The more time I spend studying, and applying myself on my course, the better I seem to get to know myself. I am learning about why I think the way I do. Why do I hate color so much? (weird aye!) Most of the answers to why I am the way I who I am is because of my personality type.

My personality type is the Mastermind.

Masterminds are good at planning operations and experts in contingency planning (A contingency plan is a plan devised for an outcome other than in the usual or expected plan). This is probably why I am usually given the task to do the strategic planning, and anticipate problems before others do (Usually being referred to as just being a downer, but usually I’m right).

Masterminds naturally grasp how steps lead into each other and will prepare for if the planned steps do not go to plan with a back-up plan that works with the alternative step. Masterminds will never set off on any project without a firm Plan A in mind, but they are prepared to switch to Plan B, C, or D if need be. This is probably why people ask me to proof read their work, because I can see alternative ways to write what they have written.

Masterminds are rare and make up only one or two percent of the population, but are rarely encountered outside of their comfort zone (usually a office, factory, school or laboratory). This is why I am so shy!

Masterminds are highly capable as leaders but are not at all eager to take command and prefer to stay in the background until others demonstrate the inability to lead, however once they take command, they are thorough pragmatists.  This is probably why I prefer to sit in the background, let other people lead the group, I contribute my ideas and support and develop other people’s ideas.

Masterminds are certain that efficiency is indispensable in a well-run organisation. If inefficiency is encountered, then they will realign operations and reassign personnel. This is probably why I like to change things around to fit better into my life so often.

Masterminds do not feel bound by established rules and procedures, traditional authority does not impress them, nor do slogans or catchphrases. Only ideas that make sense to them will be adopted by them, their aim is maximum efficiency.

In their careers, Masterminds usually rise to positions of responsibility, for they work long and hard and are dedicated to their pursuit of goals, sparing neither the time nor effort of themselves or their employees to attain this. This often leads to me pushing people too hard and pushing them away through this, as well as driving myself into burnout through trying too hard and over committing myself to my projects.

Problem solving is highly stimulating to Masterminds, they love responding to complex problems which require careful figuring out. This would be why I do Algebra for fun!

Masterminds are generally more definite and self-confident than other Rationals, and have a strong, developed willpower; this is why I am so determined to once I start something, to come to a solution, to end it.

Before Masterminds make decisions, they must do research. Where other people can make decisions quickly, I must do research in some form, whether it be thinking of my past experiences, asking advice or researching the topic.

To outsiders, Masterminds’ confidence can be mistaken for arrogance. I have learnt in the last 6 months or so that people do think that I am arrogant, but I don’t think I am…

Masterminds have specialised knowledge systems, which they build from an early age. When it comes to their area of expertise (which Masterminds can have several), a Mastermind can tell you immediately whether they can help you or not, and if so, how they can. Masterminds know what they know, but also know what they do not know. This speaks for itself for people who know me!

Masterminds are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest, although most people would be stoked with a 93% pass at a Tertiary level, I am too busy focusing on what I could have done better. I am not sure that I would be content with a 99%, It is so close on perfect, but too close for me to let go.

Masterminds are independent of mind; they do not rely on others around them for ideas or support, this is why I need time alone on a regular basis, it’s where I do my best thinking and come up with my best ideas. It often upsets people when I say I need some time alone because they feel I am pushing them away, when really I am taking a step back to assess the situation and look at it from another perspective (Which often helps build the relationship or improve the situation).

Personal relationships (particularly romantic ones) are Mastermind’s Achilles heel. Masterminds are capable of caring deeply for others (usually a select few), and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on the relationship, the knowledge and self-confidence that make them so successful in other areas can suddenly abandon or mislead them in interpersonal situations. This is why I am so socially awkward and fear getting close to people (and letting them close to me).

Masterminds do not readily grasp social rituals and have little patience and understanding for things such as small talk and flirtation (which other personality types consider to be half of the fun in a relationship); yet another reason why I am socially awkward and struggle to conform to society’s rituals.

Masterminds are generally very private people, who are naturally impassive (which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand). One of Mastermind’s biggest problems is they want people to make sense, because people are so confusing! Why don’t people just think like me!

