On Thursday a yellow sign was put up right outside my flat, i.e. inside the apartment building. That's great. I expected a sign on the exterior (we got that a week earlier), but not
inside as well. What's next? I'll have to put one on my loo door? You
wouldn't want to be caught short when the big one hits so anyone who uses my loo needs to be made aware of the risk. From the council's point of view our apartment block is two separate buildings (a "safe" one and a dodgy one), even though they're joined together. I'm just inside the unsafe part, so this new sticker tells everyone they're now entering
the dodgy area. There are two other yellow signs on upper floors that carry the same message.
I'd only just seen the sticker when we had an emergency body corporate meeting - it lasted two and a half hours and things got pretty heated. They're painting the outside of our building and
they've found a lot of corrosion in the steel panels of the roof. Water is already
leaking into one or two apartments (not mine - yet). We had the meeting
to vote on how to proceed. For me it was an easy decision: we've got the scaffolding up so we should do it now. I don't want to fork out this extra money, but leaving it till later, when it might cost twice as much, would be crazy. They needed
a 75% vote to allow the work to go ahead, but the townhouse
owners banded together and voted no (they're up in arms over shelling out all the money for
their leaky buildings and don't want to pay for work on the main
apartment block, not that they would really have to anyway) to give a 16-7 tally. The
townhouse owners wouldn't benefit at all by stopping the work; they were just
trying to score a political point. Someone compared them to the Tea Party in America.
Eventually two of them changed their mind, two more people arrived (they voted yes), and with a 20-5 vote the work was allowed to go ahead. I think it'll cost me about $3000 (on top of my normal body corp levy). People pointed out that this is just
the entrée before we deal with the seismic strengthening.
This home ownership lark isn't at all what it's cracked up to be. Paying for the roof repairs is just one of those things, but as for the earthquake reinforcements, who knows what that might cost, and in the meantime I'm stuck here with no possibility of selling. There really isn't enough money coming in; the sudden drop in value only adds insult to injury. I'm beginning to wish I'd stuck with online poker. I knew the rules and could calculate the odds; with this apartment someone slipped a couple of jokers into the deck when I wasn't looking.
While my boss was out of the office for a couple of hours, one of my quieter colleagues commented on how much more relaxed the atmosphere was. Too right. With my boss, it's go go go, all the time, and all information about anybody in the office (including her) is public property. I'm always thinking, jeez, I didn't need to know that. (I didn't have to guess her weight at all; she volunteered that information.) In other work news, the woman who was controversially fired in June for fiddling her stats, recently got unfired. She took it further, won her case, and got another three months' pay. Good on her I say.
I did vote in the local elections. I never bothered when I lived in Auckland. I see that Celia Wade-Brown was re-elected as mayor. I didn't put a 1 beside her name, nor her main rival John Morrison. My council vote was mostly driven by self-interest (my earthquake predicament) and I note with some horror that none of the names I put any sort of number beside got elected. I like the randomised ballot papers we had in Wellington, which meant the Abbotts and Adamses didn't get an unfair advantage.
Last week I read an article in the Guardian about Britain's failings in literacy in numeracy, compared with other OECD nations. I enjoyed this comment about the obsession with targets in education:
I just can't understand it. Labour gave schools targets, masses of new procedures to follow to
record target completion, policies, procedures to follow to record
policy adherence, procedures to record policy targets, procedures to
ensure that targets were within policy, policies to ensure that
procedures recorded targets, and above all targets to ensure that
recording of targets and the policies to follow procedures were on
target.
I suppose they could have thrown in a bit more teaching,
but surely with these many targets, policies and procedures the children
should have pretty much educated themselves?
I also read an article about Britain's booming new-car market. It's nuts if you ask me, and great news for people like my brother who can grab bargains by buying perfectly good second-hand cars.
Here and here you will find (and hopefully enjoy) some music from the band with probably the best name ever. They're called Tim and Sam's Tim and the Sam Band with Tim and Sam. Or TASTATSBWTAS for short. Or just Tim and Sam (incidentally there is a Tim in the band but no Sam). They're either from north Wales or Manchester, maybe both. I'd never heard of them until last week, but with a name like that there was a fair chance I'd like them.
That band name (lots of short words) made me think up a quiz question about a song title. Which hit song has 10 words in its title but only 15 letters? It's from the seventies and reached number one in NZ.
Showing posts with label my new flat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my new flat. Show all posts
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Not so hot
My parents have been lucky with the weather on their visits to Wellington, but their luck ran out this time. Yesterday things turned particularly nasty. I said goodbye to Mum and Dad this morning as they drove off to catch the 8am ferry but it was cancelled and they were soon back on my doorstep. They caught the next ferry early this afternoon and are probably still driving home now.
Last night we went to the "Splash" watercolour exhibition at the cathedral. It was officially opened by Bill English, who encouraged people to buy on the night, but very few red dots appeared. Among the well-known professional artists, and people like Dad who's professional but not well-known in New Zealand, were a lot of dabblers. My parents, especially Mum, found the whole thing a bit disappointing. The market for watercolours isn't what it was. The average age of the clientèle (if you could call it that) was very high: younger and middle-aged people no longer seem to be interested. The show runs for two weeks though, so Dad might still sell something.
After the exhibition we ate at an inexpensive Malaysian restaurant. Just like last time we went there, a big group was celebrating someone's birthday. Loudly. We walked home in the strong southerly and near-horizontal rain.
Talking of paintings, I now have one of Dad's originals on my wall. It's one of two paintings of Wales that Dad did for my brother and I when we were small. He's given me a print of the other painting, which appeared on the cover of my grandmother's book. I've been looking forward to having some of Dad's work. I also now have two family photos, and an old edition of Risk (early seventies?) but the most practical addition to my flat is a dining table. It's the one we had when I was growing up - Dad paid eight quid for it at an auction.
Mum and Dad did a few bits of DIY such as painting the window sills (which needed doing) and generally moving stuff around (which really didn't). Mum would ask me what I thought of the position of this or that and I just said, "if you're happy, I'm happy." It's funny, I live here and I pay the mortgage (well, try to) but it often feels like it's my parents' place rather than mine. I don't mean to sound ungrateful - I do care about what this place looks like, just not as much as they do.
