Hey, so my name is Scott Carlson, and I'm a senior engineer at PayPal. And what I'm going to talk to you guys about today is how we are combining our OpenStack cloud to have both KVM and ESX vSphere 5 hypervisors within it to enable multi-vendor agility within PayPal. First, let's talk a little bit about what PayPal is. I think a lot of people know who PayPal is and maybe have used PayPal, but we have 137 million users across 26 currencies on 193 markets. We have devices like PayPal here, some chip and pin technologies, and is currently the world's most widely used digital wallet. So for PayPal, it's very important that we have a solution that scales globally and is able to handle all these users and currencies. So first let's talk about why we went to ESX, because I think that's an important part of the PayPal story. Starting in 2009, 2010, prior to that, PayPal was 100% physical. So all of PayPal.com and all back-end and front-end systems were all just one-you pizza boxes scaled throughout the data centers across the world. In 2011, we decided that it would make sense to start to virtualize PayPal so that we could get into more automation, more cloud things, et cetera. So we selected ESX on VCE Vblocks as our first place to implement. The reason we did that is because PayPal had no virtualization, we also had no virtualization skill in-house. And taking a look at the industry, the best way for us to get into the virtualization game was to go with the technology that everybody knew and that we could buy and initially implement right off the shelf, which is what led us to VCE. We brought in a number of Vblocks across all of our data centers and standardized on that infrastructure for our web tier and mid tier. So over the next 18 months, I was part of the team that virtualized 90% of the PayPal front-end on ESX, which amounted to roughly 10 or 12,000 VMs across three data centers. One of the things that we looked into when we went with VCE and the Vblocks is we needed a solution that we could measure and monitor via the way that we scaled our workload. When we take a look at how PayPal scales, we have a very defined C++ compiled workload that scales very horizontally as our traffic volume goes up. It's very nice that it works almost exactly out to spec int. So if you take a look at a processor and it's spec int, divide by our cool little formula that our capacity people have, we can buy hardware based on the number of spec int it gives. You can translate that pretty quickly to a V mark under VMware. And so we can scale four core VMs until we run out of infrastructure and scale paypal.com on VMware. So it was a very easy understood test harness under there. So in 2012, the executive management of PayPal declared that we were going all in OpenStack. So here comes the cloud, right? The team that I'm on was said, let's go do OpenStack. Everything has to be on OpenStack going forward. So what does that mean? Standard, elastic, scalability, our internal cloud model. Everything needs to be in the cloud. Everything needs to scale, and it has to be easy. One thing that also we want to think about on this, because we sort of paid to get in the virtualization room, right? VMware and V blocks are not the cheapest thing you can buy. So they wanted to start to reduce the cost of every payment that we took by bringing in OpenStack and bringing in more scalable infrastructure. And also enable the developer and enable the business. Consider this the standard DevOps model, right? Today at PayPal, pre-cloud, we'll call it, there are some stories floating around that have been talked about at other conferences that it took a developer who wrote a piece of code, 168 work tickets to get that code from compile into production, which was firewall rules, VMs, multiple code pushes, QA to prod, et cetera, 168 tickets. And we are trying to simplify that down, ultimately, to where the developer can go in and click, and the PAS layer will do it. But initially, it's about at least give them a VM that works in minutes, at least give them the application that they want. In our case, it's the Java, Jboss sort of deal, or C++, to let them go quicker, right? We're trying to go initially down to seven days, and then one day, and then minutes. Let's talk a little bit about our cloud, because this sort of plays into where we went from ESX. Standard sort of best practices, if you look at other people who have talked about this sort of thing. We wanted open source, right? We wanted to be able to manipulate the code. The thing about PayPal and most big, large, Fortune 500s, especially the ones that I've been at, nothing that you buy ever works out of the box. So you need to customize it for your business practice. Maybe you shouldn't, but you need to be able to, I think, especially for some of the PayPal practices. We have PCI requirements because we deal with a lot of money. So we need to be able to PCI certify, we need to go to other vendors. We need to run all that through. We also didn't want to do vendor lock-in, right? We're big enough to want to have the ability to spray across industry globally and not do that. Also, PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay. I don't know if everybody knows that. eBay is a large commerce marketplace, I think, known worldwide. PayPal's the payment subsidiary of eBay. And eBay had already made considerable investments, both in VMware, OpenStack, Nasera, other cloud technologies. So we wanted to combine our heads with them and see where we could go forward. So that brings in OpenStack. If anybody just went to Jonathan Pickard's main session, it's about agility, right? OpenStack is about agility for PayPal. Let's get from this, six months to deploy six servers for this application to six minutes. And that's about agility for PayPal. So now let's get to the technical details of how we're doing this and why. This is our technology stack at PayPal here. The blue boxes are the kind of stuff you would expect at this conference. I did this exact same talk at VMworld. So I had to explain what all the boxes were.  But effectively, the blue is the stuff that sort of comes. The green is the stuff that PayPal has manipulated a lot or a little. And the red is the thing I'm going to talk about right now. So we use OpenStack right from trunk. We're fulsome and grizzly in multiple cells right now. Cell is our word, not the grizzly word. And we have a custom load balancers of service. DNS is a service. And firewall is a service. The firewall as a service is not quite all the way there yet. But the load balancers and DNS are used real time in production today and have been for six months. And then our deployment portal, it's a cool little front end that the dev team mocked up for our developers to build stuff in QA. I think everybody, if you haven't, please go check it out, we took Asgard from Netflix. We ported it to OpenStack and we contributed it back to the community a few months ago. And so we have an Asgard-based front end that we're enabling for multiple clouds. And that's our deployment portal for most people. So we're building this OpenStack cloud. We had our first set of hypervisors in production in December of 2012. And since then, we've deployed a lot more. So if you take a look at about June of 2013, you end up with this picture. FC is fault zone. And when you take a look at PayPal, of course the standard high availability rules of a big company apply. We need four of everything. We need three data centers, et cetera. So you end up needing 12 of everything. And in our ESX world, because we're based on Vblock and because of the capabilities of ESX, we consider that appropriate for stateful workloads. Something that needs to retain data, it needs V motion, it needs the SAN, it needs all those cool capabilities of VMware. But we sort of decided that maybe that's not appropriate for our web tier. If you take a look at how PayPal scales, and I think anybody from the US knows this, or can imagine this, both PayPal and eBay are three biggest days of the year, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then the last shipping day before Christmas. Those are our three biggest days of the year. If you take a look at the traffic volume on those days compared to January, for instance, it's hundreds or thousands of a percent difference for the different business lines. So that ramp up and scale up needs stateless things. So when we take a look at our cloud, the big orange box up there, our goal when we started to bring it to OpenStack was how can we make it cheap? How can we make it massively scale? And how can we make it all stateless? So when we picked KVM, one of my jobs is I'm the hardware guy on the team. So we picked a platform from HP, or HP based at PayPal, on the hyperscale SL230 product line. So we have 96 servers in Iraq, all local disks, Sandy Bridge series, let's see, I think I have more details over here. But effectively, so we have a big stateless OpenStack cloud and a big stateful VMware cloud right now in this case. And roughly it's probably 20,000 cores, 20,000 physical cores on each. So we have a lot of horsepower in each of our data centers to run the various things. So let's take a look at this as it applies to some of the people who are trying to use it on my sysadmin team. When we brought in VMware, we had all these grand visions of taking the vSphere and vCenter APIs. We were going to write some cool tools in front of it. We were going to put it in a little portal, and we were going to let people use that. What we ended up using is a PowerShell script using the Perl module that one of my sysadmins wrote on the weekend. And that has been our deployment tool for the last 18 months. So if you want to deploy something in VMware, you have to log in, start a PowerCLI, and run the build script. Well sysadmins don't like that. And then you go to the cloud, and you get the cool Asgard interface.  