Discovering that melting and dissolving are two separate things, an intercom that you will never lose the key for, and causally watching our neighbouring apartments.
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Discovering that melting and dissolving are two separate things, an intercom that you will never lose the key for, and causally watching our neighbouring apartments.
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Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Geoff 0:12
And welcome back to another episode of Toast & Roast.
Georgie 0:18
Dun dun dun.
Geoff 0:18
I’m your co host, Geoffrey Chong—never call me Geoffrey. And my co-host Georgie Cooke. L. Georgie CL Cooke. You don’t know what her middle name is, you’re just gonna have to watch like the last—
Georgie 0:40
Chlorine.
Geoff 0:40
Not watch, listen to the last 40 odd episodes to figure it out.
Georgie 0:45
Cl means chlorine.
Geoff 0:47
Chlorine. Is that the, that’s not chlorine, the—
Georgie 0:51
No it’s—
Geoff 0:53
Chlorine is—chlorine is Cl, huh, how about that?
Georgie 0:57
But if you go like, NaCl, it’s like sodium chloride.
Geoff 1:01
Oh it’s sodium. Yeah. Wait, NaCl doesn’t include chlorine in it, does it? Sodium chloride. Of course.
Georgie 1:08
It’s a reaction of the two of them but then I think, I think it’s technically is it NaCl2?
Geoff 1:15
No, it’s just NaCl... full name, what’s NaCl’s full name? Table salt? We’re drinking chlorine everybody. Oh god.
Georgie 1:24
No, it’s sodium chloride. It’s—
Geoff 1:26
We’re not drinking, we’re eating. No, I know, I know. Wait, the melting point for sodium chloride is 801 degrees.
Georgie 1:38
Yeah.
Geoff 1:40
Do you—what, salt salt melts before that? Or is it not melting?
Georgie 1:45
Dissolving, they’re different. Like you put you put it in water yeah, it’s gonna dissolve but for it to actually melt for salt to like, like, not be a solid anymore.
Geoff 1:58
Oh, not be solid. But dissolving is like—wait, dissolving turning solids into liquids.
Georgie 2:03
No, it’s dissolving into smaller particles.
Geoff 2:05
Is that the same thing? Dissolve?
Georgie 2:10
Dissolving just breaks down.
Geoff 2:12
You can tell how far I got into—
Georgie 2:13
Wait, did you do any science in high school?
Geoff 2:18
I did like basic science. I didn’t do AP science as people call it, advance...
Georgie 2:25
Okay.
Geoff 2:26
Or anything. So I didn’t do the bios. I didn’t do the chems. And I didn’t do—
Georgie 2:31
So I did all three of them. For one, for one year.
Geoff 2:35
Woah.
Georgie 2:35
And then after one... No, no wait, after one year I dropped chem because I fucking hated it. And then I picked up general science.
Geoff 2:46
Wait, why did you “fucking hate” chem?
Georgie 2:50
Because I didn’t do Kumon. (laughs) No, I—
Geoff 2:55
“Kumon science coming soon“. This doesn’t exist, by the way.
Georgie 2:59
It’s a bit of a shame because I actually really liked the, I liked the idea of chemistry. And I really liked the periodic table. I nerd it out over that. And like, experiment things—
Geoff 3:12
Is it—
Georgie 3:13
But then it got mathy, it got into the mole calculations, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. And like to be honest, that point in school, I was going through like a hard time mentally when we were learning about the those calculations and the moles. And I just...
Geoff 3:33
Yeah.
Georgie 3:34
I think just not being able to, like I didn’t skip class or anything. But there were a few lessons that we covered those things. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. And because I was going through such a hard time, it just lagged me for the rest of like the year and I was like, this fucking sucks. And I couldn’t quite catch up. And I started to just dislike it, like “fuck maths”, as well, like, because you had to calculate shit. And then we had this option where you could, I think it was a, either general or environmental science—I would have done environmental but then not many people wanted to do it.
Geoff 4:09
Oh my God, my environmental science class was—actually no, we didn’t have environmental science. We had society and environment.
