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(0)Submit an article to The Backbench. We’ll send a Gmail invite to the person who writes the best submission for our next issue. Submission guidelines here. We normally only get a two or three external submissions per issue, so you’ve got a good chance.
Quote from my property law lecturer (referring to constructive notice stemming from actual occupation): “So Justice Dixon said that you can’t rely on the ipse dixit of the vendor. Which is just another way of saying, don’t listen to the vendor’s bullshit.”
Its real definition is here, but I like the one above better.
I am a compulsive e-mail archiver. My Outlook Express mailbox, which is compressed, weighs in at more than a gigabyte. However, a gigabyte would be more than enough for me (and almost everyone else), if it weren’t for large attachments. If the average mail size is 5kb, and you get 100 emails that you keep per day, it would still take more than 5 years to fill up a Gmail mailbox. It’s the attachments that really eat up your Gmail quota. However, I like the ability to check Gmail on the run.
What I do is set up a forwarder email address which forwards mail to two addresses: Gmail, and a regular POP3 mailbox. Outlook checks the latter, and I use Gmail when I’m out and about. Generally, I delete unimportant emails with attachments from Gmail to keep space usage down, but this still allows me to check my entire mail archives using Gmail while on the run. If I really need to retrieve a large attachment, I use Outlook Express to do it. People email me on the forwarder address, and I set the “From” email address field in Outlook and the “Reply-to” email address field in Gmail (since you can’t change the From address there) to the forwarder address.
Another idea: Gmail recently put the number of unread emails into the title bar of the web browser window. Since Gmail will check your mailbox for you periodically and update the title bar, a third party should write an application that monitors the Gmail title bar and if the unread emails number ticks up, play a sound or some other notification that you’ve got new mail. Google could itself build this feature into Gmail, but I guess there are issues with playing sounds through different web browsers.
Issue 7 of The Backbench is now out. Tell your friends.
I’m currently doing a take-home exam for Constitutional Law which happens to be partially on the implied freedom of political communication. I thought it was pretty apt then, that I got this in the email from Jack:
A lobbyist on his way home from work in Canberra traffic comes to a dead halt in a long line of banked up traffic, and thinks to himself “Wow, this seems worse than usual.”
He notices a cop walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolls down his window and asks, “Officer, what’s the hold-up?”
The cop replies, “The Prime Minister is depressed with the way opinion polls are going, so he stopped his limo and is sitting in the middle of the road threatening to douse himself with petrol and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends, or that he won’t retire half way through his next term to let Peter Costello in. So we’re taking up a collection for him.”
The lobbyist asks, “How much have you got so far?”
The officer replies, “About 20 litres, but a lot of people are still siphoning.”
Dad took this terrific picture of Venus “crossing” the Sun about half an hour ago:
Transit of Venus
5.43pm, f/22, 1/4000s
“Microsoft has successfully patented using short, long or double clicks to launch different applications on ‘limited resource computing devices'” (link here, from Fuzzy). When electronic buttons have been around for decades, you’d think that clicking of any kind would be unpatentable. Well, one of the issues with the folks down at the patent office is that they are pretty swamped with patent applications. In the interests of efficiency, and keeping that pile of paper down to some manageable amount, they have a habit of not being very thorough with approving patents. In this, I suppose they rely more on the community to pick out the problematic patents, which more often enough emerge when a court action of some kind arises because a patent holder decides to sue.
Kev writes:
“Melissa Tan”. Just realised that this is not an ideal English name for a Tan. Put in email format and you’ll see what I mean.
Hahah. Thanks Kev.
