Quantum Forest

Last week I had my fourth trip to New Zealand in less than a year. Apart from almost being fined NZD200 for forgetting to declare a pair of boots in my luggage (I got away with a warning about the dangers of soil attached to boots) and missing my domestic connection the trip was OK. Air New Zealand is upgrading its planes in the Melbourne-Auckland route, and this time I flew in a Boeing 777-200 with an ‘on-demand’ entertainment system. It is nice to be able to pause the movie (any of the 40 ones available) if one wants to go to the loo.

And the perils of presentations

Every time one goes to meetings PowerPoint makes its appearance, and one gets endless bullet points, people reading slides (the teleprompter approach), chart junk and obvious recycling of old presentations. It really annoys me when someone is going over dozens of slides skipping the ones that are not useful for the current presentation.

I do enjoy presenting and most of the time spent quite a bit of time thinking and preparing:

• Who are the members of the audience and what do they know about the topic?
• What is my core message and the best way to deliver it?
• Then I write a little ‘script’—which is also the basis for the handout—and then I create some slides. By the way, when I say handout is not that ‘cute’ printout of your slides, but text actually written to support the presentation. This time was 9 slides for a half an hour presentation.
• I always remember something that I read in A Ph.D. is not enough by Peter Feibelman: ‘never overestimate your audience’ (page 28). I read that as always provide some context so even people that have little idea about the topic can get something of my presentation.
• I do not use a specific style for all slides (like, for example, the Takahashi Method of few large words, or the Kawasaki method, although I use few slides), but I combine them. I use as little text as possible, almost never in bullet point form, tend to use good quality pictures (taken by myself, from istockphoto or, if lucky, I get a freebie from stock.xchn). I do use simple diagrams and sometimes one or two slides with just one number or word.

A good resource for presentations—not necessarily PowerPoint— is Presentation Zen.

It was a simple day with quite a good weather (considering that we are in Hobart). My best present was to spend the day with Orlando and Marcela; had a twenty minutes walk to the Signal station and a piece of cake from Lipscombe Larder.

I received another great present from Marcela and Orlando: Gary Larson’s The complete far side in two volumes. I completely agree with one of the reviewers at Amazon.com:

The title of this product says it all: The Complete Far Side. If you need more motivation than that to buy this, something is desperately wrong…

And reading in the plane and the bus

Last time in Christchurch (about ten days ago) I bought Softwar: an intimate portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle. The book—which I have almost finished reading—is long (around 500 pages) but entertaining. There is plenty of repetition, and the structure is very loose, but it provides and engaging portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle. It is also a very interesting book from a business perspective, describing elements of the evolution of Oracle that has transformed it into such a successful company. It made me think about the poorly defined business processes in my current employment. I certainly recommend the book: good airplane read (four stars).

In a previous post I complained about Taronga Zoo. I thought that the ticket (AUD30) was quite expensive—as anything that you could buy inside the zoo—and that the place was not that great. After arriving back in Hobart we went to Zoodoo, a wildlife park located in a farm near Richmond.

The contrast could not be bigger: the ticket was AUD12, the variety of animals much smaller but it was so much more fun. The place could be defined as a ‘red neck zoo’; there is no attempt at mimicking natural conditions for most species but its main intention is to make easy the interaction between people and zoo animals and Orlando loved it.

If you have children they will really enjoy a visit to Zoodoo. There is no serious attempt at animal conservation (compared to a normal zoo) but it certainly reinforces the love for animals.

Part of my two weeks away included a meeting with old friends in Noosa, Queensland. Noosa is a very civilised place where to discuss breeding strategies: warm even in winter time, with a lay back, holiday atmosphere. After each day of discussions there were plenty of chances for having long walks followed by dinner. We stayed at the Noosa Lakes Resort for the third time (location map).

The picture shows Mark Dieters, Colin Matheson, Heidi Dungey, myself, Tim White, Jeremy Browner, Fred Burger and Mike Carson. In addition to people in the picture, we had Paul Jefferson, Michael Henson and Steve Verryn (next to me in the picture below) in the meeting. Colin—our resident wine buff—made some interesting choices so we tried a wide range of whites and reds.

It was great to see Tim again, after all these years. I met him for the first time in 1993, when I thought ‘this is a very clever guy’: pretty good at navigating the politics of meetings. He did not disappoint me and this time he was even better, helping us to come up with a good strategy.

I am looking forward to participate in other strategy meetings. With some luck Steve may be able to organise a conference in South Africa (country that I have never visited) and we could have a go there.

