It’s hard to get a job. It’s even more difficult if you are not well connected. That said, if you get to the interview stage you can control whether or not you get the job by behaving in the right way. The below tips will influence whether or not you get the job.
If you believe that you are a worthy candidate, it will show in your interview. Doing your research will help to build your confidence; don’t underestimate the competition; there are many high quality candidates out there. Finally, there is a thin line between confidence and arrogance; don’t cross it. A whiff of arrogance and your interviewer will do their damnedest to make it a ‘challenging’ interview. 2. Smile even as you speak It makes you seem more likeable and will help to build a rapport with the interviewer. Smile at someone and most of the time they smile back! Give a firm handshake at the start and at the end A firm handshake is the only physical contact that takes place (or should take place) between interviewer and interviewee and can set the tone for the rest of the interview. Some research argues that lightly patting the elbow of the person whose hand you’re shaking with your free hand is helpful in building a rapport. You might have seen politicians doing this on TV. Why does the handshake matter? According to Paul G. Mattiuzzi, Ph.D., research has shown that your handshake actually reflects certain personality characteristics and can make a real difference in certain settings, e.g. interviews and business meetings. Furthermore, research also suggests handshakes might be a bigger self-promotion engine for women than for men. He quotes an article by University of Alabama psychologists, William F. Chaplin et al, published in 2000 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In this study a panel was trained to recognize and classify: completeness of grip, temperature, dryness, strength, duration, vigor, texture, and eye contact. At a high level, there was a close correlation between the handshakes that were classified as creating a ‘good impression’ versus a ‘poor impression’. When matched up against personality, those with a firm handshake were found to be the same people that were extroverted and more open to new experiences. The rest were more anxious and shy. The benefit of a firm handshake was found to be stronger for women because women were less likely to give one so the ones that did stood out more. That concludes my tips for this piece. Next week I will give you four more tips on how to do well in interviews plus a description of what a bad handshake looks like. “People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.” Andrew Carnegie
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This is one of my favourite stories that my mum tells me. She'll probably kill me for writing it on paper but for me it's a very pleasant story and one that can be used to motivate other women. Certainly, it motivates me and I admire my mother all the more for how smart she is. She's very, very clever. This is how it went. Back in the 1980s my dad brought my mum to the UK for holiday. He bought her air ticket but he didn't give her any spending money, he said he didn't have any and that she would have to sort herself out. From her salary she had saved GBP100, that is all she had, that was her life savings at the time, she was in her mid-20s or just beyond. I believe this was her first trip to the UK. When she got there she observed a completely different way of life. She loved the clothes that were offered for sale and had one pivotal experience on that trip. She saw a woman buy one dress, just a single outfit, for GBP60 and she felt more envious than she had ever been before. In her words, "Ndinasilira ngati sindinasilirepo." All she could afford was second hand clothing from charity shops and car boot sales. She said that she couldn't imagine a world in which she could afford such an existence - a world in which she herself could pay that much for just one suit. This was 60% of her life savings don't forget. When she got back home she decided she needed to do more to improve her life and the life of her children. Unbeknown to my father she had observed that he didn't actually buy the air tickets for their trip; he had taken them on credit with an agreement to repay over time so she did exactly the same thing. She went to the travel agent and asked to buy one air ticket on credit with a pre-agreed schedule of when she would pay for it. She was a civil servant even then so she went to work and asked for a loan which she planned to use for shopping. She went home and announced that she was off to the UK to my very surprised father. How?! She explained. In that moment my mum gained financial independence. She went off to the UK where she bought things that she thought she could sell. She expected to recoup the money for the air ticket and the loan over a period of about three months but she repaid both in just one month. With the profits she did the same thing and indeed, for as long as I can remember my mum has used her holiday days to operate a business, not to relax. I told my mum that a Malawi in which a woman could do that was in a very different time and place. Nowadays it's so hard to navigate the system but she disagreed. My mother thinks people just have misplaced priorities. For instance she initiated someone she knew into a business and this woman used almost all of her first profits to buy a large TV and sofa set instead