Hi everyone, and welcome back to Global Village. 欢迎回来【小酒馆·大世界】.

In the previous episode, Simon and I were talking about disasters relief in New Zealand after the Cyclone, and we’re gonna continue that topic today.

Yeah. I have an office in the town center, the city center, we also have a small school like a private training institute. So we decided to open the doors, our staff and students as well, some of them were in the evacuation centers, they were in emergency accommodation.

So you put them up.

We communicated with them and they communicated with other migrants, like mostly Asian migrants that were living in Hawke’s Bay. We opened our office, opened our school and we provided a free Asian style meals.

Wow.

We managed to get generators going, so we were providing power for charging mobile phones devices. We managed to power the water cylinder, so people could have showers at the office.

That's amazing.

I don't know how we managed to do it, but we somehow managed to secure Starlink, which is a satellite internet service. So even before the government, the local governments could get connected, we had internet power, hot water and hot meals. I think for the first week or so, every day we had around 150 to 200 migrants coming through for charging, food. Mostly Chinese, also quite a lot of Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Filipinos.

Can I just ask that, I know this sounds like a really pragmatic question, but if you're feeding, like you said, you're providing food for that many people like if you're doing it again and again day after day, that is a lot of expenses.

Now is that... do you mind if I ask is that coming out of your basically your company’s account or your own personal account or will the government help out? Because I would assume local government should help out in this because it is disaster relief, right？Or is it through some fundraiser？

Yeah, so to answer your question, it's pretty much ‘yes’ to all of the above.

So firstly, the Korean embassy they contacted me or were... actually pretty early on, they were trying to contact me, they couldn't get through because the phones were down. As soon as we got onto Starlink, we responded to them. They asked me to go to a Korean supermarket which sells Korean food, Asian food, and the embassy effectively instructed them to provide my school with any supplies that I needed for the Korean nationals living within Hawke’s Bay. We were giving out food parcels to the Korean community.

We also got some support later on from a few community groups, but mostly, for example, the generator was provided by me. The fuel was provided by me. A lot of the meat was provided by me. The non-perishables were, some of it was donated, some of it my company paid for.

So basically, you paid for the lion share of it, but also lots of people and organizations, communities chipped in.

Yeah, I mean, for example, quite a lot of the meat because all the fridges, freezers, were dying and were gone because there's no power. I know quite a few people who own restaurants in Hawke’s Bay rather than letting their meet their products go rotten, they would allow me to go and take it and then cook it and then provide it to the migrants.

One of the restaurants is next door to my office. They have gas cookers. The gas was still going so there was no electricity but there was gas. They allowed us to do a lot of our cooking in their kitchens.

That's a good thing. By the way, who cooked those meals?

It was members of the various communities.

So one day we had Chinese, like jiaozi, dumplings, noodle soup that was made by us with our Chinese students. They cook for everyone. We did a Vietnamese like full noodle meal lunch. We did a Korean barbecue. So every day we had different dishes.

It sounds almost like a community cultural week, kind of events. I know it’s disaster relief, but it's very nice to hear the community then comes together, I think we should have another episode talking about communities.

But coming back to the topic of this whole self-reliance and disaster preparedness, how did you learn about all of these tips like how to get prepared？Is it just like little by little accumulating these life experiences or did you actually go to special schools, I don't know, training programs for this?

I mean, when going back quite a few years when I was in high school, as a student, we’re taught about civil defense, how to protect ourselves. If there's an earthquake, if there's a cyclone, so the basics, I think when I was a kid, I think still today high school students learn horticulture, so they learn how to grow food, they learn how to cultivate and plant seeds and harvest plants. We are a countryside country, right, so...

So the essential farming techniques kids need to learn.

Yeah. Or just how to grow some basic fruit and vegetables. The sort of the other stuff, the more survival stuff, I quite like camping, I also quite like going hunting and I might go hunting for a few days at a time where I'm staying in the bush. A lot of those skills I just learned through trial and error, and often a lot of error.

Do you have anything, for example, like Boy Scouts that sort of idea?

Yeah, we have Boy Scouts, camps with goal guides, obviously for girls. When I was a kid, I was never interested in that. I think my parents wanted to send me to Boy Scouts and I just refused, I hated it.

As you grow older.

But looking back now I wish I had because I would have learned so many skills.

We're talking about that as we're coming to the end of our discussion. Simon, could you give us a crash course? I know, we live in very sort of different geographical and climatic conditions, but could you give us a general crash course very quick tips on self-reliance and disaster preparedness? What we can do, I'm just like to prepare for that?

Yeah. Sure.

I think the really obvious one is just prepare some water, prepare some food, even if it's just 3 minute instant noodles, packets of instant noodles, non perishable food, if you can prepare a small cooker like a camping stove, a gas bottle camping stove, a cigarette lighter. So you can light it because I have a friend, he had a barbecue, a big barbecue, massive LPG gas bottle well prepared, but he had no way of starting the fire lighting it.

So he didn't really think this through, I guess.

No.

Another good idea is for your phones if the power goes out, have your mobile phone, maybe buy a small solar panel which you can use to charge your phones.

That's a good idea. Actually.

When the disaster happens, don't immediately rush to do something. Sit, think about it before you act. One of the big issues that we saw were people that were panicking, they panicked and they ended up getting into more trouble because they acted without thinking.

So when something bad happens, assuming you're not in imminent life danger, I think have a seat just taken what's going on, think about it and then think logically what is the next step for me? Not just run away, run, scream, panic.

I think those are very, very good tips. Hopefully none of our listeners have to face this scenario, but it's always nice to know in the back of your heads that you are prepared, should those kind of things happen?

It's peace of mind. And the funny thing was the cyclone hit us at night and I slept all the way through it. I woke up in the morning, I ended up getting in my car driving to my office.

And you didn't notice any difference?

I was very sleepy at the time, I got to the office and just wondered why there was so much water everywhere.

And then I realized why is there no power anywhere? Haha, so I certainly didn't panic, perhaps in my case I should have been a little bit more onto it.

But you should have been a little bit more panicky.

I think so, yeah.

Alright, thank you Simon for coming to the studio and share with us your experience in the disaster. And thank you for a tip. And also I really hope you guys don't have to go through anything like that again. And also hopefully people who have lost their homes or lost their possessions, they can claim it back or get compensated or get helped in one way or another.

Yeah, of course, I hope that too.

All right. And on that note, we're going to say goodbye now and can't wait to have you back. So we can talk about more topics relating to New Zealand.

Same here. We're looking forward to talking to you next.

All right. See you next time.

See you. Bye, take care.