The weather is doing it's usual New Zealand tricks ...Freezing cold one day or one hour even, then it turns on itself and it's mild and raining or sunny or grey ..A lot of grey dayus this years winter ... making it no fun at all to play with new camera and try and take the unusual shots or at least some pleasing shots ..

And the the days are getting longer and the biurds are thinking Spring is here ..We even came across a brown mallard duck with half a dozen or so duckling no more that a day or so old trainling behind her...The things you see without a camera ....

It's gone crazy at work ...everyone is getting at everyone else and the whole atmosphere of the place has really gone down hill .... Too many arguments, too much "blame culture", and it aint going to improve ...I want out ..

At least next weekend (Sunday) I fly out to Sydney Australia. I have some site visits with out outsource services provider for two days. Then a short course on some architectures with another vendor ..>Then come that Thursday McD will arrive as well and off we go for 2 1/2 weeks of holiday, travel, and photography..

The plan is that we fly from Sydney to Uluru (Aires rock) to hopefully dine under the stars and photograph the big rock at sunset and sunrise... then we are off to Dawin at the top of Australia for a extremely quick stay just to break up the flying .. I have now read a bit more about the place ..Me thinks I will be going back again as its on the edge of some impressive national parks ...

Then to Bali we fly for a week or two ...Hopefully we will get to photograph heaps of people, wildlife, forests, paddy fields and the rest .... So far it's all against us for going there ... We struggled a bit to get lodgings but thats all sorted .... the governmenmt warnings are still out on the place after the Bombings of some years back... and then just this week there was a avian flu outbreak in the remote western regions of Bali... I had wanted to go there as I wanted to capture and photograph some of the more traditional bali ... ....... AND THEN ....Its reported that they have run out of booze !!!!!! Yeh gods how cruel is that !!! Thank our lucky stars for Duty Free !!!!

So I just have to survive one week ... Thats all just one very long miserable week .............

Just Photo's from the Weekend

If only practice made perfect

There is a photographic competition running with one of the digital camera magazies ... I wish I had practiced a lot more todate. Moany of the pictures already submitted are truely awsome in their quality .. It really does show how i'm still at the bottom of the ladder when you see these 'top of the ladder' pictures ....

Shall I go on about work again .... Nah far too depressing and boring :O) Mind you I did clear the small mountain of paperwork etc spewn across my desk over too many months ... It's all nicely 'folderized' or being recycled as I type ....

McDinzie and I went out for a wander around Wellington this morning ..Would have done more but the cloud got so low it covered the hills and then it started to rain ....

Driving into wellington we drove past a fatal car smash on the opposite side of the road. It's a sobering reminder of our fragile lives and how quickly things can change around us.

My mate over in England emailed me to tell me he has another job !! I think this current role has been the first andlongest he has had ... I think he started that just before he hit 40.. before that he had a few different jobs none lasting any time ..but inbetween then he gained a masters in Law and then a masters in Computing ....

I've been dieting. This last week seriously. the past few days have been very hard .... but 6 kilos in 7 weeks is a small success ....

I'm probably drunk ......

I'm sat idly at my PC listening to Ricky Lee Jones songs and drinking too much straight 12 year old single malt whisky from a stemless wineglass ....

Been a sod of a week again ... Flew to Hamilton for a meeting with the regional manager there and his team ... Traveling with the IT outsourcer vendor managers it was pretty intense and full on .... The regional manager likes me at the moment ...I'd got a few things moving for him and did some politically incorrect enable-ments with a politically aggressive vendor aligned to part of where I work .... Anyway they like me ... The rest don't ...

Ricky throbs out her version of under the board walk ..... it's not bad ...

The wretched weather that's plagued the country recently moved on as we moved into Hamilton... We lunched at a cafe I knew well having worked/lived almost for 2 plus years in this city with a flat soul .... We sat outside and it was sunny and warm without any chill in the air and the laughter around the table was loud and free ...We'd survived the first visit ..even came away feeling positive that we were finally making the change so badly needed ..... The chicken salad wraps and kiwifruit chutney tasted fresh and clean and delicious and the coffee added nicely to the buzz of reprieve ...

and Ricky sings it must be love

And we all pile into the Ford xr6 rental car and I'm driving and the car is like a treat for me used to a clapped out Toyota import and the car strains to go much faster at the speed limit and now and then I let it loose and we sail past the slower cars and trucks and buses on the express way and for an hour or so we are all quiet and the moment is mine ... and then we hit Manukau and the Auckland traffic jam begins ...4:00 pm ... no accidents just the daily snarl up ..... and we slip away and out of it by 6pm to the city centre and the valet at the hotel takes the car away and I wonder whether to ask for it back a little later on and just drive north for the fun of it and see where I used to live and play around Browns bay .....

