But in the midst of what has been a wide speculation about Lamar Jackson's injury all week really, he decided to take matters into his own hands, whether he decided or was advised to. I like that he did this. I think it's great that he did, and here's what he had to say. Thank you everyone for your support and concerns regarding my injuries. I wanna give you all an update as I'm in the recovery process. I've suffered a PCL grade two sprain on the borderline of a strain three. There is still inflammation surrounding my knee and my knee remains unstable. I'm still in good spirits as I continue with treatments on the road to recovery. I wish I could be out there. I'm gonna repeat that. I wish I could be out there with my guys more than anything, but I can't give 100% of myself to my guys and fans. I'm still hopeful we still have a chance. So the initial diagnosis of what was going on was one to three weeks, we'll be back, you'll be back, you'll be back and now we're about to hit the six week mark and it doesn't seem like he's close to returning. So it has caused a lot of people, Twitter, pundits, whatever to question, can he play through this? And he is instead prioritizing his health and being extra careful with his contract situation looming and there's a lot of things that are untied there or is he actually hurt and can't go? And I honestly think that this line of thinking is so toxic and it is such a reach. I don't question Lamar Jackson's desire to play and I can only do that based on experience that I have as a fan and as someone who's talked to these guys a lot over the years. I've covered this league for a little bit and it seems to me it is a hardwired thing. Wanting to play, it almost seems untaught to these players. It is an inherent instinct. It is in the bones of these guys, in the DNA and I've never met, I can say I've never talked to or met a player who I'm not completely convinced that they wouldn't be going out there and giving 100% if they could. And most of them go out there much less than 100% available to them to give. And it's hard for me to envision that type of approach from Lamar Jackson who has only showed us that he's willing to do anything to get out on the field and give it his all. Remember when the contract negotiations kicked off last summer, Steve Bishadi, the Ravens owner, he was saying things about how Lamar is looking at this contract money as secondary to what's really important to him. He's using the word obsessed to win a Super Bowl. So while I think it would be nice to see Bishadi and the GM, the Costa, and of course, Harbaugh, his coach, you wanna always hear the coach say stuff about this, I would love to hear them come out in further support and maybe more meaningful support of Lamar ahead of this game. But this isn't really a story. If he could play, he would. And if he was sweating his contract and second guessing, getting on the field, I don't think we'd see him out there week one. Why would we? We wouldn't see him at all. And if you think about it, if he could play, go out there, beat his division rival, somebody who smoked you twice this year, or at least got past you twice, advance his team further into the playoffs, doesn't everyone out there making these claims or having these thoughts understand that that just adds to his value? Why wouldn't he wanna go out there? He's always been on himself. Why would that stop now in this situation? It doesn't seem likely to me. It doesn't seem likely we'll see him based on what he's saying and what this injury really is. So let's do what RG3 said. And RG3 can speak to this. Remember what happened in his rookie year? Let him recover, let him relax. And what helped, what does it do for you? Just as a human to question this. Are you gonna get an answer? Like if they lose, if they win, if he plays, are you gonna ever feel good? If they franchise tag when they don't, he goes to another team, which seems likely whatever. Like, what is questioning it right now doing for you? Like take a nap, get a grip and enjoy the action this week. I don't think he'll play. And it doesn't sound like he's particularly close to getting back on the field if they do somehow advance past the Joe Burrowing company. So it's either gonna be Tyler Huntley who returned to practice yesterday for Anthony Brown who was the quarterback Sunday Night Football, of course, against the AFC champs. That'll see, we'll see how that happens as we bring in Brandon Marshall who I never know what he's gonna say. Former All-Pro receiver, opinionated. I'm athlete media mogul and Matt Hamilton, future employer. Brandon Marshall, how are you? Oh, I'm phenomenal. I'm a little disappointed. I see right here it says up in Adams. Brandon Marshall joins the show. I thought we agreed that we were going to brand our own second.  I see Gronkowski on your show, Coach Sean Payton on your show. It's like you're getting the big hit now. It's like you moved from New York to LA, two big cities, major markets. You're getting the big hit. It's like, what's up? Are you forgetting about the small people like me? I'm not, I think you kind of curved me for like two weeks in a row. I think plenty of things happen in the news cycle. In our meetings would say, Brandon Marshall wanna come on? Brandon Marshall wanna come on? And you kind of curved me. So I have to say, fine, I guess I'll settle for Rob Gronkowski, four times Super Bowl champion, fine. Was that a little gaslighting on my side? I am good at that. It's in my Twitter bio. Brandon, what do you make? Let's talk Lamar here. We got lots to talk about six games, big stakes. What's the story? He probably won't play. What do you make of people thinking he might just be holding himself out? He can't play, right? 2006, when I was drafted to the Denver Broncos, fourth rounder, our first preseason game, playing up in Indy, I fall on the sideline and I snapped my PCL. So it was a grade two, almost a grade three, similar to Lamar Jackson's. And it took me almost to week eight to get back right. I was able to get back out there right around week six, but I wasn't the same guy, okay? I mean, excuse me, six weeks out, but I wasn't the same guy. I didn't feel comfortable until I hit probably halfway mark of the season. The PCL is a serious thing. It's not as serious obviously as a MCL, now I wouldn't say MCL, like the ACL, excuse me, or a patella tendon, something like that, but you have no stability in your knee, right?  It goes back. That's that PCL. That PCL stops your knee from going back. When you don't have that, there's literally no stability, Kay. Let's talk about what, not the, you know, the doctor operation of it all. Like let's talk about what people are saying is that it's because of the contract. He doesn't have professional experience representation as far as we know. Negotiation stopped in the summer before the season kicked off. The team has not come out and said anything. Harba hasn't really come out and said anything. Like he can't play. We're saying he can't play because it's what I believe is a fan, or what you believe is a former player. But what do you make of the assumption that he's doing it to protect himself because he needs a deal to get done and that's looming? Humanization, right? So that's basically what we want to talk about here. First off, you just said a lot. The first thing you talked about was the representation, right? I'm so tired of people saying that he's not represented. I had one of the most powerful agents and still have one of the most powerful agents in sports. Canard McGuire has done billions of dollars in deals. It seems like at the general manager level. So representing managers, players, and also owners. There was times when I was playing for the Chicago Bears that we leaned on the NFLPA to walk us through our philosophy and our approach to our contract, right? There are so many attorneys that are already paid by the players for the players. So when you talk about representation, it's not as hard as people think, right? It's about standing on what you believe in. If Lamar Jackson believes he's a top five quarterback and the top five quarterback ranges X, then that's where he wants to be. Or the market sets itself. If he feels like he should be right, there were Patrick Mahomes underneath Patrick Mahomes, that's what he believes. And then you do the dance. So yeah, there is an art and skill to negotiation. But Ms. Felicia Jackson is a hell of a lady and super smart. I've sat down and talked to her. And I've been begging her to let me tell her story. I've been begging her to come on Iron Mathly and us highlight her. She wants to always be in the back. When I tell you she is brilliant, she is brilliant. I actually met Lamar Jackson, Ms. Felicia, back when I was playing for the Miami Dolphins in 2011. We went to the same church. I live right down here in Western Florida. They're from Pompano Beach. And I would see them almost every other Sunday. Lamar Jackson and Ms. Felicia know exactly what they're doing, okay? And as far as the humanization part of this thing, didn't we just see Lamar die on the field and be brought back to life? And we started this conversation up there. Maybe it's time for us to start listening to the players. Every time money comes in to play a contract dispute, we immediately go to the owners. We immediately go to the team side. Well, what about Lamar Jackson? What if Lamar Jackson can never play again, right? Lamar Jackson deserves to have some stability. Lamar Jackson deserves to have a contract where he doesn't own all the risk. That is the situation right here. So if I was Lamar, right? And I wasn't even dealing with a PCL and I could play, I would not play. It's too much risk. I'm saying that right now. I would not play.  Okay, my last year in Denver with Josh McDaniel, you know I don't like Josh McDaniels too much. Josh McDaniels comes in and he's a jerk, right? Can I say that? I can't say that. Sorry, let me not call nobody names. I can't call nobody names. I'm so sorry. But Josh McDaniels come in and we don't have the best relationship, okay? The last year, I was like 80%. I could have probably played through it, but I didn't. I didn't go out there. Sometimes I'm going to waste going into my free agency, my off season, an opportunity to secure my family forever and risk it for you. No, I'm thinking about Z, Ziggy and Zoda that's here today. I'm thinking about their kids, kids. That's what I was thinking about. And I sat my butt down right there on the sideline. Why did you bring up Josh McDaniel when you made that decision? Like, so if it was a coach that you really liked, would you have played? Listen, probably not, right? Hey, News Flash, NBA players, NFL players, hockey players, snowboarders, whatever it is, okay? If you're in your contract year, okay? And you're seconds away from getting the deal and you're not there, sit your butt down.   