Features

PARIS — It is a humdrum secondhand clothing store in one of the most down-at-heel districts of the French capital.

But for designer Francisco Terra and other rising stars of the Paris catwalk, the shop stuffed with shirts and skirts that sell for the price of a coffee is “a temple of fashion research”.

Terra loves the place so much he held his Paris fashion week show in the store, the flagship “friperie” of the Guerrisol chain.

“It is not just people who don’t have much money who shop here,” the creator behind the Neith Nyer label said, “but all the stylists of the big labels who come to do their homework”.

His show comes only six weeks after hip brand AVOC presented their menswear collection in another more upmarket vintage store.

With high street chains going hell for leather for throwaway fashion, those in the know are embracing better quality vintage clothing, while designers are turning to secondhand and charity shops for inspiration.

Parisian friperies where the poor still buy pre-owned shoes and suits are now the haunt of hipsters and fashionistas looking for clothes that help them stand out.

Putting together “a look is all about the exclusivity of the piece”, said Brazilian-born Terra, who worked for Givenchy and Carven before striking out on his own.

“Today with mass market fast fashion, you can only find that in vintage of secondhand shops,” he added.

‘Upcycled’ jeans

Influenced by Margiela and Jean Paul Gaultier, two fashion houses who have long embraced the art of recycling, 34-year-old Terra began to repurpose clothes for his own brand, which he named after his Austrian grandmother.

His new show is set in a fictional future Tokyo in 2083. Faced with a chaotic economy, young people are forced to patching their ancestors’ old clothes together to create their new styles.

The storyline was inspired by the Japanese capital’s thriving secondhand stores, Terra said, which often rework old clothes.

Upcycling, as remaking existing clothes is called, has long been the trademark of a number of Paris labels, including streetwear brand Andrea Crews.

Upcycled jeans made from cut up old Levi’s were also one of the things that helped make French brand Vetements the label of the moment.

Vintage is also a major theme at a trade fair running alongside Paris fashion week, which this year contains a shop bringing together some of the capital’s “pre-worn” designer stores and the online luxury secondhand site Vestiaire Collective.

Amnaye Nhas, a manager of one such luxury Paris store, Thanx God I’m a VIP, said sales rocket during the runway shows, particularly when labels revisit historic looks for coats and aviator jackets.

Vintage can be reassuring. 

Her store only sells clothing from the very top designer labels. They refuse to handle anything in synthetic fibre and outfits have to be in perfect condition, she said. 

With prices ranging from 40 euros to 2,000 ($42 to $2,100), Nhas said their clients are demanding and know what they want.

A green toned Leonard silk jacket is on sale for 995 euros, while a 1978 Burberry coat is priced at 450 euros.

“Some customers are real sticklers for designer labels,” she said, “but others would normally shop in high street stores like Zara and just want to find something original to wear with that.”

Fashion historian Manuel Charpy said vintage mania is nothing new.

“In the 19th century secondhand clothing was much more important than today, completely dominating the mass market” and items were sold again and again, he said.

The current hunger for vintage began out of economic necessity after the financial crisis of 2008, said trends specialist Cecile Poignant.

The success of the American television series “Mad Men”, set in the early 1960s also helped, she said. 

Vintage clothes “give people reassurance and historical anchorage in changing times”, Poignant added.

“It all has to do with the sense of insecurity people are living with today. We are a lot less sure than we were 30 years ago that the future will be brighter.”

BARCELONA — The car of the future will let you pay for petrol or parking directly from your vehicle and receive traffic alerts and restaurant recommendations from your on board digital assistant.

Connected cars — or “mobile phones on wheels” — will be able to do those things and more, including communicate with each other on the road and with the infrastructure around them through their computer networks.

And they will, of course, be able to drive themselves. 

Prototypes, fitted with the next generation 5G wireless communications network, turned heads at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. 

But as the excitement and novelty over connected cars grows, vehicle, tech, and telecom firms are struggling with how to handle the inevitable legal and ethical issues.

Add to that the risk of cyber attack and reliability issues surrounding a fast and stable Internet connection and connected cars face many obstacles before they can ever be set loose. 

