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  #81  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2011, 2:00 PM
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  #82  
Old Posted Jan 15, 2012, 2:06 AM
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Originally Posted by truliablog.com



Read More: http://insights.truliablog.com/2012/...am-with-euros/
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  #83  
Old Posted Mar 4, 2012, 2:52 PM
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Area code 626
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

North American area code 626 covers most of the San Gabriel Valley and nearby areas in the northeastern portion of Los Angeles County, California, U.S., including Arcadia, Monrovia, El Monte, most of Pasadena and West Covina.
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  #84  
Old Posted Apr 6, 2012, 3:10 AM
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  #85  
Old Posted Apr 25, 2012, 2:48 AM
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  #86  
Old Posted Apr 28, 2012, 8:17 PM
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Originally Posted by LA Observed
LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE

LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE

LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE
Read More: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/20...os_angeles.php
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  #87  
Old Posted Jul 7, 2012, 4:21 AM
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KOREATOWN: K-Town on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/LOuD
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  #88  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2012, 5:32 AM
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The largest Asian night market experience in the United States
http://www.626nightmarket.com/
http://www.facebook.com/626NightMarket

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The 626 Night Market moves to its new home: Santa Anita Park.

Come visit us for two straight nights of the largest Asian night market experience in the United States. Only in the 626.

October 20 & 21, 2012
Saturday: 3pm - 12am​
Sunday: 3pm - 10pm

Free admission!
Arrive early from 3 - 4pm for $4 parking and "free horse racing"
Parking after 4pm is $7
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  #89  
Old Posted Oct 8, 2012, 3:30 AM
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LA's Little Tokyo
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  #90  
Old Posted Dec 14, 2012, 3:24 AM
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Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times



Basking in a uniquely Korean 24-hour spa experience
Not just saunas, but video games, TVs, food, multiple generations and oddly, a place to sleep around the clock can be found at Wi Spa.
By Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times
4:56 PM PST, December 13, 2012

Robert Kim took his family to Wi Spa last Friday night so his wife could revisit the public bath culture she grew up with in Korea. Besides, his two sons, the older one anyway, love the children's playroom, equipped with video games, foosball and a slide.

The Kims (the last name, he joked, of half the families in the cavernous jimjilbang) ran into another father he knew from the Korean-English dual language school their kids attend in Porter Ranch. (More on the jimjilbang later.) The children ran back and forth from the playroom to the floor mats where the men lounged, leaning against backrests.

"It's a nice little family outing," said Kim, a contractor. "We usually don't let them play video games except for weekends," Kim shrugged. "But my wife wanted to relax."

Wi is a 24-hour spa on the edge of K-town, modeled on a national culture that arose when most Koreans didn't have their own bathrooms. Several floors resemble a Western spa: marble counters, room dividers covered in tiny glass tile and a gym.

But the jimjilbang is uniquely Korean, a ballroom-size chamber with wide pillars where mother, father, grandparents and kids are sprawled out on vinyl mats, fooling with their laptops, watching television, reading and sleeping. Everyone dresses in yellow T-shirts and baggy khaki shorts, handed out at check-in as a hygiene measure. The scene looks like a reunion picnic, or summer camp, without the bunk inspections.

Some families even spend the night. Rest assured, no matter what time you arrive at Wi Spa, someone will be sleeping. On the mats in front of flat-screen TVs at 4 p.m.; on the wooden bench beside the baths at 6 p.m., and on white leather couches near midnight.

And no matter when you leave, someone will be applying makeup at the vanities, taking baths and using the hair dryers. As I packed up at 5:30 a.m. last week, a mother was smoothing lotion on her daughter in a scene out of a Renoir painting.

There are no rules but one: You must get naked. But only on the floors where the men and women part company to take the baths and undergo various scrubbing, massaging and skin-polishing regimens. In the women's section, the services are provided by no-nonsense Korean women dressed in matching black lace bras and briefs — I know how that sounds, but the uniform is serviceable, not alluring.

Radiant heat wafts up from the floors, creating a womb-like atmosphere. During my visit, a few young women hung onto their towels until the last second. But you really can't cling to your modesty when grandmothers, mothers and daughters of all sizes and descriptions have abandoned theirs.

