Hello and welcome to our talk, Unlocking Kubernetes Intelligence. I am Damian Kuroczko, a senior DevOps consultant in AWS. And this talk will be conducted by me and also Mateusz. Hello, everyone. I'm Mateusz Zaremba. I am DevOps architect at AWS. Okay, let's get started. We'll be talking about Unlocking Kubernetes Intelligence with foundational models and we'll need a bit of intro before we start. But very soon after the intro, there will be a demo. I can promise you that, and it's pretty exciting. But about the intro, what we'll talk about today is essentially two things. We'll talk about one, a tool that we'd like to introduce to you that helps with integration of artificial intelligence into your Kubernetes experience.  But before we go into the demo, I'd like to start with a little bit of technical introduction. And let me ask you, let's see the show of hands, who have heard about LLMs, or large language models before. Okay, I can see some hands. Some people did not raise their hands. Don't worry, I will explain a bit. And for the people who know, it's going to just be a minute, so don't worry, we'll go into the technical stuff back again soon. So what are LLMs, or large language models? Those are essentially big artificial intelligence models that convert, that accept text as an input and output also text. And they are trained on a very big body of text. You can think of Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, you can think of documentation. And by the process of training, they get to know this. And what they also get to know is how to interpret text. And since they accept text, they can also understand the context. So let's see an example. It is actually an example of one of the large language models that I asked, what should I see in Tokyo? And then I asked it also to answer in one sentence. And this is also pretty important, so that you can not only understand your input, what do you want to see, but also how do you want to frame the answer? It is the concept of understanding the shape, the syntax that you want the output to be. And let's see the example answer. And it's actually an answer to explore a couple of districts in Tokyo and see a temple. And honestly, I've been there, I've verified this, but this is pretty good advice. So that's essentially all you need to know about the LLMs before we proceed to the next step. And the next step is let's think about how AI can help us as a technical people. And I wanted to highlight two particular topics there. First one, it's a per programmer. So you can think of the AI, you can use the AI tools, like GitHub, GoPilot, like AWS Code Whisperer. You can use it to help you program. So if you have not used it before, the way it looks, you just write your code and based on the context, based on the surrounding code, it can help you generate more code. So for example, you can actually ask it to capitalise every first letter in the sentence of every word. And they can pretty easily actually generate such a code. And the second bit ties to what I said before. So the second bit is the source of knowledge. And what I mean by source of knowledge is it's a very easy, it's very easy to query the knowledge of the LLM because you don't need to hit the right keywords. You don't need to type specific syntax. You as a person just can use your natural language to ask it for something and you will get the answer back. And as I already said, they're trained on very big sources of information and we can get this information back very easily. And also we can say in what form and what shape we want the answer. Maybe we want to explain it in an easy way or maybe we want to get the steps of something. So how to solve something. And this is actually what we want to talk about today. Using the AI as a source of knowledge. But we can go one step further. I expect that a couple of people here are SREs or DevOps. And what we do like is automation. We don't want to rely on having to take an action and remembering the action that we need to take every single time. If we have a repetitive procedure, we'd like to automate this. So let's think how we can automate using the AI knowledge and how we can skip this copy pasting. So that's the one question. And then there is a second question. How can we ensure the privacy? So probably many of you used similar tools, certain tools like the LLMs, powered by LLMs, using some chats backed by the AI. But where does this information do we enter go? And as an employee, as a team, as a company, we want to ensure that this information goes into specific place. And quite often it will be actually the best if it does not leave our network. If we have control over where the input goes and what the model can do. And what we want to show you today is the answer for those questions in Kubernetes. And the answer is KSGPT. KSGPT is an open source tool that helps you stay inside your natural environment when you're working with code. So command line interface. And then with the privacy aspect, our contribution allows you to keep the traffic, keep the information that you enter under your control. And here I also wanted to give a shout out to Alex Jones, who is the creator of this project. He also helped with our contribution by reviewing and verifying our pull request. So thank you, Alex. And with this bit of introduction, I'm finished. And I like to give the words to Damian, who will tell us a story. Yeah, thank you very much, Mateusz. So we wanted to demonstrate how you can use KGPT to speed up a little bit your, let's say, working environment and also debugging what's wrong. So by this, I have a let's say that. So, first of all, to make it working, we had, I needed to prepare some infrastructure underneath and how to set it up will cover later on. Right now I want to show you how to use KGPT. So I have a deployment and let's say I'm a developer that I've got a task to change something in my application. And also this application normally runs on production on Kubernetes cluster.  But for some reason it's not working. And also we see the status is pending. Probably for seasoned administrators, Kubernetes administrators and also knowledgeable people that will mean a lot. And we would need, we know what to do next with this. Probably kubectl describe and also check the pod status and so on and so on. But here I would like to show you how to use KGPT analyze, to analyze our cluster and also show us the old problems that KGPT founds. So right now we see two different problems. Normally when we would use kubectl describe, probably we will find one problem. Later on we will, I don't know, maybe copy and paste this error message to Stack Overflow or something like that. Here we have exactly information what's wrong on what's, let's say, not in perfect state right now on the whole cluster. As well, normally we would need to go through one error by one and discover it by ourselves. Here we have it, let's say, on the screen together on one run. And what we see, we see that one kind worker is not healthy and also something is wrong with our pod. And also its error shows that it cannot be scheduled on three nodes. So one is not healthy, then probably the next one should pick it up, but it's not working. This, for this moment, we didn't involve any AI. So this is pure codified experience in KGPT. So KGPT knows what needs to be checked to know that, for example, pod is not healthy. Right now let's include some AI in it and let's try to explain why those problems are there and also let's get some solutions, recommendations for this. And right now what is going on under the hood is that these errors are sent to our LLM and LLM will answer us with the proposal what can be the solution for your error. So basically on the kind worker, the solution is that we should check the logs of the kubelet and later on it's necessary to restart the kubelet. This error, so this solution, of course, whenever I will send it once again, the LLM model will once again analyze the problem and send me back the answer and it can be different each time I will send it. Okay, so let's restart my node to make it healthy. And the second problem, let's take a look on that as well. So the node, it's insufficient CPU, try Rascal Drilling, check the instance CPU resources available. All right, so let's have a look on my definition of my deployment and also the CPU part. Okay, so we required a CPU that is 250 CPUs, that is much too big number for my laptop, so let's make it much smaller than and redeploy this deployment. So both should be fixed, but it's still pending. Okay, so let's once again analyze our infrastructure and check what's going on and why it's still pending. Send change, right? I think that this was one print, all right, still pending. It's weird, to be honest. Let's investigate it then. The demo effect. Yes. I think minus F is deleted. I think I know, am I, I think I'm in the wrong directory then. I'm changing the different deployment. Let's have a look. Yes, okay, sorry. Now it will work. It was changing the wrong file and applying the same one without any changes, sorry about that. So that's where we need the automation, right? Yes. Okay, now it's created. Okay, all right, so right now we have another error. So this shows that we have next step, let's say, right? So let's analyze this once again. Okay, no problem detected because it didn't show up yet. But let's see now. All right, so we have a nginx with fail start. Okay, so let's describe this back off restarting. So right now, even here, we don't see anything that would be, let's say, meaningful for us. And I wanted also to show the feature from KGPT that it's quite new. It's related to the filters and analyzers. And also, I wanted to show GPT filter filters list. So basically how KGPT works is that we have a list of analyzers that can analyze our cluster in depending on the different, let's say, angles, right? So we saw that it can analyze the pods and nodes as well, but there is a bunch of things that it can analyze. And also, some of the analyzers are not turned on by default because maybe it's not useful for you. And here I wanted to show you the analyzer, which is logs, analyzer to logs. Let's add it to our configuration. And right now, KGPT will be able to analyze not only Kubernetes from the Kubernetes point of view, but also it will be able to analyze our logs from containers. And let's analyze it right now. So right now, the KGPT found even six problems. And also, let's see what it will find. And so those six problems probably will be from all namespaces. As on this demo, we want to focus mostly on the default namespace. Let's limit it because we have, for example, from Kube system scheduler, some logs and so on, so on. Let's filter it out to just default namespace. Of course, we can limit it to only services, for example, or only for pods and so on, so on. So we see in the logs that also what I wanted to point out is very often probably on our pods, on containers, we will have a huge, long list of the logs and errors. And it's very tricky sometimes to find the correct line, which will be meaningful. Here, KGPT is checking which line is with the exact error. And here, we see that the container cannot bind to port 80. So let's check our definition of our pod. And we see that in the security context, we are dropping or blocking the bind service capability. So this is blocking that container for doing what it wants. So let's change it and apply this change. All right, so one is terminating and one is just to clear it up and apply. All right, so now it's running. So with port forwarding, let's have a look if it's working. Almost there. So right now we have 404. So we are inside the container, Nginx is working, but the misconfiguration of the Nginx is still not perfect. So let's once again, analyze our cluster. And here it will show that the KGPT is able to get into the logs and found the error, the exact error that is the latest one. And also it will show you the example of solution. So here we have an error with the index is not found. And the solution is that to check if file exists and so on and so on. We see that the path is not correct. It has a typo and also I've prepared the fix for that. On the, let's say this is the Docker file of our Nginx with the typo. And I've prepared the newer version, which is with fix of that. So let's change the version of our pod. And apply it. Okay. It's configured with pod routing and it