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INTERVIEW CHUAH GUAT ENG: Robert Raymer Chats with Malaysian Author Chuah Guat Eng on Writing and Publishing her Novels
I first met Chuah Guat Eng, if I'm not mistaken, when Sharon Bakar invited both of us to read our respective work at a Reading@Seksan event in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. I had also picked up a signed copy of her first novel, Echoes of Silence (1994, 2008), which has the distinction of being the first novel written in English by a Malaysian woman. Her second novel, Days of Change (2010), a sequel, made the long list for International Dublin Literary Award in 2012. She is currently working on Whispers of Truth, her third novel that continues the series.
Guat Eng read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Germany, and received a Ph.D. in 2008 from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for her thesis, From Conflict to Insight: A Zen-based Reading Procedure for the Analysis of Fiction. She was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Universiti Putra Malaysia from January 2011 to March 2013, focusing on Malaysian novels in English. Currently she teaches part-time at University of Nottingham Malaysia and at the Faculty of Cinematic Arts, Multimedia University Johor on subjects related to literature and creative writing.
She has also published three collections of short stories, Tales from the Baram River (2001), The Old House and Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014).
Praise for Echoes of Silence…
'…an intellectual as well as a tender novel about love…entertaining...intelligent…well-crafted…' – T. Dorall, New Straits Times
'…more postmodern than at first appears…the most accomplished Malaysian novel to date, a new and cultured voice…' – Jun Mo, Far Eastern Economic Review
"In March 1970, as a direct result of the May 1969 racial riots, I left Malaysia." Thus begins Echoes of Silence, the story of Lim Ai Lian, a Chinese Malaysian. While studying in Germany, she falls in love with Michael Templeton, an English gentleman brought up in the district of Ulu Banir, where his father, Jonathan Templeton, owns a plantation. While trying to solve a murder, Ai Lian, learns about racial prejudice, truth and deception, womanhood and love, and how past silences can echo into the present.
RR: Your self-published novel Echoes of Silence is often cited as the first novel written in English by a Malaysian woman. Since then there have been several others, including Preeta Samarasan's Evening is the Whole Day and Bernice Chauly's Once We Were There.
Self-publishing a novel nowadays, even via e-book, often makes financial sense for a number of writers. Some have even landed a traditional publisher because of their self-publishing success. What made you decide to self-publish your first novel in 1994? And your second novel in 2010? What have you gained and what had you lost, if anything, in choosing to self-publish your work?
Guat Eng: In 1994, I couldn't find a single publisher based in Malaysia interested in publishing novels; all major publishers (e.g. Heinemann) had either shut down or severely curtailed their Malaysian operations, perhaps because of political unrest as well as the extremely restrictive Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984. Of the UK and US publishers I approached, only two responded, one from each country. Both wrote glowingly about the parts that have to do with the colonial past but couldn't see the point of the parts about contemporary Malaysia. Both suggested I rewrite the novel focusing only on the colonial past, the Japanese Occupation, and the Emergency. Since I saw no point in writing that kind of novel, I chose to self-publish – not because I wanted to see my name in print, but because I already knew I was going to write a sequel and feared that if I didn't have the first one printed and out of the way, I would be fiddling with it until Doomsday – like Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch.
In 2001, I accepted an offer by a local, well-established publishing house to publish my collection of retold Sarawak animal stories, Tales from the Baram River. It was such a bad experience – they gave me 10 complimentary copies and thereafter never responded to my queries about sales and royalties – that I've self-published all my fiction ever since.
What have I gained? Mainly peace of mind. But also the joy of working on the production – discussing fonts, layout, type of paper, and so on – with my choice of desktop artists and printers. And the sense of achievement from successfully promoting and selling my books.
I don't feel I've lost out on anything – at least, not anything that I care about, since I don't write and publish for fame and fortune. My books have generally received favourable reviews. Several of them have been used as texts in universities, and my novels have been the subjects of academic papers. In 2015, the National Library of Malaysia bought 500 copies of Dream Stuff for distribution to their district libraries. Echoes of Silence is currently being translated by an Italian publisher for publication as an e-book to reach the Italian-speaking world. Earlier this year, I've had to reprint Echoes of Silence and The Old House and Other Stories because they had sold out and people kept asking for them. I am content.
RR: Yes, having that control can be rather ideal, especially when your book goes out of print and the publisher is reluctant to print another edition or they get taken over by another publisher. Heinemann Asia (Singapore), which had originally published my collection of short stories Lovers and Strangers, had been bought out twice in fairly short order and dropped their entire fiction line to concentrate on business-related books.
For both of your books did you work with an outside editor or rely on your own editing skills?
Guat Eng: I've always edited and proof-read my books myself. Professor Quayum of the International Islamic University Malaysia offered to edit The Old House when it was first published; his only complaint was that I had left him nothing to do. I can't say I've ever wished I had used the services of an editor. It sounds like arrogance, but it isn't. I just feel strongly that if the book gets a bad review or is universally disliked, I want to be able to hold myself – and no one else – accountable.
RR: I hired an American editor to rip apart my first book Lovers and Strangers, long after it had been successfully published, when I had an opportunity to revisit the stories for another publisher. Like most writers, I have blind spots; also what may seem clear to a Malaysian reader, might be confusing to someone who has never visited Malaysia. A detailed critique made me reconsider adding another scene or a flashback or a back story or extending the story beyond the original ending – some stories doubled in length, which I blogged about in the series The Story Behind the Story. My efforts were rewarded when it won the Popular Reader's Choice Award and was translated into French. Setting aside your ego to have someone critique your published work, let alone your first or second or third draft, is a humbling process.
Do you recommend that young Malaysian writers or writers no matter their age consider self-publishing their fiction today, which seems more acceptable and common place than in the past? A common lament is that most self-published books tend to lack rigorous (let alone) basic editing. Other than, perhaps, working with an editor (ideally one with suitable publishing experience, especially if you're writing fiction), what else would you advise those wishing to self-publish in today's market?
Guat Eng: I wouldn't recommend self-publishing to just anyone, least of all young writers. Self-publishing is essentially a business enterprise, and those who want to take that route should have some entrepreneurial experience, inclination and/or skills. Anyone can get a book printed. The hard part is planning and managing its distribution, marketing, promotion, and sales – as every publisher knows.
RR: My advice for seeking a local publisher in Malaysia or Singapore is to make sure you know what you are getting into. Google the publisher and also look for complaints; far too many writers think they have signed with a legitimate publisher but failed to read the fine print and had to fork over hefty fees and the editing was non-existent. The whole experience was horrible. If you can't find their books in a bookstore, that's often a big clue. Also make sure you understand the royalty structure, or you might end up with a handful of copies and nothing else other than excuses. Ideally contact some of their published writers and ask, off the record, their experience. If they're getting a raw deal, they will tell you. They may even recommend another publisher, one you hadn't even considered, based on the experience of their own writing friends, which led me to MPH and a two book deal.
How did you end up studying German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich? How has that experience of studying literature and living in another culture, one quite different from Malaysia, benefited you as a writer? How long were you away?
Guat Eng: I learned German as an undergraduate in University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur and at the Goethe Institute (GI) in my postgraduate years. In 1970, I was given a GI scholarship to study for the Major Diploma in German Language and Culture in Germany, first in Murnau and then in Munich. A few months after the sessions in Munich began, I got so bored that I (rather cheekily) asked the Director if I could attend lectures at the nearby university instead, but still sit for my GI diploma exam at the same time as my classmates. To my surprise and undying gratitude, he arranged for me to get a DAAD (German Academic Exchange) scholarship. For the rest of my three years in Germany, I attended lectures, seminars and tutorials on German literature as a regular student of the prestigious Ludwig-Maximilian University, but was allowed to sit for and obtain the GI Major Diploma in German Language and Culture.
As a writer, the most obvious benefit of my stay in Germany is that I could use Munich as the setting for the beginning of the romance between Lim Ai Lian and Michael Templeton in Echoes of Silence. It was, for me, the perfect setting. Not only because I had firsthand knowledge of the places I mentioned; but, more importantly, because Munich is vital to a major theme embedded in the narration of their relationship; namely, the post-1969 non-Malay Malaysian's feeling of disempowerment due to no longer being able to claim any place on earth as their homeland. In Munich, where they are both strangers but where Ai Lian feels slightly superior because she has been there longer, her self-confidence allows her to be confident of Michael's love for her. However, in London and Ulu Banir, where Michael is at home but where she feels like an outsider, her loss of self-confidence causes her to question the sincerity of his love, his morals, and his trustworthiness as a human being.
My immersion in German language, literature, literary traditions, art and music has benefited me as a writer in other, subtler and more profound, ways; as have my travels both within Germany and to other European countries. Perhaps the most significant benefit is that I liberated myself from the Anglo-American influences that had coloured so much of my upbringing and earlier education. I left Europe with a clearer, surer awareness of my historical and cultural identity as a Malaysian – an awareness that has influenced all my writing.
RR: All writers, ideally, should live overseas for an extended stay—a year or two, at least; you gain so much more perspective about the world at large and about your own country. You view it differently, for better or worse. More importantly, you no longer take things for granted, and you often come away with a deeper understanding and better appreciation for your own roots.
You referenced 'May 1969'….Your opening line in Echoes of Silence states matter-of-factly, "In March 1970, as a direct result of the May 1969 racial riots, I left Malaysia." Yet it seemed to me that you wrote very little about it or how it had affected the main character or her family directly or indirectly other than her "leaving Malaysia". This was a watershed moment, so even her returning to Malaysia should have been emotionally difficult, so I was expecting a flashback scene or a long reflection about what had actually happened to her or her family (or even a distant relative)…
Guat Eng: The whole novel is about the psychological impact of the May 1969 racial riots and its repercussions all the way down to 1994, when the main narrator begins her story….Those who have no memory or experience of life in Malaysia during and after May 1969 tend to imagine there was violence all over the country. The truth – based on personal experience, various official accounts written after the event, as well as unofficial accounts gathered from friends and acquaintances who had personally witnessed the violence, or whose friends and acquaintances had fallen victim to it – is that the riots were concentrated in a few places, mainly in KL. For the majority who lived outside the immediately affected areas (and even those who, like me, lived in KL at that time) the reality was first the shock of a total media blackout, and then the slow seepage of news about a curfew. In short, we saw no violence, not even on TV. We learned about the violence and its inter-ethnic nature from hearsay. And we were mainly concerned with how to overcome the everyday problems caused by the curfews, making sure we stored up enough food and never got caught out of doors during curfew hours.
You may ask why, since I was writing in 1994, I didn't do the necessary research so that I could satisfy readers who want to see their imagined reality confirmed by fiction. The simple answer is that I wasn't interested in creating more imagined realities. I was interested in recreating the "felt" reality of the psychological violence done to us by the "blanket of silence" (to use my main character's phrase) cast over all of us: not just the tightly controlled media but also the laws prohibiting gatherings of more than five people, the spreading of rumours, and the raising of "sensitive issues". The last prohibition was the most devastating; the term "sensitive issues" was never properly defined, which meant that no one could find closure because no one dared to speak about anything to do with the riots, race relations, and the fact that those responsible for the violence were never identified and brought to justice.
RR: During Operation Lalang in 1987, my ex-wife was a reporter for New Straits Times, so we were very aware of those restrictions, and how vague they were. Anything could be misconstrued as racial bias or sensitive, even when writing about something as innocent as hawker food in Penang. If you happen to mention "Malay" and the word "pork" too close together, there you go…
