Time just gets away from us

I now take one beta-blocker tablet four times a day. Or at least that's what I'm supposed to do. On Friday morning I wasn't thinking, and I took all four pills at once. My instinct was that I'd be fine but I Googled "propranolol overdose 40 mg" just in case. I brought up one of those "answers" sites: the first poster told me I needn't worry; the next said I'd die a horrible all-caps death. I then called the 0800 number given on the fact sheet that came with the pills. "You'll need to go to hospital and be monitored for the next eight hours." Shit. I rang my work colleague to say I probably wouldn't be coming in - she was on a train and couldn't really hear me, although she was as clear as a bell to me. She rang me back when I was in the hospital car park. Then I rang her again, accidentally. God I hate my phone. I have some element of control over it when it's in my hand (and texting is easier than it was on my dumb phone) but when it's in my pocket, all bets are off. These accidental calls and texts chew through my credit. I can lock it but it unlocks itself somehow, and all the settings change themselves, including minor things like whether my phone actually rings when I receive a call. Anyway I arrived at the emergency desk and was presented with several forms. Because of my accent I was given an extra form to do with NZ residency. One of the questions asked when I'd be leaving the country. At this rate, pretty damn soon. They took my pulse and blood pressure, and I got the all-clear soon afterwards. Like I thought, 40 mg isn't that much. Some people take that four times a day. I then took my car in for a WOF, which I'd planned to do anyway, and arrived at work at 9:30. My boss's absence made my late arrival much easier. She'll be back at work tomorrow. In my (short) lunch break I saw Career Services to hopefully talk to someone, but they stopped doing face-to-face chats three years ago, when they would have been inundated with people looking for work. All this technology is supposed to make life easier, but instead everything is gradually made that little bit harder.

I've been feeling crappy again this weekend. Everything I do has this sense of complete futility about it. No goals. No plans. No way out in sight. I do something either because it's an obligation (like paying a bill) and something terrible will happen if I don't do it, or because I have this notion that it might help my anxiety and depression if I do it. The weather this weekend, which you'll have seen if you've watched any of the Wellington Sevens on TV, has been perfect for driving me around the bend.

I rang my brother this morning. We had a good chat. He's usually a good person to talk to - he makes things seem that little bit less bleak. I should call him more often.

Kevin has an extensive DVD collection. On Wednesday night when he was out, I put on True Grit, mainly because it was a western, based in Arkansas in the 1870s. Not that long ago I was thinking of visiting that part of the world, but that doesn't even seem vaguely possible anymore.

Soon I'll be taking Kevin to see Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. My brother was telling me about someone who was arrested for putting a Mandela-based joke on Facebook: "My PC takes so long to shut down I've decided to call it Nelson Mandela." I don't find that particularly offensive, and I find it hard to believe that he was actually arrested for that.

Battles with my phone

It's been an uneventful week. I'm still grappling with my smart phone. The touch-the-screen-and-things-happen facility is both a blessing and a curse. Mostly a curse. Literally. One time I accidentally activated a function whereby anything you say is displayed on the screen. Before I knew what I'd even pressed, "oh f*** off" appeared, asterisks and all. I never felt the need to swear at my dumb phone. And I only had to charge it twice a week. I can't imagine booking flights on my smart phone or anything clever like that. Way too fiddly. Apparently you can download an app for that, but it's not like I book flights every day. On the other hand it's great to know that I have a camera in the exact same place as I have my alarm clock. And if I wanted to see who's updated their Facebook status I could do that too, in the exact same place. If I was actually on Facebook, that is.

Ever since social media became really big I've been trying to figure out why I haven't engaged in it. It's not as if I've made any big conscious decision to disengage in it; I've just never been drawn to it at all. And it's not like I feel smug about not wanting to go anywhere near Facebook and the like. On the contrary, I wonder what's wrong with me. I think I've finally figured it out. I'm interested in people. I care about people. In some cases, I care about them a lot. But I care about them on a purely individual basis. If I connect with people, I prefer to do so individually, not a dozen or more at a time. I've rarely felt part of a group or team. Of course I do spew out this blog to many thousands of people (!), but I think of all my followers as individuals rather than one big group. So that's what's wrong with me, or different at the very least.

My brother's ex wrote and shared a lot of pretty nasty stuff about him on Facebook, which she later deleted. So that's another reason to avoid it. I got a text from my brother last week; there was a lot of anti-NZ sentiment there. Mum and Dad hope that he joins the army again on his return to England. I have mixed feelings about this. No question, being an elite soldier is what he's good at. I'm very proud of him, and a little envious because I've never shown anything like the same level of competence in any of my roles. I'm sure he'll slot right back into his army position if he rejoins, and he'll do an exceptional job. But it's the whole war thing I have a problem with. He put his life squarely on the line three times, and for me that's enough, especially because one of those times was (as far as I could see) a result of a complete fabrication by various politicians.

I attended the Anzac Day service at the National War Memorial which is almost literally right on my doorstep. All the road works (building the new Memorial Park in time for the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli in two years) and repairs to the bell tower detracted a bit from the ceremony. Still it's important that we remember, and it has some extra significance for me due to what I said in the previous paragraph. It's interesting that Anzac Day has in some ways overtaken Waitangi Day (or Bob Marley Day as I call it) as our national day. I can see people want to get away from the divisiveness we see on Waitangi Day, but in recent years going to Anzac Day parades - even getting up at five o'clock to go to dawn services - has for some reason become fashionable.

I saw this article in the Dom Post on Monday about the Wellington region's economy compares to that of Auckland and Christchurch. It gave some statistics about Wellington, presenting them under the headings "good", "bad" and "ugly". In the "bad" section it gave three pieces of information:
1. House prices in Wellington haven't gone up recently like they have in Auckland and Christchurch.
2. Wellington, with its large public sector workforce, has one of the least diverse business sectors. Only Nelson is ranked worse.
3.  Business units: Business size growth in Wellington since 2002 is below national average.

Right, number two I agree with. That's not good. But why are ever-increasing house prices a good thing? And why is bigger business necessarily better? Somebody please explain.

Would rather stay dumb

Today I bought a smart phone online for $285. It's an LG model with one of the later Android versions, and a 4.3-inch screen, but only one core. I figured that the point of a dual core (as I understand it) is to enable your phone to do two things at once, but I'm unlikely to need that capability and I'd rather have a slightly bigger screen instead. If it wasn't for my "business" reason to have a smart phone I wouldn't have bothered. This graphic neatly sums up my take on the comparison between smart phones and dumb phones:

That image was created by Islandia Geomatics, and the only inaccuracy (for me) is that I use both hands to text, even on my dumb phone. When my toy arrives in the mail, perhaps I'll be converted, but I doubt it. I've already got a phone. And a laptop. And an iPod. And a camera. And a calculator. And a watch. I've even got a GPS thingy for my car which I rarely use.

I've just finished my third Nick Hornby book in a row (this one was called Juliet, Naked). It took me longer to read than the other two combined, and it didn't do it for me like the others did. It was still very well written but I didn't like the characters I felt I was supposed to like (and vice-versa) so somehow it didn't draw me in. Probably I'd have liked it more if my expectations hadn't been raised by How to Be Good and High Fidelity. Hornby is an excellent writer, no doubt about that, but I've got one minor criticism of him: he overuses the word "pathetic". That happens to be a word Mum uses a fair bit too.

Margaret Thatcher's death has sparked wild celebrations in some parts of the UK. Some of those people don't even know (or care) why they're celebrating; they just want to cause trouble. As a certain Mr Hornby might say, pathetic.

My brother has made a surprise (but sensible) change of plan: he now expects to stay in NZ until November.