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185 | 365 Balloons over Waikato

It’s interesting how sometimes the desire to capture a moment on camera, causes me to miss the moment in its essence.
 
Like trying to take a good photo of balloons and missing the opportunity to look up and take in beauty of the day, the sounds, the fun and the sights.
 
Missing the moment.

I think in many ways, we do that often.

[185 | 365 ‘Balloons Over Waikato’ - Early morning and late night at the Balloons]

184 | 365 Dream of flying?

It is said that man has always looked at the birds and longed to fly.

Well, I have a non-current pilots licence and could fly, but don’t. I just dream about it. I was talking about it with a friend on the way home from work, and it reminded me about how I long to fly, about how when I get airborne I join a different world, and about how much energy it brings me. Yet flying costs money and that is an entirely different subject.

Anyway, I got home thinking about planes so took this shot of a Cessna 152 made out of Sprite Cans.

[184 | 365 Dream of Flying?]

183 | 365 Halfway Number 2

You may have heard that it takes 40 days to make a habit, or 28 days or some other iterative. Wrong, wrong and wrong again.
 
Between yesterday and today I am halfway through 365. I missed one day in 183 days, which for me is amazing. The only other things I have done for 183 days straight in my life, is get up, eat and breathe.
 
For me after about 50 days, remembering to take the photo became a habitual, but actually taking the photo requires another step up in discipline again. For example, it was a mission to make it to 100, and today’s photo is because I remembered, not because I had a flash of creativity.
 
I am learning about habits and discipline. Disciplines like going to the gym, running, reading, studying or quiet times. For me it takes about 30 – 50 days for the thought process to become habitual, to become ingrained as a priority in my life.
 
But every time, every single time, I still need to choose to take action, to step out and run, or do my quiet time, or take a photo.
 
If you think I have the habit thing sorted out, I don’t. It’s like today’s shot on my drive to Tauranga. The glare from driving into the sun, the dirty window, makes my view lack clarity. Same for my knowledge of just about everything.

[183 | 365 ‘Halfway #2’ - Down the Kaimai’s driving into the sun, behind a slow truck]

182 | 365 Halfway Number 1

Somewhere between today and tomorrow I am halfway through project 365, which is taking a picture each day for 365 days.
 
Looking back and ahead, I think I would like to take more people shots because they show more of life than objects, or candles, or coffee drops. If I do this, it will take another level of discipline again because I will need to go looking for interesting people shots.
 
Speaking of interesting people, today I was online on Skype waiting for a call that never came, but then my friend Steve gave me a call.
 
The first thing Steve did was encourage me, it just rolls off his tongue honestly and naturally. He has this incredible ability to build people up and I am often reminded by Steve’s actions how important that is.
 
I’m reminded today that life is about people.
 
[182 | 365 – ‘Halfway #1’ – Steve the encourager and a reminder how much I love technology]

181 | 365 Coffee Stories

Agora’s story is being formed one drop, one cup of coffee at a time.
 
Yesterday I sat at Agora drinking a wonderful coffee made by the infamous Simon, and over heard a customer tell her two friends great things about the café, about how we give 50cents from each cup of coffee to charity.
 
There is nothing quite so satisfying as having one of our customers tell the story for us.
 
As I left the café I remembered the conversations we had as trustees about story. I remembered how one idea developed into another. I remembered how we want agora to make an impact on our community and have a story.
 
As I left the café, I also thought about my story, about the story of my family, my business, my friends. Those stories, like Agora’s, are a working in progress.
 
Like a great coffee brewing, one drop at a time, story is very powerful.

[181 | 365 ‘Coffee Stories’ a shot of a shot of coffee brewing, one drop at a time at café agora]

180 | 365 Monday #1

I have this strange passionate love hate relationship with my Mondays. They are a day of meetings, a day of bouncing from one thing to another, a day of follow up, a day of setting new tasks. But, Mondays move us forward, keep us accountable, help us set priorities.
 
