#123: Habemus Papam!

Welcome to Blind Guys Chat, where this guy, Oren o' Neill.

Hello.

And this guy, Jan Bloom.

Hello.

And Claudia o' Donovan.

Hello.

Talk about the A to Z of life.

Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, and you are very welcome to episode 123. Now, we do have a special guest, Mr. Mohammed Lashear on the show, which is brilliant. He's fresh from his protests in Paris. He spent the last couple of days setting fire to cars.

Oh, I. I threw some tear gas grenades at the police.

Oh, really? I like you even more.

I still have some stones with me right now, so that when they come after me, I. Stones in your pockets.

We just want to make sure before we do continue with the show here, Muhammad, because there is a survey, a little questionnaire I have for you. Hey, so I would just like to know, have you appeared on Freedom Scientific's FS Cast podcast in the last month?

I have not.

In fact, have you appeared on Blind Guys Lesbians podcast? We talk about anything. Podcast, podcast. Recently?

No. I contacted them, but they threw me out. They said, no, you're not a lesbian. Go away. So.

Opportunity. People, People can do.

I would love to be, but I'm not. No.

We refuse to take anybody in this podcast who's been on another podcast. That's. That's the new stance we've just taken.

Oh, really?

You might have. Jan and I don't agree with that. No, no. There's going to be a breakup, sugar.

Finally we have a break of.

Hey, more drama.

Yes.

You're very welcome. You're extremely welcome. And you are.

Thank you so much.

You are literally back from France.

Yes, I am literally back from France. I didn't throw any dear Ghost grenades at the buildings. I just had a wedding.

You're a gentleman.

I'm very nice.

So we might as well. Rather than ask you, because you're already in the Netherlands and so is Jan, we might as well ask, what was the weather like in France?

Yeah.

Oh, it was gorgeous. It was absolutely great. So I first went to Switzerland to visit some other family and then we drove to. To France together. And both Switzerland and France had great gorgeous weather. The only sad thing was yesterday it rained. It rained and it rained and it rained some more. So the last day wasn't so nice. But the first couple of days were just fantastic, I hope. No, no, the wedding was actually on Saturday, but it doesn't matter much anyway because we don't go outside that much during the wedding. It's just insane.

Was it the traditional wedding mo.

Yes.

Okay. So fully okay. That is really nice. And how many days. Was it in one day or do you have.

No, we always do it in one day.

You don't go down the Indian route. Don't they have weddings for three days, three or four weeks?

The true tradition for us is the same, but nobody does that because it's so tiring. You also need to work. Right.

I remember we had. We had a guy in from the UK fixing some. Doing some maintenance on some equipment we had in work. This was many years ago. And he was a lovely fellow, Indian guy. And we introduced him to the ways of Ireland in terms of our drinking capacity. No, very much before he was leaving and he. He was telling us he was getting married and it was an arranged marriage and that was. That was fine. He wasn't upset about it or anything. But he. But by the end of the evening, he had basically invited the whole bar to the wedding.

Oh, wow. That's how it works, though. I think that's the impression I get. Yeah.

Yeah.

And the other thing that's interesting is that they give presents to their guests. The wedding couple give presents to their guests.

Oh, that's different. In our weddings, we give presents to the. To the couple.

In Nigeria, you get also presents from the wedding people. And then it is more or less a plastic. Plastic cups or plastic bars, etc. That is just like a Tupperware party almost. You know.

I got a beautiful saree from a colleague of mine who got married last year and it was beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, Yeah.

I love it. It's my favorite thing to wear these days.

No, no.

Oh, yeah. It's not his, but a lesbian show, you know, really good.

Yeah.

Drag queen. Hey, but Oren, to be honest, we had a lovely show two weeks ago with Deborah, you know, from the Blind. What, the.

The Blind Kitchen.

The Blind kitchen dot com.

Yeah.

And, and, and did you practice a little bit, Mr. Oren?

What? I mean, yeah, we can't get into the kitchen.

Did you block the. Is it so dirty or so slippery or.

I put a wall up where the door was. You put a wall?

Yeah. You please introduce.

He walled himself out of the kitchen. That's what he did.

