Naked

4 May 2009Family, Photos, TravelAlistair Lattimore

In the mid 1990’s, a group of the Lattimore and Morrison family whom live in Australia made our way back to New Zealand to relax and catch up with our extended family. While in the South Island of New Zealand, the weather was perfect for snow skiing and we made our way to one of the most well known New Zealand skiing holiday destinations of Queenstown.

During that trip, my older brother Cameron and I were exploring the Queenstown shops and found our way into a tourist style gift shop – full of the obligatory items such as stuffed Kiwi plush toys. One of the things that caught my attention while looking around were necklace pendants made from jade in the shapes of traditional Maori tribal markings. I was quite taken by them and on a subsequent visit to the shop, picked one up to bring home to Australia.

Once putting on the necklace, I didn’t take it off for months and it turns out, for good reason. As summer approached that year, I was around at a friends place to cool off in the pool. No wanting to damage the leather necklace strap, I took it off and sat it on a near by seat. You can imagine how horrified I was when some friends were fooling around beside the pool, knocked the chair and the jade pendant hit the bricks and broke in half! I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, so I thought I’d see if I could repair it and thanks for some an unknown super-esque glue available at the time – it worked a treat.

Since fixing it that afternoon, I have literally taken it off a handful of times in over 10 years. When I say handful, I mean literally, I could count the times on my fingers – so few in fact that Claire hasn’t seen me without it in over 10 years. It has survived football, soccer, karate, tennis, swimming, water skiing, wake boarding, motorbikes, BMX, rollerblading and every other thing I can imagine and it made it through completely unscathed.

Enter our beautiful son Hugo in September 2008, positively gorgeous and has little fiddle fingers. He takes great delight in touching, grabbing, fiddling, smooshing, yanking or banging on anything he can get his hands or feet on to. For the last month or so, he has loved fiddling with my necklace and it has stood up to the test – until last week when, after years of wear and tear – is finally undone by an eight month old baby boy!

The question on my mind now is – after it being with me for such a long time – should I replace the worn leather strap and return it to its rightful place around my neck or simply move on?

Official White House Photostream

3 May 2009WebsitesAlistair Lattimore

Barack Obama has done some incredible things in the online space leading into the United States Presidential Election and continues to innovate in that space after. Recently I came across an official Whitehouse photo stream, published for the world to explore on Flickr. There are some great shots, which give an outsider a small amount of insight into the world of the President of the United States of America.

CVC Asia Pacific & UBS Agree On Stella Group Financial Restructure

1 May 2009News, WorkAlistair Lattimore

Today CVC Asia Pacific (65% owners of Stella Group, parent company of Stella Hospitality Group) annoucced that they’ve negotiated a financial restructure with UBS. This is great news for Stella, especially following rampant speculation in the press about the financial health and viability of the company. I’m excited to see official statements flowing into the mainstream media, hopefully this will stem the tide of unwarranted press and we can get on with business.

Red Means Go

24 April 2009General, Travel, WorkAlistair Lattimore

Earlier in the week I was on my way home from work, driving through the tale end of peak hour traffic when I very nearly smashed into the back of the car in front of me.

The traffic was moving at about 80Km/h in this section of road and it was predicably smooth, as opposed to fast then slow. As I came over the crest of a hill and for reasons unknown, the traffic 10 cars in front of me decided to suddenly break. The heavy breaking rippled through the lane of traffic as per normal, however the two or three cars directly in front of me were caught out by the crest of the hill. To compound matters, the car directly in front of me had some issues which their break lights – specifically, breaking caused his break lights to turn off instead of on!

Night fall was upon us and everyone already had their driving lights on. With the free flowing traffic through this section of road, there wasn’t a reason for the driver in front of me to break – so I didn’t notice the reversal of his break lights earlier. Unfortunately for me, that meant I first realised something was wrong after he stomped on the break pedal to respond to the heavy breaking 10 cars in front.

As you can imagine, I was very happy that there was adequate breaking distance for my heavy little tank of a car to slow down or I’d be catching a lift to work for a while.

Motorists Are Not Mind Readers

19 April 2009GeneralAlistair Lattimore

The M1 is a major piece of road infrastructure linking the Gold Coast, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast together in South East Queensland. During peak hour it carries a staggering amount of traffic and a surprisingly high amount even in off peak windows due to the arterial nature of the motorway.

When road works need to be carried out on the motorway, if possible they are performed in off peak periods – often quite late into the night as to avoid massive congestion and delays during peak hour. However even late into the night (after 10PM) – the motorway is still servicing a lot of traffic.

To avoid any unnecessary congestion on the roads, not just the M1 – road crews put out signage to inform motorists that there are works or construction happening ahead. In an ideal world, motorists are informed of the work ahead with enough time that they can safely slow down (if required) or merge lanes with minimal impact.

It’ll come as no surprise that when there is inadequate signage on the roads, motorists are unsure what the appropriate action is to take. Case in point, returning home from Brisbane to the Gold Coast on a Friday night after 10PM at night and there was non-construction road works taking place. There was a sign stating that there was road works ahead but it didn’t inform the motorists to merge and it wasn’t until progressing further around a corner that there was a large flashing sign saying merge left. Unfortunately, by that point the traffic had little chance to merge smoothly as the road was quite busy. To the detriment of the motorists, the flashing sign failed to inform them that they were in fact closing two lanes and not just the right most lane. After the traffic had to come to a near halt to merge once, less than 1Km further down the road it ground to a halt again as it merged left.

In the past, I’ve been relatively critical of councils and road works:

I like the fact that road works are taking place, as it normally means that something is going to improve on the roads that I’m travelling on. What I don’t understand is why the people or companies handling traffic control don’t do a better job of informing motorists of what sort of road works are taking place and what the appropriate response should be from the motorists. As an example, local councils will often put out signs stating that there is mowing taking place or that line markings on the roads are being redone.

Is it too much to ask that traffic control inform the drivers on a 4 lane major motorway, that they need to merge two lanes to the left and not just one?