11-12 years old - I begged my mother that we would move to another city. At that age I skipped every party and gathering as possible because I felt uncomfortable being truthfully my vulnerable self around other people. Later on I thought that was probably because I was generally restless and had a sense for adventure. 

14-16 years old - Secondary school - I was a hopeless romantic and mostly enjoyed my time alone tormenting myself with it. I didn’t really have a friend group. I had separate friends although we’d all been. My then best friend and I had a notebook where we wrote letters to each other. One time I forgot it on a table when we left the classroom, rushed back to find it but it was not there. Those were my then deepest secrets. The week after, the notebook was returned to the spot it was taken from, with a note along the lines: “Really? You are old enough to know this is bs.”

16-18 years old - High school - I had a small group of friends. I always felt that we were the outcasts, the nerds... We were the people who dressed up at every possible occasion: hippies at a carnival, ice hockey fans at the final. I loved arts and at the end of high school got an award for it. I met my very first boyfriend online and decided to apply for university close to him, 2 hours away from home.

19 years old - University - I moved away from home. I called my mum 10 minutes after they left crying, because I didn’t know how to be alone and I cut my finger while cutting carrots. I started a BA in media and communication. I had taken an interest in photography in high school and took a voluntary film photography course. In it, we had to decide a theme. Mine was the feeling of emptiness after moving away from home. It was personal. I hated to come back to the apartment and not have anyone to talk to. I teared up when I presented the theme to others in the course and they smothered their laughter. I still sometimes torment myself about that.

20 years old - I broke up with my first boyfriend because we wanted different things from our lives. I had a strong need to explore the world and go to exchange in Italy. He wanted to be lawyer and stay where he had been born and bred. My University didn’t have an exchange contract with any school in Italy so I found and arranged it out of my own back. 

21-22 years old - I lived a year in Italy. I studied a little, learned Italian, lived a lot and fell in love with tiramisu, freedom, my own potential and someone who knew how to do romance. I became part of a love triangle and a group of hippies. I travelled more within that year than I probably had within my whole life prior. I had my first panic attacks that I can remember. Later on, I realised that what then felt like a romance for a lifetime was just a game. I refuse to think of that year as anything but a song for freedom and love. Him - him, I can forget.

23 years old - Just 6 months after coming back from Italy, I went to Spain for an internship. I kept exploring. I experienced what betrayal feels like when my closest friend there decided to go for a guy she knew I liked and who I’d spent a lot of time with. The moment I saw them kissing in front of me, in a bar we had all arrived to together - it felt like from a movie. They didn’t see anything wrong with it. He was supposed to stay at mine that night. I read her messages to him on his phone when I got home and I was so angry at myself. He wanted me to get over it because he liked to talk to me - I was understanding. She wanted to act like it never happened because she had cheated on her boyfriend and was in denial about it. I refused both. I felt alone and misunderstood. I feel others around me thought I was overly dramatic - except for one. Sirkka (RIP) always looked out for me. I graduated university later on that year.

24-25 years old - I had a terrible flat mate who created an atmosphere of verbal abuse. I refuged to a friend of mine who was kind enough to share her studio flat with me while I tried to sort my things out. It was the peak of the economic crisis and I couldn’t get a job. I escaped by moving back home for 6 months because I got a government backed internship in an advertisement agency. I worked as a volunteer in music and film festivals to keep life interesting. The very same agency lobbed me to a high profile music company to work as management assistant.

26 years old - I had been in a bad relationship for 1.5 years - we fought and made up - it was exhausting. It was obvious that the relationship had an expiry date and we were on a break (once again) to figure out if we should stay together. I went on my very first holiday outside of Europe on my own to figure myself out. Little did I know, I also went to meet the British love of my life on the beach of Koh Samui. It’s probably obvious what happened to that bad relationship.

27 years old - We lived had lived in a long distance relationship for just under a year. It was expensive but we saw each other every 1-2 months. He took a career break and came to live in my homeland with me for 8 months. We lived in a studio apartment in a calm neighbourhood. I hated my job. My boss released her stress onto my by shouting at me. I let her. My boyfriend was eternally understanding at my increasing and constant exhaustion and anxiety. We held hands wherever we went.

