I can only answer that question from the most personal place, which is how I have navigated, you know, being mixed, growing up in Philadelphia as opposed to on the island. My Spanish being my second language and being wobbly in it, you know. I, being fair skinned, am I Latin, am I legit, am I real, am I a real Latina? And I would sometimes express those concerns and questions to my mom. She had no question about who I was and what I was real this, that and the other. She was like, you're real kid. But, you know, she would return me to the ethics and philosophy that I was, that she was raised in and that she taught me, which was, respect honor and caring. And, you know, these values that are culturally based, you know, the other thing I try to model with myself is that the brokenness, the partialness is okay. It's real. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining this event in the American Inspiration Author Series, presented in partnership with the Boston Public Library, Huntington Theater Company, and Porter Square Books, and produced by our ABLE partners at the GBH Forum Network. All of us behind the scenes are delighted you're with us in the land of American history, exploring our great, diverse country, its languages and culture, which are no doubt the springboard of our arts and literature. On your screen is a schedule for our hour-long event featuring the celebrated playwright Chiara Elegria-Hudis and her just-released memoir, My Broken Language. I'm Margaret Talcott, the producer of literary programs at American Ancestors New England Historic Genealogical Society, and part of its BRU Family Learning Center. It is an honor to share with you Chiara and her family history, this wonderful, truly animated memoir, and it's also a pleasure to host with some really great partners tonight, starting with you Lila from Porter Square Books. Hi, I'm Lila. I'm the events manager and a co-owner at Porter Square Books. We're really excited to be partnering this evening, and we're especially pleased that we can offer signed copies of My Broken Language. You can purchase them through our website, portersquarebooks.com, at the included link, and you'll see on screen right now the coupon code AMINSP20, which will also be placed in the chat. That code will waive the shipping fee for your purchase and will send you your signed book via media mail with our love. We're based here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but we'll send our books out anywhere in the US. And of course, the best part of these hour-long talks is that there's a whole book to dig into afterwards, so be sure to pick up your own copy at the link that we'll share. And now we're going to hear more about our featured guests from Kristen. Thank you Lila. I'm Kristen Motti. I'm an adult programs librarian at the Boston Public Library, and the BPL is thrilled to be here this evening in collaboration with such esteemed partners to present this conversation as a part of our Central Library Author Talk series. Now to learn a little bit more about tonight's featured author, Kiara Eligria-Hudis is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Water by the Spoonful and the author of a memoir, My Broken Language, which is what we were talking about this evening. With collaborator Lin-Manuel Miranda, she wrote the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical In the Heights, and the film adaptation is hitting the screens in June. Also in June, Random House will publish In the Heights, Finding Home, which Hudis co-authored with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter. Her notable essays include High Tide of Heartbreak in American Theater Magazine and Corey Couldn't Take It Anymore in the Cut. As a prison reform activist, Hudis and her cousin founded Emancipated Stories, a platform where people behind bars can share one page of their life story with the world. Hudis lives with her family in New York and returns regularly to Philly, where she is from. Margaret, back to you. And how lucky are we to have with us tonight, journalist Marita Hinojoso, a friend of Kiara's, who will jump into the conversation with her and will also act as our evening moderator. An official bio for her. In her nearly 30-year career, Maria has reported for PBS, CBS, WGBH, WNBC, CNN, and NPR, among other stations. She has anchored and executive produced the Peabody Abort-winning show Latino USA, Distributed by PRX. Maria is a frequent guest on MSNBC and has won several awards, including four Emmys, the Studs Turcle Community Media Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club. In 2010, she founded Futuro Media, an independent non-profit organization with a mission of producing multimedia content from a POC, Persons of Color perspective. She is the founding co-anchor of the political broadcast podcast In the Thick and her most recent book Once I Was You was selected for numerous Best of 2020 awards. You have an image of that right on the screen there. Through the breath of her work, Maria has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America and abroad. She is coming to us tonight from Harlem, New York City. And what's really fun for me about Maria was that she was profiled two weeks ago on the PBS show Finding Your Roots. The genealogists from my organization, American Ancestors NEHGS, serve on the research team for the program and host Henry Lewis Gates Jr. films bit sections in our building on Newbury Street. It feels as though Maria is sort of part of my work family, so it's a real thrill to have her here. So now let's get back to really what we're all doing here tonight. And it's Chiara, Chiara's family, her coming of age, and this remarkable new memoir. Chiara, welcome and over to you. Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for joining us tonight. It's really an honor to be here. I would love to share with you some of my thoughts about my journey in writing this book, My Broken Language, and also some passages from it and some stories from it as well. So I thought I'd start with showing some images that are related to the book. So all of you out there tonight can get a sense of what these stories not just sound like but looked like as I lived them. So it is a memoir. It starts when I'm very young before I've entered kindergarten. And as you can see in the top picture here, I'm on my mom's hip. And right across the alley from us in Philadelphia lived my Pippi Ginny, who's right next to me in that top picture. And as you can see, I present a little differently than they did. My mom has her hair straightened here, but she frequently wore it as an aphor to like Ginny's. I am mixed. I was half white from my dad's side. And even early on, the book concerns itself with not just our different physical presentations, but the different language worlds I was born into. So I was thrust into Spanish and English to parents who grew up in different languages. And I carried that kind of those battling languages inside of me. And I say battling because I was far more fluent in English, but also because as I developed a sense of self and a greater understanding of those languages, I found that they were equipped to tell particular parts of my truth, but weren't equipped to tell the whole thing. So I had to navigate and find ways to combine them to tell my story and my truth. So my mother worked as an activist in what was then called the Hispanic community in Philadelphia in the 80s and 90s. And so when I was growing up, she would have me look like be like her spell checker on programs that she was running. You can see here she ran a conference called the reproductive health needs of Philadelphia's Latino women. And my mom really educated me probably before it was age appropriate, honestly, in the alarming maternal health crisis in the Latino community. Mothers and newborns died at a much higher rate than their white counterparts at that time. She was also facing an AIDS crisis that was skyrocketing in the community and trying to get information and health resources to people who desperately needed them and who didn't have a lot of resources. So I was kind of steeped in this language of activism and health justice also before I even totally understood what it meant. I also saw it just in my abuela's living room. I saw good health outcomes and poor health outcomes. And I got a sense navigating between my white communities and my Boricua communities that there was a difference here. And that residential segregation had really cost my mother's side of the family and that community better health outcomes. So that's another part of the book, Latina Health Vocab from the 80s. Okay, next slide, please. So another language that the book goes into, as you can see, I'm an adult here with my mom. But here are some thaino petroglyphs from the island of Puerto Rico. We're in Utuado, which was a hotbed of both political activism for the Nationalist Party, but also of thaino roots and community. So learning about thaino language, visual vocabulary was another important part of my growing awareness of my history and who I was. When I first saw these petroglyphs, I was a child. And I had a realization that my forebears, the thainos, because our family does have strong thaino roots, that they were writers. They prioritized recording their natural world and their experiences and they did it in stone.  So this is at the same spot in Utuado here.  She's grown up. But in the book, while I'm still a child, I'm 13 when she's born. And for a lot of my life, I'm the youngest cousin in my generation of cousins. And my cousins are very embodied. They are amazing dancers.  They're all over you all the time. And they also suffer. Their bodies suffered. There was addiction. There was HIV. There was gun violence that took one of my cousins' eyesight. So I saw these kind of incredible bodies and also these bodies that needed healing. But they all existed in other living rooms, in my abuela's living room, in my tia's living room. When my baby sister, Gabby, was born, all of a sudden, here was a precious Latina life that was in my living room. And it started something in me, a feeling of urgency to tend to and care for and protect that life, because I had seen the ways that such lives were disvalued by society at large. So there's a chapter in the book about her birth, and in particular, being a larger woman. She was always a chubby kid. And when she was about three or four, I remember she ran into the bedroom and looked in the mirror and she said, look at my big belly. It's round as Mother Earth. So before the world taught her otherwise, there was an inherent body positivity that she carried that I wanted to protect. And I didn't want the world to strip that away from her. So her body language became part of my language, too. I went on to become a playwright, and I was really interested in oral histories. So oral history is another language I'm contending with. Here you see me and my cousin, Elliot, who I wrote many plays about at the beginning of my career. In particular, his and other Puerto Rican men's and women's service in the United States military. So here we are presenting at a Pulitzer event, because I won a Pulitzer prize for a play that featured a character inspired by him. Those plays did come out of family history, but they also had elements of fiction. This book, My Broken Language, is really the first time I strip away the veneer of fiction and get pretty real about how things went down from my point of view. And here we are. This is me in 2019, I think, getting ready to film my movie adaptation of my Broadway musical In the Heights. The book doesn't take us through my professional career, but it tells the stories that enabled me from my own life and my own girlhood that enabled me to become the writer of the plays and of In the Heights. So that's a little bit of the background. I'm done with the slideshow now. And to discuss the book in greater detail, what I would love to do is have Maria Inojosa, my dear friend. We wrote books at the same time. Her book Once I Was You, we were trading stories back and forth about how's your book writing going? So now I get to be in conversation with her about my broken language tonight. Maria, welcome. What up, what up, what up from New York City to Boston. Hey, we love you, Boston. Chiara and I don't know anything about baseball. So, right. So Chiara, you know, you and I haven't been together since your book launched. And I just got to ask you, you know, I'm thinking back to my book launch and how exciting it is, especially because we were, we were like birthing babies at the same time. So how's it been?  