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Enjoying a Hot Property

I’m excited about this new house for a whole host of reasons. But there’s one in particular that stands out, which is that it has central heating. The fact that I won’t have to spend another winter gritting my teeth in a tumbledown shack of a rental property fills me with glee.

I realise it’s kind of ridiculous for Australians to complain of cold winters. A friend of mind who’s from Finland reckons it’s a total joke. But what can I say? It’s all relative. Having grown up in Brisbane doesn’t exactly help my cause, either; the midyear climate in Canberra is a rude shock by comparison.

So, yes – I don’t mind if I do have an effective heating system, thank you very much. Linda wasn’t too sure about the safety factor (something about a horror story her aunt used to tell over Christmas dinner), but I’ve managed to convince her that having it professionally maintained should keep it from turning on us. Now, who can recommend a company that does the most impressive ducted heating services Canberra has ever seen?

I’m convinced that the main reason we’re so soft in this part of the world, when it comes to seasonal climatic fluctuations, is that we get both the hot and the cold. We have legitimate call for both heating and cooling systems in Canberra, because the temps go to polar extremes at different times of the year.

I know that Linda will be down for sorting out a good air conditioning system, at least – she really struggles with high summer out here. The quality of the air is somehow different to how it is on the coast; it can get very dry. As for me, I tend to run on the cooler side, which is why I’m so intent of figuring out this heating situation.

I’m realising that one of the greatest things about owning a house is the possibility of implementing appliances like this without having to hassle a landlord on the subject. This residence is totally our domain, and we will adjust the temperature accordingly.

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Stain Disdain

Oops… that’s one word for it. I just heard a sound from the lounge room which sounded a lot like my housemate knocking over a glass of red wine onto the carpet, and responding accordingly. Now she’s exclaiming at William, her kelpie. From what I can make out, he must have knocked it over with his tail.

Regardless of William’s level of involvement, going to hold Becky accountable. We literally just moved in, and we need the real estate on our side because it’s an ideal house. I, for one, plan to stay here for as long as possible. If that means making Becky shell out for the most professional stain removal , Melbourne resident have ever seen, then so be it. I’m not putting up with careless damage to the inbuilt furnishings like I have in the past.

The annoying fact is that I’ll have to have an awkward conversation with Becky about this, in which I inform her that I see it as her responsibility to wear the cost of the carpet cleaning. Past experience suggests that she won’t be readily forthcoming with an offer to do so (if she was, I might be more inclined to chip in, actually).

Well, maybe I drive a hard bargain as a housemate. But if you’re going to have a puppy, you can’t expect everyone else to take on responsibility for the havoc it wreaks. She should have known better than to leave her red wine on the coffee table, anyway – I mean, it’s precisely at tail-wagging height. Even I can see that, and I’m not a dog person. 

According to another friend I’ve shared with, it was good for his personal development that I forced him to pay for professional odour removal services. His indoor tobacco smoking habit, as he found out the expensive way, is not great for the whole bond retrieval situation. In any case, I’d prefer not to have to deal with that whole end-of-lease cleaning frenzy again.

I just want to get on with living in a clean, stain-free house. Is that so much to ask? The dog can stay.  

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Put your back into it… or not

Dang it! I’ve done that thing to my lower back again. I’m pretty sure it happened at the hairdresser, of all places – Marcus asked me to tip my head back towards the washing basin, and I felt that tweak. It’s odd, because I thought I was only moving from the neck. But it appears to be true what they say: the knee bone’s connected to the shinbone and so forth.

So now I’m sitting up perfectly straight on the lounge, doing my best not to bend my back or make any sudden movements. I’m aware that I’m doing what a physio once told me is called ‘bracing’, which is the body’s way of protecting itself from damage but is not necessarily the most effective response to minor tweaks and twinges that don’t actually involve tissue damage. Still, holding myself in this way makes me feel less like I’m about to disconnect that one thread holding everything together.

