BACK AFTER SO LONG

Have come back to this blog after some 4 years on an afternoon where I have some time to kill while I wait for the troops to do some work before I can continue.

Since the last post, I acquired a contract as a CFO at a privately owned group of companies with one of Auckland's rich families. One of the family owners still works partially in the business for about 3-4 hours a day and the other other died some time ago.  This place is a memorial to hard work and calculated risk taking.  There are 3 of us senior managers who run the company with all up about 50 staff scattered across 6 operating companies and 20 investment companies.

The owner and my fellow managers are huge fun to work with.  The owner loves his toys and we have a company jet because he has piloted planes and helicopters for many years.  Great getting around NZ without queuing, security, late planes and traffic to and from the airports.  Fantastic.  Boy do you feel like a celeb when pulling up to a regional terminal in a private jet.  A trip to the South Island and back can be done in half a day whereas by commercial planes it is an early start and a late finish.  I will return with stories as time permits.

THE NEXT CAREER PHASE

My contract was extended from ending 31 December last year to end 31 March.  I have been feeling for some weeks that the current project I am working on is at the stage where my work is almost complete.  Also, there is much talk about restructuring and the 'feel' of the organisation is such that I thought it unlikely my contract would be rolled a further 3 months.  Well, it was confirmed yesterday that my contract will not be extended after 31 March.  I came here originally in October 2008 on a three month contract, so to last three and a half years is pretty good but the run has come to an end.

My wife has resigned her job as she could no longer work with her immediate colleague.  My disabled son is at a critical stage where he needs to go out into the world but this will take some time (and money) to put in place and I may not have time.  No income will necessitate selling the house (+$1m) and moving out of Auckland into a cheaper 2 bedroom house and semi-retire on as much of the house equity we can realise. Our son cannot join us as the services he needs are only available in large cities such as Auckland and not in small town New Zealand.   But that will take time.  The extra mortgage we ended up with as a result of the incompetent builder and council and our leaky house will also cost us dearly, as the settlement of the legal claim only met about two thirds of our costs.

I am of an age where people will not hire me and this  is why I have stayed here so long.  I have constantly searched for permanent work and other contracts but to no avail.  My network is  now very small.  Many of my bosses and former colleagues are now dead, retired or overseas.  I am quite worried what I am going to do.  In the past I have faced redundancies and contracts ending but as a qualified professional with a lot of experience, I was never unemployed for long.  However, now I am at an age where there is no work.  I can beat the 'thumb suckers' around me at Excel, Powerpoint, Word and they often come to me to provide solutions to problems using these applications.  I read widely, all the financial and business journals and papers, to keep up to date with the latest business trends, theories and practices.  I am not sure what else I can do.

THE NEW COMMUNICATION

My mother-in-law died last week, mid afternoon.  She was born in Scotland, had immigrated to NZ in the 1950s lived in Blenheim for 10 years, lived for many years in Wellington and then moved to Auckland with my family in 2000.  Her deceased husband's family live in Scotland and her family had emigrated to Australia.  We had the immediate family phone numbers but the following day we turned to her address book for contact details for the extended families, the myriad of her friends and distant relatives.  She was 82 and her address book was largely incomplete, with only snail-mail addresses because that is how someone of her age communicated with people.  Toll calls were rarely made as the memories of their cost in past years still resonated and of course email was a complete mystery.

We telephoned at least one person in each of the extended families in Australia and Scotland and a number of m-i-l's close friends and asked them to disseminate the news. My disabled son has been the keeper of the family network as he has had a computer since age 5.  The day after m-i-l died, at our request he went on Facebook and announced the news, as did everyone else in the immediate family with a web prescence, including me. 

Within 2 days we had a long Skype conference with the extended family in Scotland, including aunties, cousins and grandchildren. Her sister-in-law, herself in her 80s, kept remarking in her scottish brogue, "This is much better than a telephone call - and it's free!"  One second cousin who we had not seen since about 1971 when she was about 4 years old, got in contact via Facebook and drove the length of the North Island to attend the funeral.  One young woman who regarded m-i-l as her second mother arrived from Colorado for the funeral!  We were blown away.  She had read the news on my Facebook page. 

But there was a downside.  We  rang my brother-i-l in Sydney within minutes of m-i-l's death to tell him the bad news.  He was obviously very upset.  His daughter from his first marriage was very close to her Nana.  The b-i-l needed some time to compose himself before he could think about tracking his daughter down and telling her.  She lived in Queensland, was always changing flats and never had money for her mobile so it was often difficult to contact her. 

Meanwhile a "partner" of the immediate family (i.e not married to), jumped the gun and got on Facebook late on the evening of m-i-l's death and announced the news on her Facebook page.  The missing daughter went on Facebook that evening and rang her father in hysterics about the news and demanded to know why she had to find out this way.  Of course her dad was forgiven but the whole family was very annoyed at the "partner" as it was not seen as her place to announce the news before the family.

The only person we could not track down was m-i-l's cousin in England, who had been her closest friend as a young woman.  We tried every trick we could.  We found her address on the net which allowed us to interpret m-i-l's illegible, frail handwriting.  But, no phone number, international toll enquiries could not find a telephone number despite the address and the cousin has no web prescence or links in view of her age and because she has no children/grandchildren who might have one.  We will have to write to her.

