Okay, so thanks for being here and today I'm going to be talking about load balancing and specifically its applications towards networks in general and I'm going to be focusing upon what load balancers are and how they are implemented. I'm mostly going to focusing upon algorithm analysis, what algorithms are being used for load balancing and then I'll be touching a bit upon what services are there in place to implement load balancing. So the idea for this came to me through one of the courses I was doing last semester, so last year. So I was doing a course on system administration and there I was learning about servers and networks and what types of servers there are, how they are being configured and one of the more obvious use cases of servers to me as a person new to this was about how they are going to manage load. So as a person who spent a lot of time on the internet, I always wanted to access whatever I could in the quickest time possible. So that's how actually came about load balancing and so that's the title of my talk right now. So a bit about myself, I am Shivayan Mian and I am a so for more student at TripleIT Delhi doing computer science and engineering and I did my Google summer of code last year under the low-clack team and I was also one of the guys behind the SUSE AI that you all have been seeing a lot of. So I kind of do a lot of stuff, I've been doing meddling around with AI and this is obviously a DevOps talk and I kind of end up working with whatever I find interesting and you can contact me on that email, I know this is a bit hard to memorize but that's my GitHub handle and you can always look me up on Facebook. So what's it, what's the big deal, what is load balancing? So it's very simple.  So that's as simple as it gets. So by optimal here, I mean you need to maintain the minimum response time for accessing the service, you need to get the maximum throughput and you also need to reduce the overhead or the load on the servers. So that's how load balancing works. So as you can see, it's just a traffic comes and load balancing, load balancer kind of acts as a middle person between the client and the servers and it depending on some algorithm and some obviously some parameters about the server, servers and the clients, it routes the request to some one of the servers. So some of the servers. So basically. So why do we need load balancing? So the first reason we need load balancing is simplification. So it is a single point of entry to for the client because as I said this acts as a middle person between the client and the server. So the client goes to the when a client wants to access any website. So the website or the IP is actually going to is actually the one of the load balancer and when he goes there the load balancer routes it to one of the servers indirectly invisibly to him and that's why it's like a single point of entry and obviously this this makes use of abstraction because of that and this is scalable because you can involve as many servers you like and you can have as many clients you want. You can even have distributed load balancers because so for bigger systems, bigger companies they use distributed load balancers and reusability. So here there's so load balancers involve reusability of server IPs. This is a technique. This is called TCP multiplexing. So whenever a client wants to access something so the load balancer maintains a server pool of sorts. It maintains the IP addresses of all the servers and whenever a client wants to access it, it just picks one and then it allocates it to the client and all of this can be reused. So that's what is reusability. Then it load balancers is one of the most important features they are supposed to implement failover which is when a server goes down then the rest of it should be able to work perfectly. You should be able to balance load between the rest of the servers. So they mostly involve stuff like error reporting, logging and yeah, it's obviously dynamic because why you can obviously one of the servers goes down, the load is balanced between all of the other servers and if you want to add a new server, you can add it and the load will be distributed between the other servers. Responsiveness, as I said, so one of the core features of load balancers is to minimize response time and distribute load efficiently. So the response time obviously depends on the kind of algorithm you're using. So it's pretty obvious. So if you don't have a load balancer and if you're just sending requests to one server or two servers, you don't have a load balancer so you have a high chance of many requests being accumulated on one server itself and that's going to use up your server's resources and obviously that's going to introduce some sort of lag. So the algorithm here plays a big part in how the load is being distributed. And this is really important. So this slide is probably a bit misleading. So ADC isn't actually a consequence of load balancing. It's actually the other way around. So ADC here means application delivery controller. Load balancers are actually implemented within application delivery controllers these days and what an ADC is, ADC is a software or a device that does some common tasks for the web servers so that the load on them is reduced. So a very trivial example, suppose maybe you want to go to the admin page of some website, let's say Stack Overflow. So maybe you want to go to the stackoverflow.com.admin.php. It exists by the way. And obviously you need an anonymous user should not be able to access that. And only authenticated user should be. So what you can do instead is place the authentication within the load balancer instead of all of the servers. So that the load on them will obviously be reduced because it directly hits the load balancer, the ADC, and then it gets redirected back. So an ADC will implement a client to server to client flow because the client will send a request to the server and the ADC actually has an additional capability. It has the capability to modify or to modify the response that the client gets. So and that reduces server loads and this ADC is, it involves load balancing. They have load balancers built in and this is how load balancers are implemented today. So some services, well hardware, so they're hardware based and software based load balancers in the market. So in hardware based, I think F5 is one of the more known names. So they provide load balancers to Microsoft actually. And F5 is the one that actually came up with the term ADC. They actually use it. So and software based, IngenX, IngenX everybody's used it here and it's pretty easy to use. You just need a config file and just you add parameters and it just starts up. And this another thing called balancing and that's actually open source. That's why it's here and there's net skill of my Citrix and so on. Now let's get to the fun part. This is going to be tasty because I'm going to be talking about algorithms now. So while I was doing my project, I was actually reading about what are the algorithms being used. So I observed that many of these companies actually use really naive algorithms like round robin or lease scones on random. Random is pretty easy, right? And all of these are really trivial to implement. So what actually did strike me was, is there a better way to do something? And you can have many, many parameters. You can have a much larger load and maybe some other parameters or features which are in the server that you may have not considered, which we may have to filter in. So that's what I'm going to be discussing. How efficient are these algorithms? So round robin is basically if you have K servers, then the ith request goes to the I mod K server. I am using I mod K because the first request will go to the first server, the second will go to the second, and the K plus 1th request will go to the first. So it's basically I mod K. And lease cons, basically the load balancer will route the request to the server with the least number of active connections. And random is random, just this has equal probability of any server hitting. So pros, obviously very simple to implement, scalable, you can add any number of servers you like. And for random, this has easy failover. Even if something goes down, it's anywhere random, right? So it can easily balance between the rest. And random also has really less number of edge cases. So there is probably very less number of instances that a random can actually completely fail in. So for lease connections, there are actually some really big edge cases, which is why it's not preferred. And for distributed load balancers, and it's the same approach. So in distributed load balancer, you have many load balancers, right? So if one load balancer implements random, the other one implements random. So the combination of them will obviously be random. So it's like the same approach. What's bad in this? So obviously, you are not filtering in request latency at this point. So it's not guaranteed that every request is going to take the same amount of time. And it's not guaranteed that the server will react in the same amount of time. And lease connections in RR have a lot of edge cases. So I'll give you an edge case. So suppose you have n servers, and all of these n servers have something, have load like 100 or maybe 1,000 connections. And suppose you add one more server, okay? So if you have something like leased cons, so that server will obviously have no connection, so that will be a lease connected thing. So as soon as you add that server, the load balancer will be like bam. And all the connections will be routed there, and because it's so much of load, the server will fail. So that's the edge case there. So and obviously this is actually reducing the capacity of the usable space you have. So the reason that I'm going to be analyzing why this is actually going to be happening through one of the most simple and well-known problems in probability theory, which is the balls into bins problem.  What is the maximum number of balls that can go into a bin for maximum likelihood? Because obviously you can randomly just put, you can have a chance that all the m balls go into one bin. But that's really not likely. So in the maximum likelihood circumstance, what is the maximum number of balls that can actually go into a bin?  So that's how we can actually analyze. So the solution for the balls into bins problem was actually figured out in this paper, and the solution is actually quite nice.  So basically, this is like, okay. So I can't actually explain this much. So with the KAs, they have like four options of m and n. And this was a paper by Rab and Stieger. And they actually found out a solution for the number of balls, for the maximum number of balls that can go in. So being the guy I am, I didn't actually go much into the proof of it. I obviously wouldn't understand it that much. So well, let's go to some code. Let us consider we just have these n bins, and we have m balls. So here, I'm just using n is the number of servers, m is the number of records. I'll just set them to some values. And then you have n servers, obviously. And I'm randomly picking up indices, and then I'm just incrementing them by one. That is actually basically a request hitting one of the servers. And then what I'm doing, I'm just printing the server list. And then I'm printing the, what's the maximum load of server has, the minimum and the standard deviation. So this is what you get on a random run, just one run. So this is basically this. And you see the maximum load of servers getting is 139. And the minimum is 100. And this standard deviation is like 12. And you see, it's like there is like a 39 request difference, which is actually quite a lot. It's like two extremes. One is actually a bit less, and the other one is a lot. So what do you actually want in load balancing? As I said, you need to reduce overhead. All of the servers should actually have equal load, because in many cases, you may have the same number of resources for the server. They might have the same memory, etc. So they should kind of all be balanced equally. And also, this is actually, this has one limitation, because I'm just incrementing by one. I'm just treating all requests to be equal, which is not the case. Because obviously the request can take any amount of time. They won't take the same amount of time. So they actually can't be treated the same. So we need to filter in something called latency into this. Basically the response time. We need to filter latency