Why recruiters don't reply in Dubai? But if you continue to do the same thing day in and day out, you're going to get the same result. How much salary people get in different industries? Hey guys, welcome to my channel. I talk about life, work and business in Dubai. And today I have a guest, Trisha Chapman, you probably know already. She's a career consultant. And today we're going to talk about one of the hottest topics, why recruiters don't reply in Dubai. So Trisha, please, can you tell us more about it? Yeah, goodness, how long do we have? People are desperate. Yeah, to be honest, I understand it's really frustrating.  I guess try to think of it from the other side. So what's happening from the recruiter's perspective? So in the UAE market, there's obviously quite a big talent pool. So you've got the likes of a lot of Europeans, Canadians trying to get here. You've got the likes of the Southeast Asia side of the world trying to get here. And then you've already got the expats living in Dubai. So the talent pool is quite big compared to other countries. Which then, when a job is posted, you've obviously got, you know, hundreds of applicants trying to seek that position. And when is the talent pool so big, it becomes a recruiter's world. So what I mean by that is, you know, recruiters or hiring managers can pick and choose who and when they want to reply. So I guess in terms of the system, maybe not being able to cope with such demands. I mean, not a lot of programs have got automated email set up. It's usually, you know, a handful of people having to reply or having to answer their LinkedIn email boxes, which, you know, as you can imagine, they just flow through. It's not the best organized system to be able to respond to each and every applicant. Guys, before we continue, I want to say that if you've been looking for a job in Dubai, but you have no success, you feel frustrated, Trisha can help you with your job search journey. So Trisha, please, can you tell us what services you provide and how you can help? With my pleasure, I would absolutely love to be able to help you in unlocking your potential. I'll be able to assist with all of the necessary tools for a successful job application. So what does that mean? A CV, an ATS compliant resume, of course, LinkedIn optimization, cover letters, personal branding and showcasing how you can unlock your potential. And the most important question, do you help to conduct with recruiters? Absolutely. So in all of my packages, you receive a list of all of the UAE recruiters here, as well as a list of available jobs. So I understand, obviously, the job seeker, I'm always in favor of the job seekers, but when you think of it from the recruiter side, you've literally got hundreds of inboxes and you're flooded with requests. So I guess it would be down to how you manage and how you specifically speak and communicate with those people that you're reaching out to. So, you know, make sure that your message is tailored. Don't just say hi, ma'am. Yeah. So, which I get quite frequently as well myself, you know, and don't automatically say, hi ma'am, I'm trying to get a job. You know, try to develop a rapport, try to get noticed, even pick up the phone. You know, I think people these days have forgotten the old school strategies. But is it still okay to call recruiters? Why not? I think usually you'll find a phone of the receptionist, not the recruiter and I don't think that they will put you through. The thing is that if you, I can understand your point honestly, but if you continue to do the same thing day in, day out, you're going to get the same result. So if 500 people email the same thing and no one rings or no one tries an alternative source, you're not going to stand out. So try to think outside the box, you know, maybe even presenting business cases or reaching again to a couple of people within the company to try and get you on a call or start liking, commenting on people's posts so that you get noticed over time. A friend of mine, he told me a very interesting approach. So he has sent just DHL package to the CEO of the company with his CV. So it's just a creative way to stand out. Because otherwise today it's very difficult. You just get buried under the paperwork. Even when I was posted, like I posted some vacancy long-term back, I received like 100 applications within 10 minutes and I just don't have time to go through that. Exactly. And most of them are not relevant to you. And it's so like, you know, just for me, it doesn't make sense to waste my time. So it's easier to find someone from referrals. 100% and this is exactly what I'm trying to encourage people to do. So be strategic, be focused, articulate your message, directly say, hi ma'am, I need a job or, you know, hi ma'am, you know, please help me with employment, build a relationship, build a rapport and try and get someone to help you with the foot in the door. Yeah. And also, I think it's important to have, as you said, ATS compliance CV, right? Because if the company had the system, your CV just doesn't go through. Yeah, exactly. So maybe I'll just give you a brief background of the system. So no boxes, like text boxes, you know, don't have your resume in columns. Have it just as one big, you know, text block. For example, you would match the title. So if you're going for a finance manager, make sure that your title and your CV says finance manager, not commercial director or commercial assistant, you know, match the titles. And then ensure, of course, that you're incorporating the same skill sets that's requested from the job description into your resume. Because what will happen is it's like when you type in, you know, coffee shops Dubai, you'll have on page one all of the different coffee shops that's relevant to your location. And then so forth. Now who goes to page 15 to search for the coffee shops? No one. So it would be the same from the recruiters, you know, you wouldn't be going all the way back to page 15 to try and search the talent. And I heard about the hidden job market. So what does it mean and how people connect to it? Yeah, good question. Yeah. So the hidden job market is where the job is not advertised. So, you know, normally what we would do is you would go on to Indeed or Glasgow LinkedIn and type in marketing manager and then you'd find all of the positions that's advertised. So the hidden job market is where there's positions available within the company, but they're just not advertised on any platform. So how do you access these types of roles? So for example, you could be reaching out to hiring managers within the company or human resources departments or a commercial or a business development manager and doing creating a gap analysis, you know, proactively saying I've created SWOT analysis, gap analysis of the company. I can see that you've got your 2025 strategic direction and here is how I could help you facilitate to get there. Is there anything available for me either now or in the coming future? So just one other final example. So, you know, Dubai especially, it's a transient place. So a lot of people are, you know, moving back home to their home countries. Obviously people have families and, you know, it's an expat community. So resignations are quite frequent. So you could be always speaking with people, you know, developing those relationships with your ex-colleagues or attending networking events and just getting a feel about the market and learn of any upcoming vacancies. So, you know, you might hear on the grapevine that the marketing manager is going back home or going on maternity leave in six months. So you know that a position is going to be coming. So whether there's going to be, you know, a reshuffle within the organisation but at least you are aware that there is something upcoming, so get ready. Okay, that was an interesting point and let's say I send my CV. They invited me for an interview. Can you share some tips and tricks? Absolutely. This could be a blog just, you know, by itself alone. And so first of all, obviously digital interviews are completely different to face-to-face. So I think it would be important to, you know, be identifying various tips and tricks for each. However, I'll just maybe just outline a couple, especially for digital because these days your first interview is, majority of the time is a Zoom call or for the initial meet and greet. So, you know, make sure that you've got good camera angles, make sure that you've got the lighting appropriate.   So a lot of people will look at the person on the computer, but so it doesn't actually resonate the same image from the camera. So it's important to be looking at the dot and not at the camera itself. Obviously, you know, the background, I know that we work at home, but you don't really want, you know, the kids screaming and the nanny in the background and everything for the first meet and greet. At the end of the day, these things happen in its life, but just try to be making sure environments are as quiet as possible. And most importantly, make sure that you understand the job description. So really become familiar with what's being asked of you so that you can respond and showcase what is your unique selling proposition that is specifically for that job description. And what about, should they do research about the company as well? Absolutely, yeah. So again, I know I just mentioned about business cases and the company strategy, but it's so important to be aligning your values, your skill sets to what the company is as well.  Make sure that you are showcasing how can you drive their performance to that goal.  If you do that, and it's with a star method. So I'm sure we could go into this in detail or unhappy to work with your clients individually, but, you know, making sure that you are showcasing using the star method how you can do this. And to many people, they are confused about how they should dress during an interview because it's a Muslim country and they think like it's very strict. So what do you think about it? Yeah, it's a good question because I think, you know, back in our home countries, it's kind of taboo.  But at the end of the day, it's about respect.  I think sort of on an international scale that the dress code would probably be the same. You wouldn't go to like an interview with a really low cup top or your singlet or, you know, neat casual or smart casual probably would be the preferred way. These days, not many people are having like the whole suit and tie a formal dress. Yeah, I think it depends on the industry. If you work in finance or real estate, then you have a suit. But in digital marketing, most people wear just casual clothes. Exactly, exactly. I mean, you know, it's not text, like you don't need a PhD degree to work it out. Just look professional, you know. One of the most popular questions that I receive, like how much salary people get in different industries. So can you recommend slum resources or platforms so that people can find this information? Absolutely. This is the number one question. I think, you know, people, they want to come to Dubai to make sure that they're earning the good salary. So I could probably name a few, but if I can be completely honest, I've created just newly a complete salary guide to the UAE. I would love to give it to you to be able, for your audience to be able to download. It's got, you know, the likes of finance managers, marketing, sales, healthcare, all of the different categories. So I will give you this. You're more than welcome to download it. It's completely free and you can put in the link. Yeah, so guys, you will find the link in the description under this video. Okay, thank you very much. It was useful. So guys, if you want to find a job in Dubai but you don't know what to start with or you send your CV but you don't hear back from recruiters, you can reach out to Trisha and she will help you to get a dream job in Dubai.


