...We are the sum of our experiences...: December 2006

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Tech Savvy

Just a short note of (hilarious) congratulations to Jake's Mum for learning how to blog before he did.

And post.

The look on his face was priceless.

Hi Anita!

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Early Christmas Present

I have a new favourite book. An early Christmas present from my exceedingly well-travelled Aunt and Uncle, who have just returned from backpacking Eastern Europe.

A copy of Lonely Planet's 2007 Blue List.

And an passport holder, embossed with my name.

Australia, I love you. But I've got places to be.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Belated update...

Congratulations to Ryan on being elected as the new State Manager for Queensland. May our post-pub-night-I’m-so-hungover planning and ideas sessions continue! Unfortunately I can no longer pull the: ‘Ryan, shuddup. Lissen ta me. I’m your RICX Chair’. Now it’s a case of ‘Jess, bow down. I’m your SM. Deal with it.’ Gotta love it.

Also, major snaps to Naomi who is now an OGT after passing SRB! Naomi is one of the early members of neo-QUT and the first member (not SN) that I’ve ever been involved with for exchange. So excited! You’ll have an amazing time in India/ Bangladesh/ China…wherever you decide!

Congratulations to Vicki (Tor) who my Toowoomba friends will know. Vicki has just headed home after three months abroad, only after being refused entry to the UK. Only Vicki could manage this.

Presented my PBox to the region at the roundtable. Yay. Received well. Lots of work for me to do. More details as things are finalised.

90% of house moving is complete.
My home home doesn’t feel like home because everything is in boxes.
My old home doesn’t feel like home because it’s almost empty (there’s an echo).
My new home doesn’t feel like home because everything is in boxes.

What is it, 4 sleeps until Santa comes? We’re not even going to talk about Christmas shopping…*sigh* usually I’m hyper organised…e.g. usually by August…

This final part might seem a bit random… but really, its just pointing out that we’re always learning. One of the people I work with is a grand source of information, and in recent days I’ve learned about a ‘cheese ball’ (a curry- covered cheese dip concoction apparently all the rage at Christmas), the concept of a ‘Kitchen Tea’; a soft version of the Hens Night designed to stock the bride’s house with kitchen supplies, and that Toowoomba used to the home of Castlemaine’s XXX Brewery, which later merged to become Castlemaine Perkins XXXX and moved to Brisbane. I’m still too sheltered to understand the whole ‘set your Christmas Pudding on fire’ phenomenon.

And cricket. I don’t get cricket either.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Young people + climage change

Science students needed to combat future climate change (Tuesday, 19/12/2006)

A lack of students wanting to study agriculture and science is causing concern.

Universities and scientific bodies say the shortage could hurt Australia's ability to cope with issues like climate change and natural resource management.

The University of Sydney is blaming negative perceptions * of the rural economy due to the drought, despite strong demand for graduates.

CSIRO spokesman Murray Cameron says a shortage of maths graduates has already delayed some of its research programs.

"A lot of Australia's history in agriculture, for example, has been in our ability to use genetics to breed better animals, better plant species, a lot of that in the future is about using mathematics effectively," he said.

"Without mathematics, we will not be competitive with other countries, which are aiming to do the same things."

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* I was at a conference earlier this year that mentioned 'perceptions' of rural industry. I vaguely remember the keynote speaker talking about a survey on young people's perception which asked them to rank the top three images that come to mind when considering things like farming and agriculture. The list was something similar to this:

1. Mud
2. Gumboots
3. Hard work

The above article reminds me of David, whom I worked with in QA (refer to the 60’s party photo below), who I met at a Horticultural Science conference about two years ago now.

We were easily the youngest people there, and we ended up getting stuck into the red wine one night, and ranted about the woes of the industry. We stayed in contact, and a few months later we ended up working together.

Last week, despite the fact that he had just finished a 4 year Agribusiness degree, while working part-time in the field, Dave was worried about landing a graduate position.

Jess: Dave, you’re switched on, young, you already have experience and you actually WANT to work in rural industry. You are going to have zero dramas getting a job. Seriously, there’s like, two people in the whole country like you.

Dave: HA! And you’re the other one!

All very fortunate for moi.

But it sucks big time for the industry.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Leadership drought

Below is a segment from the Editorial in today's edition of 'The Australian'.

