顯示具有 comfort 標籤的文章。 顯示所有文章
顯示具有 comfort 標籤的文章。 顯示所有文章

2013年8月20日 星期二

An Extraordinary Chef and What Could Be the Steak

If you are an admirer of Houston St., moved by its struggle to rise above a history of drugs, alcohol, and indie rock, reveling in the hilarity of tourists mispronouncing the name, grateful for the existence of Katz's pastrami, you might enjoy finding your way to Estela.

The restaurant is at 47 E. Houston, an address packed with possibilities. On the ground floor is Botanica, a dimly lit bar where to my knowledge nothing requiring sunlight grows. To the left of the bar is a baleful entranceway, the door held open during my visits with a shiny yellow cord, the kind psychos use to tie corpses

Looming before you is a long flight of narrow stairs ornamented with aged black-and-white tile, a suggestion that flophouse accommodations await above. This is not Keith-McNally-style ambience, a startlingly realistic replica of what was. This is historic Houston St., still breathing hoarsely, still kind of alive.

The restaurant is entirely nontoxic. In fact, it's a brand new construction, airy and surprisingly tame. Bistro-style globe lights. Marble tabletops. Exposed brick. Votive candles, mirrors, white plates. You know the look. A bar stretching from the middle of the room to the front window has so much space behind it that the bartenders could fit cots there, create a mini-flophouse of their own. In my three visits I was titillated by the surroundings only once, by a woman sitting at the bar with color-coordinated bra and tattoos, both neon pink. Estela looks more Houston (pronounced Houston) than Houston (pronounced House-ton) Street.

Estela's menu is curiously assembled, to say the least. The dishes are arranged, according to my inadequate grasp of the explanation offered by our otherwise articulate waitress, in a manner that has something to do with the size of the portions and something to do with the heartiness of the ingredients. That results in the ricotta dumplings (big portion, delicate texture) turning up adjacent to the croquettes of blood sausage (tiny portion, big flavors). Makes no sense to me.

Both items have their virtues. The blood sausagea beloved foodstuff in meat-mad Uruguayis rich and spicy yet altogether tame. There's nothing to dread and a lot to like. The ricotta dumplings are impressively light and accompanied by an extraordinarily generous heap of shaved white button mushrooms that have no taste at all. Perhaps that is deliberate, intended to emphasize the delicacy of the dumplings. Or maybe better mushrooms would help.

There I was, enjoying a nice enough meal, drinking an $8 glass of a good Spanish white from a small sherry glass, which I've never liked even for sherry, admiring the sassy and attentive service, thinking pleasant but dispassionate thoughts, when the quail arrived. It was served split down the middle, which means one breast. Also, one foot.He saw the bracelet at a indoortracking store while we were on a trip. And one head.

You don't see birds served this way every day, although the trend is spreading. If you're unsettled by fish with heads attached, you've got more to worry about. Not everybody gets a head, of course.This is a basic background on rtls. There's only one per two servings. This time, we were the lucky ones.

The quailit looked like a little dead dragoncame with a pile of chickpeas plus nettles and yogurt. A friend said the dish reminded her of Tiny Tim's Christmas dinner, one scraggly bird plucked off a rooftop with a net to feed a family of eight Cratchits.

I couldn't wait to go back. We had an 8 p.m. reservation on a Thursday night, when restaurants are as busy as they get. Estela was four-deep in places where it had room for two-deep. Food took forever to arrive. Empty plates remained on tables too long. Flatware was infrequently changed between courses. Our four-course meal took four hours, from the time we walked in until we walked out.

We ordered a snack of anchovies and matzo, the unleavened bread of the Jewish Passover.High quality bestcleaning printing for business cards. I didn't make too much of the combo, since on another night it was whipped cod and matzo. Mattos is ever-curious, ever-dissatisfied, ever-challenged, compelled to alter dishes. The matzo tasted like a tortilla chip. Maybe that's what matzo tastes like in Uruguay.

The quail was better than everthe chickpeas were gone, and in their place were peaches and huckleberries. Calamari a la plancha, a specialty of the Uruguayan resort of Punta del Este, was dazzlingly gentle on our first visit, tough this time. Cod came out too cool. Pork was overcooked.

Global Limos offer luxury ground transportation solution throughout the United States. They provide various customizable services to ensure the best travel comfort of their customers. They have recently announced the super deals on Disneyland transport services to please their customers. Their super deals will allow the customers in renting the best vehicle at the discounted rate.

