Desert Mandala: Life In Central Australia

gadget December 21st, 2008

Well the year is nearly over. Frustratingly, my job is still in limbo with no clear direction as to where I’ll be and what I will be doing 6 months from now. I have enjoyed the challenge of managing one of the Territory’s iconic parks and have gained much experience in dealing not only with my staff but the broader corporate and tourism sectors. Personally it has been a good year with our trip to Bali in April, where again, much fun was had and prompted me to purchase another toy for the garage.

• Bali , Bemusing , Kings Canyon , corporate culture , fun
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gadget December 20th, 2008

 The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, is a book with a pretentious -if not slightly unbelievable- title.

When I first became aware of the book about a year ago, I thought: oh yeah, another self-help book with the promise of becoming a self-made millionaire in the same time it takes for you to go through the Drive-Thru at MacDonald’s. Pass. I didn’t bother ordering it from Amazon.

Recently, I saw that my local Dymocks (an Australian chain of bookstores) was stocking it. I picked it up, leafed through, and promptly bought it for my daughter. She decided it was too much hard work before her trip to South Africa and then to uni, so she left it for me. Last week, I finished reading it and I’ve decided to write a more detailed review than I normally would. So here is what I found both useful and useless from the The 4-Hour Workweek.

  Continue Reading »

• Book review , coffee & raisin toast , corporate culture
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Amanda March 8th, 2008

It’s been a busy week for both of us.

Gadget went to Katherine for a leadership course. In preparation for the course, he did a Myers-Briggs personality test and then the consultants running the course added their own additional test questions and personality categories to expand on Myers-Briggs. The result: Gary is a Thruster-Organiser. When he told me, I laughed. And so did everyone else. 

A Thruster-Organiser of sounds like someone you’d either findworking in a brothel or for NASA. You can just imagine what fun a bunch of male rangers would have had with the term Thruster-Organiser. Surely there was a better word than ‘thruster’ that could have been used! Gary, I suspect, quite likes being able to refer to himself as as thruster. I guess it’s a bloke thing.

At any rate, he drove to and from Katherine (1100km each way with 3 other rangers = lots of sick jokes and farting, I believe) between Monday and Thursday this week. Then on Friday he had to go out to Ormiston to move some of his belongings in to town – another 260 km. So he is a tired boy. On Monday he takes up residence in the Tom Hare Building (the place I have just vacated) to begin his new position as Chief District Ranger of Watarrka National Park. I guess there will be a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing to Watarrka for us over the next few months. I will have to see if I can do some work down there once we come back from Bali in April. But I hope the West Macs mob are still going to invite us to their wonderful social gatherings. Hint. Hint.

For myself, I found the first week back at AAPA strangely comfortable and empowering. It is a buzz walking into a place and knowing deep in your core that you can do the job, do it well and instantly connect with your creativity to do it even better. I feel a lot better and happier this week than I have felt in ages. I suspect it won’t last, so I guess I’ll enjoy this while it’s here. I know I’m probably harping, but it’s been like coming home. I wasn’t expecting it to be so renewing.

I spent a couple of days organising my new (old) office, trying to get the computer applications going, remembering how to use the database and Mapinfo, and then went out and organised some consultations at Harts Range. There’s so much work to do – so many interesting places to go and loads of mining exploration applications. Next week, I’ll be going up to Harts Range overnight for a site clearance.

This morning I’ve downloaded Cybertracker software for the PDA. Cybertracker is a database/GPS program that allows you to swiftly collect georeferenced data in the field on your PDA. The scientists at PWS use it for fauna & flora surveys and veg mapping. I am going to adapt it to use for applied anthropological fieldwork. I guess I will have to sit down and design a database over the next week or so from the list of landscape items that comprise sacred sites in the NT, and trial it in the field. Anyway, I have some work coming up in the West Macs, Papunya and Kintore (never been up there before), and possibly Nyirrpe in which I can test it out on. I am hoping I get the Nyirrpe certificate so I can visit Newhaven, a private conservation area co-managed by Birds Australia and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. In using Cybertracker, my plan is to design a trial birding database using Central Australian species lists that I already have along with silhouette icons and other graphics. Once I’ve done my learning on the birding database, I’ll do the sites version.

