Space drum

I don't know if I can keep this blog up. I don't feel I have anything interesting to say anymore.

On Saturday I did the Butterfly Creek walk, as did Tom and Danielle, which meant that 37.5% of us walkers were also part of the Aspie group. The weather was perfect, and the cicadas were buzzing like crazy. We did almost 14 km so it was a decent trek. There was a bloke in his sixties who took me by surprise when he asked me "Ten forty-two?" Huh? It was after eleven. "Your scroggin." He had the numbers of all the scroggins and energy boosters and mixed nut selections memorised. I asked him what he did for a living - he was a financial analyst, probably for the government and at quite a high level, judging by how secretive he was being. He'd also done several marathons. We bussed to and from the track. After the walk, Tom and I went to Tracy's place to play that mice-kill-cockroaches-with-hammers board game.

On Thursday I had my lunch on Cuba Street and saw this young guy playing a flying-saucer-shaped
drum. I'd never seen anything like it, although the sound is somewhat similar what you get from a Caribbean steel pan. It's got a single note in the centre, surrounded by six or seven touch-pads. He was playing the drum so fast, it almost seemed to light up, as if he was playing level 58 of some souped-up version of Simon. It turns out that these space drums haven't been around very long, and if you're really lucky you might be able to snag one off Ebay for $1000. Ouch. So I won't be buying one in a hurry, but I'd like to do some kind of drumming course.

Some helpful hints from Christchurch

I'm watching a programme about the Christchurch rebuild on Prime. The estimated total cost is $40 billion. That's $100,000 for every man, woman and child in the city and its environs. Nearly a third of those people won't even be around when the rebuild is complete. And then there's the social cost. Three years on from the most devastating quake, mental health problems if anything will become more severe.