Welcome to NTN Nightly, I am General Norvel, this edition's top stories. St. Lucian's urged to take the necessary precautions as regional authorities won off dengue outbreaks in 2020. The National COVID-19 Response Telephone Committee approves first beneficiaries and St. Lucian's provided an opportunity to acquire residential and commercial property at a reasonable cost. The Ministry of Health and Wellness have indicated that St. Lucian has recorded an increased number of cases of dengue fever in 2020 when compared to 2019. The public is urged to take the necessary precautions to prevent mosquito breeding as regional bodies have warned that dengue outbreaks are expected in 2020. Alicia Antoine begins our broadcast. The Ministry of Health and Wellness has launched its vector awareness week of activities to sensitize and engage the public on the importance of source reduction as an effective means of vector control and prevention of vector-borne illnesses. Dengue fever, together with associated dengue hemorrhagic fever, is one of the most common vector-borne viral diseases affecting humans. Aedes aegypti, the urban yellow fever mosquito, is also the principal dengue-carrying vector. The Ministry of Health and Wellness is urging members of the public across the island to take the necessary steps to ensure that the population of the Aedes aegypti mosquito is contained. Dr. Michelle Faswa is a national epidemiologist. The mosquitoes, as previously indicated, they live among humans. They live in fresh water. They live in our homes, and they are daytime feeders. So when you get a bite from a mosquito, you usually look at the mosquito and see these white lines on the legs. And during the day, it tends to be the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Dengue is found throughout the tropics, and it's mainly affected by rainfalls and humidity. So you find in areas where you have high levels of rainfall, you tend to get more breeding of the mosquitoes, as well as in places that have rapid urbanization, places that have developed suddenly and do not have the measures in place to control waste disposal, etc. The national epidemiologist noted that there has been an increase in the number of cases compared to last year, with 41 cases of dengue having been recorded to date. Dr. Faswa also noted that original authorities have warned that dengue outbreaks should be expected in 2020. We've also noted for this year to date that the age group most affected would be the 5 to 9. So our kids are being affected, followed by the age group 10 to 14 years. But there has not been any difference in the sexes. The areas that we have noted with highest prevalence, and that is not just numbers, but based on the population of these areas, we have noted that the areas of Raidwee, Monroe Road, Castree City in general, Millette, Old Victoria Road, Monnier and Tuapitaw areas have the highest prevalence of cases of dengue reported to the Ministry of Health. Dr. Glenford Joseph, a medical officer in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, highlighted the importance of taking the necessary precautions to prevent the spread of dengue as the dengue virus and COVID-19 share similar symptoms. You can have what is called the co-existence in country and the co-infection where one person is impacted by both COVID and dengue as observed in other countries. As a result, it is important for us to take all measures to prevent the transmission or spread of dengue and COVID-19. If you think based on your symptoms that you have either dengue or COVID-19, it is important that you take the necessary steps, the necessary measures, protecting against the transmission of COVID-19 while you seek medical advice. The Ministry of Health and Wellness continues to encourage individuals to maintain the public health and social measures that have been put in place to ensure the health and safety of the public. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. The Telethon Committee has begun issuing proceeds from the National COVID-19 Response Telethon. The Royal St. Lucia Police Force and the St. Lucia Hospitality and Tourism Association are the first approved applicants to receive checks to go toward their respective efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jesse Laos tells us more. A check of $267,000 has been issued by the Telethon Committee to pay for expenses related to the National Meals Programme. The initiative is a public and private sector collaboration that has seen nearly 19,000 hot meals being prepared and distributed to those in need since the pandemic forced the closure of the country and displaced many lives and livelihoods. Spare-heading agency the St. Lucia Hospitality and Tourism Association SLHTA expresses thanks to the private sector partners for responding to urgent need. My thanks also to the private sector who extended very generous credit lines. The project started sometime in April, wrapped up a number of weeks after that and still they were patiently waiting for these funds to be made available. And so I really thank them for digging deep and for standing by St. Lucia when we needed them the most. So my heartfelt thanks to both SLHTA members and non-members alike from the private sector community who gave generously. Thank you very much for the check and I assure you that it will be dispersed with haste. Aziz adds that the true heroes of the National Meals Programme are the volunteers, hospitality workers, uniformed brigades, volunteer St. Lucia and members of the general public who selflessly braved the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, showing up in kitchens to prepare meals and distribute to those in need. The National Meals Programme launched on Easter Sunday forms part of the Social Stabilization Plan announced by Prime Minister the Honourable Alan Chastney. The Royal St. Lucia Police Force is another recipient of telephone proceeds. $34,000 has been approved for the procurement of personal protective equipment for police officers. Expressing thanks, the Acting Commissioner of Police Milton Daisy accepted the check on behalf of the RSLBF. I am pleased to receive this check, which would go a very long way in purchasing very needed personal protective equipment for the members of the RSLBF. As everyone knows, we are on the front line from day one. We are still there and I want them to continue to be there. That is the officers and I would not like to see officers serving members of the public and not prepared. And that is in terms of having the personal protective equipment, which includes face shields, the face masks, the sanitizers and so on. Because you never know in general policing who you are going to encounter. Finbur Cotter, accountant in the Ministry of Tourism, handed over these first check disbursements from the National COVID-19 Response Telethon. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Donald Invite, assures transparency in the process of approving and disbursing proceeds of the Telethon. What the ministry has done in the administration of those funds was to set up a small committee which has been sanctioned by the Cabinet of Ministers. And this committee is responsible for receiving, screening and approving in principle all of the applications will come before the Ministry of Tourism to ensure consistency and congruence with the intention and the principle behind the collections of the fund. The checks were handed over in a live presentation on NTN Monday 3rd August 2020. For the Government Information Service, I am Jessie Layance reporting. St Lucia's premier investment promotion agency, Invest Inc. Lucia is making good on its promise to give every St Lucia an opportunity to acquire ownership of residential and commercial property at a reasonable cost. During its rebranding in 2019, the entity highlighted a number of projects to be rolled out, including several residential developments, get-towards engaging nationals and creating opportunities for employment, ownership and investment locally. Invest Inc. Lucia remains dedicated to enriching the lives of citizens by giving them a chance to acquire ownership of residential and commercial property at a reasonable cost. During the agency's rebranding exercise in 2019, ISL fashioned new strategic statements towards socioeconomic development in St Lucia. This includes developing programs that enable land ownership by St Lucia in order to improve the socio-economic return on assets. ISL's contributions to land development were repeatedly underscored in Prime Minister Alan Sharsney's 2020-2021 Budget Address, referencing land and rationalization on the agency's lands as well as three fully serviced developments in Boazoli, Borsho and La Fag. For the fully serviced developments, ISL covers road infrastructure, utility connection and development control authority qualifications for residential and commercial use before putting the properties on the market. ISL's aim is to generate between 500 and 600 new landowners, either by development or land rationalization. At the beginning of 2019, ISL announced the Boazoli Residential Development as Prime Residential Property, approximately 8.43 acres of sloping land and compromising 25 single unit residential lots, ranging in size from 3,800 to 8,400 square feet. The development garnered interest from the constituents of Dennery and its environs and by December 2019, it was completely sold out and the new owners were handed over their lots. ISL is also looking into other initiatives that will target the middle-class spectrum, exploring options such as multi-family offerings in which case persons can purchase their unit within a duplex or apartment complex at a lower reasonable cost. This includes the Boazoli Land Development which has been designated for both residential and commercial use, which makes it a very attractive option for potential landowners. The multipurpose prime property is approximately 20 acres of relatively flat land and comprising 59 lots, ranging in size from 5,000 to 26,000 square feet. The lots consist of 4 multi-family lots, 5 commercial lots, 2 institutional lots and 48 single-family lots. Sizes are prepared for marketing to the higher end or middle-class buyers, especially young professionals. With 5 commercial lots, there are opportunities for economic activity in our development as large as the one in Boazoli. Sales for this development were halted during the country's initial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, ISL has recommended processing applications for this development and it is about 80% sold. The newest land project for ISL is the La Fag Development in Choselle. The La Fag Development is another project that offers both residential and commercial use lots, ranging in size from 4,193 to 26,000 square feet. Originally, this development had an estimated completion for the first quarter of 2020. Although progress was hindered as with most economic activity in St. Lucia, ISL is pleased to be back on track. The development will be done in four phases as opposed to the original three and three contractors from the Choselle area are working towards its completion. ISL will be announcing the La Fag Development groundbreaking in the coming days. Anyone wishing to apply for ISL's land sales can find application forms at either its castries or viewport office. From the Government Information Service, I am Anicia Antoine reporting. Emancipation Day is celebrated annually and commemorates the abolishment of slavery throughout the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which came into effect on August 1st, 1834. Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, Innovation and Gender Relations Dr Fiona Meyer, explained that it is important that the youth pays more attention to the history, to understand where they came from and where they are going. The Chief Education Officer said it should be a time of reflection with the guidance of older people to appreciate who they are as inclusions and how they can move forward and benefit as a people. In commemoration of this day, the Ministry is partnering with Goodwill Ambassador Tash Weeks to host an initiative. Young people out there are invited to be creative, to share a song, a bit of poetry, some art. The posters are all out there, lots of things that young people can do. And so we want them to present those bits of creative ideas that they have uploaded onto our Facebook page. We will identify what our Facebook page is and they can find those posters all over. There are age criteria. So for the younger ones, we have something in lower primary, middle primary, and upper secondary as well. We just want to encourage everybody to think what does emancipation mean to me as an individual, as a national of St. Lucia. And our young people, we assume you have a bit of time now on your hands. We encourage our parents to support them and to present those creative bits that can then be uploaded and can share what emancipation means to those individual children. Teachers signed to the T-Vert unit of the Ministry of Education, Delphian Natrium, indicated that youth aged nine to 21 years are invited to express their thoughts on emancipation in a creative way. Creativities encouraged and interested individuals can submit various art pieces, whether it be in the form of a painting, drawing, video art, a piece of weaving or textile print, a sculpture or craft, a song, poem, dance, video performance, a short story or spoken word. We're looking for young persons to really reflect on the whole idea of emancipation. Often we look forward to a lot of events, cultural events, and we want to go the sort of party, sort of atmosphere to it. But we really want students to reflect. We know they've been out of school, formal classroom settings for quite a while. A lot of them are quite creative, both in the visual and the performing arts. So we are trying to engage them to reflect on the idea of emancipation and what it really means to them, but to do so through creative expression. Submissions must be sent to Voice and Power 2020 at gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is August 15. Submissions can be made as an individual or with friends, and all are reminded to include their names, school, age, and a short description or statement on the art piece. And this is NTNightly, up next, Primers Hutchingson with the NTNouffel of We All. The effective management of the marine resources depends heavily on compliance. To ensure that these resources continue to thrive and provide the best local seafood, fishers, vendors, and consumers must be aware of the fishery seasons. Hair is the season chart for lobster. Adhere to the schedule. Help maintain a thriving fishing industry for all of us. This has been a message from the Department of Fisheries. Welcome back. We now join Primers Hutchingson for the NTNouffel of We All. This is GIS and National Television of NTN, Caposito-Nouffel of We All, Primer Hutchingson of Primers Hutchingson. Since July 28, 2020, the National Association of National Resources, which is the first NIC, has been able to address 1,673 applications. I had already thought of 1 million dollars. This is a low-programme of government assistance for people who are losing their jobs as a result of the corona virus. I was able to communicate with the NIC organization, Mark Norton McLean, to advise the clients I have applied to make sure that all the information is sent to the North. This is why I have always provided the NIC with the necessary information to help the officers address effectively all the claims I have made. This is the first facility I have applied to. McLean declared that the first facility I have applied to is the NIC Client. According to McLean, all the employees who have submitted the NIC Epidio to the information will be able to place their employees in the NIC organization. McLean declared that the NIC Salar will be available on October 1, 1667. This is a good project I have registered and that I have also found available. But I have always been able to make room for the work application. In any case, I would be happy if this would be 119. There are also the employees who are able to send information to me, but it is 612. And also, McLean has 700 employees who are able to send applications to me. Even after 18,000 applications that I have found assistance for my NIC, the organization has continued to facilitate me in a way to help the clients who are experiencing these problems today. Chef Group Audit NIC, so-and-shall-repain, explained that the clients can also benefit from a lot of benefits that I have received from the NIC. So-and-pain continued to explain, for example, if a client finds a maternity benefit of $800, and now we receive $1,000 of benefits from the government assistance program, then we will find $200. Because I have already received $1,000 of the benefits that I have received from the NIC. So-and-pain also advised the clients who are working in the NIC to provide information regarding the situation, such as your presence, say, if you are working, if you are not working, to help NIC to assist you in the first year. The Department of Public Health provides public advice to all of the clients not to encourage the action and agenda of the work with a lot of animal that have been brought to the public. Officers who are able to help the public to cut these animals off, such as Charles, are able to provide all the quality of the animals, especially leptospirosis, and also the animal that has been brought to the public. If you are working, because the people who are working, they are not able to provide the animals. So, animals called leptospirosis, hunter fever, salmonellosis, rat bite fever, toxopasmosis, all of these animals are not able to provide the animals. So, it is certainly more common for leptospirosis to be brought to the public, and also the Ministry of Health to teach them about the disease. A lot of people who are not able to provide the animals, are not able to provide the animals. So, they are not able to provide the animals, because they are not able to provide the animals. They are not able to provide the animals, but, they are able to provide the animals, so that they can serve the animals to the public. So, they are not able to provide the animals, so they are not able to provide the animals. Welcome to Charles, with the leptospirosis, I am Mary Malady, I consider it to be a flu disease. I consider it to be a disease of maltaitla, of the fever, of relashma, malbudin, of the flu, and I feel it is a serious disease. I think it is a flu disease, it is not a flu disease, it is a seleptospirosis disease. M. Zell Charles, who started public life when he was ill. He went to see a doctor as soon as possible and had no chance to serve women. I went to the institution to help with the ability of young boys in society, the Boys' Training Center, who went in the direction of Jinn, for example, Nishiz and the law, Mr. Wang Sonson, who did public life, including the officers who employed him. I went to the institution to help with the ability of young boys in society, not for advertising or recognition, but only for passion, to assist young boys who deserve all the support and assistance in life. There is no discussion at all, but Mr. Sonson said that to help young boys who are looking for benefits, young boys are not only for passion, but also for young people. We are going to make a change in this environment. But the environment that comes with us, it will not change. The environment that comes with us, it will not change. The environment that comes with us, it will not change. So, it seems that we are not doing the same thing, but we are trying to change the life of the young boys, so that the environment is not changing. We are trying to change the life of the young boys, so that they don't have to be aftercare. So, to change, we will still have to do a living, a uniform, so that we will be working, so that we can afford to work. We will be doing everything. So, my mother came, she was a bit shy, she was not going to stigmatize her. Yes, yes, yes. You need to try a day or a piece of a day to solve this problem for society. Thank you, Madam. I am very happy to be here with you. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the invitation that I have received. I wish you all the best in your life. And I wish you all the best in your life. Thank you. I wish you all the best in your life. Thank you, Pearl Primus. And that brings us to the end of NTIA Nightly. Join us next time at 7pm with a repeat at 7am. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Gulfman Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am General Novel.


