Space drum

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

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

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

Some helpful hints from Christchurch

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

What is this? (and some photos)

I've had enough of this, whatever this is. I suppose that's the problem - this feels like nothing.
Would it really matter if I didn't show up to work tomorrow? If anything, work has improved. I'm back in the same mode I started this role in, where I coped by pretending my job was only a temporary one.

I've been to the movies twice in the last three days, without paying a cent either time. A year ago, to celebrate the anniversary of my apartment purchase, my real estate agent gave me two free tickets at the Penthouse in Brooklyn. They didn't expire, and I only used them on Sunday when I took Kevin to see Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. For me it was an education as much as anything. Last week another movie invite landed in my letterbox - a special showing of Saving Mr Banks, after work today, with my agent and dozens of other buyers present. Many of those buyers were talking to the agent, and each other, and it all seemed a bit weird to me. I'd seen Mary Poppins a couple of times, so it was worth seeing. So two movies at no expense, other than the $354,000 I spent on my apartment.

Today at work I realised how much the coffee machine sounded like one of my colleagues. I didn't realise a lot else. I went to a job agency at lunchtime and spoke to an intimidatingly tall woman and an intimidatingly short man and handed over my CV (which was described as "almost unique") and felt a bit embarrassed and intimidated. "What, ideally, are you looking for?" Probably nothing you're likely to have available.

After work, I had 45 minutes to kill before the movie. I sat in a park, if you can call it that. There were purple flowers I hadn't noticed before. Lots of them. Were they rhododendrons? I wasn't sure. A man with striped trousers and a similar bag stuck up a poster for a band, well several bands, one of which was called Zambel or Bamzel or something. Most of the names would have been really good for word games if they were actual words. At the bottom of Cuba Street a busker in a crazy oversized woolly cardigan was singing and playing his guitar. He had a sign asking for 15.6 quintillion dollars to rebuild the Death Star. I gave him a dollar in 20-cent pieces.

The Winter Olympics in Sochi are now under way. The cost, estimated to be US$50 billion, is utterly obscene. By comparison, the Lillehammer games in 1994, which I really enjoyed at the time (partly because Britain got two medals, woohoo) cost a little over a billion, which still seems like a shedload of money. When I watch the summer games I think, if I was competing I'd embarrass myself. With the winter games I think, if I was competing I would die.

Here are some photos of my South Island trip:

A farmhouse at Stumps Corner, not too far from Temuka but it feels like you're a million miles from anywhere. There's a loose railway theme, and a sign on the right gives the latitude: 44 degrees and 11 minutes. In a long, thin country like New Zealand, perhaps longitude doesn't matter much. In Chile you could almost locate a place by latitude alone.

An old tram, with what's left of Christ Church Cathedral

The Catholic Basilica on Barbadoes Street

Some Christchurch street art -- from Wellington

A mess. And one of the many car parks.

Building frontage shored up by containers

Lyttelton - a ship being loaded with logs

Tennis final, biking, post-quake Christchurch, etc.

I've been feeling seriously rubbish again the last few days. Zero concentration. Zero motivation. And zero medication - a nice idea at the time, but it doesn't seem to be working.

My soon-to-be-flatmate came over with his dad on Sunday. When I told him about the earthquake business he got a bit jittery, and I thought he might pull out completely. I was having second thoughts too. He showed me his (expired) driver's licence with a 1977 date of birth. He's older than I thought. He's clearly had problems but what I don't know. And would you believe it, his younger brother has only just moved into another flat in the same block. That's not necessarily a bad thing. On balance I'm positive about living with another person for the first time in ages, even if the landlord thing is new territory for me.

I followed the men's final on the radio, half-hoping that Nadal would make a fast start so I could fall asleep safe in the knowledge that he was well on the way to yet another grand slam (even though I really wanted Wawrinka to pull an upset). Nobody could have predicted the ultra-bizarro match that ensued. The commentators (who included the wonderful Chanda Rubin for much of the second week) were excellent as always - a web of intrigue was being spun, and they conveyed that brilliantly. I was so glad Stan the Man came good in the fourth set, even if his victory was tainted a bit by Nadal's injury. A five-set comeback win for Nadal would have sent the controversy level off the scale.

On Monday morning I met one of the underwriters as she was walking to work. I was about to hop on the airport bus. "Have a good time," she said. "You too." That shows you how my brain was working. Or not. Wellington Airport is currently decked out with a huge eagle - which came down in last week's earthquake - and a Gollum. The flight to Timaru was pain-free as usual. Being over the wing I couldn't see a lot. All I could make out were big green dartboards carved out by irrigators, with the pivot as the bull's eye. It's amazing how sophisticated these giant irrigators are - they're all computer-controlled, and some of them are clever enough to jump over fences. The plane arrived ten minutes early and when I got out, wow, sunshine. Where has that been?

Mum kindly recorded the tennis for me, and I watched all four crazy sets. Perhaps the biggest moment came as Wawrinka served at 5-3 in the first set. He went love-40 down and couldn't buy a first serve, but Nadal was unable to get any of those second balls back in play. It was a weird set, but then things got a whole lot weirder. At the end it was good to see the two players being so friendly, even if Nadal surely wanted to get the hell out of there.

Even if you're not a tennis fan you should watch Li Na's speech after she won - it's absolutely priceless.

On Tuesday I was all over the place. I looked at some government jobs online, with little focus, and found one that was closing the next day. After lunch I took Dad's bike out - it was sunny and the exercise was likely to benefit me. I hadn't ridden a bike for I don't know how long, and I must have done 25 km at least, muttering to myself most of the way, trying to remember what that job was all about. It felt strange cycling on these straight Canterbury roads that stretch out seemingly into infinity. I'd see a truck or a milk tanker in the distance and it would take forever to go by. When I got back I applied for that job, but it was a strange application somehow. Later a couple from the UK arrived - they were staying the night and flying home from Christchurch the next morning. They'd been touring around the South Island, doing the Otago Rail Trail and a spot of Morris dancing.

Yesterday Dad drove us all to Christchurch. After dropping the British couple off at the airport, we had a look at the city. It was the first time I'd seen it since the earthquakes. Holy hell. It looked even worse than I'd imagined. The heart of the city was totally gutted. The streets on the map were still there, but they'd been reduced to almost a bare grid. To think that all that destruction happened in seconds. I couldn't get over the number of containers. They were everywhere. Some were used to shore up building frontages. It was a bright sunny day but it was eerily quiet in what used to be the CBD. An exception was the new Cashel Mall, which was a vibrant array of container shops. It worked very well. A bloke was playing a flute and singing opera. He seemed to suffer from some sort of tic, but he was very good. I happily gave him some money. He was angry when a group of Maori performers turned up and stole his spot. I hear some big company wants to get rid of the Cashel Mall containers and build something imposing. That would be a shame.

We then drove to Lyttelton, where my ancestors arrived 150 years ago. It's a lovely town but was hit hard by the quakes and resulting landslides.

I'll put up some photos from yesterday if and when I get the chance.