Well hello everybody and welcome back to my channel. Today is a laundry day Q&A. I don't have any actual clean laundry to fold while I'm doing this because my laundry room is like right there, that little closet right there. There is stuff in the wash and stuff in the dryer but it is my first load into the dryer for now. So if this video runs a little bit long I might actually bring some laundry over here and start folding it but just depends on how many questions that you guys had for me. I purposely did not look at my social media for these posts. I posted a photo a couple of days ago that says sorry it's like there you go laundry day Q&A and I have 42 comments on Instagram and I don't have as many like people I guess on Facebook but I will answer some Facebook questions as well. Without further ado let's do a laundry day Q&A and we're just gonna start at the top and then if there are repeated questions I just won't answer them obviously because I'll just say oh that's a repeat. First question about tattoos. Somebody asked me about tattoos a while ago and she is referring back to this question. It says out of curiosity you said a long time ago in a Q&A that you had a tattoo. What it is or what is it and where is it? I have three tattoos and they are all below my waist. Two of them are like Chinese character symbols and one of them is a bar code and I don't think I will ever ever show them on the internet just FYI. And then someone asked where's your September budget video? Girl I just posted it. Today is currently Friday because it's laundry day so last Friday was the first and today is the 8th so it just worked out that way in my posting schedule but it is up.  Someone else asked how do you maintain your nails? Right now we're going on almost a week of these painted. They are super cracked and I'm taking them off probably tonight and repainting them. How do we maintain them? I don't know. I use a lot of hand lotion which I love that's like good for your cuticle hand lotion and then when I actually do my nails I have this like whole long process. I did a video like maybe two and a half, three years ago on like how I give myself a manicure. I think it's the same but if you guys are interested in maybe like an updated version of how I give myself a manicure let me know in the comments below if you want to see a manicure video. I typically well my fingernails and hair grow so incredibly fast but like my nails I like to keep them pretty short but they grow really fast. So if I have nail polish on typically I keep them shorter because I just I like them short it's good for like the editing skills and stuff so anyway if I don't have polish on I just kind of like let them grow and then it gets like weird or whatever. So all right so next question random question what do you love and most dislike about your new home? That's a good question. So I would say like most dislike about my new home uh oh Doyle's back not Doyle because you know that'd be rude. I think the thing I most dislike about the new home is that because oh hi um because I live in a town home association I am unable to have a fenced in backyard for this little fool so I would love that but unfortunately it's against you know the HOA rules or whatever so that's probably the thing I most dislike because if I could in this place would be just 100% perfect like there'd be nothing wrong with it. What do I love about the home? I actually love all the work that um everyone did to the home so like the all the work my mom did all the work I did um all of the painting that I got uh well my mom and I did a bunch of painting and my mom did like the bulk of the painting let's be honest here favor mother she's not available for hire guys but she's pretty awesome and um I mix I I also love all the painting that I hired out to do that big vault in the in the way back over there and then um I love my new flooring it is so nice in the main level oh it's so great and I absolutely love that so looking forward to finally updating some bathrooms probably in the next couple of years but yeah so those are the things I love the most is the things that like my mom and I and other people have touched to kind of like make it my own and give myself my own vision can I help you sir I mean he just wants to sit here so I can like pet his head that you can't see you can see his ear it's like pokey little ear this is a hard question what is your favorite thing about yourself I don't know it says physical feature character trait etc hmm okay if I would go with physical feature I really like my eyes like my eye color I really like that it's hard to see right now because I'm super glared out because of my glasses if I explain this correctly around the black part of my eye it's actually kind of like a brownish golden color and then around the very exterior of my eye color it's like a deep deep blue and then around the inside is green so my eyes really reflect reflect reflect green most of the time um when I was younger they did reflect blue but um as I got older they were greener and greener and greener so I don't know I really like my eyeballs I guess as for character trait hmm I think it'd be something that you either like really like or you really dislike about people but I really enjoy especially as I'm getting older not caring about what others think I know that's kind of crazy and we all just want to be accepted but the more I don't care the more comfortable I am with myself to say you know I'm authentic to me I'm doing my own thing I am being true to who I am as a person and if you don't like it that's okay and I'm not out to like offend anybody you know my normal daily life or even on the internet you know if you don't like my videos don't watch you know if you don't want to be my friend in real life don't be my friend it's okay like there's other people for you to be friends with and there's other people for you to watch on YouTube but you know like I just stopped caring and that's like a really freeing thing so I think that's something I like about my personality I guess well that was like a really long answer if you could swap places with a historical figure for a day who would it be and why you know history is not really my forte to be completely honest I did this like really massive report on Juliet Lowe once and I think it would be cool to go back in time and kind of like just see that era maybe not be her but like see that era she was the founder of the Girl Scouts maybe Juliet Lowe because I just like I just remember going like hog wild on this report and I know my mom's gonna be mad if I don't tell you guys this story but we actually went to Savannah Georgia which is where where Juliet Lowe is from way before this like book report thing happened or it wasn't a book report it was like a it was a history report so it's for history class in American history and we randomly got selected people that you wouldn't know really who they were and I got Juliet Lowe and she's like does anyone know who their historical figure is and I'm like the only person in class that raised my hand and I was like you know like what they did and why they're a part of our American history and I'm like yeah I do and she's like well how do you know and I'm like well I've been a Girl Scouts since I was in kindergarten and my mom and I went there like two years ago to her house and like all of this stuff and they're like oh wow so in Savannah Georgia we actually went to um her home and did like this big tour um and Savannah was gorgeous by the way I highly recommend Savannah Georgia it is so cool the town squares are just amazing and the people are super cool so my report was pretty nuts because I had a lot of information plus I've been a Girl Scout for a really long time so I had a lot of information about that aspect too because we wanted in the report we wanted to talk about their life and then also like talk about why you know they're important and what role they played in our American history so anyway let's go Juliet Lowe that's fun let's do that someone says in reference to a previous post would you like to try English smarties and swizzles if you do I'll send you some sure um if you want to send me anything ever to any of you guys out there my public mailbox is always down below feel free to send me whatever you want I typically go and check my mailbox about once a week especially if I know something's coming sometimes like PR packages and things like that will come in the mail and I'll kind of know when they're coming because they'll send me like a UPS or FedEx tracking number so I know it's there if you guys ever want to send me something feel free it's below have fun uh some of you guys like send me letters and cards and I really love that don't feel like you have to send me like stuff okay don't feel like you have to do that but I love your letters and things like that so um let's see what are some of your favorite recipes from childhood slash present day uh probably macaroni and cheese spirals yeah it probably sounds about right uh the craft brand has to be craft macaroni and cheese has to be yes I like this person's question it says what would be the coolest animal to scale up to the size of a horse so like you have a horse and then you have another animal like what would be a cool animal to scale up next to that I feel like it had to be an animal that's like really tiny maybe or like really big because I mean I've ridden like a bajillion horses in my day so I know how big they are but I don't know I keep going back to like a barnyard chicken like I think that would be kind of cool just because they're so funny and I love their like little round bodies and they've got like these little pokey legs I don't know I think they're funny okay I'm going with a jiggin uh someone asked do you think you will ever get back into debt I'm gonna say no and I hope you're asking about consumer debt and not like mortgage debt because obviously I have mortgage debt right now because I have a mortgage but um if I can help it absolutely not no but it's it's not on my plan oh let's see here oh this is a good one is there any reason that you've been single for so long you seem like a catch and I was just wondering why you were not married yet well that's a whole another like dimension of question um there's not really a reason I guess I'm super particular like to be kind of vague about it I'm very particular I like what I like and I really don't like what I really don't like so I definitely have criteria which I think we all should have criteria because let's be honest like if you're choosing a life partner like you want to make sure that certain things line up for you okay just that being said and