Thank you very much for the invitation. It's an honor to be here. My relationship with WIDER goes back to the 2002 when I came here to present in a similar conference on the topic of violence and human capital accumulation. Since then, I have been following the work of the WIDER Institute with great interest. I think that the Institute is at the center of very important policy debates. I think that the level of discussion is with very high quality. And as Finwas mentioned, last year I came as a visiting scholar during my sabbatical. And during those three months that I spent here, I had several experience that makes my time here very interesting. The third year conference anniversary of WIDER was a very important point of discussion of development. And something that struck me about that conference was the level of discussion and the openness of the discussion. There were a lot of different perspectives and different scholars debating very critical issues in development. And in that sense, in that spirit, I want to present here three ideas that are going to shape my research in the next years. And I think that there are three ideas that are at the debate of policy in education. My perspective about education in developing countries is somehow a little bit different from the perspective that some people are putting forward, mainly the idea that the question of where does the investment in education went, the economies are not growing as they should be. And I always think, OK, what is the counterfactual? So that is something that I think is that I am more positively, my thoughts are more positive with regard to education and what has happened in developing countries. I'm going to discuss that more in detail. But the three ideas that I want to discuss with you are around the following three issues. The first one is the production of those emotional skills. I think that a lot of people are thinking social emotional skills is one part of the production of the school that is important. And I think that I totally agree with that. I want to give you some ideas of how to think about that. The second issue probably is more important for developing countries right now is the issue of heterogeneity. And the third issue is that this debate about the misalignment of incentives in education systems. In order to give you a preview of what I am going to try to convey to you, I'm going to present the ideas in a very broad sense. And then I am going to go type deep in these three ideas. So the first idea about the production of those emotional skills. So what I am trying to claim here is that we need a more clear framework in the formation of social emotional skills at the school. So I believe that it's important to differentiate different type of those emotional skills that are being produced. And I think that it's important to define different periods of time in the production of social emotional skills. As it is right now, a lot of researchers are thinking in a very broad way social emotional skills. And let me say some researchers are saying, OK, we try to understand what is cognitive skills and the rest of the skills. And they pull the other skills in the rest. And I think that is not helpful. And we need to start thinking more about a more organized framework. And I think that there is a dynamic aspect in the formation of social emotional skills that is important. The second point in social emotional skills that I want to make is that there is an important complementarity or sustainability situation between the household and the school. And we need to understand what is the relationship between household production and school production in these skills. The third idea, the second idea, is the idea of heterogeneity of the skills. So a main challenge of teachers is receiving a highly heterogeneous class. And something that is happening right now in developing countries is that the countries are increasing enrollment in an important way. There is no debate about that. And some people are claiming that the quality of education is flat or they are not improving. And I think that at the root of that problem is the following. We are increasing heterogeneities in classrooms. And the teachers do not have the tools to cope with that heterogeneity. And I think that the systems are not conducive for such heterogeneity to teach that heterogeneity. So that's the second idea that I want to discuss. The third idea is the one of incentives. Some researchers point out that the lack of proper incentives are at the root of the quality problem. And other type of researchers are arguing that the problem lies at the lack of proper tools. And I think that those two views has to be complemented. And I think that it is very important to understand that, for instance, changing the incentive structures without changing in a fundamental way, pedagogy and content of teachers are going to not give what we want. And the second point about incentives is that even if we will be able to do the right incentive programs, I think that the data that right now developing countries has are not suitable for the right incentive mechanisms that we want to induce. The third point in this incentive debate program is the point that the bulk of these policies, of incentive policies, are going to the stock of current teachers. And I think the most important investment right now is in the future of the flow of the new teachers. So I think that we need to start also thinking very heavily on how we need to change the new people that are getting into the system and how we need to change the training that they are receiving. And finally, given that we have some limitations in interventions in the supply side, what do we need to do? I try to argue that a promising venue is to change the families and students and to use policies that change families and students as a leverage to change the education system. Around these three big ideas is the discussion of my presentation is going to be. So social emotional skills. So we know that schools produce a large range of skills, both cognitive and social emotional. And research has been showing that social emotional skills can explain an important amount of labor outcomes and labor and other outcomes later in the life of individuals. This work by Hegman and other researchers has been very important and has been very active in the last 15 days. Moreover, we think that most people can acquire these skills. However, it is very clear that child's environment determines both cognitive and social emotional skills in a fundamental way. And difference early on can result in a striking difference in the endowment of individuals. And that is so far what we have been learning. But I think that there is a fundamental problem, which is the lack of a unified framework in organizing and defining these skills. What do I mean by that? What I mean is the following. So let's say that in a framework of social emotional and cognitive skills, you have two main outcomes. You have the household, and you have the institution of the school. And you have different periods in the life of the individuals that go from minus nine months to higher than 11 years. And then a fundamental part of this period of time between the nine months and five years happened either at the household level or at the childcare centers. In this period of time, the creation of executive functions are critical. And we know that executive functions basically are mental flexibility, self-control, and working memory. Those functions are critical. And those functions have both components of cognitive and social emotional skills. The psychologists have been researching executive functions very, very deeply. And there are very clear guidance of how do you produce this? You produce this in households that are safe, in households that have routines, and households that promote creativity, and that provide affection. Those executive functions are produced mainly at the household level. Once they are produced, the kids are right to the schools. And these work as an input of the school system. And if there is huge difference in kids in these executive functions, those differences are going to be reflected in the work of the school. These executive functions work as an input. And then the schools start trying to do cognitive skills. And in the first stage, they try to do reading math. And in the production of social emotional skills, they are trying to do attentional to regulation, great discipline planning. But the first point that I want to make about this is that these executive functions work as an input. And there is a huge leverage if we can change early on the trajectory of the kids such that they enter with a more homogeneous skills in the education system. Then the education system has to produce more skills. And basically, there is the production of higher cognitive skills. And there is the production of other social emotional skills, like locus of control, state of mind. And then in 11 years old, there is another opening in the brain. The brain is very flexible and very vulnerable in the first stage, minus nine to five years. And then at 11 years old, when people start getting into adolescence, there is a new transformation of the brain. And in those period of time, the relationship with other individuals is critical. And the creation of skills like