Watching The Great Australian Trade-Off has actually done wonders for my self-confidence, something I didn’t expect at the very beginning. I sort of watched the first season from another room…so, I listened to it while my wife actually watched it and kept me updated on the visuals. Had a nasty workplace accident a few years ago, spent a lot of time in hospital, and I haven’t really been able to watch people using power tools and that sort of thing. But I was still interested in the show…from a distance. So they’d be travelling somewhere in Melbourne, they’d be given a fleet of utes, they’d be loading up the aluminium toolboxes, strapping equipment to the roof racks and bars, and the whole thing would just make me queasy. Even listening to it was difficult, but I pushed through because everyone said the show was great. Also, I thought it’d be good for me, and apparently I was right. The wholesome presentation mixed with the positive presentation of various industries had made me more confident. This week was maybe the worst since the show started, in terms of what USED to make me feel ill. But it didn’t affect me that much. It was scrap metal week, with the teams having to rifle through old pieces of discarded equipment to quickly do up a room with makeshift supplies. So you’ve got people rooting through a giant, industrial skip and trying to find gas bottle holders that might still work with a bit of TLC. Industry mistake…never throw away gas bottle holders. Those things can last forever if you treat them right.
Maybe I’m ready to get back into things. Take things easy for a while, of course, but the desk job is driving me nuts, and they’re having such a good time on TV. Even with cameras in their faces and everything.
-Lopez