Well apprently there's going to be one hell of a nasty storm tomorrow and Sunday. Something that's definitely 'out of the ordinary', I think in the words of the weather-experts. I suppose I should be a bit worried, but really I'm kinda looking forward to seeing how hardcore it'll get. I can be a bit weird like that, looking forward to some sort of crazy event that everyone else will be dreading. Like when I was working at McDonald's everyone else seemed to be dreading the busy lunch rush, or the extra-crazy Santa Parade, but I'd really look forward to it, as something different.

I imagine once it starts I'll get rather sick of it pretty quickly. Perhaps if it's extra-super-crazy I might take a few photos.

Hmmmm... time for bed. Yes I know this has been a super-short update. But it's better than nothing. Leila's close to finishing her short-story collection thingee so perhaps next week our writing challenge will get back on track.

Oh yeah, and I got tickets for the Bledisloe Cup test on Saturday next week. Just to keep up the tradition of going to the annual All Blacks v Wallabies test. It'd be nice if South Africa played here once in a while too actually.

This is not a writing challenge blog update. Leila is currently inundated with the necessity to write about 6000 words in the next few days, so she can send off a collection of short-stories to Australia for some compeition thingee, so I'm not going to burden her with further blog topics to write about. I haven't really felt particularly much inspiration to write a "day in the life" blog post quite yet myself, although at one point yesterday I did open my my browser window to type it out, wrote the blog entry title, then got side-tracked and never quite came back to it. I wasn't sure whether to stick to one particular day for my "day in the life" post, or to do some interesting composite so at least it had some sort of interest to it. I'll leave that to another day for it to be sorted out.

Had some interesting feedback about the writing challenge blogging that Leila and I have been doing recently. Whether it's just "blogging for the sake of blogging" or that it's something particularly handy to get us both back into it. Imogen also pointed out that I didn't quite answer all my questions that I set myself in the previous post, as I didn't really refer to what I don't like in blogs. For a quick answer:

• I don't like blogs that are only updated once every few months.
• I don't like blogs that are just an enormous number of links to other sites, without real explanation of what one is linking to. It just creates a seemingly mountainous task to understand what the person is on about, as you have to read 20 other pages to get it.
• I don't really like overly "emo" blogs. I guess it's everyone's prerogative to vent on the net, I'm just not particularly interested in knowing about it (most of the time).

OK, well to approach the idea that I'm just "blogging for the sake of blogging". Yes I would probably agree with that, but at the same time I would say that it's better than not blogging at all. I'm a very habitual creature, and if I get out of the habit of doing something, it can be very difficult to get myself back into that habit. With some sort of necessary commitment to write in here, I hope that my 'habit' of updating will improve, and with it will the quality of the entries themselves. I think my real hope for the writing challenge is that I'll end up doing more entries like this, which aren't actually part of it, because perhaps I'm waiting for Leila to write on the topic herself, or perhaps I'm not quite ready to write THAT particular entry yet, but I'm back in the habit of writing enough to want to write about something else. I think, in the end, that I do just quite enjoy blogging in here, and somehow feel a little bit better about life when I keep things up to date a little more.

A couple of interesting things have happened this week. On Monday, Leila and I went to see the movie "Timecrimes". It's a Spanish film that was showing as part of the "Incredibly Strange Film Festival". I wouldn't say that it was necessarily incredibly strange, but it was certainly interesting. Briefly, it was about a guy who experiences a series of events that lead him to step into a time machine and he travels back a few hours. However, the "previous him" still exists, and in order to make sure the "previous him" can be reunited with the "current him", he realises that he was actually the one who precipitated the series of events. If that sounds confusing enough, eventually a third version of him comes into the movie, and it all ends up making an interesting point about how messing with time would really really fuck things up. I've not done a particularly good job explaining it all, although it's actually surprisingly easy to follow when you're watching the film. It fitted in very well with my post on time-travel the other day, and came from a reasonably similar philosophical perspective as where I would come from. Well worth a watch, if you get the chance. Apparently there's an American remake in the works, although I bet it won't be as good.

I've also managed to get myself suckered into another forum, which particularly focuses on Auckland's public transport system. As that's the part of Kiwiscrapers that I tend to be interested in the most, it's pretty cool having a whole forum dedicated to it. It's a bit quiet at the moment, but hopefully I can add some vitality to it and really get things going. My experience with forums is that just a few people can make a huge difference, turning a place that was dead into one that can hum along really well. I'll try to write my "day in the life" post tomorrow.

Well we've done reasonably well on this blogging project so far. I figured there'd be a break over the weekend, and yesterday I just felt so incredibly tired that I couldn't be bothered writing anything. However, a gap of three days isn't too bad for me, so I might as well get stuck into the next one. I probably have a few 'non-writing challenge' posts that I could write, but I do want to keep this up, and I'm curious about what Leila will set me as my next task, so let's get going on it.

So, what was the topic of this blog post meant to be? Ah yes that's right, about blogging. I often find myself 'blogging about blogging', but usually only bemoaning how terrible my update regularities have been of late. I know a few times in the past I've also written a "history of this blog" type post, so I won't do that again. I've also written quite a lot about how I wish my blog wasn't, so I'm also going to steer away from that. This post isn't meant to be exactly about where I want to take my blog, but more like "if this blog didn't have a history, if I wasn't worried about privacy issues, if I was a particularly awesome writer, then how would I want this blog to be?" I think that's fairly manageable.

