Good timing.

So, and there was a few things.

There was unfortunate timing.

No one could ever have predicted that.

We had over 500 people that had bought tickets to an Expert Empires event in London at the end of March.

So, as I've said, one of my greatest weaknesses, I've got many, one of my greatest weaknesses, I'm really positive, optimistic.

I'm like, oh, what's the worst that can happen, right? So...

And

... how does that process happen?

Yeah, I mean, part of that, uh, again, so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm involved from the point of view of, um, checking out the sites and, and checking out the characteristics of the eclipse and the sites and that kind of thing.

But most of that work's done by the AstroTrails people, and they've got, they've got a, a reasonable team who do that.

Um, I mean, I guess part of it is, is logistics.

When you've got a very, very large number of people that you wanna take on a, on a trip, is you wanna split them across multiple sites, um, because, you know, hot- hotel rooms are, are potentially difficult to get for, for enough people.

Um, but also, I, I think it, it offers people the opportunity to choose places that they'd be interested in going and, um, and different experiences.

So if you look at the one that's coming up for, um, the one in next year, the, the, the one, the long eclipse over Egypt, there's a number of different options there.

Uh, tell us a little bit about your, your videoing and imaging.

Before we go any further, Nick, and then Kat, explain your own roles and where you and your organization fit within the whole ecosystem.

I look after the credit insurance, the non-payment insurance form for the bank.

And I sit in a unit called structured financing that looks after the loans, most of the loans for the bank.

There are separate units that manage repos, for example, and swaps, kind of derivative transactions where they're used for financing, which can be equivalent to a loan.

They just use different documentation.

And also on the commodities side, we'll have loans to commodities clients or some good old fashioned stuff where somebody is delivering some metal or digging out of the ground and delivering it or delivering oil.

But it could be in a difficult jurisdiction, for example.

And I think like as Nick said, as the sort of commercial banks ended up becoming more active lenders in the region and they sort of ended up having more sovereign and political risk sitting on their balance sheets, they sort of came to us because we can help them manage that exposure so they don't have to tie up lots of capital against country risk.

Mm-hmm.

And the pressure of, like, knowing, uh, like in senior year of high school was too much for me.

And so I kinda just, like, clung onto the first thing that, that came after me.

Um, some of my close family members were in the military, and they had always said, like, "You know, if you're not really sure what you wanna do and you don't wanna waste the money, like, why don't you consider joining up?" And, um, uh, I took that pretty seriously, especially junior year.

Um, and, and, you know, in confluence with recruiters being in our cafeterias, um, and, like, flyers being, like, auto-mailed to my home, and then a bunch of emails coming in like, "Do you not know what you wanna do after high school? Join the military now." Um, and then a, a awesome, super awesome $20,000 sign-on bonus.

I ended up joining the military right out of high school.

So I enlisted probably, like, January of senior year.

I'm older than, yeah.

[laughs]

And after that she's like, "All right, Nick, I want you to do something crazy.

I want you to choke me.

I want you to mean me.

I want you to say mean, wild shit." And I do all that, but even then I'm still like, "Well, I hope this isn't too tight around your neck, you bitch."

Whoo.

And, uh, they got these booths there, and they're really comfy, you know? And, uh, that's, you know, like, you get the girl in the booth, like, and, you know, you can kinda, like, you have an excuse to sit close to her.

And it sounds really creepy actually, but, like-