Today’s post isn’t

contest related, so feel free to tune out if you’re only here for the cash dollaz (although if you are a writer, perhaps you should be at the submission page rather than reading my ramblings). As those who follow my Twitter-self may know, I’ve been applying for jobs over on the East coast of Australia for around six months now, with not so much as an interview to reward my persistence so far. It’s been affecting my ability to do the casual research work I’m currently being paid for a little bit, but thankfully I have people like Lucy to cheer me up when I vent my frustrations into the thrumming social media void:

@toothsoup Looking for work is like having the entire world tell you you’re not good enough. Keep at it, there is an ideal job waiting!

— Lucy (@findmeastorm) May 3, 2012

My problem is, of course, experience. In that I apparently have none, despite my four years of near-constant scientific analysis performed during my Ph.D. project. The attitude of industrial and, to a certain extent, university research positions is that you must have some degree of experience in a laboratory when applying for their positions.  Oh, but the huge number of hours you spent performing and demonstrating laboratories, preparing samples for experiments at national and international facilities, or stuck in front of a computer analysing ream after ream of barely-parsed machine code? They don’t count. No, you need to have at least a year or two up your sleeve doing the kind of laboratory work that would be made redundant by robots in a second if those lab monkeys decided to union up and protest the ridiculously low wages they are paid on graduation from some of the hardest bachelor degrees available.

Ahem. Sorry about that; getting a little ranty. Anyway, my point is that I’m getting nowhere fast, and it’s a bit of a downer. I have occasionally received good feedback from HR departments stating that I was within the top 10%, had a good resume, etc. but apparently I need to spend a couple of years deadening my (already dangerously low) passion for science doing the scientific equivalent of a brickie’s labourer*.

Oh goodness, there I go again.

Okay, staying on topic this time. The point of this post was to talk about goals, and how I don’t generally make them and how I’m trying to make them now. The source of this sudden focus is (like many good things) the bro-tastic Laurie Steed, in the form of a book called ‘Where Will You Be 5 Years From Today?’. It’s one of those dream-big-make-progress-not-quite-self-improvement kind of books, where by you fill in a bunch of fields and end up coming up with a set of goals to work towards. It’s a bit twee, with quotes from everyone who’s ever said something about life flitting about on each page, and cute little graphics emphasising points in bold duo- or tri-colour. But despite this, it’s possible to use it for good rather than mockery. Which is what Louise and I did one night last week. Just sat down and went through the first half of the book, answering as honestly as we could.

The results were surprising, but also not. Both of us obviously have a passion for creative endeavours, and that showed through in our top long-term goals (her: art exhibition, me: novel/collection). But what was surprising was that neither of us really had any real desire to pursue our chosen careers with any kind of vigour. Nor did our long-term goals involve any kind of material gain. In fact, both of us were pretty thoroughly sick of the idea of careers and 9-5 jobs and managers and bosses and climbing the ladder. And we are both rational enough to know that these kinds of feelings are to be expected: no-one actually likes working for the man.

But what was interesting was that, for the first time ever, we actually sat down and thought through what the alternatives might be. Things like starting a small business, or working part-time. Business proposals, grant funding, freelance writing, selling art online, and so on and so forth. And what was even more interesting was that, keeping a rational head on our shoulders, some of these options started to seem feasible. I’m not talking big money feasible, but keeping-your-head-above-water feasible. Which is not to say we’re rushing into anything crazy with idealistic stars in our eyes, but it certainly has given us both something to think about. I guess the take home message is that goal-setting is something that not a lot of us really do in a meaningful way, and it can really help focus you towards pathways that you didn’t think were possible.

And now I think I’d better go before I start raving on about personal journeys and asking the universe to give me a sports car.

—

*Not that I mind labouring. I quite enjoyed my time in Kalgoorlie and would likely do it again if the chance arose.

No related posts.

