gO.S.H

         

Edition 162  Monday 29th October 2012

Hi , wow it may have been a short week but it certainly wasn’t any less exciting or eventful for this Jones boy! I was reminded of the importance of behaving when driving a marked company car after having a melt down on the way to work one day last week. I got a phone call from the guy I abused to thank me and point out a few home truths about me performing like a trained seal !! We ended up apologising to each other and having a bit of a laugh about how silly we had both been! Crikey what a pork chop I felt, made me think why on earth I wasted all that energy on getting so upset??!!

Crikey theTasman Sea continued to give up treasures for the garden this week as I salvaged another buoy and the tail section of a surfboard from our local West Coast beach,how exciting. It’s a pity the rest of the shore crew are not as excited about the future deployment of the treasure. Unfortunately I think one of the buoys will definitely miss the cut but you must agree the end of the surfboard looks pretty cool sticking out of the ground ….dont you reckon?(see attached)……let me know if anyone needs a buoy for a coastal /marine theme thingy!(see attached,note the clay pipes for the wine rack).

In an unlucky domestic incident I was hit in the face with dog doo doo after running over some with the hand mower! Interviewed after the incident by OHS I had to say I just didn’t see it coming and was only momentarily blinded managing to recover quickly to go on an complete the job ! OHS investigators concluded that the blades of the mower had flicked the foreign body up into the air and onto my face! .OHS recommended it be added to the hazard list at 48 and that the perpetrators not be unfairly reprimanded as they were only doing what they had been trained to do…go outside!!grrrr

The highlight of the weekend was undoubtedly indulging ourselves with the sheer decadence of what is the carrot cake muffin experience from Blossoms Café Riverhead. There are no words that even go close to explaining the pleasure of this wicked treat. I always inhale mine quickly so I can drool over Christines until she gives in and offers me a precious slice…..Crikey, life is too short to miss out !!!

I hope you also indulged and spoiled yourselves this weekend with friends and family,cheers Jonesey.

Harry and the Hendersons laughed until they cried at the grumpy mans mowing misfortune 

“Good safety is good business.” Johnathan Ling Fletcher Building

I had the recent good fortune to be involved as MC for a New Zealand Institute of Safety Management(NZISM) one day workshop .

It was an eye opener for me as an impressive line up of speakers shared their experiences and provided sage advice on a number of topics .

There was a healthy (excuse the pun) attendance of  Health and Safety Practitioners and it was impressive to see two woman carry off the top Practitioner awards presented on the day!

Did you realise that 100 people die in work related accidents in New Zealand every year and many more are injured some permanently in accidents at work? The cost to the country annually is $3.5 billion dollars!!! It is twice as safe to work in Australia and four times safer to work in the UK. Stop and think about that for a minute because it is scary !!! That is 100 people who kiss their families goodbye in the morning for the last time as they never return from their workplace!

It is also many more than that that lose limbs or are impaired in some way, again, because of poor workplace safety standards !.....makes you think…how safe is your workplace?, how safe and responsible are you at work? Is your company Management team leading by example or are they yet another of the many still in NZ who take the ‘She’ll be right’ attitude to workplace safety???

Crikey, you have to take your hat off to organisations like NZISM and its members who are committed to improving safety standards and reducing New Zealands horrific statistics. We all definitely have an important role to play when it comes to treating safety at work seriously!

“Working safely is like breathing – if you don’t, you die.” From the pretty obvious Dept!

Easy Tiger

         

Edition 161 Monday 22nd October 2012

Hi, on the way to swimming early Saturday mornings I always listen to the garage sale on 1ZB. It is exciting stuff with people calling in selling or wanting to buy each others junk live on the radio. A lovely old guy called John from Blockhouse Bay called up advertising a the garage sale that day of his entire house lot. When asked for his address he was reluctant to give it because he was concerned for the safety of his cat if too many people turned up at once. When asked the name of his cat he got emotional saying between his tears that the cats name was Tiger and he definitely was not for sale. The poor old guy got so choked up he couldn’t finish and just ended the call. There was a silence as the host and Im sure everyone listening (myself included) took a moment to recover! Amazing how stuff like that affects you and makes you think about how important it is to make the most of life NOW before we are faced with a similar dilema in our own lives. I spent the rest of the day hoping that whatever the reason for selling all his stuff that things work out ok for John and Tiger the cat !!!  

Ponder this;

·         Our pets are such an important part of our families,sometimes they are all the family we have.

·         Our resident mouse continues to live the life of Riley however time and patience is thin!!!

·         Mouth watering muffins replaced the scones for long weekend spring cleaners smoko!!!

·         Swim and bike for show, run for dough…..World Triathlon Champs in Auckland.

·         The annual Myna bird occupation of the letter box @ 48 confirms Spring has sprung!!

·         Wild weekend weather produced 2 more buoys on the beach for the garden feature collection.

I hope life is good and that you had a safe and happy J long weekend relaxing with friends and family. Have a BIG short week, cheers Jonesey.

Harry and the Hendersons say life is good @ 48 even with seasonal high occupancy of mice, myna’s and babies !! 

“Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.” ― Erma Bombeck

Words for Teenagers

Parents, present and future……….ponder this;

Always we hear the cry from teenagers “What can we do, where can we go?

My answer is this: Go home mow the lawn, wash the windows, learn to cook,build a raft, get a job,visit the sick, study your lessons, and after you’ve finished, read a book.

Your Town does not owe you recreational facilities and your parents do not owe you fun.

The World does not owe you a living, you owe the world something.

You owe it your time,energy and talent so that no one will be at war, in poverty or sick and lonely again.

In other words grow up, stop being a cry baby, get out of your dreamworld and develop a back bone, not a wish bone.

Start behaving like a responsible person.

You are important and you are needed.

Its too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something someday.

Someday is now and somebody is you.

 (Borrowed from the 1950’s……..timeless)

                                                                

Little children, headache; big children, heartache.  ~Italian Proverb

Stylee!!

Hi, remember your first pair of jeans?, I can, they were a pair of  ‘bell bottoms’ very fashionable at the time they were too!(showing my age). Then there was the ‘wranglers’ I just had to have to attend the form II social. I remember nagging Mum to distraction until she finally relented and the rest of the family went hungry for a week just so I got the wranglers (also the height of fashion). In my haste to step out in them I wore them to the dance without washing them first and spent the next two weeks trying to wash the blue dye out of my skin after the sweat from my legs made it run,haha.

Well, how times have changed over the years as Fletcher took posession of his first pair of ‘designer’ jeans last week. Sure they are hand me downs but G.A.P. no less and I am sure you will agree (see attached) he will be the total focus of all the chicks at new Mums coffee club next week!!!!

Other recent Jonesey stuff;

• The best way to eat date scones is straight out of the oven..it doesn’t get any better!
• Getting dressed in tha dark may be best for baby but not for daddy…no belt Tuesday!
• Started a new trend last week wearing an unironed shirt to work, think it will be big!
• We have a resident mouse and a dilema should he/she stay or go, watch this space!
• Mother nature flexed her muscles this weekend, a wild one out on the West Coast!

I hope you had a cool weekend in your favourite jeans somewhere sheltered having fun with friends and family. Have a fun week, cheers Jonesey

Harry and the Hendersons are on the mouse’s side after all how much damage can one mouse do?? I suspect their intentions may be dishonourable !!!!

“When you're that successful, things have a momentum, and at a certain point you can't really tell whether you have created the momentum or it's creating you.” Annie Lennox

Last week was amazing it started well and continued successfully at a frenetic pace. It seemed like everything I touched turned to gold or had a positive outcome. This came on the back of a number of weeks where a lot of effort appeared to be getting me nowhere…wow how quickly things can change!!

It is so cool when things start coming to fruition after putting in the hours and many hard yards toward making them happen.

It is so important to keep chipping away and not get despondent when it seems things might not be going your way, it is certainly worth it when you experience that magical word ‘yes’ !!

It is also important to ride the success wave once you are up on it and to use the momentum that this creates take you as far as you can go. I think the Annie Lennox quote above summarises that feeling perfectly.

So my ‘upbeat’ friends my challenge to you all is to hang in there because success is a case of doing just that.  Good luck  to you all no matter what your chosen field of endeavour…success surf is up, ride the wave !!!!

“Sliding headfirst is the safest way to get to the next base, I think, and the fastest. You don't lose your momentum, and there's one more important reason I slide headfirst, it gets my picture in the paper.”  Pete Rose

Funny !!!

Hi,life can and should be a ‘funny’ thing. To that end the most important thing we all do is smile J

I have had open heart surgery,walked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, stayed up all night in Vegas, marvelled at the Grand Canyon,played representative rugby,made millions of dollars worth of sales in my career and countless other stuff that has been a buzz but nothing can compare to seeing our new son smile for the first time ! It couldn’t have been scripted better with said smile arriving as we were both telling him how wonderful he was this morning….we looked at each other and both burst into tears !! Crikey man harden up !

The power of a simple smile can never be underestimated and is something we could all do a lot more of on a daily basis. Quite amazing how something so simple can change the course of yours and others day to day lives. I had a great example last week when I had to visit a retirement village and hospital to help them save the planet with our services!

When I signed in at reception I was told that several of the residents were excited because they had seen the Green Gorilla logo on my car and thought the circus was coming to entertain them!

I entered into the spirit of it giving my best gorilla imitation complete with sound and chest beating!

Lots of smiles and laughs and something that changed the course of what would have just been another day in the departure lounge for them otherwise. Moral of the story, have a M.A.D. attitude Make A Difference by simply smiling more often.

Something else that made me smile so much it hurt this weekend was the opportunity to take the Retro Suzuki 750 for a ‘freedom’ squirt down the road. Crikey,there is no better ‘release’ than the feeling of accelerating without restriction on the open highway with rider and bike leaning into the perfectly cambered corners as one!!! Oh yeah you the man Jonesey….lucky no cops bro!!!

I hope you are all in to the swing of making the most of the longer daylight saving days with friends and family. Have a great week, cheers Jonesey

Harry and the Hendersons have a special relationship with each other,sleep and eating!

“Start every day with a smile and get it over with.” WC Fields

Some people ride motorbikes, others go to the gym, some let their dogs take them for a walk, others let golf spoil a good walk, some even write poetry or books, and then there are some who travel and others who prefer to just vegetate and  relax.

I was reminded about this stuff recently by two powerful and entertaining speeches I had the good fortune to listen to(www.toastmasters.org.nz). They were about having a ‘release’ and a ‘bucket list’.

It made me think about what I do to cover both?, I am lucky as it is one and the same thing!!

For my sins I enter speech contests,I challenge myself to write witty entertaining, humourous presentations on everyday stuff because one of my bucket list items is to be the best I can be at doing just that !!!.

Why????? To make people laugh, smile and have a good time, plus I am a competitive old bugger !

Now as you know I have always loved the sound of my own voice and when you enter a competition you create yet another opportunity for you and others to do just that. I also know that like anything the more I do it the better I get and the more chance I then have of achieving my ultimate goal of being the best in NZ and ultimately representing NZ on the world stage!!!!!

There are also spin offs for career and family life as you become a better communicator and listener.

I had the good fortune to win a recent humourous speech contest and look forward to advancing to the next level and to making a lot more people smile and laugh along the way..especially me !!!!

“Don’t cry for a man who has left you,the next one may fall for your smile.” Mae West