SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, this is Rambles and Shambles of Honor. Today I'm sitting with Taunchi. Soccer has been a big part of his life, along with work, family, community, and more recently, making the decision to start something new later in life. But before we get into all of that, when you think back to yourself as a kid, what sort of kid do you picture?

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Yeah, well, that's going back a while, isn't it? When I've pictured myself as a kid, I was just I was an introverted kid. I could be mischievous like most kids. And in fact, I think if my kids today were half as mischievous as I was when I was growing up, geez, um there'd be sh there'd be trouble. But they're absolutely well behaved compared to what I was like. But um no, look, I I I was I was a kid that was pretty comfortable with myself, like as in the sense that like I could spend hours and hours as a kid by myself playing in the backyard or this or that. But I also enjoyed um friends. And I grew up in North Geelong, every second house was basically a Croatian. Um and then every other house was uh some sort of European. So if I was bored and um I just get on the bike, go for a ride around the neighborhood, and you generally find someone in the teenage years later on, we'd always be playing some kind of sport. Always, you know, we had our local grounds, um, cricket grounds, footy grounds, tennis courts um on the roads. Um, not as many cars back then. So, you know, uninterrupted by a car coming, and usually they just stop and you know, nicely um, you know, let us get off the road these days. Impatient drivers, I'd be beeping and yelling and swearing and this and that, but an idyllic um childhood back in the 70s and 80s, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

So then as a teenager, what really piqued your interest in those years?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I I did I did like soccer. I did like the thought of playing soccer, but I didn't play start playing soccer until I was under 16. And by that stage, teams were well established. Two years of playing junior soccer, um, and and they weren't very positive years. I was more sitting on the bench. In those days, you didn't have rolling substitutions, and the coach was hardcore, old school hardcore, they were just playing for results. So my recollection of soccer in my teen years, it wasn't very good. So it wasn't a really good memory kind of thing. But it's funny how later on it became the different story. Um, sort of when I was 15-ish, started playing futsal with my friends, and um I had just telling this story the other day, two of my mates from were from around my neighborhood. So we used to catch the bus to the to the um venue that we used to play. One of my friends, his dad was a bus driver, and um well-known Macedonian bus driver, still still see the man around Geelong these days as a classic. And he loved his soccer. There was one particular occasion where he's picked us up and he's dropped us off, and he's basically halfway at the end of his route. That's where we're meant to uh get dropped off. And he said, Look, boys, I'm gonna come and after I've finished my shift, I'll come and watch you guys. Well, when he was about to drop us off, there was one other person on the bus, and he goes to this guy, listen, I'm just gonna make a little detour. I'm gonna drop my boys off um to an indoor sports venue, and then I'll resume the route. This is late 80s, mind you, 1980s. Well, he's just dropped us off and he's come in to watch the first half, supposedly. He ended up staying the whole game. After the game, we kind of said to him, Oh, you know, Yauncher, did you leave the guy? Uh did you go pick up the guy and drop him off? He goes, Oh, totally forgot about him. So it was about 45 minutes later, this poor guy's on the bus and doesn't know what he's doing, and and he's just uh gone to resume it. But that was one of my fond memories with regards to soccer in the uh teenage years. But what pre what what did I enjoy? I I enjoyed, I did enjoy reading. I did enjoy reading. I enjoyed um novels and I enjoyed detective books. Um Hardy Boys, Nancy, Drew, the three investigators. I had an overactive imagination, as did most kids. So novels transported you somewhere else and and also improved my vocabulary at the time, you know. So I was a bit of a nerd in that regard. But um, apart from that, I hated school, to be honest. And I um I couldn't wait to I just endured it. As um my son uh uses the term, I existed. Um, and that's pretty much it. I existed. Not that, you know, I was wasn't bullied or or didn't have any um overtly negative experiences. I was just bored. I was just totally bored. I hated it in that regard. So I looked for I looked forward to every day coming home from school and knowing, throw the bags, run outside, and you're gonna play with someone, you know, until it gets dark. But it kind of I got my first job when I was 16th, a day shy of my 16th birthday. And I guess from then on, it was just about saving money. Because when I was turned 18, Croatia became independent or democratic in 1990, became independent a year later. That's when I really, really wanted to just go Croatia. So all I saw myself was doing was working part-time, saving money as much as I can, and doing that. Oh, and I wanted to be an architect during those days, but uh that quickly changed very, very quickly. I was a generalist, so I was very good at generally. I wasn't good at anything specific, but um maths I didn't like, but I was good at it. English, I hated writing essays, believe it or not, hated writing um compositions, which is funny considering what you know was gonna eventually take me. But I I think I had a kind of a limited attention span with certain things, and like I'd get bored, but I was good at it. Um, chemistry, I was absolutely bored, but that's because of the teacher.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Um I hear that way too often.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

