Good afternoon. I'm Michael Barr, the Joan and Sanford Wildein of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. I am honored today to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of our outstanding graduates who have earned their bachelor's, master's in public policy, master's in public affairs, and doctoral degrees. Smart engaged people who will be leading our communities for the next half century. Let me start by acknowledging the obvious. This year's celebration is difficult. Marking one of life's great milestones in the midst of a global pandemic is challenging. We are all practicing safe physical distancing and staying at home. We can't exchange high fives or hugs. We can't take group photos with classmates and friends. As I've told our students, we know that today's virtual celebrations are not a substitute for commencement. We promise to find a way to invite our classes of 2020 back to Ann Arbor for a communal celebration in person when we are able. And yet, finishing college, finishing grad school, earning a PhD, those are huge milestones which must be celebrated. And so here we are, graduates, family members, and friends, gathering together from across the country and around the world to celebrate your accomplishments under these extraordinary circumstances. Given today's virtual platform, I'll keep my remarks brief. I've got two points I'd like you to remember. First, I want you, our graduates, to know how proud I am of you. In the fear and sadness and uncertainty of this pandemic, more than anything else, it's been you who have brought me hope. You chose the Ford School because you care about the greater good. You worked hard at the University of Michigan, and you work together. Now you're prepared with the analytic, leadership, and communication skills needed to design, advocate for, and implement good public policy. Policy that can bring lasting and fundamental change. You're leaving Michigan and heading into the world in uncertain times. And yet I know you are resilient and strong. You persevered completing your Ford School degree at the height of a pandemic and helped our community and those in need along the way. The world needs you right now. Our population, our healthcare, and economic systems, our workforce, housing, and national security will all be affected in ways that are yet to be fully seen. The pandemic reminds us that although the virus touches us all, the most significant and direct impact will be on vulnerable people and communities. It's testing leadership at the local, state, federal, and international levels, and it's highlighting the importance of leadership grounded in service, decision making based on empirical evidence and expert judgment, and communicating and acting based on our shared values and shared humanity. I know you are prepared to take on these challenges. My second point is a call to action, a call for you all to get engaged in this election year. The United States is gearing up to exercise one of the most fundamental aspects of democracy. I think it's important to acknowledge that even in a year when we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, many still face barriers at the ballot box. Passing the 19th Amendment was a hard one victory for women's right to vote, and yet it was just one of many movements before and after to expand voting rights. In 1866, 53 years before the amendment's passage, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper was the only African American woman to address the National Women's Rights Convention in New York. She said, justice is not fulfilled so long as women and us is unequal before the law. We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest members without receiving the curse in its own soul. While the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, African Americans were unable to exercise this right effectively across the country until the Voting Rights Act passed nearly a century later. And voter suppression, unfortunately, is still alive and well today. President Gerald Ford, for whom our school is named, extended the 1965 Voting Rights Act a decade later and said at the time, The right to vote is at the very foundation of our American system, and nothing must interfere with this precious right. The right to vote for many did not come easy, and it is our duty to exercise that right, to engage in the electoral process, and to continue the fight for these rights today. In closing, let me just say, this crisis has bonded us together forever. I have been moved by your compassion, your power, and your perseverance. You've inspired me every single day. I believe in you, in your capacity, and your conviction, and your preparation to take on the pressing challenges of the day. Graduates, we are proud of you. We look forward to hearing about your future successes. Congratulations and best wishes to the Classes of 2020. And now and forevermore, go blue. Next, we're going to hear from my colleague, Professor John Chachari, who is elected by the graduating students to provide this year's address from the faculty. Thank you, Dean Barr, for all you've done for the school and for the Class of 2020, whom we're so proud to celebrate today. I'm John Chachari, a faculty member here at the Ford School, and I'm honored to share a few remarks as you, the Class of 2020, mark your graduation with family and friends.  You arrived at Ford at a time when so many accepted tenets of public policy were under challenge in the United States and around the world. Many of those challenges were valid. From climate change to surging inequality, from insecurity to corruption, public policies had failed a lot of people. Some people have demanded change with revolutionary zeal but diffuse policy prescriptions. Others have tried to turn inward to embrace and organize around exclusive forms of identity. In this divisive period, even the value of even-handed policy analysis, the bread and butter of a program like ours, has come into question. A lesser class than yours might have slid toward apathy or hid in the ivory tower hoping the storm would pass. But you didn't do that. From the day you arrived on campus, you showed empathy, engagement, knowledge, and optimism. Empathy comes first because we can only hope to produce sound policies if we try earnestly to understand what other people experience and what they want and need. Your empathy has shown inside and outside the classroom, like doing field interviews in communities in Detroit, on the US-Mexico border, in Syrian refugee camps, and so many other places. This isn't just about blending the quantitative and qualitative methods we teach you at Ford. It's about empathy. It's about what's in your hearts that drives you to get up and engage in policy even during difficult times. And engage you have dialogues across difference on campus, studying internships around the world, from Morocco to Costa Rica to Colombia to China and many other places. You've worked to share ideas, to understand differences, and to contribute constructively to the conversation. And you've done that with knowledge. That includes things you've learned here at Ford about the history behind policies, the norms, institutions, and actors that shape them, how to assess their impact on real people, and how to advocate for reform. Your knowledge also includes a lot that nobody here had to teach you, like the knowledge that community matters, that investing in people matters, and that fact-based policy analysis matters.  Even in the shadow of the current crisis, your conviction that with empathy, engagement, and knowledge, we can make a positive difference. It's been so uplifting to see how you've come together and supported one another, particularly in recent months. And I'm so excited and honored that you'll be going forward as graduates of the Ford School. Many, many congratulations and go blue. You now get to hear from one of your own, representing the BA class, Ashton Smith. Class of 2020, we did it. Congratulations to us for completing another chapter of our lives. Thank you, Professor Chachari, for your words and for your introduction. For those who do not know me, my name is Ashton Smith. I'm graduating with a bachelor's degree in public policy, concentrating in technology policy, and minoring in law, justice, and social change. I'm honored to be the undergraduate student speaker for Ford's Class of 2020, partially because I have the opportunity to speak to you all for an occasion as grand as this, but mainly because I've been recognized by such an amazing group of people. So first, I'd like to emphasize just how impressive Ford School graduates are and recognize how significant an accomplishment it is for all of us to earn our respective degrees. And again, I must recognize that you are receiving your commencement addresses by means of a video. When Professor Lance taught us about the history threat to research designs and program evaluation. I never predicted that 2020 might be one of those outstanding years that would mess with the data. What is happening is historical, which is not totally in common for the four years I've spent at the University of Michigan. Just some of what 2016 to 2020 has experienced includes an extraordinary presidential election, a trade war, the confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice and a pandemic. All alongside what appears to me to be an increase in publicized divisiveness and racial tension. As policy students, these things shape how we perceive and interact with our society. And as policy students, we're encouraged to think about what goes on in the world around us and decide how we will continue to engage in that world. I have hope for our society because I know that the Class of 2020 is full of people that are dedicated to a better future. And going to a top ranked public policy school, we have been equipped with education and skills designed to help us tackle those problems. And from discussions with many of you, I know that many of us want to do that, find our part in positively influencing policy.  And by people who will continue their studies in prestigious scholarship and fellowship opportunities in various parts of the world. And these accomplishments are indicative of the capabilities of our classes as a whole. I'm looking forward to seeing where we will go and what we will do. It is unfortunate that our timeline campus was cut short, and it will feel weird transitioning to the next parts of our lives without that ceremony that we all expected. But when you think back to this time, think about the best times, about the times you went to sporting events, the time you spent with friends, the time you spent interacting with our amazing faculty. Of course, you have to remember the Ford holiday parties. And lastly, always remember, go blue. Once again, congratulations to all will now hear from Aloka Narayanan, the elected graduate student speaker for the Class of 2020. Thank you for your remarks, Ashton. First off, I'd like to thank my dear classmates for trusting in me to speak some parting words. As I sat pensively watching the movie waves last night, which is tremendous and I highly recommend it. I started to think about the traits and actions that led the characters to do what they did. If you've seen this movie, you probably understand why this process is so important. I kept thinking, how did they get there? Look, it's really hard to write a graduation speech, especially in these circumstances, to going to have to throw me a bone here and get inspiration where I can, even from movies. At the risk of sounding trite, the question, how did we get here encapsulates much of the graduate school experience. It's what we wondered on the nights we spent pouring over John Hansen's problem sets in the computer lab past midnight. It's also what we asked ourselves as we snuck out of while on a sunny afternoon to visit Dom's before the last class of the day. And it's the question we pondered with the appropriate level of embarrassment, mind you, as we closed out Rick's on a Saturday night. How did we get here is also the question that we asked when we evaluate a policy problem. The world is asking that question today, as we consider the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on our most vulnerable, seek to understand the gaps in our social safety net that have exacerbated the crisis, and evaluate the political actions that led to a delayed response to the global challenge. We can consider what could have been if things were different. Our responsibility as future policymakers is to use the answer to that question, not as a gotcha for our current leaders, but to pave a path forward. We're graduating into a challenging atmosphere. There is no sugarcoating it. But that also means that we have an outsized opportunity to steer the international response to one of the greatest challenges that we'll face in our generation. The challenges that we can see clearly now will allow us to rethink and reshape our social, economic and international policy. The question, how did we get here leads us to how can we help. This is what we went to school for. This is what we're ready to do. I have no doubts that one day we too will photo bomb an iconic picture of world leaders in the style of Michael Barr. Just kidding. We'll be the world leaders. So my stroke of inspiration at 2am this morning led to this point. Would it even be graduate school if I didn't procrastinate on writing this last official memo. It has been the utmost pleasure being your colleague, classmate, and serving as your 2019-2020 student affairs committee chair. I trust that you will go on to make positive change in the world and wish you the very best. Go Blue. I want to thank all of our speakers for their inspirational remarks. I encourage all of you to find safe ways to celebrate your accomplishments with family and friends today. And I hope to see you all back in Ann Arbor next spring. Congratulations and once again, Go Blue.


QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Bank reconciliation month number one checks and cash decreases. Let's do it within two its QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Here we are in QuickBooks Desktop. Get great guitars practice fire. We started up in a prior presentation going through the setup process. We do every time maximize the home page going to the view dropdown. We got the hide icon bar open windows list checked off open windows open on the left. Reports drop down company and financial P and L profit and loss changing it for the just that first month this time 010123 to 013123. Customize it fonts and numbers changing the font to 14. Okay, yes and okay reports drop down again company financial this time. The balance sheet changing the range in from 010123 to just 013123 for that first month fonts and numbers on up to 14. Okay, yes. Okay, that's the setup process we do every time prior presentations we've been working on the first month bank reconciliation tying out our number here as of January 31st. 2023 to what is on the bank statement last time we've been looking at the beginning balance the month one issues with it. And then the additions now we're focusing in on the subtractions the checks and other decreases. Let's go on over and open up our bank reconciliation by going to the banking drop down reconcile reconcile. Let's do some we're going to reconcile here people there's too much tension going on. It's going to be checking account. It's going to be January 31st. And there's no beginning balance here because that's our first reconciliation issue we talked about before we'll get into that more later. Here's the ending balance that we tied out so that's that. And then we're not going to do anything for the service charges and interest continuing on. We already checked off some of the items on the deposit side. I'm going to hide everything that's after January. And you worry we've got that outstanding deposit we're OK with at this point. Now we're on the decreases side of things that decreases maybe as we have here checks or they may be electronic transfers either way doesn't matter. Although there's going to be some differences in the data that we would expect to be coming through on the bank statement. Also as we think about these bank statements you also might think about how the bank feeds will work. If you were to use the bank feeds we'll talk more about that in the bank feed course or section. So here we've got the decreases. So remember we talked about the beginning balance. We then checked off that we have the additions and if the subtractions check off we have to come to the cleared balance which would be correct. That's the idea. Now on the checks or decreases if it's a check that we wrote then we have the benefit of the check number which is nice that can help us to check it off. And we might have like a cancel check which could if we want to get more information on the check that we've got that although we have to go online typically and at least request to cancel check or look or search it out. The date we have as well but that date is not as useful if it's a physical check that was written because it's likely that there's going to be a fairly significant lag between when we wrote the check and then when the check actually cleared it had to be mailed it had to been then deposited into the other bank and so on and so forth and then our bank notified and whatnot. So that's where the issue is now that means in that case we typically want to have a full service accounting system in particular for that case because I want to know if the check was written and outstanding and whether it was cleared or not. I don't want to wait for it to clear the bank before recording it because that defeats the purpose of me being able to see that I wrote the check and then it cleared. However if you have electronic transfers then the date should be pretty close to the point in time that you entered it. So if you had a full service accounting system and you're entering the decreases as you make them then then you would expect they clear the bank pretty quickly and therefore your date is going to be more relevant. You won't have a check number coming through on the bank side of things but you will have a bank memo typically which gives you detail on who you paid and that kind of stuff which can also be useful to help verify the checks. Now of course if you do electronic transfers it's more likely that you could put up a system where you don't enter the transactions first using a full service bookkeeping system but rather wait till they clear the bank and then record them which would in essence be kind of like just using your bank statement to make your books. And that could be more viable given the fact that the memos with the electronic transfers will then show up and allow you to know who you paid so that you can enter the checks and also enter the vendors or add the vendors as you go with the help of the bank date of the bank memo. But that's the general idea so we've got the check numbers here so let's just tick and tie some of these out. So here's on 117 I'm going to look for the number I'm going to look for the amount. Remember the idea being that we're going to go from the bank statement to the books. I'm going from the bank statement to the books because everything on the bank statement should be on the books. If it's not then we're going to most likely have to fix the books unless the bank was in error which it usually isn't. If it's on the books but not on the bank statement that might happen. We expect that to happen at least a couple times possibly for outstanding checks that we wrote which have not yet cleared the bank. That's why you always want to go from the bank to the books or at least think about that as the general process. So here we go 12,000 12,000 is right there. It looks like I missed a check number so this one has a check number we don't have the check number over here but it's the similar date so I'm going to assume that's the same one. I'm going to greenify that greenify it. We've got the 1000 1000 now these two note aren't over here. So I'm going to say man those aren't there what's going on here and I can see that well that looks like it's the difference between that 30,000 and this beginning balance that we put into our books. Meaning these were the outstanding checks you would think that were there entered as of 12 December of the prior year. That that were outstanding that's why my beginning balance doesn't tie out. So we'll get back to that later. So I'm going to say that looks funny because those are not there and they're at the beginning of the month. So I would expect if they were you know there would be outstanding items on my books that aren't here so these are on the bank statement they're not in our books. And so you would think that we have to do something about that we'll talk more about them later. So I'm going to go down to the 16,000 16,000 is here check number 1002 the date is always later on our books. It should be this is a practice problem so I may have made some mistakes but it should always be later because of course the banks not going to know about it. We're going to know about it first we're going to enter the data and the bank will know about it at some point in the future if it's an actual check it'll be fairly further into the future. Depending on who got the check and how long they take before they deposit it. If it's an electronic transfer it'll still be in the future but hopefully like one to three days or something pretty quick. So here's 1003 7000.  So 1005 notice that might not be in order. And this is the case because when you have your your bank data on this side they might put it in order by date that it cleared. But if it's an order by date that it cleared that's not necessarily in the same order of date that it was entered because some checks might have cleared you know in out of order from when you wrote them. So you're going to have some discrepancies probably there and like the sequence it might not be in the exact order. That's OK.  I just I got to check that one off. You're not staying focused 726005 or 1006. That's backwards dyslexic a little bit. That's OK. That's OK 72. I see it. I got it going the right way this time. The numbers are there. They're just backwards 1004 37080. So where's that one? Where is that one? I see it. So that one's out of order 1004. OK. So there we got that one. Boom<PHONE_NUMBER>07. Mui BN. How are you being? I'm Mui BN. Why just B when you can be Mui BN. I'm 1009 620 620 620. Just keep focused. Stay focused. It's kind of a tedious task here but that's OK. Then we got the 15100111 boom 15000. That looks good. Tick and tie that one off. And those are the normal transactions. Then we have these withdrawal and the bank service charges, which you'll remember when we first started up the bank rec. It asked us if they're withdrawals and service charges, which we could have actually not withdrawals, but service charges and interest. So I could have put that 15 in place when I started. I don't like doing that because I like to have my data and then I'll fix anything after I do the reconciliation. I think it kind of confuses things in other words to enter it beforehand. So in any case, that's what I do. So now we have to account for these. This one I would expect to have to account for it because there's no way we would know how much the bank charged us for just their service fee. They just charge it and take it out of our account and we don't know about it until we got the bank feeds or possibly with the bank feeds or until we have the bank reconciliation. Now the withdrawals, we should be recording withdrawals when we take money out on our side and then verifying them. But sometimes we might not do that. So in this case, we didn't. So we don't have those. So those are two items that are on the bank statement that are not on our books. That means we're going to have to fix our books unless the bank was wrong, which it typically isn't. So I'm going to say, yeah, these are legit. I'm going to have to fix my books. These two are legit, most likely as well, but they have to do with that beginning balance issue. So I'm going to have to deal with that. That's the beginning balance or first bank reconciliation problem that we will have to deal with. So we'll kind of stop