And Ricky sings easy money

But I'm tempted by the collective decision to eat at the local Mexican cafe/bar and so we pile into the cramped wooden floored, far to noisy cafe and munch corn chips and salsa full of chili and garlic and drink ridiculous coloured and flavored dakaries and take turns to tell tales about our most embarrassing moments and then east enchiladas and chili con carne and chicken fajitas........ And the tequila kicks in nicely .....

I've tired of Ricky and try Rob Thomas if you're gone

The night was the usual half sleep listening to the voices talking inside my head and as I wake fully in the morning I hear them whisper 'he's waking, can he hear us' and I tell them I can but I don't want to and put hands to face and rub the sleep away .... The hotel breakfast food is bland and the coffee bitter and feels like warm mud in your mouth....And then the day in Auckland begins ...

Rod Stewart sings they cant take that away from me ....

And the meeting we've been dreading begins ...I enter the meeting room and wonder where to sit ...It matters believe me ... My main protagonist the national operations manager..the man whose previous job was taken from him and I now have have moves to one end of the long table ... I decide that this time I'll take control ..I sit at the end on my own. The national manager sits off from the end of the table and when all are sat I spell out the agenda and start the introductions of the vendor managers around me .... the meeting is now mine and I open the table for them to voice concerns and we talk about what we are doing and the issues being faced and I get complimented for the recent actions as I was in Hamilton and then its contract discussions and I excuse the architect who pissed me off with his attitude and his comments that have crippled him with the vendor managers and I dismiss the vendor networks Client executive with a friendly comment and into the discussions we go ... I was ready and informed. Corrected the vendor managers who are new to the account as to points within the contract and played the meeting as openly as I could... The meeting had been built up as being a potential blood bath and I had taken it and turned it around ..... I hate meetings and the meeting games and rituals .......

And Rod sings blue moon

And As we walk to the next branch of where I work on Queens street I feel sick from the release of the stress and even sicker from the number of smokers as we drive through the throng of lunch time walkers mostly asian ....

The rest of the day did it's course without event and we were too tired and flat to do do anything but make our way to the Koro Lounge at the airport and fly home in our separate seats away from each other on the plane and make our separate ways home...............

And I load up some scarlatti harpsicord sonatas and stretch out cupping the glass in my hands and wonder when the sandman will arrive for me .........

It's Cold ...............

I hate the cold ... I'll emigrate to warmer climes one day and never be cold again ... I'm so cold in this room with the PC that my fingers are wrinkling up as I type .... No cloud cover over night allowed the temeratures to drop. And now as the Sun shows itself and hits the valley I'm looking out over a bank of fog thats hidden the township below...

It's cold and I want to head north to the warm ......

Not having a lot of fun at work ... I'm ready to walk and they know it ... I've been attending Career mentoring sessions the past few weeks and She tells me I have better plans now that i've created with her ... .She tels me I should bide my time and get the courses I want to take out of the way first then make the right decision for the right move ....

There is a senior Service management / Operations anagement role advertised ... The agency rang me almost before I sent my CV over ....

I'm in hamilton and then Auckland next week for a few days .... It will be a blood bath as we have Outsourcing contract issues up there .... At least it might be warmer .....

>

8 facts about this Dinzie

I've been tagged by Chiefbiscuit, There seems to be this mistaken belief that I have an interesting enough life to have 8 interesting facts about me ...... any way ....

The rules
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each participant posts eight random facts about themselves.
3. Tagees should write a blogpost of eight random facts about themselves.
4. At the end of the post, eight more bloggers are tagged (named and shamed).
5. Go to their blog, leave a comment telling them they're tagged (cut and run).

1. The love of my life and best friend is 4ft 11 and half inches tall. I am 6 feet tall (Was a little over but I'm shinking aparrently) She always seems so much taller and imposing ...I wonder why .....

2. I am compiling my family tree... 190 + relatives dead or alive all recorded in their place on the tree and printed across the wall of my spare room .... Furthest back I've gone is into the 1700s ..My ancestors lived in England - Norfolk, Portsmouth, Brighton, Cheshire, Wales, & scotland - Fettercairn (great whisky) ... All working class hero's..Most good people struggling to make ends meet through life ...1 bastard by choice ......

Funny thing there is I didn't go near him for decades when Mum was alive (her father)........And still couldn't for years after Mum died .... But now see it in a much more clinical way and have started to trace him and his line .... If mum could have done it she would have taken a knife and cut that part ofher that was him out of her. Even after decades away from him and decades away from his death she was haunted by the fact that part of him was part of her ..... And part of him is part of me and while we all have the Jekell and hyde within us, My jekell has a name ...James Woolston crichton.

Number 2 too heavy ?? But wouldn't it make a good start to a book !! :O) ...

3. I was a marksman shot with Rifle and shotgun and catapult in my teens. Pidgeon, Pheasant, Duck, Snipe were all fair game (as long as I didn't get caught) ..Two things happened that stopped me ever shooting again both happened closely together when about 18. The first was when I was walking in the countryside with my neice of about 10 . I didn't have a rife with me but we met up with a friend of mine who did. I jokingly pointed at a starling perched at the top of a tree too far out of range for a sensible shot and you can't eat starlings so why bother ..... But he turned it back on me handing over the rifle and betting that even I couldn't do that shot .... I wasn't even trying to make it really ..just raised the rifle and as the sights went past the bird I pulled the trigger ....The bird fell immediately much to the horror of my neice ...Worse still when we went to find it it was still alive, though barely. I put an end to it immediately but it had upset my neice (a nature lover through out her life) ..........A few weeks later I was walking with my father and carrying a shotgun. as we walked past my fathers much loved hazel nut trees that grew wild at the edge of a wood. We surprised a squirrel hanging by its feet and with two hands was eating the still green nuts from the shell..... "Shoot him!!" father ordered ..I raised the shotgun but couldn't shoot it ... Dad was to soften greatly over the years and he too was a nature lover, but the protection of his food supply be it strawberries or apples or his beloved hazel nuts was not to be taken lightly .... I did expect him to take the gun himself, but with nothing more than a grunt he just started walking again and nothing more was said ... I'll never know if he was disappointed in me or not at that point ... Year later he would be the one complaining vehemently about the squirrels in his own garden .. That he fed from scraps from his own table and collected horse chestnuts for and in return they dug up his lawn and ate his flower bulbs, but would also come into the garden when he called them and knew his threats were empty ........

4. I could fly a Glider Solo before I could drive a car ..... I loved doing it but other things took over in life and now I've not flown a glider in almost a lifetime .....

5. I have a black belt in Karate and an instructors certificate in Kung Fu ... I'm graded in a dozen martial arts at varying levels.. In my youth I trained with fought world, European and British champions. While always a possible I never managed to take it further ...A job,wife and child became a necessary priority....

6. The love of my life and best friend claims she is a lesbian in her 8 facts !!!! This strangely doesn't bother me - In a Danny Crane sort of way ................... ;O)

7. The Hobby in my life is Photography... I don't get to do enough of it to be good...But would love to take time out from work and everything and do my own travel log of places locally and afar .... not just the pictures but the writeups as well ... I think It would be fun to do :O)

8. Work is sending me to Sydney Australia again ... This time to meet with other companies doing similar work in IT that we are trying to do ... The they want me to attend a seminar straight afterwards ... McD and I want to take two weeks holiday straight after that and go to Cairns, or Perth, or Vanuatu, or Bali....just anywhere where we can take pictures and write a travel log and have fun ....................................

Another Sunday

Autumn has been making itself known here now .. Especially in the evenings & early mornings ... Our daytime temperatures are still warm though ...Well warm enough to wear T-shirts and sunny enough to still think about hat wearing when we go outside .... We live under the ozone hole for too much of the year .....







Work has been pretty full on again ... Highlight of the week was Friday where I had organised a multi-vendor executive seminar on the ITIL framwork ..This is a best practice framework for running IT Service Management... The discussions were excellent...lots of humour and finally the realisation from certain areas as to the extent of my work ... All processes within the ITIL framework come under my responsibility/ownership. The days session pushed this home and strenthened my case for creating a Service Management Office .. My Boss the Company CTO made a good set of notes to this ..He has a vested interest in putting this in place as well .......









My boss tells me I am to do some professional development .... .What that means is two different things betwen him and me ... But he gets his was first off and next month I have two seminars to attend in Auckland on IT Infrastructure and Service Management ..Followed by a trip to Ozz to attend another seminare on Outsourcing this time followed by a site visit to another company for a few days to look at how they manage multi-vendor outsourcing ....









It's going to be a busy winter me thinks ......