Dear Dairy,
A sigh of relief for us all. These are my thoughts for 28/10/2020. It is a day to remember. Even more so for metropolitan Melbourne having to endure the media named “harshest lock down in the world” or words stretching to that effect. Quite dramatic. But when is news media ever not?
Like many things in life, things come and go. What’s old is new again. With a renewed focus on creating better habits, I wanted something that would log my activities. In particular sleep and hikes. Step per hour, day to day cardio and burn minutes etc don’t interest me. I’ve intentionally avoided the word ‘healthy’ as for me, that is not the main motivator. It is true that health is being capitalised by many looking to market things for us to buy or invest in. At risk of sounding like a cut away from a Law and Order episode, this is about the new Fitbit Inspire 2 and this is my story.
I’m mainly a private person (yes even with a blog). I normally don’t care to divulge excessive personal information to others I’ve just met or in the professional realm. I commend how some have the guts to be much more black and white. They can tell it like it is and not care or fear how their views may be received. I find myself quite often passing off fake smiles just to get through my work day.
Why do I find myself doing that? Is it the fear of not wanting to rock the boat and diminish my chances of succeeding well within the corporate structure? Possibly. Success comes from playing the corporate game well. And there is the expectance of always-on-positivity. But in all honesty, it boils down to one of the following:
Be it a topic, a task or a point of view. The honest truth is sometimes I just don’t care. I really don’t. Not everyone has the same level of interest or need to voluntarily point out their views publicly. I believe it’s unrealistic for everyone to have an opinion or care about every topic that comes their way. Not only that our brains are processing so many stimuli per second, but our lives are so busy with thought to much more important things (ie: a pandemic), there is bound to be collateral.
Ties in neatly with the first one. You know when someone presents something so far off base that you feel a strong sense of disagreement only that it’s futile to express that as you know you cannot convince them otherwise? Guess what? Any feeling of anger or scorn melts away only to be replaced by a fake smile.
Wow, another meeting. Shocker. Fake smile and nod at the camera.
Sometimes I just don’t feel great. Or I just want to get on with my day. Is that too tall of an order? Mind you I do not have the patience of a saint, many will attest to that. Being forced to contribute or compulsorily attend voluntary meetings are not my past times.
I may have mentioned before that there is no shame in work not being your life. I work to live, not live to work and so should you. Work is a means to fund your life. Provided you do the work to the standards, is that so wrong? This isn’t my forever career. I’m not expecting to be chummy or make wise cracks with every person I interact with. If it’s an organic manifestation then sure. But it’s easy to spot disingenuous connects under the guise of fostering workplace culture.
So I get through the day doing what I’m required. Less interactions means less questions resulting in less involvement which is perfect for my ever thinning patience levels.
Coping with fake smiles is like being a palm tree. As in, go with the flow. Sometimes it’s just easier to deal with people on that level of superficial.
It’s Friday, and even its unmotivated. I’m sitting in front of the computer and partaking in another virtual meeting. Trying to amuse myself, my mind is parsing through all the words that are being said. Like machine learning only I’m filtering key phrases and tallying how often they come up. It’s my version of office lingo bingo.
Where social distancing is now a thing, meeting up needs to get creative. You can’t just spontaneously take a trip to somewhere, anywhere really. So how to spice up a social event? None other than a virtual gin tasting of course. I first heard about this during a video catch up on a Saturday night. Two drinks in and everything seemed like a good idea.
Now I’m partial to a good gin. Something about the botanical, herbal smells is both vibrant and reassuring. There seem to be many gins, brands and distilleries popping up so I must be on something trendy. Not being able to set foot in a distillery meant no opportunity to soak in the atmosphere and wake the senses. Oh well, you have to take what you can get these days.
So I parted with $50 and through the magic of AusPost and 110 kilometres, my package arrived 3 weeks later. It took immense strength to not open the little vials of gin and taste them right then and there. We found this virtual tasting as an ‘experience’ sold through Red Balloon.
Tiny Bears Distillery supplied 4 vials of varying gins, a vial of coffee liqueur, two bottles of tonic and garnishes. All I needed was the ice and glasses. Tiny Bears is a gin distillery founded in 2017 and set up in Melbourne.
Tasting night came. We were guided through each gin, its profile and the backstory of how the gin is produced at the distillery. We had the videos up and watched them at the same time. Of course it can’t replace an in person gin tasting but technology allowed each of us follow along in real time and voice our comments as we went along.
So in order of the tasting:
After the tour there were cocktail making tutorials which we also followed for a dry martini. Of course I had vermouth on hand. Of course.
The Doctor was my personal favourite of the bunch. It had a gutsy herbaceous hit that wasn’t too warm or sweet. However, The Sailor came a close second with its pale blue tint, glossy appearance and slight oily mouth feel. The former would be more of my ‘everyday’ gin and the latter being a special gin. While I would never consider drinking them straight unless for the purposes of a tasting, all of them were in fact palatable in their pure state.
Let’s just say I was pretty done after the tastings and retired for the evening. Overall it was good fun and a relaxing way to spend a few hours with friends. The package was quite reasonable in terms of the number of gins and the sizes. As a previous sceptic of an online tasting tour, I was quite impressed. But having gone through it, I would definitely recommend as a present or a gin enthusiast. More distilleries or even wine makers should consider doing these mini tasting packs for the masses.
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