this is beyond the like physical stuff it's just like a non-smoker can't be a smoker I can't do it I'm not a smoker I've never been a smoker I I'm so sensitive to cigarette smoke I actually get splitting migraines if I'm around somebody that smokes so I just can't do that uh you have to have a job I don't care what you do I don't really care how much money you make I just want you to be like productive to society in some way so a job non-smoker attractive to me which is a whole another video we're not going to talk about that but I need to be attracted to you in some way um you have to be mentally there I need to be able to have a conversation with you I need to be able to share ideas with you and you know you just can't be a pretty face or you can't talk at me you know what I mean like you just need someone intelligent to be your mate you know like I don't know so anyways um yeah that's really I don't know I mean I would have to like align with the money stuff but I mean if someone's in debt that's okay I mean there's ways to fix that as you guys know with some of my other previous videos if you've watched like I'm not a religious person um I tend to swipe left I have some dating apps um but I don't really go out on dates because they scare me but I tend to shy away from anybody that outwardly says on their dating apps that they are religious because I just don't want to be that point of contention where they get upset that I am not religious and then we go out on a date and it's like you know I I'm just speaking in general terms here so like don't give me hate in the comments I'm just speaking in general terms most people of certain faiths want to be with someone else of the same faith if that makes sense I try to steer clear of that a little bit more just because I'm not here to change anybody's mind no one's here to change my mind either so uh if that is a big deal for somebody I would rather just not you know I mean I don't know oh also no kids um they could have kids from like a previous relationship but I am not producing a child inside of my body it's just not gonna happen they just need to be on board with that I don't know that was a really long long explanation sorry guys and thank you for thinking that I'm a catch and I should be married by now um you know and I I'm not sure if I will ever get married I I I don't know um and it would be okay if I never got married it's okay with me like I don't need and I was gonna sound crazy but like as a woman I know we've all been programmed to think a certain way and I was that person too where you know some guy's gonna come in save me anyway I did a whole like Q&A about that a while back in bloom I think maybe I can't remember deep down like I just don't need that validation in life um I kind of explained it I was in a long-term relationship like a couple relationships ago and I was explaining it to a friend where we were kind of at that pivotal like two and a half year mark and we had lived together and everything was going good and it just didn't feel right but at the end of the day as a woman I felt like I wanted the validation for him to want to marry me but I didn't want to marry him and I know that sounds totally horrible and I hope that some of you can like understand where I'm coming from on that it's like I wanted him to feel that way selfishly but then I knew that in my like deep down guts like this wasn't right for forever you know it just wasn't right for that situation and actually shortly after that we ended up you know splitting up and I'm actually still you know in contact with him and he's a great guy and the problem is in the relationship that nothing was wrong it just wasn't working for me if you could have any superpower what would it be and why there's so many to choose from probably because I get like really bad travel anxiety and because I really don't love crowds and lots of people around I would love to be you know someone that could actually like teleport somewhere else so like you could travel and like I'm sitting in like Minnesota right now but if I thought really hard about it I could like be in Vancouver Canada or something and be there and like I wouldn't have to you know I just be there and then I could just like go about my day I don't know teleportation is that it I don't know um someone asked your hair is getting so long do you plan on cutting it or letting it grow out um well it's up in a little like bun-ish thing now I just walked the dog I don't know I think I'm just gonna want to grow up for a little while and see and I tend to only cut my hair like about once or twice a year because I never really I mean I wash it every day because I have to because I'm like a super greasy person um thank you oily skin I tend not to ever blow dry my hair maybe once or twice a year I'll blow dry it but to be honest I um I just let it air dry because it's just so much better for it and I don't I like it so it stays really healthy I don't know maybe I guess you guys will find out because I will show my face and be like hey look I got a haircut or I colored my hair look I didn't do anything it's still there um all right next question do your co-workers watch your videos that'd be a no and then it says if so do they ever give you suggestions ideas subscribe to channel no but I do have friends in my real life that like are my other my just regular friends that will give me like suggestions and they subscribe to my channel and like they'll make comments and stuff too someone asked how much money do you set aside each month for planner spending in your budget curious to know if I'm spending too much of well I don't think you would get ever spend too much as long as it's in the budget um since I do youtube videos and this is um I actually have like an LLC that is set up through my youtube account um and I set that up um at the very beginning of this year yeah in January um the way that I get paid is through youtube adsense and a couple of other different revenue streams and if I'm showing um like planner related stuff in a video that is technically a prop so I don't really have like a specific budget but I just don't spend obviously any more than I make so if I'm doing like giveaways or like I find doing giveaways I have to ship something like that all comes out of the business account and if I'm showing like halls and things like that it's a business related expense because I'm going to use those on future plan with me and things like that so hope that kind of makes sense I have had a few comments in the past saying that people don't like that and that's not fair because they would want to run a business expense through like washi tape you know my response to that in a very very nice way is then start a youtube channel and once you start getting paid which it will take you several years to start getting paid because it took me several years to start getting paid about three years to be exact then you can set up a business and then you can run things through on the advice of your tax person um this is all tax law so I can't really help with that but that's what my tax advisor told me to do and that's what I'm going to do so anyway that's my very nice response to that uh what are your top three planners slash stationery stores in the twin cities area ooh good question she says I'm gonna be there a few times in the next six months and I'd like to check out some interesting stuff okay so here's where you need to go there is a place called patina check that out that is in the cities if you get like a day to go somewhere else go to st cloud it's actually a town called weight park it's a w a i t e not weight like weight here it's w a i t e park it's right next to st cloud there is a place called craft direct it is like the mecca of all the meccas of all the crafting things crafting wow crafting things so if you're into anything else like scrapbooking or knitting or anything like that it's a great place to go plus they've got like tons of washi and stickers and things like I've never seen before they've got what is that washi that like really nice right like doodle doodle bug or bug doodle I don't know something like that they've got that there so yeah I would go there if I were you um the next place so I said patina patina is really cool maybe paper source but I know paper sources are kind of all over the place I don't know there is a paper source at mall of america if you want to go to mall of america um I was actually just there last weekend with jody from life's organized chaos here on youtube so we went there I got some things it was good next question is your current job something you see yourself doing long term if not what is your dream job um okay so uh no I don't see myself doing that long term which to me long term is like 10 years okay so my dream job is actually this would be my dream job to be able to create content and vlog uh you know maybe do like weekly vlogs or something like that where can I just take you around my life and you know show you what I'm working on show you like house projects and just be able to like dedicate more time and do better editing have better lighting uh have better camera equipment like you know but it takes money to do some of those things and to obviously offset not having a stable income and relying on uh like youtube revenue or revenue from other sources or ad videos or sponsored videos and things like that where um you know your channel I don't know I don't do sponsored videos um I do kind of ads once in a while but people just give me their products for free because I always tell them there's no guarantee I accept it for consideration only if I mention it in the video I mentioned in the video if I don't I don't at some point in this whole youtube situation I feel like I'm gonna have to start making business decisions and actually accepting money for some stuff because a lot of brands that do approach me are very shocked that I don't ask for like a monetary value something um to me it feels icky right now and I think I just need to get over it I don't know at some point I'm gonna have to treat it a little bit more like my income and obviously if I only have the one stream of income which is you guys watching then I will have to make you know more calculated decisions on that but if I didn't do anything else besides this I would have way more time to you know talk to brands and approach brands and you know have conference calls and do all that stuff where right now it's pretty much emailing either super early in the morning or really late at night like I have a couple emails in my inbox I have to deal with which I'm like oh I just want the brainpower to like look over the contract or like