WHO ARE THEY…. Ziad Burbar

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Where are they? [00:00:04] Speaker B: They're probably upstairs. They never answer the door. Oh, wait, it's Monday night. [00:00:12] Speaker C: They're on the second floor. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Second Floor Session. We're glad you tuned back in with us. We're super excited. But we're here at Pooh Prince again. Thank you, Poo Prince, and BioPetLab for loaning this beautiful facility. Facility to us. And we've got a super special guest today, and let's just jump right into that. [00:00:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So, first of all, we could not do this if it wasn't for the great folks at BioPet. [00:00:51] Speaker C: So having a Knoxville location is awesome. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Yes, it's wonderful. So we have got a guy who I met through work here. His name is Z, and I'm super excited to have him on. I. I think this story is going to go crazy good. So let's get into it. But first, he's going to pronounce his name the way that it should be, and so I don't butcher it. So, Z, thank you for being here. [00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you for having me, guys. And, well, my name is Ziad Burbar. It's an Arabic name. And living here in East Nissi for the past 40 years. [00:01:26] Speaker C: Wow. [00:01:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:01:28] Speaker B: So I could tell from you guys you're gonna say, even my name's Zeon. So I went by the show, like, one letter Z because you guys could do this. And sometime when I go, like, what is your name? It's like, z. Like, how do you spell that? Just the last letter Z. Yeah. But thank you all for having me. [00:01:44] Speaker A: Well, sure, absolutely. I'm. I'm so excited to hear your story. So I want to take it from the top or the bottom, I guess, and let's talk about where you're born, where you're from, how you got here, your family, and how in the world did you make it to East Tennessee? That's just wild to me. So. [00:02:02] Speaker B: All right, take us through it. So I am originally from Palestine. I'm Palestinian. And if you haven't hear in the news, there been a war there for a while. So my. To the point of my grandparents, they fled the 48 war and they went to the west bank, and from the west bank, they fled to Jordan. My dad was one of the lucky ones who got educated, and he went and worked with the government of Kuwait. I was born in Kuwait. All my siblings, I have two brothers and two sisters. I'm number two. And. But every year, my dad took the whole family and we went to Palestine to visit for luck for the summer. So you could say I'm from Palestine, even though I was born and raised in Kuwait. But you know, my roots are from Palestine. Yeah, in 1967 they called a three day war between the Arabs and the Israelis. And they call three days because the Arabs lost within three days of the war. A lot of my uncles from my mom's side decided to leave and come to the United States. It was much easier to migrate at that time. So they migrated to the United States and they went to Virginia, like Virginia, Maryland area that time. And then one time they worked in hotels and stuff like that, you know, just to kind of get the ends meet. And one time an uncle came down and drove down to, to Florida, I think, and he stopped by in Knoxville and he's like, wow, this place is nice. So he went back and told my rest of my uncles this place in Knoxville. So I think in the early 70s they decided to move down here. So 1980 we came and we visited. My mom wants to visit her mother who lived here. And so we all came and visited in the United States, 1980, and [00:04:16] Speaker C: my [00:04:16] Speaker B: dad decided, you know what, there's no future for us in Kuwait especially or the Middle east, so let's just migrate and come here. So we started our migration. Immigration and migration paper back 1979. 1980. [00:04:32] Speaker A: How, how old were you then? [00:04:34] Speaker B: By then? I was born in 69, so that is like I'm 11 years old. 10, 11 years old. [00:04:38] Speaker A: Do you remember how you felt about that? [00:04:40] Speaker B: I came expecting to see Kit, you know, the Knight Rider, because this was on TV. And the 18 shooting in the street. Like, what is this place really? This trees. [00:04:56] Speaker C: Wow, that's a good expectation. [00:04:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. [00:04:58] Speaker C: Sorry we let you down. [00:05:01] Speaker B: But I grew to love East Tennessee. So just going back. So we started Our immigration paper 1986. We had our approval right then I finished high school and few weeks later I came to the state and I fell in love with this place. Boy, you can imagine. Sometimes like I fly with work when I fly back in, and sometimes by the window I look down when I see Appalachian and I was like, oh, I'm home. [00:05:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:32] Speaker B: So 17 years, the Middle East, 40 years. So I came June 27, 1986 to the United States. [00:05:41] Speaker C: And you come to Knoxville. [00:05:42] Speaker B: I came to Knoxville. We went to Florida for almost a year and we came back okay. I enrolled early on in Roan State. Then I went to Florida. I joined the community college back then. Then I came back to ut. I went my undergrad electrical engineering at, at ut. Then I got a job in Oak Ridge. Then I went back to get my master degree, and. And. And here I am. [00:06:10] Speaker C: Okay. [00:06:10] Speaker B: All right, fast forward today. [00:06:14] Speaker C: So now, your family, [00:06:19] Speaker A: your. [00:06:19] Speaker C: Your mom and dad, are they still living or with us? [00:06:21] Speaker B: My mom and dad are actually my neighbors. [00:06:23] Speaker C: Okay. [00:06:24] Speaker B: So, you know, I tell the story. Everybody loves Raymond. That's us. [00:06:30] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:30] Speaker B: So they come to the point where they're like few houses down the street from me. They come to the point. They're. They're much older. They need. My mom had a stroke about a year ago, so all my siblings, myself, we take it. We take care of them 24 hours around the. I have my shift and so on. So luckily, with my work, the days, I'm like in the afternoon watching her. I just have to sit there in case she needs to go to the restroom or something like that. But I'm just working from home at the time. And so my. I have a sister lives in Oliver Spring, and I have a sister lives between Oliver Spring and Oak Ridge, and I have two brothers. They live here in Knoxville, too. [00:07:13] Speaker C: Okay, so now, did your whole family there was it. Are you. Your siblings, are y' all pretty close, as in age, did they migrate about the same time? [00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah. My older brother came a year and a half before we did. It's just because he finished high school. [00:07:31] Speaker A: Okay. [00:07:32] Speaker B: And then he came here. [00:07:33] Speaker C: Okay. [00:07:33] Speaker B: And of course, we have cousins, first cousins, and so on. Just a fun fact. My mom is number 11 out of 12, and my dad is 6. The 6 out of 6 is the youngest. So my mom is from Jerusalem, the old city of Jerusalem, and we are. Or my dad is from a Christian town called Birzaid. It's about. If you know, geography is about 10 km north of Ramallah. Here's kilometers again for you. [00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:08:09] Speaker B: So one time we were visiting, just another fun fact, with my uncle, my mom's brother, and I said, uncle, could you please take me and show me where you guys. Because I. I like this stuff. So I don't know if you've ever been to Jerusalem. There are. How old. [00:08:27] Speaker C: I've did like Ben Yehuda and Old. Old City. [00:08:30] Speaker B: Jerusalem. [00:08:31] Speaker C: Old City. [00:08:32] Speaker B: You've seen some of the houses, the shops. It's like, you look, it looks like a cave. You know, my. One of my cousin born and raised here, when we took him there, I was like, oh, my God, that looks like a cave. I was like, that's not a cave. So anyway, so I had my uncle take. Take us there and then literally, the. Their house or the room they lived in, all 14 people, it was as big as this room here, maybe