How to Simulate Life in the RAN

How To Simulate Life in the Royal Australian Navy

  • Buy a Skip Bin, paint it gray and live in it for 6 months straight.
  • Sleep on the top shelf of your closet.
  • Replace the door with a curtain.
  • Four hours after you go to sleep, have your wife whip open the curtain, shake your foot, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble, “Sorry mate - wrong rack”.
  • Have your next door neighbours come over each day at 0600 - blow a loud and warbling whistle - and then Shout: “Call the Hands, Call the Hands, Call the Hands - Wakey, Wakey, Wakey!.”
  • Do this once more - just in case.
  • Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to your chest level.
  • When you take showers make sure you turn off the water while soaping.
  • Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you’re nauseous.
  • Put lube oil in your Evaporative Cooler instead of water and set it to “high”.
  • Don’t watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Also, have your family vote on which movie to watch, and then show a different one.
  • Leave your lawnmower running in your living room for 24 hours a day for the proper noise level.
  • Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
  • Once a week blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot across to your neighbor’s house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
  • Wake up every night and have vegemite on toast. Optional: tinned snacks you smuggled on board.
  • Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed, get dressed as fast as you can, then run into your backyard and break out the garden hose.
  • Once a month take apart every major appliance and then put them back together again.
  • Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5-6 days before drinking.
  • Invite 100+ people you don’t really like to come and visit for a couple of months.
  • Shit, shower and shave with these people.
  • Install a fluorescent lamp on the bottom of your kitchen table and lie under it to read your books.
  • Raise the threshold and lower the top sills on your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through.
  • Once a day randomly throw your household pet into the neighbours swimming pool, and then run through the house yelling: “Man overboard!”
  • When your other half is cooking the evening meal - run into the kitchen and sweep all the pots/pans/dishes off the counter onto the floor, then yell at them for not having the place “secured for sea”.
  • Put on the headphones from your stereo (don’t plug them in). Go stand in front of your stove. Say (to no one in particular) “stove manned and ready”. Stand there for 3-4 hours. Say (once again to nobody) “stove secured”. Roll up the headphone cord and put it away.
  • When it rains. Get two empty coke bottles, tie them together, and hang them around your neck. Go outside and stand in the rain for four hours. From time to time look through the coke bottles and observe the horizon and lightning.
  • Put on a clean white suit, then go change the oil in your car.
  • Jason pistol / Needle gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed.
  • Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home (i.e. Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc).
  • Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it’s ok for you to leave your house before 3pm.