Renting a Movie in the Matrix

My plans for this weekend were quite simple – sit on the couch, well more like the leather chair since I do not have a couch yet (long story) and watch some movies that I would rent, have a glass or two of bubbly and some nibbles and just unwind from a stressful month.

I would have to rent them because:

1.       Streaming movies from Amazon is blocked for someone living in Australia

2.       Netflix does not work here unless you go through an Xbox system PLUS based on my past experience with Netflix they do not have current releases for online viewing just via mail

So it was going to be a rental.

As I have done since I discovered the Internet I got online and searched for Video Rental in Perth and was excited to see quite a few results until I started filtering them out and realized they were all in the suburbs. The closest one required a bus ride then a ferry ride to get there – a situation that is just ripe for me paying a fortune in late fees.

So I decided to ask the locals starting with the ones I knew and no one had any idea! Finally I wandered into a game store and asked the guys there and they confirmed my suspicions – there are no rental places in the city proper where I live. They are all in the outer suburbs and vehicular transportation is required to get there.

I did the math – the average DVD rental is about 2 days, stores close at 5:00pm Mon-Thurs, I work till around 6:00pm, most busses stop running by 7:00pm, I worked in a different suburb than the one I lived in and than the ones the movie rental places where in, this meant that if I rented a movie on Saturday; I would have to make the return trip on Sunday to return it OR the earliest day I could return it would be Friday. Again! A perfect situation for late fees – might as well just buy a movie in that case. But I hardly buy movies because once I watch it I rarely ever go back to it.

I hate subscription type things for anything other than magazines but I might cave in and try Quickflix – the Australian Netflix counterpart/equivalent.

I never used to get my friends who moved from NYC to SF who complained about not being able to get a pizza at 3am. I mean seriously what are you doing up and craving pizza at that hour I used to think. But I get it now – life is made better and happier by conveniences. And when you know the way things could be or should be and they are not it drives you crazy. At least in SF if you really wanted pizza at 3am you could trot off to the 24hr Safeway pick one up and take it home. Perth? Better have that pizza in the fridge already

This is no “Adjustment Bureau” or “Inception” there are no doors or spinning tops to get me out of this one - this is simply my new reality in a city that is not very convenient to live in or as the kids would say “Just ain’t ready yet”