As I often do on a Saturday, I went to Newtown market today. Four parties were after my vote: the Greens, Internet Mana, NZ First and Labour. It was good to see Annette King, the Labour MP for Rongotai, trying to drum up support. She's not my MP - I live just over the border in Grant Robertson's electorate, and he'll get my vote. It's easy to neglect your electorate vote if you don't live in one of the areas where it can affect the make-up of parliament, but I've come round to the idea that local representation is actually pretty important.
As well as the usual fruit and vege, I grabbed the parties' various leaflets, and the one that stood out for me came from Internet Mana, who I haven't even considered voting for. You know what, they have some damn good policies. Whether I could trust them to implement the policies is another matter, but I have a hard time disagreeing with anything in the pamphlet. It was also very well put together, which it should be when you think of all the money spent on the campaign. And that's my biggest problem with the party - that it's been bankrolled by a German mega-millionaire.
That's also just one of the problems I have with the Conservatives. Whether they get over 5% and snag six or seven seats, or dip under and get zero, is too close to call. This might be the deciding factor in the election. I couldn't see the Conservatives at the market, and a certain other party who have the support of nearly half the nation (if the polls are to be believed) weren't there either. Funny that.
In some ways National have a harder time campaigning than the Greens, say, because their support isn't concentrated nicely in urban areas. Still, they have very strong support among Pakeha blokes in Auckland, people who epitomise normal. In places like Milford (on the Shore) where I used to live, they do really well.
Going back to Internet Mana, much has been made in the media of the rift in the party on the issue of cannabis. The way I see it, it's great that there's a party that's serious about changing the status quo. It's only a matter of time before cannabis is legalised or at least decriminalised in New Zealand. When it happens is hard to predict, but in NZ things can (sometimes) change quickly. It's amazing how much bollocks is spouted about a drug that causes far less social harm than alcohol. "Teenagers who smoke cannabis are x% more likely to drop out of school." That's the latest one. Well yeah. But that doesn't mean they're dropping out of school because they smoke weed. I'm sure people with tattoos are more likely to drop out too. And hoodies. But no-one would seriously advocate banning tattoos or hoodies, would they? Actually I'd be OK with banning hoodies, especially given that Kevin is in one almost permanently, but that's my own silly prejudice talking.
Talking of elections and fruit and vege markets, there's a good blog out there called Fruits and Votes.
I bought four books online today. With Amazon the shipping would have cost more than the books, so I went with Fishpond instead.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Sunday, August 24, 2014
It's the economy, stupid
Yesterday the southerly continued to rip through Wellington, and it kept me inside for most of the day. Inside isn't a place I like to be on a Saturday. I did however catch up with the ex-facilitator of the Wellington autism group (who I saw in Auckland last month) and her husband. They were down for Beervana. We met at Joe's Garage on Tory Street, and covered a few conversation topics in a fairly short space of time. One of them was my flatmate. He is effectively a boarder. As they say these days, I'm over it all. I count down the weekends, because they're the most exhausting part of the week, and also because 17 is a manageable number. On Wednesday Kevin had what I hope is his last operation on his bum. He doesn't seem to be in pain. He was given a lot of medication after the op, and when I got home from work on Thursday there was all manner of lotions and creams and sprays and pills, in just about every corner of the kitchen and lounge. He'd had medicines lying around for months, but I'd tolerated that, probably because I'm quite a tolerant person. But the increased volume of them was more than I could handle. "I see you've got your drugs lying all over the place, like there, there, there, and [pointing to the couch] there." "Uh-huh, yeah." Have you got Asperger's? It's OK, you can tell me. "Um, do you mind not having your drugs everywhere?" He took all the medication downstairs, including the stuff that was there before.
We also talked about property ownership. So far for me, it hasn't been what it was cracked up to be. In fact I associate buying this place with "bad", because I had quite bad depression around the time I bought it, and had to leave my well-paying role almost the moment I got my hands on the keys. That bad stuff had little to do with the property purchase, but it's hard for the mind to break the connection. It's a bit like my brother's attitude towards New Zealand: bad things happened while he was here, none of which were related to NZ, but he still doesn't want to set foot in the country ever again. Of course in my case more bad stuff has happened since early 2012 - the earthquake assessment, more depression, and a difficult-to-handle flatmate - none of which has helped. Perhaps the hardest thing for me about owning a property has been the added pressure of earning an income. Certain types of people can expect to earn an income that heads steadily northwards, or at the very least, northeast. I'm not one of those people. In 2009 I earned a good salary, then the following year my biggest source of income was online poker. In 2011 I was back to earning good money, almost half of which disappeared for the next two years. If I couldn't eat it, I wasn't buying it. This year has seen an uptick again, thanks also to Kevin, but I'm still earning far less than I was in '09 and '11, and it's anyone's guess what will happen next. That unpredictability doesn't lend itself to paying off a mortgage. Why can't I be like "normal" people and climb the career ladder? That's pretty simple, and I've said it before. Relationships, teamwork, all that stuff is far from innate to me. It wasn't obvious to me in that beanbag relay race when I was five - I had to learn what you were supposed to do - and it still isn't obvious now. And it's absolutely crucial to one's success in the workplace (and even wanting to succeed in the workplace). Joining a new organisation is always the same for me. I can wing it for a while, then it just gets too hard. That's what makes a temp job so good. You're hired to perform a specific task - there's no guesswork - and you're not expected to do any of that networking crap because you won't be there long enough.
We also talked about the economic shift that took place in the early eighties. In New Zealand the word for this was Rogernomics, after Roger Douglas, but similar policy changes took place all over the developed world. It's funny that the subject of phones came up. In the UK until the eighties, everyone had the same rotary BT phone. If you were lucky, you got to choose the colour. We had a brown one. Actually nobody really had a phone, because it remained the property of BT, which was privatised under Thatcher in 1984. I read a really good book which touched on the economic reforms of the 1980s, as well as homelessness, love and depression. Written by Elliott Perlman and based in Melbourne, it's simply called Three Dollars. At some point in the eighties, stock markets became mainstream and the ups and downs were reported on news bulletins. (The woman in the story thought this was funny - why should I care? - and came up with her own All Ordinaries index for recording the ups and downs in her mood.) In the eighties, money changed from being simply a means of exchange to a thing to have in itself, even a way of measuring self-worth. Jeez, if my salary isn't going up in real terms year after year, I must be a failure. How and why did that happen? It's an interesting question, because I don't think it's good that it happened, even if there were clear benefits to the new economic environment like being able to choose your phone, and getting your line installed much faster in a competitive market.
We did talk about the stock market a bit. It was good to talk to someone who understood concepts like over-diversification. When my gran died, she had a managed portfolio of shares. From memory she had shares in exactly fifty companies. As I tried to explain to Dad, that made no sense at all. You might as well invest in a tracker fund.
Perhaps because of the difficulties I face in keeping a well-paid career job (which are mitigated to some extent by my ability to not piss people off), I've sometimes found it hard to warm to people who do manage to climb the rungs of the corporate ladder. People who do something a bit different often seem easier for me to get along with. Maybe that's how I ended up with Kevin.
We also talked about property ownership. So far for me, it hasn't been what it was cracked up to be. In fact I associate buying this place with "bad", because I had quite bad depression around the time I bought it, and had to leave my well-paying role almost the moment I got my hands on the keys. That bad stuff had little to do with the property purchase, but it's hard for the mind to break the connection. It's a bit like my brother's attitude towards New Zealand: bad things happened while he was here, none of which were related to NZ, but he still doesn't want to set foot in the country ever again. Of course in my case more bad stuff has happened since early 2012 - the earthquake assessment, more depression, and a difficult-to-handle flatmate - none of which has helped. Perhaps the hardest thing for me about owning a property has been the added pressure of earning an income. Certain types of people can expect to earn an income that heads steadily northwards, or at the very least, northeast. I'm not one of those people. In 2009 I earned a good salary, then the following year my biggest source of income was online poker. In 2011 I was back to earning good money, almost half of which disappeared for the next two years. If I couldn't eat it, I wasn't buying it. This year has seen an uptick again, thanks also to Kevin, but I'm still earning far less than I was in '09 and '11, and it's anyone's guess what will happen next. That unpredictability doesn't lend itself to paying off a mortgage. Why can't I be like "normal" people and climb the career ladder? That's pretty simple, and I've said it before. Relationships, teamwork, all that stuff is far from innate to me. It wasn't obvious to me in that beanbag relay race when I was five - I had to learn what you were supposed to do - and it still isn't obvious now. And it's absolutely crucial to one's success in the workplace (and even wanting to succeed in the workplace). Joining a new organisation is always the same for me. I can wing it for a while, then it just gets too hard. That's what makes a temp job so good. You're hired to perform a specific task - there's no guesswork - and you're not expected to do any of that networking crap because you won't be there long enough.
We also talked about the economic shift that took place in the early eighties. In New Zealand the word for this was Rogernomics, after Roger Douglas, but similar policy changes took place all over the developed world. It's funny that the subject of phones came up. In the UK until the eighties, everyone had the same rotary BT phone. If you were lucky, you got to choose the colour. We had a brown one. Actually nobody really had a phone, because it remained the property of BT, which was privatised under Thatcher in 1984. I read a really good book which touched on the economic reforms of the 1980s, as well as homelessness, love and depression. Written by Elliott Perlman and based in Melbourne, it's simply called Three Dollars. At some point in the eighties, stock markets became mainstream and the ups and downs were reported on news bulletins. (The woman in the story thought this was funny - why should I care? - and came up with her own All Ordinaries index for recording the ups and downs in her mood.) In the eighties, money changed from being simply a means of exchange to a thing to have in itself, even a way of measuring self-worth. Jeez, if my salary isn't going up in real terms year after year, I must be a failure. How and why did that happen? It's an interesting question, because I don't think it's good that it happened, even if there were clear benefits to the new economic environment like being able to choose your phone, and getting your line installed much faster in a competitive market.
We did talk about the stock market a bit. It was good to talk to someone who understood concepts like over-diversification. When my gran died, she had a managed portfolio of shares. From memory she had shares in exactly fifty companies. As I tried to explain to Dad, that made no sense at all. You might as well invest in a tracker fund.
Perhaps because of the difficulties I face in keeping a well-paid career job (which are mitigated to some extent by my ability to not piss people off), I've sometimes found it hard to warm to people who do manage to climb the rungs of the corporate ladder. People who do something a bit different often seem easier for me to get along with. Maybe that's how I ended up with Kevin.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Bummer
Yesterday Kevin had an operation for an abscess on his bum. I picked him up from Kenepuru Hospital. It seemed to be a success. He was given seven items of medication and told not to spend too much time sitting on his arse - that isn't an easy task for him. It's a problem he's had before - hopefully it'll now be sorted once and for all.
The highlight of last weekend was probably going to the zoo (it was Wellington Open Day so you could get in for a gold coin donation) and seeing the chimpanzees being fed.
