Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 20th, 2012
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – As their nations warn of war, the Israeli and Iranian directors facing off at next week’s Academy Awards share a reluctance to see politics read into their movies, both of which are portraits of troubled families.
Joseph Cedar, director of Israel’s “Footnote,” and Asghar Farhadi, maker of Iran’s “A Separation,” stress that their works are about human issues and not conflicted governments that seem to be slipping into ever deeper diplomatic isolation.
Yet, even as the filmmakers put art before politics in competing for the Oscar in the foreign language film category, neither man can escape the fact he hails from a country that is vigilant about its portrayal at home and abroad.
Farhadi created his delicate, Golden Globe-winning divorce drama “A Separation” under Iranian censors who impose strictures in the name of Islamic morality and national morale.
“Footnote”, a comedy of errors about a father and son who are Talmud scholars locked in acid rivalry, has been remarked upon in, and welcomed in, Israel for what it lacks — any mention of the military or of regional enemies.
Cedar’s last movie, “Beaufort”, also was nominated for the foreign language film Oscar, but its depiction of Israeli troops under fire in Lebanon and the director’s anti-war rhetoric were denounced by some countrymen as defeatist.
“I learned not to interpret my own films,” Cedar said.
But, in an interview with Reuters, he described “Footnote” as an examination of a debate central to Jewish scholarship.
“The son is all about interpretation and commentary. The father is all about fact and verifiable empiric data. And sometimes I feel like the father, sometimes I feel like the son,” Cedar said.
He shied from offering a metaphor to the Jewish state itself, where pragmatism and ideology often clash and whose secular founding principles have been challenged by increasingly assertive religious minorities.
“There is something about this film that has allowed lots of audiences to see something different,” Cedar said.
LET AUDIENCES DECIDE
Farhadi has been similarly reluctant to entertain theories that his film is a parable for the struggle between Iran’s young dissidents and its paternalistic mullahs, and he told Reuters it is up to audiences to take from the movie what they will.
“I think in every story there are many hidden themes and it depends on which ones you choose to highlight. I included themes that mattered to me … and it depends on the viewer which of the themes emerge more strongly for them.”
“A Separation,” has earned critical acclaim around the world at film festivals and other events with its tale of an Iranian couple on the verge of divorce whose problems grow ever more complicated when other people become involved in their lives.
When asked recently by the Washington Post whether one bedridden old man weighing in on the couple’s issues represents the state, Farhadi chided the reporter, “if you have a political discourse about him, you are belittling this character.”
While Iran is notorious for its film censors – award-winning director Jafar Panahi was sentenced to jail in 2010 and banned from making films – it has remained cautious in its remarks about “A Separation.”
“Sometimes we see those who run these festivals grant precious awards to films whose main theme is centered on the poverty and hardships of a country’s people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Reuters after “A Separation” won its Golden Globe Award in January.
“This should not lead our artists to ignore the glaring positive points and features of our nation, and instead illustrate the kind of things welcomed by such festivals’ organizers,” he said.
Farhadi has acknowledged adopting a non-partisan tone to get the film made in Iran but not because of problems with censors.
“No, I wasn’t confronted with any censorship,” he told Reuters. “Some countries did ask me, in order to show the film, that I should change the film’s title from what it is right now and I didn’t agree.”
Cedar said he had briefly met Farhadi and looked forward to seeing him again in the “cultural arena” of Hollywood’s Oscars.
“Putting aside all of these geopolitical sides, it (“A Separation”) is a film that really raises the level of the whole competition,” he said.
(Reporting by Dan Williams; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 20th, 2012
How do you create a hatchback with true global appeal? The recipe is simple. Take some European finesse, add a dash of Korean spice and blend them to work up a flavour that communicates, er, Latin flair, and hey presto, you have the global hatch. As much as I’d love to lay claim to this brilliant formula, it’s not mine. In fact, this is the blueprint that Kia’s engineers and designers followed when conceptualising the new Rio. Now, let’s not get into the nitty-gritty like the originality or effectiveness of it, but if this is the Korean carmaker’s prescription for success, then I recommend everyone else follow it blindly, for the last few years have shown that whatever Kia touches turns into precious metal on wheels.
The previous generation Rio, for example, was hardly special. Still, Kia managed to sell close to 900,000 units worldwide. And when you consider the fact that this was a model which lacked finesse, spice or flair, you know shifting a million examples of the new Rio won’t take Kia more than a couple of years.
