What Do Omani Students Need to Know Economic Lessons to Navigate a Global Economy

good morning it's october 26th today we celebrate armani youth happy armani youth day in celebration of today thought would share recent conversation had with the students from dr hashila sadi's class the discussion was centered around how university students can better navigate labor markets provide my seven tips on how to prepare for future in the new romani economy also answer some questions that receive often like why do you choose to work outside of vermont or why are your videos in english so enjoy and leave comment about which tips resonate with you the most guess we need to make start so without any further ado i'd like to introduce everybody to dr abdullah this is quick introduction dr abdullah is an associate professor of of economics and he is also the director of the center for economic education at the north kentucky university and ku abdullah is an active researcher and his research holds in within the areas of financial market financial education and also he is looking into the impact of financial behaviors on economic outcomes dr abdullah is also recipient of the excellence in teaching and instructions word the dean's citation award and also other several awards that recognize his teaching ability and skills abdallah is proud native of oman and we are also proud dr abdullah to have you with us this evening this is just quick introduction we're so brief guess and you are i'm sure bigger than this but we will all you know excited to hear from you in this lovely evening it's evening over already here and the floor is yours so you take your time everybody is excited to hear from you and then we open the floor for the discussions later at the end of the presentation so everybody ladies and gentlemen who are joining us on this lovely evening please join me in welcoming dr abdullah abdullah's floor is yours thank you dr really appreciate the introduction appreciate all you being here know how valuable your time is these days and as was just mentioning to dr before we started the discussion the world is changing that's going to be part of our discussion today it's extremely exciting to see the innovation that is happening and how people are reacting to the changes these initiatives by dr hashel to to include me in the presentation mean lot to me your time and your presence means lot to me so thank you for being here so our goal yes can you hear me all right so so our our goal today is to talk to you know soon-to-be graduates or recent graduates from college as you transition from being student to navigating the labor force and the labor market what do you need to know in today's economy and i'm going to try to anchor those in economic lessons to help you understand you know house will change so once again i'm an associate professor of economics at northern kentucky university but am also the director for the center for economic education so work lot in making economics applicable to people so they could understand how the economy works i'm big advocate of using social media to increase awareness and to increase engagement so if you're on twitter or instagram please do follow and continue to you know engage at my my handle is at dr al-bahrani one of the things that has popped up since the clovid situation is i've developed youtube channel and the objective of the youtube channel is to help increase awareness of economics and also to talk about some of the armani economic policies are that are being implemented so you are the target audience of the youtube channel so subscribe like comment would love to hear your feedback and if you like more traditional methods yes websites are considered traditional methods feel free to reach out to me via my website you have access to all my research there and also some of the videos so with that said our goal today is to talk about how to navigate life sounds very very broad but we're going to anchor it in economics before we do that think it's important to tell you little bit about who am and you know why i'm talking about this so dr hashel introduced me as an associate professor at northern kentucky university that's in the united states have spent most of my life in the united states frankly saying it it's not by choice it's where the jobs are and where the job jobs were for me and where my career took me still wear my you know armani hats if you because as an armani it's always really important for me to give back to oman and help produce the economic growth that we we're talking about so being here today is an example of something that i've always wanted to do and really appreciate dr for providing me this opportunity because it's allowing me to give back and to communicate with the the future generation of vermont so with that said you're going to hear me talk with with two perspectives associate professor navigating the profession of economics in in the u.s and then also as armani and somebody that wants to give back my role in the united states is is an associate professor but focus lot on outreach programs how do we get back to the community to teach how to navigate markets the reality is you myself and lot of people are operating in market systems and that on average and this is through research on average people don't know how to navigate market so what ends up happening is we see lot of income inequality and inequality in economic outcomes throughout you know the citizens of the countries or the world and to me my true belief is that gap between the people that succeed and the people that don't or have hard time succeeding is good understanding of economics so it's become my life mission to make economics accessible to as many people as possible and also throughout this time have learned that one of the things that have comparative advantage in that's economic terms for do really well is