Feeling funny

I've been feeling a bit funny the last few days. Dizziness. Weird tingling sensations. No feeling in my limbs. Lack of energy. Whether it's Efexor withdrawal or something else I don't know.

Mum and Dad arrived yesterday. It was really good to see them, and we get on pretty well (as long as I don't mention anything about work). We had a very tasty (and inexpensive) meal at a Chinese restaurant on Kent Terrace last night. As a rule regarding Chinese food, the less Chinese it is the more likely I am to enjoy it.

The upturn in the economy has made consumerism even more depressingly rampant than in recent Decembers; a combination of that and my own financial situation has put me in an even less Christmassy mood than normal. But when we had festive music playing at work today, I thought, you know what, some of this is actually very good. Especially the one by Slade, which is surely the best of them all.

David Coleman, BBC sports commentator for almost half a century, has died at the age of 87. There was something about the way he said, "The Olympic 400 metres final" that made me think, this is important.

We'll probably be going to church tomorrow evening.

The only way is up

Saturday's tramp was every bit as exhausting as expected, but I felt so much better for it. We did a loop, walking to the top of Kapakapanui the steep way, and coming back down the not-so-steep (but plenty steep enough for me) way. Only four of us did the walk, if you can call it that because all four limbs were required. The summit was at an altitude of 1100 metres, a 960-metre climb from the starting point. We waded through a stream at the beginning; I quickly felt out of my depth. I'd expended a lot of nervous energy in the previous two days and that probably didn't help. This was the steepest part of the track. My heart was pounding and I struggled to keep up; the leader put me at the front. After that I kept up a decent pace, with The Only Way Is Up playing in my head. We saw four mountain goats including a baby one (a kid of course). It felt good to reach the top. The low cloud meant we couldn't see a thing up there, certainly not the amazing view you get in the brochure.
We had lunch up there and gradually made our way down, stopping briefly at a DOC hut. It wasn't an easy descent - it was extremely muddy and slippery. Just as I could feel my feet warming up, they were back in the cold water: we crossed the stream nine times at the bottom. I felt pretty good at the end - I could do with this sort of workout more often.


I did the driving - about an hour each way. As I said before, I get nervous when I'm carrying multiple passengers because it's something I rarely do, and I always think I'm being judged. I shouldn't have been too worried on Saturday - everybody was nicely subdued. My car is more suited to this kind of driving than what I normally do around the city. When I lived in Auckland I went on long drives at the weekends all the time, but that's when I was younger and didn't have to worry about money so much (isn't it supposed to work the other way?).

On Friday we had our after-work boat trip. My stomach had been churning and I'd made regular trips to the loo - I'd been dreading it, not the boat bit but the people bit. The boat was quite a majestic catamaran that our company had chartered. There were two resident dogs - a Dalmatian and a Japanese Spitz. The sea was almost totally calm, making for a very pleasant trip out to Somes Island and back. One of my colleagues, we found out, lived on a boat for five years. “And now I’m working for …” She prefixed the name of the company with "effing". It's always interesting talking to her. Unlike some people in her role (taking calls from customers) she hasn't been institutionalised by working for an insurance company. The people bit, yes, that was hard work, as was the bit where they gave out awards for amazing this or awesome that. One award was a monetary prize for getting the most points (how you get points I don't really know). The woman who received the most points, by a mile, had just left the company, and there was a tie for second place. How did they resolve that? By splitting it 50:50 (money is good like that - it splits easily)? No, by tossing a coin. When we got back on land, some people continued their evening in a bar. It was nice having the next morning's tramp as a valid excuse - I got home around eleven.

Yesterday morning I rang Dad - he's in the UK until the end of the month, sorting out furniture for their latest flat. My brother was out. His mood has lifted immeasurably since he got back to England. He still has a short temper though - it's a trait he's got from Mum's side of the family. Dad and I agreed that would be nice if he could curb that, but if it's in your genes what can you do?

After hobbling to the market to buy all the vegetables and eggs I'll now be eating, Martin came over. I asked him if he'd be interested in flatting with me. He has a guitar and a drum kit, as well as a record player and a selection of vinyl. He's had to leave most of that at his parents' place for lack of space at his current flat - I said he'd be welcome to keep it here. I offered him $190 a week and I'll see what happens. We talked about our relationships with our parents. He said he never got much affection from his mother and could never hug her now - it would just be "really awkward". Wow, that's sad.