You know, it's been really interesting. This is the 10th stop on my books, my book, so I've done a few events now. And I didn't, I wasn't sure what would stick in the public. The book in part is about having too many influences. So it's about a lot of things. And so I thought, well, I'm throwing so much, so many selves at the readers, what are they going to be interested in talking about? One of the things I was surprised to find in the chapter on Latina health vocab from the 80s, I make short mention of the fact that my abuela in when she was in Arecibo Puerto Rico, she was one of about 200,000 Puerto Rican women to be coercively sterilized in that island's history. And my eyes just went like, you know, to know that your own abuela was, was part of the structural desire of the United States government is not the reproduction of the Puerto Rican people. Yes, you know, and for me, this is just one little fold of the family history, but it's something that people have really expressed interest and shock about. So these little details to get a sense of what the public would like more storytelling about. So I responded, I'm working on an essay right now, really going into the history of why the government cut so many women open. She was lied to, she was told that it was not a permanent form of birth control. And it just so happened, you know, the only reason I'm here, Maria, is because it just so happened, she was in the early stages of pregnancy with my mom, who ended up being her final child, the thing is the egg had already implanted in the uterus. So the tube had already been used, the tube was tied, but she was pregnant with my mom. You know, one of the things that happened for me, as I was reading your book, which I love so much, because I feel like in many ways we're very different writers, and yet there's something very unifying about what we're trying to do. But one of the things that I loved was I was like, Oh my God, I have this connection to Chiara, and I've got this connection to Chiara, because we are recent friends. I mean, we became friends in the last decade. So we're relatively recent friends, but a kind of deep and profound friendship very quickly. And what you don't know is that seeing the documentary called La Operación about the sterilization of Puerto Rican women by Ana Maria García, a very well known Puerto Rican feminist filmmaker, that changed everything for me because I was like, maybe I want to be a documentary filmmaker, look what she just did. And it was the exposing, it was using media to expose something that no one was talking about, which is that thousands of Puerto Rican women were forcibly sterilized. Is there anything else that, because I know I love this part of like, when you put the book out there and then readers are responding and you're like, wow, what else is there something else that they've responded to that you've been like, oh, interesting. Yeah, there've been a number of things. For instance, I heard from another young woman that I talk in the book about my sister is four years old when I leave for college. And I was very nervous about that because we had very different presentations. She had darker skin than me. She was heavy set. She spoke with the much she calls herself a North Philly John and speaks with a very like North Philly type English. And these were things that I was concerned were going to be met with misunderstanding in the Philadelphia public school system.  And so for the four years, I was away as the first in my family to go to college, my first in my household to go to college. You know, her, she struggled, she struggled. And so I felt like a sister lever. I was a sister lever. And someone, someone reached out to me, they said, Dear God, I was a sister lever to sister. And I said, you know what, you're going to go back, you're going to take care of her, and you're going to lead the way.  So that's another little connection that was made. So you had actually never done a book tour, right? You don't, you do different things, right?  Sometimes I felt like the book tours can be a little lonely. And the thing is, is that you're not lonely now. I mean, you're at home, you're in your upstairs studio right now. Your family is downstairs. They're well taken care of. Everything is okay. How are you processing this and what's about to happen within the heights?  In the Heights was going to release last year, there was going to be all this fanfare, huge parties, your book, you know, and everything changes. And I'm trying to think about how you've come to process how we're producing and releasing art in the midst of a pandemic. Well, in the Heights is pure joy. It's just pure unbridled joy, love, respect. It's, it's got a very cariño so hard, a very tender heart. And dear God, we need that. We need medicine in the form of playfulness and levity. And we need to be reminded what it is like to enjoy being human together in this same space. When I was approaching writing this book, my broken language, I knew it was going to cover, you know, for instance, AIDS in the Latino community is still a very under reported phenomenon. But it took us out hard.  I wanted to look at these painful things, but the only way I could do it was to also tell stories of our love and our resilience, our survival, our joy, our kind of genius ability to party through the hard times.  I really love that, Kiara. I, of course, I'm a little bit older than you, but, you know, when you were, when I was writing, when I was reading about you partying in the midst of the loss, and I was like, but that's what we were doing too. We would dance every Saturday, Friday and Saturday night with Salvadoran and Nicaraguan refugees. We were dancing with Puerto Rican revolutionaries. We were, you know, dancing through so much sadness of AIDS. And yet you're right, we were able to find extraordinary amounts of joy. You write about living in these different worlds. And I'm wondering about the experience of taking all of that joy that you knew was kind of like, you know, visceral and a part of you. It's like it defines you in many ways, Kiara, as an artist, as a human being. And what would you have, what would happen when you try to explain that in a non-POC kind of setting? And the way that sometimes people would be like, wait, what do you mean like you're playing drums? And sometimes people might be getting possessed.  Absolutely. The book does cover my time as an undergraduate.  Many of them, spaces that I loved and that I felt very comfortable in. But I had never been in a space like Yale that was kind of isolated and that wealthy and that white that was new. And a shock to the system. And so I'm a very naturally curious person. I dove head first into my education. I wanted to learn everything. I wanted to read everything. I wanted to hear everything. But I was a music major. And in the department, you know, I could go to town and I could write a great essay on that Schubert piano sonata that I heard that I loved, you know, that honestly made me feel some type of way because it was a kind of sexy sonata. But, but if I tried to bring my influences there, I discussed the time when I tried to bring a Selena Ereotilio song, which is Cuban folk folklore music about the Lukumi, the Afro-Caribbean philosophy and sacred path. I tried to bring that into seminar one time. And there was a very firm line drawn in the sand. Music is not to be danced to music is not a social endeavor. Music is a purely intellectual endeavor. And, you know, it feel it felt like the heart and soul of this thing was not of the people. It was of the cat.  Yes. By the way, you're right. And I can't wait for everybody to see in the Heights. It is. Well, I cried throughout the whole thing, to be honest with you, but it's tears of joy. It's just so beautiful. And it's exactly what we need right now. And I can't wait to be partying in the streets of every place in New York City as we celebrate in the Heights. The audience out there that Maria is in the movie also. There is a there is a protest scene. And we said, we want to get someone real and authentic to this advocate, someone who knows what it is to be an advocate. So we're like, you know, Maria was our first call. We're like, come on, bring it. And she did. She came downtown and she did a beautiful job on that scene. Can I just say that it was my first, it was my biggest dream to be in a Hollywood movie and Chiara made it happen. And it was the first day of shooting. And it was historical. And I can't wait for all of you to see the beautiful work that Chiara has done with the new script for the in the Heights film. Congratulations. Let me get that. So one of the things that comes up all the time, Chiara comes to my classes because, all right, well, the truth is I'm Mexican. So I have 16 jobs. I'm an author. I run a media company and I'm also a professor because I'm a Mexican immigrant. I can never say no to work. And Chiara comes to my classes and the students are very taken for many reasons, one, because I like to let the students know that there isn't always just a straight path, right? That you that wherever, however you end up in your life, there are many ways to get there and that we need to be patient and with ourselves. But one of the things that comes up with my Latina students and Latina students is am I Latina enough? Oh boy, here we go. You know this, right? Yes. What are we going to do about this? What are we and I understand them? Like I think it's hard like in my generation, it was invisibility. So I could kind of define myself as however I wanted to your generation is a little bit different. But this generation kind of feels like, can I am I enough? What do you think about this whole notion of our Latinas who are half Latina as you proudly claim? And it's like, yeah, but you are Latina. You know, I can only answer that question from the most personal place, which is how I have navigated, you know, being mixed, growing up in Philadelphia as opposed to on the island. And my Spanish being my second language and being wobbly in it, you know, I being fair skinned, am I Latina? Am I legit? Am I real? Am I a real Latina? And I would sometimes express those concerns and questions to my mom. She had no question about who I was and what I was real this, that and the other. She was like, you're real kid. But you know, she would return me to the ethics and philosophy that I was that she was raised in and that she taught me, which was Respeto honor y cariño, respect, honor and caring. And you know, these values that are culturally based. You know, the other thing I try to model with, with myself is that the brokenness, the partialness is okay. It's real. When I didn't know, you know, and you know who taught me that? A wonderful white woman named Paula Vogel. When I got to Brown University, and this is a chapter in the book. I didn't know how to go about being a professional writer. I didn't know. She looked me in the eye and she said with pure joy, she said, your Spanish is broken, write your broken Spanish. I said, Oh, no, no, no, I'm ashamed of my broken Spanish. I'm very ashamed of that. It means I'm not, I'm not right. She said, write your broken Spanish. And she gave me permission to be myself. Holy broken, multifaceted. So I think I think the more stories that get stories