This is what a heart attack feels like…

I turn 50 in July. As I’ve gotten closer to this milestone age, I’ve started to worry about what my health will be like on the other side of the half-century. I’m going to more funerals than weddings these days. When the pandemic hit, like many people, I started to eat my way through the day. While I was fairly fit, I’ve always been pretty heavy and when extra snacking combined with no community sport, my weight started to spiral out of control. Jogging to catch up with my 6yo daughter one day, I realised I needed to change.

2 years later, I’ve dropped 25KG, I have a committed, long term exercise routine and I’m fitter than I’ve been for my whole life! I’m an ice hockey player, and while my middling skills aren’t getting much better, my fitness has lifted my game in a big way! There are so many benefits to being lighter and fitter than before. I’m running a half marathon distance weekly, I’m eating better, drinking less, and being mindful about my health.

I just wish I’d started earlier. It’s easier on the body to rebuild at 39 than it is at 49! I get little injuries and niggles and there’s a whole process of working through those things. Family and friends are mostly ecstatic for me, but there are times when people are negative and mean. The delight in people’s eyes when an injury or setback happens can be quite daunting. I understand it. I just don’t like it.

Part of my health focus has been to include a few natural supplements. I take glucosamine and turmeric because I worry about joint health and inflammation. I take fish oil. I’m not recommending any of these things, nor advocating their efficacy, just telling you about them. They’re important to ME. I’ve had bowel issues over the years and started taking a few tablespoons of psyllium husk each morning which has helped me a lot.

On Saturday morning I was drinking my psyllium and felt a tightening in my chest. Like heartburn. More top of the stomach than chest really. It happens sometimes when I have my morning drink. It takes a while to go away and I was annoyed by it that day and tried to ignore it and keep drinking.

After a second, I realised that was a mistake. I stopped and held on to the kitchen sink as the pain in my chest got stronger and stronger……

Sometimes in a dream, you transition from one place to the next and the transition itself is very hard to nail. How did I get here? This makes no sense

The next thoughts I have are very busy. There’s so much going on, so many faces and people and I realise I am not awake, I’m dreaming. There’s so much happening I can’t seem to grasp any one thing. Everything is very foggy and I’m not quite awake. My head hurts a lot. I sit up and feel very strange, still shaking off the dream, the sore head and the fog of sleep. I’m lying on the floor in the kitchen, flat on my back… I think I may have just had a small heart attack. Have I fallen and hit my head on the floor? Rae is there giving me a puzzled look.

I get up shakily and just like waking up first thing, everything very gradually settles back to normal. The fogginess goes, the headache subsides to a dull throb and I feel almost normal again.

I finish my drink, make a coffee and get ready for the rest of the day. Maybe a beach day with Mads? I haven’t really processed anything yet.

After a little thought, I book a doctor’s appointment. Better get a quick check to be sure. The idea that something big just happened is starting to sneak its way into my thoughts.

As the day progresses I start to worry more. My head hurts, and I’m a little shaky still. Fuck! What if this is the start of a long downhill run? Will I be able to play sport? Will it happen again? Do I need to teach Mads how to call 000? Did I really just have a heart attack??? I keep wondering what happened between me thinking “ooh, this hurts” and waking up on the floor. Did I slump down slowly? Did I drop like a stone? God! What if I’d smacked my head on the countertop? I feel strangely lucky not to be injured from the fall

My folks FaceTime call out of the blue. We chat for a while and they ask how I’m going. In a moment of vulnerability, I share my story from the morning and my worry. I’ve been feeling very alone today. I want to tell my older kids, but these days our relationship is so tense it would feel like something wrong. Like a sad, needy way to ask for their attention… the fact that I can’t tell them makes me sadder still. I’ve been feeling very emotionally alone all day. A fragile, sad old man.

