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Tomorrow I have to complete a medical examination before I start my super yacht course in March. Now whilst I am not overly concerned with the medical exam, reading the medical form certainly made me pause and think. Let me share some of the more pertinent sentences.
- Experience transitions from hot to cold and humid to dry atmospheres.
- Being exposed to the elements (cold, heat, wind and water) and jump into the sea.
- Enter dark enclosed spaces, fight small oil and carbonaceous fires.
- Operate as a member of a team and independently at incidents of uncertain duration.
What a wild place luxury yachts are. A veritable disaster movie waiting to happen. Nice to be prepared for anything. I can only imagine what will be required(blatant pun warning) when space travel starts to take off .
Do you remember that project I have been working on? Well it is launch week so I can finally let the cat out of the box….
Here is a blurb I wrote about Mischief Boxes.
When is a box not a box? When it is a Mischief Box!
Mischief Boxes are made for action. You decide what goes into them. Mix, match and send. Open them up and watch history unfold. Choose from an ever expanding library of assorted mischief ingredients. Each box is designed to make an impact from the moment it enters a room. A good time guaranteed.
How to order a Mischief Box
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Choose your items
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Choose your delivery method
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Wait for your Mischief Box to arrive
Mischief Boxes are a uniquely fresh way to celebrate any number of things….
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Romance
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Birthdays
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Hens Nights
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Anniversaries
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Weddings
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Raves (doof doof)
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General Monkey Business
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Heartache
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and more
Our website exists to help you plan, promote and facilitate all manner of mischief. We will help you to achieve your goals, whatever they may be…….
If you look at the website and investigate the range of products I have written a fair swag of the descriptions. On Christmas eve I had a box of goodies arrive. I also completed another one over the weekend. This has been a fantastic project to be a part of and I am very grateful to Claire for the opportunity.
So take the time to visit the website and have a look. Share it with your friends. There is a mischief box for any situation.
Also enter the launch competition for the chance to win $1000 dollars of store credit.
Despite print media being a dieing medium, a healthy confusion and profusion of magazines sprout up at my work every week. They lie directly beside the fridge so on my visits to it I am confronted with startling headlines at regular intervals.
Unfortunately the *content* is largely gossip, scaremongering and lewd photographs. What is even more unfortunate I sometimes find myself reading these tragedies and not in a good Shakespearean way. There is a simple formula for writing articles for these magazines. I think a team of infinite monkeys or a carefully crafted computer program could churn them out at a good rate. For example.
Randomly select celebrity
Write story which has no truth
Source *facts* as a close source to celebrity
The photo stories are even more amazing.
Paparazzi take photos of celebrity hopefully after reading one of the stupid headlines about themselves
Magazine assigns a team of monkeys to write a fictitious story about the photo
Profit?
Does anyone else find this unsettling? Or am I being precious?
Even more unsettling is that this very blurb will gather more interest than a well crafted treatise on the origins of modern day weather forecasting.
Having interviewed a few people over the years for different things it was nice to be asked to do an interview late on Sunday night. I have been a member of a blogging community called bloggerunited for about six months now and have watched it grow into a very healthy and active community.
Recognition is always nice and if you read the interview it is actually what spurred me on to write my previous entry. I use the phrase personal goals a fair bit. I read yesterday that the Moon is in Aries so it is a good time to start thinking about what you want to achieve.
So without further adieu you can read the interview here.
To help support bloggerunited I will be adding a widget to this blog. So if you see something new in pastel tones. Do not be afraid.
With the second month of the year starting in record time I thought it would be a good time to write down some personal goals for the year. I am not really a fan of resolutions, resolutions are for smokers and the overweight.
Firstly a tale of poor maths and accounting.
I have had a few ideas kicking around in my head for a book/novel of sorts. I would like to get cracking on this. This morning after filling my muscles with blood(exercising) and therefore draining my brain of reasonable thought I earnestly thought if I wrote a couple of pages each week for the rest of the year I would have a book worth reading at the end of it.
Sadly weeks =/ days.
A 700 page book is far more preferable to a 100 page book.
So I have readjusted this. 5-6 pages a week.
Secondly in a more vain vein.
