Year-End Questions

If you tend to follow the media a bit (and you do, because you’re reading a blog at the moment), there’s no way of escaping the annually recurring lists of year-end questions that magazines, news papers and such invariably publish. The usual format is to get some celebrities to fill in a bunch of questions, such as Best CD?, Best book?, Best movie? etcetera.

However, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never enjoyed reading such lists. In fact, I find the whole thing a bit pointless. I mean: these lists are obviously meant to be a cute way to have the public discover some of last year’s best CDs, books and movies. However, most of the time I either haven’t the slightest idea which CD/book/movie people are talking about or I do know the cd/book/movie in question and then the suggestion doesn’t matter anymore!

So, for this year I decided to draft an alternative list of questions that unlike all the others you might actually recognize and/or enjoy. So here you have ten year-end questions about 2011, Fred and Fred-style. Hope you like them!

And by the way, let’s all agree to enjoy 2012, shall we? It’ll make things so much easier!

1) Most absurd moment?

Sitting with Fred in a restaurant in Tokyo, realising that the waitress is actually Chinese, not Japanese, listening to their conversation in Chinese, and later on in the same restaurant being addressed as Supama, Supama! Crah Keh, Crah Keh! (‘Superman, Superman! Clark Kent, Clark Kent!’) Apparently, I look like Clark Kent to Japanese people. (Must be the glasses, I suppose).

2) Best personal insight?

Realizing that not everything that happens in life is my responsibility or fault. (I tend to take stuff way too seriously, I suppose)

3) Best unforeseen event?

Gaining at least four, possibly five female friends. (I never used to have those in the past, you know!)

4) Biggest crying-but-in-a-good-way moment?

Lots of stuff. Watching the movie Up, talking with Fred about Derrida, visiting new born babies, realising what Elbow’s song Lippy Kids is about. (Very much in touch with my feminine side in 2011, I suppose)

5) What I would most like to do in 2012, if it were not so embarrassing because I’m not a teenager anymore?

Go on a survival weekend.

6) Most heartbreaking moment?

Opening the door for a six-year-old trick-or-treater at Halloween, not realising what she was doing, then awkwardly stammering that I had no candy in the house (not even a bar of chocolate, really!) and then closing the door again. Afterwards wondering whether a pear or €2 could have made the situation better or possibly worse.

7) Most annoying physical feature?

Discovering that my secret wish of being an old man (see here), has manifested itself in a definite increase of hair in my nose and on my shoulders. (Seriously, I now shave the inside of my nostrils and my shoulders every week – also a candidate for question #1)

8) Best food discovery?

Pumpkins of all sizes, shapes and colours. (Just love them)

9) Best question?

If you were a tree, which tree would you be? (My answer: ‘Officer Crabtree!’)

10) Best thing I used my computer for?

Starting Fred and Fred, duh!