Georgie 4:16
Yeah, so I think General Science was called like Senior Science, but it’s cool. I got like 90 something in it in the HSC. But yeah, I still continued to do physics and biology in year 12. Actually, I really liked physics and so some people might be like, “Oh, but physics has more maths than chemistry”, but I don’t know, it, it made sense to me because you could apply this to real world shit. Not like some molecular level trying to figure out how much BS is on this crap, like I don’t care, like it matters to me like how things move in in the world, and that’s what to me physics, isn’t it like in space and shit and I just found that tons more interesting than shit at a molecular level.
Geoff 4:59
Did, did you, did, did you get interested in, in doing animation as well then? Because animation is very much physics.
Georgie 5:09
I actually did like a, what do you call, in uni I did an elective that was like, was like—is that what they call it? Elective? Yeah, like not a core subject. That was like 2D animation. But yeah, like I wasn’t super into it.
Geoff 5:28
I think 3D, that’s one of the shittest. It’s because 2D, 2D doesn’t deal in many, much physics. Whereas 3D animation and stuff like that is a lot of shit that goes into making things look real like a bouncing ball. That’s basically what you do day one. It’s like, how do you make the most real bouncing ball of all time? Like, you can start round, but when a ball hits the surface, it compresses. So how much how much does it compress? And then when it bounces back? How fast does it bounce back? And the shape also changes as bounces. So how much does the shape change? And you have to like, you’re basically trying to recreate real life things with with code or with the with the visual thing, and it’s just the most difficult thing I can—not most difficult thing, I mean, brain surgery is pretty difficult. But like when when you have to start thinking about all those things when you’re just like, man, just, just make the ball bounce, I just want a bouncing ball. I found it really unsatisfying, though, because I would spend like 5, 10, 12 hours trying to make this ball bounce. And at the end of it, I was like, it still doesn’t look good. So like the reward to effort ratio to me wasn’t great enough for me to continue, like I didn’t at the end of it think, “Oh, if I just spent a couple more hours doing this one thing, it would be awesome”. No, I thought, “I spent a whole day on this. It’s nowhere near my expectations”. But that’s kind of, I guess, me in a nutshell.
Georgie 7:18
I think all animation is like that, like even 2D is like, you gotta be patient to get the result that you want and that it looks right. Maybe it’s just me as well.
Geoff 7:32
Yeah.
Georgie 7:33
I really admire people who have the patience to create like, animations, because it just, in my mind, it takes a really long time.
Geoff 7:46
Yeah. Yeah, sometimes I just get an idea of what what I’ve wanted. And if I can’t, if I can’t just can’t realise that in a, in a reasonable amount of time. I’ll just like, yeah, I’ll give up. Same with like, builder type games. I’ve been playing this game called Planet Coaster. I don’t know if anyone else has played—
Georgie 8:08
Nick plays.
Geoff 8:09
Like Sim Theme Park.
Georgie 8:12
Yeah, he also. Yeah—
Geoff 8:14
Roller coaster, something.
Georgie 8:16
Like where you build stuff.
Geoff 8:18
City Skylines. Yeah. So every now and then I get into this mood where I’m like, you know, I could sit down, just build stuff, build this park, have it run. And the learning curve’s kind of not kind of high. But I guess I did the tutorial on PlayStation. And then I transitioned to PC and I just didn’t do this tutorial for PCs. So I’m having bit trouble, like learning the shortcuts to like, make things rotate and move and up and down and stuff like that. But like, I was thinking, wow, like, this park that I’m doing, it, like the controls aren’t letting me do what I want. And I can’t quite figure out why. So it kind of frustrated me a little bit. So I started watching YouTube videos, which is like, you know, the way you go. And the first video I saw was this guy trying to make hyper realistic stuff in, in the theme park. So you have stock standard roller coaster or like a stock kind of standard store. But they’re like, nah, fuck that. I’m using like planks of wood and I’m doing wooden cladding. And I was just, and they’re just like, build a whole bunch of stuff around the store to make the store not look like this stock standard anymore. And make it look thematically, like accurate to their park theme or whatever. So it’s very sandboxy in a way that you can use any item, object, you can rotate it you can have it collide with each other halfway so you can just like build a whole bunch of stuff. And like stuff that’s not even, like, you can click in then you can put down and, so like a barrel, or you can put down like a swing or something like that, but that you can actually craft the whole swing yourself with, with just pieces. And I’m like, oh my god, this is like, I don’t even know if this matters. Like, should I even be like trying to do this stuff? Because doesn’t make the park technically better? Or is it just perceived better? Like, “oh yeah, my park looks awesome now”, not that it matters just matters to me—
Georgie 10:30
Yeah I think that’s where, like, what do you call them, like, people who—like people who game but they create stuff. I don’t know what, sorry I don’t know what what to label them. But I think a lot of them care about the thing that they’re building, they really want to put this incredible amount of detail into these coasters into these buildings and things. And they really take pride in doing that, because I think this is the same feeling that Nick has when he creates these kinds of things in these games that he plays. Like, he really pays attention to the detail because he wants to follow some kind of theme. Or he wants to use the right, say ingredients, not ingredients, the right materials and things like that. So it might not matter.
