Jared Diamond Books

Watching from the windows

Posted under window repairs on December 16th, 2015 by admin

Aluminium window repairs Melbourne I’m a watcher. I never thought I would become one, but I have. I sit here for about seven hours almost every day, staring out the aluminium windows at Melbourne, splayed out below me. At least, sitting here, I have a good view. It’s a good vantage point, to watch people from, and they can never watch back.

I guess this habit of watching people developed after the accident. When you suddenly lose the feelings from your hips down you tend to do a lot of sitting. It was such a stupid accident as well. I regret diving head first into that lake every minute of every day. It was an accident that could have been so easily avoided, but that doesn’t matter now. I didn’t avoid it. Now I am here. The doctors say I can’t leave home yet. They say I’m lucky I’m not a quadriplegic, that things could have gone much worse for me, that I survived and should be grateful.

I know we’re going to have to leave this place soon. Living in a high rise apartment when you’re in a wheelchair isn’t exactly the most convenient option. Still, it’s going to be harder to watch people if I’m down below. My parents are slowly removing our possessions, carting them down in boxes, leaving with them, two at a time. I can’t help, of course, even if they’d asked. There are too many hazards here for me, they said, just like they said getting aluminium window repairs in Melbourne up here wasn’t cheap.

That was when I was mad. That was when I didn’t want to watch, I wanted to live. I’ll have the scars on my fist for a while, they said. So many scars, said I. There are the ones you can see and the ones you can’t.

Love found in a limo

Posted under limousine hire on December 16th, 2015 by admin

limo hire Melbourne I think a part of me wants this limousine ride to go on forever. I would not ask the driver to pull over if you paid me. Not that money has ever been a problem, by this point it’s all meaningless to me.I dislike the term famous. It has so many negative connotations what with all the reality stars ruining that space. The reason I don’t want to stop this Melbourne limousine to ever stop is because the most beautiful and perfect woman I have ever met is in this car with me. She smiles and giggles and wants to keep on riding this limousine till dawn. I will happily go through till sunrise if that’s what she wants. I will get a change of limo drivers if I need to, anything to stay in this place with this perfect being.

The conversion has been effortless, we have talked about going on wild road trip, about our families, our dreams. Sasha is fast becoming the most interesting and free person that I can think of, and she suggested that we do this. She asked me, can you believe that? This whole thing was her idea, the dinner, the limo hire. Melbourne by twilight is magical, I don’t use that word lightly. I’m happily just going along with her plan. I love this city, and I’d love to spend more time here, but to be honest, I could just stay in her arms in the back of this limousine all night. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like her.

I don’t know why but everything she does make me smile. Whether it’s her sheepish grin because she said something adult, or when she is laugh with tears streaming down her face, everything she does captivates me. I lover her wit and her silly jokes that are always told wrong. I can’t wait to see her again after tonight. My heart breaks a little more each I leave her. I’m missing a few vital pieces now that are hers forever. Every Time I ride off in my chauffeured limousines I can feel her slowly destroying me.

A heartbreaking funeral

Posted under Funerals on December 15th, 2015 by admin

I wish this day had never come. All I want to do is scream and cry but the only thing I have the energy to do is just sit here. On the floor. Staring blankly at the computer screen and hoping for a miracle. Hoping, praying, bargaining with some higher entity for them to give him back. Please, let me have my Rowan back.

I’ve only watched the Lord of the Rings films once, with Rowan when he was a kid, but there was a line that stuck with me. It struck a chord that resonated with the parent in me and I find myself remembering those words today. No parent should have to bury their child.

I neglected dealing with. I couldn’t. I asked friends and family members to deal with the logistics, from everything from organ donation to finding a funeral director. Perth has a lot of funeral homes, or so they tell me, but if I’m honest everything’s been such a blur I don’t even know which one I’m with. I don’t know who is burying my child. Not that it matters.

I’m hoping that in writing this, I get some sense of closure, but I doubt that will ever happen. It still feels as though he’s going to walk in the front door with that grin on his face, with some tall story about where he’s been. It still feels as though this is all one terrible nightmare I’m going to wake up from and everything will be back to how it was. But I know, deep down, that that’s never going to happen. I can feel it in my gut.

The funeral’s in Perth, so I won’t have to go far. I have a friend coming to pick me up in an hours time. I have to keep moving. I have to just breathe, to go through the motions. Rowan wouldn’t want me to be left a shell. He would want me to live.