It’s no secret that a winning design is the most important step towards keeping the tills ringing, and it really doesn’t matter whether it’s European, Korean or Latin. And in this department, Kia has an ace up its sleeve in the form of Peter Schreyer. He’s once again waved his magic wand to make this compact hatch an absolute step-up from its predecessor. With its signature grille, the Rio is distinctively Kia and the lower profile and increased body-to-glass ratio gives it a sportier, more aggressive stance. Although Kia says the rear has been influenced by the Sportage, we see more of a Seat influence there, especially the taillights, which is not a bad thing at all.At 4,045mm long, 1,720mm wide and 1,455mm high, the Rio has grown up in all dimensions. And complementing its stylish looks will be a range of 10 exterior colours, some of which, like the Electronic Blue and Caramel Yellow, will make sure you stand out in the crowded B segment.
The story’s no different inside either. Just like its sister concern Hyundai, Kia seems to have taken giant strides when it comes to crafting good quality cabins. The Rio’s interior is one of the best Kia has done yet, and is arguably one of the better ones in the segment. It’s also got class-leading passenger and cargo space thanks to 70mm longer wheelbase and 25mm wider bodyshell combined with a few tweaks like moving the windscreen’s base forward by 156mm and up by 18mm. This has freed up 45mm legroom in the front and 34mm at the back as well as 8mm more headroom in the front.
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Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 19th, 2012
![[halffull0203jp]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-RQ545_halffu_G_20120202181233.jpg)
F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas
FOR GIANTS FANS
The Cocktail
The Jack Rose
They are technically the New York Giants, but ask anyone who’s schlepped to MetLife stadium through the Lincoln Tunnel on a NJ Transit bus and you’ll learn that the Giants are very much a New Jersey team as well. The Jack Rose, a smooth, slightly sweet cocktail, also has a dual state identity: It was supposedly named after a New York mobster and is made with applejack, a spirit produced primarily in the Garden State that’s also known as “Jersey Lightning.”
2 ounces applejack
1 ounce lime juice
½ ounce grenadine
Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a coupe.
The Spirit
McKenzie Bourbon 45.5% ABV
Bourbon doesn’t only come from Kentucky—this one from New York’s Finger Lakes region is made mostly of a local variety of corn and aged in former Chardonnay casks from the area, giving the spirit a slightly buttery finish. The result is a smooth sipper with plenty of butterscotch and vanilla.
The Beer
Six Point Sweet Action 5.2% ABV
Brewed in Brooklyn, N.Y., Sweet Action is a mix of wheat beer, pale ale and lager styles, resulting in an easy-drinking brew that, like the Giants’ roller-coaster season, is a mix of sweet and bitter. Conveniently, it comes in a can so you can throw it at your television should Lawrence Tynes shank a field goal…not going to happen, though.
—Kevin Sintumuang
FOR PATRIOTS FANS
The Cocktail
Ward Eight
Boston’s most historic cocktail was invented, as one version of the story goes, in the late 1890s at Locke-Ober, one of the city’s oldest restaurants, to commemorate the election of a Democratic power broker to the State Legislature. Any similarities between this rumored fix and a Bill Belichick scandal are entirely coincidental. Essentially a whiskey-sour variation, this drink has sharp citrus and floral hints of dark fruit that round out rye’s spicy bite.
2 ounces rye whiskey
½ ounce lemon juice
½ ounce orange juice
1 teaspoon of grenadine
Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a coupe.
The Spirit
Privateer Rum 45% ABV
Since rum was the bedrock of New England’s early economy, root for the Pats with a bottle of this sippable, caramel-like Massachusetts rum. Made by a descendant of Andrew Cabot, a privateer during the American Revolution who used his fleet of agile ships to harass the British Navy (downright Welkerian), this is the stuff you’d expect the Patriots’ musket-firing mascots to drink.
The Beer
Pretty Things Jack D’Or 6.4% ABV
The Jack D’Or from Pretty Things, the beer-nerds’ brewery of choice in Massachusetts, is a riff on a Saison farmhouse ale. It has a complex, ever-changing rustic character that runs the gamut from dry to citrus. It’s exceptionally versatile, and finishes strong—just like the Patriots.