He needs two yards to keep this game moving on Hey, fourth down Tennessee You see what you're made of when you go through something tough Yeah, it's been a tough year 14 days of self-quarantine for everyone but Tennesseans are built for this Titans were men of strength and power Great pass down through generations was their badge first ones here They set the tone mind you somebody. Yeah me


Hello everybody and welcome to this course on Introduction to Japanese Language and Culture. Well, before I formally start telling you about the language, I would like to introduce myself first and foremost. I am Vatsala Misra and I am teaching Japanese here in IIT Kanpur in the foreign language program. And we will be with you all through the 40 lectures and we will learn Japanese together. We will learn all the expressions, all the proverbs, we can, all different forms of verbs and a lot of other things in this course. And towards the end of the course, I am sure you will be very confident about talking in Japanese. Well, these lectures are basically based on my experience with students over these years, what they want of the course, what questions they ask, what is important for them and on all these things I have made this course. I have tried to simplify it as much as I can, tried to give you as much information in a very very simple way and tried to provide, tried to give you an insight into the Japanese life, how the Japanese people think, how they interact, what are the kind of expressions they use, what is their mannerism, how they speak, what is the body language, all those things I have tried to do in various ways. Through pictures, through audios and through a lot of other things which you will see when we actually start on our, with our lessons. Well, before I actually begin now, I would like to tell you what I plan to do in the course, but even before that people tell me and a lot of students always ask me that Japanese is a very very difficult language and very difficult to learn. There are a lot of scripts and it is difficult to memorize all of them and write in the language. So, well I would like to ask you before I tell you how difficult or how easy the language is, what is, what is language, what is the purpose of language, what do you think about it. Well, as you can see over here it is given, language is a simple medium of communication. In olden times when the scripts were not there, when man was not aware of scripts of writing, at that time communication was done as it is a medium of communication. Communication was done through pictures, through paintings, through body language, by means of gestures and it was considered alright. Because you could communicate a lot of things, you could say a lot of things in by doing all those things, but what is the purpose of language? You can see the main purpose of language is to talk to people, to connect to people, to be able to convey in a better way, to be able to talk and to be able to say a lot of things and be understood. That is what the purpose of language is, that is what language is for. So what is required, what is important to cultivate, what is required to cultivate a basic language ability? What are the important things that are required for you, for someone to be able to speak or communicate? So, well to communicate there are two important things. One is the spoken part and one is the writing part. So for the spoken part there are different things that are required, for the writing part there are certain different things that are essential. Now what is essential for speaking or the spoken part of the language?  So for that what do we need? For spoken language we need phonetics. Now by doing that, by using that we can make words. With those words we can make sentences and by learning some simple sentences we can make complicated sentences and are able to convey nicely what we want to say to the other person. For writing what do you need? For reading what do you need? Well the most important thing for reading or for writing is a script. A script is very very essential and that is the only way you will be able to write something or read something. Now for a lot of languages you have a simple script, you have alphabets as in English or in Hindi you have your alphabets and you can join the alphabets and make words and with words you can make sentences and convey and do conversation. In Japanese we have that script yes but we also use pictograms and ideograms. Because of this very reason that we use a phonetic script and these pictograms lot of time it is felt that the language is difficult because it is a little difficult to read. Well in India we are exposed to a lot of languages. We know that there are different scripts, there are different languages, we hear them most of the time, we hear them a lot of times and for example if you hear a person talking in Urdu and you listen to a person talking in Hindi, well it is understood. You can understand Urdu to a great extent and the person who knows Hindi can, Urdu can understand Hindi easily. But if you see it written well Urdu script is very different from the Dev Nagari script. So what do you think? Does this mean that the person does not know Hindi or vice versa? No, it does not mean that. That happens with a lot of other Indian languages as well. There are lot of South Indian languages where you can understand when it is spoken but may not be able to read and same applies to a lot of European languages. They use the European languages, use the English alphabet but you may be able to read what is written but then you cannot understand or even decipher what it means. So well all these things are there and Japanese also depending on what your motivation is, what you want to do with the language, whether you just want to do the spoken part or you want to do the written part, you will see the difficulty. So as such any language is difficult and any language can be easy. It depends on the person who is learning the language. So well if we think of the writing part, the spoken part can be taken care of by learning words, by doing conversation, by learning a few expressions and other things doing grammar but if we think of the writing part, well writing part may seem a little difficult but that can be learnt, can be done by a person and you can start writing and reading very easily in Japanese. The reason foreigners are unable to do or the reason they find it a little difficult is because you are not learning the language in the environment. We are learning Japanese for example, we are learning Japanese here in a very non-Japanese environment where you are not exposed to Japanese 24-7 if you are doing something in Japan or may be whichever language you are learning, you are doing it in that environment then it is much faster. Though now you can say that there is the internet now and we have more exposure and we can connect better but still if you are talking to Japanese people, if you are in that environment dealing with the natives, looking at people interacting, looking at people using expressions, idioms, phrases and the situations that you will encounter, it is much easier to learn but well you do not have to get worried about it. We have tried to make it very simple and I have tried to show all of it through pictures through audios and I am sure it will not be as difficult as it seems and after having done these 40 lectures I am sure that you will be very, very comfortable with the language with the expressions and grammar. In this course of course, we will concentrate on the spoken part of the language and with that we will also lay a foundation for the written part, the writing and the reading of the language but the main thrust is obviously on the conversation. Now, having said that this does not mean that I will sort of, we will just do some kind of situational conversation, you will mug it up, you will learn it by heart and you will reproduce it in a situation and that is conversation. No, that is not conversation at all and that is not what we are going to do over here. We are definitely going to do conversation, situational conversation but with that I also plan to teach you language as such. Your interest should be not only on the conversations but also on learning the language, on understanding how the people are, how they think, how they behave and how they interact with each other. This course is about teaching you how to speak the language, how to enjoy the language, how to learn about the Japanese people and their culture and well, the people that I think would want to sort of do the course will be students planning to pursue studies abroad in Japan, would want to visit Japan for short periods, not as tourists. This is not a course for tourists as such, this is about learning the language. So, people who want to stay in Japan for short periods and as it is very difficult to move about in Japan without knowing the language, it would be very helpful for them if they learn and then go to the country. It is always better, you interact better with people, you are comfortable and things are very easy. And of course, for students who are applying for jobs in Japanese companies and most of all, the most important thing, people who are who have an academic interest and would like to know more about the language. So, this course is all about this and that is how we are going to move ahead. As this is a course meant for people who want to learn the language, well, this is going to be a very basic Japanese course where anybody can learn, whatever the age you could be a child or an adult. Anybody could learn the course, anybody could go over all the lectures and learn the language. And also, I would like to tell you that we will start from the very basics of the language that is from the alphabet itself. The equivalent of A, B, C, D is what we are going to do in the beginning and then gradually, graduate from class 1 to class 2 to class 3 and go ahead till class 12. So, well, we will do a lot of things here slowly and you will feel comfortable, I am quite sure. Also with the alphabets, also with A, B, C, D as I told you, which is very basic, we will of course concentrate on vocabulary, on grammar, on punctuation, on intonation, on different verb forms and with all this, as I have been telling you all along, we will also do proverbs and see how the people are and what the culture in Japan is. So, all those things together, we will try to do this course with the help of pictures, with the help of audios, try to help you as much as I can and give you an insight into the Japanese lifestyle and the people and their culture. So, well, now enough of all this and I think we should start with our class and the first thing that we have to do over here is the scripts. So, well, there are three scripts in the language. We have, as you can see over here, we have hiragana, katakana and kanji. So, these are the three scripts. The hiragana and the katakana are called the kana scripts in Japanese and kanji is the ideograms and the pictograms. We will discuss kanji of course in detail later as well, but first we should talk about hiragana and katakana. Now it is interesting that till the fourth century AD, the Japanese did not have a script and they had a language, they could talk freely, but there was no script. So, now if you do not have a script, well, you cannot document anything, you cannot write anything. So, as travelling increased and as people started coming to Japan, trade was happening. So, through trade and through people coming into Japan from China and Korea, lot of pictograms from China entered Japan. They realized that this was some kind of a script which they could use for documenting and slowly over a period of time with the help of these pictograms which entered Japan at that time via trade hiragana came into being. They developed this new script which was called hiragana. Hiragana is a script which is used for Japanese words, words of Japanese origin belonging to Japan and then with trade with people coming in with Japanese people going out probably to Korea or to China, foreign words also entered into Japan. Foreign words slowly came and they were being used in the language. So, now there was a problem as to how to write those foreign words. From these pictograms and ideograms which were already there, katakana was developed for foreign words. So, the difference between hiragana and katakana, basic difference is that hiragana is for words of Japanese origin and katakana is words for Chinese or foreign, that time Chinese and now of course foreign origin. Also because kanji came first, the pictograms came first to Japan, the ladies were not allowed or could not get access to these kanji characters. And they were not allowed to write. Slowly over period of time when hiragana was developed, the ladies got the script of hiragana and they started writing in hiragana and thus you will notice that this script when I show you the script you will see that it is very cursive, it is round, it is circular whereas katakana is very angular. We will discuss of course these Chinese characters later also for the time being these are just pictograms and ideograms meaning pictures and ideas shown depicted in line form. We have a few for example a sun, when someone says make sun what do you do? This is exactly what you draw and automatically anybody would say that this is sun. Now what does the sun do? The sun divides day and night into a day into two parts which is day and night. So well if you want to show this in lines, this is how it is going to come, it is going to divide like this. So it is to be a square and it will be divided in this form in this manner like this. So when you look at when a Chinese or a Japanese would look at this character immediately the picture that comes to their mind is of sun. Now after the course when you look at this picture all the time you will think of the sun or something to do with light, something to do with brightness, something to do with day or date. So these are the things that will come to your mind. This is how these pictograms and ideograms have come into being. A certain idea, a certain picture that forms in your mind when you look at something is shown or depicted like this in form of straight horizontal and vertical lines. So well we will go ahead now and see what hiragana and katakana are. Well the kana scripts are phonetic scripts, they are symbols, phonetic symbols whatever you say you write. So hiragana has 46 basic symbols and so has katakana also 46 basic symbols. Now there is a second set also of both the scripts for both the scripts. The second set has 25 characters each and the interesting part is that the second set is made from the first set using by using just two symbols like this and this. These two symbols are used in the first set and another second set of 25 symbols is made. So this is the kana script of course when you see you will know. You can see the stroke order. Stroke order means how the character is made, what is to be drawn first and what comes after that and what follows later.  