Money matters

A few posts ago I said I was managing to pay off my mortgage. That was a lie. The revolving credit thing - which I put in place on the off-chance (!) that my well-paying job would turn to custard - has worked out a treat. It allows me to keep my property without paying much off at all, and that's what I'm currently doing. I'm paying off the fixed portion (which is about half) but the revolving bit isn't going anywhere. I did make a dent in the revolving part when I had some lump sums to plonk on it, like the poker money and the proceeds of the shares I sold, but now I'm totally plonked out. And I'm hardly spending anything. If I decide to buy a new TV and some furniture for the flat, then travel overseas for a month, my loan won't be revolving so much as rocketing into orbit. So what do I do? Get a flatmate? Two flatmates? Let the whole place out and live somewhere else? Take up online poker again? Um, no. Hope my app sells millions?

Mandy, my ex-work colleague from Auckland, is pregnant. That's excellent news. She'll be a brilliant mum I'm sure. What the baby will look like is anyone's guess however. Mandy is a black African and her partner is a ginger Kiwi.

On Friday, the same day Mandy told me she was pregnant, she got her latest actuarial exam result. She didn't pass. How she keeps studying and sitting exams I have no idea. Doing exams and having everything marked and graded feels so 2005 to me. Or more like 1995. There was a big kerfuffle in the office on Friday when one of my colleagues disputed a mark she'd received for a call she took from a customer. She seemed less concerned by the small difference it might make to her bonus than the indignity of it. You see this quite a lot. I couldn't imagine being bothered by that kind of thing any more.

I never take calls from customers so I don't have any marks or grades to worry about. I do call customers though, and on the rare occasion I successfully get someone's payment details, I get to say the word ombudsman. It's one of those words that I struggle to say without cracking up. The name Ponsonby has a similar effect on me. Ombudsman is Swedish in origin, as is smorgasbord, which Joe Bennett said sounds like the noise a pig makes at a trough. The name Smeg (they make whiteware - I have a couple of examples in my flat) sounds Scandinavian to me, but is actually an Italian acronym. Talking of smeg (which you'll be glad to know I don't do very often) I just bought a Red Dwarf DVD for six bucks off Trade Me.

I took out a new book called One Last Thing Before I Go from the library last week. I picked it because of the cover, the title and the blurb. I got through eight chapters (and they're short chapters) before returning it today. The writing was clever but everyone in the book seemed so bitchy and bastardy and, I suppose, neurotypical. I wasn't in the mood for it. I took out a P G Wodehouse book about golf instead. I'd never read any of his stuff before.

The Trayvon Martin case got a mention at the autism group tonight. The bloke who watches Hitler speeches to relax made me shudder with some of the things he came out with.

September and the smell of spring

September is one of my favourite months. In the UK we would sometimes have an Indian summer (and boy could they do with one over there now) while enjoying the plums, apples and berry fruit. Here the smell of spring is in the air. In Septembers past the milder weather would give me the urge to step onto the tennis court. I clearly remember that feeling from September 2005 when I studied for two actuarial exams while listening to US Open tennis coverage on the internet. That remains one of my favourite grand slams (perhaps because Agassi made the final at the age of 35) even though I didn't see any of it. I worked hard for those exams and passed them both. After the exams I took a few days off work and went down to Dunedin with my parents. I remember Coldplay's excellent X&Y album came out at that time. I also voted in a general election for the first time (I was quite excited by this for a number of reasons - I was intrigued by the vagaries of MMP, the election would be close, I had to cast a special out-of-electorate vote, and most importantly I was still naive enough to think it might make a difference to my life who won).

Seven Septembers on, things have changed a bit. I'm no longer playing tennis, or even watching or listening to it, and I've knocked actuarial work (I hope) firmly on the head. Last night I saw my cousin and her family for the first time in five weeks. Today I met up with a few people from the depression group; I had a coffee and a beer at Mac's Brewery, then we spent an hour at the Museum of City and Sea.

I've felt two earthquakes this weekend. Yesterday afternoon's shake (a deep-focus 5.5 centred close to Rotorua) lasted a couple of seconds while the jolt at 4:10 this morning (a 4.0, much shallower and closer to Wellington) lasted only a split second - I probably wouldn't have felt it if I hadn't just woken from a weird dream.

