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Their Proper Place

Healthcare / By

There’s a lot to be said about feet, but the main thing is this: they’re where they belong. Probably my favourite thing about the human body is that feet are kept well away from me, down on the ground where I can tread on them day after day, and that’s where they should be, because they are gross. They do their job, but so do self-serve checkouts, and they definitely shouldn’t expect any respect from me. 

So that’s the way the cookie crumbles, but now my feet are crumbling, metaphorically, and I have to get myself a podiatrist. A foot specialist. A Cheltenham foot specialist. And that…is terrible. Well, no, it isn’t…I can go to Southland, maybe pick myself up a latte, see if Insanitary is selling the season 564 DVD of Week of Our Lives, and you know I never get to go shopping. I could take the day off work and have a lovely day trip.

But anyway…seeing a podiatrist. There’s a dichotomy there: my respect for people who’ve dedicated their lives to dealing with other people’s feet (and for this, I will eternally thank them), and also my trepidation going into a building that is dedicated to people taking off their shoes. Not only that; it’s a place where people take off their shoes so that they can have various foot ailments dealt with. Sometimes, those ailments include…ugh…fungus. I have to go and wash my hands after typing that.

…

Okay, I’m back. My hands smell like honey and jasmine, because I splash the cash for the really high-quality hand soap, but more importantly, I am cleansed. Maybe, when I book an appointment to get some kind of arch support insoles to fix what ails my ankle slaves, I’ll pay in both money and some really amazing hand soap recommendations. 

I’m just assuming, like all trained professionals, podiatrists would like to wash their hands fairly often. 

-Ilia

Techno-Office

Office / By

Maybe this is news to precisely no one, but it’s just occurred to me that today’s offices would be completely unrecognisable to someone from a century ago. According to my calculations, that means the offices of 100 years from now – assuming we’re still around by then – will be completely different again. 

Why? Because of technology. Just as our predecessors in the twentieth century couldn’t have anticipated the demise of paper-based offices, we surely can’t imagine what types of devices people will be working from in the future. Like, there might not even be computers in 3020, at least not in the way we know them today. Maybe they’ll be, like, composed of swarms of hovering nanobots. Who can say?

I have some ideas in mind, but I’m no office design expert. Melbourne industrial design nerds, do you have any thoughts to share? Will we have weightless workstations that combat the sedentary nature of desk work? Will we cordlessly interface our brains to some kind of cloud-based neuro pool? Or will the whole concept of an office simply be defunct, now that AI can do information-based work better than us?

Here in Melbourne, office space fitouts may already be anticipating the future. I mean, when was the last time you saw a USB in use? Everything’s on the cloud now. Some people at my office don’t even have a computer; they just make garbled voice notes into their phones and some kind of wizardry files it in a coherent manner. Either that, or they’re being paid to mumble a bunch of mumbo-jumbo into the ether. It’s hard to tell.

One thing I could really go for is sound-bubble technology. Anyone who works in an office will surely know what I’m talking about. It’s an invisible bubble that hovers around you like a force field, and blocks incoming sounds from the environment – unless, like, someone wants to speak to you, in which case they just do a voice command to unlock sonic access.

Question the Bathroom

Renovations / By

Have you ever stopped to really think about bathrooms? Like, really questioned the prevailing standards of how bathrooms are designed? I’m of the belief that not too many people have done that, because if they had, there’d probably be more options on the market. 

I mean, almost every bathroom I’ve come across in this part of the world is a variation on the same theme: chair-like toilet that’s too high for optimal positioning, sink that’s too low to be really useful, shower freshly scrubbed with toxic chemicals and maybe a bath. Other common inclusions are fairly poor ventilation, and a cup of toothbrushes placed mere centimetres from the toilet. 

You get where I’m going with this. Contemporary bathrooms are unhealthy, not to mention wasteful. We’re just so used to them being the way they are that we don’t imagine they could be any other way. It’s like, if you were doing a bathroom remodel, would you consider a composting squat toilet? Probably not, unless you’re one of the few people who’ve taken a nerdy interest in toilet design. The rest of us just default to what’s on the market, wrongly assuming that toilet manufacturers know best. That’s fair – we don’t have the plague, right? But it’s still wrong. 

