bazaar January 2023 issue

SPRING ‘23

Your daily go-to Studio-to-Street inspired fashion that wears great everywhere.

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Already started your dream business, or is it time to revamp it and make it even more attractive to customers? No matter the size of your business, no matter if it is a consulting company with a big office, a café or a salon or even a fashion shop. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, we are by your side with inspiration, advice, tips and ideas and of course, our smart, practical, and affordable solutions. You don’t have to look around, we’ve got you covered!

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Happy New Year amazing bazaarites! By some miracle, we’ve all made it past December, navigated at least five ugly viruses floating around, traveled (or not), took our vacations (or not), and here we are, ready to attack 2023 head on! Obviously, some of you have made new year resolutions, and if you are one of those people, I sincerely wish you the best of luck with your new gym routine, your diet, your decision to stop smoking, your decision to work on ‘me’, and anything else you might have made a resolution about……we’re rooting for you!

One of the best ways to feel more motivated to become a better version of yourself is to surround yourself with people who are a couple of steps ahead of you on their journey. And we love introducing you to them. This issue we met up with Lujain Al Mulla, captain of Kuwait’s Ultimate Frisbee team, The Pampered Cats. She is introducing Kuwait to a wonderful sport that is also social in nature. We also got to meet Amina Al Failakawi, and Yasmine Al Kandari, the duo behind Past Modern, an interior design company. They are not afraid of pairing old and new with maximalism and minimalism and everything in-between.

We have another highly motivated go-getter this issue and we’re not surprised at all. Ascia teamed up with online fabric and sofa platform to bring us two stunning designs that you can use to level up your living room. We’re also find inspiration within the beautiful walls of Grand Hyatt Kuwait. Discover art collections specially curated for the iconic destination!

If you’re still not feeling motivated, then just wait until you’ve read our feature about The Promenade Ice Skating Team who just got back from Bangkok loaded with medals. We spoke to the four team members aged nine to twelve and their coach and we’re certain that this is just the beginning of their winning streak. While this is a time of beginnings it is also a time for things to come to an end. Toyota announced that the legendary FJ Cruiser is being discontinued, but are going out with a bang, with a special Final Edition to mark the iconic vehicle’s last year of production.

So what better way to start 2023 than by flipping through this issue and exploring the wonderful world of people and places in Kuwait!

Happy New Year!

Ahmed El-adly

INDEX JANUARY 2023

TWELFTH NIGHT GALA PERFORMANCE

Staged in Kuwait, in association with the American United School, are excited to welcome The Young Shakespeare Company (YSC), back to Kuwait from London, England to transport the audience inside the mind of William Shakespeare as they introduce the genius of his writing, and perform an hour-long version of Twelfth Night, one of his greatest comedies.

ULTIMATE FRISBEE WITH LUJAIN AL MULLA

Lujain Al Mulla started playing Ultimate Frisbee in 2018 and hasn’t looked back since! She is the captain of a team she co-founded called Pampered Cats, a team has won a couple of titles, most recently the Middle East North Africa Championships. Learn more about this high-adrenaline and fun sport in this issue.

LEAVING NO CANVAS UNTURNED AT GRAND HYATT KUWAIT

The Grand Hyatt Kuwait’s art collection is astounding, and adorns every single wall at the hotel. Art enthusiasts can take in a wide range of pieces created by artists from various parts of the world with different backgrounds but a similar love for creating beauty in all forms. Discover the art, and the incredible artists, in this special feature.

PAST MODERN

Designer duo and friends Amina Al Failakawi and Yasmine Al Kandari have a different approach to design aesthetic. Instead of sticking to one style, they’re more comfortable and excited about bringing things together. Read more about their ideas and partnership in this month’s issue.

MASTARA X ASCIA

What happens when online interior fabric and design platform Mastara team up with social media sensation Ascia in a collaboration? You get two surprisingly fun and unique home items that can help you add whimsy to your living room. Read more about this collaboration in thi issue.

TOYOTA UNVEILS 2023 FJ CRUISER

‘FINAL EDITION’

It’s hard to believe that the iconic Toyota FJ Cruiser is at the end of its run. This year the legendary vehicle is being discontinued. To celebrate and honor the model, Toyota unveiled a special edition aptly named “Final Edition” as the final hurrah in this car’s legacy.

PROMENADE ICE SKATING TEAM

STUNS IN BANGKOK

The Promenade Ice Skating Team did it again! They recently represented Kuwait in Skate Bangkok 2022 and brought home a ton of medals. We met up with the team; Kenzie El Adly, Laila Roshdy, Talia Albader and Leila Almosawi, as well as the Coach, Nurul Ayinie Sulaeman,to learn more about their experience.

#XCITED FOR 2023

We are on the fence regarding resolutions. Nevertheless, we still have goals we want to accomplish, and we’ve found that we can replace them with smart gadgets to helps us get things done. Sometimes willpower is just not enough.

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TWELFTH NIGHT GALA PERFORMANCE

Brought to you by The American United School and Staged in Kuwait

By bazaar staff

Staged in Kuwait, in association with the American United School, are excited to welcome The Young Shakespeare Company (YSC), back to Kuwait from London, England following sell out productions of Macbeth (2017), and The Tempest (2018).

The Young Shakespeare Company are a professional UK touring company dedicated to making theatre which is accessible yet intelligent, taking inspiration from an eclectic mix of popular forms and re-inventing these to produce imaginative and innovative productions of Shakespeare’s greatest works. Their productions are entertaining, educational, and interactive; led by a team of professional actors with a passion for inspiring younger audiences with a love for Shakespeare.

Celebrating its Tenth anniversary this year and continuing the long history of English Language community theatre in Kuwait, (that began with Kuwait Little Theatre in Ahmadi in 1950), Staged in Kuwait is the country’s busiest, English-language. community theatre group.

The group is made up of volunteers of a wide array of nationalities who, through a shared love of theatre, come together to create staged events and performances. From the person who checks a guest’s ticket on arrival, to the leading lady on-stage in the spotlight; everyone involved in a Staged in Kuwait production gives freely of their time to create - as a team. It’s a passion for theatre that we believe makes our shows special.

After a week touring local schools and universities, the final Gala performance on Thursday, February 2nd, will see the YSC team transport the audience inside the mind of William Shakespeare as they introduce the genius of his writing, and perform an hour-long version of Twelfth Night, one of his greatest comedies.

The evening kicks off at 7pm with a gala cocktail and canapé reception in the AUS atrium followed by the performance at 7.45pm. Artistic Director, Tim Waddell, says of the tour: “For some people an evening of Shakespeare can be daunting, but the YSC have a skill, honed over 30 years, to bring the Bard to life and present his work in a way that everyone can enjoy. This promises to be another superb evening of live theatre that you won’t want to miss. I do hope you’ll join us!”

To book tickets for the gala evening on Thursday February 2nd, at The American United School auditorium, with a cocktail and canapé reception followed by an engaging performance of one of Shakespeare’s best comedies of all time, visit siktkts.com or find them on social media for more information @stagedinkuwait.

FIFA WORLD CUP QATAR 2022: A FAIRYTALE ENDING

A country with a total size of just 11,610 km² hosted arguably the best World Cup in history

By: bazaar Staff

The noise, the anticipation and the excitement was in full flow as the Qatar National Team walked onto the Al Bayt Stadium pitch to take on Ecuador and officially commence the first ever FIFA World Cup to take place in the Middle East and prove that the country is ready to host and organize it.

It wasn’t only the first World Cup to take place in the region, but also the first to be held in November as many club competitions had to pause for a month while players represented their countries on the big stage. Fans from all corners of the world ensured their plans worked around the games as they aimed to either make the trip to Qatar, sit in front of their TV’s, or head to a local place showing the games as they gather with friends and family to take in what proved to be a historic experience.

Brazil, one of the competition’s biggest favorites to go all the way, found themselves out of the competition to Croatia which added to the upsets that included Saudi Arabia beating the eventual champions Argentina 2-1 and Germany being knocked out of the competition during the group stages.

Morocco, a team which included some high profile names was also a team that many didn’t take too seriously. However, they exceeded all possible expectations as they ended the competition in fourth place and beat Spain and Portugal en route to the third-place playoff where they lost to Croatia but left the country

with people celebrating their success and having some of their players mentioned in some top teams worldwide such as Sofyan Amrabat and Azzedine Ounahi.

If having the World Cup in the Middle East wasn’t enough of a fairytale in itself, the ending proved to be a fairytale for Argentina and in particular Lionel Messi who finally ‘completed football’ after getting his hands on the trophy at the end of an absolutely exceptional run in the tournament where he managed to roll back the years and show the world just how much this all means to him. Argentina knocked out Australia, Netherlands and Croatia before taking on France in the final where they eventually were able to grind out the victory through a penalty shootout.

In the build-up to the tournament, Qatar focused on creating an experience that will be a benchmark for the future and ignored all the outside noise. Show them our capabilities and all doubts will be put at ease, that’s what their focus was and it’s what they did to perfection. It’s difficult to host such a massive worldwide competition, and it’s even more of a challenge when it’s held in practically one city. Previous

editions saw the World Cup hosted in two neighboring countries and across multiple cities and even then, there was trouble when it came to finding places for visitors to travel around efficiently. But Qatar defied expectations by keeping their heads down and focusing on what they can control: The experience. What outsiders say cannot be controlled. However, what happens in the country with regards to fans and players having an unforgettable month can be.

The Hamad International Airport in Doha, also named the best airport in the world by SKYTRAX World Airport Awards, was ready and able to host the vast amount of people coming in to take part in the event. At no point were there any issues in regards to delays in the airport or problems with fans arriving or departing.

If there was any time for Lionel Messi to have his fairytale on the big stage, this was it. It seemed like everything was perfectly scripted for this competition to be remembered as one of the best World Cups to ever take place. It will be spoken about for years to come and Qatar has officially gone down as the first Middle Eastern country to successfully hold the FIFA World Cup.

DELETE ALL

This simple trick lets you delete your online accounts without any hassle

By Michael Grothaus

Last week I partook in my semi-annual digital cleanup. This is where I go through all my online accounts to see if I need them anymore and to check that my details are up to date and my passwords are not too old. And if I find an online account I no longer use anymore, I delete it.

Or, I try to.

The problem is, most websites make it as hard as possible for a user to delete their account and associated data. Why? Even if you don’t use your account regularly, your data is a goldmine to most companies, often allowing them, or their advertisers, to track you around the web.

This year during my digital cleanup, it seemed harder than ever to tell a website that I wanted to delete my account and all associated data. Nearly half of the accounts I wanted to delete posted no clear information about how I could go about doing so. Of the rest, several made it clear that I could request to delete my account and data, but I’d need to send an email to customer support (and most didn’t provide the customer support email address), and several others featured some kind of “delete account” button I could click, but it was hard to find, thanks to the site’s use of dark patterns. Only a tiny fraction, maybe 5%, were easy to delete: The companies provided clear and easy steps for me to take to erase my account and all my data.

But c’mon! What a chore, just to delete some accounts. And for the most stubborn and unhelpful ones, I thought there was no way I’d ever be able to nuke my data.

Then I remembered Apple—or a littleknown directive that Apple mandated upon iOS developers this past June.

The Apple directive decreed that starting on June 30, 2022, any iPhone or iPad app that allowed a user to create an account inside of it must also allow the user to easily delete their account and all associated data. This mandate applied even if the app user did not use the app to create their account and instead created their account on the web.

And—voilà—I suddenly had an easy way to delete those stubborn accounts. I downloaded the iOS app of any website or web account I could find that hadn’t provided an easy or clear way for me to request account deletion online. And when I opened the apps on my iPhone and navigated to the settings of my account in the app—there before me was the glorious “Delete Account” button. And just like that, I was able to erase the accounts and all associated data from nearly 90% of the sites that hadn’t offer an easy way to do this on the web.

Announcing the mandate last June, Apple said, “Deleting an account removes the account from the developer’s records, along with any data

associated with the account that the developer isn’t legally required to maintain. Providing this capability gives people more control of the personal data they’ve shared.”

Of course, Apple makes exceptions for accounts that have legal requirements to retain user data, such as banking accounts and others in “highly regulated industries.” But generally speaking, Apple says the deletion process “should not require people to make a phone call, send an email, or go through other support flows.”

Apple also mandates that apps can’t merely

offer to temporarily deactivate or disable an account. They must “offer to delete the entire account record, along with associated personal data” and the deletion option should be “easy” to find in the app—so no pesky dark patterns allowed.

Bottom line: If you’re fed up with trying to delete your online accounts, check to see if the account or website offers an iPhone app and then nuke your data from there.

Photo by Ujesh Krishnan on Unsplash.

Grand Avenue - The Avenues | Souq Sharq | Gate Mall | Airport

IT’S TIME TO EXPERIENCE A NEW SPORT

By bazaar staff

After the latest padel buzz, there’s another sport on the block and it’s here to stay! Ultimate frisbee is a passion of Lujain Al Mulla, who started playing the sport at the beginning of 2018 and she hasn’t looked back since! She is the captain of a team she co-founded called Pampered Cats, a team which has participated in several regional tournaments and has won a couple of titles, most recently the Middle East North Africa Championships.

31-year-old cat mom (and aspiring cat lady), Lujain, led the team to victory at the championship, which was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, this year. The competition hosted 16 teams from across the Arab countries. The Pampered Cats played exceptionally well and won the tournament, which was a first for any Kuwaiti team! Other than captaining the team, playing ultimate frisbee, and coaching beginners in the sport, Lujain is also an English instructor at a private university here in Kuwait.

Lujain tells us that “although I teach English full time, lately, it seems ultimate frisbee has turned into my full time commitment. I spend almost as many hours on the field as I do in the classroom. I’ve also been involved in animal rescue for some years, which has become increasingly difficult to juggle with training and teaching, but I do what I can.”

Ultimate frisbee has become a primary focus of Lujain’s. She shares that “what I enjoy most about this sport is that it truly becomes a lifestyle. Ultimate frisbee informs how I spend my days—the kind of energy and people I surround myself with—and it has shifted my perspective on my roles in life and what I can achieve. On the field, though, what I enjoy most about the sport is its pace and the rush of throwing a smooth scoring huck or blocking a disc on defense.”

Lujain’s team, Pampered Cats, was officially established in early 2021 and has 27 members. You may ask, how difficult is it to learn the sport? Well, we are told that picking up and playing the sport is easy for anyone willing to practice their throws, learn the rules of the game, and just play! There are people on the team that have never been part of a team sport before. The weekly community training is beginner-friendly, and the coach, Chris Varon, starts with the basics of the sport. So, there really is no excuse to not sign up for training!

As captain, Lujain’s main responsibilities include team retention, enforcing training hours, tracking member attendance, address tensions and mishaps, making budget decisions, overseeing delegated tasks, and handling the logistics of tournaments, She is exceptionally adept at undertaking these duties because of her career as an educator; it has groomed her to be more confident in her role as captain. She shares:

Lujain Al Mulla is bringing ultimate frisbee to Kuwait and it’s a must try!

Lujain Almulla

“What I enjoy most about being captain, though, is knowing my team has my back and that they trust me—seeing people commit to training and give their all on the field for our chosen common interest and, eventually, reaping the results of the tougher tasks with measurable results and growth. Ultimately, I enjoy sharing the love I have for this sport with my community.”

The team is still on a victory high, having won the regional championship in Saudi Arabia. Lujain comments on the competition that “Winning this time around was a dream—one that was made possible with the reinforcing efforts and confidence of some players from around the region who chose to join our ranks and realize this achievement. To compete at this high level is always invigorating and leaves you wanting to train harder and come back for more! I look forward to continuing to compete and grow as a player and person.”