No, I was not abducted by aliens but just went off travelling for a couple of weeks. This trip included Noosa (Queensland), Sydney (New South Wales) and Christchurch (New Zealand). I will write only about Sydney this time.

Accommodation

Once one starts checking prices for hotels in Sydney one realises that is a bloody expensive place to stay, particularly if one wants to be in or near the CBD. I prefer to walk or take public transportation over renting a car, and staying in the CBD provides an opportunity to walk to most touristic places. As Marcela says, ‘when one does not have a car all places are at a walking distance’.

After looking at a few internet sites and brochures, we settled for a one bedroom apartment at Sydney Metro Apartments. At around AUD180 per day it was not a bargain, although I used some credit card reward points reducing the price substantially. We arrived at the place and… surprise! It was a two levels unit, completely unsuitable for staying with a small child. In addition, the lift and corridors had a sort of seedy air, which I did not like. I had a chat with the manager and we moved just across the street to ‘Kingsleigh Apartments’ to a one-level one bedroom apartment. The place was much better. Still, King Street was really noisy, particularly for people used to sleep in an extremely quiet environment. In all, I would not stay again there and I would not recommend it to someone else either (map location).

Touristy

We did most of the touristy things, visiting the Aquarium, Taronga Zoo, Sydney Tower, Paddy’s Market, the Opera House, Royal Botanic Gardens, travelled by ferry, taxi (with Vietnamese and Tongan cabbies), monorail and walk, walk, walk.

We had great weather when visiting the Sydney Tower and the view was spectacular. The Aquarium was OK, but I am not a big fan of fish. The Taronga Zoo was sort of disappointing: there were many signs of ‘animal X will be here soon’. What sort of zoo does not have elephants, my sempiternal favourites? The zoo has brand new facilities for elephants, but its five new elephants are still under quarantine. Other animals, like the giraffes, were a bit far away to really enjoy them. Orlando liked the tiger, who was at the other side of a glass. One could feel Orlando’s heart beating really fast when the tiger came close.

Multicultural

I liked very much walking in a city full of people from every part of the planet. While Hobart is cosmopolitan next to Santiago, Sydney is the real McCoy. Full of Asians, Arabs, Greeks, and Spanish speakers. The down side was that people are clueless for giving directions. I stopped many times to ask some one for a given street name and they were hopeless without any exceptions. After a week here I was better acquainted with the street names than many locals.

I like to visit China towns (before was Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok) and this time was no exception. Nice places where to walk and buy cheap plasticky things. Easy to make Orlando happy for fifty cents. Lots of shops with signs only or mostly in Chinese, places were to look for strange looking products hanging from the ceilings.

Could I live here? Mm, not sure. Too many people, too much traffic, a lot of noise. Good shopping, lots of different food, lots of music and book shops. Strange feeling: first time that I have seen people begging in the streets in many years. I think I need to visit the city again to make up my mind.

The second part of our World Tour of New Zealand covered part of the North Island following this route: Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, Palmerston North (including Feilding, of all places), Taupo, Hamilton, Auckland.

The biggest motivation for this trip was to visit friends that we have not seen in ages. We finally were able to meet again with Munah, Gophran, Omer and Mohammed. We had not seen them since early 2000 and there are so many things that had happened in the world since that time… We had a great time and ate plenty of yummy food. Meeting very religious but moderate muslims was a great reminder of the injustice of generalisations.

While in Rotorua we caught up with Satish and Sandiah (now with small Amanat), which was a lot of fun. Almost seven years ago we went to India to attend to their wedding and had a trip around the Northern part of the country. We also visited Luigi—thanks Allison, Paloma and Pascal for the hospitality—and Tony. Going back to Tony’s place in Lake Okareka was ‘full circle’ for us. A caravan parked in Tony’s place was our first stop in New Zealand in 1996. I had also interesting meetings with Paul, Mike and Sue.

The drive down to Palmerston North—where we studied at Massey University—was pleasant. We did not expect to have any problems finding accommodation: it is not a touristy place, and the only complicated time is graduation week. However, we did not count with a very unlikely combination of events, including:

• The poor musical taste of kiwis, which drove them in ordes to attend a—grab your seat—Neil Diamond concert in Wellington. All accommodation was booked from Wellington upto Palmerston North (140 km). Bloody Neil Diamond!
• A district Lions convention in Marton.
• A car race in Feilding.

We finally found a small room for the first night in the Makino Homestay, a bed and breakfast in Fielding with really nice and understanding owners. After that, and with Neil Diamond gone, it was easy to find a place in the Rose City motel, which we liked a lot.

