Your helpful Westfield updates – Voting and SANTA-20

Is there anything that screams western democratic values and ideals more than an election polling station in a Westfield shopping centre.

Yep, there's been a polling booth in Westfield Woden in Canberra. The boffins who are the boss of all things elections have obviously decided that the best way to bring liberty, equality and justice to the populace (and make them vote RIGHT NOW for the local election and circumvent COVID-19 germs) was to take the voting to the people - deep in the heart of Big W territory.

And mere steps away from the symbolic centre, the heart of Westfield, the holy grail, the iconic statue representing humanity’s march forward towards greater understanding and compassion towards overheads and rectangular plastic cards used by financial institutions – the pay parking station. 

Read the commemorative plaque if you don't believe me; it's next to the 'Insert ticket here' slot.

The polling booth stands in the shopfront that was previously tenanted by Ishka, a chichi Australian company that claims to have a "deep respect for village communities” and sells “ethically sourced furniture”. 

No wood was harmed in the manufacturing process of the furniture, except for the trees from a village community that were chopped down and therefore died at the hands of a chainsaw or some other type of tree-killing machinery just so you could have a coffee table. 

Indeed, nothing says respect for mother earth more than a shopfront in a Westfield, whose global assets are in the range of AUD$63 billion.

At the polling booth store, you have to hand sanitise - a la all COVID-era, COVIDSafe entry points - and then state that you’re not a robot to an official who has had quite a long shift already thankyou voters and ironically resembles a robot, but then it’s all electronic smooth sailing baby and it takes about three seconds and you can do it while you’re going about your other life business so I approve. Next they’ll have a sausage sizzle in the food court. Someone please make that happen. 

Another thing happening at Westfield this year is Santa Claus. I mean, he happens every year, but SANTA-20 will be a little different.

I’ve always wondered how happy Santa really is at Christmas at Westfield, with children crawling all over his jolly rotund belly and screaming into his ear drums. There’s got to be an easier way to earn a gingerbread man crust, he probably thinks every damn year. I get the feeling he’d rather be sitting on a tree stump in a Lapland forest surrounded by reindeer shit.  

Well, this year, Santa doesn’t have to handle the children. No children allowed near Santa spreading their screaming, shouting or pathogens. No sitting on laps. There will be no lapland this year. It’s a socially distanced Santa Claus.

Families or individuals have to sit away from Santa, separated by props of elves and oversized candy canes and presumably other Christmas related things like snow covered hills, a ski resort, a forest of trees, and a vast subarctic wilderness if Santa has any say in it. Westfield say it’s ‘making Christmas merrier’. Yeah, just the way Santa likes it. 

Every kid gets a free reindeer headband, presumably after they just take a quick COVID-19 PCR test. Just kidding, Westfield, don't sue me. Why would Westfield hand out free headbands. Just kidding, there is nothing on Westfield's website to indicate they are testing kids for COVID, but this is now and that is December and two months is a very long time in 2020.

It is my understanding that Santa has been granted a travel exemption to bring his herde of marauding wildebeest into Australia, which is more than anyone except Tom Hanks and Shane Warne and Tony Abbott and Lord Sugar and Nicole Kidman has received this year. I wonder what it’ll be like stuck in a hotel room in the Stamford Plaza with a bunch of reindeer for 14 days.

Abandoned vegetales

According to an eyewitness account, someone has recklessly abandoned their health today, after vegetables (pictured) were found strewn on the side of a path.

Chucked in wild abandonment, until someone placed them neatly on a ledge, and bound and gagged them, like some sort of confused serial killer copycat deconstructing the scene of a crime. 

How did this all come about, I hear you cry out, desperate for more information. Was the planned meal abandoned due to poor cooking conditions? Was it lack of cooking ability? Was it forsaken, cast aside for a prepared meal from Uber Eats? Maybe the carry bag was sinking fast and the vegetables decided to jump ship? 

Or is because it’s celery, which deserves to be strewn on a street. We’ll just never know. Because the eyewitness wasn’t so witness-y after all. 

As an Enquiry and, more importantly, an Inquiry, is launched into why there has been a significant increase in vegetables being strewn all over the place on this path and how to prevent it in the future, the fate of the vegetables in question hangs in the balance, and their future is most certainly unclear.
 
What is known, however, is that they are currently wilting in the sun. If it’s any consolation, the vegetables had very few loved ones.

