Flat

Nothing really matters any more. There are very few ups and downs; everything is flat. I've got a job interview on Friday and I should feel excited, determined, nervous, something, but I'm struggling to feel anything. It's like I've disappeared down an emotional black hole. I discussed this with my counsellor last week; she said it's probably a combination of my medication and a lack of stimulation from other people.

In other news, my brother arrived in Christchurch this morning and I spoke to him about an hour ago. I don't yet know whether I'll fly down there or vice versa.

Latest News II (still can't think of a proper title)

In other news I'll be doing some maths tuition, starting next week. I'll have to go to Remuera for this, so I increased my hourly rate from $30 (which I'd charge anyone who lived nearby) to $35 to compensate. I'll be helping (I hope) a 16-year-old girl with her algebra.

It's not a lot of money but it all helps. I'm still trying to get something more substantial but it isn't getting any easier. The headline in the Herald jobs section on Wednesday was "career paths in a state of flux". I'm in a state of flux. As in, for flux sake give me a job!

My brother is scheduled to arrive in the country on Wednesday. I've texted and emailed him but have had no reply. Mum and had haven't heard from him either. I still don't know whether I'll go down south to meet up with him or if he'll fly up here. Whatever, we have a horrible knack of missing each other and I'd hate that to happen again.

Only an hour and a half ago I got a text from Mandy, one of my old colleagues and my only real friend from my last job. She said she's quitting her job next week and hasn't yet told her boss. Maybe she wasn't serious (I tried calling her but got no answer) but it seems everybody I know has either exited via the revolving door for the last time or is making hasty progress in that direction. I feel sorry for Mandy. Like me, she was a pre-2006 recruit in the actuarial department, so she pre-dates the period when they started giving new students some clue about what they were actually doing. She's been struggling with the exams, but worst of all she's had a number of personal problems to contend with. I must catch up with her next week.

Finally I'm about to play tennis for the first time in months. Someone from the club rang me yesterday, asking for some contact details but also mentioning Sunday doubles, or as she called it, dubs. Hmmm.

Latest news I (can't think of a proper title)

Today would have been Emma's 29th birthday. Richard is spending the weekend with her family in Kaitaia. It will be a sad time for them all, obviously, but also an opportunity to remember an amazing person.

Richard and I had quite a long chat on the phone yesterday. We're now seriously considering the possibility of flatting together. Since we get on well, and he has too many people in his living arrangement while I have too few, it would make logical sense. We might have to wait until we get our work situations sorted, whenever that happens. Richard decided that the BNZ job wasn't for him; from what I know of him, and given how I would feel in that environment, I'm almost certain he made the right decision.

When I told my counsellor that I was thinking of working in mental health, she suggested that I become a volunteer counsellor for Lifeline. They recruit a new bunch of volunteers every six months, and the deadline to apply for the latest course happened to be only a couple of days away. I filled in their application form, giving various gory details of my experiences with depression and isolation, and had to physically hand the form in at their office in Greenlane to avoid missing the deadline. At 3pm yesterday I got a surprise phone call from one of the Lifeline managers; I would have my interview that evening. Although the interview would only last twenty minutes, for some reason I had to be there all evening, so thinking I might be hanging around for hours, I took a book with me.

My book remained well and truly unopened throughout what was an intense evening. I was rarely in my comfort zone, not that my comfort zone is particularly large. The gender imbalance was as I had expected; us men were outnumbered five to one. We were split into groups and did a variety of team activities. The first of these involved building a structure together using plastic straws without talking. I made a huge effort to participate fully in all the activities, knowing that if I didn't I'd have no chance of being accepted on the course. To my surprise there were considerably more applicants than places; I guessed about half of us would miss out. I was pretty sure the woman in my group who looked like she was at a PWC interview from the way she dressed would be fine. My interview came right at the end of the evening (this was purely by chance) and it wasn't easy. "You've got no job, no family and very few friends, and now you want to help other people? You must be joking! Sort your own mess out first." Well my two interviewers didn't actually say this but some of their comments almost implied it. "We admire your frankness on your application form, but you seem rather fragile." I actually think I coped with the interview, and the whole evening, as well as I possibly could, but I couldn't help feeling they wanted someone a bit more (let's face it) normal than myself. I'll have to wait and see.

