So now your spirit is hadam. My spirit is hadam, but it's gonna become halal. Feel free to call halal. I am looking forward to it. Assalamu alaikum. This video is sponsored by Launch Good, the number one Muslim crowdfunding website. Right now they have the Lamanan Challenge, which I really recommend you join together with thousands of Muslims. Stay tuned on the end of this video to know how you can join me in supporting these amazing charity campaigns around the world. Thank you. Alright, it's 10 a.m. It's a beautiful day. Our beloved Daoud Kim has challenged me to participate in fasting until dinner time in acknowledgement of Ramadan. I've never fasted in my life, so this is gonna be quite a challenge for me because I love food too much. Okay, let's try it out. Let's see how it goes. I think I can do it. Alright, it's 12 p.m. And I am feeling pretty hungry right now.  This is the time I usually eat. These bananas are looking at me. This avocado saying hello, but I must resist. I can do it until 8 p.m. Alright. Quick update. It's 2 p.m. Now I am so hungry. I am like shaky a little bit because I've just I've never fasted this long and so I feel very weak, but I'm still holding out until 8 p.m. I don't want to do this again. Alright, it's 4 p.m. I'm not having a good time. I have to think of like strategies in order to stay sane. So maybe something that's just just not the same. Okay, I just finished working out at the gym and oh my goodness. I am so hungry. I don't know how you guys can fast for a whole month, but I'm committed. We can do this. Let's go. I can do it. I'm finally in Itaewon. Gonna meet Jay soon. I don't even know what time it is anymore. Six something. I can't even think. My body is not even reacting normal. So, see you soon. What's up, bro? I can't even talk. My body hurts. This is are you okay? Well, no, I'm not. I haven't eaten this. This is the longest I've ever done without eating. So no, you didn't even drink water. No, I had a lot of water. Wait, I was not supposed to have water. Yeah, you cannot. What? It's not perfect. Are you joking? 100% fasting. Wait, no water? No water. I didn't know that. No, you failed already. Did it really? No, but it's okay. It's your first time. Fasting is also really hard, really. I didn't know you can't drink water. I had a lot of water. Yeah, at first I also thought that water is okay. Yeah, it's not. You don't die? Almost died. Right now, I feel very strange. Really?  Yes, five meals. That's a lot. I eat a lot. I love food. So for me, this is a really bad challenge. Wow. But I did it. I'm here now. Yeah, I'm proud of you. The mosque is the most. Have you ever seen this? I've never. I've seen it in pictures. Oh, really? It is beautiful. Yes, beautiful. Inside is more beautiful. Is there food inside? There's not. It's not open yet. It's closed. Okay. Right now, everything looks like food.  We can do this. I feel like I can do anything in the world now. Honestly, I don't know how you can fast for one month. For me, one day is like two years. I feel like I lost weight. I shrunk. I'm not tall anymore. My hair is... I'm losing all my hair. See, even when I see the birds flying, I think, oh, oh, I'm sorry. I can't think straight right now. I'm so hungry. What is your name? Eat. The restaurant is called Eat? Eat. Oh, eat. Ah, I was like, eat. I want to eat, yes. Yes, I want to eat. That is the mosque. So beautiful, actually. Yeah, it is. You know, I love architecture. The mosques, like the whole architecture of it is. I saw this video. This guy, he traveled to Pakistan.  I think I saw the YouTube too. Yeah. Are you going to go someday? Yeah, I sure, of course. We made the video about the actresses. This is so nice. Yeah, really nice. Wow. I can just live here. Right here. Put a sleeping bag and a lot of food. At around 3 p.m. I wanted to die. At 3 p.m. I was so hungry. Later, it's like my stomach was so angry at me. So curious, David, why aren't you feeding me? That it started eating itself. So I'm okay now. I feel like so many people are going to make fun of me because so many people fast, right? But I don't fast. I'm the world's weakest man right now. Honestly, even walking up the stairs, I was like, ah, I felt like an old man. So you have to eat after sunset, right? Yes. That's the rule. I'm following all the rules. Let's do it. I'm excited. Very excited. It's time to be David's cake. I heard this is the first halal restaurant. Salty pie restaurant in Korea. Oh, really? Yes. Like, halal, salty pie. Okay, so this would be my first halal experience. Yeah, let's do it. Are you hungry, right? Words cannot explain how hungry I am actually. Hello, hello. This is dates. Before breaking the fast, eating the dates is sunna. It's sunna. It's Prophet Muhammad. He's acting. He's his word. So we follow his acting. Yeah. So you're not hungry? Yes, I'm not. I said I wanted to have a meal today, so I brought you here today. I haven't eaten halal for a day. I'm so hungry. Wait, this is Korean food. Yeah, Korean food. It's halal food. Yes, it's all halal food. Oh wait, I had halal food like a specific type. Yeah, right, right. How about bulgogi and jjimdak? That sounds perfect. Right? How about bulgogi and jjimdak? Oh see, I was totally expecting halal food to be like kebabs or something like that. Yeah, halal Korean food. That's really interesting actually. Yeah.  So now I can drink water. No, not right now. Now we're not after your fast, okay? Torture. Because now it's staring at me. It's like talking to me. Soon. Wait a minute. I have a lot of questions today. First of all, I'm very hungry. Not a question. Why do we fast? What is iftar? What is Ramadan? We fast for one month. No drink like you do. No water. No water. Really? No food for one month. And there is a reason because at first Allah said fast. So we do this as a Muslim. And there's other reasons. If you fast, you can feel thankful to God and thankful to everything. It's also good for your health. Remove your bad thinking. Refresh your body and spirit. Do you know the word hungry? Hungry plus angry. Put it together. Hungry. That's not good for Ramadan. Calm down. So I need a calm down. Hungry but not angry. Okay. But I can understand like the cleansing and appreciating things because I'm so hungry that anything I eat, I think it's going to be amazing. It can be so amazing, right? That's Ramadan. And so my last question is what is halal food? All-load food. The opposite is haram. It's not all-load food. For example, like a pork. Allah swt doesn't allow to drink or eat pork. I feel drunk right now because I'm so hungry actually. So now your spirit is halal. My spirit is halal, but it's going to become halal. It's going to become halal. I am looking forward to it. I mean, these are like bullies right now in the playground.  I want to, trust me. I feel like we're waiting in line for Disneyland. Like waiting, waiting. Going like a little kid, going crazy. Getting so excited. Food roller coaster. It smells so strong. I can't even talk. Oh my goodness. Technically, can McDonald's be iftar food? Every food can be halal. If it's halal. If it's halal, okay. Halal, halal, halal. It's L, it's not R. It's so difficult to pronounce it all in L. I cannot list English every time on R, L, R, L. I think that's the hardest for Korean people speaking English. Yeah, it's so hard. Wow. Two minutes. Okay. I feel like there should be like a countdown. Like New Year's one more minute. I've never, I've never been this excited about food before. 24. Oh my god, 24 is my new favorite number. So we can eat now. Yeah, we can eat now, but we have to say something. Wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm really sorry, I'm really sorry. Don't apologize to me anymore. Okay. Allahumma. Allahumma. Laka. Suntu. Wa. Biskika. Biskika. Aftartu. Bismillah. Bismillah. Bismillah. Bismillah. Bismillah. What does that mean? Oh, thank you. Bismillah is the name of God. Ah, okay. Are you excited? I'm so excited. I never knew a date could taste so good. That's nice. Wow. It's so sweet. I've never had dates before. Me neither. Me neither. It's so sweet. Actually, I never eat dates. I want to eat the seed too, but you don't eat the seed, right? Finally, water. I totally understand what you're saying by people appreciate food and water more. I got goose bumps. You know, goose bumps like on this one. Oh, Korea's best water right here. That is better than California where I live. Right now it is. Right now, yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. I agree. Wow. That's great. Yeah, let's try it. It's like Disneyland just opened the gates. We're all running in. All right. All right. Running. There we go. This is an adventure, food adventure. I don't know where to begin. Hello, Kimchi. Give me. All right. Oh, yes. Come into my mouth. I'll put the door. Oh, my God. How is it? It's so good. It looks good. I'm confused if this restaurant is just really delicious. Yeah. Or I'm so hungry that everything is really delicious. It's delicious. Yeah, okay. But it's more delicious when you're fast. It really is. It is. I've never felt these sensations before. It's like, I'm really paying attention to everything. Every taste going down. Your styles. Yeah. I feel alive. Yeah. We should try the cookie. Okay. I will. I'll try everything. Almost, yeah. Even the bones taste good. Hello, Kimchi. Hello, rice. This is going to be my favorite part of the day. Thank you. I love it. A whole month? That's really, really difficult, I think. I really like bulgogi. What is this? This is chicken. Is it? Mmm. That's so good, right? It's so good. She was young when I was younger. I smelled the kimchi and I didn't like it. But now, I'm addicted to kimchi. I love it. I need it. Everything. I'm a Korean now. I'm a true Korean now. Kimchi is in my blood. If you're Korean, there's a kimchi in your blood. Yeah. That's why your blood is glad. Mmm. Makes sense, right? Even the rice is good, right? Bulgogi with rice, perfect combination. Okay. Now I'm jealous. All right. I must try. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's nice. That's nice. You need it. Okay. If any of you come to Korea, you must try bulgogi and rice. Do it. You must. I need another halal napkin. So you think everything's halal now? Halal chopsticks. Halal spoon. Is that all right? Is halal tattoo? That was a halal tattoo. Mmm. So these days, do you eat at a halal restaurant? Or I can cook. Or I eat sushi food or not non-pork food. Are you a good cook? No. No? Last time I cooked briyani for my mom. But my mom said, oh, you're not a good cook. But it's okay. So we ate almost. But that was a lot. It was like running a race. Just non-stop. So how do you feel? There's a lot of emotions right now. Well, one, I think my stomach got smaller because usually I can eat everything, but now actually I'm full. I'm really full. You didn't eat a lot today. Yeah, actually not that much. So I'm kind of disappointed in myself, but surprised. But I totally understand earlier when you said this will make you appreciate food and water. It was great. And this is really good food, yeah. You can feel the thing to everything, like the food and the water. Yeah. So you have to say Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Oh yes. I think my pronunciation is really bad too. Oh really? We just both have bad pronunciation.  And the halal gum too. Yeah. Ramadan means also fasting. So you can be, you can thankful to food and water, but it's also refresh your mind and your spirits. Yeah. So I hope you can experience about this too. Yeah, that's awesome. I agree. Thank you for watching my video. Take care and be safe. Alhamdulillah. Masala maa. Thank you. Bye. Ramadan challenge is the easiest and funnest way to donate money automatically every day in Ramadan to different camping. Log on to launchgood.com or simply click the link in the description to join right now. Thank you.


So hello again everybody. My name is Angelos Diamantopoulos and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics. I do mostly my researches in microeconomics but I teach microeconomics and quantitative subjects for the department. And I'm also the admissions tutor and then program convener for the undergraduates for the undergraduate programs which basically means that I am someone who looks over the undergraduate programs to make sure that they are run well and I deal with any issues that have to do with the running of the undergraduate programs. So this will be a very short video so I, the presentation I hope will be around 20-25 minutes. In which I will discuss a few things about the department and our programs and a little bit about also the career prospects of having a degree in economics so as. In this presentation we have with us June, June 10th who is a student of BA Economics and Politics who will also share a few of her thoughts about her experience of studying at SOAS as an undergraduate student. We have Sakina who is another student of economics who will also be available for questions if you have any questions for her both of these are students, current students in the department and they are here to tell you about their experience in studying with us. So the outline of the talk is the following. I'm going to just briefly discuss our department, what is it that makes SOAS economics different from other economic department departments maybe or what are the special characteristics of the department of economics, discuss a little bit in our program so the different types of programs that we have, their structure, the qualifications and the requirements and things like this. And then again as I said a little bit about our career prospects and employability. I will have a long time at the end, I will leave a long time in the end for Q&A so feel free to ask questions while I'm doing the presentation by talking or by writing in the chat, but also keep in mind that there will be some time left over in the end for Q&A. So, in describing SOAS economics we tend to use these four adjectives which are real world, rigorous, regional and research led, which we feel is a good way to describe what are the particular features of our department. So just to explain a little bit what each of those terms mean. So by real world, we mean that differently maybe from a lot of other economic degrees at different universities, we tend to focus on the real world as well as abstract theories and economic theories which sometimes tend to be from a distance from what's actually happening in the real world. So we do this with many ways, we use examples in our teaching that are current examples. We have experts who teach, who share parts of their research which is active ongoing research about things that are happening today, and we also try to give examples that span the whole world in our lectures and not just the UK or Europe or the global West. Just an example of this real world attitude or this real world approach, just now as we're speaking there is this COP26 and the climate crisis which is an event that takes place today and tomorrow about COP26 which is happening in the UK now and is discussing the issues of the climate crisis and the issues in the world the world is facing due to the climate crisis, and we have a few members of the department currently giving speeches at this event, discussing what are the potential problems what are the issues with climate that the world is facing, and what are the possible economic solutions that can be and should be taken by governments, international organizations, people's and so on. This is one example of what I mean by real world taking place right now by rigorous. What we mean is that as you probably know economics is a fairly quantitative subject so you will do a lot of qualitative research you will do a lot of topics that do not have any math requirements but a lot of economics is mathematical and is quantitative. And in an undergraduate degree of source you will have that side of that side of the experience as well, there will be. Firstly, in your core modules in your theory module there will be a quantitative parts, but also there is a lot of support given in mathematical modules which are specifically designed to support students learning economics, a lot of those modules for undergraduate I teach. So this is what I mean by what we mean by rigorous regional of course being at sauce we have a lot of experts that have a regional expertise. So their expertise might be in many different parts of the world but also focused in Africa, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Latin America. What that does is that both in the general courses in the general lectures in everyday teaching, there are as I said regional examples that are brought into the picture but also you have optional courses that you can take, especially at the last stages of your studies, so this is around year three, where you can have options we have a specific regional focus so if you're interested about Japan or the Chinese economy, or Middle Eastern economy, you can take regional options which have that as basis. But also of course we have a very strong language department and that language department has language that you can take as part of your degree and that can also give you another way to specialize even deeper culturally within regions that you're interested in. And the final thing is research led so what we mean by this is differently from, again, some universities, we do not have many colleagues who are just teaching focused and what they do is teaching so you might know that a lot of universities have either teaching universities or their focus on teaching, or they have a lot of teaching staff which which their expertise is on teaching. We at SOAS in general but in the economics department specifically are a research led institution which means most of the academics of the department to research, as well as teaching. And of course this is good for you in the sense that a lot of these research which is at the forefront of their field is brought into the teaching is brought into the modules modules are changed based on what is going on and the research side of things, but it's also a way to. For example, there's also weekly research seminars that you're you can attend that are by highly high profile speakers and academics, and this gives a network, an academic network that is different from being at the university which is just teaching focused. So I'm having a bit of trouble changing the slide. So, this is a very literal description of what our department currently looks like so this is our, these are all our colleagues in the department currently. We have many different colleagues from across the world, and we also have a department of 50% gender balance which is quite rare in economics so there's almost as many women as men I think it's almost exactly 50%, which as I said is quite rare. And the, the colleagues in the department, as I said most are the vast majority is very research active and they work on very different things such as economic growth and environment and climate which are some of them are discussing as I said now in COP26. There, there's a colleague leading on a very big project across different universities and institutions on corruption, and have a professor who is famous for his work on financialization. We have colleagues that work on development economics gender economics on the Japanese economy the Chinese economy and many other areas of interest. And this is the list of the programs that we offer. So there are effectively five distinct programs that we offer these are the BSE economics BA economics BSE development economics BA economics as a joint degree so that is economics and some something else from a different discipline from a different department for example economics and politics, or economics and law or economics and the language, and so on. And also there is a new degree which is starting this year which is called the politics philosophy economics pp, which is the most multidisciplinary degree you can have which is partly run by economics by the philosophy department and by the politics department. Let me briefly tell you about the BSE economics degree so for the BSE economics degree, it is the more quantitative degree