Drasha - 8 July 2023

My drashot tend to fall into two themes: Family or progressive Judaism. This portion is all about family, so let's talk about progressive Judaism.

The daughters of Z'lofchad petition Moses for their father's holding, and God responds that their request is just. This is often celebrated as women's rights, as progressive Judaism. However, God then spells out male-preference primogeniture: All sons will inherit first, and daughters only if there are no sons. That may have seemed revolutionary at the time, but hardly seems worth celebrating today.

Immediately following this, in Numbers 36, other members of the Menashe clan argue that when the daughters of Z'lofchad marry, their holdings will be transferred to their husbands, thus reducing the Menashe portion. God resolves this by declaring the women who inherit property can only marry within their own tribe. One step forward, two steps back.

As progressive Jews, we constantly struggle with morally problematic statements like this. How do we treat the Torah as a moral authority while honestly confronting the ethical issues it raises? Dr. Rabbi Zev Farber argues that responses fall into three basic categories:

Fundamentalist—Double down and argue that the Torah reflects God's will and must by definition be moral; it is actually our modern ethical sense that is wrong.

Dismissive—Such laws simply showcase the worthlessness of religion, which should be toppled entirely for the betterment of society.

Selective—Point to uplifting parts of the Torah and ignore the problematic ones. 

The third option is quite popular because it's easy, but it's also self-serving: How do we engage with the fundamentalists, the dismissives or the apologists if we aren't engaging with the same texts they are? This is not a question of different interpretations; this is them having a viewpoint and us feigning ignorance.

The good news is, we're not the first to grapple with issues in the Torah; the Talmud is almost exclusively dedicated to this. For example, the rabbinic sages were quite distressed by capital punishment: how does Judaism hold that life is sacred when the Torah casually states, "One who insults one's father or mother shall be put to death"?

The sages' response was ingenious: They didn't argue the Torah was wrong, but they put so many restrictions on it that it became moot. Cases concerning offences punishable by death had to be decided by 23 judges, with at least 13 finding the defendant guilty. (And if all 23 find the defendant guilty, then the person is released, because clearly something was wrong with the court.) Two witnesses were required, they both had to be adult Jewish men who had seen the crime in full, had seen each other, had warned the defendant that the crime was a capital offence, had heard the defendant say he was aware but was going to do the crime anyway, and the witnesses had to agree to be the executioners. (Some of this comes from Deuteronomy – "A person shall be put to death only on the testimony of two or more witnesses… Let the hands of the witnesses be the first to put [the condemned] to death" – although in that portion God was only referring to blasphemy and idolatry.)

I think it's fair to say very few executions occurred under these conditions. The Mishnah states that a Sanhedrin that executes one person in seven years — or seventy years, according to Eleazar ben Azariah — is considered bloodthirsty. In 75 years, two people have been executed by the Israeli government: Adolf Eichmann in 1962 and Meir Tobianski in 1948. I don't need to say anything about Eichmann but you may not be familiar with Captain Tobianski. He was accused of spying by the director of the IDF's intelligence branch during the War of Independence, and after a field court martial was executed by firing squad. A year later, an inquiry was held and Captain Tabianski was exonerated, reburied in a military ceremony and his gravestone reads, "Killed by mistake." The man who ordered his execution was tried and convicted of manslaughter.

In 1954, Israel outlawed the death penalty except for treason and war crimes. In 1959, the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Union for Reform Judaism passed a resolution formally opposing the death penalty, calling it "a stain upon civilization and our religious conscience."

Dr. Rabbi Aaron Panken talks of a rabbinical school discussion with Dr. Lawrence Hoffman, debating the difference between "Truth" and "truth". Truth with a capital "T" was a singular, irrefutable truth that could never be changed or adapted, while "truth" with a lower-case "t" represented truths that were malleable, transformed or reformed by time, location and experience, seen differently by those with varying outlooks. By that definition, the Torah is not always "true" but it is always "True" in that its ideas and narratives remain the vital underpinnings of Jewish life, debate and thought.

So the "Truth" of Torah is the march of progress, from stoning rebellious children to supporting them. We celebrate the daughters of Z'lofchad while we reject male-preference primogeniture and the entire concept that when women marry their holdings become the property of the husband. We don't deny the Torah contains these things, but that those were truths - lower case t - for the age and the time that have been re-interpreted under the Truth - upper case T - of tikkun olam, making the world more just over time.

Shabbat shalom.

1 Farber, Z. (2021). Can the Torah Be a Moral Authority in Modern Times?. TheTorah.com. https://thetorah.com/article/can-the-torah-be-a-moral-authority-in-modern-times

2 Exodus 21:17

3 Deuteronomy 17.6-7

4 https://reformjudaism.org/why-reform-judaism-opposes-death-penalty

5 Panken, A. (2015). Torah's Progressive Truth. TheTorah.com. https://thetorah.com/article/torat-emet-torahs-progressive-truth

WTF?

The original plan was simple: Take a large laundry area+second toilet and turn it to a  large laundry/storage area+small bathroom, then take a small bedroom+large bathroom and convert it to a large bedroom+small bathroom. There was a clear dividing wall, and because we would always have a working bathroom there was no need for us to move out. So what the fuck happened?

First, the builder thought the bathroom and laundry should be reversed - big bathroom with a window and small laundry. However, that left no storage area, and so it wasn't going to happen. 

Both the builder and plumber said a shower-over-bath was out of fashion, but I wasn't willing to get rid of the bath, so I re-drew the plans and squeezed a separate bath and shower in the family bathroom. This stole space from the other rooms, of course, but crucially it meant I had to tear down the dividing wall, so I wouldn't have a working bathroom. This was probably for the best, as it meant the builders could do everything at once, but it meant we had to move out. The builder estimated 4-6 weeks. 

Remarkably, my wife found a couple who were going to Europe for 3 months and wanted a house sitter. More remarkably, they didn't have any pets, as my allergies probably couldn't deal with that for any length of time, and they had three bedrooms. We had two kids at home (although one was only with us for a couple of weeks) and this was some divine-intervention level luck. 