As usual I had tried to debate the pros and cons of property ownership with my parents, and got nowhere. They're blinkered on the issue. They're always looking at houses, leafing through the Property Press, peering through real estate agents' windows. And more recently, actually purchasing properties (they now own three). At least Mum can see that the property market is harder to negotiate than it once was, but Dad views it as a guaranteed path to prosperity. "The best time to buy is always now." I have bought a spacious, well-designed, well-kitted-out flat in a handy location. But it's also caused me a lot of stress and I've felt little of this sense of freedom that your own place is meant to provide. All this seismic stuff obviously hasn't helped, but there's this pressure to keep this place looking a certain way (how my parents think it should look?) that didn't exist when I wasn't living in my own place. It's perverse isn't it? It's comparable to the difference between a temporary job (pressure off) and a big, scary permanent one (pressure most definitely on). There's also the issue of being in a body corporate, which does impose real restrictions like not being allowed pets.
On Monday night my parents stayed with my aunt and uncle in Palmerston North. Tracy was well enough to invite Tom and me over to play board games that evening. Tracy's mum was there, and the state of her flat made me feel envious. There was stuff everywhere and her mum couldn't have cared less. She also has a cat which would be nice. We played two games. The first was called Biblios. You had to collect sets of coloured cards, some of which would be auctioned off at the end of the game. The rules were simple but there were a lot of strategic decisions to make; if I'd thought more carefully, or been luckier, I might have won. The second game was Takenoko, that bloody panda game, and again I drew all the wrong colours and finished last. When I got home I unpacked the Risk, colour-sorted the hundreds of blocks (representing armies) and tried to figure out the game. I found the world map quite funny. I never knew the Ukraine was so damn big, or that South America consists of only four countries. New Zealand has conveniently been left off the map altogether. Would I be right in guessing that most non-Russian Risk players have never heard of Irkutsk, Yakutsk or Kamchatka outside Risk?
On Tuesday night I played Scrabble with Mum and Dad. I recently bought an egg timer (I'll soon be eating a lot of eggs) and thought it would be a useful addition to the game because Mum is quite competitive and can take an age to put down a word. Unfortunately an egg timer doesn't really work because you have to wait for it to drain. Shortly after abandoning the timer Mum took almost ten minutes to make PORN. It's been worse. Mum was annoyed that she hadn't drawn an S and I'd had two. Oh no, I thought as I picked the last remaining S. To make life easier for everybody I "uncheated" by swapping it for another letter when no-one was looking, and she got the last S. Mum disallowed my EX (for 25) near the end of the game, I let her have her way even though it's most definitely a word these days, and I was stuck with the X at the end. I still won with a score of 215.
Apart from the economic benefits it could bring Auckland (and New Zealand) should Team NZ win, I really don't care about the America's Cup. It's all about big money and big egos. I heard the American team start on minus two points (due to their "cheating") and therefore need to win 11 of the 17 races to claim victory, but surely it's 10, right?
I left work a little early today, went to the gym, and watched Millionaire Hot Seat. Compared to the original Millionaire, which is an extremely well-designed game show, Hot Seat leaves me cold. Today there was a woman who went on an impressive run of right answers (many of them educated guesses), only to fall at the last hurdle. Her wrong answer saved the TV company $99,000, and I'm guessing that's why Hot Seat was introduced.
Last night we went to the "Splash" watercolour exhibition at the cathedral. It was officially opened by Bill English, who encouraged people to buy on the night, but very few red dots appeared. Among the well-known professional artists, and people like Dad who's professional but not well-known in New Zealand, were a lot of dabblers. My parents, especially Mum, found the whole thing a bit disappointing. The market for watercolours isn't what it was. The average age of the clientèle (if you could call it that) was very high: younger and middle-aged people no longer seem to be interested. The show runs for two weeks though, so Dad might still sell something.
After the exhibition we ate at an inexpensive Malaysian restaurant. Just like last time we went there, a big group was celebrating someone's birthday. Loudly. We walked home in the strong southerly and near-horizontal rain.
Talking of paintings, I now have one of Dad's originals on my wall. It's one of two paintings of Wales that Dad did for my brother and I when we were small. He's given me a print of the other painting, which appeared on the cover of my grandmother's book. I've been looking forward to having some of Dad's work. I also now have two family photos, and an old edition of Risk (early seventies?) but the most practical addition to my flat is a dining table. It's the one we had when I was growing up - Dad paid eight quid for it at an auction.
Mum and Dad did a few bits of DIY such as painting the window sills (which needed doing) and generally moving stuff around (which really didn't). Mum would ask me what I thought of the position of this or that and I just said, "if you're happy, I'm happy." It's funny, I live here and I pay the mortgage (well, try to) but it often feels like it's my parents' place rather than mine. I don't mean to sound ungrateful - I do care about what this place looks like, just not as much as they do.
As usual I had tried to debate the pros and cons of property ownership with my parents, and got nowhere. They're blinkered on the issue. They're always looking at houses, leafing through the Property Press, peering through real estate agents' windows. And more recently, actually purchasing properties (they now own three). At least Mum can see that the property market is harder to negotiate than it once was, but Dad views it as a guaranteed path to prosperity. "The best time to buy is always now." I have bought a spacious, well-designed, well-kitted-out flat in a handy location. But it's also caused me a lot of stress and I've felt little of this sense of freedom that your own place is meant to provide. All this seismic stuff obviously hasn't helped, but there's this pressure to keep this place looking a certain way (how my parents think it should look?) that didn't exist when I wasn't living in my own place. It's perverse isn't it? It's comparable to the difference between a temporary job (pressure off) and a big, scary permanent one (pressure most definitely on). There's also the issue of being in a body corporate, which does impose real restrictions like not being allowed pets.
On Monday night my parents stayed with my aunt and uncle in Palmerston North. Tracy was well enough to invite Tom and me over to play board games that evening. Tracy's mum was there, and the state of her flat made me feel envious. There was stuff everywhere and her mum couldn't have cared less. She also has a cat which would be nice. We played two games. The first was called Biblios. You had to collect sets of coloured cards, some of which would be auctioned off at the end of the game. The rules were simple but there were a lot of strategic decisions to make; if I'd thought more carefully, or been luckier, I might have won. The second game was Takenoko, that bloody panda game, and again I drew all the wrong colours and finished last. When I got home I unpacked the Risk, colour-sorted the hundreds of blocks (representing armies) and tried to figure out the game. I found the world map quite funny. I never knew the Ukraine was so damn big, or that South America consists of only four countries. New Zealand has conveniently been left off the map altogether. Would I be right in guessing that most non-Russian Risk players have never heard of Irkutsk, Yakutsk or Kamchatka outside Risk?
