Month: October 2021

Being a bloke in an industry largely dominated by women

On By somegeektoldme@gmail.comIn People

I want to talk about being a guy and working in an industry dominated by women. Why? Because I have been doing that for 12 years, and a work colleague suggested I write about it.

It’s been an interesting 12 years and I have learnt that there are both positive and negative sides to being surrounded by females.

Whenever I meet somebody new and they ask the inevitable, “So what do you do for work?”, 100% of the people are surprised with my answer. Everyone always has follow up questions and they want to know more, but honestly it’s not even that interesting. Jobs should not have genders, unless you have the type of job that you use your genitals for; which I do not.

Image by Ronile from Pixabay

I spend a lot of my work week listening to my co-workers chat about clothes, haircuts, small town gossip and TV shows, I have no knowledge of. I find it hard to join in these conversations, as I wear the same black cargo pants every day.1 On work days, I wear my uniform shirt and on the weekends, I wear various geeky t-shirts that my wife buys me for every anniversary, birthday or Christmas. I am not the person to ask for fashion tips or to include in any fashion related conversation.

I have had the same haircut for the past 15 years. Short back and sides and slightly longer on top, cut with clippers by a barber or my lovely wife. The only difference in my haircut, has been the amount of grey hairs slowly taking over as I get older. Personally, I blame this solely on fatherhood and the stress of refereeing my two unmatured clones on a daily basis.

Also, I didn’t grow up in the town I live in currently; I’m not even from the same district. But most of my co-workers were born and raised here, so they all know everyone and everyone’s business. So when they talk about Bob’s new girlfriend, Sue, who was married to that doctor, but got divorced because her mother-in-law crashed their boat at the lake, 4 years ago; I AM CLUELESS. I don’t even know what lake they are referring to. There are so many, which one are you talking about?!

Reality TV shows seem to be standard office conversation, but no matter how hard I try, I just don’t understand the shows. Perhaps I need to take a course, “Reality TV for Dummies” or something similar. Whenever I hear about, “So and so got booted off” or “Did you see that girl, got to go through?“, I know I can’t add anything to the conversation.

So what do I talk to my co-workers about? Well other than work, I like it when someone asks me science, history or sport questions. It makes me feel glad I took the time to remember the 967,886,430,774 useless facts, rattling around in my big, ugly head. I do have to be careful when answering questions, partly because I don’t want people to think that I believe I’m superior or a know it all. But mostly I don’t want to be accused of mansplaining.

I like working with women when it comes to a problem-solving situation, as they offer a different perspective, I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. They are very detail oriented, which works well, as I’m usually oblivious when it comes to the finer points. To be honest, most of it is pretty positive, although there have been the odd few occasions where I have experienced sexism.

Like when my co-workers hung a nude male firefighter calendar in the staffroom; if I was to hang the straight male equivalent, I’m 100% sure it would be frowned upon! Or when clients assume I’m gay and then I have to somehow try and mention that I have a wife, in a non-obvious way.2

Clients can be great though, especially at Christmas when they give my co-workers all the same generic girly gift, but they go out of their way to get me something more neutral.

I also think I have forgotten how to speak to other men. I used to play football every weekend, but haven’t for the last two years; so now 98% of the conversations I have are with women, and I get tongue tied when I have to speak to anyone else. Not that I’m especially chatty anyway.

I think that seeing a man do a stereotypical female job seems weird to people, because that is not what you see in the media. There are always movies, TV shows, books and adverts, showing women doing the “male” jobs, which is so important for young girls and boys to see those women out being firefighters, builders and CEO’s. However men being nurses, caregivers or secretaries, is hardly ever shown in media and if it is, that character is usually the butt of a joke.

I think that there are probably many men in my situation and that my story is neither interesting nor unique, it’s all about representation.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week.

1 Black shorts for summer, though. Sweet!

2 The joys of living in a conservative country.

It’s a fine line between keepsakes and hoarding

On By somegeektoldme@gmail.comIn Children2 Comments

I want to talk about passing on or donating your children’s old belongings. Why? Because being a bloke, I didn’t foresee the different emotions that I would have, when donating items that previously belonged to my boys.

When my wife and I announced our first pregnancy, we did it by posting a photograph of three Super shirts: two t-shirts and a baby singlet. When we announced our second pregnancy, we did it with four Star Wars shirts: three t-shirts and one baby singlet.

