Of 2014+

This is my first blog for this year. I'm not sure why but I seem to have had a dose of "bloggers block" and I'm not convinced I'm fully shot of it yet.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of my goals for the year. They do say they peer pressure can help you achieve goals so they're better posted online than kept in a drawer somewhere

Overall Goal for 2014 : To improve who I am, become the best father I possibly can be and make an effort to improve the lives of others

1. Russian :

Get GCSE Russian by the summer. (This is the b......d!)

2. Stay Fit 

Swim at least 3 times each week and do sets. Run at least twice and match minimum times.

3. Shop, Store, Prep and Use Food Well

Shop wisely but above all stop wasting so much food. There's so many people going to bed hungry in this world. throwing away food is just wrong.

4. Read More Self Improvement Books

Read a book each month. I've just read Dan Pink's "To Sell is Human" wow it's good.

Begin with one on good parenting

5. Learning and Development

Keep a better record of the things I learn -- get to know and use Evernote much better

6. Do More Family Stuff

Communicate and appreciate

7. Do at Least One Thing Each Month Because It's New or Challenging 

To be published here end of the year

Of One Great Place After Another Part II

It was a beautiful day yesterday and we decided to return to Kinbane Head and kick around there for a few hours for Boxing Day. We never made it. With about three miles to go we took a road signed "Fair Head" and made yet another fantastic discovery.

What we found were glorious walks over wonderful countryside much of it on the cliff's edge with drops of many hundreds of feet to the stoney beach below. Having a fear of edges, knees turned close to jelly the near er we got to a cliff face.Watching three climbers abseil over the edge turned said jelly an awful putrid pink colour! Still a great day though..

Of One Great Place After Another

The wonderful thing about Northern Ireland is that you can keep discovering great new places to visit that few others seem to know about. Recently, Anna and I took the neighbour's dog to the north coast and came across one small sign in a hedge pointing to "Kinbane Head". "Never heard of it" we both declared and decided to give it a go.
For me it's just as interesting as Giant's Causeway and certainly more sheltered. Whilst there we were completely alone and the views were just outstanding. The only one who didn't seem too sure was the dog, Remi. There was nowhere on the stoney beach to launch himself into the sea. This might have been just as well with all seals that were kicking around. I'm not sure how they might have taken to their awkward interloper who is just too playful for his own good at the moment.

Of Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I went to Ballintoy on the north coast of Northern Ireland recently with Anna and the In-laws. Vitali spied a rather interesting wall and joked that he would like to see how far he could walk along it before getting washed off. It was a mistake, for I couldn’t resist the temptation of trying to do just that without of course, the getting washed off bit.

My risk assessment went something like this :

    - Only one wave in four seems to be big enough to make it over the wall

·        -  Of those waves only 50% seem to be big enough to wash you clean off the wall

·         - If you do get washed off you fall into a very big pool. It’s deep enough to break your fall but cold enough to kill you if you don’t get out inside 30 minutes

With all of these three things clearly in my favour I determined it was worth a punt and safely made my way to the end of the wall. What I hadn’t bargained for was the neighbour’s dog wanting to join me. Of course he made his way across without having made any of the above assessments and indeed with no reference at all to what the waves were doing. It was agony as I watched him cross and I saw a wave come right in and give him a good soaking.

We duly studied for a good ten minutes what the sea was capable of then noticing a break in the lashing waves made a dash for it. And No I didn't get taken off the wall by a 6ft wave but very nearly a mad dog on the end of a lead.

Fun, but in a risky sort of way.

Of Annual Review Parts 1 & 2

Wow! Is our marketing team on fire at the moment or what? We've just developed a great Powtoon Promo for our flagship event. Click Annual Review of Employment Law Conference to preview. We've also just put together a great video promoting our next conference at the Ramada, Belfast. To preview this take a look here : Legal-Island AR Event

Of Going after Russian with the Cavalry

I don't want to speak too soon but I think I may have cracked this learning Russian melarkey. Since the beginning of the year I've worked out how best I learn, when in the day works well for me and just what type of language course or courses suits me best.
I'm doing a hour every day first thing in the morning before I swim. This is an hour's audio work with Pimleur's Russian. This course is great if you just want to learn how to say Russian phrases but if you're after grammar it's next to useless. Enter Michele Thomas's "Russian Foundation Course" by Natasha Bershadski. This is by far the best thing I found if you want to get to the centre of what is a very complex language and make your way out alive. Finally, there's RussianPod101.com which, for a monthly subscription, gives you access to a whole suite of lessons online from Beginners right through to Advanced. Their lessons are in short bites of around 20 minutes. They're best I find for learning the written language and improving your vocabulary. Vocab is best augmented by introducing associations and the more silly and vivid the more they're likely to work for me at least.

I've also discovered what doesn't work for me. You can buy a host of Apps offering the Top 1,000 Russian words to learn but unless a word is in context I struggle to remember it. Russian films with English subtitles haven't helped much either. If they're good I tend to forget it's a language lesson and up enjoying the movie. If they're bad (and there's a good few Russian films in this league I've discovered) I tend to nod off.

Above all, you have to keep at it. It's a slog but one made much easier now with Apps, and MP3s and Ipads. How we managed in years gone by with just a teacher and a piece of chalk I'll never know. Perhaps most of us never did.

Of When there's Overweight and OVERWEIGHT

I jumped on the electronic scales this morning at the Antrim leisure centre to check whether this new fitness regime is paying off or not. One thing startled me; another worried me and a third thing amused me.
It seems I'm 6 ft 1in tall. I had always thought I was 5ft 11 3/4inches. Clearly, I've be misleading medics, tailors and suit hire people since I was 18 or thereabouts.
I now weigh 13lbs 7st 12 oz which is a full two stone lighter than I was this time last year. Well done the Tim Ferris diet and Barry Phillips for the discipline for keeping to it for it's not the tastiest grub going.
My BMI is 25.1. According to the print out, if you're 25 or less you're of an ideal weight. So this makes me overweight. What amused me is that if I were to end up in the next category I'd still be overweight but the overweight is in uppercase! It's a very pc world we live in. Or should that PC?