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Audio Addict Problems

I’ve been looking forward to this trip to Launceston all month, yet somehow I’m fine with this little roadblock. I put this down to my new headphones, which make listening to music an experience of unadulterated delight. Basically, I have something to occupy me while I wait for a towing company to take me to a mechanic.

To back up, I was barely out of Hobart when my van started making ungodly scraping noises before grinding to a halt. Luckily for me, it did so right beside a cute historic church fronted by a sunny patch of grass, which I’m now peacefully kicking back on while pumping a bit of early death metal.

I’m not concerned about getting it sorted – I’m sure I’ll be able to find somewhere good for car repairs. Brighton is not exactly out in the middle of nowhere; there are mechanics up here for sure. This whole thing is simply an invitation to kick back and enjoy some fresh country air.

If anything’s worrying me, it’s the fact that my car stereo seems to be on the blink, and I’m not sure I trust some random Brighton auto electrician to look after my baby. I know that probably sounds pretty stupid, but we’re talking the cream of in-car sound systems here. It needs the special touch of someone who deeply cares for properly balanced mids and life-transforming sub bass.

That said, I might just have to take the risk if I hope to carry on with my journey. Sadly, wearing headphones while driving is a no-go, so having functional car speakers in of the essence. I’m probably being a bit overly precious about it, anyway. It’s not like they’re going be deconstructing every little bit of it and smashing it with hammers… are they? I’m not really sure how these things work.

In the meantime, I’m going to take my mind off that mental image with some hardcore drum and bass.

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It’s A Cycle

I’ve realised that most of the people I know are workaholics. Granted, they don’t necessarily see it that way, although I’m sure at least some of them would own up to it. It’s not even considered a dirty word, really. Lots of people are happy to wear it, and some even take it as a badge of honour.

To me, though, it doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of work you produce or the value of your service to the world. It just means you habitually distract yourself from your inner life through work. I’m usually inclined to think it’s none of my business – each to their own and all – but lately I’ve been feeling waves of annoyance when my close friends display this type of behaviour. Why? Because it means they’re letting their lives spiral out of their control, which can’t be healthy in the long term.

I also don’t want to deal with the fallout of their distracted lives, which is something that often ends up on me, despite my best efforts. I feel like my friends see me as their stand-in (and unpaid) life-fixer simply because I’m one of the few people they know who isn’t going around in a constant state of stress. It’s high time for them to start looking for actual stress management consultants. Melbourne is cosmopolitan enough; there are 100% people out there who offer this service professionally.

Of course, it would help if more employers offered corporate stress management training. Then people wound’t have to eat into their precious personal time in order to remain a valued corporate asset. Ultimately, though, people need to take responsibility for their health and wellbeing. Our culture encourages pushing personal resources to the max in the name of productivity and growth, but most biological organisms need periods of rest to balance out this strenuous activity. It’s a cycle, people.

 

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Questionable Design

The big overhaul of the Sydney office was a success, according to Stacey and Tania, who just spent most of that conference call rhapsodising about it. From what I can tell, the main attraction is the wall-to-wall mural that’s essentially a trompe l’oeil filing system. Beats me how that’s a good thing by any measure – aesthetic, functional or otherwise.

The only thing I can think of is that it works on a nostalgic level, given that paper-based filing is all but dead these days. Still, why not use the wall space for something useful, or at least fun? I’m not sure that purely nostalgia-fuelled novelty has much place in forward-looking office interior designs. Sydney businesses know that office layouts are about more than mere novelty. What it should really be focusing on, when it comes workspaces, is creating an environment that assists people to get their work done. That’s my two cents, anyway.

I guess I need to see this thing in person to really have an opinion on it. It just seems like, if said mural is the most noteworthy aspect of the reboot, then the design might not have a whole lot going for it in terms of actually being a good space to work in. But it does come down to what you’re looking for in an office fit out. Sydney workplaces might have different priorities, like being on top of the trend for early ‘00s stuff that seems to be going around.

Maybe I’m taking too clinical a view of this. I mean, if the mural in question somehow helps bond the millennial-dominated team together through shared recollection of their formative years, as represented by carefully labelled binders and A4 plastic sleeves, then there could be something to be said for it. Even a minimalist of the first order (like me) can appreciate the functional value of that effect.

If there’s one thing that being a design snob has taught me, it’s that it’s always worth being open to new ideas.

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Light, All Night

For most people over 30, it’s recommend that they see a doctor every year, just to make sure everything is fine. Just as a precaution, even if everything seems fine.

That’s all well and good, but I have a standing appointment with electrician companies in Cheltenham, because I need my power. Electricity is power, as they say, and I need more of it than the average person, due to my crippling fear of the dark. I have my home specially-fitted to make sure there’s not a single shadowy area, and in fact, the lights are so bright and well-positioned that there are barely any shadows either. They’re all on timers so that I don’t have to switch anything on, and they run all the way through the night. And yes, I have to be quite energy-conscious during the day in an attempt to keep the bills low. It’s not like I have that luxury at night time.

