Across the Pacific – the Easy Way

This blog post comes to you from sunny Auckland, New Zealand. I am here to do a series of speaking engagements for AXA Insurance – a demanding schedule of 7 presentations in 7 cities in 5 days. Motivational speaking takes a surprising amount of energy, so it will be an intense week – but it also GIVES me a lot of energy, in that kind of positive energy exchange between speaker and audience, so I am really looking forward to it.

Once the speaking tour is over, I will be taking part in the Lake Taupo Relay on the North Island, then heading south with an English friend, Sinead, to explore the South Island. We’ve booked to do the Routeburn Track – one of New Zealand’s classic walks, through spectacular mountain scenery – which will be a real treat. I’ll be posting some photos to my blog – so watch this space!

On a totally unrelated subject, here is some good news for the environment – the stunning success of the Irish tax on plastic bags, which within weeks had led to a reduction of 94 percent in the number of bags being used. Other cities, states and countries are now following suit. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a virtually plastic-bag-free world? Let’s hope that one day history will record that plastic shopping bags were an unfortunate but mercifully brief episode in human progress.