SIFE World Cup Opening Ceremony!!

We made it! And, as far as we know, all in one piece! The last leg of our flight (Frankfurt to Barcelona) was with Iberia. We were all slightly worried when the lady called out the boarding call in Spanish with no English translation whatsoever! Fingers crossed that they speak English in Spain because otherwise I'll have to rely on my two word Spanish vocabulary (and something tells me that you need to know more than 'Hello' and 'Thankyou' to survive in Spain).

The first thing that strikes you when your feet touch Spanish soil is the beautiful heat. What a relief it is to reach a place where the temperature hovers above zero degrees celsius once in a while (unlike a certain clean green country on the edge of the planet that I will not name..)! And the heat is a good type of heat, you don't get the sharp burning 'cancer-causing' sensation you get in New Zealand during summertime.

The second thing that strikes you are the Spanish customs officials. Well.. they struck us anyway. They accused us of illegally importing electronic goods (namely the stereo and 2 laptops we brought with us for the presentation). Not exactly the most economical way to import electronic goods... $3000 (the cost of a plane ticket from NZ) to import one stereo. I maintain that it was because we brought Sajjad along... I warned the team that it was a bad idea to take a Muslim along with us to Europe but would they listen....

Shrugging off our experiences at Spanish customs & lugging along way too much gear, we managed to make it to the Princess Sophia Hotel, where the Opening Ceremony was due to start. Unfortunately we missed the technical check due to our late arrival time but.. the important thing was that we were in time for the Opening ceremony! If we had videotaped it, it would seem like the most bizarre hyped up thing. But when you're actually there it's a totally different story. You can't help but get consumed in the hype of 40 different countries and an atmosphere of total celebration! Take a look at the pics below and I think you'll see what a unique experience it is!

But the SIFE World Cup is very much a 'flash in the pan' experience.. tomorrow we start our first round of competition and we've only been in the country for around 5 hours! The competition is tough and we have the disadvantage of presenting first up in our round. The team is ready (despite the jet lag) & we're all prepared for the moment we've prepared months for...Fingers crossed!

Funky Frankfurt

Welcome to Europe, home of the lax border controls! I can´t believe it! They actually let me through Customs (& Sajjad too!). However, one German airport officer did ask him for his papers while he was wandering around randomnly.. I guess you can´t blame the officer, it is Sajjad that we´re talking about after all!

We arrived at 5am in the morning & basically had it all to ourselves!

Singapore to Frankfurt flight was pretty uneventful, we were instructed to sleep by Merran...and sleep we did for the entire flight!

As for Frankfurt. The airport has a nice industrial-grey thing going on, which wouldn´t be out of place in a Star Wars movie. Not that I´m complaining... I always had a thing for the Death Star...

We´re stuck here for 8 hours and we´re planning to go through several runthroughs so that we can hit the ground running! Next Stop: Bar(th)elona!

Chillin at Changi

This leg of the trip is somewhat more worthy of a blog entry! Sydney to Singapore... believe it or not we did actually try and get some SIFE related work done. Merran gave us three pages worth of questions, we got out the laptop & the financials, etc.. to prepare but we were somewhat distracted by...well...the movies and games

Seriously! There are kids on these flights and they're showing the Girl Next Door (about a porn star who moves in next door to a nerd) & a doco on Moulin Rouge (showing all the body parts that the Rouge is famous for..). Ben and I were particularly disturbed to see Sajjad staring intently at the screen whilst all of this was going on.

Singapore Airport is awesome as always... you can tell that they have GDP to spare (bastards!). NZ doesn't have GDP to spare, that's why we don't have free internet at our airports and all of our toilet cubicles are littered with pick up lines. Obviously Singapore has free internet otherwise I wouldn't be typing this (I'm cheap I know..) & as for the toilets well... they greet you with big posters featuring words like "refreshing"& they smell (in the words of Ben) like "Bathrooms after women have had showers in them". So refreshing were these toilets that Sajjad managed to spend a good 1/2 an hour in the 'squatting' toilet (which is effectively a well decorated hole in the ground).. he might have been there for longer if Ben hadn't launched a rescue mission.

Anywho.. I better go see watsup with all these fountains and electronic stores littering the place! I'll let you know if my mission not to get arrested in Singapore goes ahead as planned!

