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Sports drafts are easily some of the most crucial moments in every sport.  Each franchise has the ability to pick from the crop of incoming talent and change their fortunes for better or for worse.  The NFL Draft is no different.  Each team is able to make selections based on their standings from the prior season with picks that circle back every round to fill out rosters.  In comparison with another sport such as basketball in which only the first few picks matter, professional football’s draft carries more weight because of the large number of picks and roles on a football roster, meaning that contributors can be found at anytime.  In this mock draft, I will attempt to predict the course of action that each general manager will take on draft night, with no trades and strictly based on team needs and scheme.

1st Pick, Carolina Panthers

Quarterback Bryce Young, Alabama

With the first pick the Carolina Panthers select, Bryce Young out of Bama.  When you make a franchise altering move up to the first pick like the Panthers have made, you select the quarterback of your future.  The Panthers get a good one for their trouble, Bryce is a natural playmaker and Heisman winner who fits the mold of a star NFL quarterback.  It is rare to find a QB that is comfortable out of structure and also throws like Bryce and the Panthers make the easy choice by taking him NO. 1.

2nd Pick, Houston Texans

Quarterback C.J. Stroud, Ohio State

With the second pick the Houston Texans select, C.J. Stroud out of OSU.  The Texans screwed themselves over by winning their last game of the year and now get the second choice of the top two quarterbacks.  Luckily, Stroud is not far behind Bryce.  Stroud fits the build of a prototypical NFL quarterback.  At 6’3” 215 pounds, Stroud’s size profile is much better than Young’s while also being laser accurate with the football.  Many mock drafts have the Texans taking a different direction such as taking edge rusher Will Anderson due to the rumors that the Texans front office is not high on Stroud, but this choice is a job saving one.  GM Nick Caserio will take a quarterback because of the hope that it will bring to his franchise.

3rd Pick, Arizona Cardinals

Edge Will Anderson Jr., Alabama

With the third pick the Arizona Cardinals select, Will Anderson out of Bama.  Though the first few picks were straight forward, the 3rd pick is a bit ambiguous.  It is likely that the Cardinals would be willing to deal this pick on draft night, but because they are forced to stay in place due to the rules of the mock, they take a dominant defensive player to fill the massive hole that have at pass rusher.  A possibility for this pick could also be Edge Tyree Wilson out of Texas Tech but the productive three-year starter who has always been projected to go high wins out here.

4th Pick, Indianapolis Colts

Quarterback Anthony Richardson, Florida

With the fourth pick the Colts select, Anthony Richardson out of Florida.  The Richardson can only be described as a freak of nature, it is likely that a team trades with Arizona in order to leap the Colts and draft him, but in this scenario the Colts get their dream QB.  At 6’4” 245, Richardson has NFL size while having incredible athleticism.  With unmatched speed, jumping and arm strength, Richardson’s ceiling is almost limitless, but he was rather inconsistent in college.  Many consider him to be a project, but his dual threat ability allows him to be serviceable until the small holes in his game are ironed out.  If the Colts draft Richardson and use him properly, their offense may be dangerous with superstar running back Jonathan Taylor.  

5th Pick, Seattle Seahawks

Interior Defensive Lineman Jalen Carter, Georgia

With the fifth pick the Seahawks select, Jalen Carter out of Georgia.  Jalen Carter’s fall ends here.  As the best overall player in the draft Carter finds his home at 5 and unless something within Carter drastically changes, he will be a dominant defensive tackle.  Carter’s minor off the field issues have scared many teams away, but his talent is too much to pass up for the Seahawks.  They have other needs at edge but at this point it is best player available.  What a year for the Seahawks remaining competitive in the standings, drafting relatively well last year and now getting the best overall player in this class.

