Turning 29 is A*C*E !!

My 30th year has got off to a cracking start!

Woke up early to a bright, sun-lit room (that’s a good thing - I like being woken by the sun)…. C-chan made me coffee and a banana smoothie, and played me happy birthday songs on the CD player while I opened pressies. I got:

- 2 new books (that I can’t wait to read)
- cheque to contribute to bike fund (to replace stolen bike)
- CD of Oboe concertos
- Candle
- Book voucher
- Dept store voucher
- Pudding basin

The latter was a present on request… puddings are going to be my latest cooking craze – you can look forward to it when you next come to dinner – chocolate steamed pudding, sticky date, golden pudding, jam pudding…

Good day all up!

Defeatism...

…is a plaguing illness in some work places.

“I tried so many times, but they never change so I’ve given up”
(Ever thought you could try to go about it another way?)

Often you come across people who are fixed in their ways or views, and apparently can’t see how they are wrong or affect people negatively. Often so much is left unsaid, or talked about destructively behind peoples backs, rather than constuctively.

One of the most useful things one of my last bosses said to me, in the context of trying to bring about change of viewpoint, was:
“Just keep chipping away”

In other words: be persistent. (The opposite of defeatism).

But the image of “chipping away” is more powerful to my mind - the image stays there much longer than it would have had I been told to “be persistent”.


Amateur office place behavioural scientist, signing off.

Phrases I don’t care to hear ever again....

“…in terms of…” – often very badly-used sentence joiner that helps you to change tack mid-sentence and re-iterate what you explained badly in the first place

“Give myself permission to….” – counsellor-speak, crossed over into the mainstream

“…step up and take responsibility for...” – as above

“…you’ve taken (insert adjective + noun) and made it your own” – only thing worse than hearing this on TV is when you hear people regurgitating it at morning tea the next day

“…at the end of the day…” – we can blame sports people and commentators for this one, which leads to another whole dialect of bad English...

Bloated-ness (post 2004 federal election)

There are things that you can do that give you more of a warm, fuzzy feeling than paying a thousand per month into your mortgage/investments will ever do. We collectively are doing very little to improve life for much of the living things on this planet.

Lately, I have been pondering a fair bit about human nature, and have a theory that the sort of self-absorption that seems so prominent in society at the moment is probably what spurned religions thousands of years ago such as Christianity (I know too little about other religions to comment on those). Wise people realised that we achieve more when we work towards the common good, and when we look out for only our own interests, we self-destruct.

What is most disappointing is that we don’t show any signs of being much better as a whole than people were 2 millenia ago – wisdom doesn’t seem to have kept up with knowledge. We are unable to reach a standard of living and say “that’s enough, I have everything I need, and I will be satisfied with making other people’s lives better now”.

I myself am sick of having stuff, accumulating stuff, being sent stuff, being given stuff I don’t need just because it’s Christmas, and a society that doesn’t know when it’s taken things too far for the sake of income. Symptoms include:

- useless gadgets that you use once then forget
- needless remakes of films and re-recordings of songs with nothing new or interesting about them
- culture that is either brain-deadening or increased noise, but not at all enriching
- a satirising and cynical sense of humour that makes us feel witty, but seems to smother the urge for serious and constructive critique
- lack of long term policy and public planning
- having better technology but opting for the cheapest model
- packet food that takes just as long to prepare as the real thing, but with 5-times the ingredients, and 5 times the waste

I am party in doing or enjoying so many of the above things. However, last year we gave my in-laws a world vision Christmas card (which had a donation attached), and my Ma-in-law told us that it was the best, most true-to-the-spirit Christmas present she has ever been given. She was truly chuffed! That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?