look over like all this stuff that you know they want me to do and it's like I you know in that point that I usually just delete it and I just move on but if I had time to do it then I would if that makes sense so I don't know if you guys have strong opinions about people like myself you know trying to go full-time or you know trying to earn an income on YouTube and let me know how you feel about like ad or sponsored videos down below um obviously I would still keep the content authentic to me and still give my opinions because that would be like part of the deal you know I don't know I mean let me know what you think below because I'm on the fence about it I don't mind if someone like if it says like hashtag ad or sponsored or featuring whatever I still watch the video I don't care because I like that person's opinion but it'd be curious to see my viewers the people that subscribe to my channel and the people that watch that end of watching this video what you guys would think so post it down below let me know let me know I'm super curious all right this one says hi Emily what tools do you use to plan and keep track of things on your non-youtube workplace also what made you choose okay so let me ask her that question first then we'll go she has got a bunch of questions um so I just use the Aaron Conner and Aurelie at my regular day job and I just use the stickers in the back of the book that's all I use also what made you choose this Shiba Inu and how did you come up with the name Doyle um I think I've answered this in a few different videos uh Shiba Inu is because my high school friend that ended up being a high school boyfriend his family had a Shiba Inu and I absolutely love their dog Merlin and so I knew when I got older I really wanted to get a Shiba Inu of my own and I did I don't even know where my little Shiba butt is but he's he's doing something back there I don't know and how did I come up with the name Doyle uh the guy that I was dating at the time when I got Doyle was a huge poker fan and we were watching the world series of poker or actually he was watching it and I was probably doing something else and um we were trying to come up with names and I really love old old names and um I walked by and I was like what about Doyle because Doyle Brunson is like a world series of poker guy or whatever at least at the time I I don't know so that's actually who he is named after is Doyle Brunson oh and then she says hope you have been already answered these questions before I have but it's okay I'll answer them again this person's so funny I says I'm still gonna answer this question by the way because I feel like we should all be able to talk about our periods she said are you a pad tampon or menstrual cup kind of gal and then what age were you when you started your period if you remember what happened I remember exactly when that happened because that was freaking traumatizing you guys I was in seventh grade and no no no I'm sorry I was in sixth grade it was the very end of the year I remember I got home and I wasn't like sounds weird but I wasn't like big into peeing at school so I like never would go to the bathroom at school so as soon as I got home I was like you know you get off the bus and you're like oh my god you gotta pee so bad so you get home and you're like oh what the hell I mean I already knew what it was because um actually when I was in Girl Scouts we had a whole I don't I felt like a whole day but I don't think it was it was probably a few hours and there was a bunch of different Girl Scout troops that came in and Planned Parent had actually put on this like educational seminar for us and there was like different stations where there was like five or six girls at each station and we would just rotate and they talked about what a period was what it looks like how it feels to have a period like they talked about cramps and like what you can do like you can take a Tylenol or an Advil to like help with that they talked about contraception they talked about what sex was I mean they were just very like nitty gritty they like had us uh touched um tampons and pads and things like that menstrual cups weren't really I mean they might have been around but they weren't like mainstream like they kind of are now um they actually had us touch like condoms they had us uh see what a female condom was um I think they had like lubricant there and stuff too I mean it was just like here are the facts you guys like here are the facts I think we went in like fourth grade maybe like end of fourth grade which I know was kind of early but uh what are the gals that I shouldn't say gal I mean she was like a child like we were children but one of the girls in my group had already gotten her period like she was way more developed than any of us um any any of us other girls that were in there and my mom was a troop leader at the time and was like okay we need to like inform our girls of like what's going on with their bodies and like what to expect and all of that and um she found this thing and it was it was so educational so like when I got my period for the first time I just like put my underwear in the in the laundry and of course I didn't do my own laundry at the time and like a couple days later my mom like runs up to my room and is like why did I'm like I don't know I knew what to do so like I knew where the pads were I knew where the tampons were like because my mom showed me like where they were and you know what her brand was and like you know where they were and I don't know so I was just like I don't know I just dealt with it I just did it you know I just like put a pad on and changed my underpants and I knew how to do it I didn't need my mom's help so I think she was kind of disappointed that I didn't tell her but I was like why I didn't think it was a big deal but now I'm like more of a liner tampon girl maybe I don't know mostly a liner girl as I get older it gets better I'll just say that are you going to be giving out Halloween candy this year yes yes I am um I actually already have my Halloween candy in my cabinet I want to go I need to go to like the Dollar Tree and get one of those like big those big big plastic bowls hide oil um because this one here is a little stink butt and hates when people knock on the door or ding dong the doorbell so I'm just gonna put a bowl of candy out because he's such a pain in the ass so yeah and then if I lock him in a room and then the door rings and people are pounding at the door he's gonna go even crazier so oh this kid this kid favorite 90s movie slash tv show slash song can I help you because I'm 35 years old and listens to 90 music everyday nice um 90s tv show my so-called life with jordan catalano oh my god I mean I wanted him to be my boyfriend for sure like I followed Jared Leto on all social media platforms because my little 15 year old heart still wants jordan catalano in my life and if you don't know who jordan catalano is just google it because you're gonna fall in love uh what are your favorite kinds of videos to watch besides planner videos I really really really like home stuff and like fashion stuff lifestyle things those are kind of fun to watch I don't know and there's certain like people that I really like too so um I like some vloggers like I love anything Casey Neistat does I feel like he's super creative and really fun and I just I love the way he tells a story it's just it's really interesting to me um I will never be at his level but like he is something to like aspire to with the vlogging situation those are kind of what I like to watch and to be completely honest like I know this is gonna be kind of crazy for you guys to hear I don't watch planner related videos I know it's crazy I watch a couple of people so I watch like life's organized chaos I watch these are the people I'm subscribed to so like obviously I watch the videos so I I watch life's organized chaos I watch plan the pounds away and I know both of them actually in real life which is kind of funny and there are a couple people I'm subscribed to that do planner related content but then do a bunch of other stuff kind of like my channel and to be honest I don't really watch their planner stuff I watch all their other stuff so I know that's kind of crazy yeah true confessions here true confessions for this gal ask if you didn't need to sleep what would you do with your extra time um I would probably um devote it into my channel to be completely honest and kind of get this momentum moving a little bit more and um just be closer to goals if you will to you know end up doing this full time so um I don't know when and if that will ever happen but I would love to do that kind of like I talked about previously that's probably what I would do at the time why did you pick the name Doyle I already answered that what would your favorite subject in high school and why you know I really liked floral design it was kind of a cop out class but I was always done with my stuff in like a second and it would always I mean my opinion it would look good I mean I got a nice media in those classes there was floor design one and two and it didn't matter which one you took first yeah I was like so into it and I loved it and I don't know it was just really fun it was just creative and then also like we talked a lot about um like costing and like how much it costs to you know create a wreath or create a centerpiece and like how much each stem is worth and it was really it was really cool and I really enjoyed it um okay so this person asked uh you currently do videos each month but would you ever consider doing a budget recap video at the end of the month to show us how you stayed on budget or not you know I've kind of debated about that and like at the end of the month I show you like the last month anyways like I open it up and I'm like oh well here's how last month turned out so I don't really feel like an explanation is due um in all the things that I like budget for are in those categories I don't I just feel like for me it would be a really boring video for you guys because it would be on my channel as so redundant because I'm just gonna go over it again I don't know so short answer no I've never really thought that that would be a good idea yeah because then people start asking like well why isn't this in there and I saw that you bought this and I saw that you shared this and all this stuff and it's like yeah but that was a business expense and then people get all judgy about like well that's not a business expense well it is when you're sharing certain things and that's between the text person and me you know like it gets weird so yeah I I'm gonna say no I'm just gonna say no uh okay