When will this end? Who nose

I'm still far from 100%. It feels like someone has shoved a pencil up my left nostril. It's not as bad as the acute attacks of excruciating sinus pain I had in 2008 but it still isn't much fun.

I've got that damn work function tomorrow. I'll see if I can sneak out early but I really wish I could avoid it altogether.

Some good news - my brother has been accepted into the NZ Army and will start in ten days. He'll initially be training in Waiouru but will be stationed in Burnham I imagine.

I'm hoping tomorrow's presidential election brings Obama four more years. Regarding Romney's chances, Nate Silver came up with this astute analogy: "All of this leaves Mr. Romney drawing to an inside straight. I hope you’ll excuse the cliche, but it’s appropriate here: in poker, making an inside straight requires you to catch one of 4 cards out of 48 remaining in the deck, the chances of which are about 8 percent. Those are now about Mr. Romney’s chances of winning the Electoral College, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast. As any poker player knows, those 8 percent chances do come up once in a while. If it happens this year, then a lot of polling firms will have to re-examine their assumptions — and we will have to re-examine ours about how trustworthy the polls are. But the odds are that Mr. Obama will win another term."

Cold spell

My cold has pretty much written off the weekend for me. Yesterday it tipped it down and blew a gale, and I didn't want to do anything even remotely active anyway, so it was the perfect day so sit on the sofa and lose money at online poker. Today was a little more productive - I hoovered my flat, went to the market, had a large soy flat white on Cuba Street, and worked on a puzzle. And played some more online poker, fortunately winning back most of what I lost yesterday.

I need to be much more assertive the next time I see the doctor. I mean I'm getting these colds all the bloody time. In fact it never goes away. It's always there, bubbling under the surface, ready to flare up every sixth or seventh week. I don't know what's causing it. My near-perpetual cold seemed to start in February, when I moved into the flat, but I don't know if that's just coincidence. I can't see any reason why it should be making me sick, but then again I can't see why it's a serious earthquake hazard (I expect the yellow sticker will be slapped on the building some time in December).

I'm not looking forward to the coming week at work. On Wednesday there's an after-work function which I'm now committed to attending. It'll be some kind of rah-rah-rah to do with the company; all I know is that simply won't want to know.

This coming Sunday the depression group are going paintballing; I've put my name down. I wish it was on Saturday instead but hey.

The presidential election is almost upon us. The media here keep telling us the race is "too close to call" or "neck and neck". Some commentators are implying Obama is about a 55/45 favourite, when objectively it's more like 80/20 in favour of Obama. He's not a shoo-in but I don't understand why the media outlets keep telling us it's a virtual flip of a coin when so much objective data is saying something quite different. When I think about it, it's amazing that Romney has any chance at all. If the election were held in France or Germany, or even New Zealand, he wouldn't get a look-in.

Dessert island

Only four people went on yesterday's tramp in the rain - the sensible ones (Danielle included) stayed away. We didn't get too wet and it was surprisingly warm as we walked from Willis St up to the Brooklyn wind turbine. There were lots of facts of figures on a board near the turbine which I found interesting. Coming down was quick. After three hours it was nice to get home and dry off having benefited from the exercise.

Tonight I attended the autism group with sixteen others. It was good to see Tracy who has recovered from her latest bout of illness. In an email prior to the meeting we were given two topics for discussion. The first of those asked which three items we would take if we were stranded on a "dessert island". Cream, a spoon and some scales? A dessert island sounds like a lot of fun, but with my dairy ban I'd find it quite challenging at the moment. The other topic was our most memorable travelling experience. We split up into two groups and spent half the time on each subject. We struggled a bit with the desert island topic but were more at ease when talking about our travels. I could have talked for hours on that subject, having been lucky enough to have had many memorable trips as a kid, but only had time to talk about my trip to and from New Zealand with my family in 1986-87. Things got rather tense on a couple of occasions at the group. One trait of autism is a lack of empathy and there was a distinct lack of it on show tonight.

