It doesn't get any easier...

Work-related social events are coming thick and fast as our move to Petone beckons. On Friday we visited our new premises again. We attended a two-hour talk and then filed off to a café/bar to take part in a quiz. We drew team numbers at random from one to ten, the idea being that the people originating from different organisations would get to know each other, although I was unlucky enough to pick the same number as my boss. We didn't do very well. With a few exceptions, like naming the fish that a song by Heart is named after, I didn't know a lot. Most importantly, the people on my table seemed nice enough.

On Saturday morning Rhiannon and her boyfriend came over for the official opening of the Arras Tunnel. Named after tunnels built by New Zealanders serving in World War One, it's more of an underpass than a tunnel. I live pretty much right next to it and I've watched it take shape since late 2012. The opening drew a big crowd, including a lot of dogs. There was even an impressive, if extremely noisy, brass band. I'm looking forward to the War Memorial park, above the underpass, being completed in time for the centennial Anzac Day commemoration. More green urban space is always welcome, and with all the media exposure the park is bound to get next April, it should look pretty good. I just hope they maintain it once the TV cameras have disappeared.

Later on Saturday I went to another work "do", this time at my colleague's house in Johnsonville. Oh man. It never gets any easier, does it? My mind is good at blocking out really unpleasant experiences, of which this was most certainly one, and I'm already starting to forget the gory details. I remember feeling so tense that my arms and legs felt like they'd been stretched. My colleague's husband was the kind of extroverted joke-a-minute know-it-all Kiwi bloke that I really can't stand. He asked me far too many questions. Of course everybody else in the room was in a long-term relationship, and that only added to my discomfort. I gathered my boss wasn't in his wife's good books; Friday was his daughter's birthday but he was too busy with work stuff to spend time with her. She dragged him kicking and screaming from the party before he got too drunk. She's been into the office once or twice; she seems like a really nice person. Once he'd gone, my boss sent us a group text - he clearly wasn't happy. Everybody else at the party seemed to feel sorry for him. He's a good bloke - "good value" is the term, I think. Because he drinks a lot, he's so much fun to be around, and his habit of smoking when he's had a few gives him about 500 extra mana points. It's so unfair that his wife makes him spend time with the kids occasionally instead of with his workmates. He's 45. When I finally got out of there, into the rain and into my car, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I'd been there over five hours. I'd much rather have spent that time at an airport.

Yesterday I was supposed to be going on a walk with the autism group but the weather was awful. Instead Isabel came over. She got changed in my bathroom, taking my flatmate by surprise. She took me to the Chocolate Fish café at Shelly Bay. In the evening I went tenpin bowling in Petone with two other blokes. They're really pleasant people to spend time with. I bowled a pleasing 153 and a disappointing 118. My record, by the way, is 191. I got that in Peterborough. It was the middle game of three; I scored 502 over the three games.

A good day

It was a good day at work today. I was busy getting manhole depth and invert level data from old drainage plans. You could see how all the plans joined onto each other, like a jigsaw puzzle. I didn't send a single email, or even (I think) read one. There wasn't much talk about office politics. It was pretty much perfect. For one day, it was almost like handling those earthquake claims again. Although then I could just come home, have the place to myself, and being a Thursday I probably would have played poker for a couple of hours. Life was better then. Tomorrow we're visiting our new premises in Petone for some kind of meet-and-greet, and then on Saturday one of my workmates is doing a drinks and nibbles thing which I'm obliged to go to. Before long I'll be driving to work (we might even car-pool, which has its up and downsides). I'll miss the convenience of the current location, which was a factor when I applied for and took the job. Of course they knew it was likely to change.

Earlier this week someone at work asked me if I was autistic. I could tell whether he was serious, maybe because I'm autistic. People have started doing some of the quizzes and puzzles in the paper during their tea break. One of those puzzles is a nine-letter word scramble, very much like a Countdown conundrum, except you have to find lots of shorter words too. Sometimes (but not always by any means) I'll spot the word in a second or two. Last week "trimester" appeared - I was surprised how quickly some people got it; it just isn't a word I have reason to use. We also had "breakable" once. I got that pretty quickly. When I suggested "babe" for one of the shorter words, someone said I probably don't get to use that word much in "real life".

On Sunday I met up with the woman whose parents know my parents and who does a similar line of work to me. We haven't got a lot else in common. She told me about the new wayfinding app called Waze, which she said was spelt with a zee. She called pohutukawa trees "pooties". She said someone's house was gay. Then, to top it all off, she said she voted National (I know, I said I wouldn't mention the election again). I can hear a certain song about potatoes and tomatoes coming on. But then, when I told her I'd booked a flight down to Christchurch at Labour weekend, she said she wanted to fly down at the same time, so we could then drive down to Geraldine together. Normally when I fly into Christchurch (which I try to avoid now), Mum and Dad pick me up, and the chat in the car is a really nice part of the whole trip. Oh well.

John Key wants to change the New Zealand flag. It wouldn't feature on my top five things to change, but I'm open to it. Although I like the silver fern emblem, I'm adamant that the Southern Cross should stay and the background shouldn't be black. Something like the above would be great. If it comes to a referendum I could see myself voting tactically for the status quo to avoid getting the white fern on a black background.

This will be one of my last posts. I've got so much to do if I ever want to get my life sorted out, and this blog has become too time-consuming.

Jobs and election picks

I've signed my new contract. I'm not too happy with my job if I'm honest. Today I was really wishing it was 2001 and I was sorting mail and heaving the sacks. Or even 2002, when my parents went to Australia for a few weeks, and I was at home by myself. We had a bumper crop of plums, far more than I could eat, so I bagged them up and sold them on the doorstep. On market day, when there was probably five times the normal level of foot traffic past our front door, I was a busy man.

It was great following Scotland's referendum today, seeing so many people united in a democratic process. There were some amazing photos - what a picturesque part of the world it is. The "no" side, with 55.3% of the vote, won a more decisive victory than I expected. Good luck to them now they've decided to stay with the UK. What really impressed me was the turnout - 84.6%. If only we could get that level of participation in our election tomorrow. (In 1984, NZ got a whopping 93.7% turnout when they ditched Rob Muldoon. In a FPP election, where many people's votes hardly matter, that figure is staggering. They must have really wanted him out.)

