Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • A Rapa Nui man with his Belgian girlfriend live in a one-room house that has electricity but no indoor plumbing. The ocean is close by and Polynesians had a knack for colonizing even the most inhospitable oceanic rock.
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  • A family tending their taro fields, threatened by apple snails.
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  • A couple talk and laugh at an outdoor restaurant at night.
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  • A couple talk and laugh at an outdoor restaurant at night.
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  • Walking in Lummus Park along Ocean Drive in South Beach.
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  • A man on the porch gives a treat to his dog who performs a trick while a child and her grandmother sit in chairs on the lawn.
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  • Flags and statuary decorate a colorful roadside altar in a desolate region of northern Chile. Shrines or  animitas are a common tradition of memorials that mark the site where someone died. People who are not related to the person who was killed can offer a prayer at the animita; in this way, animitas can take the roles of popular saints in the Catholic religion.
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  • A young girl lights a candle at an alter in her home at the beginning of Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos. It is a Mexican fiesta celebrating life and death of loved ones.
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  • Young staff around computers in a dot-com office.
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  • Young workers at a rising web company sponsoring the Olympic Games.
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  • Workers preparing for a festival take a break.
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  • Aborigine grandmother with child in stroller, and man with body paint.
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  • A young girl lights a candle at an alter in her home at the beginning of Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos. It is a Mexican fiesta celebrating life and death of loved ones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187588.jpg
  • Russian parents with their two children.
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  • A couple at at a table visit with a friend and his dog.
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  • Waterfront Scotty's Landing offers alfresco dining with a local twist.
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  • A biker cruises tree lined Espanola Way in South Beach.
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  • Kanoa family tending their taro fields, threatened by apple snails.
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  • Residents of a historic, rustic log cabin hooked up to the modern amenity of receiving satellite television. Moose antlers adorn the walls of the cabin in the short summer months in the North Slope of Alaska.
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  • A woman floats in her swimming pool on the edge of a wetland.
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  • In a serene setting, two wicker chairs invite visitors on the north porch of Mo ntgomery Place, a restored mansion that was built in 1805 and opened to the pub lic in 1988.
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  • Young workers at a rising web company sponsoring the Olympic Games. There is a new phenomenon breaking through the “factory of the world” culture of China. New businesses cater to the newly wealthy Chinese, so instead of ‘B to B,’ these businesses are ‘C to C’ (Copy to China). The idea is to find something that is working spectacularly well in the U.S. or Europe and then import it for newly wealthy Chinese consumers. SOHU.com wants to be the Google of China and was one of the main sponsors of the Beijing Summer Olympics. Personalization of cubicles goes a little over the top, and I noticed that the workspaces that had American fast food wrappers and liter bottles of Coke also had some of the first overweight Chinese I had seen.
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  • A young worker at a rising web company sponsoring the Olympic Games.
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  • Office workers at computers.
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  • A baby girl is fed by her mother as other women observe.
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  • Lu (the father, not shown) lives with his daughter-in-law and son who is trying to do a start up GPS business and often works from home. Lu was sent to prison during the Cultural Revolution and tries to keep pace with today’s values, but still has questions about his son’s world. The “little capitalists” that live with their Cultural Revolution parents often have conflicts of ideology. The older generation thinks in a more Confucian way—never rise above your teacher, never rise above your father, others’ needs are more important than your own.
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  • A man on a computer and a woman with a child in a Chinese apartment.
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  • A young man hooks up a computer at a new small GPS company.
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  • A young man inspects the inside of a computer at a new GPS business.
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  • A woman in an office near a poster of the Statue of Liberty.
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  • Two Adirondack chairs on a scenic overlook.
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  • A Russian woman admires her newborn with her daughter.
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  • Mother with baby born at the Moscow Planning Center and Maternity Home.
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  • A couple enjoys a private moment at an outdoor restaurant.