Back to the house, I noticed the driveway was about the same size as the part of the house we were remodeling, so I took a role of masking tape and marked off all the walls, then drew the fixtures in chalk. The first thing we noticed was that the family bathroom, although bigger than the first iteration, was still too small for a separate tub and shower, so we went back to a shower over tub. The second thing we noticed was what I thought was chalk was actually indelible on porous surfaces, such as a driveway, so the driveway now has blue toilet fixtures drawn all over it. 

Once we agreed on the new layout, we started looking at fixtures. We went to the fancy plumbing shops but It quickly became obvious we had a Home Depot budget. So no tiling, no "wet areas," everything was modular with acrylic walls, etc. It was the most vanilla layout imaginable, but we consoled ourselves that it was functional, and we could upgrade later (even though we know we never will).

The couple were leaving on Tuesday and the builder said he could start Thursday, so we were all set to go. I put in an order for the fixtures and we started packing our stuff. My daughter had the day off and my son didn't have any early classes so it was the perfect day to move. 

Monday morning, the builder called and said he could actually start Wednesday, which was great. Monday afternoon, the couple called and said the wife had an atrial fibrillation and they were cancelling their trip.

Now this is the weird part of the story. We didn't have a plan B and I was mentally preparing to call the builder and cancel. He was squeezing us in before he started a big job, so I knew we couldn't postpone as he wouldn't be available again for at least six months. I was back to square one, trying to find a builder, only now I had a bunch of fixtures on the way.

But the couple, who knew our situation, said they were going to stay with their daughter nearby so we could still move into their home! That was very generous, but it was also crazy. Who in their right mind would kick an elderly couple out of their home while they're dealing with medical issues? Turns out, I would.

They just asked for an extra day to pack so they would move out Wednesday morning, the same day the builder was starting. My daughter was working and my wife had to drive her, and my son had an early morning lecture. Needless to say, it was a bit mental but thankfully it was only ten minutes away. Then we started calling everyone we knew to find another place to live. (I looked at some long-term rentals but the cheapest were $1000/week and that was just not in the budget.) 

We had several friends going on holiday and we put together a complicated plan, moving between three houses over 6 weeks. Then, one of the friends had to cancel. In desperation, my wife called the builder and asked when we could move back in. He said he should have the electrics and plumbing working first week of September, so the new plan is to move into our friends' house on August 18, when they go to babysit their grandkids, then back to our house before they get home on September 7.

Meanwhile, the renovation is ahead of schedule, which is great, but those fixtures I ordered two weeks ago still haven't arrived, and I can't even get a delivery estimate! I'm just told it's with the manufacturer. I think Kiwis have perfected the art of "drop shipping" in that, they just drop the ball. The builder is already talking about having to stop work if they don't have the fixtures, which would mean they won't be ready for us to move back.

Watch this space. 

A moving tale

After 7 years, we finally bought a house! (Technically, a townhouse.) I don't remember if I discussed this previously, so apologies if I repeat myself. (I know I mentioned it in passing here.) When I arrived in New Zealand in September 2014, I didn't have a work permit and my now-wife was divorced but still in the process of selling the family home, and not working. I did not think that was the best time to ask the bank for a mortgage, so when we decided to move to Wellington in January 2015, I suggested renting for a year. In fact, I remember showing my wife a chart of house prices and pointing out they'd been relatively flat for six years, so we wouldn't be "missing out" if we waited a year. Famous last words.

Fig 1: The chart that convinced my wife it was ok to rent for a year.

We found a nice house in Karori and signed a one-year lease, with the intent that at the end of 2015 we'd buy a house. Except...I didn't get my work permit until November 2015, so I still didn't have a job! We approached the landlord about moving the lease to month-to-month, which is when they announced they were moving back into the house and needed us out in January!

Suddenly, instead of looking for a house to buy, we were frantically looking for another place to rent! Thankfully we found another house in Karori and moved in. The landlords didn't even want a one-year lease, which seemed odd but they assured us they weren't planning anything. Two months after we moved in, they put the house on the market.

By then I was working and we considered buying the house ourselves, but having lived there for three months we knew how much deferred maintenance it needed, so we passed. It was also right about then my wife was first diagnosed with cancer, so that was all we were focussed on. A young family bought the house but needed to fix up and sell their old house, so they said we could stay until December. My wife had surgery and was scheduled for radiation therapy in January, so we weren't looking for a new place at all. Then a Hanukkah miracle occurred: The new owner got a job offer in Australia and so was moving his family there, and we could stay as long as we liked!

Now it was 2017 and we still hadn't bought a house, but the real estate market had shot up 40% in the past year! I honestly don't know what happened to cause that, but I was sure that it was a bubble and again convinced my wife to sit tight and wait another year.

Fig 2: In 2016, between February and December the median house prices went from $400,000 to $540,000!

Needless to say, in 2017 house prices went up another 33%!

Fig 3: From $400,000 in 2015 to $600,000 in 2018, that's a 50% rise!

At this point we were getting scared we'd be priced completely out of the market, but couldn't find anything we liked. That's when I learned about leaky homes, NBS (New Building Standard, an earthquake rating) and all sorts of weird and wonderful things about Wellington property. (I heard the New Zealand Company, which was responsible for British colonization, drew a map, divided it into sections and sold them sight-unseen to Brits without revealing the topography of Wellington! As a result, Brits would spend three months on a steamer to get to New Zealand only to find their "land" was straight up a hillside! What could they do except build a house in the hillside!)

In New Zealand (as in the UK), you have a seller's agent but no buyer's agent, so you're left to do all the due diligence and negotiating yourself. In addition, New Zealand has developed the "tender" process, which is best compared to a silent auction: Everyone submits their "best and final offers" in sealed envelopes, and at the appointed time all the offers are opened and the buyers choose the best one. (Or they can reject all of them.) In the US, if you saw a house you liked you'd submit an offer, there would be some back-and-forth, if you came to an agremeent, great, and if you didn't, you moved on. In the UK, the process wasn't quite so straightforward, but it was similar. In New Zealand, suddenly you're submitting an offer that was legally binding for three weeks! If you saw another house you liked, you couldn't make an offer until you'd heard back from the first! And you couldn't make an offer "subject to inspection" so you'd have to organise an inspection -- and pay for it -- before making an offer. You also needed a lawyer to review the paperwork so you were spending $500-$600 every time you made an offer, with no guarantee of being successful! And we were astoundingly unsuccessful: We were consistently outbid by $50,000 or more.