My parents fuss and I start to feel silly for mentioning it at all. Like some sort of attention-seeking child. Part of me is sure that it’s nothing and yet part of me is still paralysed with terror that it’s not. We close the call. Despite my initial misgivings about talking, I’m glad that I have. It’s strange. It was a short conversation. Such a little thing, but I feel seen. Cared for. Loved. The worry that they show warms me up, even though nothing has really changed. It’s still on me, it’s still there, but somebody cares.

As the day goes on, my phone begins to buzz more and more regularly and insistently. I am one of six siblings and the family jungle drums have spoken and my brother and sisters are checking in on me. Again I feel a little silly and childish, but also kinda warm and fuzzy. I don’t often feel the outreach of familial love from my far-flung family these days, but I realise today, even with all our differences, with the distance and lack of regular interaction, their love remains. And more than this, it MEANS something to me. Even me, with my cold, cynical heart, I’m moved by my blood reaching out with worried words. I feel loved in a way I haven’t for a long time. I feel seen, and today that’s everything to me.

At a family member’s insistence, I speak to my 17yo daughter Katherine too. I don’t want her to worry, she has enough on her plate already but her replies make me glad we spoke. I can’t find the right way to even start to talk to my older sons, JJ & Lee so I don’t, but Katherine makes some time to come see me. I love her so much.

I see the doc later that day. I’m nervous. I give him lots of data points and he comments on how fit I am for my age. I like that. I FEEL healthy, I want him to confirm that I am. He listens attentively and doesn’t look worried at all. He measures my heart rate and blood pressure before letting me know his thoughts. As it happens, it’s not an uncommon thing. It’s called swallow syncope. Caused by my esophagus pressing against the vagus nerve. Apparently, it feels 100% like a heart attack (so I feel a little less stupid). Most importantly, he thinks my heart is fine. No strange rhythm, nothing off at all. Blood pressure is great, resting heart rate excellent. I leave with instructions for blood tests (to be sure) and a referral to a gastroenterologist to check my esophagus out. It’s cautiously good news.

I’ll be ok.

I was reminded of something really damn important today. Something that might have made it worth it too… I am loved. And I am blessed with a family that cares. There are lots of things to work on, none of yesterday’s problems have gone away, but these things remain.

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5 things teams sports taught me about sales management

I love playing sport. Barring all other life commitments I’d love to play a sport every night of the week! Last year I moved from being a player on my hockey team into the role of captain/coach. I should note at this point that my team did NOT win our competition, in fact we did not even place all that well.. We did have a great season that was enjoyed by all with many small victories along the way.

In my working life I head up the Australia New Zealand arm of a network security company. Sales managers very often use sports metaphors to communicate ideas and plans with the sales team and I’m no exception but this year I found myself using sales management tools on my hockey team!

Team sports and sales have a lot in common, here’s five things worth thinking about:

1. Have a plan. Know when to stick to the plan and when to get a new plan.

Every team team you come against will have it’s own unique strengths and weaknesses. Some teams play strong offence, some great defence, some have just one great scorer and others rely on a strong goalie. In every game, the team that understands their own strengths and weaknesses and how that lines up against the competition, will have a real advantage. I see sales people every day that roll out the same pitch no matter who they are meeting and who the competition is. You might win occasionally like that, but not in the long run. The ones who consistently win are the team with a plan. Sometimes, when you are up against what seems like an unbeatable opponent, your plan is what gives you hope and keeps you in the game.The key in these situations is to stick with a plan that you KNOW has worked before. What happens when the other guy switches brings in that semi-pro goalie? or when that OTHER tech company enters the race? you change the plan!

When I am working on a proposal for a big customer without a written plan it somehow never feels real. I’m surprised if we are successful. When things go wrong I’m never really sure what happened. if I have a plan it grounds me and keeps me focussed. I can immediately see what’s missing and what I need to do next. in the event that i don’t win (you won’t ALWAYS win!) the plan is something I can look back on and refine and use again next time. it’s also something I can show to my boss who is certainly going to want to know what happened. I’ve never been abused for losing a deal I had a plan for, but I HAVE been in the poo many times for having no plan!

