Grounded

If I’m going to continue this blog at all, perhaps I should focus on my attempt to learn Mandarin. Learning this language requires more dedication and concentration than my current living arrangements allow. In the last session we learnt numbers. Why is it that 386 in Mandarin sounds a lot nicer than 241? At least with numbers you can practise quite easily, because they appear everywhere. As I’ve found in other languages, the best way to practice saying numbers (and letters, in languages that are sensible enough have an alphabet) is to read off car number plates as they whizz by. I like that Chinese numbers also come with hand gestures. You can count up to ten on just one hand, so from six to ten, the signals aren't what you'd expect. The other topic we dealt with in last week’s lesson was family members. The Chinese seem to have more family-member words than we do, with separate words for all the different kinds of auntie you can have (mother’s younger sister, father’s older brother’s wife, and so forth). You're not supposed to call your elder brother or sister by his or her name; you need to use the word for "big brother" or "big sister", so my brother who's close enough to my age to almost seem like a twin, would need to show me respect by calling me "gē ge". And if he was my twin brother, born ten minutes after me, he'd still have to show me the same respect. Our teacher showed us her family tree which was strictly men-only. 

Mum and Dad got back yesterday from their 2½ months away. I was tracking their Singapore Airlines flight on flightradar24.com. It's a fascinating site (and would be interesting enough if it was just a world map without all the swarming planes). As my cousin's husband said on Sunday, what that site really shows you is where in world the money is. Tom is embarking on his big adventure and will be in Sydney now, about to fly to Tokyo on a 747 (not so many of those iconic planes now - sad in a way as they changed the world). Tracy flies to Europe on Thursday - she's away for five weeks. As for me, I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future.

National are still favourites to win next month's election, but their price on iPredict (yay, I'm still on their leaderboard even though I haven't traded for years) has dropped from the low eighties to the low seventies in the last few days. I've now decided that they won't be getting my vote this time. On Sunday we had lunch and board games at the autism place, and someone in a Bananagrams game joined KEY onto DORK. Well a dork he ain't, but he could have handled the events of the last few days much better. The blogger Cameron Slater is a nasty piece of work and if I were the Prime Minister I'd be distancing myself as far as possible from Slater, not calling him Cam as if he were my mate. Then there's Judith Collins, Minister of Justice of all things, who appears to think she's above the law herself, and also seems to lack any shred of compassion. So I won't vote National but are Labour, policy-wise, really any better?

The wind needle, officially called the Zephyrometer, was struck by lightning in a storm last week, and they haven't decided whether it'll be replaced.

Antipodes

This was always going to be a tricky time. Finish my old job, start my new one, and in between a four-day weekend stuck with Kevin. He was going to spend the long weekend with his family in Masterton, but as soon as he knew his sister would be there he decided to stay here. They don't get on at all.

My (very soggy) last few days in life insurance crept up on me quickly. I got more attention on my last day than at any time in the previous three years. They had an afternoon tea for me and drinks afterwards, although not for my benefit. There was a sense of relief but also some sadness - I'll certainly miss my immediate colleague, and we'll try to meet up for lunch from time to time.

Easter can be a lonely time for me, and having a flatmate (or this flatmate at least) makes me feel even more lonely. I'm sure a lot of it is just me, although the TV drives me nuts. In the morning, in the hours between when I get up and when he does, I get a welcome break from it, but the rest of the time it completely takes over. Last night I finally asserted myself when I had music playing and Kevin wanted the TV on.

All sorts of weird and wonderful subjects and questions came up at Rhiannon's place last weekend. One of them was "Where in the world is directly opposite Wellington?" The Map Tunnelling Tool has your answer. It happens to be a town called Alaejos in Spain. I can even see what street in Alaejos is directly opposite (or below) my street. It's fairly unusual that you'll find land on the other side of the earth, and even less likely that you'll find inhabited land. (Tunnel down from Auckland instead and you'll come out at Setenil de las Bodegas in southern Spain.)