Don’t even get my started on contemporary kitchen design. Melbourne homes might have beautiful, functional kitchens, but there are plenty of ways they could be improved to radically minimise energy wastage. People are generally a bit more open to talking about this than they are to discussing bathroom makeovers. I don’t know if it’s because they unconsciously consider talking about toilets to be uncouth, or because they don’t want to face facts because they’ll then have to do something about it.

It could also be that they just don’t believe there’s anything wrong with the current design. That doesn’t surprise me, given that it artfully conceals the more horrifying aspects of the space, such as its connection to a sewerage system. 

 

Illusion of Order

Office / By

I’m sure there’s a science to office design, but I can’t for the life of me figure it out. As someone who’s worked across seven different offices in as many years (yeah, I realise that doesn’t look good on my resume), I’m better positioned than most to have gained some insights into this. And yet, here I am, none the wiser. 

There just seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. You’d think there was a unified agenda, the way the internet goes on about office design trends, Sydney offices taking the world by storm with some hot new concept, open plan layouts being dead and so on and so forth. Rest assured, there’s no agenda – it’s every office for itself. Or so it seems to me. 

I mean, there’s enough of a semblance of order to fool the average Joe into thinking there are cohesive advancements going on in office interiors. We’re moving into a more technologically integrated age that offers more work-life flexibility than ever, we’re doing things more collaboratively, performance is driven by design… you know the drill. Maybe there is something to all that, but from what I can tell, things are just as chaotic as they’ve ever been in the realm of commercial work environments. 

Just ask any of the big commercial fitout companies. Sydney businesses like to think of themselves as leaders of a cutting-edge charge, whatever that may be in a given moment, but at the end of the day you’ve got to come back to the essentials. I’m talking furniture, windows, lighting, power. Whatever you add to that, in my view, is just bling. That can be nice, but it’s never going to have a game-changing impact on… things. 

Not to say that office design doesn’t play any role in how performance and efficiency play out in a space. I’m certain that it does. My point is more that businesses seem to get hung up on how it can position them at the front of some hot new cultural movement, which doesn’t even exist.

Desk Manager

Careers / By

I know I’m not supposed to swear, but what the HECK. I actually had fun filling out this big old stupid questionnaire, because it actually seemed like I was going to get a result that aligned with my interests. Then we get them back and suddenly it looks like I’m locked into a life of being a hotel desk manager. Yeah, a ‘desk manager’. In other words, someone who works at the desk of a hotel and is given the title of ‘manager’ to shut them up.

Everyone else in the class gets things like pilot and anaesthetist, and here’s me stuck at desk forever. And not like a ‘boring but earning serious dollars’ desk, either. I’m pretty sure I won’t even get to sit down at this one.

This is why they need more accessible career coaching for students. We HAVE a careers office, but the last time I visited I was turned away after a few minutes with a pamphlet entitled Get a Job, Bob! It was basically just a bunch of cartoons about this little yellow blob man with legs, called, Bob, who…gets a job. And he learns things like filing his taxes and why office staplers shouldn’t be taken home. Not why I went into the careers office in the first place, so overall, a waste of time. But that’s a public school for you…I bet Mr Ryan was just hired because the government said they had to for three days a week or whatever, and they went for the easy hiring option. 

No, I want to talk to someone who actually does career counselling. Like, they got into it because they wanted to and not because it’s a government-mandated program. So, someone who gives real advice that doesn’t come from pamphlet. But that be how it is in Melbourne. Career counselling isn’t in school, because that would make too much sense. No, we just get stupid questionnaires instead.

No Techniques Inside!

Glass / By

So, um…anyone know a really good place for repairing glass? All my hopes and dreams just came true, but I also really need some very immediate glass repair. Melbourne would be preferable, and if they can’t do it in half an hour, I’ll also take recommendations for DIY repair kits. If they…actually exist.  