The wobbles are here, I will read them out to you once. Then we have the k sound or the ko sound, s or so sound, t or the sound, n or no sound, h or her sound, m or ma sound, y or ya sound, r or ra sound and then we have this w over here, n over here and o over here. These two are given of course in the olden script, but now these are not in use anymore. First let us do the wobbles, well the wobbles are you can repeat after me a, i, u, e, o. Once again a, i, u, a, o. Then we have the k series and you have to join this k with the wobble here which makes it ka, ki, ku, k and ko and in a similar manner for the s series sa, shi, su, se and then so. You will notice over here that this is a little different, the sound is not si, but it is shi. This is an exception, please keep that in mind.  These are also exceptions, so you need to remember these three exceptions shi, chi and su. Then we have the n series and again in a similar manner na, ni, nu, ne and nu and then the h series ha, hi, hu, hei and ho and then the ma series or the m series ma, mi, mu, me, mu. Now you will notice something over here that all these consonants, all these k, s, t and h, m so far are joining with wobbles here and then the sound is there. Then the syllable is made. So in Japanese please remember all syllables will always have a wobble in the end. No syllable is complete without a wobble except for one and we are going to do this very soon.  Then we have wa. You can leave these two out o and n. Now as I told you just now, this is the only one which does not end in a wobble. You will say how will we use this? Well, I will give you a word very simple. How would you say orange in Japanese? Well, it is orange. So the un sound in orange is this alphabet over here. Then if you take the word in Japanese it is mikan for orange. So well mi ka un again you see this un sound that is how it is going to be used and you will notice for all of them that they all end in wobbles. You can write them very nicely. The stroke order is given very clearly over here and of course you can go on the net and see hiragana and katakana and different ways of writing hiragana and katakana. Well, this is very clearly given in different colors for you to remember the exceptions are also given over here and you can revise it and do it at home. Now you will see that katakana though the pronunciation is the same writing system is given over here but you will notice that it is very very angular unlike hiragana. I will show you the slide once again you can see how cursive and rounded it is, how feminine it looks and then this katakana over here extremely masculine very very angular. So well it is the same a-i-u-e-o ka-ki-ku-ke-ko sa-shi-su-se-so ta-chi-su-te-to na-ni-nu-ne-no ha-hi-hu-he-ho ma-mi-mu-me-mo ya-yu and yo well these two are missing in both hiragana and katakana because it is very similar to this sound. So thus it has been left out then you have Ra, Ri, Ru, Re, Ro, Wa, O and N. Now this O and this O for both hiragana and katakana have a different meaning. This is a vowel and this is used as a particle in the language. Now we will talk about particles also but a little later for the time being you could just keep it in mind that O over here is used as a particle and not this O but the O in hiragana. Please remember that hiragana are used for words of Japanese origin and also to change tenses of verbs and to show different verb forms hiragana is used and katakana of course is for foreign words. Well, this is katakana for you. You can see very clearly again in different colors easy to memorize so you can do this. Now as I was telling you Kanji's are ideograms and pictograms each character has a meaning. Each symbol as you can see over here this symbol has a meaning and each character has minimum two readings. One a Chinese reading and another one a Japanese reading. So please as can be seen each character has a meaning and a reading of its own. There are specific ways of writing and one has to memorize the stroke order which is how the strokes are to be made in Kanji. It is extremely important to memorize and learn the stroke order because the stroke order for a character is fixed that does not change and there is a reason because you need to go to the next character or word. So it has to end over here one and it has to start from here like this. You cannot start a character from here and maybe go here and do something like this. No, there is a specific set order to write Kanji characters pictograms. Well, now what are Kanji characters? What are pictograms? As I just told you about nichi. So when you look at this now I think you will think of the sun. How would you show a man in line? Man in lines, well this is how a man looks when you want to talk about someone you say this person over here, but you cannot make this picture all the time and write about man and say this is what is man. So what will you do? Well, just remove the head from here just make it like this. When you look at this picture now what does it look like? Doesn't it remind you of a man? Well, you can see now see when you make this you know it is a man. So in Japanese or in Chinese in pictograms when you write this character it tells you that it is a man you are talking about someone. Well if you look at this what do you think it is? It is water isn't it? It looks like a river flowing so well it is going to be made like this. If you look at fire how will you show fire in a character? How will you show it in lines? Well, this is how fire looks like you have the logs over here you have wood over here and when it burns well this is what it looks like now how will you show it in picture form or in line form simple like this, this and make it like this simple like this, this and this. So when you look at this you will know we are talking about fire. This is what pictograms are all about of course these are very simple pictograms these are not difficult pictograms you can relate to them you can understand these very clearly it only gets complicated when it becomes a little abstract. So well we will do with that we will do all of that later as I told you this is hito, this is hito. Now what does this look like? This looks like a mouth an opening isn't it? So if you join these two characters it means population so many mouths so many people so many mouths to feed and what is that that is population. So well that is how you would think of Kanji characters there is one more very simple you have done this one over here this means fire and what is a volcano?  So well if you have this and this automatically even if you do not know the word you know that this is a mountain which throws fire so it is a volcano. So that is how these Kanji characters have come into being and that is how you write them that is how you show them and you understand. The Japanese is written horizontally and vertically as well. You can see horizontally you can see it is written over here and vertically you can see how it is written. You can also write like this but it starts from the right side please remember not from this side you go this way but when you write horizontally it starts from the left side that is very very important also you will notice something else over here there are no spaces at all and Kanji characters Hiragana characters are all used simultaneously together and of course you can see there is this Katakana also used over here. So in the language all three scripts are used simultaneously which was not happening earlier. Earlier for a long long time the Japanese continued to write in either Kanji, Katakana or Hiragana but now as you can see very clearly in this slide all three are used together. Now as I told you there are no spaces something is written over here in Japanese and something is written over here we are used to space in between words but the Japanese have no problem at all in reading this why because you have Kanji pictogram you have the Hiragana in blue and then in red you have in orange you have Katakana. So without even spacing it is very very clear. Now we will do the vowels very quickly and give you some vocabulary you can repeat after me the meanings are given over here in black I will not read out the meanings I will just read out what is written in Hiragana and of course in roman it is given over here you can read this as well. This is the vowel series a, e, u, a and o. As I told you a for apple b for bat is what we are going to do here. So well ahiru, isu, inu, ushi, uchi, ebi, eki, origami, omu. So you can repeat all these again and again and I am sure you will feel comfortable very soon there is more you can repeat after me ashi, ase, ishi, ito, usagi, ue, uta, eki, eda, oni, okashi, otera. So all the meanings are given very clearly you can learn these then we have the k series or ka series you can see the sound ka series, kani, kasa, kirin, kimono, kusa, kutsu, keiki. Now this is a foreign word thus it is written in katakana, keik and also ko-hi, long sound ko and hi, ko-hi, ko-fi and ko-ara, ko-la-be, ko-ara, ko-la-be and you will notice that we do not have L in Japanese all L's are supposed to be pronounced as Ra sounds. So all the meanings are given very clearly you can learn these then vocabulary for the k series, kaban, kagi, kitsune, kudamono, kushi, keiki, keitai, kesigomu, kodomo, ko-cha. So well the meanings are again given it is given in roman as well so you can please read all of it and learn it. Now we have the sa series and in the sa series you already know the shi is an exception so well, sakana, saru, shika, shimauma, susume, suika, sebirou. So this is the sa series for you the shi of course is different please try to pronounce the shi, it is shi as in the English S-H-E, shi but over here the pronunciation is S-H-E-Shi over here it is the spelling or the syllable is S-H-I. Some words again sake, sara, same, shichi, shingo, sushi, senaka, seta is a sueta and the sound is a little long and in the end we have sura. So why I have given this vocabulary like this to you is for you to make sentences for you to speak out loudly and one thing very important over here is that you should speak out loudly and say it very very clearly so that it is heard by you and you can understand where you are fumbling or going wrong. So well the meanings are again given it is given in roman as well so you can please read all of it and learn it. Now for your first lesson there are a lot of things but well we should do the numerals over here the numbers so well very very quickly it is given the equivalence of all this is over here 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, once again 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, it is a long sound so please practice this so that you are comfortable when we do something new in our next class. There is a small expression in fact there are two there is ohayou guzaimasu with a rising intonation here meaning good morning. So anytime you meet someone from 6 in the morning till 10 o'clock well you can say ohayou guzaimasu very freely and also if you are very very informal with the person ohayou will suffice and then you have konnichiwa which means good day and you can use it from 10 o'clock onwards till 5 or 6 in the evening just before dark konnichiwa and ohayou guzaimasu. So it is ohayou guzaimasu and konnichiwa well practice these expressions we will be doing more of these in our classes later now my work is over for today and your work begins you have some assignments here for you. The first one is you have these words the vocabulary that we did and the English meanings over here just match group A with group B then we have 1, 2, 3, 4 till 10 well match 1, 2, 3, 4 with the equivalence in Japanese there are a number of pictures here. I want you to name all the pictures and practice loudly and then there is a small exercise there is a small picture here of a lot of things just list the objects in the picture with that I will end for today. Today has been a little long for you well with this I would like to end thank you very much and mata aimashou and this phrase that I am using I will explain to you tomorrow. So minasan mata ashita aimashou arigatou gozaimasu thank you.