It's day two of my new diet and I've already transgressed. A glass of wine at my cousin's place last night, a chocolate chip cookie tonight, milk in my tea and coffee at work when I just wasn't thinking. Bacon and eggs for breakfast is something I could easily get used to though. I posted a comment on whole9life.com, talking about the challenges of a strict exclusion diet when you're depressed, and my slight skepticism of the regime. I got a helpful reply, but then the topic vanished and I could no longer log in. I thought for a minute I'd been banned and IP-blocked for speaking out of turn, but no, there were problems with the site. In conjunction with the diet (or my feeble attempt at it), I'm still weaning off Efexor. On 1st October I dropped to 75 mg.

Tracy and Tom came over last Monday night to play board games. We played a rather good co-operative game where you had to recover the parts of a plane to fly out of a desert before you die of thirst or get buried by a sandstorm. It came right down to the last card - make or break - and unfortunately for us it was break. The game was good but the best part of the evening was the chat.

I've felt two earthquakes in the last week - at about 5:30am on Wednesday (an awkward time) and 7:30am yesterday.

I've yet to vote in the local elections, not because I don't care, but because I have no clue who to vote for. I only know of two of the candidates, and I don't think name recognition is a very good basis for casting a vote. Oh, and I'm fed up with those billboards that mention "reviving" Wellington. It isn't dying!

The too-hard (food) basket

After two good days (by my standards) at work, I crashed again on Friday. No energy at all. I also had a lot of sinus pain. At least it was Friday. Finding out that next Friday night's six-monthly awards dinner/party will be held on a moving boat didn't help either. The desirability to me of any work event is dictated by how easy it is to escape. Plus I've signed up for quite a hard tramp, starting early on Saturday, and the last thing I need is a hangover.

I'm skeptical about this paleo diet which I haven't yet started. My "different" doctor had these five words to say about it: "It will change your life." Well yes, not being able to eat such basic foods as grain or even most types of potato is life-changing. What makes it so hard for me is the very reason my doctor suggested I follow the diet: my depression, which makes everything take longer, which means I can't afford to spend extra time on food preparation (which might mean I'm half an hour late for work). Also how am I supposed to explain the reasons for my diet to other people? It's very strict, and even if you've followed the rules to the letter for 29 days out of 30, you're deemed to have failed. I don't understand this: we're not talking about smoking here. Still, I haven't dismissed the idea entirely, and I plan to make a start next weekend (this will mean my 30 days include five weekends; it's much easier for me to control my diet when I'm not going to work).

On Friday's Millionaire Hot Seat (yes I watched that rubbish again), one contestant mentioned an autistic relative, saying that autism "is a disease with no cure". He wouldn't win any prizes for political correctness with that comment. Although to be fair, if you think about where the word "disease" comes from, autism makes life hard enough to certainly be a dis-ease. This morning's Attitude programme was devoted to Jimmy, a 22-year-old member of the Auckland group who I briefly met last week. You can instantly tell that he's on the spectrum. His big passion is films, and (all credit to him) he was keen to find work. He got a voluntary job at the Auckland Film Festival, ushering people to their seats in his typically brusque style. "Today I want you to smile," he was told. He then repeatedly got lost as he delivered flyers to shops and cafés. Jimmy's 18-year-old brother also has Asperger's; their mother said it was hard talking about her sons and having to explain everything. Their dad seemed quite outgoing and had a very good sense of humour.

It's that abrupt way of talking that I find most off-putting when I meet people on the spectrum. Tom was like that when I first got to know him. It was almost like talking to a robot. He's improved a lot in the last few months.

Yesterday I met Phil at the Café Breton in town. He was staying in Wellington for the weekend. I didn't mention that I was in Auckland last weekend (he might have thought I didn't care about him); he told me all about the big storm which I pretended not to know much about. The café was run by people from Brittany (hence the name) and I ordered my crêpe in French. It was close to the TSB Arena where the WOW (World of WearableArt) show was happening. It's the second-largest event in Wellington's calendar. There were crowds of people, mostly women in their late forties or older. That's a very different demographic to the one attracted to Wellington's biggest annual event. Phil talked about his struggle to buy property in the crazy Auckland market. He recently went to an auction for a place numbered 44 (that's "double death" in Chinese so he thought he might have stood a chance) but the bids got so high that he didn't even stay till the end. It sounded like my experiences in 2009, with an added $150,000 or so. As I sat at a café in central Auckland last weekend, I saw someone poring over the Chinese version of the Property Press (I didn't know that existed) and making phone calls. It's time they put a stop to foreign property ownership in NZ. Imagine a Kiwi trying to buy a place in Beijing or Shanghai.

