The camping ground that we are staying at as a strict no Alcohol policy. You CAN NOT bring alcohol onto the site.
So imagine my surpirse when the hand gel in the toilets is alcohol based. You would think you could get a different kind of hand gel.
Category: lead vividly (Page 17 of 18)
"In short I thought I would start shouting into the wind…"
And with those words my blog began. Like most things in my life my blog has proven to be random, distracted thoughts. It comes and goes depending on my mood and has had three major changes to its look and feel.
It will continue to change because I love change. It will continue to be random and change in writing style because I am always learning and experiencing different things.
Anyway here are a few of my favourate posts etc from each month since Aug last year.
Old Posts
Old & New … Lost after 3 years is the new car smell, it now has one of those car airfreshener smells . A smell that you know is hiding a potentially more potent odour, the way lighting a match in the toilet tries to hide a foul stench… read more [nb this is my most commented post a whole 3 comments]
Origin Pacific falls from the Never Never Land … In my opinion Origin was doomed to failure before their first flight left the ground. They tried to behave and act like super powers, then align themselves with super powers like Qantas, rather than establishing profitable niche markets … read more
Authentic Community …I think this small business called agóge. This business with people from all over the world, with varying educations, from different religions and diverse upbringings is starting to become an authentic community … read more
Woolgathering at 17,000 ft about the Marlborough Sounds … I sit in the ATR, transfixed at the sight of the Marlborough Sounds out my window and grateful for the relief from a tiring day that woolgathering about the Sounds allows. … read more
Flying an Alpha 160 … "It is like climbing into a new car when you have been used to driving a car that is 25 years old." … read more
Most enjoyable book
Blue like Jazz – Donald Miller.
Best quote
"I’ve always thought smack in the middle of a contradiction is a great place to be!" Bono – U2
I have blogged before about the interactive mocca that you buy from the 'Naked Grape' in Tauranga.
Well, now I have found an interactive Muesli in Hamilton. It's a new cafe that opened in Te Rapa called AGIO, which is Italian for 'relax'. It does average coffee, but a great Muesli. Check out the photo from my cellphone. Just pour it into your plate and you are away!
Anyway, just because there is no point to this post, I got to thinking about the perfect cafe. I think the perfect cafe would be on leisure island, I have no idea of its real name, with a view like the one taken from my PDA below, and sell interactive mocca's and muesli.
How cool would that be?
Oh and I think there is a lesson to this post and my previous one. I really need to buy a small digital camera that I can take with me wherever I go. My 1 megapixel PDA with a dirty lens simply doesn't cut it.
There they are! The Marlborough Sounds. 
The picture from my PDA does it little or no justice, but I simply had to take some photos. The lady in front of me had a real digital camera and I thought of asking her to email them to me, but my courageous contemplation turned to weak actions.
I sit in the ATR, transfixed at the sight of the Marlborough Sounds out my window and grateful for the relief from a tiring day that woolgathering about the Sounds allows.
I have long dreamed of chartering a yacht and sailing around the Sounds. I dream of waking up on a still, warm, sunlit and cloudless morning surrounded by little islands covered in bush and farmland. The only sound is the sound of water lapping enchantingly against the side of the boat. I dream of jumping from the side of the boat for a quick swim to remind my body it is alive. Then I dream of the mandatory cooked breakfast that has smells and aromas and tastes that can only be experienced in location such as this.
It's a dream. A long held dream. Hopefully one day it will become a reality.
By means of introduction, a gobblelygook is a device that sits in your sink, that you run water through and it mashes up the food into waste water. From there it is mixed with all sorts of waste water delights like #1’s and #2’s and other stuff and pumped to the sewage treatment plant. In Hamilton’s case the water is then pumped back out into the Waikato River upstream of the Auckland domestic water supply intact.
Auckland water … yummy yummy. The Wiggles should rerecord there song!
Anyway, the other day I was putting some left over food down the gobblelygook and a guest said I should save it for another day. They then said “think of all the staving people in Africa”. Now this is not a dig at that person, because I have heard this statement a number of times in my life and I am sure it is more about not being wasteful than anything else.
But if we were really to stop and think about all the staving people in Africa, would it really change what we throw away. For me personally eating stale bread the next day is not my idea of fun and if I did it would not help the staving people in Africa or another place one iota.
I guess the point of this post is that there are heaps of statements that we make that really mean very little unless we are actually prepared to follow through on them. If I really thought of the staving people anywhere, and was compelled as a result, I would do stuff and give stuff (not left over bread) that would actually make a difference in their lives. If I don’t then there is little point raising it as an issue.
The person who made the comment may already do all of that, I don’t know, but I was challenged about the throw-away phrases I use that do the same thing.
I know it is going to be a long day when I am half-way through driving to Auckland and the alarm on my phone goes off at the predetermined to tell me it is time to get up. I arrived at the Auckland office in record time 1:06, this is in part because the road was empty and my foot was slightly heavier than normal today. A sub 60 trip is looking on the cards one day.
