153: Split the bill

Welcome to Blind Guy's Chat, where Oren O'Neill—

Hello!

Jan Bloem—

Hello!

And Mohammed Lashir— Hi there!

Talk about the A to Z of life.

Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, and you're very welcome back after our summer break to episode 153 of Blind the Guys Chat. We do hope you enjoyed the break. We certainly did. And we are going straight in to our guest for this show, all the way from Washington, D.C., Alberto DeStark. Alberto, how are you?

I'm great. I'm great. I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Not at all. Now give us, give us the answer to the very first question, which is the hardest question you will probably be asked on this interview. What is the weather like in Washington, D.C. right now, please?

Yeah, we worked on this question for like 3 years. Yeah. So please take it seriously.

Hold it down. We want none of your Fahrenheit nonsense. We're in Europe now, so Celsius, please.

Celsius. Well, so I think earlier we said that 16 degrees Celsius was 60 degrees Fahrenheit. So I think it's in the 70s right now. So that means it's probably around like 22 degrees Celsius. I don't know. That's kind of a guess, but maybe 23.

You're probably about right.

22 is 71.5. Fahrenheit.

Yeah, very good. You are the first blind, uh, Navy graduate of the Navy Academy, uh, that was in 2023. Is that correct?

Uh, yes, sir, it is. Um, so kind of by default, you know, the way our service academies go, there's 5 service academies. So one for the Army, one for the Coast Guard, one for the Navy, one for the Air Force, and then we have this other one that's a little smaller. And when it's— whenever you join, you're becoming an active member of the military, and you always have to be like very, very healthy, like no pre-existing conditions, no heart conditions or allergies. So obviously they wouldn't allow someone that is blind to be joining the Navy or any other branch of the military. So this— what happened to me was a genetic condition that randomly occurred my senior year.

So you had no issues with your sight up to that point, is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct. I mean, I wore glasses, right? So nothing that unusual. But other than that, I just— pretty regular experience. with my eyesight up until it was like second semester of my junior year.

Oh, that's tough.

So that's tough and interesting at the same time. So they did allow you to continue your education even though you no longer met the standards for the military. That is— why, why did they do that?

So the thing is, I think there's— when we were in school, there's, uh, like there's always a couple rumors or whatever that people hear, or people start like spreading. And I think one of those was like, if you start your senior year, like your first day of class, and they're not allowed to kick you out or something like that. I don't know if that's really true, you know what I mean? Like, I, I think that's just one of those like urban legends that we just like spread.

Yeah.

But, um, I don't exactly know why they let me stay. I think there was definitely controversial. There were some professors that were I guess not the most excited to be working with this situation, as they weren't really trained to be doing what they had to do. Like, the Naval Academy in itself doesn't have to be accommodating because no one there has any real problems, you know, any disabilities like that. So it was— there was a lot of problems, I'd say, from the administrative side of things. But, you know, little by little, we were able to figure it out. I will say my first day of class, I got emailed by, you know, I've said this story a few times, but I think it's a pretty good story. I got emailed by the highest medical officer at the academy, and he told me to report to his office at 4:00 PM later that day. And so I finished my classes, and it was kind of a pretty tough day, as you could have expected. You know, I was—

Mm.

Going to class, and people were saying hey to me, you know, after not seeing them of the summer, and I just had no idea who they were because I couldn't see faces at this time.

Wow.

And I was thinking to myself, I was like, I, I was like, I have no idea how I'm gonna continue this, but, you know, whatever. And I went to his office, um, the medical officer, and he talked to me and just asked me, you know, how my day went. And he told me that I had 3 options, um, the first one being that I could go to another school, another nearby school, and finish out my degree somewhere else. And, you know, at some other school, they'd be able to give me other accessibility stuff or accommodations that the Naval Academy didn't really have to do. He said I could take a year off, you know, see the sights before I really lost most of my vision and come back a little bit more refreshed. Or he was like, You can continue, you can try and continue, but we're gonna be monitoring your grades. And there's also a lot of military obligations you have to do. You know, you have to do a lot of extra things. So you have to be completing all of the regular things that a midshipman is, what we call one of our, one of the students at the Naval Academy has to do. So he's like, if you're not able to maintain those standards, then we're going to kick you out and you're going to have to pay back the Navy. like $200,000.

