Opposites attract, except when it comes to roofing

roof repairs I recently read an article in the newspaper that the saying, ‘Opposites attract’ isn’t actually true. It’s true in some senses but not in others. Introverts and extroverts can get along, but they need to both be adventurous in the same way. For example, the introvert may prefer their own company and the extrovert may like going out three nights a week, but they both have to want to go hiking on the weekend, or something like that.

The theory that opposites attract is true for my partner and I, not in the sense of how out-going we are but how much money we like to spend. I tend to buy a lot of things, clothes, stuff for the house, expensive dinners and drinks. But my partner is a spendthrift. This usually doesn’t come to a head unless it’s something that we both mutually need and have disagreements about, for example our recent need for roof repairs. Melbourne has been raining a lot this autumn, so I’m staring at this puddle of water on the floor where our roof has leaked, telling old mate, ‘We’ve gotta get this fixed!’ I can almost see his thought processes turn into dollar signs.

Anyway, eventually I convinced him. All I had to do was point out the broken roof tiles, the moss covering half the roof, and the rotting gunk filled gutters. But this only led to further problems. When we finally called the best roofing services Melbourne city has to offer, and I got my hands on their catalogue, well… Of course I couldn’t resist browsing all of the pretty new tiles and selecting the nicest ones to make our house look extra cute. When my partner found out, he cracked it, saying that we couldn’t afford it. I said, ‘We can afford it, you’re just being stingy!’ We fought it out, but at the end of the day, we still love each other.

Computing to Creativity

IT-services Every year I watch the Grouchies, and it’s always the same movies that win: sentimental period pieces and anything based on a true story with lots of sad piano music and sad actor faces. So basically, not what anyone actually wants to watch and have fun. I swear, they’re so formulaic even a computer algorithm could predict what’s going to win. Heck, a computer algorithm could write these movies and they’d still win all the Grouchies.

At least…I’m hoping so. I’ve made a bet with my friend, who thinks because he’s doing some fancy software development course around Melbourne somewhere that he knows everything about computers. He also really likes soulful period-pieces and movies about true stories, so this is a personal thing. And I’ve done computer courses. Like, I did that one course a couple of years ago on how to fix a broken computer screen and replace parts, and one a few years back on proper graphic design basics. Okay, so I’m not the most well-equipped, but I definitely have determination, and also $100 on the line that I’d really prefer not to give away.

So if I was doing software development…what would I do? Probably start developing some software. I know a bit of that from my old school days, back when we had to make basic websites and programmes that did basically nothing. There was one module on software development, and I got a pretty good score. What I need to do now is find some kind of algorithm. Note down all the things that Grouchy-winning movies have, and somehow insert that into a bit of software. Maybe I can get advice from people actually doing a software development course, so that my victory is a little bit ironic. All I need is…so much. I need so much stuff. This was a stupid bet.

-Al

Scouting for a conference centre gem

Lorne accommodation What I do definitely isn’t for everyone. In fact, thinking about it in context of the greater corporate business environment, what I do is incredibly specific. Very niche. In essence, I’m a conference guru. When businesses need to spruce up their conference holding skills, they turn to me. From public speaking to conference venues in Victoria, I’ve any business, big or small, covered. Aside from being one heck of a lot of fun, my job is also very difficult. Not only do I get all my clients exclusively through networking and recommendations, but I also have to be at the very forefront of conference holding innovations. I need to know about all the best places to hold a conference all around Victoria and all the latest public speaking techniques, tricks, and hacks.

More than that, my job involves a heck of a lot of travel. As attractive as that may sound, I can assure you, it isn’t so glamorous in person. Most of my clients want to find locations that are either within the Melbourne CBD or in an exotic location that’s a maximum of three hours away. That range includes a flight to Sydney or Adelaide as well as a three hour radius from Melbourne. Finding brilliant, sophisticated conference centres and suitable accommodation in regional Victoria demands extensive searches. As I sit here, typing out this very article, I have only just managed to find premium Lorne accommodation after being here for a week. Although a week may not seem like much, to do this all the time means I end up spending an awful amount of time away from my family. But the potential consequences of not discovering these little gems buried in the wilderness, like the conference centre in Lorne, make the risk of not going worth the pain of separation from family and friends.

The modern day lumberjack

Commercial sheds Tamworth Okay, I’m all for the industrial revolution and the invention of new amazing technologies (like running water and all that) but all this speeding up of manual processes with machinery has come with a terrible cost. The real art of work now done by machines has fallen by the wayside, with skills fostered over the generations becoming redundant within decades.

This is an issue that has resonated deeply with me personally, as I come from a long line of proud lumberjacks. My father, his father, and his father were proud men who took immense pride in what they did. But the reality of the situation is that there really just isn’t the same demand for premium, hand-chopped wood as there once was. Almost all the wood stables in Tamworth, the area we live in, are taken from tree farms that solely use mechanised wood chopping methods. Most of the tree farm owners don’t even realise they’re essentially displacing skilled labourers. Of course, that’s always going to be a consequence of replacing craftsmen with machinery, but it’s crucial that some part of the craft linger on.