Why did he play week one? Because that- He was 100% then? Because that is the business, right? Because if he doesn't do that, he's deemed a bad guy. Okay, but tell me this. He's deemed a bad team. But he wants money, he wants security, guaranteed money is what we're talking about. So this will be the second season in a row, the second season that he has not finished the year. Should that impact his contract negotiation? Okay, maybe. But Kay, when you were a free agent, had FanDuel out there, you had this person out there, that person out there, you, look, whoever gave you the best deal was the deal. Yeah. So right now, if Lamar Jackson with everything you just said, if there's one, two, three teams that come out there saying, we'll give you that 230 million guaranteed, that's the market, Kay. I understand that, but we're talking about why he would make a decision like that now versus, he could have held out. Why didn't he just hold out then? That's what he's, if he has the mentality that you're, I disagree with you, I don't think, I think that if he could play, he'd go play. I think he's wired it that way. I think he actually thinks has a lot of confidence in himself. And I think his mother does who I've never spoken to. I'm sure she does as well. Is there handling this? And he's, Lamar's whole thing and why I love Lamar is that he bets on himself, whether it's reckless or the right decision or it works out, it's a risk that he's willing to take that he'll go out there and he'll play. And I can't imagine that knowing that he could go and slay the bangles and keep going and he's gonna earn himself more money, more respect in playing that he would hold himself out. I don't think that that's true. No, listen, that's 99% of the athletes out there in football or basketball is gonna make the same decision as Lamar Jackson made, right? And that is the problem, right? As a player, you take it personal. As a player, you're talking about, I'm going to go out there and compete. And we forget about the business side. We don't have the savviness when it comes to understanding the bigger picture. We don't have the oomph to be able to sit there in a tough situation when you have millions of fans saying you are selfish, you should be traded. We should cut you. We don't even want you to come back. A lot of players can't deal with that. No, like 99% of the players think that way and we need to stop it and we need to change the way we think. And the reason why?  And I know this was almost an anomaly, but we've had players break their necks. We've had players deal with two a tongue of a lot. Which is why I disagree with you, Brandon. I don't think that any player, I think players more than ever are gonna feel supported in holding out. I think if Lamar Jackson said I'm not playing because I don't feel good, I don't have this contract, I wanted to sign it, I deserve this, I think he'd actually have more support than you're saying that he would get from fans, from people. Okay, Kay, so, well, give me one example of a player holding out over the last 20 years that was supported. And I know I'm not trying to put you on the spot here because there's so many players and you gotta think about so many different scenarios. Me, my experience, Kay, from my point of view and Mike's, what I've seen over the last 20, 30 years, all I see is fans saying, you're selfish. All I keep saying is, oh, how much money is enough money? I see organizations planting stories, like, hey, Lamar Jackson, you know, hey. It's coming from somewhere. If he's 70%, 80%, he should be able to go, why does the Lamar Jackson, why do you think Lamar Jackson had to put out a tweet saying, if I wanted them, if I could play, I would play? I know. Right. So my thing is, you know, look, maybe there's an example out there where there's been a player or two that's been supported. I can't recall. I don't recall, Kay. I think Lamar is different. And I think he's looked at differently by people. And I think he plays different. And I think that he is in a world of his own. And I think it's really hard to lump him in with how other quarterbacks, their free agency they're holding out has occurred because I do and always have considered Lamar Jackson, whether it's right or wrong, sort of on his own, people don't know how to value him. Foreign offices, I don't think know what to do with a player like Lamar Jackson, but we can both agree it's a shame he probably won't be out there. I think I just hate the conversation about whether or not he wants to be out there or whether or not he would play if he could. And I don't think he can play. And I think if he could play, he'd be playing. Right. Yeah, and I think that would be a bad decision. Taylor Flu, our amazing social media manager. Yes. I want you to clip this and put PSA under it, okay? PSA. And put this out on all of our channels, okay? PSA, PSA, you ready? Hey, players, if you're going into your last year of your deal, don't go, okay? If you're a good player, okay? If you're a terrible player, you gotta go. You don't have the accolades, you gotta go.  Do not play. I don't care if you're going into a season. I don't care if you're dealing with an injury like Lamar Jackson and you're sitting right there at 65, 70%, and their team is on the verge of going to the playoffs. They're going into the playoffs. Don't play. Don't play. Don't play. And all the fans out there, you guys may say whatever you want about me, Brandon Marshall, but I've been dealing with it my entire career.  And let's keep going back and forth. But players out there, this is a business. Take the emotion out of the money. Thank you, Taylor. Please clip that PSA underneath. And scene. We'll be back with Brandon Marshall. We gotta talk Giants, Vikings. I wanna get your thoughts on all that. Kenny Galli, they scored a touchdown. Is he gonna be important now? They didn't get Odell. Odell's tweeting yesterday. We'll get to it right here.


As St. Lucia continues to respond to the global pandemic of COVID-19, health officials recognise the need to utilise the existing Information Hotline 311 to address the questions and concerns of the citizens about the virus. Director of the Bureau of Health Education Natasha Lloyd-Philix spoke on the services offered under the 311 platform. What we have seen through COVID is an opportunity to use that existing platform as a hotline for persons to get information on COVID-related issues, be it how it's transmitted, how it can be prevented, where they can access services, or where they can go to 4K. And so, when the outbreak happened as a ministry, we really wanted to create a hotline, but we wanted to do it in quick time. So by 311 having already existed, it gave us an opportunity to just train that cohort of staff that were there on COVID-related matters, provide some guidance, some frequently asked questions. Lloyd-Philix also spoke on the need for the Department of Health and Wellness to take this proactive measure to ensure institutions are connected and informed during the global pandemic of COVID-19. We expect that if you need information, if you need clarification on issues, then you call 311. If you need care-related matters, then that call will be directed to a service provider, be it a wellness site, a health practitioner, and we have also included in that psychosocial support. So we do have some counselors who would also be able to assist. And so if you call 311, it's not a counseling line, it's not a line that's meant to provide any medical or clinical care or diagnosis, but they would direct you to the relevant authorities for that. The 311 COVID-19 hotline provides a free service to the public and is available seven days a week from 7 a.m. to midnight. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, I am Fenel Neptun.


Hello and welcome to this show called City Sense and as you know we discuss issues about cities across the globe and of course our own Indian cities. How are Indian cities grappling with some of the basic elements of livelihood, some of the basic issues of mobility, sanitation and how to make our cities better, more livable. In this continuity today we have Professor Geetham Tiwari who is a professor in the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and who actually is heading a unit called the Transportation and Research Unit that speaks about the entire issue of mobility and I've had the opportunity to visit the institute and in fact participate in one of the seminars there. They have astounding work and also they have, I wouldn't say, it's more than contemporary you know kind of vision I mean what actually ails mobility in the Indian urban spectrum. So welcome Professor Geetham and it's really nice nice that you are here. I think what is very pertinent in the Indian context is the way cities are built, the way we are handling our mobility issues. Take for example a small town like Simla where the PCU is somewhere around 70,000. So you know 70,000 cars entering the town in a gap of almost 16 hours it's completely unsustainable and then the cities get choked and one of the ways in which one of the solutions that different city governments and even state and national governments are suggesting to construct flyovers, widen your roads, thinking that once you have a flyover you will get rid of the traffic snarl but we find there's more traffic snarl, there's more pollution and I think all this is also linked to and I've gone through the white paper that Professor Geetham you've brought out and it's a fantastic white paper on India's mobility concerns. So I would just start from there and what does this white paper speak about, what are the challenges in Indian cities and how do you see the future of Indian cities as far as mobility is concerned and I think to me mobility is not just about transport perspective it's more than that you know it speaks about pollution, it speaks about carbon footprint and it speaks about all those issues. So over to you Professor Geetham. Thank you so much and this is really thanks so much for inviting me to this forum and I have actually heard your earlier discussions also and I'm very excited and thankful to you for giving me this opportunity. So your question about mobility in Indian cities let me just start with what we have tried to do in this white paper because earlier than that we have done several other documents this white paper specifically tries to provide a guidance to city authorities how to select urban transport systems kind of give a very simple guideline with city authorities decision makers can follow and understand that we want to make our city sustainable we want to provide safe and efficient mobility to all road users in a city and all our cities have varied road users we have pedestrians we have people on bicycles we have people moving on motorized tow wheelers and cars and using public transport. So essentially how can we select a transport system which can ensure that safe and efficient options are available to all our citizens. Now in this regard we have to look at two aspects of it one is that what do people want and of course you know across different income groups across different age groups this question will be answered differently but essentially people do want to move from point A to point B as fast as possible and some options that they can afford easily. Now if we look at public transport systems that is individuals are not designing that that is to be provided by the public authority and without going into too much detail we already have in several other forums and I guess in this forum also you have discussed earlier that it's already well established that if we continue to make a planning for cars for personal motorized vehicles that is not really giving us any sustainable options so it is very. That is that is a general push also. You are inducing people to buy more cars because you're providing them easy loans and all so I mean so what do you I mean definitely so I actually I would like to explain it that you know what people want in terms of options is very much influenced by the kind of soft and hard infrastructure we create around it for that now look at very simple example so if we keep widening the roads which you were saying earlier because there is congestion thinking that you know cars will move smoother but it is also telling people that you should buy a car because we are going to make a very good infrastructure for you so more cars come in the system and there is global evidence now that this strategy doesn't work there is enough latent demand for cars that the roads are full completely very quickly we can