I’m afraid of heights you would think it
doesn’t have much to do being a computer
engineer I mean where would I use that
fear of heights
what should I really be afraid of but as
part of my work that little dot over
there that’s me and so is that so is
that I even took a course to be able to
rescue people off of towers if it’s
necessary I hope it’s never necessary
and the reason for that is because you
usually have two people up on a tower at
any given time if something happens one
can help the other the reason I did that
was because of my work as a technician
for the United Nations as part of which
I would have to climb towers as you
already saw install servers but up power
generators for offices in disaster areas
you know that are set up quickly
satellite communications all sorts of
communications and all sorts of power
whatever it takes and the fun part is
that I would do this job in all sorts of
weird locations usually during or
immediately after some kind of disaster
whether it be a war
like this in South Sudan or a hurricane
like the one in the Philippines or a
tsunami or an earthquake whatever but
it’s usually something that takes people
lives and devastates lives of others so
I work for fitness it’s an elite unit
there’s only 12 guys covering the entire
planet and it’s a part of the World Food
Program of the United Nations the reason
it’s part of the World Food Programme is
because whatever kind of emergency
happens people will always need food and
WFP will always be involved so as part
of that they set up this unit and they
set it up in Dubai from where it’s
is relatively easy to get to most of
Asia and Africa where the disaster is
most commonly occurred that need help
something would happen we would sit on a
plane get there what happens once you’re
there you have to move around you have
to get from point A to point B and
that’s not always easy so you use
whatever you can use vehicles
helicopters motorcycles airplanes horses
sometimes donkeys whatever you can get
your hands on and once you know what’s
what and you’ve seen the locations then
it’s time to move the goods you have to
move the food you have to move the
equipment so you use trucks if you can
in convoys airplanes sometimes you even
rely on human power for those
hard-to-reach areas that they have no
accessibility by vehicle now you’re
there the goods are there you have to
find a place to store them that’s
usually some kind of warehouse a
temporary warehouse most of the time
this is on pallets on the grass in a
tent like those and this is to prevent
the stuff from getting wet if it rains
from it getting looted by desperate
human beings which you will always find
in such situations but the key for all
of this to function is communications
because without communications you
wouldn’t be able to do anything you
wouldn’t be able to tell who needs to go
where and bring what and do what and so
on so the telecoms is usually the first
thing that happens in an emergency in
2013 I found myself in the Philippines
in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan or
Yolanda as they called it in the West
because we can’t pronounce it and the
devastation was huge I mean the
hurricane which measured winds of up to
320 km/h just tore everything up and at
some point it even created that tsunami
in between the airport and the
as you can see it moved huge ships
inland it devastated houses basically
cutting them in half and as you can
imagine there was a lot of people who
needed assistance something like 15,000
people maybe died in that one event so I
found myself sitting on a plane the next
morning out of Dubai to Manila in Manila
was sort of hitchhiked three of us a
ride with the US Marine Corps these are
the Osprey planes they’re the the fun
ones that can fly both as an airplane
and there’s a helicopter by moving the
rotors and they were the only ones who
can’t land so we had to go with them
and we brought as much equipment as we
could and this is the situation we had
to deal with we had to set up
communications so that everybody who
would follow us in would be able to
organize what they want to do where they
want to land what kind of goods they
want to bring and so on initially it
took us four and a half hours to travel
the 11 kilometers between the airport
and the city hall where we set up our
office initially and well because of all
the dead bodies in the street all the
destruction everything it was really
slow moving so I had an idea I saw a
bike at the end of the road one of these
moto concho like things I’m sure you all
know about them so I just well made it
run and then I used it for a couple of
days to be able to go and visit all the
different locations where you know where
are we going to sleep where are we going
to store the goods where are we going to
put up the antennas and that worked out
great at some point I also have this
idea that this is an island and they
used to have internet before so there’s
probably some sort of underground
underwater cable connecting the islands
and asking around after I was mobile I
was able to move around and ask people
and I got to this one tower which was
really close to where the cable was
coming out of the sea so what we did was
we connected this cable put up a
microwave antenna on the tower pointed
it to this building that we had rented
eight floors and put up a receiver on
the other side wasn’t fun eight floors
up and down up and down all the time
with no electricity but we had a 300
megabits link which is more than enough