slightly bigger. And that's just the room. And outside there is the like one section that has bathroom slash kitchen. You know, there's like a. Maybe just a feet by six feet. [00:09:06] Speaker C: Just a corner. [00:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, this way. My uncle was like, he's like number three out of the 12. And I looked at him, was like, how on earth did your dad make 12 with here, here he goes. All I know is he was taking a shower and he calls Grandma Sophia, come scrub my back. And then [00:09:29] Speaker C: here's another one [00:09:33] Speaker A: trick. So what was it like for you growing up in Kuwait? I. I don't know much at all about the Middle east or anything like [00:09:45] Speaker B: that, but Kuwait is an oil rich country. My dad worked for the government of Kuwait with the Ministry of Finance. He was like the head of payroll department or something like that. A rich. Meaning they. We don't pay for a lot of things. Medical, we don't pay for anything. You just go get. [00:10:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:11] Speaker B: Doctors and so on. Gas, what they call it, their Benzene gas was 20 fills at my time. Remember this is like the 70s. So you know how much you paid for gas here in the seventies in the Carter administration. Twenty fills is maybe like at the time about maybe three to five cents for a liter. So multiply this by four. So you like maybe pay about ten cents for a gallon. [00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:41] Speaker B: And one time the governor of Kuwait decided to raise to 40 fills and everybody just went vice. But anyway, I digress. Needless to say, it's a rich country. Education was top class. I went to a private school in Kuwait. One of my sister and myself went to private school because of our age. We were born in the winter and my dad doesn't want us to hold us back for another year. The rest of my siblings went to a public school. And either public or private school, they're. Let's put it this way. When I came to the US as an engineer major, you have to take calculus, chemistry classes and physics classes. Most of the material I've already taken in high school in Kuwait. [00:11:31] Speaker A: Wow. [00:11:32] Speaker C: So we're a little behind over here. We're a little behind over here. [00:11:35] Speaker B: And like high school, like they're taking algebra one. Like really, that's like, you know, we [00:11:40] Speaker C: did that in first grade with my eyes closed. [00:11:45] Speaker B: The. My experience with that was is everything I took was in Arabic. So it was. I came here, did not speak a lake of English. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Okay. That was my next question. [00:11:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:55] Speaker B: So I. It was the things they Taught us. I am, he is, we are. The verb to be, you know, am is, are was. [00:12:02] Speaker A: Where. [00:12:03] Speaker B: When I came to Tennessee, I found that there's an ain't we have to. So I came here and a. I took advantage because now I understand the material. I don't understand the language. So it was a. An avenue for me to learn English because I know what they're talking about. So now I could make that correlation. It took a bit, but, you know, I aged. All my classes the. The. Because I took them in high school and. And everybody's like, how do you. I like. This is easy because anyway. [00:12:39] Speaker A: Doing it for years. [00:12:42] Speaker B: But it's a. The best food you could find. It was really nice. They have beaches. They have. But it was more tailored to Kuwaiti citizens. If you are a Kuwaiti, you have a privilege. If you're not a Kuwaiti, we're. We were there on a visa or a work visa. My dad. [00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:12] Speaker C: So you are not a Kuwaiti. [00:13:13] Speaker B: No, I'm not a Kuwait. You know, I'm a Palestinian. [00:13:15] Speaker C: Okay. So. Yeah, right, right. But you. Okay, okay. So I didn't know if you lived there. I don't know how. I didn't know exactly how that worked [00:13:20] Speaker A: or since you were born there. [00:13:23] Speaker B: It's a bit complicated. And I'll explain because I explained this to Paul once. Because my grandparents live. Left Palestine and they went to Jordan. So they became a refugee of Palestinian refugee in Jordan. And then by descent we have Jordanian passport. So you could say a refugee, a Palestinian refugee in a way. [00:13:49] Speaker C: Okay. [00:13:51] Speaker B: So we lived there on a visa. When I graduated high school. I'll give you another example. I was on the top of my class. I applied for the University of Kuwait as a really strong university. That's a nice university. However, if you're a Kuwaiti and you wanna. And even if you have a lower grade GPA or atmosphere than you do GPA. They'll take you before they 40. [00:14:21] Speaker C: Yeah, before. Yeah. [00:14:23] Speaker B: So [00:14:26] Speaker C: that's kind of tough too. [00:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's some. Which you don't blame him. This is their. [00:14:32] Speaker C: This is them. [00:14:32] Speaker B: This is them. Their money. That's what they. It goes to them first. But the US is. It's the. What's left over. It goes to us. [00:14:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:42] Speaker A: So what. As far as Palestine goes, fleeing means it's bad. You know, you're refuging from there. [00:14:55] Speaker C: What. [00:14:56] Speaker A: What. What was. I mean, what was so bad about that? That, you know, your grandmother and grandfather had to leave. Like, where were they trying to escape from what was that like? [00:15:05] Speaker B: It was a different flavor of what happened October 7th on, after October 7th in Gaza. I mean, it's, they just massacre Palestinians, they don't care. You know, there's several times I talk to people, they see like the first thing they come, like, do you think that Israel has the right to exist? I said, wow, you know, I said, nobody ever asked me if the Palestinians have the right to exist, you know, that sort of thing. And so when it becomes bad, you have two options. Either stay and die, and if you don't die, you're gonna live in oppression. And I'll tell you a story about, maybe I could divert for a little bit. My brother in law was diagnosed with cancer. Stage four cancer, stomach cancer. So they cannot allocate the chemo agent to treat him. And what, they were able to allocate it. They have to go and somehow get it and come back. They cannot. He went to the hospital and then now the doctor's on strike, that's in Palestine and he has to take immunotherapy with his chemotherapy and they cannot find it in the entire West Bank. And I said, I tell my wife, like, why, what's going on? She goes, I don't know, it's just, it just doesn't have it. I said, does Israel have it? It's like she has it. I said, well, go get it from there. I said, well, if we get it from there, we have to pay a full price, like $7,000 to, to get just like a treatment. So they're, they're choking the people there for them to leave. So they chose to stay even. They're living under oppression. They, they say, you know what, we'll fight it. Plus they cannot leave. In a way, this is the Palestinian. The Palestinian, yeah. Okay, maybe I, you look at it from the positive spin. Maybe I was one of the lucky people that end up leaving and try to look for a better life for my, for me and for my family and same as my dad and so on and maybe my grandkids. But you know, I, I won't forget my people there. You know, I'm, it's, if I find an avenue to help the hungry or so on, I'll do that behind, you know, don't let your left hand knows what your right hand is doing. If you know your Bible, right? [00:17:23] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Yep. So, so now did you, did your wife, did your wife, did you meet her here or no. There, There. Okay. [00:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:36] Speaker C: So, so you were young or did you go back and find. [00:17:39] Speaker B: I, I, I'VE known of her because she's from the same hometown. Okay. So I've known her. I've known of her most of our lives. Her dad and my dad knew each other. And then one time I was gone for five weeks to Palestine. And the first day we're there, and honestly I was there to go look, hey, maybe I should try meet somebody while I'm there. So we went there and my dad, the first night we're there, we just, Just got there. He goes, he wants to see his [00:18:15] Speaker C: best friend, his buddy. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And he goes, you want to come with me? I was like, yeah, sure, I'll go. So in there. And they're sitting down and they're, you know, drinking. And I said, I drank with them and I'm jet lag and I'm tired and they're having fun. I'm not. So I said, dad, come on, let's go. And he goes like, ah, chill. So I went to the other side of the house where her cousins were sitting and we just sat down. They went to American schools in Palestine, like elementary, mid. In high school and so on. And so they speak good English. My Arabic is good. If I speak general language. If it's technical, switch to English. So we're stalking and so on. And shortly after that, she. She came in and like, oh my God, that's her. I remember her when we were young. But okay, so I got to talk to her and the next day I asked my dad, I said, dad, what's the protocol to ask her on a date? And he got so excited. So he went and called her dad, like, can they, like, ah, sure, they could go on a date. So I went and picked her up and we hit it off since then. [00:19:23] Speaker C: Awesome. So you, I guess you were 17, 18. [00:19:27] Speaker B: No, no, no, that was in 2000 when I got. [00:19:31] Speaker C: Oh. So, okay. [00:19:32] Speaker B: I was 31. Too young. [00:19:34] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Okay. So you were. You are older fella. [00:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:19:41] Speaker B: I'm almost 58. [00:19:43] Speaker C: Okay, okay, so okay. [00:19:46] Speaker B: So. But the joke about it, especially when she's around, I said, oh, that's my mail order bride. [00:19:58] Speaker A: Oh. [00:19:59] Speaker C: So I get. So she's a little younger than you are. [00:20:01] Speaker B: She's only like four to five years younger. Okay, okay, so gotcha. Yeah. And that's why when you're young, that's a huge. [00:20:09] Speaker A: That's a big gap. [00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't play with six years. But when you're old, like. [00:20:14] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, it changes. Yeah, absolutely. Age is totally a different thing when you get old. [00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:20:22] Speaker C: It's weird Even. Even when, you know, like, you're like, our age now and we're, you know, we're. I'm 37. [00:20:27] Speaker B: And. [00:20:28] Speaker C: And you're like, she's only, you know, she's only 27. That's not that bad, you know, But. But I mean, when. When I'm 18 and she's 10, it's like, whoa, you know? [00:20:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:41] Speaker A: So you were there for five weeks, you said. Yeah. So in that five weeks, did you win her over and bring her back? [00:20:48] Speaker B: I got engaged that five weeks. And when. The day we left or the day I left, we regret that we didn't get married. [00:20:54] Speaker A: So you said you got engaged in those five. [00:20:56] Speaker B: Five weeks? Yes. [00:20:57] Speaker A: Wow. [00:20:59] Speaker C: That's when you know it's right. [00:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Listen, I. Yeah. I don't want to say anything that gets me in trouble with her. [00:21:06] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, you better watch it. You definitely knew it was right, because [00:21:11] Speaker B: I know she's going to watch this one. But then three months later, I applied for her fiance visa because I said, you know what? You could come here and visit. What if she doesn't like it here? [00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:22] Speaker B: So I applied for her fiance visa. And then another trouble started in Palestine. Israel, they call the second Uprising at the time, in 2000. October. Early October 2000. And that's the time we're supposed to go there to visit with her. So all her paper was as the US Consulate in Jerusalem. So when we went there and I said, hey, let's just get married. And we had a. Just a church wedding, and I went to the embassy, the consulate, sorry. And I asked them, can we change from a fiance visa to a. A wife green card, since all the stuff is there. So the lady was nice. She worked, we paid the fees and so on. And the only thing we had to wait on is background check from both the Palestinian Israelis. She goes. As soon as she gets that, she has her green card. And she goes, well, yeah, maybe I should stay a little bit longer just to say my goodbyes so I don't have to leave, like, right away. And then we got married October 15th. And she was in the US that Thanksgiving. I remember she came in that Thanksgiving weekend. [00:22:39] Speaker C: Okay. It's about a month. Yeah. Roughly. Somewhere in there. Okay. [00:22:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:43] Speaker B: We've been together since then. [00:22:45] Speaker C: Okay. [00:22:45] Speaker B: And I love her dearly. [00:22:47] Speaker C: Ah, there you go. Absolutely. There it is. [00:22:49] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:22:50] Speaker A: So how many. How many children, you guys? [00:22:52] Speaker B: I have two. I have a. A young man, 24 years old. His name is Laith. And cool name, actually, in. In Arabic, The lion has 199 names. The one you're probably familiar with is Assad, which is the previous president of Syria. His last name was Assad. Assad is the means lion. But apparently in the back in the old Arabia, if Bo killed the lion. So one of the lion names become bull. [00:23:28] Speaker A: Ah, that's cool. [00:23:29] Speaker B: So that's why. [00:23:29] Speaker C: Because it's a. Oh, it's masculine. It's a manly thing. [00:23:34] Speaker B: So. And also my childhood best friend, his name was Leith, so it kind of resonated with me. And. And we want to pick a name, unlike Ziad, that you guys could pronounce that. And my wife name is Hala. So we have letters in Arabic that. [00:23:55] Speaker C: Yeah, okay. [00:23:59] Speaker B: It means beauty. Every name, Every name in Arabic, every name has a meaning and a meaning. [00:24:04] Speaker C: Okay. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:05] Speaker B: So he just finished a year ago neuroscience from the University of Tennessee undergrad. And he had applied to go to become a PA physician assistant. And Christina is. He's 24. Christina, my daughter, she is 22 and she just graduated this past May. Linguistic major. And she got a job in Japan teaching English as a second language. [00:24:31] Speaker A: Oh, God. Wow. [00:24:32] Speaker C: Oh, that break me. [00:24:33] Speaker B: Sure, tell me about it. I can imagine she doesn't see this, but after we dropped to the airport and came back, I cried like a baby. [00:24:42] Speaker C: I can't imagine. That's your baby. [00:24:43] Speaker B: Like, what's wrong with you? I said, I don't care if my [00:24:45] Speaker A: son send him to Japan. [00:24:49] Speaker B: She is my baby. [00:24:51] Speaker C: Oh, it hit me hard, guys, I'm sure. [00:24:55] Speaker B: But you know, thankfully that, you know, 13 hours difference is not helping. But we communicate text and calls. [00:25:01] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, everything's much better nowadays for that. [00:25:04] Speaker B: But you know, my wife, as I told you, she's already in Palestine. In a week and a half, I'm gonna go there to visit with her brother. But there's also her nephew's getting married. So we're. I'm gonna be there for two weeks and then we bought a ticket from there to go to Japan to visit with Christina. [00:25:21] Speaker A: Cool. [00:25:22] Speaker B: And then we're kind of. [00:25:23] Speaker C: Oh, that's great. [00:25:24] Speaker A: So. [00:25:25] Speaker C: So you. She's palace Palestine, Jordanian. You said your wife. [00:25:32] Speaker B: My wife is. But no, my wife was born and raised in Palestine, so she's one of those people that. [00:25:37] Speaker C: Okay. [00:25:38] Speaker B: Indigenous. Her family never left, so they. They stayed there. [00:25:42] Speaker C: Okay, got you. [00:25:43] Speaker A: So, okay, so she's the only one that left out of her whole family. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Left out of a. So the remaining of her siblings are still there. They come and visit and they go back and they. They live there now. [00:25:53] Speaker A: Is there in Today's world. What, what kind of. Is there d. Is there dangers of going there as a US Citizen visiting? [00:26:02] Speaker B: The, the, the beauty about what the US government did is now as a US Citizen, you're protected in Israel. Okay. [00:26:11] Speaker C: I felt very safe in Israel. [00:26:13] Speaker B: Even in Palestine, you should feel safe. [00:26:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:15] Speaker B: Okay. It was before because we come from a Palestinian background. Even though we're the US Citizens, we get the first class treatment from the Israelis. But the US Government, they said Palestinians who have anybody that has a US Passport can enter and leave from Tel Aviv like anybody else, like any other US Citizen. So that happened about a year ago that they allowed that. And people say, like, hey, is the Palestinian side safe? They're great people, man. I mean, everybody that visit there, whether in the. Something about the Arabs in general, but the Palestinians, they're very hospitable people. Not only they see you, then they try to help you. They'll welcome you, they'll invite you their home. They want to feed you, they want to. That sort of thing. It. You'll see it exists there. Not because you're. You don't have hair, blonde hair, you know, blue eyes. They say, you know, this is a stranger. Let me take advantage or do something. Like, they're, they're really, really nice people. The, the stereotypes that you hear or some of the, the things that you hear. That's not true. [00:27:32] Speaker A: I was gonna say there's stereotypes and I mean, as far as what I'm led to believe about the Middle east being dangerous, I mean, you know, it doesn't sound like that part is. [00:27:42] Speaker B: Anyway, it, you know, I'm going there and my wife's. She's gone there already once for the summer for her niece's wedding, and she's back with my son. And now I'm going there. She's there. I'm gonna go there and like colleagues and stuff like, oh, are you gonna be okay? And so like, yeah, it's just fine. [00:28:02] Speaker A: I'm going home. [00:28:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:28:04] Speaker A: You know, I'm gonna come back home. [00:28:05] Speaker B: I'm not gonna go and start trouble. As long as you don't start trouble. Yeah, you're gonna be fine. [00:28:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:10] Speaker C: Shouldn't be anything. Absolutely. I remember when I was in the Middle East, I remember when I was in. I can't remember exactly, but we were going by Gaza and man, that was. That felt totally different, though. That didn't. That didn't sit well, I guess just the, from the, from the distance where they were just. They were having it. They were. Have something was going On. They were burning tires in the street. [00:28:31] Speaker B: It was a. Yeah, they're probably like some protests. And here's when you. When you're in the Israeli side of. Of town and you go toward the Palestinian side of town, you're going to see a lot of Israeli military standing there. And usually, like, they're standing with ars. Whatever they. They're equipped with, and they're roaming and looking for things. So that itself is like. [00:28:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:28:56] Speaker B: Oh, my God. What the hell is going on here? Yeah, because we're not used to seeing this. [00:29:00] Speaker A: No. That's intimidating. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Yeah, very intimidating. [00:29:03] Speaker C: So our tour guide was. He was. He was a. He was a Jew and that's. He from. He was from Jerusalem and he was military, of course, because everybody is over there and on their bus. I mean, he sat there with his gun right there on him the whole time. And. But it was just. That's normal to them, you know, that's how they. That's how they operate, you know. [00:29:26] Speaker B: And I guess if you're scared, you'll always be paranoid and you'll have guns on you, but if you're not. [00:29:32] Speaker C: No, absolutely. Then, yeah. [00:29:34] Speaker B: So that's just telling you something. [00:29:36] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. It was just. It was just different me, I guess, because, I mean, I'm. I'm, you know, just like we are. You know, you don't see that stuff every day over here, you know, I [00:29:45] Speaker A: felt that way in Mexico. Like, every time I've ever been. I've been twice, but both times cartels, [00:29:51] Speaker B: like from the cartels and stuff, or. [00:29:53] Speaker A: No, so. So one time I went down and I stayed at. At a resort. Like a. You know, it's all inclusive, whatever. And I mean, in the resort was fine, but, like, getting there, like, we. I paid extra to be picked up by a personal chauffeur or whatever to get us to the resort from the airport, you know, and just. I guess when you're going out of that airport, they're pushing all kinds of stuff on you, all the, you know, peddlers or whatever. [00:30:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:30:22] Speaker B: What's wrong with that, man? [00:30:24] Speaker C: Trying to make a living. [00:30:25] Speaker A: So that's weird, for one thing, you know, it don't happen here. So that was kind of weird. And I'm like, hollywood, get me out of here. You know, and then we get in this car with this guy, and here we go, and it's a black Escalade. And I'm like, dude, this is the cartel. Like, I'm using them to protect us right now. [00:30:44] Speaker C: That's what's going on. [00:30:45] Speaker B: I mean, it was. [00:30:45] Speaker A: It had to be. So anyway, and they took us there and. And everybody says, you know, the cartel owns a resort. So, you know, if you're giving them business, you're. You're fine. You know, it's what they say and the. But yeah, that. So. And that was wild driving the way that guy was driving, which is me normal, you know, but here wasn't like him, you know. Anyway, so that was one thing. And then another trip. I went down on a trip with B.F. goodrich down there, Michelin Trail, and drove BC cars on the Baja. And that was a blast. We had a ton of fun. But I mean, Chevy Silverado with guys with machine guns in the back. I don't make me feel good, you know, that's the military. I'm like, who's that? What's going on here? They're like, oh, it's military. [00:31:27] Speaker B: I'm like, from. Yeah, okay. [00:31:29] Speaker A: You know, so both of them trips. I. I don't feel good about Mexico. [00:31:35] Speaker B: Look, okay, I've been resort. When we got out, especially with a cruise line and we step. And we got out and they told you not to go here. I going down, man. You know, these are. At least for me, these are. Other Jews are trying to make a living Guatemala. We. We. We had a car and we drove all over Guatemala. And I spoke very little Spanish, but enough to get me by. And. And the funny thing is, like, on the street, they like, I'm driving and they have like a cart of avocados. I was like, oh, my God, avocados. I stop and, and end up like, you know, quantum space officer. And they tell me like. And so I, I took several and I gave like, it was like maybe 20 cents each. [00:32:20] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:32:20] Speaker B: So I bought so much of them and then they saw me stop and pay in that person's. Everybody came. So I was like, what do you have, gum? What do you have this? So I said, you know, it's. They want to do a living. And, and like 99.9% our people are good people. It's. It's a saying. They're always told me, if you see the good in people, you will see the good people. That, that goodwill will show up. If you go there paranoid, then you're gonna. Every bad guy's gonna come. [00:32:52] Speaker C: Yeah, everybody's gonna be a bad person if you go in paranoid. [00:32:55] Speaker B: And so you must have been to the old city in Jerusalem where all the people sitting out and selling. [00:33:02] Speaker C: Yeah, pedal your, you know, necklaces, T shirts, this, that, and when you Ask, [00:33:08] Speaker B: how much is this? Like 100 shekels. They expect you to pay 100 shekels because you're like, oh, what do you mean, 100 shekel? 