Oxley Community Carrols

My old trailerstage lives with Oxley UC.
Cameron's screen surface.
Megan has a ukulele group performing tonight.

Catherine Solomon Ordained

Today Megan, Paul Koning & myself drove into the city to attend Catherine Solomon's ordination.  The service was held in Albert St UC.  Started 2pm and finished 3:30ish i think.

A great service.  Good hymns. Met up with quite a number of people from times past.  Starting with Ben Webb whom I sent a text msg to during the service to say hi.
Also
Ces & Fay Schloss - Catherine's parents.  Ces had an oxygen bottle en tow. So glad he was able to make it.
Ian & Sue Berry & children.
Tracy.
Tim & Ro Solomon
Chris & Sharon Sibthorpe.
Dave Nix.

Etc

Wynham

If buying second hand,
Confirm no liabilities associated with the credits being purchased.
For example if the owner has trashed their room, there may be a bill associated with the credits.

Question for Wyndham -
A) can credits be sold?
B) What about the sweetner that was offerres with the credits like right to use tramsfer to other markets facility.

Dinner with Hayley's family

We were having a weekend at Kirra and Marcus had told me that Hayley's parents were staying at Burleigh and suggested we have dinner together.

I spoke with Grant and we agreed we would meet at 5pm and  each family would bring food equivalent to what they would easy and we would see how it came together.

Naturally we managed to leave our apartment late.  We drove via coles and picked up some food.

We arrived and were welcomed into their apartment. It all came together well.  I was a little selfconscious about contributing two bottles of wine that we had opened on the beach the previous day. 

Grant and I took the  meat and cooked it on the out door communal BBQ.  The inclement weather put paid to ideas of a swim and eating in the outdoor pool area. We retreated instead to their apartment.

The ladies had combined their and our salad contributions and laid out the serving take.  Just about then we (read I) realised we actually had not bought meat for Marcus.  As with these things there is alway plenty and so he did manage to get dinner.

When our wine was finished, Grant produced another nice bottle of red.  We sat on the veranda and solved various issues that have stymied global leaders.

All in all a very enjoyable relaxed evening. 

Kirra

Timeshare - Wyndham

Got a cold call a few months ago offering a cheap weekend accommodation at a choice of locations.  My recollection was that it was about $200 for 2 nights for up to 6 people. The catch and to give them their due, they were quite up front that we had to sit through a 90 minute sales presentation.

So here we are down the gold coast and have just sat through the 90 minute sales presentation for Wyndham.  Turns out they are associated in some complicated way with Watermark who's presentations we sat through on two occasions about 10 years ago.

Hmm what to say.

WHO WHAT
Wyndham, Accor, Watermark - All the same mob as far as I can see.
They sell timeshare access to holiday apartments.

HOW IT WORKS
The system operates on points.
You buy a certain number of points with a once off up front purchase.
You also have to pay a yearly fee.

Then you pay for accommodation with points. Unused points from one year can roll into the next but I suspect they have a life of 2 or 3 years.  But I don't know.  You can borrow next years points and use them this year.

It seemed like one needed about 12000 points to be able to have a peak season week almost anywhere.  (Although a few places require much more than 12000 points).

COST
Points are about $3 per point to buy.  So 12000 points is about $36 000 AUD.

The yearly fee is dependent on the number of points you own.  For 12000 points the fee is about $980.

IS THIS GOOD VALUE?
Well firstly I had a look on ebay and several people are selling credits
6000 credits for $4790
8000 credits for $4500
6000 credits for $4100
So it would seem the market price for points is less than a dollar a point.  ie less than 1/3 of the price they were offering us.
(Note someone charges a $300 transfer fee but most if not all ebay sellers said that they would pay this)

So if I was interested,  I think I would be better off buying into the scheme via ebay.
But also there are so many special offers associated with the face to face offer that I bet would be non transferability that I suspect there is a bit of a difference between the ebay purchased credits and the face to face credits.

Now the yearly maintenance cost of $980?
In peak season, 2 br apartments (sleep 6) on the gold coast seem to be about $400 per night.  So the Wyndham yearly fee of $980 is equivalent to about 2-3 nights accommodation.  Yet with Wyndham one is getting a week (7 nights I assume).

OK so if one bought two lots of 6000 points from ebay, that would total about $10000.
Then one spends $980 per year.  Lets call this $1k to keep the maths easy.

If one were to buy 7 nights retail on the net this would cost $400x7=$2800.
So we are equating $1k for Wyndham to $2800 retail.
Then we have the $1800 difference.  $1800 x 5.5 = $10 000.
So in 5.5 years Wyndham has paid for its self.


Lets consider a slightly different scenario.  If we were going retail we would probably only buy 5 nights.  5 x $400 = $2000.
So in this (slightly lopsided) case we are equating $1k Wyndham to $2k Retail.
So then we have a $1k difference.  $1000 x 10 = $10 000
So in this scenario the Wyndham cost recovery is 10 years.
(Bearing in mind that with Wyndham, one would most probably have availed ones self of the 7 nights each time)

Laying on of hands

A tradition in the Christian church is "laying on of hands".  A group prayer activity.  Community of people & connection with God.

I liked the way Ewan put his finger in Brad's nose.  It showed how much kids got on with Brad and how he was ok letting them into his personal space. 

Maybe Brad will use this photo?