Cereal selection

I’ve had many food conundra over the years, including peanut butter, pizza, and bread, among others, but I never expected to have one over my morning cereal. Fortunately, my testing provided the answer.

I have cereal for breakfast several times a week, something I’ve done since childhood. Several years ago, I bought Kellogg’s All-Bran cereal because I wanted to make some bran muffins for Nigel and me. I also had it as cereal because it is a good source of fibre, something that’s important, among other reasons, because it helps control cholesterol.

At some point, I started mixing it with lemon yoghurt and sliced banana, and I really liked it. In more recent years, I started to have the company’s All-Bran Flakes for variety, and sometimes, especially in winter, I had porridge (what in my corner of the USA was called “oatmeal”). The main consistent menu item was the All-Bran, though I had to give up on bananas when my blood pressure medication was changed to one that’s potassium-based (I’m supposed to be careful about potassium, apparently).

A long time ago, I learned that the fibre in my cereal is considered a “prebiotic” which feeds gut bacteria. The live cultures in the yoghurt, are probiotics, of course, which provide good gut bacteria, though somewhat different than the ones that normally live there (the ones in yoghurt generally help with digesting dairy, but they also assist the fibre in helping to keep one's “shipping department” to, um, empty…).

I genuinely liked the cereal, especially when combined with the lemon yoghurt, but it wasn’t perfect. For one thing, if I had it in milk instead of yoghurt it turned mushy pretty quickly. Also, a box seemed pretty expensive, especially as prices started rising, though I bought it anway.

A couple months ago, I was shopping at Woolworths and noticed they had an own-brand cereal that was similar to All-Bran, called “High Fibre Bran”. I was interested because the own-brand was $2.30 a box cheaper, which ain’t nothing. So, I decided to give it a try.

The first thing I noticed was that the box says “Delicious & Crunchy”, and when I tried it, I immediately agreed on the second part of the slogan: It was very crunchy. I tried it with milk, too, to see if it got soggy like All-Bran, and it didn’t. It’s the first part of the description I didn’t agree with: I did not find it “delicious”.

There’s an irony here: Many people I know personally have screwed up their faces at the mere mention of All-Bran, declaring, "it tastes like cardboard", which made me wonder how they knew that. As it turned out, once I tried the Woolworth’s cereal, I understood: It’s not necessary to actually taste cardboard to get the sense that something must tastes like cardboard would. To me, the High Fibre Bran was exactly like that. However: Just as I like All-Bran, which many people I know don’t like, it’s logical that other folks may love it. To each their own.

I finally ran out of the Woolworths cereal over the weekend and resumed having All-Bran. It turns out, though, they really are quite different.

Both cereals are made in Australia, presumably using some Australian ingredients, but their nutritional profiles are different. To compare products fairly, I never look at the nutritional information per “serving”, but rather per 100g. Since most values are expressed as weight in grams per 100g, that can give us a good idea of what percentage of the product is sugar, fat, etc.

Here’s how the two compare (information comes from their nutrition labels, and was correct at the time I was doing this test). Since they’re both “high fibre” cereals, I’ll start there: My regular brand, All-Bran (“AB”) has 28g of dietary fibre per 100g, and High Fibre Cereal (“HFC”) had a whopping 42.1g per 100g. Another thing I always look at is sugars, and AB has 15.7g of sugars, while HFC has 13.4g. I carefully watch sodium because of my specific health issues, and AB has 330mg of sodium, and HFC has 300mg. While I don’t personally pay that much attention to fat content, AB had total fat content of 3.6g, and HFC had 2.6g of total fat.

The bottom line for me is that High Fibre Cereal was better than All-Bran in all the things I monitor, however, the difference wasn’t necessarily huge, though, for me, the sodium difference is pretty significant. There’s also obviously a very big difference in dietary fibre, but I’m not certain I need that much fibre. Even so, I think it’s safe to say the name of their cereal, “High Fibre Bran”, is fully justified.

