Yeah - OK - so I'm pretty slack when it comes to the business of writing updates... but as always things have and continue to be busy. I've actually made it a new year's resolution to write an update at least fornightly (this then covers the other resolution; to maintain better contact with friendscollegues - I'll just e-mail them all and tell them to look at my updates - kill two birds with one stone !!!) so decided I'll wrap up the end of the year so I can start fresh in 2004.
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I trecked into the city on 12th November for the
YouthGAS gathering, which was connected with the PLAN conference - I would have loved to have gone to the PLAN conference, however working full time plus the fact that I couldn't justify the +$100 registeration fee prevented me from attending. (I didn't qualify for any of the concesssions and nobody wanted to give me the money to go)
Having learnt from my previous train travel experience, I decided to hang the expense and just catch the train from the station near my house and walk what felt like a billion blocks down Elizabeth Street till I got to the Hotel Y where the meeting was being hosted.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the chance to meet some new people, catch up with some old people, put faces to names that I'd only read about and here about some new and exciting projects people are working on. I left that session on a high -- something I hadn't felt for a really long time with a new list of contacts and initatives to follow up (that still sits somewhere on my desk at home ! - I'll get to it.... eventually !!!)
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Having become rather bored since finishing Uni and quitting McDonald's, I received an interesting e-mail from the lady who co-ordinates community safety at local council asking if I was interested in doing some paid work for them over the summer. Given that my bank balance was quickly deminishing and there's only so many times you can clean and re-arrange your bedroom, I agreed to take it on.
My official title is "Community Safety Assistant", however I prefer the "Jack of all trades" title, given that I've been doing quite a variety of different jobs that include:
- Running
wheelchair sports activities with local primary school children for International Celebration of Ability Day
- Helping to co-ordinate activities (Santa visits, animal farms, face painting) and performances for our "Celebrate a Safe Christmas" program.
- Helping co-ordinate the Safer City Centre's 1st Birthday celebrations and launch the new directional signage within the Central Activites District [see photo]
- Calling and taking phone calls from residents who are complaining about properties that have long grass and therefore pose a fire risk.
- Assist in developing items to be included in our showbag for new drivers.
- Recording locations of graffiti and reporting it to the relevant authorities for it to be removed.
However, my primary responsibility is... (wait for it....) to conduct audits of all of the public toilets in the City of Frankston !!!! - Yes, it sounds like a crappy job (pun intended :P ) but believe it or not, it is rather interesting. The purpose of collecting all this information is to develop a local toilet strategy for the construction of new public toilets and for the maintence or demolition of existing public toilets.
As a result, I've had to do some reading into a number of approaches different places have used. Two interesting (if you can call it that) things that I have learnt is that Australia has a online
public toilet map and that there is also World Toilet Seminar !!!
The amount of data too that people are interested in knowing is amazing - For example some of the items I have to check for include....
- Are syringe bins fitted ? Do they conform to Australian Standard height ?
(Syringe bins must be fitted to a height of 1.6m)
- Do the toilet doors open inwards, outwards or in both directions ?
(Apparently this is to do with disability access or in the event that someone needs to
be rescued from inside the toilet by emergency services)
The exciting thing about it is that I get a IPaq to record all the data on and use this very funky application that uses GPS to map all the toilets and tell me where I am. I'm secretly hoping that they'll let me keep the IPaq when I finish, but I seriously doubt it !
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Caught up with Adam too a few weeks ago - He's now working for Southern Metro. Region of the Department of Education and Training in the area of Student Wellbeing. What that all means I still don't know, but he tells me interesting developments are in the planning stages and that further information will follow. All sounds good in theory and I'm looking for a new challenge....
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Arrangements for school are going well. I've found out that I'm teaching Grade 3/4 next year which is just what I wanted. Went in towards the end of term to do some planning and get some information about what we'd be doing next year and also to meet my class and see what room I'd be in. The room I have is really nice, bit small - but all classrooms in my opinion are too small. I've got 4 computers plus a TV so I'm sure they'll come in very handy. Trying to work on getting a pool of resources to decorate the room with, but the downside of this is that I can't get in to my classroom till mid January (school starts back on the 27th Jan) so my bedroom is growing smaller as the collection gets bigger.
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Thus concluding the ever interesting and always exciting (NOT !) update of yours truly !!!!
May 2004 bring all of your dreams into reality.
Until the next exciting installment......
