So a warm welcome, please, for Raul Fernandez and Gary Coach Garcia. Welcome. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you. How are you? All right. So, yeah. Hi, everyone. Apologies for these initial issues. Yeah. My name is Gary Coach Garcia. I will give you a brief introduction of the IG Group and IGGBS, which is the company Raul and myself belong to. IGGBS is part of the IG Group. I will tell you a bit more about it in the next slide. All right. So, IG has a vision of becoming the leading group of airlines across the world. To do so is preparing a platform for different operating companies to work on it. So the idea is to maximizing the sustainable value to our stakeholders and customers. It started in 2011. There were joining leading airlines from Ireland, from the UK, from Spain, and it commemorates different type of airlines across the same group. So there are two full service carriers, which are Iberia and British Airways. There are also two value service carriers, like Erlingus and Iberia Express, and finally there are also low cost carriers, such as Boeing and Lebel. Lebel actually was created by IG in 2017, while the other companies were either creating the group or being a quality run, and the difference with Lebel is that it's a low cost company that offers transatlantic flights to many destinations, starting from Barcelona and Paris. Then as you have probably seen in the press, we are now in the process to publicly buy another airline, which is Europa, and that will give us also more presence in the Madrid hub. So what we are building in IG is a platform for these different operating companies to coexist and find the synergies between them. So the platform is formed by other operating companies supporting those businesses, which include IG Cargo for good transportation, then IG GPS, which is the one that provides group IT services, procurement, and financial services, and finally we have Avios, which is the loyalty aspect of the group. In terms of the vision, like becoming the world leading airline and creating this sustainable value, we believe that we are well positioned to offer this value because even if we are working on a very competitive and fast-paced environment, we do have the right basis for creating that. We believe that one doesn't fit all, so that's why we are quite diverse in terms of the different businesses that are part of the group. But we also believe that because they are different, we can also offer a rival customer proposition across the different segments of the travel industry. So here you can see the IG integrated platform, which is composed of Cargo, Avios, GPS, and so on that provide these services to the different companies. The idea is to allow this integrated platform to provide simplicity and to become more efficient and then let the different operating companies to be different, to have their own targets and in the end to provide different type of value to different type of customers. Now going a bit more into group IT. Group IT is part of IG GPS, so together with the financial services and group procurement, we form this global business services group. We do have a number of challenges in group IT that we need to address because of the nature of the group. For instance, there is a very heterogeneous legacy landscape that we need to address. Together with that, there are security issues, there are network challenges due to connectivity of different locations associated to the logistics. Obviously, there are different business alignments. The different businesses do have different visions and therefore different cultures that we will need to address from a common perspective in IT. The idea of IT is to offer a plug and play capability and this serves as a potential platform, let's say, even for future acquisitions so that we can integrate and find the right synergies underneath. So what we are doing in IT with this plug and play model is to really understand our access, our to be where we want to be, how can we standardize and to which level we can get those synergies and then define the associated roadmap and the strategy of course on how to go from it to be. Then in terms of what are the enablers to be able to do this, one of the enablers is the agitransformation that we are presenting. One of the samples is the Iberia com examples that will go a bit more in depth. Another very good example of enablers is actually the open group as a platform and the commercial aviation workgroup where we are aiming to develop much farther the commercial aviation reference framework which will serve as a base for our IT and architecture functions. Then in terms of agile working, well, you know, pretty much the idea of becoming agile so the organizations need to be more responsive, more effective, they need to be more efficient as well. There are a number of challenges that typically the different organizations face. They include specifically the culture and mindset change and that is something that we also struggled especially at the beginning and we have been evolving on that. So the use case will probably go a bit more deeper into that point. In the end what we found out is that we need to embrace the agenda and keep still some part of the more traditional way of doing IT and architecture but we will have to evolve in some areas and we have already started doing so. In order to do this, the role of the architecture that we know traditionally needs to evolve. There are some aspects where this is more necessary than others. Primarily we as architects need to be closer to the business owners. We have to be co-creating and be co-located with them, do a lot of whiteboarding with them, understand the issues and evolve with the business requirements. Then there is a necessity also for simplifying the documentation that we have and one very good thing to do so is to choose the right tools in order to not having to put extra effort on the more bureaucratic side of things. So just produce what is absolutely relevant for the business and actually within IT. The concepts that we are now a bit more familiar with and the aspects of architecture that need to change more, let's say, is rather than to boil the ocean and create a completely perfect architecture from the beginning, we should start more from a minimum viable architecture. This means that starting from the strategy and from a very high level vision of what we need to achieve, then we have to smartly partition the architecture to find the right level of depth and breadth of the different initiatives and then focus on the minimum viable architecture for each of those initiatives rather than trying to create the whole thing from the beginning. Then the concept of continuous architecture refactoring is also, as we were hearing before, making the architecture more agile. So we don't need to adhere to very strict and difficult to change these architectures or solutions, but starting from principles, starting from strategy, we can evolve that architecture as the requirements evolve or the technology underpinning those solutions or requirements are evolving as well. In terms of digital transformation, we want the teams to be working with new technologies. We are exploring the new technologies. We are applying them and see how they work. Proof concepts and small projects initially starting small and then growing on them. Things like technologies that a couple of years ago were radically new, now they are getting more, let's say, adopted by all the teams, but there are still a lot of opportunities that can be explored in areas like artificial intelligence, block change, you name it, all these new technologies that we work with. Finally, but not less important, is the architectural governance. In the traditional, let's say, the architectural governance is a bit too rigid and it needs to be a bit more fluid when we speak about agile. So to me, the key figure is the solution architect in this case that can flex the day-to-day work that is being done in the squads within the teams that are working in the agile delivery and the, let's say, enterprise architecture level where we have the strategy, the principles, the technology guidelines. So the solution architect can work with each of the squads, understand what are the needs for solutions and architectures to evolve and communicate that back to the enterprise architecture. We will see how these principles are becoming a reality with now the use case that Raúl is going to present for ABRIA.com. Thank you. Hello everybody. I am Raúl Fernández, the performance manager of ABRIA.com, and I'm going to, the case study that I'm going to introduce or present today is about the roadmap of the agile adoption of ABRIA.com. When I entered in the company three years ago, the process, the methodology they were using was very traditional, and one of the missions they gave me is to start doing the transformation with all the teams that are building the ABRIA.com platform. What is ABRIA.com? There are two different angles to see what is ABRIA.com. One is a platform, it's a technological platform, a collection of microservices, a front application, the front of the mobile apps, but also other legacy applications that are the core of the company like a ticketing system or the account, revenue accounting that this platform is using as well, and they are belonging to other teams, other areas of ABRIA.com, and sometimes we have to implement things and we have dependencies about features that they have to implement in their system, and this platform also is using third party services like ADEUS or other services. So this is ABRIA.com is a technological platform, but also ABRIA.com is a product. From the business point of view, it's a product, and as a product there are different businesses in ABRIA that want to spend money to do chains in the application because those chains are going to bring with revenue. So we have several businesses and one technological platform. Three years ago, the situation was very different to nowadays, and we have different businesses trying to touch the same platform. The businesses were not aligned each other, so whenever you start implementing things, you start seeing conflict in the implementation. So there were a misalignment between businesses. At that time also, we see we have another big problem with business is the priorities. These were three types of priorities, high-media level, high-media low. What happened? 