Last time I didn't do very well with my predictions. This time I can make one fairly confident prediction for election day: I won't be on TV. Otherwise, it's quite hard. It's been a crazy campaign, and some of the protagonists have been equally crazy. How will the huge rise in advance voting affect the result, if at all? How will the people of Christchurch vote? And so much hinges on whether the Conservatives make it. I've been wavering on this but I now think they'll fall just short. It could even be so close that they're over 5% on the night but drop under when the specials are counted (a scenario that's far more likely than the reverse).

Here are my picks:
National..............56 seats
Labour.................34
Green...................15
NZ First...............10
Internet Mana......2
Maori....................2
ACT.......................1
United Future.......1
Total..................121

I've been invited to an election party tomorrow night.

Update: It's 11:30pm and we've just had an earthquake - a 4-point-something.

All these votes but do they really matter?

I've had to sign a new contract for my transferred role. It's just as well I read it properly before signing it. There were some significant errors and omissions that have now been rectified. I think a lot of people these days are happy to just have a job and will sign anything.

I had my last Mandarin lesson tonight. Numbers on the course dropped steadily from sixteen at the beginning to just seven. Some people seemed to have unrealistic expectations. I knew it would be hard and it was. Our teacher is a polyglot: she's mastered four of the seven most widely spoken languages in China; that's a pretty unusual feat.

I went tenpin bowling again last Sunday. I'm better at that game (I hesitate to call it a sport) than I should be. I bowled a 135 and was heading for about the same in the second game but we got timed out two-thirds of the way through.

It’s a big week for voting. The general election in Sweden saw a strong showing from their far-right anti-immigration party. I’m not surprised. Today Fiji went to the polls for the first time since Bainimarama seized power in 2006. Their open-list PR system means there are hundreds of candidates to choose from. In an unusual system which has (a bit unfairly) been compared to Sudoku, voters have to select their chosen candidate’s allocated number from a grid of numbers that for some reason goes from 135 to 382. Then they get their fingers dipped in indelible ink so they can’t vote twice. Let’s hope it works for them. Tomorrow night (our time) the Scots vote on independence. They dropped the voting age to 16 for the referendum. A similar reduction has been talked about in NZ, from parties who are likely to benefit from it, but I think 18 is just fine. I look back at the 1997 UK general election. I was 17 at the time. Had I been able to vote, my thought processes would have extended to “jeez, these Tory buggers have been in power my whole life, let’s boot them out.” Not exactly an informed decision. Perhaps surprisingly, lowering the age might favour the “no” side, who I think will win. Then on Saturday we’ve got our election, and the likelihood is that neither my vote nor Kevin's (I got him enrolled) will stop the National government from running to a third term. I’ll give some predictions on Friday.

I watched a bit of the so-called Moment of Truth on Monday. Dotcom really brought out the big guns, didn’t he? Not that it did him much good. I must admit I found Glenn Greenwald’s comments on John Key hilariously accurate. After that, a lot of it went over my head, but unlike the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” brigade, this stuff does matter to me. I’ve gone out of my way, more than most, to be anonymous and invisible. Isn’t it funny that the word “invisibility” has five i’s?

Part of me wonders whether our election, in this backwater in the South Pacific, really matters at all when you have the Islamic State beheading two US journalists and now a British aid worker. How can you be so evil? It's beyond words.

I saw this picture today of an Atlas moth. Isn't it beautiful? They have a wingspan of up to ten inches. Such amazing creatures are a reminder that we live in a wonderful world. Why are some people hell-bent on wrecking it?

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".

I don't function at functions

I’m in Petone – I’ll be going bowling here in about three hours (I couldn’t face being stuck at home with Kevin). I’m parked on the Esplanade on a sunny Sunday afternoon – it’s quite peaceful here. I expect that will change in mid-October when I start spending half my waking hours here.

Last Friday we had our morning coffee at Gotham on Chews Lane. This is a weekly event. There seems to be an unwritten rule that you get something edible (which I never do) with your hot beverage. Then you’re supposed to nonchalantly waft your plastic when the barista says “eleven eighty”. I hadn’t been to Gotham before. Instead of getting a number on a stand when you order, you get an animal on a stand (except me – I got a Batman figure. It is Gotham after all). So when they come to deliver your drink, they get to say funny things like “hot chocolate on goat” or “trim mocha on giraffe”. I’ve seen playing cards used before, but this was a new one on me.

We had our so-called mid-year function after work on Friday. Oh god. Not fun at all. We started off playing pool. I’m very bad at pool, but at least you’re doing something and that makes it just about tolerable. Even if everyone else is talking among themselves in twos and threes and I’m not. That’s a situation I’ve learnt to accept – I’m extremely used to it. We then had pizza. I’m better at eating pizza than I am at playing pool. Then we went to some bar on Courtenay Place where they had the Beat Girls, who sang songs from groups like the Supremes and the Seekers. They were pretty good, but instead of concentrating on them, I had to listen to my boss talk about saving the world. When he’s sober he only wants to revolutionise it. He tried to flatter me by telling me how many applicants there were for my position. The figure had gone up by eleven since last time. Things got a whole lot worse when people in my group – well basically everyone except me – decided to dance. I didn’t drink too much – it’s never worth it for me. I survived the evening but it was hard work – at least as hard as an entire week in the office – but I don’t think I made a good impression and I’m not looking forward to work tomorrow.

After the night before, the last thing I wanted to do yesterday was see real people. But because I have no choice but to see a real person, I didn’t particularly mind spending most of the day helping Rhiannon and her boyfriend look for a new flat. I used my Navman for the first time in ages and it worked really well. We looked at seven places including one on my street. I don’t have a lot of friends, and most of the ones I do have are carless. That means I’m now spending more time driving with other people. Getting used to that can only be a good thing.

I’ve got three Mandarin lessons left, and I plan to attend them, but it’s a bit of a waste of time because I find it extremely hard to practise between lessons. If I carry on my classes it won’t be until I get my place to myself again.

