You think there has been a lack of blog posts recently, and first reaction would be they must be busy or on holiday.  Truth is I have been looking after my health.  I was passed an article today from the New York Times about people who write blogs for a living literally working themselves to death.

The article comes in the wake of the recent death of two popular Bloggers from heart related diseases and the heart attack of well know tech blogger Om Malik.  It seems that professional bloggers are setting up offices in their bedrooms, avoiding sleep and in some cases neglecting food in order to be at the forefront of timely blog posts.

These professional bloggers are paid usually by the number of blog posts they can create and by their readership  numbers.  Being the first to report a story, news item, new product and so on makes your blog all the more valuable.

Well I don’t think there is any risk of myself and Gally skipping meals, sleep or blogging to death.

This was sent to me this morning by my mate, Neil Geddes - something to liven everyones day. These are questions that have appeared on the NZ Tourism website and the official responses:

Q: Does it ever get windy in NZ? I have never seen it rain on TV, how do the plants grow? (UK).
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.
__________________________________________________
Q: Will I be able to see kiwi birds in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you’ve been drinking.
__________________________________________________
Q: I want to walk from Auckland to Wellington - can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it’s only three thousand miles, take lots of water.
__________________________________________________
Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in NZ? Can you send me a list of them in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown? (UK)
A: What did your last slave die of?
__________________________________________________
Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in NZ? (USA)
A: A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. New-Zea-land is that island in the middle of the Pacific which does not
… oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Auckland city. Come naked.
__________________________________________________
Q: Which direction is North in NZ? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we’ll send the rest of the directions.
_________________________________________________
Q: Can I bring cutlery into NZ? (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.
__________________________________________________
Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys’ Choir schedule? (USA)
A: -New-zea-land is that quaint little country , which is
….oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Auckland city, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.
__________________________________________________
Q: Can I wear high heels in NZ? (UK)
A: You are a British politician, right?
__________________________________________________
Q: Are there supermarkets in Auckland and is milk available all year round? (Germany)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of vegan hunter/gatherers. Milk is illegal.
__________________________________________________
Q: Please send a list of all doctors in NZ who can Dispense spider serum. (USA)
A: poisonous spiders live in A-meri-ca which is where YOU come from. All NZ spiders are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets. You should find some for yourself when you get here. Especially the ones with white tails
__________________________________________________
Q: I have a question about a famous animal in NZ, but I forget its name. It’s a kind animal and lives in trees. (USA)
A: It’s called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of Gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking underneath them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.
__________________________________________________
Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in NZ? (USA)
A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.
__________________________________________________
Q: Can you tell me the regions in Auckland where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay night clubs.
__________________________________________________
Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in NZ? (France)
A: Only at Christmas.
__________________________________________________
Q: I was in NZ in 1969 on R+R, and I want to contact the Girl I dated while I was staying in Wellington*. Can you help? (USA)
A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour..
__________________________________________________
Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you’ll have to learn it first

This has been around for ever - but it is still brilliant. For all us SEO geeks it is tres amusement. What if you got to build the Google home page? http://www.meangene.com/google/design_for_google.html

We are starting to receive a number of guest posts and will be upgrading the Xebidy site in the coming weeks to handle this. In the meantime check out this from Bruce Thurlow at Oz Experience and Adventure Tours today, on life as a social Internet junkie:

Got to work early this morning I logged in and I looked at:
- My facebook page for news of friends
- Oz Experience My Space page for new friends
- Hotmail for personal emails
- The Age and NZ Herald newspapers
- Looked at my internet banking
- Logged into ebay looking for a fridge
- Searched google for a page looking for best ph and broadband plans
- Uploaded photos to my flickr account
- Checked my www.youtube.com/100adventure page because I had been notified someone had posted a comment to one of my videos
- logged into my last.fm account to listen to music while I worked
- Checked xebidy.com for any new blog info
- looked at readwriteweb.com for the latest word on the internet street
- scanned gapyear.com for any new Oz Experience or Adventure Tours related posts

Did all this in 40 mins. I then started checking my work emails!

All I can say Bruce is you need to master the art of RSS to speed up the way you receive all this information

After being shy on the blog all week I seem to have a lot to say today!! For those of you who do not receive the Stray Travel and Spaceship weekly newsletter you missed a gem this week. Stray has a driver/guide called James who writes a regular column for newsletter. His absence in the past month has been extremely noticeable. Nonetheless, he has come back today with avengence; read on:

Many people seem to think that I have been away on holiday but this is simply not correct! Over the last few months I have spent a lot of time at Jeff Patel’s workshop in Cambridge helping Arthur Tank (Dilmat Industries’ leading researcher) fine-tune Stray’s latest development. All new Stray passengers will have a biodegradable implant just under the skin of their left shoulder, holding their relevant travel information, including pass details. Infrared scanners similar to a bar code reader in a supermarket are being fitted to the inside door of our buses – these will download the passenger’s travel details as they enter the vehicles. This can then be accessed by the driver using handheld internet capable mobile phones. The biodegradable implants are made from a revolutionary new product using compressed potato fibres which break down conveniently after 12 months once the Stray passenger’s unlimited bus pass has expired. The drivers that have looked at our new system are grateful that they will no longer have to count their passengers after each stop – a green light on the dashboard will indicate when everyone is one board. It will also be good for the environment, cutting down the use of paper. Many thanks to Jeff and Arthur for the many extra hours you have put in to getting this idea operational.

James is obviously simultaneously extremely clever and one very freaky rooster. But you have got to wonder what an agent overseas reading this newsletter would think?

Those that know me will know that I pretend to kite surf. I actually love the idea of it and while I can go back and forward ok and actually feel quite comfortable flying the kite it scares the b’jesus out of me; that at any point I am going to dragged up the beach and impailed in a tree - if not under a passing bus!

Nonetheless, thanks to Bruce Thurlow of Adventure Tours and Oz Experience fame I have discovered that kite surfing is in fact a right of passage for becoming an Internet Guru. Last week at ATEC (see these posts) Bruce handed me an article from the Sydney Morning Herald (Tuesday April 17th) about Larry Page, Google, and Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia. As the story transpires:

Last summer, Sir Richard Branson invited a few of his friends - (…) Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jimmy and Rosalynne Carter, Peter Gabriel, Google co-founder Larry Page {and Jimbo Wales, creator of Wikipedia} - to be his guests a Necker, his private island in The Caribbean, for a few days. (..) Now when Wales talks about that heady week, he’s quick to mention how he beat Page in a sailing race around the island. But Sir Richard raised the stakes when he invited the Internet boys to join him in a more thrilling and dangerous pursuit: kite surfing.

As it goes Page is an experienced kite surfer and made no time in getting his back on Wales for the sailing drubbing. In fact, Wales was left grovelling in water going through the lessons of body dragging etc. As it happened the weather turned bad and Wales never actually got up going much to the delight of Page and bitter envy of Wales.

Although no correlation, since then Wales has been promoting his new venture Wikia Search, which is to be a revolutionary mass collaboration search engine while completely bagging Google as producing “too much spam and useless crap”.

So, no love lost then boys. Good news is that when I go to hang out with Sir Richard this summer I will be able to fly with the big boys!

Also, check this video out - a guy gets dragged into the air about 300 meters up by his Kite for 45 seconds!