Tag: favourite stories

Lift your game, Trav

Travis, Tim and Jeff came into the office. Tim and Jeff were laughing uproariously.

“What’s so funny guys?”

Travis has been having a great time in his stint as an engineering vacation student. In fact, a few days ago, Tim, Jeff and the other hydrogeologists had taken him out to the pub and now Trav was on friendly terms with half the office.

Sheepish, Travis explained what had happened.

I got into the lift with Tim and Jeff and we started to talk, you know, just general stuff. Anyway, people got in and out of the lift. One of them was this old guy and there were the three of us and him.

I was telling Tim and Jeff about how I was listening to the cricket on my computer. “It’s bloody fantastic,” I said. “Justin taught me! You can listen to it live streaming from The Age website. I just plug my headphones in, stare blankly at my computer screen and I can spend the whole day like that. And the best thing about it is that my boss taught me how to do it! Justin’s a guru!”

Tim and Jeff nodded, and they had these sort of blank looks on their faces. I asked them if they had ever done it before, listen to the cricket on the computer. They said, “No. What was the score?”

I told them as we stepped out of the lift. As soon as the old guy left, Tim and Jeff are laughing hysterically. ” All right, what’s going on, guys?” I said. “What was with the, ‘Uh huh, okay’ stuff? You’re normally cricket mad.”

And they kept laughing. “Trav,” Tim said. “That was the CEO of the company. You just screwed up big time.”

Little Environmental Engineer

I have an important meeting. My company’s biggest client is in serious negotiations with the EPA tomorrow morning. This client brings in millions of dollars into the company each year. The auditor can’t make it to the meeting. The job manager can’t make it. So it’s all come down to me, little Joan, Environmental Engineer. Not Auditor, not Principal, not Senior Professional. Just Environmental Engineer.
EPA man:

Environmental Engineer, eh? Tell me about this proposed liner! What’s the hydraulic conductivity?

Joan:

(squeak) 10-9! That’s metres per second!

EPA man:

And what’s the risk to the environment? Well? Well? Spit it out!

Joan

Well, there’s already lots of pollution around there…

EPA man:

(roars) NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

Joan:

(bursts into tears) Waaaaaaaaaaaah!

Would you like ginko biloba with that?

My team leader, Paul, decided to leave the office and buy some juice as a mid-afternoon “pick-me-up”. He waved for the attention of the Feeling Fruity attendant.

“Hi. I’d like a regular juice. Just raspberry, thanks.” Paul liked raspberries. He could feel a bit of a cold coming on and raspberries were reputed to have antibacterial properties.

“Raspberries,” acknowledged the attendant. “Do you want lemon sorbet or lime sorbet?”

“Just raspberries, please. By itself.” Paul said patiently.

“Ice cream or low fat yogurt?”

“Just raspberries,” Paul repeated.

“Any boosters? Ginko biloba? Wheatgrass?”

“Just raspberries!”

“Would you like apple juice with that?”

Annoyed, Paul said, “Just — ” Then he stopped. “Yeah… Okay… Apple juice would be nice.”

“That’ll be $4.50, please.”

Will dance for food

After celebrating Jon’s birthday at a Chinese restaurant in Fitzroy, we ventured out in search of more entertainment. Our gang of thirteen linked arms and descended upon Brunswick Street. Brunswick Street on a a busy Saturday night is full of buskers, people bar hopping, café lounging, and cruising around in hotted up cars.

“Trampoline is nearby! Let’s get ice-cream!”

As we approached the ice-cream store, Carlo started jumping up and down excitedly. “It’s the Nutbush!” he cried. “They’re playing the Nutbush!”

Sure enough, the opening bars of Tina Turner‘s 1970s classic was filtering through the store speakers and onto the thronging footpath. It truly was as if the God of Night Time Hilarity was smiling upon us.

Carlo leapt onto one of the wooden platform stools at the front of the store. “Five! Six! Five, six, seven, eight! Right foot, right! Left! Left! Back! Back…”

Being the shameless dancesport people that we are, there was no question of joining in. Immediately, we were doing the Nutbush in front of Trampoline. The sight of a large group of people dancing on Brunswick Street obviously was not a common one because soon a crowd had gathered to gape. We were joined by a Trampoline staff member and one of the more inspired audience members.

Rounds and rounds of the Nutbush went by. People across the street were taking photos. Cars slowed down to watch the commotion. What fun! What silliness!

But all good things must come to an end and when the song faded, we cheered and high-fived each other.

Just when we thought it was all over, another store assistant bounced out of Trampoline holding two huge cups of ice-cream with a dozen wooden paddle sticks stuck into them like echidna spines.

“Thanks guys! That was fantastic!” she enthused and handed us our ice-cream reward.

