To continue on from Part 1 of my year review, this is the half that's essentially not about me. The moments that made an impression have been recorded here for posterity (read: so I don't forget how awesome I thought they were) in chronological order. The second half of the post is the Hi5 Awards. I had intended to do those a little earlier in the year, but moving countries and then coming on holiday to Cape Town (Mum and Dad's plan...not that I'm complaining) has put a spanner in the works. I won't do a lowlights section for this part of the year review, because all you need to do to find out depressing stuff is read a news website.
Highlights
Di Grassi getting the Virgin to the finish line in Sepang. I've already discussed it, but I remain astounded that he could get his car across the finish line despite it not having a big enough fuel tank (Dear Nick Wirth and the Virgin Racing design team, I'm sorry to go on and on about that particular flaw in the VR-01; it's nothing personal, I promise).
The publication of a recipe for conductive and non-conductive play-dough. Seriously, whoever thought that up totally rules. If I had an address for them, this point would be included in the Hi5 Awards section. I hope that the coming generation of physics geeks enjoy and appreciate how much more fun their education will be because of it!
How To Train Your Dragon. How I wish someone would vote this as Movie of the Year for 2010! I know it's an animated film, and there are far more technically brilliant films that were released this year. However, the whole film filled me with unadulterated delight; it's not often I get to feel unadulterated delight.
Kovalainen's fireman moment in Singapore. I know that racing drivers are employed for being quick-thinking and level-headed, but he took it to new levels there. Apparently, I'm not the only one, since he won the LG Moment of the Year award (which, I think we'll all agree, is more prestigious than the Hi5 Awards later in this post.
Vettel winning the World Drivers Championship. I'm not going to debate who should have won instead, I'm just saying I'm happy that he did. I've been a fairly ardent supporter of his since his Toro Rosso days, so it was awesome to watch him become the youngest world champion ever (especially since he was such an emotional championship winner).
Returning, for a moment, to movies of the year, I would like to give Bruno Senna a mention for two youtube vids he posted this season. The first scores serious points for geekery (bonus points for being seemingly oblivious to the position of his backside in relation to the camera, and the effect this would have on...well, anyone who likes mens' arses), the second for bad-assery (to be able to film on a mobile phone while driving a stick-shift Formula 1 car takes some serious skills).
Hi5 Awards for General Awesomeness Online
This is the inaugural Hi5 Awards, so I should probably explain them. The categories are not fixed and will change from year to year, as will the trophies. The theme for the trophies is that they will be created by an artisan local to where I'm living at the time. The winners of Hi5 Awards this year will receive wire-and-bead sculptures (if they are excited/complimented enough to send me a mailing address) themed according to their awards, since I'm currently in Africa and these seem to be the predominant form of informal art in this place at the moment. Each category was judged by performance over the whole year, not just isolated incidents (otherwise they would have been mentioned in the hightlights section).
Best LGBT Twitter Feed
Dorothy Snarker. Officially, she's a pop-culture blogger famous for Tank Top Tuesday, Gender-f**k Thursday, and awarding toaster-ovens to straight actresses who don't shy away from queer roles (that is, they've been accepted as honourary lesbians and are rewarded with a toaster oven). However, her twitter feed extends to wider LGBT issues – Prop 8 (she lives in California), the It Gets Better campaign, etc. – without losing the wonderful edge of snarky humour that we appreciate in her blog.
Best F1 Team Official Twitter Feed
Virgin Racing. Geoff (the man behind the twitter feed) has spent this year being generally awesome to fans on twitter – answering questions; retweeting cool links; providing behind-the-scenes info; keeping us abreast of the romance between Henry (the vacuum cleaner) and Veronica (di Grassi's car); he's done it all.
Best Racing Driver Twitter Feed
João Paulo Oliveira. For those of you who don't know, he's just won Formula Nippon. Far from the racing-tweets-only policy of some, he provides a very interesting look at...well, lots of things, including Japan through the eyes of a foreigner. Also, he stood up for Brazilian President when one of his followers made sexist comments and derided her for being a woman. Honourable mention goes to Karun Chandhok, but people have already pointed this out about him. (Dear Taylor Swift, if you ever read this, please drop him a tweet? He's a cool guy and it would make his day if you did.)
