Did anyone else (in Wellington) notice that in the last few weeks, everyone has been tired and miserable?

I sure have!

It struck me, when I was walking along to meet Jim and Mark for our monthly Vista lunch, that the big yellow ball in the sky, was indeed the SUN.

It then occurred to me that the combination of rubbish weather and my job being situated in an office, means it has been several weeks since I have witnessed the sun and that this may well be the cause of my general lack of mojo and my desire to crawl back under the covers and hibernate. (The other option is that wearing stockings is the cause: by the time you get up, wiggle into them, look down and realise they are full of ladders, replace them, then hitch them up like granny knickers only for them to slowly fall down throughout the day… you tend to lose desire to go on).

A brief survey convinced me that the vitamin D we get from the sun is hugely vital to our health and wellbeing. Those invisible little fellas could be the one thing stopping most of us from getting all sorts of sicknesses, but also the dreaded winter blues.

Thank goodness I am normally so excited about all activities that the dramatic reduction in my energy levels and motivation to leave the house was blatantly clear and I could jump on the symptoms and get back out there immediately… But it did give me a shakeup that sometimes in winter, you have to work a little harder at happiness.

One thing people from large countries will never understand is the feeling of being a rank underdog, of being somewhat of a joke on the world stage… and then proving everyone wrong.

I’m no sports fan, I can’t even claim to have staunchly supported our All Whites until the day they made it to the world cup, but I am perfectly happy to watch re-run upon re-run of our last-minute goal against Slovakia, I’m even happy to watch reruns of the drunken fans screaming and hugging and crying is their overdramatic, middle of the night celebrations.

There’s nothing better than being part of a small country in moments like these. It makes up for all those times we watch other countries pile up gold medals in the Olympics and all those times we don’t even make it to these sporting events.

One thing you can say about New Zealand, is that we are GREAT underdogs.

DISCLAIMER: While I believe Lance might be a part of this company, and even though Lance and I are in several companies together, I am in no way associated with Groupy APART FROM, I am their new BIGGEST FAN!

I just feel like I have to say that to avoid being accused of underhanded self-promotion.

I LOVE the idea of getting bargains through amassing crowds, and I love the bargains they are giving out. I just referred all my friends and we are going bowling en masse.

I know it’s not unique in the world, but most times you hear about sites like this and are super excited, but NZ is ignored, so you have to sit there and wish you lived in America.

I hope they do well and despite the fact that I will be missing my $10 referral fee for everyone who signs up through this blog post, I hope everyone signs up and we get lots of cool stuff dirt cheap.

Another disclaimer: The only addiction I have discovered that I have is for cheap internet shopping sites… so there is a mild chance I get overly excited when I find them.

In the past, and in a lot of countries today, employers are kings and employees really need to be looked out for.

I honestly don’t believe that is the case in New Zealand.

Not only do we have laws that fiercely protect the rights of employees… Laws that ensure employers like me are actually terrified of hiring, firing and communicating with employees, because ONE wrong step and you open up a can of worms… We also have a general employee attitude that the law actually looks after them EVEN MORE than it actually does.

Good employees have no real knowledge of the incidence of bad employees – people with shockingly arrogant, lazy attitudes that lead them to do pretty much nothing all day, consistently let down customers, miss deadlines and perform poorly on the basis that any response from an employer will be met with a threat of legal action. Employees are just people, and despite our attitude that employees are always innocent victims, I think we all know enough PEOPLE, to be aware that we are not always the morally upstanding, hard working, ethical creatures employees are perceived to be.

Yes, I know, if, as an employer, you follow the rules TO THE LETTER, you will probably win a grievance case, but this doesn’t take into account the huge time, emotional and monetary expense of even responding to the case against you. Even if someone has no leg to stand on, the fact that they THINK they do means the risk of ending up in legal proceedings isn’t very low.

So.

I think, in a country like New Zealand, on the whole, ONE THING employees should be expected to do is not slag off their employer in a public space. Not only is this rude… once again, most people have no idea of the potential consequences to the employer.