I know, I know … what a geek I can hear people saying.

But it’s fun.

• Central Australia , corporate culture , geekdom
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gadget March 4th, 2008

It’s not a life, it’s a journey …

Gadget and I are so sick of hearing social commentators, marketing promotions, politicians, our work colleagues and anyone else saying the words: it’s a journey. We groan when anyone utters those words now.

Yes. We know it’s a journey. Everything is a %^&*ing journey. And yet, in describing EVERYTHING as a journey, the import of the words ‘it’s a journey’ is so much less. It’s like using f**k as a noun, verb, adjective and pronoun. If you use f**k so often, when you really need something potent, it ceases to have punch. What do you say when you drop a brick on your toe: oh pooh! Hardly the same impact.

Who do we have to blame for this? New age gurus and self-help books? Buddhists? I suspect it’s marketing spin doctors. But I digress….

Jobs And Things

Today was my first day back at AAPA. Actually, I went back into the very same office I was in four and a half years ago. It was a little strange: strange in the fact that it was both familiar and comfortable, yet disquieting because of the ease which I felt and confidence it brought me. I wasn’t expecting to feel this way. I’d been feeling some trepidation and uncertainty about whether I was doing the right thing, going back to work somewhere where I’d previously worked. Perhaps, when I’m onto writing my twentieth Authority Certificate, I will feel less comfortable and more bored.

Having an office again rather than a noisy cubicle feels so … well … empowering. It’s a good feeling to make the space your own. Like moving into a new house. Of course, I had computer hiccups on my first day - I had half of the programs I needed missing, including the all important AAPA database and GIS program. And I discovered that they don’t use the full MS office suite. Bugger! I needed Publisher to do some work on Big Books. I’ve been given my first Certificates to do: Ormiston Gorge and a roadworks on the Papunya-Kintore road. I’m looking forward to getting out to some places that I haven’t been before, exploring, birdwatching, going to some art centres and meeting new people. I’m also looking forward to introducing the world of geekery to AAPA: using PDAs and Cybertracker for fieldwork, podcasts, corporate blogs and wikis, along with Big Books, the art of interpretation etc. More on my adventures as they arise.

We said a couple of weeks ago that there was something on the horizon for Gadget: well, he’s now Chief District Ranger at Watarrka (King’s Canyon) for the next six months. This means he comes into town -although there is frequent travel to Watarrka- and for the very first time ever we get to live together. Yay!! He’s away at the moment, doing a leadership course in Katherine, which I am a bit jealous of. I would love to do something like that. You get a four thousand word analysis of your leadership style/personality based on an online questionnaire. Anyway, I guess this means that we’ll be spending a bit of time down at the Canyon over the next six months. Who knows what’s going to happen after that. It’s a journey…

Oh my god. Did I really just say that?

• Central Australia , corporate culture
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Amanda February 14th, 2008

This is a post mainly about frogs.

Actually, it’s a post about the two or three frogs that like our ensuite.

The first night we ‘owned’ (I say ‘owned’ loosely – Westpac Bank has a large interest in our house!) our new house, Rhiannon and her boyfriend, Andrew, slept here.

They were awakened at some ungodly hour by a chorus of croaks. They searched the house, finally tracking down the noise to the ensuite. There, crowded together on the toilet seat, were three small frogs.

They tried to catch some of the frogs -I think they got one- and put it outside. The others jumped into the toilet.

And were flushed.

From time to time since we’ve been here, frogs have reappeared in the ensuite toliet. I usually catch them and put them outside, either in a drain or in a lush, damp potplant. This week, I stumbled out of bed at 5.30am, busting to pee and heard a plop! into the toilet water. I turned on the light and there was a spread-eagled frog clinging to the bottom of the toilet pan, underwater.

So I did what every woman who wakes up first thing in the morning has to do. I peed on the frog and flushed it.  Sorry, but I wasn’t fishing the frog out of the toilet water at 5.30 am.

Last night I went into the ensuite and the frog was back. I assume it was the same frog I’d flushed the previous morning, reincarnated. I decided to take a photo of the frog:

Then, I tried to catch it. (It subsequently peed all over the floor as frogs do when you scare the bejesus out of them). Caught it. Put it outside in the potplant.