I've spent a fair chunk of this weekend wishing I was in Alaejos. Yesterday I drove along the coast to Eastbourne (the car is great - it's my own space), stopping at a few places along the way. Even Petone, which has a long and quite interesting high street with lots of places to drink, gamble and eat fatty food. I've managed to get a few chores done this weekend, which has so far turned out to be less wet than predicted. Last week was a shocker. There was a lunar eclipse last Tuesday but the cloud cover made it impossible to see.

Today is my 34th birthday. I'm getting old. On my seventh birthday I asked Grandma whether she wished she was still seven. "No, but I wish I was seventeen." When I was 17, half a lifetime ago now, I wished I was seven. I think I still do. It's the second time my birthday has fallen on Easter Sunday (my 23rd did too). So will my 45th if I get that far. As well as being Joe Bennett's and Adolf Hitler's birthdays, it's world pot-smoking day.

The next time I write (whenever that is - it's harder now) I expect I'll have started my new job. I'm naturally nervous - it's an opportunity and I don't want to waste it.

Ear bashing

We had the autism group last night. Sometimes I wonder if I should carry on going. We had a new bloke turn up - he would be about my age. He's got a high world ranking in the "hands" version of StepMania, something I'd never heard of before, and I never knew you could get a world ranking in what is basically an arcade game anyway. He also practises martial arts - he nonchalantly told us about a time when he was learning a type of martial art involving a stick, and the instructor cut off the ear of a supposedly disobedient student. "I had a lot of respect for him." What?!

It hasn't stopped raining all day. I got drenched, waist-down only, on the way to work today. It was like this when I arrived in Wellington three years ago.

That wasn't clever, Boris

I was a bit distracted at work on Friday morning. I was reading this article and the subsequent comments, which now number 2200. The article relates to Boris Johnson, mayor of London and possible future British prime minister, who made a highly controversial speech about inequality and IQ. He noted that as many as 16% "of our species" have an IQ below 85, while only 2% have an IQ above 130; he said we should do more to help the 2%.

His numbers are correct, purely by definition of how IQ scores are calculated. Modern IQ tests are designed so that scores are normally distributed (i.e. they give one of those nice bell-shaped curves) with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, and because of how the normal distribution works, you get those percentages that Johnson mentioned in his speech, and they never go up or down. (Well there is something called the Flynn effect that Tracy mentioned recently, whereby performances in IQ tests improve over time, so they have to tweak the test, or the way it's scored, to keep those percentages the same. There's evidence that the Flynn effect is slowing down or has even stopped altogether.)

So Boris got his numbers right, but that's about it. Some people got dealt a nice hand, and some didn't. But to focus only on those who did would be crazy and dangerous, and that's before you look at how blunt an instrument an IQ test is. Then he said: I stress – I don't believe that economic equality is possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity. Well hard work and determination absolutely should be rewarded, but not all powerful and successful people get there as a result of hard work, and likewise most people who are struggling aren't in that position because they couldn't be arsed. A lot of it is down to, as I said, the hand they were dealt at birth, as well as their upbringing. Martin, and that game of Scrabble, is a good example. Now he isn't stupid at all. But he didn't get a good formal education, and was never brought up to see that as being important. He said that, despite being born in 1987, he's far from a digital native. They had the internet at home when he was in his teens, and you can learn a lot from that, but his dad never let him or his brother use it. Having weird parents like that doesn't help.

Intellectual elitism, and smugness, is something I have no time for. I see it a lot, and I think it's very unhelpful. I had a friend in the UK who became a maths teacher. One day she was teaching one of the bottom streams. "These kids all think that 0.25 + 0.3 is 0.28. How could you possibly be so dumb as to think that?! When I was their age, well, younger than them, I got it straight away." Well I got it straight away when I was a kid too, but like you, I was lucky. Why shouldn't you think it's 0.28? And the fact that 0.3 is bigger than 0.25, that's not obvious at all.

