The festive season is traditionally a time for remembering to give thanks for what you have. But post-Christmas, many of us find it difficult to be grateful for the new Y-fronts and hankies grandma gave, the book about how to groom your cat that dad dispensed or that coffee cup with your name wrongly spelt. At times like this, your mind wanders.
Looking back on the past year, many of us assess what we wanted to achieve this year, and what we actually achieved. Eventually, and inevitably, our minds turn to our Bucket Lists - a list of the things we want to do before the Grim Reaper catches up and gives us a gentle tap on the shoulder. John Lewis catches up with a few well-known New Zealanders to ask what's on their Bucket Lists.
2. Drive a Formula One racing car.
3. Sleep under the stars.
4. Go kite-surfing.
5. Learn to cook like my mum.
Jeweller and philanthropist Michael Hill
2. I would like to get The Hills golf course rated as the most beautiful in the world, and surround the property with great sculptures.
3. Live to 120 and stay fit to enjoy it.
4. Play a round of golf at The Hills in under 90.
5. Play a violin concerto with an orchestra.
1. Visit the world's highest waterfall - the Angel Falls in Venezuela.
2. Watch orcas catch seals from the beach in Argentina.
3. Find chameleons in Madagascar.
4. Drive from South Africa to Egypt.
5. Learn to sing in key!
Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt
1. I want to write the great New Zealand novel. I've already written six books, but I don't feel like I've cracked it yet.
3. I'd like to have another part in a movie - especially if it's a Peter Jackson film.
4. I would love to take my 8- and 10-year-old grandsons on a round-the-world trip.
5. And, like every beauty pageant contestant, I want to save the planet and end all wars.
1. To see U2 live at Red Rocks in Colorado.
2. I would love to go to an FA Cup final. I don't usually like to watch football, but the atmosphere would be amazing.
3. To float in the Dead Sea.
4. The Bermuda Triangle - I've got a fascination with it. I'd like to go near there, but I wouldn't want to fly over it.
5. I would love to be in a band and sing. But for now, I'll just have to make do with karaoke.
1. Finish five more albums. I hope to finish one over the summer holidays.
2. See Otago win the Ranfurly Shield.
3. Take my wife and two dogs fishing in Central Otago more often.
4. Read all the great books I haven't had a chance to read yet.
5. Never go on a cruise ship! I don't do swanning around swimming pools and sun-bathing or Disney World generally. The idea seems like floating hotel hell to me. There's only one reason to float on the ocean and that's to fish something edible out of it.
1. Ride bare-back on the most beautiful beach in the world on a summer's evening to a picnic laid out on a hill overlooking the sunset with my hubby.
2. Oh, and be sung to by Prince, Tom Jones and rock out later to Aerosmith.
3. Take a bath in champagne (Veuve Clicquot). It probably would be sticky and too cold to stay in for long - but I would give it a go.
4. Be a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Not sure, though, what we would talk about.
1. Take the grandchildren to a spot near East Cape and catch kingfish from the rocks.
2. Spend at least a fortnight exploring the battlefields of Gallipoli.
3. Drive from Los Angeles to New York with as many diversions as possible in six months.
4. Sing the role of Jacopo Fiesco in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra at the New York Met, accompanied by any artistes who can be bought, and an orchestra which can be bullied into assisting.
5. Build one more house that does not enshrine any of the mistakes we lived with in the previous seven. Which means Caroline (my wife) will have to control the project absolutely.
1. Act with, and then get drunk with, Meryl Streep.
2. Go night-diving with manta rays.
3. Take my boys on a road trip in a big old 1970s Chevy across America.
Dunedin Mayor Peter Chin
1. See Otago lift the Ranfurly Shield from Southland, Auckland, Wellington or Canterbury . . . or, in fact, anyone.
2. Find the perfect answer to the coterie of council critics who write ad nauseam to the ODT without any sign they have understood any previous answers or explanations.
3. Hoping the city's residents will be 100% behind the next council after the 2010 elections - yeah right!
4. Visit as many of the world's leading opera houses as possible.
5. Sing top C, forte under the roof of the new stadium.
Singer Gin Wigmore
1. Drink Mojitos with a gorgeous man in the hot sun of a beautiful apartment in Cuba while watching original Cuban music on the street below.
2. Spend two weeks in the islands of Tahiti swimming off a big yacht (that I will own) with my close mates, snorkelling, eating, drinking and long-boarding.
3. Write a song with David Gray or Jack White.
Artist Grahame Sydney
1. Write, film and direct the all-time undisputed heavyweight champion New Zealand movie.
3. Find an effective and lasting way to make the people and administrative bureaucracies of this country realise how essential it is to the fundamental wellbeing of New Zealand that we stop the selfish desecration of our remaining landscapes and rivers, the natural heritage and priceless inheritance which no generation has the right to exploit in the name of temporary profit.
4. Set up a People's Chainsaw Army whose goal is to rid first Otago, then the entire South Island, of every wilding pine, forever and ever, amen.
5. Finally, finally get out of debt.
Black Ferns fullback Kelly Brazier
1. To play in the Rugby World Cup.
2. Go to the Olympics and compete in the sevens.
3. I'd like to see women play in the All Blacks so I can play.
4. Go sky-diving.
5. Own a big Dodge ute and put the dog and the kids in the back.
- Additional reporting The New Zealand Herald