In one instance, we made an offer on a place we really liked of $800,000 and it sold for $875,000. Less than a year later, a nearly identical property came on the market and we were determined to get it, so we bid $900,000. It sold for $950,000. (Thank goodness; I don't know how we would have serviced a $900,000 mortgage.)

Then in 2020 Covid-19 hit, we were all in lockdown, the economists were all predicting a financial apocalypse and all I could think was, we might finally be able to afford a house! Instead, prices went up another 20%.

By this point, my wife had been told the cancer had returned and was stage 4, and the 5-year survival rate was 25%. Suddenly, having the stability of a house was more important than ever, but our requirements had changed. One of the kids had moved out so we could get away with a 3-bed, but we didn't know what my wife's mobility would be like so we started looking at single-level houses "on the flat." In Wellington, these are quite rare, and coveted by baby boomers who were downsizing, so they could outbid us every day of the week. We eventually stopped looking because the median price had doubled since 2015 and we simply couldn't afford anything bigger than a broom closet.

Thankfully, the owner in Australia was happy for us to stay and pay his mortgage. He only raised the rent once in seven years, and that was less than 8%, at a time when most rents in Wellington had gone up by about 50%. We even looked at renting a smaller house but we would have ended up paying more.

House prices peaked in 2021 and then did a 20% nose dive. This was a combination of inflation causing mortgage rates to go up; the government finally implementing restrictions to stop people from taking out unaffordable mortgages*; and the borders re-opening. So many Kiwis had returned to New Zealand during the pandemic that New Zealand had its first "net positive migration" in decades, and they were all cashed-up from working overseas. Once the borders opened again, there was a mad rush for the exit. In mid-2022 we started looking again, and in November we made an offer on a cute townhouse with an evil doll's closet. (Don't ask.) We were going to bid $850,000 but with more doom and gloom prophecies in the news, I reduced it to $825,000. It didn't matter; it sold to someone else for $875,000.

My wife was devastated. She was exhausted from looking and very worried about how much time she had remaining. In addition, sellers were holding off, so there were very few properties on the market. We were looking across Wellington, from Khandallah to Miramar, and everything was very depressing. In March a property came on in Karori, not far from our home, so we went and looked and were completely unimpressed. It smelled of mould, it looked very tired, it had the most bizarre layout (fully a third of the house was devoted to the bathroom and laundry area!) and although the house was on level, it had stairs to the front door. However, the previous owner had obviously had mobility issues as he'd installed an outdoor stair lift, so that wasn't a showstopper.

If there had been other houses to look at, I would have quickly forgotten about that one, but instead I sat down with the room measurements and realised we could turn the tiny third bedroom into a proper master bedroom with en suite, that would make the house nice and improve its resale value. My wife agreed, but neither of us was particularly interested in taking on a big remodel, so we submitted a low-ball offer. Of course we won.

We went into full panic mode. We tried to see if we could do the remodel before we moved in, but it quickly became apparent that was not going to happen. We were lucky to get the carpet replaced before we moved in! I think we had both resigned ourselves to living in a dump until we did the remodel, but with the new carpet the house stopped smelling of mould, it was warm and comfortable, and it looked much better. We're actually enjoying living here!! (But we still want to do the remodel.)

Fig 4: The full picture of Wellington house prices over the past 10 years. We figure the same house we paid $750,000 for in 2023 would have cost $420,000 in 2015, which is when my wife wanted to buy.

* The phrase "closing the barn door after the horse has bolted" is applicable here. Many young people, who had only experienced low mortgage rates and increasing house prices, had stretched themselves to get onto the property ladder. Unfortunately, when the rates went up they couldn't afford the mortgage, and when the prices dropped they couldn't even sell their homes for what they owed!

B'shallach

[Drash, 4 February 2023]

Depending on who you ask, the Israelites have been enslaved for between 861 and 400 years. However, I'm not going to talk about maths; I'm going to talk about the first two verses of B'shallach:

eretz pelishtim ki karov hu ki amar elohim pen-yinnachem ha'am bir'otam milchamah veshavu mitzrayemah.

G-d did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although it was nearer; for G-d said, "The people may have a change of heart when they see war, and return to Egypt." 

vayyassev elohim  et-ha'am derech hammidbar

So G-d led the people round about, by way of the wilderness.

At first glance, it appears G-d is trying to protect the Israelites by taking them on a longer but safer route. Except it wasn't safer: At the end of B'shallach, Israel is attacked by the Amalekites! And after the battle the Israelites did not want to return to Egypt. So what was the point of taking the round about way? 

Let's hold that thought and consider what G-d must think of the Israelites. He has just sent ten signs - or plagues - which devastated Egypt, and has appeared as a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night to lead the way. Does G-d really think that, at the first sign of hardship, the Israelites will abandon Him and rush back to Egypt, into the arms of their enslavers?

We don't have to wait long for an answer. Less than a week since they left Egypt, the Israelites say to Moses:

Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? For it were better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.

Moses' response is to part the sea, and the Israelites sing a song to G-d, but just five weeks later they again complain:

Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt…when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

Quail and manna rained down to feed them, and yet in the very next chapter the Israelites are again murmuring against Moses and Aaron:

Wherefore hast thou brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? (17:3)

 

And that's just B'shallach! In Ki Tisa, the Israelites create the Golden Calf, and in Shelach, after the report of the twelve spies, the Israelites cry out:

And wherefore doth the LORD bring us unto this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will be a prey; were it not better for us to return into Egypt? (Numbers 14:2-3) 

Honestly, the Israelites sound like whinging POMs. However, Mati Shemoelof, in a 2016 article entitled "What we left behind," wrote: "Egypt in this context is not the Egypt of an enemy. Egypt is their identity. Egypt is their mother tongue. Egypt is the first memory. Egypt is the frame of reference, the context in which they live. When they say that they want to return to Egypt, it is like saying that they wish to return to their mother."2

Now let's go back to the question: Why did G-d lead the people in a round about way? Rashi3 suggests it was a trick, so when the Israelites inevitably tried to return to Egypt they wouldn't know which direction to go.