“Connected cars pose a significant risk from a cyber security perspective,” said Jeff Massimilla, head of cybersecurity at General Motors, during a discussion at the MWC.

This is the industry’s biggest worry: hacking.

A hacker could easily take over a car’s network and disable brakes, the transmission, or simply shut the car down.

And that worry is hardly unfounded: Connected cars were hacked in 2015 during testing. 

According to data presented Monday by Masayoshi Son, chief executive of telecoms giant SoftBank, cyber attacks against connected objects — objects with Internet connectivity — have multiplied by four and five times between 2015 and 2016.

To mitigate the risks, telecom and vehicle firms have teamed up to enhance collaboration.

“We cannot do it alone,” said tech executive Ogi Redzic, who heads the connected vehicles services at Renault-Nissan.

Renault-Nissan partnered with Microsoft last September, and its cars plan to use Microsoft Cortana as a digital assistant.

Three years ago, Volkswagen acquired Blackberry’s European research and development centre, a group of 200 engineers, to update its connected software.

‘Bandwidth issues’

The success of connected vehicles will also hinge on the ability of an internet network to enable lightning-quick downloads or support split-second activities, such as the automatic traffic movement of driverless cars.

The current 4G standard enables fast broadband access via mobile smart phones, but government and manufacturers see the next generation enabling connection speeds of up to 1,000 times faster than current ones.

“When there will be many [connected] cars on the roads, there will be flow and bandwidth issues to make the system work,” said Guillaume Crunelle, an automotive analyst at Deloitte. 

The new, fifth generation of mobile networks is expected to enable communications between cars and infrastructure, automated manoeuvres such as overtaking and braking, and emergency warning and call systems, among others.

Commercialisation of 5G is not expected to start before 2020, however, as companies and governments negotiate to try to standardise norms between different countries for smooth 5G use worldwide.

“The 5G vehicle reacts swiftly in case of accident and transmits the information to neighbouring cars,” said Changsoon Choi, a senior manager at SK Telecom.

Driverless cars will require better GPS-tracking systems and the creation of more detailed digital maps in order to avoid possible obstacles.

In terms of infrastructure, “there are enormous investments to be made so that a vehicle can communicate with a parking system, traffic lights, road signs” said Mouloud Dey, the director of innovation and business development at analytics firm SAS.

“We still have no idea who will finance that type of thing.” 

Driverless cars also pose moral and legal dilemmas.

Will vehicles be designed to protect their passengers at all costs, even if they have to plough through a crowd of pedestrians to do so?

Who will bear the responsibility of an accident? The manufacturer, the vehicle owner or the network provider?

“We show a certain leniency to human driving errors that we won’t necessarily show for a machine,” Crunelle said. “We will have to make a decision on the life and death of some.”

“I don’t know who on the regulatory level will want to take on that responsibility.”

“Consumers are ditching their $2,000 DSLR camera for this incredible $50 lens”. “Make $4,000 per month, online and without leaving home, quickly, easily”. “The miracle natural food that kills cancerous cells and that drug companies are afraid you may discover”. “Learn a foreign language in three weeks”. “The 8-minute surgery that will give you superhuman vision. Forever”. “Five foods never to eat because they lower your testosterone”. “The ultimate way to get cheap hotel rooms.” In short, nothing but miracles, waiting for you to click a web link to happen.

Such silly claims have become a daily nuisance, whenever you are logged on the Internet, browsing any website. Since for most of us “whenever” is tantamount to “all the time”, this makes the situation all the more annoying. These deceptive, grossly misleading Internet ads used to make me smile for I would just go past them, ignoring them, not clicking on any part of the ad.

Now they don’t make me smile anymore. They have become real nuisances and a pure waste of time. It’s plain Internet pollution. Even if you are not the kind to fall in the trap and click, they distract you from the main topic you are reading or working on; plus the very unpleasant feeling that they shamelessly insult your intelligence.

Because such ads often are browser-dependant and not site-dependant, it is hard to avoid them completely. You may be looking at CNN site or checking your Facebook page — otherwise two “respectable” and clean sites — chances are you will be subjected to these ads anyway. One wonders how many users do actually fall for it and click. There are no available statistics on the subject. However, given the size of the current traffic on the web, the originators of these ads will be happily rewarded if only one person in a thousand goes clicking. They bet on that and it is certainly happening all the time.

