Another election done and dusted and hopefully that’s the last we’ll see of Winston. Any discussions of his legacy will be brief.

The left will be happy Labour got enough votes to govern alone. The right will be less happy but the positive for them is that Labour’s majority keeps the Greens’ hands off the big shiny levers. Act did better than expected and their challenge will be to keep their new MPs in line.

Labour’s challenge will be that but for Covid they would have been judged more harshly on their lack of delivery. Now they must deliver.

The media have been big winners too and have firmly cemented themselves as part of the whole shoddy system.

Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig 📚

I finished reading my battered second-hand copy, what a strange book it is, full of deep and practical ideas that for me left dog-eared pages and pencilled-in margins in their wake, scraps of which I’m sure will linger in my mind for some time to come. There a lot of philosophy-type stuff in there and some of it is hard going, and some of it is quite tedious too. I liked the father-son journey stuff, it captures some of the crazy concerns and emotions that being a father of a boy can bring. I wonder how much of it is true.

One especially memorable bit talks about a ‘South Indian monkey trap’, which I’d never heard of, and which supposedly involves a hollowed out coconut with food placed inside and a hole just big enough to admit a monkey’s hand. The monkey sticks its hand in and grabs a fistful of food, and can’t escape when the trapper comes because it can’t release the food from its fist. All the monkey needs to do is open its fist, but it is simply unable to reevaluate the positive value of the fistful of food vs the negative value of being captured and losing its freedom. There’s nothing physically keeping it trapped… it just can’t let go. #fiction?

Took a walk on one of the local maunga. Nice to feel some sunshine.

Things I learned from five weeks working from home:

I don’t like working from home

My neighbour, who is Serbian, gave us a big piece of her daughter’s left-over birthday cake. It is Serbian too, and delicious, and now it is all gone. 🎂

On days 10-12 we watched Ozark, Leave No Trace, Ex Machina, and the police checkpoint in our street. 🍿

I think my boy and his mates have discovered group chat, there’s about five of them having a good old yarn over their phones together from their bedrooms and I haven’t heard that before.

At the supermarket just now: people wearing full face mask respirators and gloves, and no flour or porridge. One guy was very upset about the no porridge.

In other health news my glycated haemoglobin levels are back under prediabetic levels and staying that way. Steak for breakfast is helping.

Went to the doctors and they’ve spaced out the waiting room seats and removed all the magazines and kids’ toys. Let’s keep it like that for ever.

Another morning tea birthday cake successfully dodged. 🍰

With the amount of money my dentist has been trying to get me to spend I can see why the FedSmoker took to DIY tooth removal.