Guat Eng: As you may know, the post-1969 emergency laws were never repealed even after we returned to parliamentary rule and, starting with the curtailing of the autonomy of institutions of higher learning (Universities and Colleges Act 1974), the ensuing two decades saw a progressive tightening of pre-existing laws prohibiting and inhibiting freedom of speech and information, increasing episodes of repressive police action (e.g. Operation Lalang in 1987) against political opponents and the media, Constitutional amendments diminishing the check-and-balance power of the traditional rulers, and – to top it all – executive interventions in the justice processes that undermined the independence of the judiciary, all of which enabled the ruling party's rampant acts of corruption to be hushed up.
Writing Echoes of Silence in 1994, the main questions I found myself asking were: Why have we, the citizens of the country, accepted these further assaults on truth, justice, and rule of law since May 1969? Is it because we have been psychologically impaired by the post-riot blanket of silence that denied us the means to find closure? Is it because of the perceptions of authority we have inherited from our pre-colonial and colonial past? Or is it our various cultures and our individual psychology that make us willing to accept and even actively contribute to the silences – the misinformation, disinformation, and the withholding of information – that frustrate the quest for truth and justice? And what are the psychological effects of being party, voluntary or otherwise, to this stifling of truth and this extinguishing of the healing light of justice?
Given the multiplicity of punitive laws (e.g. the Sedition Act and the Internal Security Act) against freedom of thought, speech, and publications in 1994, I couldn't have written openly and directly about such issues. So I made use of the murder mystery form for my exploration.
RR: Thanks for clarifying that….I read in a book review about your interest of narratology – the study of narratives and narrative structures and how they affect our perception. According to Jonathan Culler (2001) "narrative theory requires a distinction between 'story', a sequence of actions or events conceived as independent of their manifestation in discourse, and 'discourse', the discursive presentation or narration of events." Can you elaborate on how your interest in narratology affects you as a writer or even as a reader? (No doubt very similar to how someone's interest in cinematography affects how they view films.)
Guat Eng: I define narratology as a study of anything that has to do with narration, or creating a narrative. It is not a fixed "Literary Theory" but an ongoing discourse on the theorization and systematization of critical terms for the analysis of narratives. What narratologists do, essentially, is they identify, describe, define, and give names to the various narrative techniques authors use – "point-of-view", "focalisation", "free indirect discourse" – so that literary scholars have a vocabulary that can be used as a tool for analysis as well as a common language for discourse. The vocabulary is constantly evolving and expanding because as narratologists encounter new writers, especially non-Western ones who have their own literary traditions, whose narrative techniques do not find a perfect fit in existing concepts and terms (e.g. "magic realism"), they may find a need to describe, define, and give names to these uncommon narrative techniques.
I first came across the term "narratology" while I was working on my PhD in the early 2000s, but soon realized its value: it makes me more knowledgeable about the techniques I had been vaguely aware of as a reader and had been applying intuitively as a writer. For instance, I discovered the difference between "story" and "plot" between the ages of 10 and 11. My first attempt at writing a story fizzled out because I got bored with having to think up one episode after another. A year later, I spontaneously told a story in class that had a beginning, middle and end centred on a single issue. Proof that I was on the right track came some years later: I rewrote it as a radio play, sent it to the Education section of (then) Radio Malaya, and received 30 dollars for it. But that intuition-led experience did not crystallize into knowledge until I read E. M. Forster's definitions of "story" and "plot" in Aspects of the Novel, and that crystal of knowledge did not become refined until I read what narratologists have to say on the subject.
As a reader, I've always seen patterns, structures, and underlying meanings in books. I can't explain why. It may have something to do with my childhood obsession with deciphering codes and solving puzzles, and the fact that I learned Latin in secondary school. These analytical tendencies were enhanced at university by my study of English Literature, fine-tuned by my study of German Literature, and given new spaces to play in through my research on Asian narratology and theories of fiction.
RR: I too studied Latin in high school for two years and it had a tremendous impact on my English. I enjoyed the logic of the language and its grammar and wished I had studied it for four years, but switched to French, something I'm terrible at; I was too embarrassed to even attempt it when visiting France while backpacking around Europe.
Do you think some writers try too hard to be clever at the expense of the story; therefore, their writing or the story suffers? Is there a perfect balance between story and structure? Or can structure, in fact, make or define the story, if not elevate it to something truly special?
Guat Eng: As a critic and teacher of fiction-writing, I do often encounter writers who try too hard to be clever at the expense of the story. However, I also find that their stories suffer not because they use structure but because they either use it badly or neglect it altogether. Speaking generally, I find that when writers try too hard, it's usually because their ego gets in the way of the story. Some try to show how clever they are with words, allowing their infatuation with the sounds of words to master them when they should be exerting mastery over the precise meanings of words to tell a story. Others try to show how clever they are by aiming only to end their stories with a witty, unexpected, or sensational twist – nearly always at the expense of structure and plot.
RR: I always hated that. Why ruin a good story with a horrible ending? I would tell my creative writing students, you had an "A" going until you wrote that final paragraph or that final line – which had nothing to do with the story. They just pulled it out of hat to trick you! The internal logic of the story (and structure) must hold up until the end!
Guat Eng: As a writer, I find (as I did when I was 10 years old) that I can't make headway with a narrative unless I have a structure. I'm not saying it's the only way to write; I'm saying that it's the only way I can write. Structure (i.e. the way I organise the different parts of my "story") helps me to clarify and define my discourses (i.e. the issues I'm problematizing). Ever since I read Northanger Abbey at age 14, I have been intrigued by the potential of novels to poke fun at humanity's willingness to confuse the imagined and the real. From my (much later) study of Zen, I learned that a similar intent underlies the tongue-in-cheek narrative techniques of much of Asian "wisdom" literature (which is what gives them the "postmodern" flavour noted by many Western contemporary scholars). It is natural for me to want to write fiction that tends towards the deconstructive and the metafictional, and to look to Asian wisdom literature for the scaffoldings I need for my structures. In my novels, these Asian frameworks allow me to work historical breadth, cultural depth, and additional layers of meaning into my metafictional discourses with an economy that I find aesthetically pleasing – simply because they make my creative/writing process so exhilaratingly challenging.
RR: My own introduction to Asian writing came from a course in Japanese and Chinese studies and from reading the required novels before I traveled to both countries in 1980. Another text that I found enlightening was Literature of the Eastern World. Just being aware that there are many ways to tell a story (and stories that can be told about almost anything, including gourds and silkworms) and to experiment in structure and viewpoint (as I did in Lovers and Strangers Revisited) to find the most effective way to tell your story or to get to a deeper story is a great way to grow as a writer. It forces you out of your comfort zone. You have to read widely, though, just to be aware what is out there – Western and Eastern! Sometimes you have to write the story/novel chronologically first before you can restructure the scenes, so it would all make sense, even in reverse order as Preeta Samarasan did quite successfully in Evening is the Whole Day, which was discussed during a recent interview.
Guat Eng: Read at one level, Echoes of Silence is simply a murder mystery. But by using a structure based on an adaptation of the Mahabharata structure, I was able to plot my story as an interiorized dialectical discourse spanning three time zones (present, recent past, and distant past). The narration, while taking the reader back and forth between present and pasts, reveals the occurrence of parallel episodes of violence, silencing of truth, and miscarriages of justice in each time zone; and these parallels indirectly comment on one another through their thematic resonances and dissonances. The experiment in Days of Change was somewhat different. In this memoir-like narrative, my amnesiac narrator uses the I Ching to trigger the recovery of lost memories. Within the seemingly neat 64-day framework of the I Ching, the memories are not recalled and recorded in chronological order – deliberately so, because on one level (the fiction-as-mimesis level), the intention is to simulate the messy and capricious way memory works. But on another level (the metafictional level), the smooth-flowing and even polished prose style of the narration shines a light on the "fiction-making" way the narrator attempts to clean up confusions, re-order events, and fill gaps left by that most unreliable of narrators, memory. Thus structured and written as a proto-memoir, the novel serves to subvert the faithful-to-memory truth claims of historians and autobiographers.
I will be the first to acknowledge that most (or all) of my readers will never perceive the crafting that is so much a part of my writing process, and therefore never fully appreciate what I'm trying to do and say. Some may find the narratives confusing and think I'm trying to be too clever by half. But not being understood is the nature of the literary beast, and as long as my readers find my works enjoyable at the "story" level, I'm not going to worry about being fully understood.
RR: That's always the risk...of not being understood, or being misunderstood, or being accused of purposely muddying your own story to make it opaque or overly literary, thus losing your readers in the process. Many so called "great" books are said to be unreadable. Finnegans Wake, anyone? Gravity's Rainbow? I once read Moby-Dick until 50 pages from the end and just gave up – I just didn't care anymore if Captain Ahab got the whale or not! Great, epic story, but tedious to a fault, bogged down with endless mundane details about the whaling industry. Years later, I finally went back and finished it – I won't spoil the ending.
In a recent interview you said, "Wisdom, for me, means the understanding that every individual has his or her own concept of truth, his or her own story to tell; and we must somehow make space in our hearts and minds for all these concepts and stories without, however, getting caught up in them." Could you elaborate, especially in this era of Trump, Fake News, and 'alternative facts' about how to avoid "getting caught up in them"? We (at least in the US) seem to be drowning in everyone's concept of truth. Or is it even possible to keep straight all of the shifting narratives, let alone all of the political or personal spins upon spins with the so-called truth as to what really happened. Or the actual truth or even the agreed-upon truth as to what, in fact, did take place? Or should we even bother in the realistic fear that it will, sooner or later, drive us all crazy – even for us expats living in Borneo? Maybe what we need to do is pick up a good novel so we can lose ourselves in the narrative truth of the story...or just keep working on the inherent truth of our own creation and let it speak for itself…
Guat Eng: Zen philosophers have many ways to deal with the issues you mention. It would take too long to go into the various methods they recommend as means of distinguishing the imagined from the real. But one doesn't have to be a Zen philosopher to ask the many kinds of questions offered in everyday discourse as means to distinguish real from fake news: Does this make sense? Who's saying this? Which news media is responsible for this report? What's their agenda? What's the other side of the story? What are the political and geopolitical circumstances that might give rise to such an action or statement? And so on.
RR: Ah, Kipling's six honest serving men will always get you to the truth!
Guat Eng: It seems to me there is no lack of probing questions that one may ask. What is lacking is usually the will to ask those questions and the determination to find the answers. Most people just find it easier to believe whatever their favourite politician or news media says, and close their minds to the idea that there is always another side to the story and another way of looking at things.
Looking for the truth with an open mind is hard work; here's how Gautama Buddha describes the hard work one has to do before one accepts even his teachings:
As the wise test gold by burning, cutting and examining by means of a touchstone, so should you accept my words after examining them and not merely out of regard and reverence for me.
RR: Most of your professional life was spent in the corporate world as both a writer and as a creative and communications consultant, specialising in the development of strategies for advertising and promotional campaigns, corporate brand building programmes….How has this benefited you as a writer or in developing your own brand as a writer?
Guat Eng: The corporate world taught me many things that were and remain valuable to me as a fiction writer. Probably the most important is self-discipline: meeting deadlines, managing time, and the sheer teeth-gritting doggedness of writing even when I don't feel like writing instead of waiting for inspiration. The most enduring lessons relate to the art and craft of ego-less writing: to take myself out of the narrative, to draw my readers in and engage them, to make every word count, to communicate and inform, and never to show off. The most useful for me as a self-published writer are the technical aspects of producing a printed text: reader-friendly fonts and spacing, page layouts, paper choices, different types of binding and so on.