Two internet-based questions

1. Why is my internet so damned slow? I've checked my Vodafone account and sure enough it says I've used however many megabytes of broadband this month. But Vodafone are wrong. I've used precisely zero megabytes of broadband. The internet access I'm getting isn't broadband or anything close to it.

2. How do I get rid of Chinese spam comments from my blog? To begin with I didn't mind too much; I even used to go into Babel Fish for a translation. Now they're just a pain in the butt.

By the way I applied for a temporary job on Seek yesterday and got a rejection email in a little over an hour. I replied to this email, thanking them for their quick response and congratulating them on setting a new record.

Rats!

It's been an interesting week I guess. On Tuesday I applied for a job online - a three-month temporary position at one of the finance companies that hasn't gone under yet - and the next morning I got a phone call from someone wanting to interview me that afternoon. They weren't hanging around. As it happened, this bloke knew some of the people at my last job, including my most recent boss. This is nothing out of the ordinary in New Zealand, where everybody knows everybody, but even so I figured my chances were boosted by this, to maybe 30% or so. Also helping my cause was that I really did want this job; that hasn't always been the case. At the interview itself he wanted rather a lot of information for just a temporary role. "So where do you see myself in five years' time?" He commented on my CV, saying I was underselling my achievements in my last job. I could see where he was coming from: I'd put down six bullet points - roughly one for every year I'd worked there - but in reality I'd had to scrape the barrel even to come up with those. On Friday I found out I didn't get the job - I think I'd have been perfectly fine but as always there was someone else who had more experience of this or that.

Yesterday I saw a movie at St Lukes mall with some of the Aspergers bunch. There must have been nine or ten of us - quite a turnout. Before the movie I ate downstairs in the food court with Adam, who would be one of the older regulars at the monthly Aspergers group. He's 49 (though he looks a few years older) and sports a bushy beard and a pony-tail. He's a font of knowledge on all kinds of subjects. One of his favourite topics is chess, which isn't something I know a whole lot about. I did play a chess tournament in Peterborough when I was eight. I didn't win a single game, but in my very last match I was thrashing the other kid, only for time to run out and our game to be scored a draw. I went home in tears and I haven't played since. Several years later my brother for some reason also attempted a chess competition. If memory serves, it was played at the Perse, a private school in Cambridge. My "little" brother was already a six-foot brute by then, and he'd never been an academic, or someone particularly interested in subtle strategies or subtle anything. By contrast his opponents were mostly bespectacled, bookish boys, and I'm pretty sure he never won a game either. Anyway I digress. As we ate our curries, Adam bemoaned the current trend for playing chess by the book; it appeared that style and flair were frowned upon. I suggested he take up poker, where all that really matters is your bottom line. If that's positive, any style will do. Our conversation then moved from chess to Adam's living arrangements. "I've had a bit of a pong in my fridge for a while," he said. "I kind of ignored it - I thought it was just rotting vegetables - but eventually I had a look and there were dead rats in there." He then explained that some of the rats had been eaten by other rats. Meanwhile I was trying to eat my chicken tikka masala, or was it rat rogan josh? With all this talk of cannibalistic rats, I was no longer sure.

We didn't all see the same film, but I went with the majority and saw Inception which starred Leonardo DiCaprio. I liked the concept and was looking forward to it, but I was tired and I found it all too weird, too loud and too long. That I sat next to Adam probably didn't enhance my enjoyment of the film. His fridge isn't the only thing that pongs: he has what you might call a Bravo Oscar problem. Towards the end Adam saw me looking at my watch, and he said (out loud), "yeah, I wanna know when's this bullshit gonna end."

It was good to catch up with so many people from the group. Hats off to Richard for organising it all. Hopefully we can do something similar in the near future. I dropped one of the guys off in the city and all I wanted to do was get home (I don't know why I was so tired), but instead I drove to Browns Bay where the French Society were running a quiz. The real reason I made the trek up there wasn't for the quiz (though that was interesting in itself) but for a prize draw where you could win a trip for two to New Caledonia. In other words quite a big prize and not bad odds. However, when the draw was made I was glad someone with a partner and a family won it. If I'd won who would I take with me?

Today I met up with Julie for a coffee. She recently came off Efexor and has been suffering withdrawal symptoms. We also bumped into a woman who bought a shop in Devonport a few months ago. She was clearly going through a very severe bout of depression. To see her in such a state was quite upsetting; there was little Julie or I could do to help her. I'm hoping I can be in a position to help one day.

