My girlfriend is amazing. Somehow, she manages to love me for exactly who I was and put up with my overbearing and intrusive mother. You see, my mother is a very difficult woman to deal with, especially if she thinking you are beneath her. That basically covers everyone in my life. She managed to provide a very wealthy upbringing, but it was very lonely at the same time. I would have much rathered parental interaction when I was a child, than a trust fund and a credit card. I had been living with my girlfriend for just on two years, so she knew what to expect when I told her my mother and father were coming to stay. It was almost like my girlfriend morphed into mother-in-law mode immediately, grabbing the phone and calling the carpet cleaners. My mother is not only obnoxious, she is a complete clean freak and doesn’t feel embarrassed telling people their houses aren’t clean enough for her standards. She can be incredibly rude, but she is my mother and I care for her no matter what. Each time my parents came to visit we went through the same routine. We phoned the professional carpet steam cleaners, Melbourne gets dusty in the dry season. My girlfriend likes to hire the best of the best to impress my mother. We were very nervous this time around because we’d never had upholstery cleaning before. The steam cleaners that we had been going with had never slack off and always put effort into their cleaning. Apparently my girlfriend had heard of the best tile and grout cleaners Melbourne has to offer from her sister. Since they came so highly recommended around town so she gave them a call. When my girlfriend hung up the phone to the carpet steam cleaning company in Melbourne, we were both very excited, but a little nervous. Excited to show off our incredibly clean house to my mother, and nervous that it still wouldn’t be clean enough for her crazy standards.
Monster-in-law likes the carpets clean
Finding the experts
I’m
so tired of dealing with contractors I know I can’t trust. All they do is avoid doing their job, making it almost impossible for me to do mine. I didn’t take 6 months off my work and basically put my life on hold just so I could wait around for some spaced out traddies to get their head in gear. They treat wasting my time and money like it’s a game and I’m sick of it. So I’ve decided to fire the group I’m working with at the moment and look for somebody half decent.
My first order of business? To find someone who specialises in steel fabrications in Melbourne. I know that this is a really competitive space and that there are people out there in the big wide world that do some really amazing work with steel. All I’m after, really, is someone who will turn up when they say they will, and will work really hard to get the job done. It doesn’t have to a masterpiece worthy of some modern art museum, just something that functions the way it’s supposed to without any major hiccups.
Before hiring the drop kicks I’m working with at the moment, I tried to do some of this work myself, and let me tell you it was basically impossible. I had a really hard time even just finding decent steel supplies in Melbourne. You wouldn’t think it would be that hard, but for someone like myself with very few connections in the industry, I didn’t know who to trust. After being burned a couple of times, I’ve come to realise that the only way to make sure everything gets done is to employ an expert. So that’s what I’m now going to do. The only thing I have to make sure I do myself is find the right people for the job. So … any suggestions?
The sign snob
D
on’t judge me too much for this, but I’m kind of a snob when it comes to sign writers. Melbourne has some signs with pretty great different types of designs and catchy phrasing and all that, and don’t think I haven’t seen some awesome signs in my time, because I have, but you’ve got to admit, there’s a lot of bull out there.
It’s one of those things that developed pretty slowly really, my sign snobbery, I mean. It wasn’t like one day I didn’t notice them at all and then suddenly I was grading them on a bell curve, rather, I’ve always been one to notice the detail in things. It’s just the way I am. Then, for fun in university, I took a marketing course. One of the first things the marketing professor said was, and I remember this very clearly: “marketing is everywhere – all you have to do is look around you” and I don’t know why but I did. I started literally looking around me and taking into account all the signs plastered all of the place. Evaluate them. At first it was just something fun to do while on public transport, but after all this time it’s become like a little bit of a compulsive habit. Not that it’s bad or anything. Not that it bothers me, because it’s doesn’t. It’s always like a bit of a game.
When I tell people about my little game, people are often pretty confused about it, and I get some pretty weird questions. My favourite question, though, would have to be “what’s your favourite sign?” It’s not just my favourite question because I have an answer ready and waiting, but because just remembering that particular sign brings a smile to my face. It was for a car wrap company in Melbourne, and I don’t really know what it was about it that I loved so much, except to say that everything just worked together, like a tuned orchestra. It was beautiful and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.