Mum and Dad have just got back from their Baltic cruise, where they stopped off at such weird and wonderful places as St Petersburg, Tallinn and Helsinki. They'll soon be flying to Split, where they invented a popular banana and ice cream dessert as well as that manoeuvre gymnasts do where they have their legs wide apart.

RIP Blanket Man 1957-2012 - and a tricky work day

I used to see Blanket Man, a.k.a. Ben Hana, ten times a week, but I won't be seeing him any more. He died yesterday at the age of 54. Last time my parents were up I said I didn't think he'd be around much longer, but last week I saw him moving around - that seemed to be a good sign. He obviously touched a lot of Wellingtonians, judging by this impressive makeshift memorial on Courtenay Place today. That he was able to pursue his harmless (if unconventional) lifestyle in peace says a lot about how tolerant Wellington is as a city. Somebody suggested today that there should be a theatre production based on Blanket Man's life.

In contrast, someone who keeps on surviving is my grandma. She spent last week in hospital as her recurring bowel issues presented themselves once more. Somehow they removed the blockage but she's terribly weak now and I don't know how she keeps bouncing back. I did speak to her at Christmas, for the first time in months, but I don't think she knew who I was. Dad still rings her but he says it's pretty hopeless now.

I've been suffering from varying degrees of depression in the last week or so. I reached a low point at work today, which was just like a typical work day in early 2009. The day began just about tolerably and then rapidly deteriorated. My head seemed to be filled with thick fog, I had no idea what I supposed to be doing and I got quizzed by my boss - "Where did this come from? What does the factor of 1.59 mean?" - but I had absolutely no idea where anything came from or what anything meant. My memory of any specifics was non-existent. My desk phone rang. It was the property broker. Fuck. I ignored it. My mobile rang immediately afterwards. Fuckfuckfuck. I picked it up. "It's Steve Jones." "I know who it is. You've got thirty seconds." Did I really just talk to him like that? At 3:30, just after I'd completed a report that wasn't worth the virtual paper it was written on, I could very easily have caused some property damage but got myself out of the building before I became dangerous. I walked slowly around the block, at one point stopping to bounce backwards and forwards against a wall on a side street. At fourish, after I'd calmed down a bit, I got back to the office. I still didn't get any work done, but at 5:15, as I was about to go home, someone from Marketing asked me a question. And guess what. For the first time this year I knew the answer!

I'm not sleeping well at the moment. I don't think I got to sleep before midnight at all last week. Last night was no different. I remember the red digits reading 0:49 when I got up, read a couple of pages of a book about symbols (why are traffic lights red, amber and green?) and got back into bed. I must have fallen asleep at 1:30 or so. I woke up at 7:51. Fuck.

Last week I told my boss that I missed the exam deadline but I was coerced into sitting an exam in the second half of the year. I know that if I do enrol for an exam, it'll be priority E or F for me, and the grade I'll get in the exam will be something similar.

I've got plenty more to write about but I feel absolutely cream crackered. I apologise for the swearing.

Whoosh! There goes the deadline

I didn't sleep well last night as I anxiously contemplated the next few months; the howling wind probably didn't help either. Today at work was therefore an even bigger struggle than usual. I had a fair bit to do and was given the third degree by my boss. At one stage I had just about every spreadsheet under the sun open.

I don't participate in many work converations any more - most of the time I literally can't due to my lack of Mandarin - but the ballooning tragedy did crop up today. People were comparing riding in a hot-air balloon to bungee jumping and parachuting. Despite the horrendous accident at the weekend I'd happily go up in a balloon while I'd be cacking my pants doing either of the other two. I would do a parachute jump though, preferably a tandem with my brother who is now a veteran of several hundred jumps. But I think I'd give the bungee jump a miss.

At 12:45 today my mobile rang - it was the electricity company wanting to replace the meter at my flat. They rang me last month as I was walking home in the pissing rain after locking myself in the loo at work that day. Now I vaguely remember them saying something about the 9th but it was pretty much in one ear, out the other. So at lunchtime today I had to beetle home (as Dad would say - he says "beetle" a lot) so they could install this bloody meter. Half-way to my flat I remembered that all the meters are stored in a room with a combination lock. Neither I nor the two meter men had a clue what the code was, and after five minutes of faffing around I beetled back to the office.