are a form of permission. So it's your story, Maria, my story, other stories that get written, they all become a form of permission, allowing people to be more and more themselves. When I read that, I remember crying. And now you brought it up. And I was like, don't cry. Don't cry. Don't mess up. But I think that that's why the title is so beautiful. It is my broken language. And, and that brokenness, this is what I tell my students is our superpower, right? When we're able to say like, Oh, wait, the fact that I have a broken Spanish means that at least I have a Spanish that is broken. And that is a superpower, right? And the fact that I can even think about having a language that is broken is a superpower. How many people don't think that and kind of getting that energy from our brokenness. So we're going to open up to questions from the audience in a minute. But, you know, Kieta, we have actually been receiving some questions previously. And I want to just share a couple, because this can inform you as we continue our conversation and says oral history and storytelling is almost a divine right among women. Do you have any suggestions for how we can make time for this in our own busy families, which I kind of love? Ricardo asks, what was it like to finally have in the Heights filmed and have many people already see it and love it? So can you talk about those two things? Oral history and storytelling among women and in the Heights and making it real? I love the question about oral history and storytelling among women. It's absolutely crucial and urgent, actually. And it's urgent right now because women's history is, again, underreported. Our stories have not have disappeared more quickly than men's stories because of who has been given a platform historically. So it's actually quite urgent to ask the questions of your elders, of the women around you. Why did this happen? What happened when? What was that town like that you were raised in? And don't just ask the question once. And yeah, we're busy. So ask it while we're folding laundry. Ask it while we're driving to school. You don't need some sort of peaceful, quiet platform. Let this be the noise of your life, these stories. In my experience, all it takes is you ask a question and people want to talk. So ask the question and don't just ask it one time. If I had a nickel for every time I asked my family, why did we leave Puerto Rico? Mom, what was the reason that you left Puerto Rico? I asked it over and over again and I got a slightly fuller, slightly different details each time. I talk about three versions of why in the book. And those three versions helped me get a fuller picture of what was happening in history at that time. Ask those questions. And if you can, if you find the time, write those answers down, documented. This is important history. If we didn't have that, we wouldn't have in the Heights.  And that I love the fact that you also heard her and that you listened and that you said, okay, I will. Do tell us, though, as Ricardo asked, what is it like to see? And I just saw in the Heights what in March, I think, was when I got the link to the preview and my mind was blown. I've only seen it once.  What is it like out of body experience?  But I know you can't. I know that you have your feet on the ground. But still, can you just kind of clue us into what it's like? Okay, can I be real? I'm going to be super real for a second. They don't all turn out like you want. You know, I know this from experience, you give each project your heart and soul. And you love each project. But sometimes they just don't turn out as you had wished. And maybe it's because the writing didn't quite get there. Maybe it's because the collaboration is off. There's all different reasons. So you don't take for, and it's heartbreaking. It's crushing when it doesn't quite live up to the love you gave it. So I don't take for granted in any way, Maria, that this movie, it's more beautiful than I could have dreamed. It's more dynamic. It's more energetic. It's the amount of voices that went into it. All the collaborative contributions from our cast director, our filmmaking team, I don't take that for granted. I feel very, very proud of it. And I really can't even believe that a book that I also believe in and spent years working on, that I really stand behind, even though it's personal, and it's hard, it's hard dealing with these very personal stories. But two things I feel so proud of happening in the same year. I can't, I can't ever forget that. It's a real gift. And we are so happy that you and Lin-Manuel Miranda started working together early on. I mean, I can't wait. All right. We have a lot of questions, Chiara, a lot of questions. But there is someone very special who has actually been preparing to ask you a question. And I know that this is someone who is very special for you. Melinda Lopez is a quite well known Boston-based playwright and actor. And Melinda, it was beautiful to hear Chiara say how thrilled and honored she is to have you asking her questions. Your work includes Sonia Flu becoming Cuba and Mala, and your new virtual play Black Beans Project. So we're very excited about all of your new work. Melinda, you have a question for the fabulous Chiara. Take it away. Oh, my God. I, congratulations many, soon as on this beautiful, beautiful memoir. And so much gratitude to you for putting these portrayals of complex and strong women and families and burro latinidad on the stage and all of the honesty and vulnerability that you bring to your writing. So I have a kind of a granular question. I love this conversation that you're having about my broken language and all the facets of brokenness and also props to Paula Vogel, who also made me cry. But your titles are so great. Water by the spoonful, Miss You Like Hell, your 2018 essay, High Tide of Heartbreak. Can you talk a little bit about where you get your titles? Are they the first thing? Are they the last thing? Like, when you want to talk about the nitty gritty of actually slapping the name on a piece of work and putting it out into the world? Yes. You know, they're definitely not the first thing that come. And sometimes the path is a lot clearer. So when Water by the Spoonful came to me, it came to me when I wrote the scene that involves one spoon, a parent is giving a sick child or, you know, one spoon of water at a time. And once I wrote that passage, oh, Water by the Spoonful, that's the name of the play. That was clear. And it actually makes me think of someone, a reader in the UK just read my broken language, the book and called it a baptism. They said the book was a baptism. And I loved that comment because I think I've always been interested in cleansings and natural healing. And so Water by the Spoonful really speaks to that part of my heart that comes from an herbalist lineage, curandera lineage of women who use the earth and natural elements to heal physical and spiritual wounds. With my broken language, if I'm looking at this pile on my studio floor of pages where there's like hundreds of titles written. And it was the last one, we titled the book very soon before it went to print. And for a long time, the title was For Possessions because the book discusses the experience of seeing my mother undergo spiritual possession, being mounted by the spirit and hearing the language of the spirits in her voice. That was extraordinary and pretty terrifying to me as a child. And she had a spiritual gift that I didn't understand and have much experience with, but I witnessed it in her and it was pretty spectacular and awe inspiring. And then all of a sudden, I have these four experiences throughout the plot of the book where I kind of lose my present tense reality. I get very physically, a very intense physical experience happens to me. I feel like I'm choking. And I come to after some time, and I've written something. And the book actually ends with the final of these Four Possessions, which was the first play that I think I found my voice in. And so that's what was called Four Possessions. But we were like, oh, it's about the plot. It's about the plot. We weren't quite happy with it. And actually it was like, but what happened as a result of the Four Possessions? And I was like, well, I found my language. And my editor, Chris Jackson, who's a phenomenal editor at One World, he said, okay, well, what was your language? I was like, it was broken. And so there we go. And it all made sense because there had already been a chapter in the book about Paula saying to me, write your broken Spanish. Paula saying to me, Shakespeare broke the English language and made it grow by 100 vocabulary words. She cited to me Tennyson's poem, break, break, break.  And so what finally, finally we found my broken language. I said, yeah, that's what the book's about. It's impossible to imagine it with any other title. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Melinda. I agree with you. But titles are painful. And now I don't feel so bad about my experience when you say you have pages of titles on the floor because I was like, okay. So a couple of more questions. I'm just going to read them, Chiara, and you can take, you know, because I just like, you know, people have been so sweet to ask questions. So greetings from Sylvia Anne Suarez, Brown 95, who played Abuela in Caldo Santo at Perishable Theater in 2003. Thank you for your humanitarian work through your artistry. I agree. Susan asked specifically how it was to write dialects and that broken language. Dora Delgado asks, how did you get to know Lin-Manuel Miranda? Which is like, well, let's see. Fabiola asks, as a writer, how do you distinguish which stories should be told in which format? Because, you know, you are prolific in multiple formats. I do have to say this is one of my favorite questions, though. It says, Elizabeth says, in the Heights is wonderful. But we should also give some love to Miss You Like Hell. And Wei Han adds, balled my eyes out during the finale. Were it not for Miss You Like Hell, even though I had interviewed you about your work with Water by the Spoonful and your Pulitzer, but were it not for Miss You Like Hell, we wouldn't have begun our incredible friendship. I was convinced that Miss You Like Hell was going to break Broadway. I was like, it's the next in the Heights. Forget about it. It's incredible. And it didn't. And it was heartbreaking for me. But you see, people love that. They love so much of your work. So you can answer any or all of those questions. Well, I'll start with Miss You Like Hell. It's a musical for people watching who are unfamiliar with it. It's a musical I wrote that it was the first Latino musical or piece of writing I did that was outside of my Boricua experience. I said, let me, I was nervous. It's a Mexican American story about a mixed documentation family. So the mother's undocumented. The teenage daughter was born here. So she's a citizen. And I was nervous about being culturally respectful, culturally specific. So I asked Maria, will you help me? Will you guide me? Will you offer advice or point out to me where I've steered in the wrong direction? And yes, Maria was very optimistic about the future prospects of Miss You Like Hell, which was written with a score by Aaron McKeown. But I knew a little bit more, I think, about theater at that point. And I was actually fairly pessimistic. I had a feeling in my gut, I said, this woman's too real. And this story is too intense. And it's going to rub some people the wrong way, because it goes up to the mother's immigration hearings. And people don't want to see that type of America sometimes, even if that's partially the truth of who we are. So someone else had asked, how do I write the broken dialects, the different languages? How do I actually go about that? That's that's my favorite. That's what I do every day. That's my craft. And as Paula Vogel told me when I got to Brown, it's a muscle, it gets stronger. It started with