My Little Bogan

Last year I bought a Holden - one of Australia's iconic automobiles from the marque manufacturer (well, it is until 2021). I affectionately refer to it as My Little Bogan. 

I always knew that My Little Bogan had a racy past life, as it has sports seats, displayed racing car livery down its side when I bought it, and was surrounded by fumes and sweaty men to represent the smell/presence of a pit lane. But I stripped it of those stickers, smells and sweaty people - thus its entire personality - because I'm a monster.

Anyway, since I bought My Little Bogan, it's had a relatively dull life. I walk to work so the only time it gets to hoon is on the weekend when we go round and round the block a thousand times and only stop when someone raises a black and white striped flag at us and sometimes that doesn't happen at all believe it or not.

But today, a strange thing happened when I was driving home from undertaking one of the most average tasks you can ever honestly endure; visiting my local supermarket to purchase a range of fresh and preserved produce, traditionally known as grocery shopping. 

Laden with my goods, I was sitting at the lights, minding my own business, as much as I ever mind my own business, waiting for my right turn. But as I took off My Little Bogan decided to go full Holden.

Before I knew it, the back wheels were spinning considerably more than the front wheels were spinning in some sort of wheel spin and then the front ones locked. I think it's called a burnout. I did a burnout; in what can only be described as in an 'aggressive manner'. 

I didn't mean to do a burnout. I couldn't do it again if I tried, honest. It stopped at soon as it started which was a good outcome for everyone given there's a police station sitting on that corner. It was very embarassing but I don't think anyone noticed to be honest.

When I got home I had a good, hard brief glance through my Holden manual to see if there is perhaps a hidden button on my dashboard labelled the 'Bathurst 1000'. It turns out no. Okay, maybe a special feature was added to my car on purchase but I feel like I would have remembered that conversation with the car folks, I am fairly certain.

I can certainly relate if My Little Bogan wanted to live it's best Holden life. Yeah Bathurst! Evidently, Bathurst's first turn is a ninety-degree left-hander called Hell Corner, so fairly similar to what you'd find at your standard set of traffic lights. And then there's Mountain Straight, described as a gentle climb where you can reach speeds of 255 km/h, which really wouldn't be ideal at the traffic lights because the next building is the aforementioned police station and that's not how law-abiding behaviour works I'm pretty sure.

Now My Little Bogan has been unleashed, rather more angrily than necessary, this is most definitely a recipe for disaster, so I shall endeavour to tame the beast. I will (I won't).

Vodafone and TPG - Consciously coupled.

It's official! Vodafone and TPG have consciously coupled and will now be happily ever after.

All The Courts in Australia it seems have given their seal of approval for the two-year romance between telecoms Vodafone and TPG to endure, flourish and now merge. Mergers are in the air, everywhere I look around.

The telco lovebirds have finally been allowed to become one entity, combining their sizable assets and market shares in all of the telecoms things and they have also fairly optimistically opened a joint bank account despite TPG’s addiction to buying expensive shoes using AfterPay.

And the early winners will be Canberra and Melbourne, who will receive a 20% capacity increase, and we do not hate it.

The couple had a rocky road through their courtship, with regulatory hurdles thrown at them from every direction. But their relationship endured.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had opposed the merger because it said it would negatively affect competition and cause a hike in consumer prices in Australia, but the Court said “they’re in love and it’s not about money so let the kids be”, or something to that effect.

The lovey dovey telecoms market disruptors have exchanged cards, bought each other flowers, watched a romantic film together and finally consciously coupled, in a $15 billion merger deal that will mean they can feasibly afford childcare for their future baby telecomms networks for more than one day a week, but no more than two days a week probably because that care is a luxury.

Exactly who is the gold digger in this arrangement is yet to be seen, because they are both completely loaded but what we do know is it’s a telecoms combo we never knew we needed and are still not sure we need to be honest.

The new powerhouse dynamic duo are now free to give the other Australian market dominators - Telstra and Optus - a run for their money in the 5G landscape (maybe not sure I haven't read the rules that closely) but then, like Harry and Meghan, they will probably ‘work to become finally independent’ from the telecoms industry because THERE’S JUST NO PRIVACY! being filthy rich, and instead become Instagram influencers in a field in which they have absolutely no proficiency, like maybe selling vitamins tablets or something.

All that's left now is for them to roll out a baby 5G mobile network. Baby names are still up in the air, but Huawei is not on the list, I'm fairly certain.