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Hello Sweet Angels. It's podcast time. Yeah yeah, yeah, Steve, let's go.
This is Flex and Frooms on Cada.
If you ever need an incentive to move to Coffs Harbor, we have too many questions, too many questions. I think it's somewhere. It's somewhere in New South Wales. Yes, but according to an article I read, it is the luckiest place in New South Wales. Vives are up. Now your interest peaks before you're being shady. Now you want to
know no Coffs Harbor shade well. According to an analysis of the lotto winnows over the last twelve months, Coffs Harbor has accumulated sixty four million dollars of lotto winnings. That's uncanny. That's for context West Ride, which is west of some Please I wanted to geography. What did you get in geography at school? I don't even doing geography.
The chows.
Enough with this. The West Ride ten point seven million dollars and cabramat of forty million. So what this is telling me is that the vibes are up in Coughs Harbor. There's something in the water something in the air. Actually, I'm not promoting gambling.
Okay, you know there's just been a commission into gambling in Australia where actually it was a few months ago. You have to betting places have to send you an invoice with how much you've won and lost per month.
So see, yeah, I like that me too.
This is flex and frooms.
Have you ever considered how powerful your passport is.
I've definitely considered world like country rankings, so therefore I think by association. Yeah, how many passports you have?
Is one? Which one Australian? It's good to check. What about you got one Australian passport? That is it. I wanted a Guardian passport so I didn't have to sort out a visa before I went. But like, I'm not a citizen. I'm just like a rogue stranger who's like, I want a visa. I mean, I want a passport. Why would they give me one? So you can't get a passport if your parents are born somewhere not in Ghana. I am as foreign there as anybody else. Can do
a dodgy maybe everything can be paid for. I found this TikTok that referenced a news article that shared the list of the least powerful passports, and I didn't recognize that passports could be powerful alone, but I guess based on what passport you have, it dictates what countries you can go do without a visa, which is very important because, as we may or may not know, the reason why I got stranded in Milan for five days a couple of years ago is because I booked a ticket to Ghana,
assuming that like, huh, they can tell them from there, And then I got to the Milan airport and they were like, you need a visa and I was like, hmm, I've never done that before. It turns out when Mum books the fly it gets covered anyway, they'll let you can't go into the country. And I was like, I totally understand. Thank you for sharing. You know, Mom knew something you new someone hooked it up. Thank you. Anyway, listen to this TikTok.
So there is a list that's out that takes into account all of the travel information and all the government regulations that ranks all of the world's passports from most powerful to least powerful. And they define powerful as this passport gets you into the most number of countries with either no visa at all required or visa on demand, like you can get it at the airport. Let's dive
into this list. Okay, so we got a lot of ties here, but you can see Japan is number one, the world's most powerful passport and it's not even tied with any other country. With a Japanese passport, you can get into one hundred and ninety three countries with either no visa or a visa on demand. I thought the US. Maybe this is my own American centric perspective. I thought
the US would have been high. But you can see the US is number seven, tied with Belgium, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, one hundred and eighty six countries you can access with those passports. We got the UK number six and number ten. If we look down, we got Slovakia, Poland Lithuania. You can get into one hundred and eighty two countries with either no visa or vison demand. Just to provide some of the middle countries and in the middle of the rankings,
not the most powerful, but not the least powerful. This is just so interesting. Like Moldova's forty eight, you can get into one hundred and twenty one countries with a Moldovan passport with no visa or vison demand. Tunisia's number seventy seven, Cape Verd, Philippines, Uganda's eighty so cool and interesting.
West Australia. It's not looking good, Broth because it's definitely not in the top eighty. My bad. I misread Australia as Austria. We make the mistake every time. So Australia was tied eighth with Canada, Czech Republic, Greece and Malta. And the Australian passport can get you into one hundred eighty five destinations without a visa or visa on demand. Not bad nice. I like being with Canada. They feel quite neutral.
Canada maple Smople, Syrup, Wayne's Worlds all neutral things, Mike Meyer's Great place to Be. Hi don't love data?