into this to model this better. So how do we model latency? So because yeah, how do we model latency? So there are a couple of things done in this. So there's this guy, I think his name is Andrew. I don't know his surname, but anyway. So what he did was, this is basically a graph of response times. And I think this is number of servers, I think, number of requests. And it's basically response times he was getting. And this was approximating a Pareto and or a log normal distribution. So by the way, Pareto is also a log distribution, which is mapped to e to the power x or something like that. But most of us, we actually use log normal distribution to model latencies. And there are a couple of reasons for this. So one reason for this is basically entropy. So first is the principle of maximum entropy. It states that the ideal distribution is actually the one which has the least entropy or something. So log normal is actually the yellow line acting. This actually fits in quite a lot, quite good. And also we tend to use logarithms for parameters that are different, that are independent. So this is basically a graph of he used about five or more than five parameters. So because these parameters are independent, so just taking the log, you can just add them together. So that's why it's actually pretty nice to use. So that's one of the ways. And that's why in entropy information, it's actually treated as the negative log. You actually use a log. So that's why we are actually using log normal here. There can be better ways to express this possibly. And this was this paper by Ulrich and Miller. They actually used the log normal distribution and found out that it fitted really well to reaction times and so on. So what we are going to do is we are going to have a log normal distribution to model latencies. And since we actually don't have any of that right now, so what we are going to do is we are going to generate latencies. And then that's how we are going to model it and we are going to generate them so that the mean is one. They are all around one. So doing this again, so basically since this is log normal, so I'll tell you the N and M remain the same. The capital M and capital S in a log normal distribution are basically the mean of the natural log of your random variable, which here is latency. And S is the standard deviation. And in the paper here, when they actually use that and they actually set the SG to like 0.15, I think. They used SDS 0.15, I'm using 1.15, it's just a random thing. So then I'm just, this mean is how the mean of a log normal distribution is. And base latency is basically you can't have latency as zero. There can't be latency zero. You can't have response time as zero. So I'm just setting it to 0.05 in like five milliseconds. And then normalizing is basically scaling because I'm setting the mean to one. I want all of them to be around the mean. So it's just basically scaling down and then I'm just basically doing that. So and what I'm adding is the normalized weight. And I'm then doing the same thing. So what we get here is something like this. So this is actually really skewed. So the maximum is 160, the minimum is 185, and the SD is 21. Which is actually a larger variation than what we saw before. So this will actually be really skewed and kind of oscillating kind of stuff. So basically, there is actually no perfect way to map this. So we had to, there's actually no perfect way to balance load. So there's actually another way to think of this. You can have another algorithm for this maybe, where you could use a greedy approach. It's a greedy algorithm, which actually works really well. And this algorithm, which I'm going to describe right now, is I think the one that's being used today. It's a really well-known algorithm. It's called the join the shortest queue algorithm. Basically it is joined to the server with least number of unfinished requests. So it basically routes to the server, which has the least number of unfinished requests. It is similar to lease connections. And we use something like randomized joint shortest queue. So randomized because as I told you, lease connections has an edge case. That if you have a lot of load on the other servers, and a lot of requests are coming, and if you are just one more server, then that server is going to get a lot of load. So which is not cool. So randomized JS queue is going to implement the failover capability. And it's actually going to prevent that from happening. So randomized JS queue is actually really used. So if I need to implement randomized JS queue, I just chain like two lines. So the earlier piece of code we had was we just took in this line here in the loop for weight and NP random. So basically we are choosing a random server, and then we are just adding a normal. And then we are just adding the normalized weight to it. So in the JS queue, what we do is we just pick up two indices, two servers, and then we compare them. And the one with the smallest is the one we actually add to. So we just pick up two at a time, you can pick up any. So it's actually been found out that the powers of twos are actually better. So if you do it two at a time, then it's kind of good, but you can do it any. So I basically pick two and then I compare them and I find out the one with the least load. And then I just add the weight to this. And this gives a really nice result. So the standard deviation is dropped to three. And the maximum is 127 and the minimum is 114, which is really close. And this is actually really balanced kind of setup. So it's not that this is the most efficient algorithm. Obviously, there's a lot being done here. So then there's stuff coming up. It's a really on field of research. But this is one of the more efficient algorithms. And as I said, there is actually no perfect algorithm to balance load, which can probably filter in everything. Because there is going to be some or the other stuff happening, which is going to prevent you from doing that. But yeah, JS queue is actually really efficient. And well, yeah, so to wrap it up, well, I've just seen going through all these algorithms. And well, I hope this helps you build up some better algorithms. And I think making software load balancers is actually pretty simple. So while I was working on my project, so I use node.js. And there are actually really helpful libraries out there. There's one called C port, which actually implements the failover all by itself, which actually maintains the cluster. And once your cluster is there, the load balancing cluster is already maintained, then all you need to figure, write the code for is the algorithm. And round robin and lease cons is actually pretty simple. You just need the list of the servers, and then you can just balance load on this. So well, I think that's it. Thanks a lot. And any questions? Thank you. Yeah, anybody have a question about load balancing? It's not necessarily related to what you were talking about. You're talking about the algorithms with respect to load balancing. So load balancing is obviously related to DevOps. OK, so my question is more along the lines of the load is being balanced with the load balancer. What about high availability of the load balancer itself? So that's when you have high availability of the load balancer. So basically, you're considering the case when the balancer goes on and what happens. So that's when you use load balancer. That's when you use a distributed system, obviously. So that's when you use a distributed system. You can't actually have one load balancer for all of the servers you have. So the companies that you have, they have so many servers. You can't have one load balancer for that. And besides, obviously, they are obviously taking more measures to keep the load balancer active. So they are caching all its data and all of that. So yeah, it's mostly implemented distributed kind of system. You can't have one. Any other questions? OK. OK, thanks. Thank you. Make sure you have a question.


Welcome back. Today is actually Kiss and Makeup Day, a special holiday dedicated to reconciliation and celebrating the beauty of reconciliation. And this day was created by author Thomas Stern in 2001 as an opportunity for people to make peace with those who may have heard them or vice versa, like someone who is sitting at this table with me tonight. It's a great thing for us all to practice forgiveness and express our love through acts of kindness towards one another. And on that note, Dami Lola. Minko, nobody is kissing and making no mistakes. Please, please, please, please, please, please. So it's Kiss and Makeup Day. Have you ever gotten into a situation of some sort where you have had to just say, you know, let's just break your heartches? Yeah, well, I think I do that a lot. And the other time when I was wondering, am I a people pleaser person? But then I realized that I don't like conflict. I kind of get aggressive and I've gotten to acknowledge the fact that most people don't know how to handle sensitive people. So I realized that on days when I become super sensitive, I'm always quick to be the person to just kiss and make up. But I don't know, I find myself in that a lot of times. I mostly be with my family. Right?  You know what, yeah, I value the relationship more than my grudge and what. Fair enough, fair enough. Dami, your thoughts on this? I mean, it depends on the situation. Sometimes if the situation calls for it. Sometimes if the situation calls for a little confrontation, sometimes you might just need to take courage and a foundation and survive actively. I genuinely believe that everybody has a reason for doing whatever it is.   Yeah, let me put it that way. So if the situation calls for a kiss and make up, if it doesn't call for a kiss and make up really, sometimes forgiving people silently also works. Yeah. Not necessarily saying it to their face, just forgive and move on. But ultimately, peace, maybe I'm another key for peace sometimes. Are you?  Okay, Dami, what do you find for us in the news? Okay, so what I found in the news, so I mean, recently, I think, recently was like two days ago, maybe even yesterday, he said Calabar, University of Calabar students who were, I think some of them were raped or something like that. Okay, that's a reverse story. The one for Calabar is the professor. Yes, that's what I wanted to remember. Sexual assault.  Yeah, the professor who... I can't even say it out because it's very appalling. Asking students to perform a sexual activity for grades and it's very, very... And apparently, this person has been doing it for years. This has been going on for years. He was suspended and then being stated. So that's why this, even this suspension now that they have suspended him, many people are just like, they're not even stating it again because it's like the usual thing. So really, actually, it's just this really going to be served. Anyway, a group, the Women's Network has appealed to President Bola and made Tino Buto assent to the prevention, prohibition and redress out of sexual harassment, and tertiary education institutions bill passed by the Ninth National Assembly. The group similarly recommended that educational institutions in Nigeria should, as a matter of necessity, develop a sexual and gender harassment policy to safeguard the dignity of girls with a view of providing a safe environment for learning. Because really, for law students to... First of all, I don't think protest is something that law students should do. So for them to actually come out en masse and protest, it means that the matter is long overdue and they're really tired. And for one, I'm very glad and impressed that they were very brave to actually come out to protest because I can't even imagine being in university now and then for me to pass a course, lecturers say I must come. Hey, I will go to the mountain. We will set this in the spiritual realm because ha, it is really crazy. So I mean, for this, what I've been going on and on really, I believe that... It's about time. I don't even think that the president or the president should even delidally about it. It is something that, I mean, square head, let's just get this out of the system once and for a while. But then again, like I said, we can only hope that justice is going to be served this time around. I mean, even if they pass the bill, there is always this thing about Nigeria and implementation. We have implementation problem in Nigeria, honestly speaking. It's even a shame that we're even still dealing with something as trivial as this. It doesn't mean anything. It takes for great. In 2023, with all the problems in this world, one lecturer will still sit down and say, you understand from your students. Your problem in this life is not fuel, is not renewed. Everything is over. Even if you want to do whatever it is, you want to do whatever it is you want to do. Take it outside.   