These ads constitute a double deception. Firstly what they actually can do or deliver is but a pale, a distorted and a minimal part of the actual product or service they claim. Secondly, some of them will lead you to contents that have absolutely nothing to do with the catchy sentence you are reading or picture you are viewing. They just mean to entice you, to lead you to another type of contents, the kind that you would never go to in the first place if you knew their real nature.

Advertising has always been regulated. Make a false one and you are liable for legal action by the authorities. Alas, this seems to work only in the real world, not in the virtual one. Streets, buildings, printed magazines and newspapers, TV channels, radios and the like, they all can be monitored and controlled in a rather reasonable, acceptable manner. But how do you do that in the web? The process is difficult, complex, and practically impossible.

Even if some web browsers are less ad-lenient than others (the excellent Mozilla’s FireFox for instance), even you install ad-filters, there will be no way to completely stop this kind of Internet ads. The best protection against this nuisance is not to be gullible and to ignore any ad that promises you the moon or that pretends it can accomplish miracles. Blocking them completely, however, seems to be out of the question, technically speaking. We just have to live with the pain.

Couples who are obese may take longer to achieve pregnancy than partners who aren’t as overweight, a recent US study suggests.

Previous studies in women have linked obesity to difficulties getting pregnant. In the current study, neither male nor female obesity alone was linked to taking a longer time to conceive, but when both partners were obese, the couple took up to 59 per cent longer to conceive than non-obese counterparts.

“If our results are confirmed, fertility specialists may want to take couples’ weight status into account when counselling them about achieving pregnancy,” said Lead Study Author Rajeshwari Sundaram of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland.

“The benefits of a healthy weight are well-known: obesity increases the risk for diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer,” Sundaram added by email.

Sundaram and colleagues focused on the relationship between pregnancy and body mass index (BMI), a ratio of weight to height. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered a healthy weight, while 25 to 29.9 is overweight, 30 or above is obese and 40 or higher is what’s known as morbidly obese.

An adult who is 175cm tall and weighs 72kg, for example, would have a BMI which is in the healthy range. An obese adult at that height would weigh at least 92kg and have a BMI of 30 or more.

Researchers categorised individuals into two subgroups: obese class I, with a BMI from 30 to 34.9, and obese class II, with a BMI of 35 or greater.

Overall, 27 per cent of the women and 41 per cent of the men were obese class I or heavier. 

Then, the researchers compared the average time to conceive for couples where neither partner was obese to couples where both fell into the obese class II group.

Couples in the obese class II group took 55 per cent longer to achieve pregnancy than their normal weight counterparts, the study team calculated.

After accounting for other factors that influence fertility such as age, smoking status, exercise and cholesterol levels, obese class II couples took 59 per cent longer to get pregnant. 

About 40 per cent of the men and 47 per cent of the women also had enough excess fat around the midsection to potentially influence fertility. 

In addition, 60 per cent of the women and 58 per cent of the men said they exercised no more than once a week, the researchers report in Human Reproduction. 

Beyond its small size, another limitation of the study is that it wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to determine whether obesity directly causes infertility, the authors note. It also focused on couples in the general population, not people undergoing treatment for infertility, so the results might not reflect what would happen for all couples trying to conceive, the researchers point out. 

However, unlike many other studies of obesity and fertility, the current analysis used height and weight measured by clinicians instead of relying on participants to report this information themselves, which may make the findings more accurate. 

Obesity can influence fertility by altering hormone levels in both men and women, converting testosterone to oestrogen, said Dr Jeffrey Goldberg, section head of reproductive endocrinology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. 

“If you have more fat there is more conversion from testosterone to oestrogen,” Goldberg, who wasn’t involved in the study, said. 

It makes sense that obese couples would take longer to conceive because excess weight doesn’t just impact fertility in women. 

“For women, extra weight impairs ovulatory function,” Goldberg said. “For guys, having lower testosterone and higher oestrogen impairs sperm production and having a lot of fat around the scrotum, fat thighs and fat around the abdomen raises the scrotal temperature and that can also have an adverse effect.”

