Georgie explains her limited experience with Kpop and a concert she’s waited 3 years for, while Geoff reveals he's actually going to concerts soon, and describes an engaging experience with virtual escape rooms.
✍🏻 View the transcript for this episode
Georgie explains her limited experience with Kpop and a concert she’s waited 3 years for, while Geoff reveals he's actually going to concerts soon, and describes an engaging experience with virtual escape rooms.
Social media
Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Geoff 0:08
And welcome back to another episode Toast & Roast. I am your co host Geoff, and I am here with Georgie.
Georgie 0:18
Toast and—
Geoff 0:19
G G G G? Yeah.
Georgie 0:21
Baby baby.
Geoff 0:24
Oh god. Hey.
Georgie 0:26
Yeah?
Geoff 0:26
You listen to Kpop.
Georgie 0:28
I don’t—
Geoff 0:28
You know of Kpop?
Georgie 0:30
I know of Kpop; I wouldn’t say I listen to it now although I am familiar with some of the BTS hits I would say.
Geoff 0:42
It’s hilarious because one of my friends—wait a second, wait, online beats? So I know it’s not called—
Georgie 0:51
No.
Geoff 0:51
GGG baby, but it’s just I think the results—
Georgie 0:54
Gee.
Geoff 0:55
Oh it is just called Gee.
Georgie 0:56
G E E.
Geoff 0:59
Gee. Why am I getting bedding? This is so weird. All right.
Georgie 1:04
It’s by Girls—
Geoff 1:05
SNSD?
Georgie 1:06
No, it’s Girls—I thought it was Girls Generation.
Geoff 1:09
They’re—they’ve got two names.
Georgie 1:14
Shit.
Geoff 1:14
SNSD. I don’t know what SNSD stands for. But yeah, it’s both SNSd and Girls Generation.
Georgie 1:24
You know your name starts with G as well.
Geoff 1:26
It does. It does indeed.
Georgie 1:28
We have the same initials, which I found very funny when I was initially trying to do a transcript and I was like GC blah blah blah. And I was like, GC blah blah blah like, wait, hang on. That’s...
Geoff 1:41
Nice. Nice. So so how do you know how you found out about this song? If you hadn’t even even being aware or listening to Kpop?
Georgie 1:51
Well, I listened to Kpop when I was in high school, so I remember listening to Epik High. And I actually can’t even remember.
Geoff 2:07
What’s Epik High?
Georgie 2:07
I think they’re like an R&B group from from Korea or South Korea.
Geoff 2:14
Epik H—wow. Epik, actually, I think I’ve seen them recently. Yes, I mean, the name not the—
Georgie 2:18
Oh my god. Just like Geoff going to like an Eskimo Joe...
Geoff 2:22
No. I don’t go to concerts. I think my partner and I are going to go to the Black Pink concert though.
Georgie 2:34
Oh yeah.
Geoff 2:34
It’s gonna be interesting. And we’re going to go to Boys Like Girls concert as well.
Georgie 2:41
I have not listened to them either. I went to a concert a few days ago.
Geoff 2:46
Yeah you’re going to like 500 concerts. (laughs)
Georgie 2:49
(laughs) But this one I really cared about this one. So it was for a band—
Geoff 2:53
You didn’t care about the other ones? Oh no!
Georgie 2:55
Nah, this one I cared about because it got postponed like three times because of the pandemic.
Geoff 3:03
Oh that’s the same with Boys Like Girls, they got like postponed a tonne and then now they’re actually coming back.
Georgie 3:10
It’s fucking happening. That was my energy like on like, Thursday night, I was like it’s fucking happening. It’s finally fucking happening. So I went to see Marianas Trench, Canadian pop rock band.
Geoff 3:23
So, sounds so niche. (laughs)
Georgie 3:27
Does it?
Geoff 3:27
Yeah, Canadian. Pop rock band.
Georgie 3:31
So fun fact, the lead singer. Yes.
Geoff 3:37
It’s a place!
Georgie 3:37
Yes. Josh. Yeah, they’re named after the deepest point of the ocean.
Geoff 3:43
Oh.
Georgie 3:43
Yes, so lead singer Josh Ramsay. He actually I don’t know it was wrote or co wrote, Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen.
Geoff 3:52
Is Carly Rae Jepsen a Canadian as well?
Georgie 3:55
Canadian?
Geoff 3:55
So is Justin Bieber, oh, my God. It’s an epidemic.
Georgie 4:00
Yeah, so anyway, we went to see them on Thursday. And I had waited with basically, quote, unquote, waited for this concert to happen since I bought tickets in 2019. It was supposed to happen early 2020. We all know what happened then. And they hadn’t been here since like 2014. And I’d seen them like twice prior. And so Nick hadn’t seen them at all because I wasn’t, like Nick wasn’t even in the picture the last time I had seen them, but I’d seen them with my brother. And it was like his, my brother’s first concert as well. And it was so good. And I find that they’re really good live. Almost to the point where I’m like, I don’t really want to listen to the recorded music anymore because they’re just so good. Like, there’s so much energy in their live concerts. The guy’s a really good singer. They I would describe them as, like their music is like towards boy band, but they’re a boy, a boy band who actually plays their instruments, because when you watch them, they’re actually playing instruments.