I heard an interesting radio programme about Chinese mental health. It sounds like it's almost a taboo subject over there. I expect mental health problems in China to balloon in the coming decades, with the pressure on children and young adults to succeed in an increasingly Westernised society.

Last night I went to the Lux light festival on the waterfront. I think it was better for kids than for adults; there were a couple of interactive displays where you could make a lot of noise and things would happen. That meant there were a lot of screaming kids.

Julie only recently went to Napier. Things aren't working out and she wants to come back. Apparently she has to move out of her serviced apartment by Thursday, and this morning she said she wanted me to drive the 400-mile round trip to Napier to pick up her stuff, by Thursday, while she flies back to Wellington. Seriously.

The National Party have become decidedly less awful now that Judith Collins has resigned. I still won’t vote for them though. John Key has been very astute in the way he’s positioned himself and his party as the Normal Party. If you perceive yourself as a normal guy (or girl) with a normal job, a normal wife (or husband) and 2.4 normal kids, voting Normal, I mean National, is what you’re supposed to do. I’m sure they’ll get many thousands of votes from people who like to think of themselves as normal, even if they don’t agree with the party’s policies.

Update: Bowling was pretty good actually. Playing, rather than talking, took precedence. I bowled 132 (I think I finished with four consecutive spares) and 111. The other guys were all easy-going chaps and it looks like they'll make a regular thing of it.

Languaging

One other subject we talked about on Saturday was language, or the demise of it. It certainly seems that the level of people's language has been in decline. Pick up one of my great uncle's war letters and it's on a totally different plane from anything you see in your inbox (because who writes letters?) today. It's not as if he had much of an education, but he clearly made an effort. Back then, writing mattered beyond just getting your point across. I made the language-is-dying argument to Tom, and he replied that there are more words in the English language than ever before. That may be true, but a good many of them are along the lines of "selfie" and "chillax", and how many of the vast inventory of words do people actually use? How often do you hear a word like "diaphanous" these days? Or "cacophonous"? I'd bet good money that the "top" 1000 words in the English language make up a greater percentage of writing than they did even twenty years ago. It would be easy enough to work that out - perhaps I should ask the geeks at Language Log to do it. As for me, I haven't used enough big words in the 5½ years this blog has been running, and it's time I did something about that.

This isn't an easy week for me. We've already had several meetings about the upcoming move and other stuff. There has been much talk about organisational structures and I've found it hard to even remotely care. Today we met the CEO of the new company. He lost me at "we're gonna rock it out on October five." There has been a lot of braggadocio on show, especially from my boss and his boss, and I find all a bit nauseating. There is one boss I have a lot of respect for - the guy who manages all the field workers. He knows the drainage networks like the back of his hand, and does a great job of training the field workers, judging by the quality of the survey data. I hope that the move allows them to keep that up, as I said in the brief submission I made yesterday. I also made the obvious point about the inconvenience and potential cost of transport and possibly parking. It'll take some adjustment. I'll miss the propinquity of work to home, and the plethora of gastronomic establishments I currently have at my disposal when borborygmus arises. On Friday we've got our mid-winter party after work. I wonder how that will pan out. It has the potential to be quite stressful. At least when I get home it'll be the weekend and I'll be able to relax. Oh wait...

I saw my counsellor last week for the first time in ages. In our previous session she used "language" as a verb, as she'd done many times before. "Do you like the way I'm languaging this?" I'd let her off all those other times - she's a very helpful counsellor - but I was finally languaged out and I pulled her up on it. Last week there was no languaging, and we agreed upon a goal for me, to be working for myself by 1st January 2016. It's a good goal, because I fear I'll be somnambulating through life as long as I work for someone else. We talked about coming off the Efexor last December - that was actually a pretty big deal, and even though the withdrawal symptoms were awful, it was worth it.

National unveiled their housing policy at the weekend. It might increase the supply of homes in Auckland, where things have gone completely nuts, but it'll definitely increase demand, and any policy that does that is crazy. If it was up to me I'd bring in a capital gains tax, as Labour plan to do, and I wouldn't make the family home exempt. Why should it matter whether you own a single property worth $2 million, or if that sum includes your Pauanui bach and a couple of rentals? Under my system, your tax rate would reduce the longer you own the property, reaching zero after ten or fifteen years.

I've got my Chinese class tomorrow. In last week's lesson we learnt how to say where things (like the bank or the cinema) are, and where you come from. We learnt a few words for countries, such as France which is "Fă guó". Someone asked if that's because it sounds like "foie gras"!

Kevin was in some pain yesterday, as a result of the operation rather than the fistula itself. I really do hope he's sorted out now. Not being sorted can mean not being able to go the toilet, which doesn't bear thinking about.

It's the economy, stupid

Yesterday the southerly continued to rip through Wellington, and it kept me inside for most of the day. Inside isn't a place I like to be on a Saturday. I did however catch up with the ex-facilitator of the Wellington autism group (who I saw in Auckland last month) and her husband. They were down for Beervana. We met at Joe's Garage on Tory Street, and covered a few conversation topics in a fairly short space of time. One of them was my flatmate. He is effectively a boarder. As they say these days, I'm over it all. I count down the weekends, because they're the most exhausting part of the week, and also because 17 is a manageable number. On Wednesday Kevin had what I hope is his last operation on his bum. He doesn't seem to be in pain. He was given a lot of medication after the op, and when I got home from work on Thursday there was all manner of lotions and creams and sprays and pills, in just about every corner of the kitchen and lounge. He'd had medicines lying around for months, but I'd tolerated that, probably because I'm quite a tolerant person. But the increased volume of them was more than I could handle. "I see you've got your drugs lying all over the place, like there, there, there, and [pointing to the couch] there." "Uh-huh, yeah." Have you got Asperger's? It's OK, you can tell me. "Um, do you mind not having your drugs everywhere?" He took all the medication downstairs, including the stuff that was there before.