Masterminds strongest asset in the interpersonal area is their intuitive abilities and willingness to work on a relationship to make it work. Although a Mastermind does not have the natural empathy that is seen in other personality types, their intuitive function can often act as a good substitute by synthesising the probable meanings behind such things as tone of voice, choice of words, body language and facial expression. This ability can be honed and directed by consistent, repeated efforts to understand and support those they care about. Relationships that Masterminds build are often characterised by their robustness, stability and good communications.

Hopefully that helps you to understand why I am the way I am a bit better!

I am spending more and more time realising the regret that I feel, not in big things, but small situations that are easy to get over. “I would rather regret the things I have done, than regret the things I have not done”.

A good example of this being when I go out to a nightclub and I am dancing alone. I see a girl across the dance floor that I could possibly approach to dance with (not that anything more than dancing would happen), but I am too scared to even look at her because I fear the possibility of being rejected. All I am thinking is that I could dance with her so I don’t look like such a loner, but I am so paralysed by fear of rejection and having do dance alone that I can’t even make eye contact with her; yet ironically I am doing the outcome of what I am fearing, dancing alone. How is it that I cannot see this when I am in the situation? Could it be the fact that I am scared that if I dance with her that I will catch some disease? Sure seems like a possible reason when you think of how I get when put in these situations!

“Never regret anything, it makes you who you are” we hear this from time to time, and say “Yeah true”. It is true that what we do makes us who we are, but no regrets? I do not have a lot of regrets in my life, I have a lot of things that I wish I could have done better, but I don’t regret most of my actions;  Most of my regrets are not the ones that pained me, but the ones who caused pain or humiliation to someone I care about. Yes I grew through the experience and like to think I am a better person because of it, but would I change the events that created my regrets? In a heartbeat, even if it meant inflicting pain upon myself.

Take this example: 18 year old boy Christchurch youth Ashley David Austin drifted his car around a corner, lost control of his car and hit & killed 4 year old Nayan Woods (link to the story in source). Yes he will learn from this, and yes he will be a better person once he is over the trauma of the situation; maybe he will even go on to do great things for road safety. If he was given the opportunity to take back the events of that night and sacrifice his personal development and all that he might become just to give that family back their little boy, I bet that he would without even thinking.

Next time you hear someone say “Don’t have any regrets, it makes you who you are”, why don’t you pull them up and ask them if they are sure about it, or if they are just trying to avoid taking responsibility for their bad decisions? Ask them if they really believe their own personal development is more important than someone else’s wellbeing? Regrets have a bad reputation, but maybe they are healthier than we give them credit for because they remind us in the most powerful way, to do things differently next time.

Here is my thrown together attempt at a blog about Bellyflopping.

It all started a long time ago (1^st March 2012) that I heard on More FM about a Bellyflopping contest at Waterworld in Hamilton, and the winner gets a trip to Brisbane, seems simple enough. So, I meet Lana, Stacey and Todd at Waterworld, and read the T&C of the contest and proceed to panic about having to go to Aussie to compete in a trans-Tasman challenge.  I think to myself, “What are the chances of me winning?” and decide to enter anyway, because I thought the risk of winning was small enough for me to overcome my fear of making a dick of myself.  I watched a few other competitors do their jumps and was quite intimidated by what they had brought to the table; I knew I had would have to work for the win. I decided to put some effort into the style portion of the flop, making myself look like a retarded runway model on the catwalk as I approached for the jump as this was worth 10 points of the 30. I got out onto the board, and hesitated as I was very nervous, but I decided that I had to overcome my nerves and be a man about it; I had recently decided that I was going to make the best of my life and take every opportunity that I could to give me a better, more interesting life, and this was a chance to grasp this. I went for the classic ‘Starfish’ as this provides a good splash as well as looks painful (and feels it!) and Splash and Cringe factor were the other 20 points. I took out the win, with 8 points for each of Style, Splash and Cringe Factor, and my journey of becoming a Puku Plunger began. I left Waterworld glowing red like a tomato with black eyes.  I also had to rush to get my passport as I did not have one at that time, and I had a couple of weeks before I left, so got it on the express processing, because I wanted to be safe rather than sorry.

