This is it

My difficulty with social situations might be my undoing in my job. My last job wasn't a lot of fun at times, especially when my boss changed last August, but obligatory social events were mercifully rare. With the move and Christmas on the horizon, I'm likely to find myself in many more uncomfortable spots before 2014 is out.

As I get older, being socially "abnormal" becomes more of a problem. I'm always having to bluff my way through situations, and it's exhausting. I'm actually better at bluffing than I realised - I suppose I've had a bit of practice by now, and because I'm shy and retiring, people don't expect me to be bluffing. But bluffing my way through an 80-minute interview is a completely different matter from several months or years of work.

I'm already looking forward to 2015 (but see below). My flatmate should be gone by Christmas. I got another letter in the mail today from the neighbours, complaining about the noise. I'm starting to getting used to Kevin's noisy habits. Less so his smelly habits; the whole downstairs reeked when I got home today. I won't miss the assault on three of my five senses. Next year might also be the year I get to go on holiday.

I was disappointed with 3 News tonight. They whipped up the Labour leadership battle into a political soap opera. Shock! Horror! The knives are out and it's carnage! Report the news guys, don't be the bloody news. Don't just make up a story. That's not what the news is for. In all fairness, things aren't great for Labour right now, and it's hard to see who can unite the party and challenge the immensely popular John Key. One supposed truism that I hear over and over is: "He/she's just been an academic and a politician and has no experience of the real world." I think that's overblown; the corporate world (which is many politicians' taste of "real life") can be just as far removed from reality.

When I came to New Zealand in 2003 I felt a real sense of optimism. I wasn't that optimistic about me, but the country seemed to be vibrant and exciting and forward-looking and progressive. And caring. Eleven years on, I don't feel optimistic about my future or that of the country. NZ's "care factor" has taken a dive. If you're struggling, there's no-one to blame but yourself and your stupid decisions. The truth is we're all a product of both the hand we're dealt and how we play it. The choices you make in live have a huge bearing on where you end up, but having those four aces in your hand to begin with gives you one hell of a head-start. And it's very hard to make good decisions when everyone around you is making bad ones. People don't seem to see that anymore.

After 68 months of this blog, and on that pessimistic note, I've had enough. I've run out of things to say and ways to say them. If something earth-shattering happens (perhaps literally), I'll be sure to write about it, but otherwise it's game over. Here are some pictures from the tunnel at the weekend:

I don't function at functions

I’m in Petone – I’ll be going bowling here in about three hours (I couldn’t face being stuck at home with Kevin). I’m parked on the Esplanade on a sunny Sunday afternoon – it’s quite peaceful here. I expect that will change in mid-October when I start spending half my waking hours here.

Last Friday we had our morning coffee at Gotham on Chews Lane. This is a weekly event. There seems to be an unwritten rule that you get something edible (which I never do) with your hot beverage. Then you’re supposed to nonchalantly waft your plastic when the barista says “eleven eighty”. I hadn’t been to Gotham before. Instead of getting a number on a stand when you order, you get an animal on a stand (except me – I got a Batman figure. It is Gotham after all). So when they come to deliver your drink, they get to say funny things like “hot chocolate on goat” or “trim mocha on giraffe”. I’ve seen playing cards used before, but this was a new one on me.

We had our so-called mid-year function after work on Friday. Oh god. Not fun at all. We started off playing pool. I’m very bad at pool, but at least you’re doing something and that makes it just about tolerable. Even if everyone else is talking among themselves in twos and threes and I’m not. That’s a situation I’ve learnt to accept – I’m extremely used to it. We then had pizza. I’m better at eating pizza than I am at playing pool. Then we went to some bar on Courtenay Place where they had the Beat Girls, who sang songs from groups like the Supremes and the Seekers. They were pretty good, but instead of concentrating on them, I had to listen to my boss talk about saving the world. When he’s sober he only wants to revolutionise it. He tried to flatter me by telling me how many applicants there were for my position. The figure had gone up by eleven since last time. Things got a whole lot worse when people in my group – well basically everyone except me – decided to dance. I didn’t drink too much – it’s never worth it for me. I survived the evening but it was hard work – at least as hard as an entire week in the office – but I don’t think I made a good impression and I’m not looking forward to work tomorrow.

After the night before, the last thing I wanted to do yesterday was see real people. But because I have no choice but to see a real person, I didn’t particularly mind spending most of the day helping Rhiannon and her boyfriend look for a new flat. I used my Navman for the first time in ages and it worked really well. We looked at seven places including one on my street. I don’t have a lot of friends, and most of the ones I do have are carless. That means I’m now spending more time driving with other people. Getting used to that can only be a good thing.

