For the cheapest and safest man, 22 coins, go to mmoexp.com and use code MMG for 5% off. I know what you're thinking. You're saying, Matt, what are you wearing on your head?  You were about to ask me. And she said, oh, you should wear this next time we go out. And I've ghosted her ever since. How does that explain why I'm wearing it right now? It doesn't. I don't have an answer for you. Bandwagoning today. I'm bandwagoning an MVP of Madden 20. Wait, no, wait, what? Fun fact, did you know we're four and two in Wheel of Mut? And our team is actually kind of good? Well, we're 81 overall. I guess Madden doesn't want to show me it up there on the top right, but we're in 81 overall. Stafford's debut was incredible. He does. I will say he missed a few throws on the run. It's not like I really should be running with Stafford anyway. He's definitely a pocket passer. Plus I have pocket dead eyes. So it's better to throw from the pocket, but I'm kind of used to taste some hill right now. So got me some slack. I think next thing we really need to do is upgrade our right tackle. We've been getting lasered around that edge. And it's not that fun. I'm ready to hop into this episode. So I would say right now top priority is a strong safety right outside linebacker, a corner. Can I pack a punch anybody? Is anyone pack a punchable? I don't know if anyone is. Pack a punch lets me get the best version of one card on my team. Oh, Reggie White, well for sure. Wait a minute. So Reggie White is definitely a possibility. Let me look at my other players. There is an 88 overall Carl Lawson. So that's an option. There's an 89 Reggie White, also a good option. Well, Eddie Jackson. Eddie Jackson has an 86 overall superstars. I kind of want to do that more than anything. 85 speed 86 is amazing. Amazing. Also, since it's a pack a punch, we can get the power up and power him up as well. So we're getting a lot of power up players on the squad right now. As I upgrade Eddie Jackson, we're getting our second wheel spin right now. Pack a punch was a great start. And our next one is going to be a YouTuber's pick. Ooh, I'm excited. I'm going to call a YouTuber. I'm not sure who yet. And I'm going to have him pick a player. I think these drawings probably the man to call. See what he says. What's up, man? Hey, what's good, bro? How you doing? Doing good, man. How you doing, bro? Really good. I would request your assistance if you got a second. What's good? What you need, my boy? All right. I'm recording the wheel of mud. I just landed on a spin that's going to have you pick one player for the squad.  All right. We got. We got. Honestly, I don't think I can tell you. I almost think that'd be cheating. If you name someone I already have though, I won't use them. All right. Let me know. You can literally pick anybody, bro. Anybody in the NFL who you think is going to be a stud on my squad. And if I already have them, I'll have you pick. You say Tyree kill. Dude, I knew you were going to say that too. Let's go.  I love you. I'll talk to you soon. Let's go. Dude, I knew he was going to say Tyree. Dude, that's so clutch. I haven't used a Tyree card in so long. Destroying big clutch. Let's go. I almost want to say I should be allowed to put the power up on him, but I've been doing that with a lot of cards recently. He just said Tyree kill. So I'm just going to take the 87 Tyree kill. And if I get a power up variant, I'll throw it on them. We have some speed demons at wide receiver. Oh my God. We have some speed demons. Look at this. Tyree, Metcalfe, and McLaurin with Barglet hatbacks. Dude, I love this team. I love this team.  All right, boys, four and two with a significantly better squad today. All we need is a challenge meal, and we're good to go. I'm actually going to let you guys see it just like this. Let's see how we go, baby, as I'm hopping into this game. You guys are seeing it before I do. Our challenge will spin is... Oh, geez. Dude, this one's really hard. It's brand new. I was thinking of this because I was playing a lot of fantasy football this year.  Like literally just a catch. So one player on my team needs 12 receptions. Ooh, a little NSC North matchup. Oh, and he's got Justin Fields, too. Deon Jones in the middle here. Ooh, he's going to run left side and that's looking nice and open. He's got that very scary Reggie Bush. I'm not excited about that.  I just feel like blitzing right now. I'm getting impatient. Actually, maybe not. Hep X open. Oh my. Let me get a big hit. Let me get the big hit. Ah, I wanted a Devon White hit. All right, we're blitzing Dawkins, Deon Jones and Devon White. Throw RB. That is so unlucky, bro, I'm so sorry. Oh, and he is going to punt it? That's a mistake, bro. The game's already over if you punt this. I need 12 receptions, though, with one player. In my brain, I want it to be Darren Waller. But honestly, I've been using so much Darren Waller.  Let's use Hill or McLaren. Let's see who's open on this and that'll determine it. Ah! You see there? Ooh, just barely. And I think that's a roughing a passer, which I would decline. Ah! I was just given an offensive pass interference. Oh, throw it. Wait, that's Soce? Wait, that play is nasty. My thumb's off my hands because they're useless. That was the saddest attempt at stick skills ever. Oh, he's there. Wide, open. All right, yeah, let's do a Tyreek. That's our brand new player. Is who destroying got us? Let's do Tyreek. Taking him deep.  Go, Stafford. Great ball. Let him inside. Ooh, that dig route. Sausage him up. We're getting sticky now. Ooh. Might just be able to put Tyreek right in the back of the end zone here. Ooh, I think it's there. Oh, he picked, damn. Definitely wanted my touch down there. My challenge is 12 receptions and I got five or six with Tyreek already. It's actually way easier than I thought. I should have gone like 18 receptions. Big hit, big hit, big hit. What? Hey, Jackson.  Out for Tyreek. Yup, easy, easy reception. I'm giving him this short dig, little in route here. Sit, easy. He doesn't appear to have a very good user so it's making this a little bit easier. Try the exact same thing. Maybe a touchdown may not be a touchdown. Ooh, it is. Definitely a touchdown. Let's go, Tyreek. I would love to get Avalanche activated. Oh, throw to Y. Damn it. While somebody's getting, oh, I just got defensive pass interference for that. Oh, Jalen Ramsey's activated. Throw underneath, throw underneath, throw underneath. Yes, get out the way.  Damn it, wait. Did that not count as a big hit? Justin Fields just walked in. Oh my God. Let's get some more Tyreek kill receptions here. Another touchdown. And I think I give all a half so we're looking like a healthy win here.  Let's go. Oh, hold them blocks, baby. Wait, stop and go. Yup, one more. He's on his feet and he's out of bones. All right, we have time out so we can get a few more receptions here. Yup, I might be able to just hit him in a seam here. Oh, maybe. Oh, just over top of Clayman's head. I don't know how many receptions he has right now but it's gotta be a lot, damn. It's there. Lock and heating up is back enabled. Let's run fake P.A.T. roll out. I have no idea what button I'm supposed to click but we're about to find out. Oh, is it A? Yes, great throw, fish out. It's not a great throw. Tyreek Hill has 12 receptions, 157 yards. We did that in one half. All right, I'm not gonna lie. The only reason I think it was that easy was because this guy's not very good. I think realistically though, the number I had was right. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Who's RB? Who's X? You're open. Evan Engram? Wow, Evan Engram. Stafford's activated. I cannot throw interceptions to the CPU now which is so clutch, honestly, such a good ability. Tyreek? I gotta go for 20 receptions.  The blocker's there, McLaurin? McLaurin? Oh my God. Can I please get this rollout pass at work? Plant your feet and throw a laser. Yes. I keep doing this. I accidentally grieve people. I'm sorry, sir. You ever seen a man scoring an onside kick? I'd have 400 yards of stafford if he does a rage quit. And counting that, let's go. He just didn't have a chance, bro. That guy did not have a chance at that game. Five wins and a rage quit wheel spin and a challenge wheel. Oh my God. We got the trifecta today, boys. Let's get it. All right. I'm doing the rage quit wheel just like this. Just in case. I thought my recording wasn't working. So I wanna make sure that you guys see this no matter what. Is that 50k choice? Hey, let's go. I have a budget of 50,000 coins for one player. Let's get a right tackle. I think I'm gonna go Lane Johnson since he's the 85 in here and just barely by like 1,100 coins we can snag Lane Johnson. All right. That's huge. Let's open a pack, baby. Got one pack to open. Legends fantasies are just now in the store. Super clutch. You give me a right tackle. I'm gonna be really sad. Michael Strahan, 80. That's actually really good. 78 overall too. And he's pack a punchable. David Andrews, do I have a center? I don't think I do. Derek Brown, an actual detackle. And our legends player is 82 Jarell Revis. All of these positions would help. This is cornerback three. Derek Brown, I don't have the detackle. I think all lines the right call here. Let's get it, boys. Another great episode. We're playing really, really good football. For this being the first season of Wheel of Mud, first season of Wheel of Mud is usually a wash.  We're five and two. That's amazing. All right, boys. I love you. I think you're seeing this on a Friday. Most likely. So I'll see you next Monday for the next episode. Have a good weekend. You're very handsome. Clap some cheeks for me. I'll see you next video. Peace.