Oh my God.

Yeah. So, you know, being the type of guy that I was, I was like, all right, let's, let's go for it. You know what I mean? Let's, let's go. So I put my head down and then I had the best grades I ever had those next 2 semesters. 4.0. So it was, it was good. But yeah, to your point, you know what I mean? I don't know exactly why they let me stay. But I mean, I definitely proved that I could stay afterwards. So yeah, it was quite the year.

Wow.

Color me impressed, sir. Well done. Awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

At this point, how bad was your sight? I mean, were you using any assistive technology to get through class and course and exams? Did you have to look after any of those needs, or did the Navy facilitate that?

Not really. I kind of went that whole year not really knowing how to use my phone or laptop. Oh my gosh.

I know.

Yeah, I mean, I had no idea that larger text or screen reader technology was out there. Obviously, I knew about Siri, but also, I mean, we all know about Siri and how it doesn't really work, right?

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah. So, that was kind of my mode of working at the time, was just having like my roommates or like really close friends help me out. I had a lot, a lot of one-on-one instruction from professors. So, I was like always in their offices learning one-on-one. So, a lot of just auditory things and writing things out like in really, really big letters and numbers. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I, I had a lot of friends from my— or a lot of help from my friends and the professors. I vividly remember my thermodynamics professor staying like Friday nights, uh, I think even Saturday nights, like with me and just like teaching me like a lot more stuff, you know, just stuff he was just doing just to help me out. So he was, he was amazing.

Wow.

I used the CCTV for my final, for my thermodynamics final. the first semester. So that was like my first kind of introduction really at assistive technology, which that was so helpful. Like, I don't know how I would have done it without it.

It usually happens, or it sometimes happens, that in a place where there's no accommodation like the Naval Academy, that people willingly make their own. That's, I think, what happened here for Alberto as well. And That is just awesome to see when that happens. It doesn't always happen, but when that happens, I think it shows our compassion and it shows that we help each other, that we're social creatures that help each other to succeed as best we can.

We tend to focus on like those few experiences that we had, and I just think a lot of them didn't really know how to deal with the situation. One of my most helpful professors at the end of the first semester. He was one of the guys that I really, like, felt like, like, was kind of screwing me over, you know. I was just like, I remember I had a quiz, like one of our first quizzes, and we even talked about it, like, recently because he lives in DC now. And we know, we look back on it, like, you know, laughingly, but I, I, like, like, failed the quiz because I couldn't see anything that was going on.

Wow.

And I couldn't use anything. And so Like, he just made me just take it like as it was, but he was just following the rules. Like, the academy said, like, I wasn't allowed to be using anything else. So that's exactly what he did. And then I failed, obviously, because I couldn't see anything that was on the text, you know. Um, so they just didn't have anything. Like, no one told them, like, from the, from an administrative side of things, how to deal with me, like, at that time. So he was just waiting for like the letter of like what to do. And later, you know, like, like he was like phenomenal. Like he like helped me out in so many other ways and like just like was just a great mentor. And I'm gonna use this term loosely, but like a friend, you know what I mean? Where he could just kind of like help me out in a lot of other ways just because he was an officer. And, you know, obviously we have this respect that we put on officers, but.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, it's at the beginning, like no one really knew like what to do. Like I remember that first day of class, I, after each one of my classes, I would speak to, I'd like remain in the classroom for a little bit after everyone walked away. And I'd like go up to the professor and I said, hey sir, hey ma'am, like I'm just letting you know, like from August to like October, I'm going to be losing like most of my central vision. And yeah, this is just the situation. So we're gonna probably have to work together. And they're like, yeah, I mean, you get all sorts of interesting reactions. But it was— most of it at the end of the day was surprise, you know, just, they just didn't really know like what to do. So.

