Accommodation

To Retire on the Coast…

Lorne hotelsThere’s a story I heard recently about a fisherman in a village in Italy. He loved his life, had a cushy job, came home every day and made enough to feed his family and go out and have relaxing times with his friends in the evening and was just generally content.

A businessman comes along and offers him the chance to build this massive fishing empire through hard work, blood, sweat and tears. Then once he was a great fishing mogul, he could retire…to a tiny fishing village, and do exactly what he was doing at the start.

A good cautionary tale. Made me wonder…am I happy being an office drone for the rest of my life? Ow important IS money, anyway? Let’s say I moved to work in a beach apartment in Lorne, because my friends keep going there and telling me how wonderful it is. I wouldn’t be able to live in some Lorne apartment, certainly not at first. It’s a seaside town, so rent would be high and whatever. But I’d have a job cleaning or…working at a desk. The pace of life in Lorne would be slower, because it always is outside the big cities and you can’t live in a town next to the ocean and get too stressed.

But…maybe it’s happier. I won’t be rich, but hey, I get to work in a luxury beach apartment on the coast. I’ve always loved the ocean and everything surrounding it, so I get to go out on weekends and days off and evenings, walking on the beach and drinking coffee overlooking the waves. It’d be so much simpler, because there’s just less to DO out there. I mean that in a good way, obviously.

I’m actually serious; this is something that needs a lot of thought. Melbourne is great and all, but there are hotels in Lorne that are hiring, probably. It’s not even that far from Melbourne, so I could still visit if I needed a break from the ocean life. But wow…waking up to the sound of seagulls instead of traffic. It’s a lovely thought.

-Brenda

Drains

Star Conflicts, and Also Plumbing

drainage contractorsAlright, so the way I understand it, the newest Star Conflicts movie is a prequel, but not THE prequels. Kind of a mid-quel between the prequels and the sequels, which aren’t actually sequels but actually the originals, which are better than the prequels even though they’re really old now. Oh, and there’s also another sequel, which we call a sequel, which is heralding the arrival of two more sequels with another prequel/mid-quel on the way.

Phew. I don’t know if it’s just sci-fi, but all this confuses me to no end. No one ever bothers to explain how things work, what people are doing in the future, how toilet facilities have advanced through the ages…. I mean, what do people in the future do about blocked drains? In Melbourne, it’s a matter of plunger and a mixture of baking soda and vinegar. And then if that doesn’t work, call in the professionals, who’ll discover that the inside of the pipe is corroded and all the rust have built up and is blocking the pipe. That’s very strange to me, personally…I mean, what’s the point of a pipe if rust can build up inside? Who builds a pipe out of material that can rust? This is where plastic really comes in handy, I guess, but who am I to judge.

I bet in the distant future, in a distant galaxy, drain unblocking isn’t a problem. Every pipe will be built with lasers installed, because those movies are all about lasers, and they’ll zap any blockage out of existence. That is, if pipes even exist and water isn’t just beamed directly into the shower. I haven’t seen anyone using teleportation in Star Conflicts, but I bet it’s around there somewhere. Anyway, you’ve got that, and then all the drainage contractors in Melbourne will have moved onto being laser pipe makers because…well, that’s how all jobs work. New technology, new sort of job. Being a drain unblocker might be a lot more fun if you get to work with lasers the whole time!

-Lawrence

conveyancing

A Place for Me (and the dogs) to Call Home

best conveyancersI hear Carnegie is a nice place to live. Was actually looking at a place just across from a park, near the pool, a bit away from the town centre but I think that’d suit me. Don’t want to be smack bang in the middle of city life…got to think about the dogs.

I mean, really, like, no one told me that having six dogs was going to be this stressful! Every rental place I look at has to be discounted, either because the gardI get a home, en is too small or because it doesn’t even have a garden. Estate agents gape in amazement when I tell them how many dogs I have. Property consultants freeze. Potential landlords slam the proverbial door in my face. Looks like I’ll have to bite the bullet and just…buy.

