Line in the sand

On Sunday I took advantage of the sunshine by going for a longish walk - up Mount Vic, down to Haitatai, on to Evans Bay and along the waterfront to town. I then met Isabel from the autism group. We had an ice cream from Kaffee Eis and a good chat. We then walked along Oriental Bay, from where I'd just come, and at about half-five I said I'd probably need to turn back because Kevin would be expecting me to make tea. At this point we had a long discussion about Kevin. Isabel said my level of tolerance for him rated a "fifty out of ten" and I'd need to officially get shot of him. I handed him the letter tonight with a 21st December termination date. Legally I have to give him 90 days (I thought it was less, so it's just as well I had the conversation with Isabel) - this gives him 101.

At the autism group on Monday we talked politics. It's a subject that, along with religion, is normally taboo, but they made a special dispensation this time. Hopefully the discussion might encourage people to vote. Democracy is a wonderful thing to see in action, and we should all participate in it. I was in the same group as the guy with the braces who I've mentioned before, and it was largely because of him that religion and politics were put on the no-go list. In fact we also discussed the rules. There was a general consensus that Cards Against Humanity, an extremely Aspie-unfriendly game, should be off the menu at games sessions. It's hard to disagree with that, although as those games sessions sit outside the group, it would be somewhat controversial.

On Tuesday we went to Petone for a look around our new premises. There will be 170 people there altogether. We'll move again - just 100 metres or so - in the new year. The buildings and their surroundings look good actually, although the brilliant weather meant I saw them at their best.

The election isn't far away now, and many people have already voted. The sharp increase in advance voting makes a bit of a mockery of the law prohibiting election day campaigning. We don't have an election "day" anymore. I expect advance votes to be more heavily in favour of National than on-the-day votes (let alone special votes).

Scotland hold their referendum on independence two days before our election. The polls are saying it's too close to call. There is a lot of emotion in the "yes" camp. I can perfectly understand why many Scots wish to escape the grasp of a southern England-centric Westminster government, but I don't think the ramifications have been well thought out. For instance, what currency will they use? I think the Scots will be better off if they vote "no". And who's to say they can't revisit this at a later date when they're better prepared. (I learnt a new word today - "neverendum" - describing exactly this.)

Another grand slam has slipped by where I've taken only a passing interest. This US Open produced two surprise men's finalists and a very unsurprising women's winner. I don't think I would have enjoyed either of the finals, particularly Cilic's big serving that helped him beat a better all-round player in Nishikori (if I'm to believe Mum's assessment of the match). Every set of both finals finished 6-3 - I wonder if that sort of thing has happened before. While I didn't really follow the tournament, it has given me a goal, to see next year's US Open in person.

Air New Zealand's last 747 flight took off from San Francisco this afternoon. It arrives in Auckland in the morning. "Iconic" is a badly overused word, but it's entirely appropriate for a plane that changed the world. Not only that but it's an instantly recognisable aircraft. Apart from the A380, I don't think I could instantly identify any other current passenger plane.

Tomorrow I'll be doing some field work with the Czech woman. She called our trip a "date".

Good on him

On Sunday morning I heard on the radio that David Light had won a silver in boxing at the Commonwealth Games. Hmmm, that name rings a bell, and Light isn't all that common a surname. Sure enough it's the David Light who was at my tennis club in Auckland. I played him twice at the club champs; we won one each. In 2006 he was only 14 but almost my height and already quite imposing physically. He would have beaten me seven times out of ten, but unfortunately for him, I happened to play one of the best matches of my life that day, and I ran out a 6-4 6-4 winner, making maybe half a dozen unforced errors in the whole match. Fast forward to 2008, and I was going through a bout of depression and didn't want to be anywhere near a tennis court. After an embarrassing 7-6 3-6 6-1 first-round win over a guy called Dean Martin (yes, really) who didn't even play tennis, I faced David Light in round two. He'd trained hard over the previous two years and was quite an accomplished player by now; I was all over the place, tennis-wise and everything-else-wise. Predictably I lost 6-1 6-1. David made it through to the final and might have won but for some poor sportsmanship from his experienced opponent (Simon, you know who you are) who almost bullied him into carrying on in ridiculously heavy rain. David was an exceptionally nice guy, so nice in fact that I wondered whether it could hinder his progress. Neither tennis nor boxing especially reward niceness. He was the youngest in a family of eight; I met his dad a few times - he was also a very likeable chap. Congratulations on your silver medal David - next stop Rio.

I wanted to write more, but here's a picture of Auckland from the Devonport ferry.

I did a "Good on her" post when Marion Bartoli won Wimbledon. It's hard to keep track of these things.

My brother's ordeal, and one eternity to go

Today I sold Julie's Nissan Micra that she bought new in early 2009. It's a classic grannymobile. I don't know what colour you'd call it. Peach? Shocking pink? I felt ever so slightly silly as I drove it to the car yard. At first they would only offer $6000 - it needs some work on two panels and the colour could be a turn-off - but when they came up a thousand Julie eventually accepted on the phone. It'll be interesting to see what price they put on it at the yard. I wouldn't be surprised if it's ten or eleven grand. Julie's just found out that she might be moving from her Newtown rest home to a retirement village up in Napier next weekend. She doesn't think she can drive anymore, with her arthritis and neuropathy, so she was desperate to offload the car. This whole Napier thing has come out of the blue after a conversation Julie had with her niece. If it does happen, I won't be too disappointed that she's moved away, but I probably will go and see her. Any excuse to get in the car and well away from here.

I phoned my parents last night. They'd just got back from three days in London. They saw two shows and visited the Maritime Museum (which has changed a lot since I went there when I was 16) and a lot else besides. Today they depart from Newcastle on a two-week Nordic cruise. Where all this appetite for cruising has come from I have no idea. Maybe appetite is the word: you can stuff yourself silly if you want to.

This weekend my brother - a reservist in the British army - is embarking on a two-week SAS selection exercise in the Brecon Beacons. I have a hard time even thinking about what he'll be going through in the coming fortnight. Three people died from dehydration in last year's exercise - it was all over the news in the UK. With just a map and compass, you really are on your own there. I guess that's the whole point. But some of the soldiers involved, like my brother, have survived combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. That they should put their lives at serious jeopardy in a training exercise just seems so wrong. I'll be keeping a close eye on the weather forecast.

Kevin knows the date I want him out by (well actually he doesn't, because that date has long gone). But he knows the date I told him, and assuming he's gone by then, I'm now half-way to having this place to myself again. It already feels like an eternity, so I've just got one eternity to go. At work yesterday I was doing a fairly menial task, but it was strangely therapeutic too, and the last thing I wanted was to come home to 24/7 Kevin and nonstop TV.

