Top 10 Songs of 2014

Robyn Stark and I spent a few hours one afternoon compiling this list of our favourite songs of 2014. I hope these titles remind you of some good memories.

Picture from:http://quoteeveryday.com/

1. “Happy” by Pharrell Williams

2. “All About That Base” by Meghan Trainor

3. “Steal My Girl” by One Direction

4. “Boom Clap” by Charlie XCX

5.  “Shake it Off” by Taylor Swift

6. “All of Me” by John Legend

7. “A Sky Full of Stars” by Coldplay

8. “Hey Brother” by Avicii

9. “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen (performed by Idina Menzel)

10. “Try” by Colbie Caillat

My Letter to Santa

Dear Santa

We’re experiencing the backlog of a recent postal strike at the moment so to make sure you receive my letter before New Year’s Eve I’ve decided to post it on the internet (I just hope the elves have installed a modem so you’ll be able to read it).

I’ve been a good girl this year and would really appreciate it if you ensured that the epidemic of Ebola and the fighting all over the world ended – I know it’ll be a bit of a challenge to ensure that I get this gift but I hope you’ll at least try.

I would also like: three teddy bears that I can donate to the Teddy Bear Clinic for abused children; another Rhino SA badge so I can wear one on my school blazer and still have one on the jersey I’d wear after school; a bottle of green nail polish (I’ve never had green nail polish before *gasp*) and a bottle of glow-in-the-dark nail polish because my bottle is nearly finished. Oh and I also want a machine that can make my bed (I can be a bit lazy in the morning).

I hope the elves have tested your sleigh to make sure it’s ready to fly super-fast this Christmas,

Kirsty

PS: My family is going through a Vanilla milk craze so do you mind getting Vanilla milk with your cookies instead of normal milk?

PPS: Can you ask the Tooth Fairy if she collects Wisdom Teeth? And if she does will you tell her I’ll put mine under my pillow as soon as I get them removed. Thanks.

So Much To Do So Little Time

It’s that crazy time of year again and the Christmas carols and decorations are constantly reminding me that I don’t have enough days to do everything I’d like to do. I haven’t even achieved all of my New Year’s Resolutions yet and some people are already planning next year’s ones. That’s pretty scary, I highly doubt I’m going to be able to learn how to drive a boat, perfect a cookbook full of recipes and get my boat license in 24 days. But, I can’t just give up, can I?

So, instead of scrunching up my list of goals I’ve decided to alter the existing ones so they can be achievable in such a short space of time. For example instead of completing my boat license exam I’ll go for one boat driving lesson and instead of memorizing twenty-five recipes I’ll practice following two. If I can achieve these goals then I’ll be closer to achieving the ones they replaced and maybe next year I’ll be able to achieve all of my goals because I’ll know that I need to make them more reasonable so I won’t be in the same position again. After all, December is the month where you can spend lots of time with your family – you shouldn’t be using this valuable time to frantically try and complete your impossible goals. However, if that’s what you plan on doing then GOOD LUCK, I think you’ll need it.

ANOTHER BOOK BIRTHDAY

Today a year ago Escaping Extinction became available on Amazon. Over the 365 days since the first of December a lot of things have changed. For instance, this afternoon the passionate, animal-loving Ian Player died. We will always remember all that he did to save the Southern White Rhino species from becoming extinct in the 1950s. Whilst we pray for his family we also have to think about the 1020 rhinos that have been poached this year. This distressing statistic (last updated on the 20th of November http://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/poaching_statistics) reveals that even more rhinos were poached this year than last year although more anti-poaching measures have been implemented.

I would just like to thank everyone who has supported me throughout my life as well as the people who have read my books and those who enjoy reading my blog posts. You guys are awesome!

Here's the link to my second book if you haven't got it yet:

http://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Extinction-Eclipse-Child-Book-ebook/dp/B00H0IBJ3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1417366011&sr=1-1&keywords=Kirsten+A+Everett

Time

“I find you all guilty of wasting time”

That was a quote from Spy Kids 4: “All the Time in the World” and to be honest with you, it went straight over my head the first three times I watched the movie. Then, a week ago I spent one of my study breaks watching a portion of the film with my sister. After hearing this quote I immediately started pondering the concept of time. I wondered who decided that there would be 60 seconds in a minute and seven days in a week.  And, why couldn’t they have chosen there to be four hundred seconds in a minute and eleven days in a week?

The people who chose the amount of days in a week and amount of seconds in a minute were the Babylonians. Whilst, they used the cycles of the moon to create a calendar it was because they liked the number seven that there are seven days in a week (there are seven heavenly bodies: the sun, moon, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn and thus the number seven was significant to them). But, what would have happened if the number eleven was significant to them for some or other reason?

Well, then there would have been eleven days in a week and this, believe it or not, would affect our lives in one way or another. For instance, if this was the case we would probably go to school or work at least seven of the eleven days. Imagine working for seven days in a row! I would be really tired and grumpy when the weekend finally came around and I probably wouldn’t be the only one. However, if there were only three days in a week we would have an entirely different problem. It would be much harder for us to be productive and continue with tasks if we only went to work for two days and then had a day off.

The reason we use the system wherein sixty seconds is equal to one minute and sixty minutes is equal to one hour is because of the Ancient Sumerians (and later the Babylonians). Whilst we use the decimal system these people used a system where the base was either twelve (duodecimal) or sixty (sexigesimal). They knew that it took approximately twenty-four hours for the moon to orbit the earth and so they broke this time down into twenty-four sets of sixty minutes (because they normally used the sexigesimal system when counting) and so because there was sixty seconds in one minute there would be 60x60x24= 86400 seconds in one day.

And, five thousand years later we still use exactly the same system.