Apart from the fact that I am conscious of my Malaysian identity and am not prepared to exoticize myself or my stories simply to appeal to Western and Westernized readers, I am not conscious of developing my own brand as a writer. Certainly, before I worked on my first novel, I studied the market. I did research on the types of novel being written by other Malaysian writers (there were only a handful at that time), their subject matter, and their writing styles. I checked out what kind of novels most English-literate readers were willing to buy and read. Based on the research, I decided what genre I should write in and who my primary target readers would be. But apart from the times when I am launching a new book, I don't spend a lot of time promoting myself or my writings. I only give readings and/or talk about my books when I'm invited to do so. I depend mostly on the goodwill and word-of-mouth recommendations of friends and acquaintances to sell my books.
RR: You were once a guest speaker at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali. Tell us about your experience and why you feel writers must make an attempt to attend these literary festivals (or not). What are the drawbacks, if any? Any plans to return to Ubud in the future or to any other upcoming literary events?
Guat Eng: I was invited to the 2014 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival….If there were any drawbacks, I no longer remember….All I remember now is that I had a great time, made some new friends, and sold some books. I found the whole event very well organized, loved my accommodations, and apart from some confusion over transport on the first day, really have nothing to complain about.
It's a good festival to go to for book launches, networking, and self-promotion, which is what such festivals are designed for, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who has such intentions and aims. But even if one didn't have such intentions, or, like me, were not much good at networking and socializing, Ubud is definitely worth going to.
The programme allowed time for my own explorations, which I took as much advantage of as I could. The highlights of my visit were the connections I made with the locals and Indonesians from other islands, who took me to the art and craft museums. The local people are very friendly; the most memorable parts of my stay there are the chats I had with the taxi drivers, especially the one who drove me to the airport for my return flight, who, as an artist in his own right, gave me an insider view of the life of local artists and the state of the local art.
I never attend literary festivals and similar events unless I'm invited, but always accept invitations when my schedule permits.
RR: For me, attending a conference is just a great experience all the way around, whether it's speaking on a panel at a conference in Kuala Lumpur or attending a major conference on my own dime in Hawaii – just to be around other writers. It was definitely worth the investment when I attended the Maui Writers Conference in 2006, which had about a thousand people from all over the US and then me coming from Malaysia. You're from where? Meeting Pulitzer-Prize-winning writers, Oscar-winning screenwriters, award-winning novelists, plus editors from major publishing houses and literary agents from New York (I attended several pitching sessions) and then listening to their experience, their advice, and picking up signed copies of their books….Quite heady experience. Graham Brown, one of the unpublished writers that I hung out with, met his agent at another conference and sold two novels and then co-wrote some books with Clive Cussler, proving making-face-face-contact can be invaluable, so long as you have the goods to back it up.
Attending a conference overseas can be expensive, but if you book low cost flights early, take advantage of early-bird specials, split accommodation and car rental (if necessary) with other writers (I contacted the organizer in Maui and they found me someone with the same idea), or tie it to a planned vacation or a business trip or stay with a relative or friend living in the area...it can be done. If you do this too often, you can also go broke, so choose your conferences wisely, or find a way to get yourself invited as a guest speaker!
What advice would you give writers who are struggling to finish (or even seriously start) their first novel?
Guat Eng: Here are 5 tips:
1. Don't talk about it, do it.
2. Set a time-table for the completion of first draft of the novel, and organize the rest of your life around it.
3. Keep your project a secret. Don't keep showing people bits of your work-in-progress and asking for opinions. You don't want to be distracted by too many opinions. Listen to what your heart (your innermost self) tells you.
4. If you get stuck, it's probably because you haven't been listening to your innermost urgings. Stop. Listen to what you heart wants you to write. Then write what it tells you to write. No more. And no less.
5. When the first draft of the whole novel is near completion, start a search for a good reader (not an editor; that should come later). If anyone is recommended, check with other writers who have used their services. Settle on the one you can trust to be sensitive to and supportive of what you are doing, willing to give honest and constructive criticism, and able to make reconstructive suggestions while giving you the leeway to reject the suggestions if you don't agree. And yes, be prepared to pay them in cash for time spent and services rendered.
*Update: My interview with Guat Eng has been published in Blue Lotus 16, pages 18-25.
Other Interviews with First Novelists:
PreetaSamarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day.
Labels: Chuah Guat Eng, Graham Brown, Malaysian female writers, malaysian novel, Malaysian Publishers, May 1969 riots, narratology, Preeta Samarasan, Reading@Seksan, Robert Raymer, Self-publishing
Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Trailers
The trailers are out for the documentary Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed parts I & II that I recently took part in. Recently I had blogged about being beheaded at the hands of Rentap's warriors and then portraying the younger Captain Keppel
Here is the trailer to Part 1
The documentary, a Rack Focus Films production, is the Third Season in the highly successful Road to Nationhood series, and was originally scheduled to be aired 16 September 2018—on Malaysia National Day—on the National Geographic channel, Astro. Because of some unexpected delays, it was pushed back until October.
Here are the times and Astro channels for Part I & II
On NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL:
Part 1: 13 October at 8:00 p.m. Part 2: 14 October at 8:00 p.m.
Repeat Part I: 16 October at 10:00 a.m. Part 2: 16 October at 11:00 a.m.
Repeat Part 1: 20 October at 4:00 p.m. Part 2: 21 October at 4:00 p.m.
On ASTRO'S PRIMA & MAYA HD
Part 1: 13 October at 11:00 p.m. Part 2: 14 October at 9:00 p.m.
On ASTRO'S AWANI
On ASTRO'S HELLO
Repeat Part 1: 19 October at 4:00 p.m. Part 2: 19 October at 10:00 p.m.
Here is the trailer to part 2:
Joseph Conrad and Me
Somerset Maugham and Me—Part I-V
Beheaded on the Road to Nationhood—Part I
Beheaded on the Road to Nationhood—Part II
Labels: Charles Brooke, James Brooke, Kayu Malam Productions, Rack Focus Films, Rentap, Road to Nationhood, Rob Nevis, Sarawak, Sarawak history, White Rajahs
Beheaded on the Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part II
Robert Raymer with Ernesto Kalum as Retap and Iban war party
After being beheaded as Alan Lee in the documentary Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed by Rentap and his war party, my head didn't hurt, nor was there any swelling, but I could really feel the pain in my ribs that night—I must've bruised or cracked one when I fell several times while being killed—which made it difficult for me to sleep.
Back in my twenties, I cracked a couple of ribs after getting kicked in taekwondo, so I knew there wasn't a whole lot a doctor could do except X-ray it for confirmation and give you something for the pain. They used to wrap your chest but they stopped doing that decades ago. The pain was manageable; it only hurt when I laughed or slept or rose from sitting, so I opted not to see a doctor, but I did need to repair my black leather shoes. Maybe from all of the falling or banging it on the short steps at the Iban Longhouse, the sole in front started to come off.
Since I was not needed until Saturday, my big day where I was to play several characters—the Governor of Singapore; John Brooke, who had been passed over in favour of Charles Brooke as the second White Rajah; and the younger version of Captain Henry Keppel, a British naval officer who had served in the Opium War and assisted the first White Rajah James Brooke's campaign against the Borneo pirates and Iban warriors—I had plenty of time to find a shoe cobbler to fix the problem.
Throughout the day, I kept receiving photos of the shoot being posted on the WhatsApp Group. Some made me pause and wonder because they looked like my scenes. I knew there had been some changes on the shooting schedule, so I double checked Friday's call sheet to make sure my name was not on it. I thought, perhaps, I had overlooked it.
Late that afternoon, I got a message from Mark to confirm that I needed transportation for Saturday. Then two hours later, Prisca contacted me and asked if I could drive out to the Sarawak Cultural Village on my own. Seems there was a problem with the tide for the boat scene and they needed to start shooting a lot sooner than planned. I needed to be there by 6:30 am, which meant I had to get up at 4:30 am if I wanted to make the 50 km journey from my house on time.
My wife told me to take a new shortcut to Damai, via Pending, the opposite way we normally took, via Satok; both would head north on the other side of the Sarawak River. Last night it had rained and was still drizzling when I arrived at the Bidayuh Longhouse, the new base of operations at exactly 6:30 am—without getting lost, surprising my wife.
Alex and Charles Rentap (real name!)
I was told that all of the afternoon shoots had been cancelled, confirming my suspicions. Since yesterday, Friday, was a public holiday, the staff would not be around at the Bishop's House, so they decided to create the shots they needed at the Sarawak Cultural Village using two other Caucasians, the Fort Guards, Alex and Charles for the Governor of Singapore and John Brooke.
Malaysia and Sarawak flags
Swapping roles at the last minute was quite common. Sometimes, someone couldn't make it for the shoot, so they would grab whoever else was handy; others, as requested, sent a replacement for themselves. Jimmy, one of the extras, told me that he played nine roles. A little makeup, a change of costume, and he could pass for one race or another. Others played at least five or six roles, one or two primary, up-close shots, and the rest secondary to fill out the numbers.
For the battle scenes, which took place last night, they made about a dozen people look like a hundred, taking multiple close-up shots from different angles, catching various parts of their bodies. Those working on the actual footage reported how impressed they were seeing it on film.
After we were dressed in our costumes, they drove Alex, who was to portray the 14-year-old Charles Brooke, and me, as the younger Captain Henry Keppel, to a nearby jetty in Santubong where we boarded a fishing boat with a trimmed down crew. Altogether, including the director, Fendi, and Rob, there might have been eight or nine of us. Since it looked like it was going to pour anytime soon, we were all in a rush to get set up and to start filming.
Fendi, the Director
They had Alex and me stand at the bow, looking off toward our left, with the camera positioned behind us, shooting us, the sea and the blackening sky assuring us that a storm was approaching.
While filming, I explained to the young Charles Brooke, the future second White Rajah of Sarawak that someday, all of this would be his….It was Charles Brooke who greatly expanded the territory of Sarawak beyond the original city of Kuching to its present borders.
Luckily for me, I wore a hat when it began to drizzle; unluckily, the British flag that they had mounted kept pushing at the back of my head nearly knocking the hat off before they tied the flag down.
To get the angle they were looking for, we had to kneel on the deck, with our backs erect. The position was uncomfortable, so we were glad when the director suggested that we remove our shoes, which helped.
Later, when it began to rain heavily after the shooting, as I was rushing for cover, the hat flew off my head, but I somehow managed to catch it midair before it was lost forever at sea.
Author Robert Raymer and Rob Nevis, Executive Producer
I had planned to get some shots of the fishing boat that we had used but the heavy rain prevented me from doing so; I wished I had taken the shots before boarding but we were in a rush to beat the rain....Alex and I returned to the Bidayuh Longhouse, while the others stayed behind to shoot more river footage.
They then spend the rest of the day and the following day taking B-roll shots—outtakes without actors—at notable sites such as Fort Margherita, the Istana, the Courthouse, and other historical buildings, and the surrounding environs to work into the documentary.
The A-roll shots are the main scenes with the actors and extras, the most costly part of the filming, which is why they try to cram it all into several long days for documentaries or a few intense weeks for feature films.
Rob Nevis and Jason Brooke
Before leaving Kuching, Rob managed to have tea with Jason Brooke, grandson of the last Rajah Muda of Sarawak.
Even though the rescheduling of the shoot made me miss out on some important scenes, including having a private tea with James Brooke as the Governor of Singapore, no doubt suggesting that he seek his fortune in Borneo, I was quite happy to keep my head about me at all times, just in case someone decided to, well, you know, this is land of the headhunters, and that Iban war party did kill me in that other scene…
It was also quite an honor to be a part of recreating history—an honor for all of us involved from the cast, the crew and production—in the Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed.
See the trailers: https://borneoexpatwriter.blogspot.com/2018/10/road-to-nationhood-sarawak.html
Road to Nationhood: Journey to Independence part I (1945-1957)
Road to Nationhood: Journey to Independence part II (1957-1965)
Posted by Borneo Expat Writer at 11:23 PM No comments:
Labels: Borneo history, Charles Brooke, Fendi, Henry Keppel, Iban, James Brooke, Kayu Malam Productions, Rack Focus Films, Road to Nationhood, Rob Nevis, Sarawak, Sarawak Cultural Village, Sarawak history, White Rajah
INTERVIEW CHUAH GUAT ENG: Robert Raymer Chats wit...
Beheaded on the Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclai...