Okay, so I’ve been studying very hard under Master Tiger Sun for months now. He doesn’t admit many people into his martial arts lessons; you have to attend his Universal Awareness classes for a year, prove a connection to your spirit animal (mine’s a pterodactyl, which was a bit of a surprise, but okay) and then pass a bunch of other criteria. But we’ve been training for months doing tasks I thought were mundane. I finally lost my temper, shamefully forgetting everything that I’d learned in my meditation classes, but Master Tiger Sun did not become frustrated. 

He told me to use that rage, convert it into righteous fury, and bond that fury to the power of the mighty pterodactyl. And so, that was my very first use of the Pterodactyl Wing Scythe technique!

Unfortunately, I was utterly unused to the power I now wielded and tried the technique out again…striking my Dad’s glass office partition and shattering the whole thing, from across the room.

Perhaps I don’t deserve this kind of power, but more importantly, a DIY glass repair kit isn’t going to do it here. The glass at the point of impact was practically reduced to dust, with the rest of the panes a shattered mess. And now I understand why we have sturdy training dummies and a wide open dojo. Gah, I should’ve known this would happen from when my classmate Nina unleashed her Power-of-a-Hundred Centipede Stomp, shaking the dojo and knocking us all off our feet. 

Some quality companies for glass balustrading near Melbourne would be mint, especially if they work fast. Inner serenity is one thing, but there’s not going to much of that going around if Dad sees this.

-Yun-jong

 

Hot Bag Scoops?

Fashion / By

This case is testing my mental skills!

I been hinting this mystery girl all around Melbourne, always arriving too late, like I’m under some journalistic curse, ! I bust in on the scene and there’s a bunch of bad guys nursing cracked ribs and handcuffed to posts for the police to pick up. I guess the biggest question besides who this mystery vigilante actually IS would be where she’s getting all the handcuffs. 

I gotta pay the bills, so here I am reporting on the latest DuMesque red carpet movie and some woman waving around a black leather bag. You know, for a magazine with a niche appeal like Leather Carpet: Handbags of the Stars, they pay pretty well. Almost wish they didn’t, so I wouldn’t have to go to the latest big action flick with all the other paparazzi and try to get a shot of some beautiful dame and her handbag. Gotta tell ya, the other paparazzi do not like me. They’re all just jealous of Scoop McGee, ace reporter, and they wish they could go as far as me to blow a story wide open!

Also I might of broken the paparazzi code and written a few hot scoops…about the paparazzi. Oh, you better believe that I blew that story wide open!

So anyway, these handbags. Now I got the shots, I gotta write a couple of thousand words about handbags, slouch bags, and ya know, it don’t really matter what I write. But I’m Scoop Mcgee! I gotta make everything I write the best thing I ever wrote. So I look into bags, what they’re called, what they feel like, what the different varieties are, what colour is hot this season…and nobody reads it because they’re lookin’ at the pictures.

A guy’s gotta try? It pays the bills. I’m gonna find that vigilante and press them into an interview, just you wait! Gonna get myself an exclusive with the hottest piece of news in the city!

-Scoop Mcgee

The Automotive Thrill

Cars / By

I know it’s rather crass and beneath my station, but I’m terribly curious as to what it’s like to drive a car. I’ve had a driver ever since I was born, and I’ve been periodically firing them since I was old enough to understand that I had the power to do that.

Sometimes they take turns too quickly when I’m applying makeup. Sometimes they refuse to go at double the speed limit so that I can make it to my social engagement. And sometimes I just get bored and feel like I need to use the firing muscle, lest I lose the firing muscle. 

Driving, though. So fascinating. Daddy used to do it for fun, so surely I could as well. Daddy was chums with some of the most prestigious car mechanics open in Ringwood– products of that prestigious driving academy run by that foreign woman who always snubs me at parties- which led to him trying to buy out the entire industry in one of the most prestigious and unexpected business deals in Melbourne’s history. Unfortunately he lost that contract to the Clancey family, our mortal enemies, and went to pursue other interests. I’m sure I could probably buy a few small mechanic garages here and there, just keeping things under the radar of our business rivals. Few auto services here, brake pad repair there, you know how it is.

