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Me and the Conveyancers Must Save Layla!

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No, but you see, Layla can’t move out. I went to see my tarot reader, and he said that this relationship would end in total disaster. Now they’re getting married, which is total disaster for me, so that turned out to be correct. I went to visit him again recently and told him everything that had happened, and he said…that I needed to stop the wedding. Because if they go through with it, Layla and Pete are going to go on a honeymoon and it’d going to be interrupted by a pack of wild wallabies, so I must stop this at all costs. Thus causing Layla to continue living with me. Tragic, but it’s for everyone’s good in the end.

I cannot tell you how many conveyancers I’ve visited in the last few days. Did you know there are multiple conveyancing solicitors in Sandringham alone? I never even knew that conveyancing was a thing until like last week when Layla said she was getting their help with some…property thing. THE property thing. The property thing that means she’ll be ‘conveying’ herself out of the house, leaving me high and dry and having to find a new housemate while she lives it up in wedded bliss. Ugh, disgusting.

I mean…wonderful. And I feel terrible having to visit all these conveyancers. I don’t mean to waste their time, really. I bet they have just so much conveying to do. Many title transfers…a great deal of glancing over the sale of land act 1962, which I just looked up because I care that much as a friend. I’ll make it up to the conveyancers. You better believe that when it comes time for me to move, I’ll be visiting every conveyancing office in St Kilda to the other places that aren’t Melbourne. Yep, plenty of custom, all for the conveyancers, because it’s not like this is their fault.

I mean…it’s nobody’s fault. Layla simply cannot move out, and into this bigger house with her husband-to-be, because…wallabies. And I’ve seen her conveyancing paperwork, too. Definitely a few subsections that she needs to inspect more closely.

-Denise, Denise

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Hyperbaric Chamber of Medical Secrets

My dad’s friend, Jeffrey, came over for dinner last night. I hadn’t been aware of this, but he’s been in hospital receiving treatment for decompression illness, which he acquired while scuba diving. I won’t go into the details of that, but something that interested me in his rundown of events was the use of a certain kind of oxygen therapy by the hospital in treating the condition.

From what Jeffrey said, it seems to involve spending time in these things called a hyperbaric chambers. In Melbourne there aren’t that many facilities that have these oxygen chambers. Even so, their use is quite well established in current medicine. I didn’t fully grasp the whole concept, but it’s something to do with breathing air that contains more straight oxygen than ordinary air.

It seems that this is used to treat a whole range of conditions, not just decompression sickness. I think it’s sometimes used in conditions involving, like, necrotic tissues, because it enables more oxygen to reach the tissue that’s struggling to access it. Good stuff.  People are even getting into it as a way of attempting to mitigate certain effects of conditions like autism, to the extent that it’s possible to buy portable hyperbaric chambers for home use.

It’s pretty cool that there is, in fact, a solid treatment for decompression sickness – that whole shenanigan sounds pretty terrible. It’s also good that the technology exists here in Melbourne, so that Jeffrey was able to access it. It’s a funny thing with these advances in medical tech – I’ve never heard of hyperbaric therapy before, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

I wonder what people pay for these portable chamber systems. I’d imagine that it’s the kind of thing someone might choose to invest in if they new they were going to be having long-term, ongoing treatment; Jeffrey kind of insinuated that it wasn’t cheap receiving it at the hospital.

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Barry Goes ‘Baric

The guy over the road, Jim, has been telling me about this treatment his brother, Barry, has been having for his circulation problems (don’t ask me for the details on that – I tend to tune out about Jim’s siblings health complaints, as there’s always a never-ending spiel of new additions to the list). Anyway, this thing is known as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and it involves getting into a sort of chamber in which you can breathe air with a higher oxygen content than usual.

By the sound of it, Barry is looking into buying a hyperbaric chamber for home use. Jim tells me that going to the hospital to receive the treatment really adds up over time – Barry’s been at it for a while now, and it seems like he’s going to need to keep getting the treatment in the future, so it makes sense for him to drop a bunch of cash on getting a portable chamber that he can set up in his house.

I asked Jim if administering this treatment is something that you’re meant to be medically qualified for. Jim reckons it’s considered pretty safe, and that the portable chambers are devised to be relatively foolproof. I didn’t quite believe him, so I had a quick look into what the  deal is with home-based hyperbaric medicine in Melbourne.

From what I can see, it looks like Jim might be right – it does seem to be legit for people to set up these portable chambers in their houses. Of course, it would make more sense in a lot of cases to go to a hospital for treatment – there are so many different conditions that this thing can be applied to. I get the sense that you’d invest in an at-home system if you were already familiarised with hospital-based hyperbaric therapy and needed long-term treatment.

Good old Jim; always teaching me something new about the world. At least this time I learned something other than how boring chats with neighbours can be!

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Saving Power for the Ultimate Holiday

If I’m going to save up for that holiday, I need to think seriously about saving. Not just saving as in ‘oh, I might buy rump steak instead of t-bone’. No, I’m talking real, concerted efforts to cut down on the dollars.