—Luke O’Neil
Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 19th, 2012
There has been a fair share of luxury phones on the market, but with design and appearance given far more importance than form or function, they can safely be filed away under the "pretty but dumb" category. However, recently, we’ve seen a few high-end smartphones crop up that boast powerful internals.
The BlackBerry Porsche Design, also affectionately known as the P9981, is one such device which brings the power and performance of a BlackBerry with the design and elegance of a Porsche. Despite maintaining the same form factor as most other BlackBerry devices — screen and keyboard of the front — the P9981 is a considerable shift in design by the Canadian manufacturer.
The internals are identical to the Bold 9900 and feature a 1.2GHz processor, 768MB RAM, BlackBerry OS7, GPS, NFC, a 5-megapixel camera and a gorgeous 2.8 touch-enabled screen that has a resolution of 640×480. As a result, in terms of performance and battery life, the P9981 is identical to the Bold 9900 as well.
But what is not like the Bold 9900 is the design. To say the P9981 is an eye-catcher would be an understatement. The device is built around a stainless-steel frame with the front featuring a tan/earthy gold colouring. The keys are more defined and edgy, which makes the typing experience different from that on the Bold 9900, but it doesn’t take long to get used to. The back is all real leather, which in addition to giving a strong grip, adds to the luxury feel of the phone.
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Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 19th, 2012
From free training courses to reward schemes; from long holidays to lovely colleagues; from career development to open-door policies, these companies offer everything that makes up a dream job. And that’s why they are officially the best companies to work for in the UAE.
The Great Place to Work® Institute UAE (GPTW UAE) announced its 2012 list of the top ten companies to work for in the country at a glitzy award ceremony earlier this month at the Monarch Hotel in Dubai. Executives from the ten finalist companies waited anxiously as the results were read out in reverse order. And when the second place was awarded to Microsoft, a loud cheer went out, not from their table but from the table for FedEx Express because they had secured the first spot – climbing from second place last year.
"It’s a great honour," says David Ross, senior Vice President of FedEx Express. "We have been talking about this for more than a week. This award is not really ours. It belongs to our 570 employees here."
The company’s Purple Promise Award (PPA), which recognises a team member who goes beyond the typical expectations, was one of the procedures that helped it clinch the top spot. And David understands why it played such an important role. "There is no better feeling than being recognised for something you do. It generates greater responsibility in people and gives them an incentive to perform better.
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"Our founding principle is People-Service-Profit. If we take good care of our people, they will provide the service which will automatically bring in the profit. So it’s important for us to ensure that our employees are satisfied. Every year we conduct a survey and ask them about their work – have they performed well this year? Are they happy with their managers and senior managers? Based on this survey we create an action plan for the next year because each year is different and it’s important to stay in tune with the employees."
David says that even through difficult times, they’ve managed to keep their workers happy. "Because of how we treat them, people stay with us for huge chunks of their career, if not their whole career. So when we are facing an economic crisis our employees know that cash is tight. They pitch in and do their bit to help us overcome the situation."
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‘My career has taken off’
And the people working at FedEx Express are full of praise too. "It’s the best company because they are always thinking of us employees," says Tekraj Gubhahau, who works as a dispatcher. "There is so much room for growth. When I first joined I was a part-time worker. Then I sat down with my manager and developed a personal growth plan. Within five years I became a full-time worker and my career has taken off.
"There are hundreds of free online courses that we can take to develop our skills and talents. Even if I wanted to do a course from an institute or go to college to pursue a degree, I can ask the management for a tuition aid."
The company is always ready to listen to employees and that, according to Tekraj, makes a huge difference. "It’s an open-door policy at FedEx. I can walk into the office of any senior manager at any time and be sure he/she will listen to me. All grievances and complaints are given due value. This makes me feel like I am an important part of the company.
"We also have frequent meetings with our senior managers who ask us if we are happy with our immediate managers. Recognition and awards are given to those who perform well and I have won several of them."
GPTW UAE also gave special recognition to certain companies. General Electric (GE) and Pepsico were adjudged the top firms in the country for Emiratis. And the top companies for women to work in were GE, Omni and THE One. Women occupy 40 per cent of managerial positions at THE One, which at fifth spot is also the highest-rated local company. One of the contributing factors to this success is its community involvement efforts as part of which it has built six classrooms of a brand new school in the Pimbiniet community in Kenya in conjunction with the charity Free The Children.
