SPEAKER_02 0:00

This episode of A Why Did I Become a Doctor is brought to you in partnership with Medical Brief, South Africa's leading daily healthcare news service. Stay informed with trusted reporting, expert insights, and analysis that matters to healthcare professionals. Subscribe free at medicalbrief.co.za forward slash subscribe. Enjoy the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Who's the cinematographer here? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Uh yeah, he does all of the editing and stuff. But oh, you're talking about that camera? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

Well, I'm just talking about the whole setup and the So I started with that one that one camera.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

It's a handheld thing. You can't even see it's on the stool here. Yes. This is like a vlogging camera. Oh wow. And Yak had like this green wall here, and I just started. He didn't join me. And then eventually after he saw, you know, he's picking up some traction, then he decided to pull it, you know, for some.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

I think it's great actually, the uh interplay of your personalities works well.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

But I also like to answer your question, yeah. I I love cinematography. Okay. I'm an aspiring storyteller. Okay. Well, yeah, yeah, he's a big storyteller. That was from young days.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Yeah. The trouble is there's so many people, super wealthy people, billionaires, who will spend all their money on getting the best cameras and going to the most exquisite places to find let's say wildlife, for example. If you want to make money out of wildlife photography, you can't. Because people do it for fun. Yeah. So the the areas of photography that you have to be if you want if you I mean obviously you don't want to do it professionally, but people who want to do it professionally should be turned away from from wildlife photography. Yeah. Because you can't compete with these guys. Saturated. They do it for fun. Yeah. With infinite money and time.

unknown 1:56

Dr.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Andre Hugo. Yes, that is I. Welcome. I mean am I saying it right? Is that how you pronounce Hugo?

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Hugo. Well, Afrikaans people say Yuhu. Yeah. English people say Hugo and English French say Hugo. But uh Hugo, I've always been we've we're an English speaking family, always have been. Both my parents were English. But my dad had this notion that bilingualism was important. He forgot about the other eleven languages. And he sent us to an Afrikaans high school, which was quite a thing. But strangely enough, at I at high school everyone called me Lord Hugo.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

And at Vasty, English Vasty, everyone called me Yikhu, you know, just like opposites. But uh And what's the origin? Is it is it French? French.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:43

Hugo. The the Huguenotes. The Huguenots came in the 1700s, 1740. Yeah. So my parent my my fa my my family been in this country since 1740.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Okay. Do you get fussed up if people don't put the thing on the E, the accent when they write to you? Do you care about that? Nah.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

Yeah. What do you mean on the E? There's a there's an accent on the E or Andre.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

You know the the little line above the E on? Oh, on Andre. And it takes no E.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

No. You're talking about Hugo. Yeah. There's no. Doesn't worry me at all.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

But I sometimes leave it out just because I'm lazy. Do you care about pronounce like pronunciation of people's names and things or uh other people's names. Yeah. I'll tell you what, I mean, uh you know one of your contemporaries was on the show, Mark Wertheimer.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Um, and I'd always been calling him Wertheimer. Oh, okay. And luckily I asked him in the at the beginning of the interview how do you pronounce it? And it's actually Wertheimer. So it's wordy. Yes. It's like that law firm Worksmans. Lots of people call call it fancy workman's. But it's actually Worksman's. Yes. Yeah.

unknown 3:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

How how long you've been an orthodontist for, Andre?

SPEAKER_03 3:52

Um, well, that's uh see if I can do my arithmetic. Uh I started practicing in 84, so that's 42 years, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:00

42 years.

SPEAKER_03 4:01

This is my 42nd yeah. As an author. As an author, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

That's okay, that's four years. That's your age, Jack. Yeah. So when you were born, Andre started he was one year into practice, especially.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

Yeah. But I still feel like a kid. My body doesn't, but my mind does. How old are you? I'm 74. It's young.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Youngish.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

You think we'll live forever? I actually thought I'd live forever. But last year I had a a stent, and uh that set me back a lot because I had statins which have incredibly done a huge amount of damage to my muscles. And I I've been off them for 14 weeks and I'm still in agony. So I'm just one of the unlucky ones that's really reacted very badly to statins.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

But when I say d do you think we'll live forever, I literally mean it. Like, do you think we'll live forever one day?

SPEAKER_03 4:54

Human. I think you guys are in the um in the time frame of where it will be possible to live almost as long as you want to. I think that's that's coming up in within the next decade. Because, you know, with with um gene sequencing and and identifying, you know, uh uh genetic markers for various diseases and being able to gene splice and gene edit, uh it seems like they're very confident about you know changing the whole course of aging.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yeah. Would you want to, if you could. Actually, I love life. I would like to live forever.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

Me too. Yeah. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

I a lot of people say, oh, I don't want to live to be 60 or I don't want to live to be 70. I said the only people who say that are people who are not content.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

No, no, they're all in your health span.

SPEAKER_03 5:50

Yeah, wait until you wait. You don't I don't want to live to be 80, wait till you're 79 and see what you say. But it yeah, it's quality of life, you know. What uh what if your life is a misery, then you know, obviously it's a different story. And I I I feel desperate desperately sorry for people who who are not happy. I'm just one of those guys who just wakes up. I think it's to do with a low IQ. I just wake up and I'm automatically happy. Yeah. I'm joyful when I wake up.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

You really think I mean come on, you ortodontists are one of the smarter ones, right? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

Uh all I all I can say is that somehow I pushed through and persevered and got there, but I'm I'm not a bright guy. I'm just a guy, you know.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

I was telling um my cousin O'Reill, who was quite involved in the background of this show, that I'm interviewing my wife Yofty's boss this weekend, and he said to me Hugo Boss. He said, Yeah, Hugo Boss. And he said he said to me, You better behave, but I always behave. So yeah, I'll be back.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

But I must say you have a wonderful wife. She really is a star, Yfty. I'm so blessed to have somebody like that in my practice. The guys are struggling to find youngsters.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

And um that's so it's so interesting, the the the interplay, you know. I I I've heard from so many older people that young people don't really want you around. They want you to, you know, relinquish the responsibility. But um youth is so sweet, she tells me that I uh that I'm still needed. So I kind of feel uh it's it's flattering, you know, but it's it's certainly uh not what I expected.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

So Andre, take us back all the way 42 years ago.

unknown 7:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Maybe even longer than that. Like what was it growing up?

SPEAKER_03 7:44

What was it like? I grew up, I was born in Krugelsdorp.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Um my dad was a dentist, and I would have been the third generation in that practice. He he joined his uncle. And um my dad said, no ways, specialise. So I was I was really into prostodontics. I love crown bridge work. But endo, I don't know how you guys can do it. I just couldn't. Yeah, cate's endo. I can't relate to endo, but prostodontics I love. And I was I I liked Arthur Lewin, he was our prof. He he I really liked him. He was a brilliant man, a rebel. This is Witz. Witz, yeah. Arthur Lewin. He actually developed a thing called a sirenathograph. And you cemented a tiny magnet with super glue to the lower end sizes, then you gave patients various boluses. Wine gun was a typical one and chewing gum. And then um we would record that and identified all sorts of chewing patterns, and I really believed that that would be the ultimate test of an orthodontic case, you know, not what it looks like, but how did it function? But it never really went anywhere. I actually stayed in Derber because I thought I wanted to do my PhD in that. And then when I looked at how much work goes into a PhD, I said.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

How did they record that with a magnet?

SPEAKER_03 9:02

You wore a headgear with with an electromagnetic magnetic field. Okay, it's electric. And um, you zeroed it at in in in in um RC, and then you'd say, okay, pop the gum in your mouth and then chew, then you'd have the reference point. And there are all sorts of interesting things came out of that. For instance, um uh he uh Lewin uh showed that as a bolus diminishes in size, obviously so does the stroke. Uh the chewing stroke. So it's called coning. When you look at a a healthy chewing pattern, the each individual um uh point of uh return from you know maximal biting is um is progressively higher until you get near the occlusion. But yeah, he was he was just a super brilliant guy. And then my dad said to me, Prosodontics, you're crazy. I said, Why? He said it it's a very, very demanding job. And when you get to your 60s, you'll start struggling. Whereas orthodontics you can do till you're 80, because your marginal, you know, your the accuracy to which you have to work is I mean, in in in uh prostodontics, or you can feel a human hair easily between your teeth, so that's 70 nanometers. But orthodontics, uh, half a millimeter, quarter of a millimeter, you know, it it's a it's a very different um realm of of sp of accuracy that your eyesight and your hands need to be able to handle. Are you saying there's a lower expectancy in orthodontics compared to prostate? A lower, a much lower expectan a much lower degree of accuracy required. And also in prosodontics you get one chance. In orthodontics, uh I moved that tooth a quarter of a millimeter too much or make an adjustment. You know, it's a it's a subtle difference. But anyway, it happens that orthodontics suits me perfectly because um we talked about managing uh people and training people. Um that I just found, I think maybe because I'm naturally lazy, I love teaching my staff stuff. And then I don't do anything that I know that they can do as well or better. And um a lot of my colleagues over the years I've noticed they don't want, they don't train their staff because they don't trust them to do it as well as they do. And um So you're comfortable delegating. Yeah, that that limits you. In fact, I think that's probably one of the biggest limiting factors in orthodontics, uh, you know, in terms of the size of your practice. Not that that's a big deal, but um guys that want to scale up but they haven't trained their staff properly, they could be brilliant themselves, but if they haven't invested in their staff, they you know, they just can't sustain quality. So yeah. Was dentistry always going to be a thing for you from No. Interestingly, I was I wanted to be a plastic surgeon like my favorite uncle.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

He uh Also on your father's side. Yes, my dad's brother. He was one of the um uh early plastic surgeons. I think one of the earliest guys was Jack Penn at Brent's Clinic, and my uncle joined him shortly after the war. Yeah, so that was I really admired him. He was my favorite uncle. But then I watched him operate one day and I fainted. So I said, okay, no, this is why did you why did you admire him?