Alright, so that’s a ridiculous thought. There isn’t one fine thread that’s going to cause everything to unravel if it breaks. But I don’t know enough about anatomy to replace that mental image with something more realistic. I need a professional to tell me that it’s all good. Time to book in for a physical therapy appointment, evidently. Who’s got a Cheltenham physio recommendation?

There are so many different types of specialists around these days, though. Maybe I should try something new. My friend from book club is always telling me about the dry needling and cupping sessions she’s had at her latest myotherapy appointment. Cheltenham is still pretty new to me when it comes to finding services like this, but I can’t be travelling all the way up north every time I need something done.  

I mean, it took me long enough to find Marcus, my hairdresser. It was worth it, though – when I told him I thought I might’ve just put my back out again, he offered me a glass of pinot.

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Start-Up Stress

My sister, Stephania, has had a pretty hectic two years. I’m reflecting on this because I just got off the phone to mum, and she was positively gushing about how well Steph has managed to ‘dust herself off’ (mum’s words).

The story is that Steph had developed a rather lucrative start-up, which suddenly lost its footing and went under. That set off a process of Steph having a bit of breakdown in her mental health. She ended up booking herself in at a psychological treatment clinic on the Mornington Peninsula, where she had relocated from Sydney shortly before the fateful crash of her business.

As it happened, she was able to avert a full-on mental health crisis by getting in as soon as she became aware that she wasn’t feeling great. I hadn’t really cottoned to this, but according to mum, Steph had disclosed that the pressure from the business’ many stakeholders had been immense. She’d quite likely have suffered a much more serious breakdown if she hadn’t had psychological support in place while this was unfolding.

Anyway, she’s finally succeeded in cutting her losses and getting a new business off the ground, which seems bonkers to me but is also kind of admirable. She is, at least, likely to be much wiser to the risks and pressures involved than she was last time.

Another thing that mum divulged to me is that Steph has struggled with anxiety for many years – since high school, in fact. I’d actually been oblivious to that, or at least to the fact that it was a serious issue. Apparently, her psychologist has given her a referral to a psychiatrist in Mornington, who is developing a treatment and recovery management plan.

Part of me wants to tell Steph to just stop being so darned ambitious – her need to be the CEO of a software company is surely a key contributor to her anxiety. But then, I don’t think she’s programmed to live life any other way.

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Nimble Neighbour (Hopefully)

My neighbour is worrying me a bit. I’m just getting a tad concerned about his safety. Over the past couple of months, he’s been routinely spotted standing on the roof of his two-story townhouse. That’s pretty far above the ground for a 75-odd year old guy to be hanging out.

Don’t ask me how he gets up there (presumably from inside the house), but I can tell you that he’s not just pottering about up there. He’s doing something with his TV antenna. I know he’s complained to my housemate that his reception has been on the blink, so I gather he’s trying to fix that. It’s not like there’s any shortage of people that do professional TV antenna services in Melbourne, though. I can tell you that this chap’s not too poorly in the money department, either.

You need to understand that this fellow is a nut for doing it himself, even when he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I remember when he tried to rig up a home security system – CCTV and all – and ended up with an alarm that went off for no reason at all hours. Then there was the time last year when he thought he’d worked out a DIY way to connect to the NBN using a cheat sheet he’d found online (he got in a bit of trouble from his daughters for that one).

Anyway, I don’t really know what the norm is when it comes TV antenna installation, Melbourne has to be one of biggest consumers of commercial television in the country. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to have a go at it with a pair of garden shears. It’s great that he’s so active, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him using a walking stick, so his balance can’t be the best on the block. I don’t want to discourage his can-do attitude, but I’d prefer if he’d invest in the services of a professional in this case.

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2am Ramblings on Hyperbaric Medicine

I’ve just been doing some totally random reading online about something called hyperbaric oxygen therapy. You know how it is these days; stumbling onto topics that have pretty much zero connection to anything going on in your life and somehow getting sucked into reading a bunch of info about them. Anyway, I’m going to regurgitate what I just  read so that you, reader, can enjoy a similar experience.