As remarkably as it may seem to some, there is still a certain amount of demand for lumberjack work. Just yesterday a job came through for me to source some wood for several commercial sheds in Tamworth. Of course, a lot of the work I’m managing to get at the moment is of that sort: people asking me to source good quality wood rather than chop it myself. I understand that the changing of the craft is a necessity, but I feel that I can’t exactly market myself as a lumberjack if I hardly ever actually hack away at a tree. Perhaps that’s just the natural evolution of things. If people are concerned with having high quality, sustainable wood in their buildings, that’s always a field I could potentially move into. We shall see.

Chemical cures

I’m not one for fighting the signs of age Chemical peel Melbourne ing organically. I have friends that have been absolutely raving about how wonderful homeopathic remedies for menopause are, but if you ask me, that’s all a load of bull. It’s a hormone balance that causes all of the problem, literally a problem with all the chemicals in your body, so it makes perfect sense to add more chemicals to your body to balance it out. On top of that, it makes me super mad that those very same women who argue for natural cures are the ones who get botox once a month. The hypocrites! No, that’s not me at all. I’d really just be out and proud about the wonderful ways I use science to fight something that’s completely unnecessary in this day and age: getting older.

If I could fight age itself I would, but I can’t. But my word I am going to do everything in my power to stay on top of the sucker. For example, last week when I got back to Melbourne the dermatologist was the first place I went. I have a pretty good relationship with my dermatologist, after all I make a habit for seeing her pretty regularly to check for signs of cancer and things like that, and seeing as she knows me so well, she was able to recommend a treatment she thought would be just perfect for me: a chemical peel. Melbourne has quite a few different centres where you can get that sort of minor cosmetic treatment done, so I said, Sal, just sign me up. How wonderful!

With no injections or organic exfoliants or any of that rubbish a quick fix like that is just perfect for me. It’s all been wonderfully easy to arrange and I when I say I walked out a few days after that glowing, I mean it. It’s just too easy to look and feel wonderful when you cut all the other nonsense.

PC, Gone Flower Mad

daffodil bulbs Ugh, I just got back from a weekend-long conference on ‘cultural appropriation’. Everyone in the studio had to attend. And I know it’s pretty important, because we can cause offence if we
film a music video and just steal from another culture to make it more colourful, whatever. That’s been more or less our protocol ever since that band asked us to make them a music video and they pretty much just wanted themselves being filmed around the streets of Albajeria, picking out the parts of the culture that they wanted. Sixty million views, a lot of dislikes.

Now, call me crazy, but I don’t think ‘garden enthusiasts’ count as a culture. We got a list of all the stuff we can’t ever show in a music video ever again, and it included daffodils. Oh, and daffodil bulbs, just to cover all the bases. Sorry, what?

I asked about it and the boss said it was something about them being sacred in some country, somewhere. But not in Australia, which is what’s really getting me right now. There were all these random flowers on the list, most of them completely harmless and nice looking and nobody is going to get offended if we want to film a girl running through a field full of daffodils, seriously. It’s not like I’m trying to overturn the establishment, but I just want the freedom to do what I like when I’m directing without being bound by these stupid rules.

I don’t even have any plans to use most of this stuff. Like, a set of bongos? We can use them in the background but not in the video? See, none of it really makes a sense, especially the part where it mentions tulip bulbs but not actual tulips. See, tulip bulbs were used in an ancient celtic ceremony 700 years ago, so we can’t use them. Uh-huh, and this totally isn’t political correctness gone mad.

-Ernie

The Lone Flower Shop

assorted bulb flowers That’s it: this town centre is dead. Nothing here but cheap shops and a couple of really bad supermarkets. What do you have to do to get a good coffee around here? I’ll tell you: you don’t. You go to the supermarket, where you sit in the corner of the café they have, on their corporate chairs, and you sip your lattes from a machine. It makes it right in front of you and everything. That’s how low this place is.

And yet…there’s the flower shop. It sits in between the nail bar and the $2 shop, and it’s just really, REALLY nice. You know how some flower shops just feel like places that are set up for the big occasions- Mother’s Day, all that- and they just don’t feel friendly? Well, this one is. I went in looking for some tulip bulbs, because my sister makes weird birthday lists, but Gia greeted me at the door and helped me find exactly what I was looking for. And then at the end she gave me a free tulip so my sister could see exactly what the bulbs would look like. She has the shop laid out perfectly, all flower coordinated and looking just perfect, like she stayed up for nights just plotting how she wants her place to look. There’s nothing cheap about it, except the prices are pretty low because of what area of town we’re in. But Gia’s is pretty popular, probably because she’s got no competition and people just like to hang out in there.

