Guest Post: Why I’d rather give to Leisure Suit Larry than to charity

Guest post by Prashan Paramanathan

It was the mid-90s and personal computers were starting to find their way into every home. Dial up modems were still screeching and the Y2K bug lay on our doorstep, ready to destroy all that was good. Our family had just got its first PC (with its top-of-the-class 128MB hard drive) and I, the typical 13 year old boy, was just discovering computer games.

Adventure games were the hot genre of the time and alongside Police Quest, Hugo's House of Horrors and Bubble Bobble, stood - I'm a little embarrassed to say - Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of Lounge Lizzards. Larry was a dodgy, balding 40-something lovable-loser type in Las Vegas and you were trying to help him pick up. It was more comical than raunchy.

Larry has lain dormant for well over a decade now, so I was more than a little surprised when he re-emerged a few weeks ago on Kickstarter, a US-based crowd funding site. The creator of the Larry series, Al Lowe, was looking to raise $500k to remake the Larry game, and strangely, well, disturbingly, I felt myself compelled to give to the ‘cause’.

Now, despite working in the non-profit world for over 4 years now, I’m not very good with giving money in general. And so, as I was clicking the donate button for Larry, it suddenly dawned on me what I was doing. Did I really feel more compelled to give to Larry than I did to, say, World Vision?

Disturbingly, the answer to that question felt like a yes.

It made me ask around my friends – did they give to charity and how did they decide whom to give to?

The response I got was oddly contradictory: they wanted to connect, interact and contribute to the non-profit world but also had a healthy dose of distrust, distance and disillusionment with “charities”. I heard a lot of “I don’t really know how they spend their money” and “I don’t know if they’re any good”.

As I pondered this some more, I realised that what I was really hearing was this: “If I’m a young, 20- or 30- something professional, the traditional benevolent ‘charity’-model doesn’t really speak to me”.

So, what should you do if you’re a socially-conscience young professional wanting to connect to the non-profit world?

Here are two really simple things:

• Be trendy, eat social enterprise-style: Social enterprises are essentially businesses run for a social purpose. For some reason, the most common types seem to be food-related. Two of my favourites for the Melbournians are STREAT (coffee/food carts run by homeless youth and Scarf (borrows restaurants to train marginalised young people in hospitality). 
• Find your tribe: There are plenty more people like you out there. In Sydney, they hang out at many places, but three of my favourites are Emerging Leaders for Social Change (ELSC), Think Act Change and Young Social Entrepreneurs. It’s pretty simple, just turn up and see if you like it.

To make it even easier for you, I’m working with a mate (that I met at ELSC) to create Chip In Australia, a site that profiles some of the best Australian non-profits and social enterprises to make it even easier for you to connect to them.  You can check us out here.

STREAT's Stop Homelessness the Delicious Way campaign

And, if it all goes well, who knows, I might even be able to find something better to give to on there than Larry.

During the day, Prashan Paramanathan dons his non-profit consultant outfit but after five he spends his time writing for The Education Report and tinkering at Chip In Australia.

Like Lifeafterfive on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lifeafterfive.

Guest Post: A shift towards a new era of working

Guest post by Alexandra Hsiao

In today’s performance-focused work culture, Leave of absence is a loaded term. “Lack of focus”, poor performance”, and “burnout" are some of the negative associations which swirl around the idea, implying people only take LOAs because they have no choice, or when they are about to quit.

On the contrary, those three little letters have given me an opportunity to pause from the mad climb up the ladder, take a breath, and reflect. We are concerned with our growth and in our professional roles, but to grow holistically as a person, and in more than one direction, is equally important.

The LOA recognizes a shift towards a new era of work, or “reworking”. We are not one-dimensional robots who want to excel in one role for the rest of our life. This is an age where having one professional role your entire life is unlikely, and (I would argue) stifling. My generation, adept at having hands in many pots, wearing multiple hats, sometimes simultaneously. The model – photographer– entrepreneur is an example that often pops up in Vogue, but my friends - Danz, consultant – blogger – performer, and Paul, consultant – entrepreneur – student, are two real life examples of how we want to live today. Stephen Hawking said: “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change,” and he is more right today than ever before. This desire for flexibility, agility and balance is not a silly, Gen Y whim that undermines productivity and progress – it is good for business, and for society. I am a prime example.

After four years of management consulting, I needed to take stock. I was questioning the work I was doing and my place in the world. Luckily for me, my boss was forward-thinking enough to recognise this and I left Sydney for New York to intern with a social mission startup called Catchafire.