Here's some excellent work news. I can't do an exam in the first half of 2012 because I've missed the enrolment deadline! I'm not exactly up with the play on the current exam system so I had no idea the cut-off date was so early. According to Stephen Fry's book, the late Douglas Adams (who frequently had writer's block) said "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly past." This particular whooshing sound is music to my ears.

Unconditional

Today is the longest day. It's also the day my purchase went unconditional. There were no surprises in either the LIM or the builder's report, so I gave my solicitor the go-ahead. Tomorrow I'll hand over $35,000 as the initial deposit. I'll be able to move in on the 43rd day from today, which by my calculations is 2nd February. I guess I should be over the moon, but it still feels like a leap into the unknown.

I popped into Moore Wilson's for the first time last night. It's what you might call a "high-decile" supermarket which is why I'd never shopped there before. But the range of meats and cheeses on show there (that was the only section I visited) was mouth-watering - it felt like I was in Parma again. I bought a variety of cheeses as a Christmas present.

Every Tuesday I have a catch-up with my boss. He didn't mention exams this week, and I sure as hell wasn't going to. Maybe if I don't talk about them they'll go away.

The (staged?) outpouring of grief shown on TV following the "dear leader" Kim Jong Il's death would be laughable if it wasn't so scary. Millions are starving to death in that nuclear basket case.

I've never been able to solve the Rubik's cube. At least two of my cousins can. At the weekend I was at my cousin's house, getting nowhere with her cube. After half an hour I'd completed one side. I asked my cousin if she could finish it off, but what I'd done was no good because the colours of the edges weren't lined up. C'mon! That took me half an hour! She did solve it from my position but she prefers to start with white, not the blue that I started with.

Here's a flashback to 1992. Anyone remember Tasmin Archer's Sleeping Satellite? Great song, with quite deep and meaningful lyrics.

My next post will be from Geraldine.

House-hunting - getting serious

It was nice to have Mum and Dad here for a few days. We got on well - in fact I've been getting on better with Mum than I've done for ages. My parents spent a fair bit of time eyeing up properties for me; I was very grateful for this because I'm pretty clueless in that regard. On Tuesday they took a look at an apartment I found a month ago (and was still up for grabs) and to my slight surprise they really liked it! It's five minutes walk from where I live now, on the other side of the Basin. The block of flats is hardly a thing of beauty. It was built in the late nineties and looks like a behind-the-goal football stand (which is sort of appropriate because it is right next to a sports ground, just for a different sport). But inside it's spacious and well looked after. It's got 2½ bedrooms on two floors with, to be honest, heaps of space for one person. Talking to my brother, he would definitely say it was a place he "wouldn't want to rattle around in". All the fittings are modern and it's been well maintained despite being tenanted for several years (I could take on tenants if I buy it). Its asking price had been reduced by $16,000 and on Friday I put in an offer for a further nine grand less. It's a complicated business, this whole house-buying thing. I really hope my offer is accepted, not because I'm emotionally wedded to the property but because I want to get it over and done with. If it falls through, there's one (possibly two) in Brooklyn that I'm interested in. Tomorrow is the big day when I expect to find out.

I've been in New Zealand eight years and two weeks and there's still plenty of stuff I haven't figured out yet. Like why all real estate agents, solicitors, insurance salesmen and mortgage brokers are ex-All Blacks. Or Black Caps. What is it about kicking a football that instantly makes you knowledgeable about financial products or legal matters? Precisely nothing, but of course in NZ being a highly successful international sportsman (or woman) elevates you to God-like status. What's more, people trust you. It's completely different in the UK where no-one in his right mind would buy a house from Wayne Rooney. Over there you've got an Etonocracy running the country; here you have an Allblackocracy. I don't know which is worse.

The house-buying process (at least I hope that's what it is) has in some ways been a nice distraction from my other big decision - whether to do more actuarial exams. My new boss is trying to twist my arm. I almost hope he could the whole hog and break it so I wouldn't be able to write the exam. It would feel like the ultimate backward step after the decision to quit my job two years ago. The thought of it - that there's no way out - has made me feel quite down today it must be said.