We also talked about property ownership. So far for me, it hasn't been what it was cracked up to be. In fact I associate buying this place with "bad", because I had quite bad depression around the time I bought it, and had to leave my well-paying role almost the moment I got my hands on the keys. That bad stuff had little to do with the property purchase, but it's hard for the mind to break the connection. It's a bit like my brother's attitude towards New Zealand: bad things happened while he was here, none of which were related to NZ, but he still doesn't want to set foot in the country ever again. Of course in my case more bad stuff has happened since early 2012 - the earthquake assessment, more depression, and a difficult-to-handle flatmate - none of which has helped. Perhaps the hardest thing for me about owning a property has been the added pressure of earning an income. Certain types of people can expect to earn an income that heads steadily northwards, or at the very least, northeast. I'm not one of those people. In 2009 I earned a good salary, then the following year my biggest source of income was online poker. In 2011 I was back to earning good money, almost half of which disappeared for the next two years. If I couldn't eat it, I wasn't buying it. This year has seen an uptick again, thanks also to Kevin, but I'm still earning far less than I was in '09 and '11, and it's anyone's guess what will happen next. That unpredictability doesn't lend itself to paying off a mortgage. Why can't I be like "normal" people and climb the career ladder? That's pretty simple, and I've said it before. Relationships, teamwork, all that stuff is far from innate to me. It wasn't obvious to me in that beanbag relay race when I was five - I had to learn what you were supposed to do - and it still isn't obvious now. And it's absolutely crucial to one's success in the workplace (and even wanting to succeed in the workplace). Joining a new organisation is always the same for me. I can wing it for a while, then it just gets too hard. That's what makes a temp job so good. You're hired to perform a specific task - there's no guesswork - and you're not expected to do any of that networking crap because you won't be there long enough.

We also talked about the economic shift that took place in the early eighties. In New Zealand the word for this was Rogernomics, after Roger Douglas, but similar policy changes took place all over the developed world. It's funny that the subject of phones came up. In the UK until the eighties, everyone had the same rotary BT phone. If you were lucky, you got to choose the colour. We had a brown one. Actually nobody really had a phone, because it remained the property of BT, which was privatised under Thatcher in 1984. I read a really good book which touched on the economic reforms of the 1980s, as well as homelessness, love and depression. Written by Elliott Perlman and based in Melbourne, it's simply called Three Dollars. At some point in the eighties, stock markets became mainstream and the ups and downs were reported on news bulletins. (The woman in the story thought this was funny - why should I care? - and came up with her own All Ordinaries index for recording the ups and downs in her mood.) In the eighties, money changed from being simply a means of exchange to a thing to have in itself, even a way of measuring self-worth. Jeez, if my salary isn't going up in real terms year after year, I must be a failure. How and why did that happen? It's an interesting question, because I don't think it's good that it happened, even if there were clear benefits to the new economic environment like being able to choose your phone, and getting your line installed much faster in a competitive market.

We did talk about the stock market a bit. It was good to talk to someone who understood concepts like over-diversification. When my gran died, she had a managed portfolio of shares. From memory she had shares in exactly fifty companies. As I tried to explain to Dad, that made no sense at all. You might as well invest in a tracker fund.

Perhaps because of the difficulties I face in keeping a well-paid career job (which are mitigated to some extent by my ability to not piss people off), I've sometimes found it hard to warm to people who do manage to climb the rungs of the corporate ladder. People who do something a bit different often seem easier for me to get along with. Maybe that's how I ended up with Kevin.

RPG - not my cup of tea

Yesterday I had that RPG session, which I only took part in because of my flatmate. Any excuse to get out of here for a few hours. I enjoyed it about as much as I expected to. There were some really uncomfortable bits which involved me having to talk and try to disguise the fact that I had no frigging clue what was going on. I do get the appeal of RPGs, they just don't appeal to me. Different strokes for different folks. Tracy, the "game master", had spent many an hour preparing for the afternoon, and had a kind of closed-off booth set up at the end of the table with a laptop and rule sheets and books; it all seemed completely nuts. When we slew the minotaur, it was all over. We didn't go far beyond the allotted five hours, which was a relief.

By the end of the RPG I'd had more than enough, but Tom and one of the others had arranged more games, with pizza, at someone's flat near the railway station. I was persuaded to drive there, this "someone" turned out to be a nice bloke, the we played two games that were far more enjoyable to me: Tsuro and Phase 10. For Tsuro, the rules stated that the oldest player starts. Oh great. I might as well have been eighty. I hadn't played Phase 10 before, and some of its rules could do with a tweak if you ask me (I think all runs should have to be of the same colour), but at least I understood it, and I've always liked rummy-type games. There were a few aspies there, so some of the conversation was, um, interesting, but all in all it wasn't a bad evening.

My flatmate really is a lazy bugger. To give you some idea of how lazy he his, he doesn't bother eating the bottom 5% (at least) of the insides of any food container. That probably shouldn't annoy me as much as it does, but if you can't even be arsed to scrape out a jam jar, it can't be a good sign. What's more, recycling is a foreign concept to him. That would involve actually rinsing out the jar and putting it in the recycling bag for me to put in one of the bins downstairs. Way too much effort.

I sent my boss an email, basically asking for more direction. He's now pencilled in two hour-long sessions a week with me. He's done something similar with my team-mates. I'm glad that my email has resulted in (I hope) positive change.

I saw a French film - Folies Bergère - at the Embassy today. I enjoyed it from start to finish, but the scene that stood out for me was the father watching his son give his acrobatic performance - that was a beautiful moment.

It's beyond me

The news we were all expecting was confirmed today: we won't be Council employees for much longer; instead we'll be working for the water management company whose name is as yet unknown. It's possible, but unlikely, that we'll stay in our current office. In all likelihood we'll be shifting to Petone, probably before the end of the year. I don't mind Petone at all, but it will still mean some added hassle and expense.

Work could be better. Or could it? I don't think I'll ever properly fit in, no matter where I work, unless it's by myself. Only a relatively small percentage of being at work, in an office, is actually doing work. The rest is all that people-related and politics-related and system-related stuff that I'm really bad at (and eventually, being bad at that stuff impacts on your work too, as you have less and less of a clue of what's happening). I'd say the split at my workplace is 40:60 in favour of the "other" stuff. My team-mate told me about her time at Saab (cars) in the UK, where it wasn't far off 10:90 by the sound of things. It's no wonder they went under. A shame, because they made nice-looking cars (I'm a bit of girl when it comes to cars: I'm much more interested in what they look like than how they perform.)