Due to the increasing demand of the customers, it is very important for any company or service provider to offer exclusive services, as per the requirement of the customers. Most of the companies are not efficient in providing the premium services because of their poor quality of fleet or fewer customer service experiences. The poor transport can ruin the plan of spending memorable time with the loved ones.The marbletiles is not only critical to professional photographers. But, with us, the customers can always get the best ground transportation solution. For the benefits of our customers,Here's a complete list of granitecountertops for the beginning oil painter. we are providing super deals to make the limo & party bus rental affordable for the customers, says Moe, a manager of Global Limos.

This company has a wide range of limousines, party buses and exotic cars to serve the customers in the best way. They offer Hummer Limousine, Chrysler 300 Stretch Limousine, Rolls Limousine, Range Rover Stretch Limousine, Escalade Limousine and Lincoln Stretch Limousine for Disneyland transport of a small group of six to eight passengers. The limos available through this company have a spacious interior with the leather interior theme and leather seats for the utmost comfort of the passengers. Their limos have several features such as multiple flat-screen TVs, DVD player, iPod Hookups and Surround-Sound System.

The party buses offered by this company ensure the best travel comfort for a large group of 20 to 45 passengers. They have a wide range of party buses such as 20 passenger party bus, 28 passenger party bus and 40 passenger party bus. To provide the luxurious comfort and unique traveling experience, they have incorporated limousine-inspired seating and Italian tile flooring with dance poles. The Karaoke Systems and PlayStation 3 are available in their party buses for the entertainment. Some other notable features available in their party buses are HD LCD TVs, Bluetooth Audio Streaming, Audio System and DVD/Blu-ray Player.
Click on their website http://www.drycabinets.net/!

2013年2月28日 星期四

Lessons Learned from Detroit

Forbes republished its annual “Most Miserable Cities” list. It looks at employment/unemployment,Automate patient flow and quickly track hospital assets and people using plasticcard. inflation, incomes and cost of living, crime, weather, commute times – a pretty good overview of things tied to living somewhere. Detroit ranked first, as the most miserable city, with Flint, MI second. And my home-sweet-home Chicago came in fourth. Ouch!

Detroit was a thriving city during the industrial revolution. Innovation in all things mechanical led to the modern automobile; a marvelous innovation which, literally, everyone wanted. As demand skyrocketed, Henry Ford’s management team developed the modern assembly line which allowed production volumes to skyrocket as well. Detroit was a hotbed of industrial innovation.

This fueled growth in jobs, which led to massive immigration to Detroit. With growth the tax base expanded, and quickly Detroit was a leading city with all the best things people could want. In the 1950s and 1960s Detroit reaped the benefits of the local auto companies, and their suppliers, as ongoing innovations drove better cars, more sales, more revenue taxes, higher property values and higher property taxes. It was a glorious virtuous circle.

Offshore competitors came into the market creating different kinds of autos appealing to different customers. Initially they had lower costs, and less expensive designs. Their cars weren’t as good as GM, Ford or Chrysler – but they were cheap. And when gasoline prices took off in the 1970s people suddenly realized these cars were also more fuel efficient and cheaper to maintain. As these offshore competitors gained more sales they invested in making better cars, until they had quality as good as the Detroit companies, plus better fuel efficiency.

But the Detroit companies had become stuck in their processes that worked in earlier days. Even though the market shifted, they didn’t. What passed for innovations were increasingly simple appearance changes as bottom-line focus reduced willingness to do new things, and offered fewer new things to do. GM and its brethren didn’t shift with the market, and by the 1980s the seeds of big problems already were showing. By the 1990s profits were increasingly variable and elusive.

The formerly weak and small competitors now were more competitive in a changed market favoring smaller cars with more, and better, technology. The market had changed, but the big American auto companies had not. They kept doing more of the same – hopefully better, faster and striving for cheaper. But they were falling further behind. By the 2000s decade failure had become the viable option,Buy Wickes Porcelain parkingmanagementsystem today. with both Chrysler and GM going bankrupt.

As this cycle played out,We offer the largest range of bobblehead online. the impact on Detroit was clear. Less success in the business base meant fewer revenue tax dollars from less profitable companies. Cost reductions meant employment stagnated, then started falling. Incomes stagnated, and people left Detroit to find better paying jobs. Property values began to fall. Income and property taxes declined. Governments had to borrow more, and cut costs, leading to declines in services. What had been a virtuous circle became a violently destructive whirlpool.