The Appalachian Wireless Holiday Sale is going on now. Till the end of the year, visit us in store or reserve online for an unbelievable sale on the hottest devices. We know what you want for the holidays because we are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. As your Thanksgiving holiday comes to a close, the city of Prestonsburg will be getting into the holiday spirit with the lighting of the Archer Park Christmas lights at 6pm November 24th. This year's light display will see an addition of almost 500,000 lights totaling nearly 22 million. A few years ago, we made the brag about having one and a half million lights. This year we are closing in on 200, I'm sorry, 2 million lights. That's pretty exciting stuff. Went from 1.5 million to 2 million. And the thing about it is it's progressive. On this Thursday at 6 o'clock, we'll be turning lights on for the public to enjoy. So what's going to happen is you'll see new stuff coming out every week for a period of about three weeks and then we'll have everything now. The light exhibit is free to view but donations are accepted at the yellow mailbox on the light route. All donations will be used to maintain and buy new lights. We have a great, I mean just an outstanding bunch of individuals that work over at the park, men and women and they really care and they want people to enjoy it. Unfortunately, the park gets flooded quite often so there's not a lot we can do. But we can do this light exhibit for them and it's just phenomenal to be able to watch the kids eyes when they go through. It started out as just a few, just a few lights here, a few lights there, maybe an activity scene here, Santa Claus blow up here, and now it's just grown so much, it's unbelievable. The Archer Park Christmas Lights display is located at 66 Archer Park Road in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. The lights will remain on each day from 5.30 p.m. to 10 p.m. through New Year's Day. For Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


This is about amphiprotism. Is this a big word? What does it mean? Well, it's like amphibian. So we know that amphibians can live on land as well as in water. These are species that according to the Bronsted Larry definition, that is proton donors and proton acceptors, these are species that can do both. They can both accept a proton and donate a proton. So one of the simplest ways of demonstrating amphiprotism is just to add water. One of the nice things about water is water itself is amphiprotic. Hopefully you'll notice that as we do a couple of these little examples, just to give you an idea. So in this particular example, we're going to demonstrate the hydrogen carbonate or bicarbonate ion acting as an acid. So let's say it's an acid. So if it's an acid, it's a proton donor. So it's going to lose a proton and therefore it's going to become C032 minus in solution. And it will lose that proton to the water. So the water will become an H3O plus ion. So if we use our understanding of conjugates, well, we can see that this was the acid, which means that water was acting as a base. And therefore this is now the conjugate base. It's the result of the hydrogen carbonate ion losing its hydrogen. And the hydronium ion will be the conjugate acid. Okay, so this is just an example of a Bronsted-Larry acid. But what about if we take exactly the same two reactants? But this time we switch them around so that the bicarbonate ion is acting as a base. So let me just write base underneath here, which means that this time the water is acting as an acid. So if it's acting as a base, this time it's actually going to accept a proton. And it's obviously going to do that from the water molecule. So if it accepts a proton, we now have H2CO3, which is carbonic acid. We know carbonic acid is a weak acid. It's the one that's involved in the equilibrium for soft drinks. And also what's left behind then this time is the hydroxide ion, which is also in the solution. So this is now the conjugate acid. And the hydroxide ion will be the conjugate base. Useful to put these pairs together because they're a useful way to help you remember these types of concepts.


First, very importantly, we have to understand that it is not about digital marketing, it is marketing interconnected. That's first important bit. The second important bit is that technology is going to disrupt all functions, all industries. So you have to be very cognizant about it. Third importantly, don't go by the flavor of the day. That's because everyone is talking digital, you put all your money in digital. Very important to understand the consumer journeys and how in that journey you can influence the consumer. Be it through traditional media or be it through new age media. Then we talk about a wonderful framework called FICIS where consumer is at the heart but then you have commerce, you have content, you have connect and then you have community. And while many things are changing, there are some things which don't change. One is marketing is about storytelling. The other important bit is purpose behind your company and purpose behind the brands. Brands with purpose grow faster and companies with purpose are valued higher.


A group of youths have scored the administration of Governor Dony Deerey high on infrastructure as government marks two years in office. Our correspondent in Biosauce, Jesse S.E., reports that youths carried out an on-the-sport assessment of projects embarked upon by the state government. Members of the Biosauce Eminent Youth Leaders Forum are now visiting two project sites in the state. From a level average, they moved to the 4.58-kilometre Igbedi Road, then to Biosauce Media House, and Yenagwa-Operoma Road, amongst others, for faster information. The state has become a huge construction site, and with the commissioning of projects which the state would witness in the next few days, Biosauce shall experience the harvest of life-transforming projects. This is the first time that this has happened in our state, where a contract has been awarded and the time completion of the project is commendable. As youth leaders, we yearn for development, yearn for quality routes, which are indeed very grateful for what its excellence has done. The group gives the government a thumb up for human capital development by empowering the youth in various fields. We have intervened in many areas, especially in the health sector, the education sector, the sports sector, and the agriculture sector. This has greatly impacted on the human capacity development, the systematic tones daily, cassava processing factories, and by the local government area, has commenced operations and would absorb a significant number of youths in the state, thereby reducing crime in education, health, sports, and security. We have also witnessed massive intervention within the two years' miracle, Governor's reign in office. This has greatly improved the human capacity development index in the state within our climate, and amongst other developments. The youth forum urges by essence to support the government in order to attract more deliverables of governance to the state. Jesse A.C. Plus TV News, Yanagwa.


Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had a chat with a guy called Thomas Hosler. It was actually Dr. Thomas Hosler who's a lecturer and researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University. And we talked about ASMR. So for those that don't know, it's Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which is that little tingling sensation you get back of your head in response to certain stimuli, sounds, and all of that stuff. So really interesting and very popular on YouTube. So we talked about what it is, what research has been going on, how it benefits people, advertising, and so forth. So I hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Cool, and we're live. Thanks for coming down to see me. No problem. So you came down from Manchester. Yeah, awesome. So what is your background? I'm a lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, MMU. Been there for a couple of years. Before that, I did a PhD in psychology at the University of Sheffield. And then before that, undergrad degree in psychology at Leeds. Nice, nice. So you've always wanted to be academic research? I think pretty much, yeah. Both of my parents are academics. I think after I did my undergrad degree, I took a year out to just try a few things, yeah, and then decided I wanted to get back into it. Nice, nice. And so what research do you do? What are you covering? So at the minute, various things. Most of it at the minute I'm doing on ASMR, some stuff on mixed emotions as well, some stuff on... My PhD was in prospective memory. Which is? So how people remember how to do things in the future, or when to do things in the future. I like it, brilliant, brilliant. And then it migrated then to ASMR? Well, the ASMR sort of came out of nowhere, to be honest. It might be just worth telling people what ASMR is and what it stands for. So just give some context. So ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. And it's, I guess the phrase itself actually refers to the feeling or the sensation, which is a kind of pleasant tingling sensation. So it usually starts at the top of your head and kind of goes down your neck and shoulders. Kind of similar to goosebumps, I guess, but subtly different. Okay. And quite a pleasant sensation. And people get this in response to triggers such as people whispering, people talking very softly and kind of enunciating the words that they say. And there's also sort of an element of this kind of close personal attention, I guess. So like, people often get it when, say, someone's giving them a haircut or things like, you know, like arrive at a hotel or something and the receptionist is like, okay, so what room number was it? Oh, just keep looking up. And they're kind of, you know, giving you this kind of expert personal attention. Yeah, yeah. And these triggers trigger this feeling called ASMR. Interesting. And it could be other things, could it be visual as well as auditory? Yeah, so I guess it's a combination of all those things, right? So the auditory, yeah, seems to be something to do with like the whispering and the particular kind of crisp sounds. So as well as people enunciating their words like that, you can trigger it through kind of crisp sounds like tapping fingernails. Okay. People kind of running their hand along a comb where it goes... Yeah, yeah. Hair. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. Yeah. And then I guess the personal attention expert thing, people doing very expert things with their hands, say like, you know, modeling something or crafting something or... Oh wow, that's visual. That's really visual. Yeah, but I guess, you know, it's all, it comes as a package, I guess. So it's all these things sort of together. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's not just any time someone whispers, you get ASMR or any time you hear tapping or see someone doing something. It seems to be like this interplay between all these different... So there's a trigger and then you have this ASMR response. Yeah, you get ASMR. And so how did you arrive at researching this and had it become a... Well, so... A topic of interest. So it was when I was doing my PhD in Sheffield, which was on, yeah, something completely different really, you know, memory. And I was out with some fellow PhD students and these are the ones who I worked on, the paper that we published with. Julia Puario, Emma Blakey and Theresa Valtry.  He was like, oh, Tom, if you... You know, this is gonna sound weird, but have you ever heard of ASMR? And I said, no, you know.  And I was like, yeah, I do. Well, you know, not that often, but definitely when I was a kid more as well, I was like, oh, yeah. You know, I didn't think anyone else in the world... So it's an actual thing that you are really conscious that you got? I think you would know if you got it. Yeah, yeah. Obviously there's sort of different degrees to the extent that people get it, but it seems to be, some people get it and some people don't.   Yeah, yeah. There's quite a lot of skepticism there as well. Yeah. It seems to be. I guess that's from the people who don't get it. Just do it, yeah. And anyway, when Jules mentioned this to me, she said, oh, you know, have you heard of it? And I was like, no. She said, oh, we want to do, you know, I want to do a piece of research into it. And actually at that time, it was still sort of, I guess, like an underground internet subculture, especially in the last couple of years, it's kind of almost got mainstream. But there was no, I think there was one kind of scientific paper published on it, but very like under-research. Yeah, yeah, perfect. It's kind of a good opportunity to do something really interesting and novel. Amazing. And so, and so this was what, like five years ago or so? Yeah, this must, yeah, four or five. Fine, and then so you joined Manchester Met and then started your research there? Yeah, so we did, me, Jules kind of led the project and then me, her, Emma and Theresa kind of did this piece of research into ASMR, sort of in our spare time when we were PhD students. Oh, okay, fine, right. And got that published. And then since I've become a lecturer, I guess I'm paid to do. And that's pretty good, so. Great. So what have you actually researched to date and what are you currently doing on it? So the first paper that was published on ASMR, Not By Us, although actually by one of my colleagues at MMU, Nick, Nick Davis and Emma Barrett, they just did a basic kind of survey into people who watch ASMR videos, sort of what does it feel like? Why do you watch them? What are the kind of things that trigger your ASMR? So what we wanted to do is see, but there was inevitably some skepticism sort of around it saying, well, how do you know if people say, oh, I get the stinging feeling or feel relaxed, how do you know they actually are feeling that? Yeah, yeah. So we wanted to do an experiment where we actually got people sort of into the lab, got them to watch an ASMR video or a few videos and then measured their physiological responses, so heart rate, breathing rate, skin conductance, which is the sort of kind of sweaty palms feeling, and these were measures of general physiological arousal. And we found that the people who got ASMR when they were watching the ASMR videos, they showed larger decreases in heart rate and increases in skin conductance than the people who didn't get ASMR. Interesting. So this sort of shows, I guess that it's somewhat of, like it is a real thing in terms of people are reporting feeling different, but there's actually that their physiological measures are showing that something is actually happening as well. And then did you also share them non-SMR videos and measures? Yes, like a controlled condition, yeah. So it was only the ASMR people who got ASMR who watched ASMR videos that showed the biggest decreases. Okay, fine. And then people who said they didn't get ASMR, they also didn't get it when they were watching. No, I think, I mean, I think they decreased slightly, but there's obviously going to be some effect of just sitting quietly in a room watching a kind of relaxing video, but the people who reported actually getting the tingling sensation showed bigger decreases as well. Great. And so you released that paper to say that they were physical. Yeah, we published that last August. And that was your first paper on ASMR that you published? Great. And where's it going to now? So you've kind of, is it accepted now that ASMR is a thing? Well, I guess there's more evidence to it and there's more people who are researching it now. But compared to, there's probably a dozen, maybe less like papers published on it. So it's still not necessarily, you sort of need a large body of evidence to really kind of prove that something exists. But it does seem to be more people, researching it and publishing on it, which is quite exciting obviously in the sort of, I guess it's a snowball effect, like the more that you gets out there, the more other people get interested in it. Definitely. And increases. But you've kind of established a measurable effect on the body? Yeah. Than that. And do you know what happens and what's actually happening in the brain that causes that response? Well, not really, no. That's one of the most interesting questions really, is sort of why, what does it happen? There's some interesting stuff about other kind of forms of tingling, which is to do with your sort of brain's attention on its own inter-receptive signals. So like your brain is constantly getting information from inside your body about sort of what's happening, but usually it's not, you're not consciously aware of it. So there's a theory that tingling is some way of, when your brain kind of becomes, puts its attention on these signals in a particular way, that's when you experience tingling. So can you make yourself do that? So interestingly, there seems to be a sort of subset of people who can deliberately trigger like ASMR without any external influence. That can kind of make themselves tingle. And that's measurable. Well, we're not sure how to measure that. Right, right, right. That's not something we've looked at specifically. But people self-report, a subset of people self-report being able to do that, which is quite interesting. They're very, our mind's powerful. Super powerful. And this is, ASMR, it regarded as a therapeutic. So this is almost where the, you have to get the definition straight, because ASMR itself refers to the feeling, right? And this can be caused by any sort of everyday instances of people like that, example of a receptionist checking you in or going to get a haircut. But it's really kind of come to the public consciousness through the YouTube videos, right? The ASMR videos. They get millions, like millions, millions. So basically, what sort of happened is that when people started initially talking about this feeling online, there was a blog post called the unnamed feeling where someone said, oh, I get this weird tingling sensation when in certain circumstances and other people like, oh, I get this as well. And they gave it a name, ASMR. Yeah, and when was this? How long ago? This must have been about 2009, I think. But so once they had a name, you could talk about it with other people. And then people like, well, how can I say, maybe we could, people go, oh, when I watch this particular YouTube video, I get the sensation as well. And there's examples of stuff going back to the 80s, like the Bob Ross videos. And I don't know them. Okay, this guy called Bob Ross, he did a sort of how to paint series. Okay, yeah. In like the late 80s, early 90s. And sort of purely by chance, his videos are really ASMR triggering because he's got this kind of quite soft voice and you can hear the kind of scratching sounds of his paintbrush on the canvas. And there's loads of ASMR triggers in there. And people sort of saying, oh, when I watch this video, it gives me ASMR. So then the next logical step is, well, you could deliberately make videos to trigger ASMR by putting all these triggers in them. Ah, okay. And they're the things that become really popular. And then from that, people said, well, I don't just watch these videos because it sort of feels nice, but because people find that it helps decrease their symptoms of depression and anxiety and helps them relax. And in particular, it's sort of really interesting when it helps people get to sleep. Yeah, yeah. So that's where the idea of the therapeutic thing comes in because people are saying, well, yeah, are we using these videos for that purpose? Yeah, I spoke to it when we'd agreed to do this. I spoke to a few people about ASMR because I hadn't really, I didn't know much about it. And both people I spoke to were like, oh my God, I have insomnia. And the only thing that gets me to sleep is watching ASMR videos. And I had no idea. People didn't talk about it. No, not really.  And so then you start speaking to people more about it and you start looking at the videos. And it's interesting. It seems to really work. Well, that's the thing, right? You know, it's not just kind of, it's interesting to do research on it purely from a, it's a weird sensation sort of angle. But also there's this whole thing, well, actually, loads of people are using it for this purpose. And I mean, there's arguably a lot more unhealthy ways to help yourself get to sleep. Well, if you're not drinking drugs and stuff like that. So in that respect, if it works, then it could be a match. No, it's powerful.  And all you need is a YouTube account, right? Or like something you can watch YouTube videos. Well, technology is working again. Crazy. The interesting thing, and I don't know if you're starting to research it, is that actually how does it work and what parts of the brain, why does it have that effect? I mean, there's a few theories. There's one theory that it's sort of something to do with like from evolutionary psychology, like a grooming thing. What do you mean? So you know, like how chimpanzees groom each other for lights and parasites and stuff. There's a theory that well, maybe ASMR is almost like a kind of evolutionary kind of hangover from that because presumably, if you get this kind of pleasurable sensation from kind of being groomed, that would be an incentive to do it and to do it to other people as well. So that's one interesting kind of idea behind it. Another bit of research that started to go on is looking at ASMR and misophonia. What's that? So misophonia, it's a similar thing, but it's when you really hate certain sounds. I like scratching chalk on the board so more like eating sounds. So some people, the sound of other people eating drives them crazy.  