But we're going to have quiet on the set now. Ready? And we're live on YouTube. And we're live in this new room. All right. Welcome friends. I see the room filling up. Welcome. Thank you for joining us tonight. We definitely appreciate you being here. I put some links into the chat box. These links will have links to all of the libraries, reading resources. Links to tonight's event. And links to our presenters websites and socials. And. All right. Welcome friends. Thank you all for being here tonight. We'll get started in just a moment. If you want to let us know what. Native land you're joining us from today, you could do that as well. There's a very cool map that. Shows you. Hello. Hello everybody. All right, let's jump in with library news. So tonight you're here for our summer stride author series, which has been every Tuesday night in summer and it ends. It's August 31st. So every single Tuesday night, you can count on an author. Talk at SFPL's virtual library. We have lots of other happenings for summer stride too. And summer stride is not just for kids. It's for all ages. And you do your 20 hours reading.  And we want to thank our friends of the San Francisco public library for all they do for our summer stride and all of our. Programming and events and helping us bring amazing authors like tonight. We want to welcome you to the unseated land of the Aloni tribal people. And acknowledge the many Romitosh Aloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stores and lands on which we live. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these. These people's and we encourage you to learn more about first person culture and land rights. That link that I put in the chat box has a great reading list that has not just books, but also websites and other resources and our YouTube programming that we've had on first person culture. We have partnered with Chronicle books. The Chronicle. Total SF of their night and Peter Hart lob. And they will be doing the quarterly book club with us. Our second one August 24th, the end of the Golden Gate featuring Daniel Handler and Gary Kamaya. San Francisco public library has a by monthly read where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book. And this has been going on for years, years and years. And it's called on the same page. So July and August, we're celebrating the works of Jacqueline Woodson and her book, Read at the Bone. Jacqueline Woodson will be in the virtual library August 12th. And she'll be talking mainly about her youth and child children's books and young adult books. But definitely come check out the book. And join the book club as well. Book club. If you haven't come to our virtual book clubs, they're fun. We're going to breeze through some of the stuff we have coming up Sunday, August 8th, surrealist women. Tuesday night, author talk with Debbie Lascar. And the Chronicle again, Mick LaSalle. I want to say he has not had a book out in 10 years. So come check it out. August 18th, dream state. And if you don't know Shanta, you should. She is like a force of nature. She's amazing. She's one of the food justice warrior. She's a co-owner of other avenues out in the avenues, the food co-op. And she's going to talk about her food journey. And we partnered with SF neon and the tenor one museum for three part series. And this is our final one on August 25th, talking about neon and cinema. All right, tonight we are here to talk about Jamie quacks book. And I was telling Chaney and Oscar that I pulled this off of what we have the advanced reader card at our library. It was the last book that I got to pull from the cart before we went into shelter in place and I, it really found a special place in my mind. So I want to welcome both Oscar and Chaney here tonight. Chaney has written for publications such as the New York Times, The New York Times, the New York Times tusks, The New York Times, The New York Times, the New York Times, the New York Times, the New York Times, Condi Nash traveler, the New York Times, the New York Times, the New York Times, the New York Times, Condi Nash traveler. Food and wine. Travel and leisure and a number of National, geographic anthologies. His fiction has appeared in SZA va. Catamaran literary review, Gertrude and, other literary journals, earning a special mention from the push cart prize. conference and was a friends of the San Francisco brand and handler resident. He teaches nonfiction writing at Stanford Continuing Studies program. And tonight, Cheney will be in conversation with our own, I'm calling San Francisco's own Oscar Villalom, the managing editor of San Francisco's literary journal, Ziziba, and it's the technology issue. It's very good. I encourage you all to subscribe. His writing has been published in several publications including Freeman's, Zocalo, The Believer, and Lit Hub. And he's joining us from San Francisco. And there will be time for Q&A. Please use the Q&A function. And we're gonna have a nice amount of time for that. So get those questions ready. Oscar and Cheney, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I thought before we begin, we'd have, Cheney, if you'd be good enough to read a little bit from your book, The Passenger. And then after that, then I think we'll start the conversation. Great. Thank you, Oscar. Thank you to the San Francisco Public Library and everyone who's here tonight. I have a long list of things and I'll save that until the end. I'm gonna read really short passages, just snippets, and then we'll get started. Before Panic United us, boredom did. We had been sailing up and down the coast of Norway for more than a week, alternating between classic fjords and the open sea. Each day, the ship dropped anchor at a new port and unleashed all 915 passengers onto snowpacked streets and into shops brimming with handed sweaters. We rode in sleighs pulled by steaming reindeer, squinted our eyes at 7,000-year-old rock carvings, and bathed in sunlight filtered through the stained glass of a titanium cathedral. And we witnessed the northern lights. The reason many of us came on the cruise. Once accustomed to the dopamine hit that a new locale brings each day, your brain begins to take the novelty for granted. You develop a sudden aversion to the mundane. I did anyway. Yesterday, the captain blamed high winds and rough waves for the cancellation of a scheduled port call at Buda, just above the Arctic Circle. Today was yet another stormy day without docking, which meant we were left to amuse ourselves on this floating 465-cabin complex. We were bored to death. Desperate for stimulation, I turned up for the morning quiz hour at the Explorer's Lounge, the ship's glass ensconced living room at the bow of Deck 11. I sank into the chaise with a slice of success cake, which, Google told me, is an Norwegian specialty of almond meringue and egg cream. Teaming up with a group of snow-haired passengers who are three, maybe four decades older, I try to answer questions about minor Henry VIII wives and milestoneed World War battles. Since Viking Ocean Cruises advertises heavily on PBS, it attracts a certain demographic, the type of people who actually want to geek out on baroque palaces and the Marshall plan in their free time. Without Google, I was an empty vessel.  Earlier in that morning, the dark sea and bruised colored clouds had sandwiched a sliver of blue sky. By the time the quiz finished, the blue ribbon had disappeared and near-horizontal rain glashed at us. The ship pitched violently, rising and bouncing as we penetrated deeper into the storm. Still, from all the way up here on Deck 11, hundreds of feet above the sea, even the largest wave seemed like ripples in a bathtub. Wait till my grandkids see this, said one of my quiz teammates, thrusting her phone at me to film her against the window. Am I having fun all alone on a cruise, the playground of couples and families? In fact, would it shock you to hear that I've willingly gone on not one but two cruises in a row? This month, back to back, sorry. Three weeks ago, I boarded a luxury Italian cruiser from Bali. And if that sentence makes you want to punch me in the face, I'm right there with you. I had a butler with the most erect posture unpacked my cheap clothes into hard mahogany drawers before wiping down my battered carry-on. I took Balinese cooking classes, got needed by no sewers like a lump of dough, and drank bottles of wine that cost more than my weekly grocery budget. I donned a bow tie and satiated across the deck under the stars. The ship glided across the South China Sea, which I later described in the magazine article as, forgive me, silky. Then I disembarked and flew from Manila over to Bergen, Norway to do it all over again in the opposite hemisphere. I know, I know. Being a travel writer sounds glamorous on paper. And yes, I have come across plenty of folks who could afford to think of themselves as glamorous long before they ever sold a single piece of writing. A tribe that knows how to swill with Klikko before noon and not feel even a tiny bit buzzed or guilty. I, on the other hand, snuck into this trade by reviewing hostels and writing penny-pinching advice while attending graduate school in Berlin on a German government scholarship. I've approached every cruise I've taken like Margaret Mead visiting Papua New Guinea, the most foreign of environments that grows somehow more alien each time I inhabit it. That may be why I kept getting similar assignments from editors without trying akin to sending a puzzled pacifist to interview Jean-Claude Dandem while he punches Steven Seagal to pulp. That Bali cruise, the editor-in-chief of a top travel glossy, had emailed me out of the blue. The Norway cruise, I've been summoned by the head of a cab by it so you need to be in the know monthly found only in the libraries of country clubs. Or maybe it was all just a joke worn out of a, not out of intention, but from the very unfairness that drives the world of freelance writers, I happened to be available. I knew better than to decline the assignments tossed into my lap. No, wait, this is disingenuous. Work wasn't the only reason that set me on month-long trips. If I wanted to make money and lots more of it, I could have stayed in San Francisco where I live and worked for one of the social media services that everyone hates but uses hourly. Something else was keeping me away from the one-bedroom apartment I shared with my partner of 16 years. And I guess I should stop there. Thank you, Cheney. Thank you. As folks could tell from your reading, the passenger, it's about many things. But to me, I think it is primarily about, I think, the transformations that happen to us when we pass through a crucible. I think in these such moments of great fear and stress, scales fall from our eyes for a moment. And we can see clearly who we are and how we are happy or unhappy or what it is we need or can live without. And in that recognition, a reckoning may happen. We may be transformed even if the extent of it isn't immediately fully understood. Nonetheless, something has happened and things will not continue the way they once did. In the passenger, this reckoning of a life, yours, Cheney, but not just yours, happens off the coast of Norway. You gave us a sense in the reading of the calm before the literal storm. But could you tell us what happened to you and the more than 1,300 people aboard the cruise ship Viking Sky on March 23, 2019? Yeah, I think that's a very generous and yeah, summary of what I tried to do in the book, and I hope that does come through. On a very literal level, it's a story that starts off on a cruise ship that loses all four of its engines in the middle of a really bad storm that the Washington Post describes as, I think, a freak storm over 80 miles per hour winds and 60 feet swells.  