Lujain hopes that more people will learn about the sport and give it a try. She believes that the sport has the potential to transform and rework the sports scene here. Ultimate frisbee is more a sport for the masses, and all you need is a disc and some friends, and there’s plenty of opportunity to train for free. Ultimate frisbee is a sport that instills noble values in young people; it enforces the application of fair play and the upholding of high spirit and good sportsmanship—values that can elevate any school’s P.E. curriculum. It is accessible to people of all ages and genders, with its emphasis on safe play—this means families can play this sport together at gatherings and in parks. Besides this, the sport also opens the door to feasible opportunities to play at high-level tournaments abroad and represent Kuwait doing so.

Other than all that she does already, Lujain is super passionate about animal welfare and tries to dedicate some time to that during the week, as well as cooking up a storm in the kitchen, and exploring the world!

UP CLOSE & PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE

What do you most value about your friends? Their loyalty and the security I feel around them.

Which living person do you most admire? It’s difficult to choose one. I admire different people for their contribution/expertise in different fields. Out of the people I personally know, I admire our team coach, Chris Varon. I admire his ethics, passion, and skill in the sport.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being with the people I love, doing the activities I love. Also, cuddling with cats.

What is your greatest extravagance? Does my master’s degree count? That cost me an arm and a leg.

What is your most treasured possession? I’m not attached to objects, but if I had to choose—a symbolic necklace I wear around my neck.

What is your greatest fear? Losing people/pets I love.

What is your most marked characteristic? I like to think I’m a good teacher and have a way of influencing others when I am passionate about what I teach (whether it be through my career or my other interests).

Which talent would you most like to have? I practiced oud for some time and then left it on the back burner; I’d like to pick that up again.

What is one trait you have that you are most grateful for?

My love for animals.

What is the human trait you most dislike about others?

Disloyalty.

What is it that you most dislike? Animal cruelty makes my blood boil.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “GUYS, STOP THROWING DURING WATER BREAK!”

What are your favorite words to live by?

“Only give as much emotional energy to a person that equals the amount of respect that you have for them”. I still struggle to do this consciously but try to remind myself of this when I’m most affected by others.

And I’m also quite affected by the idea that, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Where would you most like to live?

Anywhere I can feel fulfilled at. This could be in Kuwait or anywhere in the world where I feel secure in my social and career life.

If you could have any job, what would it be?

I love teaching English, but who wouldn’t prefer being an astronaut over their current job.

What would you consider your greatest achievement?

I wouldn’t call any of my achievements great, but the day my master’s thesis was approved was a life highlight for sure.

What do you hope for the future?

A peaceful life with lots of love, cats and frisbee. Currently, Pampered Cats holds a community training or “catch-and-throw” at the beach currently for free. Stay up to date with the latest activities and achievements of the the team by following them on Instagram @pampered.cats, and you can also get in touch to play the sport for a free weekly beginner training.

A CONVERSATION WITH THE WOMAN BEHIND BYFARAHFOREAL: FARAH ASSAAD

By Engy Sobieh

Her avant-garde campaigns and collaborations with the most pristine brands have been seen everywhere in Kuwait. From working with Dior and Gucci to being published in British Vogue, ByFarahFoReal is now THE agency companies go to for their editorial shoots, branding, and events in Kuwait, and now, Dubai.

As the founder of ByFarahFoReal, Farah Assaad and her female-based team has been successfully creating disruptive content and innovative campaigns. And while it hasn’t been long, she’s not only managed to create the first and only fashion specialized agency in Kuwait (and is now expanding to Dubai!), but she’s also worked and collaborated with one of the biggest and most prominent international brands including H&M, Dior, and Gucci.

We were thrilled to chat with our favorite Art Director to find out the story behind the making of a pioneer in the editorial fashion industry in the Middle East, who shared about turning her passion into a career, what ByFarahFoReal is all about, and her next step.

Hello Farah! Before we dive into the successful ByFarahFoReal, we wanted to ask, how did you get into this field? I’ve always been passionate about creating art and individuality. I decided to leave my job as a manager to explore that passion, although at the time I wasn’t quite sure what it was yet and turn it into a career. Soon enough, I realized that my passion did not exist in Kuwait, so I decided to be the first.

Have you always been interested

in Fashion?

Believe it or not, I was not interested in fashion at all. I always found that it came with many rules, too many. That’s what I thought at least. This all changed when I understood that you create your own rules when it comes to fashion. You wear the clothes and define your aesthetic, not the other way around.

And how did you feel embarking on this journey and creating something new in Kuwait? I was actually so focused on achieving my goal that I had no time to even think of my fears. I was so deep into planning my next step that I did not leave room for doubts or overthinking, thankfully, because had I done that I may have never continued.

This resulted in the creation of your company, ByFarahFoReal, the first and only specialized fashion agency! Tell us a little a little about what that means. Simply put, fashion companies who, for example, have an online presence, would need editorial shoots, content, art direction, branding, and other services. What used to happen was these companies would contact specialized agencies from abroad – which is a real hassle. I wanted to bring this concept to Kuwait and make it available for companies here; now we manage projects from A-Z, from campaigns and events to PR and model sourcing & management, we do it all.

I am now proud to say that ByFarahFoReal has worked and collaborated with some of the most renowned brands in the world, and our work has been recognized internationally by some of the most prominent names in the industry such as British Vogue and of course, Marie Claire Arabia.

We noticed your team is mostly female, was that done on purpose?

Oh absolutely, why do you think our logo is pink? I’ve always loved the idea of working alongside empowered women, so it was only natural to make this happen in my team as well. I cannot begin to explain the magic that occurs when I surrounded myself with those strong women, it’s very inspiring!

In your own words, how would you describe Art Direction?

It’s knowing how the real-world works, and deciding to go against the grain, breaking every single rule, and creating your own. Art Direction to me is creating whatever world I’m inspired to create without any restrictions or boundaries.

How does it feel to be your own boss? It can be very challenging; it needs a lot of discipline and hard work but it’s also very rewarding. It’s knowing that you can give yourself a break whenever you want but choosing not to because you know that every moment you spend working is a moment you’re working towards your goal. But eventually, you learn to find that balance by listening to and knowing yourself.

Okay, let’s get a little personal. What or who is your source of inspiration?

Recently, I’m just in awe of all the talents I meet, work with, and follow in the region, whether photographers, MUAs, stylists, painters, etc... I get a different glimpse of inspiration on a daily basis!

Would you describe yourself as a dreamer or doer?

I think I’m a healthy balance of both, and I believe that you need to be that way.

Let’s take it back to your business, what does the future for ByFarahFoReal look like? Oh, I already have a whole thing about that on my vision board! I want ByFarahFoReal to be international and open up an office in every corner of the globe, as well as meet and work with artists from around the world to create art together!

You seem to already have been taking this step, you’re now also doing projects in Dubai! Tell us about that.

I’m thrilled about it. I chose to explore Dubai because it’s a similar market to Kuwait, but it’s been established longer, and there’s also been interest from agencies in Dubai who have reached out to collaborate with numerous brands that operate out of Dubai! It seemed like the logical decision to take the next step to become regional.

Are you working on any campaigns right now? I am, but I can’t reveal it just yet. All I can say is, stay tuned, you’ll love it!

ART AT GRAND HYATT KUWAIT: LEAVING NO CANVAS UNTURNED

Take in the extraordinary art as you visit the iconic Grand Hyatt Kuwait

By bazaar staff

Located in the light-filled new extension of lifestyle destination, 360 Mall, Grand Hyatt Kuwait is a destination where art enthusiasts can take in a wide range of pieces created by artists from various parts of the world with different backgrounds but a similar love for creating beauty in all forms. With conceptualized dining concepts, elegant guest rooms and elevated design elements, these art pieces created specifically for the hotel are elevating the standards of a hotel experience and makes Grand Hyatt Kuwait a destination that will never be forgotten. Discover the art, and the incredible artists, in this special feature.

By Ahmed Muqeem

Ahmed Muqeem

Ahmed Muqeem, a self-taught Kuwaiti artist with over 20 years of experience, has completed various artworks in the field of oil paintings and drawings. A lot of his work is showcased in galleries both locally and internationally in countries such as Spain, Greece, Turkey and China and collected by worldwide art enthusiasts. He has most recently worked on a portrait of Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Hamad Al Sabah in 2020 which was showcased on a national flag raised event. He also has a painting at the Abdul Hussain Abdul Redha theater of the Kuwaiti icon. It is worthy to note that the talented artist is responsible for the beautiful artwork featured in Mei Li contemporary Asian restaurant in Grand Hyatt Kuwait.

Akil

Born in Syria in 1988, Akil is a dedicated artist who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Aleppo and currently resides in Beirut, Lebanon. With a passion for Arabic calligraphy at a young age, he began developing his skills through philosophical and intellectual means related to the letter’s Arab and Islamic culture. Akil participated in several worldwide exhibitions and was awarded first place winner of the Al-Burda Prize in Dubai in 2018. His artworks are based on the Arabic musical “Maqams”, where he converts them from their audio pattern to an optical pattern.

“When I hear a voice inside me, I try to hold all these moments of ecstasy and invert them into a letter, a word, an optical language”, he explains. Akil searches for an optical modern language for the Arabic letter.

Fahad Al-Naymah

Fahad Al-Naymah was born in Riyadh and began his artistic career in 1978 at the age of 20. A selftaught artist, he began with simple sketched of his environment that influenced his earlier pieces such as camels, palm trees and other facets of the desert habitat. He portrays camels in an abstract manner that reflects its significance in desert heritage. AlNaymah won awards throughout his career with the most notable being First Prize at the Architectural Heritage Contest while his work has also been acquired in several countries such as the Green Box Museum of Contemporary Art in Holland, the Saudi Embassy in Canada and many more.

By Nic Fiddian Green

Khalid Shahin

A full-time artist, sculptor and product designer, Khalid Shahin was born in 1966 in Jordan and has more than 30 years of experience in the field of media and advertising as well as corporate identity branding. He has tried to combine and integrate Text-Art, typography and Arabic Calligraphy with his abstract paintings and unique sculptures. He aims to elegantly fuse the richness of traditional Arabic letters, shapes and curves with the innovative spirit of a modern renaissance. Mr. Shahin took part in more than 17 worldwide exhibitions and his works are included in several private and public collections in almost every country around the globe.

Nasser Al Aswadi

Nasser Al Aswadi was born in 1978, at al Hujr village near to Taiz, the third city of Yemen. He studied architecture in Taiz before continuing in Sanaa, where he exhibited his first works in 2001. Since 2008, Nasser has been moving between Yemen and France and uses calligraphy as a way to express feelings and thoughts without them being specifically linked to the language. He picks a writing style that lends the best sense and passion to that work. The letters and words are not drawn down on a straight line or horizontally but painted and stacked separately and identically while being tangled and lost in the imaginary space of the painting.

By Tracie Cheng

By Akil

Zaman Jassim

Born in 1971, Zaman Jassim is a Saudi artist whose mixed media work features visually striking and evocative forms, often enriched by a variety of symbols, patterns and calligraphic signs. In 2011 he was the recipient of the Al Kharafi Biennial Award for Contemporary Arab Art, Kuwait. Jassim has held solo shows in many countries and has participated in group exhibitions in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. His work is in the collections of the Al Mansouria Foundation, the Barjeel Art Foundation, Emaar International, the Kinda Foundation, the League of Arab States and the Saudi Aramco Company.

Nurieh Mozaffari

Nurieh Mozaffari was born in Iran and became seriously interested in painting at the age of 18. She embarked on a Bachelor’s Degree majoring in Art in Iran before completing a Master’s Degree in Painting at Art University in 1996. She taught at the Faculty of Art as well. Her work has been showcased in various exhibitions, whether it was joint work or solo. She them moved to Canada in 1998 where she pursued a diploma in Jewelry Design in Vancouver. This program pushed her to expand her perspective of the world and allowed her to express herself in 3D. She has always drawn from her cultural heritage to complement her creations. Nurieh’s work has been exhibited internationally since 1984 and says that she cannot imagine her life without

painting. Her work gives her a strong sense of self and allows her to share her innermost truth with those around her.

Renato Freitas

Renato Freitas was born in Brazil in 1974 and now resides in Miami. He studied filmmaking at the New York Film Academy. Freitas’s works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in galleries throughout the United States, France, UK, Greece, Kuwait and Brazil. He explains that his driving force is spirituality and believes that “the ethereal becomes real when the realm of the unseen connects thru my soul, and it is expressed in my work with every pallet knife or brush stroke touching the canvas.”

Centerpiece by Xavier Vellhan, art by Ali Almimar

Jamal A. Rahim was born in Al Muharraq in Bahrain 1965, brought up in its old alleys. He still lives in Al Muharraq where he has built his own house and studio. His artistic journey began after returning to Bahrain from four years in India as he came back with a Diploma in Engineering Drawing. He participated in his first joint exhibition at Al Hala Club in Al Muharraq in 1987 where he was introduced to the eminent Bahraini Artist Ibrahim Busaad who encouraged him to take art seriously as he still viewed it as a hobby beforehand. In 1988, he met another

Sabah Arbilli

Sabah Arbilli is an Iraqi Postwar and Contemporary

Artist who was born in 1977. The renowned artist and calligrapher holds an MA in Visual Arts by the Visual Institute of Traditional Arts London at the University of Wales. He has shown his calligraphy-based artworks

widely and internationally throughout the Middle East,

Ali Al Mimar

Ali Al Mimar was born in Baghdad in 1965 and graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1985 and the College of Fine Arts, Baghdad in 1991 where he was the first with distinction in his division. He

Jamal Abdul Rahim

Bahraini Artist, A. Jabbar Ghadban and was fascinated by his techniques in etching and printing. Their relationship developed into a friendship and he decided to learn the basics of these skills as he began working in BAS Studios.

Europe, Russia, Turkey, Australia and throughout the world. Sabah an award winner and a master in traditional calligraphy and delivered many specialized workshops.

By Akil

By Ali Al Mimar

obtained Fa’ik Hassan’s Golden Medal for painting in (Youth Festival - 1985) where that was the real start for him as an artist. He was supervised under the Iraqi Pioneer Artist Fa’ik Hassan as well. He saw Fa’ik Hassan as a mentor and because of that, he entered the world of painting Arabian Horses as he became one of the most significant artists in that field. “In my work, I have always tried to reach beyond the physical beauty of the Arabian horse and what it symbolizes in infinite nobility and manners in our Arabic heritage and culture. Al Mimar’s art being featured in Grand Hyatt is no surprise as the Chairman is known for his love of horses.

Xavier Veilhan

Born in 1963, Xavier Veilhan is a French artist living in Paris and works with photography, sculpture, film, painting and installation art. He graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des arts Décoratifs in Paris. Veilhan continued his artistic education in Berlin at the Hochschule der Künste in the atelier of artist Georg Baselitz. Later, he returned to Paris to finish his studies in 1989 at the Institut des hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques. He is known for experimenting with the notions of the generic, industrially produced object and of universal representation. He expresses concerns

with the scenography of a dedicated presentation and addresses issues of perception as well as the physical and temporal relationships created within the context of the exhibition format. His work is to be found in important public and private collections worldwide.

