Extreme pétanque

It was a good weekend, dominated by various competitive pursuits: tennis, pétanque, online poker and extreme ironing. I got a fair bit of sun.

Tennis on Saturday was up at Whangaparaoa (well Manly actually) and to be honest it wasn’t much fun. I was well out of my league. Playing number two in our team, when I was clearly the weakest player, it seemed I was the sacrificial lamb. Our team did win overall, so I guess it was an astute tactical decision by our team captain. In the men’s match, both our opponents were excellent net players (my partner was pretty handy in that department too), but when I get to the net I’m suddenly playing at 15,000 feet. We lost that match 6-2 6-3 and the mixed 6-2 6-2. It was a nice sunny afternoon for tennis but to be honest I just wanted to get home.

At the other end of the enjoyment scale was yesterday’s pétanque on Waiheke. This time I teamed up with Phil (we’d had a practice on Friday night) and Sylvain. As always Patrick, the dreadlocked hippie Frenchman, was in attendance. He’s been on the championship-winning side several times in the past and takes his pétanque pretty seriously; the only hope for the rest of us was that he might be stoned. Unfortunately the only weed we could see was an unusual formation of seaweed. We breezed through our first three matches, easily qualifying for the semi-finals from the nine teams who started. We were playing jolly well, mainly going for long jacks because we felt our opponents would struggle to match our accuracy from that range. We had a 13-2 win in the semis and inevitably came up against Patrick’s team (who had also had four big wins) in the final. His wife was on their team; she’s even better than Patrick – less dynamic perhaps but deadly accurate from any distance. The other bloke on their team was very handy too. The match started off nip-and-tuck – we were 3-2 down after five ends – but that soon became 10-2 and we had a mountain to climb. Short jacks and they could take our boules out; long jacks and they would get within inches. They were just too good. We scored two singles and a shock four to move to within two, and suddenly we had a real chance, but that was snuffed out when they cashed in on the very next end for a 13-8 win.

The pétanque was a lot of fun. It always is, even if you get thrashed. Everyone was really friendly. Next time I’ll make more of an occasion of it; a couple of beers or a bottle of wine (or even some Pastis) wouldn’t have gone amiss.

As for extreme ironing, no I didn’t actually iron my shirts in the sea at Waiheke yesterday, but the sheer quantity of ironing I did last night sure made it feel extreme. The closest I’ve ever come to extreme ironing by the way was during my map-making job in the UK. They wanted all their maps hung in a vertical file, and because they’d all been rolled up, I had to flatten out several hundred of the buggers (all A0 or A1 size) with my own iron.

I'm NOT being negative

It hasn't been a great few days. My conversation with Dad on Wednesday only made me feel worse about myself. I told him about the puzzles and how much they were paying me. "Is that dollars or pounds?" was his immediate reply. Pounds I said (I'd converted the figure). "Oh well. Better than nothing I suppose. I hope they're not taking you too long." C'mon Dad. Give me some encouragement, please. When we hung up, I felt sick. Why do I even bother? If the figure had been in dollars (and therefore less than half as much) I wonder what he might have said then?!

My dad's an artist. Paints pictures. He's made a living from it since 1977. I'm very proud of him. But as you can imagine, his income is unpredictable. He'll sell twenty paintings at an exhibition and then nothing for weeks. These barren spells really get him down. Not because they put my parents in financial dire straits (they don't), but because he only feels his work is any good if people are buying it. When he does make a sale - or two - after a dry patch, the last thing I'd say to him is, "oh right, only a small one then. Hope it didn't take you too long." Let's face it, making any kind of living out of selling art is no mean feat. And it isn't the eighties any more. When I was a kid, his paintings almost flew off the walls. He was one of the best in the business in my own (perhaps biased) opinion, and still is, but art was a fashionable thing to have back then, and people appreciated good art. Now people don't want to cough up two weeks' wages on something to stick on the wall, and would rather spend that sort of money on a 52-inch LCD TV. Or is it LED?