it here for now. Note that if we didn't have that first beginning balance issue and once we add these two our books, then we can check and tie everything off. At that point, our beginning balance would tie out. Then we would have our additions tied out and then our reductions would tie out and therefore our cleared balance would tie out, meaning our cleared balance would be 61, 241, 85. That has to work and it will work, although we've got to iron out all those issues with the beginning balance or the first bank reconciliation and the beginning balance of it. So in other words, the cleared balance should match the bank balance once we fix these items, which we'll do in future presentation. Now that does not mean that our book balance, as of the cutoff, as of January 31st in this case, will match that amount. Our book balance on the balance statement will still be different by the outstanding checks. We're just talking about the cleared balance, the ones that we ticked off, the ones that we tied out to the bank statement. The ones that are not ticked off, if I go back on over here, we're not deleting those. They're not going away. They are not invalid transactions. They are transactions that have not cleared as of the cutoff date. Just like we saw with the deposit then, I could go into each of these items here and say, okay, did these clear the bank after the cutoff date? Because when I'm doing the reconciliation, I'm going to reconcile sometime after January 31st, and I can see if they cleared in February. If they did clear in February, then I'm not too worried about these items. I could say they're still valid. I've double-checked them. They've cleared in February. If they didn't clear in February and it's been multiple months since they have cleared, then I've got to say, okay, if this paycheck didn't clear for multiple months, I'm going to have to ask Adam and say, what's going on with this paycheck? It doesn't look like it's cleared. That's when I might want to follow up on it at that point in time. But if it's just one month, it's not really an issue for us, so we're going to leave it there and still say it's valid. And what's it going to do for the bank reconciliation? Well, the months that are checked off are going to be the cleared balance. Everything that's not checked off, quick books when making the report of the bank reconciliation, will show the differences of the outstanding items, which will be the unclear checks and the unclear deposits. That's important not just because that helps us to check up on these unclear items, but because if I know the exact difference between the book balance and the bank statement balance, that gives me a double-check over all of the transactions. And if I can double-check all of the transactions, I'm not only double-checking cash, I'm double-checking all of the other cycles, the revenue cycle, the payroll cycle, the purchases cycle. So that's where we are right now. You'll notice that we're off by 165 here. So 165, if I go down, is the 150 plus the 15. So you might say, well, how can that be? Why wouldn't I be off by, like, where are these two items? Why aren't those in place? And you'll recall that's because we had 30,000 versus the fit 25,000 we had, which is netting out against these outstanding checks right here because these are checks that we wrote in December that didn't clear until January. So that's our beginning balance problem that's kind of netting itself out. That's not the ideal way to fix it, but you could just add these two items and then move forward from there. The reason that's not the ideal way to fix the problem is because I'd like to have these checks in the system as entered as of December and showing as when they cleared in the reconciliation. So we'll talk more about that. That's the beginning balance kind of problem that's unique to the first reconciliation. Typically, we'll see more about that in future presentations. Before we wrap this up, let's just actually add these two items. So I'm just going to enter these into the system here. So I'm going to go back to QuickBooks and I'm going to enter them. I'm going to go to the home page. Usually I like to enter them into the register. So I'm going to go into the list dropdown and go to the chart of accounts. This is the one way you can get there. Double click on the register and I'm just going to enter those two transactions. So the first one was a withdrawal. So I'm going to say, all right, this is as of, I'll make it as of the end of the month, 01.31.23. And I'm not going to put a check number because it's not a check. So I'll just say no check number. And then, so I'll just delete the check number. And then the owner took it out. So you might put the owner, but I'll leave it blank for now. And then it's going to be for 150, 150. Now the question is, what's the account that it should go to? Notice if you take money out as the owner of your own sole proprietorship, usually that's going to be a draw. And you want to make sure that you record the draw as some kind of equity account, which will be a balance sheet account. Otherwise it'll go on the income statement and be affecting your net income. Now sometimes if you're a bookkeeper and you do bookkeeping like for other clients and you're trying to figure out what they're doing, if they're pulling money out and then using it to buy stuff for the business, that becomes a problem because we have no audit trail of it as we do the bookkeeping. So you want to try to talk to your clients and say, don't buy stuff with cash when you buy stuff that's a legitimate expense that you want to record and track so that you can write it off for taxes, you want the audit trail. So you typically want to buy that stuff with credit cards, electronic transfers and whatnot. But if people have a tendency and they just like pulling cash out and spending cash on things, then we don't have the audit trail and you're going to have to give us more information about what it is you purchased with the cash. So that becomes kind of an issue. What we would like to do is say, hey, look, every time I see money that's coming out as a draw, I would like to assume that that is money that you're taking out for personal use and it's not some kind of expense. But at this point, we're going to say that we're going to pretend we asked the client, they said it's an expense. So now we don't know what it's an expense for so I'm going to put it into miscellaneous expense in this case. So we'll say miscellaneous. Do they have a miscellaneous? They don't have one in this thing. So I'll just make an account for it. I'll just say in my SC expense, expense tab. I'm going to set it up and I'm going to put it as an expense account. So I'm going to say, okay, that's it. Now next time we'll put it in as a draw and you can see the difference. So if I add it as an expense, I'm going to say enter and then I go to my profit and loss for the month of January. Now I've got this miscellaneous expense which impacted net income. Now if that was actually a draw, you took money out and spent it for personal use, then it's going to have a negative, it's going to make your net income too low, lower than it should be. It also would be recorded as a deduction for taxes, which would be kind of good for taxes but not correct for taxes. If you have a large account called miscellaneous expense, on say your tax return, then it's likely, you know, that could draw some red flags, right? Because I'm going to say, well, what is miscellaneous expense? And if it turns out the miscellaneous expense were draws or something like that, that becomes a problem. Also note that if you're doing bookkeeping or you're doing your own books and you have a tendency not to be able to distinguish or separate your books from the business books as easily and so you're spending money out of the same account for personal and business stuff, then some of those personal expenses that you have, like if you went on vacation, you went to Disneyland or something like that, then if you wrote it out of your business checking account, you could still just record that transaction as going to draws, not an expense, right? You could still, you'd have to sort out your books by saying that thing that I spent was on personal stuff. Where do you put that on the account? You put that onto the balance sheet as draws as if you took the money out and then spent it on Disneyland or whatever you're doing. So then let's do the other one. So if I go into the reconciliation, I could tick that one off. That was the 150. And then the other one we have here is the bank service charges. And so if I go back into my chart of accounts, I could say as of 131, I'm going to say this is, I'm just going to delete this. And I could say whatever, what's my bank chase or something. I won't put it here. I'll just say 15. And then this is going to go to like service charges, bank fees. So they have an account here, QuickBooks has an account bank service charges. That looks good. I'll keep it there. 131.23. Let's record it. And then back to the reconciliation, so there we have that 15 that has been checked off there. So once again, we're in balance at this point, even though we haven't at this time. So I can let's make this green and let's make this green, even though we haven't ticked off these two. And that's that beginning balance problem. We could reconcile here and just kind of note what happened. But I'm going to talk more about that in the future in the following presentation. So now also note that we did make a change to our financial statements. We've made a change to these accounts on the income statement to reconcile for things on the bank statement that weren't on our books. And we made an adjustment to our cash account. So we did adjust our cash account, but at the end of the day, we don't expect the cash account to be the same as the ending balance here because we do have outstanding checks and deposits. I'm just going to run the trial balance. So you could see where we stand at this point in time with those transactions we just did from 010123. I'm going to run it all the way to 123123 and customize it, fonts and numbers changing it. Let's bring it to 16. So this is for the full time frame. So you could just check your numbers for those changes. This is where we stand as of this time. And we'll continue and finalize the bank reconciliation finally soon.


