Author: MatrixTransform

You’re the farm

I was stooged again by the missus and ended up at Southland Shopping Centre on Sunday.
She’s got a way of making lunch not seem like shopping and I fell for it again like the pasty I am.

So there’s a new Japanese that seems nice and the missus told me about the robots that bring the food like its a good thing.
We went there.
Bad move.

This joint’s automated and the first thing that happens is we get instructions from one of the humanoid kiddies:

1: select from the touch-screen
2: add to the cart
3: send the order
4: your food will be delivered
5: and pay at the counter when yr done

Then she gestures with an open hand to the cash register where there’s another possible humanoid with a permanent grin.

No immediate threat, I thought to myself but that was when I noticed what was behind her on the shelf. One of those Asian gold cats with the kitten-eyes and an arm that’s waving waving … always waving.

So while waiting for food and with one eye on that freaky cat, I watched.

All the actual human kiddies stood around essentially doing nothing until a robot arrived and then they unpacked the food dispassionately. No visible emotion, it was almost like they were trying to out-robot the robots.

Cold like the pot-stickers ultimately were.

A returning robot smacked straight into the chair leg of the table beside us.
I’m sitting there smiling at the farce and saying “stupid bloody robots” … just a little bit too loud.

And the missus is cringing because she knows that I could equally be commenting about:
a: the wait staff
b: the machines
c: the customers
d: the sheer absurdity of it all

But this old Polish bloke beside me at the next table is chuckling because he can overhear me.

Looking at him and smiling, I peck peck pecked the touchscreen for more food. Raising my eye-brows I said, “I feel like a chicken”, and exaggerated the pecking motion with my hand.

The bloke’s wetting himself while his wife is pretending to search her hand-bag and mine is pretending that this isn’t really happening.

Maybe its my weird sense of humour but I think its hilarious that I was actually ordering more chicken at the time.

Australian media blockades the truth

As I write this there’s a convoy of trucks that are effectively blockading Ottawa, Canada. It has been brewing for a week now and has been pretty hard to miss but then, I don’t take any of my news from local news sources.

On Friday I worked with my business partner who is a very clever Elec Eng who takes his news from ABC, Ch7 or Fairfax. When I asked what he thought of the Canadian truckies, he just looked at me with a complete blank.

He’d never heard of it … not even a whisper.

So today I did some Googling (for what that’s worth) and confined the searches to Australian sites. Tried Microsoft Edge too but I got nothing except for a single mention from news.com.au

Media blackout.

How is it that such a significant event is effectively wiped from the Australian consciousness?
All of them … all at once?

CBC News in the US reckons it’s the Russians of course.

So how does everybody feel about being lied to on a national scale?

Are we feeling safer yet?

Keep it real

A friend just went through a rough trot with the virus and she posted this up Facebook.

Years ago, she came here as a 20yo from Bosnia without a word of English and I’ll wager she was on my father’s bus out of Portsea when she did.

The size of her intellect and wit is only exceeded by that of her heart.

This may take a couple of reads to digest before the enormity of what isn’t being said falls on your understanding.

Without giving anything away, here it is.

—

I just want to say thank you to all my family and friends for being there and caring so much for me.

Thank you for all the soups and goodie drop offs. You know who you are and without you I would have been screwed.

For everyone that offered to help and who was there to positively surround me with their kindness and loving energy I am forever grateful. When you’re down on your knees struggling for the next breath all on your own, love and kindness from others will get through hard times.

Continue reading “Keep it real”

Outside the People’s Republic

We recently crossed into NSW for a family thing and what struck me most about life outside the walls was that despite the broad adoption of masking and QR kabuki, there was no wide-eyed fervour like there is in Vic.

Sure, some places were stricter than others on QR and green tick-ish-ness but nonetheless we ate a counter meal (country chicken parmi and the salad even had the signature twist of orange on top) without actually flashing a pox-pass

Similarly, we had a private sit-down luncheon at a friend’s restaurant, and nobody asked for a tick.

Maybe because we fit in with the locals, we got some slack? Dunno, but the whole experience was that it was much more laid back.

Continue reading “Outside the People’s Republic”

The Quest

Thinking of my boy who now has the requisite 2 kids and a mortgage and yesterday’s constrained xmas visitation to the new flat which they’ve just taken possession of.

We had to do the Rapid Antigen tests which were mandated or else we’d be the ones that ruined xmas. Of course, both the missus and I failed … well, we got zero which, these days is apparently a pass.

Anyways, it settled them all down except the daughter in law. Beautiful, creative, and intelligent, she still had to have the windows and doors open anyway. I suppose it was to give the virus easy ingress and egress and no reason Continue reading “The Quest”