2. Know what success looks like. Visualise it.

You want to make a plan because you know that’s a key to winning right? But what should the plan look like? The key is to start with a good hard look at a WIN. WooHoo! You WON! Now really seriously ask yourself this question, “Why did we win?” in order to be able to repeat you success you need to know how it happened? Who was the competition? What were their strengths and weaknesses? How did we capitalize on the weaknesses and neutralize the strengths? Awesome. Now write this down, because this is the start of your plan.

This season we had some real ups and downs. At one stage, my team was on a three game losing streak. everyone was miserable and our usual pre-game locker room chatter was full of negativity. Before each game I always try to have a simple three point plan. Focus on this attack, neutralise that strength and exploit this weakness but this week I felt like we weren’t in the right frame of mind for this. Instead I asked for complete silence. I asked each person to imagine a time in the season when they had personally done something great, their favourite shooting technique, their go-to move that always got results. in other words, to VISUALISE success. it really sounds a little corny and honestly in a room full of tough assed hockey players, I wasn’t sure if they’d laugh me out of there.

3 minutes later we took to the ice and had one of the most convincing victories of the season. it’s not something that would have worked every week, but in that time and place it’s what we needed to win.

3. Negative feedback just doesn’t work

One of our strongest players this season was a guy called Michael. He plays in defence and when he is feeling it, he’s one of the toughest guys I’ve seen defending our zone. The trouble is, when he’s not feeling it really hurts us as a team. Michael likes to take chances occasionally and during one of our early games he saw a chance, stuck his head down and really went for it. The trouble was, it didn’t work. he dropped the puck, we had no defence and the opposition scored in the blink of eye. Hockey’s like that. it’s a fast game and can really punish you for a little mistake.

No-one felt it more than Michael did. You should have seen the look on his face when he skated to the bench. That didn’t stop the whole team unloading on him. We poured abuse all over this guy and not surprisingly, the rest of his night went from bad to worse.

It’s easy to criticise someone else and give in to the negative spiral that comes along with it. For Michael, it was one mistake that started a torrent of abuse that didn’t end even after the game was done. I did a lot of thinking about that game and how Michael reacted.

Next game I started a new tradition. Here’s what I think: I think that when someone screws up (and we all do), mostly they already know it. if you’re like me, you are YOUR OWN WORST CRITIC. As you skate to the bench (or come in from a tragic sales call) you already know how bad you screwed up. You really don’t need everyone reminding you of it. So from that game on, when some-one messed up bad, we stood up and gave them a huge cheer, a big glove-to-glove fist bump and a pat on the back and yelled, “Don’t worry about man, you’ll SMASH them next time!”

The difference? it didn’t stop us making mistakes but it did stop the negative spiral. it stopped one crappy play from turning into an entirely crappy game.

Sales is EXACTLY the same. One quarter we were having a tough time of it. one of my most senior sales guys cut 30% from his forecast just a few days before quarter end. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. How would i tell my boss? How could I not look like a fool? Would I get fired? I took all of that anxiety and without waiting a second to calm down, I got on the phone and just unloaded on this guy. Fire and Brimstone and wrath of god type stuff. Guess what happened? We missed by EVEN more that the forecast. By going all negative i undermined his confidence, freaked him out and made him run scared to all his clients. All those potential sales sensed the fear and got cold feet of their own.

I learned that most people know when they’ve screwed up. They don’t need a heavy-handed reminder. You have to deal with it, but it’s almost ALWAYS better to do that with positive reinforcement not negativity. Even a performance management plan can be made into a positive experience. As a manager or coach, I think you’ve got to always have your people’s back and always be rooting for them to win. they won’t always win, but they stand a much better chance with someone cheering them on!

4. Team spirit

One of the things I love about hockey is the player’s point system. You score a goal, you get a point. You HELP score a goal you also get a point. What’s the difference between the two points? NOTHING. An assist is just as valuable an action as scoring a goal!

