happy new year lovely people!
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Happy New Years Day! Does anyone have any New Years Day Traditions?
For years I would go to this Irish bar in the afternoon. It was always chill on New Years Day, and was a great way to cure the hangover. I would also start the new year off right with either a full Irish breakfast or some Irish stew. Unfortunately, that bar closed this year, so I will be heading to another bar.
Anyways, traditions are fun, and sometimes they change, and sometimes it is good start new ones. What are yours?
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My brother celebrates his wife’s tradition of watching the sunrise. They usually head to the Brooklyn Bridge to start the new year.
I’ve been invited but could never stay awake long enough or wake up early enough.
They couldn’t do it this year due to cloud cover. Oddly enough, it was the first year I stayed up for what would have been a sunrise.
My sis and her fiance did watch the sunrise in Colorado. I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing the picture.
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Likewise! Recovering today from last night adult beverages. Actually quite productive in spite of the hangover! Managed to downgrade my other Macbook to run High Sierra, Logic X, and Overbridge and Virus Ti software so can run my Elektrons and Virus together in my studio. Today plan to sort out MIDI from my OT to Virus Ti2 so can have awesome setup for live stuff. No gear this year for me is my goal to focus on the new and old stuff.
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What a great tradition. Very poetic watching the sunrise on New Years Day.
#jealous
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Yea funny I got more done today after multiple cocktails last nite than all week. Have template now in Logic Daw to record my virus. Now to sort the rest out.
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My first ever Christmas and New Year away from the UK in 52 years of being on World.
I have been on a promise to take The Duchess and kid to Thailand for many years now and now he is 14, we are potentially entering “the danger zone” of him no longer wanting to go on holiday with his middle-aged parents.
New Year’s Eve on Koh Samui was an experience we will never forget. At 7.30pm. an electrical storm of epic proportions, hit and a lightning strike on a power station on the main land, plunged Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao and all of the other surrounding islands into total blackout. My heart broke for the beautiful Thai people, many of who’s were depending on a big night to try and save them from bankruptcy! Larger resorts had back up diesel generators, but the vast majority remained without electricity (and for many water!!!) until the following day!
These wonderful folk have been decimated but COVID and being essentially closed until July this year, a prosperous Holiday period was crucial! To watch them deal with such seemingly impossible adversity with nothing but a smile and putting their customers first was a deeply humbling experience! I wouldn’t like to imagine what carnage would ensue if this happened elsewhere in the world, but the Thais just dealt with it in the most admirable and positive manner, it was truly something to behold!
On the stroke of midnight, Coco Tam’s , normally belting out beautifully deep tunes on their 50k rig and firing a spectacular light and Lazer show into the Gulf of Thailand, was candlelit and sans music, apart from the tinny, fake JBL Bluetooth speaker, a thousand firework displays as far as the eye could see, erupted into the sky 360°, as one and hearts were filled with joy and love. Koh Phangan seemed to detonate several small, tactical nuclear devices to give a firework display rivalled by no other!
As I said, it was a deeply humbling and inspiring experience.
And when it was all over, I took myself off to my little, traveling, battery powered Mini Mothership to await a New Year’s dawn…
Buddha did not disappoint! In fact, I was narrowly miss by his “Lazer of Love”
A very belated but Happy, Healthy and POSITIVE New Year to you all my friends.
P.S. Back to the normal shit now, but the Osmose has just been dispatched so hopefully the current, crushing holiday blues will not last too long.
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Happy New Year from Japan.
I did my first hike of the year today. It felt good to get out into nature, even though I didn’t leave Tokyo.
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I saved your photo as inspiration for future graphic design… the blues as they shift and recede into the backgound is great for Adobe illustrator… Its similar to the desktop screens on Macbooks…
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Thanks, man. It was pretty breathtaking in person. Gorgeous weather and I managed to avoid crowds by going at sort of an off time.
When I came back, I popped into my local pub for a beer and a number of local regulars had brought back liquor from their hometowns as souvenirs and they shared it around, so I had some really good yogurt sake from Fukushima and a strong coffee awamori liqueur from Okinawa. One of those days where I love living in Japan.
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Nice!
Is that the Mitsu Toge hike?
Been 3 years since I visited jp 
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Just Mount Takao in Western Tokyo. Not a proper hike like if you get up into northern Kanto, Tohoku, or the Alps, but still great if you just want to get out of the city for a few hours and get some fresh air and nice scenery.
You haven’t missed anything in the past three years really. Japan really lost its mojo during the pandemic. I went up to an onsen in the mountains a year or so ago and I was literally the only person on the bus up to the mountain and one of the only guests. I had to bring my own food to cook as they didn’t serve anything. Thankfully things are slowly coming back, although we’ve hit a bump in the road recently with a big uptick in Covid cases.
(Empty bus)
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Hopefully I’ll be back in September/October.
Definitely going JAL. Jet Star looks a bit dodgy today.
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Great photos, and that Snow Drop looks delicious.
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Happy New Year Everyone. May your dreams come true.
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Yours too and welcome!!
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Yeah, it really was. Really refreshing and easy to drink. I can see it being good after a dip in an onsen. The guy that brought it said there is an unpasteurized (namazake) version that is only available in the winter, but it sold out immediately. Gonna have to try for it next year.
I love the culture of people bringing stuff to pass around at their local watering holes. Almost every time I pop by my local place they are passing out some kind of food or drink someone brought in.
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That does sound like a lovely culture. I think bars in here in the states frown up such things as it would hamper sales. I have been to plenty of bars where people might share food, or they would do a potluck on Sundays, or one would just bust out a grill and grill up some free dogs and burgers during the afternoon on the weekend which was nice. But yeah, being able to share some interesting or rare drinks at a bar would be great, because you already know that people there are interested in such things. Also, what is an onsen?
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Onsen is the Japanese word for volcanic hot spring. Loads of them all over the country, especially up in the mountains. Usually there will be traditional Japanese inns built around them, so you can stay the night and soak in the hot springs and enjoy food and booze. The nicer ones can be in pretty remote places, but there are some around Tokyo as well.
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