The ANTO Alliance

Windows / By

We made camp on the night I discovered Australia’s Next Top Office was over. Although Archerak’s magic was gone, Space Wizard was able to use his laser vision to start a campfire. We desperately needed it, since Sweden gets particularly cold around this time of year. I’m talking about the Sweden in Melbourne, of course. The town that was artificially created just for the excellent office building competition.

“I’m going to miss it,” I said. “There would have been some awesome challenges ahead, I’m sure. And I really wanted to win Charity. Whatever that ended up being.”

Space Wizard closed his eyes and nodded. “I was particularly looking forward to helping you win the challenge for glass tinting. We would have used frosting glass and blown the rest of the competition away.”

“It’s a shame your evil clone destroyed this entire town,” Archerak said. “I had big, big plans. With a few more days they would have really started to take effect. Liquifying you was just the beginning of it. I had delayed fireballs ready to go off above the Dirge’s house. They would have ensured he dropped out of the competition entirely.”

“Where is the Dirge?” I asked, realising we’d seen no sign of the famous supervillain.

“I’m not sure,” Archerak answered. “Perhaps he escaped before it was too late. Didn’t he previously own an office tinting business around Melbourne? Maybe he’s gone back to that.”

“You really think he would give up being a supervillain? He’s known as the best around here. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere in Sweden, under a cave of rubble. There might be other survivors around. If we’re going to stop Evil Space Wizard, we’ll need as many allies as possible.”

Archerak shrugged. “I suppose that makes sense, although I’m not sure what help a washed-up movie star and a third-grade teacher can provide.”

“What did you just call me?”

Within a fraction of a second, three arrows thumped into the ground around us. Into the room stepped Ms Frankie, holding a longbow she seemed to have crafted herself out of raw materials.

“I’ll have you know, I used to teach the sixth grade, and that’s no walk in the park.”

Super Car

Cars / By

My car lives a double life. By day, he’s just a regular Hold-On station wagon, driving around Melbourne, helping people with their daily routines. We do Goober together, taking people wherever they need to go. It’s a simple job, but a fulfilling one. But by night, my car is something else. Like a car from a spy movie, he turns on his boosters and releases his wings. Suddenly, he’s Super Car. We drive or fly throughout the city, stopping criminals and saving people in danger. Most people don’t know it, but Super Car is an essential part of keeping the city’s livability standards up.

Once, after an intense chase with some criminals, Super Car had to visit a mechanic near Malvern East. The damage was so bad that he was out of action for almost a week. In that time, Melbourne’s crime scene swelled, and the police were swamped with calls. Usually we’d deal with half of those, but with the city’s auto superhero out of action, there was nothing to be done. I suppose that’s why they created Super Car in the first place.

Finding the best auto repair in Malvern isn’t easy, especially for a superhero. Super Car could get repairs from his creators, but between us, he doesn’t quite trust them. Sometimes Super Car gets these flashbacks of being created in a factory with an army of other auto superheroes. He’s worried that if he goes back to them, he might get replaced. With a quick memory upload, I wouldn’t even know the difference if he did get swapped out. So we have to be careful.

Thankfully, there are mechanics around who know how to handle an auto superhero. It’s nothing like in those Transforming Robots movies. Super Car is a delicate machine that requires a great deal of care. If anything happened to him, this city wouldn’t last long, I fear. That’s why he gets the premium treatment.

A Manly Ride

Cars / By

I’m having trouble selling my ute, which is starting to get annoying. I knew that my poor parking would come back to haunt me, and this is how. It’s pretty badly knocked up, because no matter how I try to park, I manage to stuff it up. I’ve hit poles, other cars, rubbish bins. Pretty much anything you can imagine, I’ve hit it with my car while trying to park. I suppose the fact that the car hasn’t had a log book service in years doesn’t help. People just don’t want and old and broken car, no matter how cheap I make it.