Best YouTube Film-Maker
Timo Glock. After a slow start, the clips have got more elaborate. He's played with varying the speed, allowing storyline progression through clips and creative soundtracking. He also seems to be the most prolific clip-maker in the paddock (bonus points scored).
Glass Half-Full Award
Karun Chandhok. Now, I know that we all know that all glasses are full all the time (even if they are only filled with air), but not everyone sees it that way. Fortunately, Chandhok has the ability to keep his irrepressible optimism going, despite having a very rough season.
Bad-assery Award
Andy Lally. This guy just can't seem to get enough of finding new ways to flirt with danger – mixed martial arts classes, street luge runs, getting second-degree burns and carbon monoxide poisoning from his race car. Thus, severe bad-ass points.
Dry Humour Award
Unlap. Luke (the guy behind the feed) has a delightful turn of phrase, and a wicked sense of humour. Unfortunately, it has landed him in a bit of hot water from some uptight morons (who shall remain nameless, lest I incur their wrath as well), but I still have the wallpaper he made about Red Bull giving one wings in response to Mark Webber's crash in Valencia.
Best Editor
GrandAmGal. Technically, this is a personal award not a blog award, but she has done much encouraging, reading, re-reading and criticising of my work this year via email, gtalk and twitter. Thus, she deserves a public shout-out and a trophy. She's one of the few people who knows just how perilously close the tortoise screenplay is to becoming the cartoon version of Open Water.
So, here's to the end of 2010; everybody have a hi5 for making it to the end. May we all look back on it and remember it as something better than it was!...or if we don't, may selective amnesia block out the frustrating, upsetting and just plain vexing bits.
Showing posts with label year review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label year review. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
2010 Review Part 1 – Personal
This has been a year of dizzying highs and devastating lows. In church on Christmas Day (yes, I went to church with my family. Due to time constraints [we needed to drop my brother at the airport], we ducked out before communion [to my mother's relief, since I was about to launch into a “modern Christianity has got it wrong” diatribe about the sacrament of communion]), the minister talked about how it's important to look at where we've come from in order to chart where we're going. Since it's the end of the calendar year, I felt the need to write a review of what's happened this year – a highlights and lowlights reel, as it were. I'll start with the lowlights, so that the post ends on a happy note. Part 2 of this post will serve as the Hi5 Awards for 2010 (I had wanted to do them in a separate post, but I'm on holiday in Cape Town at the moment, and internet facilities in our accommodation are sorely lacking).
Lowlights
I think the month of July, pretty much in its entirety, counts as a lowlight (that set the precedent for my final semester at Rhodes). That was the month when I lost two friends to car accidents within four days of each other. Literally, I got back from one memorial service to find out that I would be organising one for another friend. The waste of potential and the pointlessness of their deaths threw me very far off-centre. The cloud of dark grey that had settled over my mind was then compounded by finding out that, no matter how well I did in my November exams, I would never score high enough to make it into a postgraduate program.
Another lowlight came in the form of the unexpected housemate. A friend and I had arranged to move in together for the duration of 2010. However, he got excluded from university on academic grounds, so I was left without a friendly face with whom to share a house. Instead, I got saddled with The Hypochristian. It still baffles me how someone who claims to love God – who told us to look after the earth and be motivated by love – can feel no guilt about taking hour-long showers (seriously, not even a crack-whore in downtown Bangkok could possibly need that much shower time on a daily basis) during the worst drought the region has ever recorded, leaving lights on (in locked rooms, so that I couldn't turn them off) and going away for the weekend, and exclusively choosing unethical food and cosmetic products.
Highlights
Resolving the issue of The Hypochristian playing her (horrendous) music too loud (although I would debate whether it's worthy of being played at all). It would seem that right-wing religious nuts get the point when you blast them with Children of Bodom and suchlike until they turn their music down.
Girls nights. Towards the end of the year, two nerd-girl friends and I discovered that life was easier to handle when faced together. Thus, Tuesday nights became a sacred time of food, wine and geek talk. It is wonderful to have friends to share musings with and ask for creative guidance, even if the side-effect of having three scientists in the room is that every sequence of actions needs to be discussed at length in order to find the most efficient method.
Catching up with old friends. A few people have drifted back into my life this year after rather lengthy hiatuses (hiati?), and it's quite lovely rediscovering old friendships, catching up on important news, and adding new layers of memories to the bond. This is especially true when you realise that you can be yourself around them, even though you thought they would judge you for some of your life choices.
Being made an author on sidepodcast. Yes, to the relief of those of you who don't follow F1, I now have somewhere to work out the more intense parts of my Formula1-related geekery. After submitting this post, I was offered an authorship. True, it doesn't come with a paycheque, but it's lovely to know that other people think I have something valid to say.
Passing my degree. I think that says it all – I am now no longer a student; I am a graduate; I am no longer doomed to either waitress or sex worker as career options in the current job market. I want to get a t-shirt printed to that tune, just so that the whole world knows. Although, I'm not sure how seriously people take someone with “university graduate” printed across their bosom.
I have no idea what 2011 holds. I'm hoping it holds good things. However, if it doesn't, I hope I can hold it together enough to survive it. I know what I'd like to happen, but am aware that articulating these things tends to jinx them. All I know is I'm not going to be in Grahamstown, or (I hope) Harare...we're holding thumbs for Edinburgh (with trips to the south for Silverstone and the Goodwood Festival of Speed). Dad has offered to pay for my ticket over after grad, so that's looking at least a little bit likely. Anyways, I hope I'll see you on the other side.
Lowlights
I think the month of July, pretty much in its entirety, counts as a lowlight (that set the precedent for my final semester at Rhodes). That was the month when I lost two friends to car accidents within four days of each other. Literally, I got back from one memorial service to find out that I would be organising one for another friend. The waste of potential and the pointlessness of their deaths threw me very far off-centre. The cloud of dark grey that had settled over my mind was then compounded by finding out that, no matter how well I did in my November exams, I would never score high enough to make it into a postgraduate program.
Another lowlight came in the form of the unexpected housemate. A friend and I had arranged to move in together for the duration of 2010. However, he got excluded from university on academic grounds, so I was left without a friendly face with whom to share a house. Instead, I got saddled with The Hypochristian. It still baffles me how someone who claims to love God – who told us to look after the earth and be motivated by love – can feel no guilt about taking hour-long showers (seriously, not even a crack-whore in downtown Bangkok could possibly need that much shower time on a daily basis) during the worst drought the region has ever recorded, leaving lights on (in locked rooms, so that I couldn't turn them off) and going away for the weekend, and exclusively choosing unethical food and cosmetic products.
Highlights
Resolving the issue of The Hypochristian playing her (horrendous) music too loud (although I would debate whether it's worthy of being played at all). It would seem that right-wing religious nuts get the point when you blast them with Children of Bodom and suchlike until they turn their music down.
Girls nights. Towards the end of the year, two nerd-girl friends and I discovered that life was easier to handle when faced together. Thus, Tuesday nights became a sacred time of food, wine and geek talk. It is wonderful to have friends to share musings with and ask for creative guidance, even if the side-effect of having three scientists in the room is that every sequence of actions needs to be discussed at length in order to find the most efficient method.
Catching up with old friends. A few people have drifted back into my life this year after rather lengthy hiatuses (hiati?), and it's quite lovely rediscovering old friendships, catching up on important news, and adding new layers of memories to the bond. This is especially true when you realise that you can be yourself around them, even though you thought they would judge you for some of your life choices.
Being made an author on sidepodcast. Yes, to the relief of those of you who don't follow F1, I now have somewhere to work out the more intense parts of my Formula1-related geekery. After submitting this post, I was offered an authorship. True, it doesn't come with a paycheque, but it's lovely to know that other people think I have something valid to say.
Passing my degree. I think that says it all – I am now no longer a student; I am a graduate; I am no longer doomed to either waitress or sex worker as career options in the current job market. I want to get a t-shirt printed to that tune, just so that the whole world knows. Although, I'm not sure how seriously people take someone with “university graduate” printed across their bosom.
I have no idea what 2011 holds. I'm hoping it holds good things. However, if it doesn't, I hope I can hold it together enough to survive it. I know what I'd like to happen, but am aware that articulating these things tends to jinx them. All I know is I'm not going to be in Grahamstown, or (I hope) Harare...we're holding thumbs for Edinburgh (with trips to the south for Silverstone and the Goodwood Festival of Speed). Dad has offered to pay for my ticket over after grad, so that's looking at least a little bit likely. Anyways, I hope I'll see you on the other side.
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