Geoff 5:09
Yeah, that’s kind of something I appreciate about most of Kpop is that even though people are like, “Oh, Kpop is like, machine, they’re all like mass produced”, yes. But the ones that really make it, are, can, they can sing, they can dance. To a degree, they can act sometimes. But generally, the machine has, like, taught them all how to sing and dance so professionally, that you know that maybe for like, 80% of their entire performance, their singing and dancing are one of the best combination. So I find that even though, you know, there’s a ton of Kpop bands, and they all basically have the same formula, you know, that when you go see them live, then they’re not like lip synching for 90% of the entire set.
Georgie 6:06
Yeah, because it’s about the performance right? You’re, when you go to the show, you’re watching someone perform. So it’s like you go there to enjoy someone like doing a good job at that. And it could be like singing dancing, both.
Geoff 6:20
Yeah, the, are you, are you of the opinion that they everyone should live sing their concerts?
Georgie 6:29
Well, okay. So the funny thing is with Marianas Trench, they they did have like a backing track for a lot of like, their harmonization stuff. Like he was singing, though, but you know, some songs are just not complete without, depending on the production of the song. And I guess this speaks for the production, like how much you can really do in the studio, if you get creative and things like that. But when it comes to performing it live, you if you’ve done all the vocals and all the lay—and you’ve done all the things and you don’t have someone to do that part or, you know, you don’t you can’t bring a piano, the stage or whatever, you kind of have no choice but to sort of use like a backing track. So I would say like to the best of your ability, right, to what you can perform, but you can still put on a good show, even if you have like backing music backing tracks, but I don’t think you should lip sync.
Geoff 7:27
Yeah, I think that’s kind of the kind of formula that most Kpop bands go for. They have those parts where they’re, the, it’s either really difficult, or they want to put on a better performance of that part. So they leave it to the backing track to take care of the vocals while they bust out some like crazy moves. And then they come back and then they sing. They sing the more harmony and more melodic parts. So yeah, I agree. There’s like a balance somewhere there where they can leave it to the backing track, and do a good performance because you can’t, like it seems like unreasonable to ask for both. Because if anyone knows how singing works, like jumping around, and singing on on time and, and your vocals, is—
Georgie 8:22
And your voice is a muscle as well, like—
Geoff 8:24
Yeah.
Georgie 8:24
Yeah, actually, I watched a video with Olivia Rodrigo. And she was answering—
Geoff 8:30
Oh yeah.
Georgie 8:30
Questions from people. And someone asked her why is it that whenever you sing live, it’s always like one key lower. And she’s I think she might have said something along the lines of because it’s easier. And I’m like, Oh, that makes sense if you can do, because I watched some of her like live performances on videos. And—
Geoff 8:47
Yeah.
Georgie 8:47
Like if you can perform better adjusts the song compared to how you recorded it. I’m like, go for it. Like.
Geoff 8:54
Yeah, yeah. Olivia Rodrigo. She only has one album, hey.
Georgie 9:01
But yeah, she is a pop icon, especially for the younger generation. But I like her music.
Geoff 9:08
Yeah, most of this album I think is just because she had a break up with her boyfriend. What’s her boyfriend’s name?
Georgie 9:15
Yeah, so like from the heart type sh... I don’t even think it was specifically about a boyfriend right? She’s still young. A young person has gone through some heart, some amount of heartbreak and—
Geoff 9:26
Yeah, but I mean, like, yeah, like the lyrics are specifically about I mean, it’s, it’s like a coincidental timing that these songs are very much about breakup and she is, was in a breakup so, oh well, the speculation.
Georgie 9:45
The funny thing is about Marianas Trench, Josh Ramsay writes like older songs and produces a lot of them. A lot of the lyrics are like, you think they’re about love song, like about love about breaking up and sad shit. And many of them are, but there’s one called Lover Dearest which sounds like losing someone you love or whatever, but it’s about heroin addiction.
Geoff 10:10
(laughs) Wow. That’s that’s a bit of a left of field.
Georgie 10:15
Oh speaking of breakups, Armor For Sleep’s new album, I think is clearly obviously and has been, like actually spoken about by frontman Ben Jorgensen as like his divorce like—
Geoff 10:28
Oh, shit.
Georgie 10:29
2020 inspired him to write again. And I think a lot of the the new album is inspired by that.
Geoff 10:38
Yeah, you could say like, most songs are like about love and breaking up.
Georgie 10:44
They are, I learned this in music. Like it was one of the first things we learned and it was like, if you think about it, like pretty much every song is about love, love gone wrong...
Geoff 10:55
Percentage of songs that are about love.
Georgie 11:01
So I can name two songs straight off the top of my head that not to do with love.
Geoff 11:08
Mhmm.
Georgie 11:08
Yeah. Yellow Submarine and Octopus’s Garden.
Geoff 11:14
What about Baby shark? (laughs) I think there’s a lot of, um, oh man, I think I can only name probably, besides Gangnam Style, which—
Georgie 11:27
Oh, yeah, it’s about dancing I guess.