Now I need a conveyancer in Carnegie who’ll be willing to help me out, because I can’t do this by myself. I bet some people will see all my pooches and just refuse to sell, because…well, dog discrimination is alive and well. I’ll have you all know that I’m fully-licensed and I walk dogs for a living; I know my trade, I can control these animals and there’s no reason you shouldn’t sell me a home! Rentals I can sort of understand, even though I don’t think there should be any discrimination, but for buying, all you need to do is fork out the cash. Or so I thought.

I’ve heard a conveyancer can really help with various things, paperwork especially, which is one of my weak points. I have too many yapping dogs to take care of, and I certainly don’t need the added stress of keeping important papers safe from slobbering jaws. No, getting myself a conveyancer just makes the whole thing safer. Me and the dogs get a home, everyone’s happy. I should look around a bit, though…I hear Brighton conveyancers are nice. Really, I just need a roof over my head.

-Alejandra

Property

I Feel the Urge to Advocate

property advocates MelbourneI need to leave the home staging business. I’ve seen things, and things have seen me sometimes, and it just got a bit too much.

That’s the thing: I love home design SO MUCH that I just can’t bear to walk into any disasters, any longer. That’s why I’ve grown interested in being a property advocate. Melbourne has homes that would stun and amaze you, and I find it to be right at the end of the spectrum. Here I am, having to enter homes where people have a cream-coloured sofa matched with grey wallpaper and I just want to rush outside and take deep breaths until the wave of nausea passes. Grey and cream; just the thought is making me lose my lunch.

I feel like I’m a vet who can’t stand to lose animals because I care about them too much. Or a teacher who can’t stand to watch her students graduate because they’ve loved teaching them so much. See, that’s what happens when you enter your field of passion: you develop a hard edge, or you love it so much you have to let it go. That’s why I think I’d suit being a buyers advocate. All the hard work and heavy lifting of making the place look good is gone before I get there, and all that’s left is the process of looking around to make sure it’s all as good as they say so I can recommend the property to the client. If it’s not up to scratch, that’s the problem of whoever wants to sell. I can walk out and cross it off the list, never to darken the doors again unless they call me back and say it’s up to scratch. And then I get to be the judge of that…

Ah, Melbourne property advocates have it so easy. So many lovely properties, all the time to walk around them and view the interiors in all their perfection. It’s a New Year’s resolution to aspire to, I suppose.

-Brighton

trees

Auntie Mabel with the Pruners on Call

tree trimmingDon’t you just hate it when a really good song is ruined by nasty language? Or when a pizza is ruined by that ONE terrible topping? Funny, how easy it is for a little thing to ruin a big thing.

I should make that a children’s book. But in the meantime, I need to find a fix for this sticky situation of having the whole family under one roof and Aunt Mabel gumming up the works. She HATES Christmas, so whatever has changed in the meantime, I simply don’t know. She spent the entirety of her last Christmas visit sitting by the window, saying that our geraniums needed pruning and that really needed to call the tree removal people on the weeping birch because it was ‘tilting’. After two hours of this, I think I was the one who was tilting…

And who shows up on boxing day? The Ashwood tree removal people, of course. Mabel must’ve snuck up to her room and called, telling them it was a ‘dire case’. There was nothing wrong with that birch tree. It was tilting because it’s a weeping birch and that’s what it does!

Oh, and then there was a few years before, when Mabel hadn’t quite decided whether she just hated Christmas or whether it was just a phase. I wasn’t even a teenager at the time, but brought her own gardening tools and spent the whole day outside, grumbling at how Mum had let the place turn into a tip and how ashamed she should be having the entire family here at Christmas, looking at this terrible garden.

Apparently she didn’t have her lightning-fast Melbourne tree trimming people on call that year, otherwise I feel like they would’ve been at the door. And now I’m paranoid about how our garden looks for when Mabel comes along and starts judging every aspect. I should just…close the curtains for the entirety of Christmas.

