NZ Bound

Its been a couple of weeks since I last posted. Since then, the USA has elected a new President,and the current one has become something of a lame duck. The economic situation worldwide seems likely to get worse before it gets better and the time between those two events gets longer each time I look at the papers. The recession has changed from V-shaped to U-shaped and now to L-shaped. None of those sound good, but and L-shaped recession could be 3 years. Or more.

New Zealanders in their wisdom have showed Helen Clark the exit and have elected the National Party into power, under John Key - who will most probably form a governing coalition with ACT and United Future and possibly the Maori Party too. Indeed, Clark and Cullen lost little time in resigning as the leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party, and a new leader and deputy have already been selected - Phil Goff and Annette King. So, going back to work in central government next week is going to be an interesting environment. I anticipate a lot of re-drafting of the ‘Briefing to the Incoming Minister’ going on.

As I type this on the flight from Seoul to Sydney, I’m taking a chance to reflect upon what has happened over the past two weeks. I’ve  spent some good time with my mum and dad, helped them purchase and bed in a new laptop - an MSI Wind U100 netbook, and bring them up to speed. My parents have never even used windows before, Still, my dad sent me an email which I received in Seoul and we even managed to skype for the first time internationally too - so I regard that as a success. Good going Mum and Dad, if you’re reading this

I’ve caught up with friends - old and new - and met babies that I’ve not had the chance to meet yet. There are still more friends and babies to see, but there never is enough time when I get back to London to do all the things I have to do. I spent a fair amount of time sorting out some potential work stuff too - I’ll write about that another time - and it was good to re-connect with ex-colleagues and friends too.

I am returning to NZ refreshed - in my mind if not my body to start off with, as I fear the jetlag will be something special. Barely a month to go until two weeks off for Xmas. I’ll be heading up north with Rob, as he comes to visit me on his world tour, arriving in Wellington on Dec 16th.

My Ssambab is here. Yum. Will write / post after dinner, movie and hopefully sleep until Sydney.

November 15th, 2008 | Tags: Asiana, London, New Zealand, Seoul, Sydney, wellington | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

Argh - it happened. I belong to one of the more generous frequent flyer mile redemption schemes - diamond club at bmi - which allows you to redeem your miles on one-way itineraries and also using a combination of miles and cash for all levels of fare, including business and first class. Now, those are not features of many other schemes and I have used the business class redemption before - and they are very reasonable in terms of cost.

I have built up something of a liability in the number of miles I have nestled in my account due the traveling I have racked up over the past 3-4 years. So, the Lufthansa deal is bad news in that it probably spells the end of the bmi diamod class scheme which will likely be replaces by the Lufthansa ‘Miles & More’ programme, known by some as ‘Miles & Less’. A recent precedent from Lufthansas takeover of Swiss Air means that its likely we’ll see some kind of transitional period. But if and when I re-qualify for Gold status this year, I think its time to start burning miles on some buying tickets for some planned trips and reducing my liability of miles - which are about to become far less valuable than they were.

November 2nd, 2008 | Tags: bmi, frequent flyer, lufthansa | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

On the flight to London now, and I only intended a slight pun, but it reflects the small opportunity to get a view of Seoul and what it might offer, care of Asiana. The quality of the transfer and the hotel I was taken to for our overnight stopover really was pretty classy for an economy ticket. The Seoul Royal Hotel was really good - and the food was certainly tasty and authentic, if not gourmet. Asiana have certainly did themselves a few favours in my book and the experience of this flight and stopover means that I would pick them above all others if cheaper than an Air NZ ticket. I had a great sleep at the hotel and got a good 6.5 hours in - which means that when I arrive in London at 6pm local time I should be able to eat, get to bed and pick up pretty unaffected by jet lag on Friday morning.

Seoul seemed a little more americanised than I perceived Tokyo to be. Notsurprising I guess given that there is a US Armed Forces base in the city. Last night was fun - I had dinner at my hotel in the cetre of the city after a transfer process that took about 1.5 hours. I wandered around for a while and enjoyed the usual late night city street life that is common in Asian cities. But with the added time differences, i was pretty tired by 1030pm, so I headed for the hotel, bath and bed.

The morning was a little frustrating as I headed for a Korean style spa and sauna in the Hongsik University district that turned out to be closed down, By the time I got back to the hotel, there wasn’t really a lot of time to do much else. I should have called ahead I guess. If I’d have known it was closed I may have gone for a hike or the Seou Tower instead. Never mind. I got to try the subway which was pretty much like Tokyo and Osaka. I guess if you’ve been brought up and lived in London for years as well as ventured on the Tokyo metro system 3 times in the last 2 years, another subway systen set of hieroglyphics becomes relatively easy to decipher.

