Keep Calm and Go To the Sea

When I was young, we only ever referred to our beach holiday house as "the sea" - as if it was the only sea out there. To us it was! And so as today draws to the close a rather interesting, hectic and emotionally draining work year, I bid farewell to these four walls and cannot wait to go to "the sea" next week.

The plans are few, but the food and fun will be plenty. Books will be read, sun will be soaked in, wine will be drunk, catch up convo's will be had, boardgames will be played and table tennis contests will be won (by me of course!) and the laptop will remain firmly shut with the cell phone of course not having any receiption....these are the best types of holidays which make the 9 hour drive to get there well worth it!


Now just to ask the weather gods for no wind and cloud free skies and all will be perfect!

Keep Calm and Fake a British Accent

Two Australian Radio DJ's might have taken this a little too literally last week when calling the hospital Kate Middleton was in last week, pranking two nurses and resulting in one of their suicides. I'm not here to rehash all the details (my favourite online newspaper Daily Mail can do that for you) but it did get me thinking of the obsession I, and many others evidently, have with the royals.

One of my earliest scrapbooking memories was as a young child paging through all my mom's old magazines hunting for pictures of Princess Diana. My room was plastered with posters, photos, newspaper clippings of my hero. Now if I, as a young South African girl, growing up on a farm in the middle of no where, was this obsessed, I can only imagine how others within her reach must have been.

Fast forward a good few years and hundreds of us (both male and female) crammed into our office canteen to watch as her son tied the knot to Kate Middleton. I don't think that anyone, especially my male colleagues, could quite put their fingers on what exactly our fascination with the wedding was but we all knew that we wouldn't leave until it was done. Prehaps it's the real life fairy tale element that keeps us intrigued or the fact that an ordinary girl can be given extraordinary opportunities.

Regardless of the reason, I hope that the tragedies of the past will not again be repeated. That we as "royal-watchers" can respect the gravity of the consequences when some take it too far.

Keep Calm and Unfriend

Who are you again?!

One of my new years resolutions in 2012 was to live life in real time, in the moment and savouring the memory in my mind rather than living life on / through / obsessing over Facebook. I had grown tired of hearing what almost random strangers were having for breakfast, how they were feeling after their breakup, or my personal favourites, how their child was growing day by day through pictures. As a result, this year has been an awesome one which those who I do know and love, have shared with me, in the flesh. The relative privacy has been refreshing and the conversations I've had with my friends when we see each other have been so much richer because we actually have news to share in person!

The other day I realised that while the choice to not share every gorry detail of my life on the 'book has been great, I still was being exposed to all the details of so many people who I either don't recall at all, or met once...on a random party night...12 years ago... Was it really neccessary for me to have 810 facebook friends?! Hell no! And so the great Facebook "unfriend" commenced - 120 friends less later (with many more still to come) and I feel strangely lighter and perhaps even a little more willing to share online again.

Possibly the goal for 2013 should be, rather than not posting, redefine what it means to be a friend and be even more brutal with the great de-friend! Here's to keeping calm and unfriending :-)

Keep Calm and Sing Carols

Wow - I can't believe how fast the past two weeks have flown past! Things have just not stopped and now finally, as the the end of the working year draws closer, the mad rush seems to be calming down and we will hopefully be able to laze our way into shutdown. #5moreworkingdaysleft

It hasn't all been hard graft though: 3 lazy lunches, 2 year end functions and 1 half day off in the last couple of weeks is not a bad strike rate. But for now my focus is going to shift from all that has not yet happened at work to all that has not yet been done on the home front. For what must be the first time EVER, I have NO ideas as to what I'm buying everyone for Christmas. Oh - I have the gift boxes sorted, quirky gift tags purchased, the Xmassy washy tape read to stick, but do you thing I have any ideas as to what will go into the pressies?! Serves me right for only shopping for myself at the recent gift fairs.

So besides a shopping spree of note this weekend, we're also off to Carols in the Park tonight! Great way to kick off the weekend and get into the holiday mode! Happy Friday :-)