also use for other modes and there also we have global evidence you make a road safer for let's say bicycles and initially there are fewer people using bicycles and in our country actually this is very interesting data we have that a lot of people are walking and using bicycles also but in a very hostile environment any any figure pros and what percentage of people commute on bicycle or are pedestrians for their you know yeah for the some of the best numbers we started getting from national census in 2011 census and the data was published in 2016 about travel surveys and the census asked two questions how do you commute to work and what distance so this is only commute to work and not overall travel and distances so this gave really interesting amazing data and the it has been published by district wise urban districts and rural districts so in that we found that in urban districts the walking trips could go from minimum 25% going up to 55% bicycle trips also are on an average 20% but there is a variation based on the kind of states we are looking at the states which are slightly higher per capita income the share of bicycle goes down okay but in poorer states we still have very high percentage of bicycles okay so it's also a hierarchy question i mean that you forget when you're planning overall pattern we started understanding that pedestrian trips remain almost constant regardless of incomes regardless of type of city we are talking about because even in deli which has highest per capita availability of cars in the country 35 trips of pedestrian trips well it's it's great yeah it's i mean the town that i come from it's almost 44 percent it's similar yes absolutely and he yes absolutely but the question is the problem is here lies that if you look at travel pattern yes it's very much what we call sustainable we want more people to walk we want more people to use public transport but the environment is very hostile as far as planning is concerned design of infrastructure is concerned it is not meeting the requirements so who are the people walking and using bicycles and i would say even public transport people who don't have any choices so today if i'm using a bus in deli i'm really looking forward to the time i can have more income and buy a two wheeler because my walk to bus stop is very difficult i'm waiting at the bus stop the service is very unreliable and when i get a bus it's crowded okay you can say we are designing metro systems in many cities which is true more than 16 cities in india have invested in designing metro system now what is the issue with metro system so in this white paper we showed there are two aspects in using any public transport system but also the question of affordability so one is that when we are looking at the trip distribution the numbers that we started understanding in detail from census majority trips are also short trips okay so what does that mean i mean so it means that yeah less than five kilometer is the most dominant kind of trips people are not traveling very long distances to go to work okay less than five kilometers in deli we found less 40 trips are less than five kilometers and almost about 60 to 70 trips are less than 10 kilometers then we looked at overall district patterns what we got from census so we found that long trips longer than 20 kilometer is kind of stable and is hovering around six to seven percent only okay but the medium trips that we are looking at let's say more than five kilometers up to 15 20 kilometers is about 30 40 percent okay so what's the understanding why are we discussing about trip distances yeah type of public transport that we provide has an implication for that okay so if i provide a metro system so we did the calculations i did shown in that white paper so if you do if i am going only three kilometers up to five kilometers in fact and in the best case scenario metro stop is only five minutes away from my home i take five minutes walk to metro stop it's a very good system every two minutes i have a train so i wait only every three minutes actually that is the best possible scenario right now so i wait for about two three minutes for the train and since i have gone up and down so that's because it's not that great so it's taken additional two three minutes so about 12 minutes i have spent before boarding the metro okay three kilometers a short distance i quickly travel and i get down but if i calculate door to door journey time yeah it is about 20 25 minutes for a three kilometer trip if i had bicycled it would take only 12 minutes absolutely yeah so extend this to the implication of long and short trips that is the part which is discussed here that up to about 10 to 12 kilometers and longer than five kilometers bus is a good option okay why it is better than metro because it is at great we are not going up or down in metro system either you have to go you have to climb up climb up so that's additional and then bus if you're able to create a few priorities for it and also professor get them the pricing question because you know the bus is far cheaper yeah yeah that was the next issue which is discussed in the white paper for metro we estimated that your household income minimum has to be 36 000 rupees per month for one person to use metro to go to work every day okay but if you're using a bus the average household income can be 12 000 rupees okay there's a huge difference yeah but today also you'll find who are the people using metro systems that we have provided it is the middle class people and young people it's not really very old people are very children because the way you know again any public transport is all about how you provide access to it how am I walking is it safe walking environment those are the issues we haven't solved neither for bus nor for metro unfortunately and for metro we've invested so much money so that's the other thing you know this talks about we don't get into too much of financing because my take is no public transport can make profits from fare box this is globally is known it's a public service and it's a public service because if we are able to do it well then we are meeting sdg 11.2 which is providing a quality public transport within 500 meters absolutely distance now that has many other implications public transport is better for um co2 emissions for any other local emissions also because even a cng run or diesel bus is better than your petrol car i prosecute i just remember because before we just move further i remember you know you pointing out from cradle to crest that's how we measure the carbon footprint okay and you had pointed out that the diesel bus is far better than your 10 evv cars i mean you know that now there's another push that's coming up for uh for these yeah yeah i mean now the private electrical vehicles yeah yeah so how do you see this transition transformation taking place so i mean so first bit i think we have lost the whole discussion of public transport it's been hijacked by metro instead of really investing in buses you know all cities you've seen in that paper that's that's the first important point that's important because you know yeah because now you're not discussing about buses not creating as a system and just stand alone metro system is being viewed as though it's going to involve problems and it's explained that why that is i mean we witness it we haven't solved congestion we haven't solved pollution pollution and the traffic safety which is another big public health issue continues to dominate majority people who try and die in urban areas in road traffic crashes or pedestrians and motorized two wheelers so second part now in last few years we've started seeing that in the name of improving buses with the whole debate has gone into technology discussion okay we will bring electric buses and electric two wheelers and that's going to solve our complete you know pollution and emission problems so co2 emission is already there are number of studies which show that when we talk about co2 it's not about what is being emitted while the vehicle is operated it is from cradle to grave basically when the vehicle is produced yeah creating infrastructure where the resources are coming from then how the system is operated and then when you get rid of the system every system is going to have a life what kind of resources are in in available for the that process so for the reason metro system which is run on electricity in India doesn't look too good for co2 because our electricity is still coal based i think 84 percent it comes from from thermal isn't it it is lightly changed now because in last few years we've had a lot of push for renewable energies it is still about 68 to 70 percent okay so 70 percent let's say yeah so it is and unless we clean source of electricity we will have any pure to benefit that's one that's very important now we have lot of push for electric buses in India also you have fame one thing two schemes by central government but there are two issues there number one any public transport and certainly bus transport is not about only technology it's about creating a system it's about ensuring affordability if you're not answering that question that electrification just moving from petrol diesel cng to electric buses doesn't solve that problem second very interestingly some very recent papers have come out these are 22 23 publications and that is showing that in fact for electric cars so the paper compared electric cars versus petrol driven cars and diesel driven cars now electric cars have a battery so it is heavier and because of that there are two types of emissions which are happening in while the vehicle is operating one is the tailpipe tailpipe is better in electric because it is cleaner but the re suspended particulate matter which happens because of tires moving and it is throwing up the dust in the air yeah now these are heavier vehicles so these initial studies are showing that there is more RSTM okay there is kind of I would say there is already a debate in the academic circle now is it really better okay so again again you spin the wheel and come back to a new spiral yeah yes yeah yeah so I think any new technology we have to understand very carefully and so we have to understand how it's going to perform for example electric bus performance in Indian conditions which is overloaded buses we have much higher ambient temperatures in summer we don't understand it correctly so we have to tread it slowly I'm not saying don't do it but we don't have enough information to completely say okay we will just go electric in next 10 years and solve problems that is not so two two other important questions professor get them because before we wind up this show the first one is because there's very interesting point that you read us earlier but probably in the conversation we missed that and that is what people want so you know and when we are planning such such mode of transport in different cities so we do not even think about that what people want or what people want is all induced from the top or is there some parallel consciousness also developing amongst the people how does the white paper speak about that that's the first thing yeah I mean second second point is I mean maybe I'll put it just right right away is I mean what do you see as a future you know for a more sustainable urban planning stuff what could be the ways in which we do you know we just bring people to the fore and then you start the planning process in a far better legitimate participatory manner yeah so these two questions yeah so you know what people want is easy to understand because we can reflect upon our own behavior and see people around us which is happening so as I said very simply people want to move from