Death and dying is experienced by every person in every culture. No one escapes death, but the ways that the following cultures view death, mourning and the after-life are very different. This paper will explore the different death and dying cultures of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Each of these cultures shares a unique perspective on death that has withstood centuries of living.
The Jewish culture is very traditional and orthodox. In Judaism, death is not a tragedy, even when it occurs early in life or through unfortunate circumstances. Death is a natural process. Our deaths, like our lives, have meaning and are all part of God's plan. Jews have a firm belief in an afterlife, and this will be awarded to those who have lived a worthy life. Mourning practices in Judaism are extensive, but they are not an expression of fear or distaste for death. Jewish practices relating to death and mourning have two purposes: to show respect for the dead, and to comfort the living.
Is Reincarnation A Life After Death?
Is Life After Death Important?
What Is Death And Life After Death?


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Whirlwind launch weekend for 253 new evening & weekend Berkeley MBA students
August 8, 2017 | by Laura Counts
Nellie Haghbin stood in the Haas courtyard last week, chatting with a few of her 252 new Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA classmates, ready to begin a new chapter of life.
"Being here is a dream come true for me—I always knew I wanted to come to Berkeley and I'm finally here," said Haghbin, an engineer with Pratt & White based in San Francisco. "Everyone has been incredibly warm and welcoming. You just don't find that everywhere."
It's about "identity change"
The WE Launch orientation weekend included a whirlwind three days of tours, info sessions, bonding games and skits—as well as advice from 2nd– and 3rd-year Evening & Weekeng Berkeley MBA veterans on how to survive the program. Most EWMBA students hold full-time jobs and many balance parenthood with the demanding three-year course of study, taking classes two evenings per week or on Saturdays.
Dean Rich Lyons welcomed them, letting them know that they are in for more than a mastery of business fundamentals. "Great education is often about identity change," he said at the kick-off session.
Access to an innovation hub
Student Eric Vreeland said he chose Berkeley-Haas—and the Bay Area—because he wanted to be a part of its innovative, entrepreneurial ecosystem. He moved from New York to San Francisco 18 months ago and serves director of marketing for Jobr, a job-listing site acquired by Monster Inc.
"I'm interested in startups, innovation, and access to investors, as well as exposure to different aspects of entrepreneurship," Vreeland said. "I also liked the intimacy of this program. So far, having conversations is easy."
Tagel Shaked Zinger, a software engineer at YouTube, stood out from the crowd with her pregnant belly. Due in just a couple of weeks with her first child, she said the timing works out well with her four months of maternity leave. She'll defer starting classes until the Fall B session so she can spend the first two months with her newborn, then two months as a full-time student and mom before returning to work.
"I was eager to start—I've been wanting to do this for a long time—and I didn't want to put it off any longer because who knows what will happen next in my life?," she said. "My husband has been very supportive, and so is my employer."
The Class of 2020 has a median age of 30, with a median seven years of work experience. Women make up 31 percent of the group. The new students work at 180 companies and graduated from 152 colleges; 38 percent hold master's degrees. About 69 percent are multilingual (with one student who speaks six languages), and they represent 20 different countries. About twenty percent are commuting to the program from outside the Bay Area.
In terms of professional experience, nearly one quarter work in engineering, with another 15 percent in marketing and sales, and 11 percent in finance.
It's a multi-talented group with eclectic interests. One student has won 39 hackathons over the past three years, while another has directed four films focused on domestic violence and human rights. One student reported helping to revolutionize the milk pasteurization process in Taiwan and also building up the Taiwanese breakdancing scene by hosting events and trainings. Others have raced cars and motorcycles, flown planes, commuted by helicopter offshore in West Africa, and circumnavigated the earth by ship.
Zinger, who has always worked in tech, said she is excited to explore new areas. "What attracted me was a combination of surrounding myself with great people, and learning about other industries," she said.
Learn more about the class.
Posted in Student News, School NewsTagged Evening & Weekend MBA
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on inventing new markets
Jann Wenner on UC Berkeley in the 1960s & the evolution of Rolling Stone

