2014 in review

I just couldn’t resist posting this!! My 2014 annual report 🙂

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 950 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 16 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

On Being Immortal

There is a deep seated need in each one of us to be remembered. We may not acknowledge it, we may even laugh at someone who boldly states it but it is there, in the centre of our hearts.We seek it all the time, desperate to leave a piece of ourselves in the form of a memory in someone else’s life; a photograph immortalized by the internet; a song we sang off key; a family video of us just goofing around; a blog we used to write which will be preserved for eternity no matter how long it has lain dusty. This is the reason we suffer anguish, when the computer crashes and leaves us a wreckage of our beloved collection of photographs and videos; when the internet goes off and you realise that the draft you were writing was not saved. We have become hardened by the time we have spent on this earth, developing into a civilization. We no longer trust the human memory, how much can it take anyway? There are too many of us, we reason, not everyone will be remembered. We doubt our own memories too when we suddenly find that we can’t remember the dates of important events in our lives or even the most important moments themselves.

So you see we are not really to blame to take advantage of the advancements of our race to try and preserve a piece of ourselves, the best and the brightest ones so that when we are gone, they will live on. We are scared to imagine the lives of our ancestors who we know nothing about. We wonder if we are making the same mistakes they once made, because we have no way to know their stories. Sure we have a history, that can teach us the futility of war and the importance of being human but its never personal enough to make us sit up and take notice. We can think of people from history in third person but we can’t imagine ourselves in their place because we can’t really feel it. It is important therefore to be remembered for exactly who we were so that our future generations can look back and really know us.

Of course I may just be romanticizing it all and giving it more weight than it deserves. But I have to believe that the whole world has not just taken leave of its senses to spend such time and effort to make themselves immortal. Maybe it is actually the most important thing we are ever going to do and therefore worth the effort and the time we spend.

Or maybe I’m just rambling as usual…

A Very Merry Christmas

You know how sometimes absolutely delightful things happen that you had no idea were about to happen? Well that happened a couple of days ago. Someone showed me how to make a Christmas star decoration from scratch and I just couldn’t wait to try it for myself. So I thought I would share the happiness around 🙂

What you’ll need: 6 sheets of A4 paper, scissors, glue stick, stapler, punch, ribbon or thread.

Step 1: Start with cutting away a square from each A4 paper. You should have 6 square sheets now.

Cut a square

Step 2: Then, fold each square diagonally in half and then another half. You should have 6 small triangles now

Fold once to form a large triangle

Fold again to form a small triangle

Step 3: On one triangle, draw a line parallel to the folded edge. The line should be 2 cm away from the edge

Line parallel to the inner edge

Step 4: Next, draw 3 lines at 2 cm width apart that are parallel to the open end of the triangle. These lines should end at the earlier line parallel to the folded edge.

3 lines parallel to the outer edge

Step 5: Cut along the length of each of the 3 lines and stop at where they meet the line parallel to the folded edge. Repeat this for all 6 triangles

Cut along the lines

Step 6: Now comes the jaw dropping part. Open out the triangles so that they are back to squares. Lift up the centre flaps and curve them to meet in the centre. Use glue or stapler to secure them there.

Open back to square

Fold innermost flap

Step 7: Turn the paper over and repeat the same action for the next flaps but on the other side. Repeat it for all four flaps. What you have now is one complete petal of the star

Turn and fold next second flap

Turn and fold third flap

Turn and fold fourth flap

Step 8: Do this for all the six squares of paper

All 6 petals

Step 9: Collect the ends of all six and staple them where they meet. It may be difficult to hold all 6 together, so staple together 3 at a time and then staple the 2 sets together. Lastly staple all the petals to each other at their middles to complete the star

Attach 3 together

Attach the 2 sets together

Attach in the middle

Step 10: Punch a hole at the end of one of the petals to pass a ribbon or string through and then hang up your very own handmade Christmas star!

Hang up you handmade Christmas star!

And another one!

And yet another one!

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Cheers!