Cyberia--Internet Cafes
Eva Pascoe rides to work on a motorbike. Her business wardrobe features such items as black leggings, furry leopard - skin jumpers, a faded denin jacket and biking leathers. She looks as if she might be a trendy market manager, or someone who works the day shift in a student cafe. In fact she is a very rich, very successful businesswoman.
Pascoe's business base is in the city of London, not far from the uban loft space she owns in a fashionable city residential area. But she is as likely to be found at business meetings in Tokyo, New York or Paris. At the age of 31, Pascoe is the brain behind Cyberia, which she claims is the world's first “cyberia cafe.”
At Cyberia, experienced Internet surfers can play with the latest cyber technology - Net virgins can learn how to log on - while munching their way through what she describes as an "obscene nacho sandwich" or any of the other dishes offered on the highly priced Cyberia menu.
Pascoe founded Cyberia with partner Gene Teare in September 1994. Since then, the company has turned over approximately 5 million pounds. Before the end of 1996 Pascoe intends to float the company on the stock market. Yet the venture started out very modestly, in a small cafe behind London's Tottenham Court Road. The decor there is strictly lowly--stripped floors, distressed walls, ambient music, funky art - yet it has turned into a global concept. Today, Cyberia cafes can be found in the British cities of Manchester and Edinburgh, and in Paris,Tokyo and New York. On the list for future Cyberia are Glasgow, Lisbon, San Franciso, British, Moscow and Delhi.
The company is diversifying fast. Multimedia training and development sessions are held in the Trans- Cyberia and Sub-Cyberia basement venues beneath the cafes themselves. There is a range of Cyberia designer accessories, such as T - shirts and mousepads. The company even boasts an online dating agency. The Cyberia magazine was launched early in 1996, while the world's first online “television station”, Channel Cyberia, launched ill Britain in May. Cyberia Records - copies of Samples taken from the Net, for use by DJs - is promised before long. Pascoe is unstoppable, a cyberspace version of the entrepreneur Richard Branson. She grew up in rigidly communist Poland, but has made the transformation to free -wheeling business entrepreneur with incredible ease. At first, however, the prospects for cyberia did not look good. At the lunch of the first cafe, Pascoe spent most of her day trying to buy an espresso machine that could make good coffee. “It was incredibly disorganised,” says someone who worked there as a cyberhost. "There was no proper Kitchen. Four out of the five company directors had other jobs."
Eighteen months on, many insiders say things are not much changed. "It's half - cocked," says Ivan Pope; who runs a nearby design agency." You never get served. The coffee's always cold. It's chaos. "In- deed, many industry analysis are sceptical about Pascoe's ambitions. "Cyberia is simply a restaurant chain with a grimmick, "says David Tabizel, director of a multimedia company based in the city of London.
Cyberia's trick, however, was to spot - before anyone else - that the Internet was about to turn into an everyday resource. "They managed to capture the mysterious zeitgeist of where people want to be," says John Browning, editor - in - chief of Wired magazine. The company had brilliant branding, too. "It' s a great name," says David Tabizel, noting the play on words with Siberia, the vast, desolate region in the north of Russia. Another advantage, say analysts,is the company' s decision not to open clones of its original restaurant in each new location: Every Cyberia is tailored to its city' s needs.
It is doubtful that anything would have come of the idea if Pascoe had not been behind it from the start. She has been described variously as" weird and
A. The Cyberia magazine.
B. An online dating agency.
Cyberia Records.
D. Cyberia Supermarket.
I was born in Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon countries, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 1782,where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New - England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite, than a similarity of christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecei, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.
My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came in the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so-called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond “reading, writing, and cipherin” to the Rule of Three. If a struggler supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since, The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.
I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in Illinois--Macon County. Then I got to New-Salem, (at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County), where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black-Hawk war; and I was elected a Captain of volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832) and was beaten--the only time I have been beaten by the people. The next, and three succeeding biennial elections, I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterwards. During this legislative period I had studied law, and re- moved to Springfield to practice it. In 1846, I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for reelection? From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a whig in politics, and generally on the whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well-known.
If any personal description of us is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey hair, grey eyes--no other masks or brands recollected.
The author is ______.
A. a friend of Abraham Lincoln' s
B. a writer who gives an account of Abraham Lincoln' s biography
C. Abraham Lincoln himself
D. Abraham Lincoln's autobiography