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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This is a few miles out of town, though. In the immediate vicinity it becomes apparent why Gallup is important. It sits in a narrow gap between two ridges of unguessed length. The railway, the freeway, and the old road all squeeze through the narrow gap, particularly dramatic at one point where two ridgelines rundown to the open gap, almost as if a gate had been planned in a vast wall. Curiously, the old road, which should have second dibs on the space after the railroad, actually climbs over the foot of one of the ridges while the Interstate plows right through the gap. We are grateful for this curiosity, in any case, as it provides a better view than you are likely to get from the freeway. As so often, we seem to have the road entirely to ourselves, so we can slow down or stop whenever Anna wants to snap a picture.
A little way into Arizona, we are forced onto the freeway as the old road turns to rough gravel. At this transfer point there are the most garish signs advertising Genuine Indian crafts, blankets, jewelry, etc. If most of the garish commerce on Route 66 has declined, it is still thriving here, though the size, garishness, and sheer number of the signs seems mostly intended to pull people off the nearby Interstate, rather than to preserve a bygone era of the Mother Road.
There is no subtlety here, no attempt to represent the refinement of a culture. This is all about separating the white man from his cash (or, I suppose, men or women of any hue, as long as they have green in their pockets). I think I am equally jaded by the crassness of the marketing here as by the high cultural claims one hears elsewhere. The truth is, everyone needs to make a living and they make and sell what others are willing to buy. And most people need a cultural outlet that lets them express how they see the world and how they live in it. One would like to see each of these needs moderate the excesses of the other. One gets the sense, though, that just the opposite happens, not just here, but in most places.
The more upscale gift shops, like those in El Rancho and the national park, are less garish and more expensive. Even in these, though, you have to read the labels. A lot of stuff is marked as coming from the "the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and Mexico." But if you look closely, stuff so labeled is made in Mexico. If you are looking for genuine local native crafts you have to shop carefully, and expect to pay up. One only hopes that the money from both the crass shops and the posh shops is actually going to the locals.
Once on the freeway, things get very flat, very wide, and very fast. One has to maintain a pretty high speed simply not to be in the way. It is a wide straight road, so the speed is manageable but it does not leave much attention for the scenery. Nonetheless, we skip a couple of on/off sections of Route 66 as described in the Easy Guide so we can get to the Petrified Forest National Park before it gets too hot.
All the maps show the Painted Desert as North of I40 and the Petrified Forest as South of it, as if they were two separate places. This is inaccurate. They are one place and the petrified forest is in the painted desert. This is particularly evident at the Crystal Forest Trail, where petrified logs are scattered in great abundance over a painted desert landscape that seems, in a couple of places, to include old lava flows—though this may be a mistaken impression on my part.
The Painted Desert Overlook, North of I40, around the Painted Desert Inn, doesn't have any petrified wood, but the Blue Mesa trail in the middle of the Petrified Forest section is all about painted desert scenes. In short, it is one park with both features, sometimes together, sometimes separately.
A friendly guide at the North entrance circles her favorite places on the map for us. Later, at the South entrance, I hear a different guide give completely different recommendations to another party. As I have noted before, you can't see everything.
The guard at the official entrance gate makes a comment about it not being too windy yet. The "yet" will prove prophetic.
I am of two minds about the painted desert scenes. Not all landscapes are beautiful, and these are badlands—barren, inhospitable and virtually impassable. They seem to consist of stratified layers of gravel that have been carved into lumps, with occasional hotter rocks jutting out or creating table formations. On our first sight of the, a lot of the gravel is grey or black. The result is a forbidding, almost nightmarish scene. Fascinating for sure, but is it beautiful?
At first I conclude it is not. But by the time we get to the Painted Desert Inn, red has come to predominate in the stratified layers of gravel and when seen on a grand scale in the right light, it is beautiful. Not as beautiful, to my eye, as the sandstone mesas that we saw in places like Dead Man's Curve, but beautiful, nonetheless. I suspect different viewers will like different parts of it better, just as different people like different color schemes. For me it will always be the reds. but I prefer my red offset by green, and there is no green here. The landscape is much more notable for its strangeness and drama than for its beauty. Strangeness and drama, however, are well worth seeing.
Per our guide's recommendations, our first stop is the Painted Desert Inn, which is not an Inn anymore, but an historic site. As an historic site it perhaps takes itself a little too seriously. For instance, it treats sturdy furnishing from the thirties to the fifties, such as stout wooden chairs, as if they were something excavated from an Egyptian tomb or Viking longship, plastering them with do not touch signs. The Inn itself is rather dull, but it does have a couple of interesting features such as the punched tin lamps made by the men of the Works Administration crew and the skylight ceiling made up of glass panels painted in the patterns of many local tribes.
We walk the trail from the Inn to Kachina Point, which affords some interesting views but is also a welcome opportunity to stretch our legs in the morning cool.
From there we move on to the Blue Mesa Trailhead, where, we are told, there is a fairly steep path but spectacular views of some of the bluer parts of the painted desert. We make a lunch here of apples and oatmeal Raisin cookies in the shaded picnic area and then get our walking sticks out and start on the trail. The early going does promise some interesting sites, but the wind has picked up and the path is narrow and runs very near the edge of some very steep drops. One good gust we fear, could send us over.
We turn back and decide to visit and walk the trail at Crystal Forest instead. This proves to be a fortuitous choice.
When you see pictures of the Petrified Forest, you think, "Oh rocks that look like trees, cool." But when you see the real thing up close, it is totally different. The rock is essentially quartz, in a variety of vibrant colors and so while it is shaped like a tree trunk, it looks nothing like a tree. in fact it looks so not like a tree that the fact that it is shaped like a tree is completely dissonant. It is a challenge to the senses. the eye rebels at a lump of quartz in which all signs of tree rings are entirely absent but which is encased in what looks for all the world like bark.
Another dissonant element is that much of the petrified wood is broken into sections about 12 to 18 inches long. It has snapped straight across and at points you see whole tree trunks 18 to 24 inches across that have snapped off in regular chunks as if they had been chain-sawed. In short, it looks like petrified firewood that has been sawed to length and is only awaiting a petrified ax to chop it into petrified kindling.
This is all weirdly dissociative and it is the dissociative nature of the experience that makes it special. The external appearance is of ordinary fallen logs such as you might see in any forest. The quartz is ordinary quartz such as you might see anywhere—most of the petrified wood jewelry you see on sale (it is everywhere) looks just like any other piece of polished quartz. It is the dissonance of seeing the substance of one in the form of another that is fascinating. It is a practical demonstration of transubstantiation, if you like.
But if all this sounds like something rare and special, it really isn't. There is a truly astonishing amount of this stuff. There are signs everywhere in the park forbidding you to remove petrified wood, but it hardly seems necessary. You can buy the stuff cheap in any gift shop in a one-hundred-mile radius, and several shops we drive by have so much of it that great logs of it sit in empty lots beside the shops. You feel like you could order a couple of truckloads and build a house out of the stuff.
Indeed that is exactly what the man who built the original Painted Desert Inn did. But it turns out the quartz is not actually a good building material. It fractures too easily—as all the petrified firewood in the park illustrates. The guide informs us that the original quartz-built Painted Desert Inn quickly fell down and was rebuilt by the Civil Works Administration in the 1930s using full adobe techniques.
After the Crystal Forest, we proceed to the park museum, which is rather dull compared to the park itself. We learned from a signboard in the park how the petrified wood formed and why it fractured into firewood the way it did, and the rest is rather dull and pedantic.
Another feature of the park is the Puerco Pueblo, which is noted particularly for its petroglyphs. But the petroglyphs at Puerco Pueblo do not have the artistic sophistication of, for example, the Lascaux Cave Paintings. Honestly, they look like the work of a child, especially the faces.
A National Parks Service sight shows the supposed solar petroglyph among the many here. It is a very rough spiral figure, more of a rough circle with a squiggle in the middle. It is touched by a finger of light at sunrise for a couple of weeks around the solstice. The temptation is therefore strong to see it as a solstice marker.
The thing is, this is in a field of boulders covered with petroglyphs. As Wikipedia notes, there are over 800 petroglyphs, incised on more than 100 boulders. Chances that some shadow or shaft of light should touch one of them for two weeks around the solstice seems pretty high. And further, if this petroglyph was placed there to mark the solstice, what were the other 800 for? There is a tendency to regard every ancient thing has having deep significance. But their survival is a matter of chance and a long road trip teaches you that most things scribbled on rocks are not deeply significant.
This does not mean it was not a solstice marker, of course, but I find the evidence for this conclusion slim at best. There is something else too. If these petroglyphs were made by the people of Puerco Pueblo, as is supposed, there is a question of why they should choose this method to mark the solstice. These peoples were sophisticated engineers capable of building complex structures. If they had wanted a sundial calendar, they could have built one in a more convenient location.
Archaeology all too often seems to labor under the curse of Rumpelstiltskin, trying to weave gold out of straw. In his essay, Fern Seed and Elephants, C. S. Lewis decried the presumption of many biblical scholars who were attempting to discern the authorship and intended meaning of fragments of scripture based on absurdly flimsy evidence, while ignoring much more obvious evidence. "They claim to see fern-seed," Lewis wrote, "and can't see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight." Lewis goes on to write, "I wonder how much Quellenforschung [The study of the sources of, or influences upon, a literary work. – Wikitictionary] in our studies of older literature seems solid only because those who knew the facts are dead and can't contradict it?"
Archeology is a field in which those who knew the facts are always dead and can't contradict the conclusions. Even where the experts agree, the experts often share the same biases and the same interests. They want to make significant finds that shed light on the development of early people. A worthy goal, but one that predisposes them to find significance where none may exist.
G.K. Chesterton, in the story "The Honor of Israel Gow", has his detective character, Father Brown, challenged to find a connection between several very odd pieces of evidence: hoards of precious stones, piles of loose snuff, miscellaneous bits of clockwork, and wax candles without candle sticks. He immediately comes up with several ways of connecting them, causing his hearers to ask if each in turn is true. Oh no, he says "Ten false philosophies will fit the universe." As more improbable evidence accumulates, however, Father Brown is finally convinced that he has the full, true, and terrible explanation. He and his companions rush to prevent a horrible crime. But Father Brown turns out to be wrong too, and the explanation is much more prosaic, once they have the opportunity to ask the person who was there and can contradict all their speculations. Ten false philosophies will fit the universe, and ten false philosophies will fit many archeological findings. (And you should read The Honor of Israel Gow.)
A recent story that received much publicity was the discovery of a female skeleton buried with a sword in a Viking grave. From this has been woven into tales of hordes of Viking Amazons, or of transgendered Vikings. Such interpretations so clearly fit modern preoccupations that it is easy to see what motivated them. But this small incongruity could mean a dozen different things. (I briefly entertained the thought of writing a set of short stories with different explanations of how the sword came to be in a woman's grave.) "Ten false philosophies will fit the universe," and we will choose the one that suits us best. But the truth of the matter is, we don't know, and can't know, what a sword in a woman's grave really means. And we can't know if a circle with a squiggle on which the sun happens to fall at solstice was planned for for a solstice marker, or for something else, or for nothing at all.
There are more trails at the museum end, but at this point we have seen so much of the stuff lying around that it is starting to seem rather common, so we move on towards Winslow.
The road from the park gate is pretty flat and the land around it has the same yellow grass with spaced-out pale green shrubs that we saw leaving Gallup. It seems utterly unused. It is clear why people drive fast here. The roads are dead straight and there is nothing to see. At one point we see half a dozen cows gathered around a windmill, and apart from that, nothing. Often, driving in Canada, you see nothing because you are driving between green walls of pointy trees. You have no idea what might be going on behind those trees. But here the nothing stretches all the way to the horizon. It is a much bigger nothing and it is eerie.
After Holbrook, where we briefly stop for ice cream, we rejoin the Interstate for the run to Winslow—a part of the journey not notable for anything other than not being notable in any way at all.
In Winslow, we are staying at The La Posada hotel—a great sprawling pile of a building recently returned to its former glory. It is the kind of place where the public spaces seem much more important than the guestrooms. It is almost like the guestrooms are just a place to sleep while you visit the hotel, something like what I imagine the experience of staying in a noble country house must have been. (As the child of a teamster's son and a coal miner's daughter, such invitations have never come my way.) This experience is very different from a modern motel where you are expected to disappear into your room and only appear in the morning in order to pay your bill and leave. How maintaining all these public spaces—and they are magnificently restored and maintained—can be economical today, I don't know. But thank God someone is making it work, because spaces like these are one of the joys of life.
Once settled in the hotel, we walked down to "The Corner". That is, the corner made famous by The Eagle's song "Take it Easy" that contains the lyric:
Well, I'm a standing on a corner
In Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me
Was this the actual corner in which the lyricist, Glen Fry, actually saw the girl in the flatbed Ford? He was alive to ask, and still the answer is uncertain. Maybe it wasn't in Winslow at all, but in Flagstaff. Anyway, the town has decided that this is the corner and it is an item to check off our Route 66 must do list. I suspect the town council just picked a corner they had lying around doing nothing.
What will archeologists of the future make of the bronze statue of the young man leaning against the lamppost when it is all that remains after time has claimed all the buildings, the mural, and the flatbed Ford? With what significance will they invest this lonely figure? What grand conclusions about the mores and manners of our era will they deduce from the long hair and drooping mustache? Jesus in street clothes perhaps?
In addition to the statue and the flatbed Ford parked at the side of the street, there is also a large mural of the girl in the flatbed Ford. The decay that will one day leave future archeologist to puzzle fruitlessly over this scene has already set in. Like every other mural we have seen on this trip it is faded and in need of repair. Most of it is not painted on the wall, but on plywood panels secured to the wall and three of them are missing. Beside it there is one of those fund-raising thermometer things showing $15,000 raised of the $30,000 needed for a mural restoration project. This strikes me as absurd. Why is this not a no-brainer vote in city council in favor of $30K to restore the centerpiece of your entire tourist industry? And if the City Council is too dumb to act, why don't the businesses on the other three corners just chip in the money to fix it?
We go for a beer in a "brewery" across the street from the corner. I put brewery in quotes because despite using that name, it does not brew its own beer, though it does exclusively serve Arizona brewed beers. From the street-side patio we watch a steady stream of people taking their obligatory photos at the corner. The owner runs out to chase away a panhandler. From the way they shout at each other, this seems like a regular performance.
We have dinner in the Turquoise Room of La Posada. It is our first really fancy meal of the trip and our first proper sit-down meal of the day since we breakfasted and lunched on apples and oatmeal raisin cookies washed down with water. I have lamb. According to the menu it is from a special breed of lamb only raised by one Navajo farmer and only served in this hotel. It taste like lamb. But doubtless there are health benefits—even spiritual benefits—to eating something so exclusive. Anyway, it is cooked superbly and the Zinfandel recommended in the menu is a perfect match. Anna has elk, which is also excellent, she says. I have English trifle for dessert, our first dessert of the trip. It seems very odd to be eating English trifle in the middle of Arizona, but that is the world we live in. Everywhere is everywhere else. I'd like to say that this is a good thing but I'm not sure it is. Anyway, it was a good trifle, and a nice match for the last of my wine.
Over dinner we discussed the choices you make when traveling. We have given ourselves three weeks for Route 66 and side trips, but we are still seeing only a fraction of what the guidebooks list. At Petrified Forest we visited three of over a dozen sites. It would have taken two full days to see them all, and one could linger longer than we did at each. "You can't see everything" we keep saying. After you have seen 1000 petrified logs, 1000 variegated gravel mounds, 1000 red sandstone Bluffs, 100 dead motels and gas stations, several dozen neon signs, do you really need to see more? But have you seen the best one yet? Ask, and everyone has a favorite that somehow you have missed. It is better to see a lot of a few things or a little of a lot of things? This trip is definitely about the latter.
This much I know. I have reached my lifetime quota of pointy trees and pointed snowcapped mountains. And I have no limit on sunlit beaches or quiet shaded restaurant patios beside rivers or overlooking the sea. But there is also this question: Is there a limit on the appeal of novelty itself? Is a point at which you just focus on the things you know you will never tire of? And will we reach it on this trip? And if we do, will we, as a couple, agree on the common set of things we never get tired of?
Series Navigation << Grand Tour 15: High and Low, Wide and SteepThe Grand Tour 17: The Secret Museum and the Perfect Taco >>
Dead Man's CurveGallup NMLa PosadaPainted DesertPetrified ForrestpetroglyphsWinslow AZ
The Road Trip as a Form of Quest
All Things Lincoln
The Road as a Museum to Ordinary Eccentricity
Memorializing Corporals, not Generals
A Thousand Tiny Attractions
Pride in Service is Not Militarism
The Best Museum on Route 66 is About Barbed Wire
A Church Should Look Like a Church
Of Tacky Artwork and Enchanting Overpasses
The Stunning Similarities of Ancient Sites
Intimations of Mortality in a Town Too Pretty to be Beautiful
The Museum Has Become the Artefact
Holy Jumble and the Intrusiveness of Tourism
The Secret Museum and the Perfect Taco