No one cares what anyone else does, or who sees them do it. A 24-hour restaurant serves snacks, Korean food and, in a sop to vegans, avocado tacos. But one mother passed out persimmon slices from a plastic container she brought from home.

The jimjilbang is ringed by saunas of varying temperatures and (unproven) health benefits, the clay ball room, Himalayan salt room, jade room and ice room. The bulgama, encased in a clay oven that looks like a lopped-off beehive, was 226 degrees, hot enough to boil an egg. Manager Jonathan Seo said it was too hot for him, but typical of the Korean spas he used to visit with his family.

"Back in my country of origin, the public baths would be a bonding time for my dad and myself," Seo said.

Unlike in Western spas, no one cares about the kids experiencing extreme temperatures. A 10-year-old told me she braved the bulgama, and when I peeked in the ice room, one little boy was sitting on top of another.

I got caught up in the indulgent mood and watched several Korean soap operas. In one, two couples sought fake divorces so they could inherit money. The stock villain seemed to be the daughter-in-law.

Friday night was family night, and most of the spa guests were Korean Americans, but there was a sprinkling of Chinese and white locals, and some tourists from Atlanta. A downtown office employee stopped by on her way to a party in Santa Monica. "That way I'll arrive relaxed" and beat the traffic, she said. A few Hollywood filmmakers were also there, including one who asked me not to name her lest the place be deluged with industry types. She sometimes takes meetings in the jimjilbang.

Her son and other twenty-somethings bar-hop in K-town, get a late-night bite at the restaurant and lie down for a few hours before heading home, she told me. And indeed, about 1 a.m., the hipsters, including one in blond dreadlocks, arrived on schedule, although not noticeably inebriated.

Two young couples half-sat and half-lay on the little stage where Wi Spa from time to time has put on karaoke contests. Sean Fohle, a graduate student in economics at UCLA, had been there after a bachelor party brunch, arriving "fairly inebriated," he said. One of the guys cannonballed into the men's pool.

"There were some bad looks, but nobody said anything or kicked us out," said Fohle, a Palms resident.

For the bachelor party, Fohle had gone on the Internet and learned to make the traditional Korean "lamb's head" towel hat, which many of the Koreans in the jimjilbang were sporting.

At 1 a.m., bedtime was nowhere in sight for the Kim family. The dads and I had the kind of long, lazy conversation you can only have at 1 in the morning when you're so relaxed you're not embarrassed to sit on a mat in kids' clothing and talk to perfect strangers.

I retreated to the darkened room on the women's floor, passing three robed bodies in translucent face masks lying end to end, and a mother with her limbs entangled with her daughter's, all sound asleep.
Read More: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,7212323.story

Quote:
Originally Posted by klamedia View Post
Good! They didn't blow up my spa! The one that I go to is very very diverse with a healthy mix of people. They would never be able to say "but there was a sprinkling of Chinese and white locals". Just "a sprinkling of locals" would have been a more appropriate thing to say.



lots of places. Just click the link.
http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc...y=review_count


Last edited by dragonsky; Dec 15, 2012 at 11:43 PM.
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  #91  
Old Posted May 29, 2013, 2:24 PM
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  #92  
Old Posted Jun 17, 2013, 1:03 AM
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Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times



Bruce Lee statue unveiled in L.A.'s Chinatown
By Frank Shyong
June 16, 2013, 3:04 p.m.

“Seeing it there in its permanent spot with the night sky of Chinatown ... it really struck me,” Shannon Lee said.

Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, lived in Oakland and opened several martial arts schools in Seattle’s Chinatown. But he was a fixture in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in the 1960s, opening a school on West College Street and working out at the Alpine Recreation Center. Lee stood out, jogging energetically around a neighborhood where almost no one did, said Shannon Lee.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...,4835552.story
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  #93  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2013, 5:14 AM
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The 9 Fancy LA 'Hoods Most Popular With Foreign Buyers
Wednesday, June 19, 2013, by Adrian Glick Kudler
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2013/0...ign_buyers.php

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  #94  
Old Posted Aug 8, 2013, 1:38 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MWave



SM to Set up SMTOWN Museum in Los Angeles
2013.08.07 14:43 CJ E&M enewsWorld Grace Danbi Hong

Planting K-Pop on US soil, SM Entertainment announced its plans to create the SMTOWN Museum in Los Angeles.