From: http://mombizcoach.com/time-focus-money#.VGm68vmUc1Y

I hope you found this as interesting as I did J and if you didn’t I apologise for wasting a few minutes of your time – did you see what I did there? *wriggles eyebrows*

Bibliography:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/20394641

http://www.livescience.com/44964-why-60-minutes-in-an-hour.html

My Celebrity Dinner Party

Dinner parties are quite popular right now, so much so that there are numerous television programmes dedicated to filming them. After analysing a few episodes I began wondering who I would invite if I had a celebrity dinner party. What would I cook? Who would I hire to entertain my guests? What would my theme be? How could I impress them?

Those questions required a lot of thinking but after a few weeks I’ve come up with some great answers.

My guest list:

Most of the dinner party hosts on the TV programmes I’ve been watching only invite three guests and so I’ve had to cut my guest list down to only three people.

Amanda Hocking (Author of the Trylle Series)

Malala Yousafzai (17 year old Pakastani Activist and the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize)

Niall Horan (The only Irish member in One Direction)

An author, singer and an activist? That’s certainly not your typical concoction for a celebrity dinner party. Some people might go so far as to say that it’s a boring combination. But, those people obviously don’t know that my three celebrity guests all represent different parts of me. For instance, during the process of writing and editing my first book I began to admire other authors even more. And one in particular is Amanda Hocking, for reasons you’ll understand when you read a bit more about her road to becoming an author (the link to her website is at the bottom so you can check it out if you have time). I would invite Malala because she is one of my role models. She was strong and brave at a time when she could have been a coward and no one would have judged her. Like Amanda I really admire her and so this would be a great opportunity to chat to her. As for Niall, most of you may know that I’m a HUGE Directioner but what you may not know is that my favourite member of the band is the Irish blonde. Thus, inviting him to my celebrity party is proof that even though I’m an author and an activist, I’m still a teenage girl who likes to have fun and listen to good music. 

After much pondering I’ve decided that the theme would be:

Around the world in one evening, it sounds like a cliché but I think I can make it work really well and it’ll be quite impactful because we’re all from different countries so we’ll all have different stories to share.

Menu:
(PS: I'm going have to make all of that from scratch - I'll have to start practicing already!!)

When each course is served the guests will be asked to guess which country the dish originally came from. The first person to get the correct answer will be given a sweet delicacy from the same country.

Entertainment:

Every good dinner party has great entertainment and to make sure that my dinner party is not an exception I would hire some dancers to teach my guests and I a short traditional African/Indian or a ballroom dance.

As for music I’m open to suggestions but I guess it would have to match the theme so maybe a variety of songs and song genres. If my guests accept my invitation then I’m going to spend some time composing a playlist of songs I could play for them. I’ll definitely add some One Direction songs just so I can hear Niall singing along to them :p


So, now all I have to do is design the invitations and find a way to convince my celebrities to fly all the way here to have a dinner party with me.


A little bit more about my celebrity guests:

Amanda Hocking:

http://www.worldofamandahocking.com/

Malala Yousafzai:

http://freedomcenter.org/voice/young-powerful-and-influential-how-malala-yousafzai-changing-world

Niall Horan:

https://twitter.com/NiallOfficial

Time for a Break

Photograph taken by Daniel Abrams

Photograph taken by Daniel Abrams

I’ve been told time and time again that the air in the city is nothing compared to the air out there where the land remains unscarred. But, when you spend most of your life surrounded by the familiar sounds of cars hurrying to their destinations, you begin to wonder how everyday life could continue in a place without electricity and other such necessities.

So, when I got the choice of which hike I wanted to do, in order to complete the Silver level of the President’s Award, I chose one that would be far away from the goings on of the city, even though it meant I would have to get up before dawn on the first day of my mid-term. But although I was willing to sacrifice a few hours of sleep, I couldn’t fight the nerves that were storming around my body. As the hike grew closer I spent more time wondering if I would be able to cope without the luxuries I was used to (like a proper mattress and a microwave). I also wondered if I would be able to keep up with the other teenagers that would be hiking with me. After all, I wouldn’t get enough time to soak up the forest atmosphere if I was constantly trying not to lag behind.

On the first day of my hike I realized that I shouldn’t have worried about anything. The girls and boys who were with me were so friendly that by the time we got to the first climb of the day we were already prepared to motivate each other. We all walked at a decent pace which meant I had plenty of time to stop and gaze at the wonders of the forest. Thank goodness I did or else I would’ve missed seeing the majestic waterfalls, the beautiful running streams that we had to walk over and the giant Eucalyptus trees that were over 100 years old.

However, after staring at the trees and counting the leaves until my eyes started to hurt, I realized that I still had many more hours of walking before I’d be able to see the next hut. And so, I used this time to make new friends and learn new things. For instance, thanks to one of the boys I learnt how to play Water Polo, which used to be a sport that totally confused me because of the speed the game was played at. But, even though we chatted a lot there were still many moments of silence that stretched between us all and this is when I let my imagination guide me. This meant that I spent an entire hour being absolutely grateful that I wasn’t a snail because carrying my possessions for four days was enough to drive me crazy. I definitely wouldn’t be able to cope if I had to do it for the rest of my life. Especially since that would mean that the only meals I would ever eat would be oats, peanut butter on savoury biscuits and camping food. Although that doesn’t sound too bad, when you have it over and over again the flavours in those dishes start to fade and so after just a few days I was already missing real food. AKA food that doesn’t just need hot water to cook.

But, even though there were some aspects of the hike that were a bit rough (such as my aching shoulders after carrying a bag for so long), I thoroughly enjoyed the hike, made some great friends and got a chance to really appreciate the natural beauty of an area I’d never been to before.

So if you get the opportunity to choose between stressing over exams or doing something completely different, I hope you’ll make the more adventurous decision.



PS: The air really is so much purer away from the cities.