Although in recent months I haven't kept particularly up to date with the blogs in my links list, over the years of blogging they've certainly provided with me much inspiration, and also made me a damn sight jealous of how awesome they are (some of them, not all of course). There are, of course, many different types of blogs: personal diaries, newsy blogs, political blogs, topic-focused blogs and so on. Often the good ones have a mixture of all of the above, but this can be pretty difficult to achieve in a way that isn't weird and doesn't make you go "gee they always talk about this thing, so what on earth is THAT post there for?" I have found myself particularly interested in blog posts that detail people's travels, or posts that are just funny, or posts that describe a fairly normal day's life for someone, but in a way that makes it fascinating reading. Perhaps overall, I've found myself liking blogs that do describe the blogger's life quite well, but do so in a way that's interesting, funny and makes you feel like you want to know what's going to happen next. It might be through an interesting style of writing, because you know them, because they write about an aspect of their life that interests you, or because they're just so utterly hilarious, but there's something about some blogs that makes you click on them again and again, curious to know what's going to come next.

But anyway, that's enough about "what I like about blogs". It is pretty obvious that if you like a blog you'll come back to it, so I imagine that in thinking about how I wish my blog was, I'd want it to be something that I would keep coming back to - even if I wasn't the one writing it. There's one part of me that would quite like the ability to have an anonymous blog, not necessarily one that was private (as I doubt I'd ever write in it), but perhaps one which wasn't linked to my real life personality. There's perhaps a sense of liberation in that theory, a chance for me to really write about whatever I please, without worrying about privacy issues to much (although with obvious care to maintain that anonymity). Yet, I think I would perhaps bore of that. There's a certain usefulness in having a blog that people who you know actually read. You don't need to tell them everything that's gone on in your life recently whenever you see them, because there's the possibility they already know it all. I know in Europe it was very handy to just post to my blog, rather than having to send 53 million emails out detailed to everyone what I'd been up to. Perhaps some day in the future if I become reasonably well known for one reason or another, my blog may form an interesting part of that persona: a place for me to share my point of view on things. Anonymity might take that away.

I also think it could be quite nice, at least in theory, to have a blog that is about one particular subject. Perhaps a cricket or urban transportation blog would be most suited for someone like me, and there would definitely be some interest in commenting on developments in my particular subject, linking to news stories, putting my perspective on things and so on. However, I could feel a bit "boxed in" by something like that. What if there was something really interesting going on in my life that wasn't really linked to the subject of my blog? Would I still have to run a personal blog in conjunction with the other one? Geez if I have enough trouble keep one blog updated I don't want to know how bad I'd do with two of them on the go. Often a forum can be a better way to discuss those sorts of things anyway, as you get way more feedback (unless you've got millions of people reading and commenting on your blog) and it's also so interesting reading what other people have to say.

So overall, I don't think I want my blog to be radically different to the way it is, at least not the options I've outlined above. I think ideally my blog would remain - primarily - some sort of commentary on my life at the time. Something that does provide a nice record for me when I decide to look back at a particular month, but also something that's interesting for people to read. There will be stories of my childhood thrown in, along with my opinion on something in particular, philosophical rants and so forth. I can do that and it is how I would want my blog to be, even in an ideal world where I could start over. The main thing that I probably want to change, interestingly enough, can't really be changed at the moment: that is, to come up with interesting stories about what happened throughout a particular day of my life. Obviously, with limitations around what I can write about my work, and also self-imposed limitations about what I'd want to write about my home life, and not much in between - there isn't much room for providing some sort of running commentary about what happened on a particular day. At the moment, there aren't many interesting anecdotes that I can retell, there aren't many interesting observations that I can make about complete strangers, simply because I don't really come aross many of them. Often the best blog posts I've read from other people tell a story about something crazy that happened to them on the bus or train to work, something random they noticed at the cafe at lunch time, or some strange conversation they overheard while waiting in line at the post office.  My life just doesn't seem to provide those opportunities particularly often, and I think my blog kinda suffers from that. It's really difficult for me to write an interesting post "about my day", especially if it's a weekday. It's not to say my life sucks, or is necessarily particularly dull, it's just fairly repetitive, and repetitive in a way that doesn't really lend itself to interesting blog posts.

Obviously I imagine that over time my life will shift into a different pattern. I will eventually get a different job, we will move house at some point (OMG I'd love to live here) and my life will change, hopefully into a pattern that does provide some sort of room for interesting observations and interesting blog posts as a result. I do think the repetition, the lack of interaction with people in general, and the way I feel so dependent on my car all the time, has been getting me down lately. After Europe it's just such a massive contrast, and just feels so uninspiring. I suppose that not having much to blog about can be fairly symptomatic of greater issues.

But the writing challenge is a good start. I know from past experience the more I blog, the more I find interesting stuff to blog about. Hopefully by kick-starting things a bit, I'll be able to turn this blog into something that does more closely resemble what I "wish it could be".

Gosh not only has Leila written an enormous entry about my last topic, and proposed the new topic that I'll get to soon, but she's forged ahead and written a post on the next topic already. Wow three posts in two days from her, that's fairly impressive. I've deliberately avoided reading her post on the current topic until I complete mine - I'm not quite sure why, perhaps because I won't feel quite as much behind if I write mine before reading hers.

Anyhow, let's get into it. There are clearly two distinct parts of this topic: childhood fears and childhood nightmares. I think, quite fortunately, that for me to two didn't generally coincide particularly often, as it would have been rather horrible. Generally my nightmares were about stuff that didn't consciously freak me out particularly much in my general life, although obviously they did unnerve my subconscious enough to make it put them into my nightmares. But anyway, which shall I start with... hmmmm.... how about childhood fears, that's a little more interesting probably.

When I look back at things, I was definitely a pretty damn timid child. For years I slept with the light on (or at least went to sleep with the light on), and while I don't remember the age I was when I finally made the transition to going to sleep with the light off, I know that it was probably older than I'd really want to admit to. So obviously 'the dark' freaked me out reasonably much as a kid. But it wasn't just 'the dark' in general, there were definitely specific elements to it that terrified me as a kid. The most obvious, was this fear that there would definitely be something out the window: perhaps a person, perhaps a weird monster, perhaps some sort of witch. Once it got dark, I'd be enormously keen to get the curtains shut on all the windows as quickly as damn possible, and I'd hate it when I would end up forgetting and having to draw them shut before getting into bed. Luckily once I switched the light on in my room the outside world would go much darker than it was before switching the light on, so my chances of actually seeing anything out the window would be reduced.