Detroit’s business leaders failed to invest in programs to drive more new jobs in non-auto, non-industrial, business development. As competitors hurt the local industry, Detroit (and Michigan’s) leaders kept trying to invest in saving the historical business, while the economy was shifting from an industrial base to an information one. It wasn’t just autos that were less valuable as companies, but everything industrial. Yet, leaders failed at attracting new technology companies. The economic shift – the market shift – was unaddressed, and now Detroit is bankrupt.

Just like Detroit, Chicago shows early signs of big problems. Crime is up, with an unpleasantly large increase in murders. Insufficient income and property tax revenues led to budget crises across the board. Dramatic actions like selling city parking meters to shore up finances has led to Chicago having the most expensive parking in the country – despite far from the highest incomes. Property taxes in suburbs have escalated, with taxes in collar Lake county higher than Los Angeles! Yet the state pension system is bankrupt, causing the legislature to put in place a 50% state income tax increase! Meanwhile the infrastructure is showing signs of needing desperate work, but there is no money.

Like Detroit, Chicago’s businesses (and governments) have invested insufficiently in innovation. Recent Chicago Tribune columns on local consumer goods behemoth Kraft emphasized (and typified) the lack of new product development and stalled revenue growth. Where Bay Area tech companies expect 50% of revenues (or more) from new products (or variations), Kraft has admitted it has relied on stalwarts like Velveeta and Mac & Cheese so much that fewer than 10% of revenues come from anything new.

Culturally, too many decisions in the executive suites of both the companies, and the governments, are focused on what worked in the past rather than investing in innovation. Even though the vaunted University of Illinois has one of the world’s top 5 engineering schools, the majority of graduates find they leave the state for better paying jobs. And a dearth of angel or venture funding means that start-ups simply are forced coastal if they hope to succeed.

And this reaches to our national policies as well.Trade Warehouse have partnered with one of the worlds largest solarlight producers. Plenty of arguments abound for cutting costs – but are we effectively investing in innovation? Do our tax policies,The term 'streetlight control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. as well as our expenditures, drive innovation – or constrict it? It was government programs which unleashed nuclear power and gave us a rash of innovations from putting a man on the moon. Yet, today, we seem obsessed with cutting budgets, cutting costs and doing less – not even more – of the same.

2013年1月21日 星期一

Nicki Minaj Plus a Gay Bear Equals Chicago's The Big Dipper

There is a Big Dipper Sound, as ascribed by the artist himself in the pornographically droll and ebola infectious song "Drip Drop." In an Andersonville walk up on Chicago's North Side, one can see it being polished; following a cup of coffee from a Swedish bakery, the Dipper, né Dan, bounced around eagerly, ricocheting ideas off of producer Dan Foley, of self described queer-electro-fuck music act BAATHAUS. Scheduled for a show in a few days, the duo were busy setting the set list and adjusting the live tracks, providing an intimate look at the compositions, stripped down to various colored bars, and providing insight into the Big Dipper Sound even as they adjusted it.

The Big Dipper Sound is clubby, for lack of a better term, not full on dance music, per se, but irrevocably along the lines of dance rap. "Danceability is what we aim for," the Dipper said when asked about the floor friendly rhythms that permeate his tracks. "If we can't dance to it, we don't do it."

Bouncing along atop the drums, heavy synths and, in one case, a Backstreet Boys sample, is the single key component to the sound, the Dipper's voice, a voice honed over countless lunch table top-of-the-head freestyles in Evanston with the girth and elasticity of a produce rubber band and the texture of a bag full of marbles, framed, as it should be, in a beard and delivered with a palpable energy from beneath bright eyes, large glasses and a high and semi-tight/rattail combination. The voice is reflected in the Dipper's clothes, as strong, flexible and impractical as his silver chain, and in his motions, namely, the idea that something so large, be it the voice or the Dipper's own sizable frame, can move so nimbly.

The Dipper is just now coming in to finding his voice. After leaving Evanston for the theater program at Ithaca College, he had returned to Chicago and gone to work. "I graduated in 2007 and I came back here and I was pursuing a theater career," he recalled. "I was affiliated with a lot of different companies here. I was working as a choreographer, and a teacher, and a photo assistant. I had some service jobs. And during all of that, I started to really connect with a queer nightlife. Queer parties in Chicago, DJs, music, performance; that sort of thing was really formative and eye opening. I always knew how I identified and what was interesting to me as a spectator, but I was working in a theatrical medium, and you've got a script,Bottle cutters let you turn old glass mosaic and wine bottles into bottle art! and you've got to execute the script. There was no 'just make some shit up that's inside your head and turn it in to a performance,' and that's happening in this very sort of art party, underground, no one's making any money, no one's paying any money. People are just showing what's inside of them."