On Tuesday night I played Scrabble with Mum and Dad. I recently bought an egg timer (I'll soon be eating a lot of eggs) and thought it would be a useful addition to the game because Mum is quite competitive and can take an age to put down a word. Unfortunately an egg timer doesn't really work because you have to wait for it to drain. Shortly after abandoning the timer Mum took almost ten minutes to make PORN. It's been worse. Mum was annoyed that she hadn't drawn an S and I'd had two. Oh no, I thought as I picked the last remaining S. To make life easier for everybody I "uncheated" by swapping it for another letter when no-one was looking, and she got the last S. Mum disallowed my EX (for 25) near the end of the game, I let her have her way even though it's most definitely a word these days, and I was stuck with the X at the end. I still won with a score of 215.
Apart from the economic benefits it could bring Auckland (and New Zealand) should Team NZ win, I really don't care about the America's Cup. It's all about big money and big egos. I heard the American team start on minus two points (due to their "cheating") and therefore need to win 11 of the 17 races to claim victory, but surely it's 10, right?
I left work a little early today, went to the gym, and watched Millionaire Hot Seat. Compared to the original Millionaire, which is an extremely well-designed game show, Hot Seat leaves me cold. Today there was a woman who went on an impressive run of right answers (many of them educated guesses), only to fall at the last hurdle. Her wrong answer saved the TV company $99,000, and I'm guessing that's why Hot Seat was introduced.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Bombshell
On Tuesday I got a letter from the council: "Your apartment building has been identified as potentially earthquake prone. The IEP (Initial Evaluation Process) for the building has been assessed with a score of less than 34." In fact it scored just 21, i.e. it only meets 21% of current standards, whatever that actually means. What it means for me is that I could be faced with a massive bill and an unsellable apartment (except at a knock-down price) until the strengthening works are carried out, if they are deemed necessary (I'll find out in December whether the building is an official earthquake risk).
Obviously I wasn't a happy bunny when I got this news. I thought I'd done my homework before I bought this place - the council told me it would be exempt from any assessment because the apartments were built in 1996-97, well after the 1976 cut-off. But now they say that the original building was constructed in about 1960 and was extended, converted into apartments and strengthened (inadequately in their view) in the nineties. The LIM (which I paid for last December) even says: "Year first constructed - 1990-1999". I emailed the chairman of the body corp committee who seemed as shocked as me. He thought I might have a valid claim with the council. To be honest when I bought this flat I was more concerned about the cost of strengthening work, which I might be faced with now, than the actual earthquake. Let's face it, if the fault line that runs through Wellington ruptures and we get a massive quake, heaps of houses and flats here will be toast. If you were really worried about earthquakes you wouldn't live in Wellington.
Tuesday and Wednesday weren't my best days (mental health-wise) but I improved towards the end of the week. Yesterday is a day I'd like to forget however. The atrocious weather made it a good day for online poker but I suffered my worst ever one-day loss (just over US$200). That didn't put me in the best of moods for a night out with Giuseppe at the Southern Cross (an enormous bar only a few minutes walk away, but as I'd never walked past it I never knew it was there). He brought two female friends along, and we listened to some music put on by the Alliance Française (which I used to be a member of); to be honest most of the music washed over me and I was glad we only stayed there two hours which seems to be my limit. Last night I almost wished I was back in Auckland, despite my misgivings about the place. At least I knew people who I felt comfortable around. And I wouldn't have bought an earthquake-prone building had I stayed there: they don't have many earthquakes and I couldn't have afforded a property anyway.
Talking of French music, at the waterfront market today two French blokes (with an accordion and a guitar) were playing this song by La Rue Ketanou (I preferred their version of it to the YouTube one).
Mum and Dad are currently in Turkey, on an organised two-week tour. I didn't think that would be their cup of tea, least of all Dad's, but they're enjoying it even if they're finding it a bit hot. They've emailed me using a Turkish keyboard which (like their alphabet) contains two I's, one with a dot and one without. İ don't thınk they quıte knew whıch İ to use where, so theır emaıl came out lookıng a lıttle weırd.
Obviously I wasn't a happy bunny when I got this news. I thought I'd done my homework before I bought this place - the council told me it would be exempt from any assessment because the apartments were built in 1996-97, well after the 1976 cut-off. But now they say that the original building was constructed in about 1960 and was extended, converted into apartments and strengthened (inadequately in their view) in the nineties. The LIM (which I paid for last December) even says: "Year first constructed - 1990-1999". I emailed the chairman of the body corp committee who seemed as shocked as me. He thought I might have a valid claim with the council. To be honest when I bought this flat I was more concerned about the cost of strengthening work, which I might be faced with now, than the actual earthquake. Let's face it, if the fault line that runs through Wellington ruptures and we get a massive quake, heaps of houses and flats here will be toast. If you were really worried about earthquakes you wouldn't live in Wellington.
Tuesday and Wednesday weren't my best days (mental health-wise) but I improved towards the end of the week. Yesterday is a day I'd like to forget however. The atrocious weather made it a good day for online poker but I suffered my worst ever one-day loss (just over US$200). That didn't put me in the best of moods for a night out with Giuseppe at the Southern Cross (an enormous bar only a few minutes walk away, but as I'd never walked past it I never knew it was there). He brought two female friends along, and we listened to some music put on by the Alliance Française (which I used to be a member of); to be honest most of the music washed over me and I was glad we only stayed there two hours which seems to be my limit. Last night I almost wished I was back in Auckland, despite my misgivings about the place. At least I knew people who I felt comfortable around. And I wouldn't have bought an earthquake-prone building had I stayed there: they don't have many earthquakes and I couldn't have afforded a property anyway.
Talking of French music, at the waterfront market today two French blokes (with an accordion and a guitar) were playing this song by La Rue Ketanou (I preferred their version of it to the YouTube one).