Nic Fiddian-Green

Born in Ireland 1963, Nic Fiddian-Green is a British sculptor who specializes in making lifelike models of horses’ heads, both smaller and larger than life-sized, he is also the talent behind the central equine sculpture situated in Grand Hyatt Kuwait’s grand lobby entrance. He was educated at Eton College. Later, as a foundationcourse student at Chelsea College of Arts, he was sent on a visit to the British Museum to seek inspiration and chanced upon a carving of horse’s head, the horse of Selene, in the Elgin Marbles room there. He described it as “one of the most beautiful objects I’d ever seen”. Shortly afterwards, he began working on similar objects. His sculptures can be described as deeply traditional and startlingly modern. The ragged and physical look of his horses with their rough impressionist surface and rough-cut and riveted panels recall a whole lineage of modernism and cubism to post-war figures and contemporaries. At the same time, his inspiration is

clearly Classical. The still simplicity and almost spiritual calmness of his pieces strikes a chord with all who see them. His work is admired by many, including Grand Hyatt’s Chairman who has an admiration for great art and horses.

Tracie Cheng

Tracie Cheng attended the University of Texas in Austin and graduated with a degree in architecture. After several years of architectural work, her desire to shape environments shifted to the visual arts. Cheng’s paintings call to mind natural phenomena with a playful and dynamic quality of space and movement. There is a richness in the fluid layers and interweaving of her lines and paint, all working together to form a textured story. As the first of her Taiwanese family to be born in the United States, Tracie grew up with the complexities of both cultures which has shaped her paintings in significant ways. She emerged with a new style in her works that contain aspects of Chinese brush painting, abstraction, and architectural renderings.

For more information, please visit grandhyattkuwait. com and follow the hotel’s latest on social media

@GrandHyattKuwait.

BECOMING INDEPENDENT

The freelance workforce is becoming more highly skilled and highly educated

By Sam Becker

During 2021, Americans submitted applications to create 5.4 million new businesses, the highest level ever recorded, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and a 68% increase over the average for the preceding five years. Millions more are turning to freelance work as well. In fact, within the next several years, as much as half of the American workforce—almost 87 million people—will be freelancing.

The trend is picking up steam, too, according to new data from freelance marketplace Upwork. The study finds that over the past year, 39% of the American workforce performed freelance work in some shape or form (an increase of 3% year-overyear), and chipped in a whopping $1.35 trillion in earnings to the overall U.S. economy.

The growing pool of full-time freelancers isn’t merely composed of people who were laid off or who otherwise lost their jobs over the past few years. It’s often young, educated workers who are striking out on their own, as the data shows that 43% of Gen Z professionals and 46% of millennial professionals freelanced in the past year, and that 26% of all freelancers hold a postgraduate degree—up from 20% last year.

What’s behind the shift? Changes in not only how we collectively view work methods, but also our perception of independent work (and the pandemic, of course), says Margaret Lilani, VP of talent solutions at Upwork. “We attribute [the growing popularity of freelancing] to a macro shift in the workforce, where people are questioning the old ways of working for the first time,” Lilani says. “The pandemic enabled this realization en masse and helped to accelerate what would likely have been a more gradual adoption.”

“Skilled professionals recognize the benefits that freelancing offers them from a work and life standpoint. They are part of this massive ‘ah-ha’ moment causing people to scrutinize the confines of a traditional 9-to-5. And for those seeking something outside of that, freelancing offers flexibility and control that a traditional job cannot provide,” Lilani says.

Freelancer organizations say they’ve likewise seen growth over the past few years. Rafael Espinal, executive director of Freelancers Union, a nonprofit group that provides advocacy, benefits, and resources for its 500,000 members across the United States, says the organization’s “weekly membership roles have increased 300% on a weekly basis compared to 2020.”

“We’re seeing more and more people make the jump and turn to freelancing,” he says.

Weighing rewards against the risks

Despite its growing popularity, freelancing does come with significant risks. Many workers weighing the pros and cons of ditching a full-time job for a freelance career need to consider the additional costs that may have been covered by employers, as well as the time needed to learn the ropes.

“You need to figure out how to pay for health insurance—think about paid leave, disability pay, and life insurance,” Espinal says. Not to mention, he adds, freelancers should be doing their best to “learn the ins and outs of contracts,” which many freelancers struggle with.

Overall, the decision to start freelancing fulltime may amount to a comparison of the pros and cons. For instance, the gender pay gap still exists in the freelance world, which may be something prospective freelancers need to take into consideration before making the jump. Conversely,

freelancers can also be more discerning of the work they do and the clients they work with. That flexibility allows many to forgo working relationships with brands or organizations that they don’t align with ideologically, or otherwise.

Ultimately, Espinal says, the pros tend to outweigh the cons, which is why more and more people in recent years have made the decision to strike out on their own. “Freelance work provides the benefits people want: working from home, choosing their own hours, and providing the flexibility to take care of your family,” he says.

“If you’re resilient, nimble, and efficient, then freelancing may be for you,” he says. “It takes a lot of guts, but if you put the time and effort in and don’t get discouraged, you’ll be able to have a successful career freelancing.”

Employers are having a hard time finding enough workers, and that may be because millions of Americans are increasingly going to work for themselves, either creating businesses or becoming freelancers.

Photo by Rodeo Project Management Software on Unsplash.

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y we l ook at makeup. Ins tead of it being a tool for c t ion, it c an be used a s a tool to expres s who ea l ly are ange is col our f ul and it ’s simpl e. It ’s nat ura l ng and it ’s f ul l cover a ge. It ’s bol d and it ’s barely It ’s designed to gi ve you t he f reedom to be you, ever and however t hat may be a Keane, Gl oba l Head of Produc t Devel opment at Body Shop s aid “ We bel ieve t hat being t r uly

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AI ART

By Elissaveta M. Brandon

#nofilter

Not so long ago, seemingly every post on our Instagram feed came with a proud #nofilter disclaimer. In an act of rebellion against the abundance of enhanced photos—and the veneer of perfection perpetuated by social media— influencers posted unedited sunsets and celebrities posed for make-up-free selfies.

Today, the abundance of AI-generated images has kicked the conversation into another gear. The question is no longer whether someone boosted the brightness or adjusted the contrast on their photos. It’s whether someone took that photo—or made this artwork—in the first place. The meteoric rise of generative AI systems like Dall-E or Midjourney has ignited another kind of rebellion in the creative community. And what better way to communicate this rebellion than with another hashtag?

#Artbyhumans hasn’t yet risen to the gargantuan proportions of #nofilter. Counting about 4,500 Instagram posts at the time of writing, it’s not even close to the more than 280 million posts that are tagged with #nofilter today. But it encapsulates the zeitgeist as perfectly as #nofilter did back when it first started. It’s also part of a large ecosystem of similar hashtags like #notoaigeneratedimages, #humanart and #noAI.

For those who use #artbyhumans, the hashtag has become a form of silent protest and a rallying cry from concept artists and illustrators who feel affected, and in some cases threatened, by the crushing popularity of AI. An Amsterdambased freelance concept artist who asked to be referenced by his artist name, Diepfris, started using the hashtag in September. At first, he would tag some of his posts with the hashtag #noAI but he didn’t like the negative messaging it conveyed; #artbyhumans was “way more elegant,” he says.

Diepfris spent more than 10 years as an industrial designer before transitioning to making art for games. His Instagram is filled with meticulously hand-sketched sci-fi vehicles and machines that look like they could feature in a mashup of Blade Runner and Star Wars. A year ago, few people discovering his work would’ve questioned if these were drawn by a human. Today, you couldn’t blame someone from being fooled into thinking they were drawn by an AI instead. Not because Diepfries’s work looks subpar, but because AI-generated images look so up to par.

“The rate at which the output quality of AI image generators is increasing is amazing and alarming,” says Diepfris. Like many others in his field, he worries that AI will one day be able to respond to complex briefs and render the work of a concept artist like himself obsolete. “An art director could just use the brief he or she usually prepares and feed that to the AI,” he says. “In that scenario the concept artist’s services would essentially be redundant. Concept art as a job

would die out and a lot of people would find themselves out of work.”

Not everyone shares this point of view. According to Grant Regan, a concept artist and illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia, AI can’t possibly process a complex brief the way a human can, and no amount of search terms can make up for a human’s keen ability to distill technical concepts. When Regan works with clients, he says he has to strike a balance between stakeholders with contradictory opinions, resulting in a back and forth that requires mediation skills, empathy, and heaps of patience. “Attempting this kind of response to client direction and feedback through an application like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion wouldn’t be feasible,” he says. “Monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare springs to mind.”

Regan’s biggest concern isn’t the threat that AI could pose to his career, but the conniving nature of an algorithm that uses a “scattergun” approach to scrape other artists’s work and create a collage of their art without their

permission. “It has a superficially appealing sameness to it, and as completed production art it would frequently fall short,” he says. So he uses the hashtag #artbyhumans to celebrate both the skill and intentionality of his work. And also to communicate to potential clients that if they hire him, they would get “someone who has the requisite artistic and design chops to provide a response to a brief that address its requirements.”

For many artists, the hashtag reflects a desire to set themselves apart from the onslaught of AI-generated images crawling around social media. But in a way, it suggests a certain level of surrender, too—a whispered acknowledgement that AI has become so good that without the disclaimer that something was drawn by a human, viewers may believe it was not. In a world where machines can produce such convincing work, how can humans stand out?

Fueled by the AI frenzy, #artbyhumans is the new

Photo by DeepMind on Unsplash.

C M Y CM MY CY CMY K

how “It has been quite the journey, as we have experienced it all together. Our personalities are very different, and in some ways, we complement each other. But we both believe that these differences are what make us a great team. We’re able to produce very unique designs because of our contrasting styles. We have now reached a level where we don’t need to complete our own sentences because the other immediately gets it!”

Amina and Yasmine are very passionate about what they do and this is what drives them in the business. They comment on how “Past Modern is what we live and breathe every day. It’s what defines us in the market, and more importantly, the design realm. It’s who we are and what we represent.”

It is amazing to see a young team of professionals carving out a name for themselves in the industry. In the future, the aim of Past Modern is to be a great conglomerate. One that hosts a variety of disciplines including a furniture and accessories line, a broader scope of projects and international recognition. The girls hope to leave behind a great legacy in the field of interior design and architecture.

When they are not working, both the girls love to travel and witness all that is beautiful around the world. It is almost a full circle of their upbringings and experiences as children getting to know different corners of the world.

TRUTH OR DARE QUESTIONNAIRE

How would your mother describe you in one word?

Amina: Dependable.

Yasmine: Affectionate.

What is the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?

Amina: Having a destination wedding. A true dream coming true.

Yasmine: Bungee jumping. It wasn’t on my to do list that day.

Where would you like to live?

Amina: Barcelona, Spain.

Yasmine: Portugal.

What is the first famous quote that comes to your mind?

Amina: Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Yasmine: نويلملا ةبلاط ول

Which animal best describes your perfect partner, be it in business, or in life?

Amina: Honey bee. They’re smart, extremely hard working and are all about family and community.

Yasmine: Dog. They’re loyal and love you unconditionally.

Do you miss anything from your childhood and if so, what is it?

Amina & Yasmine: All the traveling without having to worry about responsibilities. Growing up in different cultures and gaining international friends who, to this day, remain close with.

If you could change your name, to what would you change it?

Amina: I like it because it’s my grandmother’s name.

Yasmine: I like my name; I wouldn’t change it.

How would you describe your handshake, in one word?

Amina: Gentle.

Yasmine: Confident.

What is the toughest part of your character?

Amina: Stubbornness

Yasmine: Emotional

Who is your favorite historical figure?

Amina: Frieda Kahlo.

Yasmine: Bob Marley.

What in the world do you least desire?

Amina: Hate.

Yasmine: Disrespect.

What do you think is lacking in the world, which [if there were more of it] would make the world a better place?

Education. Knowledge. If more people were better educated, there would be less violence, more logic and reasoning, and maybe even a more peaceful place to live in.

Why do you think most people who do, like you?

Amina: I’m very approachable, quite diplomatic, and love to spread good energy and love. I also love meeting new people, engaging in great conversation and sharing my knowledge with anyone interested in the field.

Yasmine: I’m easy going and love to go with the flow.

Finish this sentence: “Happiness is…”

Amina: my daughters.

Yasmine: living life to the fullest.

Don’t believe our word for the beautiful spaces that Past Modern creates, just head over to their Instagram account @ past.modern. and get lost in the world of interiors. Now you know who to call when you next need a space designed!

TAKE THE DAY OFF

5 reasons mental health days are good for both workers and businesses

By AJ Hess

Increasingly, employers have found that the best way to combat these losses is to give workers a new benefit: mental health days.

While mental health challenges may not always be as visible as other kinds of illnesses, they also require time to heal and need to be treated in a serious manner. For instance, Stress and anxiety can be just as paralyzing as the flu. In fact, flu-like symptoms are common symptoms of anxiety disorder.

It can be easy to accept mental health challenges like anxiety as “normal,” but workers should be empowered to take their mental health seriously. And that means taking time away from work when needed.

Here’s why all organizations should offer mental health days:

Prevent burnout

“Prevention is better than cure.” This phrase from the Dutch philosopher Erasmus is nearly 500 years old, but it still holds today.

A mental health day can help prevent an employee from burning out. Burnout can lead to missed workdays or even more severe issues.

Plus, a scheduled day off for an employee to recoup is better for team coordination than an unscheduled day off that can leave team members underprepared. With this preplanned time off, employees can then return to work ready to hit the ground running.

Increased productivity

Refreshed employees are also more productive. Psychologists often use the YerkesDodson law to explain the relationship between stress and performance.

The Yerkes-Dodson law looks like a standard bell curve where the x-axis represents employee performance and the y-axis shows employee stress.

Although stress has a negative connotation, it is often more nuanced. Stress can push us forward and propel us to act. In short bursts, it can help us accomplish tasks. But when compounded over time without rest, it can hurt us.

Psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson found that there is a happy medium between employee stress and performance at the peak of the bell curve. Too far left, and employees are under stimulated and underworked; too far right, and employees start to collapse under the weight of stress. Both left and right tails have the same outcome: weak performance.

This tells us that, in short, some stress is

beneficial. But when stress levels get too high, performance begins to drop off. You can keep productivity optimal by offering employees a chance to take mental health days before they cross over the top of the bell curve and descend into impaired performance.

Maintaining this balance of peak performance and stress can be a difficult balance to strike. Mental health days are a great tool to use for doing so.

Healthcare cost savings

What’s more, research shows that mental health days directly reduce healthcare costs. Industry giant Cigna released a 2021 study demonstrating this.

Ultimately, the study found that proactively managing mental health, including common conditions like depression and anxiety, decreased healthcare costs by $1,377 per person per year; and an average of $3,109 every two years.

Promoting better mental health could also help reduce accidents. For instance, driving after having insufficient sleep can be the equivalent of driving with a blood alcohol content level of .05% to .10%, which can lead to accidents. Prioritizing workers’ holistic health, and empowering them to address conditions like insomnia, can help organizations promote safety and reduce costs from accidents.

Improved physical health

Mental stress can often lead to physical stress. Allowing employees to have time to reduce their mental stress helps them stay physically

healthy, reducing the number of workdays missed due to illness.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have found that workplace stressors are often tied to mortality and health. The researchers measured exposure to 10 different workplace stressors among U.S. workers. They found that 5% to 8% of annual healthcare costs and more than 120,000 deaths were associated with how the companies managed their workforce.

Better morale

When an employee’s workplace causes stress, it can become a vicious cycle. Dealing with stress from work is bad enough, but compound that with a fear of being reprimanded for taking time off to recover, and workers’ mental health challenges could worsen.

Offering employees the option of mental health days without fear of reprisal for using them can create a healthier work environment. And when employees feel supported in the workplace, morale improves, and (in my experience) businesses thrive.

Offering mental health days can also help an organization develop a reputation as a great place to work. This can appeal to future employees and attract new talent to the workplace. It also can lead to less turnover among the current staff, allowing for further cost savings.