The tech startup industry, which has become popular and newsworthy via the success of companies like Facebook, Twitter and Groupon, seemed a perfect opportunity to put my consulting skills to use in a different context. More than anything, I wanted to use my skills to build something meaningful that would help people.

What I found in the startup world did not disappoint me. Startups are everything that corporations are not. Inherently small - Catchafire had 10 employees when I joined - everyone wears many hats to drive the company forward and operates in perpetual bootstrapping mode. Startups also require true end-to-end thinking, as you are coming up with the strategy, building it, executing it and then evaluating it, iterating continually and often. You have to build it all yourself, and this is difficult but wonderfully satisfying. True startup junkies are visionary but also practical, people-people but obsessed with metrics; technical but commercial.

In consulting, the learning curve for new clients is steep, but in startup, especially with a disruptive product, you are not learning the industry rules but creating them. There were moments when the team, stumped at a moment of impasse, would look at each other and realise that what we were trying to do had never been done before.

On my LOA, I learned more about what I am naturally good at and what I want to do with my life than I have in the past 2 years. Never did I think I would be making sales, or building partnerships, but by the end of my time at Catchafire I was leading the company’s expansion into a new market.

Any company that wants to win the talent war for the next generation should recognise the value in giving their staff time to explore and develop themselves. Australia is ahead of the curve here, with many of the big banks and firms granting this time to their staff. In America, however, the term “career break” draws looks of blank incomprehension from most people. Companies need to give their teams the mental and emotional permission to take this time. Many people are afraid that if they take a LOA, they will be seen as ‘weak’, or lose their place in the succession line.

The rules of work are being rewritten. The popularity of coworking is exploding, the Google 20% rule is being applied in more and more workplaces and entrepreneurship is the new ‘investment banking’. Career breaks are part of this movement, and employers should embrace them as a tool to sharpen their talent pool.

Alexandra Hsiao is an ex-management consultant, design student and author of the blog Startup Summer in the City.

Guest Post: We all scream for ice cream at Ben & Jerry's Sundae Sessions

Guest post by Amanda Barbera

I used to think a choc-top at Hoyts was a treat. But now I’ve been spoilt - by Ben, and by Jerry.

The Ben & Jerry’s annual “Sundae Sessions” Big Charity Launch, held on 5 February by the Bondi Pavilion, shook up the ‘Sunday night at the movies’ tradition which, up until now, I knew no better than to love.

Gone are the 40 minutes of commercials and yet-to-be classified previews of movies starting sometime next year. Left behind are the rip-off buckets of popcorn, Malteasers & other confectionary you’ll get venomously ‘shhh-ed’ at just to open. And no longer do you need to glaciate in cinema sub-zero temperatures and worry that the person you’ll sit down next to after a bathroom break is not the date you arrived with at all.

Pre-movie entertainment is a festival in itself, with sunset performances by the Winter People, Hungry Kids of Hungary and The Cat Empire perfect choices to get the audience grooving. The vibe was as playful, carefree and fun as, well, a sunny Bondi Sunday afternoon! Maybe it was the sun coming out and the magical beach backdrop; maybe it was the free games & charity prizes. And it’s a sure bet it was the free scoops of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream handed out all evening long. Like the Strawberry Cheesecake? Try Chocolate Fudge Brownie! Demolished Sweet Cream & Cookies? You’ll love New York Super Fudge Chunk. There’s no better way to test every flavour out there than with a licence to keep coming back for more. If you hadn’t realised what the finest, super premium ice-cream tastes like before, you’ll be screaming for the stuff after. 

When it’s time to sit down and watch the inspiring documentary, ‘Life in a Day’, we grab a beanbag, super warm blanket and cocoon under the stars.

And the best part? There’s a story behind every brand and this one’s driven by a social conscience and dedicated activism towards tackling some big global issues. Working alongside ‘Tunes for Change’ and The Cat Empire, the evening raised $20,000 for Australians for Cambodian Education (ACE) to help educate severely disadvantaged children and break the poverty cycle in Cambodia. The proof really is in the ice-cream. 

Johnny Hammond (Ben & Jerry's), Chloe Hamersley and Rich Coombes (Batlow Cider)

It’s another Ben & Jerry’s reminder that ‘capitalism can cure’, and support for the message couldn’t have been easier tonight – EAT YOUR HEART OUT!

Bondi Openair is running from 29 January to 4 March on the Dolphin Lawn next to the Bondi Pavilion.  Ben & Jerry's are hosting Sundae Sessions with free ice cream each Sunday.  The full film schedule can be accessed here.  

Lifeafterfive* attended as a guest of Ben & Jerry's Australia.

Guest Post: “If you can hammer a nail, you can build a boat”...

Guest post by Vincent Stander

“Anyone can cook!” was the mantra of the legendary chef, Jacque Gusto, in the movie Ratatouille that inspired a mouse to become a chef.

Now the Balmain Boat Company has made the exclusive world of boat ownership accessible…and far more rewarding. “If you can hammer a nail, and ice a cake, then you can build a Balmain Boat”, according to legendary industrial designer and co-owner Andrew Simpson.

Balmain Boat Company is an IKEA-style DIY boat building concept. The boat is delivered to your door in three boxes that contain 42 already cut pieces of plywood, epoxy glue, screws, nails, caulk (a google search enlightened me that this was sealant) and an instruction manual on how to build your own boat!  

Upon receiving these singular pieces of timber, paging through the instruction manual, watching the online instruction video, my initial reaction was that I had oversubscribed myself. 

Being a 30-year-old eastern suburbs male whose resume in the DIY department boasts one IKEA drawer set and the ability to change the tire on my push bike (with difficulty), I did not believe I was up to the task of building a boat. I called co-owner Nicole Still with the intention of returning the beautifully cut pieces of wood  before they were wasted on someone who would to hack and deform them into something akin to firewood and not a passenger-carrying vessel. 

For future reference, do not contact Nicole to say that you are unable to do something…you could try Andrew.

The boat build consisted of four distinct phases: 

(1) assembling the frame/skeleton 

(2) planking

(3) applying the sealant / caulk

(4) painting.

The clean edges and perfect dimensions of the computer-led wood cut pieces ensured that putting the frame together was a bit like building a large puzzle and nailing in each piece, and when securing the planks they were within millimetre perfection from the bow to the stern plate.

Each of the stages required specific skills, some of which I had not attempted before: using a power drill, applying sealant with a caulking gun, mixing the paint and curing agent to the appropriate proportions.

The social element of the boat build was unexpected and the most rewarding. I had friends around to look at the boat and all had an admirable attempt at hammering nails or drilling in screws (many of them for the first time of their lives!). I enjoyed conversations with Doug Sturrock of Sturrocks of Sydney about boat paints and numerous conversations with Sam from Bunnings about sealant and caulking guns. 

My dad was always a phone call away when I needed a hand or advice and successfully fulfilled the goal of Balmain Boat Company which is “to make parents and grand parents look like legends”. 

The dad... the legend

And similar to building a tree house or a model aeroplane, a Balmain Boat is rewarding in many more ways than the mere final ownership of the boat.

Do you know anyone in Sydney likely to get engaged in 2012? What better way to propose than an afternoon row on Sydney Harbour? BBCo will lend a boat (FREE) to any guy looking for a spectacular engagement plan. Email them at: nicole.still@thebalmainboatcompany.com.

Guest Post: Fonda Mexican restaurant, Melbourne

Guest post by Brendan Ferguson

Play word association with 'Fonda' and I immediately think of Jane, or more specifically, her 1982 workout video, which my mother flogged incessantly. For Melbournians though, ‘Fonda’ has recently taken on a different meaning. 

The literal translation of ‘fonda’ in Spanish is ‘inn’, which goes some way to describing the latest addition to Melbourne’s burgeoning Mexican food scene. But Fonda is more than just an ‘establishment providing food and drink’ (as ‘inn’ may be defined) – Fonda is an establishment providing braised pork tacos, grilled chicken and quinoa burritos and frozen margaritas.

Conceived by unlikely restaurateurs, Tim McDonald (lawyer) and Dave Youl (fireman), Fonda benefits from the input of Mexican chef, Lupita Manzo, striking a creative balance between Tex-Mex and awesome. The kangaroo burrito – or burrooto – leaps off the menu ($14), while Fonda’s rockling taco – the Fonda-ling, as McDonald has dubbed it – generates most hype amongst diners ($6). And rightly so. The soft-shell taco is served open, revealing the lightly crumbed fish swimming in chipotle aioli and topped with a zesty salad mix.

Stepping into the narrow, Swan Street shopfront, one can’t help but be happy. The bright yellow walls and fluorescent trimmings demand it, compelling you to order a golden side of charred corn ($3.50). Lathered with chipotle aioli and finished with grated ricotta, the cob comprises several hundred, miniature flavour explosions.

Fonda’s trendy clientele are trumped only by the denim apron-clad kitchen staff. One gets the sense that McDonald and Youl know every customer, and as summer rolls in and the cerveza starts flowing, Fonda’s courtyard will surely be heaving. Which suits the owners just fine. After all, as the laneway graffiti declares, “mi casa [es] su casa.”