You know, they eat sweetcorn pretty much how I eat it. A cheetah sadly died on the way to Wellington Zoo yesterday.
On Saturday, a wet and horrible day, I met up with this woman in her late twenties who I'd never met before. She's fairly new to Wellington and does a similar job to mine - she used to live in Geraldine and Mum put me in contact with her. We had a coffee on Cuba Street, then she took me out to Lyall Bay and we had another coffee. I quickly ran out of things to say and must have seemed very boring. I even felt very boring.
I'm looking forward to Wimbledon and the World Cup - two sporting events I actually care about happening at the same time. But right now the French Open is taking place. So many shocks already. Both the Australian Open champions, Li Na and Stanislas Wawrinka, were knocked out in the first round. I was thinking, heck, to have both champions lose in the first round of the very next grand slam must be extremely rare. I bet that hasn't happened for twenty years or something. Turns out it's never happened before.
I've just started reading Angela's Ashes. It's been sitting on my shelf for years but my dad told me it was very grim so I haven't dared read it until now. The word "arse" features quite prominently.
The highlight of last weekend was probably going to the zoo (it was Wellington Open Day so you could get in for a gold coin donation) and seeing the chimpanzees being fed.
On Saturday, a wet and horrible day, I met up with this woman in her late twenties who I'd never met before. She's fairly new to Wellington and does a similar job to mine - she used to live in Geraldine and Mum put me in contact with her. We had a coffee on Cuba Street, then she took me out to Lyall Bay and we had another coffee. I quickly ran out of things to say and must have seemed very boring. I even felt very boring.
I'm looking forward to Wimbledon and the World Cup - two sporting events I actually care about happening at the same time. But right now the French Open is taking place. So many shocks already. Both the Australian Open champions, Li Na and Stanislas Wawrinka, were knocked out in the first round. I was thinking, heck, to have both champions lose in the first round of the very next grand slam must be extremely rare. I bet that hasn't happened for twenty years or something. Turns out it's never happened before.
I've just started reading Angela's Ashes. It's been sitting on my shelf for years but my dad told me it was very grim so I haven't dared read it until now. The word "arse" features quite prominently.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
That wasn't clever, Boris
I was a bit distracted at work on Friday morning. I was reading this article and the subsequent comments, which now number 2200. The article relates to Boris Johnson, mayor of London and possible future British prime minister, who made a highly controversial speech about inequality and IQ. He noted that as many as 16% "of our species" have an IQ below 85, while only 2% have an IQ above 130; he said we should do more to help the 2%.
His numbers are correct, purely by definition of how IQ scores are calculated. Modern IQ tests are designed so that scores are normally distributed (i.e. they give one of those nice bell-shaped curves) with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, and because of how the normal distribution works, you get those percentages that Johnson mentioned in his speech, and they never go up or down. (Well there is something called the Flynn effect that Tracy mentioned recently, whereby performances in IQ tests improve over time, so they have to tweak the test, or the way it's scored, to keep those percentages the same. There's evidence that the Flynn effect is slowing down or has even stopped altogether.)
I've just started reading a book called The Nether Regions by Sue Gough. The library were offloading a bunch of books - I think I paid 50 cents for it. I'm actually half-way through already - good going for me. The story is based in Brisbane, and as the title suggests, a lot of the content is biological. Interestingly, for parts of the story, the narrator is mute. I wish the author wouldn't use such complicated words! I keep having to look things up in the dictionary, and sometimes the word isn't there. Numinous, is that like luminous? Or numerous? It gets over a million hits in Google so why didn't I know it? Maybe if I had a higher IQ. Or if I read more.
It's been a superb day here in Wellington. A great start to summer - let's hope it continues like this.
His numbers are correct, purely by definition of how IQ scores are calculated. Modern IQ tests are designed so that scores are normally distributed (i.e. they give one of those nice bell-shaped curves) with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, and because of how the normal distribution works, you get those percentages that Johnson mentioned in his speech, and they never go up or down. (Well there is something called the Flynn effect that Tracy mentioned recently, whereby performances in IQ tests improve over time, so they have to tweak the test, or the way it's scored, to keep those percentages the same. There's evidence that the Flynn effect is slowing down or has even stopped altogether.)
So Boris got his numbers right, but that's about it. Some people got dealt a nice hand, and some didn't. But to focus only on those who did would be crazy and dangerous, and that's before you look at how blunt an instrument an IQ test is. Then he said: I stress – I don't believe that economic equality is
possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy
and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to
economic activity. Well hard work and determination absolutely should be rewarded, but not all powerful and successful people get there as a result of hard work, and likewise most people who are struggling aren't in that position because they couldn't be arsed. A lot of it is down to, as I said, the hand they were dealt at birth, as well as their upbringing. Martin, and that game of Scrabble, is a good example. Now he isn't stupid at all. But he didn't get a good formal education, and was never brought up to see that as being important. He said that, despite being born in 1987, he's far from a digital native. They had the internet at home when he was in his teens, and you can learn a lot from that, but his dad never let him or his brother use it. Having weird parents like that doesn't help.
Intellectual elitism, and smugness, is something I have no time for. I see it a lot, and I think it's very unhelpful. I had a friend in the UK who became a maths teacher. One day she was teaching one of the bottom streams. "These kids all think that 0.25 + 0.3 is 0.28. How could you possibly be so dumb as to think that?! When I was their age, well, younger than them, I got it straight away." Well I got it straight away when I was a kid too, but like you, I was lucky. Why shouldn't you think it's 0.28? And the fact that 0.3 is bigger than 0.25, that's not obvious at all.
Intellectual arrogance, unfortunately, is rife among so-called high-functioning people on the autistic spectrum. I'm absolutely right, and nothing you say will stop me from being right. And some of them don't mind boasting about their achievements either. Tracy, for instance, talked about an IQ test she took at school. Apparently she did so well that her score appeared as a blank in their system. The staff misinterpreted this, and Tracy wondered why she got chucked in with all the stupid kids. It's a funny story, and an alarming one (the staff didn't even notice how well she'd done in the test and stream her accordingly?) but Tracy certainly didn't mind telling us that she had an off-the-scale IQ. (I'd guess I'd score reasonably well, but not off-the-scale well, in an IQ test, but I've never felt like finding out - it just doesn't seem relevant.)
It's been a superb day here in Wellington. A great start to summer - let's hope it continues like this.
Friday, November 15, 2013
Armies and mobs
My boss had family stuff to deal with this week so she was away for most of it. That made work a bit easier to cope with, but I still don't think I've got a long future there. I'd say it's 50-50 I'll be there in six months.
On Monday we finally played our second instalment of Risk. I didn't enjoy it as much as the first time. As we traded in sets of cards, new contingents of 40 or 50 armies came into play, and we all agreed that things were getting a bit ridiculous. One minute I had control of three continents, the next minute (well, next half-hour) Tracy's rampaging red army left me, um, incontinent. After two hours (that's five hours of total playing time), Tracy knocked Tom out, taking all his cards and gaining several dozen more bits of plastic. I'd forgotten about that rule, which makes eliminating someone quite a big deal. At that point we called it a day. I wouldn't have fancied my chances against Tracy's sheer numbers and, let's face it, her superior gaming skills. We commented on how everything was designed to drag things out, even the way the cylindrical playing pieces rolled off the board. It would be easy to tweak the rules to cap the number of armies at say 15 or 20, instead of incrementing by five every time someone makes a set of cards, and I think that would make for a better game.
The three of us had a good chat after the game, which I found more engaging than the game itself. We talked about crowd mentality. Someone is teetering on the ledge of a tall building, possibly about to end it all. A crowd gathers, and when it reaches a certain number (Tracy said 350 I think), people start chanting "Jump!" It doesn't matter who or where, when it reaches this critical size, this same terrible thing always happens. Supposedly it's because you stop being individuals at that point, and become a mob instead. The same thing happens when riots break out at football matches - people's ability to think as individuals goes out the window. In the past, people have said that football fans are often poorly educated and come from working-class backgrounds, and that explains their behaviour. But ticket prices have gone through the roof, pricing most working-class people out of the market, and guess what, hardly anything changes. You also see this phenomenon online - people showing extreme anger and hatred over just about any subject, taking sides, and losing all sense of self. I find it all quite scary.
Tracy, who is normally ready for bed shortly after nine, was instead (as she admitted) as high as a kite. I could do with some of whatever she was taking.
They showed the second half of New Zealand's World Cup qualifier with Mexico on TV at work yesterday. Wow, what a gulf in class there was. Without a decent keeper it could easily have been 9-1, never mind 5-1 (no exaggeration). It was nice to see that one trickle in for NZ at the end, even if it'll almost certainly make no difference to them. People have been quick to turn on the All Whites coach and team. There are two points I'd like to make. One, but for a couple of minutes of madness, Mexico would have been out of the running and NZ would have been playing Panama (surely a much easier proposition) instead. Two, the All Whites would be better served by joining the Asian confederation, as Australia did. They would then play more often, against better teams, and surely improve.
I've seen the dreadful pictures coming out of the Philippines following the typhoon. I've only donated $6 - I can't afford much these days. Although the impact on many people has been devastating (and will continue to be), I'd imagine the impact on their mental health has been far smaller. If success is having food, water, shelter and (maybe) medicine, all that other unnecessary stuff no longer matters.
I've been reading Shorty, a book of Barry Crump's short stories about a diminutive novice golfer that I picked up in a second-hand shop. I must give it to Mum when I next see her. It's a good laugh. Golf lends itself very well to story-telling. I found this bit, about a party Shorty was invited to, very funny:
It was a talking party, where you help yourself to drinks from a big table at one end and then go for a walk, talking to one person for a while and then changing partners. The tricky part is that you have to think of something to say to each new partner. Some of them play it in pairs or groups. I gathered from some of the things that were being talked to me, that the ones who were best at this game were considered the most socially desirable. I wasn't going to do very well at this game.
That pretty much describes my limited experience of parties, except mine is real.