And it's called misophonia. And, you know, there was an original idea that maybe ASMR is like the opposite of misophonia. If some people get a pleasant tingling sensation from it and some people get, you know, a horrible sensation from it. But then this recently search, which has found that people who get ASMR also tend to get misophonia. Oh, wow. So maybe it's something actually to do with a more general kind of sensitivity to sound that is like stimulating, you know, different parts of the brain. Interesting if this is developed over time or if it's kind of genetic or mixture of both. Yeah, I had to say really. Fascinating. And then are you doing any new research at the moment in it, or what's? So I'm doing a bit looking, one of my undergraduate students, Emma Schofield, did her dissertation project on it. And she's looking at, yeah, the links between ASMR, misophonia and different triggers to see, because although broadly, there's similar triggers like whispering, tapping, these sorts of things, different people respond to different ones. So we're trying to look a little bit about how people respond to different kinds of triggers. Nice. And actually I've got a link to that study online. Oh, definitely. Yeah, we'll share it after. Because you need some people who don't get ASMR to respond to it as well. I'll find, we'll put that out when we release the podcast and we'll get you some respondents, definitely. How is it being used in advertising? Because this is where it started to get really powerful, right? Yeah, this is where it's sort of gone mainstream, right? Like the Super Bowl halftime ad. Yeah, yeah. I read somewhere that people pay like the $39 million per 30 seconds of advert or something. And the most recent Super Bowl, this beer company made an ASMR video as their advert. So it's like broadcast ASMR to like a huge... Did they say it was ASMR? Yeah, I just said that. So it was, it obviously looked like an ASMR video as well. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah.  I mean, I think with the advertising, it's tempting to be like, ooh, you know, maybe when you're getting ASMR and you're getting all these pleasurable tingles, it puts you into some kind of hypnotic state where you're then susceptible to buying beer or adverts. But I really think it's more just to do with, you know, they're so different to the kind of classic adverts that really, you know, allow an exciting and brash that people find them interesting and want to watch them. And the other clever thing is that, you know, people seek out videos to trigger their ASMR but they're not particularly seeking them out for the particular content in them. It's just, it triggers your ASMR. Yeah, yeah. So like that Bob Ross example, right? They're not watching it because they like shows about painting. They're watching it to trigger their ASMR. So it means if you make an advert of it, you're going to get loads of people watching it, not because they're interested in beer or adverts, but because they just want to get ASMR from it. Yeah. But then they'll buy the beer as well. Well, I mean, I guess if you're watching the advert, you're probably seeping into subconscious that it exists. But would you also feel more of an emotional attachment, do you think, to something that has made you feel really nice and tingling and relaxing? Yeah, ASMR is a pleasurable, you know, sensation. So it might, well, we'll do that. And I mean, the other thing is that, you know, when you normally like watching an advert on your phone or whatever, you know, you're doing your best to kind of skip it as soon as it comes on. Yeah. And you're not really paying attention to it. But when you're watched, when people watch ASMR videos, you know, they want to get really engrossed in it. They put their, you know, best headphones on, sort of sit in a quiet room and pay really close attention to the video. And that's like an advertiser's dream, right?  Massively. And there's an example, it's like the Ikea did an ASMR advert as well. She's like 30 minutes long. 30 minutes? Yeah. I haven't seen this either. Yeah. And people are watching this 30 minute video to get ASMR. And it's like a 30 minute advert for Ikea. I mean, they can be watching it in their Ikea couch with the Ikea Pillies. Yeah.  But obviously, like, you know, for the advertising company to get people to sit down for half an hour and watch, essentially, an advert is great for them. But also it must be, I don't know if you've ever heard it, anyone has a stats, but it must be so many people watching these videos to make it worth their while, paying to do a 30 minute advert. I mean, crazy. Yeah. And some of the videos have got, you know, millions of views and the top ASMR artists have got, you know, hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Wow. And, you know, the best ones are like, like YouTube celebrities, really. That's their full time. There's a lady. I can't remember her name is. The one that was just read. Yeah, that's it. So yeah, we met her. I think she used to sort of work in a law firm or something like PR or something. Oh, right. So I'm making these videos. And then, you know, they're so popular and she can make enough money out of advertising on them that there's a full time job now. Day job? Yeah. She's got a little studio and a garden and... She, English. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. It's so powerful. I mean, also with like Facebook and all these things with facial recognition and stuff, they're probably doing it now, but what's starting more is to read your emotions and how you emotionally respond to whatever it might be that you're looking at.  Yeah. I mean, you've got no hope. And if it become, you know, I guess it is so popular that the, you know, the commercial side of it as well is only likely to grow. Like I heard that, you know, some company was like making headphones, particularly for use when you're watching ASMR videos, you know, because there's an audience out there who would buy that probably. Yeah. Do you feel then as if someone's using ASMR or getting ASMR specifically because they're using it for insomnia and all this kind of stuff, but then you have companies exploiting the fact that they know you get this feeling when does that marry up or is it kind of bad taste a little bit? I guess it's like an inevitable consequence of the capitalist society there, isn't it? Like from what I've heard, you know, from interviews with ASMR artists, like the people who make the videos, they're sort of, you know, always resigned to it and say, well, you know, I guess if it... I guess at the end of the day, they can still go on making the videos for free and making money off it through advertising. Yeah, well, you can watch YouTube. The stuff goes on around you and you can't stop it, so... Yeah, no, true.  Yeah, yeah, that's true. Is there anyone, if anyone, anyone for people to speak to for more information on how it's working for them? Well, because it feels like they stumble across it just to help that nothing else has worked. I guess like the main way that it sort of grows in the ASMR community, if you want to call it that, the biggest one I know of is on Reddit. So there's an ASMR Reddit where people post, you know, their favorite videos, but also, you know, do discussions about it as well. So I take people to check out there. And I think once you've found a sort of particular, you know, if there's a particular trigger that triggers your ASMR, the ASMR Reddit is quite good because people would tag their videos with the different triggers. Oh, okay. Or this one's a tapping one or this one's, you know, something else. Have they been useful for you, for your research? Are they getting involved? Yeah, so we've recruited a lot of sort of ASMR people from Reddit and from those kind of, I think there's probably some like Facebook groups as well where people talk about it and check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what do you think the future directions or uses will be for ASMR? So I mean, it seems to, I think definitely like the commercial side of it will grow sort of inevitably if there's money to be made out of it. But I think, you know, looking into the therapeutic aspects of it is going to be really interesting. And you know, you don't want to overblow anything at the minute because the research is obviously in an early stage. So I don't want to go making any grand claims to cure your depression or whatever. But, you know, I would say that if people are, you know, haven't explored ASMR at all yet, you know, why not like give it a go, search for some videos. If you know that you, if you listen to this and you're sort of thinking, you know, I kind of sometimes get a feeling that's a bit like that, but I'm not sure if it's ASMR or not. You know, go on YouTube and have a look at some different kinds of videos and see if there is one or a certain type of one that does trigger it. And if it does, you know, help you relax or whatever, then as I said, like it's healthier than a lot of other ways that people will. Well, if you'd have to take any drugs, I mean, for sure. And to help you make some insomnia, depression, anxiety, relaxing. So, yeah. Do you think the health, do you think the health kind of route commercial and all these health aspects will start to? I'd be interested to see it. Like you can just look at the way that, you know, mindfulness is sort of blown up as a thing, right? Like 10, well, yeah, probably 10, 15 years ago, meditation in general was sort of a bit of a kooky hippie thing. And now it's mindfulness is basically like, you know, standard, you know, apps and everything for it. So I could sort of see ASMR kind of go in the same way. Is that an alternative medicine? Yeah. Maybe breaking into mainstream. Maybe your GP will forward some links for you. Well, I mean, like, yeah, it's hard to say, really. Interesting. And then, and what about just the last thing on, on like funding for research? Are you finding commercial businesses or companies are starting to be interested in? So I know if a few, a few people have researchers in ASMR have kind of been approached by companies who want to know more about the triggers and how, you know, how to make ASMR videos. I think that, you know, the academic funding for it, that's something that we would hopefully start seeing the next few years because, but it's difficult because, you know, the funders don't want to fund something too off the wall because essentially most scientific research is funded by, you know, the government and the tax payers indirectly. So they don't want to throw it at some kooky crazy alternative thing and then it turns out to be rubbish. So once you've got to publish a certain amount of papers, I guess I'd just like, yeah, once there's this kind of critical mass of stuff suggesting, look, even if we don't know if this 100% works, there's enough to suggest that it's worth doing a kind of proper, really well-funded, well-run study to investigate it first. So obviously, yeah, some of it, I just hope. Great, I absolutely hope it comes to you. And is there anyone else in other countries doing the like pockets of... Yeah, I know that there's a couple of research groups in Canada and America who publish some stuff on it and then a couple in the UK as well. But science and sort of scientific publishing moves at such a slower pace compared to the rest of the world that... No, I know, also it takes, for a new idea or something new like this, it seems to take science and the community a long time to accept it and then to fund it and... I mean, I could do a whole other podcast on science publishing, if you want to, but as an example, we conducted that study, what, four years ago, probably took us a year from initially submitting the manuscript to the journal to actually seeing it in print. A year? Yeah. Which journal did you... I suppose it's in plus one, it's called. Okay. So it's like a multidisciplinary... Fine. Why so long? Just the, you know, you submit it, it goes off for peer review, they come back, they say make these changes and the whole peer review process like that and the editor who takes your manuscripts and then passes it on and then coordinates everything. Essentially, they're kind of part-time... And I guess, and who's peer reviewing? Just other... Other academics. So many other universities around that would... Yeah, who've got sort of, you know, I imagine the person who peer-reviewed Ard has some expertise in physiological measures, probably, and some expertise in, you know, some of the sensory phenomenon. Yeah. And it's one person that peers reviews. Use it to, use it to peer reviews, yeah. We need to speed things up. Yeah. We need to get the funding over, we need to crack on. There's a whole load of... I mean, I think science is getting better for that, to be honest, I think. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. That's cool. And where can people find you if they want to get in touch and either participate in a study or find out more? Yeah, I mean... Social media and... Yeah, social media at Tom Hossler on Twitter or te.hossler.mmu.ac.uk. Okay. So, you can address. Awesome. But one thing we're hoping to sort of do in the next is get some funding. We're gonna submit a bid to sort of start an ASMR research network. Nice. And one of the things we want to do as part of that is make a website that kind of coordinates all this information on ASMR and gives people the opportunity to participate in studies and studies. Brilliant. Oh, that'd be really cool. Yeah. Really cool. How far away are you from doing that? I think we're gonna submit the funding in June, July. Okay. And not far. And do you have a Facebook group? Did you mention Facebook or someone else's? I think there are ASMR Facebook groups in general. I'm not sure what they're called. Fine. So your website will be your hub for all of the staff and the research. And that'd be really cool. Well, thanks so much for coming in. Yeah, no problem. And next podcast on scientific publishing. Yeah. Cool. Thanks a lot. Hey, folks. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.


