Radio Fremantle 107.9fm - "Di's Delightful Drive Time"

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Well, welcome back to Di's Drive, 107.9 FM. We have a guest all the way from New South Wales, Daniel Battaglia. How are you, Daniel?

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Hey, good thank you.

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Well, it's an interesting book you've got written, but first of all, let's tell us a little bit about your life.

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Were you born and raised in New South Wales?

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Yeah, born and raised in Sydney. I went to a Catholic school, went to uni in Wollongong, and yeah, I've been living in Sydney ever since.

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What did you study at uni?

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I did a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Arts.

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Oh, yeah.

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Right, did you enjoy it?

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Yeah, uni was a great time, lots of socialising as well, so I really enjoyed it.

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And when was that? How long ago were you left here?

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That was about 15 years ago.

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Oh, right, your voice sounds very young.

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Yeah, I sound young, yeah.

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Now, Daniel, you've written a book, and you're making life easier.

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Parking made easier, if that could be possible. It's an e-book, it's written by you, and you're also the founder of parkingcupid.com and parkingmadeeasy.com.au.

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What are those websites about?

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They're websites for Australia and overseas, predominantly the US.

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It's to connect drivers looking for parking with homeowners who have an empty drive-well garage to rent out.

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Right. Did you go to America?

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Yeah, I did go to America. I've been to America a few times, San Francisco and New York, and I've travelled quite a bit to maybe around 30 countries.

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And notice that parking is a nightmare everywhere. A lot of countries have restricted parking and parking fines and expensive fees and things like that.

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And even people talk about difficulty, you know, reverse parking. And there's all sorts of parking issues out there that cause people a lot of pain in life.

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And so it's probably a pretty boring subject for most people, but I tried to make it interesting and have this e-book parking made easy.

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And, you know, it doubles in quite a few issues and talks about the history of parking, you know, all the way from the Roman times when they had spaces for their chariots to today and, you know, the future in parking.

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And what technology can do to help alleviate a lot of the problems.

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Well, it really is. I've looked at it when you sent the email, but I mean, it's a fascinating book. How long did it take you to write?

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Look, it didn't happen all at once. It probably happened over a period of months or years when I just, you know, had a lot of ideas and did a few blog posts on my website, but I really wanted to extend further and I had a lot more content to talk about.

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So that's when I got the idea of putting together an e-book or a book. I'm happy to say it's got an ISBN, which, you know, makes it kind of like official.

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It's got the official barcode for books. And yeah, it's been quite a journey.

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Well, one of the... Why does parking matter? If there is one thing that unites everyone in Australia, it comes at the end of every car journey and that is finding somewhere to park.

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It doesn't matter if you're driving a 20-year-old, holding all the fastest Ferrari. At some point, you have to go get out of here with a car and that means parking it somewhere. Very true. Very true.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And you've got a history of parking and it's... How many pages altogether in the book, Daniel?

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Look, it's a quick book. I didn't want to make it too boring or too long or anything like that. It's only around 60 pages.

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It's a quick read and it's got all sorts of tips and things like how to appeal parking fines with a sampled letter, how to rent out your drive-well garage to make some extra pocket money.

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Yeah, all sorts of different things. It deals with disability parking, how to get a disability parking permit if you need one. So it covers quite a range of different parking issues.

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It's wonderful. And it is. I've got friends that are in their 70s and go and get a disability parking and you've got to go to the doctor.

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So getting advice about that is great that you've included that because a lot of people, as they get older and more hesitant to go...

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I speak about my recently departed friend actually. He took quite some time to get his. It doesn't happen overnight.

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And you do have to fill in the paperwork as well. And a friend of mine...

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So it's good that you've put that in because it does put a lot of people off getting those parking permits. It's quite daunting.

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It can be quite daunting and quite complicated. So I've got some useful information there.

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If you've got a disability, you're definitely worthy of getting the permit and having that. You should have the freedom.

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We all have to drive a car and to go where we want when we want. So if you've got that need for a disability permit, you should definitely have access to it.