I couldn’t sleep very well on the 20^th March (the night before I left for Oz), We had a 5am start to get to the airport for a 7:15am start; I got to sleep around 2am, and woke up at 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep. My lovely flatmates decided to roadtrip up to Auckland, and it was a little bit hard for me to say goodbye, although I was going off on an awesome adventure. I met the team at the airport, we had Bronson from Auckland, Jeremy Wells from Wellington, Marc Ellis, Andy from More FM and Duane from Grabaseat. First stop was the Air New Zealand Koru lounge, this was our first chance to sit down and talk, we had some breakfast here, as well as a beer, to calm nerves before the flight, we also done some interviews here which I was super nervous for.

Once on the flight, I was moved seats from Economy to Gold star alliance class, which was nice. There was lots of room for my legs and a bit more comfort up there, and free food and alcohol (no-one told me, until it was too late, so no food or drinks were consumed). I watched the Inbetweeners movie, which I found satisfactory; I also watched Man vs. Wild (the NZ episode) which kept me occupied well. I was very nervous going through customs, because it was my first time going through, I am surprised that they didn’t strip search me, because I was sweating like a drug dealer outside a cop shop. We had a few people who asked us about what we were doing as we waited for our bags, because they had seen our uniforms, and so we got some laughs out of that.

When we got through the airport, we were greeted by the boys from Nova FM, which took us to where we were staying, a 70 odd storey luxury apartment building, of which I was staying on the 20^th level. We couldn’t check in until 2pm, and it was currently 10:30am, so we went down to the CBD after dropping off our bags in the luggage locker. The CBD was quite strange to me, I am not used to big cities (Hamilton is big for me), and I was rather intimidated by its size and my lack of communication with anyone who could help me if I was to get lost. We sat down with Bronson, Jeremy and Duane for a beer at a small pub while Marc and Andy went to their Hotel; After we had consumed this beer, we split up and arranged to meet back where we were staying at 2pm for check in (currently approx 12pm). I went left of the bar and heard someone say “Hey Carl” around 30 seconds after the group had split, and it was Marc and Andy, who I went with to Jade Buddha for a few quiet ones as I was terrified to get lost in Brisbane.  At 2pm, I headed back to the apartment, and it was amazing, the views were so cool, and 5 star VIP treatment was on!

We headed down to the Brisbane Centennial pools where the competition was to be held, we got there around 3pm (the competition was set to start at 4pm). We shot some video for Campbell live, which I was rather nervous for, because I am not camera friendly. The Aussie’s were late to turn up, not having the full team until 4:30pm. We kicked things off late, and had Aaron Te-Huia (AUS) first up, originally from New Zealand flopping, with a good effort. Carl Jackson (NZL) flopped first for the Kiwi’s, with the starfish (very painful as it takes all the impact) to equalise. Next up was Michael “Mayor of man-boobs” Straughair (AUS) with an impressive textbook flop to set the benchMarc that bit higher. Jeremy Wells (NZL) followed him with a great flop that displaced a lot of water, which put NZ at a slight advantage. Cam Smith (AUS) came up next, I was disappointed by his flop, and the look on his face indicated that he was too, which left Bronson Steele (NZL) with the backflip into bellyflop to seal the victory for the Kiwi.

We left the pools and went to a bar, had the worst bourbon and Coke I have ever had in my life; It had about as much Coke as it had bourbon, which would be fine if the bourbon was any good, and if there was more than a shot of bourbon in it, It was more of a glass of ice, with a shot of bourbon and a shot of Coke. I am not one to turn down free alcohol, but I went to straight Coke after that. I learnt a bit about women that night, Marc, Duane and Andy were a real laugh.

The Nova FM guys had had enough after they had had around 6 beers, so we went off back to our apartments to put some clothes on that were suitable for going out, because our tracksuits would not get us into many bars in town. We had what seemed to be the only non-Indian taxi driver in Brisbane, and had a little bit of confusion as to where we were actually going.