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  • Caudill family members rest on the front porch and yard when they gather on weekends to work in the garden and maintain their homestead. <br />
<br />
It took several years and a lot of money and determination, but kin of the Caudill family fought to keep their family homestead on Mud River from being taken over by the St. Louis-based Arch Coal Company. Nearly swindled out of their homestead, they battled all the way to the West Virginia Supreme Court where they finally won their case.<br />
<br />
For 100 years, Miller’s wife and family owned the 75-acre tract that includes a farmhouse, built in 1920, several small barns and a garden. John Caudill, a coal miner who was blinded in a mining accident in the 1930s, and his wife, Lydia Caudill, raised 10 children in the home. <br />
<br />
Arch Coal wanted to tear down the family’s ancestral home because it stood in the way of the company’s plans to expand its 12,000-acre Hobet 21 mountaintop removal complex. Hobet 21 produced about 5.2 million tons of coal, making it among the largest surface mines in the state. Mines like Hobet yield one ton of coal for every 16 tons of terrain that is displaced.<br />
Under Hobet’s plans, statements from Arch submitted in court say that “ a valley fill and an impoundment pond would destroy the inundate the farmhouse and outbuilding and bury the immediate surrounding land under the valley fill.” A lower court agreed with the company, but in the end, the family won.<br />
The mining operations have expanded to surround the Caudill property.
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  • A stone bench in a wooded setting of trees in fall foliage in the Blue Ridge Mountains creates a quiet place for contemplation. Frederick Law Olmsted sited the Biltmore house and created a lagoon, woodlands, gardens that is considered a masterpiece and enjoyed by nearly one million visitors each year.
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  • Man sits in front of alter in his home in Xoxocotlan for Day of the Dead. Dia de los Muertos is Mexico's most characteristic fiesta where it is believed that souls of the dead return to the earth.
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  • Young staff at their computers in an office.
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  • The Kumkapi neighborhood, primarily immigrant, in Istanbul.
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  • Sandals are removed before entering tents.
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  • A teenage schoolgirl adjusts her uniform.
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  • Maternity Ward at Mulago Hospital in Kampala.  Head of OB/GYN was taught by Jotham Musinguzi who became head of Population and Development Dept. for the government.  Jotham recently retired because he did not agree with the current president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Museveni has a military background and just wants to get BOOTS ON THE GROUND. Jotham said he wants to bump Uganda's population up to 60M before he even starts to worry about infrastructure for all these people. Uganda is about 30M now.  About half of Uganda's population is under 15 and life expectancy is about 50.  Population has doubled from 1990 to now.
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  • Chairs sit under an arbor in a field.
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  • Elderly La Scala musicians in a nursing home.
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  • Elderly La Scala musicians in a nursing home.
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  • Maternity ward at Mulago Hospital in Kampala.
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  • Friends on the beach at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.
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  • A waiter unfolds linen table cloths as he prepares a dining room for the evening in a plush hotel in glitzy, St. Moritz. Badrutt's Palace hotel is an iconic, luxury destination known for amenities and fine service. Huge floral arrangements and framed oil paintings create a formal elegance for tourists.<br />
The ornate Palace hotel opened in 1896 and over the years has welcomed celebrities like Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn and Charlie Chaplin.
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  • Graffiti carved in a wooden bench in Mendocino Headlands State Park.
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  • A respected older musician plays of fiddle and the music he learned from his own grandfather. In the small community of El Carmen, near Pisco, most locals trace their ancestry to African slaves, brought there generations ago to work in the Peru's cotton plantations. The brightly-colored red walls of his home are adorned with family pictures.
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  • A two generation family in their living room.
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  • Students in their dorm room at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University.
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  • Trying on clothes and jewelry for an accessory photo shoot.
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  • A young woman fluffs a pillow in her apartment.
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  • Shanghai Jiao Tong University students in their dorm room.
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  • This is a meeting of the “farmer” capitalist millionaires in Huaxi Village (Farmers Village), a model farm for the last 45 years. Even though they are the collective ideal of the capitalist model, they still dress in Mao-ish style outfits and make decisions for the 80 businesses in a socialist forum.<br />
<br />
These “model farmers” were capitalists before it was allowed in China. They started factories, but worked in them secretly (no windows). When government officials came around, all the workers ran out into the fields and pretended to be peasants. They became the first and most successful capitalist exploitation of the collective. Huaxi Village eventually went bankrupt.
