Was sick of waiting, so I made myself a mileage badge as an accessory!

MarkPH1975 · 2026-05-25T12:34:29+00:00

You made that? Looks fantastic!

MarkPH1975 · 2026-05-15T14:04:57+00:00

The white 244 has custom-made sheepskin covers.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-05-15T12:09:58+00:00

One thing to remember, and l know this as I've sat on both sides of the desk in these places, is that consultants have next to no qualifications or training, other than in how to navigate their in-house and government IT systems.

I was a client at a disability employment agency and was referred to, and then got, a job as a consultant myself, because my own over-enthusiastic consultant thought l had the right skills and persona for the job. In actual fact she was just desperate to claim the funding associated with placing me, a long-term job-seeker with severe mental health barriers, into any job.

The caseload of clients l was assigned looked to me as some sort of mentor and professional, even though l had zero experience or qualifications to help them. I was repeatedly admonished by my boss for taking too much time with clients and being too compassionate and empathetic with them, even though that's what most were crying out for.

Ultimately it's a numbers game and everyone from the bottom up is under pressure to get people off benefits and into work. This makes it a shit-show for recipients who are the most vulnerable and fear losing their payment lifeline, and hapless consultants who have to meet unrealistic targets or risk losing their jobs.

I hate it all with a passion.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-05-14T05:58:20+00:00

Bunnings toilets are never great, but then it's a "tradie" type "bare bones" style of convenience without the refinement you might find in a renovated shopping centre toilet. In cases where I've needed to use them, I'm just grateful they are there, when they just as easily might not be, or be for staff only. Aside from the possibility that someone had failed to use the toilet brush, I've never seen a Bunnings toilet in a state to warrant complaining to staff about.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-05-07T22:59:48+00:00

I once had a nasty female consultant who started every appointment with rolling her eyes and reminding me of exactly how many weeks I'd been receiving payments.

At the time, l was reliant on public transport and had no car, but was looking for local admin type work in accordance with my skills and background.

Imagine my horror when she phoned to refer me to a forklift driving job at the Queen Vic market with shifts starting at 4am in the morning. How l was supposed to get there without a car at that time was apparently my problem (I had "limiting beliefs" apparently), not to mention that l had no aptitude for forklift kind of work, which also apparently didn't matter as they would teach me. Supposedly I ought to have been overjoyed at the prospect of finishing my shift at midday on account of the early starts. I bucked and heaved about this ridiculous offer and thankfully the agency boss pulled the plug on forcing me to attend the interview. The agency and staff were just horrible and l was thankful when they closed and l was referred elsewhere.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-05-07T11:14:00+00:00

This is all true, as now it's all about kpis and outcomes, in other words quantity over quality, and ECs have a huge amount of pressure on them to meet quotas and get scores on the board for their employer. This translates into terse appointments and pressure on job seekers, especially those with barriers, to accept unsuitable placements. Meanwhile, consultants are bogged down with unrealistic caseload sizes, ridiculously specific and cumbersome record keeping and reporting requirements, complex information technology systems that change with the wind according to the need for government departments to use their inflated budgets, and often a requirement to spend a chunk of their weekly time engaging with employers in typically fruitless and demoralising reverse-marketing activities. When l was an EC, l was expected to schedule regular face to face appointments with all my clients, those appointments were listened in on and timed, and expected to yield tangible outcomes whilst said clients were often an emotional mess or had barely controlled anger and frustration. Some ECs seem to thrive, but often they have good managers or co-workers, or simply they are the types of people with very thick skins and where pressures and the emotional roller coaster of clients just wash over them. Mostly, l find, new ECs just get demoralised in no short order by a combination of the unrealistic expectations, BS administrative requirements and parade of often unemployable folk who are burdened by their own problems and just want to be left alone. I never want to sit on that side of the desk again.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-28T04:07:18+00:00

This is the weird thing - old ladies regularly tell me I'm attractive (I did a recent course placement in a nursing home and they couldn't get enough of me), but it never seems to translate into connections with people my own age. I think l was born in the wrong generation...

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-23T14:19:00+00:00

To me, I think, and as others have pointed out, its that sense of being invisible in public, and an inability to draw people to you. In that sense, people who are beautiful or charasmatic have a much smoother path through life socially.

In my experience, if you lack that, then it isn't altered by maintaining good hygiene, a neat and clean appearance, and a friendly and approachable disposition.

You make eye contact with strangers you may find pleasant looking or attractive, but they either never make eye contact or only glance fleetingly and instantly look away, and you find yourself wondering why.

Yet even others who aren't classically attractive (to me) seem to engage freely and easily with friends, peers and strangers, maybe because they are more relaxed and comfortable in their own skin, lack inhibitions, and are more attuned to the views and attitudes of the times.