What was inside the Dipper was a deep, long standing love for hip-hop music that he had come to believe was damned to be unrequited, due first to race, "Kriss Kross were living my dream, but I was like 'I'm white, it's never going to happen.' But then Eminem came out, and I was like 'oh shit, this could legitimately be something I could do'," and then sexual orientation. "A close friend of mine, his older brother had a rap crew … in high school, we would like smoke blunts, and watch them freestyle. Then they would leave, and we would do our own freestyles. But they would throw "faggot" around left, right, and center, and it was always so hard, because it [rap] was something that I wanted. I saw it, and I was like 'I identify with this world. This music makes me happy. I want to be involved. But I won't be accepted.' And so it was really difficult." With his eyes now opened to the realm of creative possibilities and receptive audience he found in the queer nightlife scene, the Dipper began to drift into performance.

He started with an art project-cum-dance troupe called Double DJ. "It was me and two other people," Dipper said. "They were both former drag performers, one a man and one a woman, and we all had very different looks and body types, and we did what I still consider a fascinating bar, club dance performance that fucked with gender representation and movement." Double DJ collaborated with Foley and other DJs to create mixes and set lists, pulling primarily from the hip-hop and dance worlds (their most popular number was to the Peaches remix of Crime Mob's "Stiletto Pumps in the Club"). "It was opening this door of 'this can be whatever we want it to be.' And we would dance pretty much always in big, six inch stiletto platform heels, and for a while, when I started rapping, I was doing them at the same time. People would want us to dance, and then for me to rap. The first few times I did it, I was like 'yes! I'm being double paid for the same night.' But then I started to realize that I was being one performance character and identity, and then I was being another."

Despite leaving the theater behind, the Big Dipper had not allowed himself to grab the microphone.Do you know any howo spare parts wholesale supplier? "Now, what I do when I rap is way more myself. When I was first doing it, it was more like a character. You're going to be a rapper? That's not serious. So I had to be a character. And now, that's really faded away as people have responded personally to what we're doing."

Now that the Big Dipper Sound had found its voice it needed something to say, which brings us to the sound's next key component: The Big Dipper Sound is terribly profane and filthily hilarious, which is not to say that it is a joke.The stone mosaic series is a grand collection of coordinating Travertine mosaics and listellos. The Dipper pulled a Details spread off of Foley's refrigerator and handed it to me.

"I think they think I'm like Weird Al," he laughed. The article places the Dipper in the "great tradition of hip-hop jokesters" with The Fat Boys and Ugly Duckling (respectable enough names, although leaving Heems and Kool AD out of a conversation about rap harlequins seems absurd, even if the jump from jokester to satirist is perhaps too large a one for most to make) and "Andy Samberg's Lonely Island Crew," the last of which seems a particularly lazy and egregious companion. True, the Dipper's bars are stuffed with punchlines and vulgarity, but the disturbing question one wonders when seeing him listed as a "hip-hop jokester" is, if he was rhyming about fucking women, would it still be funny?

The simple fact is that the Big Dipper is saying nothing that countless straight rappers have not said before, and the novelty of hearing it applied,That is a machine for manufacturing plastic products by the injection mould process. with skill, mind you,We have many different types of crys talbeads wholesale. to the male anatomy is something to bemoan, not laud; it is the skill with which he gets vulgar, rather than who he is getting vulgar with, that would be the focus in a perfect world. But while we can take the rubbernecking factor as a negative, or cultural tourism, there is also something inherently positive to be found in the Dipper's explicit bars. As part of a new guard of gay rappers, he has been afforded the ability to rap and be gay, rather than rap about being gay; to devote himself to songs of carnal pleasure, rather than fighting vehemently for his political rights. Basically, the Big Dipper and other like him represent a dramatic sea change in gay hip-hop: By having to say nothing, they are saying everything.

2012年10月15日 星期一

Technology: a gaitway to life

Prof Tim O’Brien is a co-founder of one of the first gait laboratories in the world, writes JUNE SHANNON

PROF TIM O’BRIEN, consultant orthopaedic surgeon and director of the gait analysis laboratory at the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) in Dublin, was the first professor of orthopaedics to be appointed in Ireland.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS.