Cost was another motivator when I tried it, because All-Bran was $7.79 for a 530g box. The High Fibre Cereal was $5.50 for a 500g box. If High Fibre Cereal was sold in a 530g box, and the unit price didn’t change, it’d be $5.83, still around $2 a box cheaper than All-Bran.

Neither the difference in their nutritional profiles nor the different prices matters if I don’t like the cereal with the better profile and lower price. Facts. So, while the Woolworths own-brand has a better nutritional profile and costs less, I like All-Bran much better and I’ll stick with it. It’s only part of my weekly breakfast menu, anyway.

This was one of the rare times when I tried a new (to me) product not because I didn’t like my normal brand, but because I was curious if I’d like a similar alternative. Now I know. On to the next experiment!

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are all registered trademarks, and are used here for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment for this blog post, and all products were purchased by me at normal consumer prices. So, the opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, any retailer, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

A memory with a lesson learned

Most of the Facebook “Memories” I see nearly every day are perfectly ordinary, just some documentation of what I was doing on that day in previous years—sometimes a long time ago, going all the way back to when I joined Facebook in 2007*. Every once in awhile, though, those “Memories”, especially of things from the past 6 years, can make me reflective. Today was one of those times.

This morning I saw that one of today’s Facebook “Memories” was something I published five years ago today. That post, which I also shared on Facebook’s now-defunct “Notes” feature, was mainly about how people enduring challenges and pain often don’t talk about it, and so, we may never know what “private hell”, as I often put it in those days, they were going through. I used my own experience as the starting point for the piece, something I wrote just nine months after losing Nigel.

What I wrote five years ago today is still valid, though things have definitely changed since then, especially because I lost Sunny, and then Jake, the following year. Also, I almost never have meltdowns like I mentioned, though if I do it’s still related to frustration—a LOT of frustration. Another difference is that I now seldom talk about my journey, which is mainly because the sharp edges of the suddenly solo life I began 5.75 years ago have been ground down a bit and don’t slice me open nearly as much as they used to. I also now understand how grief is a journey, not an event, and the path people walk along on their grief journey is as unique and individual as the person walking it.

As I approach the sixth anniversary of losing Nigel, I can see that I could have predicted at least the rough outlines of what my path became, though I couldn’t see that back then, of course. It’s obvious to me now that my path has been exactly what I needed it to be, filled with all the highs and lows—and mostly neither—I needed to get me this far. But that’s not the kind of thing that lends itself to commentary or narration, and so, I rarely say anything about it.

Even so, the lesson I learned five years ago is still important, and still worth sharing: We usually never know what private hell someone is dealing with at any given moment, so being kind to others is always important. Always.

Nigel would be happy I took that as one of my biggest lessons.

*My “Facebookaversary” was this past Sunday, June 22, and that means I’ve been on Facebook for 18 years, which is nearly as long as I’ve been doing this blog. This blog turns 19 in three months.

Doubly under the weather

I was recently “under the weather”, both literally and figuratively. We had several weeks with few sunny days (though some cloudy days did have some sunny breaks), and lots of rain, often heavy rain. Then I had more on top of that.

The first week in June, I started feeling bad. It started as a very mild cold the first weekend in June, and that ebbed and flowed, so to speak, for around a week after that. I wasn’t particularly sneezy or have a constantly runny nose, though both have happened at times. Mainly, I just felt yucky, and sometimes my sinuses felt angry. I didn’t have a fever, though, which is part of the reason I sometimes thought it felt more like a bout of allergies than a cold. Even so, I felt pretty bad on a couple days.

I ventured out again on Thursday of last week, once I felt sure the affliction had passed. I used an abundance of caution because I went to visit my mother-in-law, and certainly didn’t want to pass a bug to her.

And then there was the weather, too.