Geoff 11:17
Yeah.
Georgie 11:17
In the context of the game. But I think it’s just—
Geoff 11:23
It’s like a site. It’s like your own kind of game, create your own game.
Georgie 11:27
You have created your own little world. And you’ve done it yourself. And so, yeah, and then the music is fucking therapeutic actually like—so I hear it in the background. And what’s funny is, I think it’s the City Skylines game. When we lived in our old place, and our desks were in the same study space, he would just have it on speaker and I would hear the music and for some reason, a lot of the time when he was playing the game, I was just online shopping, like online window shopping, not really buying anything. Every time I hear the music I’m like, it’s just like my shopping music, it just makes me want to shop
Geoff 12:09
Yeah, when you go into the into the shop and like that’s the music that’s playing.
Georgie 12:14
...a physical store when I did that... actually like...
Geoff 12:19
Would it make you feel like buying things? Has it like brainwashed you, every time you hear it you feel like buying shit?
Georgie 12:25
I think it’s one of those things where, when you remember or when you listen to a piece of music, it reminds you things you were doing, when you happen to be listening to that music. Like sometimes I listen to certain songs like, Linkin Park reminds me of when I was a teenager and I would be like on my computer late at night like in the dark and only the only light was coming from my screen. And I was just playing Linkin Park, while I was like surfing the internet.
Geoff 12:54
I have, I have a track. I think it’s from this... I don’t know if you call them a band or if they’re just like electronically.
Georgie 13:07
Just call them musicians or artists.
Geoff 13:11
Musicians, artists, composer... called Red Alice. And it’s just just like, the most hardcore, like music from Japan that you can probably think of. Hardcore meaning fast paced beeps and boops and, and drums. And I distinctly remember just being on a bus in the middle of San Francisco. Because that’s when I was like fully into, listening to that music. So yeah, I guess this is why I’m not an artist, is like I have I have an easier time modifying and updating existing, existing aesthetics and stuff like that, but I have a hard time, like creating things from scratch. Like, even if I have a vision, like okay, I wanted to do this type of theme. I wouldn’t have any idea of how to execute and create something that looks—
Georgie 14:21
Yeah.
Geoff 14:21
Piratey. Like, I’ve seen a lot of pirate stuff, but just thinking alright, I have to make this look piratey but like, it takes me a while to figure it out like this. The YouTuber literally was like, oh, I’m just going to put some barrels here, stack some, stack some wooden crates and put some foliage here and you know, grab one of these planks of wood throw it on the wall, like rotate these barn doors and then it looks like a frickin like, salon by the end of the—
Georgie 14:50
Saloon.
Geoff 14:51
Salon? Saloon. Yeah, saloon. By the end of like him just throwing things around. And he’s like, oh, you just put some ropes here and just put some beams here. I’m like, oh my god, like that kind of stuff. Just I can’t, I don’t think I can do that so easily. So but once it’s all there, I’m like, oh yeah, this and this and this could use improving and that can look a bit more piratey if you add some of this stuff and then move on. And that’s kind of why I’m not a designer.
Georgie 15:14
I think it’s also like thinking about the different elements that make it the kind of thing that you want or the feel you want it to have. Yeah, like, I don’t know, I for some reason I thought of like, the clothes and accessories I buy, like sometimes I want my style to be kind of like, edgy or like weird. Or it depends, right, and then I’ll buy things like the shorts I’m wearing right now are black with these like metal circle studs.
Geoff 15:42
You’re fucking wearing, shorts, like 17, 15?