However, I have a simpler explanation. If the Torah is a metaphor for life, and Genesis is about birth, Exodus is about growing up. G-d is pushing the Israelites out of the nest. He didn't bring them the long way around to protect them or confuse them, but to teach them. As slaves they were infantilized, provided with food and water, shelter and protection. As they had to contend with providing for themselves, it is natural they looked backwards and longed for the familiar.

Mati Shemoelof goes on to suggest the reason the Israelites, including Moses, were not allowed to enter the Promised Land was because G-d realised they were so assimilated, they would always identify as Egyptians. "Their call to return is almost childish… Their wish to [return to] Egypt is a wish to be with the dead parent…but there is no way to heal the trauma and to make peace with it." Rashi also suggested only one-fifth of the Israelites left Egypt; the rest were so assimilated they would never leave. Joshua and Caleb, the only spies who looked forward and could see themselves living in the Promised Land, were the only men from their generation allowed to enter.

We've all taken a "round about" approach to life. Not long ago, one of our children said to us, as only a teenager can, "No offense, but I don't want your lifestyle." [pause] Surprise, honey, neither did we. When we were her age, neither of us dreamed of a middle-class suburban lifestyle in New Zealand. But here we are, and we wouldn't change it for anything.

Wouldn't it be great if we could stay children forever? No responsibilities, no consequences, everything is taken care of for you. But we know that would not make us happy. According to the Zohar, Mitzrayim is derived from m'tzarim, meaning "narrow straits." Leaving Mitzrayim is to go from a narrow strait into the wider world. Being taken care of is comforting, but constricting; it closes us off to opportunities and prevents growth. The wilderness is scary, but it is full of possibilities.

B'shallach translates to "When he let go." As we push our own kids out of the nest, I don't know what their future holds, but I hope they have the same hope, faith and resilience as the Israelites to walk into the wilderness.

I will end with the poem "Scaffolding" By Erez Bitton (translated by Tsipi Keller). It may be about Moses, unable to finish the journey but encouraging his children to continue. But it's also about my own father, who passed away 28 years ago. As some of you know, he had a massive heart attack when he was just 45. Back then, open heart surgery was in its infancy and nobody knew if he'd survive but, with three children under 13, he promised my mother he would not abandon her. He did survive but his heart was badly damaged. When it finally failed, 14 years later, his youngest child was 21. He wasn't able to finish his journey, but he kept his promise.

On the threshold of half a house in the Land of Israel

my father stood

pointing to the sides and saying:

Upon these ruins

one day we will build a kitchen

to cook in it a Leviathan's tail

and a wild bull,

upon these ruins

we will build a corner for prayer

to make room

for a bit of holiness.

My father remained on the threshold

and I, my entire life,

have been erecting scaffolding

reaching up to the sky.

1 Seder Olam Rabbah (Ch. 3), https://www.sefaria.org/Seder_Olam_Rabbah.3

2 https://www.972mag.com/what-we-left-behind-in-egypt-mizrahi-thoughts-on-israel/

3 https://aish.com/48942381/

A car tale

The GM EV1 came out in 1996, 26 years ago, and ever since then I've been saying, "My next car will be electric." However, as the saying goes, man plans and God laughs.

Of course, the EV1 was a bit of a novelty. First, you couldn't buy them, you could only lease them, in part because (I believe) they knew the batteries wouldn't last. Monthly payments started at US $500/month, which is equivalent to $950 today, and at the end of the lease you didn't own anything, so it was more like an expensive rental. Initially you could only get them if you lived in LA, Phoenix or Tucson because (I believe) they were worried about cold weather performance. But the real issue was a stated range of 70 to 100 miles (110-160km) with no charging stations anywhere. Nevertheless, they were a hit, which is why GM shut down the assembly line, cancelled the leases, repossessed the cars and crushed them. (I'm not kidding.)

In 1996 I was 27, making good money and had no kids: I could have afforded it. But my commute was 34 miles (54km) each way and my Dodge Colt - which I'd bought new in 1988 - was getting unreliable and I was always worrying if I'd get home or not. I wasn't going to pay all that money to have the same worry! (In addition, I was carpooling with two co-workers, and the EV1 was a two-seater, so that would have been awkward.)

I realized with my Dodge Colt that buying a new car was a sucker's game--the depreciation was ridiculous, and good brands were quite reliable--so I bought a 3-year-old Pontiac Sunfire convertible which, to this day, was my favourite car. I kept it until I moved to Pennsylvania in 2006, but when my relationship fell apart I decided to fly back to Los Angeles instead of driving, and I effectively abandoned it. (I honestly have no idea why I did that.) My ex-wife sold it for peanuts.

In 2007 car sharing - where you could rent a car parked on the street using your smartphone - had become a thing, and I went for three years without owning a car. However, in 2010 I got a job with a large consulting firm which required some travel and their standard package included either a BMW or a monthly stipend for using my own car. I hate BMWs for no rational reason. They were the status symbol for yuppies when I was younger, and I've always had a negative association with them. I did not want a BMW even if it was free! However, claiming a monthly stipend for using my own car when I didn't own a car seemed dishonest, so I decided to buy a cheap car and pocket the difference.

The Toyota Prius had been released worldwide in 2000 so I could have bought a used hybrid. The Nissan Leaf was introduced in 2010, so I could have bought a pure electric vehicle. However, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, I really loved having a convertible, and so I bought a used Peugeot 306 Cabriolet for £2000. The company stipend was £200 per month and I worked for the company for 4.5 years, so I did quite well out of it. I liked that car but when I decided to move to New Zealand I found -- for reasons mostly my own fault -- I couldn't sell it, and I ended up taking it to a scrapyard.

