I may be the last person in the world, but last week I stumbled onto Broken Bells.  The whole album is great.  Here is a couple of live performances on Letterman and Kimmel to give you a taste.

Anyone else have some recommended music most of us probably haven’t heard of?

A GOOD REASON TO HEAD TO NEW ZEALAND

The New Zealand government just announced something that I find rather surprising… but a step in the right direction. Concerned about debt levels, both public and private, they’ve announced changes to the tax code which encourage savings and investment, and discourage consumption.

The article goes on …

In our first post herein we listed 10 reasons New Zealand was a good choice:

1. Geo-politically and physically ‘Remote’
2. Abundant and reasonably priced lifestyle type properties
3. Plenty of water. Ocean, lakes, rivers…
4. Reasonable annual sunshine hours
5. Clean environment
6. Educated, English speaking population
7. Safe, clean and readily available organic food
8. Physical safety and the rule of law
9. Fair taxation
10. Accessible, high-quality health care

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27 degrees at the beach and have to jump on a plane mid afternoon to speak at a conference in Canberra.  NPE-AKL-SYD-CBR.

Checked into the hotel around 11pm Oz time. F1 on the tele but too tired to watch past the start. 2:30am – fire alarm. Interesting to see the number of people who pack big fluffy dressing gowns. At 4:00 awake again as some aussie sheila in car park calling/wailing for her lost dog.

Monday

Arrive at conference.  Speak during keynote to 1000 accountants (bloody big room) then hang out at trade show. Get photo taken for BRW article out today: Stealing MYOBs future. CBR-SYD-AKL and get to hotel at 1pm.

Tuesday

Head into Auckland office, then speak at Icehouse Network event.  Good crowd of 200. Followed Bill Payne who was great and in the Bay soon. A few owner managers from the Bay. Dinner with Greg Cross and get to see PowerByProxi stuff. Very cool.

Wednesday

AKL-NPL.  A few meetings then speak to 100+ people at the end of the day. New Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, Institute of Chartered Accountants and a lot of deep sea fishermen. The lady of the house lets me know she’s feeling like a solo mum.

Thursday

7am flight NPL-WLG.  Have a call at 8:15 to get onto.  Love FastBag. Xero Board meeting.

Telephone interview for Herald. Less hype and more substance tipped for next tech-stock wave

Annoy the team and then WLG-NPE.

Friday

Telephone interview for Unlimited Magazine. HAT group meet, then presentation with local principals association about broadband roll out. Ride up the peak. Hot. Struggled.

3:00 pick up the kids, head to the supermarket, at Waimarama by 4:15.

4:40 paddling into 2-3 foot glassy waves, kids playing in the sand.

6:00 fish and chips at Waimarama store.

Thats why I live in the Bay.

[9:00 UK sales call]

The wife and I have recently taken to “doing the goat track” trek up Te Mata Peak lead by my (much fitter) cousin Mandy.
The views afforded first thing in the morning up there are simply stunning (especially when the fog is this thick) We start from the Tauroa carpark and get to the peak in around 50mins, how does that compare?

What sort of training have you been up to recently and where?

When we first thought about moving back here we did hear a few stereotypes.  It would be hard to meet people, Diva was overrun by cougars, and we’d get bored ‘up there’.

As we have young kids a late night out is not arriving at Pipi’s for the 4:30 opening so I have no idea about the cougars. But what we have found is that it was very easy to make new friends, there are lots of Auckland and Wellington refugees like us, and that the lifestyle is much better than we even dreamed it was.

Having a  week with the family back in Wellington just before Christmas we noticed that there was just a background level of stress that is absent. Also life is certainly much less of a contest here. Havelock doesn’t even have parking meters.  Awesome!

A real bonus is that summer keeps on going.  This morning the beach was just sensational.

As a newcomer you of course notice things and see opportunities.

Hawkes Bay is a foodies heaven. I think that’s as important as the wine side. There are great cafe’s and shops. In Havelock North Bellatino’s is just fantastic as is The Milk Bar in Joll Road. I do find it odd though that some places are in denial of children.  The Cheese Factory has great sandwiches and outdoor area but no baby chairs.  Who do they think goes there? Neither does Jacksons on Joll or Bolderson’s. More than a few have noticed that Bolderson’s, which is a great place, decided to no longer do takeaway coffee even though at anytime there are 20 parents watching their kids swimming at Hilton Brown over the road.  I don’t get that. In Havelock there isn’t the equivalent of a Chocolate Frog or Chocolate Fish that just nails the balance between mums, tourists and the business folk.

I would do more meetings and  spend more time and money at Milk and Honey and Raffles Street if they had the Internets.

But those gripes are minor.  We keep having moments of euphoria, like swimming at the village pools after school in December. Even getting to know the guys that run the BP in the village has been fun.

With multiple offices, operating remotely with frequent trips works well. I try to do two days a week at head office and usually a least a day somewhere else. My airfares last year cost me around $8k to travel to head office  which seems like a reasonable amount to enjoy the extra lifestyle the Bay has to offer. The remote working model gives me a day or so a week to actually do work, make calls, and review things.  I think I’m more effective not being in the office all the time. I believe this model makes our business more scalable. Everyone steps up and I have a greater affinity for how our remote sales teams work across the world, away from head office. Tools like Skype and Yammer augment email and calls to keep everything going.

It’s always the same business people on the flights in and out though.  There are many companies in the Bay doing world class things.  It’s so easy to get to Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington I hope that this year a few more of you plan one or two days away a month to drum up new business.  Australia is the only pain, normally requiring a few hours sleep at hotel rathole by Auckland Airport to get home.  Just a couple of flights a week to and from Sydney would help that.

As we head out of recession it would great if those growing businesses had a goal of hiring one new person out of region.  The Bay is a lifestyle dream for many New Zealanders and they want to come here.

It’s been so cool seeing our kids have a real summer, play in the pools and learn to ride bikes. If you can find a job here or bring your own business into the Bay it’s a great place to operate from.

So one year in we don’t regret a moment.  It’s even better than we could have hoped.

The comments so far indicate the emergence of some trends which may or may not set the tone for this new decade, which I don’t actually know what to call. Maybe it could be called one of these names…

• the teens
• the twenty-somethings
• the twenty-tens
• the twenty-teens
• the tweenties
• the decade which begins in 2010 and ends in 2019 (this would suit a student who is desperately trying to reach a set word limit for an essay).

But I digress.

As Fruitbowl is very much a forward-thinking and proactive organisation, we should try to draw some conclusions from the comments about our attitudes towards the future.

After all, the best way to predict the future is not to create it, as Abraham Lincoln would have you had you believe, but to read the random musings of Fruitbowl contributors.

It seems that

• no-one likes having visitors any more. In fact, other people are simply something to pass the time with when you can’t get to your computer.
• the Millenium Trilogy is the greatest work of literature since the invention of the Commando comic and will dominate bestseller lists for most of the decade.
• Tim Durrant claims he can now bake bread on a barbeque. So Jamie Oliver’s career is all but finished.

But in order to look forward, we must look back.

The 70s were the decade of shagpile carpet, waterbeds, and oil shocks.

The 80s gave us Roger Douglas, breakdancing, and the Krypton Factor.

In the 90s we had the rise of the Internet, and OMC’s ‘How Bizarre’.

In the 00s, we laughed at Dubya, and played with our iPods and cellphones.

In this decade (see, I can’t even give it a name), what major events will shape our lives? How will we cope with the threat of climate change (man-made or not)? Will Napier and Hastings ever get along?

Please keep your stories of what you did in the holidays rolling in so we can form a clearer image of the Zeitgeist.

(If anyone doesn’t know what Zeitgeist means, please see me after the class)

1. Lunch at Elephant Hill Winery with my family.
2. Dinner at Vidals with my sister and brother-in-law.
3. Blackberry Bold. George got one for Christmas. It was brilliant until she poured fruit drink into it. Then the buttons stopped working and it wouldn’t work any more. It lasted 2 weeks. But in its brief life it was definitely the most amazing gadget I’ve ever seen.
4. Lake Taupo when it’s 25 degrees and there’s no wind. Pretty rare this summer.
5. My brother-in-law got an in-car navigator for Christmas and I downloaded the voice of Arnold Scharwzenegger for it. “Great, we made it. Now let’s go and pump some iron!”
6. Ocean Beach – cold when you get in but you get used to it.
7. Fantastic Mr Fox – wonderful movie for the whole family.
8. Pipi Pizza – packed, chaotic, great food, wonderful service.
9. Smirnoff vodka cocktails – RTD’s for grownups.
10. Watching Blu-Ray discs on the Playstation 3 – even watching Harry Potter and his dweebish chums poncing around becomes an epic life-changing experience.

A pretty lame list, I know. Did you do anything more interesting?