how you all doing? other than a fairly restless night last night, which has me riding on fumes right now, look you see, we are very well indeed on this side, thanks. we got a wonderful, indeed delightful and truly amazing surprise item in the post today. so credit, mindful of my rant yesterday to Royal Mail for managing to deliver it OK. nice one.
my joy at the parcel, i must confess, was limited to the sticker on it, and seeing the happiness it brought to the rest of my family; the 75% you all wisely prefer to me. these are things, dear reader, that should never, ever be undervalued, however. in particular massive stickers
i mean, look at the size of that airmail sticker! that's amazing man! the first thing i could find to give you an idea of the scale of it was my ipod, which i trust shows off just how big it is.
what do New Zealand, for that is where the parcel came from, want to be doing with big massive stickers like this? who knows, but it is cool that they do! i bet you they are, quite deliberately, 2mm or 3mm bigger than the ones they have in Australia. just a little "we are superior" sort of thing, you know.
we shall return to the above shortly, but now a break. when, philosophically, is a selfie not a selfie? when it's when someone has taken a picture of you, edited it, can't work out how to send it to you and so you take a picture of the picture of you with your phone. yes, phone, who has a camera today?Ben, a technical pioneer who will surely one day get an OBE or MBE, got some smart new thing on his phone. what phone? he has one of them Apple Galaxy things. this app from Japan, or China, or somewhere, lets you do all sorts of cartoon things to a picture of you, or of whoever you take a picture of.
Ben's mastery of mandarin, or japanese, or whatever, is not as it turns out to the extent that he can work out which button, or element of the screen, one pressed to send on the picture. we then had a classical situation of us needing to find a solution rather than dwell upon the problem. the solution, as pretty much stated earlier, was for me to take a picture of it with my phone. a picture that has the benefit of the flash going off, for i forgot to switch it off. sorry, whoops, etc, my apologies for that. but i think you get the general idea of what this chinese or japanese app, or possibly chinese-japanese joint app, does.
what do i think of it? i am rather gloriously indifferent to be honest. i can't say i am at all thrilled by the fact that Ben opted to add more grey to my hair, but i suppose that is how i appear. bonus that he cut my weight in half, at least, though.
so what was in the parcel with the massive sticker on it? lots and lots of these, much to the delight of my (considerably) better half, lots and lots of these.
these, if you have no idea or clue, are Beacon sweets marshmallow eggs. they are, as far as we know, only made and sold in South Africa. they are a traditional South African Easter treat, and my (considerably) better half had not had one since, ooh, 2013.
i had forgotten that i mentioned in passing to my sister that my (considerably) better half was missing them. she did not forget i mentioned this, and took it as a cue to post some of them that they had bought from an importation specialist. nice one sis!
these items of confectionery have had an amazing journey. how amazing? well, let me illustrate for you with one of my special maps, with comments on the "groot trek" to follow.
these Beacons marshmallow egg things started off at Beacon's top secret manufacturing base ('A') in Nelspruit, Bloemfontein or wherever they make them. they were then exported to New Zealand via Australia ('B'). why Australia? because the Australians are, as much as i love them, right royal nosey b@stards and insist on having a look at absolutely everything, whether it is their business or not.
from there, then, it was off to an import shop in New Zealand ('C'), where they were bought by Grant. Grant then proceeded to hide them in a secret bunker he has set up for them. Gillian then broke into the secret bunker, brazenly stole as many as she could carry, put them in a box and posted them to us ('D'). quite a formidable journey, never mind an amazing one.
what are my views on them? well, i won't be eating one of them. is this a sacrifice so that my family can enjoy them all the more? not really. i have never really liked the things at all; i do not believe that mixing chocolate and marshmallows is wise.
i do, however, have nothing but fond memories of them. at my place of verk in the Africa of the South we frequently sold these as fundraisers for various charitable causes. i was always happy to buy a few and hand them out amongst my colleagues and dear friends, pleased enough just to be able to support a good cause. had i liked them i would, however, like to think that i would not have had one anyway, for now i am most decidedly home, and surrounded by the chocolates that mean as much to me as these ones do to my (considerably) better half.
many thanks, sister - she and the boys were dancing and whooping with joy!
and thanks Grant, if you happened to have noticed a gap in your stash and not minded!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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