I'm your host, Abe Lee. I've been a licensed real estate agent since 1973. I'm the owner of Century 21, I Propered Hawaii, and work with close to 100 wonderful agents in real estate sales. I started Abe Lee seminars in 1980. I have taught over 10,000 students to get their real estate licenses and have taught continuing education classes for licensees to renew their license every two years. Our show is dedicated to helping buyers and sellers understand the process involved in real estate transactions. Our special guests will talk about legal issues, escrow, title, getting a loan, surveys, home inspections, insurance contracts, rules and trust, and much, much more. Our special guest today is Tom Kiabu, who I'll explain to you in a little while why he's with us. Tom, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much, Abe, for inviting me to your wonderful show. Thank you. So Tom, give us a little background on, I know this is a second career for you. So what did you do before? Tell us your background and your education, your family, and things that people should know about you. Well, thank you, Abe. Yeah, you know, a lot of people don't realize that I was a farmer's son until sixth grade. We had a farming colleague. He close to the end of the way we warm is, he mentioned my dad moved his farm to Leeward Community College. In time, he was evicted because of house development. We moved to Hyco Gardens. He also got evicted again for future housing out there. So in the 60s, he decided to say, I'm giving up farming and decided to go self-learn and got his real estate license. He became an agent, eventually became have his own brokerage, mainly targeting on real estate investment out there. So that is my upbringing. Then in 19, 2000 and in 1975, I decided my friend, my good friend said, hey, why don't you join UPS? I said, what is that? What is UPS? I was a local boy. I had no clue what UPS was. UPS came in and bought an existing PUC company out here. So I decided to become a part-time. 1976, I became a full-time driver. So in the meantime, I was a senior at UH University of Hawaii.  Just finish up your schooling. And I promised mom that I would finish up my schooling. Well, I became a full-time driver. Eventually, in the meantime, I spent three years going through weekend classes and night classes in order to get my degree, finally getting my degree three years later. So in 1979, I got promoted as supervisor in 1984, became a customer service rep. 1984 is when I got my real estate license. Why? Because my dad was a brokerage and he's mandated all five of us to get their real estate license, which I did. There was a path. There was a career path to determine which way do I go? Do I become a full-time real estate guy or do I become a UPS supervisor or a career in UPS? I decided to go as a UPS career. Why? Because my dad worked 24-7, constantly getting phone calls, the renters calling in day and night. So I said, forget it. I'm going to UPS. Realizing UPS is also 24-7. When you work on weekends, you take phone calls, you read emails, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that was my career through the next until 2009, 2016, when I finally retired at UPS. This is simply overseeing Hawaii overall, the operations. Funny point is that in 2019, 1976, when we first got our packages, we had 2,000 packages, 25 drivers, 15 employees. By the time we retired in 2016, we had over 32,000 packages. We contacted 22,000 stops every day, 150 drivers and over 600 employees. So what's the story behind this whole thing is that, what I do realize is that employees make the difference. If you take care of the employees, the employees are going to take care of the customers. That's how you protect your brand. So it was an exciting career for me. Finally, in 2019, I decided to go back into real estate. I did not want to go back to work after retirement because I was simply burned out from corporate. My friends kept telling me how to get my kids back home, how to get my kids back home that went to the mainland, got the college degree, and decided to stay there and now they want to come back home. And the only way to come back home is through home ownership. So I decided to get my license in 2019. I'll have my license with Abe. And from here, my mission, really simply my mission and purpose is try to get Dohana back together in Hawaii. Great. Now, Tom passed this really quickly, but he was a manager for all of UPS for the state of Hawaii. I don't know if you understood the magnitude of that job. So how long were you the head for UPS in Hawaii? Well, as a division manager in 1989, overseeing the entire operations and finally in the last five years, I oversaw the staff to it. Okay. So I was very blessed and fortunate. You worked hard. I give you credit. So when Tom took my real estate school, I knew the Kiyabu name. So I said, Hey, so and so your brother or sister go, Yeah. And then I said, I taught your nephews and nieces in real estate classes. So I knew the Kiyabu family really well, except I didn't know Tom. So we got the chance to meet with him. And of course, he joined us. So I'm very, very grateful for that. So Tom, let's get into this passion of yours.  So what led you to that? Yeah, you know, when I looked at, one thing that's really important for me is that, you know, I just came off the road delivering meals and wheels, Hawaii meals and wheels, excellent, commit a nonprofit organization. I go and meet and provide meals to there. A lot of them are seniors. A lot of them are seniors. And often they, I have a sense of sadness in their eyes, because the kids are all on the mainland. So aside from my friends that the kids on the mainland, they're all by themselves at home. I also have clients that are going to deliver and they also feel the same way too. So who is going to take care of the Kapunos of the future, where there's no one around that's going to support them. It's unfortunately kids that eventually come back when, when the parents pass away, but we don't want that happening. So it was where it's so very important for me to make sure that we try to get the Hana back here. We also realize that it's four years of decline as far as our population is a lot of people are leaving the islands and not coming back. You know, the most famous saying that Ian Tongi, the American Idol winner this year, which we are so very proud is that he says price a lot of paradise. This is a prime example what's happening. When we start losing our people, our local people, we also putting, we also losing part of our Lord spirit that existed in Hawaii, that exists in Hawaii that makes us very, very special. So there's absolutely a very important mission that we need to do. Oh, I need to do. Great. So Tom, your president, current president of a nonprofit called Aria Aloha chapter. What does that stand for? And what is your mission as a president of this chapter? Aria, Aria is Asian Real Estate Association. America was formed in 2003. It's really to help and assist and really it's helping assist the AAPI and NH, which is American Asian American Pacific Islanders native Hawaiians, which constitutes 70% of a population of Hawaii. These are the people that's really underserved. And really, a goal is really to educate them, give them an opportunity to learn about what can they do to become a home owner, which are a tremendous amount of benefits when you become a homeowner in Hawaii. So our goal is to try to get more people, the population here, stay in Hawaii. One thing is extremely important is that we're talking about the middle class people that is starting to fade away and heading to the mainland. The middle class people are your teachers, their firemen, your policemen, you know, the people that work in the stores, the UPS drivers, et cetera. Those are the middle classes. If we start losing that middle class, not only we, we're losing a little spirit, but also why would businesses want to come to Hawaii when there's no workers? So that's another reason why it's so important to keep our people home. Okay, great. Now, I understand that you had a seminar just recently with your friends from UPS and clients. And what was the goal of that seminar? And what were you trying to teach them? Okay, one thing, you know, if you look at the data statistics overall, and some of the things I just want to share with you that, you know, our land zone for urban is 5% in entire Hawaii. In Oahu, it's 30%. 30% of our land is zoned for urban usage. And what is urban usage? Residentials, commercials, apartments, industrials, et cetera. The other 70% of preservation is agriculture. So we have very limited land out here. Also realize, if you look at the data, as far as new sales is concerned, this year over last year, year to date, we're 36 per down on sales. Condos are down by 38%. But most important that our listings have been going down the last two years, both in single family and condominiums. So what do we put our position is that sometimes we just look at, look at as agencies, hey, look, there's no listings, there's no inventory, people can afford it because the interest rates are too high. But working with Abe, and he's an excellent teacher as far as zoning, is providing an opportunity or different lenses to look at things. Looking at things, for example, the event that we held on Saturday, which included half UPS is a half of my clients, is to look at things such as, look at your existing real estate right now.  What can you do? Can you subdivide it? Can you CPR it? Can you aid you with it, et cetera, et cetera? And why is that important to keep your family home? Okay, so let's take one at a time, because you said a mouthful. So let's start with Ohana. What does Ohana mean? Okay, Ohana is specifically, it's got to be a visiting era. It's not anywhere you can build. Ohana is allowing you to build another home. Okay, another home on your lot, but it has to be designated in your area. That is, you can provide a wet bar only, not a full kitchen. And this is really for your Ohana, for your families, for your aunties, for your uncles to keep them at home. Ohana, that's what Ohana zoning is. Okay, now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Ohana, you can have a full kitchen with a permit, but you have to rent to relatives only. Oh, maybe you're right. You could be right. I'm not sure about that, but yeah. All right, but it has to be for family only, right? That's what Ohana is. That's right. Now, what's ADU staff for then? ADU is accesses dwellings. Okay, access for a dwelling unit? Yes, dwelling unit. Okay, and these are for places that you can use, not just for family rent. You can use it for rentals or somewhere else. So, you need to have a certain size lot in order to have an ADU. ADU, for example, if you have a lot that's less than 5,000 square feet, you can build an ADU on your property at 400 square feet. If it's over 5,000 square feet on land, you can build an ADU up to 800 square feet. There's different types of ADUs. You have internal ADUs where you can redesign your home. There's also what they call attached ADUs that you can add a garage, et cetera, et cetera. Or there's also a detached ADU that you can build little cottage in the back of your property out there. So, again, these are meant for rent if you want to rent it out to someone else. Okay, so let's summarize then. With Ohana, you can have it attached or detached with no size limit, but it has to be rented to relatives. But with ADU, you're limited to 400 square feet or 800 square feet. But that one, you don't have to rent to relatives and you could rent it to anybody. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay, so then let's talk about what we call R5 zoning on the land use ordinance on Oahu. What does R5 stand for? R5 is that your land, your lot is 5,000 square feet. Okay. Is that R5? No. Restricted? Residential. Residential. That your lot needs to be at least 5,000 or greater. Okay. That's the virus in R5. So now let me ask you. We have an R5 zone property. It's 5,000 square feet to 7,499 square feet without ADU or Ohana. Can you build one house that's attached? No, can you build a house at all if it's under 7,500 square feet? No. Okay. You can do a duplex. Okay. That's R5 zone. How many square feet? 7,500? Yeah. If you have 7,500 or more, you can have a detached single family home or a detached home. Okay. But can you do a duplex on R5 zone land? Yes. Okay. So then what if you have 10,000 square feet and R5 zone land? Now, can you have a detached or attached? You can have a duplex. Okay. R10, R5, sorry. R5, 10,000 square feet. You can have it either a duplex, depending on the, I guess, the topography, or if you had flat land, you could possibly have two homes that are detached from each other. Is that correct? Yes. That's correct. Okay. So now let's go over this again. You got R5 and under 5,000 square feet, usually 3,500 to 4,999 square feet. You can have an ADU, 400 square feet max. You have 5,000 square feet or more. You can have ADU max 800 square feet. And if you have R5, 7,500 square feet or bigger, you could have a duplex. And then R5 with 10,000 square feet or more, it could be attached or detached. Is that the rule of zoning? That's correct. Okay. So what are you telling your friends when you meet with them and say, Hey, let's see if we can get you another house on your property. That's correct. What do you tell them? That's correct. So most of my friends have kids.   What can we do to afford or help them support and buy a home for them? I'm also making them come back to their home or to their family state that says, look, these are things that you can do for your home. It's not simply buying something outside. What did you do something inside within your lot based on the zoning? Whether it's an ADU, which is Asian place is great for grandparents, or to have a separate single family home or duplex, keeping the family together. Not only that, you also can create it into a passive income where it will support you as you retire in time. Okay. Now, I understand that all of these ADU, Ohana, duplex, two homes, you have to get what they call a sewer adequacy form approved. Tell us about that. You just went through one. Yes, I did. And I thought there was an opportunity to have split the $21,000 lot into two separate lots and sell it separately. Unfortunately, I apply for the sewer adequacy with the city and county and the deny it. Why? Because the sewer system they have right now is not adequate enough to have additional homes out there. So it's so very important before even going to deciding what to do with your home, you need to apply it for the sewer adequacy, put an application with the city and county, determine whether it's approved or disapproved. If disapproved, can do it. So in your case, what did they say was inadequate? There's not enough sewer capacity on the roadways in order to take another house or another dwelling. But that was for that neighborhood, right? That's correct. Okay. Because I've gotten approval from other areas where they had adequate sewage. So let's take the hypothetical that there is adequate sewage. Now, can you go ahead and start the process of trying to build a second home? Absolutely. Yes, you can. Okay. Good. All right. So that's really important. And Tom went through this sewer adequacy form for a client in New Anu. He had double lot, R10 zone, which is 10,000 square foot minimum. And unfortunately, the sewer department said inadequate sewage, which is a really disappointment. We're hoping to be able to get that second house for the client, right? Okay. So Tom, how do you work with your clients? Say your friend says, hey, I have my son or daughter, and they want to buy a house. What's your process? What do you do with them? Well, for me, it's really, really, truly important that I really would go into a deep discussion as far as what their goals are, what their dreams and what their goals. Just imagine what your dreams and goals are. At the end result is this is where they want to be. Let's work on a plan to get there. For example, they want to end up living in Hawaii, and right now they don't own anything. So what we'll do is look for opportunities or places that, first of all, they can afford, or maybe neighborhoods that there is more equity gains, appreciation, there may be other property or other places. And this keep and develop a plan. A plan might be from five years to 10 years. But if we develop a plan for our clients out there, and we stand touch with them all the way, then they will get to their goals. They will get to the goals. So this is how I work with them. One thing that's really important for any of the clients, as I learned from UPS, is really building a relationship and trust. As I mentioned, what UPS is, the results come through people. Results come through people.  And they're going to say, hey, you know what, this agent or this advisor is good to follow. And so these are really important things that I just apply. So for me, it's not about the end results. It's not about a commission check. That's not, it's not even talking about that. It's a matter of how to get our people from one point to another. Also, keep in mind that I totally realize coming from a blue collar environment, people work super hard to save their money. And they work really, really hard, whether it's one, two, three jobs in order to save for the down payment and be able to support the family and also the mortgage. Every penny or every dollar that they look at is really important for them. It's that it doesn't just come from the sky. I really believe that they deserve to have the best advice along the way based on how hard they work to save their money. Okay. So you had a couple, a daughter of one of your friends, and they became your clients, and you were able to find them a place. Tell us the process that you went through with them, as they were looking and they almost, you said they almost fired you because you made so many offers and you couldn't get it during the COVID, you know, hot market. So what happened there? 2021, again, when I talk to the parents, you know, they have daughters and often there are people, they're like one child only. The kids are thinking about leaving to the mainland, which to me is the easiest thing to do is just leave the islands. And I realized and I talked to the parents who realized that it's going to be extremely lonesome for them as they age into the 80s and 90s, not having no one around. Because frankly, as a child leaves a mainland, a kid leaves a mainland, it's hard for them to come back because the gap of as far as affordability between the days or the years that go by, it's going to be so large that it's going to be almost impossible to afford anything in Hawaii. So I've talked to the parents, the parents is kind enough to at least help with the deposit or down payment. And from there, once that kicks off, the child is like looking forward. And let me tell you, there's a couple of my clients right here, they would have left to the mainland. If they, if I did not find a place to stay, there's no doubt in my mind, they would have left and gone to the mainland and maybe not be turned back as the parents have been placed by themselves. So let's take an example. Let's say you have a client that has a house a lot on R5's own land. And let's say they have 6,000 square feet and they're still adequacy. So they cannot put a duplex because the lot's not big enough, but they could do an ADU with 800 square feet, which would be pretty substantial, you know, a big one bedroom or small two bedroom with a bath or two. So now if they were with a bill on that backyard or upstairs or over the garage, then you could possibly have them stay home. Absolutely. So again, the mindset in our lens, when you look at things, the automatic thing, you got to buy a property out there, a condo, a house, a duplex, etc, etc. But sometimes you just bring it back at home with your lot that you live in and look at the abilities, look at the capabilities based on your zoning, you can automatically just build something there. And by the way, it doesn't cost as much because you already own the land already. So is this a matter of developing an addition for a family to stay there? So there's a lot of cost savings when we do that. So let's go one step further. Let's say we have an R5's own land, 7,500 square feet or bigger, and they can put a duplex. Now there's a thing called a CPR, condominium property regime. What would that allow the family to do as far as the mortgages are concerned? Can they split the mortgage out and have a separate mortgage raise home? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So that means the kid can have his own mortgage or her mortgage. Parents might have their property free and clear. So now the children are living there and they become part owners of that house, but you can condominiumize and separate out the ownership. That's a possibility. Yes, it is. And the good thing about this whole thing, owning real estate is generational. We eventually can just pass it on once parents pass away. And that's really a good thing about it. And in turn, you can pass it on to the grandkids. Right. And again, this is another way of keeping families home in Hawaii through ownership. Okay. So we're almost out of time, but you've been donating a lot of money to different charities on the sale of your property. What do you do in that case when there's a sale that's done? Yeah. So Abe has a tremendous opportunity to give back to the community. This is his program that he built. It's called a 10% give back of your commission. And there's not too many people that do that. 10% back to nonprofit organizations, the choice of either the buyer or seller. You know, it's so very important. And I gotta say that I'm super blessed in life. I'm really super blessed in life. Now is the time in life just to give back because there are a lot of people out there that need some help, whether it's financial, whether it's volunteer, whether it's supposed to be emotionally supported by them. I see it. You all see it. We need to help our caputans out there. And by the way, the caputans by the year 2030, a third of them are 60-plus years old. We need to find out what we can do with our population, all these caputans, these people that's aging in place. We need to help them too. Okay. We're at the two minute morning now. Tom, any last advice as a UPS head, having managed hundreds of people or having worked with friends with their children, giving money to charities, any last minute advice? Well, I'm just, you know, keep the faith and keep the hope. You know, we're going through our financial challenges right now. Every 10 years we go through this. I've gone through four decades of ups and downs as far as the economy is concerned. It's going to pass. But in the meantime, we have to be, want to be creative enough to come up with different ideas through our different lenses while supporting the community out there. It's so absolutely very important to take care of each other. This is what we call the law spirit, caring for each other with love. Thank you, Tom. I know you have a son that you hope to bring back home soon. And he went to med school up there, and hopefully he'll come back. But Tom, thank you so much for your time, for your dedication, and for your great generous spirit on giving money back to charities of your client's choice. And so hopefully your mission of creating affordable housing and helping your clients utilize their land would be, you know, fulfilled. Thank you so much, folks, for being with us. If you like the show, let people know about it. And also, all of our Think Tech Kauai shows are archived at Think Tech Kauai. And if you have any questions about real estate education, you can go to ablyseminars.com and you can see our website. And we can learn about the real estate process. So we really appreciate you being with us. Let your friends know about the show and look at our archives. We've done a bunch of shows that I think are very helpful to first-time buyers. Thanks a lot, Tom. I appreciate you, man.


Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. This is Think Tech Asia, more specifically, at the two o'clock block. And Russell Liu has come back from China. He goes back and forth. And he is a Hawaii lawyer practicing in China and teaching at Beijing Foreign Studies University, otherwise known as the Georgetown of China. Welcome back, Russell. Why do they call it the Georgetown of China? Because I'm teaching at the law school, which should be global lawyers. They all have to speak a second language, and they double major in English or Spanish. Interesting. Spanish. I guess there's a lot of places in the world that new economies are all Spanish speaking. So they're generating a lot of producing out of lawyers. I mean, all these lawyers are law students will graduate, take the Chinese bar, then go to U.S. And a few years ago, they would study and take the alum degree. Now they're taking actual JD courses. And so they go to U.S. law schools, get a JD, and then sit from the New York bar exam. Oh, really, the New York bar exam. Now there's some Chinese firms. I mean, actually, Chinese firms in the U.S. You know what just strikes me as problematic is that they come here, they take masters, they go everywhere, really, Europe also. And we don't send anybody there. There's no American lawyers doing that in China. Now you can say that it's the government, you know, that the American system is welcoming, more welcoming perhaps than the Chinese, you know, professional system lawyers. But I don't think that's really the answer to the question. We're not motivated. We don't have the culture and the profession in the country to go there like you have and practice and set up shop and learn the language, the customs, the business. That's really too bad. We should be doing exactly the same thing that they're doing. I think that that's a really important point, Jay. My observation is in the United States, we're just too comfortable. Everybody's worrying about the tailgate party, the big game on Saturday, the big university game in the NFL on Monday. But I think what's happening in China is that, you know, the Internet has changed things, people have access to knowledge base, they're hungry to learn to gain knowledge, to up their game technology. And what I see now is that, you know, if there are opportunities for U.S., especially in the law students or university students, actually President Barack Obama a few years ago had reached an agreement with China. So their generous scholarships are offered to U.S. students who want to come to. No, they're not. Really? See, that's my point. At our law school, we have a lot of these scholarships, but nobody shows up from the U.S. That's really too bad. And also the top number one law school in China, Renmi University, people are taking that, Americans are not taking advantage of it. So it's a really, it's a one-way exchange. I mean, people from China come in. Would you law school be fun and useful, fun and helpful to an American student? Well, I think it's good because for American students to understand the culture, to understand the thinking, to understand that things are going to change in the next five, 10, 15 years only because the Chinese world, the technology, the things they're doing and what we're going to talk about today, it's going to make an impact in the world. I think more succinctly from what I observe is that many Chinese companies are bringing technologies, new platforms, and their language to a lot of developing countries around the world. The One About One Road initiative is an example where they're bringing in a new technology. Huge, huge, so important. Yes. And then many of these students are coming from these regions, from Europe, along the One About One Road, Europe, Russia, Ukraine. They're all coming to China. Scholarship. Yes, to learn Mandarin. All the Europeans are at that. Invaluable experience and education and opportunity. Anyway, let's go to our principal subject. We've called this show eco-friendly transit in China. And that's because we want to talk about some of the newer technologies that are being used right now in China, in many places in China, for transit and trains. So can you describe what has popped up here in the last year or two? I think what has popped up is China has developed not only a high-speed bullet train, and there's some controversy about the intellectual property coming over from Japan, from Germany, from Siemens, and so forth. But they're taking a different route. They're doing different things in China. And one of the things that they're doing is using the whole idea of smart technology in their transportation system. And so that's what I want to focus on, Jay, today. In fact, one of these pieces of technologies, China has made a train that's driverless. And it's been in use in Hong Kong for a year. And it has replaced, is replacing some of Hong Kong's MTR subway trains. So we're seeing this technology that's employed. It's a China train. And they're going to go around the world and then bring that technology. Ah, it's not just limited to China though. The idea is so good, so workable, that it can go anywhere. So what does this look like, this China train? Well, I think it looks like any other train. There are two types of trains. We're going to talk about the train. There's the rail train, which is being used now in Hong Kong. It's also being used in a number of European cities, the same smart technology. This has rail. You have to build a rail. And this is timely, because there was an accident recently in Amtrak on their new inaugural line that ran from Portland to Seattle. And it was going 80 miles in a 30 mile zone, and it was turning a bend. So the question was, was that possibly human error? So this whole idea of smart technology may be able to prevent those kind of accidents with the trains. We hope so. I mean, theoretically, smart technology would avoid any accident if you program it to avoid the accident. And I think, I think technology today is caught up in many ways, in many forms, so that it's doing a lot of things that people are concerned about being taken over jobs. But however, especially where you're dealing with mass transit, this is an area where the Chinese are getting better at, they deal with large populations and small populations in their country. They're dealing with improving their infrastructure. And what they've done is they've looked and seen the infrastructure around the world, and they've seen that, well, we don't want to invest in old platforms. We need to do new technology. We need to think green. We need to be eco-friendly. And this is the new prevailing thought around all over China. It's not only in technology, but the way people do things. You don't see trash on the road anymore. You don't see people smoking a cigarette. There is no, there are no cigarettes, but people don't smoke anymore. We, people are concerned. And the last show we talked about was pollution, where they have curbed it down, where they really have ratcheted down, where there's no pollution all this winter. I've been there all this winter. And I look at every day. That's terrific. What an improvement. That's virtually overnight. Virtually overnight. It was terrible four or five years ago. Now it looks. So that's all because of technology. You know, latest things you can do, technology. So they've come up with this. First of all, we were talking about the driverless rail train. Okay. That's a different category from your bullet train. And that's what we're focusing on here today. So describe it. Well, but there's a third category. This is driverless, trainless. Trainless. Railless, excuse me, railless. Okay. So three categories. There's the regular rail, high speed rail, that's already deployed between major cities in China. That was a few years ago. And that's working well, right? It's working well. Okay. And it's, it was not that expensive. It is not that expensive to ride it. Yeah. Not expensive at all. And it's preferable to catch the plane now, because when you catch a plane, you have wait time, security checks, airport, a lot of, it takes a lot of stress out of you. Yeah. This is good for long distances. Yes. Long distance now. So that's one category. Second category is rail, but it's smart technology. Smart technology. Yes. Third category is it's no rail and smart technology. And that's the newest technology. So I thought it would be great to introduce it to our audience today. Yeah. City called Jujo, China, but Jujo, China, they are launching, it's in Hunan. They're launching a new rail-less train system. It's called A-R-T, excuse me, A-R-T, autonomous rapid rail transit. Autonomous rapid rail transit, A-R-R-T. That's right. Okay. And this is interesting because the population of Jujo, China is about 3.96 million. Small city. Small city. We got about a million here in Honolulu. Okay. Okay. We have technology everywhere. They're reminding us. And so anyway, their new system, they're developing, it's going to be the initial leg is going to be four miles for inner city rail. And so you're talking about the same size as if we are taking it from Kalihi to downtown. Not much bigger than Honolulu. So they're doing this system and they're coming out with this train where it can carry either a train that has three cabins will carry 300 passengers or a five-cabin, which will carry 500 passengers and travels up to 50 miles an hour. So it's just right for transit. It's for a small city, for a population where you're not talking 21 million people. And we're not talking going 500 miles in a given direction. We're talking about going three or four miles. And what's amazing is that this is employing the latest smart technology. It doesn't require rails to be installed. It doesn't need to require overhead traffic. All it requires is a road. And it's designed so that it follows asserted dotted lines or, excuse me, guideway. Yeah, you've shown me a picture of it. I'm very impressed. Imagine it's kind of like a bike path kind of affair. It's a macadam, black top on the side of the road. Cars don't go there. Not supposed to go there, right? And the train, as it were, follows this dotted line, which is in the center, I guess, of this macadam roadway. There are no rails. There are wheels. And the train has wheels. I guess that makes it kind of like a bus. There's no overhead power supply. The train is powered by batteries, which are recharged at appropriate points during the day or week. And this is the most interesting part. It's autonomous. So it can go by itself, this fabulous kind of bus, autonomous rail, railless bus thing that goes right through the center of the city. And it can go up to 50 miles per hour, that is something. Yes. And it's not like it's not in shape because there are also monitors that go back to Central Station where