Headless Chicken

Things I do not recommend doing simultaneously:
1) Working full time
2) Earning minimum wage
3) Attending university courses
4) Maintaining and running a household (incl. cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc)
5) Taking care of a furry four-legged creature that has a propensity for vomiting

I feel like I've been running around like a chicken with my head chopped off the past month or so. I had some respite in between my two jobs (a two and a half week stint at a charter school in Harlem, and a four and a half week stint as a teaching assistant at a summer program located in Greenwich Village), but now I'm back to running around like an over-extended mad woman, particularly because Jon has been on night float (night shift) the past week, and hence has been unable to help much at home.

As I type this, I currently have laundry being dried at the laundromat, and have just come back from doing grocery shopping at two different supermarkets (Trader Joe's and Fairway) and dropping off several packages at UPS. I am also about to partake in some chicken breasts that have been hanging out in the fridge for the past week + 1 day, and sincerely hope I don't get food poisoning, but am too tired and broke to eat something else. Later I still need to deal with the laundry, prepare food for the rest of the week, and finish reading the book due for class tomorrow and write the corresponding response paper.

I feel like this is quite beyond the realm of 'burning the candle at both ends', but more like 'burning the candle at triple/quadruple ends'. I laugh when I think of how both sets of parents are urging us to have children soon, because at this point of life with our meager time and money, the thought of having children seems like a prospect far past ridicule.

Two Concussions in a Day

Today I half witnessed two concussions. And my half witnessed, I mean that I witnessed the immediate aftermath, but not the actual concussions itself, because I happened to be meters away from the incidents - though I heard the loud accompanying thumps. Prior to today, I don't think I witnessed anything remotely close to concussions before, and it's strange to think of two of them happening in my vicinity within a span of 6 hours.

The first concussion was when I was at work. Today I had an in-school suspension assignment, and I was sitting in a room with my student during class transition time when I heard a loud thunk and yelling. I commented to student that it sounded like something was being murdered outside. When the crazy sounds still persisted for about a minute, I opened the door to look and saw a bunch of students gathered outside excitedly, and saw that the source of the commotion was a really violent fight between two female students. A teacher was already there, but the girls still persisted.

I didn't know what to do, and when I turned back I saw my student craning his head out of the door trying to look, but he didn't manage to see anything as it was around the corner. We went back in the room and I closed the door, but when the yelling was still there a minute later, I went out to try and disperse the watching students and a student told me, "hell no, I ain't missing this." The status of the fight looked exactly the same as it had earlier, and the same female teacher was still trying to break it up, while more teachers came. I went back to the room, and after about another minute the chaos died down, and I opened the door to see one of the students still agitated and shouting as she was led away.

Later the teachers in the staff room were talking about the fight. Apparently one of the students said "fight me" to another student she already had problems with, and the other student dutifully grabbed her head and slammed it against the wall. Obviously the student who had her head slammed into the wall was fine, because she was well enough to continue the fight.

The second concussion happened when I was taking the M15-SBS bus home. I boarded at 57th Street, and at 50th Street when the bus was stopped to let passengers get on and off, we heard a loud thunk and noises of a commotion. A kid standing next to me said, "Is it a fight? Sounds like a punch." This set off the old ladies near us as they got confused and somehow word got relayed that someone had fallen. An old lady then said, "that sounded more like a head hitting something." Then a few passengers ran to the front and told the bus driver, "Someone fell, don't move the bus," and I wondered if someone had fallen under the bus.

Again I didn't know what to do in the situation. I felt bad for whoever had fallen, but I didn't want to be a rubber-necking bystander as it wasn't like I had any medical training and could help. Also I wanted to go home, and felt bad for thinking that. I didn't know whether I should get off the bus and stand around or stay on. Either way was equally useless, but I figured at least by staying on the bus I wouldn't be blocking help or gawking. After about a minute word spread on the bus that it was being taken out of service cause of the accident, and we all got off. Outside, I saw a white-haired lady on the ground, her grey handbag propped up under her head as people tried asking her questions, but no one seemed medically trained.

Just as another M15-SBS appeared in the horizon, a woman in scrubs and with a stethoscope around her neck came running from the South and identified herself as someone who worked nearby. This was comforting, and around 80% of the passengers on the bus I was on got on this other M15-SBS, as about 10% stayed behind with the lady and 10% for some reason were still on the old bus. And so off we went, crammed into this other bus, with some passengers telling the passengers on this bus about what had happened.