On FiveThirtyEight they were trying to get a measure of the off-the-mapness of Germany's 7-1 win over Brazil, largely by comparing it with famous blowouts in American football. But they missed one crucial fact: gridiron isn't on the global sporting map to begin with. No result in that sport, however shocking, can reasonably compare. You can say the same about rugby, although the All Blacks are a global icon, and if they were beaten 70-10 by Australia in a World Cup semi-final (heaven forbid), that would send out some pretty big shock waves. Only two sporting events in my memory come anywhere near Germany–Brazil. The first was Michael Johnson's 19.32 in Atlanta, when he obliterated his own world record and the rest of the field. That second 100 metres was stupidly fast. The other one that sticks out is Isner–Mahut. Not the same sort of achievement of course, but tennis is a global sport, and that match even overshadowed the last football World Cup, as well as the Queen's visit to Wimbledon, while it was happening.

Had Holland won that shoot-out against Argentina, their passage to the final would have been unsatisfactory (a dodgy late penalty to beat Mexico, followed by two consecutive wins on penalties). With Argentina getting through, I know the result I want on Monday morning: a convincing win for Germany, or failing that, any win for Germany. Before the final we've got the third-place game, which has a bit more meaning (and intrigue) this time than it normally does.

Odds and ends

On Saturday I spent a really nice evening at my cousin's place. I hadn't been there for nearly two months - among other things, my cousin had been in America on business. My aunt and uncle were staying, so there were eight of us for dinner. I did some baking - it was nice to produce something that doesn't feature on Mohs hardness scale. I saw the photos from my uncle's funeral - it was a DIY funeral with no undertaker, and the grey (but thankfully dry) day somehow added to the atmosphere.

I played two board games at Tracy's place last night. The first game was based on the popular French story Le Petit Prince. Four of us played: Tracy's mum joined in. It was simple to play but there was more going on than initially met the eye. You had to build a planet and make sure it didn't have too many volcanoes or baobab trees. It was a high-volatility game, or that's my excuse for coming last anyway. We then played 7 Wonders, again. That game has less volatility, making it more likely that Tracy, who must have something close to an eidetic memory, will win. She did, with an enormous score. My second place, and reasonable score, almost felt like a win.

Rolf Harris got nearly six years. Had he been younger, and had his terrible acts taken place more recently, he probably would have got (and deserved) longer. Actuarially, the chances that he'll die in prison are very close to 50:50. That's assuming he'll serve his full sentence, and I'm not sure that actuarial "rules" fully apply in prison.

The Wimbledon finals almost passed me by this year. Kvitova’s win over Bouchard, to claim her second Wimbledon final, clearly wasn’t much of a contest, but I would have been worth watching just to see someone play that well. The men’s final, which took four times as long, was a completely different story. They’re two absolute giants of the game; it’s hard not to be a bit envious of them. Look how many languages they can speak. Federer has two sets of twins, dammit. Djokovic's first child is on the way. It's easy to say so now, but when my aunt asked me to give a prediction, I picked Djokovic's five-set win, and even correctly predicted which sets he'd win. Of course it very nearly didn't turn out that way.

As I watched the Netherlands–Costa Rica quarter-final go to penalties, I was in two minds over who I wanted to win. On balance I probably wanted the Dutch to go through. Costa Rica looked like they were playing for penalties from the start, judging by all that fist-pumping from their bench after a goalless 120 minutes. Holland, on the other hand, were desperate to avoid that outcome, but when it eventuated they didn’t just think “oh shit”, they actually made something happen by changing their goalkeeper. In the end it was good to see Holland – possibly the stand-out team of the tournament so far – make the last four, but this World Cup would have been far less enjoyable without the plucky Costa Ricans, and it’s sad to see them go.

The group stage provided one goal for every 32 minutes of play. In the first knockout round, we saw one goal every 48 minutes. In the quarter-finals, it took an average of 78 minutes per goal. Goals aren’t everything of course, but those figures are some indication that this World Cup, which began with a hiss and a roar, is in danger of petering out. Another factor is the (disappointing?) lack of upsets in the knockout stages – on several occasions the favourite was in jeopardy, but each time they just about squeaked through. That of course means we’ve got a heavyweight semi-final line-up, even without Neymar, and the legacy of this tournament will largely depend on what sort of show the remaining four teams put on. More 0-0 draws and penalty shoot-outs won’t help. Even if Holland win it, which I hope they do.

It's got to end some time, Kevin

I got an email from Dad basically saying, jeez, I hope you didn't upset your flatmate when you said you wanted him out by Christmas. It's funny that both my parents seem more concerned with his well-being than mine. I took him on for the extra money, not out of the goodness of my heart, although I think I have been pretty good to him - I've given him a lot of leeway (probably too much, partly because his past made me a bit wary). He has it pretty good here, with all those cooked meals (OK I'm not that good a cook) and all that housework that magically gets done, often when he's still in bed. He has the whole place to himself when I'm out, and has almost free rein on the TV and whatever the hell else he likes. His classes are a ten-minute walk from here. It's all very convenient for him and I can perfectly understand him wanting to stay. But...

The World Cup continues to excite and surprise, not that I can watch much of it. I did catch some of this morning's game between Brazil and Mexico; the Mexican keeper was in inspired form. I still have my booklet from the 2010 tournament, with all the results filled in. The group games from four years ago look a bit dull now; some teams (um, England?) operated entirely in binary, with every game finishing 0-0, 1-0 or 1-1. I'd written in some notes from my hotel in Bali - "Channel 13 (reception awful) or 8 (not much better)" and names of countries in Indonesian that I'd picked up. Ivory Coast was "Pantai Gading", Greece was "Yunani", New Zealand was "Selandia Baru". Watching the action in a foreign country, and not having complications like work or flatmates to contend with, made the whole thing more interesting.

Warning: if you don't like maths or logic or tennis, or probably all three, please ignore the next paragraph.
Last year I promised to do a hypothetical calculation based on the Wimbledon qualifiers, and post the result here, so twelve months later... Qualifying for the men's singles at Wimbledon (which is going on now) involves winning three matches: two best-of-three-setters and a best-of-five. There's no tie-break in the deciding set of any match. The question was, how dominant do the servers have to be to make a best-of-three, on average, last longer than a best-of-five? The reason why that is even possible, in any situation, is because you're more likely to reach a long third set than a long fifth set. If you make that final set long enough (and you do that by making both players demons on serve), the greater likelihood of reaching the final set in a best-of-three starts to outweigh the fact that you've played two fewer sets to get there. If you assume that both players are equally dominant on serve, and their dominance is constant throughout the match, it turns out that we need the final set to last, on average, 14 times longer than each of the normal (tie-break) sets. That might sound ridiculous, but to achieve this the server "only" needs to win 86% (or more) of points. That's a very high percentage obviously, but you might expect it to be higher. The average length of a no-tie-break set rises steeply once you get above 80% of points won on serve. By the way, if both players are winning less than 14% of service points (and I've certainly played matches where it's felt that way!) that would do the trick too.

