L'inverno sta arrivando

The days are getting very short. Soon enough it will be dark when I leave work at 5pm. Winter is coming.

My Kiwisaver account has been doing nicely over the last 3 years. It is a government initiative to get people saving; I put 4% of my weekly wage aside and that is invested in 'safe' portfolios. If I don't touch it, I should have $400,000 by the time I retire. I like the look of that.

In the meantime, I feel like I have two savings goals left. I want to buy a good D-SLR camera, probably a nikon d50 or similar. I do also want to learn to drive my car. That's more of a motivational than monetary goal. Then lastly, I want to save up a few grand, then travel through ireland, france and italy. I yearn to breathe that ancient air. New zealand is so young geologically, politically, socially. I want to stand in the colosseum, to see the ruins of the terme di diocleziano and caracula, cross the ponte di rialto and ponte vecchio. To see the towering cathedrals of Chartres, Nimes, Rouen, to spend a night at Mont Saint Michel. To stand at the cliffs of moher, to see the giants causeway.. just to breathe the air and taste the food and hear the people.

My feet are itching.

The sandman comes.

Silence

I've met some interesting people over the last week. I went to my first tweetup, a meetup organized via twitter. The only other person I knew who was going to be there had to pull out, so I was essentially meeting complete strangers, heh. They were cool though, they had interesting jobs, one a microsoft employee for the last 10 years, another working at the company who has just won the contract to lay Christchurch's ultra fast fibre network. My twitter list has grown at an alarming rate, but the difference between it and say facebook or msn is that these are real, local, tangible people, that I can physically go and hang out with, have a meal with, get to know. It's... it's exiting to have a reason, or desire, to leave the house again.

Last Saturday I went to the Frompsons' and met another couple of tweeps. We played Scene It, which worked pretty well, but the film clips they kept showing us were of lame movies or movies we didn't know wtf was going on. On Sunday I came down with the manflu though, so I've spent a lot of the last couple of days in bed.

There was a news story today about how geoscientists are predicting a 23% chance of a magnitude 6.0 to 7.0 aftershock to hit the wider canterbury area in the next 12 months. If narrowed down to the city limits it's about a 6% chance. People are panicking and getting upset, but I can't really see why. I mean, we already know there's a risk of aftershocks, considering we're still feeling then every couple of days. We know they vary in size, everyone watches the seismographs. What should people take from this story? 'be prepared', 'be cautious' and 'it's not over.' Surely we already knew all this. I just don't understand the panic.

I guess I've been pretty stoic for a long time though. Que sera, sera.

On a whim I ordered some limited edition Halo 3 miniatures from Weta Workshops, which arrived at work today. They are very cool. I took some photos but only one turned out because it was a bit dark in the room.

I also bought a new guitar, a Fender Squier, which as well as being a fully fledged guitar, is a controller for Rock Band 3. With (a lot of) practice I should be able to play some proper guitar sometime! I bought a little Fender Mustang amp for it as well. That pretty much emptied out my savings. I got a payrise at work today, so I think I will rejig my savings a bit, try and save more than the $30 per week I had been managing. Travel is becoming a real goal for me. I've never been out of the country, and I want to see Ireland, France and Italy before I'm too old to 'do it properly.'

Best get some sleep or I'll never get over this manflu.