28 years old - I moved to UK to 2 years after we met for us to be together. It was an emotional move. Only one friend came to my going away party and even that was because it was her birthday and we had the party together. Before settling, we did a 1.5 month trip to South East Asia and Australia to influential places that I continue to talk about to this day. I had never been interested in UK for travel - let alone to live there. I struggled the first year. I found it difficult to connect with anyone. It felt like I was dating again, I didn’t know how to connect with people in a long term way. Every time someone told me they’d like to hang out again and I pulled out my calendar, the standard response was: “Let’s see.” And normally I would not hear back from them.

29-30 years old - I worked at a chain restaurant and the mail distribution centre before settling into Tesco as a customer assistant. I finally started to make connections with people I worked with and the attention I got, soothed my lonely mind. I knew I couldn’t talk to anyone at work on a deeper level but yet still I let them affect me and I let it go too far allowing it to affect my relationship. We broke up. I got into another bad relationship that ended up with me having to call the policy (3 times) because he either threatened me or to kill himself. I travelled to Vietnam and Cambodia to find myself again. I didn’t. Later on that year, the love of my life and I got back together. Or maybe more like - he allowed me back into his life. I’m the one who asked to break up. I’m the one who asked to get back together. Thankfully, our strong connection lasted for those horrible 9 months and if anything I believe it grew stronger. A month later, I started cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) because he arranged it after I had had a month of panic attacks.

31 years old - I hid my relationship at work. I didn’t want to be the shop gossip anymore and I didn’t trust anyone around me. The few friends I had made through him had made their stand clear during our break up although it was a very friendly one and we specifically said we didn’t want it to affect any other relationships. I felt so out of place, tired, confused and lonely yet I felt so deep gratitude towards him and my family for supporting me through what felt like my personal hell.

32 years old - I’ve now lived in the UK for 4 years. I’ve had a round of CBT, we’ve turned a basic builders van into a camper and there are months when I feel incredibly live and happy. Those months are often followed by another full of confusion, sometimes panic attacks and anxiety. I feel like I’m the age where I should now be thinking of having a family, be excited about life and build a home. The only thing I’m 100% sure about is my relationship and my family. The rest feels like constant juggle with bullshit expectations of either me, someone else or society. I don’t feel like I have anyone else around me who know me and the question I keep asking myself sometimes is - who would come to my wedding. Who would want to celebrate alongside of me. Does that even matter? Have I been such a bad friend that even the people who I thought were friends for life, have now taken their distance. Who am I? What has made me this person? I used to be the forever positive romantic who always wanted to help and support others. Am I not that anymore?

[nightrainlily]

DAY SEVEN: ART IN CROISSANTS, PERFUME, AND SCULPTURE

we’re old pros now. we woke up early and caught the train at three bridges to Victoria, then beelined to the Victoria tube line, took that to Green Park, then took the Piccadilly line to Leicester Square, then walked to Covent Garden. if you can keep up with all that, you’re a local.

we stopped for breakfast and finally coffee. we haven’t had coffee since we left Sweden, and we became really caffeine dependent on the dark, smooth Swedish blends during our stay there. going cold turkey was hard, and Joelle and I were feeling it. we each got our favorite drink (a latte for Jo, a cappuccino for my mother, and an americano for me), and were absolutely overjoyed when they arrived at the table. I had strong crema. I knew it was going to be a good day.

my breakfast was also delicious (I’m going to talk about food a whole lot in this post, so if that’s not your thing, you might want to skip to day eight). I had a broiled grapefruit and granola, which may sound simple but really was just so very satisfying. side note: some people say that almond milk tastes like dirty water and that it’s terrible, but honestly I could drink it by the gallon. it’s so creamy! and smooth! and delicious! Joelle had coconut yogurt with pistachios (we all agreed pistachios are a seriously underrated yogurt topping) and this croissant that I could actually hear flake when she bit it. Joelle loves croissants—she gets excited thinking about how good the croissants are going to be in France—and my mother and I are encouraging her to start a croissant blog, the content of which will be ratings of croissants by flake, butter content, taste, cost, pull value, size, golden brownness, etc. she tells me this one was an eight out of ten; too much pull and too little flake, but the coloring was a perfect buttery bronze. once our caffeine kicked in, we were in high, high spirits. way up there.