10 shekels, man. And it was like what? The Americans were like. He said, 100 gonna get. [00:33:19] Speaker C: Like, it's just. Watch me. [00:33:20] Speaker B: Yeah, there'll be like 15 or 20. So you have to. [00:33:24] Speaker C: Well, it was on. Was it Ben Yehuda Street? [00:33:27] Speaker B: That's. [00:33:27] Speaker C: That's a Ben Yehuda. That's a. That's like a very markety area, you know, because we went down through there. And of course, our tour guide, he's like, if. When we go down through here, just put your backpacks and stuff in front of you because it's crowded. I mean, you don't know what's going, you know, he says, may be fine, it may not be fine. There's people that pickpocket whatever. You put your stuff in front of you and we go down through there. And sure as the world, you know, you try just a couple. I mean, it wasn't like 25 hands going, trying to get your stuff, you know, but there's a couple people, they're like, ah, no, you know, but. But they come up to you wanting to sell you something, but they're just making a living. They just do it a little different than we do here in East Tennessee. [00:34:05] Speaker A: The. [00:34:05] Speaker B: With that, they see you, your blonde hair, blue eyes, so you're a tourist and they want to sell. This is how you're going to get their money from the tourists. So they. If they don't hustle you. [00:34:17] Speaker C: Yeah. You're going to walk right by them. You're going to walk right by them. If they don't come towards you, they're [00:34:21] Speaker A: not doing good at what they're doing if they're not trying to. So they ain't trying. [00:34:24] Speaker B: This might come as a shocking to you. So I don't look like a typical Arab. So if you. At least to them, I don't. So when. At least when I'm shaved, just recently I've started growing my beard. So when there's time. When I'm driving, I rent. Sometime I rent cars in Palestine and they. I rented with the. The yellow tag. And the yellow tag is an Israeli car. You're allowed to go in and out of the west bank or the. The Palestinian territory and so on. So I'm driving with the yellow tag and the way I look. So the. The Palestinian military, they stop me and they ask me like, passport or like, how Are you like, so your, your id? So I give my passport and I start speaking them in Arabic. But there's also a lot of agent, massage agent. They speak fluent Arabic. And I tell him, listen, man, I'm from the town right here, here and this and that. You could call my uncle and so on. And then they're probably calling my name and so on. But the moral of the story is I myself don't look. [00:35:26] Speaker C: Don't look. You don't play the part. Yeah. [00:35:27] Speaker B: So when I go to Jerusalem, I get hustled. [00:35:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:31] Speaker B: Hey, mister. 100 shekels. Like I switch to Arabic. What do you mean 100? Like 10 shekels. [00:35:38] Speaker A: They're just floored. [00:35:39] Speaker C: Whoa, whoa, okay. [00:35:41] Speaker B: Speak Arabic. [00:35:45] Speaker A: I'm living here longer than you. [00:35:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:35:49] Speaker A: So you've made it to the United States. You lived in Florida for a year. You moved to Knoxville, you went to ut and you graduated and you got [00:36:01] Speaker C: a job doing what? [00:36:02] Speaker B: At that time, I was an electrical engineer. I got a job in a company off of Bethel Valley Road to Oak Ridge. One of the incubator. It's called vacuum Technology. Until now. I'm grateful to the owners that there are two partners and that they give me the opportunity to go there. And I build my skills and my career at this company. I worked with them for about 10 years. I'm an electrical engineer. So I did a lot of electronics design. [00:36:35] Speaker A: Like what kind of electronics? [00:36:37] Speaker B: Like that acquisition. They're. They're into mass spectrometer. This woman aboard. Your view. [00:36:48] Speaker A: What he's really saying is like, I'm trying to dumb it down. [00:36:53] Speaker C: I'm on another level than you guys are. [00:36:55] Speaker A: Listen, if we can't understand it, we're. Okay, Skip. [00:36:57] Speaker B: So mass spectrometer is. It's a low. It's. It's a low vacuum system that you, you test the type of gases that actually exist. So you go in a low vacuum and you put a mass spectrometer, like devices that actually, it's. You're under vacuum. So you try to bombard the, the atoms into the detector part and then you read and you can tell you have, you have this much helium that. This much nitrogen, this much oxygen. [00:37:28] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. [00:37:30] Speaker B: And they are. And they went into. We evolved when the, when, when, when I was there, they evolved the business where they could have leak test equipment. For example, the, the old fridge, if you remember, there's a thermostat. You cannot. Low or high. That thermostat is a, is a little bulb that has freon in it. R12 or R1. [00:37:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:53] Speaker B: R22 or whatever refrigerant at the time. So they kept changing for the environment. So we build leak test system to actually. For GE and others to actually test to see if they're leaking. Because they install in the fridge, it goes in the field, two years later, it fails. That's a warranty call or a service call, reliability and so on. So we build leak test system to actually test those. So I was part of the. The. The system design, mainly the electronics and the control and some of the systems, not all of them. And I stayed with them for roughly 10 years. And at that point when I started, I was employee number seven. When I left, like I was maybe 50 or 60. But now I kept in touch every now and then with the owner, and when I run into him, see what's going on, I ran to Costco or something like that. I think they. They're up to like a couple hundred people. [00:38:54] Speaker A: Wow. Wow. [00:38:55] Speaker C: It's grown huge. That's awesome. [00:38:58] Speaker B: I'm thankful and I'm grateful because it's [00:39:00] Speaker C: almost like you've built. You helped build that up. I mean, in a certain, you know, in a certain. [00:39:03] Speaker B: In a certain way, you could say, yes, that. And I think everybody that working at the time, they pulled their weight and they, they worked hard. And we had a lot of smart people at the time working for that company. Even the owners themselves, they're very bright individuals. And. And until now, I'm. When I look back and I'm really grateful for the opportunity that I got with them, but I got to the point where I needed something different. It's like I reach a limit or a ceiling, and I want to do something different. So I started looking around and I got a. My neighbor who worked with a company across from cti, which got bought by Siemens. They. He goes, yeah, we play soccer with the. Between the companies, like, every few days a week, he goes, I could take your resume and pass it along to one of the guys, to one of the people there, because they're looking for people. So I give my resume, gave it to the individual, and I got called in and I got an offer and turned on my notice, and I went and worked for cti. And it was a huge difference because, you know, going from a 30, 40 employee to a company where you have HR, I mean, the wife was the HR. So you have to understand. So there's an HR. [00:40:22] Speaker C: Wow. [00:40:23] Speaker B: There is. So it was a big change. It was like a lot of opportunities. So I dove into. It was a new technology to me it was like I went from gas analysis and mass spectrometer to a positron machine tomography, PET system, PET medical devices, nuclear medicine devices in a way. So I started as a senior engineer with them and the last 25 years, this last July 2nd, it was 25 years anniversary with them and. I have a senior position with him, a principal key expert. And I also very grateful for the opportunity that I had with CTI and with you know, Siemens bought us out and I remember the CTI owners, there were four owners, two were here in Knoxville, became good friends with one of them and I'm still in contact every now and then with his son who also worked with us. But yeah, so my undergrad in grad school is electrical engineering, electron computer engineering. I did a lot of the from a low level all the way to high level software. I do my recent work for the last 10 plus years is in the, the system architect part of the