Cooking isn't that hard, Oren, come on. I'll be honest. Like, sometimes I'll cook something and I'll think, okay, this is fairly good. I could give this to other people. And then other times I cook something and I'm like, I'm so happy I'm alone. I'm so very happy I'm alone. I have all this Crap myself, but. Oh, I don't have to feed anyone else.

How's your. Is this very rude question? You can cut it out if you don't want to answer, but how is your dating life? How's your dating life going, mom, how.

Many women have you got on the go?

It's all right. There are dates happening. I keep on finding girls in the mail.

What are you doing?

I love that. I love licking those stamps.

Oh, my God, look behind you. That's where the line is.

Oh, yeah. Hey, but are you also in preparation for the. For Eurovision Song Contest already? How is. Any updates on that Oren or whatever?

Well, the only thing I heard yesterday was that the singer Emmy headed off to Switzerland yesterday.

Okay.

Is the Irish representation all the parties and. Yeah, yeah, attend all the parties. I can't believe it goes on for so long now.

Our men also left already. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Claude. We have Claude.

Claude. Cloak.

Cloak.

So basically me.

He's from. Yeah, he's you, but not. Not so nice. Not as nice as you, but probably.

Probably a better singer, though.

Like the song Mo.

He. It's a nice song. It's. It's a Eurovision song. I mean, I. I like the guy anyway. I think he makes fairly good music, but, you know, this is a Eurovision song, so it's. It's good, it's good. I like it. It's not, you know, I won't be singing along loudly, but I don't.

La la la la la la la.

La la la la.

Eurovision is such a kind of a thing on its own. And I know the American gang don't really necessarily get it and why we keep talking about it because it is such a big cultural thing and historical thing. I mean, as a kid we used to watch it.

Oh, yeah.

Every single year.

Yeah.

But you know, now I don't necessarily watch it every year, but it's on.

Semi final one on 13th, semi final two on the 15th and then the 17th is the final final, the Saturday final. Yeah.

So stick it in your diaries, folks.

Stick it in your diaries. Yeah, and then burn your diary.

Hey, but. But in. In the weather update here in the Netherlands we have also a nice weather. I must say it is really an dry but also nice sun we had last week. It was. What was it here, Mo. 27 or 20.

27? 26 degrees Celsius. Yeah, it was really good.

It was really, really good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had that. Was it last week or the week before?

25, I think we got to.

You see. Oh, okay.

Yeah, but it Wasn't us. It was Galway or somewhere. Was it?

Well, no, we. It was, it was 20. I think it was 20, 23.9 or something. 26.9 in Galway, which is in the west of Ireland. But it was in 20. It was like 21, 22.

Yeah.

With us in Dublin, I saw 23.

That's lovely.

So our summer is gone.

Is that where they speak like Irish Galway?

Yeah, a little bit further. They do speak Irish and Galway, but I think what you're thinking about is more is even slightly further west, which is on the islands, the Aran Islands, which are just off the coast of Galway and Clare. And there's one particular island there. Well, they all they speak.

Yeah.

Irish is the kind of. Is the first language on those islands. But there is one that if you go, you have to speak the. You have to learn, you have to know how to speak Irish. But the others will allow English and Irish.

Okay.

But there's the Iron Islands, a lovely set of islands.

I was told like by a colleague of mine, this must have been 2015. No, no, not 2015, 2017, I think. I had an Irish colleague in Amsterdam and he told me about that place where they just only speak Irish.

I mean, there's pockets of what they're called Gaeltacht areas where they, where they speak Irish.

It was the wor. Yes, that was the. That was.

But they, but it's, you know, all over the country. Like there's one in Meath, there's a few in Donegal. There's a few in. Around the Galway area.

Okay.

The islands are kind of more militant where they don't really like.

Militant. Yeah, that's really.

But it's, you know, and in Cork and Kerry as well, there's a few places, but it's not the place that Irish has spoken. Most is in schools. And then once you leave school for them, most people never speak Irish again. Which is kind of sad really, you know, but sure.

Is it drifting away then the real Irish language or is it still.

I mean, it did, it did. You see the problem is it did because. Oh, I don't want to blame our. Our neighbors, but you know, politically we were.

Well, our next. Are literally next door neighbors in the uk.