We kept the Superman baby singlet, along with the baby Star Wars singlet, because they hold sentimental and emotional value for us; especially me. What I didn’t expect was to have an emotional attachment to furniture and other items.

Now I realise that every family would have to go through this at some stage; about decluttering the house and the kids’ belongings. This can mean sorting out books, that they no longer read; toys they no longer play with; and also clothes that no longer fit them.

Over the last few years, we have tried to pass on as much stuff, as we possibly could; purely because a lot of those items, were actually given to us. I think it would bring us some type of negative karma, if we were going to sell things that we were given to us. Does that make sense?

Image by PX41-Media from Pixabay

As a parent, but especially as a father, I’ve been having conflicting feelings about this. An easy example of this, is when we donated some clothes recently; which were clothes that UMC2 no longer fits. As I was packing the clothes into a bag, I came across a blue Spider-Man t-shirt, that I purchased for UMC1. I remember the day and the store that I purchased that t-shirt. As I was holding it in my hands, I was hit with a mixture of feelings; it’s a small piece of clothing, that no human member of our family fits anymore.

I was surprised that I felt some sadness because of it. Both my boys had worn that t-shirt, and now it was too small for either one of them. I knew I had to pass it on. I had to donate it, so it could find its way to another child, that would love it as much as what my two boys did.

Another example was six months ago, when we sold our wooden cot. I remember buying it, because I didn’t have enough money, so I had to sell some of my Spawn comics to cover the cost. Spawn actually helping children sleep is such a crazy concept to me!

Both my boys have their own beds now, but my house is very small, so they actually have to share a bedroom. UMC2 has not slept in the cot for an extremely long time, so we had packed it up and left it in our tiny bedroom.

Some months had passed and I made the observation that our bedroom was fast becoming a scene from Steptoe and Son. We needed to get rid of the cot. We both decided we should paint it, so we could try to sell it. The strange thing is that, when the entire time the cot was dismantled, I was just frustrated with it. The reason was because it was just sitting there doing nothing, taking up a massive amount of space, in an already small bedroom.

It was a first world problem; I get it, but it was still something that we needed to rectify. We managed to sell the cot and mattress online, so I was relieved that it was going. A problem was created though, when the buyer arrived to pick it up. It was my job to assemble all the pieces, to make sure nothing was missing. It was at this point; and as stupid as it sounds, I felt an emotional attachment to the cot, that I didn’t know was actually there.

This piece of bedroom furniture had protected both my boys, while they were asleep for five years and I couldn’t help but think, this was a massive chapter in our children’s lives that was closing. I really didn’t think it would have that much of an impact on me, but it did. I remember my wife and I building the cot for the first time, and I remember the first night UMC1 slept in it.

Later on, I had to dismantle and pack it up when we moved cities, and finally be able to reassemble it when we purchased our house. It was just some pieces of wood and a mattress, but it had been a huge part of our lives. When the buyer came to pick it up, I helped him take it to his car and hoped his children would get joy from it, as he drove away.

I’ve discovered that as a parent, I’ve wanted to keep many things from the boys’ childhoods; whether it’s socks, shoes, t-shirts, shorts, or any type of clothing and toys. But if I did this, the house would be chaos. Like I said before, as a guy, I really didn’t think I would have an emotional attachment to children’s furniture, but also to their old toys and t-shirts; things the kids no longer or can use.

The books that the boys would ask us to read, 100 times a day, no longer get touched. They will be replaced with new and more complicated books, so they can be read 100 times a day. Even with the meagre amount of toys that we have, a lot of them don’t get played with anymore.

I think with donating and passing on old items, it’s great knowing that they are going to be used by someone else, even if you never meet them. However this also means, the boys will receive new and donated items, so the cycle can continue. And over time, those items will get replaced as well. I guess what I’m really talking about, is the fact that with a lot of the items that we donated, I discovered that I had more of an emotional attachment to them, compared to the boys.

I know this sounds strange coming from a guy, but I would love to have some type of profound and wise quote about this, but I just don’t; it’s just life. It’s always been like this and that’s how it’s going to continue to be like this. I think as a parent, I really don’t want us to be a family of hoarders. Though to be fair, with the boys collecting sticks and stones in their room, maybe hoarding is in their blood as well.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon.

