Claire is on the warpath once again against the Wellington City Council. Despite the lessons of cities like London (more roads = more cars), it appears another road will be built int he near future.

On a Wellington wide scale, this goes against the wishes of those who submitted their opinions and will further move us AWAY from a safe and clean city. On a personal level THEY ARE BUILDING IT RIGHT NEXT TO THE APARTMENT I WANTED TO BUY.

A note from Claire…

Despite public consultation urging against the Basin Reserve flyover, the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) has recently agreed on plans that would see construction begin in 2011/12. This would inevitably lead to increased congestion at the Mount Victoria Tunnel requiring further expensive roading projects to remedy.

Of the submissions received by the GWRC regarding the flyover, 79% did not support its construction.

Wellingtonians have been ignored.

We need YOU to show the Greater Wellington Regional Council that we have a VOICE and that their decision does not reflect OUR vision for the future.

Come DEMONSTRATE

Where: GWRC, 142 – 146 Wakefield St
When: 12:30pm, Friday 31st October

Just sitting at Singapore Airport, after the hour’s flight from Ho Chi Minh City.

The flight home is proving to be harder than expected.

My mother’s leg, which is now swollen and bruised both at the knee and ankle (In fact you can’t really tell much difference in width most of the way down and her toes are kind of sticking out from this little round foot), she is limping heavily and when you go up and everything expands, things only get worse.

We thought life would be ok, given dad’s Gold Elite Star Alliance rating. Either we could negotiate an exit row, or he could use airpoints or dollars to upgrade her to business class.

It appears not so.

Despite years of traveling almost monthly and their combined status, there has been absolutely no help. The first person told us the plane here was full, there was nothing we could do and to sort out the long leg from Singapore… We then boarded the plane to find it almost empty and rows of seats available.

We arrived here to find that you have to book upgrades DAYS in advance - even if business class isn’t full and you have the airpoints or dollars to do it.

What I find almost amusing is that airlines have a tendency to make it clear that they are not offering service because they LIKE you, it’s because you give them a LOT of money with your decision to fly with them regularly. What we are now finding, is that even money doesn’t really buy you the service. In fact, if you ASK to fund the upgrade, they still don’t deem you worthy (even if you are struggling to walk).

Luckily, my mother is not one to cry about it (in fact she is yet to shed a tear, despite her fairly substantial injuries). But I wonder what would happen if someone as high maintenance as ME was in that position? I suppose luxurious air travel was the gap Emirates intended to fill when they came on the market.

One thing I LOVE about working on the internet, is that in theory, you can work from anywhere.

One thing I hate, is that every holiday becomes a ‘working holiday’.

In the past 19 days, I think I’ve made real progress on figuring out HOW to get the lifestyle I want. It may not happen this year, or even next year, but I reckon I can see now how Decisive Flow can be set up so any of us can take off anywhere and still get our work done.

This morning, I woke up at 6.45 am, went out to see Ho Chi Minhs Museleum (which was closed), had breckie and am now doing an hours work while the rest of the family has some ‘freshening up’ time. This entire trip, I’ve managed to literally have about no time free every day until bed time, when I can quickly check my emails. If anything had arose (which, thanks to the geniuses I work with, it hasn’t - apart from Kelles sprained wrist), I had an hour or two the next morning to get some stuff done… WITHOUT interrupting my holiday.

The fact that every ‘hotel’ has wireless internet makes traveling so much easier. My laptop case has dings, rips and dents all through it, but this fine old thing is still going strong, despite being strapped to the back of a motorbike for days on end and dropped once or twice by my sister.

After seeing Sarah’s lifestyle over here, I can see the appeal of moving over for a few months. The pace is so much faster in some areas, but so much slower in others, the heat is just lovely, as is the ability to eat and drink to your heart’s content and never quite understand what’s going on around you.

Even 4 years ago when I was last here, it was so much more difficult to work and travel. Now, it’s super easy.

Because there is so much opportunity to get your teeth stuck into things over here - this country is developing at such a fast rate, in the week Sarah was away from Hanoi, she has noticed so many changes - our skills are so welcome here. You could spend 30 hours a week running your own company and still have a good few free to donate to anything you want to get involved in.

At the very least, the prospect of 2 weeks away from my desk isn’t nearly so frightening!

