I wrote an article about why it’s often better to develop multiple buildings at the same time, but also why it is often so difficult. It’s posted on Arup Thoughts — Benefits of neighbourhood-scale development.
Author: Joan
Twitter experiment
Do you use Twitter? How do you use it?
A lot of people talk about it so I tried for a month. I read some guides then started posting every day.
I went a networking event to ‘live tweet’ and got some new followers that way.
After one month of having a good go at it, I’ve decided that it’s not for me right now.
It’s been fantastic, getting a constant stream of news, ideas and links about my clients, my industry, my interests. It’s also very gratifying to get followers you respect and have never met.
Spending attention on Twitter meant I strayed from my previous information diet of emails, podcasts, blogs, newspapers. I missed that so I’ve decided to go back to it.
My information diet somehow more manageable if it doesn’t come to me in an easy-to-digest form like the Twitter stream. Perhaps it’s like choosing to eat wholemeal bread.
What I have learned:
- If you have a distinction between your ‘professional’ self and ‘personal’ self, Twitter is ideal for the professional one. However, it seems that more and more people don’t distinguish between those two personas.
- Don’t follow The Age unless you’re disciplined enough not to click on every link (it’s all interesting). Same goes with other news websites, I suspect.
- Definitely ‘live tweet’ at events. It’s a great way to get people coming up to meet you.
- Think about using Twitter if you don’t already have an established routine of following industry news. Twitter is an all-encompassing information channel.
I think I’ll use Twitter occasionally but I’ve uninstalled the app from my phone. No more tempting bright blue bird.
Follow the trail
This is a trail I followed at QV today.
I win
My bike.
Wednesday October 17 is Ride2Work day. It’ll be my second one. You too can ride! Why not take a Melbourne Bike? It’s free and you get breakfast.
Okara: waste into food
We bought a soy milk machine some months ago.
In 22 minutes, it pulverises and heats a small cup of soy beans into a litre of soy milk.
I then add 2 tablespoons of honey or maple syrup to sweeten it. It doesn’t taste like the soy milk you buy from supermarkets, as it doesn’t have malt. It’s more like Asian soy milk but I don’t make it as sweet as that.
For a long time, Damjan and I wondered what to do with the leftover soy bean solids. It felt like we were throwing out a lot of it. After some focused Googling, we discovered that soy pulp is called okara. It is in fact highly nutritious with protein and fibre.
The first time we reused it, we made an lemon cake of almond meal and okara.
We’ve now added to our okara repertoire vegetarian burger patties, knedle soup (vegetable soup with dumplings made of flour and okara) and bread with okara filling.
Sometimes, though, we can’t keep up with all the okara that I generate with the soy milk machine. So a few weeks ago, we bought a bokashi bin, which is a little composting bin that we can keep in our apartment.
We started it off on banana peels, but now it takes three quarters of our waste — egg shells, tissues, fruit and vegetable peels, corn cobs and okara.
We’re halfway through our first binful and, as promised, there are no smells from the bin. We’ve barely had to empty our normal kitchen bin in the past two weeks.
If you have a garden and would like some nourishing compost, drop me a line.
Plumbum
From Wikipedia:
‘Lead’s symbol Pb is an abbreviation of its Latin name plumbum for soft metals; the English words “plumbing”, “plumber”, “plumb”, and “plumb-bob” also derive from this Latin root.’
Eggplant face
An eggplant from the South Melbourne Market.
The date
We were celebrating with dinner at Comme.
‘What’s the date today?’ I asked Damjan.
‘Joan! It’s your birthday.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
Bigger than yours
‘Look Damjan,’ I hissed. I cocked my head towards three young Asian women chatting on the tram.
‘What?’ Damjan said.
‘Her phone,’ I said frantically. ‘It’s a huge Samsung. I’ve never seen it before.’
Damjan’s glance was long and casual. The white Samsung phone had a purple protective case and filled the girl’s hand.
‘It’s a Note, a Galaxy Note,’ he murmured. ‘Like yours.’
‘It’s bigger! It looks bigger.’
‘No, I think it’s just the cover.’ Damjan stopped. ‘Joan… do you have phone envy? Yes, you do!’ He grinned. ‘You were all worried about getting a big phone and now you’re worried that there’s an even bigger one out there!’
‘I want the biggest,’ I said stubbornly.
I see dead things
A year ago, I found a dead bat next to the footpath. As a reminder, here it is again.
Yesterday, I found this bird.
Here is another dead thing I found on the street that same day.