empathy, cooperation, and sense of belonging is critical. So I want to make three points. First one is that an intervention that shape executive function early on will have large returns. And it's not the typical argument that you have to shape the executive function because later on, this can have the high returns. The argument is that you have to change the executive functions because that is one of the main drivers of change in the education system. If you are able to homogenize and to increase the endowment of certain skills before the kids enter the school, that's an important leverage in the quality of the school. However, there is no clear way that we know how schools are producing these social emotional skills. Thus, it depends on the climate or the culture that foster social emotional skills. It is produced at the school level or it's produced at the classroom level. And I think that that's another point in which we need to have better understanding of how these skills are being produced. There is some research that shows something that is very interesting is that teachers that produce the cognitive skills not necessarily at the same ones as the teacher producing social emotional skills. And that, from the policy point of view, implies something that is quite interesting. We don't know if we need to couple certain type of students to certain type of teachers or we need to rotate kids during the school life with different type of teachers. And another point is even if schools are not producing cognitive skills, they may be producing relevant social emotional skills. This is something that is very interesting because in this debate, there is a debate about conditional cash transfers, which is we are bringing kids to the schools but they are not learning in terms of cognitive skills. And the argument is here, the argument is they may be not learning in cognitive skills but they may be learning in non-cognitive skills. There are some evidence pointing towards that. My colleague David Deming have some paper in which he showed that during the school trajectory there is no difference of cognitive skills between one person intervening and the other one not. And later in life, he showed some important effects and one mechanism can be to the production of social emotional skills. And I have some work in conditional cash transfer in Colombia that shows similar results.  So that is another point is that the schools are producing a wide range of skills and we need to start thinking in a broad sense not only in cognitive skills. An area of exploration is of course interaction between household and institutions in the production of social emotional skills. And here there is this idea that in a lot of developing countries, families tends to believe that once they give the kid to the school their work stops because the school will take the load of the work. However, there is a clear relationship in the production of social emotional skills between what the household is doing and the institution is doing. A heterogeneity. The problem of heterogeneity is very straightforward. Class rules varies with heterogeneity but in cognitive and social emotional skills. And it is more costly in terms of actions and time to reach students with low levels of these skills with low level of endowment in both cognitive and social emotional skills. And moreover, the curriculum and the materials at the national and subnational level sometimes are better suited for students with higher skills endowment. For instance, the textbooks that the systems are producing are more suitable for students that have higher endowment. And there is a correlation between these skills and the home environments. There are some home environments that do not have the right estimulations that don't provide the right opportunities to kids and basically kids that goes to those home environments have lower endowment in these skills. In that regard, several education systems are leaving behind students for low income and vulnerable households. This is an idea that Bernardi and Duflo are insisting and I think is important. There is some indirect evidence of this idea. The indirect evidence comes from, for instance, this is a clear example in the provision of textbooks. There are some experiments that provide textbooks to one school, not to the other one. And basically the researchers don't find any difference in the performance of students going to school that receive the textbooks versus the other one. And one of the hypotheses that they present is that teachers concentrate effort in high achievers at baseline students. So the textbooks are right to the classroom and the teachers start working with the kids that were able to read the textbooks. And in that sense, the teachers adopt the pedagogy and adopt the input to help a certain type of kids. And that is one indirect evidence of this type of heterogeneity. The other evidence comes from explicit policy that targeted students by a skill level. So we have experiments in remedial education. I am just giving examples, for instance, Bernardi computers that adapt to skills or tracking. All these policies, what they are trying to do is they create exogenous variations in the homogeneity of the classroom. And one potential mechanism that a lot of these researchers are having in mind of the effects of these policies is that teachers can adapt better the pedagogy when they have homogenous classrooms. Of course, there is another perspective in which you change the tools that the teachers have. So the idea here is the following. There is one idea that if you change the incentives, the teacher will respond. The idea, another way to look at the problem is to try to change the teacher so that the teachers can respond to heterogeneity. And those are two different approaches. So why is this program is important right now in developing countries? This problem is important because a lot of developing countries had increased enrollment rate in a substantial way in the last decades. There are several policies that increase enrollment for instance conditional transfer and these policies are targeted usually to low income and vulnerable populations. And basically there are new enrollment in the system that are coming from these households. And a lot of people are pointing out these two facts that are happening in developing countries. The first fact is that enrollment is increasing but quality is either flat or not good. And they are saying that one hypothesis that explain that is that, well, you are bringing to the system kids that are more difficult to teach. This hypothesis that I am trying to put forward is different. Is that yes, you are bringing kids to the system that have different endowment of skills and those kids are very difficult to teach in a classroom. And the teachers do not have the right incentive to teach them. And we need to change that. In the macro perspective it's important to bring the private sector because the schools that are receiving this population may be private or public. There are two type of systems one in which you have a system in which there is complete segregation, private schools attending people with high income and public schools attending only people with low income. This is a case of complete segregation. However, there are some countries right now in which we have private schools attending low income populations and high income populations. The cases, for instance, India and Pakistan, this is happening. In any of these two cases, the heterogeneity in the school is increasing and that is the challenge that we have at the micro level. If in the classroom heterogeneity is increased, the teacher has the following decision. Either teach to the mean, teach to the high performance students, teach to the low performance students and teach differentiated pedagogy. And those actions have different costs attached to them. It is more easy, less costly, for instance, to teach to the high performance students than to teach differentiated pedagogy. It takes more effort and takes more skills to do differentiated pedagogy. This is data from PISA that tried to provide some of the flavor of what I think is happening. These are data. Each of these dots are schools and we separate between public schools and private schools. We have two years, 2006 and 2012 and we are plotting here index of wealth versus an index of diversity of dispersion. The higher this access, the more heterogeneous the school is. And this, again, each point is a school. So we see in this graph three facts that are happening. First of all, this is the case of Colombia and in Colombia there is segregation that is important. Private schools are attending high income individuals and the public system is attending middle and low income families. The second fact that this graph is showing us is there is a down slope regression in which basically the dispersion decrease with wealth. These classrooms, these schools are more dispersed, more heterogeneous than the public ones. And the third one we believe, and we are trying to test this, is that heterogeneity is increasing in the system. And this is not only the case of Colombia, there is similar graphs of other countries. I just put Colombia, I replicate Uruguay and Turkey but the same pattern is happening. The same pattern in which we believe heterogeneity is increasing at the