As a general rule, I really struggle to take photos on a Monday. So, because the season is changing, I have decided for the next 6 Mondays I am going to take the same shot, from home, at around the same time. Hopefully I will see the change of the season in a new and beautiful way.
 
If not, at least I will have Monday’s shot sorted.

179 | 365 - Hamilton 400 start line

“Vibrant, diverse and thriving - Hamilton combines all the vigour and energy of a bustling city with a relaxed, easy lifestyle.” … Well at least that’s how the Hamilton City Council website describes it.

But wait there’s more… “From the majestic Waikato River to the spectacular Hamilton Gardens to lakes, walkways and golf courses - Hamilton provides the perfect environment for leisure.”

A perfect environment for leisure, are you kidding me? A walk in the park, is just not the same as slow walks down sun clad golden beaches. I’m a Tauranga boy at heart, there is no escaping it.
 
Never fear, V8’s are coming. The city is being turned into a racetrack for the annual Hamilton 400 street race.
 
[179 | 365 – Hamilton 400 start line – This is a shot I took as I drove down Mill Street]

178 | 365 Art

When your kids are 3 they are all artists. Regardless of how recognisable their drawing is we encourage them over and over again as they mass-produce their drawings and scribbles and … art.
 
By 10 many kids will realise that they don’t draw as well as other kids and by the late teens, you are either an artist or your not. Most feel useless at art and stop creating.
 
Art is defined “the creation of beautiful or significant things” and art is more than drawings or paintings. Sadly our societies, schools and families stop encouraging our kids to be artist, the way we used to when they were 3.
 
This leads to less creative adults.
 
Consequently less beautiful or significant things are created.
 
 
 
[178 | 365 Art – This is a shot of Siren drawing a picture for Talia at the Rototuna School market day]

177 | 365 Things we value

Money is a medium of exchange for things of value. This means that we use money to buy things we value.
 
If I pay you wages it’s because I value your time and give you money. If we buy art or food or clothes or coffee or toys or random stuff. In each case we decided to spend our money on something we value.
 
Therefore, personally I value café coffee every couple of days more than other things. It’s that simple! More than saving the money, more than paying off the mortgage, more than using it towards buying my wife flowers, more than giving it to the good.trust to give to the poor.
 
If you asked me if I value coffee more than these things I would say ‘NO’, but the cold, hard reality is that the way I spend my money shows I do.
 
So if you want to see what people really value, look at how they spend their money.
 
[177 | 365 – ‘Things we value’ - Last night, I had no photo, so choose to take a photo of twenty dollar notes falling in front of my camera]

176 | 365 Salt

Growing up in Tauranga you become accustom to salt water. You know the bitterness of its taste and feel the dryness of your skin after a day sailing. You see stains it leaves on the windows of your car, and the corrosive power of salt water to destroy objects over a period of time.
 
When you’re around salt, you can feel it, taste it, smell it and see its effect.
 
There is no escaping the effect of salt.
 
“You are the salt of the earth”

 
[176 | 365 March is salt harvesting season at Lake Grassmere in Blenheim and the salt is brought north to the Mount for refining. This is a shot of the salt being stockpiled at Dominion Salt.]
 

175 | 365 Numbers

Numbers are a strange part of our business and society. Even if you’re not a ‘numbers person’ and hated math, you generally spend a significant amount of time dealing with numbers. When a baby is born the question straight after their name and sex is generally, ‘how heavy?’

From then on numbers are the measure of growth, of development, of test scores, of financial stability, of success. Business is judged by numbers, evangelists record salvations by numbers, churches measure growth by numbers.

And yet.

It is almost impossible to truly measure the must important things by numbers. Good Marriages. Personal growth. Spiritual transformation. Or even happiness.

And yet.

We continue to measure by numbers.
 