Geoff 11:29
Most of his songs aren’t about love. Although his he had a song called New Face, which I think is just kind of like a really, like, technical take on how all the Koreans like to have plastic surgery. So he thinks about that kind of stuff. He likes making fun of like Korea, I guess, in general. Oh man, there’s no percentage. Why is 90% of songs about love sex? Can’t people sing about something else? Oh it’s just some random forum. There’s no one who’s done like a calculation on this?
Georgie 12:06
Well, because I think it’s hard, right? Like, how many songs are there in the entire world?
Geoff 12:11
I reckon. Oh, wait, using data found from this study can only find enough data to calculate coming three years.
Georgie 12:18
And that was five years ago.
Geoff 12:20
50% between 68 and 71. And then 60%, between 2002 and 2005. 64.5%? Between 17 and 20? You know, what, if, if someone has access to the Spotify database, they just need to put it through like an algorithm that can pick up all the lyrics in the song and then like, decipher its like, its meaning.
Georgie 12:50
But then open to interpretation, right? Like so if you look up Lover Dearest by Marianas Trench, and if you read out the lyrics tell me like, it doesn’t sound like a love song. But it’s—
Geoff 13:01
I mean, maybe it’s love of heroin.
Georgie 13:06
OK.
Geoff 13:06
“This place is a hole, but I don’t want to go. I wish we could stay here forever alone. This time that we waste, but I still love your taste”. See, taste is a weird thing to say for a human. But I guess kissing people also say, like your taste. Also, I guess some other juices.
Georgie 13:28
(laughs)
Geoff 13:29
“Don’t let him take my place. Don’t just sit there. Sometimes. I wish you would leave me. Well, I’m not sick of you yet. Is this as good as it gets? I’ll try to hide it or I’ll could slip into you”. Mmm?
Georgie 13:46
(laughs)
Geoff 13:46
It’s so easy to come back into you. (laughs)
Georgie 13:52
(laughs)
Geoff 13:52
Okay, fair enough.
Georgie 13:53
But you also have the bias of me having told you this was about heroin addiction.
Geoff 13:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see how even these kind of words. It goes. It sounds like he’s addicted. But he’s addicted to a person.
Georgie 14:06
Yeah.
Geoff 14:07
Like, yeah, he wants it. He wishes they could leave but they like they’re not sick of them yet. And they go “words” here so I don’t think heroin speaks.
Georgie 14:20
Yeah, so it’s like personifying a thing that’s not a person. So making it still seem like some kind of relationship, so maybe it’s not really necessarily love, right? It’s probably relationships.
Geoff 14:31
Yeah.
Georgie 14:32
In general.
Geoff 14:33
Even its if it’s towards you know, things.
Georgie 14:36
Still like what about? Yeah, like the octopus, Octopus’ Garden. “I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’ garden in the shade”.
Geoff 14:45
Oh, yeah.
Georgie 14:46
Oh, then “we would be so we will be so happy you and me”.
Geoff 14:50
There you go.
Georgie 14:50
“No one there would tell us”—
Geoff 14:51
It’s about love. It’s about love. All of all songs are about love. Even Under the Sea by Little Mermaid.
Georgie 15:04
I feel like that obviously is a bit more obvious though. I now I really want to think of a song that is definitely not about love
Geoff 15:12
Gangnam Style. It’s not about—
Georgie 15:15
Oh yeah yeah. And I would say Weird Al Yankovic is, a lot of his songs.
Geoff 15:20
Doesn’t he just do parodies?
Georgie 15:21
I know but still they’re songs right? “I’m so tacky”? Like tacky is not about.
Geoff 15:27
Does he turn love songs into non love songs? Who knows? I do. I can sing Gangster’s Paradise, not Gangster Paradise. Amish Paradise was the first time I heard about that song. Gangster’s Paradise. But yeah, Weird Al? I don’t think he does very much songs. I love his Polka medleys though, they’re they’re pretty good. They’re pretty good. Switching topics. So I have a new job. Well, I—
Georgie 16:06
(laughs) Wait, didn’t you have a new job like last week?
Geoff 16:11
Yeah, like last week. No, no, I officially I like resigned and I have signed a contract for the for the new place I’m gonna go work for and they were really kind to invite me to a virtual—
Georgie 16:27
A dinner? Oh.
Geoff 16:29
No dinner. You Campaign Monitors. Like what is your collective name? Campaigners?
Georgie 16:36
Oh.
Geoff 16:37
Monorites?
Georgie 16:38
It’s it’s CM Group.
Geoff 16:41
No as in like, what did they call the employees? You guys got a collective name?
Georgie 16:45
Oh.
Geoff 16:46
Canva has Canvanauts.
Georgie 16:48
Oh do they?
Geoff 16:49
Yeah.
Georgie 16:50
Campaign Monitors?
Geoff 16:52
Really?
Georgie 16:53
I think—when we write it out, CM, e-r-s?
Geoff 16:59
Cammers?
Georgie 17:00
CMers, I don’t know.
Geoff 17:02
Seamours?
Georgie 17:02
CMers. We don’t say it out out loud.