could take complex ideas and present them in ways that is understandable for everybody so if that's what do really well that's what i'm going to do and this is an example of my conversations so with that let's move into where we are in the world today and what does the world look like for us in the future it's no surprise to you to me the world is changing the world is changing in ways that we had predicted but in ways that we had not predicted in in in february and march nobody would have actually february nobody would expect it for us to be in the situation that we're in right now but in from predicted standpoint you know there's lot of things that are happening in the economy that we have seen or we knew was going to happen but we haven't really responded to so today we're going to talk about those implications from an armani standpoint for the people in armando right now the world changing even in more extreme ways so let's talk about the economic history of vermont when we talk about economic history i'm going to keep it relevant but the question that often get and this is comment that get through dms or through comments on my youtube channel is how did we get to where we are right now right and to do that we have to look back so what we have here is real gdp in 100 000 us dollars from 1965 till 2019 for amman and what you notice is our growth in oman has increased drastically over this period of time but most importantly 2002 to 2003 that was shift in the armani economy our growth increased drastically after that compared to before 2001 2002 so if you are researcher or if you're studying economics or history it's really important for us to look back what were the policies that were implemented in 2002 that created this economic growth was it just market response to higher oil prices something happened the data is clear that something happened for today's perspective though the thing that we need to take into consideration is although the economy has grown and economic growth is steep what we're noticing on the right side of this graph from 2002 and on is the volatility of our economy is higher volatility meaning that the ups are more extreme but also are the the drops in the economy that has implications on how you navigate the economy so if this is going to remain pattern for us to predict about the future then we have to be ready and equipped to maintain or navigate through more volatile economy let's look at this graph here but we have break even fiscal oil price for oman what does that mean that means what is the minimum price or what is the price where the government spending breaks even what is the price of oil where the government spending breaks even so let's start in 2003 roughly for the government to operate breaking was roughly 23 us dollars on barrel of oil between 2003-2007 our government spending increased so that the break even is now 42 dollars per barrel right so if you know about economics one thing that increases gdp is government spending so some of that government spending that we saw was fueled entirely by government spending in 2007 to 2000 or in 2008 specifically we saw the price of the price of oil mean the the break-even point go from 42 to 61 50 increase in barrel of oil required to operate the economy this is huge jump so so what happened in 2008 if you look back at your your history of mining policy that's when the first wage increases were implemented when was the second wage of wage increases implemented 2011 2012 and we see that increase in the cost of operating and then we reach our peak in 2015 of 102 dollars per barrel required to operate the armani economy that's an extremely high number right and since then we've seen decrease in the operating cost of of the economy but it's nowhere near where it needs to be so what do you need to predict we're going to have to get that number from 79 per barrel closer back 40 per barrel or you know what what prices are today so we're going to see more reductions in government spending and this has implications and we're going to talk about what that has implications this is the graph that we need to spend some time on this is the amount of external debt or money external debt as fraction of gdp so in 2000 our debt was 36 of gdp right which you know you think about your own personal life if you have loan that is only 36 of your total income for the year that's not necessarily bad loan but something happened in 2011 2012 where we saw our expenditure increase and the percent of our external debt increased drastically so 125 is not necessarily bad thing what is bad thing here is the growth rate and that's the concern and that's why you hear about you know the the debt and the the the rating agencies and their concerns so we need to be careful about this debt and how to how to minimize it so what what do we have here we have increasing government spending that is not sustainable and increasing debt so what is going to happen here we're going to see shift in our economy from government being the main predictor of goods and and expander to individuals or private firms so if you're preparing the future your future and my future relies on entrepreneurship and innovation being developed in our mind right so when you think about your future jobs you need to start thinking about private industry and this was mentioned in vision 2040 where you know the the the goal is to create self-dependent romani well what does that mean that means that you're going to have control of your own destiny rather than relying on on the government and if you look at the history of garland we are nation of entrepreneurs historically we were you know involved in business but in the past 40 40 50 years we become extremely reliant on on government to solve our problems and you see this on social media whenever there's an issue the first thing is the government should do this right this