I'm not quite sure where this fear came from, but I think Scooby Doo had quite a lot to do with it. As most people know, Scooby Doo started off as a kids cartoon (subsequently made into terrible movies) with four people and a dog investigating all these scary monsters/ghosts/etc., who always turned out to be people in masks at the end of the show. While it was pretty harmless fun, and in my later teenage years I actually quite enjoyed watching the programme, as a kid it really freaked me out. In fact, I'm not quite sure why I continued watching it. But anyway, it wasn't the scenes of the monsters chasing the characters that scared me, it was the situations where someone would be standing next to a black window, there'd be a flash of lightning which would illuminate some scary monster/ghost/witch outside the window, which would then go black again. Heck even thinking about that now freaks me out a bit. I became convinced that there'd be random scary stuff outside the windows at night, even if I was a fairly rational child who didn't particularly believe in ghosts and other scary stuff. The other thing I remember particularly freaking me out as a kid, was the Wizard of Oz movie. Now, strangely enough, this movie was one of Leila's absolute favourites as a kid, and it didn't scare her at all. But for me, even as a reasonably older kid, I remember being totally freaked by it. It wasn't just the scenes of direct confrontation between the witch and Dorothy, but more indirect stuff that would get me. The scene where the house is flying in the air from the tornado and they see the witch outside (those damn windows again!) particularly scared me, as did situations where she'd wander off the yellow brick road (I remember my mind pleading with her not to leave it.)

Of course there were other things that freaked me out as a kid: thunderstorms in the middle of the night, ghosts in the general, the Witches movie, the movie "IT" which I saw when I was 12 and got totally fucked over by, but in general nothing else came close to my "windows thing". I think it's interesting to see how that's manifested itself these days, in that I'm never particularly keen to open curtains during the day (although I will do it sometimes) and I'm also still keen on turning lights on whenever I enter an empty room at night. For a very long time I found it extremely difficult to deal with the concept of having a window open at night, and I also still very much prefer the bedroom door to be shut when falling asleep.

OK, now for nightmares. Oddly enough there's not a huge crossover between my general childhood fears and what I seemed to have nightmares about as a kid. I think I vaguely remember having my first nightmare at around aged 4: it wasn't particularly exciting as all I remember was that there was a fire and the whole scene looked like something out of DangerMouse. A while later I had a much much more intense nightmare, which was about me getting lost in a shopping mall. This dream turned into one of the most epic ever, and I still remember scenes from it incredibly well. There were parts when I seemed to visit someone's house and watch their TV for a while, before remembering I needed to find my Mum again, and I always remember my utter relief in coming across her in what seemed to be a supermarket, in the fruit & vege section. After that, my nightmares tended to be about fairly mundane subjects, but were freaky for me all the same. I think the most common one was about the plughole in the bath messing up. I had a lot of baths as a kid, and obviously some significant sub-conscious fear of the plug disappearing and things getting sucked down the plughole (though generally my dreams involved me being more freaked out about my bath-toys going down there than me going down there). This wasn't exactly a totally freaky nightmare, but I had a great deal of very similar dreams over the years, and they always were fairly unpleasant.

As a teenager my nightmares generally revolved around trying to get to school on time, or exam stresses. The trying to get to school on time was a particularly common one, especially when I was riding my bike to school. These were more like "frustration nightmares" than "fear nightmares", but still were rather unpleasant as I'd always be aware of the time ticking on, but for some reason found it impossible to leave the house as there'd always be something that I had forgotten. Pretty similar to exam nightmares, where I'd always freak out about my pens running out and similar stuff. In more recent times, I've freaked out about missing flights & trains as my most commonly themed ones, although I have had a few rather disturbing ones where there's a really dangerous person that I keep on having to beat the crap out of (I'm often really strong in dreams for some reason) to stop them from harming people. Occasionally I've also had freaky dreams about giant spiders and the like, but they're pretty damn uncommon.

OK, well I think that does it. The next topic is to blog about blogging. Not so much why you blog and why you forget to blog (something I seem to write about more than anything else), but rather what makes a really good blog, what annoys you about blogs and (most importantly) what do you wish your blog was like?

Although the writing challenge has got off to a reasonably good start I think it's still reasonably important that my blog follows what's going on in my life, at least to some extent. I was chatting with Leila about how this whole challenge might work last night, in a little bit more detail than the original plan we came up with. I think it'll work out pretty well, and we have the opportunity to explore some interesting blog post topics. I know that coming up with an idea about what to write about can be tricky at times, but that will be hopefully overcome by the fact that half the time I won't need to be the one coming up with the idea, and the other half of the time I can think more along the lines of what I'd be interested in Leila writing about than what I'd be interested in writing about myself, and the fact that I'll need to write a post on the same topic will be fairly inconsequential. I suppose that our plan is fairly could work with more people than just the two of us, but you have to be committed to writing on each topic that comes up, and also you have to come up with a topic yourself when it's your turn. Obviously, topics need to be acceptable for blogging about.

Anyhow, this post is actually supposed to be about stuff other than the writing challenge.

As of this week Leila and I have actually been back in New Zealand longer than we were in Europe. It is starting to feel like I had one crazily long dream a few weeks ago, and strangely while the four weeks we spent there felt like ages at the time, it now seems like a mere flash in my life. I suppose that's because there's much more continuity between my life back in New Zealand before and after the trip, than there is between the trip and New Zealand (if that makes sense). Even when I was in Europe I'd find myself waking up at night, realising I wasn't dreaming as I was actually awake, but then thinking about the fact that we were on the other side of the world to our normal lives, on a journey that was so utterly removed from normality that it almost seemed like I was still dreaming to some extent. In a half-joking manner, I'd have to remind myself about the big long flight we'd been on to get to London in the first place, so that my sub-conscious was satisfied I wasn't just going to wake up back in my bed in Auckland.

