Massage Therapy Benefits HIV and AIDS

Vital Life Services of Oakland, California provided shanghai massage as one of their services to low-income and homeless people living with HIV or AIDS.

“We did offer massage to our clients and they greatly benefited from the treatments. All of our therapists were volunteers,” said Program Director Debbie Rugh, “Both staff and clients were most grateful for the services rendered by these remarkable individuals. We operated the program on a rotating basis. There were usually about 40-50 clients signed-up on the waiting list.”

Massage therapy is quite beneficial for those who live with the symptoms or effects of
HIV or AIDS. The major benefit of massage therapy are a positive, caring and nurturing

CANNIBAL CORPSE Bassist Issues Japanese Tour Report

Bassist Alex Webster of Florida-based death metal veterans CANNIBAL CORPSE has penned the first entry of his new tour blog for the SWRsound.com web site. An excerpt follows below.

"For this first edition, I'm writing to you from Osaka, Japan holiday. We're currently on tour here; it's a three-show mini-tour consisting of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. We've already played the first two shows of the tour and are currently taking a breather in Osaka before the final show in Nagoya.

"It's been 13 years since CANNIBAL's last tour of Japan, so we're extremely excited to finally be back. The tour has been fantastic, and right now I'd like to give you a little recap of how things have been so far.

"The first show of the tour was in Tokyo, so that was the city we flew into.

"We arrived early in the afternoon on Sunday, the day before the first show.

"The concert was booked into Tokyo's Club Quattro in the Shibuya district of the city.

"Although we were exhausted from the long flight from the United States, we decided to stay up the whole day in order to get on a good schedule. Keeping moving is pretty essential to staying awake after a long flight like that, so my wife (who was along for the trip) and I set out to explore the area around the hotel.

"It would really be hard to exaggerate just how awesome and overwhelming the bustling city of Tokyo can be for visitors — we were just blown away by the sights and sounds of this amazing city. The atmosphere was incredibly exciting, and despite our fatigue, we had no problems staying up the whole day as planned."

Juicy Couture head sees holiday growth

Improved sales trends at the Juicy Couture unit of Liz Claiborne Inc (LIZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) over the last few weeks are boosting its president's confidence for the full year.

Speaking at the Reuters Global Luxury Summit in New York, Juicy Couture President Edgar Huber said he is expecting same-store sales in the year-end holiday season to rise at a high single-digit rate from the year earlier period, when the financial crisis led to retail's toughest season in decades.

"The last couple of weeks were better than the beginning of the year," Huber said on Monday. "Last weekend was great, probably because the weather was great. People were out, they were shopping and we saw it in our numbers. (We are) getting much more confident about the accuracy of our forecast for this year."

Juicy Couture's net sales were $132 million in the first quarter, down 5.4 percent. Excluding the impact of licensing its fragrance business last year, sales rose 6 percent, helped by the addition of 38 more stores.

At stores open at least a year, quarterly sales fell 22 percent. Yet as comparisons for the rest of the year get easier, sales trends should improve, Huber said.

At the end of the latest quarter, Juicy had 63 full-price stores and 33 outlet stores in the United States.

Huber said the Juicy expects to open 11 to 12 stores this year, with five of those in the United States.

Huber said the brand could ultimately have as many as 250 U.S. stores, noting that there are "tons of locations which we are still very interested in that you can get great deals in," such as Miami and Seattle.

As the U.S. market for commercial real estate has come down, the company -- like many other retailers -- has sought better deals from its landlords. It also has benefited as some outlet mall developers finance the building of new stores.

Huber said good deals on new stores may boost the bottom line by 2 to 3 percentage points this year.

Juicy also is working to expand its international presence in Latin America and China. Over the next 5 to 6 years, Huber said he hopes international sales will make up as much as 45 percent of the brand's total, up from about 16 percent now.

In China, where Huber said the brand's business is "very healthy," he thinks Juicy could have 25 to 30 stores by the end of next year.

In addition to new stores, the brand known for track suits with the word "Juicy" written on the behind, is also boosting its online presence.

Right now, Huber said sales from the company's own website make up about 8 percent of total sales.

"I hope we will go close to 10 percent this year and then from next year on, I really want to develop it to 20 to 25 percent, and make it a really strong distribution channel for us."

Mi?oza misses cut in Japan Tour return

Frankie Mi?oza’s return in the Japan Tour came to an abrupt end Friday when the former Philippine Open champion missed the cut of the Mitsubishi Diamond Golf Cup 2009 at the Oarai Golf Club in Ibaragi, Japan.

The Filipino golf legend, who is set to join the US Senior Tour later this year, shot a second round eight-over-par 80 to end up with a two-day total of 14-over-par 158 at 114th place.

