Can you survive a flight without being connected to the internet? Will you surrender your phone to enjoy a meal with your significant other? Have we escaped an escape room together and what was our lost episode 10 really about? Perhaps there's more questions than answers?
✍🏻 View the transcript for this episode
Can you survive a flight without being connected to the internet? Will you surrender your phone to enjoy a meal with your significant other? Have we escaped an escape room together and what was our lost episode 10 really about? Perhaps there's more questions than answers?
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Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Georgie 0:08
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Toast & Roast. Hope you didn’t miss us the past week that we didn’t have an episode. I am, Georgie and I am here with my co host, Geoff.
Geoff 0:24
Hello. Yes. We took a un-scheduled planned unplanned break. Kind of.
Georgie 0:34
What, what makes you say it’s unplanned though? Cuz...
Geoff 0:38
I mean like, I guess just in the middle of the of the first like one of the episodes realised that, hey shit, we’re not we’re not gonna be able to record one, cuz yeah my parents came to town and you got a bit sick. A little bit.
Georgie 1:02
Just a little bit.
Geoff 1:04
With the big C, OVD. Hey you know me, I got the the C-O-V-I-D.
Georgie 1:12
No, no, I have a friend who called “the coco” and I was like that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard
Geoff 1:20
The coco!
Georgie 1:21
Because I’m so sick of people calling it a Rona and it just sounds really bad.
Geoff 1:26
Oh, Rona. Yeah, didn’t sound great.
Georgie 1:29
Yeah.
Geoff 1:32
They—have you seen Encanto?
Georgie 1:33
No, don’t—but well, actually, I don’t even care. But I probably will see it one day, but I just haven’t planned to see—
Geoff 1:40
One day. Yeah. Okay, that’s fair. But the there’s a song in it.
Georgie 1:47
Is this the Bruno one?
Geoff 1:49
The Bruno one, yeah. And there’s this. I guess you’d call them a YouTube family musical esque family. But they they do a parody, no. Cover, parody, rendition, whatever you want to call it of the Bruno song. But replacing lyrics about COVID. So they like called it “COVID no no”. So they’re like, “We don’t talk about COVID, no, no”. And—
Georgie 2:21
That’s great.
Geoff 2:22
It’s basically lyrics about how everyone’s weirdly stopped talking about COVID.
Georgie 2:29
Yeah.
Geoff 2:30
And yeah, everyone’s kind of like, ready to live with it.
Georgie 2:36
Yeah.
Geoff 2:36
But yeah.
Georgie 2:36
I think it’s because there’s a lot of people have gotten it now. People know people who have it, haha, I know myself everybody.
Geoff 2:45
But you’re the you’re the only person I know, directly that has had it.
Georgie 2:51
Yeah I guess, maybe I should—no, actually, I know some colleagues who had it before me, like in the past couple of months. But no one has really talked about it in detail recently, I think because everyone’s just you know, tired of, of hearing about it. And obviously, this is why we didn’t talk about it in general, on the podcast, because people, people probably get all the information from you know, other podcasts maybe or the news, or they’ve just heard—
Geoff 3:21
Or their friends.
Georgie 3:22
Yeah, but I will just like I just wanted to mention as a, not really as a PSA, but as a thing that I learned is that like, yes, I can see how people have died from this because because I thought it was... I mean, it was like it was, it wasn’t like a really bad cold, but, I am vaccinated, right, and you can imagine people who are not vaccinated or people who are immunocompromised would have had a potentially had a much harder time. Because I consider myself to be in pretty good health. So.
Geoff 3:58
Yeah, I think when you were describing some of the symptoms and your feelings around it, I guess like anyone with mildly worse respiratory, like, capabilities would have struggled way harder.
Georgie 4:17
Yeah, yeah.
Geoff 4:20
But yeah, I think people who haven’t had COVID I kind of a minority at this stage I think.
Georgie 4:26
Yeah.
Geoff 4:27
Like there was the International Woman’s Day high tea or whatever. Not even high tea, let’s call it morning tea, morning tea. It’s so weird, we got the invite—
Georgie 4:35
It’s not high, it’s just basic. It’s just tea.
Geoff 4:38
Yeah, no one’s on weed. No one was smoking weed. Funny I went to high tea today. But. So, so we got the I think we got a email about it. It was a brun—it started like a brunch. And then somewhere along the lines the invite changed to a morning tea but I didn’t notice. So like I looked at all the stuff they brought and, I was like, wait a second, this is not brunch. It’s just a bunch of crackers, some dips and like, there was, there was no T involved, but you know, morning tea. And then we got to talking a little bit about how everyone—I mean, there was only seven or six other people there—five or six other people.
Georgie 5:17
Everyone. Yeah.
Geoff 5:19
But, but five, five, or six, because the sixth person was actually one of my friends that I play board games every month with, but the other five have all had COVID already. My friend.
Georgie 5:19
Yes, a large percentage of who was there. Yeah.
Geoff 5:40
We were like, what have we rolled into? Like? I don’t want to be in a room with like a bunch of people who’s had COVID. I’m sure it’s fine.
Georgie 5:51
But they’re immune.
Geoff 5:52
Yeah, I mean.
Georgie 5:54
Yeah.
Geoff 5:56
Like, technically, they’re fine. But it’s still like, Oh, I’m a minority.
Georgie 6:02
But also, like, how long ago? Did they have it kind of?
Geoff 6:05
Probably months?
Georgie 6:06
Because I know someone who got it early on in like 2020. And then they got it like last year? Probably a different strain.
Geoff 6:13
Yeah.
