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Hello, welcome to the podcast of Shortcuts. I'm Josie Lung and today's episode is about signs

and symbols. When I was young, I had a watch that I'd fixed. They used to do stand-up about it.

I had a digital watch that I'd fixed with blue electrical tape. And I really thought that this would be the way that I would find true love.

I thought that whoever was able to see the watch and see what a cool and beautiful thing it was would be my true love.

And most of the time people would just say, ooh, what have you done to your watch?

Or, ooh, your watch is broken.

And I remember once I was at a party. And this man,

who's a good-looking man, was like, wow, what a cool watch. You fixed it with blue tape. I was like,

yes, I have. Oh my goodness. Then this is going to blow your mind. He lifted his sleeve to reveal

the exact same digital watch fixed with white electrical tape. And I was like,

oh my goodness, this is it. This is romance. And we had a chat. And then as we chatted, I remember just

thinking like, this is not romance. Like he started talking about lay lines. And I was like,

this isn't for me. And then he started talking about underwater rivers, which at the time I thought

was pure nonsense. And now I think that is a genuine thing. But at the same time, I was like,

this is not for me. And it was a really sad, formative moment to be like, you mean the magic lied?

The magic lied. However, I think I am definitely somebody who likes a little bit of spooky magic

to be given a sign, regardless of the real world consequences of it. Enjoy the show. I hope

you find beautiful things with prefiguring and auguring elements to them.

This is Shortcuts.

Come show us what you see.

Brief encounters.

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