Author: Fee Writes

Fee Writes

Ben & Jerry’s to Stop Selling Ice Cream!

I didn’t mean to get you all upset with the title of this post telling you that Ben & Jerry’s are going to stop selling ice cream – that would be disastrous. But they are going to in a selected area.

The arm of the law has got its fingers everywhere. When a government is suing a company because it chooses not to sell its products in a specific place – isn’t this a little 2-faced from the said government?

Here’s what’s happened.

Do you know the ice cream Ben & Jerry’s? Darn good!!!

Now, B&J’s is owned by Unilever (since 2000); however, the decision to remove the ice cream from certain places was made by Ben and Jerry and the independent board of directors, which was set up to (among other things) protect and defend B&J’s brand equity and integrity.

The furore came when B&J announced that it planned to stop selling ice cream in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Wow – that got the heckles up, and the Israeli government quickly got into action, launching a legal attack.

Israeli PM Naftali Bennet said the move was “morally wrong” and would prove to be “financially wrong”. And the Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called the move a

“disgraceful capitulation to anti-Semitism and the BDS movement”.

Ah, then here comes the long arm of Israel.

Israel’s ambassador to the US asked 35 US governors to enforce state laws that make it a crime to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement (The BDS movement calls for a complete boycott of Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians.).

Meanwhile, Republican senator James Langford of Oklahoma, called on his state to block the sale of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, claiming the company’s new policy violates Oklahoma’s anti-BDS law.

Some grocery chains in Israel have pulled the ice cream off their shelves or are putting them to the bottom of the freezer. (I’d still find it!!!). They seem to think that boycotting is a waste of time.

Avi Kaner, Co-owner of Morton Williams Supermarkets, said:

“Even the most liberal-minded person who believes in a two-state solution knows that ultimately there will be territorial exchanges and swaps. It is not up to Ben & Jerry’s to dictate what the borders should be.”

So it’s okay for a government to boycott, bomb, be heavy-handed with apartheid type laws and dish out the racial injustices? But when a company chooses not to sell its products in certain areas, god forbid that this is seen as morally wrong!

Ben & Jerry’s have said that continuing to sell ice cream in the settlement would be “inconsistent with our values” they also said the decision reflected the concerns of “fans and trusted partners”.

Who are Ben and Jerry? Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are both Jews who have a track record of campaigning on social issues such as LGBTQ rights and climate change and now the blatant apartheid in Israel.

I applaud any company that stands up for its ethics even in the face of financial loss and government harassment.

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Fee Writes

Random

The Best Three Words

There are times in life when these three little words are the powerhouse to helping you accomplish something you may think out of your range.

Confidence seems to be gained the more experienced you become at whatever it is you’re doing. This can apply to anything, from cooking your first meal for the family to leading a global APEC leaders meeting (I am referring to the recent zoom call our prime minister had called and chaired)

Whatever the reason for added confidence, it’s an idea to have these three little words in your toolbox to pull out at the appropriate time.

My last blog post was about being inspired when I went to Wellington recently. What I didn’t say was the reason I was in the capital city. It was for a conference which happened to be held on the week after I accepted a brand new job.

That’s right! I am a believer that you definitely can teach an old dog new tricks. In saying that, I’ve now been on the job for about three weeks. The training has finished, and I am now out in the field on my own. To say it’s a bit scary is not putting too fine a point on it.

Let me fill you in. My new career is with a company called CBG Research. And my job is to rock up to previously selected houses on behalf of the Ministry of Health, choose one member of the home and conduct an interview.

It’s the door knocking that, for me, is the intimidating part. Even though the household should have received an invitation to participate, you can guarantee that about 99% of people haven’t seen it let alone read it. But, that printed ‘invitation’ is a bit of a security blanket for me.

After my field coach left and I was on my own, the reality of what I’d committed to hit. BUT the job is something I want to do.

Not only does it get me out of the house, but it also gets me into the community and meeting people I would never otherwise have come in contact with. So, as I pick up my laptop from the car seat and open the car door, I say the magic three words.

That’s right. Simple isn’t it? “You’ve got this!”

How this works, I have absolutely no idea. But what it does is calm me down and remind me that the right words will come as I smile and say, “Hello, my name is Fee, and I’m here……….”

The next time you have something to do that you’re unsure about, say these three words and feel the magic.

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Fee Writes

Random | Review

When Inspiration Hits

Inspiration can come any time from anywhere, and when it hits, one really should do something with it.