What I’ve learnt after watching 3,850 minutes of Dragon Ball

On By somegeektoldme@gmail.comIn Television

I want to talk about Dragon Ball. Why? The reason is because my awesome wife gave me the complete Dragon Ball Saga on DVD for Christmas. I had watched Dragon Ball Z a long time ago, but no other Dragon Ball series regularly since then.

My wife thought it would be a great idea for us to watch them together on Saturday nights, to witness the beginning of the whole story, but also to understand some of the events we had heard about.

So instead of hiring some baby sitters to watch UMC1 and UMC2, and hit some bars, nightclubs and parties on Saturday nights, we stayed at home and watched Dragon Ball. We are that cool.

Image by Anthony Gallon from Pixabay

22 discs, 3,850 minutes, and 153 episodes later, we have finished it. There are so many different things that we have learnt, but since we went into Dragon Ball without a huge amount of knowledge; other than what we have picked up over the last few decades, everything was revealing and entertaining.

Below are 25 of the most craziest, interesting, entertaining, and favourite moments from Dragon Ball, that we have discovered, in no particular order. Also I realise a lot of people would have already seen Dragon Ball, so this list will not be a surprise to some of you; I’m only a few decades late.

WARNING, there are spoilers, so read at your own caution.

1.) Krillin has always been loyal, short and bald.

2.) The craziest building in Dragon Ball, has to be Muscle Tower, the six-story fortress, belonging to General White, of the Red Ribbon Army. When Goku enters it, he encounters mazes, monsters and mayhem.

3.) The original reason Bulma was searching for the Dragon Balls, was for the Eternal Dragon to grant her a boyfriend. Yes, a boyfriend.

4.) The Red Ribbon Army soldiers were under the assumption, that the reason they were searching for the Dragon Balls, was for world domination. The real reason was for Commander Red, the leader of the Red Ribbon Army, to become taller.

5.) DynoCaps are some of the greatest inventions, we have ever seen. Why has someone not invented them for real?

6.) Mercenary Tao’s mode of transportation, is both extremely bad arse and bat-shit crazy.

7.) The origins of some crazy character names: the Red Ribbon Army’s generals were all named after colours; King Piccolo and his Demonic Clan were named after instruments; Goku’ grandfather Gohan, is named after rice; Krillin is named after chestnut; Bulma is named after girls’ gym shorts; and the list just goes on and on.

8.) Goku promised to marry Chi-Chi when they were children, by an innocent mistake; but he still went through with the wedding, when he was older.

9.) Master Roshi is a complicated character: on one hand, he is a gifted martial artist and wise mentor, who cares deeply about his students; however he is one of the worse perverts ever.

10.) The names of some of the finishing moves like Wolf Fang Fist, Four Witches Technique, Devilmite Beam, Solar Flare, Crane Style Assassin Strike, Kamehameha, Explosive Demon Wave, were truly epic.

11.) Krillin’s technique to defeat See-Through, the Invisible Man, was very different. Wow, Bulma will never forgive him for it.

12.) I didn’t know it was possible for anybody to be squeamish, when watching a cartoon, but my wife could not stand the sight and sounds of King Piccolo, coughing up his eggs.

13.) Fortuneteller Baba and Master Roshi were siblings, and their interactions were priceless.

14.) We got to see how the origin of Goku’s power pole and the Flying Nimbus. Roshi would never be worthy of riding the Flying Nimbus again!

15.) At no point, was the location of Goku’s parents, the subject of conversation; by anybody.

16.) My wife and I would start trying to guess the number of episodes a particular fight or mission would last.

17.) The theme song actually tells you, exactly what happens in the show.

18.) The number of episodes the Ox-King’s castle was being destroyed by Fire Mountain’s lava; while the Ox-King was still trapped inside, was truly insane.

19.) The final episodes with the Furnace of Eight Divisions was bonkers, because of what Goku had to do, but also the fact the Furnace actually existed in the first place.

20.) The Devil’s Toilet was the most absurd, yet funniest name for a building in Dragon Ball.

21.) The mystery of Goku’s transformation by the full moon, is never truly resolved.

22.) Launch is very much like Bruce Banner; sometimes the Dragon Team needed Nice Launch, other times, they needed Violent Launch.