classroom level. So what is the conclusion of the second idea is the following. I think in developing countries we need to investigate the level of heterogeneity in classrooms for both public and private schools. Secondly and more important, I think that we need to investigate, differentiate endowment of skills at a school entry. That is one of the points that is very important again is that once the kids arrive to the school, the kids, the endowments of the kids work as an input of the school. And if the endowment is very dissimilar, the teachers will have a very difficult task of trying to, for instance, increase the education of low income individuals. And what does that mean for terms of research going more inside the classroom? It means that I believe that we need to start looking inside the classroom with instruments that can capture what are the pedagogy that teachers are doing in classrooms. For instance, there is this class instrument that Pianta at the University of Virginia is using. And we can go inside the classroom, start observing what are the actions that teachers are doing when they are facing more heterogeneous population. And finally, I believe that there are some pedagogy methods that allows a better approximation of the problem of differentiated pedagogy. There is a model called Escuela Nueva in Colombia. The model is the following. This is a model that is multi-grading in the same classroom. And the idea was that the density of schools in rural areas were very low. They tried to bring more kids to the school of different grades in the same classroom. And basically the teacher organized the kids by desk and the kids work in each problem at their own rhythm. That type of model allows a more flexible and more differentiated approach to pedagogy. The model that is happening right now in the typical school in developing country is not like that. The typical problem in the typical school in developing country is like this room. You have kids sitting in lines and there is one person talking to them. And that will not be conducive to differentiate pedagogy. I am doing an evaluation of a model in Vietnam with the World Bank on the model. And the results are very promising. Third idea about incentives. So the debate here is the following. There is one perspective that says that system are failing in the linear quality of education because of the misalignment between the incentive structure and the final objective of education. And there is the example that teachers, the promotion of teachers is automatic and is not linked to the result of the kids. And in that case, you, the teacher will just receive remuneration and promotion regardless of what happened with the kids. Another perspective is that the system do not really require the education because of the lack of proper pedagogy and content on teachers. And if that perspective is true, what is key is teacher training that provide content on pedagogy. And something that is very striking is in a lot of our system, the training of teachers is not about content and pedagogy. The training of the teacher is about philosophy of education. And these people know a lot about, let's say Piaget and a lot of other people who know a lot about education.  And moreover, they don't have the content to teach the kids. So there is some evidence in Latin America very clear that this is happening. So fine, there is a problem of incentives and a lot of people are trying to do these programs in which they attach incentives to the production of certain outcomes in the kids. And there are some emerging evidence coming from a pilot program from by researchers that test the idea of attaching a payment to teachers. And my reading of this literature is that actual incentives can change behavior and may induce better student outcomes, at least in the short run. For instance, the evidence coming from Kenya, from India, from China, but clearly incentives may change behavior in an unintended way. For instance, the case of Kenya, they detect that there were a lot of teaching to the test. And in the case of Mexico, they discover dishonest behavior. One, almost like a food note, teaching to the test not necessarily is a bad idea. When you have high power test, teaching to the test is a good idea. What do I mean by high power test? When you have test that actually measure analytical thinking that measure actually is how people solve problems, teaching to the test is not necessarily a bad idea. But anyway, so there is, basically there are these programs that try to attach the incentives to certain outcome of the kids. And I think that there are some promising results there. However, the response of those programs depends on the nature of the problem and in the capacity to respond. If the problem is teacher after season, and we know that there is a lot of teachers and students in developing countries, then there is a large margin to respond in absent season. We will mainly use the teacher to come more to the school, but we don't know if the kids are going to learn more. If the problem is content and pedagogy, teacher incentives will have less capacity to do what we want to do, which is more learning of the kids. So that concept was proven in different context under pilots and some researchers. And we did something in Pakistan, which was the following. We convinced the government of Pakistan to run such a program. And we convinced the government to try to do the best program possible given the context. And something that is very important about the pilots of the researchers that happened in Kenya and India and China was the following. Usually the researcher do the following. They test the kid at the beginning of the year. They follow the kid after some period and they test the kid again. So you have tests that are applied by the researcher and the test follows the same kid at some time and another time. And that is done because of the following reason. You want to have incentives attached to change in test scores. You will measure what happened at baseline with the kid and then you measure sometime later because when you have incentives attached to changes, you have, you inputting incentives into the teacher to concentrate effort in all the kids. And moreover, they have more incentive to concentrate effort in the kids that have lower test scores at baseline. That data is not the data that governments have. Governments have data that are very different. Governments in developing countries usually have data that are great specific. And in Pakistan, for instance, they have these grade five exam in Punjab. And when you have data that is great specific, what happens is that you measure every year a different cohort of individuals. And when you try to attach teacher incentives to that data, what happens is that the teacher do not have the incentive to produce any effort because you have shocks in each cohort that are exogenous that the teachers cannot control. So one year you have a good cohort and the teacher says, okay, I have a good group of students, I will do less effort. If you have a bad cohort because of a shock of the cohort shock, the teacher says, okay, I have a bad cohort, I will not do the incentives. Moreover, there is a dynamic problem in these type of programs when you have cohort of individuals, which is once the school is able to increase the scores one year, the next year is more difficult to increase it again. So you have these problems that are attached to the nature of the data. And the vast majority of data in developing countries are not suitable for teacher incentives. So a point that I want to make here is, yes, teacher incentives may be very important, but in developing countries, there are some limitations that are critical. The limitation of the teachers cannot respond because they don't have the right tools. And secondly, the nature of the data that developing countries have is different. So one of the most important ideas of our teacher incentives is that they try to change behavior of current teachers. They, the margin of actions for the flow of teachers is very limited of these type of programs. And the most important investment in the future of quality of education in any system is the flow of teachers. It's how can we change the people who are entering into the profession? How can we change the type of training they are receiving? How can we retain the best ones and let go the ones that we don't want? And how do we do professional development? And again, one point of policy that is very relevant, very important is the second one, the training that the future teachers are receiving and there is little investment in research there and the policies usually are not about that. It is very difficult that policy will concentrate that. What we need is we need teachers that receive right content and that receive better pedagogy. So if we don't have that much room for action, what should we do? And one solution is that we do demand interventions. And demand interventions are important for changes in this education system for several reasons. But one of the clear reasons is that there are some policies that have been proven that actually are changing the way families behave. I have a hypothesis of why it's happening is because probably we know and we understand better how family act and we know family better as an institution and schools