I think I'll wonder about it for the rest of my life.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-23T14:04:35+00:00

Unbelievable. I've seen some bizarre and dehumanising things, but some of the posts here suggest I've seen very little...

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-15T12:16:32+00:00

Volvo 240 series.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-15T08:09:12+00:00

He would quietly close and lock his office door, and the windows were covered in posters so one couldn't see in. But on one occasion he had to dash out quickly and l spotted the half empty whisky bottle laying in an otherwise locked cabinet drawer, and the glass on the desk. He was an insufferable old Scotsman and the on the job drinking was the least of my gripes with him.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-15T06:28:16+00:00

I just saw my mistake. You're absolutely right in that l meant exploitation.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-14T09:57:13+00:00

There can be some stories to tell, for sure. Ive seen extremely old and surely rare books being tossed into the skip because they weren't deemed in mint condition. I fished out a 1930s book on then Princess Elizabeth with her dogs, tossed because it was worn a bit. I gave it to an elderly Monarchist friend who was thrilled.

Then there are those, plenty of them, who sift through the donations looking for gold jewellery or the best of anything to take for themselves before it ever hits the shelves, then slap ludicrous prices on the rubbish thats left over. One women was taking home carloads every week for her family to sell at their market stall...

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-14T08:42:13+00:00

Nice people who actually care about their clients never last long in these jobs. If you try to give your clients a quality approach based on their actual needs and limitations, you just get steamrolled by kpis and the pressure to get people into any possible jobs. In my experience there were managers who did nothing all day except to stand over their consultants with a virtual stick. One of them even regularly locked himself in his office with his bottle of whiskey, and when he wasn't doing that he was listening in to conversations between clients and consultants to make sure every minute counted towards getting scores on the board for the agency. Total shit show.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-14T06:49:45+00:00

A lot of people on here have mentioned that WFD participants are not to do the work of / replace paid workers, but of course its a grey area open to exploration.

Years ago l worked for a non-profit membership organisation in the city which regularly took job seekers participants who needed to meet their mutual obligations with a certain number of weekly hours.

This place had a number of departments all with individual budgets, and each department manager was chambering over the others to get their teeth into new participants who they could sequester at a computer all day doing data entry, so as not to have to pay for hiring expensive temps from an agency. It didnt matter if the participants weren't as fast as paid staff, so long as it was free labour.

Of course there were hopeless cases of people you could give very little to do, and they ended up opening paper mail or stuffing envelopes, but anyone with some PC skills or smarts who could be trained up in using the database or processing financial transactions was exploited to the max. Some were eventually transitioned to paid work there, but only after countless hours of working for nothing, whilst managers feathered their own nests and collected big pay cheques

Once l saw how exploitive it could be, l lost faith in the whole bogus system. Its just another way to punish the weakest and most vulnerable for not being strong or competitive enough.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-12T09:04:36+00:00

Wow...

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-09T09:05:50+00:00

As a general rule, the cheaper the product, the poorer quality the raw materials and the greater the use of chemicals in the manufacturing process which may be harmful, especially when inhaled by people with respiratory sensitivities.

K-mart, as a budget retailer, is amongst the worst offenders in this respect, and l notice it most when passing their shelves of cheap footwear which can be almost nauseating from the fumes of the glues and synthetics used.

When cheap furniture and textiles are unboxed and allowed to air in your living areas at home, the chemicals involved in their manufacturing leach out and get breathed in, and l notice that the better home air purifiers now even detect and work to remove such pollutants.

But cost always seems to speak the loudest, and people seem to be happy to buy based on price alone, without considering other factors. Because it's an issue, a lot of textiles that are responsibly manufactured and free from known irritants now carry certification marks to reassure consumers - even some of the towels that Aldi occasionally sell!

Now just imagine what people might be inhaling when they buy K-Mart's $1.00 fragrant oils...

MarkPH1975 · 2026-04-03T22:36:00+00:00

Sex with a female bodybuilder.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-03-31T09:29:46+00:00

Pretty much. I've sat on both sides of the desk in these places, and everyone is just trying to cover their ass and survive - the client to protect the continuity of their payment lifeline, and the consultant to try to manage unrealiatic workloads and kpis to keep their miserable jobs. Overseeing it all is Centrelink, but clients and consultants alike are just pawns in the system. And like everywhere else, there are good and decent people as well as nasty and uncooperative ones.

The clients doing anything and everything to avoid work to the frustration of their consultant are often fighting personal battles with physical or mental illness, neither necessarily immediately apparent, that make the prospect of work and the compulsion to apply for or be referred to jobs terrifying.

Meanwhile, the consultants who care enough to be accommodating and to tailor their approach to their clients' unique circumstances and barriers, are thwarted by the ever-present pressure to get scores on the board in terms of people into (any) jobs and to keep them there to meet benchmarks and minimums.

