In Australia, New South Wales, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we drove as a family back home having finished letting Lincoln play in the local skate park.
I mentioned to Ria, “I feel hungry. Do you remember the Indian restaurant?”
She exclaimed, “You also want Indian food? I had the same idea! I wanted to get takeaway, but I didn’t know if it was going to be too expensive.”
“Alright, get out your phone and figure out what restaurants are still open, because it’s already 8pm.”
Ria found the Indian restaurant through Google Maps. The Indian restaurant was open until 10pm.
Looking For A COVID-19 Vaccination Pro-Freedom Restaurant
I parked across from the Indian restaurant, wary of our being a COVID-19 vaccine-free family in a time when restaurants are required by vaccine mandates to ask for COVID-19 vaccine certificates.
“One of us can go into the restaurant and the other one can mind Lincoln in the car. I’ll bring a photo of the menu back,” I organized.
Focused on the small Indian restaurant as I crossed the road, the shop front was all glass panes, designed to see into the restaurant from outside.
The entrance door was at the far right of the shop front, while all the dining tables were aligned to the left of the corridor to the back service counter.
All the usual New South Wales government mandatory COVID-19 vaccine certificate QR-code check-in signage and symbols were properly displayed on the business shopfront.
As I came into the restaurant, I was somewhat coy, because I didn’t have my face mask on. I wasn’t sure whether the restaurant staff would chase me down or whether they would be more relaxed about COVID-19 restrictions and allow me to walk around.
My body full of curious tension, I looked left to notice three tables occupied with seated diners. Six Indian male customers were enjoying dinner together. It was curious to me that they all did not have face masks on. Obviously, when you eat during a pandemic, you don’t need to wear face masks.
Ordering Takeaway In A COVID-Safe Way
Immediately inside the front entrance, on a wall to the right, a menu the size of a wall poster greeted me.
I stopped, browsed the menu, to see some vegetarian options.
A glancing look to my left spotted the tall male waiter with a face mask on, walking over to the seated customers to serve food.
I felt comfortable in the restaurant, but I still did not know their stance on COVID-19 vaccine passports or face masks.
Passing eight rows of tables, I approached a slender, tall Indian female wearing a white and light blue medical-grade face mask behind the high counter.
Before I had a chance to open my mouth to speak, she quickly grabbed a white and light blue surgical face mask from behind the counter and extended her hands forward to offer the face mask to me.
She jerked the face mask towards me, as if to say, “Here you go. You can put it on.”
I guess she was being polite.
But I waved my hands at her as if to say, “Well, no, I don’t need one of those.”
That exchange over face masks put me off from that point on.
Haggling For Takeaway Dinner
“Can I order takeaway,” I asked, mindful of COVID-19 mandates imposed on business that require them to discriminate against unvaccinated people like me.
“Yes, you can,” she said.
“Alright. Let me have a look at the menu and I’ll come back.”
As I walked back to the menu posted on the wall, I looked back over to the six males seated down, eating dinner without face masks on.
I thought, “What’s the difference between them and me?”
“They are all in your restaurant without a face mask on. I assume they’re all healthy individuals without coronavirus. I’m a healthy individual without coronavirus. I am not sick. I don’t need to wear a face mask. Why do I need to put a face mask on for the ten steps that it takes to walk to the service counter?”
It made no sense to me.
The mask-free people seated down can still catch the virus just as much as I can catch the virus. It doesn’t matter if I wear a face mask or not. The rules around COVID-19 seemed really silly when the restaurant staff both wore face masks, but the customers in the Indian restaurant were not required to wear face masks.
It seemed like an odd COVID-19 health regulation to enforce face mask use when walking but not enforce the same face mask regulation when seated down within the same meter and a half of space between a standing customer.
Ordering Takeaway From Outside The Business
Still uncomfortable about whether the restaurant staff would ask for my COVID-19 vaccine passport, I took a photo of the menu and came to stand outside the restaurant.
Ria popped out of the car and carried Lincoln across the road in her hands.
“They have a menu inside,” I mentioned to her.
We both stood mask-free inside the door, juggling Lincoln in our hands as we browsed the menu for a few minutes.
I gave Ria a hand pamphlet menu.
“Let’s go stand out there,” I awkwardly ushered her outside the restaurant doors.
I didn’t want to be in the premises complicit with a business enforcing COVID-19 rules that the Australian government has pushed onto businesses, because it forces customers to have those COVID-19 rules and regulations forced onto them as well.
Once Ria was ready I took her order.
I brushed through the Indian restaurant without a face mask on to relay our order to the young staff member.
I paid using my bank card.
I came back outside the Indian restaurant, where we waited for 10 minutes.
When the chef had cooked the food, the girl came outside carrying our food in a plastic bag.
She looked around for me in the darkness.
“Oh, sorry, I couldn’t see you up there,” she smiled as I approached.
“That’s alright, you have a good night.”
She said, “You too.”
That was the extent of it. We had an awkward interaction to begin with, and it made me uncomfortable. I’m sure she was uncomfortable that I decided to ignore their COVID-19 signage and face mask requirements. But I’m not in Australia to do everything that the current government in power says. That’s why we have an opposition party in federal and state governments, so that we can express our freedom of choice.
With food in hand from a restaurant that was ordered by the New South Wales state government to discriminate against unvaccinated patrons, I popped back into the car, ready to drive home for takeaway dinner.
Diary Of A Mad Chaos is a daily diary written from March 1996 until today, of which individual books and book series have been created, namely “The Lost Years” an exploration of young, entwined love, the “Wubao In China (猎艳奇缘)” book series which provides an extensive comparative analysis of the cultural differences between Eastern and Western societies, and the book titled “Foreigner (华人)” an exploration of race relations in Australia.