Sorry for the technical issues. Hi, everyone. My name is Mei Lin. So thank you. Firstly, thank you very much Hafiz for inviting me to come here to give a talk at Tech Tolerate. So it was a very interesting concept. And after I got the invitation, I started to read up. And I also found out about the other series as well. So it's nice to actually emphasize quite a bit of oceans. In particular, like last few years, I think there's a lot of sort of hype and issues that came up with respect to oceans. So I'm a little bit different from the other speakers this evening, so I'm going to share with you a little bit more about the natural environment and what actually some of us are actually doing in Singapore to actually help conserve and protect our reefs. So this title, You, Me and the Reefs. So it's a very interesting title because when I was actually doing some research, I was thinking about what should I share in this talk? And what came up was You, Me and the Oceans. But we all know that the oceans is very big. And even for myself as a marine biologist, it's a vast environment for us to actually try to explore as much as possible. So instead of actually talking about oceans, I scale it down to actually talk about something that's very close to my heart, which is coral reefs. And not just any coral reefs anywhere, but coral reefs in Singapore. And I'm going to show you that we have coral reefs. Just right, I've done our best, yeah. But before I go into some of the things, I want you guys to maybe at the start of this talk, imagine like a world without coral reefs. Like, what do you think it would be like? So maybe before that, like maybe I just want to get an idea of how many of you actually have seen coral reefs or know about what coral reefs are about. Or maybe, yeah, maybe like you know, you Google, you've seen coral reefs or heard about what coral reefs are. So they're actually a very special environment. So that's what I'm going to share with you now. So this is what a really nice, healthy coral reef looks like. But this is not what all coral reefs looks like. Every reef is different.  So this is a very nice place. This is a very special opportunity that I had very recently in May. I was able to go on a research expedition at an island called Dongsha. Some people might know it as the Prattus Islands. So you might heard a little bit about it, the South China Sea issue that's ongoing here and there now. So this is a reef that's located right back in the middle of South China Sea. So there are still really very nice reefs in South China Sea, apart from the ones that have been talked about in the news. But going back to the same question, is that what if we don't have these reefs anymore? So sad, it's not really working very well. Okay, yep, got it. Yeah, so this is what probably would look like if we don't have reefs. It's basically just a very flat sandy bottom with no life, nothing. So earlier on from the backdrop, you could see some animals, like the reef fishes. But in this one, you really see almost nothing. So what this tells you a little bit is that reefs are like homes or shelters for many different marine animals that we're gonna talk about and hopefully see. So a little bit of a background. So some of you actually raised your hand earlier to talk about like, oh, about whether you've seen or heard about coral reefs. So let's start with a little very small basic about coral. This is what we call a polyp. So every coral starts off something really very small, like a really tiny larvae, which is microscopic scale. Like even the biggest one is about one millimeter big or millimeter long. So this is a illustration how it looks like. But eventually these coral reefs will grow very big and what you see is like big structures. And these large structures are made up of calcium carbonate. So these are, so corals are actually made up of millions and millions of those single units of polyps and they can look very different when they are completely grown. So some of them can look like a plate-like structure. Some of them actually look a little bit like the soft, like a little bit of soft. This is actually a type of soft corals. Some of them look like boulders, basically like big structures. Some of them actually, if you actually have a closer look, some of them look like they have like brain fissures. So we have very interesting common names for them. Some of them we call the brain coral. Some of them we call the cabbage coral. But basically like kind of relating back to some of the food stuff, but they really do look like that as well. But this, basically this collage of pictures shows you a diversity of what corals would look like and how they occupy some of the spaces on our sea floors. And what's really interesting about this collage is that these are all Singapore's coral reefs. And you look at the names. There are very common names and places that you've seen before. East Coast Park, Tanamera, Chek Jawa, and Raffles Lighthouse. Raffles Lighthouse may be not so well heard of because it's the southernmost point of Singapore. And at that point, there's a lighthouse. And it's actually a very special place for us researchers as well because we've been doing research on that reef for almost 20 years. But not myself, but my colleagues. For myself, I've been working in this place for about eight years. Yeah. So with that, we can see that corals are very unique as well. One aspect of the corals is that they can photosynthesize. So like, in fact, usually when I describe it, I would usually say photosynthesize. So whatever you mean by that. So earlier on, that small picture I showed you, the earlier diagram, is that it looks like an animal. And corals are actually animals, but they are very special animals that actually holds a very small algae cell in their body. So from this picture, you can see that they are mostly brown color. So these cells are brownish in color. And what happens is that these cells can photosynthesize and produce food for the corals. So it's one of the few marine animals that can do that. So not just, basically corals can not only just filter feed from the environment and catch food, but they can also get extra nutrients from this photosynthesis process. So moving on to show you, so I've been talking a bit about coral reefs and now to actually demonstrate how they are important to us on an economic scale, but not just economic scale as well, but there's a lot of other things that comes with it also. So on an economic value like, almost 500 million people rely on coral reef ecosystems as a form of livelihood, as well as a source of food. So economically it's very valuable. And some people actually have put a price tag on this. And not just that, especially for ecotourism. So some places where, for example in Australia and even just around the region as well, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, where diving is a very big thing in these countries and these are the places where a lot of Singaporeans go to as well when they wanna go diving. And in Australia itself, like it can generate like almost 5 billion of a revenue for them. So by just protecting this coral reef ecosystems, they can actually gain a lot from just that in terms of industries and commercially as well. And what's interesting also is that, although the oceans is so vast, about 70% of our earth surface is covered by the sea water, 25% of marine animals actually rely or depend on the coral reefs itself. So that's one quarter of what we actually already know for marine species. So that's quite a big chunk actually compared to the overall aspects. And not just that. So something about coral reefs is that because these coral reefs are actually, where you usually find them is that around the fringing areas of our islands. So just off Singapore, basically the coastline is usually covered by coral reefs. And coral reefs can actually help protect and become a barrier against coastal sort of wave action and one of the studies actually showed that almost 95% of the wave action is buffered by the presence of coral reefs. And not just coral reefs, but also other ecosystems as well as, such as mangroves. So one example of mangroves in Singapore is Tungai Bulow. So maybe some of you have been there and visited. So those trees there, a very special type of tree is the mangrove trees. But unfortunately, the coral reefs are facing a lot of threats. And these tree numbers are very interesting when I was doing my research as well. And in fact, 0.2% of the ocean's sea bed is covered by coral reefs. And when you look at this map, you can see that the darker colors, the ones in the, basically the legend, the darker purple colors are where coral reefs are found now. And you can see that it's actually very limited in distribution. It's along the equator, not too far from the north, not too far from the south. So a lot of our reefs are actually tropical and subtropical coral reefs. So beyond for the up north or down south towards the either ends of the poles, we don't really find a lot of coral reefs. And despite the fact that when you look at this map, you think that, oh yeah, maybe there's a lot of coral reefs, but when you actually do an actual measurement, it's only 0.2%. It's actually very, very small. And earlier on, we talked about that 25% of marine animals use this environment as a form of home, shelter, and a source of food as well. But unfortunately, today, at least, at least 75% of these coral reefs that you see here are threatened. And they are threatened by a variety of factors. So for example, so before I actually show you the vast number of different words and threats that they face now, but I'd like to share a little bit about this set of photos. Again, these photos are all taken in Singapore. Nothing overseas here. But it's just to share how close these threats are actually to home. So for example, a colleague of mine, when he was out diving, he actually found a carcass of a turtle