Boating

My brother Donny has always overshadowed me, even though he’s younger than I am. Somehow, I drew the literal short straw and ended up tiny, while he stands at over six feet tall. It’s totally not fair. I’m the older sister, but everyone assumes he is my older brother. He’s better at pretty much everything, too. Why ask Rey to do anything, when you can just get Donny to do it better? Well, not this time.

I recently started a new job, and they don’t know about my younger, bigger brother. I intend to keep it that way. I just hope that the boss doesn’t need any marine welding, because that is Donny’s favourite. If they find out that my brother is a professional when it comes to marine welding near Melbourne, nobody will ever see the need for me around here again.

I’ve been trying to make myself invaluable to the team, but unfortunately, I’m pretty lazy and not really good at anything. Maybe I should learn how to do some marine welding myself, so that if the boss comes around asking if anyone can fix his boat, I can offer to do it completely free of charge. I just need to get an understanding of how to install bow rails. Then I’ll be able to do it myself.

I guess I’m just paranoid because at my last job Donny helped everybody out with an audit, since he’s also an accountant. That was great, but unfortunately everybody liked Donny so much that I got fired and they hired him instead. It’s totally unfair. Just because I have nothing to offer and my brother has everything, I lose my job? Well, not this time.

Update: Great, my boss read this post and now he’s demanding that I get in contact with Donny, so that he can help with some welding issues around the place. Here we go again.

I’ve been thinking about boating a lot lately. I know that seems like a random thing to have on my mind but I’ve always been fond of the water. If you need outboard motor repairs, Melbourne area locals, then you’re in the right place for that sort of thing. I only just moved here from up north and I have to say the boating industry is… weirdly strong? Is that a bad thing to say?

It’s not that I think it’s weird that people like boats and stuff down here, but I just assumed that there would be much less of a boating scene. The weather doesn’t help, because no one’s going to say “let’s go out on a cruise around the bay – it’s pouring with rain and it’ll be great!” Even windy weather can be a pain, depending on the boat. But no. Melbourne people are just used to it, I suppose.

I did ask some of the boat servicing people around the docks why it’s such a big deal, and they had a plethora of answers. There was a huge boating craze a few months back, with young people in particular becoming uncharacteristically interested in taking up ownership of marine vessels. So there was a boom, and while that’s died down a bit, people still are still pretty hyped on the idea – it’s actually considered hip to have a go-to boat repair guy down on the coast. 

Okay… that’s fine. Most people in Brisbane just take the public catamaran to get their fix of being on a boat, but I guess that sort of system isn’t really set up down here, so people have done their own thing. After that boost to the industry, there’s been a bunch of television coverage of various parts of the docks in Melbourne. Anchor winch servicing, marine welding, the lives of people on house-boats, you name it. Now everyone wants a piece of the action. And in the end, it looks like I’ll be in good company when I finally get my boat down here.

-CT

Ugh, so streaming service Neat-Flicks just HAD to go and make their own version of Dark Boat, and set it in Japan instead of the original Australia. “We just thought that the story would be more profound and reflect the cultural norms better in the place where it was originally conceived.”

Well, they were wrong, on so many levels. That’s not even the thing that bothers me either, and I can just about get past the shoddy sets they dressed up to look like Tokyo. No, it’s how the ignored the themes of the original and just inserted their own. Marine stainless steel welding was at the very heart of the original source material, with the main character originally just wanting to go into the stainless steel welding industry and be a good, productive member of society. What starts out as a passion for him steadily erodes with the corrupting influence of the dark boat, until eventually he cares only for selling spirits and creating misery.

They even removed his original plate alloy boat from their adaptation, which in the original served as a powerful anchor to his past. Its neglect over the course of the first season was a powerful reminder that bad influences can destroy the things we love the most. Instead…they gave him a girlfriend. An evil girlfriend, who makes him do evil things, and that shows that he’s a bad buy.

I’m glad to see that most of my forum friends are avoiding this monstrosity and seeing it for what it really is. What was once a taciturn look at a young man’s life, and how it’s ruined by the arrival of a magic boat that produces infinite sorrow, is now a cliché storm of a young man turning into a delinquent because he hangs out with the wrong crowd, with the boat almost fading into the background. All those themes about plate alloy boats being superior to old, magical ones full of terror, left by the wayside. This is why shows like this needs to stay animated.

-Dave-kun

Anyone seen those new Aqua-Pods? Lawrence Corp just did a live demo and I managed to catch the stream on my lunch break. I try to keep up with the latest tech, but that company does make things a little difficult, given that they seem to come out with something completely new every single day. And it’s always some cool thing that you didn’t even know that you needed.

Anyway, the Aqua-Pod is a plastic bubble with a motor…and that’s mostly it. You sit in a chair, strap in and zip through the ocean with a basic joystick. The fuel only lasts a couple of hours, but it’s basically meant to be a more affordable way to get people enjoying the sea. Do I think it has a future? IMO, you can’t rule it out. It has a big old boat motor, so the companies that service outboard motors near Melbourne dock area should be pretty happy. There’s been a bit of a dip ever since the boat craze faded, so if people get into Aqua-Pods, then there’s going to be yet another sea trend. Anchor winches were another hot commodity during that time, so not too sure what’s going to happen with those. I assume the pods have some way of stopping in the middle of the sea rather than just bobbing at the mercy of the tides. Or maybe they don’t? Knowing Lawrence Corp, it’ll probably be some sort of proto-anchor-winch innovation that they haven’t yet unveiled. Like, an anchor winch that’s actually a laser. An anchor-winch with such a long and flexible cable that it can attach to the dock and stretch for miles. At least I can someone who can do professional anchor winch installation in Melbourne. They’re getting a ton of work, because the sea is just going to turn into a mess of tangled pods.

Nah, they won’t do that. My money is on it being lasers.

-Pierre