the continuing saga...

of piiiiiigs innnnn spaaaace.

Do you remember that?

It's from the Muppets back in the 70s.

I loved the Muppets,

but Pigs in Space was a weird but

it's title sticks in my head.

Funny that.

Boy Mags hates the Muppets.

Actually she seemed to hate anything that attempted humour.

I wonder why that was?

Anyway, being redundant is getting tiresome.

Well it is and it isn't.

I decided to give myself until the end of February 

before I started applying for jobs.

So I've done that and even got any 'extra' day in the form of leap day.

Though I did apply for a job yesterday that is a good fit for me

but is back in Canterbury.

Which would be fine if the earthquakes had stopped stopped.

It kind of raises the stakes in the desirability of moving back to Canty.

It's not an unpopular choice in the famdamly

but living is not cheap there.

However, living is cheap in Southland.

Yes, I said Southland.

Southland.

Southland.

It's not really a place anyone thinks about 

When I saw a cool community development role there, I 

took a look at housing opportunities 

- renting and buying -

and soon enough found myself looking at houses in Otago.

Southland is not a big place,

at all.

Like it's a bonus that it's a couple of hours drive to Queenstown,

or to Dunedin and you could always go visit Stewart Island.

Not that I've had any desire to do so,

simply because getting across Foveaux Strait sounds horrific,

traumatic and scary, really scary. 

There are a few jobs in Hamilton and 

I'm applying like for many of them to see what happens.

Maybe we'll stay here,

maybe we will be elsewhere.

Maybe I should just apply for jobs where we want to live.

Hmmm.....

NZIPIM & social media

Let me say that in New Zealand,

as with most countries,

we have particular areas that are much derided

as of the banjo playing, six toed, no teeth, cousin marrying ilk.

Southland is generally that place for us.

I flew from Hamilton in the north

(also much derided as a bland no hoper town)

to Invercargill about as far south as you can go
on Monday to speak at the

NZIPIM South Island conference.

I also spoke to their North Island conference

a week or so ago about the following.

Email Etiquette - yes there is such a thing

and

Social Media - my favourite thing at the moment.

Email is actually a tricky thing

because how we use email is changing.

Originally, like 18 years ago, email was considered to be like letters.

We would write long involved letters which heaps of information.

Now we pass information along very quickly and

emails have been an easy way to get things off your desk and

on to anothers.

Email use is decreasing as the younger generations move to

even more instant modes of information sharing like twitter.
More instant and shorter.

My next presentation was on social media.

Which is our theme for the week

(see previous post).

Ok kiwi farmers and social media haven't really gelled

 namely because rural broadband has been pretty sucky.

But that is changing,

not just because the Rural Broadband Initiative

is bringing broadband to most rural schools

(please note: most is not all)

and thus some

(please note: some is not remotely all)

rural homes will enjoy better Internet access,
but also due to better cell phone coverage.

In my humble opinion,
 social media is best used on a smart phone,

preferably an iPhone in my biased and totally converted opinion.

So yesterday I took the farm consultants over using twitter

and how one might use it to connect over what
one may choose to connect with others about.

So here's the thing that most newbies do not understand about twitter

it is all about creating

communication, connection and communities.

Seriously it is.

Communication, connection and communities.

Sums it up.

Here's the other thing....

like most things, twitter is what you make it.

You can be totally immersed and involved
gaining solid, trustworthy, surprising connections

or participate as much as you want to or not,

or lurk and just watch the conversations.

With all of the millions of tweets each day you only ever see

a fraction of what happens.

So what I have done is create rules for myself to manage my time and involvement.
My rules are simply too many dogs, cats or lunch photos or tweets
I do not follow you.
If you blitz twitter with inane comments,
I do not follow you.
If you tweet once a day but you tweet a heap all at once,
I do not follow you.

As far as time is concerned,
either twitter is something you make time for or you don't.
When you get practiced and savvy at using it
it takes no time at all.
As far trusting information on twitter,
use the same rules as you do when you meet people in person,
do they seem trust worthy? 
Then chances they are.
You learn which are reliable sources of info which are not.
Just like life.

Tomorrow's forum all about farmers and social media.
It is about putting faces to places and jobs.
Help the world to realise that the food chain starts somewhere
and there's some serious pressure on our farmers.

My goal to use twitter to create agvocates
and who knows what can happen????

Anyway back to Invercargill.
As we were all seated on the plane to leave,
the hostee removed a half drunk bottle of beer
from a particularly hairy passenger
who had arrived with crutches but was walking fine.
Interesting people in Southland.
I think the crutches were insurance for any speed wobbles later on.

Other exciting thing was that RadioNZ Rural News picked up
on our wee Social Media for Farmers Forum
and I was interviewed for tomorrow's news.
I was quite chuffed about that.
See you at #AgChatNZ

Farm on.

But back to Gore

It's the first day in a long time that I have been home during daylight and I have discovered that my windows have developed their own insulation courtesy of the stock trucks. It won't be a case of washing the windows as chipping away the mud.

But back to Gore, which is now a week ago - sorry about my slackness but Nat Com is all consuming :-)

First things, for those of you who have not driven out in the countryside for a while, this is pretty much what you see - the back of a Fonterra milk tanker and in the South Island you get that view for ages cause it's hard to find passing lane.