and institutions are very difficult to understand and they vary a lot among contexts. But demand interventions have been proven to be very successful in different contexts. For instance, we have policies that bring kids to school which are for instance, conditional cash transfer and information policies and those policies have been very successful. One area of research for me that is interesting is that once you have a conditional cash transfer policy, you are tackling another problem which is a fundamental problem in education system which is the following. Kids that are coming from certain backgrounds do not have the mental space to get the knowledge that they should receive. For instance, if a kid that come from a low income family arrived to the school and the only question that she has in her mind is I am hungry and what I am going to eat today, that kid cannot learn. So conditional cash transfer are interesting to me because conditional cash transfer can be another mechanism to create mental space for these individuals. But in any case, policies that bring students to school like conditional cash transfer has been very successful. There are some demand interventions that also change student achievement. For instance, scholarships. And here I am mentioning just two cases, the case of Kenya, the case of Cambodia and my paper in Cambodia shows something that I think is relevant and it's also a point of interest in my research which is the following. If you target programs using poverty, you will leave certain behavior different from a scholarship that target using merit. So when you target using merit targeting mechanisms, you will leave certain responses that are more schooling and higher achievement in test scores in contrast to poverty-based mechanisms, targetings in which you only induce higher progression in the schools but you don't induce changing achievement in tests. So in this point, what I want to say is that targeting is very important not because it's a way to reach certain populations but because targeting by itself can produce different behaviors in individuals. It's very different if you say to the kid, we are going to support you because you are poor or we are going to support you because we believe that you can do it. Those two approaches are totally different and in targeting, we are creating certain behaviors that are differentiated. And the last point about the money interventions, we know that early child interventions that goes to the family or that provide a high quality child care centers can make a huge change in the system. So all in all, the money interventions can be very affecting bringing kids inducing higher achievement and changing social emotional skills. And what we are trying to do right now with a group of people is to say, okay, we are going to intervene the demand and we are trying to see if that change in the demand can trigger changes in the education system. And how do you do that? We are doing an experiment in Manizales in Colombia which basically is trying to first to intervene the demand side, providing information. And secondly, we are trying to go to the school and we are saying to the school, look, it is fundamental that you have a good interaction with the families. And you have to start having a relationship with the families because the family is your best partner in the education of the kid. So we are trying to make changes in the demand side that try to trigger changes in the education system. So let me conclude here to have some time for questions. A long time ago, I was in a conference in which Benarji says something that was for me quite illuminated. He said, we need to go inside the black box of education. And believe it or not, I was thinking, okay, do I need to go into the black box of education? I am an economist and economy is thinking the following way. Economists think you have a leverage, you can change the incentive structure and you let people do what they know best. And I think that that is correct. I am an economist. However, we need to go inside the black box in a fundamental way. We need to start understanding how teachers react to incentives. How schools react to incentives? How schools organize an institution?  And we need to understand how teachers are or not being able to do heterogeneity differentiated pedagogy. And that is a critical point. Why? Because in developing countries, the challenge is the following. Yes, we are increasing the enrollment rate and a quality is flat. If we want to start moving the quality, we need to start thinking about the following problem. We increasingly have classrooms with more heterogeneity. And we need to have pedagogy that can tackle that problem. And that, we need to provide tools to tackle the problem of pedagogy. Or we change the type of models of education that is happening in the school. If we keep with the model in which there is a teacher in front and kids sitting in rows, we are not going to be able to tackle the problem of heterogeneity. The last point is my reading of the literature what had happened in the last 20 years, which by the way, I have a huge admiration for the work of the flow of energy, Kramer, in the sense that I think that they are seriously making a revolution in the way we think about development. My reading of the last 20 years of this agenda is that we have been very successful doing demand interventions, and we haven't been very successful doing supply interventions. And part of the problem is we understand better what happened in the family. We don't understand that much what happened in the school or the school as an institution. And we need to start thinking about the school as an institution. But in any case, demand side interventions can be very powerful. You can start changing the system if you start changing the demand and if you start changing the families. And what I am saying is that through demand changes, you can start triggering changes in the system that has profound consequence for the development of education. Thank you very much.


And welcome to Condo Insider, a by each show about association living, whether it be a condo or a homeowner association and we're celebrating about 175 episodes we've done to help educate our board members as well as our owners about the opportunities rights and obligations living in a condo association. And today I'm really excited because we have a really good person who I've known for a long time, our house speaker the House of Representative speaker for the state of Hawaii, Scott Psyche. And we're going to talk to us about kind of what's going on with the legislature what we can expect in 2021 and, and some of the challenges we have in the association industry or maybe some discussion about some potential bills. Anyway, and so welcome Scott to the show. Thanks. Thanks Richard for inviting me today. Glad to be here. Can you share a little bit about you know your legislative background how you got into the legislature and who you represent I know who you represent but tell us who you represent and, and are you having a good time right now seems like a difficult time for any legislator. Yeah, it's been a challenge for all of the members of the legislature. So I, you know, when I fears a few years after I graduated from law school, one of the state House members was planning on retiring so he asked me to run for a seat and basically recruited me. That's how I got my start and, you know, I think we're just really excited that it would be an opportunity to kind of work on community projects on state projects, you know, basically public service in general. So it's been, you know, it's been a great experience and I've really enjoyed it. So I currently represent House District 26, which runs basically from McCully through Kakako. So I do own and reside in a condo unit in Kakako. So you guys want your viewers to know that I kind of know firsthand what you know condo owners and condo residents go through on a daily basis and how you know how their condo operations and their condo lives have been impacted by the pandemic. There's an interesting statistic by the way that because I'm a belong to Community Association Institute, which is our national trade body and I went to a national seminar. And one of the interesting things they were saying is that pre COVID, the rate of delinquencies in condominiums nationwide so this is not specifically Hawaii with about 9 to 10% of the owners and a condominium were delinquent which might be a minor delinquency of just 30 days but were delinquent not paid in the current month. But after COVID, the national statistic was 10 to 11%. It hadn't changed that much but you can see it changed by 10% because the difference between 10 and 11% is about 10%. But most people believe that the worst is yet to come on that matter. Yeah, I mean, I got to believe that without seeing the specific, you know, the analysis been in numbers. I mean, I got I got to believe that maybe people have been given chances right if they're behind for some reason. And, you know, the governor did, you know, issue of emergency proclamation at least trying to deal with renters to avoid evictions and then we have at the federal level. There was a prohibition on on for federally financed mortgages there was a prohibition on on also on actions being taken against owners so I'm assuming that there will be a