International Free Hugs Day!

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

It’s not (yet!) commonly known, but the first Saturday in July every year has been designated ‘International Free Hugs Day‘; that meant it fell on July 2 this year.Â Not that we ever need an excuse to hug people, but in order to celebrate we took our ‘Free Hugs’ posters down from the shelf and headed downtown.Â We also brought along a stack of ‘Hug Certificates‘, of course!

For our last ‘Free Hug’ session we were down on the walkway of the inner harbour, but we chose a different location this time: In order to celebrate the 100^th Anniversary of the Canadian Navy last year, a bronze sculpture called ‘The Homecoming‘ was erected at Ship’s Point.Â The sculpture shows a young girl running into the waiting arms of her father, returned from sea.Â It was a perfect location for us!

We held our signs aloft and waited, but not for long.Â Very soon we had a reasonably steady stream of people coming by to hug, be hugged and, in some cases, to have their pictures taken.Â Several people asked why we were doing this, and we simply told them that it was International Free Hugs Day!!Â A couple of people wondered if it was a tourism promotion put on by the city;Â that may be a good idea (‘Hug Me, I’m from Victoria‘ T-shirts?Â Hmmm…) but no, it’s just something we enjoy doing.Â We hugged young people and old people and everyone in between.Â We hugged both locals and visitors to our city, all with gay abandon.Â We were instructed on how to say ‘a hug’ in Portugese (um abraca, I think), and basically we had a wonderful time!Â Hugging is good for you (and the person who’s hugging you), doesn’t take a lot of time, is non-fattening, doesn’t cause cavities and contributes to world peace!! Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says…

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Mike Nelson Pedde — Leave a reply

Hello, dear reader!

Both of us have traveled extensively throughout our lives, and to that end eating in restaurants has at times become ‘routine’ for us.Â There was even a time when we co-managed a resort with a 90-guest seating capacity.Â Still, we both appreciate a really good restaurant.Â Food in all of its aspects – the preparation, the sharing, the sights, scents and tastes… (even the cleanup) is an important part of both our lives.Â All of that is a long way of saying that we’ve decided to add a ‘Food’ category to our blog, where we’ll feature some of our favourite restaurants and we might even sneak in a favourite shared recipe or two along the way.Â Neither of us is a professional food reviewer, but we know enough to know what we like and what we don’t like, so rather than having a ‘scale’ of 1-10 or whatever, we’ll just share our impressions.Â If we go somewhere we don’t like for whatever reason, we just won’t write about it.Â We want to share what we DO like instead.Â We have broad palates and sometimes eclectic tastes, so we’ll offer our thoughts on a wide range of places with three things in common: adequate food, adequate service and adequate value (and each must be excellent to be adequate).Â Look for future ‘Eating Our Way…’ posts on the last Saturday of each month.

We’re going to begin our ‘Food’ category with a local restaurant that we both appreciate: Floyd’s Diner.

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View.

P.S. You can read more of our Food posts and restaurant reviews here.

Hug Certificates

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 12 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

Well, the results of the latest survey show that rampant hugging is sweeping the world! Okay, so we made that part up, but there’s no doubting that hugs are good for you, non-fattening, and won’t cause cavities!

Because of this, a couple of years ago I had an idea to make up Hug Certificates. I designed the original Hug Certificates using CorelDraw, and printed them out using standard business card stock. They look like this:

front

back

We’ve given out Hug Certificates to people we’ve met hugging each other on the street, left Hug Certificates in books at the bookstore, on seats on the bus, on chairs in restaurants, and basically everywhere we go during our days. And yes, we’ve also given them out in exchange for hugs we’ve received. We’ve even mailed packets of Hug Certificates to friends in other places, so they can start their own hugging trends… Recipients of Hug Certificates have returned smiles, laughter, happy tears, and more than one hug back to us.

So, in an effort to make hugging a truly global phenomenon, we’ve decided to put up a link to a Hug Certificate file so you can print out and give away your very own Hug Certificates!

Instructions are very simple:

1) Go to your local office supply store and purchase a set of blank business card stock pages. These come on 8Â½ x 11″ sheets, 10 to a page, usually 300 in a package. Each card is 2 x 3Â½”.

2) Click on this link: Hug Certificates to download the file. This is a Microsoft Word file, suitable for any version of Word from 1997-2007, and I assume it will work with later Word versions as well. It may work with other word processing software, but I haven’t tried it. Open the file, and you should have a two-page document. Print page 1 on one side of the business card stock, and page 2 on the back side. See your printer guidelines on how to load the paper properly and how to print on both sides of the paper. I find it easiest to print several copies of one side, reload the paper and then print the other side, but it depends on your printer.

3) Fold along the perforations (folding both ways helps it tear easier), and separate the cards into a stack. Recycle the leftover bits and go out on your merry way, giving out certificates as you go!

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NB: (May 20, 2010) The new version of bit.ly shortened links allows us, the users to create custom links. Therefore, we’ve replaced our old bit.ly link that links back to this page with a new one. The new link is: http://bit.ly/HugCert The old bit.ly link still works and will lead here, but the new one is a lot easier to remember. I’ve updated the back of the card (above) to show this, and also updated the downloadable Word template. Also, we’ve decided that we each prefer slightly different wording for the backs of our Hug Certificates, so the template now shows five of each style. Feel free to edit the back of the template once you’ve downloaded it to reflect your own preferences, but we’d appreciate it if you’d leave the bit.ly link attached.

Update: After seven years of hugging, in 2016 we had to make new Free Hugs posters (see below for our first Free Hugs campaign in 2010). All you need to make a poster is a pen or marker and a stiff piece of cardboard, but if you’d like the template we used to make ours, you can find it here: New Posters: For the Love of Hugs As of June, 2019, we’ve shared hugs with Ambassadors from (at least) 84 countries!! 🙂
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And be sure to check out Marcia’s page: Marcia’s Meanderings – Ladybugs and FREE HUGS! for information on our own ‘Free Hugs’ campaign to celebrate the anniversary of our engagement. More images are available here. Also visit our post on International Free Hugs Day 2011!!

Know anyone who’s looking for a really Big Bear Hug?

Hugs,
M&M.

P.S. Every time you give or receive any Hug Certificates, or if you find one somewhere, we’d love it if you would leave us a comment and share your experiences!

Update!

Free Hugs Campaign – Official Page (music by Sick Puppies.net )

and

Free Hugs Campaign continued….

The official site: Free Hugs Campaign
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Update: February 14, 2010

A man from Ohio (unofficially) broke the world record for the most number of hugs in 24 hours: 7,777!

More here: Hug record attempt over Valentine’s weekend

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P.S. II, the sequel:

There are a number of ‘Free Hugs’ videos available on YouTube – they’ll definitely bring a lift to your day. Here are a few examples, and from there you can find links to others:

And one from Vimeo: Hug Therapy – You can Change the World, One hug at a time…

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P.S… III!

Hug it Forward is “a movement to inspire people everywhere to live their passion while giving back to make a lasting change in the world.” Click the link to see more!