Sizzling Sydney

G'day Mate (wow... it's like they speak a whole other language over here)

3hrs down and Only 25 hours to go!!! Ben is trying to setup a blog as we speak.. we all know that it's because he wants to be like me :) He should have set one up by Singapore so I'll provide the link then. He's deciding whether to name it after a air hostess on the plane he believes he has a chance with.. the only flaw in his plan is, as Hayley pointed out, that she's married..but hey! That never stopped Ben!

Other than that, Sydney looks great.. it's hot, well at least looks that way from inside the transit terminal! From here we fly to Singapore where I will undertake to refrain from breaking a single law (which, believe it or not, is a hard thing in Singapore!)! I would challenge Ben to do this as well but I am almost certain that he would fail.

As for everyone else, Sajjad got his halal meal (Ben is particularly pissed off because he also got an extra dessert), Hayley has been remarkably quiet and Tamie tried to dump her drinking cup (full of Tamie germs) in the UNICEF 'donate your change to help hungry kids in Africa bag'...yes... people really touching people.....

Things are about to get a little bit crazy around here....

I have approximately 15hrs until I'm due for check-in at Auckland Airport... and a marathon 45 hours away from the Spain. I'm glad too... I am truly sick and tired of every 2nd person at University telling me that I absolutely HAVE to go see Sagrada Familia, try every form of alcohol the Spanish have ever invented, and bring some Spanish women back with me.

The SIFE group have split in two for the first leg. Katherine, Jake, Asher, & Nicola are flying Emirates via Dubai (I txted Katherine just now to tell her to get me some 'bling' while she's there) and they'll be arriving a few days early. Patrick, Sajjad, & the presenters (Tamie, Ben, Hayley & myself) will be flying Qantas via Sydney, Singapore & Frankfurt. Ironically, we will spend more time in Frankfurt on this trip than we did last year when Frankfurt was our final destination!!

However, with all the commotion around sampling the various alcohols of Spain & Germany (I would say Singapore but given that they ban the chewing of gum I'm not quite sure what their reaction to alcohol consumption would be), nobody's losing sight of the fact that we're travelling to Spain to represent New Zealand. More importantly, we're representing a 24-member strong SIFE team most of whom are happy to stay behind. None of us would be here today if it wasn't for them. Being part of SIFE Waikato 2003 was amazing, but this year's team has simply blown me away. All 24 of them are hard-working and creative individuals who have created real change in their communities. Some people spend their entire lives trying to change the world, these people did it in just under a year.

Which reminds me of a quote from last year. After viewing our presentation at last year's Sustainable Enterprise Forum Rod Oram remarked "I don't know about you, but after seeing that I feel a lot more optimistic about being able to collect my super in a few years time.."

If that was true of last year's team it is even more true of this years.

We're in the times: September 20th 2004.. Waikato Times covers SIFE Waikato's buildup to the World Cup...don't miss it!

How do you describe a legend?

From the left: Sir Edmund Hillary, Sajjad Ali, Patrick Bridgman & myself

From reading my last blog post you would have thought that conquering one's procrastination habit was a challenge worthy of the greatest of adventurers. Maybe it is.. but in my book Mount Everest is pretty much up there with procrastination as one of those vast unconquerable landscapes. Sir Edmund Hillary's achievements have become the stuff of legends (and many a patriotic TV commercial). A man hailing from a land more reknowned for its sheep than its heroes, managed to climb the highest peak in the world and in doing so cause many a wealthy european mountaineer's jaw to drop.

That's where Weetbix commercials leave the legend, but for me that's where the legend begins. The legend of Sir Edmund Hillary is that he didn't stop, indeed he seems never to have stopped...ever ...As a high school student reading books filled to the brim with his achievements I often wondered if he even knew that there was such a phrase as 'resting on ones laurels'. Not only did he climb Everest but he was the first to reach the North & South Poles, and then went on to transform entire communities in Nepal through sheer hardwork and charisma.

This is where we come in, I am lucky enough to be part of SIFE Waikato, The University of Waikato's SIFE team. SIFE is a worldwide organisation that spans more countries than you have fingers on your hands (40 to be exact). It is in fact the largest student organisation in the world. SIFE teams at Universities around the world create and carry out community projects that teach enterprise skills to different groups in the community. A list of SIFE Waikato's projects can be found on our website; they range from helping the Pacific Island community sell Niuean bread to working on the production of a management resource for the disability support sector. SIFE teams then present their results at a National Competition where one team is chosen to represent the country at the SIFE World Cup. SIFE Waikato has won the national competition two times in a row this year and will be going on to compete at the World Cup in Barcelona in two weeks.