point A to point B as fast as possible now we look at all the factors which influences our choices it seems that convenience and comfort dominates any other that's the first thing absolutely okay affordability comes very close to it we can even consider you know many countries think talk about and they do provide completely free public transport because it has before before yeah before professor let me just dwell more on that because I'm really liking it do you also not think when you you are writing the development plans what do you call the master plans in India you know take for example now the 2041 master plan speaks for TODs you know when you write master plans it should not just be limited to your land use plan but should be a quintessential section okay where are the employment going to get generated where are people going to stay so that commute is one of the quintessential aspect of the master plan do you not think that that is an essential element which is missing in the overall very very essential element and this we analyzed in another publication that you know your whole choice of mobility trip patterns etc actually starts from the way we are planning our cities how is it what are the densities what how we are planning different activities so my choice whether I'm going to walk or use any other mode first comes from there if I have to travel longer distances walking is out if we have very mixed land use patterns it does encourage walking in by city and another important issue yeah okay yeah so the two things that you know we did very detailed work in couple of small cities because we thought nobody's really walking talking about these small cities we have 400 small cities so for example we started looking at Patiala a rich city small city no dirt of resources but what about you know thinking about stg compliant mobility planning are you thinking about how you will provide public transport how it will have impact on air pollution what impact it will have on your walking trips safety of pedestrians etc so we found in the master plan of Patiala there is no discussion there is one paragraph yeah so we attempted and discussed with the town planner why not have a like whole chapter and you talk about stg compliant mobility plan becomes part of your master plan and you have a vision 20 years like master plans over 20 years yeah 20 years from now we want to achieve this and then you work backwards okay in the next five years we will do step one two three and so on so i think including mobility stg compliant mobility as part of a master plan document is the stage where we should stop definitely start and then there is other part coming which is you know your revision of Indian roads congress guidelines because next step is okay you have to do details at the road see mobility is planning but my choices are also depend on what the design of the infrastructure is do i have proper footpath do i have safe crossing facility that would also influence my choice so design also this detail design matters a lot and third then of course comes about reliability comfort convenience because if a bus is not reliable and i have a two wheeler i will end up using a two wheeler okay two wheeler may be very fuel efficient very comfortable and convenience but it has the highest risk of getting involved in traffic crashes today when we look at our data 40 to almost 45 deaths are people using two wheelers so even after wearing a helmet you still have very high risk okay and and so so two wheelers does not include the cyclists and two wheels are basically motorized two wheeler transport yeah because of speed you know twice two wheeler goes at much higher speed yeah cyclist uh of the because they got lower speed uh do not seem to have the same level of risk of course because we don't create safe infrastructure for bicycles so because of that they do face also risk so risk is really two pedestrians bicycles and motorized two wheelers okay and definitely pedestrian bicycle we can solve by providing better infrastructure so last proofs again i mean what do you think should be the way forward yeah because because you know we've seen uh the 74th amendment was like completely usurped by the special purpose vehicle model of the smart cities that didn't give any i mean i mean people in path harder to look once we have the spv it'll be project oriented we have the best minds etc etc nothing is happening in fact we have worsened from one from bad to worse honestly speaking so what do you think should be the way forward in which we make and as you rightly said i mean nowhere in the world i mean there can be an alternative to public transport you know you i mean your private cars can't just take over those spaces and these are not the sustainable ways of of moving i think for sustainable ways yeah planning for engineering for design so what i find a big block which is missing in enabling our cities to have more sustainable mobility is that we are not able to have an integrated planning or design mechanisms by how do you do that yeah so there at present i don't see any institutional setup in cities which can you know so yes master plan we talk about everything but then we start planning buses separately we start planning roads is you know it's not people are not seeing that your choices are also dependent on the way we're planning roads and safety issue is also about the way we are planning roads and how people are walking we are planning metro as a standalone system and all money is coming from the center so that little bit money that the state states have for urban transport is all being going into metro systems at the cost of creating appropriate infrastructure so i would say we have to look at institutional mechanisms which and that comes from perhaps from having your 74th amendment really centralized institutional mechanisms in a city who is responsible for creating this vision document then what mechanisms we have that we have integrated designs for buses for and one thing that we did not discuss actually in majority of Indian cities small cities mobility is being provided by what we call intermediate public transport systems or informal systems yeah that's the because there is a demand for it and they can't wish away we cannot run buses in small cities yeah so we have to include it so by inclusion this is what i mean by integrated how to have informal or IPT bus systems and metro all planned the operation level integration and design level integration okay that's the institutional mechanisms we have to create that these three level of integration should be possible metro should not be on its own and we know you've seen in that white paper we've talked we've put together the numbers even in Delhi after creating 400 kilometers of metro the leadership is 46 percent of what it was estimated projected to be and other small systems it's like two percent five percent yeah much capacity yeah coachy i mean we've seen coachy and even yeah yeah it's hardly hardly yeah so buses have to be very well i mean i would say your road based system is the basic system okay yes for long trips metro is an attractive option but if it's not integrated and all your money goes to creating a small metro system that doesn't solve i mean then i think it's a construction project it's not a public transport project we don't want a construction project we have a public transport you know we want solutions yes and the last thing again i mean where do the people figure it out in this whole process of the alternatives that we talk because you you spoke about institutional mechanism you spoke about you spoke about you know integrated but it's more about systems but where the people you know so that people are part in process of this uh entire planning paradigm i think it is this you know basically the policy planning the master plan documents unless they have very strong public participation and you know that we've always had difficulty with that because the moment we mean public it is you know this in this very heterogeneous group how are we going to integrate people who are actually walking who have no voices people using low income people who are using buses i mean today in delhi you have almost 20 still 20 people using buses but are we really doing a lot of planning for it and forget delhi look at any other city majority people are using ipts buses but the investment is going into creating these capital intensive infrastructure either metro or flyovers yeah it is also not meeting the mobility for so people's voices and mechanisms for participation of this level you know i would say the silent majority is missing right whether your 74th amendment is able to enable that i think that's what we should work for otherwise we will continue to have these you know capital intensive construction projects so great and thanks professor githam for really sparing of the time and really bringing out the white paper that you put it's it's probably in the academic circles one of the finest works i've seen in the recent past and i assume that this discussion will further kind of provoke or maybe give some play as a role of a catalyst you know maybe in some kind of churning and then we'll i mean maybe some some kind of alternatives that we that we yeah let's hope for that but i think the three four takeaways which are very important and the first one is we require more integrated system more institutionalized mechanism more people centric and not just be the construction projects but it has to be overall larger mobility package that we talk about you know for the people to commute in the cities thank you professor githam and i i hope we'll meet again yeah thank you so much thank you


Thanks everybody for turning up, Joel Ben here, business analyst in the services team. The ANS registry software, so for a long time we have packaged the registry into I guess it's a zip file and put it on the ANS website but it was it was difficult to go and set up. It wasn't well documented it was quite troublesome to get running and we've only had a couple of real sort of people that have taken it on board and are using it at the moment. As of 10.3 the new registry that was released in in R10 has been packaged up into a really neat little package that can be installed in literally four steps and I know that Ben and Leo, I think it was Ben and Min had set one up in seven minutes on a Nectar cloud and it was basically running and there's one here that I can show you an example of and this is now really a viable option for people to use as a metadata store whereas before it was it was really quite clunky and people were probably turned off a little bit by using it because there were so many steps of getting it up and running but now literally in seven minutes somebody can have a registry which meets the back end and the front ends of research data Australia with a search portal operating so this is one that I think Ben stood up so it's basically a vanilla install so seven minutes this was set up it works we've got the spotlight we have theme our topic pages I should say the back ends are all operational and it comes with obviously a set of sort of example records that people can can see how they are structured before they go in it and use them. As I said this has been bundled up and it is literally as easy as four steps and they're really well documented further down the page and it will step anybody through how to set up an instance of the registry and research data Australia. There are obviously a couple of requirements that need to be installed but they also walk through in the setup of the four steps so yep really easy and as I said the guys did it in seven minutes I'm going to nick the theme and that's pretty much all I've got.