somebody's watching it all the time. Watching it and making sure there are cameras on it. So it can make sure that if there's anything that you have to know about. Yeah. Well, how do they collect the fares? I mean, that'd be an interesting question. They use a telephone. What did you call that program? Collect the fares. You can collect the fares. First of all, smart card technology. That's out of Hong Kong or out of Japan, no? Well, they had that for Beijing for many years. The subway system, smart cards. You can use the bus, you can use the trains, the subway. Transit card. Transit card. And you just swipe it and you put money into the card. And in Beijing, for example, you can actually, on your smartphone, you can load, there's an app for that. And you can just simply, you don't have to go to a train station to put money. You can do it on your smartphone and then just swipe it over. Yeah, or you use your Samsung smart watch like this one. That's right. Holding it up. There it is. I see it and I don't see it yet. There, that's smart. You could use this because I can use this with a credit card machine. It will run the charge on the credit card machine. Whether the clerk knows it or not, I can do that. And so I suppose the future is smart watches like this for the same purpose. I'm sure it's going to happen. It's going to happen. And it's amazing, but there are so many things that, there's so much flexibility in a system like this. Because it's using the latest technology. You can put onboard entertainment, all digital things. It'd be a wonderful experience for the passengers. And you can also very easily or able to track your demographics. Because of the smart card. Of the smart card. Because it can make a record of everybody who's coming and going and how long they stayed and all that. So is this expensive? I mean, how do you pay for something so fancy like this? Well, it's interesting because from my understanding, the company that is designed that they did their studies or market research studies. And it's a lot cheaper than, you know, the subways. It's, the overhead is a lot less because it's just tires. It's just maintenance of the road. And the road doesn't require much maintenance. It doesn't require much maintenance. It's only going to have this thing, which is kind of lightweight. You know, it's electric. It's not the combustion engine. And I've seen the pictures. It looks pretty good. It's kind of like a souped up bus on steroids kind of thing. Several buses together. Several buses all linked together. Five hundred people in a train of buses. That's what it amounts to. But it's quite remarkable how they get it to go on the sensors. They put the sensors down in that dotted line in the middle of the road. It just follows the sensors. So there's really not a lot of navigation issues around it. Just follow the yellow big road. Exactly. So this is made in China, designed in China the whole thing. Yeah. And how much deployment? I mean, where has it been deployed so far? Well, it's been made, designed out of a Hunan, China. It's actually, the technology is made for domestic right now, for domestic use. So we'll probably see that in smaller cities in China. It's pretty interesting that we read about all the geopolitical things that Xi Jinping has been doing. We see him extending China's influence all over the world at every continent. One road initiative is crossing many, many countries to extend China's influence all the way to Europe. Quite amazing. But this sounds like it's not just a train or a trainless train. It sounds like it's part of that initiative, because once it's perfected in China and Hunan or elsewhere, it's something that China can export and put in every city that, well, every city needs some kind of transit, and it'd be better than buses, presumably cheaper, more efficient, less labor, a whole enchilada. This could be an extension of China's influence. Yes, well, that's why the whole China's economy is changing. It's moving up the value chain. No longer, it's the garage, not factory. And the whole theme of China is innovation, green technology. This is all designed not only for Chinese needs, but it's good for their exports. Yeah, sure. So now they are formal competitors to Japan's rail as well as some of the other rail builders around the world. So they're exporting the rail around the world. I think they're going to do something in Southeast Asia, a very major project. We're seeing the whole one-about-one-road initiative reaping benefits to China because of factors that they can deliver now. They can deliver trains. They can deliver mass transit systems to a lot of places where, for example, large population centers, where you can't afford to put in something that's very expensive. Yeah, this isn't hard. All you need is a slice of the road, the cat on top, those sensors are probably easy to install, save all the money on rail, save all the money on overhead power or anything like that. Underground power, all you need is the train and anybody could build the roadway. So we're going to talk about exactly how interesting this might be to Hawaii, right after we come back from this break. Russell Liu, an American lawyer practicing Beijing and teaching in a local diplomatic school, what is it, international? Beijing Ford Studies University. Foreign Studies University in Beijing. And we're going to talk about how this could be kind of an innovation arbitrage to bring it not only outside of China and in the west of China, but also here in Hawaii. We'll be right back. Very exciting. I'm excited to even think about talking about it. Yeah. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? And they told me they were making music. Okay, we're back.  Me and Russell Liu, we're talking about trains, transit. We're talking about ARRT, the Autonomous Rapid Rail Transit System, which is being built in China and presumably will be exported from China along the One Belt, One Road Initiative going west. But also, this is something that Hawaii might be interested in. If not just for Honolulu, where our rail initiative seems to be stuck on a long-term basis and way too expensive, also for the neighbor islands. How do you see that playing out, if possible? Well, first, let me talk about the One Belt, One Road, Jay. Please. You touched a very interesting point. The One Belt, One Road, we're talking about the traditional One Belt, One Road in Marco Polo route that went through Northwest China, through the Middle East, through Europe. You're talking about the old route that went from China down from Shanghai, Yiwu, all the way down to Southeast Asia, around India, through Kenya, up through Africa, and to Europe. The third One Belt, One Road, which people haven't identified yet, is the China's movement of the economy into South America. And that is the new road, the One Belt, One Road, that passes through Hawaii. So just think about it, if we're in the middle of that route, it goes, we can be very important economically. Well, if that's the reality, we have to recognize it as the reality, and maybe somehow find opportunities and advantages in it. We haven't had, aside from a few guys buying high-rise condo apartments for astronomical sums, I'm not sure that we've had a whole lot of China investment here right now in this iteration, such as the kind of investment we had when the Japanese were coming. Well, those are different times, Jay. There's a time when you had land that could be zoned for hotels. All the zoned land for hotels are gone. Nobody has thought about it, of what you can do. The capacity does not allow for hotels, the present capacity doesn't allow for a lot of Chinese travelers to come here. 80-something percent is the occupancy rate. So that means very few rooms left for the Chinese, if you want larger people to come here. As a result, I remember Madam Wu, remember her? Yes.  You know, she was like number two or three and the government was just way up there and sitting somewhere, I think.  Well, she didn't buy anything here. She went to Seattle and bought a lot of airplanes, that's what she did. And, you know, they have passed us by in terms of industrial investment, I think. And so maybe it's time for us to look more carefully at them, especially in view of the South American road you're talking about. So what could we do with this ARRP? Showcase technology. Yeah, go ahead. I really think that having some successful technology out here in Honolulu, that is, Chinese-made innovation will bring a lot of, attract other potential economic opportunities to this place. And I still firmly believe, born and raised and grown up here, that Honolulu can be a very unique Singapore of the United States if it chooses to be. We have a lot of bright kids here, many kids who are technological savvy, but it's now, how do we bring that here? One of the ways is really, when you showcase and you have Chinese technology here, the Chinese will start to take notice. They become much more friendlier, your develop relationships. The vehicle relationship, not only just because it's going to feed your transportation needs, but you're giving them a place to show the technology. Think about that. When you have a place where you can show the technology, you don't need a convention center where big rigged trucks will come up because we can't do that. When technology is here, and you start to have all kinds of technology here that comes from China, then you become a showcase, you become all of a sudden a magnet for business. Then you have a good partner, you negotiate a good partnership relationship with them, it's a win-win-win. Then you also bring American, tech companies here. Because the Chinese are here. And you do jobs to local people to innovate the deployment of this equipment and to maintain it, and to operate it. So I want to give you a case study. We can talk about how to deploy this in Honolulu, but let's wait. Let's talk about how to deploy it in Maui first. Maui has terrific traffic jams. Maui has certain relative to Maui, high-density population centers that could be connected. How would this work? If a deal was made, say between the county of Maui, just for example, and the Chinese who are operating and developing and exporting and deploying these ARRT, trainless trains. I love that idea when you're starting off here, the case study of Maui.  It's a beautiful environment. You don't want to put overhead tracks, trails.  