He was seven shots over the cut score of 151 and 15-over of new leader Chawalit Plaphol of Thailand’s two-round tally of 143 after shooting a one-under 72 in the second day. He shot a 71 on opening day.

First round co-leaders Satoru Hirota of Japan and Korea’s Kyung Tae-kim slid to third and eight spots after each shooting a seven-over-par 79 and eight-over-par 80 in round two.

Mi?oza, 59, battled had a terrible opening round with a six-over-par 78 spiked by five bogeys and a double bogey. His only saving grace was a birdie on the par-five 15th hole for a 40-38 card.

Sydney: Won't you take me to Funky Town?

Newtown is no place for a Nana. That's "Nana" as in folk who have Nana tendencies such as being a little too fussy, verging on prudish or easily shocked. If you've ever been told to "stop being such a Nana" then don't do Newtown on your next trip to Sydney.

Newtown's community is a melting pot. There's lots of body piercing on lots of bodies; lots of incredibly black hair dye with matching lipstick and eye-shadow and that's not just on the females; and there's more than a few tresses and spikes of startling red or lurid green, too.

Newtown is definitely gay-friendly and Goth is so popular that several stores sell everything and anything in Goths' favourite colour of black.

The locals have a way with personal style that's cool, clever and funky - or downright frightful if you're a Nana.

It's colourful, unconventional and diverse. The main thoroughfare, King St, is four interesting kilometres covering an incredible diversity of interests.

There are more than 600 absolute one-off businesses, from body-piercers to tattooists and hair salons, to fashion and jewellery, homewares and toys.

Sydney's foodies call it "Eat Street" as it boasts more than 100 cafes, pubs and restaurants covering every possible ethnicity and food type.

It's also designerville, but without the snobbery and flash shop-frontage glitz of Sydney's hob-nob boutique shopping suburbs. Here you'll discover a reasonably priced fashion find of the century that you can bring back to New Zealand and be damn sure you won't it see on anyone else.

Newtown is just four train stops out of Sydney's frenetic underground station at the Town Hall to the inner-west suburbs where the pace slows dramatically.

Make haste by all means, but only to bag the best cafe table in the sun and enjoy the morning spoils from the oven while they're still warm and a copy of the daily newspaper before it's been wrinkled.

At 9.45 on a Friday morning, I was way too early for Newtown. Cafes were open, but it seems 10.30am to 11am is plenty early enough for local retailers.

On a sunny work-day morning, without the distraction of open shop doors, the old buildings shout history, mixed with a little funky retro, artistic bent and many decades of grime. In the 1800s, it was the first suburban shopping centre developed outside of Sydney's centre. The main street is the longest and most complete commercial precinct of Australia's late-Victorian and Federation period, although it started life as a bullock track leading to farmland, and earned a reputation in the 1960s for being run-down, seedy and unsafe.

Real estate prices have since driven out most of the undesirables, although junkies are not unusual and, by nightfall, I did spot a little huddle of deros hanging out together. There's so many other people around, though, that there's no feeling of risk.

But, if you do feel the need to move on, keep wandering until you hit the adjacent suburb of Glebe, smaller than Newtown and a little more genteel, but home to lots more great shops and the busy weekend Glebe Markets held in the local school grounds.

Here's a selection of Newtown's and Glebe's most interesting shops:

ALL BUTTONS GREAT AND SMALL

Home to Lucy Godoroja's passion for buttons, this tiny shop is jammed full with buttons in every shape and size.

She has sold buttons for as much as A$100 ($122) each, made in the 1970s in Paris and adorned with gold and crystal diamantes; but when I was there some Swiss buttons topped the price list at around A$66 each.

Even if you're not into sewing, there are some buttons to adorn hats and bags, hair-ties and shoes, cushions and quilts, or to string up as jewellery.

SHORTIES

Good enough to make you want to have another baby. The clothing for wee girls and boys (up to age 6) here is testimony to the creative flair of Sydneysiders and Melburnians.

Even actor Russell Crowe has discovered Shorties, falling for the hand-crocheted soft toys, ranging from cup cakes to robots and rockets.

AMAZING PAPER

Just off King St in Enmore Rd, choose papers to write letters (there's a huge stock of envelopes to match), wrap gifts, make journals, scrapbooks, boxes and bags.

The shop also sells pens, wax seals, ribbons and stickers. Exotic papers include hemp, tamarind and banana leaf, silk, lace, flocked, suede, embroidered, foiled and embossed.

Great to feast your eyes and touch and feel all the different textures.

MADE590

A tiny fashion store, with its front door on the corner of King and Union Sts, Made590 mostly stocks locally designed clothing for women, men and kids, displayed alongside unusual homewares from Japan. This is one of Newtown's fashion stores that grew out of its owner Christina Kelly's successful years of designing and selling clothing at outdoor markets.