Once we got back to the apartments and put some nicer clothes on, we got a message from Marc and Andy that they had no long pants that were clean, so that rules out a bar in town. Marc finds this pancake house, so we decide to meet him there, and they serve beer and pancakes! We couldn’t find our way to the pancake house, but we had found the Jade Buddha again and so we asked a lovely young lady, and she pointed us in the right direction. I had the impulse to tell her that she was amazingly beautiful, I mean, I had had a few brews, but I wasn’t that drunk to have “beer goggles”, and then spent the rest of the night regretting not telling her, so much so that I considered going looking for her, but didn’t want to risk it at nearly midnight in a unfamiliar city. Greatest idea ever I thought, pancakes and beer. I had the short stack, which only has 2 pancakes in it, Marc reckons he has never seen someone consume 2 pancakes in such a short period of time. Marc had already had a meal, but looked at the front cover of the menu, and saw blueberry pancakes and decided to see if the blueberry pancakes actually contained as many blueberries as in the picture, they did.

I left the pancake place around 11:45pm, and wandered back to the apartments alone; luckily for me I have a good sense of direction. I went past the Event cinema (the one that was on TV for the Hunger games premiere) and the line wasn’t too bad for the premiere, and I considered joining the queue and going to see the movie, but figured that I would be too tired in the morning to get up (3am NZ time start to day, and a 2am Brisbane time finish to movie, 3am Brisbane time back to Hotel = 27 hour day, not keen).

We got up at 7am to catch our 10am flight, and it was a long trip to the airport, much longer than it seemed coming into Brisbane, the fare was like $80. It was a long, boring wait coming home, as excited as it was that was coming home to my flatmates and my adoring fans, my adventure had ended. I watched tower heist on the way home, which is a good movie I thought, but it was so hard not to look at Marc and Duane’s screens as Marc was about 4 minutes ahead and Duane was about 2 minutes ahead of me in the movie, so that I could see what was coming. Once we landed in NZ, it was only around 15 minutes and I was outside on NZ soil, and my Facebook was going mental, as it was nearly Campbell live time, and everyone had seen the ads and was commenting and sharing things all over my wall. It was so awesome to see Tayler and Annya when they came to pick me up, had a great talk with them on the way home.

In the morning, I had an interview with the wonderful Lana Searle on 92.2 More FM Waikato (I should go into radio with that sort of advertising spirit!), but I decided to go to town that night. Could I be more stupid? But it was great to meet some new people when I did get there. I took my Puku Plungers jacket with me, and the bouncers at Thirty-Two 04 were talking about the Campbell live coverage, and turned around and go “Oh look, there’s one of them!” Gold. I had such a great night out, I got forced to dance, and never have I had such fun in town, usually I just sit in the corner awkwardly. I got home at 4am, and had to get up for a 10am interview, seems easy enough? Not when you have had like 6 hours sleep in the last 5 days. I made it to the interview on time, and got given a tour of Mediaworks, and met a pile of the staff and they were really nice. By the time this interview had come up, I had been on the radio and camera so much that I was not too nervous, I actually think I got cut off mid-sentence a few times because I talked too much!

Overall, being a part of the Puku Plungers was a great experience for me, It both was fun and Challenged me, two things I had planned on grasping opportunities to take further.

I would like to thank all that helped it happen:

Lana Searle, Todd Fisher and Stacey Wouters at More FM Waikato.

Andy Macpherson and Marc Ellis and More FM Auckland.

Duane Perrot and Grabaseat.

My Flatmates: Jessie, Annya and Tayler.

Bronson Steele – Auckland winner.

Jeremy Wells – Wellington winner.

Speedos.

Canterbury.

Nova FM.

ABFAT and the Aussie team.

I found this in my drafts, and havent read it, so look out if you dont like it!

So, Some of you may know that I struggle with who I am and how people around me see me. 

This is especially the case if you are someone who means a lot to me, the people I am referring to are too nice to say the words - “Carl, you are annoying me”. This is nice in the sense that they never tell me, this could be because I am not annoying, but I’m pretty sure I am. I sometimes wish that those close to me would just slap me and tell me “Shut up, just shut up and listen”, At least then I would know that they are being 100% honest with me.

I have some middle ground here where what someone thinks of me can affect me, depending on context and situation, as well as the mood I am in at the time. These people are the most dangerous, as these people are close enough to me to put the knife in my chest, but far enough away for it not to reach any vital organs. These people I care how they see me, but if they think that I am annoying, then they can just get over it, there is the door, blacklist me, block me, whatever, or heaven forbid you actually confront me about it. 