floating in the sea. So at first, when he saw it, he thought they're like, oh my God, he saw a turtle and the turtle was really close. And for some reason, the turtle was on the surface for a very long time. Because usually what happens is that most of the turtle sightings that we have, it's up and down. They would just go up for air and go back straight down. But this one, strangely, was on the surface for a long time. And by the time he got close enough, he actually saw that it was really badly decomposed. The eyes were already popped out. And this white sort of appendage that you're seeing is a gut that came out of the turtle. So you can imagine, sorry for those who are eating, but you can imagine that this turtle probably has been floating in the sea for quite a while. But on the other hand, it shows you that we have interesting diversity as well. For an environment like Singapore, like looking at just that water, like can anybody just give me a description of color of this water? Greenish brown? Yeah, so I mean, probably in your imagination, you were thinking like, oh, the coral reefs or the oceans that I usually see is very pretty blue, very clear waters. Unfortunately, we're the opposite. So this is due to many different factors. So we'll share a little bit of these factors later. And the center picture is a very interesting one. Some of you might have kept up, or maybe might have heard of Jubilee, the sperm whale. So last year, I think no pun intended, although last year we celebrated our 50th year, which is the Jubilee year. They named this whale, Jubilee. And it was an interesting one also because she came, she's a female. They did the diagnosis, so she's a female. She's actually quite a big whale. You can actually see her whale bone now in the Natural History Museum that's based in NUS. But that aside, she was found stranded on one of the islands, Jurong Island. So immediately, the museum got a phone call saying, like, we got a stranded sperm whale. So, but they thought that maybe she was still alive. But by the time they actually got to her, basically she was bleeding very badly. And actually, one of the things, one of the possible reasons for her death was a propeller cut. So one thing that's very interesting when you actually look out of our seas, like from East Coast Park, what do you usually see? For those who actually have stood out at the beach and look out to the sea, what do you usually see along our East Coast beach? Like, what's the sea line? Ship. Yeah, well, essentially ships and tankers. So we have very high shipping traffic, but also because of our traditional strategic position of our port. So we're actually a very high-frequency sort of shipping lane. So ships move in and out very frequently. So we're not surprised by this diagnosis of her being killed by a propeller cut. So I've seen other animals who were lucky enough to survive propeller cuts, but it's horrible. It's terrible when you actually see one animal that actually has this huge gash on the back.  And then, you know, yeah, so kind of sad. But anyway, she's immortalized now. And I think on an education basis, like, you know, some of the things that they found through this entire sort of salvage of her body, there are some interesting information that are available in the museum. And I'll share one of it later. And the last one over here is, can anyone just quickly tell me what these are? Right from. Yeah, very, very astute observation. So not just the black-tipped reef sharks, but they are actually baby sharks. So this was really an unfortunate one, like another unfortunate incident as well. So this happened last year also. So locally, although we don't really think that people do fishing, but we still have people who actually go out to do recreational fishing, but not just using fish and hook, on basically hook and line. But some of them actually lay out like long fish nets. So basically what happens is that like along a reef, they were laid maybe 100 meter long or fishing line. And then basically these nets will sort of like fall down. So they basically form a barrier. So what happens is that any fish, anything that actually passes through will get captured. So it's a very traditional fishing method, but it's very effective. And unfortunately, it was too effective in this case. We hypothesize or we suspect that maybe it caught these 13 juvenile sharks when they were just about to be sort of going back out to the sea. And unfortunately, all 13 of them were caught in the net. So this is the sort of the end result of what happened, but not just the sharks. They got stingrays, they have crabs, they have other fishes. And it's just a matter of overnight. So this net was only left for 24 hours, but some of the animals, they died because of suffocation. And some of them actually already started to decompose. So I think one of the outcomes, or one of the sharing points about hitting here is that such fishing nets are indiscriminate. They catch anything. And to some extent, some of the animals that people usually fish, they don't really eat as well. Some of the crabs are toxic, so they actually have to release it or throw it back to the sea. But I think one of the good outcomes from this is that the National Parks Board has sort of worked with the local fishing community to actually share with them, talk to them about what are the cans and what are the cannotes. But without further ado, let me show you the doom and gloom words that I have here. Yeah. So these are just some of the major impacts that coral reefs are facing now. So just to briefly go through, not all of them, but some of them which are interesting. So I kind of, in some ways, they are categorized to be something very similar, sedimentation, coastal development, and pollution. So just looking at the color of the sea water, these are the major impacts that are happening in Singapore. So what has happened is that since the 1960s, Singapore has been developing our coastline to provide new land. So the new land that we're sitting on now, maybe not here, but at least where our airport is sitting now, it's actually completely reclaimed.  And that used to be vases of ecosystems such as the mangroves and something called a seagrass. And so now they are not there. But there are some positive things about, so I'll share the positive things later. With time, coastal development also leads to something called sedimentation. So the idea of sedimentation is that there is a lot of particles in the water. So that kind of gives this greenish color. And not just that, the center block, looking at coral mining, warming oceans, and ocean acidification, this comes to a little bit more of the topic of climate change. So we've all heard about climate change and some of the impacts they are facing now. And in fact, some of the hot and warm humid temperature and the erratic rain patterns that we're seeing now can be closely related to some of these impacts of climate change. And not just happening on land, but in the oceans as well. And I'll share with you a little bit about something that is happening with us now. So in the last three months, so the sea water temperature, the average sea water temperature in Singapore tends to be between 27 to 29 degrees. But unfortunately, in the last couple of months, the temperature has gone up to about 31 degrees. And that has caused a lot of mortality in some of our corals. So without further ado, I heard my bell. So I just wanted to share that actually, some of our daily actions are contributing to the threats that we see. So for example, if you support the aquarium trade, a lot of the animals that you have are actually wild caught and they are caught in an unsustainable manner. So one example would be dynamite fishing. So what they do is they actually put in dynamites and then either they catch the fish, the food that you eat is caught through that manner. And not just dynamite fishing, there's something called cyanide fishing as well. So all these contribute. So imagine, and one of the probably more close to hard one and something that is kind of gaining some traction in Singapore and some support of like against buying and also selling shark's fin as well. The idea is the same thing as well because there's a consumer demand and therefore people go out to continuously fish. So if we actually can effectively reduce the demand to some extent, that is the possibility of actually sort of improving the sort of like reducing demand and then people catch less. Hopefully that's what we see. And so what urban run-offs and drainage, basically what you throw into your sewage and everything that will contribute. This is just generally on marine trash. So a lot of our trash, like while we think that we're throwing them into the bins, but a lot of them actually still goes back to the sea. And there are some very interesting vortexes of marine trash, not here, but in the Pacific Ocean. You can read up about that as well. It's basically like an island of trash. It's quite interesting. And just to give you an idea of statistics of how much trash. So we have an organization called the International Coaster Cleanup Singapore, ICCS. So they do annual cleanups sometime around this time, August to September and October. And just in 2014, and with a volunteer of almost 3,000 people, they collected almost 15,000 kilos of trash. And some of this trash are really interesting like snorkel and mast. A lot of them are plastics. And some of these plastics actually goes back to the whale that we saw earlier. So one of the things that they did was to cut up and see what she ate. So not only found out what she actually ate, but other things that she accidentally ate as well. So very briefly, just to share a little bit about the positive side of things and also a little bit about my research. So Hafiz earlier described that my favorite, one of my favorite animals is the giant clams. So can anyone just kind of point out to me like where do you think the clam is? So if you look quite closely, this giant clams, as his name suggests, is the largest living bivalve in the world now. The largest one can grow up to a meter long and weigh over 300 kgs. So I believe that this is one of the individuals. So over here, this sort of appendage that you see is one of the breeding sort of apparatus of this animal. And this animal shares a very similar relationship with the algae cells that I talked about for the corals. So these animals can photosynthesize as well. And I think studies have shown that this species can live up to almost a hundred years old also. Yeah. So why do I say they are unsung heroes of corals? So like when I started my research, like people have cultured them and they have been sort of like in the market for a very long time as a source of food and also the shells as a source of materials as well. But what I found interesting is that nobody's really actually thought about like, hey, what are the roles? What are the ecological roles and functions that they can have on coral reefs? And very simply, they are important sources of food. So imagine like a very giant sea hum.  