You don't want to disturb. I have a real sensitivity because my heart is in Hawaii, sensitivity to digging up the ground, disturbing traditional Hawaiian. Maui cares a lot about electric energy. He cares a lot about transportation. He cares about renewables, driving, creating electric energy, and then driving trains. It's just like this. This would fit within what I want to call at the frontier of Maui's thinking about electrical generation and renewables. And this is great because the work is already done. The major work has been done because Maui has tried it out where the roads are, where you can go, where you're not disturbing the environment. So you're not going to build something on top of that. You're going to simply modify it to have smart lanes, these dotted lines to the rail, dedicated routes, and you're going to bring clean electric-powered, trackless trailers. You can make charging stations using solar power or wind power for that matter. Maui would be great for that where the sun is shining every day of the year. And you could connect the connect population centers and commercial centers all together. And if you found you didn't get enough traffic from one or the other, you can change the route without spending any significant additional money. That's right. And it would be great for Maui because I'll tell you why. You can bring that technology to Maui, improve it, and start to create technology research development centers and link up different parts of Maui, Kana Pali with the Kalui. Yeah, exactly. By having this and you can take tourists across there safe, eco-friendly way. Yeah. And I'll give you another one you'd see what you think. The Big Island was doing this for a while before Billy Kanoy, remember him? And I don't think of doing it anymore, but they had free buses. So if you worked in a hotel in Kona, but you lived in Hilo, you could get on a free bus. This saves you a midnight ride across the saddle road and all that. It was a real of great thing for the people at the Big Island. Too bad they don't have it anymore. But if you want to incentivize people to ride this as a demonstration, if you want to incentivize the success of it, you make it free. And everyone can ride it. Tourists can ride it. The locals can ride it. People can ride it to work. They can ride to recreation and ride it home. And so, and you can change the, you know, the route so easily, it would adapt itself to exactly where you need to put people. Really interesting possibilities there. So in the model, what do you think about a free ride and how would you be able to do that? I think a free ride is terrific. Nobody's going to turn that down, Jay. You know, you can get your revenues through advertising revenue on board entertainment that will tell the tourists where to go. Yes. Think about that. Think about that. Yes. You can take the tourists also on this free ride to your sponsors, drop them off to the Kona Farm area. You galvanize all the Kona coffee. Well, talking about the Big Island, you know the Big Island has greater distances than Maui, but still the Big Island has plenty of renewables too. In fact, it has so much renewables that it can't use all the renewables that it has. So you can put these charging stations for the train along the way or at the, you know, the end points of the route. And you could essentially charge it with renewables and spend very little in terms of operating it. And think about it. If you can increase your tourist revenue because you have this and it makes sense to partner with the tourists and the companies where it will go to Ocaca Falls. It will pass all these areas at Scott. And people will be able to enjoy the islands less car accidents, less pollution, all electric. Yeah. And the autonomous thing is it's being perfected up. When I see recently, the Army now has a helicopter that can be operated autonomously. It's not even remote radio. As you just set it on a course, tell it what to do, and it does it. Or a big U.E. helicopter, it can do that. So autonomous vehicles are coming of aid, just not just the drones. It's all cars, of course. So this rides parallel, if you'll excuse the expression, with the whole autonomous movement. We got to get on board with this. You know, one of the big problems about renewable energy is we haven't used it sufficiently in transportation. This could solve that problem. We just got to open up, you know, to a Chinese import. And start working with them and learning from them and being part of the program that they suggest to us. So let's do this, all right? Okay. I'm on board, Jay. Yeah, I'm on board. Yeah. I think we just need to be open-minded and look at technology. There are lessons to be learned. This technology, for example, the trackless trade or the rivalless trade, it's already been employed already in some European countries that Chinese tech is in operation. And so I see great possibilities and I see that here, maybe it is a way to supplement our new heart, a new system that was supplemented. For example, if we can't fill the infrastructure, you know, one of the things I'm always concerned about coming from Hawaii is that you're going to dig up along the way a lot of land. There may be traditional Hawaiian burial sites. And, you know, we don't want to disturb that. We need to preserve all of this and having this over existing roads. Imagine in this city of Jujo, that track system is four miles, your initial track in the inner city area. So from the non-track track, the non-track, the trackless rail system, it is four miles. Think about it. From Kalihi to downtown Honolulu, that's 3.2 miles, okay? From downtown Honolulu to Waikiki, that's 2.9 miles. Made to order. It's because think about it. No condemnation, right? No expensive rails or overhead power. It's all renewable right there and it's largely autonomous. The whole thing can operate by itself. And PS, whatever you do with the route, such as it is, has been planned or stuck, whatever the case may be, we still need to go to the university. We still need to go to the airport. We still need to go to Waikiki and other neighborhoods like Kailua, like the whole other side. This is a perfect extension. If you want to build the thing that the monster we have created for rail now today, if you want to extend it, this is a great way to extend it. Great way to extend it, supplement it. Think about a triangle. And from downtown Honolulu to UH Mono, that's 3.9 miles. So you're talking about a triangular system that can move people, a lot of people. You're talking that one train will take three or two people. And it can go up to 50 miles an hour. And it will take people safely across the road. Russell, you and I, we get so excited about these things. We can hardly contain ourselves and we don't realize that we're out of time. So Russell, you thank you so much. Thank you, Jane. Talking about A-R-R-T, instead of H-A-R-T, it's really an eye-opener to talk to you about. We need H-A-R-R-T. H-A-R-R-T. H-A-R-R-T. Thank you, Russell. Thank you. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Now Nigerian youths want government at their levels to include them into the Nigerian project for goals and sustainable development. They made the appeal of the youth's engagement and collision hangout in Kaduna, organized by the Young Men's Christian Association, YMCA. The Youth Association, a media officer, is the fan of Aqboko, says Nigerian youth have the potential and expertise to be part of the project, other than that no nation develops without the contribution of the youth who are the future of the country. Let's have an opportunity to give these young people the opportunity to determine what they want. They'll be allowed to actively participate in the conversations around governance, in the conversations around the things that will affect the future of Nigeria, to still believe in the Nigeria project. Let us not look at what is happening today and become complacent and refuse to add value to wherever we find ourselves. A few people will are just looking at the situation as hopeless and say nothing good is going to come out of it. Individually, each of us, we have that role to play to make the Nigerian project a better one for the future. So my message to young people is not to give up. My message to young people is to still believe and my message to young people is to add value wherever they are to the Nigerian project. The call of the federal government and the federal and state governments to provide a free environment to the team in youths stressing that supporting them and innovation was a pathway to positively impacting climate change in the country. We want the government to open more avenues where the youths can participate in environments. We need an eco-friendly system in Nigeria. We need to build very strong resilience for our environments. And I think the youths have those opportunities if only the government will let them explore and actualize it. For the climate change, it is really eating death into the world, not just Nigeria. We have youths that are inventory. We have youths that create this energy efficient cookstores that will help us create a zero, eco-free Nigeria government to listen to our voices so we can have a very, very nice eco-friendly system in Nigeria. I think Nigerian youths are very agile and hardworking people. And very creative. If you look at what's happening in the world in entertainment, in sports, in different aspects of end of the world, you see Nigerian youths really going far and beyond. And I really hope that Nigerian youths also, the energy that Nigerian youths have, the positive side that can really influence leadership in the country as well to help the country get better in the aspect of governance. It's all about youths, to empower youths in different aspects of life, to learn more skills, new skills in different aspects. As Nigerians, if we love and the companion, we will be like this in all the features of Nigeria. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


For us to come out here and support a first marine division, it's our job to provide general support fires for the division and direct support fires to those maneuver units as the general determines. This is great for us on several levels, first and foremost, it's one thing for the batteries and the battalions to come out by themselves. It adds a totally different perspective when the regiment comes out. And for the regiment, it's an absolute gift to have maneuver to support and the division sitting over us in order to provide training for the regiment. The training is important so we can see how we really fight in combat. We don't use blank ammunition, we use live rounds, so it's important because we gotta be accurate and we gotta be safe at the same time so everybody in the whole division or whoever we're supporting can come back home safely. Ready, go! Throughout the training areas, I think you're gonna find a very engaged bunch of marines, very committed and professional, committed to technical and tactical expertise and committed to making sure that we get the most learning from this exercise and apply it in future exercises in case we're called away, in the likely case we're called away to fight a battle or a war.