so I actually know this person in real life hi Beverly by the way uh it says she says love the random videos and laundry uh why the glasses lately and can you see close or can I see far all right so good question since I um had that recent bout of like really bad headaches like chronic headaches and migraines for like I don't know what was it like 40 days or something ridiculous towards the very like first couple of weeks I think it was like the first two and a half weeks I had my contacts in and I was like screw this literally threw them in the trash and because um I had a headache and it was actually like pressure like right behind my eye it was really like it was just throbbing so I was like you know anything that I can get out of my body like even if it's a contact like I just need to get them out so um I haven't put my contacts back in but I think actually tomorrow I might put them back in for the first time because I've been pretty steadily headache free for about a week so I'm feeling really good and there's a little tiny headache but it's like very very manageable like I wouldn't take like an Advil or anything for this kind of um of pain so I think I think I'm good now um and then can I see close or can I see far or maybe it's can't you see I don't know um so if I take my glasses off and blind is a bad and I can see my hand to like right here and then it gets blurry so yeah I can see really really close without my glasses on but everything far away is just like blurry images and colors and light and that's about it it says uh next question does Doyle ever show his teeth when he smiles can we see a picture of him smiling one of these days you know on instagram I have a few of him smiling if you don't follow me on instagram feel free to post or not post it's it's down below you can just follow there if you want here's the deal if Doyle is smiling that means he's super stressed out and he's probably like a few moments away from a panic attack so yeah he does actually like legitimately have seizures so I try to minimize his stress level usually this happens if we go to the vet if we're going to the groomer's office if we're going somewhere he just does that kind of thing and then he like really smiles and he doesn't really show his teeth a lot and if he's showing his teeth that means he's stressed out so but if you look back on my instagram feed um there is pictures of that somewhere hi Emily I love your channel and your budget videos are really informative my question is how long does it take you to save up for your home also Doyle is awesome well thanks um you know I've been steadily saving for about three four five ish years um I mean and when I got I didn't get really super intense about it until the last like two and a half years to be completely honest but before then I was still throwing like every bonus and every single tax refund birthday money whatever it was I just threw it in there and I forgot about it but you know I would still like go on trips and like do things like that but I mean I would do that out of just my regular income so um I wasn't really taking a lot of my like regular income and paying myself you know off of that I hope that makes sense that's what happened all right if you were to change your name what name would you adopt going forward and why you know so I didn't really like my name growing up as a kid because nobody else was named Emily everyone else was named like Amanda and Jessica and Katie and I like so desperately as a child wanted to fit in because I was just like so awkwardly weird and crazy kind of like I am now um but just like a lot shorter but I just really wanted to be like accepted and fit in and I felt like my name Emily was so different because nobody in my school had the same name like literally nobody not even just my class but like nobody in my school had the same name now it's super popular but it's really not popular amongst like the 36 year olds of the world I mean there are other sort of 36 year olds that are named Emily but it just wasn't very popular when I was born so I don't know what I would go for because I don't think any other name is good maybe FDE maybe I don't know that one's for you Kayla by the way if you're watching which you probably are so hi Kayla she calls me FDE another good question if there are is there any food that you hated as a kid that you now love she says mine was mac and cheese I would not eat it because it looked weird and then one day I tried it and I've been loved ever since well mac and cheese is really good um let's see here uh yeah uh I really like certain vegetables now like I really like mushrooms but they have to be cooked you know vegetables I guess maybe that would be a good answer how do you resist the urge to spend well that's easier said than done I feel like everyone is different and resisting the urge to spend is very difficult for some people and very easy for others it just kind of depends what I do is I keep my bigger goal in mind so whether that's paying off debt saving for your kids college living your retirement dreams like whatever it is that's gonna not make you go through the Starbucks line every single morning and get you further to that with the money vehicle that you do have that's kind of what inspires me to curb the spending a little bit like just kind of push it down be like no I don't need that it's like no I don't need stuff from William Sonoma well I actually I have a couple things from William Sonoma but I don't need to go hog wild in there I can find a lot of the other things that are very similar like a home goods or a target like there's ways to get those certain things like on a budget um and it just makes me think about it a little bit more to say you know these are my other goals that I want to have and bigger things that I want to do with my life in order to reach those goals I need to say no to a couple things right now this is a great question and I have no answer but I'm gonna read it anyway it says how do you get gel pen off of your sheets after you fall asleep planning and roll over on the g2 pen repeatedly throughout the night well girl I think you're just gonna have to go and get some new sheets okay I don't know because g2s are freaking messy and I really want to see a photo of that so please it's a plan Sarah plan take a picture I hope you took a picture of it you should tag me on Instagram because we're on Instagram right now so I know you have an account you should tag me because I want to see that if I had to eat one meal for the rest of my life what would it be I would say dragon house but they closed so I don't know I don't know right now someone says have you been intrigued by it says m-o-n-a-t monay monot I mean I think monay like the painter have I been intrigued by monay at all I miss the same one I don't know I believe some of the youtubers you watch advocate for it curious in your thoughts I don't know what it is so I have no thoughts sorry someone asked how can I stop living paycheck to paycheck budget sacrifice and make a plan good luck do you do a lot of reading if so what are you reading now and what are your favorite books to be honest I don't do a ton of reading because my extra time on the weekends is really dedicated to you guys and YouTube so I don't do a ton of reading but I am a big nerd and I love to read business books randomly so I read like all the Dave Ramsey stuff and then I also do other things as well so I've read like the Amazon book I've read like the container store book yeah I'm crazy like that this gal asked what is the weirdest thing you've had to do for Doyle for example my dog had to get his anal glands low okay we're gonna stop asking that question now um that yeah I mean I get it uh probably the weirdest thing you know when okay there's some weird stuff and if you guys don't like TMI like click out or like put it on like mute for a minute when Doyle was a puppy this is like so normal with like boy dogs they're a little like weenie it would get like mucus on it and he would like constantly lick it because I think from like being a little pupper and then him being like weaned off of his mom I don't know but something was going on and I would take like not a hot washcloth but like you know a warmish washcloth and like wash it off because like he'd get like dirt in it because it would be like still wet from the pee and I don't know it's fine now obviously but it's like a very normal thing for uh little pups to have at least with shebas I think with other ones it's fine too but I mean you can just leave it too because they will just like lick it and they'll clean it themselves but I was like ew and glue you so that's probably the weirdest thing I've done so far all right so last question on Instagram and then I am going to wrap this bad boy up if you could go back in time what year would you travel to um I would travel to a very specific year I would travel to 1999 that is the year that well actually no 1998 in the fall when I started my senior year of high school I would do a lot of things differently it would probably change the trajectory of my life a little bit but I would also be able to spend some time with people that would still be alive at that time as well and it was just a good time in my life and um you know to kind of like just relive those memories too which is kind of cool because that's like the last time in my life I really remember having not really a single care in the world so that's probably what I would do well I was going to say goodbye but I am back I just changed my battery um I don't have that many questions on Facebook and this video is going to be like epically long anyways so might as well just keep on trokin so now I'm on the Facebook answering your questions my social media links are always below if you guys want to watch or not watch well you could watch I guess but um if you want to follow me anywhere so first question do you do a meal planning I know cooking for one can be challenging just curious if you plan out you know to like keep costs down at the grocery store um you know I don't really plan it I just kind of like whatever looks good at the grocery store and then I just kind of eat the same thing for like three or four days because I'm single and I'm sad but yeah that's usually what I do a lot of times I'll even come home and I'm like you know it sounds really good right now like a tomato and I'll like legit just sit and eat a tomato like I don't know um I'm single I guess I can do that if I really want to I don't need to like make a meal how did you get hooked on Erin Condren what made you gravitate towards the hourly and does it truly give you enough room in the evenings will you go