Wednesday Night Skate

Had a good WNS last night - a new leader meant a different route. Not sure if that was through navigational mishap or design but it was good to see some different parts of town, including Brisbane's oldest standing building (picture linked from Wikipedia)

The windmill was built by convicts in 1824, which I think makes it younger than my parents house :)
We skated along some of my favourite tracks and I had plenty of time to work on a new slide stop I'm trying to perfect. Works 90% of the time, but 10% of the time it spits me onto my knees. It's also taking a toll on my wheels - these are a couple of years old and have probably done over 1,000km. Could be time for replacements...

The constraints of success

Bit of a different one tonight. I’ve been watching the political dynamics at play in the office recently and mulling over the why’s and wherefore’s of who gets what – and more importantly how those who get what they’re after go about getting it. This has been bobbing around my mind for a few weeks now and I need to get it down to get it out of my head. Hopefully it won’t come over as a whinge or a whine, and it probably won’t come over as anything new to most of the people who read this, but humour me or at least go watch a bear falling out of a tree instead and come back when I’m in a less contemplative mood.

I think this initially stems from a P.J. O’Rourke comment on Barack Obama - about how his major failing was that he was a success at school (an ‘A grade student’) and how this didn’t equip him to become president. It’s a well oiled saw that a lot of successful businessmen who were B grade students still end up employing A grade students. I think that is because A grade students, in whatever discipline, have an eye for detail and a desire to get to the bottom of problems. The most important thing is to figure out the answer to the problem, to tackle the obstacles that are placed in your way and overcome them through the application of your own effort. And if you have the mindset to do this then you get rewarded with high marks, maybe scholarships or prizes, the accolades of your family and at least some of your peers. This leads to a certain mindset – you can achieve great things by thinking things through, by problem solving, by finding solutions. You’re a do-er.

But it also makes you a details person, someone who looks ‘down’ to approach the challenges that you’re trying to overcome. It’s less of a job and more of a vocation. In some ways the thing that you’re working on, be it a piece of software, an architectural drawing, a project implementation or a design, becomes an entity in it’s own right and it’s easy to feel that you somehow have a responsibility towards that thing to help it become the best it can be.
However not everyone takes the same approach. There are many people out there who feel no responsibility towards your project, people who’s only interest is not what they can do for it (or you) but how they can talk it up for themselves. These are the people that you leant your homework too, who wrote the formulae on their pencil case or who smuggle a mobile phone into the local pub quiz. The task itself is meaningless – the only thing that matters is how the outcome reflects upon them. There is no sense of personal accountability. Bending the truth is easier than learning the truth, deliberately misleading people is still considered to be honest and outright lying is an acceptable way of getting what you want.

I think the problem is that the do-ers treat the talkers with a mild contempt and derision borne of knowledge - but this knowledge is a weakness. The expensive car the talker drives, the high-end camera lens they use or cutting-edge computer that they have just bought may not deliver an equal performance to the cheaper, better equivalents that are easily available but this is not the point. A flashy, meaningless, self-appointed title added to a business card may seem to be vain and ridiculous posturing but only to do-ers – only to people who know the details. Other talkers, other people who are looking up instead of down, will take this information at face value. They will try to challenge it not through knowledge but by the further use of symbols. The do-ers may exchange wry looks and sly sniggers at their desks as they attempt to wrestle through the problems they are working on but the talkers are the ones walking the corridors getting noticed. A flashy Rolex may only tell the time as well as an understated Seiko but that isn’t it’s primary role – it’s there to catch the eye, to project a certain aura regardless of what is underneath. The symbol is everything, the information itself is meaningless. Look up not down.
The detailed nature of a do-ers job helps maintain the divide. It’s hard to take the time to play the game, to have the lunches, make the ‘casual’ phone calls, ‘coincidentally’ be on the same plane as your boss when there is a deadline to meet. The talkers are the ones with the time to play the games, and it is those games that get them what they want.

And of course once a ‘go-to guy’ reputation is established the trap is firmly sprung. You will not escape from that role because you’re too good at what you do, you’re too valuable to be moved. You have double-glazed your own glass ceiling. And don’t think that you reverse out of this position by failure. Your long days, sleepless nights and successes may well have been seen as excellent teamwork that reflected well on your management and helped bring great success (and many commissions) to the sales guys but mess up and it will land on your head and your head only. And after that – well no-one wants to promote a failure.

Not really sure if there is a solution to this - true success should be measured by your own internal values, not by outside markers, and I think that a lot of do-ers would struggle to turn their backs on their projects, cross their own personal moral codes and become a talker. But it’s ironic to think that by doing so well at those tests so long ago I’ve created limits for myself. Until I stop talking and do something about it, that is….

