I need some elixir

On Friday we had a surprise announcement at work. It's highly likely that we'll be moving to Petone, probably in October, to a central 'hub' that deals with all the water management in the region. If and when this happens, I won't be a Council employee anymore (which means that my orientation came a bit late). My biggest issue with the move is that, as I'm currently paying zero dollars to get to and from work, I'm effectively getting a pay cut unless I can negotiate something. I have no idea at this stage how the change will affect my day-to-day work. I hope it means I actually get to do more real work. I spent a decent chunk of Friday on the internet, mostly looking at plane-crash-related articles like this one. Yes that's a really interesting subject, but it's not remotely what I'm being paid to look at.

It hasn't been a bad weekend. Yesterday I went swimming at Tawa. I got instruction from Isabel, one of the volunteers at the autism group. It's not like I can't swim - I've swum miles in the past - but I've got virtually no technique. Then later I went to my cousin's place. She, her husband and the two eldest boys were playing Clash of Clans on their iPads. They were fairly serious about it all. I couldn't quite figure out what was happening amidst all the colourful (and stunning) graphics, but it seemed that your clan's success or otherwise depended heavily on how much elixir you had. It's quite educational for the kids. They get to learn words like 'elixir' (which is useful for word games). But only if their parents are rich enough to afford iPads. Last night I went to Countdown for a change. I learnt that Maori for beef is 'meaty cow'. Well it's actually 'miti kau' with a macron (or bar) on the first i, which makes the vowel longer.

Today I saw The Epic of Everest, part of the film festival, at the Paramount. Anything Everest-related pulls in the crowds in New Zealand, and this film certainly did. It told the story of the British attempt to scale the world's tallest mountain in 1924, and it was fascinating viewing. The Tibetans are an amazing people (my dad was lucky enough to visit, and paint, Tibet in the mid-nineties), even if one of the captions (basically "look how dirty this Tibetan village is, and compare it to the beauty of Everest") suggested otherwise. I was amazed that they got that close - only 600 feet from the summit - only using oxygen above 27,000 feet or so. And I was even more amazed that someone was on hand with a camera powerful enough to film the ascent from up to two miles away.

What a week for air travel. Three crashes, 460 lives lost, beginning with the Malaysian aircraft that was shot down in an utterly appalling act. And to think that it was another Malaysian 777. It's all so incredibly sad.
FiveThirtyEight did an interesting (as always) article analysing the likelihood of plane crashes on different airlines. Its main conclusion was that, for any one airline, you can't expect a crash to affect (positively or negatively) the chances of another crash. It also concluded that crash rates are strongly correlated with per-capita GDP of the airline's home country, which is hardly surprising. Interestingly it rated Garuda as the fifth most crash-prone global airline out of 56. I flew with them a few times as a kid.

I will get around to writing about Auckland eventually. On Tuesday I'll be starting my percussion course.

Learning curve

The new job isn't bad. The possibility that I might achieve something there, at some point, does exist. On Wednesday (day two) I attended a project management meeting that I didn't understand at all, then went on a manhole tour in the afternoon. I'll be entering all sorts of manhole and pipe data into the various systems, and I'll need to know how the symbols on the screen relate to the real world, so the excursion was pretty useful. I'm also becoming acquainted with GIS (that's geographic information systems) which I last dealt with in 2003. Two months ago I never would have imagined I'd be dealing with Wellington's drainage networks, but here I am. It'll be a steep learning curve for me, and the biggest challenge (as always) will be fitting in. My boss, who's an Aussie with an American-sounding name, seems a bit full of himself.

I got a surprise call from Julie on my birthday. She was very civil. I popped over to see her yesterday at her rest home in Newtown and we went out for a coffee. Mentally she's in better shape than a few months ago when things got out of hand and I sent that letter. She plans to move into her own place, for fear of being institutionalised as much as anything. I'll try and keep in touch but will have to tread carefully.

I saw Mr Peabody & Sherman on Friday (pre-2007, when I last had flatmates, I'd see movies by myself all the time). I only found out about the film by accident after using the internet Wayback Machine. It's well worth watching, even for adults, as long as you can handle the (deliberately) terrible puns. For kids it would be very educational. In the evening I met up with the anxiety group for the first time since January for a Mexican meal.

Last Monday the autism group didn't run because of Easter, so one of the facilitators (a swimming teacher) arranged a session at the pool in Tawa. I enjoyed it although she could have cut out some of the silly games - you know, we're not kids. Gah. I realised I'm not nearly as good a swimmer as I should be. She said she'd be happy to give me a lesson some time. There used to be a pool on my street. My cousin's two eldest boys learnt to swim there. But they knocked it down in 2008 to build a supermarket that still hasn't been built. As if we needed more supermarkets.

E for excruciating

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

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

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

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

Election - keep MMP!