Yeah.

Like, I totally understand, you know, that like, there's always like multiple sides to these kinds of stories and I don't know. I mean, I'm thankful for all the help from my friends and the professors that I did receive, you know.

You never went into active service, right?

You did not go sail on a ship? Yes and no. So like I said, when you first apply to go into one of the service academies and then you accept the offer, you do have to become a member of the active military. So it's kind of an interesting situation where you are a member of the military, but like when someone asks you like, what did you do? Like for me, for example, it's like, I like, I went to school, you know what I mean? Like I, I didn't do like a deployment.

Right.

I didn't like go out and do anything like that. Our summers are definitely quite the experience, you know? So we, they do try and get us ready for when we do become naval officers. So I've been on like a destroyer. I've been on other like types of ships. Um, I had an aviation cruise where I got to fly helicopters. Like, so like we've done like very interesting things, but in the way that most people think about being in the military, like, not really.

You left the Navy and then you're now— well, your, your latest venture, I presume, is this, uh, is this app that you have created. for collating receipts. Is that correct?

Yes, sir, it is. So I kind of realized that since I had started losing my vision, I never had access, real access to my paper receipt information. I also can't tip on my own or sign my own receipts. So Europe may be a bit different, but in the way it kind of works here in the United States generally is that usually you get a paper receipt or you have to do something on a tablet, which both of those forms are generally inaccessible, at least for me and most of the blind people that I've interacted with. So what I thought about is if you're able to get the fully itemized receipt immediately after you pay, to our app, then you could turn on something like VoiceOver on iPhone. You could turn on TalkBack, go line by line, navigate the entire itemized receipt in a clean and efficient manner. And then afterwards, you could also interact with it. You could also tip, you could sign, you could split the bill with friends, you could do all sorts of things. Because the current way, if someone wanted to view their paper receipt, They could take a picture of it, they could aim their camera at the receipt and use OCR technology, they could scan a QR code. And all 3 of these fundamentally hinge on the idea that you have to aim your camera at something that you really cannot see.

Yeah.

So I just obviously didn't like that solution. There's email and text receipts, but I thought that this was better because if you wanted to find your email or text receipt, After a week or a month, you're going to have a difficult time navigating through your cluttered inbox, finding this thing that has marginal value to you. So if you just had an easy place to find all of your personal expenses that was in a digital format, then I feel like you'd have something quite interesting. So that was kind of my idea, my hypothesis, I guess.

Interesting. Of course, in the States, you guys do your own taxes, don't you? here we don't, um, unless you're a business. But if you're an individual, you don't have to do your own taxes unless you're self-employed. So I guess for you guys it's really important to have receipts, right?

Yeah, so there's all— obviously all the taxes, that stuff is very important. Um, there's all the work expenses, so whenever you go on work trips, uh, you always have to take pictures of your receipts. So this is gonna be better, right? Because you're just gonna have all of them in one place and just export them into the software that your company requires you to do. And then, yeah, there's, there's a lot of interesting ways that the receipt information could be useful or have some sort of value. But at the end of the day, I just thought that it's not exactly whether or not someone cares about the receipt. You know, if someone is blind, it shouldn't matter if they care about their receipt. It's the fact that they should be able to quickly look at it or view it and then just like discard it. Because what someone normally does whenever they get a paper receipt is they'll just quickly stare at it, you know, maybe check it out real quick, and then they'll just like crumple it up into a ball and put it in their pocket or throw it away. And that, like, like that small little thing is something that like we cannot do. So I just thought to myself, this is going to be like a easy venture to just try and help the blind community out. Easy, it is. I, you know, I don't know if it's easy. Yeah, you know, looking back into it, but it's been— it's definitely been a fun process because there's a lot of interesting, like, engineering components to it. And I feel like I'm learning a lot. So I'd really—

Brilliant.