Oh, those lovely people.

We weren't allowed to speak Irish.

So. Not the Scottish people mean.

No, no, no.

We weren't allowed to speak Irish for such a long time that it kind of came out of our culture in a way, you know, and then we. They tried to bring it back when Ireland got independence, but it's just been kind of a bit of an uphill battle.

Yeah. But there is a bit of a revival in the last few years.

There is, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the same goes for, like, in Morocco, in all North Africa, actually. You've got the Berber language in Maz, which is not Arabic. It's its own little language. Well, not little. It's actually quite big. It's spok millions and millions and millions of people.

Wow.

And the Arabs first, and then after that the French and the Spanish and whoever else were there tried to stamp it out. The only reason why it didn't happen is because we lived in the mountains. It was very hard to get to us, stop us from speaking the language. But wow. It was for the longest time in Morocco, actually. Well, not longest. After independence, I think it took some 30 years or something, or 40 years.

Wow.

The language was. Was actually forbidden and you couldn't have books in that language and you couldn't have, like, writing in that language. Now it. Now it's very different, but it used to be forbidden as well.

So that's really interesting. And so can you speak it now?

Yeah, yeah, Well, I can't speak it. I can understand it and I can like. Yeah, have some words, but. But my parents do speak it. Like I said, it never really got stamped out because those people were. A lot of them were so remote and you couldn't really stop them from speaking it, so they kept speaking it. What got stamped out mostly was actually the writing. There's not a lot of writing in that language because of the political situation now, but there's more and more now. More and more is allowed, so. Well, the whole language is allowed. It's actually now an official language of Morocco. And so a lot more books get produced in that language now. Stuff like.

That's interesting. And when was your independence? How long is your island?

As Morocco got independent from France and Spain because parts of it were French, part of it was Spain in 1956. And Spain actually held on to quite a bit of territory for longer. Some of it it lost in 1973, some of it even in 1975 when Franco died. And Spain still has two little cities on the North African coast called Sota and Melia.

Oh, yeah.

And those are still Spanish.

Yeah, with a big heck cave cage on. On it. It's also for the.

Yeah, there's a barrier. There's a big barrier to stop refugees from getting into. Because if you're in one of those towns, you're in Spain.

And have you visited them?

Yes, actually, Certa I visited because for the longest time, that was the boat that we took from Spain to Morocco, went to Serta, and then from Certa, we crossed the border into Morocco. Now we no longer take that ferry, but that ferry is still there. We now take the ferry from Spain to Tangiers, and then you're immediately in Morocco, but the ferry from. From Spain to Certa is still there. So a lot of people who go to Morocco by car still take that ferry.

Wow.

So. Yes.

How many hours is the ferry?

Yeah, I was gonna ask exactly the same question.

It's around 30 minutes to.

Yeah, that's nothing. That's amazing.

Straight. Yes. You can see the boat to.

The boat to Ting, you know, my home island. That is two and a half hours almost.

Yeah, it's this. The G. Straight is like 14 km. You can see Spain from Tangiers.

Really?

Yes, very clearly. Even when I could still see, I couldn't see very well. But when I could still see, I could see the Spanish mountains.

Right.

From Tangiers. Yes.

I'd love to visit your part of the world. I have to say. I'd love to see it. I think the culture must be really interesting. Like, it's such a. A mix of different.

Food is very good. The culture is very nice. The. The landscape, actually.

Food.

A lot of people think actually that Morocco is a lot of desert, but barely any of it is desert. There's a lot of mountains. Yeah, a lot of mountains, actually. And of course, the coast is very nice.

Yeah.

So there's a lot to see there in terms of nature. And then if you go all the way down south there, you have the Sahara Desert.

So tell us how your Envision glasses are going.

Well, actually, I'm using AI a lot more and more now, but I got so into the habit of using my phone for it. I even sometimes use the Ally app from Envision on my phone, but I haven't really been able to break the habit to go to my phone first. And I really. I need to take some time to break that habit and take out the glasses more and use them more. So I've not used the glasses very much, but when I've used them, it's spectacular. Because your hands are just free.

Yeah.

So that's very nice, but I just. I need to get used to using them.