Georgie 6:14
Anyway we’ve hit our quota for like—
Geoff 6:17
Yeah. We hit our quota. But I mean, like one of the one of the guys said, like, oh, man, yeah. I had COVID. And, I mean, I was hanging out with all my friends, like, every weekend and partying and I’m like, oh well duh, you would have gotten it like, you like purposefully increased your chances. But yeah, I think generally, like, seems fine. Right? You You’re, you’re fine.
Georgie 6:45
Yeah. But I do like, kind of, what’s the word? Recommend, you know if, like to not, to not go and hang out? Yeah, I recommend. But it’s also like, I think we probably got because we went to a concert and there were a lot of people and that was our first time going to like a, more densely populated, densely populated concert with more people, people but people were like still trying to—
Geoff 7:11
Who was the—
Georgie 7:12
The Violent Soho concert. So don’t judge my taste in music everybody. But—
Geoff 7:15
Violent Soho?
Georgie 7:17
More like Violent So-no!
Geoff 7:21
Well, like Violent co—coco!
Georgie 7:27
Yeah, so they, they sing grunge rock. So you can imagine there’s a lot of people like not just singing but shout singing? Shout—shousing? No, that doesn’t. Singing loudly.
Geoff 7:41
You mean, shaoxing wine?
Georgie 7:45
Singing loudly, right. So like, because because Nick and I have always obviously been to like, we’ve been out to like, bars here and there. Just for like a drink. And we’ve also been to the gym. Probably came in contact with COVID. But then probably at this concert, it was just like, everything’s happening. Everyone’s singing loudly and we’re being even more exposed. So, ah, it is what it is. But recommend like, still keeping your distance from people, things like that. And avoid, avoiding getting it if you, if you can.
Geoff 8:23
Yeah, it’s not comfortable as far as it sounds. But yeah, so went to high tea today.
Georgie 8:33
Was it a real one? That was—was this one a real one?
Geoff 8:36
No, we tried another, tried another very... Yeah, you’re right. The last time talking about high tea was like the durian high tea, I think.
Georgie 8:44
Yeah The Grounds has a high tea.
Geoff 8:45
This one was very... sorry?
Georgie 8:48
The Grounds has a high tea.
Geoff 8:50
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we still haven’t gotten to a generic high tea because this one’s also Asian inspired. Where they have like—
Georgie 8:58
Yeah.
Geoff 8:59
Hainanese chicken like, nigiris.
Georgie 9:02
At a tea? What is this?
Geoff 9:04
Yeah, yeah, this is madness, right. We didn’t get any tiny sandwiches. I was a bit. I was a bit annoyed.
Georgie 9:11
Large sandwiches?
Geoff 9:13
No, they didn’t give us any sandwiches.
Georgie 9:16
This is not a high tea, Geoff.
Geoff 9:18
Yeah, I know. The one of the things on the website was a kaya toast. And I was like, I’m down.
Georgie 9:26
Oh my god, yeah.
Geoff 9:26
Right. Right. They didn’t have it. They changed the menu. And they didn’t update the website. And I was like, so I’m not getting a kaya toast.
Georgie 9:39
Do you know anywhere here that does it?
Geoff 9:42
Yeah, Killiney, so that’s a that’s a Singaporean coffee house, so kopitiam, in Westfield top floor.
Georgie 9:54
Of where?
Geoff 9:54
Yeah. That that place does—
Georgie 9:56
Like in the city?
Geoff 9:57
Oh, Sydney, Westfield. Sorry.
Georgie 9:58
Oh shit, nice. Okay, I need to check it out.
Geoff 10:01
They do it. There’s one in Central Park, I think just in the back. But man, it is expensive like something like—
Georgie 10:15
It’s like they almost have a monopoly
Geoff 10:18
$7.50? Yeah, something something like $7.50 for like a cup—like a like a kaya toast sandwich. It’s ridiculous.
Georgie 10:31
Ah... $7.50? I mean it could be worse?
Geoff 10:32
It’s bread and kaya, come on! Not—by the way. See—$4.80 actually, not bad.
Georgie 10:39
Okay, no, no, that’s fine Geoff.
Geoff 10:42
That’s kind of okay. So for those who don’t know, kaya is sort of like a pandan-esque. And if you don’t know what pandan is, then I can’t really help you.
Georgie 10:53
I would describe it as a bit like, it’s a bit coconutty?
Geoff 10:58
Yeah, actually, you’re right. Yeah, it’s like, it’s a coconut jam. Kay... kaya’s main ingredient is coconut jam.
Georgie 11:05
I need to tell you a thing about—
Geoff 11:07
Yeah.
Georgie 11:07
About, about pandan that I felt ripped off. Okay, so you know what a green tea latte is right. Matcha.
Geoff 11:18
Yeah.
Georgie 11:18
For people, not matcha, “matcha”.
Geoff 11:21
Yeah.
Georgie 11:24
So the real matcha doesn’t have—isn’t sweetened. You can get sweetened, right? But the real stuff is meant to be bitter AF and a lot of people don’t like it.
Geoff 11:36
Yeah I hate it.
Georgie 11:38
I don’t mind it. I like tea. And I kind of like the bitterness. But yeah, but adding some of some sweetener like is, is how I kind of prefer it. So Starbucks does a green tea latte, which if you tell them you don’t want it sweet, it is kind of actually okay, it’s obviously not authentic. But it is as close to like, bitter matcha as, as a commercial Starbucks like as a commercial coffee chain can do. And a lot of people who work at Starbucks will tell you that every Starbucks around the world is basically the same the recipes are same, the coffee is the same, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I believe this because I used to be, I don’t know, a Starbucks hoe maybe. But um—
Geoff 12:26
Haha, is that something you people get called? Starbucks hoe?
