Well, spring has (at least theoretically) arrived here at Te Whare Mayfurr, now over halfway through what has been charitably described across the globe as "a sh*t of a year" where the abnormal becomes the new normal and the old normal feels positively abnormal on the occasions it does come back...

As some of you may know, after 102 days without community cases in New Zealand COVID-19 managed to slip through our borders into our largest city Auckland last month, so once again we're doing the "Level 2" social distancing, masking and sanitizing quick-step across the country with Auckland first going into a "Level 3" lockdown for a while before dropping to an intermediate "Level 2.5" where movement is permitted but gatherings are limited. Once again, the government is pretty much doing the right things and applying learnings from our first time around, with even more contact tracing as well as mandatory masks on public transport - which from personal observation over the last few days when going to work have been pretty well adopted by commuters, no outbreaks of "covidiocy" so far. My personal challenge has been trying to stop my mask on the train from being a constant fitted fog-chamber where every breath fogs up my spectacles, it's a pain in the arse frankly but it has to be done if we don't want things to get worse.

Anyway...

Our Sheltie Anton did very well for himself last month, winning "Best Neuter In Show" at an all-breeds dog show - especially because it's only been very recently that neuter/spayed dogs have been allowed to compete at championship dog shows. Anton's win is the first win at the "In Show" level of an all-breeds dog show that we've ever had with any of our dogs, so we are very proud of our boy!

After nearly six months of inactivity my tram-driver training at the Wellington Tramway Museum has restarted, and by now I have graduated to "supervised driving with passengers aboard" which is a plus. I have also now driven each of the museum's four operational trams, ranging from a 97 year old "Double Saloon Mk1" to the (relatively) modern 68 year old "Fiducia". I'm really enjoying getting to now the crowd at the museum, and my goal is to get qualified to drive a tram solo in time for when my parents visit us for Christmas.

Artistic output, as you may have noticed, is somewhat "meh" at the moment. I like to think that I'm trading quantity for quality, particularly trying some more painterly styles as an alternative to the "cartoon" style I normally do. The "Bob Ross" approach for landscape backgrounds is rather fun, especially if I try not to overthink what I'm doing and just "doodle" (for want of a better word). I've set up a private Trello board to manage all the ideas for drawings I have, which seems to be working okay.

Hopefully in another couple of weeks we'll be able to drop back to a (relatively) normal "Level 1" where the only differences to normality are contact tracing and closed borders. Speaking of which, certain people have been misinformed that New Zealand's closed borders mean it has "cut itself off completely from the rest of the world". The fact is that the border is only closed to people (apart from returning Kiwis and selected non-Kiwi "essential workers"), goods can come in and go out with no issue... in fact, a number of our primary industries are exporting more compared to last year. So any ideas that our border closure means that New Zealand is slowly reverting to an Iron Age society without petrochemicals and electricity are, to put it mildly, complete b*ll*cks. Much like the idea that you have to choose between "protecting the economy" and public health in a global pandemic, because "learning to live with the virus" actually means "learning to die with the virus".

He aha te mea nui o te ao?
What is the most important thing in the world?
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people.
- Maori proverb