A profoundely sad and utterly senseless murder of a student from the US occurred at a bus stop in Meadowbank (nearby where I live). I fear that this may not be the last case of random and senseless violence like this we hear. Melbourne over in Australia I now learn is currently experiencing a youth crime wave and quite often what happens over there I feel fairly often ends up happening here. I feel helpless admittedly and reinforces my anxiety I’ve penned about earlier.

Commonwealth Securities (CommSec) have emailed me (and purportedly other NZ resident customers as well) to advise they are closing our accounts.

The world is changing, people are changing. I don’t necessarily agree with (nor understand) the way the world is currently headed, but other than continuing to express my views and concerns to elect representatives, “chewing the fat” with friends and family over the challenges facing society, participating in public consultations held by any government agency, discussing civics in a broader setting and continuing to partake in civic discourse, I otherwise feel powerless to effect any change as an individual.

In a way, it feels like some sort of generalized regression or devolution is slowly creeping in to the human species, but can’t put my finger on the root of it. Closer to home, It just seems some kind of ‘strangeness’ is happening. E.g. Everytime I head out, chances are very good that I will witness at least one incident of people losing their shit in a public freakout. People obviously under the influence smashing things, public shouting matches between groups of people, physical assault along with other public disorder incidents. In truth, it is beginning to feel like scenes out of a zombie movie at times as obvious drug use continues to increasingly grip society.

As my uncle said to me, you can’t save the world and you know what? He is 100% right. Going to be hunkering down, closing up a bit, sticking to my knitting as it were, and focussing more on taking care of the people who matter the most in my life. (Engaging Some sort of self defense mode as it were).

I’ve tried (and I shall continue to try – through continuing to engage in the civic process), but the reality is, there’s little else I can do and anything I do in the overall scheme of things has little impact on the prevailing.

I’m also anticipating in due course, I will probably eventually stop updating this site entirely. I’m seeing little point in continuing to write and spell out my thoughts here.

“Night Glow” at Claudelands Event Centre, Hamilton for Balloons over Waikato…

Didn’t have a ticket (They’re Free to grab, but very limited in number), was passing through The Tron, so walked up and took some photos through the fence.

I haven’t been able to get my desire to travel (overseas for leisure) back since COVID-19 – Essentially the desire to do so completely disappeared over the COVID lock downs and it never recovered.

In a nutshell, the potential enjoyment derived in my mind / grey matter doesn’t yet exceed the potential hassle / stress / cost at the moment. Given that it’s now been 5 years and the itch still hasn’t returned, I think it would be fair to say it may not return for a very long time (at least not to the same level as it was prior to COVID-19)

If there is a “purpose” to the travel, be in for work, volunteering, or other opportunity (that is not purely for leisure), then perhaps I can tack on a “leisure” component afterwards, but until that comes, will leave it be.

Celestrial Dragon photo at the Latern Festival in Manukau Sports Bowl.

Karangahake Gorge Tunnel Photo. The Rail Tunnel loopRail Tunnel loop is one I’ve done plenty of times as a wind down walk after a bigger hike.

The situation I feared almost two decades ago has materialized.

Facebook has begun and is already replacing having a website for a lot of businesses. Often when I do a search for a business, I find they now only have a Facebook page. The issue with this is that it effectively forces people to get a Facebook account to look at their page. (Scroll a handful of posts and FB now demands you login or create an account)

I will admit to buying shares in Facebook (now Meta Platforms Inc.) as a psychological analgesic to try and take the edge off of my high disdain towards the company. The stock price has now since quadrupled.

Despite my attempts to set up alternative self hosted platforms for friends to use (this site, peak.nz originally being one of them) to try and stop Face-borg taking over in this fashion, this was ultimately in vain. In hindsight and upon blunt reflection, I stood no chance.

The old web is dead. 15 years ago I was panned for being “Oh so pessimistic” for suggesting what has now eventuated today.

Admittedly, I really dislike the “new” Internet and have responded by drastically cutting down my personal use of it

Quick shot of the still waters of Auckland Viaduct Harbour

Takapuna Winter Lights Festival…

Traffic was jammed up for about a 2 km radius. Lucky I took the bus this time.

Picture of southern lights

Lanterns hanging from the trees

Update 5th February 2024: Have now tested negative. Apart from sleeping for much longer and a dry cough, symptoms are largely gone. Overall, for me, felt like a longer acting but milder version of the flu.

Symptoms initially appeared mid last week sometime but daily Rapid Antigen testing only began showing positive 4-5 days after symptoms first appeared.

So far symptoms have been rather mild (so far). More like a mild / low grade influenza with mild fever for only a day and a tickly / itchy throat for the rest of it,

That said, it’s appears to affect everyone differently and quite vastly so. Have had APAC Development team members at work being knocked out for weeks at a time.

You know this system is buggered when just a single investment propery alone (e.g an average 3 bedroom stand alone / single family house) one happens to own is appreciating in value faster than what one earns in their main job. And that is before considering the taxman coming to take his take off of my salary.

Sadly, none of the politicians I spoke to in the lead up to our last elections gave a hoot. National Party candidates in particular – they didn’t seem to care about the social impact of house price speculation and in fact seemed to be incredulous that I would vote against my own financial self interest.

Yeah well, what pride is there to live in such a socially and economically divided society? We’ve already long since lost our our egalitarian identity and we are already losing our social cohesion.

Full moon photo from Auckland’s night sky…