In general, cloudy and rainy days aren’t that important, really, except that temperatures also dropped a lot (have I ever mentioned how much I hate cold temperatures?), and there seemed to be an awful lots of rainy days. The rainy weather is dreary all on its own, but it also means my solar panels make far less power on what are already shorter days (though, as I said yesterday, the daylight hours were two seconds longer than Saturday…). That affects what chores I can do—or, at least, what I’m willing to pay to do in the daytime.

At the end of May, there was a storm in Hamilton that caused a “mini tornado” in an area a couple kilometres from me, though the weather wasn’t as severe in my neighbourhood. However, at the same time that the suspected “mini tornado” struck, there was a torrential downpour in my neighbourhood, so much so that I had to turn the TV volume way up so I could hear it over the rain. The winds didn’t seem strong here, though.

That was only one of several storms with heavy downpours in May, so many, in fact, that I assumed it had been a rainy month, but apparently not. According to MetService, the rain accumulation in Hamilton in May of this year was completely aligned with May of last year and the historical data, too—which is a pretty good argument for not relying on mere perception, especially when the actual data is available.

Okay, fine: The amount of rain that fell in May was actually quite ordinary, even though it didn’t seem that way. Maybe it was the fact the days were shorter, and the fairly constant cloudcover—which isn’t tracked in data, as far as I can tell—is probably what affected my (incorrect) perception of rainy weather. Just cloudy, then.

All of which means that the actual rainfall in May wasn’t as bad as it seemed to me at the time, and my June disease affliction wasn’t as bad as a “real” illness. In fact, I sometimes still have times I’m a bit sneezy with a briefly runny nose, so maybe it’s just some sort of winter allergy, or whatever.

Winter is never pleasant for me, regardless of the amount of rain that actually falls in any given week, and this year has been no different. I’m glad I quarantined myself for my mother-in-law’s sake, even if my seeming disease affliction really were “just” allergies. The yucky feeling was real, even if my perception of rainfall may have been based on alternative facts. I blame winter

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 10

There was a new Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100” on June 22, 1985: “Heaven” (video up top) by Canadian singer and songwriter Bryan Adams. It was Number One for two weeks, his first Number One hit and his third in the Top Ten song.

The song was the third single from his fourth studio album album, Reckless, and was written in 1983 while Adams was touring with Journey, which is probably why the song is inspired by the band’s song, "Faithfully". According to the Wikipedia article linked about the song above, Adams didn’t think the song was right for his album and almost didn’t include it.

There were two different music videos made for the song, and the one above appears to be the first. I don’t remember this video, and Wikipedia’s description of the other doesn’t sound familiar. It’s entirely possible I didn’t see either, or else, not maybe just not often.

I do remember the song, though, even hear it on the radio every once in awhile (Number One songs often reappear for years afterward…), however, I wasn’t exactly a fan of the song back in the day. In fact, when I saw it on the list of Number Ones for 1985, at first I couldn’t remember how it went. However, when I watched the video—as I do for every song I share in this series, of course—I recognised it immediately. To be clear, it definitely wasn’t that I DISliked the song, I just didn’t actively like it. I thought it was fine for what it was, but maybe a bit slow for my taste.

There’s one thing that I feel obligated to mention: In those days, some people liked to make a point of disliking Bryan Adams (kind of like in more recent times when some people made a point of stating their dislike of Nine Inch Nails…). One must wonder how much of that was performative, given Adams' success, right? Personally, I never disliked Bryan Adams, and I didn’t pretend that I did (a Canadian friend of mine did, though). I've liked a lot of different pop music in various genres and years, and it’s actually pretty rare for me to actively dislike a song, let alone an artist or band. Having said all that, I never bought any of his music, though there may have been a song on a compilation here or there, but I don’t remember any off the top of my head. Kind of like when I saw this song on the list, I suppose.

“Heaven” reached Number 12 in Australia, Number 11 in Canada (Gold), Number 17 in New Zealand (Platinum), Number 38 in the UK (Platinum), and Number One on the USA’s Billboard, as well as Number 12 on their “Adult Contemporary” chart and Number 27 on their “Mainstream Rock Songs” chart. The song was ultmately Certified Gold in the USA—in 2009.