What's the hard part about the business? Is it like shelf life? Like what's the difficulty? Managing employees. Yeah, definitely employees. You know, it's unfortunately we're in that, you know, sort of retail employee turnstile where it's really tough. We're very lucky, a lot of our employees, for the most part, for hourly employees, they've been with us a lot of them for a while. Some, you know, there's always some turnover, you know, a certain percentage, but our bakers are just pretty steadfast.  Right, there's always light changes that move right on. We have a really great crew, we all just adore each other and it's just good. I know we talked about this earlier, but, you know, as these places are reopening, that we're being told the hard part is like finding employees all over again. Because no one's incentivized to work, people are getting unemployment checks. Yep. And so this is obviously impacting you guys. Sure. That's been happening to us, yes. What do you do? Cover front of the house. So we work some shifts, yeah. Front of the house, which is my favorite, not. I'd much rather be in the kitchen. I would like to be in the kitchen creating, that's sort of my happy place, but yeah, I've just been covering front of the house while we're getting people trained up and looking for people. Yeah, what I'm finding is, and especially after talking to other people in the same boat, all post for the job. And normally I'll get tons of applicants and then I'll text them, hi so and so, thank you for your resumes, this is Nancy, opponents. Are you available to jump on an interview call tomorrow at 3.30? And yes, absolutely. This past week, and this has never happened before, I kid you not, like a half dozen, I would respond pretty quickly after I'd received their email. Crickets. Nobody responds. So they put in their application so they can, when they fill out their unemployment form, they check out the box. Oh yes, I'm looking. I'm looking, oh okay, are you? I don't know. Well they don't have to, that's the problem with the system. All they have to do is put a valiant attempt, which I would call just like a dusting. Yeah. And then as long as they're checking the box saying yeah, I tried. It's definitely gotten harder. I have a few people now that are potentials, but it's taken a week longer than it normally might. I mean, we're just lucky we get people to do apply, but I see the difference even in our little world. Yeah, in West Hollywood, as I've mentioned, like the Chamber of Commerce on the calls, this is the biggest thing that hotels are struggling with too, like ballet employees, just restaurant employees, cough, baristas, they can't seem to fill the seats as the hotels are getting way more operating.  I heard about one restaurant have to close for two weeks because they didn't have labor. Imagine, after COVID, after everything, now they have to close because they can't find people looking for work who want to work. It's a combo of the unemployment checks and the insimulus and all of that. And a lot of people are going and following their passion.  Let me find a business that I want to start or that I want to follow. And it's apparently a lot of people are going back to school. Right. Yeah, a lot of people, I didn't even notice when I interview people, they've gone back to school. But I wonder if this is LA and the big cities because people have all left the big expensive cities and gone back to maybe where they were from or if this is happening all over the country. Well, people have moved out of the cities. Also, you know, I saw a statistic chart and it looked legitimate that food service, whether it's cooks, bakers, servers, all of the food service and all the hospitality were in the top of COVID deaths per job occupation. So, you know, if they didn't move or go back to school, they died.


I'm Stan Boyle, I am a founding member of Spectrum Theatre and we welcome you back to the neurodiversity matters conference with Spectrum Theatre. Today, at this time, we are having an interview with Jesse Helfering from the Summit School in Montville, Canada. So welcome, Jesse. It's nice to have you. Well, thank you very much, Stan, thank you. Yeah, so we will have, this is being broadcast live on Facebook, so we will open this up for if anyone has any questions to post them on Facebook and we will try to get them out and ask them to Jesse. But first we'd like to have Jesse discuss what the Summit School does, what your programs are in that and then go into questions. Wonderful, yeah. So first of all, I'd like to say just a thanks, Dan to you and Clay and everybody and Anna that I've dealt with so far has been great. And what you guys, the Spectrum Theatre Ensemble we're doing here, I just think it's wonderful because it's one of the main foundations of what we're trying to do also, which is to kind of create connections across Canada, across North America, within organizations that have this sort of similar mandate, which is to use theater to kind of sort of open up the audience's minds, introduce different types of, introduce neurodiversity and all of its wonder and the struggles and everything. So this is great. I'm really, really excited and happy to be a part of it. Thank you. We appreciate that. Wonderful. And so basically at just, Summit School is a school in Montreal. It's a kind of unique school where we have over 650 students. All the students at our school have developmental disabilities. The students range in age from five to 21. The, about 50% of our student population is on the Spectrum. So, that means that 50%, there are other developmental disabilities and there's a big sort of social community of many different individuals with different types of sort of ways of expressing and ways of being. So in that way, it's quite interesting. And there's sort of a different way of structuring education for each of those groups. I started at the school about 12 years ago. My background is in theater and film and English, I have a degree in English literature. So when I came on board, they, you know, we, there was sort of a need right away. I just saw right away that there were students that had the ability to express theatrically that wanted to be on stage, but there was no real program for them. So we just started to develop that program. We had wonderful support from the community. And each year we put on a show or every year and a half and it just grew and grew. All of the shows that I do are original content. So they are created with the students in some capacity. The way that we sort of get content from the students has changed, you know, changes and evolves every time because it's sort of a learning flow. But I just wanted to give a few examples of some of the shows that we've put up. So our first sort of big show that went beyond the school community was called Rachel at Risk. And that was a show that was based on interviews over six months with over 50 different students with developmental disabilities.  And, you know, we got a sense that they really had a lot to express in terms of, you know, ideas about what they wanted to say. This was around 2012 that we did this. And so we, I kind of, I then took all of that. So I'm, you know, a writer and a theatrical person, I took that and I kind of used the transcripts of those interviews to create a play. And so that play, Rachel at Risk, was put on and, you know, it sold out. It was a huge, wonderful reaction. And it was very scary because the first time that I did a show where there was so much memorizing. So these students had a ton to do. And the thing about our school is that the students that come, they all have sort of intellectual impairment. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways of categorizing that by IQ or whatever. A lot of that's, you know, so controversial and meaningless, but the fundamental is they do really struggle with learning. And so a lot of our guys would really not be able to get a regular high school leaving diploma. Some of them never really end up learning how to read. So we have all sorts of levels of intellectual capability. And so putting on a play like that, you know, there were a fair number of people saying, you know, the students may not be able to do that. But, you know, we learned different ways of rehearsing and a different approach to how to memorize and a lot of repetition. And it was just an incredible, you know, wonderful success. And from there, again, it grew. We did another play called Outta Here a couple of years later. And that one was a musical that was about, the basic storyline was five students from our school and the school went downtown Montreal to this outing at a library, at a museum. And five of these students escaped and they kind of had their Ferris Bielder's day off kind of scenario running through the city, doing things they've always wanted to do. But it also gave an opportunity and a fun sort of musical way to look at some of the challenges that they face in regular society, the way that they're sort of misrepresented and with a way often some of their actions and behaviors are misinterpreted. And so it gave us a way to play with that. That was sort of uplifting and fun. And also at the end, very heartfelt and emotional. That play ended up going to the Centaur Theater. So we put it up and then we were asked to go to the center, which one of the biggest theaters here in Montreal. And that was an incredible experience because you've got to imagine these young people who don't get to do a lot of different things. And now they're on one of the biggest stages in Montreal with a packed house of regular theater goers and those theater goers, I know the way the mentality when they arrive is, oh, this is gonna be nice. It's a school play. It's gonna be cute. They were in tears. They were laughed. They were like, one of the said, this is like the best thing I've seen at this theater all year. So we've been able to build and work off of that. And the thing is, it's one of these things. I'm just gonna do a side comment here where I know it's annoying, right? It's annoying that when someone with a disability does something that quote unquote, neurotypical people can do, we're supposed to applaud because that's amazing. And the thing is these guys have talents and abilities that are inside them that are incredible, that have their own unique sort of flavor that we're bringing things to the stage that no one had really ever seen before. So we're not just talking about doing something that is the same as another group or equivalent. We're actually doing something that's opening up a new way and not just a new way of, not just a new way in terms