One of the two TV monitors we have at work (the one that I can actually see from my desk) was unusually tuned to Sky Sport today. This morning they showed extended highlights of Chelsea's match with Manchester United (Man U won 3-2 as it happened). I was thinking how the Premier League is really just a series of exhibition matches. You see some incredibly skilful football played by some of the best players in the world, but the games are meaningless as the teams may as well be hand-picked. In the afternoon they showed live coverage of what turned out to be the deciding game of the hilariously-named World Series. Is American baseball just like professional football, in that the clubs (or franchises) with the most money can afford the best players and therefore win? Is the physical location of these teams as meaningless as in Premier League football? I'm guessing so but I really have no idea.

Don't have a cow, man

I've taken Mum's advice and given up dairy products for a month, starting today. Mum, who can be dangerous when she gets on the internet (remember a certain Wellington-based job she found for me?), stumbled upon a web page similar to this one which gave a list of symptoms (Simpsons?) of lactose intolerance: depression (check), skin problems (check), frequent cold or flu (check), sinus pain (check) and a few others that I could tick off. Giving up milk products isn't that easy. I've always been a reasonably big cheese eater, I normally have one yoghurt a day (sometimes two at weekends), I put milk on my cereal every morning and in each of my six or seven daily hot drinks, and I have the occasional dollop of cream or ice cream. Last night at Pak 'n' Save I got a bit confused: are eggs dairy products? I rationalised that I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a cow lay an egg, so in they went. It took me a while to find the soy milk, which I've already taken a liking to. It's very likely my experiment will make no difference, but there's a small chance that it could radically change my life for the better.

I took the crack-of-dawn (6:50) flight back from Timaru yesterday, in time for work (well actually I was a bit late). Apart from having to get up so damn early, it was a totally hassle-free experience. It was good to catch up with the family again. We all got on really well. I met my brother's fiancée for the first time; she's attractive, easy-going and highly intelligent (she appears to be blessed with a near-photographic memory). She's clued up when it comes to money and earns plenty of it. She's of mixed race: her mother's side of the family is a mystery to her but I'd guess it comes from India or thereabouts.

Mum and Dad worry about my brother, just like they do for me. At the moment he's jobless: he's still waiting for the army to get back to him. Unsurprisingly he's finding his driving ban to be a major pain in the butt. He's taken to cycling everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Being the super-fit bleep-test-winning guy he is, Geraldine to Ashburton is a nice easy jaunt.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday were very pleasant days but on Monday I woke up to an unseasonal flurry of snow. I didn't go very far while I was down there, but that was hardly the point. Hanging Rock, where I took this photo, was about the extent of my travels.

On Tuesday Mum and I went to Temuka and put some flowers on my grandparents' grave. While they lived to a combined 180, so many of the surrounding gravestones marked lives cut tragically short. There were several teenagers who died in road accidents, one of whom always sticks out. He died about five years ago; there are two pictures

inset into the stone, one of his face, the other showing an extremely tasteless two-fingered salute on the end of a tattooed arm. At least the empty beer cans are gone now. In late 2009 there was a spate of suicides. It's always interesting (if sobering) to visit the cemetery with Mum, who knows the stories behind the names.

In the last week or two, both Jimmy Savile and Lance Armstrong have featured prominently in the news. They have a surprising amount in common. I found this excellent post about Armstrong on the Guardian website. I particularly like the bit about the so-called American dream ("you have to be asleep to believe it").

Great news: Blogger now lets me add pictures again, and it no longer puts six blank lines after each paragraph, so it's actually better than it was before. Who would have thought it? I might not have to move to WordPress after all.

Catching up

It wasn't a bad week at work. We even had a 9km run (or walk as it was for me) on Tuesday afternoon as part of a fundraising event.

Wellington is bathed in sunshine right now. That's a bummer for me as I'm about a hop on a 19-seater plane to Timaru, although a quick glance at the weather map tells me it's much the same down there. Things are forecast to turn pear-shaped tomorrow.

It'll be good to catch up with my family again, in particular my brother who I last saw in May 2011, and to meet his fiancée for the first time. I'll be down there until Wednesday when I'll be catching a very early flight.

Puzzles, poker, parachutes and paintings

Nothing of note has happened since I last posted, so you might as well click the back button now.