Mum and Dad are currently in Turkey, on an organised two-week tour. I didn't think that would be their cup of tea, least of all Dad's, but they're enjoying it even if they're finding it a bit hot. They've emailed me using a Turkish keyboard which (like their alphabet) contains two I's, one with a dot and one without. İ don't thınk they quıte knew whıch İ to use where, so theır emaıl came out lookıng a lıttle weırd.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Work woes
Friday was my last day in my old role. Not many people there even knew. That didn't bother me. I don't have fond memories of my time on Level 25. In fact I don't have many memories at all. I do remember my last attempt at bluffing - nearly a month ago - before everything caved in on me: my big boss was talking about some make-or-break audit-whatsit called the FMR. I must have said MFR at least ten times before realising I'd got the letters in the wrong order. Perhaps that was the last straw for me. I might as well have said MFI (which is a chain store in the UK famous for selling dodgy furniture) or even MI5.
In all seriousness I managed reasonably well in the role until mid-November when my new boss arrived on the scene, creating an extra layer in the hierarchy. He was young, hungry, eager, energetic, basically all the things I wasn't (I'm not even young any more). Suddenly everything I did at work came under close scrutiny by an upstart who could quite easily do both our jobs. I was surplus to requirements. Depression set in, I became even slower and even less accurate, tasks got taken away from me, and before long I was just a body.
It was going to happen eventually, as it always has for me in a team environment. If it's just the three or four or five people in my immediate team then I can just about manage. But then people move in and out, you're expected to build relationships with people outside your team, alliances are formed, and before long I don't even know what I'm doing there any more and I end up on the sidelines. I know of no other possible outcome.
It wasn't a wonderful weekend. For some reason I could never relax. All that sunshine on Saturday did little to lift my mood. I did however watch some provincial cricket at the Basin - more about that in my next post. I saw Julie yesterday; she has her own battles with depression as well as physical pain. She takes twenty pills a day.
Today was my first day in the new role. New start. New opportunity. It would all be blissfully stress-free. If only. It was fairly menial, as jobs go, but I still had my fair share of new information to take in. I made multicoloured hand-written notes with bullet points and asterisks to help me remember. I started out OK but slowed up badly from about two o'clock when the sensory overload set in. I was wide-eyed, the ceiling lights seemingly turned up to 500 watts. It was a hugely frustrating afternoon for me - work got done, but very slowly. I'm quite concerned that I won't even be able to hold down this job for very long.
Buying this property (which, had I left it three months, would have been impossible) meant a new bank and more pieces of plastic in my wallet. I now have thirteen flexible friends, including those that fit into an ATM but have nothing to do with banks, and I can't keep track of them all. Most of the time I dodge the issue by paying in cash. As well as being easier for me (I find handling change much simpler than remembering which card is where), it helps to control my spending and reduce the size of my digital footprint. Regarding the flat itself, it's got a lot going for it and would be great if I was feeling better and could be confident of maintaining an income, but right now it feels like a burden. I structured my mortgage in such a way as to handle this scenario at work, not expecting it to eventuate quite this soon.
On Thursday I'm meeting Rose. Could be interesting.
My appointment with the shrink has been postponed till next Tuesday.
Tomorrow's job (apart from my actual job) is to tell Mum and Dad about all the work stuff. I know they'll be worried sick about me once I tell them, which is why I haven't as yet. Odds-on at least one of them will fly up here before the end of the month.
In all seriousness I managed reasonably well in the role until mid-November when my new boss arrived on the scene, creating an extra layer in the hierarchy. He was young, hungry, eager, energetic, basically all the things I wasn't (I'm not even young any more). Suddenly everything I did at work came under close scrutiny by an upstart who could quite easily do both our jobs. I was surplus to requirements. Depression set in, I became even slower and even less accurate, tasks got taken away from me, and before long I was just a body.
It was going to happen eventually, as it always has for me in a team environment. If it's just the three or four or five people in my immediate team then I can just about manage. But then people move in and out, you're expected to build relationships with people outside your team, alliances are formed, and before long I don't even know what I'm doing there any more and I end up on the sidelines. I know of no other possible outcome.
It wasn't a wonderful weekend. For some reason I could never relax. All that sunshine on Saturday did little to lift my mood. I did however watch some provincial cricket at the Basin - more about that in my next post. I saw Julie yesterday; she has her own battles with depression as well as physical pain. She takes twenty pills a day.
Today was my first day in the new role. New start. New opportunity. It would all be blissfully stress-free. If only. It was fairly menial, as jobs go, but I still had my fair share of new information to take in. I made multicoloured hand-written notes with bullet points and asterisks to help me remember. I started out OK but slowed up badly from about two o'clock when the sensory overload set in. I was wide-eyed, the ceiling lights seemingly turned up to 500 watts. It was a hugely frustrating afternoon for me - work got done, but very slowly. I'm quite concerned that I won't even be able to hold down this job for very long.
Buying this property (which, had I left it three months, would have been impossible) meant a new bank and more pieces of plastic in my wallet. I now have thirteen flexible friends, including those that fit into an ATM but have nothing to do with banks, and I can't keep track of them all. Most of the time I dodge the issue by paying in cash. As well as being easier for me (I find handling change much simpler than remembering which card is where), it helps to control my spending and reduce the size of my digital footprint. Regarding the flat itself, it's got a lot going for it and would be great if I was feeling better and could be confident of maintaining an income, but right now it feels like a burden. I structured my mortgage in such a way as to handle this scenario at work, not expecting it to eventuate quite this soon.
On Thursday I'm meeting Rose. Could be interesting.
My appointment with the shrink has been postponed till next Tuesday.
Tomorrow's job (apart from my actual job) is to tell Mum and Dad about all the work stuff. I know they'll be worried sick about me once I tell them, which is why I haven't as yet. Odds-on at least one of them will fly up here before the end of the month.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
A new start?
I'm in the new place (well I'm not physically in the new place as I write this because I haven't got phone or internet there yet, but you know what I mean). Mum orchestrated the move while I was at work yesterday. It was inexpensive and (according to Mum) fairly painless. Mum was a great help; I just hope that her help stops there, and that she doesn't decide to fly into Wellington every other week and gradually convert my flat into hers.