Georgie 12:29
Oh, it’s just you know, you use the word hoe because you—anyway, I go to Indonesia, and they have Starbucks there. And I wanted to get the green tea latte. Like an iced latte or whatever. Just wanted to get green tea latte of some kind, it was probably, I think it was iced. And—
Geoff 12:52
Yeah, I get a double choc chip frappe.
Georgie 12:54
Wow full on. I mean, like you kind of, I mean, when I go to Starbucks I kind of want to get the, the the calorie bomb—the, yeah, the big, the desserty drinks. Anyway, like yeah, in Indonesia. I go and get one and I asked for it with with soy milk, which they have, all good. But I’m drinking this iced green tea thing and I’m like, something doesn’t like taste like green tea. It’s like a little bit sweet. And I don’t think I adjusted the sweetness, but still, it just doesn’t taste like matcha, and like it was almost like to the end of the cup. And I was like, holy shit. This stuff is like green pandan. This stuff is green pandan milk. And I was like, I feel so like cheated. But at the same time I’m like, that’s kind of interesting and cool. But like, dude, matcha and pand—what?! So it was pandan like milk or something.
Geoff 13:57
That’s strange. We we had, we decided to go a little strange to that tea for high tea, because Dorinda doesn’t like tea and neither do I. So we picked this tea that was supposed to be coconut and truffle flavored.
Georgie 14:16
Wait truffle is in like chocolate truffle, not mushroom truffle. Yeah.
Geoff 14:21
No, mushroom truffle.
Georgie 14:22
Wait what?
Geoff 14:22
In the tea. Yeah.
Georgie 14:24
Oh, ew.
Geoff 14:27
Yeah. It tasted more coconutty than anything else. I don’t think we could taste very much truffle. So it’s I think it’s a good thing we couldn’t taste the truffle because truffle in tea is kind of weird, right?
Georgie 14:37
Yeah.
Geoff 14:39
But man, I love kaya, it’s it’s so good. And the reason why you would actually go to a restaurant to get kaya toast is because they they put a block... I think maybe if you really thought about it, maybe it’s maybe one centimeter block of like cheese.
Georgie 15:02
Yes.
Geoff 15:02
Like a square, one centimetre high block of cheese. And I think it might be at least five by five square. Anyways, they put this in the middle of your of your kaya, like between two pieces of bread, kaya. And they put that big block of cheese—not cheese—butter in the middle. And you get to the restaurant because they’ll do this. And if you did it at home, I think you, they cool the, they cool the butter down to a point where it’s like a little bit hard. So nobody’s fridge, like, cools butter to that like, like hardness I think. Any case. It’s it’s weirdly specialised. And you think that why would you ever go to a restaurant to get it? Trust me, you go to a restaurant to get this. It might not be $4.80 worth, but.
Georgie 15:54
It’s because of the way you describing it. It’s like a, I think it’s like a, like Asian people be like, nostalgia, etc. But then you just describe it it’s like, it’s just... oh speaking of toast.
Geoff 16:10
It’s just—
Georgie 16:11
My friend took me to this, some toast cafe in San Francisco. And it was like—
Geoff 16:20
Oh, I think I went to one too.
Georgie 16:21
It was so bouje, have you been to it? I can’t remember what’s called, I think it was called like Mill Cafe.
Geoff 16:25
I think it was just called, real grilled cheese. Mine was just grilled cheese. And you’d go there. And they just made grilled cheese toast.
Georgie 16:32
Oh no, this has other toast. But it was like really thick. But it was essentially, the way my friend put it, because my friend is originally from Sydney... He said, yeah, it’s just like bouje toast. And it’s just funny because you know, Australians started the whole brunch thing. And you go somewhere else where they kind of—I don’t want to shit on them, right, but you just go somewhere else where they try and do a brunch, and it’s just—I don’t know. But at the same time, we are such cunts, man, like we just we put like some, we artfully put slices of like strawberries on like a pretty ordinary stack of pancakes. And then we make our homemade caramel sauce and put on top and we go yeah, that’s like $22. So so we are a little bit, you know, we made some overpriced breakfast items. And we continue to do so. And then everyone’s copying us. I mean, if that’s not like, some kind of capitalism.
Geoff 17:34
It’s yeah, brunch has gotten out of hand. Let’s be real. But I mean, I like going out and having french toast—
Georgie 17:43
French toast is good.
Geoff 17:45
Good old, good old French toast. But I think it’s been coming pretty generic. That was fucking annoying. I got a phone call on the one time I don’t want my Mac and every thought that Apple things to react, everything reacted. And then I was like shit, and then it cut off the bloody recording.
Georgie 18:07
I hate how it’s like it’s supposed to be in sync, but it’s also not. It’s like you get it on your watch. And then your phone does the same thing. And then your MacBook in the other room does the same thing.
Geoff 18:16
It’s like one at a time.
Georgie 18:17
You’re getting a phone call. Yeah, actually speaking of phones ringing.
Geoff 18:22
Yeah.
Georgie 18:24
This is this is a really huge pet peeve of mine. So on a flight, as in an airplane—
Geoff 18:31
Oh, God.
Georgie 18:32
Hahaha. You have to put your phone in flight mode for the duration of the flight. And they tell you this, so they remind you this. And then when you land, there’s an announcement and they say you know, you can’t take your seatbelt off yet or whatever, please wait until you’re told to do so the light goes off or whatever. But because you’ve landed on the tarmac, and the engine is off or turning off or whatever, you’re allowed to turn your phone back on. And this is my least favourite thing ever. But even before that, just when the fucking wheels touch the tarmac and the plane comes to a stop. Everybody turns their phone on. And you hear, bloop blooop, bloop, bloop, all over the motherfucking plane. And yeah, I just don’t understand. Like okay, one I completely understand. You want to turn your phone back on. I do it too. But why can’t you do it on silent? I just don’t get it? Like read all your messages and all that stuff. Like get back connected online etc. Go and tweet your plane rating plane landing rating.
