Tuesday, August 11

Today was the day that the new Director of the Sustainable Business Center, John Cole, came to campus.  I was the first person to greet him and it made a significant impression on him.  He really is a ‘big gun’ here in AU.  Here’s a bit of a bio on him:  

 

Dr John Cole is a leading strategic thinker and adviser in sustainable development. An early proponent of triple bottom line thinking and business sustainability for competitive advantage, since 1989 he has been involved in industry, environment and community development – variously as a company manager, industry lobbyist, government official, and occasional university teacher. He recently headed the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency’s non-regulatory innovation arm – Sustainable Industries and EPA Marketing. He joined the EPA as a founding member of the Agency executive in late 1998.

 

 USQ (BTW, the Aussies refer to the U as the “Uni”) will build a second building and it is expected that Dr. Cole’s center will occupy an entire floor.

The tea for Dr. Cole was held on the 6th / executive floor lounge. Just to the right is a balcony/roof top where they grill sometimes.

Dr. John Cole

After all of the excitement in the morning, I spent the afternoon working at the computer.  I had to get IT to install Office 2007, since my unit had 2003 on it.  Then I decided to start looking into the travel options for spring break.  I didn’t get too far down the road before I went down the hall to the tourism lecturer.  She suggested that I  book my in-country flights right away because of so many schools being on spring break at the same time.  We had checked some hotels and found several of them totally booked.  I probably spent a good hour with Frances and we checked pricing on Virgin and Jet Blue, assuming that Qantus would be higher, well . . . I found an E-Red special (I don’t know what it means other than I got a good price).  I booked both mine and my mom’s flights.  I will fly Brisbane to Sydney on 9/11 and settle into the hotel, Sparky lands on 9/12 and we’re staying in Sydney the entire time except for day trips.  Mom gets in on 9/20 and we’ll spend a few more days in Sydney, then we both fly from Sydney to Melbourne on Wednesday, 9/23.  Again, day trips and returning Sunday, 9/27.  The other flight I booked was for Mom to get back to Sydney on 10/5 from Brisbane to catch her flight home.

When I was in Brisbane last Friday, I picked up tons of brochures, so I have created a stack for Kylene and a stack for Mom in the guest bedroom.  We’ll take days trips out of Ipswich while they’re here.