And I think, yeah, and I think a lot of people can appreciate what I'm trying to do.

How does it work exactly? Take me— I'm going to a restaurant, I got my receipt, what do I do in order to get it into your app?

Sure, so the restaurant situation is— the current flow is something like this. You're done eating, the waiter comes up to you and says, can I bring you the bill? And then you say yes. And so they come back, they give you the bill for you to review, then you put down your credit card, and then they swipe the card and they come out with the merchant copy and the customer copy, and then you sign and tip. That's the current process.

Mm-hmm.

The process that we're trying to propose would be similar. So you're done eating, the waiter comes up to you and asks you if you're ready for the bill. And then you say yes, they come out to you with the bill, you put down your card, they swipe the credit card, and that doesn't immediately charge you for the bill. You just, you get a notification on the app to review the bill. And so then you can turn on VoiceOver or TalkBack right after that card has been swiped and then look at it line by line and make sure that it's correct. Then you confirm it, and then it will prompt you to tip and sign. So this process will actually be faster than the current process out there, just because you'll be able to tip at your own pace or whenever you want. And obviously, this is better because you actually know what you're tipping without having to rely upon someone else. So the whole idea is that the credit card becomes the linking mechanism. So we need to have it registered at some point. But when they first swipe the credit card, it's not automatically going to charge you because we still want you to be able to confirm the information on the bill.

Right.

Yeah, so that's kind of the idea.

So do you need to work with the credit card companies or with the restaurants in order to get this implemented? How does it work?

Mostly the, the companies that create the the place where you pay, we call that the point of sale system. Like a terminal? Exactly, exactly, yep, yeah. That's what we're integrating with, because they have the itemized receipt information, so we have to integrate with them. For us, the largest point of sale systems are Square. Square is the biggest one by far, and then we have another one called Toast, which is mostly the restaurant ones. And then there's another one called Clover. So those 3 make up around 70 to 80% of paper receipt transactions in the United States. And yeah, so we have to integrate with them, and then we have to just make sure that everything's working correctly because there's still some engineering we have to do.

Yeah.

But, but yeah, I mean, we do have to do some stuff with the credit card companies just because There's something here that we call PCI compliance, where hosting credit cards on our app requires us to make sure that the information can't be stolen by, you know, random people. So that's like the part that we'd have to work with the credit card companies. But other than that, it's mostly the point-of-sale systems.

And are you integrated with all point-of-sale systems at this stage, or?

Are you still working on that? No, we only have Square right now. So Square is the biggest one, and that's why we decided to start there, especially because their information, like the way we could integrate with it, was pretty easy. It was pretty open. And then we're looking at Clover right now, but we're adding the tipping feature on Square currently. So we're going to add the tipping feature, and then we're going to integrate with Clover, and then Toast. But yeah, the tipping feature was really interesting. It took us a while to kind of figure it out. But like I said, I mean, this was started in April, and then we presented at the National Federation of the Blind's annual convention in Austin, Texas, which was pretty awesome because we were live on the App Store like a day before the convention began.

So we were—

Wow. Yeah, yeah. So we were cutting it pretty close, but Yeah, we're adding a bunch of new things. So I'm, I'm very, very excited to, uh, yeah, see what's next.

I will say that Europe is very different though. I'm, I'm not sure that your flow will work, but that's not really your flow. I think it's the difference between the US and Europe.

They give you a tablet, like where you have to do all the work?

No, no, no. Actually, we don't actually even use, well, maybe in Ireland you do, but we don't use credit cards at all. And so therefore, holding payments and all that infrastructure does not really exist. Like, I've been in the US, I've lived in the US even, and like, we don't even sign our receipts. That's not a thing here. You pay for it, you get your receipt, and you're out of there. There's no signing, there's nothing like that, because once you've paid, you've paid. So what happens here is they come up to you, they tell you what you have, and they tell you what the price is, and you say, sure, I'll pay. And then you go pay and that's it, right? And if you want a tip, they don't ask it on the machine itself. I just tell them, you know, oh, add €10. And they'll say, oh sure, thank you so much. And that will be that. So there's no real flow like there is in the US where it's much more formalized. It could work, but it would have to differ because of the way the European payment flow works.

