Hello again欢迎来到Happy Hour英文小酒馆。关注公众号璐璐的英文小酒馆，加入我们的酒馆社群，邂逅更精彩更广阔的世界

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

Hi everyone and welcome back to Global Village. 欢迎回来你们最喜欢的板块【小酒馆·大世界】. Today we have a new guest speaker, but also...actually a recurring guest speaker, 今天是我们的老朋友Simon, Simon from New Zealand. Hi Simon.

Kia ora , 你好.

First of all, let me, just out of my concern before we get into the recording, let me ask you about the recent natural disaster that happened in your part of New Zealand. 最近新西兰是有一个cyclone, right？

We did. So about three weeks ago, four weeks ago, we had really large that the largest cyclone on records parts of New Zealand.  My city was the worst affected area.

I'm sorry to hear that.

We had about 10 days with no power, no electricity, no internet, or most people no internet.

10 days? 

So no phones, no internet, no power, some places, no water. It was quite scary.

That must be really tough. I thought, shall we just talk about the sort of disaster preparedness and also self reliance in New Zealand, perhaps in this topic？

Sure.  

All right. So first things first, is this common, you said it’s the largest, but does it happen often or regularly, this cyclone or similar natural disasters？

Yeah, New Zealand has had its fair share of natural disasters, about ten twelve years ago we had the Christchurch earthquakes which destroyed the city of Christchurch. We had the Kaikoura earthquakes.

And then in 2019... volcano?

Yes, we had White Island, the volcano eruption, and there were I think 8 people killed in that, terrible event.

It sounds scary because when last time I was in New Zealand with my parents, my parents actually went to that island, went to that exact scene, and then that's really scary to think about.

Now I'm going to ask you, I know it's still very, very fresh, I hope you don't mind, you mentioned about this cyclone sort of like the electricity was gone, water was gone.

So how badly were people affected？For example, in terms of casualties or just normal family, are they out of supplies or their homes flooded, for example.

There was about ten deaths in the country, so people died... drowned due to floods or falling debris. There are a few people died. A lot of people were made homeless, either temporarily or they have now totally lost their homes.

Within my company, we have one of my staff members, her house was totally flooded out, almost 2 meters of mud right through the house.  

So she lost everything. It was terrible. I think it is about 5,000 homes which have been destroyed, which for small... for my city which has around 60,000 people, it's a lot.

That is a very high percentage. I'm just a little bit curious, may be curious is not the right word, but will they get for example compensated by like for example insurance company or is there disaster relief funds to help them rebuild their homes？

Absolutely, while the average Kiwi loves to complain about the government. The reality is that our government compared to most around the world is very generous. Whenever there are natural disasters, they will put in support packages for families, for businesses and for individuals.

There's already a number of financial support products available provided by the government. Most people, I think almost everyone would have insurance.

So while it's very upsetting to lose your house to lose your property, there will be people who are financially much worse off. But most people will be able to claim and get some reimbursed.

Compensation or relief funds. I see that's nice to know actually. What about yourself. Last time we talked, I remember you’re telling me that you are or you were less affected.

So it's a bit of a secret, but I'm a secretly a bit of a prepper. I love to be prepared for things. My wife always complains that I buy too much camping equipment. However, for the cyclone,  yeah.

Are you one of those people that has his own secret bunker and just prepared for the sort of end of the world scenario？

I probably would if I was allowed to, my wife won't allow me to do that. No, but I, compared to most people, we were very well-prepared. We had solar panels, we had batteries, we had a generator.

You had a generator?

We even had our own generator for power. I had cans of petrol for the generator, for the car. Because that's another thing. The petrol stations, we could not get petrol, the roads were all destroyed, all the bridges were knocked out. So no one could bring in emergency supplies. Petrol was rationed, and in some places it just totally ran out. But for me, we had cans of petrol, we had about 6 weeks, 2 months worth of food, about3 months worth of water. So I was probably less worried than most.

So you were definitely more prepared than most people then, or is it common for people to have this level of disaster preparedness or self reliance？

To be honest, no. I am perhaps a little bit unusual in this regard. Our government does regularly recommend to people that we prepare for natural disasters. They recommend sort of like a 3, 4 days worth of water, for example, 3, 4 days worth of food. I sort of went to a whole new level with my preparation plan for weeks.

You also grow your own stuff, right？You grow your own vegetables?

I have a hydroponic garden, my actual garden, my house is quite small. So we have about eight fruit trees, but they're all the dwarf trees. They’re not like full size fruits. They produce a lot of fruit, but we have a vertical garden.

So I have this hydroponic garden which is designed and sort of built up the side of my house. It's grown on four levels. So we have all sorts of salad and berry fruit.

Would you say your little vegetable patch or vegetable garden can suffice like, can really supply at least you and your wife’s daily vegetable needs.

We can grow our own fruit and vegetables, we would be able to live on it. We also have a large chest freezer, huge freezer. And I'm quite a keen hunter, I quite like going hunting.

You go hunting as well?

When I go hunting, if I for example kill a deer or a wild pig, we would butcher it. And then the meat would be frozen and kept in the freezer.

It just sounds like you lived in the wilderness, really, you hunt your own animals, you grow your own stuff. I think we can.. the hunting in itself can be a separate episode that we can talk about later.

We have some pretty weird exciting stories from my hunting trips, so I'm sure we can make an episode out of that.

Yeah. How are your behaviors regarded in New Zealand culture？Do people look at you and think he's very well-prepared, I wish I could be more like him; or do they just think that you are a bit of a freak for lack of a better word.

Well, certainly 3 weeks ago people were looking at me going, I wish I had what he had, but no I mean, I think a lot of New Zealanders like the idea of being prepared, but they just don't do it, they procrastinate or they don't have the spare money to do it, or they don't have the space.We're lucky in that, we own our house, we don't rent, so we are able to put solar panels on the property, type of thing.  Many people don't.

Sounds like a very sustainable lifestyle as well. And I know for fact that you are a bit of a pillar in the community. 可能大家之前也听到过, 就是Simon他有很多身份, 比如说business owner, 他原来在government里面做过, 然后也是属于当地community的一个领袖这样.

Since you’re so prepared for this, and you had generator, you had all of these supplies, I'm sure you helped out with the whole community when obviously many people were struggling during the disaster.

Yes, for the first week to 10 days, things were really, quite bad. So we had no, as I said before, we had no power, no phone, no internet. There was no communication from the government. No one knew what was going on.

On top of that because everyone was panicking, there were few bad people that took the advantage to commit some crimes, stealing. Within 3 days, things got pretty dire pretty quickly.

I think people are just panicking really and it happens when people panic.