Word: vacant
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...long afterward, a tantalizing opportunity emerged on Tongatapu. It turned out that Sesika's family had a piece of vacant land adjoining the secluded Ha'atafu Beach, some 20 km from Nuku'alofa, the capital. The Burlings thought about opening a restaurant there, then became excited about the idea of a resort. Burling considered his choices: stay in Sydney, he recalls, and be another "brick in the wall," or take a risk in Tonga. For a free spirit like Burling, it was a no-brainer. "I figured that if we ended up back in Sydney with the arse...
...plan does have a certain breathtaking screwball grandeur, like some '30s movie written by Bertolt Brecht and directed by Preston Sturges. Donald Trump, the young multimillionaire real estate developer, owns 100 vacant acres of Hudson River waterfront just northwest of midtown Manhattan, a parcel that he characteristically calls "the greatest piece of urban land in America--the greatest piece of land in the world." One hundred acres! In one spot in Manhattan! At the center of that plot, the developer announced last week, he intends to put up the world's tallest building, an office and apartment tower shooting...
...with such force that police officers had to use bullhorns to direct the vast throngs. Those who tried to drive to work in Tokyo soon became entangled in gigantic traffic jams. The paralysis was so complete that many schools in Tokyo canceled classes, and national TV showed rows of vacant desks in offices. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone condemned the tie-up as "a vicious crime...
...government, and then abolished that body. Ministers in charge of the economy, education, foreign affairs and internal security were dismissed in the dramatic shake-up. Also fired was Haiti's tough police chief, Colonel Albert Pierre. Duvalier, who quickly appointed long-standing family retainers and technocrats to fill the vacant posts, offered no explanation for his actions. But he was clearly reacting to the unusual restiveness among Haiti's citizens, and to a threatened cutoff of much needed U.S. aid following bloody government clampdowns on civil unrest...
...their Savile Row suits' and handmade shirts and Jermyn Street shoes, but they wore them with a careless scruffiness that was a vital part of their snobbery. A real English gentleman never tries; that was the article of faith." His complaints about silly and selfish women, notably Fiona's vacant sister and Volkmann's troublemaking wife, also deserve to be heard. But when all this grouchiness becomes the dominant element in the novel, the sensation of having been backed into a corner at a cocktail party is vivid...