Dunedin is blessed with a number of excellent tour operators who provide enjoyable sightseeing the easy way. You'll find a profusion of pamphlets at the visitor center on The Octagon. During summer months, it pays to reserve early.
If you have food and wine on your mind, you should definitely hook up with Zest Food Tours (tel. 0800/937-886; www.zestfoodtours.co.nz), which will take you on a walking tour of the city, introducing you to the many gourmet tastes of the area. And if you join them on a Saturday, you'll also get a tour of the Otago Farmers' Market, which is held at the spectacular Dunedin Railway Station. Book your tour at the Dunedin i-SITE Visitor Centre and pay around NZ$180 per person.
Many of the operators are geared toward peninsula exploration. Outdoor types will find pleasure in the sea-kayak, rafting, walking, and mountain bike tours offered by Wild Earth Adventures (tel. 03/489-1951; www.wildearth.co.nz). Its Ocean Discovery Kayak Tour takes you along wild beaches and soaring sea cliffs to the albatross colony and offers amazing photographic opportunities. It costs NZ$125 per person.
Also popular is Elm Wildlife Tours (tel. 0800/356-563 in NZ, or 03/454-4121; www.elmwildlifetours.co.nz). Twice voted New Zealand's best wildlife tour, it gives you a sound insight into the habits of various penguin species, fur seals, and sea lions. Viewing hides give you a close encounter and options range from NZ$99 to NZ$213. You'll need good walking shoes as you'll be walking on coastal hillsides. Most tours are 6 to 8 hours long. They are closed from December 25 to 31.
If you think ghosts don't exist, Andrew Smith's Hair Raiser Ghost Walk (tel. 03/477-2258; www.hairraisertours.com) might convince you otherwise. Get behind the city's beautiful architecture and discover the truth behind many famous ghost sightings, the wandering habits of the supernatural, and The Octagon fires. Based on fact, not fiction, the tour is not for the fainthearted and there's no guarantee of a good night's sleep afterward. No garlic or crucifixes allowed. Tours leave from outside the visitor center daily April through September at 6pm, and October through March at 8pm; they cost NZ$30 for adults, NZ$15 for children 12 and under. No credit cards.
Take the hedonistic approach to touring with Top Hat Limousines (tel. 03/455-9060; www.tophat.co.nz). They can tailor-make a tour to suit your needs anywhere in the South Island; their standard hourly rate is NZ$145. Classic Jaguar Limousines (tel. 03/488-5961; www.classicjaguar.co.nz) offers a very good 5-hour Dunedin City Heritage Tour for NZ$200 per person, or a tour of the city's heritage homes for NZ$210. It's also a very stylish way to travel to Oamaru to see the Moeraki Boulders and the Blue Penguin Colony. Children ages 6 to 12 travel at half--price.
Citibus Newton Tours, Princes Street and Transport Place (tel. 03/477-5577; www.newtons.co.nz), conducts excellent tours of varying duration, from the comfort of a double-decker bus, all with guides providing valuable insight into the area's highlights, along with the occasional anecdote to liven things up. All tours may be booked directly with Citibus Newton, online, or at the Dunedin i-SITE Visitor Centre. Pickups from your lodging can be arranged. The First City tour departs five times per day from the visitor center. The fare is NZ$20 per adult, NZ$10 per child 14 and under. The company's Wildlife Tour of Otago Peninsula includes Larnach Castle; other wildlife tours include either the Albatross Centre or Penguin Place. Tours depart daily from the visitor center at 2:30pm and cost NZ$95 for adults, NZ$47.50 for children.
A number of cruise options can show you the wildlife delights of Otago Peninsula. The visitor center has a comprehensive selection of brochures and a helpful staff to help you sort out your priorities.
Locals are quick to tell you about the fantastic value offered through the family-owned and -operated Monarch Wildlife Cruises, Wharf and Fryatt streets (tel. 0800/666-272 in NZ, or 03/477-4276; www.wildlife.co.nz). Established in 1983 by owners with degrees in biology and a wealth of experience on research vessels, Monarch won the New Zealand Tourism Awards Natural Heritage category in 1994 and the Ecotourism category in 1997. Crewmembers are experienced Department of Conservation officers or have degrees in zoology, so there's not much you won't be able to find out about albatrosses, New Zealand fur seals, yellow--eyed penguins, and other species you're likely to see. If you're short on time, opt for the 1-hour albatross cruise from Wellers Rock, which costs NZ$49 for adults, NZ$22 for children ages 5 to 15. It departs from Wellers Rock at 10:30am, noon, 2pm, 3:15pm, and 4:30pm in summer and at 2:30pm in winter. (Remember that Wellers Rock is a 45-min. drive from Central City.) Monarch also has full harbor cruises from Dunedin lasting just over 5 hours. Dress warmly and take your camera; if you're unsure about which option to take, note that the most popular is the cruise--and--bus trip, which includes a guided tour of Penguin Place—it gives you a taste of everything. Half-day tours cost NZ$90 to NZ$140, and full-day options from NZ$235 to NZ$275.
The Taieri Gorge Railway (tel. 03/477-4449; www.taieri.co.nz) is more than a small jaunt on a train—it is an award-winning journey through history and spectacular scenery that is otherwise inaccessible to the public. No matter what time of the year, you'll be impressed with both the scenic beauty and the sheer engineering feat of the railway's construction. The 75km (47 miles) of rail includes 12 tunnels, and the magnificent Wingatui Viaduct, which took 42 years to build, beginning in 1879. Make sure you get Your Guide to the Taieri Gorge when you board the train, so you can follow your progress through to the tiny township of Middlemarch, the final stopping point—a funny little backwater of a place where bachelors need hard-to-find wives. Once here, you can get off and, if you're not interested in finding the bachelors, you can link up to a coach to Queenstown; mountain bike, walk, or horseback ride—which will take you several days; or stay on the train for the return trip.
From October through April, the Dunedin-Middlemarch round--trip train runs Friday and Sunday morning, leaving Dunedin Railway Station at 9:30am; it takes a 45-minute stop at Middlemarch, and returns to Dunedin at 3:25pm. (Reduced hours in winter; call or check the website for details.) It costs NZ$97 round-trip for adults. Students get a 20% discount; one child (ages 3-17) per adult rides free, additional children pay NZ$22 each. The shorter 4-hour trip to Pukerangi (19km/12 miles short of Middlemarch) runs daily at 2:30pm, returning 6:30pm, and costs NZ$84. Both trips include at least two photo stops, excellent ongoing commentary, and a buffet car for snacks and drinks. An adults-only car and a wheelchair-accessible carriage (book in advance) are available. For a coastal train experience, leap aboard the Seasider, which departs on selected Wednesdays and Saturdays in the summer season. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm assured that the wild coastline on the trip north to Palmerston makes it more than worthwhile. You can make it a round-trip, or link with a gold-mine tour. It costs NZ$80 round--trip for adults, NZ$25 children ages 3 to 17.