people were able to Skype with their
families they were able to
teleconference with with whoever was
involved and that worked out great that
seriously I went up there and I talked
to the technicians and they were like
yeah well I don’t know we’d have to talk
to the boss but we cannot talk to the
boss because the phone lines are down
and this and that and here comes the
beer let’s have a few let’s take the
discussion again ah still not ready have
another beer alright we got the job we
got it up and running we promised to
take it down if the bosses said they
don’t want it but in the end it worked
out great they gave it to us for free
the local telephone company the mayor of
the city of Tacloban actually gave me a
motorcycle which I put stickers on and I
was using that until the end of the
mission and by the end of the mission
and we got so friendly with the private
sector with the army I could hitchhike a
flight on a Huey to move stuff from
point A to point B and that was pretty
cool
so anyway said a couple of points during
this whole mission there were some
doubts there are some doubts about
whether I’m being too reckless riding
around on a motorcycle with no insurance
with no helmet with with no local
driving license same thing with the
helicopters and then
you know there was this balance with her
yeah it’s working let’s continue doing
it or it’s not a hundred percent safe
let’s not do it it was this calculated
risk they’re coming out of there
we usually have debriefings where we
discuss what went wrong during a mission
won’t with it right and so on and when
asked about all of these things that
happened I say it was luck
it was just pure blind luck that I saw
this cable and it was pure luck that we
found this hotel that was empty and pure
luck that there was this motorcycle by
the road and that I was able to get it
running and at some point one of the
bosses said no man you’re wrong it’s not
luck it’s an opportunity that you saw
and recognized as an opportunity
it’s the guts you have to act right then
and there without asking us for
permission without going through
different time zones all the bureaucracy
and everything right and basically you
made your own look that those were the
words he said this mission cemented my
reputation as a fixer within the team
because I would get things done one way
or another things would just happen and
the next major mission I was in was in
2015 in Kathmandu the there was a huge
huge earthquake about eight point
something and a lot of people were
injured there was a lot of damage to the
town and even worse up in the mountains
and getting from point A to point B was
almost impossible this is the foot of
the Himalayas people you can imagine
it’s all mountains and canyons and stuff
so I was the first one on the ground
partly because the previous planes were
all
turned around because they couldn’t land
at the Kathmandu Airport my pilot was
luckily stubborn and he just circled
around the airport for a while a while
being five hours and we weren’t sure we
could even make it to the closest
airport but then it opened up and we
landed and I was there the day after the
earthquake so immediately I started
looking around how to set up
communications and we used whatever we
could this is a picture for Buffs which
I climbed on so that I could fix an HF
antenna on two strings between that
light pole and another one that you
can’t see here that’s a satellite dish
that was mounted and put up on top of a
transport container and it worked
it would make a bit link more than
enough other locations were more
difficult because of all the mountains
you have to place it in very specific
positions the satellites because
otherwise you can’t see the satellite
from the mountains and those are the
tallest mountains on the planet and in
some cases we even use some very
extravagant transportation means that’s
an elephant seriously
it’s huge so anyway landing on that
Airport there was nobody waiting for me
and I didn’t speak the language so just
looking around and then this little
Indian guy comes up with with a camera
and says good evening sir can I take
your picture and I’m like okay you speak
the English how good yes you can take
all the pictures you want but I’m
grabbing your hand and I’m not letting
go until I get stuff sorted out so with
his help we found a major of the Gurkhas
who agreed to rent me his pickup truck
and and that was the start of
we managed to find this area that had
all these containers and all these rub
holes that were in the containers all
these prefabricated buildings were in
the containers so we could use all that
it was right next to the airport which
was very convenient and I immediately
noticed that same night actually when I
was playing with a satellite dish that
we won’t have enough bandwidth for all
the people who will be coming in because
I was expecting hundreds if not
thousands of relief workers
humanitarians who come in within the
next couple of days so once again with
my translator and with the help of the
local office we organized the meeting
with the local telecommunication
companies that’s like orange and Claro
here right there were two companies
there as well fierce competitors but I
was lucky again that the chief technical
officer of one of the companies was a
Hungarian guy now I come from the same
part of Europe and when you are way out
there that kind of means something
there’s an immediate bond so I convinced
the guy to give me 50 SIM cards which I
will be able to hand out to all the