When I met my counsellor later on Wednesday, we talked about all the negativity coming from my parents, and strategies to deal with it. The next day, when I spoke to Mum, I tried out one of these strategies. It failed miserably. I told her that my brother (who almost stopped communicating with my parents for five years) had the right idea. She put the phone down on me. We did later repair much of the damage, but it wasn't nice.

I do think Mum and Dad are partly to blame (they do like to seek out worst-case scenarios) but a lot of the problem is my level of self-confidence. Most of the time this hovers around zero, and when I'm depressed it drops well below zero. I don't have many people to talk to, so anything my parents say (especially if it's less than positive) carries far more weight than it should. Hell, I'll be thirty next week! I'm old enough to have my own family.

I stayed up till 1:30 on Friday night to finish those puzzles (I'd better not tell Dad that) and on Saturday I played tennis. I was on the court in body, but not really in mind. Our opponents were a level above us, so it was hardly surprising that of the four sets I played, I lost three of them 6-1. The first match, with Bazza, started atrociously. The opening set was over in 19 minutes (isn't it funny that I thought to time it?); we put up a much better fight in an hour-long second set, storming out to a shock 5-2 lead and bringing up a set point. But in the end it was a struggle even to take the set to a tie-break, which we lost 7-3. The mixed match wasn't much fun. It was typical of many of my recent on-court experiences. At the start I at least have some idea of what I'm doing, but after a while I no longer know where I am or who I am or why I am. I was really only playing for the exercise and the mental health benefits I get from that; all those games and sets hardly mattered. I'll be playing again tonight.

My poker profit broke through the $500 barrier yesterday in unexpected fashion. I had my first ever tournament victory in a 66-man pot-limit badugi event. Reaching the latter stages of a tournament always requires a slice of luck, and I received mine when, short-stacked and half a dozen players from the money, I hit a seven-outer on the last draw to survive. For once I capitalised on my good fortune by building a healthy stack. Eventually we were down to three. Every time I raised, the player to my left would reraise the max and I'd fold as would my other opponent. Then I got dealt a K-9 badugi (you could perhaps call that a badoggie). I raised. Sure enough, he reraised. I don't think you've got anything. I just had him covered and put him all in. He called and drew two. My badoggie held up. Heads-up play didn't last long. My opponent wasn't aggressive enough, or just went card dead, probably a bit of both, and I emerged as the winner.

Now is a good time to take a short break from online poker. I've got a whole list of jobs that need doing before I go away. Lately poker has been something of an escapism. And it's got well-defined rules, it feels predictable, safe even. I know that probably sounds ridiculous. But after a few hours staring at virtual images of cards and chips flying around the screen, I feel I've wasted that time, and often get more depressed.

I met up with Phil shortly after my poker win. We played pétanque at Bayswater and then had a long chat over a coffee. He's emigrating to Denmark at the end of the month, to live with his girlfriend he met on a work trip over there. I told him about my puzzles; he thinks I could make a serious business out of them if only I'd publicise myself a bit more. When I think about it, I've gone to great lengths not to publicise myself, in all aspects of my life. It was great to see Phil though; he doesn't have any preconceived ideas about how people should live their lives.

Today I'm coming out of my latest bout of depression. When I'm depressed, nothing matters and I don't notice anything. Birds, dogs, trees, music, TV, other people, anything outside me and my depression completely washes over me. Sometimes I can't understand how the rest of the world keeps functioning as normal when I'm malfunctioning so badly. When I get back from my trip I think I'll move out of this flat. Living by myself isn't helping me.

Wedding crasher

I'm writing this from the other end of the country; I'm down here for my cousin's wedding which, unusually, is on a Sunday. I can't say I'm overly excited about it. Big social occasions are tricky for me at the best of times, but I find weddings especially hard to relate to; getting married is something other people do.