It has been a very peculiar day, and one in which I wished I could do more instead of standing by helplessly. But I guess everyone has their own niche in life, and mine isn't being big enough to pull apart students (which I'm sure is against the law) or knowing what to do when someone gets injured.

Ceiling

On Sunday after coming back from a night in NJ with my Aunt and Uncle, Jon and I were greeted with a huge mess when we opened the front door. My first thought was that Saffron had destroyed something, but then it immediately went to "what kind of white paper do we have so much off that he would destroy it like this?"

It turned out of course, to be something far beyond Saffron. The floor was wet and our clothes in the cupboard were wet too. The ceiling light looked like it was filled with dirty brown water that threatened to spill out. The bathroom floor had dirt all over it, like there was a flood that had subsided and left silt in its place, but the tiles were still wet. The toilet seat was covered with droplets of dirty water, and the Archie comics that were on top of the toilet cistern were wet too.

When we called the Superintendent, he said, "Oh yes, the kitchen pipe of the apartment above yours burst."

So Jon and I ended up spending the better half of the rest of the day, from noon when we came home till bed time, cleaning up the mess and feeling frustrated. I tried my best, but the two pairs of shoes I left out that got caught up in the mess were ruined. Jon tossed the pair of shoes that he left out that had gotten drenched too. As fate obviously still has it out for us (to an extent: our material losses were less than $150), Sunday, Monday and today have been humid days filled with rain. The apartment has a funky smell to it, and the floor is still damp and cold to the touch. Online it says that you need to hire a professional drying crew when this happens, but I highly doubt my avaricious landlord will do anything about it. Sigh.

Meanwhile, every few hours, another piece of the ceiling falls off and the floor becomes coated in a powdery substance that is invisible to the eye.

Wedding Nightmare

I had a nightmare last night about my wedding. I dreamt for some reason that it was less than 24 hours away, and that I had neglected to check my wedding outfit and in fact only had a veil, and no wedding dress. Then I realised that I had forgotten to order the dresses for my bridesmaids, so they had nothing to wear (this part might be realistic, I'm still procrastinating on ordering their dresses). Of course I felt very stressed in my dream from all the running about, and even when I woke up and realised it wasn't real I still feel the physiological signs of stress.

This dream has made me feel annoyed because: 1) since when am I so unprepared for an event of that sort? 2) I don't like feeling stressed 3) I don't think I'm the sort of person to stress out over a wedding.

In other news I am still working on a paper that is due for my last class of the semester. I have found it considerably harder to juggle part-time work (as a sub nonetheless) and school, and have found myself slightly clueless at the deadlines (so ok, maybe point 1 is becoming true). So after today, my first semester at Hunter College will be over, and I'll have a break of about a week before Summer classes start - joy.

Spills and Thrills

Yesterday after lamenting about my adolescence, I made a fool out of myself while at school and ended up feeling very much like a youth again. It was a very strange and startling feeling, and one obviously not very welcome.

On my way to the subway, I stopped by Dunkin Donuts for an iced tea for class. The last time I had bought an iced tea, I ordered the sweetened version and found that it was far too sweet for my liking, and so this time I tried asking for 'half sweet and half unsweet', to the confusion of the cashier (I assumed the iced teas had been pre-mixed in some sort of dispensing cooler). The medium-sized iced tea I received this time however was not sweet at all, and had the slightest hint of bitterness. I felt disappointed and wanted more sugar.

When I got to campus, I headed straight to the cafeteria as I wanted to eat chicken fingers as a snack before class. After obtaining said chicken fingers I was headed to pay when I noticed the sugar, so I stopped and popped open the cup cover and poured some sugar in, before continuing to the cashiers. I must not have fixed the cup cover back tightly however because after setting the cup down on the counter for the condiments and utensils, I accidentally knocked against the cup and sent the entire contents spilling all over the counter.

The first thing I did to react to the situation was to go, "oh shite." The girls next to me who were taking their utensils looked and then moved away quickly. It was a very New York sort of reaction. I frantically leaned over to grab as many napkins as I could, and while I was between grabbing napkins and soaking/scooping up the icy mess, a sort of good samaritan appeared and threw a bunch of napkins on top of the spilled mass before getting utensils for himself and moving away.