So imagine one of these, how many Chakwe Tiao can you eat? Yeah, but not just a source of food for humans, but a source of food for a lot of marine animals as well. So maybe the next one as well. But unfortunately they are also facing very similar tracks to coral reef ecosystems. So this one over here, when I talked about bleaching, so the idea of bleaching means that they completely lose their little cells in their body and they become completely white. And not just bleaching on a warming, on climate change scale. So they are actually being illegally harvested in many parts of their distribution. Some of the shells are actually currently used as an ornamental trade and carvings. So this is the reason why, or one of the reasons why the Chinese was so interested in the South China Sea. And not just that as well as the source of food. So this was taken in Sabah. So actually part of many countries in our region, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, they still eat this animal quite frequently as a source of proteins. But the good thing is we're actually doing something about it. So in Singapore, we've lost a lot of them in the early days. And Singapore being a local fishing island as well, a lot of them will harvest it as a source of food. But as we go into the 60s and 70s, earlier on I shared about the coastal development. So that take precede in terms of what has impacted the survivorship and growth of these animals. So what we're doing here is actually we bring back the parents and then we culture them. So those are the young little clams. So all clams start small, so they don't look this big immediately.  So these are about two to three years old. So this is just sort of an overview. And now we're actually moving on to the next stage. We have some juveniles that we are planning to actually transplant them back onto our coral reefs. So all these colors and sea water that you're looking at, this is our natural environment. But I think what's really hopeful for me is that despite the fact that there's so much impacts on our reefs, we still see corals, we still see clams. And these are just basically the survivors of what has happened over the last 40 years on our reefs. And we can learn a lot from them because they have survived and they must have learned or adapted to this unique environment of ours. So just to find, hopefully ending soon, is that to share that every one of us can actually do or make a difference. And in your own way, you can explore and learn more about the oceans or about coral reefs. You can share and speak up just like myself. I'm sharing with you guys what I've learned and what you know of. And I think the last one, while it's the most important one, but it's also usually the inertia part for most people. Actions and volunteers, show it in your actions. Some of your daily actions that you do can make a difference. So this is a really nice infographics that I found that is made by the National Ocean, basically the NOAA from the American administration. So some of them are really very simple, 10 ways. So basically don't support buying some of these items as souvenirs back home. So sometimes when you go abroad, you might see them selling this. Very simply as well, choosing sustainable seafood. Look at where your seafood's coming from. Are they dolphin-free, tuner-free, for example? Especially some of the items. And I think one of the things is about volunteering as well. I think there are avenues for everyone to try something different. So I think finally, so what's the environmental legacy that you want to live for your own children and your children's children? Is it this that you can see maybe now in the 1950s? Or is it this in 2020, or maybe even sooner, a graveyard? And then eventually when you're there, you just put a bouquet of flowers. I like to end this talk with a quote that I really like. It reminds me of why I do what I do. And also it reminds me that even as an individual, you can make a difference. So as long as you care for what you believe in and what you're passionate about, you can bring it across, bring across your message and bring across it through your actions as well. So unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not. So thank you very much.


Wendy Lowe, and I'm excited to share another journey with a dear friend as he takes his health path. We are coming to you live from my home and from downtown Honolulu from the studios of Think Tech by me. Today we'll be talking to a well-known Hawaii broadcaster and emcee and a dear friend. What I would like you to take away from today's discussion is the idea that listening to your body is a way towards keeping you healthy. Today we are very honored to welcome William Van Osdol, but we know him as aka Billy V. He is a reporter in the mornings on Hawaii News Now, Sunrise, and the voice of many of Hawaii's very prominent events. Welcome Billy V. Wendy, thank you very much. Nice your house. I know this is so cool, right? We get to see everybody's inside the house, right? The humble beginnings and who they really are inside their homes. So let's just get started. You know Billy, most people, when we get started, we talk about other things, but I know what's important to you as your family.  Okay, thank you very much, Wendy. Let's go ahead and show you a picture of the fam. So you might as well see what they look like. Here they are going out for some family exercise during this COVID-19. My son is in the back there. He's 18. He's going to go to NYU. He is graduating as of this broadcast this coming Saturday. My wife, Sawako, there. Hi, honey. And then my dog, Chewy, in the middle, which is actually a lot of the reasons why we keep nice and healthy. But we'll talk more about that in a minute. That's the family. Wow. And then you're absolutely right, Billy. You know, when I have my dog, I have a grand dog. I have custody every other week. When my grand dog is with me, I walk and I'm diligent about it. But when she's not with me, I slide a little bit. But then I have to serve harder when I'm in the water. So I like even one. So yes, your lovely wife, your angel, Sawako, your son, Neon, and your pride and joy, Chewy, your best friend. Thank you for introducing them to us. We're very excited to meet them as well. So let's get right into it and talk about your professional journey. You're not only on TV, but you do other stuff to share that with us. Thank you very much. Let's go ahead and take a look at the picture real quickly here. I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but there's just kind of a little bit of a list for you there. I'm an entertainment reporter with Sunrise. You mentioned that. I worked for University of Hawaii Athletics. I'm also on the radio in Hawaii World 5. I own my own business, but along with owning the own business, there's a whole bunch of other stuff. You and I have worked together with the Miss Hawaii Scholarship pageant and continue to do so. So a lot of TV, a lot of events stuff, but that's all stuff that I wanted to work in for a long time. Wow. I mean, the list goes on and on. And I know that you mentioned the Miss Hawaii pageant on pageant night, which you are the voice of.  And I look forward every year to working with you and just having a good time. So thank you for all the support in all the different community events that you are involved with. We truly appreciate you. And actually, we really appreciate your voice. And I love it when you go into that mode and maybe at the end you'll jump into that, that deep rustic voice of yours that just makes it a more exciting of an event. So thank you very much. So tell us now, I know we've done TV and all that, but what is your true and your original passion, Billy? The original passion, true passion, that's still up for grabs there, but the original passion was radio. Started back in radio when I was just 16 out of high school, so 17 years old, over on Hawaii Island. And here's a list so that way I don't have to go through the whole thing, but you can just kind of take a look at the radio stations that I've worked at. Starting out from the big island. Also, the rest of them are all here in Honolulu. I don't know if we've got that list up. Yeah, there's a site and it has all the stations that you worked with. The latest one being Hawaii 105 radio. And I'm still there on Saturdays. I'm glad that they still let me in to come and play once a week. Radio, from when I was young, that was, you know, when you're doing stuff and you have the radio in the background, it kind of keeps you company. Well, for me, it was like the party. That was, you know, KKUA days, Kamosami Kong day. So, yeah, I know, go through the names. Oh, I remember. Back in the good days, Billy. So that's what I wanted to, I heard that on the other side of the speaker and that's what I wanted to be and it just continues and it's still there. I still get nervous whenever I reach for the microphone, maybe for the first time of the day because I only do it once a week, but that was the original passion. Some people ask whether it's radio or TV and I gotta go with TV at the moment because in the newsroom, there's a certain energy that that's just, I work with a great group of people. As a matter of fact, you know, let's, we might as well just show you the picture. Is that okay, Wendy? Yeah, go for it. That picture is awesome. I love the heart there. This is the Hawaii News now studios and on the couch there you see everybody, Mieleka, this is kind of an older picture. Mieleka is now on the big island, but the rest of the crew, that's all of us there, minus Casey Lund. It's a really good group of people. And when I work with them, there's a certain level of excellence. And you gotta make sure that you got it every day that you bring it. And that's the kind of crew that I work with. But saying that, I know that I've got their back, they've got mine. When I asked Dan Cook, you know, when Dan was there and I had just joined in the morning in studio, I says, any advice for me? He goes, yes, don't be afraid to go to the edge of the clip. I just, you know, push the limits. Go to the edge of that clip. I says, oh, okay.  