On August 7, SM Entertainment revealed that it will be building a place for US residents to experience hallyu in Los Angeles. The new SMTOWN Museum (tentative name) will be located at 6th and Oxford in Koreatown.

“We’ve been planning for a long time to create a place where residents in Hollywood could experience hallyu, but we decided that it was more meaningful to bring US residents and tourists who were interested in hallyu to LA’s Koreatown,” said the agency.

“You can say that this construction of the SMTOWN Museum and its entertainment spaces is the first step for the new future of hallyu.”

SM Entertainment also added that it will do its best to make this new museum into a hallyu landmark in the US and help hallyu grow.

The new building at 6th and Oxford was purchased through SM Entertainment USA and will include a museum, a Korean restaurant, a space of entertainment with holograms and diverse contents.

The opening day has yet to be announced.
http://mwave.interest.me/enewsworld/en/article/42874

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  #95  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2013, 3:42 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LA Times



Traditional craftsmen restore Korean Friendship Bell
A gift from South Korea for the U.S. Bicentennial, the huge Korean Friendship Bell had accumulated rust and was tagged with graffiti. But L.A. had neither the money nor skill to repair it.
By Matt Stevens
3:00 AM PST, December 9, 2013

Tap, tap, tap.

The bell issues a soft musical reply.

Gong, gong, gong.

Around him, other workers take buffers to the bell under the watchful eye of a foreman. By the midmorning, city workers back in a truck to remove bags full of waste, and at noon, the team retires for a simple lunch of barley rice.

After the break, Chai spreads his selection of small picks across a white cloth on the scaffolding. As he chips away at the edges of a rose, rusty brown gives way to glowing bronze.

Nearly 40 years ago, Chai's mentor spent months casting the Korean Friendship Bell at the behest of the South Korean government and sent it to San Pedro as a present for the United States' 200th birthday.

Now Chai is helping to rescue it.

"My teacher always spoke of this bell as a child he had given up for adoption. He was always concerned about its well-being, but there wasn't much he could do, because it was so far away," Chai says through a translator. "I always wanted to come here."

The bell may not be well known in Los Angeles, but some Koreans consider it a West Coast Statue of Liberty — a symbol of the strong ties between the U.S. and Korea.

Then-South Korean President Park Chung-hee wanted the gift to be something special; his government spent more than $1 million to cast the bell, formally known as the Bell of Friendship, and build it a proper house.

He had it modeled after a famous Korean bell that dated from A.D. 771. Back then, bells were considered technological wonders that had the power to restore peace, tranquillity and healing to those who heard them.

A Korean bell doesn't curve outward, instead dipping almost straight down like a dome to keep the sounds resonating within. A bowl placed underneath reflects sound back into the bell and through a hole ornamented by a dragon, which funnels the bell's sound out a pipe at the top. The features allow Korean bells to be heard miles and miles away.

Four Korean goddesses — holding symbols for peace and victory, the South Korean flag and the national flower — are engraved in relief onto the bell, and each is paired with a goddess resembling the Statue of Liberty. Roses in bloom form a circle around the base.

Traditionally, the bell has been rung five times a year: for Korean Liberation Day, U.S. Constitution Day, Korean American Day, the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve.

But in recent years, it has fallen into disrepair. A chunk of the link that attaches the bell to its house fell off during a bell-ringing ceremony in 2010, causing the object to sag and twist inside its pavilion. Bird excrement lined the belfry. The concrete of the once-colorful pagoda was chipped. A vandal covered the inside of the bell with graffiti.

The city of Los Angeles had neither the money nor the expertise to fix it, so the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism paid more than $300,000 to replace the link and hire the experts who could bring the bell back to life.

The artists say that they are among a handful of metallurgists with the experience necessary to repair a bell of this size. And because Chai's company cast the bell, his technicians approach the repairs with a sense of duty.

"When this bell was cast, Korea was still among the poorer countries in the world," Chai, 51, says. "So for them to aspire to make the largest bell ever cast in Korean history … that was a giant project."

Ernest Lee was just a kid when his aunt first took him to see the Korean Friendship Bell in Angels Gate Park. He recalls his joy at being able to read the inscription in his native tongue:

"May this bell ring and sound forth the hope and resolve of our two nations in their common devotion to enduring prosperity, liberty and peace."