[Numbers - Today was a day of numbers, of forecasting the next financial year, like I really have a clue. Will it be 1 or 2 or 4 or 2 or 2? Shot was taken at agora last night]

174 | 365 - Coal Wagons

Back in the New Zealand Rail days, the Railways thought they were in the railway business. They thought they had no competition and they were wrong. They were actually in the transportation business and their competitors were trucking companies. For passengers the competition was bus companies and then airlines.
 
In business, knowing what business you are actually in is critically important.
 
Finally though, with new management, Kiwirail have sorted this out. They are not in the transport business or the railway business. Now their competition is static walls as they compete for taggers.
 
Not really true, but maybe a good idea for Jim is to run a competition for taggers to ‘beautify’ the Huntly coal wagons and them arrest them all afterwards.

Another day. Another trip to Auckland.

173 | 365 - A Ping-pong's social life

The social life of a ping-pong ball sounds like an interesting thing to write about. After all ping-pong balls do get around.
 
When they are moving, they move at pace. With a bit of spin they are reasonably hard to predict. There are even different classes of ping-pong ball, high-performance down to functional but breakable.
 
My third form Tech Drawing teacher used to make us write 250 words about the social life of a ping-pong ball and share it with the class. This was his form of punishment, and it’s worthy of note that the following year he left teaching to be a funeral director.
 
Anyway, the moral of this post, “Ping-pong balls don’t have social lives.”
 
[Thanks to Stas and Sam Kelsen for their help in the taking of this photo. I like the way it streaks, but the ball is still in focus.]

172 | 365 Hot Spots

Last year our business had a massive metaphorical blaze. The term fighting fires was a dramatic understatement as we fought to contain a major issue that caused people grief and cost a heap of money.
 
As I pondered this shot that I took of a big warehouse fire at Tristram Marine a couple of thoughts struck me.
 
Firstly firewalls. The fire in this building was contained to the point that they will be reopening the showroom at the other end of the building tomorrow.
 
My second observation is hot spots. Today, the same fire appliance that was in this shot was still at the fire to dampen down hotspots.
 
Last year we lacked firewalls. Processes and systems to contain issues as they arose, and stop them becoming a raging uncontrolled blaze. As a result we spent a lot of time dampening down hot spots.
 
I’m reminded that as leaders and managers we need build firewalls. Simple purposeful systems, that protect our organisations from large disruptive metaphorical fires.

171 | 365 Oscar

And Oscar goes to … Jayden!
 
Chartwell Kindergarten have Oscar. He joined Chartwell in July 2009 and each weekend Oscar gets to go home with an exceptional kid. While Oscar is at home, he gets to go on all kinds of adventures and the families print photos and place them in Oscar’s diary.
 
Yesterday Oscar got to drive some diggers at the Agoge Digger School at Boys Day Out. (Not the coolest thing he has done. He has been to Brisbane!)
 
I really like the idea of having an Oscar. I like the way to seems to be given without many rules, the teachers just decide. And not everyone gets a turn with Oscar, there are more kids than weekends. When Oscar does come home, the diary makes it more special and it encourages the family to get involved. This in turn makes the child feel even more special. Their aim is to strengthen the kindergarten and the families. It does that well.
 
A cool idea!
 
One that is portable into business and other organisations, although a large cuddly monkey might need some rethinking.

170 | 365 Glocal

My ONE shirt was used as a map on a couple of occasions last night at Agora Goes Live. This is a shot of Octaves Ibounga and a couple of the team from Jerk Freaks (a jerk dance team), pointing towards their home countries of Congo and Egypt. The Jerk Freaks are part of our Glocal community.
 
Glocal is a term I read recently. It’s a term that came about in 1989 and describes the changing convergence of people and cultures. Glocal describes a culture that combines both local and global. A culture where we can locally affect global, and global can connect directly back to local.
 
New Zealand is becoming more and more a glocal community. Global people from varying cultures, birthplaces and history converging locally.
 
Very exciting.

169 | 365 Candle in the Dark

As a teenager lighting and sound were my thing and I can remember attending a course with a renowned lighting designer for the performing arts, whose name alludes me.
 