I wonder if you'll listen to this. But um, yeah, no, but actually it was because of chemistry in year 11, and I I just didn't like this teacher. And I and he made the subject so bad. And chemistry, believe it or not, was one of the prerequisites to do architecture. No way. And uh it was funny because a couple of weeks ago I was in Melbourne and I I walked right out the front of the um the building where I did my work experience back in year 10, and it was um an architectural firm, and I was saying to my wife, geez, it was funny what life could have changed, what could have taken you, because that was all I wanted to do. I was really good at graphics, I loved graphics design, um, and that's what I wanted to do. But come year 11, uh the thought of of doing chemistry in in year 12 with this teacher was just no way. So I actually pulled out of chemistry and as a result pulled out of the idea and the dream of being an architect or studying architecture. So I ended up going down a sphere, down the side of commerce. I did, I enjoyed all that, but when I got to uni, I should have taken a gap here. That that was one thing I wanted to do. I wanted to take a gap here, wanted to go to Croatia, wanted to go traveling. Um, everyone said, including my boss at work at the time, no, no, best, best you go to uni. Once you finished it, then do it. And probably looking back, it was a mistake, but at the same time it wasn't. Because I did get into bachelor um uh to do a commerce degree at DECE and I didn't like it. You know, kept wagging lectures, turning up and just go to the cafeteria and spending all day playing cards and socializing. And I'll never forget in the middle of the day, we we we decided we're gonna call the afternoon off and go haunted house hunting because we just got our licenses. Oh, yeah. So a group of us would just go driving around town and this and that and whatever. You know, we love the freedom. Um, about a year and a half later, I ended up going to Croatia after getting a summertime job, a full-time job saving money. That was 92. And when I came back, I realized one, I didn't know Croatian as well as I thought I did, and I really wanted to study that. And two, commerce wasn't for me. So I pulled out of commerce. Shortly after that, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts at Macquarie University and ended up doing uh a degree via correspondence, or as I these days would deem it off campus or online, but then it was a little bit different. You used to get these cassettes, you know, in like 20, 30 um audio cassettes in a in a big jiffy bag. You listen to that and then you return it, you know, they'll recorded lectures on that way. And it's funny because one of my lecturers ended up being my colleague at the Hudovatsky Viesnik, the Croatian Herald newspaper. And um, about six months before I'd even finished my degree, he was um trying to get me, trying to get me to work at the at the Croatian Herald. And um, yeah, and that's where I started my journalism career, believe it or not. Remember, this is a kid who hated writing compositions in in secondary school. And I realized I did have a talent for writing, um, more so for storytelling than writing. There's that imaginate kid with the big imagination starting to pop up again. And I think and I think that's what I most enjoyed. I most enjoyed telling the stories or retelling a story. Um, and that's how I saw myself as kind of a reporter who'd retell stories or make something out of nothing. Give me a give me a sentence, give me a paragraph, and I'll turn it into an article. Or, you know, it'd be interesting. I'd be going to community functions, and my mind wasn't there. My mind was already conjuring up the first paragraph to an article. And once I had that paragraph, I knew in my mind what photos I wanted to take, what angle I wanted to take. Um, and I think that was that was very important and something that I always say to people nowadays who want to be journalists or photographers or anything to do with media, before you even start, have a bit of a an idea as to what you want to approach. And that's that will that was always my thing. So, one, it saved a lot of time because you knew exactly what you wanted to do. And we were always taught plan, write a plan, do the da da da. I'd already have that plan in my head.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

