Up at 7am on Monday morning (not too early) to catch a flight up to Auckland. However, it had snowed all night and the entire airport was closed!

So on Tuesday morning we caught the 05:45 flight up (which is a whole lot earlier). The reason Andrew and I went up was for the annual TUANZ Contact Centre conference. It was pretty interesting, there were some excellent presentations (esp. on the growth of the Asian market.. there are some interesting times ahead).

One of the talks was on how to get your workforce physically active again (something I think that really needs to be done). And there was this excellent company called azion. Actually their website is a bit lacking on detail – but the jist of it was that you split your workforce into a number of teams (4 per team). Each person is given a pedometer and each week the total number of steps taken by the team is entered into the website. Once they hit the goal for that week they are shown a flash movie of what they would have seen if they had actually been walking. So you get a virtual tour of NZ.

It’s really a very cute idea. If it’s not being done in Ireland & Europe then I reckon it’s an idea which could *really* take off (and easy to do too). With the way our sedentary lifestyles are going you might even be able to get serious government funding to get set up!

Anyways.. dressed up in Tux’s again for the awards, good times (but no pics). Then a day in Wellington on work, and then spent the weekend up in Palmerston North with family. Met a very nice English couple – Jim & Abby – on the way up (thanks to a text asking me whether I was sitting next to anyone interesting.. as otherwise I would have happily kept on listening to my mp3 player!). Totally interesting pair – backpacking around doing WOOFING and making houses out of renewables (straw) etc.

It was great to catch up with the cousins. A much needed break. Now, the reason for the A change in attitude title. Well, it came to dawn on me (and I’ve been avoiding this for the longest time) that I really do need to get back into real career / job mode. I have had the best time over the last couple of years, and I have really enjoyed and have no regrets whatsoever! about taking it easy and just cruising for a while. But I have felt over the last 6 months to a year that my concentration and skills have been turning to mush.. and so I came to the uncomfortable realisation that I need to start pushing myself and upskilling myself again. So less long holidays I suspect, more hours in the office, but hopefully get some good stuff done – and make myself employable again.

Well, that’s the idea.. we’ll see what happens eh ;)

Excellent plane ride back down. Everyone got both a window and an aisle seat ;)

The last first-aid course I went on was about 6 or 7 years ago. So when the chance came up to do a refresher course (for the princely sum of $60) I decided to go. I have been in a few situations over the last couple of years where 1st aid did have to be performed and my skills were definitely rusty.

The course was 8am->8pm on Sat, and 8am->6pm today (Sunday). Really enjoyed it. The instructors were great, the other participants got into the acting spirit well (we simulated different scenarios)… all in all just an excellent course.

We simulated car crashes, axe wounds, burns (MSR stove fireballing), broken limbs, stretcher work, abdominal issues etc. Hopefully won’t ever need to put these skills into action, but I’ll feel a lot more confident now should I need to again.

It was held in a scout den about 10 mins drive out of town. Really loved the series of posters they had on different constructions to make.. really brings me back to the many years of scouts I enjoyed! (we never got to make a javelin thrower.. probably a good thing too!)

Sat night spent an enjoyable 25 mins in the pub (while Ireland were beating the All Blacks) and a still pretty enjoyable but not quite so few hours afterwards drowning our sorrows (though not too much – seeing as had the second half of the course)

Glynn is off to Ireland in a weeks time, and I’ll not see him before he leaves as I’m off to Auckland Monday->Wed, Wellington for Thursday and then to spend the weekend with my Aunt & Co (hopefully anyway) in Palmerston North. Quite looking forward to it. Not quite sure what is going to come out of the Auckland trip.. but I am really pretty excited about some possibilities for work that may arise.. we’ll see.

Oh, finally.. if you can play Flash Movies (and you have sound on your PC) then this link to ‘The Evolution of Dance’ is worth watching…

Also looking forward to trying out bug polo in a few weeks time.. should be mayhem and madness and lots and lots of fun.

So Thursday night headed off down to Wanaka for both the Queens and
Florians birthday. Drove down with Jayne & Glynn and we didn’t actually
make it there until almost midnight. A quick couple of pints was all we
felt like.

The weekend was actually pretty lazy for me.. I went biking with Glynn
the following day – I’d actually been here a year or so ago with John &
Maeve. The house that Glynn chose was about 100m away from where the
mountain bike tracks started – perfect really!