Yet I know it is only a matter of time before the frog (or frogs) are back again.

Why is this a problem?

Well, I don’t hate frogs. I like them, actually. But the little buggers tend to make a god-awful NOISE at 2.33am and wake us up. In the ensuite, it is amplified.

No frogs = better sleep.

Simple.

(BTW. For those who care, these frogs are usually Desert Tree Frogs, Litoria rubella. Having a ranger for a partner is handy when it comes to knowing common scientific names!).

About Jobs

Ok. I am changing jobs. It’s been on the cards for a while. I’m not going very far, nor am I having a career change. I’m having what you might call  ‘a career return’. I’m going back to the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority to work as an anthropologist once more. This hasn’t been an easy decision for me -again my ambition is to be an academic and to specialise in not only environmental anthropology (thus my PhD on joint management) but also to examine the cultural causes of depression, and depression in Aboriginal communities. This is a long term plan, which will need some incubation and attention, beginning in the second half of this year.

I guess I am quite worried that after being in Parks -which is a sizeable department- and having a variety of projects to work on (although I haven’t recently been happy with the nature of the work I’m doing, nor with my ill-defined role), I might be bored doing sacred site clearances and sacred site registrations. There’s also the fun things at Parks, like fauna surveys and doing the odd bit of Larapinta Trail maintenance that I will miss very much. And all the great people I work with.

There’s things I won’t miss, but I won’t say them here.

Anyway, my last day will be, auspiciously, 29th February.

Gary also has something in the pipeline, but more on that when details are confirmed.

So that’s that for a few days.

• Central Australia , corporate culture , domesticity
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Amanda December 20th, 2007

I read recently that if you have more than 20% of your workspace taken up by personal items, then you are percieved as not being professional. I also read recently that women who don’t apply more layers of make up than there are geological strata in the MacDonnell Ranges are also seen as less than professional. For these pieces of wisdom, I say thank you feminism, thank you Hollywood and thank you soulless corporate culture!

I have to admit, I fail on both counts. Anthropologists who engage in remote area fieldwork don’t need to impress with inch-thick foundation and other pore-clogging gunk. Just some sunscreen and a bit of lip balm will do. As for my office…

To upset the corporate clones, I collect snowdomes.

That’s right … those symbols of everything that was tacky and wrong about tourism in the 1960s and 70s … snowdomes. I currently have about 65 of these little guys in my office, stacked neatly on my bookcase. Whilst most of them I’ve collected myself, friends and family have thought of my eccentric habit and have brought them back from all over the world (like Hawai’i  and Bosporus). They’re surprisingly hard to come by in Australia nowdays, which is why I occasionally have to resort to something like the tiny porcelain thimble (from Port Pirie in South Australia), a tiny gold stature of a merino ram (from Goulburn in NSW) or a miniature tea pot (from Woomera in South Australia).

From time to time someone – I think it’s our cleaner, the walking American stereotype- plays with them and upsets my arrangement. But mostly, people tend not to notice them until they’re mid-sentence in a conversation with me and say: “Oh, wow! I’ve never noticed those before … how wonderful!”

And you know what? I’ve never had anyone tell me it’s not professional.

• corporate culture , fun
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gadget December 13th, 2007

As you might have guessed, both Gadget and I have been all too busy for the past 6 weeks with moving, working out bush, job applications and interviews and the usual round of pre-Christmas socialising. We’re both bordering on exhaustion and looking forward to the holidays. I don’t think we’ve caught up on our post-moving exahustion yet. We’re both tired and grumpy and ready to tell everything to go jump.

To begin with, we’re both waiting on interview results – Gadget for a promotion & me for a university job (a post-doc position). Let me tell you it’s painful. What should take a week, at this time of the year is taking two or more weeks. I could write more – especially about the bizarre unfolding of events that one of us has had to endure – but I guess I can’t. Those of you in-the-know will know exactly what I am talking about. Perhaps the most amusing line comes from one of my own interviews. When I asked how long until I found out, the reply was, “Not long. About fourteen days…” PAUSE “… Oh… and there’s the Christmas break. That will slow things down. Oh… umm… you’ll probably know in the second week of January.”