I’ve played a lot of different team sports over the years and worked for a lot of different companies. There’s usually a super star wherever you go. That one person who everyone looks at and can tell they are in a class of their own. The thing is, it’s not always that team with the super star that wins.

Jack Welch was famously successful at big business management. Discussing types of people and who  to keep and who to let go Welch put people into 4 categories. There are:

1. High Achievers who fit with the company direction
2. High Achievers who DON’T fit with the company direction
3. Poor Achievers who fit with the company
4. Poor Achievers who DON’T fit with the company direction.

When asked who was highest priority for attention Welch’s ideas are surprising to many. He says, your first order of attention is to cut #2 FAST. The problem with these guys are that they seem to be doing very well. They are high achievers but the problem is that they are not a good fit for the team. Because they are successful, people will follow them, and as a bad fit they will all end up going in the wrong direction! The rest need nothing urgent. #1 is doing well, give them more support, #3 need some help and training and #4 might need to go but at least no-one is going to follow their lead.

5. Keep at it

One of the hardest things a team can do is pick themselves up,dust themselves off and try again without losing heart. To me, persistence is the most valuable asset any sportsperson or sales person can have. You’ve just got to keep plugging away.

I’ve seen great players simply worn down by a guy who just won’t give up, who just keeps skating and skating until he’s ready to drop. Similarly I’ve seen sales people with the same ethic. Losing is tough. Rejection is hard. But for those that can just keep going there’s almost always a second chance. Our business relies heavily on software maintenance renewals. After the first year of usage, we contact our customers to make sure all is well and invite them to renew their subscription with us. There are always a few who don’t renew. Some tell us very bluntly that they’ve gone with a competitors offering. it’s never an easy thing to hear.

This year. we started re-connecting with our old customers who hadn’t renewed. In most cases, up to a year had gone by since we last spoke and they had been given a chance to see what their new offering was like. GUESS WHAT?? A very high percentage of those customers are coming back! it’s the old grass in greener, didn’t know how good I had it mentality. Some people just see the rest before they know how good they had it. I find it hard not to take rejection personally but I try to always be persistent. It doesn’t always have a happy ending but every once in a while is enough to keep me going.

You got any others I might have missed?

Life on Mars

The news this week reports a theory which has recently emerged that some of the key components for life on earth may have originated on Mars. The short short version is this: We think life began around 3.5 Billion years ago. We think that life (RNA anyway) could only have been created in the presence of highly oxidized molybdenum and boron which apparently weren’t around on earth at the time. Guess where they WERE around? MARS

Read the whole theory here…  

 

What if life DID exist on Mars long before even the seeds of life on earth began to germinate?  What if, like the legends of Rapa Nui, a civilisation of pre-human Martians outgrew their planet’s ability to sustain their own bloated existence. What if the Martians used up all their resources and became the ultimate victims of their own evolutionary success. What if hiding deep under all those red rocks there are giant monolithic clues to the doomed Martian society waiting to be found?

 

THAT’S CRAZY!

Is it?… let’s say it happened.. Let’s say that a Martian civilisation grew much like life on Earth is growing now. The Pre-Humans dominated and bred and within a few thousand years their sheer numbers started to put on strain on their planet’s ability to sustain them. They try austerity, population control but at a global level it’s just not possible to get a single political consensus. Eventually, as resources become scarcer and scarcer, conflict emerges and becomes all out world war. What weapons do the Martians possess? Even if they only lasted as long as people on Earth have NOW, odds are they could make the same military advances we have.. And after the war.. after all is blown apart on Mars, the atmosphere destroyed, the climate wiped out, the water all but gone.. all that remains are the basic chemical building blocks of life carried to Earth on a meteorite…

Then 3.5 BILLION years later, the surface of Mars contains no trace that life ever existed at all, and life evolved from those Martian specks has become the human race. The dominant species begins the same self destructive story…unless somehow we evolve beyond our very own nature…

The legend of Rapa Nui has always fascinated me. It’s a lesson that we seem to be failing to learn. Many people think the Easter island story is a metaphor for the whole of Earth.. maybe the real metaphor is Mars.