Complicating the matter was that we were so close to coastline that we came very close to capsizing against the rocky shore. So that's the basic literal beginning point of the book. But like you said, the passenger wasn't going to be a book until we all went through something similar, I think, figurative, equivalent, life equivalent, which is what we all went through last year during the pandemic. And in some ways, we may be headed to again. I had been trying to write about this experience. And it was kind of a funny, salty article, but never more than that. And during the pandemic, I really, I was able to recast the experience through a completely different lens, because I realized, oh, this lockdown, this feels kind of familiar. Oh, remember that time when I was in this cruise ship without any kind of power over my own destiny, hunkering down in this closed space, not knowing what was going to happen to me.  And also, I guess in some ways, the collective nature of what we might call destiny, even though I don't necessarily believe in that. So yeah, it's what started off as a kind of a suspenseful, but also funny story about a cruise ship became, I hope, a book about an experience that we all shared. Now, again, it's about many things, but your descriptions of this, it turns out to be a 27 hour or deal are very funny, but also harrowing. It also gives you an opportunity to sort of give a sense of all the folks who make up the roster of passengers and employees on the ship. And I don't know if you could talk a little bit about that. Who are your fellow passengers? What sort of folks are they? Sure. Spoiler alert, the main character doesn't die. I'm here. Nobody dies, which is probably why I could write a story that I hoped would balance the funny with the suspenseful. But people are badly injured. Some are injured for sure during the ordeal because we were pitching pretty violently, but also because the sea was so rough that they couldn't deploy any of the lifeboats, which meant that everybody had to or they tried to evacuate everybody with by winching them off on helicopters. And there are some injuries happening there to less than half the people got airlifted in the end. But like the roster of people, characters, if you will, some that I just described, very well educated and well to do cruise passengers. But I also wanted to shed a light on other characters who don't necessarily take the center stage in many cruise stories that I've seen. I actually have gotten some flak from cruise fans since the publication in some ways because I shed light on the inequality that takes place on a ship. And it's a literal, it's a small world on a ship. You have this microcosm of the world starting with well to do passengers on the literal top level top deck down to the bottom of the ship where there are staff members who never actually get to be seen or get to see much because they're greasing and laundering and whatnot. And the incident actually brought some of those people to light as well. And I was fascinated by that experience. And I wrote about that. But of course, I can't claim to know what it's really like to have gone through that. I was in that strange between upstairs and downstairs position because I was embedded and I was treated very much like a passenger. I was a passenger. And I can't really claim that those 27 hours are really bad for me because even during those hours, there are staff members feeding us and cleaning up after us. It does make you also wonder what it would take to upturn that kind of world order or hierarchy, if you will, because cruise ships didn't create that inequality, certainly, but it holds up a mirror and you can be very uncomfortable. So when some cruise fans have problems with the fact that I highlight that, I take that criticism because I think it is a choice to talk about inequality on a cruise ship as much as it is a choice not to talk about it and to ignore that. I think it takes a lot of willful unwillingness to see if you were to go on a cruise and not be able to notice the kind of literal disparities that's happening, not just between the passengers and the staff members, but also among the crew members as well. Yeah, I think to be clear, I think people are aware usually of the service staff on these sort of cruise ships. A lot of them mostly are from other places in the United States. A lot of them are brown, but what you're talking about is essentially the crew, the labor hoard, otherwise invisible until this near catastrophe. And there's a scene in your book in which you finagle the way to go back to your room and you want to actually retrieve your copy of Moby Dick, speaking of disasters at stake. And you're going down the hallway and you see this, you see these, I believe they're all men? Yeah, they're all men in that hallway at least. And it's interesting because even the service staff that are visible, they're designed to be visible, they're trained to talk in a certain way, smile in a certain way. One of the most gratifying experiences of publishing this book actually was getting an email from a crew member who teaches other crew members how to behave, how to speak around passengers. And she wrote me and said that I got that kind of uncomfortable hierarchy within the crew world, right? And that meant the world to me. But the scene that you describe has me going down the hallway where I wasn't supposed to. And I realized that they're all these men that I'd never seen before who are not uniformed. They're in this greasy T-shirts and they came up from the bottom of the ship to be evacuated, but still out of sight from the passengers. I'm still making, yeah. And they're more or less huddled together and utter exhaustion? Yeah, I don't know what was happening to me, honest, because I think being an introvert, all I wanted to do being in the hallway was really to be away from people. I was sneaking out because to get, you know, to get a copy of my book, but also really I wanted to be away from people. And he was just shocking to see crew members willing to be just huddled together. And I wondered, is it because they spent months, if not longer, being around other people, do they find comfort in that? Well, I also bring it up because, of course, when one thinks about the context of the pandemic, one also, you know, thinks of all these other communities, adverse communities that suddenly we become aware of during this pandemic, we become aware of how precarious our situation is. That's right, they're crammed into closed quarters. I mean, speaking of, you know, pandemic, cruises have always been kind of vectors of viruses, right? All sorts of different viruses. But, you know, I think COVID-19 makes you wonder about, well, is this a really good idea? And also, if you think about it, the sheer absurdity of building ginormous ships with casinos and duty-free shops and multiple restaurants and floating them in the middle of the sea, and makes you wonder, like, what are we up to? I'm wondering, as a, you know, as someone who's been around freelancers his entire life and who's worked in newspapers, et cetera, and reporter, and those reporters and editors, I was fascinated by your reaction towards the availability of social media. At one point, the ship is drifting so closely to shore, you now have cell phone reception, correct? And you go, I guess you go to Twitter or you go to whichever social media app it was, to see what people are seeing about this, this unfurling disaster. I found that part of the book so engaging. Could you tell us a little bit about what you were seeing online? Yeah. You know, there's a lot of, the social media peanut gallery was in full swing talking about what was happening and we were getting a lot of passengers, the passengers and crew members were getting actually really good up-to-date information about what was happening. What's really scary about social media is that there's also, there was a lot of misinformation just floating around where people might speculate what might be happening aboard the ship and then next thing you know, that just spreads like wildfire. There are all these people who become experts all of a sudden on, you know, maritime navigation and criticizing the, you know, captain for sailing on a day like this and whatnot and I just found that all very interesting and I still don't know if social media is responsible for the kind of inflamed narcissism that we're experiencing today as well as the spread of misinformation or if it's just simply the byproduct of humans having been gossiping for the last millennia, you know. I really don't know but the fact that it was happening in real time was crazy. To be in the middle of it, to be the subject of this inadvertence reality TV show was pretty darn, I don't want to say like repulsive but I certainly never signed up for it and there's a bit of not exactly shot in Florida but I think Kuli, Kuli in watching this real-time disaster, right, certainly different when you're on that she was thinking or potentially sinking ship. But you should, this is what I found so interesting as I could see how someone who was a freelance writer would think, aha, this is my chance.  But you choose not to but in fact, because you're thinking that the story I want to tell is going to be longer and nuanced. Well, I hope that's right.  I think I was born maybe 50 years too late and going viral has never been one of my aspirations even though I think people my age or younger probably do aspire to do that or many people do anyway. It was interesting because there was also another photographer, a freelancer on board, a photographer, and around my age as well. And both of us chose the same path and I describe us as kind of dinosaurs in this ice age of print media where we're seeing our opportunities evaporate yet were reluctantly on social media yet unable to evolve into birds and kind of watching our imminent extinction. I just I just couldn't reconcile with the idea of possibly the ship possibly going down in my last words that I left leave behind in this world being tweets about what was happening. I just and getting likes for that. That's just seems like the most inhumane way to go. I would prefer to go anonymously. But, you know, I did write a book about this and I own that too. And there were times when I was looking around and I took extensive notes in part because that's how I cope with the world. I'm always kind of taking notes.  And but also there are times during those 27 hours when I thought, Oh, maybe I just maybe I could, you know, sell this story, you know, this could be good, you know, maybe up.      Yeah. I, you know, I don't think I'm superior to people who use social media, not at all. I'm just really slow.  And I just need time to compose my thoughts. And I had an inkling that what I was going through might mean more than what was happening on the literal sense that I might be able to make more of the experience than just the experience itself. And I wanted to hold on to that. And I was right. This is, this is a story that helped me heal in many other ways, not from this experience per se, but many other personal things that I describe in the book.  And nonfiction, I think, can cause casualty in your personal life. And, and it's just what it is, because I realize that you know, sharing this story is also an act of generosity. It's not about narcissism because I don't think I come across looking really good, to be honest. But if there's someone that the book reaches someday somehow, and it doesn't have to be this year or next year, but somewhere, then yeah, I'll be, I'll be ecstatic. So, and if this helps someone heal, like it helped me heal, then yeah, right on. You, you also write early on, I think one point you write that not knowing can be the pathway to happiness. Gosh, you know, there's a Korean proverb that says that goes not knowing is medicine. And it's one pathway. I don't think it's the pathway, but there are times when I would have preferred not to know from social media what exactly was happening to the ship. Like when we were headed perpendicular to the shoreline, I would have preferred not to know that. But, you know, what are you going to do? But then much later, when you're describing the appeal of cruise ships, you write, when you create a space that everyone can tolerate, you end up draining all life from it. And it seems to me, these two, those two insights are not unrelated. That pathway of not knowing, of being out of touch with your feelings, say, leads to the sort of tolerable, not comfortable existence, I guess you could call happiness. Yeah, I mean, this is why I was kind of nervous, but really looking forward to this talk, Oscar, because you notice things. I never made a connection, but you are absolutely right. And I'll have to sit with that for a little longer. But I definitely see the appeal of cruises. I totally do. Because aside from the physical creature comfort, you're right. You don't have to know. You don't have to think. And yeah, I think there's a reason why there's that willful turning away from disparities and inequalities, in part because people are trying to escape by being there. And what are they trying to escape? And I myself was trying to escape, too, by being there, being on two cruises back to back.  