Workplace Engineering

I just cannot stop watching this video. What an incredible vision from Microsoft. This is the kind of future I want.

I’ve recently started to apply myself to public speaking and Toastmasters a bit more than I have been doing and decided to enter a tall tales competition.

Firstly, I want to thank everyone who were kind enough to listen to me practice.

Secondly, I was asked for a transcript by a couple of people and thought I’d post it here for anyone to pick up. The inspiration for this came from reading People Magazine after reading a fairy story to my kids - odd I know, but there you go.

I won my heat, but the next round clashes with an event I’d promised to take my kids to, so I’m doing that instead. Here is the speech. (I have a longer one that seems to be developing into a short novel - who knows maybe I’ll try to post that too.)

Ladies and gentlemen, as everyone knows, the scholarly work of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Children’s and Household Tales more commonly known as Fairy Tales introduced the wider public to a less well known part of society…..

Much has been devoted to the outward public lives of this part of society, but no so much to their day to day experiences, some of which are more tragic than fantastic….

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BullFrog Gum Drop is one such example. Born in 1965 from the marriage of Cinderella the 15th and Prince Charming the 33rd, our gumdrop experienced a normal childhood until the age of around 13 he began to develop from amphibian to humanoid form as the species of frogicus princicus is known to do.

One quick digression at this point - it has been the mistaken belief for many centuries that frogicus princicus required the kiss of a Fairy Maiden to complete the metamorphosis from amphibian to Prince. Detailed observation has been proven this to be completely false. You can read more about this on my website.

Poor Gum Drop experienced his metamorphosis while his parents were hosting a benefit for orphan cats with the Womens Institute and Girl Scouts.

It is unclear whether charges were ever finally pressed, but we do know that Gum Drop in addition to suffering the embarrassment of finding himself in the middle of polite society with nothing more than an awkward smile, spent the next five years in a boarding school, while his parents left for a new life in Argentina.

At boarding school, Gum Drop blossomed. He became an honor roll student.

Other than when he burst into uncontrollable sobbing after seeing the insides of one of his relatives on the biology table, school was good to Gum Drop.

In his senior years, he was the captain of the basketball team. Later he shared those experiences with us through his autobiographical work High School Musical.

It was at college and then university that we saw Bullfrog Gumdrop’s descent into shame and obscurity, unfortunately as result of his tongue remaining more frog like than human.

On a trip to Cancun his buddies found his talents most useful snagging a shot from a top shelf bottle of Tequila when the barman was not looking. Oh how they all laughed.

BullFrog did not laugh so much when those same “buddies” smeared superglue over a bottle of Cuervo and Bullfrog spent the next two nights in hospital suffering from concussion.

Back at University, BullFrog slipped into depression and began to forget his studies. This was a sad period punctuated by a brief moment of happiness when he was asked to assist with a double dutch competition during the famous 1999 world skipping rope shortage.

This chance event turned to romance. He could often be seen with one particular young lady, nonchalantly swinging his tongue as she jumped to Malcolm McLaren.

At the end of the shortage, Bull Frog feared rejection and in his distressed mental state left for Asia.

It was unfortunate really, as unbeknownst to him, his devotion to those hours of double dutch led Sleeping Beauty the 98th to believe that she had found her true love. She requested her mother bring the family coming of age apple. It is truly sad and from what I know, the poor girl is still in that glass case.

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Unfortunately, that is where our story ends and I must make my appeal. Despite the efforts of many of us in International Fairy Rescue there are still only rumors of his whereabouts and we need to find him as his estranged father would like to make contact and start an organic pest control business.

So, if you see someone who looks like him or would like to find out more about Bull Frog and other parts of my work you can go to my website fairies are real, no honest, they really are.com. Thank you.