business is basically how to understand what the market needs from the, from our stakeholder, the product manager and so on. But also work with the, the scientists and the, the design team to understand what's the technology and how could you bridge that into a system that could be fit in the market, that's reliable, manufacturable, etc. Etc. That fit that niche and so on. So if I may brag a little, one of the product that I was in charge of as a full in charge of as a STEM architect is called Vision for a PET ct. And when we released Vision it was the best in the market and our competition so you know, is ge, Philips, they're out and a couple others. Now we have a newcomer called United Imaging. But at the time usually our market share is about 40 to 42%. When that system came out for several quarters it peaked all the way up to 82% of market share and it came down to the 50s and so on. So that's one of my great achievement. Other one is it's the flagship at the time is Quadra. It's a long axle field of view. We sell that for $9 million. So that's the less prime time. [00:43:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:16] Speaker B: So the, the previous one Vision, it varies from 1 and a half to 3 million depend on the, the bells and whistles that you ask. And that system was supposed to be like two or three of them and, [00:43:30] Speaker A: and what are they using that for? [00:43:32] Speaker B: We nuclear medicine is a. I'll try to simplify this. [00:43:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:42] Speaker B: Cause I, I it asked me to say that in Arabic. I was like you could Inject it with a radioactive tracer and it goes into your system and then you start emitting radiation from inside out. And so we build an annulus or a bore that has the crystals and electronics. So we collect that radiation and we reconstruct it into an image. I'll give you an example. Cancer cells are very active cells, more active than your normal cells. So when you give it sugar, by definition they're going to eat or they're going to consume more sugar than your normal cells. So if you give it radioactive sugar, so they're going to eat or you're going to consume more radioactive sugar than your typical cells. So it translates. You're going to have more concentration of [00:44:41] Speaker C: radio in that area. [00:44:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Then your normal. [00:44:46] Speaker C: So for example, if I have basically shows hot spots. [00:44:48] Speaker B: A hot spot. Thank you. So you take the reconstruct image and you see there's your typical hotspots because your brain consumes sugars, your heart consumes sugars on. So you see that. But there is typical things that the nuclear med or the rheologists look at like oh this cancer, this is it. So cancer is one of them. A lot of the brain tracers that we do for Parkinson, Alzheimer and so on, it's still on the, in the verge of research but they're trying to break that research into. There's some tracers that could actually find some of the step. We do a lot of oncology, cardiology. I'm sorry to look at the flow in and out of the heart and so on. And our sister company which is under the nuclear medicine is spec, which is single photon that's located up in Hoffman State. I don't do much work. I do some work, not a lot of work with them, but most of my work here in, in Knoxville. [00:45:39] Speaker C: So is that how when, when, when, when you have like a cancer scan, the medicine that they inject, is it sugar induced radiation? [00:45:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Floral FDG stand is fluoro di glucose or. Okay. But the, the floor, the fluorine, the, the, the, the fluorine is like oxygen fluorine and so on. So the fluorine is an F18. It's a, it's a positron emitter. Positron is a positive electron. You know I went to college, to physics in high school and fixed in college. Electrons are negative. And when I went and started with like this physics beyond what I learned and it's like, it's positron. So what's a positron? It's a positive electron. [00:46:23] Speaker C: It's like no, no. [00:46:24] Speaker B: Electrons are negative, man. What are you talking about? So positron emitter, there's a whole decay sequence that happened in the nuclear the unstable nuclei that a positron, the product that is a positive electron, as soon as it leaves annihilates with a negative or an electron. And because of that annihilation, an energy of 511kEV kilo electron volt two of them goes in both direction. So now you know when you have crystals all the way around and you see a line one and events an event detector at the same time, you know there was an interaction. So you take all these million or billions of line response and you reconstruct that into an image where the physician or the doctor could see that and so on. [00:47:13] Speaker A: Wow. [00:47:14] Speaker C: Wow. [00:47:15] Speaker B: It's. [00:47:16] Speaker C: I was wondering how all that stuff worked. That's pretty cool. [00:47:19] Speaker B: It is. I, I am blessed again because PET technology is still on the the edge of technology. [00:47:29] Speaker A: What does that stand for? [00:47:30] Speaker B: Positron emission tomography. [00:47:33] Speaker C: Yeah, PET scan. [00:47:34] Speaker B: We've had a bunch of them. [00:47:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I know, I know, I know what a PET scan is. I didn't know what that stood for. [00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So we're in the age of technology which for a person who is a thinker, innovator, you could come up with IDs that. So I have not solely but shared with certain people close to 40 patents. [00:48:01] Speaker C: Wow, that's awesome. And that's pretty cool. [00:48:04] Speaker B: And I have forgot maybe 40 or 50 publication or conference records or so on as a, as a sign a man of science to show your science is you have to wide it out so A it shows that this is your work and B it other could learn from what you've done and then take it to the next level. So this is part of what we do or like there's a team that actually publish and not just write patent for the sake of writing patent. We do it because we're working on a problem and we find a solution. So we, that solution is unique. So we write a patent on it. Want to do this. And plus we're there for business. So you don't want your competition to do what you're doing. So this is something that you want to prevent your competition doing. So you file a patent and all this. [00:49:01] Speaker C: Okay, that's awesome. My only reason I was curious about that is because. [00:49:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. [00:49:10] Speaker C: We. I had a childhood cancer. One of my kids and I often wondered how they figured out how hot spots work. That's the only reason I said hot spots because. [00:49:20] Speaker B: So what kind of cancer? [00:49:21] Speaker C: Neuroblastoma. [00:49:23] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:49:23] Speaker C: Yeah, he's good now. Everything's good. It was stage four, all that. [00:49:29] Speaker B: How old was he at the time? [00:49:30] Speaker C: Two and a half. [00:49:31] Speaker B: Oh, wow, man. I'm sorry. Yeah. How old is he now? [00:49:35] Speaker C: He is 10. [00:49:36] Speaker B: 10. [00:49:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:36] Speaker C: 10. 