to finding your piece of the rock on ThinkTech Hawaii. I'm your host, Abe Lee. I have been a licensed real estate agent since 1973. I'm the owner of Century 21 Eye Properties Hawaii and work with close to 100 wonderful agents in real estate sales. I started Abe Lee seminars in 1980. I have taught over 10,000 students to help them to get their real estate licenses and teach continuing education to real estate licensees to maintain their license. Our show is dedicated to helping buyers and sellers understand the process involved in a real estate transaction. Our special guests will talk about legal issues, escrow, title, getting a loan, surveys, home inspections, insurance, contracts, rules and trusts and much, much more. And today we have a very special guest, a good friend of mine and a wonderful instructor and a broker and a broker in charge. So he wears many hats and his name is Elliot Lau. Elliot, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today. Good morning, hi Abe. Thank you for having me. It's an honor and good to see you. Yeah, same here. So we're gonna ask, tell us a little about your background.  So we can't forget her. So tell us a little about your background. Abe and I go back a long ways. He knows my family. I'm born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and I am one of three, but my mother is one of 16 brothers and sisters. So my grandmother that Abe talked about is the matriarch, a gigantic family with deep roots in Hawaii. She's half Hawaiian and I grew up with 71st cousins. So born and raised here, I went to school at Punahou and then went on to BYU in Provo, Utah where I had great education, returned home after that and went in my, actually my career path was in the airline industry. I was always fascinated with airplanes and when I got a job with the airlines I loved it was made Pacific Airlines and those of you old enough to remember them they put the props to the neighbor islands and that was my career path. My father was always been broke with my whole life and he kept telling me I should get my real estate license and I had no interest in it but he kept saying you should have it, you should have it and I finally went to get my license, Moto appeased him, never intended to get it to real estate and I still remember in 1988, the day I got my back in those days it took two weeks for your, when you took the state exam you have to go to the mainland to get graded and you waited about two weeks for the results. The day that I got the letter in the mail saying I pass was the day that the airline I was working for went out of business. Mid Pacific Airlines filed for bankruptcy and that spawned a new career in real estate so that's kind of where my roots come from. Oh my goodness, I didn't realize that. The day you get your license, that's your warning sign that hey, you gotta get out the airlines in the street and I really remember Mid Pacific Airlines. They were about to start to Hawaiian Airlines and Aloha Airlines back then. Yeah. And I remember your father very well because he was a very accomplished broker and of course your mother was one of the fond girls, 16 children, can you imagine? And Elliot's grandma was only like four feet 10, just a tiny little lady but she had 16 children, amazing lady. So I have fond memories of her. So we go back more than just real estate. I mean, I've known the fond clan for really literally about 50 something years. Crazy, huh? Okay, so Elliot, now you did tell us how you got started in real estate so where did you go first with your license? It's funny, so I got my license and dad goes, I'm not gonna train you. So he sent me to Harita at the time. Harita had probably the best known or the best real estate training classes in Hawaii at the time. This was back in the 80s and I still remember my broker, Richard Fujiwara was my trainer.  And I still remember Richard's very first day. The first thing he told us in class, which I share still today to new agents that I train and teach is service your client and you'll have a long rewarding career. Chase the dollar and you're not gonna need it for long. And I still remember that. The first words of wisdom he shared and I still practice that today and train and coach that today still. So what happened after Harita? Where'd you go? And what did you do? Dr. Harita, great question. I had a great transaction with a broker of a small company and he hired me to be his sales manager. So after Harita, I went and joined him and I was probably there in the name of the company at Tenu, my pro source and Charlie was the broker. And we're still good friends today. And but I was there probably for about six or seven years and then I went to Mary Warren when it was still with close McCarter. So I was at Mary Warren, it was more Laurel and McCarter at the time and I was there for several years. And then I went on my own. Part of this by then it was during the Japanese bubble. So the market collapsed and when I got licensed I said I would never do property management ever. But back when the Japanese bubble collapsed, really if you want to still be in the business you kind of have to do property management. So I went on my own and I was doing a lot of property management at the time and at that point I was doing so much property management I say, you know, if I spend that much time in doing sales I'll make a lot more money. So I went back into sales, I was still on my own and that's when Brian Loughlin premier Realty 2000 contacted me and I joined him and we're together as partners for 22 years. And so fast forward, 22 years later after that I was given an opportunity to join Compass. Compass is a big brand, big company luxury broker on mainland and new to Hawaii. And so they hired me as their broker in charge on Oahu and that's where I'm at now. So that's been my career in a nutshell. Great. Now let's go back to Premiere because that's where the real estate school started. And I was the first teacher there and I knew Brian when he was in high school. So Brian and I go back many years and I was recruited by a guy named Mike Imanaka to come and be the premier or the first teacher. And of course you succeeded me and took over what now called INET. So tell us what happened in the pre-licensing portion because that's what I'd like to focus on for the next few minutes is what did you teach and what were the main things that you were trying to teach to your students? So great question. You know, my formal teaching for pre-license actually started in California. So after joining INET, I mean Premier Realty which then turned to INET. I went to California with Brian and I was doing some business development things there including teaching. So I was an instructor in California first. And so we were, they have similar courses. They're requirements that I think is 80 hours of classroom instruction. But what I would teach when I moved back here and started teaching pre-license on a walk-in, really I was teaching things at real estate concepts. By the way, going back to my BYU days I actually got my license in Utah back in the 70s. And so I keep forgetting that that's where my real estate career kind of started. But I since have long gone past Utah but I still remember real estate concepts was new to me when I first was introduced to it in Utah. This is the thing about real estate pre-license is that I keep telling agents on the first day of class that you're gonna be learning a new language. And many of the concepts are very conceptual and very hard to understand. And so I tried to blend the instruction with real life concepts. So understanding what real estate is and the concepts. And then I spent a lot of time on some of the bigger items that include agency, disclosure, state laws because they know that's what they're gonna test you on. A lot of my curriculum, it revolves around really passing the state exam and getting them prepared for that. Okay, so now when you're teaching because you're also practicing real estate. So you're selling as well as teaching, I'm assuming. Yeah. Okay, so now you're now in the field doing the things that you're teaching the students to follow, right? So which textbook did you use to be your guide? Well, principles and practices. When I got licensed back in the 80s, Pades Matusik was the author, co-author of the book, Principles and Practices of Hawaiian Real Estate, which really is a staple for Hawaii, which now you've taken over, you've succeeded in the revising and editing of the book because laws change all the time. But yeah, I've known principles and practices since the 80s and that's what I used to teach myself. Sean, you've taught hundreds of students through Inet and I noticed that you had a lot of five-star Yelp reviews and so you must be pretty good for them to have that many five-star Yelp reviews. But what were the main concepts that you were trying to teach to the agents as far as licensing and ethics were concerned? Well, that's a great question. You know, I believe that first of all, you've really got to interact and make the class interesting because when you think about it, it's not the most exciting dynamic subject matter to be teaching. So I think that making things a little more palatable, making it more fun, making it more interesting. I would always mix things in when I would teach a certain concept, like agency. Agency law is conceptual and boring and it confuses most people. When I then I try to involve real life scenarios, what this all means to get people to understand, ah, okay, now I'm taking something that's very conceptual to real life situations where people can relate to it. And I found that was quite the best way to get people to understand what you're teaching. Okay, so how long does it take to get a license? That's a great question. So the law, the Hoy State law is 60 hours. And we did it in four weeks in the beginning, but four weeks involved a full day on Saturday. So you're doing two weeknights and then all day Saturday. And it was tough, an all day class was tough for students. It's even tougher for the instructor. You know, teach to talk for eight hours. I know you still do that, Abe. I don't know how you do that. But man, after an eight hour day of teaching, you know, it's not like when you go to school for eight hours as a student, you go through, you go through eight different teachers for the eight different classes. This one, I mean, when you're an instructor of a real estate school, you're talking for eight hours and it's tough. And so we stretched it into a five week class where now we can do half days on Saturdays and get it in and, you know, I always thought four weeks is tough. You know, I was just talking to one of my each and sisters morning and when he got his license, he did it in five