Halloween Costume Completed!

Well, after spending time collecting, cutting, paper mache and colouring the loo rolls, my son ended up going to the halloween party as some sort of super hero with a booster jet on his back. I'm glad he loved it!  The big ones really came in handy as the boosters! Thanks to all my friends who contributed a loo roll, or two !  :-)



All smiles!



Fun at the party! Hubby fixed an old bike light onto the front :-)

Air drying the loo roll after using
paper mache to stick them together.

Dear 7 Billion

Dear 7 Billion,


Welcome to this world! Your mummy and daddy must be proud of you. I don't know your name yet, or whether you're a boy or a girl, but I think there is a huge chance that you were born in a developing country.


Things are looking bleak now. The global economy is in turmoil and it hasn't been fixed since 2008. For some strange reason, the culprits are still out there making ridiculous amounts of money.  Neither you nor I will even have a chance to  make that amount in our entire working lives. I'm sure I'll have to work until 65, and maybe you will have to work until 80 before you can retire, or maybe retiring will be a thing of the past.  Hang on, will you be able to get a shot at tertiary education?


You'll have it tough.  According to the experts, if you're in a developing country, you will be worse off.  By the time you're older, you will have probably experienced droughts, floods, heat waves - all affecting your family's livelihood.  Maybe your country would be submerged too, and perhaps your parents will decide to migrate to a city for a better life, but I doubt that will be so if you're living cheek by jowl in a polluted and unsanitary city.  


7 Billion, sorry for disappointing you, but that's the way things are. Maybe by the time you're older, the governments will have decided that our natural resources should be accounted, invested heavily in environmental solutions (and not just technology) and stopped being so greedy. Maybe, little 7 Billion, you will be part of the solution too.


With love,
Agy


ps. don't give your parents a hard time!

From dull black dress to....

a black dress with a bit more colour!  

The after!!

Bra strap revamp!

OK, this is for the ladies!  Do you ever find it annoying when your bra strap takes a peek every now and then when you wear a tank top?  I'm always fidgeting! :-)

Coconut!

We had coconut and chicken soup yesterday, and my son was eyeing the coconut we had bought from the wet market. The aunty had already taken off most of the husk and we had to make sure that we didn't break it into bits to get to the flesh - "Make sure you don't break it, mummy!"  He was looking forward to making an instrument out of the coconut, or horsey sounds - clip, clop!  Other than being a musical instrument, I think they make great bowls!

Getting the Halloween Costume Ready

Halloween is coming and my son's kindergarten will be having another party. I think this will be the last one as he'll be in primary school and I don't think they "celebrate" it then. Anyway, he came home asking whether he could be a skeleton for the party. I decided to use the inside tubing from toilet roll and kitchen towel rolls.  Got my friends and colleagues to "donate" them to me!!

Then my little one said "Mummy, I want to be a monster instead!!!"

So, now I need more tubes!!!

Project in progress.....

Creating Success Around the World

Janelle of "Of Pinks and Fairy Tales" interviewed me for her blog. Hop over to her blog to find out!! She has some great crafts too :-)

Social Informatics

Hi everyone! Two great things happened to me this week that the rest of the stuff seemed like noise :-)


Firstly, I was one of the winners of Michele Made Me's Drop Dead Denim Giveaway. I've never entered a give away, let alone win something, so it was really surprising to find out that I had won. When I got Michele's email,  I reflected on how a group of people from different countries, who have never met before but share a passion (such as making things from recycleables) can link up, exchange ideas and even engage in communication via Facebook, Twitter, email and their blogs. Isn't it amazing? Someone should do a study on this! It won't be me because I don't work in the social informatics field.  It does lead me to my second point.....


.......drum rooooollll  I did actually attend the 3rd International Social Informatics Conference this week, and in fact tomorrow is the last day of the conference. So, me being the non-IT and non-sociologist I attended (expenses paid by my employer) and I found it to be an eye opener. You might be wondering what this has to do with green issues. In fact, there are linkages.  I met a researcher from the Japanese NEC team that has developed Ecology-MAME (I hope I got the site right).  Their on-line platform motivates activities with mutual effect and lets people start environmentally conscious actions (in this example energy saving actions) or continue them in local communities.  Users would feed their energy savings into the programme and the site would update the data with the rest of the communities. You can visualise this information, and in some ways it's like a game, seeing who can have the most energy savings in the community.  The researchers will use the model to "explain the factors of intention for the behaviours, and focus on people who don't carry them out even though they understand their importance". NEC have already done a trial run in Japan and plan to expand it in size and to other behaviours e.g. recycling.  I can see this being used as part of an energy smart grid and smart meters. It could provide consumers the additional incentive to save energy.  


OK, have to sleep. I need to wake up at 7am tomorrow for the 3rd day! Good night all!