humanitarians as they arrived at the
airport so that they could talk to each
other because in Katmandu the
communications were ok
there was cellular telephones there was
even internet on the phones you could
plug in your laptop and use this as a
hotspot and get your job done now with
these 50 cards I went to the other
company and they gave me a hundred you
know to top the competition and the next
thing I did was I got one of them in a
couple of days they showed up and I
could remove that satellite because they
brought a fiber optic cable both to our
location and to the airport and that
worked out great right the thing is this
Hungarian guy and most of the technical
people that I worked with very closely
there left that same afternoon
they left Kathmandu they went out to
filled all over the country to fix up
the wrong towers sub offices and whatnot
so my point here is again yeah lucky you
make your own look but I took the
initiative there I went there
immediately there’s a small window of
time when you can act and you either do
it or you don’t and if you do it you
reap the rewards possibly which happened
in this case and that worked great yeah
this is also Nepal remember I started
with my fear of heights I had to cross
that to get from one part of a village
to another that’s what their bridges
looked like like I said I’m still afraid
of heights I even got the job in a way
due to this fear of heights the phone
rang at 4:00 in the morning and I picked
it up and somebody says are you afraid
of heights I’m like what the hell who is
this it’s 4:00 in the morning tell me
man are you afraid of heights
this is so-and-so oh okay I remember it
was a guy from the UN who had offered me
the job earlier and I’m like dude can I
think about this what do you mean I’m
not afraid of heights look man I need to
know now I want to send you out to
Colombia tomorrow you’re gonna be going
up in the mountains into Farkus
territory you’re gonna be climbing
towers are you afraid yes or no
there’s an opportunity there right so I
had the guts and I said I don’t know but
I’m willing to try
I ended up going to Colombia for my
first mission which was cool they needed
somebody who could speak Spanish
apparently and my team leader fell
through a roof broke his leg close to
the end of the mission so I ended up
even being a team leader on my first
mission which is quite a big thing in
any case that was the beginning of a
great job and I think that this job with
all its opportunities it’s very much
like our life every day brings you
opportunities every day you have a
chance to do something my job allowed me
to visit
a huge portion of the world 76 countries
and some which I can’t even find on the
map anymore that’s your map fill it up
doesn’t have much to do being a computer
engineer I mean where would I use that
fear of heights
what should I really be afraid of but as
part of my work that little dot over
there that’s me and so is that so is
that I even took a course to be able to
rescue people off of towers if it’s
necessary I hope it’s never necessary
and the reason for that is because you
usually have two people up on a tower at
any given time if something happens one
can help the other the reason I did that
was because of my work as a technician
for the United Nations as part of which
I would have to climb towers as you
already saw install servers but up power
generators for offices in disaster areas
you know that are set up quickly
satellite communications all sorts of
communications and all sorts of power
whatever it takes and the fun part is
that I would do this job in all sorts of
weird locations usually during or
immediately after some kind of disaster
whether it be a war
like this in South Sudan or a hurricane
like the one in the Philippines or a
tsunami or an earthquake whatever but
it’s usually something that takes people
lives and devastates lives of others so
I work for fitness it’s an elite unit
there’s only 12 guys covering the entire
planet and it’s a part of the World Food
Program of the United Nations the reason
it’s part of the World Food Programme is
because whatever kind of emergency
happens people will always need food and
WFP will always be involved so as part
of that they set up this unit and they
set it up in Dubai from where it’s
is relatively easy to get to most of
Asia and Africa where the disaster is
most commonly occurred that need help
something would happen we would sit on a
plane get there what happens once you’re
there you have to move around you have
to get from point A to point B and
that’s not always easy so you use
whatever you can use vehicles
helicopters motorcycles airplanes horses
sometimes donkeys whatever you can get
your hands on and once you know what’s
what and you’ve seen the locations then
it’s time to move the goods you have to
move the food you have to move the
equipment so you use trucks if you can
in convoys airplanes sometimes you even
rely on human power for those
hard-to-reach areas that they have no
accessibility by vehicle now you’re
there the goods are there you have to
find a place to store them that’s
usually some kind of warehouse a
temporary warehouse most of the time
this is on pallets on the grass in a
tent like those and this is to prevent
the stuff from getting wet if it rains
from it getting looted by desperate
human beings which you will always find
in such situations but the key for all
of this to function is communications
because without communications you
wouldn’t be able to do anything you