In these ways, offering mental health days can help your workers, and your bottom line.

Mental health challenges hold workers, and the economy, back. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), depression, anxiety, and stress cost the global economy nearly $1 trillion yearly in lost production.

Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash.

MASTARA X ASCIA

The collaboration we didn’t know we needed

By bazaar staff

Our homes are our safe spaces, where we go to shed the layers and be ourselves completely. So designing a space that is a reflection of who we are and a space we can see ourselves grow into is an essential part of our being. And we have just found inspiration in a surprising place! The collaboration between social media star and influencer, Ascia, and our favorite digital fabric store, Mastara.

We love how Mastara has grown in its offerings, having started as an online fabric boutique specializing in bringing customizable, made-tomeasure curtains to our homes, they now have added sofas to the mix. Most recently, Mastara has been collaborating with the region’s hottest designers like Ziad Antonios Sarkis, and now Ascia!

Ascia has also evolved, from her beginnings as a fashion blogger to a lifestyle influencer, entrepreneur and business owner. Her irreverent sense of style and ability to bring things together and make them work are what make her so special. And we were just so excited to see how she would design a living space with Mastara, of course it would be fabulous, of that we are sure!

“We had always planned to work on two types of collaborations, first with designers and interior architects, and the second with celebrities and online personalities. Being an online company in a traditionally ‘brick and mortar’ industry, it was important to team up with those who reach people primarily in the digital world. We had been seeing Ascia’s obvious passion for interior styling through her content over the past. Coupled with her unique and creative taste, we knew that Ascia was just the person to curate something truly inspiring and interesting, and she certainly exceeded our expectations,” explained Jamal S AlfahhamMastara CEO.

Mastara has been smitten with Ascia’s style and passion since they started working together. “As I’ve gained more experience over the years, I realized the joy I take in designing. So much of that joy comes from creating spaces where the meeting of style meets comfort. I’ve wanted to venture into interiors recently and this felt like the perfect way to go about it,” Ascia explains why she decided to collaborate with Mastara.

Ascia worked on two pieces with Mastara, Diwaniya and Woodles. The ‘Diwaniya by Ascia is such a unique piece, it’s not only beautiful to look at but it’s also versatile and comfy. With this piece she was aiming for a ‘conversation pit’, somewhere to have as your own personal haven at home where you can spend quality time with family and friends. The layers of tiered boucle fabric give it such a multi-dimensional and organic aesthetic that it is truly a work of art.

Woodles, on the other hand, is very unexpected. It is a set of 12 upholstered wall art pieces designed by Ascia. Not only do they decorate but they create a natural insulation that gives rooms a warm and cozy vibe. The organic shapes, wrapped in high quality Italian and European fabrics of the Boucle and Velvet variety, are available in three color palettes and are super easy to install using the peel and stick tape.

The ever humble Ascia said she wouldn’t call it a collection, because she only designed two pieces, but commented that they are powerful, fun, playful, and strong. We certainly think the pieces make a statement without being too loud. They are eyecatching without trying too hard.

According to Mastara, Ascia went all in, she didn’t start with something small and simple, she pushed their boundaries and created two aesthetically brilliant and well-designed pieces that she very specifically had in mind. Where one might think that a celebrity would stick to something plain and simple like a basic ottoman or funky chair, she came in with a well-articulated plan of exactly what she wanted and was involved in the design process the entire way through, the results are astounding!

The brand remarked on how wonderful it was to work with her as a person, and how involved Ascia was in the details of her creations. “All we needed to do was extract the ideas from her imagination, which she was able to articulate extremely well. The Woodles for example started by her creating each shape with some tape on a wall, no sketches, no measurements, they are direct from her imagination to a remarkable end product. Ascia and her team are extremely professional and dedicated. We are not surprised that she has found the success she has. It is impressive to see someone so young with such passion and drive. We can’t wait to do more projects with her,” explained Jamal S Alfahham - Mastara CEO.

Ascia’s designs are a great addition to any home and the perfect starting point for anyone trying to give their home a more unique touch. We asked Mastara for advice on how to we can make our home more reflective of our personalities. They told us to be authentic to ourselves and not to follow trends. A trend is something that will have its lifecycle and eventually end, but your unique preferences and style will always be you. This is 100% of the reason why Mastara does not mass produce, The brand will always have a madeto-order element that allows customers to take control of their home furnishings from choosing textures and colors to having pieces that fit their lifestyle. “We are simply here to guide and help highlight those in the industry who are truly pushing the envelope when it comes to style and design. In short, be true to yourself, trust your instincts and dare to be different,” explained Jamal S Alfahham - Mastara CEO.

Find out more about this unique collaboration by visiting mastara.me or checking out @mastarakw on Instagram.

C M Y CM MY CY CMY K

BECOMING YOUTUBERS

Meet the workers who quit their jobs to become full-time YouTubers

By Chris Stokel-Walker

For several years after The Korean Vegan’s 2016 debut, Molinaro’s social media profile was busy, if not exactly bustling. She had inked a book deal in 2018, the result of which was released in 2021. But she remained niche, hovering around 80,000 followers across her different platforms. That changed once the pandemic struck. Stuck at home, and with restaurants closed, people started cooking more—and they sought out Molinaro’s videos for inspiration.

Sensing an opportunity, Molinaro expanded The Korean Vegan to TikTok, then ultimately to YouTube Shorts. “The Korean Vegan went from being 80,000 followers across social media platforms to now being 4.5 million in just a couple of years,” says Molinaro, now 43. “Ultimately, it was that explosive growth that led me to withdraw from being a full-time partner in October 2021.”

Molinaro was one of 435,000 full-time YouTubers in the United States last year, according to recent research by Oxford Economics commissioned by the video sharing platform. Anecdotally, YouTube has seen more people turning to the platform full-time during the pandemic.

The rise of the creator economy predates the pandemic—the sector was already growing well beforehand—but indeed the stresses of COVID appear to have pushed some who had previously created content for the video platform as a side hobby to consider it as a sole source of income. Google searches for “how to start a YouTube channel” spiked in March and May 2020, while other video platforms such as TikTok saw major spikes in user numbers as people sought out entertainment to while away the time stuck at home. Now, the creator economy is now more than $100 billion.

“The pandemic has amplified what YouTube has offered creators for the last 17 years: the chance to build the career they want making content they love,” says Tara Walpert Levy, vice president of Americas at YouTube. “Over the last two years, we’ve seen creators from across the job spectrum come to YouTube to take advantage of that opportunity.”

Take, for example, Cat Benson, creator (along with her husband Camaron Conway) of the CatBen YouTube channel. But until February 2021, she fit YouTube around her role in the care sector in Kentucky. The pandemic was a tricky time for Benson, who signed people up for their Medicaid benefits. “It was very, very hectic during that time,” she says. “People needed health care and

needed help.” The mom had built up her YouTube profile posting cleaning videos, but struggled to fit it around her job and her responsibilities as a parent. “It just got to a point where me and Camaron just sat down and were like, ‘You know, this is really what I want to do. And it’s more lucrative.’”

For Molinaro, the decision to jump full-time into The Korean Vegan, rather than treating it as a side hobby she’d work on over a lunch break, was “frankly a little antithetical to someone as risk-averse as I am.” She found inspiration in a friend’s advice, who told her: “I’m pretty sure you’re a really good lawyer. You’re very good at what you do at the law firm. But I’m also pretty sure they could find somebody else to do what you do,” Molinaro recalls. “There’s nobody else who can do what you do as The Korean Vegan.”

Molinaro says that she felt her job as a lawyer was “somewhat meaningless” compared to the impact she was having on YouTube— and as a result of it. Off the back of her digital presence, she was able to write an op-ed for The Atlantic about Donald Trump, and was profiled by Salon. “Why I started sharing these stories is because I saw that there were people who really had no clue what it’s like to be an immigrant in the United States,” she says.

YouTube’s own statistics suggest that the site contributed more than $25 billion to the U.S. economy—a major element at a time

when recession is striking not just the United States, but the entire globe.

Kevin Stratvert, a former Microsoft employee who left his role at the company in July 2020 at the height of the pandemic to make YouTube videos full-time, says the switch was a no-brainer. “Financially, it worked out better than Microsoft,” he says. Nevertheless, he also had misgivings— or fears—about what was to come. Both he and his wife are cautious, conservative people. He had worked at the company for 14 years when he left; his wife had for 13 years at that point. But he couldn’t deny the reality: “When I looked at the numbers, you see this growth,” he says. “You see more and more people viewing, you see the ad revenue coming along, and you see the impact you’re having on people.”

It also benefited him—and tied into the broader sense of achieving freedom from the tyrannies of their jobs that many felt during the pandemic.

“When you’re at a big company, your calendar is just full of meetings,” he says. “That consumes a lot of your mental energy.” Now that’s changed. Out of the company, Stratvert’s calendar is cleared. “Now you have all that mental energy available to focus on making content producing things,” he says, “figuring out that next video.”

By day, Joanne Lee Molinaro, works as a partner at a high-powered Chicago law firm; at night, she runs a food blog and YouTube channel called The Korean Vegan.

Photo by Mostafa KordZangeneh on Unsplash.

COUNT YOUR WORDS

By Lydia Dishman

No one’s reading most of what you write. I started in newspapers, where I was paid by the word. The more you wrote, the better chances of getting on the front page. Those who wrote even more had a shot at the Sunday front page. If you wrote even more than that, you might be nominated for a prize or win an award. But when we moved into the digital world and started Politico, we started to see data revealing that even our moms weren’t reading that. The Washington Post, which has some of the best journalism in the world, only had people viewing content for an average of 20 seconds per piece.

So, it makes sense that people will remember one thing you say, at best. This also applies to podcasts, Zoom sessions, or any industry meeting. Figure out what that one thing is that you want to get across and just say it. Put it up top.

2. Write like a human.

If I’m having chips and salsa with you, there are social cues that keep me from being boring, right? I don’t use SAT words, or what my grandma called ten-dollar words. I don’t tell you things you already know. I don’t repeat myself because I want you to like me and I want you to have chips and salsa with me again. But when we sit behind a keyboard, we often do all those things that we refrain from in person. Journalists in particular tend to button up their collars.

One of the things we tell our journalists to do is read their passage out loud they can immediately catch if they’re using those fancy words, or the sentences are too long, or if there’s a word no human would use in real-time conversation.

3.

Do the work for the audience.

Think about who you want to reach and don’t make them fish for your big ideas. In journalism, we were literally taught to hide our best stuff. We were told about the concept of putting “gold coins” in our writing, and if you had six good stats or anecdotes then those should be sprinkled throughout the narrative to keep people going. But people don’t have time for that anymore, and most people will not indulge that.

4. Spell out your takeaways.

I talked to a teacher in Falls Church, Virginia whose parents never seemed to pick up on what he was saying in his emails. They would write back and ask him things that he’d already answered. He

read my morning newsletter, Axios AM, and he saw that I identified the key points and separated them with bold and bullets. He started doing that with his emails to parents and voila, he stopped getting stupid questions. The parents knew what he wanted them to focus on.

He took the time to think about what those three or four things were that he wanted them to know and spelled them out. It wasn’t just that he had isolated them with bold and bullets (which helps because every eye tracking study we looked at showed that when we see a block of text, people skip it) but he had taken the time to distill his message.

There was also a minister, David Glade, in Alexandria, Virginia. In a sermon, he boiled down the advice that he gave his kids to five words: Do the next right thing. It’s good advice, but the takeaway reveals the thought he put into that. Think of all the studies and commentaries

that he could have added onto it. The succinct way he presented it made the message stick— the kind of thing that can be remembered years later. He put in the thought on the front end. Don’t let typing be the first thing you do.

5. Just stop.

When asking for a raise, we dig ourselves deeper than we should. If I was asking for a raise, I would say, “Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I’m going to do, and you should give me a raise.” Instead, most people preface with or tack on statements like, “Well, I know these are hard times. I know you have a lot on your desk.” Just say what you want and stop there—you’ll be better off.

The power of saying more with less

Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz are co-founders of Axios, which is a news website with the mission of making people smarter on the topics changing the world. Formerly, the three of them were founding journalists of Politico. Below, Allen shares five key insights from their new book, Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less.

Photo by Amelia Bartlett on Unsplash.

AlRai, The Avenues, Souq Sharq, Al-Kout, Boulevard, Promenade

THE ULTIMATE JYSK KASHTA GUIDE IS HERE!

Here’s how to Achieve the Perfect Set-Up Anywhere

By bazaar staff

Attention all outdoor lovers! It’s the most wonderful time of the year… KASHTA SEASON. It’s time to grab your camping gear and enjoy the great outdoors. While there is no shortage of kashta rentals to choose from, you cannot always guarantee that they are well-maintained. More importantly, it is more cost-effective and personally satisfying to build your own set-up that can be used again and again. With this in mind, we’ve prepared this guide as a starting point for designing your own kashta set-up system that can be used year after year, in any environment. What do we mean by “any environment”? Simply put, we are not limiting ourselves to a specific location. You can set this up anywhere, from your backyard to the beach to the top of a building–the sky’s the limit.

With the help of this kashta guide from JYSK, you’ll soon be ready to show off a set-up to impress your guests. It will sparkle and shine, and most importantly, it will be a manifestation of your own individual style. Feel at one with nature with a minimalist kashta setup, or glamp in luxury, the choice is yours. So get ready, because this is JYSK’s Ultimate Kashta Guide.

Flooring: Starting with your first layer, using a simple, practical rug made of straw or cloth is best. Choose brown or its shades to go for a clean, natural look. Layer additional rugs on top of your primary one to create depth and dimension, or go for a funky mosaic effect by layering several smaller rugs. This option provides unrivaled ease and comfort whether you plan to spread your

seat out on sand or tiles. Keep in mind that extra padding is always welcome.

Seating: Local-inspired low seating and floor cushions are a hallmark of traditional kashtas. Throwing a bunch of floor cushions around the area is a great modern twist that will make it feel homier and add extra padding for sitting on

the floor or lying down to watch the stars. On the other hand, folding chairs are very convenient and easily fold into a carry-on to transport to different locations. Bean bags and poufs are another great choice for lounging around a fire. Adding a unique and contemporary touch, a swinging chair allows you to sway in the arms of nature, provided you have somewhere to hang it.

Tables: To make the session even more glamorous, you can bring a floor table, which is perfect for sharing a meal with your loved ones in a traditional Arabic setting. Compact and convenient, coffee tables are perfect for serving refreshments, setting out drinks, or playing cards and board games with friends and family. The overlapping side tables can be used not only in the living room but also at your Kashta, where you

can place accessories on the top layer and hold food and drinks during mealtimes on the bottom layers.

Lighting: Even on the coldest of winter nights, a kashta lit up with an ambiance of soft lighting from lamps and lanterns can feel cozy and inviting. The kashta’s lighting is critical; while you probably won’t need to worry about total darkness if you’re setting up in your garden or at the beach, you should be prepared for total darkness if you’re camping in the desert. There are so many different kinds of lighting you can bring with you to the Kashta. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but we really like the twinkle of the string lights that will mimic the stars above. Transform the look and feel of your kashta by hanging it from a pillar, draping it around the table, or laying it out

on the floor along the edges of your set-up. To add some traditional flair and extra lighting, consider using floor lanterns.

Cushions and Pillows: When it comes to group seating, cushions are a great choice because they allow you to easily create different levels and can be rearranged to accommodate different arrangements. Remember, the more cushions, the better. You can also stretch out comfortably on a cushion sun lounger, which are comfortable to lay on and easy to relocate. Whether you prefer to sit or lie down, having cushions greatly improves the comfort level while you’re out in the desert (or your garden, because remember, this kashta is for everywhere). You can go all out with cushions of every color, shape, and pattern, or keep things more minimalistic with a onochromatic look.