No poker for four weeks

I had my Italian class this evening. At the beginning we all have to talk about what we did in the past week, in Italian of course. I always find this awkward. Tonight I tried to make a joke of it: "Nothing much. Next!" But I can't do that every week. I'll have to start making things up. The rest of the session was easy in comparison.

I'm happy to report that after tonight's short badugi session (which I played when I got back from Italian) my bankroll stands at $2000.40. I've promised not to play again until 1st September.

A good face for radio

Wednesday was a crappy day. It was the most depressed I'd been in ages; at one stage I let out a loud yell in my (thankfully empty) street. It was more of a roar than a yell actually. That afternoon I'd met up with some agency-type person at a café on Ponsonby Road. In a rather uncomfortable semi-interview, he told me two things I already knew. Firstly I'm unlikely to succeed in a large corporation because I don't have the right personality type. Secondly my lack of outward self-confidence puts a severe dent in my chances of getting through an interview unless it's over the phone: apparently I have good mannerisms and facial expressions for phone interviews, just like some people are said to have a good face for radio. This bloke had a fair few contacts in the corporate world and suggested I join the business networking site Linked In. He said he'd become a world kickboxing champion after being badly bullied at school (a quick Google search confirmed that he indeed was an ace kickboxer). I presume he told me this by way of encouragement but, the way I was feeling, it had the exact opposite effect. The men's group that evening, where we watched the end of the Australian film Crush, came at a very good time.

On Friday I had an appointment at a recruitment agency in the city. There was a queue of about a hundred people outside the Queen Street Vodafone store, presumably itching to get their hands on the latest iWhatsit. I was at the agency all afternoon and got tested up to the eyeballs. Which shape comes next? Which of the following words means the same as 'random'? Which of these numbers is the odd one out? Well you can make any of them the odd one out if you really want to, but I suppose figuring out what it expected of you is a skill in itself. Then came some typing tests and, finally, tests on Word and Excel. These were the most stressful of the lot; it's amazing how many functions in Word and Excel I've never used. A lot of the time I'd be thinking, is it under Format or Tools or View or what? Unlike in real life where you can work it out eventually, click on the wrong menu and a box would appear: "Incorrect Answer!" It might as well also have said "Ha ha ha!" I needn't have worried though. I had more than enough points in all the tests to be eligible for some temporary work, and if I hassle them enough times over the coming weeks, who knows? When I got back to Devonport I bumped into the younger brother of one of my old colleagues at work. He knew I no longer worked there and asked me where I was working now. When I told him he was incredulous. "What do you mean, you're not working?!" There was a certain irony to this. According to his big sister at least, he's never been particularly fond of work. In fact he used to go to Australia to play a bunch of poker tournaments. I didn't think to ask him whether he still does.

I spoke to Richard last night. The first six weeks of his job involve role-plays and various forms of team bonding. Not my idea of fun at all, and I don't think it's his particularly either. I might pop over and see him again some time this week.

I had a successful day on the badugi tables yesterday. Playing exclusively at the lowest level I made $63. My plan is to take a few weeks off when my bankroll hits $2000 (I've got more important things to do), and then play some bigger games on my return. After yesterday's effort I'm tantalisingly close to the magic milestone, just eight dollars short.

92.5% of the world's population...

...are not on Facebook. That's a pretty overwhelming majority and they can't all be wrong; the remaining half a billion people who insist on all that social networking bollocks really need to get with the program.

To me Facebook sounds like one giant pain in the arse. Until someone can convince me that I should join up, I'm staying right out of it. You have to tell everyone what you've been doing every five minutes (or is that Twitter?) and upload photos constantly, presumably photos with people in them. And then there's this business of accumulating friends as if they were football stickers or baseball cards. If I was on Facebook I know I'd only have four friends, or something pathetic, while the bloke in the upstairs flat has 382. I feel inferior enough as it is, thanks. And what if you decide someone isn't your friend any more? You have to "unfriend" or "defriend" them, and that sounds rather messy. Best to avoid it altogether.