I went, oh, that's nice. Or we will let you fall and we will laugh at you for the rest of the morning. That was my introduction to being in the studio on Sunrise and it's one of, it is the best crew that I've ever worked with. Great and profound advice and wisdom. And, you know, that's how we have to live. We gotta live on the edge.  Take it to the edge and just go for it, right? Yeah. That's exciting. So may I ask, who is the station manager that manages the Hawaii News now, Sunrise? The Hawaii News now, Sunrise, the station manager, I guess you would say the general manager at the time was Rick Blangiarity when I first started. The news director right now is Scott Humber. He's our illustrious leader down in the newsroom. And Katie Pikmin is our general manager upstairs for Hawaii News now. Wow. Want to just give them all a shout out because they're doing a fabulous job. I mean, you know, it starts from the top and then all of you with the right hearts and the right chemistry just sitting there and having a great time. So whether it's good news, sad news, bad news, you're delivering with the right temperament, the right heart, and it really penetrates our hearts and our minds to receive that. I wake up every morning to all of you every morning and I just absorb all of that. And then at eight o'clock, I watched around the world in 90 seconds and then I turn, then I usually start my day, but I usually from the morning, from the minute I wake up, it's all of you that will welcome my day. And I just, I just appreciate all of you and your energy so much. Thank you very much. And now it kind of leads to my next question. So how do you find success in the business place of today in what you do? And I think we've answered it, but go ahead. Well, I kind of alluded to it. Basically, what you need to do is if you can find a place where you can find people with the like minds, the like value set and the same goal, then that's perfect. If you find in the people with that same value set, I guess you could say, find a team that you can work together with, find that trust that, you know, that Dan mentioned there so you don't have to worry while you work hard. And you will find that you will celebrate those victories and you'll want to celebrate everybody else's, but it kind of ties in with Aloha Aina. If you have Aloha for each other, then you have something to work with that you can move together and move forward with. So more than just Aloha, Aloha Aina. Yes, it is love of the land, but it's love of the land, people, relationships with everything because everything has to work together for you to succeed. Wow. You know, I always feel, I want to say, initially I thought it was the magic of all of you and your hearts in the station. But yeah, it's truly the Aloha that you have for each other. And you have for your job and what you're doing for your responsibility of being the deliverer of the news of the day. And as I just commend all of you and that's why I wake up to you. And for a few hours in the morning and I'm just excited to see all of you and what you have to say. So I know you have a phenomenal, you have a phenomenal career. I reach out and go to an event and I see you at the mic. I know we're in good hands and I know we're going to be entertained. And then when I go to a sports event, I see you on the on the course on the court. And I just feel so excited and you at your mic and your script in one hand or your agenda and you're just pacing the floor and just waiting for the right time to get started and just guide that event. And I know that event is in such good hands because you are truly a professional. Yes. And I know, you know, I work with you for many, many years on different events and I see you around. And I know at one point, there was something different about you. And there's something going on in your life. And so I kind of like wanted to ask you and you shared with me. So let me just ask you now, what started the change in life for you. Well, it was a health issue. It was something called diverticulitis. For those are not not familiar with that term. It is small pockets that wind up happening into your intestine. And sometimes if food particles get stuck into one of these pockets, it can start to infect. And the next thing you know it's like a bad traffic jam on the H1 freeway. When there was traffic. And the pockets are like a little accident. And suddenly you've got a backup of cars in your intestine. It's like you have a particle and then you've got a backup of food. And then that sits there and then it starts to go sour, I guess you could say, and it becomes infected. And so it starts the lining and starts to irritate and it became very, very painful. And I ignored it actually for quite a while. And then I figured out, I better go to the doctor when I got to the emergency room and found out that I was in so much pain, I couldn't do the radio show. And you know, if you're taking me away from the radio show, you know, it's gotta be something serious.  I just want you to share with the audience like, what did you think it was? I wasn't sure. All I know is that it was I was doubling over. And I couldn't stand straight. I wasn't really sure what it was. Symptoms abdominal pain was mostly here on the left hand side. But I would go to the restroom and nothing would come out. So it's confusing. Right. So when I went to go to the doctor, get it checked out, this is, well, okay, let's go ahead, do a colonoscopy, we'll take a look. I says, okay. So they do the colonoscopy. And the doctor says, well, why don't you come into the office and we'll go ahead and tell you the results. Oh, okay. So my wife and I go into the office. We sit there with Dr. Marotani. He says, well, you've got polyps in your colon. Oh, sorry, you have diverticulitis, but it's a little bit worse than we thought. And go, oh, okay. But there's something else. My wife starts to dig her fingers into my arm. Holding my hand in my arm. And he goes, we found early stage of cancer. Wow. My wife starts to shake and she starts to cry. So there's so much emotion next to me that I just kind of. What do we do next? He says, well, there's several options. And what we decided to do is we decided to take the infected section and remove it. Okay. So that had to do an extensive surgery. Right. We did that rather than going the chemotherapy route. Right. So we've gotten better. That's been healed up. I had to have an ostomy for a little while. I still suffer because it's a new normal. Right. And there are some things that I have to be very, very careful of what you'll talk about in the, but basically the cancer has been gone. It's been five years. I'm still clear. I go for my colonoscopies, my yearly checkups, but I have to be careful. Let's allude to, you said something a little bit earlier. You didn't need anything wrong. Well, I didn't know if I was eating anything wrong. Come to find out that there are things that I should avoid like horn, hard things, things that are small like seeds kind of stuff that might get stuck in there. And so I went, oh, and doctor says, oh, fiber, you need fiber. We all need fiber. So those are some of the things that I, that I was kind of going through, kind of leading up till now. But along the way, there's been a couple of realizations along the way too. Wow. You know, this is so key. And, you know, like we, the knowledge is power. And so that's why you're sharing with us. People may experience something and they'll just put it off. And so the, to me, the blessing though, you have the indicator that something was wrong and the blessing of it all, and there's always a silver lining. So the, to me, the blessing is that the irritation prompted you after a while to go to the doctor and then the detected early stages. That's a good thing right there. Early stage because the doctor says that if I had not checked it, if I had checked it about two months earlier, it would have been able to find it because it was such an early stage. But if I had waited until my 50th birthday, when I was supposed to go get my colonoscopy, it would have been a very much dire conversation because that wouldn't have been for another three years. So yeah, that would have been not good.  