that we have and for that you, you need a level mathematics with great of PR above to enter and this is, as I say the most rigorous mathematical degree that we have however, you can also do BA economics which BA economics doesn't have this requirement for mathematics. And BA economics is a program that can be structured in many different ways. So one reason you might want to do BA economics is because you don't want to have the quantitative side. You want to be able to choose more options, you have the ability to choose more options from different departments as well. And you might want to have this degree because of the flexibility it offers but also because of the lack of the quantitative subjects. But if you wish to graduate with a BSE economics, then you can start on the BA economics and automatically graduate with a BSE economics, if you take a specific pathway, what they call the BSE pathway. And this is effectively, it's just a set of modules which are created so that students can catch up with the knowledge of a level mathematics that they don't have or equivalent, and then slowly come up to the level of mathematics that the BSE economics students can then be able to follow all the quantitative subjects from BSE economics and just automatically graduate with a BSE economics degree. So, if you're interested in doing a BSE economics you can do it without a level mathematics starting from this BA economics, BSE pathway. We also have the BSE development economics which has a special focus on development, which is something that we have a lot of expertise on as you may imagine. And we have a lot of experts, expert colleagues who work on development, and this also can be structured in a more or less technical way, and also there is support for students that do not have a level mathematics to be able to take more quantitative subjects. And the joint degrees is something quite rare for economics departments and for universities in the Q&A in general, you have the opportunity to split this degree between economics and a language or another. Discipline, and you can also have economics as a first or second subject, which means whichever is your second subject you will have less module zone or less focus on in general. What I'm going to highlight in this slide is that for all students, there is the opportunity to take a summer school in the university in Singapore between your second and third year, for which you're the fees and the travel is covered. Students have to pay for accommodation. This is credit-bearing summer school. So what that means is that basically the modules that you take in that summer school, you don't have to take during your last year back at SOA. So you can have a little bit of a less difficult or less full program in your final year, but also of course the opportunity to study at a different university at a different place far away from the UK. So this is something that is also an opportunity that students might be very interested in. So just to talk to you briefly about our teaching, we try our teaching to be interactive and participatory, by which I mean that basically we try to engage our students in our teaching as much as possible. We don't have only the very standard lectures of a person like me now sitting and talking to people that are just listening, but we also have structured the lectures in a way that students are engaged, students are asked to participate and talk and things like this. But more specifically, the teaching takes place broadly as a mix of lectures, tutorials and pre-recording material. The pre-recording material is something that a pre-recorded lecturers, it's something that we have introduced from the, since the pandemic, but it's something that seems like a lot where some parts of the lecture, some parts of the key lessons of each week are pre-recorded. So you can see before the lecture. The lecture is a standard lecture in which you have a lecture teaching to university students, but again in a way that's as participatory as possible. And then tutorials, which are much more hands-on, students are asked to engage in conversations, prepare some readings, discuss those readings, or for quantitative subjects, you know, solve exercises and show the solutions or discuss the solutions. And then we try our teaching of quantitative subject to be very hands-on. So, instead of just teaching and having exams at the end of the year that students are meant to take, we follow the students through the year. There is support outside the lectures that students can have to discuss specific issues with the lecture directly and have kind of learning that is very much catered for the specific issues that they still may have with the quantitative subjects. In general, we assess students in many different ways. So the most standard way of assessing students is with exams and almost all modules have exams which take place in the major period. But those exams are, the weight of those exams, the significance of those exams is generally, as years goes on, decreasing. So, modules will have between 50% and 80% grades depending on the exam. And the rest depends on assessment, which happens throughout the year, and we use different types of assessment to help students build skills that are of different types of skills, I'm sorry. So, for example, we do group work. An example of group work for first year students would be what we call Festival of Learning, which is that we split all students into groups, and these groups make a presentation on an economic issue and economic topic or an economic question in a way that is participatory and creative, and then they present those videos in the period of the pandemic or actual physical presentations at the end of the year to the rest of their class. And so, and they are assessed based on that presentation as a group, but we also have in different modules, policy briefs, blogs, posts, country reports, of course, essays, and multiple school quizzes. So there is many different ways that students get assessed. Most different types of assessments are there to build different kinds of skills, skills that our alumni generally tell us are very, very useful in the workplace. So, working in a team, meeting deadlines, working with data and software, being able to analyze data, create policy reports or other types of reports are all things that students tend to do our students tend to do in the workplace after studying and so on. And these are things that they have honed in due because of the assessment structure of their modules in general during the studies. And fundamental, of course, to all of this is to teach students and for students to learn and to be proficient in economic theory, that's most important task, as well as its application from a global perspective. So, I discussed a little bit I gave you a kind of an overview of what teaching is like and how we do teaching on a kind of per module basis. But of course there is a lot of support that comes out of that is beyond and outside the module so that support can be very much focused on studying and we do have from the library, learning, teaching and innovation center there's a lot of study skill workshops that take place throughout the year, some are online, some are on campus on different things so how to write essays, how to site, make citations properly, how to study. There is also we're going to be running this year, a workshop on how to make how to do public speaking which can also be very useful for students. There are many more. So, the support exists and students can have access to it throughout the year, but as well we have what we call an academic advisor assigned to each student so an academic advisor is basically a student, an academic member of staff, like me for example that is assigned that a student is assigned to all students are assigned to an academic advisor in the beginning of their studies and this is someone who stays there throughout their studies. And it's someone that they can talk to about academic issues, questions that they may be having difficulties that may be having studying or their experience of studying in general, discuss module choices discuss, maybe job placement internships career concerns and stuff like that so this is a person who is there to be a point of contact and have a kind of an overview oversight of the students journey throughout the three years. In addition, we have what we call peer mentoring for first year students so this is a student led initiative. One of the students running this is actually June was going to speak to us in a few minutes. And this peer mentoring is basically that all first year students are assigned to an older student a mentor who is willing to take that role take that initiative. And the mentor again is there to help students with different types of questions from academic related questions how to do things in the library how to print papers, which courses to choose or how to study for a course to more broad life issues like where to live in London or where to go out for lunch, and so on. We have a dedicated career service which has career first career events, a very large jobs database that is shared with students frequently, but also there's a workshop that students have to go. That is run by the careers services that tells them key information that they need to know about applying for jobs internships and so on. We have a very active global alumni network. And in particular we're running this thing called the in mentoring via source connect, which is a platform through which students can get in contact with alumni so people who had started have started at source before, both graduate and undergraduate. And this is, because we have a very global network of students, especially our post graduate students are from all over the world, and often they tend to go back to the world. They tend to go back to where they came from or some of them do or in any case go in place outside the UK, this network is quite global, and that can connect students, especially that are interested to go to other places, you can find the alumni that is in these