Just happened to be on a tram coming back from working in the city and on my I Phone I was researching blogs about jobs and comparisons between numbers of university graduates in Melbourne for the types of jobs being advertised (a matter of vocational sustainability -  for a change I'm talking about a different kind of sustainability.) There need to be more forums and conduits for information about job search experiences post graduation.  After all, it's three years out of your life to get a degree, and would be exceedingly disappointing to sacrifice all that time and forgone income, and yet, not be able to obtain employment in your chosen vocation. 

While I was ruminating on such matters, I heard the sweet sounds of a guitar coming from the middle of the tram, and I mustered up the nerve to talk to the person next to me.  I said to the man, on my left, with the gentle New Zealand accent, how refreshing it was to hear live music on the tram whilst rumbling home. Normally you just hear the quick bursts of sound emanating from the street, from the buskers, as you go past at the city stops. The man sitting next to me, replied that it's quite normal in Rome, Italy to have buskers playing accoustic instruments on public transport, as I experienced in New York.   

I fumbled around in my bag to find some change, as I thought this young man was most certainly deserving of a monetary reward.  My nattering on about the busking boon aboard the tram must have convinced the man to do likewise, as he leant down to leave some coins in the open guitar case, as he got off. 

I wandered over and had a chat with the guitarist and threw in some encouraging words which he seemed thrilled to hear.  No matter, what is going on in your life - you will always find there is someone who is much more unfortunate and the fact that I stopped to talk (and not merely leaving a few dollars) seemed to have made his week.  Keep going buskers on public transport, out there, you make our city, and you remind us that music isn't just something we hear on our ear phones, as we trundle home. 

Many of us greenies will be reading the Age online and uttering profanities after reading that technology has been developed to send advertising through glass windows, through 'bone conduction'.  As you rest your weary head aboard the train, the new techy juggernauts have the ability to prime your brain so that you the commuter will go and buy otherwise unwanted things.  Uggh!

Apparently they are looking in to extending the application to transmitting news, weather, and music. I was also quite surprised to hear that in Germany there has been a positive reaction to this! Methinks us aussie commuters will find it too invasive - being more reserved types, I know I would.   There is nothing nicer than resting one's head and feeling the rumble and rocking, back and forth and the meditative trance this engenders when travelling on PT. 

Now this website is all about green messages - so it occurred to me that you could use the technology to prime people for good purposes - such as, did you put that piece of litter in the recycling bin, or did you pump extra air in to your tyres this month?

There are no end of good applications but I still think that there will be an outcry! Communication and information boundaries need to be enforced at some point.