In New Zealand, my partner already had two ICE vehicles: A Toyota Wish (which I've never seen marketed anywhere else) and a BMW Z4, which her ex-husband had bought as a sort-of apology. (She divorced him anyway but kept the car.) The BMW was a two-seater and highly impractical for a young family -- plus it did nothing to change my feelings about BMW -- so we sold that about 6 months later. The Toyota Wish was a great little car but by 2016 the kids were outgrowing it. When some friends decided to leave New Zealand, I jumped at the chance to buy their Volkswagen Touran for NZ $10,000. At the time, all the hybrids were small four-seaters and the only EV that would fit five was a new Tesla Model X, which cost about NZ $70,000.

Fast forward to 2022, the 14-year-old Touran had several very expensive repairs and was no longer reliable enough to be our only means of transportation. Plus with two new drivers in the family we could definitely use a second car. New Zealand was flooded with used Nissan Leafs, but because they don't regulate battery temperature, you have no way of knowing their actual lifespan and I wasn't willing to take a gamble. About the same time, New Zealand introduced a "clean car rebate" and the cheapest new EV - an MG ZS SUV - cost NZ $42,000 after rebate. It comfortably sat 5 and had a range of 270 miles (440km), which was perfect. There was one problem: There weren't any available in New Zealand.

We were told they'd be available in December so we patiently waited. In November, the local equivalent of Consumer Reports came out with a study showing hybrids were much more reliable than EVs. This was counter-intuitive, since the EVs had fewer moving parts, but the problem seemed to be new companies (especially Chinese firms, such as the one that had bought the MG branding) were new and still learning, plus they were trying to cram in new features. This scared me off a bit, and I decided to look at plug-in hybrids (PHEV) as a good compromise: The Prius PHV, for example, had an EV range of about 16 miles (26km), enough to get us to the airport and back. There weren't many used PHEVs available, and the ones that were sold for $3-4k over their non-plug-in counterparts. Even at current petrol prices, it would take a while to recoup that difference.

Then I saw a dealer listing a 2014 Prius PHV for $12k, which was the going rate for a regular Prius. I was sure there was a catch, but the car had just passed its Warrant of Fitness, so I knew it was roadworthy. I even got an independent inspection and he said it was great for its age. I decided that because the PHV versions are so rare, the dealer had unwittingly priced it the same as a regular Prius. I decided to buy it, even though the car was 220 miles (350km) away and I hadn't seen it.

Of course that's not the end of the story. We're also looking at buying a house, so I didn't want to eat into our downpayment. I was already aware one of the big banks was "virtue signalling" with a special interest rate for EV cars, so I contacted them. I have a great credit rating and plenty of cash, so I thought the process would take a few hours at most. So far it's been over a week, and I still haven't gotten a definitive answer yet. The issue does not have anything to do with me, but everything to do with their process: I had to fill out an online form with all my financial details, then they sent me an email which I had to respond to with all my financial details, then they called me and I had to tell them all my financial details!! At this point it's almost comical, except the dealer is getting very agitated that I haven't paid for it yet. The bank won't even tell me how the process works until I'm approved, so I don't know if they're paying the dealer or just giving me the funds. It's just nuts.

There are only a few flights from Wellington to New Plymouth and they are designed for commuters, leaving at 7am and 4:30pm, neither of which would work. On Wednesdays there is a 12:30pm flight and I intend to be on it tomorrow, even though I haven't paid for the car yet..Hopefully the dealer won't mind, and this will all work out. 

And maybe my next car will be fully electric.

Sparky humour

What did the electrician say right before his death? Don't worry, the power is off.

In the UK (and NZ) a sparky is an electrician. Oddly, there's no equivalent nickname for plumbers, carpenters, etc. But then, they don't have the sense of humor a sparky has. If a plumber installs pipes the wrong way, they leak. If a builder frames a wall the wrong way, it collapses. But a sparky can run electricity pretty much any damn way he wants and get it to work. The trick is that when you're trying to troubleshoot an issue, you basically have to reverse-engineer everything he did, with the added bonus that you can't see any of the cabling. I think they know that and so go out of their way to run wiring in the most convoluted fashion, just to amuse themselves knowing that for the next 50 years people will be trying to figure out what they did.

Our house was last renovated in the 50s, I'm guessing, based on the use of fluorescent strip lights in all the bedrooms. They looked horrific, even more so because the batten covers were broken or missing. When they started flickering, I bought floor lamps but they weren't hooked up to the switch so you'd have to turn on the fluorescent light to find the floor lamp!

About two months ago, someone showed me an LED batten designed to replace the strip lights. Whilst not ideal, the cost was reasonable (about $40 US) and they looked a lot better, so I bought one and put it in one of the rooms. It was fairly easy to install but there were two issues: 1) It wasn't exactly the same size, and someone had painted around the strip light, so this now exposed a chunk of unpainted ceiling; and 2) it was three times as bright!! Way too bright for a bedroom. 

I found another batten that was half as bright and installed it in the second bedroom. Again, installation was easy and it revealed a chunk of unpainted ceiling, but it still looked much better than the old light and it didn't flicker or hum. It was still a bit bright but it was OK, so I ended up replacing the first light with the same model. 

My plan was to return the ultra-bright light but then for some reason I decided to put it in my office, which had a double strip light, even though I didn't have any problems with that light. I turned off the switch and pulled the old light down, just as I had done in the bedrooms. I hadn't really paid attention to the wiring because I'd already done this twice before. I connected the new light and flipped the switch just to make sure everything was working and...nothing. 

I thought maybe there was a loose connection so I turned off the switch, got on my step ladder, started checking the little screws clamping the wires and got a nice, little shock. 240 volts right through my hands. Thankfully I wasn't grounded and I was able to release what I was touching, so the only damage done was to my pride. Nevertheless, I decided to stop working on it for the night and deal with it the next day. 