There is something very exciting about going to Bombay. Even though it is now called Mumbai, I always refer to it privately, by its former glorious name. The teeming metropolis, which is the commercial capital of India, is a curious mix of contradictions because despite it being called a “city of dreams”, the fact is that “this city never sleeps!”

Other than being the chosen abode of the richest industrialists in the country, it is also home to Bollywood, the largest film industry in India. Once a collection of seven separate islands, Mumbai has grown to become one of the most populous cities in the world. The Marine Drive beach, with its twinkling lights, known as ‘the Queen’s necklace’ (because of its garland-like shape), can be witnessed from the flight itself, when you land in the evening. 

Getting out of the airport and into a cab, while observing the clever manoeuvres of the driver- as he manipulates his vehicle in the swirling traffic- is a challenge in itself. I am often left wondering how I managed to drive in these very streets, almost two decades ago. Must be the recklessness of the young, for I did live life dangerously during those days. 

When I moved to Bombay in 1992, I attracted all kinds of like-minded people who ended up becoming my friends. We were a crazy bunch but the craziest was this friend of mine who loved Indian movies with a passion that bordered on insanity. Not only did she watch the new film on the day of its release, but it had to be the first showing as well. “FDFS” is what it was termed, first day first show! Most of them were matinees where we took our toddlers along, and they learned to walk unaided, in the carpeted aisles of these cinema halls.

The best, by far, was when we discovered that a movie shooting was going on in a nearby area. The thrill of picking up our kids, jumping into a car and racing to the spot, was unexplainable. Though, watching the actual shooting in process was quite a let down, if truth be told, because the sheer number of takes and re-takes that the actors had to go through, was agonising. But, the awe, of viewing creativity in progress, was what sustained us. There was hardly any detail, however trivial, about moviemaking that escaped our razor-sharp vision. We knew everything about everyone. In Bollywood, that is.

Educating my husband on these intricacies was an uphill task. He knew nobody in the Indian film fraternity, and was tragically slow when it came to retaining any information about them. Also, when we came face to face with any of the film stars, he refused to believe that they were, whom they actually were. To be fair to him, most of them in real life had little or no resemblance to their glitzy onscreen reel life personas, but still.

“Look, that is Govinda,” I pointed out, the other day.

“Who is Govinda?” asked my spouse. 

“Shhh! He can hear you. He’s our top actor,” I whispered. 

“Are you sure? But he is only five feet tall,” my husband remarked.

“His nick name is Chi Chi,” I told him. 

“Chee Chee? Chee Chee?” my husband exclaimed incredulously.

The star stopped in his tracks and turned towards us.

“Ahem! Autograph please,” I covered up the embarrassment.

“God bless, Chi Chi,” he scrawled illegibly, on a piece of paper.

BARCELONA — Consumers are snapping up fitness trackers, smartwatches and other connected wearable gadgets — but huge numbers wind up in drawers unused after just a few months once the novelty wears off.

“Abandonment has been a big problem with wearable products,” said Mike Pedler, the leader of PwC’s product innovation and development practice.

“It is something that everyone involved in designing and producing wearables is still wrestling to address.”

With worldwide sales of smartphones now barely growing, many tech firms have turned their focus to wearable gadgets in the hope that they will be the next big source of growth.

Huawei, the world’s third-largest phone maker, unveiled a new smartwatch at the Mobile World Congress, the phone industry’s largest annual trade fair, with a more sporty look than the first device it launched two years ago.

Dozens of other wearable gadgets, ranging from bracelets that measure your heart rate to GPS-connected footwear, were on show at the event which wraps up on Thursday.

CCS Insight predicts 411 million wearables devices — including virtual reality headsets and wearable cameras — will be sold around the world in 2020, up from 123 million in 2016.

But about a third of owners of smart wearables abandon these devices after six months, according consulting firm Endeavour Partners.

“For now most devices would not pass the ‘turnaround test,’ which is characteristic of an item you would turn around and retrieve if you realised you’d forgotten it on your way to work. Like your wallet. Or keys. Or smartphone,” PwC said in a report on wearables last year.

‘Lack killer app’

Part of the problem is that smartphones can already do most of the things people use wearables for — they act as pedometers, count calories, measure heartbeats and make payments.