As I sit on this London-bound Asiana 777, I lament the lack of AVOD entertainment system with only broadcast video available. Still, I guess we have personal screens at least and I have a row of three to myself. The iPhone might get a quick run out as I have an episode of Cowboy Bebop to watch now that Hancock has finished on the Asiana system. I would watch a Korean film, but I can’t figure out how to get the English subtitles up.

We’ve just crossed over into Mongolia - about 10 hours to London.

October 31st, 2008 | Tags: Seoul, travel | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

I’ve left the mac at home. Two reasons - weight and battery life. I only have about anhour of juice left the the Powerbook battery these days and it just didn’t seem worth bringing that at the portable hard drive on this trip. Internet access in the UK will be via a ‘3′ USB stick which I have bought on my parents’ behalf.

I will resurrect my old desktop system for them so they can start to use Skype to conference with my sister and I across the UK, Greece and NZ. I’m pretty sure the old pentium system can handle it, but there is an element of doubt. Last time I had it running it was on Windows 98. I’m hoping that XP Home edition won’t be beyond its reach.

October 31st, 2008 | Tags: eee pc, iphone, tech, travel, wellington | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

It was a little bit of a tight connection having been about 30 minutes late into Sydney but I managed it ok as this Asiana 777 was late in from Seoul. So far so good - having just cleared Papua New Guinea we’re probably about half way there. I’m going to do my best to stick to NZ time en route, which means I am staying awake with a couple of beers, plenty of water, ploughing through some newspapers (so far read 1 NZ, 1 Oz and 2 Korean papers) and magazines, and some movies. Baby-mama was surprisingly good and I think I’ve developed a bit of a crush on Tina Fey, and that’s not even counting her Sarah Palin impersonation. The Forbidden Kingsom with Jet Li and Jackie Chan was a mindless updated Karate Kid which was easy on the eye and my slightly Korean beer-addled brain.

The service on Asiana is good, but the selection of fayre is a bit limited compared with the likes of Singapore and Air NZ long-haul products in economy class. Or even Lufthansa actually. I was pretty lucky in that my trip to the UK, Japan and India in February and March this year was in Business class, so my comparisions might be a little offside. But I think it’s fair to say that the service on Asiana is very good, but not best in class by a long chalk. Still, the flight is probably only 60-70% full, so there is plenty of room to spread out, even if the Star Alliance Gold seat blocking I was assured of didn’t work out. I’ll be keen to see if things are stepped up a notch atIncheon tomorrow - it’s often the case that airlines flying out of their home hub tend to step it up a little.

I’m looking forward to getting to my hotel and getting out for a little walk in Seoul tonight and perhaps even getting to go for a spa if there is plae close by. Asiana are laying on a tarnsfer, a hotel nearthe centre of the city and breakfast and dinner vouchers as part of the deal. The other side of the deal is that my flight tomorrow doesn’t take off until 1.30pm. So, it’ll takeme a while longer to get to London, but I’ll get a good night’s sleep on the way. That suits me just fine on this trip.

October 30th, 2008 | Tags: Asiana, Seoul, Sydney | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

Now, that’s more like it. The re-fitted A320 that I’m on this morning is much flasher thanthe old one I was on to Brisbane last week. The entire leftside of the plane’s seatback entertainment system isnt working too well though - so I shifted over to the other side to watch Vincent Ward’s, ‘Rain of the Children’. Watching this filmhas highlighted to me that I have mixed feelings about leaving NZ right now. Of course it’ll be great to see my parents and to catch up with friends who have had little kids since I was last in the UK. But things are going pretty well for me back in NZ right now, and I’m a little loathed to leave. I also wish Kate was with me too. It’d be much more fun taking this multi-legged trip with her, even if she is most likely to be passed out next to me.

A quick changeover in Sydney, but I have been told I need to pick up a boarding pass and change terminals too for my Asiana flight from Sydney to Seoul. I won’t have much time to spare in a lounge, but what time I can spend will be in the Qantas Club as it is a code share and there is no Star Alliance lounge in thatterminal, I think. The Air NZ iinternational Koru Lounge is nothing to write home about - nothng like as nice as the Chistchurch or Auckland longes whch ihave used in the past. But, pleasant nonetheless.