It just so happened that Sir Edmund was coming to town as part of the University's awesome new brand campaign and was nice enough (after some much appreciated 'persuasion' from Prof. Clive Gilson ) to lend his name, and backing, to the SIFE Waikato team on videotape. However, as much I was glad to get this extra bit of support I would be lying if I said that the real highlight wasn't actually meeting, talking and listening to this great man face to face. That is truly a once in a lifetime experience.

Not only that.. But I also got to witness the launch of a very special advertising campaign. Sir Edmund Hillary's backing has allowed the creation of something that is quite remarkable and an advertisement that will (hopefully) redefine the tertiary marketing landscape. An achievement that, quite honestly, makes the PR departments of other Universities look like complete crap!

I mean, lets face it, For institutions that charge us $10,000 a year they don't exactly market themselves very well. Consider the fact that Uni students, at the very least, spend 3 years at University. That's $30,000 a year, the price of a Hyundai. Now, I'm sure I've seen Hyundai ads with better slogans than 'Get Over It' and 'It Makes You Think' (which ironically.. Victoria's ad actually don't do, unless they mean 'it makes you think of changing the channel and not coming to Victoria').

So let's just say that Waikato's ad campaign is refreshing and treats those who are aspiring to a University education like the idealistic, energetic, enthusiastic, and mature people they are.. in other words, the campaign is spot on. For those who are interested in seeing it, I'm told it'll be screening nationwide this Sunday evening during the 6PM news on channel one. Break tradition and watch the news for once; Trust me, it'll be worth it

What do you do when you have a million assignments due?

There are some people who think they have procrastination down to an art form. I like to think that I'm one of those people. Such an attitude absolves me of any guilt since it means that my acts of procrastination are merely acts of artistic expression, and who in this day and age would ever deny artistic expression?

If only the world was sympathetic to my cause..

Imagine if you had four assignments to do in the next four days..what is the one thing that you would do? For most of you that thing is probably completing your various assignments. Well, maybe you would clean up your room first, and then do your assignment but the end would be the same. This is the way of the amateur procrastinator.

A professional procrastinator would get up at 4AM in the morning and 'warm up' to his/her assignments by checking his/her emails first. If the professional was unlucky enough to have an empty inbox (and thus no distractions) the professional would then surf his/her favourite blogs before checking out the latest news on all the major news websites. Just to be sure that he/she was receiving accurate information he/she would also surf foreign news websites & spend about an hour translating 'Le Monde' via the 100-character google translator. Now.. after all that current affairs a dose of fun would be needed.

There are a number of solutions to this ill: Nuklear Power and The Onion are particularly good. After a few good laughs it would be time to go to Uni, the professional procrastinator would leave at the time of peak traffic & spend 1/2 hour on the road because of it, arriving just in time to have a conversation with friends. Many heated arguments & other meaningless conversations later everyone would have left & the professional procrastinator would only have his/her work to do?

Luckily a President of the Court of Appeal (Noel Anderson) would be taking a lecture courtesy of Harkness Henry. Now surely no one would pass up the opportunity to listen to the President of the Court of Appeal? Especially if they were a law student (as all good procrastinators are). After 45-mins of listening to a judge reading off a pre-prepared script at a dangerously monotone level, the procrastinator begins to question his/her future career aspirations. This eats up an extra hour or so with the procrastinator concluding that he/she would never stoop to being so boring & that President Anderson wouldn't have been anything like the said procrastinator when he/she was young. The President was probably born with that dark grey suit on.

Nevertheless, the extra tidbits of knowledge that the procrastinator managed to pick up in between daydreaming spells would have been the most valuable thing acheived during the day and in a future procrastination experience he/she might even find him/herself trawling through the Waikato Law Review to read the full transcript.

So, with some new knowledge under the procrastinator's belt what's his/her final step? At 11:23PM the professional procrastinator would get out his/her laptop with all the relevant textbooks and course materials. With nothing else left to do the procrastinator sits down...

And starts up an internet blog.

...

Some people never learn.