Geoff 19:46
Oh my god, do you do plane landing ratings?
Georgie 19:50
I do. I do. But yeah, but like, I’ll let me finish my rant first, but um, it’s just it’s so irritating because I feel like it further perpetuates the fact that you couldn’t stand being on a flight, um, not connected digitally.
Geoff 20:06
Like, I always say, like, people don’t believe me when I say that I can go without incidents. But then I look at them.
Georgie 20:17
I don’t know why people don’t believe anybody.
Geoff 20:19
Yeah.
Georgie 20:20
I feel like it’s easy to believe, like, no one’s gonna die.
Geoff 20:24
I mean, like, Geoff, you spend all your time in front of the computer. You’re like the most highly connected person I know. You’ve got the thing on your wrist, you got thing in your pocket. You carry a bloody laptop, everywhere you go. Not everywhere I go. But like, anytime we’re going on a play and you got a laptop iPad, you got every fucking electronic thing under the sun. And you’re telling me that you can go without them? Yeah, it’s not that hard to be honest. Yeah, you just turn off the internet. And then you like, like, to be honest with you. I’m on a train. I spend five minutes looking at my phone. And then like, the rest of it is not not even looking at my phone, because I run out of things. Like I don’t have anything to scroll anymore. Twitter will get boring at some stage. And if you do it frequently enough—I catch up on Twitter. I don’t have like a million followers—following a million people. But yeah, I don’t necessarily feel like I need to check it all the time. But then I look at them, right? Those people who are like “Geoff, you can’t go without internet”. And then I’m looking at you like, “No, YOU can’t go without internet”. Yeah, you’re the one who can’t sit and have a conversation with me without looking at your phone. Or like the moment anything goes silent. It’s sort of like everyone’s got their like, phones out as soon as they’re not interested in the conversation.
Georgie 21:53
Do you ever go out to eat with someone? Or a few people? And then somebody goes to the toilet? And then the person at the table who’s still at the table who didn’t go to the toilet, takes out their phone?
Geoff 22:08
Yeah, I think so. I think that’s reasonable. Like they’re in the bathroom. And then—
Georgie 22:14
It’s funny.
Geoff 22:15
And then you text them. Hahaha.
Georgie 22:16
That’s the best thing I’ve heard actually. I did not expect you to say that at all. But I was listening to a podcast and a this woman, which is by, it’s called, so it’s the only one listen to, it used to be called Becoming Better. And now it’s called Time and Attention. So the couple who do it are husband and wife.
Geoff 22:42
They’re alive?
Georgie 22:43
Like—yeah.
Geoff 22:45
They’re alive. Sure.
Georgie 22:46
They’re alive.
Geoff 22:47
Okay. Just checking. I thought you said “they’re alive”. And I’m like, Yeah, okay, sure.
Georgie 22:53
Did I say that?
Geoff 22:54
I think you said they’re live. But it sounded like you said, they’re alive? I don’t know. Listen to the recording again.
Georgie 23:04
I didn’t say anything with the word live. Anyway. They went for dinner. I think it was, if I, if I’m quoting wrong. Well, oh, well, they can get some credit for the story. I think the husband went to the bathroom. And the wife was just there at the table. Restaurant, they were eating it. And she just kind of sat there and like, she just people watched or whatever, or just, you know, just waited for her husband to come back. And somebody from like the table across, like, commended her for not taking out her phone while her partner had gone to the toilet. And she was like, it’s no big deal.
Geoff 23:38
Yeah. I mean.
Georgie 23:39
Cuz I mean, if you don’t have any—I mean, yeah. Oh, speaking of phones, and restaurants and going to, I think I told you, I went to Bistecca. Yeah. And they take your phone. And they put it—
Geoff 23:52
What? No, they take your phone at Bistecca?
Georgie 23:58
Yeah. And then we also went to their sister restaurant called The Gidley. So we went there like a few weeks ago. And they they do this thing to do the same thing, right? The guy was—
Geoff 24:06
You can’t take my phone.
Georgie 24:09
They just, they just, they don’t take it. They tell you can you put it in this box? And give it to you often. Yeah, they want people to be present.
Geoff 24:18
But what?
Georgie 24:21
And the guy was like, we can’t, we have learned of two years of doing this. Adults cannot be trusted to not check their phones. But I mean, like it’s, it kind of makes sense. And the funny thing is, the first I heard the first I’d ever heard of restaurants suggesting or even having this kind of premise, put your phone in a box and, you know, be present and not use your phone while you’re eating was about probably 12 years ago. And so like 12 years ago was a long time. I think now it’s less, it’s less weird. You still say this to people. And it’s odd. I just remember like when we went to Bistecca we were telling Nick’s parents about it. And Nick was like, Oh, well, we don’t have any pictures because they took our phones, they thought it was, they were like flabbergasted. I don’t I just don’t think it’s a big deal. Like, when you first hear it, you’re like, oh, okay, and then.
Geoff 25:16
Oh, I don’t know.
Georgie 25:17
Food’s so good anyway.
Geoff 25:18
I don’t know.
Georgie 25:20
Oh, you can’t really live without the internet. You can’t live without the internet.
Geoff 25:32
I mean—
Georgie 25:32
You lied, Geoff!
Geoff 25:32
It’s about, it’s about handing over a piece of technology, which is—
Georgie 25:33
Surrender.
Geoff 25:33
Like, pretty expensive. And it is, are arguably pretty important. It’s got a lot of documents, it’s got a lot of, you know.
