Weekends Away Titbits
We have just spent a wonderful week away - it started off with the Skukuza half marathon, then on Sunday we lazed aound, on Monday we did the Gorge Swing in Graskop (AWESOME) and from there we started exploring the Limpopo province. We found a wonderful animal rehab centre where we got involved in the feeding of the wild life. After that we moved on up to a game farm near Tzaneen.
En route we passed a little town called Leydsdorp which has become a ghost town and is for sale for those with deep, full pockets.
Leydsdorp was establish in 1891 when gold was first discovered in South Africa and holds part of South Africa’s interesting history where hundreds of immigrants streamed to Africa’s most southern tip to seek their fortunes.
For more info on the interesting little town see www.sanwild.org/investment/investment06.htm
I trust that you spent some time away last week and got to see some interesting places off the beaten track and most importantly got some much needed rest and relaxation
Until next time, have a wonderful week
With love
The Weekends-Away team.
Corporate
It is seriously time to start planning your year end function - we are already having a problem around availability for big groups and would not want you to be left with a choice of left over dates and left over venues 1 month before the time.
The year end functions that we put together range from 5 star to budget and from the theatre to the rivers, restaurants, outdoor sports and themed parties -
Email mandy@weekends-away.com for more info -
Team-Building Activity of the Week:
WE live in one of the most exciting countries in the world today - the downside is that alongside with the opportunities and the growth comes the crime and violence.
What about considering spending some of your teambuilding budget on some training in Medical issues -
Can you help somebody with an allergic reaction to a bee?
Can you administer CPR to somebody having a heart attack?
Can you attend to somebody’s injuries without picking up a communicable disease?
Do you know how to treat someone that has got a burn injury?
Your company might not be big enough to warrant a medical division on the property, but that does not mean that you might not need this knowledge in the work place or even at home -
Email mandy@weekends-away.com for more information
Conference Speakers International
Conference Speakers International
Patricia’s journey shadowed that of her adventurer ancestors, Sir Richard Glyn and his brother Robert, who came to Africa in 1863 because they’d read David Livingstone’s account of ‘The Smoke That Thunders’ and wanted to see this mighty cascade and to hunt Africa’s big game.
Using Richard’s diary about the old party’s trip, Patricia found and walked their route along the 19th-century wagon trails that once snaked along the great river systems of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. She crashed through thick bush and deep Kalahari sand, walked unarmed in Big Five territory and consorted with Zimbabwe’s notorious ‘war veterans’. When her ancestors’ wagons moved, so did she, where they stopped for provisions, so did she - eventually reaching The Falls on exactly the same day as they had, 142 years later.
Patricia’s talk about her walk is richly illustrated by magnificent slides and wonderful video footage. It highlights how much the subcontinent has changed in the century-and-a-half between these expeditions, and comprises a very personal wake-up call to the destruction for which we are all responsible. The presentation is also about Patricia reaching her destination through the kindness and hospitality of Africa’s rural people. It’s a tale about personal development, as the woman who could hardly read a map learned how to navigate by GPS and lead her two-person back-up team through the thirst land on the peripheries of the Kalahari. It’s about the crew’s near disasters, their highs and their lows. It’s about the wonder and simple delights of camping in the great African outdoors. It’s a tale about meeting challenges, facing fear and being rewarded with great insights and even greater peace. The presentation is brutally honest, extremely funny in places and deeply moving.
To book Patricia for your next event,
please call Robyn on (011) 465 4447/57 or 0861SPEAKERS
Incentive
TheItalianF1Experience
Friday 7th to Sunday 9th September 2007
Whether it be the Grand Prix, the Olympics in China, or the world cup Rugby - incentivise your team with one of these great once in a life time events -
We are able to put together the perfect package with seats and access to the pits or the change rooms.
We work with a team that specializes in sports travel around the world and as such can offer you the very best -
Email mandy@weekends-away.com for more info
Adventure News
We are really spoilt in this country for a choice of ways to spend time outdoors -
Now in its fourth year, the Jeep Msinsi Multisport Series offers both athletes and teams a perfect introduction to this fast growing sport. The series consists of 4 events from July to October.