A guy at work is due to become a father next month. So at work today they had a baby shower (if that's what they call it when it's the father). I ended up spending over thirty bucks on this event, which is quite a lot when you don't really know the bloke. And it meant you had to talk and mingle and all that tricky stuff. And I realised that there's at least an 86% chance that I'll never have kids.

World Cup memories etc.

Rik Mayall has died at the age of just 56. What a shame. I was a bit too young for the Young Ones, but I did watch Bottom, a lot, and he was absolutely hilarious. Like him I once came off a quad bike, although I didn't fare nearly as badly as him. I rolled it and couldn't move from underneath it. This was on my cousin's farm in 2004.

Last weekend, as usual, was tiring even though I didn't do that much. On Saturday I met up with that woman and we went for a drive around the coast, north of Porirua where she lives. We "clicked" better this time, but I don't know, she's still one of the 98% (at least) of people I find scary after any length of time.

Last night we tried a new game called Fallen Lands. It had a fairly low goblin quotient and was therefore more my cup of tea than some of the stuff I've tried (endured?) recently. The game panned out unexpectedly, as I struggled to gain territory early on, and ended up with fewer territories than both the others. To everyone's surprise, including mine, I was the winner. I beat Tracy by one point. Spending less money to acquire territory proved decisive. After that relatively short game, we played Timeline. Tom and Tracy talked about Neal Stephenson's books at length, and Tracy, who wanted me to jump on the bandwagon, lent me Quicksilver. It's 900-plus pages and fairly heavy subject material; I hope she doesn't want it back for a while.

So Rafael Nadal is French Open champion ... for the ninth time. That's just crazy - nobody wins nine of anything, not on the men's side anyway (Navratilova won nine Wimbledons). I wish I could have seen the women's final between Sharapova and Halep. I see a score of 6-4 6-7 6-4 and I just know it must have been a good match. Sharapova's three-set record is phenomenal.

Another World Cup is almost upon us. It's hard for me not to have World Cup memories when I come from the so-called home of football. In 1986 I was six and ideologically opposed to football; I paid no attention to any of the games. I remember the unusual-sounding names of Uruguay and Paraguay, which I'd never heard of before, and getting excited because apparently someone had won a yellow car. I watched lots of game shows as a little kid; winning a yellow car seemed perfectly plausible. The 1990 competition in Italy was the first time I'd ever properly watched football. It was probably Pavarotti that did it for me, as well as England's run to the semi-finals. They scraped past Cameroon in the quarters. Just the word Cameroon sounded exotic and colourful. In the semis England lost to Germany on penalties and Gazza (a.k.a. Paul Gascoigne, who the whole nation had gone crazy over) was in tears. In reality there was a lot of dull, defensive football on show in Italy, but the English squad arrived back home as heroes. Surely next time they would win it. Of course the next time they didn't even qualify, and it's never been the same since.

I need hope

My new flatmate just called me to say he's running late, so that's given me the chance to write something here.

Yesterday I didn't want to get back to Wellington and this never-ending cycle of impossibility. I was hoping some massive storm would brew up and we'd circle for a while before being diverted somewhere, anywhere, I wouldn't have cared.

I felt pretty terrible a lot of the time I was away. Sometimes I was visibly upset, and that made Mum upset and both my parents very worried. I was still able to do things, but most of the time I felt sick to the stomach and like I was running through treacle. Mum took me out for tennis three times - we just hit the ball; no scoring. I was hopeless the first time, much better the second time, and dreadful again the third time. Mum was rusty to begin with but steadily improved - if she played competitive age-group tennis I'm sure she'd do really well. The last time we played, a bloke perhaps a shade older than me turned up with his two small daughters on bikes with stabilisers. He was cleaning up the area around the courts. His girls were clearly giving him a lot of pleasure and this made me upset because in all likelihood it's a pleasure I'll never experience.

Mum even took me to the golf course - we did nine holes but I didn't even finish some of them. I hit trees, mounds, boundary fence posts, even the trolley once. Sometimes I hit nothing at all, not even the ball. I would have racked up scores well into double figures on a few occasions if I'd been counting. And amongst all of that I managed a par three.

On Friday we saw Captain Phillips at the cinema in Geraldine. It was a gripping, if rather scary film about Somali pirates. It starred Tom Hanks and was based on a true story. My brother has been on armed patrol ships in the Gulf of Aden - most of the time he didn't have a lot to do.
Before going to the cinema we had fish and chips. I think I could have eaten my plateful all over again.

We talked about the few months I spent down in South Canterbury before moving to Auckland. I was very organised and motivated in my job search. One afternoon I drove into Timaru and knocked on doors of banks and finance companies (both South Canterbury Finance and Mascot Finance were in existence then). I had a chat with a very pleasant woman at BNZ. She eventually offered me a job, but by that stage I'd already taken the actuarial job in Auckland. Things could have turned out very differently. (Nearly all the jobs I applied for were in Christchurch or Canterbury. Maybe a couple were Wellington-based. Only one was in Auckland.)

We met my uncle; he's done much better with his lung cancer than anyone predicted. But his cough was back and he was extremely negative about, well, pretty much everything. Regarding the situation in Christchurch, he said they should take dynamite to the cathedral with Gerry Brownlee inside it.

I started this blog five years ago. Things are a lot, lot worse than they were then, and I've now got five fewer years to remedy the situation. The good news is that my counsellor is back on the scene and I'll be seeing her on Tuesday. And the flatmate is, on balance, good news too. Having someone to talk to should make a big difference.

Tennis final, biking, post-quake Christchurch, etc.

I've been feeling seriously rubbish again the last few days. Zero concentration. Zero motivation. And zero medication - a nice idea at the time, but it doesn't seem to be working.

My soon-to-be-flatmate came over with his dad on Sunday. When I told him about the earthquake business he got a bit jittery, and I thought he might pull out completely. I was having second thoughts too. He showed me his (expired) driver's licence with a 1977 date of birth. He's older than I thought. He's clearly had problems but what I don't know. And would you believe it, his younger brother has only just moved into another flat in the same block. That's not necessarily a bad thing. On balance I'm positive about living with another person for the first time in ages, even if the landlord thing is new territory for me.