Georgie 15:47
And I think of the vibes I want to want to give off right? I want to be like, Yeah, so like edgy when I think of like an edgy sort of fashion style.
Geoff 15:57
You want to feel edgy?
Georgie 15:59
Yeah like I think of like black, I think of like those stud things on like metal lots of like, metal pieces metal jewellery, maybe.
Geoff 16:08
I saw, I saw a probably less than teenager, just precipice teenager, I think, wearing a choker. Like—
Georgie 16:15
Oh, yeah.
Geoff 16:16
I didn’t think that they were even... I thought they were like so old that you can buy that kind of, it’s like, it’s just a simple lace, plastic. Like that original choker. And I was like, wait, like you can still get those? And people are still wearing them? I’m pretty sure that was that was good, like 15...
Georgie 16:37
Yeah literally fifteen years ago I would wear one of those like, it was like a velvet strip. Like that just went around my neck.
Geoff 16:45
Oooh.
Georgie 16:45
I was like yeah, like exactly you’re saying like a classic 90s choker kind of thing.
Geoff 16:50
Yeah.
Georgie 16:51
But yeah, I think about the different elements. Yeah, I would buy or like you know, maybe you have a belt that’s like, I don’t know black. Why am I saying black? I don’t know there’s lots of other things. Like maybe I have a top with a certain print on it or something like that, or like some wicked looking sunglasses, or if I want to look like you know princessy then I’d buy things with like lace or with—and then I think that’s the same thing when you are also thinking when I was picking out plants, or picking out pots, plant pots for this, for my office I was like well what kind of vibe don’t want to give? Like you know I could buy like black pots if I want to look fucking emo or boring or like super like—
Geoff 17:40
Wow, wow, black is not boring.
Georgie 17:43
Alright if I want to look like a textbook minimalist like Geoff in my, in here, I would have bought, I would have bought—
Geoff 17:50
Thank you.
Georgie 17:52
Black pots for my plants. But I bought white because I wanted textured white kind of stuff. And then I bought like a yellow and blue one recently, because I wanted some colour, I wanted to look fun but not like really fun, because the other options were like these spotted yellow and red options.
Geoff 18:11
What, what you don’t want is something in the background of your camera of your of your Zoom or meeting that will distract people from the topic you are trying to talk about. Because—
Georgie 18:27
Questionable.
Geoff 18:28
Yeah questionable. One of one of the chiefs has like a cabinet glass cabinet, like two, two really thin ones, and one’s full of like whiskey stuff and the other ones like full of like small figurines and and also it’s it’s just so much going on in his background. I was like the first thing I said was like woah.
Georgie 18:52
Yeah, yeah.
Geoff 18:53
I was trying to figure out what the theme is here.
Georgie 18:56
We had the same thing with us. Like I was, you, you probably remember, I had mine facing the wall and I had all the pictures on the wall. But Nick, he was like next to me. And he had like literally the whole back, like the rest of the apartment in the background, including on top of the bookshelf. He had his whole like collection of rum, no rum—
Geoff 19:15
Porn!
Georgie 19:16
His collection of rum alcohol. And when he moved when we moved here like he just has a blank background. Everyone’s like, oh, where’s your rum collection?
Geoff 19:29
We missed the rum collection.
Georgie 19:30
We were having a joke the other day, like we had an inspection. And we were at home so the property manager came in and just took a quick video and stuff. And we—
Geoff 19:41
Man I’ve never had one. I’ve honest, honestly in the past eight years, I’ve never had a property manager covenant inspecting my apartment. I don’t know if that’s like negligence or really lucky.
Georgie 19:57
Maybe it just so happened that while you were there like, just didn’t happen. Or, maybe people you were living with like, you were you were at work and it just didn’t happen. I don’t know.
Geoff 20:08
Yeah, it’s really strange. Never got hit up.
Georgie 20:11
Yeah. So I was joking. Because we were trying to clean up a little bit, make sure there wasn’t like visible like dust or anything like dirty like lying around whatever. And it was just joking. Imagine if we had like, some really, sexual artwork on the wall or something like that. Or we just had like a like, just like sex toys.
Geoff 20:33
Yeah, something, really phallic. One of the luxe paintings.