the three of us are fond of quieter, cleaner spaces, like Kensington and Covent Garden. we walked through tea shops, parfumeries, and chocolatiers. the rows of stalls of the jubilee market stand on the outskirts of the square, where artisans and merchants sell their wares. I bought a tiny stamp of an “a” in the art deco style to use on my letter seals. oh, the things I do for my pen pals.

back to the topic of perfume: the word itself is derived from latin which translates to “through smoke.” Romans, Persians, and Arabs each developed their own versions of the latin original. what we call perfume in the states is actually a range of products which include eau de cologne (seven percent concentration), eau de toilette (ten percent concentration), eau de parfum (fifteen to twenty percent concentration), and actual perfume (forty percent concentration). I gravitate towards clean but also spicy scents; the one I’m wearing the most right now is coipaba balsam, palo santo, and cyprus. I found three blends today that I liked: a bergamot, oudwood, and birchwood one; a bergamot, agar wood, and geranium one; and a lemon, camellia leaves, and iris one. I only recently started to appreciate perfume and the niceness of a scent. I’m a musician, so when I think about art, I most often think of sound, but of course visual art is the most prominent form, and performance as well. only recently have I realized that the sense of smell can also factor into artistic expression as well; in the same way that a chef crafts a sensory experience, someone who crafts smells is also an artist.

after we felt we’d fully explored the Covent Garden area, we walked to the British Museum. we sort of came around the side, and then suddenly it was looming over us, stretching on for city blocks. its architectural influences include the greek revival style, which manifests in huge portico with forty four columns overlooking the street. the entrance opens onto the great court, a circular space in the center of the museum that is five stories high, centered around the reading room. the light filtering in from the cloudy sky today gave the marble room a gray cast, which seemed to me perfect museum-viewing weather.

some of the British Museum’s most renowned pieces are from ancient Greece, which include The Thinker and remains of the Parthenon. the only other public viewing opportunity for the Parthenon is in Greece, where the rest of the pieces still remain. the figures especially are exquisite—the folds of dresses fluttering in the wind, the detail of facial hair, the realness of human anatomy and movement. the ability to turn stone into figures that feel truly alive is something to witness and appreciate, if you ever get the chance.

the other section where we spent the most time was the Asian exhibit. our highlights from those rooms were the Chinese pottery, incredibly well preserved and incredibly detailed, pieces from South Asia centered around Hinduism and Buddhism, and the life-size model of a Korean scholar’s home. whereas the Greek rooms were mostly white marble, the Asian art was vibrant in both design and coloration. I saw the sculpture of the god Shiva, dancing in a ring of flame which conveys the Hindu belief that time is cyclical. some postage stamps in the modern section of the room show Kazi Nazrul islam, a Indian poet during the Indian revolution. the special room of jade sculptures had pieces ranging in size and delicacy, but all were beautiful and reminded me of the small gifts my grandfather used to bring home from Korea.

I didn’t even talk about the Rosetta Stone, but you get the gist of that. it was amazing. I felt like I was in the presence of a god.

I keep a list of professions I would pursue if I could live infinitely and money were no object. it includes: florist, music producer, magazine editor, professor, and now, museum curator. I love organization and the process of finding beautiful or interesting things. my blog, I suppose, is a form of curation, and my playlists definitely scratch that itch as well. to become an expert on something, to know more about it than almost anyone in the world, is a gift which gives you the power to enrich peoples’ lives. in his book The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell discusses three types of people: connectors, mavens, and salesmen. I would like to think I’m a maven, because I so enjoy learning about things and then disseminating that information to specific outlets that will most appreciate it. I think I get it from my mom, who reads the newspaper and clips articles for the people she loves. I take that concept to the next level. and being a museum curator would be the next next level.