of reinvesting that money into her business. If you take a very long term view and operate a business with such a view you can achieve so much. Ignore the naysayers and be an inspiration to your own children like my mother was and is to me - she is my model for hard work. "Financial peace isn't the acquisition of stuff. It's learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can't win until you do this." Dave Ramsey Understanding different types of loans can help you to negotiate with your banker like a pro! If you can get your head around different financial concepts you can not only push your personal financial situation forward but your business life too. Let's chat about different types of loans or mortgages. All the below concepts are equally applicable to regular loans and mortgage-style loans. Fixed vs. floating (or variable) interest When you borrow money from a bank the interest rate is either fixed or it's variable, also known as floating. Fixed Interest Rates If the interest rate is fixed then it does not change for a certain duration of time; it can either be fixed for the full term of the loan or mortgage or for just part of the term. For example, you might have a 10-year loan with a fixed rate of interest for all ten years or a fixed rate of interest for the first two years only followed by a variable interest rate after those two years. Floating or Variable Interest Rates When the interest rate on a loan is variable it is reset periodically. It might be reset every month, quarterly, every six months or even annually. A variable loan is more risky for the borrower but it is less risky for the bank. It's more risky for the borrower because when you take out the loan you only know what the interest rate is in the initial period but you have no idea whether it will go up or down whenever it is reset. Why would anyone choose a variable interest rate then? Because variable rate loans are less risky for banks they are usually cheaper than the equivalent fixed rate that you can get at the same time. If your interest rate is fixed but interest rates in the economy start falling then you lose out. However, the opposite is also true, if interest rates are rising but you have a fixed rate then you're safe. Interest-only Loans You can get a loan or mortgage whereby you pay just the interest on a monthly basis and you only repay the entire borrowed amount at the end of the loan term. This may make sense if your money is locked up in an investment and you expect to receive a lump sum of money in the future. An alternative would be a loan with an initial discounted rate or a period of non-payment. How would that work? Discounted Rate Periods A loan can be structured such that you pay a low rate for an initial pre-agreed period followed by a higher rate after the discounted period is over. If you have a solid business or investment case you might even be able to secure a loan where you repay nothing at all initially (maybe a year or two) followed by a period during which the loan is repaid including interest. This is how it might work: Let's say you or you and your family own some properties but you don't want to sell them to finance a project - let's say it's a project to build flats that will take two years. You can go to your bank and use your existing assets as collateral but explain that until your project to build new flats has been finished your cash flow is restricted. The bank, considering you to be a good risk especially with your collateral, might then consider a discounted interest rate for two years or a period where you pay interest only or even a period where no payments at all are made. You can also do this on a much smaller scale. Let's say you want to go to Dubai to buy a minibus or two for business. You can explain this to your bank to get just 3 to 6 months of discounted interest payments. The more fluent you are in finance the better able you will be to negotiate. Next week I'll tell you how my mum used her understanding of finance and credit as a young 20-something year old to start a business. "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." Benjamin Franklin So, you're considering getting a mortgage and you want to see your banker with a firm understanding of what a mortgage is and how it works. Good. I'll sort you out with that knowledge. A mortgage is a type of loan. It's a loan for a piece of land or a property. The land or property acts as "security" or "collateral" for the loan. The asset backing up a mortgage is what makes a mortgage different to a regular, "unsecured" loan. A mortgage for a home is called a "residential mortgage"; a mortgage for offices, factories and other commercial properties is called a commercial mortgage. The "term" or "maturity" of the mortgage is the number of years over which you are borrowing the money. At the end of the mortgage term it will have been fully paid off. Your mortgage has a "principal value". The principal value is the amount of the mortgage. It's the amount that you borrow. Typically, the principal value will be lower than the value of the land or property. A bank is generally very unwilling to lend you an amount equal to the value of the property because if the property falls in value and you stop making your mortgage payments they will lose out. That is too risky for them. If you find a piece of land or property with a value of 100,000 and the bank decided it could lend you 75,000 to get that property then the "loan-to-value" would be 75%. This concept of loan-to-value (LTV) is an important one and a key mortgage term. The higher the loan relative to the value of the house, the higher the interest you will pay for that mortgage. Interest is the cost of a mortgage. However, note that the interest on a mortgage is "amortised" or paid down over the whole mortgage term. If you got a regular, unsecured loan of 100,000 and you were told the interest was 5% all you would need to calculate your interest payments for each year is the following formula: 100,000 * 5% = 5,000 This formula does not work for mortgage calculations. In order to find out your monthly payments you need more inputs. I will give you the inputs you need for the formula you can use in Microsoft excel to calculate monthly payments: Inputs required to calculate a mortgage: The value or principal of the mortgage, let's assume 100,000 for this example; The monthly interest, e.g. if you're told the annual interest rate is 12% then the monthly interest rate is 1% (12% divided by 12 months); The term in months - so if your mortgage term is 10 years that comes up to 120 months. For example purposes I will use the above numbers. · Monthly interest = 1% · Term = 120 months · Principal = 100,000 The function you will use in Microsoft excel is called PMT. The formula is: “=PMT(monthly interest, principal, term in months)” To calculate your monthly mortgage payment click any box in your excel spreadsheet, type exactly: =PMT(1%,120,100000,0) Don't type any spaces after the commas. You should get the answer 1,435. The "0" after the last comma basically says when 120 months have passed I want the value of the mortgage to be "zero" as is typically the case in a mortgage. Click to download my free mortgage calculator. If you don't have a computer at home then use the one at work. This is a very simple and basic formula but it will give you the confidence to go to your bank manager to talk about mortgages. Note that you can only use the PMT function if your interest is "fixed" - next week we'll talk about different types of interest: fixed, floating, discounted and so on. “More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.” Ray Dalio (net worth $6.5bn) Have you ever thought about getting a mortgage to kick-start your property portfolio? There are many young, professional girls in town that are planning on building a property either to live in or to rent out but they're not sure about how to finance it. Borrow the money. Get a mortgage. First things first, what is a mortgage? A mortgage is a type of loan. Due to inflation and high interest rates in Malawi it's normally just five to ten years whereas personal mortgages in the West are 25 years long on average. They can even be as long as 35 years. If interest rates are too high for you to get a mortgage then consider getting a short-term loan. How does a mortgage work? You go to the bank and borrow a given amount of money for a given number of years. Every month, you make a payment to your bank to pay down the loan. Part of the payment pays down the loan and part of it is interest. In the first few years, most of the payment is interest and only a small portion pays down the borrowed amount, however, with every payment the interest portion falls and the repayment portion increases. Getting a mortgage can help to speed up a building project. Instead of funding a project with your salary you can use your salary to pay off the mortgage and the lump-sum mortgage to accelerate work. If interest rates are too high for you to get a mortgage then consider getting a short-term loan. In fact, I myself have used short-term loans to increase the rate at which my house was built. Each time we were running low on cash we obtained a 3-month or 6-month loan to ensure that the project didn't come to a halt. What will you need to get a mortgage? Generally, the bank will want collateral: you need to have an asset that is worth more than the amount you are borrowing to secure against the mortgage. That way, if you can't pay the loan back, the bank sells your asset and recoups its money. Banks are not in the business of taking risk. They do not want to make loans that they won't get back. Collateral is what makes a mortgage different to a regular loan. Regular loans don't have a specific asset as security. What if you don't have any collateral? If a parent or other relative is willing to guarantee your loan using their property then try to get a mortgage that way. If you already have the plot of land to build on then that will have a value. Get the land valued and get a loan that is worth less than the value of the land. Use all the money to start your housing project and pay the loan back from your salary. When that loan is fully paid off your land will be worth more because you've built something on it so you can get a second, higher value loan and so on. How about if you don't have a single parent or relative that can act as a guarantor for a mortgage? Use your business's credit worthiness. If you have a business that is producing consistent revenue or even has assets then you can use your business's track record to obtain a loan. This is how my father obtained a mortgage as a young man in the 1980s. Don’t have a business? Start one! It’s never too late. “How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.” Robert G. Allen Last week’s article focused on energy, this week we focus on water. There are so many things you can do here