Who would thought? Who would have thought? To like? Get this information? Put it in a place and let us have access to it. But this is the Henley Passport Index for July of twenty twenty two. This changes frequently, so check back in, especially during COVID. I imagine what I don't like about this data is what can I do with it. I can't just go and get a Japanese passport. I can't just go and get a Lithuanian passport. They make it their gatekeeping stop gatekeeping passports. Babe a
girl band. She's like, you can't get in, Willy nilly, let me in. I add value.
You're listening to Flex and Frooms on kDa, so FLEXI.
I was having a conversation with a girlfriend the other day and we were having a bit of a debate. She thinks that all around Australia it's illegal to sell a property to someone without disclosing that there's been a death within the house.
Illegal or frowned upon illegal.
She said, you can't sell a house to somebody without telling them that someone died within it. I said, but only check out.
I feel like if you ask, they probably have to tell you.
Yeah, But then what happens if it happened thirty years ago or hundreds?
What about if you're living on a place where a cemetery used to be.
As are all of our friends living in Newtown in Sydney where the Camperdown cemetery used to be thirteen hectares wide.
So what does the answer do you? Some googles.
I did some googles and a particular story came up which really illustrated this point.
Australian story. Australian story. Nice.
So back in two thousand and one, there was a guy called Cef Gonzales.
Do you know this story.
He was a young man from the Philippines, but his family lived in Australia. They bought a house in North Ryde. They built a beautiful big house in the year two thousand. In two thousand and one, Seph had a bit of a breakdown where he proceeded to murder his mother, father's sister Auntie one by one as they came home. It was really grim, made heaps of headlines anyway, end of story.
The news cycle continued. Then in two thousand and four, the house were up for sale, right and the people that bought the house were from Singapore, and naturally they didn't know what happened.
Yeah, naturally, of course, so they purchased this house later on because realistically, when there was news coverage about this murder in the house, did they give you the address in the news coverage? I feel they wouldn't do that. No, I don't think so. But it was all over because it was like this happened in a family home, so that they should have been able to recognize the home from the news coverage.
Well, this is where it got tricky. Okay, they bought the house. They were from Taiwan, pardon me, not Singapore.
They're from Taiwan.
And the minute they bought the house, it made news that this house where the family had been murdered it had been bought. So the family get to the house and they realized, oh, this is the house. So then they got their deposit back and they didn't have to take the house.
They got eighty thousand dollars back.
And the company that sold the house, which was I won't, I won't disclose, you won't, they were fined twenty one thousand dollars by the New South Wales Office of Fair Trading for failing to disclose information that could have a substantial impact on the value of the property. And then the next year it was sold for eighty thousand.
Dollars less than the previous year.
That's it, and it got me thinking, flex, would you live in a house where a quadruple murder had occurred?
Would Flex me live in a house where there had been a quadruple murder, presuming I have choices. No, But I was thinking about recently when I was trying to find this place to live, and I went into it with preferences of course, wooden floors, you know, grey lighting, nice bathroom, and then you start, you know, doing the search, and then you realize you can't have what you need. Like I really didn't want carpet, and I didn't want gray carpet. Now I got gray carpet and four out
of like how many routes to me. But you know, beggars can't be choosing in this instance, though, I feel like there is a lot of things, a lot of places, environments I'd rather live in than that pubaly because I'm a speaky girl. Yes you're speaking. So this is the thing.
Do you believe there would be some sort of bad juju in the home where that kind of thing occurred.
I don't think bad juju in the sense of like these spirits would torment you. But I do think that the energy of an environment where something harrowing had occurred, you'd would feel that, or if you knew, you would convince yourself that you were feeling that, you know, sleepless night would be like or maybe and did I see that? And I don't want to, you know, like I said before we discover that statistically said that only fifteen percent of what you worry about actually happens. But it's the
eighty fives and the plagues you. I don't want to worry about living in an environment like that. Yeah, but the devil you don't know or something, et cetera, et cetera. Would you Oh no.
