I’m standing on the footpath outside my office building.

It’s 10:23pm. Who the hell stays at work til 10:23pm? The ambitious and the lonely – that’s who. I remember when I used to be ambitious.

Amid the hecticity of a flustered Santa Claus, the insane mosh pits in the shopping centres, a colourful explosion on the Harbour and the sound of millions scrawling down last minute resolutions, we found our winning entries and here we are to announce the lucky bunch…

Are you a greedy person and money is precious to you? Are you a hungry person and food is precious to you? Wait! Are you a hairy person and a razor is precious to you? Tell us what’s precious to you and you could WIN something PRECIOUS!

You want to know what’s extreme? Commitment that’s extreme. Commitment to your principles and not doing something any other way.

Hope is the tiny morsel which we hold in our mouths and struggle not to swallow. It is the fragile, ever crumbling force whose strength we underestimate as time and time again it perseveres through blood shed and through breaking hearts. Days where hope in all its magnitude become apparent are rarely dramatic, but its days like this that make life worth living.

“That woman is about to be pick-pocketed,” he said. As if on cue the short man slipped his hand into her bag, snagged her phone with two fingers and skulked away. Suri admitted he hadn’t seen skill like that since he left his home village of Shikarpur in India.