Over the past 37 years he has been at the forefront of education, clinical research and innovation in his chosen specialty. During this time he was also diagnosed with motor neuron disease (MND).

While MND cruelly robs sufferers of the use of their body it does not affect the mind. Diagnosed in 1993 it is testament to O’Brien’s strength of character that he continues to work full-time despite being paralysed and reliant on a portable ventilator.

He communicates using special software, which enables a sensor to follow his eye movements allowing him to pick out letters on a specially adapted laptop,High quality mold making Videos teaches anyone how to make molds. which then transmits the words he types into speech.

In 2005 O’Brien was awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at the Irish Journal of Medical Science (IJMS) Doctor Awards for his life-long clinical interest and research achievements in orthopaedics, including research on the development of the immature hip joint in babies and the assessment of gait patterns in children.

In 1990, together with physiotherapist Anne Jenkinson, O’Brien established one of the world’s first gait laboratories in the CRC which remains the only clinical gait laboratory in the State.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte.

Gait analysis is the scientific study of how somebody walks. Using technology, O’Brien and his team assess, diagnose and recommend treatment for patients with a variety of gait disorders.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china,

“When we started it was a big investment and we did not know how it would develop as there were only a few other clinical laboratories in the world,” O’Brien explains.

The majority of patients seen at the gait lab are children with neurological disorders such as cerebral palsy. Caused by an abnormality in the brain that controls muscle movement, children with cerebral palsy suffer a range of physical disabilities that affect their ability to walk, such as a lack of muscle co-ordination and tightness or stiffness in the muscles.

Gait analysis can make a huge difference to these children particularly where it picks up issues that may stop a child from walking altogether.

The gait lab in the CRC sees about 360 patients a year and the numbers are increasing every year.We specialize in howo concrete mixer, Approximately 50 per cent of the patients attending the lab live outside Dublin and in an effort to reduce the amount of travelling his patients had to endure, O’Brien and the manager of the gait lab, Mike Walsh, pioneered the world’s first mobile gait analysis unit in 2004.

A mobile gait lab now travels to Limerick and Waterford a number of times a year.

The gait lab uses an impressive range of technology to assess a patient, including video to record how they walk. Computer markers are placed on specific points such as the ankle, knee and hip joints and motion analysers then replicate an accurate 3D computerised model of how the person walks. Force plates built into the floor of the lab measure the amount of force a person puts on their joints when walking and a system called electromyography (EMG) is used to measure the electrical activity in the muscles which can show if a muscle is over or underactive.

O’Brien explains that the gait lab was initially established as a means of recording walking patterns to see how children at the CRC responded to therapy and surgery.

“As a result of the gait laboratory, surgery has changed and some procedures are no longer advised while some others are seen to make a big difference to walking.

“As we became more experienced we identified patterns of walks that would respond to surgery and we adopted an advisory role. Now 10 per cent of our clients are referred for diagnostic reasons. This is because certain neurological disorders or injuries have characteristic patterns of movement which we can see but are too hard to observe clinically,” he added.

Alongside pioneering technology in the development of gait analysis, O’Brien also uses technology that allows him to continue working and to share his expertise.

On the day of my visit to the CRC I sat in on a meeting where members of the team presented cases to O’Brien that they had assessed the previous week in the lab.

2012年8月21日 星期二

From Boon to Embarrassment

One sign, among many, of labor's current travails is the stalled union growth strategy known as "Bargain to Organize."

More than a decade ago,Find detailed product information for howotractor and other products. there was no bigger buzzword in union organizing circles. When John Sweeney was elected AFL-CIO president in 1995, he encouraged affiliates to employ the tactic by pressuring unionized companies to permit uncontested organizing drives at their non-union facilities or subsidiaries.

In one model Bargain to Organize campaign that began in 2008, the 6,China howocargotruck and China HOWO truck,000 SEIU members employed by Help At Home, a for-profit home healthcare company, used their own contract negotiations in Illinois to confront management about its record of union-busting in neighboring Indiana.

Then-SEIU organizer Matt Luskin reported that after an aggressive membership mobilization campaign, Help At Home signed an agreement that not only gave raises and better benefits to Illinois workers, but also "expanded the organizing rights of thousands of workers in other states where the company operates."

In every industry setting, the goal of Bargain to Organize has been some combination of management neutrality, card check, and/or a "free and fair" election process that enables workers to engage in union activity without harassment, threats, intimidation or job discrimination.