So we have two different sets of environments. Each vBlock is managed separately, because it has a zone vCenter. So we end up with 20 unique environments to manage. And that's why we want to put this all together under OpenStack. Originally, we started to have the debate, and it's still ongoing. Why don't we just take KVM and get rid of VMware? Why don't we do that? It would be easy. And being one of the guys who doesn't believe that we should do that, the reason why we don't do that is because we have things like a vBlock. VMware has certain capabilities that I need for the workloads that need it. Scott's opinion now, things like KVM are just not there at the quality of vMotion and DRS and auto placement. All those kind of things just aren't quite there yet. And so when you deal with things like that and the stability of the vCenter hypervisor, you need that VMware in your environment, especially in big corporate environments, where you have those commercial workloads that fit that. So it makes sense to have both. Real quick, back to our compute racks. Because we're stateless here, we have, at this point, introduced no shared storage into our cloud. We're just starting to get into some shared flash cinder-based things. But in general, we just have 96 servers in a rack, and we scale them horizontally. And our front end has 400 servers in a couple of racks. If 10 of them break, nobody cares. We follow that whole rule of 10%. I think Netflix has talked a lot about it. You don't care until 10% of your environment breaks.  So after integration, it'll be all pretty. The idea is that we'll have a standard cloud management zone, we'll call it the management network. It'll have our cloud in it with the Asgard front end. All the hypervisors will continue to live in their current form, but managed by OpenStack. So when PayPal talks about managing ESX and KVM, or vSphere and KVM, with OpenStack, this is what we mean. We are not taking and mushing the things together. We're using what vSphere is good at in the places that it's good at. We're using KVM in the places that it's good at. And we have put OpenStack on the top of it to manage it all. Because those people want a single interface to log into to manage everything. And then they can just pick the fault zone or availability zone or host aggregate that they want to deploy to. I like this slide because it's sort of tech speak. And this was a lot more important at the other places where I've given this talk. But a lot of people have asked me, don't you replace ESX with OpenStack? No, you don't. You don't replace ESX with OpenStack. First of all, ESX and vSphere are not the same as OpenStack. Nova is not the same as vSphere, vCenter, or ESX. Nova is kind of more like vCloud Director or vCloud Automation. And KVM is like ESX or vSphere. I use them interchangeably, sorry. So when you start talking about replacing one for the other, and you talk about hypervisors, you talk about KVM versus vSphere. And then you have to talk about this stuff on top of it. You don't just say, I'm going to replace VMware with OpenStack. I'm going to replace vSphere with OpenStack. So how are we going to do this? So as of today, we have ESX hooked to our OpenStack cloud in our QA space. We missed our end of year moratorium to get it in production, but we'll be doing that in Q1. As you can imagine, we stopped working on the site many months before Holiday to make sure it's rock solid. So what did we think about when we actually tried to bring ESX into our cloud? These things right here are sort of important criteria, things we needed to solve. First, we started looking at the functionality. Does KVM and ESX do the same thing? Yes, we're pretty good. They can all host virtual machines. When I bring ESX under OpenStack, can I do the things my sysadmins want? Can I build machines? Can I turn them on? Can they turn them off? Can I VNC to them or do the virtual console? And can I rebuild them like they were, keeping the same IP and the same hostname? And can I delete them and make them go away? Yes, all those things are there. We're good there. Auto configuration, that's more interesting. We have sort of the standard T-shirt methodology for VMs, extra small, small, medium, large, bare metal sized. Can it apply those configuration settings on build time? We're good there. IP address management is more interesting. I'll get to that later. Can I build from snapshot and template? That's interesting in this case, because especially when you start talking about multi-hypervisors, you can't use the same snapshot on different hypervisors. So you have to maintain glance images for a hypervisor and potentially every image size and potentially every pattern of application on image size per hypervisor.  Let's see, can we deploy in the fault zone? Yep, that's just a Python tweak. And can we put it in one interface? Yes, because we're considering all these a fault zone, host aggregate. I guess we're using the term host aggregate now. So what version of vSphere do I need? Did a lot of testing in our lab. I originally started on vSphere 50U1. And I found that I could make it work, but I had to start backporting a whole bunch of things. If you take the vSphere 50 vCenter appliance and you tried to build it, there's unfortunately a couple of bugs in VMware's implementation that they were missing the XML API libraries. So you had to copy in a whole bunch of stuff and make it work, et cetera, et cetera. So it was just a big problem. So we stuck with ES6-5.1. Since I did this slide, I didn't upgrade it to 5.5. So 5.5's out now, it works better than 5.1. So 5.5 is where I would go if you're gonna do this if you can. If you're going brand new, do 5.5. But if you have 5.0, I recommend 5.1 vCenter. I think 5.1 will manage a 5.0 vSphere just fine, but you at least need the APIs in the 5.1 vCenter to do everything we're doing here. So the hypervisors is interesting. Because PayPal has PCI, and because we have no proof that anybody has ever certified a KVM hypervisor for PCI with multiple zones on the same hypervisor, right? A PCI and a non-PCI workload on the same hypervisor. We made the decision that a single hypervisor could either be PCI or not PCI. In the VM world, you can use vShield and you can share. But in the KVM world, we have no proof that that's actually been certified, so we go separate with that. And so we started to have our VMware workloads follow that same pattern just for ease of use, right? So if we build a hypervisor, it's either a PCI hypervisor or it's a non-compliance, non-PCI hypervisor. And the open stack management just follows our standard network. We share with the vColonel network sometimes and we have it separate from the vColonel network other times. When you take a look at the storage requirements of the data store support for the ESX driver, the vCenter driver for Nova, it has, you need a data store cluster in VMware. I should have probably asked if people speak VMware in here, is there a lot? Okay, enough. So you can sort of cheat and you can create a data store cluster with a single disk and you just call it a data store cluster. So you can get around this requirement if you don't have a shared storage. But you need shared storage for this to work, the data store cluster anyway. You need DRS enabled with auto placement. So if you have shared storage, it works with multiple clusters. But if you have a single disk that you're cheating on, of course, it just auto places on that one data store. And you have to create this in advance or at least we did when we implemented it. I believe this is all checked into a Vannano where the Cinder support is there. I have not tested that, but I think the Cinder is there. And so I think people know this OpenStack grizzly picture from Ken Peppel. How do we actually plug this in to OpenStack? Now that we have, you know, I have like 12 vCenters flying around the network and I have all these KVM environments, how do I plug this in? It's all about Nova, right? So this is what makes this easy. How do you put ESX in my cloud and how do I make it easy? And you do it like this. There's a couple of different ways. People who know KVM, it's just a libvert thing and I spelled libvert wrong and I forgot to fix it. But with VMware and vCenter, there's two ways to do it. We'll start on the left. You can either point at vCenter. So if you already manage yourself with vCenter, use the vCdraver and you modify the NovaConf to point at your vCenter. You give it the IP address and all that kind of stuff and it manages through vCenter. But if you have standalone hypervisors, you can just use the ESX driver and point it directly at that ESX. And so these features for Nova are already included out of the box. Unless you want to download some of the fixes that VMware has contributed back, you can basically just use Grizzly or Havana trunk to do what you need to do for VMware. A quick sample of my lab config of Nova here. Pretty simple to get this to work. Once you, so this is implemented against a out of the box vCenter 5.1 appliance with all the defaults built in. So I put in the host API in my lab, root VMware is the standard appliance password. I had built a cluster called open stack test in my vCenter. It had two hosts with a net app behind it, I think, and this is the wisdom location for where the APIs are for the vCenter appliance. And this is all you need in order to build VMs from the Nova side. When you take a look at the cluster name, I'm not sure I talk about it in here. But originally out of the gate in first Grizzly, you could only put a single cluster here. And so what that meant is if you had something like RV block or you had multiple, multiple clusters inside your VMware farm, you needed a Nova compute node for every single cluster you wanted to manage. And so if you have lots of clusters, you end up with a whole bunch of Nova compute nodes. But they added a feature so that you can just comment delimit this now. And so this single Nova compute node can manage any amount of clusters on this vCenter server. But you still need a Nova compute node per vCenter. One to one mapping. So what about glance? Glance needs a raw VMDK format disk. Sort of the standard way you would build disks under OpenStack. The one that we built here is our standard Red Hat 20 gig VM. Has to be saved in VMDK format and imported that way. They may have fixed this by now, but originally it had to be thick provision. There was no thin provisioning allowed. It ballooned it when you deployed it. And in the VMDK world, it had to be all merged back into one VMDK. You couldn't deploy split VMDKs where you had one as one disk and one as the other disk or multiple disks. You had to merge it all back into one VMDK. In our front end environment, we had two VMDKs, so we had to combine those back