Escaping the sun's rays and counting our lucky stars that we don't vlog every day of our lives. We also learn about Georgie’s first ever job.
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Escaping the sun's rays and counting our lucky stars that we don't vlog every day of our lives. We also learn about Georgie’s first ever job.
Universities mentioned in Australia:
Social media
Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Georgie 0:08
Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Toast & Roast. I am your co host Georgie and I'm here with Geoff, who maintains that we have not yet talked about sunglasses on the podcast, but I'm pretty sure we have.
Geoff 0:24
I mean, like, I, so I don't know if I've told I told the story yet. No, I remember now. Yes, I told the story about how I got two pairs of sunglasses. But recently, you know, the sun has gotten brighter or something.
Georgie 0:42
Wait, wait, hang on, wait, what, what?
Geoff 0:44
No joke, I’m joking. And I was like, you know what I could do—oh right, right. So I lost my parents sunglasses somehow. And then I was thinking, You know what, I don't need sunglasses, but I do need sunglasses. So I went into a Sunglasses Hut and—
Georgie 1:05
You love that place.
Geoff 1:07
I don't know. It just seems really convenient. Just walk in, right? And I try on another pair of the same Ray Bans that I got before. And that, and the, and the the sales attendant, or whatever. Who's helping me find where these glasses. She just looks at me and says, “too small”. And then like—
Georgie 1:30
Wait you have, you have s—
Geoff 1:33
Serious?
Georgie 1:33
You have talked about this.
Geoff 1:34
Have I?
Georgie 1:34
Yeah.
Geoff 1:36
Oh, maybe I talked about it the day it happened. Anyways. So since then—
Georgie 1:41
This is what you get when you pre record a podcast, you just forget everything.
Geoff 1:46
Maybe, but since then, right? I've been like, Okay, if I can't get the sunglasses, I kind of don't want any other pair of sunglasses. So what do I do? And I find out that because I was looking at polarized ones. And then I went down the rabbit hole of deciphering what the hell polarized means. I just knew it was good. Have you, have you—
Georgie 2:10
Compared to what?
Geoff 2:10
Compared to nonpolarized.
Georgie 2:13
Okay, so polarized are the ones that if someone looks at you, they literally see their own reflection. It's quite...
Geoff 2:18
Oh, no, that's just like the mirror finish.
Georgie 2:23
Okay.
Geoff 2:23
So polarized glass, sunglass, sunglasses block out horizontal light. And that is basically any light that bounces off shiny surfaces. So like car, cars, or snow, or, you know, things that light—
Georgie 2:46
Since when is snow shiny?
Geoff 2:50
It is to the ones who smoke the gun—but yeah, like bright stuff. But you don't necessarily need polarized sunglasses for everyday use. Apparently, it's only recommended for like people who play golf, snowboard or the like, you know, Formula One racers. I don't know. Polarized.
Georgie 3:17
Wait they wear helmets.
Geoff 3:18
Yeah, I know. I'm joking. Anyways, so you wanted to find out if your sunglasses are polarized or not, you just shift your sun, you look at your sunglasses, like horizontally, the horizontal like normal, and then you rotate it vertically. And then you'll see a shift.
Georgie 3:38
Huh, yeah, OK, I need to try that out.
Geoff 3:41
Yeah. So you'll see a visible shift. Any case. So I was looking at like, does it fucking matter? Right? I don't, maybe I don't need this. And it turns out, I probably don't need this. So I looked up the Ray Bans without polarization and the 55 millimeter one which was quote unquote, too small. You can get a 58 millimeter one. So—
Georgie 4:09
58 millimeters like the, each—
Geoff 4:11
Lens.
Georgie 4:12
Each lens is 58 millimeters wide. Horizontally. That's—and that's too small for you.
Geoff 4:19
55 was too small. 58 maybe OK?
Georgie 4:21
How big is your face, Geoff?
Geoff 4:24
I don't know. Apparently it's humonga-dunga.
Georgie 4:28
I think so. Because I think 55 on me is considered ginormous.
Geoff 4:33
Yeah. I don't know what's happening.
Georgie 4:37
Okay, so I don't know if this is like to your taste, but I have two pairs of sunglasses that are from the Korean brand Gentle Monster. I would consider them more of a designer brand. Have you heard of them?
Geoff 4:50
No, I've never heard of them.
Georgie 4:51
Okay, so because they're Korean. I think they tend to make their sunglasses.
Geoff 4:59
Oh, I see.
Georgie 5:01
Catered to Asian faces.
Geoff 5:02
I see.
Georgie 5:02
Asian faces, and have a lot of really oversized sunglasses, but also sunglasses that are really experimental in style. I have a pair of black ones. Fuck it, let me just get it. I'll show you. You’ve probably seen them before. Like—
Geoff 5:17
Woah.
Georgie 5:18
They’re pretty standard, but yeah, I like them on me. Like—
Geoff 5:22
They’re massive.
Georgie 5:23
They’re square. Yeah. Do you think they look, yeah, so I think the actual measurement is, if I can find my ruler well that's like the people can probably hear the sounds but I decided before this, before we started recording, I made a cup of tea. And I was like, if people can hear me drinking the fucking cup of tea, I don't care. You know, we used to be all weird about background noises. I don't care.
