February 10th, 2020Kyle’s Rant

SO FAR 2020 has been a tough year for not only Australia but the world. Everyone is a bit stressed over the whole coronavirus outbreak on top of climate change and let’s throw in Trump being acquitted.

But a little closer to home, I posted a photo of my black ute after the last dust storm, simply because it was black and showed up the red dust. On the Instagram and Facebook post I stated I was over the third dust storm for 2020 and hash-tagged it climate change.

Didn’t that bring out keyboard warriors. These guys were trying to crucify me online saying that the poor farmers out west had it tough and it was their topsoil that had dropped on my car. They even told me to get a life. Thanks, but I have one. All I was trying to say is that dust storms are shit, however they affect you, and I am sure the farmers out west would agree with me on that, and that climate change is real.

Something else that happened to me last week was a request for boat training which I regularly do in Melbourne. Yes, I train people on how to drive their new powerboats, a skill I picked up in another life a long time ago. But I do like to keep my feet wet.

So this particular request was nothing special except when I accepted the offer my contact who sold the folks the boat commented: “That’s great. My Chinese customers will be very happy.”

I wondered why he mentioned their lineage at all and then the penny dropped. I asked if these clients had recently flown in from China to buy the boat. “Yes,” was the answer. I then queried when they had flown in. “Oh, last Saturday,” was the reply. Sorry, I said, unless I have a 12-day clearance and a letter from the doctor I am unavailable. It turns out this guy didn’t feel comfortable training these guys himself because of the coronavirus and decided to handball me the task. Now I know some people think the coronavirus is all media hype, but tell that to the poor bastards stuck for 14 days on that ship now moored off Japan. How’s the cherry blossom viewing going for them?

And then, not so close to home, but still in Australia it seems there are real  scumbags in the world trying to take advantage of good people. How about the bunch of mongrels who set up a fake fundraising page to raise money for those poor kids’ families who were killed while doing something as innocuous as going to get ice-creams. What sick and twisted bastards.

It really does shake your belief in humans. Up here in the Central Highlands it is like we live in a bubble with most people, apart from the aforementioned keyboard warriors, being of a “do unto others” attitude and a lot more giving more back to society in a week than our suburban counterparts give in a lifetime, but maybe that’s why we all live here, because the vast majority of us share the same mindset.

People – not a fan, rant over…