On Tuesday I went out into the field. It was a great day for it. I went with a young Czech woman who is fairly new to the Council, to try to find out how the stormwater network connected in parts of Berhampore and Island Bay. She was so good, and I felt completely hopeless. It's not easy (for me at least) to figure out what connects to where, when you have so many tiny channels that often give just a trickle of water, if that. It gave me some appreciation for why our data on open channels is so patchy.

I had my second Chinese lesson last night. It isn't getting any easier. In some ways it's a great language. I liken it a bit to Lego: to make a sentence you just connect the blocks you need, without having to add any funny embellishments first, and you can easily change a sentence by rearranging the blocks and maybe changing one or two, in a perfectly logical way. But obtaining the necessary blocks in the first place is really, really hard. As I said here, Chinese words have no "shape" to them; they're just sounds. We're a long way from learning the characters, which is a monumental task. Here's a brilliant article, written in the early nineties, explaining why Chinese is so damn hard. All the apps and clever programs that have been created since then probably haven't changed the situation all that much.

Last Saturday I went to Greytown in the Wairarapa with Martin, to pick up his drum kit. It was wet and windy, and I had to watch what I was doing as I went over the Rimutakas, especially on the way back. Then on Sunday I helped Tom take some electronic gadgetry off to the tip. He's going to Japan on the 20th, for a year, and is understandably excited. He applied for an English teaching programme at the start of the year and got put on a waiting list. This last-minute acceptance came out of the blue; he'll resume his PhD when he gets back.

With Tom gone, our fortnightly board games sessions won't be the same, if they happen at all. On Monday we seemed to spend more time eating cake than playing games, not that I minded one bit. The cake (in the shape of a Tardis), and ice cream and mousse and raspberry coulis (?), was for Tracy's 30th birthday, which is actually today. As for the games, we first played a printed game where you had to hop from one square to another, with certain restraints that could be relaxed if you had a special power, and collect all the gold before your health level reached zero. Or something like that. I've played a lot of games like this now. I was much more a fan of the second game, What's My Word? (A word game, yay!) Both players (or in our game, teams) have to pick a six-letter word, and take it in turns to guess certain parts of the word (e.g. the first three letters, or the middle four), and those parts have to be words themselves. You get 25 points for a correct letter in the wrong place, or 100 points if it's in the right place. The points system is what makes the game so good: the method of scoring also provides vital clues for guessing the word. Anyway Tracy and Tom's word was SLUICE, and Tracy's mum and I managed to deduce it. I picked INVOKE for our team, and they got it too, although I think we got more points overall. (Here's a review of the game - I'm enormously envious of the bloke who wrote it.)

On Saturday Tracy's organising an RPG from 1pm to 6pm (I bet it goes longer) and I foolishly said I'd play. I think there will be six of us. She's put a lot of effort into it and I'll have to spend some time figuring out how my character "works" tomorrow night, in advance of the game or battle or scenario or whatever I should be calling it. It sounds like hard work. Why oh why can't I play "What's My Word?" instead, over the best of 19 games? Is this what they call a first-world problem?

After ten years, a space probe has come within quacking distance of a rubber-duck-shaped comet. I have no idea how. Apparently the spacecraft will stay at that distance, rather than just drifting away again, and will analyse material from the comet that will help understand how planets in the Solar System were formed. It's all way beyond me I'm afraid. As I think this blog might be in future.

Mei guan xi

The last few days have reinforced my belief that I'll need to work for myself eventually. Anything that has brought me even a modicum of success has been something I've done by myself, and now that I'm in my mid-thirties, I can't see that pattern suddenly changing. Plus if I'm semi-serious about ever living with other people for any length of time, I don't think I'll be able to work with other people too.

My percussion course unfortunately got cancelled due to low numbers, so I decided to so something different. I enrolled for a course in Mandarin. I had my first lesson last night. My first impression: it's hard. You've got those all-important tones to negotiate, but the minute you try and form a basic sentence, all those tones go out the window. It's nothing like anything I've attempted before. The words don't feel like words at all, but just sounds, which means there's little to get a handle on. Compare Chinese to Indonesian, where the words for "open" and "closed" are "buka" and "tutup" respectively. Now I look at "buka" and think of "bocca" which is Italian for mouth, and imagine a wide-open mouth. As for "tutup", that reminds me of "shut up", hence closed. When you're trying to learn Chinese, those kinds of memory aids are far harder to come up with. And let's face it, Mandarin is not the prettiest of languages. With all its monosyllables, it hardly flows like, say, French or Italian. The Italian word for beetroot is "barbabietola", which with those three B's surrounding a rolled R, is a pleasure to say. The same goes for "pomodoro" (tomato), and you can see all those four O's lined up like four big juicy Italian tomatoes. In Mandarin, nothing on the same planet as those two words exists. But in case you think I'm bagging Chinese, it does have some really nice features. Word order seems extremely sensible to me. The word for "understand" is "ming bai" (I can't get the tone markings easily) which literally means "bright white". How great is that? A relationship is "guan xi" (Chinese life is all about your guan xi), and to say something doesn't matter, you say "mei guan xi", which means "no relationship". Makes sense, doesn't it? It's also a reminder, in case I needed it, that if you're not in a relationship, you don't really matter. I'm already looking forward to lesson two. (I'll try and get on the Batucada drumming course.)

I spoke to Mum, Dad and my brother on Monday night. Mum and Dad had just got back from their amazing Nordic cruise. While they were away they had an offer on their third UK property accepted. They're turning into tycoons. My brother passed his SAS course, but frankly (after what happened last year) I was just glad he got back in one piece, with only a few bruises and cuts to his hands. I still have no real idea of what he went through. How my little brother does it I don't know.