I followed the men's final on the radio, half-hoping that Nadal would make a fast start so I could fall asleep safe in the knowledge that he was well on the way to yet another grand slam (even though I really wanted Wawrinka to pull an upset). Nobody could have predicted the ultra-bizarro match that ensued. The commentators (who included the wonderful Chanda Rubin for much of the second week) were excellent as always - a web of intrigue was being spun, and they conveyed that brilliantly. I was so glad Stan the Man came good in the fourth set, even if his victory was tainted a bit by Nadal's injury. A five-set comeback win for Nadal would have sent the controversy level off the scale.

On Monday morning I met one of the underwriters as she was walking to work. I was about to hop on the airport bus. "Have a good time," she said. "You too." That shows you how my brain was working. Or not. Wellington Airport is currently decked out with a huge eagle - which came down in last week's earthquake - and a Gollum. The flight to Timaru was pain-free as usual. Being over the wing I couldn't see a lot. All I could make out were big green dartboards carved out by irrigators, with the pivot as the bull's eye. It's amazing how sophisticated these giant irrigators are - they're all computer-controlled, and some of them are clever enough to jump over fences. The plane arrived ten minutes early and when I got out, wow, sunshine. Where has that been?

Mum kindly recorded the tennis for me, and I watched all four crazy sets. Perhaps the biggest moment came as Wawrinka served at 5-3 in the first set. He went love-40 down and couldn't buy a first serve, but Nadal was unable to get any of those second balls back in play. It was a weird set, but then things got a whole lot weirder. At the end it was good to see the two players being so friendly, even if Nadal surely wanted to get the hell out of there.

Even if you're not a tennis fan you should watch Li Na's speech after she won - it's absolutely priceless.

On Tuesday I was all over the place. I looked at some government jobs online, with little focus, and found one that was closing the next day. After lunch I took Dad's bike out - it was sunny and the exercise was likely to benefit me. I hadn't ridden a bike for I don't know how long, and I must have done 25 km at least, muttering to myself most of the way, trying to remember what that job was all about. It felt strange cycling on these straight Canterbury roads that stretch out seemingly into infinity. I'd see a truck or a milk tanker in the distance and it would take forever to go by. When I got back I applied for that job, but it was a strange application somehow. Later a couple from the UK arrived - they were staying the night and flying home from Christchurch the next morning. They'd been touring around the South Island, doing the Otago Rail Trail and a spot of Morris dancing.

Yesterday Dad drove us all to Christchurch. After dropping the British couple off at the airport, we had a look at the city. It was the first time I'd seen it since the earthquakes. Holy hell. It looked even worse than I'd imagined. The heart of the city was totally gutted. The streets on the map were still there, but they'd been reduced to almost a bare grid. To think that all that destruction happened in seconds. I couldn't get over the number of containers. They were everywhere. Some were used to shore up building frontages. It was a bright sunny day but it was eerily quiet in what used to be the CBD. An exception was the new Cashel Mall, which was a vibrant array of container shops. It worked very well. A bloke was playing a flute and singing opera. He seemed to suffer from some sort of tic, but he was very good. I happily gave him some money. He was angry when a group of Maori performers turned up and stole his spot. I hear some big company wants to get rid of the Cashel Mall containers and build something imposing. That would be a shame.

We then drove to Lyttelton, where my ancestors arrived 150 years ago. It's a lovely town but was hit hard by the quakes and resulting landslides.

I'll put up some photos from yesterday if and when I get the chance.

Flat - in more ways than one

My mood improved in the middle of the week but has since taken another dive. It's physical as well as mental. I should probably see the doctor, but all this depression stuff now feels so normal. It's got to the stage where it's part of what I am.

I rang up my prospective flatmate this morning to give him the green light. There are now a few flatmate-related things I have to organise, and I don't feel like doing any of them.

Tom came over today. I still feel a bit uncomfortable with him around. He likes to get his mitts on any digital device I might have. Why haven't you added this or customised that? Jeez Tom, that's really really low priority for me at the moment. He mentioned Java programming again. Apparently arsing around with code, even if it serves no purpose, is fun fun fun all the way, and highly rewarding. I would like to learn Java, with a distinct purpose in mind, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Where will the time come from? The concentration? (I couldn't read a novel at the moment.) Of course Tom is pretty knowledgeable about the ever-changing digital world, and he was able to tell me what a "flat" iPhone design was. How can an iPhone screen not be flat? It turns out that "flat" just means no effects such as gradients or 3D or translucency (supposedly all that stuff, which was all the rage not so long ago, is now old hat).

Well done to Li Na on a fully-deserved Australian Open title. It's her second grand slam; she also won the French Open in 2011. The first set of tonight's match was a real belter - it could have gone either way. Cibulkova, the surprise finalist, certainly played her part too. Li Na almost exited the tournament over a week ago when she faced a match point, which means I need to update this page.
Let's hope Stan the Man at least puts up a good fight against Nadal tomorrow.

Flatting and statting

It looks like I've got a flatmate. I was iffy about this guy - who is probably thirtyish - when he phoned me yesterday, but when he came over with his dad last night he seemed like quite a safe option. He's embarking a two-year web design course - the school/college is just a short walk from here. Last night they were frantically measuring things and deciding on where certain items of furniture would go, as if they'd already moved in. Unsurprisingly the guy rang me today to say he's keen to move in; I've promised to show someone around tomorrow so I couldn't quite give him the OK, but I did say he was well in the lead. It'll be strange living with another person - it's nearly seven years since I last did so.

I listened to almost all of Stan the Man Wawrinka's stunning win over Djokovic on Tuesday night (and paid for it the next day). It was one of those times I really wished I had Sky, although the commentators paint a pretty good picture. I was glad Wawrinka won. He dominated the middle part of the match, and was able to hold off Djokovic with some big first serves on the crucial points in the fifth set. From the commentary, he was the deserving winner (and I was surprised to find out that he won eight fewer points than his opponent - it goes to show how important the big points are). It's nice to see the one-handed backhand come back - it just looks good. Just think of Federer's one-hander. I'd love to see Wawrinka win the whole thing now; that outcome isn't totally out of the question.