Geoff 5:46
Absolute silence.
Georgie 5:48
It's a bit. I don't know, like stuff like drinking a cup of tea, picking up a piece of paper on my desk, whatever. I feel like those are very natural noises.
Geoff 5:57
And typing.
Georgie 5:57
Yeah. Outside. And yeah, if we were outside or something, or there were external voices, I feel like maybe that's a bit too strange. Or is you recording a vlog. Yeah. So I don't care if you hear me drinking everybody. It's a cup of tea. And if you must know what kind of tea is, it's earl grey. So anyway, measuring these sunglasses.
Geoff 6:18
Should start every podcast with...
Georgie 6:20
I beg your pardon. It's 60.
Geoff 6:23
Like 60?
Georgie 6:25
63?
Geoff 6:26
Woah.
Georgie 6:27
I must have been I must have been thinking about the height. I think the height is 50. The height is 54 or 55. And I wouldn't, I tried on a pair that were taller than this and they were just just huge, I looked like a bug. Not saying anything's wrong with that. I I just didn't like it particularly. But yeah. Obviously because they’re designer they're quite—
Geoff 6:54
Geesh.
Georgie 6:54
But the first pair I bought was this pair. And I literally wore them in a waterpark. They stayed on my face and they will find by the way, I should probably describe what they, they what they look like. They're not like aviators or whatever. So they're not really fragile. They're made from like acetate, so they're pretty solid. And I've dropped I've dropped them on occasion, and then obviously I wore this one in the waterpark and they got a bit dirty, but after I wiped it, you know, there weren't any saltwater scratches, or micro scratches on whatever. And I've had I've had one of these for 2018, 19, 21, 22. Like four years and then the other one I've had for maybe like three.
Geoff 7:37
Have you seen the vlog? slash the YouTube blogger? Casey Neistat?
Georgie 7:46
Oh yeah.
Geoff 7:47
You heard of him?
Georgie 7:47
Yeah, I know of him. And I've heard—I've heard?—I've watched some of his videos and I know about the fact that he wears sunglasses because I think he said he doesn't like to really see his eyes when he's recording a video or something.
Geoff 8:01
Yeah, yeah. It's really it's really about how like his sunglasses are the Ray Ban wayfarers, and I think he broke a pair and he did a YouTube vlog, or rather, part of his vlog was just him like getting a new pair, but the thing is he doesn't like the way the Ray Ban new pair looks. So he basically, what does he do, he takes like white-out or some or like a marker or something like that, he like colors in the thing I can't... “Casey Neistat sunglasses”. Yeah he like completely wrecks them essentially, let me just find an image of it. Yeah, yeah, if I like... gotta share my screen. But yeah, he like basically completely wrecks his sunglasses because, I don't know, he just likes the style.
Georgie 9:04
Oh.
Geoff 9:05
He scrapes off like the shiny plastic and and can—just wrecks it. And I'm like why, why you do this man?
Georgie 9:16
He just gives them like a new look, like edgy kind of look, but like.
Geoff 9:20
Yeah.
Georgie 9:20
It's called art.
Geoff 9:21
So like I think for the most part consistently he creates a white outline in within the lead so just along the edges of the lens he'll he'll scratch it or put white mark or white marker or some kind of whiteout on his on the sunglasses. So it looks he looks less of a panda but more like a panda. I don't know. It's actually quite interesting because you know, I don't know if I could Google anybody else else's sunglasses and have it look, like, have this like grid of, of all of his sunglasses. And it seems really iconic to him. Oh, look someone even put it on a napkin.
Georgie 10:10
Why doesn’t he do a collab with somebody?
Geoff 10:13
It's true. I'm wondering if Ray Ban sponsors him. He should just get Ray Ban to make them that way.
Georgie 10:21
Yeah, exactly. But maybe he likes the process. I mean, I don't know. I don't know much about it. I don't know. I've never seen videos where he does that. So.
Geoff 10:30
Yeah, he's like, he's like a movie maker. He was a movie maker. I don't know what he does these days. But he's a movie maker. And he turned to vlogging on YouTube. And he just made things super cinematic. He introduced the whole B roll. And like, I guess PO—not even just his POV, but kind of like someone else's POV—kind of vlogging. You know, the fact that you see him actually get into cabs. So lots of vloggers will just log themselves like face on. And then they'll just get in the cab right. But from hi—for him, he actually has a camera outside the cab, and it actually films him getting into the cab. And then you have another another shot of him actually from the inside getting into the cab. So he gets he gets inside and outside shots of himself in full body, getting into cabs going into restaurants and stuff like that. Plus the plus the one that just shoots his face.
Georgie 11:33
So he gets like, he puts things together by capturing every angle like probably in a movie. Like a, like—
Geoff 11:39
Yeah.
Georgie 11:39
Like a cinematographer would do.
Geoff 11:41
Exactly, he does proper cinematography. “Casey Neistat, vlog...”