text:
Palestine: French Blogger Weighs In On Gaza
Written byDeborah Ann Dilley
Posted 29 December 2008 6:39 GMT
Read this post in Français, বাংলা, Malagasy
French blogger Jeremie Berrebi, writing from Israel, posted yesterday a long blog post "Gaza/Israel : Why it is starting again" on the Gaza attacks seen from Israel and his analysis of the reasons behind the Israeli air strikes:
Depuis [la rupture de la trêve], ce sont plusieurs centaines de missiles qui sont tombés sur des villes israéliennes (on parle ici de cibles civiles) au cours des derniers jours. Des missiles plus sophistiqués qu'il y a 6 mois ont même été lancées sur des villes qu'ils n'avaient pas la possibilité de toucher avant. Oui, vous avez bien lu….des centaines de roquettes Qassam ont été tirées sur de VRAIES VILLES qui ne font même pas partie des territoires soi disant "disputés" par les Palestiniens modérés.
Since the truce ended, several hundred missiles have fallen on Israeli towns [we are talking about civilians here] during the past days. Those missiles are much more sophisticated than six month ago, and have been aimed at town that were not within their reach before. Yes, you are reading that hundreds of Qassam missiles have been fired at REAL TOWNS, that are not even located on the so called "disputed territories" by moderate Palestinians.
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+ DEMONSTRATE AGAINST THE ISRAELI ASSAULT ON GAZA! + Israel pounds Gaza for second day; 296 killed + The Bloody Saturday of Israel in Gaza + Gaza massacres + From Gaza, with Love + Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary……
29 December 2008, 12:46 pm
ZorbaDGeek
Israel should stop the bombing after the missile attacks stop for a week or the Hamas government folds. Until then maybe the increasing number of casualties will cause the terrorists who call themselves Palestinians to come to their senses or the civilian population in Gaza will decide they had enough of their leaders.
Granted – if they can get money for missiles, why not get food for the people??
Yet, the embargo is internationally sanctioned, basically, and keeping the Palestinians in basically a ghetto.
The Israelis decide what goes in and out of the 'country'.
Basically – the Gaza strip is occupied, and regular people are suffering badly.
Who would not want to fight and try to get out of the embargo????
The US (well, Bush for now) tells Israel to limit civilian deaths, they tell Hamas to stop bombing. Ha!
What authority does the US have at this point, after bombing thousands of civilian Iraqis to death, and still also keep funding Israel??!!?? Tell me, what influence does the effing Bush administration have? None. Well, quite a bit, but none that they seem to want to exert.
civax
Annette:
Hamas is a known extreme-Islam terrorist group listed by the international community's countries.
The siege on Gaza started when Hamas went to power (not without bloody clashes in Gaza).
When it rose to power in Gaza, after very bloody clashes that were actually civil war, Israel, US and the Europeans give it 3 conditions in order for it's governments to be recognized:
Denouncing violence, recognizing Israel and honoring past agreements as signed by previous government.
Hamas rejected these and launched attacks on Israel (rockets, sniper fire on farmers working in fields near the borders etc).
As a result, Israel, the US and the EU stopped passing aid and money to Gaza and the siege had began.
Still, as the situation in Gaza became hard, Israel did let in thousands of support aid – more than 17,000 trucks the past year, even under rockets fire. Israel keep sending in trucks with food and medical aid even now, during fighting.
The siege was completely cause of Hamas refusal to talk. Israel (same Israel!) have relatively calm talks with the PA in the West Bank. The siege, suffering and current situation in Gaza – it's all Hamas' fault.
1.	To say that Hamas broke the ceasefire is simply an outright lie and a flagrant distortion of the truth. Many months ago there was a debate about the Israeli blockade of Gaza on "Global Voices" and our friends from Israel were nowhere to be seen.
Israel is a nuclear power and the military super-power in the region. Also, Israel is the 6th undeclared permanent member of the United Nations. The Israeli use of sophisticated weapons against occupied civilian highly populated urban concentrations is nothing but a war crime. After the strangulation of the Palestinian population for many years, and starving them, these glorified fireworks were a scream for help. The cynical Israeli response was to open the crosses for 2 days then unleash these coward barbaric attacks on people that cannot respond with anything but these very inaccurate primitive home-made fire-crackers. Whereas western media reports these events as a response to Palestinian rocket attacks, they fail to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people and represent the sequence of events leading to these desperate rocket attacks. Also, the use of words like "missiles" is not only misleading but seems to me a misrepresentation of the inexistent treat they truly represent. This is propaganda at its best. The situation is created by Israel not just responding to it and if the Israelis wanted peace as they claim the solution is very simple. The destruction of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will accept no authority in the Palestinian territories that it does not ultimately control. Any individual, leader, faction or movement that fails to accede to Israel's demands or that seeks genuine sovereignty and the equality of all nations in the region; any government or popular movement that demands the applicability of international humanitarian law and of the universal declaration of human rights for its own people will be unacceptable for the Jewish State. It is that simple. This Israeli ethnocratic theocracy with Universal Suffrage will stop at nothing to realise their biblical aspirations of full land judaisation dreams and the total inhalation of any real Palestinian authority. The question that remains is what will Israel deem necessary to eradicate a militarily inexistent treat?!!
Propaganda is everything that has been written in the post above. Propaganda is all about trying to hide the real issues and focus on the periphery where one can be misled. Israel left Gaza in 2005. They gave over to the Palestinian people the infrastructure of Gush Katif which included a multi-million dollar export program of produce and goods. The Paletinians, led by Hamas terrorists, destroyed this infrastructure and burnt it to the ground. Israel has no interest in taking over Gaza since Gaza is the modern-day equivolent of Sodom and Gemorrah, led by a Hamas government that could care less about it's civilians and more about killing Israelis.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas has called for the destruction of the state of israel. This has been their cause since before the gaza scenario even existed.
Hamas has been stockpiling arms that they have smuggled into Gaza from Egypt that they have received from Iran, Syria, and other Middle-East territories to be used to destroy Israel. And has nothing to do with whether there is free movement into and out of Gaza.
Hamas has been responsible for the firing of over 5,000 mortars and kassam rockets at Israel since 2001, whether the borders have been open or not – just to kill israel. Hamas has no interest in making peace with Israel. And it's irrelevent what the situation is in Gaza, Hamas is devoted to killing and destroying as many Israelis as it can, and they don't even care about their own people. They use Gaza civilians as human shields, fire their home-made rockets from schools and mosques, and turn hospitals into military bases relying on the morals of peace-loving civilizations who would not bomb a hospital to protect their terrorists. The Palestinian people suffer at the hands of their own leaders who love death and destruction and will stop at nothing, even the destruction of their own people – men, women, and even children – to destroy Israel. Those who rally to support Hamas are protectors of terrorists and their values, who would love for others to look at them as sophisticated and intelligent people.
The battle in Gaza is a reflection of the true battle in the world right now: those who support and sympathize with terror and islamic fundamentalism, and those who realize that islamic terrorists are a blight on the world and need to be wiped out, before they wipe us all out. They are the ones who call for the death of the Jews and lead violent protests calling for Israel's destruction. Choose a side: you're either with the terrorists against israel, or against them and for israel, or held hostage by the former and lack the courage or the moral sophistication (and the intelligence) to tell the difference.
Left Gaza??!! According to the Neo-Zionist maybe.
Nobody masters the art of sophism and rhetoric like our friends from Israel. However, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig". There is no need to get into "The Politics of Anti-Semitism" again. Change that record as people can see trough this masquerade. Israel as the occupying power under article 55 of the Geneva Convention "has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate". Israel failed to do so and used it as a bargaining political instrument for oppression. In fact, 1.5 million inhabitants are effectively prisoners. Israel strategy is to cut the blood supply to create an environment of chaos and destabilise the Hamas regime in Gaza. Israeli internal politics struggles also had a major influence on how the military campaign will be directed. Kadima and Avodah would have lost the elections handsomely if they have not shown that they are tough and a successful campaign in Gaza seriously improves the leftists' chances in the elections. Also, a political readjustment with the arrival of a new American administration in few weeks was necessary. This kind of cynicism is nothing new to Israeli politicians and their miserable calculations.
5 January 2009, 9:29 am
Israel is not and should not be a state above criticism and International law.
Moreover, the Jewish Diaspora and lobbies have always tried gagging anybody that dares criticising Israel. The fact that there was a historical precedent for cruelty and genocide does not give Israel a carte blanche to do the same. What you have been doing is recycling the usual war propaganda of every Israeli government for home consumption. What most Israelis were trained to forget: that despite the Israeli withdrawal, Gaza is still occupied. Even before the Hamas takeover, Israel retained all the measures to ensure its effective control of the Strip: from direct control of all the border crossings to Gaza, both for goods and for persons, to Israeli control of Gaza's population registry. The only apparent exception – the Rafah checkpoint – is restricted to entry into Gaza of Gaza inhabitants only, as defined by the Israeli registry, and even this is under Israeli supervision. But for most Israelis, Gaza is an independent, sovereign empire, which was occupied by Israel ages ago, and now, for no reason at all, poses an existential threat to its benevolent Jewish neighbour.
Once the war started, Maj.-Gen. (Reserve) Giora Island – former head of the Israeli National Security Council – spelled it all out on television, without a shade of shame: Israel should not confine its attacks to military facilities, he said, but must hit civilian targets as well. The damage to the civil population should be maximized, because the worse the humanitarian crisis is, the better and the sooner the operation would end. It's the same major-general, by the way, who just a year ago caused outrage by urging the Israeli government to negotiate directly with Hamas. Do not need to look for consistency, integrity, or intelligence where war criminals are involved.
Join the conversation -> Jon C

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Lindsey Graham Has Completely Abandoned His Filter Amid the Kavanaugh Noise
By Davis Richardson • 10/04/18 10:16am
Sen. Lindsey Graham. Win McNamee/Getty Images.
It started with a fiery outburst before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday.
After hours of listening to testimonies from Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, Senator Lindsey Graham (D-S.C.), normally the cool Southerner, erupted to lambast his Democratic colleagues for bringing forth a last-minute sexual assault allegation against the Supreme Court Justice nominee.
"This is Hell!" boomed Graham from his perch in a partisan display of anger against partisanship. "This is going to destroy the ability for good people to come forward because of this crap!"
Over the past week, the South Carolina senator has continued a crusade against modern politics, invoking both his own identity politics and simultaneous contempt for tribalism.
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"I know I'm a single white man from South Carolina and I've been told to shut up but I will not shut up," Graham boomed to lawmakers after the committee reconvened the next day.
"If you don't like me working with President Trump to make the world a better place, I don't give a shit," Graham told CNN on Monday, echoing the same brass talking point he gave the network this past summer.
Lindsey Graham on CNN:
"If you don't like me working with President Trump to make the world a better place, I don't give a shit" pic.twitter.com/uXr1bLPVTG
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) October 1, 2018
Graham managed to slide back into the news-cycle with some more jabs on Wednesday. Speaking at the Atlantic Festival alongside the publication's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, the senator said Ford was spoken to "respectfully" during last week's hearing, while Kavanaugh was "treated like crap."
This remark received loud boos from the Davos crowd.
"Yeah, well boo yourself," shot back the senator.
Graham also told the audience he was fed up with President Trump's cozy embrace of North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un.
"Enough with 'I love you," said Graham of the president's remarks that the two leaders "fell in love" after exchanging letters. "This love crap needs to stop. There's nothing to love about Kim Jong Un."
Filed Under: Politics, National Politics, Donald Trump, Supreme Court, Kim Jong-un, Brett Kavanaugh, Lindsey Graham, Christine Blasey Ford
SEE ALSO: NJ Politics Digest: Is State Running a 'Stealth Moratorium' on Charter Schools?