What seems to have enhanced the 'dream-like' place that our holiday holds in my mind, is the way in which normal life in New Zealand has seemed so incredibly utterly normal recently. I guess that it being mid-winter doesn't exactly help things by making it easy to do fun stuff in the evenings or at the weekend (it seems to have rained every single weekend since I got back). I feel like I want to write about all the things I've been up to throughout the past few weeks, but yet my list seems so incredibly short. This return to normality was rather depressing in the first couple of weeks after returning to New Zealand, as I really really felt like I wasn't "supposed" to be back here. I'd found cities in Europe that were just so much more exciting to be in, and I imagine to live in. Obviously it being mid-summer in Europe helped a lot, as I imagine London in January isn't quite so nice, but the vibrancy and hugeness of the places we visited (especially London) felt like it matched with me so much more than the overgrown town that is Auckland. Travelling is incredibly addictive, as I have experienced before pretty much whenever I've gone overseas, and I remember saying to my Dad a day or so after we arrived home that "it's been great to catch up with everyone, can I head off on part 2 of the trip now?"

I think the holiday has changed things quite a lot for me. In terms of how I see Auckland working, I now have a much better idea about what the alternatives could be. In terms of knowing about art stuff, I feel like I've been spoilt so much by the great galleries of Europe I won't truly appreciate it until realising what a song and dance art communities here make about a Picasso exhibition in Brisbane. It's like "but there was a whole room full of his stuff at the Pompidou, and a whole museum dedicated to him in Barcelona...." I think the trip has changed a few long-term goals for both Leila and I, modifying how we see things happening over the next few years of our lives.

Although the "come-down" has been a bit depressing, any future holidays I have throughout my life are going to have to be impossibly good to beat that one as the best ever.

OK well I'm going to get going first on the politics post. Hopefully I'll convince Leila to write a post herself some time in the not too distant future.

Anyhow. The first election I ever remember was the 1987 one. But don't get too excited about any more memories about that election. All I can recall is being in Thames on a family holiday and my parents taking me down to the local primary school (the school my Dad went to as a child) so they could cast a Special Vote (as they weren't in Auckland that day, obviously). After that I didn't really know much, except I suppose a couple of years later I became aware that David Lange was the Prime Minister. In 1989 and 1990 the Prime Minister changed a fair-few times. We got fairly excited when Helen Clark became the deputy Prime Minister in 1990, as she was the local MP. After that, it was the 1990 election when I next really noticed this whole thing called politics (remember I was only 8 then).

In 1990 Labour got totally wasted, and I remember feeling a bit sad for Mike Moore as he had to relinquish being Prime Minister. But still, I didn't really have much of an opinion myself. I was probably guided somewhat by my left-leaning parents, but then again at the same time the Labour government of 1984-1990 was hardly left-leaning, introducing much of the neo-liberal ideology that could be considered particularly right-wing (no surprises that two of its most influential politicians at the time went on to form the hardcore right-wing party ACT). At the time of the 1990 election I was in standard 2 and we had a small political discussion at school (as much as you can at that age). I think my opinion at the time was to favour Labour over National because Labour seemed to include many "green" policies, while National seemed not to. Of course this was a gross over-simplification, but I was only 8. Anyway, I suppose that between 1990 and 1993 I gained much of my initial political knowledge. With Ruth Richardson's "mother of all budgets", "Ruthanaesia", cuts to welfare, policy changes that made people pay to go to hospital and so on, I developed a pretty strong distaste for National. It seemed like they really didn't care about the welfare of the people, doing whatever they could to cut back spending and help make the rich get richer. I think my experience of National over those three years, even though I was only between the ages of 8 and 11, kind of cemented my opinion that I could never vote for them in the future.

By 1993 I was 11 and became much more interested in the world of politics. The election that year was tremendously exciting, with the final result not actually becoming obvious until a good few weeks after the election, due to its closeness. Whilst I was hopeful that Labour might force a victory (largely due to my distaste for National), my favoured party that year was probably The Alliance. Further to the left than Labour, I largely had the opinion that "Labour had been rubbish from 1984-1990, National had been rubbish over the past three years, so surely these guys can't be any worse". I read through their basic policies and they all fitted well with my nice ideological beliefs in free health and education, etc. Their highly progressive tax system seemed to make a lot of sense to me as well. Unfortunately, in 1993 we were having the last of our "First Past the Post" elections, which meant that although The Alliance won about 15% of the vote throughout the country, they only won 2 actual seats and were therefore pretty minor players in parliament.

Over the next three years the National government probably wasn't quite as bad as it had been in the early 1990s. There was the rise of New Zealand First, basically thanks to a whole pile of racist New Zealanders getting freaked out by Asian people, Helen Clark took over as leader of Labour from Mike Moore, and they probably became a little bit more of my 'party of choice'. However, in the end Labour and Alliance did agree on most issues (although Alliance was a bit more extreme) so I was pretty happy for either of them to do well. By the time the 1996 election came around MMP was the big buzz word, as the whole electoral system had the biggest change ever. Lots of people were enormously confused about it, grumpy that the number of MPs went up, and kind of scared about the possibility of the parties themselves deciding upon the makeup of the government, rather than the people, as coalitions would most likely be essential.