Now for some boring (to most people) tennis stats and probability stuff. It would seem that matches where the loser wins the most points are more common than I thought. From what I read online, Federer has lost 24 matches in his career having won the most points, which is a lot when you think how little losing he's done. On the other side of the coin, John Isner has been out-pointed in 20 of his career wins, including that match. He hasn't been on the tour all that long, so to rack up 20 such victories already is no mean feat. It might almost be a mindset thing for him - he'll do enough to hang on to his serve, maybe not put that much effort into the return games, and then put all his energy into the tie-break which he excels at, probably because he gets so much practice at them.
Although I never had point tallies when I played interclub, I'm pretty sure a couple of my singles wins saw me win less than half the points, and if that kind of thing even happened to me at the standard I played at, it must happen quite a lot to the pros where serve dominates, matches are generally closer, and individual points can be much more important.

I mentioned this before, but the Australian Open website gives you a plethora of facts and figures and charts and graphs for each match, and most of it isn't worth looking at. Like the "keys to the match". One of Djokovic's "keys" in his match with Wawrinka was "average more than 7.2 points per game returning". What?! I can see the idea of that I suppose. Lots of long return games means he's making good inroads into Wawrinka's service games. But 7.2 is a really high average. (If all points were 50:50, regardless of who serves, you'd get to 6.75, and any advantage to the server would only decrease this average.) It would take something quite bizarre to reach 7.2 in a long men's match, like a player being dominant on serve on the deuce side but struggling badly on the ad side. Frankly it looks like that figure was plucked out of thin air. Unsurprisingly, Djokovic didn't reach the target (it says he averaged 6.8, but that doesn't tally with the stats - 170 points in 26 return games gives an average of 6.54, which is actually still quite high).

I spoke to Mum tonight following Cibulkova's upset thrashing of Radwanska in the semis. Cibulkova is about the same height as Mum, but their physical similarities end right there. The Czech player blasted an out-of-sorts Radwanska off the court to set up a final with Li Na.

Tennis - at various levels

Today I played tennis, for the first time in ages, with the Meetup group. It was stupidly windy out there (wind must play a huge part in Wellington interclub competition). We didn't play any games, which was probably just as well. One of the guys had never played before, and didn't seem to care that he couldn't keep any kind of rally going, or even hit the ball a lot of the time. I didn't care much either, but I would have felt extremely self-conscious in his situation. He kept talking about "Sanchez shots" as if someone called Sanchez was currently a top-ranked male tennis player. We later ascertained that he meant Sampras. As for me, I enjoyed the hit-out and wouldn't mind getting back into it properly if I could find the time.

When I got home after tennis, Ana Ivanovic had just taken the second set in her shock three-set win over Serena Williams. I was happy with that result - I've never been a huge Serena fan, and I remember seeing Ivanovic as a teenager in 2005 and I was mighty impressed with her. There was some drama as Serena served at 2-5 in the final set. She was (rather unfairly) given a time violation, and responded by taking virtually no time in between points. She hung onto her serve, saving a match point, but Ivanovic served out to love, beating the player everyone said was unbeatable. It was a great performance, regardless of any injury Serena might have had, and any of the dozen players left in the tournament has a chance of lifting the trophy.

I've just updated my CV, but I guess I need several versions. It's tricky - I'm saying, look, this is what I've done for the last ten years, but that's all irrelevant because now I don't want to do anything remotely like it.

Need to make a change I can embrace

I did manage two hours' sleep shortly after my last post, and felt surprisingly awake on Saturday. The Beatles cover concert wasn't bad at all. OK, the band (who we could hardly see because there was a tree in the way) seemed to lack energy at times, but heck it was free. The audience was younger than I expected, but when you think about it the weather was excellent, it didn't cost anything, and most importantly you could bring as much alcohol as you wanted. They finished with Hey Jude which I think would be my favourite Beatles song.

On Sunday I caught up with a woman from the autism group. We had a coffee and a long chat. Unusually for someone at the group, she's in a long-term relationship. When I talked about work she knew exactly where I was coming from (and that's unusual anywhere). She's had serious problems with depression and is on the maximum dose of Efexor and that's not all. She's also carrying a lot of excess weight. In fact her dream is to design clothes, that aren't tents and don't cost a fortune, for larger women.

Monday was a very fine day and after work I sat out on the waterfront. Two stingrays swam by, one of which was practically man-sized. It was an amazing sight; the last time I saw anything like that was at Kelly Tarlton's a long time ago. I then attended the first autism group of the year. I mentioned work, of course, and got all kinds of job ideas from bars to libraries.

Looking back over work-related blog posts from 2009 and 2012 (it's amazing how much I've forgotten), my latest experience is giving me a real sense of déjà vu. I absolutely have to leave the world of big faceless insurance companies, or else it'll be déjà vu all over again in my next job. It never ceases to amaze me that some of my colleagues don't just tolerate the environment, where everything you do is monitored at all times, they seem to enjoy it. I can sort of understand it with the younger ones, for whom privacy is a foreign concept (and I think you're naturally more competitive at that age), but when people get into their forties and fifties and are still driven by targets and KPIs that have been foisted upon them by some authority figure, I'm completely baffled.
On Thursday the global CEO sent us all a 32-meg email, which was nice because we have a whopping 150 meg of storage and can't send anything over three meg ourselves. The email outlined a three-point plan for us all to follow. First, put our customers at the centre of everything. Fair enough. Second, adapt to change faster. Embrace change. That's always a tough one for me. The last one though was like someone had Googled "corporate bullshit" and tried to cram as many buzzwords in one sentence as possible; I had no idea what it meant.
I am looking for jobs now but it's very hard to know what I should be applying for.

It's been a very hot Australian Open so far. Inhumanely so. It's not fun for anyone. The extreme heat policy doesn't really work, and I wonder whether it'll take loss of life for them to change anything. The temperature has since plummeted but it's pretty muggy out there now. It's interesting listening to the commentators. Today they were talking about the demise of serve-and-volley. In 2001 Roger Federer beat Pete Sampras at Wimbledon (7-5 in the fifth set - I remember it) by coming in on almost every serve, and of course Sampras did the same. Now they're saying racket technology would make that style of play almost impossible, which is a shame. The tournament website has something called Slam Tracker, an analysis section run by IBM. You click on a match and it brings up three options. One of the options is entitled "momentum" and it's almost totally meaningless. A much better idea would be to show the estimated probability of a player winning the match given the current situation. It would be easy to understand and show the relative importance of each point, which I think people would find interesting. The second option is called "social sentiment" and shows a graph of the number of positive tweets each player has received. My first thought to that is, who cares? My second thought is, how do they know? Do they search for key words in tweets so they can tell whether they're positive or negative? What if you describe a player as "amazingly crap"? It's all a mystery to me - I wouldn't know a hashtag if it walloped me on the nose. The third option just shows the stats, and that's the only bit worth looking at.

