Grounded

If I’m going to continue this blog at all, perhaps I should focus on my attempt to learn Mandarin. Learning this language requires more dedication and concentration than my current living arrangements allow. In the last session we learnt numbers. Why is it that 386 in Mandarin sounds a lot nicer than 241? At least with numbers you can practise quite easily, because they appear everywhere. As I’ve found in other languages, the best way to practice saying numbers (and letters, in languages that are sensible enough have an alphabet) is to read off car number plates as they whizz by. I like that Chinese numbers also come with hand gestures. You can count up to ten on just one hand, so from six to ten, the signals aren't what you'd expect. The other topic we dealt with in last week’s lesson was family members. The Chinese seem to have more family-member words than we do, with separate words for all the different kinds of auntie you can have (mother’s younger sister, father’s older brother’s wife, and so forth). You're not supposed to call your elder brother or sister by his or her name; you need to use the word for "big brother" or "big sister", so my brother who's close enough to my age to almost seem like a twin, would need to show me respect by calling me "gē ge". And if he was my twin brother, born ten minutes after me, he'd still have to show me the same respect. Our teacher showed us her family tree which was strictly men-only. 

Mum and Dad got back yesterday from their 2½ months away. I was tracking their Singapore Airlines flight on flightradar24.com. It's a fascinating site (and would be interesting enough if it was just a world map without all the swarming planes). As my cousin's husband said on Sunday, what that site really shows you is where in world the money is. Tom is embarking on his big adventure and will be in Sydney now, about to fly to Tokyo on a 747 (not so many of those iconic planes now - sad in a way as they changed the world). Tracy flies to Europe on Thursday - she's away for five weeks. As for me, I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future.

National are still favourites to win next month's election, but their price on iPredict (yay, I'm still on their leaderboard even though I haven't traded for years) has dropped from the low eighties to the low seventies in the last few days. I've now decided that they won't be getting my vote this time. On Sunday we had lunch and board games at the autism place, and someone in a Bananagrams game joined KEY onto DORK. Well a dork he ain't, but he could have handled the events of the last few days much better. The blogger Cameron Slater is a nasty piece of work and if I were the Prime Minister I'd be distancing myself as far as possible from Slater, not calling him Cam as if he were my mate. Then there's Judith Collins, Minister of Justice of all things, who appears to think she's above the law herself, and also seems to lack any shred of compassion. So I won't vote National but are Labour, policy-wise, really any better?

The wind needle, officially called the Zephyrometer, was struck by lightning in a storm last week, and they haven't decided whether it'll be replaced.

Compatibility issues

I went swimming tonight at the Freyberg pool as I now do every Tuesday. As mentioned at last night's autism group, the Germanness of the pool's name is apt: ve vill not haf fun in ze pool. All the lanes were busy, right from the aqua-jogging (a.k.a. swogging) lane to the slow, medium and fast swimming lanes to the swim squad lanes. I stuck firmly to the slow lane of course.

Last night's group was great actually. There were two very nice new people and a lot of very enjoyable (and at times quite amusing) conversation. It's a real joy to see someone's face light up when they are excited about a particular topic, as happened on a few occasions last night. I'd really like to get to know some of them better, preferably by meeting up outside the fortnightly sessions.

The meeting came at a good time for me. Yesterday was a bit stressful with the realisation that I might have to be out of this flat soon. My lease expires on 15th November; the flat has just been sold, the new owners still want tenants but, as I found out yesterday, on a one-year contract. That's a hell of a long time. Far too long for me. If I can negotiate something in the coming days, great, otherwise I'll have to be out of here pretty sharpish. A pain in the butt really because I was happy to stay here for the time being, just without the inflexibility of being locked in for so long.

Also increasing my stress levels was a phone call I got on Friday with a potential offer of an actuarial job, subject to an interview. In February following my can-we-just-get-this-over-with actuarial interview (not the one for my current job) I promised to myself I'd never have another such interview. Declining the offer (which I did today) was the only sensible option, for a whole raft of reasons. Today, by the way, is the sixth monthiversary of my job. When I started I had serious doubts as to whether I'd survive that long. I should however mention that I achieved absolutely nothing at work either yesterday or today, so I'm surviving but that's about it.

On Thursday I met somebody I hadn't seen since I was nine. Rose came from Temuka - her parents were friends with mine when we lived there - but now lives in Wellington. She's single and works as an art teacher. My mum and her aunt (I think) swapped our phone numbers. It was funny meeting up with someone I hadn't seen for 22 years and wouldn't know from a bar of soap. We were in the café on Cuba Street for a couple of hours - longer than I'd planned. We had a coffee and a small meal; we got on OK but I ran out of things to say. We agreed to meet up again some time, probably to see one of the many live bands in Wellington. Then on Saturday Rose rang me to say that it was good that we met but that "nothing romantic would come of this - we're not that compatible". This was a bit of a surprise comment because I'd never suggested anything like that, but I think she was concerned our families were trying to hook us up.

As I was writing this, I got a call from my parents; they're coming up for a quick visit the weekend after next, having snagged flights from Timaru through Air New Zealand's reverse auction for a very cheap $78 return for the two of them.