Extortion

Chermside, as some of you are aware, installed paid parking a while back much to the annoyance of many people. We rarely go there any more unless it is something important and we plan on spending enough money to get the parking validated. Today was one of those odd times where we planned on going to attend the preview of a stocktake sale, have some dinner and meet up with our vanillas to go to a movie. All in all it was going to be at least 11.30 pm before we got out of there... so roughly six hours.

Now the way the parking is structured is that after 6.00 pm is free. The sale started at 5.30 so one thought it was better to check how they planned on charging us... theoretically as the first three hours are free and it is free after 6.00...

That is not the case at all. Oh no, if we had arrived at 5.30 then we would have been charged full fees for the evening. And of course there was no way to get the parking validated after 5.30 as the concierge has gone home. Needless to say we did not spend as much time, or for that matter money, at the sale as we planned. Sigh and they wonder why retail is struggling L

We did have a quick dinner that was excellent, before meeting our vanillas to go and see Star Trek. Both He and his mini-me ducked into the amusement arcade first. Like a couple of children we found them huddled in some pirate thing... in fact we had to physically winkle them out of it before we missed the start of the movie...

And you know something? One deeply suspects we were the only twoo geeks at the movie. We were the only ones laughing at the jokes...

It was kinda sad J