Georgie 20:40
Petite luxures. Yeah, well, Nick was like, or if there was like a photo of you just like in the nude. It’s just like, what would they say? Would they like, judge, but then it’s like, it’s your home. Right? You can, as long as you’re taking care of the actual property then like... oh dear.
Geoff 20:59
Yeah, or like the most that could happen is they’re just going like, “Well, that was interesting”. And then like, leave. Like, it’s not, it’s not like they’re gonna maybe kick you out for being some weird voyeurs or. Or, yeah, what’s it called? Burlesque or whatever.
Georgie 21:20
I wonder if like, people who are into that, like, do you prefer to purchase your home instead? Like so that you’re not, what, susceptible to pay other external people like seeing, like I said.
Geoff 21:36
Do you feel like you’re closeted by the fact that a stranger can just walk into your house at any point in time?
Georgie 21:43
Yeah.
Geoff 21:43
Priming them that you are indeed an exhibitionist.
Georgie 21:47
I mean, I think people wo work in that space, like, what was I gonna say? Like, they they probably, like they don’t want—
Geoff 21:58
They’re over it.
Georgie 21:58
Yeah.
Geoff 21:59
They’re over the stigma.
Georgie 22:00
Yeah, they’re over the stigma. That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. Yeah. So maybe that I don’t care. They’re like if someone’s gonna look at this and judge me then fine. But this is what I like to do, this is what I’m interested in. But yeah, I’m curious whether some people’s—in that space like have a, have an insecurity about it, but I don’t... I suspect not.
Geoff 22:23
Well, I can see right into people’s windows around here so I can probably, I can probably tell you–
Georgie 22:29
What are you doing Geoff?
Geoff 22:31
...interesting things about our neighbours?. No, I think they’re a little bit too far to know like to see what kind of artwork—
Georgie 22:38
Like I see a guy like, with a drum kit from here, but other than that, and there’s a guy—
Geoff 22:44
I judge that drum kit, judge the drummer.
Georgie 22:47
...tripod as well. And Nick’s like, Nick pointed out that sometimes he sees the tripod is raised, sometimes it’s at a lower height. And I’m like so—
Geoff 22:54
Oh, my God.
Georgie 22:55
Yeah, like and he’s like, what if they’re watching us, I’m like, come on.
Geoff 23:01
Yeah, what have they got a 200 millimetre lens on their camera? And they’re just like—
Georgie 23:05
They see me in my pyjamas every now and then, whatever, like it is, but it is too far.
Geoff 23:10
In your big shirt. You don’t have pyjamas.
Georgie 23:13
Oh shit, roasted.
Geoff 23:14
Yeah.
Georgie 23:15
Yeah I don’t have pyjamas. I just wear a big shirt.
Geoff 23:18
Unashamedly walking around in a big shirt. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess it’s like, it, living in a glass house and like being able to see the other people does kinda like, that’s kind of strange that you can look right into it. But at the at the end of the day, it’s kind of like, no big.
Georgie 23:40
Yeah. I feel like it is what it is.
Geoff 23:41
You know, living in a—yeah, but then like, maybe we’ve just become accustomed to, to this kind of lifestyle where we’re just constantly being watched. And we’re like semi-okay with it.
Georgie 23:58
Nothing to hide, you know.
Geoff 23:59
Oh, this is like the argument for not having like, a strong password—
Georgie 24:05
Yeah, no, well, I’m not using it as an excuse for that, though.
Geoff 24:11
The, the analogy is, would you, would you like use the toilet with a window on it? Like, you want the door unlocked?
Georgie 24:21
Wait, at home?
Geoff 24:21
That’s the thing. The VPN one is—I guess in—
Georgie 24:26
A public place? No.
Geoff 24:26
Yeah. In a public place. Would you use the bathroom with the window unlocked?
Georgie 24:30
Isn’t that why it’s called a public toilet like—wait? (laughs)
Geoff 24:36
Well, that’s the analogy for a VPN. That’s analogy for VPN, like you when you’re using Wi Fi, public Wi Fi, it’s like using the toilet, a public toilet, and would you rather use it with the lock and no window or would use it without lock and a win—like without window, and having a VPN puts the lock on the door and the window? So.
Georgie 24:58
It’s a fucking weird analogy.
