Fight For Your Right
https://youtu.be/yu9cUsRDj2c
Good morning. This is Bill Chan again with The 5 Elements of a Fulfilling Life at 5Element5.com at Hyatt Regency today in Orlando.
I'm here because we got a mandatory evacuation on Monday due to the hurricane where I lived in Tampa, Florida.
It was scheduled to land in Tampa on Thursday, so the government put out a mandatory evacuation, and we left immediately at 2:30 on Monday.
We went Inland to Orlando, Florida, where my son lives, and we checked into a Hyatt Regency in Orlando, a beautiful hotel with all the amenities that you could ever want; a colossal convention center right next to it, and it has a beautiful swimming pool, a lovely Garden, lots Terrace and then a professional gym.
The gym was the best thing that attracted me to this hotel, and we've been here since Monday, so today's Saturday, and we have been here five days now, actually six days since today's Sunday, so we've been here for six days.
We're driving back tonight; I just wanted to tell you about an incident here.
While we were staying here, my son had lunch buffet at the restaurant in the hotel, and he had chicken soup where we didn't; my wife and I didn't have the chicken soup, and he got sick from food poisoning, so he was vomiting, and he was having diarrheas all day.
He rested a lot the next day, but he was still frail. We talked to the restaurant F&B manager, and he told me that he'd waive the lunch for us, okay fine, but later for two nights, we heard this crazy dizzy music, it's like lounge music from downstairs at the swimming pool area that kept us up all night.
After the first night, I came down to complain to the manager, who said it could be your neighbors playing loud music. If it happens again, could you call security, and they'll take care of it?
The next day the music woke me up at three o'clock in the morning, I called security, and they took care of it, but I couldn't fall back to sleep again; I didn't know where it was coming from, so I went downstairs to do my tai chi at the swimming pool area, and I heard this music from the swimming pool, it was the swimming pool music, is the same music that was playing upstairs it I heard on the 18th floor.
I told the manager about the music keeping me up all night, waking me up at three o'clock in the morning, and falling back to sleep at seven, I even missed my meeting the following day, so I wasn't happy about it.
She agreed to give us two free nights next time we stay there and waive one of the nights on our current invoice.
Then at 4 pm, she called me and said can you come downstairs to talk to me, as I went downstairs, she said, "I talked to my manager, and she told me that we're gonna give you a one-night free Penthouse."
I go, wow, that's nice, so we went upstairs to the penthouse, and it's a beautiful, beautiful room; I meant the living room is so huge, and the bedroom was lovely, it had walk-in closets, even espresso machine in the kitchen area, and a fabulous view, the lake view was gorgeous.
I love it! What I'm saying is sometimes, when things don't go our way in the environment, you have to talk about it; you got to complain about it, and if you don't complain about it, look, you're not going to get compensated. For a four or five-star hotel, you should expect food safety, you should expect a good night of rest, and if you're not getting that, you should come down and talk to the management about it because you pay for it; you have the right to a nice restaurant.
You should also complain if you have horrible food because they might make you something Gourmet, right? You pay a premium for it, and you deserve the right to have an enjoyable, beautiful experience.
The second thing I want to relate to you about is safety, the minute the government announced a mandatory evacuation, we started packing, and by 2:30 pm, we were out of Tampa; it was scheduled to land in Tampa at five o'clock Tuesday.
If it landed first in Tampa, it would have been the worst devastation, I mean, it would have been horrible, so I packed up all of our stuff, I took pictures of all our furniture that we couldn't take out, I took out as much as I could in my car, loaded it up and drove out of Tampa, I droved to Orlando.
A friend of mine decided to stay; he was lucky because the hurricane landed in Fort Myers, which just about wiped out parts of Fort Myers.
We were living at the Zone, which is by the pier, we're very close to the water.
He could have been destroyed if the hurricane landed in Temple; nothing is more important than your and your family's safety.
So no matter how much it costs, you must go to a higher land area, rent a nice little motel and keep your family safe.
That's all I'm saying if the local government calls for mandatory evacuations, get out of there, and don't put your life at risk.
My friend called a couple of days later, and he said, "well, we're okay, we're fortunate; the only thing that happened was the power went out for a few days, which was a little bit of inconvenience, but it was okay, it could have been a lot worse."
What I did immediately after hearing about the mandatory evacuation was to call the insurance company right away.
We have renter's insurance, and they told me, "you get three thousand dollars to spend on whatever you want to keep yourself safe; find a hotel and accommodation; it's all covered."
So why take the risk? Why take the chance, right? Please take all the photographs of all your valuables in your apartment then you can claim for it afterward. If it's damaged, always have insurance.
So be safe, okay, and always know you're right! Thank you!