See, you're right. I totally understand that and respect that. And during the last year, there are times when I just could not bear to look at my New York Times app. I just turned it away. I mean, I just deleted it. And I thought, I don't need to know the counts anymore. I just want to watch my Netflix because there's that comfort, like you said, in not knowing. Is that a good state of being in a permanent, you know, on a permanent basis? I don't know. I think there are people who go through their lives trying to stay in that kind of ignorant bliss. Who am I to judge that? You know, they seem happier than I am. Right. And this is again, I think it was too late. It's the way I looked at the book is that, you know, we then you get into this crucible. And it's sort of you have a moment, perhaps of conviction. You see things for what they are and you can choose to do something with that or not. And having that choice, my God, my goodness, you know, that's that's a huge privilege and often conferred to us unfairly. And I think it was conferred to me by my parents in many ways. So yeah. But you also, you know, again, the book is about many things. One of them certainly is that the sea is pitiless. Indeed, life is pitiless. You write of many other shipwrecks and the loss of so many other lives because of them. Of the sinking. I think it's of the Ukeshima Maru off the coast of Japan is just at the end of World War Two. You write those on board were not the people whom history books honor just bit players on the chaotic stage that had seen too many anonymous casualties already. Your book to me seems like an attempt to at least address that, no?  But at least I want to acknowledge that and also accept the fact that I could have been one of them, you know, the line between a near disaster and a disaster is really tenuous and really, really fine. And yeah, I mean, I'm part of that collective as well. And I don't know, there's something kind of pointing on about that. Yeah, you said earlier that if I remember correctly, you don't believe in destiny. I don't. And I mean, this book, I think fairly argues that fairly well, the reason you wouldn't. I mean, you know, really, the book really gets us, the book does why I love what other books do, which is to get you to question about how we arrive or we have arrived. That indeed, how we are at the mercy of chance and luck as surely as ships are at the mercy of unforeseen inclement weather.  But it's nonetheless amazing that we can shape any lives at all. Right.  We used to be just genetic strands and how are we like functioning humans thinking? It's incredible.  But I really think that it's just everything is a series of random occurrences that go down one path. But we could have, you know, like the permutation of all the opportunities where things sort of gone radically different. It's just really overwhelming to think about, you know. Yeah, I don't know. It's both overwhelming and really awe inspiring, to be honest.  You feel as if though you there's really not much for you to do except just sit there and try not to get hit by flying object. I mean, yeah, such a capitalist immigrant child thing, right? It's like, I got to be productive somehow.  And one of them is I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly, Erlen Birkaland. Perfect. Yeah. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about about Erlen. Yeah, he's a rescue diver. He used to be a rescuer in his 20s, and then chose a career in nursing hospice nursing. And then in his late 40s, early 50s, he decided that he wanted to rescue people again. Crazy. So he was part of the rescue service responding to Mayday. And he was on a helicopter, basically, repelling down from the helicopter and getting on the ship and sending people up, right, one by one, risking his life. And when I talk to him about, so part of the book, those of you who haven't read it, I interview rescue workers and and try to write from their perspectives, although, right, I mean, I also acknowledge the limitation of me as someone who wasn't actually, well, who's not them. Anyway, so I interviewed him and he was very self-effacing in many ways.  I was just doing my job, you know, but then you hear the story about how he like the ship, how badly the ship was pitching and he could have just basically slammed into it. There were times when he was, you know, practicing before the incident.  He was risking his life to do all this. And hundreds of people did that in order for us to stay safe. And yet, it could have gone the other way, too, you know. And in fact, it sort of goes pretty badly for another group. There's a cargo freighter called the Haglin Captain. That's right. And they received the Viking skies distress call. Can you tell us what happened? Yeah, a quarter of other apparently, if you hear Mayday, you respond. So this freighter nearby responded, but then their engines failed as well, bad storm. And there are nine crew members on the ship and they had to abandon ship and jump into the freezing water in order to be rescued. Luckily, all alive. I talked to the spokesperson at the freight company. And they assured me that they're healthy and employed, but would not release their names. So just like those casualties that history books would never honor, they will remain nameless. But these Good Samaritans had a much more harrowing knife than I did, for sure. While you're researching the book, did it become that much more clear to you just how much danger you all were in? Yes, yes and no, yes in that, for those reasons that you mentioned, and there's just there are hundreds of articles actually out there. So it seemed to me that even though, I mean, we were safe because a lot of people work hard, but at the same time, it could have, you know, occurrence going one way or a bolder being in another place, we, you know, it could have turned out very differently beyond anyone's control. And there's some comfort in that as well, morbidly, if that makes any sense, it makes you think, gosh darn it, like you can do all the right things and, you know, still may not survive. So just live in the moment, Yolo. Well, again, it's that sort of, I mean, again, what I admire so much about the book is that it forces, well, I don't say forces, but it allows the reader to shake off the cobwebs and to sort of understand just how incredible this thing we call life is. How much of it really is out of your control? Yeah, absolutely. I hope it's one of the things that people take away. But it's beyond my control, and that's a good thing. You know, when you put out a book, it has its own life and what people make of it is really not within my control. And it's none of my business to be honest, but I have been struggling with it to be honest. I think the post publication, post part of Israel and part of me wants to nurture it, you know, show up for events like this and wish it well and say, go out into the world and do your thing. And another part of me thinks, gosh, like it's so alien. I gave birth to this yet. I just, you know, it's going to have such an alien life and I can't even bear to look at it. And yeah. Before we get to Q and I want to ask you one more question, because one of the passengers who was particularly interesting is, I think a pronounce her name, Sarri. Yeah, Carrie. Yeah, Carrie. The answer. Yes. Yes. Could you tell us a little about her? Because yeah, well, first, let's let's tell us a little about her. Yeah, Carrie was one of the four vocalists lead vocalists on the ship. I didn't know because I didn't go to any of the shows and I was very, very embarrassed because she was a minder who was assigned to this little cluster of passengers were there to look after us. It was incredibly well organized, well rehearsed. Well, practice, I don't know what to call it, it wasn't a rescue, evacuation maybe. So there was one person assigned to say two dozen passengers and then that person for us was Carrie. And I got to know her through her stories, you know, inadvertently. And, and I just kept thinking like, I mean, I also learned that she briefly considered going to medical school over being an actress singer. And I think she regretting her life choices being here. And, and I, you know, the kind of life that she would have I did follow up with her by the way and that's why I gave her a Welsh name because she is Welsh, but I also didn't want to use her real name because I the only people whose names I changed are the crew members because I wanted to make sure their employment wasn't affected. And also my ex, but yeah, so Carrie, she didn't talk to me on, you know, like while I was writing the book, I only informed her after and said, I want to send you a copy. And here you are, you're, you have a different Welsh name, but And am I right? Am I right remembering she no longer works on cruise ships? You know, that's as at the time of me writing it, there was absolutely no trace of her. There was nothing listed for hers on her agent's website. Her social media went dark after the incident. In fact, she was the only person from the crew members and I looked for all sorts of crew members. She was the only person who didn't delete the post about the incident. She just let it sit there and whereas the other crew members I think were gently or not so gently reminded that they shouldn't be writing about that incident for the sake of their employment. Since then though, however, I learned since the publication, I learned that she has chosen to go back. So life does go on and yeah. Life does go on, but reading I wonder if she too, like you in some way wasn't changed. Right. I mean, I can't imagine. Well, some people probably became more of who they used to be, some passengers. But I really think that we are all impacted by it one way or another. I hope so. Yeah. I think that's correct. I think the way you write about some of the passengers, they pretty much seemed like they weren't there when it happened, even though they were there from some of their reactions. They seemed, you know, I think there's one particular who seems to be things that, but she's not dealing with that. Sounds like this wasn't this fantastic. Right. And you know, honestly, I can't speak for anyone other than myself. Right. And I find it so awesome that every one of us will have a different story to tell about it. You know, that's how it makes life so fascinating that you share this experience yet you could walk away with a different story. That's right. Okay. Well, let's open it up into Q&A. Hi. There is a really wonderful comment in the Q&A. It says, hi, Chaney. We were on this voyage. We were with the same group in the atrium with you. We were under supervision of Carrie, the cabaret singer. Thanks for capturing the experience and transformational nature of the experience. We stayed on the sky until moldy. We went back to Norway in August 2019. We had to visit the coastline of the near disaster to try to come to grips with the experience. We've purchased four copies of your book to remember and to share with our friends and family to use a baseball metaphor. You hit the experience out of the park. Thank you, Janet and David from Concord. Oh, my goodness. Thank you. This means the world to me. Thank you. So I don't have anything intelligent to say about it other than thank you, Janet and David, did you say? I may have seen you, may not have gotten to know your names, but isn't that incredible that out of the seven plus billion people we got to intersect at all? Okay. So now how about some questions? Let's go. I love the humor in passages you read, but you mentioned how the cruise ship experience was oddly similar to early COVID lockdown. Do you feel like the cruise ship disaster helped prepare you for quarantine in some way? Yeah, absolutely. I was unfairly better prepared than many people. That kind of uncertainty and the loneliness of being around many other people. It's a very special kind of loneliness, you know, living in a city and yet being confined without any control. It's a very specific feeling, but I had gone through that. So I was able to cope with it better, I think. And plus this time I had Netflix, so you know. All right. How about a fun one? Have you embraced your inner Martha Stewart? So this refers to a section in the book. Oh my goodness. So I'm visiting my parents since Seattle. They're watching the other room and I hope they never get to that point. It's kind of embarrassing, but my friends make fun of me that I have this big Martha Stewart energy and that makes people sort of want to settle down with me, if you will. I have not fully embraced it. I really hope to have a proper room springer. But COVID seems to have a very different thing on a plant for us, so we'll see. It sure does, Cheney. The book felt to have such a natural flow of weaving the factual with the very personal and sometimes painful. What was writing like this and weaving this together for you? Cathartic. I laughed a lot and I cried a lot. Oh my god, I sound like a really bad movie reviewer. I laughed. I cried.  