Wellington is an exciting city full of wonderful things to do and see (my blog post about ‘My Wellington Experience’ is testament to that). So when an opportunity to head down there came up, I certainly wasn’t about to say no.

Even in winter, Wellington weather can be somewhat surprising. Believing I was heading into a stormy couple of days still didn’t faze me as I boarded the plane in a sun-drenched Tauranga.

No wind. That’s right. Flying into Wellington was a breeze, literally.

It was mid-afternoon, and my son was right on time to meet me. As time with him was limited to that single evening, there was only one thing I wanted to do, go to Te Papa and see the Surrealists exhibition. I have always loved this style of art with my heroes of Breton, Dali, Ernst and Cheval, so to go and see their works was an absolute must.

I was not disappointed!

There were paintings, sculptures, magazines, sketches and all manner of other creative endeavours the Dada and Surrealists came up with. Their sense of weirdness and humour is out of the box. With their use of brushes and pens, they created art in many forms.

For example. Here is something even you can do.

Take a small article from a newspaper and cut out every word. Then put all the words into a paper bag, shake gently. Now take out one word at a time and copy each word exactly as they come from the bag.

And there you have it – an original poem by you.

This is a Dadaist Poem by Tristan Tzara

But the most fun was being able to recreate the mirror in the painting “Portrait of Edward James”, which shows the back of the man’s head in the mirror… below.

Into a wee room I went, stood in front of the mirror and what I saw was exactly that – the back of my head. Freaky, to say the least, but also incredibly inventive. I’m not sure how it’s done, but there was a mirror behind me, so I’m assuming it had to be all about the angles (and I’m no mathematician).

A frame surrounded a peephole, and my son took the photo below. What a great memento of a great day.

Walking around this exhibition and seeing the art made me want to get pen and ink and sketch or write poetry. This is the thing with inspiration; one has to make the step to follow through immediately and so when I got back to my hotel room that night, out came the pen and ideas were transferred onto paper to be worked on at a later date.

Let’s trust that “later date” is sooner rather than… well, later

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Fee Writes

Random

Jeff Bezos to Fly Into Space

The race for space travel and the wrangling that’s going on with the big boys makes me shake my head and say, “truly?”

You probably already know that the great almighty Amazon leader, Jeff Bezos, is to fly into space at the end of July. Now that’s Amazon, the conglomerate retail company, not an indigenous leader from the Amazon rain forest.

And in a big publicity stunt, he asked his brother to join him. And I say publicity stunt because who takes cameras and records the whole thing to put out on social media?

Check it out – I mean, this thing’s been edited to give it all the warm fuzzies. INSTAGRAM POST

There’s a great deal of activity going on surrounding this space flight. Jeff is being roasted online by people saying he should take his extremely pricey space visit and just “stay there”. Then a chap, Ric G, started up a change.org petition and called it “Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth”. Bit harsh but funny. At the time of writing this, the signatures were up to 148,000 and climbing.

You can sign if you want: Sign Here.

Ric stated:

“Billionaires should not exist…on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter, they should stay there.“

Now there is a third seat in this rocket and, instead of asking his other sibling, it was auctioned off.

Disclaimer: he may have asked his sister, and she refused; I’m not privy to Bezos family talk.

The winner (whose identity still hasn’t been revealed) paid $US28 million for the privilege of flying up to the edge of space and being weightless for about 10 minutes.

Now let’s look at the overall private race. There are three billionaires vying to be the top dog with the old space travel. Jeff, Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Elon has already ferried astronauts to the ISS, put a Tesla in space and landed and reused its 1st stage rockets – so I reckon he has the leap. The next thing to watch out for is to see if Richard can get in before Jeff does.

I wonder if Jeff deliberately shaped his rocket into a phallic symbol to try and strut the macho stuff to his competitors?

The race doesn’t end there. You see, NASA decided to ‘go private’ so to speak, and create a contract for the space lunar lander. Both Elon and Jeff put in their intent, and Elon won. This is a $2.9 billion contract that Musk will be paid to build the spacecraft that will land astronauts on the moon.

Oh dear, Jeff was not a happy chappy. Both he and another Alabama-based defence contractor cried foul and filed protests against NASA.

The upshot was that the Senate agreed to spend $US10billion over the next five years, which means that NASA can now award the contract to two companies – and the second one? Well, it’s not a dead cert, but Jeff’s is currently in the lead.