And how are you finding the. Like, I've played with the Ally app, but not so much. How are you finding it?

The responses are definitely okay. I will say that the look and tell feature that they have, like, tell me what's in front of me is slightly less good, I would say, than ChatGPT's. But you know, ChatGPT's version costs €20amonth or even 25 for me after taxes. So it's better. Yes, but it's also, you know, you have to pay for it. The ally is very nice in that it's tuned for people with low vision and so it generally gives you a little bit more information than ChatGPT. ChatGPT, you really have to prompt. But I have to tell you, it is spectacular when you use one of those features. And this one is ChatGPT. I was wanting to watch a soccer match between Barcelona and Dortmund and I got home a little late. So I came in while the match already started and so I pulled up my phone, pulled up ChatGPT and asked it like, what are you seeing on the television? It's like I'm seeing a soccer match. Oh, who's playing? And it's Barcelona. And I'm like, who's the other team? It's like, oh, that's Brugia Dortmund. So it's probably a Champions League match. And I said, yes, it is. And I asked like, what's the. Has someone scored? And it's like, no, it's no, no. So that's very nice. But the only thing that it doesn't do yet is doesn't keep track of things for you. So you have to re prompt it all the time otherwise. So for example, I had this where I walked up the stairs and said, tell me when I'm up, when I'm all the way up the stairs. And he said, sure, I'll tell you. And then I got all the way up and it didn't tell me. I'm like, hello, you would tell me. And it's like, oh, you're up the stairs now.

Yes, well, you want to know when's the last step kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly. But it doesn't tell you that yet.

So that still has to come with the Meta. What I'm. I'm. I should keep it quiet also for Mayta because I'm still having this whatever exclusive situation with the VPN still, you know, what I, what I do and, and then I am carrying or wearing it more and more even. Also since also with the integration of, of the phone call and WhatsApp etc, you know, that's really. And also Spotify. But that was later last week or two weeks ago was an update for translation and that was really funny when you then meta is able to translate instantly From Spanish, Italian and France into English and from English to those other languages. And it is amazing. I was. Well, Ticho is practicing France a little bit or French, you know, so I. I challenged him, you know, well, gonna speak parlez fou francais, petite tico and la la bon vi and Peugeot and all that kind of stuff. And then it is amazing.

This.

These glasses are really instantly translating it into. So you hear it in your ears all the time. And that is. I. I will take it. I hope I still have the. The. Yeah. The issue or. Or it's working when. When we travel to France for the summer holidays. But then it is. It is super.

That's impressive.

Yeah, it'll be really, really useful.

Yeah.

But then the problem is. So it's translating for you what someone, some French person is saying to you and then you need to be able to say to them. So is there. Is there like also an app that you could tell to tell you what to say?

No or.

No, that won't be handy. Nothing's impossible. It's just.

Nah, that's true.

That's true.

This. This idea in my head of Jan walking around with those glasses, hearing French people and then answering with baguette, baguette, baguette, baguette. I want to go on vacation with you. I want to see this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, Mo. I was hoping that it was doing German as well, you know, for the upcoming side for Sight City. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you can ask the people from Sessia or the people.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I can do that. Yeah. Access. Ye. Yeah, I will. Of course I will bring my glasses. That is good.

Yeah. I've only got one kind of update, but not kind of update about meta in Ireland. Anyway.

Yeah.

Is. Our good friend Eric Lawler texted me during the week and said that was the look and describe feature working on my glasses. And I said no. And he said, well, they're working on mine.

Oh.

So I'm putting a call out for all anybody in the uk, but particularly Ireland. But I want to know in the UK as well, because I've heard the people in the UK are having hit and miss about whether it's working or not working.

Yeah.

And somebody made the. Somebody put forward the suggestion that I don't know how. But meta. No. If you have used previously a VPN to try and get look and describe working and therefore put to the end of the queue or.

But.

So I'd love to know in the uk, but particularly Ireland, have. Has anybody. Has anybody noticed a difference? Is look and describe working with your meta glasses.

You're saying in Ireland they're going to let people in Ireland and the UK use that feature.