although we didn’t get through every room, or even every floor, of exhibits, the museum was set to close and we were dead on our feet. we set off towards a row of restaurants, and as I looked around on the map, I saw a By Chloe. I’ve wanted to eat at a By Chloe for literally years, but the locations in L.A. and New York never quite made it into the family vacation itinerary. by the time we got there we were so hungry we could hardly stand, but just seeing the menu rejuvenated me. a lot of people ask me if being vegan is hard because I miss certain foods, but restaurants like By Chloe really fill the gap. I ordered a spicy Thai salad (on brand much?) and a side of mac and cheese, because I feel like if you’re a vegan offered mac and cheese and you don’t take the opportunity to at least try it, you’re probably doing it wrong. my mother got the same salad as me and a cauliflower soup, and Joelle got a taco salad (also on brand. another side note: Joelle’s list of her favorite foods does not include any Mexican dishes, but she’s ordered it consistently when we’re out and says that’s what she’s missed most since leaving home. this girl loves her Mex). and we got sweet potato and regular fries. with beet ketchup. and chipotle aioli. basically, we were feasting and I was in heaven. I’m always grateful when my friends and family compromise and eat at vegan restaurants, so thanks for fulfilling my dreams, guys!

then we stopped for gelato, and although I didn’t get any I’m going to talk about it anyway because it looked really good: my mother got coffee and dark chocolate, and Joelle got cheesecake and dark chocolate (another one of Joelle’s favorite, most beloved foods: cheesecake). there are gelato shops, and good gelato too, on every corner in this city. we love that.

and although we were in an unfamiliar area, we walked a block or two and found an underground station, read the map, and took it home. the London underground is by far the easiest public transportation system I’ve ever used, and I so appreciate the frequent stops, clean trains, logical signage, and ease of access to other lines. we’ve been able to get around entirely on our own, without any major mishaps. like we haven’t even gotten lost once. I count that as a victory.

today was rich. I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re feeling full-up of art, culture, and good food.

signing off,

amaya

1. Dedicated to the One I Love - The Mamas and the Papas

2. But Not for Me - Chet Baker

3. Something Soon - Car Seat Headrest

#europe2018

[foundtheworl]

New Post has been published on Found The World

New Post has been published on https://foundtheworld.com/divers-guide-east-bali/

A Diver’s Guide to East Bali for Scuba Diving Lovers

Bali reached international fame some time ago. It has long been a destination for surfers, tropical island lovers, and those looking for a temporary (sometimes permanent) escape from reality. In this sense, Bali is old news – however, Bali never gets old.

This South East Asian island has a certain mystic about it that has been drawing travelers, tourists, and ex-pats for decades. Is it the ocean’s swell? The unique mix of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity? Or perhaps it’s the near-perfect weather, practically guaranteeing year-round beach lounging.

No one would blame you for taking off to Bali. I’m guilty of it a few times myself. But it wasn’t for any of the above-listed reasons. While I certainly have nothing against surfing and sunbathing, my draw to Bali was for a completely different reason: Scuba diving.

What’s so good about diving in Bali?

I’ve done quite a bit of diving in South East Asia. As an employed dive instructor, I’ve jumped around from the east and west coast of Thailand to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia. I’ve gone on multiple dive vacations to exotic places like Borneo, to the deep waters of the Philippines, to random, unplanned dive trips off of Koh Rong, Cambodia.

But there was always something about the idea of Bali that excited me more than all these places. Bali’s got it all; reef and wreck dives, deep water, current, massive schools of fish, sharks, turtles, small and crazy looking creatures, and tons of other tropical marine life.

Starting point

I was traveling with my boyfriend during my first trip to Bali. We were both employed in Malaysia as dive instructors and were in need of a short vacation. What better place, we thought, than Bali. It was just a short flight away and we were especially excited to check out some new dive sites.

We flew into Depansar International Airport and immediately jumped in a van to take us northeast.

