Word: makeshift
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...about 10 o'clock on a moonless night, the grungy 2,215-ton ferry Dona Paz coursed through the choppy waters of the Tablas Strait, some 110 miles south of Manila. The people who crammed the decks on makeshift cots and slept three or four to a bed were scheduled to be in the capital by morning, and the air was filled with anticipation. Young women from the impoverished island of Samar talked excitedly about finding jobs as maids in Manila homes. Mothers and fathers tucked their children into bed and chatted about the relatives and the sights they would...
Along Beijing's Xiushui Street, merchants in makeshift metal stands plaintively urge shoppers to buy jade-green grapes, bright red Coca-Cola sportswear and Begonia Flower-brand silk lingerie. A balding trader, waving a fan, hawks Christian Dior-label shirts. They cost 100 yuan ($27) abroad, he confides, but his price is only 25 yuan ($6). A real bargain. The yellow license in his stall identifies him as a ge ti hu (private entrepreneur), who sells his wares on the free market...
...vault, technicians modified a miniature remote-controlled video camera so it could be inserted into the 3 1/2-in.-wide entrance hole. The camera, originally designed to probe the interior of nuclear reactors, provided fiber- optic light without introducing any heat into the chamber. Over the site was a makeshift scaffold and the flags of Egypt and the National Geographic Society, the principal sponsor of the $250,000 project...
...validity of marriage vows made in another hemisphere. Perhaps the greatest irony is the novel's skimpiness. The cast of characters is rollicking, and the plots are properly tangled. But little is fleshed out, and the actors onstage seem less artificial than the occurrences that take place outside the makeshift theater. In Keneally's retelling, the play within the play's the thing...
...running barricades of picketing stars to get to a field where only the best have ever belonged. Players' negotiator Gene Upshaw charged, "Management is trying to bust the union." His opposite number, Jack Donlan, foresaw "six to eight weeks of hard bargaining." Meanwhile, the N.F.L. planned to count any makeshift games in the standings (in order to ensure at least an adjusted TV contract); the advertisers figured to count the audience to determine their own rebates, and the losses all around may be counted in the tens of millions...