Tiger Claw has said that his last tour of Melbourne was his last, which of course left me silently devastated. My favourite A-pop artist, never coming back to Melbourne? But he IS doing a special tour in the Philippines, so guess that’s where I’m going for my next holiday? That is, if I can save up. First thing I’m striking off the list is air con, because it guzzles so much power. At work they just started a policy of commercial energy monitoring to properly ascertain how much power is used, and where. It gives you all the exact statistics, and now I’m wondering if I can maybe swipe a bit of that action for my home. If they even DO it for homes…I’ll have to look into it. But it would help me see what’s wasting the most energy, and where to cut down. I’m happy to go through the winter without heating. I can bundle, or…just work overtime. That way I’ll be earning and saving at the same time. And then we get to the issue of solar power, which I’m seriously considering. They say it takes a little while to see earnings from it, but I can’t be worrying about silly little things like the linear progression of time. I have Asian pop music concerts to attend, and much moshing to do. there’s got to be somewhere in Melbourne that does industrial solar of a greater efficiency than most. And then, I’ll be harvesting the energy of the sun all year, saving thousands! If I factor that into my calculations, then I should have enough money for a nice holiday by November or so, just in time for the concert.  It’d also be pretty useful if I developed night vision, lessening my need for lights. I’ll look into research developments on the issue.

-Tal

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Wallpaper to brightening up the place

It has come to my attention that my room is boring. I’m not sure why I’ve let this go on for so long, but I’m citing business. Hey, I have my hands full  lot of the time. But all my walls are white and bare and it’s finally getting to me. I’m a teenager; I feel the need to cover them in pictures of cars and motorbikes and rock bands with obscenely large amounts of colour.

They need SOMETHING. I could just do it myself, but…well, that’d be too much effort. Time for some digital wallpaper with bold graphics, all easy to apply in case I change my mind. Really, anything except stark white will do just fine.

If you knew me, you’d know how important a bit of colour can be. Really, the crazier the better…which is why I need to go with garish. Not just garish…stupendously garish. Dragons, unicorns with swords instead of horns, lightning bolts, warships, magical dancing skeletons, even more dragons, medieval knights. Pretty much anything that will cause an ordinary person to walk into my room and be frozen for at least a minute. That’s when I strike.

This may take more thought than I…thought. In any case, it’s high time I actually did something with the place. I do actually live here, and that’s not changing any time soon. As for whether I’m allowed to go hammering nails into everything. that’s a bit trickier. I’m sure they probably wouldn’t mind. And it’s not like I’m sharing a room anymore, so I don’t have to think about what suits him. In fact, that comes with a number of perks, the likes of which could fill an entire article.

Could I even go so far as custom designer wallpaper? Hey, this is my place. I’ll have to ask, because it’ll feel like I’m decorating someone else’s house, but…it could be an option.

In any case, these white walls have to go. I’ll get posters if I have to. That’s how desperate I am.

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Whither Goes The Weather?

They say that if you don’t like the weather in Melbourne, wait fifteen minutes. That seems all too true at times. I mean, it’s still summer – arguably, midsummer – and I’m wearing a jumper and carrying an umbrella. Just a couple of days ago, it was serious bushfire weather, with a bit of crazy lightning thrown in the mix for extra fun. Which brings me to my point, which is that the building I work in could really do with tinted windows.

Look at it this way: seeing as it’s virtually impossible to dress for the weather here, the next best thing is to spend the day in an environment that’s as responsive to heat and cold as possible. For that reason, I predict that window tinting on commercial buildings in Melbourne is only going to become cheaper and easier to install and maintain. Can you tell I’ve been formulating an argument for getting it to present to my manager? Allow me to elaborate.

According to my hairdresser, there are these stick-on films on the market now, which block 99% of UV rays, heat and glare. I guess that feature is more applicable on hot days (not like today), but who knows? Perhaps they can limit heat loss from inside the office as well. If nothing else, being able to reduce the energetic costs of running the air con on hot days would go a way towards balancing out the heating costs come the inevitable cool changes.

While I’m at it, I might even put forward getting some decorative frosting for the glass office dividers that cut through the whole place – they’re not exactly conducive to privacy the way the are right now, so they feel kind of pointless. Glass decor for Melbourne offices: what’s the best way of obtaining this? Presumably, there’s some kind of film-based solution for that too.

Heck, maybe this stuff can go on the outside of the building; the joint could do with a bit of branding on the outside, if you ask me. I wonder if it’s weather-resistant?

 

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Mirror, mirror on the wall…

It’s one of those days! You know the ones – the kind where a client’s labrador puppy barrels into your studio and knocks a speaker right into your floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Okay, so that specific scenario might not be the most relatable, but I’m sure you understand what I mean. And to think it was only a few months ago that I had that new mirror glass installed.

Well, the show must go on – we have a concert to rehearse for here! There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of shattered glass so it should be all good for the kids to use the floor, although I’m a little bit unsure about how safe it is to have a vertical mirror with a huge crack in it. It’d definitely be best to get it fixed as soon as possible. I need a recommendation for someone who can do glass repair and replacement in Melbourne, fast. Any suggestions?