On Monday we finally played our second instalment of Risk. I didn't enjoy it as much as the first time. As we traded in sets of cards, new contingents of 40 or 50 armies came into play, and we all agreed that things were getting a bit ridiculous. One minute I had control of three continents, the next minute (well, next half-hour) Tracy's rampaging red army left me, um, incontinent. After two hours (that's five hours of total playing time), Tracy knocked Tom out, taking all his cards and gaining several dozen more bits of plastic. I'd forgotten about that rule, which makes eliminating someone quite a big deal. At that point we called it a day. I wouldn't have fancied my chances against Tracy's sheer numbers and, let's face it, her superior gaming skills. We commented on how everything was designed to drag things out, even the way the cylindrical playing pieces rolled off the board. It would be easy to tweak the rules to cap the number of armies at say 15 or 20, instead of incrementing by five every time someone makes a set of cards, and I think that would make for a better game.
 |
| Here you can see Tracy's stupidly large red army (her reward for wiping out Tom's green) about to take over the world. Some of the pieces represent ten armies, so it was even scarier than it looked. This is where we packed the game in. |
The three of us had a good chat after the game, which I found more engaging than the game itself. We talked about crowd mentality. Someone is teetering on the ledge of a tall building, possibly about to end it all. A crowd gathers, and when it reaches a certain number (Tracy said 350 I think), people start chanting "Jump!" It doesn't matter who or where, when it reaches this critical size, this same terrible thing always happens. Supposedly it's because you stop being individuals at that point, and become a mob instead. The same thing happens when riots break out at football matches - people's ability to think as individuals goes out the window. In the past, people have said that football fans are often poorly educated and come from working-class backgrounds, and that explains their behaviour. But ticket prices have gone through the roof, pricing most working-class people out of the market, and guess what, hardly anything changes. You also see this phenomenon online - people showing extreme anger and hatred over just about any subject, taking sides, and losing all sense of self. I find it all quite scary.
Tracy, who is normally ready for bed shortly after nine, was instead (as she admitted) as high as a kite. I could do with some of whatever she was taking.
They showed the second half of New Zealand's World Cup qualifier with Mexico on TV at work yesterday. Wow, what a gulf in class there was. Without a decent keeper it could easily have been 9-1, never mind 5-1 (no exaggeration). It was nice to see that one trickle in for NZ at the end, even if it'll almost certainly make no difference to them. People have been quick to turn on the All Whites coach and team. There are two points I'd like to make. One, but for a couple of minutes of madness, Mexico would have been out of the running and NZ would have been playing Panama (surely a much easier proposition) instead. Two, the All Whites would be better served by joining the Asian confederation, as Australia did. They would then play more often, against better teams, and surely improve.
I've seen the dreadful pictures coming out of the Philippines following the typhoon. I've only donated $6 - I can't afford much these days. Although the impact on many people has been devastating (and will continue to be), I'd imagine the impact on their mental health has been far smaller. If success is having food, water, shelter and (maybe) medicine, all that other unnecessary stuff no longer matters.
I've been reading Shorty, a book of Barry Crump's short stories about a diminutive novice golfer that I picked up in a second-hand shop. I must give it to Mum when I next see her. It's a good laugh. Golf lends itself very well to story-telling. I found this bit, about a party Shorty was invited to, very funny:
It was a talking party, where you help yourself to drinks from a big table at one end and then go for a walk, talking to one person for a while and then changing partners. The tricky part is that you have to think of something to say to each new partner. Some of them play it in pairs or groups. I gathered from some of the things that were being talked to me, that the ones who were best at this game were considered the most socially desirable. I wasn't going to do very well at this game.
That pretty much describes my limited experience of parties, except mine is real.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Tapering off and feeling better
I'm still feeling better. I've now reduced my Efexor to 37.5 mg a day - ten per cent of what I was on early last year - and hopefully when I come off it completely on 1st January I'll stop feeling (un)comfortably numb. (I heard that song on the radio this morning.)
So life has become more palatable all of a sudden. Work is an example of this - so much of what goes on there is (for me) excretory, but last week it didn't get me down too much. Yes, it's all shitty but it's got little to do with me. As an aside, it's interesting that I cope with work by minimising its importance, while some people - especially managers - vastly overestimate the importance of their roles, and perhaps that's a coping mechanism too. Another sign of my improvement was when I went to the gym today - I had no problems doing 500 pulls on that machine; in my depressed state I'd be flagging after 150 or so.
It's day 29 of my 30-day almost-no-carb diet experiment. Since I started I haven't eaten a single potato, nor a grain of rice, nor a strand of pasta, and I've hardly touched dairy. I've had maybe three or four bowls of cereal. A colleague felt sorry for me (even though I never mentioned my diet) and bought me a Boston bun and a sausage roll. I was cursing under my breath but I enjoyed them. A lot. I've drunk alcohol on two occasions, both times with my cousin. On the flip side I've eaten heaps of meat (mostly beef), a fair amount of fish, precisely 58 eggs, several bowls of fruit and bucketloads of vegetables. It's really interesting to see what happens to your pee when you eat a lot of asparagus. Or beetroot. Or both. (There's a technical term for beetroot-tainted pee - it's called beeturia, which is surely a made-up word.)
I'm still unconvinced about this diet, but it's got me thinking about food a lot more, and operating on autopilot a lot less. On Tuesday, when my experiment is over (I'll weigh myself then just for curiosity's sake), I won't revert to my previous diet entirely. I'll certainly try not to eat so many carbs. On the subject of food, here's an article about the shocking amount of food that is wasted in the UK. I doubt things are much better in NZ.
This article in the Herald made me want to go back to Birmingham. The university (the one I went to) is mentioned as one of the city's highlights. Birmingham has come on a long way for sure, even since I got to know the place in 1998.
Programming an Android app. Oh god. I tried to follow the tutorial provided by Android themselves. This will be self-explanatory right? They want people to make as many lots of apps so they can make lots of money, so it's bound to be simple. Um, no (except the bit about an "activity" - I understood that at least). I downloaded a free e-book that I thought might be useful. The introductory chapter told me in no uncertain terms not to think of programming an app (or reading the rest of the book!) until I know about Java. Apart from landing in Jakarta a few times I know nothing about Java, so that might be a good starting point. I'll take a book or two out of the library tomorrow. This will be a long hard slog.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a good read, but I don't think I'll try the other two books in the series. The Swedish language would be interesting to learn, not for any real practical purpose, but just because it looks like a cool language. It's rich in "strong" consonants like B, hard G, K, M and V, giving rise to such words as bekväm.
I spent some time (not too long) working out the probabilities for dice rolls in Risk. I know you can find the figures all over the internet, but to really understand what's going on you need to derive them. The 3v2 case (attacker rolls three, defender rolls two) is the most interesting. It seems obvious now, but when we played on Monday I didn't appreciate that, when you roll three dice, 6-5-5 and 6-5-1 are essentially the same thing (6-5-5 looks more impressive). They're both 6-5, which is actually the most likely of the 21 distinct outcomes (you'll roll that combination one time in eight). Once you've worked out the odds for a single attack you can then extend that to predict the likely outcome of an entire battle. There are some other things that seem obvious now but didn't at the time - if you own a continent, you don't necessarily have to fortify the inside borders of the continent; the territories just outside are just as good (or perhaps better, since you prevent your opponent from gaining control of the bordering continent).
I emailed Martin on Friday to say that if he wants to move in, drums are a definite no. I felt a bit bad - I wanted to encourage him to get back to his music, and I think that playing the drums well takes a great deal of skill. He hasn't got back to me yet.
So life has become more palatable all of a sudden. Work is an example of this - so much of what goes on there is (for me) excretory, but last week it didn't get me down too much. Yes, it's all shitty but it's got little to do with me. As an aside, it's interesting that I cope with work by minimising its importance, while some people - especially managers - vastly overestimate the importance of their roles, and perhaps that's a coping mechanism too. Another sign of my improvement was when I went to the gym today - I had no problems doing 500 pulls on that machine; in my depressed state I'd be flagging after 150 or so.
It's day 29 of my 30-day almost-no-carb diet experiment. Since I started I haven't eaten a single potato, nor a grain of rice, nor a strand of pasta, and I've hardly touched dairy. I've had maybe three or four bowls of cereal. A colleague felt sorry for me (even though I never mentioned my diet) and bought me a Boston bun and a sausage roll. I was cursing under my breath but I enjoyed them. A lot. I've drunk alcohol on two occasions, both times with my cousin. On the flip side I've eaten heaps of meat (mostly beef), a fair amount of fish, precisely 58 eggs, several bowls of fruit and bucketloads of vegetables. It's really interesting to see what happens to your pee when you eat a lot of asparagus. Or beetroot. Or both. (There's a technical term for beetroot-tainted pee - it's called beeturia, which is surely a made-up word.)
I'm still unconvinced about this diet, but it's got me thinking about food a lot more, and operating on autopilot a lot less. On Tuesday, when my experiment is over (I'll weigh myself then just for curiosity's sake), I won't revert to my previous diet entirely. I'll certainly try not to eat so many carbs. On the subject of food, here's an article about the shocking amount of food that is wasted in the UK. I doubt things are much better in NZ.
This article in the Herald made me want to go back to Birmingham. The university (the one I went to) is mentioned as one of the city's highlights. Birmingham has come on a long way for sure, even since I got to know the place in 1998.
Programming an Android app. Oh god. I tried to follow the tutorial provided by Android themselves. This will be self-explanatory right? They want people to make as many lots of apps so they can make lots of money, so it's bound to be simple. Um, no (except the bit about an "activity" - I understood that at least). I downloaded a free e-book that I thought might be useful. The introductory chapter told me in no uncertain terms not to think of programming an app (or reading the rest of the book!) until I know about Java. Apart from landing in Jakarta a few times I know nothing about Java, so that might be a good starting point. I'll take a book or two out of the library tomorrow. This will be a long hard slog.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a good read, but I don't think I'll try the other two books in the series. The Swedish language would be interesting to learn, not for any real practical purpose, but just because it looks like a cool language. It's rich in "strong" consonants like B, hard G, K, M and V, giving rise to such words as bekväm.
I spent some time (not too long) working out the probabilities for dice rolls in Risk. I know you can find the figures all over the internet, but to really understand what's going on you need to derive them. The 3v2 case (attacker rolls three, defender rolls two) is the most interesting. It seems obvious now, but when we played on Monday I didn't appreciate that, when you roll three dice, 6-5-5 and 6-5-1 are essentially the same thing (6-5-5 looks more impressive). They're both 6-5, which is actually the most likely of the 21 distinct outcomes (you'll roll that combination one time in eight). Once you've worked out the odds for a single attack you can then extend that to predict the likely outcome of an entire battle. There are some other things that seem obvious now but didn't at the time - if you own a continent, you don't necessarily have to fortify the inside borders of the continent; the territories just outside are just as good (or perhaps better, since you prevent your opponent from gaining control of the bordering continent).
I emailed Martin on Friday to say that if he wants to move in, drums are a definite no. I felt a bit bad - I wanted to encourage him to get back to his music, and I think that playing the drums well takes a great deal of skill. He hasn't got back to me yet.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Crashing the system
Julie rang me at work yesterday. I soon wished I hadn't picked up the phone. I sent her a letter last night, saying that I've had enough of all this depressing talk, going round and round in a cycle of negativity, and that it doesn't help either of us. I drove over to her place and put it in her letter box. There was no point talking on the phone, or in person, because she would just take over.
