Out of the Past

2014: The Year of the Horse. Ironic, considering the whole horse meat debacle of the previous year. I don't know about you, but my year bore almost no relation to anything of the equestrian variety. As I began to write my next post, after what can only be described as "too long", I looked back through various forms of social media and trawled through streams of search engine pages to find something exciting to write about. Imagine the ecstaticism as I learnt about how 2014's Trending Topics were (in order):

1. World Cup 2014
2. iPhone 6
3. Peaches Geldof
4. Robin Williams
5. Rik Mayall

I'm lead to believe that Germany took the trophy out of England's grasp as we* triumphantly fell at the first hurdle, which sums up Trending Topic number one.

The second item displeases me as I'm not a particularly great fan of all things Apple. Maybe it's the cult mentality, maybe it's the overpriced sub-par hardware, or maybe I'm just one of the few who see no appeal in having a part-eaten fruit emblazoned all over every little bit of technology in my futuristic household; watching Lethal Weapon 8 in glorious 10k 4D with the room illuminated only by the cacophony of pixels and dimensions, and partially digested fruity backlights holds, sadly, no appeal for me.

It's safe to say that the remaining top five are late celebrities (or derivations of the word thereof). I'll play it safe and leave that there.

Distinctly dissatisfied with the search engine route, I'll have to rely on personal experiences. So, without much further ado about nothing, here's my 2014.

*I use the word "we" in its loosest sense. I, in fact, played absolutely no personal part in England's World Cup journey; I happen to share the same passport issuer.

Bon Anniversaire

Every year, as far back as I remember, seems to start in much the same fashion. Following the customary counting down from 10 - which assures us we can all, in fact, still remember all single digit numbers - someone in London ignites enough gunpowder to give Guy Fawkes a heart attack. Not long after, just as the Hootenanny withdrawal kicks in, it's time to celebrate the incrementation of my age.

Unfortunately, January also walks hand in hand with university exam season - which lead to procrastination, revision, and exams on repeat. Much of the procrastination was simply futile attempts to beat a machine at chess and the occasionally victory at digital solitaire - with some admirable high scores and speed runs, I might add! However, one aspect that particularly stands out is the discussion on 11 dimensions, which was sparked by a TED Talk I encourage you to watch (if you're that way out). The video came courtesy of the Breakfast Learning Club, who also held a rather contentious discussion of macro-/micro-evolution, straight out of the chicken/egg conundrum. If you're interested - the egg came first unless your definition of egg explicitly states it must be laid by a chicken, in which case it was the chicken... but your chicken hatched out of an egg, so... #EggFirst

Also, O2 raised some tariffs by 72p - and I'm still outraged, even if not on O2 myself.

#WishYouWereHere

The next few weeks saw me rack up numerous LSU Media credits (yeah, I'm on the internet somewhere other than I page I write myself now!). I attended a conference and ran a stand promoting the South Africa Challenge which featured prestigious autographed postcards.

Limited edition, I heard

Something I didn't know was missing from my life until I saw it, was Goat Simulator. Enough said.

Fail Forward

The first Fail Forward conference was held and, as well as running around doing various odd jobs, I was demonstrating the wonders of Makey Makey and how one could play Pac-Man using oranges and a banana.

You can just about see the fruit laid before the screen

I have a particular interest in having abuse shouted at me and constantly being told I'm wrong, I started training as an FA football referee. Taking great pride in quoting "The Laws of Football" whenever an amourous decision in seen on TV, with the default response to the question "why is that a free kick, Ben?" being "...because the referee said so.".

Finale

As the academic year drew to a close, many things happened. Lectures, exams, reports. The most poignant was the final year report I printed. It cost me 20 of the queen's and is, to date, the most expensive thing I've ever abandoned in a box for someone to read later.

So expensive, I took a photo

Draco Dormiens

In May, I ran my first 10k - in the Great Manchester Run - for Cancer Research UK. I completed it in 1hr 10min, but the mere fact I survived the ordeal (and raised money for a good cause) was enough for me.

A suitable period of recovery later...

Not long after, I was part of a team who won various accolades in the Loughborough Think BIG awards. We won for South Africa Challenge, EventCatch, and Fail Forward. EventCatch won the "Dragon's Innovation Award", which was particularly noteworthy as it was the idea I had most involvement with.

Golf

June brought about the retention of the annual Golf Weekend trophy, as the Southern Team once again reigned victorious over the northerners. The biggest thing I took from the event is that a putter should remain firmly in your bag unless you're on the green - it is definitely not a good idea to play it on any part of the fairway.