80% of the projects were high-priority and 20-medium. If USIT has a lot of projects with a high-priority, the one that is deciding which project is going to be the first to implement ISIT, and that's the bad direction because we are losing the time to market to start working with a project that has the most impact in business. So at some point, we have to move that responsibility to business and say, we cannot work with only three levels of priority. The backlog has to be from 1 to N, and we can pick up the projects from the top of the backlog. Another problem that we had at that time is the visibility. So all the engineers in Iberia.com were working in tasks to implement features, but they didn't know the business strategy. If they didn't know the business strategy, you cannot pretend that the team is proactive and the team can take decisions in the right direction because they don't know the business strategy and we are working, we are not a technological company, we are selling tickets and our target is the user. And another problem that the business didn't know or didn't understand how IT was working because we were like at two different things, business asking things and IT implementing them, but we were not working as a team. Another problem was the dependencies. You have dependencies with another systems that are working, are still working in traditional technologies, traditional methodologies, and the speed of implementation is not as fast as an agile team. So if you have dependencies, you have to wait. And what's happening at that time is that because business was putting a lot of pressure in some of the projects because they were very urgent, if that project has a dependency in a third party, you cannot start implementing on that project until the third party finish the dependency because if you do that, then you have implementation that these are already done, but it's not ready to put in production. If it is not ready to put in production, why you don't work in other things that you can put in production and get the time to market. Another problem is the knowledge. There were like a few people with a lot of knowledge. Iberia is a very old company. Few people with a lot of knowledge and many people depending on them. So we have to distribute that knowledge in all the people. Otherwise, the dependency to do something is very big and also the quality. At that time, we had a very monolithic application. You change something here and then you break something in other part. Of course, we have done a transformation project and now we convert all that monolithic application in a microservice platform. So what we did at the beginning, agile goes about working with team, working with people. So at the beginning, we didn't say to anybody that we went to transform to agile. We just started to work with the people, with the team. And I remember the environment was a very difficult one because there were like a different providers working, delivering projects and when they put the project in the production, they generate a lot of bugs. And all the providers were blaming each other. So one of the things is you have to create a good environment. And a good environment that is focused in solutions. And everybody is working in a solution, not complaining, not blaming each other. So we started to do like a round of retrospective meetings in which we talk about the impediments that the people had doing their job. What are the impediments that you have? What we can do? And then we came with a series of actions. In those meetings, nobody can complain. Nobody can blame each other. Everybody, the laptops, please close the laptop. And if you have a mobile call go outside, we are going to work together in a solution. And it's amazing. In two months doing that every week, the attitudes of the people change because you put all the people to work in a solution together. And then you gave them like a possible solution to the problems. And then you try to influence them to give them the good values to create like a base in which you can work in agile. Especially be focused on the customer and the organization. You have to delegate in teams. You are going to, at that time, we were about to remove the project manager role. So team has to be able to out organize. And team has to be able to assume the responsibility as a team. And that is difficult, I will tell you. So we have a good success environment after two months in the people. And then we started to work together, to keep working together every week to define what will be the model that we would like to work. We are going to try to do the model scalable for all of us that we would like to work. And we did that with the development team, with the engineers, but also with the business people. Because the challenge was stop having two different teams, business and IT. The challenge was you are the product, we are IT. Herarchically you are in the same position, but you are doing different roles. But for doing different roles and with the common target that is the user, we have to be able to work together. How is the best model to work together? Then I put everybody in long sessions on Fridays, I remember, and to define that model. It was a difficult process. But then people start contributing with ideas. And they are the people that are going to implement the things. And they are the people that knows much better what is the best model for Iberia. Much better than if an external consultant comes to Iberia and says, this is the model, try to follow. No, we are going to create it. Because if they created the model, if they created the model, because they did it, they are going to follow. They are not going to leave that like an imposition. They are going to leave that like a democratic act that everybody agrees. And they have to do what the team is agreeing. Okay, so we created the model. We spent several months trying to define the model. Can you hear me? Thank you, the family model. And in January this year, when that the model was defined and agreed in all the teams, then I dissolved all the teams in Iberia.com, 130 people. I dissolved all the teams. And in the act of one day, in an auto-organized meeting, everybody choose when he wants to work. They already know the model. So with the model, you have a collection of rules. You can have, for example, for this model, we are going to have the development teams that has to be full stack. So every development team has to have all the profiles that you need to deliver such an improduction. Service backend developers, front-end developers, quality assurance, another different technology like experts in the content management system. So you have a team that can implement something and put in production. They already know that there were cells, I will explain later on, that every cell is formed by one product owner, one business analyst, one UX, one UI. So we draw the template and everybody select when they wanted to work. And after that, we started around to find the team agreements to start the new way of working. And we implemented this. We have been working this year with that model. And now we are in a position in that we found several things that we need to improve because, okay, this slide is not complete. Okay. Because we realize that the culture is very difficult to change. It's the most difficult thing when you are playing a transformation on a file. You can set the ceremonies, you can set the framework. But the culture, the mindset is still old. So now we have to do a second round of transformation. So what is the model that we defined? We defined it a model, a three-level model. The top level, well, it's not the top because it's not hierarchical. The center of the model is the core. In the core are all the stakeholders that have interest in Iberia.com, that have money, and they need to change in Iberia.com. And at this level, what we do is try to talk about the things that are cross. If you have a project that are touching two different businesses, you have to make sure that the priority for that business is the same that this one, otherwise, you will not be able to deliver because you have dependencies. So we try to figure out what are the dependencies and resolve conflicts. At that level, we have the solution architect of Iberia involved because the solution architect at this level has to try to identify what are the dependencies with other systems. Because as soon as you identify dependencies, you can start working on those dependencies. You start talking with other parties to then planify the work and have that work ready when you start implementing. Then we have a second level. You will see the squads, and every squad has two different levels. In the left-hand side, you have the cells and the development team. The cell is formed by the product owner, business analyst, US, and UI. What they are doing is trying to pick up the requirement at a very high level that are created in the core and do a fine game, and the input is an initiative, business initiative, and their output is used backlog with different user stories. A user story is a requirement that is very well defined from the functional point of view, but with enough information for a developer to be able to start to implement. In our case, we include the UI and UI as part of the requirements, and every cell can fit one or several development teams. The cell is like in the traditional scrum, the product owner, and the team, the development team is the development team. The development team is a full stack team with different technologies from apps, mobile apps, Angular, backend developers, it was inter-site, and every team also has a member that belongs to the chapter architecture. So the chapter architecture is like if I am a developer that I like architecture, I am working here in the development team, I like architecture, that is my focus, my passion. So what they do is they create a community, so every development team has a member of the chapter architecture, they create a community about architecture. So they can share things about that practice, they can be in contact with the solution architect and the enterprise architect, they can understand what are the principles of the architecture in AIG, and they can try to to conscientiate to the other people in the team how things have to be done, and they can identify also inside of the team that if we have to develop this functionality that has an implication in architecture, then I have to raise a flag and say to the solution architect. Okay, so this is the model, and then this is some photographers about the act when we created that model in an auto organization fashion. And other thing that we incorporated to the model is a ceremony that is the town hall meeting. We have a town hall every quarter at the beginning of the quarter, and the target of the town hall is to understand the business strategy for this quarter, what is business wanting to do in the application. So every business manager goes there and tell to all the people, when I say all the people, they say 160 people all together, and business managers comes and they tell us the business strategy, the sales, the product owners tell also the plan, align it with the business strategy, and then all the people together with a plan that they have about the implementation for the this quarter start talking to each other about the penances. So after those sessions of explaining the strategy, so in a big room we have different positions for different squads, and all the people goes through the different squads, and the product owner tell them in detail what is our plan for this quarter. And if you are, for example, someone for the ticketing systems and goes there, and then they tell you things, maybe you say, okay, if you want to do that, I have to do some change, because you will find that if you try to do this, this parameter is not in our process. So then we have to do things. So then you keep a positive, and then you have something to integrate as a ticketing system in your plan. So the target of this town hall meeting is try to manage all the dependencies we have with the people in front of you, talking about the things we are going to do, and talking, interacting with people is much more powerful that if we do this plan, this three months plan, based in emails or other kind of remote communication, it's much more powerful. And also we found that this kind of meetings, because all the people is together, and then you can know other people that is working in other areas that maybe you never see in the day-to-day, create a lot of synergies and a lot of motivation. And it's amazing that the last, for the last, sorry, we are finishing the time. It's