Then there are people that I just don’t care what they think of me, most of these people actually are harmless, but mostly because they fit in this category for me, If they were placed in the categories above, then they may be able to do some damage, but their arrows do not hurt me from where I put them. No-one can hurt you unless you let them.

I sometimes get a bit strange with people and it scares them, the awkward transition between the stages of Carl’s friendship. Sometimes, someone will just shoot through the ranks and become one of my closest friends, who I can rely on for anything, others will jump through all the hoops I throw their way, but they still don’t progress.

I let those people closest to me hurt me, especially those very close to me. I could list times in the last week that I have let my 3 closest friends hurt me, but it’s barely worth playing the blame game, it will only mean that our friendships will be weaker, Although I do doubt that 2 of these 3 will read a single word on this blog, little alone this blog post. 

I am going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment, my emotions are running overtime, I want to just scream “STOP THE WORLD, I WANT TO GET OFF”. Suicide has been considered, inside the last 2 weeks even, Why would I let life get me down so much? I am not sure, but I will overcome, I have to. I have to be everything I can be. I wish I could change so much of my past, but it has made me who I am, some of the bad things around me have opened better opportunities. When one door closes, another opens, This is not always instantaneous, and even if it is, then we are barely in the head space to see it at an arm’s reach away.

I haven’t been here for a while, so I figure I should post something. Now that I have moved cities, time is valuable for me, and much better spent studying than it is blogging.

I should probably start with an update on what I am doing and how I have been.

I have been on down buzz recently as a whole (Been trying to hide it as much as I can to most people though), with good moments that made me smile scattered through it. I cannot figure out what is causing me to feel this way, maybe it’s just who I am becoming; Maybe I should color my hair (I colored my flatmate’s hair the other day, so I know how to do it now), and turn into a Emo? I do miss some of the most important people in my life right now, Firstly I miss Josie, She is there for me whenever I need her, and would drop everything just to talk to me, even if it is 3am and I need a hug, she would drive across town just to give me one (not that I ever let her!). Secondly, I miss my dad. My dad means a lot to me, he is a great role model in my life and I aspire to be more like him. I miss my 3 nieces more than they can imagine. Jessica, Gemma and Aaliyha, such great little angels.

My new home in Hamilton is great, not so much the house, but the people.
I have amazing flatmates, They are 3 beautiful girls, but they don’t seem to see it. The words of One Direction say “You don’t know you’re beautiful, that’s what makes you beautiful”, I wouldn’t quite say that it makes you beautiful, but it does make you more beautiful in my eyes….. for example, When a guy compliments you, you say “Thank you” and not “No, I’m not”, or worse “I know”.
I have been clothes shopping with the girls quite a bit, I like to spend time with them, because I do not know many people down here. However, I am meeting new people, they may even see this post, I hope it doesn’t scare them off!

I am kind of writing all over the place at the moment, but that is how my mind feels, a bit scattered.

I went out to town (clubbing) on Thursday night, all the people I could have gone with had Class in the morning, or were not in the same area code, and so I went alone. Going to town alone is never a good idea, especially not when you are a shy guy who just sits there and in the corner and talks to no-one because he is afraid of rejection! I ended up just finding a quiet corner and drinking there, and not talking to anyone until the early hours of the morning.
I went out again Friday night, had 2 friends with me to go with, and so I was not the loner in the corner, but instead the idiot on the dancefloor, just standing there swaying from side to side with the music because I cant dance! We went to “The hood” a bar/nightclub, and it was full of people with skin that has a colour that is a shade or twenty darker than mine, and I was not that keen to go inside, in case I got the shit beaten out of me for being the white boy in there (Racist Stereotyping I know, but it’s just what went through my mind, because of the racial tension that we see, even in our world that we have today. I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting in there, even though I just stood against the wall, and watched other people dance, it was nice to see my mates have some fun. I think I ended up in 7 or so clubs/pubs that night, whereas I am more settled alone, where I went into 2 and spent 5 mins in one and the rest of the night in the other on Thursday night.

