Bleagh. I'm sick with a crappy cold/cough thingy, and I hate it. I almost never get sick, and I don't do it well at all. There's no-one to look after me on an hourly basis, no-one to stroke my hair and ask me if I'd like a nice drink of hot blackcurrant juice, no-one to tuck me in and bring me a hot water bottle when I need it. I have to be sick all by myself and I don't like it.
Normally I get rid of colds by telling them to go away - and they go - but I wasn't really onto it this time. It kinda sneaked up on me by manifesting as a horribly sore throat for the first few days, but this morning it finally wiped me out. My head hurts, my face hurts, my eyes hurt, my sinuses hurt, my teeth hurt, my throat hurts. Ugh.
Well, at least I managed to keep it at bay during Shift's annual hui. This year we stayed at The Chateau Tongariro, and in addition to organising lots of team-building stuff for us, Shift also arranged for the Auckland and Wellington teams to head on up the mountain for an afternoon's skiing on Friday. It was the most perfect day - warm and sunny - the snow was deep and powdery and the sky was intensely blue. Gorgeous!
A bunch of us had planned to stay on after the hui was over and catch some more action on the slopes on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, but the weather wasn't that great on Saturday, so we ended up with just a handful of people - and boy, were we glad we stayed.
15cm of fresh snow overnight meant that our route up the mountain was as snowy as Tom (our resident snowboarding expert) has ever seen it, and the view was incredible.
As a fairly inexperienced skier I spent much of Friday and Sunday doing beginner/intermediate classes on the lower slopes, while the others went up to the top of the mountain and hurtled down again - but by the end of the weekend I felt way more confident than I had at the beginning - and the others had quite a hard time getting me off the slopes at the end of the day!
I think Shift absolutely rules - I feel so thrilled being part of the team. It's a great feeling to work for the best web design company in New Zealand. This weekend has allowed me to get to know my colleagues better, and it's great to know what totally excellent people they are.
One of the things we focused on this weekend is that we can choose our attitude every day. We watched this video called Fish! about Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle - and how the guys there have made every workday a day filled with fun and laughter - by playing, by being there (being fully present for one another), by choosing their attitude and by continually looking to make someone's day.
It was a great video, and the "choose your attitude" really struck a chord with us Shifties. I heard the phrase being used a lot over the weekend, and you always know something's taken hold in people's minds if they start using it in everyday conversation.
I generally choose to be happy and positive - having the best job in the world makes that pretty easy. I'm not so great at being positive when I'm sick, but I'm working on it. So today I took care of myself, stayed in bed and kept warm - and tomorrow hopefully I'll be back at work building great websites again. 
I hope you like the snow pics. I took the one of the road up to Ruapehu, and fellow Shiftie Ross Howard took the one of The Chateau. The other incredible Ruapehu ski field pics are by another Shiftie, René Held. I couldn't just choose one in the end - they're just too good. Click on any of the pics to see a larger version.
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Technorati tags: Shift, skiing, New Zealand, sickness, choose your attitude, Fish!.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
On being sick, skiing and choosing your attitude
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1 comments:
I hope tomorrow finds you feeling much better! Can't wait to see those snow pics. ;)
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