We loved boozy dinners, cocktails and champagne. Then I saw crushing truth about what alcohol had done to me and quit... but didn't foresee the impact on my marriage: DAISY BUCHANAN
I didn't know what was wrong with me, but my anxiety – which had dogged me for years – was suddenly overwhelming. I felt scared and utterly ashamed of myself, and I couldn't explain why.
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The Guardian
41 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Am I just an asshole?' Time blindness can explain chronic lateness - some of the time
Dr Melissa Shepard has a problem with managing her time. She had always been a high achiever, making it through medical school to become a psychiatrist and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. But no matter how hard she worked, she struggled with one of life's simplest expectations: being on time. 'I really felt like I could just not crack the code,' Shepard said. 'I worried: am I just an asshole? Is that why I'm always late? No matter how hard I wanted to be on time, it was a struggle.' When Shepard learned about time blindness as a symptom of ADHD, which she has, it all clicked. Russell Barkley, a former clinical psychologist and expert on ADHD, coined the term in 1997 to describe what he calls 'the serious problem people with ADHD have with governing their behavior relative to time intervals and the passage of time more generally'. Time blindness can be a symptom of ADHD or other conditions such as anxiety or autism spectrum disorder. Shepard now frequently talks about time blindness and other mental health struggles on TikTok, where she has 1.5m followers. The term has become something of a buzzword on certain corners of the video-sharing app, with some pointing to its legitimacy as a symptom of a medically recognized disorder to explain why they can't get out of the door in the morning. Others use it to vent about their 'chronically late' friends. You know the type: you say 'let's have lunch at 1pm' but make the reservation closer to 2pm, because you've learned to factor in their perpetual tardiness. Everyone has their slow days, but some TikTokers argue that people who are habitually 30 or 45 minutes late are claiming time blindness when in reality they're being inconsiderate. As one person posted in a video liked over 125,000 times: 'I think that being chronically late is a character flaw, and I think that it's disrespectful across the board … I know people are like, 'time blindness' – no, you need to figure out how to be on time for things.' Some people are bad planners. But others, like Shepard, do live with time blindness. 'We all sort of have this internal clock that we use to estimate how much time has passed,' Shepard said, 'but people with ADHD tend to not have as good of an internal clock.' On social media, those who have time blindness share examples of their inability to gauge how long a task might take. For instance, one woman created a timetable for waiting for freshly brewed coffee to cool down, so she doesn't burn herself. (At 30 seconds: 'very hot - ouch!' One minute: 'Hot but could drink if urgent.' One minute 30 seconds: 'Ideal drinking temp'). Dr David W Goodman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, clarified that time blindness as a symptom of ADHD or other conditions refers to a difficulty with the perception of the passage of time. He said it is different than poor time management, or when someone can successfully perceive how long it takes to do something but fails to plan accordingly. (So-called 'time optimists', or people who constantly underestimate how long it takes to get somewhere or complete a task, fall into the latter category.) The popularity of the phrase does seem to point to the proliferation of 'therapy speak', or how psychobabble has made its way into the mainstream to excuse poor behavior with fancy sounding clinical explanations. Could 'time blindness' be a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone strolling into work 45 minutes late, toting an iced coffee? According to the Attention Deficit Disorder Association, it is possible for people with ADHD to receive disability accommodations at work via the Americans with Disabilities Act, provided they have proper documentation of their condition from a medical provider. Shepard also noted that the rise of remote or flexible work has eased the strain people with time blindness feel, since it eliminates the need for a traditional commute. Still, one TikTok user sparked a mini-meltdown on the app in 2023 after suggesting that employers should allow for disability accommodations for people with time blindness. 'They exist actually!' one user commented. 'They're called watches and clocks and alarms.' On Reddit, professors have voiced frustrations that more universities are allowing students extra time to get to class or submit assignments due to time blindness. 'Any student, regardless of ability, who does not learn what they need to do to show up and turn work in, is not prepared for a job in most fields,' one wrote on r/Professors in 2022. 'We are setting these students up for failure.' Shepard has written accommodation letters for people with time blindness, but she'll also work with those patients on strategies to help them be more prompt. Many are common-sense solutions, such as setting alarms in the morning to denote it's time to start a new task (wake up, brush teeth, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast). Some are less obvious: Shepard said that people with time blindness do better working with old-fashioned, analogue clocks that have hands, as it's easier to physically see the passage of time that way. Goodman said it's 'cloudy' whether or not time blindness constitutes a disability for which someone should get accommodations at work or school. 'You really do need to have a formal diagnosis in which that would fit,' he said. 'Not just that you didn't plan or anticipate. You have to make a decision: is time blindness an explanation or an excuse?'