I’d heard a lot about Bali, particularly the crazy party scene of Kuta, located in the south of the island near the airport. Kuta attracts backpackers and young Australians with promises of wild and cheap beach parties. Not really my scene anymore. We decided to skip this party animal’s hot-spot and head to a quieter part of the island.

TIP: If you’re not into the tacky tourist scene, get as far away from Kuta/Depansar/Seminyak as possible. Built up resorts, westernized restaurants, and countless souvenir shops as far as the eye can see are all you’ll find here.

So, where should you go? I’m glad you asked…

A Peaceful Haven

We’d done some research before arriving in Bali and knew we didn’t want to stay in the south with the 18-year old spring breakers. We settled on a small village called Amed, a 2 ½ hour drive from Depansar Airport, on the far east coast of the island. It looked small, quaint, quiet, and most importantly, was in close proximity to some amazing dive sites.

Amed

When we arrived in Amed, it was exactly what I’d be hoping for; narrow roads, mom and pop style restaurants, and cozy accommodation options. We picked Kadek Homestay, a small family run guesthouse in the middle of the “main drag” (if you could call it that). The property was shrouded in a garden jungle and backed directly onto the beach.

Kadek Homestay – garden and sea view                    

The first of many special things I noticed about Amed was the black, volcanic sand. It makes sense once you look up and see the powerful and prominent Mount Agung towering over Amed. The dark color of the sand gives the whole beach an edgier, more curious appearance– I couldn’t wait to see how that translated underwater!

Viewpoint over Jemeluk Bay with Mount Agung in the background

Diving in Amed

Amed is, by far, the most laid-back place for diving I have ever visited. You would be hard-pressed to find a place that’s more easy-going.

As card-carrying PADI dive instructors, we had all our own scuba gear with us. The only things we needed were a few weights and two tanks. We wandered into a dive shop just a few hundred meters from our guesthouse and chatted with the employees for a few minutes. They recommended a few dive sites that were just down the road and off the beach. Because we were dive professionals, we were able to go diving safely on our own. The dive shop rented us two tanks for $5 each and threw in a couple of kilo weights for free.

We stacked the tanks sideways on the floor of our rented scooter, wore as much of our gear as possible, and balanced the rest on the handlebars as we took off in the direction of the beach.

Pyramids

We found the spot the folks in the dive shop had described to us – a dive site known as “Pyramids.” We assembled our gear on the side of the road, used the references the dive shop had given us for an entry point and walked into the sea.

As soon as we were underwater it felt like we were on the cusp of a night dive; the black sand and twinkling sun on the surface was reminiscent of a sunset dive. We descended down, looking for the man-made pyramid-like structures we were told about. As the current pushed us along, the first pyramid came into view.

Suddenly there was a pop of color. It came from the bright soft corals that consumed the structure. Angelfish, moorish idol, trumpet fish, and damselfish flitted happily around. Upon closer inspection, we found dozens of small, colorful creatures like nudibranch and shrimp.

After a few laps, we drifted along to the next pyramid, then the next. More awesome soft corals, sand-burrowing string rays and flounders, and tons of colorful fish.

After we surfaced we had a quick swim to shore, dissembled our gear and hopped on the bike again. I couldn’t get over how such a simple and easy procedure could yield such a great dive. I didn’t know it yet, but it was about to get easier and better….

 Big smiles after our first dive in Bali

The U.S.S. Liberty

If you’ve done any research about diving in Bali, you’ve read about this world-class wreck dive. The U.S.S. Liberty sits literally just off the beach in Tulamban, the neighboring village of Amed.

We decided to dive the U.S.S. Liberty the next day at sunrise in order to beat the crowds – as the most sought-after dive in Bali, we knew by mid-day the site would be mobbed with divers.

We managed to get our hands on a phone number to a local who delivered tanks to dive sites. We called, thinking this was too good to be true. Sure enough, the man on the other end confirmed the story. So, we thought we’d push our luck – did he have 15-liter tanks instead of the typical 12-liter? Yes, he did. Did he have Nitrox? Of course. Could he deliver two 15-liter Nitrox tanks to the U.S.S. Liberty dive site tomorrow morning at 6 am? No problem.