too. Some people will think some of these tips go too far or imply stinginess but you have to do what you’ve got to do. It’s better to be seen as tight rather than that friend everyone avoids mid-month because you beg too much! If you have a big household with lots of people, consider getting a water meter. I don’t have one, but many begin to use water more conscientiously when they know how much it is costing them. Simple things you can do when you’re using water: When you brush your teeth or shave, don’t let the water run continuously. Turn on the tap only when you need the water. This is such a pet peeve of mine. When someone is brushing their teeth, I expect them to turn the water off between mouth rinses. I cannot stand seeing running water! It’s a waste of money and a scarce environmental resource. I once had a house mate who just let the water run from the start to the end of brushing her teeth and I had to give her a little lecture about it. I was the one paying the water bill! Don’t stand in the shower for ages. Turn the water on to wet yourself. Then turn it off as you soap up; then back on to rinse. Job done. There is no need to soap yourself up twice. Don’t fill the bathtub to the brim every time. A little water is enough. If you have two kitchen sinks, don’t let the water run whilst you rinse — wash dishes in one sink, rinse in the other. Water your garden in the evening when it’s cooler so the water doesn’t simply evaporate into the air. Speak to your garden boy about doing this. He doesn’t care how much you spend on water. Consider using a watering can to water the garden rather than a hose. You’ll lose less water. My husband and I got a gadget that you put onto the showerhead to reduce the rate at which water comes out. We couldn’t even feel that there was less water coming out of the showerhead. When you need to replace your toilet, get a water-efficient model. Get indoor and outdoor leaks checked promptly; take a walk around your house now. Any leaks? I personally wouldn’t do this, but I know people who fill up the tub once and everyone bathes in the same water. Eww! If it’s just kids that’s okay, I suppose. In this family the mother bathed first then everyone else. I also don’t do this, but some people only flush the toilet after someone has done a “number 2.” To reduce the washing up, don’t keep using different glasses for your drinks during the day. I am so guilty of this — my husband tells me off about it all the time. Don’t use running water to defrost food. I usually take dinner meat out in the morning so it defrosts during the day. Alternatively, if it’s a very hot day, I move meat out of the freezer and into the fridge so it defrosts more slowly. I hope you learnt a trick or two here and that you can add even more tips! The more you save on water, the more you have for fun stuff. “Today’s wastage is tomorrow’s shortage.” Anon. Every bill has been rising in price sharply: water, electricity, you name it. If you want to reach the month in surplus cutting back on energy and water costs may be the way to go. The below tips will help ensure you don’t have to borrow money from friends before the month is over. Don’t leave your gadgets on standby. People that don’t switch their TVs off properly waste a lot of energy. This also applies to all other gadgets that are left on or on standby when not in use: games consoles, microwaves, radios, DVDs and computers. When my TV is not on, it is actually “off,” not on standby. This means that to switch it on, you have to actually get up; you can’t just use the on button on the remote control. Too much like hard work for the lazy but great for your waistline! When you bring in the “no standby” rule, you’ll have to enforce it very rigorously to begin with. Leaving items on standby is a hard habit to kick. I make sure guests follow this rule too! The only item that doesn’t go on standby is our satellite box. It takes ages to come back on, so we don’t think it’s worth it. Know the gadgets that consume a lot of energy At the top of this list you’ll find power showers, vacuum cleaners and kettles and for the fortunate few, washing machines and tumble dryers. We stopped using our power shower the moment we saw how much energy it was chewing up! The power shower alone was costing about Mwk17,000 per month or Mwk200,000 a year to run. Fortunately, we had two showers in the house and we could enact this immediately. The savings were huge. We allowed guests to use the power shower if they wanted, but we didn’t use it ourselves and ultimately uninstalled it. Other energy saving tips: Each light bulb in your house uses very little energy, but cumulatively, bulbs can account for up to 20% of energy used. Get into the habit of switching lights off when the room is not in use. Get your kids into switching lights off at a young age. You can make it into a little game. After dinner, play “turn the lights off”; the kid who switches the most lights off wins. I don’t recommend giving prizes for it, though — winning should be enough! You could also get low-energy light bulbs. They cost more but last much, much longer — up to 15 years! Switch your water geyser on when it needs to be and off when it doesn’t. My parents got an automatic timer for the geyser to save on wastage and also because that means no one has to wake up early to switch it on. When you’re cooking, use the lid on the pot to cook food faster. This way more energy goes into cooking the food and less escapes