amazing the result that meeting has. So basically I'm finishing the conversation, the rest of the points are key learning that we had in this phase that you can read in the PPTs, and then we are starting to work in the next level of change that we need to improve in the agenda formation. Please have a seat, Raul. We'll go through a few questions. Thank you very much for that. I think in your, you skipped over some of the key learnings in the interest of time. I think one of them might answer the first question, which was we heard earlier about a bimodal architecture approach. Is that how you would describe the situation in IAG? Bimodal architecture? Bimodal or two-speed or multi-speed? Two different spaces. Actually we have like three different levels. It's much more three levels than two. We have an architecture at the top level that we discussed when we have the core meeting, when all the stakeholders are together, and then we see the impact that the new functionality will have in the architecture, and then you miss the impact and the requirement that then we will have to change those pieces of software according with the principles of the architecture, the general principles. And another level is in the cells. When you are landing, when you are refining the requirements, then you find that there are some things also that are impacting that you cannot see at the high level. So architectures have also meetings every two months with all the cells, and they are explaining what is going to be the backlog for the two or three springs, coming springs, and so you can identify also other changes that you have to do. And also my happen is not the regular that when you are implementing in the SCRAM, you find some other implications. Okay, thank you. You mentioned user stories. Who creates those in your organization? User stories. User stories are created between the product owner and the business analyst. The differences in the product owner and business analyst is not so much. In our case, it's just legacy, because at the beginning, when we started to work, product owner work were in the business area, and the business analyst were in the business areas, and the requirements for IT were just one sentence. So we needed to hire a business analyst to try to translate that one sentence in something meaningful for the developers. But nowadays that we have been working with product owner and business analyst long time, and they know each other, and they know how the other guy is working as well. So there is a good synchronization, and so far, both of them are business product owners. But the product owner, PSL, is the responsible to create user stories. Okay, thank you. I'll combine two questions into one. When you got the teams together in the early stages, you mentioned the first two months, was that face-to-face, is the first part of the question? And secondly, you then talk about quarterly meetings, are they good enough, or should they be more frequent, do you think? Second part, you talked about quarterly meetings getting people together. Do you think that is regular enough, or should it be more regular than quarterly? Okay, let me explain. So the first phase, the phase zero in which we have this retrospective meeting, is very important to have that retrospective meeting face-to-face, because interaction is much more powerful than email, even much more powerful than when you are in remote. So you can do, essentially, it's much better. So there is a difference between the town hall meetings and the core. The core meeting in which all the stakeholders are together happen every Friday. So every Friday, we are discussing the things that are cross, things that are high level, and the stakeholder has a very good knowledge about how other things are going. The town hall meetings happen every quarter. It's enough. It's a lot of, so imagine 130 people in a meeting during a whole day. It's a very expensive meeting. It's not because it's expensive. It's enough because at that time you can plan the three coming months very well, and if you have any issues during the plan, because you see the other guy that is implicated in your project, you can go to his place and ask the questions. And so far it's enough, and it's a very powerful meeting. Okay. One for you maybe, Gary. What do you think of the term minimum viable architecture? It seems unarchitectural. The least amount of architecture possible doesn't sound like a good idea. What do you think? I think that makes sense. Actually, it is within the concept of photography itself. So when we do the ADM, we can choose what the scope of the ADM is, and that allows us to focus on really the partition of the architecture that we want to resolve at a very specific point in time and for a very specific initiative. So as I mentioned before, rather than trying to create the architecture for everything, it is better to just do a preliminary phase to identify things like the principles, the strategies, and so on. And from that perspective, and with an architecture vision probably for the whole lot, then focus on developing the architecture for specific necessities, primarily because those architectures and solutions are going to evolve with the time in an agile world. So sometimes it's also a waste of time if you want to resolve everything at the beginning, knowing that parts of it are not going to be used or are going to change. And we are at a time, but one more question because I'm interested in hearing you answer. What does IAG particularly hope to gain out of participation in the commercial aviation work group? So the principal focus, I believe, is the reference architecture. I think that will be one of the enablers for Group IT in the end that will provide us with the basement, let's say, for the different domain viewpoints, data architecture, applications, business architecture. So that will streamline quite a lot the ADM cycle in the end. So how to produce the architectures and the solutions to make it much more efficient to use the resources and to be able to deliver in less time and finally to become more agile. And it's the latest example of what we're doing in the open group in other industries as well is going to that reference architecture level and what it means for your particular industry. So we'll leave it there, gentlemen. Thank you both very much, Raul and Gary Klitz. Thank you. Thank you.


I'm here with you today to show you just a little slideshow. These are some journal pages I've made in the past few months, along with some photos from my personal camera roll, things I've seen on my daily walks when I find something inspiring, bits and pieces of my life that aren't necessarily shared on social media. So I hope you enjoy them while we have a little chat. Our little chat is going to be about YouTube demonetizing the small YouTube channels. So the little channels that have less than 1,000 subscribers and less than 4,000 views, I think it's view minutes, they have to have both to be monetized. If they don't have both, then YouTube is demonetizing them in February.  I'm going to link Mara Del Abrams' video in the description below where she has a linked list of small channels that we would appreciate very much if you go watch, like, share, subscribe and check out their creative content. Some of them are super, well, not some of them, all of them are super talented people and they're just starting out, though. That's the only thing. So they need a little help. And if you could provide that, that would be fabulous. We appreciate your support. You can search in the YouTube search box for hashtag thanks for watching art. And when you do that, you should find all of the videos that are being created with that hashtag. But you can also find specifically the small channels by going over to Mara Del Abrams' video, because it's really about getting attention to the little channels. It's not about me on my channel acquiring more subscribers, although if I do, I'm not going to complain, but that's not what this is about. This is about the little guy.  I really would appreciate that. That's it for right now. I hope you've enjoyed this little slideshow. I hope you enjoy the hop and you have fun searching the hashtag. Don't forget the most important thing. Besides liking, sharing and subscribing, your favorite YouTubers, go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. And I'll see you later. Bye guys.


Cancer. It's a very scary word. But an outstanding treatment facility was here at home. I was led to the Lawson Cancer Center. As a nurse practitioner at the Lawson Cancer Center, we are champions for our patients. I am so happy for Robert. The treatment worked. On Monday, May 1, Pikeville Medical Center paid a visit to Bevan's Elementary for Doctors' Day. Several PMC representatives spoke to a kindergarten class about the different types of jobs in the medical field available in our region. Each of the children were thrilled to receive a gift bag and participate in hospital-themed activities. Yeah, this started because of one of the teachers here at Bevan's Elementary. They reached out to us and they wanted us to see if we could help with a program that this kindergarten teacher had on Doctors' Day. So we, with the Workforce Development Center at Pikeville Medical Center, thought this was a great opportunity for us to get into the schools and to talk to these kindergartners about what doctors and nurses do within the hospital. One of the things that we're doing as far as the initiatives that we have going is that we're working with the elementary schools, the high schools, and even in the colleges for education. Trying to get these students to become aware of opportunities that we have right here in eastern Kentucky in our region so that students can consider a career in healthcare. Since the Doctors' Day program began in March 2023, over 600 elementary and high school students have been a part of it. The goal now is to expand the program over the following year to reach more students. I'm really excited to have the opportunity as a physician to come here at Bevan's and talk to the next generation of kiddos about the importance of medicine and also the importance of their health. This is the reason I went into pediatrics is to be able to work with the next generation of kiddos. Truly, if we can ensure their health and their happiness, we can ensure a better course, a better future for the earth, right? If the next generation is dedicated to happiness and health, then certainly we're going to leave the world a better place than where we found it. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.


So you're a natural of the golden rule. You open doors for strangers at the coffee shop, and you tell your server thank you after a refill. Which is great. Keep doing that. But these everyday courtesies are tested when you're in a meeting with a superior, or on a teleconference with an office three time zones away. Unit 1 will test your mannerisms by reviewing various workplace scenarios. We'll move to standards and appropriate workplace attitudes and behaviors, using several articles that review the treatment of others. You'll find that Workplace Etiquette extends beyond the office to luncheons, conferences, and other social settings. We'll assess your current view on how to navigate beyond the four walls of your office, and give you tips on how to maintain your image no matter where you are. Employer expectations may vary, but practicing workplace manners will ensure you stay on the right side of HR. Keep at it, take notes, and let's get to work.


Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting episode, another edition of A Week in Geekton here on YouTube. My name is Javier Menendez and today we're going to be continuing our Aquaman talk here on this very channel. We're going to be covering the later portion of Dan Abnet's run. So stay tuned. Yeah, everybody, welcome back. Previously, actually a year ago, I talked about the, I think it was a year ago, I talked about the first four trades in Abnet's re-worth run. Now, if you're not familiar with it, and if you don't mind spoilers, then please do continue watching. If not, go ahead and watch that first video where I talked a little bit more in depth about the origins of that run. Of course, it started in the new 52 and etc. etc. But yeah, this run continues after what was the start of the whole civil war in Atlantis, where our main bad guy Corum Wrath took over after the events of the first three volumes where there was that embassy attack on the Atlantis embassy attack, I should say, with all the diplomats and all that stuff eventually escalating into a war between Atlantis and the U.S. government. Superman stepped in. One of my favorite moments from the beginning run was that confrontation, that talk between Aquaman and Superman, and I loved how that reflected the character's status from Metta standpoint with the fandom. I'd love that scene so much. That was easily my highlight of the beginning portion of the Abnet's run. Now here, we continue that adventure with the repercussions of the civilian, of the civil war, I should say. Mira has left the kingdom of Atlantis, Aquaman is presumed dead, and there is talk about this ghost or as you know, they're referring him now as the Aquaman, there's talk of this ghost that is leading a revolt against Corum Wrath and we find out that yeah, it is Aquaman. We previously had the introduction, the rebirth introduction, I should say, to Dolphin. So that is where we leave things off in Volume 4. Beginning with Volume 5, obviously, are two lovebirds here reunite. Mira gets, she loses her ability to breathe underwater under a magic spell, a magic attack, and so it is a race to save her life. We got the character of Aquaman trying to continue this revolt against the tyrannical Corum Wrath and his regime that he started in Atlantis. We also have all the different side characters that have been introduced in this run. Volko is also a key part in this story as he is trying to get all of these sea listers involved and build a big enough army to take down the official army that Corum has. That means going down to the trenches down below, and I don't mean the actual trench, but to the innermost circles in Atlantis to recruit would be sort of like these mutated hybrids, I should say, of sea creatures slash Atlantians to get them involved. Now, the first Volume 5 that I'm talking about, Volume 5, the crown comes down, has art by Ricardo Federici, and for the most part, I've really loved it. This, to me, is the answer to Marvel's Issaad Rybik and his magnificent glorious work on Jason Aaron's Thor. Well, the equivalent of that, we get Ricardo doing fantastic work here on Aquaman, and it looks breathtaking, it looks beautiful, realistic, and just a great sense of depth with these characters as they are roaming around trying to stop the main bad guy while also trying to earn the people's trust so they can win back the throne, if you will. Now Aquaman in this story refuses to return to being a monarch, and instead, if they succeed, it will be up to Mira to become the Queen of Atlantis and continue the succession and all that stuff to get Corum Wrath out. So that's sort of the setup. One of my complaints, by the way, is that Volume 5 is pretty short. It only has issues 31 to 33 and then annual. The annual is not totally necessary, but it's actually pretty cool. It's like 20 years in the future. It's a different sort of what-if timeline, and I thought that was really, really awesome to see something like that. I think that was drawn by Max Fumuda, I think I said that right, or maybe not. He was the guy that did the art in Fumara, sorry, Max Fumara. He did the art in the Miolaverse for BPRD and stuff. So I really, really enjoyed reading that, that was awesome. But one of my complaints is that this is really tiny, this is only three issues of Aquaman material. If you are not counting the annual that I just mentioned. After that, it sort of leaves in a cliffhanger with the status quo that I just mentioned. And instead of picking Volume 6, you kind of have to read this book. This is Mira Queen of Atlantis, Mira's first ever solo book. It is written by Dan Atlet and it is drawn by Lan Medina. Unfortunately, it is part of the bigger story. It's not a standalone title. You have to read it before reading the final volume of the arc, Volume 6, Kingslayer. So yeah, you do have to read this in between. It's not totally necessary, but if you want to read Mira, it has to be before you finish the Appnet Civil War stuff, if you will, the Atlantean Civil War. For the most part, Mira's book is pretty freaking fantastic. Her title is well written. I love how strong and determined the character is. Mira is one of my favorite comic book characters. And I think Appnet, you know, he knows the character pretty well. He's written Aquaman for a few years now, so he knew what he was doing when he did this. And it has fantastic art from Lan Medina. Really pretty artwork. I mean, look at this. This is pretty spectacular fitting for our lovely queen.  Basically the return of the queen, as it says right here. Back in the New 52, after a throne of Atlantis, Ocean Master was captured and he was imprisoned in Bel Rive, Bel Rev, if I remember correctly. He escapes doing, you want to think it was forever evil during that time period. And he befriends a single mother with her son. And that's who you see here, a pacifist Ocean Master who has fallen genuinely in love with his character and has formed a loving relationship with her and her son. Which was really cool to see and it added a more interesting layer of somebody that was very totalitarian, very strict and very phobic when it came to land dwellers, as they like to say. So it was really interesting to see that dynamic, to be, you know, that dynamic to be explored, I should say, in a very cool way with him falling in love with a land dweller. So when you start reading this book, if you've not read the New 52 stuff, you're going to meet an Ocean Master that is changing, that is, he's different. He's going through an evolution of sorts and I really, really appreciated that it was something fresh and unique to do with the character that actually, yeah, several other versions have tried, but I thought that this particular one did a good job of reminding us who Ocean Master is and his legacy, but also opening the door for change, for potential change. So the book is great. And at the end of this, it sets up the finale, if you will, of the war for the throne with Volume 6 Kingslayer. This also has like four issues, which is a pretty small trade, in my opinion, but it has amazing artwork, stellar writing. And actually, one of the things that people criticized of this run for, and I will get to it in a little bit with the negatives, is the pacing, because it's a long story that I think could have been trimmed down a bit. I think it could have been shorter, especially if you were reading it with singles monthly. It would have been really annoying because the story drags. When you read it in trades, it picks up a lot better and faster. So I think the pacing could have been a little bit better. But really, Abnet does what an Aquaman writer, what I wanted a writer for this title to do, which was to explore the inner workings of Atlantis. A lot of writers through the decades have focused more on Arthur's position as a Justice League member and as a world hero. And vaguely exploring the duality of being from both land and sea, yes, they do feature him as the king of Atlantis, but it's more focused on the stuff that happens in the surface world and the tension between the two places, you know, different countries, I should say. Sorry. Atlantis. Whereas this, almost all of it, I'm going to say, what, like 80 or 90% of it is down below in the depths of the sea, so I really appreciated that and gave us a new window into the inner workings of the city and it introduced several new characters, several new concepts. We saw like the school of magic being explored, the widow tower thing and the selection of a new queen, all that inner working and inner workings of a monarchy and all that stuff. That to me is the most exciting thing about this run. Also, you're giving us a really cool kick-ass version of Aquaman that at first was a mix of old school and then it was clearly inspired by Jason Momoa as well. So you incorporated a bunch of elements to create what I think is a satisfying version of the character that people can enjoy. I still think New 52 is a good entry point and if you like that, go to this instead because the rebirth stuff, even though the pacing is a little bit off, it's still a worthwhile story about xenophobia, the fears of war, succession, dual roles and how, you know, obviously a character like Mira taking control of a city that mostly wanted a king. So you get to see stuff involving that and I think for the most part, Avanette does a fantastic job, really accessible, really cool. The art in it is fantastic, like I've briefly shown. It just has wonderful colors, wonderful art by Federici and seriously, look at this with the tones and the waters and stuff. It just, okay, this is, no I can't show that, that's a spoiler. But yeah, stuff like this just looks really good in page, you're holding it. And the villain, Coral Wrath, I think that also might be a slight negative, in my opinion. There is a complexity to the character because he comes from the barracks, he comes from deep down below where people are treated almost slave-like and his rise to power to fill a void in his heart that he could not do as he was growing up with the relationship of his father, which his father believed in the system and what he was doing, working the stones and all that stuff. So I do believe that Coral Wrath, he is a worthy villain for the pantheon