back to the life planner well it is a life planner but it's just the hourly version so how did I get hooked on Erin Condren um probably Jen Ross from well then it was Jen plan or not Jen plans I'm thinking of somebody sorry organized like Jen that's the channel that she had named at the time now she is pretty neat living that's who first kind of like introduced me to Erin Condren and Erin Condren products let's see here what made me gravitate towards the hourly Jen plans actually on Instagram um she started using the hourly and I was like you know what like this would work so much better than uh the vertical that I had been using because I just didn't understand like how to put it in properly and the hours just gave me like a parameter and I just felt better for me uh does it truly give you enough room in the evenings no unfortunately it does not I have so many wish lists about how the hourly could be better but I wish there was more time in the evenings but I don't know uh no short answer no it doesn't give you enough time in the evenings but if you don't really like schedule too many plans in the evenings it's okay um or if you do have plans in the evenings you could just like put it at the bottom and then will I go back to the life planner I think you mean it will I go back to the vertical I actually do have a vertical for my business stuff for next year so yes and no um my regular planner will still be an hourly but um my business will be a vertical next question other than your monthly budget how do you keep track of your expenses do you use a monthly spreadsheet of what is spent where no I don't um my monthly spreadsheet is essentially my monthly view on the ec monthly deluxe planner that I use so no spreadsheet just nice and decorative and weird that's me this is a great question um opinions on staying with your parents to save it for a house versus saving while living on your own and to get a house she said since you kind of did both well yeah I have I think that there is something to be said for paying your own light bill and being responsible for all the groceries in your fridge and all of that but if I could go back in time and save all of that money when I was a younger kid I would have multiple paid forehouses by now I wish I would have known what I know now and even if I would have saved half of it um I would be in be in superb shape but I didn't and that's okay I feel like if you have a good relationship with your parents and you just keep your parents informed as to like what you're doing and why you're there and if they support your goals and dreams financially I mean they don't have to support you but if they want to give you maybe free rent or really discounted rent or groceries or whatever it is while you're there I say go for it um there obviously are situations where it's not good to be with your parents because of reasons and you know you have to make that call but my parents and I really get along and there's no like animosity or issues or me feeling like they owe me for something or vice versa like it's just it's not like that and I have a good relationship with my mom and my dad so yeah I mean we just like we're all adults and we have mutual understandings with each other about things but I guess it's about your family dynamic and what works best for you you know if your parents are going to be upset that you're not contributing to the grocery fund when you've got you know $30,000 sitting in the bank waiting for a mortgage down payment you know they depending on their personalities and stuff you just don't want people getting like mad about it when you've got you know goals happening and then and then at that point I think it would be worth moving out on your own renting as cheap as you can maybe getting a couple roommates and just to remember that it is temporary if I could go back I would stay with my parents as long as I could and save up as many dollars and cents as I could but you know I got to do it for a little while again so that was kind of fun hey can you sit down it'd be nice can you sit down everybody can see your ears everybody can see your ears oh jeez hi Doyle um someone also asked if you can only eat one foot for their studio life what would it be again dragon house but it's closed so no and then what is your favorite holiday and why I would say the 4th of July I really really like it because I used to I haven't been in many years and I need to go back but I used to go to the 4th of July race in Daytona every year for NASCAR and I haven't been back in years but it was just such a fun time I think I went for like what five or six years straight or something it was awesome it was so much fun and I'm a huge NASCAR fan yeah I don't know but I love 4th of July it's always like a good not kickoff to summer but you know summertime barbecue fun I don't know but I do not like fireworks by the way fireworks are freaky I don't like them and because I have this putridutra we can't really be outside like 4th of July weekend too much during the evening so a lot of times what I'll do is I'll get up like super super early in the morning like three o'clock in the morning and kind of like trick him that it's like five or five thirty then we'll go out right before sunset because most people aren't you know cracking fireworks and stuff at that point let them go outside for the last time and then we just kind of buckle in for the night and I've got a sound machine that's always in my room and if it gets too crazy like in the house or wherever we are I'll just go into the bedroom with him and like watch a movie on my phone or whatever um because the sound machine kind of draws like draws that sound out so Doyle's just Doyle but that is it for all of the questions if you guys made it this far like you should just thumbs up for yourself because holy bajolis and I hope you grabbed a snack because this was a doozy it was a doozy wasn't it doily's yeah it was such a doozy that my laundry is not done but um it's stopped so I need to switch that out a little bit you're gonna say goodbye with me you're gonna say goodbye you're coming over here come here come here you guys want to see what the dog is doing he's protesting I asked him to come over here and this is what he does what are you doing Doyle what are you doing that is the opposite of come here yeah that is the opposite of come here oh thank you you're so helpful you're so helpful all right so Doyle and I are gonna say goodbye thank you guys for watching this longest video um if you've got questions feel free to post them below also your thoughts and feelings about some of the questions that I posed today um that would be awesome just put it down below because I'm like super curious so anyways we're gonna go I need to do the rest of my laundry and Doyle needs to get out of my arms because he hates this but there is a window in front of me so he is having a good time looking outside and seeing people walking around there's some people walking outside right now so all right well we're gonna jet thank you guys for watching and we'll see you later say bye you know what I'm saying goodbye thanks for watching honk honk all right see you later guys bye


I hope you're enjoying the event. It was a long time for in-person events, right? And I always have a dream to play on a Broadway show. So this is my day. No, just kidding. I'm better on the soccer field, actually, than on stage. All right, so let's start. I'm Olivier Poupenis from Symphony. And I'm here today to talk about how to develop. And automate workflows in seconds. About 2,000 years ago, inventors in China took communications to the next level, crafting cloth sheets to record their drawing and writings. And one fact highlighted by the pandemic we are traversing these days is that our way of working still relies on activities based on this invention. And work from home makes it costly and painful. So hyper automation. Gartner defines hyper automation as a business-driven discipline approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many businesses and IT processes as possible. And no doubt that this will drive our upcoming challenges. Workflows are at the heart of hyper automation. So let's see now what kind of workflows we are trying to automate here. And let's see a representation of a sample customer activity cycle divided in three phases, pre, during and post. The pre phase is the period where the customer decides and prepare what to do during is when things happen and execution takes place. And finally, the post is to keep it going and make sure the cycle can repeat. Each phase is decomposed into processes. And if we look at the pre phase, we can have processes such as account opening, credit analysis and sustainability. During and post will have their own ones too, right? And again, this is a very simplified example and I'm sure that your activity cycle is probably much more complex. But this is for our understanding here. If we zoom into the credit analysis, we can identify a certain number of workflows like information collection, information analysis and credit approval. Zooming into one of them such as credit approval. And we'll see that we have to first request an approver, review the analysis done from the previous workflow, evaluate the risk and take decision on the acceptance or request a dedicated committee to take care of it and finally send back the final decision. This is the kind of workflow that we will explore today and see how to automate on symphony. Automating a workflow on symphony provides a lot of benefits that are listed here. And symphony has not been designed and is not in our intention to restrict the collaboration between humans but help humans to work efficiently. So what is the solution? The solution is to develop bots and bots can do everything a user can do and more. For example, you can format a nice message with enhanced controls from a bot. But the problem is that you have to code them and therefore imply developers. The hope is that low code and no code technologies will help to reduce the dependency of highly skilled personnel. Going toward no code is a ground that every organization is trying to reach. But the reality is that all of the effort will be limited in terms of capabilities. These technologies can help until reaching a certain level of complexity and are more adapted for small and moderate scale projects. But this is already good, don't make me wrong. This is already a lot. So how do we go from there? Innovation and reduced time to market are the main motivators for financial institutions to engage in open source. So from this statement, we studied how to bring low code and open source together. As a result, I'm happy