Firstly, happy birthday America! For those celebrating, I hope you’re having a blast!
This week was so intense that I barely made it through with little sleep and spent the whole weekend just resting (hence the late email). In the space of 72 hrs or so, I had to intubate a 9 month old child, deal with rare but life threatening condition called “malignant hyperthermia” and a full-blown anaphylaxis! Talk about one hell of a week!
Happy Birthday Sunday Surprise!
But that’s enough medical talk. For now, it’s all about the Sunday Surprise turning ONE! For those of you here from the start, thank you for following along. I didn’t consider the very first email as really a first since it was mainly a test email and close friends. Here’s what it looked like:
That’s right, the links were different, so was the colour schemes and I hadn’t quite made up my mind on the sections. I’d like to think that everything from the design and the consistent sections is a nice upgrade. I wonder how things will look by next year? Do you have any suggestions?
From there, there we’re some slight modification and adding of logos etc so that it looked like this…
It was only after nearly changing the name of the newsletter to Curious Curations or Curatorial that I decided that the name was staying so I might as well make a logo!
The beginning
The beginning of this newsletter was an just a simply idea to having something monthly for my close friends. Most of them are in a busy phase of life and we tend to not physically be free enough to catch up frequently. Many are also not particularly active on social media or prefer their privacy. I thought an email would be a way to keep updated and hopefully get them to do the same too. My intention was to share cool gadgets, great articles or even random financial advice along with updates from the day to day.
I bounced this idea off a few friends and realised that while lot were going to be interested in hearing some of my views and deals, they weren’t like to start emailing back in the same way. So the idea was tucked away in the back of my mind for years.
Then the pandemic came with the associated lockdowns…
This is when a friend suggested acting on the idea and maybe making one for all comers. I wouldn’t be sharing as much of the day to day, but the same things I find interesting might be interesting for those out in the internet lands. Heck, I might even get my friends on board if it found a wide enough audience!
With that, the Sunday Surprise was born.
So where to now?
The fact that we’ve had a newsletter every week has surprised me. It’s not an easy task and I have a new found respect for those that put out quality and interesting newsletters! It literally takes hours to do and while I enjoy it, it does mean that some are inevitably late.
Going forward, I’ll try and streamline as much of the process as possible. It’s also becoming it’s own little project out side the banner of Photos x Raffy, so I might actually shift this blog and contents over to raffyhalim.com where it seems more of a natural fit.
What do you think?
I’ll keep tweaking the sections over time but for the moment, I like the overall format. I’m not sure if people find it way to long, but it’s meant to be mainly entertaining while being informative in some way. Otherwise, it’d be just rehashing cat memes.
On the note of cats
The Sunday Surprise was one of the most fun projects started during the lockdowns due to Covid-19. I have to say though that while this helped me keep sane, it wouldn’t have been the same without my 2 cats and close friends.
Luna and Gary provide me with hours of entertainment (Luna is sleeping perched behind me as I type this right now) and company especially when social contact became very limited.
Gary in his cat bbed 
Luna trapped next to me under the blanket 
Luna napping behind me as I type
They are 2 wonderful rescue cats and if you’re not a pet person, just go to a cat cafe and see what you think!
A thank you
Finally, for reading along and even getting to the end of such a long post, but also for following along and reading the weekly newsletter. Knowing there’s readers out there and getting feedback has to be one of the most satisfying things about writing all this.
With that, see you (hopefully) next week and even more…