together and figure out a way to deploy like that. And I talked about this before, but in your multi-hypervisor cloud, you have to maintain an image per hypervisor inside your glance and then deploy them as appropriate depending on which hypervisor you're deploying to. When we go about deploying the OS, this is kind of an interesting debate that we started internally. How do we take an ESX template and turn it into what we want? Either we can have a huge VMDK that we copy all over the place that's fully deployed or we can deploy a small pixie booted one effectively and use our cobbler kickstart infrastructure and let it take 10 or 15 minutes more. So we started out this way. We built a real tiny root disk, a couple of gigs, and we just threw it at our kickstart environment and we set it up so that it just kickstarted everything on that network and it built a small VM. It was real basic, it was just the only OS, but it ended up at the point where it was usable at that point. At the image deploy side, if you take a look at what KVM has today, it has the config drive sort of features where it can mount, it can make all the OS changes and then boot it back with all the characteristics that. At time of our testing, config drive wouldn't do that with a VMware VMDK image, so you had to use the VMware Tools APIs to attach to that disk and make the changes pre-boot. Alternatively, if you go the kickstart route, you can use the S99 route or you can use kickstart or cobbler criteria to make sure your machine ends up. Where it goes. So we're in a CIRA shop and we're quantum neutron based. In order to integrate this in our environment, which was already in CIRA, requires 3.2. VMware vSphere 5.1 cannot talk directly to allocate the port. NSX is integrated in 5.5 now with the kernel, so that all works. But in 5.1, you have to use the NSX-V app integration bridge. So effectively what you do on each hypervisor is you create a helper VM that's run in the V app and a separate transport zone in the CIRA. And then every VM that is built on this hypervisor gets put in that transport zone and attached to the VDS. And when it does that then this VM, even though it lives next to a standard VMware one, will talk to your quantum neutron network. This is not real elegant, but it works good. 5.5 is native in the kernel. Like I said, so again, if you're starting from scratch, then you should probably start with 5.5. I did not do any testing on 5.0 with that to see if it worked just 5.1. So what do we have left to do? Like I said, we're moving this into production and our goal for this year was to have just basic management build new capabilities. Early next year we'll introduce that build new capability. What we're not gonna do, at least right now is we're not gonna suck in and rebuild every VM we've ever built under VMware because that's just too much work. So we're gonna be doing new deployment testing. But what do we need to do? We need to do at scale testing. So we're pretty big. We need to build thousands at a time. We haven't done those thousands at a time. People who've used vCenter knows that you can do eight things at once usually. And if you're building a hundred VMs and you only do eight at once, then it could kind of take a while to do things. So we need to figure out how to scale those tens at a time, 200s or 1000s at a time across multiple vCenters. We're working with VMware to figure out how to do load testing on the drivers for those things. Almost everything that we had a problem with is fixed in Havana now and contributed back. We're grisly in the environment that we're running this in. So we have had to back port some of the Nova fixes from Havana back in. It wasn't too many, but enough to just fix a couple of the bugs like the multiple cluster thing. Multi-datastore enumeration is an interesting issue and I actually have to talk to them to see if they fixed it. But effectively, when you deploy a VM, it always picks the first datastore. So if you have 50 datastores, like the way our environment got set up is we had 52 terabyte datastores because that was most efficient at the time. It would be much better to have 100 terabyte datastore, honestly. But because we have 52 terabyte datastores and I can't delete them all, I have a problem right now where it always tries to use that very first datastore and then I have to sort of move things around, which is not real good. And then we're also working with VCE. I don't know if there's any VCE people in-house, but VCE is actually certifying a Vblock as an open stack Vblock. I think they announced it a couple of months ago. And so we will be able to call them as our integrated provider for help with open stack on Vblock. They've got this thing that they announced, I guess it's called intelligent operations. And basically, open stack, we'll talk to that for monitoring because it's sort of a converged watcher of that infrastructure. I know a lot of the other converged vendors, Hitachi, the NetApp hook in with VMware, a couple of the other ones, UCS, all have this little monitoring thing on top and those integrations up into the open stack monitoring is coming as well. So let's see, I think that's it. Reading materials that I used here, it's interesting it'll be in the deck if anybody wants it. Canon, Canon, Canon, both have contributed a lot in this space and VMware has one of the leading contributors now to make sure that VMware is a leading supported hypervisor. Everybody saw the canonical announcement that they are sort of the preferred open stack framework now to manage VMware. And please come use PayPal and if I have some time, I'm happy to answer any questions that anybody has. Yes. They reside in a Nova compute VM. It's exactly right. So we built a very small, a two core VM running KVM that we turned into a Nova compute node and then we made this Nova config on that compute node because I only have one of those. I want that to be controlled by vCenter with DRS and vMotion. So I'll let that compute node manage that cluster from within the cluster. Right, so FT, I would solve the problem with FT with VMware FT fault tolerance. That would be why I'm not concerned. If I didn't have that, yes, I would have the one-to-one mapping concern. But remember the only thing you lose is manageability. So if that VM dies, you can just reboot it, have the auto-reboot feature set in VMware and then that VM will come back in a couple of minutes unless it's totally broke. But you don't really lose anything in the meantime. The vCenter. So if we take a look at that compute model that we deploy where we have 96 compute nodes in one rack, if you can imagine having 96 standalone ESX-5-1s which need 96 Nova compute nodes to manage the 96 hypervisors and if you have five racks of that pretty soon you have 450 more Nova compute nodes. Just to keep track of those, it gets out of control too quick. Correct, we have some of the ESX drivers in the lab. We are not gonna do it in production. We're always gonna use vCenter. I can't answer that question if it's gonna remain or not. I know VMware is working on the vCenter driver. So it's there, right? Who Citrix wrote it originally, I guess. So it probably will live for people who need it. Okay, is Nasir required is the question. It is in our case because we're quantum based. If you're Nova flat DHCP, then you can allocate, yeah, if you're quantum, yes. Quantum, neutron, yes. If you're not, then no. At least in my experience. Do the application team decides if they're KVM or ESX? They don't actually. We separate it by environment effectively right now. Nobody really gets a choice to be stateful anymore, honestly. Unless you're really important. Everybody is required to be stateless. So we tell them to be stateless. So which department decides? So the team that I'm on is, what do we call it? Platform engineering and operations, infrastructure. And so my role is compute owner and I'm kind of the hypervisor owner with four other people in one of my other teammates in the room here. And I guess it's our responsibility to come up with the data to make the decisions on which is appropriate. At the beginning though, when we declared let's go open stack, we also declared that we would use whatever the common industry things were at that point, which were KVM, ESX fulsome. And so all net new stuff stateless was just gonna be that because it was free, right? That tagline that I talked about. And so there really wasn't a debate right there for that. But now when we talk about mission critical workloads, the compute team, along with the infrastructure architecture team has debates over whether you need three nines, four nines, five nines. So we kind of do that model. Does the hard, if the hardware gives us three nines, does your application have to be five nines? Or for instance, do you have to have the five nines infrastructure for your application? And that kind of decides it at this point. The quality of service. We're red hat shop today, yeah. Did we look at OVF as an exchange format? I'm gonna probably say no because our very early tries, I guess we didn't build new OVFs. We tried to convert existing VMDKs to consumable OVFs and that failed miserably with the crazy way we built those VMDKs. So we kind of gave up and for sake of speed went pure VMDK. So when PayPal made the open stack decision at the CTO level at PayPal, we decided that it was very important for PayPal and eBay as an entity to be an engineering leader in the open stack community. We wanted to have our name out in the industry. We wanted to be open stack and we wanted to show that we could take this tool manipulated to a huge Fortune 500 company. No, we did not say we're gonna get rid of VMware. We said we're gonna take this product and make it work and be agile with it. Like I said before, there's a lot of really important uses for VMware inside of PayPal and eBay. Core infrastructure, everybody knows there's a lot of things that come with VMware OVFs and that's the only place you can deploy it. Some people are getting around to KVM now, but I can tell you that that was not one of the criteria out of the box. Let's get rid of VMware. We brought in something that was open, that we could be leaders in, that we could go fast with. Anybody else? Please find me anytime if you have any other questions. Otherwise, thank you very much. I appreciate the time.