I've just seen my aunt and uncle; I get on well with them. I thought they'd be going to the wedding tomorrow, but due to some family politics I don't understand, they weren't invited. Come to think of it I don't remember getting an invite either. Perhaps my name was tacked on the end of my parents' invitation, or else I've come all this way to gatecrash a wedding I don't particularly want to go to. I guess I'll find out.

I thoroughly enjoyed last week's Italian course. I was surprised by the sheer number of people on it; there must have been forty, the vast majority of them women. It was interesting hearing people's reasons for learning the language. A lot of people had trips planned, some had an Italian speaker in the family or were even married to one, while a few were doing it for the sheer hell of it. Most interesting were a vulcanologist who is about to spend three years on the foothills of Etna, and another woman of about my age who owns a house over there (that got me thinking). On the last day we had to make up a short sketch in groups of about six and perform it in front of the class. I was an Aussie bloke buying lingerie from a boutique in Rome. This was good for me because it took me out of my comfort zone. My knowledge of Italian improved considerably over the five days, though confidence is always an issue for me, and I have an unfortunate knack of forgetting languages as fast as I learn them.

On Wednesday night I played pétanque with Phil; he wondered what I was still doing in Auckland now that I'm not working. The simple answer is that I don't want to have to start from scratch again. Not yet anyway. As flimsy as my social network is, it's a lot better than nothing. I did win the pétanque, not that it mattered, but one of our games ended in the most dramatic of fashions. With the scores locked at 12-all I was sitting pretty, just inches from the jack, when Phil supplanted my boule with his last throw. Then, with my final attempt, I did the same to him. If they ever make a Hollywood movie based on pétanque, they won't be able to top that. Boules Up. I can see it now.

The beginning of the end

I've finally set a date by which I'll leave my job, for good, come what may. I won't mention the exact date here, but it's definitely on the horizon. Drawing this line in the sand is liberating if a little scary. What (and how) will I tell my parents? What will I write in that letter?

Monday and Tuesday were bad days. The effects of my medication - or perhaps my lack of medication - didn't help. I took yesterday off work; that lifted my mood slightly in the office today, but really I'm just going through the motions. And that's on a good day. On my bad days I sit at my desk, head in hands, just wishing I could crawl into a hole.

I enjoyed the pétanque on Sunday. The weather on Waiheke was great. We finished third out of eight teams, winning two and losing two, but with a good "goal difference". Phil made the final, playing in a different team from me, and was a tad unfortunate not to win the whole shebang. One of our games didn't end particularly sportingly. Every time I've been, we've had to play this French hippie who has dreadlocks, is always puffing on a cigarette of some kind, and has about seven teeth, all of them varying shades of brown and yellow. He's also very good at pétanque. The first time I met him I thought he'd be a pleasure to play with but no. He is desperate to win and, knowing that we're hardly pétanque experts, creates rules seemingly at will. This game was no different. But on the whole it was a good day. Having lived in dark caves for the last two and a half years, I realise how important it is to get some sunlight every now and then.

My uncle and aunt (who live in Woodbury, not far from Geraldine) are in Auckland on a rhododendron conference. I'll be meeting them shortly.

We've got a mystery team building day tomorrow. Oh man. It'll be funfunfun all the way and I simply can't wait.

Little white balls

This morning I could hardly feel my arms and legs. I dragged myself out of bed at 9:30; if I'd stayed there any longer I might simply have floated away. I took a nosedive early in the week and haven't felt right since then. Now I think I know why. My Efexor "extended release" pills don't contain powder; instead they contain dozens of tiny white balls which are presumably designed to "go off" at different times. But for me right now, these balls aren't going off at all. Instead they're going straight through me. I need to see my GP toot-sweet.