Geoff 25:00
Yeah, exactly. It’s a weird analogy, but I mean, like, I get it like, it’s like, yeah, I probably wouldn’t, wouldn’t use the toilet with a window on it. So I would use a VPN. That’s the—
Georgie 25:14
But it’s like, who is looking through the window?
Geoff 25:17
You’re not doing anything weird or wrong or illegal, but you still want some privacy?
Georgie 25:22
Yeah you have a point. Fucking hell.
Geoff 25:26
Yeah. So yeah, if I could look straight into someone’s toilet, I’d be like, that’s weird. I don’t want to watch someone take a dump.
Georgie 25:36
But why are you looking in that person’s fucking toilet window?
Geoff 25:39
I mean, it’s there. It’s, I’m living in a glass house here. It’s not like I, I just like literally walk from one end of my apartment to the other. Take a look at the window. Look at the scenery, but the scenery is just a bunch of people on their toilets. Like, what am I meant to do?
Georgie 25:57
What?
Geoff 25:58
Anyways, whoever builds an apartment with a window in front of your toilet is probably weird anyways.
Georgie 26:05
Yeah, it is a weird place to put it on.
Geoff 26:06
But yeah, I see. I see bed, I see bedrooms, like they have a kitchen. And then and then like, there’s a bit of wall, and then the bedroom so you can kind of see them walk from their kitchen, bedroom. But yeah, I ain’t lookin’.
Georgie 26:26
You sure?
Geoff 26:26
Just every now and then. Every now and then you walk past—
Georgie 26:30
So there’s one, there’s one across the way, where I can see that the person has their desk facing the window. So they’re facing this way. And so sometimes I can’t see their face or that their torso upwards because it’s obscured by a computer, like a monitor. But I can see their feet under the desk just like swinging around. It’s just—like, it’s again, like you were saying, I’m not watching. I just happen to look that way.
Geoff 26:57
Yeah. Yeah, you happen to look that way. And they’re looking right back at you. Yeah. Um, I mean, unless that person is pretty self conscious about their like, feet—
Georgie 27:10
So it’s so far away, right. But there is one like, there’s a building a bit shorter than ours, that the roof is like, below our balcony. And if I look down at it sometimes in the mornings, I can see a guy like open the windows, and he’s just gotten out of bed and I’m like, I’m not gonna like, I’m not gonna stare here. I’m just gonna look away, because that just seems you know, he might not be able to see unless he looks up, but that’s still like, it’s kind of fucking weird.
Geoff 27:41
Yeah, yeah. Well, we’re all we’re all celebrities to somebody else. There’s always, there’s someone out there being a voyeur of your—
Georgie 27:51
That reminds me. Okay, do you ever think like, I wonder because because in my neighbourhood, we we go to the shopping center, we go to the gym in the in that building. We walk around, like during the day. And there’s lots of family. There’s like a, there’s a lot of people who live in this neighbourhood. And there’s lots of people with their kids and their dogs. And some of the people who go to the gym, we recognise them when we see them in the shopping centre or just around. And like we’re not gossiping about them necessarily. But sometimes, Nick and I will talk about, “Oh, I saw the person who I usually see at the gym. I saw them over there at the cafe” or whatever. And we see, we see people we recognise that we’ve never really talked to and then I sort of wondered, I wonder if people have seen us, or one of us and beeen like, “I see that girl at the gym, I see her walk around a lot” and they know that I walk around the same park like all the time during like lunchtime, so they’ve seen me like buying groceries and if they recognise me, I don’t know. It’s funny to think about.
Geoff 29:01
I think it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing as when when you go to the same sandwich shop every day. It’s kind of like an, it’s like a it’s like a non thing, until you leave, then you have to say goodbye Yeah, I’m sure I’m sure at some stage. Like if they if they hadn’t seen you for a long time. And then they see you again in a totally different place. It like it might spark—
Georgie 29:34
“Do I know you?”
Geoff 29:34
Like, oh, like “did she move”? Do I like, did you guys move? We, I used to see you around all the time, and never like you never talk if they if they had the inclination that would be an opening to talk, you know, opening lines to talk to people, but I do not... I do not converse—
Georgie 29:52
I know that.