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Because he was a plastic surgeon. He was a lack of plastic surgery.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

He was a lacquer guy, you know. He was a great man and he was just a pleasant fellow, and he's I suppose it impressed me that he always had a bigger house and uh But dentists were were making big big money those days, too. Your dad my dad, uh I mean, I I I think dentistry was quite significantly more lucrative relative to other po uh uh professions. But then, you know, you get standards, our standards like you, and then obviously you're in a different league. But um we were I can remember in Kruger's door, we're like the first family to have a second car and the first family to have a cool uh pool, you know, within our circle of friends. So I felt I felt, you know, very privileged. And I was privileged. Uh uh lovely I I had lovely parents. What'd your mom do? My mum was a social worker, but gee, she was a genius. She she actually used to take books out of the library in three languages and just to keep herself proficient in German and French, for example, and she could do maths. I was I was like an A student, and and in Matrix, I'd be sitting, sweating over a problem, and she'd walk past and say, What's going on? She looked like you're struggling. Can I help you? And I'd say, Mom, that's impossible. You can't. Oh, well, let me have a look, and she'd write down with a little pencil. And she was amazing. She she would work it out just from principles. And she would come with an answer within, yeah, 20 minutes. Oh, well, this is how you do it. Blah de blah di blah. And she didn't do maths at Vasty or anything. She was just a brilliant chick.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Kruger's Drop. Yeah. You know, there's a there's a show uh called Devil's Drop. You heard of that? No? It was about it was there was these serial killers and things in I think it was Kruger's Drop, so they named the documentary Devil's Drop.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

No, didn't we? But Kruger's Drop didn't have a what was the name for ducktails and we called them ducktails, you know, Hell's Angels type guys who rode motorbikes that were called ducktails.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Yeah, you wouldn't find Yak and I in Krug's Doctor. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

You don't know you're modern day ducktails.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

We have a Vespa. They chase us away. You know, Yak drives a Vespa. Oh really? Yeah. You ride, you ride a Vespa. Right, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

I've got one I've got a little Suzuki scooter that belonged to my dad, but I live in Omanas because when it's bad when it's in December, the traffic's bad. Yeah. Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

What Suzuki what? Like a little scooter. Those things are dear. Are you like a daredevil type?

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Well, I'd I I'd I try not to be, but I until I when I turned 71, my wife said to me, Right, give up your flying or your motorbiking. Yeah. You you're old now, you know, don't act like because I used to get on my motorbike. We m a lot of the time, most weekends we're at Hotobias Purday, and then I'd ride down that beautiful valley all the way to Krugersdorp Airfield where my aeroplane was. What were you riding? Riding my motorbike from from Hartis to Krugersdorp Airfield. What what motorbike? I had a uh 1200 uh adventure.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

And um my son also had a bike and we did a bit of biking together, but he's done like the whole of Southern Africa, but I haven't done anything like that, you know. I uh but uh but but the motorbike brings out the cowboy in you, you know. And every day every time I'd say to myself, I'm going to drive, you know, safely. And look again on you're doing 180, you know. It's not and then I realized actually that is a dangerous thing. So I And that's where the low IQ features. Yeah, that's a low IQ. Anyway, I gave up. I gave up I said, I know I'll never go up, never give up flying. But then last year, like I told you, I had a stint put in. It was it was a shock to me because I never I'm my flying doctor every s um every year he'd tell me I'm I'm not worried about your heart, it's fine. Every did every year I did a stress ECG. And uh then I had like short, not I didn't I had one episode of shortness of breath, but I had a feeling of recurring heartburn that just wouldn't go away. It sort of went away if I took a Gavascon, but it it didn't go away permanently. So I thought, uh, I'm developing an ulcer or something, I better go and see the doctor. And she said, uh, maybe you should just go and double check, you know, that it's not your heart, go to the uh cardiologist. So I went along to a cardiologist and he put me on the treadmill, and after 10 minutes he said, Are you okay? I said, Yeah, I'm fine. So he said, Okay, well, I think that's enough now. Come let's take your heart. Yeah. He said, Oh, geez, on the sonar, you could see one part of my heart wasn't contracting as well as the other, and that's a clear sign of occlusion, you know. So um he said, No, we're going to theatre. And he put us, you know, the angiogram. On the screen I could see it. He said, Yeah, you got 90% narrowing of your LAD. How do I function? You know, with mild discomfort. But anyway, he popped in a stint and I that was nothing.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

But then the statins, oh my god, they killed me. They've killed me. Till now I'm struggling. But anyway.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Why why'd you become a pilot?

SPEAKER_03 17:55

Um my my uncle that I loved, he had a plane, but my dad was the actual uh pilot and he flew my uncle's plane more than my uncle did. And I flew with my dad when I was a kid, but I was terrified. I didn't want to. I it it took him years to get me up in the air, but the minute those wheels left the ground, and my fear had got evaporated. And then my brother and I, we started gliding at Machaly's gliding club out in in Machalisburg when we were students. So I was first a glider pilot. And you know, um uh Andreas Sibold, the periodontist. He's a he's a great glider pilot, and he's got he's he's still very active in that. And he he gli he keeps his uh two gliders out at um Machali's gliding club. It was a very German place. All the instruct instructions were in German and it was uh it's a German, German sort of hobby. So you just fly you fly just to fly. It's not like fun, yeah. And then yeah, then I started then after I'd qualified, I bought a six-seater, a Cessna Centeria.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Hold on, so you were flying before you became a dentist either?

SPEAKER_03 19:09

Yes. Well, when I was studying.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

As a as a as a glider pilot. Yeah. And then when I finished qualifying, uh as an or when I finished as an orthodontist, I actually ordered a Mercedes, a new Mercedes. And I looked at it and I thought, but that's just so much like the old Mercedes. It was a 500 SE and I already had a 380 SE. So I thought, well, why spend all this money for a car that looks exactly the same?

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Wait, hold on, you you had a Merck while you were studying, so what No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

I said after when I finished studying.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

One of my earliest cars was a second and Merck.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Okay, okay. Um What were you driving in as a student?

SPEAKER_03 19:48

Um I had a little I know I had a BMW um 32 320i. But I bought that while w uh while I was a post grad.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:59

We didn't do too badly as postgrads. Yeah. Don't tell anyone, but we did a bit of moonlighting as well. So that helped. At your dad's practice. No, actually. At a friend's practice. Why not your dad's practice? Um well proved it all while I was in Joburg, it was just a bit closer. Anyway, so um yeah. Uh then I said, No ma'am, I could buy a plane with that money. I thought, plane, why not? Who thinks that's still the case?

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Can I buy a plane right now instead of a car?

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Well, what's the going rate? Oh, I um yeah, I don't know actually. At that time, I can't remember the actual actual rate, but I did pay more for the plane. But I never lost money on any plane. Yeah, of course. They don't depreciate the they kind of appre appreciate in value, whereas cars definitely depreciate.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

And who has to do the maintenance and servicing and all that stuff?

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Um, expensive. Uh if you like my f uh my colleague and friend Mark Jackson, you must interview him sometime, he's built I think he built one helicopter and he's busy with his fourth plane. And he's um he maintains them himself and builds them himself. Pat Daly, another orthodontist, he built his own plane too. He's up the road, yeah. Yeah, he built his own plane too. And uh he's also been a pilot for forever. He was a pilot, and we've we're we're we're the best of friends, the three of us. And we've got this mad passion about flying. Even now, Mark's got a plane in his garage, and every now and then we go and have have a plane inspection and a few drinks and we go out for supper. But um, this all you're gonna fly then. Yeah. No, we don't. Mark's close by. Yeah. But yeah, so flying's been a big part of my life. But strangely, my wife said to me, Don't you miss it? So because last year when I had my stint, my flying doctor, also 74. Also had a stent.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

He was playing golf in the Midlands. And they had to chopper him in to Durban. He dropped down on the on the golf tee. And he also had an LAD stent. And he's the guy that told me that my heart would be fine. And he was always bragging about his amazing health status, you know. And so it catches you by surprise when you, you know, you don't pick it up at all.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Look, forgive me. All I'm getting out of this story is that what the Don't auto provide cleanse. So talk, you know, in a few years. I mean, autos are making good money, right? Still to this day or what?

