Plumbing 101, Change of Career!

Melbourne Plumber serviceThat’s my life now: walk into the wrong room, change jobs forever. Maybe it’s in my blood; after all, my dad was a carpenter, and that’s basically the same thing as plumbing. It just involves more wood and furniture instead of plungers and pipes. I bet plumbers in Melbourne and carpenters get along just fine. Actually, why aren’t more pipes made of wood? Oh yeah, the soggy factor. See, I’d know this if I was a plumber. Correction: I WILL know, when I’m a plumber. Working with my hands is most definitely in the family, which I guess is why my IT career wasn’t going anywhere.

They did send me to a conference, which I was excited about at first, until Lenny said that it’s what they do to everyone who they want out of the office for a weekend. They find the cheapest conference in the cheapest place they can find and send them away for a bit, so that everyone else can get some work done. So…yeah, that was a blow to my confidence, in a job that was already starting to get me down. Like, have you tried turning it off, and the turning it back on again? You haven’t, and the problem is fixed? Good for you, talk to you again in an hour or so when you have basically the same problem.

And then I walked into ‘Plumbing 101: Pipes for aPprentices!’. They could’ve worked on the title, but even after I realised I was in the wrong room (IT was across the hall; ‘Computer Class: Creating Crafty Keyboard shortCuts!’), I felt like I belonged. And I didn’t even learn anything! For real, all the guy talked about was how as a plumber, we should respect the power of the wrench and feel the nuance of the plunger. Clearly he wasn’t one of Melbourne’s plumbing service professionals, which made sense since the conference was out in the sticks. Still, this terrible presentation spoke to me at my core. I’m going to quit my job! Go to plumbing school! Become a plumber! FEEL THE PLUNGER NUANCE.

I mean, it could be good advice. Maybe I’ll ask on my first day of class.

-Vaughn

Shona the Homewrecker, Messing With Home Buying

home buyer advocatePyramid schemes! Betrayal! Geese! Soap operas truly are the pinnacle of entertainment. They have it all, and it’s so much of an emotional rollercoaster that I had to take the day off work. My nerves just can’t handle these intense storylines. Fortunately my boss is a big Week of Our Lives fan and she totally understood; in fact, she said she wished she’d had the same idea. This girl gets it!

So, Shona is being a homewrecker, as per usual. Shona is the worst. She’s the one who convinced Brad that he needed to find a Melbourne property advocate before the wedding, so that Tania would know he was serious about buying a nice home and starting a new life. Of course, Tania freaked out because buyers advocates are only for expensive properties and Brad should’ve known that she has a crippling phobia of displays of wealth, instilled in her by when she was six and asked her obscenely rich father for a ball pit that was full of coins, after which she dived in and almost drowned. Brad should’ve KNOWN!

So he goes and flaunts his property advocacy know how and Tania gets icy-cold feet, as per Shona’s nefarious plans. Then she goes to convince Joel to lend Selena some of his geese for her photoshoot, even though the shoot was entitled ‘Humans and Birds: A Forbidden Love’ and was meant to be done with non-threatening animals only. Selena lets it happen anyway, because she’s only just escaped being kept in the basement by her uncle for her whole life and being taught that the world had been conquered by aliens. The geese get angry and ruin the whole thing, including their budding four-way love triangle involving a swan and a canary.

I just can’t even deal. Now Shona is talking to property advocates around Melbourne in an attempt to get them to show Tania the most extravagant places on the market. If that happens, the wedding is off, easily. I’m counting on this fictional property advocacy to realise what’s up, but what if they don’t?? I have to find out what happens!!

-Leticia

Excited for my new ute aluminium accessories

I haaluminium service bodiesve some very exciting news to announce! I bought a cool new car, actually to be more accurate, I also bought a cool new ute. I’m not sure which vehicle I like more, my jeep or my father’s classic commodore.

I never thought that I would like a dusty ute better than I would like a sporty car, but I really do. One of the best things about this ute, is the fact that the sale included a number great looking and highly functional aluminium ute toolboxes. Melbourne tradespeople have a thing for under body box storage which is ideal for me.