I got an email from Dad this morning. It's bitterly cold there; the bad weather hasn't helped his mood. He'd just met up with some old friends in a pub; if I was him I'd want to spend all day there. Dad touches down in Christchurch on Saturday.
I really do need to see the doctor and get my pills looked at.
I got an email from Dad this morning. It's bitterly cold there; the bad weather hasn't helped his mood. He'd just met up with some old friends in a pub; if I was him I'd want to spend all day there. Dad touches down in Christchurch on Saturday.
I really do need to see the doctor and get my pills looked at.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
One sleep to go
Things have been pretty busy the last few days but I've now got an hour or so to myself on this sunny Sunday morning. Mum and my aunt have just been to the Catholic church opposite my flat. They said there was a large (in more ways than one) Tongan presence in the congregation of 400. The Pacific Island community does add a lot of vibrance to the southern part of Wellington. Mum and her big sister have now gone to Te Papa to see an exhibition of wedding dresses on loan from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. If instead it was an exhibition of beer bottle tops I might have been more interested in going. A four-day domestic cricket match has started at the Basin; the crowd is very sparse. I can't see much of the ground from here but the scoreboard man regularly pokes his head through a hole in the board to change it.
I wasn't in the best of mental states when Mum arrived on Wednesday. When I got home from work I rang Vodafone to get my phone and internet sorted for my new place. All the options were expensive; I said I would think about it. At 7:30 I met Danielle at the tramping club. Hordes of people unexpectedly filed in to see a presentation. Danielle, who didn't stay for the talk, said she'd never seen so many people there - I half-jokingly said that someone had probably been to the Himalayas. Which they had. A woman of about Mum's age - and without a full set of fingers - proceeded to give a talk about her intrepid Himalayan adventures in the seventies and eighties. She lost her boyfriend on one trek in the mid-eighties and she was badly frostbitten. Later she married a like-minded chap and they started up a school in Kangchenjunga region of Nepal (which includes the world's third-highest peak), bringing education, medicine and contraception to the area. Unfortunately they now face the task of rebuilding the school after a major earthquake last September.
Late on Wednesday evening I rang Vodafone again. I spoke to somebody (probably based in India) who was very knowledgeable about the phone network but who talked too quickly and didn't speak up. He was just doing his job, but he bombarded me with seemingly dozens of options that would all set me back hundreds. "Slow down a bit man, you're giving me too many options." The big mistake I made was phoning at almost 11pm; I was too tired (and depressed) to take anything in. Eventually I lost the plot and threw the cordless phone across the room. I felt terrible that I completely lost it like that in front of Mum. The front of the handset had come off but I snapped it back into place. He was still on the end of the phone! "Sorry but I'll have to ring off." The next two days I visited a Vodafone store in town. Those shops aren't much use because they really just want to sell you stuff. The one on Lambton Quay has a bank of five funky-looking world clocks which work but are surely just for show - the hour and minute hands are identical. I couldn't tell whether it was supposed to be 3:25 or 5:15 in London although I knew that in reality it was neither. I don't know when I'll get my phone connected.
Talking of phones, yesterday Mum's mobile rang while we were in the flat but she couldn't find it. I then rang her phone to locate it, but as I moved around the flat the ring never really got any louder. We did find her phone in the end. It was in the fridge.
The wedding. The main event. I didn't go to the wedding, just to the reception, but that was more than enough for me. The food was good and while the speeches dragged they did have a couple of moments of real poignancy. I ate too much and drank more than I normally do (which still wasn't that much). The tables weren't numbered but were given "meaningful" names - ours was called Castle Island after the town in Ireland from where Mum's great-grandfather emigrated in the 1870s (our family visited the town when I was ten). Despite Mum's efforts she couldn't persuade me to dance. It was good for the family to get together, even though the whole idea of travelling hundreds of miles and taking time off work to attend a wedding of someone who you share a few strands of DNA with but hardly know seems a bit ridiculous to me. I saw my aunt and uncle from Auckland for the first time in years (I worked in the same company as him from 2004 to '06). At around half-nine all that hip-hop crap started blaring out and I wished I could have changed the station.
Yesterday lunchtime they put on another wedding party at some friend's million-dollar-plus waterfront bach (bach!) but Mum and I didn't go. We were able to use all the packing (for my move) as an excuse. The two things I wanted to avoid, above all, were drinking and talking. Last night though we did have a much smaller non-wedding-related dinner at my cousin's place.
Tonight will be the last time I sleep in this flat. The block looks a bit grotty from the outside but I get a lot of sun here. The extra vitamin D has given me a boost I'm sure. The next place won't quite have that. Tomorrow at 9:30am, three men are coming to shift my big items the quarter-mile or so into the new flat. Mum has been very helpful with a mixture of organising all my bits and pieces and motivating me to organise myself. This weekend only three people have used the word "exciting" to describe my move. Mum flies back tomorrow afternoon.
Yesterday morning I found the time to play three games of Countdown when Mum was here, winning two of them. I won the first game - at the time I didn't seem to play very well but looking back I did better than I thought with some tricky selections of letters. In the second I finished strongly but was still fortunate to win. With four rounds to play I was 14 points down but I found SAINTLY to halve the arrears. We both then got ATTEMPTS for eight and a difficult numbers game ensued. I got three away and expected to be beaten but my opponent blanked so we were tied going into the conundrum. PRROTESTS seemed to leave us both stumped but only having two vowels and knowing that conundrums are never plurals ending in S, at least I had something to go on. I saw SPORT and then buzzed in with SPORTSTER (which I wasn't sure was even a word) with under three seconds to go. Apparently it is a word, so I won the game and avoided a tie-breaker. In the third game I faced a better player; my first-ever nine-letter word (SHARPENED) gave me 18 points and a slightly flattering (for me) 11-point loss.
I wasn't in the best of mental states when Mum arrived on Wednesday. When I got home from work I rang Vodafone to get my phone and internet sorted for my new place. All the options were expensive; I said I would think about it. At 7:30 I met Danielle at the tramping club. Hordes of people unexpectedly filed in to see a presentation. Danielle, who didn't stay for the talk, said she'd never seen so many people there - I half-jokingly said that someone had probably been to the Himalayas. Which they had. A woman of about Mum's age - and without a full set of fingers - proceeded to give a talk about her intrepid Himalayan adventures in the seventies and eighties. She lost her boyfriend on one trek in the mid-eighties and she was badly frostbitten. Later she married a like-minded chap and they started up a school in Kangchenjunga region of Nepal (which includes the world's third-highest peak), bringing education, medicine and contraception to the area. Unfortunately they now face the task of rebuilding the school after a major earthquake last September.