I’ve got three Mandarin lessons left, and I plan to attend them, but it’s a bit of a waste of time because I find it extremely hard to practise between lessons. If I carry on my classes it won’t be until I get my place to myself again.

I heard an interesting radio programme about Chinese mental health. It sounds like it's almost a taboo subject over there. I expect mental health problems in China to balloon in the coming decades, with the pressure on children and young adults to succeed in an increasingly Westernised society.

Last night I went to the Lux light festival on the waterfront. I think it was better for kids than for adults; there were a couple of interactive displays where you could make a lot of noise and things would happen. That meant there were a lot of screaming kids.

Julie only recently went to Napier. Things aren't working out and she wants to come back. Apparently she has to move out of her serviced apartment by Thursday, and this morning she said she wanted me to drive the 400-mile round trip to Napier to pick up her stuff, by Thursday, while she flies back to Wellington. Seriously.

The National Party have become decidedly less awful now that Judith Collins has resigned. I still won’t vote for them though. John Key has been very astute in the way he’s positioned himself and his party as the Normal Party. If you perceive yourself as a normal guy (or girl) with a normal job, a normal wife (or husband) and 2.4 normal kids, voting Normal, I mean National, is what you’re supposed to do. I’m sure they’ll get many thousands of votes from people who like to think of themselves as normal, even if they don’t agree with the party’s policies.

Update: Bowling was pretty good actually. Playing, rather than talking, took precedence. I bowled 132 (I think I finished with four consecutive spares) and 111. The other guys were all easy-going chaps and it looks like they'll make a regular thing of it.

On-court exertions

I played badminton today with the anxiety group. It was more enjoyable than I expected. We played a lot of short doubles games to eleven. Near the start of the session we had a game consisting of many long rallies - I felt like I was really getting a workout. I need more of that.

Maybe I could get all that exertion if I joined a tennis club. Andy Murray was upset in straight sets in the quarter-finals of the US Open, much to the delight of one of my colleagues who said Murray was arrogant. His on-court demeanour isn't always that endearing I agree, but I've never found him arrogant, in fact quite the opposite.

Tony Abbott has been elected as Australian prime minister. When your name is that close to the start of the phone book, what can you expect? (Various studies have shown that people with surnames alphabetically near the beginning are over-represented at the upper echelons of politics. And just think of the last three British prime ministers - Blair, Brown and Cameron.) On that loose language-related theme, I heard that the words "selfie" and "twerking" have been added to the online version of the Oxford dictionary. I took my first ever deliberate selfie today. Until a few weeks ago I didn't know it had a special name. As for twerking, I can't say I'll be doing that any time soon.

Last week Campbell Live did a story about a young woman who was causing all kinds of mayhem at her flat; when the landlord sensibly gave her an eviction notice, she responded by trashing the place. Kerre McIvor (or Woodham as she used to be) has written a piece about it here. "It was probably the hardest she'd worked in her life" - ha! I feel very sorry for the landlord who was to trying to help a young family but got that help chucked back in his face, and there's nothing he can do about it. Some people, like this woman, seem to have a total disregard for anybody else. She should be put in jail.

Mum and Dad arrived home at one o'clock on Friday morning. They've since been to Dunedin as well. Dad flies to the UK on the 25th.

Trapped!

One minute I'm sitting out on the balcony on an unusually balmy Sunday in August and the next ... oh dear. The door has locked behind me, the key's inside and I'm trapped. No phone, no nothing. What the hell do I do? I'm only on the first floor but there's also a step up from the ground. I'm looking at 13 feet. I think of ways down but decide there's no real way of getting down other than stepping out onto the beam that connects the balconies, and jumping. I use a long stick to knock on my neighbour's window but they're obviously out. Eventually I attract the attention of a Chinese family who live above me and are about to head off in their car. The mum phones the property manager, who I thought had a key to all the apartments, but apparently not. She tells me not to even think of jumping. "I'll call 111. The police." "Um, you should probably ask for the fire brigade." Oh god. Is this really happening? It's happened in bad dreams enough times. I hear her half of the 111 call. "Nothing's on fire and nobody's injured." Five minutes later three firemen are on the scene and I'm suitably embarrassed by the whole situation. They put a ladder up and I get down. I've left one of the downstairs windows open a few inches with the "security" stay which the firemen break very easily, and I'm back inside without having to shell out for a locksmith.

I bought the people upstairs some lilies and a box of chocolates but they haven't been back since. It makes a nice change to sense the aroma of flowers as I walk into my flat. There are a couple of things I can take out of being trapped (I was stuck for about an hour). One, I've locked myself out before (far less dramatically) and I'm bound to do it again. It's just too damn easy to do. Having flatmates will help but in the meantime I'd better make sure my property manager has one of my spare keys (there's no-one around here I really trust with them). Secondly the window stays are so feeble that I must never leave the downstairs windows ajar, not even an inch.