Yeah.

But in the US, this is very useful. I can see how you'd want to use this.

Alberto, you never told us the name of the app. What's it called?

Of course. It's the letters E-Z as in Zulu, R as in Romeo, E as in Echo. So it's Ezra. The reason why it's Ezra is just because it's easy receipts.

Cool.

I like it.

Brilliant. You're live on the App Store at the moment? And is it, is it iPhone only or is it Android as well?

We have submitted, so we're waiting to hear back from Android. So, okay, we'll probably be live on them. Like, no, it doesn't take that long. Like, we'll probably hear back from this week. Um, okay. But, uh, yeah, I mean, we're about to be live on the Android store and we are definitely live on the Apple Store.

And do the merchants have to do anything to enable you to work or do you work automatically?

Yeah, you got a lot of great questions.

I'm a tech person, can you tell?

Yeah, I can. Yeah, of course. Yeah, so that's kind of another thing. I mean, you kind of think about this, you know, kind of like pragmatically, and you're like, well, this seems like such a simple idea. I'm really wondering why no one's done an app that has all of your personal expenses, all your itemized receipts, right? But it's just There is a whole laborious process, right? So that you have to integrate with all the point-of-sale systems, because although there are 3, you know, that encompass like the 70 to 80% of paper receipts that I mentioned.

Yeah.

Yeah, to finish the gap, you know, you have to do— there's a lot more of point-of-sale systems, which that's what we want to do is to completely make the paper receipt obsolete. And then on another level, there is this thing where we still have to sell to merchants, you know, and just because we integrate with the point-of-sale system, that doesn't mean that they're automatically going to have the software on their system, on an individual merchant system. You could say a different thing about the larger companies like Walmart, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, whatever, you know, that's a different story. But also, they're not just going to talk to this random startup, you know, that hasn't really proven themselves. So what— so there's, there's a lot of different ways that we can solve this, right? We could just start hiring a bunch of people to go door to door, you know, whatever. There's a lot of inefficient ways of doing this. But this new thing that we're adding as well, because I said we're adding a lot of new things into the app, is what I'm calling the Places and Get Involved tab. So the Places tab is going to be able to show you all of the places that our software works at. anywhere near you, you'll be able to see. Additionally, there's going to be something where you can request any place. It'll look like Uber search bar where you can easily just request some place that you frequent and you can request to see that software there.

Your users are nearly like ambassadors for your software. They're asking the people to say a cafe near them. Yeah. It's like, can you please use this because Yeah, that's really clever.

Exactly. But it gets, I think it gets a little better because the Get Involved tab is where you can be a volunteer and then you can assign yourself a place that's been requested. Maybe you, most people go to the same coffee shops over and over again.

Yeah.

Maybe they work at one spot, maybe they know some people that work somewhere. And so the idea is that they can assign themselves a place that's been requested and, you know, some places will have more requests than others and they can go and do, what basically I would have done anyways. Just talk to the owner, the general manager, or whatever, and help us get more people. And then they can show them, hey, you have like 30 requests. People generally really want to see you there. So that's kind of the idea. There are other ways that we're trying to expand.

So Alberto, like obviously you are blind and you are using your app in a certain way, right? It is to understand the receipt and to be able to, you know, independently give your tip. And that's all very good, but how about sighted people? Tell me, could you sell this to sighted people? My thought is yes, but what do you think?

Yeah, of course. So, um, one of the interesting roles that a lot of There's this role here in the United States called a consultant. I don't know how familiar you guys are with that, but the running joke is that—

Yeah, yeah, they exist everywhere.

Okay, yeah, okay, that's what I figured. Yeah, I don't want to seem like, you know, whatever. But the kind of running joke is that like no one ever knows what they actually do, you know? It's just, they're just doing some random— I don't know.

