It’s taken me more than 50 years to observe myself and acknowledge that whenever I am in the kitchen I tend to use way too many serviettes/kitchen rolls for my liking. I noticed that I constantly clean my hands, reach out for a kitchen roll to dry them, and then repeat the process. I haven’t figured out if I genuinely need to keep my hands so clean or if I just enjoy wetting my fingers and then drying them up. Anyway.
These are my random musings to jumpstart my blog. I missed it a lot.
A few months ago, my mom visited us. During that week, she would happily escort me for a few minutes as I walked to my workplace. When we said goodbye, I saw that she would stop and watch me as I crossed the road. I’d look back, and we would exchange smiles before going our separate ways. She did this every day for the entire week, and it really warmed my heart. I would get to work feeling really good. I can’t remember the last time I took a moment to watch someone cross the road. It reminded me that we’re never too old to feel loved by our parents.
I understand my nephew has plans to start working once he finishes grade 2 in December. You won’t believe it but his mom and I have already started talking about him. Let’s call it as it is – gossiping. If we’ve started this when he’s 7 years, I think we have a very long way to go.
That aside, Do you have seasons where you’re just inclined to watch specific things? Well, I am in my ‘Space – era’. I’m finding myself drawn to Movies/Documentaries that discuss anything space.
For context, I watched this Documentary called ‘Returning to Space’. It’s about Space X’s- Elon Musk’s rocket manufacturing and launching company – 20 years’ mission to return NASA astronauts back to the International Space Station. I thought it was really good. So in between, another interesting story was mentioned so I watched it.
The Challenger Disaster:
In 1986, NASA launched a Space Shuttle called The Challenger, to the International Space Station (ISS), with 7 people on board. 6 of them were astronauts, one of them was a high school teacher. They decided that to inspire young people to spur interest in space exploration, they should bring a teacher on board in the hope that they would share their experience upon their return. Eventually Teacher Christa was chosen in over 11,000 applications. She was given a few basic space exploration lessons and she was really excited to be the first teacher in space. In her own words ‘You will watch a teacher teaching from space.’ The whole country was excited. I was too.
It was a very hyped event. You can imagine, the schools in ‘ushago’ were watching the live stream of the launch in their schools while those that were in Florida went to watch it live. It was not a kawaida day. Everyone was excited about it. NASA was finally where it wanted to be – all eyes on it.
The Day of the launch:
That morning they woke up to a very cold day. It was very cold that there were some thick ice deposits on the launch pad. The engineers raised concerns to the managing team about the weather conditions not able to support the launch and after a few discussions, it was agreed that the launch should happen.
The lift off happened. It was all shangwe and vigelegele.
Then… BOOM. No sooner had the lift off happened, than it exploded. 75 seconds into it, as everyone was watching the launch, the Challenger exploded. Big big explosion. It was unbelievable. Just 1 minute 15 seconds later. As everyone was still watching it.
It was tragic. It was very very sad. They all died.
It was later on concluded that there might have been a leak that prompted he explosion to happen. There’s a lot to unpack from both stories – The challenger and Return to Space. They explain in detail that Lift Off may look scary but in practise it’s the Re-entry that’s more scary (entry back to earth from the ISS). If you have watched any of them, let me know what you think.
2024 looks beautiful, may it be everything you’ve been desiring for yourself.
Happy New Year.