The Great Expanse

My new house has an unnecessarily large laundry room. It’s definitely intended to be a laundry – you can tell by the way the cabinets are designed. There’s a space for a washing machine and a mounted attachment point for a dryer, and a deep metal sink next to a bench with a built-in ironing board. It’s clearly been designated for this purpose.

So why on earth is it so big? It’s almost as big as the living room. It makes me wonder what the previous owner was doing in here. I mean, surely the room was originally intended for something else, and they repurposed it as a laundry. Maybe they were a keen sewer – I’ve heard of people having their sewing machine set up in the laundry, which has always struck me as weird since laundries tend to be so small and pokey.

The exception to that is ones that have been totally redone. I guess people must hire laundry designers or something. I suppose it’s not that different to renovating your kitchen or bathroom, although who spends that much time in their laundry? That said, having a big, airy laundry as opposed to a cramped little afterthought of a room could make all the difference.

This brings me to what I should do with this space. I can imagine it being a nice sunroom, or perhaps a rumpus room for the grandkids, but those uses would preclude it from also being a laundry (in my view, anyway). If I leave it as-is, I’ll have to think of something laundering-adjacent to do with the space.

The question is, do I take up sewing, or move the laundry to another spot and use this space for something else? The latter would mean getting the best laundry renovations. Melbourne has to offer. That should be achievable right? Like I said, it seems to be a thing now. But do I want to be that person, who can’t just accept the laundry their house comes with?

I guess it comes down to how you want to use your space, which is going to be different for every person and may not make sense to anyone else.

Guest Post: GSB

It’s your boy, the Glass Smashing Bandit, back from a short holiday and ready to compete on the second season of Australia’s Next Top Office. I’ll be wearing a mask the whole time to add a sense of mystery to the show, which has been approved by the producers. When I pitched it to them, they fell in love with the idea.

I know what you’re wondering. Why would the Glass Smashing Bandit agree to go on a reality show for three months, designing offices instead of smashing glass, as his name suggests? The thing is, to design the best offices I’m going to be smashing windows and fitting new ones. Sounds like my kind of thing, no? I get to raise some awareness for my cause and Not Flicks gets people tuning in just in case my mask slips off and they see my face. It’s a win-win.

Believe it or not, I actually did a few uni subjects in commercial office design concepts. Melbourne universities will let you study anything. That was before I got into glass smashing and working for Channel 17, obviously. Even started my own business before deciding I liked breaking glass more.

I should be honest, though. There is a lot of heat on me at the moment, so I definitely have an ulterior motive for proving that I could perform the best Melbourne office interior fitouts, if I wanted to. Those detectives, Schlock Homes and Jon Whatson are pretty close on my trail. It wouldn’t hurt to get away to an island somewhere and design the best offices I can. And if I win, all previous crimes are pardoned. That’s just a bonus because as soon as the show is over I’ll go back to smashing glass. It’s what I love, after all.

I don’t know if any of the others have made their code word obvious, but I’ll give you mine for free. Just messing with you. Nobody will know my code word.

Chaos Controller

I love my job. Every day I get on the train and head into the Melbourne CBD, where I get to spend ten minutes taking an elevator to the 617th floor of a building nobody knows about because it’s invisible. There I get to work on the best video game nobody has ever played, and yet at the same time, everyone is always playing it.

That’s right, I’m working on the video game of Life. You’re playing it right now and so am I. I get to control the actions of a million people, choosing how their day will play out and what they will do. Maybe I’m controlling you right now. Twenty-five of us work on the Australian server, but there are a lot more servers across the globe. We’re just a small part of the international player-base.

I know it sounds crazy, almost like something out of the Matrices movies, but give it some serious thought. Have you ever done something like go to get an auto service, but as soon as you get there you forget what was wrong with your car? That’s because the action has been cancelled by the player. Now there’s no need to be afraid. We take good care of you guys. When was the last time anything seriously bad happened in Australia? The American servers, on the other hand, have some serious issues. I’m glad I wasn’t assigned to work over there. I know Australia isn’t perfect, but it’s a breeze to run in comparison.

