Thing #10: Have an embarassing moment

Based on true events: A friend of mine (we will call her M. K. to maintain her anonymity) managed to complete three Things in one go, when it was revealed that she was to be blamed for the funny smells in the classroom and not the poor student sharing the desk with her. In doing so, she had an embarrassing moment, she completed the fart and burp Thing and also blamed someone else for it. A truly remarkable achievement!

If you have any great stories to share, then please do drop me a line or leave a comment!

Thing #7: Prepare yourself for fame

It's too late to 'prepare' myself for fame (although I could have claimed I was born ready - what a cliché!). I am too old for that. The question is now whether I became famous or not, which as always got me thinking: How do you measure fame? It turns out, I am not the only person who thought about it and there is even some research on this. For example, Schulman and Boissier came up with this (notice this was published in the Annals of Improbable Research Online a site worth-checking).

Actually rewinding my thought recording tape, the very first thing that came to mind was not whether I was famous or not (we all now the answer to this - after all you are reading my blog!), but how do you deal with not becoming famous when you grow up. It is very harsh to wake up one day and realise that your dreams have not materialised. Yours dreams were filed under 'I don't-know-what-happened' and will probably stay there. You are not going to be someone 'special'. You will not even claim your 15 minutes of fame on TV... you get the picture.

Well, not everyone needs to be famous. What matters more is to be important for those around you, those who care about you. That's something you don't appreciate when you are 10 years old and fame seems like a priority. If you are 10 and reading this keep on dreaming, but remember one day you will wake up and you will not be 10 anymore. You've been warned!

Thing #79: Build an Igloo

You find yourself stuck on a mountain in the middle of winter. Soon it will be dark. It's time you put your survival skills to work. You decide to build and igloo. You could follow the easy instructions shown in the video below (instructions are always easy until you apply them) but this seems like hard work. What if there was another way?





And indeed there is! The only catch when you want to build an igloo is that you need to have... snow. And today it did snow, for 30 minutes. I knew it was not going to be enough. It was not going to be hard enough to pack in blocks either. So, I decided to innovate and build an igloo mini-prototype.

The idea is simple, albeit it can take some time for it to work and if you are in a hurry this is not Place a strong enough tent-like shape in preferred position and... wait. Do something else for a few hours and when you come back you have your igloo ready. Simple!





In our case the transparent walls provide 360 degree views making this igloo not just a revolution in prefabricated igloos, but also a special place to protect you and your loved ones when stuck in the mountains.

Thing #15: Fart and Burp

Check out this image at PostSecret.com.






PS: and in case you are wondering no it wasn't me who posted this. Still as completing this Thing by finding something so relevant is far more difficult than actually farting and burping, I think I deserve to claim this Thing!

Thing #42: April Fool Someone

Happy... April Fool's Day! (You know who you are!)

Thing #42 completed - no no for real!