delayed effect or be a delayed impact and we might see a higher number. Well, I think most people believe that, you know, the worst is yet to come you know we're dealing with the pandemic part the COVID part, but the economy is going to have a lingering effect for probably some time. But you know you as a legislator. I have to give you a compliment because I've known you for a while but you know one of my favorite people of all time was Mark to Kai, who was elected to Congress who I helped supportive strongly when he was running for office and I considered him one of the best legislators we've ever had. And you remind me of him very very much. You know you have a very good demeanor about you and a style about you and I know your dedication to this and I feel like we always thank the first responders and the police officers and the medical people but the legislators have a tough job and so I think we should be thanking our legislators for standing up for public service and so I'll thank you there before I ask you this question. And that question was, you know, it's got to be a tough year going into 2021 for the legislature. How are we going to handle that are we going to allow testimony or are we going to have lots of bills it seems like it's going to be a zoo. Yeah, so ever since the shutdown in March, the state capital building has been closed down close to the public, although there are people have been working in the building. So I'm expecting that when we convene our regular session in January and January 20 that the building will still remain closed to the public, which means that number one, you know we will have the house members physically present in the building to attend committee hearings and four hearings. But the public will have to be zoomed in to participate. So we are, we've been working for the past few months to build up the infrastructure at the capital, the IT infrastructure to handle virtual virtual hearings to ensure that the public can be can access a public hearings and participate at the hearings, you know, by providing a testimony. So that is that is the plan for now. I would, I would assume that you know you certainly are probably going to encourage written testimony, but on top of that, the people will have to make a reservation or something because I mean there's a 1.4 million people here so I mean, I would assume there's got to be some way that I can't, I can't see that you just can dial in zoom and and and and just jump in. We'll have a procedure set up to accept written testimony, and then to have individuals sign up to testify at the hearing. And, you know, we'll probably have maybe a cut off time for both for both of those. One thing I see in the legislature, but being I'm down there a lot is that you, you know, there's usually thousands of bills introduced a lot of them are by request and, and it's like, it's a chance to for everybody to throw this stuff out you're going to try to limit this at all you're going to just kind of as normal. So we've asked, you know, we've asked our members to, to, you know, to be very judicious and with their bill introductions this year. As you mentioned, usually there's about 2000 a little over 2000 bills introduced in the house every year, but we, you know, we are going to try to limit the number of bills. We want the members to prioritize bills. We'll see how we'll see how it goes. For our audiences information because I tracked this, the condo world which we live in, we run from about 30 bills to 150 bills a year that are introduced. The two of them are kind of companion bills and duplicates and by request but I'm hoping that this year we have only the essential bills introduced because it's going to be harder than our legislators to deal with so much and the legislature is very active on associations and, and I feel it's a good thing because they balance the rights of the owner and the obligations of the boards they try to have a consumer protection basis to it when it when we do that. So you know, one of the things COVID has brought up is that this whole thing on what you're going to do is have virtual meetings, you know, under the current statute, condos or associations don't have the ability to have virtual meetings and vote. How do you guys see that or how do you see it. Yeah, so there's a couple of statutes. So on the books now that address association meetings and board meetings. So interestingly, the statute that governs board meetings does the way it's worded it does provide some flexibility for board meetings to be held virtually. But that language does not appear in the statute for association meetings. Association meeting statute requires basically in person meetings, you know, on on the site. So I'll be working with your organization, your organization with the condos to introduce a bill on this session to see if we can amend the association meeting statute to provide the flexibility to hold hold virtual meetings. Next we have this year a new some new committee chairs and the committee in the house that deals with condo issues is the committee on consume commerce and consumer protection. And we have a new chair representative Aaron Johansson, who represents the Moana law, Moana law area. So he also has condos in his district and he's aware of, of the concerns in condo condos are going through. So I'll be working with him, asking him to take the lead on this bill. Yeah, I have some experience with Aaron he's a very good legislator and been very balanced and, you know, he's done a really good job with open ears and willing to talk and understands kind of the issues. I see this proposed, I know, I know it's speculation until you get an actual bill and language which gets amended but but you see it being broad base you can do it forever is it going to be limited to like a hurricane or a pandemic or how do you how do you, how do you personally see that. So I think what we can do is it'll probably be limited to emergency situations. But, you know, I think, I think that there should be some public discussion on whether it should be broader and apply, you know, throughout the year. I think, you know, one of the, one of the, one of the things we've seen through this pandemic is that people are a little bit more used to virtual meetings and they're used to these, these kinds of meetings so it may be, it may be the normal thing to do at some point. And so our law should be flexible. And the challenge just to share with our viewers that from my experiences we started at my company we started working on this two or three years ago on the concept of voting in virtual meetings. And the challenges with condominiums are, it's not like one person one vote they have these percentages of common interests that have to be tall and you know based on your ownership. And some, believe it or not, some larger condos have as many as 40 different percentages of common interest, and then they have the parking still common interest and all these things. And then you throw in the concept of cumulative voting, where in some associations you can, you know, stack your votes towards one person to get them on board. None of the technology out there and voting exists today to deal with the way Hawaii's voting and condos is set up but we're working with some vendors to, to come up with a plan because it can be done it's just technology. So we're going to have to look at the, when we look at these new bills exactly how the voting side. Actually a current law on the statute that allows for electronic voting at a meeting. But the current statute says, it has to be self contained within the meeting so you can't be over the internet. You say you have to have like your own server there and the technology and for big homeowner association of 500,000 people that be giving clickers but it's all internal within the association so I think that I agree with you we need to do this. We need some technology issues that the kind of follow quickly along with it. Yeah, so you should give us your information after you've done your own analysis on the tech issues, you should provide that to us. So we'll be happy to do that. The other thing that are you seeing this bill just for condos are you looking at putting in the same thing for a 421 Jay homeowner association. I think it was going to be introduced for, I think we'll introduce it for both. We'll see how it goes. Okay. All right so that's the virtual meeting side of that but this is all being driven by coven. And the common question I always get is, you know, because association the kind of private property in a way is wearing a mask how do you, how do you, some people say I don't have to wear a mask. Because I'm not in the public and, you know, so the board can't enforce me wearing a mask and in common elements for example how do you see that. Yeah, so let me just explain that there was some confusion about whether or not the mask rules apply to condos and particularly for common for the common areas. Governor in November amended his emergency proclamation to make it clear that there is a statewide mask requirement. And what it says is all persons in the state shall wear a face covering over their nose and mouth when in public. In November 19, the health department issued an advisory opinion to clarify that this mask rule applies to common areas in condos. So, there is a mask requirement. The exception