Geoff 17:06
Yeah.
Georgie 17:07
I don’t know we call ourselves collectively.
Geoff 17:09
I find it’s really common that people come up with collective names, even if they don’t use it, like Deloitians for Deloitte, like?
Georgie 17:24
(sniggers) What?
Geoff 17:24
Yeah, Deloitians. And we call the company like Deloitte in general Uncle D. So like, if, if you—
Georgie 17:33
I think I remember this.
Geoff 17:34
Yeah, if you’re expensing something you call you saying like, you make, you’re making Uncle D pay, or something like that. Anyways, so I got invited to a virtual escape room.
Georgie 17:50
Oh yeah?
Geoff 17:50
Now I thought this was going to be some VR shit.
Georgie 17:54
Have you? Have you done it already?
Geoff 17:56
No I’ve done it already.
Georgie 17:07
Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, cuz I’ve done one before. Go on.
Geoff 18:02
What was it called actually? Is it like, Mission mission? Impossible, oops? Impossible.
Georgie 18:13
Okay, so I’ll tell you about my experience in a nutshell. It was basically a WordPress site with a bunch of attachments, and you navigate to different pages and find out and they will some of the pages were locked by passwords, which were the answers to certain things, and then you navigated your way through it. In a similar vein, Chris, and I tried to play a game on Board Game Arena like to solve a murder mystery, and you kind of seeing the same thing that the other person is seeing on the screen, like you’re looking at a picture of a murder scene with some whatever clues and whatnot, but it was kind of just a bit weird.
Geoff 18:58
Yeah?
Georgie 18:58
It didn’t, it didn’t have the same vibe as a real escape room, obviously. But we were yeah, we were trying to solve this murder mystery. And I don’t know, just the way that these things are executed. I just haven’t really loved any of them.
Geoff 19:14
Wait. In Tabletop Simulator, you are doing an escape room?
Georgie 19:21
Well, actually, it wasn’t an escape room. I just realised that was more of like solving a murder mystery, but we both see like, the same screen. And so whoever can, I mean, both of you can control the screen so you can open a clue and then the other person sees the clue as well.
Geoff 19:34
It’s pretty interesting.
Georgie 19:36
It’s difficult to collaborate. Like I think we were trying to do it like not on video call, but just like, chat, but it’s just tricky. I feel like if you were on a video call, it might be a little bit easier.
Geoff 19:48
Yeah.
Georgie 19:49
But yeah, I don’t know, the execution. I don’t know. I haven’t come across. It’s not like I’ve tried to look. But I haven’t come across many escape rooms where I feel like oh, this was really well executed online.
Geoff 19:59
Physical ones or online? Right, right.
Georgie 20:01
Online.
Geoff 20:01
Yeah, this one, I think you might, it’s sounds better than the one that you just described and—
Georgie 20:09
Urban quest.
Geoff 20:10
Urban quest. Now, this one was actually pretty good. Because it was, like, simple enough, like, it wasn’t like super flashy, like I was expecting some kind of VR shit, you know, you lift your phone and you like.
Georgie 20:31
(laughs)
Geoff 20:31
And crap like that. That was that was too high of an expectation, because it said virtual reality, I’m like took it to the extreme. But essentially, it was kind of like what you described, where you just kind of get, like pages. And some of them have images on them. And the idea generally, is to solve the puzzle. And all of the answers are kind of words, they’re either single words, or multiple words, or you have to stack five words next to each other, like five words, one after the other. But this one was pretty cool, it without trying to give too much away, it mixed up a lot of external stuff. So at one point, you got to go to a, like a website to have a look at photos, and try and decipher a code from that. Sometimes you pick up, you have to go to Google Maps. And the concept here is that you’re actually trying to chase after someone who has stolen something, or so yeah, so for the Google Maps stuff, you’re trying to decipher which way they went, just by some audio clips, that will give you some kind of directions. So you’re kind of trying to aid, like, it’s kind of like you’re aiding someone on the ground as to where or someone from above is aiding you as to where they’re going. So you have to use Google Maps to follow. So they’ll be like, oh, that person went there, that person went in there. And then you have to kind of give the, the the answers are basically the locations that are the building names or something like that, that going into. So—
Georgie 22:11
Wait so, is it live?
Geoff 22:13
Yes.
Georgie 22:13
Someone? Yeah. Okay.
Geoff 22:15
Well, all in zoom, there is a person that kind of facilitates it, but he’s not in, he like we started in a room with all of us. And then we went to breakouts, and that facilitated, jumped into different rooms to make sure everyone’s kind of on track.
Georgie 22:29
Oh, it’s really well done. I can imagine like, yeah, yeah.
Geoff 22:34
So we’re all in the Zoom call. And we’re all looking at the same thing. Sometimes we screenshare, sometimes it was a task that each one of us could take, like a part of the task, and then go figure out the answer, and then come back. So it was it was very, very well done. I think. We went on a forum and had to look through some forum posts and find clues in the forum. Like holy crap, like, this stuff is really well, it’s really well done.
Georgie 23:02
So it didn’t just feel like you were contained in this one thing that someone had built or whatever, but someone had, like, I guess using the internet and some other resources makes it seem like...
