Some Flagrant Plagerism of Some Flagrant Plargism

My partner just posted this one her blog, after stealing it from Kint's blog. I have decided to also steal it because someone who shall remain nameless wants a new blog post from me.

"So I kind of got this idea from another blog, was just scanning and found a blog where she was answering questions, not sure when/where she was asked but it gave me a blog idea.... seeing as I have so many loyal followers, i encourage you all to ask me a question and I will answer it...

You can be random, or funny (or try to be) or serious or a little bit naughty... and I will endeavour to answer then all..."

So ask me a question, or not, whatever :-)

Pay It Forward

I found this "Pay it Forward" thingo at my friends blog, Somewhere of Jen's Rainbow http://rainbowjenjen.blogspot.com/.

I decided to get myself involved in this because I've been meaning to learn/do woodwork for years but also find some excuse to put it off. Well no more I says, what better way to motivate myself to learn and new skill than to give myself three orders to fill before I've even started.

So how will it work:

The first three people to comment on this blog post, will receive a hand made gift from me (that may or may not be a piece of wood work) in the next 365 days.

What it will be and when in the next 365 days you will receive is yet to be determined.

Bear in mind though, that if you want to get something from me you must also be willing to Pay it Forward?

On a somewhat slighlty related point, has anyone seen the movie of the same name with Helen Hunt, Kevin Spacey and I think it was the kid from Sixth Sense, is it worth seeing?

A Community Service Announcement

The following is a e-mail I have just sent to Budget Motel Chain in relation to one of their motels- Rippleside Park Motor Inn in Geelong. If you are planning a trip to Geelong I highly recommended you do not stay a Rippleside Park Motor Inn.

To Whom it May Concern,

I wish to make a complaint about one of the Motels in your chain. My wife, a friend, I and our children stayed at Rippleside Park Motor Inn North Geelong on the nights of the 11/01/10 & 12/01/10 checking out on the morning of 13/01/10.

During our stay their was an issue with the plumbing in our bathroom, what the exact issue was, I'm not sure but we came back from being out all day on the 12th to find the bathroom and toilet area flooded. Unfortunately, some of this water had leaked into the carpeted area of the room. We laid down some towels and immediately notified reception of what had occured before going out again.

That day we had paid to get internet access in the room, but when we returned the login in we had been given was not working. I went to reception but by that stage it was closed, as we had some urgent business that we needed Internet access for, I knocked on the owners door. I did not receive a response, so I went back to our room. Shortly later one of the managers knocked on our door, I explained the issue, to which they totally ignored before launching into a rant about the states of her floor and she basically accused us of deliberately and maliciously damanging the room.

At this stage I mentioned the fact that the room had be fine when we left in the morning, and that as soon as we got back and noticed the water leak we had informed them. I had stated that we had noticed that there was an issue with the cold water tap and that you had to turn it incredibly hard to make sure it was fully off. However, the owners assured this would not have been the cause as their cleaning person would have checked the bathroom thoroughly and turned the tap off if we had accidentally left it running.

We then went back to reception to determine if we could fix the issue we where having with the Internet. The owner was joined by her husband and again they pretty much ignored the issue with the Internet and continued to accuse over the damage to the room. They also accused us of trying to hide the fact we had our friend staying in the room with us because we had not mentioned when we checked in. When we checked in our friend was not going to be staying with us, but at another motel in Geelong. Her plans fell through and since we had a bed we weren't using in our room we offered it to her, this was arranged after hours when the owners weren't in reception so we decided to tell them when we checked out and pay the extra money then. We made no attempt to hide our friend or her son from the owners and knew they had seen her coming and going with us.

That night when they questioned me about I foolishly denied that our friend was staying with us due to the over the top, and accusatory response we had received to water leak we had the room which we had nothing to do. I was afraid to be honest with them initially because I was worried about what they might do to us over something that was our fault when they had been so awful to us over something that had nothing to do with us. I did, however, later admit that our friend was staying with us and that we would be find with paying the extra money for her. At the end of that meeting I apologised for denying our friend was staying there and for the damage to the room despite the fact we had nothing to do with it. The female owner was still upset, but her husband assured me everything was okay.

The next morning when I went to check out and pay the extra amount for our friend who also stayed with us, I was again lectured about the state of the room. The female owner accused us that the towel she picked up of the floor was brown and accused us of being untruthful and suggested that we had spilt coke, (this despite the floor being so flooded that we would have had to have poured about 20 x 2 L bottles of coke on the floor to get that amount of liquid), when I pointed this out to her she moved on to accusing us of damaging the floor with hair dye, which would be even more costly to us than pouring coke on her floors!

I again informed her of the problem with the tap and she stated that she did not think this caused the problem. I also stated that there was some water around the toilet that morning, so maybe the toilet was leaking, again this was dismissed. She was convinced we had spilt some kind of brown liquid all over the floor. I stated that this was not the case and that if we had we would of told her. I stated that their was leak with their plumbing and that the brown tinge to the liquid was probably due to the water reaching the carpeted area and drawing up some dirt from the carpet and floorboards. Again this was dismissed.

It seemed apparent to me that the owner wanted to blame us for the damages. I find it interesting that at no stage did the owners consider apologising for the leak and the fact that we were forced to stay in a room with a significant patch of soaked carpet. They also showed no interest in the damage caused to our belongings which were on the floor at the time of the leak.

While I was checking out, the other owner was outside being abusive and agressive towards my wife. He shoved his head into the car the women were sitting in to count the passengers. My wife and her friend were made to feel very threatened by this man and after he left my wife decided to let him know that his behaviour was inappropriate, especially to women. When she approached him and gently explained how he had made her and our friend feel he took it as an invitation to be more rude and abusive towards her and he began to lecture her. I find it interesting that the night before when he was face to face with another male everything was apparently fine, but the next morning he took the opportunity to twice yell at, and stand over my wife, while I was not there. He admitted to my wife that his issue was with me for having lied about having another person in the room, but at no point did he come to me to talk about it, he chose instead to single out the women and treat them in an abusive manner over an issue he had with another man. I find this behaviour incredibly inappropriate and mysoginist and I worry for every woman who has the misfortunate of staying in his establishment if this is how he thinks women should be treated. If this is how he treats women who are staying with a man, I can only imagine how scary it must be for a woman staying there by herself.

When my wife realised he was not going to apologise for his behaviour and was getting closer to her and yelling louder at her she said "I think we should leave it at that" and began walking away to make herself feel safe again, as she did the owner screamed at her "GOOD! THE SOONER YOU GET OUT OF HERE, THE SOONER YOU GET AWAY FROM HERE AND NEVER COME BACK, THE BETTER!" My wife was shaking when I found her in the car after checking out.

By this stage we were outraged with the behaviour of the owners of the motel and had decided that we would never be staying there again and could not wait to get out of there. I'm e-mailing you, because after the way we were treated during our stay at Rippleside Park Motor Inn I have no wish to speak to the owners/managers of that establishement ever again. I wanted you to be aware of the treatment we received at this motel and feel you should carefully consider whether you want it to continue to be linked with your chain/business. We have stayed at a number of other motels in your chain and the staff and establishments have always been lovely. I feel that this motel has the possibility to tarnish the otherwise good name of our business and felt you should be made aware of this situation.

PS This e-mail was a joint piece of work with my partner.