Geoff 29:52
...with neighbours. I am an anti neighbour converser. I just stick to my own shit. But having said that, it is really useful having neighbours if you’re like locked out and stuff. Oh my god. So we have an annual general meeting for our owners corporation. Now, if you’ve not heard of this, you either don’t own an apartment or you don’t give a shit, or you own a house, lucky enough. So every year, all the owners, or all of the owners—in very heavy inverted commas—show up at this meeting. And we talk through like 30-odd motions, as we call them, we “go through the motions together”.
Georgie 30:43
No. Yeah, go on.
Geoff 30:47
Right, right. So, and it takes three to four hours. Right? It’s it starts at six—
Georgie 30:55
It takes as long as your washing machine.
Geoff 30:56
The last one that I went to ended at 10. Yeah, actually, you’re right. We’re like a bunch of wet towels spinning around in this room for, and discussing going through the motions together. This is very much like a washing machine. But we don’t all come out clean. So we are trapped in this room for four hours. And we just like, sometimes they debate about shit. And sometimes they don’t debate about it, and they just like vote on it. Anyways, so you have to have a certain number of owners. And I’m not, I’m not going to dive into it. But there’s this one guy who’s a proxy for like, 15 apartments. So literally anything he says goes, that he can kill a motion, he can, he can win a motion single handedly, because he’s just the biggest stakeholder there. And a proxy is that there’s, if there’s multiple apartment owners that don’t want to show up to these things, they like nominate one dude, or one dudette, to speak on their behalf. Anyways, so this dude’s got 15. So he can just kill anything he wants. It was so boring. Like the first time I went because this guy was like, “That sounds useless. Kill it”. And some of these people don’t even live in the apartment. They’re just like investors. Anyway, so I go to this thing once a year, it takes three to four hours because they debate over stuff sometimes. And it’s 30 motions. This time we talked about a little bit about our intercom system—
Georgie 32:31
All right, yeah, okay.
Geoff 32:32
Hurray. So I don’t know if I complained about this on the podcast.
Georgie 32:37
Sometimes it doesn’t work.
Geoff 32:39
But the my intercom system, it doesn’t give me picture. It barely gives me voice, and the button opens the front door, but does not unlock the lift so that the person that came through the door can get up onto this floor from the ground floor. So what do I do, I end up going down the lift and out the door, letting them in and then walking back into the lift and having the most awkward lift ride? Because usually they’re contractors and not people I know.
Georgie 33:12
Wait, I don’t really have a problem with this, I just feel like it’s my duty to kind of show them where the fucking apartment is so... you just hate people?
Geoff 33:23
Well.
Georgie 33:24
We’ll go with that.
Geoff 33:26
No, I don’t hate people. I just, I just don’t want to make small talk with—waste my time with small talk. So I go to this meeting. And right at the end, by the way, we start talking about intercom system. And I’m like, this is my time. I need to, I need to, I need to talk. Like I haven’t talked at all throughout like most of these things. And just clarifying questions sometimes. And basically, as looking through the proposal, the proposal is actually quite expensive. But all in all, we have so many tenants and so many earners that like $100,000 is like 600 bucks per person. Easy enough. Anyways, because of reasons we weren’t going to spend the money, but essentially, the proposal was to replace the system. And they were like replacing, fixing it once for one person is $700. Six or seven hundred dollars to fix for one person, and they were like the contractor that fixes it has told us that you should replace the whole thing because otherwise, every hit is six, seven hundred dollars. And this system is 20 years old. I cannot believe it. This building is 10 years old. How is there a 20 year old intercom system in the building? Makes no fucking sense. So before anyone had a chance to defeat this motion. I was like, wait a second, everybody. Let’s think about this. Before we even go to defeat things. Yeah, it makes sense because $700 per hit. And the the building manager, one of the building manager assistants was there. And he was saying, yeah, there’s more broken, there’s more less than perfect working ones, than there are working ones, in three buildings, by the way. So we’re talking 13 multiplied by six, which is—
Georgie 35:37
Seventy two?
Geoff 35:37
Seventy nine?
Georgie 35:38
Cannot Kumon.
Geoff 35:39
I think, no, 13 divided by six, six is 18, 78. 78. 78 times the three. So there is 234 apartments, and you’re telling me that more than half, more more than not, they’re broken. Anyways. Also, the new system is going to come with an app. So it’s gonna be great. Yeah, I can, I can lift my phone and scan it, and it will let me in so I will never be locked out ever again.