Come on. To say it is appalling is actually to say the least. But then we can only hope. I just think women deserve a little bit more honor. Don't you just get tired of your body being seen as an object? You see a man and you're like, hey, I need this. Could you help me with this? And automatically it just translates into there are very few men who are disciplined enough to not ask you for sex. And even in the middle of that discipline, at some point or the other, they will always insinuate it to just try you and see it by presence. But it will work. It, it, it. I'm just tired. All my time in the university, I actually never encountered, because I don't know if I would be able to do it if I encountered something like this in a traditional touch show. So because I want to pass in school, I have to come as leg, make it make sense, please. Yeah. Oh, it's about petrol price. So in Enugu state too. And I'm particularly happy about this news because each time I travel to the village and from Anambra, but I also travel to Enugu and Anambra whenever I'm in the East, there is just this thing that Easterners do. It's either they increase the price of fuel or they go down, they'll be selling 680. I don't know why they do that. I don't really understand. Okay, well, transportation. But then this time around, the governor of Enugu state, Peter Ambar, has called them out. I think he was speaking through the commissioner for special duties, Mr. Mekajoku. He was saying that, oh, he paid an unscheduled visit to like several fuel stations in Enugu. Both the major ones and the minor ones. They are meters we are not accurate. So they were cheating on customers. And you know, when people are lamenting, you feel powerless, but at this point, like the moment he was going through the visit, you literally see people like hovering around him and like they were happy. It was like, thank you, thank you, because it doesn't feel good to be cheated. Fuel is already expensive and you're increasing price. Ambar. I think it's just insensitive and selfish. Maybe there's a better choice of what, but that's how I feel. Well, that's what it is. It's just insensitive and selfish, actually. Okay, well, my story, I see if it's not enough that they are insensitive and selfish. They are not lying again now. Because the government is definitely facing heavy criticism over the 4.1% unemployment data. I don't remember. Okay, I think it was NG, I was having this conversation with last night before we came on air. So unemployment rate has reduced. I was like, sorry, what did you say? Reduced or increased? She said reduced. I said, wait, she said that's what she saw in the news and I already am like, excuse you, reduced from 2021 till now. You're telling me it has dropped. So they claim that it has dropped from 33. something percent to 4.1%. In which country? In... I didn't get the memo. I didn't get the memo. Definitely, that's not true. So the Niger Labor Congress through its National Secretary General has kicked against the new unemployment figures data that was released by the National Bureau of Statistics saying it is not reflective of the current realities of this country. Which is the truth, actually. And despite stating that 133 million Nigerians were multi-dimensionally poor as of November 2022, the NBS on Thursday reviewed that unemployment rates dropped to 4.1% in the first quarter of 2023. This same first quarter of 2020 now, I know how many people that do not have jobs. How many people have even the government? Who is supposed to be the highest employer of labor? How many people have the government actually even employed? So here is the thing, if there is increased employment what is now the need for palliatives? Right. Why are you there going about sharing palliatives? If people are making more and getting more employed then the government shouldn't be spending precious money that should be focused on other things. On palliatives. What's that thing called now? The minimum wage is very low. So they are probably trying to augment. So use the money spent on palliatives add it to minimum wage and increase it. It's more hard. No, but okay. So someone was saying that it's probably the dynamics or other dimensions they are looking at it from. Maybe a lot of people have not created their own businesses. I said okay, true. We now have more businesses and online businesses that are not loved. But are you saying that that is the statistic that they are using to measure this? I'm not sure. I don't think so.  How many people are going to be employed by private sectors? Anyway, let's come back to our conversation for tonight's ride. We're talking about professionalism from your online persona but when we come back after the break we'll continue the conversation. See you soon.


Man is a cool, cool when it's a Monday. Why am I so used to Wednesday? Because maybe Wednesday is my favorite day. But I also love Mondays because Mondays are MCM. I am a man, I'm proud to be one. This is why it's 5-4 and this is why in the morning. And today is MCM man crush Monday. So few minutes ago you were here with the drum discussing careers and then there was youth and politics. But I was more interested in career and it's this that informs what we are going to do next. And that is choices. Parents choosing careers and spouses and maybe even friends for their children. They say that they love them and in fact our parents love us. There is nobody on earth that wants good for you more than your parents. Is it good when they want to choose everything for you so that you just remain to follow what they do. From childhood and I'm talking about after the age of 18 where you also have your right conscience or right to choose they continue choosing for you. Is it good or bad? It's there in our social media platform. So start commenting and go on. We'll read them at the end of this all. My name is Ankara Kaisu and I am not alone in this house. I carefully chose this panel. You will understand when we shall have done introduction. We have teacher charity and we have job or cool. How are you guys? We are fine. We are going to start with you. You're going to tell us everything about you. You know you were not new here but it's been a while since you came here. So tell us everything that you think we need to know about you. That I think the world should know about you. I'm teacher charity. Yes. I'm a teacher, I'm a mother, I'm a wife and by passion I'm a journalist. Professionally I'm a teacher, passionately I'm a journalist. Actually I love writing. What is your dad, the career of your dad?  I told you this and this is why I chose this panel. I told you this and this is why you will get to know this after this. You have social media platforms? At Iliya Sikwadi. Just that. In Twitter. Just that. LinkedIn everywhere. WhatsApp that. At Iliya Sikwadi. Yes. At Iliya Sikwadi. We missed you. It's been a while. It's been a while. Let's get to the gentleman of the day. You know today is MCM like Man Crush Monday. So you are the man of the moment and it's your first time here. So job tell us. Tell us what you think we need to know about you. Okay. I'm Job. Okul by name. Technically I'm a journalist. Pasi. What are you? I'm a father. I don't know why I doubt this but just go on. Okay. I'm a father. A son to a pastor. PK. Islaid. I did communication in tourism. Communication in tourism. It's so close to journalism. In the field. You are in this field. That's very nice. So nice welcome here. I want to tell you that I told you, I chose carefully. You are not just a son of teacher. A daughter to teachers. Like both parents of a tindi are teachers. Job is son of pastor. And SDA pastas, and not even the contemporary ones, the classical SDA pastas, where pastas were very few, you could get one in Nairobi and another one in Machakos, so those guys used to be very strict. I don't know any person who is stricter than a teacher and a past especially on their children. So I know they were controlled by their fathers or mothers and all that, and that's why we want to get a first hand experience on this.  To start with, let me say that I have the best dad in the whole world. My father is the best. I hope he's watching. He's watching by the way. He just retired his at home. I know he's watching me wherever he is. I have the best father and he has worked with me through all phases of my life to date. So after school, after fomfom, on matters choices, my father has been there making for me choices. But at that point I thought I was able to make my own choices. Some went on well, others were crushed and here you see parents are parents. Even if you met, you'll come back, they'll still welcome you. So after fomfom, I never wanted to be a teacher. I looked at myself and I just didn't see any teaching thing in me. I only came to realize that I'm a good teacher after training, after graduating, after teaching for two years. Actually when we went for this, we call it Tusome, we went for the Tusome training. Our coach, our cluster coach was the one who identified the teaching portion in me. I didn't even know that I could teach. The teaching skill in me? Because the person is not there. Was not there? He saw it, it's me who didn't see it but he saw that portion in me. And from there I just got strength, I felt like I'm really at it and I did well. And by that time I was living here, I was heading a school at Kasarana. I know, I know. What did you want to be? I wanted to be a journalist. But my father kept on saying that he can only pay for two courses for his children. Medical and education only. Our first boy is a teacher, a monster teacher. And you see when you are sponsored you have to be a lawyer. I cannot go around pushing my father that I don't want them or don't want me. I became a teacher but I'll soon deviate from it. Okay, let's get to job. The son of a pastor. By the way, the job they said, she's called Stella Omwenga. You will see her after the show, she will come to greet you. Stella, after this, come and greet the son of a pastor. Tell us your experience job on, not on job but on education on education on career choices and all that. By the way, we'll come back to choices of spouses and all that because I know that is another day area. So you have to tell us about your education and career choices and all that regarding to pastor Okuru. Okay, for a start, I think I have the best dad. If someone could work on you in the morning for me, he thinks he's going to do when he's away. What do you mean work on you? Can you throw me in the morning fast? I very go out. Kenning has breakfast. But fine, he was a loving father. He could eat out of love. And then when it came to post 4-4, we sat down in the talk. Technically, according to him, he wanted me to be a lawyer. It's something I'm pursuing in life later on. To me, I had a lot of interest in writing and speaking. By birth, I'm a sanguine. So I talk a lot and I write a lot. So when it came to my career choice, because whatever I wanted me to do, you didn't give me that opportunity to choose whatever I wanted to do. When it came to the diversity, I got an option to get what I wanted to do. Because I love travelling a lot. Other than travelling, I also write a lot, interact with people a lot. Say it to God because that favor, my nature. With him, I never had any problem. What he kept on insisting until the point of his death was, do what you need to do. After that, at least in life, you fulfill my wish. Of being a lawyer.  Because you didn't have an option because of fee. If you had some sort of fee, you could do journalism and leave teaching. But job defied. He wanted you to be a lawyer. He suggested that you become a lawyer. But you talked, I told him dad, find that you can work but not now. Oh. And he accepted. Oh, he accepted. So at least he was flexible. Was very flexible when it comes to matters education. Yes. But when it comes to those stories. At what point did he die? Dad, when you had finished university or something. No, when I was in my first year. Oh, sorry. But he saw you like when you started learning about your career. Do you remember when he came to UN, we came with him? Yes. He came and did for your intention. In my first thing. He walked you through all those steps. All those steps. But then it was very analog. Analog. So you had to queue. Yes.  