I attended a meeting yesterday on the 25th floor - some of my old colleagues from my previous role were there. I really really didn't want to know. At times I stared out the window - I could see the Basin, my flat, the old Hannah's shoe factory, and in the foreground a huge billboard ad for a bank - something about revolutions and leaders. Is there no escape from this bollocks? I did pick up a couple of things from the meeting. One, they might at some point be changing their crazy zigzag premium rates on some types of insurance. Two, it would be easy for any of us to completely crash the main system. It wouldn't be much more complicated than asking your calculator to compute a number that's too big to fit in the display. Only instead of just producing an error message, the whole system would die. The worry in the meeting was that the proposed changes could kill off the system without any direct human input at all.
There were some other things in that meeting, directly related to my role, that I didn't quite take in. I was at the meeting because they want me to take on new tasks, become more involved. Grow. Develop. I don't want any of those things. It's hard enough to keep track of the tasks I'm doing now. My head is all over the place as I have to shift my attention from task A to task B, then back to A again. Then to C, and so on, all in quick succession, and in a matter of minutes I've done a whole Genesis album. Put D and E in the mix and I won't be able to cope. And of course the last thing I want is any sort of career progression in the environment I work in. My old boss, who I still think of as my boss, is going for interviews at the moment. I can hardly bear the thought of those.
I think a lot of (most?) people at work don't really want to know any more than I do, but their aspirations motivate them to want to know. Some of the sales people, for instance, are really competitive, and that competitiveness (which goes beyond just wanting to make more money) drives them to increase sales. Being a salesman, especially when it comes to selling someone else's overpriced products/services/stuff, isn't something I've ever aspired to. Seeing who can sell the most stuff is, to me, like seeing who can fart the loudest. Both are talents, and both can be improved with practice, but I don't have any wish to excel at either of them.
I'm still enjoying Truth in Advertising. A lot of it rings true to me. He said he was quite happy renting, he liked the impermanence of it, but he bought a property anyway because that's what he was "supposed" to do. I've certainly been conditioned to buy rather than rent. "Whatever happens, the value of property never goes down," Dad told me several times. That wasn't far off the truth for most of the 20th century and the very early 21st, but with leaky homes and earthquake strengthening, getting involved in property now seems like a minefield.
To prove my point about car registrations in the UK, when I asked my brother how old his Audi is, he told me it was a P. No date, just a letter, which happens to mean 1996-97. It's a bit like rocks that you say are from the Cretaceous period instead of being however many millions of years old. That makes a lot of sense because millions of years are hard to fathom. By the way, it can be good to think of things like geological time when you're feeling depressed, because it makes other things (like whether you fit in with your work colleagues) seem insignificant.
My counsellor supports me in my plan to gradually reduce my dose of Efexor to zero.
I attended a meeting yesterday on the 25th floor - some of my old colleagues from my previous role were there. I really really didn't want to know. At times I stared out the window - I could see the Basin, my flat, the old Hannah's shoe factory, and in the foreground a huge billboard ad for a bank - something about revolutions and leaders. Is there no escape from this bollocks? I did pick up a couple of things from the meeting. One, they might at some point be changing their crazy zigzag premium rates on some types of insurance. Two, it would be easy for any of us to completely crash the main system. It wouldn't be much more complicated than asking your calculator to compute a number that's too big to fit in the display. Only instead of just producing an error message, the whole system would die. The worry in the meeting was that the proposed changes could kill off the system without any direct human input at all.
There were some other things in that meeting, directly related to my role, that I didn't quite take in. I was at the meeting because they want me to take on new tasks, become more involved. Grow. Develop. I don't want any of those things. It's hard enough to keep track of the tasks I'm doing now. My head is all over the place as I have to shift my attention from task A to task B, then back to A again. Then to C, and so on, all in quick succession, and in a matter of minutes I've done a whole Genesis album. Put D and E in the mix and I won't be able to cope. And of course the last thing I want is any sort of career progression in the environment I work in. My old boss, who I still think of as my boss, is going for interviews at the moment. I can hardly bear the thought of those.
I think a lot of (most?) people at work don't really want to know any more than I do, but their aspirations motivate them to want to know. Some of the sales people, for instance, are really competitive, and that competitiveness (which goes beyond just wanting to make more money) drives them to increase sales. Being a salesman, especially when it comes to selling someone else's overpriced products/services/stuff, isn't something I've ever aspired to. Seeing who can sell the most stuff is, to me, like seeing who can fart the loudest. Both are talents, and both can be improved with practice, but I don't have any wish to excel at either of them.
I'm still enjoying Truth in Advertising. A lot of it rings true to me. He said he was quite happy renting, he liked the impermanence of it, but he bought a property anyway because that's what he was "supposed" to do. I've certainly been conditioned to buy rather than rent. "Whatever happens, the value of property never goes down," Dad told me several times. That wasn't far off the truth for most of the 20th century and the very early 21st, but with leaky homes and earthquake strengthening, getting involved in property now seems like a minefield.
To prove my point about car registrations in the UK, when I asked my brother how old his Audi is, he told me it was a P. No date, just a letter, which happens to mean 1996-97. It's a bit like rocks that you say are from the Cretaceous period instead of being however many millions of years old. That makes a lot of sense because millions of years are hard to fathom. By the way, it can be good to think of things like geological time when you're feeling depressed, because it makes other things (like whether you fit in with your work colleagues) seem insignificant.
My counsellor supports me in my plan to gradually reduce my dose of Efexor to zero.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Totes
One of the topics at tonight's autism group was finances. That's quite a pertinent subject for me at the moment so I'd prepared a list of tips to help people on the spectrum with both the "ins" and "outs" of money, only I wasn't able to get very far when it was my turn to talk.
At work today we had afternoon tea - savouries and mocktails - to celebrate the new team structure. I happily partook in the food and drink but I couldn't see what there was to celebrate. I'm now officially part of a much bigger team with a more ruthless manager who has the same first name as my mother. My old boss is sticking around until mid-September. Last week he did my interim review, as they call it. We dashed into a meeting room and were done and dusted within five minutes.
On Saturday I signed up to play pool with the anxiety group on Meetup.com. I don't like pool that much, and I like sitting round a table with lots of people, drinking, even less. And that's what we did for an eternity (I think it was nearly three hours) before we even played pool. The woman next to me was extremely loud and kept saying "totes". That's short for "totally", which is bad enough as it is. I'd only heard "totes" as a joke before; I never thought, like, real people, like, totally said "totes" in general conversation. I'd totes had enough before the pool, and once I'd played a couple of games and blown what felt like dumb money on drinks, I was glad to get home.
On Friday night Julie put the phone down on me again. This time I didn't feel as guilty as I have in the past (my counsellor has helped here I think). I haven't called her back.
I attended the games evening at the library on Wednesday. I played canasta with the same woman from the previous week. She works at the library, doing some kind of strategic planning or something. In other words nothing to do with books. I really had no clue how to play canasta. She plays every other week, and my cluelessness soon became obvious. My family played a long time ago when the game was popular, and once in the early nineties I did join in without ever properly knowing the rules. My dad tape-recorded our canasta session (he'll still have the tape somewhere), hoping to get a few snippets from my grandfather who had Alzheimer's. Unfortunately my grandad didn't say a lot (he was very quiet, and placid, in his later years). Anyway, there are two main types of card games: trick-taking games and rummy-type games. Canasta is a rummy game but it doesn't really play as one. My instinct was to try and get rid of all my cards, as you do in most rummy games, but in canasta you often want to do the exact opposite - pick up a whole bunch of cards from the discard pile which you use to form melds that score points. This took some getting used to. It's not a quick game - it took me 1¾ hours to come second.
I've been reading a book called Truth in Advertising. In places it's hilarious. Slightly alarmingly for me, a lot of the humour revolves around the narrator's disillusion in his job, but he's actually less disillusioned by his made-up job than I am in my real one.
I've now seen the latest seismic reports for our apartment block. It appears my flat is in fact in the dodgy zone rather than the "safe" zone. By the way I now pay $1750 a year in insurance through my body corp fees. One highlight I just remembered from the body corp AGM: when asked if any firm decisions have been made about earthquake strengthening, a committee member said the process was currently at "ground zero".
Car number plates beginning with H appeared on our roads last week; it took a smidgen over two years to get through the G's. In the UK you can tell the age of a vehicle directly from its number plate. When I was growing up, the new letter (an H-registration, say) came out on 1st August each year, to a big fanfare. A few doors down from us was a garage; people would take off in their new cars on the stroke of midnight. Such is the status symbol that a new car provides in the UK. Used cars in the UK lose their value extremely rapidly; my brother has just bought a not-that-old Audi A4 for only £600. (It looks like my brother has got his old marine security job back. He's only been back ten days and things are already looking up for him. Hopefully he can consign his NZ experience to history.)
At work today we had afternoon tea - savouries and mocktails - to celebrate the new team structure. I happily partook in the food and drink but I couldn't see what there was to celebrate. I'm now officially part of a much bigger team with a more ruthless manager who has the same first name as my mother. My old boss is sticking around until mid-September. Last week he did my interim review, as they call it. We dashed into a meeting room and were done and dusted within five minutes.
On Saturday I signed up to play pool with the anxiety group on Meetup.com. I don't like pool that much, and I like sitting round a table with lots of people, drinking, even less. And that's what we did for an eternity (I think it was nearly three hours) before we even played pool. The woman next to me was extremely loud and kept saying "totes". That's short for "totally", which is bad enough as it is. I'd only heard "totes" as a joke before; I never thought, like, real people, like, totally said "totes" in general conversation. I'd totes had enough before the pool, and once I'd played a couple of games and blown what felt like dumb money on drinks, I was glad to get home.
On Friday night Julie put the phone down on me again. This time I didn't feel as guilty as I have in the past (my counsellor has helped here I think). I haven't called her back.
I attended the games evening at the library on Wednesday. I played canasta with the same woman from the previous week. She works at the library, doing some kind of strategic planning or something. In other words nothing to do with books. I really had no clue how to play canasta. She plays every other week, and my cluelessness soon became obvious. My family played a long time ago when the game was popular, and once in the early nineties I did join in without ever properly knowing the rules. My dad tape-recorded our canasta session (he'll still have the tape somewhere), hoping to get a few snippets from my grandfather who had Alzheimer's. Unfortunately my grandad didn't say a lot (he was very quiet, and placid, in his later years). Anyway, there are two main types of card games: trick-taking games and rummy-type games. Canasta is a rummy game but it doesn't really play as one. My instinct was to try and get rid of all my cards, as you do in most rummy games, but in canasta you often want to do the exact opposite - pick up a whole bunch of cards from the discard pile which you use to form melds that score points. This took some getting used to. It's not a quick game - it took me 1¾ hours to come second.
I've been reading a book called Truth in Advertising. In places it's hilarious. Slightly alarmingly for me, a lot of the humour revolves around the narrator's disillusion in his job, but he's actually less disillusioned by his made-up job than I am in my real one.