So I guess for people who have been making a lot of changes, or maybe for a parent who sees their child making so many changes, what would you say the difference in your mind of rapidly changing and you know, maybe even just giving up on dreams versus realizing well this isn't for me and I want to try something new? So you tried architecture, then you decided to, you know, drop chem, then you started commerce and then you decided to drop that. So how do you know that that wasn't giving up? How did you know that was following your passion?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, but good at the point it was it was giving up. 100% it was. And every time you make a decision and you turn your back on something, you're absolutely giving up. But in the greater scheme of things, you're not giving up on life. You're not giving up on your dreams, you're giving up on one dream or you're giving up on one aspect of your life, but you're not giving up. That's the thing. What you're actually doing is you're experimenting. You know, you're you're trying to find your feet, you're trying to find your way. Now, we talk about an ever-changing world that we live in. Nothing stays the same, nothing stagnates, nothing. You know, um, there's an old saying, life's too short. If you're enjoying what you're doing, that's a different story. Absolutely. Continue, prolong that for as long as you possibly can, because even that's not going to last forever. I think as when you become a parent, you realize you start to, and as your kids start to get older, um, or you know, your parents become more older, and and you yourself become older, you you start to cherish little things a little a bit more, particularly younger people. And I look back at my younger self. Um, when I say I was an introverted kid, a shy kid, I think that stopped me from experimenting and that stopped me from trying new things. I was even then I was comfortable with the familiar. And you sometimes you don't want to try new things because you're scared of what new things might bring. You're scared of change, you're literally scared of change. So when you do decide to stop something and take up something else, I don't think that's a bad thing. Now, if you stop something and not do anything, like in other words, you fall into a heap and you start to fall into some sort of like a depression where you're not looking for something different or something new or something innovative or something whatever the case may be, then that is a problem, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Yeah. And did anyone ever try to steer you in a direction, or were you free to kind of make your own decisions and drive up?

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah, uh yeah, all the time, all the time. Um, like I said, I wanted to take a gap here. I wanted to travel, I wanted to go to Croatia. Everyone was saying, no, you got to do school, you gotta do school. And look, it's funny, there was a there was a manager at work where I basically said to him, Oh, once I finish my VC, is there a job here that I could do full-time? Was that a as a safe way, Woolworths? And the manager actually, um, I didn't really like him. But looking back, I probably respected him. And and he goes, Oh, no, no, look, you know, there'll there'll always be jobs, you know, you can always have this job as a weekend job and this and that. But you know, my recommendation is you go to uni, do your uni, finish a degree, and then you know, take a year off. And I actually kind of inadvertently was probably listening more to him than than than to my parents, who were kind of really insisting, you know, school, school, school with um with Croatian parents. It was always a case that, you know, especially Croatian peasant parents who come from the farm, from the villages, um, school was everything. So that that was one example. I think as I got older, I kind of realized I like working for myself. Even when you work for yourself, you're the slave to your customers, you're the slave to your clients, you're the slave to the taxation office and what you're not. But at the same time, you're free to make your own decisions. And as I've gotten older, apart from I enjoy working for myself in that regard, the other thing thrive on is flexibility, you know, as well. I mean, decide I've come from work, I've had an early start, but then I've also got a little bit of a flexible um approach during during the rest of the day, and how exactly what I'm gonna do the rest of the day is really up to me type of thing, you know. And I I enjoy that. And COVID was was a crap period, but one of the good things from the COVID area was the flexibility of the workplace, and that's something I always dreamt about. I remember in my 20s reading about young, a young man, young, young people from Melbourne who ended up going to Croatia, and this is when the internet was in its infancy, um, had started like a business subscription service. Um, and what they did was they lived somewhere on the islands in Croatia, woke up about eight o'clock, went, went to the local store, got three or four newspapers. Remember, the internet was just still in the infancy back then. Just spent, went to a cafe, spent every day reading the newspapers, staying in a cafe till about midday, then going home, um, putting together a business report about, you know, what was happening in Croatia at the time, um, commercially speaking, and then sending it off to the subscribers. The subscribers were paying a some sort of a fee to access this. And bit by bit the subscription base had grown so much so that this person was able to pretty much live a life of bliss, you know, reading newspapers, putting together something, having a coffee by the seaside, and um, and that was your life, and and that was financing. And I thought to myself, what a great life that would be, something like that, remotely living. But what stopped me from doing that a lot of the time has been that that fear of the unknown. And then as you get older, you do get responsibilities, family, parents, um other commitments as well, bloody soccer. Yeah, so uh, yeah, yeah, that's that's kind of in a nutshell it.