SPEAKER_03 22:40

Yes. Um, you know, I think there there have always been guys that have done better and guys that don't it's exactly the same as dentistreak. You know, there I think there are guys that are struggling, but um and they're guys that do well. Even orthodontists struggling. Yes. Is it possible? Yes. That's interesting. Yes. In fact, young orthodontists now, you know, when I was when I was recently qualified, banks would just throw money at you. And you we never worried about money. We just borrowed it. And if we needed more, we borrowed more. But now the banks are very s um nervous because a couple of um guys actually went under. You know, big expectations, you all the other orthodontists have done well. Suddenly a youngster qualifies and they they set up some youngster in like five different practices with all expensive equipment, and he was bankrupt within a year. So I d that's just, you know. So so becoming an orthodontist doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're gonna be rolling in it or I think times have changed a lot, you know. And I I'm looking back and thinking about it. Um uh, you know, I was bought by Smileway a few years ago, about four years ago, three years ago. And Chris uh uh Kerr Peterson, the COO of that, he was my he's my nephew, and he he's the one that sort of um introduced me. He took me from analogue to digital, and then he used that as his thesis to do an MBA while he was working with me in my practice. He did a part-time MBA, modular MBA at UCT. He cum lauded his thesis, and his my practices change management from analog to digital is in the teaching uh records. Uh it's a teaching case at UCT business school.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

I attended one of Chris's CPD talks. Oh, yeah. And I was f my I was blown away by how he he said he tracked your movement throughout your old your previous practice in the day. He did like a heat map almost to see where Andre walks around and what he touches and What was he looking for? Efficiency. Yeah, just trying to optimize for efficiency. And I think even at your practice, the workstations are optimized such that you don't have to like lean over almost and it's just everything's within I mean, have you even been there, right? No, I have. You must go there. But I can imagine.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

I mean, you walk through my practice just now and you're like, oh, practice because it's so big. In my practice, I just roll my chair from one person to the next. No. Um, yeah, look, orthodontics uh it's been great to me. And I just I just happened, it it suits me, you know. It suit it suits me. I like uh I've got a mechanical mind, so the mechanics of it um is is uh easy for me. And um uh the people thing is nice because you know, I think there's only three professions in medicine and dentistry that you can be a manager, unless you own a practice like you with people working for you. But if uh actually as an orthodontist, um you can run a big practice by managing and training your staff well. It's the same with pathology and radiology. You know, they they're those are fields where they they sort of your management skills become like almost more important or as important as your technical skills or your your clinical skills. I don't know, other branches of medicine don't think a plastic surgeon can really delegate his work.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

I know they do a little bit. I mean, I've worked with surgeons where they'll do two osteotomies and two surgeries side by side, and you'll, you know, get to a point, yeah, then you'll tell the uh assisting surgeon, okay, you sew up, then you'll go and do that one. But um it's that's very unusual.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Did did you do any man management courses or anything or self-taught?

SPEAKER_03 26:39

No, I didn't. And you know, it's so interesting. Um I was listening to the radio a few years ago, and I just I don't listen to radio much, but th this this professor of entrepreneurship at Vit at at uh it was at UCT, um started talking. So I thought, oh, that's interesting, entrepreneurship. And one of the first questions they asked this guy is, how do you teach entrepreneurship? He said, We've come to the conclusion that you can't. It's innate, people have it. So the guy said, Well, excuse me asking, but why would you bother to have a faculty of entrepreneurship if you if you can't teach it? He said, We teach people to recognize the qualities of entrepreneurs, and if they are not an entrepreneur, to not make the mistake of trying to be one, rather to find that quality in somebody else and help them make their dream come true. I thought that was so interesting. And uh uh uh shortly after that episode, in fact, just a weekend or two later, I was invited to lunch by my uncle, who was quite a famous guy, John Marie, he was chairman of Arms Corps, Eskum, Med Corps, the whole bang shoot. He was a very, very prominent businessman in in um uh all those jobs not simultaneously, but you know, at different times in his life. And um at the same lunch uh uh at their house, there was a another guy who was introduced to me as the greatest, previously the greatest uh MD of any company in South Africa. And I said to the guy, oh that's interesting, which company? So he said, actually, I'm no longer an MD, I now am an entrepreneur. So I said to him, Oh, that's interesting. How's that going for you? Because I just heard this thing saying that entrepreneurship, you know, is born. So he said, Absolutely, I went bankrupt in my first business in 18 months. And he was introduced to me as the the best MD this country's ever had, type of thing. So I said, So this guy, I said, so what's the big difference between, you know, being uh an MD and an entrepreneur? He says, when you when you're an MD, you've got a legal team, you've got a finance team, you've got an IT team, you've got a maintenance team, you've got a social media team, you've got, you know, you've got HR, you've got uh, yeah, um the whole bang shoot. You can imagine what it all encompasses. I think there's about ten things you basically need to be. If you're an entrepreneur and you and you lack seriously in any of those fields, you won't make it. So he says you've got these guys working with you when you're an MD, but when you're on your own, you are that guy. And if you know, if you make if you don't, if you're not skilled at management or PR or HR or you know finance or anything, you you're gonna come second. So that's also what's changed over the years. Somehow I think orthodontics and dentistry generally was more lucrative in the past and less competitive. So if you know you could muddle along. Yeah, but why what's changed? What exactly is made? I mean, I think for instance, about my dad's waiting room when he had a practice, and it was like his mother's furniture in the waiting room. You know what I mean? You somebody gives you second-hand furniture and you use in your waiting room. That was okay then. But now patients walk into a situation like that and they think, oh, geez, I've got to get out of here. So patient expectations are much higher. I think patients' knowledge is much higher. And I've noticed it in my own time. I mean, previously, we just look in a kid's mouth and say, ah, you need braces. You know, there was a scanned letter saying more or less how long it would take, and you give a quote. But now we try to put in detail every single thing that possibly might happen to them during the course of treatment. And it's it's a totally different sort of scenario. I mean, it's I've never had a a particularly sort of bad experience. I've just become progressively more conscious that patients are becoming more and more and more aware and more demanding. And I myself, as a patient, I'd I'd check everything a doctor tells me. Patients are smart nowadays, yeah. Yeah, patients are smart. And you gotta you gotta um, you know, you can't just in the old days, you know, m nobody would dare question the doctor or the orthodontist. But now you got you know, you've got to take them seriously and you give them a serious answer, which which takes time and communication. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

I often think about orthodontics as the the gynee of dentistry, because like you gotta practice so litigatively defensive. Really, you think so? Yeah, because I mean you've seen the patient for the longest period of time. Orthodontics is so low risk, you guys don't get sued. I think I think not from a risk perspective, I think from a time frame perspective.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

I think you're right that orthodontics till now, touch wood, has been one of the least litigated. And I think it's because all orthodontists do what most good dentists are are doing these days. You you evaluate a case and you say, this is what I'm going to do, and this is what it's gonna cost, and this could happen, that could happen, and then that is the would be the outcome if you need a root treatment, you know. But in the old days, a dentist would, a patient would come into the dentist's room in pain. And it still happens today, and the dentist, you know, has to help, so he injects and he draws and he, oh dear, it's an exposure. Now you're trying to explain to the person in pain in your chair that you must do a root treatment, and then they say, Yes, go ahead. And then afterwards they say, But why didn't you tell me how much it was going to cost? You know, I would never have done it if you were So, you know, I think what orthodontics have has been lucky that it's it's uh but it's going back many years, there's always been a definitive investigation and a definitive treatment plan and quote uh although we didn't explain nearly as much then as we do now, but um So a lot more talking you're gonna have to do.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:25

And why is Oh so interestingly, talking uh we've discovered, we think that talking is you might as well write it in the breeze. It didn't happen. Okay. Because if it's not in writing, it's meaningless. And um But now with Heidi and all these AI transcription things. Yes, we we've tried a little bit of that, but um they're not that great.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 33:50

Um I did I used to have uh sit-down discussions with parents and then I used to record it. But you know how hard it is to find a place in a recording. And then of course you get the transcribing option, and then you know, with all the garbled English that comes out of that. Um so yeah, I I I still think the written word, you know, whether you dictate it or whether you, you know, whether you've got AI to to what would you call that now? Dictate AI dictation.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Yeah, yeah, transcription, dictation.

SPEAKER_03 34:20

AI transcription, yes. But I'm sure you can if I can ask, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

If it hasn't been, you know, a very sort of litigative environment for orthodontists, why has there been such a big movement towards, you know, providing such a big informed consent? Are you guys doing it prophylactically or?