of Aquaman characters. I just think at a certain point, they unleash a force within the book and the character just spirals into generic territory for me. It could have been a little bit better, but overall I'm satisfied and I think it was an amazing story and the resolution for Coral Wrath was really good. I really enjoyed it regardless of the way the characters was written for the final arc. He started one way, it got interesting and then it ended in another way. Let's just say that. If you've read it, I think you know what I mean. So yeah, great great arc, fantastic writing and world-building by Dan Abnett. He really got it down and I will miss it. I will genuinely miss what Abnett did, which started in the year 52. Basically his story, you know, there's still more to tell because it continues onward into other books that I'm going to talk about, but for the most part, this is like the meat and bones of his run where you do get to explore this new side of Aquaman. Later on, after that story ends, we get this Aquaman and Suicide Squad, Sync Atlantis, where it is written by Rob Williams and Dan Abnett. It was a mini crossover between the two titles. I cannot divulge the info that's in this book because you need to read the others. Really something happens that involves the Suicide Squad and the art for the most part is pretty awesome too. It's pretty great. I liked it. It's a nice blending of two artists because it was Joe Bennett and Jose Luis. Yeah, it's fun. It's not the most complicated thing in the world. It's a very simple story that once you start reading it, you could figure out what's going to happen in the end. But it's pretty cool to see a team like the Suicide Squad interact with Aquaman characters. So I thought that was a pretty fun, well written book.  I'm going to do a separate video on that simply because it is sort of like this deluxe hardcover and stuff. So I want to do a separate video for that to finish off the Rebirth stuff. But overall, fantastic. A worthwhile time if you're an Aquaman fan to at least read these Abnett stories in trade. They read a lot better in trades in my honest opinion. They're wonderful. And you get excellent world building, new elements to explore with the character of Aquaman, Mera, Dolphin, Volko, Corum, Wrath, all these wonderful characters that I love. Of course Ocean Master and all that stuff. So yeah, I am very much pleased. I thank Abnett for all the wonderful contributions that he did to the wonderful world of Atlantis. And I'm saying wonderful a lot. But it's that great. It's that good. I genuinely loved it. And I think if you give it a shot, you're going to like it too. Because it's action packed and pretty fun to read in my honest opinion. Have you read the entirety of the storyline? Abnett's run in Aquaman, let me know down below. And if not, what is your favorite Dan Abnett written material? I'm very interested in finding out. Guys, as always, you can follow me on your favorite social media platform, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that fun stuff. Just type a week and geek them and I'm there for you. Thank you everybody for liking, subscribing, commenting.  I love every single one of you. Blessings to all that wish you nothing but the very best I have got to go. I will catch all of you on our next episode.


Welcome back to the channel, everybody. As you can probably tell by the thumbnail, we are doing another video on a medical student quitting medical school. Now, as usual, I don't watch this video before I do this whole video, so I have no idea what this person is going to say, so hopefully it's not terrible. And for those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael AKA Dr. Chlini, and I'm a board-certified, diagnostic and interventional radiologist in New Jersey. So let's get into this video with Ruri, hopefully I'm saying that correctly, and see what she has to say about quitting med school. Let's go. You know, I really can't believe I'm actually doing another one of these videos as this is the, what, fourth video in the last month or so, but there must be something in the water, and let's go ahead and get into it. All right, so this is Ruri, or Ruri Ohama, and she is a first-year med student in Turkey, and she says, if you are interested in which ethnicity do I have, I mixed Japanese and Turkish, blah, blah, blah. I was born in Japan, grew up in Turkey, but I visit Japan every year. Both of these languages are my mother's languages, Japanese and Turkish, but I speak four languages fluently, Japanese, Turkish, German, and English. I'm jealous because I speak one language and like 1% of Croatian, and I wish I spoke another language. She's going to continue to post. She plans on doing productivity-related videos going forward, so I don't know anything about Ruri. I don't even know if I'm saying her name correctly. She has 289,000 subscribers that watch this video, and this video has 115,000 views so far, so I'm very curious to see what it's all about.  If you have been following this channel for a while and if you have ever watched my med school vlogs, you might think that, oh, I knew that because this girl was so unmotivated to go to med school, and she was doing all of the things outside of med school, like traveling, eating a lot of food, and she wasn't really talking about the lectures. But that's what I like to do. So we're on the same page so far. I'm not quitting medicine. I'm quitting my med school. We need to firstly talk about why I took a break from med school in the first place. During the time that I was taking a break from med school, I was preparing myself for medical school admission test of Italy. So she's Japanese and Turkish, and I think she lived in Turkey. So I wonder if she was trying to not go to med school in Turkey and go to med school in Italy, which is what it sounds like. Someone in the comments below who knows what they're talking about, please fill me in. Because of COVID and also because of some personal reasons, I didn't slash couldn't go to Italy and take the exam. I really, I genuinely feel bad for anybody who's in school, like whether it be university, college, or med school or whatnot right now during this whole pandemic stuff, because I feel like they really just got poor education during this time where everything had to be remote. Because at the end of the day, yes, online lectures are good, but like you have to have some personal connection and some chemistry with other people, especially when you're practicing medicine. So I feel, I really genuinely feel bad for a lot of these students. If you watch my previous vlog, my Italy vlog, you know that I went for an exam, but I scored second highest out of 250 people, which is pretty impressive. I mean, I was pretty impressed. The test itself was pretty easy, not gonna lie. It was about like biology, chemistry, physics, and... Pretty easy, pretty easy stuff. Just scored the top one or two percent of the whole class. Pretty easy though. I think I'm gonna start med school in Rome, either this month or next month. All right, let's, let's reel in a little bit here. Rory, please comment below on this video and give me the rundown of what's going on. So she's in Turkish med school. She's always wanted to go to Italy from med school, which having recently been to Italy, totally understand that. I'd go there too. She didn't get in the first time. Now she took the exam and got in and she's quitting med school in Turkey so that she can hold off finishing med school until she's in Italy. I don't know if she has to restart her first year or whatnot, but this seems like a lot of delays. And when you're in medicine, you're already delaying your life as it is. Like look at me. It was a very long path to finish med school and medical training. And anytime you delay that, you're basically just losing out on a lot. Let's just put it that way.  So I guess that's what she's doing. I'm not really sure, but this is just kind of what I've gathered from watching this video so far. I like diversity. I like different ways of thinking.  And I've always wanted to live in a country that is neither Turkey, nor Japan. I think it's a really, really great opportunity to expand my vision and gonna explore new things. I totally agree with everything she's saying here because my biggest thing is when you finish high school and want to go to college, the best thing for you is to just go somewhere different, whether it be in another state, whether it be in another country or whatnot. Just get away from your hometown. You'll meet a lot of different people. You'll learn a lot. You'll make a lot of close friends from many different parts of the world. And that's the best way to kind of expand your horizon. I would say the best thing that ever happened to me was moving away from college and moving to New York City after college. Those two things completely changed my life for the better. I will say though, the hardest things for you to do is to leave the comfort zone of your hometown or whatnot. But it really is imperative to kind of see other things, see other cultures and get a different perspective on life. I wonder if she would consider going to a U.S. medical school. Ruri, comment below. I really think I'm not saying her name correctly though. Ruri? I don't know. I cannot pronounce it. Hopefully I'm saying it correctly. Let's talk about the rich parents factor. Because I'm not studying in a private uni, a lot of people think that, oh, it's because we have rich parents. It's nice to be having rich parents because it's easier to get private uni's and oh, if I had rich parents, I would go there too, girl. I'm gonna pay all of the tuition fee by my own. Also the rent, also the living costs by my own. My family might help with the rent. I'm currently able to afford all of them by myself with this channel, with the amount of the money that I make by my own. That is awesome. So she's doing this YouTube channel.  Why didn't I do that in med school?  