This year sees the inclusion of a 5km Trail Run/20km MTB/2.5km Trail Run New Balance Multicross Event alongside the original Long Course and Short Course multisport events. Multicross will give the land dwelers an opportunity to see what all the amphibious action is about. The Multicross event can be raced as an individual or as a team of 2. In the team of 2, the 1st athlete runs the 5kms trail run, the 2nd athlete does the 20kms MTB and then they both run the last 2.5kms together to the finish
For more info check out www.maxcluer.com Enter Online
Competition
Win accommodation and dinner along the Milands Meander -
Accommodation is on Stocklands Farm - set in 10 acres of garden and pastures, this 150 year-old stone house with original yellowwood ceilings and doors offers luxurious accommodation in either private en-suite bedrooms or in self-catering cottages. www.stocklandsfarm.co.za
Dinner is at Yellow Wood Café - www.yellowwood.co.za
In order to win 1 night’s accommodation and dinner for two send your email address to Tamara
Please also refer to a friend - for each referral, you receive an additional entry -
Training
TOM PETERS CALLS HIM…
“THE HOTTEST PROPERTY ON THE MANAGEMENT GURU CIRCUIT.”
Imagine two worlds that are completely different in nature:
the Downward Spiral and the world of Possibility.
The Downward Spiral is the world we ordinarily inhabit.
It contains all our fears, anxieties, successes and failures, expectations and disappointments.
We are driven to measure and compare everything.
It is where we experience belonging and not belonging; winning and not winning; success and failure. Everything good implies its opposite, everything bad conjures hope for change.
It’s a world of hierarchy where we compete and struggle to maintain our position in relation to others.
In a word, it is the world of SURVIVAL.
The World of Possibility prompts us to remain open because we recognize that it is all invented and so we can create a setting for anything that we say is missing in our lives.
In other words, we TELL A DIFFERENT STORY.
Instead of meeting events with anxiety, defensiveness or resistance, we remain joyful, open-hearted, at ease and in a state of contribution.
For more info email ryan@frontfoot.co.za
Activist Issues
The Minister of Health has kept the newspapers busy in the last few days as well as Carte Blanche. This is the first time that I have made any political comment, however there comes a point when some things need to be said.
The wind blows the hardest at the top of the mountain, but then if that is where you want to be, then best you make sure that during your time there, you are the best that you can be -
In September last year, more
than 60 HIV scientists, including a Nobel Peace Prize winner and leading academics, have called for the immediate removal of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
In a letter to President Thabo Mbeki, a total of 81 signatories said the minister’s health policies were ineffective and immoral.
“We therefore call for the immediate removal of Dr Tshabalala-Msimang as Minister of Health, and for an end to the disastrous, pseudo-scientific policies that have characterised the South African Government’s response to HIV/AIDS,” said members of the global scientific community.
According to the letter it was an embarrassment to the South African government to have a health minister who “now has no international respect”.
The list of signatories included leading academics from institutions such as Harvard University, specialising in Aids research, microbiology, haemotology, immunology, molecular and cell biology.
Nobel peace prize winner David Baltimore as well as Robert Gallo - the developer of the first HIV blood test and co-discoverer of HIV as the cause of Aids - put their names to the letter.
In the letter the academics echo the words of Stephen Lewis, UN Envoy on Aids in Africa, that South Africa’s response to Aids was “obtuse, dilatory and negligent”.
South Africa has over five million people infected with the HI virus and over 500 000 people needing ARV treatment who don’t have access to the medicines.
Tshabalala-Msimang has stood her ground despite a barrage of calls from politicians and activists that she resign. Mbeki has also said he will not fire his health minister.
It amazes me when so much is not going right that Mbeki does not fire Tshabalala-Msimang but rather her deputy who actually has made some positive leeway into the Aids issue and has also quite rightly uncovered the terrible conditions at the hospital in Frere.
If we do not all keep abreast of what is going on politically and open our mouths when necessary, the country will not be heading in the right direction -
Thought for the week
Look Ahead
Do not look back with shame, nor look up with arrogance, nor look around for blame. Just look ahead with dignity.
Help keep our country and it’s cities tidy
A tidy city is the sign of a civilized society!