I am getting tantalizingly close to attaining a six pack. Six packs are incredibly hard to achieve unless you are genetically predisposed to them. I have been doing some research and the only thing stopping me is about three extra cardio sessions a week. This is a short term goal. I do not know how the Mediterranean diet is going to affect me. I also do not know the physiological benefits of hoisting anchors and scrubbing decks.
Thirdly.
I think I would like to do some more Scuba diving if leisure time permits and maybe coerce my wife into underwater adventuring. Scuba was a highlight of last year and given I am going to be on the sea for the foreseeable future it would be incredibly rude not to enjoy the ocean’s full spectrum.
Finally if my posts seem to have even more self indulgence than is usual. I can not apologise; nevertheless I have an excellent quote that I would like to share.
“ They’re fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talk about writing or themselves”
— Lillian Hellman
During the Olympics I and the rest of the world got particularly enamoured with Michael Phelps and in particular butterfly. Butterfly is a particularly hard swimming stroke to master. It shares nothing in common with other strokes. I have never been particularly good at it but this did not stop me from commandeering all manner of pools and seaside locations for butterfly exhibition swims.
Racial stereotyping aside South East Asian’s are not renowned for being good swimmers. This compounded with my sometimes alcohol infused enthusiasm made for quite a spectacle. Alas during one of my last shows my wedding ring slipped off in Chiang Mai never to be seen again.
Luckily the ring was not particularly expensive. We wisely spent our wedding savings on entertaining our guests and feeding them. So whilst there was an emotional attachment, the finnacial one was not great. Therefore it is with great pleasure that I can now present to you my new official wedding ring, worn by my hand model.
My hand model is actually myself. Another string in my bow. I could quite adequately be a part time hand model. Stunning they are, although they sadly have a bad habit of going on about themselves. Just like a good model should….
Recruiting people to read my blog is always fun. I wouldn’t call myself a consummate salesman but I do have a pitch of sorts. When were in Asia my number one fan was very good at talking me up in between bottles of beer Lao. I always had my business cards handy. In fact if I remember correctly I politely left some outside a bungalow on Koh Penanag, I am pretty sure there were some Swedes staying in there. At least I hope there was.
My new email subscription service has been rolling on. Rather than subscribing people with out consent I have decided to conduct brief interviews before signing people up. Today I had a particularly humorous interview that I thought would be worth sharing with you all.
Daniel
are you subscribed to my news letter?
9:29am *******
what newsletters are they?
9:33amDaniel
well
they are informative and humorous
there are no Viagra ads
and they are family friendly
9:35amDaniel
like a funny New Zealand herald that is family friendly without Viagra ads
9:35am*******
haha
9:35amDaniel
pm me your email address if you are game
9:36am********
*******@gmail.com
will i see results in 14 days?
9:37amDaniel
no doubt
i expect you will have more fine lines within days.
In closing subscribe if you dare and if you do not; beware of strangely worded questions.
Not content with day dreaming about the Mediterranean I have started pondering circumnavigating the Caribbean. I spent an awful amount of my childhood playing a game called Pirates. Solidly based on the golden age of piracy Pirates is a fantastic game which includes dancing, sword fighting, ship battles and siege mini games.
Opportunities for fencing and piracy will probably be limited but it hasn’t stopped me from re charting my ideal route through the Caribbean. The red line is my optimum piracy route. It allows swooping on multiple colonies and intercepting the Spanish gold fleet and the silver train on the northern face of South America.
Florida offers a good starting and finishing point. St Kitts and Nevis were always good for a plunder. Cuba has always been an interest for me and I expect no self respecting super yacht owner would miss the Cayman Islands.
Cartography graffiti is fun. I think I am becoming a fan.
A working persons curse, the humble fire drill strikes fear in most. I don’t think they ever happen at a convenient time. I thought I would take the opportunity to maximize the opportunity and write about them.
Obviously the fire drill has passed. A born rebel the thought of perishing in a fire blogging furiously is romantic but also stupid. This particular fire drill was more of a forced congregation with the rest of the building. The wardens did not take attendance rolls. In fact I am struggling to think of positives but have managed a few.
-Got to chit chat with and identify the smokers.
-Got to get a coffee.
-Walked up six flights of stairs because the lifts were insanely busy.
If I was in charge of fire drills I would reroute the air conditioning to include some artificial smoke. Dormant computers would make realistic screaming noises. Having a fire truck turn up would also add some drama.
Now we are talking.