to introduce here the Symphony Workflow Developer Kit. So here is a diagram to understand the positioning of the Workflow Developer Kit or WDK. The goal is to be as close as possible of a composable business where you can literally assemble business components together. Programming languages and generic low-code or no-code platforms have their pros and cons, right? But when limits are reached, the low-code platforms have the tendency to open to pro-code. At Symphony, we first opened a platform through APIs and provided a bot developer kit to ease the work of developers. The Workflow Developer Kit is the next step in our journey to help developers to build solutions. It can do almost as much as the bot developer kit can do, but with the potential to go toward our final objective. And we'll see that in a little bit. What is the WDK architecture? It's architecture sits on three layers. And the first one helps to describe workflows using a YAML-based language called SWADL for Symphony Workflow Automation Definition Language. You can represent activities triggered on events to manipulate a context. That's basically what the workflow needs. The second layer automatically translates the SWADL. Description into executable BPMN assets. And the third one executes the workflow thanks to an embedded open-source workflow engine called Camunda. Not sure if you know this workflow engine, but it's pretty famous on the market today. So what is the impact on the development cycle to use a product like this? Compared to traditional approaches, the amount of effort and time to deploy is much lower, just because we are describing and not developing anymore. And monitoring activities can help to understand how to refine the workflow to make it more efficient. Think about a step requiring a user to approve a request that takes in reality three days. If you know it by monitoring activities, maybe you want to insert a step in your workflow to remind the approver to do the task after a certain period of inactivity. The future of the WDK is, of course, to go visual. Everyone is asking me this question. Can we do it visually? This is something, of course, we are planning to do for the near future. And to provide a way for non-technical users to describe their workflows, still under the control of developers, which is quite important here. Enough of the theory. Let's see it in action now. So I'm gonna switch to a presentation from the presentation mode. Let's go back. All right, sorry. All right, so on the left side, you have my ID, my development of our environment with an example of a Swaddle workflow. And on the right, you... Is it your right? Yes. On the right, you have a symphony where I have here two rooms and instant messages, one with my bot and one that is a dedicated room. So I'm gonna start it to start the bot that includes the WDK. It's one line of, sorry. To start the jar that contain everything. And it takes a little bit of time and when it's gonna tell me that everything is up. So it's a live demo, sorry if there is some issues coming up. WDK sits on a regular symphony bot. So there is authentication of the bot with the key manager and to get also a session key. And then the bot is able to use the API and the workflow will of course consume those APIs. All right, so it's there, my bot is called Asiabic and I can talk to him. And this is my Swaddle. So I took the example that we saw in the presentation previously, which is the credit approval. And this activities has one, two, three, four, five activities, this workflow has five activities. What is the first one? The first one is to assign an ID to an approval request. So what we do is when a message is received like slash credit approval with an amount and a currency, what we want is to define and get a random number and keep it for the entire context of the execution of this workflow. Of course, this could be a little bit different. We could call an API and the API can give you this information and keep also the request, store the request in a database. And the second activity here will be to request an approver. So we have here in a variable an approver Rome ID and we're gonna send this particular form with what has been requested, by who the new request ID. And the amount of the currency and a button that says assign me. So everyone that will be inside that room will have the potential to request to be assigned to this ticket. And then we'll see what we're gonna start this already and we'll continue after. So to trigger my workflow, I need to say content dash approval with, I'm gonna say 1000 and the currency would be USD by sending this to my bots. The workflow is gonna be triggered and I should have soon a message in the credit approval admin room. It's a little bit slow, sorry. That's demo effect. Yeah, it's very slow. I don't know, you had some troubles before as well. What? Oh, the network is not okay. Why I'm not on the wifi? No, I'm on the wifi. All right, sorry about that. So I can show you because I made a lot of demos about it. So that's what should come up. This approval ID with, I'm gonna go like this. With this form, with assign me, you click on assign me and then the bot will talk to you directly with you have been assigned to this credit request. Please review the following information. So you get an attachment and this is, let me go back to this one. This is the next activity that is called information analysis with request approver. When request approver is, has been done. So on form reply of the request approver, I'm gonna send a message that will be inside in this, for this user ID, the one that initiated the event and this is the content that will be sent. You have been assigned to the credit request. You can use any of the, of the symphony special tags as well, like the hashtags to create signals automatically on it. And then with an action button, like done. When it's done, we go to the next one and the next one will be the risk evaluation where we ask the user to approve, reject our request, which is something that appears here. You approve, reject or request, you submit and then it goes to the approval and mean room to say the status of the credits is approved with everything here. As a workflow developer, I didn't show you the final decision step, which is here when the form is replied, the risk evaluation is replied. What do we do is we sent everything like the status of the other request. If you need to update this workflow, so the swatter language is recognized by your ID automatically because it's based on a standard and public YAML based language. So here you can add another activity. If you want an activity about messages, automatically you have the list of all the activities that you can do on Symfony. If it is something about users, it's the same if there's something about rooms, it's the same as well. That's pretty much everything. So if you reach a limit, if you want to do something that is very specific to what you can do, we also have a way to expand that custom activity and you can extend the swatter language by yourself by creating those custom activities. Of course, it is part of our open source program. So if I go back here and I go to this, the WDK is deployed, is, sorry, available on the Phinos repository in the Symfony ecosystem. And we are of course open to pull requests if you're interested to extend, create custom activities that you want to be part of the standard YAML language, swatter language, it's definitely possible here. Because at Developer Relations, we help developers as well. What we provide is a course and a certification program that comes also with our tools and very soon you have a dedicated course for the WDK that you can go from our developer center. Everything is free and our intention is here really to help you. And that's it. I'm sorry about the demo, but it seems that we have some technical, some network issues here. So I unfortunately cannot run it right now. And I don't know if you went to our booth, but we did all day some demos. It's very lightweight. It runs on a Raspberry Pi and you can of course put it on your cloud if you want, but it's definitely something that is absolutely not heavy. Any question? Yeah, so maybe I went a little bit too fast, but for example, if I want an activity to, sorry, send a message, that's true, but when you say for example, you don't know if it's send or update, you know it's message something, it points directly to the right list if you put message. And then here you have like, what are the parameter of send message? So you have for example, sorry, the ID. So I'm gonna say ID, you have also the documentation of the parameter, what it corresponds to. And the events, so on which events, you want to trigger this. So on on, and then when a message is received, when a message is suppressed, when a user joined a room, so you have all the least of you can do. So you can start by learning the very basics and the ID will help you to learn more and more and acquire the proper language. How many of you are using, I will come to your side. How many of you already developed bots on Symphony? How many of you are Symphony users? Yes, question. Yeah, no, so actually the WDK is helping to create a bot. At the end it's a bot, right? And the bot is two things. It's an application, but it's also an account. So the bot itself has an account on the Symphony network. So that's why you are talking to the bot like you would talk to a regular user. And it has some extra capabilities compared to a human, but the authentication is made the same way. So yeah, the WDK sits on top of our bot developer kit who takes care for you. So you have just a description file to define where is the public key of your bot that will be recognized by the bot account that is in our system. And the authentication is made like this. Yeah, actually a bot, as I just said, is really like what a user can do, but in an automated way, right? But everything that a user can do a bot can do, and more. In any room, it can be a one-one and it can also be on behalf of someone else. There's something also possible. Like the bot can add for me if I'm not available, for instance, but I know for that kind of questions I want an automatic reply and the user will see as if I do it by myself. Any other question? I think it's the last session of the day. So because you were patient, I have a little gift for you. We have symphony t-shirts. I don't know who didn't get his t-shirt yet, but who wants the t-shirt? Who didn't get the t-shirt? We have, our L are really large. Large, you have to help me, Yongshan, because large too, still have some. Of course. All right, please make sure to come and if you need more. Thank you.


