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Sustainable Streetscapes II

Saturday, 4 April 2009

Sustainable Streetscapes is making progress! I've had a designer out this morning as well as a council member to discuss planting laws and plant opportunities... Since my original post I have had more ideas.

1) Community vegie gardens... each naturestrip has a different vegetable and the entire street acts as a community garden. Ganesh was against this idea - he thinks the world isn't a nice enough place and that the vegies would be poisoned/crushed/urinated on. So I'm sticking with herbs for now. One day though!

2) A pressure based water system. Basically a hole drilled in the cement in each gutter that goes through into the naturestrip. A long tube would run inside the naturestrip along the gutter and fill with water. Small tubes would drip water out into the naturestrip on a pressure based system so as not to flood the garden. This would help ensure the health of the plants and make use of any rain.

I've also spoken to some of the neighbours and they are up for it! Can't wait to finalise the plant choies... I was loving this picture of jacarands with perhaps some native mint and rosemary to continue the colour theme but jacarandas aren't native! If anyone knows of any native trees to the area that provide a nice green canopy without dropping anything sticky/slippery on to the ground that would be very useful!

The landscape designer, Chris, also showed me some great interactive maps available through DSE... Our entire area used to be tree scrub!

Labels: naturestrip, streetscape, sustainability

posted by genloz at 12:56 PM 0 Comments

Why should we choose you?

Thursday, 18 December 2008

Interview day... Today I had a chance to implement my 'sustainable culture' HR policy... The job ad I posted for a new programmer included the requirement of 'interest in sustainability' amongst other things, and one of my key questions was regarding the 5% reduction! Unfortunately only 2 out of 50 applicants deemed my requirement worthy of a mention... and only 1 of those interviewed actually knew what the 5% target was about!! I am definitely starting to see why behavioural change is considered so difficult... (well I suppose I already knew from my chocolate addiction)... The candidates were an extremely mixed bunch... Those who were obviously social isolates, spoke too fast or didn't stop! Those who turned up in a dirty tshirt and those with full suits and cufflinks... Some fresh out of uni and some with years of professional experience. After all the interviews it turned out that the best 2 were the 2 who actually addressed the sustainability criteria in their responses... Now it's up to me to come up with a test/activity to determine which one!

Reading through the cvs really put my career into perspective though... I think I'm having a career crisis like Xin! I trained in software engineering and physics, I have been doing environmental engineering and sustainability and now I'm moving into education?! It's no way to build a skill set and have a focus like the people who I interviewed today... I need to decide what I enjoy most! It's just so difficult - elements of each are fascinating. Perhaps I should have been a journalist - the classic jack of all trades!

I also realised that my hobbies have really been light on this year. All my interest in sport, volunteering and the arts has dried up in favour of work, work and more work... If I'm not at work, I'm doing webpages for the University or for ecoIT or the not for profits I'm involved with... I really need to get out there and embrace life more! I read an interesting quote the other day. I'm not sure of the exact wording but it went along the lines of "boys learn to live too early, women learn to live too late, that is the problem with life". I'm certainly seeing that with Ganesh and myself. I suppose the HSP has to do with my slight uptightness but I've had enough - it's time to be a complete and happy person... No more hiding behind the computer! And yes, I see the irony of declaring that via a blog... I've been thinking a little bit about my new years resolutions of late and that is definitely going at the top of the list.

Labels: career, interview, sustainability

posted by genloz at 9:38 PM 2 Comments