June 1st. Here in New Zealand that means the last, colourful leaves of autumn drifting off from the trees. It means the feijoa and passionfruit crop is over for the year, and it’s time to prune the trees to replenish and make room for spring growth. Time to buy that electric blanket to replace the…
Tag: learn
Getting a Slice of the Cake
Change. A single, soft-spoken syllable. Yet it’s a powerful little creature, reaching into every corner of our lives. Sometimes it’s an invitation – welcome and exciting. Sometimes it’s a burden – disruptive and frightening. It’s a bundle of contradictions: progress and retreat, secret and flamboyant, havoc and harmony. It can bounce into our lives with the…
Ten Ways to Understanding
A constant claim from many people with chronic pain conditions is that nobody can understand the pain unless they have experienced it themselves. On a superficial level this is obviously true, at least in that people who don’t have chronic pain conditions, have not felt what it is like to have chronic pain. But I…
Ten Minutes in the Monkey Forest
Beside a small gravel carpark next to State Highway 1 on the Kapiti Coast in New Zealand, huddled in a small v between the shoulders of two hills, is a remnant of ancient kohekohe forest and sub-tropical bush. It is crammed with palms, vines, and ferns. Most people in the area know it as Nikau…
Pretty Lights
Public buildings, hotels, office buildings etc. in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, England, Estonia, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Qatar, Scotland, Taiwan, and the USA are lighting up for October 7th. To most people, the date means nothing. Yet it’s a significant day to thousands of people around the globe. International Trigeminal Neuralgia Awareness Day.
Filling a Time Capsule
Public places are great for people-watching and collecting gems of overheard conversations. Over lunch in a cafe the other day, I heard people on the next table discussing time capsules.
Verve 