works. So application is working. And this is very basic application that is only print screen from the release of KGPT that shows that the feature that with Mateusz prepared, which was the adding the SageMaker provider to KGPT was released. And also this version is quite old. It was one month ago added, but right now we have even three new versions. So that shows that this project rapidly grow. And yet this, this is the demo part. Let's go back to our presentation then. So you saw how KGPT can be used by, by someone developer or someone else. Let's have a look how to configure it and what is needed to make it working. So for sure we, from, from our laptop, we need to have a connectivity to the Kubernetes cluster. KGPT use Kube contact that is used by Kube control. So you need to have a configured context locally. And also you need to have a connectivity to a model that you pick because there is a bunch of, of them that will be covered as well later on. In our example, we used Amazon SageMaker in AWS. And in this case, to have a connectivity to SageMaker, we just need AWS CLI configured and have credentials, temporary credentials locally. To install on laptop, KGPT CLI is provided by a package for the Mac, it's easier mostly by, to install it by homebrew. But of course, the binaries for, for other OSs are also prepared for Debian based and also Red Hat based OSs and also for Windows. With each, with each version, there is a list of, of the packages that you can install. In terms of the configuration, KGPT, of course, has a very good help. And also it's very useful to, in terms of the listing and also adding the backends so we can list all backends. And also to add, for example, Amazon SageMaker, we need to provide two elements. One is in which region it was deployed. And second thing is that, in which endpoint name it has. And this part also will be covered in the part of the SageMaker. As well, everything what we will do with CLI is saved in the config file. And we can change it later on if needed. And some other parameters also are saved there. That can be also changed in CLI or in the file. Okay. But CLI is very good for temporary and maybe locally to work on right now problems. Right. And in terms of the production, very often we don't have even access to production cluster. So for, for this purpose, KGPT operator was created. So we can install KGPT inside our Kubernetes cluster, have it running all the time and also based on our configuration, create reports, which is called the results of what was going wrong in specific time. We can install KGPT operator by Helm chart and also configured by Helm values file. Additionally, with the KGPT operator, we are able to create Prometheus service monitor. If you use a cube Prometheus stack and also Grafana dashboard that will visualize the reports from KGPT, what was going wrong in the past and also graph if the problems are growing or we are fixing them. Additionally, KGPT has web hooks that we can configure to notify us on the Slack. And for those interested in platform engineering and in the backstage plugin is also created for KGPT. This part's covered KGPT so we know how to install it, how to configure it, how to use it. Now we will switch a little bit to SageMaker part and also the back ends of LMS, which will be covered by Mateusz. Thank you Damian. What we will talk about is the backend and also we'll mention our contribution, which is the SageMaker backend. But let's go into the back ends first. So what are the backend? KGPT by itself does not know how to resolve those issues. KGPT knows how to analyze, what to check for, but it does not know how to fix them. The backend is the place that tells the KGPT what information is shared to us, so shares information how to fix those issues. The AI back ends are basically behind those comments that you run explained, and then the KGPT sends the information to the backend and then the backend responds and as I mentioned before, it's powered by a large language model, so it receives text and responds with text. In our case is how to fix the issue. So let's talk about SageMaker backend itself and what is in our contribution that we thought it's important to share with you that increases the privacy, increases the control of the model that you use. So SageMaker backend architecture essentially consists of a couple of elements and when we run the explain command, we are the person here on the left side, here on the left side and then we're going from the left to the right and I'll explain what's happening. So first, we hit the SageMaker endpoint. This is the instance that's running all the time or could be a couple of instances that has the LLM on board and is responding to your requests. This LLM endpoint, this SageMaker endpoint, and by the way, SageMaker is AWS service for machine learning. So that's why the SageMaker is repeated a couple of times. And here the SageMaker endpoint is just constantly running with your model. Then on the next to the right is the SageMaker model. What it means is that this SageMaker endpoint takes the model from the model registry and the SageMaker model is association of model artifacts and container image and potentially more metadata about the model. So what the artifact means? Artifact is the weights for the model. It's the actual model. It's the packaged model that we want to load into the container. So there's the container image that we want to load in the container and the container will tell it how to serve the model. And this information together, so container image and artifacts, plus potentially more metadata if you'd like to, creates the SageMaker model. And then we can create, from the SageMaker model, we can create SageMaker endpoint. And in this case, what the SageMaker backend gives you, it gives you the power to control the SageMaker endpoint. You can also replace the artifacts and the image to whatever you would like to. So we have control over the network. You have control over the image. You have control over the artifacts. Essentially every bit of the stack you have control over. But in this case, we still have this, this part that the request potentially comes from the outside, right? But we can keep everything inside our network if we go the operator way. So in case we have our cluster on EKS, or essentially just in AWS, you can have the operator on board, inside your network, and then the request may not even leave your network. And again, here as well, you're in power of every single element of this, of this diagram, and you can change everything you want. And then I'd like to explain to you how you can, how you can deploy it yourself. So how you can have this, this entire stack that I showed you here, this backend. Yourself, how you can create it and have a training in your, in your infrastructure. So for this, we need a short detour. We will go into the cloud development kit. I'll have a short introduction into what cloud development kit is. And cloud development kit is, is a kit from AWS that you can use as infrastructure as code. It's a infrastructure as code tool that with the command CDK deploy will convert your code into actual infrastructure, into actual cloud resources. So let's see example. And in this example, I'm creating a free bucket. And for those who don't know what as free bucket is, it's a object storage in, in AWS and it will create, if you write this code, run CDK deploy, CDK will actually take this, understand what infrastructure you would like to deploy and deploy it into your AWS account. So with this information, we can actually deploy our backend. So deploy your own backend with the LLM on board it. So to deploy it yourself, you need a couple of steps. The first step is the, to prepare the environment, you will need the, in our case, we use Python, so we need Python, you will need CDK, and you will need to authenticate to your AWS account. Then you can call on the repo that we prepared for you. So this repo contains this sample code that actually powered our, our demo. So you can use this backend. We use the same backend as we are showing here. Then you install dependencies from the, from the project, and then you run CDK deploy. And after some time, you'll see something like this. And here you can see it took quite some time, 460 seconds. So don't worry if it's not instantaneous. It's, it's still going, it takes quite a bit. And then I want you to highlight one piece here. This one piece is the endpoint name. As the output, you will see in your command line model endpoints, like endpoint name. And here, important thing, this string will be, will be different for you. This is just a unique name that it's created when we do CDK deploy for our endpoint. And this is the name that Damian mentioned before that we need to specify when configuring the backend. So this is just a unique name in our account of the endpoint that we deployed. So if you go to your AWS account, you will see such endpoint running. So this is how you deploy it. And then we can test it. So let's test it. There is a file in the repository called invoke SageMaker. You can run it with Python. And the example is, and that's, that's actually input the output that, that I actually run against this backend, right? The Hello World program in Python 3. Let's see the answer. Sure. Here's a Hello World program in Python 3. Well, it is Hello World program in Python. So you can see, you can verify if your backend is working by running this file. You can also change the prompt if you would like to. And with this, we know, we already know that our backend is working. So we can edit the deployment. So as I said, you're in charge of the infrastructure. You can change to anything you want. So let's take a look at those two files. Up.py, ncdk.json. I have parametrized couple of values there. So we'll first look at the package name. So what actually specifies which model I deploy. I take existing model package name. And in cdk.json, you can see I take existing Llama 2 model. But here the model is not important, that the exact one that we used. The point is that you can change it to whatever you would like to, and you can run your own model as a backend. Then also we can specify the instance type that powers the endpoint. In my, in our case, we also specify the default for you that you can use. It's working well. And then the third thing that we can also change and specify is the instance count. I defined it to one for starters. But as I said, all those values you can change, you can change the infrastructure. The code is yours, right? You can go into the GitHub, clone it and change it to whatever you would like to. And with this, basically you all can already edit quite a lot in the deployment. If you liked more, you can take a look at the stack.py and change the actual, the infrastructure. And once we are done with playing with it, changing it, we can destroy it such that we remove the instances. If you, if you don't want to have them running because they're running, the endpoint is running all the time. We can destroy it and simply CDK destroy. It will take a moment. And after some time, you will see model endpoints like destroyed. And this actually covers the end of the lifecycle of CDK. And with this, you're ready to deploy your own backend. So we can now go into key takeaways. It will be wrapping now. And there are three points who would like you to remember about this after, after the stock. Damian, the first one is yours. Click. Yeah. Codified DevOps Accessory Knowledge. So in KGPT, it's not the magic. Under the Neath, it's codified elements and analyzers. And you can check each of them on the GitHub. And basically KGPT knows how to check if specific element is working well or not. So this is the one point and another. Sure. The second one is faster debugging powered by LLMs. So this can cut down the time of you debugging things by quite a lot. And it powers it by the fact that powers it by LLM is the part where also saves you the search. So you don't no longer need to copy paste anywhere. You can just do it right in the CLI. And there's also third point that I wanted to highlight. You can host it and control it, control the model yourself. So you don't have to use someone's endpoint. You can control it. And this is this gives you a lot of power. And those are all the three points I'd like you to remember after after this talk. Those are in our opinion, the key takeaways. Thanks a lot for attention. And we are open to questions. And then one more thing I'd like to ask you if you could scan this feedback form with your with your phone. There will be a feedback form. Very quick, free questions, all optional. And let's see the questions. Yeah, please. Yeah, sure. Which. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So I wonder actually. Sure. OK, so there is a question if you can actually reproduce this and then also if you could change the model. So the answer is the actual model that we used is the one that you would deploy if you clone the repository that I mentioned. So this actually the model we use Lama two, but you're free to change it. And with reproducibility, it's with LLMs, they they generate every time they generate something can be slightly different. It can be. So it's not necessarily you will get the same answer, but you will get probably similar answer. So absolutely. Yes, you can reproduce the experience, the specific solution that it gives you, not necessarily today. The same. But we actually use the back end from the code that we showed you and shared with you. And at the end of the presentation, we already shared it so you can see it's in the schedule. The presentation is shared there and there is a resource page. At the end, you can see all the resources with also the GitHub repo linked. And of course, SageMaker is one of the back ends. You can even have a local deployed model, your own model and also use it as a back end. And there is a bunch of lists of other back ends that you can use in KGPT. So it's not only SageMaker yet. Are there any other questions? You just said that we can change any models we'd like to. But how do you make sure the output is correct? So how to ensure the if the answer is correct? Well, you need to trust your model so you can first choose a different model, the one that you're comfortable with. That's the first that's the first thing that you could do. And then there are also each model has also configurable variables. In our case, I mean, if you could go back to the config with temperature and top K. Yeah, I think it was there was in the slide. So there you can also change how it how it works like how it generates the answer. So you can also modify it such that it chooses only the words that it's more sure they should there are the right words. So there is a temperature and top K that can be changed. But yes, it's it's a generative model. So you need to have some some caution and some some judgment whether what it says is actually true. It may produce incorrect answers. But essentially you can switch to different model, the one that you or your team or your company will feel comfortable with. Thank you. I think you mean this one, right? Sorry, top P and temperature. Okay, yeah, top P and temperature. You can change it to minimize the hallucination that LLM will generate, right? And also those, I think you can change. And also you can use different backends in the same time that KGPT can answer you from different models, for example, at once that you can pick which answer is the best. Are there any more questions? Yeah, there is a question. K3S like this. I'm not sure if I know this tool. If you are able, if you are able to, you know, connect to that as a normal Kubernetes cluster, that yes, it needs basically. Sorry, we did not repeat the question. Yes. So the question was is KGPT is able to work with K3S. So the smaller, let's say implementation of Kubernetes. And I didn't check it, but I think yes, if you are able to use a cube control, then without any additional configuration, it should work. See, we have one more minute. So that means if there is any last question. OK, I don't see any question. There is resources. If you did not scan it, please do scan the feedback form. It's really just a couple of seconds and it would be very important for us if you could leave some feedback. Thank you very much.


Hey everyone, welcome to echo calypse a little bit of a tongue twister there and This is your soft launch. So let's take a look at what is the coverage for the soft launch before we Take a look at all the goodies here that we are about to discuss. So for the announcement The soft launch, I didn't know when this was out. I found out. I think The other day This soft launch is only available in the Philippines while a beta test will be held in Australia So pre-registration will be gradually be available for other regions. So right now if you're in the Philippines I'm not sure if this works with a VPN. You can actually play echo calypse already. This was out I think July 28th So not sure yet when will this be available in other countries or will this be available global? But for the meantime, people in the Philippines will have will can access this and can download this and Also, I'm not sure if you can do this on a VPN so Put your comments down guys if you can play the game using a VPN and download This game echo echo calypse echo calypse really difficult to pronounce but again This was a really really nice surprise for me, especially When I was browsing through the new games upcoming for August I Really missed this one. So I've been playing since You know this morning and yesterday I downloaded the game didn't use that account I opened another account and I got this one So definitely a game that you should try on. It's it's your basic gacha RPG turn-based a Lot of things to showcase you have here your squad By the way, the waifu's here are Fantastic if I may say so as you can see this is my team already This is your wallpaper your case is actually your The heroes or units that you're gonna be playing with so I have here SR's the orange ones are the SSR's the The blue ones are the ours Even for the ours, they look fantastic So again from the start you'll be using more or less as SR's so the purple ones to start with and the good thing about this is It's purely turn-based It's mostly on an automated You know it automated Battle system. I'll take you to one of the battles that I have here for the story so that you guys can see what I mean, so You have to set up your case or cases or your heroes and They automatically They automatically do something In the order of in the front row the first on on the top going down Then the second row from the top going down as well So each of your cases have their ultimates Okay, so the first round will be your basic attack the second round They will be recharging it as you can see there. There are four bars on top So while they are recharging their ultimate They will be using their basic attacks So neat, right? The only customization that you can have here is Sorry forgot to enable auto battle. So when you do auto battle Also, these guys here below Will be included in the loop of turns so you can use this will be actually used if you don't do Auto battle then you'll have to use them. Let's do another round so that I could explain more further on the battle system Okay, so let's just confirm these and attack so the art the art the design I'm in love with it at this point There is actually a two times auto one one times auto. Let's just do this one times This is an auto ready if you deactivate auto here then These kills below are called your artifacts They you'll have to manual them And this is the countdown or the energy that they require or that you are generating and The four here is the energy that they require So once you offer you turn off your auto, then you'll have to manually click them like right now But if you don't want to do that, you could actually program them the sequences again the first second third and fourth So you can re program which? Artifact goes off first up to the last one. So let's do this with auto in mind so again going back to The formation your formation will dictate the order in which they will go in order The which in which they will attack so again That is your customization. So so far. I'm finding it nice because It's it's actually it's actually a nice side game to have Doesn't doesn't require you really to be on it Most of the time so let's do another one. Let's do another round of battles here Before we move on to the next phase. Oh I'll go to the gacha system in a while So again as you can see here, they will all go with the basic attacks For your heroes or your units Then a second round will be their ultimates They will have their each Individual ultimate so I have here a DPS. You have their tanks. You have a bruiser there There are a lot of classifications actually in this game in terms of your Your heroes or units. I'm gonna call them waifus I'm not sure if they're all girls, but at this point most of most of your heroes are of female So let's go and check out their classifications In the case menu Okay, let's get out of this It's good that it runs smooth in your in my emulator, so I don't have a problem So your case here, so as you can see Once you click then there is a description of What they are good at this is a DPS DPS as well This is your support more or less your healer Then damage absorption. This is your brawler Actually your AOE shield. This is your tank AOE healing reduction. I'm not sure how what her you know, she's and she's my only SSR here Garula, I still have to know how to play her and This is you you're gonna have your own your own what they call this your own unit But this is only Temporary you will have to use the more powerful Units or heroes that you have so you can take a look at them you can arrange them according to their clan or Their group or their faction as you go down squad is here You can assemble your squad. You can change your squad here in this button here You can you can mix and match their deployment. You can transfer Whichever sequence that you want including the artifacts if you have unlocked another artifact, so this There's an assist. So if you unlock another artifact, you can actually put You can actually mix and match again. So this is where you set up things also You have there are a lot of this game a lot of things that I will cover for this game So artifact storehouse. This is your inventory So gift bag opens when I open this Flower Okay, so anyway, so that is it so artifact K squad syndicate There are a lot of content yet that I have to unlock. So chat is here steel ambition this is content again that You will have to unlock and get some Freebies Okay, so going to the gotcha system you may go through here or You may go through draw So your currency is this one Your elementium you can actually also spend This currency here This is your I don't I'm not sure what this is called there the crystals No, I'm not buying anything Wants me to buy something anyway, this crystal also buys your your elementium This is your elementium so you can use this to summon as well 10 will give you a 10 draw as you can see and Your draw wait Okay, so we're art so this is your draw wait when you reach 50 Then you are guaranteed a SSR in this case So you have your advanced draw. I don't think there are other banners here at this point card pool preview so we can preview And here is the general SSR general probability It's 3% which is kind of higher than your average gotcha and that is it. So this one Tokens used for a draw procurement can be obtained through elementium Okay That is it. So so far so far. I'm I'm enjoying it for the For it's a game wherein I don't have to invest a lot of attention. You could do a lot of kind of auto in this game The customization again would be on the artifact sequence the end the sequence of your squad and That is it So so far for those of you guys who are interested in this one You will have to try to use a VPN and download it this is the soft lawn is currently available in the Philippines and it's currently under CBT in Australia so For those who are interested to follow me in future content for this Please do subscribe because I'll be making a lot of content up until global launch for echocalypse. So that is it guys So hopefully I won't I won't go I won't delve too much on the other content here like patrol You have your complex. Sorry. I forgot to mention this. So this is your dorm type dormitories is here Then leisure center so this is your affinity Archives and showroom so usually the same with pretty much with the other gotcha, but this one visually Speaking I'm happy with this the gameplay We'll have to try it out and See if how it goes Whether it's going to be a good game down the line. We will have to play more of it So again guys, if you want more content from this game, please do follow me or subscribe to my channel I'll be creating more content up until global launch and thank you guys for staying this far.  This is the warden and I'm out of here