My favourite character to control is Premier Norris. The other day I made him go to a Milperra auto mechanic and ask to buy some dice for his Grottos and Goblins roleplaying game! They don’t sell dice at a mechanic’s workshop, so he left feeling like a bit of a moron. The character is such a loose cannon, but he gets results. Those results happen to be making everyone in Victoria angry, but that’s exactly what I want. Chaos is much more fun than making people go about their day normally. I just don’t want too much chaos, because that would be hard to deal with.

  • Cars

Garage TV Credits

The third season of The Great Australian Trade-Off is better than it’s ever been…period. Full-stop. Not a semicolon or anything, because that’s most definitely the end of the story. 

The internet agrees with me. While the show was pretty good in season 2, they’ve swapped out the hosts, injected this badly needed humour element and now all of the contestants are super good looking. Ugh, who needs average people? Average people? On television??

As is tradition, the show reached its week dedicated to auto repairs and car mechanics. Garages Bentleigh already has must have been really cool about letting this TV show come and film in their space, especially since the individual garages weren’t named. They removed all the branding and had a message at the end of the episode, thanking all the Bentleigh car mechanic garages for allowing them into their workspace. I guess with the show as popular as it was, there’s going to be a massive boom of people getting their car services done in the Bentleigh area. They’re going to be getting scores of phone calls every hour: “Hi, um, I need my wheels adjusted and…uh, was yours the garage where Chip lost his temper and threw a wheel across the workshop, smacking right into a camera and giving his team an instant disqualification??”

So yeah, loads of that. Or they’ll just get random calls where people will be like “Hey, this may sound weird, but was yours the mechanic’s workshop where Cascada revealed her true talent for engine diagnosis despite it being her first time, and Brent became so jealous that he set fire to her overalls with a magnifying glass?”

I guess that may somewhat offset all the extra business they’ll be getting, but not by much. So long as your cordon off the important areas and direct tourists to certain places, I’m sure they’ll be able to get their work done just fine. Still, just think of all the extra car servicing. Bentleigh better prepare itself for a tourist storm! It was such a great episode, I wouldn’t mind taking a quick look myself…

-Rohan

Purely Mechanical Shenanigans

Here I am, in Toowoomba. What a nice place, and what a nice name. Rolls off the tongue…Toowoomba. I have to be careful while I’m saying the name, because it’s phonetically almost identical to the spell of ear enlargement. I remember that one being a favoured prank in the academy; just whisper it from the back of the class while someone is talking to a girl they like, and boom. Instant embarrassment! Ho-ho!

Anyway, since I was getting the hang of Australian life, I thought I’d go on a little trip across the desert, have a little Australian cuisine, and experience a little Australian engine trouble. It’s a good thing they have mechanics! Toowoomba is quite isolated if you don’t have transport. I estimate that it would take me weeks of travelling to get back, probably months, and surely along the way I would succumb to the temptation of my aching feet and draw a summoning circle so that I could call forth a winged beast to carry me the rest of the way. And that would be cheating.

No, no, I’m just happy I made it to the mechanics in Toowoomba so that I may rest easy, let them fix the problems caused by many days of driving, and perhaps go to a cafe. We had coffee on our realm, but now that I’ve tasted it here- freshly ground from the bean and mixed with steaming milk, as opposed to brown sugar water that tastes like boiled eyeballs- I can’t believe what we’ve been missing. Banishment really is turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

And cars! Many of my brothers fear them, but I love the feeling of the engine, the control over the wheels using the one smaller wheel. You can take courses to become an auto mechanic, and I’m considering. I will forget magic and go full machine. Cars are super great, so great that they even have auto electrical mechanics working in Toowoomba. 