15UP - yes it's the one I invented

Wordament

People aren't buying the app, and that's hardly surprising because there isn't much to entice people to buy. There's so much you could do to make it really good, but the current developers aren't capable of making the (extensive) necessary changes. It's frustrating when you see what other apps have done. I was recently introduced to Wordament, a Boggle-style game involving a 4x4 grid of letters. You have to connect the letters together (diagonally is OK) to make as many words as you can in two minutes, but that's most definitely not all. Everybody plays the same game at the same time, and at the end of the game you can see how you stack up against the rest of the world. The games aren't all a simple find-as-many-words-as-you-can: sometimes there are themes or multiple letters on one space or some other variation, and that all adds considerable variety. The hardest variant is the one where you get a hefty bonus for making a certain long word, which is difficult to find when you're trying to make other words as well. My only gripe would be the arbitrary distinction between "common" and "obscure" words: some of the "common" words (which can give you more points) actually seem quite obscure, and vice-versa. Because I don't have a Facebook presence or an iPhone, I can only play as a guest, but that's fine by me. I'd give Wordament 4 stars.

Scare

I hardly feel amazingly wonderful now, but compared to a week ago I'm much better. For over a week I wasn't good at all. Going through my old blog posts, I can see that my brain has filtered out some of my worst experiences.

Last night Dad told me about his latest big scare. He had a blood test for prostate cancer (PSA test) and the result was alarmingly high. He flies to the UK next week and they were going to put off his actual check (for lumps) until he got back but he insisted he had the check before then. Although his prostate is enlarged they didn't detect cancer,so he feels he's dodged a bullet there, but he'll have more tests in early November. Prostate cancer isn't easy to treat but you can survive with it for years - there seems to be a lot of variation in how aggressive it is. Dad isn't looking forward to the flight - it takes a lot out of him. He said he'd never go direct again.

Tuesday's second America's Cup race really was exciting - no doubt about that - and after today's race the Kiwi team have several match points up their sleeve. So as long as they don't capsize they should be OK. It'll be a real boon to Auckland if they can host it again. The races, and everything that goes on in between them, have received wall-to-wall coverage in NZ. But in San Francisco most people are aware that there's some kind of, y'know, boat race, and that's about it.

In contrast to the yachting, New Zealand's Davis Cup promotion tie in the Philippines received very little coverage at all, but it was a drama-filled contest that finished in the early hours of the morning, local time. The Kiwis somehow got over the line, with Michael Venus coming from two sets down to beat Treat Huey (great name) in the deciding match. I can't quite decide whether I should get back to playing tennis again. The exercise would be hugely beneficial to me I'm sure.

On Monday I played board games with Tracy and Tom. The first game we tried was a card game where you had to put various inventions in chronological order. It was more interesting than it sounds. I guessed reasonably well, making up for how little I actually knew. The other game was what they call a "programming" game. You roll dice which you then put in an ordered sequence to direct a robot through a rather complicated course. I got confused and kept rolling "backwards" when I needed to go forwards, or vice-versa, and didn't get very far.

I'm going to Auckland tomorrow. I still have to pack. I've got quite a few people I want to catch up with. When I get back I'll be thinking about flatmates.

Disconnection

It's been an exhausting day. My old boss leaves at the end of the week. The responsibility for a task that he used to do, which is actually several tasks, has fallen on me. As luck would have it I'm taking over just as there's this major launch, the likes of which haven't happened in years, and I still don't know what I'm doing. Nor do I particularly care. Today I was supposed to provide time frames for when I would have my various tasks done, so that they could "socialise the project". That's some serious BS there, folks. I then provided some time frames which were also BS. Saying how long it would take me was a bit trying to say how long it would take me to drive somewhere I've never been before, with the added bonus that I neither know nor care where the destination is. We then had a meeting where it became obvious to everyone that I didn't have a clue, and that's when I felt really stupid. The word "collateral" was used in that meeting to mean, as far as I could tell, "printed documents". That threw me a bit - we weren't caught in the crossfire of a battle, nor were we taking out a loan. I talked to my old boss after the meeting - I told him that I didn't really know what I was doing and there's only so much feeling stupid that I can handle. He said we'll need to scope out this and scope out that, and I just wanted to go home, open the freezer and scope out some ice cream.

I had my counselling appointment in my lunch break. She was very helpful and got me to think about things like I've never done before. I felt that I was able to put my finger on why I don't really have relationships. When I interact with someone, it is to exchange information or opinions, and not a lot else. But when other (more socially adept) people interact, they also make connections. That's what I'm not doing and don't really know how to. (There's certainly humour involved when I interact though, and I wonder what that's all about, because a lot of people on the autistic spectrum don't - or very rarely - use humour. Maybe my humour is different to that of most neurotypicals. I don't know.)

Another thing that came up was my constant looking at the clock or watch. I'm almost obsessive about the passing of time. My near-obsession doesn't have much to do with being punctual, it's more a concern about life passing me by without doing anything meaningful.

After work, instead of burying my face in a bowl of ice cream, I attended the autism group. It's getting too big now: I think there were 27 people including the facilitators. There was a new guy who went by the name of "Mr Ronald". This might sound cruel but Mr Ronald (forty? fifty? it was extremely hard to pick his age) reminded me of Gollum - he had verbal tics, and would often bend over double and cough and sneeze and blow his nose. Poor chap, basically. We weren't in the same subgroup so I didn't get to see much of him. After tonight I'm actually quite glad to be in Auckland in two weeks.

So Serena won yet another grand slam. To win the third set so emphatically after everything that went on in the second is the mark of a champion.

Some very positive sports news - after the ridiculous decision to drop wrestling from the 2016 Olympics, it'll be back for the 2020 Games, which we now know will be held in Tokyo.

On-court exertions

I played badminton today with the anxiety group. It was more enjoyable than I expected. We played a lot of short doubles games to eleven. Near the start of the session we had a game consisting of many long rallies - I felt like I was really getting a workout. I need more of that.

Maybe I could get all that exertion if I joined a tennis club. Andy Murray was upset in straight sets in the quarter-finals of the US Open, much to the delight of one of my colleagues who said Murray was arrogant. His on-court demeanour isn't always that endearing I agree, but I've never found him arrogant, in fact quite the opposite.