Geoff 23:12
Yeah.
Georgie 23:13
Yeah.
Geoff 23:14
So it does make it like the theme, the themes, the theme of it really leaned into this where you’re kind of like trying to use the internet to decipher clues to give back to the to operatives and stuff like that. So it made like thematic sense that you will be using the internet for this stuff.
Georgie 23:31
Do you need a minimum number of people?
Geoff 23:34
I think it’s four.
Georgie 23:36
Okay, good because our team is literally four people.
Geoff 23:38
Yeah.
Georgie 23:39
Yeah, we have a tiny team. Yeah.
Geoff 23:41
Yeah, there’s there’s a leaderboard as well so you can get pretty competitive.
Georgie 23:47
Wow.
Geoff 23:48
Where is it? Yeah, if I click this one, Mission Impossible, Mission... The funny thing is that the one who organised it did a Mission Impossible already. So we got put into a Mission Impossible 2, which so without doing the first one we were trying to do the second one.
Georgie 24:07
Oh, do you need to do the first one in this scenario?
Geoff 24:11
I think it builds on the story ish from the first one. So, but but by no means it stopped us. So you can see that there’s some companies here that have done it in, way more companies that have done this one, Monash, was is there BDO Team Bolt.
Georgie 24:32
Yeah, nice.
Geoff 24:33
So it was, it was it was pretty good. I’ve done a lot of physical ones, which are obviously better but in terms of virtual ones I think this one was pretty, pretty sweet.
Georgie 24:46
Do they do like in person wants as well, like other activities that are not?
Geoff 24:53
Yeah, it seems that way. It’s face to face. Like they have a face to face button now, “shake up your office and experience and even a quiet and shy in the team will rave about”.
Georgie 25:07
Okay, so they do other like team building activities, I might like take note of this.
Geoff 25:12
Yeah, the thing—
Georgie 25:16
Come in handy.
Geoff 25:16
Yeah, oh, it was really cool at the end, they give you a heat map. So there’s if there were three teams competing against each other and it shows you how long each team took on each of the puzzles. And then they give awards for like the person, the team that managed to jump ahead the most by doing like a really, doing one of the puzzles really quickly. So, so yeah, it’s quite good. Quite good. I enjoyed it. It was really nice of them to invite me along to something that, I don’t start, I don’t start till a few a few weeks later. So I think—
Georgie 26:53
I think that’s really nice. I actually know someone who recently moved companies and they invited her to like a team dinner as well.
Geoff 26:01
Like, oh, that’s why you were like, did they take you to dinner, where’d they go?
Georgie 26:04
Yeah, it was because—
Geoff 26:05
Bistecca?
Georgie 26:05
It was front of mind. Oh, yeah, Bistecca.
Geoff 26:12
If for people who don’t know, bistecca is a I believe a steak? A steak restaurant?
Georgie 26:16
Did I tell you about that?
Geoff 26:18
I think you did.
Georgie 26:19
Yeah. And then you cried because you had to put your phone away. (laughs)
Geoff 26:23
Yeah, they’re, they’re, a restaurant that takes your phone away when you walk in. And you should read the comments about it. Actually, let’s going into that, it’s funny.
Georgie 26:32
Oh, people complained?
Geoff 26:33
People complain about this.
Georgie 26:35
Because I think I mentioned on a previous episode that this, because Geoff was quite surprised as well. But I think that this concept is actually not new. But I think the first I heard of it was maybe in 20, 2011 when I was working for an agency and my boss had told me about somewhere he went with they were like, teah, put your phone in the box. Please don’t use it. So that was like 13, 12 years ago or something.
Geoff 27:02
Yeah.
Georgie 27:02
Wow. Someone is mad here.
Geoff 27:04
Too many rules. It’s a gimmick restaurant. “Too many rules, paying over $500 for wine, which was decanted away from table out of sight, not acceptable. Locking your phone in a drawer, childish, especially for our generation who don’t use in public. Weighing your steak and then how are you going to know which steak is yours? Gimmick, overall service was okay, food good. Not a genuine Italian restaurant”.
Georgie 27:31
Well, firstly, the Italian restaurant, I don’t think they ever claimed to be an Italian restaurant just because they were named “bistecca”, which is the Italian word for like, meat.
Geoff 27:41
So bistecca, I looked this up because I had a bistecca filet or something on on our trip. But essentially, it’s actually a, it’s actually a cut of meat that’s very healthy. Bistecca cut of meat. Because I thought bistecca was just the restaurant but it’s actually a cut of meat.
Georgie 28:03
Yeah, isn’t that—
Geoff 28:05
Heart, something like that.
Georgie 28:06
Oh, is, am I, am I remembering this right? Is this the one way you can only get it here? Yeah, like as in. It’s a very specific cut of meat.
Geoff 28:15
Steak a seasoned, bla bla breed... “This breed of cow is renowned for producing meat that is exceptionally tasty, bistecca alla Florentine is a thick piece of porterhouse steak that’s cooked to perfection”. Oh, I thought it was like the healthiest cut of meat somewhere.