“Wearables lack a killer application,” said Pedler.

Wearables also often need to work together with a smartphone, leading consumers to complain that they are a hassle to use.

The main reasons people gave for abandoning their fitness wearables was that they were “too difficult” or “are annoying”, according to a 2016 study by German health insurer DKV.

Huawei’s new watch has its own cellular connection and the chief executive of the company’s consumer business group, Richard Yu, said he believes this is the key to increase the appeal of smartwatches.

“The majority of smartwatches do not have an autonomous Internet connection, you need your smartphone nearby and that uses a lot of energy, that has hindered the development of the market,” he told AFP in Barcelona.

‘Need better design’

The look of wearables is also an issue. Huge batteries make them big and bulky.

“We need to see better design,” said Ramon Llamas, the research manager of IDC’s wearables team.

“The wearables we have seen have really been first generation type devices,” he adds hoping for improvements.

The tumbling size — and cost — of components is making it possible to make smaller and sleeker wearables.

Munich-based Bragi has come out with the Dash, a wireless in-ear headphone that looks like a hearing aid that holds a music player, 4 gigabytes of storage, and a microphone to take phone calls — you just need to nod your head to accept.

Researchers are also working with flexible materials like graphene — which is 100 times stronger than steel, super thin and can conduct electricity and heat — to make more attractive wearables.

Barcelona’s Institute of Photonic Sciences has made a prototype of a graphene wearable device, which it displayed at the fair that can wrap around a wrist measuring heart rate and oxgyen levels.

Graphene will allow firms to focus on the design of wearables instead of focusing just on the technology, said Frank Koppens, a graphene specialist at the institute.

“You won’t even notice it is a wearable,” he added.

Jaguar’s fastest road car bar the short-lived 1992-94 XJ220 supercar, the F-Type SVR is the full-fat version of the British brand’s now familiar Porsche 911-fighting sports car. Developed by Jaguar’s newly formed Special Vehicles Operations skunkworks division — and first capable of 200mph (322km/h) since the XJ220 — the F-Type SVR’s 2016 arrival comes three years after the first F-Type model hit showrooms.

A classic front-engine rear-drive brute in character, the SVR however employs standard rear-biased all-wheel-drive (AWD) to help manage its huge power and torque output. In essence, it is a more intense development of V8 engine versions of the standard model, rather than a revolution or revelation.

Assertive aesthetic

A curvy and sveltely feline design in standard guise, the F-Type’s design is beefed up somewhat for SVR service. Seemingly little altered from front views, the F-Type SVR’s broad hungry honeycomb grille, wrapover headlights and gaping side intakes are complemented with a sharper lower spoiler lip, while its long bonnet receives twin heat extraction vents. Swooping and sexy from front view, the F-Type’s angled bumper shut-line above the wheel-arch stands out slightly, but detracts little from its aesthetic. 

Its body colour roof outline and dark panoramic roof panel accentuate the F-Type’s graceful lines, while wider 265/35ZR20 front and 305/30ZR20 rear tyres generate more grip necessary for the SVR’s increased power.

Designed with improved airflow in mind, the F-Type SVR features numerous tweaks, from its bumper, body vents and underbody covers to reduce lift and drag, while increasing downforce. Its most obvious aero enhancements are however its large rear venturi air splitter and dramatic active rear tailgate wing mounted above its moody slim rear lights. 

But their overt aesthetics do alter the standard F-Type’s elegant design flow, and also seem to draw attention to, accentuate and visually add weight to the F-Type’s somewhat high and wide rear haunches. Underneath, the F-Type is built on a lightweight aluminium frame, and for SVR service features several revised weight-saving components, making it between 25-50kg lighter than the nearest AWD F-Type R version.

Bellowing brute

Gloriously thundering, bellowing and growling, the F-Type SVR’s supercharged 5-litre direct injection engine is familiar in lesser states of tune from many Jaguar Land Rover vehicles, but is tuned to produce an additional 25BHP and 14lb/ft here. Developing 567BHP at 6,500rpm and 516lb/ft throughout a sledgehammer-like 3,500-5,000rpm mid-range, the SVR is highly responsive from idling and throughout the rev range, owing to its mechanically-driven supercharger and ever-ready boost. 