And when you get to Gore after six hours of driving you feel like this

because even though the locals are wandering around in t-shirts, it is cold and you can tell cause they have the heating on already. Lovely toasty warm cafes and country clubs - mmmmmm.

So whats Gore famous for and why should you go there?

there's the Creamoata factory with Sargent Dan

and Sam the Ram

To be fair Southland has a proud history of settlement, farming and moonshine. They are our hillbilly's and what's great about them is that they have a strong sense of community and place. They are rightly proud of Gore.

Gore is a special place....with special people who roll their 'r's'

Look! Here is one of those special people now.

Can you see her, there on the left.

I was having a zen moment taking photos of flowers in a wee park when this woman came up to me to ask if I was aware that I had captured her image and she was worried about her security.

Fair enough.

I explained to her that I was aware of her kind of concerns and that I didn't put photos of people faces on my blog unless they knew I was going to - just in case they are mass murderers and I wouldn't want to blow their cover, y'know how that can be.

She went on to tell me that she had been grabbed by a stranger (please note: all scary strangers are men by default) and he wrenched her arm quite badly and pushed her into her friend.

I'm not sure how she equated being on my blog and being attacked by a stranger. All I could do is encourage her to hurry home before dark, at least hurry away from me so I could go stand on a Main Street corner and wait for Wazza my undie contact.

No I didn't watch out for strangers who might give me a random bash - I figure there are enough people who have my back that karma would make life very difficult for him if he did.

Gore can be quite a strange place.

It will be stranger still come July when the Young Farmers come to town.

Bludy Southland

I do actually like Southland, it's just that it's a blighted by bizarre experiences.

Yesterday/this morning's overnighter was the usual mix of the mad, feral and lost time. Actually maybe Lost would be a good comparison.

So driving to Gore is OK, long and uneventful which is actually the best kind of car journey. Gore was freezing... for me. The locals were in various stages of undress so clearly the cold doesn't bother them. I got to experience the cold in all it's glory while I waiting on a street corner for Wazza, my underwear contact (just to clarify because that is a very dodgy image - we are organising NZYF undies. Don't worry, I'll let you know when they are on sale).

Anyway skip a few hours until I got to my hotel room at about 11.30pm, ready to crash into bed, ready for my 5.30am wake up for my 6.45am flight back the land of the living.

As I walked along the corridor I vaguely noticed there was a woman lying unconscious just along from my door. There was vomit and clothes nearby so I assumed she was drunk, checked she was breathing, in recovery position and went to bed. The hallway is only accessible to those staying the hotel so I wasn't too concerned about her overall safety.

45minutes later I heard her mumbling and knocking on doors, someone asking if she was ok, to which she must have say yes cause he closed the door, then more and louder mumbling and more and more banging on doors. More voices and then none. Then more of her, louder still. Until she was banging and banging and banging on my door saying "Let me out"

By this stage I was thinking a few ways I could let her out from my third floor window. Instead I got up and asked her if she was ok and tried to keep her quiet. Just then appeared an angel of mercy in the form of the manager and another guest who was the owner of a previous heard voice. As I turned to talk to them, the drunk woman slipped into my room, into the bathroom and made use of the facilities in the dark - light switch was on the outside (hehe). The poor manager was mortified and after a bit went in and hauled a very floppy woman out of my bathroom and into her room next door.

To the sound of her throwing up I sank into a peaceful, if brief sleep.

P.S. This is the second vomitous carpetous experience I have had while away on NZYF business in the space of two weeks - neither of the perpetrators Young Farmers members, both were old enough to know better.

It never rained!

True, absolutely true. It did not rain at Waimumu/Gore/Invercargill

I was thrilled.

In fact it was hot, earth parching hot and the best thing there was no cold Southerly to ruin the hot, hot sun.

Dunc and I drove for seven hours to Waimumu - from wintery Canty to balmy Southland - visited with the Waitane Club chair Don and soon to be Mrs Don, Jess at the NZYF stand.

They are a young power team if I ever met one.

Next day, Thursday Dunc dropped me and President Richie

(there are a few Richies in NZYF - this one is a sharemilker from Bay of Plenty who also has kiwifruit and in his downtime is President of NZYF)

anyway we were dropped off at Waimumu Field Days

(in Southland, dropping off means an hour each way - thanks Dunc)

I got to watch my first ever fencing competition.

these are the winners. You'll notice not a sword in sight.

They are Waitane Club members and are not fencing contractors

I think they are dairy farmers.

This upside downness is why I could/would never build a fence,

that and I don't know how.

And kneeling - not my thing at all.

and fiddling around with wire

and having to use upper body strength

and I would get crazy about perfect spacing of the wires or the gate not hanging evenly and you have two hours to get the fence done according to the instructions given so it's not like you just rock up and wack a fence up.

That's what you do on your own farm when it only has to keep stock in.

This was a Otago/Southland Region competition organised by MoffDog

(that might actually be spelt MoffDawg, will have to check)

I would post a photo of him but quite frankly his shorts are too short and have holes in them.

At the end everyone (one girl, yay Rebecca! rest are lads) stands around and has a beer.