As I stood there trying to clean up the mess, I felt like such an unspeakable idiot again. Not only had I made a mess for everyone, but I had done it in an extremely high volume area. Everyone passing though the cafeteria would stop at that counter to pick up items. I felt like I wanted to sink through the floor and disappear. Instead, I spent what must have been the longest few minutes of my life cleaning up that mess, feeling myself go hot all over from the shame and embarrassment. The emotions and experience felt exactly like what I remember in bits and pieces from my adolescence. And boy was there ALOT of liquid to clear, as medium-sized anything in the US really makes large in all other parts of the world.

I think next time I'll just deal with either an unsweet tea or a super sweet tea.

Adolescent Development

I'm taking a course in Adolescent Development this term, and the instructor assigned Adolescence by John Santrock as the textbook. Reading the book makes me feel kind of weird inside as it makes me recall all the relationships, emotions and experiences I felt during my adolescence, and it invariably (also perhaps coloured through my pessimistic adult lens) makes me feel a knot of something negative in the pit of my stomach. It makes me think of how unhappy I felt in my adolescence, especially with regards to my wild feelings and emotions, and how sad I just felt most of the time. And how on some bad days, how those experiences and feelings have probably leeched over into my adulthood and manifested in similarly negative ways.

A few years ago when I was teaching, one of my students asked me if I ever wanted to be a teenager again, and I replied that you couldn't pay me a million dollars to go through it all again. Yet here I am, reliving through all the emotions again as I pore over this silly textbook that has way too much text (I could dedicate a whole rant to the deficiencies I see in American textbooks), with all sorts of thoughts churning repeatedly in my mind and my heart to no real conclusion. Was there really any way I could have escaped these outcomes? Or was it predetermined by the genes in me, and buoyed by my inevitable environment? Who knows. All I know is the way I feel when I think about this topic and the overarching emotion I recall from my adolescence.

Blizz-Not

There was supposed to be a whopper of a Blizzard today, and school was cancelled all around as a precaution. Last night when it rolled back 10:30pm, then 11pm, and finally 12am when I decided to go to bed, I saw no flakes and felt a sinking feeling in my heart. Sure enough, I wake up this morning to find this Blizzard is more of a Blizz-Not, BOOO!

Needless to say I'm disappointed. The best Blizzard title still goes to the one in Jan 2016, when I was in the Bronx with Jon. 

Skills

Bah, I think when I have a child I'll really need to stress the importance of marketable and transferable skills. The job market isn't a very nice place at all.

Shit Show

I'm not sure there ever has been another country on earth in recorded history, that has ever gone downhill so fast, save for being invaded by a vastly technologically superior country. Things are all going to hell in a handbasket, and its still just the first month of the year. Ho boy. Damn do I dislike this country more and more, day by day. 

School Anxiety

Today's the first day of my classes at Hunter and I feel anxious. One is that I haven't had anything remotely resembling a schedule since May last year and feel worried about time management, and the other is that I'm starting a program that (appears to me at least) to be removed from the usual purely academic and international setting and instead one is that is very local and in a culture I'm not fully familiar or comfortable with. For instance today, the first class, will be held at the campus school rather than the main Hunter campus itself. The idea of attending a lesson in a location like that makes me feel a whole bunch of irrational worries, beyond the usual "what if I turn up and no one else is there?"

Urgh.

Nutella Blondie Brownies

The last time I remember baking was more than 10 years ago [Though as I continued writing I remembered baking blueberry pie when I was 17-18 years old]. It was when I was still attending church in Singapore as a teenager, and I wanted to impress the people in my Sunday School class with my baking skills. I was probably 15 years old. I was going to make muffins from a recipe in my Home Economics textbook, a recipe that I had actually made a few times before to tasty perfection. 

Problem was this time, I had forgotten to get fresh milk. Instead I used powdered milk as a substitute and hoped for the best. When the muffins came out, they were rock hard. I don't know why I didn't abandon the idea after that, but still persisted and brought them to church. Sure they were hard, but they still tasted good to me, and so I naively thought that was good enough, They're like crunchy cookies, I thought. 