Clock is such that it is now time to move to member statements. So for the first member statement, I turn to the member from Mr. Kegawak, James Bay. Thank you, Speaker. While the government is dragging its feet, trying to roll out the vaccine, Northern communities in Ontario are showing resilience and are showing solidarity. Has been working around the clock to create a vaccination system that accommodates or scattered communities in Ontario for northeast and struggles with the limited vaccine supply. Given our territory that we do not have high-speed internet and that we are not using new technologies, we have called in. We have asked the community to contact residents in order to help them to get vaccinated. My office has also been helping. We have created a system for seniors who need help to book an appointment and to let them know when the vaccination clinic will be available. It's resourceful and capable of standing together in a situation where there are not left on their own in the middle of a global pandemic. I want to thank and remind those of Mr. Kegawak, James Bay, that Parkbind Health Unit is asking caregivers of seniors help them access the booking system for their age range. Merci. Thank you, Speaker. Thank you. Thank you. The next member statement, the member from Mississauga Streetsville. Good morning, Speaker. Today I would like to talk about a very important event that took place on Saturday night, Earth Hour. Earth Hour is one of the world's biggest environmental movements. Each year, millions of people in more than 180 countries turn off their lights, showing their commitment to protecting the planet that we call home. Here in Ontario, in addition to our homes and businesses, landmarks like the CN Tower and Niagara Falls also went dark to recognise this occasion. Participating in Earth Hour is just one small step we can all take to protect our environment. I'm proud that this Government recognises the importance of protecting our environment and is taking action to do so. We are investing $20 million over four years in the Greenlands Conservation Partnership and $12 million over the next three years to support the Greenbelt Foundation's ongoing work to protect, promote and improve the Greenbelt in the Golden Horseshoe region, alongside the implementation of our Made in Ontario Environment Plan. In addition, we are leading consultations for the biggest expansion of the Greenbelt since it was created. Thank you to all of Ontario's businesses and families who took part, and I look forward to continuing this important work. Thank you very much. Member Statements. Member for Oshawa. Thank you, Speaker. Catherine Ross was born on March 26, 1921, and she just celebrated her 100th birthday. She has wonderful memories and stories of summers at the cottage, special friendships with great neighbours, and family moments that have kept her heart beating for a century. Catherine or Kay or Mrs. Ross or Aunt Kay goes by grandma to me. She is my person and I am hers. She now lives in a retirement home just around the corner from me. For years I have been a help and usually decent company, but now I am her registered essential caregiver. During the pandemic I have gotten a COVID test every week or every other so I can visit and help her following COVID protocols. For her birthday we set up a Zoom call. 100 years ago it would have been impossible to imagine a virtual party with loved ones on a computer screen or the internet. It was special and I am grateful to everyone who shared their best wishes with grandma through letters, videos, and messages. In her birthday message to family she wanted everyone to know she is happy, has been fully vaccinated, and is so fortunate. My 100 year old grandma is protected and I am relieved, but we want all of our neighbours and their families to be protected too. My office is flooded with worried and anxious people wanting their loved ones to be protected. So many people are waiting for vaccines. Durham Region Public Health Unit now has the fifth highest number of cases per capita. Numbers are climbing. The variants are spreading. Durham needs to be included in the government plans for expanding vaccine access and Durham Region pharmacies should be added to the government pilot project. Durham Region is in need of more vaccines and more access to them and they are needed immediately. Please support us. Thank you. Thank you. The next member statement, the member for Scarborough Rouge Park. Thank you Mr. Speaker. During the pandemic we have seen Ontario come together as a community and as a family. We have relied on each other. Our neighbours, our friends, our families for a source of comfort, hope and support during these times. We have seen the best in us and I would like to highlight to in this house another examples of Ontario spirit in my riding of Scarborough Rouge Park. I want to send a huge shout out to Bill Yon and David Adamson from Highland Creek Community Association for being true leaders in our community. Highland Creek Community Association and Italpasta have made generous donations over 100,000 pounds of food to the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank. This is an incredible example of the Ontario spirit and thank you. Bill, David and the entire Highland Creek Community Association for all that you're doing for our community during these exceptional times. You too truly embody the Ontario spirit and I'm proud to represent our riding such as Scarborough Rouge Park that has residents who are ready and willing to lead by example. Thank you Mr. Speaker. Member statements, the member for Nickel Belt. Thank you Speaker. Today I rise to say thank you to everyone who is working so hard in Sudbury and Nickel Belt through this difficult time. First I want to say thank you to Dr. Sutcliffe and our public health unit for their hard work in the last year. Thank you to our hospital worker for all they continue to do. Thank you to long-term care home and resident home workers for their courageous work throughout the pandemic and to for their help to get their residents vaccinated. Thank you to the teams at Chicago McQuay and the Shwagamok for the great work getting First Nation and Métis people vaccinated. Thank you to our homeless and shelter workers, paid and volunteers. A special thank you to the YMCA and the Samaritan Centre. The same goes for our home and community care sector worker. I thank you. Thank you to the City of Greater Sudbury that has stepped up in an incredible ways offering their arenas for vaccination site. Their workers including paramedics to help out. Thank you to our mental health and addiction workers dealing with an overwhelming numbers of cries for help of overdose and families left behind. I want to thank our teachers who are flipping back and forth between online and in-person teaching. Let's face it, there is nothing easy about teaching a four-year-old child over Zoom. There are many more essential workers and businesses big and small that have worked hard from Albao to Foliad, Gogama and everywhere in between. As northerners, we came together to help each other today and I want to say thank you. Let's remember Speaker, let's be calm, let's be kind, let's be safe, this too will end. Thank you. Thank you very much. Member Statements. The Member for Oakville North Burlington. Thank you, Speaker. During Hellenic Heritage Month and this week of Passover, we must remember one of the saddest chapters in the history of Greece. In March 1943, the Nazis rounded up and deported the Jews of the city of Thessaloniki, sending them to the concentration camps. Before the war, the city had more than 50,000 Jewish citizens of whom 46,000 were deported and killed. The city was home to most of Greece's Jewish population, with most families having arrived after their expulsion from Spain in 1492, mostly Sephardic Jews speaking Ladino, a variant of Spanish. Up to the 19th century, Jews were a majority in the city, with 33 synagogues, thriving schools and businesses. Outside Thessaloniki, the ancient Romaniotes were Jewish families in Greece since the time of Alexander. Across Greece, about 70,000 Jews died. Some were saved. Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens saved 1,200 people, and Bishop Risostomos of Zacintos saved all 275 of his Jewish citizens. Today, only about 1,300 Jews live in Thessaloniki, 6,000 in all of Greece. Some descendants of survivors live here in Canada. The Jewish community of Greece is working to build a holocaust museum in Thessaloniki to honor those who were killed, to remember their lives, and ensure their contributions to Greece are never forgotten. May their memories be eternal. Thank you. Member Statements, the member for St. Catharines. Thank you, Speaker. Despite all the work of community agencies, according to this month's coroner's report, Niagara had the second highest opioid-related death rate in the province. This situation is really serious. St. Catharines has many volunteers and community agencies that are doing their part in the opioid crisis. I stand today to celebrate their strengths and their contributions. St. Catharines is fortunate to have activists, recovering addicts with lived experience, and volunteers that continue to support our city during the opioid crisis. One of the more visible contributions is the needle pickup, which helps keep our streets safe. There is the tireless work of actionist Fred Bowring. There is Karen Orlandy and her volunteers at Serval Spire. There is Andrew Lilly and their volunteers from the Street Works Department, a positive living Niagara. St. Catharines also has an amazing group of city employees, a local golf disc group, and many other volunteers who are active with needle cleanup. It takes the community to do this great work. While St. Catharines has the heart, the provincial government holds the purse strings. It is essential we provide more provincial support, connect folks at the margins of society, and provide them with education, naloxin, and community support. The pandemic has exaggerated overdote deaths and the provincial funding plan is needed today, one that uploads costs and outreach, needle pickup, and safety supplies. Thank you. Member Statements. The Member for York Centre. Thank you, Speaker. The deadly effect of the lockdown is real, but the public health modeling, the fear on the basis of which the government makes these decisions, is not. By now, most MPPs privately realize that the lockdown is deadlier than COVID. Despite a quarter million surgeries postponed, a million cancer screenings that didn't happen, overdoses skyrocketing, suicidal ideations that are at least quadruple, and a complete paralysis of our healthcare system, the premier is not alarmed. But the modeling and fear that our ICUs may be overwhelmed is always off by two to five times. On September 30th, Dr. Brown convinced the government to place the GTA in red. He said that if Ontario keeps Michigan's case trajectory, we'll have over 250 ICU patients by end of October. Ontario indeed met Michigan's case trajectory, but the number of ICU patients was only 73, more than three times less than predicted. On January 12th, Brown said that by the end of the first week of February, even with a reproductive rate of 1%, Ontario will have over 700 ICU patients. The rate was indeed 1%, so we met the trajectory, but the number of patients was 325, or less than half than predicted. Speaker, a year later, public health refuses to admit a basic error, that ICU admission is not proportional to cases. They're not a function of each other, because it's not about how many get COVID, it's who gets COVID. But the death, disease, depression, bankruptcy, and divorce are a function of the lockdown. Please look at the numbers. The government knows it's doing harm. They're afraid to admit a mistake. I'm telling the government, you do not have the consent of the people to lock us down. Do not impose a third lockdown. We never left the second. Please show leadership and save lives by ending this deadly lockdown. Member Statements. The Member for Richmond Hill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise in the House to speak about the exciting new Centre for Seniors, the Care First Campus of Care, right in my riding of Richmond Hill. Care for us has been caring for seniors since 1976, providing many services from transportation to deliver meals, assisted living, home care, and more. I'm so proud of our government and the Ministry of Long-Term Care, who have allocated 2,983 safe, modern, long-term care spaces to be built through the 29 projects across the province. 1963 new spaces and 1,015 upgraded spaces. Of the 29 projects, 23 involve the construction of brand-new buildings, and 19 involve campuses of care that is to be built as well, and is to be provided on the same site as well in Care First. COVID-19 caused unprecedented challenges for many non-profit organisations and thousands of seniors who rely on the community service to maintain their well-being. In fact, the past Sunday they host a special young at heart fundraising campaign to fundraise for this. So, working together with the government, we are building support for the seniors. Thank you. Thank you very much. Member Statements. Member for Scarborough Centre. Thank you Mr. Speaker. Sorry about that. I'm very happy to share with the house what an excellent time I had during my Easter crafting event with some of the kids of Scarborough Centre. We did two crafts, a bunny pom-pom plate and a wooden bunny ornament, and I must say I was pretty impressed by the creative chops of the little budding artists who joined me. We shared fun stories and the kids told me about how happy they are to be in class where they get to learn and see their friends. I delivered top-notch jokes as we crafted, gems such as what is a bunny's favourite type of music, hip-hop, and what do you get when you cross an insect and a rabbit, bug's bunny. I scored some laughs and some eye rolls, which to be honest reminded me of my time as a teacher, and the good time was had by all. As Easternears, it was nice to virtually gather and connect with the community. It reminded me what joy children find in life, and reminded me to do the same. While we are all going through a difficult time, I look forward to Easter and commemorating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ soon. I am thankful for the sacrifice that he made for all of us, and will share a quick quote by Floyd Tomkins. Let the Resurrection joy lift us from loneliness and weakness and despair to strength and beauty and happiness. I certainly saw strength and happiness in the young people that I joined this past weekend, and they and their resilience fills me with hope for the future. One more joke to end on a high note, how do you know carrots are good for your eyesight? Have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses? On that note, eat your vegetables, and I wish you all a very happy Easter and thank you very much. That concludes our member's statements this morning.