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Do you remember your first day walking to the Croatian Herald? Was that a bit of a shock going from university studying journalism? I know you had some work experience, but kind of the full-fledged adult now.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Um, I was part of a group called the Croatian Students Association, and we used to put together two pages in English. Um, so I'd I'd been involved with this organization ever since I was what 18. So about maybe six, seven years later, that's when the opportunity arose at the Viesnik. And look, I was kind of eased into it because I had I was working um in retail at the time, part-time in retail in Geelong. Um, and also I was um studying, obviously, the Croatian or the Bachelor of Arts. And really the the the once a week I used to go down to Melbourne and help put together this um these pages. So basically meant typing up articles, cutting them, copying, pasting, sticking them down old way, nothing like what it's today. Um and and then you had these massive, what no, A3? Were they A3? A3, like you, like a newspaper, yeah? And um we used to then take a hard copy over to the office. Um, and then when I got there, the first few months, I'd say, I shadowed someone as well. So they were they were showing me how everything was done. And look, it was a fantastic place to to learn skills because you had to do everything. There's only there's only three or four of us that worked there. There's four of us that actually worked in the editorial side of things, and that's how the the Viesnik was. You know, later on we maybe had six at one stage working in the office. But um, it was because it was such a small operation, you had to learn everything from journalism to editing to sub-editing to layout to distribution to sales to marketing to um you know customer service. You had to do the whole gamut. Then later on, when I became editor, I had to look after the finance side of things as well. Of course, you got people helping you, but um, at the end of the day, you have to oversee all of that. And and look, the uni side of things was because it was off campus, I used to basically get these tapes, listen to them on my Walkman, go to Deacon University, sit in their library during the week and you know, um, do all the things that I had to do with etc. etc. I I just saw it as another step, you know, you know, making money. I never saw it as a career. I saw it more as when I look back, fast forward maybe to 30 years, and I look back and I think I've worked in the Croatian community, I've worked in football, and for the better part of 30 years, I've made a living out of that. Or maybe not 30, 25 years. Most people do that as voluntary activities on the weekend, being involved with their local soccer club or stuff like that. People do that voluntarily. For the like I said, for the better part of 25 years, I was able to make a living out of that. So I never even saw it as a job. To this day, I what I do now, I don't see it as a job. Um, if I'm doing something Saturday night, 11 o'clock, updating letters and and and results or watching highlights of games or or um scouring the net looking for some story, you know. Um this morning at five o'clock, uh, as I'm having coffee and uh getting ready for my first um appointment at six. Um I'm just sort of scouring what was happening overseas in in Croatia. For example, I've got this idea for an article, and I thought whip it up, you know, as soon as I get a moment and whatever. So to me it was all just lifestyle anyway. So I'm very lucky.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Who do you think had the biggest influence on how you learned to work?

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Or definitely would have to be my mum, my mum, I reckon. Even to this day. I mean, she she's 80 years old and she still like smokes a pr shut and for the non-Croatians that's means smoking ham and um climbing ladders and painting things. So she had a you know, it's interesting because um those a lot of those people had a really strong work ethic. You know, she would have been 13, 14, 15 going to look after the sheep, uh whatever, uh the goats and whatever in the fields, and then um going to school, um, the limited schooling that she did have, but you know, she was she was the youngest of of seven kids and by three daughters, three sons, three girls, three boys. Um, and by the time she was kind of in her teens, most most had left home, you know. The girls had gone off to marry, marry early, because that's what you did. And look, the the the the the lifestyle of rural Croatia back in the 50s and 60s was more so that kids were brought into this world not out of love, unfortunately. Usually it was like labor, you know, like they'll labour for the for the for the parents, the families, you know. People used to have big families. A lot of the time it wasn't because of love and this and that. And those kids, unfortunately, a lot of them. Tell them how it is. Yeah, a lot of them had didn't, they they were neglected in many ways. And that's something that shaped a lot of um the post-war migrants coming here to Australia. And you know, um, now you see them spoil their grandkids so badly because they're in a position to do so, and they didn't get that, and they probably weren't in a position to spoil their kids. And then you see us second generation kids, we get more involved in our kids' lives than what our parents did because