I was recently sent this e-mail:
Question I’ve been wondering about for the last couple of weeks, for reasons
that I guess are pretty transparent. What kind of loyalty is expected –
socially, not legally – in a job?What I mean is this. As far as I can tell, people see it as their God-given
right to look around for a better job, and to take it with the minimum
allowed notice if they find one. However, the same thing is looked down on
in, for example, a romantic relationship (I guess there are plenty of
liberal-minded people who would even disagree with that). One difference is
that the decision to take or keep a job is usually financially motivated, so
a better financial offer is considered enough of a reason to abandon it –
but it also has a social ripple effect, because by leaving you add to the
workload (and not necessarily pay packet) of other people, or else decrease
the company’s productivity, which will come back and affect its employees;
either way that will have an effect on their lives, both financially and in
terms of stress, free time, yada yada… And in any half-decent job you’ll
have some kind of friendship with other employees and your employer; in any
other situation, doing something for self-serving financial reasons while
inconveniencing people around you would be seen as a betrayal of
friendship, wouldn’t it?Of course, employment contracts tend to have clauses that allow you to
leave – specifying the amount of notice you have to give/get, whether you
can go and work for the competition, and so on – so in some sense your right
to leave is anticipated and accounted for. But there is (relatively)
clear-cut divorce law as well; that doesn’t make it open season for “keeping
your options open” all the time.Does it make a difference what kind of work it is? If a bricklayer leaves
for a better offer, they can be replaced by the next guy that comes along
with (I imagine) a minimum of adjustment – not to say anything against
bricklayers, just that it’s the nature of the job that skills are
transferable almost universally. But in programming for example, it might
take a new employee months to come up to speed with the work done by someone
who left (especially if they don’t write good comments :); so it’s a bigger
investment, and kind of a vote of confidence, for the company to take you on
in the first place. Does that demand some kind of loyalty?I’m interested in what other people think about this.
I’ll start. It’s true that there are certain similarities between the
commitment necessary for a job, and those required in a relationship.
As I’ve alluded to in the title of this post, however, there still is
– or should be, at least – a strong divide between professional and personal
relationships. As long as activities can be confined to those spheres,
then things aren’t going to get as morally problematic.
If you break your contract and go to work for a competitor because they
are offering you a hefty pay increase, then maybe you aren’t going to be
very well liked in your old company. Do it too often, and your professional
reputation may be shot. (Corporate slut, I believe the term is!)
Which is fair enough. When you are offered a role in a company, you
are making a commitment because the company is also making a commitment
to you in terms of training you and educating you. You’re also privy
to the inner workings of the business, and while you can’t legally
run off with trade secrets, there are intangible skills and techniques
(ie, experience) that you take out with you to other companies. You’re
understandably going to piss off more than a few people if you jump ship
at a critical time in the year and you’re a vital cog in the project.
Remember that it’s a two-way relationship, however. The company must
work to keep you as well. If the company doesn’t treat you well, then
it’s only fair that it doesn’t drag your career down a path
you don’t like. And since we’re talking about professional corporate
relationships here, we’re really boiling everything down to a sterile
cost/benefit proposition. What’s that phrase they keep flashing up at the
start of The Apprentice? “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”
Companies don’t attract people merely by the size of the paypacket. The
perks, the people you work with (company culture), the opportunities
you are given to develop and the overall performance of the company are
some other factors. Perhaps the most important of those is the company
culture. There has to be a fit.
Things aren’t that cut and dried in real life, though, and there is a
fair amount of overlap between personal and professional matters. Whether
this is intentional (romance with a colleague, social events with
colleagues that aren’t work related) or unintentional (getting pissed off
with someone who is not pulling their weight in a team and taking that
grudge with you when you leave the office). Forming personal friendships
at work is expected. I mean, when you spend the majority of time of your
waking life at work, and you see these people virtually every day, you’re
going to befriend at least some of them! The better you fit the culture
of the company, the better you will get along with your colleagues on
both a personal and professional level.
And with any type of relationship, you’ll respect each other and if you
do have to jump ship, try to give sufficient notice. Not all companies
will dislike you if you swap companies. Some will be even supportive
(you’re alumni, after all, and could be working for a future client or
supplier). Personal considerations may play a part. Let’s say you’re
managing a small business with your wife, or a close friend. You get
a stunning job offer. Obviously your personal relationship with the
person is going to affect whether you take that offer, or don’t because
you know the stress it will cause the other person. But if we’re
talking about a large corporate enterprise, with people you may only
have known for a year or two, the strength of the personal relationships
is going to be a much lesser consideration in this case.