Georgie 25:44
But they literally, they literally get the box with a bag or whatever. They open it, and you put your phone in there. They just put the lid on top. And then they just put it away.
Geoff 25:54
It’s like a coat check. I get that I get that. But what I probably accept is a box, like at the table, more than a box—
Georgie 26:03
That’s what they used to—I mean, yeah.
Geoff 26:05
You’re right. They’re probably like, we don’t trust the adults because they can’t like take get their, like let their hands, keep their hands off their phone. But it’s still their phone. I kind of get it’s coat check kind of thing. I guess.
Georgie 26:18
Actually, I think in Bistecca, they gave us the key and they said in an emergency, you can.
Geoff 26:23
Yeah. See, that’s the thing, right? What if there’s an emergency?
Georgie 26:26
But at the Gidley. They didn’t.
Geoff 26:28
You’re getting a phone call. You have to take the phone call, and I get the whole...
Georgie 26:34
but then why would you be going to fine dining? When you’re expecting a call from like...
Geoff 26:38
You don’t know, like, what if someone has a stroke or something? You’re like, I don’t know. They’re gonna have a stroke.
Georgie 26:45
Well, let’s just admit you’re addicted to your phone, Geoff.
Geoff 26:48
I mean, um, you know, escape rooms. I have to hand over that my phone to like before going in escape.
Georgie 26:54
Yeah because you’ll cheat.
Geoff 26:54
Yeah you’ll fucking cheat. Yeah, God, I want to—
Georgie 26:59
Actually I went to one I went to one, where um, I don’t think you had to surrender your phone.
Geoff 27:04
Yeah, of course. I got handcuffed. Can’t keep your phone when you’re handcuffed?
Georgie 27:10
No, I mean like, as in they didn’t ask us to put it away or whatever. But I think the reception was so bad in there anyway, that why would you cheat?
Geoff 27:17
Yeah, that’s true.
Georgie 27:19
I think that’s the one I did with you.
Geoff 27:20
Did we do an escape room? I don’t remember.
Georgie 27:23
It was for my birthday. Like, years back.
Geoff 27:24
I don’t remember going to an escape room with you.
Georgie 27:26
With Monica and Nick and, and Phuong. And his girlfriend.
Geoff 27:32
Oh, yeah, was that for your birthday huh? Yeah.
Georgie 27:36
I believe.
Geoff 27:37
That’s right.
Georgie 27:38
Wasn’t it your idea? Your idea.
Geoff 27:41
I mean, back then I suggested escape rooms for everything. I’ve been to a lot to be honest.
Georgie 27:45
It’s so good.
Geoff 27:46
Yeah.
Georgie 27:46
It’s good. Yeah.
Geoff 27:48
I’m guessing you kept the photo, because I remember I remember vaguely not accepting the photo, because you know, I don’t have physical things.
Georgie 28:00
Because you’re a minimalist. Actually, it might even be here under my desk. I’m gonna try, I’m gonna try and find it.
Geoff 28:06
I remember, I remember back then escape rooms was was like the thing to do. And I would, I would suggest it all the time. And I recently, I guess in the last couple years, I got asked—
Georgie 28:20
There it is, that’s you.
Geoff 28:20
There we go, oh that’s me.
Georgie 28:26
Yeah.
Geoff 28:26
So I figured, like, I think someone asked me, oh, you’ve done a lot of escape rooms? How many have you done? And I was like, how many? So I counted the number of escape room places there are in Sydney that I’ve been to, I think there’s at least five I’ve been to plus one in Melbourne or something like that. And if I said I went to at least two or three, if I did two or three of the escape rooms in each one of these places. That means I’ve done at least 15 escape rooms. And I was like—
Georgie 29:00
Yeah that’s a fair bit.
Geoff 29:01
I don’t remember doing 15 escape rooms, but the numbers don’t lie. You’d assume that I’m really good at escape rooms. And no, it’s really the people that you go with that make it that—
Georgie 29:16
Yes, yes. The team w—yeah.
Geoff 29:19
Like, I’ll know if something feels like a red herring. And I’d know like what generally you know, that padlock so you got to get the code and what kind of things would have the code in them. Like, those kinds of hints. But really, yeah, it’s deciphering this stuff. Is, is, the t—is the team that you go with that is makes it easy to dechiper stuff.
Georgie 29:45
Yeah. Some people are like super good at deciphering like the most obscure, like—
Geoff 29:51
Oh, my God, think about, talking about obscure, right. So there’s a thing that I think we’ve talked about. When you do you I did this with coworkers where you do a group GeoGuessr?
Georgie 30:04
This is the lost episode.
Geoff 30:06
Oh is it?
Georgie 30:08
Well, we talked about GeoGuessr where you lost the entire half of the recording.
Geoff 30:14
Maybe we should just publish your monologue, like we did last time.
Georgie 30:17
Haha. Yeah. So I, yeah, in that I said, I am not a big fan of GeoGuessr, I guess I think just because I’m extremely bad.
Geoff 30:26
Yeah.
Georgie 30:27
Just, I feel, find it stressful sometimes.
Geoff 30:29
Definitely. And, and so I devised a way that makes it easy. It makes it better for teams. So if anyone’s not familiar with GeoGuessr, so essentially, it’s Google Maps Streetview. And the game puts your camera somewhere in the world. And you’re meant to look, you’re meant to figure out where you are on an actual Google map by walking around signs and stuff, and then putting a pin on the Google map where you think you are closer, you are more points. And normally, people play this individually as, as competition. So everyone gets their own, everyone gets put in the same place. And then the person who is the closest gets the most points. I found this really difficult, like you said, for people who aren’t geographically inclined, or just hate the game in general. But I found that, yeah, if someone finds it really quickly, and moves on, it’s not that much of a team game. Like they can go through all four of them before one person has finished even one of them. So everyone’s kind of just sitting around waiting for one person to find where they are. Not fun. So I devised that, hey, why don’t we have one person navigate, and everybody’s watching the screenshare and contributing to figuring out where we are.