I wouldn't live in that house because that was particularly I think it would be super disturbing if you knew the people that had passed away, like if you had visual evidence, if there was news stories about it. But the style of houses that I like and that I would like to live in are oldie worldy. They're from one hundred years ago. So it's part of the purchase. I need to understand that someone has presumably passed away in the premises I definitely like. For example, my auntie
and uncle live in my grandparents' house. They passed away like twelve years ago, and they died in the bedroom where my auntie young cool sleep. Sorry, yeah, my auntie and I have a sleep in that room where my grandma passed away. And whenever I go to that house, all I have is the vision of my nanna in that room, yeah, when she passed away. So I like I would find it hard get a creepy vibe when I go there. Yeah, And I think it makes such
a good point. It's not necessarily that the spirits are there. It's just that in your mind you have the knowledge and the memory that that happened there.
And the mind always likes to fill in the gaps of what it doesn't know. So like, you might not know the details, it might not be as gruesome as you imagine it to be. But lo and behold, sit with that news for a couple of weeks. You can make up someone to fill in the gaps.
MM.
I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that, but it's interesting to know that it is illegal to do so. And I guess in the same vein, let's say you were going to buy a house that had flooded recently, or that I don't know, had like a ceiling cave in. You would need to know that information. It's vital, right, So I guess why would we draw the liner and murder?
Yeah, yeah, I wonder what deaths they consider the ones that need to be told about, like if someone just passed away from old age in the house.
Oh, they have to tell you, like where where's the line? Honestly, I mean to be fair, I'm surprised that you don't have to disclose if houses and suffering flood zones. It's up to you to do your own research. So I'm thinking like old age, like you know, you'll, what's there to say about that murder? I wonder if they tell you if your house is in an area that's frequently robbed Ooh, because again the suburbs in Sydney in particular where I didn't know this having even been born and
raised here. But there are certain suburbs where like robbery happens quite frequently and it's an expectation of living there, Surry Hills and it shann't be named speaking.
From my house being robbed in Surry Hills, you got wrecked. Yeah what two years ago? All my jewelry gone, my laptop gone, my housemate's Lenovo laptop remained, all the macs in the house.
Deals you get it? Exactly fair? How savage? Is is it? Ill?
Literally?
Yeah, that was pretty heavy. They wouldn't stoop that low. So it was laptops were taken, jewelry was checking what else?
All of my perfume bottles, all the cats had been taken off, and they'd been smelled.
Of course.
All the drawers open and they waigh, they found the person who robbed our house was through the fingerprints on my perfume bottles.
They found them.
Yeah, they found them, and repeat offender recouped most of the jewry. Yes, she was a repeat offender.
So and you got the jewelry back. What a great story. It was a good story. Did you feel really violated? Yeah?
The laptop being being gone was a bit scary because I don't know what I have on their incriminating artifacts, no doubt, but yeah, it was an interesting experience.
You really can't prepare yourself that happened to you. That sounds terrible.
Yeah, you can't prepare yourself for the violation that you actually you feel walking to a house.
Just something like to end on Yeah, flicks and frooms, Flicksie.
I came across this TikTok and I want to know what you think of it.
It is about a thing called performative work. I'll let you know for a fee.
Let's talk about performative work and why it is the cringiest part of corporate life. Performative work is the act of publicly demonstrating your commitment to your job or the boss in a way that's not productive at all. Let's have George Costanza explain what I'm talking about.
What do you do all day? Not that much?
I thought that new promotion was supposed to be a lot more work.
Yeah, when the season starts right now?
I shit around pretending that I'm busy. How do you pull that off? I always look annoyed.
When you look annoyed all the time, people think that you're busy.
Think about it.
In the office, it can look like peace around acting exasperated, but in a virtual workplace it's a little more theatrical. Oh how am I? I am? Just back to back with meetings today. It's just NonStop. Sorry guys for the seven am call. This was the only slot I had available today.
That is a great point.