So I have to spend the next FOUR WEEKS stressing over whether I’ve got this position or not. Entire civilisations have fallen in that time. Do people actually understand how dreadful this is? What kinds of mental health effects it creates for applicants? My whole life feels like it’s on HOLD. Both of us feel like we’re being tortured to a silent, wimpering, but nonetheless, painful death!

Anyway, Gadget finishes work today until mid-January, whilst I have to wait til next week. Those last few days are always tortuously slow. Doubly so when your other half is at home chilling out and you’re still at work, trying not to look too bored and disinterested. I am not too ashamed to admit that I don’t want to be at work at all at the moment.

And then there’s Christmas. So far, I’ve written zero Christmas cards and bought only two Christmas presents. I am hoping to improve on this dismal effort by the end of Thursday next week, my first official day of leave. Until then, I have to sit on an interview panel, go to yet another Christmas party, write another job application, and generally try and finish up a few projects before I go on leave.  In all, I feel like I’m in the last few weeks before giving birth – that frustrating time when you don’t have the energry to finish what you’ve started and don’t want to start anything new… in fact, you’re just exhausted and stunned into inaction by the sheer insurmountability of the unknown time for which you will have to wait in order for the really hard, important work to begin.

… I am so over all this.

• corporate culture
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Amanda December 4th, 2007

Aahhh… the magic of government process. The mystery. The complicating simplicity. The ramped-up synergies and outcome-oriented program deliverables.

Excited? Those government synergies sure get my salivary ducts lubricated…. 

Tonight, however, I am confused. After spending several hours discussing potential projects to expend a surplus budget across two different organisations on three different occasions, and then subsequently drafting project briefs to spend the abovementioned money, this afternoon, we had another meeting.

And at this fateful meeting, as a Territory-wide group, we carefully eliminated most of the projects we’d proposed. I say ‘we’ very loosely – I am just the square peg in the round hole, the person down the end of the office with the snow dome collection in her office, not a real, functional member of this team in any sense. We eliminated and eliminated until,  after nearly two hours of hard and earnest elimination (a mild laxative effect, actually), we had an unspent surplus only slightly less than we started with two months ago.

Did I miss something here?  Or is it just the process that matters, bugger everything else?

 …and in other news to hand, a random picture of our dog, Charlie:

… and Ben in the pool:

…proof that we are responsible home owners, complying with NT pool safety regulations …

 …and the kind of outdoor setting you buy in Alice Springs the day before you’re hosting an 18th birthday and no one in town has anything other than plastic tables and chairs for less than $700!! (which is another blog post altogether)…

• coffee & raisin toast , corporate culture
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Amanda October 23rd, 2007

* CUBE FARM.
An office filled with cubicles.

(piccie from http://www.geardiary.com/ )

I’m trying to stay upbeat about work … but it’s so hard when you’re moving house and feeling like you’re over your job about 12 months ago. So to amuse myself (and anyone else out there who actually reads our blog) here are some new buzzwords for the corporate (or public sector) world of work:

BLAMESTORMING: Sitting round in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.

TESTICULATING: Waving your arms around and talking bollocks.

PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on. (This also applies to applause for a promotion because there may be cake.)

SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything and then leaves.

ASSMOSIS: The process by which people seem to absorb success and advancement by sucking up to the boss rather than working hard.

SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die.

SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids or start a “home business”.

404: Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error message “404 Not Found” meaning that the requested document could not be located.

OH NO SECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake (e.g. you’ve hit ‘reply all’). And my personal favourites:

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE:The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again. ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organisational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the “adminisphere” are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. This is often affiliated with the dreaded needless paperwork and processes.  Like other public sector agencies, it should come as no surprise that the Northern Territory Government has an entire department dedicated to this rarified layer of useless paper chases and processes concieved by people fully trained in the art of discussing Australian Idol and the cover of the latest New Weekly magazine (totally and utterly relevant to effective government administration … uhem … er … NOT!).

Well that amused me for about 47 seconds. I hope it amused you, too – perhaps for about 48 seconds.

