Being Grateful for First World Problems in a Time of Plague

I never cease to be grateful for living in Australia, rather than anywhere else, even in a time of plague.

Americans might love their right to bear arms and all the rest of that, but just like in old school Westerns, the police do shoot back, and with very heavy firepower. Also, their police, for all the supposed constitutional protections Americans have, do lock up a lot of people to the point where, something like one out of every eleven people ends up in gaol at some point in their life, often for things which would not result in incarceration elsewhere.

So all of my problems are first world problems, although one of the famous general ones (ie McDonald’s doesn’t deliver) has been cured in recent years through Uber Eats and similar services, and one of the more particular ones unique to me and few other Australians (ie supporting an AFL team in long term premiership drought) was cured by the miracle finals run of 2016.

One current first world problem facing me at the moment in this time of plague cannot be cured by Netflix and Uber Eats. It is the delay in parcel deliveries, due to Australia Post and other privately owned parcel delivery companies being disrupted by covid exposure at their various depots.

I am not currently ordering books online, not with the 80 unread book backlog in piles around my lounge room. What I am ordering, from various wineries and wine dealers, is wine, and there are unprecedented delays.

Just last Sunday, a six pack of red wine arrived which was ordered almost five weeks earlier. And right now, through two different orders placed about 9-10 days ago, I have approximately $700 worth of wine still in transit to me. I am accustomed to almost instant gratification in terms of high velocity deliveries.

And for this, to be honest, I am grateful. There are much worse problems to have than to have to wait a few extra days or weeks for your quality Australian wines to arrive on your doorstep.

[As an aside, another of the reasons to feel lucky about living in Australia is that we have such good quality wines. I first realised this about 25 years ago when I first started to regularly frequent the Greek restaurants in Lonsdale Street, at a time when they still served, as their house red, an imported Greek wine called Demestica or some such, which, whilst cheap, was so much rougher than local reds in the same price point.]