Match-3 puzzles combined with Chess.
Pawn'd combines the strategic thinking and unique moves of chess with fun, gem-shattering, puzzle-game action. Each piece has simple but unique moves inspired by chess and perfected for match-game action.
Several modes of game play provide unique challenges. Can you break the poisoned piece in a just a few moves? How long can you keep playing while finding only matches of 4 or more? Tired of deep thought? Try matching as many pieces as you can before time runs out!
Are you ready to get Pawn'd?
Nominated in the TouchArcade Forums as Game of the Week!
Dozens of Glowing 5-Star Ratings and Reviews!


text:
Travel in
Stunning interior gardens, courtyards, and delicious tajines, spanning from the Atlas Mountains to the Sahara.
Best time to Travel
What is the best time to visit Morocco?
March to October is the best time to visit Morocco.
What is the curreny in Morocco?
The currency in Morocco is Dirham. 1 USD is equivalent to 10.6 Moroccan Dirham.
Pick a destination
Morocco Travel Guide: Best Things To Do (10-day Itinerary)
Destinations in Morocco
Things To Do in Marrakech, Morocco: A 3-Day Guide
11 Things To Do in Fes, Morocco (Complete Guide)
9 Best Things To Do In Chefchaouen, Morocco
Sahara Morocco: Visit the Merzouga Desert in a 3-Day Tour
Renting a Car in Morocco in 2023: All you need to know
Magical Morocco: a beautiful blend of influences that make it the perfect stepping stone between the delights of Mediterranean Spain and Sub-Saharan Africa. Discover French influences in the vibrant cafe culture, delicious pastries, and coffee, but also most distinctly, its Middle-Eastern charm. Seen in the stunning desert landscapes, the stimulating souks, and impressive mosques.
Spectacular Surprises
Morocco has everything that travelers would expect from a nation that hugs both the Atlantic coastline and the Saharan desert. Spectacular cliffs are home to charming white and blue colored villages, and incredible waves that make it a surfer's paradise. Meanwhile, in the Sahara, explore beautiful red and orange sand dunes and glittering palm tree oases. Both accompanied by picturesque sandcastle style houses, and crystal clear night skies that are perfect for stargazing. The biggest surprise, however, is the Atlas Mountains. Discover an epic mountain range for snow sport fanatics, lying unusually close to the extraordinary Sahara.
Stimulating Cities
In every city, there are new and exciting discoveries. Whether it's exploring maze-like streets, bargaining for beautiful multi-colored textiles and sparkling lanterns, or sitting cross-legged over a steaming hot tagine. In Marrakech, Africa's 'capital of culture', walk across squares of snake charmers or relax in luxurious riads. In Chefchaouen admire the beautiful ultramarine colored houses, and in Fes discover the extraordinary Medina. The wonders of Morocco are waiting!


COMPATIBLE Punch Tooling will once again demonstrate its wide range of punch press tooling products at Austech.
The company will show an extensive selection of the tooling styles it manufactures and distributes for single-station, multi-station and turret type punch presses.True to its name, the company's products are designed for compatibility with existing tool libraries and machines.
These include Amada, Mazak, Strippit, Carrier, Nissimbo, Trumpf, and Euromac along with many others.
With the benefit of 30 years industry experience the company has developed a tooling service package including quality tooling compatible with existing presses; affordable, tailored options; and comprehensive post sales support.
Compatible Punch Tooling will also display its own WearPlus range of tooling along with Unipunch, Strippit, Unittool and Redman products. Stand H52.


Corinne Morgan has always gone out of her way to stay out of trouble. All she wants is to graduate from the notoriously brutal Anna Dale Academy in one piece. Unfortunately, her headmistress seems out to get her – and a vicious trio of students known as The I.C. are too!
All this would be enough for anyone to handle, but things get a million times crazier when Corinne acquires a crystal ball that revives her ancestor, an Irish war goddess with her own plans for revenge and in need of a new body.
Forced to co-exist with a second persona in her own head, Corinne draws upon her own resourcefulness and her father's business connections. She secretly builds a suit of impenetrable high-tech armor that provides her with the strength of sixteen 16 year-old girls. Coupled with the supernatural abilities now bestowed upon her – most notably a set of spectral wings and the power of flight – she assumes the alias Corbie and plans to strike back against the I.C. In doing so, she sets off a chain reaction of events that leads to her battling a wild array of super-powered villains, from rival gods to swamp ogres.
Whether it's on her home turf of Beverly Hills, in the darkest depths of the Irish countryside, in or other dimensions, Corbie goes toe-to-toe with the forces of darkness while, as Corinne, she continues to face the daily challenges of a highly sensitive teenager in an often overwhelming world.
John Porter (INFJ / enneagram 4) is the Xennial writer and artist behind "Corinne Morgan, Corbie". His childhood was spent watching commercialized eighties kidvid and reading a plethora of licensed comics, which at six led him to want to pick up a pencil and begin making sequential stories of his own.
In the early 2010s, John was further inspired by the earliest Stan Lee issues of The Amazing Spider-Man (pencilled by Steve Ditko and later John Romita), as well as Lee's work on Daredevil with Gene Colan, to create a new superhero title for introverts and highly sensitive people (HSPs). After years of stop-start development, this project was eventually refined into what would become Corinne Morgan, Corbie, and the first issue was made available for download in October 2018.
John currently resides in a tiny village in the North East of Scotland, in a house ready to buckle under the weight of an army of vintage Transformers toys and the occasional Ninja Turtle. When he's not drawing, he can be found on his personal Twitter account (@JohnPorterCMC) talking about old TV commercials and communicating almost entirely via Simpsons references.


text:
Enterrement de vie de jeune fille est une série télévisée française en six épisodes de 15 minutes réalisé par Benoît Pétré et Deborah Saïag, diffusée entre le  et le  sur Canal+.

Synopsis

En prévision du mariage prochain de leur amie Eléonore, Gwen et Zoé veulent faire vivre à Eléonore un mémorable enterrement de vie de jeune fille !

Fiche technique
 Titre : Enterrement de vie de jeune fille
 Réalisation : Deborah Saïag et Benoît Pétré
 Scénario : Deborah Saïag et David Bouaziz
 Producteur : Gilles Galud (La Parisienne d'Images), Canal +, Canal Jimmy
 Distribution : Canal +
 Directeur de la photographie : Stephan Massis
 Chef Décorateur : Richard Cahours de Virgile
 Montage : Pauline Delcroix
 Costumes : Frédéric Cambier
 Pays d'origine : France
 Genre : Comédie
 Durée : 6 x 15 minutes
 Format : Couleur

Distribution
 Vanessa Pivain : Éléonore
 Benoît Pétré : Baptiste
 Isabelle Vitari : Sophie
 Mika Tard : Zoé
 Mayane Delem : Gwen
 Alexandre Brik : Erwan
 Morgan Perez : Reynald
 Roland Menou : Le curé
 Deborah Saïag : Sacha
 Gilles Galud : Le vigneron
 Patrick Grand Mourcel : L'homme-fantasme

Liens externes

Série télévisée créée en 2006
Série télévisée française des années 2000
Série télévisée de Canal+
Série télévisée humoristique

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
package org.apache.sshd.netty;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InterruptedIOException;
import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
import java.net.SocketAddress;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap;
import java.util.concurrent.CountDownLatch;

import org.apache.sshd.common.future.CloseFuture;
import org.apache.sshd.common.io.IoAcceptor;
import org.apache.sshd.common.io.IoHandler;
import org.apache.sshd.common.io.IoServiceEventListener;
import org.apache.sshd.common.util.GenericUtils;

import io.netty.bootstrap.ServerBootstrap;
import io.netty.channel.Channel;
import io.netty.channel.ChannelFuture;
import io.netty.channel.ChannelInitializer;
import io.netty.channel.ChannelOption;
import io.netty.channel.ChannelPipeline;
import io.netty.channel.group.DefaultChannelGroup;
import io.netty.channel.socket.SocketChannel;
import io.netty.channel.socket.nio.NioServerSocketChannel;
import io.netty.handler.logging.LogLevel;
import io.netty.handler.logging.LoggingHandler;
import io.netty.util.concurrent.GlobalEventExecutor;

/**
 * The Netty based IoAcceptor implementation.
 *
 * @author Julien Viet
 * @author Apache MINA SSHD Project
 */
public class NettyIoAcceptor extends NettyIoService implements IoAcceptor {
    protected final ServerBootstrap bootstrap = new ServerBootstrap();
    protected final Map<SocketAddress, Channel> boundAddresses = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();

    public NettyIoAcceptor(NettyIoServiceFactory factory, IoHandler handler) {
        super(factory, handler);

        channelGroup = new DefaultChannelGroup("sshd-acceptor-channels", GlobalEventExecutor.INSTANCE);
        bootstrap.group(factory.eventLoopGroup)
            .channel(NioServerSocketChannel.class)
            .option(ChannelOption.SO_BACKLOG, 100)  // TODO make this configurable
            .handler(new LoggingHandler(LogLevel.INFO)) // TODO make this configurable
            .childHandler(new ChannelInitializer<SocketChannel>() {
                @Override
                @SuppressWarnings("synthetic-access")
                public void initChannel(SocketChannel ch) throws Exception {
                    IoServiceEventListener listener = getIoServiceEventListener();
                    SocketAddress local = ch.localAddress();
                    SocketAddress remote = ch.remoteAddress();
                    SocketAddress service = GenericUtils.head(boundAddresses.keySet());
                    try {
                        if (listener != null) {
                            try {
                                listener.connectionAccepted(NettyIoAcceptor.this, local, remote, service);
                            } catch (Exception e) {
                                ch.close();
                                throw e;
                            }
                        }

