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Roslyn
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Name: Roslyn
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Back July 2007
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There are no ethics committees...
... in space
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An important workplace lesson.


(PS. This goes out to everyone who has been posting about coffee lately. Which seems to be half my flist...)

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Current Location: Sydney
Current Mood: busy

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On distance.
Too many cool people are no longer in Sydney.

This makes me wonder: does absence make the heart grow fonder? And moreover, does this phenomenon conveniently, if paradoxically, coincide with my ability to put a person out of mind, once they're out of sight?

See, in theory:


Unfortunately, when I plot how I actually feel, it turns out like this:


Conclusion: YET MORE clichés disproved. (Who'd've thought.) Also: people, if you're reading this, come back!

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Current Location: Sydney
Current Mood: contemplative

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On procrastination.
This Monday involved some thought on a topic very close to my heart. In a recent conversation with [info]unknownblogger I'd likened the difficulty of finishing a large task (namely, a PhD thesis) to Zeno's first paradox - the distance remaining may always be divided into an infinite series of remaining tasks, and the end point feels unreachable.

I then stumbled across the very same analogy in the wikipedia page for Hofstadter's law, which gave me the perfect excuse to do some research on procrastination (as a means of procrastinating, of course): see, for example, Parkinson's law and student sydnrome.

I then procrastinated some more:



And to be fair:

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Current Location: Sydney
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Verve - She's a Superstar

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Even coffee has it's limits.
See also: glass ceiling

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Current Location: Sydney
Current Mood: creative

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Good to know.
Hypothesis: correlation (possible causal relationship?) between bad hair and existential crisis.


Data: plotted.


Conclusion: no discernible pattern detected; hypothesis disproved. :)

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Current Location: Sydney
Current Mood: accomplished

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Possible useful background to my last post...

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Current Location: Sydney
Current Mood: artistic

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Has anyone else noticed this?

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Current Location: Sydney
Current Mood: wordy

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Hjem søt hjem
General annoucement that I've made it home safely. I now propose to go and throw myself in the ocean. Have been fantasising about Coogee beach for the better part of the last 24 hours.

That said, I enjoyed the trip home - transit is good for guilt-free thinking and relaxing. Plus I had a long stopover at the vaguely utopian Chaingi International Airport (Singapore) - had a massage and manicure and availed myself of free internet.

V sad to leave India behind, but v glad to have access to a washing machine, a bed of my own, and an ocean!

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Current Location: Randwick 2
Current Mood: mellow

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Bangladesh...
This will have to be quick, more to follow when I'm back in Sydney:

- Made it safely to Bangladesh, despite lengthy delays. (It's a bad sign when an airline serves your in-flight meal in the pre-departure lounge.)

- Due to said delays, arrived in Dhaka at 12:30am. The airport was busy, swarming with pilgrims, but none of the counters were open and there were no public phones. Had vague plans to stay at a certain hotel but, of course, had not made a booking and did not know the address. Fortunately, my "have faith will travel" approach paid off: a helpful local lent me their mobile phone, I called the hotel to discover that (amazing, wonderful) Frances had made a booking for me, and a car was waiting for me outside. Triumph! If only I could outsource the rest of my life to people named Frances......

- Flew down to Cox's Bazar the next day, and have been here ever since. It's beautiful, peaceful, and much more laid back than India. Highlights have included looong chats with Frances, lying in her hammock in the sun, eating amazing street food (a delicious fusion on south and south-east Asian flavours and textures), wading in the Bay of Bengal at sunset, and learning about local cottage industries while exploring a nearby village and speaking with the women there. It's been a restful, soul-nourishing few days. Frances' place is idyllic, and I feel incredibly lucky to have a local guide who also happens to be one of my closest friends.

- Sadly, this may be my last update from the subcontinent. Will be in transit for most of the next few days. Tonight, am catching an overnight bus to Dhaka; have a flight to Delhi tomorrow; then am off to Singapore on Tuesday and arriving home on Wednesday.

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Current Location: Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh
Current Mood: peaceful
Current Music: Nature - Acoustic Soul

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The iPod and iNdia
In Sydney, the iPod is as conspicuous as it is ubiquitous. Almost everyone I know has one - or wants one. I have harcore technophobe friends who are now passionate proponents of podcasting. And, like half the people on a given Randwick-City express bus, mine has become an essential part of my daily commute.

Like mobile phones (and to a lesser extent computers, especially laptops) they've become so common and affordable that they're virtually disposable. For example, I've had two - and I confess that I've been considering a vanity upgrade. My first was green mini. It suffered battery failure early last year and I replaced it with a 4gb nano. Now, I'm eyeing off the second generation nanos - I have always had a thing for pink...

But I digress. My point: despite market saturation in the affluent west, iPods are almost unknown in India. This surprised and mystified me - India is a developing country, but it's also home to more than a third of the world's software engineers. It has a sprawling, wealthy, tech-savvy middle class; internet cafes abound; MP3s are a way of life; and even rickshaw drivers own mobile phones. Like the iPod itself, India is all about the effortless integration of technology and recreation.

Nonetheless, Occam's razor pointed to cost and yesterday's Telegraph confirmed this hypothesis. (Also reported here and here.) The local price for a 2gb nano is US$222.27, the second highest price on earth after Brazil, where they're US$327.71. More importantly, with average average annual earnings of just US$720, India has the lowest per capita income of the 26 countries where iPods are sold. It would take an average worker 112.67 days (more than five months) to cover the cost of an iPod; it would take an average Swiss worker just 1.17 days. The cost is under two days work in Canada, the States, the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong, and - of course - Australia. But they're also expensive in China (37.2 days) and Brazil (34.6 days).

These figures are derived from Commsec's iPod index data, which converted local prices to US$ to compare the strength of currencies. It's an even more gimmicky version of the Economist's Big Mac Index. Western media is tackling the report more directly, discussing its prediction of an AU$ slump. This is a disappointing angle given that the index can't control for the biggest independent variable in its data - intentional price discrimination by Apple. As such, it's pretty useless for analysing global currencies. On the other hand, it does highlight some disparities in Apple's pricing practices, and so perhaps points to Apple's predictions about currency fluctuations. For example, I'd infer that Apple has a tendency to set a higher price in countries where it fears inflation - why else the relatively high price in China, where iPods are manufactured and transport costs are practically non-existent?

It's understandable that Apple wants to keep the price standard across markets, income disparities notwithstanding. This protects quality and shields against parallel imports. But if I were into conspiracy theories, I might wonder whether Apple is keeping the iPod especially expensive for a reason. It could be argued (if not very convincingly) that it's saving their x-factor by limiting their global reach, compensating for market saturation by subtly establishing the iPod as a marker of western affluence, and leveraging globalisation to protect the iPod's association with aspiration. I can see the ad campaign now. "Those white earphones signify much more than "I'm listening to music, don't talk to me": they stand for a better life."

In any event, Apple is clearly taking a deliberate approach to global pricing. And why not - the iPod is its flagship product, the symbol of all that is cool and market-conquering about the revitalised Apple. It has every reason to be cautious about the revenue it raises and the image it projects. But it will be interesting to watch its approach in developing markets over the coming years, especially in India and China. I suspect that Indian incomes will catch up to western pricing more quickly than Apple will adapt its prices to accommodate low income regions.

Perhaps even more interesting: I think the Indian market is more than ready to start buying MP3 players in droves. If the iPod is out of the question, it will buy the best alternative it can afford. My (altogether unqualified) tip to the technology world: take your iPod rivals to India, discount them heavily, and watch as the beast slays itself.

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Current Location: Kolkata, India
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: A sitar!

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