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  • A Ladin funeral procession seen trough a lace curtained window in a small village of LaVal in the Alps where the people are isolated and speak German and Italian but also Ladin, their own ethnic language.
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  • A Rapanui dancer paints his body.
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  • The Bluegrass Region is rich with lore and traditions like the lawn jockey, a small statue prominently positioned on every farm with a lantern or hitching ring in one outstretched hand. Local legend says it memorializes Jocko Graves, who stood guard over horses for George Washington and froze to death holding a lantern in his hand. He was known as the faithful guardsman.<br />
Modern day watchman and farm owner Dr. Smiser West walks out his office door toward the lawn jockey painted with the colors of Waterford Farm.
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  • Keeneland Race track's Thoroughbred horse auction for two-year olds is where horses often sell for six figures. A bid spotter dressed in a tuxedo searches the crowd while a video showing the horse sprinting on the track along with the time is show on monitors above.
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  • Street are lit at dusk outside a plush hotel in St. Moritz. Glitzy designer shops attract high-end tourists for a glamorous vacation in the Swiss Alps.
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  • A waiter prepares a dining room by freshening the floral arrangements in a plush hotel in the Swiss Alps. The elegant Badrutt's Palace opened in 1896, and over the years has welcomed tourists and celebrities like Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn and Charlie Chaplin.
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  • Australian children await a naturalization ceremony in Phoenix.
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  • A robot programmed to help elderly out of bed and into a wheelchair.
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  • Maternity ward at Mulago Hospital in Kampala.
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  • Maternity ward at Mulago Hospital in Kampala.
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  • Tailgaters watch a Lions game on TV, parked in the erstwhile Grand Michigan Theater.
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  • Stacks of plates are put out for morning breakfast.
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  • For an anniversary celebration, a husband surprised his wife with a romantic candle-lit dinner in a tent perched above a secluded beach on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • A big congratulations wish to a couple dressed in formal attire who donned crampons to walk on ice to be married on the Mendenhall Glacier. They took a helicopter onto the icefield and said their vows, then were toasted husband and wife.
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  • Dressed in elegant formal wear, a bride and groom walk to the helicopter to fly up onto a glacier for their wedding ceremony in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A nun tunes her guitar while her sisters rehearse music in the cloistered Convent St. John in Val Mustair. A UNESCO World Heritage Site founded in the 8th century, it has been home to Christian Benedictine nuns since the 12th Century.
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  • Two Ladin women dress in traditional clothing that is often worn on Sundays and for ceremonial occasions linked to the ancient customs. Ladins in the small village in the Dolomites divided from other ethnic relatives to the far reaches of the mountains further away from German influences. The people living here speak Italian and German, but Ladin in their first language.
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  • After a candle-lit bath in milk and honey, a couple is served champagne, then they snuggle down in a straw-filled bed. Luxury spas find unique ways to attract tourists.
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  • Dr. Smiser West waits for birth of a Thoroughbred foal on his Waterford Farm. April and May are foaling season and most are born between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. under the cover of darkness.  A night watchman calls Dr. West who at age 94 still jumps out of bed and comes to the barn to wait for the blessed event of a baby that is born to run.
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  • Framed portraits are displayed on the family organ in the living room of the Caudill-Miller homestead.
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  • Lorene Caudill prepares for their move by taking down family photographs. She and her husband Therman endured eight years of coal dust and foundation-shaking dynamite blasts as Hobet 21, one of the largest surface mines in the state, inched slowly toward them. They put up apples from their last garden and packed their belongings after signing a letter of intent to sell their beloved home to a coal company.<br />
The Caudills, along with other family members, did achieve a small victory by preserving ownership of a nearby ancestral home but only after a long battle—all the way to the West Virginia Supreme Court—with the coal company.  No one lives there now but the extended family gathers on weekends to garden and for dinners at the house, which was completely surrounded by mining. Since then, the house was burned down by arsonists.<br />
<br />
The Caudill house, where they had planned on spending the rest of their lives, is a half-mile down the road from the old homestead. They are some of the last to leave the community. Therman Caudill, a retired schoolteacher said, “It took the coal company 125 years to run the Caudill family out of Mud River, but they finally did it.”
