It is often said that you don't know what you have until it's gone. Gone has a certain finality to it. Dictionary.com defines it as departed, left, ruined, past or dead.
This photo is one of my favourite photos of one of my favourite possessions - my bass guitar. I took this photo in December of 2009 about a week before Christmas. I was on vacation at home and needed a red photo for an online photo competition.
Right now my bass guitar is gone. Departed, but hopefully neither ruined, nor dead! The last time I saw it was at the end of September 2011 when it was packed by the removal company. It has been in their safe keeping since then. Five months is a very long time to not have your stuff, but I suppose it's better than them all truly being gone!
Thinking about all my things, I can honestly say that right now the list of my "favourite things" is quite short. There are probably several reasons why this may be the case :-
1. I have forgotten all the cool things I have!
2. Many of my really favourite things came back with me on the plane.
3. I've realized that the important things in life aren't things.
I'd like to think that it's all reason 3, but I think in reality it's a combination of all three.
I hope the lesson I take into the soon approaching future when I will have all my stuff back is that I should share my favourite things more with the favourite people in my life!
Friday, March 2, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Catching up!
At least 8 months have passed since I lasted posted on this blog! It's pretty much dead in the water, it's scant readership absorbed in other people's musings and ramblings no doubt. I just spent the last hour or so reading the 16 posts that make up the blog as it currently stands. In some respects in feels like I am reading someone else's work, but I guess that's what happens when almost a year passes between stopping writing and starting again?
I've titled this post catching up as it feels like I owe it to the blog (and it's readers present or future) to fill in the gap between 9 May 2011 and today 1 March 2012. To say a lot has happened is probably an understatement, it feels like everything has changed!
I suppose it's best to start at the beginning and to take it from there. It started with a business trip to South Africa. I used the opportunity to visit a doctor to check-out a lower back injury that was causing unbearable pain in my lower right leg. An MRI revealed that I had a ruptured disc and a 2nd one close to rupture. My doctor recommended a conservative approach - bed rest with physiotherapy. What should have been a 3 day hospital stay eventually turned into a 2 week stay! First there were blood pressure issues, then some adverse drug reactions and also a persistent chest pain that was eventually diagnosed as a pulmonary embolism.
In the end my 1 week business trip turned into a 2 month trip. I eventually made it back to Kenya at the end of July. I was back, but not to stay. I was being repatriated to South Africa. In the end we left Kenya at the end of September a few days before October 2011.
Getting back into life in South Africa has been a 5 month adjustment that doesn't feel like it's over yet. Not only have I changed countries, I have changed jobs, cities and houses. It also feels like I have changed direction!
I can probably expand each of the changes into a blog post or two and maybe I will in future, but I feel like the blog is "caught up" and that hopefully I can move forward again from here.
I've titled this post catching up as it feels like I owe it to the blog (and it's readers present or future) to fill in the gap between 9 May 2011 and today 1 March 2012. To say a lot has happened is probably an understatement, it feels like everything has changed!
I suppose it's best to start at the beginning and to take it from there. It started with a business trip to South Africa. I used the opportunity to visit a doctor to check-out a lower back injury that was causing unbearable pain in my lower right leg. An MRI revealed that I had a ruptured disc and a 2nd one close to rupture. My doctor recommended a conservative approach - bed rest with physiotherapy. What should have been a 3 day hospital stay eventually turned into a 2 week stay! First there were blood pressure issues, then some adverse drug reactions and also a persistent chest pain that was eventually diagnosed as a pulmonary embolism.
In the end my 1 week business trip turned into a 2 month trip. I eventually made it back to Kenya at the end of July. I was back, but not to stay. I was being repatriated to South Africa. In the end we left Kenya at the end of September a few days before October 2011.
Getting back into life in South Africa has been a 5 month adjustment that doesn't feel like it's over yet. Not only have I changed countries, I have changed jobs, cities and houses. It also feels like I have changed direction!
I can probably expand each of the changes into a blog post or two and maybe I will in future, but I feel like the blog is "caught up" and that hopefully I can move forward again from here.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Time Travel
The population of a small island in the South Pacific Ocean have perfected time travel! The island of Samoa is planning a jump into the future by moving themselves west of the International Date Line. Perhaps the island's population have grown tired of being some of the last people on earth to celebrate the New Year? Jokes aside, the real reason relates to the economy. Currently Samoa loses two working days with it's biggest trading partners - New Zealand and Australia. Currently when it's Friday in New Zealand its Saturday in Samoa, and when it's Sunday in Samoa, it's Monday in New Zealand.
The International Date Line (IDL) is an imaginary line that runs generally north-south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's function is to define the position on the Earth's surface where the date changes. Traveling east across the line means you repeat a day, while crossing it in a westerly direction means you jump forward a day!
The line follows the 180 degree meridian for the most part except where it goes around parts of continents or islands (no avoid a single nation have time zones in 2 different days). Samoa, lies just east of the line, and so the change in position will only lead to a small additional kink in the line on the new maps.
If you extend the IDL into the other hemisphere, the line is called the Prime Meridian or perhaps better known as the Greenwich meridian as it passes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in southeast London. This arbitrary line was agreed to as the zero position of longitude at the International Meridian Conference held in 1884. The same conference defined the "Universal Day" as midnight-to-midnight Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), but decided that countries could unilaterally decide how to measure time. It is for this reason that some countries like India choose to have 1 time zone that is 05h30 ahead of GMT!
This artificial line creates the Eastern and Western Hemispheres also creates some interesting time phenomena (although they are completely artificial constructs). For example, you can celebrate your birthday twice in one year by crossing the IDL in a easterly direction on your birthday. The clocks go back a day and you get to celebrate again!
Another strange phenomenon is that for 2 hours each day (between 10h00 and 11h59 GMT) three different days are observed in different places on the globe. At 10h30 in Greenwich it's Tuesday, while in Samoa it's 23h30 on Monday night, and across the IDL in Kiritimati or Christmas Island it's Friday morning 00h30!
Samoa has a population of about 180,000. I suppose they will enjoy being one of the first nation's to experience the New Year at 00h01 on January 2012!
The International Date Line (IDL) is an imaginary line that runs generally north-south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's function is to define the position on the Earth's surface where the date changes. Traveling east across the line means you repeat a day, while crossing it in a westerly direction means you jump forward a day!
The line follows the 180 degree meridian for the most part except where it goes around parts of continents or islands (no avoid a single nation have time zones in 2 different days). Samoa, lies just east of the line, and so the change in position will only lead to a small additional kink in the line on the new maps.
If you extend the IDL into the other hemisphere, the line is called the Prime Meridian or perhaps better known as the Greenwich meridian as it passes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in southeast London. This arbitrary line was agreed to as the zero position of longitude at the International Meridian Conference held in 1884. The same conference defined the "Universal Day" as midnight-to-midnight Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), but decided that countries could unilaterally decide how to measure time. It is for this reason that some countries like India choose to have 1 time zone that is 05h30 ahead of GMT!
 |
| What time is it? |
This artificial line creates the Eastern and Western Hemispheres also creates some interesting time phenomena (although they are completely artificial constructs). For example, you can celebrate your birthday twice in one year by crossing the IDL in a easterly direction on your birthday. The clocks go back a day and you get to celebrate again!
Another strange phenomenon is that for 2 hours each day (between 10h00 and 11h59 GMT) three different days are observed in different places on the globe. At 10h30 in Greenwich it's Tuesday, while in Samoa it's 23h30 on Monday night, and across the IDL in Kiritimati or Christmas Island it's Friday morning 00h30!
Samoa has a population of about 180,000. I suppose they will enjoy being one of the first nation's to experience the New Year at 00h01 on January 2012!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)