Boys being boys of course, they made fun of my muffins and talked about how they were as hard as rocks. Although they were my friends and I knew it was good-natured ribbing, I still felt hurt. I felt like I had failed and had embarrassed myself in front of the people I most wanted to impress (ah, I never want to be a teen again). 

I never made that recipe again. And for that matter stopped baking completely for the next few years until a friend went gaga over blueberry pie and I made it for her when I realised it couldn't be found anywhere for purchase in Singapore. The second time I made the pie for some other friends, it was so goopy it collapsed, and I lamented my baking skills once more.

Flash forward to this week, when I was stretching in the gym after a run and looking at reddit as I cooled down. Someone had posted a photo of brownies he had made and someone else attached a link to the recipe. My first thought when I saw it was "Hah! Baking! Never going to do that again." and I looked at the recipe out of curiosity, and I realised it didn't look very hard at all and I already had half of the ingredients on the list. I realised I could actually make it, and that this might be one of the last times where I had the chance to be able to spontaneously bake anything on a weekday. 

And so when I went grocery shopping afterwards (a planned trip), I started gathering the items on the list. Things like soft brown sugar (never heard of this before this recipe), vanilla essence and baking powder. When I got home I realised I didn't even have a whisk, so I instead used a wooden spatula. The recipe called for piping out the dough and nutella, and I instead used my (very clean!) hands and the back of a spoon. 

When the baking was done, I anxiously pulled the tray out of the over and sliced into it. Then I popped it into my mouth, and it was good. I felt happy and relieved. And then I sliced it and distributed it into 3 containers, and told Jon to bring 2 containers to work the next day when he got home from work. Because in baking it, I had seen exactly how much sugar and butter went into it, and felt slightly sick at the thought of how unhealthy it was, and wanted to spread the unhealthiness around, hahaha.

So here is my tale of baking again, after several years.

News News

Just read a news report that a tailor, who runs a shop on a street parallel to the one I'm living on, was stabbed several times and robbed of $80 (!!!) just yesterday around noon. I remember hearing a lot of sirens around that time and wondered what was happening.

Reading about it just makes me feel really disappointed as a whole about the state of the world. 

A Rare Religious Post

After an emotionally trying week (wedding prep + MIL), stepping into church this week felt like a welcome breath of fresh air. For the past few months I've been dropping by Madison Avenue Baptist Church whenever Jon is unavailable on Sunday mornings (it is also conveniently a brisk 10 min walk from my current place), and have so far found the church extremely agreeable with my existing notions of Christianity (acceptance of LGBTQ+, political and social activism). The Rev in charge, Susan Sparks, typically delivers hilarious and heartfelt sermons that I love and enjoy, and today I was looking particularly forward to seeing her and listening to her sermon.

This week however, the Rev was nowhere to be seen. Instead it was the Associate Pastor Rev Hutto who was going to lead the entire service, and I felt the slightest twinge of disappointment. Either way, I was still happy to have made it to service this weekend. The sermon Rev Hutto delivered this week however, was beautiful and amazing, and very befitting of the whole political situation swirling around the presidential inauguration.

Rev Hutto started off by saying that he originally had another sermon planned, but had decided that he need to address the events over the last 48 hours: namely the inauguration, counter-protests, and most prominently, the Women's March. The scripture reading was Exodus 1:8 to 2:10, and Rev Hutto's sermon spoke about how biblical society, or even society at large today, constantly ignores, undervalues and underestimates women, but that God uses this underestimation to still carry out his plans. It was a beautiful sermon. And I'm the type that usually nods off during sermons (though admittedly that hasn't yet happened since I've started attending this church).

So here it is: my first religiously themed blogpost since I've started writing this thing.

A podcast of the sermon can be found here. Look for the sermon on 22nd Jan, 2017. 

Last Post of 2016

Today's the last day of 2016, and every year around this time I try to take a moment to settle down and think about the year that has passed. Unfortunately this year because of a combination of down-ed wifi (the cat likes sitting on the router, turning off the wifi, and it took me a while to figure that out), a present heightened stage of agitation (Jon and I just finished playing 3 rounds of 7 Wonders Duel, where I won the last game but felt throughout that I was constantly losing and so felt defeated even though I eventually won) and time pressure (we need to leave to go have an early dinner with his friend soon), I find myself unable to fully sum up my thoughts about this year.