Leaping off-the-line with an instantaneous alacrity, the SVR rockets through 0-100km/h in 3.7 seconds and tops out at 322km/h. Relative to its size, output and hefty 1,705kg weight, the SVR’s 11.3l/100km combined cycle fuel consumption is moderate, but driven more spiritedly, becomes quite thirsty.

Building power and torque with a brutally progressive fashion, the SVR’s mighty supercharged V8 is nevertheless abundant throughout and allows for effortlessly brisk overtaking and indefatigably confident and quick progress on steep inclines.

Meanwhile, power is channelled through a slick, quick and smooth shifting 8-speed automatic gearbox, which can be operated through steering-mounted paddle shifters for more involvement, and can be set to for a more responsive shift mode through the infotainment screen, which also allows one to mix and match a choice of more ‘dynamic’ aggressive engine, suspension and steering settings. 

Additionally, a more vocal exhaust note can be called up with the press of a button.

Balanced and intuitive

Instant in responses and fulsome in delivery, yet balanced and intuitive, the SVR’s character is that of a front-engine rear-drive sports car crossed with muscle car. Fitted with a rear-biased all-wheel-drive system and electronically controlled limited-slip rear differential to more effectively deploy its huge torque and power within a relatively small footprint, the SVR will instinctively initiate a power-slide when exiting a tight corner with too much throttle too early. 

However, its rear differential actively distributes power to the rear wheel best able to but down to tarmac, while power is also subtly transmitted to the front axle to pull the SVR onto the straight and narrow.

More of a well-sorted brute rather than a scalpel-like Lotus Evora or a tenaciously gripping Nissan GT-R, the SVR’s rear-drive biased instincts lend it intuitive, if somewhat tail-happy handling traits. Meanwhile, with revised dampers, stiffer toe and camber settings, and torque vectoring automatically braking the inside wheel into corners, the SVR turns in with tidy precision and agility.

Meanwhile, its meaty and quick steering delivers good off-centre precision and responsiveness. Reassuring and talented through winding hill climbs, the SVR is also stable and settled at high speed and over imperfections, with buttoned down rebound control. Riding on the firm side, the SVR’s adaptive dampers provide taut cornering body control, especially when set to “dynamic” mode.

Luxuriously sporty

More forgiving and supple in “normal” mode for daily driving, the SVR drives with a high level of refinement for noise, vibration and harshness, while its huge brakes are reassuringly effective and fade-resilient. With its hunkered down driving position, thick steering wheel and peering over its long sculpted bonnet, the SVR’s driving position is easily accessible, alert, well-adjustable and adequately cosy. 

Supportive and comfortable, its seat headrests are however unfortunately not adjustable and seem to bulge from the base of a taller driver’s neck upwards. Front and side visibility is good. However, rear and over-shoulder visibility is somewhat restricted owing to a small glasshouse, heavily sloped roofline, thick rear pillars and high-set and wide haunches.

Well crafted with quilted leather seats and upholstery with contrast stitching, soft textures, metals and suede aplenty and quality materials used throughout, the F-Type is luxurious and unmistakably sporty inside. Its cabin is driver-oriented and features user-friendly, intuitive controls, as well as an infotainment system with remote vehicle monitoring, remote start and climate control, using smartphone connectivity.

Convenience, safety and infotainment equipment levels are extensive. However, and on a more minor note, one does question the necessity of the additional weight of an electric operated opening tailgate hatch system as a standard feature in such a sports car for which Jaguar has otherwise been keen to apply weight-saving measures.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 5-litre, supercharged, in-line V8-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 92.5 x 93mm

Compression ratio: 9.5:1

Valve-train: 32-valve, DOHC, variable timing, direct injection

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic

Driveline: Four-wheel-drive, electronically-controlled limited-slip differential

Ratios: 1st 4.714; 2nd 3.143; 3rd 2.106; 4th 1.285; 5th 1.0; 6th 1.0; 7th 0.839; 8th 0.667

Reverse/final drive ratios: 3.317/2.56

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 567 (575) [423] @6,500rpm

Specific power: 113.4BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 332.5BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 516 (700) @3,500-5,000rpm