You jump to the library, another queue. Go to so assumed authority up there. Another queue. And I can imagine you from home ring a ga kelo. You cannot jump queue. You are very loyal. And my case was quite different. Yes. You see, the day actually I just got converted into SDA. I was a Catholic. Actually I was from the convent. I wanted to be a nun. What? So today maybe you could have not known me. I was in the convent. I got converted into SDA. And then our church pastor, Pastor Grega. I think it's the one who talked to my mother that let this lady go to Kamagambad Ventist College. And by the way that is Kamagambad Ventist College changed my life. How? All round. Actually I was. That's why you went to learn why you need to change your life. Everything. Actually it shaped my life whole. All corners. I mean emotionally.  A very big part. Actually I don't even regret not joining university. I could have been dead by now. Dead. So I went to college alone. Nobody took me and like a job. You see job was taken by the father. Yes. I went alone. Actually from our home to college was 20 shillings. From Rongo to Kamagambad. And I even cried because you see I wanted to go to Shanzu Teacher's College.  Yeah. And my father was there. He actually said that you see you were given all the time to read, to study in school for the four years. Those who studied and scored A are not crying now. Look at this. Actually they are looking for the colleges which they are supposed to join on internet. And here you are. You are very busy crying and you failed. You see I just... What are you calling a failure? According to him I failed. Actually I'm the only person in our family who did not join university. Oh who didn't go direct to them? Who didn't go direct. I'm the only one. According to him I failed. But you see God has a way of doing things. I think God just wanted me to go there so that I get shaped.  This month I'll be there. Because I know you charity.  You've not told us about your new book. I know you will do it maybe at the end of the show.  So on this job, on the career choices. I'm going through why parents choose careers for their children. And one of the reasons was that they feel their children are extension of themselves. So what he didn't achieve in life, the ones achieved through you. I've talked to several parents who told me I was advising to go back to school. They are still tender ages but they are parent. And they are saying, me I'm concentrating on my children. Whatever I've not achieved, my children will achieve for me. I'll get to where I didn't go. They want better life for their children. What do you feel about this as your background and everything? Parents thinking that children are extension so they should choose for them what to do.  My level of location as per now is higher than us. But she always says this. The moment you take in a child past 4-4 as a parent, you read about cases certificate because you know everything. When they go to the university level, you have a degree. As much as they never went to school but experience wise and laugh then the knowledge gap that you have in your head has increased that much further. There is one too. If in that matter parents tends to believe that what they want for their children is the best. In a way it is true. In a way it is true because they see it further than we do but in another option it is good to give a child to choose what they want to be. As a child grows up, just know from the level from age 2, 3, 4 the possible career this baby can have. Our sister Tindi talks a lot.  Both of you are sanguins. She is also a sanguin. She is more sanguin than you. She is sanguini if that is an English word. Now, at the end of the day, monitor your child, then see what they can become in life. Don't force it on them.  You know what? No, that you wanted me to do that in future. I never lose an argument. I never lose an argument. Even if I am wrong, you must win. Even if I am wrong, it is not dangerous. You will tell us after this if that will be dangerous maybe for his marriage. But go on for now. It is not dangerous. It is the one who has experience, it is the one who will tell us. My dad knows maybe that is a marriage but my dad knows me that I have to. You don't want to lose this argument also. But go on. You have sold me a job. You are very good at deviating facts. It's true, this is a path. I take a different road towards the same direction. So he studied you? So he studied me a lot. When I was a 7, he told me you have to be a lawyer. I told him dad, I am working on that. When I went to high school, but in my high school report form, let me call it that, the only thing my dad could look into were the languages, history. Oh, because he was very sure you could be a lawyer. He was very sure of what he wanted to be like. He would never bother about any other subject most of the times. And he could give me a challenge.  And the challenge was very nice. You always promised food. Food? Not money. It's like that is good for you. No other. And he's saying no other. That's a subject for another time. That is history now. The no other party is history. But... So with all this promise, something works in my favor. The twin came to choose what we wanted to do. I told him dad, find this works with this course. But this always works with this. With this and that course. So let me do this. We must do this. Because time is still there for us. And by the way, talking and communication also go a long way. There are also flabs.  It's just a matter of time. A matter of molding. Charity, don't you think talking too much and winning arguments always is dangerous for a marriage? It is very dangerous. But it is actually, he has even confessed that he knows very well that he is wrong, but he insists that he is right. That is very dangerous. And to marriage, I heard him saying that he's asked. Okay. It could be mine. But even in yours, I'm very sure this is a very serious factor that has to affect your heart. You cannot be right always. It's always important to accept when you are wrong. Actually just consent. Just say I'm wrong here. I'm sorry. And then you see how to go about it. You cannot just insist to be right. He wants to rebut, but I won't allow him because he don't want to lose that. He said he was wrong. This is another event. This is another event. It does not want to lose. We may end up arguing that way. I know him. There is something about our parents that I want us to help here. That they look on what is trending on the market and think this is what my child could do. But I think that is dangerous. There is a time, CDs now. You remember, not CD of what youth call CD, but compact disc where they record movies and all that. There are people who went to school to make that. But you know, that one is getting out of market now. So when it was trending maybe in the year 2027, CD was the thing. Compact disc and DVDs were the thing. So a parent could advise a child then back then to study maybe making that. Or maybe at a writer which is no longer there. I don't know whether any of you so at a writer. So when they school. It's obsolete. Like they went obsolete. But parents look on what is trending, what is giving a lot of people job and advise their children to do that. When maybe in 10, 20 years time that would be mechanism. Actually that is not even a problem in the house or in the country. Let's say it is just a global thing. Most of us think that most of us want to go to school to get employment. And this is something that when you when you tell your parents when you try to reason away from it you become like an outcast. So it is important that we know that we don't go to school to get employed.  Today I am a writer. I write and I am so much comfortable in writing. So let us just teach our children that people don't go to school to get employment. You also go to school to create employment. You go to school to grow mentally. Like I always tell my class two paupils that the first person to finish his or her work you make a line. If you do it last you make a line after that person. That is patience.   You see we go to school to grow socially, emotionally. There are so many things that we acquire in school that we cannot just focus on employment. But it is also right. You see people are frustrated.  So when you go and when you go to maybe to the college right now to study whatever you are talking about making CDs what will it help you with? It is also important to get ideas of people around you influence. But the position making remains with you. You believe in yourself even when nobody believes in you. It is important. I think she is a teacher. Yes. She went to school. Yes. Went to Kama Gambo. In the 20s she has a bus fare. Finished. Remember that. Ya. Came to Nairobi. Secured a job. But virtue of her good leadership skills she learnt in school. She became a teacher to an institution. What was that? An Nairobi institution. Nairobi institution. What was that? She went to school to get a job. Teaching 72 pupils how to pangalain and how to be patient is part of whatever she got in school. Why she applied it in a place of work. So this notion of that they want to go to school not to get a job maybe by studying to get a job because there is no way to be told this job is for those who never went to school to study this. It never happens. I think most of us are in school as I am getting skills you are sure of something at the end of the tunnel maybe you hope after finishing this there is some job somewhere. That is why our parents struggle to take us through the education because maybe your your parents are not that much rich they are not wealthy enough but they are struggling you see there is a struggle in this family and you hope that maybe when they change the world they see a struggle. And then after struggling you do for more than 4 years all those years through school you come back after graduating then you take a dad dad still hasn't put a cousin he changed my shayatu I can use my skills somewhere else where? That is just an underscore of what I was saying that parent will be great disappointed yes amplified what she was saying that is what I was saying in a different angle actually let's say like I was saying I did not train to as a teacher to be a teacher for the rest of my life there are skills I learnt there that I can apply somewhere else when that place actually if that is where my passion lies and I use skills that I got from the other side there is nothing wrong we appreciate and if one day I get employed as a teacher there is no problem I can still do 2 or 3 or 4 things there is when she is asked today what are you studying in school? what is your profession? I am a teacher I am a teacher for a job yes the thought of what other skills do you know what do you have come later the basic things I am a teacher they don't even come I am a teacher they show I am a teacher what do you do oh baby someone sees you somewhere our first employment was much of her being what? of training as a teacher not employment but training I must bring this to an end because I know you I know the two of you if I continue like this just as the CSL says as we continue like this we continue non-marrying I must stop non-marrying with you there is one thing about kareya the last thing about kareya pastor Abuia of University of Nairobi he told us that he told his parents that he must go to the University of Nairobi whether he is going to learn funeral management and katarik whether he is going to learn what he insisted that he must go to that particular university and this is also a factor there was some classical mentality that there are institutions that are better than another so parents choose kareya according to where are you going like you didn't want to go to Kamagambu you wanted to go to Shanzu is it right for one to be focused on an institution now we start with you I think there is nothing wrong when you focus on an institution at the same time there is nothing wrong going to anywhere like you cannot you cannot just insist that you go to Nairobi to the University of Nairobi thank you thank you even when you can acquire the same course at Rongo University you see you will have cut cost because let's say if I decide to join Rongo University I will be commuting for more I will have cut so many things but if your parents are in a