-Abigail

office design

Big office design decisions

office fitoutsI have had my meal of fish and potatoes. It was a good meal, and now…action must be taken. Any minute now.

It’ll happen, at some point. At point that is the right point. Gah, this is just me all over! Inaction, all the time. I’ll never learn, and it will be my downfall. I’m the world’s greatest procrastinator, which is why it took several years for me to get round to starting a business. Actually, the business hasn’t even started yet, what am I saying? I’m scheduled to begin trading on Monday, and now I have to renovate this office in the space of a weekend. How did it come to this? Oh yeah, internet videos.

Oh, there are office design companies in Melbourne, office fitouts experts if you will. I could just get it all done, but I promised myself that I was going to do this myself. It was going to be how I proved to myself that I was ready to do this, to finally run my own business efficiently without running away to get someone else to do stuff for me. I remember a bit about DIY from my youth, so I thought I could do this. But something always happened that meant I could put it off. I needed to find just the right floorboards. I didn’t want floorboards, I wanted tiles instead. Tiles were overrated, I really just needed the right carpet. By the time I’d made it to the curtain colours…well, that’s now. We’ve made it to the curtain colours, and I’m still as terrible as I was.

Professional office fitouts it is, I suppose. It’ll probably end up much better, though I do wonder if they’ll be finished in a single day. Maybe all my staff will have to move in while there are major renovations going on, and I’ll have to make something up. Like, there were faults with the previous renovation, which is…true enough. I had to call in Melbourne’s best office renovation people, because my own skills weren’t enough! Also, kind of true…

outboard motor repair

Outboard Motor repairs before the fishing trip

anchor winch MelbourneJake had the bright idea of taking us all on a fishing trip. Normally this would be a fun adventure, instead we were all terrified because none of us had ever been fishing before. We were keen to try though, because as far as we could tell, fishing is a relatively low-impact activity.

Jake decided that we should all go out on a boat. This is despite none of us having a skipper’s ticket, half having never been on a boat more than once. Oh and one of us wasn’t able to swim.

Flash forward six months, and Jake, true to his word, has gotten a skipper’s ticket and decided that life jackets are our best chance. We got one with an old outboard motor, which I didn’t realise was a mistake. It wasn’t long before we realised the boat needed a serious outboard motor servicing. Melbourne waters can be unforgiving to an inexperienced crew.

The day was a disaster before we even hit the water. Jake’s truck could not get up the hill leading to the pier. We all burst into laughter at this predicament of course, since we could literally see the coast from inside the truck. For about 45 minutes we had to help push the boat up the last few metres to the top of the hill. No sooner had we accomplished this task, the trailer breaks off. The boat’s back end falls straight down, right next to the pier, outboard motor broken into pieces.

We were so close, yet so far away. It’s a good thing our shenanigans didn’t manage to break the anchor winch. Melbourne is a fantastic place to fish and enjoy the bay, but I doubt I’ll ever go out with someone who doesn’t have at least a few years experience with a boat. We didn’t end up out on the water, but we still ended up fishing off the pier, so at the very least it was a memorable weekend.

beauty

Eyebrow Tattooing…but Why?

anti wrinkle treatmentsMy nerves can handle a finale. My nerves can handle a mid-season finale, provided I know that it’s coming. But now Week of Our Lives has just been tossing in the revelations in whichever episode it likes, and I just can’t deal. CANNOT DEAL, PEOPLE.

Anyway, juicy details firthcoming! Now Spencer is the mayor, he’s unveiled a gold statue of himself in the town square that also acts as a fountain. Debbie has remained faithful despite the unfortunate tortoise incident that found its way onto Me-Straw, but now she’s worried. Spencer is flying in some expert eyebrow tattooing experts from Melbourne, because he’s worried that the golden statue’s eyebrows are more ‘fleek’ than his, and it’s now mocking him.

