This story was sent to me from my sister … enjoy.

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whom-ever he was talking with something about ‘a thousand marbles.’ I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say…..

‘Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s ‘dance recital’ he continued. ‘Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities.’ And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a ‘thousand marbles.’

‘You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

‘Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail’, he went on, ‘and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays.’ ‘I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.’

‘Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

‘There’s nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

‘Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.’

‘It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!’

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. ‘C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast.’ ‘What brought this on?’ she asked with a smile. ‘Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles.

A few weeks ago we took advantage of a friend’s Florence-based wedding to take a proper holiday. My first proper holiday from work for maybe 3-4 years. And when I mean proper holiday I mean not going to visit family and friends in Hong Kong or elsewhere. We spent about 10 days in Italy, landing in Pisa; going onto Florence; then a few days in a hot spring retreat in a town called Bagno Vignoni; then we went to the east coast to a place called Gabicce Monte for the final four days. It was bliss. Driving through the amazing Tuscan countryside was lovely – even in a Ford Fiesta (glad we got an automatic with all the hills and bends!). The hot spring retreat was so tranquil. The village was so picturesque. The weather was fantastic – so thankful for that. And the view from our balcony in our final hotel – panoramic sea views – was perfect. Here are some pictures:

The view from Villa Mangiacane, the venue for the wedding – about 20 minutes drive outside of Florence.

The view over the city of Florence from Piazza Michelangelo

Our spa hotel in Bagno Vignoni – Albergo La Therme

Dawn in Tuscany

We arrive at our final hotel (Hotel Posillipo) in time to watch the sunset from our balcony

The low season beach in Gabicce Mare

The view on the way up to Cortona

A summary of our trip – west coast to east coast

It was an amazing trip, perfect in almost every way. I got to tick off my ‘list’ of things I’d like to do on a holiday. This list isn’t something I’ve consciously put together but it’s become something I’ve looked for on a proper holiday. It includes things like: watch a sunrise; watch a sunset; drive a crap car; have a beer overlooking the sea; go for a swim; get lost; have afternoon naps; see a city from high. It’s quite a simple list but it’s basically things you don’t get to do at home and things that really make a holiday ‘feel’ like a holiday.

A word for my wife who planned this amazing trip with the help of Tripadvisor and Booking.com – two brilliant holiday-planning sites / iPhone apps with everything you need to plan a trip abroad including good coverage and content mass, ample and up-to-date reviews, detailed information on things like hotel facilities, as well as things like easy booking and free cancellation.

For anyone who’s interested, the rest of the holiday snaps can be found in my Flickr album.

As a response to the last post about questionable design regarding the external lift buttons, I thought I’d counter that with some good design from a set of mugs found on FireBox.com, a coffee or tea mug with colour charts for the drinker to specifically request a strength of drink. Brilliant. Clever. Gimmicky, but clever.

I think the clever bit about this product is that it’s taken a normal everyday item, analysed how people use it, identified certain issues or common scenarios, and then designed a solution for it. I like the way the colour chart is on the inside which makes it easy to compare (and fine-tune) the drink’s colour with the colour marker.

Whilst moving across the Sky campus I ran into a rather interesting bit of industrial design. This lift has its buttons on the outside of the lift. Once you’re inside the lift you’re only given buttons to open / close the doors. That’s a rather intriguing / daring design. Except I can’t think of a single instance where this design works better than the traditional ‘floor buttons on the inside of the lift’ design.

For instance, what happens if you pressed the wrong button? What happens if you change your mind? What happens if you don’t know which floor it is and you need to open the doors at a few floors to poke your head out? Not only can you not change your selection whilst you’re inside the lift, but you also can’t see which floors you’ve pressed.

All-in-all, I can understand why this design isn’t widespread. It’s an interesting alternative design but I do wonder how this design was researched, conceived, and tested.

This would be funnier if I wasn’t doing the same thing last night – almost.