Hyperbaric therapy in Australia is pretty well established as a medical treatment for the decompression sickness sometimes suffered by scuba divers. It involves the patient going into a sort of tank or chamber in which they breath air with a higher oxygen content than is standard in our environment. This can be 100% oxygen, although I think milder versions might also be a thing.

In Melbourne, hyperbaric medicine is used in hospital settings to treat things like necrotising soft tissue infections and certain cases of non-healing wounds (like from diabetes or radiotherapy), as well as decompression sickness. Some people online have some pretty wild stories to tell about how it’s helped with things like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and developmental delays, and even reversed brain damage. These reports aren’t scientifically supported at this stage, but there’s quite a lot of them about, which makes it hard to write them off. 

The chambers through which the treatment is delivered are even available as portable systems for home use, which means that people who could benefit from ongoing therapy can have relatively affordable access to it. I guess I feel like, if people have gone to the trouble of figuring out how to construct a portable version of this thing, there must really be something to it. I can’t imagine anyone being motivated to explore it that thoroughly if there wasn’t.

Anyway, like I said, I don’t really have any use for a hyperbaric chamber, portable or otherwise, in my life at this point (and I hope this continues to be the case, given the list of conditions they’re said to be able to treat). Even so, it’s got me thinking in new ways about the role of oxygen in the body.

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Everyone’s Nautical Nowadays

I’m not sure how I feel about the commodification of the boating industry. First it’s everyone commuting on boats because they think it’s cool, and that I can just about tolerate. At least they’re doing so respectfully and giving boating a boost, even though I don’t think they’re REAL boating fans. It’s just a bit of a fad, and then in six months you’ll have a bunch of broke uni students trying to sell of their boats.

But now I find out that there’s a long-running TV show where people just name boat parts, and where they’re from, and it makes me unhappy. Melbourne’s outboard motor services are serious business. SUPER serious business. I watched a few episodes of the show, and while it’s very impressive that they can name boat parts, and where they’re from, the whole thing feels tired. In all the episodes I watched, there seemed to be about three parts that people were naming. Just anchor winches, outboard motors…and others. It’s like the show was started by someone really passionate about boating, but sometime in the last three decades they left and now it’s just still going because someone from on high keeps saying “well, we have nothing else to air, so do the thing about the boat parts where they stick their hands through the walls.”

I’d imagine it’d be the same if you’re one of those people into motorbikes, and you stumble across a tired old show where people just look at bikes and name the model, and it’s clear that no one working on it has any passion. I love boats, and I love their parts, and this doesn’t seem right.

Melbourne’s best quality outboard motor repairs deserve much better than this. I mean, at least a prime-time slot where an actual expert roams around the docks with a camera crew, talking about various aspects of boat mechanics and their jobs. That is, an expert who cares. Like me…

-Albert

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How I Learned to Love Wallpaper

I’m pretty sure that when you think about graphic design, you have this image in your head of someone sitting in a luxuriously spacious studio apartment, with some gigantic easel and probably a large compass. That is a common misconception and also 99% wrong.

Then there’s the relaxed student sitting in a cafe with their laptop, drinking coffee and occasionally tapping away at their keypad, making computer magic. That’s pretty wrong too. My first few years as a graphic designer were spent hunched over a desk in a dimly lit office, making sure the website colours matched up and looked pretty. I was barely allowed near the nice software. It was slightly soul-crushing, but it was a start. Then I went freelance, and found my true calling.

That calling was custom designer wallpaper. This wasn’t a result of a deep desire from my childhood, or anything. I didn’t visit historical buildings in my youth, tracing a finger along the elaborate designs and hoping, praying, that I would someday render such designs with thine own hands.