I wish YouTube was like more of a thing 10 years ago. It's not fair. I'm jealous. But good for her. That's so bad. I'm literally gonna pay my own tuition fee. It's not about rich parents. When I went G to Lee last time for an exam, I paid for my flight tickets. I paid for my hotels. Actually, let's see how much the Italian med schools are. Let's see. I'm actually curious to see how much they are different from the U.S. So she said she was going in Rome. This can't be true. This literally can't be true. Get out of here. Cost and financing of medical studies in Italy, the scholarship, oh wait, hold on, the scholarship. 4,500 euros a year? That's like nothing compared to the crime that is the U.S. medical school system completely destroying medical students of all their worth. 4,500 euros to USD is $5,082 a year. Someone sent me a message the other day saying Georgetown was like $100,000 a year. That is highway robbery and that's a crime. So it's $95,000 a year cheaper. I wish I could turn back time. I'd go to Italy too. I'm kind of upset. I could have definitely paid for medical school in Italy with my YouTube channel. She's doing it the right way. I did it the wrong way. But I wanna see how much doctors in Italy made.  This is so interesting to me, seeing different countries and medical systems there. The average physician pay in Italy per year is 128,000 euros. So that's very similar to what it was in UK, significantly less than the U.S. So maybe that's why. But if you basically have $5,000 a year is like essentially free in terms of medicine. So if you're making that kind of salary after a very small tuition for medical school, I mean, it might actually be worth it. I guarantee knowing that she'll have to use this channel to pay for her graduate school or her medical school, she'll work twice as hard. That's just how your mind works. For some reason, you just like make it work. The reason why I want to do an Erasmus in Germany is that for a seated language.  I'm crying. So I really want to use that language. What is an Erasmus? So I'm kind of confused. Now she's talking about going to public university in Germany, but then also transferring to Italy. I don't know, she's like all over the place. My current plan is to stay in Italy, do an Erasmus with Germany. I might work in Germany. I might work in Italy. I might work in Singapore. I might even move in the U.S., who knows. So I actually got a question from Mr. Browne before asking, is it a betrayal for the country? I couldn't understand the question. Why would it be a betrayal for the country? I think they're basically saying, would you be betraying your own country of Turkey to not do medicine there and practice there? It's really scary to be honest because I'm not gonna have any of my family. I have to learn about taxes and laws and everything accounting and stuff in Italy too. That's a lot of work. Not only do you have to learn medicine, which is like by and large, hard as it is. Now she has to learn a whole new government, a whole new tax structure for YouTube and all that stuff. It's gonna be a lot in the language. So let's not forget the language. You know, I didn't really think about that. She's like, oh, I'll just go to Italy and learn medicine. But then if you don't speak the language, how do you learn medicine when you don't know the language that they're teaching it to? Because medicine is a foreign language. So you have to learn medical language on top of Italian, on top of Italian medical language, that's tough. But at the same time, I'm really excited because I know that it's gonna throw me as a person so, so much. And I think I'm gonna gain a lot of new perspectives. That's how I want to shape my life and I'm gonna shape my life in that way. I love this. She's not quitting med school, which I like. It's kind of a click baity title. However, the fact that she's doing all this to better herself, even though she knows how tough it's gonna be, that speaks volumes about her as a person because that, I keep saying it, that is the hardest thing to do because the natural instinct is to go away from challenging yourself like that and being scared because it's hard to do that. But she's just going full blast into it. You know, hope it works out. I trust myself. We'll see how it goes. I'm very impressed. It's gonna be tough. But I'm thinking about filming every single experience that I'm gonna have in Italy. I can have it in a language-wise and cultural-wise and med school-wise. And I think it's gonna be really, really, really fun. I, of course, need to hustle a bit. That's the reality. If you want to do med school and YouTube at the same time and maintain a healthy lifestyle and social life, I'm sorry about you need to hustle a bit. Hustle more than anybody else that is around you. I need to. I have to subscribe to our channel. She's saying some pretty profound things. She's very wise. And I want to see it because obviously you know my love for Italy after watching my Italy vlog. Like up here, I'm obsessed. I'm Italian. I want to go back to Italy like every month. So I'm going to be watching her vlogs if she vlogs about medical school in Italy. I like working. Not gonna lie, you know, I make my own money. It gives me financial freedom and it's an awesome thing. But at the same time, I like partying. I like going out with my friends.  I like to explore new countries that might not do when it comes to life is work hard, play hard. Wait, I'm, wait, I really like her. We think very similar.  Totally would. We should do a collab together. But everything she said so far in this whole video is very impressive to me. Not because it's how I think, but just because it's very wise. All right. So what are the takeaways from this video? I thought it was going to be a clinic medical school video, which it turned out not to be, which is good because I'm, you know, get a little nervous seeing all these med students quit. We need some doctors in the world, but she's not quitting med school for good. She's just quitting it in Turkey and then moving to Italy to finish med school and hopefully practicing there or maybe back in Turkey or whatnot. As always, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. If you have another video like this or come across it, let me know as well. And I will do a reaction video to it because they seem to be popular on YouTube for the last couple of weeks. As always, make sure you smash the like, subscribe button, follow me on Instagram and TikTok if you know already and I'll see you all on the next video. Oh, make sure you, what emoji should we do? Let's do a slice of pizza emoji if you made it this far in the video. I'll be very impressed. All right, I'll see you on the next one. Bye.


Hi, beautiful. I realize that picking the right shampoo and conditioner for your hair type can be tricky, but I'm here to help you. You may have a combination of many different things on the same amount of hair. You may have some damage going on, some dryness going on, color-treated hair. You may have oily hair at the scalp even possibly. So you're like, Brad, what the f***? What shampoo and conditioner do I use? We get that question all the time at X-Mondo. Brad, should I use the hydrating one if my ends are dry but my roots are oily? And I'm like, well, you can actually mix and match your shampoos. And today I do wanna mention is gonna be heavily focused on my own products because I am so excited to finally introduce to you guys my four brand new shampoos and conditioners. These shampoos are formulated to work on your specific hair type and for your specific hair needs. So whatever you are, however your hair is, there is a shampoo and conditioner for you. If you don't wanna purchase from my line of products, you can purchase other products that have similar benefits to the ones I go over today. I've been working on these for over a year now and me and my team have just put so much effort into these. They're just such great products. They look amazing, they smell amazing and they are amazing for your hair. But I'll introduce each of them to you in a minute and explain what all of them do and explain who should use what and how you should use it. Let's do it. I've been waiting for so long, like I just said, to show you guys these. So this is really exciting. I am so thrilled at how they came out. We did so many iterations of this packaging and formulas and the colors and we finally have something that we're so proud of and here is the first product. First up, we have Hydra Glow Hydrating Shampoo and Conditioner. These are so cute. I can't, I'm obsessed with the silver tops. I mean, besides the packaging, you guys already know I'm obsessed cause I literally designed it. So of course I'm gonna like it. Hydra Glow is going to hydrate the f*** out of your hair. It's gonna be so, so good for those of you with dry hair. We've combined so many different oils in this product. Stuff like Meringue Oil, Argan Oil, and jojoba oil. Three of my all-time favorites all in this product. If you read the label, there is plenty of oils, plenty of hydrating properties, stuff that will just make your hair so de-frizzed, so shiny and so hydrated, roots to ends. This is one of my favorites for my hair because it does get a little bit dry sometimes when I color it. This is Hydra Glow, so sexy, so beautiful. Let's move on to the next brand new shampoo and conditioner. Up next, we have this beautiful pair right here which is Recalibrate, our repair shampoo and conditioner. Just as sexy as the other one, but different in its own unique way. This product is going to repair your hair.  We're here to help. This product combines a bond building technology and yes, it's vegan, just like all the rest of my products. And if you don't know anything about bond building technology, well I'm here to tell you today. Bonds are of course what keeps your hair together so when they break, it gets brittle, but they can actually be reformed and Recalibrate helps that process.  