It's almost two weeks since I went to Auckland on a shiny new plane. On Saturday I went to the autism group, where the turnout was relatively low. It was great to see the facilitators and some of the old faces, as well as new ones. The topic, which people talk about in turn at the start of the session, was the pros and cons of 21st-century life. Gosh, where do you start with that one? Firing up the Auckland Transport app on your smart phone at 11pm and getting on the right bus with 30 seconds to spare, through to people not talking to each other because they're glued to their smart phones. The worst part of living the 21st century, in my opinion, is that the amount of hatred and cruelty in the world is the same as it was in the 20th, if the events of the last few weeks are anything to go by. On Sunday I saw Bazza in Papakura, and couldn't wait to leave his house with the unshuttable loo door and a combination of two strong smells: disinfectant and Bazza. He bought me a kebab meal which didn't quite do it for me, to put it mildly. (Bazza still plays tennis. He recently chipped in $1000 to help buy a defibrillator, after someone from an opposing team collapsed and died during an interclub match.) On Monday I met Richard at the very pleasant Pukeko café in Parnell. Richard had been sick with flu and it was good of him to catch up with me at all. I saw three movies: What We Do in the Shadows (a Wellington-based comedy vampire movie that wouldn't have worked at all if it was Auckland-based), The Lady From Shanghai (a slightly weird film noir from 1947 with a dramatic ending; it was part of the film festival) and The Armstrong Lie (also part of the festival, this was a fantastic documentary I thought). I didn't see everyone I'd hope to. I couldn't contact Mandy at all. Brendan lives near Albany and meeting up just got too hard; I had to make do with a 70-minute phone conversation which he dominated with his conspiracy theories on both Malaysia Airlines disasters. On Tuesday I caught up with the former facilitator of the Wellington autism group. We met at Zarbo in Newmarket. I had a great meal there, including a small piece of a gigantic salmon. She then took me to visit her house in Titirangi. They've done a lot of work on the property, especially the garden which, with its stream running through it, really makes the place. The Auckland property market has gone crazy in the 2½ years since they bought the house and its value has increased accordingly. She then drove me to the airport - nobody had ever done that for me in Auckland before, so I felt quite privileged.

The Glasgow Commonwealth games is in full swing. I'm not watching any of it. I was here for the Auckland games in 1990; it was all very exciting and a very big deal. I still remember the "This Is the Moment" official song. Some people have asked what the point of the Commonwealth Games is any more - "you might as well have a games for countries that begin with P" - and I kind of see that point. The argument I don't get though, is "the standard isn't as high as the Olympics, so it's crap and not worth watching." I've seen tennis matches between players ranked well into three figures and been totally captivated. The corollary of that argument is that if the best players are there, it must be worth watching. The Indian Premier League has many of the world's best cricketers, but to my mind it's manufactured crap and I can't see why you'd want to watch it.

I need some elixir

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

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

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

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

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

Getting oriented

My new(ish) job, in theory, is fascinating: the drainage networks represent a whole new underground world. In practice though, I wondered why the hell I bothered turning up today.

Yesterday was interesting. I had my "orientation" at work. You'd think I might have had it sooner - I've been there three months, although some people had been there a lot longer. In the morning we had our introductions, with a distinct Maori theme. Being Maori Language Week might have had something to do with that. To my shame I know very few Maori words. I can count up to twenty in (let me think) eight languages, but Maori isn't one of them. We played a sort of game where each of us, in turn, had to say something we hadn't done. Everyone in the group who had done that thing then gave that person a lolly from a pile. I said that I'd never been to America and got ten lollies - a little over half the group. A few eminent people in the Council, including the CEO, then spoke. The CEO wasn't exactly over the moon with Tuesday's decision to decline the Basin Reserve flyover. I was hoping to see the Mayor but I think she was away. We got to look at some old pictures of the city and play "guess where this is". I could have looked at those photos for hours, and wouldn't mind having a couple on my walls at home.

After lunch (and the food was good) we went on an excursion, taking in WREMO (the emergency management office), the Botanic Gardens (what a peaceful place to work), the Archives (I'd be close to my element working there) and the ASB Sports Centre in Kilbirnie (where I found out that I'm really bad at basketball shooting). Our guide was great - he's been with the Council for many years, having started at Archives, and knew everything that was worth knowing about Wellington. I asked him the origin of a street name and he quickly gave me the answer. So all in all, it was a good day.

I haven't got the time or energy to write about my Auckland trip. Perhaps I'll manage that at the weekend.

In my face

It's the weekend, but so what? I don't really want to see anyone this weekend, not even Kevin. Especially not Kevin. It wasn't long ago that some of my weekends were people-free, if you don't count the market, and I was fairly happy with that. Now there's someone around, and in my face, all the bloody time.

Yesterday I had a performance review at work. I didn't think I'd have one so soon. I did a lot better than I expected; I haven't produced or achieved anything there for weeks, but my boss didn't seem to care that much.

We're getting the wobbles here in Wellington again. Two earthquakes yesterday (although I didn't feel the first one) and two others that I've felt in recent weeks.

Tomorrow I'll be collecting for Autism NZ for three hours at the new(ish) Countdown at the end of my street.

The group stage of the World Cup has been completed; I don't think anyone can complain about a lack of excitement. The States surprised many by making it out of a tough group. Australia didn't win any games but won plenty of friends with the way they played (and scored one of the best goals). It's funny how American and Australian sporting teams (and fans) can be almost intolerable in the events they excel at, but very endearing in sports like football. Some of the images from the match between the USA and Ghana were of pure joy.
Uruguay also made it, as one of three teams to qualify despite losing their opening game. They'll have to play the rest of the tournament without Luis Suarez, who got a well-deserved ban that could easily have been longer. I couldn't believe Uruguay's population was only 3.4 million - that's less than New Zealand.
The football has been excellent with none of the ball-related problems that dogged the last World Cup in South Africa. The refereeing could have been better, but offsides are quite hard to get right and until they use technology to make those decisions, game-changing mistakes will be made.
I hope the knockout stage is as good as the group stage, and please not too many penalty shoot-outs (more about them in my next post).

My boss, and some World Cup crackers

It was good to go on a training course last Monday and Tuesday, because it meant I was busy. The main thing I learnt was how much there is to learn. The program we use has capabilities that seem almost endless.
My boss is one of those people who sends emails at 2:46 am, complains (boasts?) that he didn't get to bed till four, chain-drinks coffee all day, and always has several dozen urgent unread emails on his phone. I'm not impressed, nor am I particularly sympathetic. There are other people in the office, including me, who are willing to help him, but other people are all muppets. He's a smart guy, but he's deluded about his own importance and that of his work. (As I wrote last year, perhaps a certain level of delusion is healthy.)

Yesterday I took Julie to have a look at some apartments. She needs to get out of that rest home in Newtown that she's in now. It's a pretty awful place and it has a rather creepy black Siamese cat called Speep, which isn't a very nice name. After looking at the apartments, which I don't think Julie was interested in, we had a coffee. Two songs from my favourite album came on in quick succession, one on my car radio and one in the café, but Julie talked all the time, dammit, about this or that person who said this or that. I told Julie that rehashing all of that isn't helping anyone.

The World Cup kicked off on Friday amid plenty of negativity and cynicism. Brazil won the opening game, but were given a helping hand by the man in the middle, succinctly dubbed Referinho after the game. It wasn't a good look. I saw the FIFA "fair play" flag and thought, yeah right. But since then we've been treated to some remarkably open and exciting football, with goals coming at the breathless rate of 3½ a game. Half the teams have now played their first match, and all but two of them (Cameroon and Greece) have scored. Unusually every game has had a winner, and even more unusually, half those eight winners came back from a goal down. I've watched three games so far. Holland's 5-1 win over defending champions Spain was a joy to watch, not that I've got anything against the Spanish. Towards the end I was willing Robben, who seemed to be everywhere on the pitch, to add even more goals. Costa Rica sprung a surprise with their well-deserved 3-1 win over Uruguay this morning. Then, in the same group, England lost 2-1 to Italy despite (I thought) playing pretty well in an excellent game. The Costa Rica result doesn't help England's task in getting out of their group; they may well have to win their next two games. Kevin watched part of the England–Italy game; he regaled me with tales of his exploits on the football pitch - this surprised me because I find it hard to imagine him doing anything remotely sporty. I must say I really like the "vanishing spray" the referee uses for free kicks. It keeps the defensive wall the required ten yards from the ball, and stops the attacking side from stealing ground. A very simple and effective innovation.

It'll be interesting to see the teams from the bottom half of the draw over the next three days. Bosnia anyone? How about Iran (who, I seem to remember, beat the USA one time)? In fact I just saw this on Wikipedia about that match in 1998:

They crushed the united states in a stunning second goal, ending the tyrant rain with 2-1 loss. The Iran vs US game was predicted by Max Lowsen II (First King of Camelot) as being the "Da Best Goal". Er, what?

Last night I spoke to my parents. It was Mum's 65th birthday. They seem to be enjoying themselves; they're going to France on Tuesday.

Limbo land - and the NHS

Work is starting to get a little frustrating. My boss says he'll come over in ten minutes to discuss something or other, but it always ends up being at least an hour, and then he'll only spend a few minutes with me before attending some vital meeting. Most of the time I'm left in limbo land. I am getting to know about the drainage networks, but as for actually using our systems to do work relating to the networks, I feel almost completely clueless. And most importantly, I'm spending too much time doing bugger all. In my contract it says my salary might be negotiable after three months. Well I'm half-way there already, and if I ask for a raise in another six weeks they'll think I'm having a laugh. The good news is that I'm going on a two-day course next week, which may (or may not) help me understand one of the programs we use.

During one of my "bugger all" periods at work this morning I read this article on the Guardian site. It's an absolute must-read. The bloke who wrote it (and a book) is the same age as my grandfather (Dad's dad) would be if he were still around. The article illustrates what a difference the NHS has made to millions of people in the UK, from someone who remembers all too vividly what life was like before it: if you became seriously ill and couldn't afford health care, you died. The NHS isn't perfect, but the proposed alternative, where people lucky enough to have money can effectively jump the queue, is surely a huge leap backwards.

Mum and Dad left Christchurch yesterday morning on their eleven-week voyage; alright for some. They'll be taking in the UK and France, and are also going on a Nordic cruise. They're currently on a stopover in Singapore. I emailed the Guardian article to him - I knew he'd be interested - but told him not to read it yet because it's too depressing.

When I walked home this evening I realised I didn't want to go home (which no longer feels like home) but didn't want to be at work either. I was quite happy being in limbo land.

Exhausted...

I'm still feeling the effects of Saturday's climb, especially in my calf muscles.

We had our fortnightly "big team" meeting today. It took a surprise turn when all the managers left to enable everybody else to talk about them. "He's a great manager but a poor leader." That kind of thing. One woman who attended the meeting is some sort of management guru. She was writing frantically during the meeting. She splits her life evenly between Sydney and Wellington, crossing the Tasman every other week. For some reason I got chatting to her. She said she once had a mild heart attack and her blood pressure was found to be 230/130. Whoa. At that point her commutes between Australia and NZ became fortnightly instead of weekly. (Talking of Australia, after last week's budget - where in my opinion they made the right amount of cuts in all the wrong places - I'm glad I don't live there.)

After work today I went to the Malaysian place in the Left Bank arcade and had a nasi kampung with an omelette on top. That filled me up. On the TV they were showing an athletics meeting from Shanghai. While the 5000 metres was taking place, an enormous Russian bloke threw his last attempt at the javelin. It soared out to 82½ metres, only enough for fifth place, but he was clearly enjoying just being there. I could have sat there watching the athletics all evening, but instead I attended the autism group. I don't know how much longer I'll keep that up.

I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this blog up either. I've run out of things to say and ways to say them and I'm tired.

Getting away

I'll try and make this quick. I still have tricky days, and although the new job is far more interesting than the old one, it's amazing how much the change in job hasn't solved. Although this week I've had a chat to someone who has given me an idea (or rather the impetus to pursue an idea).

I'd like to go away. Properly away. It's four years since I last did that. I'm considering going to New Caledonia, although I'll need to wait till I have enough leave. I have been there before - in December 1986 - and can't remember much about it other than the searing heat. That was on the way to New Zealand - an incredible journey for a small kid. Our UTA jumbo jet had a name - "Big Boss" - and we stopped in Bahrain, Muscat, Colombo, Singapore and Jakarta at some point on either the outward or return trip. In those days you had to refuel much more often. I remember looking out the window of the plane to the Australian desert that never seemed to end. Occasionally you'd see a road, a car, some sign of life. Anyway, Phil has been giving me advice on what to see (and how and when) if I do go to New Caledonia.