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So you can enjoy life a bit more and do the things you need to do and want to do.

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Exactly. Now there's some, as you said, there's cars that can drive themselves in a limited way.

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But the numbers are few, but they are going to increase. Holden stopped making cars in 2020.

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But in 20 years' time, there will still be holden cars driving on the roads. Why do you think so?

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Of course, holden are a classic Australian car. They're a favourite. They're very popular with the collectors.

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There's holden from the 60s and 70s still driving on the roads with vintage cars.

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But like you said, technology will have self-driving cars and we've got self-parking cars, things like that, and a number of automated gadgets like cameras and beepers and other things as well.

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Self-parking cars, that sounds a bit much. How would that happen?

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Some high-end cars have the function where you can pull up to an empty space and then they can parallel park themselves using the reverse cameras and the reverse sensors.

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The car actually does, my girlfriend's got a car like that, but I think it's, hers is an Audi.

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But the guy can computer screen and it actually guides you through. It doesn't do it automatically. You just have to hold on to the wheel, don't you?

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Yeah, you still have to hold on to the wheel, yeah.

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Wow.

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And it guides you through.

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Yeah.

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And this, give us advice you've got. Renting, can parking be profitable? Tell us about that, Captain.

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Yeah, definitely. Look, for a lot of people living in a city and surrounding suburbs and different areas, parking is an issue and even storage as well.

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And so people with an empty driveway or garage can rent it out as a parking space or for storage space for their car or boat or things like that.

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There's always demand for parking and storage in a city and surrounding suburbs.

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Oh yeah, used to go on a trip to London, that was a big thing. People did do. Rent out their, you know, their garages or for storage or other people's vehicles.

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Yeah, definitely.

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Do you actually have to reply to your council? Can you just do it, just between the driver?

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A lot of people, a lot of people just do it between themselves. They just, you know, post up flyers or go to websites like the ones I've created, parkingmeddyssey.com.au.

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Well, they use other websites like Dumtree or Parkhound and some other websites out there. There's a few websites doing it now.

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I'm certainly not the only one and that's probably the easiest way to do it.

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But like I mentioned, some people also use posters and flyers and would have asked and things like that.

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But I mean, you've been very generous, not only in your advice, Daniel, and admire you for that.

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But this, to get this booklet is actually on Amazon. It's only, it's not in hard copy. It's an e-book.

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Yes, you can get it as a book and hard copy. As the e-book, it's 99 cents. And as the hard copy, just pay a little bit extra for the printing. And I think it's $5.99.

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And where's that from?

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And that's from Amazon.com. Yeah, it's also on Apple and Google Play and a few other online bookstores.

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Right. Say that again to people that was a little bit slower, please.

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Yeah, sure. So it's on Apple Books. It's on Google Play Books. And it's on Amazon Kindle. And it can be printed as a book on Amazon.com as well.

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So if you want the physical copy, you can get the physical copy. Otherwise, you can get it in the PDF format or the other format for the creators like the Kindle.

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And the website to go to?

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And the website to go to is parkingmadeeasy.com.

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Yeah, or one word, lowercase, W dot. Yeah.

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It's on https://www.parkingmadeeasy.com.au/. Look, I think it's wonderful that you've done it. It's so cheap and it's very readable.

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It offers some great advice. Parallel parking, the ultimate challenge as well. That's good.

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Not everybody can parallel park, that's for sure.

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And it's a great skill to have, as you said. Master Parallel Parking, what do you suggest?

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There's some tips in the book just about lining up your car, having the right process and just going through each of them step by step.

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That's really good. You've got lots of practical advice. And it's a really good read. It really is.

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Lining up, finishing off. Parking made easier, makes your life easier. And how very true is that?

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I haven't said that, Daniel, when you go out and park your car. Do you always find a parking bay?

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Yeah, I like to try to go directly to my destination and then I circle backwards and always find one within distance.

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I'm happy to also pay for parking. Obviously parking is real estate and like any type of real estate, there's rental costs to it.