And lastly, we put Hyaluronic Acid in here and yes, if you have a skincare product that has that, it's the same thing, but in hair care form. It locks in the moisture and retains it so that your hair never gets dry. It is an amazing ingredient. Let's put these away, let's move on to the next pair. Up next, we have Polychrome. You've colored hair, babe. I'm gonna save your hair color. I'm gonna make it last. We also decided to make the caps nice and large for you guys because you can now flip them upside down in your shower. I know it was very hard before to get the shampoo and conditioner out while we helped that situation so it should not be a problem for you anymore. We've added sickening ingredients in here, like chroma hands to slow the rate of fading due to washing. Also, we put things like Chroma Vale, which is a UV defense. And if you guys have hair color, you know that the sunshine can really, really fade out your hair color very fast. So it's important to always use protection when it comes to the sun. We also added vitamin E into the mix to add tons of shine, hydrate your scalp, and just make your hair look like the day you walked out of the salon really. Up next, we have an oldie but a renewed and still great and fabulous oldie. It's Project X, my second ever product to be released. It was so long ago. And it's finally back and it is renewed and restored besides the ingredients because you guys loved it. We didn't wanna change it. We decided to change the name from Everyday Shampoo and Conditioner, which actually is more of a detoxing shampoo and conditioner as a hair stylist, that's what we kinda call it. I realized I was a little confusing, so we changed it to Detox Shampoo and Weightless Conditioner because that is really what they are. It's a pretty strong shampoo, but it still adds a lot of health to your hair. And then the conditioner is not gonna be heavy. Perfect combination for any but normal or oily hair. Some of the ingredients in this include a blueberry and apple extracts, which helps circulation of the scalp and it helps deep cleanse your hair without stripping it.  I wanted to mention that these are vegan, sulfate-free, paraben-free, gluten-free, cruelty-free and color safe. Girl, I got it all covered for you. And of course, if you guys have ever smelled the products before, this smells the exact same. It is to die for, but I'll let you just buy it and smell it for yourself if you really want to. Or just read the description on the website and we talk all about the scent and what is included in it. It is like a unisex, clean, sexy smell. I can't stop smelling it and it's my own product and I've been smelling it for like over a year and a half, two years now. And I'm still obsessed, so I hope you won't too. Now that we discovered all the different, gorgeous, fabulous shampoos and conditioners I have to offer. And again, if you don't wanna purchase mine, you can totally still use this video to learn about your hair type and what shampoo and conditioner would be best for you. We're gonna go over all the different hair types right now and then after that, we'll talk about what shampoo and conditioner set is best for you, but you can also mix and match, which we'll go over after this section. First, we'll go over dry hair. If you have a dry hair, your hair is typically hard to brush through. It's like the Sahara Desert girl is dry. You know what, come on, you know what dry is, I think, right, you got it. Then we have damaged, which is similar to dry, but there's extra bits added on to that. Your hair is all kinds of split, it's gooey, it's stretchy. When your hair is wet, it takes a really long time to dry. You're bleaching it all the time, you're heat styling literally every day, it's getting elastic and nasty. You probably have damaged hair. So next we have color treated and this is anybody from a double process, platinum blonde hair to highlights, whatever kind of highlights, blue, purple, pink, orange, brown, dark brown, light brown, caramel brown, whatever it is. Your hair is color treated if you have any kind of color in your hair, whether that be dye permanent, permanent, semi-permanent, anything like that, your color treated. Oily hair, your hair needs tons of dry shampoo. You need to brush it off and to distribute the oils all around, you need to wash it a ton and you never feel like your hair is clean enough. You probably have oily hair. And then we have normal hair, which is hair that is not oily, it's not dry, it's right in between, it feels good all the time. It never needs too much washing and it feels pretty damn good all the time. And it's either virgin hair or it has very minimal color treatments done to it. So hydroglow hydrating shampoo and conditioner is for those of you with dry hair and you might have curly hair, you might have straight hair and have it dry but typically curly hair is very dry. A great thing for curly hair that is needing moisture. Recalibrate, repair, shampoo and conditioner is great for those of you with damaged hair. This is also great for anybody in our color treated category. So anybody from a dual process to highlights, anything like that, this will add so much health to your hair and help it recover from all those coloring processes. Polychrome color extending shampoo and conditioner is amazing for those of you with color treated hair. Again, any with purple, blue, green, orange, brown, light brown, dark brown, black hair. This is you. It'll preserve your color, like I said before. Project X Detox Shampoo and Weightless Conditioner is fabulous for people with normal or oily hair. If you fall into those categories, she's your b**** maker, your b**** actually. Okay, I realized that I just told you how to use each shampoo and conditioner on their own separately and what they're good for. But you can also make combinations of two things. You can use, you know, say recalibrate with Project X conditioner or use one sometimes and the other one sometimes. So we're going to play a little fun game that I created, which is called How to Pick the Right Shampoo and Conditioner Combo Per Person and Per Scenario Game Show hosted by me, Brad Mondo. Okay, so I have Emma over here and she's going to read the scenario of these fake characters and she's going to list out three different multiple choices I can choose from. And I'm going to choose what shampoo and conditioner combo makes the most sense. And you're going to do it with me. Let's do it. First up, we have Victoria. So Victoria let her friends bleach your hair flat on one bed at home. And of course, this resulted in a lot of damage because she let her friends do it and they really did not know what they were doing to make situations a little bit like worse. She only also washes her hair like once every two weeks and has a lot of hair and it tends to get oily very quickly. Can you describe me the water sprayer? My face is looking a little like matte right now. Which shampoo and conditioner combo is she going to use? Is it A, Hydroglo shampoo and conditioner? B, Project X shampoo and recalibrate conditioner? Or C, Polychrome shampoo and conditioner? This is tricky. I know, I know. B, Project X shampoo and recalibrate conditioner? Yes. Yeah, I got it.  Are you sure? Yes. You need to try to play it out. Of course you got it right! Her hair is thick and gets really oily quickly and she only washes her twice a week. She doesn't need a good cleanse, especially if she has very, very heavy hair like. But we also want to add a lot more nutrients into her ends because they have been compromised by bleaching. So that is why we have recalibrate conditioner in there. Okay, next we have Skylar. So Skylar has had electric blue hair for three years. His hair is short so he doesn't have too much damage. It is like really rather dry. So we're wondering what he will use for his hair. Will it be A, Polychrome shampoo and conditioner? B, Polychrome shampoo and Hydroglo conditioner? Or C, Hydroglo shampoo and conditioner? I'm gonna have to go with B. B? Is that your final answer? Yeah. You be right! I chose Polychrome shampoo and Hydroglo conditioner because he has blue hair. He wants to keep that blue vibrant. We need UV protection and we need to lock in those color molecules. So we did that for the shampoo and then conditioner. We chose Hydroglo because he said his hair was dry but not quite damaged because his hair is really, really short. Okay, so next we have Brittany.  And she does not leave her house without her hair being pinched free. Like- Of course she doesn't. No. Why would she? She drinks it every day. So is it A, Polychrome shampoo and recalibrate conditioner? B, Project X shampoo and Polychrome conditioner? Or C, Project X shampoo and conditioner? I'm gonna go with A, Polychrome shampoo and recalibrate conditioner. Is that your final answer? Yes. A! I did it again. A! Did you guys get it right? I did it again. So I chose Polychrome shampoo because when she has balayage highlights, I'm sure she gets a glaze and she doesn't want that glaze to run out of her hair so the Polychrome is gonna help it stick.  It's a lot she needs to repair that hair. Next we have Whitney who's actually ironically best friends with Britney. Oh, fun.  She's very low maintenance and lets her hair air dry. I already know. I already know. You do? Okay, let's see. Is it A, Hydroblow shampoo and conditioner? B, Hydroblow shampoo and Polychrome conditioner. Ooh. Or C, Project X shampoo and Polychrome conditioner. C, Project X shampoo and Polychrome conditioner. C, really? Yeah. I see you. You did it, it is C. I chose Project X because she only does a gloss to her hair and her hair is normal and she goes to SoulCycle every day. She's gonna need a good cleanse, a good healthy cleanse that's not gonna strip her hair. And then I also chose Polychrome conditioner because she does have that gloss on her hair and she's not wanting to just like disappear from her hair all of a sudden and she wants to get a ton of longevity out of that gloss, so I chose that. Next up we have Svetlana. Come on down. Svetlana has big curly hair. So she has red curly hair. Right. And it gets dry and frizzy. Is it A, Hydroblow shampoo and conditioner? B, Polychrome shampoo and conditioner. Or C, Hydroblow shampoo and Polychrome conditioner. C. Final answer? Yeah. You did it. That was awkward. I chose Hydroblow shampoo because her hair is curly and it's dry. She's gonna need an extra boost of moisture. And then I also chose Polychrome because her hair is colored red. She needs to make sure that color molecule stays in her hair and she has that UV defense. So that's why I chose that. We did it. That's the quiz. Hopefully you guys followed along and maybe you got some of them right. And hopefully that helps you figure out which combination or which duo, which pair is best for you. So here you guys go. This is my entire lineup.  