Tony Abbott has been elected as Australian prime minister. When your name is that close to the start of the phone book, what can you expect? (Various studies have shown that people with surnames alphabetically near the beginning are over-represented at the upper echelons of politics. And just think of the last three British prime ministers - Blair, Brown and Cameron.) On that loose language-related theme, I heard that the words "selfie" and "twerking" have been added to the online version of the Oxford dictionary. I took my first ever deliberate selfie today. Until a few weeks ago I didn't know it had a special name. As for twerking, I can't say I'll be doing that any time soon.

Last week Campbell Live did a story about a young woman who was causing all kinds of mayhem at her flat; when the landlord sensibly gave her an eviction notice, she responded by trashing the place. Kerre McIvor (or Woodham as she used to be) has written a piece about it here. "It was probably the hardest she'd worked in her life" - ha! I feel very sorry for the landlord who was to trying to help a young family but got that help chucked back in his face, and there's nothing he can do about it. Some people, like this woman, seem to have a total disregard for anybody else. She should be put in jail.

Mum and Dad arrived home at one o'clock on Friday morning. They've since been to Dunedin as well. Dad flies to the UK on the 25th.

The muppet factor

Sunday's drama has made my work week more manageable - no matter what happened at work I was unlikely to feel as much of a muppet as I did on Sunday. Still, pretending to care, like in this morning's meeting, can get tiring after a while. Some people have meetings virtually all day every day and I wonder how they cope.

Dad has had a painting accepted for a exhibition in China. Painters were invited to submit their work, so it's safe to say the submissions were of a high standard, and only a small fraction of them were selected. In other words Dad has done well. He's also exhibiting some paintings here in Wellington this weekend - they're bringing them up in the car and will be arriving tomorrow.

With the situation in Syria comes the concern that my brother might be sent there. He's currently in the reserves of the British army.

Rugby's Ranfurly Shield is an interesting concept. Upsets in rugby are rarer than in other sports (such as football), and because a team only plays a handful of home games in a season, it can hang onto the Shield for years. Or not touch it at all for years. Otago, who I always thought were a big player in NZ rugby, got their hands on the Shield last weekend for the first time in 56 years. Yikes. I hope they hold onto it for a while.

The US Open tennis is in full swing. Well sort of - there's a lot of rain and no roof. Marion Bartoli isn't playing. She retired from the game after her incredible Wimbledon triumph. It's a shame that tennis should lose such a classy player.

In more sports news, there was a controversial and highly bizarre match in the league cup between Yeovil and Birmingham yesterday. You can read all about it here.

Miracles happen

The bloke who sorted out my laptop said it would now be "more faster" which indeed it is. He also said all my data would still be there. It's not. Thank goodness for flash drives.

So Andy Murray became the first British man to win Wimbledon for 77 years. I was wide awake at 2:30 so I got up and watched the rest of the match (and drank a gallon of coffee when I got to work). There were so many twists and turns, it didn't feel like only a three-setter. (There were eleven breaks of serve, Murray claiming seven of them.) That final game was high drama; if Djokovic had broken for 5-5 anything could have happened. I'm glad Murray won but not because he's British. He's not really playing for Great Britain, or for Scotland, anyway. He's playing for Andy Murray. If nationalities were that big a deal they wouldn't allow mixed-nationality doubles partnerships.

Murray's Wimbledon win is his second grand slam title from seven final appearances. I'm fairly confident he'll follow in his coach Lendl's footsteps in winning several more slams. Frankly I couldn't give a stuff that a Brit won but if more Brits play tennis as a result, that would be a big win. In the UK (when I lived there at least, and I doubt it's changed) courts were empty apart from the Wimbledon fortnight and possibly the week after. It was as if tennis didn't exist for 49 weeks of the year. I clearly remember a conversation (well, argument) I had with a woman at my local club; she said that tennis courts should only be built in wealthy areas because nobody from poorer areas could afford the expenses needed to become the next Wimbledon champion. As if that's what matters. As if people getting off their arses and playing a game that doesn't involve pixels isn't important.

While Murray's win was nice it didn't come as a shock, unlike Bartoli's victory which continues to blow me away. Six years ago she surprised everybody by reaching the final where she lost to Venus Williams. Surely that was as good as it would ever get. But getting to the final again and winning? Miracles happen, don't they? OK, Kvitova's win two years ago was a bit of a surprise, as was Sharapova's in 2004, but Bartoli isn't Bartova or even Bartovic - she was cast in a different mould altogether.

TV coverage of Wimbledon, what little I saw, could have been better. You'd see an incredible winner and where was the slow-motion replay? No, you'd see David Cameron instead. John McEnroe does an exceptional job in the commentary box though, it must be said.

On Sunday I played board games with Tracy and Tom. Sitting on Tracy's shelves are a dazzling array of weird and wacky games - there's no Scrabble, Monopoly or Risk (or anything anyone has heard of) to be seen. We played three games in all. First up was 7 Wonders. You had to build up your wonder of the world (say the Pyramids or the Hanging Gardens) using resources which you can buy and sell, or sort of, and it was the "sort of" that always confused me. I must have driven Tracy mad as I kept asking how much stone or glass I had, and how much it would cost to get more. In each of three "ages" a war took place, and it was by winning the final war that I won the game, without really knowing what I was doing, and with one of the lowest winning scores on record.

Then we played Takenoko, a Japanese-style game where you had to cultivate, irrigate and fertilise land so you could grow bamboo for a panda to eat. A really bizarre game if you ask me. And I did pretty badly - I came last by some distance. I kept having to buy irrigation sticks to water my land and hardly ever grew anything. I wanted to kill the damn panda but annoyingly that wasn't in the rules (which were quite complicated). Both these first two games were designed by the same person - you never would have guessed that as they were so different.

Finally we played Small World. By this stage I was longing for Community Chests or triple word scores, something I could get a handle on. Small World involves territories and armies, similar to Risk but more complicated. The armies were different races or beings, such as orcs or giants or tritons. Each race would have a special power or trait, like "flying" or "diplomatic". The races and powers would pair up at random and Tracy would get excited if a particular combination came up: "Alchemistic dragons, man. That's awesome!" Armies would kill each other until they were depleted when they would "go into decline". For me this was the most enjoyable game of the three, and I won with plenty of luck and advice from Tracy.

The illustrations in all three games were impressive; I liked the attention to detail in the way each race was depicted in Small World. Unlike the board games of old, these modern creations have been tested to the nth degree. But they struck me as being quite a niche market. There used to be a shop selling these kinds of games in the Old Bank Arcade. The games sold for around $100 and I was always amazed by how heavy they were. That shop closed down last year - they were selling obscure games in a fairly obscure location so I suppose you could see why. But it's still a shame. Also gone is the shop that sold coins, notes, stamps and war medals. In its place is yet another shop selling expensive household crap - mostly presents for people who already have everything. For $35 you can buy a side plate with either "bitch", "slapper", "wanker" or "tosser" written on it. Nice. The shop that used to sell candy and lollies has also shut down - it's currently empty.