Georgie 31:56
But if the person doing that, it’s just one of those people who doesn’t really give a shit and they move around, and they don’t really, like cooperate with other people. It’s bad. And—
Geoff 32:05
Yeah, that’s why I usually do it. I usually emcee it, I guess. Because I’m just—
Georgie 32:13
Oh because you hate it?
Geoff 32:14
No, I think it’s a fun game as a group. But man, so I’ve done this a couple of times, with, with my group, my team at a previous workplace. And, you know, some are interested and it’s, and, you know, it’s like, we basically have no idea where we are. So it’s a crapshoot most of the time. You can do world, you can do wonders of the world or like, monuments. So you’re standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, you’re like, “Okay, here’s the Eiffel Tower”. But I did it with my new team, a broader team, actually, we call them tribes. I don’t know if you if anyone’s really heard of this. But...
Georgie 32:54
Yeah, I think we used to have something like that but we don’t really call them that anymore.
Geoff 32:58
For those who aren’t aware, you just have multiple teams that all work on their own thing, but they’re all tied together as a single, like, I guess an overarching goal or theme. So each team is—
Georgie 33:15
I think we have crews, like crews for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C#.
Geoff 33:21
So yeah, we did it with the entire tribe. And that was like, ten, fifteen, odd people, I think at that in this meeting. Ten people probably, anyways, so we’re doing this, my God, these are the most well travelled people I’ve I’ve ever met, one person has visited visited every country in the world, except for Alaska, or something crazy like that. And no joke. I went out to a sign and it was like E,-D-H-N-O-S-A, or something like that. They’re like, “South Africa”. You gotta be kidding me. And it was right. It was friggin it was the highest scoring. We had nailed every country. Like, no matter where we put, we were always in the right country. And within like 100 to 200 kilometers of the pin, if not closer. And...
Georgie 33:21
Haha yeah, that’s pretty good.
Geoff 33:35
This is like being put in the middle of nowhere, desert bushes, tight locations. Sparse houses. Yeah. It was crazy. We walked—
Georgie 34:32
You sure they hadn’t just, played the game a lot? Oh no you said they actually travelled and stuff.
Geoff 34:37
There’s one person who was like, just to clarify, we can’t Google the names of buildings we see here. I’m like, yeah, you can’t Google.
Georgie 34:45
Yeah.
Geoff 34:47
What kind of question when the game is about finding where you are.
Georgie 34:50
I mean, I mean, if you I don’t know it could be cheating. Maybe some people just want to do—oh, actually speaking of this, there was a game that is a spin off of Wordle, which is called Worldle. And they show you a country. And and when I showed this to Nick, he was just very good at it all the time. He’d get it in one go. And I’d just be like, horrifically embarrassed.
Geoff 35:15
Yeah.
Georgie 35:17
So like, I didn’t enjoy this game as much as him because he’s just better at like recognising places and countries and things. And so what I do is I put in a guess. And then it would tell me about how far away the country I guessed was from the actual country. And then I would just go to the fucking world map and try and like look for it if I didn’t have any clue, because, because I’m just not, yeah, like you said, not geographically inclined. We did have a funny incident on GeoGuessr, where it was somewhere in Australia. And we recognised it because the cars are on—
Geoff 35:56
Yeah, that’s like the first thing, which side the cars are driving on.
Georgie 35:59
Yeah, and then the bins. The bins were like the correct color. And my colleague goes, “Oh, this looks really familiar. Like, I feel like this is near me”. And we found out it was like in Wollongong, because we moved around a bit, and there was a school, I don’t know if you could see the school’s name, but we ended up getting it like, like, I think it was like 12 meters away. Like in the same street.
Geoff 36:26
It’s... we I think one of the first ones was literally in New Zealand and we had like three people in New Zealand. And they were just like—
Georgie 36:35
And New Zealand’s small, right? So people from there, they fuckin know.
Geoff 36:39
Was going up the road and like the sign said, like, one kilometer to this place. And they’re like, oh, yeah, it’s it’s in Auckland. Okay. And they were like, oh, yeah, it looked... Someone said, “Oh, the shade of blue in the sky seems familiar. I think it’s in New Zealand”. No way, the shade of the blue in the sky. I mean, this guy had traveled every country in the world. So I think he’s spent a reasonable amount of time, I guess, looking at the sky and going you know, what the shades of blue do, might change between hemispheres, you know? But yeah.
Georgie 37:23
But like how attentive must you be to know that is specifically New Zealand. Like, if you’re talking like England, then I’m like, Yeah, England would be probably grey as fuck.
Geoff 37:33
Yeah. I thought it was amazing. It’s an amazing thing.
Georgie 37:38
Yeah.
Geoff 37:39
But oh, what were you just saying.... something about? Oh, right. So I stumbled upon this YouTube video of a quiz show in the UK. And I think—
Georgie 37:51
Haha. Sorry, I love, it one of those ones that are like—wait did you share this with me?
Geoff 37:56
Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, Singaporean guy.
Georgie 37:58
Singaporean guy. Yeah, go on.
Geoff 37:59
So there’s this, there’s this team with one, with the Singaporean guy on it. I think they’re from like, I think they’re actually a college in Singapore—
Georgie 38:08
Fom the UK?
Geoff 38:08
That have come in for the, for the actual for the competition.
Georgie 38:14
Yeah, right.
Geoff 38:14
Anyways, I think it’s an international competition. Anyways, so yeah, so this like, this kid. He’s like, a bloody geographical genius. Right? Let’s put this into context.