I see electricians regularly to make sure there are no gaps in the strategy. When I first bought all these lights and had them installed, I made the stupid mistake of just assuming that they’d all keep ticking over. Maybe one would go out, I’d replace it, but meh…could just do that the next day, and it’d be fine. But since then there have been a couple of serious power outage incidents, they’ve shaved years off my life, and I never want to go through that again. Got myself a set of very expensive generators that activate as soon as they detect a power surge, and obviously I needed residential electricians to set them up in my home. So now, it’s always bright in my home, even when the rest of the street or more goes out. And yes, I do have blackout curtains, to avoid angering the neighbours. It’s that, or I’m blazing my light out into the street like a permanent Christmas display.

-Regan

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Cooling Secrets Revealed!

 

When I was a child I thought air conditioning units were magical, which I think is fair. It was hot outside, there was a clean white box that gave us cold air from nowhere, so it had to be some kind of magic. It was either that, or there was a refrigerator hidden in the wall right behind the unit, and that’s where it was getting all the cold air. I went behind the house once to try to confirm this theory, and found no fridge of any kind, so that pretty much confirmed the magic thing for me.

I believed that the air conditioning servicing companies Brisbane is famous for were run by wizards, which would explain why they’re everywhere. But then I grew up, and got curious, which leads me to this current night class on basic technology.

It’s week four, class is tonight, and looking at the syllabus, I know it’s the one I’ve been hanging out for: air conditioning. Finally, the secrets will be unveiled. I liked looking at the inside of a computer hard drive, the car engine was alright, and I could’ve done without taking a coffee machine apart. Now all the magic of my morning latte has been ruined, ruined I tell you!

But this week, they’ve promised that we’re going to be looking at the magic of air conditioning, which is not actually magic, but I feel will become more so once I figure out how it all works. I’ve been so patient. I’ve waited for so long. I’ve rung up so many air conditioning professionals just to ask how cooling works, but put down the phone because I was too nervous. A couple of times I even considered looking up a tutorial on Me-Straw, but…come on. Come on. As if air conditioning people would let their secrets be exposed like that. No one would want air conditioning repairs near Brisbane any more – not with a ten foot pole. The whole trade would collapse!

No, best that the secrets are only discovered by a chosen few. As a seeker of truth, I feel that I belong among that number.

-Priscilla

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Renovations, Everywhere

I was talking to my friend, Chad, and he’s all like “I gotta get a bathroom designer in because my girl wants me to renovate the bathroom and I can’t design anything.”

To be honest, I don’t really have a girl at the moment, because Isa and I aren’t going steady anymore. Someday, some girl is going to ask me to remodel the bathroom or something and I’m not sure I’m ready. That’s commitment in a nutshell if I ever heard of it, because if you have a bathroom, you have a house. If you have a house, you have a life, and a mortgage, and if you have a life and a mortgage you have a wife, and if you have a wife you might even have kids, and now I need a paper bag to breathe into or whatever because that’s just terrifying. A mortgage…a bathroom to remodel, that I bought, with tons of money, and now I owe, like, the government tons of money. This is why Chad needs to stop coming to me with his problems, because we’re, like…at different stages of life, man. Like, he’s at his stage, where his girl is asking him to remodel the bathroom, and I’m playing video games until 4am every night, sitting on a beanbag because it’s the only piece of furniture I actually own. Well, that, and a kettle. I have to have my peppermint tea before I got to bed. It settles me.

Chad needs to go talk to one of his other friends. Like, maybe Chad, who just got married and he’s been posting on Visage-Tome about all their plans for the house, which probably include kitchen renovations. He’s probably in touch with all sorts of Melbourne kitchen designers, and conveyancers, and gardeners, and all the stuff that proper adults have. I rent on the fifth floor just so I don’t have to deal with any of that stuff.

-Chad

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Time-Wasting Tendencies

How do you motivate yourself to work when you’d much rather be checking your full moon horoscope, or investigating what the prime minister has been up to on social media? I seem to have a bit of a problem with all of the above, and my boss has started to notice.

I’ve started asking around, and one of the most common answers I’ve heard is that it all comes down to spatial design – as in, how an individual workspace is put together, as well as the flow of the office as a whole. This kind of makes sense to me. I work in a cubicle, which is arranged such that my colleagues can’t really see what I’m up to, so there’s not much to stop me from going on mindless scrolling rampages, at least in the moment.

I’m not sure there’s much I can do regarding my firm’s choices in office interior design. Melbourne is a leader in the global commercial design landscape, though, as far as I can tell from a quick online search. Maybe that’s some ammunition I can use to argue my case – in other words, we’re letting the team down.

Here I go again – searching and blogging and polling strangers about their workplace habits, when I could (and should) be getting on with that report that’s due in two hours. I’ve only got myself to blame, really; I can’t very well point the finger at my environment. I mean, it’s not like it’s terrible. It’s undeniably a high end office fitout. Melbourne has plenty of worse-off offices hidden amongst its up-to-date facade, no doubt.