More on the moving process later in the week…  

• corporate culture , fun
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Amanda August 28th, 2007

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with a certified toss pot. Or in the words of Robert Sutton, a flaming asshole.

In fact, I haven’t worked with one for nearly ten years, dating all the way back to the oh-so-pretentious kitchenhands and wannabe ‘gourmet’ chefs of the Eco Cafe in Mittagong. You know, the kind of pretentious middle class wankers who call their kids names like ‘Clementine’ and ‘Woodroffe’ (I wish I was making this up, but I’m not). At the time, these twats had the gall to tell me (I was a 30 year old, third-year undergrad) and I quote: …you’re the shit-kicker today, Amanda, so you’re doing drinks and dishes. I subsequently had to serve about 50 identical and equally pretentious snotty women with blonde bob-hairdos and outrageous fake Oxbridge accents, who only ever drank weak-decaf-skinny-soy lattes (said laah-tayy) and who always sent them back because they were never weak enough.

Well, if you wanted a cup of warm milk, love, why the bloody hell didn’t you just ask for it? You latte-fatte twat! As for the people working in the Eco café… hah!!You earn HOW much an hour? $14?? Yeah, make me strong cappuccino, make sure it’s HOT, and that’s Dr Amanda to you.

Imbeciles. What kind of sad tosser would give their child a name like Clementine just to try and prove they were upwardly mobile? Sad, sad, sad.

When I worked in banking, there were a number of flaming assholes around: pathetic social rejects who’d made it as far as branch accountant via a process of osmosis and longevity. Their sole purpose in life was to make their colleagues as unhappy and fearful as possible. Thankfully, I didn’t work with too many of these – and as their reputations always preceded them, I would try to avoid working at the branches where these incompetents worked.

In both agencies of the NT government I’ve worked for, I’ve been fortunate to never work with a certified flaming asshole (although I do know of them). Public servants in the NT … well, anthropologists and the kinds of people attracted to conservation agencies, tend to be decent human beings who attempt to enjoy their work and count their workmates as friends. The people I work with have their moments, but I would never describe any of them as flaming assholes. They are mostly caring, humane people who I actually like and socialize with outside of work.

So where is all this talk of workplace tosspots leading?

I’ve just read an entertaining book called: ‘The No Asshole Rule’ by Robert Sutton. And you guessed it, it’s all about those subhuman lifeforms we all know and despise: the workplace jerk, biatch or arsehole (in proper English). The book’s subtitle is: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. That should give you a clue where this blog post is headed…

Robert’s most pressing piece of advice for those who work in places tyrannized by assholes is: get out.

Don’t try to survive these jerks, the research shows that in order to survive, you have to become a jerk yourself. Even better, Robert says choose your workplaces very carefully – try and find out as much about them before you accept a job offer and end up in the slammer with a bunch of certified bumwipes.

If you needed evidence that tossers like this actually damage the not only your productivity and mental health, but also the performance of your workplace itself, the No Asshole Rule is full of well-researched proof:

• people leave these workplaces in droves (costs the workplace $$ to re-hire)
• a negative encounter ‘packs five times the punch’ of a positive encounter (affecting morale and productivity)
• bad people can sink a corporation’s shareprice

Alright you say, I have a family, a mortgage and bills to pay. I need my job, even if I work with Sargeant Major Barkface. I can’t just leave my job!Robert Sutton has advice for you, too.
If you’re stuck there:

• try to change your own perspective (i.e. view it as a ‘lesson’ from which you can grow)
• learn emotional detachment and indifference
• buddy up with your work colleagues for safety & sanity
• go for small wins over the jerks rather than winning major battles
• limit your exposure to the person (or people) as much as you can

However, Robert really does ask you to consider whether it really is impossible to get out and find somewhere else to work…
There’s also tips for instituting the No Asshole Rule at your workplace and tips to stop you from letting your inner jerk run free (we’re all guilty of this from time to time).

Anyway, the book is an insightful and entertaining read. I’m not sure if it’s available in Australia yet – I actually ordered mine from Amazon.
If you’d like to learn more about Robert Sutton and his books, please visit his website: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/

Namaste,
Amanda

• corporate culture , lifehacks , self-help
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