Accessories: Games, blankets, snacks and other necessities can be neatly organized and stored in straw and wooden baskets for easy access in your kashta. Not only do their natural tones look great with your kashta, but they also make it easy to transport everything you’ll need, whether it’s a short distance from your home or halfway across the country in the desert. You can spruce up your set-up with some artificial plants. Why settle for an all-sand campsite when you can spice it up with some greenery? Another way to add a special and individual touch to any kashta is to have a board on which you can spell out messages. Whether it’s a birthday or an anniversary, writing a special message on the board is a great way to commemorate the occasion.

Tableware: While disposable plastic cups and plates are convenient for use and disposal, they detract from the elegance and beauty of your kashta and are bad for the environment. JYSK quality tableware will allow you to feel like a king

at mealtime. Dine in style by selecting tableware with colors that complement the kashta’s design scheme. JYSK offers multipurpose dining cutlery, plates, cups, and serving bowls that can be used for snacks. They also offer cooling bags for food to make sure that your food and drinks stay fresh and chilled.

So, Make the best of this good weather, round up your friends or your family, and let them know you’re camp-ready for the great outdoors at a moment’s notice (even if the great outdoors is your garden). Your newly assembled, fullyportable kashta set-up means you no longer have to restrict your outdoor fun to the desert. Ensure your Kashta is an experience to remember by packing all the necessities you’ll need to stay comfortable and relaxed. Here at JYSK, we aim to cater to the aesthetic and functional needs of all our customers, so we stock a wide selection of tools and products that suit your kashta needs.

Explore JYSK’s selection of modern, functional furniture and accessories for ideas on how to design a kashta that reflects your unique sense of design. All furniture is available online at www.JYSK.com.kw or their showrooms in Dhajeej, Shuwaikh, The Avenues, and their newest location, Assimah Mall. Should you have any inquiries, feel free to contact the Customer Service Hotline through WhatsApp at +965 2226 1884 from 9 a.m. to midnight or email customerservice@JYSK.com.kw. You can find @JYSK_Kuwait on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook.

When it comes to home goods, JYSK is the international retail chain leader for your house. Since its founding in 1979 by Lars Larsen in Denmark, the JYSK Group has expanded to include over 3,000 stores in 51 countries, with more than 100 new stores opening each year. For more information, please visit http://www.JYSK.com/.

GRAND HYATT KUWAIT SCOOPS 2022 CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER MIDDLE EAST READERS’ CHOICE AWARDS

Kuwait’s most iconic hospitality destination was awarded ‘Favourite Business Hotel’ shortly after opening

By bazaar staff

Only a few months into its grand opening, Grand Hyatt Kuwait has carved a unique place for itself in Kuwait’s social and cultural circles. The hotel was recently named Favourite Business Hotel – MENA in the 2022 Condé Nast Traveler Middle East Readers’ Choice Awards.

Only a few months into its grand opening, Grand Hyatt Kuwait has carved a unique place for itself in Kuwait’s social and cultural circles. The hotel was recently named Favourite Business Hotel – MENA in the 2022 Condé Nast Traveler Middle East Readers’ Choice Awards.

Each year, Condé Nast Traveller Middle East recognizes the very best of the travel industry with their annual Readers’ Choice Awards. The winners are selected from a shortlisted group of nominees after readers and travelers cast their votes, which makes the award all the more impressive.

Commenting on the win, Philma Gomes-Ellis, Cluster Director of Sales and Marketing at Grand Hyatt Kuwait, said “We are delighted and proud to receive this prestigious honor after a mere four months into starting operations. This award highlights how Grand Hyatt Kuwait has already

become the favored destination for business travelers, visitors and residents alike in Kuwait. It is also the ultimate testament to months of tireless dedication and the hard work of our teams, and our promise to deliver exceptional luxury experiences for our guests”.

Strategically located in the heart of the 360 Mall extension, Grand Hyatt Kuwait is part of the nation’s most immersive social, entertainment and lifestyle complex; amplified by innovative concepts, modern architecture and elevated design components. The 302-key hotel offers curated experiences, including an eclectic array of gastronomic concepts featuring contemporary Turkish, European and Asian-inspired cuisines. Additionally, meeting spaces of 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters) that span across eight venues, has already garnered preference from the most celebrated events on Kuwait’s

annual social calendar. The tranquil Noor Spa with its of rejuvenating therapies and treatments has become the ultimate urban sanctuary for inhouse guests.

With influences from the sea, dhows, and the traditional mashrabiya, the intricate design of Grand Hyatt Kuwait together with its excellent service pays homage to the country’s traditions, while presenting contemporary Kuwaiti hospitality to the world.

In a vastly competitive hospitality industry, Grand Hyatt Kuwait will continue to set high standards for the market, and exert diligent efforts to deliver exceptional stays for its guests.

For more information, follow the hotel on Instagram @grandhyattkuwait and visit www.grandhyattkuwait.com.

STAY IN SCHOOL KIDS

An extra year of education could boost your chances of being your own boss

By Sam Becker

and, in recent years, more and more have brought that dream to fruition. During 2021 alone, roughly 5.4 million new companies were registered in the United States, an increase of 23% over the previous year. While the pandemic has clearly been a significant catalyst for much of this entrepreneurship, new research suggests that education is playing a big role, too.

Additional years of education lead to higher rates of entrepreneurship and self-employment, according to a new study from Iowa State University economics professor John Winters and graduate student Kunwon Ahn. The study, which was published in Small Business Economics, shows that “an additional year of schooling increases self-employment in high-growth industries by 1.12 percentage points for women and by 0.88 percentage points for men.” To sum it up, “the results suggest that formal education enhances entrepreneurship,” the paper says.

As such, if you want to become a business owner someday, your best bet may be to stay in school—at least according to this study. The research looked at employment and education data for more than 8 million people born between 1963 and 1990, meaning it spanned generations from younger baby boomers to millennials.

Interestingly enough, the paper comes hot on the heels of another report, which showed that community colleges are, by and large, producing graduates who are not work-ready, according to many employers. While that may have some wouldbe students second-guessing higher education, the takeaways from the Iowa State study suggest that if your goal is not merely to find a job but to build a business of your own, hitting the books may be a path forward.

But more education also led to different, albeit similar, outcomes for men and women. Specifically, it led to more self-employed men filtering into different industries, while it led to more overall female entrepreneurs.

“The benefits of education are often debated,” said Winters, in a statement. “Some worry it’s mostly about signaling rather than skill development, but our study provides a piece of evidence that additional years of education after high school can boost self-employment in highgrowth industries.”

“Education is empowering,” he added. “[For men,] additional schooling may not affect their confidence much, but it can provide skills to help them in more productive and higher growth industries. For women, education may have an even greater impact on encouraging them to jump into entrepreneurship by increasing their confidence in addition to their skills.”

Despite the apparent shortcomings of some community colleges and two-year degree

programs, the Iowa State report may provide some policy ammo for governments, which have, for decades, focused on increasing entrepreneurship and business formation rates as a way to stimulate economic growth and increase the number of jobs in a given area.

Further, most job growth in the United States already does stem from burgeoning small businesses and business formation. In fact, two out of every three jobs added to the U.S. economy over the past 25 years are attributed to small businesses. As such, there are reasons to want to inspire more people to become entrepreneurs.

Of course, making the leap from employee to entrepreneur isn’t without risk—around 20% of

new businesses fail within one year, and half fail within five years, according to government data.

The risk of failure, especially as we head into an economically shaky stretch, may be enough to turn many would-be entrepreneurs off for the time being. But the Iowa State study does show how critical education can be in spurring prospective business owners to action.

“Education and entrepreneurship are both massively important topics, and better understanding how they work together is critical for a prosperous future,” said Winters.

Millions of Americans dream of owning their own businesses

Photo by Pablo Varela on Unsplash.

AlRai, The Avenues, Souq Sharq, Al-Kout, Boulevard, Promenade

OFFICIALLY LAUNCHING, RASHA MANSOUR, THE BRAND

Rasha

Mansour launches her eponymous fine jewelry brand, rooted in the mythology of ancient Egypt, born in the modernity of Dubai

By bazaar staff

At the foundation of the brand lies Mansour’s desire to bring forth Ancient Egyptian wisdom into this ever-changing world. Her life-long passion for ancient Egypt combined with her love for jewelry and precious stones is translated into each and every piece of her magical creations. Mythical symbols and artifacts that are prevalent inside the walls of the pyramids and temples of ancient Egypt, stand at the core of the brand’s designs.

Rasha Mansour is a passionate, self-taught jewelry designer. Her obsession with gold started at an early age, often playing with her mother’s jewelry. Born and raised in Dubai, she spent a lot of timeduring her childhood and teenage years in the gold souks and bazaars of the Emirates.

At the age of 16, she decided to study Business & Finance in Egypt, where she met her teacher of Egyptian mysteries, Katy Noura Butler. Butler has been living at the pyramids area for over 30 years and is the author of the renowned book “The Egyptian Path of Love.” Mansour has been a student of Butler and the Egyptian Mysteries over 20 years.

“As mankind stands poised at the threshold of a new world, it is time to look to the ancients for guidance and bring the ancient mysteries to life. Due to my Egyptian heritage, I feel it is my responsibility to present ancient Egypt in the most authentic way and share this ancient knowledge with the world and the new generations,” says Rasha Mansour.

The brand took its first steps in early 2021 when Mansour decided to pursue her true calling and founded the brand, leaving behind the corporate world. Encouraged by the success of her first creations that immediately caught the eye of Egyptian personalities such as renowned actress Mona Zaki and international celebrities such as model Adriana Lima, Mansour continues in her exploration of eternal tales through the creation of precious heirlooms.

Striking charms, neckless, bangles and rings, are made from the highest quality of gold and certified gemstones, all carefully chosen to complement the story of each piece. Mansour honors and preservesthe authentic meaning and message behind each piece to remind the wearer of their own gifts and qualities.

“I like to think that what I do is more than just fine jewelry. It’s a well-studied art form that I treat with the utmost respect. Keeping the original proportions and meaning of each symbol is very important to me. Each piece represents a certain story and emanates a particular energy the wearer can tap into,” says Rasha Mansour.

From Khepri the Scarab God who represents rebirth and transformation, to the Ankh which stands for the feminine and masculine unity, Mansour’s creations feature an array of mythical pieces.

Lotuses are widely featured in the work and were the main inspiration for her brand campaign. Observed for thousands of years as a symbol of the sun, creation, and rebirth, the Lotus flower follows the sun cycle, closing up and sinking beneath the waters of the Nile at night, to rise once again and open up at dawn. Not only are Mansour’s various representations of the lotus ever so striking andmodern, but they are also true to form, emulating the curves of the beautiful flower.

The Egyptian Book Of The Dead is one of Mansour’s main guides for her hieroglyphic pieces with their sacred symbols and beautiful and relatable quotes. Another major appearance from the ancient land is the wonderful deity, Hathor in various pieces including the signature piece “The Dendera Ring”, inspired from the Dendera temple.

The wearer of Hathor is promised Hathor’s energies of joy, love and happiness.

Mansour dedicates her precious time to research and source specific stones to complete her designs. Some of her pieces took months from the initial concept and design to final production.

The collection is available for purchase online at www.rashamansour.com.

Photography by Abdulla Sabry

by Maha Hamada @Mahahamada.

by Flare PR @FlarePR

“Know thyself deathless and able to know all things, all arts, sciences, the way of every life. Become higher than the highest height and lower than the lowest depth. Amass in thyself all senses of animals, fire, water, dryness and moistness.”

Ancient Egyptian Proverb

@CostaKuwait

WORDS MATTER

By Aimee Rawlins

words

Words wield power; they can significantly shape people, culture, and behavior. Yet while we grow ever more aware that we live and work in a world of finite natural resources, the language we use in business isn’t helping us make impactful change. In fact, the words we use every day hold us back from creating a regenerative future, one that respects and restores the ecological systems we all depend on to survive.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the discourse around sustainability. Despite being in use since 1987, the concept of sustainability— with its goal of maintaining the status quo rather than reversing the damage we have caused— clearly doesn’t help move us forward.

The language we use isn’t just obsolete, it holds us back

Consider the typical language we use to talk about business success, goals, and visions. No doubt you’ve heard phrases like right to win; market penetration; ownable territory; targeting campaign; capturing value; demand; dominate the market; and first-mover advantage. You’ve probably used some of them yourself. But do you consider the assumptions that underpin this language, and whether they’re still relevant, helpful, and constructive for our work today?

All of these phrases are founded on ideas of winning and ownership, steeped in military references, colonialism, and competition. It’s an aggressive narrative, suggesting that in order for you to succeed, someone else has to lose. There is little room for partnership, alliance, or mutual success in this discourse.

It’s not just the win-lose nature of the business lexicon that causes issues, however. The very definition of what we see as business

success and how it is achieved could use some reflection. The language here refers to progressive accumulation, always striving upward and seeking bigger and better share of efficiency.

In this language, “bigger” is the definition of better, anything else is worse, and shrinking is certainly a failure. Financial measurements of sale and profit no longer connect with needs, but rather with the ability to stimulate desire. It’s a narrative that can’t tell us when we have enough. We continue to use a definition of success that’s tied to infinite growth; an entire language that reinforces the way of thinking that led to the current climate crisis, not the kind of leadership that will lead us out of it. If we’re to describe a better world, and bring forward the associated behaviors, this language needs to change.

Reframing success

Although shaping a regenerative future requires long-term, systemic, global change, we can take the important first steps today by changing the way we talk in our own businesses.

It starts with redefining what is “valuable” within our linear systems of production and consumption. We need to move away from the traditional view of progressive growth toward a place of plural abundance.

There’s an opportunity to create a language that reframes success as a communal or shared benefit and expands our idea of growth to encompass different sources of value—cultural, social, natural values as well as productive and financial ones. This is a true reflection of regeneration—the meaning that got lost amid the jostling to appear green.

Apparel company Pangaia sets a great precedent here. By describing itself as a “global collective of individuals, working together for a better future,” the business actively reframes traditional ideas of competition and success. The brand’s tagline, “Designing an Earthpositive future, together,” is rooted in notions of noncompetitiveness and alliance. In this language, success starts to become conducive to regeneration. It is shared, self-perpetuating, and restorative. Making use of eco-friendly materials, using compostable packaging, and recycling some of its offcuts are just some of the ways Pangaia translates words into action.

But it’s not just small, relatively new brands that are starting to use regenerative language. Larger businesses are also taking steps to rethink their words. Walmart’s commitment to “reversing nature loss” is an example of regenerative language in action. The business

Want to change the world? Start by changing your

is aiming for zero emissions across its global operations by 2040, with a pledge to “help protect, manage, or restore” 50 million acres of land and 1 million square miles of ocean by 2030.

Change is already in progress: Walmart has created a supply chain finance program that both enables reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and, in a first for the retail industry, uses sciencebased targets to do this in a way that aims for a 1.5 degree Celsius pathway. This program marks a tangible first step in Walmart’s journey to avoid 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its global supply chain by 2030.

Small changes make big ripples

By moving the language of business away from competition toward collaboration, we create a new definition of success, qualified by values that go well beyond the bottom line. For example, something as simple as talking about value chains rather than supply chains is a small change that can add up to a big difference.

These new words recognize that the business does not exist in isolation but is part of an interconnected system with an impact beyond its own confines—on its partners, its employees, and the communities affected by its processes.