What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. So if you're like me and you're struggling with anxiety around this whole coronavirus thing, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. I have an entire playlist for coronavirus and mental health that I will link up in the info card. All right. So yesterday I did a video about eight books I suggest you read that should calm down your coronavirus anxiety. But today I wanted to talk about some facts and just a quick little update about myself. And yeah, I've noticed that my anxiety has mainly come up around other people's behaviors. All right. For example, like just run into the store yesterday to go get some coffee cream or I see people just hoarding toilet paper. And that's when I started getting anxious. Like in this human nature to see people doing that and then be like, should I be doing that? You know what I mean? If you want me to do a video about like the psychology behind like, like the group think that's happening right now, like please let me know down in the comments because it's really interesting. And for me, it helps me calm down because knowing what my mind is doing helps me decrease my own anxiety. But anyways, before I jump into this, there's an amazing psychologist and author named Robert Duff. And he just announced on Twitter that his two books F depression and F anxiety are free today through Sunday. Okay, I'm going to pick up a copy of F anxiety because I already read F depression. And it's so, so, so good. He also has anxiety courses. But anyways, Robert Duff is awesome. Make sure you follow him on Twitter, and I will link his books down below. They are free. They are free between today and Sunday. Okay. But anyways, let's jump into this because knowing the facts is important if we want to reduce our anxiety. So I don't know if this needs to be said, but I am not a doctor. I hope you guys are following credible sources about coronavirus updates and not just the mainstream media. Okay, like, we're going to see with these stats, how the mainstream media is increasing the fear, but even more so, even more so and even worse, it's people like you and me who are increasing the fear. Okay, so the first fact that I want to start with is this one. Okay, last night, my beautiful girlfriend, Tristan and I, we went to go see that movie The Hunt. All right, theater was pretty empty, but it was opening night. I'm trying to gauge here in Las Vegas how much it's affecting our local economy, like are the casinos dead or the movie theaters are typically in casinos. But anyways, I came back home and I saw something trending on Twitter and it was 40 to 70% of the US. And I'm like, what is this? What, what is 40 to 70% of the US? Why is it trending? So I look at it and it's trending because people are quoting an article where a doctor took notes from this talk at like, I believe UCSF and it was trending because it said, one of his notes said 40 to 70% of the US population will be infected over the next 12 to 18 months. That's what they were sharing. That's what they were sharing. Okay. That's what they were sharing. All I did was click on it. All I did was just do one click, just one little easy click. Okay. Because during times like this, we cannot be headline readers if we want to manage our anxiety. So the whole context of this is 40 to 70% of the US population will be infected over the next 12 to 18 months. The very next sentence says, after that level, you can start to get herd immunity. So I'm not a doctor. I wanted to see what that was all about. So I looked up, I'm like, what's herd immunity? I think I know what that means. Well, let me double check. Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune. Okay. So again, we cannot be participating in the panic. Like I was so upset. I was so upset about this. I'm like, all you people had to do was read the very next sentence. Like that's it. Like you guys, should we be concerned? Yes, to a certain degree, but we need to take everything in the full context. Like the Joe Rogan podcast that he did with the infectious disease expert, I see people sharing these like 10 second clips, like 10 second clips about the doctor saying, yeah, it's going to get worse. I don't think people understand that. But if you listen to the whole segment, like he actually says a lot of things to help calm that anxiety. All right. So anyways, one of the doctors I follow on Twitter, he ended up sharing this and it's a data pack that was updated on March 11. So today's March 13. So as of two days ago, something that Dr. Mike here on YouTube always says is like he, he talks about what date it is because that's important because things are changing so rapidly. All right. But here are some more facts. Okay. And I'm going to pop these old graphs up right around here. Okay. So the majority of infectious, the majority of infections are mild, mild series, seriousness of symptoms, 80.9% are mild. Like the flu, you should probably stay at home. Okay. 80.9%. Okay. 13.8% are severe hospitalization. 4.7% are critical intensive care. Okay. Like I don't mean to minimize what's going on and the deaths that are happening are absolutely terrible. I saw Markiplier make a video about this and he's correct. Those of us who are healthy should be taking precautions to help those who aren't. Like I, my parents are, you know, getting up there in age and everything like that. So I'm obviously concerned with them. And I'm concerned about all of your parents and grandparents and everything. Wash your hands. Don't cough on people. All right. So the next one says the bulk of people recover. Okay. So 40% currently ill, 56.6% recovered, 3.5% died. Okay. Next. Those age 60 plus are most at risk. So again, like even if you are not old, do things that will help not infect older people. Okay. But look at this graph. I see a lot of people just sharing graphs where you see these spikes and visually without looking at the full context, it can make you freak out. Okay. We are people, we are living in a time and I'm not like this anti-social media or technology person. I love me some technology, but I do know from a psychological standpoint, because of social media and the way we skim things, the way we only read headlines, it's easy to look at a graph and see those spikes and just be like, spike bad, spike is bad. All right. We need to pay attention to it. Okay. So next it says, especially those with pre-existing conditions. All right. So cardiovascular disease is number one. That concerns me. I've been really thinking about my smoking. I recently switched to a jewel rather than cigarettes, but that is not the best. But now like I'm really thinking about this. Diabetes. Okay. My dad is a diabetic, so that somewhat concerns me. Chronic respiratory disease. Again, the smoking, not good. Abnormally high blood pressure. Cancer. No existing conditions. Boom. 0.9%. Okay. How contagious and deadly is it? It says, we don't fully know yet, but it's in this range. Okay. So the bottom line, the X axis is average number of people infected by each six person. And it's like one and a half to like three and a half people, right? And then the percentage who die, it's sitting there. It's still sitting, I believe, around like 3% or so somewhere around there. Okay. So then it goes, the case fatality rate varies by country. Quality of healthcare, average age of population, both factors. Listen, I don't mean to get political, but I'm going to toss it in real quick. Like right now is the epitome of why we need Bernie Sanders in office. Okay. Quality of healthcare and people who have access to healthcare. Okay. You have Bernie and Biden. Bernie's the one who wants to give you healthcare. And I don't know. I had to throw that in there because I'm amazed that this is a prime example of why we need Medicare for all. Anyways, as you look, it has China, Italy, Iran, South Korea. I'm going to link this down below if you want to check your country for me and managing my anxiety. I'm looking at the USA. Confirmed cases, 1,000 deaths, 31%. Percentage is 3.1%. I think it's helpful to look because it has percentages based on the country rather than the overall percentage. Okay. And this right here, this right here, I'm going to take up the whole screen with it. Okay. Flattening the curve. Okay. Fast, intelligent action, slows pandemic effects, stop overwhelming of healthcare systems. Okay. So what you're seeing is outbreak without protective measures. Okay. So it spikes in the beginning when we don't know what's going on, when we have no clue what's going on, what's happening, how dangerous is this? Should we be quarantine people? Da-da-da-da. Boom. It spikes up. But flattening the curve. That's what we're seeing right now. Outbreak with protective measures. Okay. There are a lot of criticisms about our president and I am very critical of him as well. But we have to be somewhat grateful for the certain things that he's doing, right? But again, this is why we all just need to be conscious of what we're doing. I'm very fortunate. I was just talking with Tristan about this last night. I'm very fortunate because I have a job that I can work from home if I need to. Today, our boss just actually said, hey, take Friday, work from home. We have offices here and in Los Angeles and here in my Vegas office is only me and one other person. We're a little small company. But anyways, I can work from home if I need to. But anyways, just be aware of this stuff. I'm personally not trying to freak out too much. I'm an introvert, so I don't go out too often. So like Tristan and I go into the movie last night, like her and I never see movies together. She doesn't. I see more movies with my son. Anyways, like chill. I might do a video about things you could do at home like if you're not going out. All right. Anyways, disease deaths per day worldwide. Okay. This is important too. So comparing the coronavirus to the diseases that we've been dealing with for years, okay? The ones we've been dealing with for years and how many they're still killing per day compared to the coronavirus. Okay. Tuberculosis is killing 3,000 people per day. Hepatitis B is killing 2,400 people per day. Pneumonia, 2,200 people per day. HIV and AIDS, over 2,000. Malaria, over 2,000. All right. Going down, going down, going down, going down, going down, going down, going down, going down, going down. Coronavirus, 62. Okay. So keep this kind of stuff in mind. Finally, this last graph right here says mentions in the media. Okay. I've been curious about this and I was actually trying to find this stat just the other day. So I'm glad that somebody put it together. It says mentions in media, SARS, 56.2 million mentions. HIV, 40 million. MERS, 23.2 million. Ebola, 11.1 million. Okay. COVID-19, hashtag coronavirus, 1.1 billion mentions. All right. So we need to understand that part of our anxiety is based on how it's constantly in our face. I'm not going to lie like I have debated, as somebody with anxiety, I have debated muting coronavirus words and terms on my timeline. And it's this, it's this weird trade-off, right? Like, do I, what's more important? Calming my anxiety or staying up to date with the news? You know what I'm saying? Like, because I think both are important. Maybe I'll do something where like, I don't know, maybe you can like, because there are programs out there like the Freedom app where you can limit like certain website usage and stuff. I don't know.   Colleges are shutting down. So yeah, it's a much different landscape right now on social media. But anyways, like I said, if you want me to do a video about the psychology behind like kind of these social contagions and how we make each other freak out, let me know. And don't forget, Robert Duff's books are free Friday to Sunday. They will be linked down in the description below.  All right. And make sure you follow him on Twitter too. He has a podcast. He does a bunch of cool stuff. Okay. But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon, as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my books over at the rewiredsoul.com, as well as the merch from the merch store. All right. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.