my musical training. One of the other languages in this book is music. And I discuss all of different elements of my life with music, but they all are connected to the ear. And the ear is also what I use as a writer. I just eavesdrop and listen to the music of how people talk. I'm obsessed with it and I love it. If anyone has listened to Maria's phenomenal podcast with Suave, not only do you hear a story about mass incarceration today, about the criminal justice system as it applies to real lives in our communities, but you also hear a man who's conversational language is symphonic. So I'm listening to a story like Suave, I'm just basking in how this man speaks English. It is stunning. It is gorgeous and it's innovative. And one of the things I have found about having broken languages is it forces innovation on you. In fact, my mom had broken English growing up with me and I heard her innovate the English language in really creative and cool ways because not being fluent forces you to kind of think outside the box and find another way to express yourself. So yeah, that's my bread and butter. I write every day while my kids are at school, Monday through Friday, and when I run out of ideas, I take a walk through New York City and I eavesdrop some more. Thank you, Kiara. And for everybody watching tonight as you're thinking about your own stories, think about what Kiara said. There isn't a perfect language. I know that I never ever thought of myself as a writer because I was monolingual Spanish first and always felt not good enough. And so I just want to encourage you to heed the words of an amazing writer, incredible artist. Yes, she has all of the awards, but you know what, Kiara, you know, you're changing history, Mameeta, you're changing lives. You've changed my life in ways that I mean, well, we're friends, so I'm lucky. I'm so lucky to know you and have you as a friend, but you are changing lives. And I'm so thankful. So if you don't have your copy, get your copy of my broken language and enjoy it, savor each page. And we're going to bring Margaret on now. And Kiara's going to share some final readings. So congratulations, Kiara. Thank you, friends. Love you. Thank you so much. Love you too, Maria. Thank you so much, Maria. That was, I feel so lucky to be on screen with both of you. I feel lucky to be a woman. I feel lucky to be hearing from you as we all are. I'm getting some texts from folks that they are tearing up. So we're all trying to hold it together here. So thank you so much for your honesty. This is such a fascinating conversation. And it's covering so many aspects of the American experience today for us as women and for Latinas and and who is not excited about in the Heights. So I'm so thrilled. I wish we could go on all night but being respectful of everyone's time and dinner hour. I want to move toward closing and first with a final reading from the book. Kiara has picked a passage just for us.  Okay. So as you can see, this is pretty late in the book. This happens while I'm a student at Brown and I have decided to quit music and become a writer even though what is quite clear to readers and later to myself is that my music life actually just went right into my storytelling life anyway.  And she's so wild the NEA didn't even like her and made her sign forms saying that she wasn't doing obscene stuff when they funded her when they funded her art. You know, she was one of these downtown theater artists and I had never met anyone like her. And the first time we met she she gave us this writing exercise and so I'm going to describe what happened in this writing exercise and she tells us simply write your identities. That's it. So she tells us write your identities. This reading is probably going to be about five minutes long. Okay. There we go. So every identity I could think of. I started with the chosen ones. Pianist, poet, composer. There were identities thrust on me, census stuff. Female, Latina, Boricua, mixed, 20 something. There were alter egos, rock star, girl who saves the world, barrio girl. What else? What else? I loosened up, got playful. White rice chef's apprentice. Girl with the stiff hips. Hides on Abuela's staircase during the party, girl. Then it rushed in. Jolting and heavy. As though a tap had twisted open or a water main had blown. Tremors coursed through my hand, knees, shoulders. I gulped for air like a toppled goldfish, full, nowhere in sight. My pen moved this much I could feel, but of some other accord. The ink was autonomous. It would not succumb to my brain. It had been a decade since Dr. Phillips essay test, but the same violence raked me. The same volcanic heat thrashing my heart, lungs, larynx. I was thrumming, asphyxiating. Holly Hughes, gone. Classmates vanished. My hand lanced the page, an undomesticated thing, a sword slicing through battle. I vomit any moment. Half of me pleaded stop, stop, while some other half, which sought no permission, thrilled at the precipice. Ride the wave, grab the reins, and mount the beast. Then time was up, and people were sharing a loud, and it was rude, I knew, how, rather than listening, I was re-acquamating. Regaining consciousness felt old and familiar. I knew how to do it. You're trapped underwater, swimming countercurrent toward the surface. Daylight shimmering nearer as breath, at last, finds you. Based on everyone's behavior, I apparently hadn't done anything unusual. Had my shaking even been invisible? It felt in the moment as though I had collapsed to the floor, torso, heaving, legs, twisted. But no one looked my way. I put my pen down, needed my throbbing hand. My classmates' lists were 10 items long, maybe 20. Their identities tended toward the accurate and objective, gender, sexuality, age. Thumbing through my notebook, I saw a list that continued for pages. Some of them two or three columns thick. My identities were neither accurate, objective, nor purely autobiographical. Reading them aloud, each one struck me as obvious, yet surprising. Badass. Junkie. Crack head. Twelve-stepper. Yelly. Illiterate. Witch. Welfare queen. Righteous thighs. West Philly. North Philly. Spirit medium. Santera. Quaker. HIV positive. I was somewhere in the recipe, but not the main ingredient. Asked to name myself, I had instead named my perez women. My matriarchal family tree. Each orisha is a source energy, with particular creative and destructive powers. Ya may ya, for the ocean surface, her ripples, swirls, and tsunamis, her saltwater hips, the essence of maternal life. O ya, for the tornado, the winds. The cosmology of my cousins was divvied up, too, into specialized forces of creation and destruction. Floor was wilds me, promiscuous me, junky me, recovery me, regrets me, me on the couch in a depressive coma, reborn me, serenity prayer me, me who laughs volume 11, motherfucker.   Kuka was caretaker me, loyal me, virgin on my wedding day me, granny panties me.  My pantheon, my baddest women, my biblical ribs and mud. Out of their rough mortal flesh was fashioned my tempo and taste. Being 300 miles from Philly did not mean opting out. Each mile of distance magnified a self I'd always sensed, but only newly named. My cousins were that of God within me. They were not the faith I chose. Like mom's ghostly visitors when she was five, my cousins chose me, knocking on my midnight door, portentous at my bedside. After all my God-denying and God-shopping, after all my hours in Quaker pews, reading Yoruba books, studying Lukumi prayers, just so the universe could be cute a decade later and pass me a note in class, you were born into the church. Thank you. That was powerful and beautiful and I love it.  Kiara, thank you so much and thank you for this evening and I, you know, we all want to, we all want to see you in person someday and you are always welcome to Boston, so please. And we're going to move on with some quick reminders and some closing thoughts and thank you, Lyla, over to you about the book. Yeah, absolutely. As a reminder, if you enjoyed tonight's presentation and I absolutely know that you did and you want to dive deeper into the lives of Kiara's words and learn some more about all of this, you can purchase your signed copy of my broken language at Quarter Square Books. The link is in the chat for you and, again, you can use the code that's on the screen now and we will waive the shipping fee for Media Mail and we'll send that off to you with a book plate, again, with all of our love. Just mentioned in the comment field that you want to sign books so that we can be extra sure to put that in for you and, again, we're so pleased to have been part of this evening. It's been so wonderful. To find out more about resource services and programs for people of all ages at the Boston Public Library, please visit us at BPL.org. We at American Ancestors New England Store Genealogical Society are really delighted to have presented tonight's event. If you yourself are researching your family or someone else's family, our library and Education Center might be of use although our stacks on Newbury Street are currently closed because of the pandemic, you can visit our digital archives, connect with one of our genealogists online at American Ancestors.org or join in an educational program from our Brew Family Learning Center. We run countless webinars and programs focused on families and communities in America. People who have come from all over, from England on the Mayflower, from San Juan in 1966, from Eastern Europe in 1930 and, of course, we research communities who are already here. Our goal is to encourage people to understand their backgrounds and with that to understand themselves. We hope you'll join us again in this Zoom land. Until then, many thanks to our guests.  Thank you to all of you and thanks to all of you in the audience as well. Thank you for joining us and good night from Massachusetts and from New York City. We'll hope to see you again soon.


Hey everyone welcome back to undead world heroes survival so this month we have a new tier list we definitely have two new heroes to be added to the previous list and we also have some movement based on some of my play tests that I've made I'm actually more versed with all of the you know the factions right now but without further ado let's proceed to the tier list itself okay so we start with tier c so it's still Niles he does really need a rework he's now eclipsed by the new hero that just arrived um although he's melee but again he's no use right now okay so let's proceed to the next one so we have letter b for tier b still no changes in this tier so you still have um you'll have these guys you have sam you have jones you have bella you have henry and you have this girl I forgot her name caddy sorry she's caddy so no change for b and c let's move further up which is a for your tier a guys there have been changes I think I elevated one up to tier um tier s or tier s s I forgot but this is your tier a so you have here um what they call this you have here the new girl which is olivia then you have here cookie you have the deam you have here uh lee and you have here forgot his name again um he is with the sugary purse so for this girl olivia um frankly speaking her kit is quite confusing because um she is mostly a ranger so it's expected that she deals um single you know single damage single target damage she also has piercing but she is she displays a lot of crowd control spells or skills okay but you know it's it's really a mix it she is kind of similar to to what you call this to the old guy um I'm gonna look for her later but um the one that has a crossbow um is similar to that guy um but again he she still remains a mystery right now requires a lot more testing um I don't have her yet but as far as her kit is concerned it's like a mixed bag um she doesn't excel at anything I do hope that her damage is very significant um and she targets the unit with the highest hp so that is it for olivia so hopefully you could give me um uh inputs guys