Overall, however, the whole process was a stunning demonstration of the new, linked communities we now live in.

AUCKLAND CITY OF CAN'TS

Auckland is the city of Can'ts says blogger No Minister. 
http://nominister.blogspot.com/2012/01/auckland-city-of-cants-ctd.html#links

My family used to enjoy setting off our fireworks on St Heliers Beach each Guy Fawkes night.  We were firing off sand out over water - how safe was that.  Then you could watch every other family's fireworks and the Auckland City Council's display down the harbour, if they had one.

One year, the lowlife went on the rampage at Mission Bay and the Police went wittering on instead of doing their job of putting on enough men/women and arresting the little bastards as they fled back west and south in their boy racers .  Result, the Auckland CC banned all fireworks from the eastern beaches.

So, now we let off our fireworks in the front yard at our home, firing up and over the suburb - how safe is that?  Auckland - city of can'ts

LEAVE US ALONE!

I noted 2 articles in today's New Zealand Herald where the interfering busy bodies are again trying to force their view point.  The first involves a call from the Auckland Regional Public Health Service to ban smoking in all public places 'controlled' by the Auckland City Council.  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10779688  The second is a call from The Auckland Council's environment and sustainability forum for a ban on open fires http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10779665.

Of course they are all claiming it is for our benefit and good health as it will stop second hand smoke hazards.  What a complete crock.  I am an ex-Wellingtonian and I can tell you that Auckland is windy.  The wind in  Auckland is not usually as strong as Wellington but is is equally prevalent.  It is rare to have a wind free day here.  I followed a Council diesel bus yesterday and had to put my air conditioning on recirculating to stop the huge clouds of black smoke entering my car.  Unlike a pedestrian or beach goer I could not move away without causing an accident.  That might be a better place to start rather than worrying about the chances of cigarette smoke blowing across a pavement or beach.  (Oh by the way, I protest not out of self-interest but out of principle.  I gave up a 30 a day habit in 1989 so am a big fan of non-smoking).

UNION BULLYING

In the 70s my wife and I owned a small retail business.  A representative of the Retail Workers Union turned up one day and demanded to talk to our staff.  These were the days of compulsory unionism.  The Union would negotiate with the Retailers' Association each year.  Any agreement reached was compulsory and imposed on every retailer regardless of whether you belonged to the Association or not (which we did not being too small to afford the Association fees).  Also, any employees had to be members of the Union.  The Union  had the right to enter our premises, interview staff and to examine the wages book. 

One of our young staff had just started and was not a union member. The Union Rep told her she must join and must start paying the weekly fees, which amounted to about 5% of her gross wages.  She refused.  The Rep called us over and told us she had to join.  We demurred and said it was up to her.  The Rep left and 3 days later a letter arrived from the Union stating we had to fire our staff member if she did not join the Union within 10 days.  We ignored it.  A month later, the Rep returned with some local Union big wig in tow (as a number of the surrounding retailers had similarly ignored the Union demands).  The big wig demanded the poor lass join the Union.  Again she bravely faced them down and refused.  He turned to us and said we had to fire her.  We said no.  He looked around the shop and said to us "It would be shame if that big plate glass window got broken."  We replied, "Insurance will take care of that."  "How long will you get cover if the window gets broken weekly?" he replied.  We got the message.  We gave the girl a pay increase to cover the fees and she joined the Union.  Go the Ports of Auckland, smash the bastards.

I THINK I'LL BE WHARFIE

Watching the Ports of Auckland scrap with the wharfies union  triggered some memories.  I remember in my late 20s when I was climbing my way up the corporate ladder after obtaining my finance degree, I was ran into one of my boyhood neighbours.  His uncle was a big time union and TUC leader and his father was an organiser on the Wellington wharves.  My friend, his father, brother and brother in law all worked on the wharves.  He was a year younger than me but earned twice what I was on at the time despite me having just made finance manager in a bank.  My father said that I would out-earn him in later years.  He was right but I worked out the difference in earnings and made some assumptions about his and my likely increases and worked out I would be about 50 before I caught him in total income earned over the years and in present value terms I would not catch him before 60.  Of course, he had the income while his family were young while I was always broke through the same period. 

The immediate and extended family were all avowed communists, including the big union boss.  He used to ride around in a new German car provided each year by the Union while his members and those of our suburb who could afford cars, drove English bombs 20 to 30 years old.  When at college I read Animal Farm by George Orwell, the whole thing clicked and I think my loathing of communism and unions arose from then. 

Despite what I saw at the time as their political hypocrisy, the family were great people and the stalwarts of many of the sport clubs in our area.  The father was a self-taught man of great humour and could have wonderful discussions with you on politics, acknowledging the irony of being able to have such a debate thanks to capitalism, whereas communism would have shot us both for having such debates. 

With age you realise we all get through life as best we can and the rancour and fixed views of youth soften.  I now remember them all with great affection and mourn their deaths as part of my childhood disappearing.