Get out of my dreams (and stay out of my car too)

Last night, I had a dream about spiders. Arachnids of all kinds are most unwelcome in my dreams, I tell you. I can still remember all too vividly the dream I had as a kid about giant spiders walking out of the house over the road from mine. In real life, I can't help but start at the sight of them, even if they are meters away, and not showing signs of being likely to rear their nippers up at me or take a leap my way. It seems that Arachnids are now the second recurring dream symbol that my subconsious likes to throw up every so often to make its point - the other symbol is the experience of being trapped underwater for a long time by a wave that breaks on me. Great.

In last night's dream, I was in a somewhat vulnerable position in a small room (not trying to be smutty here), then noticed that I was surrounded by several largish spiders that had somehow before escaped my notice. After some expert self-analysis, I have decided that spiders represent things that are most unwelcome in my life, and in this case, popped up quite suddenly.

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Forgive the obscure 80's song reference in this post's title, but you must be used me doing that by now.

It's rainin', and it's rainin' good

Fell asleep to the sound of rain, woke up to the sound of rain...
Can still hear it raining outside, and I'm presently located not far from the catchment area!
What a nice sound!

Calling all rich business people who are feeling generous....

My challenge is not to award a 15 million pound prize to the first company who can build a passenger plane that can carry 3 passenger astronauts twice into space...

My challenge is do anything else with the same amount of money so long as it does someone good. It can even do humanity as a whole good! Really easy! Lots of options! Just think, you can:-
- build hospitals in impoverished regions of the world (and there are lots of those),
- make townships in remote regions self sufficient with electricity, food and water,
and oh, I don't know,
- fund the development of biodegradable plastics,
- fund a new train line in Sydney (instead of a motorway),
- give your live audience hybrid cars or annual public transport passes.

There, I just came up with 5 ideas for you, really quick! (Whatever you think if his music, at least Bono gets off his bum and does something about raising awareness of AIDS and 3rd world debt).

Heartened by humanity, for a change….

Turn off all the media noise that’s going on around you, switch off to other people’s moans and groans about “person x that did y the other day which makes them evil” and how “something good will never happen in this place, so you might as well give up”… and you might just find something that inspires you!

I must say, I have been a bit of a Lizzie Bennett from Pride and Prejudice of late – “the more I see of this world the more I am displeased by it” (or something similar). But this week at work, no less than 2 people have inspired me a great deal!! I temporarily feel a little bit like my 12-year-old self, when my sheltered and safe existence allowed me to blindly put a positive spin on just about anything.

Person 1 – on a fixed term visa, living here year to year with her family, not knowing where they might end up, learned English as an adult prior to coming here from a former communist eastern European country, not able to get secure employment and has a boss that is quite frankly a prick. We take her out for her birthday, and shout her an inexpensive lunch and coffee. She insists on repaying us by inviting us to her home for lunch, which was delicious. She repays kindness 10-fold and bears her burdens with an amount of grace I rarely see in people.

Person 2 – rich lawyer with enough money to buy yachts and stuff. Donates large sums of money to researcher in desperate need so that important area of research can get off the ground. Doesn’t want to be publicly recognised for what he has done, and wants area of research to be widely available one day soon to people in the third world to help reduce a form of pollution. Lawyer doesn’t see why he should keep all this excess money that he doesn’t need. Donation is not even linked to tax write-off!

I feel myself climbing out of my grey (not quite black) hole this week!

And this weekend, I am going to the nation’s capital, to visit friends!! But more on that next week!

Couch spud

We have recently taken to reading the description of late night movies scheduled to air on our ethnic telly station just for our amusement. Here is a snap shot from 3 movies airing this week:

A certified, yet harmless, nut case is on a five-day "observational" leave pass
from a lunatic asylum. (Greece)

A family of farmers has to deal with the retarded elder son. He gets
everybody bored and tired of him, even the cow, to whom he talks several times a
day. (France)

Otherwise, I am enjoying watching or anticipating watching:
- "6 Ft Under". The new series has just started on the teev - yay, some drama that doesn't explain everything and has some engaging, different characters!
- John Saffran's new show about religions of the world.
- The Chaser (CNNNN) group are taking a break from afternoon radio committments to soon produce an election special! Where would we be without their irreverent humour to keep us sane in the lead up to the Big Poll?
- "People Like Us". If you have never seen this 1/2 hour show, try to watch it. This week it was on 10pm Tues on our national broadcaster. I don't know how to describe it, other than a spoof documentary.