Any pain means that the body is telling you something's going on in there. And it's not just because you bumped it or it just hurts. Why does my gut hurt? Why does my left side hurt? You know, now we can Google these things. Well, if I can, let me give you kind of an example of exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, water really is your best friend. Because what happened with me is I used to, for those of you that remember KCCNF and 100 and the birthday bash concerts for years, people would go down there every July big concerts all the big names. I was the stage manager for 16 years of that stage. Now it, the sun beats down as the sun goes down, it's beating right onto the stage. So I'm hot, sweaty. I'm cramping. And I'm thinking it's just the stress of the concert. And this is happening for a while now. This is back in the 90s. How many years ago? That's that's some 30 years ago. Well, yeah, 30 years. So what I found out, okay, I ignored it. It would always happen at the concerts. I'm thinking, okay, it's just concert stress. It's all cramping all in here. After I had my cancer surgery, about four weeks afterwards, I had that same exact cramp.  Right. So I had to keep stretching it out, stretching it out.  So okay, let's do a little deductive thinking. Well, if I drank the water, pain goes away. So that's not stress related. Okay, if I listened to my body, then I would have figured out that this had to do with hydration. So the sun beating down and all those 16 years, I was dehydrating myself every birthday bash. Yes. And not realizing it. Right. And so I'll ask you a little trivia question here, Billy. Do you know on the average, how much water we should consume daily? Oh boy, I will fail at this one. Three of these. This is 32 ounces. Okay, 32. That's 96 ounces. You drink three of those? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that's excellent because... Survey says? Do you weigh like 180 pounds? When I got married. Okay, so the reason I asked you, and you don't really have to answer, I'm sorry, but... In theory, where you should drink, you take your weight. So if you weight 200 pounds, you divide it by two, and it's 100 ounces of water that you should consume daily. So you're pretty good. You are pretty good because you're doing 192. You're doing, yeah, you're doing pretty good. So here's the thing, is that when I found that out, I went and bought three of these. I have one at work. I have one at home. I have water wherever I go. Thank you to my chiropractor because he made me a sports drink. I'm not pushing any... He says, I go, oh, let's drink water. You need more nutrients, but you can't... Don't drink the sports drinks off the shelf because that's too much sugar. So he made me something from a company that's a mixture that doesn't have as much sugar. And I says, because I don't like water. I don't like water either. I mean, I'm not a water drinker, but same, I have to carry this thing and I have to monitor. And this is the only way, but you know what, truly, if I don't finish it and I'm like, oh my gosh, the day is almost over. Then you got to pump it up, but that's not good either. So you just like what you do, one, two, three of them, perfect.  And it is so critical not just for pain, but to flush out the toxins out of your system.   The water helps it, but we also do another thing and we'll get, I'll speak to you that is called fascia. Your fascia is the largest organ in your body. And it, what it does is it connects everything in the body. And if we don't like roll our body up and just move the crystals in our body, the water is like a saline in our body. And what happens is the saline, if you're not moving it, it crystallizes. And then you have blockage and you have like, oh, a lot of pains, especially as we get older because it's crystallized. So it's a simple method of rolling your body out on a roller to help you to break up those points. And so then you have even better circulation of the water that you're pushing into your body to help you circulate and flush out the toxins. The body is so beautiful and so simple. If we just did the basics, like, you know, like you're going to share with us, but water is so key. Hey, what, Wendy, hang on for a second. Honey, I found out why I'm sore when I get up in the morning. We'll talk about that later. Okay. Okay.  Okay. Your gut commands the whole body. It's sometimes even more important than this. Of course, this is important, but your gut, everything is regulated in your gut.  Most everybody, I don't know how many, what is the statistic, like 20 pounds of BM is stuck in your intestines that most people don't push through. And it's toxic waste stain in your body. Okay. So you were very blessed that you had a signal that said, Hey, the verticulitis better check it out, pain, more pain.  Then you like addressed it. And then you were woken up to the initial problem. Right. And that's the blessing for you. So yes, exactly being in tune to your body, listening to your body, and then follow me and taking action. Because success is not just being there at the right place at the right time in the doctor's office, but being there at the right time at the right place and taking action, which you did. And then you were able to find the issue and take care of it. And we have Billy be here five years survival cancer clean. So, and I gotta say mahalo to my family because they're the biggest reason they're the biggest backers in, you know, and there's a whole bunch of stuff now that we've gotten through all of this that we want to go ahead and tackle. So I made a list of things that I know that I need to do. We'll show that to you if we get the chance here more walking. That's good. Right, Wendy. Yes. More nutritious diet. And we really let's take that one step at a time. You know, if you want to do more walking right. Yeah, what is the purpose for you walking to bring your heart rate up and to yeah. Right. Most people they have to get the idea out of their head. Oh my gosh, I've been walking every day for like 20 minutes 1520 minutes and I'm not losing weight. I want you all to get that part of your head you don't walk and exercise with the main focus to lose weight. The main idea is why you walk is exactly you need more oxygen in your body. You need to strengthen your body but your body has a natural pharmacy within itself. So when you walk and you're exercising, your pharmacy opens up and it starts healing your body. Okay, so that's even more more profound than oh I gotta walk I gotta lose this turkey that I ate I shouldn't have eaten that gravy, you know that extra gravy. So, you know, that's not why we do it is because we want to open up our healing, our pharmacy in our body to start healing and making it do what it's supposed to do. Okay, continue. Next one is more nutritious diet. More nutritious diet. So what was your diet prior to all of this five years ago. Well, you know, we got to actually go back a little bit further than that if we go back to the 90s I mean it was, I was multiple jobs, high pressure jobs, lots of fast food. Lots of spam eggs and rice, which by the way I still love my wife knows that if I but if that, you know, any day if I don't want to eat anything, she'll make that and I'll be happy. But my wife in after the cancer surgery and the healing. My wife is Japanese, and I love Japanese food and cooking and that involves a lot of vegetables and stuff so we've been including that I have found the right salad dressing. You got to go find a sesame seed dressing that's just me. I'm not endorsing it. Okay, I just did too late. So find a dressing that's good for you.  Okay, you want to eat tells all the time you can put me in your salad. It's good. Okay, and so you're you know that's the point spot on right there walking exercise is great, but the diet the nutritious nutritious diet.  I'm a little chick from Miami. I love. I mean I raised my kids and Vienna sausage can corn and white rice and that was our main staple. No, right. But since I retired Billy, I've not I've not eaten those things and I'm trying very hard. And I talked to myself all the time. Don't need it don't need it. Oh, I love it. No one's looking don't need it. Right. So I made a commitment at home. I'm plant strong at home. I eat out seven nights a week. Okay, so I will if you had a primary event. I say Billy, can I just have two slices and eat it on like in heaven. But that's, and I'm talking myself don't need it. It's enough. But, but 60 years old, we serve we do all these and our lifestyle is so full that we have to represent. And so you are a response but I know I know that this is your, your journey and I'm so excited to hear that all these great things are happening for you Billy. Thank you, thank you. And I know there's more in your list. More sleep. That's that's that's the hardest one on this list. That's the hardest. I just because you know you have we get up for sunrise. I'm up the last one and I'm up at 230. So I'm I'm actually the late one. There are people that wake up at 11pm, midnight, one o'clock two o'clock and shifts. So they they they trickle into the newsroom more sleep is and at this point I think I'm averaging probably about four hours of sleep. And that's my day as well, but Mahalo to isolation because it forces me to get more sleep because I need to build up my immunity so I can face the outside when I go there. Okay, so all these key points Billy are just very important. And what I know your heart is is to wish everyone out there to listen to your words of advice and be proactive about health and listen to their bodies. And before we sign off, I know that you want to introduce and say Mahalo to your family and we have another very lovely picture of your family coming up. And we can talk about them as well.  Exactly. That is profound. So deep Billy so deep. Listen to me but listen to you. Because only you know right.  There they go. Leon, I love you. Work hard at NYU. Hi honey, I love you too. And then Chewy, please don't make she she on the floor. Okay, go outside. Anyway, family love you. Wendy, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Billy. It was a joy and I look forward to having you back again. Stay healthy and keep sharing your heart with the world. Hello, Wendy Lote. Get a chick. I never knew that. Wow. Get a chick. Get a chick from the West Eye.