“Wow! Thank you!” Elated, we dug into our unexpectedly free dessert. Mmm…Raspberry, mango, cookies and cream, and chocolate…

Just desserts for consultants

Our company arranged for us an eight hour training session with RMIT‘s School of Geological Engineering. We environmental specialists were to learn how to classify soil consistently. We would get hands-on experience reading geological maps and differentiating between silty clay with sand inclusions, and sandy silt with gravel inclusions.

Our lecturer, Paulino, greeted us with abrupt enthusiasm. Seventeen of us sat in the soils laboratory, our legs dangling from high chairs. Paulino introduced himself and turned on his Powerpoint presentation.

“Look! I have new gadget!” he announced in his occasionally incomprehensible (Italian? Portuguese?) accent. With a flourish, he waved in front of us a stubby metallic wand. “See? It’s laser pointer and… Ah ha! Changes slides too.” The presentation jumped ahead. He clicked backwards then forwards.

We were suitably impressed.

“I only got it yesterday,” he said. He looked at us all slyly. “I charged it to you guys, you know.”

There was silence as we absorbed this news.

“Don’t look at me like that!” he cried in glee. “I know your type! Always charging things to jobs. Consultants! That’s what you do. Well — now I charge you!”

It was true and we knew it. We all began laughing.

“Of course, Paulino,” Sherri affirmed. Sherri is the team leader for contaminated land in the Environment Group. “Of course you should charge your new gadget to the company. In fact, you should have bought an even more expensive one!”

Trouble on platforms 5 & 6

It was almost dark when I stepped out of the train at Richmond station. I hoped I didn’t have to wait long for my connecting train. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something dark flying towards the train.

“THOCK!”

It rebounded off the train window. I looked down. It was a large rock, dark grey and angular. It was big. I wouldn’t have been able to wrap my hand around it.

“THOCK!”

I recoiled as another rock flew by. A man staggered past me. He stopped some distance ahead. He wound up his arm again and this time I saw him hurl another rock at the departing train, throwing his entire body forward in the effort. The train passengers inside ducked back away from the window.

Alert and alarmed, I walked casually towards the downward ramp. As soon as I passed the rock-thrower, I began jogging to the ticket barriers, where I knew there would be train staff.

“Excuse me,” I called to the two staff members as I approached thee exit. “There’s a gentleman on platform 5 and 6 throwing rocks at trains. They’re big rocks.”

“Really?! What does he look like?” asked the woman.

“He’s wearing a dark blue t-shirt with white writing on it. He’s got dark hair, I think.”

The male staff member began speaking rapidly into his radio. “There’s a man throwing rocks on platforms 5 and 6…”

I waited for a short while then looked back towards the platforms. And there he was, leaning against the wall about five metres away. The rock-thrower stared balefully at me. I stepped a little bit away from the people talking into radios.

“There he is,” I said in a low voice. The staff stopped talking and looked at the still man.

“That’s him?”

“I think so. Yes.”

The male staff member passed through the ticket barrier and walked up to the man. “Hey mate. Where are you going?”

The rock-thrower exploded into action. “I’m going home!” he shouted, stumbling away from the wall. “I wanna go home! I WANNA GO HOME!” He looked at me again then ran up the ramp.

The staff member whipped out the radio again. “He’s on platforms 3 and 4 now. We’ll need help…”

“Don’t worry,” said the woman. “We’ll take it from here.”

I nodded and walked backed to my train platform.

Gambling

I was sitting in a crowded tram when the door whooshed open and two ticket inspectors stepped up. They swiped their magic ‘access all areas’ cards and stood in the doorway, talking.

At the next stop, a tall Asian youth (international student?) entered the tram and froze. The ticket inspectors glanced at him. I could see the wheels turning in his head.

“I have to buy a ticket,” he said slowly.

The inspectors moved to let him past. He stayed in his spot.

“I need to check if I have coins,” he said. He pulled out his wallet. After flicking through the compartments, he carefully put the wallet away.

“No coins,” one of the inspectors murmured.

“I don’t have any coins.”

The inspectors looked at each other and sighed. “Where are you going?”

“Just to Melbourne Uni. [pause] Is that okay?”

Surely they’ve been through this before,” I thought. “Those damned tram ticket machines only accept coins.”

“You’ve got a few options, mate,” one of the officials stated. “You can get off at the next stop…”

“I’ve got coins,” someone piped up. “I’ll change it for you… if you’ve got a five.” Ooh, some nice person was being helpful. Hey! (double take) That was me talking!

The student jerked his head towards me and looked through his wallet again. “I don’t have a five,” he said calmly. He focused back on the ticket inspectors. “Can I stay? Is that okay?”

“We’re not going to say it’s okay or not,” they said.

He appeared to be pondering this.

“Here, let me give you some coins.” I offered up a gold two dollar coin and a one dollar coin. “You can pay me back the next time I see you on a tram.”

He shrugged and shook his head.