The album Reckless reached Number 2 in Australia (Platinum), Number One in Canada (11x Platinum), Number 1 in New Zealand (Platinum), Number 7 in the UK (3x Platinum), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard 200” (5x Platinum).

This series will return July 6, 2025 with a brand new Number One single for that week. Will I remember that one?

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1985” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 1 – February 2, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 2 – February 16, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 3 – March 12, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 4 – March 30, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 5 – April 13, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 6 – May 11, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 7 – May 18, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 8 – June 1, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 9 – June 8, 2025

The semi-annual change. Or not.

By anyone’s reckoning, it’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere. The June Solstice arrived at 2:42pm NZST yesterday afternoon (June 21), and while we say winter began on June first, yesterday could be called “the Winter Solstice”. Regardless of the start date of the seasons, in this case it means that daytime will start getting longer again, which is a huge plus for me. The short days and cold weather are the reasons I dislike winter so much. Sadly, the warmer weather is many, many weeks away.

I went to a relative’s house for lunch with some of the family, which was a good time, as always, and that’s where I was when the June Solstice arrived. However, I was surprised that there was still a bit of fog when I left my house near midday, though nowhere near as bad as it was earlier in the morning. Still, fog and cold temperatures, are a big part of winter in Hamilton, so I’m kind of used to it.

It wasn’t the fog or cold temperatures that were negatives, though: That came later as I drove home. The radio host mentioned that daylight today would be two seconds more than yesterday. Yay. Winter still has a looooooong time to go.

The September Equinox arrives at 6:19am NZST on Tuesday, September 23, which is also five days before NZ Daylight Saving Time returns.

Adding changes to the list

It’s no secret that I have trouble with personal organisation, and that I’ve come up with strategies to deal with that. The system I came up with has had some successes, and one major failure. I’ve now changed directions to try and fixt the one that didn’t work.

Back in 2023, I wrote about a personal organisation system I’d created for myself. That system had a section called “What’s Up” that I intended to help me keep track of things I wanted to get done. I explained it in more detail in a post after six months using it, and that’s how I used the system throughout 2023 and 2024—and then I didn’t.

In January of this year, I started writing out the dates on the sheets for this year’s “What’sUp” section, but I struggled—or, more accurately, I struggled. At the time I thought to myself that “I’m just not feeling it”, and so, I stopped. I’d gotten as far as June 1, but just couldn’t face it any more (and I’d just bought a new ring binder to put the old sheets in; more about about in a bit).

Part of the problem was that it had become a list of what I did, not what I wanted to do in a day. That’s still useful for things I don’t do on a schedule so I can tell how long it’s been since I did that task (which is why I was going to save the old sheets in a binder). Even so, it had become useless for scheduling things—because I didn’t use it for that. I also found the limit of six items to be arbitrary and utterly silly. So, it wasn’t working, I was frustrated, but also unsure what to do about it.

In the meantime, I made a version on Apple’s Notes app, and I just listed what I did on a given day—pretty much like I did on the handwritten version, but not limited to only six items. However, just as with the paper version, I sometimes forgot what I did on a day, or over a few days, and I had to try to remember later. It wasn’t a huge improvement—except that the Notes app is on all my devices and I could add something to my list anytime, anywhere—even if I suddenly remembered something as I was getting into bed (it’s happened).

I next made a temporary “to do” list using Notes because users can add check buttons—to make the list an electronic checklist. I was originally thinking how I could copy-and-paste items from one to the other, and then it hit me: Why not just make it one list? And that’s what I did (shown in the screenshot up top).