After work today I finished off Puzzled, a book on cryptic crosswords by the Australian cruciverbalist David Astle that Tracy had lent me. I've dabbled in cryptic crosswords a bit myself (both solving and making them) and it was a very interesting read. He can't avoid seeing anagrams in everyday life, and to a lesser extent I suffer from the same affliction. I can't go past the Medusa bar (the one I didn't dare entre last week) without feeling "strangely amused". This isn't too far from the Tetris effect I suffer from when I see poker hands in car number plates. Putting the two together, if I got stuck behind a Honda Integra (granite, tearing, ingrate, Tangier, any others I've missed?) with 7432 on its number plate (that's the best draw in deuce-to-seven) then I'd really hope my insurance hadn't lapsed.

As for online poker, the less said about that the better. Over the last month my bankroll has been going in the same direction as the bloke who jumped from the edge of space this morning, and at about the same speed.

I was hoping to give the book back to Tracy at the autism group tonight but she didn't turn up - she wasn't well last week and presumably she still isn't now. The group wasn't too bad - better than last time because the two new guys weren't quite so disruptive, but I still miss last year's sessions with the smaller group and different facilitator.

On Friday I went to a watercolour exhibition with my cousin. It was a big event - several hundred attended including various dignitaries; you could hardly move. The quality of people's work varied enormously. A lot the time I'd be thinking, that's a bit like what my dad would have done, only he'd have done a much better job of the cows.

Saturday was a bit of a write-off weather wise for most of the country (my parents got over two inches of rain) but Sunday was sunny and I went for a short drive along the coast.

Next Saturday I'm heading down south for what will be a family reunion of sorts.

The height of class

Last Wednesday I attended the fortnightly depression meet-up. Only three of us showed up - the usual suspects: Martin, Giuseppe and me. With almost a foot separating the other two in height (Martin is 6' 5", Giuseppe 5' 6") and me being slap-bang in the middle, we could have re-enacted the "class" sketch by the Two Ronnies and John Cleese. Giuseppe had started taking weed as a stress-reliever. I only tried it a handful of times in 2001 when I lived in France. I must admit that I quite liked it. Some of the people I lived with were heavily into it though, not to mention stronger stuff that I wouldn't have touched with a barge pole.

The weather at the weekend was almost balmy, but blowing US$300 in two hours of online poker put a damper on things for me. On Sunday afternoon we had another depression meet-up, this time at the Southern Cross.

On Tuesday I'd planned to play a freeroll poker tournament at the Big Kumara in town. I turned up there, as did two older blokes, only to find it had closed its doors for good at the weekend. I then remembered Medusa had a tournament starting at the same time, but that place looked so dark and dingy that I didn't dare go in.

After work tomorrow I'm going to an art exhibition with my cousin.

Looking back...

October 1987. What a month. Although I was only 7½ at the time I remember it well. The Great Storm of '87 (famously unforecast by Michael Fish) ripped through Southern England, giving us a day off school. Our garden flooded; we had a canoe which my brother and I used to get about. My grandmother had flown from New Zealand to stay with us - she got sick and had to delay her flight home. She flew back to NZ on what must have been 19th November, the day after the King's Cross fire that killed 31 people; using the underground that day must have been a nightmare. October also saw a worldwide stock market crash that badly affected New Zealand where people had borrowed to invest in companies that had borrowed heavily themselves.

Twenty-five years on, nothing remotely as dramatic is happening. Work is still much the same. I still get pulled up for this, that or the other, and it doesn't make me feel any better about myself. Two weeks ago they started piping music through the loudspeakers; it's just a "classic hits" radio station that plays pop music from the eighties onwards. I wonder what happened in the mid-to-late nineties that caused virtually all mainstream pop music after that time to be complete and utter crap. They ran a bizarre raffle at work today. Tickets were $10 each (a bit steep for my liking) and there was just one monster prize up for grabs, which included a paid day of leave. I didn't quite see the logic of offering a prize with a salary-dependent cash value.

Last night I attended the autism group (along with 17 others) at its new location on Willis Street. I'm a fan of the move; the new place is close to both work and home. It's almost right beside where they have the Sunday market so it's very much on my beaten track, if not everyone else's. It's more spacious too so it'll give the ever-expanding group a chance to breathe. The session itself didn't go brilliantly last night though. A couple of new blokes (friends) have an axe to grind, a bee in their bonnet, and the facilitators do little to stop them.