At one point during the course we had to create mood for a tent scene on the stage using lighting effects and one single candle.
 
Having that one candle on the stage made the design difficult to say the least. In a pitch black theatre, where you literally can’t see your hand if it is an inch from your face, a candle is exceptionally bright. The light it generates can’t easily be softened or turned down. People sitting in close proximity of the candle were illuminated by its presence alone.
 
20 plus years on, I can still remember a lot that I learnt on that course, about how the eye works, about how we see black and white in the moonlight, about creative license, and about how bright a single candle can be.
 
Every now and then you meet people who are like candles in the dark. Every now and then I meet someone whose flame burns so brightly in the dark patches of this world that it lights up everyone around them.
 
If one small flame can make a difference, maybe I can as well.
 
 

168 | 365 - Almost home

To have a home, a real home, a safe home, a loving home, is there any sweeter thing?
 
Home is a place, but not the building. Home is the people, the laughter, the sadness, the exciting and the mundane.
 
At home you are best known and best cared for.
 
And yet for many many people in New Zealand don’t have a home. They have a place they call home, a roof over their heads. But it is not a home, certainly not in the sweetest sense of the word.
 
I flew to Christchurch yesterday morning for meetings, was scheduled to get home at 8:30pm last night. By lunch time our meetings were done, and Tere graciously dropped me at the airport and I caught the last direct afternoon flight.
 
I was home for dinner, home to chat with my kids. I was tired as it has been a very busy last 7 days. But I was home.
 
There is no sweeter thing.
 
 
168 | 365 – This is a shot of the Q300 as we turn onto finals over the Waikato River to land home in Hamilton.

167 | 365 - Planning

Some of the very best planning and thinking happens by the ocean. Spent the majority of the day in Raglan with Campbell talking and planning. My normal phone and camera are both out of action, so this photo from a really really crusty image from an old Nokia.

166 | 365 - Jane Gifford

The Jane Gifford was built in 1908 by Davey Darroch, at Whangateau, initially to cart granite from mines in Coromandel to Auckland. She is 19.8 metres length on deck, has a 6 metre beam and a displacement of 60 tonnes. Based in Warkworth from 1921 to about 1938 she was used to cart shell from Miranda in the Firth of Thames to the cement works on the banks of the Mahurangi River, Warkworth. For a number of years she also carted road metal from the Public Works department Quarry at Motutara Island to Warkworth, for building roads in the area. She was also used to transport stock to and from Great Barrier Island and occasionally to Little Barrier Island.

http://www.janegifford.org.nz/

166 | 365 – Jim and I headed to Warkworth for an interview on Monday.

165 | 365 - Risk Taker

Jayden is showing me how he can be a risk taker, and tries to jump higher and higher. No pads or nets on our tramp. Hurt yourself, take risks, learn.

164 | 365 - Fresh Start

Up early to study. Went out for a break and breakfast as the sun rose over the Waikato.

163 | 365 Bright Spots

I like this photo because of the way the sun fuses with the water to create bright spots that look like small liquid fireworks (without the risk of burning your house down).
 
Spent the last couple of days thinking about bright spots. Things that are working.
 
It’s been refreshing because by default I focus on dull spots, i.e. things that need fixing, rather than seeing the cool picture that bright spots create.
 
The goal in seeing bright spots, is to work out why they are bright spots, and then try and replicate it to dull spots. Hmm, a complex train of thought.
 
Basically looking at why things are working, rather than focusing on why things aren’t working.

162 | 365 Pondering

I love the view out of my office window. I enjoy gazing off into the distance towards Mount Pirongia, which is 27km away to the southwest of the city. I am captivated by the movement of cars and trains journeying to their destinations at the bottom of the road.
 
When I’m on my mobile, I often get out of my seat and watch the world go by my office. I’ve been known to get caught leaning on the window ledge, just pondering, considering, thinking. Across our driveway is a café. I’m sure that people must look up from time to time and wonder what the weird guy is doing just looking out the window. “Get a real job” they probably think.
 
Yet a huge chunk of my job is thinking. And thinking can be really really hard. But without thought we carry on through life without change.
 
Without change nothing improves.

I got reminded that I need to think more yesterday. To ponder more.

So today will be a day of ...

161 | 365 Orange Goggles

You’ve heard of beer goggles right. The experience of allowing alcohol to somewhat taint a persons normal scale of attractiveness for the opposite sex.
 
Well maybe we don’t actually need alcohol to taint our view of people.
 
Maybe we allow our picture, our framing story of a person’s life to form an inaccurate view of a person we barely know. A wrong view no less.
 
Last night we had dinner with some friends and in the course of the meal we were chatting about one of our friend’s parents. I was really surprised to learn some cool and funky things about the dad. I have known that person from a far and never would have pictured him in the context I was told about. I was pleasantly surprised.
 
I think I do that more often than I care to admit.
 
It was as though I was looking through an orange bottle at a person. My framing story was wrong. My view was tainted.
 
 
 
161 | 365 Yesterday I forgot to take my camera with me, so this is a shot from my phone.
 
 

160 | 365 Balance

10 years ago today a great challenge was before me. On one hand I was compelled to care for my wife in labour with our first child. On the other hand was my desire to watch Team New Zealand defend the America’s cup. Trust me, balancing the two, while at a hospital is very difficult.
 
Today that baby girl is 10 and she too is balancing. Only her balance is physical on an imitation Rip-stick. I tried it out tonight. Trust me, balancing on two wheels is very difficult, particularly for an old guy like me.
 
Yesterday I was speaking to a person who used the term “work-life balance”. It’s a fascinating term. Work-life balance almost implies that you work and then you have a life. Life is far more complex than just work or life. Sports, family, children, finances, churches, work, friends, exercise, relaxing, entertainment, hobbies and the list goes on.
 
For me there is a continual struggle to balance all of the facets of life. Not just work and everything else. Maybe, we have the wrong term. What if instead of teaching people to have work-life balance, maybe we need to teach people to have “whole-life balance”.
 
Whole life balance I suspect is harder than balancing a wife in labour and the Americas cup, or an old guy riding a rip-stick.
 
Whole life balance. Provocative?

159 | 365 - Bright Light

You know that experience you have when you first turn the light off and everything goes pitch black. Then slowly, over a period of time, your eyes adjust. This process is called night adaptation. It takes roughly 8 mins to half adapt to darkness and around 30 mins to get full night adaption.

Once our eyes are adjusted. We can walk around with very little light as though it was daylight. We get used to walking around in the dark, and the night feels very bright.

Suddenly someone flashes a bright white light towards our eyes for less than a second. In that second our night adaptation is destroy completely and it will take a further 30 mins to completely restore it. We start fumbling around in the darkness again, wishing it were really daylight.

I took this photo yesterday morning. The bright light is not the sun, it is a street lamp that illuminates small exposed patches in its vicinity, while still casting deep shadows into the darkness. Dawn is breaking in the background. Daylight is coming.

Here’s the point. How bright a light will I be to the people around me? Will I be a bright white light that has significant radical impact? Or will I be like the streetlight, an artificial light that illuminates small patches while leaving deep shadows?

158 | 365 - Creative Cake

I’ve been thinking lately about how we are all creative. Every single one of us, in some way enjoys creating. Its as if we were created to create. And yet we are all creative in very different ways.
 
Some people create through art and paintings. Some people create through music and dance. And then other people create through welding or building or software or written words or stories or laughter or process or clothing or teaching or parenting. Why you can even have creative accountants.
 
And then once we have created. We look at what we created and say “it is good”, and our creation helps create us.
 
Today’s photo is a part of the Birthday cake, Karina, my very creative wife made for Kyla’s tenth birthday. It is the zero of the ten, and is a banana cake with icing edges and a slightly hollowed centre with blue jelly on top.
 
Very creative.