Seriously, if you don’t like your job and you find your employer repulsive enough to slag them off at every opportunity, STOP blaming everyone else in the world, take some self responsibility and behave like an adult:

1. Keep your mud slinging to your close circle of friends
2. FIND ANOTHER JOB (and in a difficult job market, where finding a job isn’t that easy – maybe take a step back and appreciate the organisation that gave YOU one).

A lot of us employers work our butts off to make sure our employees get paid every week, work reasonable hours and when we’re in a particularly foul mood, or they’ve done something particularly dumb, we suck it up and do our absolute best to make sure they still feel valued, while we take on the extra responsibility of the fallout.

I’m not sure if most employees can say they honestly give the same in return and I do think it’s time we shifted this attitude. Even if you are not thankful or grateful to the company that puts money in your pockets from week to week, show them a little respect.

We’ve had mega road tolls the last few long weekends (12 at Easter). Needless deaths caused by a lethal combo of alcohol, speeding and lack of seatbelts.

This Queens Birthday Weekend, the police had had enough of scraping us all off the roads and vowed to have a zero tolerance approach to speeding. This meant a combo of placing Police everywhere and having an absolute max of 4kms over the speed limit before fines were handed out.

So, despite some grumblings from those who think of themselves as race car drivers, on a weekend with terrible weather and a LOT of people on the roads, one solitary (self caused) death is not only a major achievement, it’s the lowest road toll we’ve had since records began.

I think we’re pretty proud of ourselves. We did good!

However, one needless death is still one too many… So while we should be patting ourselves on the back, we should also set a whole new target: Zero.

I head this morning a protest is planned north of Auckland this arvo. They are going to block all motorway lanes (potentially with a horse and cart at the helm), just when everyone leaps in their car to go away for the long weekend.

I have heard what their issue is but can’t even remember it, because the only thing that sticks in my head when I hear this is that EVERYONE will HATE these people. They will be hard pressed to find any support for their cause.

Clearly these people are angry, clearly they are at their wits end and feel this is the best option available to them. But also, clearly, they have become so angry that their focus has narrowed so much that they are giving into anger and have forgotten their end goal.

I understand how they feel. I feel it ALL THE TIME.

And it’s HARD work to keep the end goal in mind, especially when you genuinely believe that people/animals/the environment are being harmed and you NEED to make it stop.

It would be so easy to give in and scream, yell and disrupt traffic with a road block, leap aboard whaling boats, write an email/blog rant, punch someone… It feels like the best or only option left, but sadly, you would be doing your cause MORE of a favor by sitting at home and watching TV.

Or is any publicity good publicity?

I’m going to run the risk of getting another lecturer about become Right Wing in my old age.

The Government is talking about a couple of things with Tertiary education: one is cutting interest free loans for people to retake a failed course (the details are hazy), and the other is to free up more slots for foreign students (thereby meaning less for locals).

People are leaping onto their high horses faster than you could shout ‘giddyup!’

I don’t know about other people, but in My Day, the university halls were full of youngsters running around feeling superior to the rest of the country because they were INTELLECTUAL. It drove me insane at the time because the fact of the matter is that in New Zealand, for vast amounts of us, it’s not THAT HARD to get into University.

Now, I believe those same people are wingeing because people want to make it HARDER. And by harder, they mean you have to actually be able to pass your course for the Government to further subsidise your studies with interest free loans and by no longer ensuring your place is available ahead of someone from overseas who would be paying the full fees – I think that most students don’t realise that a huge portion of their fees are covered by the Government before they even look at getting loans for the remainder.

Wasnt Tertiary Education invented so that the academically elite could be taken from a generic schooling system and really push themselves to greatness? Not that the masses could get a dumbed down degree in our desperate hope that no one feels like they missed out.

And the funny thing is no one is even demanding we go back to the initial purpose, they’re just saying that, like a lot of things I think New Zealanders have come to assume as their birthright as a citizen of New zealand, Tertiary Education is actually something that you should have to work for.

Like most good mothers with several unmarried twenty-something daughters, my Mum booked her children in for a night of Botox and cocktails… I think they refer to it as a Botox Party?

OK, so technically it wasn’t a Botox party as much as a Ladies Night at their local bar and no Ferguson in their right mind avoids:
a. 2 4 1 discounts on alcohol and dessert
b. Free manicures

The lecture on the benefits of Botox was sort of thrown into the mix and we figured we could probably withstand the sales pitch.

