Day Three -San Luis Obispo to Monterey

A facinating day on the road trip. I started off at 8.00am from San Luis Obispo - a college town. Coffee from the Black Horse- Cafe Latte with an extra shot, but still not real coffee. An nice town, but off to Hearst Castle for my tour. I booked this on boxing day from Port Fairy.

Hearst Castle is quite amazing- full of European gothic and renanance works of art - the most exquisite tapestries I have seen. The money this family had/has is palpable in the buildings and artwork.

Off down the road along the beatiful Californian Coast. A stop off to look at the elephant seals which are almost as long as an average car.

A drive along the coast was most stimulating. I am getting quite used to driving on the wrong side of the road and I have discovered that it is only when I am tired that I find it hard to cope with staying on the opposite side of the road.

Well this is California - the home of self improvement, so I bought a talking book - Jack Kornfield - on Buddhist Psychology to listen to as I travel along. It has been really fruitful to listen to this book - as it has many valuable insights.

The night in the Motel 8 at Monterey - it has free wireless broadband, microwave, fridge, TV and its spotlessly clean. What is more, it is just accross the road from my new favorite shop - Wholefoods Market. Imagine a supermarket full of organic and healthy food, with take home meals, organic beer (I'm drinking a californian organic belgian style beer now) real fruit - fantastic.

Tomorrow - the Monterey Aquarium and in the afternoon, I'm deciding between a bike ride around to Carmel, or a whale watching tour. It is good to stay in one place for more than a day, and I have done most of my travelling with only 110 kms to San Francisco where I will be for three nights including New Years.

Day one LA

A long but uneventful flight – but I probably only got 30 minutes sleep all up. Queues on arrival at immigration – about an hours wait, and then another hours wait at the hire car place. Luckily I rented a GPS – what a godsend. It has taken me a couple of hours of driving around LA – mostly missing turn offs – to learn to drive on the wrong side of the road, but I’m getting quite good at it now, and the GPS (once you get used to it) means you don’t have to worry too much about getting lost. The first hour the poor thing had to constantly re calculate the route to the point where I was cracking up laughing. Luckily, the LA traffic on a Saturday afternoon is pretty laid back
Lunch at Venice Beach – very bohemian. There is probably million dollar properties, but many of them look like beach shacks or stucco. Lots of places for rent on the beach front.
When I got to Santa Monica, I had a flat tire. I pulled into a parking lot and looked everywhere for the jack – in the boot, in the engine compartment. Finally I found the owners manual and found the jack is under the drivers seat. Changing the tire, two guys asked if I needed help after 20 minutes of struggling with the jack and tires. I would have had 20 people ask me If I was moving the car because they wanted my spot, but until those guys came along, no one offered to help or asked me if I was ok.
Checked into my hotel – different, unusual, different – the view out the window is of the airconditioning plant and it sounds like a jet liner. Oh well – I have not been asleep for about 30 hours, so I think I will sleep well tonight.
I walked around the pedestrian mall for 2-3 hours tonight – just amazing. There are expensive boutiques, a million crappy coffee shops, lots of picture theatres. Some things that have struck me so far:
Lots of buskers from the crazys to great guitar players, wrap dancers and dancing jews celebrating chanaka and joined by the wrap dancers

Some sightings and thoughts:

• Lots of dogs in shops - go to the third floor of borders - they are there!


• lots of polite and fairly clean and neat homeless people- perhaps just the santa monica homeless are designer


• lotus taxi


• power yoga


• childrens gyms


• Lots of shops


• the mall is pumping at night - but at 9.00am sunday the only thing full is Dr Dance's studio with the beatiful people


• the jack in a toyota yaris is under the drivers seat


• I love my rental gps - its got me so far otherwise I would still be driving around in LAX


• Sunday morning you dance or yoga in santa monica

the start

The trip has begun, and I have successfully navigated the duty free stores they place as obstacles in the departure lounge without a purchase (although the digital SLR with 2 lenses for $699 was tempting). I'm now armed with fisherman's friends to keep my cold at bay, ear plugs and a new pink highlighter for the lonely planet guide to coastal California which will be my main read on the plane. A special thanks to all those who helped me get organised for the trip - especially Russell who kindly escorted me to the airport via Highpoint ANZ to sort out visa card pins! Next blog should be from the beach somewhere on the West coast!

Community Garden Adventures

A few weeks ago, I got a call from Marc at the Kensington Recreation Centre about the community garden plot that I put my name down for a couple of years ago. I thought I had better take it up the offer as it was the last plot.

My first trip to the community garden revealed that plot 15 was a veritable jungle! Some hard work to clear a little of it, and now it sports some tomatoes and beans. I've dug up and composed with horse poo about 1/5 of the plot. No need to join the gym.

Turns out that having a community garden plot is equivalent to having a puppy! Lots of people talk to you through the fence, and some neighbours have even admitted to community garden envy!

The standard of neatness for community gardens is extremely high, so plot 15 is currently still the most untidy, even though I've spent some time pulling out the undergrowth and clearing the jungle.

It has been very therapeutic to dig over the hard earth and dig in some compost, plant a few things and chat to my new neighbours.

Turns out the queue for the community garden is about 50 people and there are only about 30 plots, so I was quite lucky to get my plot, even if it is a jungle.

Lots of stuff

I have had lots of conversations recently with people and promised lots of stuff. I have put together some useful tools, sites and people I have found / met recently, and thought you all might like to know about them.

Cool tool

Want to do more than a survey? Create a users voice page (thanks Geri Overberg).

http://www.uservoice.com/

This site allows you to register and conduct a survey or feedback from users or whoever on different ideas. More flexible than a survey – they can add their own ideas and comments, more structured and useful than email or chat.

Presentation skills

I believe that presentation skills are an essential skill in the business tool kit. Who’s going to trust you with a squillion dollar project if you can’t string together a presentation, or if you submit your audience to death in a hail of power point bullets. I highly recommend the presentation skills course facilitated by Justin O’Brien through My Development. Even if you have done lots of presentations and you can mostly wing it (like I used to do), you will still pick up some really valuable tools and techniques from the course. If you are nervous, this will build your confidence. Justin is very experienced and has provides very supportive and constructive feedback on what you do well, as well as areas for improvement on presentation skills.

It’s a day out of your life, but hey, think about how many bland or awful presentations do you sit through in a month, and there are so few opportunities to get constructive feedback in this area. Just do it!

For those outside Medibank, see Justin’s web page at

http://www.hppg.com.au/html/s01_home/home.asp

Want to see how a great presentation is done, with little evidence but lots of presence and personality and humour check out Sir Ken Robinson at TED.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

(Thanks Justin for the link and the course was excellent!)


Visual Periodic Table

Need to find new and different ways to present data, strategies, metaphors, concepts, and ideas? This website has heaps of stuff I have not had time to explore, but I used their visual periodic table is a nice tool, and it takes a little while to load, but well worth it if you are looking for different ways to present visual info.

http://www.visual-literacy.org/pages/documents.htm

Common Craft

We all struggle at times to get complex ideas across to others. Check out common craft. They explain now the US President is elected in plain English in about 3 minutes quite brilliant– short but compelling. Unfortunately, I can't provide a link to you tube (for some odd reason)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_VQ8I7g6I

I really like their video explaining zombies - check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVnfyradCPY

Workplace politics and tactics, managing people, negotiation tactics
Need some hints and tips on business politics and tactics and more. Ever walk out of a meeting and wonder – what just happened? This site will give you some insight. I enjoy Rick Brenners insights and tips, and he sends out fortnightly short and sharp emails on topics no one else really writes about. Have a look at his archives.

www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/archive.shtml