It’s the most beautiful aluminium tool box set that I’ve ever seen and I would love to have it on my car, if that sort of thing was possible. I can hold all sorts of things in my ute now, and for as long as I can think straight, I’ll always have a place, a secure, beautiful place to hold my drinks when I leave the ute. It is a great place to hold a set of spare tools as well as all of my other power tools and such.

I don’t know how much longer until I just sell the my old car and use the ute full time, because I’m usually the only one driving the thing. I don’t have any passengers in my car, and I don’t even have a work dog. There was a bit of an accident with my last service bodies, Melbourne weather can be unpredictable and you really shouldn’t leave things unlatched. I will never love that way again, and part of me is okay with that. Part of me is okay with not being able to love again, as it frees me up to do my work and to focus on putting all of my energy into my new ute and my new under body boxes. They are both fantastic.

Hungry, Up on the Ladder

aluminium laddersI swear, it’s not my fault I get hungry at the weirdest times, which tends to be a lot of times throughout the day. It’s seriously a detriment, because I work up in high places and there are times when I just can’t control my hunger. Like, I have a big breakfast, then an hour later whole I’m on the job, I needs me some brunch pronto. Substantial brunch. After that is real lunch, and then I start craving afternoon tea. Then I get a hankering for linner (that’s lunch/dinner) and by the time I get home I’m starving for actually dinner. After dinner comes my evening supper, and then a bit of suppreakfast (that’s like supper and breakfast- I have to get up in the middle of the night for that one). And people still give me grief for being skinny.

I’m way up high on aluminium ladders for my job, though. I’ll be painting a house, up on some aluminium platform, and I’ll need whatever meal for which it is now time. I used to just suffer in silence, but the hunger started to affect my balance so I explained it to my boss. He’s pretty reasonable, so now every time I have to get up on a platform, I take everything I need with me. An hour every evening is spent packing my food for the next day, and I eat what I need super quickly during my breaks. It can be tough, clambering around all those planks and trestles with a massive food bag, but it’s better having sustenance than almost passing out because I haven’t eaten my linner. Got to love a good bit of delicious linner.

For me it’s like staying hydrated, except the food version. Some people here eat like sparrows and they’re up and down these aluminium platform like monkeys. What a mercifully slow metabolism they must have. Meanwhile, here’s me on my fifth meal of the day, knowing I’ll be hungry soon…maybe I should ask a doctor or something. Or get a job that doesn’t require so many ladders and platforms, maybe.

-Selasi Rice

A True Tree Removal Protagonist


Bentleigh tree removalEvery good protagonist needs a way for the reader to find them endearing. Even the worst anti-heroes, with the greyest of moral, have that one thing. Maybe they send their money back to their lovely elderly parents, or they support an orphanage in Gambia. Always on the side, of course, because it would hurt their image if everyone were to find out about it. Or sometimes it’s just that they do a job as a pillar of the community, something simple and benign.

I need something like that for Max, the main character of my new book. Zander in my last book went over great with my reading audience; he did underwater welding, and people lapped up his interesting-yet-daring choice of job. I’ve seen people here in Oakleigh who do tree removal…maybe Max could do something along those lines? He’s a manly man, and there’s a certain charm to the lumberjack type that could make him a big hit with my female audience.

Alright, that’ll be it then. Max is a tree lopper, a local boy and he’s devilishly well-liked by all. Except the bad guy. And of course, he struggles with a secret case of vertigo, and maybe a phobia of something innocuous and silly, like peanut butter. He’s not allergic to peanut butter, mind you…he just finds it very frightening, and he can’t tell his tough tree removal friends for fear of ostricization from the community.

He’s looking pretty well-rounded, I feel. So moving onto Denise, his fiancé and something of a worrywart who constantly objects to Max being in a profession where a tree branch could fall on him at any time and then he’d get amnesia and forget about their relationship and become obsessed with all the tree removal in Bentleigh forever more, and their love will be a distant memory (or not a memory at all, as the case may be).