This story isn’t

necessarily Kalgoorlie-centric, in as much as it might have happened to me somewhere else at some other, future point in time. But, as it turns out, it did happen in Kalgoorlie and so gives me an opportunity to talk about other facets of the job there, as well as some freaky brain stuff.

The area in which we were working while constructing the netting structure is just outside of the roaster itself. The roaster facility is maybe two or three-hundred square metres of factory-type industrial workspace containing the sheds of the tradesmen and permanent staff, as well as the control tower and some rudimentary office space for meetings and management types. The whole place is tinted a rusty, red/brown colour, speckled with the occasional white splash from the lime mill. The most prominent feature of the facility is the roaster itself, standing at an impressive 180 metres tall and constantly breathing a stream of thick, white cloud into the air. This effluent is comprised of water vapour and sulphur dioxide, and really does look like your typical nature-made cloud once it starts floating away; a fact that will come into play later on in this tale.

The worst days on the tailings dam were those where the wind would shift from a south-easterly to a south-westerly and then drop. This wind pattern meant that the cloud of gas streaming from the roaster would fall directly on all of us working in the dam. Because it was heavier than air, the dam would catch it and store it, creating quite a dense fog which, on some days, meant you couldn’t see from one end of the dam to the other. The really shitty thing about that can be summed up in the following quote from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency:

Current scientific evidence links short-term exposures to SO₂, ranging from 5 minutes to 24 hours, with an array of adverse respiratory effects including bronchoconstriction and increased asthma symptoms.  These effects are particularly important for asthmatics at elevated ventilation rates (e.g., while exercising or playing.)

Emphasis mine. This stuff tasted like shit and caused what I can only be bothered to assume was a reaction with mucus resulting in some kind of sulphuric acid that stung and burned with every breath. Thankfully after the second swing I was prepared with a face buff (pretty much a cylinder of stretchy material) borrowed from Pat that took out most of the sting. But damned if that chemical taste still lingers with me when I think about it.

Anyway, so the roaster operated pretty much constantly the entire time we were working on the dam. I think I was once quoted a loss of a million dollars a day if it didn’t. On the day in which this story occurs, it was streaming almost directly above me as I exited from the crib room. The weather was perfect, with a rich blue sky that stretched, uninterrupted, to the horizon. By chance, I happened to look up just in time to see the moon rapidly accelerating through the sky, seemingly on a mission to leave our orbit and end life as we know it on Earth.

And then I blinked, and the moon was back to being stationary while the clouds of gas marching towards the horizon were now moving, and the visual cortex in my brain had reasserted its authority over an illusion known as ‘induced movement’. Briefly, induced movement occurs when you don’t have enough reference points to decide which object is moving and which is stationary in your field of vision. You may have experienced it when sitting on a train at a station when another train is opposite you. When the other train moves, your vision overrides any input from your body moving and for a second you might think that you are moving, when in actual fact it is the relative movement of the train pulling out that tricks you.

The interesting thing about my experience was not the phenomenon itself (although illusions that trick the body’s senses are really interesting and I may have been sucked into a two-hour wikiloop while I researched this) but rather the way I reacted to it. For one, maybe two, seconds I was utterly convinced that this shit was going down. The moon was flying away and holycrapwhatthefuck. Or, rather, not. Because my immediate reaction didn’t fall into the fight or flight categories. Instead, the first thing I did was to ask myself how this could have happened, and why it was happening. In other words, I began trying to reason out this life-threatening observation despite being absolutely certain that it was true.

It’s strange to think that perhaps, after all these years of scientific study, my brain has been rewired to ask questions first and shoot later.

Related posts:

1. Tales From Kalgoorlie: Boss

If there were

one piece of advice I would give to prospective Kalgoorlie workers, it would be to get hired in Perth. The company that I worked for provides housing for free, a daily food allowance, and the convenience of company cars/clothes. You spend very little and save pretty much everything you earn, and the entire philosophy of working a shitty mining job (i.e. to earn le moolah) is vindicated. Not so the poor unfortunates who find themselves blowing in to Kalgoorlie without a predetermined preoccupation. They must pay prices for hostel accommodation that would be hilarious if they weren’t so tragic, buy food at roughly one-and-a-half-times Perth cost, and get themselves to and from site. And the worst part? The recruitment agencies that take in these guys take a chunk of their pay, so they aren’t even earning as much as those coming up from Perth. It’s kind of screwy.