Leadership drought (December 18, 2006)
The rains have failed, but so have too many politicians

WATER supply is like the weather. In times of drought, everybody whinges but nobody does anything about it. Except perhaps state governments, and all they do is procrastinate and punish. The Victorian Government announced yesterday that from the new year, Melbourne would go to level three water restrictions, which ban washing cars and restrict watering gardens. Brisbane faces the prospect of much more onerous level five restrictions if it does not rain very hard, very soon. And the only obvious reason why Sydney is not already at level four is that there is an election in the offing. For years, people in the capital cities have watched their dams emptying, while governments, used to waxing fat on dividends from water utilities, have held fast to their supposedly surefire solution to water shortages - praying for rain. No state has built a dam to service capital cities in decades. And with the honourable exceptions of Perth, which has bitten the bullet on desalination, and Adelaide, where recycling is an established part of the city's water strategy, there has been altogether inadequate investment in water infrastructure. When they are not procrastinating, they are punishing people who dare to use water. And so around Australia, city people endure water rationing, as if supply shortages were unavoidable. This is outrageous, given that expanding supply and recycling can produce as much water as we want to pay for. Nor need it cost us all that much extra. According to former federal Treasury chief and current head of the NSW utilities regulator, Michael Keating, in his state at least, pricing systems are in place that meet the long-run marginal costs of supplying water. What is lacking is the political will to spend money on expanding the supply.

The issue in the bush is different - during droughts there is not enough water to go round to meet the needs of farmers, let alone the environment. The state of the Murray-Darling basin has been known for years, as has the need to radically reform the way water for farming use is allocated and priced. But the problem here is the same - government inertia. A national approach to pricing and allocating water across state lines in the bush was a fundamental of national competition policy in the 1990s. It was integral to the impressive sounding National Water Initiative announced in 2004. And John Howard held a summit last month that addressed the need for a national market in water rights, one of the issues the NCP was supposed to have fixed. But don't hold your head under water waiting for an outcome from this latest talkfest.

It can't go on, and if the politicians cannot address the issue of how water is best allocated to the most efficient rural users without destroying the Murray, perhaps we should look for people who can. Water scientists Mike Young and Jim McColl suggest a single organisation to make the decisions on allocations, manage entitlement registers and set water trading rules for all the issues involving large water systems across state borders. In essence, such an agency could manage the water supply as the Reserve Bank controls credit - impartially, and with an eye only to the interests of all Australians. But before we get to the point where such an agency could exercise such enormous authority, we need a consensus on what sort of farming is suited to Australia*. There seems no doubt that water-intensive crops are not suited to our drying continent. However, the argument between those who see this drought as something to wait out until the rains come and those who argue that we must change our use of rural water and return more to the Murray-Darling permanently is not over yet. And the idea that urban users are responsible when the dams run dry is still commonly accepted. This suits the premiers of the four Murray-Darling basin states, because while debate still rages they can continue to duck their responsibility for supplying enough water in the cities, and to co-operate with Canberra and each other to efficiently allocate what is available in the bush.

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What can I say. Except maybe, snaps to Adelaide and Perth.

*This point I'm not even going to touch. I can see that in the coming days/weeks/months/years there will be a huge amount of controversy over the comments made before that little asterisk.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Walking my old path.

In between house moving, and trying to clear the rabble from my room I chanced across a small, red note. On it, was a Chinese proverb from Cathy which came from my sugarcube envelope in the office:

‘I dreamed a thousand new paths… I woke and walked my old one.’

I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on the last year, I don’t think I could have anticipated anything that has happened. At January Conference in Perth, my biggest concern, and the biggest part of my year (in my mind) was hoping to be selected to go to AP.

Now, its nearly 12 months later, and I’ve had an absolutely crazy year. The thing is, I’ve only realised all this after actually taking the time out to look back. Before now, it’s just been ‘its alright, it’ll blow over, just keep working’. Its only now that I’ve taken an objective view of it all, that I realise that a lot of really major, unexpected things happened. I probably should have quit about half a dozen times and honestly, I’m probably one of the most likely candidates for ‘bitter alumni’.

But over the last few days I’ve been tossing up applying (read: changing my mind hourly) for a few different leadership roles, but in the end I’ve decided to stick with my PBox.

