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I was meant to be in Tasmania for a wedding this weekend. Instead the dreaded lurgy has reared its ugly head, and I am instead stuck at home with tonsillitis. Not all bad news though, it has bought on a stream of self-development, blogging and learning (a notable being learning to spell tonsillitis). A lot has been going on over the last month and a bit, so  this is a bit of a bubble-n-squeak post.

Firstly, I got back from snowboarding in Japan for three weeks about a fortnight ago. We were in Niseko on the north island, Hokkaido. It was an amazing trip, and an amazing experience. We met some really cool people over there, and experienced the best snow that I have ever seen – hands down. We had a good week of solid and consistent snow… and I was all over it like a fat kid on a cupcake. As you can see… the snow was pretty deep!

There was a sad aspect of the trip however. Whilst we were over there, a skier called Scott McKay went missing after leaving a bar called Wild Bills late on a Friday night (story here). Unfortunately, people don’t last very long in -8/-10 degree temperatures. A couple of community searches were hosted for Scott’s body. I participated in the second search but with the levels of snow that Niseko was having at the time, it was a needle in a haystack situation. I still remember seeing his father addressing the search team before the search commenced. It was a little disconcerting: this was the sort of thing that you see on TV all the time, it felt very strange to actually be there in real life. He was so distraught that he could hardly hold the megaphone he was addressing the crowd through. I think I speak for most people who were present when I say that I felt true empathy for Scott’s Dad that day.

In other news, WiFi in Australia has been growing like magic beans! There are now maps contributed by the community for Perth (thanks Jimmy) and for the Northern River’s region of NSW (thanks Pippa). I’ve also heard through the twit-vine that Neil is currently revamping the WiFi in UK site, so I am looking forward to seeing what comes from that development also.

I’ve been reading a few books too (which will probably make the likes of Jane very proud of me). Firstly, I finished The Graveyard Book a week or so before I hit Japan. It was a typical Neil Gaiman book – brilliant, and not nearly enough of it! I seriously recommend ANYBODY to read ANYTHING he has written – the man is a genius. I’ve almost got through Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This is an amazing book – published in 1937 after the Great Depression, and is the precursor (and ideological basis) of the explosion of success books published today. I’m also reading Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. It is an interesting account of how the way we describe the events that unfold around us has an effect on our actions and our mental state, specifically  focusing on the human condition of depression. It then shows practical steps people can take to change the way they perceive the events in our lives for the better of our mental health (hence, learned optimism).

Oh, I found this video of David Tennant and Catherine Tate from last years Comic Relief on YouTube – classic!

Also on YouTube, this amazing short film was sent to me by a friend… a work of art and the best YouTube video I have seen so far!

There are probably more things to write about, but I am going to leave it here, so that I can pretend that those other things are in fact new things, giving me a higher post count!

Filed under: general, snowboarding by Chris