they're either working um afternoon shift at Ford's or or or Harvester or what you're not down here in Geelong. Um, or they just weren't around, they were doing double shifts. Yeah, and so my generation kind of sometimes thinks, I know with my father, I got quite of uh you could say neglected. You didn't really have that fatherly love towards your son because kind of for whatever reason he wasn't around or um they were too busy doing other things, or simply they didn't get that from their parents. So uh with with the kids today that are brought up in in these types of environments, they're so lucky because they get their parents involved that we didn't we didn't have that, you know, involve involvement. But back to my mum, she was she was. Um, yeah, she was like a mule carrying massive, massive weights of things and out into the fields and doing a lot of work. And she she carried that into her motherhood, so she'd you know be working, you know, getting us ready for school, going off to work at Ford's, coming back and um organizing dinner and something like that. And I think a lot of mothers, uh migrant mothers, were like that in particular. Not to say that the fathers weren't. There were many cases where the fathers were providers, absolutely, where the fathers were working hard. Um, but it was the mothers that worked hard at the same time and and and also did the uh the motherly duties. So I think the work ethic I probably get from her, but it does help when you're doing things that you genuinely enjoy. Now, whatever that is, but like I said, I've been blessed doing things that, and and in some cases I carved out roles, carved out jobs for myself, doing things that I really wanted to do. Um, personal training is a funny one. Um, you know, um, 2009, 2010, I decided I wanted to do personal, a personal training course for my re for me. I wanted to improve myself because up until then I'd done a lot of work in the community, always for others, um, never for myself. And after um a couple a couple of issues, I I had uh my my boss, my work colleague, he'd passed away. Um was that 2007, 2008? Shortly after that, I had a relationship that went belly up that wasn't very good. So um, and then after that, I think we had a a Croatian soccer tournament in in Geelong where we were just absolutely knackered. We were just burnt out. This is 2008. Um, after that, I thought to myself, I've got to do something for myself. I really gotta do something for myself. I was what, 36 at the time, I think it was. And I said, you know what, still single, um, you know, enjoying what I'm doing and this and that, but I've got to do something for myself. And that's when the idea of I was pretty much in, I was very much into um my gym and um being active. And I had the time. I do, I must admit, I had the time on my hands to do that. And I thought I'll do a personal training course just for myself. Halfway through the course, I started thinking, I don't mind this. This is actually really enjoyable. When I when I finished the course, um, I think my sister was my first client. And after about a month, she said, Oh, I've got to stop training with you. I said, Why, why, what have I been doing wrong? She goes, I'm pregnant. I goes, Oh, okay. And I wasn't really kind of familiar with training pregnant women. I was a novice, so to speak. But then I started doing different courses, boxing for fitness, um, um, another, another course that was really, really good. I was telling someone about this the other day, uh, metabolic precision, which is which has really taught me how to package my marketing, taught me marketing and how to package all my um offerings and that sort of stuff. So this is around about 2009, 2010, when when I thought it, well, let's start start this small hobby business. Well, 16 years later, I'm still doing it as a hobby business, you know. But they there was this startling figure that after the first year, 85% of personal trainers quit for whatever reason, but usually to do with the fact that it's you you don't make much money out of it. Um and somehow I managed to keep doing that uh well as well as all these other things as well. So I've been lucky in that regard that I've been doing things that I enjoy that I don't see as tedious work and stuff like that, and and that does significantly help.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

So we go from journalism to fitness, personal training. And you mentioned COVID before, and that's when I started the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

So how did that all No, actually we started beforehand. Oh, you started beforehand. Yeah, so I started I I was working with um Football Victoria um for three years full time, up until 20 the end of 2018, early 2019. And I'd I'd I'd gone overseas, come back, first day I'd get back. The my boss in Melbourne told me, yeah, you've got to come up, you know, blah, blah, blah, to the head headquarters. And they said that they're gonna do undergo restructuring. Look, prior to that, for the for six months before that, I was really, really not happy um with the job because it was becoming very, oh, what's the best way to describe it? That what I was supposed to be doing, developing the sport here around the Geelong area, which I was doing with a colleague of mine, we were fantastic. We were getting numbers, record numbers, and and now um seven years later, the numbers are staggering of how many people are playing soccer. And and there are clubs that I actually helped form to this day that are doing