My boss is five years younger than me. He had told me he was 28. For some reason the subject of weight came up at work, and to show how many pounds he'd lost he dug out an old passport photo with a late January 1985 date of birth, making him 26. However he comes from China where you're considered to be one at birth and a year older at the turn of each Chinese year. He was born just before the turn of the year so by Chinese rules he is indeed 28 and will in fact turn 29 before his "real" 27th birthday (because it's an early start to the next Chinese new year). You get old quickly in China.

On Wednesday night (the night before my parents flew home) we ate at a Vietnamese restaurant on Majoribanks Street. I had beef noodles which were appetising without feeling full. We then played Scrabble again. I won but had far more than my fair share of good letters. Until the end, that is, when I had four I's on my rack. Mum and Dad both had an "I" each, and with no place to put them (no QI allowed in our game, folks) the game ended with only three of the nine I's having been played. I wonder if that's some kind of record. I should point out that Mum consistently took an age to put down a word - she's actually pretty competitive - and we didn't finish till after eleven. I must get an egg timer before we play next.

We had another quake on Thursday morning. A mere 4.2, it was certainly noticeable from my elevated position. I'd call what I experienced a "double wobble".

Bought the flat or fallen flat? I'll find out tomorrow.

E for excruciating

I got my hair cut yesterday during my lunch break. I had to talk which I really wasn't in the mood for. It was also the most expensive haircut I've had in my life.

I went swimming last night and will take a break from it for a while. I've got a skin condition - it seems to be dyshidrosis (awkward spelling). Lots of tiny bubbles appear under the skin of my hands, mostly around the base of my fingers and in between my fingers. The bubbles burst, the skin cracks, peels and sometimes bleeds. The Wikipedia page mentions chlorinated water, which seems quite likely given how much worse it has got since I started swimming, so I'll give it a rest and see if it improves.

My new boss mentioned the dreaded E-word - exams - in yesterday's weekly catch-up meeting. He recommends that I resume them sooner rather than later. Oh no. At Monday's autism group I said I'd like to be my own boss one day; some people there thought that would be very stressful. My dad has been his own boss since 1977 and has never been unduly stressed by it.

Tomorrow morning (our time) Birmingham play Braga in Portugal in the penultimate group-stage match of the Europa League. Win and Blues are into the next round, but that's a very tall order. My prediction is that Braga beat Blues while Brugge beat Maribor in the other match. Then Blues thrash Maribor in the last round of matches but it will all be for nothing because Braga and Blues play out a draw that sees them both through. Blues would miss out despite an impressive haul of ten points. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Random ramblings

For some reason last week at work was a more tolerable one than usual. Maybe it's because my desk is now just 200 metres from the loo instead of 300, or perhaps it's because I now have a fellow pom in my team, even if he does use phrases like "unravelling a can of worms" and "light at the end of the rainbow" in meetings. However, one better-than-average week doesn't change the fact that I need to get out of there, and to that end I've applied for a contracting role, working in procurement. You needed to be good with Excel, in particular Pivot Tables and VLOOKUPs. While I wouldn't say I was an expert I think I'd be plenty good enough, and there would be real advantages for me if I wasn't attached to any one company.

On Thursday I went to a mental health awareness concert at the King's Arms in Newton with three other blokes from our group. A real eclectic mix, you might say. I loved the venue and it seems they have well known bands there on a regular basis, so I should keep my eyes open. One of the less well known bands I saw was called Bipolar Bass. Personally I think The Bipolar Bears would have made for a better name.

I had an interesting session with the psychologist on Tuesday. We discussed my self-inflicted injury during last weekend's tennis match. Occasionally I just lose it. Fortunately (so far at least) I've only ever lost it with myself, but I hope in future I can think my way out of reacting in that way. I'm confident I can make the change, but because everything happens in a split second it won't be easy. Later that evening I played pool with the men's group; this made a nice change from our usual meetings even if I am utterly crap at pool.

Many of my colleagues had their exams this week. Some others, those outside our team, asked me which exam I was doing. Finding an explanation for why I wasn't doing one (or more) this time wasn't easy, but a lot better than going through the motions of sitting an exam.

Last night I tried playing two freerolls simultaneously. Despite the odd misclick or panic-induced misjudgement the experience was largely successful. I finished 161st in the single draw, just inside the top 5%, while in the badugi I qualified in 48th place, surviving an all-in with a jack.