Last week the job search was really starting to get me down. Maybe I am unemployable after all, I began to think. Who would ever want me in their company? I've got plenty of skills and qualifications, but none of the ones that really matter, i.e. people skills. Next Wednesday I'll be meeting one of the recruitment agents and for that reason I decided to get a haircut yesterday. This was a shame; my hair hadn't been cut since that job interview and it was the longest I'd had it in eight years. Sure, I was beginning to look a bit like a caveman, but why shouldn't I look like the person I really am? I had my hair done in the city where it was quick and painless. I also bought two CDs in Real Groovy costing $6 between them, one by the French group Matmatah (unfortunately I didn't like this one nearly as much as an earlier album of theirs) and the Cranberries' To The Faithful Departed. I really must stop listening to such depressing music. I heard the George Thorogood song "Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job" on the radio today; if only the second part of that equation was as simple as the first. I have some good news at least: that publishing company want some more puzzles from me. Only ten, but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Last Wednesday Richard invited me round to his place; he lives in a boarding house in Remuera, built in 1855 (by New Zealand standards that's seriously old). Upwards of fifteen people live there and I can understand why he's thinking of moving out. Still, it was great to see him in his own habitat, so to speak. He cooked a very good meal and gave me the excellent news that he's now got a job on the phones at BNZ. He starts on Monday so they're not hanging around. To be honest I never expected him to get something as mainstream as that (and I hope I'm not being prejudiced against people with Asperger's by saying that) but good luck to him. I hope it all works out.

I've had my worst day ever of badugi today, losing $65. In my first session, on the 25c/50c tables, I dropped $17 in 124 hands. Worse was to follow as I dumped $39 in 114 hands on a 50c/$1 table, all laws of probability disappearing out the window. The whole lexicon of badugi nightmares came into play as I was monstered left, right and centre, normally by someone who called three bets pre-draw and drew three. My 5432 ran into number two in a massive pot in a display of rampant badugiflation. After a while I wondered whether it was all some sick joke and my opponents were drawing cards from some special deck stripped of all high cards and unhelpful suits. In my last session (at 20/50) I ran red hot in comparison, losing just nine bucks. The good news is that I'm still up $308 on the month and a lot more overall thanks to that big SCOOP result. It was funny cashing that cheque. "So where did it come from?" "Er, the internet," was all I felt I could say.

Fush and chups

I had a blood test this week, the results of which were a pleasant surprise. The big news was my cholesterol reading which had dropped from 6.4 to 5.2, so on Friday I had fish and chips to celebrate. They were the best fish and chips I'd had in yonks; I'm sure the length of time since I last had them helped increase my level of enjoyment. For some reason there's always been a certain aura surrounding fish and chips for me, and for six years (until I got that shock cholesterol score last year) I took full advantage of living in a country with perhaps more "fush and chup" shops per head of population than anywhere else in the world. As kids we had an old shed at the bottom of our garden; my brother and I pretended the shed was a fish and chip shop; we'd pass the imaginary fried food through the windows of the shed which had long been broken.

Yesterday I went to the monthly Asperger's group for the first time in three months. As always I got to talk to a very kind bunch of people, including one or two I hadn't seen before. Some of us might meet up and see a movie in the coming weeks.

On Thursday I saw the classic Italian film Ossessione and tomorrow I'll be starting a new term of lessons. I've gone back to evening sessions just in case I somehow find myself a job. I'm finding the job search process a bit frustrating but I'll keep plugging away. I still haven't heard anything back from that mental health job I had the interview for. I'm seriously considering studying for a Certificate in Mental Health in 2011.

To my relief that US$4000 cheque (the poker winnings I cashed out) arrived last week. Until I saw the money it almost didn't seem real. This month I'm up $333, mostly from badugi. Yesterday I tried five-card draw for the first time. It took some getting used to - my opponents were reluctant to raise, even with huge hands, so I'd often be betting and raising, not realising that I was behind. To give an example, on one particular hand I was dealt a pair of queens. I raised and we were four-way to the draw. I hit a second pair and bet out after the draw. I get one caller who promptly turns over three kings!

I had an interesting call from my grandma at 6:20 this morning. She wasn't making a lot of sense, and I was half-asleep, so all in all our conversation wasn't up to much.

Nearly a year ago, when I was down in Geraldine, I posted some pictures of Dad's model plane crash. Well today there was drama on another level entirely as his plane caught fire!

Richard has kindly invited me over to his house for dinner on Wednesday, so that will be one of the highlights of the coming week.

Badugi glossary

Poker is full of jargon, be it "runner-runner", "flopping the nuts" or "under the gun". Badugi is no exception. So for those who wish to give this fine game a crack, here is a handy selection of terms taken from the Concise Badugi Players' Dictionary, or Cobapdic for short:

Badoggie: a badugi topped by K-9, such as K954. As the name suggests, it's a bit of a dog.