Georgie 28:31
I’m not sure about healthy but yeah, it’s actually like a unique or like, you can only get it at this restaurant, in Australia anyway, because it says, I think it says, it’s an, you can get it in this one in this region in Italy, which is fine.
Geoff 28:46
But yeah, so we went to this restaurant called Isola Riva. This was up in central coast, no, near Central Coast, I guess.
Georgie 28:55
Yeah.
Geoff 28:56
And their menu. We had this thing called, oh where is it, it’s called bistecca something? Share plates. Wagyu bistecca. So I was very confused. Why there’d be wagyu bistecca. Because I thought bistecca was a type of, maybe not a wagyu. I don’t know.
Georgie 29:15
No I think it just means meat in Italian.
Geoff 29:17
Yeah. Seared sirloin with salsa verde. But damn, that was pretty good. Bistecca’s pretty good.
Georgie 29:23
Nice.
Geoff 29:25
Anyways, back to the restaurant.
Georgie 29:27
So this person said—this yeah, but this person said, well, not people in our generation don’t use phones. And I’m like, are you in an older generation and you don’t use your phone a lot?
Geoff 29:37
In public. Yeah.
Georgie 29:42
I don’t know.
Geoff 29:46
Is, are, okay, I think they think there’s a generation who can put their phones down. To, whilst eating.
Georgie 29:54
(laughs)
Geoff 29:54
I don’t know if that’s actually like a thing, is, how can you attribute that to a whole generation?
Georgie 30:00
My problem with this review is it says “locking your phone in a drawer”. They give you the key. If you need your phone, you can go get it.
Geoff 30:09
Yeah. It’s just like a locker. Right.
Georgie 30:12
It’s a little box. So I think ours was even in a zippered pouch. Like it wasn’t even locked.
Geoff 30:18
Yeah.
Georgie 30:18
You put it in. Yeah. And I think it’s more in that the action of them saying please put your phones always to encourage you to put your phones away. Because if they don’t encourage you, you will have it in your bag. And maybe you will pull it out and take pictures of your food or whatever.
Geoff 30:31
It’s very tempting.
Georgie 30:32
They want, they want you to enjoy the food, but they don’t, like I don’t know, I just don’t know what the big deal is.
Geoff 30:39
Yeah, look at that. It’s made via mobile. Just FYI. The comment review was made via mobile.
Georgie 30:48
Can I ask, what is your thoughts and opinions generally on taking photos of food that you eat? That you didn’t make?
Geoff 31:00
Only if it kind of looks good, and I have somebody who wants to see it. Like—
Georgie 31:06
Yeah.
Geoff 31:07
We we took, we took, I d—you know what, actually I don’t think we even took photos of the bistecca wagyu that I had at this at this place Isola Riva.
Georgie 31:17
That’s fine, Geoff, because I didn’t want to fucking see it.
Geoff 31:20
Exactly. No one wants to see it. My partner’s there. Like that’s the only other person that would want to see what I’m eating. So.
Georgie 31:27
Yeah.
Geoff 31:29
I did take a picture of burgers that I had, at this place called the Glass Onion. And our review of that places a bit mixed. The burger tasted okay. But the place wasn’t exactly the cleanliest? Clean—
Georgie 31:45
Cleanest?
Geoff 31:46
Cleanliness. Cleanest.
Georgie 31:48
Cleanest!
Geoff 31:51
Yeah. So it’s hard to focus on the food when things around you aren’t very clean. And you’re just like, oh, is this food clean? I don’t know.
Georgie 32:02
But then this makes me think of those like, sort of, I think, I think Wong Fu or someone did like a parody of how they—
Geoff 32:11
Oh they do!
Georgie 32:11
White people visit an Asian restaurant that looks kind of dirty, but that’s their perception of it.
Geoff 32:18
Oh, I saw a short—
Georgie 32:19
Dirty equals good.
Geoff 32:21
Yeah. I saw a short from Freddie Wong.
Georgie 32:26
I don’t know Freddie Wong.
Geoff 32:28
Yeah, he came back. He’s, he used to do lots of moviemaking on and collaboration with Wong Fu as well.
Georgie 32:40
Okay, okay.
Geoff 32:41
So, for those who don’t know who Wong Fu is, it’s a group of three Asian guys who started a filmmaking production studio on YouTube. And they gave a lot of the Asian Asian movie stars their start on YouTube. Like, Arden Cho from Partner Track, if anybody’s watching that on on Netflix. That is, she’s she’s also part of kind of the people who worked with Wong Fu.
Georgie 33:17
Yeah.
Geoff 33:19
But back to you taking photos of food. Yeah, sometimes I’ll do it if the food looks particularly good. But other, other times, it’s, it’s just a sliced piece of steak on my plate, so I’ll just eat it, you know. Oh, yeah. Why was I talking about Freddie Wong? Right?
Georgie 33:38
A short that you saw?