is we're gonna have to change the way we think instead of saying the government should change this the the line should be we need to develop company that solves this problem so that's what we're gonna talk about today how do we shift our mindset from government employees to business and innovative business owners and innovators and to do that have some tips and these are tips that talk to my students about these apply to the us as much as they apply to come on the context in which you apply might turn slightly so one understanding markets you are expected to navigate markets to make decisions based on capitalism so you need to understand how that works so for instance this is something that i've been talking lot about on on my youtube channel but everybody's was upset about the reduction in the wage scales if you understand markets and everything that just presented everything that just said indicates that wages have to fall in the economy they have to right but at the same time so will other prices so if your wages fall and other prices fall in real terms your life hasn't changed but people are reluctant to take the wage decreases now there's other consequences for people that have lot of debt but we won't get into that but what we're saying in the market is extremely predictable right now but lot of people don't understand what's happening and we need to increase awareness about how to operate in the market number two and you might applaud you for doing that by being here today you already understand item number two and that is product differentiation in economics we believe that if you have product that looks like everybody else's product then you cannot ask for higher prices or higher wages in the example of labor so what you need to do is you need to think about how are you differentiating yourself from the market when you all graduate on paper you all look the same right you all have bachelor's degree you might vary in which topic you have or subject you have bachelor's degree in but bachelor's degrees all look the same so what are you doing to invest right now in your time to set yourself apart so when you go into the labor market you look different because if you don't look different you're going to get the same wage that everybody else gets so think about product differentiating think about building your skills and we'll talk about investing in yourself in little bit so there you go invest in your the new economy requires you to always develop your success removing more store more towards gig economy and what gig economy means is that you're going to be solving problem on your own so you need all that skill sets you know and and educators know this because you know in may we had to or march we had to switch all to online education lot of us needed to figure out how to develop you know videos how to host zoom calls today learned how to use google needs so you're always going to continuously need to invest in yourself develop your human capital so you could continuously differentiate yourself from the market but also make yourself valuable to the market and lot of people look at education as hey i'm just going to get my education and graduate with my degree education is lifelong journey am educating myself have graduated my phd in 2010 but every year try to learn something new try to join courses try to work with other people we need to stop thinking of education as one time frame you know degree or certificate it's continuous journey so embrace it jump on it and develop your skill set number four is something that is specifically for the armani market as we transition from government-based economy to business and innovation-based economy the risk level of operating in the economy is going to increase and one of the reasons that as armani's we love government jobs is the risk level is really low right once you get job you're in the system and you keep your job for as long as you want but when you start to go to the private sector there's more volatility there with respect to the job or if you start business that requires tolerance of risk so the first thing that would recommend is identify your risk level the second thing that would recommend is the risk that you're willing to take is probably not the same risk as other people that are others are willing to take and keep that in mind because what find in the armani market is the youth are actually willing to take more risks the the older generation the parents the aunts uncles and grandparents are the ones that are conservative and they try to reduce the risk that the the youth are taking and it generates situation where people are not taking enough risk to innovate i'll give you my own personal example in 2010 when graduated my phd everybody said you have to come back to amman this is it right so everybody worked with the belief that you know am safer and everything is more you know tolerable in raman and still hear that language all the time however had to take risk had to do what believed was best for my career for me for the vision that had for myself as global economist and that meant that had to find job internationally as well so at first heard lot of people saying no you shouldn't do this you can't do this now people like the fact that took that risk and they appreciate it so think about your own risk what do you what do you tolerate and then make sure that you think about what is it that is requiring you to take lower risk sometimes our our society and our culture is very what we call an economics risk averse entrepreneurship innovation require you to take on risk and fail and we need to embrace failure as part of finding success rather than saying that failure is the end part of the process it's it's the first step five with that said look for the opportunities know the world economy is going through really difficult time but in reality you are actually you