Right, this is the rebirth of my blogging. My first post in at least 5 years, with a new domain and a new title.

Anyone who knows my wife, @kerrching, knows that she's a Apple nut. Also, with a June birthday, she has conveniently positioned herself perfectly for the Apple release cycle. An iPad was inevitable for her birthday, but I knew that if I just delivered a wrapped box, there wouldn't be much of a surprise. Where's the fun in that? So I rang my friends James and Paul, who happens to run the finest chocolate shop in London, Paul A Young Fine Chocolates and said "Could you freeze an iPad in chocolate carbonite, and have it survive?". They weren't sure, but were willing to give it a go.

Additionally, iPads aren't available yet in South Africa, so it had to smuggled over from London, without Kay finding out what was going on.

The prepared product:

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Unwrapping begins:

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The "I like chocolate, but you gave me 2 kg of it for my birthday, are you a bit nuts? look":

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Why don't you pull on that little ribbon embedded in the chocolate?

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Realisation!

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Revelation:

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Acceptance:

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Success!!!!!!!!

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With many many thanks to all the wonderful people who helped this to happen:

Simon , who waited in line forever at the London Apple Store to source the machine itself.

James and Paul, for successfully performing the carbon-freezing process, and

Karen, who went through a couple of hours of hell trying to explain what was going on to the South African customs people.

Oh, and just in case you're worried: no iPads were harmed in this production :)

Update: 16:27, June 14th

Wow. Well, thanks for all the kinds words, everyone. This ran away a little more than I expected.

Media types: Yes, you can use the photos without permission, so long as you maintain attribution with my name or a linkback, as per https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en_GB