Toon

While we were in Auckland over the last couple of weeks, we frequently noted trees with strongly pink leaves scattered around the city.  They were quite striking, and stood out wherever we saw them.

By chance I met a lady at the zoo - where there were several of these trees - and, since apparently she knew something about trees, I asked her if she knew what the name of these trees were.  She said she thought they were called a Chinese Toom Tree.  I may have misheard her, because in fact they're called Chinese Toon Trees.  She made the interesting comment that while the trees are striking when they're pink, they're almost unnoticeable once the pinkness goes, and they revert to a much more common green.

Seemingly these trees are well-known in many parts of the world, and quite apart from their colour, their wood is useful for furniture, and their leaves for medicinal purposes.


Curiously, neither of the Wikipedia articles I looked at mentioned their wonderful colouring. Yet that seems to me to be their greatest feature. Obviously those who wrote the articles thought in terms of practical uses. I tend to think, as I so often do, in the purely un-useful: therefore it's the appeal to the eye that I found most interesting.

I don't know whether they grow here in Dunedin, but if they do, I'd love to have one!

Transformed

My wife and I nearly killed ourselves on Saturday morning.

Now that the laundry has a new floor she had this idea of putting cupboards and shelves in there and a bench top, and found the ideal sort of thing (once she’s rearranged the configuration somewhat) on TradeMe for $150. Ridiculous bargain. But talk about heavy – and of course on Sat morning it drizzled solidly, and it took us two trips to get the stuff, one with a trailer on which the largest item was carried (a former pantry).

Celia was inside the car for that trip, half lying down trying to hold the other stuff from smashing through the windows. Carrying the stuff out to the car was bad enough – we had to come down and go up a steep (though not long driveway). But getting it into our house here was worse. In the end she had to unscrew the large trailer-carried item completely (in the rain) – it was too big to go through any of the doors.

However, since then she’s painted the laundry and put down the secondhand floor covering (same stuff as we've used in the bathroom –I keep thinking it’s called Vortex, but that’s not right) and put the fridge, freezer, washing machine all back in there...on her own. Tonight we’ve set up the former pantry (now chopped down to fit in with the sloping ceiling) and it’s looking great.

The room is so much better without all the clutter of pipes (they’ve all been removed and replaced with the Tub thing that we bought), and the leftover bit of concrete from the old toilet, and the horrible pink walls we’ve endured since we were foolish enough to paint them that colour (I think we hoped the colour would fade – it didn’t) and the old cistern, and the rubbish floor that was heading downhill, and the wall that divided the laundry itself from the toilet area. Plus all the junk that accumulated in there.

All in all, a transformation.

Dan Pink and economics

I've made note of this video before in another blog, but not here.   The voice you hear is Dan Pink.   He's describing a peculiar thing that is contrary to what should happen - according to economists.  Their theory is that the bigger the incentive the better the work.   (Obviously they haven't looked at some of these people who've been grossly overpaid, given even grosser bonuses, and still done a poor job.   The CEO of BP is a prime example: he's about to walk out of his job with a $17m severance.)   However, the reality is that people will work for purpose more than payment because purpose is far more satisfying.   Hence the reasoning behind Linux, or Wikipedia and many other examples.

The video's quite long, but it's superbly done.  An artist draws what Pink says throughout: not only his words, but also pictures and often additional comments visually or verbally.   Quite apart from its content, it's just great to watch.



I'm told this has something do with what's known as 'swarms' - not entirely sure at this point what that refers to.