is if you are six feet apart. So from someone and you don't need a mask, but, but you should even in that situation you should have a mask with you. Because as you know people are going to be walking around and someone's going to be within six feet of you so you have to put your mask on at that point. But yes the mask rule does apply to common areas and condos. I didn't bother me because I had them from all the banks I robbed so I always had them available for me but on that note I'm going to say we're going to take a one minute break. We're with our house speaker Scott psyche we're going to come back and ask him a few more questions about what to expect in 2021. So we'll be back in one minute. Hi and welcome back to condo insider we're with our illustrious house speaker Scott psyche who I've known for years and, and talking about 2021 the legislature, some condo proposed bills. Those types of things that he's been very helpful and explaining some of that. And the last thing we ended up with was the, you have to wear masks in common areas carrying one with you unless you're within six feet of somebody. One of the problems we alluded to is the economy is going to get kind of bad probably already bad in some ways for certain people. How do you see the rental assistance program going use. I think that's been an issue and the paper quite a bit and how do you see that shaken up. Um, in, um, he was in April when the state received it. It's share of the federal cares funds. The legislature set aside $100 million of that for a state rental assistance program and it's because we knew that that was going to be one area where people are would need immediate assist help and relief. So, the program is being administered through not to not to nonprofit organizations, a little united way, and the, the community foundation, and those organizations are responsible for taking out, taking applications and processing applications. So I'll just give you a brief update on the status of that program. The 9,000. And this, this program basically provides funds for rental assistance up through December 31. And 9,500 94 households have been assisted have been approved. There are still 1,776 applications pending. There's already made payments of about $41 million to those who have been approved, and there's another 1212 million dollars in payments that are pending. So this, you know, this program has assisted thousands of households in our state, and, you know, and not just renters but also those who own units who are renting to these individuals. It's been a big success. I was kind of surprised when I read in the paper that a lot of landlords refused to check because they weren't paying their general exercise tax. That seems to be a problem to me. Yeah, that's something we're going to be looking at into something that we weren't really had it really anticipated. But I think there have been some cases where that's where that's happened. Unfortunately. Well, I think all of us, it's only the state needs money right now all the states in the country that need money but it says this obligation existed before COVID and it's kind of not the thing you should do you should be paying your taxes and being responsible reporting it and I hope the state does put in some checks and balances and enforcement because everybody should be paying their taxes in that area. So how do you feel generally about, you know, the state in the economy and are we going to get through this are we going to live or what do you see for the, for the next year. Yeah, so you know a couple of things one is that, you know, we know we acknowledge that the top priority is public health and safety, we have to make sure that Hawaii residents are going to be healthy and safe during this pandemic, which leads to the second area which is that, you know, a healthy population here is going to lead to a healthy economy. And, you know, we know that that the reopening of our economy will be incremental. It's not going to happen overnight, it's going to take time. And as we as we work through it. There's a couple of things to remember. One is that we need to learn how to manage the risk of COVID in our state. We will never have zero cases, even with a vaccine will not have zero COVID cases in our state. So we have to be able to manage the risk of cases occurring in the future. And we do that through our public health programs, you know, our, our screening testing, quarantine programs as well as the vaccination program. And then the second thing is that it's important to remember that as we manage the risk that you know we do have a, we have a statewide economy, and it's important that every component of our economy. You know, stays in place and helps and participates and rebuilding and rebuilding our economy. Tourism is, you know, our top one of the pillars of our economy. And it's really important that we reopen tourism gradually and safely, because it has such a big impact. Not just on hotels and airlines and car rental companies, but all kinds of small businesses throughout our state that rely on on tourists, tourist revenue. So, I think that you know what is happening now is positive we're seeing incremental incremental growth in our economy incremental growth in tourism numbers on the case low, you know, even as of today is still relatively low. I think there are about 134 cases today. So we just have to continue to manage the risk, while we reopen our economy incrementally. We want to meet and we do want to maintain public health and safety while we do that. In my view, and I'm just talking as one resident of a wonderful state is that I hear about diversifying the economy. And I think that's good, but to me you're never going to not be in the tourist business, no matter what you do and no matter how you diversify tourism going to be the cornerstone to Hawaii's economy. I don't see any way around that we can mitigate its influence to the grave you're, you're never going to not have tourism. Right. And we need to find ways that we can have tourists come back safely and their population to be safe, but not make it so overburdened with checks and balances that nobody wants to come because it's a pain in the a cold way to come here. Right.  I don't, I don't, I don't think that we should go back to the pre pandemic time when we saw 30,000 tourists arriving every day. I think it has to be a tourism has to be managed, but it will always be a part of a very vibrant part of our economy. So, you, you have any, where, where do you see the makeup between that we don't forget it from 30,000 to 20,000. It's certainly less tax revenue and, and less jobs, where do you, what areas do you see us picking out that difference up in. We have to, you know, we're going to have to shore up some other areas of our economy, the military spending has been constant during the pandemic. I think that we may see increased military spending in Hawaii. That's one area that we, you know, I feel that we should be, Hawaii should be proud of its role in, in, as far as the military presence here. We, we have a lot of businesses and a lot of families that depend on the middle on the revenue that that we see from the military side. I think we're also going to see more aggressive. Initiatives being taken in the agriculture area. What we've seen through the pandemic is that farmers need help with not just with production but distribution distribution is a big logistical issue for them I think if we are able to try to iron out some of the distribution issues that may help help ease the burden on farmers. The University of Hawaii is going to have to step up. I think we're going to have to, you know, make Hawaii a place where we see a lot of research and development going on where there's where there's different kinds of initiatives that will attract not just Hawaii residents but also industries from other states and even other for from foreign countries. So there's a, there's a lot of areas that we need to focus in on some of them are short term some of them are going to be medium and long term, but we have to, you know, we have to start planning for that now. But we've come to the end of our show so I mean first of all, thank you for all of your effort for the state of Hawaii. It is a sacrifice to do public servant work. And I know from my own experience, how seriously and important you take this how hard you to work for the residents and the consumers and the population of Hawaii and your job. And so I want to thank you for that. And I want to say to our audience, we look forward to seeing you next Thursday at three o'clock for another interesting show. I think next week we're talking about the issues of smoking and condos and marijuana and those types of issues but again happy holidays Scott. Thank you from your very very busy schedule taking time to be with us today. Thank you so much to all of you and happy holidays to you as well. Thanks Richard.