SPEAKER_03 34:41

Um I tell you why, because um things happen. Like I can remember one episode where a mother and daughter came in and um they hadn't I treated them, I treated her many years before, and her teeth were skewed. So she said, But you told me I only had to wear my retainers for two years and then I didn't have to wear them anymore. So I said, In my whole life, I've known that is not true, so I would never ever have said it. Oh no, says the mother and the daughter, that's exactly what you said. That triggered me. I was I was very upset by that. I mean it's a relatively minor thing, but um then I realized that in fact it was so f funny enough from my I I was in association with Siggy Weeber, Zig Vierberry's uh good orthodontist who's also now part of Smallway, and we were in association for 33 years. We we would work sort of I'd work in Florida, he'd work in Randburg, and the next day we'd swap. At first the staff were resident, and it's so interesting we exchanged technology and ideas through the staff. Like I'd say, tell Dr. Weaver to try this, or they'd say, Dr. Weeber's doing this, why don't you try that? You know, so the hygienists were like the conduit or the communication between us for trying different things. Sorry, I interrupted you. He is got a practice in Haute P now. He's got a practice in uh Paul, I think, now. Yeah. Grosdale in Washington's Paul. I did some lectures with him. Yes. Nice guy, really nice guy. Okay. Anyway, so um.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Oh, yeah, we you you were with your association with him for and you used to be a few.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

But he tells a story. He says, once he was sitting there, really explaining nicely about this kid's treatment, and he really thought he was doing a great job, and the father said, No, that's fine, let's go ahead. And then as a father stood up, he picked up a typodont of a plastic type dont with perfect teeth off the table, and he said, Are these my child's teeth? And he just knew that he had wasted the last half hour of his life. You know, shown photographs, shown x-rays, and then the father wanted to know if those were the teeth. And that this is many years ago. Yeah. Before the father could have imagined that it could have been digitally straightened and cast in plastic and whatever. Yeah. But anyway, you know, so uh patients uh the the level to which patients understand varies so hugely. You can't presume, you can't presume, think this guy doesn't look like he really knows. And then they ask sort of very, very perceptive questions.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

They come in prepared, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:40

Mechanically minded people, like engineers are always always telling you how to do it. Be afraid of engineers. You've got to be on the top of your game. Yeah, they're always telling you how to do it. Mechanical engineers, especially.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Your your Twitter bio, I think you call yourself an aging technophile.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Yeah. I mean what's a what's that's a while.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

Are you into tech? So so it's so interesting because the I was talking about Mark Jackson earlier. When we were students at Vasty, he bought one of the first computers. I think it was called a Commodore. Okay. And he did all sorts of fancy things with it, a little bit of basic programming and stuff, and organized his music library and organized his phone book, and we all thought he was, you know, crazy. Anyway, over the years, uh I I say him between him and Chris Kerr Peterson, they dragged me kicking and screaming into the computer and digital era, and now they've created a monster. I'm so interested in technology, I'm absolutely uh fascinated by it. And uh, one of the things I really want to stay alive for is to see some of this technology. In fact, oh uh the f the first day a Model 3 Tesla came available, I looked and I saw on the Tesla website you could order one in South Africa. So I paid a 15,000 Rand deposit to get a Tesla 3 about, I don't know, 10 years ago or eight years ago or something. Have you gotten it? And no. And then a cyber truck came along and I paid my five, it was only $500 deposit or something. But I paid it. And just not because I really thought we would get them here, just because I wanted to feel like part of this thing, you know. Yeah. And I've got Tesla powerwalls in my house in Amanus, and I love I just I just I'm besotted with technology.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Yes, Neuralink thing. We're on the waiting list for Neuralink. But I was telling Yash earlier on because I heard about your Tesla experience, and uh last week was the first time I drove a Tesla. Oh wow. And I must say this that technology, I think it uses LIDAR for scanning. Doesn't no, it doesn't use only cameras.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Only cameras, yeah. Only cameras. That's where he departed uh from everyone else. Everyone else said LIDAR would be essential. And he said no, humans drive with eyes, two sets of eye, two eyes. I'm gonna put eight eyes on. I think they've got ten eyes now. Yeah. But uh the he says that's that's sufficient. Yeah. Um Have you driven one before? I've been in one. I haven't driven it myself. Uh I was in Australia, a friend's car. But but so what are you when you say Neuralink, just so that you can stay ahead of the game. No, I need functionality here for for the hand. Not that I need it, I want it.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Yes. Yeah. Because uh what are they gonna do with that? So it's a biorobotic Oh you'd have to have an you'd have to have a hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There would be um an implant prosthetic. But the difficulty with um prosthetic implants is you don't have tactile sensation. I can't feel that I'm holding this. So dexterity becomes a bit dumbing.

SPEAKER_03 40:44

Yeah. No, it's already there within robots. They've got it. Yeah. So the hand, now if you look at the Optimus hand, it's got it's got all the degrees of movement that that a human hand has. Yeah. That's the Elon says that's the thing that will differentiate that and also AGI, you know, the ability to navigate the world.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

Did you watch this one interview with Musk where somebody asked him if he if he thinks we'll all become cyborgs one day?

SPEAKER_03 41:12

He said we already are.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Yeah, did you see that? Yeah, you know this this thing. Yeah, yeah. Where he said you take your cell phone everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

Yes. Without it, you're half a human.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

Yeah. I think we must just embrace technology.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

There's a lot of people that are Yeah, look, I think, you know, like Musk says, uh th there is a risk. But w I'm an optimist. I I I think that AI is, you know, the I think that it's gonna bring I believe that in his concept of abundance.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

But he also says that we in ten years' time we're not gonna be working. Yeah. If we don't want to.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

What do you reckon? Well, I think that'll happen in some countries, but there'll be other countries. The the world will be divided into two. Those countries that ban AI and those that embrace it. So you could have a situation where South Africa, with its idiotic government, would ban uh self-driving cars and would ban robots. SpaceX. And then uh Swaziland would have them. And Swaziland would become a a booming uh Dubai, you know. So I think the world w is going to be divided between those protectionist thinking people, the the people who're trying to protect, and in in so doing they're gonna harm their people because the the the pe the countries that embrace it are going to uh get abundance and uh I I believe the it is possible to the high uh what does he say? Not the basic universal basic uncle, high universal high income. Um because all you have to do is tax the output of robots. So, okay, there's no more personal taxation, but every every job that gets done by a robot, 20% tax. Every procedure done by AI that's renders uh generates income, 28% tax. And then that goes into the government pool, and then you don't have a government, you have an AI government that's like five people doing the job of currently we've got about 180 people sitting there drinking tea and making mistakes. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Oh, your power walls okay. Mine is mine gave me problems. Oh really? Yeah, and then I felt like a fool because apparently, I don't know, do you have the power wall two? The one that's like white. Yes. That's the one I got. And I I've got a I've got a I think I've got a Power Wall 2 and a Power Wall 3.

SPEAKER_03 43:47

The three is a new one. Yeah, I've got I've got two. Uh I d I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Uh it's in my Omanus house.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

But anyway, so I mean after mine was installed and then load shedding hit, okay, all the power went off. Yes. For like a minute and then it the power wall kicked in to back up. And then I thought maybe that's just a one-soft glitch carried on happening. Oh, okay. Installers couldn't s figure it out. Tesla then tells me, well, this thing is not designed to be a UPS, so actually it's yeah. And that's the official. That's not the base requirement. So the PowerWall 3, the new one, is designed to be a UPS because it can put it in. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 44:25

I I've not um had that experience, but I think because I don't work on any device that doesn't have a built-in battery. I only use them, I don't well, were you on a desktop?

SPEAKER_02 44:37

No, this is so because I live in the house. I know when you see it drops, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:41

Yeah, I think um the early solar systems did that, but I don't see that drop anymore. I see even with my Sunsync at home, it seems to go straight. But that's the thing. The cheaper systems work better than than the one.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

No, no, my power wall, I've never had any trouble with I I've loved that. Well maybe I must get the details of your installer. But BYD's coming to kill them. Tesla.

SPEAKER_03 45:06

BYD is a Tesla killer from the car. Actually, no ways. You know, BYD doesn't make a profit. Okay. So BYD is technically bankrupt. So they don't pay their suppliers like uh they're 180 days in arrears. BYD is uh on the brink of collapse. Okay. They can produce cars cheaply, but they can't make electric cars profitably. The other cars are sort of carrying the company, but even that whole company um i is in dire trouble. Just supported by the government.

SPEAKER_02 45:40

Yeah. Yeah, I interrupted you with something you were gonna say. Yeah, yeah. Well, what happened with the Tesla? Like could is it that it can't be imported here in South Africa to South Africa?

SPEAKER_03 45:49

There's no point in importing it because there's nowhere to charge it. You know how much power you need to charge those things. And if you don't have a fast charger, you're gonna take forever. So, you know. They said to me, okay, you know, what colour do you want to Tesla? I said, No, put in some put in some uh charger, uh put in some tr fast chargers on the routes in South Africa.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

But they won't because the the government just get one, make it make it the Hugo Orthodontics company car and let you have to bring it home. I'll charge a toy. I'll find a place to charge it.

SPEAKER_03 46:22

You have to bring it our bank too why. I did an exercise and I asked Grok, which I use Grok AI even now. Do you pay for it? Yeah. Okay. I got super grok. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 46:32

That's a good that's a lot, $400 a month or something.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

I also got Claude. Yeah, Claude is brilliant. Yeah, but um I'm I'm still trying to be clever enough to use it properly or find the time to be clever enough to use it properly. But um I'm just so fascinated I have to play with it, you know. Um what was I talking about? I asked Grok, oh, how many solar panels would I have to put up and how many Tesla power walls to charge my cyber truck?

SPEAKER_00 46:58

So it was like I don't know, 200 solar panels and four power walls.

SPEAKER_02 47:05

Yeah, but that's just assuming you want to do it everything off the grid, which is not Yeah. But what I found interesting now was the first time I hired an electric vehicle when I was in Europe last week, and the surcharge that they charged me to give it back to them, not fully charged, was absolutely ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03 47:27

So you had to go and sit there and charge it.