Georgie 36:16
And that is great, actually, because like, I’m sick of carrying keys around sometimes. I just wish I could just go “bloop”.
Geoff 36:23
Yeah. Everything of mine is keyless. That’s the last thing is the freaking door at the front with the scanning card. Apparently, I also saw on the financials, were spending money on key fobs and card access cards and stuff like that.
Georgie 36:38
Right.
Geoff 36:39
I don’t understand. It will save money. No one will ever have to do this ever again.
Georgie 36:44
Maybe some people are not technically inclined and they would rather just have a key. Maybe? Is that what that all accounts for?
Geoff 36:52
Yeah. Well, that can still stay. To be honest. You can have a key if you want. It’s not going to stop you.
Georgie 37:01
What if your phone dies?
Geoff 37:02
...access card Yeah, but I’m stuck outside. That’s my fault. I didn’t charge my phone. Actually, I think the building manager will be able to remotely open it, which would save $250 call out fee.
Georgie 37:17
Yeah.
Geoff 37:19
Bitches. Anyways, so I made all these statements. And then they were like, we need more data, because they actually don’t have the data on how many things are broken and what’s broken—
Georgie 37:29
Get the data.
Geoff 37:31
It seems weird that you need such granular data, but okay. Yeah, the building manager assistant is going to give it to them. So it didn’t get defeated completely, it just got moved to a different meeting. And because of reasons the cost is too much for now. So we might get it in 2023. Maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe later half of 2022, 2023. So that’s pretty exciting. I’m looking forward to getting a working intercom system that I don’t have to carry a key around.
Georgie 38:03
Oh yeah.
Geoff 38:05
And that is apartment living everybody. Also, I can’t actually, like if I wanted to let anybody down into the basement, visitors or whatever, we don’t have visitor parking, which is a travesty. I’d have to I’d have to go with them, with my access card all the way down. There’s like five levels. And there’s three gates—two gates.
Georgie 38:30
Our new place has like an actual like system where you got to get a key to open up a visitor parking space and you have to unlock and lower the bollard, like those those poles that are there. So you have to actually free up a spot and you have to register which we did yesterday. We registered so we can allow visitors, but yeah, there’s still like—the building manager said, just be careful when you like open up a parking spot that no one takes it. Just, just comes in and just grabs it because then it would be under your your key pass, yeah.
Geoff 39:08
That’s really strange. My my friend’s apartment building in your area has visitor parking.
Georgie 39:18
Yeah, that was our old one where we used to live but now this one seems like a bother, but I can see it’s like more secure I guess. So people can’t just camp out, because you got to enter the roller doors but then you also have to have a space available so you can’t just you can’t just hang out in there, basically.
Geoff 39:42
The, but yeah, like I said, and I think my last podcast I’m, I’m hoping that you know building buildings going forward might have like, like better facilities for yeah, charging my car possibly. And yeah, and I guess the thing is with the visitor thing if they really don’t want people just hanging out there, have digital keys, you know, you can send a digital key to somebody, they can add it to their Apple Wallet or whatever. And then they can just like RFID themselves to unlock the the bollard things. But you know apartment technology, not, not the, not the fastest thing in the world. And you know what’s not fast? The ending to this episode. I think. So new, yeah, you can catch us next week because we have new episodes—
Georgie 40:46
Wait, we don’t have one next week.
Geoff 40:46
...Monday, follow us... Oh, yeah, we’re skipping next week but usually every Monday so you can follow us on @toastroastpod, that is toast, toast with a T, roast with a R, P with pod... on Twitter and Instagraaaam.
Georgie 41:08
You can find us on... I was gonna say Apple Music. Apple Podcasts. We’ll be a band soon. Don’t worry, we’ll have some music.
Geoff 41:14
We’ll be, we’ll be, we’ll composers, the music...
Georgie 41:18
Spotify, we’ll be, we’ll be artists on Spotify as well. And—
Geoff 41:25
Yeah.
Georgie 41:26
I don’t know. The big, the big, bollard.
Geoff 41:34
The big window in your apartment. Watching you.
Georgie 41:38
See you in two weeks.
Geoff 41:40
See, see you next, two, two weeks.
Georgie 41:43
Bye.