I'm just saying in the uk recently there was an announcement that made AI was going to be made available and then we went through at least two weeks, if not more of people saying, it's working for me, it's not working for me. It's no, it's not working for me. Again, it's working for me, it's not working. And then so I kind of gave up on it. Well, it's not work. Definitely not working for me. And then Dairy Lawler email texted me earlier in the week and said it's working for me. And funnily enough, typical of Derry, I said, how do you know it's working? He said, well, I've just asked to describe a bottle of wine.

Typecasting there.

But he gets his echo vision already. What is.

No, he hasn't got his echo and I wanted to ask Mo, does he. Has he heard about these and does he know anything about them? No, he hasn't got his echo vision glasses. He won't get those glasses, those smart glasses. I believe he said till around October, November time.

There are forwarding services so if you really don't want to wait, you can pay to have an address in the US that they send it to and then they forward it on to you.

I'm looking at the website here and it says you can still pre order now. So they're obviously not, not there yet. And if you pre order you get a zero dollar subscription fee for life. So that's interesting.

Oh, that offer's still there.

Yeah. And they're gone subscription, Claudia. Yeah, but if you pre order them, you don't have to pay a subscription at all. So they've gone from 5.99 down to $449.

Oh yeah, yeah. And I thought they were 6.99.

It was 599 it says here. But anyway, how they look is they're kind of fairly solid looking. They're. They're black. They seem to be a bit thicker than the meta glasses. The arms are quite thick but also the front part is also quite thick and they've got two very obvious camera lenses in the corner, like in the top corner of each on either side. And I'm not seeing any LEDs. I can see a little speaker, what looks like a tiny little speaker just at the top of the side piece, which would be over your ear. And then there's two Little select buttons just behind the hinge on both sides as well. They say they're lightweight and fashionable. I mean, they're not unfashionable. They're. They're not wildly dissimilar from the Meta glasses in terms of style. They don't. They're not quite like that Wayfarer style that, that Ray Ban are very famous for, but they're not. They're. I mean, I'd wear them. I wouldn't feel the cameras are obvious. The cameras are very obvious. Much more obvious than they would be in the metadata. Yeah.

Okay.

I will tell you, I've listened to a bunch of podcasts where they got interviewed and I'm not, not impressed. Right. But it's not a revolutionary product in the sense of, okay, you need these ones right now because they do X, Y and Z. That Envision slash. I mean, that's cheaper than Envision.

Yeah, I suppose perhaps their selling point is the price.

Yeah, I'll have to see though, because I'll be honest with you. Subscription, $0 for live is nice, but there are a lot of apps and services out there that couldn't maintain that to begin with.

Yeah.

And setting the price point too low for things like these may cause service to just. To just disappear in a puff of smoke. Yeah, I'm not thinking that, for example, Celeste. I mean, they might still exist. It might all still work. But I've been hearing noises that it doesn't anymore. And at least they're not no longer reacting to people asking them questions.

Oh, wow.

So. And they were very cheap as well. They had a subscription price. I mean, I hope these things get cheaper because Envision is not cheap. And it will, and it will. But I don't know. I don't know. We'll have to see if that price point is realistic.

The matted glasses are probably at maybe two years. So how come we haven't seen as much development with third party apps being made available on Meta?

Really?

The only third party apps, if you want to call it WhatsApp, a third party app. And the only other one is Be My Eyes.

Well, Spotify.

Spotify and also the. What is it? Shazam is also Shazam.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, I mean, sorry, I mean in terms of apps for the visually impaired.

Okay.

You know, the whole Meta glasses are not released globally. You know, in the Netherlands, they expect to have it here. What is it, end of the year, quarter three or quarter four?

Yeah. So another thing is, at the moment, at least Meta is keeping the glasses closed. So you have to really work with them in order to be able to run on them. And so you have to apply and Meta has to say yes or no or they might not respond at all. I don't know about that. No, no, it's, it's much, much worse than Apple because Apple has developed. Well, I don't want to say worse. It's different. So Apple has a developer program.

You diplomat you.

Yeah, so. So Apple has a developer program and you have to pay a little bit and then you get in and then your apps get vetted and then they get put on the app store. Right. The thing about Meta is you. There isn't a publicly available API. I can't go API. I can't go develop an app for the Meta glasses, then go to Meta and say, look what I made.

Isn't it cool?