Last Sunday's warm weather in Auckland took me by surprise after the storm we'd had hours earlier. I had a sinking feeling after talking to Mandy who updated me on various gossip from our ex-colleagues. She said she has no desire to keep in touch with them either, but feels obliged to from a professional perspective. I'm so glad I'm out of all of that. When she got back to her study I walked along Takapuna Beach, as I did most lunchtimes for about three years. I bumped into a woman who I used to see on the bus when I lived in Bayswater in 2004 (she had an intellectual disability and had supported employment) - I don't think she recognised me.

Judith Collins wants to revamp NZ's antiquated and horribly inefficient judicial system. About bloody time. Judges and lawyers do very nicely out of the current system.

I thought I heard on the radio yesterday that it was the tenth anniversary of Johnny Cash's death. This was actually a couple of weeks ago, not that it really matters. Here's the video of Hurt, which he did shortly before he died. It's hard to watch without getting a bit choked up.

The big switchover (I could do with one)

I never thought digital-only telly would come to New Zealand, but in two weeks they'll be switching off our analogue signal. I remember my grandmother grappling with digital TV on one of my visits to the UK; they really should have waited for all the old people to die before making such a confusing change. I'm not a big telly watcher (my flaky undigital reception might have had something to do with that) and the whole digital thing just wasn't a high priority for me. Plus I didn't want to spend the money. Last week, despite feeling like crap, I forced myself to at least think about it, and this morning (having browsed PriceSpy) I bought a 32-inch Samsung TV from Noel Leeming for $400. I was in and out within five minutes before all that light and noise completely engulfed me, although when I saw an 80-incher on display I felt like asking them if they had anything bigger than that. Installing and tuning my new TV was surprisingly painless. I had visions of, well, no vision, but instead I've got a really sharp picture.

This morning's first America's Cup race (the NZ boat almost capsized) was the lead news item at 9am. It's a shame I missed the race - it seems to me that, just like in Formula One, the exciting bits are when someone crashes (or nearly crashes). I turned on the (old) TV in time for the second race. Right, I still don't know whether it's a jive or a jibe but I'm going to watch this and it's going to be great. But it was abandoned half-way through due to high winds. The commentators thought that was farcical and I was inclined to agree. They then had some expert on, trying to explain things for people like me. He said, "the pre-start is the most exciting part of the race." What?! Imagine if the warm-up was the best part of a tennis match. When we stayed in NZ in the summer of 1986-87, there was some America's Cup series between the Stars & Stripes and a Kiwi boat called KZ7. They played Rod Stewart's Sailing over and over. My older cousins, who sailed all summer, were right into the yachting. I was too young to have a clue what was happening. Many years later I still don't have a clue.

It was a superb day yesterday (I was secretly hoping it would be the exact opposite) and although I had little energy I went for a walk, trying to make the most of the weather. I stopped for a coffee and ended up talking to a 72-year-old woman (what's the cut-off beyond which women happily tell you their age?) who knew a lot about Syria and other conflicts, and was pessimistic about the future of the planet and its people.

Last week was exhausting. Everything had slowed down considerably. It took me noticeably longer to walk to and from work. Normally I'm a reasonably fast walker but people were streaming past me. And as for the bit in between the two walks, well that had almost ground to a halt. I sat at my desk, shaking, unable to remember what I'd done 30 seconds or two minutes before. I was constantly having to backtrack. Work kept piling up in my queue. I was unable to prioritise: my depression had taken over everything and become Priority A and B and C and D.

