100daysofbeing

Food, fluids and friendships.. The highlights of days of Christmas past..

Overheard on the airport lounge’s public address system, Amy Winehouse belting out the lines to Back to Black. A bit out of left field but enough to unleash a flood of memories from that summer of 2009. #LifeInASong

Stumbled upon via the Wordpress discovery feature, The True Story of a Seven Year Marriage: Before you can make high towers, it’s best to build a good strong base. It comes from laughter, empathy, forgiveness, accepting the other person’s struggle, and knowing yourself. But sometimes without knowing it, you build too high and too fast. Things get shaky and start to wobble. There is always a way to rebuild if you’re willing. Always new and different blocks to try, always time to take a few steps back and build the bottom stronger. ...

Watching Whiplash again reminded me of the power mentors (or more correctly in this case, people who we look up to and whose opinions we cherish) can have over us, driving us to become singularly focused on achieving, thereby impressing them. The merits and demerits of the influence of Fletcher on Andrew may be open to interpretation - the methods certainly are - but the intensity with which that final scene was delivered might make up for every thing. ...

--- Yesterday was a seventh consecutive day of having managed to start my day with a time of quiet contemplation using the devotional I’ve chosen to use for the year. The reading, from 1 Corinthians 9:27 with its imagery of war with the body got me thinking of all the other metaphors faith (at least in the Christian sense) is described by. A few readily came to mind; an athlete, a soldier, a farmer and a steward of resources. I suspect there are more, if one chose to delve deeper, but all these seemed to support the narrative of focus and discipline on one hand, and reward on the other. ...

Sent on a whim, and very well received by all accounts. I should do this more often. #Embrace spontaneity

At the coffee machine, catching up with the new, younger engineer who shares my first name, he asks me what my surname is. I give him the anglicized, easy to pronounce version which doesn’t satisfy him. He asks me how I would pronounce it - cue five attempts, after each of which he fails colossally to reproduce the sounds I make somehow ending up adding, subtracting and transposing syllables through his various attempts. ...

In the picture are two of my favourite things: coffee, particularly that festive specialty ginger bread latte and wasabi peas which have been out of stock at the shop next to work for a while. Which is why I went a little over the top once they were back in, ordered four little packs. #Bliss

Each year, on the last day before work officially resumes, I pop into the office to clear my desk. Something about the emptiness and the quietness allows me to, as I put away the detritus of the past year’s work, progressively bring myself to a place where I feel prepared to face the new work year. A large part of that is about trying to ease myself into the routine of work, acclimatising to my work space again after what usually has been two to three weeks of absence, and a food fuelled haze of sorts. ...

My first run since I cracked a couple of bones in my foot last October went without incident, all fifteen minutes of it. I took my usual route, up the Beach Boulevard and then towards the Beach Esplanade; the long, straight stretch of which I have come to love for the sense of exhilaration I get as my feet pound the ground in time with whatever song I am listening to. ...