Georgie 11:49
So did he kind of pioneer this I guess? Because I don't know how long he’s been, he seems like he's been on YouTube for a long time.
Geoff 11:56
Yeah. Yeah, how long? He also does time lapses and stuff and everything. Yeah, how long has he been a YouTuber? “Filmmaker blog and co founder the multimedia company Beam”. How much is, when did, when did he start start? “Casey Neistat start”. He started posting daily vlogs on 2015 and then he stopped.
Georgie 12:22
OK. Yeah.
Geoff 12:24
So, so yeah, he really kick started that whole cinema graphic togoph—cinematographic style of—
Georgie 12:32
Cinematic.
Geoff 12:33
Cinematic.
Georgie 12:36
I know, I think we talked about this, and then I think I went back and I was like, oh, or I think I might have had a conversation with Nick. And he was like, cinematic.
Geoff 12:44
Yeah. So he does a lot of cinematic stuff with his vlog. And my god, I'm just thinking of the setup, right? I think you were gonna talk about it. Like, he has a camera outside, camera inside, or he has one camera, and he like, gets out of the cab, picks it up, puts it back in the cab and then opens the door and then records himself getting in, like he has two composites, two different angles. It's crazy.
Georgie 13:10
That's kind of cool. I mean, I already dislike—but this is like, probably because I feel like a lot of vloggers gotta stage and prepare this stuff—but I already hate the fact that if you want to film yourself walking into your apartment, or out of out of your apartment, you have to turn the video on, walk outside your apartment, close the door. Come back inside to collect the camera and then continue on your merry way. It just, it's too much trouble. It's not really it's not really my thing.
Geoff 13:43
Yeah, and it's sort of like, I think sometimes people like, they open the door and go oh, “hey, how's it going everybody?” Like just as if you were sitting in the apartment waiting for them to come inside. But they would have had to open the door, put the camera there, close the door, and then come inside?
Georgie 14:04
Yeah, I know. It's so yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe it comes naturally with them after doing it enough times. But yeah, to me just...
Geoff 14:13
Yes.
Georgie 14:14
Seems odd.
Geoff 14:15
I've toyed with the idea of vlogging
Georgie 14:19
Yeah, how would you do it?
Geoff 14:21
I just have five cameras. (laughs)
Georgie 14:24
Oh you would do? Wow.
Geoff 14:26
No, I wouldn't do that. But at some stage, I would get annoyed. I'd be like this is taking up too much of my time. See, the thing is, I haven't started vlogging because I, I have I have an idea in my mind of how I like to vlog or the quality, and influenced by like, yeah, Casey Neistat’s cinema, cinematic style. But then I think about how much time I have to put into it because his day must be twice as long. Everything takes twice as long to do.
Georgie 15:00
What do you mean his day’s twice as long? We all get 24 hours in a day.
Geoff 15:03
Yeah, I mean, like, if you think about your stuff that takes five hours to do not takes 10 hours, and you just say, oh my God, no.
Georgie 15:12
Yeah. Yeah, that's a turn off for me as well. Like, oh you know, this of me, I hate editing. I don't want to edit a video. So if the camera angles would be more complex, I would rather just, I would just walk around with the camera like shooting like what I want that's happening in my day and stuff. Turn it around and point out and myself if I want to be in the in the frame, and then just stick it together. I just don't want to. I don't know, fuck all of this shit, it’s too tiring.
Geoff 15:43
Yeah, yeah. See, then then you think well, then I thought, well, I could just not do any of that, right? And just do do exactly what you said, just hold the camera up and do whatever. But then would I be happy with the outcome? Probably not. Do I want to be in my own vlogs? Maybe not. Maybe I can just do it from my point of view all the time, but no one ever sees my face.
Georgie 16:08
Mhmm, mhmm, yeah.
Geoff 16:08
But even then I'm like, okay, am I putting you on YouTube? Do I think it's interesting? Probably not. Do I have to edit it? Probably, like, there’s just no way that—
Georgie 16:20
No, just don’t?
Geoff 16:22
...that I'll record before our five hours of the day, and then actually play that roll? Because it's five hours. Like, why would you put five hours on though? Or I'd probably most likely just forget. Like, to be fair, I'll sit down at a restaurant and just order my food and eat like a regular person.
Georgie 16:44
And forget to vlog.
Geoff 16:45
Yeah, and then I'll be like, oh, wait, that was probably something vlogable, and like.
Georgie 16:50
Oh my god, you know, what's funny is I think this has happened to me when I briefly thought I might start like a travel vlog. And we went to Melbourne for like, a weekend. And I tried taking a few little clips on my phone, like on the, on the bus and stuff. But even on the bus like I, in my mind, I thought it was easy, right? In my mind, it's just it's really basic. It's like, okay, hold the phone or sitting on the bus, you know, go about everything. Later, I can put music on top of it or whatever. You know, in the Airbnb, just take a few like shots of you know, interesting things, and the view outside, whatever. And then I just got fucking tired of it.
Geoff 17:29
Ha, yes.