In all honesty, even though this is the last thing I need at the moment, I’m secretly a bit relieved to have something to worry about other than run sheets and whether we have enough child-sized purple bowler hats. The task of recruiting a glazier is a welcome alternative. So much so that I’m almost tempted to chuck in the concert and focus on jazzing up the studio instead – now that I look around, I can see that there are quite a few jobs I’ve been putting off.

For example, we could do with a new glass stair balustrade. In Melbourne, we feel more pressure to be mindful of how we look from the street; back when we first set up in Geelong, we gave virtually no thought to things like whether we should have our logo etched or sandblasted into a balustrade.

Anyway, first things first: get that mirror situation fixed. If the glazier is good, maybe I’ll keep them in mind to do some more work after the concert is out of the way. The Easter break might be a good time to have the glass on the stairs replaced.

 

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TV back in the Day

What is the problem with kids these days and their constant watching of television? Yes, I’m aware I just said ‘kids these days’, which does make me seem very old, but sometimes it’s necessary. If i can use another stereotypical phrase, back in my day people spend time playing outside. Sure, we had TV and it was fascinating for a while, but it never fully became a part of our lives.

The internet was a distant dream, and we spent a lot of time being active. People criticise us for having unhealthy lifestyles, and now that everything is kale and quinoa seeds, maybe they have something of a point. That doesn’t change the fact that as kids, we were much more active than those nowadays.

At this point, I’m surprised there are so many TV antennas installed in Melbourne. You’d think with the coming of the internet, they all would’ve been taken down as people get their entertainment fix from web streaming services.

In the last few years there has been a surge in providers of streaming platforms. Now people can watch their favourite programs anywhere. This only means that people are spending even less time away from their screens!

As much as I dislike people just staying in and watching movies instead of being active, I do appreciate the culture of television. After all, I’d be quite sad if my soaps moved online. There’s one, and it’s quite terrible called ‘Week of Our Life’ that I’m halfway addicted. It’s the reason we had the antenna repair person in last week, as TV barely had a signal. In the program Francis just discovered that her husband has filed for divorce because she has an androgynous name. She cooks up a scheme to bake him a pie with his favourite endangered animal inside, then it all goes wrong because…well, I missed that part on account of the bad signal. I’m not sure if the Melbourne based digital antenna repair lady was a fan of the program, but she was very professional while I complained about missing it because of the broken antenna.

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Honeymoon Delays Over Dry Needling

At times my lovely wife-to-be just gets things completely wrong. She always means well, but her command of the world at times lacks logic. The results are largely hilarious and insignificant but every once in awhile she just gets things very wrong and there is a mess to clean up.

In the lead up to our wedding we’ve been doing a lot of planning and for the most part working together. However, I left the honeymoon completely up to her as she was particularly keen to surprise me. I made sure to show her my full schedule and work appointments but of course she booked us flights on the day I was due to begin my dry needling courses in Auckland. Apart from it being my only prior commitment in the months after the wedding, I had also alerted her to the dates numerous times and highlighted it on the calendar.

Apparently this was not enough notice. After calling the airline and explaining, and really hammering the surprise honeymoon aspect, she was able to change the flights. Airlines are suckers for loved-up honeymooners in a pickle. We were able to rearrange our flights at no extra cost to accommodate my dry needling course. I still do not know the destination, although my wife has assured I don’t require any specialist equipment. If there was a way I could change to a later dry needling course then I would have done so. Unfortunately it’s been booked out for months as it’s very popular among physiotherapists.

Last time we went away she told me on the plane that we were off skiing but she hadn’t packed any thermals or ski wear for me. It was a cold week. At least with the knowledge that I’ll have completed my dry needling training I know I’ll be able to relax and enjoy whatever it is she has planned. I might just pack some spare accessories just in case we end up rock climbing, skydiving or camping. You never know.

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Holiday Car Hassles

My old friend from primary school, Edmond, and I are in the midst of a two-month house swap. We came up with this as a solution to our mutual need for a holiday somewhere far from home – that’s Scotland for me, and here in Australia for him. So here I am in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, waiting to hear back from Edmond about getting his car to start.

It looks for all the world like he hasn’t bothered to have this pile of junk serviced for years. He told me he drove a good car, but all I’ve gotten out of it so far is one problem after another. Now the danged thing is refusing to start, and I want him to give me the okay on taking it to a car mechanic for repairs. Ringwood, fortunately, has car service centres and also decent public transport options, so I should be able to manage the whole thing with a minimum of fuss.

I just need Edmond to tell me if he’s an RACV member before I hook this up – if he is, I might be able to get a free towing service or something. I mean, ideally, I’d love it if Edmond could send me some cash the fund the whole business, but I’m a realist – judging by the state of the car, I won’t be too surprised if I’m left holding the bill for this one.

Maybe I should just do the guy a solid and cough up for his car service. Ringwood residents out there: any recommendations for the best mechanic in town? That can be his birthday present taken care of for the next three years or so. And it would be less stressful than waiting for him to respond to my email.

I do love Edmond, even though he drives me crazy. That’s another reason to book his car in for a service, I suppose – it’s not like he’s going to get the brake pad replacement he needs off his own dime.