And they make a lot of money while doing it.

They make a lot of money.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. So it is the same everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, but they also notoriously have to travel a lot. Um, so that would be like one of the easiest pitches, um, to be made is to pitch to these consultants that have all these work expenses where they don't have to— they don't want to continuously waste time on taking these pictures of all these paper receipts that they're doing. Um, so that's one different way of doing it. Another kind of interesting, uh, thing, another way that we could sell this is there's been this massive idea right now in the kind of conservative or military demographic where paper receipts are— there's some microplastics in them, in the ink.

Really?

And so there's some medical problems for some people that interact with them pretty often.

Wow.

And, you know, to kind of prove this point a little more, if you guys have maybe heard of the podcast called Diary of a CEO, one of their more recent podcasts, I think maybe it was about 2 months ago, 3 months ago, was about someone who is like some longevity expert. And the title of that podcast is just about why paper receipts are terrible for you. So essentially where I'm going, and that podcast itself, I think, had just about a million listens. So there are definitely a lot of people that are interested in this as well, other than the blind community, which I think that demographic, a lot of them that are talking about this are for like health reasons. They're talking about the stuff that kind of rubs onto your skin from the ink. And so that's good. That could be another interesting selling point, which is definitely something, you know, there's definitely people that have some concerns over that.

It is interesting because there are, there are apps that you can, you know, track your receipts, but they all, that I'm aware of anyway, they all require you, as you say, to point a camera at them and take them. Yeah, exactly. Um, whereas what you're talking about could, could relatively easily— now of course there's the whole data holding and data processing issue, which I don't know if it's as big an issue in America as it is in Europe, but in Europe it's huge.

California too, there's quite an extensive privacy law that's actually modeled on GDPR in California.

Oh, that's interesting. But yeah, so if it could be integrated relatively easily with accounts software, I'd say that'd be A real winner, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

Because it's saving everybody. Yeah, you're right. I'm talking with this lobbying firm in DC to try and push for basically making paper receipts obsolete based off them not being accessible to the blind community, just because in the United States, you know, like we described, the flow is quite inaccessible. So that's an interest. I'm not gonna talk about that as a definitive thing yet, but I think that could definitely help us out. Also, passing legislation in the United States is still this process.

Slow.

It takes years. Yeah, so even if it does happen, like, it's, you know, we're not going to see anything until anything, a few years. But we do have a patent, so that's, I think that's going to be pretty helpful. You know, we have a patent to getting the itemized receipt agnostically amongst different point-of-sale systems. That's practically exactly what the receipt— what our patent is. So I think that's, that's a pretty good patent to have. And our lawyers are incredibly good because, uh, we got them pro bono. So they're one of like the best firms for this.

Yeah. So if people want to know a little bit more about the, the app, what's the best way to, uh, to get more information?

So our website is pretty simple. So it's just— if you just type in EZRE .app, like ezra.app, you'll be able to find our website. And then additionally, if someone would like to email me or whatever, it would just be my, my name, [email protected]. So either of those are great ways of finding out a little more information. Maybe you want to ask me some other questions. Maybe you want to give me some good feedback. You know, I'm always all ears. You know, I just— It's, you know, all these conversations that you get and people always have some great things or, you know, to say or how they would like to really use this. You know, that's, that's what it's all about, you know, is what people really want.

Well, look, we wish you the best because you've done tremendous work so far.

5 months, that's amazing.

Yeah, and thank you for telling— thank you for coming on the show and telling us all about this. And hopefully you will keep in contact with us and let us know how the development of the app is going and We can get to use it in in Europe sometime soon.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Email us on blindguyschat.com.

Drop us a line and come along. Email us on blindguyschat.com. We'll read it out loud in a song.

Hello.

Claudia.

Hello, Claudia. Hello.

Hello. You've been here all along.

I have.