know billionaires are made during economic downturns because there's so much opportunity right now to innovate and solve problems so look out there what is their what's missing in the economy that you could solve so the thing that did is started the youtube channel why because saw an opportunity was at home didn't have anything else to do and wanted to still teach so spent time and resources to develop youtube channel so you know it's business my consulting business increased during the economic downturn so look for the opportunities it's not doom and gloom there's there are good opportunities out there six you've probably heard this before find your passion and you know the the the saying in america or western culture is if if you do what you love you'll never work day of your life meaning that if you really do what you love you don't consider it work when you do it and truly believe this lot of people think this is cliche and it's waste of time to say find your passion but in reality each of us are individuals there's something that you are concerned with in this life that truly motivates you to try to find that solution so think of yourself as problem solver lot of students and deal with this in the united states they come to me they say dr want to be you know want to major in economics tell me what job can get and honestly that's the wrong way of looking at it you shouldn't be looking for jobs because by the time you start college and by time you graduate college the job landscape has changed the problems are still there but they're being solved by different jobs so think about the problem that you want to solve and think about what solutions you bring to the problem what is your value proposition here why is it valuable that you be part of the problem solving process so throw jobs throw the idea of jobs out of the window start to ask yourself what problem exists in oman globally or wherever and how can be part of solving that problem and this way you're going to have job for life you're going to have career because those problems will always exist if economic education is my motivation my passion then you know if we move online still could do my job however if my passion was to have job as professor teaching in person then would have lost my job because that's not what i'm doing now item seven we need to think global this is one of my biggest concerns right now in oman and around the world is we have become focused on national aspect rather than what is our role in an international aspect and you know the expat versus local divide is extremely high and in reality we all need each other you need the global market as much as the global market needs you but more importantly if you're starting business the omani market is just too small for you to be sustainable you need to think global right so embrace the global move we should make sure that we're we individually are competitive on global sense you are part of global economy so think about how to operate within it rather than exclude it and right now we're seeing lot of language about how to exclude the the the global market to favor the local market and that might create some short-term gains might make people happy here and there but in the long run it's going to have large consequences to the economy because once you close yourself off from the global economy then you it's difficult to grow so we need to be thinking global and that's one of the things that want to highlight am close to my 30 minutes cap here so this is what i'm going to leave out with okay the future is in your hands it's in my hands but my role the way see it is my role is to support you the youth of ramon to move on learned lot in in the way that you know through my experience some some i've learned you know some i've learned the hard way so if there's any way that could minimize your transition or as you navigate the markets please count on me it's my role see it as such and this is an example of the things that love to do so if there's anything that could do please don't hesitate to reach out you could contact me via you know twitter instagram please if you enjoyed this conversation subscribe to my youtube channel i'll be having more content out here soon but really appreciate this invitation and hope you found this enjoyable and look forward to our discussion and your questions thank you so much thank you thank you so much dr abdullah for the stimulating thought provoking interesting presentation you did cover some valuable lessons here think this our students will find very useful not only for students but everybody here will find those you you know you there's lessons useful and applicable what like about the lessons is that they are really realistic and they are achievable and it's not really hard even for like our our students who are just now starting their courses in economics it's not really hard to understand them and and think they reflect the reality as well you emphasize the fact that the world is changing everybody realizes this and everybody should be ready to face this reality you emphasize also the importance of of of stretching our our comfort zone perhaps and stepping out of your comfort zone starting to take risks starting to experience failure pair up which everybody think you should should do we all have have experienced this and always you know talk to my students about my own personal experiences and it's not all plain sailing there there have been lot of turbulence along the way and ups and downs and so on the problem is that we don't really want to face those challenges and we won't just you know pave roads and we want to navigate along those roads without but that's not reality real life situation is different and we all need to realize this think the when you realize understand the the world as you explain it with all the ups and downs that just makes things easy for people