Melbourne residents love to brag about how “livable” their city is. I’m not from Melbourne originally but I moved here for work a couple of years ago. Ever since then I’ve been astonished at the undue pride these people seem to take in their city. Seriously, what is so great about Melbourne? It’s one of the most expensive cities in the world, the public transport cards don’t even work properly, and there are hipsters everywhere. They should really get in touch with my barber!

Just to demonstrate how silly this place is and how unjustified all the praise is, I recently had to hire a company to deal with an emergency drain clearing. Melbourne properties can often be overrun with trees, at my place the root systems had the clogged the drains.

Everyone calls our neighbourhood ‘leafy’ and ‘dappled’ but these are just euphemisms for ‘overgrown’ as far as I’m concerned. See, this is what I’m talking about: Melburnians are so obsessed with aesthetics that they tend to neglect practical considerations. Anyway, the blocked drains had gotten so bad that by the time I called for drain cleaning, it was far too late. The blockage was so bad that it had actually damaged the drains. This could have been disastrous if it wasn’t for those drainage contractors. Melbourne has at least one good thing going for it: fantastic drainage plumbers with great response times. They got the drain repairs done quickly and I was surprised by how affordable the service was too.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to living in this crazy city. Sure the coffee is great, but at what cost? The mishap with the drains at our property was just one thing that put a damper on my experience. Then the other day, I went to this fast food joint and enjoyed a delicious burger only to discover that it was vegan! For crying out loud, Melbourne, you always have to be different, don’t you?