days, which is 12, five, 12 hour days. And I went, that's brutal. That's, I don't know how you can do it. Yeah, that's tough, that's tough. So now the students have to pass the school exam first and then what happens? Oh, you have to. So the requirements to apply for a real estate exam, you have to submit an application to the restate commission. In order to read the prerequisites for applying for a license, you have to show that you've passed the state exam, which is administered by a contracting company called PSI. In order to sit for that exam, you have to take and pass a class, which is yours and in my class, that's the 60 hour course. So working in backwards, you have to apply, you have to pass the state exam, to sit for the state exam, you have to take the class. So it starts with us and the classes and you have to pass your class first before you're allowed to sit for the state exam. So I understand that there's two parts to it, the state portion and the national portion. How many questions in each and what percent do you have to pass it with? So there's 80 questions for the uniform and there's 50 for the state and you have to pass each one at 70% passing rate for each. So the uniform covers the things that are uniform across pretty much all 50 states, things like tenure, methods of ownership, real estate principles. And then the state portion deals with state specific laws because every state has their own set of laws, which is why licenses aren't reciprocal because every state has different laws. So now you passed a school exam, like yours, and they passed a 70% passing rate. How long do they have to take the state exam? Great question. So from the time you get your certificate from the school that you've successfully passed, you have two years to complete or to sit for the state exam and pass that. However, I tell students, don't wait for two years because if you wait for two months, you will have forgotten all the information. I say you should be taking it, if they allowed you, you should be taking it two hours after you get the state of the school certificate because you only start to forget things.  If you were studied by now, you're not gonna find the time to take the exam. So now you took the school exam, you passed it, and you have two years to take the state exam, you take the state exam, and then how long do you have to actually do something with this license that you can get? You don't get a license by passing the state exam, but you have the right to get a license. So how long do you have to get something with that test that you passed? That's a good question. People think that once they pass the state exam, they're licensed, they're legal to practice real estate. No, that's just the next step in your whole journey is once you pass the state exam, now you have to make application to the state for a license. So the state exam is just one of the prerequisites. You actually have to apply to the state, and you have two years from the time you pass the state exam to apply for your license. Just because you've passed the state exam doesn't guarantee, right? There's about 10 or 12 questions on your application that you have to answer, and basically they're all questions relating to your character. And if you, you know, because that's what the law requires, you have to be of good character, not just pass the exam. So you could pass the state exam and not be, not able to get a license because of some things that happened in the past. So now, people ask me, well, I want to get into commercial real estate or residential real estate or something else. Do I have to have a separate license for those different categories? So how does a state of Hawaii license work? What can you do with your license? So a state license, once you receive the license from the real estate commission that says you are licensed to practice real estate, you are not licensed to practice anything that's real estate related, commercial or residential, as well as practice anywhere in state Hawaii, not just on, you know, if you take your class and test on Oahu, you can practice your legal to practice on all islands. But that whole saying goes, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And that's true. So I understand too, that you can do actually property management or timeshare, residential and commercial. I guess those are the four basic areas where you could exercise your license. Yeah. Yeah, and so, but, you know, the courts and the law still holds you to a standard of competence and expertise. So just because you're licensed to practice any form of real estate, the law will still say you still have to have competence in doing that. So how would you go about once your students have passed the test and they say, Elliot, who's gonna hire me?  That's a good question. So usually at some point during my class when you're getting their license, I spend them on an hour. I just take a break from studying real estate and give them an idea what they're getting into because I joke with all my students in every class. I said, you know, in two or three weeks, you're gonna be licensed to practice real estate. And this is what all newly licensed real estate agents look like, because it's so true. I now have a license, what do I do with it? All right, so I used to go through, I say, here are 10 questions to interview your real estate broker, because these are questions that you need to know. You know, in this business, there's a really high failure rate. And I think a lot of it is people don't know what they're getting into, what is involved in being successful as business.  But by that same token, most people won't and it's because they don't understand what they're getting into and what it takes to make it as business. And really it starts with having the right broker. So how would you go about interviewing? Cause you got residential brokers and then you got commercial brokers and sometimes they don't cross over, do they? No, and it rarely do they cross over. The residential is typically where most agents start into unless you have some kind of a kickstart in commercial. Most commercial brokers don't want new agents. Most, there are exceptions, but they're very different in the nature. You know, when you think about residential or real estate, residential is really real estate that's for habitation, right? And that's really encompasses all residential real estate is real estate that's meant for habitation. Commercial real estate is everything else. So it is so broad and diverse. There are a lot of specialties that are involved with it. And so residential real estate is generally the, I shouldn't say easier road cause it is not easy. There is nothing easy about either one, but I think it's the one residential is much, you're much more likely to get up and running much quicker because you're helping people buy homes and that's very relatable to most people. Commercial is a whole different animal all together. Okay, so now the agents have come to you and you were at Inet and what was your responsibility at Inet? At Inet, I was the broker in charge and so the broker in charge by real estate law is the person that's one of the people responsible for the conduct and actions of all your agents. So we spend a lot of time on trading. I enjoyed training, teaching agents how to be successful in the business, but also how to oversee and keep them out of trouble because although you're responsible for all your agents and their real estate activities, you cannot mandate that they attend training or sales meetings or anything else. And so you have to walk this fine line of really having your agents competent and trained to do this job. And when you think about it, you're dealing with a lot of money, right? I mean, even what we call today a small deal, right? A $250,000 deal. I keep having to remind agents, I don't know what world $250,000 is a small sum of money. Yeah, really. And now the average price or medium price of a condo is like 500 grand and the house is over a million, which is crazy. When you and I started, we never had no idea you'd ever get that high, right? Yeah, no, not in a million years. So, Elliot, we're running out of time, unfortunately. I'd like to have you come back and talk about the contents of the course and how it would help the consumer because really what you're teaching the student, the agent to do is how to treat the clients so there's no lawsuits and there's proper disclosures and everything is being done correctly and ethically. So we have a lot more things that I would love to have you come back and talk about because of your years of experience in both teaching and also managing and supervising. So what advice would you give in the last minute or two about a person that wants to think about going into real estate as a career, part-time, full-time, or whatever? I think my advice is to really understand what you're getting into.  They sit in an open house and they make millions and millions of dollars doing this. Okay, that's kind of akin to when you watch, NFL is going on right now, right? And then you watch these professional football players that make obscene amounts of money and you think, wow, that'd be so great to have that career. But what people don't see is all of the preparation it takes in the background, how much training, how much working out, same thing with real estate. And you be successful in it? Yes, but you have to be aware of what it takes. You can make a lot of money in this business, just understand what you're getting into.  You have to talk to strangers, you have to have conversations with people. These are things that some people just can't get past. Picking up the phone and calling people you don't know. These are scary things for a lot of people but that's really the most successful agents do that the best and do it the most. And then I can't tell you, thank you so much. And we're just touching the tip of the iceberg. Now you talked about the school, what I'd like to do the next time is talk about the course content a little bit but then also how it relates from the agent to the consumer and the fiduciary responsibilities that the agent has and how big a response to me that is. Because a lot of people don't think about that. So thank you so much, folks. If you enjoyed the show, please go on to it. It's gonna be broadcast and it'll be on the Think Tech Kauai archives. So just look up Elliott Lau and then we should have the video and please tell your friends about it. And if you have any interest about the real estate schools, I do have ablyseminars.com where you can get information on the pre-licensing school and the process to get a license. So Elliott, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. We'll see you one more time at least.