Still, I’ve asked her why she chose to set up in a place like this. She just said it needed a burst of colour that only bunches of hyacinths and daffodils could bring. That, and the lack of other flower places in the area, and the rent was cheap…but still, her place sticks out. That’s what happens when you line your windows with bright yellow and white daffodils in a tessellated pattern, I guess. Maybe Gia is a mathematician. If you’d seen the layout, you might agree.

-Harrison

My unexpected path to beauty therapy

beauty therapy Have you ever seen those ASMR videos online? The acronym stands for autonomous sensory meridian response and the videos are designed to give you a relaxed tingly feeling. They often involve someone speaking to you in a soft low voice and sometimes they pretend to be examining you or touching you in some way. Well, a couple of years, ago I got heavily into watching these videos. They’re so relaxing. I’d always listen to one on my headphones before bed to ease the day’s tension and send me off into blissful sleep. I eventually started making some of my own videos and the first in the series was about me giving a facial treatment at a day spa. I know it sounds strange but this is what led me to study beauty therapy in Melbourne.

I made about seven videos all up about different things like cranial nerve examinations, abductions by benign entities, and head and shoulder massages. A lot of people wrote comments on my videos giving me feedback and praise but the most popular video by far was the one about the facial. It got the most hits. I had my friend model for me while I filmed her face and used a whole bunch of tools to give her a ‘facial’. For example, I brushed her skin with a series of soft brushes and used this vibrating exfoliator to gently tingle the cheeks. I also used cool creams and lotions and trickles of water. The visuals weren’t really important for a lot of people, it was mostly about the sound effects and the description of the sensations. It’s especially evocative if you listen on headphones and get the binaural sound. And that’s how I ended up enrolling in cuf50407 – would you believe it?

I actually loved giving the ‘beauty treatment’ so much that I wanted to do it for real. If the fake experience can be that soothing and euphoric for people, imagine how good the real thing must be!

Kids do the darndest things

ride on floor cleaner My kids are good most of the time. They’re a bit cheeky on occasion but that’s just because they’re adventurous, not because they want to hurt anyone. What seems like antisocial behaviour is, when you look closer, just innocent mischief. My husband tries to discipline them but I do think he’s being too harsh sometimes. I’m kind of glad that they have an imagination at least and that they know how to enjoy themselves. So long as they don’t hurt anyone else, these are great traits to carry on into adulthood.

Take the other day for example. My husband had to take the kids with him to the business with him in the evening because I was working too and we didn’t have a baby sitter. In the type of work he does, they require some commercial floor cleaning equipment such as those nifty ride on floor scrubbers. Brisbane is a reasonably populated place and the floors of his workplace need to be cleaned frequently due to all the people passing through. Anyway, he left the kids in one of the empty rooms (bare except for a trash can and a ride on floor scrubber), thinking the kids would be okay for just a few minutes while he attended to some other work. When he came back, they were each riding on the back of a scrubbing machine, playing hockey with sticks and a can out of the trash. While he reprimanded them for their mischief, I felt a secret sense of pride.

To think that the kids could create a game out of something as boring as a ride on floor scrubber! Melbourne kids like me are probably not as inventive as the Brisbane kids who have to make their own fun in a boring town. I can only hope that as they grow older they develop the wisdom to avoid hurting themselves while retaining their idiosyncratic creative flair.

Bliss in the Offices

office It’s time to set these affairs in order. We can’t have a productive workspace if we’re all acting so immature, and it’s just not good for business whenever we have clients in. You see, there’s an office just downstairs, a floor below us. They’re all conveyancing lawyers around Melbourne, and things used to be tense between our two businesses even though we don’t really do any of the same work. There must have been some inciting incident. Anyway, ever since then, we’ve been in a gentle yet irritating war. They complain about us using their electricity, the people here complain that the conveyancers are stealing our customers on the way up the stairs. Quite why someone would come here for a lease car and end up wandering into a conveyancer’s place is beyond me. I think some of these rumours are exaggerated. In any case, there’s bad blood between the two floors and I’m sick of it.

That’s why I’ve organised a social calendar to bring the two together. We occupy the same building, and we do much of the same thing (that is, paperwork, wearing formal wear, dealing with clients), so there’s no reason we can’t get along. If the stories I hear are true, there may even be a few pranksters in both camps who need to apologise. All in all, what I really want people to realise is how silly the entire affair has been. I have no part in it, and even I get bristling looks from their receptionist as I walk past in the mornings! Then again, this could be the parking issue. We shan’t discuss the parking issue.

I’m planning to remind both parties that they are some of the finest at their respective businesses, car leasing and Melbourne conveyancing people, brought together by occupancy, and we have no reason to not be friends. And productivity will resume as normal.

-Sandrine