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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
I thought I'd never go on a cruise – this adventurous voyage from Dakar to Lisbon changed my mind
In the days leading up to my very first cruise, I felt a certain apprehension. My mind was full of horror stories one hears about these behemoth floating cities: the diesel fuel and the sewage; the seasickness and the virus outbreaks; but above all, that feeling of being trapped on board, unable to escape one's fellow passengers. The minute I stepped aboard the SH Diana, at the Port of Dakar, in Senegal, these fears were allayed. This 125-metre polar ice-class expedition ship – one of three in the Swan Hellenic fleet – is oceans away from the mass-tourism vessels you see in the cruise ports of the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. At full capacity, it accommodates 192 guests and 141 crew, rather than the thousands seemingly crammed like sardines on the larger ships. And after walking up the gangway to a welcoming committee of smiling crew, I discovered that, for my leg of the cruise – from Dakar to Lisbon, via Western Sahara, the Canaries and Madeira – there were only 59 other passengers aboard in addition to me and my wife. While I'd heard of stereotypical cruisers being described as 'newlywed, over-fed or nearly dead', few of my fellow passengers fell into these particular categories. Half were alumni from the University of California, Berkeley, mostly in their sixties, plus a group of Russians and a smattering of Chinese and Europeans. Crucially, no one seemed to be on board with the intention of partying heavily. They were in pursuit of more high-brow touristic pleasures. Swan Hellenic, a British company registered in Cyprus, prides itself on offering 'boutique cultural expedition cruising', allowing guests to 'see what others don't'. I certainly saw a great deal, although I'm not sure how much was what others don't. Our first stop was at a lacklustre Atlantic fishing port in Western Sahara called Dakhla, where guides did their best to show us round the town – but the experience improved vastly as we headed further north to the Canary Islands and the Madeira archipelago. Here, the ship's excellent expedition crew laid on some engaging city tours, hiking trips and coach excursions. Small compared with the mightier cruise liners, our vessel was able to moor up at each port we visited. There were also rigid inflatable boats aboard, had we stopped at shallower ports without cruise ship capacity. In Tenerife, I explored the botanical gardens of Santa Cruz. In La Palma, I joined a tour of the island's Caldera de Taburiente, a vast erosion caldera stretching five miles across with walls rising 2,000 metres on all sides. I also visited the site of the 2021 Cumbre Vieja eruption which spewed lava down the mountainside to the sea, burying over 3,000 homes and forming a new peninsula in the process. In Madeira, I spent a morning hiking the famous water irrigation channels known as levadas, while in Porto Santo, I scoffed pasteis de nata custard tarts and wandered round the town, admiring the town's skinny cobbled streets lined by doorways decorated with paintings of island life. Then there were the days in between the port stops, spent at sea. Given a spacious cabin with a balcony, I felt spoilt. It may have been just one level above the ship's basic passenger cabin, but it still felt like a well-appointed hotel room. There was a large double bed, a vast TV, a flame-effect fireplace (useless in early summer in the North Atlantic), an ensuite bathroom, a desk and a living-room area, plus dozens of cupboards and drawers – more than I possess in my entire London house. Suffice to say, space wasn't a problem. Elsewhere, the SH Diana offered two excellent restaurants, a piano bar, a gym, a spa, a sauna, a hot tub and, on the stern deck, a swimming pool not much bigger than a snooker table. During the days at sea, there were lectures from on-board experts on subjects such as marine wildlife, weather phenomena, astronomy and photography tips. The service crew were unstintingly polite and smiling at all times. I don't think I've ever been called 'Sir' so often and with such regularity. There were some characters aboard, too. One Russian guest, well-oiled with vodka, insisted on playing loud folk songs on his smartphone in the piano bar. Another evening, on the star-gazing deck, a young American proposed to his girlfriend on bended knee (she said 'yes'). And ever-present was an ageing American widower who refused categorically to speak to other passengers, spending most of his time staring wistfully out to sea. One evening, my wife and I were invited to dinner with the captain, a straight-talking Norwegian called Svein-Rune Stromnes who explained how his ship had launched in 2023 and spent its short life so far circumnavigating the planet, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, skirting Africa, Europe and the Americas in between. He later gave me a tour of the bridge where his newly promoted second officer was keeping an eye on the radar, in case of rogue debris or marine wildlife. The latter proved surprisingly elusive throughout my cruise. By the final evening there were grumbles from the passengers, disappointed at not spotting any whales. Then, on my way to the bar, walking along the starboard promenade deck, I suddenly spotted two spouts in the middle distance. 'Whales!' I yelled to my fellow passengers who all rushed out to join the show, cocktails in hand. And there, surrounding the boat in a widely spaced pod were half a dozen fin whales – the world's second-largest species after blues – all expelling air through their blowholes. Finally, I understood Swan Hellenic's motto: 'See what others don't.'
Finextra
2 hours ago
- Finextra
Katanox secures FCA authorisation to offer payment services in the UK
Katanox, travel's growth engine, providing financial infrastructure for hospitality distribution, has been granted a PSD2 license by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide payment services in the United Kingdom (UK). 0 This approval extends the company's coverage beyond the European Economic Area (EEA), where it already has a PSD2 license. With Katanox, hotels and both leisure and corporate travel agencies can transition away from costly, insecure, and error-prone bookings and transactions executed with virtual credit cards (VCCs) to automated bank payouts, eliminating the need for additional integrations. The Katanox Platform streamlines processes and drives growth in the travel industry by consolidating payments, reconciliation, direct contracting, connectivity, and rate integration into a single platform. This provides more efficient workflows, faster payouts, control, and transparency. Fragmentation remains a significant challenge in the hospitality industry. According to a study conducted by Adyen, 31% of hotels reported that reconciliation and associated administrative work were hindering their business ambitions. On average, five employees support reconciliation, with each spending approximately 7 hours per week on this task. Katanox's unified platform addresses these inefficiencies directly, freeing teams to focus on delivering better service. Hospitality companies face challenges managing multiple integrations and datasets across various business functions. Katanox simplifies these complexities by consolidating numerous functions into a single, streamlined approach. Failed payments also contribute to guest friction. Poppink TRVL Projects states that up to 25% of all VCC transactions fail during the check-in process. Katanox reduces this failure rate and enhances the customer experience by improving payment acceptance through direct bank processing. Katanox removes technical and financial barriers in B2B operations and guest-facing transactions, making travel more seamless for suppliers, buyers, and travelers. 'The UK is a strategic market for travel, and we're delighted that this FCA license enables us to provide our hospitality partners in the region with desperately needed trusted and regulated financial infrastructure,' said Paul Beukers, Katanox CCO and Co-founder. 'This is a crucial step in reducing the operational fragmentation that holds the industry back.