Overall, I have sat down and written much less. Although by count not the year where I've written the least, it's the year where I have written the second-least. Before I blamed this on being busy, but this year, especially the second half, I haven't been busy at all. In fact, I find myself melting away from boredom, but I suppose that in itself is a deterrent to writing. I find my life and myself boring, and ponder how things ended up this way. Alternatively I find myself panicking - what if this is all I'll ever amount to be? What if I really am a good-for-nothing? So then that's when I try to stop thinking altogether and distract myself. So in this case, my idle mind has really become the devil's workshop. And I feel much less optimistic about my future prospects, though in reality they remain the same as ever. All this from 6 months of being at home because I can't find work.

The most important thing that happened this year of course was that I got married, albeit in a civil ceremony. It means I have made the decision, together with someone else, to remain committed to this person and relationship for the rest of my life, which is of course no small potatoes. We attended a pre-cana session as a requirement of the Catholic Church a few weeks ago, and it was enlightening. It reminded me at least of the commitment I have made to Jon, and that we are in this journey called life together.

The last main thing about this year is of course that Saffron came into our lives. From waking me up at 7am in the morning meowing pitifully because he's hungry to using me as a scratching post (WHYY?! He has actual scratching posts that he doesn't want to use), having Saffron in our lives has made it that much more well-rounded, meaningful and hilarious. Just over a month into this, I'm still woefully bad at cleaning up cat puke, but now every time I hear the Knights of Cydonia by Muse, I always think of Saffron, because for some reason every time he sits on my laptop, that song plays on itunes even though I haven't listened to it in ages before.

So to end of this year's last post, 3 pictures of Saffron. who is such a crazily good-looking cat:

Carrie Fisher and Star Wars

Feeling slightly sad now at the news that Carrie Fisher has passed away. I'm not one to typically mourn or feel sad at celebrities dying, but Carrier Fisher remains particularly fresh in my mind I suppose, because Jon and I watched Star Wars Rogue One just last week when he was off work and having a week-long vacation. We saw it at the Union Square Regal cinema, and our immense enjoyment of the movie was not the least dampened by the fact that it was easily of the the crappiest cinemas I have ever been to.

As everyone surely knows by now *SPOILER ALERT*, all the main characters die at the end of Rogue One when the Death Star aims at the planet they're on. The surprise appearance of Princess Leia right at the end before the movie cuts to the credits is the scene that reminds the audience that the movie does end on a hopeful note, to be continued in Episodes 4, 5 and 6. And seeing her, as I was feeling terribly sad (and horrified!) about the characters all dying, made me feel somewhat better. It also made me want to watch Episodes 4, 5 and 6 again, though of course it's always a question of when Jon will be free enough to watch the movie together.

In the mean time, I shall feel that little bit sadder.

Swing Time

Earlier today I went for a reading of Swing Time by Zadie Smith at the 92Y with Shirin. It felt pretty awesome to see an author that I respected in person and to be able to listen to her read her work in her voice. Although I haven't always been a fan of all her books (felt disappointed by NW especially when contrasted with Penelope Lively's How It All Began), I have been an admirer since I first picked up a pirated copy of White Teeth in a tiny bookstore in Sapa, Vietnam, when I was backpacking in South East Asia with my Dad in 2011. So of course I jumped at the chance to listen to her speak and do a reader for her latest book, Swing Time. I was also excited because I thought the book explicitly involved swing dance, but I think it just involves regular dance.

Anyway as much as I enjoyed the evening, there was a part of her conversation with the moderator, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, where she mentioned that she wrote the book with black women in mind, and that made me feel awfully put out. It made me feel excluded, which of course would make anyone feel not-very-good, but it also made me feel sad because there really wasn't any one writer out there that would write for me in the same ethnic-trying-to-traverse-the-Western-World-sense way. There is no author out there that I know of that has written anything close to what I feel, think, and experience as I navigate the world, and so I rely on the writings of outsider-like figures to echo my inner voice. And of course that makes me sad, as I feel alone in the things I feel and worry about.