23.) The first wish granted by the Eternal Dragon in Dragon Ball, was for Oolong. He wished for a comfortable pair of underwear.

24.) Watching Yajirobe and Korin together was hilarious, because even though Yajirobe was on the support team, he was still a jerk.

25.) The way Goku would determine if someone was a boy or a girl, had us in disbelief and laughter.

There are a lot more things I would like to discuss, but I feel 25 observations of Dragon Ball is enough. We loved watching it; even every single recap of the previous episode. The show is a product of it’s era, but it was outstanding.

From the fights scenes, trash talking, powering up scenes, Roshi and his nose bleeds, Goku being hungry, and Emperor Pilaf and his gang losing yet again, Dragon Ball is a gem; but I would not have it any other way.

Thanks for reading and see you in a few days!

Misadventures in Internet Dating

On By somegeektoldme@gmail.comIn People

I want to talk about first dates and internet dating. Why? A friend of mine went on a first date recently and it got me thinking about some of the first dates, I’ve been on. Some were good, some were ok, and some were just shockers.1

Image by athree23 from Pixabay

There were two first dates that I went on, that I can look back on them now and laugh; well try to laugh. This was about 11-12 years ago, and I had joined two dating sites. The reason I joined was because I didn’t travel in the same social circles of single women, and making eye contact with females at the comic shop was vastly discouraged.

I liked internet dating, but I also disliked it for probably the same amount of reasons; I mean, I’m a geek and I wanted to discuss geek related things, but I didn’t want to bore women to death. An example of this, was when after chatting to one woman on a dating site, we agreed to meet at one of my favourite bars.

We were talking about music, movies and television shows, which was great. She asked me what television shows I liked, and I rattled off a few, including Doctor Who. Granted, this was her own fault, but she mentioned that she had heard of the show, but she had never watched it and asked me to explain it.

I’m going to be honest with you, I have no idea how long I talked about Doctor Who for. It could have been 2 minutes or 20 minutes2, but at some point after I allowed unbridled geek culture to fall out of my mouth, I noticed the glazed look in her eyes. I had discussed a two-hearted alien with regeneration capabilities, that travels through space and time in a stolen box; on a first date. Amateur.3

Another classic first date was when I had been chatting to one particular woman for a couple of weeks, so we decided to meet up. Now I’m going to call this woman Lois, purely to make the story entertaining and flow. Lois suggested that we meet at the casino on Thursday night, which was fine by me.

At the time, I lived in the CBD, so the casino was only a 15 minute walk for me. Now I need to point something out; when I would meet someone for a first date, it was usually at a cafe, bar or restaurant. I had never agreed to meet anyone at the casino before, so this really should have been a red flag for me.

When I arrived at the casino, I walked through the main doors, then preceded to go up the stairs to the main foyer, where we had agreed to meet. I was standing there for a few minutes with no one around. It was about this time, my Spidey-Sense was going off.

I was starting to wonder if she could see me and if I’ve been stood up. I decided to wait one more minute then leave, when I heard my name being called. I turned around and there was Lois walking towards me. We introduced ourselves, which was about the same time, when I noticed something was very odd about Lois.

It could have been my imagination, but I was getting the distinct impression that she was drunk. We had agreed to meet at 6:30 pm, so the notion of someone being drunk at that time, as well as being on a first date, was extremely weird.

Now we’re standing in the middle of the foyer, still talking; we haven’t moved to the bar. It was at that time that I finally noticed that Lois had a glass of wine in her right hand, and her phone was in her left.

Lois then started apologising about the situation, which went something like this: Earlier on that day, someone offered to buy Lois’ business. The business was a hair cutting salon and Lois was quite surprised about this, because it wasn’t for sale.

She had explained to me that this particular person had offered a huge amount of money for the business, but there was a catch; she needed to make a decision before 7.00 pm that day. I asked her why was it such a short deadline?; why wasn’t she given more time to think about it?

The answer went along the lines of the businessman liked to buy and own hair-dressing salons, so they can join his hair-dressing empire. He needed to make the deal as fast as possible, because he was flying back to Auckland the next day.

I’m hearing this story and my Spidey-Sense has just gone off again. I’m thinking this is situation is bonkers; I don’t know what I’ve stepped into here, but this just seems mental.