on how you think of olivia right now she's in tier a I think her her kit is good it all depends on how she develops up to her um legendary or exclusive weapon so we have here again cookie here and that's it for tier a for your s tier guys you have here the same young corner you have your tyler you have here to forget this guy um and you have here this girl keep on forgetting their names uh tanya you have rock you have webster um anyway the changes here is tanya I elevated to tier s um it's it has been great using her in um one in my hive team sorry this is gabriel I forgot his name so um she has been a good you know a decent up to you know not decent your average up to above average in terms of the team for hive I've used her in skyscraper for the hive content and she she actually is good um I've had I have already at legendary which um I think which makes her different from than before than before herself in legendary but then unlocking her you know your her signature weapon is going to do wonders for her that is why she is at s then you have rock here always a staple for AOE damage then you have webster here as well again webster shines um so much in single target um that I cannot put olivia you know uh and toe to toe with him um olivia still remains to be seen and also we have here the last which is tammy tammy is the new one new tank for um sugar reapers I have her at one copy and I'm using her at skyscraper and she does wonders for the team even with um a low level um I think she's going to be good guys um she has HP recovery damage reduction defense increased for all the allies that she's with defense reduction to enemies and movement speed reduction as well so again as far as the other pluses in terms of what she brings to herself and to her team she's going to be very good and she probably might end up a tier s s okay so for now I'm putting her at tier s okay because again she's untested yet um but her kit dictates that her value is at s and the last is going to be your tier s s okay to start with Abigail a monster again I've been using her in almost all of my content um very good tank uh tank damage dealer she's really not a tank anyway but again very good versatile very versatile very sturdy very you know very tough and um I'm sorry that I put um leta to s last time I actually didn't realize that what she brought was really extraordinary in terms of the buffs in terms of all of the things that she brings to the team really in terms of leta her you know her buff in terms of damage is what I really value most in a team and she does a really good job and so far no one in this roster can equal what she brings so that is why I put her back at s s then you have here um Helen as usual staple for s s then you have here um I forgot this guy um forgot their names then you have here britney this guy I'm sorry astra astra is good for uh what they call this for uh what for revive and resurrection and you have britney britney again is a must for you know for any player you have to have her whether you're favoring any other team her aoe for ultimate is is really a must have in skyscraper especially if you're facing waves of attacks then you must have her this is the guy that was referring to when I was comparing to Olivia um Olivia might have the potential of Murray because Murray has the same kit so he is melee but he has a lot of aoe crowd control damage so there is a possibility that Olivia will be will be you know going up to the level of Murray so for those who are using Olivia and using Tammy please give me some feedbacks on their kit um I'm basing the steer list based on mostly the skills that they have but again I might be putting them up especially for Olivia um I'd like her kit um again but so far it's just theory it doesn't apply to the real application so that is why she's at a then the last for your tier s s is going to be meredith meredith once she becomes legendary and locks her you know her heel she is actually out of this world as well and no other hero here gives you know gives those buffs those shield or those healing um you know uh nothing can compare to the others here so that is why she is at tier s s so anyway guys so that is the tier list for the month of December so again if you want to view this file I'll put this in the description of this video so maybe you may check it out um and uh you know for comments and and suggestions please put them down in the comment section below and hope to hear from you guys um on what you think on the tier list thank you guys stay safe take care Christmas is nearing and advance Merry Christmas to everyone and don't forget if you haven't subscribed yet please consider because uh this really helps my channel a lot and um also don't forget to click that bell icon so don't miss any uh videos from my channel thank you guys take care stay safe this is the warden and I'm out of here


Hi everyone, I'm Gaurav. I work at VMware on a data center observability system called Network Insight. And in this talk, I'll discuss some of the specific challenges we encountered while building a configuration store layer for this system and our approach to address these. So just a bit of context. The configuration store layer maintains time series for last number of objects. Each time series can be thought of as a sequence of states or nodes where each node maintains the state for that object for a particular associated time span. The exact details of this layer is not so relevant for this talk. And I'll focus on three of the specific aspects of this layer that should be more generically applicable to many other layers that people are building. So firstly, this layer integrates with other subsystems by providing a change feed for every modification that is happening within the store. We also want this layer to provide low latency, point access, and mutations, roughly in the order of five to 10 milliseconds. And this is due to the nature of our existing guarantees that we provide out of this layer. And finally, we should be able to read and write very large objects into the store. We have seen records of up to 100 megabytes in size. And in the future, this could go up significantly, almost up to a GV or so. So let's take each of these aspects that I've bolded one by one at a time. So first is the change log. So typically, these are used to provide an ordered feed for all the updates happening in the primary store to other subsystems. And these in turn react to these changes by taking some specific actions. For instance, an indexing system could consume the change log for making the updates searchable, or a caching system could use this feed to keep itself synchronized with the ongoing modifications. The structure of change log keys in FDV roughly follows this pattern that I've shown here. You have some subspace prefix to isolate these, followed by a version stamp to guarantee uniqueness and strong ordering. And you have associated value that contains the metadata about the change itself. But this design suffers both read and write hotspot. By design, all the logs are appended at the end of this key space, which will be hammered by all the mutations that are coming in. And if you have two or three storage servers that are holding that chart, they will get all the mutations. In addition, these storage servers have the extra work of splitting these charts as they grow in size, and then ship out the older splits to keep the data volume balanced. Even if you look at from the read point of view, this is the only chart that is getting all the read requests. And that consumes a lot of CPU cycles from it.  So this is a graph that we plotted from one of our production systems. And we were able to get this out by using a feature called locality info that FDB provides. This gives us the range boundaries that are hosted on each storage server. So we use this information. And in our layer code base, we tag each of the writes and then emit telemetry for it. And that tells us where is that right key going to its server. And in this case, we have our application factor of 2. And we can see that each write is going to exactly two storage servers. And they are so precisely overlapping that you can see only one color. And for a last duration of time, those are the only two storage servers that are getting all the mutations. And based on some internal logic, FDB clusters keep changing these active storage servers for that chart every four to five hours or something like that. It's not so helpful in our case. By that time, the storage servers are already saturated. And they are throttling back transactions. So what we want to have is ability to switch the storage servers faster. If we could do that much more quicker, then these writes will keep on jumping from one storage server to another. And storage servers have ability to accommodate a small burst of mutations because they have about 1 and 1 half GB of buffer space that they can use. So in order to do this as a fast switching of storage server, what if we could get some kind of prefix that we could put in front of our change log keys. These prefix need to have certain properties. They need to be non-contiguous. Otherwise, if they are contiguous, then we will not be solving anything. And they need to be unique. Otherwise, we will not be able to read all these change logs deterministically at the read time. Also, whatever that logic has to be for generating these prefixes, it should be repeatable at the read time. Otherwise, we will not be able to find the data that we have written at the right. So if we had such a key, we could use this in place where I've called bucket. And if this bucket prefix satisfies all these properties, then we can achieve the desired behavior. So we use a simple bucketing function without any bookkeeping or overhead. We take the read version of the transaction. We mask n lower bits out of it. n depends on how fast you want to switch the bucket prefix. And then we reverse all the bits to give us almost a random distribution, but it is deterministic. And you can repeat it at the read time as well. If you use this function or any such similar function and put it in, then what you will get is good even distribution, fast switching of these logs among storage servers. But this has an issue related to ordering. I mentioned earlier that these buckets are based on the read version of the transaction, whereas the changes themselves are based on the commit version of the transaction. Now, if you consider the example that I've given here, TX1 and TX2, TX1 starts before TX2 and ends after TX2. So if we consider the change itself, then the commit version of TX1 is higher than TX2, and so it should be after TX2. But if you look at the read version of TX1, it is before TX2's read version. And the bucket derived out of TX1's read version could be before bucket derived out of TX2. And hence the change log could be in the reverse order. And we don't want to do that. We want the same order for the change logs as for the changes themselves. So we put an additional constraint in these transactions. And what we want or what we ask these transactions to do is that you put an invariant that the bucket that you are writing your change log to, it is in some way clean. And you also dirty the older bucket so that there are no out of order change log writes. So if you see what we've done here is that for the first transaction, we have dirtied the bucket zero, which is like one bucket before bucket one, by putting a right conflict there. And we are expecting our own bucket to be clean by putting a read conflict on it on bucket one. And similarly, transaction two goes and dirties the one bucket before it, which is putting the right conflict on B1. And it expects its own transaction to bucket to be clean by putting a read conflict on B2. And this red line that I've seen, this creates a conflict between them. And after TX2 has committed when TX1 tries to commit itself, there is a conflict due to the