6th Pick, Detroit Lions

Cornerback Devon Witherspoon, Illinois

7th Pick, Las Vegas Raiders

Cornerback Christian Gonzalez, Oregon

8th Pick, Atlanta Falcons

Edge Tyree Wilson, Texas Tech

9th Pick, Chicago Bears

Offensive Tackle Paris Johnson Jr., Ohio State

10th Pick, Philadelphia Eagles

Offensive Tackle/Guard Peter Skoronski, Northwestern

11th Pick, Tennessee Titans

Quarterback Will Levis, Kentucky

“Buy Now As low as $31.19/mo.”—a feature of most commerce websites that has always confused me.  How does the price get so low?  Should I do this to buy more stuff now?  In particular, StockX’s implementation of Klarna initially and now PayPal “Pay in 4” stood out to me as a route I could use to buy $300 Tie-Dye Jordan 1s.  I did not end up purchasing this pair via this method, but the bolded, new button struck a curiosity: what if I did just pay $31.19 a month?  I could make a purchase that I could not afford at the time, and get the product I wanted. 

Both PayPal and Klarna fall into a larger group of companies that provide a service called point of sale financing.  These companies, including others such as Affirm, Afterpay, Sezzle, Quadpay, aim to provide “flexible, pay-over-time installment options” for customers, and “​​an increase in traffic, customer spending, and, of course, revenue” states point of sale financing provider United Consumer Financial Services.  The benefits of this service for merchants are innumerable, which is reflected in the large increase of sites using this service.  A figure from McKinsey Consumer Lending Pools states that the volume of point of sale balances “has taken 3 percentage points of growth from credit cards and traditional lending models.”  Though 3 percent may seem small, this percentage equals about 10 billion in revenue, an incredible amount of growth highlighting the scale of the United States credit card and lending industry.

As you may have noticed, point of sale financing is a direct evolution of layaway, a service in which the customer pays a deposit to reserve an item or service for later purchase.  Layaway was first introduced during the Great Depression in the 1930s and continued in use until the popularization of credit cards in the 1980s.  Though largely phased out, layaway still stuck around until the early 2000s in which many of the companies that offered this method removed it entirely.  Then, during the 2008 financial crisis, layaway made a return.  Many large companies such as Walmart, and Sears began to offer layaway again.  After this resurgence, a new form of layaway began to emerge: point of sale financing.  In an article from 2019, Kathryn Roethel Rieck a writer for Bloomberg Second Measure states: “A new industry is aiming to take the pain out of paying for holiday gifts (and many other things).” Point of sale financing, though similar to credit cards, appeals to a general category of consumers: the financially cautious.  In comparison to credit cards which allow the user to carry a balance, point of sale financing specifies the period in which the consumer must pay.  Along with a time frame, these loans are usually interest free and without additional fees.  This advantage is vastly appealing to the financially savvy consumer who carefully manages expenditures.  

Another compelling aspect of point of sale financing is the ease with which such loads can be taken.  In another figure by McKinsey Consumer Lending Pools, conversion rates of sites with point of sale financing increase with the amount of integration provided.  With maximum integration, conversion rates increase by 3.2% compared to other states of integration.  In my example of StockX’s case, the site offers something similar to the “throughout website” category of integration.  I can attest to the draw of this option displayed on the site.  It was a direct inspiration of my curiosity for this method purchase.  

With more and more companies further integrating point of sale lending into their websites, only more consumers will be exposed to this improved and easy to access form of lending.  In the near future “26% of the retailers plan to start accepting them (point of sale lending) in the next two years” writes skeps.com.  Some examples of the draw for these retailers are the ability to “widen customer base”, “increase average order value”, “improve cash flow”,  “make more sales”, and finally “save money and time” states United Consumer Financial Services.  Each of these benefits can be attributed to the convenience, and simplicity that point of sale financing allows for the consumer.  But what are the disadvantages?  For companies, there is little to none.  Increased purchasing capability for the consumer will generally result in better sales numbers for the company, hence why so many websites have begun to include this service.  For the customer, the general concerns with credit and loans apply, such as overspending.  Though in reality to the average, financially conscious customer point of sale financing is a benefit.

Sources:

https://www.skeps.com/blog/exploring-the-rise-of-pos-financing-part-2

https://www.cnbc.com/select/what-is-a-point-of-sale-loan/#:~:text=What%20is%20point%2Dof%2Dsale,up%20into%20smaller%20monthly%20payments.

https://www.ucfs.net/benefits-of-pos-financing-for-merchants/

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-loans/point-of-sale-financing/

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/banking-matters/us-lending-at-point-of-sale-the-next-frontier-of-growth

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/banking-matters/us-lending-at-point-of-sale-the-next-frontier-of-growth

In reality, I only found ‘Saint Ecuador’ by Stephen Berg at random chance.  Quite fittingly, I found ‘Saint Ecuador’ by after speed scrolling through about 5 pages of other poems.  The only visible part of these poems was the title, and that is what my decision would be based on.  “Ecuador” in a sea of other words stuck out to me, as a country rather than a word or phrase.  This prompted a quick search of what Ecuador is translated to, with the obvious response: Equator.  While it may not be essential to understanding the poem, this search was a critical process in my search for the meaning of this poem.