The next morning, we met our “tank guy” in the parking lot. He rolled up with our tanks and an analyzer to check the oxygen level of our Nitrox tanks. All good. He stated for us to call him when we were finished and he’d come pick up the tanks. Our dive at one of the most famous dive sites in the world cost us $7 each.

Gearing up for U.S.S. Liberty in the parking lot among snoozing locals

Once our gear was assembled we walked down to the beach. A local pointed us in the general direction of the wreck.

Walking down the beach to the dive site – you can see how close the dive site is to the beach by the other divers already in the water, about to descend.        

The Dive

We experienced one of the best dives of our lives in the next 80-minutes. The wreck itself is staggering. It’s 120-meters long and has been sunk for over 50 years. The top of the wreck sits at 5-meters and the deepest point is roughly 30-meters.

There are many wide-open areas to safely swim through, over, and under the ship. The shimmering black sand sets a fantastic background for the vibrant soft coral that has grown all over the wreck. The pink, white, and purple fluorescents seem to light up the whole area.

Cruising over the top of Liberty      

Exploring the inside of Liberty

And, oh my goodness, the marine life – schools of snapper, trevally, and hump head parrot fish patrol the grounds. Colorful angelfish, giant puffers, and porcupine fish drift lazily by. Red-tooth triggerfish flutter around and sea snakes twist their way by. The wreck is also crawling with exotically colored nudibranch and shrimp. The site is like an ancient, underwater playground. Simply beautiful.

One of the coolest parts of the dive was the garden of snake eels in the shallows. We spent almost 10 minutes observing their hide-and-seek behaviors at the end of the dive.

Snake Eel Garden in the shallows of U.S.S. Liberty

We loved it so much we dived it again the next day.

Japanese Wreck

Another ridiculously accessible shore dive in Amed is the Japanese Wreck. It’s shallow and often used as a snorkeling site as well. We’d heard great things about it, even though the maximum depth is only 12m, we wanted to give it go.

The dive is laid-back and boasts lots of small critters, like nudibranch and colorful reef fish. As usual, big soft corals and sea fans, all brilliantly colored. If you’re up for a longer dive, swim off the slope until about 35-meters – there’s a coral plateau waiting to be discovered.

Jemeluk Bay

We also wanted to explore the bay which was just a 5-minute scooter ride from our guesthouse. Jemeluk Bay is a large area hosting several relatively easy dive sites.

On the eastern side of the bay is Jemeluk Drop-Off AKA Jemeluk Wall. As the name suggests, the rocky, jagged reef drops down to depths of roughly 40m or more. We followed the reef with our right shoulder and surfaced at the eastern point of the bay. Another great dive with loads of healthy barrel sponges, soft corals, and swarms of small tropical reef fish – especially in the current at the end of the dive. Look out into the blue for the chance to spot some bigger pelagics!

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This literally just barely scratches the surface of the diving in East Bali. There are some truly amazing local dives that we didn’t have time for, and some that lie even further off Amed’s east coast; Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida. If you’re looking for some intense diving with strong currents and mind-blowing marine life – head here after Amed.

The diving we experienced in Amed and Tulamban guaranteed that we’ll return again one day. Not only was the diving top-notch, the ease in which we were able to dive was incredible. Of course, if you’re not a certified and very experienced diver, I would never suggest diving on your own. And in Amed, there’s no need to anyway – there are plenty of small, local diving shops dying to take you beneath the surface.

Amed and the rest of Bali are stunning regardless of whether or not you’re a scuba diver. From viewpoints, scenic motorbike drives, Hindu cliffside temples, miles of beaches, and consistently epic swell – Bali never disappoints.

#Amed #Bali #Beach #Coral #Heaven #Indonesian Island #Island #Paradise #Peaceful #Scuba Diving #Surfing #U.S.S Liberty

[fadingfartconnoisseur]

The Best Mother-Daughter Getaways Around the World

Want to plan something fun for your mom? She deserves it. Skip the flowers, it’s time for an upgrade! After everything that she has done for you, make this the year that you treat her to a special getaway.