and people will not panic so yeah know that this is part of the reality have to face it have to carry on moving and so really found those lessons very valuable accessible and they're they are realistic in fact and we'd like now to turn to our dear audience i've got some some comments here myself some questions but not to be selfish though will open the floor to the our dear guests here today and see if anybody would like to ask question please unmute your might please and go ahead if you have particle hello hello hi dr if may call you that like that sort of the ring to your name there yeah hi my name is pete peter i'm one of the teachers here in the program really enjoyed your presentation and thought that you hit your your sort of speaking points very accurately in terms of you know the fourth industrial revolution and the economic future of month have couple of questions for you when entrepreneurs are first starting out they're sort of faced with this choice and the first choice is how much research do need to do how much data do need to collect how analytical do need to be before get started and then other entrepreneurs will say no no you can't overthink it you just gotta jump in and start so when you've talked to entrepreneurs over the years like what sort of advice would you give for that issue yeah that's first of all thank you for being here the the second thing is that that's difficult topic right because what you usually see is the people that are against preparation are the people that started entrepreneurship and succeeded and they never really went through the the failure aspect and those you know you could call them unicorns in entrepreneurship or you know people just found success naturally the way think of it is it's like running right some of us are natural runners and it comes really quickly for other people they require some training they require to build up the process and sustainability is what i'm after so from sustainability standpoint we need to increase awareness of entrepreneurship how to understand markets how to research how to collect data you know there's lot of entrepreneurs in oman and in the united states across the world that start businesses and they haven't looked at the land data landscape and their businesses fail immediately because they have not differentiated their product so i'm an advocate for thorough understanding of the market that you're going to get into and understanding what your value proposition is you know we have enough restaurants in orlando sorry we don't need more restaurants right unless you're doing restaurants in very unique way that attracts the market and you have to be able to communicate that to me telling me that you're selling pizza or is not enough so it's it's awareness the research is about awareness of your own product and your own business and it's the same thing for college students so if we're thinking about college graduate my back got locked there for second all right so same thing for graduate student or students graduating you need to think about yourself and what's the value proposition you bring in that means you need to know yourself you need to know what your likes and dislikes are and what your value is to the company so this advice for entrepreneurship is not just restricted to businesses but it's individuals and asked that of myself on an annual basis how am growing what i've what have learned and like dr hashov said is him and we have many stories of failures right it's part of life and the pressure that the market is feeling right now especially students navigating college at this moment is they have this perception that they can't fail and the reason being it's not their fault it's my fault it's everybody else's fault that has reached somewhere but doesn't talk about their struggles so one of the things that want to do is talk about the struggles went through the struggles others went through so others could learn from it as well and that applies to business as well yes thank you very much thank you thank you peter are there any other questions please go ahead so see question in the chat why did choose to teach outside of armand you know the the honest answer here since we're talking about we're talking about failing failures over here sorry i'm getting sorry i'm getting some echo so since we're talking about failures or challenges in in the market applied applied to teach in amman several times when first started my career was just never accepted so then had to realize had to make decision what do want to do if one door closes there there's many other doors and found the door that was open and committed to it and alhamdulillah i'm succeeding so but it was failure for me in 2010 when applied to several places and did not get accepted so at that time it wasn't choice at this point it's you know my career is is going really well in in the us and i'm finding ways to work in oman so that's that's the long answer thank you very much ayman you wanted to ask question go ahead amen hakamani yes good evening good evening good evening good evening dr abdullah am mayman this is am now am student so will be near gradator for bachelor in logistics management my goal to work want to to convert to mars to master after provide the education service to students want to be lucrative tell me advice this is for how can develop myself improve myself for everything there will be good professional lucrative nothing appreciate your question and appreciate you being here and appreciate your interaction actually on twitter my advice is extremely simple my advice is to remain curious to always want to know more and if that curiosity you start to develop it and you start to seek answers for yourself then you'll become lifelong learner and in the past that you want to go after being lifelong learner is going to always help you develop your skills and also help other