really, really well, and they've expanded dramatically. And I think to myself, that that was that was our doing. But for example, the media side of things, I couldn't, I couldn't undertake media, any media, because I wasn't part of the media department. And it was very, very kind of bureaucratic and it was very political, and it was very, oh, dare I use the term bullshit. That's all good in many, many ways. Because what you would suggest um would sometimes fall on deaf ears because of that bureaucracy, because of the let's I won't say politics, I'll just say bureaucracy. Interestingly, after I finished up, I had a re I took a redundancy because there were three options. One, relocate to Melbourne. I said no, because that would not mean I wouldn't be able to do all the other things that I was doing as well. Reapply for your job. And that meant me going up against my colleague who was 60, 65, or something like that. Football, this was his life. He'd been with this organization for 15 years. I said, no, I can't do that to him. That's ridiculous. I go, are there any other options? And they go, well, there's redundancy. I go, yep, I'll take that. So I had 12 weeks, paid, um, and that was really good. It gave me a little bit of an opportunity to think, what am I going to do? And I'll remember I'll never forget um in the mail, I ended up um ordering a microphone, a desktop microphone. And when it arrived, my wife, like, she she she is says this story many times. She goes, I thought you were absolutely going nuts. But you know, you've just lost your job, you're unemployed, and now you're buying toys, you know, and then thinking, I I I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want to, you know, go on about it because I thought, you know, you're probably feeling a bit down and depressed and this. On the contrary, I actually felt free then. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to do club podcasts. So I wanted to do audio podcasts for clubs and run like little radio shows for clubs. And I'd started writing for the Geelong Advertiser covering soccer for the local competitions. So I'd already started working with other clubs. And that was so 2019 was when the idea of that was born. Then I was approached by another guy who was involved in the in the um soccer community, and then he gave me this idea of maybe we could do like a show, like an actual sports show, a soccer show over the internet. So this is over Facebook at the time, and that's how the idea of one of my podcasts was born. Concurrently, I was in the in the process of starting up my own sports media business, which to this day I've got community sports media services. I covered stories on local basketball, local little aths, little athletics. I put it out there and I did a couple of articles for a Karai Little Athletics Club. And, you know, they they at the time said because of the article, it ended up going viral that they had a lot of influx of members. And I because I was writing for another newspaper, I approached the editor and said, listen, eh, I've got heaps of stories that I'd like to submit. I don't want any publication, I don't want any payment for it. Rather, just you provide me the forum to do this. He goes, absolutely. Because he didn't, I they had a very limited kind of a um a sports section. This is the Julong Independent, India, as it was called. And um the the the guy, the editor at the time, because I'd been writing a regular column in previous years, he knew my my work and what you're not. And uh he said, Yeah, absolutely. Anytime he got an article, we we'll we'll publish it. That was the key. But um, when COVID came around, we were going up to a uh studio up in Melbourne at the Docklands and Internet Radio. COVID came along and that's it. You know, the studio was shut off limits, we couldn't do anything. But then all this be live, restream, um whatever, what other zoom? I mean, they're all Zoom-like platforms that enabled podcasting. So when we had the lockdowns and we had to shut down, we were still able to continue doing these podcasts. And at one stage, because there was no soccer happening, we ended up having like trivia competitions, people from different clubs up against each other, football soccer trivia, how brilliant that was. And we we ended up having an unbelievably loyal group of viewers. Um, and later on, I I I I you know found out from a lot of people that there were a lot of people who, if it wasn't for every week looking forward to this podcast, they probably would have gone nuts. They would have, they would have, you know, they would I know of I know of people who were suicidal in those years. And the bloody government and all of those idiots, they have no idea. They they weren't impacted. They were not impacted, but they have no idea what sort of an effect they had on the people. We do. We would that we saw that we spoke with people in general, and and we know people were, like I said, there were people who were very suicidal, very lonely. Um, and and to think that even in those years, we um well me and my my my uh co-presenters, co-hosts had such a positive impact was amazing. And now post-COVID, it just went nuts after that, to the point that one year um I had three, almost four podcasts on the go was way too much. Like, as compared and plus everything else that I was doing as well. But um, yeah, that's been a good ride so so far.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

And now I guess for the grand finale or for the final whistle, what have we got going on now?