Specific torque: 140Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 410Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 3.7 seconds

Top speed: 322km/h

Fuel economy, combined: 11.3 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 269g/km

Fuel capacity: 70 litres

Track, F/R: 1,585/1,612mm

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones, adaptive dampers

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Brakes, F/R: 380/376mm ventilated discs

Brake callipers, F/R: 2-/1-piston

Tyres, F/R: 265/35ZR20/305/30ZR20

A Word for Love

Emily Robbins

New York: Riverhead Books, 2016

Pp. 290

This is the story of a great love, and of an American girl who becomes part of an Arab family, but it is quite different from most romances or cross-cultural novels, due to the author’s innovative approach to language: Emily Robbins displays an uncanny ability to expand the meaning of words beyond their dictionary definitions.

Partly inspired by Arabic, which produces many associated words from three-letter stems, she creates a lyrical narrative that makes unusual connections between words, and to the feelings they evoke. This is not just a question of style, but thematic. Besides exploring multiple forms of love, the novel focuses on language and words, and their linkage to behaviour. 

“A Word for Love” is set in an unnamed Arab city, easily recognisable as Damascus.

Anyone familiar with the city will find that Robbins’s descriptions ring true. Yet, it is not the famous landmarks that are highlighted. Most of the plot unfolds within the four walls of the apartment of the middle-class Syrian family with whom Bea, the narrator, lives. This is another feature of the novel’s integrated style and theme: Huge human emotions play out in a very compressed space. Love, anger, resentment, jealousy, fear and generosity are expressed in the everyday interaction involved in housework, dress, personal hygiene, meals, child’s play, whispered secrets and shared jokes. If one thinks such things are trivial, think again: Robbins shows how they are related to very basic human values and needs. This is a novel about the beauty of small things. 

There are, however, a few outings. Bea visits the National Library, for she is on a mission, having come to Syria to read “the astonishing text”, a particularly lovely rendition of the Qais and Leila love story, which is said to make even scholars cry. Bea wants not only to increase her Arabic proficiency, but to intensify her feelings. Her partner in this latter endeavour is Nisrine, the Indonesian maid of the Syrian family, who wants to “grow her heart”, so she can like her job and get over her homesickness. Making an Asian domestic worker a main character is another element that sets this book apart.

Another outing, which turns out to be fateful, is when the family goes shopping. Just before reaching home, they face a police blockade. Madame, the mother of the family, makes Bea and Nisrine get out of the car and offer the policeman a bag of apples to speed their passage. Adel, the blonde policeman, is smitten by Nisrine, and she, in turn, spies the chance to grow her heart. As the family’s home is right across from the police station, their love blossoms in the space between. 

“There is a language that develops in love. When the circumstance is extreme… then so can be the language. Theirs was of epic proportion. They talked with their hands across the street and the garden. He stood on the rooftop, she on the balcony. Because they were far apart, it was a language of large movements”. (p. 89)

“When she was on the balcony and he was far away, then he would raise one arm, and if she raised hers, it felt like the sky could connect them”. (p. 100) 

Looking for deeper meaning in the legendary love story of old, Bea finds herself caught up in a contemporary Qais-and-Leila romance. There are many parallels: Adel has a reputation as “a real Qais” and he writes poetry, tossing poems to Nisrine on the balcony wrapped in small plastic bags, or occasionally giving her one when she takes the family’s children to the park by the police station.

The ultimate parallel is that theirs, too, is an impossible love, unacceptable to family and society. By paralleling the two romances, Robbins in effect creates a thematic narrative that spans over a millennium.  

Paradoxes and dualities drive the plot to an uncertain conclusion. While Bea is constrained by living in the family, it also gives her a sense of belonging. The greatest paradox, however, is the policeman’s dual role. Adel is Nisrine’s lover and is supposed to protect, but he is the adversary endangering Baba, the father of the family, who has been a political prisoner and risks being one again, as he is involved in the pro-democracy movement. It is 2005, and unrest is mounting in the country. Adding to her ruminations about language and writing, Bea learns that “here writing could be dangerous”. (p. 48) 

In this, her first novel, Robbins doesn’t romanticise love, but searches for its function in life. As Bea discovers, love is not something one finds or loses, but a component of one’s being: “In the end, it was something you went to in your most painful moments… It lifted you, helped you to become another person, to know another side of yourself”. (pp. 233-4)

The book is also a meditation on people being trapped in pre-assigned roles, and the unforeseen consequences of trying to break out of them. “A Word for Love” will be available at Books@Cafe where Emily Robbins will have a reading in March.