position to support you you don't have any financial problem there is no problem you can just go to the college of nature wherever you want and you pursue what you want you didn't want to be at the University of Nairobi no they haven't been given the University so that I was so smart may be I can only be managed at the best University at the best University okay paraside depending on the parents at their level of technical tradition of parents in the age of my father and his elder brothers going back there there was no University in Kenya and that was very famous University of Nairobi so that believe that either the University or the University accept University of Nairobi they ever believe that if it is treated it should be a Godi Shanzu, Kaimosi Eregi those form a big big names you should mention Migori Migori may be somewhere in between and Kamagamos the only private college from 1912 1912 so you also speak special with that very special is that the college is not there so that is what they believe they used to believe and so my dad getting admission at University of Nairobi he never opposed when the letter came he supported it because he knew that was the best word that was the best boy having the best brain but at the end of the day I can think today we should focus on where they study focus on what they study and what is being delivered are you sure where doesn't matter at all it does it does in a percent a very minute percentage but that is not a matter of where it's a matter of what and how okay crowning this will you choose only you quickly will you help choose career for your child technically I will guide oh you will guide he will not force if he says otherwise we will let him or her go that way what of you teacher that's what I will do I will just guide her I will guide them because it's more than one I can say I got it already in education okay let's go to this choosing spouse thing and I want to give you short statistics that there's something called arranged marriage arranged marriage is where a parent arranges arranges a marriage for a son or a daughter like parents of this side and parents of that side get together and say let's our sons and daughters get married or my son I think should get married to your daughter and all that my parents were married that way and their base was on a religion called lejo maria was born in that way I'm a lejo maria person for this denomination in our lineage let you let you let your daughter marry my son and all that so that is arranged marriage you know it works that I was very surprised that marriages globally 55% who think 55% are arranged marriages arranged it's only 45% of marriages that people meet and marry without parents knowing arranged marriage is different from forced marriage forced marriage is where you cannot say no and by the way 90% of marriages in India 90 are arranged marriages while 80% of marriages in Afghanistan are forced marriages now what is interesting is that in India 90% of marriages are arranged there is only 1.1% of divorce 1.1% of divorce and globally the global divorce rate is 8.6% and all that what shocked me is also that Kenya currently the divorce rate in Kenya currently is 70% imagine now being 70 people 70% of marriages are breaking in the name of divorce and it was 40% and Kenya is the freest one of the freest from the arranged marriage thing it's very free compared to India and all that so I want you guys to discuss this do you think from this view that it is good for parents to choose spouses for their kids we start ladies first we reject this even after this statistics I still reject it I strongly reject it it is very dangerous and at the same time I can consent to give us a name a percentage in a scale of 1 to 10 1 to 10 let me give you 3 anyway there's nothing wrong with the arranged marriage you see our parents see what we need to be able to see but it is also important for our parents to give us a breathing space that full atmosphere to decide on what you want to do whether you want to settle with them or not there's nothing wrong they can just bring their proper source you will go through them and say I cannot settle with this one and I can settle with this one actually you should be given time to make a very serious personal decision on it yes and whether it is arranged or not those people who are arranged for you will not come and stay with you with this person with the so called spouse you get out and the house remains with the two of you so when it comes to separation or divorce that you are talking about actually we don't operate we take matrimonio leave there is so much heat in marriage when your marriage is hot there is nothing wrong in taking a break you go relax if you can't come back you see how to go about it you see people things are enhancing people are killing each other in marriages actually you even find someone killing the spouse plus the children will you accept a dead child or a divorced child we must accept and I don't know why the church is so quiet about it the church very quiet you see according to the church actually for the church to allow you to divorce it may even take them forever they'll be like just to be there you see we are praying for you yes and assist to love me and assist to love me just be there and that is the same thing that parents saying when you find yourself there you talk to them you tell them that I don't see this marriage working I know I could have maybe made a mistake somewhere choosing this guy but you see I am going to die in it and they are like just to be there I am also struggling here with your father just to be there your father inherited something just the other day he inherited something the other day and you see I am not going anywhere or should I also go to your grandmother where will you go now if you come and you see it is just logic actually I thank my father yes and I had issues with my marriage I am the one who took that money and I think I am going back the afterm is almost over no that is special announcement very special announcement yes I had even told those who are calling me at night or stop calling me at night very special so let parents always give us time let them hear our opinion and reason is that it is logical these things fail anything can fail and if your marriage failures you mean that you are the problem or is the problem or maybe both of you are problems let them accept give you time to breathe and maybe both of you will get time to see the importance of that marriage when you are away you say that and you say that now or maybe the kids are involved today the kids want the father tomorrow they want you instead of tossing kids left, right and said let me just go and be there you get your only reasons for going not somebody forcing you to be there that is what I am trying to say I have spoiled out her art pastas I have left her to do so because she is talking from personal experience now talk as a PK don't you think about this and let him know to bring verses here I know him I think we have not seen a Bible study forum so I won't quote any Bible verse but I can I know you can now there is an element of choosing I want to go to the arranged part there are some marizata arranged without you knowing that you have been snared there is a tabla that has been said for you your mum and the mum your mum a mum to the woman and the mum to the man are friends and so they always insist on a get together they know she needs to bring you guys together without you people knowing so you have to find that at the end of the day you are together this is what was happening from a very young age so that's spotting they spot and keep and they maintain so every day on a Sunday you go out to take lunch together this family are my friends they come to your place so that you get used to each other so with time you find that by default you get attracted to the time that has been even our parents are very smart they want they show you they show you directly at the end of the day you fall into the trap at that time you will see that they fall into the trap is maybe if someone comes to see you there is a problem and if she comes to see you she is like she is more welcome than either just know that maybe this is a trap I am getting into so parents do that a lot nowadays so parents do church do kaniisa pray a partner pray a family friend I want to give you a very trivial like when I was born I was 21 years old and my family was very trivial you wonder why you wonder why you go to amatanga ya shoshu ya shoshu ya mitu kumbe something is kukui kumbe something being done for you and leave you alone and leave you alone and then kumbe na pachiya kumbe niki zanani kumbe niki zanani kumbe niki zanani no matter how long you take out you wonder why you take long because my son is doing something and they confirm the other side kumbe niki zanani kumbe niki zanani kumbe niki zanani the handma mum covers for you W joining she was preparing so there that form of arrangement you support that do you think that is good in that family at the label the boy man and the woman meme niki uboto bagao they see ni can fit consent this is the best choice for me It's being fly today But when I came back to the arranged party, I told them that I was planning to go to Shoshua and ask them if they would like to have a kwaingi. I told them that I would like to have a kwaingi. They go and bring a woman for you. Yes. They bring for you. And that is not even ours. I was reading about India that on arranged marriages, you meet your better half 15 minutes to the wedding ceremony. To the wedding ceremony? Yes, 15 minutes. And then the worst part is, this is the worst part. That's when you see her for the first time in your life. Whatever she was talking about is very fine. You can meet your mistake, fail to embrace your mistake and then blame it on us. If your mistake is a point to you. So that is the life. I was asking my mum why is it that my grandmother because before she passed 20, we used to study a lot with my grandmother and she told me this. That her and my grandfather they never knew each other. Yes, that is arranged marriage. That was not even arranged. That is what? In prom too? It is a typical kwaingi mistake. So what is it? So what is it? So what is it? So what is it? It is a kwa. That is it. That is it. That is kwa. It is a kwa. That is kwa. That is kwa. So imagine and they ended up saying perfectly. And that is what you find most of the parents will tell you that if there is a problem that you are married they will tell you. You know the reason? Yes. I think now there is no love in marriages. People are married because of situations. Yes. So if you fear breaking up maybe your children will be psychologically hurt you have a position in the church you have a position in the society. There is something that is going on in your life that fear if they walk away from this person maybe there will be some negative impact on my persona. So at the end of the day you are married not because you love the man but you are saying that because of what you want to prevent. Our time is much spent I wish we had the whole day here. So let's read a couple of reactions from the public. There is somebody called Tito Marwa or Marwa. Tell me what you did in Kijeluwa. Tito Marwa says here in Oma and that's why my name was Kweezy they don't like being near their mother in law being near their mother in law and then there is Martin Gendu who says maybe and there is Janet Janet Michaels I know her she is somewhere around this room. She says Apoko Spouses is tricky for causes they can help those who choose in line with the interest it comes to when it comes to friends they are at better position to access whether they are of value or not that is who to choose who to parent to choose for the son or the daughter and then there is somebody called no children should follow their passion and then there is Linda Linda Wehrunga who says happy to see you my friend of Goda Speiding they say oh thank you welcome Linda and then there is parents Selena Amor says parents are supposed to advise only not to choose and then there is Wodiniya Sambu who says it's not right for them to choose this one is so disfiant as defiant as at the indigenous equality then there is somebody called Whiz Whiz says at some point but in terms of spouses no it's mutual things so you should go you should go where your heart heart beats for and then there is somebody called Magitha say trust your parents they know what is good for you for you always want