10 years old. [00:49:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:38] Speaker C: Absolutely. You got. You got that. But yeah, I was just curious. That's pretty wild. I had no idea because we've had many, you know, radiation scans and stuff, but I didn't know that that's how. [00:49:49] Speaker B: If he had PET scans. [00:49:50] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:49:51] Speaker B: Because the breeding. There's a lot of PET scan plus [00:49:53] Speaker C: trans tomography and a lot of neuroblastoma can. Can comes into the adrenal gland or it comes into the head and his. Came into the adrenal gland. But of course it was just, you know, scans constantly, you know, so. But that's. That's wild that you say that. It's a sugar based. Because then it goes to those. [00:50:12] Speaker B: It finds those hot spots too. [00:50:14] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. A lot of MRIs. Yeah. [00:50:16] Speaker A: Yep. [00:50:16] Speaker C: And they. Yep. I was always. That's pretty. That's pretty neat. That's. [00:50:21] Speaker A: I like. You get to learn a little bit what you already knew about but didn't really know. [00:50:25] Speaker B: It's funny you say this because we get patient scans because, you know, we get. We want to learn from the field what we have. So we get patient scans, we analyze and how could we do this? And so on. But it really hit me, one of the releases that we. The vision release that we did. So the first system we installed it was in Groningen in the Netherlands. So I happened to go there after they installed it and they started because they're starting patient scan. I'm curious to see what's going to happen. And then this lady was scanned on the predecessor system and she volunteered that she goes, we should not. She doesn't have to get injected. Or do you have the. She volunteered to get on the. On the system. And as she's being scanned and I'm looking and I met her before. Good to meet you. Thank you for volunteering and all the other stuff. And she's getting scanned and I start seeing the nodules in. In her image. It broke my heart, man. [00:51:21] Speaker C: It broke my cock. [00:51:22] Speaker B: I'm joking right now because here's a human being in front of you before we. Because all anonymous and we look at the image. We don't know who's the person behind it. [00:51:32] Speaker C: But you actually just met this person [00:51:33] Speaker B: and I met this person. I'm looking at it just broke my heart. [00:51:36] Speaker A: So she volunteered to just for you to research on her? [00:51:39] Speaker B: Basically no, because they want to commission the system. So in order to commission the system and they feel good about commissioning the system. So we have the, the CE mark this Europe 510k, that's the FDA approval here and so on. So what they do normally is they, they install the system, they scan phantoms and so on. And then we have, they have other systems like the predecessor system. The predecessor system that they had mct, that's our previous system. Siemens gonna love me because I'm making this any retirement for them. So they, so they scan the patient. The patient has been injected with the FDG radioactive sugar. So once she finishes she agrees that yeah, she doesn't mind sitting another 10 minutes on the system. So they take her to the other system, the new system and they scan her. So these are the nuclear meds and the management team and so on to look at it. Good, commission it, go forward. And they're safety person and, and, and, and so they, they need to their own internal testing. They do a lot of that with phantoms. And then they start getting volunteers that who been scanned. They already have radioactive tracers in them. They put them in the system for only a few, like maybe five or ten patients at that. At that time everything goes good. They, they commission the system and they start taking actual, you know, real sc. Okay, yeah, yeah. [00:53:07] Speaker C: That would break your heart. [00:53:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:53:12] Speaker C: So Bo had mentioned. I'm curious, how'd you become a black belt? Man? [00:53:16] Speaker B: I was waiting for you to say [00:53:18] Speaker C: how did you become a black belt? Oh God. [00:53:21] Speaker B: So I, I start the. [00:53:23] Speaker A: So afraid somebody's gonna try to steal your patent. Afraid someone was going to try to [00:53:27] Speaker C: stay steal your patent. [00:53:30] Speaker B: So when my kids were younger we took him to. They want to do a martial arts. So we took him to do martial arts. Both my son and my daughter. And you know, we take him and the other dad sitting there and we're all talking. So the gym we're at, they started doing parents activities like workout punching and so on. And some of us got interested in grappling on the ground. And it reminded me of my high school and middle school that unlike now, we just like fighting each other. Especially if you grew up in the Middle East. So I'm like, yeah, this is something really interesting. So we talked to the owners like why don't you bring like somebody to teach us Brazilian jiu jitsu? And like, yeah, if there's interest in here and you guys will willing to pay. I'll break somebody. So he. The one he knows is Vitor Scholin. He's a known Brazilian black belt in New York. So he got one of his friends from Brazil and they, they brought him here on a work visa. And I started October 2011. And if you look at it's funny because you look at the statistics of white belt make into a blue. There's five bills white belt, the blue belt, blue belt to purple it. That's almost like one of 100. I can. Exactly. But it's like it really sharply declined. A lot of people quit because it's a really, it's a really hard sport. I mean look at my. [00:55:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I have a. Yeah. [00:55:13] Speaker B: A clavicle. I have. And most of these are really honestly they're accidents that happened that actually separate my or. Or separate. You know, twisted my. Because there's no punching and it's just like grappling. And I fell in love with the sport because it's not just only physical, it's a tactical that you have to think about. And it's like it's a structured playing chess. [00:55:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:39] Speaker B: But you're actually grabbing people which moves next. Okay so. And I tell a lot of people who are starting it's not just a sport, it's a lifestyle. So you have to eat right, you have to work out. Right. I mean think of it this way. I'm almost 58 years old. I'm a first degree black belt. You know, somebody off the street wants to come, but we get those a lot and they want to come. And I have to humble him. You know, I have to like respect the smell. So I have to work hard at this. And you know, I, I wake up early almost every morning. I go to Fort Sanders. I either you know, lift weight or be doing some cardio of some sort. And I train at least three times a week in jiu jitsu. I go Tuesday and Thursday. [00:56:27] Speaker C: Currently. [00:56:27] Speaker B: Currently, yeah. Okay. [00:56:28] Speaker C: Okay. [00:56:29] Speaker B: Tuesday and Thursday. [00:56:30] Speaker C: So it is a lifestyle. You keep it up. [00:56:32] Speaker B: You keep it up. And let me just finish. I'll tell you something that my wife try to persuade me not to do. So Tuesday and Thursday my lunch hour is blocked on my schedule. Anybody that schedule on my schedule for work, sorry, I cannot attend said find another spot. These are blocked. I'm out of office. And Saturday from 10 till noon and I go and it's an open mat so you could roll, train, do whatever you want to. But I we. The first gym I was with, they changed A couple of instructors and then they decided they don't want to do it. And I've, and I know he's local in town. His name is Ben Harrison. He is a, a class A person. Him and his partner, Amy Coleman, class A people. I've known Ben before and I went to Ben, it's like, hey Ben, I want to come and train. Can I? Because I've seen him in competition and outside and he goes, yeah, come on. And that's the best decision I've had. I was purple built when I started with Ben. So I've been already through my blue belt, purple belt. I just got my, I was a year when I got my purple belt. I started with Ben 2017 and I got all the way brown belt, black belt. And he just last December he gave me my first degree black belt. It's SHIELD System martial arts. I encourage you, if you love jiu jitsu, to come and train with us. We have doctors, we have mechanics, we have, I mean a whole spectrum of people. A husband, a dad, even a sister and a wife that they come and train with us. [00:58:22] Speaker C: That's pretty cool. [00:58:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So, so going back to the topic is when I started, I was making my lifestyle. When I first started, I was doing like five days, five times a week. It's like I fell in love with that sport and I had to cut it down a little bit. So, you know, my wife is telling me like, you know, maybe you're training too much. You're not spending time at home. You could. So I was like, okay, how am I going to get out of this? What's the smart thing to say? What would you rather me do this or go to bars? She goes, keep doing this. [00:58:55] Speaker A: Gave her an ultimatum. [00:58:57] Speaker B: No, she knows I'm joking. I will never do that. But it, it's, it, it clears your mind. It's a healthy minds and a healthy body that I truly believe that. And it, it also managed my stress level. My job, believe it or not, is very stressful. And, and people have learned when I have meetings, Tuesday and Thursday afternoon is when they ask me for things because I come back, I'm sort of like, say get another go for it. I just choke few people when I. Or get choked. It works both ways. [00:59:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So I've, I've got a question about that. Have you ever had to use your martial arts in the real world for any situations? [00:59:51] Speaker B: Almost. And luckily I'm a true believer because younger, I trained in kickboxing at a younger age. The best fight and you hear a Lot of the high level people, literally the best fight is the, the one you get out of. [01:00:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:08] Speaker B: The one you don't do. There's a couple of time I was approached one time I was approached with my kids both my son, my daughter, they were young at the time. And the guy from, he was having road rage and doing gestures and so on. And, and like, I, I, you know, hey, man, I'm sorry. Just keep going. So he actually blocked me on the road and he came out of his car. I said, this is real. So I saw him coming. I got out of the car and started going to him. He saw me coming. He just turned around and got in the car and he took. [01:00:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. He knew there wasn't no intimidating that. [01:00:46] Speaker B: And he goes, dad, he got scared. And I was like, that's this said, guys, I'm so sorry. You know, and I keep saying, like, I don't want to do this. I only did this because I don't want you to get hurt. And I keep telling my kids, the best fight is the one you don't. You diffuse and you get out. And there's a couple of times it happened where person got angry. Like, it's not work outside of work and so on. And they're like in your face. And I'm like, man, I'm sorry, I apologize. I just walk away. [01:01:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:01:13] Speaker B: You know, I, I look at somebody as like, how could you choke and pass out? [01:01:17] Speaker C: That's what I was. 30 seconds. Yeah, that's what I was fixing to say. Like, you already like, I prom. I'm sorry. I'm going to get. Because if I have to do what. [01:01:26] Speaker B: But you throw a punch, man, it's on. Yeah, it's on. Yeah, you're done. [01:01:31] Speaker C: It won't be just a few seconds. [01:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:34] Speaker C: So. So is, is it kind of do they. I've heard this before. It's kind of like if, if, if you carry a gun or whatever, you don't. If you're gonna pull it out, you're gonna use it. [01:01:47] Speaker B: Yes. [01:01:47] Speaker C: And, and it's the same, same thing. [01:01:49] Speaker B: So it, if you're gonna pull out a gun, you better use it because the other person's not gonna think that, hey, I'm you. And just kind of tell you something interesting about jiu jitsu. It. It took. I was on a fast track. You know, I trained so much time and so on. And, and the school I'm in, they just don't promote you because you, you punch the clock. [01:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:16] Speaker B: They promote you because you got your skills and so on. So it took me 10 years to get. And that's really good in jiu jitsu. [01:02:24] Speaker C: That was going to be my next question. How long did it take 10 years [01:02:27] Speaker B: for my black belt belt? And like 10 years in a month or two months, something like that. And three more years was for my first degree. Usually in karate or any other martial arts, it takes a year, maybe two years to get your black belt. So by the time that timeline elapsed, you're the blue belt in jiu jitsu. That's your second belt after white belt. So once in a while. I haven't seen this in a long time, but even you see it on social media, like somebody who is a black belt karate, goes to a jiu jitsu school and wants to challenge him. [01:03:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:03:05] Speaker B: Okay, Come on. [01:03:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:06] Speaker B: So the guy stands and like, wants to ready for a kick. The other person shoots, take him down and like I turn his back and ch. [01:03:16] Speaker A: That. [01:03:17] Speaker C: That was going to be my next question too. There was. Because I heard you say that, you know, so not bashing anybody that's done that, you know, has went black belt karate or anything. [01:03:28] Speaker B: It said respected martial art too. [01:03:30] Speaker C: Right. But, but a black degree jiu jitsu and black degree black belt, that ain't. We ain't even on the same page. [01:03:40] Speaker B: I don't think they're on the same page. [01:03:41] Speaker C: Okay. [01:03:42] Speaker B: I honestly. [01:03:43] Speaker C: But I didn't know I was just. [01:03:45] Speaker B: The exception is like there are grand masters in karate and sword, so on. These are different levels. [01:03:49] Speaker A: Right, Right. Karate's like, correct me if I'm wrong, but it and karate more on your feet, where jiu jitsu's grappling on the [01:03:56] Speaker B: ground, you start on your feet, but you go to the ground and so on. Because karate or a boxer or. [01:04:00] Speaker A: Yeah, you get that guy on the [01:04:01] Speaker B: ground, on the ground, that's it, they're done. Yeah, they kind of do anything. So it's two totally. [01:04:06] Speaker C: So it's two different combats. Basically. Grapple karate is more kick, you know, [01:04:13] Speaker B: and, and if you watch any of the MMA fights, you could tell somebody who is a karate or stand on their side, they want to be in. They keep their distance because they want [01:04:21] Speaker C: to, you know, kick, kick from a foul. [01:04:24] Speaker B: And the guy who does grappling, they're being very careful, but they're trying to close that distance. Once they close that distance, they take it down. I know the karate guy probably have some training in, in, in grappling on the ground, but not like somebody who has done grappling. [01:04:39] Speaker C: Yeah. For 13 years. Yeah. Solid. Every day. [01:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:42] Speaker C: Yeah. Or more. Yeah, I'm sure. [01:04:45] Speaker A: Well, so are we current then? Are we. We're up to today? [01:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, let's go with that. Anything I left out, we'll leave it for different. [01:04:56] Speaker A: Okay. All right. We'll leave it open just in case we bring him back. So before we close, I want to. Well, I think it would be cool if you said thanks for watching Second floor Sessions in Arabic. Can you do that? [01:05:13] Speaker B: Second floor session. Okay. Am I. Can I say one thing before I do that? I just want to say thank you, guys. [01:05:21] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. [01:05:22] Speaker B: This is. I heard a few of your episodes and I like, you're uncovering hidden gems, people here in East Tennessee, and I hope I'm one of them. [01:05:34] Speaker C: Oh, you absolutely are going to be uncovered now. [01:05:36] Speaker A: But as long as that thing. [01:05:37] Speaker B: I met G. Jay when I came here, a phenomenal person. And I'm sure a lot of the people that you interview, they're really good people. And I'm through. It's just an opportunity for your listeners to actually know they're actually good people in this community and hopefully outside. [01:05:55] Speaker C: Absolutely. And people. Some people may be able to relate with other people. That was the big thing that we wanted to really have people on here that relate. Relatable, you know? Exactly. [01:06:07] Speaker B: So now what do you want me to say in Arabic? [01:06:10] Speaker A: So. Well, first of all, so much thanks to Jay. I. I can't thank B enough for. For this because without. Without this, we couldn't have you. [01:06:20] Speaker B: Thank you. [01:06:20] Speaker A: So thanks for that. And you can close us out in Arabic saying thanks for watching Second floor Sessions. Thank you. [01:06:39] Speaker C: Thank you, guys. Thank you. [01:06:41] Speaker A: Thanks for watching. [01:06:42] Speaker C: Catch you next time.