Welcome to Toffy TV, it is the match preview legion lighted versus Everton at Elland Road, somewhere that we haven't been for a while and not somewhere we've travelled well to in years gone by, to make memories, but yeah I mean I've got the winning memory, the winning goal but it's going to be a tough game, we're not following on from the next round. This is a new castle performance, this is not going to be an easy game, it might be easy because we're playing away and we seem to be doing, this would be fourth, would it be fourth away game in a row if we won it? If they won it yeah, which is if. Normally we don't get four in a season, so that's a bonus. It is, we won one of the last 37 games of Elland Road, so make it that what you will. Didn't have to throw that at me so early. But there won't be any fans in there which will make a big difference, but I did watch Leeds against Leicester the weekend and they do run around very fast. Which means that. They've run around? They've run around, they're already one up on us and they've run around really fast which makes it true. No listen, they've done really well this season and because there's problems it goes and beat us it goes and so. If they beat us it'll be the first time they've done a double over us since they were first promoted, it'll be in the season which they've come up. So we're going to have to be at our best and we're going to have to play the low block. We are low blocking it aren't we? We've got it but there's no other way to play it sadly, there's no other way to play it because at the moment. We haven't got Alan yet but we're just not playing well either so that's the issue. The issue is we're going to have to sit on the edge of our box trying not to give them any room to break on us and try to counter attack them. Like we played at Leicester and how we did at Wolves let them have more of the ball than us and hopefully hit them on the break but everyone's going to have to play really well because they were all shocking at the weekend. Obviously Leith have won their last two games as well and there's a lot of this in the Premier League teams seem to go in waves don't they? And they're obviously just hitting a good spell now and yeah we do have an issue with certainly teams putting pressure on us, teams playing high up the press because we pass so slow. That's the problem, we don't go through the gears and that's our biggest problem. We've seen that at the weekend, we've seen that a lot of games, we've seen that when you said when Leith played us like Southampton away when teams were up against us and Leith are a very fit team. Obviously that's the trademark, that was the thing saying when I watched that Leith documentary what caused them to get so many injuries and I know it's been thrown at them, they got up last season because they had that little break but we'll never know whether that's two or not. They've added to it this season and they've brought those players in and now they might be without some of the better players for this game but it is a tough game. Especially when Everton have come off the back of Leicester, Newcastle, playing this game, Manchester United then we've got space. And you're asking them from the same players, we keep on reiterating this, the squad is, it's just so thin and you're asking the same players certainly in the attacking areas of the pitch to go out and put performances every game to the level that we need it to be. To beat teams like this you just seem to have so much energy that we don't. The thing in the home game when these beat us, we did that chances, we had a lot of chances, they did as well, don't get me wrong, they should have scored a few goals themselves but we did that chances because they do leave the door open. The game against Leicester at the weekend, the chances Leicester missed was incredible but then they had a threat on the break. The third goal, they just fly forward and Everton haven't got done like that with the second goal of the weekend so that's something we've got to be wary of to why Godfrey's got to play, no question about it. So we will have to be wary of it but we can cause them issues off set plays, there's no question about it. I don't know whether Everton might be better suited by putting maybe going 4-4-2 or something. Because I think if you went with a low block with 4-4-2, again the midfield would probably be a little bit overrun but you've got to have someone helping them out. We don't like you just said, we don't move the ball quickly enough through the areas of the pitch to really drag them out of position so we might have to go from back to front, go long to them but to do that you've got to have someone round them, you can't jump and pull it down and hold it for everyone to get there. So you might have to go a little bit more direct in this to try to miss the midfield out a little bit and get into the back line. The mobility's an issue in our midfield. The core, we've got it but it's other areas and we'll play so it's not exactly the most mobile. I imagine Everton will just play what they normally play but just 4-3-3. That's the case, we're going to have to have golffry like I said in it right back and then I'll have obviously the two centre box. You've got them, Luca D might provide a little bit of width for us, Leeds. Rodd Regal looks like he's out, he's done his groin, he's got late tests on Bamford and Rhaffene and if they don't make it then that would be a huge boost for Everton. Because there Bamford's been great for him, he's got a cracking goal here with down Rhaffene, he's got to win it against those lovely left foot on him. He's a real threat as well but from our perspective we're going to have to be solid, we're going to have to work. I imagine Tom Davis will come back into the team alongside the core and maybe it might be wise to throw someone else who's mobile in there but if not, if it's Davis and the Core, maybe it'd be wise to put Gomez in there or Saita Shigat and try and join in and if it's going to be him. I still feel like either of them don't give us the legs we need, especially against a team like this. That's why I would put Holgate in Adam if he had all right back in the other one whether he's golffry, whether he's there just too well with their mobility because then it might allow us to play a little bit higher up the pitch and cause them problems because otherwise we're going to be just chasing our tails and hoping that we get the first goal and then it gives us something to cling on to. To game you can win, don't get me wrong, they're not Manchester City in the pump or whatever but they are a good side and they're a very, very energetic side. It's about going back to the water from the middle. We've only lost three games. We've lost two since we last played Leeds, haven't we in the Premier League? Both of them. That's the way to look at it. It's not like we're shipping goals, it's not like we're losing loads of games. We've lost two games since then in the months of December in January, obviously both game in January. I think what happened on Saturday was obviously, we mentioned this when we did the final where, too much respect paid but some are like Leeds, not enough respect paid, some are like Leeds, you've got to pay them the respect of you know how hard work and you know they're going to create chances, you know they're going to give you opportunities. But for me the way we've looked at it, the way from home, Leicester and Wolves, you know, Sheffield United, be tight at the back which means you've got to have that foreing. Maybe Dean plays, I don't know but he still looks mad away from me. I know he's back and he's fit and stuff but he still looks like he leaves the door open but without providing enough going the other way. I think you've got to get that balance. So what would you do with Dean? I put him on the bench. For a game like this I think where you want to be solid, manager might feel starting them and maybe Ben Godfrey on the other side and starting someone in like Tom might give us enough. Maybe you can't take Leiford Dean out of the team but there's got to be just little changes that he's got to be prepared to make. Does he go back to like what he did against Leicester and Wolves with Dean on the left side? Possibly so and then you might say well I'll put the charlatan on the other side and leave a woe be out then, at least you've got someone coming off the bench. Cos I think that's always got to be in the forefront of, don't put all your eggs in one basket as well, don't always put all the players on the pitch at once, leave some on the bench for that and I know people look at like being on the benches like well you're not good enough but it's not sometimes, sometimes it's like no no I'll get 25 minutes out of you for the most important part of the game. I think that's where we don't always look after our players, it's not always the worst thing having a good player coming off the bench. If you do have a couple of options and maybe Dean playing left midfield and maybe the charlatan playing right midfield or the right side could help us, I just think that they're really the only options we've got and we've got to look after knocking seeding first and then build on that and that's what we've done at Wolves, that's what we did when we played Leicester away as well, who have seen us good sides or teams that we certainly feared a little bit when we were going into those matches so yeah let's not forget that we can be a good team and especially when we're not conceding goals and then build on that and hopefully that will get us through, you hope. I've just got a battle having me in the scraffer everything, you know, and if we do that and we keep it tight we can win the game, you know, I've only got three at the weekend and they don't score loads and loads of goals leads but they have the opportunity to because they do fly forward and like you say we've got to stay in the game. But what we've got to be doing is that we've got to be better on the counter attack, we've got to be better on the counter attack. I don't expect us to move the ball as fast as they do, but with someone like Hamilton Rodriguez though he can move the ball, he doesn't move but he moves the ball and if you've got wheel and runners, if you've got Richard Allison or whatever, you've got to have those wheel and runners to push on and I think that's where we've got to start being better, we've got to start being so much better when we counter attack because we just look really limp. Well, it's hard to come, even when we break and we look like we might get it, but at the time we've got the ball under control, it's just the chance goes, it's like you look at, like I said, the most late at the weekend and the bamfits gole don't want to put them to one of the balls. It's sharp if you're in the first time and it's out of his feet in before Leicester have even had a chance to set and then the third goal, the break on them and the running with the red, it's ridiculous though. It's like that was like 90th minute or something, the running like it's a bloody 100m sprint, wherever we break out, it's like we'll switch it, is anyone here? I know what you're doing, that's how I'm having the fitness to back it up. No it is, it is of course. I know what you're doing, we don't know what we're doing, we don't know what we are, we don't, at the moment, there's no style as such, there's getting into the good plays and see what happens, which is weird. That's fine Leitha, built the same way, that's fine, I'm not suggesting evidence should be built the same way because there's lots of different styles in the Premier League, it's just that, our players, we haven't got fast enough players and that's the problem in the squad.  