SPEAKER_02 47:28

No, no, I I paid the surcharges, didn't have time, I had a flight to catch. But then it I like I thought about it, you know, from a from a bigger perspective. And we take for granted, like we go to a petrol station, we fill our fuel, and that's it, it's done for the next couple of days or so. Whereas if you go and recharge a car, you've got to find out where you can go charge and spend time in that interim while it's charging to be in a safe space.

SPEAKER_03 47:54

But but it's really getting amazing. They are uh the the supercharges now, you can charge to 80% in 10 minutes. Oh. And it depends on the car. I mean, most most titlers are doing 500 miles. Yeah. That's 800 kilometers.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

I'm really thinking I'm thinking of getting a BYD, the dolphin surf, the cheap, it's a almost. Is that a electrical seal or something?

SPEAKER_03 48:22

The the dolphin surf, it's the new cheapest one you can get. I I actually uh met a guy um in Omanus just a few weeks ago, and uh somehow a family connection I started chatting to him. I hadn't met him before, but he's a pilot and he commutes between Omanus and the uh airport in Cape Town, and he's got a BYD dolphin. Okay, he's got the dolphin, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

That's slightly bigger. What's the cost of that? What's that good? The dolphin stuff you can get for 389,000. It's a cheapless, one of the cheapest EVs. Oh wow. It's got a range of about 300 kilometers, but that's I don't I don't drive far. And with the with the power wall, I use you know, there's a thing called energy energy arbitrage, right? So it uses cheap, I use time of use uh so I would be able to travel for really cheap if I just got an electric. But my my car is still fine.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Yeah, I think um I think that those little cars um make sense if you know your journey and you know your your usage. But my my niece had one, not that, I think she had a Volvo electric in uh Australia. But then she did complain that um sometimes she gets called as a speech therapist and she does outlying areas and sometimes she just couldn't take her car and then she'd have to use her husband's car. Yes. But um that's g uh all going to change. I mean, it's uh maybe not in South Africa. That's always my question. South Africa seems determined to destroy itself. No, I think we'll be fine. It'll be good. Oh, we'll be good. We'll be good somehow because we've got an amazing we've got amazing entrepreneurs here. But our government are not helping us. Yeah, but that'll change.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

That'll change. Let's hope. Change is coming. Let's hope. What the most irritating thing for me about what you're speaking about is them keeping the satellite internet out of the coverage. Oh my goodness. But why are you guys so hellbent? I mean, look, I want it also. But I I don't really need it. You know why I need it?

SPEAKER_03 50:22

Why? Because in uh Beluli in in the bush, uh the the internet is absolutely shocking. But these are rich people. And my son lives there. Orthodontist problems. My son, my son lives there. Yeah. And he works online and he has incredible difficulty. I get that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:45

I get it, yeah. In a bed for you residential area, every couple of days someone is digging a hole and cuts our hard line, a fiber hardline. And it's difficult.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

I had a Starlink for 18 months, it worked perfectly. Oh, okay. And then they just cut me off. I I I couldn't believe it. All my mates that had Starlinks all said, oh no, to eat my Starlink's cut off. Mine only lasted eight months. I said, mine have been going 18 months. Touch wood, I don't know. Where were you using it? In the bush. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

I tried to get it for Everest. And the Nepalese government. All rich people problems, guys.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

All rich people problems.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

The Starlink Mini. Yeah. Yeah. Great.

SPEAKER_03 51:24

Apparently the Starlink Mini, they don't propagate it or advertise it as much because it um n it uses more the antenna is weaker, so it uses more signal. So if everybody in an area has a mini, instead of if the area being able to support 50,000 starlings, it would only support 5,000 minis. I don't know how true that is now, that's something I read a while ago.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

Is it this way you guys must stay at home, get fiber?

SPEAKER_03 51:58

Chill.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

You want to fly all over to the board. Where do you fly to, Andre? Like where do you fly? I don't fly anymore.

SPEAKER_03 52:03

When I did, I well, I was so lucky. We had a share in a houseboat on on Lake Kariba, Ziggy and I, and all we what we we had a mate there was a dentist in Harari. Yeah. We had a mate in uh who was a dentist in Harari and he said, Don't you guys want a share in a houseboat? I said, Jeez, yes, please. So they said, Okay, we just have to supply the diesel motors. So we smuggled in two diesel motors with his ex-wife, who was who went back as a returning resident. She took these two diesel motors with her because as a returning resident, you're allowed to take back whatever whatever you wanted. So she imported these two diesel motors. They went into this boat, and we had oh, we had 20 years of great, great fun out of that. And I used to fly, I used to fly my family to Basaruta, Island, and spend a week there or ten days, snorkeling and diving and enjoying that, and then on to Gariba, and then home. How do you get clearance?

SPEAKER_02 53:05

If you want to fly somewhere, can you just say let's let's pick up the keys and go fly?

SPEAKER_03 53:09

Um International clearance at that. Do you know Airlink is owned by a guy he's who started it, and I think he's the major shareholder, Roger Foster. And he um owned a uh he he's a mate of mine, and he owned uh an aircraft company called uh Foster Webb. He was actually a builder, and then he got crazy about flying, and he started Foster Web Aero while he was building, and then he built all those hangers himself, and then he just got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then he started Airlink. He's a brilliant businessman. If he if he ran if he ran SAA, there would be no problem. But of course that's not gonna happen. But anyway, old Roger Foster um I actually bought my first plane from him. Uh what were we talking about? Yeah, I mean, when do you get international clearance? Oh, oh so he's so companies like his organize clearances. You just uh text his um uh maintenance or his logistics person. They do flights all over Africa. So they you just say, I want to fly on such and such a date. This is my flight plan, this is the altitude I want to fly. There's I want to there I want to land. But you've got to get clearance from the CAA. Yes. But if it if it uh when it was done, uh it was a hassle for me to do it personally, um, because then it involves Portuguese because the Ruto. And and we used to have to land in um Maputo. But there's all sorts of underhand weird stuff going on, like you had to give an envelope with you know 200 Rand with Mr. De Abreu written on outside, and when you arrived, a guy would come up to you and you'd hand him the thing, and then he'd say, Okay, you can fill up now, and then here's your paperwork and off you go. We did have to clear customs there too, but anyway, we did we did use uh his services for that. But if it was if it was just um to Kariba, that was easy. You just filed a flight plan and you phone in your flight plan, you phone SMUTS and you tell them this is where I'm flying from yeah to yeah, and as long as you've got a registered flight plan in advance, but for some reason you needed special uh permission to fly to Mozambique. So in theory, you you're trained, you can fly anywhere, like theoretically. Yes. I mean Mark Jackson flew in a little area that he built all the way up to Kenya with a whole team of guys.

SPEAKER_02 55:48

Because I mean you're building something. What's the regulation with regards to it being tested and approved?

SPEAKER_03 55:55

Yeah, if you build it yourself, it does get tested and approved, but once you have been once you've been through that process, you become the authorized um maintenance guy that you're allowed to do your own maintenance. So Mark does his own maintenance on his own Aries. I never went that route. I bought my Aries and I paid people to maintain them. Um So you know how to speak to air traffic control and all those things. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever played flight simulator? Oh yes. That flight simulator, I had my instrument rating for 25 years. That's like a commercial pilot, except just a little bit less than a commercial pilot. Instrument ratings, what you need to do to fly when the weather's crap.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03 56:39

And um if there's total f cloud cover, a normal pilot's not allowed to fly. He has to only allow to fly. If if if the sky's covered half with half covered with clouds, then you can still fly. But once it's more than uh two-thirds covered by clouds and it becomes uh not okay, they won't let you fly to destinations. Um so then I did my instrument rating, uh, which enabled me to go up above the clouds, which is fantastic. It's much smoother up there and it's there's also less bumpy. It's it's just great. Yeah. And flight simulator came out. Flight simulator, I used to practice on flight simulator every time before I did a practical test. Flight simulator is fantastic. There's a whole big industry.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

Like you can go on YouTube and just watch people fly.

SPEAKER_03 57:28

If you fly a flight, if you if you train on flight simulator, you can walk into an aeroplane and start flying.

SPEAKER_02 57:34

But so presumably at that time when you were you know keeping up with the training and stuff, if you were flying commercial as a passenger and if the pilots like had an emergency and were passed out, would you be able to like land the plane and stuff like that? I think so.

SPEAKER_03 57:47

Sure. That's cool, huh? Because I used to often uh do those, you know, in on flight simulator you can fly a Boeing. Yeah. All you have to know is what the s what the store speed is. And you just stay above the store speed until you're at the ground, then you go below the store speed. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

I really thought that there'd be much more regulation because I've got my RPL license. What's that? Uh remote pilot license for drone stuff.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 58:14

And there's an event that we fly, we use a venue that's close to Lanceria Airport, and every time we got a film for this event, we got to file a flight plan with Lanceria. And they do two.