That 1996 election resulted in a huge bloody mess. New Zealand First found themselves in a "king-maker" position, and could allow either National or Labour to form a government, depending on who they wanted to form a coalition with. Eventually they went with National, which hacked me right off, but in the long-run was probably a good thing as the stupidity of their MPs over the next year or so (remember Tuku's underpants and "youthful exuberance"?) discredited NZ First so badly they barely survived the 1999 election (only because Winston Peters won Tauranga by 60 odd votes). But anyway, the post-election mess didn't really help anyone's popularity much and the main goal just about everyone wanted from the next election was a result that didn't leave the whole country hanging for months about what the next government would be. My beliefs stayed pretty much the same: I hated NZ First with a passion because of their xenophobia, National were slightly less horrific than they had been, but still kinda sucked, while Labour and The Alliance were definitely the prefered options. In pre-election debates Jim Anderton (Alliance leader) always impressed me: he had the best tertiary education policies by miles, a pretty important consideration for me as I finished school in 1999, while I still definitely supported Labour over National.

It was a bit frustrating that I was only a few months off turning 18 in time for the 1999 election. However, although poll results were neck-and-neck throughout most of the pre-election, once the All Blacks lost to France (gosh we have a habit of doing that) in the semi-finals of the 1999 rugby world cup, Labour most definitely pulled ahead of National in the polls, and were eventually able to form a coalition government with The Alliance (and some help from the Green Party, who entered parliament for the first time). This was the best possible outcome from my perspective, and for the first time I could remember I was actually pleased with the government we had. It was quite unusual not complaining about the government all the time at first, and although Labour hit a rough patch in mid-2000 (largely because business got freaked out by the possibility of having a government that actually didn't put them above everything else for the first time in close to 20 years) they remained a pretty damn popular government for the next few years. The Alliance fell to bits in 2002, which precipitated an early election and was rather frustrating, as it meant Labour lost an important ally. This has turned out to hurt them over the last six years.

The 2002 election was the first in which I was able to vote. I considered splitting my vote, but in the end it was two ticks for Labour. I felt they had done an excellent job since 1999 in turning around what had been 24 years of crap government. There was still much to be done, but they had held my university fees at roughly the same level for all three years of my Bachelor's Degree, they had reinvested lots in health and education, and they had managed to ensure the economy was doing well at the same time. National's vote fell away hugely in 2002, with minor parties such as United Future, New Zealand First and Act picking up much of their previous vote. Without a decent coalition partner, Labour ended up cobbling together an agreement with both the Greens and United Future. It wasn't great, but it worked, and United Future turned out to be a fairly easily satisfied partner in it all, even if half of them were crazy religious fundies.

By the time 2005 rolled along Don Brash had reinvigorated National into a force to be reckoned with. Frustratingly, he had done this largely through the same means that New Zealand First had gained popularity in the mid 1990s and in 2002: by appealing to the inner-racism of voters, although this time by attacking Maori, and also through promising crazily unrealistic tax-cuts. Election night was crazy, as at first it seemed like National would win, until lots of South Auckland Labour votes came through late on in the night and meant they ended up as the most popular party, although only just. I was particularly glad that Labour managed to win on this occasion, as Don Brash was definitely a relic of the early 1990s National Party that had been so particularly terrible. With his hardcore neoliberal ideas, a Don Brash led National government would have taken us back 12 years to the social catastrophes of Rogernomics and Ruthanasia. On the down side, the Green Party missed out on having enough seats to form a government with Labour alone, and due to the stupidity of NZ First and United Future (who refused to join a government that included that Greens), Labour was forced to cobble together a pretty substandard government with both NZ First and United Future. We also ended up with the embarrassment of having Winston Peters as our Foreign Minister (although in hindsight he hasn't been as bad as I thought he'd be).

So, that brings us up to date. I'm not going to rabbit on about the prospects for the election at the end of this year, as I'll leave that to another post. But rather, I shall expand upon my opinions and why I might end up voting the way that I will. For the first time I am actually unsure about where I'll cast my party vote at the upcoming election. No I haven't gone to the 'dark side' like many other New Zealanders, and succumbed to John Key and his "we'll be Labour but with different faces" facade. This time around I'm tossing up whether to vote Labour or Greens. Let's look at each of them individually, and see if I can make some sense out of it.

On the side of voting Labour, undoubtedly this is the safest vote to try to prevent National from forming the next government. Often I find the best way to decide who to vote for is to work out who you definitely DON'T want to be the government, and then figure out the best vote to try to stop them from winning the election. I know I only have one vote, but I like to think of it as potentiall THE crucial vote that might decide a final result. After all, in MMP every single vote does get counted and every single vote does matter when deciding how many seats a party gets (well unless you vote for some wacky party that'll never reach 5%). I do think that the Labour government we've had in the past 9 years has been the best NZ's had in a very very long time. The government has managed to increase social spending quite dramatically, but at the same time has run a sound budget and has (until recent months) watched over an economy that has enjoyed a the longest run of growth since World War II. There have been some great social policies as well: civil unions, legalising prostitution and criminalising the physical abuse of children. They also managed to handle the "Iraq situation" amazingly well, by avoiding becoming embroiled in the war but at the same time maintaining good relations with the USA. That's not to say things have been perfect though: they have watered down climate change policy and still haven't actually enacted an emissions trading scheme, even though we ratified the Kyoto Protocol a LONG time ago. They cut my student allowance in 2005 over some stupid rule change, they haven't made it particularly easier to get student allowances, they haven't really reduced university fees at all, and have made it really difficult for universities to maintain their top staff through chronic underfunding. Furthermore, until recently they avoided much investment in rail infrastructure while spending billions on more motorways. And, of course, by not adjusting the tax brackets for inflation, they effectively increases taxes quite significantly over the last 9 years. However, no government is perfect and they've certainly done a much better job than most.

On the other side of the fence, there's the Green Party. I like their ideology, as they seem the only party that's really got their head around climate change and are focused on making sure we don't screw the planet up in the long-run, even if that means a bit of short-term pain. I'm really into their transportation policies, promoting rail over roads and halting furtehr motorway developments, which will be totally pointless if petrol prices continue to rise. They definitely seem to be the party that has got a grip on the big issues that we are facing in the world at the moment, and has good plans that actually look beyond the short-term vote-gathering compromises that can bog-down larger parties. Furthermore, as current polls put National way ahead of Labour, it may be necessary to vote for the Greens as there's the potential situation that National may be forced to do a deal with them in order to form the next government.