Of course, I’m not at all inclined to use the services of a mechanic I don’t personally own, since they may not be up to my standards.

Oh, but…what a thrill it would be regardless! Sometimes in life, you must step outside your comfort zone, put on some low-class shoes, select one of your 400 or so vehicles and drive to an ordinary mechanic, then let fate decide what services you have done.

I certainly hope there’s actually something wrong with the vehicle…perhaps I’ll fire my personal mechanic, Timothy, in preparation. Let them sit for a while. Then I’ll find a garage for car inspections near Croydon and have something done, just like an appointment with a manicurist, or a personal orchestral composer.

Can you get vanity services done to a car? The wing mirrors could get a nice gilding with gold dust, for example. 

Javelin through windows

Windows / By

I know Javelin throwing isn’t the most common sport in the world. I didn’t care that it wasn’t popular, I was good at it and I enjoyed the sport. I was completely in love with my new found favourite activity and no one could tell me otherwise. My parents had tried to convince me to choose a different sport, maybe something a little more mainstream, like netball. No matter how hard they tried to persuade me, I was still convinced that javelin was for me. I was practising my throwing each and every night after school, determined to be the best. I wanted to be known for my talent, for my accuracy and my sporting achievements. Although the night was creeping across the sky, slowly stealing away my daylight I was out there. I told myself that after another ten minutes of throwing practise, I’d pack up my equipment and head inside. It wasn’t wise to throw javelins in the dark.

With all my focus on my throwing, my arm position and force, I started running, one foot behind the other and put my entire body into it. The twist of my torso and the spring of my back allowed me to do one of the most powerful throws I’d ever done. When I realised that the javelin had speared the frame of the upstairs window I stood silently in shock. I wasn’t sure what to do, whether to try and grab it without my mother noticing or just fess up right away. I knew my parents were going to be angry. We had just gotten the timber windows replaced in Melbourne a few weeks earlier because of a storm. Just as I was about to pull the javelin out my father walked out to look at the window. He’d heard it stab into the frame and told me not to worry, that he’d call the window replacements people tomorrow. He told me how proud he was of my efforts and offered to support me in any way he could. I was moved to tears, my father truly believed in me. My father hugged me and walked back inside to find the number for local sash window repairs. I’m going to train harder than ever before, I’m determined to make the school team. I will make my entire family proud of me.

Drilling to Success

Cars / By

Drills, drills all day, every single day. They’re totally necessary, and I’m kept going by the heat of my inner flame, but wow, SO many drills.

Madame Broom doesn’t let just anyone into her prestigious academy, you know. You have to possess incredible innate talent, and the ability to work so hard your arms and legs feel like they’re about to fall off. I don’t know if I have what it takes, but that’s why I’m in training. If I make it, then I have a career as a Hawthorn car mechanic for the rest of my life. I’ll earn the respect of all my mechanic peers. 

Of course, you have to first get into the academy, and then get through the course, which only a tiny handful of people do. Hence why I’m doing as much training as possible. Madame Broom isn’t going to let anyone into her academy if they have a speck of rust on them, and fair enough. That’s what’s going to give me the edge over all the other people applying, so it may be enough to get me a callback, where I can really show Madame Broom what I can do. I can already replace a tire twice as fast as your average member of a pit crew, I can diagnose a car’s need of an oil change just by smelling the air, and the vehicle inspections…well, they’re a speciality of mine. My grandfather used to say I had ‘the sight’, whenever I made my way through his farm equipment and diagnosed what was wrong with them in short order. 

But then, I’m expecting to show up at the audition and everyone can do the same thing. It’ll just be a heap of people with the sight, and Madame Broom will have to pick who has the best sight, and is thus worthy to join the ranks of the Prahran car servicing professionals who have completed her intense course. How am I supposed to know how good my unusual skills are, with a bunch of other unusually skilled people? I’m not.

-Pavlova