SPEAKER_03 58:24

Because you're with you with you within the control area. So the requirements for you, if you want to do that professionally, my son and my two sons had a had a company that they used to do. Um one's a GIS expert and the other one's a um uh horticulturalist, and they used to like drone over f fly farms, Avo farms in the low felt and stuff, and then say, oh, their cameras would be able to detect where certain need areas needed more water and certain areas needed more fertilizer and that sort of thing. But it was so expensive. Do you know a small drone company like that has to have a safety officer, it has to have this, it has exactly the same requirements as an airline. Exactly. That's what I thought. But that's the government again. They shut down the drone industry in this country. It was reserved for their buddies. But they've all gone bankrupt and it's not working, and you can't I don't know what's happening now with the drone business in South Africa, but it's a it's a fantastic tool that is not being used because they made it impossible for everyone. My my son's just sold their drones, so it's not worth it. It costs them a thousand Rand to get permission to fly in an area, and then they'd only be getting like two thousand Rand for the job, you know. So um, yeah, there's not a uh it so if you're flying in controlled airspace, that is a different matter. And there's some if you like you in if you're in Joburg controlled airspace or Cape Town's controlled airspace, then there are special rules that apply. But if you're flying outside of those controlled areas, it's not a problem. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:14

So it's just two sons you've got. Yes. And why didn't they do follow in old man's footsteps?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

Did you this is something that irritates the hell out of me. And it's so interesting. I've got a number of Afrikaans mates whose sons are orthodontists or daughters are orthodontists. Not one English mate. And not one English dentist friend whose child is a dentist. Many Afrikaans guys whose sons are dentists, Jewish guys, their sons become dentists or whatever. But the English guys, every guy's got his own bloody idea. It's ridiculous. Why do you think that is? I don't know. It's too much freedom. You know, they they're not I d I d I really don't know. But But you wanted them to become orthodontists. Yes. Please, one of you. Why one of you? Well I mean I love this, but k but just carry on. Have somebody to take over your brother. You know, if you go into a family business, you know what a huge advantage you have. You're starting, you know, instead of starting at the bottom, you're starting at the top. Yeah. Um, but it I find that very interesting that so many kids, my kids just said, Dad, that's disgusting.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:26

Are they around are they around my age or I'm just trying to figure out?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:31

I'm 38, 38. Yeah, oh yeah, my son's about 40. Yeah, so so similar. They millennials. My daughter's pushing, I don't know. I I I I don't everything in my life's five years ago.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:42

I don't I don't specifically don't remember No, the reason why I'm asking is i i it's telling me that you wanted them to become orthodontists and they're in my generation, which means you you still believe orthodontics is a is a good place to be.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:57

Oh, orthodontics is a fantastic, fantastic profession. Even now. Even now. There's no doubt that um you know the there it's different. There are more challenges, it's not quite as easy as a young person just going to start up your own practice. And um, but but I I think orthodontics is a lovely profession. Although uh a friend of mine, um, George Tomodakis, a wonderful orthodontist, he said he doesn't advise young people to go into it because he believes that AI will take over our jobs within less than ten years.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:35

That's what they all thought about radiologists, right? And they now there's more radiologists.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:40

I think what'll happen is that no doctor or radiolog no radiologist will comment on an x-ray that hasn't been pre-screened by uh AI. It'll be negligent not to, yeah. So so I think that it'll be used as a tool, hopefully, and that there will still be place for humans. But um you gotta be the human that owns the You know what surprised me?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:04

So when Yofty started in your practice, it she works from home. And I never thought a dentist in inverted pumice could ever work from home, but the dentist can, right? Because you do treatment planning is like a big part of your job, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:17

Absolutely. And that's all, you know, uh that's my nephew Chris that that brought all that in. I'm uh about ten years ago more. He was working for um he's a super bright kid. He he did a PPE for his father, Phil Philosophy, Politics and Economics, majoring in accounts, well uh accounts as a major. And then he did a triple A for himself because he's creative. Cum laud at that. And then he was working for an advertising company and he really has always been into technology. When he uh he's been my IT advisor since he was about ten. So he um excuse me, um about ten years ago, maybe a bit longer, he said, we were having a drink in Amanas and a glass of wine, talking rubbish, and he said, Tell me about the practice, what's your plans? I said, Ah, I'll wind it down slowly over the next ten years. And so he said, why? So I said, Well, I can't live forever. So he said, Why not? So I said, uh, tell me more. So he said, I I can create a hologram of you. You can be on the beach in Seychelles, and you can still be walking around your practice and earning money and managing things. So I'm still waiting for that, but it it grabbed my imagination. So I said, Okay, wise guy, tell me what else you could do for me. So he said, Well, list all the problems that you have in your practice, things that you'd like improved. And I made a list of 10 items, and every single thing he found a perfect technological solution for. So I said, Okay, come. You run that side, and I'll just walk around straightening teeth. I'm not, I'm so pleased to be able to hand over the everything else. So the first thing they did is they digitized 15,000 files. And when I say they, he and um two of my staff members who now work for him at Smileway, the the Huchenduren girls, Cindy and Charmaine, they're amazing. And um they and then he actually said we're gonna have an online appointment. Everything he suggested, I thought was a terrible idea. Like he said, we'll have an online appointment book. I said, that's a terrible idea, but just do it anyway. So he said, Why is it a terrible idea? So I said, Well, people are gonna make multiple appointments and they're not attend them. So he said, No, you set up the rules. They can only make the appointments that you tell them they got to make, or they can only make one appointment at a time. If they want to need to make multiple appointments, they have to do it through reception. So, you know, and I'll tell you what, the adoption of the appointment ours was the first truly online system where you could actually make And change your appointment yourself online. So he told me we have an appointment change every four minutes. Wow. And we don't even know about it. Because what used to happen is the mom would come to the front desk and um little booty and sissy are with her. And then uh oh, we have to see, you know, Dr. Hugo in eight weeks' time. And then the the receptionist says, Well, what about Wednesday afternoon at 3 30? Oh, that's great. Then little kid, Mom, I've got ballet on Wednesdays. Oh, yeah. Okay, let's make it Thursday, okay? Thursday afternoon at such and such. As they're walking out, Booty says, But my karate's in on a Thursday afternoon. Then they come back and they still so you know they can do all this thinking themselves at home now. If they make a mistake, they just change the appointment. There's no penalty as long as it's not in less than 24 hours. So that has been an amazing, amazing thing. I would never ever in a million years have dreamt about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:02

Look, I'm a patient of the practice. And I was just fascinated when had my appointment, then I got home, and there's like an email with everything that's happened to me, photos and everything. Already in my inbox. Wow. And I think Yfty was telling me, or maybe Chris was telling me, but like they even track how long patients have to wait from the time they walk through the door to the time they leave again.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:24

They get a one-time pin, then they come in and they log in with their one-time pin, and that's when they enter the practice, and then they get um as the then they get on-chaired when the when the hygienist says, Okay, you're on my chair, on my chair, and then off my chair. So we've got accurate stats on everything. And Chris dreamt all this stuff up. I mean, I would never have thought it would be necessary or even desirable.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:50

And Chris is at smileway. Smileway, yes. You must mute it, man. I mean, the only thing that I haven't seen is the holograms. But you've you've teached probably the hologram, the human hologram.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:02

So then the other thing he said to me, for example, um, what what what would you like to see improved? I said, There's nothing more irritating than saying to a mom, your kid's not brushing their teeth properly. And the mom says, I brushed the teeth myself. He said, In the first place, why are you talking to the mom about oral jean? Are you an oral genist? So I said, No, I'm not. So he said, Well, that's the oral jean's job. First point. Second point is, you don't tell people stuff like that, you show them. So we got little cubicles there. If brushing's not good, you say to Yanni, go and fetch your mom, go and sit in that cubicle, and then you project the photos you've just taken onto that screen. And then when you see the mom moaning at the kid, you know, now's the time for the hygienist to go and say, I can see you've noticed that Yanni's not brushing his teeth well, you know. So that sort of communication thing. But um he also uh said we should have a suggestion box. I said, that is definitely a bad idea. Why? Because I know what patients are gonna suggest. They're gonna say, I want they want to come at eight o'clock at night. They want to come on Sunday morning. So I said, no, you don't let them ask those you don't let them ask those questions. They're only allowed to ask pre-populated questions that help us within the framework of what we prepared to do. And um I also didn't see the value in it uh initially, but now I really do. Because if people are unhappy, they've got to moan to somebody, and if they can moan to you, you can do something about it. If they moan to social media, you can't help.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:39

That's one of the biggest problems of private practices in South Africa. They we don't make it easy enough for patients to complain to us directly. Yeah. Do you have any system? To complain to me. Yeah. Yeah. My whole surgery is transparent, they can walk through each other. Can patients book online for you? No. Amazing, eh? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Christmas. No, we've actively we've actively dissuaded our system from allowing that. Why? Because you sound like Andre did, because he didn't want that either. No, but Andre's into efficiency and uh What are you into? Um, I'm I'm into my private time being my private time. I appreciate when patients cancel and rebook and things. I'm like, oh, that's just speed up one hour of my. But I guess it's a different uh thing altogether because he has to like do all the work, right? You've got to you can't just be walking around and checking things, like what's the difference?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:26