Today, we're doing screaming in the middle of the night to see how he reacts. I wouldn't really say this is a prank, I would say this is more of a reaction. See how he reacts, see if he takes care of me. Marvel Squad, we got this crazy-ass lady trying to race me over here. Trying to race? Oh, sh**. Pull up! This girl just pulled away. Hey! That was not a fair! That- yeah! Pull over at the g- No! Oh, I'm hot? You're- you're hot, too! Pull over at the car wash! We can exchange numbers! I'm not telling my girlfriend about this! Sorry, damn. Guys. Sh**. I just found this new girl!  Alright, we just pulled into the car wash, all jokes aside, I know Mariah's gonna be hyped that she won that race, so I gotta go crush her feelings right now before she tries to say any sh** about winning. Watch this. What up- oh, wait. I thought you were way hotter from- from the other car view. Never mind. Never mind- it's- wait, is that the new merch? Is that the merch that's coming out September 3rd?  What? Not dating. I thought I was hotter than this? I thought you were hotter from the other car. I- it was sunny out, I thought it glared. I pulled over, guys. The other squad is over, we're done. No, I- I thought you were a different girl, low key. That's why I was all hyped, but then it was just my- my dried up girlfriend over here. Hey, what is good, Marvel Squad? Welcome back to our channel.  I had a really bad nightmare last night. Did I tell you about my nightmare? Wait, you didn't tell us that nightmare? Did I tell you about it? About what? I didn't even tell you, oh my god. Wait, why did you tell me this? Literally, my nightmare was that, like, the world was coming to an end, and, like, that- What? Like, Florida- our state was the first state that, like, got- Like, blew up or something? No, it was on fire. Like, we had to be back, but we didn't have time. Wait, hold up, she did not tell me. Why did you- why did you tell me? That's why I was so dead this morning, but I'm just not- Why don't you wake up? No, the reason- the reason I didn't tell you was because I didn't realize it kind of- You know how sometimes it takes a minute to process what your dream was in the night before? Uh, so you- So it took me a minute. Did you wake up in the middle of the night? Yeah, I did, like, it was really scary. Aw, I wish I was there to help you through that. Yeah. This girl doesn't- doesn't, like, care to wake me up. I'm probably passed out, and she's here over here having a nightmare, but- But if I look rough, that's why. Right, you can't look rough in our new merch. No matter what mood you're in, it's always a good mood when you're wearing our new merch. This is the t-shirt, and on the back- We haven't showed the t-shirt much. Yes, look at how dope this design is. We got the cursive lettering over here, and then the passed out colors, which is our favorite. Guys, September 3rd, how many days? September 3rd. So this is the official 10 days away. Put it in your calendar. September 3rd. 10 days from today. We are dropping our merch line. We got hoodies. We got hats, phone cases. I'm wearing one right now. But before we, you know, go into anything else with this video, we gotta wash our cars. Both of them are dirty, which is why we drove. Both of them separate. Is there a vacuum thing here? Yes, there's right there, baby. So cue the car wash montage. A better job. So this is my work. You guys already know. Team Arai is the better team. We be coming out here, not even just doing good pranks and whatever, but we are making cars look more fresh. Now, let's turn over to Bill's side here. Oh God, we're already starting off wrong. Oh, you already know you're at the sexiest side. Ooh, I mean, the Corvette is pretty sexy. I mean, it is really hard to pick which car is more sexy. Oh. Did you not see the hole? I know. Yeah. I was kind of ignoring that. I was kind of ignoring that. I want to figure about the Mariah. But anyways, the cars are clean. Ooh, look at how clean. It's been months since we actually cleaned the car. Comment down below if you are the Mercedes gang or you're the Corvette gang. Definitely the Mercedes. Girl. I cleaned it better. I don't know about you.  Mariah won the race because I was behind a box truck. Don't even listen to that. Corvette's better in all aspects. Whatever. Final thoughts. Boom. Done. All right, guys. So Bill is actually vacuuming the Corvette right now and we really need to vacuum the Mercedes because the sand, Brittany just took Instagram pictures. You guys haven't gone to see that. Go on my Instagram account and go like and say you came from the YouTube video. I might just posted a sunset picture that was absolutely gorgeous. But as you guys read by today's title, basically today, I'm going to be screaming in the middle of the night and kind of get his reaction to see what he does and how he reacts. I did do a screaming in my sleep prank, but today we're doing screaming in the middle of the night to see how he reacts. I would really say this is a prank. I would say this is more of a reaction. See how he reacts. See if he takes care of me. I did do a little bit of a hint today saying I had a nightmare last night. I really didn't have a nightmare, but I am really tired today. I don't know why. I'm just super, super exhausted. I don't know if anybody else has these days where they just can't keep their eyes open. Like I am so freaking tired, guys. Like it hurts. But I'm going to basically doing that. So make sure you guys video a big thumbs up. If you haven't already, make sure you go down and hit that subscribe button. Enjoy the November family and get ready for September freaking third, guys.  I'm so excited. But yeah, so basically I'm just going to wait until it's like obviously in the middle of the night and I'm going to hurry, set up the camera and just screaming in the middle of the night. Not sure if I'm figuring if Bill's going to be in the bathroom or not or if he's going to be not in the bed yet. I don't know, but it's perfect timing because I'm exhausted today and it just all makes sense and it all works out in its favor. So see you guys, come down below to Mariah and let's get right on into the video. All right, guys. Bill is brushing his teeth in the other room right now. We are literally getting ready for bed. I'm going to hurry up and set up the camera and we're going to get this prank right on her roll. I'm so nervous, but I'm super excited. So let's hurry up and set up the camera. Let's go. It's been so hard for me to keep my eyes open today. Like, oh, I'm exhausted. Of course, yeah. So we can cuddle like this. Um, right there. All right, let's cuddle. Come on, snap. We're going to cuddle. We're going to go to sleep and we're going to cuddle and have a good time. All right, bye. I did not leave the hallway. Huh? What's wrong? What? What happened? Babe, what the f**k? I always had a really bad dream. Were you awake when you screamed? No. It's not funny. That hurt. Are you okay? Are you kidding? Wait, hold on. Are you actually okay? Oh, why did you put the light on? So I can see you. What? I'm not really... But what? Did I die? So you screamed? Yeah. Because I died. I'm sorry to be mean. Oh, that scared the f**k out of me, man. My dream coming from last night in the world was coming to an end. Oh, it's fine. You got trapped in the fire. It's fine. What? It really scared me. I got scared more than you got scared. Are you okay? Babe, I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm about. That scared the f**k out of me. Oh my God. Oh, you have no idea. That was scary. Babe, what the hell? Now you're doing this s**t on purpose. I don't know. You go to bed. I did. We just laid down. You just laid down again. I know. For 10 seconds. You laid down again? No. I don't want to do that.  It scares me more than you. Are you okay though? Yeah. I'm better than you. Lay down. Maybe if you laid down, I'd feel more protected. I don't know. I don't know. I'm screaming. What about like this? Let's go to bed. Come on. Okay. Lay down. No. Are you gonna scream again? You're not. I would try to be sweet and nice. I go to the bathroom. So f**king late, babe. Oh my God. What are you doing now? Let's go back to bed. You were going to the bathroom. Babe, I even went through with this and I didn't pass the ball asleep because I am exhausted.   Yes, I was a f**king praying. Team f**king praying. I'm exhausted and I can't even keep my f**king. I'm so scared. I'm f**king scared. Like waking up and like... What? That's not even funny. I can't wait to watch you getting scared. Yeah, that's funny. No, it's not. Team Araya, do you admit that Team Araya came back f**king it right now? How do you think I feel? You haven't even been to bed. Okay, I look like I've been in bed.  Did you ever sleep? No. I did. Do you realize how hard it was for me?   It's your turn to wake up and be like, oh f**k, Team Araya is coming back. No, I know what you're saying. Dad, I genuinely thought that you had a nightmare and because you said it earlier too, that you had a nightmare last night. Thank you. I love you. You literally had a nightmare last night, so that's why I thought that you did. No, I really didn't have an, I didn't actually have a nightmare. That was a joke. Oh, you didn't? No. The other night? No, you said you did earlier. No, I didn't. I was a lie.   Araya came back strong. Yeah, whatever. Actually, we were doing some sports for Merch. I feel like so, no, you wanna be cool. She never sleep.  You never sleep in a shirt. You wanna be cool? What? If we did a Team Araya and Team Bill and had a competition to see which shirt could sell the most. We should. Our next drop? We have to incorporate Dad somehow. So this, yeah, the drop that we're doing September 3rd, I don't even know what I'm saying right now, Come on. How funny would that be? See how much merch sold for Team Ryan? That would really determine whether we're Team Ryan or Team Bill. Stay tuned for future talks about that. But guys, we're gonna go to bed now. But guys, I hope you enjoyed today's video and the reaction of Bill getting scared. Just like kind of a scream scared snap. He was looking out the window and he darted out the room once he screamed. And I'm surprised that our sirens didn't go off because last time Bill pranked me and scared Cam to me. That's on our blog channel. Yeah, our alarm system went off. But it's our alarm system isn't turned on so that's why right now. Yeah, absolutely. But, oh, shoot. Don't look at that guy, this is all mine. But anyways guys, I hope you enjoyed today's video.  Go ahead, subscribe button. Also, it is really late. So next video, I promise you we're going to announce the giveaway winners. Oh my God, we totally forgot for the vacuum. I know. So stay tuned. Stay tuned, guys. I don't even know what's going on right now. I'm so freaking tired. My ears hurt. I promise you guys, on Monday we will announce the winners. I'm sorry that we keep delaying it. It's late. I didn't even realize till now. But all right guys, we are going to go to sleep and we will see you in the next video. But until then, peace, love you guys.