We had two of these recruitment agency workers with us in the last week of our last trip. The previous trips we had two others, one of whom was adequate and the other completely vacant. Vacant in the sense that there was really no knowing what functions were being processed behind those eyes. He could have been a genius, or an idiot. We’ll never know. In any case, this trip we managed to score two decent guys: Dean and Boss. This particular tale concerns Boss.

Boss was a big dude of Kiwi, or possibly Polynesian, descent. His actual name started with an ‘O’ and went on for several dozen syllables, hence the shortened version. He smoked big rollies, was quick to show off his missing front tooth, and knew how to tie a knot due to an extensive employment history in marquee construction. More useful than that, he was confident in everything he did and wasn’t afraid to do something without verification from the (actual) boss. So, kind of rough, but knowledgeable. The hired labour equivalent of The Dude, if you will.

The other piece of this story comes from the fact that, for most of the trip, we had a mice problem in the crib room on site. For those that haven’t been on a mine site, a crib room is simply a demountable room with electricity provided either by mains or a diesel generator. Ours had a pie warmer (brilliant) fridge and microwave for our lunches, and the tangible presence of a whole tonne of poop covering every conceivable surface greeting us every single morning. We thought it was a rat problem at first, but eventually we spotted a couple of mice scurrying from the scene of the crime. Promises were made to put down traps, but they never materialised, and we were sent gagging from the smell most days. The breakthrough came when I discovered that we had inadvertently made a mouse trap by leaving the rubbish bins without liners overnight. Prior to that, the mice had always been able to climb out of their little green feast hall by gripping up the liners and jumping out. I came in to a lack of horrid odour and four mice scurrying around in a panic at the bottom of one of our bins.

I put the bin outside with the lid on, unsure of what to do but wanting the others to see the culprits. Everyone had a chuckle, but each put the lid back on and the mice were left alone throughout the day .

Until lunch time.

We had called it to go back to work, everyone gathering up their pie wrappers and energy drink cans and shuffling off to the 4WDs. Whereupon Boss walked on over to the bin containing the mice, picked it up, and shook the living hell out of it. We watched on as he put it down, opened it up, observed that one of them still going, and picked it up for a second shake. This time he peered inside, pronounced the quartet extinguished, and walked away.

—

(NB: For those of you that might be horrified at the animal cruelty described here, the chances are pretty good that we’d have left Ratsak out the next time they got in. Or worse still, not opened the bin for a few days in the hope that they would silently starve to death, wresting the kill decision from us. So, y’know, consolation or something? :/)

Related posts:

1. Tales from Kalgoorlie: Moonfall

photo credit: Matt Lavin

It’s been two

weeks, and I’m back from my first stint in Kalgoorlie. It’s good to be home, if only for a little while, before we head back over to (hopefully) finish the job on the next swing. It’s been a heck of a couple of weeks, this being the first time I’ve ever been involved in such a physically demanding workplace. I’m proud of the way I’ve handled it so far, with only one dummy-spit and the lightest of friction between myself and the rest of the crew. The person I was most worried about irritating was Pat, and while I think I did get on his nerves near the end, I believe our friendship won’t suffer too much for working together.

The work itself is hard, but rewarding in its own way. I’m not sure if I mentioned what it was I was doing in my last post but if I didn’t, we’re essentially covering a tailings dam with netting so that birds don’t get poisoned. That sounds simple–and I guess it is–but the area to be covered is mind boggling, and the work is all at elevation. It has its own challenges, mostly physical, but there is a logistical element to it. I enjoyed the logic of it all, the necessary step-by-step. It’s like putting together a piece of Ikea furniture, but on a much grander scale. The two weeks passed almost without me noticing. The rhythm of work-beer-sleep-repeat doesn’t leave much opportunity for anything else but laughing at country television advertisements. And since the work on any given day is the same as any other, any conception of time passing is lost in the wash.