Georgie 38:26
History as well.
Geoff 38:27
History! It’s, it’s incredible. Like he studies biochemistry. But apparently, as a kid, he just stared at maps all day and looked at his atlas and stuff like that. But Jesus Christ. So I was watching the grand finale of this because I started following it after I saw the super cut of him answering every geographical question. But you, like, these kind of questions are, “Here’s a picture of two countries who have a country in the middle. And they’re like, neighbouring, like the neighbouring country for these two pictures”. And he’s just like, instantly, like, within a second. He’s just like, “Oh, that’s probably Croatia. And that’s Italy. So the one in the middle must be that”. And I’m like, okay, okay. You got me there. And then there’s a segment where they shade parts of a country. Like, in Africa, they shade a little bit of Africa in red. And they’re like, five points if you can name me the wetland that that that this the shade of and he’s just like, boom, he knows it. I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. It’s a little red blob on the country and you’re just like, “Yeah, that’s gonna be that wetland”. Like the guy is absolute beast.
Georgie 39:47
But I also feel like it probably depends on where you were educated, right, like, like, it’s interesting because my mum would ask me similar questions about just geogr—so I said I was really bad at Worldle, because I didn’t know what countries were, I’m just not very good at that. And when I was younger, my mum would ask me, What’s the capital?
Geoff 40:08
Oh, my dad does this too. I think my dad used to do this too. It’s weird.
Georgie 40:11
Yeah. And I would, I would never be able to answer and I’m just like, I don’t want know what you’re talking about, right. Or my mum would be like, “can you name all the countries in Africa”. I can name a few because we just happened to learn about it in year five, or whatever. But the curriculum in Australia is—and I think this is not a great thing—like the general curriculum, if you don’t do geography as like an elective is really heavily focused on Australian geography, and Australian history. And so my mum would ask me these questions and be like, didn’t you learn this in school, capital city of every like country, or even like the major ones, or whatever, I don’t know, every country in Europe, blah, blah. And she’d be like, “Really? I learned that in school”, when she went to school in Indonesia, and I was like, that’s not how it works here, mum. I think we just are focused on the fuckin White Australia. I don’t know, do you find, I don’t know? You, when, you, your schooling was different from mine.
Geoff 41:10
I don’t remember much of my schooling prior to 10 years old. So the interesting thing is that I’m not geographically inclined, even though I have have basically travelled like, the entirety of Southeast Asia. But it’s kind of strange, because I used to think that Perth was closer to Japan somehow, like cuz, but they’re not like Sydney’s closer to Japan. And I would think that like I completely miscalculated where the hell South Korea was in like relation to Japan as well. And you know, this, this is all centred around the fact that I really like to go to Japan. But just, I don’t know anything about any other country. But yeah, I think I think America has the same problem. I’m, I don’t really remember very much about learning in this, like, from Australia, about any of the other countries. I guess I had soc... society and economics and we had like, a Turkish day. But I don’t remember learning anything about you know, Turkey. Like other than what food I’m eating? Oh, man, you know what’s great? The flatbread. Turkish bread. So good.
Georgie 42:32
Turkish bread. So good.
Geoff 42:34
But yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Like the the education may just be a little bit more diverse in other countries, and then sparks a little bit more interest in other countries. Besides just learning about Australia and Australia things. I feel like America is kind of like that, you know, you you spend your entire education learning the 51 States of America.
Georgie 43:04
Isn’t it 52?
Geoff 43:05
Oops, I killed off a state.
Georgie 43:07
Actually, there is a video, there is a video from one of those talk show hosts in America. It’s like a compilation of people on the street being asked to point at a world and say can, name any country on this map? And it’s got the laug—I mean, you can hear the audience laughing because a lot of them point somewhere and they say that, like South America is Africa. And it’s like, no, that’s... and then someone goes, Africa, and like they’re like, that’s a continent not a country. And then they try and help them and point at, say, Australia, like, what’s this? And they’re like, I don’t know. And like, they’re like, “Do you know where the where the US is?” And they don’t even know where that is.
Geoff 43:54
Just we’re in it. Like who cares?
Georgie 43:58
Yeah, I mean, yeah, but it’s quite funny. And then there was I think after showing these people failing to identify a country, they had this one young boy come up and just start naming like every country in like Africa, and all of these... yeah.
Geoff 44:17
Was it the tan... I have a tangent here, right. So those is usually videos watching where this guy, he walked the streets, rewarding people for solving code problems on a whiteboard, I’m like, this is so cringe. Like I can’t remember. I don’t think he asked people for sorting algorithms or anything like that. But yeah, there was, he’s like, I’ll give you 100 bucks if you can solve, if you can solve or write this algorithm on the whiteboard, like oh my god. This is...
Georgie 44:50
Was it successful though, like?
Geoff 44:52
It was kind of successful, but I mean, it’s a really cut video.
Georgie 44:56
It’s probably cut. They ask like fifty people and like—
Geoff 45:00
Yeah, like 10 people would be able to solve this stuff on the street. Plus—
Georgie 45:06
I would feel like so dejected.
Geoff 45:08
Yeah. I’m like, just even watching the video.
Georgie 45:12
The success rate. I don’t know.
Geoff 45:15
Even watching the video, I’m like, I think I can solve that. But I don’t know if I could solve it. Like on the spot. This is a problem with our hiring process as well. Some people get whiteboarded. I mean, some people get given whiteboard tests. You don’t get smacked with a whiteboard or...
Georgie 45:37
Sounds very violent.
Geoff 45:38
....waterboarded or anything. Yeah, that was that was pretty, that’s a pretty difficult version of the of the, like, social experiment type stuff when people like walk in the streets asking.