text:
Meir, Meir Heath and Meir Park
That was 'Swift'! - Stoke-on-Trent pub raised hundreds to buy some life-saving equipment (and the venue did it in just three weeks)
And a Stoke City legend has given his backing to the scheme
Sally EcclestonTrainee Live News Reporter
From left to right, Michelle Swift, Jamie Richards and Denis Smith in front of the new defibrillator.
Micro bar owner Michelle Swift has raised a glass to saving lives after collecting in enough cash to buy a defibrillator for the community.
Swifty's Micro Bar in Meir has the equipment to benefit the whole area having raised £1,999 in just three weeks.
And the installation of the kit, which is used to help those in cardiac arrest, has won the support of Meir-born Stoke City legend Denis Smith.
Michelle, aged 37, of Meir said: "The area has been neglected in recent times and we thought it was about time we had the same facilities as other areas.
"It might not ever get used and I hope that's the case, but it's there if anyone needs to use it.
"All I've done is open the pub. Everything else has been pushed forward by the community pulling together. We've just provided the platform.
"As much as I've headed it up, it has been the community which has made it happen."
And it was the passionate community who helped to raise the funds so quickly.
The defibrillator at Swifty's Micro Pub in Meir
Michelle added: "I thought it was going to take us three months to raise the money, not three weeks. Everyone has been so passionate and helped a lot and really raised awareness of how important these machines are."
To raise the funds, Swifty's held an open mic day, donated profits from their Spectrum beer - a beer brewed in aid of autism - and enjoyed generous donations from others in the community.
AEDdonate, a Stone-based charity which installs defibrillators in communities throughout the county, helped to install the defibrillator on the front of the pub.
'I will never be able to thank her enough' - Great-grandad meets the woman who saved his life
Potters hero Denis headed down for the unveiling. He said: "I've lived in and grown up in Meir and seen the pubs change over the years. And these kinds of pubs have always been part of the local environment.
"People talk to each other here and meet up to catch up, so they'll talk and more people will soon get to know about the defibrillators that way too.
"Here, it's more a community hub rather than a pub and a great place to have one."
James Russell, head of Community and Education at the charity said: "There are around 1,000 registered defibrillators across the county and only 400 of these are accessible to the public.
"The ambulance service recommends that defibrillators should be placed within every two minutes of where someone walks.
"We've installed 500 defibrillators as a charity, and we still have a long way still to go, but we have seen an increase in community defibrillators across the county.
Supporters from the public and AEDdonate in favour of the defibrillator at the pub.
"Our newest campaign, 'Staffordshire 1,000' is our latest initiative to get an additional 1,000 defibrillators installed across Staffordshire from today."
Jamie Richards, Chief Executive of AEDdonate, added: "We're seeing more and more defibrillators installed which means more lives being saved.
Fears life-saving defibrillator could be removed after being vandalised by yobs
"We think the defibrillator at Swifty's is in a superb location, it's very visible and lots of people will be able to spot in passing by.
"We'll also be back very soon to complete training with the local community so they can learn how to use the machine."
Stoke City FCStoke City boss throws down gauntlet to youngsters after comprehensive friendly win at Wrexham
Sam Vokes brace fired Stoke to 3-1 victory


