Domestic Violence

As regional Australia reels from several women’s deaths, advocates seek both policing and prevention. Half of the 26 women who have been killed so far this year have been in regional parts of the country, highlighting a need for more resourcing outside metropolitan areas.

The women keep demanding that more be done to stop domestic violence particularly, but not only, that results in women’s death. The women keep saying that the govt must do more. The keep saying it, and saying it. But what?

What should be done?

Education directed at boys to teach them how to act with women. Yeah, sure, but that’s not going to save anyone’s life in the short term. Better parenting around boys? How do you do that?

Stricter bail laws. I wonder how many men who kill women are on bail? The problem with this one is that bail laws work for the majority of offenders. It is only the minority that we hear about. So, any changes have to be balanced between the two.

What else do they have?

I tried to read the National Action Plan. I got interminable links to it, blurb on First Nations people, pages of warnings about the plan, lots of phone numbers to call if you are in need, but I never seemed to get to the plan itself.

Then I thought, this is ridiculous, I should be able to find the plan.

So, I went over it all again. Then I found the plan. And I got all the phone numbers, again. I got the dedication to First Nations People, again. 

Then it seemed to set out its objectives, then it summarised those objectives, then it repeated its objectives in beginning of how the plan would work, all in non discriminatory, neutral language, and then…

It just repeated the same points over and over again

…and then I just kind of lost interest, got distracted and never really read it to the end.

Isn’t the problem with domestic violence that all of the acts are kind of random, with little tying them together other than the sex of the perpetrator. They are essentially random acts of violence. And there is no one key factor as the cause. There is no real pattern. Just angry guys, probably angry for a plethora of reasons. Other than mental health issues. Maybe more can be done for those with metal health issues, but we already know that.

Is It A Scam?

Did Sam get potentially scammed? He found a replacement antique lamp stand (more old than antique) to replace our broken one in our lounge room held together with black tape. $50. It was out in the Eastern Suburbs. I was willing to go and get it, as it had the old fashion white cup holder that we need, but the woman said she would drop it off. She said she was heading into town on Thursday for some Anzac Day nonsense, but she could drop it off today. 

Nothing. She didn't show. And she's not responding to messages. And she hasn't taken the item down as sold.

So, she has Sam’s name and address. Is that data collection, rather than legitimate sale? You have to wonder.

Oh, I don't know, but you have to wonder?

I wanted the lamp, though.

Time For A Walk

Today, I am going to take the dogs for a walk early.

Then, I am going to contemplate life.

Do my TattsLotto? My friend LouLou is going to be homeless soon, caught up in the rent explosion, so much so she can't afford to rent any longer. I need to buy her a house. Come on TattsLotto, it's for a good cause.

LouLou lived in a very basic unit but consequently she only paid $150 per week. Four older single women on low incomes lived there  so I'm guessing they will all be having trouble securing new places to live. It was a weird (ugly) block of four Besser Block units, on either side there was a vacant block of land. As it turns out, the units and the two vacant blocks belong to the same people and now they are developing the whole lot. LouLou had 3 months notice until Jan 31st to move out. Then she had a couple of months of house sitting lined up, which would bring us approx to current time.

I should call her.

I have to consider what I am going to do about my car? The damage doesn't really need to be fixed, but then I am left with a damaged car. Do I want to spend a couple of thousand to get it fixed?

I have to consider what I am going to do about my leaking roof? It has to be fixed, but the quote that I got is way more than I expected it to be? What to do?

Anyway, first I'm going to have a shower and harness up the hounds and go for a meditative walk first up.

Except, Sam reminds me he's not working either, being that strange public holiday where we commemorate war and killing and so on and what have you. When people claim long dead relatives as heroes who they couldn't possibly have ever have known. So we head out for lunch together taking the woofs with us.

There is a new Indonesian Restaurant in Lygon Street we're going to go to. Apparently, we are going to get take away, as we need to get Charlie some lunch too.

Old Fillet-of-Fish Raises Her Ugly Trout Mouth

I have been having ongoing dealings with the incompetent bitch senior Sydney HR manager Fillet-of-Fish. She wanted some figures done, and as usual she has given vague instructions, and insufficient details, which is always her recipe for blaming you when things go wrong.

You know, the best outcome I can hope for when dealing with her is that I get to the end of dealing with her with my reputation relatively intact.

And she has been at it again. I supplied all the wrong figures to her, according to her. 

She called Boris and screamed down the phone at her, which had the opposite effect than she had anticipated, if she had any idea of what effect she was going to have.

"I picked up the phone and she just screamed down the phone at me, How could this happen? How could this happen? How could this happen?" said Boris. "I couldn't really believe it. All I could think was what is this all about. I was forced to ask her to calm down. Seriously," said Boris. She gave me a disbelieving look.

Apparently, Fillet-of-Fish gave the figures to some execs and they were wrong.

Lucky for me, I have leaned to never pick up a phone call from her. Any dealings I have with her have to be in writing.

I keep thinking it can't just be me who she does this to? Surely, she does it to other people? Surely, her incompetence will be found out. But it never seems to.

