The Life of Philip

Whenever I have finally made a big decision I like to sleep on it before I tell anyone. Mull it over, get used to the idea, and process it myself. Then I let a handful of people know: my parents and family, a couple close friends, and a few others. I also let that sit a day or two, giving them time to respond and us to talk about it.

And then, if I think it's necessary or good to, I do something to let the rest of my friends and those who know me to hear about it. Often in a way that allows me to clearly state one time the details of the decision.

Like I'm about to do in this post.

The past weekend I went to Sydney to relax and see a friend.
This week my good friend Val comes to visit me.

Pictures of both in two weeks.

I have an armload of things I am carrying. Some are small, some are large. Really, it's about to overflow past what my arms are able to carry. If I give you one or two things to carry, the movement to do so will cause everything to tumble and spill.

It's been silent for a while, but this just doesn't seem like the time or place to share, otherwise it may get messy.

I'll just try to tell you what I'm carrying instead:

Autumn. Sydney. Best friend. Frisbee. Friends. Websites. Dinner. YWAM. Car. Two months. Future. Options. Work. Clients. Audio. Music.

Those are a few things.

This is when the Google context-relevant ads become a bit amusing. Apparently Google now can also predict the future. From a recent ad on a page I was visiting:

2008: God's Final Witness
Unprecedented destruction will come in 2008, leading to America's fall.

Man, they just keep making their algorithm better, don't they?

I feel like I'm on an anti-American binge here recently, sorry. At least it's minor stuff.

The royal United Kingdom has just announced and released their new coin designs. I've always wondered what they were going to do once Her Majesty passes on, now I know. These are actually kind of cool, at least from a design perspective, not sure about said design on a coin though. In any case, check it out. It's pretty creative to split up the Royal Arms across several coins to unify them

I was reading some articles online today about the slowing economy in America and the fears of a recession. Most of it centers around the fact that the price for gasoline is at an all-time high. People have to spend more money at the pump and therefore have less money to spend on other things, which in turn hurts a store's income and the economy at large. I can understand that.

The funny thing is that the national average price of gas is $3.22 a gallon. People pay a $65 to fill up their cars. I remember last summer being shocked when a service attendant tried to charge me $55 for my fill-up. It was a mistake, that was the price for the massive truck next to my car, but I was scared about ever having to pay so much to fill up my small tank.

So maybe all of that isn't funny, but here's the twist, I pay $5.36 a gallon here in New Zealand. Yes, that's with all the conversions done. I know my sister in Northern Ireland pays at least that much as well. I'm not complaining, merely observing what the rest of the world probably already figured out - Americans have it easy... or so it seems. You pay more than $2 per gallon less than the rest of the world for gas. And the recession? Well, for one, tech jobs definitely pay more over there than here. Not only have I not found people offering as much on a numerical level, but with the conversion rate (currently it's roughly US$0.8/NZ$1) it's even less. Maybe that's not accurate as I have only seen a small sector of the industry. I do have friends however who are excited to be making NZ$12 or NZ$13 an hour when minimum is $11.something here. Sure, minimum wage here is more than the USA's national average, but it seems that once you get off minimum, people here aren't making as much as in the States.

I'm no economist, these are just my mostly uneducated observations, but it makes me wonder how bad a "slowing economy" is going to be in comparison to the rest of the world?

So I play a lot of Ultimate down here. Usually three times a week. One social day, one league day, and one training day. I recently went to play at a beach tournament in Nelson (which my team placed 2nd in, our only loss over 11 games being the final). Now, the first week of April, a mere two weeks away, is the New Zealand Open and Womens National tourney. And I really want to go play. But it's in Wellington - a plane flight away. Plus tournament entry fee, plus room and board. My guesstimate is around $250 all told. I have the money in hand to pay for all of that, but I'd really like to be able to, you know, pay for rent in a month or two as well.

So I thought, hey, maybe I could ask my friends to pool together to sponsor me to compete at a national level in New Zealand! Now, hopefully this isn't all too late, but from what I've heard, I can still get in. I'll be checking that tonight when I go to play my local league game.

What do you think? Anyone up for a bit of sponsorship? I'm going to setup a sweet little donation/sponsorship page later today, but I wanted to post this right away because of the time difference.

I'll lay out and dive for a disc for you if you sponsor me.

UPDATE: Donate now!