In the introductory line, the only exclamation point in the whole poem can be found.  As a rare occurrence in poetry paired with explosive diction, the first line begins with a grandiose proclamation: “What a lean boom the name Ecuador makes!”  This introduction blatantly clarifies two of my immediate questions, as Ecuador is stated as a name and is described as having powerful spoken and written effect.  The second line is no different.  The use of ‘loud’ words can be seen again in examples such as “thunder” and “blood.”  This is a reoccurring trend.  In every sentence of the poem, distinct imagery can be separated from every other line in the poem.  This imagery can be grouped into four categories: jungle/natural, explosive/loud, dry/sun, and human imagery.  For example, the first two lines as stated before are both explosive/loud while the third, “a crisp splurge of revelation” pairs with the fourth “at the moment when faith” as human imagery.  The key identifiers in these lines are faith and revelation, both words of religious connotation and connected to human existence.  This is the form of Saint Ecuador, every line separates an idea or a description of an idea, rather than a rhyme scheme or alliteration.  

Though ‘Saint Ecuador’ lacks a rhyme scheme, the poem fills this gap with tempo and change of pace.  As discussed in the last paragraph, each sentence in ‘Saint Ecuador’ can be read as stand alone, with each varying in length.  The main effect of this is a choppy and slow reading, with each sentence seemingly sticking out among the others beside it. This is a conventional form of poems, but I do not believe that it detracts from the overall message proposed by Berg.

Outside of structure, ‘Saint Ecuador’ is about a man lost in the desert.  This is clearly explained with recurring imagery of sand and sun, along with a constant relationship between the main character and a lack and search of water.  The first indication of the main character’s peril begins in line 7 when Berg writes “each guiding well, shaded by an oasis.”  Though not an outright declaration of hardship, line 7 prepares the reader with an image of sanctuary among dead land, which is further elaborated on in the upcoming lines.  Another key detail in line 7 is Berg’s use of the descriptor ‘guiding’.  This indicates that there is more than one well, and that they seem to align with an end destination in mind.  The protagonist’s lost status is further explained by line 9, in which Berg writes “If an old map still told water.”  When paired with the evidence from line 7, line 9 reinforces the notion of a desert journey.  Line 9 directly mentions the need for water, and hints at the possible failure of the map to provide accurate information to find this need. Immediately after, a line of self questioning emerges: “Where is the way home?”  Line 10 suggests that the protagonist regrets the decision to embark on his journey, and as a brief introduction to the topic of regret discussed later in the poem.  Finally, in line 17 Berg directly references the desert when writing “and curtsey to an audience of sand.”  Paired with the previous example along with others, the “audience of sand” described by Berg can be directly connected with the desert.

Other descriptors of the man’s isolation in the desert are the use of plants and natural imagery in order to contrast with the desert landscape, and Berg’s use of distinct and bright colors while describing the surroundings.  

Fittingly, in a poem about isolation and a main character lost in a sea of sand after a map has led them astray, the reader is able to find this character alone in the scorching desert.  Berg’s message can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but most importantly highlights the theme of being lost, in this case in the desert, but more importantly in all facets of life.

Born as a member of a Turkicized Mongol subculture in modern day Uzbekistan 109 years after the death of the Great Khan Genghis himself, Timur quickly rose in the ranks of the Chagtai Khanate.  Timur’s legitimacy and status within the Chagtai Khanate was dependent on his genealogical roots, of which he traced back to Genghis himself.  Though it is unknown and unlikely that Timur descended from the Khan himself, Timur did descend from the Mongol invaders who invaded his home region long ago.