Hi, it's Bridget. Welcome to Above Life channel. Today, I am doing a channel that was requested by you. I will be having a discussion with Amy Winehouse. This is the first time I've ever connected with her and I'm going to share with you that I really don't know much about her at all. I know sometimes you guys get annoyed when I say, I don't really know much about her, but that's just the truth. I didn't follow her music and now I'm kind of sad that I didn't because when the idea to channel her came forward, I thought I should listen to a couple of her songs.  So I'm looking forward to getting to know her. This is the initial contact and conversation that I'm having with Amy Winehouse in the afterlife. So if Amy, if you can come close. Okay, so it's interesting. She is to my right side. It's interesting to me where spirit comes in and hangs out and I can feel her on my right side and she feels really casual and really comfortable. She feels very useful.  She's like, it's not all real. It's not all real. Beautiful red lips.  That inspires me. So that felt good. So she has just a like a couple kind of a layered t-shirt on. It looks like there's maybe a tank top or something underneath it.  She's got black jeans on. They look like jeans. They're like tight jeans. And that's what she has on. I think she has high heels actually. I'm looking at her feet and it looks like she has all boots. I like a heeled boot on. Totally like a rock star, like I would think of like a rock star kind of a thing. She said, oh, yeah, thanks. She said, oh, you're sweet. You're sweet. She says you're sweet. And now, so Amy, I know I don't know much about you. I know that you were incredibly gifted vocalist, obviously singer. I listened to a few of your songs this morning, as you know, because we talked a little bit in the bathroom where I was listening to your songs while I was getting ready.  She said, yes. She says, yes, yes. But she says the reason why you're conflicted about it, Bridget, is because so I feel her, so I'm getting messages on two layers from her. I can hear her a bit. I can see her. So hearing is clear audience, the second gift of hearing. Claire Williams is seeing. I can see her. That's how I describe her to you. And then I'm feeling sensing her. So I'm getting information by sensing her through energy. And so she says, she's referring to how I feel a little conflicted. I'm like, I think you're from the UK, but I feel like you have a specific or a separate part. Like she feels like she lived overseas for a while, like a different part of Europe. It looks like. And so I feel her in different places. So I'm not quite sure. So London, England, Manchester. I like to get a little bit of details.  But like Home of the Beatles is what she just said out loud. The Home of the Beatles. Okay, so now I see an image of Paul McCartney. Have you played or sang with Paul McCartney? There's this feeling of, I can't hear her respond. There's a feeling of either I wish I did, but I didn't. I didn't get to. Or yes, Sir Paul McCartney, she's like, she's a huge fan. And he, he has commented, I feel like he's commented publicly that you had a beautiful voice. I feel like you sang together. I feel like they did a duet or something. I don't know if there's a song together or they sang together or they sang over a song together. I don't know, but I feel like there was some kind of a collaboration. But I feel from her, like she's like, yeah, like there could be more, like she wanted to do more collaborations. All right, more work like that. You have an interesting style, your vocal style, very interesting, beautiful. It's almost like you were way ahead of your time. That's how I feel. Or way rather late maybe.  She's like dial it back, dial it back. She said, yes, I've been told that I'm an old soul, she says. She's got kind of a sultry voice and she kind of feels like someone that I would imagine in like old Hollywood with, you know, this gorgeous fur coat and these, this beautiful pinned up hair and like maybe the 50s and 60s. Like that's how I feel. She's like, she's like, right on, right on. That is definitely an influence in my work. And she's sharing, okay, so there's an African American, she shows me a picture of a singer that's American, that's African American.  It's not Aretha Franklin. I don't recognize her. Ella Fitzgerald maybe is what it might be. And she says, that's one of my icons. Like that's one that would be someone that I would be like, wow, you know, I'm like, okay, yeah, all right. And she says, but I am influenced. I have been influenced in my music by a lot of different, a lot of different artists and different sounds. But the most inspiring to me, I think the most had the most imprint on my work is definitely like the jazz, the blues, the but she says, but taking that and putting it into like rock and roll, you know, like Bowie style stuff, like that's the kind of thing that I wanted to accomplish. And she said, I was a huge fan of David Boyd, like a huge fan. Did you ever meet David Boyd? She said, yes, I met David Boyd once. She says, I met him once. And it was pretty awesome. She says, it was pretty awesome. So if you're from the UK, I don't feel a strong accent. And, and when so when you're talking to me, I don't hear you in an accent. And why, why would that be your spirit? So you know more about the spiritual communication now connection, because now you're like on the other side. So why is that that I don't hear your accent? And she laughs and she said, because you're Americanized. She says to me, I'm like, Oh, really? And then she reaches over and she asks if she can smoke, like she asked for a cigarette.  Because in the afterlife, I can't smell that. That's fine. And she says, Oh, you know, she said, I know, I know. And she's kind of like, it's on the side. She said, I know it's a dirty habit, but I just had to do something, you know, to calm the nerves.  Okay, so can you talk to me a little bit about the accent? Why don't I I know you said Americanized, but I'm feeling like there's something about where you lived, or where you were raised or something. Like I almost feel like it's regional, like there's a dialect or a little bit of a different accent to the words, because of where you lived the region that you lived in. That's how I feel. Is that accurate? She said, Yeah, she said, Yeah, you're close, but she said, You're never going to get it. She said, You know, you're not good with geography. And she it is over. You're right. I'm not. And now she just kind of tucked a leather jacket. It looks like a moto jacket over the top. And it's like really soft. She said, Yeah, feel it. It's really soft. Feel it. It's like, she's like lamb's leather or something, some kind of a different, it's not like a traditional leather and stuff. It's really, it's really like, Yeah, feel it really soft. And like, Oh, yeah, nice. She is very cool. You have your cool factors like way high. It's very good. Awesome. All right. So I'm super comfortable talking to you. It's really casual to thank you. So one of the things that people are going to want to talk about, she says, Yeah, I know the whole death thing, right? Yeah. And she's like, Yeah, it's okay. It's totally fine. You can ask me anything. She says, It's totally fine. You can ask me anything. All right. So I, I don't know how old you are were at the time of your death. I don't know where you died. And I, I think I, I think I know, remember hearing that you died of overdose, but the drugs were involved. Is that true? She said, Yeah, I struggled. She said, you know, a lot of, a lot of creative types, as you know, she said, as you know, you know, because you talk to a lot of, a lot of, she doesn't say people, she says, a lot of us. And she said, and that's kind of interesting. She's like, there's kind of a, that's kind of known over here. Just saying, no, like she's trying to give me a tip. Like she says, it's kind of known over here. The afterlife. So we're talking more, I guess, but so you died of an overdose, correct? She said, Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I did. She said it wasn't the first time. It wasn't the first time. She says it was not the first time that she, she said I was brought back from the edge before. It looks like three times. And one time she went to a hospital with a B name. It kind of reminds like what comes to me is like a Bethesda. I don't know where that would be if it's in the United States or where that would be. But that's just the word that comes. Now that could be because it's near a military base. It could be a hospital that sounds like that, but it looks like a B, S, T, H or something. Something I can see that. She said it was brought there. And she said it's real, she just said it's real funny how they do things, you know, when someone comes in that's like a celebrity status, you know, they don't want all the fans to be there in the, the paparazzi, but she calls them something else, the pops, the pops or something. There's something else she's using a slang term that I don't recognize for paparazzi. She says, they're real funny about that. They don't want any of that. So they, and she says it's not like I, it's not like I'm ashamed of that. I want to be clear to, to the people that are watching that I'm not ashamed of the struggles I had with addiction. I'm not ashamed of that. That's just the reality. That's just, that's real. That's real. And that's real life for a lot of people. You don't have to be famous or celebrity. And it doesn't mean like I'm crushed by the stress or the pressure of being famous is so much because if you look the numbers and the statistics about addiction, she says are much more intense than simple, simply just people who are celebrities, everybody and every family all over the place different. She's describing like different demographics, different sizes, shapes, cultures, everything. She's like people are hit with addiction. So it's not just because celebrities can't handle it, the pressure. It's not about that. It's not about that. I just want to make that real clear. She's like, I want to say that. So then she says, and it's not glamorous, doing drugs, mistreating your body, you know, high highs and low lows. It's not glamorous. It's not. It's not about famous. So I'm going to be like the famous people and do that. And it's not famous. It's not, it's not something you do just because you're famous or I admire that and famous people because they're so cool. I want to be like them. I'm going to do that.  