You have to you have to be very structured and you have to say it to yourself, these are the times I'm prepared to work and these are the times I'm prepared to do certain procedures. Then your book is very structured. But if you can't work like if that doesn't work for you, then online booking, you know, isn't gonna work. Was dental school good to you? Dental school was very strict when I was there. Yeah. But yeah, it was it was it was like uh if you're if you if your hair was too long or you or maybe not that the guys did have long hair. Second time. The tie, you have to wear tie and all that stuff. Um I don't think we had to we didn't have to We had to we were allowed to wear safari suits. Yeah. Remember safari suits.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:13

My grandfather wore those here. Yeah. And um but but was if you uh you there were very strict guidelines and it was a very strict place. You were kind of scared to put your step out of line, you know? Yeah. Very easy. John Lemmer was very, very strict, brilliant. So it wasn't fun, like you know with a woman to meet women and stuff. There was like w two women in our in our class. Oh, but yes. So how did you socialize? The nurses all used to come to us as patients. Well, you had a beamer and you had a pilot. Actually, I had to join a sh hockey club because the tennis club was the beruch at Witz, but the hockey club, even though I couldn't play hockey, the hockey club were had a very sociable sort of situation. So they'd always have bras and then there would be chicks as well. So it was socializing and I was in Rez. Socializing wasn't really an issue then. We didn't have cell phones to to uh detract us, we had to use real people to entertain us. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:15

Um so dental school is okay, no horror stories, you didn't get kicked out of class or anything like that, like some of us. No or the ward. It was or cool. Yeah. Do you listen to podcasts?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:27

I do. I I I watch more. Yeah. Uh uh X or YouTube. Yeah. Um because you said you don't listen to radio much, so um, but I I I do tend to listen. I don't know why. I've I've I like the long form, like what you guys are doing here is long form. I like like Joe Rogan does his interviews, long form. I don't know whether you wouldn't call that a podcast. A podcast is necessarily without without uh video or not.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:57

No, no, that's a podcast, definitely. So Joe Rogan's a podcast. And um And have you watched Friedman? These episodes.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:03

I've watched uh I watched a couple, and uh that's I think you guys have got a really good dynamic going between you, you know. Thank you. It's a it's a it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:12

I I watch podcast it depends. Like when I'm doing a walk outside, obviously I'll just be listening. But if I'm on the exercise bike, I'll be watching. Uh it's different experience when you're listening versus watching. But podcasts are fun and long form is the best because you can't have a real conversation in 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:29

Yeah, you can you can put up a you can put up a front for a short while. Yeah. But the long long uh podcast tends to um you know show more of your of the person being interviewed. But you guys are easy on your on your subjects. You know, you could be like nasty and then you could see the bad part of me coming out. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:52

No, we want to get more guests on. So they see us being well because I had my sister on and lots of people said, Hey, you were being so mean to her and everything. But what does Fair Mr do? She's a surgeon. Oh right, general surgeon. She's in Katoo at the moment. Yes, yeah. Private practice there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:09

Retirement anytime soon?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:12

I've always thought retirement's a dirty word, you know. That I'd I thought I'd never want to retire.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:18

Um but I must say since uh since my episode last year, I've been thinking, hmm, actually, I could spend I mean it I'd like to be able to come into the practice a few times a month, maybe, you know, once a week. But what will you do the rest of the time? Oh, I I've I love the bush. I spend a lot of time in the bush and I love humanis. I love walking on the beach, that's my favorite thing. Barefoot on the beach, I've got I've got very uncomfortable feet. I've got a size 17, one foot. I did see you. Wow. So shoes are massive. So my shoes are horrible. I have to import them. And even with orthotics, I really can't walk really nicely. I hate shoes. So barefoot on the beach, and at Lakeland, where we we spend quite a few, when we're in Chauteng, we spend quite a lot of time at Lakeland. It's got acres and acres of grass, and I just walk barefoot there, and there's animals there too, it's lovely. And in the bush, I specifically built a place in a in a reserve without big five, supposed to not have big five, but every now and then a lion wanders in.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:31

But I walk there because I like walking in the bush, and they won't let you walk in Balouli. Shh. So um I like walking in the bush because it's like the trees are my big thing in a bush. And and actually it's terrible what's happening in Kruger and the greater Kruger, the elephants are destroying the trees. Yeah. There's hopelessly too many elephants.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:49

Too many elephants. I read about that. And do you know about that? Oh the elephants actually go and just for like to scratch their back, they'll destroy a whole really ecosystem.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:59

Yeah. Elephants are incredibly destructive animals. They you know, I mean they're beautiful, magnificent. But the old Kruger uh regime used to say 7,000 elephants. Now they they say there's probably 30,000. I wouldn't be surprised if they're more. But Kruger, the whole face of the whole Kruger has changed, and I think we'll go down in history as being a generation that stood by while the habitat was being irreversibly degraded. Kruger's heading into a very, very bad place. And there's no plan to fix it. It it's 30,000 elephants will destroy it quicker. And they would have to I mean, we're talking about something totally different now, but that's fine. Did you ever think of emigrating? Never. Um and uh I'm so lucky, none of my kids want to emigrate either. Good. Um I've I belong in Africa. I'm an African. My family have been here since 1740. Yeah. You said you love the bush also. Where does that mean? I love the bush, yeah. Did your dad take you? Yeah, my uh my d my uncle, the one I admired so much, the plastic surgeon, married a German heiress. She inherited 14,000 hectares. Or was it Morgan, I can't remember, in in the Timbavati. Yeah. Over the years they sold off those farms, but my dad had the use of it for his lifetime. And when we were kids, we had we could hunt as much as we liked, we could do whatever we liked in the bush. We grew up. I mean, I've been going to the bush since I was a you know, toddler. And um it's just part of me. I love uh I love the bush. But walking in the bush is special. Bumping around in a Land Rover doesn't do it for me.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:50

I like to be on the ground. What does your brother do? He passed away five years ago. Yeah. About he was a vet. Okay. And he was a brilliant guy. He wrote a book called Space.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:05

He had a whole theory about gravity. He's a super brilliant guy. And um he had this whole theory that no nobody actually knew what gravity was. You know, how what is gravity? He explained it as a flow, basically a flow of not electrons. I I read the book, but it was so far above me I can't remember. But but anyway, he uh my brother and I were very close. He's eighteen months younger than I am. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:36

I mean there's lots of healthcare practitioners in your family, then Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:40

My cousin's a plastic surgeon, my uncle's was a plastic surgeon, my uncle, my cousin's in America now.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:47

Yeah, but uh no that's it. Not not more.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:53

But is it if I can ask, is it easy for you to retire right now from uh succession plan? Um as in if you need to step away, can you do it at any time?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:06

Not quite yet.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:08

Uh I would say um uh I'm hoping within a year or so I will be able to um perhaps just show my face once a week. Um there are things that interest me uh and that's you know, like there's new technology all the time. The latest thing is direct resin printing of aligners. And um that's something that's um I think going to be a game changer because instead of first printing the model and then vacuum vacuum forming, you directly print print the aligner. And this resin graphy has been around a long time. Initially it was a bit toxic, and then they found ways to cure it. And I think they've cracked it now, because they're talking about it. Um we Yofti and I are going on a course soon. Oh yeah. I saw that coming in the di in our calendar. Graphi is and that fascinates me because uh with aligners, when you get near the margins, uh uh it becomes relatively weaker because that's where the the thermoforming uh stretched. That's where you've got a trunk.

unknown 1:20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:18

Trump line. Yeah. And actually uh with graphite you can determine you might want to print thicker in certain areas and thinner in other areas. So it's it opens a whole new um thing in terms of if it can be cheaper, because aligners at the moment are too expensive for our average patient.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:39

And um while we're talking about aligners quickly, last year in Korea I saw something about I think it was called thermoforming or thermoplastic aligners, where it's kind of like a single-use aligner. Yeah. Where you use it for a specific amount of time and you apply heat or some form of UV to it onto the next mold or your next stage, and then you can still use that aligner going into stage two, stage three, stage four, up until something like that. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:10

That sounds very unlikely to me because the the aligner will degrade, the material is likely to degrade. One of the problems, for instance, with graphie, graphite's is got a much bigger range of um movement. So you can one aligner can theoretically last you say three weeks instead of in other words, you use three aligners, but the material starts showing its age after ten days. So this theoretical saving that you've got for using one aligner to do three stages is um negated by the fact that the aligner starts looking disgross and then the patient doesn't want to wear it. So you have to print three aligners anyway. So graphy resin is much more expensive. So until that cost comes down, I'm I'm interested to see what they're doing now, but I I'm it's like inevitable. Like AI is inevitable. You you know, I think direct align I mean it makes sense, doesn't it? Why would you first print it? Why would you print it? Yeah. Why would you print the whole model, then thermoform when you could actually print just the material. But you have to get exactly the right uh m you know material to do it. And graph is a South Korean thing. Did you say you were South Korean? Yeah, that's exactly where I saw it. And that that product, you can take it and you can stomp on it and twist it and whatever, and you just chuck it in warm water and it forms back again. So maybe that's what you're talking about. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:42

Maybe I wasn't, I mean, I'm not into autocide, I wasn't paying too much of attention. But every time you've spoken about orthodontics in this interview, I can see you go into like a different mode. It it tells me you're not you haven't become bored with orthodontics since 48. Orthodontics is fascinating. I mean it's art, it's science, it's mechanics. This is wirebending. They call you guys wire benders, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:04

