Trees, sneeze and theseez

A major victory on the tree front. I received a call from the Tree Manager at Marrickville Council about the street petition and they have agreed to plant four native gums in the street to replace the ones we lost. They have yet to finalise which of the four types of tree we suggested they will go with but probably the brushbox or watergum. The planting season is between April and October and he said to me they would be planting them some time in this period. They also indicated they would be using mature specimens so they will be pretty big as soon as they are planted. The strategy has been successful all round because the Tree Manager has agreed to use this as a precedent for further tree replacements. Very exciting! I feel like the time I put into knocking on everyone's door and almost losing my voice from pitching my proposal to every household was worth it.

Meanwhile I've been feeling a bit under the weather. I'm not sure if it is hayfever or a cold but for about a week or two I've been feeling very tired, sore muscles, itchy nose, sore dry eyes, congestion, swollen tongue. The confusing thing is I never had hayfever as a kid but I've heard that you can develop it as an adult. The last few years I seem to get bouts of this and I'm wondering if I am now affected by some pollen that comes out at particular times of the year. I thought I might go up to the chemist and get some antihistamine.

The recruitment for my PhD research has been going pretty well I think although my supervisor was right to warn me that it would take longer than I expected. I'm feeling less worried though. It was hard not to panic when there didn't seem to be any possible subjects for my research on the horizon. I learnt alot in a very short time about how to pitch my project to get organisations interested. Recently, I had a very positive meeting with a finance company located in central Sydney that has just moved offices. I also had a very exciting discussion with a manager at a large global Telco. When I explained the kind of organisation I was interested in, they suggested that they may make a good case study. When I found out more about this particular unit I became very excited. They have been testing a new mobile phone solution in their own office for about a year now that has been designed specifically as a kind of alternative to Blackberries. The solution has email, synchronises with outlook and enables access to the office network remotely. Using what the manager called "decked phones", they use the same mobile handsets once they come into the office as the internal phones. This particular set up has not been rolled out to many other organisations yet and is still in testing phase but could represent a very good case for my "emerging office" study.