wouldn’t be able to tell who needs to go
where and bring what and do what and so
on so the telecoms is usually the first
thing that happens in an emergency in
2013 I found myself in the Philippines
in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan or
Yolanda as they called it in the West
because we can’t pronounce it and the
devastation was huge I mean the
hurricane which measured winds of up to
320 km/h just tore everything up and at
some point it even created that tsunami
in between the airport and the
as you can see it moved huge ships
inland it devastated houses basically
cutting them in half and as you can
imagine there was a lot of people who
needed assistance something like 15,000
people maybe died in that one event so I
found myself sitting on a plane the next
morning out of Dubai to Manila in Manila
was sort of hitchhiked three of us a
ride with the US Marine Corps these are
the Osprey planes they’re the the fun
ones that can fly both as an airplane
and there’s a helicopter by moving the
rotors and they were the only ones who
can’t land so we had to go with them
and we brought as much equipment as we
could and this is the situation we had
to deal with we had to set up
communications so that everybody who
would follow us in would be able to
organize what they want to do where they
want to land what kind of goods they
want to bring and so on initially it
took us four and a half hours to travel
the 11 kilometers between the airport
and the city hall where we set up our
office initially and well because of all
the dead bodies in the street all the
destruction everything it was really
slow moving so I had an idea I saw a
bike at the end of the road one of these
moto concho like things I’m sure you all
know about them so I just well made it
run and then I used it for a couple of
days to be able to go and visit all the
different locations where you know where
are we going to sleep where are we going
to store the goods where are we going to
put up the antennas and that worked out
great at some point I also have this
idea that this is an island and they
used to have internet before so there’s
probably some sort of underground
underwater cable connecting the islands
and asking around after I was mobile I
was able to move around and ask people
and I got to this one tower which was
really close to where the cable was
coming out of the sea so what we did was
we connected this cable put up a
microwave antenna on the tower pointed
it to this building that we had rented
eight floors and put up a receiver on
the other side wasn’t fun eight floors
up and down up and down all the time
with no electricity but we had a 300
megabits link which is more than enough
people were able to Skype with their
families they were able to
teleconference with with whoever was
involved and that worked out great that
seriously I went up there and I talked
to the technicians and they were like
yeah well I don’t know we’d have to talk
to the boss but we cannot talk to the
boss because the phone lines are down
and this and that and here comes the
beer let’s have a few let’s take the
discussion again ah still not ready have
another beer alright we got the job we
got it up and running we promised to
take it down if the bosses said they
don’t want it but in the end it worked
out great they gave it to us for free
the local telephone company the mayor of
the city of Tacloban actually gave me a
motorcycle which I put stickers on and I
was using that until the end of the
mission and by the end of the mission
and we got so friendly with the private
sector with the army I could hitchhike a
flight on a Huey to move stuff from
point A to point B and that was pretty
cool
so anyway said a couple of points during
this whole mission there were some
doubts there are some doubts about
whether I’m being too reckless riding
around on a motorcycle with no insurance
with no helmet with with no local
driving license same thing with the
helicopters and then
you know there was this balance with her
yeah it’s working let’s continue doing
it or it’s not a hundred percent safe
let’s not do it it was this calculated
risk they’re coming out of there
we usually have debriefings where we
discuss what went wrong during a mission
won’t with it right and so on and when
asked about all of these things that
happened I say it was luck
it was just pure blind luck that I saw
this cable and it was pure luck that we
found this hotel that was empty and pure
luck that there was this motorcycle by
the road and that I was able to get it
running and at some point one of the
bosses said no man you’re wrong it’s not
luck it’s an opportunity that you saw
and recognized as an opportunity
it’s the guts you have to act right then
and there without asking us for
permission without going through
different time zones all the bureaucracy
and everything right and basically you
made your own look that those were the
words he said this mission cemented my
reputation as a fixer within the team
because I would get things done one way
or another things would just happen and
the next major mission I was in was in
2015 in Kathmandu the there was a huge
huge earthquake about eight point
something and a lot of people were
injured there was a lot of damage to the
town and even worse up in the mountains
and getting from point A to point B was
almost impossible this is the foot of
the Himalayas people you can imagine
it’s all mountains and canyons and stuff
so I was the first one on the ground