Some news for all you who have followed the fortunes of Fixed and Floating since 2009: Andy got married last Saturday. It's all happened fairly quickly but good for him I say.

Last night I spoke to Julie, who also figured fairly prominently in the early stages of this blog. She has had what you might call an annus horribilis, but the good news (for both of us I think) is that she'll be moving to Wellington before long.

I also went swimming last night; it was even busier than usual. If you weren't careful you could have lost an eye.

On Monday I woke up to a force nine gale and the weather hasn't got a lot better since.

It seems National, or should I say John Key, is nailed on to win this election. I struggle to see why he's quite as popular as he is. Politics goes in cycles I suppose - the timing is right for him - but more than anything he's cultivated a brand, and in 2011 brands are, well, Key.

I've been thinking a little more about MMP and electoral systems. MMP isn't perfect but in my opinion it's clearly the best of the five options on the table (the second-best being STV). The biggest flaw with MMP (but please, still vote for it!) seems to be voters' lack of say in which representatives from a particular party make it into parliament. It's all down to the party list; us voters have no input into its make-up. But how about this? Instead of getting two votes at the election, you get just one, which goes towards choosing your electorate MP and the number of MPs each party gets. There are still top-up seats (like the current list seats) but these go to the best runners-up. Say for example National get half the votes throughout the country, that will entitle them to 60 of the 120 seats just like it does now. Say National also win 45 of the 70 electorates, then the 15 best runners-up from National also make it into parliament, although unlike the winners, these MPs don't represent their electorates - they'd be called "additional" MPs or something like that. How you determine "best" would be up for debate, and the current 70-50 split might need looking at, but it's fairly easy to understand and (I hope) better that we currently have. The BRU method - it has a certain ring to it; Kiwis tend to like a good BRU.

I've also been thinking about the whole concept of electorates. The world is smaller, so where we live is less important now than it used to be (which means first-past-the-post, which is totally geographically based, gets gradually worse over time). Why not carve people up using some other variable such as age or occupation? Where we live is often down to chance, and there can be huge differences even within electorates (especially in big cities - I always find the results by polling place the most interesting of all, and it wouldn't be stupid to use to those figures to help decide which suburb or street to live in).

Finally on the subject of the election, whether the winning party is blue or red or green or pink or yellow, or some combination, for most of us it won't make a lot of difference.

All sorts of crap

I went swimming tonight as I usually do on a Tuesday. I continue to be amazed by the number and variety of tattoos on show. I've got no problem with them but I've never come close to even thinking of getting one myself. Am I missing something?

We had the autism group last night. Ten of us turned up; we now have a "topic" to begin the meeting, just like in Auckland. This perhaps helped the evening follow a more positive course than the previous one. However there was one bloke who talked about crap rather a lot, and when I say crap I actually mean crap. A real positive to come out of the meeting from my (selfish) perspective: I'll be meeting one of the women for lunch tomorrow. There's also a woman who goes tramping regularly; that's something I wouldn't mind getting into - it has all kinds of benefits: exercise, meeting people, seeing parts of the city and country that you otherwise wouldn't, exposure to vitamin D, and much more besides.

When I got home I gave my brother a ring. He's about to go away on a two-week trip for his new marine security job. He'll be paid handsomely - £4000 - danger money I suppose.

Yesterday I acquired a new boss at work. He's originally from China - for some reason the Chinese gravitate towards these kinds of professions - and has a two-letter surname that, despite its brevity, I'm unsure of how to pronounce. Friday was a particularly weird day at work. We had our elevenses at 11:11 on 11/11/11, while my actual work was the financial equivalent of deciding which games and goals to arbitrarily exclude to make a football team's league table position look semi-respectable. I was more than happy to publish the real data but my boss and his boss clearly weren't.

The weekend was one of contrasting weather - a vile Saturday followed by a gloriously sunny (and verging on hot) Sunday. The pleasant weather continued into yesterday. The highlight of my weekend - if you can call it that - was my attempt at house-hunting. I looked at three places, but none of them were really suitable. The last place needed earthquake strengthening.

A got a text from Phil about the annual pétanque tournament on Waiheke. He lost in the final for the third year running! I don't know who beat their team in the final but I bet it was Patrick, the dreadlocked Frenchman whose teeth are a mixture of yellow, brown and non-existent.

Berlusconi has gone. Hooray! (even if it did take a debt crisis to get shot of that megalomaniac).

The general election is a week and a half away. It doesn't seem long since the last one. To be honest I don't think it matters much who wins, although I will vote nonetheless (for whom I really don't know). Since I've lived in New Zealand I've felt gradually less attached to the political process, even if I've moved to within a stone's throw of where it all happens. As for the referendum on our voting system, that's a much easier decision for me. I'll be voting to keep MMP. Sure it needs the odd tweak (some restriction on defeated electorate candidates remaining in parliament through their party list would be nice, and I'd no longer allow parties who win an electorate but gain less than 5% of the party vote to get their full allocation of seats). But a return to first-past-the-post (which looks like the only alternative in the running) where some votes are vastly more important than others, and a party can govern with fewer votes than its defeated rival, would surely be a step backwards.