I’ve had a few people enquire about it, but they always pull out when they find out I don’t have a roadworthy certificate. Around Underwood, they aren’t hard to get, but I don’t want to pay for one until I know there’s a buyer. Otherwise, it could be money wasted. It’s a bit of a problem, since I need a certificate to sell the car, but I don’t want to get a certificate without knowing that I can sell the car.

I know that the issue isn’t the car’s colour. Who wouldn’t want a hot pink ute, with pictures of flowers on the side? It’s a man’s car, and yet all the people who have enquired have been women. I get it, hot pink and flowers isn’t manly at all, but that’s exactly why it is manly. It takes a true man to be comfortable no matter what, and ignore what the people around him think. When I got this vehicle as a birthday present, I was appalled. But I grew used to it. I’ve never felt better about myself, because I had to ignore the criticism around me. It’s a manly ride, no matter what other people tell you. It’s taught me more life lessons than television. I’ve never known a better car. You’d be a fool not to buy it, hot pink or not.

Now It’s Personal

Heating / By

Some people really love to make a fuss! You tell one tiny little white lie, and next thing you know they’re demanding your head on a stake. I’ll admit that it’s marginally unethical to tell the whole office you’ve got a medical condition that you don’t technically have, but sometimes the ends justify the means, and in this case I had no choice but to play dirty.

I don’t like having to wear a jacket at work, okay? I spend all this time planning out outfits, and I find that jackets tend to ruin the line. Evan and Dan and Britney wouldn’t understand that, because they’re all such dowdy drones. In short, it’s imperative that I get have my say over the heating over winter, and they wouldn’t have understood if I’d made my point in a less manipulative way. 

If only Evan hadn’t overheard me explaining my ruse, and Hans – ever the Mr. Reasonable – hadn’t taken the matter to HR. Then I’d still be sitting pretty, ensconced in my ideal climate. As it stands, I’m currently swathed in a shapeless cardigan that completely conceals my new neckpiece, while Hans is happily researching ducted heating system repairs. Melbourne area locals, he says, don’t really know what cold is, but it’s still good to keep your system in good nick. Bloody Europeans… to top it off, they somehow manage to make cold-weather clothes look chic. 

Whatever. I may have been temporarily defeated, but the battle hasn’t been won yet. If Evan can use Hans as a pawn to take me down via HR, then I can fire that right back. I’m sure there’s some dirt to be dug up, and while it might not get me the remote back, it might at least wrestle it away from Team Icebox. Maybe I can argue that, at the office in Clayton, services for heating and cooling are not allowed to be controlled by…  people called Evan? Maybe that’s a bit far fetched. 

At the end of the day, it’s not about Evan being banned from the remote. It’s just about me being in charge of it.

Steamy Shoebox

Renovations / By

I swear to dog, Karen is just looking for things to complain about. If it’s not that her job is too fulfilling or her fiance too supportive, it’s her house being too big. That was the hot topic at brunch this morning. I had to focus really hard on my poached salmon slider to keep from voicing my opinion, which is that she needs to shut up about her too-big house. 

Granted, she’s not a woe-is-me type. She was really just saying that she’d like to make more effective use of the space, and I can relate to that. I just get a bit fed up because I’m coming at it from the perspective of not having enough space. In any case, we do have this in common: we’re both keen for a bathroom upgrade. The difference is that Karen can afford to recruit a great bathroom designer close to Melbourne, while I’ll essentially have to DIY it or get my sister-in-law in Brisbane to do it remotely for mates’ rates. 

That’s actually not a bad perk on my end. I’m just suspicious that someone who lives up north won’t fully grasp what Melbourne homeowners need from their bathrooms. It’s all about managing the fluctuating temperatures, and balancing heat retention with air flow. I’ve experienced one too many mouldy Melbourne bathrooms in my time to mess around when it comes to steam extraction and ventilation. 

My laundry could do with an upgrade in that department as well. My dryer somehow manages to steam up the room so badly, it’s like it’s been raining hot tea after I’ve put a load through. It can’t be good for the paint, or the structural integrity of the ceiling for that matter. All it needs is an extractor fan that actually works, although it would be good to consult a laundry renovations specialist. Melbourne area homeowners, have you ever done this?