If the polls get closer, I will probably end up voting Labour. It's the safest bet to ensure National don't get in. However, if it seems obvious National will get in, then at least a vote for the Greens might mean National has to compromise on many of its hardcore right-wing policies to gain the Green's support in a government. However, at the same time, if too many people do that there is the potential for Labour to end up in a similar situation to National's 2002 election result, which would be a sad end to what's been a very very good government.

Hmmmmmmmm....... I wonder what Leila will write about the topic.

Yesterday Leila and I came up with a concept of trying to get us to write more frequently: me on here and her either in some random notebook number 842, or on her long neglected blog. We didn't really get around to it yesterday (not a good sign), but today I'll give it a go.

So.... today's topic of writing comes about from the idea of time-travel. Not so much if it's scientifically ever possible (I know that something to do with the theory of relativity means that if you travelled close to the speed of light time would pass at a different rate for you than it would for objects not travelling so quickly, which therefore means that at least in some respects you could be described as time-travelling), but rather whether the concept of time-travel can actually fit with your philosophy of the world. Clearly the idea of going back in time and also forward in time both seem problematic. Going back in time does seem a bit "less weird" to me, because at least you're delving back into something that's fairly set in concrete as having actually happened. You know, to some extent, that if you popped up in 1970, what you'd see in a particular spot. Travelling forwards, into the future, gets really messy as you potentially see results of actions you haven't already taken in your life, and then wonder what would happen if you went back to the present and deliberately took a different course of action.

Yet, if I think about it, perhaps travelling forwards wouldn't be quite as messy as travelling backwards in time. Sure, if you were to go forwards and come across aspects of the world that you may affect in your future, it does get bizarre (as you would kind of steal your own future "free-will" to choose a different course to your life). But if you kept fairly clear of that, at least by travelling forwards you would be screwing with the real present that you've come from. Let me explain that a little more carefully. If one was to go back in time, unless you have a pretty deterministic viewpoint that things turned out the way they were always going to turn out, then every little action you take has the potential to multiply into a different outcome to the 'real present' that you came from. Do the wrong thing and you may accidentally delete your existence, or at the very least something along the 1 in a trillion series of events that actually led to your being. However, by going forwards you can't really mess this up, your actions wouldn't effect the 'normal' course of time, because in a way you're just jumping ahead and briefly seeing what things "might" be like in the future. If you mess with something in the future, or see an event happening that you don't like and could be prevented through some action back in the 'real present', then you can make that change and - at least in my opinion - changing the course of the future isn't nearly as messed up as changing the course of the past, thereby undermining the 'integrity' of the present that you came from.

OK so that is probably a little confusing. The whole conversation from which this rather crazy philosophical rant comes from, was originally instigated by Leila reading through my blog and thinking how it could be pretty interesting if one was able to read future blog posts - perhaps through some random event blog posts of the next couple of years were surprisingly visible on this site. It would be kind of like time-travelling, as you would be able to see the future. This thought rather unnerves me though, this ability to see into the future. Sure it'd be useful to find out the winning numbers for this coming Saturday's lotto draw. It might also be comforting to find out how exactly some situation that continues to annoy and stress you may turn out - to know that everything will be OK in the end and that you will manage to find a way to make it all work. However, what if you came across something bad happening in the future? Would you be able to change it, would it affect the normal present, would you being aware of something happening in the future change whether it actually happened still? All these questions just form a massive brain-mess when i try to figure them out.

A lot of books/movies etc. on the topic of time-travel seem to try to get over this by somehow "locking in" events. I suppose that it's through the idea that in a way, the future is set, and although it is us who will decide upon what the eventual outcome is, that particular outcome will happen in the future. In a few years time I either will still be living in my current house, or I won't be - there isn't any grey area there. It is the same for all other possible options in the future, in that there will be a definitive situation that I am in at a particular point in the future. Although I have the ability to affect that particular situation, there will be an outcome, there is one particular future out there and that is the only one that will ever happen. I suppose a few people take that one step further, and think that 'the future situation' is locked, and in a way no matter what we do, that situation will still happen. I find this deterministic viewpoint a little depressing, in that it seems to take away our ability to affect change in the world and renders us seemingly powerless. I suppose there's a midway point where one takes the opinion that the future is locked, because although you don't know it, you will always choose to make this decision and that decision, as will everyone else, leading to a particular outcome. This still leaves you with some sense of freedom to make choices, but it's as if the future always knows what you'll choose.

Whilst I like to think of myself as a believer in free will, there is something about that third option that seems to make a lot of sense. I often do have 'faith' (gosh it's annoying that religion has taken over that word so much) that things will sort themselves out, rather than feeling like I actively need to do something NOW in order to ensure that whatever situation is bothering me changes around. Perhaps it's my semi-deterministic subconscious mixing with an overall sense of optimism, and coming together to create a general idea that things will come to a good outcome as long as you make the obvious right choices, and as long as you have a bit of a think about how to get something done.

OK well I've fulfilled my part of the challenge. I wonder what Leila wrote.

Edit: Oh lame, her last blog entry was partially on this very topic. Now I have to come up with a writing topic. OK the next writing subject will be to explain our political views, including a history of them and how they may have changed in more recent times. And to justify why we have them.

I had a strange dream a couple of nights ago. It was really nice and exciting on the one hand, and yet strangely disconcerting on the other. As is typical with my dreams, I found myself surrounded by a broad number of people from throughout my life. It's interesting that many of my school friends I haven't seen for at least five years and yet they find themselves appearing in my dreams fairly regularly. Perhaps that happens to many people, that their dreams seem to require a lot of people to be present, and one's subconscious searches around for the best way to fulfil that role, and then puts them in. I don't necessarily think that school was involved as the setting, but just that quite a lot of people from school were there.