Intellectual arrogance, unfortunately, is rife among so-called high-functioning people on the autistic spectrum. I'm absolutely right, and nothing you say will stop me from being right. And some of them don't mind boasting about their achievements either. Tracy, for instance, talked about an IQ test she took at school. Apparently she did so well that her score appeared as a blank in their system. The staff misinterpreted this, and Tracy wondered why she got chucked in with all the stupid kids. It's a funny story, and an alarming one (the staff didn't even notice how well she'd done in the test and stream her accordingly?) but Tracy certainly didn't mind telling us that she had an off-the-scale IQ. (I'd guess I'd score reasonably well, but not off-the-scale well, in an IQ test, but I've never felt like finding out - it just doesn't seem relevant.)

I've just started reading a book called The Nether Regions by Sue Gough. The library were offloading a bunch of books - I think I paid 50 cents for it. I'm actually half-way through already - good going for me. The story is based in Brisbane, and as the title suggests, a lot of the content is biological. Interestingly, for parts of the story, the narrator is mute. I wish the author wouldn't use such complicated words! I keep having to look things up in the dictionary, and sometimes the word isn't there. Numinous, is that like luminous? Or numerous? It gets over a million hits in Google so why didn't I know it? Maybe if I had a higher IQ. Or if I read more.

It's been a superb day here in Wellington. A great start to summer - let's hope it continues like this.

28/11/03

I advertised for a flatmate on TradeMe last night and have already had someone take a look. He's British and has only been in the country a couple of months. He knew exactly where St Ives was, because he graduated from Cambridge as recently as 2011. So he's a clever bugger. He now works as a geologist (interesting job) in town. He almost turned a blind eye to the whole earthquake-risk business (he missed the big quakes we had in August and September). It was funny showing him around. I feel a bit embarrassed by how big my place is considering I live here alone. I'm not sure about him: practically he'd be fine I think, but his youthful exuberance might get a bit much. A 32-year-old German woman, who works at the hospital, has expressed interest too.

I arrived in New Zealand ten years ago today. What an absolutely stunning day that was. Not a cloud in the sky; as we drove from Christchurch to Temuka the sun was mind-blowingly bright as it lit up the snow-capped Four Peaks. Perhaps being zonked from spending 24 hours on a plane actually enhanced that experience. Today has been quite the opposite (admittedly in a part of the country that experiences "the opposite" more often than Canterbury does). It started off grey and drizzly, just the sort of day you get when you land at Heathrow and go home via the M25. Then around lunchtime the drizzle turned into proper rain, and it's been properly raining ever since.

Ten years, or 3653 days, is a long time. I don't feel like I've achieved much in that time but maybe my own expectations are too high. In 2004 and '05 I gradually became more and more Kiwified, going on road trips and getting to know which rugby team plays where. But that Kiwification has since unravelled and I no longer feel especially attached to any country (I do however feel some affinity with Wellington now). I should mention Mum - she spent thirty years in the UK, got married and brought up two kids there, and when she came back to her old stomping ground of Geraldine to live, it was like she'd been away for thirty minutes.

Silvio Berlusconi has been kicked out of parliament after being convicted for tax fraud. My only response to that: Hooray! What a nasty piece of work.

Here a couple of recent Joe Bennett articles that I liked. There's this gem about people's smartphones being chucked in the Avon river, and this one about pronunciation of French words in English, a subject I touched on in this post last month.

Gale tales

Extreme weather is now the norm, or so it seems. When Geraldine made the news yesterday morning (there had been a fire and some roofs had come off) I rang Mum. Her power was out and she hadn't slept much - she'd stayed up to watch the Shanghai tennis final; the storm peaked in the early hours. But she was fine and there was no damage to speak of. It wasn't much fun for her being alone in the house though. Dad has a knack of bogging off overseas and missing these "weather events". She got her power back on at 8pm last night. The storm ripped through Wellington too; scaffolding spectacularly collapsed at a building site just two-minute walk from my work. I spoke to my cousin who finally got back to Wellington after having five internal flights cancelled. Tomorrow she flies to the States.