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_996259.jpg
  • A fern leaf frames a historic portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted along with tools of his trade as a landscape architect. The still life is arranged on a work stool in his office at Fairsted, now the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.<br />
<br />
Olmsted (1822-1903) is remembered as America’s first landscape architect and park planner. He designed many well-known urban parks including Central Park in New York, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, as well as parks in Buffalo, Rochester, and the Niagara Reservation. He is also credited with drawing plans for Louisville, Chicago, Boston, Detroit and Montreal parks as well as his final masterpiece, the grounds of Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.
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  • Porch of the Bolduc House Museum with antique chairs and rakes.
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  • A family prays at sunset near the campfire at the contest compound.
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  • Men gather in the shade of a tent to socialize at a camel competition.
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  • From Leslie Chang’s story that accompanied these photographs in National Geographic Magazine:<br />
<br />
By the time she was ten, Bella lived a life that was rich with possibility and as regimented as a drill sergeant’s. After school she did homework unsupervised until her parents got home. Then came dinner, bath, piano practice. Sometimes she was permitted television, but only the news. On Saturdays she took a private essay class followed by Math Olympics, and on Sundays a prep class for the middle-school entrance exam and piano lessons. The best moment of the week was Friday afternoon, when school let out early. Bella might take a deep breath and look around, like a man who discovers a glimpse of blue sky from the confines of the prison yard.
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  • Trying on clothes and jewelry for an accessory photo shoot.
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  • Trying on clothes and jewelry for an accessory photo shoot.
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  • A young woman turns on a light in her apartment.
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  • Inside a couple's apartment in Beijing.
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  • A fish tank separates patrons from the kitchen at a restaurant on East Nanjing Road | Shanghai, China
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  • Pedestrians in downtown Shanghai.
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  • A teenage schoolgirl at her desk doing homework.
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  • Backlighting through yellow curtains at a restaurant in Shanghai.
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  • The IKEA store in Shanghai, China is packed daily, but Sundays are particularly crowded. Sometimes one can’t maneuver through the aisles.
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  • Cleaning an apartment before dinner.
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  • A man tries out a chair at a Sam's Club store in China. The first Wal-Mart in China is in Shenzhen, the city where Deng made his famous “to be rich is glorious” speech. This store sells all that a family needs or wants. The cosmetics area is much more plush than any Wal-Mart in the U.S. Women who work in offices will have a cheaper brand of lipstick in their homes, but carry a nice brand in their purse so they can be seen using it in public. The signs that hang overhead in this store proudly announce, “Made in China.” This is very different than the best store I could find in China 17 years ago. The best store then was a government “Friendship Store” that had a photo of a female employee on the wall with a sign underneath, “Worst Employee of the Month.” The only way you could motivate workers at that time was to shame them. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, beauty in China is seen as utilitarian. Cosmetics for instance are a major business in China and women in the China Middle see this as an important part of their lifestyle. Wal-Mart aims for the Comfort Class consumer earning between $5,000 and $20,000 a year.
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  • All over China, young architects design buildings that are just experiments: throw in a bit of classical modern, a little Prairie style, a few Roman columns. This restaurant with the longest name I saw in China, decided one day they would just photograph the interior of the restaurant with all the customers and then have it printed on huge canvas sheets so it feels like you are sitting inside the restaurant – inside the restaurant.
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  • Inside a house at the Mission Hills Golf Club's housing development.
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  • Women wait to view a display of jewelry made for a Bollywood movie.
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  • A gold jewelry store in Bangalore.
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  • In curlers, B&B manager Delta Craft looks out a window.
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  • A man, television, brooms, and tables outside a back doorway.
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  • A man seen in rear view mirror and a store through rainy a windshield.
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