This 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 Crew Cab Short Box Single Rear Wheel is stock number 12188Z. We're here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, near New and used heavy-duty truck headquarters. This 2020 Chevy Silverado 3500 has the 6.6 liter V8 gas engine. It pumps out 401 horsepower. This truck has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop as a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off per the state of Wisconsin inspection process. And this truck is 100% ready to go. Black clear coat is the color, excuse me. And we shoot all of our videos in 1080p, 60 frames per second. So if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet, smartphone or television, turn them on right now because it is your best way to check out the quality, condition, options on the truck before seeing it in person. And if you like the videos and want to subscribe to our YouTube channel where we do videos of our new and used inventory each and every day here at Summit Auto, in the lower right hand part of the screen is a subscribe button. Click that and then click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos we do each and every day here at Summit Auto. Comes with the 20-inch polished and painted alloy rims and it has Goodyear Wrangler Trail Runner LT 275 65R 20 tires. And these tires look like they have probably about 80% of the tread left, maybe a little bit more. Frame and underbody is in excellent condition. It does have the Z71 Rancho shocks, or Rancho shocks that come with the Z71 off-road suspension package. Front fender is in excellent shape. Headlight lenses are nice and clear. You do get the front bumper parking sensors and LED fog lamps. Speaking of that front bumper, very nice and clean, no dents or dings on there. The hood is in excellent condition. And it does come with the LED clearance lights up top. Passenger side front fender, no dents or dings on there. And the passenger side rim, no scuffs or scrapes. As you go down this side of the truck, take note of how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the truck, you can see the truck, hear the truck, and have confidence in the vehicle you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here there's absolutely no surprises and you can make a smart and informed buying decision from the comfort of your own home or wherever you may be watching this video or checking out this vehicle. Very clean down that side. I didn't see any dents. I didn't see any dings. This back rim is absolutely perfect as well and the back tires are in really nice condition too. The frame and underbody looks really good and it's like that all the way underneath has all the remaining factory exhaust and the lower rockers all look really good as well. It does have some painted step bars that come with this truck. They look really nice.  Chrome tipped exhaust rear bumper steps back up parking sensors full towing package which includes a receiver hitch four pin and seven pin wiring and that tailgate is in very nice condition as well and it does come with a soft tonneau cover. I will say that it looks like it has been repaired in one little spot but that's why we do the videos so that full disclosure you can get a really good feel for the whole vehicle before coming here. This one does have the LED bed lighting and the bed has a little bit of light duty usage and it does come with a factory bed mat but for the most part looks pretty good back there. Tailgate is super light, has the shock down assist so it's never going to slam down on you, shuts nice and solidly and as you go down the driver's side just as clean as that passenger side, these trucks are nice when they're new like this or like new like this, paint is all shiny and looks like a show car. Back rims and axle and shape down the rest of the side looks really good. Do you get the telescopic till mirrors? They have LED side lights, directional signals, they're heated, they have blind spot monitoring, they have a telescope out like so and then they also fold in like so. Inside the 1LT package gives you the black cloth interior, no rips or tears on the seats, power driver's seat with lumbar, factory Z71 all-weather floor mats, this one does have auto headlamps, that's for your cargo lamps, that's also how you turn on those LED side lights and your LED bed lights and then you have push button four wheel drive, tow mode, power windows, power locks, power mirrors, you get that nice wood grain kind of neat looking wood grain trim on the door and then these mirrors do power fold in and then you can see those LED side lights on there too, I always like showing both sides so that you know that all the options are working on the truck. We'll hop inside and I do have to start this one up for us to check out the radio and everything. Actually I can do this right here, 11,967 miles on this vehicle compass display, does have a digital speedometer as well, this one comes with the heated leather wrapped steering wheel, Bluetooth and information center controls on the right, cruise controls and heated steering wheel controls on the left, it does have audio controls on the back of the steering wheel, this one has the six speed automatic transmission with the optional tap shift and it comes with the Chevy infotainment system radio, AM FM radio on here and it is Bluetooth capable as well, this is also where your backup camera is going to show up and then you do have Apple CarPlay Android Auto where you can project your cell phone to the screen so while you don't have navigation system on this particular radio you can project it from your phone to your screen such as Waze and Google Maps and then you have Nav right in the screen, you can also do music and stuff like that.  That factory all weather format goes over the hump, you also get keyless entry, remote start and power drop down tailgate, passenger side seat is an excellent condition, I don't think this truck has ever been smoked in, no rips or tears on there, headliner looks really good and you do get on-star and SOS buttons in the center console up there as well as map lights. We'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we'll start it up and check out under the hood. Back seats are just as clean as the front seats, no rips, no tears back here, it does have the latch, child safety system for any child car seats you may have, rear window defrost, these headrests do fold down for better visibility, seats are in excellent shape, they do fold up, get a pretty nice almost completely flat floor back here and that all weather floor mat keeps your carpeting looking like new. Back here you get two USB charging points and a 12 volt power point, bottoms of the doors all look really good on this truck and we will start it up, take a look under the hood, no check engine lights or anything like that, once again there are those LED side lights, they are super bright, I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this HD video, you will have been able to tell just how clean this truck is all the way around, verify its condition and quality. Under the hood we have the 6.6 liter V8 engine, 401 horsepower, engine base very clean, runs very smooth, once again this truck has been fully safe and inspected by our service shop as a fresh oil and filter change, all the fluids have been checked and topped off and this truck is 100% ready to go, there is your mission sticker and I would highly recommend this truck from a quality and condition standpoint, I didn't see much wrong with it other than that tonneau cover has a little bit of rip in it but other than that this thing is 100% ready to go, super clean and highly recommended and to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, wranglers, half tons, three quarter tons, one tons you name it we got to go to that website right there www.summodauto.com full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summodauto.com and if you like to check out more HD videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto, remember to like, subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there, in fact in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on the upper left a link to more Chevy Silverado 3500 truck videos like this one the upper right a link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right, click those check us out and we're super excited to help you with this ultra clean 2020 Chevy Silverado 3500 crew cab short box single rear wheel one LT Z71 in black clear coat. Thanks again for checking out the video remember to like, subscribe and share


Hello everybody, if you are working on eBay marketplaces where the currency is different from your primary currency on your PayPal account and you don't do these three very easy steps You will lose a lot of money and you will even don't know that you are losing this money so What I'm talking about and how to solve this situation. So let's see Actually, if you're working, for example, or on eBay UK eBay United Kingdom, you will get money with pounds But if your PayPal is not British PayPal and it's for example United States PayPal or Israeli or it doesn't matter from where your PayPal Your different different currency will be USD, but the money which you get is pounds. So what's happening in the background? What's happening in the background is that The money from pounds will be exchanged to USD So the currency will be exchanged and you will lose a lot of money for this because PayPal's currency exchange rates are not very good and not only this you even don't need this exchange because you want to keep your money With pounds if I'm working for example in eBay France Italy or Germany I want to keep my money with euro. I don't want my money to be transferred to you to USD Every every time every time that I get money actually So what to do is how to solve this situation? You must do the thing if you are working on other marketplaces First login to your PayPal account and go to the settings here on the top right after that all what you need to do is click on the Click on the my financial info here on the top left Or top right it depends on your PayPal And then all what you need to do you need to go here bottom currency management and Here you need to click add currency after you click the add currency It will open you all of the available currencies on PayPal Then you need to choose the right currency and that's all now the money Which you get from eBay to PayPal will get directly to the right currency and you will not lose money for the currency exchange This is Something which is very important and a lot of dropshippers don't do this And then they lose a lot of money and they even don't know about this because it's very hard to identify What happened and where all of your money because you don't calculate it in your break event And then you just directly lose money So I hope that you like this video Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a comment with what do you think about this video and Any other dropshipping related questions I will be really happy to answer you and don't forget to join to Autodesk just $1 trial. See you on the next videos. Bye. Bye


Biosecurity simply refers to all the steps you take to ensure your flock stays healthy. No flock owner wants to introduce disease in their flock, so let's go through some strategies to prevent expensive vet bills or death in your flock. Isolation refers not only to the physical location of your coop and flock, but also the separation of groups of poultry. Traffic control refers to the patterns of activity in your daily routine around the care of your flock. It also means keeping trouble out. Sanitation means keeping things clean on a regular basis. It may surprise you how easy it is to set up an effective cleaning regimen. Let's focus on isolation. Isolation means keeping your flock on your property and away from other poultry flocks. This may be a rare requirement in your particular area. You should also keep your older chickens permanently separated from any new or younger flocks. Older birds can carry diseases without showing symptoms. The same is true for new chickens that enter your flock. It is best to keep flocks and their equipment separated. You should always keep different species of poultry such as turkeys, waterfowl, gamebirds, or p-fowl permanently separated from your chickens. Several different diseases, including avian influenza, can be spread by allowing these species to mix. Some species carry certain diseases that are deadly to other species, so it is best to keep them separate. Wild waterfowl and shore birds can carry diseases and give them to your flock. It is best to locate your coop well away from water sources visited by migratory birds and waterfowl. Wild birds roost in trees. When they do so, they defecate where they roost and can spread disease to your flock through their droppings. In addition, wild birds can carry external parasites that can drop onto your coop and chickens. Let's move on to traffic control. Not just any person should be able to go in and visit your flock. Visitors should be accompanied by you if they have an important reason for coming into direct contact with your birds. Otherwise, they can look from farther back. You should jot down the name and contact information of people who absolutely need to come into contact with your flock on a calendar or in a notebook. That way, if an illness pops up in your flock, you can look back and recall who visited recently. To reinforce how important your flock is to you, post a sign asking visitors to come to the house before walking over to your coop. You can post something as formal as a biosecurity sign or something as informal as a request for all visitors to come to the front door first. Signs used together with locks can help ensure that only certain people gain exclusive access to your chickens. Well-meaning neighbors, family members, or friends may not understand the importance of biosecurity, but everyone understands a locked door or gate. It means that people should rethink how important it is to enter a coop or space used by your flock. It is also a layer of protection against thieves when you're not home. People are not the only things that can carry disease from one location to another. Car tires can do the trick too. So visitors or guests should be able to park far from the coop in order to avoid accidentally transporting disease to your flock. Your daily routine should not change much. Start by caring for the youngest poultry first and then move on to the older chickens. Avoid going in reverse as you may carry a disease from your older chickens to your younger ones. Care for your chickens before caring for waterfowl or game birds.   Do not move equipment around between different age groups without first cleaning and sanitizing it. The last visit of your daily routine or weekly routine is the disposal of your flock's manure. Some people use a compost pile while others spread manure thinly over pasture or lawns for fertilization. Either way, you should aim to separate your chickens from their manure in order to break the life cycle of certain diseases. Drying or composting manure quickly kills microorganisms, but is important to place your manure far away from your coops. You should also keep pets and neighbors in mind when deciding how to dispose of your manure and bedding.  Foot baths are simple to put into practice and provide you and your flock with huge benefits. Visitors and family members should be taught how to use the foot bath before coming into contact with your flock. A few simple steps and some easily found pieces of equipment are all it takes to make a foot bath that you can use with your own flock.  You should always avoid borrowing equipment in case it has germs on it. Before using any new or borrowed equipment, it should be cleaned and sanitized first. If equipment for your flock is to be moved between species or age groups, then it should be cleaned and sanitized before and after it is used. Make sure to set aside one pair of boots or shoes to wear only when you are caring for your chickens and nowhere else. Depending on the season, you might want to wear a dedicated jacket or set of coveralls for working with your flock. A hat is always a good idea in order to keep dust, dirt and feather dander out of your hair. All of these things can carry germs as well as have the potential to stay in your hair and be transported elsewhere. Keep your dedicated clothing and footwear in a small covered container by the back door and wash items weekly. Insects, rodents and wild birds all have excellent histories of transmitting disease to chickens. Use different control strategies for each in order to keep these pests at bay. For example, remove bird feeders, bird houses and bird baths before getting chickens to prevent contact with wild birds. In addition, use a well-built coop in order to keep predators from attacking your flock.