Georgie 17:30
And then I forgot, you know, like, I was like, oh, do I really. And then we're leaving the Airbnb to go and eat food, for example. And I'm like, do I make some B-roll of walking into the elevator and pressing the ground floor button, like? And I, I felt the same when I when I did photo blogging, like before, social media was like really big. And I had a specific dedicated blog for photos. And I would take photos of everything, everywhere. And I remember going in Japan and taking photos of every single species of fish in the aquarium. And then there'd be times where I would start eating and be like, “Oh, no, I didn't take a photo of the food, I haven't documented everything”. I don't know, over time, it's, it's made me realise that, especially with social media coming into the equation, that we just, it's so easy to get stuck on your phone, and then I just, I didn't enjoy it. I was like, I actually just want to enjoy the food. And so that's why I don't think I've gone back to being interested in like vlogging because it seems to be like this massive interruption in what you normally do.
Geoff 18:41
Yeah. The thing is, it's really interesting because I have a whole kind of library of family home videos. And it seemed like we recorded a lot of stuff. Granted, these are on tapes, and I actually recorded, I had to get this little machine thing I think my dad bought it and then I hooked it up to a VHS player. So for those who don't know what tapes are, they're like kind of like a brick of plastic, hollow plastic and then you get like a black film and and it has two cylinders inside, and it rolls the film from one side to the other. And then you put it into this magic box that—
Georgie 19:29
Wait. This is not—
Geoff 19:32
I’m trolling, I’m trolling. (laughs)
Georgie 19:34
(laughs) Yeah.
Geoff 19:38
But if you really don't know what a tape is, sorry.
Georgie 19:41
You must have been born after 2006 if you don't know what a tape is.
Geoff 19:46
Maybe 2016... jokes.
Georgie 19:50
If you're, if you're born in 2016 and you're listening to this, you probably shouldn't be.
Geoff 19:55
Go see parental guardiance.
Georgie 19:59
Yes, yes.
Geoff 20:01
You'd be 16, wouldn’t you? No, you wouldn't be 16.
Georgie 20:04
No, get out. You'd be seven.
Geoff 20:06
You’d be seven, you’d be seven sorry, I don't know how to do math. I did Kumaon. Or, I actually, side note—
Georgie 20:12
(laughs) Kumon!
Geoff 20:14
We were playing for—I’ll explain what Kumon is later, but we're playing, we're playing a board game.
Georgie 20:20
No wait, I used to work there, we need to explain.
Geoff 20:22
You did? Okay, so Kumon essentially, is a boot camp for your children to learn English. Or, actually, you can learn Japanese because I think it's based from Japan.
Georgie 20:34
Yeah it is.
Geoff 20:35
Kumon is a Japanese institution. Or, or more likely math. So this is after school type stuff. They're not involved in your curriculum. But essentially, after school, you go to this, I guess, a classroom or something where they set up, or building, I've seen recently Kumon buildings. And they hand out these little booklets with mathematical equations on them. Now the problem with Kumon is that they rank you on speed and accuracy. So you finish a 10 page booklet with, I don't know, 5, 10—depends on what level you are—20 questions on each page. And if you get some of them wrong, down goes your accuracy. And, but so your speed doesn't matter. Your speed only matters when you're accurate. So you just drill, they just drill you like little toy soldiers on mathematical questions. So levels are A all the way to—I've no, do you know how many levels there are? I’ve never asked.
Georgie 21:41
For maths, for maths. I think it goes up to I or J.
Geoff 21:48
Oh.
Georgie 21:48
And it's got, has got 2A, A.
Geoff 21:52
Oh, yeah, they do, 3A.
Georgie 21:54
A2. Oh. Yeah. I think for math is like 2, 3, yeah, 2 and 3A, and then it goes to A and then A1, A2, B, B2, something similar to that. English, I think goes up to O, because it goes—
Geoff 22:12
Ohhh.
Georgie 22:12
Further than maths. And English, English is a weird one. I mostly marked English.
Geoff 22:18
Really?
Georgie 22:18
Only maths when, yeah, I only did maths when the other person wasn't there. Or they were running late. Or whatever.
Geoff 22:25
Yeah, so A1, 1A or whatever. thing. Think plus and minus, maybe even just counting to be honest, like just counting from one to 10 because this is for like really young kids—
Georgie 22:37
Or counting images. Maybe?
Geoff 22:38
Yeah, really counting images? So I've never seen—
Georgie 22:40
I think so?
Geoff 22:42
...1A?
Georgie 22:42
Oh, no. No, you're right. Maybe it's just counting. I don't actually remember maths. Yeah. But it starts very simple and then progressively gets harder.
Geoff 22:54
Yeah, cos it starts with young kids.
Georgie 22:58
Yeah. And the idea is you're supposed to... they, they, when you join the, they create like a plan for you. So they're like at, at, by this by this time in six months, you should be, have jumped like three levels.
Geoff 23:11
Wow, English must have a different thing because mathematics.
Georgie 23:15
Oh really? I would have—
Geoff 23:17
Didn't give me a plan.
Georgie 23:18
Okay.
Geoff 23:19
Maybe they had a secret one. I never knew.
Georgie 23:23
They'd probably talk to your parents. Not you.
Geoff 23:26
Oh, probably.
Georgie 23:27
Yeah, cos this is like, my supervisor would talk with parents and who them this plan and stuff. Yeah. And, and it'd be in your folder, but you don't really care about the folder. You just put your work in the front and then people like me mark it.
Geoff 23:39
Yeah.
Georgie 23:39
Yeah, it's, it's very repetitious. I think that's the idea is, and my supervisor never wanted me to tell the parents that it was repeating the same next because you basically have the booklets, like Geoff was saying, for each level, and I don't know if there's 10 booklets and a level of something or whatever the heck it is. And you do each of those booklets multiple times, you may do them more than expected or more than was originally prescribed if you're struggling and not doing well. And it's just repeating this, it's, you’re doing the same work.
Geoff 24:16
It’s 100% memorisation.
Georgie 24:18
Yes, yeah. So she didn't want me to tell, my supervisor didn't want me to tell parents this. She wanted to say it was “practice”.
Geoff 24:25
Yeah.
Georgie 24:26
It’s “practice”, not not repeating and doing the same thing because that sounds bad.
Geoff 24:31
Yeah.
Georgie 24:32
But it was memorising, and I would feel terrible for the kids who would like struggle to remember a certain answer. And then they'd come back like two weeks in a row continuously getting that same that same question wrong and writing the same thing because they hadn't like taken in.
Geoff 24:55
Yeah.
Georgie 24:55
The correct answer from last week. That I just feel bad because it means they can't go to the next level.
Geoff 25:02
Yeah, the the whole like stick is like, you repeat it until you get it right. And oftentimes the the marker, actually, I don't think the markers even tell you why you got it wrong. They literally just put an X and they move on.
Georgie 25:22
Nah, it’s not an X?
Geoff 25:24
Was it?
Georgie 25:24
X’s are not allowed. Yeah. Because it's um, this has been inspired by the way, Japanese way of doing it. Haha, I'll remind you. So, circle, a big a big giant circle on the whole page means that that whole page is correct.
Yeah I remember.
Don't worry about it. Yeah. We put a tick on things that are incorrect.
Geoff 25:49
Oh, wow. This weird reverse positive cycle of shit.
Georgie 25:53
Yeah. When we mark them really fast, it doesn't end up looking like a tick. It looks like a little stroke, like a diagonal stroke.
Geoff 26:01
Oh, yeah. You're right. You're right. Yeah. So...
Georgie 26:04
And then when it's correct, we circle that, to indicate that circle is good. We circle that to indicate that it is. It is correct. And then there is a score on the front. Usually, if you get everything right, you write 100. And then you put a circle around the 100. Otherwise, you just write 98%, or whatever. And if it's partially correct, you put a triangle. And then same thing, when it comes back corrected. And it's all good. You, you draw a circle around it. And then you, once, if you've got 98, and everything's correct, you then circle the 98 on the front of the booklet. Now, the really annoying thing with this is that sometimes the students didn't understand that, like, they'd get the folder back with the with the booklet in it, and you haven't made any changes. Because whatever they wrote there, as the answer was still incorrect. So you just leave it.
Geoff 27:05
Yeah.
Georgie 27:05
So I'm not, I wasn't, af—I mean, after some time, when we're only allowed to help them if they're really struggling. Like, if they come back like twice, three times, and they still are getting it wrong, then we'll call them over, and then we'll help them. And that kind of sucks. Because I felt really bad. Because at times, I do a triangle, which means they had maybe a spelling mistake. And then they would erase the whole word. And then they'd write a completely different word.
Geoff 27:30
Oh, no.
Georgie 27:31
Because they didn't understand that the triangle just meant “small mistake”. And there are other things like this, where I just feel like, that's where the marking system fails. Because you're not, you're not there to guide the student through the work. Really, you're there, to just mark the thing, check in again, mark it again. And so it feels very impersonal. It's like why am I there? I'm just marking your work?
Geoff 27:58
Yeah. The... it might be that they're trying to aim for solidifying concepts that they learned in school more than trying to, like teach them anything. But that's also up for interpretation. Like, I don't think Kumon is supposed to tutor people, even though they say they're like a tutor system. But really, like, you don't get why you got the mathematical or the English thing wrong. You just get a shape. And you're just trying to you just have to go off and figure it out yourself. But I got put into it, because my math wasn't stellar, obviously. Because why would you put someone who's math is stellar into Kumon? But I think I quit at intro calc.
Georgie 28:47
I’ll come back to that.
Geoff 28:48
Yeah, I quit at intro calc. My dad finally. Let me out. My brother went—
Georgie 28:53
Haha, let you out.
Geoff 28:55
Yeah. He's like you can you can get to I don't know. H or whatever. H, I, H. And you can, you can, you can stop. Brother wasn't so lucky. But yeah, so what can what does do well, and I guess it is mental math. So like, addition, subtraction, multiplication, long multiplication, lasts for a little while. I can't remember if I'm any good at it still. But yeah, generally, if you have a look at a set of numbers, and you say add these up, it's it's fairly straightforward. And that's pretty much all I took away from from Kumon was strong, simple mental maths. But my sisters were also markers. And...
Georgie 29:44
Oh, yeah?
Geoff 29:45
Yeah, so they marked, they marked my stuff.
Georgie 29:50
Haha.
Geoff 29:50
So couldn’t, couldn't find them.
Georgie 29:53
There was a kid who was really clever, and he did both English and maths and I remember thinking, “Why are you here?” So the supervisor—he was, I think he was in year three, or something, maybe two.
Geoff 30:11
So for reference, that would be 10, 9, 8? Seven or eight years old. I think. Because year five is when you're 10 or 11. And then minus,
Georgie 30:26
Yeah.
Geoff 30:27
Yeah.
Georgie 30:28
Yeah. So second second grade, which is like, we have kindergarten, and then year one, and then year two. And people usually go into kindergarten at like, five turning six. It used to be four turning five. But then I think now they tell parents, if your kid is like, four, maybe hold off another year, I was fucking four, because I'm a young. And I was, you know, obviously, this was before 2022. Anyway, this kid was so clever. And he was very good at all his work he did at Kumon, he got everything correct, like, almost all the time. And his level at Kumon was well beyond, like, year two. And then I, I think, like, I don't know, I just felt like it was a waste of time for him to be there. And I think over the, I think I worked there for four years, and I think he ended up getting into a an opportunity class, which is basically like a gifted and talented class for, which, in New South Wales, is for years five and six, so fifth and sixth grade. And you have to do like a test when you're in fourth grade, to try and like, and then it gets, the test gets marked. Obviously, it's a test for getting in, I don't know what what else you would call it, entry, test, whatever.
Geoff 31:53
Entrance, exam.
Georgie 31:53
So I was, yeah. And then I think maybe after that, like, he was still going to Kumon for a bit and I was like, just so badly wanted to tell his parents to like, like, he's too good for this. Spend your money at like actual tutoring or something? Or I don't know.
Geoff 32:13
Yeah, that’s legit.
Georgie 32:13
There were just some kids who were just so just so good at remembering stuff. I'm not discrediting the actual skills.
Geoff 32:22
Yeah. Let's talk about education and how it all it all points towards making people just good at remembering things. For the exams. Is that we want to teach our kids. Yeah, I hate tests. I don't test well at all. Like, I'll go through the entire semester being all fine and dandy, and then you put me in a test and my memory fails me for like 40% of it. And, and then I'm doomed. Except math, of course. Because I mean, math—
Georgie 32:54
I mean I'm not—
Geoff 32:56
...drilled into me.
Georgie 32:57
Have you ever cheated? In an exam?
Geoff 33:01
Yes, not an exam, but a test. I think I've cheated.
Georgie 33:07
Let’s share.
Geoff 33:08
Let's share. So it wasn't that, it wasn’t that, it wasn't that crazy, but actually involved my friend. They passed me the answers during the test itself. To be honest, I don't know I can't remember the exact details of how it happened. But I just remember it happening. But yeah, I was that kid who would use my friend’s like cheat sheet of notes. Like I would never write my own.
Georgie 33:40
Yeah.
Geoff 33:41
I would always use someone else's. Yeah. I coasted through my high school as a C grade student. Yo.
Georgie 33:50
Wait, what is this? What is a C grade student?
Geoff 33:53
Like basically 51 to 60% passing grade.
Georgie 33:58
Oh like.
Geoff 33:59
Yeah.
Georgie 33:59
Oh, wait, hey, wait, not, this is not New South Wales?
Geoff 34:02
No, it's not New South Wales.
Georgie 34:04
Okay, because I was going to ask about the HSC. But then you wouldn't have done that. HSC.
Geoff 34:09
Yeah, we did TEE. Tertiary Entrance...
Georgie 34:12
Similar thing right?
Geoff 34:13
Similar thing. Yeah HSC is actually I believe, a British British scoring system. We we did it. Although one of my sisters did it. When we were back in Malaysia and Hong Kong where of course they used to use the British system, but I think HSC... HSC scoring is probably British, I don't know.
Georgie 34:39
They call it, I think they call it an ATAR now?
Geoff 34:43
They call it an ATAR now. HSC scoring...
Georgie 34:47
Yeah, essentially, it's a ranking for how well you're doing compared, or how well you did in the exams compared to other people in the state. So if you get 100, like other people can get 100, many people can get 100. And it means you're in like, what the first percentile of?
Geoff 35:09
Yeah.
Georgie 35:09
Something like that. Yeah, they keep telling you it's not like a score. It's a ranking. I'm like, okay, why was mine so shit? So I was going to share my cheating in an exam thing. I was in a in a maths exam, I hate those. I wasn't good at maths. And I had written some formulas on an eraser.
Geoff 35:35
Oh my god.
Georgie 35:36
I put it in my pocket. Like, it's tiny. Like, you know, a small eraser. I just wrote a couple of them. And I think I might have kept that eraser in my pocket. And it's like, they're not gonna feel you and feel your pockets before you enter the exam room—exam. Why did I say it like that? Anyway? I asked. At some point, I was like, I think I need to look at the, look at the equation on my eraser because I got stuck. But I didn't want to put my hair in my pocket because that is known to be a little bit suspicious. Like what are you doing? So I asked to go to the bathroom, and you get escorted to the bathroom. So obviously, they don't like follow you in. So it was like a male teacher who like walked me to the door of the bathroom. I just go in the bathroom. And it's like a, it's the specific bathroom. There's just one cubicle.
Geoff 36:26
Woah, that’s interesting.
Georgie 36:28
Not, sorry, not one cubicle. But it's like a it's like an accessible toilet.
Geoff 36:32
Okay, yeah.
Georgie 36:33
So, yeah, so you can't potentially bump into other people in there.
Geoff 36:39
Yeah.
Georgie 36:39
Into like a regular, yeah. So I go in there and of course, I go. Because I needed to go pee, I went peed. But I put my hand in my pocket and looked at my erase to remember what the fucking formula was, of course I walk out, and I totally went to the toilet and just go back to my desk, and I remembered.
Geoff 36:54
Did it help? Did you actually have the right formula on the eraser?
Georgie 36:59
I did. But if you want to ask if it actually helped me get a better score, like, overall, it probably didn't make that much of a difference.
Geoff 37:07
Yeah, I mean, we like so like, for some reason, you know, everyone's like oh, pressure these kids into you know, passing these exams, which have no real world effect or benefit, but at that time, because everyone tells you that this is really important. You're gonna die if you don't pass it, then you like, of course, I'm going to try and pass it. So apparently, it is actually managed by New South Wales, like it’s HSC, “Higher School Certificate is run by New South Wales and some ACC schools, as well as some international schools, Singapore, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Tonga”. So I guess that's, that's quite interesting. I always thought it was like a British thing. But guess not, I guess Australia had a lot of, had a lot of educational influence. Not that that was a good thing. Maybe. But I think it made it easier for people internationally to rank. And then havem be like, oh, you ranked, I don't know, 98%, 98.5 percentile? Sure. We'll let you in to Australia. That kind of like, coming into uni, is easier from different countries, because you'll have the same scoring system. So that makes sense. My dad got a free scholarship in Perth. And that's what—to go to UWA, oh, University of Western Australia. Being one of the top schools in the world? University of Western Australia. What are top schools these days?
Georgie 38:47
I don’t know. That’s a good question.
Geoff 38:49
But, but yeah, so back then the Prime Minister was giving free edge free education to those who wanted university or web ranking.
Georgie 39:02
Oh, yeah. Education used to, or uni, used to be free.
Geoff 39:06
Yeah, it's crazy. 85th in the world. That's pretty good. Consider the number one is ANU. Oh my god. So my joke with ANU—
Georgie 39:21
Where was that?
Geoff 39:21
That's Australian ranking. This—
Georgie 39:24
Australian ranking.
Geoff 39:25
31 in the world, Australian National University, really?
Georgie 39:31
Hey. Where's mine? UTS? Please be good.
Geoff 39:38
Dorinda has also gone to UTS. Hundred and—number nine in Australia and 133 in the world, apparently. 2021.
Georgie 39:50
I mean, it's okay.
Geoff 39:52
Yeah, I made fun of my friend—
Georgie 39:54
What is this based on?
Geoff 39:57
Huh? QS world ranking 2021. So one of my old high school friends he he got lead into my high school year 10 or 11, because he has really good marks and then he, like, got into the did he get into UWA? I can't remember why. But he moved over to Sydney and went to ASU. And I was like, wait, you're an ANU student. Does that mean you’re an anus now?
Georgie 40:32
Oh my god.
Geoff 40:44
I thought it was so funny at the time.
Georgie 40:51
Oh man. Oh, there’s a, there’s a university in Western Sydney. And they renamed to Western Sydney University. So now they abbreviate WSU. It used to be UWS, which kind of just, I just felt like it rolled off the tongue better. And then like all the other, many of the other universities in New South Wales are like USYD, which is University of Sydney UTS which is University of Technology Sydney. And then suddenly, you suddenly, UWS, University of Western Sydney wants to be different, fucking reverses and goes Western Sydney University.
Geoff 41:32
That's not, that's not good for SEO. Not good for branding. Just all around. Not great. So we're looking at global university rankings. Wow. MIT is 100. The closest one is Stanford at 98.4. How did they do this thing? How do they rank? Also ranking is such a cult? Like I think I said that tweet where that guy was like the top 11 things a good manager does or whatever.
Georgie 42:08
Sorry. I can't with these, these titles. You know?
Geoff 42:13
Yeah. And I'm like, and someone responded, and rightly so, they said, “Wait, so if I don't do like three out of these 11 things does that make me a bad manager?” Are you calling—
Georgie 42:25
Yeah it does.
Geoff 42:25
You're the gatekeeper...
Georgie 42:28
Yeah, yeah, you are terrible. You have to like—
Geoff 42:30
Oh, man, you can if you cancel ONE, one-on-one session with your your mentee or your—
Georgie 42:38
Direct?
Geoff 42:39
Direct report, you're a bad manager. Oh, shit. You, get out of here.
Georgie 42:45
No, this is so, it's so silly.
Geoff 42:48
So Stanford University 98.4 Harvard University 97.9. Why these all in the United States? Did they make this ranking system?
Georgie 43:00
Yeah, I don’t knoe, I don't believe—yeah, you're right. They're they're a cult. But what if? What if? What if for some, some unknown reason or like magically next week, we are like the number one podcast? In like Australia or some shit? Is that a cult?
Geoff 43:24
I don't know who scored us. But I probably wouldn't believe it, if someone told me like, oh, you’re number one, I say, based on what? Do you want, do you want to be the number one shitty podcast? Number one in listeners? Exactly.
Georgie 43:40
I think what I mean, is the one like buy like by Apple or whatever.
Geoff 43:44
Yeah, number one on Apple Pod... According to their data? Yeah, I don't know. Depends. I guess we'll be part of the cult.
Georgie 43:57
If that happens, what are you going to do? Should we just stop doing the podcast?
Geoff 44:01
I'm gonna go get sponsors. That's what I’m gonna go do.
Georgie 44:05
Really?
Geoff 44:06
I want to get—
Georgie 44:07
Just trying to think of—
Geoff 44:08
I want to get sponsored by Ray Bans. I want to get sponsored by Lucky Charms.
Georgie 44:17
Why Lucky Charms?
Geoff 44:18
I don't know. Have we not talked about Lucky Charms?
Georgie 44:21
No. Oh yeah Otter. Otter should.
Geoff 44:23
Otter. Otter, get sponsored by Otter. Get sponsored by MIT. Just giving them a shout out here on our big platform.
Georgie 44:31
Let's get sponsored by Kumon.
Geoff 44:34
Get sponsored by Kumon!
Georgie 44:38
But then we have to advertise them and we totally just like roasted them.
Geoff 44:42
Sponsored by Vessi. Thank you, give us a sponsorship for Vessi. Apple, Apple sponsorship. We use a lot of their shit.
Georgie 44:51
But what are you gonna do Geoff? Are you gonna like eat a sock or something?
Geoff 44:54
Eat a sock? Why? Okay, so if we let's do that then. If we become the number one podcast at any given point in time in the future—
Georgie 45:02
In Australia.
Geoff 45:03
In Australia.
Georgie 45:04
Yep.
Geoff 45:06
What should we do?
Georgie 45:08
Yeah.
Geoff 45:09
Yeah. I don't know why you want me to eat a sock?
Georgie 45:11
Stop being minimalists? Is that too much?
Geoff 45:12
Why do you want me to eat a sock?
Georgie 45:17
It just, I just took it out of nowhere, you know.
Geoff 45:20
I have been wearing odd socks lately. So...
Georgie 45:23
Oh, cool.
Geoff 45:24
I don't know how I keep doing it. But one’s light grey, one’s dark grey. Like, I'm not, it's not bad.
Georgie 45:33
You sure, you sure one of them is not just like fading in the wash?
Geoff 45:35
It is. It is literally one is fading and the other one is brand new. So it's like—
Georgie 45:41
Wait, how can you do that?
Geoff 45:42
I don't notice.
Georgie 45:43
Can you feel it?
Geoff 45:44
I don't notice, I don't feel it, no. I just put them on. And then I’ll only just realise. It's happened twice now. So it's, it's getting a bit of a like a, like a pandemic here. But—
Georgie 45:57
Yeah, what are we going to do?
Geoff 45:57
What am I gonna do? I will. I will, I don't know. Something painful or something good?
Georgie 46:10
Something we can do live. Can we do something on the pod, like we do it on the podcast?
Geoff 46:16
We can speak like Kevin from The Office. When he stopped using lots of words. We can can do a whole podcast without vocab without, without like a really low level of vocab. Like, “Me, me speak you co host Georgie. Hi.”
Georgie 46:35
I don't think that's gonna work, we'll just drop, we’ll just lose our ranking.
Geoff 46:38
We’ll lose our mind. We'll come up with something. Let us know if you want us to do anything random. Anyways, so the whole point of me talking about Kumon, was that I had a board games day on the on the long weekend, right. And...
Georgie 47:00
Wait, this is a long weekend, which of the weekends?
Geoff 47:02
The last long weekend.
Georgie 47:03
They’re all long weekends.
Geoff 47:03
They're all long. Should we get four by eight? Come on. We need four working days with eight hours. And not that bullshit where you have to cram five days of working into four days.
Georgie 47:13
Oh, yeah, we can talk about that another time. I definitely disagree.
Geoff 47:16
Yeah. But this podcast has gone long enough. And I guess you'll never know why I started talking about Kumon in the first place. Maybe next episode.
Georgie 47:23
Maybe next time.
Geoff 47:26
Don't forget to follow us on @toastroastpod, Instagram and Twitter.
Georgie 47:33
You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the big circle. Congrats you got full marks, everybody.
Geoff 47:39
Hell yeah. Full marks. New episodes every Monday. So see you next week.
Georgie 47:47
Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai