SMOKING HABIT FOR SALE

I’ve made my donation of $300 to the Cancer Society , who’ve thanked me on their website here.

You don’t have to sell something strange or give as much as $300, but I’d encourage you to make a donation here.

Today Kent and I signed the contract, and it was my first full day without a cigarette.

This is a photo of me smoking my last cigarette, at 1:58 today.

My smoking habit has been sold to Kent Pearson, an Australian born new New Zealander who works with me at Colenso for $300, which I’ll donate to the NZ Cancer Society.

Thanks Kent for buying my habit! You did a good thing.

I spoke to Kiwi FM’s Wammo on Friday afternoon, who had some interesting questions.

You can hear the interview here.

Or check it out on Wammo’s blog here.

Thanks Alice for making it happen.

Tomorrow I will sell my smoking habit on the internet and will never smoke a cigarette again lest I pay someone $1000.

At the moment Kent Pearson, who I work with, is leading the bidding. He knows that he’ll be around me enough to tell if I have one.

A few strangers have bid. At least I think they’re strangers.

1003 people have looked at my auction and 74 people have either bid or put the auction in their watchlist. Perhaps some of them are waiting to make a sneaky bid at the last minute.

On the topic of people selling strange things on the internet, Kelvin showed me this website - www.davidhorvitz.com - where you can buy all sorts of things from a man from NYC. I think I’m going to buy a photo of a mailbox.

The Trade Me auction for my smoking habit is now live.

The auction closes at 2pm on Monday 31 March, 2008.

Go to the auction here.

During twelve years of smoking you learn a trick or two.

Stephen J Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, has written about Smoking Habit For Sale on his New York Times blog.

Read the story here.

This morning on Sunrise, the team debated the merits of my campaign.

Thanks Jaquie for sticking up for me!

To launch my campaign to give up smoking, TV3’s Campbell Live ran this story last night. Thanks to Tony Reid for making it happen.

The story is on the TV3 website here.