Peggy Turner 1910 – 2007

Went to a memorial service today for an old friend, Peg Turner. Peggy was my grandfathers cousin, but I knew her as our fantastic neighbour from when we lived in mission bay. It was only by chance we discovered we were related.

Peg was an incredible person. She was so active, with the church, with community groups, with her family, around her house. We lived in a block of 3 units, Fe and I at the front, Jim & Daisy Edwards in the middle and Peg at the back. Jim & Daisy didn’t have the greatest health so I used to make sure I did the lawns around the place, and Peg would do all the gardens, including often picking up the clippings with a couple of old licence plates. She was so active for what we thought was a 70 year old woman, imagine our suprise to find out she was 90!

Peg was a huge inspiration to so many people, a real lover of life and someone who just took you for who and what you were. She never pre judged anyone and lived life to the full. She was direct in her speech but caring in her actions. Someone who made a real difference in my life and I hope I have learnt something from her.

I would like to say rest in peace, but that doesnt seem appropriate. Wherever you are Peg, I hope your having a great time.

Happy Birthday to me!

Good friday was my birthday, great day. The fangdamily all came round for a huge fry up breakfast (mmm… sausages…) and then Fe and I went out for dinner. As much as I love the kids its was nice for the two of us to get out for a bit of a break.

Speaking of the kids I managed to catch them on video singing me happy birthday, to be fair this was a couple of weeks ago, but hey!

CeBit

Well I’ve been pretty slack lately, so much going on haven’t had time to catch up on it all!

Works been pretty insane with some M&A stuff going on and in the middle of it all I spent a week in Germany for a trade show.

What a trade show it was. CeBit is the biggest trade show in the world, it mainly covers consumer electronics but also has a host of business to business stuff there to. Its in Hanover, which sort of seems to be a bit of a hole, except for its show grounds. I mean over half a million square meters of show grounds, 27 halls, 35 function rooms, resteraunts, shops even a beer hall to seat a few thousand people. There are buses and taxis ferrying people around, it took me over 15 minutes to walk from where we were based to where most of our customers were towards the other end of the grounds. Amazing stuff. They reckon they get about 500,000 visitors through, which is pretty impressive for a town with a population of about 500,000! Only in Germany could they pull this off. I mean the whole city gets together to get people too and from the showgrounds, even the motorways turn into one way systems to get people in, with public transport running every few minutes. We never had to wait more than a few minutes for a bus, train or taxi. Bloody amazing stuff.

Anyways I’ll post again soon on some of the other stuff we’re up to.