Compatibility issues

I went swimming tonight at the Freyberg pool as I now do every Tuesday. As mentioned at last night's autism group, the Germanness of the pool's name is apt: ve vill not haf fun in ze pool. All the lanes were busy, right from the aqua-jogging (a.k.a. swogging) lane to the slow, medium and fast swimming lanes to the swim squad lanes. I stuck firmly to the slow lane of course.

Last night's group was great actually. There were two very nice new people and a lot of very enjoyable (and at times quite amusing) conversation. It's a real joy to see someone's face light up when they are excited about a particular topic, as happened on a few occasions last night. I'd really like to get to know some of them better, preferably by meeting up outside the fortnightly sessions.

The meeting came at a good time for me. Yesterday was a bit stressful with the realisation that I might have to be out of this flat soon. My lease expires on 15th November; the flat has just been sold, the new owners still want tenants but, as I found out yesterday, on a one-year contract. That's a hell of a long time. Far too long for me. If I can negotiate something in the coming days, great, otherwise I'll have to be out of here pretty sharpish. A pain in the butt really because I was happy to stay here for the time being, just without the inflexibility of being locked in for so long.

Also increasing my stress levels was a phone call I got on Friday with a potential offer of an actuarial job, subject to an interview. In February following my can-we-just-get-this-over-with actuarial interview (not the one for my current job) I promised to myself I'd never have another such interview. Declining the offer (which I did today) was the only sensible option, for a whole raft of reasons. Today, by the way, is the sixth monthiversary of my job. When I started I had serious doubts as to whether I'd survive that long. I should however mention that I achieved absolutely nothing at work either yesterday or today, so I'm surviving but that's about it.

On Thursday I met somebody I hadn't seen since I was nine. Rose came from Temuka - her parents were friends with mine when we lived there - but now lives in Wellington. She's single and works as an art teacher. My mum and her aunt (I think) swapped our phone numbers. It was funny meeting up with someone I hadn't seen for 22 years and wouldn't know from a bar of soap. We were in the café on Cuba Street for a couple of hours - longer than I'd planned. We had a coffee and a small meal; we got on OK but I ran out of things to say. We agreed to meet up again some time, probably to see one of the many live bands in Wellington. Then on Saturday Rose rang me to say that it was good that we met but that "nothing romantic would come of this - we're not that compatible". This was a bit of a surprise comment because I'd never suggested anything like that, but I think she was concerned our families were trying to hook us up.

As I was writing this, I got a call from my parents; they're coming up for a quick visit the weekend after next, having snagged flights from Timaru through Air New Zealand's reverse auction for a very cheap $78 return for the two of them.

Life in the slow lane

After work on Monday (83% blokes in our team), I attended the Wellington autism group where there were 100% blokes. All eight of us. You could pretty much cut the testosterone with a knife (not really). It was a good session though and we were graced my Matt Frost's presence. So he does exist in real life after all!

I felt I hadn't been getting enough exercise so on Tuesday I swam for the first time at the Freyberg pool. It was very different to anything I was used to. No lilos, no kids, definitely no fun. The pool is roped off into lanes for every one of the 15 hours a day it's open; the lanes are marked as fast, medium and slow. I swam in the slow lane most of the time, sometimes moving to medium. Even though it was hardly relaxing, I liked the 33-metre pool and will try and go once a week from now on. I'd definitely had a workout but man was I hungry afterwards.

I've lived in New Zealand nearly eight years and still haven't got my head around Kiwis' attitude to physical pursuits, especially swimming, cycling and running, the disciplines that make up the triathlon (and boy do they love their triathlons here). In the UK I used to ride a bike to, heaven forbid, get from one place to another. That's almost a foreign concept in New Zealand; here everyone is dressed in their Lycras, primed for Serious Exercise. OK, some people ride their bikes to work, but it still seems to be more an exercise thing than an A-to-B thing. I noticed this week, advertised in big letters in a shop window, a sports bike that was reduced from about 2½ times what I paid for my car to only 1¾. I remember when I lived in Bayswater in 2004 I used to drive along Lake Road (on the North Shore) in my '84 Bluebird, amazed at the speeds people got up to on their bikes.

Last night some kind of World Cup thingy started in Auckland. There was a great sense of occasion there - the rugby was almost a sideshow as far as I was concerned - but all the public transport issues helped confirm what I've thought for some time, that as a 21st-century city Auckland doesn't function.

Last Saturday I had a look (from the outside only) at one or two houses in Hataitai and Miramar. I still need to get a bit more serious.