By 2006, Lee had moved to Torrance and often passed the bell. The telecommunications entrepreneur quickly realized that it had fallen into disrepair. So he banded together with some high school friends, joined forces with another Korean advocacy group and formed the Korean Friendship Bell Preservation Committee.

The nonprofit group started running the bell-ringing ceremonies and worked with connections in Korea to find a master carpenter who could replace the termite-damaged totems that guard the pagoda. But who, members wondered, could fix the bell?

Lee's group reached out to local metallurgy experts, who said restoring the bell was outside their expertise. The city said the same thing. Even the Internet failed to provide a solution.

One of Lee's committee members, however, had brought a 4-year-old Buddhist magazine back from Korea. It was on a coffee table when someone spotted an ad the size of a business card promoting Chai's firm, Beom Jong Sa. The ad said: "Manufacturer of Korean Bell of Friendship in L.A."

Chai's skills have taken him all over the world. He once cast a massive bell for Indonesia decorated with dozens of tiny handcrafted Buddhas. Another time he journeyed to North Korea to refurbish a bell.

Now in Los Angeles, he keeps pictures from those trips on a tablet he carries with him. On that device, he also has some old photos of his mentor, Kim Chul-oh, ringing the Korean Friendship Bell before it was sent across the Pacific.

At the age of 72, Kim is the last living craftsman to work on the original project. It has fallen to Chai to repair his master's work.

Soon after Chai and his team arrived in San Pedro in August, they took hundreds of pictures of every square foot of the bell and belfry. They conducted tonal tests, tapping the bell with small mallets in a meticulous search for corrosion. Then, finally, they were set to begin.

For weeks, Chai and his team attended to each flower on the bell as concrete specialists mended the belfry. After a send-off dinner at the Korean consul general's house, the first set of bell masters flew home to South Korea with Chai. Then he flew back to Los Angeles with more supplies and a new set of artisans who would put the finishing touches on the bell and do the painting.

Chai has met each challenge with the same steady approach and demeanor. His work uniform seldom changes: a blue polo shirt with his company's namein gold lettering over the heart, washed-out jeans and worn brown boots. (He adds a jacket if he's meeting with a Korean official.) His hands are callused, and dirt hides under his fingernails even at formal events.

He speaks mostly in measured, diplomatic sentences and gesticulates to the cadence of his speech. He has a sense of humor, but even his jokes are half-serious.

"The biggest concern I have is that after I repair [the bell], the birds will come in and poop on it again," Chai says during a recent tour of the plaza.

Beom Jong Sa finished the job in late November, capping about 100 days of round-the-clock work.

Chai said his company approaches all its jobs with a dedication to quality, but acknowledges that this project meant something more.

The bell, he says simply, is "my child."
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c...rint.htmlstory
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  #96  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2014, 6:00 AM
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Korean immigrants in Los Angeles originated Sundubu jjigae or Soon Tofu in 1990s. Hee Sook Lee, a first-generation Korean immigrant first arrived in Los Angeles with two of her three sons in 1989. She left behind her husband and 18-month-old son so that she and the other two sons, 5 and 7 at the time, could get an education. She decided to open a restaurant. To differentiate her eatery from the seemingly endless array of restaurants lining the streets of Koreatown, Hee Sook Lee decided she would serve just one simple tofu dish, soon-dubu -- a common, cheap lunch dish with chunks of white tofu submerged in a bubbling bright-red soup saturated with spices.

Hee Sook Lee took to the kitchen, spending long nights experimenting with different spices and condiments. From the commonplace stew, she conjured up 12 varieties with different types of meat and flavors. She brainstormed ways to customize the dish like a cup of coffee, offering four degrees of spiciness, with or without monosodium glutamate. After about a year of preparation and some advertising, Hee Sook Lee opened her first BCD Tofu House on Vermont Avenue in April 1996. It is the first Soon Tofu specialty restaurant. The name is short for Buk Chang Dong, a neighborhood in Seoul where her in-laws once ran a restaurant. Ten months after the first restaurant opened, Hee Sook Lee opened a second BCD Tofu House in Koreatown. Ten months after that, she opened a third in Garden Grove. Just two years into the business, Hee Sook Lee began to export her Soon Tofu to South Korea. Even at this rate, Hee Sook Lee hasn't been able to open branches fast enough to keep up with the demand, and numerous imitators took advantage of the opportunity. Now Soon Tofu is hugely popular in Korea.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan...ness/fi-tofu24

Also According to Chef Roy Choi (of Kogi Korean BBQ fame), sundubu jjigae was a dish developed by Korean immigrants in Los Angeles.