red line there. And it gets retried with a liter bucket, a read version, and therefore the bucket, and things are nice. So if we had some way to apply user defined functions on the version stamps on the server side, we wouldn't need to do all of this. But unfortunately, at the moment, FDB doesn't provide such kind of functionality. So yeah, I mean, in practice, we can expect to see some conflicts due to this. But on our workloads that we experimented with, it hardly matters. It is like very, very few conflicts, almost negligible. All right. So this is, I don't know if it is visible, but this is after this change what the scenario looked like. If you recall from the earlier graph, there were only two servers active for long durations. And now if you see, they are almost randomly getting assigned. So the first graph is showing you the mutation rates for each of the servers all put together. And the remaining three graphs, I've highlighted one server in each one of them and trying to see how they're switching fast. And it's pretty evenly balanced out. And it changes roughly every few minutes. The second problem I want to talk about, which is again, very generically applicable is minimizing the latency of the transactions. So typically, these are the four phases of transaction. You have GRV to get the read version, reads themself, writes, and then commit. And typically, this is the range of latency that we see in our systems. So out of these, GRV is something that is optional. It can be removed at some cost. So every transaction has a read version and a write version, depending on whether it is doing at least one read and whether it's doing at least one write. If we could cast these versions and then reuse them, then we can eliminate the GRV call. And I'll go into the details into the next slide. But using this, we are able to save about 25% of our transaction latencies at the cost of some of the transactions or read-only transactions, giving you slightly still data, but monotonic. Monotonic in the sense that because we are caching all the read and the commit versions in a process, a transaction never gets to see a data older than the last transaction that happened. It will see at least as new the data as the last transaction. We have to be careful here because GRV is not just the mechanism to hand out the read version. It is also admission control mechanism used by proxy to control incoming transaction. And proxy slows down the response to the GRV if the cluster is under load.  So this is roughly the structure of the simplified version that we use. So we route all the transaction through this run block, you can say, as a pseudocode. And the callers get to choose whether they want to reuse the callers get to choose whether they want to provide a read version upfront or not. So if they provide the read version, then before running the transaction, we set it on. Otherwise, we refresh the read version in the green block there. And after applying the mutation, after applying the transaction, committing it, we have the commit version available as well. And we pull it out and use it in the cast value. If you see the refresh read version block, in addition to making the GRV call explicitly, we also measure the latency of the GRV call. And this latency serves as a proxy as an indicator to know whether proxy wants to throttle the incoming transaction. And a very simplified approach could be that if the latency is greater than some threshold T, then you consider that the proxy is not willing to accept too many transactions. And you don't use the cast version and go to the proxy directly. And let it apply its throttling. So I mean, T could be like 5, 10, 15 milliseconds or so. If you are under it, then you're good. If you are going over it, then you better go and ask proxy. And don't worry about these optimizations here. Note that both these calls, GRV as well as commit version, they happen all the time within the transaction implicitly. So we're not adding any extra overhead other than calling it explicitly and caching these values. For write-only transaction, GRV call doesn't happen. And there are some more options that we have in our code base to avoid explicit GRV call if it's a write-only transaction. Finally, I want to talk about this third aspect of handling large values. So we get these large values in our system from device configurations that we collect from the data centers. They come in XML, JSON, protobuf, et cetera. Examples of these configuration could be large switches and firewalls that have many ports and rules, and computed network topologies that have hundreds of thousands of parts in them and tend to become large. Now, if DB has this transaction limits around both the duration as well as size, it doesn't allow transactions to span more than five seconds. And even though the documentation says 10MB is the upper bound for a transaction, the recommended size if you read the forums is close to 1 megabytes. But we still want to have consistent writes and atomic visibility. And we want to have consistent read without any stale or partial data. We just want to write these large values as if FDB allowed such large values to be written in one transaction, even though, due to the limits, we cannot do that. So what we do is we follow a multi-step protocol to achieve it. And it's pretty standard and simple, but useful. So what we do is we start with writing like a temporary garbage collection row and give it an ownership of a chunk pointer. Version's time can again be used as a chunk pointer, but it could be anything, a UUID or whatever you want to. So one thing to note, each of the colors represent an individual transaction. So it probably will make more sense then. Once we have got the chunk pointer, then we break up our data, which could be megabytes or gigabytes in size, and then write it against this chunk pointer in multiple transactions, maybe in parallel, depending on how you want to write it. Once this is complete, we shift the ownership of chunk pointer back from the GC record to a master record, which is our main lookup mechanism, and delete the GC row in the same transaction. Once this is done, the ownership is now fixed with master, and the visibility is atomic. In between, if there was any failure before we were able to do this blue transaction, all any partial data would remain under the ownership of GC row, which will be eventually cleaned up by some background task. When we go to the delete of these rows, instead of deleting the data inline, we shift the ownership of chunk pointer back from the master to a new GC row, and clear the master row all in same transaction. Again, what we get out of this is, if there was any concurrent read happening for that record, it will not fail, because the data is still present, and it will get deleted after some time. That concurrent read, why I say that concurrent read would have otherwise failed is because it's a lot of data to read, and the concurrent read might not be reading this entire record in a single transaction. It might be using multiple transactions, so it will not get MVCC benefits. So if I delete the data inline, that transaction would get partial or incomplete data. But with this pattern, we don't run into that. And the background cleanup just periodically scans for all the garbage rows for, let's say, anything up to now minus 30 minutes or now minus 1 hour. And for each of the garbage, it clears itself and does a range delete for all the data under the space of it. And that's about it. Like if you consider extensions of these, like updation of records, they are pretty simple, and this protocol can be easily made to do so. So just to recap, we have used, we have discussed some of the common patterns that we find running into many times when building layers. Like I've been listening to many talks since morning, and I think there have been a lot of mention about change feeds and latency and everything. And I think these are pretty generically applicable problems. We saw how we use some of the AFDB constructs to address these issues. Specifically for change log, we made use of version stamps, conflict ranges, and locality info to first find the problem and then devise a pattern for it. For reducing the latency, read and write, commit versions were used. And for handling large values, version stamp, and multi-row transactions. So using these kind of techniques, we were able to balance out our SS storage server queues pretty uniformly. And we removed throttling happening due to it. We were able to reduce our transaction latencies by about 25% under a certain set of conditions where it was OK to get certain state of reach. By the way, I think I skipped the part where for the pattern that we have used for reducing the latency, it only affects the read-only transactions for write transactions. They will never be run into consistency problem. They will always conflict and be retried. And so they will not be sacrificing any guarantees for transactions that involve write. In theory, they may run into slightly more conflicts. But again, we don't find that happening too much for our workloads. And finally, we have a pattern where we really do not have any limit on the size of the record we can write in FoundationDB. So I mean, we don't have to worry what that limit is and whether we are affected by any of such limit within FoundationDB. So I think that's it. Yeah, thank you.


Hi, I'm Ethan Allen here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm the host of likeable science, and today we're going to do a little bit different kind of activity. We're going to actually show some real science. You may have seen this activity before. It's a very simple one, which is part of its appeal, but it tells us something very profound about the world we live in. So here's a balloon filled with just air. I've just blown this up. And here's a source of flame. Now when I bring the balloon down onto the flame, almost as soon as it touches the flame, even in a few seconds the balloon pops, right? Now I take a balloon, just same kind of balloon, but this has water in it. It's about half filled with water. I bring it down onto the flame, and notice it just sits here. The flame burns against the skin of the balloon, but nothing happens. The balloon does not pop, it just sits here. I can sit here, and I can do this for quite a long while, and you can see the bottom of the balloon actually blackens up a bit, but the balloon does not pop. So why is this? Why does this happen? What's going on here? Well, the balloon pops because its skin melts when it's heated up by the flame. When there's water in the balloon, the water actually moves the heat away from the skin of the balloon quickly, very quickly, very efficiently. The skin of the balloon never heats up to its melting point, and therefore the balloon never pops. This speaks to the large so-called heat capacity of water, its ability to absorb a lot of heat, move it around very quickly and efficiently. This phenomenon, this heat capacity of water, is really important on a global scale because it is water that moves heat around on Earth. If it weren't for water, our Earth would be a very, very different place than it is. The sun, if you think of this flame as the sun and the water in the balloon as the ocean, the sun heats the equatorial waters very well, just pounding energy into them, and this water heats up and gradually moves northward and southward towards the poles, gradually dissipating heat as it goes, warming the air above it, warming the land around it. That's why so much of the Earth is actually quite temperate. The tropics, particularly out in the ocean regions, are not overly hot, and meanwhile, well up into the polar regions, at least for part of the year, the area stays quite temperate and is quite livable. If it weren't for this, if it weren't for the property of water to absorb heat and move it around, the Earth would have just a very narrow band of intensely hot area and a large portion of the Earth would be covered by ice caps and be completely frozen. There would be a very small temperate zone where life could exist, but because of this marvelous property of water, this great heat capacity, our Earth is this wonderful, sustaining temperate zone basically over virtually the whole Earth that supports life and makes life possible. That's it. Simple but profound. Thank you so much.