Georgie 45:52
Have you ever had, have you ever had to do like some kind of whiteboard test as part of a hiring process?
Geoff 45:57
Yes.
Georgie 45:58
Like you, you’re, you’re the interviewee.
Geoff 46:00
A little bit. Sometimes they have a whiteboard there to help, to see, to let me use it if I need to illustrate what I mean, by what I mean. What I’m saying. What I’m saying. So, but they I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation—oh wait. I think I’ve had one, one. Yeah yeah, I mean, one time, they asked me to write on the whiteboard, and I was just like, thinking, oh, my God, are you serious? Are you actually asking me to whiteboard? And I kind of got, like, got the gist of it. And I was like, man, they’re not gonna ask me back. I didn’t even finish that algorithm or whatever I was whiteboarding. And it seemed like I didn’t answer their questions in the right way. By the way, this is a very terrible way of interviewing anybody, you shouldn’t interview someone asking them for, like quizzing them on answers, specifically found in a Google search that you did the other day. Like, “here’s the top 100 things a developer should know”. And then if they don’t give you the right answer you, you like, cancel them? Don’t do that. Anyways. So that was basically what was happening. And then I left I was like, oh, man, not probably not gonna get a call back. Apparently, they called me back. And they were just like, I was like, okay, this is a bit strange. But on the flip side—
Georgie 46:06
Did you decline?
Geoff 46:18
Oh I didn’t accept it.
Georgie 47:30
Did you... Did that just, red, that was just like a huge red flag? And you’re just like?
Geoff 47:36
So this is kind of my opinion on the whole situation. Yes, they were probably, they probably did Google “top 10 things front end developers should know”. And they did quiz me on those things. And I didn’t answer exactly the right answers to the quiz. But
Georgie 47:57
But then, do you think they were looking for the right answers? Or were they just looking to see how you responded?
Geoff 48:02
Well, the smart per—smart person would think, yeah, you’re just looking at how they respond. But my opinion here is that a lot of smaller teams, or new ish tech, tech teams, don’t actually know what front end developers do. They they just don’t, they just don’t know. So this is the best they can kind of come up with without having an expert in there to actually tell you how to hire a front end developer. So you get, you get a lot of job, but I don’t know that it’s necessarily a red flag. If they recognise that they have a knowledge gap. And they’re willing to take a chance on someone who sounds like they know what they’re talking about, or ask the right questions to come back the questions, you’re getting tasks you’re asking, then they’re smart enough to think we aren’t the subject matter experts, this person has is clearly a little bit more switched on, then we should hire them. That is good. The red flag would be if they don’t call you back. And they just continue on with their lives as if they actually know how well who they’re hiring for and what they’re hiring for. But yeah, I like to give them benefit of doubt that they just don’t know how to hire for this specific area, they’re just like well, we don’t have an expert to tell us how to hire this person. So it’s hard. I think it’s hard out there. There’s a developer shortage to quote unquote.
Georgie 49:40
There’s always a developer sh...
Geoff 49:42
Yeah, I was I was having a chat with someone about this as well. How. Like, there’s a there’s a shortage on designers that know how to design visual user interfaces. And—
Georgie 49:57
Okay, were you gonna say for like, design at scale.
Geoff 50:00
Design at scale?
Georgie 50:02
Design at scale, like as in, I think there’s a shortage of designers who actually know how to build like a component library. Ah, not build, sorry, design.
Geoff 50:11
Yeah.
Georgie 50:13
And who really understand like the effects of “if you change this here, and it fucking changes everywhere, what repercussions is this going to have”.
Geoff 50:20
System thinking designers. I think I’ve also I’ve also talked about, we’ve also talked about this with another colleague about how the system thinkers are hard to find. But generally, like, we’re getting more and more user experience designers who don’t know how to do visual UI. So you start getting this awkward position where you’re like, well, we gotta have someone who knows how to do visual UI. And of course, understand the medium that they’re designing for, like you say, changing a design here, and it having a rippling effect, is something that you kind of need to be aware of sometimes. And then you also have the problem where we also are running out of UI specific engineers, all of them are full stack, all of them have deep knowledge and programming and JavaScript and stuff like that. So you’re starting to lose the, the, and then you start to try and hire for UI, but no one knows how to hire for UI, so then you kind of just reject people that are good. And and that’s just, that’s just kind of like, I guess this is the situation we’re here. We’re in now. But plus, like, you start getting the only place that’s good for a UI designer, and a UI developer is a design system team. Because no one wants to hire and no one knows how to hire for the feature teams. So whatever. It’s hard.
Georgie 51:48
Yeah, and then it gets all fucking siloed and silos are...
Geoff 51:52
Yeah.
Georgie 51:53
Silos are tiring. And yeah.
Geoff 51:58
What were you gonna say?
Georgie 52:01
Nothing. I was just gonna say, also, we’re like,
Geoff 52:06
Oh, yeah, and that’s that’s about it. I, my recording is broken. So like into different time slots. So yeah. I guess that’s all we have time for today. Don’t forget to oh my god, I forgot the ending. Follow us on @toastroastpod, Twitter and Instagram, mostly Twitter.
Georgie 52:29
And you can get our episodes where you find your podcasts. Such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and and the big everywhere.
Geoff 52:41
What was the other one? Google?
Georgie 52:46
I don’t know how, has some popped up?
Geoff 52:48
I don’t know actually.
Georgie 52:49
Recently? That I don’t know of.
Geoff 52:51
Apple Podcasts and Spotify, right. That’s about it.
Georgie 52:54
That’s about it.
Geoff 52:55
And we’ll see you next time. Oh, new episodes every Monday. Bye.
Georgie 53:01
Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai