New Year’s Day 2025

The Fen Shui colours for 2025 were green, red and yellow. And everyone (except James) partly or fully complied. Lots of red and yellow shirts and green tops or skirts….

Jim excelled himself (after borrowing John’s Rastafarian cap)

Even the food reflected the obligatory colours ….Jen used red, yellow and green capsicums for her dish; Robyn’s crudités were in the theme; Sally added corn and bacon to make her potato salad compliant; Jody (well John actually) added red onion and greenish capers to the smoked salmon; Anne’s salad incorporated all the colours; James’ custard tart partly complied. The only exemption was given to Phil because it is impossible to make tiramisu in fen shui colours! and I made red velvet cupcakes atopped with yellow bees.

Everyone had done some pre-work last year to assess their personality types, and among the group we had 5 logicians, 2 commanders, 3 defenders, 2 protagonists, 1 mediator, 1 virtuoso,and 1 consul. There were some interesting results in terms of who would fit well together (personality chemistry)…..the only fact worth mentioning is that I had the best chemistry ( this was challlenged because some people thought I had rigged the result!!!).

After a sumptuous lunch provided by everybody, the serious business of the day began. Two teams were formed…one appropriately called “the red shirts”…..

I have no idea what the other team’s name was…(I don’t think they knew either!)

The teams had 30 minutes to complete two tasks. One was a building task. Called the “Raspberry Bridge “ challenge, they had to build a bridge at least 12 inches long, and strong enough to support 3 wild raspberries, with straws, paddlepop sticks, rubbers and blu tac. The other task was to identify words beginning with the letters “O”and “W” across a range of categories.

On the whole, I rated both teams well for sensible division of responsibilities. The wordsmiths on the “Red Shirts” seemed to be Jen, Tiny, Phil, Jody and John while the bridge builders were Terry and Garry.

The Red Shirts bridge builders approached their task thoughtfully, and produced a pretty good product

They had even tested it to ensure boats could sail under it…..

You’ll note that only one side of the bridge has a full set of (rubber) stairs because, as the team explained, this was a Government project and it had run out of money. However, the team were very happy with the final product.

The other no-name team appeared to have only one bridge builder, Les, while the wordsmiths were Jim, Sally, Anne and Julie. James just sat patiently waiting for dessert to happen, and Robyn helped to prepare the dessert for which James was waiting.

Les approached the task like a drunken sailor, so his product did not have the finesse of the Red Shirts product.Judge for yourselves!

Each team then has to sell the benefits of their respective bridges….their pitches were impressive…..

although they were subject to challenges from the other team……

The wordsmiths on both teams were incredibly creative, with some seriously obscure and inventive contributions….

Amazingly, both teams scored the same number of points so everyone was a winner!!! And prizes for best dressed went to Jim, Jen and Jody ( the three Js).

Overall, a fun day….