And it's hard. It's hard, but I felt like without putting myself on the page, it just felt disingenuous, you know? If I was going to write about life and all its messiness and yet keep my hands clean and walk away from it looking good or not sharing much about my personal life, then, yeah, I don't know. I think there would have been a cop out. Has that been your initial approach to the story? Yeah, so when this had a kind of a strange path to publication, but long story short, my editor at Godin is the one who kept pushing me to write about my relationship and I fought him all the way through. And in fact, actually, right until the date of public, we had to send things off to the printer for proofs, but certain sections were still just placeholders because I just couldn't bear to write them. And then on one night, sitting down outside in my courtyard in San Francisco, I was able to just write it in one go and it just felt great. And I knew that I had been working on it in my head for months and months and I've been dreading writing it, but it came together. I think it comes together very well. I think it's very, it brings the reader into intimacy with you, let's say you in quotes, the author, but with the story. I think, you know, that idea that here you are in the situation. And again, it's an assessment of everything.  And of course, that's hard. It's just imagining my 15-year-old niece opening the book makes me want to just hurl. But I hope strangers can just kind of treat this person as a character and, you know, not necessarily make the connection to me. I would think so. I mean, again, just to go if we think of this as being analogous or metaphor, even for the pandemic, certainly a lot of relationships came under scrutiny during lockdown. For sure. For sure. You know, and I think that's something that I think a lot of readers can easily relate to, of that sort of that necessary reassessment. Yes, someone in chat does mention, so indeed he is your ex, right? A short story. Yeah, short answer is yes. And also, Erlen Berkland, the rescue diver, after having read halfway, or like halfway through the book, I sent him a copy after publication. He said, unsolicited relationship advice. Dump him. I like that guy. I like him a lot too, yeah. All right. I think we have time for a couple more. Oh, how about, has anyone optioned yet? Somebody wants to see this made into a film. If you'd like it, great. I don't know. And it's not, no, the answer is no. And it's got its own life. And if it does get optioned and get turned into a movie, I really hope that it becomes a very different story and it becomes, it's played by someone who looks nothing like me. That's all I hope for. Let's see. How about a further research? How much more research did you put in after the events in this? Because there was quite a bit of like, you know, yeah, Oracle ship stuff. I didn't keep track of the time. I was accused by a certain cranky Facebook commentator that I was out to make a quick buck, which is hilarious. Because if any of you know anything about book publishing, you don't make a quick buck. You get pelted by pennies over many years, you know. So if I actually think about like per hour wages, it gets very depressing. Luckily enough, I enjoyed a lot of it. I'm a very nosy person. I take after my dad.  Having said that, I couldn't have done this without the lockdown where I just had a lot of time. The magazine world was decimated. I was laid off and had a lot of time. How about our final SFPL questions for the both of you? What are you reading? What are you watching? What are you eating? Oh my goodness. Cheney, go ahead please. I'm finally reading Kathy Park, Kathy Hall Park's Minor Feelings. I'm so sorry. I'm two last names. That's hard. Fantastic collection of essays. And also I'm reading kind of a guilty pleasure book from the library, a thriller, a murder mystery. I'm not going to name it because I'm kind of embarrassed. I shouldn't be actually, why am I embarrassed? It's called Bath House. So there you go. It's literally steamy. And it's, yeah, it's a page turner. Okay, Oscar, what are you reading? Author of Bath House was in the, has been in the virtual library. We love him. Oh my God. Yeah. No shame. I know. It's just my parents are watching. Oh yeah. I turn into my like 15, I revert to my like 15 year old self thinking like I shouldn't be reading this. That's understandable. I'm reading submissions. That's pretty much it. Lots and lots of submissions. Wonderful. Well, I thank you to the San Francisco Public Library, not just for having me, but like you've been a lifeline to so many of us. And it's been just so great. And it's incredible how quickly you pivoted to provide all these amazing things. And you know, it's been incredible. And thank you to Oscar and Ziziba. It feels like a home coming to me. Ziziba was the first literary journal to publish me. And the San Francisco Public Library, thanks to the Brown Handler residency at the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. I've had this incredible, you know, relationships with the library. And this is and also thank you to everybody who joined because libraries like our last public sphere that were random encounters happen. I don't recognize any other names in the attendees, which is trust me, when you're a writer, the best thing to do like to see because oftentimes it's just your friends and family. So this is incredible to see all these names of people I don't know.  So thank you. My people too. Thank you library lovers. And Oscar and Cheney, we thank you for being here tonight, library community. We always thank you for being here. And you too, viewers, we thank you as well. And have a wonderful night, everybody. Thank you.


This paper proposes novel methods for extracting keyframes from digital video content stored in data centers. These keyframes can then be used to generate short summaries of the video content. The paper also evaluates the performance of several deep learning models on four popular video summarization data sets. The results show that the proposed solutions outperform existing methods, achieving higher F-scores than other methods. This article was authored by Obata ESA and Tamer Shanable.


What is money? It is common to hear that money is the root of all evil. We are told that money is synonymous with greed, and that desiring it is somehow inherently bad. This is not true. Money is perhaps the single most important creation in the history of mankind. Just take a moment to consider a world without it. Think about all the things in your life that you enjoy. A house, a cell phone, a book, a new computer game, new clothes, car, a meal at your favorite restaurant. How many of these things could you provide for yourself? Luckily, thanks to money, you don't have to. Instead, you can specialize in doing a specific task. Maybe you play music, or build surfboards, or repair cars. And then you use the money you earn to buy products or services from others. This wasn't always the case. Before money, peaceful societies used a system called barter, exchanging one object for another. Imagine Bob has a fish, and Tom has clean water. The two could trade with each other. But what if Tom doesn't like fish? In order to get the desired water, Bob could trade with someone else for something Tom wants. This is called indirect exchange. In the different societies, there were certain items that everyone wanted. These made up the earliest forms of money. Throughout human history, all sorts of things have been used as money, such as salt, tobacco, grain, seashells, livestock, or furs. Over time, societies ended up embracing some form of metal, such as gold and silver, as their preferred form of currency. Why is this? Many societies value these shiny metals as jewelry, luxuries, and for industrial use. But they also have many other benefits. Metals are hard to destroy. They are uniform and divisible. Any two ounces of pure gold are the same. And they are easy to carry around if turned into coins. They are also scarce and difficult to mine, so you can't manufacture new money as if it grew on trees. It was the invention of money that truly allowed human civilization to thrive, because you could now buy things without having to make them yourself. This brought freedom and choice to people, a choice for a real livelihood instead of simply living hand to mouth. You could now be a farmer, a seamstress, a sea captain, pirate, or tradesman. This specialization, called the Division of Labor, allowed people to become more learned and skilled, and to produce more complex and useful things, improving the quality of life for everyone. Money also made it easier to save for the future. By saving some of the money they earned for doing tasks, people are able to purchase larger and more complex items, like a new house. Of course, when people began to have savings, they wanted new ways to protect their money. This gave way to banks, where you could deposit your coins with someone who would keep them safe, in exchange for paper receipts that you could redeem when you wanted to get them back. The paper bank notes themselves became a form of money, since you could exchange them with others who could then go and claim the gold you promised them. In fact, many of the names for currencies today are derived from this system. The name dollar, for example, was Spanish for a weight of gold. The way Bob earns money is by producing goods or services that others want to exchange for. Once societies began using paper, it was easy for governments to print new money, even if they had not collected any gold to redeem with a paper bank notes. Throughout history, this has been a popular way for governments to generate new money because it was easier than other options, such as collecting taxes. Although this was good for politicians, it was bad for the rest of us, as our money lost its value. This is called inflation. During the 20th century, we saw governments completely take over money. In America, you used to be able to exchange dollars for gold, a system called the gold standard. In 1913, America created a central bank, the Federal Reserve, which began creating new dollars without new gold. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt made it illegal to own gold. In 1971, President Richard Nixon stopped exchanging dollars for gold with other countries. And after that, there was nothing of value left backing the American dollar. The result? 100 years before the founding of the Fed, the price of gold was $19.39. 100 years after the Fed, the price of gold was $1,204.50. Why did this happen? With the monopoly to create money, the government has been able to finance massive wars and government programs. All of this has come at the expense of the value of our currency and your savings.