Late on Wednesday evening I rang Vodafone again. I spoke to somebody (probably based in India) who was very knowledgeable about the phone network but who talked too quickly and didn't speak up. He was just doing his job, but he bombarded me with seemingly dozens of options that would all set me back hundreds. "Slow down a bit man, you're giving me too many options." The big mistake I made was phoning at almost 11pm; I was too tired (and depressed) to take anything in. Eventually I lost the plot and threw the cordless phone across the room. I felt terrible that I completely lost it like that in front of Mum. The front of the handset had come off but I snapped it back into place. He was still on the end of the phone! "Sorry but I'll have to ring off." The next two days I visited a Vodafone store in town. Those shops aren't much use because they really just want to sell you stuff. The one on Lambton Quay has a bank of five funky-looking world clocks which work but are surely just for show - the hour and minute hands are identical. I couldn't tell whether it was supposed to be 3:25 or 5:15 in London although I knew that in reality it was neither. I don't know when I'll get my phone connected.
Talking of phones, yesterday Mum's mobile rang while we were in the flat but she couldn't find it. I then rang her phone to locate it, but as I moved around the flat the ring never really got any louder. We did find her phone in the end. It was in the fridge.
The wedding. The main event. I didn't go to the wedding, just to the reception, but that was more than enough for me. The food was good and while the speeches dragged they did have a couple of moments of real poignancy. I ate too much and drank more than I normally do (which still wasn't that much). The tables weren't numbered but were given "meaningful" names - ours was called Castle Island after the town in Ireland from where Mum's great-grandfather emigrated in the 1870s (our family visited the town when I was ten). Despite Mum's efforts she couldn't persuade me to dance. It was good for the family to get together, even though the whole idea of travelling hundreds of miles and taking time off work to attend a wedding of someone who you share a few strands of DNA with but hardly know seems a bit ridiculous to me. I saw my aunt and uncle from Auckland for the first time in years (I worked in the same company as him from 2004 to '06). At around half-nine all that hip-hop crap started blaring out and I wished I could have changed the station.
Yesterday lunchtime they put on another wedding party at some friend's million-dollar-plus waterfront bach (bach!) but Mum and I didn't go. We were able to use all the packing (for my move) as an excuse. The two things I wanted to avoid, above all, were drinking and talking. Last night though we did have a much smaller non-wedding-related dinner at my cousin's place.
Tonight will be the last time I sleep in this flat. The block looks a bit grotty from the outside but I get a lot of sun here. The extra vitamin D has given me a boost I'm sure. The next place won't quite have that. Tomorrow at 9:30am, three men are coming to shift my big items the quarter-mile or so into the new flat. Mum has been very helpful with a mixture of organising all my bits and pieces and motivating me to organise myself. This weekend only three people have used the word "exciting" to describe my move. Mum flies back tomorrow afternoon.
Yesterday morning I found the time to play three games of Countdown when Mum was here, winning two of them. I won the first game - at the time I didn't seem to play very well but looking back I did better than I thought with some tricky selections of letters. In the second I finished strongly but was still fortunate to win. With four rounds to play I was 14 points down but I found SAINTLY to halve the arrears. We both then got ATTEMPTS for eight and a difficult numbers game ensued. I got three away and expected to be beaten but my opponent blanked so we were tied going into the conundrum. PRROTESTS seemed to leave us both stumped but only having two vowels and knowing that conundrums are never plurals ending in S, at least I had something to go on. I saw SPORT and then buzzed in with SPORTSTER (which I wasn't sure was even a word) with under three seconds to go. Apparently it is a word, so I won the game and avoided a tie-breaker. In the third game I faced a better player; my first-ever nine-letter word (SHARPENED) gave me 18 points and a slightly flattering (for me) 11-point loss.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Feeling flat
I'm now officially the owner of my... what do you actually call it? It's not a house, I know that much. One word I see far too much of is unit, which sounds so cold, industrial, lifeless, certainly not somewhere I'd want to live. Everything these days seems to be called a unit, as if people are too lazy to think of the proper word. Apartment might be the proper term for what I've bought, but even that sounds a bit American - why use one syllable when three will do? - so from now on I'll stick to flat.
If I had a dollar for every time someone used the word "exciting" to describe the purchase of my flat, I could buy... a damn good bottle of wine. I stopped getting excited some time in 2008 I think. I mentioned this to my dad over Christmas; he said "you're not an old man you know." I know, and my inability to get excited any more is a problem. Not only that, but there never seems to be anything on the horizon to look forward to, even when there logically should be. The only thing I really enjoy these days is food. My medication needs to be seriously looked at.
Mum is coming to visit tomorrow. She'll be helping with my moving and packing (and getting my A into G, instead of E flat or wherever it's been of late) although that wasn't why she came up. My cousin is getting married on Friday; Mum and Dad were invited but of course Dad is still in the UK. This isn't my female cousin who lives in Wadestown (she's been married since 1998 I think) but a male cousin who lives in Hataitai. He and I have a lot in common. For a start, two of his grandparents were exactly the same people as two of mine. We also both have a chubby face. And we were born less than a month apart - I was born on 20th April '80, which is an interesting birthday because 20 × 4 = 80; his birthday is 16th May '80 (16 × 5 = 80).
My cousin and I are quite different. He exudes confidence and enthusiasm; I don't exude much at all. Because my dad couldn't make it I got a last-minute invite. I'd have been more than happy to miss it. I said as much to Mum. "But there will lots of family there and everyone will be dancing..." Exactly. "And the food..." Well there is that I suppose. I won't be going to the wedding itself, just the reception.
The autism group, which took quite a long break while a new facilitator was recruited - went well last night. We've got a new host - she's from Holland but (unsurprisingly) speaks very good English.
I had a few more games of Countdown over the long weekend. I've now had ten wins and eight losses, avoiding the walking dictionaries and calculators who have appeared on TV (you can tell who they are) but all bar one of my opponents seemed decent enough. In one game I was pretty happy to find ADROIT for six but I my opponent found ROOIKAT (huh?) for seven. Funnily enough I didn't win that game.