It's frustrating because there's been times this season when you've seen how good Everton can be and you look and go, we actually look like a real threat here, but it almost seems like we get knocked out of our strife very quickly, whereas people stop doing this stuff, whereas a team like Leith, what you've got to respect with like Bobby Else has done and what their players have done is they still keep the values all the time, they might lose. You know, they've lost lots of games, they've lost nine games this season, but they're still having the right good going every game with we. Everton can lose games, it happens in football, especially now, everyone's beaten everyone, but I still get. The games we lose by, as we lose by with a wimper. It's like there's nothing though, it's almost like we just don't give everything out for it and that's what annoys me more than anything. Yeah, we lose games with a wimper, all the home games maybe by, well even Man United, even after a good first 20 minutes, we just died the death in the game and never showed anything. And I said the three games that Leith's, Westam and the Newcastle game, the minute we conceded the goal and knew the game was over, that shows what we've got. We don't really have the kind of plays you can lift themselves once something bad happens. So that's why scoring the first goal is hugely important for us, it's hugely important for us that we get that first because I just think that when we go behind Leith on in games, we just don't seem to have. And that comes from the bench as well, if you look at the bench and you've got nothing that can change the game, we're only one of two teams that have failed, a substitute have failed to score this season. That's shocking, that's shocking, your bench is a huge part of your tactical situation having someone who can come off the bench who can change the game. And Leith's eyes have been looked and gone, oh god this fellow come on he could change the game, whether it's coming back from injury or he's been left there on paper. We've got to be very careful in the next few games because they're very, very tough and we've got to be careful that we don't just start sliding away from where we want to be. And I know as I said before the season will come in waves and we'll have good runs and bad runs but we can't fall into a pattern, that's the thing, we can't fall into a pattern where people simply don't believe. This is an important game, it's important to have a really good performance and response because the manager has come out and he said things after Newcastle game which should have players more than anything, which will be lazy, not trying. These don't attitude, these are words that should have players more than anything else because if someone questions you that you're not working or you haven't got the attitude. That to me is like ringing the bell there mate. The lazy shout especially. Lazy is a strong word in football. He's right to do it because we didn't have the attitude. Players, we see this sometimes with everyone and it looks like the players don't respect the other team like they expect it to be easy, be easy today. And I think that was what we were guilty of when we played Leeds at home last time. I think we thought we'd been promoted, we'll beat them, we're too good for them. We certainly, it was certainly the case when Westam beat us 100%. We turned up on that go Friday, sorry on that New Year's Day, easy this 3.3 and then we'll get back into the top and they beat us on Saturday was the same. One thing they won't be complacent going in now, not after last time, not at the results Leeds have had. You can't be complacent. Leeds looking to complete their first double over us since 1991 should that. Over the 45 sides Everton have faced at least 10 times away from home in soft flight history. The lowest win rate on the road is against Leeds. We've won just 6% of our games there. Leeds have won all of the midweek games. Everton have lost three of the four Premier League games this season when they've had 60% or more possession. Stop having possession. The only one we won was West Brom. The opposition have more possession. Patrick Bamford has been directly involved, 15 goals in his last 20 games for Leeds, scored 11 and got 4 assists.  Fils you with loads of hope. I'm filled with bags of confidence going into this game. Everton have surprised us before and hopefully they'll surprise us again. Let's hope. You know what, we've got two games in the hand and if we won them, I know they're both tough but if we won them, we'd be in the top four. That just shows how mad the season is even when we're all feeling a little bit down. There you go. Let us know your thoughts in the comments on this one. What are you expecting from the games? You hope we go back to the low block four centre back. What do you think we should be having a good right goal at Leeds? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Make sure to give this video a like. Subscribe if you haven't already. If you want more great videos, join us over on Patreon where we do live daily shows. The link is just down there. Thanks for watching. See you later.


Hello artist welcome to Monet cafe.  Do you ever want to just paint like a kid again? Well? That's what I did with these metallic watercolors. Oh, there's so much fun I'd also really appreciate it if you would take a moment right now to like Subscribe and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos And I'm able to keep these free lessons coming because of the support from my patrons on my patreon page if you would like to consider becoming a patron It's only five dollars a month and you get extra goodies and extra content So I saw these van Gogh metallic and interface watercolors in a painting demonstration, and I can't help it I'm just a color addict. I had to get them and play with them. That's what this video is about Playing a little bit. We often get too serious as artists So I'm gonna be talking about these in this lesson and doing a little painting demonstration Now I found them on Dick Blick site and they're $50. Okay, so this is maybe like you say hey I got a birthday coming up. Maybe somebody special in your life can get these for you So as I usually do I like to create a color guide I just got a piece of watercolor paper and a black marker and I marked off all the names and numbers of the colors then I used a white plate just to squeeze out a little sample of each color and Boy, they are sparkly But I'm gonna show you something that is to me just the coolest you see how they look on this white watercolor paper The magic happens to me anyway when you add these to black So let me speed up through this a little bit and show you where the magic happens Thus far these have all just been shimmery bronze gold and just some gorgeous iridescence going on But this I want you to pay attention to this bottom row this bottom row is what's going to really be Crazy awesome when I put it on black paper You might can see here that the color names from left to right are red blue violet and green Does that look like those colors on this white watercolor paper? I don't think so and to demonstrate on the black surface I'll be using our Teza. It's a six inch by six inch water-friendly black paper.  This is a great 100% cotton watercolor paper you can see where I cut out the little six inch by six inch Square to make my color guides the same size I also just used a white plate to apply all of the watercolor colors and Of course, you'll need some water. These are watercolors and a brush This set does come with its own little brush and a nice little sponge to dampen So I liked this brush fine But I always kind of go back to my favorite brushes for watercolor Which are made by the Princeton brush company lots of these products can be found on my Amazon shop and I always have a link to that in the video now to do white on this. I didn't want to use a charcoal pencil I decided to use my Posca acrylic white marker, you know, this has got to show up on the black surface so I did the same thing where I marked off all of the color names and Numbers and because that's rather boring to watch Let me jump forward and show you the magic of these metallic watercolors again paying attention to this bottom row so as you can see putting these on black paper just really creates such a brilliant and Metallic color and also too when it dries It's a little bit different when it dries and the neat thing is when you move it it literally is The reflections and the light changes the color. So it's really kind of fun. That's why I said this Demonstration is about just having some fun. I do know that we can get very uptight as artists So alright here this one especially look at this blue now when I did this on the white surface It didn't look blue at all and those little areas that are still kind of wet looking in white They will dry to not show the white. It'll be just the blue or the purple. Look at the purple It's like a magenta purple and oh my gosh, purple is my favorite color. Is that not? Fantastic and fun and the green you can see now it really now it's green So these colors make sense when you put them on a black surface. Oh my goodness They're still a little damp right here, but wow so shimmery and gorgeous and you know I might veer away from some of the traditional painting Professional painting, but Monet cafe is about having fun and getting creative. All right So now you can obviously see how the ones on the white card don't look like especially those bottom colors at all But they still have their function in certain types of paintings. You may want to create. Alright, so now I decided to have a little fun Using my Princeton brush company two different brushes here one of them has a really nice point to it And of course some water. I often like to use two containers of water and also some paper towels And I am going to use in this case the white charcoal pencil So as you saw at the beginning I thought dragonflies would be really fun to create some iridescent Shimmery colors and I decided to do this from imagination and just play When's the last time you just got out some drawing paper or a surface to paint on and you just said you know what? I'm just gonna play today I know I can tell that you guys do this because I do it and in all my different art groups I can see it happening all the time where artists get a little stagnant or You know just feeling a little down that their work is Not loose enough and I think the reason for that is because we're not playing and I like to say to paint with the thought that you know what? I might just throw this away and Also, I think of it too like I'm just gonna talk to you guys while I create these Oh real quick. Let me say I took a kneaded eraser. I didn't want the white lines quite so dark I wasn't sure if they would show up still When I added the watercolor so I decided just to kind of knock down the white a little bit and I actually ended up not using the white plate for this one. I decided to use this little watercolor Plastic palette. These are so cheap. You can get them at the dollar store But anyway back to what I was saying I find that often as beginning artists We have a goal in mind That we want to have a beautiful painting when we're done and so we Kind of get too serious And we also judge ourselves too harshly when the painting is complete And so that's why I think starting with an attitude of just going, you know what? I'm going to be like a kid again You know when you got a box of crayons