On Saturday I went on a tramp - Cannon Point walkway in Upper Hutt. We had good weather and it wasn't too arduous. Only six of us did the trip including just one woman: an Austrian in her twenties who had piercing eyes that I found a little intimidating as she asked me difficult questions about my job.

My brother now wants to join the NZ Army. He had various tests and an interview last week. He did the infamous bleep test; apparently he outlasted everybody else by some distance (he would have thrashed me too). The maths test was a different matter - he's inherited his numberblindness from Dad - but after 13 years in the British army he should waltz in.

Yesterday they changed the code for getting into my apartment block. As the previous code was "press all the worn-off buttons in ascending order" that's no bad thing.

Bored games? No way

My brother and his fiancée arrived last Tuesday. I just gave him a quick call; they went to Christchurch today and rented out a flat in New Brighton. I asked him about buying a car, momentarily forgetting his (second) driving ban which lasts till February. My parents arrive on Wednesday. I'll be flying down south at Labour Weekend. I hope I manage to see my brother, and my future sister-in-law, but he and I do have a knack of missing each other.

We had a wonderful weekend of Wellington weather and it continued today. It would have been nice to have had someone around to enjoy it with. Just something simple like a walk along the waterfront. Sometimes sunny weather can make me more depressed because I see people enjoying themselves in the company of others while I'm on my own.

I can't complain though. Compared to how I was feeling six months ago, well there is no comparison. Those "head-banging" days, when I couldn't see for my thick depressive fog, appear (for now at least) to be over. Changing roles at work certainly helped, even if my current environment isn't somewhere I want to be in the long term.

Last Monday I went to Tracy's flat in Kilbirnie to play some board games. Four of us (that's always a good number) played. We started off with a quick game called (I think) Tsuro, where players follow tracks laid down by square pieces on an 8x8 board. It was a fun game if a little chaotic: you could easily be whisked away to a different part of the board, and then sent off the board entirely, in which case you were dead. The game continued until only one player remained.

The main game we played was Ticket to Ride, where each player had to form train routes to and from various cities across Europe (there are several versions of the game including the European one we played). A lot of the skill in the game revolved around the decision to accept or decline routes based on their length and location, and various other features. I bit off more that I could chew, accepting pretty much everything and although I made some nice long routes, my incomplete ones counted against me in the finish and I came third.

The games were a lot of fun and I hope we can do something similar again.

The iPhone 5 is out, and will be appearing in New Zealand on Friday. Inevitably there will be snaking queues then at various stores as people clamour to get their hands on the Holy Grail. This is all good news for me because it puts us one step closer to the iPhone 10. When the iPhone 10 comes out, I'll be able to snap up a crappy iPhone 4 or 5 for under fifty bucks and finally see what all the fuss is about.

People at my flat twice in one week - whatever next?

Last Saturday's meet-up in Petone didn't do much for me. I'd forgotten that there was a rugby game between the All Blacks and Argentina; most of our group had forgotten about it too. At half-time in the rugby (an extended half-time due to the floodlight failure at the stadium) we went to a different pub to play pool. As I said in my last post, I've never liked pool. The game is 80% social, and it's the sort of "social" that goes on in pubs, which I'm especially bad at. Even Martin, who's pretty quiet most of the time, was much better at that than me. After ten the others wanted to play Laser Strike (do you play that?) which I was hardly in the mood for, but luckily for me the same power outage that affected the stadium also put Laser Strike out of commission, and we called it a (wet and windy) evening.

The next morning I picked up four chairs that I'd successfully bid for on Trade Me. I had to collect them from a Christian camp in Waikanae, a little over 60 km from here. My car needed a run.

I couldn't decide whether to go in to work on Monday but did in the end. Then, knowing that my colleagues had seen me below my best the previous day, decided to take Tuesday off. I listened to the US Open final which was a real treat, with minute-long rallies almost the norm. Andy Murray needed every bit of the cushion he built up after two very tight opening sets, and even then he might not have won it. In the fifth set he seemed to be the fitter man, and his experience of playing his semi in similarly windy conditions certainly helped him. Perhaps Djokovic wasn't at his best in the final but it's a well-deserved victory for Murray and a huge monkey off his back. I hope he kicks on from here and wins a few more grand slams. I spoke to Bazza the next day and he felt much the same. We also had our debate - again - over who is the best player of all time; Bazza always says Nadal should be placed above Federer in that regard due to their head-to-head record; I tell him that's a logical fallacy - just because A generally beats B doesn't necessarily mean that A is better than B, and that going by that logic you could place Djokovic ahead of both of them - but he takes no notice.