Growing up I always wanted to be a writer, not as a main occupation, but as something in addition to my regular work. I wanted to pour out my embellished experiences and deep emotions, for inside me I knew I could write about universal themes that linked human experience. As I grew older however the strings of words, coherent introspective thoughts and universal ideas have become even more fleeting and scanty. They have been crowded out by other things like worries, mental to-do lists and thoughts on more prosaic things. And so slowly, year by year, I find myself less able to feel like I can write, and at the same time am less inspired at length to sit down and write. It is a combination that can, and most probably will, mark the end of my teenage dream to write the novel. But of course for every time I am reminded that I am an outsider, the spark to write reignites, and it is only something time can tell whether I will be able to successfully follow through.

Kitty Litter and Floors

Since acquiring Saffron my floors, aside from the bits of kitty litter, have never been cleaner. This is because I find myself constantly wiping them down in order to get rid of the kitty litter, which while not in itself dirty, is incredibly annoying to walk on. It doesn't help that Saffron, as a male cat, is large for a cat and the constraints of our apartment mean that we only have a small space to put his litter box. This means of course that he kicks the kitty litter all around the area. URGH. Stupid cat.

The Revenant

I just finished reading The Revenant by Michael Punke in slightly over 24 hours. I can't think of the last time I've finished a novel this quickly. This is of course in part due to not really having anything else pressing to do, and in part to the lovely way the novel has been written and narrated. It reminded me quite a bit of both Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, books that I loved and read over and over again when I was a kid for its tales of human ingenuity. The Revenant of course is significantly more bloodier, but made me feel the same similar sense of wonder and intrigue I felt when I was reading those two books just under two decades ago. Oh how time flies!

Tutoring at 1960 First Ave

I've been tutoring twice a week in East Harlem at an after school program for Middle School students since late August, working with about ten Grade 7 boys and fifteen Grade 7 girls, and after a tough first few weeks I'm starting to become more and more used to the students and how the centre functions. Besides that I've also got my schedule for those days timed nicely too; for example it takes me about 10 mins to walk from the 103rd St subway to the centre, and so I must leave home by 3:15pm to be there by 4pm. In other words my Mondays and Wednesdays, other than any strange new behaviours by the students, has become rather routine - which I quite like.

Today however, as I walked to and fro from the centre, two strange things happened: a young adult walking along 103rd randomly decided to declare that he was in love with me and to marry him, and as I walked by Metropolitan Hospital I came across a middle-aged/elderly man openly urinating onto the sidewalk, apologising and turning away from me when he spotted me walking. It was, all in all, bizarre for an otherwise normal day, but still within the realm of normality for life in New York City.

Saffron the Cat

Last Tuesday (15th Nov) I went to the ASPCA on a bit of a whim and ended up going home with a cat named Saffron. Jon and I had been talking about adopting a cat for a while now, but with me having no job, the extra cost of needing to support another living being seemed a little too high for us to afford. That being said though, it's moot now since Saffron came home almost a week ago (oops!).

During the taxi ride home from the ASPCA, Saffron kept meowing so pitifully in his hard carrier, that the taxi driver and I felt so bad for it and I thought about him as the poorest thing in the world. When we got home and the carrier was finally opened however, out came the boldest cat that I've ever met. He spent literally 0 seconds in the carrier and practically sprang out when we opened the door, and proceeded to investigate every single square inch of our tiny flat, jumping up and down all our tables and counters. That first night, we also began to realise that we would have trouble shooing him off our bed as he would snarl at us at us when we tried to get him off. So since then we've resorted to keeping the door closed, much to Saffron's chagrin.

Jon and I have quickly fallen in love with Saffron. He's an old boy at 14 years old, and spends most of his time sleeping. When he's awake however, he still likes running around the flat at top speeds and climbing all over things. He loves being scratched under the chin and has a particularly violent and strong angry tail wag that makes thudding noises. He also has no problems showing his displeasure by snarling. Yesterday he went into the bathroom when I was trying to clean up the mess made from all the kitty litter and proceeded to roll around and freak out on the litter that was on the ground, and when I tried to wipe him down with pet wipes afterwards he got upset with me. So we ended up spending the remainder of last night displeased with each other.

Adopting Saffron has brought up a whole barrage of other questions for Jon and me, and another dimension to our relationship. We now talk about things entailing shared responsibilities and differences in approaches towards taking care of the cat. We wonder what this means for us, when we become parents one day.

In the mean time however, we enjoy our time with Saffron as much as we can. He could live for another year or even another five years, either way because of his age, we know that we should treasure every moment with this persnickety fellow.