My name is Steve Zerker. I'm the host of Looking to the East. This is a show that I do twice a month on Think Tech Hawaii. Welcome to the show. Really appreciate you taking a look at the topic that we have focused on today, which has to do with tourism. So as most of you know, and certainly in the state of Hawaii, because many, many Hawaiians want to go to Japan, I've found out from talking to my friends in Hawaii. Some have actually already come here. There's great interest in traveling to this country. And fortunately, after a long duration, over two years, of not allowing international tourism, Japan has opened up its borders without any significant incumbrances. And international tourism has restarted, as of actually last month in October. So we have a very special guest to join us today. This is a colleague of mine that I've known for a number of years. His name is Eric Johnston, and Eric is a journalist. He's been in Japan for over 30 years. He currently is a deputy editor for the most famous and widely distributed English newspaper source in Japan called The Japan Time. So Eric, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Thank you, Steven. And good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Aloha to everybody who is listening. Yeah. So Eric, let's start with just a little bit about your background. I know whenever foreigners like us are discovered in this country, especially long-term foreigners like both you and I are, the question that pops up into people's minds immediately is, how did this happen? How did you get to Japan and why did you stay so long? So maybe you could briefly talk about your experience in coming to Japan and your professional development over the last 30 years. OK, sure. Well, first of all, I'm actually talking to you, Steven, from the resort town of Niseko in Hokkaido, where it's preparing to open the ski season next month. I'm based now in Sapporo after a very long tenure in the Kansai region, the Osaka-Kyoto Kobe region. And my actual title now is Senior National Correspondent, which basically means I cover all of Japan from Hokkaido, which is kind of unusual, but it's a lot of fun. I came to Japan, I guess primarily, the real motivation is my own father. He was stationed with the US Navy in Yakosuka near Tokyo during the part of the Korean War and then later in Sasebol. He learned a bit of Japanese and came back and never forgot his experience in Japan and how much he enjoyed it. When I was majoring in college, when I majored in business and communications, the communications major required some sort of foreign language study. This was the mid-1980s, and I was unsure of what to study. I didn't really want to do another two years of French or Spanish or German or other languages. So my father said, well, what about Japanese? It's a pretty easy language, at least to speak. OK, that sounds good. I don't know if I agree with that, Eric. Well, perhaps my father was kidding. He did have a rather sarcastic wit at the time. But nevertheless, I joined the Japanese language classes at the University of Pittsburgh. And it was right before the Japanese economic bubble of the late 1980s, early 1990s. And there was growing interest in Japan, but not yet a rush of students to study the Japanese language as there would be a few years later. So I was in very small classes and received lots of personalized attention from the Japanese instructor. The language was difficult, but not as difficult as I thought it would be. And I made friends, developed relationships with both teachers and other students, as well as graduate students, Japanese graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh. And when I graduated, I thought to myself, wow, I think I actually want to go to Japan and study the language more. So this was, again, the time when foreigners like you and I could come to Japan, write out a college, no experience, and make good money teaching in English conversation schools in any major Japanese city. My friends I knew at the University of Pittsburgh were actually based in Kyoto. So I ended up in Kyoto in 1988. And through their introduction, began teaching at Japanese English language schools, as well as studying Japanese on the side. And that went on for a few years. And finally, in 1991, I got really lucky and managed to land a full-time editing job at a newspaper based in Osaka that covered the video game and karaoke machine industry. It was actually a trade magazine. And it was Japanese. And they wanted to start an English language version of this magazine. The owner and editors were all Japanese, and they didn't really speak or read English. So they decided to hire a foreigner, a young foreigner, to do this. I answered an ad, a help wanted ad, in the Japan times. And lo and behold, I got the job. And for the next three years, my job was basically to translate. By then, my Japanese ability was, I would say, at the intermediate level. I was still using dictionaries pretty much every day for every other sentence, just like Japanese language students around the world do. But I was also working and getting paid to do things like go to video game trade conventions throughout Asia, Europe, even Brazil. Yeah, I think I ended up going to something like two dozen countries over a period of three years. Reporting on Japanese and video game developers, what they were doing, and then coming back to Japan and writing about it. So that was really my first introduction to journalism, if you will, as a full-time profession. And I fell in love with it. I really realized that I enjoyed going to new places, talking to new people, learning new things in a non-academic atmosphere. So by the mid-1990s, though, the Japanese economy, as you know, was panicking. The go-go years were over. And I was getting older. I was about to turn 30. And I was thinking to myself, this has been fun. But is this what I want to do for the next stage of my life? And I decided no. But once again, fate intervened. I managed to find a job at a local Japanese language newspaper in Osaka called the Mainichi Daily News, which is still in existence, but online only. And I joined just before the 1995 Kobe earthquake did. And that really was my introduction to serious journalism, writing about video games for so long. And I spent a couple of years there working as both a translator and a beat reporter in Osaka covering local events. But I also got the opportunity, again, to travel. I went to the European Union covering the, sorry. I went to Europe to cover the beginning of the European Union. So traveling around talking to different countries about the introduction to Euro and what it would mean to their economies. I had almost no economic background, but that was OK. The idea was to learn and present it to non-experts, not people working on Wall Street or in the city of London. So then in 1997, this opportunity with the Japan Times came up also in Osaka. And I grabbed it. The Japan Times was larger than the Mainichi at the time in terms of circulation. And I felt it would give me an opportunity to do even more from that particular part of Japan. And here I am, 25 years later, the only real difference being is that in February of this year, due to remote work and everything that has happened with corona, I decided that I wanted to make a move up to Hokkaido. My wife and I have been coming here on a regular basis for over 20 years. And since I could remote work, I figured, well, I've come up here. I know a lot about the Kansai, the Kyoto, Osaka region. I'd like to learn a lot more about the Hokkaido region. Take a look at some of the issues, including tourism, that are affecting this part of the country. And that's more or less what I've been doing since February of this year, just basically learning about Hokkaido, as well as covering national politics, which is sort of my steady beat, my main gig. Well, that's a very brief history. OK, I'd love to do a show with you on national politics, because it's not as corrosive as American politics have been over the last four or five years, but it's equally interesting. Yes, yes. It's been quite interesting, actually, especially the last few months with the assassination of former Prime Minister Abe and the Kishida administration. Of course, the political situation is also playing into how Japan has approached opening its tourism sector, as well. Yeah. So let's talk about that. So again, Japan had been closed from early 2020, basically, and tourism, which was the fastest growing industry in the country. It was 6% of GDP in 2019. It was predicted to go to 10%. And the Abe administration was very supportive of it. And then it came to a screeching halt. If you look at the tourism numbers year over year after COVID, it basically went down 99%. Basically, there was no tourism for a long period of time. But now, finally, as we mentioned at the top of the show, the borders are open. There's no COVID restrictions any longer, so people can come in.  And before the show started, we mentioned a report that showed that the growth in international tourism is 15 times higher year over year, even for a brief period of October, because October was not open for the full month. It started, I think, in the first or second week. Yes, that's correct. October 11, I think it was. Yes, right. So they're back, but they're in significantly smaller numbers. And so, Eric, when you look at that, are you encouraged that potentially the numbers of international tourists coming into Japan will ramp up at some point to what it was pre-COVID? You know, Stephen, that's been a question I've been asking people here in the resort town of Niseko for the last 24 hours or so. And the general answer seems to be yes, but not right away. The latest figures for all of Japan's show that in November so far, over 140,000 have visited. Many, if not most of these, are from countries in East and Southeast Asia. And this is because although tourism is open, a lot of the major airports, international airports in Japan, haven't recovered to their pre-covid levels in terms of flights. So you've got a lot of them. So that's an impediment still. Yes, that is still an impediment. And it could be a while before we see a full resumption of flights from all areas of the globe to Japan. Right now, I think we're seeing at least here in Sapporo. And I was in Kyoto a few weeks ago. I noticed this as well. A lot of tourists from East Asia and Southeast Asia are coming in now. For the upcoming winter season, I think that there's two things. Yes, there is certainly hope that the numbers that we've seen over the last few weeks will continue to increase. That air service, especially to places like Hawaii, I don't think Air Hawaii has restored its direct flight to