One thing us humans sure are good at is avoiding the sad realities of the world until they are so unbelievably close to our eyeballs we have no choice but to look… And even then our brains manage to justify their presence.

Every time I travel to a country where clean water, a roof over your head and even a meal are not givens but privileges, I have a minor breakdown.

How do you sit back enjoying your meal, knowing that the kid watching you would probably last off the same amount of money for several weeks (Or months?!?), how do you NOT buy endless pocket sizes tissue packets off the women wandering the streets at night with their babies sleeping on their backs? How can you NOT feel immense guilt that EVERY single thing you buy back at home costs more than these people earn in a day?

One thing I will not do is accept the well-told ‘travel hardened’ justification that these people who pester you at your dinner table should be simply ignored or that they are carrying their babies to make you feel guilty.

Because, even if that is correct, what kind of mother would do that to her child unless the other options were worse? and why do we always assume that the poorest amongst us are the most greedy? How can we live by the notion that all humans are created equal EXCEPT the vast majority of us, who have no wealth, and these people should be ignored even when they are right in front of your face?

The joys of Vietnam 4 years on from my last visit, is that even in the middle of the tourist district, sitting on a roadside restaurant, if you give the equivalent of 1 Vietnamese meals worth of money to EVERY person who comes by asking for money, you will be parting with less than $10, add that to the $4 you pay for your dinner and beer, and you have only spent the same amount as a cheap meal back at home. And no, the hordes don’t come racing, the smiles however, do.

Aside from the non-stop fun we are having, this trip serves as yet another reminder of the extreme wealth we possess and the duty that comes along with it. Handing out meal money is not the solution, but it does serve to show a little respect to the people whose country you are traveling through and whose lives are, to you, a tourist attraction.

The day has arrived! I’m in a mild panic at the thought of 19 DAYS away, swanning around Vietnam…

But:

• Emma and Kelle are far more practical and sensible than me and will probably do me out of a job
• I get to hang out in Sarees new country and meet her friends (and adopt her weird food habits
• This is a major test for my planned trip to the US next year for significantly longer (but for more work related stuff as well as a massive road trip

So, may be light on the posting for a while, but you never know, might throw a few pics up here as we make our way up the country!

I have a group of close girlfriends who have known each other since school. We have grown up together and faced just about every life issue together. We’ve fallen out, fought, cried, broken up, laughed and talked our way through every major life event any of us has faced.

It is a wonder sometimes to be so close to such a great group of people and I marvel that through some trick of fate, I managed to meet all these people by the pure luck of attending a certain high school.

These days, we are generally spread across the globe, but still manage to meet up (or plan trips) to ensure virtually nothing we have to face is faced alone.

This past weekend, the 5 currently residing in Wellington (two others are in Melbourne and one is just about to set off for the US) headed to the beach for a ‘girls weekend’. One of us is going through a tough time and it was a chance to get out of our routines and spend a weekend nestled in the warmth of great conversation, excellent food and a couple of bottles of wine.

We talked, quite literally for 48 hours non-stop. We almost managed to tag team through the night to ensure someone was always awake. We laughed so much our bodies revolted against us, we played helicopters on the beach until Claire fell in the ocean and our tears were wiped away by the wind. We analysed irony for so long it now has a whole new meaning, and we sang Disney songs better than Elton.

We came away with 2 key mottos:

1. Leave your ego at the door.
2. Don’t judge people’s motives, only their judgements (That was helped by the Vice Presidential debate)

One thing that never fails to surprise me in life is the healing power of friends and the joys of knowing people who will stand by you no matter what, who hold your hand through your weaknesses and who make you laugh when you would otherwise be crying.

Girls, we’re nearing the ten year mark… I never thought I’d ever be old enough to know people this long! I hope our predictions for where we’re at in twenty ten are both completely correct and utterly wrong.

We are unbelievably lucky to have each other.

Over the past month or so, I have spent a lot of time strategising what I WANT. For most of this year that I have taken solo control of Decisive Flow, my aim has been to ’see how things go’. But now I’m more clear headed and have tried a few different things, it’s time to come up with a plan.

Hiring a business mentor has been key to this. I don’t believe it is possible to run a business on your own, and I don’t think that the advice of friends and family is enough to back you up (which is not to deny the value of it!)