people so there's things that do today that wasn't taught ever but my curiosity just you know i'll spend 10 hours one day trying to solve one little problem on my computer and all of sudden learned about technology and things that have changed so if you develop curiosity you'll start to teach yourself and once you realize that you could teach yourself anything the world is yours because if you start to teach yourself anything you will become you'll have access to all the information out there and that's what the world needs is people that are confident that they could solve problem thank you for for motivation dr abdullah you're very welcome you're very welcome if you need anything to reach out anything reach out please excellent would like to encourage our students to who are with us this evening to ask questions please this is your chance we've got an example here of entrepreneur let's say risk taker who has succeeded in his in his career and he can share his lessons and he's here actually to share valuable experience okay hey any other questions okay well wait okay dr abdullah have couple of questions here you touched upon this equation of weight increase and degree and its relationship to with the economic growth how how can we understand this relationship because people are nowadays here i'm so much concerned about the the decrease in in wages but but you have maybe brought different perspective to this so if you can't touch people thank you yes thank you for that question so if on on my youtube channel have two videos tackling this wage change issue but one thing that's missing in those videos and i'll talk about it here is everything that we're experiencing is expected from an economic standpoint so we have reduction in government spending the economy is not producing as much as it used to right and then you have coveted the issues from covid and lower oil prices this all reduces what we you know call in macroeconomics aggregate demand and the only solution here is one of two things either the government spends more which we just said is not going to happen with the current economic situation or prices fall right those that those are the solutions and when we say prices we're not just talking about wages but in this situation wages is the thing that's moving first then the prices of other products will fall as well so we will see housing prices fall right we will see consumer goods prices fall just because there's lot of inventory in the market it needs to be liquidated the problem basis that's different than the rest of the world is most of our goods are brought in from the outside okay and those prices are not going to fall okay and this is actually what happened in you know 2008 those prices didn't fall but all wages in the in the economy were were falling so what did we do we just pushed the wages up and then that caused inflation and that's why the prices in oman from 2008 if you look at the inflation data to today increase drastically and the the negative outcome here is the fact that we as omanis priced out of international travel so it became really expensive for foreigners to come to amman for travel because now our prices are really high so one thing that we're going to see and hopefully once kogan is you know behind behind us is as prices fall in roman we're going to see more opportunities for tourism in oman because it's going to be cheaper and that's actually what we needed to to do but that also is going to create pressure for us to produce our own products in ormond because the external products are too high so we need to ask from business environment standpoint what are we doing to allow businesses to develop in our land if there's lot of issues to developing businesses in armand then it's going to be hard for us to create those goods and services but we're going to see natural move to romani products because external products are going to be too too expensive so excellent thank you very much dr abdullah another another concern of everybody here think especially the students is their future jobs and hope i'm sure everybody is not worried about this are you don't know how familiar you are with the college of economics and political sciences at southampton university and the different departments and majors am familiar with the overall pictures the details am not so okay and so i'm just asking about the future job so who is students who are joining university gets enrolled this year where in five years time they will find themselves with certificate with the degree looking for jobs would jobs be different in the five years to come from the ones that we know now and how students could prepare themselves for the different jobs thank you that that's great question so the short answer is yes the the job landscape is going to be going to look really different and culturally we will change our perspective as well you know growing up as armani the the goal was always get get the degree and then come work for for the government and the government job was the high hierarchy job and everything else was inferior right at least from social perspective and what we will start to see is more appetite for private businesses because private businesses will give you more flexibility right now though for the next one to two years it's going to be difficult looking for job because we haven't developed the private industry infrastructure but after that we're going to see more movement to private industry believe we're going to see more armani entrepreneurs your graduates are going to be more likely to start their own businesses and that's the concept of risk myself my job landscape has changed as as professor also need to think about the entrepreneurship and consulting landscape so all of us are going towards more self-dependency and you know going back to everything that talk what are you adding to the to the market and how