Still, it’s worth thinking about, especially for business owners. At the end of the day, I’ll lose out if I get the sack over my chronic time-wasting, but so will the company. There are things that could be done to facilitate better workplace habits, and they could be a simple as giving some thought to the layout of the space.

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No Aquatic Cars

Everyone can have their soaps and their other reality TV shows. Lizard’s Hut is all I really need. It’s a little more niche- much bigger in the UK, in fact- and it’s all about people bringing in their inventions, where they are ruthlessly judged and torn apart.

The open secret of the show is that no one ever actually receives funding: it’s actually just a stream of idiots filing past a group of incredibly aggressive judges, who then more kindly explain to the viewer the science behind their decisions. It’s actually very educational.

The latest inventing idiot who had their dreams crushed on international television wanted a car that could drive underwater. Now, one of the judges is a smart fellow who used to do auto electrical work in Bentleigh, just around the corner from where I live. He’s generally the one who deals with anything to do with cars, so obviously he tore the guy a new one and he ran away sobbing. We then received a very interesting lecture on why the idea wouldn’t work…obviously, auto-electrical was at the top of that list. Cars are not entirely waterproof; they can resist rain, but not being submerged. Even if you shore them up and insulate the engine against the water, there are still all kinds of issues- pressure, the exhaust, the lack of escape options in case of emergencies- that mean that an ordinary car made waterproof still isn’t going to work underwater.

So educational. Now I fully understand the deal behind why submarines are submarines, ships are ships, and cars are cars. Next time I go for a car service close to Bentleigh East, I’m going to remember this. Maybe I’ll quiz the mechanics on their opinions on aquatic cars. Hopefully they look at me like I’m the idiot, as they should.

 

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The Coldest Christmas

Prepare everything. Prepare the carpets, shore up the door-frames, disassemble the trampoline. Lock the cupboards, bolt the doors to the spare rooms, and make sure ALL the ornaments are up high.

That last one is mostly because my brother is going to be bringing his great dane- as if we needed extra large bodies on this house- but I guess with all the nephews and nieces getting older, we need to start preparing for Christmases with grasping little hands in the house as well.

And especially, above all, we need to prepare for Great Aunt Yelena taxing the air con to its limit. Air conditioning services are great, right? Thanks to the Central Cooling Authority we don’t even need to worry? Well, they haven’t met Great Aunt Yelena. Her body runs a few degrees hotter than everyone else’s, or so it seems. It’s like she constantly has a life-threatening fever, but has as much energy as a lady twenty years her senior. Touch the controls for the air con and she watches you like a chameleon settling both of its eyes onto a juicy cricket. Turn down the settings and she’s up like a truck when the air horn is blown, guilting her way out of any repercussions by saying she’s an old lady and she needs the room at just the right temperature…

One room would be fine, except she claims the main sitting room as her domain and that’s where we have to be to open presents and have the family times. So the air con is on full blast, we’re all shivering, and there’s Great Aunt Yelena, smiling like she’s lounging by the pool. Oh, you want to be the one to look up the best air conditioning repair in Canberra when you run the machine ragged? Of course not…we’re the ones hosting, it’s our house. It’s as close to a cold Christmas as we’re likely to get.

-Chris

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2019, More Food

 Someone asked me recently what I’m looking forward to in 2019. And I was all like…gosh…it’s not New Year’s Eve. Stow it with the big questions. I guess in 2019 we’re getting phones that can roll up, so that’s pretty exciting. That wasn’t the answer they were looking for, though. I think it was more like ‘job prospects!’ and ‘installing a new wood burning fire in my four-bedroom house!’ and other really adult things that make me physically ill to talk about.

Of course, Lorelei was only asking because she wanted to talk about all of HER very mature goals, like having a baby (yawn) and her and Kal going on holiday to Port Douglas, their dream destination, and how her restaurant is getting a commercial wok burner. Oh gosh, she went on about the commercial kitchen equipment for what seemed like hours, and I was just like ‘Lorelei, next time I see you at a party I’m going to come down with a sudden, violent case of hiccups so I can leave the room’.

Then again, I’d gladly hear about a commercial wok burner over the other stuff that makes me feel like I’m not doing anything with my life. In fact, it did rouse within me a desire to be a bit more of a foodie this year. I’ve been slaving away trying to cook my own stuff and none of it seems to go right. Apparently I was cursed with a great love for good food but the complete inability to actually make any of it myself, so I’m thinking ‘whatever, that’s what restaurants are for.’ They have all the equipment to make food properly instead of me having to look up conversion tables and wondering if the inside of the chicken will still be pink because my oven is just plain awful.

Commercial ovens are built for that sort of thing. They cook everything the way you want them, so…that’s good. I’ll try out as many restaurants as I can, and that’ll fill the void in 2019 nicely. Thanks, Lorelei! Still don’t ever want to talk to you again though.

 

-Oscar