Cloud converged infrastructure, hyperscale, hyper-converged software defined. The IT world is a buzz with buzzwords. At the center of it all is EMC and VCE. VCE once a company that was owned by a collection of Cisco, VMware, EMC, a little bit of Intel with a separate governing board has now been rolled in to EMC and this is really the first big VCE announcement that we're going to analyze. Subsequent to that bringing back VCE internally to EMC. I'm here with Stu Miniman here at Wikibon headquarters. Stu, big announcement from VCE today, taking off the gloves a little bit or maybe I should say the handcuffs. Yeah, so Dave, it's interesting. We've watched VCE since the start. Dyslamer actually worked on some of the architecture when it was a project inside of EMC back in the early days. It's interesting, there's so many out there in the press that love to pick on VCE. Every time Cisco did something with one of the storage partners out there, it's, oh, VCE's dead. Anything in the ripple as to how the relationships were, oh, VCE's going to be dead. VCE's growing. You were just at the EMC analyst event down in New York City this week and I think that the number you gave me is for seven quarters they've grown 50% year over year. I mean, phenomenal growth. Number we hear is in the ballpark of $2 billion that VCE did and so some of the data that we got from the people involved is of course when a company's grown that big, everybody wants to be a part of you. Everybody's like, hey, I've got a software product, I've got a hardware product. How do I get on board this train? Because it's huge and some of those pressures from the parent companies were starting to cause some tension and cause some problems and it just made sense since EMC was the majority owner that it really just comes back into EMC. Cisco, by the way, still a minority owner but there's no board anymore. It's just a division of EMC, still keeping the brand, still keeping VCE and we're starting to see some changes along the way but it's core mission to still simplify IT and drive that convergence and they're one of the leaders in this space. And that train that you talked about, that's a single SKU train. It's not a reference architecture. They've made a big deal about that and I used to joke any color you want as long as it's black but there's some different shades now that they're offering. So take us through the announcement. Yeah, sure Dave. So first of all, you're right. When we think back to the early days, one of the knocks on V blocks was really it's a single configuration and I can't adjust and I can't modify and customers need options but what we know is customers spend way too much time trying to over optimize and configure it and turn those knobs and the simplicity of VCE so that it is truly that single SKU that ships out of the manufacturing and you know exactly what you get. You know how it's going to perform with certain workloads. That was great. Over time they've added more models. They've added more configurations and the announcement today, a couple of big things that are going to allow even more flexibility but still keeping what they call the VCE experience. So the first one we'll talk about is what are called the VX block which is a little bit, it forks what a V block was. A V block we always knew was it's EMC storage, Cisco compute, Cisco networking. A VX block actually is going to allow me to change some of those components a little bit so they talk down the road that both the compute and the networking, maybe even the virtualization could change off of the original configuration. The first configuration that they're going to have is that you can run VMware NSX which of course is the software networking component or SDN component, the huge NICERO 1.2 billion dollar acquisition, NSX on what basically is a V block because even though it's going to be called a VX block the hardware configuration is really the same as what I had with a V block before but it's just going to give that option for VMware's software network. So that's an example of something that probably wouldn't have happened right in previous administrations. If Cisco has a vote on the board wouldn't they have vetoed something like that? So there was definitely some tension there and there was discussion that hey if I'm still using Cisco hardware gear yeah I can do VMware networking, I can do other software on top of that. I mean there are places where Cisco and EMC and VMware compete a little bit when it comes to the software component so if the core components say the same it might have happened on VCE. It just happens a lot faster and a lot easier now that VCE is part of really just under the EMC umbrella. Well what about Cisco's software to find ACI? I presume that's still at play. I mean some customers are going to want to use that. Yeah absolutely and ACI is being baked into the V block that is a configuration that you can get and if Cisco's smart they're going to leverage VCE to be the driver really the tip of the spear to get those customers to adopt it because V block customers tend to be pushing the envelope a little bit trying those newer technologies so ACI is a perfect fit for the V block. Well Cisco I mean really that relationship worked out in the sense that it created a distribution channel for Cisco at EMC's sales force who's got relationships with a lot of big customers like you said it's the big customers who are buying V block. I mean it worked out pretty well but you always hear about these tensions. I mean what's going on there? So first of all of course Dave, Cisco wants anybody to sell their gear so more of their gear and absolutely when it comes to the UCS, the compute platform if it wasn't for really the two I'd call out it to EMC and NetApp did a great job of getting those to the customer's environment because even though it's the server piece the storage guys have had a long time interconnecting how those pieces work so VCE with the V block and the NetApp FlexPod both delivered a ton of those environments. If you look at the bigger UCS customers most of them are buying Converge. A lot of revenue that drove Cisco made it easier for customers to adopt that change because one thing that Convergence does and even Hyper Convergence takes it even further is I don't think as much about the brand I think about the solution and if I think about the solution I can make that change if I've been an HP or an IBM shop for ages well I'm also a Cisco customer and I buy the solution it makes sense I don't worry about oh wait you know the compute has so and so's logo on it. Well what about Hyper Converged? We talk all the time you saw a big raise the other day by SimpliVity, Nutanix is doing well granted it's at the lower end of the market space maybe than what V blocks traditionally have played but those markets always come together what about Hyper Converged? What's VCE's Hyper Converged strategy? Yeah so today Dave VCE does not play in Hyper Converged EMC does EMC has the V-Specs Blue which is based on the VMware V-SAN EVO rail technology I would expect that VCE needs to move in the space Cisco's going to move into the space Cisco actually is a V-SAN partner they don't do the EVO rail so today nothing from VCE but expect to see more V-Specs is already there but by the way V-Specs and the Solutions Organization in EMC all report now to Praveen who's the CEO of VCE so absolutely I expect to see and hear more from VCE on Hyper Converged but today I mean Dave we talked about if VCE's doing two billion and Converged is like a six billion dollar market Hyper Converged last year was about a tenth of that so it's still early it's still growing it's the future. So just keying on what you just said Pat Gelsinger at the financial analyst meeting this week talked about EVO RAC and he said that the first configuration is going to be a solution around VCE or V-Block so that's going, you know, that EVO rail is going up market. Okay, what about V-Scale? Where does V-Scale fit into exactly? Actually just one more piece talk about the flexibility of the solution the other one is if you look at a Converged environment or especially a Hyper Converged one of the things that people have question is what if I need more computer I need more storage can I be flexible and VCE now has a solution that they're calling a VCE technology extension so now I can take a block of compute or a block of storage and plug that into the network so it's great if I just need more Cisco UCS or if I wanted to say from EMC and Iceland or ExtremeIO to programmatically plug that in still keep it in the V-Block experience and that leads to your question which is Yeah, but so yeah, but I just want to, second I mean that's a criticism you have of a lot of the Hyper Converged solutions that you can't scale storage independent of compute you actually hear a lot of people in the Hadoop community complaining about that and why not, I mean different workloads are going to require different profiles. Yeah and absolutely on that and that's why a single solution isn't what you need, you need flexibility so take Nutanix for example it's not a single option they have kind of a small remote office box they have a big storage heavy box and if I put them all in a pool together I can have different configurations and balance as needed and grow as needed so that's their angle Yeah, that's Nutanix's angle and you know it's simplicity, you know it's not like you've got one monolithic box and there's not a little bit of adjustment inside there but absolutely there are environments where you might run out of computer or might run out of storage But there's greater granularity than the marketing would lead you to believe is what you're saying Yeah, there's some nuance there absolutely Okay, what about V-Scale? Okay, so VCE when they first came out it was while you're just taking the parent company's technology are you going to create anything yourself? And the first thing that they created is what they call VCE Vision which is really their orchestration software layer and V-Scale is really the next generation and kind of what this whole announcement from VCE was called the dot next release reminds me a lot of how VMware does their announcements but it's taking vision and really turning V-Scale into a software backplane that can pull together the V blocks and the VX blocks and the compute and storage and manage all of them in a really software defined way and it really plays in nicely with if you look at what EMC has with Viper what Cisco has with ACI it's a similar type of orchestration model and could leverage all of those things going forward Okay, so it's another layer on top of the fabric and vision is a VCE product right? I mean they sort of built that themselves Yes, a homegrown software which was the first product that they actually created IP on their own Right, I mean normally it was taking some VMware, some Cisco, some EMC so where do you see that product going? So V-Scale, customers of VCE don't just buy one box that they're usually buying a lot a lot of repeat, a lot of larger customers going into service