Things I Like Thursday – Announcements

Some announcements make your blood freeze and your muscles tense (remember being called to the stage at school assemblies?); there are those that make you furious (sitting aboard a delayed flight on the runway), while others are easily ignored and have little impact on your life “staff announcement, calling Teresa aisle 9″. But the announcements I like are the kind that increase your heart beat and flush your cheeks, are both exciting and terrifying.

Things I Like Thursday – Cherry Blossoms

If you’re living in South Korea or Japan, you have probably already seen these fantastical and demure trees welcoming the Spring with flowers of pink and white. As I grew up in New Zealand, I still marvel at them every year for the one week they appear in April. And by the looks of the traffic and throngs of people, I’m not alone.

Things I Like Thursday – The Benefits of Coffee

It probably comes as no surprise that coffee would make my list of ‘tops’. But are you even aware of how versatile this little bean is?

Let’s begin with the essentials

At home in New Zealand we have a garden. Through laziness or temperament my father lets the trees and plants grow wild, cutting only the grass necessary to allow access to the trampoline and washing-line. This results in urban chaos. Our two cats love the unhindered branches, damp soil and dark nooks for hiding. Birds nest in the trees, sing by the windows and gobble the plethora of fruit. It is a paradise the neighbors are less fond of.

Surrealist royalty Mark Ryden paints nostalgia of the non-existent. His work is on the fictitious memories attached to items of forty / fifty years ago, by those too young to remember. I understand that Ryden’s Art is not for everyone and I hope that I explain myself sufficiently so as to deflect hate-mail.