Last night my cousin's husband, their three boys and an 18-year-old English exchange student who's currently staying there, came to my flat and the six of us had fish and chips (my cousin had been in the States and was about to fly back). It was a nice evening actually. The boys got a lot of excitement just from being in a new place, and enjoyed playing with cardboard boxes and sellotape, proving that you don't need to spend big money to keep kids entertained. The exchange student is a really nice easy-going guy. And my cousin's husband sorted out my wireless internet connection so I can now play badugi in bed if I so choose.
Having people round gave me motivation to give the place a jolly good tidy.

On Wednesday I went to the tramping club and signed up for a trip in two weeks. I met Danielle there; I invited her over to my flat but she only stayed for ten minutes or so. I'm still a little concerned at all the money she's spending on alternative medicine, particularly as she doesn't earn much, but she says it's doing her good so who am I to judge?

Tomorrow night's autism group has been cancelled; Tracy has invited three of us over to her flat in Kilbirnie to play one of her board games. I think it's called Ticket to Ride; you have to build train tracks that go across America. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. I hope it's not too much of a train wreck for me.

Right on cue, here comes the flu (well I hope it's just a cold)

I've picked up a cold. Yet again. Tonight's pool evening in Petone with the depression group is therefore an unattractive proposition, but I'm still going. I'm picking Martin up (he doesn't drive - yet); that's a bit of bugger because he'll probably want to stay longer than me, although at least it gives me an excuse not to drink. I've never liked pool anyway - I'm only going so that I can get out and meet people. In my experience pool mainly involves flirting, with the actual game being accidental. And I'm hopeless at it - well I seem to pot a few balls but just hardly ever the black one, at least not intentionally.

My boss and his boss already want to know our leave plans for Christmas, even though it's 3½ months away. They want someone in the office at all times (except public holidays). I'd planned to take a good few days off for our first Christmas as a complete family for eleven years, but as I'm kidless and fairly new to the team I might be forced to work between Christmas and New Year.

September and the smell of spring

September is one of my favourite months. In the UK we would sometimes have an Indian summer (and boy could they do with one over there now) while enjoying the plums, apples and berry fruit. Here the smell of spring is in the air. In Septembers past the milder weather would give me the urge to step onto the tennis court. I clearly remember that feeling from September 2005 when I studied for two actuarial exams while listening to US Open tennis coverage on the internet. That remains one of my favourite grand slams (perhaps because Agassi made the final at the age of 35) even though I didn't see any of it. I worked hard for those exams and passed them both. After the exams I took a few days off work and went down to Dunedin with my parents. I remember Coldplay's excellent X&Y album came out at that time. I also voted in a general election for the first time (I was quite excited by this for a number of reasons - I was intrigued by the vagaries of MMP, the election would be close, I had to cast a special out-of-electorate vote, and most importantly I was still naive enough to think it might make a difference to my life who won).

Seven Septembers on, things have changed a bit. I'm no longer playing tennis, or even watching or listening to it, and I've knocked actuarial work (I hope) firmly on the head. Last night I saw my cousin and her family for the first time in five weeks. Today I met up with a few people from the depression group; I had a coffee and a beer at Mac's Brewery, then we spent an hour at the Museum of City and Sea.

I've felt two earthquakes this weekend. Yesterday afternoon's shake (a deep-focus 5.5 centred close to Rotorua) lasted a couple of seconds while the jolt at 4:10 this morning (a 4.0, much shallower and closer to Wellington) lasted only a split second - I probably wouldn't have felt it if I hadn't just woken from a weird dream.

Mum and Dad have just got back from their Baltic cruise, where they stopped off at such weird and wonderful places as St Petersburg, Tallinn and Helsinki. They'll soon be flying to Split, where they invented a popular banana and ice cream dessert as well as that manoeuvre gymnasts do where they have their legs wide apart.