"But you'll never queue for anything," he said.
"I won't queue an hour for the Russell Street Ramen shop, when there are many good Ramen shops in the city. I won't queue like that. people queue for dumplings and I automatically thing loser.
But, a one off, for a new phone, a few hours, why not. The fact that I am getting Sam's iPhone 7 with double the capacity of my now short of capacity iPhone 5 has little to do with it. No, it doesn't.
The first tram was 5.15am, but that was too late. So, we got up at 4.15am, drank coffee, and walked into the CBD. Of course, it rained as we headed into town. Of course, it did.
"Really? Rain? That wasn't meant to be a part of the deal." I kind of wondered how much later the tram would have made us.
We both had on black hoodies, so we pulled the hoods up over our heads and water drops sprinkled down upon us. Did we look like a couple of crims passing through the shadows of the morning? There was one girl dancing on the footpath, completely out of it, looking at a bin as if it were her dance partner. “I guess Thursday night out is still a thing,” I said. Sam shrugged. There were a few other guys tripping along as thought they’d had too much to drink, appearing like lost souls in the murkiness of the night turning to day.
The homeless people seemed to be increasing, they seem to be in every second doorway. It is a very sad indictment on a wealthy city like Melbourne. The most liveable city in the world, I wondered if the homeless would agree?
“If you were homeless, wouldn’t you make your way to Brisbane where, at least, it is warmer to live out in the open.”
“Do you really think homeless people have those choices?”
“I think, I’d be able to manage that…”
“If you had no money?” said Sam. “Really?”
“I’m guessing it would be a one way trip,” I said. “Surely, I’d always be able to afford a one way trip to Brisbane?” I wondered?
It was cold and wet in Melbourne, being out in it would be miserable. Then I wondered which part of homelessness wouldn’t be miserable?
I tell you what, though, 5am is the time to go to work. No traffic, no people, none of the really annoying things of the usual morning traffic. Yes, I know, that is the people.
We'd were in the city last night to eat dinner and check out what was what with queuing for a phone? The Myer staff told us they had 200 units and that people needed to be lining up, physically present, chairs with bags and notes on them weren't good enough. People were already lining up last night.
It was still dark when we got there, at 5am, this morning, and the line was around a different way to last night and there were many seats, some with people actually sitting in them. We were informed by a couple of people who were assuming captainship of the whole operation, it would seem, that there was now a list and we had to put our name on it and the list would be checked by Myer staff at 6am and if your name wasn't on the list, you were out, or if you weren’t there, your name would be removed from the list.
That seemed very different to what we'd been told last night, but we reluctantly complied. We were 57 and 58.
Who put you guys in charge, we thought?
There were lots of people, playing supervisor, with lots of people giving their opinions. There were nice guys in the queue who were chatty and friendly. My iPhone 5 was probably the oldest phone in the queue. It was the first time I have queued.
“There, you get to hang with the nerd boys,” said Sam. “How was it?”
Eventually, the lovely Myer Apple Lady turned up and, after that, it all ran pretty smoothly.
In due course, we were given numbers, we were 49 and 50 respectively. And when we checked there were 60 units of the phone we wanted, so we were going to get what we wanted. Yay us! Yay Myer!
The Myer staff were lovely, they gave us coffee. Anybody who gives me coffee is alright in my book. The whole process was relatively pleasant.
So, 4 1/2 hours from getting out of bed, to walking up Bourke Street with our new phones, we bought one for a buddy, I didn't think that was so bad.
Sam went to work. I've been home half an hour.
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