It was my old boss's last week, so we had leaving lunches and drinks on Thursday and Friday. That was all I needed. At least when I'm at my desk I can sort of pretend. Friday's drinks after work were particularly horrible; we went to the Green Man - several hectares of floor space crammed with people, some of whom I was supposed to interact with. I wasn't there for long. I spent some time with two blokes from work - they both knew me from our work involvements but they didn't know each other, until they got talking about guitars and bands and karaoke, and after a while it was clear that they were getting on like a house on fire, so I left them to it, and soon left the Green Man altogether.

When I got to work on Thursday my payslip was in my inbox so I checked my bank and credit card statements. What's that $65 for? Ah yes, now that name rings a bell, didn't I look at that site (cinechest.com) when I was trying to find that 56 Up movie? But I don't remember giving out my credit card details (I don't do that willy-nilly) and I sure as hell didn't sign up for paid movies. A quick Google gave me the answer. I'd been scammed by those bastards at cinechest.com, and if I did nothing I'd get charged $65 every month. Wow. I went to the bank and got my credit card cancelled for a $10 fee. So 56 Up became 75 Down. I was given a "disputed transaction" form to fill in - I haven't done so yet and don't fancy my chances of getting that money back.

The first time I felt like this, where life went by in slow motion and took on a grey, metallic tinge, was in Lyon back in 2001. Just like then, the last thing I want to do is see or talk to anybody, and almost everything I do is a function of my depression. Dad had a call from her sister who is going through a bad depressive spell too, probably worse than mine. After talking about her, I then mentioned my latest bout. Dad said that with the possibilities my app might still give me, my mood should instead be elevated. My parents have been really supportive with anything app-related and I do appreciate that.

I'm going to Auckland this Friday night. I'll be staying till Tuesday. It's a well-timed trip for me. After last week, I desperately need to get away. Spending time with people who don't freak me out will be a welcome change. When I get back I plan to start my new diet (it won't be easy) and advertise for a flatmate.

Just when I thought it was all over...

Last Friday I was depression-free and felt (dare I say it) good for the first time in several months. The weekend was decent enough if uneventful. Yesterday I made use of the extra hour by going to the gym before breakfast and getting to the market early. I got to bed early (by my recent standards) last night and although I woke up a few times during the night I probably still got seven hours' sleep. It might as well have been seven minutes. When I got up my nostrils were streaming and I felt exhausted. Work today was a struggle. I lay out in the sun for a bit at lunchtime, grateful for the opportunity, but I still felt like crap. In the afternoon I banged my head on the toilet wall (just once!) before being shown a new task. After 15 minutes of this I told my trainer the two things I wanted to avoid today: having to think and learning anything new. I'm not sure she appreciated that.

I seemed to lose the feeling in my arms and legs today. This happened a lot in 2009. I'm seeing the doctor on Wednesday.

Scrambled

Let's face it, 7:45 was never going to happen. And when I did get to work, I was all at sea. I must have had at least ten spreadsheets open at one point. After successfully crashing my computer I spent the rest of the day in meetings.

Had tennis - again - on Saturday. Didn't play with Bazza this time; instead I partnered the bloke I played in that friendly singles match on Thursday night. We both played well that night and on Saturday we carried on where we'd left off, racing out to 6-2, 3-0, 30-0, at which point my partner thought he was Superman and could latch on to anything at the net. In contrast I hardly hit the ball at all. The more he played Harlem Globetrotters-style tennis, the more tentative I became. Every drop of confidence had drained out of me, and soon I was hating the whole experience and just wanted to get off the court. After falling behind in the second set, we had three match points on my serve at 6-5, 40-0. They all came and went, as did a fourth, and we were fortunate to close it out on our fifth opportunity. Fortunate, because mentally I was gone.

I had no energy at all in the mixed match, which thanks mainly to my partner, we won 6-0 7-5. I've got no idea how that score in the first set happened because I was like a zombie for the whole match. Overall we won 5-3 and I was glad it was all over. We had to forfeit a match because one of our players strained his achilles, and there was way too much bitchiness among the women for my liking.

I woke up this morning with no sensation in my limbs. Made it to Takapuna market just before they packed up - visually the market was a bit more than I could cope with, especially as I had only ten minutes to make my purchases, so everything happened so quickly. When I got home I felt completely scrambled. Got my hair cut this afternoon - quick, cheap, probably not that good but I didn't care - and went for a swim which seemed to improve matters a bit. Negotiated the supermarket, which would have been an impossible task a few hours earlier, but now I'm totally knackered.