countries and this is something that many students have found very very nice and useful. Of course, there are many society student societies, some of them are economics related so I have here this open economic forum economics and finance society the Islamic finance and ethics society. But there are many other societies that students can take can be a part of both economic related societies or something else. And these are of course societies that are run by students. And I don't know if June wants to come in and share her experience at sauce for just a bit and then I'll take over. Of course, can everyone hear me or. Yes, okay great. So my name is June and I'm the final year student pursuing a dual degree in economics and politics, something which is definitely added to my source experience as being a mentor for the freshers of the economics department. It's a good way to give back and in my own first year, I also had a mentor, and he helped me loads with academic questions and fun things to do in London or so, especially as someone who's not from England. And it's also good to keep being involved in the student community. Another great thing about my degree is that I'm doing a joint degree of economics and politics. It works really well together. I learned a lot about decolonization and climate change and policy. And what's great about it as well as that I can specialize in both politics and economic modules to different regions. So later this year I will be doing economic development in China and East Asia. Aside from this, my academic advisor is also great she's, she's helped me so much when I've had questions about exams or essays. And more recently as I'm going towards my final year in graduating, we've been discussing my options for the future. She's heavily invested in my personal growth and wants to help me succeed. The career services is also really great for any questions and in my second year I regularly look for internship opportunities. I'm also involved in several societies such as women's football crypto society. And last year during the pandemic when everything was closed but we're allowed to go outside and do exercise. I was, I created a cycling group. This was a great way to meet people from so as and further discovered London. This is my final year of so as I'm really looking forward to the module economics of the environment. It's an important module in today's age and time, it covers macro and micro perspective of the issue and tackles climate change. And it also discusses intergenerational equity and how we can assure the well being of those alive today and future generations. Thank you very much, June. That was great. Thanks a lot. Okay, so let me just continue briefly I want to start kind of wrapping up this talk because already I think it's gone longer than what I was hoping for, but just to give you a brief description of what employability looks like if you have a degree at source the source economics graduate destinations it's an average of the last three years I think it doesn't include the last year so it's the previous three years probably and you can also see that I mean already this looks like a very good process are pretty good and most of our students the vast vast majority of students gets a job after their studies. The difficulty also here is that this misses out on the students who leave the UK and especially for postgraduate because this is coming from the UK I see if I'm not mistaken but in any case it's government UK data so it's data for those who stay into the UK those who don't stay into the UK, their status is lost so this is also where this 6% of other comes from. Because especially for our so our undergraduate student bodies mostly from the UK but our postgraduate student bodies very international and a lot of those students then go to go abroad to work and those are kind of lost within the system so that's part of the 6% there. And you can see here I have the list of skills that students are expected or students will gain from studying at source, I don't really want to really read through that list, but I think from my discussion what I was talking about teaching before you get a sense of the skills that one can hope to build from studying an economics degree in general and an economics degree specifically here at SOAS. But to give you a little bit of a face to this career story I'll just tell you these three placements that are all very recent so Bijan he did an economics and politics degree like June, and he's currently a senior advisor for the Department of International Trade in the UK. And that team is a PhD economic student recent economic student as well and her story is quite interesting because she's an economic consultant at PJW International Development Consultancy which is a consultancy on development based in the UK in the EU but what is interesting about her story one thing that is interested is that she found a job she was contacted by a SOAS alumni and she met with that SOAS alumni and that SOAS alumni was running this consultancy and she found a job there. And finally Tatiana who finished her degree last year in 2021 and she is currently a global data environmental social and governments fixed income and leach analyst at Bloomberg. These are three examples three phases of students that have studied recently at SOAS on undergraduate degree. And finally I'm going to leave you with this screen, which is this slide which is basically the most common graduate destinations of destinations of students at SOAS these are places where both our students are very keen to go to, typically, and where many students do end up going to so this is just to give you a sense of the kind of graduate destinations that you can expect or students that study at SOAS end up with and up to. So I'm going to stop here. Thank you very much for listening and there I'm going to leave the rest of the time for questions. So, feel free to ask me any questions again. This is, you can ask me questions on anything that you might want via the chat or be using the microphone turning on your video if you want to. I don't know if anyone has any questions. I don't see the raise your hand function so if you do raise your hands don't worry about it just speak. Well, we just take a second to let any of your questions come through. Would you maybe like to speak a little bit about sort of dissertation and sort of final year project kind of elements that could be interesting. Yes, thank you Dan so yeah let me say a couple more things of that I haven't that they haven't maybe said. So one thing that I wanted to. So if you want that I can go into a little bit more detail about our program structure. So the way that programs in general are organized is that you have some core subject and compulsory subjects and some optional subjects so the current compulsory subjects are those that you have to take. Depending on your degree and then the optional subjects are things you can choose different courses you can choose. Some subjects can be sometimes from the economics department what we call guided options and sometimes from other departments whichever department across the school, a language or a non language option. And the way most degrees are structured is that your first year is usually more core subjects that you don't you have less choice so you, you are told this course that you need to take. So as you progress in your second and then as you progress to your third year, you have more choices so then you have a lot more choices to do with. As I said, choice from within the economics department, specific regional focus specific area of economics that you might be interested in finance banking international trade environmental economics that you mentioned the gender economics, many other options that you can choose and also the regional subjects. And also, so you have more options like that so I get a question here from Teresa Thank you very much which is where would students study in Singapore. So these partnerships that I mentioned the summer school is with the Singapore University of Management, if I'm not mistaken but I might be mistaken. There is information of these on our website, but I think it's a Singapore University of Management. It's taken with their name. Yeah, so there is. So, yeah, there are more options as you go along. And there's also at the final year like that mentioned there is a study project is the individual study project that students can take, which is a dissertation that you can focus on something that is in the supervisor that is supervising the dissertation throughout the year. And that can be a qualitative essay or quantitative essay and econometric essay where you do some data analysis and things like this, which are also if you want a lot of our courses are data driven and econometrics driven, especially in the second and third year. Do I do we consider applications with the retakes and what is a retake. So is that maybe a level exam retakes or equivalent. Yes, yes, we do. So, so you can see if you look at the website, what are the different qualifications and different requirements to get into the studies. But if you if you feel that you like the degree if you feel that you like studying at sauce if there's something that you know in today's discussion or in general click for you for whatever reason. So if you're interested to apply it is very possible that on certain occasions if you have, you know, very good personal statement or some very good aspects of your application, and some qualifications are not exactly met, you could still be made an offer. So, yes. Yes, I think that's all the problem at all. I don't think that we would even look negatively at that at all to be honest. So what we look at is the final degrees the final what you got in your IP total after the retakes. Yeah, no problem. So, do we accept application with a deferred entry. So if you you mean applications that you want instead of wanting to start in the next academic year if you want to start in the year after that. To be honest as an as an admission student I don't remember seeing applications like this