Target, for example, is updating its language to reflect its accountability as one part of a larger entity. In terms of working toward renewable energy goals, Target completed the conversion of its Vista, California, branch to become its first netzero energy store in March 2022. The retailer is also showing innovation when it comes to reducing carbon emissions in its large-format stores, with store design that makes use of reclaimed wood, CO2 refrigerators, electric vehicle charging points, and rooftop solar panels in some locations.

Another area of language ripe for change is innovation. Rather than framing progress as disruptive and necessary to stay ahead, let’s see it as being responsive to a changing world. Materials innovator Bolt Threads leads here by speaking to the mutual benefits of its products for people and planet over profits.

Danone also speaks of collaboration, sharing its regenerative agriculture knowledge freely with partners to promote regenerative action— protecting soil, empowering a new generation of farmers, and promoting animal welfare. By 2020, Danone’s regenerative agriculture program expanded to 144,771 acres; and around 2.4 billion pounds of dairy milk (75% of Danone North America’s dairy milk) has been sourced from acreage within this program.

A new world needs new words Increasingly, people are acting more consciously and considering more than the final purchased product when making their decisions. Brands need to articulate themselves beyond their product or service to reveal their broader impact on the people employed, the livelihoods supported, the environment stewarded, and the social impact made if they’re to stay relevant. That both Walmart and Target are now in the top 10 of solar corporate users in the U.S. demonstrates an association between brands using regenerative language and taking positive, tangible, measurable steps toward regenerative action.

As individuals responsible for bringing systemic change to businesses, there is one simple place to start. By being alert to the importance of the words we use when we speak of success, innovation, and the future, we can begin to challenge limiting and harmful connotations. We can make language micro-interventions in our conversations, e-mails, briefs, and reports, which will start to shape new meaning, new metaphors, and, ultimately, new behaviors in business.

Photos by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash.

TOYOTA UNVEILS 2023 FJ CRUISER ‘FINAL EDITION’

Middle East region bids farewell to an icon with launch of special commemorative edition of the popular SUV

By bazaar staff

Toyota announced the launch of the 2023 FJ Cruiser in the Middle East, together with a special ‘Final Edition’ grade to mark the iconic vehicle’s last year of production. With just 1,000 units available, the Final Edition comes with several unique features and gives off-road adventurers a unique opportunity to own a piece of motoring history. The FJ Cruiser was discontinued in December 2022, after more than 15 years as one of the region’s most popular SUVs.

Inspired by almost half a century of tough offroad performance from the legendary FJ40 4×4 utility vehicle, the FJ Cruiser was developed as a capable SUV aimed specifically at drivers looking to push the limits. Launched in 2007, the model was hailed as an instant classic by customers and critics alike, particularly in the Middle East where it has gained an enthusiastic following among offroaders.

The 2023 Final Edition adopts a single tone select beige color for the exterior, upholstery, and center cluster trim, creating a distinctive sense of modernity. Further adding to the vehicle’s rugged appeal, a special black coating has been applied extensively throughout the exterior, including the blacked-out grill, bumpers, exterior mirrors, door handles, and spare tire cover. 17-inch aluminum wheels and side steps are also included, while a Final Edition badge indicating the vehicle’s unique number underlines the limited edition’s exclusivity.

“The FJ Cruiser rides into the sunset leaving lasting memories of one of the most iconic SUVs in Toyota’s rich history. The vehicle’s winning combination of off-road capabilities, style, and performance make it equally at home during desert adventures or everyday activities and provides a comfortable and dependable experience for drivers and passengers, wherever their journeys may lead,” commented Kei Fujita, Chief Representative, Middle East and Central Asia Representative Office, Toyota Motor Corporation.

Fujita added: “Although the model will be discontinued, the excitement of off-road capabilities lives on with other adventure-ready Toyota vehicles such as the iconic Land Cruiser, GR Sport Variant, and Prado. I would like to thank our customers for continuing to inspire us to develop ever-better cars tailored to the needs of motorists in the region and beyond.”

Powered by a DOHC, 4.0-liter V6 engine that incorporates dual independent Variable Valve Timing with intelligence, the 2023 FJ Cruiser is capable of producing 270 horsepower and 380 N m of peak torque. It is also equipped with a wide range of driver assistant features such as Active Traction Control (A-TRAC), Crawl Control, Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) with an off switch, and electronically controlled locking rear differential. In addition to stellar all-terrain performance, drivers enjoy greater peace of mind thanks to Toyota’s world-class safety features.

The FJ Cruiser’s legendary status as one of the most unique Toyota SUVs and proven durability

throughout the years will live on in the hearts of its owners and the Toyota family. Although production will cease, owners can be assured they will continue to enjoy world-class service from their local Toyota Service Centers. The 2023 FJ Cruiser is available in a variety of attractive finishes and specifications, while the Final Edition is scheduled to roll into the region during Q4 2022.

Visit toyota.com.kw, call 1803803, or follow @toyotakw on Instagram.

COMMUNICATION IS KEY

Leaders, this will help you actually communicate with your team

By Stephanie Vozza

Remote and hybrid working arrangements have amped up the importance of communication tools, but using just one method won’t do. Most companies use email, videoconferencing, instant messaging, texts, project management platforms, social media, and phones. This plethora of incoming messages is why many people have two monitors, says Maura Thomas, author of Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity Every Day.

They have their work on one monitor and their communication channels on the other monitor so that they can monitor every communication as it arrives,” she says. “That means you are constantly switching all day long because most of us get a communication every minute and your attention is being diverted.”

The problem with having so many forms of communication is that companies haven’t provided instructions on how and when to use each one. When guidelines are lacking, the selection process becomes personal preference. For example, one coworker may never check email but live on Slack, while another may send text messages.

“To compensate, some people send the same message in all the ways to communicate to cover their bases,” says Thomas. “You end up with the volume of communication because you aren’t sure which way to send a message.”

To fix this over-communication problem, Thomas suggests putting a company communication plan in place, reserving each form of communication for a specific type of messaging.

Email

Email is best for routine requests and information sharing. It’s designed to be asynchronous communication with a delay. “I send it, you read it whenever you read it and respond whenever you can,” says Thomas.

Unfortunately, that’s not how email works in most companies. Because most employees keep their email open, they’re constantly checking it. As a result, email becomes a synchronous tool, with people expecting an immediate response. Instead, companies should define a timeline for email responses. For example, Thomas suggests that email should be responded to within a day or two. “The more wiggle room, the better,” she says. “Leave some discretion in there to reduce the burden on people.”

Team Communication Tools Like Slack

Instant messaging methods, like Slack, should be reserved for project related communication and socializing. It’s important to have specific channels, otherwise the risk is that urgent messages could get buried in generic threads.

“It can become an almost unusable stream of noise,” says Thomas. “It’s never going to be

perfect, but you can designate a Slack channel for urgent stuff.”

Phone and video

Synchronous communication methods, like phone calls and Zoom meetings, are best for relationship building or covering sensitive or complex topics. They’re also helpful when you need to get instant feedback, but use them sparingly for this purpose, says Thomas.

“People keep saying, ‘I am drowning in meetings,’” she says. “Consider if you could upload a video to a Slack channel and get feedback on the project or report. It’s possible to take that synchronous meeting where everybody had to be at their computer at 9 a.m. and create a four-minute video that can be viewed anytime. You’ve given everybody who was going to be in that meeting a chance to better prioritize their day.”

Text

Text messages should be reserved for timesensitive or urgent information. Employees will understand that texts should be responded to right away. Overuse of texting will diminish its importance and employees won’t be able to prioritize anything.

Set Communication Hours

Communication policies also need communication hours, so employees can get the breaks they need to be their most productive selves when they’re on the clock. Establish norms, such as Slack channels being put on Do Not Disturb and no emails sent outside of communication hours.

“The goal is to prevent a 24-7 ‘always on’ work culture that can quickly lead employees to burnout,” says Thomas.

By intentionally teaching teams how to use communication, you can move from almost exclusively synchronous to asynchronous communication, says Thomas.

“If I could put my head down work, I could become super-efficient,” she says. “But most companies don’t operate that way. To become more effective at communication, teach people how to use the tools you’re introducing. The mechanics of the tool is one important lesson, but so is when to use each one. By providing guidelines, you create more effective companies.”

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash.

THE FIRST PROGRAMMER

How Ada Lovelace used her knowledge of music and embroidery to become a computing legend

By Corinna Schlombs

Ada Lovelace, known as the first computer programmer, was born on Dec. 10, 1815, more than a century before digital electronic computers were developed.

Lovelace has been hailed as a model for girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). A dozen biographies for young audiences were published for the 200th anniversary of her birth in 2015. And in 2018, the New York Times added hers as one of the first “missing obituaries” of women at the rise of the #MeToo movement.

But Lovelace—properly Ada King, Countess of Lovelace after her marriage—drew on many different fields for her innovative work, including languages, music, and needlecraft, in addition to mathematical logic. Recognizing that her well-rounded education enabled her to accomplish work that was well ahead of her time, she can be a model for all students, not just girls.

Lovelace was the daughter of the scandal-ridden romantic poet George Gordon Byron, a.k.a. Lord Byron, and his highly educated and strictly religious wife Anne Isabella Noel Byron, known as Lady Byron. Lovelace’s parents separated shortly after her birth. At a time when women were not allowed to own property and had few legal rights, her mother managed to secure custody of her daughter.

Growing up in a privileged aristocratic family, Lovelace was educated by home tutors, as was common for girls like her. She received lessons in French and Italian, music and in suitable handicrafts such as embroidery. Less common for a girl in her time, she also studied math. Lovelace continued to work with math tutors into her adult life, and she eventually corresponded with mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan at London University about symbolic logic.

Lovelace’s algorithm

Lovelace drew on all of these lessons when she wrote her computer program—in reality, it was a set of instructions for a mechanical calculator that had been built only in parts.

The computer in question was the Analytical Engine designed by mathematician, philosopher, and inventor Charles Babbage. Lovelace had met Babbage when she was introduced to London society. The two related to each other over their shared love for mathematics and fascination for mechanical calculation. By the early 1840s, Babbage had won and lost government funding for a mathematical calculator, fallen out with the skilled craftsman building the precision parts for his machine, and was close to giving up on his project. At this point, Lovelace stepped in as an advocate.

To make Babbage’s calculator known to a British audience, Lovelace proposed to translate into English an article that described the Analytical

Engine. The article was written in French by the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea and published in a Swiss journal. Scholars believe that Babbage encouraged her to add notes of her own.

In her notes, which ended up twice as long as the original article, Lovelace drew on different areas of her education. Lovelace began by describing how to code instructions onto cards with punched holes, like those used for the Jacquard weaving loom, a device patented in 1804 that used punch cards to automate weaving patterns in fabric.

Having learned embroidery herself, Lovelace was familiar with the repetitive patterns used for handicrafts. Similarly repetitive steps were needed for mathematical calculations. To avoid duplicating cards for repetitive steps, Lovelace used loops, nested loops, and conditional testing in her program instructions.

The notes included instructions on how to calculate Bernoulli numbers, which Lovelace knew from her training to be important in the study of mathematics. Her program showed that the Analytical Engine was capable of performing original calculations that had not yet been performed manually. At the same time, Lovelace noted that the machine could only follow instructions and not “originate anything.”

Finally, Lovelace recognized that the numbers manipulated by the Analytical Engine could be seen as other types of symbols, such as musical notes. An accomplished singer and pianist, Lovelace was familiar with musical notation symbols representing aspects of musical performance such as pitch and duration, and she had manipulated logical symbols in her correspondence with De Morgan. It was not a large step for her to realize that the Analytical Engine could process symbols—not just crunch numbers— and even compose music.

A well-rounded thinker

Inventing computer programming was not the first time Lovelace brought her knowledge from different areas to bear on a new subject. For example, as a young girl, she was fascinated with flying machines. Bringing together biology, mechanics, and poetry, she asked her mother for anatomical books to study the function of bird wings. She built and experimented with wings, and in her letters, she metaphorically expressed her longing for her mother in the language of flying.

Despite her talents in logic and math, Lovelace didn’t pursue a scientific career. She was independently wealthy and never earned money from her scientific pursuits. This was common, however, at a time when freedom—including financial independence—was equated with the capability to impartially conduct scientific experiments. In addition, Lovelace devoted just over a year to her only publication, the translation of and notes on Menabrea’s paper about the Analytical Engine. Otherwise, in her life cut short by cancer at age 37, she vacillated between math, music, her mother’s demands, care for her own three children, and eventually a passion for gambling. Lovelace thus may not be an obvious model as a female scientist for girls today.

However, I find Lovelace’s way of drawing on her well-rounded education to solve difficult problems inspirational. True, she lived in an age before scientific specialization. Even Babbage was a polymath who worked in mathematical calculation and mechanical innovation. He also published a treatise on industrial manufacturing and another on religious questions of creationism.

But Lovelace applied knowledge from what we today think of as disparate fields in the sciences, arts and the humanities. A well-rounded thinker, she created solutions that were well ahead of her time.

PROMENADE ICE SKATING TEAM STUNS IN BANGKOK

Four skaters and the Coach Nurul Ayinie Sulaeman while collecting medals

By bazaar staff

The Promenade Ice Skating Team did it again! They recently represented Kuwait in Skate Bangkok 2022 and brought home a plethora of medals. The four girls, Kenzie El Adly aged 12, Laila Roshdy aged 9, Talia Albader aged 10 and Leila Almosawi aged 12, as well as the Coach, Nurul Ayinie Sulaeman, participated in events and showcased exemplary poise, artistry, and grace in their performances.

It is clear to see that the team did an outstanding job. This is the first live competition that the Promenade Ice Skating Team participated in after the pandemic. They really put their game energy on, focus on the performances, and handle all obstacles like a pro. All nervousness was handled before their events, and the young ladies showcased their talents in confident performances. The sportsmanship was also at an all-time high! The team members supported and cheered for each other; lifting and comforting each other at all times.

The team competed against 420 skaters from 7 countries and 18 ice rinks. The Promenade Ice Skating Team brought home 25 medals in total - which is an impressive accomplishment. Each team member participated in five events, and the coach entered one event. The choreography, the maneuvers on ice, and the magnificence with which the girls represented Kuwait is definitely worth commending!

The Promenade Ice Skating Team has always brought home the medals and achieved victories at the international competitions they participate in. The team has a high standard of coaching and excellent facilities, which makes training a breeze! The team comes together more like a family with the coaches, who give their heart and soul to ensure that the team members are at the best possible level they can be at the time of the competition.

Meet the skaters that participated in the event, we are certain this isn’t the last you will hear of them!

Promenade Ice - Skate Bangkok

Kenzie El Adly

Aged 12

Level: Freestyle 1

Team member since September 2019

5 events at competition: 1 Gold, 4 Bronzes

“I love skating with Promenade Ice. The coaches are excellent, they are kind and push you to do your best and to not give up. I also love the Promenade team. I’ve made some amazing friends here. Everyone in Promenade Ice - the staff, coaches, skaters, and skaters’ parents are always very supportive. I learned a lot in the years that I’ve been skating with them - and it is a lot of fun! I’ve made new friends and got to travel to different places and experience new things and also learn more about myself and what I’m capable of.”

Laila Roshdy

Aged 9

Level: Freestyle 1

Team member since December 2021

5 events at competition: 1 Gold, 3 Silvers, 1 Bronze

“I love skating in the Promenade Ice Skating Team and being with them in a team is the absolute best feeling.”

Talia Albader

Aged 10

Level: Gamma

Team member since 2021

5 events at competition: 2 Golds, 2 Silvers, 1 Bronze

“I had so much fun, it was great experience.’”