Newest Military Secrets – the HORROR!

“At my signal, unleash hell”

A quote from the movie, Gladiator.

I personally think it is also 5 words spoken regularly by employees at your local kids ‘FUNLAND’ each morning. I have an image of a group of pimple faced teenagers lined up and shuffling their feet nervously. At the glass doors before them is the chaotic horde of children waiting to be let inside.. the skinny guy in front of the entrance to the ballpit looks crazy with fear as his eyes dart back and forth scanning the room for another exit. It is only the steady gaze of the world weary, middle age, franchisee that keeps the troops together. Before panic can set in, she raises her hand in a defiant salute, “At my signal, unleash hell”. The doors burst open and the terrified teens try to control the raging, primal force that is contained in 2-5 year old kids..

Help! Help! This child is attacking my shark!

My idea is that it’s high time the Military made use of this unbelievable power.

Kids are natural weapons. The military’s most unbreakable equipment will easily be smashed by a 6 Year Old boy. It’s really just a combination of determination and time.

By far the most devastating of Military applications would be children as biological weapons. This weekend I have been nursing my 5 year old girl through a common virus. She was upset and crampy, had a headache and threw up a lot. During this time, she would not leave my side. She clung on to me like super-glued Velcro! Her little 5 Year old immune system has since beaten the virus and she is happy and healthy again. There was, however, an unfortunate side effect. While the Virus was travelling through her system, something (THE WEAPON!) inside her, transformed this cute little bug into some sort of super freaky MEGA-BUG! Now while she is happily laughing and playing (with no desire to come near at all) the rest of us poor bastards are coughing and spluttering and barely able to hold a dry cracker down…

Of course I guess there is the possibility that I’m just a big wimp when it comes to dealing with any illness…

Instant Karma’s gonna get you, Comic Book style. KAPOW!

Was John Lennon right? I think he might have been…

Some 15 years or so ago I borrowed some comic books from a good friend.  The Watchmen series, a seminal title by collectible legend, Alan Moore. I had them for ages and had EVERY intention of returning them but hey, I am a busy guy and stuff started to happen… I moved houses, jobs, and cities several times. I bought a house and had kids. I got married and divorced and along the way, as many people do, I grew out of a lot of my boyhood hobbies, including comic books.

At some point I just packed up all my old comics and games and stuff and sold them, tossed them or gave them away. Sadly, I had forgotten all about the Watchmen comics (and my truant loan) until the movie came out. Watching the film, I remembered borrowing the comics and began to feel a certain gnawing guilt for never having returned them.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was randomly going through some old boxes in my garage. These boxes have been moving with me for the last 15 years but have never been opened. I think everyone has a few of these. They were marked KITCHEN/OFFICE which was why I was searching through them, I think I was trying to find a cheese grater or a spatula… What I found was, of course much greater!  In the bottom of one of these boxes, in pristine condition, was the full set of watchmen comics. Pretty much the only comics to have survived the great purge.

I remembered that I had borrowed them from my old friend Andrew so I searched for him on Facebook, sent a message and arranged to drop them off in Canberra. I might not be the fastest, but I always get there in the end….

In the meantime, because these comics were lying around the house, Jason and Liam (my sons) started asking all about comic books. Being boys of a certain age, superheroes are like crack to them. We got to talking and they asked about what kind of comics I used to read when I was a kid. Thinking hard about it, I remembered that my favourites were these obscure and spectacularly unsuccessful comics by Marvel called the “New Universe”. It was a lot like the TV series: Heroes. No Lycra or capes, just the kind of stuff that might happen in the “real world”. Dudes who get powers and have no idea what to do with them. Characters who actually grow older, unlike say, the Simpsons.. I’m pretty sure Bart Simpson has been in the 4th grade for about twenty years now!