but yes, we can do that and what is what I know for sure does happen is as soon as who are accepted for this year, then the if the fair, they're entered to the next year and this is something that we do I allow so I'm not exactly sure in the technical side of how you would do this, but I do know of cases of students who were supposed to start this year and have deferred their studies for next year. These are also questions that you can take up with admissions if you're interested at that missions. I think it's undergraduate admissions at sauce. If I'm not mistaken. Yeah, you can also use the study at so ask.ac.uk mail address that I put in the chat earlier on. But as well just to quickly add to deferred admissions when you make your UCAS application when you're quite through UCAS from memory there's a box that you can tick which says defer application. And then that just lets us know that you'd be intending to start in the following year. But as has been mentioned there if you if you make a normal application and then decide you might want to defer your entry. You can also use the email to admissions or to any of our email addresses and we will speak to about getting that processed. Thank you very much. Yes. Sakina also put the email there. Thank you Sakina which is the email for admissions also Sakina is a student as we said from the third year student from the department. I'll ask her a question for you to do so as well. Sorry, so this is the same question I think that was just answered by Dan and this is the question that Eduardo Eduardo I think also made which is about deferred entry so deferred the application is exactly the same as applying for 2023 I think. Is that correct. Yeah. Any other questions anything else about the program about the economics maybe. No, so thank you john for your question so john asked whether the candidates will be invited for interview no we don't have an interview process so I think you apply through you guys. And then your application is either accepted or not accepted.  Eduardo. Yes, so that. So, I can. For example, if you guys are interested this is, this is the structure of the degree so this is the BC and be a economics, but also if you want I can show you the base development economics and the joint programs. So for the BC, for example, if you can you can see here for the BC economics. The first year where you would have an economic principles this is micro and macro. And then elementary statistics and statistics applied economics in the global economy, which is a development based one term module, and then you will have mathematics for economics which is our first quantitative module. And you additionally do these are the course that you have to take in your first year as I said the first year has more substance that you have to take and then there's more options. You have 30 credits of optional modules, which is a 15 credit is a one term module so 30 credits is to one term modules, and this can be a language or this can be something from another department from politics from law for whatever. So that would be what the BC looks like if you see the BA economics, it has 45 open modules, which is again as I said the BA has a little bit more options. Unless you do the BC pathway where you have these extra quantitative subjects which bring you up to speed to a level. So that's what the first year of the BC looks like. And then the development economics and the joint programs the first year looks like this. So the BC development will have. It's very similar the first year actually to the BC economics. And the BA developments will have only micro macro economics and the rest you can take from a from your other subject. That's for the first year, and then you see the year two, and then year three as you can see, there's a lot more options. And one thing also that is interesting to students, the kind of options that exist so this is not a full list. These are mainly options for from the economics department, again their options outside the department and there are such as econometrics global financial markets international economics development economics banking and finance gender economics, environmental economics applied econometrics and different regional modules within a focus on Africa, China, Middle East, Japan. That's it. So the qualified the A level grades, typical BC economics offer would be the qualification so ABB, typically. No, a AB, I'm sorry, a AB. There is also distinction between if you're if you belong to a widening participation group. So that means people from either that do not have family that has gone to higher education, or from impoverished neighborhoods or different, you can see the qualifications for people that belong to the widening participation category, they offer for economics is ABB for everybody else it's AB. You're welcome. That's a very good point. Sorry, so thank you very much for asking this which I forgot to mention, which is that for exactly what Teresa asks which is exactly for those that do a joint degree with a language. For example, economics and Japanese, the language program has a year abroad. So that year abroad you go to Japan you go to whichever country is the language you're doing, and you have a placement that you work there, and, or so that you learn the language. Or I'm sorry if you work there but you go to the country and you, of course, use the language as the whole point. Yes, this will be exactly if you have a joint degree economics and the language then that can include if you want to a year abroad, which is between the third, between the second and third year so you do for four years the first two years and then a year abroad then back and forth for your final year and this is something also that students do do and enjoy very much. You're welcome. Any other questions. Maybe just before we. Oh, sorry, there's a question a few hundreds. Is there an option for students to have placement opportunity before this is a good question. It is something that a lot of students are keen on the way that it happens so far is usually with the summer internship. We are working towards having something like that so there is. So we are working towards having the opportunity for a placement period in your third year studies but it's not something that is yet existing our program so you I shouldn't say it with a very high degree of certainty, but it's something that we're working on to have degrees that to include some placement opportunity as it currently stands placement opportunities happen in as internships during the summer. Although, again, not so much of a very official way but there are students who take a year off at some point in their studies if there is a good reason for it and sometimes that could be an official placement so that they work for you and then they come back. Exactly. That is what's akin as I saw you could interrupt your degree to do a placement. Again, this is not an entirely official thing so it's not something that necessarily the university fully supports but if you want to do it and if you're very, if you keenly want to do it that would be possible. So I think that you were about to say something I think we should more we could we could wrap up I don't know if you think there's something that I should add. I think I think it's been a great session and hopefully everyone's questions have been answered. Just in the last minute or two there was something Sakina shared with me earlier about something called k economics I was just wondering if she might like to share with share with the guests. It sounded quite interesting and nice opportunity. Yeah so in our first year, obviously, second year was a little bit affected by COVID, but they're hoping to get it back this year. We had at the end of term this event called k economics, which is essentially, and it's a free event where students and staff from the economics department all gathered together in just one of the buildings and your fed cakes, little sweet treats tea coffee and some. I think there was presepo, but I'm not sure. And it's just a really nice way to get to know people outside of the classroom because you're not just meeting your friends, all of your academic advisors the tutors are all there. We're running this again here. Thank you very much Sakina for this yes we are running. So we do a lot of events that are outside the curriculum let's say which are some social events of this year will be running k economics will be running. And some quizzes for second and third year students so you Sakina also can be a part of those. Yeah, but also for first years which are quizzes about how well did you know the economics department, which would be again social events with questions and game quiz as games. So that students can. I mean, like Sakina said meet each other and new people but also their tutors and their lectures, and also tutors and lectures of other classes that they don't do. So we do try to. And this year, like Sakina said very rightly last year was a difficult year copy wise that happened less socializing was more virtual, which works to a level but this year will be much more on campus next year for you guys hopefully a lot more on campus also. And that's yeah we do try to have events for students to meet staff and to socialize with stuff and stuff are generally on the whole fairly friendly. So, Sakina and June and Dan thank you very much for your help. Everybody who came thanks very much for your questions I hope it was informative. And I think this is a good time to wrap it up. Yeah, I'm just going to put two things in the chat that people might be interested in. The first is a link to chat with the students. And so we have Sakina on that as an economic student. So if you do want to get that any more questions about student experience you can jump on there. And it's a sort of text based chat that you can use. Otherwise, if you have any questions that are more sort of say official for the university as such admissions, the third entry, etc, etc. You can contact us there at studyatsoas.ac.uk. Thanks everyone for joining. Thank you very much. Have a good day.


Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the principal and CFO of Kai Hawaii, and he's the founder and owner of Island Business Management, and he's the chair of our Hawaii Restaurant Association. He does a lot. He is Ryan Tanaka, and today we are going beyond finance. Hey, Ryan, welcome to the show. Hey, Rusty, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. Ryan, I remember when you played JV Tennis at Punahou, and I know that you're also a wrestler and you ran cross-country. How was your experiences at Punahou? I had a great experience at Punahou. I was there for middle school and high school, and it really prepared me for life, and from there I went to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and worked in Tokyo, but all of those experiences later on released them from a wonderful education at Punahou School, and great coaches like yourself. I wasn't quite at varsity level, but I did have coach Scott for JV for Tennis, and I did that on the side. I was a wrestler primarily, and was under coach Matt Oni, who was just phenomenal. Now, Ryan, I also know that you won the most inspirational player award at Punahou for three times. I mean, that's impressive. That really says a lot about your character, and in terms of that, the team was the one that was voting for it, right? I'm surprised that you remember that. Thank you very much, Coach Rusty. Yes, I did. My freshman sophomore and senior year, and it's a vote from the team, and there's so many inspirational wrestlers and athletes at Punahou School. So to be recognized, it was truly an honor.   And I know that you guys also went swimming with the sharks together. How was that experience? That was a great experience, yeah, we did. Casey, every birthday, she tries something every now and then. That's out of the box, out of her comfort zone. And so one year, she wanted to go swimming with the sharks without a cage, went to Haleiva, and I'm prone to motion sickness. But I took the ginger and I had my drama mean. I took that before and it didn't help at all, but we still had a great experience out there. And yeah, the sharks are nocturnal and they typically will feed them in advance. And so when you go there during the day, it's a great experience. It's very peaceful, the sharks are there, they're peaceful as well. They saw Galapagos sharks and black tip. I mean, there were probably 10 or 12 sharks with us in the ocean and they must have been between as small as like six feet to as maybe 10, 11 feet long also. Well, Ryan, I know my friends have done that swimming with the sharks.  And they said it's such a surreal experience. And I like hearing that you and Casey did that. And I wanna ask you, Ryan, about you being the principal and CFO of Kai Hawaii. Tell me what you guys do at Kai Hawaii. Kai Hawaii is a locally owned structural engineering company. And most of our work is public infrastructure over half and that includes highways, bridges, airports, schools, medical institutions, and then the other half of our work is private. So we service our clients, their landowners, developers, architects and other clients with anything from shopping centers to multifamily and just about everything in between. At Kai Hawaii, I was fortunate to join under the founder and president Ken Hayashita who had worked now about eight years, but I'd known for about four or five years prior to joining. And I always called him as my trusted structural engineer. And he has built a company with now 50, close to 50 employees, mostly Lysland structural engineers and project managers. And they're just some of the kindest and smartest people I've worked with. Regularly we talk about one of our purpose of our company, which is to help create a safe and sustainable tomorrow for our community. And that's something that we all believe in. And I see our structural engineers regularly researching and trying to find the most suitable structural solution that's economical, that's modern and that I really give their project the longest shelf life possible. And that's what you want from a trusted structural engineer. So it's a great honor to be here and he has recently promoted to principal. Well, it's amazing. I mean, at Kai Hawaii, you guys do a ton of stuff and you mentioned Ken earlier, what do you admire most about Ken? He's trustworthy. He's just someone who's selfless and he does demonstrate great leadership because he's constantly looking to build the next generation. And so so much of our time is just spent on how do we grow as a company? How do we grow as individuals? It's not just about achieving customer service excellence, which is a top priority for us, but also personal excellence. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, he's a great leader. And Ryan, you were the founder and owner of Island Business Management. Tell me what you do with Island Business Management. So I founded Island Business Management in 2007 and it is a specialized in corporate finance. So this is where I help clients to diversify the balance sheet, to acquire, manage and sell real estate, different businesses, strategic investments to really help grow their own portfolio and to create this safe and sustainable future for their own employees. So that's what Island Business Management specializes in.   And you do a lot of things behind the scenes, but I want to know, how did you first get started in business? What got you excited about wanting to get into business? Well, first of all, thank you, Coach Rusty. And that means a lot coming from you because you're always the varsity tennis coach for Punahou and everybody knew that you bred champions. So that really means a lot coming from you. You know, what started me in business at a young age was because our family, to get what we wanted, we had to earn it ourselves. And the fastest way to do that was to sell a product, right? Or to provide a service and you would receive cash, you know, or some type of payment. And so that just became the lowest hanging fruit, right? The path of least resistance to getting what I wanted when I was in middle school and high school. And then my junior year of high school, I was at Punahou and that was the year that actually I played JV tennis. That summer I was invited by Nestle, the, you know, the chocolate milk company to fly to the Philippines where they have a very large presence and they wanted to promote one of their larger products, Milo, through POGs, through milk caps. So this was a variation of milk caps and they flew me out with a friend and a couple of chaperones and we were their representatives, like the US POG champions, that's what we were called.  We were on national television. We performed and demonstrated at private schools, public schools, mega malls. You know, it was a very humbling experience, but we were at a parking lot one night because every night they'll take us to a different restaurant to try. And when we got out of the van, I had a driver and three tour guides assigned to us. The, there was a girl who came up to me out of the blue and she probably was somewhere between four and five years old and she had a cup, you know, like a mug and she held it up to me and looked into my eyes and that was my first time experiencing someone you know, asking for money, basically begging. And it wasn't an adult like you see here in Hawaii. This was a child, you know, and so I looked into her eyes and I tried to understand her in that moment and I couldn't, I couldn't see a soul. I couldn't see life, you know, she was just empty. And it really left an impression on me that there are people out there who need help. Nestle had given us $700 of spending money in 1996. That was a lot of money. And so I took out a $100 bill, put it in her cup and the driver pulled it out of the cup, put it in my pocket, pulled me aside and said, look at that staircase. And there were a few men who were sitting down and he said, that money will go to them. It's not going to go to her. And I realized no matter what I wanted to do I thought in that moment I couldn't help her because it would go to them. And so what I love about business is that it allows you to really live beyond the line, right beyond the game like your two books say and to influence industries. However you believe you can and to create positive meaningful change. And that's what drew me to business is that it allows me to do that. And they say that your childhood can really shape some of the other experiences can shape who you become today. And that was definitely one of the experiences that is in the back of my mind when I think about our employees and how we can help them, how we can service our clients, how we can make a positive impact in people in our community. Well, you're definitely making a positive impact in our community, Ryan. I know that you were doing a lot behind the scenes during COVID. And I know that you also did a bunch of surveys to try to really help with COVID relief. Can you tell me more about what you did there behind the scenes? You know, the COVID economic hardship survey is really came about because the state of Hawaii was receiving $1.25 billion in federal CARES money, but this is the first federal response. And so a handful of state, a house finance committee members had called a meeting with members of the private sector. I was privileged to be invited into that phone call. And their question was, how do we spend this money? So one of the proposals I had thrown out was commercial rent relief because this is now in the beginning of April when businesses deemed non-essential were being temporarily closed. And so people were struggling with their lease agreement with paying rent. That was, you know, the single actually falling because it was even relief for those who were unemployed or the federal plus up. And so that led to, you know, my reaching out to city council members and then to different trade associations who were all very supportive. You know, trade associations became the clarion call for many hardest hit businesses during COVID. And then I found myself because of the people who I was with on a call with our chief state economist, Dr. Eugene Tian, who is employed at the state of Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. It was him, his deputy director, and they offered because we had just created a survey before we published it, they offered to administer it. So that was a blessing in disguise. From that point, you know, reached out to the banks, the credit unions, they all agreed. And within, you know, a matter of days, maybe weeks, we were able to create a statewide push to really diagnose, you know, who is suffering from their inability to pay rent commercially.  So four times during COVID, we made do a follow-up survey. But this was an opportunity, quote Rusty, to really see the, you know, the community at its best, right? Everyone coming together and trying to find a solution in a time of need. Well, I was so proud of you, Ryan, to really be instrumental in doing what you did to help countless businesses here in our community.  