                        ChannelPipeline p = ch.pipeline();
                        @SuppressWarnings("resource")
                        NettyIoSession nettyIoSession = new NettyIoSession(NettyIoAcceptor.this, handler, service);
                        p.addLast(nettyIoSession.adapter);
                    } catch (Exception e) {
                        if (listener != null) {
                            try {
                                listener.abortAcceptedConnection(NettyIoAcceptor.this, local, remote, service, e);
                            } catch (Exception exc) {
                                if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {
                                    log.debug("initChannel(" + ch + ") listener=" + listener + " ignoring abort event exception", exc);
                                }
                            }
                        }

                        throw e;
                    }
                }
            });
    }

    @Override
    public void bind(Collection<? extends SocketAddress> addresses) throws IOException {
        if (GenericUtils.isEmpty(addresses)) {
            return;
        }

        Collection<Channel> bound = new ArrayList<>(addresses.size());
        try {
            for (SocketAddress address : addresses) {
                Channel channel = bindInternal(address);
                bound.add(channel);
            }

            bound.clear();  // disable auto close at finally clause
        } finally {
            for (Channel channel : bound) {
                closeChannel(channel);
            }
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void bind(SocketAddress address) throws IOException {
        bindInternal(address);
    }

    protected Channel bindInternal(SocketAddress address) throws IOException {
        InetSocketAddress inetAddress = (InetSocketAddress) address;
        boolean debugEnabled = log.isDebugEnabled();
        if (debugEnabled) {
            log.debug("bindInternal({}) binding", address);
        }

        ChannelFuture f = bootstrap.bind(inetAddress);
        Channel channel = f.channel();
        channelGroup.add(channel);
        try {
            f.sync();

            SocketAddress bound = channel.localAddress();
            if (debugEnabled) {
                log.debug("bindInternal({}) bound to {}", address, bound);
            }

            Channel prev = boundAddresses.put(bound, channel);
            if (prev != null) {
                if (debugEnabled) {
                    log.debug("bindInternal({}) replaced entry of {} - previous={}",
                        address, bound, prev.localAddress());
                }
            }

            channel.closeFuture().addListener(fut -> boundAddresses.remove(bound));

            // disable auto close at finally clause
            Channel returnValue = channel;
            channel = null;
            return returnValue;
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            log.error("bindInternal({}) interrupted ({}): {}",
                address, e.getClass().getSimpleName(), e.getMessage());
            if (debugEnabled) {
                log.debug("bindInternal(" + address + ") failure details", e);
            }

            throw (InterruptedIOException) new InterruptedIOException(e.getMessage()).initCause(e);
        } finally {
            closeChannel(channel);
        }
    }

    protected void closeChannel(Channel channel) {
        if (channel != null) {
            channelGroup.remove(channel);
            channel.close();
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void unbind(Collection<? extends SocketAddress> addresses) {
        CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(addresses.size());
        for (SocketAddress address : addresses) {
            Channel channel = boundAddresses.remove(address);
            if (channel != null) {
                ChannelFuture fut;
                if (channel.isOpen()) {
                    fut = channel.close();
                } else {
                    fut = channel.closeFuture();
                }
                fut.addListener(f -> latch.countDown());
            } else {
                latch.countDown();
            }
        }
        try {
            latch.await();
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void unbind(SocketAddress address) {
        Channel channel = boundAddresses.remove(address);
        if (channel != null) {
            ChannelFuture fut;
            if (channel.isOpen()) {
                fut = channel.close();
            } else {
                fut = channel.closeFuture();
            }
            try {
                fut.sync();
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
            }
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void unbind() {
        Collection<SocketAddress> addresses = getBoundAddresses();
        if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {
            log.debug("Unbinding {}", addresses);
        }

        unbind(addresses);
    }

    @Override
    public Set<SocketAddress> getBoundAddresses() {
        return new HashSet<>(boundAddresses.keySet());
    }

    @Override
    protected CloseFuture doCloseGracefully() {
        channelGroup.close().addListener(fut -> closeFuture.setClosed());
        return closeFuture;
    }

    @Override
    protected void doCloseImmediately() {
        doCloseGracefully();
        super.doCloseImmediately();
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Public Release: 12-Nov-2015
Protein's work in eye lens suggests a way to tame cancer
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
SAN ANTONIO (Nov. 12, 2015) - How does a protein called connexin put the clamps on cancer? Researchers in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio today reported an explanation.
Study senior author Jean X. Jiang, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry at the Health Science Center, said connexin tethers itself to a cell-proliferating molecule called Skp2. This prevents the Skp2 from traveling to the cell nucleus to promote more cell growth, she said.
The majority of cells in the body have connexin proteins, but primary tumors have very low amounts. "This is because the presence of connexins suppresses primary tumor growth," Dr. Jiang said.
Dr. Jiang and her team study the eye lens, which is rich in connexin proteins, as a model system to understand how connexin functions in cells throughout the body. First author of the study is Qian Shi, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Health Science Center.
"If there is a way to amplify the presence of connexin, then there can be a way to suppress the cell proliferation, for example in cancer," Dr. Jiang said.
In the future, cancer therapies could potentially be based on connexin molecules, the study suggests. The journal Developmental Cell published the findings online today (Nov. 12).
Dr. Jiang's research is funded by a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Eye Institute of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
For current news from the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, please visit our news release website, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or view us on YouTube.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is one of the country's leading health sciences universities. The university's schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have produced more than 31,000 graduates. The $801.8 million operating budget supports six campuses in San Antonio and Laredo. For more information on the many ways "We make lives better®," visit http://www.uthscsa.edu.
Will Sansom
sansom@uthscsa.edu
@uthscsa
http://www.uthscsa.edu/hscnews
Developmental Cell
NIH/National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health
http://uthscsa.edu/hscnews/singleformat2.asp?newID=5154
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2015.10.014


text:
Bringing Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities to life for MIF
This year's Manchester International Festival features an ambitious production of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. We talk to director Leo Warner about the challenges of bringing the novel to the stage, and creating a theatre from scratch at Mayfield in the city
For the next ten days, Manchester's former railway depot Mayfield is being transformed into a theatre, where an adaptation of Italo Calvino's poetic novel Invisible Cities will take place in a performance that mixes dance, music and projection mapping.
Calvino's novel sees the explorer Marco Polo conjure up visions of 55 imagined cities for the emperor Kublai Khan, while along the way musing on questions of language, time and culture. It is a difficult text to bring to life on stage, and the MIF production is suitably ambitious, with an entirely new theatre space built to house it inside the Mayfield.
The project is a collaboration between 59 Productions, the company behind the video design of the Opening Ceremony at the London 2012 Olympic Games and the theatre production of War Horse, the renowned dance company Rambert, and MIF.
It was over two-and-a-half years in the making, from its first conception via a conversation between Warner and 59 Productions' set designer Jenny Melville in the back of a cab one day, to finding the right backing in Rambert and MIF. "It's certainly the most complicated thing I've ever attempted to do," Warner admits.
Creative Process Digital Product Design Technology Theatre


Today I'm going to talk about a topcoat I bought a week ago. The Gel-look XXXL shine topcoat from Essence. It was only €1.69 so I was like why not?
I'm not really sure why they named it gel-look topcoat. I can't see the whole gel part it just looks like a regular topcoat. But than again I have never had gel nails before. So maybe it's just me.
I tried it on a random nail polish (Essie) and a essence nail polish.
A topcoat is a coat to top your nail polish and make your nail polish stay on longer. It's also suppose to prevent your nail polish from chipping.
I noticed that when I tried removing my nail polish it was harder to remove. Which means to me that it really sealed my nail polish. And will also wear off harder on a every day basis. And that's exactly what I'm looking for in a topcoat!
I would buy it if you need a topcoat, but I wouldn't buy it for the claims.


(W) Bob Schreck (A) Nate Van Dyke (C) Tom Yeates, Frank Miller It's been 13 years since little Tim and Lex Murphy escaped from the island of Isla Sorna, and recent public opinion has reversed, with the world clamoring for authorities to re-open Jurassic Park! With the help of their controversial Granddad's inheritance and their own sharp wits, a secret deal is struck to open a new park! This time they'll get it right... right? Bob Schreck makes his writing debut on this all-new tale, under covers from fellow industry legends Frank Miller and Tom Yeates!