Ch ch ch ch changes…

When you are ready for change, it can’t come soon enough. When it is forced upon you, you drag your heels… unless you can ready yourself – add your own spin to the situation, and take it in a direction you can be content with.

Readying myself (for a potential change in jobs) is my challenge at present. I’m finding it substantial distraction, a background stress that is inhibiting rather than driving me to do what I should be doing.

Must… focus… Must… think… positively!

cutting back... again

This state is continuing a trend to cut back its support to the rural research, and this article demonstrates a trend that has been happening in all states DPI's and also the national scientific research organisiation for over 10 years now. There are rumours in aggy research circles that the state DPI will no longer perform the multiple roles of research, extension, and regulation within 5-10 years, and will only perform the role of a regulatory body (quarantine, chemical regulation etc). That will leave applied agricultural research largely in the hands of private industry (chemical co's and agribusiness consultants). Not quite the same thing as having an independent body carry out objective research with the best interests of society at heart.

So why should we care about this? Farmers are less than 1% of the population and put chemicals on our food and cause salinity through land clearing, right?

Farmers are a diverse mix of people – many are University educated, some are third generation on the land, some “seachangers” who have moved from the city in the hope of a different life, some are immigrants who started off as a farm hand and gradually started farming their own land. One thing that can be said of living in the country – you are generally isolated. Before farmers take up new ways of doing things, they need to first and foremost, have respect and trust for the person who is teaching or demonstrating it to them – ie ideally you need someone who has an objective & holistic approach and preferably has long-term research to back up what they are saying. And someone who is based not too far from you (face to face contact is important). Regulation and the uptake of new practices need to be backed up by objective research that is for the benefit of all, and that we can all see happening with our own eyes, not just read about in an article somewhere.

Can private industry provide this? Definitely not. Can industry levies fully fund this? Not enough $ to support the infrastructure (facilities etc) required, and many would argue that as the end benefits of agriculture are eaten by everyone, every day, so it shouldn’t only be farmers who pay.

Can Universities provide objective, long term research and extension to growers? Yes and no. They can be objective, but Unis are not necessarily stable as many research staff go wherever their funding contracts will take them. This means that in a short time, an exodus of staff to other research institutions can alter the skill base in a University Faculty significantly. In addition, Unis have to juggle research with their primary focus of teaching, are often based in the city, and aren’t traditionally good at research extension – this is a role that govt-funded organisations have traditionally filled. And let’s face it, practical research extension is learned on the job, and if we are lucky, experienced researchers who haven’t been tempted to take a package by now might be able to mentor younger researchers.

So what can be done? It is obvious that political parties don’t know how to market agricultural research to the masses, or to argue its benefits over issues that the city-centric 80% of voters think are important. They don’t know how to say to people that it is integral to their lives, and that farmers need to be helped to farm sustainably so that the land can be there for generations to come. Importing our food from other countries is not a sustainable option either. The views of political bodies (including farmers groups and political parties) only get reported when they are extreme or controversial. Somewhere in the middle is the balanced view of what is really happening – a whole range of things.

The funds available for agricultural research are increasingly available only as competitive grants. So initially, say we had 2 state DPI’s competing for the same field of research in 2 different geographic regions (say temperate and sub-tropical). With a limited pool of funding, the options are: fund both inadequately to do the project, or fund one organisation (that is not set up to be able to carry out research for the benefits of those outside its own region) fully. Gradually, our state DPI’s and SIRO are differentiating their skills so that they don’t compete with each other for funding. Result? Patchy skills bases around the country, no sharing of research because we are all competitors and govt departments move towards research areas that they think will look exciting to voters because that is where the money is. Where does that leave the back up for other govt functions such as quarantine, plant and animal health, food safety...?