Geoff 33:40
Yeah, he did a short, he goes, this is this is how you find good Asian restaurants in in the in San Francisco, the, or the LA area, he only visits 3.7 stars. It’s the sweet spot. Every, like if you have a look at like comments, you’ll find that people in the Western society have a very different perception of what is a good restaurant to people in Asia. Asians tend to look at the food, food tastes good, I’m there. But a lot of people in the Western society expect good service. So that sweet spot is just the amount of you know the balance between the Caucasians or the Western people who go into an Asian restaurant, don’t like the service so they rate lower and the Asians rate a little—
Georgie 34:38
Higher because the food is great.
Geoff 34:40
Yeah, so you get you get the you get the it’s basically a filter then it’s filtering out all those people the one—
Georgie 34:46
Yeah.
Geoff 34:47
Or the 1.3 stars of service out the window and—
Georgie 34:51
Yeah.
Geoff 34:52
Get the perfect sweet spot.
Georgie 34:53
Nice. I did see a sort of similar short reel from this guy on Instagram called Tedsthetics. He’s I think he’s Australian and he does a lot of shorts kind of mocking different things. But he did one saying how to know if you’re gonna get like good, I think Vietnamese food or something he said it’s gonna have this, he’d have a, like a shot of the napkins, the silver napkin, dispenser with the thing. And then he said the woman is like, serving you probably has a mustache, means it’s going be good. And he said something like, If they ask you if they ask you, chili, it’s not a question. It’s a statement. (laughs) But yeah, there was some other things that he mentioned that I can’t quite remember.
Geoff 35:47
Oh, I go in and as soon as I see the stools, like they’re the plastic four legged stools with like, the holes on top, I’m like, this is legit. Legit. They brought in the imported stools from from like Malaysia. They put it right here.
Georgie 36:05
Yeah.
Geoff 36:06
And then you realize the Kaya Toast cost like $7. And you’re like this is this horrifying?
Georgie 36:14
An abomination.
Geoff 36:15
An abomination. But yeah, the the, what, what were we talking about again, oh, yeah. bistecca.
Georgie 36:27
Bistecca, bad reviews.
Geoff 36:30
Yeah, we “not a food review as we didn’t get to eat there”.
Georgie 36:37
Wait where? Oh, wow. Okay, so here’s my thing about reviews. And I know we have talked many a time about different ratings, different reviews on the podcast for different things. But the ones that I frankly don’t understand are ones like this, where someone rates the place or rates the item, but then says something that indicates they didn’t even get the item. Like some, like I’ve seen some for like clothes that say like four stars. And it’s like, ah, like, “I haven’t received my order yet. But I’m sure it’ll be good”. And I’m like, how? Wait, what?
Geoff 37:17
Yeah, I know that. I mean, for tech reviews I like looking at the lowest stars but I’ve never seen—
Georgie 37:25
I always love to look at the lowest stars. I need to know how bad the item can possibly be.
Geoff 37:26
Yeah, this is why I haven’t bought a new iPhone, the new iPhone 14 yet. Like Pro, because I need to see the one star reviews.
Georgie 37:41
Nick got it the other day.
Geoff 37:43
Oh, he pre ordered?
Georgie 37:44
Yeah. Yeah, he was waiting until like, like, because I was trying to be home to to get the order as well, because he was going out during the day at some points. So I tried to make sure someone was home. And it’s coming to four o’clock. And he was like, “where is it?” Said it was on board for delivery, yada, yada. And I remember I think when I got my 7 or maybe 6s, I was at work in the city. And I think I got it at like 4:30. It was quite late. While everybody else I knew who was working in the city had already gotten it. But anyway, it did arrive I think at about 4:30. And Nick said he’d talked to the guy delivering it. And he said, “I’ve just been delivering iPhones all day, all day”. And then yeah, he said, someone didn’t answer the bell. And he said, “Can you just let me leave this note?” And he said, “Don’t worry. I’m not leaving the iPhone. I can’t leave the iPhone. Just need to leave the note”.
Geoff 38:37
Yeah, yeah. That’s the ah, the fact that yeah, people are just swarming, I thought you couldn’t buy one yet. And I was like, just because you had to preorder. But this seems to be stuck in the store. So nothing stopping me from going out and buying one. But yeah, the, what was it? Yeah, late the late delivery is, is—oh, lost my train of thought. But yeah, that’s pretty, pretty funny, because he’s like sitting there. Oh, that’s right. Someone was saying that they noticed. They looked at the tracking. And the phone was like in a completely different place. It wasn’t I don’t think it was in New South Wales. They were like, wait, why is, why is my not, my phone not been delivered? And they check the tracking and it was like nowhere near them. And it was already you know, at the end of the day, or something like that. But—
Georgie 39:34
Oh so it was like tough luck. They probably didn’t get around to it.
Geoff 39:38
Yeah. Exactly.
Georgie 39:38
Like I figured that they’re probably trying to deliver like so many on because that’s the day it’s released. Right? Because it’s on the box it says like “do not deliver before this date”.
Geoff 39:50
Ooh.
Georgie 39:50
Because yeah, you’re not supposed, Apple just like specifically doesn’t want anyone to get it early. And so like, they just have to wait for this one day. And if so many people ordered them, then, you know, there’s a person delivering, like, Nick was kind of chucking a bit of a fit. And I was like, there is a person doing this work, you know, like, you can’t—it’s possible that they might not get through all of them.