By engaging with fisheries scientists in the development process, Smith-Root engineers transformed the backpack electrofishing world when creating Smith-Root's LR-24 Backpack Electrofisher. Among many innovations, the LR-24 introduced digital controls, "quick setup" options, 10 programmable/recallable settings, electrical output monitoring, overload warning, customized shoulder harness, 400 Watt electrical output, and state of the art safety features.
Quick Setup will select a voltage level necessary to achieve 25 watts average power output through the water between electrodes. This setup uses a default setting of a pulsed DC waveform with a frequency of 30 Hz and a 12% duty cycle (equivalent to a 4ms pulse width). All settings can be adjusted up or down from this starting point to achieve levels necessary for fish capture. This is very useful when electrofishing in a new area and you're not sure what settings to use.
This feature allows the operator to set up two completely independent sets of waveforms and voltages and toggle between them simply by releasing and pressing the anode pole switch in less than one second. This can be very useful if working in waters with multiple age classes, or multiple species where the optimal settings may be quite different.
Emergency stop switch, twin audible alarms, tilt and immersion sensors and Anode-Out-of-Water sensor, combined with the ETL safety certification make the LR-24 the safest backpack electrofisher available. With the ETL Listed Mark on the LR-24 Backpack Electrofisher, researchers can be confident that they are using the safest backpack electrofisher in the world.
The Power Limit Key allows the user to limit the maximum average output power. It is defaulted to 400 watts, which is the maximum average power output that the LR-24 is capable of producing. It can be easily changed to a lower limit, which can be useful if a study requires staying within a certain power level. The user can decide whether the frequency or the voltage will be automatically decreased in order not to exceed the output power at that limit.
Voltage can be adjusted in 5 volt increments, frequency in 1 Hertz increments, and duty cycle (pulse width) in 1% increments. This is very desirable given study results which indicate that fish injury rates decrease corresponding to decreases in all of these settings. Exact control of the settings allows for much greater control of the output waveforms.
The LR-24 can produce straight DC, pulsed DC, and Burst of Pulses (previously known as CPS waveform).
Roto-molded packframe and molded control box housing offer tough structural support in a light-weight package. The removable battery cover protects all cable connections from environmental conditions and wear and tear.
There are 10 storage locations available to either pre-program desirable settings or to store settings currently in use. These storage locations are filled with Factory Default Stored Waveforms, but can be replaced one by one with settings the user prefers. These can be pre-programmed before going in the field or saved and stored while in the field. This can be very useful if a setting has been found to be very effective with a particular species, or it can be of use if a project supervisor wants to standardize sampling and provide settings for crews to use in the field. Factory default stored waveforms can be restored if desired.
The easy-to-fit Cordura suspension harness allows for quick adjustment, making multi-user operations fast, simple and convenient.
The LR-24 Electrofisher is the first and only electrofisher independently tested and certified to meet published safety standards.
Need an electrofisher for only a week or a month? Rent one.
The Smith-Root rental program is a worry-free and flexible way to get the equipment you need for field season. You can rent on a weekly or monthly basis and Smith-Root's rental program also offers you credit toward ownership of new equipment.


How often do you play video games? Gaming enthusiasts can testify in truth that regular gaming headphones do not always feel comfortable, especially when used continuously for long hours. The phones tend to get hot as well as feeling heavy on one's ears. Moreover, the ear cups, especially those that are fitted with leather padding, are not very well breathable. This makes long hours of gaming uncomfortable, and it pisses some people off. You want to keep this load off for a while and still continue enjoying your game? Gaming earbuds are a sensible solution to those who want to give their ears some relief.
Gaming earbuds are an ultra-compact, lightweight and easily portable style of earphones designed to fit directly into the ear canal. There are earbuds that are specifically designed for gamers. Similar to gaming headphones, the gaming earbuds are designed to produce high-fidelity audio that is immersive enough to drive you deeper into the game.
What is the essence of having earbuds specifically designed for gamers? Why can't I just wear the ones use with my iPod? One thing you should realize is that those iPod earbuds were designed for music and can fail to accurately tune to the sound effects of the game. There are certain effects that game designers incorporate into the game, which must be felt for one to get the excitement and full experience of the game.
For one to enjoy the gameplay, the sound effects and other sounds such as gunfire, explosions, footsteps, car roaring, etc. should be fully enhanced. Surround sound systems and over-the-ear gaming headphones are well-known to enhance these sounds. Similarly, gaming earbuds are designed to bring out these effects though in a smaller dimension. In addition, they offer an excellent exterior noise reduction. The isolation from external noise is what amplifies the gaming audio effects.
As indicated earlier, earbuds are ultra-compact and lightweight, making them highly portable. These earbuds are not something that will replace the regular gaming headphones. This is because they can't be as good as headsets when it comes to simulating the gaming sound environments. However, owning a pair of earbuds will give you extra comfort and freedom from your headsets whenever you start feeling uncomfortable.
Another feature that comes with gaming earbuds is the inline microphone. The mic is capable of picking up voice clearly as long as it's close to the mouth. Hence, just like the over-the-ear headphones, earbuds can be used to play games that require voice commands.
Earbuds are the most portable of all kinds of earphones due to their small size, lightweight, as well as being easy to conceal. You will not find them heavy or feel uncomfortable even if you wear them the whole day. Additionally, you can play your favorite games anytime and anywhere, even when you're on the bus or train.
Earbuds have small size tweeters which enables them to accommodate all sounds including high and sharp sounds. This property enhances the production of quality treble.
Most earbuds are well-fitting into the ear canal. This helps in blocking external noise from entering the ear canal. They are usually made from a material that exhibits sound blocking characteristics.
Since not all is rosy for earbuds, below are some of the drawbacks associated with earphones in general.
It's obvious that earbuds cannot reproduce bass clearly the same way woofers and subwoofers do. Despite this drawback, gaming earbuds are designed to reproduce high quality bass that is adequate for gaming experience.
The standard size of earbuds will not fit perfectly into all ear canals. Some may feel too loose while others feel too tight. This is because all ear canals are not identical in size. So, it's upon the users to find a pair that is perfectly fitting.
With so many gaming earbuds in the market today, we decided to offer you a helping hand when it comes to choosing the best. Our aim is to see you pick the best pair of earbuds for your gaming needs. Below are top 5 picks from the most popular gaming earbuds from Amazon. The selection criteria include product's rating, customer reviews, comfort, and quality.
Some brands of earbuds could be designed for both gamers and audiophiles. However, Razer Hammerhead Pro was exclusively designed by gamers for gamers. This is because the audio output is engineered up to the requirements of gaming sound. They are made from high-grade lightweight aluminium body, which is a sign of durability. The inner acoustics chamber features an optimized design for superior quality of bass and crystal clarity of audio communications. As the name suggests, the earbuds are said to be producers of hammering bass.
The Razer Hammerhead Pro also features an advanced passive noise isolation mechanism. This feature is enhanced by the interchangeable ear-tips (of sizes small, medium, and large) and the optional bi-flanges. These ear-tips are also aimed at minimizing the cases of earbuds being too tight or too loose in the ear canal. They come with a carrying case to compliment the style, comfort, portability, and audio fidelity.
The main con of the Razer Hammerhead Pro is that it doesn't come with an inline volume control. Additionally, its mic is not very good at picking voice.
Are you the type of gamers who prefer to leave their bulky headsets home when travelling? The Razer Moray Plus is designed for you. The basic package comes with in-ear earphones along with an omnidirectional inline microphone. The earphones have a passive noise isolation capability and extended bass output. This pair of gaming earbuds has a sleek, lightweight design and produces powerful bass-driven stereo audio with superior clarity of the mid/high range.
Razor Moray Plus also features 3 adapters to support both audio and voice for multiple gaming devices. In this case, it can work with PCs/laptops, Apple devices, Sony PSP 2000/3000, and Nintendo DS Lite/DSi. This makes Razor Moray + a great tool for both communication and gameplay.
The SteelSeries Flux earbuds come with memory foam tips for better audio experience. The package also includes silicon ear-tips of 3 different sizes, i.e. small, medium and large. If you are a gamer who likes burning the midnight oil, these earbuds are ideal for you. This is because they are very comfortable to wear even for hours. The earphones are lightweight with flat rubber cord which lowers chances of tangling and getting messed up in your pocket.
The SteelSeries Flux features an omnidirectional inline mic whose capturing of voices is pretty good. The sound captured/delivered is clear and accurate because they make use of balanced armature technology. The cable ends are swappable such that you can use it with a wide variety of devices. For instance, there is an end that can be used with mobile devices and Mac for it has a 3-pole 3.5mm jack. The other end is for usage with PCs as it has both a 3.5mm headphone jack and a 3.5mm microphone jack.
SteelSeries Flux headsets are designed for wearing over the ear. The over the ear design allows for a secure fit as well as better listening experience. Finally, the package contains a carrying case to ensure protection of both the headset, extra cable, and the ear tips against damage.
The Turtle Beach M1 earbuds are specially designed for gamers on the go. They have noise-isolating design which optimizes the quality of sound. They also have an around-the-ear design to enhance stability and comfort. These headsets are characterized by superior quality sound and high deep bass response. This is enhanced by its large 10mm drivers with neodymium magnets.
For crystal clear communication, the Turtle Beach M1 features an omnidirectional inline microphone with sleek and compact design. The inline mic also enhances hands-free calling with your mobile phone. For multiple device compatibility, the M1 is fitted with a standard 3.5mm jack. Users are also provided with a carrying pouch for convenience and protection of their earphones.
This was officially designed for the PlayStation Vita gamers. It's a stylish headset whose rich audio performance and in-ear style gives you deep immersion into the game. The quality of audio enables you to hear all the action as you play. The earbuds offer impressive passive noise isolation.
The headset is fitted with an integrated mic for crystal clear communications. The mic can be muted using an inline switch. The mic muting is basically done when you're in game play and you don't want to be heard by your enemies. This headset comes in a variety of stylish colors. The package also contains 3 sizes of silicon ear tips. The ear tips ensure a comfortable and secure fit in the ear canal.
The fact that it's the official headset for PlayStation Vita doesn't make it incompatible with other devices. It's fully functional and compatible with all devices that have a standard 3.55mm port. In simple terms, the earbuds work as standard headphones.