I understand that all govt departments – state or national – need to justify themselves, re-evaluate themselves, and restructure from time to time to account for changes in society. But cut backs and the loss of older, more experienced researchers is slowly crippling the research community (or is it just that I'm realising how inept we all are?). The loss of positions without replacement is decreasing the critical mass of researchers in some areas – how can environmental scientists and agricultural scientists bounce ideas off each other if they aren’t co-located, yet supported by other scientists of the same discipline at the same time? In addition, the loss of research stations in the heart of where the end users of the research are based is decreasing the level of 2-way interaction between industry and research that is necessary. Let's face it - how often would farmers and scientists get together and chat unless they ran into each other on the street from time to time?

I'm wondering how much longer the cutting back can go on?

Flat tyre

First *horrifying* experience of a flat tyre on the M5 yesterday….
My poor nerves! Cars & trucks whooshing past at 110kph as we put on spare tyre….
Then the (mild) embarrassment of having to drive at 80kph the rest of the way into Sydney due to silly excuse for a spare tyre that car manufacturers give you these days*. Suprisingly, given Sydney's many impatient, intolerant "why the hell aren't you doing at least the speed limit?" bumper hugging drivers, I only got half-honked at once!!

Couldn’t help but think “that’d be right” when my tyre went flat. Funny that – you feel flat, then you get a flat tyre – kind of like your energy materialising itself in an event. If these are the rules of the universe, whatever can I expect to happen next?!!!

* spare tyre is smaller and harder than normal wheel, and you can only travel at 80 kph and for a certain distance. ie the spare tyre is only designed to get you as far as a tyre shop. Really irritating if you don’t have time to deal with it on the day your tyre chooses to get a puncture and go flat. As Cheese says, cars are evil, expensive pieces of junk.

Sometimes you astound yourself with your philosophical revelations, sometimes you slice through sociological phenomena with cutting satire.

Sometimes you are just plain shallow....

On the weekend, I saw a couple lunching out with matching white pants and tops. All white, but clearly not sportswear to do with lawn bowls or tennis. Matching is the sort of thing we might do by accident and get mildly embarrassed about. Very coordinated weekend leisure wear. Very sickening.

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By the way, here is a cool link if you are at all concerned about the Sydney rainfall situation. These data are taken from electronic rain gauges, so not as accurate as human-checked, but still gives you an idea of what is falling where. Note that Camden in the south-west (close to the waragamba dam area) always gets less rain than nearer to the coast. Sad, sad days for Sydney Basin's amenity horticulture, fruit and veg producers. However, you will be pleased to hear that recycled water is getting trialled by my campus, and is used to water the public grounds in the new cul-de-sac-ridden housing estates out this way.

I think this year's Australian Idle (sic) finalists should do a remake of Toto's 80's hit single: "Bless the rain down in Africa", with an Australian twist to the lyrics of course.

Thwarted by bureaucracy, Australian style

Was wondering if anyone else has been thwarted by bureaucracy recently? You know, you have something in mind for the benefit of everyone, and you start to make enquiries about how to go about it. It seems possible, so you proceed, only to find out part way through that some other person/department needs to be involved. Suddenly, things get way more complex than they need to be, and after much effort (you persist only on principle), the decision about your original idea/approach finally comes back :
- NO, or
- Yes, but you’ll have to do a, b, c,….z in order for this to happen

A friend who works for a large, Australian company was recently thwarted by bureaucracy in an attempt to get a door opening in the opposite direction in the Mens toilets in his office. He had everyone’s health and safety in mind. What could simply have been $200 unscrewing and rescrewing of hinges, turned out to be a $2000 internal services quote that was, not surprisingly, knocked back.

(I have lots of similar things happening around me, but not so interesting to tell).