My name is Jean-Francis Zinzou. I am the Ambassador Permanent Representative of Benin to the United Nations, and I am the Chair of the Global Coordination Bureau of least developed countries. I would say here we were able to identify what has been taken on board after the consultations that we had and what remains to be pushed to get into the outcome document of the third international financing for development outcome document, financing for development conference, I mean, outcome document. And one major element is that we need very clear, defined commitments on ODA because with LDCs we are highly dependent on the amount of ODA we receive to provide for support to our transformative strategies for reaching the sustainable development goals. And there we are looking forward to having at least 0.20 to 0.25% of GNI of our development partners to ODA and devoted to ODA and at least 50% of ODA flows to be devoted to LDCs. And there we need ODA not just for the sake of having ODA, we need ODA to have a catalytic effect on our efforts. And especially we are aiming at directing more ODA to multiplying sectors, to sectors that are productive and we need more ODA. We are calling for a fund for support of infrastructure and productive capacity development. And this all together will work on the framework for investment in those prototype capacities both from public and domestic and foreign direct investment sources. So this is one compound of issue. And then we need also to have institutional capacity development which is a major element to secure good governance at national level because governance issue is not just a matter of, I'll say, morality, it's a matter also of structure. The structures in place, the institutions in place should be strong enough to really set the channel and the framework for transparency and for accountability. And these are things we are really going to push for in the program. And at another level we are also calling for more, I'll say, industrial development because we want value addition. We want value addition, local value addition. And this should be a very important factor to unleash transformative changes in our economic structure and in the better integration of three dimensions of sustainable development which are economic efficiency and social stability and environmental sustainability, environmental protection. So we need really to be working on those three dimensions and the documents should be very supportive because our ambitions are clearly stated in the SDGs and the Financing for Development Conference is about providing the means of implementation of the SDGs that we agreed upon and those means of implementation should be commensurate to the needs of each country and that's why taking into account the dependency of the LDCs on resources from our development partners we are insisting on the need to really empower our people to really take into account their capacities and to take into account our national endowment to be able to generate more wealth locally and by generating more wealth locally we will make gains achieved in the Millennium Development Goals program sustainable in the long run and I think that those are elements we should be working on and we know that we have been pushing for having more support in the field of climate change, mitigation and adaptation and this program, this outcome document should also set very clear benchmarks in that field because we are very strongly challenged as LDCs by the negative effects and consequences of climate change and we need really to be taking that into account in the design, in the implementation, in the planning of our development programs to build really resilient economies and to have the support of our development partners for that because if we don't take into account climate change that will really backfire and you know it's just enough to have a real disaster to bring your efforts back to ground zero and we really need to avoid having to start everything from scratch after each disaster we need the right investments to make our economy more resilient to various types of shocks and we are also speaking, shocks are not just related to disaster we are talking also about the capacity to enjoy I'll say more counter-cyclical financing possibilities counter-cyclical financing possibilities to be able to curb the consequences of financial and economic crisis which are cyclical we know that those are cyclical and we need to have really the capacity to finance counter-cyclical measures in those fields so those are the major elements that we are out for and we are now about to define very clear prioritization of those requests to see what is our red lines for common negotiations and what we can be more flexible on to really have a balanced outcome document and as the Rio Principal Cis stated our concerns should be at the baseline of an outcome document of new measures that we are trying to work out in the post-2015 development agenda


Well, this evening we're looking at the basics of community scheme living. We're still getting inundated with questions when it comes to community scheme living, how it's different from what we conventionally know, and also just what we need to bear in mind when we live in community schemes, and especially as more and more of us choose the community scheme life due to different factors, and of course security being a very big one, and really getting a good understanding of what we need to be aware of, mistakes we need to avoid, and what some of the potential implications of even the new property practitioners act has in how we live in community schemes. And to help us make sense of community scheme living, somebody who needs no introduction on the private property park cast is Zelenda Fanamarva, who is the co-founder and director at TVDM. Zelenda, good evening, and thank you so much for joining us on the show. Hi, ladies, I'm so lovely to be part of this again. Thank you very much for the invitation, and hello to all of your listeners this evening. Zelenda, it's always such a pleasure to have you join us. And of course, talking one of your favorite topics, I think if anything, you're one of those people who really does make making understanding community scheme living better, more accessible, and certainly puts us at ease because it can be very intimidating. There are so many different implications and legal implications when it comes to community scheme life. So it isn't just a, I have my property, I bought it, I have my rights, I can do whatever I want to do, which is an attitude many people tend to want to take, but unfortunately that isn't quite how it works, correct? Hundred percent correct. You know, you hit the nail on the head there when I have been dealing with clients lately, and I don't know if it's because of COVID and people may be spending a bit more time at home, or they're a little bit more vested in their interest in a community scheme. But that very issue of its mind, don't tell me what to do, is most certainly a lot more prevalent. It's reaches from, you know, noise disturbances in community schemes because more people are at home, perhaps the kids are at home and doing homeschooling, more people are working from home and not needing a bit more quiet when it comes to meetings being held remotely on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, and suddenly every single little noise around you, which never became, was a problem before suddenly becoming an issue, or, you know, the issues of maintenance not being undertaken in the scheme that you would normally not see if you were simply leaving in the morning and coming back in the evening, loss of tenants in community schemes is making investor owners a lot more wary of what is going on in the management of these schemes to ensure that, you know, levies don't go up and special levies don't be raised. I was recently approached by body corporates that has an owner that is requesting a 50% levy reduction because of her personal circumstances. And one has to remind body corporates that they're not businesses and they don't have various source of incomes. The levy contributions that are payable by every single owner is the only source of income. And if you are going to allow one owner to have a 50% levy reduction because of what is happening in their personal circumstances, you're going to have to allow everybody to do that. And the body corporate is very soon not going to be able to meet its expenses that, as you know, is constantly arising. So, you know, the situation that we're in currently is most certainly shedding a light on a lot more issues, new issues, and issues that weren't necessarily problems before, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but most certainly is necessitating us going back to the basics. So it's a very good topic this evening. Thank you. And you know, Zalinda, I think talking about how much of a great topic this is, something that's very clear, and you actually touched on it as you were talking. And I wanted to spend a little bit of time on it is around the maintenance of, you know, the body corporate or certainly the maintenance of the complex of the state that you're living in, and as an owner, not being happy with how the premises are being maintained and wanting to, you know, take to task perhaps the trustees or the managing agent. I want to split this question because I've been getting inundated, you know, with this specific question, especially during COVID, we saw in the early days that, of course, you know, some maintenance was an issue because of heart lockdown, you had to kind of arrange who's coming in, who's not coming in, but gone are those days. And so we don't have an excuse of certain kinds of work not being done because, you know, of COVID or the restrictions that we have. So my first question actually has to do with the inadequate running of a community scheme. And I make particular reference to if services weren't being paid for.  And yet you as an owner were paying for your levies and owners who listically were paying for the levies and presumably HEM was being held annually. And, you know, you're getting a report only to find that you're now having a report that's being plucked up on the gate saying that actually this complex is X million hundreds of thousand rands in arrears because they weren't paying the city.  Because I'm seeing quite a number of those scenarios popping up. And owners don't know what to do because we know that if the city, you know, decides to block any kinds of services where you stay, you as an individual owner who's been paying on time and even holistically as a complex or estate, you've been paying. So it's not an issue of failure to collect levies, right? Levies are being adequately collected. It's the failure on the managing agent's part to play their role in making sure that services are being adequately paid for. Take us through what the trustees or certainly the members of the body corporate, what kind of recourse they would have in situations like that. So you touched on a very important point there about the managing agent not doing what they're supposed to be doing. And I think this is a concept that comes up very often. I'm a member of a group on Facebook called sectional title living in South Africa. And there's almost 11,000 members to that group. And it's all owners and trustees and tenants and attorneys and managing agents and all sorts, you know, people that are really relevant in the industry. And, you know, this concept of the managing agent, it can do this or that or the trustees didn't do this or that, you know, anybody that lives in a body corporate or homeowner's association or any form of community scheme for that matter needs to remember that when something like this happens, it's not, it doesn't come down to the managing agent or to the trustees, it comes down to them as members. There's actually very little in terms of the sectional title schemes management activity focus on sectional title schemes for a second that is actually in the hands of the trustees decisions in regard to maintenance, the tenure maintenance repair and replacement plan, the reserve fund, the administrator fund, raising of special needs, well, not necessarily special needs, but we'll touch on that. It rests in the hands of the owners, you know, the trustees are responsible to put together the budget with the assistance of the managing agents. They're responsible to contract a relevant contractor if they can't do it themselves to prepare a tenure maintenance repair and replacement plan. And in my experience, it is better for a specialist to do that. I mean, you've got companies like Merphin and THC in the industry that are really well known and very professional when it comes to those types of things. So it is better for that to be outsourced. But ultimately, although these documents are prepared on the instructions of the trustees with the assistance of the managing agent, not on the instructions of the managing agent or the decision of the managing agent, they are presented to the members. And the members have the responsibility to consider the year past in terms of the audited annual financial statements. And they need to look at its in lights of the year going forward in terms of the estimate of income and expenditure of the budget. They need to look at that budget from both the administrative points of view for operational expenses and the reserve fund point of view in terms of the maintenance repair and replacement plan. If that isn't adequate, they need to give instruction to the trustees who in turn with the assistance of the managing agent will go back to the drawing board to ensure that there's adequate funding. Now, you use the example of a scheme that's levies are being paid.  