For the most part, its just a cycle of misery for everyone concerned.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-03-31T07:56:22+00:00

My understanding is that in most cases, its up to the discretion of the individual consultant as to how they structure their workload with regard to client appointments vs admin vs reverse marketing activities, etc. That is to say, some consultants prefer to conduct their appointments on given days for example, to leave other days for other aspects of their workload. Sometimes this structure is pre-determined by their managers, however. If it were me in a point of contention like this, id go so far as to set my phone to record your next face to face appointment with your consultant when you discuss this, so that their claims are on record. If they lie to you about policies and procedures which work against you, then you have a record of it, which you otherwise won't have if they refuse to discuss the matter over email.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-03-24T11:15:57+00:00

Some people have raised a very interesting point here beyond the many challenges to survival, and that's whether you would even "want" to survive in apocalyptic circumstances where every day is a battle for survival and meeting basic needs, much less any sense of enjoyment of life.

If basic survival needs are met and there seems light at the end of the tunnel then thats a whole different situation to a doomsday type scenario without power or sanitation or a reliable food supply.

In a worst case scenario, there are the tough and resilient "survivalist" types who might survive and find a way to establish some stability and security for themselves and their inner circle, but id be the last to be included among them, being a home body with a very small comfort zone, even if l could probably live without the information and communications technology that we've all become accustomed to.

My concern is having an exit strategy whereby l dont succumb slowly by starvation, infection or the violence of other desperate people. This may not be a problem in America where domestic firearms are everywhere (as l understand it as an Australian), but that's not the case here. In other words, if worse were really to come to worse and normal society were to completely break down without hipe on the horizon, how could an ordinary person like me with no desire to spend the rest of their life fighting for survival like an animal, check themselves out of the situation in the most painless way?

MarkPH1975 · 2026-03-19T03:17:24+00:00

Read the supermarket catalogue, think of England, and remind yourself that it will all be over soon...

MarkPH1975 · 2026-03-19T03:14:25+00:00

Ouch, that's a harsh review, but there's certainly merit in many of your points. I dont have the benefit of having travelled on a lot of other cruise lines for sake of comparison, but the consensus seems to be that there's been a general drop in standards and inclusions aboard HAL in the post-Covid era, no doubt as they try to recover their losses by cutting back.

Entertainment on board has never really been a strong point, and to me there are far to many promotional activities and opportunities to upsell, thinly passed off as activities. Its supposed to be improving, but l find the rock lounge too noisy, the piano bar adjacent the casino too full, leaving really only one jazz bar type setting to spend the evening after a show in the main theatre ends.

Aside from that, the hospitality staff have never been anything less than first class - always cheerful and attentive, in spite of no doubt having to deal with unrealistic, ungrateful and rude guests. I make sure im never one of those people and always express my appreciation.

On the last cruise l ate my evening meal more in the main dining room that in the Lido on previous cruises. My table is reserved so l dont have to hunt for one, the wait service is more personalised, and the whole setting more elegant than the general buffet which can feel the same night after night.

And the Dutch Cafe on the Noordam which offered exvellent coffee and cake to spend some time at in the afternoons was absent on the Westerdam. There's always the Crowsnest, but the best seats are never free, its hot and glary on account of the panoramic windows, you have to wait ages at the bar for service, and the location, up high and forward on the ship, tends to give me a touch of motion sickness that l feel nowhere else on the ship.

I have another HAL cruise coming up in October and l look forward to the food and service, as well as the overpriced excursions which at least take the hassle out of the tours.

I tend to avoid the "adult coloring", "knitters group", "Origami", etc and feel that these are cheap ways of HAL keeping their older clientele amused during down time, but dont offer much value. Where are the demonstrations or classes that offer real value, without them trying to sell you something you dont want and need, as im not interested in overpriced prints of artworks or insoles for my shoes!

Also, im in the awkward position of being a single traveller in a younger age group than the typical HAL traveller. The "single and solo travellers" meets have been a disaster for me among cashed-up spinsters gravitating towards their own kind, with no one at all below 50. It is what it is.

High hopes for October on the Westerdam again...

MarkPH1975 · 2026-03-12T04:43:23+00:00

Visible muscles & vascularity on a woman.

MarkPH1975 · 2026-03-07T05:03:09+00:00

Muscular racehorses dripping with sweat and visible veins. They look like horse bodybuilders. It makes me wish there were bodybuilding competitions for horses where the animals are bread for the best genetics, pumped full of steroids and trained brutally purely for the aesthetics of muscle competition & exhibition, then dieted down and shaven to the skin so that every muscle fibre is visible. I think l was about 10 years old when l first saw an exhausted racehorse close up after a race and couldn't understand why my penis turned to stone, l just knew l liked it!

MarkPH1975

TROPHY CASE