Can you please allow me there, in there.

So they haven't done an SDK. I thought they'd done a software development kit, but they haven't done.

As far as I know, there is no publicly available stk. As far as I know. I might be wrong because.

No, I think you're right. I think you're right, but I'm just astounded at that because that's such a opportunity. They could still control, they could still do quality control and make sure.

Right.

You know, the same way that, that Apple do. I think they're missing a trick. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're missing a trick.

I think, well, they might not have the organization ready for that. They may want to. I think this was also like a bit of a surprise hit, maybe for them. Yeah, maybe they tried it and they thought, well, maybe it will work. And they obviously thought it was cool, but I'm not sure that they thought it would be this big a thing.

Yeah.

This quickly, especially considering how the Google Glass, for example, was received.

Died of death.

Yeah, that died of death of like, was very, very, very painful.

Yes.

And very fast. And so they thought, well, we might as well try this and then we'll see. But you know, in order to have an app Store, you got to have an old organization around it to vet the apps and all that stuff. And they may not have built it yet. I don't know. I mean, I'm speculating at this point. I have no clue. But we'll have to see. Obviously, once the product gets bigger, they're going to have to, because Apple and Google are going to play in this space, I'm almost entirely sure. And they're going to have the organization to have an app store. And if Meta doesn't come along, meta will lose.

They'll lose out.

Because you don't hear much about the profession. You know the glasses from Apple.

Well, yes, you do, but.

Yeah, but not improved.

$3,500 and not available everywhere either. And you can't. So there is an SDK for those and there's the App Store. The App Store for those as well. So you can make apps for it, but you're not allowed to touch the cameras on them. And so you can't really create apps for the visually impaired on that either because the camera is closed.

I think using AI is really a game changer for us. You know, it's really.

Yeah.

Yes, I like it very much.

All right, let's have a couple of emails before we go.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, we have emails.

You're the producer, you tell me. Yeah, we have a couple. I have a really quick one. So do you remember probably four weeks ago, I think we had Claire McLaughlin, who's the artist, she emailed us about the Scene Unseen. She's. She sent us another email just specifically about the Hugh Lane one. So I'm just going to read it out really quickly. It goes the Scene Unseen visit to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin is coming up on Friday, June 6th at 2:30 Irish time. And I'll be sending out tactile packs next week. We will be exploring selected artworks from Alvin Ivrian. There's an Irish name for you Mo Alvin Evran's exhibition the Dream Pool Intervals. And if any of your podcast followers would like to join in on Zoom on Friday 6th June at 02:30 GMT, she will post out tactile packages to them in advance. Of course, they are always welcome to attend in person. Also, participation and tactile packs are provided free of charge to those living with sight loss. Registration is now open by WhatsApp text or voice note to artist Claire McLaughlin on. And this is a Irish number. So it's 00353. So your. Your country's international code. And then 353863091653 and I'll put that in the show notes. And then we got a voice note from one of our favorite listeners. Although we don't have favorites, we love everybody. But yes, he's kind of one of my favorites for sure.

Hello guys. Blind Oren here from Scotland. Once again, my apologies to Oren. I'm afraid I do on occasion listen to other podcasts, although in fairness, clearly you do as well.

So got you There.

The reason I contributed to that one was there was a discussion about whether blind people were expected to wear sunglasses. And that was just putting in my personal experience of it, because years ago, when I still had a little bit of vision, I didn't wear sunglasses. I just used the long cane and I used to get a lot of collisions. In fact, I had one woman swear at me for not watching where I was going when she tripped over my long cane, which I thought was a bit rich, but there we go. But then some years ago, I was on holiday and the sun actually came out, which was unexpected, and I bought a cheap pair of sunglasses and all of a sudden people stopped bumping into me quite as much. It was as if they could see my eyes. They thought I could see them, which clearly wasn't the case. So after that I started wearing sunglasses every time I went out. And I have done ever since, especially with the event of the audio Bluetooth sunglasses, the Bose framed original, now of course the Meta Ray Bans, which in the UK do have the look and describe feature, which I use a lot around the house. Pick up a tin or a box or something. Watch this. You just hold it up, ask your glasses and you get the answer. Really, really useful. And I love it to bits. So, again, apologies for daring to listen to other podcasts, but with the military bands, I can listen to podcasts and audiobooks as I go about my daily chores. So that's my excuse. As for football, Jan actually doing pretty well this season so far.