I bet Karen thinks her laundry is too big, and is going to pay someone to make it smaller and more steam-filled.

Getting Along

stress management / By

What do we think about robots at the moment? Are they going to make our lives easier and more balanced by reducing our workload of repetitive tasks? Or are they going to introduce us to a new wave of stressors, unlike any we’ve seen before? More than likely, the reality will fall somewhere between the two.

I guess I’m just wondering about the unforeseen health impacts of adding robots to daily life. This will no doubt change as the technology develops over time – I mean, there’ll surely be some teething issues that need ironing out. For example, I predict we’ll resist delegating tasks to robots, and with good reason – there’ll be a few dramatic screw ups that human society will struggle to forget about for a good long while. Our day-to-day wellbeing will be affected as we contemplate about what we’ve done and how irreversible it is.

Then there’ll be the question of whether robots themselves are vulnerable to anxiety and stress. This will be a relatively fringe topic, easily glossed over on account of the robots not having nervous systems. Even so, stress management training courses for robots will become a thing, and subculture will develop around robot health and wellness.

Overall, there’ll be a rise in numbers of professional stress management consultants. Melbourne will see the rise of specialists who consult for both humans and robots, coaching them in working together to support the human nervous system. In this way, they believe, the robots will be less inclined to learn behaviours that mimic the outward expressions of an excessively stressed human system.  

I realise I’m being quite specific here, but this is such a huge topic – it’s hard to say much about it without honing in on something in particular. I’d like to think that I’m an optimist, overall. I believe that it’s possible for us to live in harmony with our creations.

Beautiful Heating Prose

Heating / By
I’m not usually one for poetry, but sometimes you just hear a certain little collection of words arranged rhythmically, and something in your heart flutters. I was watching an episode of People With Way Too Much Money, and Bradley had taken Meg out on a romantic date, they were on the bow of a cruise ship…and Bradley pulls out a piece of paper. “I wrote these words for you, my darling,” he said, before reading his lovely poem:

Meg so hot,

Hot, hot Meg

Meg so hot

She fry an egg.

Um, excuse me while I squee.

See, it’s all thematically linked. Bradley made his fortune doing ducted gas heating repairs in Melbourne, and even now that he’s moved onto managing multiple businesses, you could still say that he’s remembered as a ducted heating tycoon. Many of the romantic things he does are related to heat, like taking his then-girlfriend Scarlet on a desert trek, or flying his other girlfriend Monique all the way to Cancun for a sunbed experience worth over two-million. He IS the heating guy, Bradley. His family made Melbourne heating a household name, in Melbourne, because they put heating in almost all the houses and people talk about it I guess. In fact, I think that’s what keeps drawing all these beautiful women to him: they see past the good looks and the perfect teeth and the designer suits and the hundreds of millions of dollars in his bank account, and they know that he really gets heating.

Like, here’s a guy who would never bring in a fan heater to heat up his home, oh no. He’d get the best split system heating Melbourne has to offer. No girl is ever going to be cold in his house, because Bradley would consider that a travesty.

He’s the ‘hot’ guy, but not in that way. Girls just love how he makes them feel warm and cozy…with his ducts and gas heating.

-Layla

Windows Are…Windows

Windows / By
My experiment to prove that muffins are actually good for you has failed. Turns out that I- and everyone else in this world- must face the harsh truth: muffins are just cake, in a whimsical shape. In retrospect, this really shouldn’t have taken so long.

Onto the next experiment then: proving that all windows, and indeed all glass, is actually a portal to another dimension. I’m confident here, although I’ll need to access this dimension in some small way to prove my hypothesis. And this is going to require I speak to commercial glaziers in Melbourne, and that could go either way. They might be friendly and glad that I finally discovered their secret, or they might be friendly and trap me inside the glass dimension because i discovered their secret. I think all tradespeople I’ve seen thus far in Melbourne have been friendly, so I don’t think they’re going to turn out to be super aggressive or anything. We’ll have a nice chat about glazier work and see where it goes.