Senator Bernie Sanders said

“It does not make a lot of sense to me that we would provide billions of dollars to a company owned by the wealthiest guy in America.“

You have to admit he’s got a point.

Oh, and when Elon won the original contract, he sent out a tweet to Jeff … 🤣🤣🤣

Well played, Elon.

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Fee Writes

Laugh! | Random

Lost My Phone

How much do you rely on your phone? As I live on my own, my phone is a massive connection to the outside world.

To say that I’m careful about having my phone with me when I leave a place is probably not overstating the obvious. So when I lost my phone for a few hours one morning, I realised just how much I rely on it.

The day began perfectly. I’d had a great sleep and woke refreshed. I threw on my gym gear, had a glass of lemon water and headed off to pick up my friend, Kathy, to go and do a workout.

I’d better come clean. My workout is not one of those vigorous, pumping types, getting all sweaty and puffed. Mine is done with a fraction more decorum. I’ve decided that pushing 70 is exercise enough.

But I still go and get on the treadmill, lift a weight or two and play with a ball which you can see in my post “The Gym Experience”

Having my girlfriend with me (a fellow Improver) makes the experience even better as we usually end up laughing and enjoying each other’s company.

The session ended, and off we went. Dropping off Kathy, I then headed to the market to grab an apple. I reached into my gym bag to get my phone and was horrified to find it wasn’t there.

“Take a deep breath and think about this, Fee,” I told myself.

Having looked in the car, I figured that it must be still at the gym, and I was pretty sure I knew where. After getting the apple (I wasn’t going to miss out), I headed back, parked the car, ran up the stairs and got to reception, hoping that it had already been handed in.

Nope. Darn.

I went in and checked around all the equipment I’d used but found crickets – nothing, zilch.

The lady at reception suggested I go to my service provider and see if they could “find the phone” or, at the least, block it.

Here I’m going to plug 2 Degrees, the phone company I’ve been with since they began. A brilliant young guy bent over backwards to help me (please don’t visualise this chap literally bending over, although it’s a pleasant image).

Immediately he blocked the sim card.

Oh, and before we go on – yes, the phone was unlocked!!!! I had to fess up to that to my embarrassment. Not that I have any nude or porno pics, but I didn’t want ones of my grandies getting out there in the world.

We then spent the next… I don’t know how long, but it seemed like ages, trying to find my phone via Google.

What is it with Google? A new thing now is to do a two-step verification, and guess how that is done? They send a code to your phone!!!!! This meant, of course, that we couldn’t get into my Google account because I DIDN’T HAVE A PHONE!

The lovely guy then populated a new sim card with my phone number and put it into a sample phone. Still didn’t work.

So finally I went home. Now I have to say here that I’m am very impressed with myself for not flying off the handle, getting overwhelmed or feeling gutted. I took the view that shit happens, and one has to simply “let it go”. It is such a waste of energy to get pissed off with something that is out of your control. I thought, just do the steps and see what the outcome is. If push comes to shove, I could simply get a new phone and begin a new journey.

But I didn’t have to. When I got home, I did a Google search for “find my phone” and, voila, there on Google maps it was…. at the gym!

It looked like it was in the car park, so I enlisted Kathy to come and help look under cars – I mean, c’mon, I didn’t want to be the “some random chick on all fours in the car park”.

With no luck, I went back to reception and YAY; it had just been handed in. My phone had been found sitting on the water fountain, and that’s when I remembered. I had taken the phone out of my pocket, put it on the water-cooler and proceeded to use the scales to weigh myself (I don’t possess these).

BOOM! Found the phone (and a bonus – lost weight).

See, just do the steps and trust in the process to a final result.

So how much is your phone to you? Have you ever lost it? Tell me in the comments below, as I’d love to know that I’m not the only ditsy blond (well, grey).

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Author: Fee Writes

Ben & Jerry’s to Stop Selling Ice Cream!

I didn’t mean to get you all upset with the title of this post telling you that Ben & Jerry’s are going to stop selling ice cream – that would be disastrous. But they are going to in a selected area.

The Best Three Words

When Inspiration Hits

Inspiration can come any time from anywhere, and when it hits, one really should do something with it.

Jeff Bezos to Fly Into Space

The race for space travel and the wrangling that’s going on with the big boys makes me shake my head and say, “truly?”

Lost My Phone

How much do you rely on your phone? As I live on my own, my phone is a massive connection to the outside world.

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