I have always wondered what the first musical instrument would have been? Presumably, the human vocal chords – chanting, singing or wailing around a fire pit would have been the
I have just returned from Japan after visiting my partner’s family. On arrival at Narita Airport at 9pm, we were met by Hiroshi, my partner’s brother, who said “We go to onsen (Japanese hot baths).” After flying for 12 hours, this was indeed a welcome treat and we basked in 40 degree pools of different depths, some shallow with stone pillows to gaze up at the planes taking off every few minutes from the airport a kilometre away, and some with pummelling jets of water that massaged away the aches from 12 cramped hours on Fiji Airlines.
To say Noah loved music and his violin is an understatement. His passion for both had him skipping meals, losing sleep and wandering the fields and forests, fiddling away the hours in practice. A young teenager, he was enrolled at Waihi College where he joined the school orchestra. Unfortunately, his passion just wasn’t enough. For all the time sacrificed and spent in practice, he just wasn’t a very good violin player and so was given only a minor role at the back of the string section. This left him feeling discouraged and frustrated and he fervently prayed for a miracle to change things.
Becoming a parent is like going through a second puberty. You can know all the theories, but nothing can prepare you for the lived experience. It can unveil things about you that you weren’t aware of. It can test your relationships. And while each overall journey is different to the next, there are many shared moments and feelings between all parents. It can feel like you’ve joined a secret club – particularly when you become a mother.
Many of us are all too familiar with the game of tossing a coin to decide a choice, question or stake. To the Romans, it was known as ‘Ship or Head’ – a game of choosing between a ship on one side of the coin or the head of the emperor on the other. In German, it’s ‘Kopf oder Zahl’, and the most common in English is ‘Heads or Tails’. One side of the coin usually depicts a ruler’s head and the other side is called ‘tails’, normally numerical, but perhaps it could just logically be that – the opposite end of an animal from its head.
I have always wondered what the first musical instrument would have been? Presumably, the human
I have just returned from Japan after visiting my partner’s family. On arrival at Narita Airport at 9pm, we were met by Hiroshi, my partner’s brother, who said “We go to onsen (Japanese hot baths).” After flying for 12 hours, this was indeed a welcome treat and we basked in 40 degree pools of different depths, some shallow with stone pillows to gaze up at the planes taking off every few minutes from the airport a kilometre away, and some with pummelling jets of water that massaged away the aches from 12 cramped hours on Fiji Airlines.
To say Noah loved music and his violin is an understatement. His passion for both had him skipping meals, losing sleep and wandering the fields and forests, fiddling away the hours in practice. A young teenager, he was enrolled at Waihi College where he joined the school orchestra. Unfortunately, his passion just wasn’t enough. For all the time sacrificed and spent in practice, he just wasn’t a very good violin player and so was given only a minor role at the back of the string section. This left him feeling discouraged and frustrated and he fervently prayed for a miracle to change things.
Becoming a parent is like going through a second puberty. You can know all the theories, but nothing can prepare you for the lived experience. It can unveil things about you that you weren’t aware of. It can test your relationships. And while each overall journey is different to the next, there are many shared moments and feelings between all parents. It can feel like you’ve joined a secret club – particularly when you become a mother.
Many of us are all too familiar with the game of tossing a coin to decide a choice, question or stake. To the Romans, it was known as ‘Ship or Head’ – a game of choosing between a ship on one side of the coin or the head of the emperor on the other. In German, it’s ‘Kopf oder Zahl’, and the most common in English is ‘Heads or Tails’. One side of the coin usually depicts a ruler’s head and the other side is called ‘tails’, normally numerical, but perhaps it could just logically be that – the opposite end of an animal from its head.
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