text:
Q: Keeping vertexcoordinates after adding a new vertex I want to add a new vertex to a graph, with fixed VertexCoordinates but when I use VertexAdd, the new graph does not have the VertexCoordinates of the previous one.
g = Graph[{1 -> 2}, VertexCoordinates -> {{0, 0.5}, {0.5, 0}},
  PlotRange -> 1]

This is the initial graph
g = VertexAdd[g, 3]

Adding a new vertex makes a new graph with automatic coordinates.
I tried to see if there is a way to define the coordinates when adding a new vertex but I could not find anything.
Also I was looking if there is something like:
SetProperty[g, VectorCoordinates -> {list of coordinates}]

To set coordinates for all vertices in a graph, but I could not find anything.

A: Here is your Graph
g = Graph[{1 -> 2}, VertexCoordinates -> {{0, 0.5}, {0.5, 0}},PlotRange -> 1]

You can try this!
g = SetProperty[VertexAdd[g, {3, 4}],
VertexCoordinates-> PropertyValue[g, VertexCoordinates]~Join~{{.7, .6}, {-.2, -.3}}];

The graph will retain its VetexCoordinates
EdgeAdd[g, 1 -> 4]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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As one of the richest cities and a major financial hub in Europe, Frankfurt is a popular place with Germans and foreigners alike. Frankfurt is known as the smallest metropolis in the world, it is the most international city in Germany, rich in history, culture and great cosmopolitan atmosphere. Almost one of three people living in Frankfurt is not a German citizen.
Standard of living and salaries for almost every profession in Frankfurt are typically above the average for Germany and Europe. So almost everyone would like a chance to live and work in Frankfurt.
Frankfurt, as a part of Germany, has a healthy economy, with a focus on the financial services, hospitality industry, IT and telecommunications sector, logistics, biotechnology and creative industry. It is one of the Europe's leading locations for companies.
This quick guide will help you to discover how to find a job in Frankfurt.
Before you start to look for a job in Frankfurt, you will need to check if there are any steps you need to take to get valid work permit or visa. As the City of Frankfurt is in Germany - an EU country, citizens of other EU and EEA countries are free to live and work there without any visa or work permit. However, if you're from a country outside the European Union, you will need to have a valid German working visa.
Germany's Federal Foreign Office have published visa requirements for all nationalities on their official page. You can check here, if you need to have a visa or any other work permit to work in Germany.
Foreigners typically have to obtain the temporary residence permit – Aufenthaltserlaubnis. It is an single year permit, but it can be renewed indefinitely. Usually, after 5 years, citizens of countries outside EU are eligible to apply for a permanent residence permit in Germany.
Highly skilled foreigners from a countries outside the EU are eligible to apply for an EU Blue Card. This working permit gives a right to work across almost every EU country. Highly skilled professional in this case means that you have five years of senior professional experience or have completed a bachelor's level degree.
As one of the finance hubs in the world and one of the leading locations for companies, Frankfurt offers a wide array of available job vacations for its citizens. Frankfurt is also a hub for international companies, so if you are not fluent in German language, you might find a job for non-German speakers by working in global company or within an international company, where English is an official business language. Some of the well-known international companies operating in Frankfurt are General Electrics, Nike are Dell Technologies.
If you're a student, many of the international companies in Frankfurt offer internship opportunities for foreign students. If you are still studying and want to try living and working in Germany, this could be great chance for you.
Before start look for a job in Frankfurt and move to this great city, you'll want to know something more about job requirements, wages and working conditions in Frankfurt. If you have a specific profession or role in mind JobAndSalaryAbroad.com is a great source of getting insight into salary ranges, benefits and job requirements.
Here you will get more information for more than 300 occupations in Frankfurt.
There are globally popular sites where you can start your job search, like LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster, etc., but don't forget local sites which sometimes cover better Frankfurt area. Some of the well known Frankfurt specific job sites are: JobinFrankfurt.com, Stellenangebote and Arbeiten.de.
There are many big international recruitment agencies that are looking for talented individuals. They are always ready to help highly skilled job seekers to connect with the right employer.
Some of the larger recruitment agencies in Frankfurt are: Kinney Recruiting GmbH; Michael Page - Personaldienstleister für Experten, Vollzeit & Interim; Adecco Personaldienstleistungen GmbH; Manpower GmbH & Co. KG; Amadeus FiRe Personalvermittlung & Interim Management GmbH; Designerdock Frankfurt; Skillmix Health Care / Arbab International GmbH.
Searching for a job online is a good idea, especially if you are diligent and regular in searching, but using services of a recruitment agencies could make your job searching much effective.
Keep in mind that many employers, especially international companies in Frankfurt, are used to welcoming foreign citizens. You should explain that you are relocating to the employer and they'll be understanding of your situation. It is very important to explain your visa status, and to tell them if you will need a sponsorship.
No matter which recruitment agency you choose, always check out its credentials. Be wary of scams and do not pay to be put in touch with an employer. If the recruitment agency asks for money to process your application, it is not a genuine company.
You can start building your network online, by joining groups in your field in Frankfurt on professional sites like LinkedIn and Meetup.
Make sure your CV is up to date, easy to read and error free. CV should be no more than 2-3 pages and provide information about your work experience, education and other activities related to the job you are applying for. CV should also include your personal details such as date of birth, marital status, nationality and contact phone. Headshot photo should also be included.
If you are not sure how to make a CV, Europass offers standard template with all relevant information, that is very simply to complete. You can also consider an idea to hire local HR consultant who can help you to make good CV.
Job interviews can be very stressful, especially if you are not just looking for a job, but also to move abroad. When recruiting abroad, usually first interview will be held on a video call or via Skype. This type of interview is much different than face to face meeting, so you should prepare yourself for it. Remember that first impression is very important in Germany.
Startup companies have relaxed approach during interview process, while established businesses in Frankfurt will conduct more traditional interview process.
Interview process usually is not over after the first interview, it usually involves two ore three rounds. If it is needed for the job, German language test is also part of the interview process.
Knowledge of German language will make your life in Frankfurt much easier. Everyday communication will be something you will need outside the company, so even if your employer's business language is not German, you should consider to learn it... at least to speak it.
If you have got an official job offer in Frankfurt, valid visa and work permit for Germany, than it's time to prepare for relocation.


You are currently browsing the archives for 2 March 2018.
'In light of the most recent medical evidence, the medical community and federal government officials at all levels would do well to revisit their guidelines on male circumcision, so as best to counsel parents on the potential health advantages to their kids well into adulthood,' Dr. Ronald Gray, epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg College of Public Wellness, said in a written statement. In the report – published in the Oct. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association – the doctors highlight recent study suggesting that circumcision has life-long health benefits.
BMC anesthesiologists gain APSFs Ellison C buy here.
BUSM, BMC anesthesiologists gain APSF's Ellison C. Pierce Award For the next consecutive year, anesthesiologists from Boston INFIRMARY and Boston University School of Medicine have obtained the prestigious Ellison C buy here . Pierce Award to get the best Scientific Exhibit in Individual Protection from the Anesthesia Individual Safety Basis . The award, that was presented through the 2011 American Culture of Anesthesiologists annual getting together with in Chicago, recognizes the attempts by physicians to improve patient safety through development. Chris Connor, MD, PhD, associate professor of anesthesiology and biomedical engineering, and Eddy Feliz, MD, associate professor of anesthesiology, established the exhibit, which centered on avoiding aspiration.