Uh, no. I actually did a fairly boring job for a graphic design company, and while I was there they had some really nice wallpaper. Like…REALLY nice. It was custom printed brick wallpaper, with quotes from famous artists framed and scattered around. It didn’t blow me off my feet, but it was pretty eye-catching. I asked how they did it, and they told me about the process. I became interested, and things kind of took off from there.

After I’d done a few jobs for the company, I heard about an opening in the design department, and I jumped on it. Over the last few years I’ve done all kinds of wallpaper for people, from animals prints to movie posters. A large part of my job actually involves walking round houses, recommending shades and designs and generally making walls more interesting.

And yeah, I have become a bit of a wall snob, but I really enjoy what I do and as graphic designing goes, I think I might have found my calling. Custom designer wallpaper. I suppose that’s how wallpaper can change your life. Graphic design goes so deep, you’re bound to find something that suits you.

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Hair Wizard Wanted

How do you choose a hairdresser? I’m asking because, being new in town, I find myself faced with task of doing just that. Back in London, I routinely went to a guy who was a life consultant, gossip provider and sommelier all rolled into one. I’ve had him on speed dial for the past five years, so I haven’t had to consider any other options.

So, I ask you: what’s your go-to luxury hair salon in the Melbourne CBD, and why? I need to find my new stylist slash confidante on the double. By now, you might have begun to gather what I tend to gravitate towards in a hairdresser. In essence, it’s someone with a strong ability to sense what I need before I know that I need it. My hairdresser is not someone who simply cuts my hair the way I tell them to; it’s someone who steps in and tactfully saves me from my own poor judgement, in hair and in life.

I know, I know. That seems like a lot to ask. But it’s really just about two people getting along. I want to have a rapport with my stylist – I mean, if that’s not there, how are they going to be able to assist me in making my desired impression in the world? That’s really what I’m paying them to do. If the job was just to make my hair shorter, I could do that myself with a pair of kitchen scissors, couldn’t I?

I suppose the reason I’m asking how you go about choosing a hairdresser is this: knowing what qualities you look for will help me understand if I’m likely to have an affinity with the same person as you. Melbourne hairdressers, like those in other parts of the world, no doubt come in a wide variety of characters.

Yes, I have high ideals when it comes to finding my hair guru… and that’s why I always have the best hair in town!

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The Ocean Master’s Quest

OH. MY. MAINSAIL.

So strange how Week of Our Lives is having so many episodes set at sea recently. With that recent dramatic return of the fellow lost at sea, you’d think they’d continue that plot-line, but they actually solved it in one episode (it was his twin brother trying to extort everyone and find the key to their grandfather’s safe, where he kept the deed to an ancient jade mine in the heart of China. Quelle intrigue!)

But for now, they’ve returned to the sea for a set of episodes based around Marlucia and her efforts to gain her Ocean Master qualification, impressing the ghost of her dead sea captain father who may or may not be actually haunting her. Half the forums think it’s in her head, and I’m not sure myself.

Anyway, she’s stuck on the outboard motor. Services in Melbourne have to be, like, UP there. Top-notch. Ahead of the game, and all that. Marlucia is a smart girl, especially since she escaped her orphanage aged only two years old using an elaborate duplicate of herself made from paper cups and string, and also a stray pigeon that she was able to feed laxatives. But in terms of motors, I think Marlucia has always struggled with technology because of that flashback we saw of her growing up in the Tibetan monastery, where they beat her whenever she made an internet reference. She escaped to an Albajerian monastery by climbing over the mountains, but in the here and now, outboard motors are her greatest downfall. But they’re the last step in earning her Ocean Master badge at the behest of her maybe-dead maybe-a-hallucination sea captain father! And if she doesn’t have the badge, how can she enter the secret society and join the hunt for the lost treasure of Emmeline Pankhurst, hidden in a salt tomb underneath the Dead Sea??

She’d better get onto the case of places that do outboard motor repairs and servicing in Melbourne, and hopefully find a wise sensei who’ll help with all her problems. It usually works like that, anyway.

-Leticia