Month: August 2020

Magical Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Aside Markozen.com Geography

Hạ Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and popular travel destination in Quảng Ninh Province, Vietnam. Administratively, the bay belongs to Hạ Long City, Cẩm Phả town, and is a part of Vân Đồn District. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various shapes and sizes. Hạ Long Bay is a center of a larger zone which includes Bái Tử Long Bay to the northeast, and Cát Bà Island to the southwest. These larger zones share a similar geological, geographical, geomorphological, climate and cultural characters.

Hạ Long Bay has an area of around 1,553 km2, including 1,960–2,000 islets, most of which are limestone. The core of the bay has an area of 334 km2 with a high density of 775 islets. The limestone in this bay has gone through 500 million years of formation in different conditions and environments. The evolution of the karst in this bay has taken 20 million years under the impact of the tropical wet climate. The geo-diversity of the environment in the area has created biodiversity, including a tropical evergreen biosystem, oceanic and sea shore biosystem. Hạ Long Bay is home to 14 endemic floral species and 60 endemic faunal species.

 

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Footage for the movie Kong Skull Island was shot at Ha Long Bay.

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If desert landscapes appeal to you, this is the resort to check out

Aside Markozen.com Geography

I have always had an attraction to the desert. It may have started by watching the Roadrunner cartoons as a kid. Every time I get into desert country I feel relaxed and find the scenery stunning. This Utah resort is on my bucket list.

A modernist marvel of architecture and design in the wild and wind-swept landscape surrounding Utah’s Lake Powell, Amangiri hotel is a clean-lined sandstone monument to luxury that blends into its stark and striking natural surroundings. The hotel’s centrepiece, a dramatic pool, is built around a jutting rock formation at the base of a mesa. It’s all very relaxing and decadent, with a Navajo-inspired spa, gourmet restaurant and absolutely perfect service.

 

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Butte crossing on a swinging bridge.

 

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Accident leaves Jamaican Woman with British accent

Aside Markozen.com Bizarre

One year ago, 33-year-old Deana-Rae Clayton was an all-Jamaican woman with a rich island accent. However, after partying with friends in Negril, a horrible car crash would send her world into a tailspin, claiming the life of a friend and leaving two others nursing serious injuries. The fun-loving vlogger would also awake from a coma to a new life.

When Clayton first awoke from a coma two days after the accident, she found herself speaking with an American accent, which gradually changed to a British accent months later. Doctors described the phenomenon as foreign accent syndrome – a speech disorder that has caused a sudden change to her native tongue.

The accident also left Clayton physically challenged and blinded in her right eye. She also suffers from memory loss.

“In the accident, my head trauma caused a stroke and that gave me brain damage,” explained Clayton, whose upbeat spirit and zest for life has not been devalued by her traumatic experience as she steadily tries to piece her life together again.

“The swelling that the brain damage caused is between my language and motor skills, so my accent has changed and I am now left-handed instead of right-handed. I am unable to speak the Jamaican accent now,” she told The Sunday Gleaner, adding that her life will never be the same again.

“I am still learning to walk. I cannot walk without any aid. Even turning on the bed is a struggle for me,” Clayton said. “I spent one month in the hospital and I’ve done four surgeries. My entire life has changed because I can no longer work a 9 to 5.”

She said doctors initially projected a two-year journey to recovery, but that timeline has been thrown off.

“They said it would take one to two years in terms of recovery to a point that I will be able to walk like nothing happen. However, because of COVID-19 and the delay in my left femur healing, that’s now looking like three to four years,” she revealed.

Mom To The Rescue
In the earliest stage of her recovery, Clayton was almost entirely dependent on her mother to care for her.

“Deana-Rae’s accident has caused me to do everything for her. I have to bathe her, clothe her, and help her to use the bathroom. The only thing that I don’t help her with is to feed her,” her mother, Beverley Clayton, told The Sunday Gleaner.

“It has been extremely difficult financially taking care of Deana-Rae. Being retired, I have to depend on my husband and my son for support,” she added.

Within six to eight months, Clayton had recovered to the point where she could bathe and dress herself and move around with assistance.

She remains optimistic that by the end of the year, she will be able to walk without aid.

Creem Magazine

Aside Markozen.com Media, Music

Creem (which is always capitalized in print as ‘CREEM’ despite the magazine’s nameplate appearing in mostly lower case letters), “America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine”, was a monthly rock ‘n’ roll publication first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. It suspended production in 1989 but attained a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a glossy tabloid. Lester Bangs, often cited as “America’s Greatest Rock Critic”, became editor in 1971. The term “punk rock” was coined in May 1971, in Dave Marsh’s Looney Tunes CREEM column about Question Mark & the Mysterians.

CREEM picked up on punk rock (which many claim the magazine helped to conceptualize, if not invent) and new wave movements early on. CREEM gave massive exposure to artists like Lou Reed, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Blondie, and The New York Dolls years before the mainstream press. In the 1980s, it also led the pack on coverage of such upcoming rock icons as R.E.M., The Replacements, The Smiths, The Go-Go’s and The Cure, among numerous others. It was also among the first to sing the praises of metal acts like Motörhead, Kiss, Judas Priest, and Van Halen.

Melvins guitarist Roger “Buzz” Osborne taught Kurt Cobain about punk by loaning him records and old copies of CREEM.

Alice Cooper referenced the magazine in his song “Detroit City” – “But the Riff kept a Rockin’, the Creem kept a-talkin’, and the streets still smokin’ today”. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth said: “Having a certain sense of humor in the rock’n’roll culture – CREEM nailed it in a way that nobody else was. It informed a lot of people’s sensibilities.”