That's a fantastic scenario. And unfortunately, it doesn't happen very often. But if that is the case and you're still not meeting your expenses, then you're going to have to look at either levy increases, which is why it's so dangerous in a sectional title scheme or any community scheme for that matter, to not raise at least a minimum levy increase on an annual basis because everything goes up. There's nothing in the world that doesn't go up. Unfortunately, the budget is always increasing. Therefore, the levies need to increase. No levy holidays or levy discount should be given in that regard. If a levy increase is not possible or a levy increase has already been raised and it's still not sufficient, you know, the body corporates by trustee resolution needs to look at raising a special levy. If the trustees don't feel comfortable in doing that, they should approach the members, at least for an ordinary resolution for that to happen. You have to look at the governance documents of any other type of community scheme, for example, a homeowner's association, to see whether or not such a special levy can be raised in sectional title, it's relatively easy. And if that is still not adequate, you have to look at other sources of funding, you know, companies like ZDFIN or StratoFIN, both of which you've had on your show before, and I'm sure it'll be a nice opportunity to get them back again, will be able to loan the body corporate monies. The level of resolution has also come down dramatically in sectional title from the sectional title schemes management act, because the reality is that living in a body corporate or community scheme is very expensive. Now, when it comes to the services that are not being provided, the only entity that can disconnect services is your local authority. And if those bills are not being paid, you know, you need to look at the reason for it, is it because the body corporate doesn't have the funds for it? And that's one of the first things that should be included in the budget and paid. Is it because the trustees weren't keeping track of the expenses? Is it because it was underestimated and then suddenly you got a lack of a bull that you should have made provision for? You know, there's situations where the trustees aren't able to make these decisions or present this information to the owners because the information is not being provided to them by their managing agents. You know, that's when the managing agents are being a bit naughty and need to give their trustees this type of information and involve the owners and transparency is key. You need to involve the owners from the first moment you have a problem and not only when they're arriving home to see a notice that they're suddenly not going to have service delivery. And at the end of the day when it reaches that point, you know, the recourse available to them is not to say, trustees, what happened here or managing agent, it's your fault. It's to immediately gather together to see how those bills can be paid and then deal with the repercussions of it afterwards. But it's a very scary situation. It's a very good example to raise. And I think talking off that scary situation, I see we've got questions and comments coming through relating just to this. Remember, you can send them on our Facebook page as you are watching. Also share the love with friends and family on your Facebook page. And to go to those comments, I can see Polina Nkosi checking in watching Lindy Chabela also checking in and watching Michael Addison saying Zalinda is brilliant. Of course, she is and Mike somebody who we have on the show in a very regular basis tuning in there. And we've got a question here coming through from Mallory Panther who says I belong to a board of corporate sectional title scheme. Most tenants pay but the managing agent is very incompetent. What can we do there? So the issue of dealing with an incompetent managing agent Zalinda, I think it's one that comes up in different shapes and forms. And oftentimes, even the trustees themselves don't quite know how they can fire a managing agent and what the process is. They'll tell you that they've tried to fire them before, but there's always an issue or they sometimes don't want to hand over, you know, their documents or whatever relinquishing the power essentially, they don't want to do so. So what would be, you know, the most efficient way to get rid of an inefficient managing agent? I always cringe when I read comments or receive comments about incompetent managing agents or inefficient managing agents. I mean, Zama, you know that I used to be a managing agent myself and that's how I started my career. And I would never give that time back for the world because now I can actually understand the practical realities behind the black and white of the legislation. And it's not as simple as what the legislation sometimes says. One also has to remember that a managing agent doesn't only manage one scheme with one owner. It's hundreds of owners and, you know, multiple schemes, you know, different types of community schemes. I'm not giving excuses or making excuses at all, but the managing agent is a contractor and the managing agent acts on instructions and the managing agent gives advice. I always used to say to my colleagues as managing agents when they go to meetings and they give advice and the trustees ignore that advice or the owners ignore that advice to make sure that they put it in writing, to put it in the minutes, to send an email. And very often when the trustees or the members have to approve those minutes, they conveniently take out what the managing agent has said because who are they to be included in the minutes? They're simply a contractor. I remember myself as a managing agent, how often my advice was shoved under the rug because who was I just a managing agent? But that being said, it is a reality that there are not perfect managing agents out there. And I don't believe that anybody is a perfect person. Need to learn a perfect managing agent, but they are most suit, they are most certainly suitable managing agents suitable to a scheme. And that's the first question. And I know your question was about the termination of it and we'll touch on that. But when a managing agent is appointed for the scheme, very often the trustees and the owners look at what is the lowest fee that they possibly can obtain? What is the least amount of services that can possibly be offered? And that's not necessarily the right way to get the right managing agent or right portfolio manager for your scheme. So that's something to take into consideration. If the relationship has failed, that we always talk about irreconcilable differences like a divorce and you need to terminate the managing agent, you first have to look at the contract. If there is no contract in place, which is very often the case, scary you so, you have to look at the provisions of contract law. And of course, you look at the sectional title schemes management act in sectional title, you look at the constitution or the memorandum of incorporation in the HOA. And of course, you have to look at sometimes the title deed restrictions because some managing agents when they're appointed by the developer, they're actually bound to that association in perpetuity. So that's also very important point to look at. But if we look at the simple route of there being a contract, then in terms of the sectional title provision or position rather, a managing agent contracts can be terminated simply on a trustee resolution provided that determination period that is set out in the act is followed. So if there's a breach clause to follow that, give notification, give an opportunity to rectify a breach alternatively terminate with a notice period, whatever that might be, normally a month or two months, sometimes three months. And then of course, if the trustees aren't able to make that decision, or if the members wish to direct the trustees to make that decision, a simple ordinary resolution taken at an annual general meeting or a special general meeting is required bearing in mind that an ordinary resolution cannot be taken in writing, it actually has to happen at a meeting. And then if there is no contract or if the contracts, if the trustees or owners are wishing to terminate the contract, not in terms of its terms, then you would need a special resolution of the members, which is a 75% vote at a special general meeting or at a general meeting called for a special business or including special business. And then the managing agent requires a two month notice period in the same way the managing agent can also give notice to the community scheme. It's not very often that you hear about a managing agent giving notice to a scheme and when you do hear about it, then you immediately ask the question of oh no, what did the community scheme do? Because a managing agent is just generally tuned into take quite a bit of abuse. And when it gets really bad, then they'll give notice. But that's the process of terminating a managing agent when you believe that there is no other option available to you. You've mentioned the records of the scheme. So in terms of the sectional title schemes management act within 10 days of the termination, the managing agent has to provide the records to the body corporates. If they do not do so, an application can be brought to the community schemes on the service for an order that those records need to be handed over. And really because the industry is so small, it's never advisable for a managing agent to do that rather have a nice clean break. And very often when that's the case, you'll find in a couple of years that that community scheme will actually come back to you when they find out the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side. And that's exactly where we're going to leave it this evening. So Linda, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thank you, Zama. Thank you for the opportunity. And that is Zalinda Panamadva, who's a co-founder and director at TVDM Consultants, wrapping up the Thursday edition of the Private Property Podcast with myself, Zaman Dunwoa Khumaalom. Well, we'll be back on your screens tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. It's a Thursday. You can look forward to Malino on the farming podcast at 8 p.m. Until then, from us and the team, hoping you're staying home and staying safe.