Today I haven't felt like doing anything, though I did play pétanque at Bayswater with Phil as last-minute preparation for tomorrow's competition on Waiheke Island. Phil is someone I find very unscary, so I was happy to do that rather than be stuck inside on a sunny afternoon. I won three of our four games. Phil likes to travel, and once or twice as we were playing he looked up flights on his iWhatsit - apparently you could fly to Vancouver or Honolulu for a dollar. This will be the fourth time I've been to Waiheke - each time to throw boules - and it's a pretty cool place. The last time I went was two years ago when the tournament quickly descended into farce. The organiser, if you can call him that, carried a hip flask. He was sozzled before we even started and after a couple of hours he was four sheets to the wind. The rain, which completely obliterated his draw sheet, didn't help either. We seemed to play more games than anyone else, advancing to the next round despite losing in style virtually every time. All in all it was an interesting day.

Yesterday I didn't go to work. Instead I went to Mt Eden to meet with Grant, who Andy kindly put me in touch with, to talk about jobs in mental health. We had a power cut (a fork lift truck hit a power line, blacking out half the city) so my alarm didn't go off. I overslept badly, missed my medication (as I found out today) and got there late. In the end though, we had a very productive meeting. Grant is a really nice bloke and he knows a lot of people in the field. Mental health work is certainly something I can consider. It must be very satisfying after a day's work to know you've helped somebody. Whether I'd be suitable is perhaps another matter - at this very moment I'm struggling to help myself, let alone anybody else.

In the afternoon I took out a few CDs from the library. One of them was Moon Safari by Air - a great album in my opinion. I love all that "spacey" music. The album came out in '98 and as such it reminds me - though not fondly - of my first year at university. I also took out Tracy Chapman's Our Bright Future which was a bit of a disappointment compared to some of her earlier stuff which I really like. I only grabbed one book which I couldn't resist simply because of its title: Bonjour Laziness - Jumping Off the Corporate Ladder. Of course I want to jump off the corporate ladder at my first opportunity. This book talks of the "incomprehensible no man's language" you get in the office: "AGIR has become IPN, which supervises the STI, divesting the SSII of control of the DM, but the latter will waste no time in subsuming RTI." Personally I call all of those acronyms TFIs: three f***ing initials. I've only read two chapters so far, but it's an absolute scream. Better than Who Moved My Blackberry? and that wasn't bad.

I had a good week on iPredict. They have stocks in petrol prices; Wednesday's five-cent increase at the pumps netted me $190, though that did little to lift my mood. My overall profit is $800 of which I've decided to withdraw half. In a later post, who knows maybe my next post, I'll give a run-down of my biggest winners and losers.

I'm pleased to see that the bastards who killed 32 birds at Temuka's aviary in August have been put away. I have fond memories of the aviary and the park as a kid. I happened to be there days after the attack; it was very sad to see all those flowers outside. Some people just make me sick.

From tomorrow, anyone caught using a mobile phone while driving faces an $80 fine. I think it should be more like $200. People have been dashing around buying hands-free kits, wondering how on earth they'll cope with this new law. It won't affect me - while eating a sandwich, reading a map and driving all at the same time remains legal, I'll be fine.

Something to look forward to

I flew back to Auckland yesterday morning. By end of the trip, the side effects - if that's what they were - had worn off and I was able to relax a bit. At the beginning of the week I really just didn't want to know.

Hanmer Springs was good. The town itself was way too touristy for my liking, but they'd done an impressive job of the pools. I could imagine as a treat spending half a day bathing in the hot pools and ordering drinks. I particularly enjoyed the sulphur pools, though ten minutes in that heat was about my limit.

From Hanmer we made our way over to the West Coast, staying one night at Westport and another at Greymouth. With Dad driving, we never get from A to B directly; we usually dawdle along, making sure we stop at X, Y and Z. Dad paints pictures for a living so he's always on the lookout for views that might make a nice painting. I don't mind this - I've got used to it over the years and it's his job after all - but all those extra hours stuck in the car give us many more opportunities to fall out with each other. That doesn't happen often, but I did fly off the handle somewhere between Reefton and Westport when Mum said I was boring. I'm always very conscious of how boring I am, so when my own mother says I'm boring I feel there's no hope for me.