Last night was Soundscape, they close off the road, and have a big music event, and it has more than 5000 people go to it, and over 50 acts there, both local and international. I got extremely frustrated with the cab company, if you are going to an address, you go to that address, not sit down the road in someone else’s driveway and when approached (he saw me, because he looked at me), drive away and then say they are not at the address! I then had to wait another hour for a taxi to arrive, Soundscape had already started at 9pm and when the first taxi came and left without us, it was 11:45pm. The taxi company re-sent a taxi, it never came….. One of the girls rang another taxi company and they ended up arriving close to 1am, and off they went because one of the girls got sick, and so I stayed home to look after her, because it felt like the right thing to do.

I am going to Brisbane in 9 or so days, to represent New Zealand in the greatest sport ever, Bellyflopping! Believe it or not, I won the Waikato competition, and get a free trip over there, and getting Speedos, and Tracksuits and Dressing gowns etc, I will post pics and videos when I get my hands on them.

I think that will do for now, I will try to do another update in the next little while.

There is such a high number of totally beautiful females in the world today. 

The lack of self esteem in the world today is terrible.

I myself suffer from it, I took in the mirror, and think to myself, who could ever love this? 

Guys are different to girls, when a guy has low self esteem, he will usually bottle it up, and most don’t really care enough about how they look for it to get to them. Our female counterparts are a different story, Most females are worried about the way they look. Usually you will find most girls (and women) have issues with the way they look, especially relating to their weight. There are a number of girls that I know that are totally beautiful, that I myself would be lucky to be looked at twice by, but they don’t see the beauty that I do when I look at them.
I personally prefer a woman without make up, I would rather see a woman with her flaws, than have her try to cover them up. Don’t get me wrong, I think that a woman should have the right to wear make up and enjoy herself, but I think it better left for special occasions. You should not need make up to feel beautiful.

I will admit it, when I tell someone that they are beautiful, and they try to shut me down, by saying things like “No, I’m not”, “Ewww” or “Shut up”, I want to slap them in the face and “No, you shut up, do not conform to society’s definition of beauty”.

I think that there is a lot of jealousy out there of that girl who looks like a ‘Barbie doll’ early in the high school years, as this is the girl who gets all the attention from the boys. I think that this causes the lack of self esteem in the girls who are not shown that much attention from the boys at school. I also think this is causes the self esteem issue in our ‘Barbie doll’ figure, when she is treated badly by the younger boys at school, she feels that she must be more beautiful, better looking. A lot of these girls feel that they can do this by dragging the girls around them down, they pick on them and bully them and call them ugly.

There are many cases in New Zealand and worldwide where people are picked on because they are better looking than the person doing the bullying, they are jealous and so try to bring the person down to and below their level.

We should be teaching life skills to our students in our schools, even if it was only for an hour a week, preferably in 2 half hour slots, then the topic would be taken in better by the students. These life skills could teach you how to feel better about yourself, as well as how to change a light bulb, how to change a Tyre on a car, how to check your oil and coolant levels on your car, those things that your father would usually show you. Unfortunately our father’s of today are less and less able to do these things themselves, so if they are a part of the child’s life, then they do not have the knowledge to pass on to their children. Back to the topic :)

If we are bringing our children up in a world where they are told that they are ugly and do not do something about this, our young people will have trouble with relations with members of the opposite sex, and with keeping friends. This theory is being proven in the teenagers of today.

I also see a lot of young females (you can hardly call them ladies), who throw themselves at Young males (I wouldn’t call them men either). Many I believe are looking for someone to put their piece between them, to make them feel loved. When our parents teach us about love, they tell us not to get too attached to our partners, is that why most relationships fail? because we do not fall in love with our partners, we just think we do? I personally have a young lady in my life, that I would like to think I am in love with, it is love as I know it. My dad says to me, Do not get serious, you don’t need a girlfriend, just go out and have fun. Sorry dad, not the theory for me, I don’t want ‘fun’, I don’t want empty sex, I want to make love to someone.

If anyone tells you that you are not beautiful, here is a little definition as I put it for someone who is “Beautiful”

Beautiful is an adjective used to describe things as possessing beauty.

Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning or satisfaction.

Pleasure describes the broad class of mental states that humans and other animals experience as positive, enjoyable or worth seeking.

Bottom line being - If you make someone (just one person) happy, you are beautiful.

In the words of Eminem “Don’t let anybody ever tell you you ain’t beautiful, they can all get fucked, just stay true to you”.

Cheers

Carl

I am 20 years old at the time of me writing this (21 next Weekend).

