Jazzoos news and views: June 2008

Tuesday 17 June 2008

At the age of 29, I finally have a fulltime job!

Well, I had the interview for the Griffith University postdoc fellow position on Thursday 12th June, and yesterday, Monday 16th June, I got a call to say the job was MINE!!

I am so bloody excited about it and can't wait to move to Brisbane and start! Bec and I are travelling to Brisbane tomorrow to look at 4 houses to rent in Sunnybank Hills, Sunnybank and Mansfield. They are pretty close to the university so it means that I can occasionally ride my bike to uni!! Although the cost of renting may be $10 - 20 more per week closer to the uni compared to suburbs further out, we will be saving on fuel driving vast distances getting anywhere! My wage (before tax and superannuation) is exactly 60k which is more than I thought I would be getting! I have now been to the University of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University, University of New England and now Griffith University: four universities in three states! Looks like I am continuing my 'professional student' career!!

I am really looking forward to the drive to Brisbane, having never driven north of Yamba (see earlier post from last year), so there will be many a photo and further details soon, so watch this space!

Tuesday 3 June 2008

Bongil Bongil National Park

Following on from the last post, I thought I might post something a bit more intuitively positive. I recently decided to visit some of the nearby national parks and take a few walks and just relax and birdwatch. I went to Bongil Bongil National Park, an area of littoral rainforest just south of Coffs Harbour. Littoral rainforest refers to rainforest with a closed structure and composition which is strongly influenced by proximity to the ocean. And I can tell you, it is weird seeing rainforest within throwing distance of ocean! The bird species list was quite impressive and included rainforest restricted, coastal heath and oceanic species; over 30 in total. It included a 'lifer' for me: Russet-tailed Thrush (Zoothera heinei)...

I did the Bundagen Rainforest Walk (6km return) and the Palm Crossing walk, recording the species of birds seen as well as their abundances. I have now included this information into the online atlas database (Birdata).

I have decided just to show pics below.... experiences don't always need captions...

C'mon Griffith...

Life is sometimes hard, sometimes, it seems to fall into place. However, sometimes, it throws you curve balls.... Take the saga that I am experiencing at the moment regarding work. Yes, I am still jobless and living with my fiance and her parents. However, a job has come and gone in the intervening period between blogs...

In my last post, I expressed hope regarding a consultancy position that I was being interviewed for. Needless to say, the interview came and I was pleasantly surprised. The CEO of the company (James Warren) actually flew down to Coffs Harbour and then met me in Nambucca for the interview. He basically said that he wanted me for the position and that I would be in a senior/management position by the end of the year in the Brisbane office.... I was gracious in acceptance, but commented on my waiting on an academic position at Griffith Uni. He was happy to wait for the outcome of that, however, as universities are the quintessential bureaucracy, they have taken for ever to get back to me. In the meantime, I got a call last week (two weeks after the interview) from James to inform me that they were 'moving on' and looking at interviewing other people if I didn't accept... To say that I was depressed and disappointed is an understatement; I basically threw away a perfectly good, well-paying job on the hope that I will be shortlisted and hired for the university position... Such are the curve balls of life; dangling a carrot of gold when you dream of a carrot of platinum.

HOWEVER, today I got a call from Griffith University informing me that I have bee shortlisted for an interview for the position. So next Thursday, 12th June at 12.30pm, I have a phone interview from home with a selection panel from the university. FINALLY, after submitting the application in the second week of April, submissions closing on the 8th May, I now know that I have AT LEAST got to the interview stage. I am just hoping that the wait will be worth the reward of actually getting the position...

I will keep you informed....

Random fact...