Yep, perfect. Characters are done. Now I just need a plot…

-Jane C.

Brownies, Also Tree Removal

Melbourne tree lopperSome foods are just so amazingly good that you can’t see why the entire day isn’t spent eating them. Like, brownies. Really well-made brownies, moist and gooey on the inside and practically 50% choc chip with maybe a dusting of salt on the top. Amazing. Social interaction is stressful, work is boring, watching TV is like sucking your soul into an event horizon and…well, hugging a really cute dog is pretty great. But I’d still rather be able to eat brownies, all the time, forever.

I may have been too hasty with the work thing as well, because the deliciousness of brownies took over my brain. I may work in an office, but the people around me are really great and actually loads of fun. We send our disaster relief to places in Melbourne, like…the non-emergency services disasters. So if you crashed your car into a tree, call an ambulance. If a tree has fallen down and someone could crash their car into it, we can summon a Melbourne tree lopper from those treehouses that they undoubtedly all live in and have them fix the problem. We have all kinds of industry connections, big and small, tree lopping and extreme weeding. Actually, come to think of it, tree removal is basically extreme weeding. Like, a plant of some sort is becoming a nuisance, so you call the tree loppers in…THEY get rid of it for you. Just like weeds. What DO these extreme weeders do, anyway? I wouldn’t know, because all we do is send people out or give them contacts. I keep getting elderly ladies calling and complaining that their gardens are overrun by some kind of super weeds and they can’t remove them themselves so we’d better send someone along, pronto. You’d be surprised how often the word ‘pronto’ crops up.

Okay, now I’m genuinely wondering where the line blurs between weeding and, like…stump removal. Melbourne offers both, but maybe they should team up. Create a super business. Less calls for me to field…more time to eat brownies.

-Kieran

Beautifying Our Glorious Corporation

dermal fillers ballaratLawrence Corp prides itself on image, and I see nothing wrong with prioritizing the issue. We’re a dynamic company aiming for the top spot in the technology world, and people don’t buy technology unless it really looks good, no matter the functionality or whether it can project holograms and make your car drive itself.

And why shouldn’t this policy extend to staff members? We don’t just sit behind desks and talk to our customers through headsets. Lawrence Corp has its employees out there in the world, lobbying technology outlets and speaking to customers face-to-face. Why shouldn’t we have a trusted Melbourne anti-wrinkle injection professional visiting our office for a mandatory session with each employee to make them look their absolute uniform best? Personally, I’m fully supportive of this initiative from our great CEO, Mr Lawrence. If people come into our company on business or to make a query of some kind, they’ll see that all of our employees are a matched set of efficient workers who also have their appearances taken care of. Studies have shown that worker mentality can be improved with a uniform approach, and company-wide anti-wrinkle treatments are one such method. I’ve heard that the program is soon advancing to dermal fillers, a change I welcome. And not simply because the company provides them to all employees free of charge.

Lawrence Corp is so influential, they’re shaping the world of technology, the business sector, the stock market AND its employees’ faces, for the better. Of course, the treatments are strongly encouraged and not mandatory, but who would go against such a scheme? An expert in dermal fillers from Ballarat was flown in for their skill alone, so people know they’re in safe hands. And the treatments advance company interests. You wouldn’t want to go against company interests…now would you?

-Anika Fergus, P.A.

Digital drama at the reading of the will

executor of willI remember how I felt when my very first sprite died. That was of old age, so it was quite a significant moment in both coding and world creation. Guess I’ve created a game where that sort of thing can and will happen, so like life, it’s just something to get used to. Okay then. It’s happened several times since then, and I’ve been noticing that the NPCs have picked up that something needs to be done with their possessions after they die.

Not that I’m about to programme in a skill tree for executors of will, because there are some careers that I don’t think would be tasteful to include as options…but at least they have a rudimentary last will and testament system in place. I went Diving into the home of a deceased man recently, just to observe the proceedings. He’d written a letter to be read out after he died, so it was kind of a will. The family gathered round, and then just took what belonged to them. End of story. All pretty simple, to be honest. If only proceedings could go that simply in real life.