Tracy was out of action for all of last week - her thyroid was all over the place, high one minute, low the next. Yesterday though she'd improved enough to invite Tom and me over for board games. We just played one game - Alhambra - quite a cleverly-designed game that combined classic "economic" strategy (is it worth paying x to obtain y?) with spatial considerations (where is the best place to put this tile - if I can legally place it at all?). I'm better at the economic stuff than the spatial stuff. Tom and I were thinking on a fairly basic level, while Tracy (who admittedly had played it before) was on a different plane in her strategy, so it was fitting that Tom and I finished in a dead-heat, with Tracy a dozen points ahead.

Sunday was a glorious day and I managed to get sunburnt sitting on Oriental Bay near the tugboat restaurant. After yesterday's storm and today's rain that's hard to believe.

A stormy trip to Auckland

Hooray! It's over! The America's Cup regatta came to an end in this morning's 19th race of the best-of-17 series, with the limitless resources of Oracle winning out. It's remarkable how many Kiwis got so emotionally (and irrationally) involved in it all. It wasn't NZ v USA or anything close to that, it was a battle between two mega-corporations. I kept hearing "we've been penalised" and "we've got no chance now", and even the mayor of San Francisco said "we won!". You can just about get away with "we" when a national team like the All Blacks are playing, but how can you get that attached to a brand? Today I got a long and very emotive text from Brendan (a friend from Auckland) who normally shows no interest in sport at all. He was "totally disgusted", calling Oracle's comeback a "conspiracy" and saying, in all caps, "MONEY TALKS". I totally agree with his last point. I only learnt yesterday that Larry Ellison (Mr Oracle) is the world's fifth-richest man. As for Dean Barker, he took defeat extremely well I thought. I hope the NZ government cut their funding for the next America's Cup challenge to zero. Imagine if that money was spent on mental health services instead.

The piece in the Press on the America's Cup by the ever-brilliant Joe Bennett sums it all up rather nicely. Two more of Bennett's columns caught my eye. First there was this one about personalised plates. It's weird, people pay hundreds of dollars to get hard-to-decipher vowel-free combinations because they provide an ego-boost. Not so long ago I was following a car with a plate that read (or so I thought) NOTLGB. Hmmm, what's LGB? Is that, like, gay? So you're straight? As I got closer I noticed it wasn't a B on the end, it was an 8. NOTLG8. Huh? I sat right behind him until it finally clicked. "No tailgate". But I had to get so damn close to figure that out. Then there's this piece which touches on a subject dear to my heart, all that nauseating marketing speak (I'm guilty sometimes too: I talk about "issues" too much). As he says, words matter. He's obviously a voracious reader; that's one reason why he writes so well.

Well I left Wellington eventually on Friday night. We had a downpour and a rare thunderstorm; one of the planes on the ground was struck by lightning. There were a lot of cancellations as a result, and it was complete chaos in the terminal building. The departure boards were worse than useless (they only showed a handful of flights and gave dodgy information about those) and the staff were very unhelpful. I spoke to one woman who told me all flights were suspended for the evening and I'd need to queue up to get put on a plane the next day. I had my phone on me and, as a rare treat, I'd bought an internet data package. According to my phone, that woman was telling porkies and I was good to go from gate 11. After a 90-minute delay we did indeed take off from gate 11. The plane was packed - people had been rebooked on my flight from earlier (cancelled) flights. The flight was fine. My phone was a godsend: I knew exactly which bus to get on and where, and I arrived at the motel a few minutes after midnight.