But anyway, in my dream it seemed like everyone was floating up in the sky, as if we could all walk on top of the clouds. Normally I would probably find myself a bit freaked out by this proposition, but in this dream for some reason I knew that I was able to easily "fly" back down to earth. In fact, it was kind of similar to just getting on a train and heading off to some destination. In fact, I remember rather looking forward to the stage of my dream when I would be able to just step off the clouds and gently flit back to earth, strangely after passing through what reminded me of metro-train gates. Perhaps I would need to flit down to earth in exactly the right position to avoid plummeting to certain death. At one point in this dream I do remember getting slightly worried about what might happen if I came back down to earth over land, and that it would be a rather hard landing. But my head got around that by reminding me that as long as I dropped down over the sea things would be fine. I had a few worries about getting things wet, but it seemed to pale in comparison to how awesome it would be to finally be able to do something that would feel like I was flying. I think that I did manage to do some of the semi-flying thing towards the end of the dream, as I know the over-riding emotion of the dream was a sense of freedom and happiness, rather than looking forward to something but being annoyed that it never quite happened before waking up.

When I did eventually wake up I realised that instead of hitting snooze on my alarm I'd actually turned it off, and I needed to be at work in 15 minutes. Typical.

So it's now about three and a half weeks since we got back in New Zealand.  Life feels like it's returned back to normal, although obviously we're still talking obsessively to anyone who'll listen about how cool Europe was. The utter normality of life back in NZ has been a little depressing I suppose, although it does feel that over time that has settled down a bit. Going from the warmth of a European summer (especially the hot cloudless days we had in Venice) back to the New Zealand winter, which has seemingly got colder and wetter, hasn't particularly helped things though.

I suppose with this blog, Europe did help kick start it back into action, although I've spent much of my last three weeks trying to backdate entries so that I didn't miss anything particularly significant from our holiday. Obviously there was masses to write about, whereas once again back in NZ I'm often thinking "hmmm... not sure if that's really worth writing about". I suppose that a few posts in a row that get me back into the habit might help. As I was discussing before the Europe trip, I probably need to develop an obvious new direction for my blog, as what seemed to work in the past doesn't seem to be working particularly well anymore. Perhaps a subtle shift from explaining what's happening in my life, to an outlet for me to have a bit of a rant about things, might be a good way for me to still be motivated to write in this blog. As always, I think it will just take something to spark me back into the habit of it all... and then I'll be sweet as.

OK, so rant number one is going to be about trains. I suppose that going around Europe and seeing the awesomeness of their trains has frustrated me about their pathetic state in New Zealand. Fortunately, this year has been somewhat promising for the country's rail future. A few months ago the government paid a crap load of money to buy back what seemed to be a few rusty locomotives and a few more rusty wagons. At close to $700 million for all this, it did seem like a heck of a lot, but it does seem like this is a step in the right direction towards us finally developing a rail system that does not belong back in the 1950s. While I don't know particularly much about how rail freight works around the country, I know that there is only one inter-city passenger train service (and that barely survives) and I know that while Auckland's passenger system has improved a lot in recent years (most obviously through constructing the Britomart terminal) it's still pretty crap. Less crap than it was though, as when it plumbed its depths in the early 2000s there was usually just one train per hour across the lines off-peak (up to one per half hour at peak times) and not even any services on Sunday.

With fuel prices going nuts, in particular the deisel which powers all Auckland's trains and buses, it seems like if there's ever going to be a time when train commuting in Auckland takes off, and also potentially where inter-city travel by train becomes viable again, now is that time. I've looked into catching the bus to work myself, and may well either end up doing that or finding a good bike to ride on the days when I don't have to head over to the Shore after work to pick up Amalia. However, as all the buses and trains are powered by deisel, it seems inevitable that fares will rise again soon, just as they did back in 2005 when petrol prices first started to increase dramatically. For now, the Regional Council is doing their best to stop that from happening, through subsidies to the bus companies, but it seems like it's only a matter of time until bus fares start going up again. Train has the potential to break free from its link with deisel - as we found out in Europe with just about all the trains there running from either a 'third rail' or from an overhead power supply. However, unfortunately once again we're stuck in the 1950s with our trains still running on deisel. Electrification plans have been around for a while, and are taking good steps towards actually happening, but in the meanwhile we're still stuck with noisy, slow, polluting deisel trains.

I don't think I can over-emphasise how important the project of electifying the rail system is. Auckland is already pushing deisel trains to the limit through Britomart, which is actually the largest underground railways station in the world that is used by deisel trains. The trains are slow in their acceleration, they're noisy, they can't travel in the long-tunnels that will form the future of any expansion to our train system, and they're just way crappier than what a modern electric train can be. Electrification doesn't come cheap of course, with a good $500 million needed to upgrade the lines and about the same again to buy new trains. However this investment is essential if our train system is to move into the future. By not being reliant upon deisel for power, rising fuel prices won't necessarily mean that train fares will need to go up, giving train a comparative advantage over cars as the means of commuting for a sizeable chunk of Aucklanders. Furthermore, the trains will be faster, more reliable, and much quieter. Wellington has had an electrified train system for decades now, and manages to transport significantly more people around the city by train each day than Auckland does - even though it has barely one third the population.

If Auckland's train system is to develop beyond what is currently an incredibly limited system, electrification is utterly essential. A CBD loop tunnel has been proposed, which would turn Britomart into a through station, continuing underneath the city and eventually linking up towards the current Western Line near Mt Eden. Obviously, such a long tunnel could only be used by electric trains. Another potential project, a harbour tunnel, has also been proposed (although probably not to be built within the next 10-15 years) would involve a deep tunnel underneath the Waitemata Harbour, linking with the current busway next to the Northern Motorway (the busway would obviously be turned into a rail line). With another deep-level tunnel proposed, obviously once again electrification is essential. Another project, a rail link to the airport, isn't quite as dependent upon electrification, but it would still be very much beneficial. In any case, while electrification is up in the air nobody's going to buy new trains and nobody is going to want to invest on expanding the rail network.