I don't think I can make myself go to the Great Gatsby work function. Apart from some food, what is there to gain? Annoyingly it's only a five-minute walk from my flat, but I don't think anyone will care if I'm not there. The only person who might have cared was given the sack.

Good on her

Wow. Marion Bartoli really is champion of Wimbledon. Who would have expected that two weeks ago? I'm very glad I got up at 1am to watch the final even if Lisicki's nerves meant she was some way short of her best. Nerves play an even bigger part in women's major finals than for the men - the serve isn't as dominant so a soul-destroying run of say six losing games is much more common, and unlike for the men, six games is half the match. Bartoli was extremely determined and pumped up but all that adrenalin didn't compromise her thought processes in any way. Game two of the second set was huge psychologically, as was the first point of game three where Bartoli was well out of the rally but hit a down-the-line winner that would have been called out if Lisicki had challenged. Lisicki was struggling with her ball toss and by game five, when she chose a bad time to play a drop shot (people try that so often when they aren't thinking straight) she really just wanted to get off the court. I was happy that Lisicki staved off three match points for what would have been a harsh 6-1 6-1 defeat. For the next ten minutes she was a different player, but just as things were getting interesting Bartoli served out to love with a new racket and new balls, finishing on the right end of a crucial opening rally and serving an ace on match point.

That someone different like Bartoli can claim the greatest prize in the game must be a good thing. I really liked her speech as she held the trophy. She supposedly has a sky-high IQ (I saw someone on ESPN unsuccessfully try and trip her up on the Fibonacci sequence) and is also a keen painter. It took her 47 attempts to win her first grand slam title - that's a record: Novotna was older when she won Wimbledon in '98 but it was "only" her 45th attempt. As for Lisicki, she's got an excellent aggressive game which we only saw last night in that late cameo. I doubt it'll take her 47 tries to claim a slam.

The hard drive of my laptop is stuffed and it's costing me $340 to get it sorted. That's an expense I could have done without.

I was a bit tired today after getting up last night, and there's no way I'm watching the men's final tonight. Out of the blue Tracy invited me and Tom over to play some unusual board games this afternoon. This was fun even if I didn't know what was going on half the time - I'll write about it when I can do so less painfully.

A painstaking post about Wimbledon

I took my dying laptop into a place in Newtown to see if they can revive it. I then braved the market in the pouring rain. At one stall a woman gave me $10 too much change; a long time ago I might have pocketed the extra money but I wouldn't dream of doing so now.

So I'm writing this post on my phone which isn't an easy task. I'm playing around with the handwriting recognition thingy at the moment.

Right, so Del Potro was badly injured for his semi-final with Djokovic and would only last three sets. Or two or one or none. But as they got deeper into a long, intense game midway through the first set, all ideas of a quick match were out the window. The third set was a real belter. I was very impressed with Del Potro who produced 100 mph winners seemingly out of nowhere. Not only that but he defended brilliantly, staying with Djokovic in the long rallies which nobody normally does except possibly Nadal. All the time I was struggling to keep my eyes open and when Djokovic won that tie-break to go 2-1 up I hit the hay, fully (stupidly?) expecting the top seed to rattle
through the fourth set. Instead, as I found out this morning, Del Potro saved two match points in another tie-break and was only finally seen off after 4¾ hours, the longest Wimbledon semi-final to date. Andy Murray didn't exactly have it all his own way either, and I sympathise with him over the roof issue, but we have indeed got the final everyone expected.

With work the next day I couldn't realistically watch the women's semis. Had I watched them I'd have needed to pull a sickie, or in this case a Lisicki. I should manage to see tonight's final. I don't mind who wins - they're both fun players to watch and wonderfully grunt-free. If anything I'm probably siding with Bartoli because this might be her last chance to snag a grand slam whereas Lisicki (if her form this fortnight is anything to go by) should have plenty more opportunities. It's a tricky match to pick - Bartoli hasn't dropped a set in the tournament but has somehow avoided anybody above her ranking of 15th; Lisicki has had some very tight matches but has come up against the likes of Stosur, Serena and Radwanska. Should be fascinating. I just hope the crowd aren't too anti-Bartoli; I suppose she doesn't look like your typical tennis player and that's why some people don't take to her.

There's heaps of non-Wimbledon stuff I wanted to write about but writing on this phone is way, way too painful.

Oh, and last night I chatted to Richard for the first time in ages, which was nice.

A fascinating final four

The women's competition at this year's Wimbledon has been fascinating, not that I've been able to watch any of it. As we reach the final four, all the big names and familiar faces are gone. It reminds me of the men's tournament in 1996 (the year Sampras didn't win) which I found equally fascinating. Some people seem to think the loss of former champions like Serena Williams and Sharapova diminishes the competition but I don't see it that way. I think all the remaining women are a breath of fresh air. Agnieszka Radwanska beat Li Na in a great match last night and as she is seeded four and reached last year's final you can hardly call her a no-name. She plays Sabine Lisicki in the semis, a very popular player who has done well at Wimbledon before but really hit the headlines when she knocked out Serena. Also through (and yet to drop a set) is Marion Bartoli, who I've always liked since I saw her win the Auckland title in 2006. Bartoli plays two-handed on both sides and takes a lot of small steps during points to say nothing of all the bouncing around between them. In other words she's a bit mad. The crowd booed her throughout her win over Sloane Stephens last night; the booing was at its loudest when she wanted to stop play as the rain came down. Playing on grass with a grand slam semi and big money at stake, I'd want to come off too. Bartoli was runner-up in 2007 and she'll be up against Kirsten Flipkens, a name that's fun to say. Last night Flipkens beat Petra Kvitova, the 2011 champ, in three sets.

The men's tournament has seen its fair share of shocks too, but I still get the feeling that Djokovic and Murray are on a collision course to meet in the final.
Edit: I underestimated Verdasco a bit, didn't I? I shouldn't have done - he's a very good player.

Tonight there was a meeting about all the road works. I went along and peered through the window but left as soon as I realised it was a presentation which I'd already missed the start of. I didn't want to walk in and make a scene. I must say the communication to residents about all the work has been excellent. However I'd really hoped to meet some of my neighbours there and talk about the earthquake business which seems a more pressing concern.

My computer is playing up badly and I'm worried it might die on me completely.