I went to Tikipunga and Kamo High schools, and went through to year 13.

I failed NCEA level 3, so didn’t get University Entrance.

While I was still at school, I was a volunteer at Tornado Youth in Hikurangi, This involved a large range of things, including Mentoring, and running programmes and camps, Mowing lawns and doing gardening work, Doing makeovers on homes in the town, Being the technical guy (Sound, light, media etc) as well as general muscle. My years at Tornado Youth were some of the best of my life, It was through Tornado that a lot of my opportunities in life were opened. A few examples of this are, My confidence, Before I went to Tornado Youth, I was quite quiet and shy, and hid from the crowds, Tornado FORCED me to be loud and proud when they offered me the position of a Youth Leader. I had to step up and be confident, which was a huge challenge for me, because when people are not following your instructions, you get less confident, which starts a bad cycle of you getting less and less confident, so I had to just man up and get over it. I still have the occasional panic attack when I am put in a situation that I am uncomfortable in, but can handle most situations around people. Another example is the training and conferences that I was sent to as a leader, I met some amazing people at these, One of these is my only follower (for now) [Hi Melissa], Who have became great friends of mine and have helped me through some tough times. Yet another example is the opportunity to represent Tornado in contracting to other companies, one of these being Whangarei District Council.

I was initially meant to work at W.D.C. for a day and a half, and at the end of the second day, they told me to keep coming back, and I did, for a week and a half or so, and I was approached because they liked my attitude. The Council placed me on a course to enter W.D.C as a cadet, and I was the only male on a course of 14 or so females, which was a bit of a challenge at times. Being on course put me straight back into my mentality of high school, feeling on the outside, and alone. But I soon made some awesome friends in the course. We went through an interview process and I was chosen to be the Property and Community Services Cadet, one of three that were taken on by W.D.C. that year (2010). My contract came to an end in November 2010 and I was offered a contract for a project which was to put all of our details such as our cellphones, security tags and keys into one central database, which was a contract for 4 months. I was then offered a permanent position at W.D.C. and have been a permanent member of staff since. In November 2011, I resigned from W.D.C. from my role, to pursue further education in Hamilton.

I think that’s me for now.

Carl

So, this is my first real attempt at a blog, I hope you like it.

First off, I support the release of Ian Wishart’s book about the Kahui twins murders.

I initially supported the book for two reasons, because I believe in the right that Macsyna King has to share her story, and also because a close friend of mine was being bullied as a part of the boycott of this book, because she was the daughter of the author.

As the boycott of this book progressed, my support of the book became stronger, after straying into the boycotter’s camp as a supporter, and seeing the hatred displayed there. I could not grasp the concept of how people who claim to be against child abuse believe that their abusive attitude and bullying can be justified by the fact that they think that they are making a change for child abuse by boycotting this book. I struggle to understand how boycotting a Macsyna breaking the silence on one of New Zealand’s most tragic child abuse cases, can be seen as doing something for child abuse, If you want to help child abuse as a cause, you should be supporting someone sharing their story, not slamming it.

A lot of the people involved in the Boycott, I feel have crossed the line of fairness towards Macsyna and her family, as well as the Author. I would like to see some of the persons that were harsher towards them in terms of defamation of the author and some of the supporters to have to face the consequences of these actions. There have been multiple persons in this boycott that I have seen move from page to page and not being held accountable for their actions, a recent example of this being the Libra advertisement with the transsexual person, with these people showing their true colors there also.

Throughout the Boycott of this book, I have met some awesome people, I have gained around 20 new friends on Facebook as a part of this. I have found these people to be some of the most weird and wonderful friends I have came across, When I have been in need, they have been the ones to extend their hand of support, and thus concreting my respect for them.

I have been seen by the boycotters to be somewhat of a trouble maker, I believe mostly due to my hunger for a good debate, and my OCD tendencies in regards to spelling and grammar. I think that I have been a good person to be a part of the team of supporters, and have added value to our cause. We did succeed in sense that the book was published, but had a few speed bumps along the way. Some of these included The Warehouse, Paper Plus and such stores choosing not to stock the book, and Whitcoulls decision not to stock it, and then revoking this (small win) with the proceeds from their sales going to charity.

Let me know what you think

Much love

Carl