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So, you know, I understand the convenience of parking. If I don't feel like parking or paying the parking, I know I've got Uber or I've got taxis or I've got public transport.

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But it's a convenience thing and I like to drive my car and I like the convenience of having the freedom to go where I want when I want.

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And yeah, and if I can't find free parking, then pay parking, is it?

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Yeah, of course, first choice is free, second. And what kind of car do you drive?

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I drive a Subaru Impressor.

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Oh, right. And when you park at home, is there street parking or your garage?

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Yeah, now I've got street parking.

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Right. And do you rent out your car space at all in your house or is it just...

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No, no. Just street parking and rent out my space. No, no. Yeah, my brother takes that one. So, yeah, we leave it for him.

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Oh, that's very good of you.

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Yeah.

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So, you've done this great book. Again, tell us where we can go. People can go and get it for $0.99 on Lightning.

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Yeah.

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The website again.

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It's an e-book. Yeah, it's an e-book. It's available on Google Playbooks. It's available on Apple Books and Amazon Books as well.

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And so it's only $0.99 and it's good reading. You can share around the PDF and the e-book and things like that.

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And yeah, hopefully give you a few tips to just make life a little bit easier.

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Because we've all had parking paints at one time or another and this has a lot of tips to solve them.

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Including using your new apps like the GPS systems, utilizing the technology in the cars.

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Yeah, some cars come with GPS, with parking in it as well.

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Yeah, I've got a lot of friends that don't know how to use them though.

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Yeah, exactly. It's not as user-friendly as possible.

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That's right. This is a very practical, helpful book.

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Have you done any book launches yourself over in Sydney?

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No book launches yet. It's just been a soft launch. But yeah, I plan on something coming up soon, I hope.

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I hope so. I hope you come over to Perth and do go to one of our famous bookshops here and get the hard copy out.

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Do a hard sell, Daniel. I think you'll really enjoy it.

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Yeah, sounds good.

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So this book also relates to wherever you're living in the world, you can apply the programs, correct?

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Yeah, it's very relatable to any country in every country. It's currently written in English only.

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It's got a few Australian language things in there, you know, the Holden Car and just about disability parking just refers to some of the Australian malls.

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But they're very applicable to, you know, most of the English-speaking world, especially the Commonwealth and the US. We're all very similar.

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That's wonderful. Well, you've obviously put a lot of research and time and such a good price for people to go out there.

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I recommend it. It's such an easy read and also practical. You just keep the copy in your car at all times.

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That's what I would suggest.

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You get it from an expensive parking ticket. Exactly. We're parking fine for that matter. I've had lots of them over the years.

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And of course, if you don't pay your parking fines now, they go to fines enforcement and then they go and you lose your license.

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It's often unaware. That's right. Because people, they haven't kept up with changing their addresses, don't realize.

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And you've really got to keep on top of things. You get a parking ticket, find out about it, where you have to pay for it.

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Go to the fines enforcement registry and you can get it paid out.

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Taken out of your pay on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Why do I know that? Because I've done that before.

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You've been through it, yeah.

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But that's what, you know, if you have to do, if you've got to, um, making sure it's speeding fine, not that it was not a speeding fine.

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It was a large fine with a very sick friend at the hospital. So I got three in one day anyhow.

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But they do happen and when you least expect them.

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But Daniel, congratulations on writing at Staggart, Daniel Battaglia, B-A-T-T-A-G-L-I-A. Yes.

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Yes, correct.

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And the song you've chosen to finish the interview is Eskimo Joe, a Western Australian band.

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And I have interviewed Kev. He's a great guy. Tell us why you chose Eskimo Joe.

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I've been to one of their concerts and it was a great song and a great experience.

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And so, yeah, it was very relevant, you know, for free and at all.

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So it'll be a good song to finish off with.

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Beautiful. Well, stay on the line. Here's your song.

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And thank you for writing a significant and helpful book for us mere mortals. Daniel, you've done very well.

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Daniel Battaglia, check it out. You won't be disappointed.