In the end it was easier than anticipated. Sarah spotted the ‘Botox Lady’ on sight. Her slightly shiny, wrinkle free forehead was a dead giveaway. It was actually surprising how obvious it was.

The spiel on ‘facts’ vs ‘myths’ had us giggling in our Martinis… And outside of a mild scare when comparing our frown lines, we had a blast doing our interpretation of different facial expressions post Botox… Which basically amounted to a constantly slightly surprised appearance.

I’m not saying I’m anti cosmetic procedures. I think there are times and places where a wee bit of Botox or a boob job add so much to someone’s confidence that no one in their right mind should deny them… But surely there IS a line and I think 90% of the time it is crossed during cosmetic procedures.

Ask me again in 10 years, post kids and marriage etc. I will probably have changed my mind :)

I watched the American Idol finale the other night and it got me thinking about culture.

When the winner was announced, the runner-up was immediately banished from shot, while the winner was bathed in glory, lights and thousands of those streamer things that must be a nightmare to clean up.

He sang his winning song, while she hung out with all the other losers on the sideline.

And while I was anxiously fidgeting on the couch wondering when someone was going to step in and ensure that the runner up was made aware that she was STILL a winner for turning up, I realised she was totally cool with the situation.

I know we mock ourselves as a country for our lack of competition and drive to win, of our attitude that participation is key and the trophy is a ‘nice to have’ but not really THAT important… But for the first time I wondered if actually that is a FUNDAMENTAL aspect of our culture, and we have twisted ourselves into such a knot about it, we’re the ones with issues about winning and losing.

I imagine the runner up in American Idol will pick herself up, wait about a minute for the bruises to heal, then run off and find a more lucrative record contract. Losing is a part of life, not really worth worrying about, the next win is around the corner.

In New Zealand, what would she do? Run crying home and give up? Would we create this awkward scene where she got a little bit of the limelight in fear that she would end up with lifelong issues from losing? Have we made losing such a big bad monster that we’ve blown it out of all proportion?

Maybe American Idol is not the best place to create theories on culture – but given NZ Idol never really took off (I suspect due to another cultural element of ‘hating on everyone from NZ who is famous in NZ’), it just made me wonder…

I was watching Breakfast yesterday morning and they had a segment on Tui taking on the Church over their ‘Yeah Right’ Billboard campaign.

The Tui ‘Yeah Right’ billboards have been around for Donkeys years, and often stir up controversy… Which fits right into the Tui Beer brand ‘personality’ of being plain spoken, slightly mischievous laddish types.

They’ve done a good job of pretending to be just ordinary blokes partaking in a bit of guerilla marketing, of being unafraid of breaking the rules and stirring up trouble. For example, a 2 minute google search turned up this one, which mocks a hugely controversial murder trial here, where the guy on trial claimed to be doing a paper round while his dad shot up the entire family:

They’ve done a brilliant job of making us believe we’re all a part of it and people now go out of their way to wear ‘yeah right’ tshirts and make their own banners and suggest official banners etc.

And a church somewhere in the country has been posting their own ‘yeah right’ banners outside their church for something like 8 years. I think the only change from Tui’s signs is that they’ve swapped their branding for the word ‘spirit’, and their blatant copying cannot be passed off as anything else.

Well, Tui discovered these billboards and came down like a tonne of bricks, and suddenly their happy-go-lucky image is thinly stretched over threats of legal action and demands to remove the signs for infringement of copyright.

I reckon that was an EXTREMELY bad call. I’m sure it will blow over and no one will notice, but the image of a couple of blokes sitting round a box of Tuis cracking jokes has very much been replaced with one of a bunch of corporate suits strategically planning a campaign and caring deeply about boring things like ‘bottom line’, ‘copy rights’ and all sorts of things that they outwardly MOCK on the billboards.

The guy from the church sort of figured this and despite being not-particularly well spoken, did seem to make the Tui guy squirm when he called them up on not having a sense of humor.

I wonder what they thought they’d gain over kicking up a fuss? Seems like they had a lot to lose.