The problem with performative work is it takes away time and energy from you actually being productive. It's also contagious, especially if the boss reinforces this behavior. The best thing you can do to avoid performative work is just not participate in it.
I think what confuses me about that video is it feels that the person's framing performative work is something you do to appease your bosses, not something you do to overcompensate for the fact that you're not working.
Ooh.
I think it's both because like if I thought that the point, they're like, oh, I'm just back to back in meetings. That's my poor time management because I knew I didn't want to do meetings and days I was having fun, so I would do a meeting day, put them all on one day. Then I can bludge interesting like this whole like talking out loudier emails, like if you were really in the zone, there's no time to be like and I'm just gonna click send and I'm
gonna be enter. Like it feels like a performance to mask the fact that you're not actually doing, not a performance for the benefit of your employees or of your employer because they're not in the room most of the time. Yeah.
I think people think that they hoodwinking even when it's obvious and they're not. You know, you think that your boss hasn't been in your position, Yeah, but for them to become a boss have had to be like you. Yeah, I think it works in some instances, Like I think if someone acts busy and exacerbated all the time as a junior person, you're less likely to go to them and bother them.
Yeah.
When so it's like really great for middle management and I wite believe are the biggest bludges in the world.
That's true best position to be in. Yeah, I agree, actually because I'm thinking, like, what if you saw an intern doing performative likes, I'm sure they are actually stress it's a stressful place to be but or like, get off it. Come on, this is a one day a week kind of thing.
Literally, flex and frooms.
Guess what I just found out? What Tea Pain is giving Gwyneth Paltrow a run for her money into industry beef. We love to create beef that does not exist and over exaggeration. So I might say a lie, But what is the truth if not presumptions? Listen to this though. Tea Pain just released his own candle collaboration with the brand Market formerly known as Chinatown Market. They changed it a couple years ago for the reason because nobody who built that company is Chinese. It's like that. It's very
confusing anyway. So the candle is called tea paint and it's in the shape of a paint can. Very creative in my tea paint.
I think very much like two thousand and eight Jean Paul Glartier like bottle that was in a tin.
Yeah, it's just what happens when you get some big thinkers in a room. What do you reckon? We do a play on words, a pun and anyway, so it's a sweat and tequila scented candle. Ooh, that is bad. This is marketing. I don't want a regular candle from Tea Pain. I don't want any candle from te pain really, but I want this one really badly and I can have it for a cheeky You want to guess how much it costs? One hundred whoa is that right? Why did you get so high? I don't know. It's ninety
six dollars. Okay, damn you ruined it. Yeah, but ninety six dollars. And there's not much to say about it, like the the can itself says it's hand poured bougie parfumi. Oh it's so ugly. It looks like you find in your cupboard. It's very literal, it's very paint can says tea paint sweat and to heal a candle and what could be any Sarah Font Not sure, but I like
the marketing. I'm always ready to give pats on the back for genius marketing because, like I said, I could imagine it'd be really difficult for someone like Tea Pain to stay relevant, not because he hears who he is, but when you are so famous and your likeness is really indicative of a time in pop culture, Like he was pop culture for a good five six years and then I don't know if you heard, but he got screwed over by his manager and was basically bankrupt, no money. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
His manager made him sign, made him commit to a bunch of bung deals in real estate and stuff he thought he had investments he really didn't, really terrible stuff, And I spent the last few years building his name back up. He does these live streams on Twitch where he plays music up and coming artists and gives them a platform and he co signs them. Did you do that with Mason Dane? Yeah? So it's super cufical and This is just another way he's innovating. I love that.
I love to see a rags to riches, Riches to rags.
It's riches riches to rags, cont life cycle, a loop. Who also knows Candles? Who Drake? But nobody really knows because they're not that good unfortunately, Sorry Drey, But I do love Drake and I want them to be amazing. Over Oaks should be a lifestyle brand. I'm willing to buy in. Is it available yet? The candle, the tea paint candle? Are the Drake candle? Yeah, it's been available for years. I don't know if it's sold out, you'd hope, So maybe an experthday gift.
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