Rugby sevens and golf will both be included in the 2016 Olympics, which we learnt just this week will be held in Rio de Janeiro. Rugby sevens will be a great addition to the Games (and could well increase the Kiwi medal tally), but golf? What were they thinking? Golf already has its four majors every year, so at best an Olympic gold medal will become the fifth most cherished prize in the sport, some way down the pecking order from your Claret Jug and Green Jacket. Surely an Olympic gold medal should represent the pinnacle of a sport, the number one event in the calendar. Not the number five. For that reason alone, neither golf nor tennis should be there.

To continue the sporting "what the …?" theme, in less than seven hours from now New Zealand are playing their most important football match since 1982, but you wouldn't know it. The All Whites are about to take on Bahrain in the first leg of their World Cup qualifying play-off, but the sports headlines are dominated by rugby, cricket, league, motorsport, rugby, netball and rugby. I just don't get it.

Tomorrow I've got more interclub tennis. Who knows, we might even win a match point.

Perfect result (but not for me)

The results of the early exams came out today; amazingly everyone passed. We had an unprecedented number sitting this time so it really was an incredible effort. It was suggested that the exams are getting easier, but they're not. I've got my own theories for today's perfect score:
(a) My department now has a virtual A-plus-only hiring policy, so we now have some very clever people in our midst. The academic bar has been raised several notches since I arrived on the scene. I was very much a B-grade student so if I hadn't got in when I did, I never would have made the cut.
(b) We've got far too many people working in our department. There just isn't enough meaningful work to go round. So all the new students have oodles of time to study.
(c) The number of students has reached a critical mass where they can study in a group and generally help each other out.

At the same time as all those results came in (one of my colleagues celebrated so wildly you'd have thought he'd just won the Powerball jackpot), I got a letter giving a breakdown of last week's result. I'd done even worse than I'd imagined, coming 142nd out of 177 and passing just one question out of six.

A celebratory barbecue had been planned for tonight (our whole department was invited) and I'd brought beers and a change of clothes to work. But by mid-afternoon I realised I simply couldn't face the thought of being with people tonight, and certainly wasn't in the mood for celebration of any sort. So at 5pm I went home, did a good half-hour on the cardio-glide thingy and downloaded Green Day's 21 Guns. I'll try and stay up for the men's semis tonight.

Blame it on the Badugi

It's been a strange week. I spent a large chunk of my work day yesterday on websites from the BBC, CNN, Reuters, you name it, trying to determine whether Michael Jackson really was dead. He was only fifty, but boy did he pack a lot into those fifty years. He polarised people; I always had a lot of sympathy for him. So much of what happened (as is the case for us all) was a result of his upbringing, and largely out of his control. He'd always been a very unusual bloke, but in about '95 (when he did Earth Song which I thought was amazing) he fell out of the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down. So sad. (By the way I didn't invent that phrase; I heard it on TV and thought it would come in handy here.)

Today I got two new tyres for my car and ordered a case of wine for Mum and Dad for when they get back from Vietnam. They've both just had their birthdays. Mum's was one of those special landmark birthdays so she also got a box of expensive but very good chocolates. I got home just in time for the badugi tournament, and I qualified for the second time, finishing 54th after a head-spinning 6¼ hours. I came back from the brink on several occasions and was extremely fortunate to survive. One time I think I went all in with a queen badugi; another time I clung on by the barest of margins, making the worst possible six while my adversary had the best possible seven. At one stage I was down to less than a tenth of the mean stack size.

On Tuesday I had that presentation for real. It could have been a lot worse. As expected I got asked lots of questions I didn't know the answers to, but at least people could tell I'd put some work into it. The presentations overran so my boss, who was to go last, didn't have time to give her talk on the subject of "philosophy". A shame, because I'd really like to learn about Jung and Freud and all that stuff, but as it turns out it was actually going to be about the philosophical basis for pricing our products. That reminds me of the men's group which I'll be attending next week; the subject of Freud comes up a lot there.
That afternoon our team went go-karting as a team building event. It was the first time I'd done it apart from one very brief go when I was eleven or so. You think you're going at breakneck speed, and it would have been a lot of fun if I was with a different group of people. Unfortunately my colleagues are all quite competitive, and I lack the aggressive type-A personality needed to be good at that kind of thing. So most of the time I was at the back of the field, which normally wouldn't matter, but my workmates liked comparing grid positions, lap times and all that malarkey.