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Last edited by dragonsky; Feb 7, 2014 at 4:46 PM.
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  #97  
Old Posted Feb 13, 2014, 4:43 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LA Times



Chinese visitors turning San Gabriel into a boomtown
San Gabriel's growing reputation for Chinese food and services has made it a destination for visitors from China, boosting revenue for the city and creating some hassles for residents.
By Frank Shyong
February 12, 2014, 5:18 p.m.

Chen Si, 35, and her husband visited Los Angeles from Shanghai for the first time in December, excited about local attractions like Disneyland and Hollywood.

They were less enthused about the idea of American food. They booked a room in San Gabriel, where friends said they could find "acceptable" Chinese food in the surrounding neighborhood, Si said.

The once-quiet suburb about 12 miles east of downtown Los Angeles is in the midst of a transformation built on the growing international reputation of its Chinese food and services.

These are boom times for Chinese tourism, and statistics show that about a third of those who travel to the United States spend at least some time in Los Angeles. But some are shunning coastal resorts and Beverly Hills opulence in favor of San Gabriel, a city of 40,000 best known for its historic mission.

"San Gabriel is famous in China," said David Lee, chief executive of Hing Wa Lee Group, which recently opened a flagship jewelry store in San Gabriel a few hundred feet from a Hilton hotel, where many Chinese tourists stay. "It has become a brand name destination."

The tourism boom has helped spark new development. A 316-room Crowne Plaza Hotel is slated to open next door to the Hilton in 2015, taking over an overgrown lot that once housed a Norm's restaurant. Hilton developer Sunny Chen is applying to build another hotel right next to that at the site of an old furniture store.

With no beaches, no major landmarks and few A-list shops or restaurants, San Gabriel is an unlikely tourist destination. But the city has a Chinese-style five-star hotel within walking distance of a thriving community of Chinese restaurants, Asian banks and multilingual travel agencies. Visitors to San Gabriel sometimes use the city as a home base for trips throughout the Southland, returning to Valley Boulevard to eat.

Lee says he's trying to cater to Chinese nationals, who form about 70% of his business. Chinese travelers spend about $3,000 on each trip to California, more than visitors from any other nation, according to data from the U.S. Office of Travel and Tourism Industries. Here they find cheaper prices for name brand products like watches and iPhones, and it's more likely that they'll be genuine in America, Lee said.

Tourism, and the investment it helps generate, helped shield San Gabriel from the 2008 recession. The total value of all commercial and residential real estate within the city has doubled in the last decade, bucking countywide trends, according to city records. And the San Gabriel Square strip mall can generate more sales tax revenue than some of the city's commercial corridors, according to city officials.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-s...#ixzz2tAq9K5w6
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  #98  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2014, 8:14 PM
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  #99  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2014, 4:00 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LA Times

High-end malls in Southern California court shoppers in China
At the Beverly Center and South Coast Plaza, attracting the interest of individual Chinese is a courtship that begins long before shoppers board flights for the U.S.
By Yifan Zhu
March 21, 2014, 4:15 p.m.

Chinese visitors represent an increasingly important piece of spending in the Southland and an influence that is stretching beyond just shopping to real estate and other investments.

In 2013, Los Angeles had 570,000 Chinese visitors, 20% more than in 2012 and double the number from three years ago, according to the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board.

They are also the biggest spenders. Chinese visitors in California shelled out an average of $2,472 a trip per person in 2012, followed by tourists from Brazil and South Korea, according to Visit California.

Chinese purchasers are a factor in fast-rising home prices in several Southern California communities. In addition, developers from China have been pouring money into commercial properties in downtown Los Angeles and other local areas.

And Chinese companies have begun going Hollywood, with recently announced investments in the Resolution talent agency and the out-of-bankruptcy Digital Domain visual-effects house.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,1974228.story
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  #100  
Old Posted May 15, 2014, 3:22 AM
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