And another one. What's up people? Menor here. Coming to you with a video. This time we are going to be unboxing a very well made and reasonably priced item that is giving Fitbit a run for its money. The item in question is the Yo-Fit fitness tracker and these are the contact information of the item. And unlike the Fitbit, the entry point or the entry price for this item is under $30. At that price point you cannot go wrong. The box is pretty sturdy, pretty well packaged. This is the device. This is a quick setup guide. These are the different color variants that you can get. I personally went with black. These are the website details and this is what's included in the box. They are not sending you extra charging devices because everybody has a USB port on the computer or they can use the phone adapter also. That's where they are doing the price cutting. But having said that, just because the price is low doesn't mean it doesn't do all the stuff that you want it to do. It's relying on your cell phone to download an app and work with that app to get the data storing done. Keep in mind this is an entry level device. People are always carrying their cell phone. Right on the back the device has a label thing on it. Let me peel that off. And this is the device. While this device is listed as a device that can be used by kids based on the size of the wristband, it is approximately 9 inches. So unless your wrist is 9 inches, yeah, you're going to be fine. This is what the device looks like. You can switch between the modes by tapping on the bottom button. So let me download the app and you will need a Bluetooth cell phone to work on it. Hopefully you have a Bluetooth cell phone. Just go to the Play Store and download the CC Band app. The app is getting downloaded. It's a 16 megabyte app and it's also available on iOS and Android. And for the charging part, if you have a charge port, just plug the watch right into the charge port or USB port of your PC or the USB port that you're using on a laptop. And this is what I definitely like about this app. While you have an option to register, you do have an option of skipping it. So that is amazing. It requested me to go through the setup option to see if it can read write to my device and now it's turning on the Bluetooth. And to pair the device, it's pretty simple. Just click on the bottom link button and right out the back, it picks it up instantly. That is amazing. And just click on the button and once you have connected the device, it's going to show you the connect window. Interesting. From the device, you can see how much battery life is left. That is the sleep or the step counter. So if you're walking, it will count your steps. It will check your heart rate monitor, I guess. And it has two different modes, static and dynamic. And it also checks your sleep. So it is also a sleep monitor, which definitely is good. And on the dashboard, even without registering, it does give you the record history. You can set up goals. On the settings, you can get alert notification for text, SMS, wrist sensor, time monitor, I guess, for SMS notification alerts. So if you want to set up alerts for WhatsApp, Skype, etc., you can actually get that set up. It has a detailed frequently asked questions section and you can even set up the firmware updates. And the best part, the time is right there. So right now it's 3.18, so it's actually 3.19, so it's going to show you the time. And the thing that I'm really liking about this watch is some of the devices will continuously record your heart rate. This one, you have an option of telling it to record it at time, or you can tell it to record it dynamically. It will record it as it's taking place. So this is definitely a positive. The sleep monitor thing, I'm not able to test it out right now because I'm awake. So I'm not asleep, so that's not going to work. And if you want to charge it, let me remove the watch. And that's a green light, and I'm like, let me turn the heart rate thingy off. Because I had set it on dynamic mode, it's going to continuously blink. And as soon as I told it to stop, it stopped and it's no longer wasting your battery. And in order to see where exactly the USB port is on the back of the watch, they do have the thing listed right there. Just very carefully from the side using the instruction. Put the band off from the left or the right side like this. So that's what you do. Do not pull it straight forward. So don't pull, yank it off like that. Pull it either from the left to the right. And that's how you take it off. There's the USB port. Just plug it in. And you'll be good. Overall, this is a really nice product. If you're a health nut or you just are looking for a smartwatch to try it out, what it feels like. This will be definitely a great product to test out. Definitely a big thumbs up from my side. And thank you so much for watching. I'll see you guys and girls on the next one. Later people. Bye.


Hey, what's going on guys? Welcome to a new video. So today then I want to talk about whether a product can actually be too Saturated or not, but before we jump into the video then I just want to mention quickly as always in every single video I am giving away a free one-to-one consultation call with me in this video If you want to enter then all you have to do is simply like the video and leave a comment down below And if you commented on my previous video then just make sure you stay tuned to the end of this one Where the winner will be announced and that being said then let's get straight into it So when it comes to answering them whether our products can actually be too saturated or not You can't really answer the question in one single word and there's a few different pieces of information You need to know as well So as it says here in a document then yes and no, but you have to take it case by case So to fully label something is saturated then you have to understand these four things number one Then is how many new people are coming into the market each and every year because if there's a strong amount of people coming Into the market then there's a strong amount of new potential customers added to that market that when people first come Into a market then obviously they're going to be untapped So potentially new customers number two then is what is your market size and strength because if a market is? hundreds of millions of people then it's going to take a significant amount of Advertising to actually fully cover that market and then therefore actually deem it saturated number three then is how much of the market has been covered So you need to do your research into how many people are actually Advertising within the space that you want to go into because again if nobody is advertising in it or there's not many people Advertising in it then obviously it leaves a gap in the market for you to go into yourself and number four Then how is the product being advertised and this one is actually really important because if there can be hundreds It's not thousands of people advertising in the same space that you want to go into But if they're all advertising the exact same product with the exact same ad then again It leaves a gap in there when it comes to standing out on social media It's about doing things in an original way Different to everybody else and ultimately having that unique selling point So how do we actually go about finding the answers to these questions now before we actually jump into it? There's a couple of points that I want to make a number one Then is just because a lot of people are selling the same product It doesn't necessarily mean the product is saturated going back to the questions if you can do it in a different way Or there's a strong amount of people coming into the market each and every year Then potentially you have new customers right there a good example of this and our company to look at is called blue Create go and check them out all of their best-selling products are kind of like this stereotypical drop-shipping products that everybody has seen before but because they took the time to Create really good ads that involved people and actors And viral ads that caught attention. They did really well So even though there are products the market has seen before because they advertise them better than everybody else They were still able to find success and then number two then however on the flip side of this And what we've just spoken about the more people selling the same products then the more difficult It is going to be to be successful too So to some degree then something can be saturated a good way to think of it as think of Saturation as like a scale you have not to 100 and very rarely if at all is pretty much impossible for something to be 100% saturated, but there's there's a scale so it can be 10% 20% 50 60% And ultimately the more saturated something is then the more work is going to take because you have to invest in a Really good ad you might have to change the product somehow change the design or the color just to make it unique to you And your company so question number one then how many people are coming into the market? So just an example I'm going to use the dog knee shoes That's like a typical example on this channel And it's probably like a typical niche that people tend to consider saturated and according to some research And I simply did a quick Google search. There's approximately Anywhere between one or two million people coming into the market each year and what I mean by that is then actually people who? Adopting dogs each and every year. So how many dogs are adopted each year UK 1.6 million dogs So every single year there's potentially another 1.6 million customers that won't have seen your product before won't have seen your competitors ads So they're untapped and I don't know about you guys But if you could just capture like 10% of them 160,000 customers You're going to be making some pretty decent money another interesting statistic that come across as well as this one now is for the US It's not really relevant to the UK, but each day then in the US 10,000 humans are born But within then if you compare that against puppies then and kittens and that's 70,000 So that represents one human to every 15 dogs Slash 45 cats at the moment like dogs are breeding a lot quicker than actually humans are so In terms of like the market strength then it's a very healthy market and that kind of leads me into point number two in fact Which is what is your market size and strength? so again, we're using a dog niche and Again, just a quick Google search you can find out some pretty interesting numbers Another thing we can look at then is the audience insights tool within your ads manager account So what you want to do is go to your audience insights tool Just make sure you have the country selected that you plan to go into And then you can choose as well with the dog issues pretty handy if you just click this plus mark you've got all these different options and The pets is found within hobbies and activities pets and then you can choose dogs And then this is going to give you kind of like an approximate amount of how many active people there are within your niche Now if you choose interests then so say we were going into cycling and we just put cycling then Obviously the audience is absolutely huge, but that doesn't necessarily mean that many people cycle It just means that many people have shown interest It just means that many people have shown interest and therefore part of that audience So when using audience insights, don't take it as kind of like fact just use it as a rough number The whole point here is to kind of gather information about a market and then use all the information together to kind of come up Like a general consensus or opinion on a specific niche And then something else I found which was quite interesting is that the average owner spends 1200 pound per year on their dog So where did I find this one? So here it was it was dog market size and it was here. So what is the UK pet industry worth? So the average dog owner in the UK spends a pretty penny each year in their pet 1200 pound to be precise now the reason this number is really important is because It gives you scope into how much or how expensive or what kind of products you can sell So if the average owner spends 1200 pound per year, then if I was trying to sell a product that was 600 pounds then In terms of like the market as an average then 600 pounds is a lot of money for somebody to spend on their pet Whereas if I was just trying to get them to spend say 15-20 pound on a color or 30-40 quid on a cool amount of something In the grand scheme of things, it's not a lot of money Which means on average most people would be willing to spend that amount of money if that makes sense Any questions at all on anything in this video by the way, feel free to leave a comment down below Moving on to question number three and four. In fact, I'm just gonna enter this down So it's a bit tardier and they're kind of both encompass the same thing like in terms of how you answer these questions Then you use the same method So question three and four was how much of the market has been covered and how is the product being advertised? So this is the difficult