Yeah. Yeah. This is where he's provoking you now. I wish I could bend wires like the early guys did, because today our brackets are are made so that you can use a straight, we call it a straight wire appliance. Each bracket's got the right in-out, the right torque, and the right tip built in. So if you place it correctly on the tooth, then the the wire will line the teeth up nicely. Um but in the early days, they had zero torque, zero tip, and and zero in-outs on all the brackets. So you had to have first order, second order order, and third order bends. You had to bend each between each tooth in three different dimensions. A lot more technical doses. Oh, much more. And there's still a society called the Tweed Society where it's a great great uh sort of challenge and honour to be a m a member of the Tweed Society. It means that you Oh no, I think it's the Angle Society. Now I'm a bit confused. I think it's the Angle Society, but anyway. That sounds more automatically related to the other. They go back to Angulated. They go to um uh you you have to you have to treat cases specifically with that uh with you know, bending every single bit of torque, tip, and um uh uh in out. But dentistry's gotten easier, hasn't it, over the years? I should imagine the equipment's got a lot better. I mean my dad would got the first sitting chair, he used to stand, and he had his first hip replacement when he was forty-five. Yeah from standing on his left left hip, working the pedal with his right foot. And then he got the first reclining chair that was out, he got it, and that he said suddenly now it made sense because now you're working with the patient, you know, you much imagine doing these procedures standing. Standing, yeah. Yeah. Terrible. So that's become easier. And also, I mean, they didn't have air rotors, they had, you know, they had really primitive tools in the old days. So and also now with endo, I mean, apparently the apex locators and all sorts of fancy things that make endo a lot less with CBCT technology at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:12

CBC technology planned. No, because with this invisible line thing, I always joke with you if you say to, hey, look, even I can do this now. I haven't touched a patient in ten years, right? It's like, no, no, it takes a lot of you have to think and it's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:24

Um I I got very excited about aligners, but I can see they're very distinctive limitations. Aligners are hopeless at space closure. You can't close spaces properly with aligners. So if it's an extraction space with a massive amount of crowding, then you don't have any residual space to close. That you can do. But if you're extracting a case and you've got to close the roots parallel like that for more than four millimeters, I'd say it's basically impossible.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:54

Because otherwise it's a tipping force. That's a- But with all this technology, right, are you seeing more people doing things that they sh shouldn't be doing? Like, or is that not exactly?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:04

I think what's happened with the liners, it's done two things. It's swung the world towards non-extraction, because the liners are fantastic at non-extraction. So they take these incredibly crowded cases and they treat them non-extraction. Whether you should or not, whether you should be treating that case non-extraction or not, I think will become evident over time. Um, a lot of people taking CBCTs are saying, oh, look at all these aligner cases, all the roots are out of the bone. But you know, with a CBCT, you can fiddle with the settings to make it look like the roots are out of bone, or you can make it look like there's bone over the roots.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:39

So I I I'm very um uncertain, um, but there are fabulous uh orthodontists. There's one, a couple of big guys I'm thinking of, um Pad uh Diego Pedro and uh Maligon, they're Spanish guys, and I've done their course, and but but they treat everything non-extraction, and I don't I don't it doesn't quite gel with me that it makes sense. I believe that some cases there's a true discrepancy between the actual tooth material volume and the volume of bone, and that there's a limitation. But over time, I mean, we we did quite a lot of uh what's called periodontal, accelerated osteogenic orthodontics, P-A-O-O. Okay. Where Sibalt used br uh Andreas Seabolt, I spoke about him earlier, brilliant periodontist. He used to you raise a full flap, you cut just through the courts, decortication really, and you whole lot of bone. So you stimulate a thing called rapid acceleratory phenomenon, which basically increases the turnover in the bone. And we did a number of cases where that they went very, very fast. And then we did other cases and why are some cases going fast and others not? Couldn't quite puzzle it out, but it ended up being a very expensive. Of technique and so uh w that sort of limited so um it cost more than the orthodontics, for example. Okay. Like twice as much as the orthodontics.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:09

But isn't that also more so so much more for a variable? I mean, what if your like osteoclastic activity continues after that and you you lose bone after your desired movement is created?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:21

Um yeah, that it doesn't seem to happen. So the bone the the body is quite miraculous in how it osteoblastic and osteoclastic activity balance, you know. They s uh when you put pressure on a periodontal ligament stimulates the the cells to become osteoclasts. And then on tension on a periodontal ligament stimulates osteoblastic activity. They don't call it osteoclastic and osteoblastic activity anymore. They call it something like anabolic and catabolic processes or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:53

You see, this is why you can't retire. There's only so much of walking on the beach and learning around the bush that you can do before you need to.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:00

Actually, I've left a lot for my mind to still engage with in the bush. My parents and my whole family, they know all the trees, all the grasses, all the birds, the names, whatever. And I've sort of said, uh, I'll learn that when I retire, you know. So I'm like half a bush knowledge guy. I c I could spend the rest of my life just enhancing my knowledge on the bush.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:25

But you could also still do that in the bush. I mean, don't you you guys do your own aligner treatment planning. Yes. So, I mean, that doesn't need to be physically in front of the patient. You could do that remotely on an iPad while you're sitting in harmonis.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:38

Yeah, we do all our training all our planning remotely. Yeah um yes, I I look, I do, I spend, I take a lot of time off. I mean, I've always for the last 20 years I've taken at least 12 weeks a year holiday. And now I take about 15. But um yeah, orthodontics is just it's a wonderful profession. And I'm I'm I c I can honestly say that um you know it's been super kind to me. And um I I believe that there's still a a long runway for it because there's um you know th there there's so much I I don't uh I don't believe that it that that humans will be totally replaced. Maybe they will be. But but when I see the limitations, the current limitations of aligners, I think that braces and soles will always be necessary in some form.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:35

So you have to be able to buy me that plan. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:39

You should definitely guarantee you.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:42

Is there anything else we didn't talk about, Andrea, that you want to chat about? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:45

Not really. I want to hear more I want about you. I want to I want to hear about you guys. What about interview you? Yeah, you can ask us your life. Ask us what you want to do. Yeah, you're more than welcome. So you grew up in Durban.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:56

Yeah. And your family's all still there? Um, yeah, basically. Well, a lot of people have moved to Joburg just for work. But my parents are still there. My dad is 78 and he's still running his small law firm in Twangat. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:12

Does he specialize in anything?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:14

It's a small town town, so you're gonna be. Conveying. No, I mean they do a lot of conveying, but yeah. And Yak used to Yak used to live with me at one stage. Oh, really? When he was studying engineering. Okay. And failing engineering. Where did you study? Not studying engineering. Uh initially at UKZN, University of Natal. And then uh yeah, after that failure, I got exiled to Mauritius. So I lived in Mauritius for quite a while. Yak did dentistry in Mauritius.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:39

How did you get exiled to Mauritius?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:41

Well, from the failure. So you did dentistry in Mauritius. Yes, yes. Oh, okay. Do you have Mauritian connections? As in family or as friends? Uh no family, but a lot of friends. A lot of friends. No, my sister studied medicine in Mauritius. Oh, really? So if you can't get into med school. No, you know it's very competitive, like to get into med school. Yeah. So if you can't get in, there's there's a uh university in Mauritius, they still have to. Yeah, not anymore though. It's not there. No, it's still there, but uh the entry requirements have gotten a lot more stricter than yet. So my sister was studying there, then that's how they'd heard about this place. So he went to do he followed in her footsteps where he did dentistry. And then they closed down the dental school. Yeah. And he was the only student in his class.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:23

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:24

Because he was in that last batch that they couldn't leave him, abandon him. So he had like one-on-one tuition. Oh wow, fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:35

Or traumatized. Yeah. Whichever way you look. Well, how did you find Mauritius? Because I've I've got friends that have lived there and they say after a year or two it becomes Cabin fever. Cabin fever. Is it just because it's small?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:48

It is small, but uh it's also it's it's much bigger than people think it is. Okay, I'm assuming your friends are ex-South Africans.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:58

Yeah. So I mean they wouldn't venture into the usual, you know, the local spots that the Mauritians are in. So they probably are sticking to the west coast or north.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:08

Maybe mount, you know, the mountains, the forests, and the rivers. But there's a lot more than that inland.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:14

So I mean it all depends on what's the first time. I gather what they meant by social uh by cabin fever is is socially, but one doesn't need a huge circle of friends. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:26

You take them and you put them or you bring them back here. And you probably try and map the geolocation of the same.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:32

They won't go further. Probably smaller. Yes, yes. Interesting, yes. And I see Mauritius is really turning into a sort of a financial Yeah, socioeconomic hub. Uh it's a very smart government then. It seems so obvious, you know, one one questions why other governments just don't realize that, you know, you need to make a place business friendly if you want to attract uh quality people with money. Yeah. Regardless of the politics. And quality quality businesses, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:02

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day and coming and speaking to us. Yeah, it's been great. Yeah, look at talking to you guys. Yeah, you too.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:08

Thanks. We appreciate it. Thank you, Chasey. Thank you very much.