I'd been dreading Tuesday for a while so I'd almost forgotten about Wednesday which was exam results day. It was no surprise to me that I didn't pass. The pass rate, at nearly 50%, was a surprise, but my heart wasn't really in it and my head was often all over the place. So I now have until next Friday to decide what to do next, though I've already decided. I won't be doing another exam this year. At work on Wednesday I had a panic attack, my first for some time. Thankfully it only lasted a minute or two and nobody noticed anything untoward.

It's been very foggy here the last 24 hours, so the ships' foghorns have been going full blast. For some reason I don't mind that, just like I don't think I'd mind living near a railway line. Wimbledon will be on telly shortly, but as I've got the French club in the morning I don't think I can stay up all night and watch it, as much as I'd like to.

Goal!!!

The exam wasn't great, but heck, I wasn't expecting greatness. The questions were wordy and required equally wordy responses; this meant I could always slap down some kind of answer, but I was far too wishy-washy and kept repeating myself. Often a question would be split into four or five parts and I would write much the same thing for part "e" as I did for "b" and "c" and "d". I'm not holding out much hope for results day (which is still seven weeks away) but the most important aspect of the exam is that it's over and I can now get on with sorting my life out.

My life would be much more sorted if I could just have a bit more meaningful human contact. Hell, some days I could benefit from any contact, human or otherwise. To help achieve this I'm hoping to buy a house and get a flatmate, so on Sunday I went with Julie - my real estate guru - to look at three places in Birkenhead. I love the bush of Birkenhead - it's so quiet and peaceful there - but I have to make sure I don't end up in a cold, dark, dank hole. Two of the houses were non-starters for this very reason, but the other place was wonderful if just a tad too big for me (it's got four bedrooms and two bathrooms and sits on a quarter-acre). It's up for auction this Sunday - the chances are it'll go for something well above my price range but I'll pop along anyway; my only hope is that it doesn't go at all. It's funny how being a bit of a loner has almost worked to my advantage in trying to enter the property market. I never piss my money away on a night with my mates, nor devour it at über-cool restaurants in the city. And I can put my exam passes - each one of which generates a pay rise - down to single-mindedness rather than intelligence or enthusiasm for the subject. I'm hardly coining it in my job, and it does drive me up the wall, but I have managed to squirrel away a significant deposit in the last five years.

Last night I went to the men's group, only it wasn't much of a group - just three of us were there: Andy, Brendan and myself. We ended up watching Youtube videos including one of Dylan Moran who is a brilliant comedian. He'll be performing in Auckland on Friday - alas the tickets are sold out; I never find out about theses things until it's too late.

I miss being in the UK at this time of year, mainly because of the amount of sporting drama the likes of which you just don't get over here. Both my favourite football teams - Birmingham City and Peterborough United - have just won promotion by finishing second in their respective divisions. Though football has become bastardised in recent years, the system of promotion and relegation never ceases to produce edge-of-the-seat excitement. In 1999 the Carlisle goalkeeper - Jimmy Glass if my memory serves me correctly - scored a 95th-minute winner to keep his side in the Football League, sparking a mass pitch invasion. No amount of rugby or league comes close to that for my money.
And then there's the snooker, which might not even be a sport at all. My grandmother has been filling me in on the latest action from the Crucible (which has just finished), making me homesick. Many a time I'd be glued to the telly till late at night watching coloured balls being struck into holes, or even long drawn-out but utterly captivating safety exchanges. Matches would last hours, even days, and would regularly go to the deciding frame. And when I try to explain any of this to Kiwis, they don't seem to get it at all.

If anyone cares (I doubt it), I spent three years of my four-year degree in Birmingham (the third year was spent in Lyon, France). Part of me wishes I'd stayed there after graduating in 2002. That final year was the only sustained period of time when I've felt good about myself, so Birmingham always brings back happy memories for me. I then had to find one of them job thingies so I shifted back to Mum and Dad's and promptly got depressed again. I finally moved to Peterborough where I got a job making maps - it didn't seem a great job at the time, mostly because the pay was so low, but it sure seems a lot better now. As regards the football, well Birmingham has two professional clubs, Birmingham City (aka Blues) and Aston Villa. I plumped for Blues because they were less fashionable and less successful. Peterborough (nicknamed the Posh - heaven knows why) had always been one of my local clubs growing up anyway. Football was hardly in my blood so I felt I could support whoever I wanted, even multiple teams. I should point out that I never ever enjoyed playing the game. At school I was always last picked, and I used to stand there in defence, talking to two other hopeless players (but not quite as bad as me) about the previous night's episode of Red Dwarf, while my nuts froze. Man was it cold. To be honest I never really "got" team sports, full stop.