Geoff 40:13
The—
Georgie 40:14
Gotta be empathetic peeps.
Geoff 40:16
Yeah. It’s isn’t that bad that you get it like the next day?
Georgie 40:22
I think it’s because it’s a Friday and like, didn’t want to wait, the weekend kind of thing.
Geoff 40:27
Oh.
Georgie 40:27
It’s just, it’s just, I do find it funny when this sort of thing happens. And you’re the person who doesn’t care about it. But you’re observing someone just get really frustrated about it. And it feels, you can see the, you can smell the first world problem.
Geoff 40:45
(laughs) Yeah. I’m sure I’m sure there has been something recently where I’m just like, “Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? I ordered it? It should come today. Where is it?” But I remember the PS5. I really—
Georgie 41:01
Oh, yeah.
Geoff 41:01
Didn’t give a shit about the PS5. And I was just observing everybody losing their shit, because they’re not getting the PS5. But I got one anyways, I felt like the ultimate troll. I want one. No, don’t get me wrong. I want a PS5. I just don’t want it as much as everybody else. But yeah. Deliveries are always tricky ones, especially with my address. I don’t think I’ve lost anything lately, man.
Georgie 41:33
Yeah, that used to be the topic of the pod. And I feel like into maybe 15 plus episodes, you haven’t said anything?
Geoff 41:41
Yeah.
Georgie 41:42
About some debacle. Have you even been buying stuff Geoff?
Geoff 41:47
No joke. So. So sometimes I get into this idea that to make my purchases worth more, I’ll go get a credit card that gives me lots and lots of Qantas points. And now is the time so I’m actually waiting for the credit card so that I can just load all of the stuff that I want to buy onto it so that I get more points. So that it makes it kind of worth it. To some degree, 80, I think it’s 80,000 Qantas points. You can kind of get a one way to most places with 80,000 Qantas points so it’s kind of worth it, but also I also am I also agree that it’s a can be a big waste of fucking time. So.
Georgie 42:37
Yeah.
Geoff 42:38
Yeah, I’m waiting to load a bunch of stuff. But having said that, I got something the other day and I’ve been trying to move things to the parcel lockers. So—
Georgie 42:49
Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you have ones like near, conveniently near you?
Geoff 42:54
Yeah, Commbank. It’s like across the road. They have like—
Georgie 42:57
Oh so it’s very close.
Geoff 42:58
Yeah.
Georgie 42:59
Mine’s like, mine used to be closer to me when I like lived up the road but now I’m a little bit further so it’s actually about, I don’t know, almost 15 minute, 10 to 15 minutes walk but still it’s nice to direct it there. Like if I know I’m not going to be home but I do want to pick it up like on the way home.
Geoff 43:18
Yeah. I have a friend who is constantly in the office, or colleague, constantly in the office when he’s getting deliveries. He lives near you. And it keeps getting redirected to one of the two Ausposts that are like 15, 20 minutes away.
Georgie 43:38
Yeah, no no, that sucks.
Geoff 43:40
Yeah.
Georgie 43:41
Yeah.
Geoff 43:42
But he’s he’s missing it constantly has to like figure out which Aus, which post office he has to go to to pick it up.
Georgie 43:50
Yeah, because they’re all, I think they’re all equally like far, you if you want to walk sure you can walk but it’ll take like 30 minutes and then if you’re carrying a big item, like fuck it, and then driving is like such a bother, as well. Because one site one way you have to like cross the major like the Eastern Distributor, and then the other way is just kind of like some other major road that’s like ah.
Geoff 44:16
He said the one opened up closer to him but—
Georgie 44:19
Yeah, one, like it’s not a post office though, so you can’t like send shit.
Geoff 44:25
Oh.
Georgie 44:25
Sometimes it, like sometimes a parcel will go there for you to collect. So that’s been a bit better. But yeah.
Geoff 44:25
He thinks it’s too new. And no, not very many people know it’s there so they don’t parcel direct anything there. But I don’t know.
Georgie 44:43
That’s funny.
Geoff 44:44
Yeah. You know what else is funny? The end of this episode.
Georgie 44:49
(laughs)
Geoff 44:49
(laughs) Nailed it. So we, you can follow us on @toastroastpod on Instagram and Twitter. Actually, have we ditched—
Georgie 45:00
Don’t even—
Geoff 45:00
Do we post on Instagram anymore?
Georgie 45:01
I feel like I’ve abandoned it?
Geoff 45:02
Poor Instagram. Play a tiny, the tiniest violin for Instagram.
Georgie 45:11
Not even gonna play a violin at all.
Geoff 45:15
So.
Georgie 45:16
Yeah.
Geoff 45:16
Just tw—
Georgie 45:17
Don’t find us on Instagram.
Geoff 45:20
We ditched it.
Georgie 45:21
Yeah. You can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the big tomato. I don’t know where that came from.
Geoff 45:31
Italy?
Georgie 45:33
Oh maybe. Tomatoes are good.
Geoff 45:36
Tomatoes are good. And new episodes every Monday. See you next—
Georgie 45:40
See you next week.
Geoff 45:42
Bye.