Debbie wants to tell someone who can help, like a psychiatrist, but having perfect eyebrows to impress Craig, her ex who dumped her for his online Japanese robot girlfriend, is too tempting. She’s going to surpress the truth of Spencer’s illness just to make her eyebrows the most fleek in all of Realsville, prizing her appearance over the good of the citizens!

In a related story, Greta is trying to snag the handsome guy who fixes the gas despite the fifty-five-year age difference, and she’s been trying to oust Debbie from her position as PA so that Spencer will include her in his eyebrow tattooing plans. Never mind that her husband Paolo managed to survive her attempts to have him killed at sea by befriending the mercenary pirates and has returned for his ultimate revenge! And Greta is using the money from his life insurance just to keep the anti-wrinkle treatments from Melbourne flowing. What happens when the truth comes out? Will Debbie see sense? Why is Spencer’s gold statue wearing Crocs, and is it a sign? How will Leela convince Clarice to open a reptile petting zoo together when iguanas killed her entire family?

Squee, so much mystery and intrigue!!

-Leticia

rendering

Making a difference with rendering

rendering companiesI’ve done some pretty impressive building work in my time if I do say so myself. If had to choose the most complicated work I would have to say it was the rendering project that I organised for a family in need in the western suburbs of Melbourne. I volunteer at a local charity that helps underprivileged families repair their damaged homes. The charity is called ‘Projects for Humanity’ and I’ve been involved with them for about two years. In that time I’ve managed to help out some of the poorest families in Melbourne. The work is incredibly rewarding when you see the difference it can make to a family in need. I don’t know why more people don’t volunteer their time to help those who are less fortunate than themselves.

It’s fulfilling work and I hope I can inspire others in the building industry to lend a hand or a hammer where they can. The charity is run on donations and dedicated volunteers who care about making a difference in this world. I have a background in renovation project management so I organise the projects as best I can. Recently the charity was contacted by a family in desperate need of help with their house rendering. The family was worried about the safety of their young children when I large section of rendering come loose and fell off. I got on the phone straight away and spoke to a few rendering companies in Melbourne that I thought might be able to help. Thankfully I was able to quickly organise a team to donate their time to repair the brick rendering for this struggling family. If knew how to do rendering I would have done the job myself, but unfortunately it’s a skill that I do not possess. Thankfully there are plenty of house rendering companies based in Melbourne that are kind enough to help out a family in need.

function rooms

Unique birthday celebrations

I hate anything too boring, which is usually a trait I keep to myself. If a friend says we should meet up, I keep my suggestions of doing so at an ice skating rink while wearing matching onesies to myself, sitting in an ordinary café sipping my ordinary cappuccino in compliant silence. It’s fine, really.

And then my birthday rolls around, and boy, EVERYONE knows that it’ll be a crazy time. Maybe that’s why nobody ever misses my birthday celebrations. For one glorious night a year, people actually realise that my way of doing things is the best way, and they’re allowed to cut loose for a change. See? Amity knows best, and she also knows all the hottest function rooms in Melbourne and hereabouts that tolerate a bit of wackiness. Don’t worry, I’m not going to wreck the place! Just…make some interesting decisions regarding the decorations.

I just found my dream catering company as well: Mad Science Catering. Science in name, science in game, because they serve all their drinks in beakers and their finger food in petri dishes, with microscopes that actually just display the ingredients of what you’re eating. That’s useful, because their dishes are just plain nuts. Orange and green tea-flavoured dumplings filled with seaweed-infused eel. Or this mysterious brew that turned out to be apple juice mixed with melted choc liqueurs and a dash of vanilla extract. It was like drinking an apple pie, with delicious extras. You never know what you’re getting, there are new flavours every time and I just wish I could make them my personal chefs because wow, what a way to live! If nothing else (and there’s so much else anyway) they’re a conversation piece.

Next time I’m planning to have all my friends take ice skating classes, except there’s gonna be a special requirement to stand on one leg the whole time. They also have to wear animal-themed onesies, because no one has yet taken me up on that offer…and then, of course, culinary loveliness afterwards.