It helps us to retrain our imaginations, it lets us look again at what we have classically determined these guns as weapons of destruction to be weapons with inherent possibility. So they take these guns and they make them into garden tools. We begin to learn to think with our minds about alternatives, a world teeming with possibilities, new ways of solving problems. I don't know about you, but that's the type of world I want to live in. A world where my son imagines new possibilities, way to solve problems. A world that moves beyond this flat lining of images of guns and moves to a more robust, healthy heart pulse filled with new life from all.


Aganza Chisaka, who is a Wonder Woman of all sorts. So we're gonna jump right in today because we have a quote from it and it's crazy to think that we're almost at the end of our series, but we'll relish the last few moments just as we can. So why don't we jump in today? I'll start off by telling us a little story of how I met Aganza actually. Again, it's the same research trip that I've spoken about in the past. I went to Uganda to do some research related to post-colonial performance traditions in 2018. And my acting professor, Catherine Coray, mandated that I meet Aganza because we went to the same school a few years apart and have similar interests. So this is how we met. And in the same trip, she ended up producing the debut that I made in my international directing career and we became lifelong friends and colleagues and we found ourselves producing the sixth edition of the Kampala International Theater Festival and the seventh edition launched today. So the timing of all of this is so serendipitous and perfect. But to tell you a little bit about Aganza from the way I see her, she is an actor, a playwright, a producer, a director, a scholar, an interested artist, a global theater maker. Is there more that I can add to that list without using up the entire time we have today? Probably. But hi, my dear, how are you doing? I'm great. That was such a beautiful story back in time. Oh my goodness. And it's such a strange current period and all of that has happened. Wow. Right. It's not even been three years yet. It's crazy to think, right? My goodness, my goodness. But I think meeting you was such a match made in heaven. We have had a great artistic journey and also social journey as friends together. I thank Catherine Corey all the time. That she mandated you to do that. Thank you for having me on this platform. To have my voice added to these phenomenal women is such an honor. Thank you. This is such a great initiative. I'm excited to be here. Well, we're excited to have you. Thank you so much for being so willing to lend your time and to talk to us for an hour and tell us about who you are and what your practice is. Before we jump in, I just, given the recent violence and the issues happening in Uganda, I wanted to ask how everything is, what's the situation like there? I know you're based in Kampala right now, so I hope you and yours are safe as well. Yes, by God's grace, thankfully, we're safe. Our area is safe. It is quieted down. Sunday was a quiet day. Monday is a quiet day. Of course, everyone is following the news and keeping close contact of their family members, but thankfully, we're good. Thanks for asking. Yeah, I'm glad to hear you're doing okay, but just where I think the entire region at this moment is under some massive political turmoil with BBI happening in Kenya and the war going on in Ethiopia, but really happening in Uganda as well. So thank you for that update. I hope things start slowly easing out in the next couple of months, building up to the election. But on to brighter things. Tell us, I mean, I always love hearing this, right? This is my favorite part of the series because I get to talk to women and I love to hear their stories again, but why don't you tell our audiences present here today a little bit about you and your Jenny and what makes Aganda the artist that she is? I come from such an artistic background. I'm so honored to have that strong foundation, especially on my dad's side, my paternal side, very artistic line of individuals and not just in the performing arts, also in the visual arts, musicians, carpenters, whatever art it is, there is someone in my family who has done that. And so the arts was always around me. I always saw it, it was always appreciated and I'm so thankful to have that as my childhood background. I started out as a poet. My parents told me that I wrote this poem at seven years old and it was really cute and I had aunties who encouraged me to keep writing. Alongside the writing of poetry, I was dancing and I was doing hip hop, I was doing modern dance, I was doing ballet and so poetry and ballet or dance were my daily art form until I was about 18 years old. I never thought of myself as an actor because I believe it or not quite shy, I still am. Most people don't believe that but I think artists in general, to a certain extent, have a tinge of bashfulness to them. They're also some sort of introvert or something. And so being on stage, being the lead character, being the director, producer of anything wasn't my thing. It wasn't what I went for outright. It was just, oh, do you wanna dance? Yeah, sure, I want to dance. Do I get to wear that awesome outfit? Do I get to hang out with cool people during the weekends? That's cool, let me do that. It was not until I went to university that the lady who interviewed me said, you look like a great fit for theater. Would you like to try that? I said, would I get to dance in theater and would I get to sing in theater? I was like, yeah, you get to do all the stuff you love to do but theater, you get to do drama and we think that you'd be a great fit for that. I said, okay, my first class, I fell in love with theater. My director was Ruben Polendo. He's still my mentor, friend and director. And Ruben. Yeah, love Ruben. He broke down what storytelling was for me in such a real way. He has this thing he calls whole theater, theater that is fully visual or all the senses. And he loves, it's whole theater to him. This is his theology. He says, it's whole theater when the audience and the actors have this zinc moment at the exact same time. And it's a feeling in your body and sensations that you cannot express in words but you can only feel when you're in the theater. And I understood that. I understood exactly what he was talking about. And it was the only class. I mean, at university I did theater and psychology but theater was the only class that I did their readings willingly. I mean, who reads Stanislawski willingly and who reads Aristotle willingly or before that I couldn't read Shakespeare but here I was reading Shakespeare quite willingly and I've read it the whole night just because of the way Ruben opened up the world of theater and performing arts to me. It wasn't from the point of view of I'm an actor, I'm a director, I'm a producer. It was this, it was speaking, it was how does your body communicate? How does your voice communicate? Where is the real you? Who is the real you? And let's see that on stage, be vulnerable on stage. And I love that on authenticity and I love the integrity of performing. And I think up until now I still search for that in my own work. So that's how I got started.  Like this was the first question and you've gone into the exact point of the conversation that we're supposed to have today. So deep, so fast. So let's just jump in. Here I was thinking, okay, I'll talk to you about your university experience then try to tease that out a little bit but you've gone bang in. So how do you, let's go for it. How do you seek to find this concept of whole theater, this zinc connection between audience and actor in your work today? Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the work you've been doing now that helps or that has helped create that philosophy for you in a more robust way in the context that you work? Yeah, you know, Karishma, it's been so hard in Uganda to create that type of theater. First of all, I mean, just the conversation at the theater festival that we just had today. Eric, I was talking about how do we get people to the theater to buy tickets, the ticketing issue? That's still a real, real issue that we have in Uganda. And so first of all, your challenge is to fill the theater or with the people that come to the theater, to the few audience members, how do you convince the actors, the performers to create that same whole theater with like 10 people in the audience? Is it the same feeling? Is there a performance that can exist away from an audience? So I guess that's what we're doing now in 2020 performing without an audience and can we say that we're having whole theater and isn't theater a place where people can convene and come together to share hearts and minds and disagreements and explore their self-identities through how they see themselves on stage or to see the society on stage? It's difficult, but I've had those experiences. So much good work. I guess, let me talk about the bitjodo, which you directed, I produced and acted in. The bitjodo was such a unique piece to begin. I had acted in it the first year and it didn't go so well simply because of the circumstances of where the piece was performed and how it was performed and coordinated at the theater festival. So the next two years of performing the bitjodo I performed in it three years. So the next two years were eye-opening for me because I saw the script in a whole new light and I think the compiler audience got to see the script in a whole new light. They saw it's humor, they saw it's political agenda or voice, they saw themselves on stage and the audience that came back for repeated performances were saying the jokes alongside the actors and that for me was like, ooh, we're doing something in the industry. We're speaking, people are coming to watch theater and they're getting it. Just to hear people in the audience say shh shh because they wanted to listen to the lines. That for me is exciting. It's, that's where I want to be but that's not what I've always had. Platforms like the Compiler International Theater Festival bring that sort of learning to Compala. Bring that, I'm talking about Compala because that's where I am right now. I'm not so sure how audiences are in other East African countries but platforms like KITF and other festivals enable the audience to learn how to appreciate art and therefore come to some sort of holistic theater. But I'd like to, that's one side. The other side that I'd like to say and how I approach whole theater in my own work is my own spiritual journey because I do believe a performer has to perform regardless of an audience. So I can't rely on an audience in order for my performance to be good. I can't work off their energy. At some point, I have to inspire me. I have to speak to me. And that's very spiritual and that's extremely emotional as well. So at what point does the performer unveil themselves