Similar to many great Central Asian warriors before him, Timur began his track to dominance as a military leader.  Timur led many invasions, including the subjugation of Khwarizm and invasion of Khorosan, two Central Asian nations.  He was a devout Sunni Muslim, as his clan and great-great-grandfather were one of the first of the Mongol invaders to convert to Islam.  After the reigning Chagtai Khan’s death Timur began his reconquest of the Transoxanian territories.  His reputation as a conqueror and leader allowed him to rise the prominence in the region and after defeating the regional ruler and betraying his half-brother, he became the sole ruler of Transoxania.  Timur then declared himself the restorer of the Mongol Empire in his capital of Samarkand.  After securing his dominion, Timur began a series of invasions into Persia, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan.  First, he began an invasion of the Persian territory of Herāt. Progress of restoring stability in the region made by the Ilkhans had been halted after the death of the last member of the Ilkhanid dynasty.  Thus, the region was both politically and economically unstable and was not able to put up an effective resistance.  Khorosan and the entirety of eastern Persia fell to Timur next expanding his empire greatly in size.  The regions of “Fars, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Georgia all fell between 1386 and 1394.” After these conquests, a former ally, the leader of the Golden Horde began an invasion into Azerbaijan, but Timur’s armies pinned them against the Volga river and massacred the Horde’s armies.  Timur then weakened his enemy by destroying and disrupting the Silk Road trade that the Golden Horde depended on, weakening his greatest rival.

The second part of Timur’s conquests lies in the subcontinent of India.  After using a pretext based on Muslim rulers showing excessive tolerence to their hindu subjects, Timur crossed the Indus River, and in his wake reducing thousands of cities to rubble and killing hundreds of thousands.  The armies of the Dehli sultinate faired no better as Timur slaughtered its soldiers and sacked the city in 1399.

For his final expedition, Timur headed west toward the Mamluk Sultanate and the early Ottoman Empire even invading the Knights of Rhodes and receiving tribute from the late Byzantine Empire.  While preparing for an invasion east into China, Timur fell ill and died, dividing his territories among his sons.

Similarly to many other great Turkic Mongolian conquerors, Timur’s empire fell apart as rapidly has he had conquered it.  His focus on conquest, rather than administration left his sons with disloyal land, split up among them.  Western Iran was dominated by the tribal federation of Kara Koyunlu who had recently seized power from their former overlords, the Jalāyirids.  The Kara Koyunlu, roughly translated as Black Sheep, seized large portions of Iran after the death of Timur’s youngest son Shah Rokh. As a balance in the region an old tribal rival called Ak Koyunlu, also known as the White Sheep conquered western Iran from the Kara Koyunlu briefly forming a tribal Iranian Empire.  The Ak Koyunlu were led by the ruler Uzun Ḥasan who briefly took control of the persian city of Herāt.  Uzun Hasan’s grandfather had been appointed as a governor by Timur and the former subject of the Timurids began a rapid expansion into the surrounding lands.  By this time, the Ottoman Empire had risen in the region to dominance with Mehmed II taking the throne.  Uzun Hasan, at the asking of the Venetians who were threatened in the area by the Ottoman superpower, began a rapid conquest of Ottoman lands but was defeated by the Ottoman artillery superiority.  After the fall of the Ak Konyunlu, the Safavid Empire rose to prominence under Shah Ismāʿīl.

Though remembered as the last great Central Asian conqueror, Timur’s alteration of Iranian and Turkish history cannot be understated though his reign was short.  Like many conquerors before him, his empire soon fell after his death, but leaps in education and sciences were achieved under the Timurid Dynasty’s rule.  

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/place/Iran/The-Timurids-and-Turkmen

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kara-Koyunlu

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Timur

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Timurid-dynasty

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/t/Timur.htm#:~:text=Early%20life,great%20Mongol%20conqueror%20Genghis%20Khan.

Do not drink caffeine in the night.  Every time I need to do an assignment, I would wait until the last possible time, start it, sleep two hours and drink a bunch of caffeine in the night.  The next day, I would feel fine until late afternoon then fall asleep for 14 hours.  Another important thing is to get all college applications done far in advance.  It is easy to apply undecided and make the hard decisions later.  Applying early boosts your chances of admittance and allows you to forget about it entirely.  It also allows you to deal with important things such as financial aid and worrying about that.  I was able to get all my applications in by the November 1 early decision I deadline and now can take the financial aid component slowly and create a budget with a relative idea of cost and total aid.  Another important component is to thoroughly check whether you qualify for financial aid.  Up until this point, I did not know that I could have qualified for the free common app waiver and that could have saved me a lot of money.  

