ONE YEAR AGO… I had put my back out on the weekend so I wasn't at work. I actually got bored lying around doing nothing, so I decided to go into work for a couple of hours and just work from the La-Z-Boy by my desk.

On my way in I heard the news that there had been another massive earthquake in Christchurch, and when I got to the office I saw Deon outside who told me about hearing the roar of the quake over the phone while he was speaking to a lady in Christchurch.

Later in the afternoon I had my very first plasma donation booked, it seemed strange lying on the beds at NZ Blood Service with a needle in my arm and watching the destruction on TV… the images looked like something you'd see in a movie, but the reporters and bystanders spoke like us.

At home, Kathryn and I watched the news footage; we felt hopeless being so close to it all but still too far away to help. Eventually I couldn't take any more and had to go to bed. Living in this generation in a country so cut off from the rest of the world I grew up thinking that kind of grief was just something you see on TV, it was never something that I'd ever see happening ‘just down the road’.

We've never had to deal with a war. Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 and the 2004 Tsunami were never ‘real’ for us – we saw them, we donated money but we all carried on with our everyday lives. This was different; it brought it home, it was personal and it united us.

<3 Christchurch for being such a beautiful city.
<3 NZ for everything we've accomplished in the last year.
<3 First Contact, we did lots!
<3 Danny & Melissa, Kim & Michael and Javier - it was great to meet you under the circumstances.
<3 my friends and family, cos I mean seriously - we're awesome, right? Of course we are :)