to themselves? And it comes with a great deal of vulnerability to oneself in the storytelling. How does this character relate to me? What am I saying to me? What have I learned from this script or from this work that I'm doing right now that impacts me and I can somehow impact someone else wherever they are in the world because I don't know when this work will be seen. And I think that that holisticness in oneself that vulnerability to oneself to admit to oneself anything, whatever it is can create a kind of whole theater or a whole artistic moment that can transcend video and time and the four walls of the theater. It lasts long. I'm not sure if I'm going off too much. You tell me. You aren't. Okay, great. Keep going. This is beautiful. Keep going. Yeah, so there's that kind of whole theater. And my work right now, I've just done a piece called Killing Time this year that has been two years in working. Not because the piece is long. It's because it has gone through rewrites and reworks just showing people and people giving them me their input. And every time I hear it, I'm like, this needs to be enhanced. This needs to be taken away. I hear a voice of a character that I never heard before. And I'm like, oh, let me enhance that part. And so when in writing now, well, let me speak as a writer now, in writing, looking for whole theater would be, is this character saying what they need to say? Now, sometimes I wish I was like, Deborah, Simway, who to me feels like she just, you know, conjures all these amazing words and scripts from on high and then just fills them out. But I'm not like that. I need to sit with the work. I need to allow the characters to speak to me. I speak back to them. I need to hear them. I need to hear actors do them. And then I know what they're saying. I know where they want to go. And I need to be honest to that character. Recently in one of the killing time rehearsals, I heard one of the characters in such a unique way that I hadn't heard them before. And it freaked me out because I was like, whoa, this character is controversial. This character doesn't sound like Aganda Jizaka wrote that character. And that was a really great moment for me because I was not sounding like myself. There is a pressure to always write characters that convey exactly what you believe at all times and at every single 24 hours, seconds of the day. But that's not the case. Art just spills out of you and you need to let it spill out of you because it's a reflection of life and our interactions with life. So to negate one side of yourself and say, I'm only staying true to this path because it's the right path according to your inner ethos and values could create work that is a bit lopsided. It's like, I'm going to create a story of being on a border border from my home to town, but on that border border from home to town, the surrounding areas completely meet void of trash, void of carbon dioxide, void of everything that makes Kampala Kampala. That would make the story lopsided. People be like, hey, but what about all the cars honking and what about the trash bins on this side and what about the birds that are singing at that corner? Why didn't you write about those birds? And so to create an art that is holistic and to write characters that is holistic, one has to bring in everything that affects them in life and let it be what it is. It becomes difficult, of course, when the audience then questions you and says, so do you really believe what you notice? Is that your, are those your beliefs? They don't have to be. They don't have to be, but that's what the character is saying. That's what the work is saying. And if I can be a conduit, that's the word we're using in this conversation, a conduit, a vessel that carries that message that I should carry that, then I should convey that message and let it be that. Perhaps it's not for me, perhaps it's not for you, but it might work for someone else. Yeah, you've really touched on a lot of really interesting concepts throughout your process, both as an actor, as a writer, in your producing capacities as you're speaking about the audience. One of the things that stuck out to me as you were speaking was this notion that not everything is for everybody, right? Not every piece of work is for every single audience. And you've talked about your experience producing the betrothal and with KITF and then also in your own shoes as an actor. If you're not finding the space in Kampala or if you're not finding that sort of connection with the audience, you talked about looking in within yourself to be able to maintain that connection with whatever character you're playing or whatever character you're writing about, how do you, Aganza, do that? What are the things that you cannibalize, so to speak, as your art? And what do you find in your daily life that moves you in a specific direction when it comes to the art that you're making? What makes you tick? What makes me tick? You know, there are some good days and there are some bad days. And thank God for friends who are there on your bad days. Thank you. Great conversations, books, good sleep. But also going out to society. I think the times when I've stopped creating are the times where I've distanced myself from the real world. And I say real world because it's easy to be in your own world and think it's the real world, your own little safe bubble. Like right now, for me with the situation that's going in Kampala, it's not inspiring for me to write anything about it sitting here in a comfort zone in a safe space. I'm not inspired. My inspiration is going to the streets when all the halibut is happening and seeing how it's happening. My inspiration is reading the newspapers and seeing all the contradicting or all the different views. My inspiration is hearing my friends talk about it and seeing the expressions in their face and how they get excited or afraid of another just because of different political views. That's exciting. That's juicy for me. Seeing other people do work. When I see other artists' friends pursuing their dreams and saying they're gonna get through, they don't have funding, they don't have this, they don't have that. But they just say, we're gonna do it, we're gonna go ninja, you know, we'll sneak in at night, we'll steal a few cables, you're gonna light up the place and then we'll be out before they even know it. That's inspiring for me. And that makes me want to write. But then you can't always have that. There are some days when you really need to self-motivate and honestly, it's hard. It's really hard. Sometimes it's just like one line and hours.  And it's in those moments that a good friend, friendly call really spurs you on when someone says, oh, I saw this work you were doing. What was it about? And then you have to talk about your work and then you realize, oh yeah, that's why I'm doing it. And then you remember. So recently as having a conversation with an artist, we were talking about dance. Saying, why do you dance? What's the why? And I could ask the same question about performing arts, acting and drama. Why do you act? Why do you write? Why do you direct? Why do you produce? And I think the answer to that question has to be unchanging no matter what the circumstance is. If your answer changes or is changeable by circumstance, then you have a shaky, you have a shaky why. But you want a constant why. I write because I need to tell the stories of people. That's an unshaking why. It's stories will be there daily. I now just have to go and find them. Why do you dance? I dance because da, da, da, da, da. But you don't want to why that is tied to something that is going to change. Because once it's gone, it's gone. And then where's your why? Where's your motivation? But honestly, Karishma, it's a hard, motivating though. Your art is hard, it's really hard. Yeah, I hear you. And I mean, I think even in our context as well, right? The notion of detaching our artistic motivation from materialistic gain is so difficult because it's like I'm acting because I need to pay the bills. Or I'm actually an actor, but I'm directing because I need to pay the bills. It's not really what I want to do. It becomes very challenging. Particularly, as I said in our context, because the sector is still so young, it's still developing, the economy is still, it's not as heavily reliant as the state of New York is on Broadway. We'll get there with our own sustainable models. It works in our favor to extend that we are not there because now we can't say that money is a motivator. We can't say accolades is a motivator. We can't say reaching a certain level is a motivator because there is no level to reach. We're creating levels as we go. So it really helps our art scene to search for that inner motivation without it being monetary or whatever. I think in projects where the motivation is work or an accolade, it's very easy to die in mutual work because I'm going to just tweak it so that it works and then it works and then I get my accolade. But when you're fighting for your name and fighting to be known and fighting to create something out of nothing, your work is deeper and that motivation is in a much more secure place. So if you were to tell our audiences and viewers today what your why is, and you can have one sentence for every practice of yours, what's your why? That's my why. You knew the question was going to come. No, actually, no, I did not know. Well, I'm glad I can still surprise you. What is my why for acting? My why for acting is that I love to tell the stories of the individuals I meet and encounter daily. I love to tell their story. Not necessarily my story. I just love to tell that story.  I'm that person who walks into a bank or any sort of area and I am interested in the individuals around me and I like noticing body language. I like noticing how people are communicating without using their voices. I'm like, hmm, that's interesting. I wonder why that happened. That's why I act. I like looking for those characters in me. Ah, why do I direct? Oh, I know why I love directing. I love watching actors bring characters to life. I love it. I absolutely love it. I love seeing them struggle with their process and then either succeeding or not succeeding and then talking about why they didn't succeed. I love how when you're directing a character or an actor there is so much that comes to the surface and now this is speaking from like psychology. There are just so many conversations you have with the actor about who they are who they are in relation to the character. Why is that even a thing?  