Hi all,
I hope
all of you are feeling fighting fit :-)
Life is
still busy-busy here. I have just taken on some management lecturing at NMIT
due to a tutor going off to have bypass surgery - Keith Coman, for those of you
who know him. His surgery (last Friday) went well, but he is out of action for
6 weeks to two months. At this stage I have only committed myself for filling
in for this coming term, though the head of the Business School has left the
door wide open if I want to continue doing a bit of lecturing. Lessens their
risk, having a bit of extra tutor cover.
My first
couple of lectures this week went well - just a tutorial on Friday now and LOTS
of reading to refamiliarise myself with the subject and get up to speed. The
class has six nationalities (Kiwis, Taiwanese, Chinese, Malaysians, German and
Swiss), which makes for an interesting mix.
Jan is
slowly recovering from his surgery. However, he is not doing too badly - after
all, he was off fishing in the sounds over the weekend (and came home with some
Snapper and Kahawai). Max & Karen are coming around on the weekend to smoke
the Kahawai and have dinner afterwards, so that should be great.
We are
also catching up with Jenny this Friday night as she is up in Nelson doing some
more mistletoe work. We are going to pop out to her folk's place with some
dessert - and to find out how Donald Junior is as he has just, like Jan, had
his tonsils out.
I haven't
heard how Adam Saleem went in the London Marathon - hopefully he will drop me a
line & let me know.
On
Saturday I was given a presentation by a distributor from NSE, or Nu Skin
Enterprises, trying to sell me "PhotoMax". Having done some internet
digging, this is a many tentacled company, including Big Planet, DVD Movie
Magic, MaxCast, Pharmanex, NUS and Global Internetworks (all associated
Multi-Level Marketing companies).
It was a
fairly slick presentation, and it smelled like Amway (you can take by that
comment that I may have been presented to, but I am not sold).
Buying
into NSE's PhotoMax required a US$3k start up investment, which was glossed
over very quickly, as was the US$100/month purchasing required to stay in the
scheme. That's $4,200 in the first year, roughly NZ$110 a week, which would buy
me enough weekly labour to do the cleaning, the washing, walk the dogs a couple
of times and have some town trips run for me. So a not-inconsiderable
investment.
I had a
look at NSE's stock market figures and found their listed financials. They
turned over $1.1b in 2006 for 100,000 'distributors', thus the average
distributor generates revenue of $11,000 pa. However, profit is only $32.8m,
which translates to $328.00 per distributor.
Not
forgetting that this scheme costs you US$4,200 to belong in the first year, Mr
or Ms Average Distributor then makes a loss of US$3,872 (NZ$5,200)... hmmm.
Hardly the stuff that dreams are made of.
Additionally,
I was not sold by NSE's product, after having a trawl around the internet at
other similar products - all purchasable online without any up-front fees. All
I can say if any of you have this deal thrust at you, be very, very careful. It
looks very slick, but I think there are lots of buried fish hooks in it.
As
mentioned last time, our next trip will be in May to Hanmer for a luxury
weekend, then a more budget Hanmer weekend in July with some of the Hutties.
June 15-17 we should be in Chch for the for UWH Secondary School Regional
Champs (we are waiting on the kids voting whether want to go or not).
Of course
we now have a clash for the regionals -Jan's exam is on the afternoon of the
day that we are supposed to be leaving for Chch. We have to try & see if he
can sit his exam early. Next it will be that I am invigilating an exam on the
same afternoon!
Next Jan
will have to start planning what course to do next.
And we
hear that Andreas and Katrin may be heading over to our side of the world this
Christmas, which will be great. Our fingers are crossed for a confirmed
booking!
Look
after yourselves, everyone. Alles liebe :-)
Sam & Jan
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