No, Jan, he's still drunk because his his team and my team actually drew, and that's a big thing for him because his team is awful. Because they were expected to lose. They were expected to lose quite heavily. So I'm I don't drink; otherwise, I would have been drunk too.

But by the way, have you got any views on because on Mr. What's his name from Meta Facebook? buying or potentially— well, he's about to buy 30% of Liverpool. Have you heard that?

I thought that was actually— that was Jeff Bezos, right?

Jeff Bezos. Amazon.

Thank you. Amazon guy.

Is it Amazon? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Rich people buy football teams all the time. It's fine.

Yeah. I'm not sure it's fine though. I think it's going to— because they're rich people just want to make more money. And I think the problem potentially could be that for supporters, it's going to increase the ticket price.

Because oh, it's very possible. But you know, there are rich people everywhere, all over the football world that actually have stakes in clubs.

Yeah.

Paris Saint-Germain, for example, has that Qatari guy Nasr Al Khalifi, who is very, very rich. Then in England, you've got a bunch of like very rich owners. I don't think it matters. Like prices are already high, and those those teams spend astronomical amounts of money. on players already. You do not go into sports to make money. You might try, but it will fail because it's such a money pit. It is just a massive money pit. And I don't think anything new is happening here, really, if you think about it.

Well, whatever about that. What about, what's his name, Mark Zuckerberg buying a castle in Ireland?

Oh, let's move on from that. What's our email?

Fair enough.

Why don't you ask Mark whether you could live there so that you can describe the whole castle with the Meta Glasses?

Zero interest in living in a really freezing cold castle. And I think he'll discover that himself shortly. Now, so I got an email from Claire.

Loughlin.

That's the one. Sorry, I just—

Pure guess. Yeah.

I'm very tired. We've been on holidays, you know. It was exhausting.

Holidays are exhausting.

Yeah, we actually— that's a lie. We have— Oren and I haven't had holidays at all. We've been, we've been working like I don't know what. But anyway, good morning, Chloe, Claire says. I hope you had a wonderful break. Thank you, it was nice, uh, even though we were still working, but it's all good. I'm delighted to tell you that the Seen Unseen, live from La Biennale de Venezia— Venezia? Venice. basically went very well, and I'm exploring a visit to the Pavilion of India, who have a large interactive artwork before the exhibition closes in November. This is a follow-on from— we did an email from Clare about this.

Yeah.

I think it was probably at our last show.

I do remember, yeah.

Before we took a break, yeah. So Clare is saying she's hoping to connect with the visually impaired community in India as well as in Ireland, hopefully forming new connections and friendships for everyone joining either in person or online, and she, Clare, will keep us posted. So I've asked her to do a report for the podcast, like a little voice note, so she's going to do that, so we're really looking forward to it. So, Clare, thanks a million, you are phenomenal, you just do so much amazing work, and I personally, as an art lover, really admire what you're doing, making art accessible to people living with sight loss, so fair dues to you. So we look forward to hearing that, and yeah.

And Clare, if you do manage, please keep going with this, and if you could hook up with some arts people in San Diego, I would be very willing to go over there and assess the situation, as they say, because Alberto told us that San Diego— he was based there for a little while, and it's a lovely place to be.

And I will be perfectly prepared to volunteer as your helper monkey, Oren, in San Diego. Oh, will you? Yes, I will.

Okay, there's no snow in San Diego, you know that.

Oh, okay, it's off. Sorry. I know there's no snow in San Diego, California, for God's sake. Okay, so that's all.

I will go everywhere. It doesn't matter to me. Wherever there is art, let me go. It's fine. It's good.

Brilliant. So, Clare, listen, thanks a million for that. You are a powerhouse. Yeah, powerhouse indeed. Thank you so much.

You really are.

All right, folks, that is it for this show. Thank you very much for listening. And thank you to our guest, Alberto. And We will see you in two weeks' time, I think.

Yes, two weeks. It never stops.

Never stops.

Okay, bye bye.

Accept an August.

Bye. Accept an August.