Well, first of all, I hope this video will find you safe and that you and your family
are doing fine. I wanted to come here and basically, just talk to you,
give an update of what's going on with us. We got a lot of messages, a lot of people
concerned when they didn't see new videos being published in the last few weeks
We're now in the United States, this is Austin, Texas, the city that was
home until 2018, that was when we became location independent in terms of work
and started traveling the world non-stop But Austin is still our base
As you can imagine, it was not our plan to be back now. We should be in New York,
then in Florida, we were planning to create travel videos there. And then again we'd
go back to Japan because I was working on the Olympics. If you don't know,
I'm actually a journalist. In addition to creating videos here, another passion is
to work on these global sporting events like the World Cup, the Olympics,...
I absolutely love it. I've been doing this since 2004 and I love the
energy, the excitement, the environment, everything!
Well, so here we are, our lives
have changed like everybody else's and all I can say is that we're fortunate
enough to be able to keep working at this moment. I say we're lucky because a
lot of people are putting their lives at risk
being at the front line of all this. My sister, for example, she's a
doctor in Brazil. In Brazil a lot of cities are
in lockdown as well. I know a lot of people who live overseas are curious to
know how are things in different parts of the world
and we're basically all in the same situation.
Here in Austin, there's a stay-at-home order
issued by the mayor. You should only go out for essential things
like groceries, medication, get supplies to be able to work from home,... All other
businesses like gyms, beauty salons, clothing stores, everything is shut down
Everything that is not essential for survival is closed. Needless to say, a lot
of people are losing their jobs. If you don't follow you can actually be fined
$1,000 or six months in jail or even both. At the state level, anyone who comes
to Texas from other regions where there are lots of cases like New York,
California, and New Orleans should undergo a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine
People who are driving to Texas should register with state troopers
and are subject to check-ins. Again, you could be penalized if you don't follow
There's also social distancing in practice, you know, everyone maintaining
six feet from each other - that's about two meters if you're not from the U.S.
And my impression is that people seem to be following
So, how are we doing these days?
Today is grocery day, we'll take the chance to go out. Let me see what's the weather like...
78 degrees, which is like 26 Celcius. Normally the city would be booming
everybody out and about
Oh, my God! Nobody is out!
Do you know when this part of town would be like this? Wow
This is the State Capitol building. Austin is the capital of Texas
This is Whole Foods flagship store. Yes, Whole Foods is originally from Austin
The store is open but you can't eat here
Austin normally has a vibrant city center, so hard to find parking, and the
city has lots of independent shops, food trucks...
Not for now
I've never seen parking lots like this
This is Sixth Street, it's well known for the nightlife, live music... Wow, everything
is even boarded up. It's the first time I come here since all this started
Austin was hit even harder because there's a major event here called South by Southwest
It happens every March and it brings dozens of thousands of people to
Austin from all over the world. It's a fantastic conference and there are lots
of parties downtown, that's obviously very important for the economy here and
the small businesses,... but this year it was canceled
Let me show you how the city should be now
Look at the line for the grocery store
It starts here, he is the last person in line
And the store is all the way there
Everybody maintaining social distance
We'll try a different store now
We came to this Walmart that is so big,
so big, it's all this... And the advantage is no lines to get in
Rice and pasta gone
Cereals... there are some but not others
Coffee filters have disappeared too
And obviously toilet paper... totally gone
It's totally gone! Totally gone toilet paper! Wow!
This is the section of flour... also gone
The rest is full
This is our fridge here. Do you see? We got a lot of frozen food and we also cooked a
lot of stuff and we froze, just in case
Lasagna day. Lunch watching TV. Gordon prepared it all by himself
He's really good at the kitchen
Here in the U.S. there's something really cool in
several cities. You can do your grocery shopping online and then you just go to
the store to pick everything up. They prepare everything for you, totally
totally free. I used it several times before, but look at the situation now
This Walmart. Can't pickup today or tomorrow. Let's change the store
Same thing... Trying one more time
Nothing
Maybe this store here... Nada (nothing)
Let's try HEB, the main chain here
This one is available on April 10th, this on the 8th, but nothing sooner
It's so difficult to find an open time slot because you gotta schedule the exact time for the pickup
And with Whole Foods... ta-da... Free 2-hour delivery with Prime, but it's sold out
And I also spend a lot of time in front of the computer editing videos. A lot of people
ask me if I'm the one who edits the videos and yeah!
I do everything here, I use DaVinci Resolve. Just switched from Premiere Pro
Editing can be complex at first, but it is really fun actually
We could be complaining, miserable,... but let's think of what do we learn with all this
And I think for us travelers there's a very valuable lesson there
It's: always know what's going on around you and think of ways on how
things could impact you. When we go to a new country, for example, we do
extensive research about the places that we want to visit, but we also read about
the history of the country to try to learn and try to think of how could
something from the past impact the current days. You know, political
economical changes... it's just the journalist's mind. And Gordon specifically, he has paid
really close attention to everything that was going on in Wuhan, China since January.
I worked in Wuhan in 2007. Wow, that was 13 years ago!
We are at the Yellow Crane Tower, here in Wuhan
This is one of the Four Great Towers of China, woohoo!
From here we can see the city of Wuhan. Nihao (hello)!
Always with a camera, even back then.
So when you see in the news something that
connects with you somehow you obviously get more interested
When we saw the lockdown going on in China we started preparing for the worst-case scenario
for a traveler, which is: this could happen in other countries and we could
be stranded somewhere. We didn't think quarantines would be a reality in the
Americas, but here we are. We decided to shoot as many videos as we could
really filming non-stop. Our idea was if there's a lockdown, at least we can edit
And that also meant that we cut down on editing time on the road because we
could use that time to produce more content. Unfortunately we also lost track
of it, got concerned with the news and that's why there were no videos for weeks
Sorry about that!
So know what? There's obviously a lot of interest on
this topic and everything that is going on around the world and I see a lot of
channels already focusing on this here on YouTube, but I don't want to focus on
negativity and things that affect us all. The crisis is real and should be taken
very seriously, but I'm that positive person that you see on the videos
I wanna use this time in lockdown to learn something new,
reconnect with family, at least over the phone, improve my business maybe edit faster,
who knows? That's why I'll keep editing and publishing the travel videos
we shot. I think it's important to maintain a balanced life these days
Fill our minds with good thoughts because things one day will go back to normal
We will travel again, but in the meantime, I want to contribute just
by bringing a few minutes of joy every week, just so that we don't
forget that the world is beautiful, people are kind, and life goes on
My next video will be at Changi Airport in Singapore. We had a stopover there on our
way to Indonesia which is the next country coming up. We have a whole series
on Indonesia, really, really nice. And then we have Thailand as well. So, a lot of
nice videos coming up. I really hope they will brighten your day
In the meantime, stay home and stay safe
I can guarantee that it's not every day that we eat like this
Just sometimes