Word: creaking
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...unfazed by the indifference. A Tamil by ethnicity and Malaysian by birth, he grew up in the tin-mining town of Ipoh, the youngest of 10. Ponnudorai's parents were too poor to buy him a metronome: he learned his exquisite sense of timing by playing along to the creak of an old ceiling fan. Naturally left-handed, he taught himself to play on a right-handed guitar because it was cheaper than a model strung for left-handers (and this is how he still plays). A car crash in his early 20s ("we were road racing and I drove...
...brick by dirty gray brick, a portrait of North Korean society that feels far more real than any debriefing. Church's Pyongyang is caught in the familiar time warp of the North's long-soured revolution: it's a place of deserted roads, decaying buildings and rusting trains that creak off to the provinces at walking pace. But what's different is the richly quotidian existence he brings to life. O may be under the thumb of a totalitarian regime, but he meets associates for a beer after work, flirts with telephone operators and fends off the elderly widows...
...While all arboreal dwellings are a treat for the senses-there's the smell of freshly cut timber, the creak of branches and the sound of wind whistling through the leaves-few are as spectacularly luxurious as the upmarket structures created by the Scotland-based TreeHouse Company (www.treehousecompany.com), which look more like mansions than playhouses. The designers can install anything from kitchens and bathrooms to under-floor heating and electricity. The circular cedarwood dining lodge the company erected in an ash in West Sussex, England, for instance, has all that plus a telephone connection, a spiral staircase, 13 windows...
...bespoke areas: a number of European companies are offering solidly constructed, customized treetop retreats which, for prices from $15,000, may be designed to fit almost any species of tree. While all arboreal dwellings are a treat for the senses - there's the smell of freshly cut timber, the creak of branches and the sound of wind whistling through the leaves - few are as spectacularly luxurious as the upmarket structures created by the Scotland-based TreeHouse Company (www.treehouse- company.com), which look more like mansions than playhouses. The designers can install anything from kitchens and bathrooms to under-floor heating...
...another reality, their irreducible weakness in the great-power ring where America is the last man standing. Strong enough to deny the U.S. a war resolution in the Security Council in March, France and Germany were too puny to stop the war itself. Their fabled "axis" has begun to creak; unlike French President Jacques Chirac, Schröder carefully refrained from pressuring Bush for a speedy handover of authority to the Iraqis. Schröder must have realized that it was not so wise to remain inside Chirac's pocket. The months Schröder spent in there helped radicalize...