I Am The Beat

by russellclarkenz, posted in Music

So there’s this song that has been stuck in my head since 1981.

Back in the 1980s I was busy (due to my date of birth) being a teenager. As such I was eagerly and sullenly looking for cultural tropes to which I could adhere. This particular song stuck in my head because it was sufficiently different from the standard pap (not a typo) of the time.

It’s a song that has always stayed with me as a touchstone for excellent 80s pop music, a little bit of fun, a little bit different, and some great talent banging on the pots and clanging the strings. It leaves me with a smile on my face every time I hear it.

I’ve revisited this song many times since the 80s, and it has always made me feel good, uplifted, joyous.

So it occurred to me the other day to go and see if The Look were still together, and I was delighted to find out that they have put out another couple of albums.

So I did what any reasonable human being would do – I investigated the back catalogue and bought it all.

And I tell you, if you want a big slab of excellent, intelligent 80s pop, you have to get Pop Yowlin’ and Tunes and Stories. Both great albums, so full of life, character, smarts and fun.

You can buy their albums on Bandcamp here: https://thelook1.bandcamp.com/

MIQ Musings – Day 14

by russellclarkenz, posted in Absurd, Life

MIQ Diary – Day 14 – How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.

430am. Good! Today is the day that I get out of here, so I want to make the most of it, even if I do very little, the experience of being awake is still worth it.

First things first – pack! It turned out easier than anticipated – done in 5 minutes. I went around the room several times to ensure that everything was in the bags. Easy.

The remainder of the day was spent doing precisely nothing, and it felt good.

My health check was at 330pm. As I mentioned yesterday apparently it needed to be within 3 hours of departure. Obeying rules for the sake of it isn’t my forte, but what the hell, just this once more.

The housekeeping team had requested that we strip the beds so I dutifully complied. It took longer than anticipated.


Then we had our marching orders:
6pm – bags on the trolleys outside the room.
615pm – a siren sounds and bus passengers for Auckland should go to the conference centre entrance.
630pm – bus departs.

Once again this military precision all felt overwrought and faintly ridiculous. Still, I guess they have to deal with a range of ‘characters’ in these places, so best to set the bar low. It happened as they said it would, and the low bar was necessary – some idiot managed to be confused by even these instructions. We nearly left late.

Final farewells were made, with good humour, and we were off!

The bus ride was about an hour and a half. We had to keep our masks on until we were decanted onto the pavement at the domestic terminal at Auckland Airport. Given our history over the past 2 weeks, this seemed faintly ridiculous. If there’s a group of people more credentialed to be considered COVID-negative, it’s us mugs on that bus.

Feet hit the pavement and Mask Theatre was over. It was good to see people smiling. We said our various goodbyes (awkward because it’s hard to build camaraderie when you’ve never met many of these people with whom you’ve just shared two weeks’ isolation experience.)

Scott was waiting for me. We headed home to see the cats.
—
So that’s my story. Some thoughts:
1. It’s not a nice experience, even for someone like me who actually enjoys some solitude. Avoid it if you can.
2. Despite it all, making the most of the time to work and think was useful.
3. Overall it was a very similar experience to last year’s. Slightly more polished this time, but they’ve had a year to get it to this point so most of the rough edges have been knocked off.
4. I can’t praise the team at Jet Park Hamilton highly enough. If you think MIQ is boring for 2 weeks, try doing it for over a year.
5. MIQ as a concept is completely unsustainable. We have to make some changes:
a. Allow fully vaccinated returnees to self-isolate.
b. Drop the eradication strategy in the bin, and learn to live with the virus because it’s not going anywhere.
c. Fix the hopeless vaccination rollout. This starts with stopping pretending it’s going well.

MIQ Musings – Day 13

by russellclarkenz, posted in Absurd, Life

MIQ Diary – Day 13 – I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.

A 6am wakeup after an 11pm sleep. I’m not convinced anything is different – I just moved my seven hours’ sleep window slightly. Ho hum.

Another health check at 830am, all done efficiently, with hardly any waiting. I was informed that on Saturday it would be at 330pm instead. Apparently it needs to be 3 hours before we leave (because the process says so, rather than anyone expecting me to suddenly catch the lurgy mid-morning.

Those of you with sharp minds will have worked out that we will be leaving at 630pm on Saturday. They are putting on a bus back to Auckland Airport, which should arrive at 8pm-ish.

It was a relatively quiet day work-wise so I finished up early afternoon. I just couldn’t be bothered to do much. My motivation has been up and down here, and today is the first time it has been rock bottom.

I decided to read a book on Disciplined Agile Delivery (aka Unified Process with not much tailoring – and I’ll be giving the side eye to anyone who says different). It was a short book – though not nearly short enough for my liking.

I reneged on my packing promise.

Went to bed early. I figure packing might take all day on Saturday.

Nearly there, but not nearly close enough.