There’s always been something a little bit higher about a really well done piece of glass stair balustrading. Like, you look at it, and it’s just so terribly nice and chic. A little too nice…and a little too chic.

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get the balustrading done. Quite apart from having a portal to another dimension and a test subject in my entrance hall, I’ve just always thought it looks good. I’ll scout around Melbourne for residential glaziers that suit my purpose, see what they have to say about glass balustrading…and then, I’ll see what they have to say.

And if this all fails, I’ll have some nice glass lining my stairs, and I guess I can move onto ‘coffee actually makes you sleepy, and the whole wakefulness thing was a global placebo’.

–Ranier

All or Nothing

Conveyancing / By
It sure is a thrill-a-minute working with Sandrine. Every day is an adventure. Every meeting, a journey of self-discovery.
 

Well, it’s a journey of discovery at least. We’re plunging the depths of that woman’s madness more and more every day. At today’s meeting, she accused us all of letting down the conveyancing solicitors we had sworn to serve. Okay, first, Sandrine… no one has sworn any oaths. You made that up. And our numbers are actually looking good. The conveyancing firms who we have as clients seem pretty happy with the work we do, and we’re getting all kinds of great leads, so actually, the conveyancers seem to be doing pretty well, thank you kindly.

But Sandrine is convinced that our office is beholden to every single property market professional in all of Melbourne, and if we don’t have them as a client, then we’re failing them. Our services are just THAT good. Well, I think most of them are fine, Sandrine, and besides, we’re not a mega corporation. We can’t contact every single place in Melbourne that does property transfers and say we can 100% help them with their work. We don’t have the resources.

Sandrine came across like a military general, but I get the feeling that she was trying, in her own, twisted way, to give a motivational speech. Like, “We don’t have every single client possible? Well, go out there and get every single client possible! NOW!!”

Yeah, that’s not how business works. No one owns 100% of the market; otherwise the market shuts down. And besides, while we’re good at what we do, I’m sure that one conveyancing firm Carnegie area locals are so dependent on (according to Sandrine) will survive to knock out another Section 32 without us. At least, that is, until we become an actual mega corporation with 10,000 staff members. And Sandrine still won’t be satisfied. She has a fixation with making everyone and everything her property by contract. Maybe that’s why she wants all these solicitors on board so badly. 

-Raya

The Cool Queen

Air Conditioning / By
Canberra has a heatwave, and suddenly, Britney is everyone’s best friend. Oh, sure, everyone just forget that there’s a photo of her getting close with Shaun at the school social, and everyone KNEW Shaun was dating Stephanie at the time. Britney went public about Stephanie when she was caught with Kevin behind the bins and made a big fuss about how it wasn’t her fault, so she basically stabbed her friend in the back. Britney has amazing air conditioning, so she’s the most popular girl in school right now. Makes TOTAL sense.
 

The way Britney tells it, it’s like she has a direct connection to the best air conditioning Canberra businesses rely on. She not only gets the best service but her air con unit has the power to create instant winter. Yeah that’s a thing when you’ve got wealthy parents. Britney is seriously trying to make us believe that her air con is supercharged and has snow right there in her home. Slow down your lying machine Brit. This is the same girl who said that she was friends with that sports guy from Yugoslavia and he gave her ice skating tickets, and then I look it up and I don’t even think that’s a real place. At least, I’m pretty sure. But there was an ice skater and he played professional hockey so who knows the whole story.

Oh, and it’s all cold stuff with Britney. Her air con in the best, she’s best buds with a famous ice skater, and she probably thinks I forgot but I remember back in grade two when she was bragging for WEEKS about how her fridge has an ice-maker. That was exciting, back in grade two…I guess.

Now it’s all about the air conditioning. And when it’s winter, she’ll boast about getting the highest quality air con services. Canberra is far warmer than it should be this time of year. I know my parents can’t just afford to have the air con full blast all the time. But just you wait. Everyone will fly into Britney’s trap like mosquitoes to a bug zapper, because I guess no one has cooling in their homes? It’s just one big popularity contest!

-Lake