“Knowledgeable and experienced coaches that helped Talia develop many skills on & off ice, Love it!” -Talia’s mother

Kenzie El Adly

Talia Albader

Laila Roshdy

Leila Almosawi

Aged 12

Level: Pre Alpha Team member since July 2022

5 events at competition: 3 Golds, 2 Bronzes

Coach Nurul Ayinie Sulaeman

Aged 30

Level: Freestyle 8

Coaching and team member since March 2019

1 event at competition: 1 Gold

“As a coach and adult skater myself, I still love the feeling of performing on the ice. The challenge, nervousness, and the satisfaction after the final bow is what I loved for since I was 7. Hopefully by still competing in this agetogether with my students, it will become a good example of how figure skating can be a long term passion sport.”

If you are inspired to see how you fare on ice, give Promenade Ice a visit, maybe enjoy a public skating session or if you would like a few more tips and tricks, book a private session with one of the exceptionally trained staff. You can call them for more information on 22277138. Or you can follow the activities of the Promenade Ice Skating Team and find out more information about the rink by following them on Instagram @Promenade.Ice.

Leila Almosawi

Coach Nurul Ayinie Sulaeman

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF POWER

Nuclear fusion will be a gamechanger—in the future. Wind and solar are critical right now

By Adele Peters

On December 5, inside a sprawling national lab in the Bay Area called the National Ignition Facility, scientists aimed 192 lasers at a tiny, peppercorn-size pellet and achieved a milestone in nuclear fusion research: For the first time, they were able to produce more energy than the laser energy that was used.

It’s one step toward potentially creating clean, limitless energy—though having tech that can actually be used at a power plant is a very long way off. “If you ask what the road is from this particular experiment to a machine that makes clean energy economically, it could be decades,” says Eric Gimon, a particle physicist and senior fellow at Energy Innovation, an energy policy firm.

The experiment demonstrated one crucial first step. The lasers created the heat and pressure to fuse together atoms, generating a huge burst of energy. But even though it achieved “ignition,” generating more energy than the lasers beaming into the lab, it was still a fraction of the total power needed to run the system. Firing the lasers used around 100 times more energy. In order for the system to feasibly work, it will have to become far more efficient. The process would also need to be able to work repeatedly; right now, the machine can only work once a day. The material used, tritium, is also rare and expensive.

The research will continue, and others are working on different approaches to fusion that may ultimately succeed. Still, to meet climate goals, the world will need to fully transition to a clean grid before nuclear fusion is commercially available. The technology needed to do that, including wind, solar, batteries, and improvements to the grid itself, is essentially ready now. “We have everything you need to get to 80, 90% clean, I believe,” Gimon says. “And that we’re still a fair way from, so we should be deploying like mad.” Other tech in development, including new forms of geothermal power, could help close the remaining gap. And that work needs to happen now, not decades from now, to have a chance of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep investing in nuclear fusion research. (U.S. government funding has also been aimed partly at helping scientists understand how to keep our nuclear weapons stockpile safe, not just producing clean energy.) “In an energy system, it’s very valuable to have a diverse set of resources—spread your bets in terms of where energy is coming from,” Gimon says. “In the same way a multi-crop garden is much more resilient than than monocrop garden. Anything we can add to the set of possibilities that provide clean power is a positive.”

Photo by Timur Garifov on Unsplash.

YOU.COM

A Google alternative combines search with an app store

By Jared Newman

While most Google alternatives differentiate themselves from the search giant by doubling down on privacy, You.com is taking a different approach.

The startup’s big idea is that web search would be better with apps, which can appear on results pages as interactive widgets or informational panels. Search for a place to eat, for instance, and you might see a carousel of restaurants from Yelp. Search for “AI art generator,” and you’ll see a prompt for creating images using Stable Diffusion.

After a year of building more than 200 of these apps on its own, You.com is now opening up its platform to third-party developers, letting them build their own search apps. Richard Socher, You.com’s founder and CEO, says the goal is to create a Google rival that’s not only more private, but more open for app makers and more customizable for users.

“In order to make a fairer portal to the internet—which is essentially what search engines are these days—I think you need to allow everyone to collaborate and participate in that,” he says.

Search with a side of apps

Integrating apps into a search engine is trickier than it might sound.

For any given search, You.com’s algorithms have to decide whether an app is relevant enough to show. Not every decision is as obvious as displaying Yelp results when a user types “tacos near me,” and you can’t guarantee the apps you’re hoping to see will actually show up. Socher says this is a non-trivial challenge on the technical side.

“You have to learn how to rank not just the apps themselves, but every tile and all the content within each app without having built it yourself,” he says.

To that end, You.com also puts an emphasis on user controls. For any app that appears in search results, users can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to help influence the rankings in future searches. Tapping an app’s ellipses button reveals even more options, such as the ability to block an app entirely.

You.com also has an app store, of sorts, appearing at the bottom of every results page. From there, you can browse for additional sources to run your query through. If you search for Call of Duty, for instance, you might want to quickly search YouTube and Twitch. And if you frequently search for news, you can add carousels for specific sources, such as the Associated Press or the New York Times.

This doesn’t always work the way you might

want. Adding or upvoting an app to one search, for instance, doesn’t ensure that it’ll appear for similar searches, and while you can pin certain apps to a sidebar menu for quick access, I’ve had trouble getting certain sources (such as Yelp) to appear there.

Over time, though, the idea is that You.com’s algorithms will learn from users’ behavior, and the site will get better at surfacing the apps that people want to see. That, in turn, will reward developers who create the most useful apps.

“We’re definitely going to rank higher apps that are providing value to users,” Socher says. “If you just create a massive banner ad for your site, everyone’s going to downvote the app, and you’re going to disappear from the app store.”

Incentivizing search apps

As You.com refines its algorithms, it also has to convince developers that building their own search apps is worthwhile in the first place.

The site has amassed more than 1 million active users since it launched last year, but the company won’t say how frequently those users actually visit. It’s backed by $45 million in venture funding, with Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff among its investors. (Prior to founding You.com, Socher was Salesforce’s Chief Scientist.)

Socher acknowledges that the site is still too small to attract bigger companies—You. com won’t say how frequently its 1 million active users actually visit the site—but he notes that more than 500 developers have applied to build their own apps so far. You.com has chosen 15 of them to include at the outset, including the podcast search engine ListenNotes, the comparison shopping site Price.com, and an AI tool called Looria that summarizes product reviews. Another 130 apps are on the way.

For those smaller companies, You.com offers a handful of incentives, the most basic being more exposure to the product or service in question. The site also offers affiliate revenue sharing when users purchase a product through

an app’s search results, and it plans to offer in-search subscriptions as well. Already, You. com offers its own AI-based writing tool, which requires a subscription for unlimited use, and Socher says it’s generating thousands of dollars in revenue per week. He envisions offering similar subscription tools to other apps.

“If you build something that a lot of people would like to use more frequently than once or twice, then you can make money with it,” he says.

Eventually, You.com plans to show ads in its search results as well. Similar to ads on other privacy-centric search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Brave, these will be based on users’ current search keywords, not on their search history. (Unlike those search engines, You.com does keep a record of users’ search histories by default, but it offers a “private mode” that users can toggle on and off, similar to the incognito mode of a web browser.)

Still, Socher stresses that You.com’s apps themselves are not advertisements, and developers aren’t paying for placement.

“They’re just trying to be useful,” he says. “So, if you don’t like them, you can actually decrease the frequency that the app appears or block it forever.”

The anti-Google

As of now, You.com still feels a bit like a proof of concept. Load times are noticeably slower than Google, and having to constantly finesse the search algorithm with upvotes and downvotes can get tiresome.

And yet, there’s something compelling about the idea of an expandable search engine, one that pulls in rich results from the apps and services you actually care about. If You.com can succeed in bringing developers on board and get better at integrating them with search results, it may finally have a Google alternative worth using for reasons other than privacy.

“We’re thinking about not just a search engine, but ultimately, a do engine,” Socher says.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

By Talib Visram

how it stacks up

The plant-based boom may have hit a wall. Or so some reports claim, detailing losses among big players like Beyond Meat. Notably, Deloitte research found customers have become warier of the environmental benefits of plant-based over conventional animal meat.

But one Bay Area company is banking on the renewed success of plant-based products—as long as they contain certain meat components. Sci-Fi Foods has been producing “blended” burgers using its cultured beef cells along with plant-based material. It claims this is the best approach for maximizing taste for real-meat cravers and for scaling up affordably. And a new study from the company underscores the environmental benefits of its product over the age-old patty—while underlining the urgency to manufacture it using renewable energy sources.

The plant-based industry has primarily targeted carnivores who may want to curb meat consumption but not go all-in on vegetarian diets. But “ultimately, for meat eaters, there’s still a gap in terms of the tasting experience,” says Joshua March, Sci-Fi’s cofounder and CEO, of the market’s current offerings. For Sci-Fi, enhancing the taste means supplementing its burgers with real beef cells—even if they’re grown in a lab. “You have a pretty dramatic impact on the flavor even with having a minority of the product being cultivated cells,” March says.

What’s more, consumers are still consistently buying meat. That’s environmentally hazardous, when livestock causes 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions; cattle farming in particular produces methane and takes up half of the land in the U.S. To explicitly show the climate benefits of its lab-grown beef compared to conventional beef, the company commissioned a life-time analysis study. Ohio State researchers compared the environmental impacts of both meats—from raw materials to the final products. March says that while past studies have considered generic cultivated meat cells, none have specifically looked at beef cells.

In July, Sci-Fi announced it was the first to produce edible beef cells grown in single-cell suspension, using genetic engineering. Beef cells like to grow attached to a surface—“which is fine inside a cow,” March says—but in a lab, they have to each grow individually on tiny beads, which is expensive. Sci-Fi was able to grow them without that support, so they can float alone in large-scale bioreactor tanks—which the business has suggested will keep production costs down by 1,000 times. Those beef cells form the core of the burger, and are mixed in small quantities with plant-based material: largely soy protein (just as Impossible uses), coconut oil, mushrooms, and oats.

The researchers of the study (which Sci-Fi donated to, but which was done independently) compared four sustainability impacts of the blended burger with conventional patties— greenhouse gas emissions, land usage, water, and energy. Each area saw dramatically improvements with the lab-grown product: It generated 87% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, 90% less land use, and 96% less water use.

The fourth area, energy demand, showed the least change, at 39%. And when the study also considered a hypothetical burger of 100% cultivated beef, the energy use was about the same as that of conventional beef. Lab-growing meat utilizes a lot of energy: for aerating and mixing in the tanks, and maintaining high temperatures for culturing and cleaning each batch.

But in the lab, compared to the farm, there’s the opportunity to switch to renewable energy; in that case, the emissions toll from energy would be zero. As of now, Sci-Fi’s lab does run on 100% renewable energy, bought as part of a local East Bay energy plan. But doing that on a commercial scale in the future will be more challenging. “How do we transition animal agriculture, which has all of these other emissions which we can’t control,” March says, “and just electrify it so that we can power it renewably?”

Currently, Sci-Fi, which has attracted notable investors including a16z, is in the middle of its FDA consultation process; if granted approval, it expects to market its blended patties in late 2024. (Upside Foods obtained the first FDA approval for cell-based meat, for its cultured chicken, in November.) Sci-Fi still hasn’t decided on a final ratio of cultured cells to plant-based material, but is experimenting with between 5% and 20% (for the study, they used 16.9% cultivated cells).

After that, they plan to gradually increase the ratio of cultured meat in the mix. It’s not feasible at the moment given the high cost of the technology, chiefly the cell components and bioreactors. March also believes no cell-based ground-beef competitor will be able to hit the market 100% cultivated. “While I want that to exist in the world, it’s going to take quite a long time before that’s commercially viable to do any kind of affordable price,” he says.

For now, the study reinforces the fact that Sci-Fi’s blended burger is more environmentally sound than traditional beef. Like with EVs, it’s going to take an industry-wide transition to get to net-zero. “In many ways what we’re doing with cultivated beef,” he says, “is we’re electrifying the cow.”

Is lab-grown meat actually better for the environment? Here’s

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash.

#XCITED FOR 2023 WHO NEEDS RESOLUTIONS WHEN YOU HAVE GADGETS AND TECH?

By bazaar staff

Our only New Year resolution this year is to do things the easy way. Sorry Nietzsche, but we are not convinced that to live is to suffer or that to survive we need to find some meaning in the suffering. But we’re not here to judge, and if you have committed to your resolutions, then we want to help you, by giving you the low-down on how to do it the easy way.

Resolution 1: Dress better

Trying to release your inner fashionista this year? Whether you’re going minimalist and choosing a capsule wardrobe or going full on maximalist a la Iris Apfel, the secret to looking good is garment care. If your clothes are clean and pressed, then you can’t really go wrong. The Samsung Smart AirDresser is precisely what you require. It gently dries your clothes, gets rid of odors and allergens and can be controlled using an app on your phone.

Resolution

2: Look more put together

Looking the part is half the battle and if you’re tired of always looking like you just rolled out of bed and your hair looking like a massive ball of puff then get the Philips StyleCare Auto Curler and Heated Straightening Brush. This is a 2-in-1 set, for getting your hair quickly styled so you can be on your way to seize the day.

Resolution 3: Get rich quick

That’s a bandwagon we wouldn’t mind getting on either. We’ve given up on crypto and NFTs for now, but the stock market is still a place to make money. But you need a powerful but mobile device so you can keep an eye on your bets (strategic stock selection) all day. And we love the Microsoft Surface Pro 9, it’s small and portable but mighty.

Resolution 4: Eat more ice cream

Yes, this is a totally valid goal. Ice cream makes us happy, happy people are more productive and productive people are more successful. But you need to work up the right appetite for all that creamy goodness. The Wansa Home Treadmill will get you all pumped up in no time.

Resolution 5:

Become an

athlete (in the only way you really can be)

If you had the genetics for an Olympic sport, you are definitely at training and not reading this. So you’re next best bet is to beat your friends at Fifa 23 on your Playstation 5. Non-soccer fans can also consider Switch Sports on the Nintendo Sports, where you can beat all your family members at Chambara.

Stay updated on the latest events, monthly promotions and offers by subscribing to the monthly newsletter on xcite.com, follow X-cite’s social media channels on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat, @xcitealghanim or Facebook at XcitebyAlghanim and win prizes with contests, or visit the online store at www.xcite.com.

ARE WE CLOSE TO A SOLUTION?

The 5 most promising uses for CRISPR gene-editing technology so far

By Bobbie Gossage

The concept of CRISPR gene-editing is still quite young. Although the discovery of CRISPRs themselves—repeating DNA sequences present in single-celled organisms, such as bacteria—can be traced back to the late 1980s, their use in more complex multi-celled organisms for the purposes of targeted gene-editing and the slicing-and-dicing of genetic code to combat diseases and transform life forms only goes back to 2012 and the work of such scientists as George

and Nobel Prize winners Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier.

By Bobbie Gossage

In that short decade, the application of CRISPR to treat diseases running the gamut from forms of inherited blindness to blood disorders to cancers and beyond has been a hotspot of biopharmaceutical innovation. At the same time, underlying CRISPR technologies have evolved to perform more sophisticated gene-editing that functions less like molecular scissors cutting out aberrant genetic code and more like a keyboard, with a “search-and-replace” function (dubbed “prime editing” in CRISPR 3.0) that can swap out one molecular letter for another.

The technological evolution could open up a host of new medical possibilities for CRISPR going forward. For now, here’s where we’ve seen the most progress, and the biggest potential, for the use of this kind of gene-editing in the medical world.