"It doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman here," says Clare Andow, store manager at THE One’s Abu Dhabi branch. "As long as you have the passion in you, you can climb to whatever heights you want. I know it sounds clichéd but I have the best job in the world. The ethos is that I get to change the world. I’m not just selling sofas. I’m selling sofas for the greater purpose of building schools for the less fortunate. The work atmosphere is great. We are all away from our families here so we become each other’s families at THE One."
‘We celebrate success’
Clare says employee satisfaction is one of the key areas that THE One focuses on. "We have one-to-one sessions with all our employees to support their career development and help them become business leaders," she says. "We have appraisals four times a year to get their feedback on important issues. We also have a lot of team bonding activities. Once a month we have a breakfast bash where we celebrate the month’s successes, birthdays and just have fun."
This is the second time GPTW UAE, part of a global research, training and consultancy firm that recognises the best workplaces in over 45 countries worldwide, has compiled the list of the top companies since it set up its base here in 2010. The annual benchmarking study forms part of the world’s largest employee survey.
"Two-thirds of our result is based on how employees evaluate their company," says Michael Burchell, Director of GPTW UAE. "So the pride that they have about their work, the respect and trust they have for the managers and the level of camaraderie that exists in the workplace play a huge role in the position a company gets on this list.
"The remaining one-third is based on the policies and practices in the company. So we survey every employee and study the establishment in detail because it’s not just about the list. All participating companies want to know where they are lacking and to improve themselves. And that’s the reason why this year the benchmarks have improved. Even those who didn’t make the list this time, had improved their work culture tremendously. But this is a competition and we could pick only ten companies."
Even though participation in the programme is voluntary, Michael hopes the list will soon become an indicator for workplace excellence in the country. "To be a good market player, it’s essential to focus on the workplace culture," says Michael. "So apart from just compiling a list, we also want to raise questions about how companies are treating their workforce."
The top 10 list
1. FedEx Express www.fedex.com
What makes them great: FedEx’s P-S-P or "people-service-profit" philosophy guides all of their efforts. To thank employees who exemplify PSP, it uses the Purple Promise Award (PPA) which recognises a team member who goes beyond the typical expectations for his or her job to ensure the customer’s needs are met. Sometimes the individual’s effort requires the assistance of co-workers. In such cases, more than one employee may receive a Purple Promise Award for the same endeavour.
2. Microsoft Gulf FZ LLC www.microsoft.com
What makes them great: While Microsoft has a business-focused culture, it also works to create a sense of work/life balance. A charter of principles help assist in raising awareness of some of the key issues impacting an individual’s work/life balance.
3. Marriott www.marriott.com
What makes them great: Employees at Marriott benefit from a culture of appreciation. As an example, a Certificate of Excellence comes in the name of the associate from the Corporate Headquarters in Washington DC, and signed by the Company Co-Founder J. Willard Marriott, if an associate receives a thank you note from a customer on excellent service.
4. Pepsi Co Asia, Middle East & Africa www.pepsico.com
What makes them great: Employees benefit during welcoming from an assigned "functional onboarding coach" and a "culture coach." These two mentors help the new employee adjust to the company and its business culture.
5. THE One www.theone.com
What makes them great: At THE One, employees are invited to take part in community involvement efforts. By 2020 it hopes to support 99 villages.
6. Omni www.omnicommediagroup.com
What makes them great: The Circle of Excellence is the forum for thinking "outside the box". It is championed by a senior and provides a confidential forum in which to brainstorm solutions to challenges in business, personal and family life for themselves and on behalf of their colleagues. Participants are asked to share their commitment to maintaining a life-long focus on progress toward their long and short-term goals.
7. Merck UAE www.merck.de
What makes them great: Merck developed an "Employee Council" where every 15 employees elect one member to be their voice to senior managers. The employee council meets directly with the managing director of the organisation, the HR director and the VP of the region. In this meeting, all issues are discussed openly and there are no barriers to topics. Direct feedback is given to the employee council who transfer the message back and answer all queries of their respective teams.
8. Bayt.com www.bayt.com
What makes them great: Bayt works hard at creating an employee-centric culture. In developing employees, for example, it conducts a daily training. These 30-40 minutes training sessions are called STARS training and the content is prepared by a bayt head and the content is shared across the offices each day.