I've been writing this post at work; it was the most constructive thing I could think of doing before my lunch break. I haven't been silly enough to post it at work; I'll leave that till I get home. In the meantime I'll have to listen to two of my younger colleagues rabbiting on about the incompetence of some of the people in our customer services team. They don't seem to realise that the customer services people are poorly paid and are probably only here because they need the money to feed their kids, not because they're planning on pursuing a career in the industry. I've also got a meeting with my boss - these encounters are no longer daily - but apart from that I'll be counting down the four hours and seven minutes until I can go home.

Swine flew

I've got my latest actuarial exam on Monday morning. It won't be easy but I'm ultra-prepared for anything the examiner might throw at me. All topics covered in minute detail. All formulae committed to memory. All past exam papers attempted. All pigs taxiing on the runway, ready to fly. And with the amount of coverage swine flu has received in the past week, I'm beginning to think that maybe pigs can fly. Over half the emails I got at work this week were related to the virus.

On Thursday I met up with Brendan from the men's group. He's certainly an interesting bloke - he must have one of Auckland's biggest calculator collections. The weather today has been shocking - I even managed to get some study done though I fear it might be about two months too late. Tomorrow is forecast to be fine so I'll go to Birkenhead to look at an open home for the first time ever. I'll see if I can bring Julie along - she actually seems to enjoy this real estate business.

As you've probably gathered, I'm not overly confident about Monday's exam, so my next post is likely to be of the "mortem" variety.

Actually ... what?

I'm training to be an actuary and have been for the last five years. Actuary, you ask? Actually, yes. Click here for some information on what an actuary actually does. When I tell people what I do for a living, they often imagine it's something to do with law. Or else they mishear completely: "you mean architecture?" or even better, "bows and arrows?" And of course most people have no idea, to which I normally reply by saying I have no idea either. Now I try to avoid the A-word altogether and just say I work in insurance.

To qualify as an actuary you have to pass rather a lot of exams. Fourteen of them in fact, and they don't get any easier. To give some idea of how hard they are, five possible grades are awarded, four of which (called FA, FB, FC and FD) are failing grades. After five years I've passed ten exams. I used to be very nervous on exam day and absolutely petrified when the results came out, whereas now, when I have serious doubts about where my career is heading or even whether I want a career at all, I take the whole thing much more in my stride. My current course is based around investments. A more logical choice would have been to sit the life insurance paper, but I chose investments instead mainly because I'd find the topic more interesting and of more use to me personally. The exam is on 4th May. I made a very slow start to my studies (when you're struggling to negotiate the supermarket, making any headway with Black-Scholes equations becomes impossible) though I've done a bit better of late.

Training as an actuary, it's possible to progress, financially at least, just by passing exams. Even though the exams are hard, they're a hell of a lot easier to get my head around than corporate politics. In fact the corporate world in general leaves me cold. I've got no intention of ever managing people. I find it hard enough to manage myself.

Yesterday I had tennis again. My two-year winning streak with Bazza came to an abrupt end. We were taken apart 6-2 6-2. They were simply too good for us. My mixed match was much closer, frustratingly so. I didn't hold out much hope to begin with because both my partner and I had been outplayed in our previous respective matches, but we started off well, leading 6-3 2-1, only to lose five of the next six games. In the third set we led 3-1 but again lost five games out of six and that was that. Though my unforced error rate was low, all the oomph had gone out of my shots. I used to be able to force the issue, hit harder, deeper, but all the confidence has somehow gone from my game. Overall the team lost 5-3 (we were only two points away from an overall win) though we still lead the competition.

I was very sluggish today and not feeling at my best. The swim I had this evening certainly helped matters, though as I lay in what was left of the sun, trying to dry off, I was trampled on by a dog. His name: Bazza.