into the air. Don’t defrost meat in the microwave. It’s a massive waste of energy. My tips on defrosting are in the money saving article on water (next week). Turn off the heater and throw on an extra blanket. June is gone now but if you switched heaters on during our “winter” you were burning lots of cash. It’s cheaper for you to just use a blanket or to just put a sweater on. Come on, girls, it’s not that cold. Even in June I usually wear short sleeved tops. These are just a few suggestions for you; there are many more things you can think of yourself. For every gadget you plug in, think about how you can save money. “Keep the future bright; turn off the light.” Anon. Last week we talked about cutting back on life’s luxuries. Today we carry on the same theme with a focus on children. It’s so easy to spend on kids. Even when you’re dealing with your last few pennies if they ask for something you almost always want to say yes. The unfortunate consequence of this is that they become spoilt, unruly and difficult to control both at home and at school. For kids that love their food they become obese all too quickly. Children are very perceptive; even before the age of three they can have you completely wrapped around their little finger without you realising it. The beauty with children, however, is that it doesn’t cost much to keep them happy. There are so many things you can cut out without compromising at all on their well being. Nappies This is a special bug bear for me. In the long run nappies are far more expensive than terry nappies (matewela) but so many people insist on using nappies even when they can ill-afford them. If you have a maid to wash the nappies that makes it even easier to commit to terry. Nowadays you can even get terry nappies designed to look like a disposable nappy so that they are easy to put on. Don’t write off terry nappies before at least trying them. Hand-me-downs Children grow extremely quickly. Don’t buy clothes if you don’t have to. Ask family and close friends to share their old clothes with you and when your child outgrows them, pass them on to someone else. Your child won’t mind and won’t even know the difference – well, not in the early days at least. Breastfeed One day I was at a friend of a friend’s house and she spent all day on the phone bugging her baby daddy to come and drop some money off for formula! I don’t know if this was a strategy for just hustling him but in the end he did drop off the money and she went off to get the formula when she was perfectly capable of breastfeeding. Breast is best. It’s what God designed so it baffles me when people choose, instead, to spend lots of money on dried cow’s milk for their offspring. Cerelac Another big luxury. Phala is, in fact, more healthy and several times cheaper. For the fortunate few, their children reject Cerelac and prefer likuni phala or even just phala made from mgaiwa from the market. If you can’t really afford Cerelac don’t even start buying it. Get your child used to the cheaper, healthier stuff. Purity Baby Food I’ve never seen anything more ghastly in my life. I don’t know how the marketers convinced us that foods that have been packed into glass bottles and sat on a shelf for weeks or even months are a premium product compared to their fresh alternatives but they have. It is far healthier to buy fresh vegetables and fruits from the market, boil them up and mash them for your kids. It’s also a lot cheaper. This is one area where you can save lots of money immediately. Purity and other pre-packaged foods are inferior goods compared to fresh food. The only plus in my opinion is the convenience. If you plan in advance, you should be able to feed healthier, fresh food to your precious babies. “I highly recommend getting your career established first and then having children.” Arizona Muse Last week we talked about shopping around to save money on the things that you buy. I suggested three things – buying in bulk abroad, getting products where they are cheapest instead of just going to your favourite shop and taking advantage of discount days at Game and other stores. This week we’re going to think about things you can live without completely. You get so used to buying what you buy that you never actually stop to think whether it’s that necessary. To help you think through your own shopping list I’ll go through some things me and my friends have cut back on: Rent You could live in a cheaper area and save thousands immediately. Of course, many of us are unwilling to compromise here so we have to look at the small stuff. Juice! For what you get, it’s not cheap at all. I was having a chat with one of my best friends about cutting back and she said, “Can you believe it, we’ve even had to stop buying juice!” I was like, “You were still buying juice? I stopped buying juice ages ago and I live in England where it’s much cheaper!” It is cheaper but I still find it to be poor value for money and completely unnecessary for the weight conscious. Juice packs in a lot more calories than one might suspect. Restaurants I spend A LOT of money on eating out every month. I find it very hard to cut back because I think of it as a “treat” after a week of hard work. However, right now my husband and I have just spent a small fortune extending our house to create a new room and shower room so we decided to stop eating out completely for a couple of months. To stick to our resolve we’ve added treat foods to our shopping list to encourage