October 30th, 2008 | Tags: Air New Zealand, Seoul, Sydney | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

As far as my first international invited workshop/ lecture was concerned, I think that went pretty well. It was a little difficult to understand the exact requirements of the participants in advance due to the nature of the subject matter and the wide degree of variation in the background of the people who came along. But I thought we did at least a reasonable job of delivering the Foundations of Psychosocial Disaster Management course for the first time, and the feedback assessment forms seemed to bear that out.

After presenting on the Tuesday and the Wednesday, I had a relatively easy day yesterday. I had quite a busy time, with both work and social stuff. Dinner on Mt Coot-tha with Greg and Stephen from Queensland Health on Monday night followed by some work at the Queensland Health offices on Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon was the workshop, after which I met with my traveling mate Nick. We met in Queensland about 8 years ago, just before I started my clinical training in London. He was a teacher and I was an academic. 8 years later, he has married a Queenslander and has been living and working in Brisbane for 3 moths now and settling in. It was great to catch up in person, even if briefly. Wednesday was the conference and conference dinner, followed by Thursday at the conference again And last night I met up with my friend Claire - an Aussie who I met originally in London. She brought her daughter Ava along who was keen to meet again. Last time I saw her, she was 9 months old  she turns 5 years old on Saturday. Ava was keen to see who this Sarb bloke was who was shown in pictures holding here as a wee infant. A funny dinner and she’s a lovely little girl - Claire in understandably proud of her.

Up at dawn this morning - 5am - to get to the airport for my flights to Christchurch and then on to Wellington. I struggle with smaller time zone shifts more than the larger ones, so I’m feeling a little tired and jaded. I probably look it too as I forgot my shaving gear. Home soon. For a few days at least.

October 24th, 2008 | Tags: Brisbane, conference, disaster, psychosocial, workshop | Category: General NZ Blog | Comments (1)

I buzzed into work pretty early this morning to sort out a few documents, hold one meeting and type up a brief report before setting off for the Psychosocial Disaster Management Conference in Brisbane. Although Air NZ are supposed to be upgrading all the A320s and 767s that service their Trans-Tasman routings by December 2008, I’ve been unfortunate enough to land one of the old planes out of Christchurch. Not yet outfitted, it still has pretty shabby seats and 90s equipment and no personal screens. It’s enough to make me wish I’d flown Virgin or Qantas instead. And there are babies and young kids screaming their heads off and the service is average. Blah Blah. The noise reducing headphones are doing the trick, and I’m watching Ed Norton in The Incredible Hulk - which is actually quite good so far.

I have Greg and Stephen from Queensland Health picking me up at the other end to talk about the workshop we’re running tomorrow. So, I’m going to do a little reading of my presentation and the course handbook again once this film is over - I think I’ll have enough time. And I’ll listen to a little Belle & Sebastian  and Kora while I’m at it.

Ed Norton has just swallowed a USB stick.I think I should be paying more attention to the film.

October 20th, 2008 | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

Its been a busy week. I’m off to Brisbane on Monday where I’m teaching and presenting at a conference on psychosocial disaster management. This week has been all about getting ready for that work, drawing up a proposal for some related work next year, and doing some work for a border management exercise in New Zealand later this month - Exercise Spring Fever. When I get back, I’ll only have four days or so until I leave for London via Korea, for a fortnight visiting my folks. I’ll miss the start of the cricket season, but I hope I’ll get a few games in before Xmas, if the weather plays nicely. I’m looking forward to getting stuck in again, the days are longer and reasonably warm now and watching India v Australia on TVis getting me revved up again. Its been too long between games.

October 18th, 2008 | Tags: cricket, disaster, psychosocial, wellington | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

I accept that times are unusual.

I accept that the US$700 billion bail-out bill has deflected a lot of attention, as well as the completely nonsensical pork-barrel clauses that have nothing to do with anything. Child-size quiver of arrows, anyone?

I accept that the market gyrations over the last week have been rather sobering. Anyone wanna buy a bank? Going cheap?

I accept that the Palin-Biden VP debate in the USA has been a circus to behold. I loathe the way Sarah Palin’s ability to avoid answering questions is lauded as a success. I am embarrassed by the way that a lot of USA media have focused upon personalities and not on content.

I accept that the re-inclusion of Peter Mandelson into the fold of Gordon Brown’s UK Cabinet after his re-shuffle was somewhat of a surprise. I also think that is one of my more spectacular under-statements.

I also accept that in the New Zealand election, well …… not much really. I understand that the election campaigns will officially be launched this weekend. Here’s hoping things kick off soon.