A large amount of change has taken place in the last 6 months.  The most important thing is to take everything step by step otherwise it will become overwhelming.  Another important lesson I learned is to not take two English classes.  You only need 4 credits to graduate and for senior year, early dismissal and study halls help with time management.  Next semester, I hope that film production will be much simpler and less time-consuming than Creative Writing.  I will also take an early dismissal, and I hope that will make the semester easier because it is the last semester of senior year.  

The most important class this year in my opinion was consumer economics.  The small student loans unit was helpful, but I believe that this should be longer.  It could also be helpful if we looked into examples of how to receive aid and possibly how to do the FAFSA in class and how to take out government loans.  Many of the websites that explain how to do this are confusing and make it unclear about specifics.  One of these unclear specifics is the timeline of how and when student aid is received and how familial situations affect how aid works, most of the time instructional websites just assume.  I feel that an optional class with a school counselor that explains this would be helpful. 

A lesson that I will take from this semester for this class is to get all the shorter assignments done ahead of time, as I quickly fell behind on many of them.  Something that I believe will help me is to plan to do things by a certain date when I know ahead of time that I need to do them.  Instead of planning to get something done by a due date, I believe that next semester it may be helpful to manage time better by creating my own completion dates that happen before the actual deadline.  This is because when I aim to get something done over a week, I almost always finish it on the last day.  By instead completing something on my own completion date, I will avoid the stress of having to complete several things within one night.  The best way for me to do this is to use the calendar that I already have and instead of putting the deadlines on the actual days set them to a time in the week which is very open.  This will mean that I have less very empty days and more half filled days which is more comfortable than an up and down cycle.  My advice to incoming seniors is to enjoy the last year of high school and take easier classes so that you can focus on the other things that happen in the last year of high school.

Air Jordan 1 “Tie Dye” Women’s Exclusive – ~$250

Starting off is the Women’s Exclusive Air Jordan 1 “Tie Dye”.  The shoe comes in a standard black and red Jordan 1 box with black laces.  The heel, tip, collar, eyestays, and vamp are all coated in a mix of teal and blue in a seemingly circular pattern.  The quarter and midsole are both white leather, while the tongue, lining, wings logo, swoosh, toe box, and outsole are all black.  This shoe was on a buy list for about 9 months for me after I saw a lace swap online with tie-dye laces to match the vamp and eye stays.  It fits like a traditional Jordan 1, with a thin sole and little to no cushion.  After mild use, the black leather on the toe box will crease, but this problem is fixable with a shoe tree.  The laces custom laces I bought are from a seller on Etsy, but are about 2 inches shorter than the regular black laces that come in the box.

Air Jordan 4 “Lightning” – ~$270

Next is the Air Jordan 4 “Lightning” a large release in 2021.  The shoe comes in a special yellow Jordan 4 box with yellow laces.  I was fortunate enough to have gotten these straight-off drop, but this pair looks better in the pictures.  The entire outsole and midsole are gray and yellow, with the rest of the shoe a bright yellow except for the mesh and eye stays which are black.  The issue with this shoe lies in the two tones of dark colors.  The gray vs. black is a persistent eyesore as both the colors touch in awkward places.  I grabbed a pair of custom laces from the same seller noted previously.  These laces are yellow with a black splatter pattern, so I tend to lean on the side that the shoe should be black and yellow, rather than gray and yellow.

Air Jordan 1 Zoom CMFT “PSG” – ~$250

The next shoe is an interesting twist on the Jordan 1, the Jordan 1 Zoom CMFT.  The CMFT stands for comfort as this shoe has a thin foam layer around the sock lining of the shoe, but the foam layer fails to make the shoe any more comfortable than a normal Jordan 1.  In fact, the foam ends up making the shoe bulky and full compared to a standard Jordan 1.  The reason I bought this shoe was for the laces: the PSG Zoom CMFT comes with a pair of bright pink and purple laces to match the pattern on the inside of the double collar.  This pattern is random and different on every shoe, but my specific pair has one shoe that is pink, while the other is purple allowing for a mixed lace combination.  The shoe also has other intriguing hints such as a reflective swoosh and Jordan Paris Saint-Germain FC Logo on the back heel.