On Saturday I met up with Richard in Newmarket before the autism group. I hadn't seen him in over a year. I still prefer the set-up of the Auckland group to the way they run it here in Wellington. There you're able to get up, walk about, and have conversations in twos and threes. Richard will try and talk to just about everybody, which is great. As I chatted to some new people (there was one woman I really liked) I bemoaned the fact that I wouldn't see them for at least six months, possibly longer, possibly ever. There's a bigger spread of ages at the Auckland group: in Wellington they're mostly twenty-somethings.

A big thunderstorm came through on Saturday night (I could have been luckier with the weather). The rain was torrential and I was kept awake for hours. Between two and four, the fork lightning got further away, then closer again. In the morning I popped over to the Shore to meet up with Mandy, who is now five months pregnant. So that gave us an obvious topic of conversation. She was also studying for yet another exam. I don't know how she still manages it (she reckoned the prospect of a new baby gave her extra motivation). Her partner holds a senior position at the same company; in her (serious) words he gets paid far too much. They bought an apartment in Birkdale, a stone's throw from the cold, damp flat I lived in for a year. Its value has already shot up in the short time they've owned the place. Mandy asked if I would ever consider having a family. Never say never, I said. I think I'd be OK at the dad bit up to the age of five, but not much use after that.

On Monday I caught up with the ex-facilitator of the Wellington autism group.  We had lunch at the swanky new section of Britomart. She's pretty happy with her lot now - her husband's got a good job while hers (at a school) is rewarding and almost free of stress. It's all very different to their situation when they lived in Wellington. Later I met Richard again, at his new flat in Onehunga. He showed me his drawings, mostly of fantastical figures, then played me some songs on the guitar. It must be nice to have his level of creativity. Things are looking up for Richard - he's far happier with his current flatting situation than some of his previous arrangements.

I didn't get to see Bazza while I was up there, or (despite my best efforts) Brendan, which isn't his real name, or either of his two previous real names. The wet and windy weather made Tuesday a bit of a write-off. I couldn't really go anywhere or do anything before my flight except read my book. I was pessimistic about my flight but it took off with only a short delay. Our approach and landing was a bit bumpy but unremarkable by Wellington standards. So I was back to work yesterday, and I surprised myself (and probably my boss too) by how on the ball I was.

Is this for real?

Work. Oh god. It's happening again. For a while I go along merrily (well, not exactly, but I sort of chug along in third gear) and then, bam, all of a sudden I plummet off a cliff. I took Tuesday afternoon off sick. Just before I left I drafted an email to my new boss saying that these latest changes aren't going to work for me. It seemed a better option than pretending everything was fine - I haven't had much luck with that strategy in the past. I sent the email when I got to work this morning. Despite my best efforts I didn't get much done today. I had all the usual physical symptoms. It took me an age to do anything, and I promptly forgot whatever I'd just done. We have a system where - bizarrely - you have to type gibberish at a certain point, and I must have stared at the "jsrttrsjtsr" (or whatever it was) for several minutes without even realising it. I looked at the vacant bank of desks behind me - heck, soon there are bound to be people sitting there, and then it really will be game over. I remembered ducking to avoid a flying pigeon as I was walking down the street - I know the event happened in the last few days, but I don't know if it was real or whether I dreamt it. I think it was real - I'd say I'm 70-80% sure. I improved a bit in the last hour of the day, probably because I knew it was the last hour, and have felt better since I got home.

Canterbury has been hit hard by the storms. My parents' power was out from 5pm yesterday until 6:30 this evening. They can cope with a power outage quite well. They've got gas and have a steady supply of water from the stream. Their biggest worry was all the meat in the freezer - probably half a cow at least.

It's official - a copy of the yellow sticker arrived in my letter box on Monday. Another copy will soon be attached to the building.

On Monday I heard this song emanating from Cosmic on Cuba Street. It's by Fever Ray, a Swedish artist I hadn't heard of before. I managed to catch just enough lyrics to jot them down and Google them when I got home. It's a pretty good song on YouTube but much better coming from proper speakers. I've started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (although I haven't read any this week) - with that and Fever Ray, I'd quite like to go to Sweden.