Well, I offered to take the boys out and buy them some superman or batman comics, but after hearing my story, all they could think about were these old comics. I tried the internet and some comic stores but these things were a huge failure so they just weren’t anywhere to be found. The boys were devastated and try as I might, I could not convince them to settle for anything else. By this time I was feeling pretty stupid for having built these things up into such a big deal and then being completely unable to deliver.

A few weeks later it was time to head to Canberra for work. I packed up the recalcitrant Watchmen comics ready to returned to their rightful owner. In the intervening time I’ve been asking anyone who might have a clue if they could help me find these old collectibles. I’ve been on the internet, into comic book stores and picking the brains of anyone who looks kinda geeky. I’ve had several ‘Comic Book Guy’ types sneer at the sheer stupidity that I exhibit by expecting to be able to simply order these “rare collectibles”. Worst Dad, ever…

That’s when the weirdness begins. Almost the minute I drop off Andrew’s watchmen ( only 15 years too late) I bump into Steve, who is the son of Glenn, one of my teenage besties. Steve is a Comic book guru, so naturally I ask him my question and he says he thinks he remembers seeing these old “New Universe” comics at his house!

Well, it turns out during my great sell-off/give-away/throw-away I gave a big box to Glenn and sure enough, just as I had discovered a box 15 Years later, the very same thing was waiting for me in an old archive box underneath Glenn’s stairs!

I returned home triumphant to two ECSTATIC boys with the pile of comic book stories that they had given up for lost.

Instant Karma?

Undoubtedly.

Catch me if I fall.

I took my two boys for a bushwalk in the Blue Mountains today.We went to this place called Evans lookout. There was a long, steep walk from the top of the valley down into the canyon. Lots of rocks, steep descents and hundreds of steps cut into the stone…

 At the bottom was a quiet little creek where spring water collected and flowed further into the valley. It was cool and shady because of the canopy of trees and looming cliffside.It was very serene. Very peaceful. The boys liked it a lot more than I thought they would.

The View from Evans Lookout

The walk back UP however, was pretty tough. I don’t think they really knew how much harder it would be to climb back out of the valley. There was a lot of gravel and loose rocks and it was very slippery.

I told the boys to stay close together and walk up slowly. First Liam, then Jason, then me.. That way if Liam slipped, Jason could catch him, and if they both slipped, I could catch them both.

The boys said to me” But Dad, what if YOU fall too?” and I said,” Don’t worry about that, I’m your Dad and I’m not going to fall. I’ll always be here to catch you if you fall.”

And I intend to be.

Always.

I’m a MAC, and I’m a PC…

Unless you’ve living in the World WITHOUT Web you’ve probably Seen these…

That’s 15 Ads where Apple tell us how wonderful the Mac is and how terrible the PC and Windows are. Let’s be honest with each other, it’s damn compelling stuff.. Who wants to be that geeky fat guy? Nobody!

Windows devotees, naturally despise this Über cool, jeans wearing punk, with no concept of work and a closet free of neckties and blue suits..

And really there’s no arguing that Macs are WAY sexier than PCs. I use a Macbook Pro in a predominantly Windows based office and the lustful looks elicited from both geeks and newbs alike are VERY satisfying. Let’s face it, that ad is VERY compelling.  Poor old Bill Gates has been taking a pummeling from Steve Jobs’ posse and I must say that it’s funny, VERY funny when Microsoft try to out-cool Apple.

I like Jerry Seinfeld, I watched the series, every episode, and I think it’s a little sad that a man who made me laugh so much is no longer finding new and daring ways to make me laugh some more. Don’t let that make you think that Jerry’s NOT doing anything, OH He’s doing stuff! Just nothing funny… This, my friends, is Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s cool ads:

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think we’re likely to see hordes of people camping on the street 72 hours before Microsoft opens it’s new Mega-Store.. Even IF Bill Gates is there personally!

In conclusion, Macs are better.. no.. wait… hang on.. Let me re-read that..

Mac’s are SEXIER. yes without doubt… but is it all about LOOKS? I’m a Mac owner, what’s my experience of really USING this computer like? Well I loved it! Until recently when I crashed.. I tried to recover, I tried VERY VERY hard but I just couldn’t.