All the gear and no idea

#Challenge14

Monday 21st July 2014, London City Airport - the start of a six week long adventure to South Africa. The first four weeks would see Team Rhino and Team Giraffe out on the South Africa Challenge. Lead by Ice Man and supported by Goose and Maverick, five aspiring young leaders from the UK would head out to Durban, SA, for a two week leadership and development programme.

Day one, challenge one, we were straight into the deep end with one of the team pitching at a entrepreneurial event and the pace didn't really slow much afterwards. There's much too much to cram into the short space I've "allocated" here, but needless to say it was an incredible experience, with some inspirational people, and a great step in my own personal development.

Straight from the airport to pitching

#IcedGoose

On the back of Challenge 14, Ice Man and I (Goose), set off on a spectacular two week road trip aiming to cover the perimeter of South Africa. The trip was dubbed "#IcedGoose" and even sported its own official t-shirts.

Rush-printed seconds before departure

Again, there's much to much to cram in here and maybe at some point I'll write it up here, but as an overview, we travelled around 2,200 miles in two weeks and our rough route is wonderfully outlined below.

As well as innumerable encounters with dangerous wild animals, we visited the southern-most tip of, not just South Africa, but the whole of Africa. It was a pretty cool experience and we also saw where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. On the "back 9" of our journey, we stopped off in the Kalahari Desert to partake in the, at the time, custom of pouring ice water over one another. In the Kalahari.

Beitrag von Ben Oddie.

Back to Life

Back to reality. Nothing much really seems to come close to the feeling of freedom and enjoyment of roaming around a beautiful country such as South Africa, much less standing in the rain being shouted out because "I never did nothing, ref!" - you used a double negative and were it up to me, you'd be banned on that basis alone. At least Ebola didn't catch me.

The year so far had been fairly action-packed and amongst the glamour of travelling, it wasn't without its stresses. Finishing a degree has never been a walk in the park, least of all juggling all the extra-curricular involvements. There were many times where it felt the number of pies I metaphorically had my fingers in greatly exceeded the fingers available, and the lull of "normal life" was just about the R&R I needed.

Amongst all the other yearly goings-on, I'd qualified in British Sign Language at Level 2 which meant I could now pretty much watch reruns of Cash in the Attic and Homes Under the Hammer at 3am with the sound off whilst feeling a strange sense of comradery with the poor man, trapped in the television and forced to not only watch daytime TV over and over, but repeat every last word of "banter".

Germany

When I was in school, we learnt German. I'm not sure why, but we did. We learnt it for three years and then had the option to continue to GCSE. I did, and even took it to A Level. By now, I'd spent seven years learning a language which, in all honesty, wasn't much use in my day-to-day life. This was to be the year which it would actually come in handy. I was fortunate enough, even after South Africa, to manage to visit Germany twice.

In November, I flew to Berlin with some friends to "check out the startup scene". It was an interesting trip and we managed to make a few decent contacts on the startup scene. As much as I tried to speak German at every opportunity that presented itself, the Germans have a rather irritating knack of being able to speak better English that most of the British population (see "I never did nothing"). Consequently, whenever I paused for thought or to check something with one of the other guys, people would take this as my inability to hold a German conversation, and we'd default to English. I tried. I tried.

Electric scooter on an abandoned airstrip, Berlin

December took the family to Frankfurt to check out the "Christmas Market scene". This time, the lack of business-oriented events made for much more of an opportunity to speak German (with business events being conducted mainly in English, even between locals). It's safe to say I remembered a lot more German than I thought I would and didn't do too bad - I even managed to keep us away from things containing nuts (a worry of a particular allergist prior to landing). All in all, it was a nice wind-down before Christmas and set a nice pace moving forward into the new year.

Allegedly the largest Christmas Tree in the world

 2014 was an incredible year. I met some incredible new friends in South Africa. I survived numerous near-misses of the Ebola virus. I developed a lot both personally and professionally - although not covered in any real detail here. That about sums up my year and I look forward to the challenges and opportunities of 2015 - in particular, I look forward to the year of the Wood Sheep (and finding out what a Wood Sheep is). All the best for this year, dear reader, and hopefully we'll stay in much more regular contact!

"Oh Cliff / Sometimes it must be difficult not to feel as if / You really are a cliff / when fascists keep trying to push you over it! / Are they the lemmings / Or are you, Cliff? / Or are you, Cliff?"

Ben