the best for you and give you statistics on that then lastly for now is Tangila Kenya who says how can my parents choose for me as spouse while I am the one who is going to live and I only need advice from them this brings me to another statistics which says that 90% of arranged marriages especially when it's cultural like places like India when the marriage can't work the spouses hoped for suicide than divorce like they better kill themselves than divorce and another one is that when there is a divorce the person who causes that divorce is most likely highly like 90% going to be disowned by that family for breaking this for breaking this arranged marriage thing you hear the fifth I was hearing you groaning about the 15 minutes thing you want the experiments before marriage it is very important to do experiments very important I know the church is against it but it is now it is very necessary I meet you today we move to the house number one there are so many factors that will always glue two people together common interest you see like you find yourself you love eating rice I love eating Ugar you don't like going to church Allah going to church you will be having issues like on a daily basis it is important to be given time you learn the person you are going to live with so that is what you mean by experiment and the other one that I don't want to say that one which you are thinking of it is also important what do you think about this one PK reject it as your father imagine your father is watching no the one that she wants to say I won't touch into that how do you know it this is a PK in Pelagal Palatola common sense because you are on air and she has refused to say it so it's something who are you to say it I can't I can't speak for her but in a way you should know the person going to spend the rest of your life with her but as much as I want to know I also want to tell you this for free I've seen marriage couples for more than five years they get married for two weeks and they divorce two weeks in marriage they're done and they date for many years maybe the other day a friend of young man he said I'm going to date for the rest of your life I'm going to get married marriage is the number one cause of divorce of divorce it is the number one cause of divorce for five years I've been married for three years then three years were done two weeks even one month two weeks one week pap one enda kutini there was somebody in charge there isn't was there isn't I was saying this is people are very plastic also during courtship also during courtship they're very plastic they can come to your house stay with you even live together can we stay for ages they're still very plastic let them confirm I'm here to stay now then you made the real job okay but we are finishing this because time is still on us we've been here for around 45 minutes or 50 minutes also it's only that this conversation is very sweet that we can't finish but teacher Charity can you tell us your final comments on this camera here teach the nation for about 30 seconds especially Beampu this is what I want to tell any youth out there watching this show let us be real and let us always believe in ourselves there's nothing you should not push away anybody advising you just listen to their advice but you remain the sole decision maker in your life thank you that is what I can say thank you Yobas you say you prepare for your last comments somebody in our church who married on a Sunday then when it came on a Saturday that is 6 days later he came in front of the congregation and said marriage is a challenge pray for me if that marriage is a chance play marriage is a challenge so say your last comments why teach the nation a son of pastor ok on another side as a young person I want to borrow from whatever tindiya said listen to pieces of advice make the decisions on your own and I think the more the advice is that you receive the better because in a way you will be having an expanded thinking space where you can make the decision out of the bigger pool of things that you are receiving that is one two sometimes it is also good to listen to your parents don't just be a rebel for no good reason because when to satisfy you being a youth I can call this in adult there is something called adolescenting in quotes in adult to wear you be able like a 14 year old and you should over that so don't rebel so much listen to your parents people can advice you look for advices you can also get some money not a relative not a friend not a family member whom you can share with staff who can advice you and then keep good friends to the parents this is from me to the parents those children you have also have brains please involve them in decision making but to the children this is measured to you statistics say that 85% of parents want the good for their children they want their children to live better than they live now so listen to them don't dispute them it has been a very good discussion with two phenomenal people a teacher son of a teacher a communicator son of a pastor it's been very good very good you can there's something you should borrow from this please borrow from it and let it help you in your life in making decisions concerning spouses, friends career this has been why in the morning and I think this is now the last segment for today till we meet tomorrow and on Wednesday salute


The Asian Review, I'm your host Bill Sharp. Our show today is a more assertive Japan, and our guest is Dr. David Fowles. Dr. Fowles has two PhD degrees, he's a real go-getter as you can see. One is in statistics and the other is in political science with a focus on Japan. So let's get right into it because time always flies by. You know, it seems to me that, as I recall, the first book I ever read about Japanese politics was called The Japanese Superstate, and it was written by that famous Todai professor, woman professor, the first woman professor ever appointed to that position in Todai. She ain't iconic, though I'm sure is way retired by now. And of course, in those days, Japan was really on the ride and everybody was beginning to look at Japan as a kind of a model, beginning to be a little envious of Japan. And then came the 1980s, and through the early part of the 80s, Japan was really going along, there was money everywhere, and Japanese were getting perhaps a little cocky about it. And then came 1989 with the recruits scandal, and that was the beginning of a 20-plus year fall from grace. But do we see Japan recovering its national confidence, the sort of stature it had in the 80s before the recruits scandal? What's your take? Well, thanks for having me here. Well, you're quite welcome. It's always great to have you. In fact, as you mentioned to our audience, this is your third visit to Asian Review, so we're always glad to have you. Yeah, thank you. As far as Japan getting its mojo back, that's a really good way to put it. I guess I believe there's a lot happening in Japan, and there's great strides being taken in terms of making Japan a more competitive player in the international arena, economically and in the security front as well. However, I'm not ready to say that they're back where they were in the 1980s. My feeling is those days are gone. Japan's economy, I don't think is ever going to be as strong and vital as it was at that time. Basically, because of the demographic problem that they have and the way that the lack of new workers coming into the economy is going to affect their GDP and so on. That's really interesting. Do you think Japan's rise to free eminence peaking in the 80s was artificial? Well, in some ways it was because the export model of growth that Japan grew on, I don't think was ever going to be sustainable because it wasn't always fair. Japan had huge trade surpluses with the United States and many other countries, and other countries were looking for more access to Japanese markets, and there was a lot of problems with the trade issues, as you may remember. The US has especially had a lot of tough talks with Japan about that. I don't think mature economies can continue to grow on this kind of export-led growth, but Japan has done a lot in terms of developing its consumer markets as well through the past 20 years, so not quite as export dependent as they used to be, but still a lot of their growth comes from export. You know, it seems to me that the model that you're talking about, it was all based on something, blocking out imports from other countries, coming up with real nonsense concerns and checklists and that kind of thing. Like, American skis won't work on Japanese snow, American beef can't be digested by Japanese intestines. Right, and it seemed that the US was quite willing to tolerate some of that nonsense if they could have X number of military bases in Japan, and Japan was some sort of a security partner. Yeah, I agree. That was kind of the basic deal that we would kind of supplement their economy, but Japan was going to be our aircraft carrier in the sea there, and I think it was Nakasone who called it that. Right, right. You know, it seems to me that while Japan's international image has suddenly dimmed since the 80s, there's been a lot of, what do we call it, quiet revolution that's gone on domestically within Japanese society, and Japanese civic society has really taken a few leaps forward. You were talking about consumerism and other features, which Japanese citizens seem to be all that concerned about in the boom, boom days of the 70s and the 80s. Yeah, I agree. And one of the areas that, you know, there's a lot of push for change now is the role of women. Something that the administration, the Obie administration has taken certain steps to try to address, primarily, I believe, because it affects that big issue of demographics, which I brought up earlier, because women haven't been willing to have babies. The demographics have continued to weaken, and if women are given, I think, a fair shake in, you know, the job, more equal pay, more women who become heads of corporations or board members and so on, this is going to, I believe it's going to strengthen women's will to participate in the workforce and maybe take on that burden of birth and raising kids and so on. Well, looking at the Japanese experience, the rise, the glory, the tumble, at least relative tumble, I mean, it still is what the third largest economy in the world. Does it have lessons for other countries in Asia, particularly like South Korea, China, Taiwan? Yeah, I think all those countries are watching Japan because Japan's not alone in having this problem of an aging population. It's kind of leading the pack, but South Korea, China, Taiwan to a lesser extent, but they're all having this issue of not being able to replace the people that are dying with the birth rate. And China's going to have a huge problem with this, I believe, but, you know, they have a much bigger population to start with. So what Japan does and how they're able to cope with this problem is going to be, I think, educational for a lot of countries in the region and other countries around the world that have aging population. They all seem to be hit, too, with this growing inequality of wealth, which seems to be a manifestation of globalization, as far as I can see. Maybe China hasn't been hit with it quite as bad with globalization, but definitely there is inequality of wealth as it's growing. It's interesting. Japan is the first to climb, the first to tumble. The other climbers, are they going to tumble? I guess those have to keep watching. Yeah, I don't think Japan's handled the demographic issues that well. Their culture kind of inhibits them from dealing appropriately with that issue. I mean, they're very closed in terms of wanting to see foreigners immigrating into the country and changing the role of women is something that a lot of especially people in the political elite are resistant to. You've seen this with the recent debate over passing a law for abdication of the emperor. They did recently pass a kind of one-off to allow the aging emperor to step down for his son Crown Prince Naruhito, but the Democratic Party wanted to get a resolution in there to make it so that the princesses were able to maintain their royal status after they marry a commoner because they're having fewer and fewer royals because the princesses are marrying out and there aren't that many males. Well, the Democratic Party had to really push hard against the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to get that resolution