Well, for me, what comes to mind is COVID, right? Because we had just, I put together a Huey and we had acquired a Waikiki restaurant on January 30, 2020, 45 days later, were hit by COVID.  And, you know, they have quarterly earnings announcements and they need to tell their shareholders that they're being responsible, right, they're being fiduciaries of their money. You understand that at some point, both sides have to give something, right? We have to pay something, we have to do something. So we never stopped paying rent through all of COVID. And we ended up working with our landlords at the time, Barbara Campbell from Outrigger and Chris Sullivan from American Assets Trust, this phenomenal people and great to work with and, you know, so happy that they were able to fill all of their properties during and through some of the aftermath of the initial COVID pandemic that affected all of us. But that was probably one of the greatest adversities was just, you know, closing on that transaction 45 days before COVID really hit. And, you know, it was a, there was some panic, right? Because for finance people, like you said, I'm a finance person. And so everything is numbers, right? So it's all linear. And then you have COVID, which created uncertainty. This uncertainty that became this kiss of death that nobody could wrap their minds around. And, you know, we thought it was gonna be done by Easter, right, of 2020 that then became, hopefully independence day of 2021. And then we saw the Delta variant take over. So it's just been an ongoing experience, but fortunately we had a great landlord, you know, a lot of federal relief. And so everything worked out. And Ryan, I have to say that restaurant that you acquired, that's Giovanni Pastrami in Waikiki. I love that restaurant and that bar. I mean, it's so nice. I mean, I'm glad you guys got it. I'm glad, you know, things are going good again. And, Ryan, I wanna ask you as chair of the Hawaii Restaurant Association, what are some of your goals? Well, let me start by saying I am the incoming chair. The chair is actually Greg Maples. And I just love him as a person, as a professional. I was working closely with him during COVID. So our collective goals, you know, along with Cheryl Matsuboko, the executive director, who I also love and admire, they've been true leaders during COVID. And HRA, you know, think about restaurants, where the Russian industry is a $5.6 billion industry before COVID, 3,600 restaurants, almost 100,000 full and part-time employees. So, you know, they are significant here in Hawaii and we're a destination economy. Right now, the biggest goal is helping all of our members and restaurants as a whole, and hardest of businesses, because it's not just for restaurants, but helping hardest of businesses to make it through the Delta variant. And that's through the employee retention credit. You know, because we're in Hawaii, it's very likely that if you're hardest hit, you do qualify. So if your CPA tells you, you know, we're finding other category experts to give second, third opinions, because most likely you can get some additional funding that will float you through the end of the year. And then on top of that is just working closely with Mayor Blangiardi and Governor Ige and their administrations. They've been so inclusive in their leadership and so great to work with. Just working with them on the timing of loosening restrictions, right? Making sure that they're able to manage the public health crisis while we're able to help them to rebuild and re-stimulate the economy. Oh, I love hearing that, Ryan. I mean, you guys are all working together so well. And Ryan, you have both of my books and I want to ask you two things. First of all, did you like the books? And secondly, if you liked it, what are some things that stood out to you in it? I do have your two books. They're fantastic reads. I recommend everybody to read it. I was able to read them very quickly. I have them right here with me. The first book beyond the lines, my interpretation of it, Coach Rusty, is that they're different trade secrets on how to succeed in your profession or how to build a leadership culture in what you do professionally. Whereas beyond the game is how do you then succeed at life or how do you develop habits and attributes that will help you just to be a successful human being? So the two really work in tandem. You can't read one and not read the other. And I'm hoping that you write a third book. For me, one of the most meaningful parts of your second book, towards the very end, so I don't want to give away anything, but it's the 1% principle. And it's every day living 1% better, trying to find ways to be 1% better than you were last week or remember things, read and acquire knowledge, always be, and you live life to be 1% better. I used to use a 10% rule and that bar is just too high. It's so easy to forget about your goals and go on to your day to day, but 1% is tangible for all of us. And I think it's a great reminder for us to just live 1% better, but you can learn more about what that means by reading your book and I encourage everybody to read their great reads.  And you can't just do something and oh, I got a big victory. No, it's all these little things that lead up to it. And yeah, I mean, it's interesting how you said 10%. I go 1% and everybody can get better through 1%, right? Yes, I would use 10% but I've scaled that down to 1%. Yeah, now Ryan, I need you to be my promoter for my books and then there's a better chance there could be a third book. Well, one thing that you mentioned in your book is really what it means to live beyond the lines. And so I'm hoping that you can add some color there. Certainly, I've already been sharing your book with my kids, with my family, with a lot of our employees. And we are hoping, we're looking forward to you coming in and actually training all of us at Kai Hawaii in later on in December. So you will continue to have a lasting impact on all of us co-trusting. Well, I hope I don't let you down, Ryan, but I'm definitely looking forward to that speaking and training in late December. And Ryan, you've worked with the Tokyo Star Bank, you've worked with Deutsche Securities, you've been around a lot of great leaders throughout your life. What are some things that you feel the greatest leaders do? Yeah, you know, Tokyo Star Bank, Deutsche, I really was working with some phenomenal world-class people. And to this day, I mean, just world-class, some of the best. And moving to Hawaii, you know, with my clients through Allen Bitt's management, Ken Hashida, just working with, again, world-class, some of the best people. And really what I find that they do on a consistent basis is help and inspire people to do what they didn't even realize they could do themselves. Right, that's leadership.  And then the year that you leave, I don't wanna, you know, I'm sure that there's great coaching that continues, but it just says a lot, Coach Westi, that after the year after you left, right, for the last six years, Punahou School has only won once. And so I think great leaders really allow, you know, help people who may already be talented, who may already have the right chemistry and the right makeup to do what, you know, to do things beyond what they believed they could accomplish. And it's creating that purpose. And you talk about your four Ps and I wholeheartedly believe that, right? Start with people and then your purpose, where you need to have a defined purpose and then follow the right processes that will lead to good performance. And as a finance person, I do look at financial performance as well, right? Not just community impact and having a great product and service, but also, you know, is it financially sustainable? Well, that's why you're the master of finance, Ryan. And you know, I wanna ask you, Ryan, out of all these experiences that you've had so far, what's a valuable, very important lesson you've learned? You know, I would say one recent lesson that stands out to me is just letting go of the past, right? You know, we're always learning from the past and that's important, right? You learn from the past, it helps shape the future. But when, you know, when you're personally involved in something that may experience, you know, an outcome that you weren't hoping for, then it's easy to hang onto that. But I think, you know, one important life lesson is just letting go of it because today, tomorrow, there's gonna be new decisions that need to be made. And that really comes with a clear conscience, right? And looking at a new set of variables and making clear decisions by learning from the past, but also letting go of any personal ties to it so that you can really make, again, same thing like we try to help our lawmakers develop data and make informed decisions. We do the same thing for our businesses. Well, I liked hearing that too, Ryan. And what would you say, Ryan?   When you really reflect back on everything so far in your young life, why are you successful? Well, you know, there's been struggles along the way and that was, you know, all part of the process. And I think what I've learned, again, going back to your four P's, it starts with people, right? You wanna work with the right people. And so now when I look at an investment, whether it's even in real estate, do we have the right property management team if it's a development? Is it the right developer? If it's a business, do we have the right operators in place? So starting with great people, so high quality people, and then are they doing the things for the right reasons, right? Are they following their purpose and do they have the right processes in place? And if so, are they delivering, right? And, you know, as we're now evaluating different businesses, you know, one thing at Kai Hawaii, for example, co-trustee is Ken Hayashide and I co-founded Kai High Capital. So it's an investment arm. We make strategic investments to help build that, you know, that safe and sustainable tomorrow for our own employees and for their retirements. And we look at, you know, are these the right people? Are these the right projects and are they high quality? And that's, you know, I think if you have those ingredients in place and it's a lot easier to have confidence that you're making a good investment. I completely agree with you, Ryan. And I want to ask you about affordable housing.  