providers going into large enterprises and when I want to manage these large clusters in these environments this is where V-Scale is going to be able to take care of that and it's a good extension for the product line So Stu, I want to talk about cloud in a box when these systems came out it was interesting, Larry Ellison actually made the statement that Oracle didn't get it all started VCE didn't get it all started it was actually Teradata that it got all started the first to actually put sort of this appliance model together and all the compute storage and other infrastructure in the box and so that was many, many that was back in the 80s but it was really Exadata and VCE and sort of HP has sort of chimed in with converged infrastructure right around that 2009 timeframe but when that occurred everybody started talking about cloud in a box and it really wasn't cloud in a box it was compute networking and storage in a box and then you had this management and orchestration thing where are we with cloud in the box? Yeah, yeah, great question Dave you know I think back a few years ago it was really, you know advanced virtualization in a box and maybe with some management on top of it and we've come a lot further so if you look at EMC's hybrid cloud it uses converged infrastructure as the substrate it's the base layer and then there's a lot of software on top of it to really turn that into a cloud offering so EMC hybrid cloud is specifically it's either V block or V specs underneath it and therefore I know if I have a certain number of virtual machines or a certain number of virtual desktops or those environments I know what increment I want to buy that in I know the base configurations and that's an underlying piece because when I go to cloud and if I go to software defined data center or anything there still needs to be hardware that it all lives on I still need spindles and nodes and compute and everything else so how do I build those out and I want something that just really easy works and can scale and that's one of the things that converged infrastructure can bring. So where are we in the marketplace? I mean I definitely have to give Cisco props I mean they've done very very well in the market they underestimated them when they entered the market I was extremely skeptical that they'd be able to succeed in an adjacency like servers and looking back the success is because they were very focused they changed the game and obviously have done very well and they had a partner in not just EMC I mean NetApp's done very well the FlexPod and so they've got a good strategy it's worked can you give us an update on sort of the market what are the players looking like? Yeah so it was interesting Dave we had theCUBE at the Open Compute Summit this week and we've talked about one of the biggest threats to Cisco is what we call kind of the white box or bright boxes kind of the new term is not just saying just go buy some generic but you know if what about if I buy from Dell or HP and they give you some hardware and I disaggregate the software so some of that disaggregation is a big threat to Cisco it's interesting you listen to John Chambers and he said I'm not worried I'm going to crush all of those white box guys but it's a you know for years Cisco's been squeezing huge margins out of the network and they got much better margins out of compute than anybody thought that they could a lot of it because they marry some of the network pieces in there so there are some big threats you see most of the big players out here are using more commodity components you know we talked to HP and Dell IBM uses a lot of open source components even EMC offers you know white box type of technologies with what they build with ECS with Viper you know a lot of their components they're going to more off the shelf componentry and Cisco builds their own stuff so you know there is a threat that if you know I can deliver a platform at a lower price and I can get software built on top of it to really build more of a kind of a software ecosystem which is how most of the market is but it's not how infrastructure typically is today that there's a huge threat to Cisco and you know while they've been riding UCS and they're doing great with it at the macro trend you know I think there's some huge threats well that's interesting you know open source even finds its way into hardware with OCP and I would imagine companies like Cumulus and others would be sort of an interesting wild card I should say in that space but what's the market look like I mean do you have a sense as to the to the size of the business who's got the biggest shares I mean even in a rough sense it's just sure from a compute standpoint yeah so it was actually SimpliVity in their announcement said that it's basically storage and compute are both a little over like 52 to 54 billion dollars so it's a hundred billion yeah it's a hundred billion just taking the compute and the storage and the convert space is you know looking to attack a big piece of that well and you throw in so you said the compute and the storage throw in the networking yeah you know it's another piece throw in the software it's I mean at one point I had it at a 400 billion but okay so it's huge yeah and just a quick note on the network piece because really core networking is mostly orthogonal to this you know I don't build my whole network that I run all the internet and all my nodes off of it's there's top of rack switching and that embedded stuff is in the convergence but I don't get all the networks so yeah so who's doing well there I mean obviously VC what's their share do you know the of converge if I see you know if VCE is at about two billion and it's a little over six billion it's they are you know number one in you know Gartner breaks it up into two or three different segments and they might have about half of the segment that they play in they're about you know more than a quarter maybe is that kind of high-end overall yeah our target market as opposed to the reference architectures another one and then Gartner actually segments the you know application specific solutions like what Oracle does in some IBM's solutions as a third piece so you know all those markets are growing convergence is really you know that the rising tide that's raising you know a lot of these pieces so VCE seems to strategy is to expand horizontally with more choice go up the stack maybe over time more more management you know more cloud-like capabilities probably not going into the application unless I mean they're not Oracle so they're not can start you know layering databases but maybe they could you know create affinity with with databases so what do you see there that that sort of horizontal versus vertical play yeah and it I'll bring a note that VCE told us is said in the early days it was really about saving money and simplifying things that they they love our terminology Dave which is to get rid of that undifferentiated heavy lifting and the transformation that they've started to see over the last kind of six to twelve months is customers are looking to build this platform and get faster and do cloud speed I'm sure it's something you heard from the whole EMC Federation is that agility and speed is something that they're driving especially with Pivotal so in some ways you know they are moving up the stack but they're not trying to make you know specific you know environments for applications they want a general purpose you know pool of resources where I can understand the specific workloads and go after them so if I juxtapose that to Oracle Oracle is basically I call it appliance creep they're building highly optimized appliances for virtually every workload you can imagine whether it's database or analytics you name it they've got you know an appliance for it and so VCE's strategy is much much different they're talking about a horizontal infrastructure that can support not just Oracle applications but applications across the portfolio now Oracle might say well we can support other applications too but they really don't want to you know Oracle doesn't want to support Microsoft applications they want to support Oracle application I would think that VCE is application that wants to be application agnostic right is that the strategy yeah absolutely application agnostic I'm in some ways they're even going to be you know virtualization agnostic who said it's VMware today but that you can do physical environments on parts of the V block you can use other virtualization environments the interesting thing Dave when we talk to the storage companies is right how are they doing with those new applications you mentioned Hadoop before today convergence is not been a good fit even hyperconvergence hasn't been a good fit for Hadoop because just the balance isn't quite right it's usually not the same buyer most of the hyperconverting solutions are built for virtualization and while VMware is working hard to virtualize Hadoop that's that's not where most people are with that type of well and I see this is modern apps VCE and Praveen you know expanding their their their total available market I mean if they can start getting into new forms of virtualization maybe even you know other choice around servers and network not choice around storage that's not going to happen is it no no it's any anything you want as long as it's emcee storage I mean that's kind of even though well you know Federation I mean you know if vSAN makes sense you know that's a little bit different it's you know the role it's interesting to see oh emcee how much of it is hardware and how much of it our software solution that looks real that's that's getting you know traction and it's just it's only going to go up from here alright Stu we're out of time we have to leave it there final thought on on the announcement and the market the directions you know customer thoughts what do you think yeah so you know the thing that I keep coming back to is when I talk to VCE customers it's you know storage goes away as a problem and as a matter of fact most of my infrastructure can become invisible and that's great because it need to move to that different model when we talk to the hyperscale guys you know they don't have infrastructure teams they focus on their application they focus on their business value and that's something that I know we've been preaching at Wikibon for years so how do I make it simpler how do I make that infrastructure go away and while Vblock you know takes pieces from some of these big you know traditional companies they deliver an experience in a different way and it's really more about the people and processes often that it is the technology so it's it's it's great to see this this process and this solution you know driving some change back to these parent companies all right thank you Stu check out check out Stu's work at wikibon.org and also premium.wikibon.com new website that we have you can text him or tweet him at he's at Stu if you had any questions on the announcement I'm at D. Volante thanks for watching everybody this is the cube we'll see you next time