That evening I noticed the light in the stairway was out, and later one of the kids mentioned the light in the bathroom was out as well. Putting two and two together I realised I'd screwed something up. My assumptions about how the light was wired were completely wrong, and it would take me two days to figure it out, in part because of two things:

1) The wire I thought went to the switch actually went to the upstairs bathroom. When I first checked it, the circuit was open (ie no current flow) but later on I checked it again and it was closed (ie short-circuited). I could not figure out how this was possible, but later I realised it was because the bathroom switch was originally off but a child had flipped it on (and left it on).

2) if you threw the bathroom switch the bathroom light wouldn't come on, but the stairway light did! I'm still not sure how that is possible, but I did realise the cause: After my first failure, I had disconnected some of the wires but left two wires connected. As far as I'm concerned, that was strictly voodoo. 

On top of that, the wiring was so old the insulation kept coming off in my hands and I kept having to shorten the leads to minimize exposed wires. There wasn't a lot of room to spare and I was very concerned that if I needed an electrician to install more romex, he was going to insist everything be brought up to modern code. 

The obvious solution was to hook the hot and cold wires together, but with one circuit closed I was sure I was going to short-circuit the entire house. However, I didn't have any other ideas so I hooked them up, grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen and turned on the electricity. To my amazement, everything worked again!

Now you're probably imagining me working in my nice, clean office standing on a stepstool, but nothing could be further from the truth. Two weeks ago I'd dragged in three boxes of food from the Civil Defense (ie. earthquake) supplies, and I'd replaced all the expiring food but hadn't gotten around to finishing the inventory, so they were spread across the office. And the stepstool was just one step too short, so I'd brought in the only other thing I had: a full-sized aluminum ladder, which took up the entire room. It was so tight, if I dropped something on the wrong side of the ladder I practically had to take the ladder out of the room to get to the other side. (And yes, aluminum ladders are a poor choice when working with electricity, but I made sure I was wearing rubber-soled shoes.) 

The old strip light had space for the wire connectors but the new light didn't, so I needed to shove them into the ceiling, except the hole wasn't big enough. I could have gone to the garage for an appropriate tool but instead I grabbed a kitchen knife and started stabbing the ceiling. Eventually the hole was big enough and, 24 hours later, we haven't had a ceiling fire so I'm counting this as a win.

Photo: I did wrap everything in electrical tape before so I'm sure it will be fine.

The last thing was to snap the light to two clips mounted on the ceiling. I got one in but could not get the other, and eventually I gave up. So far one clip seems to be holding it. The other thing is the office ceiling wasn't painted, but appears to have had some sort of wallpaper instead. The paper had chipped and cracked and each time I brushed the light against the ceiling, large chunks flaked off. Some of them were big enough to drop in the bin, but most broke apart and needed to be hoovered. Oh, and the ceiling was fibrous, which makes me wonder if it had asbestos.

But the important point is that it's finished and I know better than to touch the electrics again...at least until this weekend, when I replace the heated towel rack in the kids bathroom.

Photo: The wires into the switch. Note the red romex with the single black wire--what the hell is that for?! 

Footnote: A few months after installing the light in my office, I noticed a slight odour that wouldn't go away. After ignoring it for several weeks, I finally took down the light and found the wall-paper like ceiling coating was discoloured, as if by heat. I couldn't remember which DIY shop I bought the light from, so I googled the model to see which came up, and found a recall notice! Apparently these light fixtures were starting house fires!! I immediately took it back to the shop and traded it in, very grateful that a little discoloration was all that had happened.

Rethinking Karl Marx

I hate thinking. That's not true: I don't mind thinking, I just hate having my assumptions challenged. That may just be a sign of age.

I never studied Marxism - or any economic theory - at uni, but I was a rabid Libertarian when I was a teenager. I believed that personal liberty was paramount and the only legitimate function of government was to prevent one person from interfering in the peaceful activities of another. For me, that was the definition of "freedom."

This extended to the market, of course, and my argument was simple: A government, being comprised of citizens, can only do what its citizens are capable of; it does not have any magical powers. Therefore, any government interference does not "create" anything; it only forces people to behave in ways they would not normally choose to. To put this another way, if the Air Force wanted to spend two billion dollars on a new B2 bomber and they created a GoFundMe page that only raised $100 million, the difference -- in this case, $1.9 billion -- the government forcibly takes from its citizens via taxes. If citizens refuse to pay, they go to jail and their assets are taken. If they refuse to go to jail (and defend themselves) they are killed.

So for me, the definition of freedom necessarily included a free market, and in the post-industrial revolution, that meant capitalism. Even in the 80s, with corporate raiders, banking crises and a rising national debt (which had just hit $2 billion dollars!) I was unabashedly capitalist because I didn't believe government knew what was best, and all they could do was subvert people's free will and replace it with the desires of a few. In other words, all government intervention could do was introduce bureaucracy and corruption.

If I had problems with America's free-market system, you can imagine what I thought of socialist or communist systems. Now I won't deny I was a "cold war kid" (as described by Billy Joel) and was fed a steady diet of propaganda about the "Godless communists" (as described by Ronald Reagan). Of course, I conflated Russia, Communism and Karl Marx; the failure of one was the failure of all, making it easy to repudiate all three without thinking critically about any one of them.

My daughter is studying sociology and asked me to review a paper where she reviewed Karl Marx's approach to sociology. I was quite surprised because I'd always considered Marx an economist, not a sociologist, but here he wasn't talking about revolution or the value of goods, but instead about how society should treat its people. And he was doing so just after the first industrial revolution when society was completely redefining how people were treated.

Before 1760, most people were tenant farmers, and although they did not own their own land, they produced their own "goods" (in this case, food) which they sold for a profit. With the industrial revolution, Marx noted, most people no longer produced their own goods but instead sold their labour to the "bourgeoisie" who controlled the means of production. ("Bourgeois" was a medieval French term for a person who lived in a walled town that had become synonymous with the middle class.)

Karl Marx was asking what it meant to be "free" and, unlike me -- born into a society of wealth, social mobility and personal freedoms -- he came to a different conclusion. He argued that forcing people to sell their time in pursuit of wages, with no input or control over the finished product, not only devalued them as humans but also "alienated" them from their creative process and social relationships. They were no longer pluralistic individuals part of society but now simply cogs in a machine, incapable of being free.