SPEAKER_00 32:09

The final whistle, well, you just mentioned it, uh isn't that interesting? So I like in my what 54 years of age and I've become an author. Isn't that funny? Like I was saying to someone the other day, I'm used to having my name on the byline, you know, in the newspaper, in print. But when you see it in a book, on a hard copy, whatever, it's pretty freaky, like it's pretty amazing. And it's not something that happened overnight. It had once again happened because of COVID in a sense. The kids were at home, and you know, we we made the most that we could make out of it. But my son then coming out of COVID in 2022 or 23, so he was grade four, grade five, and he you couldn't get him to read anything other than Captain Underpants and the uh Diary of a Wimpy Kid and all of those graphic novels. And we tried to get him to read like the messy books, the because he was all he's obsessed by soccer ever since he was three. But yeah, it started for a while and they weren't much the tiny Timmy books he he we bought in the whole collection, and they weren't challenging enough. So it was kind of like, how can we get him or my thinking was how can I get him to read more? Maybe if you read soccer books. Yep, we tried that. It worked to an extent, but it wasn't challenging him enough. Then I thought, what if I write these little short stories of him as a as a as a character? And I made it fun initially the character's Marko Butzo. Now, in Croatian, but chubby, you know. So it's kind of like a little bit comical and this and that. And I thought of, and then he goes, I'm not Marko Butzo, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a boomba, blah, blah, blah. So look, it engaged him, but that didn't last long. But then a seed was planted where I thought, you know what? Maybe I actually did a novel based on the Australian Croatian kid. Me growing up, me experiencing things, and then me as an adult experiencing things. And over the years I'd interviewed that many people. I forget who've I who I've interviewed, particularly Australian Croatians, and particularly from the soccer kind of area industry, if you like. So I thought, well, maybe I could, because I kind of looked around, and at the time, this is going back, yeah, three, four years ago, there weren't in there weren't many novels. And there weren't there was books, yes, very limited amount of books, and majority of them were historical books. You know, an organization celebrates its 50th year, so it compiles together a chronological order of the club's history, photos, old photos, putting that together, great. But there weren't stories. There were very few biographies or autobiographies, very few. And then there was even fewer novels, so fiction, stories. And like I said, I had an always had an overactive imagination as a kid, and and I was told I was a good storyteller. And I thought this is maybe something that is missing. So over those course of three, four years, bit by bit, I started putting ideas down on paper, or on a screen, I should say, typing it out. And then I started, and this was the contagion, or this was the kind of like the infectious part of it all, I guess. I'd spent hours just researching. So I'd be spending hours upon hours of a night till two, three o'clock in the morning, sometimes having to get up at five or six o'clock the following morning, just energized by this idea of where this story was going to take me. So it's sort of bit by bit, and then probably the last year, year and a half, it started to come together. And it's funny because when I sort of had the idea of a novel, the final whistle, I knew what I wanted. I I I could almost see this cinematic ending. Um, and I knew how I wanted the novel to end. And although it's probably not the best title, the final whistle, because it implies sort of the end of something. It's not the end, it's actually sort of a journey of something, and just sort of organically develop from there, interestingly enough. So, yeah, now I'm what, 54? And I become a debut author, which is pretty cool. It's harrowing in a sense because you kind of put yourself out for judgment. And even now, people who have it's only been a few weeks now that it's been out. And and when people have got it, they say, Oh, is this this character, this person, or is this character, that person? I'll go, it's not really. They're based on all of those characters, but it's not anyone in particular. So it's kind of like you, you, you, you're almost like putting yourself out there, but you're not putting yourself out there. But people will perceive everything differently, and that's the beauty of it. They'll read this novel, um, and everyone will have a different kind of interpretation of it, or they'll they will see it and take something out differently, and that's exactly what I wanted. But ultimately, it stems back to I wanted a little kid to start reading a little bit more, and now I can't even get him to read my novel. I said I've got I said it, you'll go, you're so lucky. You've got you're one of the first first people to read this novel. And every time I said see see him flop down in front of the television watching YouTube or or daydreaming or whatever, okay, yeah. Have you um started reading my my novel? Uh not yet, not yet. Maybe one day, maybe one day.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Anyway, thank you so much, Thornchim. It's so great to hear a little bit about your life and learn a bit more about you. I shall now shake your hand. Yeah. Say goodbye and learn about Murso.