Oh my goodness yo this is my puto Mozambique it's beautiful right i got the longest suspension bridge in africa right in front of me i mean it's beautiful like africa is really rising if you don't believe that places like this do exist in africa my brother change your ways that's why africa to the world is here to stay we are here to show you the positive image of africa but yeah today i mean i really want to stay away from this content but it seems that africans don't want me to stay away specifically africans in china yo your boy is right here and for the first time i feel so proud to be african because i feel like the rules and regulations i mean the law is working in africa i mean for the first time i feel so proud to say i rise oh come say of this national anthem this is the nigerian national anthem to serve our fatherland with love and what and strength oh my goodness so when i see things like this i feel like now africans i mean we are obeying the rules and regulations in africa this is how it's supposed to be because we cannot sit down fold our arms and allow foreigners to come and disrespect us in our homes i mean they disrespect us both home and away if you had diaspora african diaspora you cannot tell me that if not been disrespected whilst living abroad what really happened you know i was busy filming videos yesterday because i can't wait to show you this beautiful city of maputo and then i saw so many people tagging me in the post and i have to go check it out and when i saw the post i was like china africa again what really happened my friends and i have been asked to live this chinese establishment a restaurant too simply because we are black on the continent and you are telling me that you cannot sell this food to the people living on the continent it doesn't make sense we've been disrespected for so long and i feel so happy i mean not so happy i'm now using what the laws to protect eight people because last month i did a video i said that i feel like when you talk about this issue africa is not ready to bring measures to control or bring measures to resolve this kind of issues that is happening in africa when you are living in a continent where the leaders of people in power don't care about eight people people always try and take advantage of you so i'm so glad that the people in power are now defending the people i'm so glad that the people in power are now doing the right thing because this should be done a long time ago the FCC PC closed down the restaurant yesterday i mean less than 24 hours because the girl recorded the incident and the incident went viral and the cpc whatever came and then they closed down the restaurant i mean how cool is that if things like this happens next time they will lend sense because trust me you can never open a restaurant in china i mean even as a black man you cannot even open a restaurant with your own name you have to use a chinese person's name if you don't know ask anybody as a foreigner you cannot even buy land not to talk of what buy a house in china without using a chinese person's name but they come in here buy sell and yet they will tell you that we are not gonna sell it to our your own people yo i mean i'm not gonna talk too much i'm not gonna waste my energy on this video this is what happened and i just felt like sharing with you um let me know what you think in the comment section but hey hold on i'm gonna show you the beautiful streets of maputo tomorrow so boy mr ghani baby and um yeah i'm out


Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. Coming up on the program, Maria Ritter Jr. reports on displaced Afghans leaving the country to survive. Brian Lin has this week's Technology Report on a Japanese experiment that broke the record for internet speed. Later, Andrew Smith and Jill Robbins present the lesson of the day, but first... The desert in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan is filled with hundreds of thousands of people. Some live in tents. Others live out in the open after they were forced to leave neighboring Pakistan. More than 40 years of war, violence, and poverty have turned 6 million Afghans into refugees. Another 3.5 million people are displaced within the country of 40 million. Many were driven from their homes by war, earthquakes, and drought. Afghanistan's economy collapsed after the Taliban returned to power following the withdrawal of the United States and NATO allies in 2021. Now, two-thirds of its population depends on international aid to survive. Displaced Afghans live in camps around the country. They do not have enough food or firewood for heat in the winter. Women and children often turn to begging. Others marry off their young daughters to families willing to pay them money. In May, for example, 15-year-old Shamila was married at a camp for internally displaced people outside Kabul. She stood in a bright red dress among the women of the family who congratulated her. But the girl was unhappy. I have no choice. If I don't accept, my family will be hurt, said Shamila, whose father did not give the family's name because he feared the Taliban. The groom's family is giving her father money to pay off debts taken to support his wife and children. I wanted to study and work. I should have gone to school, Shamila said. I have to forget all my dreams, so at least I can help my father and my family a little, and maybe I can take the burden off their shoulders. Last year Pakistan decided to deport Afghans who entered the country illegally. Many Afghans lived for years in Pakistan. They were afraid of continuing conflicts at home. When Pakistan's order was announced, hundreds of thousands feared arrest and fled back to Afghanistan. The Afghans, said Pakistani officials, often prevented them from taking anything with them. Their first stop has been the camp in Torkom, where they might spend days or weeks before Taliban officials send them to another place. With little food and little to protect them from the mountain cold, many in the camp are sick. In a camp at the foot of a mountain, 55-year-old Farooq Sadiq sat with his wife and children on the ground among some of their belongings. Sadiq said he had been living in the Pakistani city of Peshawar for 30 years and owned a home there. Now they had nothing, not even a tent. He said they had been sleeping on the ground for the past eight nights. I have nothing in Afghanistan, no house, no place to live, not enough money to buy a house, he said. He hopes to settle somewhere in Afghanistan and get a visa to Pakistan so he can go sell his home there to use the money for his family. The deportations from Pakistan have greatly increased the large numbers of Afghans who tried to migrate into Iran hoping to find work. Every month, thousands cross into Iran at the border near Zoranj. At night, with the help of smugglers, they climb over the border wall and jump to the other side. Mostly young men, from age 12 to their 20s, flee Afghanistan this way. They plan to work in Iran and send money home to their families. Many are caught by Iranian border guards and sent back. Others take a longer trip by car through mountains and deserts on Afghanistan's southwestern border, through Pakistan, to reach Iran. There is no border wall there. But fighters from the Sunni militant group Jundala often attack the migrants, killing or kidnapping Shiites among them. Over several months, Associated Press photographer Ebrahim Nuruzi traveled across Afghanistan from its eastern border with Pakistan, to its western border with Iran, to report their stories. I'm Mario Ritter, Jr. Japanese researchers say they have broken the world's speed record for sending internet data. The recent experiment involved sending data over fiber optic lines enclosed inside cables. Fiber optic technology is currently the fastest way to transport or transmit internet data. Fiber optic cables use signals of light to send data over long distances. The fiber material is very thin, about one-tenth the thickness of a human hair. Fiber optic technology was meant to replace an older internet transmission method that uses cables made mainly of copper wiring. This method can also carry data over the internet, but at much reduced speeds and capacity compared with fiber optics. A report released last year by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union, ITU, suggested current worldwide internet data transmission is reaching full capacity levels. The Japanese data transmission experiment used fiber optic cables, but the engineers involved made some changes to the cables in an effort to greatly expand speed and capacity. Such methods are known as multiplexing technologies. They aim to increase the amount and speed of internet data with existing transmission equipment. These technologies combine multiple communication signals into a single transmission line. One multiplexing technology called Wave Division Multiplexing, or WDM, aims to increase the wavelength capacity within transmission cables. Another method called Space Division Multiplexing, or SDM, can involve increasing the size or number of fiber optic centers, called cores. Engineers from Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, NCIT, led the researchers who carried out the experiment. The tests measured speeds in petabits. One petabit equals one million gigabits. The record transmission demonstrated a data transmission capacity of 22.9 petabits per second in a single fiber optic cable. The previous record for data transmission was 10.66 petabits per second set by the same team at NCIT. Major progress has been made in recent years in internet data transmission speeds. In October 2022, an international group of researchers announced they had broken the world record. That team reported they had reached a test rate of 1.8 petabits per second using a single optical cable. Results of the Japanese experiment were officially presented in a paper released at the 49th European Conference on Optical Communications in October. The team said it was able to beat the previous record by a large amount using new methods to expand and combine different WDM and SDM elements. The method used a fiber optic cable that contained 38 cores. The researchers said expanding the number of cores resulted in an increased number of optical paths for high-speed data