Of course, as soon as I come out of that cycle and back to reality, the same problems rear their ugly heads. I’m still completely lost as to what I want to do with my future career. I’ve come to accept the fact that I am going to have to start at graduate level despite my Ph.D. qualification if I want to enter industry: it’s just the way it works in that environment. But it’s whether or not I want to continue with science purely, or if I want to mix and match with another discipline. As I was saying to Louise this morning, I don’t have the passion for science that I see in other (successful) scientists. Or perhaps that’s the wrong way of saying it. It’s basically…well, you tend to find that by the time researchers hit the end of their Ph.D., they have a particular area, or question, that they want to explore. A topic that will drive them, in all likelihood, until the end of their careers. And so far I haven’t discovered that thing that fascinates me so much that I would be willing to devote large chunks of my time to it. Not even my writing has that effect on me. It seems that while I am good at a lot of different things, I’m not passionate enough to become great at any one of them. It’s a bit poo.

In the meantime, I’ve had some news from my former supervisor about some possible literature review work once I’m done in Kalgoorlie. It involves an Indian company who are looking to do some material science research, and so need to know what has gone before. Sounds like just the kind of thing to get me back into the swing of science, and I should (finally) be able to do some work on writing some journal articles while I’m doing that. Who knows? It might even open up some doors for me. Alright, enough of all this navel gazing. Off to make a list of things I need to do while I have a) the Internet, b) money, and c) time.

No related posts.

photo credit: Armando Maynez

It’s natural that

while I’m hunting around for a job, I begin to think about what it is I’m going to do once I have found one. This will be the first time that I am involved in what will be my career, rather than my education. Not only that, but this will (hopefully) be the first time that I command a wage that can be considered in any way plentiful.

Realising this, I’ve been mulling over the ways in which we, as consumers, spend money. I had a delightful (and enlightening and challenging, as always) chat with Laurie yesterday and we talked a lot about what we do with money, and why we do it. Specifically with regards to the pressures of marketing and aspirational branding/living.

Aspirational branding and its social implications is a topic that has interested me for quite a while. His Holiness Charlie Brooker has produced a very insightful piece of documentary regarding aspiration within television marketing and programming, which covers most of the bases more quickly and with cleaner lines than anything I could, so I suggest you check that out if you’re interested.

What the conversation with Laurie and I centred around was the idea of living independently, sans aspirational consumerism, while engaging and building a community. Translated, that means: not buying stupid shit, not owning stupid shit, and using your finances to support creative endeavours by friends and colleagues. The definition of ‘stupid shit’ is, obviously, a subjective one, but for me it includes such things as label brand clothing, expensive cars, expensive televisions, etc. And I’m keenly aware that list makes me sound like an old man, but I just fail to see the point of these childish things. Why aspire to follow the cycle of fashion which exists purely to make you buy more clothes? Why buy a $50,000 car which is speed-limited to the same pace as a $2,000 one? The mind boggles at the transparent surface-level thinking that must go along with the use of money in this way. I am earning money; I am big and strong; choose me as your friend/mate.

There are exceptions. I don’t begrudge those who have an active mechanical interest in automotives their passion, for example. But I would much prefer to commission a student of film, or ask an artist to paint my family and friends, than own a big shiny chunk of materialism. But what is it that makes other people, particularly those with a large disposable income, follow through with such purchases? This is the kind of stuff that will tie in with the project that I have planned for 2012, which may or may not be an attempt at a novel. Okay, well, actually, it is an attempt at a novel. But no promises as to a completion date.

Anyway, thanks again to Laurie for the great coffee conversation. I’ve just spent the day garnering answers to the question of Kindle Direct Publishing, so expect a small post about that soon.

No related posts.