can you take on more risks without you know failing too hard but also embracing some failure so it's it's big change in the way we do things and the people that adjust their mentality and their expectations are going to be able to take more opportunities because the opportunities are going to be for the first movers the first people to move into this direction so if you're thinking about your graduation and what the future looks highly think you know encourage you to think about entrepreneurship and your own private firms excellent thank you to trump okay back to our audience are there any further questions have economics question about oman if that's all right so have been reading for several years now about government spending in oman being unsustainable over the long term and as you know they're bringing in vat next year there's gonna be you know this value-added tax coming in do you think that the currency peg will be sustainable where we have one omani riel equalling you know it's pegged at 2.6 u.s dollars do you see that changing in in the future or what are your thoughts on that yeah so you know pegs are are difficult and in armand historically we're pegged because our main resource is oil and we want to be able to forecast the price of oil the the issue here is all of the actions that we are seeing is to maintain the peg at the current value right so the introduction of the vat whether you like it or you don't is really to generate revenue because if the government doesn't generate revenue then it can't spend and the debt issue increases and if the debt issue increases then that puts pressure on the peg so all the efforts that we are seeing being implemented right now are to minimize the pressure on the on the peg think we are still in good shape to maintain the peg the and and just to from an economic standpoint what i'm looking over here is cash reserves and central bank reserves and those numbers are still in good position the more we go into the debt markets the more the pressure is going to be put so as armani's our objective here should be how do we increase spending in the economy to maintain this peg right and lot of people this is this is the economic slash citizenship discussion as armani we need to start thinking about how to circulate more money within the armani economy so historically what what did the armani's do whenever they got opportunity to go on got holiday they went outside of the country well now maybe we could spend those reals in armand right and that's what creates things from moving you want to buy computer now you could buy an armani computer right so how thinking thinking local or buying local but thinking global and and that's you know it's in our hands and and one of the things that's in our hands is accepting these lower wages because the the longer that we hold off for wages the more extreme so some of that volatility is due to wage friction in the economy people not being able to adjust wages and that's why we see the ups and downs little bit higher extremes so for okay for the short term yeah we're in good shape okay yeah because it's interesting because of the advantages and disadvantages of having peg you know one big advantage is the country can attract the foreign talent because they see the currency as stable yeah that's sort of the situation with the international teachers like me but then it makes it difficult for in some ways for the omani government to manage debt and manage forecasting economic budgets and things like that so interesting to hear your your comment on that thank you thank you for your question appreciate it thank you dr abdullah thanks peter for the questions because we have our dear students and this is by the way maybe forgot to mention that the course that peter and are in is the language course this is what we call the eap or esp courses english for specific purposes and we aim at developing our students linguistic abilities linguistic proficiency in order to be able to carry out their degree in the college and prosper in the future as well what do you think the role the linguistic proficiency play in students success we always want to encourage them to learn english mean whether we like it or not it has to be in english english is medium of instruction and it says all the language of business peter think you agree with me that we we need to push on this we encourage your students to improve their language and that's the purpose of the whole course is it what exactly linguistic proficiency and how do you think how important it is especially you touched it on being global as well and why while you are also talking about being global was like concerning the map just behind me because the students when they saw the map they asked me teacher why did you change your background said well because just to give the chance that want you to be global then or yeah from that standpoint thank you dr this is this is conversation have often and you know it's conversation that shows up on social media often because my youtube videos are in english and lot and and sometimes they cover armani concepts and people that are not familiar with me will post something like you know we're armani's why don't you speak arabi and in in reality roman is just one segment of my market am thinking about the global sense right my students are in the united states they're in england they're you know across the world so have to think about the language that's true the most people and right now whether we like it we don't english is that language now are there benefit to knowing the local language wherever you go yes you need to know the local language wherever you go if you're in alan you speak arabi romani specifically if you are in kentucky you know highly recommend picking up some kentucky accents you know that that's just being chameleon and being you know you adapt to the environment that