I've now seen the latest seismic reports for our apartment block. It appears my flat is in fact in the dodgy zone rather than the "safe" zone. By the way I now pay $1750 a year in insurance through my body corp fees. One highlight I just remembered from the body corp AGM: when asked if any firm decisions have been made about earthquake strengthening, a committee member said the process was currently at "ground zero".
Car number plates beginning with H appeared on our roads last week; it took a smidgen over two years to get through the G's. In the UK you can tell the age of a vehicle directly from its number plate. When I was growing up, the new letter (an H-registration, say) came out on 1st August each year, to a big fanfare. A few doors down from us was a garage; people would take off in their new cars on the stroke of midnight. Such is the status symbol that a new car provides in the UK. Used cars in the UK lose their value extremely rapidly; my brother has just bought a not-that-old Audi A4 for only £600. (It looks like my brother has got his old marine security job back. He's only been back ten days and things are already looking up for him. Hopefully he can consign his NZ experience to history.)
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Pants
July has been a record-breaking month of blogging for me. That's a shame because my writing has been decidedly pants this month.
There are a few other things I was too tired to mention last night. Last Thursday we had our body corporate meeting. Guess what - for seismic purposes my apartment block is two separate buildings, and the one I live in is safe. Not safe safe, but above the magic 34% threshold, while the other building is a few points below. Unfortunately that doesn't mean a whole lot. A prospective buyer isn't going to think, you know what, that great big yellow sticker there only applies to half the block so this flat should be fine. And because it's a body corporate, we'll all have to chip in whether we're in the safe part or not. The costs of earthquake strengthening could easily run into seven figures. Heck, it's costing us $40,000 just to find out how much it will cost. Most people - myself included - don't have this sort of money, and there are thousands of us in the same boat all over Wellington. The government will surely have to step in. Where will the money come from? Well they could have used that few hundred million they spent on the America's Cup, so now I have to hope they win the bloody cup and can use the money from that.
My brother had an accident on his last scheduled skydive. I think there was some problem with the parachute not inflating fully, he had a very hard landing and was extremely lucky to only have bruises and no fractures. I hope we can stay in touch from opposite sides of the world. Despite a nightmarish last seven months for him, I'm optimistic of his future in the UK.
Last night we had another big turnout at the autism group. One bloke, who was a regular member back in the "old" days, made his first appearance for about 18 months and was taken aback by the sheer numbers. He used to be on the board of Autism NZ. We now have three facilitators including an Irish bloke of about my age. As usual we did our "what we did at the weekend" bit, in turn, and as usual our male facilitator said he played football. I always imagined it was some social team, but last night he said his team won through to the last four of the Chatham Cup. This comment went by almost unnoticed, but the Chatham Cup is a pretty big deal. A quick Google tells me that he's the captain of the team who came back from two goals down to win their quarter-final 3-2, and he scored the goal that sparked their fightback. For just about anyone on the spectrum, experiencing that level of success at a team sport is hard to imagine.
I just finished P G Wodehouse's golf book. Golf lends itself so well to amusing anecdotes. It's so full of jargon, even more so in Wodehouse's time when the clubs had names like niblicks, mashies and brassies.
There are a few other things I was too tired to mention last night. Last Thursday we had our body corporate meeting. Guess what - for seismic purposes my apartment block is two separate buildings, and the one I live in is safe. Not safe safe, but above the magic 34% threshold, while the other building is a few points below. Unfortunately that doesn't mean a whole lot. A prospective buyer isn't going to think, you know what, that great big yellow sticker there only applies to half the block so this flat should be fine. And because it's a body corporate, we'll all have to chip in whether we're in the safe part or not. The costs of earthquake strengthening could easily run into seven figures. Heck, it's costing us $40,000 just to find out how much it will cost. Most people - myself included - don't have this sort of money, and there are thousands of us in the same boat all over Wellington. The government will surely have to step in. Where will the money come from? Well they could have used that few hundred million they spent on the America's Cup, so now I have to hope they win the bloody cup and can use the money from that.
My brother had an accident on his last scheduled skydive. I think there was some problem with the parachute not inflating fully, he had a very hard landing and was extremely lucky to only have bruises and no fractures. I hope we can stay in touch from opposite sides of the world. Despite a nightmarish last seven months for him, I'm optimistic of his future in the UK.
Last night we had another big turnout at the autism group. One bloke, who was a regular member back in the "old" days, made his first appearance for about 18 months and was taken aback by the sheer numbers. He used to be on the board of Autism NZ. We now have three facilitators including an Irish bloke of about my age. As usual we did our "what we did at the weekend" bit, in turn, and as usual our male facilitator said he played football. I always imagined it was some social team, but last night he said his team won through to the last four of the Chatham Cup. This comment went by almost unnoticed, but the Chatham Cup is a pretty big deal. A quick Google tells me that he's the captain of the team who came back from two goals down to win their quarter-final 3-2, and he scored the goal that sparked their fightback. For just about anyone on the spectrum, experiencing that level of success at a team sport is hard to imagine.
I just finished P G Wodehouse's golf book. Golf lends itself so well to amusing anecdotes. It's so full of jargon, even more so in Wodehouse's time when the clubs had names like niblicks, mashies and brassies.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Collecting
I stood in the cold on Lambton Quay for an hour and a half on Wednesday evening, trying to raise money for Autism NZ. There was plenty of foot traffic but the weather didn't help; people just wanted to get home. It was also hard to get noticed, unlike last year when we put up a stand at the entrance to New World. To my surprise two blokes each gave $20. I was the next biggest donor (a $10 note and a bunch of small change) but of the thousands of others who walked past me, only ten or so donated. If everyone had given just a dollar, what a difference it would have made. It can't help that so many people live cashless lives. I stood next to a bus stop for some of the time; bugger those Snapper cards.
I can't remember anything of Thursday except that after work I walked past a café that I hadn't really noticed before on the corner of Dixon Street and Courtenay Place. It has lots of old shabby furniture. I heard the latter half of what seemed like an amazing song blaring out of the speaker. The only lyrics I caught were "Jump On My Shoulders" which happens to be the title of the song. I Googled those lyrics after going to the gym. When I listened to the song (by a band called Awolnation) on YouTube it no longer seemed amazing, just reasonably good. I must download the Shazam app (which can identify songs as they're played) when I ... um ... get back to using my smart phone instead of my dumb one.
Last night I saw the Great Gatsby at the Embassy with the work social club. It's good for me when the social club organises a movie because I can participate without having to be very social. I read the book in 2009 and I can see why it's viewed as the great American novel. I didn't realise that F. Scott Fitzgerald was so damn young when he wrote it. The movie wasn't bad either but I preferred the book and I felt the movie was half an hour too long (one of my colleagues said two hours too long). They could have cut back a bit on Gatsby's use of "old sport". Visually it was quite spectacular though. After the film a few people, including my boss, wanted to extend their night out but it was an easy decision for me to go home.
I listened to bits (when I wasn't asleep) of last night's gripping semi-final between Nadal and Djokovic. The other three grand slams have produced all manner of great men's matches in recent times but this time it was Roland Garros's turn to come up with a real classic. It wasn't just the quality of play and closeness of the match, but the significance of the outcome. Luckily I woke up in time for the fifth set. During the most dramatic game of that set, which saw Djokovic broken for 4-4, the commentators did justice to the historical significance of it all. The crucial moment was perhaps when Djokovic touched the net to hand Nadal a break point in that vital eighth game, but it's easy to single out individual moments. Had Nadal served out the match at 6-5 in the fourth set, all those "crucial turning points" in the fifth would never have happened. With a staggering record at Roland-Garros (58 wins and only one loss), Nadal must be a fairly heavy favourite to win a record eighth title.
I can't remember anything of Thursday except that after work I walked past a café that I hadn't really noticed before on the corner of Dixon Street and Courtenay Place. It has lots of old shabby furniture. I heard the latter half of what seemed like an amazing song blaring out of the speaker. The only lyrics I caught were "Jump On My Shoulders" which happens to be the title of the song. I Googled those lyrics after going to the gym. When I listened to the song (by a band called Awolnation) on YouTube it no longer seemed amazing, just reasonably good. I must download the Shazam app (which can identify songs as they're played) when I ... um ... get back to using my smart phone instead of my dumb one.
Last night I saw the Great Gatsby at the Embassy with the work social club. It's good for me when the social club organises a movie because I can participate without having to be very social. I read the book in 2009 and I can see why it's viewed as the great American novel. I didn't realise that F. Scott Fitzgerald was so damn young when he wrote it. The movie wasn't bad either but I preferred the book and I felt the movie was half an hour too long (one of my colleagues said two hours too long). They could have cut back a bit on Gatsby's use of "old sport". Visually it was quite spectacular though. After the film a few people, including my boss, wanted to extend their night out but it was an easy decision for me to go home.
I listened to bits (when I wasn't asleep) of last night's gripping semi-final between Nadal and Djokovic. The other three grand slams have produced all manner of great men's matches in recent times but this time it was Roland Garros's turn to come up with a real classic. It wasn't just the quality of play and closeness of the match, but the significance of the outcome. Luckily I woke up in time for the fifth set. During the most dramatic game of that set, which saw Djokovic broken for 4-4, the commentators did justice to the historical significance of it all. The crucial moment was perhaps when Djokovic touched the net to hand Nadal a break point in that vital eighth game, but it's easy to single out individual moments. Had Nadal served out the match at 6-5 in the fourth set, all those "crucial turning points" in the fifth would never have happened. With a staggering record at Roland-Garros (58 wins and only one loss), Nadal must be a fairly heavy favourite to win a record eighth title.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Would rather stay dumb
Today I bought a smart phone online for $285. It's an LG model with one of the later Android versions, and a 4.3-inch screen, but only one core. I figured that the point of a dual core (as I understand it) is to enable your phone to do two things at once, but I'm unlikely to need that capability and I'd rather have a slightly bigger screen instead. If it wasn't for my "business" reason to have a smart phone I wouldn't have bothered. This graphic neatly sums up my take on the comparison between smart phones and dumb phones:
That image was created by Islandia Geomatics, and the only inaccuracy (for me) is that I use both hands to text, even on my dumb phone. When my toy arrives in the mail, perhaps I'll be converted, but I doubt it. I've already got a phone. And a laptop. And an iPod. And a camera. And a calculator. And a watch. I've even got a GPS thingy for my car which I rarely use.
I've just finished my third Nick Hornby book in a row (this one was called Juliet, Naked). It took me longer to read than the other two combined, and it didn't do it for me like the others did. It was still very well written but I didn't like the characters I felt I was supposed to like (and vice-versa) so somehow it didn't draw me in. Probably I'd have liked it more if my expectations hadn't been raised by How to Be Good and High Fidelity. Hornby is an excellent writer, no doubt about that, but I've got one minor criticism of him: he overuses the word "pathetic". That happens to be a word Mum uses a fair bit too.
Margaret Thatcher's death has sparked wild celebrations in some parts of the UK. Some of those people don't even know (or care) why they're celebrating; they just want to cause trouble. As a certain Mr Hornby might say, pathetic.