As part of my preparation¹ for the International Eat An Animal For PETA day we had some great ‘gourmet burgers’—if there is such a thing—in ‘Burger Xtreme’ (or ‘Burger Extreme’, depending on who you ask) in Palmerston North (339 Church St, phone 06-357 7224). They were big, tasty and meaty. We thought about repeating the experience in ‘Burger Fuel’, Hamilton, but the service was so bad that we ended up cancelling our order.

Now to commercials

While in New Zealand we rented a SIM card for our mobile phone from Vodafone, which seemed to have decent coverage and was reasonably cheap too. We were driving a Holden Commodore, rented from Budget, which was a nice car, although the distance activated alarm when reversing was driving me nuts when parking. We flew Virgin Blue from Hobart to Melbourne, a completely unremarkable experience. The international leg was done in Emirates, with a good service but the airplane was a bit run down. On our way back we stayed a night in Melbourne in the Hilton Airport hotel, which was a great decision, because our flight arrived two hours late. I was a bit worried about noise and lights next to the airport, but the insulation is magnificent, the service very good and the price right. Airfares and Hilton reservations were done through Flightcentre, which provided an excellent service.

Considering everything, the trip was quite good, although we now need holidays to recover from holidays.

¹ The final celebration was with a juicy Porterhouse steak. I have plenty of vegetarian and vegan friends, but vegans with a holier than thou attitude really annoy me.

I always find surprising the clean and green motto used by New Zealand, particularly the green part. Driving with Marcela and Orlando from Christchurch to Wakefield (following the Kaikoura, Blenheim, Nelson route) the whole landscape has been transformed. There were only rare examples of the original native vegetation, but there were plenty of farms and wineries (with very nice white wines, by the way).

Yes, the place tends to be very clean and there is a surprisingly large number of public toilets (most of them quite clean). However, from an environmental point of view, New Zealand has been modified and transformed into a large farm. In fact, Tasmania is much ‘greener’ and with a larger forested proportion. It just happens to be drier and, therefore, the vegetation looks less green.

In summary, the motto seems to be clever marketing but quite far from reality. This takes me to another word used all the time with the motto: sustainability and the almost religious meaning of the word.

A few weeks ago I was asked in Tasmanian Times if plantation forestry was sustainable, mostly from a soil fertility viewpoint. Of course my answer was ‘it depends on site and silvicultural practices’. However, every time I answer this type of questions I have a feeling of uneasyness, because people seem to think that the idea is to repeat ‘exactly the same practices’ ad infinitum. That is, they assume a static world, where there is no technological change and no learning. For example, applying current techniques we would probably be able to keep growing plantations one after the other in the same site, while maintaining site productivity. However, most likely we will not use the same techniques and we will want to actually increase productivity while reducing the amount of land dedicated to production.

Last Friday night we arrived back from the land of the long white cloud (Aotearoa / New Zealand). It was a good trip and Orlando behaved really well in the planes, making Marcela’s and my life a lot easier. The first week was to participate in the biannual Research Working Group 2 (Forest Measurement and Information) meeting, while the second was travelling around the Northern part of the South Island.

Workwise David and I were quite happy with the meeting, and we were able to see that the work we are doing in inventory and growth modelling is of good standard and has nothing to envy to things done in the rest of Australia and New Zealand.

One of the best parts of the trip was the chance to see Jo and Peter in Wakefield (map, a few kilometers from the birthplace of Lord Rutherford). They are the closest thing to family that we have in this part of the world and it is always good to see them. They are restoring a 1875 farm house, which is turning to be beautiful. From a culinary viewpoint, the highlight was Strawberry Fare — a restaurant in 114 Peterborough Street, Christchurch (map) — where the list of desserts is longer than the list of mains and entrees. A delight for people with a sweet tooth (I mean people like me).

The low point of the trip was going through multiple security checks and related idiocy. On my way to New Zealand I was swabbed in Hobart by a security guard looking for gunpowder residue. It was supposed to be a random check, but it was clearly targeted to bearded males (doh!). On my way back I forgot to put my ten year old Swiss army knife in my check-in luggage, so it was detected by some Kiwi low life that wanted to confiscate it. I managed to buy an envelope and ten dollars on stamps to post it to Australia. I have my fingers crossed hoping to get it back.

We arrived at home late at night and our cat, being a genuine representative of the species, did not show any interest in our presence. Anyway, it is nice to be back home and blogging again.