and a coloring book when you were a kid You didn't think oh, I'm going to create a masterpiece You thought I'm just going to have some fun And so that's part of the point about this and you know, like I said, I might I might veer off the professional artist type of videos But Monet cafe is not really about that It's about learning to paint of course And hopefully giving you guys a lot of good content and information with the real core art principles But we don't want to lose that childlike passion of art and I really believe it's I'd say more than 50 percent in the joy of the creation You know, of course, there's some value in the final product You know, I'm not going to say it's not because of course we all do Hope to get to where we're creating some beautiful art that we can share But I think more of it is about the experience than we usually realize or that we usually embrace So that's kind of my little My little mama artist talk to you guys right now And I'm saying this from experience because I am a super competitive person any of you guys out there like that And when I was starting in art, I was comparing myself to so many other artists And I I didn't have the skills under my belt yet. So it was kind of ridiculous for me to compare myself to other artists So I think of it like Other genres of creativity like music When you're learning to be a musician, you don't just jump right in there and play a song You got to do the hard work first, but you can do it through having fun. So all right now, let's get to some Instruction, that's enough talking So as you can see, I had already applied kind of a shimmery silvery color I didn't give you guys all the names to these colors, but this one is the what's called the red I believe and I'm just glazing it over the wings in different areas I'm trying trying not to apply it too awfully thick But part of this was experimentation for me because I had never used these types of watercolors either So that's where all the the fun comes in So I added just a few Of the wings of the dragonflies having a little bit of the red And then I thought I'd mix it up and try a few other colors on some of the different wings And this one I believe is the blue which is really crazy. That doesn't look blue, right? But once again, here comes the magic You start putting this down and it's like voila. There it is I talk about magic a lot when I'm painting because I've shared this story before I think in the last video My dad bought me some kind of cheap magic sets when I was a kid I like to use the word illusion rather than magic and I actually took Magic or illusion lessons. He saw I really liked I liked the Um aspect of making people go. Wow, how'd you do that? And that's kind of what art is like too We're taking a three-dimensional world and putting it on a two-dimensional surface In kind of a way that fools the eye or tricks the eye So yeah, I took magic lessons. Oh, here's the green. Look how fun that is Um, and I actually I was like, I think I was probably like seven or eight when I really got into it then when I was in sixth grade. How old are you 11? I started doing um Magic shows I would do birthday parties and um things that at my school I did a presentation even with the the fire and stuff like that. So I really got into it I wanted to mention too. This is the one that's kind of a pretty gold color and um, I Wanted to point out that see you can see in the upper right hand corner there Some of them some particular colors are very liquidy And I wasn't sure what to do about that But I just squeezed it out Some of them had a lot of liquid at the front of the tube And they seemed to work fine as long as you squeezed out enough to kind of mix it up with some of the part That's a little bit more solid. So just dabbing in some color and and once again my dragonflies. They're they're nothing special I just thought let me go out of my head and think what do dragonflies look like I probably could have done some better dragonflies if I had pulled up some reference images Um, but I did have fun. This was a saturday when I did this and saturday is my favorite day of the week I just love um, just being able to do something for me and to relax and And uh, just take a a little break for the day and I say a break. It's not really a break I still always work, but I do it for the fun of it So I hope you guys take some time to do things like that for yourself as well And I had realized all of my dragonflies were from a kind of looking down on them position So I decided to make this little guy turned a little bit so his wings were in a different position All right, all of that was real time. So let me speed up a little bit.  So I decided to add some splashes of white gouache And just to make it look like there was maybe stars or fireflies or anything like that And I just embraced the fun and creativity of this And again, I do believe this is going to make you a better artist when you try to do something professionally You'll loosen up. You're hopefully your marks will be more gestural I added a little bit more color to the wings a little bit more of the gold. Isn't that fun? Oh, and I wanted to mention I know a lot of you guys Um are like I was and I still am very I have to be very frugal And some of you are not in the financial position to go out and buy $50 Watercolor set so use whatever you have you don't have to do this with metallic watercolors you can get out a piece of watercolor paper and just do it with Regular watercolors on white watercolor paper or if you have black paper use acrylic You can do this in pastel, but the goal is to loosen up be a kid again and have some fun So I decided to add some little swirly cues. I'm just totally going like what can I do here and just letting my brain go weird Which it does kind of naturally So anyway, so I had a little bit more fun with this. I did like it with just the black and The little gouache splashes and my swirly cues. Is that a is that a term swirly cue? But I decided to do something else that was a little fun Maybe I experiment too much on my channel. I don't know But I thought hmm. What would happen if I decided to add some of this pretty blue in the negative spaces So I just kind of worked around the dragonflies leaving a little bit of a black Edge, uh, I didn't go all the way to the wing in other words. I left a little Edge of black around the dragonfly and around the wings And I liked it. Like I said, I liked it before But I thought this added a little bit more pizzazz. I'm like, why not embrace this? Let me get as much metallic watercolor down as I can Okay, so you get the idea of my technique here. So let me speed this up a little bit Look at these colors though. Wasn't this fun? Now, let me show you the final here and something else. That's really neat It really does change color when you lift it up and hold it and actually turn the painting it adds Different shimmer Effects to it and also it reacts differently in different lighting. This is it laying down on my My surface my table and then I picked it up and took it into a little area Sorry for the vertical footage here, but I took it to an area in my house.  So just have some fun.


Welcome to The Metal Voice. Today on this show, we have a legendary guitarist who's got a new album out on Atomic Fire Records on May 27th called Universal. I'll say it, the one, the only, Michael Shanker. Hi Michael. Hi, how are you? Good, good, good, good, good, good. Congratulations on the new album. It's absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much. I can't stop listening to it. 2018, you know, with the release of, which was my favorite album of the year, Resurrection, releasing almost an album a year, you know? You didn't hear from me for so long. What's the big turnaround? Why so proficient these days? Yeah, no, it does every, it does in my whole career. It's just pouring out.  I did acoustic instruments, electric instruments and cover versions and you name it. I mean, and 50 years later I got basically everything I wanted to do out of my system. So now I can relax and focus on the stuff I love most is the rock music that I do these days. Tell us about working with, this is a surprise for me. Michael Kiske from Halloween. You know, I was pretty surprised that it was on this project. Tell us about working with him. Yeah, I was surprised too. And it was actually, it was an idea, you know, I must say, though, the only thing we know, the only thing I know when I leave my home and go to Michael Fosk, which is a studio, is I only know the music that I had written that I'm bringing over to Germany. And he hits the recording button. And that's when he starts to getting to know the songs and not before. And that's when we both start to watch how it's shaping up because we do everything in a moment. So all of these little bits and pieces, all of these surprises or guests, you know, or family members, they kind of come, they occur as we go and listen to my music. And then we check, you know, we do electric guide on the, on the drums and electronic bass and stuff like that. So everybody knows roughly what my, my idea was, because I only record at home just the guitars. So we add all of these things to it. And then we start, and then Michael Fosk, he has got, he, he, he learns the song as I put them down and he starts writing lyrics and vocals straight away. And the next morning when I come from the hotel and Michael Fosk says to me, yeah, Michael, this is what I, this is what I came up with last night. And he, and this one, say, for instance, a king has gone as a, as a, as an example, since it is with Michael Kiska, I say, yeah, I mean, he goes like, I play this song. This is a memory of Ronnie James Theo. Oh, my favorite rock singer, fantastic. And then he plays, I say like, fantastic, Michael, this is incredible. And then Michael Fosk says to me, what do you think of, you know, doing and asking the rainbow guys that were playing with the, with the Ronnie James Theo those days. And I said, well, if you can get them, would be fantastic. And he got them. And so we ended up with Tony Carey and Bob Dacely and Bobby Rondinelli. And then the nuclear blast head, head of nuclear blast in Germany, Marcus Tiger, said, hey, what do you think of Michael Kiska? Let, let him try on this song that would sound great for him. I said, okay, let's, let's, let's do it. And when I heard it, I was blown away.  