Rain, rain go away… Happy Birthday Queen Elizabeth. (If we had a King would it be called King’s birthday?  Doesn’t really have the same ring.) In honour of Queen Elizabeth’s birthday I bought myself a pink polker dot umbrella from the $2 shop for $3.90?! (Must be taking the increase in GST to the extreme)…

Aside from rain the long weekend brought an opportunity for the corporate crew to sleep in, visit friends, read, hit the town, or run a half marathon (whatever you’re into). A number of Del fitties took a trip to the garden city, Christchurch to run the half marathon. Alice, Mandie, Holz, and Rach came away with a half marathon win!! (Win= completing without tripping over, crying, fainting, losing a shoe, or taking a wrong turn) Shot team, fantastic effort!! 

In another sporting discipline, I’ve joined the hard-core Wellington dragon boating team. We have recently kicked off our training with a serious “dry-land” session. Picture this (wish I had taken a photo)… 

• Venue: a Deloitte meeting room (with a view of the sea from the 14th floor to create an atmosphere of being on the water);
• Attendees: a mixture of 15 sporting firm employees from grads to partners;
• Exercise regime: burpees, press-ups, squats etc. (led by big-dog Danny the aerobics man, including necessary vocal encouragement to really “get those legs pumping”).

After half an hour the windows were foggy, our legs were wobbly and the room smelt like a high school gym locker-room. In case you can’t picture us, it looked somewhat like this:

Note: Dragon boating season starts in Feb (dedication)- by the time the season starts this is the goal:

Along with innovative an exercise regime and venue selection (unlike Auckland, Wellington isn’t privy to an in-house gym) the accountant’s of Del House on Featherston have been participating in some innovative thinking. “Innovative accountants”… may sound like an oxymoron to some and perhaps has negative connotations as a result of the Enron fiasco, however (take my word for it) it’s far from this. 

The Wellington Innovation Team has been involved in a number of projects, including “innovation cafes”. The cafes get a group of diverse people together in order to brainstorm solutions to a specific business problem. Note: this is no clouds-on-a-page brainstorm; whiteboard sessions and bullet points are a thing of the past. The sessions are inspired, interactive and inventive. The only rule is you must bring an open mind. This provides an opportunity to exercise the right “inventive” side of your brain when the left “logical” side is getting too big for its boots (can happen when you spend too long working on an excel spreadsheet) and come at a problem from a number of angles, using a number of contemporary tools. So far the team has had a number of success, however it’s only the early stages… watch this space :) !

I’m on a new client this week, in a new office (drinking Dilmah unlike Twinings at the last office)… Will keep you posted.

Good luck for exams!!

Cheers, Lucy :)