October 4th, 2008 | Tags: bail-out, economics, election, Joe Biden, New Zealand, Peter Mandelson, politics, Sarah Palin, UK, USA | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

I got out of the UK property market in June 2005. Probably a quite a way short of the peak price for 1 bedroom garden flats in south east London, but I wasn’t comfortable with the way the economy was going at that time, the flat needed maintenance, and I didn’t want to have to think about potentially selling the property at a loss when in NZ. Property prices were grossly inflated compared to wages as far as I could see when I came to NZ. So, I decided to sit it out on the sidelines and rent here too while things took their course.

We know that prices have gone down in the UK - though there are big regional differences. Prices have also gone down a little in NZ, again with big regional differences - Wellington hasn’t dropped as much as other regions. Although I’m tempted to get into the housing market from an emotionally driven point of view, my more rational  reading of the current situation is that we are not anywhere near the bottom of the economic cycle just yet. I think we are in a slump, but we’re still at the start of it, on the way down. As Warren Buffet said on the news last night, who knows whether it will last 6 months or 2 years, but it’s going to get worse, and significantly so.

So, I’m still sitting out on the sidelines for a while yet and I’m going to try to force myself to remain out too. For the forseeable.

October 3rd, 2008 | Tags: credit crunch, wellington | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

This is an excellent slide animation that shows you how this current situation occurred. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek but should be considered the gold standard sub-prime primer.

Subprime primer

October 1st, 2008 | Tags: credit crunch, sub-prime | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment

Last night I attended a 3 hour blog marketing workshop at The Biz Centre, run by Hamish Clark and Richard Calkin. I’d already been to a Trafficology workshop by Richard on search engine optimisation, so I thought it would be worth attending. Although much of it was at a level I’d already covered, there were some to-dos that came out of the workshop, especially when it comes to cross-marketing to my business site - more on that some other time.

Anyway - a list of to-dos for increasing my blog links and footprint:

• Increase my use of tags and categories - even after three weeks of tagging using wordpress, I’ve seen an increase in google search hits. I sill need to tag my archive of 200+ posts
• Use trackbacks more - a good explanation here.
• Submit a posts and page sitemap to Google - did this earlier this morning.
• Relax my commenting sign-in but use a spam filter - done.
• Use blog listing sites more - to do.

If you get a chance and you’re relatively new to blogging and you’re a small business, this is a great workshop to attend. Even if you’ve been blogging a while, there are some juicy nuggets there, and Richard and Hamish are very responsive and experienced. I’m looking forward to a follow-up coaching session which is free, as is the workshop. Contact The Biz Centre to find out more.

October 1st, 2008 | Tags: biz centre, blog, marketing, tech, wellington | Category: General NZ Blog | Comments (1)

It was quite the surprise to wake up this morning and find that the Lower House of Representatives in the US Congress had voted against the proposed bank bail-out plan. The fact that it looks like it was because some Republican Congressmen threw their toys because they didn’t like Nancy Pelosi’s speech seems rather infantile given what is at stake. And the markets reacted as you’d expect. Now, it looks like the bail-out will be tweaked and it will go to a re-vote, but who really knows what will happen. At a personal level, I’m glad that Pelosi’s speech emphasised the importance of transparency and accountability. One of my growing concerns about the initial proposed plan was just how much power was vested in Paulson’’s hands - who was accountable to no-one at that point.

It is a sweet irony to me that those who are against this bail-out are the staunch Republicans who deem this state interference in the market to be as bad as communism. They are comparatively un-evolved when it comes to their Republican cousins in the upper echelons of power who dreamed up the strategy of privateers taking all of the profits and offloading all risk and debt to the taxpayer.

I imagine that the wrangling over this matter will continue. In the meantime, there are several bank failures to mull over - and they are failures in that they cannot survive without state takeover or state legislation being over-ridden in order for takeovers to take place, takeovers which would fall foul of monopoly regulations in other times. This includes Wachovia in the USA, Bradford & Bingley in the UK and several European banks including Fortis. Wachovia is an interesting case for NZers. It  owns the entire South Island electricity grid and the Green Party here are calling for the assets to be bought back when the resources of Wachovia are rationalised.

And as a related sidenote, ne of the most popular articles on the Guardian website at the weekend was John’s Gray’s piece on the possible end of the USA economic empire - I thought it was a fascinating piece and posted a link to it on twitter. And here is a great piece on the Sarah Palin phenomenon too - top writing.

September 30th, 2008 | Tags: bail-out, credit crunch, John Gray, Sarah Palin | Category: General NZ Blog | Leave a comment