And neither did we know any other song that all the other songs, you know, they happen the same way, like on the on the spot, or when we find, like, for instance, what's the song, the emergency song, for instance, like, you know, it's a very, very, it's a kind of a progressive song. And the record company, they went straight away when they heard that song, that's going to be the opener. And, you know, it's very, very different. And the timing is kind of very, very, very difficult to understand. And, but it's still catchy. So it's kind of a very strange song. And so we looked at it and went like, you know, what, what are we going to do with the drums? I think we should get Simon Phillips for that because he's good at those things, you know. And so we got Simon in for that. He did a fantastic job. And, and then, you know, everything else started to shape up. And we gave it to Ronnie and he had a goal and we said, wow, that's good enough for us. And then, you know, and so, so we picked the people. But, you know, we have a main band. The main band is Ronnie Romero, Michael Schenker, Photoshop, Baron Koba and Steve Mann. And that's our main band. And then the others are guests, but they are not strangers because they are actually family, you know, because Barry Sparks, for instance, he was with MSG in the 90s. And he's also a fan. And he always emails and said, I want to play on the next album and so on. And so I always keep it in mind. And then we have Simon Phillips, of course, and then Brian Ticci, he played with us already like as long as eight, nine years ago on on a Michael Schenker's Temple of Rock song before the devil knows you're dead. And he's also a fan and fantastic drama. And so, you know, the only actually new people on this album, it's Michael Kisker. And basically that that's Michael Kisker. And of course, Bobby Rondinelli and Bob Dastley and Tony Kerry. And, you know, while she was he appeared on the album because he did such a great job on immortal. I wanted him again. And Gary Bard, he appears on it because every time there is a piece of music I write that suggests a low, low voice. I get Gary because he has got the best low voice I know of as a very bluesy and very mentally and vibrato and really warm sounding. So there you got it. You know, all these people, they showed up, but nobody had a clue what was going to happen ahead of time. If you go back to the king is gone, I know what you said it was a tribute to Ronnie James deal, but I'm listening to your solo. Is it not a nomads to Richie Blackmore at the same time? To me, it sounds like Michael Schenker because I'm, you know, I don't, I don't copy anybody and for 50 years I haven't been listening to music. So I try my best. I really make an effort. I, you know, I always tell people I'm a spirit on the mission spreading and expressing the joy of music from a place of pure self expression. So I don't have a record player. I don't have a radio. I don't have any music at home, not in the car. I have to do that for 50 years. And that's my passion. That's what I was born for to be myself, you know, to, to anybody can do it. It's just not anybody, not everybody or most people don't want to do it because they don't trust themselves. They don't think they're going to get rich or famous with it because they don't believe in themselves and that they rather stick to a trend and copy other people and get a piece of the pie. But for me, it was never important. So, but fame and everything else comes automatically anyway. But that, that what happened to me. But for me, the most important thing is to be an artist. And, you know, we are all unique people. If we go within ourselves, nobody can express what you can express.  And whatever, if we express something from within ourselves, it comes across. So that's how, you know, Kirk Hammett and Dave Mustang and all these people discovered my playing because it was coming from within. It was something they have never heard before. And that's why they were, you know, that's why they got hooked on that, you know, as they told me themselves. Wow. What about, I know Steve Harris from Iron Maiden, you know, he's a huge UFO fan, Adrian Smith from Iron Maiden. You know, he's influenced by you. At least I read about that. What are your comments on them? Yeah, it's all true. It's like Steve, Steve Harris is a complete pit-wave fan. He even dresses like him. So does K.K. Downey from Judas Priest dresses like me. You know, I went to the whiskey when I was 18 years old, when I did my Trust American tour. And I, I, I, there was Judas Priest playing and my girlfriend and I, we wanted to see because we heard about that. You know, and that was K.K. Downey, the guitarist from Judas Priest. Having my perm and playing the Flying V and almost an identical outfit. I mean, I looked at my girlfriend, she looked at me. It was like, it was like, it was me again. You know, I couldn't believe it. It was unbelievable.   It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least it was in the 80s. That's what happened to you. They either copied me or Eddie Van Halen, or they copied each other on the 80s scene just to be part of a trend. Let's think about the 80s, Michael. They have a song in the album called London Calling and it describes the scene in England, Britain and the 80s. Is there anything about that time that you miss? Well, you know, first of all, that the lyrics is written by Michael Frost. So he is the kind of, he feels like he was born at the wrong time because he is really an 80s fan. He's a Michael Schenker fan. He's my co-producer. And that's why we're working together. He really understands what I'm doing. His fantasy, his imagination, the only way he can go back to the 80s is writing about it. And so, you know, I don't listen to lyrics. And so, when I did an interview the other day, somebody was telling me, this song, London Calling, what was it about your time in London? I said, I didn't know it was about that. You have to ask Michael Frost because he writes all the lyrics. And then, you know, and then I kind of started to understand and realize, yeah, probably Michael Frost probably writes a lot about me or writes a lot about those days in the 80s because he became, you know, he was, he was blooming in the 90s, you know, which was too late. Everything was gone by then. And so he really feels like he missed out, but I always tell him, don't worry about the 80s, you know, something will happen. Anyway, he is the guy who does all the lyrics because I thought the reason why I don't listen to lyrics is because when I grew up, I couldn't understand English and I was just focused on the music and I'm glad that happened that way. And so that's why I'm really hooked on the music rather than, for me, the lyrics is just like a singer being able to make sounds that fit. Fantastic. You still don't listen to the lyrics. You really focus on the music aspect. Oh, yeah. But I, yeah, yeah. And here I know why also I don't listen to lyrics lately either is because I keep thinking it's all about sex anyway. So why should I be listening? I mean, it's like 50 years of sex, you know, what else is that what different lyrics can there be? So I didn't even, you know, try to analyze the lyrics. But now that somebody told me this song is about London. Oh, I said to him, maybe I should listen to the lyrics or ask Michael first what are the lyrics all about. So I have a little bit of insight, you know, and so it's a good idea. Maybe I should inform myself. What about bringing Michael Kiske on tour with you was that did you offer him sort of like, you know, to come on stage for a few songs? Yeah, yeah. So it's very, very hard to do that, you know, but of course, if we are playing where he lives or he's available, you know, he's on tour and he plays in the same city or whatever. Of course, I always make that effort. You know, if there are people there that have played on previous albums, etc, etc. But, you know, I did the Michael Schenker press. It was a very expensive undertaking. It's four singers on stage, nine people all together. It's a very, very expensive. But it was worthwhile. It was one of the greatest shows I've ever seen, Michael. That was I'm glad you did it. It was absolutely fun. I must say, you know, it was so, you know, when we started the resurrection album and we were in the studio together for the first time, it was unbelievable to see four singers, you know, grown up singers having so much fun together. I had never seen before. It was unbelievable. Michael, just describe very quickly the musical sound on this album compared to the last album, the musical direction on this album. Michael Schenker, I just make sure that, you know, I have the songs that I pick. They are always like songs that fit well together to make an album balance. Like a good written book, you know, it does not, it should not get boring. So I make sure that different elements in there to always keep coming up with some surprises of something that is exciting, etc, etc. And so it could, you know, I may end up with not the best songs, but the best, you know, put together for an album song. And that's very important. And basically, you know, Michael Schenker has written both of them musically. So the difference is that these are new songs. Not a continuation. You know, you can answer this last question or not. I mean, your brother, have you made peace with him?  But is there, you don't have to answer if you don't want. I mean, it's up to you. Who does my brother is a bully and I don't trust him. And I don't hang out or don't make contact with bullies. And neither would I don't think you like to. Or neither does Alan. I don't any normal person would, you know, it's just, I don't feel very, I don't feel comfortable just simply. I don't trust him. That's it. You know, if I would make contact with him, he would, he would carry on exactly where he stopped last, you know, it's just bad. Okay. All right, Alan, you have the tour, the tour coming up a US tour starting September and the mortal kind of got lost in the pandemic shuffle here. So you're playing songs from both immortal and the new album. Well, the same with the set. I make sure that the set has always got surprises on there. It's well balanced. And it also has new old classics that we haven't played for a long time that people always wanted to hear, but we haven't gotten to it yet. I keep all my sets, most of them for the last four years, maybe, and I check them what I played on the previous tours. And then I, you know, put some stuff that I think, you know, would be great to have in a set like older songs. And then, of course, make a well balanced, you know, kind of not overplay, not play too many songs of every album, which is impossible anyway. But, you know, just kind of keep a couple of highlights from maybe the last album and a couple of the new one.  So to make sure that, you know, that the known stuff is also present. You started off by saying, you know, it's a good thing you didn't join Ozzy Osbourne, you know, is there a part of you? Or all the others, they would have not liked it. But I mean, is there a part of you that said, you know what, maybe one album would have been cool to do with Ozzy? No, that's not how it works. Because first of all, when Ozzy's offer came up, I had to, you know, after that, because I almost fell for it, you know. But I had to, I have to always, I had from that moment on, I had to figure out how can I protect myself from being tempted and not ending up doing something. I shouldn't be doing or I would regret later. And so I came up with this thing like, Michael, why did you leave Europe? Or why did you leave the Scorpions? And for the same reason, you should not join your Ozzy Osbourne Motorhead or Ian Hunter or any of those who knows how many people have asked me, the purple, etc, etc. For the same reason, because I would have to copy all of the stuff for life shows they had done. Before I hate copying number one, it would not be Michael Schenker expressing himself. And it just would not make any sense to what my mission is. You know, it's just people never really understood. They always thought I had almost an ego trip, but people never really spend any time understanding why I was doing what I'm doing. I mean, it takes 50 years. Maybe it takes a hundred years. Maybe by the time I'm dead, people start to understand what I was doing. But it seems to be very hard to explain to people and then they still don't get the wrong end of the stick. But maybe in a couple of hundred years, maybe it kind of all comes to the foreground, to the open people's clicks, maybe. I don't know. The new album, Universal, anybody that's a Michael Schenker fan, you're going to love this. Nice, short, quick tempo songs, middle solos, outro solos, Michael Schenker playing solos throughout. It's a great album and congratulations again, Michael on a fantastic album. Thank you so much.