The four of us waited in silence as the tram rumbled by three more stops. At last, we reached Melbourne University. The doors whooshed open and everyone, including the inspectors, stepped out.

Joan the Programmer

I’m entertaining friends in the rumpus room when I hear mum’s call.

“Joan!”

“What, mum?”

Dad rushes down the stairs, holding the phone before him. “It’s Jason,” he says grimly. “He says it’s an emergency.”

I put the phone to my ear.

“Joan!” comes Jason’s frantic voice. “You need to do some emergency programming!”

“Huh?!”

“There’s a problem in Western Australia. Go up to my room and turn on my laptop.”

Confused, I run upstairs.

“What’s going on, Jason?”

“Is the laptop on? You need to open up muvision. It’s a black and yellow icon. Now find the file called ‘main.c’. Go up to the top and scroll down until you reach the function called ‘main’.”

“Function?” I reach back into my hazy past and recall ‘Engineering Programming’ (ie. Java for Dummies).

“Find the ‘while’ loop… It’ll have the word ‘while’ in it.”

“Jason, I have a bunch of computer scientists, mathematicians and electrical engineers downstairs. Do you want to talk to them?”

“No, Joan. You can do it.” He believes in me.

“There’s a line with 2000 or 20000 in it. Do you see it?”

“Yes.”

“Read it to me, every character.”

I hear the intense concentration of silence as I read each letter, square bracket and space. After my litany, he instructs me to make changes.

“Now compile it, Joan.”

“Compile,” I murmur. I look for the ‘compile’ button.

“It’s in the top left. It looks like a pile of paper.”

I click it cautiously. Suddenly, a stream of sentences fills the window at the bottom of the screen. Thankfully, there are none of these “bugs” of which Jason tells me. Jason then leads me through finding the file on the hard disk, renaming it, then compressing it.

As I do this, I think of my guests downstairs, who are probably wondering where their host has disappeared to.

“Now put it on a USB disk and email it from the main computer.”

I fumble with my USB disk (which I normally use to transfer Microsoft Word files), then finally email it to Western Australia.

“Thanks, Joan. I hope that works. Bye.” The dial tone tells me it is over.

So, your mother dresses you?

Jana showed me the frog pyjamas her mum had bought her.

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“Did she think they was cute or something?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess you can wear them at home…”

“This is why I can’t wear anything that mum ever buys me.”

“That’s a shame,” I said. “Mum buys all my clothes. Mum bought all this…” I pointed out my new mohair jumper, my form-fitting black pants, my cute black Mary Jane shoes, my sparkly blue headband. “This is my favourite coat,” I continued. I modelled my hooded black woollen winter coat. “The other day, a random girl ran up to me at Melbourne Central. She said, “Excuse me! Could I ask where you bought your coat from?” and I had to say, “Sorry, my mum bought it for me.” “

“So, your mum dresses you?” Jana asked, fascinated and skeptical.

“No,” I corrected her. “She puts a department store in my wardrobe then I dress me.”

Arts bitterness

One morning, I wanted to treat myself to a hot drink. I considered awarding my patronage to Gloria Jeans, Hudsons, Coffee HQ or some other coffee chain store but then I decided to support local business. I walked into a new coffee shop near the train station. Staff there had been trying to woo me in for weeks with their free raisin toast samples and mo’aves.

“One soy latte please,” I said to the attendant.

“Sure,” she said brightly. She tapped a fellow staff member on the shoulders to pass on the message. He got to work straight away.

“So,” she said in a friendly way, “What do you do?”

I was a little surprised by the directness of her conversation starter (What happened to ‘How are you today?’) but I proudly said, “I’m an environmental engineer.”

“Where do you work?”

“Just over there, in that building.” I felt the need to add something. “I only started a few months ago.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “So you did one of those degrees that actually gets you a job.”

Whoa. I stepped back a little.

“Um. Yeah. Environmental engineering. It’s quite vocational…”

“I did Arts. Lucas here did Graphic Design.”

Lucas stiffened and continued making my soy latte in uncomfortable silence.

“Oh.” I tried to nod understandingly. Quick! Say something not condescending! “…Do you find yourself using your skills now? This seems like a pretty… funky place.”

“Nah. Not really.” She looked at me expectantly.

(Cautiously) “Is that disappointing?”

“Yeah. I guess. But we all knew when we were at uni that we weren’t going to get jobs. We were expecting it. Now I want to do Education so I can get a job.”

“Ah… Some of my friends who did Arts have done that and they love Education now.”

“Yeah,” she nodded enthusiastically. “But, you know, I kind of look back on it and think, ‘What was the point of those three years?’ “

“Surely it wasn’t a waste of three years, though…” I murmured.

“One soy latte.” Lucas had spoken for the first time. He pushed my take-away cup towards me.

“Thanks.” I wrapped my fingers around the insulated hotness.

“See you next time!” she called as, stepping back onto the street, I walked towards my professional career.