of the content and who the actors are, but a new way of performing, a new way of being on stage and just the movements are different. And on all of that is interesting if it's put into the right context and surrounded by the right sort of setting and concentrated sort of thought by all of the people that are helping to put it up. So before we go to the last questions, I just wanted to say one other show that I wanted to talk about was the one we just recently finished. And it was called Letter to My Disability. And the way this show came about, I'm highlighting this to kind of show you the different ways shows are made at the school. This show, there was this teacher that for 15 years, she sort of had the higher functioning group. I, again, I hate these words and, you know, but that's the kids that were the most academically capable. When they turned around 14, 15, they would have this health class with her and she, one of the modules in the health class was disabilities. And they talked about disabilities that the students themselves had. And in some cases, this was one of the first sort of moments where these students actually began discussing their own disabilities or confronting them. And it was sort of controversial because in some cases the parents had not really talked a lot about those issues with them. Yet all of the kids kind of knew that there was something that was different about them. And so the teacher then asked them to write a letter to their disability and they were able to use whatever words that they wanted, whatever language. And she basically handed me a stack of 40 letters and I just read them and it was like these pure expressions of anger, frustration, of beautiful creative writing, of joy, of joy, of joy, of joy. Of writing, of joy, of hope. It was just in these letters to themselves almost. And I was like, oh my God. So we put up a show that surrounded that which was kind of a narrative about a teacher trying to draw this out of her students. But the letters that we used in the show were real letters written by the students. And again, that one was picked up and put on another huge stage here, the Segal Center and again sold out performances and a lot of success and a lot of desire for people to, hey, can you put this show up again and it's hard because it's to school. But so that's sort of where we're at. And now we're sort of a bit, as everybody else is in the theater community, a bit derailed here because of COVID and the future of what performance might mean over the next two years. So we haven't really started wrapping our head around that but so that's kind of where we're at. And the school, the whole time, this is done from a school that has just supported us and every step of the way they've helped us to realize these goals. And not all our goals are academic goals. And that's been the wonderful thing is that it's really seen as sort of a self-confidence building but also community building sort of, lots of different benefits to the program that might just kind of go beyond your straight up reading, writing and arithmetic. So I'm just always happy and thankful to Summit School for allowing us the program like this to exist and grow and evolve. But I think that's kind of my intro to what we do. Thank you. Let me just say personally, as a member of Spectrum Theater Ensemble, your experiences are, you know, the background of your experience is different but you have said so many of the same things we've discovered as a theater company here at Rhode Island. I mean, that's- That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, and that's one of the reasons I wanted, because I've also, the thing, it goes both ways a bit then because even here in Montreal, I'm looking for others who have done this, you know, and I haven't seen it. And one of the things too is that we've, throughout the evolution of these students that come through the project, then they leave. And so I'm trying to find ways to support them as they leave and go into the community and to create theater on their own and start writing their own theater. Because when I get them, they're, you know, 13, 14, 15.  So you gotta foster that. And at first these kids, when they start, some of them are, they're angry that they have sort of something that's different than the others or whatever, but a lot of them by the time they leave and they're in 18, 19, 20, they now feel like they're advocates. They feel like they've processed that experience. They've been supported during that transition within themselves of understanding who they are. We've really tried to help them reach their own, you know, absolute certainty that they have value. And in fact, their value is in some ways, I'm not gonna be comparative, but more significant because they are at the forefront of a new change and hopefully changing the way people see a whole group of people. And, you know, one of my students, Claudio Tamburri, he wrote a one-man show that last summer I directed for him. He wrote it, you know, I just directed him. He was the one-at-man performer. He went to the Montreal Thin Tringe, the Toronto Fringe, had all sorts of support. And so that's a wonderful story of like, so I guess where you guys are at and some of these companies, you're out there producing, you are really taking control of your destiny. I'm sort of at the stage where these young people are sort of developing. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm, again, I'm going to reiterate that if anyone has any questions, please post them to Facebook Live and we'll try to get those out. But I have a few questions I had come up with and honestly, you've already kind of gone into a little bit of some of them in minor detail, but I'm gonna, so I'm going to start with, obviously you mentioned how you have students of many varying levels of ability. So how do you go about engaging everyone together with so many different varying abilities? How do you, how do you get them to mold into a cohesive group? Yeah. That's a great question. I'm really glad you asked it. We, I think, and I think part of that starts before I even interact with them. It starts at the level of the school itself and what the school is. So the kids are not in classrooms based on diagnosis. They're in classrooms based on their, you kind of look at, I mean, let's say you wanted to use age, you kind of look at age in three categories. You look at their biological age.  And so those are the things that will place them into classes. So it's not just a strict grading and in a class there might be kids of different biological ages. So that mixing is already done at the school. So they are part of a larger social environment where they, and nobody's going around as a student thinking about diagnosis. It's just human being to human being. But the one thing I wanted to mention was, and being a director of actors and I've done shows that are all quote unquote, neurotypical and there's not a huge difference. Like, I don't look at it like, okay, now I'm gonna do the play with the autistic students and I have to have a different mind. No, it's the same approach. But the big thing that's different I find is as you're saying, it's the point of engagement for theater, okay? Because a theater kid that's neurotypical, they're expressive, they're engaging, they might be performative. There's so many incredible actors on the spectrum that day to day aren't like that. They might be quiet, they might not be expressive but then you have to see them on the stage and when you put them in that environment, tons of stuff changes. I had one student, his name was Gabriel and he was like, you know, serious, relatively serious day to day. If you didn't give him the time of day and you saw him walking down the hall, he was the funniest guy you've ever, I mean, and he would improv on the stage. He would just roll with it and riff and his mom after the show because she would have everybody, the audience and stitches. His mom after the show said, I never knew Gabriel was funny. And I'm like, I never, I could never, you know, that was, and so there's where you see, we all have this other persona that comes out when we're on the stage. We all do, but I find like trying to figure out who will be good on stage, that's the thing that's a little different. That's the thing where I think communities in general and people in general have to open up their audition process and make it more respectful of differences. They have to not expect everybody to come in and blow them away and feel okay about standing in a waiting room with a hundred other people. There has to be different ways of doing that part of the process because if you don't change that, if you don't open your mind up to just that first introduction, you're not gonna find these incredible individuals, you know? So that's sort of one of the differences I would say. But yeah. So we have a question from Facebook Live. So the question goes, could you speak to the challenges, how you include non-speaking or minimally speaking students and give any strategies that might have found useful for that? Yeah. So for our school, again, our school benefits from that sort of that mix of having many different capabilities. So I've had students that are on stage, you know, really non-verbal. We often, what we try to do is pair them or create scenes where they can be with other performers that are or so that we can sort of create environments. And I guess in my mind, I'm also thinking of the students and it's not just non-verbal. So maybe that's where I'm getting a bit, but I'm also thinking of the students that are very lower intellectually. A verbal, yeah. Exactly, where they can still be on stage, but they also, they need to sort of be bonded with someone else who can. And these wonderful, you know, sort of kinships on stage develop and it's a great thing to see. And it kind of speaks to the sort of group support that's happening on the stage as well of people supporting people. So the non, you know, the other thing with non-verbal, it's, you know, because we create all our own content, we're able to create content that would work for those students.  