If I had a dollar for every time someone used the word "exciting" to describe the purchase of my flat, I could buy... a damn good bottle of wine. I stopped getting excited some time in 2008 I think. I mentioned this to my dad over Christmas; he said "you're not an old man you know." I know, and my inability to get excited any more is a problem. Not only that, but there never seems to be anything on the horizon to look forward to, even when there logically should be. The only thing I really enjoy these days is food. My medication needs to be seriously looked at.
Mum is coming to visit tomorrow. She'll be helping with my moving and packing (and getting my A into G, instead of E flat or wherever it's been of late) although that wasn't why she came up. My cousin is getting married on Friday; Mum and Dad were invited but of course Dad is still in the UK. This isn't my female cousin who lives in Wadestown (she's been married since 1998 I think) but a male cousin who lives in Hataitai. He and I have a lot in common. For a start, two of his grandparents were exactly the same people as two of mine. We also both have a chubby face. And we were born less than a month apart - I was born on 20th April '80, which is an interesting birthday because 20 × 4 = 80; his birthday is 16th May '80 (16 × 5 = 80).
My cousin and I are quite different. He exudes confidence and enthusiasm; I don't exude much at all. Because my dad couldn't make it I got a last-minute invite. I'd have been more than happy to miss it. I said as much to Mum. "But there will lots of family there and everyone will be dancing..." Exactly. "And the food..." Well there is that I suppose. I won't be going to the wedding itself, just the reception.
The autism group, which took quite a long break while a new facilitator was recruited - went well last night. We've got a new host - she's from Holland but (unsurprisingly) speaks very good English.
I had a few more games of Countdown over the long weekend. I've now had ten wins and eight losses, avoiding the walking dictionaries and calculators who have appeared on TV (you can tell who they are) but all bar one of my opponents seemed decent enough. In one game I was pretty happy to find ADROIT for six but I my opponent found ROOIKAT (huh?) for seven. Funnily enough I didn't win that game.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Happy New Year!
Yes I know it's officially been 2012 for a whole month now, but this is New Zealand which operates on an eleven-month calendar starting in February. Businesses shut down during the off-calendar period, news programmes are off the air, and people's lives generally go on hold (or on holiday). Back when I really enjoyed tennis, I used to despair when club days and interclub competitions took a break over January, and often a good chunk of December and February too. Apparently it was for the school holidays. Well for me, the only significance of school holidays was the amount of traffic on the roads. And anyway, does everybody really go away for the whole six-week period? I somehow doubt it. In the UK, closing down tennis clubs for six weeks in midsummer would be laughable - there wouldn't be any summer left!
Last night I met up with Julie, who has recently moved to Wellington and is renting in Hataitai after going through a very tough patch. It was great to catch up actually. My real estate agent rang me while I was there (more on that to come), then at 9:30 I did quite a big shop at Pak 'n' Save - it's quite relaxing to go at that time and I should do so more often. I felt like I'd had a productive evening.
But then I couldn't sleep. I slept through my radio alarm yet again, and woke up at five to eight. In my rush to leave for work I left my mobile at home. Normally this would just be a minor annoyance but I needed to email the leaseholding tenant at my flat and she'd texted me her email address. So I had no choice but to walk home mid-morning in the pouring rain to pick up my phone. I also had to visit the bank and my lawyer. Due to all that farting around, as well as my tiredness and lack of motivation, I got absolutely no work done today.
I take over ownership of the flat tomorrow but I won't be moving in then. I did ask to take vacant possession but after some negotiation the tenants agreed to move out on the 12th and pay me rent for those ten extra days. The tenancy on my current flat expires on the 18th. I had to sign a bunch of stuff today. I decided to put just over half my loan on revolving credit. I'd asked to fix the rest but the bank put me on floating instead. I signed it anyway - I can choose to fix at any time if I want - and I suppose there's a certain irony to that mistake given the title of this blog. Buying a property is so damn complicated - imagine if I had to sell one as well.
I read (or skimmed, rather) in the sports section today that a certain amount of hatred now exists between Djokovic and Nadal. If that wasn't the case, so the article said, they wouldn't have slugged it out for nearly six hours on Sunday night. I'm not sure how true that is. What is interesting is that successful tennis players often do develop a hatred of the guy (or girl) on the other side of the net. Even at my club in Auckland, those who made the finals of the club championships tended to have a higher-than-average AQ (that's arse quotient by the way), and in the tournaments I played in as a kid, the nice people I played against were usually the ones I could beat. I suspect that a high AQ, an inflated ego, and utter contempt for one's opponent go hand-in-hand.
Not totally leaving the subject of big egos, Fred Goodwin, former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland which collapsed in 2008, has been de-knighted. All I can say to that is good.
Continuing vaguely along the same lines, there was interesting article on the Guardian website two weeks ago about Francesco Schettino, captain of the Costa Concordia, the huge cruise ship that ran aground and then sank, with the loss of up to 33 lives. I thought this was an interesting and insightful comment about Italian society:
The issue of being prone to panicking or not has nothing to do with this story. Instead, this story has to do with the consequences of the complete lack of meritocratic selection on Italian society. Italy is full of "Schettinos" holding prestigious professional roles without having the necessary educational qualifications and skills, and stealing those roles from all the higly qualified but not "well-connected" Italian young people who are forced to emigrate. This story is a great metaphor of what is leading Italy into its grave, and this is the interpretation that the healthy part of Italian public opinion is giving to what happened.
Last night I met up with Julie, who has recently moved to Wellington and is renting in Hataitai after going through a very tough patch. It was great to catch up actually. My real estate agent rang me while I was there (more on that to come), then at 9:30 I did quite a big shop at Pak 'n' Save - it's quite relaxing to go at that time and I should do so more often. I felt like I'd had a productive evening.
But then I couldn't sleep. I slept through my radio alarm yet again, and woke up at five to eight. In my rush to leave for work I left my mobile at home. Normally this would just be a minor annoyance but I needed to email the leaseholding tenant at my flat and she'd texted me her email address. So I had no choice but to walk home mid-morning in the pouring rain to pick up my phone. I also had to visit the bank and my lawyer. Due to all that farting around, as well as my tiredness and lack of motivation, I got absolutely no work done today.