This gives me the chance to step back from the politics, and back into what AIESEC is really about; having an impact. And, right now, I feel that the place I can have the biggest impact is through a project.

The main reason behind this is because over the last two years, all I have done is learn. Learn a lot, in a short space of time. Now, when it comes to the point where I can reflect on what I’ve actually done, it feels like I may have done a lot, but I haven’t accomplished anything. With a project, I can go back to the parts that I skipped (e.g. doing corework) and into a position that I’ll hold for more than a handful of months.

I also have a strong belief that you need to have a fairly solid commitment to a role before applying for it. A few days isn’t enough time (for me at least) to get into the mindset of a different position, and to really be passionate enough to take it on. There’s no way that I’ll step up to a position (a second time) that I’m not fully prepared for.

There’s also quite a few other opportunities which I’m considering coupling with OCP, as well as outside AIESEC. My own sanity being one. Haven’t seen that since State this year. I’m pretty sure I left my party hat in Perth. But I’ve also made a commitment to the ICX guys for 07 which I need to honor, and I’ve not been happy with my activity (read: inactivity) for the external relations and communication strategy from 2006, and I’ll have a lot more flexibility to work in this area. I’ve always had plans on keeping track of our alumni, there’s the possibility of expansion and I’ll still be pushing using experienced older members rather than letting them wander to H4TF.

Anyway, that’s a little insight to my last week. Back to fine- tuning the plan.

Big thanks to Daz and Dan for helping, but mostly not helping me figure this one out.

Mostly a huge thankyou to Kezz, who without a doubt has been my rock this year. After tempting you with candy at recruitment and nudging you to apply for the EB back in April, you’re the one that’s always been there to make me laugh when I need it, but most of all you always remind me what we're here for.

Panda: Thanks for the gerberas, the sugarcubes, 202 procrastination, shopping adventures and the chocolate croissants.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Christmas Party.

The photo is of the original Quality Assurance team from my first workplace; David, Kathy and I. Probably the first team I’ve ever worked in actually. Over the year that I worked in this department, the role grew from ‘the job done for a couple of hours’ by one person, to a full time job for three people. I think one of the main reasons we became such a tight team was that we had to tackle not only our own learning in the QA area, but also the mindset of management and staff.

Anyway. Off serious things. We always managed to have fun. Especially at the Christmas Party.

The annual staff party is always a huge event, a great time to catch up with friends, see the business manager pull out retro dance moves and drink the bar dry.

It might be a terrible picture, but we were having an excellent time. This was taken much later in the night, so I’m sans ‘fro but still with the horrendous yellow eye shadow. Its always an absoloute ball, does fantastic things for the work culture and is and an event that I will always make time to get to.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Blonder

As a housewarming present for the residents of the House of Blonder and to celebrate Dan moving in, today I dropped by:

A 15 metre garden hose.
A large funnel.
14 litres of expired goon.

Let the good times roll boys.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Quote.

Its MC election time.

Its SM election time.

Queensland is gearing up to vote on adding recycled water to our potable supply (hugely significant for Toowoomba, which voted ‘no’ in a previous referendum).

Today we have a fabulously applicable quote from the Toowoomba Chronicle from Mayor Dianne Thorley:

‘I don’t punt on elections.’

Monday, December 04, 2006

Short updates.

Its been a little while since I’ve updated, so a couple of short notes:

Sydney. I don’t think I will ever get used to the weather in Sydney. Despite being summer, what I required was jeans, stockings, a beanie and a parka. In reality, and in true Queensland style, I took pluggers and singlets. Stupid Sydney.

Reading. I’ve got my reading bug back. I polished off ‘Kon-Tiki’ on the plane. I’ve always been a fan of ‘the classic’ adventure novels, and this was just a reminder. In summary, five crazy Norwegians decide to take a raft from South America to Polynesia. It’s fantastic.

The flight home saw me start, and nearly finish ‘Marching Powder’ by Rusty Young, and next on the hitlist is ‘Island’ by Aldous Huxley…mm… Huxley goodness…

Finally, I had the revelation that Christmas is coming. Way too soon. Only realised it this weekend. I must shop.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Farewell Naomi.

The following is the best article I have ever read.

I am so happy right now. Click here.

...We are the sum of our experiences...