So I love developing characters in the act. I love seeing people become better people just because of the characters they've played or not played. The rehearsal room is so intriguing to me and yummy. Why producing? Well, producing, this is a good story. To the viewers out there, I started producing because there's such a lady who is on this call, called Karishma Lagani. Told me I should start producing. Oh my word. Oh wow. So why do I produce? Why I produce because, and I've been thinking about this a lot, Karishma, in terms of producers in Uganda and what their goals are. And most producers enter, especially in theater arts, I mean theater film, they enter to get the money. That's where the money is. If you want to earn money in the industry, become a producer. You'll definitely earn more than the other roles. That's definitely a motivator, but I've been thinking about it alongside you and alongside Deborah same way. Why do I produce? And I think this year in particular, it came so strongly to me that I love to create platforms for other people, other creators to thrive. And just like directing, which is a smaller version of that, being someone to come into character, producing is seeing someone's dream come to fruition. And that makes me so happy, so happy to see someone who says, I want to dance and then I create, can create a platform for them to dance. And so I want to act and I create a space for them to act. Oh, I want to sing. And I'm like, here's a studio, go sing. And I can manage their money without them getting swindled or cheated. And I can just make sure they're taken care of as human beings, as artists that need to be loved. Bambi, artists need to be loved. And many producers don't realize how much loving and nurturing artists need in order to create the best art. I like the image of a mom giving birth, like art. So if the artist is the mother with the baby who needs to give birth, you're the midwife who's going crazy all over with like the hot water and the towels, just trying to make sure she goes through it as easy as possible. You're the producer. And I love to do that. I love to see it when young people are done with their production and they're just so happy. And I want to show them a party. So that's now why I produce. What else do I do? Right, why do I write? I write because there's a story that only I can tell. And there's a way that I see life that only I can see it. So I need to write it. So just hearing you speak about your various hats that you're wearing, and this is something that for those that have been following our series from the beginning will have noticed that you can't just be one thing in our context. Like you are all things all the time. And you're sometimes a producer in some context and sometimes a director. And then sometimes you've got to make space for your own work. And it's just, it's so interesting to hear you talk about your one sentence thing description of every part of your practice because in some ways they're so similar, but in other ways they're so different. And that's why it almost needs a whole other craft to facilitate that main goal that you have to achieve. So thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you for sharing the why. Aganza, I'm curious. And having known you personally also, I know that these responses of yours are kind of things that have evolved over time.  It's something new that I've heard you speak about more recently in terms of why you're taking that on, you know, more hands-on. And of course it's a big, long, tiring, hard journey, rewarding, but hard. For folks that are younger, that are still finding their footing, what would you advise they think about as they confront problems or confront challenges like this where they're not sure why they're doing what they're doing. They're not necessarily being seen in the market. They're not necessarily, a space is not necessarily made for them in the same way. It's a good one. I would advise folks to get under people you see doing what you wanna do. So if it's Karishma and she's doing something close to what you're doing or want to do, find a way of working with Karishma and just humbling yourself and working under Karishma. There's a desire, I understand, in young people to be at the level immediately. But art is a continual process. It's always changing. It's always growing. When you think you've reached the level, there's a new one. And so it doesn't hurt to just humble yourself and work under people, all with people for extended periods of time as long as they're not harassing you, mistreating you, treating you like trash. Stay there and learn and learn and ask questions and learn. If you don't have a place when opportunity to work under people, try little things. One thing at a time, whether if you're a writer, write something daily, whether it's journaling or poetry or reading a book and then writing the parts of the book that stood out to you and just thinking about why they stood out to you and then finding someone who you can share your work with and saying, is this working? Is it not working? When I started writing and I still do this, I workshop my writing. I bring 10 people into a room and I allow them to read it, which is such a scary process because anyone can say anything to your work, but it allows you to hear your work and how you speak and hear your voice. Yeah, so I'd say get under people and if there's no one to get under, start doing the minimal. So don't, of course, you have to think about budgets. So start doing the minimum with whatever area it is, if you're an actor, you start doing actor drill.  If you are a producer, you start following the producers and seeing how something is produced or taking work that is already produced and figuring out how would you produce it? Yeah.  What do you read willingly that you want to recommend us to be reading at our own will also? Read Stanislavski willingly. I'd say read plays. Read, read plays. I have a ton of plays that I like going through. Some I read over and over again. Some are hard to get through, so I start them next up and then I start again. But if you can get your hands on plays, directing books, whatever genre you're trying to get into, that's what you read or read articles. This year a lot of articles have come out on how to do theater in a COVID year. So read that, read articles of theater and what other people are doing. Read newspapers. Newspapers can be quite inspiring. There's so much theater in New York's paper too. You'd be surprised. So I would say read plays.  It's a whole show. It's, you've got the humor section, you've got character arc. Yeah, so I'd say read plays if you're an actor.  And also other plays and figure out the style that you like. And once you find that style, keep going down that lane of that style. If you're a producer, like a director, you're reading articles like crazy, figuring out what other people are doing, seeing how you can get into contact with them. Yeah. Yeah, that's really, really sound advice. Thank you for that. I think I'm going to start having to read a few more things that I haven't been doing that much recently. Yeah, I think that it's also such an interesting balance, right, of being in a space where you can continuously generate and create content, but then also finding things that can help you move your practice forward. Yeah. And just on that note, I'll ask you one more question because I want us to have enough time for the little gift that you have to share with our viewers today. On the topic of creative stimulation versus creative generation, can you talk to us a little bit about your experience having gone abroad to study certain way you, you were at NYU Abu Dhabi, and then having to come back to practice in a region that you didn't necessarily learn in. What's that been like? And how has that changed your creative generation and creative stimulation in every sense of the word? Yeah, those are things people don't prepare you for. Everyone's like, go abroad, it's awesome. Oh my goodness, what? Yeah, culture shock is real, but I had reverse culture shock. I had the culture shock when I came back. Going was easy, coming back was hard. So when you're abroad, things work out and I'm thankful for NYU Abu Dhabi. It's such a great learning environment where if you need a camera, there's a camera.  If you need to go to a prop shop, there is a prop shop that is fully stocked. Everything was at my disposal as an artist to become the best artist that I needed to be. And when we graduated, they sent us into the world to be awesome and to prosper. And yeah, prosper, you're coming back to a third world country, but that doesn't hit you till you're back in that third world country where you start feeling it right from the airport and you're like, oh, this is how it's going to be. I can't just pick up a phone and say, I need this or I need that and it's there like magic. So the broad experience taught me to work in a cosmopolitan environment. It taught me to understand how other people think and to appreciate other languages and other ways of seeing the world. Artism is a very empathetic field. It's a very compassionate field, especially theater, because you have to place yourself in someone else's shoes. And when you have the opportunity to do that in another country and in another environment, that experience is heightened because not only are you adjusting your mental capacities to the space that you're in, you're adjusting to a different language, to a different look to individuals who just look very different from you to different accents. So it expanded me, it stretched me. It made me so accommodating to and open to different forms of art and how theater could be seen and valued. On the flip side, it taught me a lot about Western art and not about African art. And so I came home with a lot of Western knowledge of how to do theater, a lot of Western knowledge on literature in theater. And so when I came home, I had to readjust and say, hey, what about my people? What, how do we do things here? And at university, I learned how to produce in a Western society. I learned how to direct in a Western society. This is how you communicate to the actors because voila, everyone automatically comes on time when you're in that such a space. And then in Uganda, you start your rehearsal. Do you remember, I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you and just like remind us of the tech day when we were supposed to start at 10 a.m. and we didn't start rehearsal till 1 p.m. Do you remember that? And so we went, what time did we go to? I was just sitting there and you were like, welcome back. We went for coffee because we were waiting for everything to just, you know, start. It's like, oh, it's getting exciting now. Yeah, I remember that moment. I remember that moment being the moment where you looked back at me and said, Krishna, welcome back, welcome back, my friend. Welcome back. And I had no one to tell me welcome back. I had to tell myself, Sanyu, welcome back. And you don't really love it and sit into me in the snow. And so the Western education system of art doesn't prepare you for all those things. And I'm not saying that these things are negative. There's a way that we in the colonial world think that if it's Western, it's probably right. But they're catering for their culture. They're catering for society that works perfectly like that. And so I think coming back here and having to navigate all the nuances of the industry, timekeeping, the hardships of directing, casting, communication, because language barriers is also a thing here. And realizing that the people here may or may not have had such a wide international experience as I did. And so they're thinking, I don't want to say it's narrow. It's Uganda, it's here. It's very specific. It's a very specific one to a specific context. Specific, that's the word. So how do I move them to a place that is more objective, more open and say it can speak? It can speak. I remember the theater festival, 2016, we had an Arab piece that was multimedia. And most of the Ugandans were like, yeah, hmm, interesting. And that's where it stopped. Like how do I stretch your brain without having to take you out of the country? And then also how do I adjust my brain to communicate with you? So I think there is a theater that is, that can work in Uganda and East Africa and Denmark countries. That is as excellent as Western learning, but is uniquely tethered to our cultural space. And one of the things that I've learned with my rehearsals is, you know, you said, you need to say that rehearsal is at 9 a.m. And just know you're going to start at midday. And you need to be absolutely okay with that.  