My brother has made a surprise (but sensible) change of plan: he now expects to stay in NZ until November.
I've just finished my third Nick Hornby book in a row (this one was called Juliet, Naked). It took me longer to read than the other two combined, and it didn't do it for me like the others did. It was still very well written but I didn't like the characters I felt I was supposed to like (and vice-versa) so somehow it didn't draw me in. Probably I'd have liked it more if my expectations hadn't been raised by How to Be Good and High Fidelity. Hornby is an excellent writer, no doubt about that, but I've got one minor criticism of him: he overuses the word "pathetic". That happens to be a word Mum uses a fair bit too.
Margaret Thatcher's death has sparked wild celebrations in some parts of the UK. Some of those people don't even know (or care) why they're celebrating; they just want to cause trouble. As a certain Mr Hornby might say, pathetic.
My brother has made a surprise (but sensible) change of plan: he now expects to stay in NZ until November.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Don't give me that shirt
Today's work day was my worst in a while: my motivation and concentration started off bad and only got worse. I was still some way above head-banging level however.
Mum and Dad came up on Thursday. We met at New World in town; they were chatting with my cousin (the one who got married a year ago) and his wife, having bumped into them. The way I was feeling, my cousin was just about the last person I wanted to see.
On Friday we ate at a surprisingly inexpensive Malaysian restaurant on Courtenay Place. Good value for money. On Saturday we went to the market, then had a drive around the coast to Eastbourne. We were unprepared for such high temperatures as we walked part of the track that leads to Pencarrow lighthouse. Dad took quite a few snaps - he found the big Optimist sailing regatta to be a real goldmine. We stopped for an ice cream on the way home, then had fish and chips from Fish Fins in Newtown (I go there about once a month). That evening we had a game of Scrabble. The luck factor in the two-player game is high enough but with three players it's even bigger. There are three good reasons for that: (a) everyone gets fewer turns; (b) the order in which you play makes a difference - if there's a player who doesn't know (or care) about defence, the player who goes next has an advantage at the expense of the third player; (c) the outcome is more likely to be determined by which player goes out at the end of the game because the point swing is greater, in both absolute and (even more so) relative terms, and who goes out is largely down to luck. Of course when I'm playing with my parents, none of this stuff really matters but I like thinking about it and I can't help that. This time, as it happened, luck was on my side: late in the game I drew both a blank and an S, put down COOLESt for 66, and even though I got stranded with the Q, I won with a score of 217.
All in all, Saturday was a good day. As a family it's nice to enjoy basic things like sunshine, a walk, food and a game. Sunday wasn't so great as Dad and I did our best to fall out with each other. I did the 6.8 km Round the Bays in the morning. It was a good walk (apart from the last bit which I ran) but now I almost wish I hadn't bothered: at work they've been comparing times and photos - especially my ultra-competitive boss - and it feels like I didn't really participate. I often feel that way about things.
Mum just bought me some more bloody shirts. She's always buying me shirts. I've now got embarrassingly many shirts in my wardrobe. Until the weekend about half of them were in a large bag in the spare room, washed but obviously unironed. Mum fished them out and ironed them. When Mum starts ironing, there's no stopping her. Dad then had a go at me for leaving my surplus shirts unironed. It seems ridiculous now, but the way he said it was quite cutting and I took offence. I couldn't understand why he even cared what I did with my shirt mountain, and how he dared criticise me when I've spent many more hours ironing than he ever has. Dad made a few other digs in my direction: he obviously thinks I should be far more interested in interior design.
Luckily our falling-out didn't completely wreck the weekend. Dad lent me another Nick Hornby book - High Fidelity. The first chapter of the book was all about teenage relationships, so I found that quite a hard read, even if it was funny. I'm hoping the rest of the story will be less of an "inadequacy trigger" for me.
Since I last posted, the Blade Runner (Oscar Pistorius) was charged with murdering his girlfriend, while a meteor exploded in Russia injuring 1500 people. Frankly, with news like that, who needs books or films? Real life is plenty dramatic enough.
Mum and Dad came up on Thursday. We met at New World in town; they were chatting with my cousin (the one who got married a year ago) and his wife, having bumped into them. The way I was feeling, my cousin was just about the last person I wanted to see.
On Friday we ate at a surprisingly inexpensive Malaysian restaurant on Courtenay Place. Good value for money. On Saturday we went to the market, then had a drive around the coast to Eastbourne. We were unprepared for such high temperatures as we walked part of the track that leads to Pencarrow lighthouse. Dad took quite a few snaps - he found the big Optimist sailing regatta to be a real goldmine. We stopped for an ice cream on the way home, then had fish and chips from Fish Fins in Newtown (I go there about once a month). That evening we had a game of Scrabble. The luck factor in the two-player game is high enough but with three players it's even bigger. There are three good reasons for that: (a) everyone gets fewer turns; (b) the order in which you play makes a difference - if there's a player who doesn't know (or care) about defence, the player who goes next has an advantage at the expense of the third player; (c) the outcome is more likely to be determined by which player goes out at the end of the game because the point swing is greater, in both absolute and (even more so) relative terms, and who goes out is largely down to luck. Of course when I'm playing with my parents, none of this stuff really matters but I like thinking about it and I can't help that. This time, as it happened, luck was on my side: late in the game I drew both a blank and an S, put down COOLESt for 66, and even though I got stranded with the Q, I won with a score of 217.
All in all, Saturday was a good day. As a family it's nice to enjoy basic things like sunshine, a walk, food and a game. Sunday wasn't so great as Dad and I did our best to fall out with each other. I did the 6.8 km Round the Bays in the morning. It was a good walk (apart from the last bit which I ran) but now I almost wish I hadn't bothered: at work they've been comparing times and photos - especially my ultra-competitive boss - and it feels like I didn't really participate. I often feel that way about things.
Mum just bought me some more bloody shirts. She's always buying me shirts. I've now got embarrassingly many shirts in my wardrobe. Until the weekend about half of them were in a large bag in the spare room, washed but obviously unironed. Mum fished them out and ironed them. When Mum starts ironing, there's no stopping her. Dad then had a go at me for leaving my surplus shirts unironed. It seems ridiculous now, but the way he said it was quite cutting and I took offence. I couldn't understand why he even cared what I did with my shirt mountain, and how he dared criticise me when I've spent many more hours ironing than he ever has. Dad made a few other digs in my direction: he obviously thinks I should be far more interested in interior design.
Luckily our falling-out didn't completely wreck the weekend. Dad lent me another Nick Hornby book - High Fidelity. The first chapter of the book was all about teenage relationships, so I found that quite a hard read, even if it was funny. I'm hoping the rest of the story will be less of an "inadequacy trigger" for me.
Since I last posted, the Blade Runner (Oscar Pistorius) was charged with murdering his girlfriend, while a meteor exploded in Russia injuring 1500 people. Frankly, with news like that, who needs books or films? Real life is plenty dramatic enough.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Putting it out there
We had another big turnout at tonight's autism meeting. Seventeen showed up including a stand-in facilitator from South Africa who did a good job I thought. We were split into two groups - the loud group and the one I was in. Being in the quiet group gave me the opportunity to talk more than usual; I talked frankly about my inability to form relationships and my desire to work for myself some day. I took the email address of a timid guy who's had as much success in relationships as me (albeit in less time); I'm hoping we can share some ideas. Tracy was there - she really hasn't been well lately. Her number one goal was to start a family. Another woman had a goal (or rather an un-goal) never to have kids. The South African woman said to me, "you seem to lead a pretty normal life" when I told her about my job and my flat. But that's exactly it. It might look normal but it sure as hell ain't.
I've been feeling a bit low the last couple of days. Yesterday was another beautiful day. I went to the waterfront market, bought lunch (a butter chicken wrap) and enough fruit to feed a small army (the stonefruit has been great this summer), then took a walk along Oriental Parade. They were taking the Hobbit frontage down from the Embassy with a giant crane. There were a lot of teenagers milling about by the waterfront, doing all the things I never did at that age, and that's often a trigger for a downswing in my mood. Bizarrely I'll sometimes feel better in bad weather because I won't see so many people out enjoying themselves to compare myself against. I slipped and slapped yesterday but neglected to slop - as a consequence my knees and ankles turned bright red.
I've just finished another book. This one was a true story about a group of MIT students who lived the high life for a couple of years by beating blackjack for millions of dollars. Word of their exploits gradually got around, they had to take more desperate measures (like wearing disguises) to keep their operation going, and eventually they packed it in. Fascinating stuff, and I was firmly on the side of the students while reading the story because card counting (in my book) isn't cheating at all. I had no idea quite how sophisticated the big casinos' camera networks were (and that book was written ten years ago).
Julie, who turned 67 last week, goes into a rest home on Wednesday. I hope it's just a temporary measure. It's so sad to see someone in that much pain, with no friends or family for support. I'll still pop in to see her every Tuesday.
The Solomon Islands were hit by a massive earthquake last week. The quake caused a tsunami and for a short while New Zealand was on a kind of yellow alert. Nothing came of it and we could all just carry on with our lives. In the Solomons, where they keep getting strong aftershocks, the situation is rather different.
I've been feeling a bit low the last couple of days. Yesterday was another beautiful day. I went to the waterfront market, bought lunch (a butter chicken wrap) and enough fruit to feed a small army (the stonefruit has been great this summer), then took a walk along Oriental Parade. They were taking the Hobbit frontage down from the Embassy with a giant crane. There were a lot of teenagers milling about by the waterfront, doing all the things I never did at that age, and that's often a trigger for a downswing in my mood. Bizarrely I'll sometimes feel better in bad weather because I won't see so many people out enjoying themselves to compare myself against. I slipped and slapped yesterday but neglected to slop - as a consequence my knees and ankles turned bright red.
I've just finished another book. This one was a true story about a group of MIT students who lived the high life for a couple of years by beating blackjack for millions of dollars. Word of their exploits gradually got around, they had to take more desperate measures (like wearing disguises) to keep their operation going, and eventually they packed it in. Fascinating stuff, and I was firmly on the side of the students while reading the story because card counting (in my book) isn't cheating at all. I had no idea quite how sophisticated the big casinos' camera networks were (and that book was written ten years ago).
Julie, who turned 67 last week, goes into a rest home on Wednesday. I hope it's just a temporary measure. It's so sad to see someone in that much pain, with no friends or family for support. I'll still pop in to see her every Tuesday.