The gravity of a black hole is so strong that it prohibits light from escaping the collapsing star that created it, so given that light can't escape, it is effectively dark, thus the name 'black hole'. There is a 'boundary' between the black hole and the non black hole called the event horizon. Now, in an idealised theoretical world, imagine a situation where an astronaut was floating toward this event horizon from an orbiting spacecraft while sending messages (light signal, beeps etc) back every second. To the astronaut, as he/she approached the black hole event horizon, and even as he/she crossed the event horizon (space and time don't officially exist beyond the event horizon, I think, but say for now it does), he/she would continue to observe, every second, a message being sent to the crew waiting on the spacecraft! HOWEVER, to the crew on the spacecraft, the length of time that passed between messages from the astronaut would slowly lengthen as the astronaut approached the event horizon. Once this event horizon was crossed, the spacecraft would no longer receive any messages, as the gravitational field is so strong that NOTHING can escape. So the important thing to get from this (apart from the absurdity of actually wanting to approach a black hole), is that not only is time affected by gravity, but time is relative to the observer. What seems like a long time to one person has the potential to be experienced differently by another. Experiments in the 1960s using caesium clocks (very, very accurate nuclear clocks) found that the slight difference in gravity at the top of a 30m high tower compared to the ground resulted in time running slightly slower at ground level. This is known as 'gravitational time dilation', although the amount of time we are talking about is in the order of nano-seconds (0.000000001 secs). This occurs as gravity has the effect of slowing time! Interestingly, this effect is significant enough that the Global Positioning System (used in GPS units and in-car navigation units) needs to correct for its effect on clocks aboard artificial satellites orbiting the Earth!!

What I'm reading...

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking (256pp. - 1988)

My dad had this book years and years ago, but I never got around to reading it. I saw it the other day in a Borders bookstore and decided to read it. It is the original 1988 edition, although since then there have been at least two other versions, including a 1996 version that includes a lot more figures to help explain the complex mathematical and physics concepts.

A Brief History of Time attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes, neutron stars, light cones and superstring theory to the nonspecialist reader. Its main goal is to give an overview of the subject but, unusual for a popular science book, it also attempts to explain some complex mathematics. Suprisingly, Stephen Hawking has an often comical way of writing, suprising given his amazingly superior intellect!

Half way through the book at the moment, and finding it hard to grasp some of the concepts; may require a couple of reads!!

What I'm listening to...

Tame Impala - EP (2008) - psychedelic/indie rock band from Perth (where all good bands originate), making it big in Australia!
The Presets - Apocalypso (2008)
Massive Attack - 100th Window (2003)
mmd_as - mmd_as (2009) - a collaborative electronica album showcasing mr_mark_dollin and Alex Strain. Download the album and info here
Radiohead - Kid A (2000)
Arvo Pärt - Arvo Pärt: A Portrait (2005) - Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer (1935 - )that is heralded as pioneering the mystic minimalism style of classical music

Featured websites...

Litoria Consulting - This is the environmental consultant company that I work for as a Senior Ecologist. We're a specialised environmental consulting firm, with professional capabilities in the areas of environment, economics and planning; my specialty is fauna ecology, especially birds.

Nuts about Natives - promoting a small contract-based plant propagation business providing private, community, government and commercial agencies with superb native plants for everything from promoting the benefits of gardens with native plants to revegetation projects. Operates just south of Perth, and happens to be co-owned by my sister!

mmd - the official website for the music from artist and close friend Mark Dollin. Peruse through pages of interesting philosophical essays on his blog, while downloading and listening to hours of music described as everything from ambient pop to highly technical ambient soundscapes to quirky electronica!! Check it out!!

About me...

My name is Jarrad Cousin, although also go by jazzoo, buddhahead, helmet, dr jarrad, jizzdog, j-rad or jezza...

I am 32 years old, married with a young son, loving life and loving work! I am patriotically Western Australian, having lived the first 24 years of my life in Perth. I moved to Armidale NSW to undertake my PhD in 2003, and having completed that, I moved to Brisbane, where I worked at Griffith University as a post-doctoral research fellow in avian ecology, and am now Senior Ecologist at Litoria Consulting!