Air Force 1 ’07 LX – ~$120

Now a pair of Air Forces.  This specific pair of Air Force 1s is a twist on the classic white/white colorway.  It comes in a black Air Force 1 box compared to the usual white and is completely white except for the minified swoosh, tongue tag, midsole, and outsole.  It has a large, rounded toe box, like all Air Force 1s, and fits similarly.  The downfall of this shoe lies in the yellow outsole and aged swoosh, as both of these colors contradict the white uppers of the shoe.  This shoe is another strong example of the dominance of double white, as double white easily outclasses all colorway competition.

Fake Air Jordan 1 “Seafoam” Women’s Exclusive – ~$18

The Seafoam Jordan 1 was underrated at its release and is one of the best-value Jordan 1s.  This pair specifically is a fake pair from SK, on sale for $18.  This is by far the best deal I have ever gotten on a pair of shoes and a flagship model on how fake shoes are a much better investment than real pairs.  The Seafoam’s strong point is that it is built out of all light colors and the fact that it only has two tones.  Those two colors are white and a pale mint green, both of which seamlessly transition on the shoe.  In the package I received, 3 pairs of laces were present.  Two of these laces matched a tone on the shoe, with the final white with a brown outline around the edges of the laces.  The only issue with this shoe is that it get dirty easily because it is made out of two light colors.

In 2010, millions of people were killed by an earthquake that struck Haiti.  To a state already rife with systemic corruption, the earthquake was a devastating blow to the already cracked foundation that the nation was built upon.  In the coming years, Haiti’s failure as a state would be exposed in the forms of vast territorial gang wars and a police force that refused to take action to protect the Haitian people.  

In July 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in the midst of ongoing efforts to rebuild infrastructure and housing that was damaged by the 2010 earthquake.  Within a year, Dominican Today reported that the President of the Dominican Republic deemed the situation across the border, “a low intensity civil war.”  

Haiti’s rotting corpse, left at America’s doorstep, should be taken as a preventative warning of the fragility of modern day society.  Our society, though vastly different on the outside, is structurally similar to Haiti, composed of three accelerants for corruption:  a wealth disparity where 1 percent of American households hold 32.3 percent of our country’s wealth, according to the Federal Reserve; minimal transparency between the government and the public; and extensive monopolistic powers.

Haiti’s origins are not too dissimilar to our own.  With a revolutionary beginning, Haiti was the second country in the Americas to declare independence from an oppressive colonial overlord, according to the U.S. Department of State.  Similarly, Haitian economic figures from the CIA World Fact Book state that the “top 20 percent of households hold 64 percent of the total wealth.” The correlation between this statistic and the Federal Reserve statistic referenced earlier is undeniable:  the majority of U.S. wealth and Haitian wealth is held by a group of select elites.  

These elites can be directly related to monopolistic powers within each nation, with two examples being the Haitian Energy Sector and Silicon Valley.  Companies in either sector wield vast amounts of capital and influence over their separate governments.  According to Washington Monthly, the Haitian Energy Sector was likely responsible for the assassination of President Moise.  Though on the surface, the American business world refuses to admit to maintaining a similar amount of power, in reality, American monopolistic powers have the ability to exert an even greater amount of influence over our economy than the destructive force that is the Haitian Energy Sector.  

This leads to the final parallel:  minimal transparency and accountability from the ruling class.  Misinformation among Haitians is rampant, headed by local leaders and dividing the country into two factions:  the elite and the poor.  Similarly, in the U.S., friction between all divides in our society has sprung cracks in a foundation that we believed to be unbreakable.

With a rich history and culture, and holding the title of the only successful slave revolution in history, Haiti’s failure as a state is a disappointing and alarming reality exacerbated by corruption. 