The persistent noise in the background changes to the next track and Bono sings “Something is about to give, I can feel it coming, I think I know what it means.” I let the words sink in a little bit, and then start thinking about a decision I made on Sunday not to speak about Authentic Community. It was a huge decision for me, because I left a number of people in the lurch, but it was the right decision.
I seem to be making heaps of decisions at the moment, all the while aware that something is about to give. Some of them are well rounded decisions with great motives, others are strange decisions with little effect and a few are decisions that are simply out of character for the man I want to be.
It is interesting that each decision I make, makes the bigger decisions easier. It is like a self-perpetuating snowball running and pitching and bowling down a hillside. Each decision increases the size of the ball, each decision increases its momentum, but with each decision the ball also becomes less controllable and has the potential for a more damage if it hits the wrong thing rather than just coming to rest at the bottom of the hill.
It is the uncontrollability and potential for harm that kept me awake after Jayden woke me in the early hours of the morning.
Anyway, I am not sure if this is a post about decision making, or a post about reasons why you shouldn’t blog with a lack of sleep. I think I will go have a doze on the couch in reception until Marc arrives.
Sweat Dreams…
We have all seen the Oscar's or MTV awards. Someone gets an award that they just didn't expect and end up babbling into the microphone about nothing. I have, in my own opinionated way, thought it was bizarre that these stars would speak publicly so badly.
Anyway last Thursday a group of us went to the fast 50 awards. We were sitting there and they said the first award is for the Fastest Employee Growth in the Central North Island. As they said it I was struck by the fact that we might actually win this, which was something I hadn't prepared for, "and the winner is Logistics Personnel".
What the? I then tried to get my team to come up with me (their legs became rocks), I lost my way getting up the front (there were only about 100 people there) and then was lost for words. Yes you heard it correctly, I, Andrew Nicol was lost for words. I blahed something about thanking my team about ten times and promptly left the stage. To this day I can't believe it!
Later we got another award for 28th Fastest Growing Company. I had a bit more to say about living people matter and my team, but I will never get over the shock of being lost for words.
You can read my viewpoint post to see some of my thoughts about our growth.
[Sara] Serendipity. It's one of my favorite words.
[Jonathan] It is? Why?
[Sara] It's such a nice sounding word for what it means: a fortunate accident. I don't really believe in accidents. I think fate is behind everything.
[Jonathan] Oh you do?… So everything is predestined, we don't have any choice at all?
[Sara] No, I think we make our own decisions, but fate sends us little signs and it's how we read those signs that determines whether we are happy or not.
These words from the video Serendipity, which I watched last night, got me thinking about destiny and fate and things that happen that may well be fortunate accidents.
I remember speaking with a friend a few months ago about fate and destiny. When I meet this friend it was a result of Serendipity. I rambled that I dislike the idea of destiny or fate or luck because it means I have no control over a situation (my nature of a control freak coming out again). What I was saying was that I want to have free will.
Then this morning I read Scott Adam's Dilbert Blog and he basically said we are all moist robots with no free will.
In a prior post I asked who is at fault if a guy pokes a bear with a stick and the bear kills him. Then I sweetened the pot by supposing the bear was actually an irrational guy whose religion says you need to kill people that poke you with a stick … The correct answer, and the one that no one offered as far as I could tell, is that it was no ones fault. Not the guy with the stick, not the bear, and not the irrational religious guy. Each creature acted according to its nature and its programming, as all moist robots must.
The bear is a furry moist robot. You poke him, he mauls you. It's that simple. The bear's brain isn't equipped for free will. Neither is yours or mine.
To add to all that Paul says that "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family", then adds just a sentence later that God "is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom". This just brings heaps of questions to mind like; If God decided, how can we be free? And what if he decided not to, do we still have freedom? Are there boundaries between destiny and free-will?
It seems I may have become a fence sitter on this matter, in a serendipitous way.
The expectation of change is gone, the heavy machinery that once littered the road side has moved on, the surprise changes in road layout are no longer. Finally after spending enough money to feed a small third world nation for a year, and after 10 years we have a 4 lane road from Long Swamp (just north of Huntly) connecting to the 4 lanes at Mercer, then snaking all the way into Auckland and beyond.
An element of excitement and anticipation made the drive interesting and revealing the first few of times I trundled up to the city of sails and homeward on the new road. Now that excitement is replaced by familiarity, the unknown layout and speed limits changes are replaced with the undemanding and effortless click of cruise control. For years I was excited by the prospect of speed and ease and time-saving which are all rewards that the new road has brought, yet now it feels like something is lacking. It feels like Auckland just grew, stretched its arm deeper into the Waikato and took the liveliness out of the roads, replacing it with repetitiveness and simplicity.
I miss the ever shifting landscape that construction brings and how it often provided a welcome divergence in my thinking to questions and opinions about their efforts and floundering.
The new road is fantastic but without the interest and excitement that continual change brings, it is now is just one more piece of road.
Even when driving it would seem I need change, adore change and miss change.