9. Dulsco LLC www.dulsco.com
What makes them great: Dulsco actively listens to employees. Its open door and ‘open office’ model facilitates two-way communication, especially down-up, and it also has suggestion boxes across every location/department to encourage suggestions through awards and recognition.
10 EMC http://middle-east.emc.com/
What makes them great: EMC works hard to provide a caring culture, going beyond what is required. For example, it grants paternity leave, as well as marriage leave, and compassionate leave, even though it is not required to do so by labour law. And it grants public holidays in excess of government announcements.
Inside info
GPTW UAE has opened registrations for next year’s list. Any company in the country with 50 or more employees is eligible to participate in the fee-based programme. Companies have until October 2012 to register. Find out more at www.greatplacetowork.ae/
Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 18th, 2012
Story By: by Ted Burnham
Ben Rasmussen mixes passion and creativity into a one-man chocolate making venture.
Some people fill their workshops with sawdust and power tools; Ben Rasmussen built a chocolate factory in his.
Actually, “factory” might be too big a word for the Woodbridge, Va. operation, which Rasmussen says is “absurdly small.” But it’s a step up from his kitchen, where his Potomac Chocolate â one of the smallest chocolate companies in the U.S. â was born.
Rasmussen says he grew up on Three Musketeers bars, and tasted dark chocolate for the first time just two years ago. “It was like this awakening, this eye-opening moment,” he tells The Salt. He became enamored with the subtle differences between beans from different regions. “To try this Madagascar and get these great citrus notes, or this Venezuelan and get plum, tobacco, shoe leather … It just blew my mind that this huge variety of flavors could be possible,” he says.
Ben Rasmussen pours tempered chocolate into a tray, where it will harden into a finished bar.
What began as an obsession quickly became a hobby, then a side business. Rasmussen works days as a systems administrator, but devotes evenings and weekends to making single-origin bars with beans from Costa Rica and Brazil. As he’s mastered the chocolate-making process, he’s also collected a menagerie of customized equipment, all in the confines of a converted utility room.
The art of chocolate-making goes back thousands of years to Central America, where fire-roasted cacao beans were ground with stone tools to make spiced beverages. Europeans industrialized the process and added sugar to make the first chocolate bars. And these days, chocolate-making involves specialized machines, and has a vocabulary to match.
The first step in chocolate making â roasting â brings out the flavors and aromas in the beans. A tool called a winnower then cracks and discards the husks, and the beans are ground into small bits called nibs. A melanger mashes the nibs into a thick, oily paste called liquor (it’s non-alcoholic). The liquor, along with a little sugar, is heated, or tempered, to develop its consistency. Finally, Rasmussen pours the liquor into molds where it cools and hardens.
Rasmussen buys his beans from Costa Rica and Brazil.
In a Hershey’s plant, that would all happen on an assembly line, and even most artisan producers use fairly large machines. But Rasmussen needed equipment small enough for his one-man operation. When he found there wasn’t any, he began filling his workshop with “Frankenstein” machines, buying parts on Craigslist and cobbling them together to suit his needs.
There’s the convection oven, to which he added a rotating drum to roast more beans and keep the flavor consistent: “Best $75 I ever spent,” he says. There’s the hand-cranked winnower: Rasmussen added some plywood, a PVC pipe, and a small vacuum to replace a massive machine that could cost thousands of dollars. And there’s the melanger, which began life as a lentil grinder.
In fact, Rasmussen says he has just one piece of equipment specifically designed for chocolate: a tempering machine, which ensures the bars take on a glossy sheen and break with a satisfying snap. Tempering is a delicate process where the temperature has to be just right, or the chocolate won’t crystallize properly.
Between his day job and his family â he’s a father of four â Rasmussen manages to produce 60 to 80 pounds of chocolate a week. He says it’s all he can do to keep up with demand since his Upala 70 percent cacao bar won a silver medal from the London Academy of Chocolate last year. But he remains focused on the chocolate, remembering the wonder of his own conversion experience.
With mass-produced chocolates, he says, the true flavor is obscured by additives like milk, vanilla, and too much sugar. But when you have a good dark chocolate, you can tell there’s something different about it.
“You look for the snap, you look for the smell, you place it on your tongue and let it melt,” Rasmussen says. “I love introducing people to that.”
Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 17th, 2012
Getting Your Goat
wether
What kind of animal was this? A kid, wether or doeling is good. A nanny or billy goat—also called a buck—means it could be tough and gamey.
