Ashleigh and Pudsey - Winners Britain's Got Talent 2012

Audition Semi-Final Final Announcing the winners and final performance

Sweetening the Deal

A young friend of mine in Ireland is an IT specialist, entrepreneur, software developer and consultant.  Being a consultant is like being unemployed but you can hand out business cards and deduct expenses. Only it is nice to have something to deduct expenses from.

His wife suggested he improve the family cash flow or she was taking junior and going back to mother, or looking for a better offer or something equally desperate.  So Wayne, somewhat reluctantly like Andy Capp, started reading want ads and sending out resumes.

The trick of course is to stand out from the crowd, as any marketer can tell you and as Wayne knew well.  So he positioned himself, not as an IT specialist of which there are many and a dime a dozen, but as an email specialist, with extensive experience in automated emailing.

As an example so you don't think it is just spam, as I did when he told me, automated emails are the kind you get when you subscribe to something that tell you your subscription has been received and the newsletter will be shipped weekly to your inbox when you confirm your address by clicking the link.  And that sends out the newsletter on a weekly basis.  Etc.

As it happens, Amazon.ir was looking for exactly just such a person.  Wayne got called for an interview, and another, and another.  He was down to the last interview and very excited about the job when his wife provided him with a way to sweeten the deal.  Apparently she was excited about the job too, or more like the cash flow.

One dozen home-made Amazon cupcakes

They went over wonderfully well and Wayne is now gainfully employed.

Askania Nova - Research Station, Biosphere and Zoo-Park

The steppes as they once were

Askania Nova started out as a sheep ranch back in the 1890's.  A German chap ran 300,000 sheep on the grasslands.  In 1919 the Red Army shot the current owner who refused to move off and confiscated the property. It was declared a preserved area and gradually became a scientific research institute, along with the virgin steppe biosphere reserve. At the peak of its fame it constituted 40,000 ha or about 100,000 acres, of which 30,000 ha was research institute and 10,000 ha was virgin steppe reserve.

The research institute was famous for animal breeding, developing many new breeds of beef cattle, sheep and pigs. The wool sheep hybrids they developed were some of the best in Russia.

Wool sheep with crossbred meat type lambs. Shearing is end May.

Today the biosphere reserve and the zoo-park and botanical garden is under one management while the research institute is under another - in this case our friend Yuri.  Yuri was in the same beef and forage course as Tanya back in 1999 so the three of us have known each other for a while.

Yuri and I and some of his staff in front of the main building

The walkways in the botanical garden were crawling with snails.  Need garlic butter.

Perils of the open road

Wednesday morning we left for Askania Nova. 

On our way out of town a flash of colour caught me eye and I glanced sideways at two women who were walking along the sidewalk.  Of course, right then the car hit a hole in the road.
"Watch the road, not the women!"
"My dear, you know I only look at other women to remind myself how beautiful you are and how lucky I am to be married to you".
She replied in Russian.  I didn't catch it all but it may have had something to do with romance and travel.

An hour later we are stopped at a light in Krivii Rih.  There is a stunning drop-dead gorgeous blonde on the crosswalk, tight white dress, hemline and neckline threatening to meet in the middle.  I closed my eyes.
"I am not looking.  I will not look".
"Oh, go ahead and look at her.  She will never look at you".

Golf Quotes

1. These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow. ~ Sam Snead

2. I was three over today: One over a house, one over a patio and one over a swimming pool. ~ George Brett

3. Actually, the only time I ever took out a one-iron was to kill a tarantula. And I took a 7 to do that. ~ Jim Murray
4. The only sure rule in golf is - he who has the fastest cart never has to play the bad lie. ~ Mickey Mantle

5. Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you're not good at them. ~ Kevin Costner

6. I don't fear death, but I sure don't like those three-footers for par. ~ Chi Chi Rodriguez
7. After all these years, it's still embarrassing for me to play on the American golf tour. Like the time I asked my caddie for a sand wedge and he came back ten minutes later with a ham on rye. ~ Chi Chi Rodriguez

8. The ball retriever is not long enough to get my putter out of the tree. ~ Brian Weis
9. Swing hard in case you hit it. ~ Dan Marino
10. My favorite shots are the practice swing and the conceded putt. The rest can never be mastered. ~ Lord Robertson
11. Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the clubs and the fresh air. ~ Jack Benny

12. There is no similarity between golf and putting; they are two different games, one played in the air, and the other on the ground. ~ Ben Hogan

13. Professional golf is the only sport where, if you win 20% of the time, you're the best. ~ Jack Nicklaus

14. The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf. It's almost a law. ~ H. G. Wells

15. I never pray on a golf course. Actually, the Lord answers my prayers everywhere except on the course. ~ Billy Graham

16. If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play at it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf. ~ Bob Hope

17. While playing golf today, I hit two good balls. I stepped on a rake. ~ Henny Youngman

18. If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball. ~ Jack Lemmon

19. You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work. ~ Lee Trevino

20. I'm not saying my golf game went bad, but if I grew tomatoes, they'd come up sliced. ~ Lee Trevino

Lost in Translation

A long time friend was promoted about 6 months ago to Director of the Agriculture Reseach Centre at Askania Nova, in the heart of the Ukrainian Steppes.  Askania Nova is also home to a large nature reserve with many thousands of animals and birds.  It is managed by the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences so is under our friend's jurisdiction, I believe.

Przewalski's Horses at the Askania Nova Nature Reserve

Tanya and I promised to go down to see him this spring and so we leave on Wednesday morning and will drive down.  Our excuse is a one-day seminar on dairy and beef production which will be held there on 17th, sponsored by another friend's genetics company.  So I have a short presentation to give at that and Yuri asked if I would give a presentation the next morning to his research staff, too.

Tanya offered to translate for me, which thrilled me no end.  English to Russian won't be too bad for her as she has heard much of this before in both languages at other presentations I have made and is familiar with most of the concepts.  Yesterday she was going through my PPT slides and making sure they were translated and that she understood them.  She fixed several areas that had needed work and got me to explain a great many things in detail to her so she understood.

I am not always patient in explaining concepts to someone whom I think should understand them and was a bit short on a couple of occasions.  At supper I apologized and thanked her for not killing me.  She said "The evening is not over yet".

Mothers' Day

When the kids were in elementary school, if a parent volunteer were needed for a school outing, I would go as often as possible.  We had a full-size 8-passenger van and could haul lots of kids if necessary.  For many of those years, Ella was home with preschoolers, ours and others, and besides it was an excuse to skip work.

When #1 Son was in Kindergarten, the class went for a morning outing to the Canada Geese hatching grounds at Wascana Park.  I was the only father in the crowd.  When we had everyone herded into the fenced area, the teacher took over control of her class and said "All you mothers, sit over there".

I spoke on behalf of the parents at his Grade 8 Graduation exercises some years later and recalled the incident, commenting that I had been called a Mother before but usually as part of a compound word.