Growing up in a capitalist society, I never considered any other option. The goal was to have in-demand skills which could command a high value in order to maintain a degree of freedom and a work-life balance. If you didn't have those skills, it was your fault, and you deserved to struggle. I always recognised how lucky I was to have in-demand skills, but I never considered how it would have affected my life if I didn't.

However, thanks to my daughter, I've been forced to question not only my world-view and my sense of worth, but also my views on Karl Marx. Whilst I still don't agree with his conclusions, I have to acknowledge that the questions we was struggling with 150 years ago are still valid -- if not more so -- today. For most people today, the only way to earn money is to sell themselves. Capitalism has turned the world's oldest profession into the world's only profession.

Moonlighting as a plumber

Initial LVR restrictions in October 2013 restricted banks to no more than 10% of loans beyond 80% LVR. In 2015, the restrictions were revised to target price inflation in Auckland, easing the restrictions to 15% over 80% LVR for non-Auckland loans, and increasing to 5% over 70% LVR for investor purchases in Auckland. In 2016 the restrictions tightened further on Auckland investors, to 5% over 60% LVR.

Merriam-Webster defines "moonlight" (verb) as "to hold a second job in addition to a regular one." However, I've taken a more literal definition.

Our property has been subdivided and now has three homes on one water connection. Normally when they do this, they put individual shut-offs on each property. (In New Zealand a shut-off is called a "toby" for some reason.) Of course, for our house, they didn't do this. Since Wellington doesn't meter water use, sharing a connection isn't a problem, only an inconvenience if you need to shut off the water for any reason.

For the flat behind us, the shut-off is on our garden tap (faucet) hose. It's not labelled and doesn't look like a shut-off; the only reason I know is because one day I shut it off...

Anyway, the point is that we don't have a shut-off for our house, and the kitchen tap (faucet) doesn't have a shut-off either. I don't know if this is a British thing or a New Zealand thing, but the pipes come straight out of the wall into the tap (faucet). In order to change a washer, you need to shut off the water to the whole house. Or in my case, I need to shut off water to three houses!!

So when our kitchen tap (faucet) started dripping, I just tightened the handle. When it started streaming, I tightened it more. When it started pouring, I tightened it more. Everyone complained they couldn't open it, and I don't know why I bothered: Tightening wasn't really helping. One night I measured it and found it was draining a litre per minute. That's over half a million litres (130,000 gallons) of fresh water wasted per year! Even though I wasn't paying for it, a sense of environmental responsibility goaded me to action.

So one night I went to the street and examined the tobies. I say plural because there was on on either side of my driveway, and no indication of which one was mine. I pried open the metal covers, expecting to see a valve, and all I saw was dirt. So I gave up and called a plumber.

New Zealand is going through a bit of a housing crisis. (There's even a Wikipedia page on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_property_bubble). For much of this crisis, the Conservative government was in power and their response was, "Great, our property values are increasing!". Even though New Zealand was hardly affected by the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the Reserve Bank kept interest rates near zero for no economic reason. Loan-to-value restrictions were relaxed in 2015, so more people qualified for loans with less than a 20% deposit. And New Zealand is one of the few countries that doesn't have a capital gains tax, making property much more attractive than any other investment. (The government did introduce a capital gains tax for investors who flipped a property within five years, but all you had to do was register the property as your primary residence during that five years and you were automatically exempted!)

Of course, the Conservative government couldn't deny that housing was becoming unaffordable for most Kiwis so they did what any good government does: They blamed the Chinese. Seriously, even though less than 3% of home buyers were off-shore, the government pretended the issue was cash-rich Asians bidding up the market. Even though Labour won in 2018, sentiment was such that they passed a law forbidding foreign ownership. Two years on, it was shown to have had no impact in the housing market whatsoever.

The major problem, as the banks repeatedly pointed out, was immigration. New Zealand has always had a problem: A well-educated workforce with a small economy. There has always been a "brain drain" to other countries, particularly Australia, which could afford better salaries. In 2012, for example, 87,500 New Zealanders moved overseas, 60% to Australia, which was experiencing a mining boom. (Sir Robert Muldoon, Prime Minister of New Zealand, once famously said that New Zealanders moving to Australia "raised the IQ of both countries.")

However, in 2013 that mining boom collapsed, dragging down the entire Australian economy. By 2015, the Australian dollar had lost fully 25% of it's value against the New Zealand dollar, and Kiwis started returning en masse. They were educated, well paid, had cash reserves and needed housing. From 2015 to 2021, house prices doubled. In 2015, the median house price in New Zealand was $430,000. In 2021, it was $850,000.

And the underlying problem was that, because of the Conservative government's laissez faire attitude, new homes were not being built. In 2017, only 30,000 building consents were issued. In the same year, New Zealand had a net immigration of 70,000! Perhaps the government believed there were an extra 40,000 vacant homes around the country that could make up the difference?

When the Labour government came in to power, one of their first policies was "Kiwibuild" with the stated goal of 100,000 additional houses by 2028. Unfortunately they promised 1,000 of those houses would be available within a year -- when it turned out only 300 had been finished, the programme was largely ridiculed. However, it did have the effect of kick-starting the construction industry, and in 2021 48,000 building consents were issued, a 60% increase from 2017.

Which brings me back to my problem: I could not get a plumber for love or money. I tried several but they were clearly on bigger projects and coming out to change a washer wasn't on their radar. So the kitchen tap continued gushing. It was so loud, you could hear it over the television. It needed to get sorted.

So one night, as I was putting out the trash, I again opened the toby and started digging in the dirt. It wasn't long before I had exposed the valve, but I could not turn it. To be fair, it was inside a small pipe and I've been having issues with my shoulders, so I could not get a good purchase on it, but again I gave up.

One night I was in the garage, cleaning up. (I had recently installed a kayak hoist and gotten the kayaks off the garage floor, but that's another long, painful story.) I came across a very odd piece of metal that was bent and had a hook at the end; I have no idea where it came from or what it was for, but I realised I could insert it into the pipe and use it to leverage the toby closed. I waited until the wee hours, when the neighbours were asleep, and quietly snuck out to the street and managed to turn off the water.