Happy birthday Andy

My best mate from the UK turns 40 today. He's a friend that I've known since when I was about 11 and we've helped each other through (and got each other into) all kinds of trouble over the years. I'm also godfather to his first-born, Freyja. Hopefully he won't mind if I post a recent picture that he sent me
I bought Andy a goat for his birthday via http://plangifts.org/ which seems like a great way to pass on best wishes, stop cluttering up someones flat with random tatt and help people who need it far more than you or your friend does. Plus someone else has to wrap it which makes life easier (I can't even wrap a book or CD without half a roll of sellotape and much cursing so a goat would be almost impossible). Andy also writes a great buddhist blog at http://endlessriver.wordpress.com

The hardest part about emigrating is not the new challenges that you face but the friends & family that you leave behind. It's theoretically a lot easier with phone calls, emails, skype, blogs and something I once heard about called 'Facetwitter' or some such thing but something always seems to come up. But true friends are people who you can pick up with as though you were never apart and hopefully sometime soon Andy & I will be able to do that.

Happy birthday mate - hope you have a top one, and I wish I was there to share it with you.

Melbourne Zoo

In the rest day during the Melbourne trip we went to Melbourne zoo to check out their baby elephant Mali.

It turns out that most of Melbourne had a similar idea

We were allowed in in groups of 150 people for 5 minutes at a time. It was worth it though as Mali was very lively
although sometimes she just wanted to stay close to Mum
We stayed at the zoo for pretty much the whole day. I'm not a big fan of zoos and some of the cages here did seem a bit small, but they had an excellent seal house with an underwater viewing area

The penguins seemed pretty content to just dip a flipper in the water too
but sometimes it's hard to believe the animals are really enjoying it in there

Melbourne Day 7 - Dawn skate

The last skate of the trip is always a dawn skate on the day that everyone flies out. It's a struggle to get up for but it's worth it as you skate along dark quiet streets, passing surprised workmen and drunken revellers straggling home.

In Melbourne we skate down to St Kilda (approx 20kms). We start before dawn and the sunrise can be breathtaking

We made it to St Kilda with a couple of falls but only one casualty. There is a pier at St Kilda with a stone breakwater at the end, and it's a great place to look back at the city
It's also the home of a small but thriving wild colony of fairy penguins. Unfortunately we arrived too late to see anything other than a penguin bum thrust out of the rocks in our general direction no matter how we tried to sneak up on them

On the way home we skated through Albert Park, which had hosted the Melbourne grand prix the weekend beforeAfter that all that is left is a farewell breakfast and some sad goodbyes
Well we stayed on for a couple of days, went wine tasting and had bracing walks by the seaside - but that's another story.....

Melbourne Day 6 - Mitcham

Day 6 was a little cold & overcast at the start and we were all hoping the rain would hold off - we would be a long way from tram & train stops for a while. We started off from Mitcham station with 45 hilly kms between us & the city.We soon warmed up as we got going
We soon met up with the freeway - the bikeway that ran alongside was fast and flowing so we made great time

but there was still time to show the locals that you're never too old to have fun along the way
We stopped for lunch at a pub called 'The Harp', who were very gracious about the large amount of sweaty skate stuff we dumped in a corner
After the pub there was time for a photoshoot
before a stiff climb to help burn off the calories and show us how far we still had to go

There was a fantastic little twisty downhill section just after this that I managed with virtually no brake, so I was happy to hit the level ground of the pipebridge at the bottom
From here on in we followed Merri creek bikepath past the Carlton & United brewery - lowering our heads in silent prayer for the senseless waste of so much promising barley & hops - and finally reached the Yarra. From here it was a long 6km to the apartments and a much needed sit (or lie) down

Melbourne Day 5 - Cragieburn

Day 4 was a rest day so on day 5 we strapped on our skates again and caught a train out to Craigieburn (approx 45km of skating). Craigieburn is one of the outliers on the planned development schedule of Melbourne. I think that they built infrastructure (train lines & highways) out to the outside points of their development area and are now building inwards. This means that Craigburn is a bit isolated, but as part of the infrastructure is a smooth, open & almost empty bike lane it's a perfect skate if the wind is behind you.

The marshals were as always both attentive and ruggedly handsome
and all the skaters seemed to be enjoying themselves

About halfway through the skate we had the choice of catching a train home or continuing on along some paths that hadn't been previously explored. The second half of the skate proved to be harder as sometimes the paths would turn to muddy tracks, we all ran out of water and the pace was up to be back in time. It was worthwhile though as it went through some beautiful scenery

threaded our way across narrow bridges (those slots are a perfect wheel-catching size)
Past some unexpected architecture
and across more of Melbournes industrial memories