The Solomon Islands were hit by a massive earthquake last week. The quake caused a tsunami and for a short while New Zealand was on a kind of yellow alert. Nothing came of it and we could all just carry on with our lives. In the Solomons, where they keep getting strong aftershocks, the situation is rather different.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Autism - it's not just for kids
On the radio this morning Kim Hill interviewed Graeme Simsion, the NZ-born Australian author of the successful novel The Rosie Project. The main protagonist in the book has Asperger's, although Simsion doesn't explicitly mention it. It sounds like a good read - I must look out for it. Simsion ran an IT business, earning good money, before (in his fifties) turning his hand to writing. I was intrigued by two things he had to say. First that to become an expert at something (to the point of making a living from it) requires 10,000 hours of practice, whether that's writing or painting or golf or whatever, and since most of us can't afford to give up our day jobs we need to find those 10,000 hours on top of our full-time employment. So if I could manage thirty hours a week, that's seven years! I'll be forty by then, and probably overweight, living alone in a complete pigsty. His other comment related to people with Asperger's: they can (1) choose to remain social outsiders, or (2) learn what to say at parties and, as he put it, what wine to serve with which cheese, and gradually "grow out of it". That's all a serious oversimplification. It's possible to do something in between (have social contact without being the life and soul of the party) and for some people on the spectrum, fitting in is extremely difficult if not impossible no matter how hard they work at it. As for the "grow out of it" bit, that's a great way to perpetuate the myth that autism is "something kids have".
Yesterday our work team went out for lunch. I had a rather yummy lamb shank. I've given some thought to how easy or hard it would be to give various things up for a year. Alcohol: pretty easy; I enjoy a glass of wine or beer but I could easily go without. Online poker: harder, but I've managed fine so far and never get the urge to play. Meat: now there's a toughie (typing that has got me thinking of steak). Meat-free days are extremely rare for me (I'm still thinking of steak). Mmm. To be honest I don't eat huge amounts of meat but that's more a financial decision than anything else.
On Wednesday we had the day off to celebrate Bob Marley Day. I spent some time on my puzzles - I'm submitting some to an Australian publishing company - and had fun and games with my printer. I decided to cut my losses and buy a new (cheap) one. I also bought some extra ink that cost more than the printer.
Yesterday our work team went out for lunch. I had a rather yummy lamb shank. I've given some thought to how easy or hard it would be to give various things up for a year. Alcohol: pretty easy; I enjoy a glass of wine or beer but I could easily go without. Online poker: harder, but I've managed fine so far and never get the urge to play. Meat: now there's a toughie (typing that has got me thinking of steak). Meat-free days are extremely rare for me (I'm still thinking of steak). Mmm. To be honest I don't eat huge amounts of meat but that's more a financial decision than anything else.
On Wednesday we had the day off to celebrate Bob Marley Day. I spent some time on my puzzles - I'm submitting some to an Australian publishing company - and had fun and games with my printer. I decided to cut my losses and buy a new (cheap) one. I also bought some extra ink that cost more than the printer.
Last Saturday I went on a tramp to Belmont trig station. It was good walk through a very pretty part of the world, if a little on the warm side: my nineties Barkers track pants are great for winter but for that kind of weather I really need a decent pair of shorts. Part of the track was called Baked Beans Bend. By now I'm used to names like Dead Man's Creek and Skull Gully, but Baked Beans Bend? Did the pioneers experience flatulence problems along that stretch? Or maybe they had issues at both ends, hence the Puke bit.
Last weekend there was a seven-hour doubles match in the Davis Cup. It was the longest ever doubles match and second-longest tennis match of all time. Stanislas Wawrinka (who lost that marathon to Djokovic at the Australian Open last month) was again on the losing side as he partnered Marco Chiudinelli, playing for Switzerland against the Czech Republic. The Czechs won 24-22 in the final set on their 13th match point. The sheer number of match points might be a record in itself. Gustavo Kuerten needed eleven to get past Magnus Norman in the final of the 2000 French Open; I remember that match because I bet on Norman to win the tournament before it started - he was in amazing form but seemed to be battling stage fright and a partizan crowd in the final.
My parents are coming to stay on Thursday for four nights. My flat needs a serious clean before then.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Tennis comeback?
There's been some good news from my brother: his ex has chucked in her job and left the country (she's freezing her butt off somewhere in the north of England - she can't do much damage there). Hopefully this whole saga will now blow over and he'll be able to get on with life.
I've almost finished How To Be Good which is a shame as it's been a jolly good read. I found Hornby's depiction of "Barmy Brian" quite thought-provoking, especially the bit where Brian (he's about fifty) tells Katie what it's like to cook for himself (badly!) following his mother's recent death. There are shades of (Barmy?) Bazza, who also lived with his mother until she died in 2008. As Hornby says, "love ... is as undemocratic as money, it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable. I am loved by my children, my parents, my brother, my spouse, I suppose, my friends; Brian has none of these people, and never will ..." There are a lot of Brians in this world, living, breathing human beings, existing outside of society, unloved by anybody. OK, some of them have made a choice to live like that but most haven't, and it's all very sad. For some reason I've always found those sorts of people interesting, probably because I only really exist on the fringes of society myself.
By the way I find Tom (Katie's ten-year-old son) to be extremely unlovable!
After work yesterday I dashed to the Green Man (a bar quite close to work) to watch the tail-end of Serena Williams' shock loss to her compatriot Sloane Stephens. I was wishing I hadn't bothered (there was no sound and you couldn't watch it without something going on - like a game of pool - between my eyes and the screen). The underdog Stephens looked to be playing a blinder, and I was impressed by her fighting spirit after she lost what I thought would be the crucial game at 3-3 in the third set. I've never been a huge Serena fan, and Stephens seemed amiable, so I was happy with the result. (I'm always amused by Serena's official weight. On the Aussie Open site she's listed as 68 kilos, but they don't say which parts of her anatomy are included. Her bum? Maybe that's just her bum.) Sharapova fell heavily to Li Na in her semi-final this afternoon, and Stephens' excellent Open came to an end in her semi with Azarenka just as their match was getting exciting.
I've been following the tennis much more than I thought I would. I'm sure the no-poker thing has played its part (I don't miss the poker but I do miss having an "escape" - the tennis provides that to some degree). I emailed a comment (about tie-breaks) to their radio team and was surprised to hear it read out on air by Richard Evans, my favourite commentator. I'd like to make another comment about the weight of rackets. All this talk about tennis has made me at least consider taking it up again. I basically quit the game when I came to Wellington. At various times tennis has done me an awful lot of good, but it's also caused me a lot of angst on occasions, I'm a bit apprehensive about getting back into it. They're in the middle of the current season, so it's likely I'll have to wait till September in any case. Whatever, I need proper serious exercise on a more regular basis (I've put on weight and certainly feel more lethargic); at the weekend I've got an arduous tramp planned - hopefully that will help.
I've almost finished How To Be Good which is a shame as it's been a jolly good read. I found Hornby's depiction of "Barmy Brian" quite thought-provoking, especially the bit where Brian (he's about fifty) tells Katie what it's like to cook for himself (badly!) following his mother's recent death. There are shades of (Barmy?) Bazza, who also lived with his mother until she died in 2008. As Hornby says, "love ... is as undemocratic as money, it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable. I am loved by my children, my parents, my brother, my spouse, I suppose, my friends; Brian has none of these people, and never will ..." There are a lot of Brians in this world, living, breathing human beings, existing outside of society, unloved by anybody. OK, some of them have made a choice to live like that but most haven't, and it's all very sad. For some reason I've always found those sorts of people interesting, probably because I only really exist on the fringes of society myself.
By the way I find Tom (Katie's ten-year-old son) to be extremely unlovable!
After work yesterday I dashed to the Green Man (a bar quite close to work) to watch the tail-end of Serena Williams' shock loss to her compatriot Sloane Stephens. I was wishing I hadn't bothered (there was no sound and you couldn't watch it without something going on - like a game of pool - between my eyes and the screen). The underdog Stephens looked to be playing a blinder, and I was impressed by her fighting spirit after she lost what I thought would be the crucial game at 3-3 in the third set. I've never been a huge Serena fan, and Stephens seemed amiable, so I was happy with the result. (I'm always amused by Serena's official weight. On the Aussie Open site she's listed as 68 kilos, but they don't say which parts of her anatomy are included. Her bum? Maybe that's just her bum.) Sharapova fell heavily to Li Na in her semi-final this afternoon, and Stephens' excellent Open came to an end in her semi with Azarenka just as their match was getting exciting.
I've been following the tennis much more than I thought I would. I'm sure the no-poker thing has played its part (I don't miss the poker but I do miss having an "escape" - the tennis provides that to some degree). I emailed a comment (about tie-breaks) to their radio team and was surprised to hear it read out on air by Richard Evans, my favourite commentator. I'd like to make another comment about the weight of rackets. All this talk about tennis has made me at least consider taking it up again. I basically quit the game when I came to Wellington. At various times tennis has done me an awful lot of good, but it's also caused me a lot of angst on occasions, I'm a bit apprehensive about getting back into it. They're in the middle of the current season, so it's likely I'll have to wait till September in any case. Whatever, I need proper serious exercise on a more regular basis (I've put on weight and certainly feel more lethargic); at the weekend I've got an arduous tramp planned - hopefully that will help.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Tennis and tats
I got sucked in again last night, in an even worse fashion than the night before. I listened to the commentary of Djokovic vs Wawrinka, an absolute belter that finished at quarter to four (NZ time) this morning. I slept through the fourth set which Wawrinka won on a tie-break, but was glad (kind of) to hear the fifth set which reached a spectacular crescendo in the 22nd game. At the end of surely one of the best last points ever, I couldn't tell who had won it because the commentators were in awe. I felt a bit sorry for Wawrinka at the end; he played the match of his life and he might never get the chance to beat a superstar at a grand slam again. Today Chris Bowers said it was an even better spectacle than last year's final. I wonder whether Bazza stayed up to watch it.
So I've been pretty sluggish today, which thankfully is a public holiday in Wellington. I got up late, worked on my puzzles for a bit (I want to get a portfolio together to send to Australia) and read some more of Nick Hornby in the sun on the bank of the Basin Reserve. There happened to be a closely contested four-day cricket match going on. I'm guessing it was some top-grade club match but I really had no idea. Every now and then I'd get a whiff of pot smoke.
At the beach yesterday I was struck by the sheer number of tattoos on show (I know I've blogged about this subject before). One bloke had "Fuck the World" across his upper back. Seriously man. I'm not ante tattoos per se - people can do what they like - but I find some of them (like that one) really distasteful. I'm sure the prevalence of "tats" is on the increase. It feels like half the population now have them. I've always thought that insurance companies could use tattoos as a pretty reliable rating factor for life policies.
I didn't meet Tracy for lunch last Thursday because she was ill. On the Monday (the day of the autism meeting) she had iron pumped into her intravenously over several hours. She's been ill quite a lot lately and it's a bit of a worry.
So I've been pretty sluggish today, which thankfully is a public holiday in Wellington. I got up late, worked on my puzzles for a bit (I want to get a portfolio together to send to Australia) and read some more of Nick Hornby in the sun on the bank of the Basin Reserve. There happened to be a closely contested four-day cricket match going on. I'm guessing it was some top-grade club match but I really had no idea. Every now and then I'd get a whiff of pot smoke.