Because you compared Zoho Mail and Microsoft Outlook, we think this app could fit your needs.
The custom signature feature in Zoho is one of its best features by far. It not only lets the individual show his/her credibility to clients and vendors but it also lets partners and clients recognize the business's brand better.
Zoho mail is definitely a more effective mailing tool for businesses than Gmail but it still has along way to go when compared to Microsoft Outlook that are tailored almost specifically for use in a professional environment.
Save time and effort comparing leading Software tools for small businesses. The table below compares Zoho Mail vs. Microsoft Outlook. Check out how both product compares looking at product details such as features, pricing, target market and supported languages. Quickly access the latest reviews to compare actual user opinions and ratings. Do not hesitate to click on Visit Website to access a Free Demo or Trial immediately.


This entry was posted on 15 August, 2015 at 19:03 and is filed under Frida, New release, News.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
UPDATE: Due to popular demand, Something's Going On will also released as a digipak with the CD and DVD only.
Also, a remixed version by Norwegian DJ Lindstrøm will be available, but it's not clear in what format(s), digital, CD or vinyl.


text:
Consumer Products Industry
Principal Investors and Private Equity
Technology, Media, and Telecommunications
Business and Organizational Purpose
Corporate Finance and Strategy
Digital, Technology, and Data
Innovation Strategy and Delivery
M&A, Transactions, and PMI
Organization Strategy
Pricing and Revenue Management
Zero-Based Budgeting
Our People and Culture
Related Expertise: Finance Function Excellence, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Corporate Finance and Strategy
The First Steps Toward the Finance Function of the Future
March 14, 2022 By Alan Hippe, Petra Gall, Alexander Roos, and Anna Oberauer
To evolve in today's dynamic business environment, every finance function needs near-term ambitions that are bold enough to motivate employees to achieve their full potential. Three steps guide the process of developing the ambitions:
Finance leaders should first gain clarity on the need for change.
This clarity provides the basis for developing a compelling story that promotes organizational support and facilitates defining an approach for driving change. The story should seamlessly flow from the company's overall purpose and vision.
By clearly understanding its starting point and ambition for the future, a finance function can choose the right focus areas and initiatives.
Drawing on our experience and examples from Roche's finance transformation, we show how companies could implement these steps. Read about this approach here.
A CFO must set unique near-term ambitions that are bold enough to motivate employees to achieve their full potential.
This is the second in a series of articles on the future of the finance function.
To evolve in today's dynamic business environment, every finance function needs unique near-term ambitions that are bold enough to motivate the company's employees to achieve their full potential. Even if the organization does not realize all of its stretch targets, such ambitions will inspire people to reach for greater heights of performance.
In our previous article, we presented five hypotheses for the function's near-term future that were intended to serve not as a universal blueprint but as an inspiration and a starting point. We see the finance function as a company's custodian of performance—steering activities and resource allocation at the enterprise level to achieve strategic objectives. In our view, many finance functions could fulfill such a role by the end of this decade.
To ensure that they set the right direction for their function, finance leaders should first gain clarity on the need for change. This provides the basis for the next step: defining ambitions for the future, with a compelling strategic story that promotes organizational support and drives change. The story should seamlessly flow from the company's overall purpose and vision. With the direction set, the route may be adjusted in response to changes in the internal and external environment. By clearly understanding its starting point and ambitions for the future, the finance function can select the right focus areas and initiatives, iterating its approach on the basis of the lessons learned along the way.
The Future of the Finance Function
Lessons from Best-in-Class CFOs
Finance Function Excellence
The Need for Change
Finance functions need to spend sufficient time analyzing the challenges that the transformation will be designed to overcome. Otherwise, they risk pursuing initiatives to "put out fires" and neglecting other issues that should be addressed. A well-articulated explanation of the need for change motivates stakeholders to support the transformation and helps them develop the right aspirations and, ultimately, the best value-adding solutions.
Our experience, supported by BCG's CFO Excellence Index benchmarking, indicates that a finance transformation is typically triggered by a variety of external and internal factors.
External Factors. Finance functions must help their companies address increasing regulations, such as those related to compliance and taxation, that add to the complexity of running the business. They must also support efforts to respond to capital market pressure and economic volatility—for example, by identifying and contributing to cost savings goals. At the same time, the shortage of high-caliber talent is driving the need to develop a more attractive working environment. Last but not least, the sunsetting of legacy IT systems creates an opportunity to redesign processes in conjunction with installing new systems.
Internal Factors. The need for greater efficiency and effectiveness to achieve a company's purpose and vision is a strong motivation to transform. In many finance functions, efficiency may lag because the current setup is fragmented and complex and leads to wasted effort. Often, a failure to realize benefits of scale causes finance-related costs to grow excessively as the company's sales increase. This reduces the financial flexibility needed to invest resources where needed. As to effectiveness, high-growth companies, in particular, want finance to provide support beyond its traditional roles of stewardship and scorekeeping. Many finance functions have significant room to improve as trusted advisers to the business, and they must advance even further to become its custodian of performance.
Many finance functions must advance to become the company's custodian of performance.
Corporate transactions provide another impetus for change. In the context of a post-merger integration, companies seek to streamline the finance organization to maximize synergies and realize the benefits of scale. Additionally, the finance function of startups and other companies preparing for an initial public offering needs to establish a new finance infrastructure to support the reporting and compliance requirements of a public company.
Finally, many CFOs may be strongly motivated to transform their functions. For a new CFO, in particular, a finance transformation is an opportunity to gain transparency into current capabilities, as well as to create a legacy by taking the finance function on a transformation journey.
Roche Emphasizes the Need for Agility
For Roche, the main triggers are external business and technological disruptions. Three of Roche's major brand-name biologic drugs are under competitive pressure from biosimilars, while technological advances are creating new opportunities across the value chain. To improve flexibility, the company is transforming from a traditional organizational model based on divisions and operational units to a more agile model. As people throughout the company seek to respond, they need the finance function to be more adaptable and focused on adding value. Accordingly, it is committed to experimenting with agile ways of working, encouraging its personnel to act as entrepreneurial spearheads and further leveraging its shared-services organization. A well-designed digital backbone (including an enterprise resource planning system) provides stability as the finance function increases flexibility and speed in this agile setup. Additionally, the finance function is analyzing and digitizing its processes end to end with the goal of reinvesting the savings generated in R&D.
A Compelling Story and an Iterative Approach to Driving Change
To truly transform their organization, finance leaders must first craft a compelling story that promotes support for the changes to come. They can then develop an approach to pursuing those changes, while being ready to adapt specific initiatives on the basis of internal and external developments.
The finance function's story must be specific enough to guide decisions but easy for employees to internalize.
Craft an inspiring and actionable story. The finance function needs a story that is specific enough to guide decisions but easy for employees to remember and internalize. Although striking this balance is challenging, it is essential to promoting the long-term support of the finance organization. The entire finance leadership team and organization, not only the CFO, must be fully committed to this story, which provides the foundation for the ensuing transformation. The story must also make sense from a business perspective and align with the company's purpose, as CFOs typically need board approval for any investments in the transformation.
The strategic story usually articulates messages covering three topics:
The Finance Function's Contribution to the Company's Purpose. The entire finance organization, including internal and external stakeholders, should be inspired by the function's contribution, which sets the direction. The organization should recognize the contribution as appropriate and integrate its objectives into daily decision making.
The Desired Future State of the Finance Function. The ambitions should be bold but realistic, as well as actionable and measurable.
The Initiatives Needed to Achieve the Future State. The first set of initiatives should be based on a strong understanding of the path to the future state. Adaptability needs to be built in to allow for changes in the internal and external ecosystem, along with new knowledge gained along the way that creates clarity around the next steps.
Together, these elements should constitute an easy-to-tell story that inspires the finance community and motivates action.
Define an iterative approach. A well-thought-through approach to implementing the finance strategy begins with building momentum. To celebrate early successes and motivate employees, the organization can use pilot projects. To set the stage for wide-scale change, the finance community should prioritize early initiatives, taking into account that some might be pursued simultaneously. On the basis of the lessons learned, new initiatives can be identified that enable the company to take the next bold move. Members of the finance community should co-own and drive the changes to promote sustained impact. At the same time, colleagues across functions should work together to develop fit-for-purpose solutions or, at the very least, to test them. Early investment in enablers (people, technology, and data) will help to build the capabilities needed throughout the transformation.
Roche Focuses on Explaining Why, What, and How
Roche's finance function is following a similar, iterative process to be well positioned for the future of finance. Although the details are unique to Roche, the company's approach demonstrates the value of thinking deeply about the future state, adopting an iterative approach to concrete initiatives, and considering potential implications. The approach results in three main elements: why, what, and how—which are continuously refined when needed. (See Exhibit 1.)
The first two elements are at the corporate level and apply companywide. "Why" is the company's purpose ("Doing now what patients need next"). "What" is reflected in the company's ten-year ambitions, which call for contributions from all parts of the business, and the vision for its Pharma and Diagnostics divisions. "How" is specific to finance and sets out the various ways that the function supports the company in achieving its purpose, ambitions, and divisional visions. It has four components:
1. The finance framework consists of the contributions that every finance employee is expected to make:
Connecting the dots as entrepreneurs—for example, by designing and implementing initiatives from a comprehensive company perspective
Serving as a guardian for stakeholders—for example, by safeguarding assets, providing transparency, and ensuring compliance
Providing specialist expertise—such as in accounting and taxation
Owning processes and systems end to end—such as by leveraging technology and automation
The extent of each employee's contribution may vary by role.
2. Shared mindsets, behaviors, and transferable skills aim to enable personal and professional development and flexible careers within and beyond the finance function.
3. Finance ambitions include both quantitative and qualitative objectives—for example: "Analyzing end-to-end business processes across functions and aiming for a digitization ratio of 80%" and "Ensuring that finance personnel act as entrepreneurial spearheads, maintain an external focus, and take smart risks."
4. Business priorities and strategies (parts of which may build on aspects outside of finance) are defined, and actions are identified to drive them.
The Right Focus Areas and Initiatives
The finance function's starting point strongly influences which initiatives will have the greatest impact and help to achieve its ambitions. For some finance functions, the bundling of transactional tasks or the automation of monthly reporting could constitute a step-change improvement. In contrast, mature functions could be ready for more ambitious initiatives, such as comprehensively revamping their activities and processes to promote greater business impact.
BCG's CFO Excellence Index confirms that finance functions have a wide variety of starting points and improvement opportunities. Although the benchmarking finds relatively small performance differences among industries, we see significant differences between the best- and worst-performing finance functions in each industry. Top performers have highly efficient finance functions and focus on activities that create business impact. (See Exhibit 2.) These findings mean that there is no one-size-fits-all way to select the right initiatives.
In our experience, successful finance transformations are comprehensive programs that encompass the function's operating model and value-adding processes, as well as enablers related to technology and ways of working. To identify initiatives, it is useful to answer the following questions:
How does the finance function's setup need to change to achieve the future state? Issues to consider include the right mix of centralization and decentralization, the role of shared services and centers of excellence, the approach to partnering between finance and the business units, and the positioning and structure of the digital backbone.
How can the finance function create more value? For example, it may need to redesign its processes to promote greater business impact, such as by integrating processes within and beyond the finance function to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
What new capabilities does the finance function need to drive step-change improvements? Decision makers should consider data and technology as well as skills. To inform decisions, the function needs high-quality finance data that is easy to access and use.
Transparency regarding each initiative's value creation potential and resource needs will help to promote open discussions about prioritization. Moreover, continuous communication is essential to ensure that teams are aligned in their pursuit of disruptive change. This will help in continuously challenging the as-is initiatives to ensure bold thinking. Otherwise, there is a strong risk of developing siloed solutions that cannot operate interactively. In the worst case, a function has initiatives that look good on paper but fail to realize the envisioned value.
Roche Links Finance Initiatives to Its Strategy