But the thing is it doesn't start out necessarily like it doesn't start out. She says it doesn't start out like I didn't intend.  Nobody like chooses that. It's just something that gets out of hand. It gets out of control. And for me, it was pills.  And then I did lots of other kind of, lots of other kind of, and then she says like substances or something. She's calls it candy. She's saying I didn't, I had lots of candy is what she says. I don't know why that's the word, but she says I had lots of candy. And I kind of feel like cocaine. Is that true? She said yes. She said, but that wasn't really my drug of choice speed was not my drug of choice. And then she said heroin. When you get to heroin, then you know you're in deep because that stuff messes you up. It messes with your mind and it totally controls you. That is like the devil himself is heroin. That's why it's such a, and I think it's because of the opiate component that there must, you know, it must be something with the brain and psychology and it just, it takes over everything. Some of the other substance abuse, some of the other substances or the drugs that you can use aren't as like mind controlling as heroin. It just, it literally feels like you're possessed.  And that's, that's the hard part. I did, I also did crack. I did try mess. So I've had a lot of experience with drugs and I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed either, because I'm not ashamed either, you know? So can you talk a little bit Amy about did, did this start for you because of an injury? You mentioned doing pills first, maybe marijuana and then maybe some pills and stuff. Or was it like stress because of work or family or was there an abuse situation? Can you talk a little bit about that? She says that they're a box to check all the above. She says, you know, I think everyone could see themselves in me. Actually, if they really stepped into my life as like a regular person, if they saw Amy just as Amy, like a regular person, I think you could see that. And she's referring to like this rise of fame, like she said, like a rocket. It's like my career took off like a rocket. And for other people, that seems like this great thing, like, oh, isn't it, you're so lucky. Everything's so great. But there's a lot of pressure that does come with that. And for me, managing the stress and the anxiety for me, I was majorly, I would have panic attacks. I would like, I would have days that I was just high and great. And I felt good. And then I had other days when I was like, just, and she swears, I'm not going to swear on the video, but she says FU kind of thing. And she's given the finger and stuff to the world. And like, I'm not dealing with this. I'm not getting out of bed. I'm not doing this today kind of a thing.  Is there a mental illness thing or a mental health thing?   Like, this is why she says, you know, like a pre existing condition or some people are predisposed to do that. And that's not really, that's not real. That's not reality. She says, that's not reality. It can be anybody. It can be anybody. She says, for me, I'd say my anxiety very much. She says, she's like showing me driven high performer. And she says, I totally a perfectionist. I expect a lot of myself because I know what I know what I'm made of, like I know what I'm capable of. I know what I know what great is not going to settle for good when great is is where I can be, especially when you're doing collaborations and projects with other artists and things.  And I will share too, I will say she is showing me that like drinks, like I see like a, it almost looks like a glass with like a, I don't know if it's whiskey or scotch or something, but it's like strong because I can smell it. Like she's showing me drinking as well. And she said, all kind of goes together. It really doesn't, she said, it really doesn't matter what you're addicted to or what your drug of choice is, you know, alcohol is a drug too. She says alcohol is a drug too. So, but it's the combination that's deadly. It's a combination.  I have lots of people that I know and who are close to me to that deal with that too.  Like a shaken up pop bottle is how I describe it. Is that accurate? She said, yeah, but she's smoking.  Like it's like a sugar crash kind of a thing. You just get hit and then you need to get back up again. So then you have to take some things to help you get up again. And then you're like, and then she's talking about being like paranoid, having paranoia because of it. And so can you talk to me of them? I feel like your death was in the morning. I said them, I'm saying I want to ask you about the morning of your death. Founded in an apartment, it feels like, or found in a flat. I feel like you're in overseas. That's what it feels like. I feel like a family member, a woman or a close friend found you. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah, she said, yeah. She almost looks like she's on a couch. That's what I'm saying.  I feel like there's a needle in your arm. So I don't know if that's physically tangible, like I'm actually seeing that as something exact or if that's this is what caused it. And it looks like so an injection, maybe a heroin overdose. It feels like that. And that's what it feels like to me. But she says it's a mix because there's other stuff in my system too. She said it's toxic. It's toxic. That's what I would tell people. It's toxic. It's like drinking bleach or something. Like imagine that. Can you imagine that drinking bleach or like rubbing alcohol? She said, I'm like, ew, or to me, I'm like, ew, ew, ew. That's just, oh my God. I'm feeling like 27 or 28, 26, 26, 27, 28. I feel like you're very, I feel like you're young. You're young. But you do have an old soul. She said, yeah, thank you. Thanks for that. So are you reincarnated? And I also want to figure out, she says no, right away. She said, no, no, no, not ready for that yet. She's like, no, not ready for that yet. I don't blame you.  She kind of laughs. She says, what makes you think I would go back to the UK?  You don't want to come here. She's like, oh, Canada is cool. She says, I like those Canadians. And she's like, yeah, they have a good looking president or prime minister. She says, okay, Amy's got a great personality. You guys, I like her.  She's like, thanks. Thanks. She said, but we wouldn't have hung out like in human, you know, as people. I'm like, I know we wouldn't have. That's fine. All right. So you're not reincarnated. So I want to ask you so many things, but I feel like this video is going to get too long because this is the first contact that we've had. Like, I want to talk about love for you, relationships that you've had. I want to talk about, you know, more about what does it feel like to be a spirit with you? I want to talk about that. I want to talk about family with you. I want to talk about all sorts of stuff. Can you give me a little feel though? Like I said, I, Brigid is not great with details as far as like translating the timelines, like calendar times and spirit times, totally different thing. And I'm so like, la, la, la, in the spirit time of things that I don't, I'm not good at that, but details. So I would like to know when did you die? So like year wise, I feel like, so for your life, I feel like 2014 was a pivotal year, but I feel like you died after that. I feel like you would have like 2015 or 16. It feels like, well, this is kind of weird. Okay. So I see 2014 like that's an important time. I see 2015. There's activity there. And then it's 2016. I don't see you anymore. So I'm feeling like you probably died. It's weird because I see two different things. I see the summertime like 2015, but then I also see the ending of something and moving into the next. So may have been summertime 2015 or may have been arcing into a new year. I don't know. Cause I feel like the ending of a year, December, I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't get, I'm not 100% sure. She's like, you need to go look it up. Yeah, I will. But 2014 seems active. 2015 seems a little bit different. And then 2016, I don't feel you. So I think you're gone by then. So that's it. All right. Thank you for your time. I do appreciate it very much. She's like, yeah, no problem, no problem. And I look forward to having another conversation with you. If you guys as viewers here at above life channel have questions for Amy, things that you'd want to know that would be interesting to learn from her or to talk to her about. Remember, she's in the afterlife. So she has a totally different perspective. Please go ahead and post it in the comments below. 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