Teenagers

It's hard to understand how the human race has survived. I mean, it's hard to imagine Primitive Caveman--who hasn't read any books on listening to teenagers, being supportive, and unconditional loving--not ending his bloodline the first time his 12-year-old mouthed off at him.

Children spend the first two years being completely dependant on you, and the next 20 years expecting you to wait on them. Whilst you're busy trying to ensure they get a good education and have lots of opportunities, they're busy screaming because the shirt they put in the laundry basket 20 minutes ago still isn't clean.

The only consolation is that everyone else has to deal with the same nonsense at some point, even the smug person with plenty of advice will at some point be curled up in the fetal position, crying in frustration and exhaustion.

The only advice I can offer is to remember it's temporary, that children change moods more often than underwear, and that your job is to keep them safe, not make them happy. To paraphrase Nigel Latta, the hardest thing is to make sure their problems remain their problems. You're too busy working, cooking, cleaning and occasionally sleeping to try and fix all of their issues, especially as they've created most of them themselves. And besides, even if you could fix them, your children wouldn't learn very much from them.

So yes, it's very hard when your baby is sitting outside your bedroom door at 10 at night screaming and crying because she's been playing games on her phone for two hours and suddenly realised she needs something in the morning and wants to make it your problem, but remember that if you fix it, you're just ensuring she'll be back next week with the same issue. Make sure her problem stays her problem, and she'll still be back next week but you'll have gotten a little more sleep.

P.S. This was actually supposed to be a rant about me having to go to the supermarket at 10pm last night because one of the kids took the last roll of toilet paper and not only failed to tell anyone, but actually put the empty plastic bag back in the cupboard, so we thought there was more. I'm not sure how I got on this other issue.

NCEA

Just as I figured out the English education system, I now have to figure out the New Zealand system, which is completely different than both the US and UK, but just as complex and ridiculous. NCEA stands for National Certificate of Educational Achievement, and it works something like this:

In year 11 (about 15 years old), every child in New Zealand is given NCEA level 1 exams in their chosen subjects, which are graded by a small army of teachers and ranked as "achieved," "merit," "excellence" or "not achieved" (i.e. failed). The results of these exams are then promptly thrown out and never seen again.

In year 12 (16 years old), every child in New Zealand is given NCEA level 2 exams in their chosen subjects, which are similarly graded, ranked and thrown out, never to be seen again.

In year 13 (17 years old), every child in New Zealand is given NCEA level 3 exams in their chosen subjects, which are similarly graded, ranked and then put through a meat grinder to generate a ranking number which determines university admissions.

The meat grinder goes something like this:

1. Each subject contains a number of components, which are worth different credits. For example, an essay may be worth 5 points or an exam may be worth 10 points. You can only count a maximum of 24 points per subject.
2. You can take as many subjects as you wish, but you can only count credits from five subjects.
3. You can only count your "Top 80" credits.  That is, if you got 20 "excellence" credits, 20 "merit" credits and 60 "achieved" credits, then you would count the 20 excellence, 20 merit, and 40 achieved, for a total of 80.
4. You then multiply the number of "excellence" credits by 4, "merit" credits by 3, "achieved" credits by 2, and add them all up.  Using the previous example, that would be 80 excellence, 60 merit and 80 achieved, or 220 points.
5. Universities have their own requirements for each programme, so a Bachelor of Arts degree may require 150 points while a Bachelor of Engineering requires 250 points with 17 credits in Calculus and 16 credits in Physics. 

Of course, even though only the level 3 results count, you can't take the level 3 exams if you haven't passed the level 2 exams, and you can't take those if you haven't passed the level 1 exams, and you have to decide your subjects in year 10 so you can sign up for the right classes in year 11, which means you have to figure out what you want to do in college when you're 14 years old!!

Absolutely insane.

Pet cemetery

The cat is going to die.

That's not a threat; the cat is fantastic, a siamese mix with a wonderful temperament whose only vice is that she can't resist a lap. No, she's going to die because she's old and her kidneys are shutting down. The vet gave her 3 months to live, and that was 9 months ago.

So every day is a gift, although of course we all take her for granted (and complain when she sheds on us). But what bothers me most isn't that she's going to die, it's that I have no idea what to do when she goes.

I've never had to bury a pet, other than fish. I've known people who cremated their pets, but I find that a little bizarre. We're in a rental house, so it seems slightly awkward to leave the cat in someone else's backyard. How deep to dig? I'm not even sure I have a shovel. Or a box. What about a plaque?

You'd think, knowing the cat is going to die, I'd be prepared for it, but in the end I'm sure I'll ignore the problem and improvise at the time.

The cat probably deserves better.

Karori

Karori is Maori for "rollercoaster."* It's in a valley in the hills above Wellington, about 160 meters (500 feet) above sea level.  To look at a topographic map, it appears quite smooth and orderly, with the main road running along the basin of the valley:

However, that purple covers a difference of 70 meters (230 feet)! Birdwood Steet, for example, is only 600 meters long but rises by 50 meters!  Karori Road varies from 139 meters to 178 meters, and it's not a simple grade but a series of hills and valleys.  The drive to Wright's Hill (the green blob at the bottom) is 3.5km but climbs another 150 meters!  In other words, Karori is a cycling nightmare.

I bought a used bike off the Internet, sight-unseen.  It was the wrong size, rusty and the gears didn't work--but it was cheap!  I took it to the local bike shop which only charged me $40 NZD for a standard service, and the gears worked perfectly--for a day. The next day they were frozen in place again.  However, I didn't bother complaining because I realised that I would never change gears in Karori -- I was either climbing straight uphill in first gear, or screaming downhill at terrifying speeds.  There was no point shifting gears so I could go faster!

That said, it could be worse. According to this article, when Karori was settled in 1840, the only access was a Maori footpath! By 1843 they had built a road along Curtis Pass, about 260 meters above sea level. It was so steep that passengers had to walk up one section as the horses couldn't pull them! In 1897 the residents voted to pay £4000 to build a new road. It was supposed to take 6 months but took 3 years and cost £8000.  It was still good value, as today it is still the main road into Karori.  (For a suburb of 15,000 people, there are only 3 roads that access it!)

My point isn't to complain about the hills or the roads or even my bicycle, but to compare Wellington to San Francisco.  You see, SF is the only place I ever wanted to live in the US, and I appear to have done just that. In addition to the hills, the bay, and the weather--if  Mark Twain's "the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" were true (it isn't) he would have felt right at home in Karori--even the ethnic diversity is similar, with Wellington about 76% white and 16% Asian, while San Francisco is 49% white and 33% Asian.

Of course, there are some differences: Somes Island has a wildlife sanctuary rather than a maximum security prison; in the Mercer 2014 International Quality of Living Survey, Wellington was ranked as the 12th best city in the world while San Francisco was #27; Numbeo.com calculates it costs 30% less in Wellington to maintain the same standard of living as San Francisco; and where San Francisco has 837,000 residents crammed into 47 square miles (that's 17,179 people per square mile!), Wellington city (including Karori) only has 200,000 people over 112 square miles (roughly 10% of SF's population density!)

So perhaps I found an even better version of Baghdad by the Bay.

* Of course I'm making that up.  Maori for "roller coaster" is takai rōnaki.