I moved to Cape Town earlier this year, basically on the other side of the world from my mom, and I miss her so much– especially with Mother’s Day right around the corner. She recently came out to Cape Town to visit, but as soon as she left, I was busy thinking of where our next Mother Daughter getaway could be.

From a cooking class in Barcelona, to wine tasting in California, to a yoga retreat in Bali, there’s endless options to pamper the special woman in your life.

Here are my all-time favorite mother-daughter getaways around the world!

– Wine Tasting –

Napa Valley: Is there any better way to bond with Mom than spending time over a bottle of wine? Napa Valley is the ultimate spot for giggling over glasses and finding your new favorite wine.

South Africa: I am totally head over heels for my new home country and its incredible wine region. My mom and I took a wine safari up Table Mountain, and it was such a great experience. Be sure to check out Stellenbosch too– it’s easily one of the world’s best wine regions.

Temecula: I couldn’t leave out my hometown! Full of family-owned wineries, Temecula Valley is one of California’s greatest treasures, and just down the street from where I grew up. You can find more than fifty wine varietals in a laid-back and fun environment.

Croatia: One of the most underrated areas of Europe, Croatia has incredible wine and flawless beaches. If you are looking for sun, fun, and vineyards, get to the coastal region of Istria.

– Enjoy High Tea –

London: High tea has been a tradition since the nineteenth century, and there is an endless array of amazing places to go for cucumber sandwiches and a proper English cuppa. From five-star hotels to quaint cafés, London has it all.

Bangkok: When you think of Thailand, high tea probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but there are some incredible internationally themed high teas around the city. Think Moroccan tea with French macarons.

Sydney: Have you ever seen a ten-page tea menu before? Welcome to Sydney! This is the perfect city for a mother-daughter getaway. Look out over the harbor, sip the finest exotic teas, and nibble at a scone.

Dubai: Dubai is the ultimate luxe city. Go for high tea on top of the world. In the world’s tallest atrium at the Skyview Bar in the Burj Al Arab, you’ll have the view of a lifetime.

Madrid: Go for a Spanglish-style high tea at any one of the cafés dotting the city. You can easily pass a lazy afternoon listening to Spanish guitar and sipping tea in one of the city’s many lush gardens. Check out my Madrid guide here!

– Plan a Spa Day –

Bali: Does your mom work hard? Then she deserves an escape to Bali! This tropical paradise is definitely one of my fave spots on the planet to indulge and treat myself.

Québec: There’s nothing like working up a sweat during a long day out on the Canadian ski slopes and then unwinding in a world-class spa like the Scandinave Spa in Mont-Tremblant.

Cancun: For a cheap and cheery spa break that’s just a quick flight from the United States, this is the place to go. And, while you can find great prices in Cancun, there are also five-star spas that will make you feel like a pampered goddess.

Palm Springs: California is full of amazing spas, but few can compete with Palm Springs. With natural healing mineral waters and a stunning mountain backdrop, the city is full of yoga retreats and luxury resort spas.

– Take a Cooking Class –

Chiang Mai: Whenever I travel, I make it a priority to check out the local food. It’s especially fun in Asia because the local food is often very different from what you find at Asian restaurants across the Western world. Thailand is one place that’s worth visiting for the food alone, and Chiang Mai is a perfect spot to find some cooking tips.

Tokyo: Did you know that it takes ten years to become a proper sushi chef in Japan? Your mom and you can learn a trick or two from these guys! I took a cooking class with Traveling Spoon, where locals teach you traditional dishes and show you the way through the markets– it was such a cool experience!

Barcelona: Get a local guide to take you through the vibrant markets of Barcelona, teach you the secrets of Spanish cooking, and show you why food is at the heart of Spanish culture.

Tuscany: Who doesn’t love Italian food? Forget about ripping open a bag of dried noodles and dumping on a jar of sauce. It’s time to learn how to cook like an Italian grandma.

New Orleans: Think American food is boring? Then you’ve never been to New Orleans! This city is a world unto itself with a culture and culinary scene unlike anywhere else.