Badugiflation: a phenomenon in which your opponents are showing down huge hands, i.e. fours and fives, left right and centre. Your sixes and sevens, which were bloody good hands back in the day, just don't cut it any more.

Jack shit:
1. A really rough jack badugi, like JT85, as opposed to a smooth jack.
2. Absolutely nothing.
Thus if you're sitting on a king or queen badugi in a live game and your opponent proclaims he's got "jack shit", you're none the wiser.

Knuts: the worst possible badugi, namely KQJT. Either play it fast or dump it, depending on your position and your opponents. Pronunciation of the 'k' in 'knuts' is optional. Appropriately for this hand, "knuts" backwards is "stunk".

Monstered: we've all been there, and if you haven't, you soon will be. When your virtually unbeatable hand gets beaten, you've been monstered.

Number two: normally number twos stink, but not in badugi where the term refers to 532A, the second-best hand in the game. Losing with this hand (it can and does happen!) requires the ultimate monstering.

Snowman:
1. An eight badugi. The word is used similarly in golf to refer to an eight on a particular hole.
2. Someone who likes to pat-bluff, or snow, a lot. Snowmen are tricky customers.

Ugi: a badugi which isn't bad, such as an eight or nine. You'll often end up calling off multiple bets in a big pot with your ugi, in the vain hope that it'll somehow be good.

So there you have it. Best of luck at the badugi tables and may all your pat snowmen hold up.

Independence Day

Last weekend Americans celebrated Independence Day. At the same time I regained my own independence by getting myself a new set of wheels. For a minute I thought of avoiding the whole "anonymous box" thing and getting something exciting and European like a Saab or a Citroen, but in the end I spent $2500 on a red 1996 Toyota Camry. As well as being an anagram of "my car", the Camry is one of the most exciting cars on the planet. In the week I've had it, I've been getting stares at every red light. In fact Camrys are so exciting that 74% of New Zealand's actuaries choose to drive them. In all seriousness it should be a reliable car, if perhaps a bit big for me.

I did have some real excitement last week, in the shape of a phone interview. I'd applied for a job at my local mental health support centre; the impromptu interview took me by surprise a bit. "Is now a good time?" Sure, it's a bloody great time! But I'd met the interviewer before, and I handled the questions as well as I could have hoped. Whether that'll be good enough, somehow I doubt it (I come from a very different industry after all) but if I did get it, I'd be over the moon.

After catching the end of this morning's third-place World Cup match, I saw a programme about an Auckland teenager who, three years ago, got into a car with one of his drunk mates behind the wheel. The resulting crash left him brain damaged. The programme certainly brought home the horrors of drink-driving, but what really amazed me was that after the accident, none of his so-called mates, not even his girlfriend, wanted to know him any more. I didn't have any friends to speak of at that age, but if that's what teenage friends are like, perhaps I didn't miss much.

In other news, I'm back badugi-ing again. I've asked to cash out most of my SCOOP winnings ($4000) and am anxiously waiting for the cheque to arrive. Yesterday I made eighty bucks at the tables (a mixture of 25c/50c, 50c/$1 and $1/$2) but I gave back thirty today. I'm also trying to get a handle on triple draw, although the variance in that game seems even more severe than in badugi. I'll be restricting the bulk of my play to weekends and will try to give weekly updates on my progress from now on.

Family matters

It's been a busy last couple of weeks in our family. I wasn't looking forward to the nightly phone calls when Mum and Dad got back from their trip, but lately the unusual amount of news from their end has justified the high phone call frequency.

I mentioned Uncle Dan's untimely passing in my last post. His funeral will be on Wednesday.

Last week my aunt, in her wisdom, tried to get my gran into a home without telling her. People arrived at my gran's door to whisk her away, and surprise surprise, she wasn't having any of it. In fact she went absolutely ballistic from what I can tell. So she's still at home after all that, and I'll give her a call tonight.

In better news, my brother is coming to New Zealand! After all my talk of spending "proper" time with him in the UK, we managed to completely miss each other. There was never a day when we were both free. We still talked on the phone and have exchanged several emails since. He'll fly into Christchurch on 18th August (the first time he'll have been in the country since 1997); I'm looking forward to that a lot.