One thing I woke up and realised recently is that for the last 3 or four years I have never ONCE woken up without feeling stressed. It is a very mild stress that is a combo of:

1. Worrying about the future
2. Worrying about having missed something important

It struck me that this kind of ongoing stress is not normal, and that I have come to accept it in my life.

So, one of the key things I hope to get out the the next 9 months with my business mentor is how to GET RID of that morning (and all day) stress and ensure I have plans in place that I feel comfortable enough with to rely on!

It just struck me as insane that I wasn’t even aware of how ingrained the stress was and how I had simply accepted it.

Does anyone else find that watching a movie these days is a torturous process?

I understand why people illegally download movies, I am yet to hire a DVD that isn’t so badly scratched you spend half your time trying to clean it and miss half the movie anyway because it jumps scenes and bungs out every couple of minutes.

It is a sad day when people are crying out for video tapes to come back.

It feels like we are missing a good solution here!

(FYI, just watched ‘Enron (well half of it anyway) - great movie for getting a little idea of how/why all our financial institutions are going under!)

Everyone hates Mondays. Most people hate Sundays.

It doesn’t matter how much I am enjoying my work on Friday, by Monday, I am convinced that work is the last thing I want to do.

It’s stupid, so i thought I’d change my mindset.

At about the same time as I was deciding to change my mindset, I listened to a radio article about how not to dread Mondays. One of their key points was to make the most of your Sunday. Most of us only enjoy a one day weekend, because we spend all of Sunday preparing for Monday or getting worried about Monday or even just thinking about Monday.

In the meantime, a couple of friends and myself have started Sunday night Shared Dinner Club.

Our combined culinary skills have resulted in some fantastic meals, the best (by far) being this week’s enchiladas and Chocolate meringue pie.

At the end of Sunday night, one participator made the comment “Sunday Is my FAVORITE night of the week”

It occurred to me that the event is a total success. If we now look forward to Sundays rather than dread them, we have successfully cured Mondayitis!

I happen to have a lot of brilliant friends who are very knowledgeable about all sorts of things.

It also happens that my one true love in life is sitting back and talking about those things with anyone who has an opinion on them.

Something that has come up recently is the development of countries that don’t currently share our monetary wealth. And issues around what works and what doesn’t. What is us just enforcing our way of life and what is actually of help?

I witnessed the aftermath of the boxing day tsunami from an island in Thailand. Where our countries unitied to compete over who would spend the most while locals quietly gathered together their belongings and sent over the stuff they KNEW their families needed.

I have been through Cambodia and witnessed palatial houses and resorts - all owned by people from Korea and elsewhere. The locals slowly became workers in their own country, while it was being bought up from underneath them.

I know one persons view while traveling doesn’t uncover the entire picture but it got me thinking:

1. That we are arrogant to assume we know the best way to develop other countries.
2. That the one greatest thing we can give developing countries is the tools to communicate and collaborate among themselves.

In this world, one thing is for certain - when a company spots an opportunity to make money, it will do its utmost to make it and countries where land and living are relatively cheap are prime targets for exploitation. The only way I can see that people living in any particular country can combat this is through communication with each other.

So now we get onto the tools part. A lot of development experts I know are kind of anti-technology - they see it as the root of many of our problems.

But I say that you simply cannot judge a computer as anything more than a simple tool. It’s just like a hammer, paintbrush or any other tool, the benefits or woes come from how you use it.

We may overuse cellphone to the point we are rude, we may spend half our lives gaming on computers, but that is not the tools fault. We can’t deny people these tools or recommend they will be unhelpful simply because we cannot trust ourselves with them all the time.

The One Laptop Per Child program came into question, and the answer was left open. Is it a good idea to give children in Pacific Island countries, Inidia etc a computer each? Is this their most pressing need?

I would say a resounding “Yes”.

Even if all the computers are used for is connecting the kids in one community with those in another so they can learn from each other their history, their culture and what’s going on in their country… To me, this is about the most valuable, on going thing we can do to help them survive and prosper in a global world. It is not ok to assume that they will treat a computer in the same way we do, or that they will get lost in a world of CNN and Facebook.

I don’t know a lot about development and the ins and outs and potholes of a foreigner going into a country and ‘helping’, but I do know that the internet is probably our most open method of communication and spreading knowledge at the moment. Surely its only a great thing when those who have been forced to remain silent due to lack of money can join the conversation?