This poses the question, should the United Nations and, by extension, the United States intervene in Haiti?  David Oxygène, the secretary general of the National Movement for Liberty and Equality of Haitians for Fraternity states that “all military interventions bring about occupation and that is never good for any country; 1915, 1994, 2004, they all brought disease, hunger, poverty, and destruction” referring to the numerous shortcomings of previous occupations in Haiti.  In this case, Oxygène’s examples of attempted solutions to prior instability in the Haitian state could not be more relevant.  His first example, the 1915–1934 U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Haiti, is deemed by history.state.gov as “a result of increased instability in Haiti in the years before 1915… Between 1911 and 1915, seven presidents were assassinated or overthrown in Haiti, increasing U.S. policymakers’ fear of foreign intervention.”  This resulted in a 1915 invasion where according to history.state.gov, “Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated and the situation in Haiti quickly became unstable. In response, President Wilson sent the U.S. Marines to Haiti to prevent anarchy.”  For his second example, Oxygène references the 1994 – 1995 Intervention in Haiti, of which history.state.gov describes, “On July 31 the Security Council passed UNSCR 940, the first resolution authorizing the use of force to restore democracy for a member nation… The Haitian leadership capitulated in time to avoid bloodshed.”  For his final example, Oxygène notes a recent event in Haitian history, the 2004 Haitian coup d’état and its aftermath.  A UN force of United States Marines, Canadian, French and Chilean troops arrived as a peacekeeping force with an official 7000 strong peacekeeping mission arriving in July 2004.

Welcome to Part 2 of my Guide to Buying Shoes Off Wedian, International Shipping Edition.  By now, all domestic shipping should be completed.  You can check this by visiting the “my order” tab in the Sugargoo main menu and checking the status of your orders.  The next step is to QC or quality check to the best of your ability.  A simple side-by-side comparison with a few Google searched images will usually suffice, but I advise spending at least a few minutes per pair, as international shipping is the bulk of the total cost.  The number one rule with international shipping is that every gram and centimeter matters.  Save as much space as possible, as even a few shoeboxes can add 20 dollars to your shipping cost and increase your chances of being seized.  I recommend removing all shoeboxes, tags, and other unnecessary materials that could potentially raise your shipping cost.  Sugargoo will remove these for 10 cents if you either check a box titled ”shoebox removal” or by directly messaging your agent.  

Now, select check each item’s estimated weight and find a combination of items around 8000 grams.  As referred to in the prior blog, 8 kg or 8000 g is our target weight because it balances both the chance to get seized and the shipping cost.  To explain this further: US customs has a small chance (around 1%) to seize your item as counterfeit goods.  If this happens, your items are incinerated and lost forever.  In order to minimize this risk, you can make the haul smaller and lighter to give less of a reason to be randomly searched.  8 kg is the base number for minimal risk, and it is possible to push this up as high as 15 kg if you are not afraid of losing your items.  The advantage of this higher weight is reduced shipping costs per item, forming the counterweight of the risk vs. price problem.  A good rule for weight is that 8 kg will cost just under 200 dollars and if you add shipping to the total cost of each pair with 8 pairs, (1 pair of shoes hovers around 1 kg) adding 25 dollars to the cost.

Now, after making the above decisions on weight and haul size, select each of the items you want to internationally ship and click “submit parcel”. The next step is critical: pay extra for shockproof packaging, box reinforcement, waterproofing, and anything else that you think will make your haul safer during transit (though I do not recommend vacuum packaging).  This is to protect your items, as international shipping is notorious for damaging items in transit.  Once finished, you should submit your order, but do not pay yet.  

The next part is a trick that can save you on average 300 grams of weight per item.  Sugargoo will not process your order until you pay for shipping, but this allows us to request a 2 dollar service called pre-packaging.  This service essentially tells the agent to weigh the package on a scale and adjust the price of shipping accordingly.  This is essential because the original shipping cost was calculated based on the estimated weight, not the actual weight of the shoe.  The estimated weight is always greater than the actual weight, so this can result in reduced shipping costs.  After your package is reweighed, the price in the “my parcel” tab will be adjusted to the actual weight and dimensions of the package.  Finally, it is time to pay and ship.  Once again, I highly recommend using PayPal to protect your card information because around a year ago, Sugargoo accidentally leaked all of its credit card data.  For shipping type, I recommend EMS as it has the fastest shipping time (2-3 weeks) for a reasonable price.  E-EMS is also fine if it is cheaper than EMS, but it is a bit slower.  For the budget people, you can use SAL for a lengthy 2-4 month wait but overall cheaper price.  Also, remember to declare your package for 11 dollars per kilogram in the declaration box.  

