by I reached the top of the mountain over the long Easter weekend. Nine weeks of living with my flatmate, nine more to go. I’m so glad I had a chat with him earlier this month, hard as it was. I really don’t know where I’d be now otherwise.
I’m living in a state of perpetual fatigue. A good night’s sleep, when I get it, does little to energise me. Walking up to the top of Mount Vic on Friday was a major effort. Even just walking into town is a struggle – I watch people stream past me when I’m used to it being the other way round. Tennis on Sunday was a case of dragging myself onto the court. After the game, which was borderline embarrassing for me, I went to see Batman v Superman at the Embassy with a bloke from the club. He’s gay. He thought I was. I’m not. Before the film we ate at the Chinese place nearby. My meal was extremely good value. I’ll get number 98 again the next time I go there. The film was never going to be my thing. Given the name I use for this blog, I guess I like my superheroes to be extraterrestrial.
On Friday night my flatmate’s parents invited him and me over for dinner at their rather nice place in Kelburn. That would suggest that neither my flatmate nor his parents hate my guts. His scheduled exit in late May didn’t get a mention. Instead we talked about the flag referendum. The three of them, plus exactly 1.2 million other Kiwis according to the preliminary figures, voted for the status quo. I voted for change, but I wasn’t too bothered either way. His parents are very nice people. So is he, for half an hour, down the pub, every other week or so. No really he’s fine. Honest. OK, there’s the small matter of the calls he made to Africa on my landline…
I read an article in the Guardian soon after the flag referendum result was announced. There were hundreds of comments, most of them coming from people whose knowledge of New Zealand ended at sheep and rugby. “The hard left who hate the flag and hate the country have been defeated! Hooray!” That’s fact-free crap, and they would have realised it was crap if they’d bothered reading the article, but it’s also crap that taps into the zeitgeist, and therefore gets plenty of upvotes. That’s the world we live in now unfortunately: people writing whatever is most likely to be plussed, hearted, thumbs-upped or up-arrowed, facts be damned. I know, I should avoid reading comments altogether.
Yesterday I met up with a friend at the Southern Cross. We then went to Ekim, a bohemian-looking burger joint just opposite. Ekim backwards is the owner’s name, and he was semi-famous last year for this Facebook rant (which I can view even though I’m not on Facebook, and no I didn’t read the comments). Mr Ekim sounds like a right reknaw. The hospitality industry does attract such people. (And tips? Huh? This isn’t America and we should be very grateful for that.) Still, we both would have given our burgers at least four stars and neither of us came down with food poisoning, so they’re doing something right. They even played Paul Simon’s Call Me Al and that gets an extra star from me.
Last Monday I met my English language student for the first time. He’s a Burmese refugee in his early thirties. I also got to meet his wife and seven-month-old daughter. His wife also has a tutor. I was struck by how happy he was. He smiled pretty much the whole time I was there. They live in an apartment block in Berhampore. His daughter’s name begins with the “th” sound as in “thin”. Burmese must be one of very few Asian languages to have that sound in its (to use a technical term) phonemic inventory. Normally you have all kinds of fun and games trying to teach that sound, so at least I’ll be spared that. Burmese lacks the “v” sound, however. My student seems to have a reasonable vocabulary but lacks confidence in speaking. When presented with my name on a piece of paper, he spelled out the letters rather than attempting to say the words. I expect I’ll find the teaching extremely rewarding and I can’t wait to crack on with it.
The restructure at work hasn’t gone away. On Thursday I should find out whether I still have a job.
My parents have got the keys to their house in Moeraki. I can only see positives in this. It gives them both a chance to get out of (as Dad put it) fucking Geraldine, it’s close to the sea, Dad will be able to fish (he hasn’t done that in ages), and it’s not far from Central Otago which is its own amazing world. I initially thought they were crazy for buying a fourth property (two in the UK, two in NZ) but this seems a great buy, for their own well-being as much as anything.