The best day of the trip was Friday, a gloriously sunny day. We stopped at Punakaiki and tried to figure out how on earth those Pancake Rocks came about. Just around the corner we scavenged for fossils, finding perfectly preserved leaves. When I see millions of years of history like this, our own appearance on this planet seems like the blink of an eye, and all that complicated stuff we spend so much time worrying about hardly seems to matter at all.

When I got back yesterday I played pétanque again with Phil. Just like last time it was teeming with rain, but this time I came out on top, winning 13-5. We were tied at 5-all but from there I wrapped up the game in just four ends. I realise now the importance of scoring multiple points on the ends you win and limiting the damage on the ends you lose, much like in poker I suppose.

In my week off I hadn't given work a moment's thought. Well that's not quite true - I'd certainly thought about where the hell my job might be going - but the actual mechanics of what I do on a day-to-day basis hadn't figured at all. So in this morning's two-hour meeting it was back down to earth with a bump.

Tonight I had my Italian class which, as always, I thoroughly enjoyed. In my last post I mentioned that something strange happened to me. Strange because it happened to me. Two weeks ago a very nice English woman showed me her flat. The next day I sent her a text saying that although I liked the flat I wouldn't be interested in the room because it was too small; I thought it was a shame I'd never see her again. The following morning, to my surprise, she replied, inviting me for a drink. I figure she might not have many friends either - she's got an 11-digit phone number like mine (people with lots of friends tend to have shorter numbers) and she wasn't quite sure where the space bar was, which makes me think she doesn't send a lot of texts. Hopefully we'll go out later this week, and who knows, something might happen.

Forgettory

That mini-boost of Efexor is now starting to kick in. My depression has abated somewhat, but at a price. I get very tired even when I've been sitting on my bum all day, my short-term memory is now a forgettory, and I'm constantly thirsty. A quick Google search suggests that these side effects aren't unusual, and they're a price I'm willing to pay for the time being.

All I remember of Friday is the presentation my colleague gave at a meeting. His talk impressed me because he's only been at the company a matter of months, and he used some sophisticated modelling techniques to arrive at his conclusions. In other words there's no way I could have done any of that stuff.

On Saturday I worked on my puzzles and then played pétanque with Phil from the French club. The bowling club down my street has a pétanque piste attached. I'm sure we were supposed to pay, but being the middle of winter and sluicing down with rain, nobody else was there. The game was a lot of fun even though I ended up soaked to the skin. I came from 10-3 and 12-8 down only to be edged out 13-12. I'm sure we'll have many more battles over the coming months.

I'm struggling to remember what happened at work yesterday, but I don't think any of it was particularly good. After work though I had Italian which was much better. An elderly couple who were about to spend a week in Italy had brought two bottles of wine along for us all to share. The Italian wasn't easy, but it isn't supposed to be, and the wine pretty much made my evening.

Today at work was a complete dead loss. The highlight was an email telling us we'd soon be getting our bonus letters. Actually the highlight wasn't that part of the email - of course I'm thrilled to be getting a bonus of zero dollars - but the next bit. These bonus notifications will have a new, more colourful letterhead which is more closely aligned with our company's brand image, but will also be printed on thinner paper to offset the cost of all that extra ink and make the whole process cost neutral. I'm so relieved it's cost neutral. We were told to give feedback about the new letterhead. I was about to reply that I really couldn't give a rat's arse, then thought better of it.
I couldn't focus on anything for more than ten seconds all day. My soon-to-be-boss spent half an hour explaining a new one-off task to me, and explained it pretty well I thought, but everything simply washed over me. By the way the tsunami alert was a false alarm; I'll be getting a new boss, my fourth since I've been there.
Tonight I had a look at a possible new flat. It had a lot going for it but I'll be saying no unfortunately, because the room isn't really big enough.

I'll be taking next week off to stay with Mum and Dad down south, and hopefully get over to the West Coast, where I haven't been since 1993. I'm very much looking forward to that.