Can you talk about that and what you're doing to help our community in terms of affordable housing as well? So just pre-COVID, I was invited to a meeting and Finance Chair, Sylvia Luke, had announced the Alice Report, right? That says over 17,000 affordable housing units are needed over the next five years here in Hawaii. So that's the demand. You know, we can't build fast enough to do that. And, you know, one thing that some, you know, very successful developers like Marshall Hung, Mel Kanshige, Newton Chung and Derek Locke did was back in 2019, they worked with the Kotol administration and City Council at the time to establish Bill 7, which is here in Honolulu. And it allows a landowner who builds, who has a property below 20,000 square feet and who wants to build affordable housing and, you know, service that 100% AMI or less gap group allows them different concessions. So they can build up to 60 feet. They can have higher density, no elevator requirement, single staircase, no parking requirement. And then they wave, the city waves a number of permitting fees and wastewater fees. So just to give you an example, if you have a 5,000 square foot land and it's appropriately zoned, apartment or business, BMX, you can build up to 25 affordable housing units. So that's an area that I've really been spending quite a bit of my time in because it's also become a priority for Mayor Blangearty. His first bill, Bill 1, offers an incentive, a completion bonus. So if you build an affordable housing Bill 7 building, they'll give you a percentage back as an incentive bonus. And that's become so important for his administration. So I've had the opportunity to work closely with Mayor, with his managing director, Mark Formby, with planning director, Dima Cheetah. And we're tracking all of the Bill 7 projects city-wide and we're at 17 permit applications. There's about nine to 10 projects that are being planned and in design. And those represent the permit applications that represent over 450 affordable housing units. So going back to the 17,000, we just can't build fast enough to get there. There's other 201H, very successful tower affordable housing developers who are building in the hundreds and in the thousands also. So collectively, if we all band together and just really continue to push ourselves and to get these projects done, then maybe we can move the needle and really address this growing problem of the lack of affordable housing here in Hawaii. Ryan, I'm so happy that the Mayor and our state representatives are calling you.  They know who to call.  And I know that you're a man of faith. Can you tell me about how your faith really helps keep you grounded? Yeah, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ by the saints, and that really has been my number one priority. And so my relationship with God, my relationship with my family, that comes first and foremost. Ironically, I am divorced. So I see that divorce also as a blessing. But, and then I've been remarried to Casey, who you know, and that was another blessing. So there's so many different aspects of life, but I think being grounded in faith is important for everybody to find your faith. And the other thing that I do is I have a personal, you know, life board of directors, sort of speak, just different category experts who really are overachievers in their own field and have achieved or have achieved prominence in what they do. And so for example, you know, in the media during, you know, all of our efforts to try to work with the media and tell the right story and create the right narrative that would demonstrate what we're trying to do, that, you know, we're really keeping our neighbors and friends employed for commercial rent relief. Somebody who was, he was Diane Ako from KITV, you know, she on the side would just help with that messaging and, you know, selfless volunteer, trying to make the community better. And so I've found that that's so vital is to tap into these category experts, whatever the field may be in each area, I have somebody who I can call for advice, for sound advice, so that we can again, do the right thing and think through the different variables because every industry is different.  And so we're always looking at working with the right people. Ryan, it was a pleasure having you on today's show.  I still don't know how you get everything done, but you find a way to do it. And I want to thank you for taking time to be on the show today. Thank you, Co-Chresti. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Ryan and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.


Hello, hello Good afternoon everybody. My name is Jonathan Riddle and I work on Katie neon So Katie neon is a continuous integration system that continuously builds packages of kid ease software and it builds Katie applications builds plasma builds Katie frameworks and it builds extra gear applications where they've been ported to frameworks 5 And it builds it several different branches it builds it directly from get master builds it from stable branches from get And it builds those daily and it builds it from download dot katie to org So it scans for new tires and it builds from download dot katie to org using the long-term support editions from plasma And everybody has access to this so it's a katie project And so everybody who's a got a katie developer account has access to the continuous integration system So if you want to test a build of your package you can log into build dot katie org and you can see everything's the jobs are available there for everything that we build and You can just click build to build new package and if you want to fix something in the packaging We've got a get to archive and everyone has access to the get archive So you can change the packaging to fix whatever you need to fix or to add new packages if you have some new dependency And of course you can come along and talk to us On our RT channel mailing list So if you have a bug report somebody's reported a bug and you need to test it in a stable branch But if your computer is running master branch because that's what you develop against Or maybe you need to verify a bug report based on clean setup Or if you want to test that your app works with a new version of Qt we have Qt 591 then KD neon is your friend and But you don't need to reinstall your computer. You don't need to change distro You don't need to even install a virtual box or some other virtual machine, which takes quite a lot of resources and time You can use docker. So docker is a nifty container system And it's very popular for servers, but why not on desktop, too? It uses the existing kernel that your computer runs and it uses a zip of a file system So a complete new file system to give you an isolated environment So you can download from docker servers the latest build of KD neon and And we build this daily and it builds on hub dot docker.com which is their service And it just takes our packages and and builds a new image using all the KD software that we build continuously on on our Jenkins instance and it builds it for the unstable unstable get branches and builds it for the user tar builds and it builds it Both with the default selection of applications, which is very few and with all the applications So if you really want to test any application is an image with it there So here is a screenshot and this screenshot shows My home computer here, which is running some version of plasma it shows This window here, which is running a version of plasma that comes with plasma 5.8 So that's the long-term support edition So I'm in the background here is a version of plasma running developer edition and over here is just a standalone application Ocular is running from developer edition as well So we've got three completely separate unrelated versions of the same thing or running on the same machine not taking any significant overhead in terms of use Let me give you a demo So one simple command neon docker. It's a ruby script. You can run the full Docker commands if you want but I've written a ruby script so you just run it as one command and it pops up this window with a Zephyr X server and it runs a full It runs a full instance So we can see here from system settings. That's an exclusive preview of the new system settings coming in plasma 5.11 to be released shortly another just a simple flag to that neon docker command and That will pop up another X window with another version of plasma It's instant on it just loads as fast as plasma loads in your normal computer So it's not like a virtual machine and you can see here This is running your The released version of of plasma and the released version of system settings that we're all familiar with So if you get a bug report that says this is broken new version of system settings You can easily compare it between the new version and the pre-existing version to see is it really a regression? Is it something I should care about and that's just running a standalone application So you don't need to run the full plasma desktop if you only care about one application Then you just run the standalone application That runs in an isolated environment So there's no particular security risk But if you want to use it as a full developer environment, then you just bind Whatever directory you need on your home system into the docker So that's an extra switch into command and then you'll have full access to your files So you can still use Git or or Qt creator or K develop or whatever you need to develop with so you can easily develop on On the Mac on git master with your computer running stable and it runs on any distribution so it if You don't want to change to neon. That's fine You can still keep running your your whatever Distro you want to run as long as it has docker then you can easily run this stuff So some examples This if you saw yotta's fantastic talk about Caligra yesterday He popped up an RC the other day and said How can I get Caligra unstable because I'm running a stable version. So here's a screenshot from him running the stable version that comes with his Ubuntu system and here's a screenshot running the Built directly every day from git and if you want to know more about how neon docker works Yossa's just published a blog on planet KD available right now It's also used in Calomars continuous integration So the Calomars family is at the back there and they use it for daily testing So so this whole family has to work hard to test Calomars every day But it's makes made easy by using our docker images Doing the daily automated integration testing using docker to make sure that there's no bugs since the day before and This is the wiki page for you finding finding out more Come on people. You missed my awesome talk. Who's got a question? Thanks. Thanks Jonathan There's one question When you get that meta where you use Calomars to do the installer so that Calomars can be tested doesn't the world like Well, well the docker images don't use the installer because they they don't use an ISO to install from They just a file system So it just uses the bootstrap or the existing Ubuntu image and then you have to install and then you've got your docker image So I'm afraid it's not that meta. It is just just as it is Thanks. Thanks anyway