text:
Teen survives 10-inch knife lodged in face: 'It could have been the end of me'
Posted 9:34 PM, June 17, 2019, by CNN Wire
Eli Gregg, 15, is recovering after a 10-inch knife pierced his face.
BOURBON COUNTY, Ks. — When Dr. Koji Ebersole laid eyes on the boy whose face was impaled on a 10-inch knife, the neurosurgeon thought, "here we go again."
Eli Gregg, 15, of Bourbon County, Kansas, is recovering from the freak accident after going home from the hospital on Monday. In a rare occurrence, he's the second boy Ebersole has treated recently for a sharp object piercing the head.
The first was 10-year-old Xavier Cunningham. In 2018, he survived a penetrating injury to the head after falling from a treehouse ladder in Missouri and landing on a footlong metal meat skewer. He said he was being attacked by yellowjackets, a type of wasp, before he fell.
"When it happened to Xavier, as soon as we saw the X-ray, my colleague said, 'this is going to go viral,' " said Ebersole, a neurosurgeon at the University of Kansas Health System.
Teen stabbed in skull during Santee brawl
A medical team at the University of Kansas Health System then operated on Xavier and removed the skewer.
"I think going through Xavier's case helped us a lot for this one," Ebersole, who's also an associate professor at the University of Kansas in Kansas City, said of treating Eli.
"At the time of Xavier's case, nothing like that had been seen at our hospital amongst the personnel that were involved," he said. "This is supposed to be once in a career."
In the Kansas countryside, Eli was playing outdoors with his brothers and some close family friends on Thursday evening when they came across the knife, Ebersole said.
"It didn't belong to the family. They found it, it sounds like, outside in the grass, about 10 inches long," he said. "My understanding is, Eli wanted to take it away from the younger kids for protection, and in that transition, there was a trip and a fall, and it was in the hand of another boy at the time, and … it fell into his face."
Baby brothers beat all odds after horrific attack
In a video interview released by the hospital, Eli said that the incident happened "very quickly" and that when he found his mother in their kitchen, she immediately called 911.
"When she looked at me, she just gasped," Eli said.
"I love her, and I'm glad she was there for me," he said. "It could have been the end of me."
With the knife embedded in his skull, Eli was sent to the University of Kansas Health System early Friday. Ebersole said he and his colleagues started to operate on Eli about 7 a.m.
Teen stabs principal during graduation rehearsal
While closely monitoring blood vessels near where the knife was lodged, Ebersole and his colleagues used catheters, tiny balloons and other tools to carefully remove it.
"Once it started moving, it was out in 10 seconds," Ebersole said.
He added that Eli "didn't suffer any brain injury. No injury to vision. No injury to the movement of the eyes. No strokes. No brain bleeding. Really, he's just got a small little cosmetic incision line, if you will, from the knife on his right cheek. You would never know that he went through all of this."
Of course, Eli was alarmed about the incident, but "I saw a small smile today when he realized that his story was bringing hope to other people," Ebersole said Monday.
While at home, Eli was instructed to "take it easy for a couple of days, and then we'll take another MRI in about a week," Ebersole said.
Eli's mother, Jimmy Russell, called her son's recovery "answered prayers" in a video released by the hospital.
"I'm really happy that they were able to get it out and keep me alive," Eli said of the surgery to remove the knife.
"I finally get to see the rest of my family," he said through tears. "I get to go home."
Group home resident wearing 'demonic' mask stabbed caretaker 30 times, authorities say
Filed in: Trending
Topics: Kansas
'I'm very lucky': Man stuck on interstate during tornado hit by own Jeep
Home intruder suspect suffering machete head wound caught after escaping hospital
Police department's 'humorous' Father's Day tweet draws backlash
Officials: San Diego County Fair is safe after boy dies from E. coli infection
11-year-old boy describes moment he grabbed machete to 'protect the house'
Man in hazmat suit stalking neighborhoods at night
Suspect thwarted by 11-year-old during home invasion flees hospital
'Very tough' 11-year-old grabs machete and slashes home invader
Boy, 2, dies after E. coli infection linked to animals at San Diego County Fair
Man, 15-year-old boy accused of assault in East County
Zookeeper suffers 'lacerations and punctures' in tiger attack at zoo


A lot has been said about the global recession and the harrowing effects that it has had on the Canadian population – both business owners and consumers alike. The financial crisis affecting the nation, however, has perhaps had a more adverse effect on students moreso than anyone else.
Students across Canada, of course, tend to find themselves summer jobs in an effort to pay for their tuition once the school year begins in September. As a result of the struggling economy, statistics have been showing that the majority of students who would regularly be working during the summer months are currently unemployed.
The unemployment rate in Canada, as has been followed closely by the Synergy Merchant Services Blog, is reaching highs it hasn't seen in a very long time. Not surprisingly, the students victimized by this fact are looking towards attaining financial aid in order to be able to afford their upcoming school fees.
Byrne notes that Ontario's rise in financial assistance requests has also come due to the job losses that many parents have suffered in 2009. Unfortunately, there are more families with lower incomes this year than last.
Sadly, it looks as if this tough summer will be providing students with an even tougher forthcoming school season.
Synergy Merchants Partners With CFC Financial Corp.


text:
› Companies
Everstone acquires Cookie Man from Australian Foods for an undisclosed sum
By T E Narasimhan | Chennai | Last Updated at July 02 2018 23:20 IST
Photo: Shutterstock (Representative Image)
Private Equity firm Everstone has decided to acquire Cookie Man brand from Australian Foods. Cookie Man was the first fresh baked premium cookie brand to enter the Indian market in 2000.
The Everstone Group's packaged foods platform, Everfoods has entered into an agreement to acquire Cookie Man (Australian Foods India Private Limited), via its subsidiary Modern Food Enterprises Pvt Ltd (MFEL). The company did not disclose the deal value.
Anupam Saluja, CEO, Cookie Man, and the current leadership team, will continue to work with the Modern and Everstone leadership.
Chennai-headquartered Cookie Man is a manufacturer and retailer of Australian cookies and bakery products such as muffins, ice creams, brownies, chocolates. It currently has a network of 50 plus stores/kiosks in leading malls and airports present in over 20 cities across India.
As a part of the acquisition, Everfoods also gets exclusive rights to own and operate the brand and other related intellectual property not only in India but also in adjoining countries of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Mauritius.
Deep Mishra, Managing Director, Everstone Group, who leads the investments and acquisition strategy for Everfoods said that Cookies are the fastest growing segment in the biscuits category, and the segment is expected to continue to grow at a double-digit rate in the coming years.
"Cookie Man, with its premium and authentic cookies positioning and an extremely strong equity base is a good fit for Everfoods and especially Modern. This is the first of many acquisitions in the core and adjacent spaces that we are evaluating and looking to close."
Previously, Everstone Group via Everfoods completed the acquisition of the iconic 'Modern' brand from Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) in 2016 and has also built a state of the art R&D facility in Chennai.
First Published: Mon,July 02 2018 23:20 IST
Prev » Jaquar taps into premium wave but faces stiff competition from other brands
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Despite early rains, ice cream brands take a big bite this summer
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All-electric vehicle plans lack infra support: Bosch Chairman Volker Denner


text:
Port of [Fernet-rb](https://github.com/fernet/fernet-rb) from ruby.

Fernet allows you to easily generate and verify **HMAC based authentication
tokens** for issuing API requests between remote servers. It also **encrypts**
the message so it can be used to transmit secure data over the wire.

## Installation

This library requires either the M2Crypto library or the Pycrypto lib. By default Pycrypto
is configured as a dependency since M2Crypto requires the presence of SWIG for compilation.
If M2Crypto (>=0.21.1) is installed it will be used, otherwise Pycrypto (>=2.6.1) will
be used.

pip install fernet

## Installation on Heroku

If you want to use M2Crypto you can try this buildpack which supports building the M2Cryto package:
  https://github.com/guybowden/heroku-buildpack-python-paybox

## Usage

Both client and server must share a secret.

You want to encode some data in the token as well, for example, an email
address can be used to verify it on the other end.

```python
import fernet
token = fernet.generate(secret, 'scottp@heroku.com')
```

On the server side, the receiver can use this token to verify whether it's
legit:

```python
verifer = fernet.verifier(secret, token)
if verifier.valid():
    operate_on(verifier.message) # the original, decrypted message
```

### Global configuration

It's possible to configure fernet via the `Configuration` class. To do so, put
this in an initializer:

```python
# default values shown here
import fernet.Configuration
fernet.Configuration.enforce_ttl = true
fernet.Configuration.ttl         = 60
```

## Tests

Run ```tests.sh``` to run the unit tests. Note that one test checking for bad padding in a token will
fail when running with Pycrypto.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Trump Dismisses F.B.I. Director James Comey
By Sarah Ulaky 5 months ago Feb 14, 2019 0 Comments
Sarah Ulaky
A lover of literature, art, music and fashion with an appreciation for the simple things. An unusual morning person who doesn't drink coffee. An acquired taste.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump dismissed director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, who was leading the criminal investigation into whether members of Trump's campaign colluded with the Russian government during last year's presidential election.
"While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau," Trump wrote in a letter to Comey on Tuesday.
The firing was due to Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server, although it appeared Trump benefited politically from the outcome. He once praised Comey for having the "guts" to pursue the matter.
"I cannot defend the director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's e-mails," Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein wrote in a letter released by the White House, "and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken."
Just after news broke of Comey's dismissal, Democratic lawmakers demanded calls for a special prosecutor to handle the accusation of the president's and his associate's relationship with Russia.
"The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation is for it to be led by a fearless, independent special prosecutor," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a press conference Tuesday evening, "If Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein does not appoint an independent special prosecutor, every American will rightly suspect that the decision to fire Director Comey was part of a cover-up."
Schumer took to Twitter Tuesday evening to continue sharing his beliefs in the matter.
"First Pres Trump fired Sally Yates, then Preet Bharara. Now #Comey," he said. "Doesn't seem like an accident. We must have a special prosecutor."
First Pres Trump fired Sally Yates, then Preet Bharara. Now #Comey. Doesn't seem like an accident. We must have a special prosecutor.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 9, 2017
Senator Richard Blumenthal made calls for an independent investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's ties to Russia back in February. He claimed there's "no doubt" that a special prosecutor should have taken over the case.
Trump, in his letter to Comey, said that he needs to find a new F.B.I. director "that restores public trust" but wishes Comey "the best of luck" in his future.
"It is essential that we find new leadership for the F.B.I. that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission," the letter read. "I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors."
Featured Image via Flickr/Federal Bureau of Investigation
Tagged Chuck SchumerDismissalDonald TrumpfbiJames ComeyPOTUS
Emmanuel Macron is France's Eighth President
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Canadian Ted Cruz Eligible for Candidacy
China to Increase Trade With France In Face of U.S. Trade War
Supreme Court Aims High at Specialty License Plates


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