Glynn and I headed out for a quick cycle on Friday morning. Glynn was slightly ahead of me when I heard ‘Oh Shi*’… I duly slowed my speed and came round the corner to see a ramp. And a hole (above), with Glynn in it. In ChCh we have nice cruisey tracks – wheras these trails – or some of them – were made for the NZ Championships in 2000(and something). Still.. didn’t stop him getting back on his bike and cycling on (at a slightly slower pace for a little while!)

By Friday night most people had arrived and it was just a fun weekend.
There was also a mountain film festival on. I had seen quite a few of
them before at the Banff Mountain film festival – so I didn’t go to the
evening sessions that the others went to. I did really enjoy the kiwi
films though.. Brilliantly made and will excellent comedic value! I
would try to describe them.. But I’d never do them justice.

The others went off climbing on Monday morning, and I went to a morning
session of films.. These ones were about development work (except for a
film about and Irishman and a kiwi who walked the Pacific Crest Trail..)

There was a film (Nomads) about kayaking & malaria work in Uganda which had specific interest to me due to mum and dad being there… And then there was one about a lady (Cynthia Hunt) who is doing aid and development work in the Indian Himalayas. That film was called Magic Mountain – the idea being there was a magic mountain of nutrition to climb..

The drive back to Christchurch was as lovely as ever, a perfect sunset
over Mt. Cook. I really am pretty blessed to live here. This past
couple of years has been lots of fun. Lots of fun. But at
somepoint in my life I would like to dedicate at least a couple of years
to doing this sort of work.. Maybe even help out in Uganda .. Though I
don’t feel completely comfortable about that yet. I’m not sure yet
where the best use of my energies (and limited skill set ;) will be..
But someday it’ll happen.. We’re just so lucky to be able to enjoy the
things we do.. It’s far too easy not to think about the bigger picture.

The team building exercises that were held last week were excellent fun. We had Tony Brindle – ex mountaineer and outward bound instructor as our facilitator. I really thought his course was the best I have ever been on. Mostly we would learn some theory, and then have a short exercise to put it into practice.

For example, for one of the exercises saw the group split up into 4 groups
2 observers
2 managers
2 supervisors
5? Workers

Everyone was split up – I opted to be a worker for this one. We were brought down and placed on a giant chess board. Then about 10 mins later the supervisors came down, numbered us, and went away. Came back after about 5 mins (we were getting colder!) and told one of us to move. This process was repeated. We, the workers, were becoming agitated and restless. I was all for telling them we weren’t going to do anything until the situation was explained .. i.e what we were supposed to be doing. See by this time, David and I had worked out we were playing a sort of chess game and we figured we knew what to do to win the game.

In the event we ran out of time. But it was a beautiful illustration of how much extra communication is needed when groups work remotely. The mangers you see, assumed we knew the rules & aim of the game, so they never communicated this to the supervisors, who in turn never communicated it to the workers. We, the workers, should have made it clearer to the supervisors that we wanted direction.

In the pic above we had to pour water into the vertical tube to raise the water level inside to float a ping-ball to the top.. really not as easy as it looks (we should have siphoned it).

There were lots more examples and exercises.. culminating in a sort of rogaine where everyone was running around looking for clues.. great fun..

Then there was a salsa workshop and a few drinks etc. to celebrate the end of training. I must admit, I’d completely forgotten quite how much I enjoy salsa (though in particular merengue – so much easier). There are some not incredibly amazing pictures here

So a couple of weeks ago I set up www.snowpool.org.nz as a way to help people car pool to the ski fields. I was really pleased to see the first real notice go up on the site, and decided to go and test it out!

So, after watching the crusaders (Canterbury home team) win the Super-14 (rugby) competition for the second year running.. I went home and got packed – rather than go out and get hammered!.

Jon picked me up at 6am ish (in the mist) and we drove (in the mist) to Mt. Dobson (about 2 1/2 hours drive up to the ski field). The beauty of it is though, that all of Canterbury seemed to be in mist for the whole day, whereas we were above it all in, while not quite blue skies, still pretty good conditions.

The top two pics are Jon, and Jon getting some air… (he was a *slightly* better snowboarder than me ;)… that said – I was actually pretty happy with how my boarding went! I’m still way better at turning from toes onto heels.. but I’ll get there.

The News was also here as it was the earliest for 27 years that the field had opened. Now whether that is because last year was so bad and they need the cash .. or not.. I don’t know!. The conditions were a little icy, but it warmed up and melted a bit and was quite nice for most of the afternoon. I have a pretty good feeling this is going to be a great season!

And as for snowpool… what a great idea ;) I mean the fuel cost $70 return.. so splitting that saved each of us $35… bit of a no brainer to see that it’s worth car pooling.