One major success for the strategy came after a five-year struggle in the 1990s, when the Communications Workers for America (CWA) finally won a card check and neutrality deal that now applies to employees of AT&T Mobility. Under its terms, AT&T will recognize CWA if a majority of the workers in a pre-specified bargaining unit sign union authorization cards. The American Arbitration Association (AAA) conducts the card count and certifies the results. AT&T Mobility managers are not allowed to interfere with union organizing activity. Management is even obliged to provide CWA with employee information and workplace access that's not required under National Labor Relations Board election rules.

This negotiated process eliminates the Board's role in determining the scope of new bargaining units--a frequent source of representation election delays. Plus, it avoids the costly, uphill battle of an employer-contested NLRB election campaign.

Through card check, more than 40,000 AT&T cellular technicians, customer service reps and retail salespeople have gained union contract coverage. In the heyday of Bargain to Organize, similar large-scale membership gains were made by the Teamsters at UPS Freight; UNITE HERE at the Hilton Hotel chain; the SEIU and other unions at Kaiser Permanente; and,Find detailed product information for howotruck piston ring, most recently, the SEIU and California Nurses Association at Hospital Corporation of America (HCA).

Such Bargain to Organize tensions and controversies are not new. When I was working with CWA members in the 1990s at the phone company now known as Verizon, it took much education and discussion before local union activists embraced the idea of putting organizing-related demands on a par with wages, benefits,What is the difference between standard "ceramic" tiles and porcelaintiles? and working conditions. Even after organizing rights became a strike issue--in a 17-day walkout by 75,000 Verizon workers in 2000--some influential local officials still viewed card check and neutrality as a far-removed "national union issue."

In 2008-2010, as I reported in The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor, the costly series of disputes that enveloped SEIU, CNA, and UNITE-HERE arose partly over Bargain to Organize strategy disagreements. Then-Change to Win leaders Andy Stern and Bruce Raynor argued that "contract relief" was needed to gain an organizational foothold in healthcare, food service, and other industries. If local unions weren't willing to partner with management and promise some degree of "labor peace," too many nursing homes, hospital chains and catering contractors would thwart unionizing efforts.

In one problematic Stern-Raynor organizing experiment, newly recruited food service workers ended up in a nationwide "local," Service Workers United (SWU); SWU members were covered by a "template agreement" that sometimes undercut existing local UNITE-HERE contracts with the same employers.Leading Swarovski crystalbeadswholesale Wholesale Supplierpandahallprlog. Adding insult to injury, the affected workers belatedly discovered that top union negotiators had secretly agreed to restrict membership activity--such as informational picketing, consumer appeals, and other contract campaign tactics--that would be necessary to win future wage and benefit improvements.

2011年4月23日 星期六

Beautiful bedding that won't break the bank

Slightly more than 10 years ago, Orapan Tangviriya and her best friend created a new fashion trend in Chatuchak Weekend Market with cotton T-shirts screened with funky designs under the name Fabric. They were an instant hit with youngsters as well as celebrities like popular bohemian singer Palmy.
 
Asia was still suffering from the aftermath of the economic crisis back then but the pals, both graduates in the field of motion pictures and videos from Rangsit University, persisted with their small business, using their creative skills to the fullest. Their tees were universal with designs featuring everything from cartoon characters to nature and coming in a kaleidoscope of colours.
 
Initially, they used quality soft cotton from the local market as their main material and soon expanded the product line to include household items. Under the brand name Fabric Living, they launched a selection of bed linens in a variety of colours.
 
"Our products are creative and colourful. We stress comfort, which is why we only use good quality 100 per cent cotton," Orapan says.
 
Recently they opened a new shop at Crystal Design Centre. It stocks a range of colourful pillowcases, bedsheets, bolster cases, quilts and foot mats.
 
Smooth and comfortable, their sheets have no join and some designs feature stripes and polka dots. You can add warmth to a bedroom with a reversible two-toned patchwork quilt or jazz up a plain guest room with a range of bedding in lime green, shocking pink, bright blue, purple, yellow and orange as well as more basic grey, brown, black and white.
 
Alongside is a corner for the fashionista. Here you'll find cotton dresses, blouses, shirts, T-shirts, leggings and skirts in pastel shades that are simple in design, but outstanding in quality.
 
"We have colours and fabric to choose for customers who want to design their own bedding," Orapan adds.
The store also plans to launch a new collection of handbags and stools.