So, should there be loyalty? Unlike a marriage, where there are vows,
there are no such vows in business. Contracts are promises, but they
are not moral undertakings. Breaching a contract is not a criminal
offence (in a typical case), and if it’s worth your while to breach
one (accounting for money/reputation concerns) then there’s nothing
inherently bad about it in a moral sense. Professionally though?
It can be bad, yes.
Ok I’ve rambled on about this far longer than I intended. Comments?
Ram Puneet Tiwary, the “sleeping flatmate” of the two Singaporeans murdered last year on Barker St has been refused bail. Tiwary is himself a Singaporean. What I find vindicating, is that when the murders were reported in Singapore, the media there were up in arms and many Singaporeans questioned the safety of sending children to study in Australia. How ironic it is that it’s a Singaporean who could be responsible for the murders.
Denise linked to this article which has a blurb saying, “People move to Sydney seeking fortune and opportunity in the bright lights. But many leave despondent, friendless and fed up with living a shallow existence.”
I found it peculiar to read Sydney being described as a “hard city”, full of superficiality, materialism and hard knocks. After all, Sydney is still Australian, and the Aussie lifestyle is generally laid back and less rushed than most other industrialised countries. Shops still close at 5pm.
I haven’t spent a significant amount of time in a foreign city, but I would say that Sydney doesn’t approach anywhere near the “hardness” of other “global cities”. New York, for instance, emasculates Sydney in terms of this. Property prices are extreme, people there are snappy, and it’s a pretty intimidating city that unmistakeably means business. A friend who attended Columbia Uni there told me of how when he first moved to NY, he had to rent out a small one-bedroom apartment while waiting for campus accommodation. He shared the apartment with a friend, paying US$700/mo for a hole in a ghetto area.
Even Singapore, which is smaller than Sydney, projects a “harder” lifestyle. Life is faster, people stress more, and status is a key part of society. Singaporeans ooze materialism. Few Sydney-siders would brazenly ask questions like “How much do you earn?” and “Is your family rich?” to people they’ve just met. There’s even an age old apothegm there which dictates what every Singaporean needs, called the “5 Cs”: credit card, cash, car, condominium and country club membership. (Well, that’s actually 7 Cs, but who’s counting?) There’s superficiality for you, and it’s a product of the city’s culture.
Judging how friendly a city is can be misleading. You only meet a handful of people when you’re in a city, and you have good and bad days. Although the article claims it’s hard to make friends in Sydney, Sydney proved it could be friendly during the Olympics. A small city isn’t necessarily friendly. Another friend claimed that Adelaide, which is really just a really big country town, “freaked him out” because the people there were pretty rude. I didn’t find that the case. But then again, I found Parisiennes helpful and the Swiss obnoxious. It’s just a matter of personal experience.
One overriding factor is that you’re normally going to feel more at ease in a city you’ve grown up in. If you’ve moved from another city, then you’ll feel more comfortable with people who have also come from your home city. You grow up feeling attached to a city’s character. The densely packed crowds and constant hustle and bustle of activity in Hong Kong is an endearing part of the city for its residents. It’s something they’ve got used to, and Honkies who have moved to Sydney may understandably find the relative quiet here quite boring. Conversely, the opposite is true.
However, I would agree that Sydney is probably becoming more materialistic and consumerism is more pervasive. Fashion is a bigger issue than it was ten years ago. Cuisine here has blossomed. Perhaps it’s just the natural process of a city becoming more “global”, and thus by extension, more “globally aware”. I love Sydney, but that’s not a revelationary statement coming from a Sydney-sider.
(Shrapnel, I know you’ve been in Sydney for a few months now – how do you find it compared to Vancouver?)
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