transmission. One researcher was Chigo Okonkwo of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He told the country's NL Times the rate of 22.9 petabits per second represented about 20 times the global internet traffic per second. Okonkwo also noted the speed is about 229 times the total capacity of the kinds of fiber optic cables currently in use today. Worldwide, the estimated average internet data transmission speed in 2023 was about 46.8 megabits per second. International Research Service Statista reports the rate reached 118.7 megabits per second in Western Europe while Northern Africa had the lowest estimated rate at 9.8. Statista said the American-based Pew Research Center studies internet data transmission rates across the United States. Pew reports the fastest current data transmission method available in the U.S. called fiber to home is about 10 gigabits per second. This amount is equal to about 10,000 megabits per second. Most Americans receive much slower data transmission rates, an average of just under 50 megabits per second. Pew estimates fiber to home service only accounts for about 20% of the U.S. internet service market. The NCIT team described its latest test results as a major step toward the realization of future ultra-large capacity optical communication networks. But in order to reach this goal, the team said its current methods must be further perfected. For example, the researchers pointed to one major issue that could delay future deployments of its superfast fiber optic system. This will be the need to complete significant upgrades to current telecommunication hardware systems in order to support the new cable technologies. Brian Lin joins me now to talk more about his technology report. Thanks for being here Brian. Sure Dan, glad to be here. This week you reported on a new internet speed record reached by researchers in Japan. And the record was measured in petabits, which I'm guessing most of us have not even heard of. Yes, that's right. It truly can be hard to imagine or comprehend what some of these superfast speeds mean. But the report does note that just one petabit is equal to about one million gigabits. So for comparison purposes, the most advanced fiber optic networks currently in the U.S. operate at speeds up to 10 gigabits per second. But that kind of service, known as fiber to home, is estimated to be used by only 20% of America's population. The data transmission rates demonstrated in the Japanese experiment are way beyond what any current system can deliver to homes. So that being said, how soon could we expect to start seeing the kinds of speeds reached in the latest experiments being widely deployed? At this point, it really is hard to say. Several years ago, for example, Americans were promised much improved 5G wireless service that still has not been deployed across wide areas of the U.S. For example, one estimate suggested 5G was currently available in just 31% of homes across the U.S. Internet service providers are still saying they're seeking to expand that service, but it certainly demonstrates the difficulties and delays that can happen when building out new infrastructure to support these new high-speed data transmission systems. Alright. Thanks for joining me, Brian. You're welcome. Thank you, Dan. VOA Learning English has launched a new program for children. It is called Let's Learn English with Anna. The new course aims to teach children American English through asking and answering questions and experiencing fun situations. For more information, visit our website, learningenglish.voanews.com. Name is Anna Matteo. And my name is Andrew Smith. My name is Jill Robbins. You're listening to the Lesson of the Day on the Learning English podcast. Welcome to the part of the show where we help you do more with our video series, Level 2 of Let's Learn English. This series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. Today, we're going to talk about Lesson 4 when Anna and Pete go to see a circus. They show us some ways to politely disagree and state our opinions. As you may remember from our previous podcast, Ms. Weaver had asked Anna and Pete to do a new program where they give different opinions on a topic. We can listen to the beginning of that program as we start Lesson 4. Hello, I'm Anna. And I'm Pete. Welcome to He Said. She Said. Because there are always two sides. To every story, today's show is about circus arts. Circus? That's not an art form. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. I think Pete and Anna have different ideas about what an art form is. But we don't know what they are yet. They are disagreeing in a very simple way, as we heard. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Kind of a boring way to disagree. In this lesson, we learn about some more interesting ways to do it. By politely giving your opinion and supporting it with examples. So let's listen to how Pete supports his opinion. Recently, I went to a circus festival. There was a huge circus tent and many different circus performers. It was a celebration of circus arts. That looks fun, Anna. But I don't think circus performers are artists. I think they are athletes with interesting skills and costumes. Pete supported, or we might say backed up his opinion, with more information about the circus performers. He is giving a reason for thinking the way he does. This is an important point for English learners who want to develop their writing and speaking skills. When you give an opinion or argue a point, you should provide support for that opinion. And when you have a different opinion, you can choose to politely say a different opinion the way Anna does. That is a very interesting point of view, Pete. And I completely disagree. And back to supporting your opinion, there are several ways. One is to state facts. Pete says the performers have skills and wear costumes. You can also support your opinion with statistics or numbers. Another way is to give examples. Listen to how Pete continues to support his opinion. Anna, Michelangelo was an artist. Rembrandt was an artist. People who swing from ropes are not artists. I know it's not easy to swing from a bar and catch someone by the hands. You have to be very athletic to do that. What do you think, listeners? I believe he's giving some examples of people he considers artists. Then he gives an example of an athletic activity, swinging from a bar and catching someone. You may have noticed that Pete mispronounced the names of the artists, Michelangelo and Rembrandt. That's a way of showing that Pete really might not understand very much about what makes something artistic or what makes someone an artist. When you're having a disagreement as Anna and Pete are here, it's important to listen to the other person's argument and see if you can find some point of agreement. Do you think Anna will do that? Let's listen. That's a good point, Pete. They are athletic, but they are called trapeze artists. Trapeze artists. I hear what you're saying, Anna, I do, but where is the art? Look at these guys. They're jugglers. Yes, they are skilled in the art of juggling. They have a special skill, but are they artists? No, they're just throwing things back and forth. Kind of like you and me, Pete, we're going back and forth on this issue. I don't think we'll ever agree on this one. No, but we can agree that these young people are amazing. Okay, yeah, we can agree on that, but still they are very athletic, flipping and throwing each other around. Yes, I agree with you on that point. Notice that Anna said, that's a good point to show she is listening to Pete's argument. Pete and Anna are still going back and forth with the art question, but they both think the young performers are amazing. And Anna tells Pete she agrees in this way. Yes, I agree with you on that point. When you have a disagreement with someone, it's sometimes helpful to get a third person involved. We find that one of the circus performers has an idea to support Anna's opinion. You know, Pete, let's let the performers speak for themselves. Kate and Piper tell stories while hanging upside down on a ring. Was it hard to interview them upside down? I interviewed them right side up, Pete. Kate says circus performing may be athletic, but it's not competitive. With most sports, you compete. It's an art form because, like, other sports are competing. This is simply performing and having fun. Okay, Kate made a really good point. In athletics, there's a lot of competition, but still. Here's Piper, Pete. Well, when you're up in the air doing circus, you have to perform. And so we learn to embody characters and to move fluidly and gracefully in artistic ways. And that is why they are artists. You're right, Anna. Oh, you're right. It's just so beautiful. I know, Pete. Pete is saying from Anna's point of view, I think, with the help of Piper and Kate. It seems one important difference they see is that athletes are competing while the performers are having fun, not trying to do their performance faster than others, for example. It's an art form because, like, other sports are competing. This is simply performing and having fun. Yeah, and the other difference is that the circus performers are becoming a character. Essentially, they are acting. Well, when you're up in the air doing circus, you have to perform. And so we learn to embody characters and to move fluidly and gracefully in artistic ways. That may be a new word for you. It's spelled E-M-B-O-D-Y. It means to give form to an idea, like when you make a symbol or an example of something. Here, Piper is talking about expressing or becoming a character. I think it's time for us to give our listeners their assignment for this lesson. Choose a topic that people are talking about where you live, or pick one from our activity sheet in lesson 4. Write to us with your opinion on the topic and support it with at least two reasons. Facts, statistics, or examples. You can email us at learningenglishatvoanews.com or put your comments on our YouTube video for this podcast. And it'll be great if you share the lesson of the day with your friends and family. Remember that you can also find us on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Thanks for listening. I'm Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. And I'm Dan Novak.