I’ve only been present for that kind of event once, when my grandfather died. He lived alone, didn’t have too much, and fortunately we’re not the sort of family who’d argue over the small things. So it was just a matter of dividing up the small stuff, selling the house and that was pretty much it. You see this happens on TV a bit, which is often when the shouting and punching happens. Drama, right? Maybe I should be ramping up the drama in the game, just to keep people interested. People right now just get along a little bit too well…

But it won’t be will-related. I don’t fancy observing Victoria’s probates and gauging the exact responses of the bereaved. That falls under the ‘tasteless’ category I was mentioning earlier.

Grow Old How You Like!

anti wrinkle treatmentsThey say people aren’t allowed to grow old anymore. Pfft, I say. Pfft to the absolute max. I think these people are confusing growing old with looking old, but the two are totally different. There’s more to progressing through the years than simply getting yourself a few wrinkles, and thinking of it in such a linear way? That’s bad. That’s wrong. I do so hate it when people are wrong.

Like, take all those middle-aged protesters who arranged themselves outside a beauty clinic on the weekend. Oh, you know the protests…’beautification is evil’ and ‘natural beauty 4-eva!’ and ‘beautiful at any age!’

Of course, most of that is true. Beautification isn’t evil, but apart from that, it’s true. People can be beautiful at any age. But why should clinics in Melbourne offering anti-wrinkle treatments bear the brunt of your scorn? Their view of beauty is so shallow, it almost sickening. There are marks of age that can never be gotten rid of; wisdom, experience, not being able to get up the stairs as easily and really wanting grandchildren all of a sudden. What, do you think an anti-wrinkle treatment is going to stop you from calling your grown-up daughter for a two-hour conversation on baby names? No, it isn’t! That grandchild is going to grow up thinking his grandparent is one of the youngest-looking, hippest cats around, but that can only be a good thing, except if they ask you to skydive. Don’t skydive at the age of…oh, anything over 70. Even before then it’s a bit of a hazard.

But in terms of looks, people can look however they please without being judged. They should have that right, because age isn’t a box that you’re placed into at some stage because you look a certain way. So let people grow old, or let them stave off the wrinkles for a little bit! And if you know someone in Melbourne specialising in lip fillers, or laser hair removal…don’t egg their houses. It’s rude, and you need to rethink your priorities.

-Jezebel T.

Conveyances Make Dream Home A Reality

conveyancing lawyersI remember designing my dream house way back in grade 3. It wasn’t meant to be a realistic place, which is what you’d kind of expect from asking…nine-year-olds. Mine was on an island, because, I loved pirates. We had to design our dream house in pairs, so I designed it with this other boy named Alec. I wasn’t a fan of his dinosaur robot room, but I was pretty happy with my pool-hammock-treehouse. The best part was a spring-loaded trap on the beach just outside the front door, for people we didn’t like. That would just spring them right off the island. The worst part was how I planned to lure Alex onto it so I could have the island all to myself, because I was a terrible child.

Fast forward a few years, and I can’t help but smirk as I search for conveyancing lawyers. My parents left me the house, and now that they wanted to move into a residential village they’ve asked me to sell it. I figured that a conveyancer would help with all the paperwork and complex terms or whatever, and it’s not like I’ve ever done something like this before. So yeah, that’s helping. But it’s pretty stark, the differences between real life and a child’s imagination. My parents never had a tree house, or a hammock, or a pool, or even a combination of all three. The conveyancers aren’t going to be handing me any forms that say ‘do you declare that your hidden trap door will not be a significant nuisance to the neighbours?’

Maybe I’m the crazy one for thinking like this, but not much I can do about that now. Man, that island was cool though…so much promise. If I ever become a theme park tycoon, I’ll definitely be creating something just like it, because they would flock to it on account of its awesomeness. And by that time, I’ll have a legion of Melbourne’s good conveyancing solicitors to make it all a reality. That’s how that works, probably…

-Doug