One of the other financial accountants, one who has a management position, said to me in the kitchen that I was lucky. 

I’d asked him how he was, you know as you do, and he said to me that he was exhausted and had too much work to do. 

We’ve implemented a new system and it’s been a long and drawn out process to get it right and finally now it’s up and running. I haven’t had much to do with it because I only work part time and I don’t have so much responsibility, but he has been in charge of the whole operation.

I said to him, oh why do you say that? Me being lucky and all.

He said, just working three days you’re lucky.

I said, it was a conscious decision from working hard at my previous law firm and just being shit on in the end, I decided that I would only work as I like to work, which translated to 3 days. 

He said I was smart.

I said, I’ve never regretted the decision.

He reiterated that I was lucky.

That's been my week, the spectre of Fillet-of-Fish potentially raising her ugly trout head at any moment.

And being, I guess you'd call it, complimented by one of the other guys.

And I am done for the week.

The Wardrobe

The collapsed wardrobe. Disaster

We fixed the wardrobe ourselves and felt pretty clever about it

In The Office

My day in the office, pretty depressing. What is there to say? Nothing. The office sucks compared to working from home. It sucks big time. We should all go on strike against returning to the office.

I got in early and had computer problems and I couldn't really get any work done until 9am. I nearly packed up and went home, except, I figured, that would just give me computer problems next time I was in the office.

We should all still be working from home.

A handsome temp turned up halfway through the morning, so that was something by which to get distracted.

Wardrobe Collapse

Last Thursday, there was a noise, upstairs, not a noise that I'd heard before, I thought. And Sam says to me a short time later that our wardrobe had collapsed.

So, I went and had a look and one side of our built in wardrobe had collapsed and the shelves, the clothes, the coat hangers with jackets and shirts had all hit the floor, well, those of it that weren't piled up on the wreckage below. It was a car crash.

Oh! Er! Fuck! 

What to do?

So, Friday, over breakfast, Sam bought up the Ikea website and what the company had to offer. 

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, what experience have we got to do that? I think.

So, I got onto wardrobe companies. I made an appointment with one for Saturday, and another company said they were keen, but then didn't get back to me to make the appointment.

I had some idea what wardrobe companies charge and it is more likely to be in the thousands than the hundreds. Jill confirmed it later when I spoke to her. "Thousands," she said.

Who cares what it costs, I thought, wardrobes are important and used every day so they have to be done well.

I took the dogs for a walk to think about it all, or to forget about it, or something. I'd just got quotes to get my car fixed and the leaking kitchen roof fixed and neither were cheap.

I got home. I made coffee. I flicked on YouTube. But what to do about the wardrobe? Oh well, we'll find out tomorrow, I guess, might as well wait until tomorrow.

I switched off YouTube, I just can't get lost in that now. What to do?

My laptop was open in front of me. The Ikea page was still open.

People rebuild houses entirely, surely, we could rebuild some shelves.

I took my laptop and my tape measure upstairs and I went through Ikea's catalogue.

I found a combination that was almost exactly the right size for our wardrobe. The top shelf was kind of separate to the rest of the collapsed wardrobe and it was the only part of the old wardrobe that remained and the new structure fitted under it and supported that shelf.

Well? Maybe we could do this.

I showed Sam what I'd found. To replace both sides of the wardrobe was going to cost something like $660.

I cancelled the wardrobe company for the next day.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mess that was our wardrobe. Jesus! What a disaster. A sea of black garbage bags stretched out in front of us, we threw out all sorts of things that I would not have thrown out otherwise. 

The bulldogs played in the middle of it all, not really a help you understand.

And just coincidently we had an un-burnable rubbish collection booked for Monday.

Saturday morning, Sam and I took the dogs for a walk. After which we went out for lunch. We had Bún bò Huế Vietnamese rice noodle dish with sliced beef, chả lụa, and pork knuckles.

We headed to Ikea. Sam knew exactly how to go straight to the stock we wanted, without doing that interminable maze-like tour of Ikea.

The wardrobe that stretches across the end of the wall of our bedroom is in two sections, but we decided to only replace the one side that had collapsed, to begin with. See how we go. We bought the three frames, but we didn't buy all the draws/baskets we needed as we weren't exactly sure how many that would turn out to be. So, $260 later we were out of there.

Then we were trying to find our car in the car park. We went to the second floor of the car park, pushed our trolley to the car, but no car. WTF? Minds boggle. We looked and we looked again. All of our purchases slid off the trolley as everything from Ikea is in plastic and the plastic was slippery on the metal trolley.

Anyway, we picked it all up again. We spun round a few times. Then we looked over the concrete wall to see the car sitting in exactly the spot where we thought it was, just one floor down.

We got home and tore down the rest of the collapsed wardrobe.

Putting the new wardrobe together was the easy part. It only took us a few hours.

Organising all our clothes took longer.

$260 later we have a new wardrobe. Done. Pretty good. The two sides didn't match, but who cares, we may replace the other side at some point in the future.