partly because the previous planes were
all
turned around because they couldn’t land
at the Kathmandu Airport my pilot was
luckily stubborn and he just circled
around the airport for a while a while
being five hours and we weren’t sure we
could even make it to the closest
airport but then it opened up and we
landed and I was there the day after the
earthquake so immediately I started
looking around how to set up
communications and we used whatever we
could this is a picture for Buffs which
I climbed on so that I could fix an HF
antenna on two strings between that
light pole and another one that you
can’t see here that’s a satellite dish
that was mounted and put up on top of a
transport container and it worked
it would make a bit link more than
enough other locations were more
difficult because of all the mountains
you have to place it in very specific
positions the satellites because
otherwise you can’t see the satellite
from the mountains and those are the
tallest mountains on the planet and in
some cases we even use some very
extravagant transportation means that’s
an elephant seriously
it’s huge so anyway landing on that
Airport there was nobody waiting for me
and I didn’t speak the language so just
looking around and then this little
Indian guy comes up with with a camera
and says good evening sir can I take
your picture and I’m like okay you speak
the English how good yes you can take
all the pictures you want but I’m
grabbing your hand and I’m not letting
go until I get stuff sorted out so with
his help we found a major of the Gurkhas
who agreed to rent me his pickup truck
and and that was the start of
we managed to find this area that had
all these containers and all these rub
holes that were in the containers all
these prefabricated buildings were in
the containers so we could use all that
it was right next to the airport which
was very convenient and I immediately
noticed that same night actually when I
was playing with a satellite dish that
we won’t have enough bandwidth for all
the people who will be coming in because
I was expecting hundreds if not
thousands of relief workers
humanitarians who come in within the
next couple of days so once again with
my translator and with the help of the
local office we organized the meeting
with the local telecommunication
companies that’s like orange and Claro
here right there were two companies
there as well fierce competitors but I
was lucky again that the chief technical
officer of one of the companies was a
Hungarian guy now I come from the same
part of Europe and when you are way out
there that kind of means something
there’s an immediate bond so I convinced
the guy to give me 50 SIM cards which I
will be able to hand out to all the
humanitarians as they arrived at the
airport so that they could talk to each
other because in Katmandu the
communications were ok
there was cellular telephones there was
even internet on the phones you could
plug in your laptop and use this as a
hotspot and get your job done now with
these 50 cards I went to the other
company and they gave me a hundred you
know to top the competition and the next
thing I did was I got one of them in a
couple of days they showed up and I
could remove that satellite because they
brought a fiber optic cable both to our
location and to the airport and that
worked out great right the thing is this
Hungarian guy and most of the technical
people that I worked with very closely
there left that same afternoon
they left Kathmandu they went out to
filled all over the country to fix up
the wrong towers sub offices and whatnot
so my point here is again yeah lucky you
make your own look but I took the
initiative there I went there
immediately there’s a small window of
time when you can act and you either do
it or you don’t and if you do it you
reap the rewards possibly which happened
in this case and that worked great yeah
this is also Nepal remember I started
with my fear of heights I had to cross
that to get from one part of a village
to another that’s what their bridges
looked like like I said I’m still afraid
of heights I even got the job in a way
due to this fear of heights the phone
rang at 4:00 in the morning and I picked
it up and somebody says are you afraid
of heights I’m like what the hell who is
this it’s 4:00 in the morning tell me
man are you afraid of heights
this is so-and-so oh okay I remember it
was a guy from the UN who had offered me
the job earlier and I’m like dude can I
think about this what do you mean I’m
not afraid of heights look man I need to
know now I want to send you out to
Colombia tomorrow you’re gonna be going
up in the mountains into Farkus
territory you’re gonna be climbing
towers are you afraid yes or no
there’s an opportunity there right so I
had the guts and I said I don’t know but
I’m willing to try
I ended up going to Colombia for my
first mission which was cool they needed
somebody who could speak Spanish
apparently and my team leader fell
through a roof broke his leg close to
the end of the mission so I ended up
even being a team leader on my first
mission which is quite a big thing in
any case that was the beginning of a
great job and I think that this job with
all its opportunities it’s very much
like our life every day brings you
opportunities every day you have a
chance to do something my job allowed me
to visit
a huge portion of the world 76 countries
and some which I can’t even find on the
map anymore that’s your map fill it up
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