Sapporo yet. I'm sure that they haven't. I'm sure they're hoping to do so very soon. But at the same time, a lot of people want the foreign tourists back. They recognize two things. First of all, the Japanese government, as you mentioned, reopened in October. But for planning purposes, for a lot of people in the tourism industry, not only here in Sapporo and Hokkaido, but in other parts of the country, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kanazawa, even Okinawa, the decision came really too late for this season. Because the tourism industry has to really adjust by retraining staff, just simple things. Reopening hotels, getting them ready for customers, finding enough part-time staff to handle the kinds of rushes that we saw three or four years ago. And the ski resorts here in Hokkaido were hoping that the central government would have made the decision they made in October back around March or April, would have given them six or eight months lead time to find the people they need. That didn't happen. So what's happening now is they're really struggling to find part-time help. And I think those foreign tourists who come from abroad may find that certain areas of the country, the service is still good, but it's limited. You may not get everything on the menu in the restaurant. You may find that even the top hotels have restricted some services. You may find hours of operation not quite back to what they were in the past. Now, for first-time visitors to Japan, you may not notice that much difference and indeed things may look real really good. But if you're a repeat visitor to Japan, if you've already seen Tokyo and Kyoto and you want to go off somewhere that's not shall we say as popular as those two cities, then you might find that the level of service that you were expecting, that the tour brochure said you would be getting, isn't quite up to that standard yet. So that's one thing. Another thing is that although most Japanese local governments really do want Western tourists and Asian tourists to come back, they're concerned about the emerging eighth wave of the coronavirus, which is now getting out. Yeah, let's talk about that. I don't think maybe international viewers or the American viewers know that Japan's infection rates, if you look at the world statistics, are the highest. And for many, many years, Japan was one of the lowest. It was managed quite well. But in the last six months, as have been, Eric, approximately the numbers by Japanese standards have been off the scale. The Japanese government, I think, Eric, you're probably much closer to this than I am, kind of is just accepting this and it's becoming just the new normal as they say in the United States. But the numbers are shockingly high. And certainly my Japanese colleagues at Kansai Gae Day are concerned. Yes, the numbers are rising. We've been through a number of waves, especially over the past six to eight or nine months. But a couple of things have occurred this year. In addition to tourists, one of the big complaints from abroad that Japan has been getting is that its COVID policy has been very restrictive towards foreign exchange students who actually live in Japan, who are studying at Japanese universities, who were caught by the COVID outbreak a couple of years ago when they were in their home countries. And they haven't been able to get back in Japan. This became something of a real, I won't say scandal exactly, although it's certainly scandalous in some ways, but a huge topic of concern for universities here in Japan with lots of foreign students, as well as the foreign business community was, of course, anxious to get foreign business people back in. So the government found itself under a lot of pressure earlier this year. And there was serious talk, I think, in Prime Minister Kishida's government about reopening to foreign tourists. But the political calendar and the political events intervened this summer. The lower house election, Japan's parliamentary lower house was holding its elections in July. And so I think that the government wanted to wait until after that in order to make a decision. But then, of course, was the tragic assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe just before the lower house election in July. And that really threw things into total chaos. And so I think there was a lot of confusion about whether or not to open immediately or to wait or what to do or when to do it. Finally, though, they decided to reopen, as you mentioned, in October. And the people I'm talking to here in Niseko are very happy. But they've also said that what they're really worried about is we're in the eighth wave of the coronavirus. Now, things spike. And another decision is made by the government, say, next month or early next year that, oh, you know what? Levels are really, really spiking. We've got to place some restrictions. And we're going to once again limit the number of foreigners to enter. They've already lost a lot of money over these past two years, as you can imagine. And they're concerned that if they reopen, if they get all their staff back and do everything that they need to do to reopen, that they're going to have to close once again or restrict hours. So that's a really big problem. Yeah, it's tough. Even though things are open now and we can see the foreign tourists coming in. By the way, Eric, I chair the Tourism and Hospitality Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce. And last month, there were a couple of hoteliers on the Zoom call. And they're at 80% occupancy. And corresponding to what you said, what you're picking up in Niseko, the vast majority of foreign tourists are Southeast Asian, Koreans, and Chinese, not from the mainland, of course, because they can't come, but Singaporean Chinese, Malaysian Chinese, Thai Chinese. And one guy was, he has about eight or 10 different hotels spread out through the country, some in Okinawa, sorry, Chinese New Year, which is a third week of January. Yes. Next year, 100% occupancy already. Yeah, that's growing to be the case here in Niseko yet. I don't have the exact occupancy rates, but it's certainly up, I think, compared to last year. But one of the interesting things that's going on now domestically is Japan is offering various discounts to Japanese people to travel to different prefectures to get out and about. And I think that the current tourism strategy here in Japan and perhaps other places like Kyoto as well for this year, for the upcoming next three, four, five months, is let's try to get as many Japanese people back to our hotels and resorts and tourist areas as possible. And yes, if the situation of foreign tourists develops, we'll certainly welcome them back. But unlike the inbound tourism boom that Japan experienced between roughly 2014 and 2020, I think a lot of businesses are now wary of putting all of their eggs in the foreign tourism basket, if you will. And they want to make sure that they have a lot of foreign tourists, that they're taking care of the foreign tourists, but they also have a lot of Japanese tourists coming in. And there's one other thing I should mention as well on foreign tourists that is, I think, a concern that doesn't really get reported all that much, at least not in the English language media overseas. And that is one of the concerns that some localities have as foreign tourists reopen is if Corona spikes to a much greater level than it present, and if a larger number of cases of serious cases occurs, do these local towns and small cities have the medical infrastructure to take care not only of foreign tourists who fall ill, but of their own Japanese populations, which are very often elderly and have all sorts of medical issues they have to deal with. So while the main tourist areas of, say, Niseko, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kanazawa on the Japan Sea Coast, Okinawa, perhaps Nagasaki, one or two other places, are probably ready and have their medical infrastructures up to a level where the local officials aren't that concerned. If you're coming to Japan as somebody who doesn't want to go and get stuck with a bunch of foreign tourists all taking photos of the same thing, then if you really want to go out and see the real Japan, quote unquote, to a small rural village or an isolated sea town or some place that's really off the beaten path, you're welcome. But at the same time, do be aware, for example, that social distancing requirements, the wearing of masks, the sitting at tables that are divided by clear plastic partitions is probably going to be enforced more than it might be in some other areas. I just went down to breakfast here at the hotel I'm staying at. And one of the things that they're requiring all tourists to do, for example, is to first sterilize their hands before they walk in. There's a spray of alcohol, but you do that. But even after that, when you go to the breakfast buffet, you pick up your table and they give you disposable plastic gloves to put on at the buffet table.  And of course they try to spray tables out in a restaurant, which can sometimes mean that fewer people can get in, that they don't pack them cheek to jowl like they used to. And even if you're with your family, they may ask you to sit adjacent to each other rather than across from each other. Now, again, some places enforce this more than others, but it's still considered common sense here.  And the polite thing to do is to follow the social distancing requirements, even though they're not legally required. Yeah, you mentioned briefly international students and we have students on campus at Kansai Gaidae this semester. And the number is over 500, whereas pre-COVID, we were averaging 300. So they're back. And the applications for our next semester spring are at 600, Eric. So there's tremendous demand on the part of international students to come to Japan. It was very popular pre-COVID, but it seems to have become even more popular after that. And to your point about Japanese health customs and wearing of masks, I've been quite pleased. I've been surprised at how the students have adapted. They all wear masks. Everybody in the classroom wears masks. When they're walking outside, even though the Japanese government is not recommending that you need to do this any longer, the students are still wearing masks, as I do when I'm walking outside, because I guess I'm being influenced by the Japanese culture myself, even as a foreigner. Yeah, and the more rural parts of the country I've been to, not just here in Hokkaido, but elsewhere over the past couple of years. Outside on a warm day, yeah, I mean people will, even if they're wearing their masks, they'll have them pulled down under their nose or mouth, for example, you see a lot of that, especially among younger Japanese and as well, and in the cities as well, a lot of younger Japanese just simply don't wear the mask like the older people do. But you can sort of understand that, right? Because if you look at the statistics, although younger people have caught COVID quite a bit, the fatalities have traditionally been, I think in the older generations. All right, well, we're right on time. We've talked about some of the challenges and some of the concerns, the slow ramp, but I have to say that one of my good friends, she was a Kansai Gada students with me many years ago, exchange student, she went to Hokkaido just last month. So I think she timed this holiday maybe two or three months even before the announcement of the opening of the borders. She had a wonderful time. She told me it was so great. And she's coming back again in January, Eric. Yeah, yeah. She said, I want to come back again. She was happy that there weren't that many tourists, that there was not so crowded. So right now, the tourists that are coming are experiencing Japan without having the Chika Jal experience. That's exactly right.  