In other news, we had a very good session at last night's autism group. People have really come on in leaps and bounds. Tom, for instance, has become (and this sounds terrible) much less robotic and more human. This time last year he'd hardly say anything at the group and his face would be almost expressionless the whole time. Now he contributes quite a lot. He must have a good sense of humour, if all the comedy programmes he put on my computer are anything to go by, but up until recently you never would have known it. We talked about skills that people on the spectrum sometimes have. The date calculation thing always blows me away. In fact there is no calculation that I can see. You input a date, sometimes years into the past or future, and out pops the day of the week. Almost instantly. How? It's the same with mental arithmetic. I'm quite good at that (it's one of the few things I can confidently say I am good at) but I still have to calculate the answer, and I make mistakes sometimes. How some people are able to bypass all those calculation steps and get straight to the answer I have no idea.

One of the comedy shows Tom gave me was Look Around You. It's a spoof educational programme, where they do supposedly serious experiments that are in fact complete bollocks. It's a take-off of the programmes they produced for schools in the UK in the late seventies and early eighties, and must have repeated for a few years after that because it all seems quite familiar to me. The attention to detail is excellent and makes the whole thing even more hilarious. Here's the bit where they boil an egg. Enjoy.

We moved desks at work on Friday. I've now got less space but I've got a window. I'm now miles from the loo but people can't see what I'm doing very easily. You win some, you lose some I guess.

My chances of being stuck on the balcony were increased by Wellington's warmest winter on record. Climate change has all kinds of knock-on effects.

I've started caring about politics a bit more of late (and it's funny that after my last post when I talked about Key, and not trusting, I should lock myself out). We've got a prime minister who basically thinks he can do what he likes, and I don't like that. His comments about the GCSB bill didn't wash with me, and as for the saying "if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear", well that might be true, but the fact is we've all got something to hide, dammit, even if it's perfectly legal. I really hope that whoever wins the Labour leadership contest can shake things up at next year's election.

I haven't heard from Julie at all since I wrote that letter.

Mum and Dad arrive on Friday. I haven't told them about the lock-out incident.

Food for thought

I saw the doctor today. Not my usual doctor (I specified this when I made my appointment) but one who advocates a change in diet rather than endless popping of pills. I already watch what I eat, or so I thought. But she wants me to do the Whole 9 diet, a type of exclusion diet that is "guaranteed to change your life". No processed foods including grain, no dairy products, and definitely no sugar. Sugar is the food of the devil. On the flip side she says I should be eating lots of meat, the fattier the better, lots of fish, three eggs a day, and mountains of vegetables. "Isn't this the caveman diet?" "Yes, but I've been following it for months, and do I look like a caveman?" As it happened, she had more than a hint of a tash, but I decided not to comment on that. She had no problems with my plans to come off my nothing-matters pills, as long as I didn't go the cold turkey route, and she wrote a prescription for the small tablets to allow me to better regulate my dose. So I got something out of seeing the doctor today - that's not always the case.

Mum and Dad will be arriving in Wellington next Friday. They'll be staying six nights. I'd better make sure those shirts are all ironed. They're bringing up a dining table which could make a big difference - suddenly my flat will be suitable for visitors as well as any flatmates I might have. I expect they'll be bringing a lot of other bits and pieces that will probably serve to complicate my life rather than improve it. I'd be more than happy with just the table and some meat, if they're able to keep it cold for that long. I'll wait till my parents have been and gone before going on this life-changing diet for a month. (I'm skeptical but there's little harm in trying.)

Yesterday I was chatting to one of my colleagues about the housing market. She said that December 2011 wasn't a clever time for me to buy, and that Wellington's apartments are dropping in value like a stone, yellow sticker or not. People just don't want a bar of them. A lot of apartment owners must be in a negative equity situation. I'm not quite in that position: I took out a 68% mortgage, I'd get about 68% back if I were to sell now, and I've paid a bit more off since then. It's frustrating because I look around my flat and think, you know what, I've actually got a pretty good place here. Maybe coming off Efexor might help me see more of the positives.

I rang Bazza for his birthday last night. He said he thought it would be me because nobody else remembers. There were really only two topics of conversation: earthquakes and tennis. I'll probably see him next month - I fly up on the evening of the 20th in time for the aspie group the next day, and come back on the 24th.

David Shearer resigned as Labour leader today. He's always seemed like a genuinely nice bloke, someone I can trust. He didn't get very far as leader because he's not an orator, he isn't particularly adept at political gamesmanship, and he doesn't pretend to be your mate. In other words he's the polar opposite of John Key, who I no longer trust at all.