Sally Bland

By Jung Ha-won 

SEOUL — Trying to raise the world’s lowest birth rate is among the missions of South Korea’s welfare ministry — a challenge starkly illustrated when one of its own working mothers died at her office.

The 34-year-old woman was an elite employee who had passed the highest category of the highly competitive civil service entrance exams.

A mother of three, she had only returned from maternity leave a week before her death last month, and immediately went back to working 12-hour days. 

She returned to the office on Saturday. On Sunday, she was there again at five in the morning to finish early and take care of her children later in the day, according to her colleagues. 

Instead she suffered a heart attack and they never saw her alive again. 

Her death has prompted widespread soul-searching over the difficulties faced by overburdened and exhausted working mothers in a deeply workaholic and male-dominated society — which desperately needs to encourage more births.

South Korea’s fertility rate — the number of babies a woman is expected to have during her lifetime — has been declining for years and now stands at 1.2, the lowest in the world in the latest World Bank tally. The global average is 2.4.

Experts call it a “birth strike”.

‘Unimaginable dream’

The civil servant who died has not been named, but Kim Yu-mi, a 37-year-old IT engineer with two young daughters, said she could “totally relate to her”.

“It is exactly the reality for all working mums all across South Korea,” she said.

She was one of the minority of South Koreans who took advantage of the legally available one year of parental leave, which is paid for by the government.

Since 2006 authorities have pumped more than 100 trillion won ($88 billion) into hundreds of programmes aimed at encouraging people to marry young and have larger families. But they have failed to arrest the trend.

Kim describes herself as “extremely lucky” for being allowed to go back to work.

“At least my employer did not kick me out when I asked for a maternity leave,” she said. “In the past, female employees like me were simply told ‘Go home and never come back’.” 

But when she returned to the office after her first maternity leave, she added, she often worked past 9 pm, making reading a bedtime story impossible.

“Sitting with my child to play and eat dinner together was an unimaginable dream.”

Workaholic country

According to official statistics, the average South Korean works 2,113 hours a year, the second-longest among OECD member nations, where the mean is 1,766. Mexico ranks number one.

But local surveys indicate the reality is even longer, and, as in Japan, there are regular reports of “death by overwork”.

At the same time, in double-income families, men spend only 40 minutes a day on house chores or childcare compared to three hours for women. 

The cutthroat corporate culture, and a deep-rooted patriarchy that sees women as the sole family caregiver, are pushing ever more women to shun marriage, said Lee Na-young, sociology professor at Chung-ang University in Seoul.

The vast majority of children are born in wedlock in South Korea, but the marriage rate has steadily declined to hit a record low of 5.9 per 1000 people last year. 

“South Korean women are expected to be modern career women at daytime and traditional housewives as soon as they go home in the evening... so why bother to get married?” Lee said, noting the burden on working women is far heavier in the South than elsewhere. 

“In this environment, I wouldn’t be surprised even if more South Korean working mothers are exhausted to death,” she added.

“This trend among young women, called ‘birth strike’ or ‘marriage strike’, is a very reasonable, rational choice for them to survive socially and economically.”

In the wake of the civil servant’s death, the welfare ministry has banned working on Saturdays and moved to discourage weekday overtime.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy has seen ever more women joining the workforce and increasingly taking the top spots in competitive exams to become lawyers, diplomats, school teachers, accountants and other professionals.

But a shortage of affordable, reliable daycare centres also means women are faced with having to give up their careers to stay at home if they become mothers.

The birth rate problem will not be solved without a change in attitudes that see women as “nothing more than tools for making babies”, the major Dong-A Ilbo daily said.

Would women be happy to give birth in a society where “a working mum who just returned from a maternity leave dies like this?” it asked in an editorial. “No, they have become too smart to do so.”