Hello everybody and welcome to this week's Everton show. Well, the first team players are back from their warm weather training trip to Dubai. We're back in Premier League action at the weekend. And I'm glad to say Kevin killed Baner's back amongst old friends. I'd like to say you're here at Finch Farm to see me, Kev, but that's not the case. You've been to see Wayne Rooney. No, sure. I always like to come and see the best dress man in Finch Farm. So, Leighton Bairns. I love to see Leighton Bairns and I'm round here. You're three or four. You're down the list somewhere, Daddly, you know, but you're looking well today. This is my best clonaghis. Gweiniaeth Hefyd yn gallu daith hwnna. Fe wnaeth dros am gwell, oedd felly'n gweithio ond eu meddwl wrth bob gweithio a ddwy fel gwnaeth eich bod ni'n mynd i felly eu ran o'r ddechrau wedi'u gweithio. Ym heb ei maes yn gwneud. Ond hefyd, ond hefyd, ac rwy'n credu'r cyfr wybodaethen o hisbl ond ond hefyd. Dyna'n hoffa'm fwy i'r adroddiadol hefyd wedi'u gwneud o ran o'r llwyffain cael ei fath o'r hwnnw. ..y'r ddweud yn y gallu gwybod ymddangos ei wneud hynny. Mae'n dweud hynny'n gyfnod i'r cyntafol yr ystyried. Mae'n ddweud â chyfnod. Yn ymddangos, mae'n ddweud yn ymddangos, fel y dyma'r Gwlad Ynghylch Ffwrdd. Felly mae'n ddweud yma, mae'n rhaid i'r gwaith. Mae'n ddweud, mae'n ddweud â'r ddweud. Mae'n ddweud â'r ddweud, mae'n ddweud â'r ddweud. Mae'n ddweud â'r ddweud. Felly mae'n ddiwedd na'n ddefnyddio i chi, mae'n ffordd, mae'n ffordd. Mae'n dweud â'n hwnnw, a fyddwn ni'n 16, 8 yn ran i. Rhaid i chi ddim yn fawr o'r meddwl o ran i. Mae'n rhaid i chi'n fath o'r ddoffiliad o'r ddechrau'r ffordd, a'i'n dwi'n ddoffiliad o'r dweud o'r ddechrau'n ddechrau'n dweud i wedi'n ddylai am fawr o'r dweud. Pe fyddi'n gweithio'r dweud i chi'n dweud o'r dweud o'r dweud, Onw'r gwybodaeth i'w ddechrau? Rwy'n gweithio'n gwybodaeth i mi, y cysylltiadau i ffyrdd 16 a 17. Mae'r ddweud lleiwyr ar y ddechrau. Mae eich ddweud hynny'n ei ffyrdd, byddai'n gwybodaethu, a mae'n ddweud yn ei ddweud a'r dddechrau. Dwi ddim yn fawr i gael ar yr ddweud, mae'n ddweud ar gyfer hynny. Mae'n bwysig yn ymgyrchu. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'r gwybodaeth, Ond hynny hwn yn oeddwerthu i chi'n ei erbyn. Rwy'n erbyn wedi'i gwneud i fynd yn ymddangosio. neu'r rai, cerddoladau hwn yn y byw rai o'r newbwrdd sy'n ymddangosiaeth, ac mae gwein ei gweinwyr yn ys Service i'r blaen. Mae cymdeinidol yn cwrdd i chi'n cymdeinidol, ac mae'n gofal a phond. Rwy'n roi gweinwaith iawn i'r bobl a'u gwneud i'r bobl. Fe yma, yma efallai chi irian bod ymlaen yn gweinwyr. I was went for Аeith Majesty, so that's really important for us. It's difficult for everyone to spend time together. You might have that hard because we see each other every day. It's not too much down time after training so going hallway together forces your hand in that way. It's good for the boys that came in January, it's nice for them to get away with the boys. It's nice to get away and bond a little bit more and do things with band properly to Mae'r ceisio yn gweithio'r un pethau. Mae'r fform i amser ym mhau'r prosesu i'r mhau, ac mae'r gwerthu. Mae'n gwneud o'r llans o'n wahanol a gwneud o'n'r cynnig o'r gwneud o'n wahanol. Mae'r cwerthu o'n ei chael gwaith a'r gwerthu o'r cyfrifoedd i'ch gwneud, cwrs, a chael gwerthwyr o'r castilydd dan mor hwn ac grannu. Mae rhan o'r dewis i chi i ni i'r cyffredin awr o'r cyffredin iawn. Mae'r cyffredin iawn yn cael ei ddweud yn gwneud am y llwyddiadau. Mae'r yma'r 247 a weithio'r cyffredin iawn i'r cyffredin iawn i gael y llwyddiadau. Mae'n rhan o'r gwahodrach o'r cyffredin iawn i gael y cyffredin iawn i gael y llwyddiadau. A maen nhw'n gwybod o'r gwahodrach, maen nhw yw ymddangos i gael y llwyddiadau. byddai am yr wych. Ond mae'n gweithio'r bwysigol i gyda'r mewn! Felly mae'n cwrs fel fynd i'r groes, a mae'n dweud i ni'n cael eu gweld fflau'r cyhoedd hwnnw. Felly mae'n dweud i ni, mae'n dweud i ni fflau'r cyhoedd hwnnw, a'r dweud i ni'n gweithio'r cyhoedd hwnnw. Mae'n ddweud i chi'n gweithio'r cyhoedd hwnnw, gan hynny'n gweithio'r cyhoedd hwnnw, ac oedd gen i chi'n gweithio'r cyhoedd hwnnw. yn gynghwil gwahanol y bydd yw'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n debygf yn gweld fel y staff iawn, mae'n dweud o'r cyfan a'r cyfan yma. Rydym wedi'u gwelytio'r wydd, ond rydyn ni'n debyg ymlaen i'r gweithio. Rydyn ni'n golygu y byddai, mae'n gweithio'n siarad. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'n cael ei gwybod ar gyfer o fynd yma. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'n swydd fydd, i'r gwneud i gael ar y gweithio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'n siarad, that we see outside the stars, then in the rain and in the wind in the new cave. It's nice to get used to it after a few days but it is tough. You've been on plenty of those mid-season trips, pre-season trips,笑vre? What are the main benefits? I think it has to be about coming together. There's been a lot of change here at E yeten in the last— last couple of years, you only need to look at the signings that came in across the summer. Mae'r ddweud y gyntaf yn gyfweld gyda'i gael i gychwyn i'r ddweud ychydigion a'r ddweud bod yn ymwineisio'r cyfrifoedd. Felly, mae'n ddiolch yn cael ei wneud y cyfrifoedd yma o'r ddylch yn ymgyrchol gyda'r ddweud o'r ddweud hefyd. Rydyn ni'n dweud ychydigion o'r gyfrifoedd. Rhyw roedd yn gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio, ond mae'n ddweud yma o'r cyfrifoedd. ac mae'n gweithio i'r bwysig yn gyda y peth yn y gwaith ar y gadael. Gweithio eich gweithio ar y gwaith o'r cyfrannu ar gyfer y cyfrannu. Felly mae'n gweithio i gyd yma, mae'n gweithio ar y gwaith, mae'n gweithio ar y gwaith mae'n gweithio ar y gwasanaeth. Mae hyn yn ei gael i'r ffordd drws. Mae'n gweithio i gael gan y dystiadau hynny. Dwi'n rhaid i'n meddwl yw'r cyfrannu yn 2014 yn Tewsden i'r teimlo, ond Dawyd Mo şuch ypeople yn iawn, there was a few staff on the trip too. Did you make that one, did you? I was one of them. I made the cwthust any one. Ah, you enjoyed it, did you? And I did enjoyed it because it was terrific and you could just see the way that the lads were bonding because because we had had Paul trefio arlyser masdang ac er청ydd. We'd lost Wayne or we were in the process of losing Waynejan Manchester United but from that trip we went on to finish fourth in the Premier League. Do you know the one thing that sticks in my mind from it was just probably prior to that trip. I think we went to Burnley. Ielwch chi'n amgylchedd, nawr môl i waith iawn acmwynt. Mwyonnwch chi'n amser yw rhaid i fawr yn gwylltio'n bynnag. Felly fy fawr bawb am gweithio'n gwyllteisio'n gweithio'n gwyllteisio mawr sy'n dweud. Rwy'n amser wahanol. A fyddech chi'n wneud i gwyllteisio i mwy o gyrsdoedd. Dechrau'r gweithio i ddechrau, fel seron yn ei bod yn gweithio, arweinydd ei dda i'n gweithio eu holl. Ac gallwn yn y bewyn, Falch i nhw i'w llwyddo i Eustam, ac yna, glikodd yn gwneud hynny i gynnau'r bobl a ble mae'r llwyddo i wir yng Nghaithu Pwladartyr yn Liverpool. Ac wnaeth nhw i ddweud hynny woketh nhw'n cael ei siŵn. Mae gennym na wneud arall, dwi'n cyfrifio, a oeddaeth dylau, ac rydym ni'n gwneud i gwneud yn fored, ac rydym ni'n gwneud i gyfareneddau, mae mor gŵis bair. Rydyn ni wedi'n gweld yn cyfrifioig, ond felly rydyn ni'n gwneud i gyrwyng. A'w'n gwybod fe modrwyd ein bod ni wedi eu cydymme ni yn caith o hyd arall yn fawr i mi ddigon gan angen o'r hynny a Michelle mwy gwyllwg. A mae'n gweithio'r cyflugau fel gwreidiau i mi o'n dod i'r cyflugiau i'w bwyl yn ei ddweud. Mae'n gweithio'r cyflugiau yn cyfrifellau'n gystafell, ac yna hefyd yn y cam iawn. Rwy'n ei wnaeth bod sumo'r tyf yn fawr. Mae'r amser yn ei ddweud frysig yn â'r ysgrifennu arall o gael yn maith am y cwriau. yw'r amser o Alun Stubb, Duncan Ferguson, David Weer, Lee Carsley, Steve Watson, Nigel Martin. Ac mae'n gofyn i'w ffordd, dyma, mae'n gofyn o'r gweithio'n gweithio, mae'n gofyn i'w ddweud byddai'ch cael ei wneud yn y cael ei gynhyrchu. Ac mae'n gweithio i'w ddweud i'w ddweud. Dyma, mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio eich sylweddau o'i cyfrifolio. Dwi'n safon i'n gweithio, ac diwrnodd yn fwy o'r haf, ac fydda I don't forget about Kevin Campbell either. It was even still part of that squad at that time as well. The way we came together… Because we were up against it a little bit. There was a lot of pressure on us all. We had a small squad as well and I think were able to give a little bit of freedom to Tomi Graves anticipate me earlier this season and he went on and expressed himself in a certain way that we were able to maybe format behind him because he was such a good player, Tomi. I think in general we did, we came together and I said it was probably the proudest feeling I would have had through my career. Y llifio llwyddo celfbwyswyr yn ymwybod â'r cyfrannu newydd ar ôl yng Nghymru? Er oed yn yr hyn, oedd Edfom Ało'r yr Aelod yn ystafell yma eu fan y cyfrannu llwyddon ar y blecynny a'r cyfrannu llwyddon yn y swyddon peichol e'n pobline addig a gyfrannu llwyddon yma. Ychwanes o yr Aelod yn y cyfrannu llwyddon, oed yn cynnwys yma yn cyfrannu llwyddon. Bydd wedi uwch fel y llwyddon yma flwyddynhau yma, yr Aelod yn byw sy'n hawdd yma dros mewn hynod ymwys yma. Leighton Baines, getting back fit, I think it's a huge priority for Everton, I've got nothing but great things to say about Leighton Baines and how he's going about things, how he's applied himself over the years, but getting back on the training ground, getting back first of all yet training in amongst the squad themselves and then getting back on the pitch at Gooderson, I think that can only be a good thing and I think it'll help the rest of the players just for continuity, it'll help everyone around him. Duncan Ferguson was speaking over in Dubai about Cenk Towson who hasn't adapted as quickly as he would have liked to in English football but Duncan said he's looked really sharp, he's looked really good in training over there so that trip could be the making of the boy because it must be difficult to come over from the Turkish league to the Premier League. We've seen so many over the years haven't we at various clubs and even the lads that I would have had here at Everton at Gooderson we would have had lads coming in who struggled, who's coming on big fees and struggled coming from various leagues around the world and it's a huge culture change from isn't it, I think that's the one thing we've all got to accept that it might not necessarily be this season we're going to see the best out of him, it might be next season, it might be even beyond that, it's almost as if now we are expecting players, we're expecting too much of players too quickly. It's difficult, it is hugely difficult just to adapt to training style then of course then to adapt to day to day life and I think that's the thing realistically for him, I think he's got to get a base, he's got to get settled here with his family whoever it is that's going to be coming over with him and then I'm sure we'll see the best of him because he is talented, he is talented. I haven't seen some of the clips on your Twitter feed that you've been putting out over the last week so you can see the talent that he's got, he's a talent and hopefully we can get the best out of him here now over the next year or two. Let's hope so and that just about wraps it up for part one of this week's Everton show coming up after the break we'll hear from Kuko Martina and of course plenty more from Kevin Kilban. Welcome back to part two and