The week: Best, Worst & Borneo

It’s the longest weekend ever and time for our weekly look at your high and low points, known around here as Best & Worst of the week. This post began well over a year ago when I decided to try an online version of a tradition we (and many other families) have around the dinner table when we all have to say what our best and worst bits of the day were.
I’ve always found this a fantastic way to cut through the grunts or the ‘I dunnos’ that kids throw at you when you ask how their day was.
Asking someone to pinpoint their best and worst moments makes them think. In a good way.

It’s also tradition for me to go first so let’s do it…..
I have two very big bests this week.

BEST 1: I went on holidays to Borneo with my family. As an Adventure World ambassador, this trip has been planned for a while. We knew nothing about Borneo before we left except that it was going to be warm and not too far away. Yes, we saw orangutans, we went up to the incredibly beautiful Kinabalu mountains and we lay around a pool. I read books (I promise to post about those books soon because they were GREAT) instead of emails and we had a lovely lovely time away. It’s a beautiful country and I highly recommend it. We plan to return.

BEST 2: Mamamia 3.0 went live while we were away which was quite surreal but invaluable at the same time because it taught Jason and I that we COULD be away from Mamamia and not only would the world keep turning, the MM team would do a sterling job in our absence. I was very good at switching off. I kept my head buried in my Kindle and looked up from time to time to notice that the site seemed to be running as smoothly as could be expected during its first week.
Thank you to everyone who has put up with the bugs – a few people asked why we launched while there were still bugs and I have to say that at some point? We just had to hit the GO button. Our developer is the COO of the website Mashable and they’ve been in beta testing for their site for 9 months. We don’t have the luxury of that kind of time because we have been working on this version for almost two years and we just wanted to launch it already. So we did.
We’re squashing more and more bugs by the day and we have a few more tweaks and surprises in store.
WORST: The shocking news about little Kiesha Abrahams. My heart breaks and I am full of anger…….

ON MY MIND (OMM): The refugee situation which seems to be lurching from bad to shocking. Something has to change and I have no idea what that is. Simplistic solutions like “stop the boats” or “let everyone in” are clearly not working. We need thoughtful, humane, nuanced solutions to this incredibly complex, fraught problem.