The business signage process

Posted under Signage on December 15th, 2015 by admin

As Business signage Melbourne a small business owner, finding a really good, trustworthy, high quality sign company in Melbourne can be difficult. You know you want something great, that makes you stand out from the crowd, that draws the eye, that makes people want to work with you and your business, but ferreting out those who say they can from those who can deliver is really difficult. Trust me. I’ve just been through the whole thing. Twice.

I own a local, organic green grocery. See what I mean? Small business, and yet I really want to get across what I’m all about through my business signs. Melbourne residents need to be able to look at my sign and know that they can trust me and my products. They need to be able to walk past my sign on the street and be interested enough that they have a bit of a look inside, or better yet, have a chat to me or one of my fantastic staff about our products. The sign is the hook, without it, they’re probably not going to want to have a look inside, and I need that to happen.

Going and talking to couple of different graphic design companies has been more or less a complete disaster. They’ve presented us with all kinds of different ideas and styles, but, in my opinion, it’s all been terrible. All I’ve seen are bizarre, comic reductions of our core message into gaudy images and shapes, or, alternatively, designs so mainstream that we would look exactly like every other organic grocery. It’s as if everything we talked about in our meetings, which were generally excellent, went in one ear and out the other. All I needed was for someone to listen to me, and that just didn’t happen.

I’ve come to the point where I’m just exhausted. I know signage in Melbourne is important, but I just don’t know if I can keep going through this process. I just feel done. I just want to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

How many of me does it take to fix a light bulb?

Posted under Aluminium ladders on December 14th, 2015 by admin

Today I did something t aluminium ladders hat could have been, and, with a bit of hindsight, probably was funny, but at the time it was just cringeworthy. And not just a little bit cringeworthy, either. It was major, pathetic, Three Stooges cringeworthy.

I like to think of myself as a pretty self sufficient kind of a person. I live, quite comfortably on my own and that’s always worked fine for me, but once in a blue moon I come up against something new. Something I haven’t had to deal with with before. As a pretty self sufficient kind of a person, I like to think I’ll be able to deal with these moments as they arise on my own. I guess you could say I’m stubborn like that, but, as I see it, it’s more that I’m fully capable of handling my problems on my own. So when one of the lights in my apartment decided to blow, I decided that, with a quick ‘how to’ search on Google under my belt, I had enough expertise in that area to handle the simple task of changing a lightbulb.

Even though I don’t have an aluminium ladder of my own, I know a mate in the ground floor apartment who does, so I figured it would be easy enough to borrow it from him. Irritatingly, Steve has one of those ridiculously huge Bailey ladders, and it wouldn’t fit in the lift, but that just meant a bit of extra cardio for me, carrying it up the stairs. The problem with that was that I got into a bit of a rhythm, where I wasn’t really thinking about much more than continuing up the stairs, so when I got to my flaw I just kicked the door open and stormed through. Thing was, I was holding the ladder horizontally. The whiplash was mind-boggling, and I was moving so fast that I actually fell down, under the ladder, which then fell on my chest. If there’d been a laugh track laid over the top of it, it would have looked like slapstick comedic gold. As it was, it looks like three broken ribs, cracked plaster, and a long hospital bill.

Oh, and one busted light bulb.

What to do for Sam’s birthday

Posted under Ice skating on December 2nd, 2015 by admin

My b Ice skating Melbourne oy Sam is turning 9 two weeks from now and I just don’t know what to do for the kid. We’re thinking about booking him one of those party venues Melbourne seems to have plenty of, but darn it I’m just not sure we really should.

I mean, it’s not like he’s mentally challenged or anything, he’s just real awkward in social situations and pretty slow on the uptake. He’s got a couple of friends at school, or so he says, but we never see them round at the house. We talked to his teacher to make sure the people he’d named in his class were real people, about six months ago, when I asked about his friends, it turned out he’d just made up names off of the top of his head. When I talked to his teacher about it she said there were no people by that name in his class. I gotta tell you, that made me real worried for a moment there. This time, at least the names were real, but we’ve got no way of knowing whether they’re actually his friends, see? And if they’re not, we wouldn’t want to book him out a party venue for friends he doesn’t have. It’s a complicated kind of situation.

Couple of years back, he got real into ice skating, learning to ice skate through lessons and such, but it was a cold kind of a pastime for such a warm country as Australia. I always thought learning to ice skate here was a real impractical thing to be doing, but he seemed to enjoy it a lot and that was good enough for me. Maybe we should have his birthday at an ice skating rink? That way he doesn’t have to talk to the other kids if he doesn’t want to, which, knowing him, he probably wont. I’m not a bad parent, mind you. All I really want for him is to have a good time.