I take over ownership of the flat tomorrow but I won't be moving in then. I did ask to take vacant possession but after some negotiation the tenants agreed to move out on the 12th and pay me rent for those ten extra days. The tenancy on my current flat expires on the 18th. I had to sign a bunch of stuff today. I decided to put just over half my loan on revolving credit. I'd asked to fix the rest but the bank put me on floating instead. I signed it anyway - I can choose to fix at any time if I want - and I suppose there's a certain irony to that mistake given the title of this blog. Buying a property is so damn complicated - imagine if I had to sell one as well.
I read (or skimmed, rather) in the sports section today that a certain amount of hatred now exists between Djokovic and Nadal. If that wasn't the case, so the article said, they wouldn't have slugged it out for nearly six hours on Sunday night. I'm not sure how true that is. What is interesting is that successful tennis players often do develop a hatred of the guy (or girl) on the other side of the net. Even at my club in Auckland, those who made the finals of the club championships tended to have a higher-than-average AQ (that's arse quotient by the way), and in the tournaments I played in as a kid, the nice people I played against were usually the ones I could beat. I suspect that a high AQ, an inflated ego, and utter contempt for one's opponent go hand-in-hand.
Not totally leaving the subject of big egos, Fred Goodwin, former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland which collapsed in 2008, has been de-knighted. All I can say to that is good.
Continuing vaguely along the same lines, there was interesting article on the Guardian website two weeks ago about Francesco Schettino, captain of the Costa Concordia, the huge cruise ship that ran aground and then sank, with the loss of up to 33 lives. I thought this was an interesting and insightful comment about Italian society:
The issue of being prone to panicking or not has nothing to do with this story. Instead, this story has to do with the consequences of the complete lack of meritocratic selection on Italian society. Italy is full of "Schettinos" holding prestigious professional roles without having the necessary educational qualifications and skills, and stealing those roles from all the higly qualified but not "well-connected" Italian young people who are forced to emigrate. This story is a great metaphor of what is leading Italy into its grave, and this is the interpretation that the healthy part of Italian public opinion is giving to what happened.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Here we go again
My offer on the flat was accepted on Monday evening. The vendors had come back to me at $358,000, eight grand above my initial offer. I then split the difference and they accepted. The haggle stage was quite painless. First and foremost, I just wanted to get it all sorted. Some people lose sight of that and instead of thinking "I'll try to buy this property at a reasonable price" they think "if move my bishop to this square then I'll back him into a corner and ... gotcha!" I wasn't in the mood for games, talking of which New Zealand dramatically beat Australia by seven runs in the Hobart test match that day.
Eleven turned up to the autism group. One of the older members wasn't feeling 100% and had to be taken home. This was our last meeting with the current facilitator who is moving to Auckland - she must be nuts! (Her husband has got a job up there, but still.) It's a shame to see her go, but if she gets involved in the autism scene in the Big Smoke she'll do an excellent job I'm sure. We made tentative plans for the group after Christmas - I'm hoping we can start meeting up socially outside the fortnightly sessions.
I should have been really happy after the third-of-a-million-dollar deal went through. But there are still several hurdles to negotiate and I've been bombarded by property-related phone calls and emails throughout my work days.
My mental state has been fragile since the weekend; yesterday it took a sharp nosedive. Work, life and everything became impossible. As for work itself, it was 2009 all over again. I locked myself in the loo and banged my head against the wall and the sink. I didn't hurt much at the time but I certainly felt it later. Work has definitely become trickier since my new boss arrived. Until then I was getting by, never really achieving anything but never letting that get me down. Work was just there. But my boss is very switched on and highly motivated at work, i.e. the exact opposite of me. The nuts and bolts of the job matter to him, and he expects them to matter to me, so I've been getting feelings of total inadequacy. Buying property, which makes staying in employment even more important, probably sent me over the edge.
I nearly didn't go to work today - I was going to take two days off including tomorrow's Christmas party - but I heaved myself out of bed eventually.
Putting any problems I might have into perspective, a journalist was murdered last weekend just yards from my work. He was a good man, just walking home after his night shift at Radio NZ. After a gruesome killing like this, I wonder whether bringing back the death penalty wouldn't be such a bad idea, if only you could guarantee that they get the right person. And there was I thinking I was safe in Wellington.
On a much lighter note, Birmingham play their eighth and probably final European match of the season, needing a miracle and the dodgy head-to-head rule to progress. But it's been fun.
Eleven turned up to the autism group. One of the older members wasn't feeling 100% and had to be taken home. This was our last meeting with the current facilitator who is moving to Auckland - she must be nuts! (Her husband has got a job up there, but still.) It's a shame to see her go, but if she gets involved in the autism scene in the Big Smoke she'll do an excellent job I'm sure. We made tentative plans for the group after Christmas - I'm hoping we can start meeting up socially outside the fortnightly sessions.
I should have been really happy after the third-of-a-million-dollar deal went through. But there are still several hurdles to negotiate and I've been bombarded by property-related phone calls and emails throughout my work days.
My mental state has been fragile since the weekend; yesterday it took a sharp nosedive. Work, life and everything became impossible. As for work itself, it was 2009 all over again. I locked myself in the loo and banged my head against the wall and the sink. I didn't hurt much at the time but I certainly felt it later. Work has definitely become trickier since my new boss arrived. Until then I was getting by, never really achieving anything but never letting that get me down. Work was just there. But my boss is very switched on and highly motivated at work, i.e. the exact opposite of me. The nuts and bolts of the job matter to him, and he expects them to matter to me, so I've been getting feelings of total inadequacy. Buying property, which makes staying in employment even more important, probably sent me over the edge.
I nearly didn't go to work today - I was going to take two days off including tomorrow's Christmas party - but I heaved myself out of bed eventually.
Putting any problems I might have into perspective, a journalist was murdered last weekend just yards from my work. He was a good man, just walking home after his night shift at Radio NZ. After a gruesome killing like this, I wonder whether bringing back the death penalty wouldn't be such a bad idea, if only you could guarantee that they get the right person. And there was I thinking I was safe in Wellington.
On a much lighter note, Birmingham play their eighth and probably final European match of the season, needing a miracle and the dodgy head-to-head rule to progress. But it's been fun.
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