Oh, dang it all, my ears are now four times their original size! It takes six hours for this spell to wear off!

-Tom

Fireworks NOT For Indoors

There’s a good reason fireworks are illegal in this country, as it turns out, and it’s because they can set your house on fire. Of course, that’s only if you’re silly about the whole thing, but that’s how Keynan was born: silly. I went to the milk bar to get some…milk, and I came home to find that he’d set off the whole box of them in the living room.

Long story short, we’re homeless. That’s the last time I leave my idiot son alone in a house with fireworks, that we probably shouldn’t even have had in the first place. It’s a pretty nice hotel, though, and it was nice of the insurance people to put us up for a few nights while we look for a new place. Heck, we’ve been meaning to build a place for a while now; maybe this is our chance.

Might be a chance to make some improvements as well. First thing I’m doing is finding someone for good air conditioning services close to Melbourne, because that was one thing we were definitely lacking. We’re going to have to put some kind of parents lock on the controls, because Keynan’s ability to set things on fire knows no bounds, but otherwise it’d be great to finally have air conditioning. Oh, and we’re getting rid of that open fireplace. Chopping the wood is just miserable, and then there’s Keynan’s habit of poking the blazing logs with a poked to see if he can spike a chunk of flaming wood, then waving it around like it’s a sparkler.

Nope, we’re having real heating. Real heating, and real cooling, actual Melbourne grade air conditioning that works and is reliable, both of them heavily locked so that there are no more accidents, like that one time when Keynan folded four electric blankets together to see if he could set them alight, or when he made a flamethrower out of a lighter and a can of hairspray to reenact one of his rock music videos.

We really need to watch Keynan more closely.

-Kaira

Bash Meme Racing

Ah, I remember the old classic, Bash Meme Racing. You get to play as your favourite meme, and then you get to participate in an extremely tense race where you can bump into other memes if you’re sick of them.

I hated it. Now, I’m not really a meme person to begin with, but this came out a few years ago when I was dead set on being a mechanic, and also, I was a complete and total stick in the mud. What was up with me? We may never know. I used to go round to all the car service centre Ringwood had to offer, looking on as they did their work – so professional and calm. I wanted to be like them.

And apparently, that meant that I had to sit there watching my brothers racing each other in a silly video game about memes, and I judged them. I judged them super hard. I used to tell them that lobbing sticks of dynamite is an unprofessional way to conduct a race, and the use of chemicals has an extremely negative impact upon a vehicle, especially if it creates a stream of green flame behind the car, and that there’s no such thing as a button on your vehicle that make it transform into a dragon. You know, just really useful things that I believe truly enhanced their gaming experience. It enhanced the experience so much that Mum had to come and tell me to get out of the gaming room.

I now realise the error of my ways, and I’m past my weird little mechanic stage, fortunately. I wasn’t cut out to do car repairs, let alone make decisions about roadworthy certificates. Ringwood locals probably got lucky there, all things considered. Those jobs are for people with actual passion for the job, not just a bit of intellectual thirst.

And hey, they’re remaking Bash Meme Racing, so maybe I can finally enjoy something I once forced myself to hate.

-PW

Commercial Solar Misinformation

Wow, how did I know that Her-Bla would start off its second season with a thoughtful commentary on solar energy? Maybe because it’s the lowest-hanging fruit possible?

And by ‘thoughtful commentary’ I do of course mean that it confuses the conversation and presents absolutely no useful information, because that’s what we want to be showing our kids. I watched this with my son, who is seven and thus smack bang in the middle of the target demographic, and he didn’t have a clue what the episode was trying to say. Neither did I, for the record.