Roche's finance function links its bold ideas closely to the components of its strategy. It has extended the scope of shared service centers beyond traditional end-to-end processes to include, for example, project management and elements of performance management. It also aims to digitize 80% of end-to-end business processes across functions and shared services, thereby eliminating many repetitive and time-consuming tasks. To establish and sustain the new ways of working, the finance function has systematically broken down silos, removed hierarchies, and eliminated non-mission-critical activities.
Finance functions need to continuously evolve to keep pace with the changing business environment. A function's starting point provides the basis for determining the right level of ambition to promote disruptive change without overburdening the organization. By following the iterative approach we have outlined, CFOs can gain clarity and embark on a successful journey to the finance function of the future, building organizational knowledge and adaptive capabilities along the way.
About Roche
Roche is a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics focused on advancing science to improve people's lives. The combined strengths of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics under one roof have made Roche the leader in personalized healthcare – a strategy that aims to fit the right treatment to each patient in the best way possible. Roche is the world's largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology and diseases of the central nervous system. Roche is also the world leader in in vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer diagnostics, and a frontrunner in diabetes management.
The Roche Group, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is active in over 100 countries and in 2020 employed more than 100,000 people worldwide. In 2020, Roche had a market cap of CHF ~300 billion, invested CHF 12.2 billion in R&D and posted sales of CHF 58.3 billion.
About the Center for CFO Excellence
The Center for CFO Excellence (CFOx) is the hub of BCG's know-how and global expertise on the CFO domain. CFOx supports CFOs, helping them deal effectively with today's most pressing finance-related challenges. Our experts work with CFOs worldwide to support their efforts in transforming the finance function's operating model to achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness. They achieve this by capitalizing on the digital disruption to unleash the power of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, also advancing corporate performance management to the next level and enhancing the value of the finance function.
They focus on improving capital allocation to ensure a productive return on investments and to outperform competitors. Aiming to orchestrate company-wide transformations, BCG helps drive the corporate value agenda, identifying the best strategy for renewing the organization's finance systems and increasing transparency and insight. If you would like to learn more about CFOx, please contact one of the BCG authors or visit cfox.bcg.com.
Alan Hippe
Chief Financial and Information Officer, Roche
Petra Gall
Chief of Staff to Group CFO/CIO, Roche
Alexander Roos
Managing Director & Senior Partner; Global Co-Leader, Center for CFO Excellence
Anna Oberauer
About Boston Consulting Group
Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we work closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholders—empowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact.
Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives that question the status quo and spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clients thrive and enabling them to make the world a better place.
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Warren Buffett heads into Berkshire's big weekend with stock underperforming over long term
admin 9 months ago No Comments
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Berkshire Hathaway chiefs Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger will do their best to answer hours' worth of questions during the company's annual meeting on Saturday on everything from investing to politics to life.
Despite the fact that most of the 30,000 Berkshire investors congregating in Omaha, Nebraska, are lifetime Buffett devotees, many are sure to raise one awkward matter: Why does Berkshire continue to underperform the stock market and what are the 88-year-old Buffett and Munger, 95, going to do to correct course?
Michelle Buckley, chief investment officer of Baldwin Brothers, a Berkshire holder with $1 billion under management, said that while her firm appreciates Berkshire's reliable earnings potential, there is growing concern the conglomerate is being too conservative. Especially with its $110 billion cash hoard in a market environment clearly rewarding increased risk-taking and growth — not exactly Buffett's forte.
"We have owned Berkshire Hathaway at Baldwin for a significant amount of time and continue to incorporate it into our proprietary equity strategies to reflect that legacy positioning but also to capture the conglomerate's earnings potential," Buckley wrote in an email. "We are, however, becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Berkshire, as we also built our position to reflect the conglomerate's historically noteworthy cash conversion and capital allocation."
Baldwin owned 83,000 Berkshire Class B shares at the end of March with a current market value of about $18 million. Baldwin also sponsored a 2017 proposal on Berkshire's proxy ballot to attempt to reduce the conglomerate's methane emissions.
It may surprise some investors to learn that despite Buffett's prowess and mammoth lifetime outperformance, Berkshire is trailing the S&P 500 over the last one, five, 10 and 15 years. To be fair to Buffett, a lot of that is due to stock investors' continued preference for hot growth stocks, which the classic value investor like Buffett has largely avoided. These include names such as Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet.
Growth equities have seen remarkable outperformance over the broader market during the last five years, with the Vanguard Growth ETF up 185% versus the S&P 500's 173% gain on an indexed basis.
Meanwhile, Berkshire's management team oversees a private portfolio of companies described by the CEO as a "Niagara" of cash generation. And Berkshire has stock holdings in big, value companies like Coca-Cola, Bank of America and Verizon. These types of stocks, Buffett has said, help guarantee earnings for years to come through persistent dividends and stable balance sheets.
But the rest of Wall Street hasn't been interested in hunting for value amid consumer staples companies or big banks, opting instead for flashy acronyms stocks such as the FANGs.
And some of those value names for Buffett have turned into traps, including underperforming bank stocks and Kraft Heinz, one of Berkshire's largest holdings. The stock of the packaged food giant, whose products include Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Jell-O and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, plunged more than 27% in a single session earlier this year.
Putting the cash to work
If the market preference for these stocks turns — as it did suddenly and briefly in December — Berkshire is likely to shine relative to the market, cementing Buffett's legend status once again. But if things stay on a similar course, Berkshire is unlikely to regain ground on the market anytime soon.
Buffett himself hinted that the market may be getting ahead of itself and has grown agitated by the drought of investment opportunities for adding to his conglomerate. The Berkshire chairman and CEO told shareholders in February that steep prices were keeping him on the sidelines.
"2019 will likely see us again expanding our holdings of marketable equities," Buffett wrote earlier this year. "We continue, nevertheless, to hope for an elephant-sized acquisition. Even at our ages of 88 and 95 — I'm the young one — that prospect is what causes my heart and Charlie's to beat faster. "
While some investors may bemoan the wait-and-see approach, Buffett has never been one to overpay, even if it meant holding excess cash for long periods of time. Indeed, Buffett promised in his 2019 shareholder letter that Berkshire "will forever remain a financial fortress" with a minimum of $20 billion on hand in case of a sudden financial downturn.
For lack of a better option, Berkshire stepped up its efforts to buy back its stock to the tune of about $1.3 billion in 2018, though some investors were disappointed in the smaller-than-expected repurchase.
Berkshire Hathaway's top holdings
To be sure, UBS analyst Brian Meredith told CNBC that those investors fixated on Berkshire's capital deployment aren't giving its current businesses enough credit.
"You still have this massive $100 billion of cash out there, and yes I want to see him hopefully deploy that. But I want to see him deploy it in a rational and good return-on-investment type business. He's still able to grow his business he's currently got," Meredith said.
Turning it around
The analyst sees Berkshire's collection of financial businesses, like insurance, coming back into favor.
Meredith called out Berkshire's Geico as an example of one of the company's core businesses that's set for a turnaround after years of investments. Berkshire's insurance businesses accounted for $204 billion of the company's total $248 billion in revenue last year.
Geico's "now at the point where it's turning the corner, where its profitability is finally kind of at the area where they need it to be," the analyst added. "Therefore you're going to start to see them garner market share and grow again in the marketplace."
It's worth noting that when the preference for value stocks briefly came back into favor at the end of 2018 following the market's steep Christmastime sell-off, Berkshire's performance once again topped the market. Through the end of last year, Berkshire led the S&P 500 on a five-year and 15-year basis.
Baldwin's Buckley said her firm's continued investment in Berkshire depends on the company's vision for the future, including board renewal and governance initiatives.
"Important are our concerns about Berkshire's governance structure, particularly its entrenched board, limited financial transparency and cursory efforts at recognizing environmental, social and governance risks to its consolidated operating model," she said.
"Since we argue corporate transparency as key to long-term profitability and shareholder value, we take issue with Berkshire's continually elusive communications with shareholders and have placed our position under review for potential exit."
To review video of Berkshire's past annual meetings and other Buffett interviews go to CNBC's Warren Buffett Archive.
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Futures Movers: Oil prices sharply lower as hints toward bearish OPEC outcome find traction in thin market
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Drew Spartz
Head of Incubation Program @ Nonlinear
Working (6-15 years of experience)
426San Juan, Puerto RicoJoined Mar 2021
super-linear.org
Building Superlinear.
Sorted by New
15What are examples of EA orgs pivoting after receiving funding?Q1mo
193Announcing Nonlinear Emergency Funding3mo
46Announcing The Most Important Century Writing Prize3mo
37The $100,000 Truman Prize: Rewarding Anonymous EA Work4mo
What are examples of EA orgs pivoting after receiving funding?
Drew Spartz1mo
Interesting, that updates me! I've added more qualifiers to that point.
Announcing Nonlinear Emergency Funding
Hi Aman,
Appreciate the question. We've received funding from different sources like the Survival and Flourishing Fund, Future Fund, and other private donors, with Emerson Spartz donating six figures annually.
This project would not fall under the scope of what the Future Fund granted us, so we will not be using their funding for this.
This is coming directly out of our operating budget, so we're aiming to make payouts that have a higher counterfactual likelihood of impact.
Hi! Thanks for the questions.
I remember hearing that Emerson/Nonlinear invested quite a lot into crypto - presumably with the current markets, his/Nonlinear's portfolio must've taken a hit?
Yes, most crypto people have taken a hit, including Emerson. As far as I know, he has no plans to slow down his donations to Nonlinear.
Secondly, Nonlinear received a Future Fund grant: https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/?_search=nonlinear Are you potentially concerned about clawbacks to the money you hand out, especially if you're dispersing small amounts to several people who could then be affected?
We're not using Future Fund grant money for this. That being said, we are still gathering information, but based on our conversations with lawyers and distressed debt investors, we are not as concerned as some community members are about clawbacks, especially for very small grants. This may update in the future as more information comes out.
Also, will additional funders top you up, or will the money go directly to the people affected?
We have had several funders reach out to us. Still working out the details :)
I can see how you might think that, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
My opinion is that the presumption of innocence is not just a legal principle, it is a foundational principle of most justice systems because one accusation can forever ruin someone's reputation whether or not they are proven innocent in the future.
Accusations can draw a lot of attention, but retractions receive far less attention.
I believe it's very important to be careful damaging someone's reputation before hearing both sides because it's really hard to repair it.
Additionally, it's much harder to prove accusations wrong than it is to anonymously make them in the first place, so most cultures have immune reactions against anonymous accusations.
It's also just bad epistemics to only hear one side. Every side always thinks they're in the right, so if you only hear one side, it's practically impossible to have good epistemics.
FTX Crisis. What we know and some forecasts on what will happen next
He still has ~$600m of HOOD stock plus whatever equity stake is left in FTX.us. FTX.us is probably worth at least a few billion.
[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
The $100,000 Truman Prize: Rewarding Anonymous EA Work
Good suggestion! Updated the description.
Getting legal counsel advice was always the intended procedure internally. Thanks for pointing out that the way I worded it had the potential to be misconstrued so I've updated it again :)
Thanks for the flag! Was already aware of this but added a qualifier in the post above and added this to our org payout guidelines for extra redundancy.
Ryan, glad you liked the prize, and thanks for your feedback! Our partner has significant IP law and branding experience and does not share your concerns.
His perspective: the general case is that
Celebrating our ancestors is common practice. Long-dead famous people frequently get things named after them.
Negative outcomes are unlikely. What you're proposing could happen, but is quite an edge case.
Branding is important. A better-named prize can lead to more impact and improved community health.
So why are we calling this "The Truman Prize?" instead of something like "The Anonymous EA Award"?
There's a reason why inspiring people from the past get things named after them. Could write a whole post on our thinking around this, but let's just say we think having a community health prize with a more inspiring name would be more effective and lead to more impact.
Spending a lot of time on preventing low probability, low downside possibilities, is low EV.
Things like this usually end up being really bureaucratic and could take months or years to approve, so the cost is higher than a simple quick email. Following this general approach to low probability, low downside risks, would lead to it being prohibitive to get things done.
It's low probability because first, a descendant of Truman would have to
Actually learn of this prize which is unlikely
Not feel like we are honoring Truman by celebrating anonymous altruism, which seems unlikely.
Care enough to actually ask us to change the name, which is also unlikely.
And in the unlikely event that all three of those things happen, then we'll just change the name. Which is also low cost.
Summaries are underrated
Great idea. If anyone wants to run a prize like this, I'd be open to funding it.