Now the apology part was the fact that she was drunk. Lois told me that she was so stressed about her decision, that she needed to drink to think about the problem. The issue was that she said it’s a huge amount of money and with that money, she could invest in another businesses or go overseas or do whatever she wanted to do. However she went on to explain, that she previously had no intention of selling the business, because it was doing so well.

This was the conundrum; to sell or not to sell, but the answer was to drink.

I was thinking about what would I do if I was in her position, and someone had offered to buy my business extremely quickly for a huge amount of money. I would probably have a couple of drinks and be stressed about it too.

However, the one factor in this whole equation I didn’t understand, was that why she had agreed to go on this date with me. I mean, Lois could have said she couldn’t make it and she’s really sorry. That would have been ok. But I didn’t understand why she went through with the date, if she had all these personal issues happening to her.

I know personal issues can happen to anybody, at any time. I understand that and I can probably relate to that, but it was the fact that the sale of your business would be extremely important.

However badly the date was going, it was going to get worse. As Lois has been telling me about her situation, her phone started ringing. She looked at it and said “Oh no. I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to take this call.” So Lois walked off to the side to have a conversation. I assumed it was the businessman, whom was inquiring about the business proposal. Oh how wrong I was, I was so, so wrong!

As I was standing there, Lois began shouting. Not just myself, but other people around her could tell she was in a very heated argument. At this time, I was thinking if this was the businessman, it can’t be going well.

Four minutes go by, and Lois ends the phone call. She walks over to me to give another apology. Lois was apologising for the conversation, she just had with her boyfriend. Yes, her boyfriend.

Lois went on to say that he gets like this, as in jealous and angry; when she goes on dates with other men. It’s cliche to say, but it was at that precise time when I realised what a train wreck of a night this was turning into.

Lois apologises and informs me that her boyfriend is going to be here in under 10 minutes, to pick her up and take her home. Now I hear this and I’m thinking that I need to leave. I need to go home. This is a disaster, so cut your losses and go home.

The problem was that I felt like I was a character in the story, and I wanted to see how this would play out. I mean, this was just nonsense. It was just crazy. I just wanted to go home, but there was another part of me, that was quite fascinated with this train wreck of a night, that I needed to see how it would end.

So with that, the die was cast and I decided to stay. I realised I haven’t done anything wrong, I had no idea Lois had a boyfriend. So to me, I’m in the clear and the thing was, if the boyfriend was going to start anything or do anything to me, I felt I was going to be ok, because there were security guards everywhere. It was a casino after all.

So we talked in the foyer about jobs and interests, basically waiting for the boyfriend to arrive. I think it was about 15 minutes later when he appeared. When he turned up, I could tell it was him, because I saw a guy coming up the stairs and he looked pissed. It was like I was staring at an angry cartoon character, that had been brought to life.

After completing a quick scan of the foyer, the boyfriend walked straight towards us. I mentioned to Lois that it looked like her boyfriend was here. She turned around and quickly walked towards him. What happened next with absolutely insane.

The two of them started yelling and swearing at each other. The argument escalated extremely quickly, because after 45 seconds, there are two security guards talking to them.

While this was unravelling, I was still standing there, watching this apocalyptic mess. After yelling at each other, Lois and the boyfriend started yelling at the security guards, and it was at this point, more security guards were called over. The result was both of them were escorted out of the casino. I stood there watching the whole thing, not fully believing or accepting what had just happened.

After ordering a bourbon and cola, and drinking that beautiful reward, I decided that I was going home. When I got there, I told my flatmate all about it, to which she laughed and said she had a prediction for me.

She said that she knew a few people like Lois, and then she predicted that the next day, I was going to be contacted by Lois to arrange a second date. I told her that was just mental and that wasn’t going to happen, to the extent we bet some house cleaning duties on it.

And so, the next day I received an email from Lois apologising for the previous night. She was very sorry that we didn’t get to talk more, but she was hoping we could arrange another date. When I was reading the email, I wasn’t thinking of how I was politely going to say no, but the idea of the extra household cleaning duties I was going to have to do now.

I hope this was entertaining for you, because it’s funny to me now. Do you have any funny experiences through internet dating? If you do, please let me know. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in a few days.

1 I need to point out, for all I know, I’m one of the world’s worst first daters.

2 Time is very much relative.

3 My wife can actually handle my geek rants. That’s why she’s my wife.