I’m an angry computer user when things don’t go my way. I decided to write a blog entry on how frustrated the whole experience made me. In the end, I realised that there were thousands of people olut there, just like me. So I deleted my entry and posted this video instead. This guy is my new hero..it goes on for a bit, but hang in there, it’s worth the wait..

Angry Mac Dude.. stick with it, it starts slow and then he really gets going…

I do hope Steve Jobs gets well soon.

A different sort of Blog entry… What’s the moral of the Story?

This was a bedtime story I told my kids…

I was trying to create a particular message for them, but so far no-one who has read this has picked up on the message I was trying to send… Which means either I’m an idiot or you’re an idiot…

What’s it gonna be? What’s the message here?

You are here…

The Island Castaway (no Tom Hanks)

A wealthy and powerful man began to lose his way in the world and decided to take a cruise to find himself. After 11 days at sea, there was a violent storm and the ship capsized, flinging the man into the raging sea. He survived the storm by holding on to a piece of floating debris and eventually was washed up on a small island. The island was very small and though there were enough trees with fruit, fresh water, and fish to keep the man alive, after many weeks he began to lose his will to live. He decided at this time to try to put an end to it all.

The next morning 2 strange boxes washed up on the shore. Both were locked and looked difficult to open. The man spent a full day using makeshift tools trying to open the first box. For the whole day, he could not even scratch the outside of the box and eventually as night fell, he conceded that he could not open the box.

The next day he set to work on the second box. It seemed identical to the first, but by the end of the second day, he had managed to peel away just a very small corner of the top of the box. That night he could barely sleep, he was so excited about what he might find in the box.

Three more days passed, each day the man managed to open the box just a little more. Finally, at the end of the fifth day, the man had opened a hole large enough to reach inside the box. He reached his hand inside and felt something small and square inside the box. He worked away, into the night and eventually freed the small square object, which happened to be another box, a smaller version of the first two. Since his island ordeal, the man had never felt so alive. Again that night, he barely slept, so excited about what he might find in the small box.

Another week passed, each day the man was able to open the smaller box just a little more.. Finally, he had managed to open the small box and inside was a small silver flute. In the coming months, the man taught himself slowly and carefully to play beautiful music on the flute and after 6 long months on the island he was eventually rescued by a passing fishing ship.

When the ship arrived, the fisherman helped the man aboard and they picked up the first box the man had passed over. They opened the box and inside was a radio beacon, life raft, and nautical flares. The man looked at the box and sat down, smiling to play the flute.

Lost your Licence? I’ll flip you for it.

Australia calls itself the Lucky Country and growing up here, I’ve always believed it. Look around, we have great beaches, great weather, great lifestyle, great grandparents, it’s really, well….. great! This is all very cool, until you take some time to think about WHY we call ourselves the lucky country. Is it because of our golden soil and wealth for toil? Our Natural gifts of beauty, rich and rare? I always thought so… But perhaps I was wrong. Maybe we’re all just hoping for a quick win. The thrill of gambling it all on the roll of the dice.. or more correctly, the push of the poker machine button. Getting LUCKY.

Nobody loves to gamble more than we do. Sure, Vegas has a great reputation, but think for a second about our very own NSW..

In 2002, Australia had 20% of the WORLD’S poker machines. By 2007, NSW alone had 43% of the ENTIRE WORLD’S poker machines..  that’s a lot of poker machines.. Think about it. The USA (home of Reno and Vegas) has 15 times more people than Australia and more than 40 times the population of NSW and yet only double the Pokies..  thats like 35 times more pokies per capita!! OUCH..

Of course, 72% of all gambling related statistics are invented on the spot for the purpose of making a good argument and this itself is only 16% likely to be true (I’d bet the farm on that..)

No matter what the numbers are, it’s clear we like to gamble. Our most famous International event on the sporting calendar is the Melbourne Cup. Even the PM stops to have a punt. We just can’t seem to stop the insanity. With all this in mind, it really shouldn’t surprise me that the rest of our system is a gamble as well.