And when you say you're starting at midday, it means you're going to spend 30 minutes asking everyone, how are you? How are you doing?  Or you didn't eat lunch today? Oh, sorry. Then rehearsals start. And that needs to be in your brain and slowly but surely work can get started. So that was the separation for me. First, just, man, I think the Western learning really expanded me in a great way that I can be useful here. And people said, why did you come back?  And you know, you had succeeded. You had reached everything that we wanted you to reach. But I think God placed me in Uganda for a reason. And I do want to find that reason. And I think I'm more useful to people here than struggling to fight at a level that is not even my level in a country that doesn't even value what I have to save. And yet I have so much to save for this country. Yeah, yeah. I could not have thought of a better way of phrasing it. You know, I got similar questions when I was coming back. And you know, it's very rewarding and very inspiring to hear you say what you're saying about the context we're working in because there is a place for us and this place is here. And I think it's our responsibility as the sort of next generation, the current generation of artists to construct and contribute significantly to the expansion of a creative sector that really is in our hands, right? We've been left with something that is kind of developed, but not really. So we have the power to push it to the level that we've seen, you know? And actually that has existed, you know, pre-colonialism, during colonialism in our own context. So how do we just see what's within us already and push that forward? So yeah, thank you. I kind of now want to switch gears and really just hand you the stage. Our viewers today, we have a very special gift that Aganda will share with us. She has a little bit of an activity for us to engage in together so that we can feel like we are bridging the liminal space between our Zoom screens and really connecting with ourselves for a quick moment. So take us away, my dear. Great. So right now, Karishma is going to become the student alongside you guys. And I will be the professor. No, I'll just be your acting coach. When we're acting or when we're going to perform, performers go through different stages of warm-ups. Some are more intense than others. And I'm going to take you through the least intense warm-up that you can do on a daily. And everyone should just do this on a daily because it helps your body so much. And that is warming up your vocal pipes, warming up your speaking muscles, just centering your body to get you through the day or to get you through the performance. You don't want to have any tension. You don't want to have your breath going through the wrong channels. You don't want to have your jaw in the wrong areas.  So Karishma, is your back straight? Yes, ma'am. All right. So very gently and easily, we're going to take in three deep breaths. Breathe in and out. Now the first deep breath is always the fastest in my opinion because sometimes we go through the entire day without breathing. I don't know what time zones everyone is in right now, but we sometimes go through that whole day without actually taking oxygen into our lungs. We sort of just speak and think it's a normal thing, but breathing is a miracle that God has granted us daily. And I think we should breathe in at least three times a day, really deep breath. So let's do our second one. And this time when you breathe in, we're going to breathe out so slowly until you feel it in your tummy and then your body has no choice, but to just inhale oxygen at the end. So deep breath and exhale so slowly until everything is out. Go, let's do that again. Third time, breathe in. You should feel your lungs enlarge right now. You should feel like they have done a reshuffling of air, which is a good thing. In this day and age when we're wearing masks, man, if you get a chance to take off your mask, inhale oxygen. You don't want to be breathing in carbon dioxide the whole day and then you go to bed and not give your lungs a breath of fresh air and oxygen. So this is a really good technique to get oxygen into your lungs and just expand your diaphragm. You don't want to be like this the whole day. Just want to stay expanded. Next up, we're going to center our neck and our shoulders. Some people go through the day and then they end up being jetted up forward or they get far too back. And they're just not centered. That's me right now. That's you right now. You're wearing a backpack. The one shoulder is higher than the other. Yeah, you're just not aligned.  Yeah, you start doing all that business. So sit up straight or as straight as you think you can be and just take your shoulders right up to your ears, really uncomfortably and drop them. And up again, squish them to your ears and drop them. And one more time and drop them. Now very gently, take your shoulders up, back and around. You should do this every morning. Once you just step out of bed, this is what you're doing. Up, back and around and up and around. You should already be feeling centered. If not, let's keep going. Okay, take your right hand, place it on your neck very gently. Take your left hand, put it on your left shoulder and just pull very gently. As you do this, you want to keep breathing and relax. Now you can see it on me. This side looks a little lower than this side. It's like a little bit more relaxed. Do you notice that for yourself? Yeah, it's really gently pull. It's amazing how your body gets so unaligned. Great. So this is some little things that actors do to open up their shoulders, open up their diaphragm and to get their vocal cords free so they can do rehearsals and speak clearly. I could show you more, but that's just show the work and like neck work to free you up. Now, since I'm already stammering with my words, let's free up our jaws. So there's this little thing over here and over here that gets clenched so often. If you chew gum a lot, you just do that. You can see it moving and that's your jaw muscle and you need to massage that. So if you're having a speaking engagement or if you have a Zoom meeting or if you're going to speak on stage, you want to massage your jaw because chewing often or speaking often brings a lot of tension to your jaw. So clench your jaw. You can bite your teeth so you can feel the plenched jaw and then just massage that area. Great. Now my favorite, which is still the jaw area, is this part right here, which is in between your neck, like this tendon right here and your jaw line, it's right behind your ear and on the other side as well. If you open your mouth, you can get really in there and just massage inside. Yeah, if you want to be very gentle, sometimes it's painful. Some people who have a lot of tension in their jaw and some just go through it really simply. How is it for you, Karishna? It's less tense than the back of my neck but my neck is so tense that I can actually feel it here. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So once you've got your breath in, your jaw is warmed up, then you can go into other stretches but I already feel like my voice is more clear just from breathing. So you can do this in the morning.  Hi, my name is Agandjit. Hello and welcome, this is just the beginning. Yeah, so that's all I have for you today. And the two tips, how acts is warm up. Thank you so much, Agandja. That's lovely. And folks, if you joined us in this activity, I hope that if you're wrapping up your day like we are here in East Africa, that you have a way to unwind and for those that are starting up their day like those watching from California, from those sides, hope that this is something that you can incorporate into your daily practice. With that, I want to say thank you so much, Agandja, for joining us in this space today and for really showing your insights and telling us about your process and your practice as it spans all of these wonderful, wonderful parts of your artistry. Before I ask you my final question, I just also want to thank Rafael and Lucy, who are our Kenyan Sign Language interpreters, and Julia, who's our American Sign Language interpreters to the entire Howl Drowned team that has produced this one-of-a-kind series that has both Kenyan Sign Language and American Sign Language interpreters and to the Tiberi Arts Foundation and the Ruby Musical Theater Initiative for co-producing this series with us. So before we sign off, Agandja, how can we follow you on social media if you want to get in touch? What's the best way to learn about the work you're doing right now? Great. Thank you so much, Karishma, for this conversation. It has made me think about how I talk about my art. I'm like, hmm, I should really find how to speak about it more often. And thank you to our Sign Language interpreters. It's such a joy watching you. It's like a performance all on its own. It really is. Yeah, thank you for this opportunity. You can find me on agandzachisaka.com or on my Instagram, Turquoise Lush. Turquoise is my favorite color, so Turquoise Lush. On Instagram. But all my platforms are Agandza, so just look for Agandza and something to show off. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. And for those who missed the conversation, you can see the recording on our pages as well. Well, we'll have a wonderful, wonderful evening. Thank you, everybody. Please join us next week, same time, same place, Monday at 8 p.m., East Africa time. We will be speaking to the Lam sisterhood, so Lora Kumbu, Ann Mora and Aleya Kasam will be joining us and we'll be talking about collective authorship as part of the creative process. So thanks, everybody. Have a good night.