I kid you not, the very first line in the episode was, “What a lovely day to install a 100 kw solar system!” I’ve no doubt that it is, random character who said that, but whoever writes for this series is getting paid too much. At first it looked like they were going to promote solar energy and commercial energy monitoring, because Her-Bla and her friends went to a magical mountain so they could install a solar system as close to the sun as possible. But then they reached the top of the mountain and they could see that the sun was crying. The sun said that humans stealing its solar energy was making it tired, and Her-Bla offered an apology on behalf of the entire human race for being so selfish and ‘stealing’ solar energy. Honestly, what even IS this show? The customary end-of-episode lecture was about treating the sun with respect (good), using solar energy whenever possible (okay) but switching back to coal when we feel like the sun is tired and needs a rest. WHAT.

How does…I can’t…I mean, do they know how industrial solar panels work, or anything about the subject? Absolutely incredible…and I don’t mean that in a good way. And yet, like most train-wreck television, I’m sort of curious to see what they’re going to crash into next.

-Annabelle

  • Cars

Toorak is Very Nice

Day 3, after moving to Toorak.

…

It’s very nice. It’s not AS nice as I expected, what with it supposedly being the place with the highest average house prices in all of Melbourne and all the celebrities living here, but maybe it’s just a lot of hype. Maybe it’s actually a struggling area that recently hired a great PR person. That would explain why the likes of myself managed to get a room here on my budget. My room is still chaos, because I’ve been flat out with work, but at least my new housemates don’t have to deal with any of that. I’m usually so tidy…

Need to find a new place for car maintenance as well. It’s not like they don’t have car servicing near Toorak, because everyone needs to have their limousines, Rolls Royces, and Porsches sorted out. I tell a lie, I haven’t seen any of those. Not on this street, anyway. Everyone here seems to have normal enough cars, so I don’t have to feel like a pleb when I finally bring my car in for a service.

Such is the annoying thing about moving somewhere new, especially if it’s far away. You need a new everything, from your hairdresser to a car servicing place. And those two things in particular are something that require a bit of trial and error…with dire consequences if it turns out to be error. Every time I have to get my hair cut somewhere new, I’m gripped with mild panic at the thought of what’ll happen if they cut it wrong and I can’t just stick bits of it back on. Car servicing and repairs are a bit different in that cars have standard servicing, but still. You want to be able to trust your mechanic.

Just got to take the plunge, get some recommendations for a good mechanic in South Yarra maybe. That’s if it turns out that Toorak garages exclusively service million-dollar cars after all. To be determined.

-Harrison

Wallpaper, for Psychological Health

tropical wallpaperThere’s more than one way to curb toxicity in online gaming! At least, that’s the very beginning of my thesis. Most games nowadays have a system of reporting and banning to try to stop players from becoming abusive, and to punish players who take things too far. Over-Botch has something very similar, although it’s a well-known problem that people file false reports when they simply don’t like a person, or the career they’ve picked, or their managerial style.

But I’m hoping to stop all that with my new thesis, entitled ‘Wallpaper, and the Passive Benefits of Calming Surroundings’. Right now, many people play with wallpaper of a neutral colour. However, with the digital wallpaper revolution that allows people to customise their wallpaper choices, and even purchase wallpaper that is easy to remove. Thus, wallpaper with a calming quality can actually have a profound effect on a person’s mental state.

I haven’t been able to test this extensively as I’d like, but I was able to carry out several tests. My participants were placed in several different rooms and asked to play a stressful, competitive first-person shooter game. One control group was in a room with simply white walls, and they reported greatly-heightened aggression as a result of being scrubs. One participant even went so far as to break the console, which was…not really what I wanted, to be honest. However, control group two were placed in a room with decorative wallpaper displaying such things as peaceful mountain meditation scenes, stock photo families walking along the beach, and various pictures of ducklings and young squirrels gathering nuts.

The change was astounding. The wallpaper lowered aggression by as much as 80%, with one participant verbally noting at the end of a stressful game that “I would be angry, but I just look at this tropical wallpaper and I can think of only tropical things.”

Fascinating. We could eliminate toxicity altogether! Further testing required.

-Michael

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