us to eat at home. For example, buying a frozen pizza that you just stick in the oven when you feel lazy is a lot cheaper than going out for pizza. We wouldn’t normally buy this type of food because it’s not healthy but it does the job of keeping us at home when we want to eat out. Meat News flash: you don’t have to eat meat every day! Some people in town would think this is unthinkable and perhaps an utterly ridiculous suggestion but it’s true. Husbands will especially be against such a suggestion, however, desperate times call for desperate measures. You can also cut back by eating less meat. For instance, unless it’s a very small chicken I only ever eat one chicken part, I find two to be excessive. If everyone in your home has two pieces your chicken will immediately last twice as long by enforcing the one-piece rule. The same goes for sausages and other meats. I normally cook minced meat with beans to bulk it up. Less meat means a heavier wallet and a more attractive waist line! You could go for offal as well. We have started to eat liver and tongue. This has the same taste as meat, is cheaper, and also the best source of iron out there. Lotion This is one thing I would never buy in shoprite or game. It’s usually too pricey unless it’s on offer. The small Indian shops, e.g. Rajani’s in Blantyre can usually give you a better price. Body wash You don’t really need it. Soap is a lot cheaper and it still does the job. Personally, I still use body wash but I generally buy what is cheapest on the shelf. I don’t ever stick to one brand when it comes to body wash. Next week, we’ll have a long chat about cutting back on that most expensive asset, children! “Cut back on your rent or cut back on what you spend on food but never worry about investing money in a good book.” Robin S. Sharma There are only two ways about it: if you want to have more money in your pocket you need to:
Saving money is the most readily available option for most people: even today you can save yourself money but to make more money you likely need more time. Yesterday I had plans for going into town to buy a few things that I thought I desperately needed but I was also very tired so in the end weariness won and I stayed at home all day and spent no money at all. Of course, we all have to spend some money to keep our homes running but by going to the right places to do your shopping you can save several thousand kwacha monthly. Once a month one of my friends goes to three shops to check the prices of the things she needs to buy and she buys every item where it’s cheapest. She goes to Game, Shoprite and Chipiku, however, I recommend you also try the market because fresh fruit and vegetables are much cheaper there. It seems like a lot of work for a monthly exercise but at the rate that prices are rising it’s so necessary. For most of us salaries are staying stable but prices continue to rise almost daily which means we’re getting poorer and poorer by the day. This shopping-around-routine is much easier than it sounds; you just need to get into the habit. Execution Plan Write a list of everything that you need. Plan your shopping-around day, let’s say you choose the third Saturday of every month. First thing in the morning go to the market and buy all your fruit and vegetables, potatoes and legumes (peas, beans, nandolo). The butchers in the market are also more willing to give you a competitive price for good cuts of meat and fresh fish. Many butchers have a mincing machine so you can save money and control the quality of meat that goes into your minced meat by having it minced in front of you. After you’re done with the market, go to Game and Shoprite. Note the price of the remaining items that you need. For the record, note down how much you saved by buying your fruits and vegetables at the market. After Game and Shoprite make for Chipiku stores or Metro. Most things will be cheaper here so it’s best to leave these store last as you’ll buy your items knowing what they cost at Game and Shoprite. Make The Most of Discount Day Once a week Game have great product discounts. If you find something that you regularly buy on offer buy it in bulk. Around Christmas time Handy Andy was cut so low that several of my friends stocked up for the whole of 2013! Remember though, when you see the word “sale” in shops, what that really means is “spend” because they are trying to lure you in to buy things on sale which you may never have intended to purchase to boost their bottom line. Once there it is difficult to resist many other “bargains” and before you know it your budget is blown. So unless you were waiting for that specific product to come on sale (and you knew the pre-sale price) don’t spend just because of the word “sale”. Make The Most of Business trips Toiletries are atrociously expensive in Malawi. If you have the opportunity to travel then buy them abroad. You will find face washes, body washes, cleansers and toners for up to one-tenth of the price that they are sold for in Malawi. With a little planning and foresight you can and you will save thousands of kwacha. At times it takes a lot of patience but it’s the price you have to pay to make ends meet. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry |
For 2 years until early 2014 I wrote a weekly personal finance and business column for Malawi's leading media house, The Times Group. The target is middle-class, working African women.
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