Last weekend Kevin went to see his parents (or "folks") in Masterton so I decided to invite Tom, Rhiannon and her boyfriend over on Saturday. Not a bad evening (lots of good food), but I couldn't totally relax. Too much talk of computer games and Game of Thrones-type TV series. Apparently I'm unusual in ever going to the cinema by myself. I don't logically get why going to the cinema alone is any weirder than going to McDonald's alone. On Sunday I walked up Mount Vic and went to my cousin's place for dinner.

Work is fine. On Tuesday I went on a traffic control course at the Brooklyn tip, even though most of it wasn't relevant to me. A lot of the people on the course were in their early twenties, and their attitude to the course made for an "interesting" day. In my lunch break I finally figured out how to set the clock in my car - it only took me just short of four years (I'd got used to adding or subtracting the right number of hours and minutes but it had recently started to annoy me) - and I don't even know which buttons I pressed. Talking of clocks, at 1pm today, quite by accident, I saw the animated clock in the Old Bank Arcade do its thing. I had no idea what would happen, and I was quite impressed.

On Saturday I'm going on a difficult tramp (for me) in the Tararuas - it's scheduled to take ten hours and at this point I'm wondering how I'll survive. If I do make it I'll put up some photos in my next post.

Maps and work

Maps. I've always quite liked staring at them, and get to do that quite a lot at work. I'm supposed to be focusing on pipes and nodes, but it's hard not be distracted by roads and buildings. As well as digital maps, I sometimes get to look at physical plans that were drawn in the sixties and have been added to over the years; the distances on the plans are now a mish-mash of feet and metres, and luckily I'm conversant in both. For all my enthusiasm for maps (I'd like to get an old map to put on my wall) I don't think I'm especially good at reading them.

Work is going OK for now. On Monday morning I attended a meeting chaired by the head of department, the swarthy bloke who spoke French in my second interview and has a tan that you can't naturally acquire in Wellington. It was an hour and a quarter of high-level conceptual stuff; I couldn't see how any of it pertained to me. A woman in my team (she's been there a while) complained that nothing in the meeting was of relevance to her.

My background ("he's an actuary") has come up quite a bit. I was never actually an actuary and it's years since I last did anything remotely actuarial. The last exam I passed was in 2008 and it feels longer ago than that. I really wish they'd quit using that A-word.

Councils are notorious for their inefficiency and I've already seen several pieces of evidence that Wellington is no different. Less work seems to get done than people say gets done. Yesterday they needed to get Push and Pull door stickers and they had to be authenticated or some such bollocks. I suggested that someone visit the $2 shop.

Despite the new job, I still feel that I'm drifting through life (at best) with no maps or plans.

I called Birmingham's last-gasp draw a "great escape" because it kept them in the division, but really for those who follow football, it is one big escape, win, lose or draw. I get that need for escapism - I certainly have it myself. Football also gives you a sense of identity, something I've always struggled with.

Going down...

Eight days in the job. Getting to know quite a bit about pipes. Compared to people, pipes aren't too bad. They had drinks after work today. I didn't want to be there but I didn't want to be at home either. After work I had that sinking feeling. The end of the week, but weekends are hard work. I was wishing I was still back in Auckland doing some kind of temporary work where I could relax and not face the impossible task of building a rapport with my workmates. Did I mention that my job isn't permanent? It's a two-year contract. Two years feels like an eternity. The money is better - that's something - and the work is interesting, but there's all that other stuff. And I'm staring at a blank calendar with nothing to look forward to.

On Monday I got a letter from the apartment next door about excessive noise, both in Kevin's room and in the lounge. For me, that's actually a good thing - it gives me more ammo when asking Kevin to turn down (or off) the bloody TV. It's the second note I've had from the people next door.

That evening I played board games with Tom and Tracy. We played two games of Qwirkle which involves placing rows of tiles with matching shapes or colours in a similar fashion to playing words in Scrabble. It was a nice simple game, and I felt I had a reasonable handle on it. (I won the first game and came second in the other.) Then Tracy's mum joined us for a co-operative card game called Hanabi. Unlike any card game you've ever played (except Indian poker if you've ever tried that), you see everybody's cards except your own. Interesting concept certainly.

My new employers have come up with a new "logo". It's terrible. For a start it isn't a logo at all. It's text on a yellow background. Wellington is full of creative people; I don't see any creativity in this block of text.

Much debate on the Guardian website after the execution of Clayton Lockett. He was injected with a previously untried cocktail of lethal drugs, and only died 43 minutes later from a heart attack. I'm against the death penalty. Yes, some people commit such heinous acts that you wish they could be wiped off the face of the earth, but by killing a convicted killer, it starts to make you as bad as them - two wrongs don't make a right. There's little evidence to suggest that capital punishment reduces murder rates. Plus there's always the chance that you'll execute someone who was wrongly convicted. And nobody, no matter what they did, deserves to die slowly in agonising pain.

Also from the Guardian, here's a rather alarming article about prenatal screening for autism. Having met many warm, kind, intelligent people who happen to be on the spectrum, the idea that their very existence could be denied as a result of a positive blood test is repugnant.

I've written several times on the demise of sport as we know it. Most popular sport these days is like fast food, and it's amazing how people just mop it up. They announced this morning that rugby will soon feature a super eighteen. Yes! An upsized competition. Bigger is better. Then there's English football where the top players are paid obscene amounts and fans happily part with a large chunk of their own wages to see them play. As more and more money flows to the top of the game, some of the smaller clubs are struggling to stay afloat. One of these (and they aren't even that small) is "my team" Birmingham City, who are dicing with relegation to the third division (which is now called League One - go figure) for the first time since 1995. They've lost their last five games, and have only won two of 23 home games all season! Tomorrow night they travel to Bolton in their final game. They could draw and stay up on goal difference, or if they're really unlucky, they could win and still go down. It's hard to predict results on the last day (some teams have nothing to play for so you don't know what sort of side they'll put out or how they'll approach the game) but I reckon Blues are marginally odds-on to be relegated.