Space Moot

Nine days until our written submissions are due. Okay, I don’t think I’ve explained what this space moot thing is that has occupied all my time since I finished work last week. It’s an international law mooting competition, based on space law. It’s an international comp, with the first round being a regional one. There are three regions – America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The Asia-Pacific region is the largest, sporting 33 teams this year from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India, China, Japan, and several other countries. (The winner of each regional round progresses to the world finals, but those are a long way away.)

Two 12,000 word memorials need to be couriered down to Adelaide by Friday next week. This is followed by the actual round of oral submissions, which will see around 30 teams fly into Sydney to argue out the case. These start in mid-April and are held over four days. Each team competes in four moots, done in a round-robin format, and the top 8 go through to the quarter-finals and it turns into a knockout.

It’s a long, drawn out process and writing these memorials reminds me of writing a thesis all over again. We had to rewrite most of everything last week as well. It’s not all bad though. Our coach works at one of those big city law firms, so sometimes she manages to book a meeting room there for us to have group meetings in. They’re pretty cool actually, you get in and this waiter comes around and takes coffee orders(!). There’s also a little bar fridge in each room filled with drinks for the taking and a neverending supply of Kool Mints and Kool Fruits. In the last couple meetings, we’ve even managed to edit a document working off a projector which beats crowding around a computer screen. And the views:

I mean, if you’re going to be crammed up inside in a room doing work when you should be enjoying uni summer holidays instead, this at least eases the pain a little. Nothing like watching the sun set over the harbour.

It’s a challenge working on documents this big in a team – version control is an issue. Also, different working styles make things quite trying sometimes – some people like getting things done early (ie, me), some are last minute people and so on.

  6:59pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Law  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Fired for Blogging?

I totally agree with this post by Anil. As he says, you don’t get fired for blogging, you get fired for bad judgment. I say you get fired for pissing people off. If you mouth off at your boss in private with the openness people do in their blogs, that’s probably not a good career move. If you do it in front of the world, then that makes it all the worse, doesn’t it? If you complain about how your boss is a bastard/bitch, has a bad temper and a stick up their ass, how do you think a bastard/bitch with a bad temper and constipation is going to react when they read it on your page?

Not clearly identifying a company or person doesn’t make that much difference. It’s like spreading bad goss through two degrees of separation using only first names. No one likes that happening to them. People may not personally know the person who is the subject of the goss, but people are still darn interested, and sooner or later, those two degrees will become one. The difference in the workplace is, your boss can do something nasty about it which also happens to be legal… which is one remedy more than your vindictive ex has.

  12:14pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (1)  •