Someone I know recently lost their Driver’s Licence. Not in a little way. Not say, sitting on 110 Km/h on the M7 from Sydney to Canberra and forgetting that the M7 is a 100 zone even though it’s WAAAAY safer than most of the 110 zones on the rest of the drive. Not that, NO. But in a BIG way. (I love starting sentences with BUT by the way..)

She lost her Licence doing nearly DOUBLE the limit in a school zone. Where little kids walk around. Where MY little kids walk around. So it’s tough to be sympathetic. But (there I go again) even though I might not be sympathetic, our loving Government wants to give everyone a fair go. What does a fair go mean?? Well it means taking part in the Lucky Country philosophy. You’ve got to be in it to win it! So.. lose your licence and we’ll flip you for it. Not literally, it’s actually more of a Double or Nothing kind of scenario.. I’m not kidding, go check it out. You have 12 Demerit points which are lost for various offences. You lose all your points and you lose your licence for 3 Months OR you can gamble and instead of losing it for 3 Months and going back to normal, you can have just 1 point for 12 Months.. If, during that time you so much as fart while driving, now you’ve got a DOUBLE suspension: 6 Months..

Seriously, the only thing this is missing is two brightly coloured boxes and a Game Show host in a loud Jacket.. What’s it gonna be honey? You’ve come so far tonight.. red light cameras, mobile phone use and now a SCHOOL ZONE.. Will you risk it all and play on??

The Money or the Box?

Look ma – no Water! What the? Waterless Washing Machines…

I love the enironment. So far, for me it’s been the best one we’ve ever had. I mean, compared to the barren winterland of the last ice age, this environment kicks some butt. It’s so GREEN. So, when I hear of a new way to save the environment I am all for it.

One thing that troubles me a great deal are recent reports of the Pacific Plastic Soup. This massive trash vortex is said to consist of all the floating debris (mostly plastic) that has collected in the Pacific Ocean. The “patch” is thought to be a massive accumulation of floating rubbish in two big vortices (is that a word? let’s just say YES) on either side of Hawaii. Sitting just below the ocean surface, it is very hard to spot using satellite imagery, but American sailor Charles Moore was apparently very spun out when, in 1997, he sailed through the soup and took DAYS to get from one end to the other! Some (like me) might argue that the Pacific Plastic Soup will soon represent our greatest environmental threat.

Pacific Plastic Soup

Others will tell you that access to fresh water is one of the World’s greatest challenges. It’s big, that’s for sure. We are in the middle of one of Australia’s worst ever droughts, and clearly fresh water is a critical issue! I found it a little ironic that here in Sydney, we’ve been watching our city get drowned under some of the heaviest rainfall in decades, rain that’s draining straight out to sea… While we wave goodbye to the countless gigalitres of fresh water passing by, we’re working on saving our future by building a huge desalination plant. This is clearly a brilliant plan (way too smart for me to understand) which takes into account all that surplus electricity, which up till now has just been going to waste! Like He-Man, we have the power!

Hang on a minute, what’s all this got to do with Waterless Washing Machines or the Water Powered Car for that matter?? Well, be patient, I’m getting to that..

Recently, British scientists announced that they can SAVE THE PLANET one load of washing at a time. Is it a miracle of cleanliness? No – it’s the waterless washing machine. This revolutionary invention doesn’t use disgusting, unhealthy, wasteful FRESH WATER to clean your soiled linens, but in fact makes use of healthy, clean, environmentally friendly, plastic polymer chips. That’s right, we’re replacing the water with just 20KG of PLASTIC.

But don’t worry, you can re-use the 20KG of plastic chips. A few times anyway.That’s called R-E-C-Y-C-L-I-N-G, it’s all the rage you know.

And think, all that water we saved can be used to wash those huge bags of plastic chips into the Pacific Ocean. Hell, it’s a long way from Leeds.