Well done.

We were expected to struggle because we'd just been promoted to the top division this season, but the manager did a great job of signing new players and we've done pretty well. Has not been scintillating silky soccer, but it's been effective and we have ground out quite a lot of good results. So our league splits into a top six and a bottom six now, and we are in the top six, which means we cannot possibly be relegated. We have five games left against the other teams in the top six and there's a chance we might get European competition next year. I'm not holding my breath because we've overachieved. I think this. But you never know. Of course, I'm recording this on a Friday and tomorrow Saturday we play Celtic. So we may well find that the season goes horribly wrong, but there we are. But thanks for asking and I'll keep listening. Keep all the great work. Cheers, thanks.

It's a very interesting discussion, right, about those, like, sunglasses and. Yeah, I've heard it Called the blindness outfit. I never wear sunglasses. And to be fair, I do sometimes bump into people and I just walk on. I think once in the train station, I. It wasn't even me. It was my cane bumped into someone, and I think she cursed at me, but I was gone so fast that I didn't quite hear. So I really just do not. It was almost gone. I mean, it was almost. I mean. No, don't think so. I don't think that. Well, for one, I think she was older, but for two, I don't think she liked me very much. But, yeah, I mean, I don't wear a blindness outfit. I don't care about sunglasses at all. It might help, actually, but no, no, I'm just walking, and I can't be bothered remembering those glasses. I mean, I used to wear glasses when I could still see, but now I don't need them, so I don't wear them.

When we were dating, Oren used to wear glasses because he still had some vision left. So he used to wear glasses to make what he could see a little bit clearer. And he had his long cane, and we'd be going out on dates and stuff. And the amount of people who would just literally walk right towards him and expect him to get out of their way.

Right.

And I remember asking him, can you please just take off the glasses? And the minute he took off the glasses, things improved. Oh, that's funny.

Yeah, because they see the glasses, and I think he can still see a little bit, so he'll go out of my way.

But, I mean, what they don't realize is the field of vision is so tiny. It's not really any. It's not healthy.

Now, people don't realize a lot of things, like, for example, the guidelines, because that's where the collision happened also with that older lady. She was standing on the guideline right there. I always walk a little bit beside the guideline because I know people do this, but my cane has to touch the guideline because otherwise I might stray. So it touched her, and I think she started. She started cursing, but I didn't have time. I had to catch my. So I just walked on.

Sorry, sorry.

Next. Next time, you can shout at me all you like, you know?

You know, Oren's approach is just to. When he was on the long cane is he used to whip it really fast so that it would actually hurt somebody if they got in his way.

I mean, I do walk fast. Like, I walk seriously fast. And so. But I can't help myself. Like, once I yeah. Once I get lost in thought, I speed up.

Yeah.

And I don't really realize it until I'm like, oh, I think I'm walking fast. I'm like, well, I'm doing it now, so I might as well go on. But, but it's, it's just like I, I do try to keep track of myself and just slow myself down if I turn because people really get startled. If you turn really quickly. Yeah, people get startled and they fall down and stuff. You don't want that. But, you know, when I walk straight, I just walk fast.

I must really. Well, then, then the guide dog is really helpful because when I'm also getting walking with Chef and I'm also lost in thought or whatever, and then, then Chef is really helpful. He. He's there. Sometimes you end up on a place, if you miss some turns, whatever, in a place where you didn't want to be, you know, where am I? But you don't bump into people at all.

No, no, not at all. Because. Because the dog is more visible, I guess.

To be fair, though, I don't bump into a lot of people. It's. It doesn't happen too often. It happens sometimes, but sometimes.

Nice. You. I know.

Well, keep practicing. No, you know, practice makes perfect.

Yeah.

Bumping into people.

That's it for the show, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for listening and thank you to Mohammed for driving all the way from. Well, you know, to be on the show. And we really do appreciate it. Thank you very much again, Mo, and we will see you in two weeks time. Bye for now.

Thanks, guys.

Bye.

Bye.