So a couple of articles came up just like the last couple of days, one in The Economist and I'm not sure actually where the second one was, that's The Economist, this was in I think Bloomberg or something. No, this is The Washington Post. So one in The Economist and one in The Washington Post. Both talking about demographics and the demographic crisis that both China and Russia are facing. We've talked about this a little bit, particularly we've talked about the fact that China, for the first time since 1961, for the first time since the massive tens of millions of people dying of starvation during the Great Leap Forward, actually should be called the Great Leap Backwards, but the Great Leap Forward under Mao Zedong for the first time China's population shrunk this year. And what's particularly interesting about the fact that it shrunk is that the Chinese admitted that it shrunk. That is, there's some speculation that says that the population has started to shrink years ago and they're only admitting it now, but anyway, they're admitting it. China's National Bureau of Statistics announced a decline of 850,000 people to a new total of 1.4118 billion. It's a first decline in 60 years, right, since 1961. The birth rate reached its lowest level on record, 6.77 per thousand people down from 7.52 in 2021. So that's a big decrease just in one year. So this is a big deal because not only does this mean China population now shrinking, indeed it is speculated that later this year India will surpass China as the most populous country in the world. For the first time probably in many centuries, I think for many centuries China was the most populous nation on the planet. But this means that China has a shrinking workforce. It has a rapidly aging population. So you have fewer people paying in to support an older population since China does not really have a pension system or a social security system. And since many people are still relatively poor in China, it does mean that a lot of the income that young people are going to be producing is going to have to go to helping their parents and grandparents live.  If you know something about economics, you know that what ultimately drives an economy is saving rates in a sense of it's fundamentally what drives an economy long term. Economic growth is investment. So there will be less investment in China, more consumption, particularly focused on the aging population. Another interesting aspect of this is that it wasn't that many people didn't predict this. That is, everybody expected a population of China to start decreasing, but a lot of the expectations were that it would decrease in the 2030s in about 10 years. And this has happened 10 years earlier than many had expected. Again, this is going to cripple the ability of China to have kind of the economic dynamism. It thinks that it needs in order to compete with the United States in order to build up a military, in order to become a dominant power in the world. It is a real issue. And then of course there is a real potential for a real crisis as people age and if China does not kind of have, if the Chinese people do not have the resources to support their parents and grandparents. There is a risk economically that China enters a period of stagnation similar to what Japan entered in the 1990s. Remember, Japan has been shrinking for a while now and part of its economic struggles is no immigration, shrinking population, a significantly aging population. Japan I think is now the oldest society in the world where 29% of the population is over 65. That is, and China is heading in that direction and that could result, it won't be the only thing that results in stagnation, but if you combine it with rising authoritarianism in China, you combine it with a shrinking of the space in which private enterprises allow it to function the limiting of the freedoms of Chinese in the economic realm. You can see that the likelihood of stagnation in China is significant. Again, I've said this for a long time now. I really don't think China is a significant threat long-term to the United States. It might be a short-term threat, but long-term it's going to have big problems domestically. Now, of course, demography is not destiny. Demography can change pretty quickly. Birth rates can change pretty quickly. If you think about demography, in the 1970s when China's population was growing significantly and it looked like it was going to have a massive population, the state stopped that. The destiny of China was not to grow forever and to have massive, this massive population. The One Child Policy basically stopped it. So there are things that can be done and those things don't have to be corrosive. Israel for a while, the Jews in Israel for a while had very low birth rates and there was a real risk that the Arab population would exceed the population of the Jews in Israel within, I don't know, by 2050. And the birth rates have accelerated in Israel and they've gone up not just among religious Jews but also among secular Jews. I think a lot of it has to do with one's attitude. I've said this before, I think on the show, that I believe that having children is an act of optimism, it's an act of belief in the future. It's an act of one's belief and one's ability to support a family, to provide for a family, to make a living. And I think that if China was freer, if the Chinese had significant values and believed in the future and didn't have European-style cynicism, then birth rates would go up and I think that's what's happened in Israel. I think Israel, as it became richer, as it became stronger, as it became more confident in its own survival long term, it's also, you know, that confidence and that optimism has resulted in having more children. Just one other aspect of this is, and we'll see another country where it's even worse, because of the one-child policy because Chinese families prefer to have boys than girls, there was quite a bit of female fetuses aborted. There's about 104.69 men to every 100 women in China, which of course also creates challenges instead of challenges to having kids.  And again, there are real restrictions on immigration, just like in Japan, kind of bringing in, if you will, women from other parts of China, other parts of Asia or other parts of the world, why just Asia. Let me just say a few other things. They're just trying to incentivize people having children, they're giving money to families that have a third child, they're extending paternity leave, they're trying to learn from some European countries like Hungary and Poland that have been subsidizing childbirth and have had some minimal success increasing the number of babies in the economy. Anyway, we are seeing, I think, the beginnings of real challenges in China. The unemployment among young people is very high at 16.7% for 16 to 24-year-olds. Economic innovation, growth in the tech sector has been reduced significantly because of the crackdown by the government. And the number of young people is shrinking. And remember, who innovates, who grows an economy, who really is the productive energy of the future, it's young people. And when you have fewer young people, you're going to have less innovation. You can do that with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to youronbookshow.com.  Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. There's a little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.