I raced inside, disassembled the kitchen tap (faucet) and replaced the rubber washer. I went back to the street and turned the water back on. It occurred to me, since everyone in my house was also asleep, if something went awry the kitchen would be flooded by the time I got back to the house. I did it anyway.

Thankfully everything went fine. I went upstairs to find that not only was everyone awake, but my daughter had tried to take a shower at 1am and discovered the water was off.

(Who takes a shower at 1am?!)

Anyway, I was overjoyed but I didn't say anything; I wanted my wife to "discover" that the kitchen tap no longer dripped. Unfortunately, the next morning I discovered the kitchen tap was leaking almost as much as before! I googled it and noticed the tap was supposed to have a nut to keep the washer tight, which was missing on mine. That night, at 1am, I again sneaked out, turned off the water, disassembled the tap, found a nut that seemed to fit, and put it all back together. The tap leaked only a little bit.

While it was a marked improvement, I didn't understand why it was still leaking at all, so I googled it. It turns out, if you over-tighten the handle you can distort the brass "seat" the washer sits against, creating a leak. The solution is to get a "tap reseater" which is a little metal device that can gouge out the brass and create a flat seat. I bought one today, it's almost midnight and I'm just waiting for my dishwasher to finish so I can sneak out and turn the water off again....

P.S. It worked, sort of. As you can see from the photo, the seat was actually cracked and so water was leaking through the gap. The "right" solution would be to replace the seat, but that would mean drilling it out, tapping the pipe and then screwing in a new seat, which seemed like a lot of work. Instead I used the tap reseater to grind down the existing seat as far as I dare, hoping the washer could then cover the gap. I honestly didn't think it would make a huge difference but it reduced the stream to an occasional drip, which is good enough for me!

The $5000 vacation, part 2

This isn't really a part two, it's just another holiday that happens to cost about the same as The $5,000 vacation, part 1.

That holiday, three years ago, was the first "proper" family holiday we had taken.(At least, the first one that didn't involve tents.) And the reason we did it was because we were worried it would be the last opportunity for a family holiday -- our eldest was heading to Israel for a year, and then to Uni, plus the other two were now teenagers with their own interests. We just didn't know how much longer we had. 

A year later, our eldest was back from Israel and we were talking about another family holiday, this one to the UK as the kids hadn't been there in over ten years. I bought plane tickets in February 2020; a few weeks later, the world shut down.

(Thankfully they refunded our money, but not because of Covid: Our flights connected in Hong Kong and at the time there was a lot of unrest so the airline cancelled all flights.)

The New Zealand borders were effectively shut for two years. Kiwis could still fly but you had to spend two weeks in quarantine, so a two-week holiday meant four weeks off work plus an extra $2000 per person for the privilege of sitting in a hotel room 24x7. On top of that, people who were desperate to move back to New Zealand were fighting for those slots so it seemed highly inappropriate to take one for a quick holiday.

Although the border controls kept Covid out of New Zealand for almost two years, they finally failed and suddenly we were having 20,000 new cases per day. Stopping 50 cases at the border was recognised as inconsequential and they dropped the managed isolation process. (They're still only allowing kiwis until 2 May, at which point most anyone can visit.)

So quarantine was no longer an issue and Easter was coming. In New Zealand, like most Commonwealth countries, Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays so you get a four-day weekend. Unlike most Commonwealth countries, Australia and New Zealand don't observe Remembrance Day in November (Veteran's Day in the US) but instead observe ANZAC day to commemorate the Australian and New Zealand soldiers sent to Gallipoli in 1915. This year, ANZAC happens to be the Friday after Easter, so you can get ten days off but only take four days of holiday. I had requested that time off last December, long before I had any plans.

We had just done a road trip of the north island in December and a camper van tour of the south island in January, so we talked about an international holiday. We didn't want a long-haul flight or even a layover at another airport so there were only two options, Australia or Fiji. And Australia kind of sucks.

(Of course that's not true. I quite enjoyed my visits to Sydney and Melbourne, and I know there's a whole continent left to explore, but now that I am a New Zealand citizen I am contractually obligated to insult Australia at every opportunity.)

My wife and I had been in Fiji twice for layovers heading to the States. Fiji doesn't mind if you leave the airport and so that's what we planned to do. Unfortunately, the first time I went through the wrong door and we got stuck in the international terminal for six hours. The second time we went through the right door and spent the afternoon swimming and eating at a resort hotel across the road. It was lovely and we talked about going back, but there were always too many other places to go. Now it was perfect.

It didn't hurt that Fiji Airways was having a sale.

Like New Zealand, they also closed their borders for 18 months which, for an island nation dependent on tourism, was quite impressive. They re-opened their borders in December with a vaccination rate around 69% and, although they had a spike in January, right now their case rate is just 38 per million people. (New Zealand, by comparison, has a vaccination rate of 78% but the current case rate is 3,330 per million!!) So they are highly motivated to get international visitors, plus historically April is the shoulder season. We're staying on the main island because that's where the medical services are, which is just an unfortunate reality of our lives now. However, we're going to spend three days on the south coast (near Pacific Harbour), then a day in Denarau followed by two days on the north coast (Volivoli). We didn't opt for all-inclusive resorts (those are still insanely expensive) but we are staying at nice resort hotels on the beach.

Both girls decided to join us for part of the week but then they needed to fly to Auckland to attend a youth seminar. Our youngest wanted to go to a Scout camp over the weekend, and although he could have joined us after, I don't think he wanted to fly on his own. We booked the flights,  hotels, rental car, airport shuttle, travel insurance and budgeted NZ $50 per person per day for food and entertainment. The total came to $4,842 NZD for a week in Fiji, just $150 less than our 10-day trip to Christchurch three years ago. This time, though, I did budget to feed the kids!

All that's left now is to cross our fingers and hope our world doesn't change again in the next four weeks...

New Zealand heatmap

Google photos created a "heat map" of my last 7 years in New Zealand. Still a lot of places to visit...