Congratulations, your haul is on its way to the US.  It should arrive within a few months, depending on your choice of shipping.  If you followed all these instructions, your haul should arrive intact with all of your items in it.  Remember that this does not only apply to shoes, as almost anything can be bought for a lower price than in the US.  I have seen people stick clothing, room decor, and even jumbo packs of candy in their hauls.  I will leave a few of these links at the bottom.

Pre-Packaged: https://sugargoo.com/index/item/index.html?tp=mall&tid=25

Husky Clothing: https://alaska-reps.x.yupoo.com/albums

Other Random Sugargoo Services: https://sugargoo.com/index/mall/lists/cid/3.html

$400                                                                                                $450                                                                                            $750

Getting the shoes you want is hard.  Everyone who has spent $170+ on a pair of Jordans knows how easy it can be to tear through your budget.  Even the comparatively low-priced Nike Dunk’s $110 price tag is frustrating for the quality you get.  As everyone knows, Nike is able to make a healthy profit on pairs due to the extreme demand and limited release quantity of these shoes.  Adding on resale prices for shoes that you missed the drop for, a pair of UNC Dunks can cost upwards of $420 + fees from the resale site you choose.  Replica/Fake sneakers can solve this problem.

On a higher-end site, those same UNC Dunks are $30.  A lightly flawed pair of Jordan 1s costs $15.  When I discovered this for the first time, it did not seem real.  You could get almost any shoe for under $50.  That same $170, could be spread across 10+ pairs, but it is not as simple as that. 

The main obstacle to buying from Wedian is that its stores only ship to China, and unlike many online retailers in the US, the shipping is not free.  This presents a problem and many individuals resort to buying from middlemen rather than base distributors in China.  These middlemen charge only a small percentage less than Nike, resulting in a similar base price of $150 for a generally low-quality pair of shoes.  Though there are exceptions, many middlemen purchase flawed, low-quality batches for as little as $5 and raise their prices as high as they can.  Low-quality batches are notorious for being hit or miss and are only a marginally better deal than buying straight from Nike.  Instead of contracting middlemen, you can buy from what is known as a warehouse.

Warehousing sites serve as your personal hub in China.  All the products you order are shipped to the warehouse, then packaged up into a parcel and shipped to the United States.  Though this process can take lengthy amounts of time, it results in the best possible price and best quality if done correctly.  The first step in this process is to pick a warehousing site.  Three of the leading sites are sugargoo, wegobuy, and pandabuy.  A quick search will bring you to any one of the three home pages.  In this guide, I will be using sugargoo though the process is similar on all three of the sites.

After you make an account, step 2 is to pick the pairs that you want.  Mainstream and new shoes are the easiest to find in shops as they are guaranteed to be in stock.  Make a list of around 7-8 shoes that you are interested in, then search for them on Wedian pages.  The specific sellers I recommend (all medium tier) are SK, H12, A1TOP, and LJRFB.  Since these are all Wedian pages, sugargoo conveniently allows you to paste the product link into their homepage to seamlessly purchase the item.  Without paying, you can add all the products to your “cart” and then add up the total, convert it to USD and add $200.  This is a good baseline for how much your haul will cost.  Then you can buy the pairs and send them to the warehouse.  As a side note, be sure to use PayPal or any other payment service to make the purchase, many of these sites have had credit card information leaks.  Pairs usually take up to 3 weeks to ship to the warehouse, and once arrived will be sent in photos to you.  In these photos, I recommend quality-checking the pairs to the best of your ability, as some wedian shops do allow returns.

Continued in Blog 4.

Links:

Warehouses:

http://sugargoo.com

https://www.pandabuy.com/

https://www.wegobuy.com/en/

Wedian Stores:

SK: https://weidian.com/?userid=1625671124&spider_token=b268. High to mid tier.

SK ALT/SenK: https://weidian.com/?userid=1783900488&spider_token=b671 Same as SK.

LJRFB: https://weidian.com/?userid=215732834&spider_token=d50b Mid tier.

A1TOP: https://shop1624885820.v.weidian.com/?userid=1624885820&spider_token=3765&tabType=all Mid tier.

H12: https://weidian.com/?userid=202714577 Mid tier.