So we have our next session here. We have Vaibhav Srivastav. I'm sorry if I pronounce it wrong. And Vaibhav is a data scientist and a master's candidate at the University of Duttgart. And this topic is building petabyte scale ML models with Python. So great. Take it away. Perfect. Just quick check, you're able to see my screen, right? Oh, yeah. Everything works fine. Awesome. Perfect. All right. Well, good morning to everyone. And today I'm going to be talking about building petabyte scale machine learning models with Python. And before we get started, let's set some context over here, right? When it comes to machine learning or when it comes to building any deep learning ML model, you want two things. You want to be able to train your model faster, and you want to be able to reach a higher accuracy or whatever measure that you're tracking as soon as possible, right? Because if an experiment is going to fail, you want it to fail faster, right? You don't want to wait for, say, two, three days, and then get to know that this particular experiment failed. And these two charts over here sort of set the motivation quite all right. So on the left, you see we ran an experiment across multiple number of workers, and we just benchmarked how fast was the model able to sort of train. And you can see quite clearly over here that at around eight number of workers, we got about 5x speedup. So what that means is that we were able to train the model five times faster than it would have been on just one device, right? So we were able to get results five times faster, essentially. What you see on the right is that as we increase the number of workers, we were able to reach 80% accuracy for our particular benchmark faster, right? So for like one, this was about 50 units of time and whereas for eight, this was roughly about 15 or 16 and so on. So this effectively sort of helps us understand that we do not really want to run our experiments on just one machine. And if we have capability to run them on multiple machines, then we should. And here's a quick walkthrough of what I'll be talking about. So we first talk about what exactly distributed machine learning is. We talk about out of code machine learning. Then we look at a couple of ways through which we can build scalable workflows. And then we briefly touch base upon which one should we use and when? And then we head over to Q&A's. Feel free to put your questions in the chat and I can answer them later as well. Yeah. So before we get into how do we actually build a distributed machine learning pipeline, let's talk about what exactly happens in a typical machine learning model, right? So for any machine learning exercise, you have some sort of data and you have a task, right? So this task can be, for the lack of better example, can be say stock price prediction, right? So you have certain information or certain data regarding stock price of say S&P 500, right? And then you have a task which could be, you know, to predict the price of it, say tomorrow, day after, whatever it may be. So that's your task, which is regression, right? And then you have some sort of a model. So this model could be a neural network, it could be a linear model and so on. And then you have a notion of quality, which is effectively the loss, right? Which is how well is the model learning, whatever it is that you're throwing at it. So that's your loss function. And then you have the, you basically have the optimizer, which optimizes this loss and, you know, essentially tells the, or not just the model in a different direction when updating the weights, right? And this optimization is done using, typically in a neural network setup is done using stochastic gradient descent. And I mean, you can have different optimizers and so on. But yeah, that's the gist of how a machine learning exercise looks like. Typically, this would all work synchronously. So you will first have data, you will process it, then you will have the model and then you like pass your data to that model, you calculate the loss and then you do this multiple times through epochs till the time your model is effectively trained, right? And this is like synchronous. So one step happens after the other. And while this is all good and chill, why do we still need distributed machine learning? Because you can still just train it one by one, right? You can still train it on one device. So why do we need distributed machine learning? And that's where some of the most recent models, if you look at, so if you look at in the realm of national language processing, we have GPT J level models, which are billion parameter models. So billion parameter models are kind of like the norm now, right? So you need to have one massively huge compute to one be able to just load that model, let alone find unit or train it from scratch and so on. So you need to be able to load that model in the first place, which requires a lot of compute. And second of all, you might want to use a lot of data to be able to train your model. So in a typical, say speech recognition exercise, you might throw in roughly about, 5,000 to 10,000 hours of audio data at your model for it to be able to learn the patterns within the speech. And you won't really be able to do that with just one device, right? So you would want to be able to scale your training across multiple devices. And this is what we're gonna be talking about in a bit. And second of all, we effectively want efficient computation for our algorithms, right? So if there's something that can be parallelized and we want it to be parallelized, that's the key over here. And we don't want to be running into out-of-memory errors and errors pertaining to us not being able to us not being able to get to results faster and so on. And this is where out-of-core machine learning comes in. So out-of-core ML is basically a way to exploit external storage when you have large data and you cannot load all of your data into your GPU or your RAM. So you effectively take batches of data and then you throw it to the model and the model learns on one batch and then you throw in another batch and then you throw in another batch and model effectively learns on small, small snippets of data or like partitions of data. And then you add up all of those gradients or whatever that loss is and then you optimize on that and so on. And this is something that we typically use a lot when it comes to building large scale models or just want to ensure that we do not get some sort of out-of-memory error or an error when we're effectively training the module. So how does this look like if we were to talk about in the same way as we did at the start of the presentation? So again, now we have some sort of a data set but now we can partition that data set into two partitions. Let's take two partitions. So you have say I have 100 rows then like data set partition one would have one like zero up until the 50th or like the 49th row whereas the data set partition two would have from 49 or from 50 all the way to 99, right? And so we have these two partitions, right? We still have the same task. We still have the same model, right? And the only thing that changes is the loss function. The loss function now only works on the first partition of data whereas in the second case it only works on the second partition of the data and then the optimizer effectively just adds, adds both the losses and then optimizes further, right? And we just looked into the use case of having two partitions but we can have multiple partitions. So we can have four partitions, six partitions, 10 partitions and so on. And each of these partitions can effectively work parallely, right? So I can have one of this partition being trained separately on one GPU and I can have this partition being trained on another GPU parallely at the same time and then at the optimization scale time I can just add all of these up, right? So in this way we effectively cut the synchrony of us waiting and we parallelize the entire operation across these GPUs to be able to then train the model faster. So this way, like just in this case roughly we get roughly about 1.75 to 1.65 x speedup because the only blocking process here is the optimization process, right? Everything else can be easily parallelized. And this is effectively something which all deep learning or machine learning libraries now use. So this is called a mirroring strategy and you effectively mirror your model along with your model and you just pass it different data partition. So how does this happen in real life? So one is by using partial fit and we'll cover that in a bit. And the second is that you sort of use some sort of a deep learning framework like TensorFlow, PyTorch, MXNet, Jax, whatever the new frameworks keep on coming in and you use their distributed training APIs which will effectively do this for you, right? So you create a model and then you can tell it that these are the device IDs or like these are the GPU IDs that I want my model to be pushed on and trained on. So as long as the GPU itself can load your model and can process the minimum batch size that you've given to it or the batch size that you've given to it, the model training would happen in a distributed fashion. What partial fit does, this is typically useful for like low resource. Like when you have low compute, you don't have say five, six GPUs on your hand and you just have your training statistical ML model which says cycle tone or something like that. And you have say seven, eight gigabytes of data and your RAM just cannot fit all the data in one go. In that case, you use partial fit wherein you just give it some batches of data in one by one synchronously and then the model effectively trains on those smaller batches and keeps on updating the weights and so on. So both of these methods are equally used in practice. If you're more deep learning focus, then you would want to be able to use say PyTorch or say TensorFlow or JAX nowadays. But if you're building statistical models and you would want to just use something like task along with cycle tone to just do partial fit for large data use cases. So now we get to the point of how do we actually build these scalable machine learning workflows. So there's the first scenario wherein like you have some sort of legacy code base wherein you have a machine learning workload and then cycle tone stats models or something like that. And the second one would be wherein you're building a new experiment from scratch or you're creating a new experiment from scratch. In both of those cases, in the first case with like the cycle tone one the more acceptable approach right now would be to use something like task to create data batches. And then you use incremental pipelines provided by task to train your model on these smaller batches for more deep learning base models or for like new models, you use something like tf.data or it's equivalent in whichever framework you're using to create data batches and you use something like torch.nn.data parallel or tf.distribute strategy to load your model on separate GPUs and then train your model and so on. So before I get to these links I put in some co-lab links in the slides which you could quite easily just run and see how distributed training works with task and with TensorFlow. I wouldn't be going through those right now in the interest of time, but I do want to quickly show you how easy it is to do distributed model training with PyTorch. So this is the DDP page which is distributed data path parallel page which is a module within torch.nn. And it's relatively simple, right? So you first just set device. So set device would be just one GPU or could be multiple GPUs. It could be say three, four, how seven number of GPUs you have in your cluster. You just pass all the IDs for those and you can just set them up in the environment variable of CUDA visible devices and so on. And then you effectively just create the distributed group and then you just pass your, like you pass your model as a distributed data parallel model and you provide all the device IDs that you want this model to be trained on and you provide an output device. So this can be any of the GPUs or can be CPU as well and then you effectively train the module, right? So it's literally three lines of code that you have to add. If you have a legacy by torch code, you can use distributed data parallel to be able to parallelize your model training or distribute your model training across multiple GPUs and so on. Similarly, if you have TensorFlow code, then again, you can use something like tf.distribute strategy. So once, yeah. There are multiple strategies that you can use with TensorFlow depending upon where you wrote your code. So if you wrote your code using Keras, then you can use something like mirrored strategy or TPU strategy. There are different strategies for different use cases. Mirrored strategy is the one that we spoke about wherein you load the model along with the partition in one of the GPUs and then once the training is done on that particular or like once the model's gone through that particular batch and has a loss of value, then it aggregates all the losses across all the GPUs and then updates the model weights. There is, if you're using with TPUs, then there is another TPU strategy for it and so on. So it's, and this is as easy as literally just using tf.distribute strategy. And calling the mirrored strategy and passing your GPU IDs as you see over here and that's pretty much it. Once you do that, it effectively automatically takes the model from the code that you've written and mirrors it across the devices that you've passed to it. And you can see that quite clearly in the collabs that have put into this slides, these slides are already on the schedule. So you can just go up to the talk and click on download the slides and then you should be able to access these collabs as well. So now comes the million dollar question. We spoke about desk, we spoke about fire torch, we spoke about TensorFlow, which one should you use and when to this? I put forth the most cited quote, which is there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs. So typically you would, if you're doing something from scratch and if it's deep learning related, it's advised or it's a good call to use something like PyTorch or TensorFlow for your experiments because they provide very nice APIs to be able to just distribute your model across devices. If you're building a statistical model or just building classical machine learning models since I could learn, then it's a very good idea to parallelize it with desk and avoid out of memory errors and so on. So that's what my recommendation would be, but then again, it depends a lot on what your exact use cases are, whether you have access to GPUs, whether you have access to only CPUs, whether you're constrained by RAM and so on. But typically these two solutions or like these three solutions that we spoke about if you consider TensorFlow and PyTorch as separate solutions is something that would help you out. So do look at all three options depending upon what your use case is. With that, thank you. Thank you so much.