at USM Finch Farm in the company of Kevin Kilban, you touched on Sheamus Coleman before Kevin, how big a boost is it for club and country of course to have him back. I think from a selfish point of view from Ireland of course, I think in general it was a massive blow I think to the end of Ireland's World Cup campaign that we didn't have Sheamus involved in the last few games but I think certainly from an Everton perspective as well you're looking at, I mentioned before I think he's been the most consistent right back over the last six or seven years since he's made his breakthrough into the side. I personally think and again I'm biased but I just love watching him develop the way that he, the lad that he's developed into but certainly the player he's developed into as well I think the potential was there I think when he signed but not many players go on to fulfil it and he's gone to do that and he's gone to maybe exceed any sort of expectations that were around him. But I think he needed, I think from a personal point of view as well, I think he played in the 23 game, I guess that's how Fampton I think it was in the 23 game in his first game back and listening to him talking about that saying how he needed to go through and make a tackle to feel good about himself. Then his performance in the Leicester game was just simply outstanding just for such a long time out to come back. It showed the character of him, it showed the measure of him as a player but also his energy level so I think that is a massive plus for Everton in the course of well the next three or four months I suppose now till we've got to the end of the season. If he plays against Wafford at the weekend it will be his 250th appearance for Everton so we've clawed back most of the 60 grand we paid for him. Let's be fair he's probably been the bargain of the last, I don't know, across the course of my career I don't remember, maybe some people can throw things at me but I don't remember a signing that's had a bigger impact both for club and country as Seamus Coleman. I don't recall it, he's been an absolute bargain but you'll know him like most people would know him as well sitting around this club. It isn't about how good he is as a player, he's such a great lad, he's very amenable, he fits perfectly in to what Everton is about and that's what he's done across the course of his career, he's had an amazing career. He's a perfect ambassador isn't he for Everton and also for Irish football as well because of how everybody over there is so proud of him. Well definitely, I think Irish football thinks one Darren because I think the Irish league in general gets a lot of criticism but I think our side, the Irish side over the last ten years we've had Kevin Doll, we've had Shane Long, we've had Stephen Ward, of course we've had Seamus Coleman, we've had Wesley Hulhan as well now that's made the breakthrough in the last four or five years properly as well. We've had so many players that have played in the league of Ireland and I think that's got to be, it's got to give hope to everyone playing league of Ireland and whatever age you're at now that you can go and emulate what Seamus has done here. He's almost like now the torch bearer, he's the one now that every sort of Irish player, every youngster coming in can say well look if you don't necessarily go to England at 15, 16 like which historically was the standard route in English football you can actually get there when you're 19, 20, 21, you don't necessarily need to go early and I think now Seamus is certainly that player that every Irish player can aspire to be. Now he's the modern day, I don't know, you'd probably say Roy Keane, Johnny Giles because of how he's gone about it across his career. He has been an incredible signing forever at the football club of that, there is no doubt. Right, let's turn our attention now to the weekend visit to Vicarage Road where we play Watford in the Premier League. This is Cucko Martinez take on that one. They have also really great players, a great squad and we know it will be difficult but still we trust in our squad and we know that we are much better than them. And one of the players you will probably come directly up against is somebody of Atonians will know well Gerard Dena Feu so that must be a challenge you're looking forward to. No of course, when I play also at Southampton I play against him and I know the way of playing and you know it will be fun.  No of course, if I asked one of the staff to help me to select some views of the players of course but still you know we are a great squad, great players and we know that we can beat them and that's the first thing that we need to do now. Cymartina recently Kevin has been putting in some good solid performances, he had the assist as well for Umani Ash recently and it can't be easy being asked to play out of position which is what the boys done. Yeah, if you'd have asked me if you said to me Kev look I did play a little bit at left back predominantly of courses maybe at left midfield but I played towards the end of my career at left back. If you'd have said to me go and play right back, first of all you know as well as I do I couldn't use it, that was a talk for standing on but I think the one thing that maybe it is quite striking. If I actually played right side centre half once, believe it or not I did play right side centre half and honestly I think the problem that I would have found even when I would have played in the right hand side of midfield at times it's your shoulder because you're so used to playing with your back to maybe in field on you, everything's in front of you to your left hand side. All of a sudden everything's, it's an adjustment, I've done something from when I was four or five years old I played predominant as a left sider and all of a sudden then you're playing on the right, your shoulder's all wrong, you're trying to get your body position right, you're losing your marker, you're losing lads so you're losing lads so you're meant to be marking. I think everything you've got to take into account and I think anyone that does it deserves a lot of credit because it's very very difficult. And he's doing well. Yeah well there you go. It'll be a tough game at Wafford. Yeah I mean they started off brilliant didn't they and I watched them at the start of the season, I think certainly the two will know, everyone will know Gerald Daylefhaev, I think he was excellent in that Chelsea game recently. Richarlison on the left hand side he's really impressed me this season, I think one of the stand out midfielders has been D'Corey, I think he's been absolutely brilliant across the course of the season as well. So there's certainly three, one of course Everton will be familiar with, the other two Everton you know watching those two this season are very very good so I think if you keep those quiet then I think you've got a real chance against them because they've got a powerful side, of course they've got the option with Deaney up front or if it's Ondraig but certainly Deaney brings that physicality to them, they can go direct into them and they can play different ways and personally I like seasides mixing up, I like seasides that can play direct and can play nice passing and attractive style and certainly Wafford can do that. Javier Gratia came over to English football, we did know a great deal about him, there's been a symmetry to his result so far and we're going to draw on the defeat but the full one demolition of Chelsea is one of the score lines of the season in the Premier League so far. Some might say you got Chelsea on a bad day, yes you could argue that case but you've still got to take your chance, you've still got to perform the way that they did that night and I think it was the night actually that Wayne was on Monday Night Football and it was just a brilliant all-round performance from them, the way they went about it with real pace and I think the one thing we watch when you watch them, if they get their tails up in any game across this season when I've seen them they're almost going for that jugular constantly and there's no real fear, there's no real thought about defending at times, they'll actually keep on attacking you so certainly with the pace they've gotten creativity in the side it's a tough place to go and get a result. Everybody's excited about the potential of the partnership of Seamus and Theo Wolcott, quite rightly so. Yes it is, both bringing different dynamics to the game as well, watching Theo Wolcott how he's been playing and performing over the last while since coming in to Gullison is adjusting very well he looks. He's a quality footballer and sometimes I think we all do forget, sometimes you can beat a club for a while and you need that move to freshen yourself to get yourself back and some motivation back in the system, I know it's easing the level or something that will be a level that plays all the time and you're earning this amount, you should have that motivation but it's not always that simplistic, it's not always that way and I think Theo Wolcott coming in here, you can see immediately yes he is right at it, he's wanting to maybe show one or two people who've doubted him in the past and I think that can be a good thing but the relationship with Coleman, I think that's got to give every Evertonian that little bit of a boost at what can be and I think the potential certainly is there. Definitely, let's finish by speaking about your own post playing career Kevin. Do we really want to chat about that do we?  I was coaching up at Hull for a while, I was taking in the 23s, I took in the 23s for about 10 months it was, I was actually injured at the time, I was still under a players' coach. I took the reserves and it was maybe an opportunity that was presented to me that I took and I enjoyed doing it and it was Nicky Barnby who was the manager at the time. Nick was then sacked and I understand then the precarious position of anyone in football clubs, it can be, it can change so quickly and so I just thought to myself look, I see Lee Carsley who everyone would know, Lee asked me to go down to Coventry, he said look will you come back and sign and carry on playing for another year with the view to continuing coaching down there so I said yes, I went down maybe for Lee more than anything I suppose and I knew straight away, I knew within four or five weeks of the season that I didn't have it in me and it was in me legs, I didn't have the power left in me legs and predominantly with me I was a runner, I couldn't play but I could run, I could run and I knew I just didn't have that power that was in me legs, I was getting over running games and I just thought to myself quite quickly I need to make a decision here because I was getting embarrassed when I was playing in matches, again you might say I've been quite regular but no I knew myself, I did know myself Darren and I wanted then, I'd done a little bit of media work at the Euros, I missed the Euros with injuries so I was working with Five Live out there, Five Live asked me to come back and do bits and bobs again for them so I was working on the odd game here and there, then I got asked to do a bit of sky, then I got asked to work with BBC TV and then at the end of that season I had a decision to make, was I then going to take that, go back into coaching or was I going to take the media and I thought now, I wanted to spend a bit of time with my kids, I wanted to try and give them a little bit back from the time that I'd missed out on them growing up and I decided then I'd go into media and it's great to be part of it and I'm loving every minute of it, yeah That's just about it for this week's Everton Show and if you want an omen, the last time we played a Premier League game on the 24th of February was back in 2007, a way to Watford and we won 3-0, wouldn't we take that again? Thanks for watching, do join us again in seven days time and I'll see you in another future episode