Rafael Nadal's serious purple patch has taken a lot of people by surprise. I've heard suggestions that he might be juiced up. He's now won 13 grand slams, just one behind Sampras and four behind Federer. It's incredible that 30 of the last 42 majors have been won by just two men (Djokovic has bagged half of the remaining dozen). Serena Williams, like Federer, now has 17 slams, but unlike Federer I can see her adding another three or four to that tally.

After badminton on Sunday we went for a short walk. It was a stunning day (quite the opposite of today) and I took this photo:

It drives me mad

I don't mind driving. In fact it can be quite pleasurable being in my own little bubble, listening to some music. Years ago when I lived in Auckland, and petrol prices were less of a concern, I'd often go for a long drive up north at the weekend. On my own. And that's the thing. As soon as I have passengers, driving becomes scary as all hell. What little sense of direction I have flies out the window and I become hyper-aware of every gear change and lane change. Will she think I'm too cautious? Too reckless? Too goddamn incompetent? I look in the rear-view mirror to see the expression on her face. If I'm by myself nobody's going to know if I've taken a wrong turn so the prospect doesn't bother me. I can relax, which means I can concentrate on the road. But when I've got passengers that all changes to the point where my judgement is impaired and I'm probably a danger to other road users. With certain people (like my parents, or someone like Martin who doesn't drive yet) it's not so bad, but with most people I can feel the pressure ratcheting up about ten notches. And that's what I felt yesterday as I took people the short distance to Happy Valley Road for the start of our tramp at Te Kopahou Reserve.

Instead of marvelling at the scenery I spent the first two hours of the tramp wondering if I can somehow get over this fear of driving with other people. It isn't completely irrational (if I had to guess, I'd say I'm five times more likely to have an accident in a car full of people than on my own). It's just as well we had the tramp yesterday and not today - it's seriously nasty out there now. Yesterday there wasn't much wind and only a light shower, but the low cloud made things very atmospheric. We started off on the Tip Track (so called because it overlooks the landfill site), walking past that slightly ridiculous castle. We then passed what looks like a giant football (made up of pentagonal and hexagonal panels) and is actually a radar station that keeps track of planes. That's what they tell us anyway. Next week we'll probably find out that it's used by GCSB for something more sinister. I struggle to remember much after that. There were some impressive views for sure (when the cloud didn't restrict them), but I was feeling a bit down and having a hard time taking much in. Some of the tracks were fairly steep but overall the trip was just at the right level for me. Today I was feeling the benefits of all that exertion without being put completely out of commission.

After the tramp I had a nice hot shower and popped over to my cousin's for dinner. She had a friend over; we listened to my cousin rehearse a presentation about patents and trade marks that she was due to make tomorrow for the University of the Third Age in Timaru. The talk lasted an hour but it was interesting; she'd made a good job of cutting out the legalese. Today's ghastly weather meant that all planes (and ferries) have been grounded in Wellington and her talk has been postponed till October. I braved the elements enough to make it to the market, then braved Julie this afternoon. She's a bit more positive now that's she's got a new doctor.

The driving-with-passengers-is-scary thing is really just a manifestation of my general doing-anything-with-anybody-is-scary thing. I wish there was a cure. Perhaps doing it more often would help. Maybe a flatmate would help; the extra income certainly wouldn't do me any harm.

The Phoenix Foundation are a very good band from Wellington. I had no idea they'd hit the big time in the UK, but a year ago Buffalo got some serious airplay on BBC 6 Music. I wonder why that particular song was "the one". That station nearly closed down; when I was over there in 2010 there was a big campaign to save it. I notice Cerys Matthews is hosting a programme right now. She's Welsh and was lead singer of Catatonia in the late nineties. She couldn't really sing but I liked the band anyway and have two of their albums.