My Natural Born Winner

I've always known that Jax is a serious bright-spark. Nedbank recently realised this and she was one of 2000 employees countrywide that were nominated for the 'Natural Born Winner' award. The list was chopped and filtered and Jax ended up at a formal awards dinner where she found out that she was one of the 20 winners. Nice one!

The prize - a whirlwind trip over to the USA for a Caribbean Cruise and then a couple of days at Disneyworld. A trip for 2 that is. After Jax won I was on my very best behaviour and after a worrying couple of days I got the invite.

We've just got back and had a seriously cool time. Treated like royalty and never having to reach into our wallets. We flew a ridiculous 16 and a half hours to Atlanta. This after Jax and the idiot woman at the Delta check-in counter had a lekker argument that ended in Jax having the added bonus and convenience of an 'enhanced security check' before boarding. The first part of the trip was a 4 day cruise aboard the monstrous Grandeur of the Seas to Key West and Cozumel (a little island off Mexico). We had a luxury suite on the 8th floor of the boat, with balcony and all. Food served all day, some great activities on board, but the highlights without a doubt were the walk around Key West and the excursion into Mexico, to the Mayan ruins at Tulum.

After arriving back in Fort Lauderdale, and unfortunately missing Horatio Cane in Miami, we made our way to Disneyworld. I had no idea what to expect of the place that is obviously pretty famous. It was way bigger than we ever imagined, with highways and monorails connecting different parts of the park, and an amazing 55,000 people that are employed there. I ran around like a lunatic hyperactive child and we managed to see and do a ridiculous amount in the short amount of time we had. If you wanted to do everything you'd need more than a week. Our highlights were, in no particular order:

• Space Mountain - a fast roller coaster that spins you around a massive pitch dark dome


• Soarin - a gliding simulator that takes you over different parts of California and allows you even to smell the orange plantations and pine trees below


• Everest expedition - another roller coaster, but this time up, down and backwards through a replica (smaller obviously but still pretty big) of Mount Everest


• Walking through the Magic Kingdom - with Goofy, all of the chipmunks, Buzz Lightyear and a hundred other characters

Probably the best thing was that we were there during the quietest time of the year at Disney and we walked straight onto most of the rides.

We ate at some interesting places, explored a Walmart and enjoyed the very different but surprisingly entertaining 'Blue Man Group' at Universal Studios. Another awesome excursion was to the headquarters of NASA at the Kennedy Space Centre. We watched a 3-D IMAX about the Hubble Space Telescope, did a shuttle launch simulator (which wasn't as good as the one at Disney) and then did a tour of the whole site. We were really lucky to see one of the shuttles on the launch pad, ready for it's November the first launch that will be the last that NASA will do for the foreseeable future.

All I can say is well done and keep up the good work Jax. I am really looking forward to the trip next year.