I would just like, sorry that was way too much. My shampoo and conditioner just does something to me. Okay, so, wow, I'm like nervous now. I hope this helped you figure out which of these would be best for you and your individualized hair type and hair texture. They are now available actually and you can shop them at xmodohair.com or shop the links below for each individual shampoo and conditioner set. I also wanna mention you guys, if you're trying to get these before the holidays or for the holidays, please order it now. Because of COVID, things are shipping slower and there's so many more people buying online. So if you want this stuff, you have to order it now. That way I can assure you that you get it in time. I don't want anybody to not be able to get their package in time.  Thank you for allowing me to create the hair products of my dreams. I appreciate you guys so much supporting me throughout everything and throughout the years. I'm just beyond grateful and excited about everything to come with my brand and the fact that you guys get to use it and how a piece of me in your home is just the best part of all. And I just want to reiterate again that these are all vegan and cruelty free. So you can either buy a pair or you can mix and match and have some fun, happy shopping. Anyways, if you guys would like to see more about these products, you can obviously click the link below. Like I just said, you can also go to our Instagram at xmodohair and see much more information about this. You guys can also follow me everywhere else here on my social media handles. Ooh, there they are. Text me at this number. I will text some of you guys back personally. Yes, it is really my number. Yes, it really goes to my phone. Yes, I can really see all your messages. Make sure you guys subscribe if you're not already. Hit the bell icon. This is a like button, but the bell icon also do that. Today's Instagram shout out goes to Arisa and her message says, hope your day is going amazing. Thank you. I've been really bored with my hair and I ran out of ideas of what to do. I want to do something simple, but still hasn't moved to it. I got you. I like what's going on. I think you need to cut your hair. Do like a two inch chop. It'll make you feel brand new again. Do a little bit of layering, I think is what you need. And that'll make you feel really new and make your hair look more wavy and curly. It'll look so, so good. And then just add more highlights, more around your face really. Just some face framing, nothing too serious. And that'll help you feel brand new again. I hope that helped you. And if you do it, send me a picture, I would love to see it. That's all for today guys. Thank you so much for watching. And don't forget to live your extra life. And I'll see you next time. Bye guys.


So good morning everyone. I'm a PhD candidate at the Department of Political and Social Change. I'm working on the conflict in the south of the Philippines, but today my contribution is more an activist pitch really. So I am trying to look at another kind of intersection here, not just race, gender, in class, but the activist as an academic and as, sorry, the academic as an artist and as an activist. So I start by really commenting on how we live in a world that is brimming with talent and intellect, but suffering in creativity and critical thinking. Academics as a collective are complicit to this poverty in our shortcomings in our research, teaching and public engagements. What did we do when gender was hijacked as a technical fix in development agendas? What did we do with the knowledge that the big winners of the US led wars elsewhere in the world were US companies that sold 19 to 36 billion dollars in arms sales? Why we were busy revising that journal article for that ranking journal drowning in papers to mark for the courses we teach, computing points for an elusive tenure. Neoliberal academia has kept us occupied, distracted and competing with each other. While we have not dismantled neoliberal education yet, we gain in revisiting the technology of ourselves in our academic institutions and in the wider communities that we engage in. So amidst this dystopic climate in neoliberal academia, scholars in various parts of the world have resisted through artistic and activist engagements. It did not matter if it required more intellectual and emotional labor and no points, no grant and not even an achievement award. But exciting work by scholars for instance in South Africa have utilized the photo voice project as a method of participatory research using photography and rigorous visual discourse analysis with a component book and exhibit to engage the public and empower the participants. Our own participatory research in the Philippines have used theater and videography workshops as tool for health impact assessments in mining communities. An exhibit and a video allowed for conversations beyond affected mining communities. Other academics slash artists slash activists in Hong Kong and Canada have explored diaspora and violence using personal letters dot gifs or gifs. That is one still from a website that shows anthropologists. So like very very short clips that are similar to ethnographic clips but shorter. And a card game even for works in comparative literature, anthropology and urban planning. So the good news is that we are in no shortage of individual academics that become more effective public intellectuals through artistic and activist engagements. I think this very symposium is a testament to that. Unfortunately when we do artistic and activist engagements our universities don't usually notice. Many of these works are dismissed as too soft or too hardcore. Gatekeepers in academia are not too thrilled when boundaries are blurred even if these works can be as rigorous as they are interesting. The bad news is that when scholars are becoming more effective public intellectuals through artistic and activist engagements the states and corporations notice. This is why scholars at risk network does important work protecting scholars. Yearly they provide sanctuary and assistance to more than 300 threatened scholars worldwide. In doing so they protect individual scholars but also the freedom to think, question and share ideas. The very premise of why academic work is valuable in the first place. But despite these challenges artistic and activist engagements in academic work are very rewarding. In my assessment knowledge created through cultural productions and collaborations result in more authentic forms and authorship. By authentic forms I mean forms of knowledge that are grounded and resonate with audiences and by authentic authorship I mean the acknowledgement of the collaborative nature of many kinds of knowledge production that are not given appropriate by lines. For instance our work on health impact assessment in the Philippines envisioned a staged theater production and good quality videos that can be entered in film festivals. But in contrast the results were community theater pieces and raw footages that captured the participants health impact assessment but also their pride and their sense of humor. They were not what we expected but they were better. When the people in the communities looked at the forms the research has taken shape they were familiar and accessible and they recognized their own images and their own voices. The project also required the collaboration with local communities but also indigenous theater and video groups in the Cordilleras in the northern part of the Philippines. The local health organization and a national environmental group was also collaborating with us. So it was more authentic to cite all of them as collaborators instead of just thanking them in an acknowledgement. We were very lucky to have found one of the few grants that supported the kind of research that we did. So it is something that scholars resist the neoliberal academia and that the neoliberal globalization despite material and discursive obstacles. I argue however that these exciting individual projects are probably not enough. In these dire times we recognize how academics as a collective have a task in addressing the poverty and creativity and critical thinking as neoliberal capitalist production poses complex challenges such as gender justice, climate justice and the likes. Public intellectuals need to step up our game and contribute to realizing utopias through collaborative productions. So I think we need to get our act together. One positive deviant example is a network of scholars from different parts of the world that met early this year in the Philippines to form the Scholars for Humanity International Network. After a week-long discussions with academics and grassroots or organizers from different sectors, members have put together a manifesto that says troubled by a world wherein our humanity and life-supporting systems are under unprecedented threat from severe inequalities and multiple forms of oppression, the network is committed to encouraging and supporting critical compassionate scholarships in the service of just peace and self-conscious people-responsive practices. The Declaration of Principles affirms commitment to among others reflexive intergenerational work that builds a better caring world and compassionate humanity, working critically with the wealth of knowledge produced by excluded groups and disrupting dominant structures of knowledge production which support interlocking forms of oppression. In November, Scholars for Humanity International Network will disrupt the Philippine Anthropology Association conference to examine the theory of insurgent scholarship, ethical insurgent methods and cultural productions as insurgent public engagement. I give this example of academics organizing themselves beyond unions because to me it provides a glimpse of a feminist utopia. It is part of a vision of transforming society that requires transforming the ways academics create and share knowledge. So my humble contribution this morning to a panel about thought shifting is to invite us to investigate the technology of ourselves as academics working in neoliberal institutions. I have explored ways in which academics could be more effective public intellectuals through artistic and activist endeavors.