At the beach yesterday I was struck by the sheer number of tattoos on show (I know I've blogged about this subject before). One bloke had "Fuck the World" across his upper back. Seriously man. I'm not ante tattoos per se - people can do what they like - but I find some of them (like that one) really distasteful. I'm sure the prevalence of "tats" is on the increase. It feels like half the population now have them. I've always thought that insurance companies could use tattoos as a pretty reliable rating factor for life policies.
I didn't meet Tracy for lunch last Thursday because she was ill. On the Monday (the day of the autism meeting) she had iron pumped into her intravenously over several hours. She's been ill quite a lot lately and it's a bit of a worry.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Roped in
Dad has been made vice-president of the indoor bowls club at Woodbury. He can't stand bowls, and likes committees even less, but somehow (laughably) he managed to get roped in. He said there was no-one else left to take the position, and all eyes were suddenly on him. That an indoor bowls club with maybe a dozen members should even have a committee and that some of its members take it very seriously is in itself laughable.
My boss got the bottom grade in our annual assessment. That grade is supposed to be reserved for the bottom fifth of managers, but if 80% of the company's managers are better than him I'd be surprised. I imagine he's assessed under different criteria to the ones I would use (as long as he's personable and doesn't leave me in the dark, that's fine by me). We sit at adjacent desks, we're close in age (he's just a few months older than me) and even though our similarities pretty much end there, my boss and I get on well. He's a typical lad I suppose. He gets drunk a lot, despite being married with two daughters under four (getting hammered regularly after the age of thirty is another item on my don't-get-it list: yes I got drunk a few times when I was younger, but the price I paid the next day was never worth it, and the novelty quickly wore off). He likes cars, gadgets and labels. He talks to (argues with?) his wife a lot on the phone: I often hear him getting defensive.
Nick Hornby's How To Be Good continues to be excellent. How is such clever writing humanly possible? It all feels so effortless. All the UK pop culture references, such as S Club 7 and a short-lived digital TV channel, mean I can pinpoint accurately when it was written (1999-2000).
Kimiko Date has won through to round three in Melbourne, as has Laura Robson (a pom who was born in Melbourne) after her bruising three-set match last night. If they both win their next matches they'll play each other. There's an age gap of 23 years between them; that would surely be some kind of record in a grand slam.
The depression group have got an outing to Days Bay on Sunday. I'll be going. It's a long weekend here by the way.
It's a year tomorrow since my grandmother died. I miss her a lot.
My boss got the bottom grade in our annual assessment. That grade is supposed to be reserved for the bottom fifth of managers, but if 80% of the company's managers are better than him I'd be surprised. I imagine he's assessed under different criteria to the ones I would use (as long as he's personable and doesn't leave me in the dark, that's fine by me). We sit at adjacent desks, we're close in age (he's just a few months older than me) and even though our similarities pretty much end there, my boss and I get on well. He's a typical lad I suppose. He gets drunk a lot, despite being married with two daughters under four (getting hammered regularly after the age of thirty is another item on my don't-get-it list: yes I got drunk a few times when I was younger, but the price I paid the next day was never worth it, and the novelty quickly wore off). He likes cars, gadgets and labels. He talks to (argues with?) his wife a lot on the phone: I often hear him getting defensive.
Nick Hornby's How To Be Good continues to be excellent. How is such clever writing humanly possible? It all feels so effortless. All the UK pop culture references, such as S Club 7 and a short-lived digital TV channel, mean I can pinpoint accurately when it was written (1999-2000).
Kimiko Date has won through to round three in Melbourne, as has Laura Robson (a pom who was born in Melbourne) after her bruising three-set match last night. If they both win their next matches they'll play each other. There's an age gap of 23 years between them; that would surely be some kind of record in a grand slam.
The depression group have got an outing to Days Bay on Sunday. I'll be going. It's a long weekend here by the way.
It's a year tomorrow since my grandmother died. I miss her a lot.
Monday, December 31, 2012
The sun sets on another year
Another year is almost over. It hasn't been an easy one. My grandmother sadly passed away in January. The next month my job went rapidly south, as did the state of my mental health, almost as I moved into my flat. Moving out of my role in to a less stressful one was the best thing I did this year, even if it meant a severe cut in pay.
On Boxing Day I saw the Hobbit with my parents at the cinema in Geraldine. It's always a novelty to see a film there, even though I've done so a few times now. You get sofas to sit on, a mirror ball and an interval. I was really tired but it was a worthwhile watch. My only criticism was that Bilbo (Martin Freeman) seemed too human. I'm thinking of seeing A Life of Pi but the book was so damn good that I'd be worried that the film might spoil it.
I recently finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It was grim stuff, but certainly a captivating grim. I was puzzled a bit by the author's stylistic punctuation, or rather the lack of it. Apostrophes were removed from all contractions ending in -n't, e.g. cant or doesnt, and a lot of two-word phrases were fused together as a single word. The world had been reduced to its bare bones, so perhaps he was trying to replicate that barrenness on the page.
Mum has two female friends over from Australia. Their arrival (earlier today) has come at an inopportune time; Mum's stress levels have been off the scale.
Some top-class darts again this morning's semi-finals. Michael van Gerwen, who survived two match darts and a tie-break in his quarter-final, hit a nine-darter and had a dart for another perfect leg immediately afterwards. When I used to follow the game in my teens, nine-darters were so rare as to be almost mythical.
I'm about to go into Timaru with my brother to see in 2013 on Caroline Bay. The highlight of this holiday for me has undoubtedly been all the time I've spent with my brother. We get on really well.
Being a numbers geek, I note that the coming year will be the first for 26 years to consist of four different digits.
On Boxing Day I saw the Hobbit with my parents at the cinema in Geraldine. It's always a novelty to see a film there, even though I've done so a few times now. You get sofas to sit on, a mirror ball and an interval. I was really tired but it was a worthwhile watch. My only criticism was that Bilbo (Martin Freeman) seemed too human. I'm thinking of seeing A Life of Pi but the book was so damn good that I'd be worried that the film might spoil it.
I recently finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It was grim stuff, but certainly a captivating grim. I was puzzled a bit by the author's stylistic punctuation, or rather the lack of it. Apostrophes were removed from all contractions ending in -n't, e.g. cant or doesnt, and a lot of two-word phrases were fused together as a single word. The world had been reduced to its bare bones, so perhaps he was trying to replicate that barrenness on the page.
Mum has two female friends over from Australia. Their arrival (earlier today) has come at an inopportune time; Mum's stress levels have been off the scale.
Some top-class darts again this morning's semi-finals. Michael van Gerwen, who survived two match darts and a tie-break in his quarter-final, hit a nine-darter and had a dart for another perfect leg immediately afterwards. When I used to follow the game in my teens, nine-darters were so rare as to be almost mythical.
I'm about to go into Timaru with my brother to see in 2013 on Caroline Bay. The highlight of this holiday for me has undoubtedly been all the time I've spent with my brother. We get on really well.
Being a numbers geek, I note that the coming year will be the first for 26 years to consist of four different digits.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Diversions
Last weekend I discovered Amadou & Mariam, the blind musical duo from Mali. Listen to this amazing song; I found it really uplifting. I'd like to get my hands on their latest album but haven't found it in any shops yet.
After work today I popped into Arty Bees, the bookshop on Manners Street that's open till at least nine every day (ten on Fridays and Saturdays). I'm guessing the name "Arty Bees" comes from the letters RTB, but I might be wrong about that. They had what sounded like French sixties music playing - I wanted to know who it was. I thought I'd try and catch some of the lyrics and Google them when I got home, but then I hit on the radical idea of actually asking the woman behind the counter. Talking to a real person to find out information, I know. It turned out it was Jacques Dutronc. Anyway I read the first couple of chapters of Bad Science before going to the depression group, which wasn't much of a group (just two of us) but at least I went, unlike last week when I simply couldn't face all that talk of dating.
The last book I read was Janet Frame's Intensive Care. My own mental state was sometimes fragile as I read the book; the plot didn't help my mood that much. Interestingly (and unexpectedly) the subject of autism was touched upon with the appearance of the likeable (for me) Milly Galbraith.
After work today I popped into Arty Bees, the bookshop on Manners Street that's open till at least nine every day (ten on Fridays and Saturdays). I'm guessing the name "Arty Bees" comes from the letters RTB, but I might be wrong about that. They had what sounded like French sixties music playing - I wanted to know who it was. I thought I'd try and catch some of the lyrics and Google them when I got home, but then I hit on the radical idea of actually asking the woman behind the counter. Talking to a real person to find out information, I know. It turned out it was Jacques Dutronc. Anyway I read the first couple of chapters of Bad Science before going to the depression group, which wasn't much of a group (just two of us) but at least I went, unlike last week when I simply couldn't face all that talk of dating.
The last book I read was Janet Frame's Intensive Care. My own mental state was sometimes fragile as I read the book; the plot didn't help my mood that much. Interestingly (and unexpectedly) the subject of autism was touched upon with the appearance of the likeable (for me) Milly Galbraith.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Ham tomorrow
I read today that a longstanding member of Tararua Tramping Club (the one I was about to join) fell to his death on New Year's Day while on a solo tramp in the South Island. It must be very sad news for everyone at the club and it goes to show that there's an element of risk no matter how experienced you are. I'm about to email the woman from the autism group; I'm sure she would have known him. He sounded like a kind, easy-going bloke.
I had an unusual dream (or possibly a nightmare) about my flat. I had four dogs to contend with for a start. Then I wanted to advertise for a flatmate but somebody put up an ad for me, stating that only actuaries need apply. I'd rather have the dogs.
Mum wrapped up some ham to take back with me. Every Christmas and New Year it's the same story. Ham and salad one night, ham and potatoes the next, ham and ham the night after. Not that I mind particularly.
I finished Stephen Fry's autobiography in time to give it to Dad before I hopped on the plane. He really is an amazing man. The mind boggles as to how he managed to pack so much into his twenties. How I wish I had a quarter of his talent with words. He left his life story tantalisingly poised on the subject of his cocaine addiction, which he says will require another book.
I had an unusual dream (or possibly a nightmare) about my flat. I had four dogs to contend with for a start. Then I wanted to advertise for a flatmate but somebody put up an ad for me, stating that only actuaries need apply. I'd rather have the dogs.
Mum wrapped up some ham to take back with me. Every Christmas and New Year it's the same story. Ham and salad one night, ham and potatoes the next, ham and ham the night after. Not that I mind particularly.
I finished Stephen Fry's autobiography in time to give it to Dad before I hopped on the plane. He really is an amazing man. The mind boggles as to how he managed to pack so much into his twenties. How I wish I had a quarter of his talent with words. He left his life story tantalisingly poised on the subject of his cocaine addiction, which he says will require another book.
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