Has anyone at home ever hear of CostCo? If not, chances are we will in the not too distant future. Unconfirmed reports on the internet suggest that there will be a CostCo warehouse built as part of the docklands development in Melbourne. My guess is that it will grow from there.
CostCo is a warehouse style supermarket which aims to sell high quantities of fairly high quality goods at fairly low prices. And, interstingly, it is a membership based shop. You have to spend $50 or $100 to buy a membership before you can even shop here! Lots and lots of peoepl do though. It is an extremely successful business. I'm not a good enough shopper to really be able to compare prices (the exchange rate doesn't help) so I'll leave it to others to pass judgement on the affordableness (or otherwise) of CostCo. I'll just say that I was really impressed with theri scale adn volume. There weer many peoepl lined up waiting to go in when the place opened at 10am. The vote of the consumer is what counts!
We met at lunchtime with Oakdale Rotary at a very classy country club. They had leather chairs with little rolling wheels on them! Very comfy. Also had great desserts. My kind of place really. I sat at teh back table with all the other rebels of the club. It was fun, except that there was a womens' luncheon of some description happeneing behind some partitiions just behind us, adn they pretty much drow3ned out the club president! At the end of our presentation there was tiem for questions. One bloke made a wise crack about being really keen to get to Tasmania. He said he woudl hire a sports car and drive around aqs quickly as he could tryign to get a ticket (presumably from Sarah). For the longest tiem I didn't know where he was heading wit the story, but i n the end I'll give it credit. I found it funny...
Meeting at the country club
The afternoon provided a chance for vocational visits. Chris Currie had gone to some effort to try and arrange for us to do things we hadn't seen before. I think this is a tough ask in teh last week, but he worked at it and did a good job. I can't speak authoritively about what teh rest of the team did, but, in brief:
Michelle visited a local governemnt training authority
Sarah was out with county police
Glen went to Jack Rabbit who make machinery for almond harvesting
Chris had a pow wow with the membership coordinator for the local Rotary clubs
& I (Will) got to visit a local IT Solutions company who were named… IT Solutions!
IT Solutions is run by Modesto Downtown Rotarian David and his business partner. He's actually a competitor of sorts with CHris, so it was nice of both of them to arrange the visit. David and I had a great time discussing things as diverse as choosing their customer base, employing staff, time management, salary adn incentive schemes, low labour services that can provide ongogin revenue streams, hang gliding (a favourite of David's!) and finally, what we each wnat to do when we grow up. It was a thoroughly entertaining afternoon. Thanks David.
April & her son
A kiwi in his element
Wednesday evening presented us with ten pin bowling and pizza and partying. Terri & Howie dropped in, as did many of our hosts. I don't really want to talk abotu my bowling, suffice to say that Chris' 10 year old daughter beat me pretty consistently!
Enjoying bowling the way Terri, Els, Howie & I prefer
On the upside, the bowling alley had a radar on the alleys to tell you your ball speed, and I did hold the speed record for a short time at 19.1 mph. I was knocked off though. First by Chris, and later by Jeff and Glen who fought out a tough contest with Jeff finally taking the prize at about 23 mph... A productive evening I'm sure you will agree!
Glen bowling at 20+ Mph
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