Archive for the ‘ the new ’ Category

Secret Garden Party 2010: Too much fun for 140 characters

I decided to go to the Secret Garden Party at practically no notice, after hearing about it being a random festival of fun and insanity. But I grossly underestimated how much crazy hijinks were on offer. So here’s a short list1 of what I did at the Secret Garden Party this weekend:

  • Wandered around a festival with friends old and new
  • Danced to more sub-genres of music than I can count
  • Swam in a lake
  • Missed every single headliner
  • Slid down a helter skelter
  • Had my feet eaten by fish
  • Walked, ran, danced and pretend tightroped across a wibbly wobbly bridge
  • Found the conceptual end of the festival
  • Wrote stories to get free G&T
  • Saw a gorilla and banana get married
  • Got a tan
  • Listened to a talk on prime numbers and football
  • Failed to hula hoop
  • Watched an impromptu limbo competition happen down at the front stage
  • Only got bored twice in the entire festival
  • Drank a *lot* of cider
  • Saw a theremin playing space robot
  • Held a stick insect
  • Went on a ferris wheel
  • Had breakfast in bed
  • Was electrocuted by cucumbers
  • Took juggling lessons
  • Played scouts games
  • Swung on a mystic swing
  • Accidentally found fish (or were they umbrellas?) (or umbrella fish?)
  • Attended a fairly scientific talk on lucid dreaming
  • Saw a beat-boxing competition so good I forgot there was only voices
  • Danced more in the space of 24 hours than in the previous 24 months
  • Was touched by the tree of lost things
  • Saw a haphazard film crew re-enacting of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves
  • Danced on a floating boat club
  • Watched it burn in flames

The list of things I missed or forgot to do or didn’t know were happening until after the fact is at least as large.

Roll on Secret Garden Party 2011.

  1. It might be short, but it’s still too much for twitter or Facebook to handle! [↩]
2010
07/27
CATEGORY
Life
the new
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The New

Today is not just the start of a new year – it is also the dawning of a new decade. I’m a big fan of symbolic events1 , and today is traditional time of year to create a fresh start.

Thinking back on the decade, I started it in Melbourne in the final stages of my degree while working at a web company using HTML and Microsoft ASP. I’ve finished the decade in London, contracting as an Adobe Flex developer. In meantime, I’ve backpacked through South America, lived in 10 different houses, and changed my career path from client to server and back again.

Thinking back on the successes and failures of the past 10 years, I think I’ve got a mini-manifesto.

The New.

Learn new skills. Meet new people. Read new books. Visit new places. Consume new foods. Listen to new music. Play new games. See new sights.

I like the new. The new is interesting, and potentially unique. My career is balanced somewhere between the cutting and the bleeding edge – as new as new gets. Although the old and familiar is very comforting, the new can in time become just as old and familiar whilst not taking anything away from the previous old. And even if the new ultimately turns out to be something not to continue, in the meantime the rush of the new is enjoyable.

So, for the decade to come, I will be chasing the new with everything I can.

It should be fun.

  1. New Years Eve is an example of what I call the Speedometer Effect: people pay more attention to the changeover at 199,999 km than they do at 125,954 km for example, even though they are the same change in distance. In a similar way, life changing resolutions occur more frequently at New Years – thus the name – than at any other time of year [↩]
2010
01/01
CATEGORY
Life
the new
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