Whizzing by

When things come around again that have happened before, that's when it reminds me how long we've been here. This morning I attended another men's breakfast at St Stephen's church in Shirley. Admittedly it was held in September last year but it's still the second annual men's breakfast I've been to.

This morning Cam was speaking on living as a Christian in the workplace - how the workplace is a place for evangelism, how evangelism is something we should be not something we should do, and how we should be prepared. A very challenging talk with some great tips to take away too. Why is it that when someone asks on a Monday "What did you do yesterday?" it's easier to say "Hmm, not much. How about you?" rather than "I went to church yesterday morning and heard a great talk about Jesus before having some friends from church back for lunch" or whatever?

Thinking earlier about being here for over a year and stuff got me thinking again to what we were doing this time last year and where we were with stuff. This Wednesday marked my one year anniversary of having this job (we went out for coffee and cake to celebrate) and tomorrow is the one year anniversary of getting the keys to our house before next weekend marks the one year anniversary of living here.

Things happening again reminds us of so much that has happened in the past year, but also of the things we're missing. This weekend, if we were still back in the UK we would be heading up north to Grimsby. It's my niece Ellie's birthday this weekend (Happy Birthday, Ellie!) and we always used to go home for it. And we're missing her 7th birthday now, after missing her 6th birthday too. Things like that make it hard to be here sometimes.

Sporting frustration and sickness

I didn't realise how frustrating it would be watching the Olympics over here. Great Britain are have a great Games. They're currently third in the medal table. Third! That's quite honestly an amazing achievement. But the frustrating part comes in the fact that unless there's Kiwi interest in an event there's limited coverage of it. I guess it's understandable, and is probably much the same in the UK, but it is very frustrating. We topped the rowing medal table, have won 4 out of 5 track cycling golds (and 8 out the 15 medals presented so far) and have won both the sailing golds presented to date but I've had to follow pretty much everything on the BBC Sport live text feed thing. I guess it's a downside to put up with every four years that comes with living on the other side of the world.

The weekend just gone was a bit rubbish. Last week was one of those when I didn't get home before ten any night (taking Jo's uncle out for dinner on Monday, Bible study group on Tuesday, standing in leading at CE on Wednesday and Joel's stag-do on Thursday) and slowly over the week I felt my health gradually on the slide. By Friday lunchtime I felt pretty terrible and so had to go home. I've been in bed (or crashed on the sofa) ever since. A sore throat that led to a rasping, chesty cough followed by a streaming nose and eyes and finally headaches and throbbing sinuses weren't much fun. I think I'm on the mend now and will probably be good for work tomorrow. Maybe. I lost my appetite and hardly ate anything at all over the weekend. I think that shows quite how ill I was. I did scrape myself out of bed on Saturday to go along to Joel and Liz's wedding though. It was great to be able to make it. I just hoping my wheezing and coughing weren't picked up by the video camera.

Joanne's old stomping ground

This week I've been up north. I attended the Sales & Store Conference (North Island) with work which was held in Palmerston North. 'Palmy', as it's known, is one of the places Joanne grew up. I think she was there from when she was 7 till 13, or something like that.

The conference was an internal work thing where the sales team and the stores team all get together to meet up and hang out and learn to work together and stuff like that. It has a work side to it, definitely, but there was time for fun and time-building stuff too.

The work aspect involved presentations, like the one from the CEO breaking down the company's strategy and plan for the coming 18 months, and workshops and discussions and such. I am really impressed with how the senior management let people know that it's 'our' company. If we have ideas and thoughts and suggestions, if they're good and worthwhile, they'll be considered and even implemented. It's great that people feel their ideas and opinions are valued. It means they're willing to speak up and volunteer stuff.

The fun aspect of the conference had two sides to it. The first involved team-building events. The conference had a topically Olympic theme to it and so the delegates were all divided into teams and throughout the conference there were games and tasks we all had to participate in, scoring points for our team. Some of the events were fun, some were silly, but I guess it was all about breaking down barriers and making people step outside of their comfort zone and stuff. It certainly helped people to get to know each other, which was a good thing. Workshops and break-out groups function so much better when you've just been cheering each other on in gumboot (wellies, in English) throwing contests. Add in the banana race (passing said fruit along a row of team members using only your knees), the fertiliser and spoon race (think egg and spoon race but themed for our company), tying knots in human ropes, selling a bag full of random products around the city centre and turning up on the last morning wearing pyjamas or dressed as Fred Dagg and you'll get a sense of the sort of thing the 'Olympics' involved. Our team didn't win, but my nail polish (don't ask!) matched our team hat (we all wore team beanies; each team wearing a different colour).

We also had off-site entertainment which involved a trip to the Te Apiti wind farm, a tour of the Tui brewery at Mangatainoka and an evening of bull-riding and line-dancing at the Woodville racecourse. The wind farm was quite impressive really with these huge turbines scattered along the side and crest of a gorge. The brewery tour was interesting but didn't have the same appeal to me as it did to those colleagues of mine who could enjoy the three free beers. The evening event was all a bit 'rural' for me but it was a coupled with a casino event so I enjoyed some Texas Hold 'em while others line-danced and rode mechanical bulls. The evening climaxed with the 'Sheriff's session' - a kind of kangaroo court where amusing events from the past year were retold, sometimes with photographic evidence, with 'offenders' being fined (all proceeds donated to charity). Somehow I managed to avoid any fines at all.

All in all the conference was a good, if tiring few days. It was good to meet a few colleagues that I've only previously emailed or spoken on the phone to. It was good for them to meet the face behind the spreadsheets too!

I arrived back at Christchurch airport on Friday remembering that exactly a year previously I had arrived at the same airport. A year in Christchurch now. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, it really has flown by.