Blood disorders

One of the two biggest CRISPR-related developments of the year—and one of the more eye-catching drug development breakthroughs in recent memory—involves its use in the genetic blood disorders beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease (SCD). These are not extremely common conditions in the U.S. since, as genetic conditions, they afflict certain populations, and therefore, some geographies more than others. Worldwide, however, the conditions are far more prevalent, preventing the proper transport of oxygen throughout the body because of missing genes and malformed red blood cells that lead to major problems in multiple organs and need for regular blood infusions.

To that end, rare-disease drug maker Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, one of the original biotechs to focus on the technology, announced promising data earlier this year that set the companies up to become the first to have an FDA-approved CRISPR-based therapy, called exa-cel on the market as soon as mid-to-late 2023. By the end of September 2022, the companies had submitted the drug for FDA approval.

Cancer

Another critical 2022 development in the CRISPR space targets one of medicine’s everlasting holy grails: better ways to fight cancer.

A small clinical study published in the journal Nature this past year found that CRISPR geneediting can be leveraged to alter the immune system, guiding T cells to attack specific tumor types by helping them recognize and home in on certain biological markers on those tumors. Effectively, this could be used to create a precisely targeted arsenal against solid tumors in various cancers, such as breast and colon, according to the study authors, and kill them off.

“It is probably the most complicated therapy ever attempted in the clinic,” study coauthor, physician, and cancer researcher Antoni Ribas of the University of California, Los Angeles told Nature in an interview on the study. “We’re trying to make an army out of a patient’s own T cells.”

HIV

Excision BioTherapeutics launched a landmark trial in humans this year in search of a functional cure for HIV. This one, however, has a twist: Unlike other deployments of CRISPR that edit the building blocks of human cells, this tactic targets the HIV virus itself, snipping out the regions that would allow the virus to replicate in the first place. In this instance, the goal is to eliminate the ability of HIV to persist at all in the human body. There have already been several big achievements

Fengh

in HIV treatment that have made it a relatively manageable chronic condition with the use of antiretroviral drugs; Excision’s goal is to take away the need for even that level of maintenance.

Rare disorders and beyond

“The targets we’re finding with CRISPR . . . are going to guide the drugs coming out in the 2020s,” said Jon Moore, chief scientific officer at biotechnology company Horizon Discovery, all the way back in 2016. That certainly seems to be the case, given current CRISPR-related experimental drug pipelines. From ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) to rare conditions, such as transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR) which can cause heart failure, and more common afflictions, such as urinary tract infections caused by bacteria (which Locus Biosciences is targeting with a CRISPR-based therapy), the life-sciences industry is in the early stages of finding the science fiction—reminiscent technology’s best use cases. Just like any new technology, not all of them are bound for success—but the progress of companies like Vertex, CRISPR, and Bluebird bio in the past year alone show that the industry is putting significant bets on the future of CRISPR.

Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash.

Church,

Zhang,

movie night

January Movies

MIND CAGE

Release Date: 22 December

Genre: Thriller

Cast: Martin Lawrence, John Malkovich

Synopsis: In this spellbinding thriller, two detectives seek the help of a brilliant serial killer when a copycat killer strikes.

SHOTGUN WEDDING

Release Date: 29 December

Genre: Action, Comedy

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Josh Duhamel

Synopsis: Darcy (Jennifer Lopez) and Tom (Josh Duhamel), gather their families for an extravagant destination wedding, but the ceremony gets put on hold when the entire wedding party gets taken hostage.

MEGAN

Release Date: 5 January

Genre: Horror

Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw

Synopsis: A robotics engineer at a toy company builds a life-like doll that begins to take on a life of its own.

OPERATION FORTUNE

Release Date: 5 January

Genre: Action, Thriller

Cast: Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Hugh Grant

Synopsis: Super spy Orson Fortune must track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology wielded by billionaire arms broker Greg Simmonds.

BABYLON

Release Date: 19 January

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie

Synopsis: A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.

PLANE

Release Date: 26 January

Genre: Action, Thriller

Cast: Gerard Butler, Mike Colter

Synopsis: A pilot finds himself caught in a war zone after he’s forced to land his commercial aircraft during a terrible storm.

Source: cinescape.com.kw

bazaar books SNAP OUT OF IT

by Maddie Dawson, Romance

After three marriages and a lot of living, resilient Billie Slate knows exactly what trouble love can bring. Now she’s reinvented herself as the Heartbreak Bunny, an on-call performance artist who can heal anyone who’s been burned by that four-letter word, LOVE, by hopping about and whisking away sad mementos from their past relationships.

Call it magic. Call it peculiar. But her bunny costume is as perfect as her breakup mantra: SNAP OUT OF IT.

As every romantic notion Billie had pushed away starts pushing back, the Heartbreak Bunny must confront the possibility that, just maybe, love has some tricks left up its sleeve.

THE STAY AT HOME MOTHER

by

Trope, Thriller

Her chest tightens, her heart speeding up. The kitchen is chaos. She steps on something hard and looks down. Toy dinosaurs are scattered everywhere. But her son is nowhere – her baby boy is gone. The police arrive. She can’t look at her husband. Instead, she studies the network of lines on her shaking hands. Then her phone beeps with a voice message. ‘Listen to it on speaker,’ says the detective. A woman’s voice fills the air. ‘I’m assuming this is the Andrea Gately listed as a contact on the Missing Children of the World website. I’m calling to let you know that I’ve given your details to the police. Why are you using a picture of my son on a missing children’s website? Why are you using it and where did you get it?’ An absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller that will leave you gasping with shock and staying up way past your bedtime. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Liane Moriarty and Adele Parks.

HOUSE IN THE PINES

by Ana Reyes, Mystery

Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer. Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank. Plunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer—the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey.

THE STOLEN HEIR

Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge. Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years. Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren’s help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.

HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS AND UNFAIRLY CUTE

by Talia Hibbert, Young Adult

Celine Bangura is conspiracy-theoryobsessed. Social media followers eat up her takes on everything from UFOs to holiday overconsumption—yet, she’s still not cool enough for the popular kids’ table. Which is why Brad abandoned her for the in-crowd years ago. (At least, that’s how Celine sees it.) These days, there’s nothing between them other than petty insults and academic rivalry. So when Celine signs up for a survival course in the woods, she’s surprised to find Brad right beside her. Forced to work as a team for the chance to win a grand prize, these two teens must trudge through not just mud and dirt but their messy past. And as this adventure brings them closer together, they begin to remember the good bits of their history. But has too much time passed . . . or just enough to spark a whole new kind of relationship?

BACK IN A SOELL

Even though she won’t deny her love for pretty (and pricey) things, Nineve Blackmoore is almost painfully down-to-earth and sensible by Blackmoore standards. But after a year of nursing a broken heart inflicted by the fiancée who all but ditched her at the altar, the powerful witch is sick of feeling low and is ready to try something drastically different: a dating app. At her best friend’s urging, Nina goes on a date with Morty Gutierrez, the nonbinary, offbeat soul of spontaneity and co-owner of the Shamrock Cauldron. Their date goes about as well as can be expected of most online dates—awkward and terrible. To make matters worse, once Morty discovers Nina’s last name, he’s far from a fan; it turns out that the Blackmoores have been bullishly trying to buy the Shamrock out from under Morty and his family.

Nicole

by Holly Black, Fantasy

by Lana Harper, Romance

AAW IS BRINGING JOE & THE JUICE TO KUWAIT

We can’t wait for the organic veggie shots

By bazaar staff

Ali Abdulwahab Al Mutawa Commercial Co. (AAW) is introducing Kuwait to a wonderful world of organic and healthy options from the popular Danish juice bar and coffee shop.

AAW Deputy CEO Mr. Khalid Al Mutawa said: “We are thrilled to announce our company has signed a franchise agreement with Joe & The Juice to bring this reputable brand to Kuwait as part of our ongoing effort to diversify our product offering and to expand our portfolio with premium global brands in the food and beverage sector. We are proud to announce this partnership with Joe & The Juice, a company whose values align closely to our own. Together, we can better serve our customers’ needs and help them live healthier lives by providing them with greater access to organic, all-natural goods.”

He added: “Customers in Kuwait who are interested in living a healthy lifestyle will find a welcoming community at Joe & the Juice, where they can enjoy a coffee, juice, or healthy meal in a vibrant and energetic setting.”

Joe & the Juice CEO, Mr. Thomas Noroxe, said: “Together, we want to break into one of the world’s most promising new marketplaces. Our entry into the Kuwaiti market today with our partner AAW marks a significant step forward in our expansion plan. Our goal is to open ten more locations in the Gulf region within the next two years, and fifty more within the

next ten years. We are pleased to have AAW on board as our local partner in Kuwait, and we look forward to opening the doors of our first branch to Kuwaiti customers very soon.”

Kaspar Basse established Joe & The Juice back in 2002. The first shop was located in the corner of the lifestyle store Rue Verte on Ny Østergade in Copenhagen. As an elite athlete on the Danish Karate team, Kaspar was highly acquainted with strict diet plans and a strong focus on health and nutrition. The market for nutritious food was bland, and that fueled his ambition to change the narrative of health in fast food. Kaspar formed his goal to make healthy food sexy.

Since then, the company has expanded to become a global healthy-eating lifestyle brand, with over 300 shops worldwide. Fresh, high-quality, natural, and local ingredients are used to prepare juices, shakes, coffee, sandwiches, tea and more. Its modern, hip ambiance makes it convenient and enjoyable for customers who desire a fast yet healthy lifestyle.

To stay updated on all AAW related news follow @aawalmutawa on Instagram.

BELUGA

Beluga publishes your posts to a JSON/RSS feed and a simple static site on the open Web. Publish your “tweet-like” content to your preferred S3compatible service directly from your phone.

BLARMA

Looking for fun and fast ways to learn new languages? This vocabulary builder app allows you to improve vocabulary quickly through fun and simple memorization techniques, daily challenges, and audio-visual learning with practice tests.

MYGOTU

Thriving isn’t just about what you know, but also who you know, and what they know. That’s where myGotu - Knowledge Exchange comes in. myGotu - Knowledge Exchange is a simple way to connect with new people, build your network, and share knowledge.

ALIVE

Alive encourages people to live meaningful/ Intentional life by identifying and tracking their wishes, lifegoals and passions and sharing their bucket list with friends, discovering interesting people and connecting with them.

MEMIX

Memix is the fastest way to create custom memes on the internet. Simply type whatever text you want to see, and Memix will instantly turn it into a meme. Memix integrates with your favorite messaging apps!

MAGIC AI AVATARS

Create custom avatars based on your own photos. Get 200+ high-quality avatars, which you can use as a profile picture and share with everyone. Expand your favorites to get larger and even higher-resolution avatars. But the best part? You can try it for free!

play.google.com itunes.apple.com

BEELINE VELO 2

Trying to get around a city on a bike is a stress like no other, attempting to navigate cars, people and lanes while also tracking your destination on your phone with a confused navigation system. The Velo 2 cycling computer is unfortunately unable to remove the cars and people in your way, but it can make the navigation easier.

GARMIN INSTINCT CROSSOVER

Garmin’s new Instinct Crossover Solar fits a niche group of people who seem to be exercising every second of the day. It doesn’t really matter what your chosen sport is, the never-ending menus on this watch will have a mode for you. It tracks everything from running power, to heart rate, effective recovery time, and even how smoothly you descended a mountain bike trail.

BACKBONE ONE

This PlayStation-inspired controller seamlessly hooks up to your iPhone so you can play PS games on the go. In the collapsed position, it’s even smaller than a Nintendo Switch, taking up less space in your travel bag. Also makes for a great gift for gamers.

KODAK LUMA 150

Portable enough to fit in a briefcase if you need to produce a presentation for work, or your backpack if you’d like to watch a film or enlarge your gaming experience on the go, the KODAK Luma 150 portable projector promises to expand the screen to up to 150 inches while delivering bright, vivid images. It has built-in, surround-sound speakers and a headphone jack for private viewing, with a battery run time of up to 2.5 hours, which is rechargeable via mini USB.

YOTO PLAYER

Instead of tapes, this groovy little audio player works by slotting in cards, each of which contains a story to listen to. There are loads of classic tales to pick from, such as The Gruffalo and Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as well as other cards with podcasts, radio and activities on. Instead of a screen it has a cutesy pixelated display, which along with chunky buttons for volume and skipping tracks, the whole device is completely kid-friendly (even my two-year-old was able to get to grips with it).

EMBER MUG2

By connecting the Ember mug to your smartphone via the accompanying app, you get a notification when your brew has reached your perfect temperature, and a heating element in the bottom of the mug keeps it toasty warm until you have finished every last drop.

CAPRICORN DEC

22 – JAN 19

Hurdles come and go, but Capricorns don’t give up! And that should stay your attitude right now. Strongly, standing by your ethics and ways of living life, you would do pretty well. You need to express yourself right and manage all the areas of your life with a correct attitude and mindfulness.

AQUARIUS JAN 20 – FEB 18

Just like your symbol, you bear too much to say out loud. But, this year you will experience some days and events with you wherein you can enjoy some me-time and work on yourself to achieve better things in the year ahead. Moreover, the year would be great for you if you are constantly putting in all your efforts in the right places.

PISCES FEB 19 – MAR 19

Work on the motto— one good deed per day! As your horoscope foretells that you have a great high chance of running into pessimism and a dual mind every now and then. When, for once, you thought that the previous year is over and you can take a rest, you saw things coming with more rush and strength.

ARIES MAR 20 – APR 19

Sometimes, Aries natives get highly motivated and strong-opinionated, which might get them into problems easily. However, sometimes the same dominant factor can help them win some extremely hard battles in their lives. Even though you might be impulsive, the year will be a strong one for you.

TAURUS APR 20 – MAY 20

Taurus people are pros at being focused in their lives. But this year wants you to make some changes— the good ones. In order to follow your dreams and give your best shot at everything, you may have to interfere with your regular life.

GEMINI MAY 21 – JUN 21

Duality runs in your character. So, how about reshaping yourself to embrace the best in the year? Head-on situations can occur in front of you, where you purposely have to keep your duality aside and act patiently to solve the situation. The year will be prosperous for you.

CANCER JUN 22 – JUL 22

Planets got your back! So, give your passions and plans the best shot you got. With the right strike on life and appropriate enthusiasm and energy, you will succeed even on the not-so-favorable days of the year. All you need is a pinch of advice (in some areas of your life) and total faith in yourself, and good results will be there in your life in no time.

LEO JUL 23 – AUG 22

For the brave Leo, nothing in life is hard. Even though the year might throw some challenges in your path, you will do pretty great. Predictions say that contentment would be the best for you in the year. But your thirst to be the best and have the best will make you put in the most appropriate efforts you can.

VIRGO AUG 23 – SEP 22

You are one of the most sane-headed folks on the zodiac table. But even you are not perfect. Right? Avoid rushing to conclusions! There are all kinds of possibilities for the natives in the year. Thus, this little advice would save you days and weeks in the year and help you to improve whatever was left in the last year.

LIBRA SEP 23 – OCT 22

We all know that balance is the key to your calmness. However, introspection, understanding the developments, and making changes according to the time would be something you will need. Planetary transits will favor you to quite an extent and bring satisfaction to your life. Still, remember that not everything that is correct will work for you.

SCORPIO OCT 23 – NOV 22

Scorpios don’t interact much. As much as they love to be on their own, you might not have a choice in the future. In fact, the same habit can be productive for you. However, on the other hand, a little modification is all you will need to attract the happy-go-lucky times in your life.

SAGITTARIUS NOV 23 - DEC 21

By all means, you can call this a favorable year. Your yearly outlook marks a time for exploration and understanding. Not only will you get the planets’ blessings, but also make some great accomplishments.