So you'll still be able to find accommodations fairly easily. I don't know how much they're gonna cost. You might want to bring your- Yeah, that's another issue I haven't touched. The airplane ticket prices are incredible right now. Well, not just the airplane ticket prices. You wanna stay at some of the resorts. I've heard that some of the resorts are going for thousands of dollars per night. But there are other places as well. There are smaller chalets and pensions. And if you're coming as say somebody who's young and just wants to come and ski without all of the spas, treatments and all of that kind of thing, I think you can still come and visit fairly cheaply and get on the slopes without too much trouble compared to say again, four or five years ago. So yeah, it's definitely a good time to come for those who want to come and for those who are perhaps willing to maybe be patient about certain types of Japanese social distancing requirements that are no longer the case in the United States or some other countries. All right, Eric. Well, thank you so much. This has flown by as I expected it was going to. Thank you. You're so knowledgeable about this issue. For those of you viewers who want to follow Eric, you can search for him at the Japan Times, newspaper where he's working. There's featured journalists and he is one of them and you can click on his name and you can see the recent stories. Eric, you also have a LinkedIn website. So- I do, I don't really use it. I think honestly, if you take a look at my stuff on the Japan Times, you've seen- That's the best way I should follow you. Absolutely, yeah. Okay. All right, Eric. Well, thank you so much. Enjoy your time up there in Niseiko.  No, I am not. So you would be back there again. I'm a watcher. I'm going to sit at home and drink hot chocolate once. Okay, sounds good. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh, you're very welcome, Eric. It's my pleasure. So we'll be back on in a couple of weeks with another topic in looking to the East on Think Tech Kauai. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Kauai. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechkauai.com. Mahalo.


I know you've heard about Beyonce's new album but did you hear what Bishop Wooden had to say in response? I have seen maybe even heard the whole commotion about Beyonce's new album, particularly one specific song Church Girl but really the whole album as well as the album cover there's been a little hubbub about it. I was going to stay silent on it but then I saw something the other day that just touched my heart and to be honest I want to let you all hear it I'm not going to give commentary in the middle of it I'll say something afterwards though but I want you guys to hear this this guy you may not agree with his doctrine I'm not sure if you do or you don't but this is really I like this particular person this is Bishop Wooden this is a man's man this is a man's preacher he calls it like it is and he deals with this just the right way I believe. Preach to your elders I want to preach to you superintendents pastors and leaders we're called to speak up we're called to say something Beyonce just release sacrilege the only thing I can account for some of this stuff is somebody and sold their soul to the devil now all I can say to you this when you sell your soul to the devil you get the short end of the stick because you're not gonna live but so long and when you leave here where you're going you're going to be there forever so it's not it's not it's not a good deal I don't care what it gives you but this piece of trash that's release and she named it church girl now I had thought to try to read the lyrics to you but I struggled to listen to them it's too bad it's too bad it's not for public consumption it would it would be a desecration if I read this and I don't recommend it you know Paris I know all your little children got there all of them three months old they got a cell phone but I don't recommend that you let them listen to this it is it's it's the worst you you can't get and to to sample the song of a real church lady tweak a clock to I don't know whether she knew what she was gonna do with the song or not she knows you're not saying I don't talk about anything that's not public anything that's public is fair game and I pray to God that a stiff denunciation of what she did with that song is put out it shows that we we're not speaking up ain't nobody respect the church the world don't respect the church so you can't win the world are numbered by them I'm just so proud that somebody was gonna use my music what do you mean you want the best in the world we sing for Jesus I tell you what did help me my shadow just really fresh release hers and that's the one you need to buy that's the one got a good beat to it if you feel like shouting a sanctified a mistake of it sanctified message amen and you know can't nobody sing any better but for to show this kind of disrespect for the church and what sad is this that will be church people who will defend it but let me tell you something I'm not I'm not bothered by those who defend that kind of garbage I'm bothered by those who say nothing you're the one who angers me am I right president the late president Richard Milhouse Nixon said nothing hurt him you know because you know he was criticized for Watergate he said nothing hurt him as bad as the indifference of his friends we go silent when we go neutral do you not know I'm gonna preach this in a minute do you not know that in the Bible there are no demilitarized zones Jesus said he that is not for me is against me and he who is not gathering together is scattering abroad now whose side are you on let me to say a thing God's gonna kill you for telling that lie when the Lord when the Lord calls you he when he calls you we all call you y'all said today I was reading it to you for a reason you're gonna defend the doctrine of the church you're gonna preach the gospel of Jesus Christ now now when you see obvious wrong obvious wrong how much lead how much do you have to be lead to say something against obvious wrong I'll tell you one thing about the world the world don't need any leading I do it my now I do it my that about him I know I admit I admire that about the center the center is committed so did you notice what he said he said that he admires that one thing about the centers they're committed we're not we'll let someone say whatever they want do whatever they want defame the name of Christ and the church and we want to act so polite so calm so sweet well we'll just let them alone we'll just pray for them no we're not gonna do that what we ought to do is just what he did denounce what she says and anyone else who wants to listen to that stuff denounce that too we're gonna expose that that's what that's our job and this isn't a heresy hunter this guy is not out there just as they would say out there looking for heretics just to see who he can chop who said he can chop off this is a preacher of the gospel and he said it correctly it should never be that Christians have to take a backseat or stand in silence when someone is encroaching or offending the gospel what I call it we're not calling for a fight we are gonna stand up and say what the said the Lord we're gonna defend the gospel we're gonna defend the name of Christ we should be doing that and it shouldn't be that we have to wait for some leading of the Holy Spirit we already have our marching orders could you imagine someone telling you to go into battle tell you this what you're gonna do and the moment the shelling start the moment the shots of fire the bullets are flying the missiles are flying you go back and ask hey commander what should I do I already told you what to do I he said it's so right I almost felt like going back and join such a guy in Christ almost I wouldn't even mind they started speaking in tongues the man said what he had to say and he said it right wouldn't it be awesome if us as believers would do the exact same thing


So we got the call Sunday about this and the person who died had been in the tub for 5 days when she was found this weekend and we just came out cleaning this on Wednesday so yes. This bathtub has been like this for about a week.


Hi and welcome to the session. I am Neha and today I am going to help you with the following question. The question says state whether true or false. For this statement all rhombuses are kites. So let's see its solution with the help of this figure. Here we have a kite and a rhombus. Let us recall what is a kite. A kite is a quadrilateral with exactly two pairs of equal consecutive sites. That is ab is equal to ad and vc is equal to dc. Also the diagonals are perpendicular to each other. That is all these angles are 90 degree each. And one of the diagonal bisect the other. Here ac bisects bd. That is be is equal to ed. Also one pair of opposite angles is equal. In this figure we have angle b is equal to angle d. Now let's see what is a rhombus. A rhombus is a parallelogram with sites of equal length. That is pq is equal to qr is equal to rs is equal to sp. Opposite angles are equal. That is angle p is equal to angle r and angle q is equal to angle s. Also the diagonals bisect each other. That is po is equal to or and qo is equal to os. Also they are perpendicular to each other. So that means all these angles are 90 degree each. Thus we got that a rhombus satisfies all the properties of a kite. And thus the statement all rhombuses are kites is true. So with this we finish this session. I hope you must have understood the concept. Goodbye and take care.