tacked on to that bill, that one-off bill. And so there's a lot of resistance in the current administration to changes that would allow a bigger change where maybe women would eventually be able to become the empress. Although, historically, there were numerous cases that happened. Right, right. In the old days, the old old days. I think that's symbolic of kind of the resistance to the changing roles of women in Japan. That's really interesting. Now, when you say one-off, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying here. Change the law so that the current emperor could advocate for the future. Would that opportunity still be open to future emperors or is it just this one time for the current emperor? Yeah, it's just this one time and any other emperor in the future will have to have the diet pass a similar resolution and so on. And this is basically because of the conservative positions of members of the administration and the Liberal Democratic Party. The public overwhelmingly supported a law that would make it permanent, that abdication would be okay in the future. But the traditionalists didn't really want to see that happen. Interesting. Well, let's talk specifically about the leadership of Mr. Abe. And I mean, part of Japan's problem has been revolving toward prime ministers. Prime ministers around eight months, ten months maybe, everybody's lucky and then it was gone. And we went through so much of that. And then Mr. Abe, who was part of the revolving toward the phenomenon at one time, came back. 2006, 2007. Yeah, got his act together and he's been a pretty strong leader at the same time. Oh yeah, he's accomplished a great deal, both economically and with his Abe-nomics program. Although it hasn't been as successful as he would have hoped, I'm sure. But also with kind of reasserting Japan's presence on the international stage and his moves in Asia, especially to reassure their countries in the region that Japan is going to remain a major player economically and in terms of security, I think have been remarkable. It's interesting though, as you were saying, just before the show started as we were chatting away, really Japan needs the United States and other countries in Asia do too. China's just too big. It's too big, it's increasingly powerful. The wealth of China always seems to be a question mark to me. Just how much money can China spend on this, that thing and the debt is rising. But it doesn't seem to faze anybody. And perhaps compared to other countries in Asia, it's deeper pocketed. So countries in Asia really do need an alliance with the U.S. or some other power. Now one of the most controversial things about Mr. Abe has been his push for constitutional reform, specifically Article 9. And could you bring us up to date on that? Well, they are looking to bring a draft proposal of a revision of the Constitution to the diet in the late this year sometime, possibly in the fall. That was the plan. And this revision is from reports that I read, is going to basically state that the self-defense forces are legitimate. The Constitution does allow for the self-defense forces to make them a military. Under Article 9 of the Constitution, Japan was to renounce war as a way of resolving differences, as well as not maintain military forces. And Japan does maintain military forces. It's got one of the strongest militaries in Asia. So to rectify this obvious inconsistency, Abe is focused on that as a reason to revise the Constitution. Some folks who are a little wary of this think that this might be, you know, just a reasonable way of opening the door to further changes. And so there's people that are still opposed to this. But I've seen polls that show the majority of Japanese believe it's okay to amend the Constitution to state that the SDF is legitimate. Well, this is a really good point, and this is also a really good place for us to take a break. So you're watching Asia in Review. I'm your host Bill Sharp. My guest today is Dr. David Fowles, our show, more assertive Japan. And we'll be right back so don't go away. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Despeng, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Welcome back to Asia in Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharp. My guest today is Dr. David Fowles. Our show today, I'm more assertive Japan. And just before the break, we were getting into the really interesting topic about human life. So just before we went to break, you were saying that according to polling that you've seen, the Japanese public is willing to accept. So I'm going to go ahead and show you a little bit of what I'm going to talk about today. So I'm going to go ahead and show you a little bit of what I'm going to talk about today. So according to polling that you've seen, the Japanese public is willing to accept some changes in the wording of Article 9 to effectively recognize the SDF as a legitimate military force. Yeah, I want to be very clear. What I believe I've read is that the first two paragraphs will stay as is. But in addition to that, you have recognition that the Japanese military forces are legitimate. What about the part of Article 9 that says, we the Japanese people renounce, what is it, the rate of war or war? Is that going to still be there? Yeah, my understanding is that would not change, nor the part that says that we won't maintain military forces, which doesn't really jibe as far as, you know, how do you say that the SDF is a legitimate military force if Japan isn't supposed to maintain those forces? Right. So in my view, something has to give there. Right. So the second paragraph I would think would have to change, but it's not really clear. Lots of different changes have been proposed by the Liberal Democratic Party in the past, and it's what they're going to end up doing is kind of open to question or whether or not they're going to get there given the recent thumping that the Prime Minister's party took in the election just this past weekend in Tokyo municipal metropolitan elections. Hmm, that's interesting. But he still has a solid majority in both the upper house and in the lower house. Yes, he's got the best situation anybody's had in many, many years to try to push through basically anything he wants. The problem is that recently he pushed through an anti-conspiracy law that really angered a lot of people. It was supposed to deal with terrorism, but it was so vague and broad that many people feel it's going to impinge on people's privacy rights. Even the UN Rapporteur for Privacy Rights wrote about this being they need to redo this. They need to rework this. And I saw reports that things like picking mushrooms in forests that are preserved will be considered conspiracy to commit terrorism under this law. Illegal bicycle racing. There was just all kinds of things thrown into this bill and the people, although they're split on whether they need it or not, the vast majority believes it was just rushed through. And that's the problem with having both houses and nobody really to block you. But yeah, he has the votes. If he gets to that point where he gets his constitutional revision on the table, it's possible that he could do this. However, Abbey is going to now, because of this thumping he took in this weekend's elections, is going to start facing challenges from inside his own party for leadership. And he was on his way to becoming the longest serving prime minister in post-war history. He may still get there, but with this anti-conspiracy law being very unpopular, he has a scandal of influence peddling that involves him and a bunch of his team members. His wife was even pulled into this. This is one of the reasons he took the thumping in this election. He's not been really open to investigating that scandal.  Vulnerable? He's vulnerable, yeah. Who would his number one contender be? It used to be said that also was really interested in being prime minister. But I haven't heard his name mentioned recently. Well, I think the guy that he ran against was Ishiba, who was a former defense minister. When he won in 2012, he would still be a top contender. Some people might think this governor of Tokyo, Yoriko Koike.  Yes, she was part of the LDP as well. And she left them and started this tomin first no-kai as Tokyo residents first. Okay. Sound familiar? Oh, no, no, no. She doesn't have links there, does she? She's pretty conservative, but she's very popular. And she is a kind of a populist. And people are talking about her possibly, you know, taking her popularity to the national level. She's somebody you would have to consider. But various people in the top levels of the LDP, I believe, will probably run. So what about also? Is he gone now? Has he faded away? I don't think he's a... Fallen from grace? Yeah, I don't think he's a top contender for the prime minister's office. That's my view. Oh, interesting, interesting, interesting. Well, Abe certainly really wanted the U.S. to stay with TPP. Yeah. And probably was pretty disappointed when Trump came out and said, well, we're pulling out a TPP. And now the story is that Japan seeks to lead TPP. Did Japan do that? That's a good question. I remember Abe saying shortly after Trump was elected that without the U.S. TPP would be meaningless. And it seems to have kind of changed his tune on that one a bit. And I have seen that he's thinking now that maybe Japan needs to assert leadership in pulling this off. I'm skeptical about that. Whether Japan could offer the type of incentives, the market incentives to some of the countries like Vietnam and Malaysia and so on, that the U.S. would offer to make this thing work. I know Japan's going to double its efforts in the regional comprehensive economic partnership, ReCEP, which China is the kind of the lead on that. And it's been kind of thought of as a competitor to the TPP. And Japan is probably going to try to look to counter them inside of ReCEP as well. But I don't think they have the weight. You said that will Japan join ReCEP or will it seek to counter it? I think they're already part of it. But they're going to probably double their efforts to try to counter China's leadership inside of ReCEP, as well as trying to revive the TPP. But there are going to be some obstacles, I think, to really getting a TPP to succeed now. Has Japan joined in on the China's big project at the moment, the One Belt, One Road? I think they're not as involved as many other countries. They're more waiting and watching. And most of the other countries in the region, including I think South Korea and others, are very interested in this. As far as I recall, Japan did not join the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, along with the United States stayed off. Good ally. Well, we're sort of running down here on time. But let's just talk for a minute about the South China Sea, because it seems Japan wants to assert more influence on the South China Sea as well. Yeah, Southeast Asia and South China Sea in general has become, it seems, a major focus of Japan. Once again, both economically and in terms of security cooperation, I've seen Japan raising the amount of foreign direct investment that it's sending into some of the top ASEAN economies. And on the security front, they have this, I think it was last November, they announced this Vientian vision, this initiative that they have for security cooperation. Basically, nothing new coming forward, but a framework for what they're doing with ASEAN in terms of security cooperation, you know, all across the spectrum in terms of just having HADR or humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and peacekeeping operation training with each other, capacity building of various types. Then there's like Japan's new emphasis on providing technology transfers, which since 2014 they've been able to do because of changes in the law. And that I see as a major emphasis and something that the Southeast Asian countries are very interested in. They've been doing this a lot with the Philippines and Indonesia as well. You know, the patrol boats, Japan's focus is on the maritime domain and maintaining rule of law in that area. Well, I've just been told that the clock has caught up with us again, so I guess we're going to have to stop it here, but there's so much more we could talk about. That always seems to be the case, the quandary that we fall into. So I want to thank you very much for coming back and joining us for the third time. And I want to thank you for watching today and we'll see you next week.


Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. We do have a voice over gameplay video for you right now just because I am actually preparing the set and everything for the podcast tonight featuring Cap Berguson, Daniel, you guys will probably recognize him once the show begins. But what we need to talk about right now is a new patent that was discovered that was filed back in January by Nintendo. This patent features a brand new, never seen controller from Nintendo and the fact that it was filed recently makes you think it could be something that comes out this year, next year, et cetera. And we're gonna discuss what this controller could be for, why it even exists in a moment. Before we do, I will remind you, we are giving away a Nintendo Switch OLED, a PlayStation 5, or an Xbox Series X to one lucky winner. To enter into that giveaway, all you have to do is head down to the gleam.io link down in the pinned comment or the description. Now look, this patent is weird. Here it is, at least one look at it. And at first glance you go, what the hell is this thing? It kinda looks like an N64 missing the middle prong so you don't have a control stick.  And why is there that giant bulge? Is this attached to something? Is this allowing memory cards? What is this weird thing? Well, as you dig further and further into the patent, and I actually just got done recently reading the entire patent, which has so much jargon in it that pretty much means nothing, at least not anything that we care about. It probably means something from a legal perspective. But as we go through an image here, I wanna show you a particular image that is quite interesting. So this is one here where you see this thing in pieces. Now these are the internals of the system. Here you see what's obviously gonna be the board with the shoulder buttons and that thing at the very bottom is actually a battery. But what you're also going to see here is this round circular thing at the top. And upon reading the patent, this is that giant thing that's in that bulge on the back of the controller. That bulge is a rumble motor. That's it, that's all it is. They put a bulge in there to include a rumble motor. Now we all have haptic feedback in different, you know, buzzing features on our phones and other devices. So you don't really need something this thick. I mean, this looks like it's thicker than a Joy-Con, which has HD rumble and multiple rumble motors. So it's very weird that they have one that's this large. Now this may or may not be traditional rumble. It doesn't show the wedge you usually see on traditional rumble. So this could be a brand new rumble technology Nintendo's messing around with. That's why it's so large, which also could lead you to believe this might be a controller that never sees the light of day. They just patented it because they had it actually, you know, made up at a factory and they just want to check it out and test it and come up with their own use cases. But yeah, so obviously that's kind of the big feature that's hard to miss with this patent. Now as we go to this next image, one thing you'll notice in this image is a little recessed area. That's actually where the battery goes. And based on what I understand reading this patent, the battery is actually easily removable. Now it seems to be intentionally easily removable and they decided to compensate and allow there to be space for the battery to expand and contract. In fact, they have an entire section about how this is specifically designed for the battery to expand and contract. Now I don't think this is some brand new battery technology. I think lithium batteries do expand and contract, although the bigger expansions that they're allowing tolerances for here usually means you should replace your battery. So I find that to be interesting, but it does look like it's pretty easy to replace the battery. It literally slides in and out. So I don't think there's gonna be any concerns of batteries with this, assuming that this thing ever releases. So there isn't a whole lot else here to go into. It's mostly a hollow shell. There doesn't appear to be things like amiibo support or anything like that. And here's a look at what would be the backside of the controller with the buttons and the D-pad. And yeah, it's pretty much, besides that rumble motor and the buttons and the D-pad, it's a pretty hollow shell. So here you'll see showing how the battery can be easily inserted and taken out and it's just not that difficult of a process. Now, what could this controller actually be for? That's the question people wanna know. Why would this thing exist? It basically looks like a Super Nintendo controller that's maybe a bit more beefy with a rumble motor, right? I mean, that's the vibe I get anyways. Here's your Super Nintendo controller.  But yeah, by the way, it does mention there's potentially Bluetooth technology, although they don't have any of it pictured. So it is gonna be wireless. What I find interesting about this is why this might exist. So we already have controllers, additional controllers beyond Joy-Cons and pro controllers made by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. These controllers are obviously for their Nintendo Switch online service. There's N64 versions, there's NES versions and there is SNES versions or Famicom versions, whichever ones you wanna call them. These are basically replica controllers of what the controllers were like back in the day, but wireless and that's cool. But what we don't have is potentially what's next. There has been rumors for a while that Game Boy Advance, Game Boy, et cetera, would be coming to the Nintendo Switch online service at some point and this is a rumor that goes back to last year and just because the N64 and Genesis was announced first, the rumor still persisted past that and obviously we haven't heard a lot from there outside of the same people that said it was coming repeatedly talking about it on podcasts and other things where they mentioned, yeah, this is still a thing, it's still happening. Nintendo is just biding their time till it's the right time to drop the Game Boy stuff. And I look at this and I go, this might be their answer to having a universal controller for their handhelds because sure, you're not gonna have the slider pad like on DS and 3DS and by the way, nobody said DS and 3DS games are coming but everything from the Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, all of those only need a D-pad and then at maximum four buttons. This controller could be literally the Game Boy-esque controller. What we have to remember is that there is no standalone controllers officially from Nintendo for these platforms so you're not just gonna get some little cramped together controller that looks like a Game Boy to play. You're gonna get something that looks at least like this. Why there's Rumble, I find that to be really interesting. The addition of a Rumble controller, that's almost the one red flag because obviously Game Boy, Game Boy Color didn't have Rumble. I don't remember Game Boy Advance having Rumble. Maybe I'm wrong on that front and that could be why. Maybe Game Boy Advance had Rumble but I had an advance and my dad had a Game Boy Advance SP and I don't actually remember Rumble ever being a feature of those handhelds. So it does suggest that maybe they're considering use cases like certain N64 games that use the D-pad, being able to use this as compatibility with those N64 games and having Rumble. So that could very well be what it's for to make the controller a bit more versatile. Also maybe they're thinking that people might wanna use this controller with indie games and indie games would still like to use Rumble because a lot of indie games are great with the D-pad. So I can see there being a few use cases where Nintendo might go, you know what? Yeah, we might not need it for our games but to make the controller a bit more user friendly, a bit more functional, let's throw Rumble in. Now why it's one massive Rumble in the middle with a bulge I have no idea. I don't know whose design idea that is and this is just one patent. Remember this might never come out, okay? Nintendo files patents all the times and even sometimes unveils products that never come out. Pokemon Company did it with Pokemon Sleep. Still waiting on that. Nintendo did it with the Wii Vitality Sensor, showed it off at E3 on stage, heart rate monitor, all this stuff never came out. So yeah, there's a lot of these patents and products that get made that don't come out and this could be one of those very products but if Game Boy or whatever gets announced for Nintendo Switch Online later this year and they announce a controller and it happens to look similar to this, well this is where you probably first heard about it because this is just a really interesting thing. It doesn't look like it has motion controls as far as I'm aware from just reading. I know you might see some of the arrows and go oh is that motion? From what I'm able to tell it doesn't have motion controls. Maybe there is some motion in it. I have no idea but I didn't really get that out of the patent material from the description, the claims and the drawings. So you guys let me know what you think about this. Is this something that you find just completely strange? Is this something that you think is really highly interesting? Are you curious why Nintendo is making this when the SNES controller serves every functionality? Save the rumble? Yeah, let me know down in the, is this something that you even wanna use? It's just such a weird, weird design. Anyways folks, I am Nathaniel Rumpeljantz from Nintendo Prime. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.