As part of our 'Outdoor Fridays' we have been very busy creating and concocting in our mud kitchen! We have really enjoyed digging, filling, pouring, shovelling and serving! Take a look at the photos to see for yourself!


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Nevertheless, -- Episode 8: Relationships Aren't Easy
Nevertheless,—is excellent at delivering the message that relationships aren't easy; life is chaotic; it makes sense that relationships would be too. Love is not all that a relationship needs; it needs mutual respect, sincerity, compromise, sacrifice, understanding, willingness, and courage to become the best version of oneself and love and accept that person as they are. The minute one has an uneasy feeling about a given situation, I think it's a sign this "thing," whatever it may be, is not suitable for them. One should always trust their instincts; they are messages from their soul.
Confessing one's feelings to someone who is not free to reciprocate seems futile; that said, I am glad Nabi cared for Do Hyeok enough not to sugar-coat anything in front of him. That doesn't mean I am proud of her for not giving in to Park Jae Eon because all she did was allow him to believe he has power over her, which he does. Even his admission of falling in love, at first sight, seemed contrived, much as he is too. It's on Nabi to be the change she wants in her life. I used to think Jae Eon had feelings for Nabi, but I don't believe that anymore. I think Park Jae Eon sees whatever he thinks he has with Nabi as a convenience or a challenge he must win. Relationships, though, whatever they may be, don't work like that. When one really loves someone, they want to pull that person closer, not push them away. It wills one to want to fix what's broken instead of just throwing it away because they fear intimacy or commitment; it's not the act of losing your freedom. Commitment is not a rule or a regulation — it is an action. It's choosing who you want to give your time, emotions, and heart to, but neither Park Jae Eon nor Bit Na is willing to do that. What little empathy I had for Park Jae Eon ended this episode. He's hopeless. I didn't have much for Bit Na, so no loss there. I didn't think we'd get a chance to see much of Kyu Hyun, but the little we did gave me pleasure. I'm glad he was strong enough to end things with Bit Na; his constantly telling her how he feels and what he wants, and her unwillingness to change or even try only means she didn't respect him or his feelings for her. Despite knowing why Do Hyeok doesn't want to give up on Nabi yet. I feel hanging on to someone when they don't feel the same way is like a setup for a major heartbreak. I love Do Hyeok, his sincerity in everything he says and does borers right through my heart. I'm in love with him. I hope he isn't an afterthought or rebound. As much as I want to like Ji Wan, I'm having a tough time doing so; the more I see her or hear her talk, the more I find her annoying. I wish she would stop taking Yoon Sol for granted and assume she will always be there for her Yoon Sol was bound to get tired of it all. When the person you have feelings with doesn't seem to match your sincerity or want what you want, one must have the inner strength to walk away just like Kyu Hyun was able to do. I want both Yoon Sol and Nabi to have that strength, too, if need be. Because just because someone realizes they may have feelings for you but doesn't dare to act them isn't enough. Park Jae Eon asking Nabi if she wanted to go over his place to see the butterflies made me cringe. It sounded like he was asking her if she wanted to have sex rather than a relationship. Watch episode 8 here.


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