Procrastination Leads to Clutter

Posted under Legal on November 29th, 2015 by admin

clutter There is some truth to the phrase ‘if you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding’. It’s true, truly truthful. Because, and this is thinking really hard about the issue…if you DON’T eat your meat…how CAN you have the aforementioned pudding? Meat comes first, before pudding you see. The conquering of the meat is paramount to progressing towards the pudding.

This is a really deep thought for a Thursday. Maybe I need to roll things back to something a little bit lighter. Like my will! I have this legal will draft that I’ve just been casually chipping away at for a while now, and it’s my primary source of procrastination. That’s probably why I keep having the deep thoughts, you know? I think that I really need to get onto that last will and testament that people think is so important. But that means going through my possessions, and that’s the end of that because I always find something terribly distracting. Just yesterday I dug up my old coin collection. I used to be mad on those things, polished them every day. I was under the delusion that my friends would actually be impressed by this collection of small metal objects. Still, I managed to score a few limited edition ones. One day, those are going to be worth something. But not for a while, so if I’m getting on with making a will, those should go to my grandchildren. Kelvin is so obsessed with shiny things, so I hope that’s going to continue into his adult years. He’s gonna love these coins!

It’s all so much to deal with, lots of trinkets and baubles to sort through. Makes me want to make my will just a matter of writing ‘you all just work it out amongst yourselves, and be civil’. Then my family could just roll with that. But a last will and testament isn’t quite so easy. Back to it, I suppose. Until I’m distracted again…

Putting a Stop to the Hackers

Posted under Technology on November 15th, 2015 by admin

firewall The level of excitement I feel for the upcoming Galaxy Conflict: The Push Wakes Up is just phenomenal, more than anything I’ve ever felt before. I absolutely can’t wait to get my tickets, because I was at work when they were released and my boss wouldn’t let me take a break at that exact moment to go and get them. Seriously, boss. But still, I want the full cinematic experience and nothing less. That’s why I’m in a bit of an online war.

See, I have these friends doing web development courses in Melbourne, and I’m doing a similar thing up here so we’ve kind of connected online. I thought I knew them pretty well, but as it turns out…not so much. They’re part of this super-shady hacker group who are trying to get a copy of The Push Wakes Up before it airs in cinemas, which is just unacceptable. For one thing, they’ll be viewing the cinematic event of this millennium on their stupid little laptop screens, which just makes me sad. And then, it’s morally wrong, because they’re essentially stealing something that belongs to a paying audience. Those in my web design course feel the same: online does not mean free. Thus, I’m now part of a group trying to protect The Push Wakes Up from these nefarious hackers. I’ve already informed the colleges where they get their education, and strong corrective action has been promised. There’s nothing more to do but sit and wait for the next cyber-attack.

I can’t believe I thought they’d be better. I bet if their fellow web development students knew about this, they’d feel the same way: it’s pure selfishness, and they’re spoiling the experience for themselves as well. Maybe at some point, they’ll realise. But maybe, they just need to complete the entire web design course experience, and then they’ll see the light. It’s themselves they’re hurting, in the end…

Places to be in Victoria

Posted under Marquee hire on November 10th, 2015 by admin

The lush vineyards of Victoria have attracted many couples over the years. More and more people each year are choosing marquee’s in Victoria to tie the knot. The romantic fairytale backdrop tends to attract the brides, and the abundance of quality wine seems to appeal to the grooms. Never the less, couples seem to be choosing Melbourne marquees for hire preferences. The marquee offers a great party feel and atmosphere to any event. Each hire being specific to the bride and grooms wedding themes and styles. Something seems to be in the air in Victoria which makes visitors and locals a like fall in love. With the magnificent nature and countryside around who can blame them.
Victoria’s capital Melbourne has a vibrant and multicultural population growing from year to year. It has a large proportion of Greeks and Italians. With this brings a love for food, fine wine, and most of all a good party! Often the streets of Melbourne have party marquee hire’s scattered all over. One thing I love about Melbourne is the cultural European like feel it has on you. A smile is on every face! A Friday night brings the young party goers who flood the streets. The Melbourne party marquees resemble more of a rave with bright flashing lights and strobes, all are in full swing late into the night.
Last but not least my favorite spot would be Bayside which is located in Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs. Surrounded by stunning peaceful beaches, it offers a perfect party marquee hire spot. Bayside marquee hire operates extensively throughout these coastal Melbourne suburbs. Seeming to offer a huge range of party hire equipment whether it’s for a 21st party or a 40th birthday party the range or party equipment is astonishing. Including options such as dance floor hire, lighting, furniture hire and much more, not to mention the marquee.

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