– Go Camping –

Iceland: Traveling Iceland in a camper van is definitely one of my best travel memories, and I’d love to do it again with my mom. This breathtaking country has a natural beauty incomparable to any other place you’ve visited.

US National Parks: The United States is full of so many amazing national parks, like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. When you’re from the United States, it’s easy to forget how geographically diverse and dynamic the country is. Take your mom for a camping adventure to fall in love with your homeland all over again.

British Columbia: Our neighbors to the north have so much to offer. From the vivacious cityscape of Vancouver to the spectacular mountains of Whistler, this province has it all. Enjoy a fun city break, and then pitch a tent in the mountains.

Galapagos: A nature lover’s deam come true, the Galapagos Islands deserve a place on every traveler’s bucket list. Far away from it all and without all of the distractions of modern life, this is an ideal spot to reconnect with your mom.

  – Go Scuba Diving –

Indonesia: Did you know that Indonesia is made up of more than 17,500 island? It’s a beach lover’s paradise, and the beauty of Indonesia isn’t limited to its shores. Once you’ve dived beneath the surface, you’ll see a whole other world.

Oahu: I don’t need to tell you that the Hawaii Islands are awesome. If you can pull yourself away from the beauty above sea level, do it; the sea life is truly unforgettable.

Bimini Islands: Just fifty miles from Miami, the crystal clear waters off of the Bimini Islands are the best spots in the Bahamas to go diving. Whether your mom loves diving or is thinking about taking the plunge for the first time, she’ll love it.

Maldives: On top of having some of the best beaches on the planet, the Maldives has incredible diving. You’ll see whale sharks everywhere, and there are turquoise waters as far as the eye can see. Watch my diving video here!

Belize: A massive sinkhole off of the coast of Belize, the Great Blue Hole is widely considered to be the world’s greatest spot for scuba diving. I stayed at Hamanasi Dive Resort and it was the perfect divers’ oasis.

– Hit the Beach –

Brazil: Brazil is home to some of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen! Plan a getaway for Florianopolis.

San Diego: Maybe I’m a bit biased toward my hometown, but I think the beaches of San Diego can hold their own among the top coastlines in the world.

Costa Rica: With lush rainforests, dramatic volcanoes, and picture-perfect beaches, Costa Rica is a dream beach vacation.

Bahamas: What could be a better way to treat your mom than a Caribbean beach getaway? Head to the Bahamas for a guaranteed good time and an unforgettable bonding experience.

British Virgin Islands: With year-round perfect weather, the British Virgin Islands is another place in the Caribbean that you have to see.

French Polynesia: From Tahiti to Bora Bora, French Polynesia is absolutely heavenly. Go beach hopping, and make memories with Mom that you’ll cherish for a lifetime.

– Take a Yoga Class –

Bali: On top of having dream beaches, Bali is one of the best spots in the world to go on a yoga retreat. Whether you are an old pro or a total newbie, you’ll have an incredible time.

India: Home of yoga, India is a must-see for any yogi. Take Mom to the southern city of Mysuru for a yoga retreat that she will never forget.

Costa Rica: It’s not all about the beaches! Costa Rica is also a top stop for mastering your headstand while looking out onto paradise.

California: Famous for its yoga retreats and new age vibe, Ojai is famous for its yoga sessions and the Ojai Music Festival in June.

– Shopping –

Los Angeles: Whether you want to go thrift shopping or hit up the ultraluxe stores of Rodeo Drive, Los Angeles is the place to go for a Mom-and-me shopping day.

Dubai: A mecca for shoppers, Dubai is the place where you can buy anything and everything. Grab some gold from the vending machine, and check out some of the most ostentatious sites in the world.

Paris: Is there anything chicer than a shopping trip to Paris? Treat your mom to some haute couture and a few selfies on the Champs-Élysée.

London: Another European favorite, London is the place to go for fun shopping. Get Mom a souvenir from Harrods, and then shop Oxford Street until you drop.

SHOP my favorite Mother’s Day gifts!

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The Best Mother-Daughter Getaways Around the World is a post from: The Blonde Abroad

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