There's like in the first play that I did, there was really not much dialogue. A lot of the dialogue was thought bubble dialogue that was sort of narrated by another speaking person, of the people on stage moved. So, you know, that's sort of part of the, part of it. So I guess if you can create scenes that have impact that are non-verbal, I think that's the key, right? And then so you can create wonderful moments that, that, you know, there's still a lot that can be done on the stage with just presence, with movement, with all of that. So, and that's sort of what we've found is that we'll adjust the scene so that those individuals can be on stage. And then you're seeing, you know, can they remember what to do to their movements and stuff? And that's the intellectual level. But yeah, for kids that are non-verbal, and with a higher intellect, there's a lot of opportunity as long as you, the facilitators, or whoever is creating that piece recognizes that. Right. So we have about five minutes left, a little bit less now. So I have two more questions. One that I came up with and one that I was kind of thinking of, but that had been also asked on Facebook. So we're going to kind of ask them together, what does the future hold for the Summit School and your program within it? What do you hope to be doing? And the other question being, how could people contact you and or the Summit School if they want to become involved in your program? Okay, so I was speaking with Clay earlier in terms of, you know, Summit School, we have a website, it's changing soon. It's www.Summit-School.com. So you start with that, but I'm also going to be providing to the Spectrum Theater Ensemble all of my contact information and other ways of engagement. We have some documentaries and film things that we can kind of do engagement with. So I think that's where I'll leave that. And Dan and Clay, obviously, if people reach out to you guys wanting to know more, we'll try to create that bridge of communication. So that would be the first thing. Second thing, the future, that is a, you know, that's it, my idea for the future of the program has changed. We had a show planned for next February. That might not happen now. The thing is I have also, I also produce film also. So I think that is where I'm going to kind of spend my, my next project will probably be a film project with the students, because then we can deal with social distancing. We can deal with, you know, the dissemination of that film doesn't have to be in an auditorium. It could be on people's computers at home. So- You can do something like what we're doing with Zoom. Absolutely. And I'm getting a lot of inspiration from this. You guys are like, this is the, I've done Zoom with this, your technical stuff is like the highest I've seen, man. You guys are pros. So I got to go learn all this stuff now so I can do it. So, you know, but beyond that, like forgetting about COVID and forgetting about, you know, what we're going through now, I think the key for me was just to continue to find interesting stories that will resonate with our student performers and will resonate with audiences to continue to kind of build what we're doing. We're all about original stuff. I just, I love it when people do plays that have already been written, but I just have this feeling that the voice, you know, it's so interesting when everything's operating from the students to the message to everything. It's all new. It's all coming from this sort of unique perspective. That's sort of what excites an interest us over here. So yeah, that's the future for us. Okay. Thank you very much. Wow, Dan, thank you so much. See you. Yeah, so I'd like to thank you very much. So we're definitely looking forward to collaborating with you in the future. And with the program, the summer school, we're gonna be cutting out for about five minutes while we get ready for our next panel, which again, you'll see me again. So thank you, everybody. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you, everybody. Awesome. Thank you so much, Spectrum Theater Ensemble. Thank you, Dan. And just, it was great being here.


Udo State Governor Laki Ayedatiwa has been sworn in as the state's substantive executive governor following Governor Rotimi Akeridolu's demise. State Chief Justice Ulushegun Odoshola administered the oath of office at the Coca-Cola Conference Hall of the Governor's office in Akure. Present to witness the swearing-in ceremony at top judges in the state, government officials and politicians. We will determine duties to the best of our ability, faithfully, and accordance with the constitution of the Governor and the body of the year and the law. As always in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, solidarity, well-being and prosperity of the Governor and the public of Nigeria. We will determine duties to the best of our ability, faithfully, and accordance with the constitution of the Governor and the body of the year and the body of the year and the body of the year. That I will not allow my personal interest to influence my official conduct on my official decisions. That I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That I will abide by the food of conduct contained in the big schedule to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That he were assured the indigens of the state of continued progress as well as making their welfare his topmost priority. The event which culminated in today's ceremony, where Abdulla is sworn in as the Governor of Wondustia, is the watershed in the history of Wondustia as this is the first time we are having a transition within an administration. Today's event has placed a burden on all of us to pull together and set together as one because we have the honor's responsibility to continue to sustain the legacies of Araku, Oluwaiutini, Oduwaiu, Akiribi, Esi, Esiwe, which was good governors, properly called. Our leader and governor during his campaign embarked upon several large-man projects, many of which have been completed and several ones ongoing. We now have the responsibility to complete them. It is to the credit of Araku, Akiribi, that the state now has a flyover region where the one in Araku is ongoing. It is necessary for us to acknowledge with pride the wonderful achievements and legacies of Araku in Oluwaiutini, Oduwaiu, Akiribi, Esiwe, Esiwe. His records of performance are monumental and unprecedented. I want to assure the people of Odu state that I will not let my watch. This administration shall continue to advance the welfare of the people. We shall always place the people first in every decision we take.


Taking a power nap during your day can quickly restore your energy, but what happens if you combine it with a cup of coffee? Well, let's find out. Hey, what's up, Greg here, the founder of Your Inception. Welcome to my channel, where I show you how you can achieve limitless performance with a minimalistic approach. Subscribe below to start your journey. Coffee naps or so-called caffeine power naps have become very popular in the past years.  Now, why exactly would you do that?  Well, yeah, exactly. Coffee does boost your energy, but here's an important thing you need to know. Coffee takes about 20 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes to go from your body to your brain. So this is the approximate time that it needs to kind of give you the energy boost that you expect from a cup of coffee. So if your power nap is short enough, this means 15 to 20 minutes, and if you drink a small cup of coffee before that, what's going to happen is you're going to wake up completely refreshed because of the nap you took. And secondly, you're going to get the energy boost from the cup of coffee. And this is just fantastic. But to get the benefits from drinking coffee before taking a power nap, you have to do it in the right way. Now, I'm going to show you the exact process how to do a perfect coffee nap. Now, first of all, you need to set everything up for the nap. So in my case, this means noise-canceling headphones. This means using a sleep mask, a nice pillow, and a blanket, and of course, my smartphone, which has the possessed app. This is the app I use that helps me quickly fall asleep. By the way, guys, if you want to know the exact procedure, how to make the optimal power nap, then I created another video which you can find in the description below at the end of this video, or you're going to find the link somewhere around. So just check it out after this video is finished. After everything is set for the power nap, you need to make a short cup of coffee. Now, think as presses and forget the Marie Canis, all right? So it has to be a small cup of coffee because if it's a big one, you're going to need, you know, a long time to drink it because it's going to be hot at the beginning, and then you won't be able to take an optimal power nap. Then, of course, drink this coffee, and immediately after that, try to fall asleep. And last but not least, make sure your power nap is not longer than 20 minutes. Kind of the optimal length is 15 to 20 minutes, but it shouldn't be longer than 20 minutes because this is the time that coffee will start bringing the benefits. It will boost your energy. So, you know, when this happens, you need to be awake. By the way, guys, I have revealed seven powerful secrets that will show you how you can outperform everyone around you without burning out. To get them, download my free handbook below. All right, guys, let me show you a couple of things you need to be aware of before you take the first caffeine or coffee power nap. First of all, keep in mind that if you drink a long cup of coffee, which some of you will probably do it, that's fine as well. Just keep in mind, if it's a long cup of coffee, you're going to need more time to drink it. And in this case, then you need to kind of shorten your power nap from 15 maybe to 10 minutes. That's all right as well. It's not optimal, but it's all right. And secondly, if you don't fall asleep during this 15 to 20 minute power nap, that's all right as well. Because if you're going to lay down in your bed, if you're going to try to relax, you'll still get most of the benefits that you get from a power nap, plus in this case, combined with a cup of coffee. So don't worry. You don't have to fall asleep. It's not necessary. But in most cases, if you follow my exact procedure that I mentioned in my other video, I'm saying in most cases, you should actually fall asleep. So yeah, that's how you can make a perfect coffee nap. And in my opinion, this is even better than just a standard nap. You know that just how it is, you guys should definitely try it as soon as possible. And do let me know. By the way, guys, if you like this video, don't forget to press the like button and subscribe to this channel below. So much about coffee naps. If you have any questions, guys, do let me know. If you want to learn more about sleep hacking, check our videos that I created for you. Don't forget to follow your inception on Facebook and Instagram. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel. And I hope to see you soon. Take care.