sports i have played competitively

cricket

soccer

table tennis

chess

rugby

basketball

some stuff about me

i shave with a razor, not an electric shaver

i invariably eat hubbard's fruitful flakes for breakfast

i check my e-mail in the morning

i had never eaten spagetthi, except out of a tin, before i left new zealand

I was riding into work today, a lovely fine spring morning, along the waterfront, when up ahead there was some flashing lights and a man waving traffic through. I slowed down and went through when requested. There was a cyclist lying on the ground. She was sprawled there, covered by a blanket someone had thrown over her, a women bending down beside her. Her bike was on the ground. A little way along the street a women sat in her car, hands over her steering wheel, looking straight ahead, seemingly in shock.

I rode on to work, more slowly than before. Things were under control, no use in stopping. The ambulance passed me along the way.

I create the scene again in my mind tonight. I don't know how badly injured the cyclist was. In my mind, at least, not too badly.

Do you ever wonder what a fragile thread we live by? A car swerving from a side street, a tire blowing on a downhill, a drunk driver careening across the yellow line.

I sit here, 36, half my life gone. What would my epitaph be if the plane I'm travelling on tomorrow crashes? Which me would they write about?

I'm not morbid tonight, but I wonder if it should take a crashed cyclist on the road for me to ponder life - the unbearable lightness of it, hanging on a thread, not knowing when it will get cut.

Philosophy is good Mike, but not in the abstract, you need to live it.

Do you ever look up at the stars, on a crystal clean night in the mountains, away from the lights, and just lose yourself in the vast unimagined size surounding you?

What do you feel when you do that? I feel worn away to nothingness, but I don't think in a bad sense. It's more of a humbling.

Sometimes I feel infinitely sad.

Sometimes, though, I can dance with joy at life.

Read this and smile with me for a while. Feel light.