ZUKINI

Also hugely loyal to local designers, Zukini has a great selection of clothing from emerging designers.

A standout label is High Tea With Mrs Woo, which nowadays makes it to Australia's annual Fashion Week. These garments are instantly recognisable, superbly tailored, intricately designed and elegant.

The website is a delight in itself, worthy of a decent click-and-scroll session.

ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE

Magnificent architectural treasures fill two floors of this 30-year-old business in Glebe Point Rd. Ornate gates, statues, mirrors, massive double doors, fire surrounds, and glittering leadlights hanging from the ceilings had me a little awestruck.

It's all for sale and most items come with an intriguing story, such as having been borrowed as props for movies such as Scooby Doo, Babe, Moulin Rouge and Mission Impossible.

Architectural Heritage is used to shipping large items to New Zealand and there are smaller treasures you can buy and take home yourself.

SAPPHO BOOKS AND CAFE

Glebe boasts this brilliant second-hand bookstore - more than 30,000 titles - in which I browsed and lunched for over an hour.

Housed in an old 1880s building, tables are tucked behind the bookshelves to take the extra customers when the semi-outdoor cafe gets too full.

There's outside seating on the main street, too. Upstairs is an equally fascinating collection of second-hand and antiquarian music books at Da Capo Music.

Port Lincoln: Sashimi school

How do like your tuna? Lightly seared with a soy, ginger and lime sauce, or served gracefully as gossamer-thin layers of super-fresh sashimi? How about speeding past your face underwater at 70km/h?

In a world where you can cage-dive with great white sharks, swimming with a school of one-metre tuna is not your everyday experience - especially when one of them might nibble your toes.

The toe-nibbling experience of South Australian Tourism Minister Jane Lomax-Smith is just one of the anecdotes that Matt Waller of Adventure Bay Charters relates as we head for Port Lincoln's tuna farms 1km offshore.

Tuna has been good for this once-sleepy South Australian fishing town. Locally harvested tuna can bring A$5000 ($6175) in Japan, and Port Lincoln's steady supply of sashimi-grade fish has given the town the highest proportion of millionaires in Australia. Super-yachts line the Port Lincoln marina.

As we arrive at a floating pontoon ringed by two netted pens filled with darting tuna, I calculate that I'm about to dive into about half a million dollars of the world's freshest sashimi.

They're the same kind of pen that Port Lincoln's piscine entrepreneurs use to fatten up their tuna before they're despatched to the famous Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.

In nearby Baird Bay, swimming with sea lions and dolphins is on offer, but today only tuna is on the adventure menu.

Some of the fish weigh 150kg, and a steady supply of pilchards is keeping them eating and moving so the water is roiling with a restless energy from the smoky-black muscular fish.

Donning a mask and snorkel I lower myself into the water just as another shower of fresh pilchards rains down. In the crystalline water the mayhem is amplified as the tuna whizz past centimetres from my face. It feels like I'm crossing a busy street in a big Asian city, and just like in Saigon or Bangkok, the fishy commotion effortlessly parts and goes around me.

Back on the pontoon a few non-snorkelling spectators are handfeeding the tuna, gingerly dipping their pilchards centimetres into the water. The impact is instantaneous as tuna dart over, tuck in, and move on.

Other tuna fans descend into an underwater viewing tunnel, staying dry but still experiencing the sublime speed and grace of the fish.

Meanwhile, I descend through a silvery, shape-shifting cloud, feeling the sleek fish brush my torso remembering that Matt, our boat skipper, said: "Be careful to keep your fingers tucked in".

But by now my confidence is building and I proffer a fresh pilchard in the water. Tuna come at me from all sides and the winner is a plump, but still speedy fish.

This morning I was looking forward to tuna for dinner, but after this up close experience, maybe a nice kangaroo steak instead.

IF YOU GO

Swimming with tuna with Adventure Bay Charters off Port Lincoln is one of the stops on overland camping trips with Nullarbor Explorer from Perth to Adelaide or vice versa.

House of Travel has Adelaide to Eyre Peninsula Nullarbor Traveller packages which also include optional activities such as swimming with sealions and the Great White Shark Experience.

Louis Vuitton Denim Bag: Snob or Slob?

I have no words for Louis Vuitton's python-interior embroidered denim bag with multi-beaded handle (and are those feathers I see dangling nonchalantly?!?!?).

I guess one could use it inside out and pretend it's really a python bag lined in denim. I mean it would make more sense but then you'd lose out on the kaleidoscope of logos in rainbow colors and we all know LV fans love their logos!

This actually makes me sad; after touring Louis Vuitton's home and atelier I'd developed a newfound respect for the brand, but this-- this makes no sense whatsoever (though it could have been made purely for editorial purposes, or for Beyonce). and not only,I think the coach wholesale is your good choice,too.

What do you think?