—”Cooking & Eating: Get Your Goat On,” Off Duty, Feb. 4
A wether is a castrated goat (or sheep); it’s probably related to a Latin word for “calf.” A doeling is a young female goat that has not been bred.
Sound Generation
echo boomers
One way builders have been trying to do that is by “right-sizing” their homes, or building smaller, more efficient dwellings that are more appealing to the supposedly more urban-minded and environmentally conscious young buyers, who are referred to as “Generation Y” or the “echo boomers.”
—
“Builder Economists Push Back the Bottom of the Housing Market…Again,” Developments blog, WSJ.com, Feb. 8
Echo boomers (so-called because their parents were baby boomers) are also known as “Millennials” or “Generation Next” and are usually considered to include those born in the 1980s.
Skeleton Crew
osteoclast
The drugs target a protein called RANK Ligand, which helps regulate cells called osteoclasts that break down bone.
—”FDA Panel Votes Against Expanding Use of Amgen Drug Xgeva,” WSJ.com, Feb. 8
The word osteoclast comes from Greek roots meaning “bone” and “break”—it’s the same “-clast” as in “iconoclast.” Other less-common -clast words include mythoclast (someone who destroys myths), genuclast (a medical instrument for breaking knee-joint adhesions) and bioclast (a piece of shell or a fossil in a sedimentary rock).
Winning at Squash
mirliton
That last item can be replaced by a serrano; the mirliton squash (also known as a chayote) can be swapped for bitter melon varietals.
—”Reconsider: Frito Pie: The Tailgaters’ Favorite Gone Frou-Frou,” Off Duty, Feb. 4
The word mirliton comes from a French word for a kazoo-type flute, although the squash itself is often called a “christophene” in France. It is also pronounced as “mella-ton.”
—Ms. McKean is a lexicographer and the founder of Wordnik, an online dictionary focusing on how words are used today.
Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 16th, 2012
The SOMA Travel by XtremeMac is a dock-based speaker system for your Apple devices. It can fit your iPod, iPhone and iPads. Granted, many of these devices come with built-in speakers, but the SOMA Travel (Dh249) aims to improve the sound quality.
Taking a few cues from Apple, the SOMA Travel is very simple and clean in its design, and is almost all black, except for a ring around the power and volume buttons on the top. The front features a pop-out dock base to connect your device, and fabric-covered speakers. The device connector can be pushed to adopt a different angle, thereby making it compatible with the various Apple devices out right now. The entire unit is just shy of 10 inches in length and is about 2 inches high.
But here comes the best part — unlike most other docks, the SOMA Travel doesn’t need to be connected to a power supply, or even batteries. It uses power from the device connected to the dock itself.
However (and probably consequentially), the volume of the SOMA Travel is rather soft and won’t really fill up the room. For the newer devices which come with a speaker — the iPhones and the iPads — the SOMA Travel dock offers a slight improvement in sound quality and volume. The convenient part about using the dock is that you’re not left holding the device upwards and in the angle that is most conducive to a louder volume. The result is a fuller sound at a marginally higher volume. For devices that don’t feature a speaker, the dock is a considerable step up.
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Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 15th, 2012
Story By: All Things Considered
In Scotland, Apple’s latest iPhone update isn’t the smashing success it has been elsewhere. That’s because Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant, can’t understand a word they’re saying. NPR’s Guy Raz puts Siri to the test with brogue-carrier Neil McIntosh.
Posted by TerranceV | Lifestyle | Posted on February 14th, 2012
Nestled in the hills of Guilin, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famous for its rolling green landscape and stunning spiky cave formations, boutique hotel Homa Chateau, in its contemporary grass-covered form, looks like a striking UFO that has settled into the landscape in this rural Chinese village.
The 46 personalised rooms in the HOMA (Hotel of Modern Art) Chateau were designed by a prominent artist – and while they’re all unique, they do all boast a signature modernist and slick look – think luxe fittings and glossy surfaces. There is also a high-end restaurant and even in-cave dining, a fantastic spa with famously excellent massages and cave exploration sessions and art classes.
In fact, the Taiwanese owner of the hotel is clearly art mad; he also owns the surrounding 1,320 acre sculpture park that boasts some of the most beautiful contemporary art sculptures in the world, most of which were built while the artists were on a "retreat" in the hotel. Too cool.
Inside info
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