you're in just like you know if you were to go to roman it's important for people to know the culture language is part of culture but if you're thinking about how to maximize your reach to the world the world right now is english speaking we could go back in history and ask why that's the case and i'll leave that to the historians but if i'm thinking about my my global perspective english is the language that need to speak to survive to feed myself so highly recommend that you develop your english speaking skills but also think about the local context right so how are you going to use english in your local context and when when are you able to shift and maneuver that's the more important skill so depending on who i'm talking to my accent changes not because choose but it's through years of adapting right so if i'm talking to armani's might say oman is raman if i'm talking to an american or australian i'll say oman even my own name right mean dr is an abbreviation for dr abdullah in armand if said my name is dr abdullah people wouldn't like that so you need to know the environment in which you operate in so you can get the most out of it and that just requires awareness and it requires investment in those skills be it chameleon is what say excellent thank you very much there are couple of points here on the chatbot please if you don't mind okay so so we we have point over here about the advice for starting your own business it doesn't apply for every every major you know yes the barriers to entry are going to be higher for for different segments of the market started off my educational career as chemical engineer major starting chemical engineering business is is difficult probably but starting off chemical engineering consulting business or working for another business so you can learn the skill sets to develop your own business is still existing right some markets have high barriers of entry but i'm here to tell you secret markets that have high barriers of entry have higher profits right so those are the markets that would actually want to target figure out how can get piece of that pie rather than work for somebody else so barriers of entry is good to keep in mind but think for an entrepreneurial landscape how can be part of the business environment rather than just an employee and i'm not using test here in the right way apologize for that rather than just rather than thinking of an employee perspective think as the business owner because even in the chemical engineering or engineering market there is business owner what do they have that you don't have and make that your goal so we have another question here economics is the study of scarcity why do we look at the situation economy determine our final choices isn't scarcity concept disappointing many entrepreneurs yeah so the the question let me rephrase that in the way understand it economics is the study of scarcity and the idea here is we as human beings have unlimited ones we always want more but life tells us that there is constraint we can't have it all so if we can't have it all we have to make choices and some people call that disappointing call that life right so you know me being at this call right now to talk to you is choice by doing this gave up something else because can't do two things at the same time so that requires me to evaluate what is more important to me and by choosing to be here am telling you that this is more important to me than my next best alternative and the more we think of life as choices and life always having trade-offs then we realize what we value and this goes back to the conversation of policy right so lot of people are really upset with wages and the change in wages or the vat but people are only looking at one side of the equation what's on the other side of the equation if you're getting this what are you giving up right and once we start to think about life and this terms then it allows us to make better choices in life so my recommendation to you is not to think of it as disappointing or reminding you that you have to give up something think of it as what am gaining and what am giving up and if i'm gaining something that's how much value it and it's conversation you could have with friends family your teachers when you show up to the class your teacher needs to know that you value their time and your choice to show up because you have choice not to show up your choice to show up means that you value what they're saying so you being here today tells me that you value my time and what have to say and say thank you for that thank you for being here thank you very much are there any other questions from the audience if not then we're reaching the clock here it's the nine o'clock almost here would like at the end to on behalf of everybody else who's here to thank you so much so much to abdullah for the the time you have giving us i'm sure you have many other things it's already like like mid day there you are committed with your students i'm sure you have classes to go to and other commitments thank you very much for being with us here just general note for everybody that recording of this session will be available soon on the mike account on twitter dr abdullah could also have it on his as well so it becomes available to everybody can't put the link right now because it takes like think think about 10 minutes to for google to generate the link to that otherwise could have you know just share it now but it will be available very very soon on on twitter thank you very much dr abdullah for being with us here it has been real pleasure having you and we look forward to meeting you again learning from you more inshallah thank you so much for for including me and that the dialogue is ongoing it's lifelong relationship and insha'allah i'll see you in muslim in the near future thank you very much you thank you very much take care take care