bit because it can be difficult to find ads about a certain niche or a certain product Now it did be quite an easy thing to do You could use something called ad swiper, but Facebook actually shut them down because of like the software and technology They were using and in fact, they shut down the ad espresso version as well So pretty much the only way to go about finding Facebook ads is to use the Facebook ad Library and which is public knowledge anybody can go in there and search for an ad But I tend to find that the results they give you a pretty poor and relevant to drop shippers So the best way in my opinion then is just to simply use the Facebook search Feature so when you search in for particular products on Facebook then a few things to keep in your mind that you Want to be looking at number one is look at how many views the actual video or post has and then you want to kind Of compare the amount of views it has against the market size and the new customers So we know then that the dog niche is Approximately one two million people every single year and then we want to look at the ad copy as well and see if they're all the same So a simple Facebook search I did earlier was LED dog color. I went straight to videos and This is going this is essentially what it showed me in terms of the results now You've got these different filters down the side so we could go just by 2019 if you want But if you want kind of like a broader view of everything then just go by any date because then it's going to give you kind of Like past history as well So just looking at these then keeping in mind the view so 1300 nearly 1226 28 million so that's quite a considerable one that we want to have a look at but 358,000 I mean if I was going through this list of Videos and all of them were like two million four million two million one million 28 million 14 million then I would be concerned but because it's not like that then I would have no problems at all with this product now Obviously, there's other External factors you have to think about like in the UK is that till 10 o'clock? So no one's going to buy this product So you do have to look at other Things I mean that's a completely different topic in fact at the moment We're just focusing on whether it's saturated or not and to me looking at the information and I don't believe it is Another thing I noticed as well as like everybody is selling the exact same product. So if we compare that to that Now I do actually experience selling this product But because I did find it increasingly difficult to sell this exact LED dog color was forced to look at other ones I'm purely because that's the same as that Which is the same as that which is the same as that? That looks slightly different, but it's the same as that. That's a completely different one That's like a silicon one, but it's the same as that That looks like something pretty unique in fact, but they're the same. They're the same Can't really see in those, but they're the same. They're the same So as you can see everybody's selling the same type of LED dog color So if you did want to try and break into this market then Either you have to do it in a completely unique way that grabs a lot of attention on social media Or why would find a different style of LED dog color than no one's seen before now at the end of the day Guys what it boils down to is doing something different to everybody else and pretty much just standing out on social media So if you're selling the same product advertising in the same way, then you're just not going to do that So it's just about being different having that unique selling point So back to the Google documents then and just a few final notes, which are quite important So overall then it's about making a judgment using all the information you find And answers you have to these questions and making an overall judgment about a particular niche But if you're still not sure then there's a couple of things you can do So number one then you can look at the average kind of like cost per action or cpm for your niche And the way you find this information out is simply do a google search There's tons of information out there on the internet Most of the questions you will have you'll be able to find answers to just by doing a google search So found this website here and there's loads of different like infographics and information about Like click-through rates, etc So you can see here that the average cost per click for all these different industries and if you have a look at Where it's a 70p if we scroll down 70p or 70 cents the retail So you look at an average cost per click of 70 cents and you can compare that to other niches So if you want to go into health care versus fitness Then you can it will tell you which ones are more competitive than others Essentially and then finally to finish the video often guys The second thing you can do is simply just test the product So test some ads and then once you get some numbers and some data You can reverse engineer the process to see if you are going to be capable to make some money With that product in that particular niche So just an example then of how you would do that and you can have ad number one Then let's say you spend 20 pound on ads and for that you get 200 visits So if you do the maths then 20 pound divided by 200 visits, then you're looking at 10p per click So you can assume in things Perform on average according to ad number one then going forward you're going to get a 10 percent You're going to get sorry. You're going to get a 10p cost per click Basic average conversion rate then on the industry standard, which is around 3 percent It can be higher than that. It can be lower than that. Obviously how expensive your product is will affect that But again, you may have seen some sales on that. So you may actually have an accurate conversion rate to base these numbers on So therefore then using 3 percent You're going to convert on average six people in every 200 people Now work out your average order value if you're only selling one product and that product's 20 pound Then of course your average order value is going to be 20 pound Therefore every 20 pound spent on ads would return 120 pound in sales Six people times the average order value of 20 pound is 120 pound in sales Then last thing you need to work out then is your cost of goods sold So if you're selling one product and you retail it and sell it at 20 pounds But then it costs you eight pounds delivered to the customer Then your cost of goods sold is eight pound per order So eight pound per order times the six orders is 48 pounds So you're looking at 48 pounds cost of goods sold to fulfill those six orders Your your facebook ad spend was 20 pound your sales was 120 pound and therefore your profit is 52 pound So that's kind of like how you can first engineer it now I'm not saying everything's going to be as specific as this and you can guarantee that going forward because You never know. There's so many different factors. You might find that Certain audiences you can get a lot cheaper cost per click Some audiences might be more expensive But to kind of get like a rough rule of thumb or a rough guide or just a rough idea Basically if whether you're going to make any money in that niche then this is how you could go about doing it And that being said there guys that wraps up the video Um just a couple of notes to take away just because loads of people are selling a product Or because somebody has told you a certain product or niche is saturated Then make sure you do your own research because that's not always going to be the case Bottom line if you can sell a product and stand out in a way that no one else is Then you will always sell that product really well And that being said then if you enjoyed the video Please make sure you do leave a like and if you wanted to be entered into the one to one Raffle to win a call with me then please do make sure you leave a comment down below And that being said then let's get into announcing the winner of the last Here we are then guys on the previous video how to avoid valio dropship in It got a really good sponsor. Thank you very much for the support If you haven't seen the video yet, please do make sure you go and check it out So i'm just going to take the url then copy that head over to the random comment picker Get youtube comments. We had 69 that is definitely a record So thank you very much guys for the support for the channels with absolutely crazy We're going to be at 5000 subs really soon i think And the winner of the previous video then was cameron. So this was very helpful and encouraging things So thanks cameron. I really appreciate your comment. Make sure you reach out on instagram We can get that called arranged and guys if you didn't win this time and you fit up Well, you just haven't been very lucky recently and you just want to get straight down to business and book a call Then you can do so make sure you check out the link in the video description below And that being said guys, thank you very much for watching this video and i see you in the next one


In this video, we're going to discuss the solution to question number seven from the final exam for Math 12-20. And in this question, we're asked to set up the integral to find the area of the region under the parametric curve given as x equals 1 plus e to the 2t, and y equals e to the t, where x ranges from 1 to 2. And this question is to set up the integral type question. Although simplifications are necessary, we are not expected to actually evaluate the integral for this question. So the start of this one is to recognize that to find the area under a curve, we want to integrate the expression y dx. And this is also relevant for parametric curves, and this actually gives us a way of how we want to compute this. So the integral, now we're going to try to set up a here. We're going to integrate the, well, to get the area, we get y times dx, y is the height of the rectangle, dx is the thickness. So we're going to insert the y function as it's given. So that gives us an e to the t. Then we're going to insert dx where we take the derivative of the x there with respect to t, in which case that's going to give us 2e to the 2t dt, like so. And so by labeling, we see there's the y coordinate right here. Here is the dx right there. And so that gets us most of the way there. The last thing to do is the bounds here. So we have to identify the bounds. And in terms of the integral itself, there's not really a lot of simplification to do there. You could leave it factored in the way that you have before, or you could bring out the 2e to the t, e to the 2t, like so. I mean, you of course can add them together. The exponents e to the t times e to the 2t would be e to the 3t dt. And so again, this wouldn't be a hard anti-derivative, but we're not actually asked to set it up. I'm sorry, we are asked to set it up. We're not asked to evaluate it. So the last thing to identify are the bounds here. So as x approaches 1 and x approaches 2, what happens? So as x approaches, as x is going closer to 2, we then plug, we have to solve this equation right here. We have 2 equals 1 plus e to the 2t. It's attracting 1 from both sides. We get 1 equals e to the 2t. Taking the natural log of both sides, you're going to see that 0 equals 2t, and therefore, t would equal 0. That's going to be the upper bound of this thing. So we're going to get 0 as the upper bound. As the lower bound, we take x equal to 1, and so we have 1 equals 1 plus e to the 2t. So attracting 1, you're going to get 0 equals e to the 2t. Now, one thing I should mention is that the exponential function can never actually equal 0. So it's tempting to say that, oh, there's no solution here. But in all reality, although e to the 2t cannot equal 0, we can have that e to the 2t approaches 0. And so really, we think of this as a limit. What happens is x approaches 1. So in that situation, when can e to the 2t approach 0? So kind of amending what we said earlier. So we want 1 plus e to the 2t to approach 1. That means e to the 2t should approach 0. And that happens, of course, as 2t approaches negative infinity, the horizontal asymptote there. And so that's telling us that t is approaching negative infinity as well. And so it turns out that this integral is actually was an improper integral in disguise. Kind of like the Decepticons there, in which case the lower bound actually mean negative infinity here. So our integral would be from negative infinity to 0 of 2 times e to the 3t dt. And honestly speaking here, as this one was meant just to set it up, if you left it factored as e to the t times 2e to the 2t dt, that would be perfectly fine. You do have the bounds negative infinity to 0. So if I was looking at this one, things I'd want to grade is that definitely I want to see that you swapped from the x values to the t values. So we need the bounds to be negative infinity to be 0. You'd have the y-coordinate e to the t. You have the derivative of the x-coordinate 2e to the 2t. You also need to have the differential, the dt here. That is part of the integral. Its omission would be a curvature of a point there. And this shows you how you could set up the integral to find the area under this parametric curve.