There is good news though. With the government now owning the railway tracks and also the existing rolling stock, they're in a position to want to invest in upgrading the stock. Just last week the government also passed a law to enable regional councils to raise money through a fuel tax they would impose within their regions. This allows the regional councils some certainty that if they decide to proceed with purchasing electric trains (which for some reason Auckland is expected to do, whereas Wellington got the government to pay for 90% of their new rolling stock, but this isn't going to be a rant at how Auckland always gets shafted), they have some certainty about being able to pay for them. So I suppose that nothing really stands in the way of electrification happening... well at least unless the National Party wins the election at the end of the year and decides to reverse everything. Which I guess is possible. Perhaps I can have a politics rant next time.

So many of my posts in the last month have been fairly restricted to "we went here and did this, then we went there and did that". Whilst the big sights were obviously often the highlights, I think it's quite useful for me to not forget many of the little things that made our trip what it was: the funny moments, the ways in which the places operated that I liked, things that were annoying, things that took you by surprise, things that you'd NEVER see in New Zealand and so on.

Well I guess overall.... WOW HOLY FUCKING SHIT EUROPE ROCKS! OK, now I've got that out of my system. Every place we visited I think we were pleasantly surprised by, even though for which I had enormously high expectations - such as Paris & Venice in particular. I think I am only truly starting to realise how much amazingly special stuff we saw, how it's not every day you can go to an art gallery and see six Picasso paintings in the same room, how it's not just normal to stumble across a 2000 year old Roman ruin and so on. Obviously I knew that before leaving, but after a few weeks of seeing amazing stuff each and every day, you almost begin to think that it's normal for you to be surrounded by buildings hundreds of years old, and for an art gallery to be filled with names that even I (the most art uneducated person in the world) recognised. But yeah, while the museums and art galleries were definitely most impressive, and I do feel like I learned a lot, there were many other things that I probably found more impressive and interesting.

Like the architecture! And by architecture I don't just mean the fantastic churches and temples, or the ruins of Rome or Pompeii. I think generally I mean the density of it all, the typical 4-6 level building in either London, Paris, Barcelona or Rome that seems to line almost every street. While one might think the homogeneity of the buildings would eventually become boring, two never did quite seem the same, and where you found longer lines of the same sort of architecture - such as Regent Street in London or many Parisian boulevards, the vista that it created was awesome. I have found that height of building just seems to work really well: it doesn't tower above you in an impersonal way like a skyscraper can (although there were some truly impressive skyscrapers in La Defense and Canary Wharf in particular), but still has the density to create a vibrancy that is just impossible in a place like Auckland, still obsessed with 1 and 2 level buildings. With those kinds of buildings, you always knew the street level would probably be retail, providing an array of shops that is just totally impossible in New Zealand, while the number of people living in the building would mean someone's always coming or going, someone else is hanging washing out the window, and yet another person is arguing loudly with their family member inside (although in Italy I think everyone just talks like they're passionately arguing, even when they're just asking what's for breakfast).

Funnily enough, when I think about the density of these cities, it isn't London, Paris or Rome that immediately comes to mind, but rather Barcelona. Although it didn't have the size of a London or Paris, and didn't have the chaos of a Naples or the "city sized museumness" of a Rome, I really do think that Barcelona felt the most vibrant of all the places we visited. Not only in the central "Gothic Quarter", where the narrow alleyways seemed constantly full of people, even at 11pm on a Wednesday night; but also throughout the wider L'Eixample, the newer parts of Barcelona. L'Eixample rather fascinated me actually, as a method of having a heck of a lot of people living in a fairly constrained space, but still having nice areas of private open space (through the use of inner courtyards) and also ensuring through those same courtyards that most parts of the building get a decent amount of sun. While the Gaudi designed "La Pedrera" that we walked through, is probably not quite indicative of the whole area, I do think that it's pretty common for buildings in L'Eixample to be designed in this manner. The density of the place meant people were always around, the metro system could be fantastic and the vibrancy was unbelievable.

The whole "European" way of life was also quite interesting to us. Seeing the variations in culture between countries became more and more obvious as the trip went on: ideas that Parisians had more similarities to Londoners than we might have thought, that Barcelona was kinda similar to southern and central Italy, which itself was similar, but also quite different, to the more northern towns of Florence and Venice. It was interesting to see the whole "siesta" culture, and given the heat of mid-afternoon in Spain and southern Italy, Leila and I began to embrace the idea of taking a break in the afternoon and heading back to our hotel, before emerging at around 8pm (or even later for the locals) to get dinner and see a bit more of the city. The European attitude to alcohol was also particularly interesting, with wine, beer and spirits seemingly available for sale everywhere. There's surely no liquor licensing of the kind we have in NZ, when a typical tourist van sells beer for the same price as a bottle of coke. At the supermarkets in Paris we could find bottles of wine for under 2 Euros as well... yet it just didn't seem like we ever came across particularly drunken behaviour at all. Perhaps the only time we did was on a bus back from Venice late at night when I think we coincided with some "after-ball" celebration and the noisiest bunch of teenage Italians I've ever seen. But apart from that it seems like the Europeans knew how to handle their alcohol without the "nannying" that we see in NZ all the time. Perhaps the fact that it's always been so available and relatively cheap means that Europeans don't get the whole "gotta get smashed tonight" mentality that NZers (and the English) have. 6pm closing time for pubs has a lot to answer for!

I guess in so many ways I really found my outlook on life often matching up a lot with how Europe seems to work. Being able to live without a car for 4 weeks quite easily was great, being able to catch trains all over the place and in many places having so much within walking distance (even in a big city like Rome) made life so easy - and must be truly awesome for those living in these places. I'll get back there.... some day.