At the end of May, I made up the entire month of June in Notes, and each day has “Something or other” as the default placeholder text (I can type over it, obviously). So far, it’s been a combination of the old system and improvements. As I said, a list of what I actually did each day is useful, but the new system means I can schedule things for that month, too, then click the button for the things I’ve actually done, and if I don’t get it done, I can easily copy anything I didn’t do and add it onto the list for the next day.

It’s very early days for this revised system, but I’ve already noticed that I’ve been scheduling things I’d like to get done because, first, it doesn’t matter if I go beyond six items, and second, I can easily move an uncompleted task to another day if I don’t get it done. This suggests that the new system may finally be one that can actually work for me—MAYBE.

This has been a particular kind of journey, but I think I knew all along there would be changes to my systems as I found things that didn’t work. Coming up with ideas I think would work better is hte easy part. Actually successfully using it? That’s the unknown part. Maybe I should schedule a review in six months…

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 9

This series is back on track this week with a new Number One song for this week in 1985: On June 8, 1985, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (video up top) by English pop rock duo Tears for Fears reached Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100”, and remained there for two weeks. The song was the third single from their second album, Songs from the Big Chair.

I first heard of Tears for Fears when they released their first studio album, 1982’s The Hurting., and that was mostly because their song Mad World”. which I loved, primarily because I saw the music video for the song, which was their first video. I did not, however, buy the album, but a friend let me tape their copy (that tape is long gone).

When “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was released, it was played on the radio a LOT, and that can make me get tired of a song. For whatever reason, that didn’t happen with this song, and to this day I still like it when it comes on the radio—though that’s now rare because I only listen to the radio in the car when I’m running errands here in town.

I bought the album Songs from the Big Chair, which I left behind in the USA. However, I bought an anniversary collection of their early albums from iTunes (as it was called then…). And that I still have. The collection included several remixes, and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was one of them.

I used to follow Curt Smith on Twitter back in the day (Roland Orzabal was apparently never on it), and thought he was quite interesting (in fact, I was on his email list for quite some time, too). I think I may have traded Tweets with him at some point, and he may even have followed me back (the only celebrity I know for sure followed me back was Stephen Fry, though I think a few others may have, too). That was all way back, at time when Twitter was still fun, before it was subsumed into the pool of fetid slime it would become (that was well before Elon bought it, by which time it was already becoming a hellscape).

“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” reached Number 2 in Australia (5x Platinum), Number One in Canada (Gold) and in New Zealand (5x Platinum), Number 2 in the UK (4x Platinum), and Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100” and “Hot Dance Club Play” charts, as well as Number 2 on their “Adult Contemporary” chart. It was also reached Number One on the USA’s Cash Box “Top 100” chart. The song wasn’t certified in the USA.

The album Songs from the Big Chair reached Number 5 in Australia, Number One in Canada (7x Platinum), Number 2 in New Zealand (Platinum), Number 2 in the UK (3x Platinum), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard 200”. It was Certified 5x Platinum in the USA.

This series will return June 22, 2025 with a brand new Number One single for that week—and the week after that, too.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1985” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 1 – February 2, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 2 – February 16, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 3 – March 12, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 4 – March 30, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 5 – April 13, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 6 – May 11, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 7 – May 18, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 8 – June 1, 2025

Sometimes, it’s not the eggs

Over the past few years, I’ve shared a few photos both  here and on social media (especially the latter) of meals I’ve made, like the photo above of my poached eggs this morning. For no particular reason, I rarely share such photos now, but I realised recently that’s probably a mistake. These days especially, it’s seldom about the eggs.

I’ve done cooking experiments of one sort or another for decades, but especially in the last ten years—and even more frequently beginning with the first Covid lockdown. Those experiments were a way to beat the boredom of lockdowns, but I also I thought it was an interesting and creative thing to do.

Time moved on, and my enthusiasm waned a bit, particularly during challenging times, and I found myself focusing on very specific things, like consistently making good poached eggs (because sometimes it is about the eggs…). And yet, the experiments continued.

Today’s eggs were perfect, as they usually are, so I feel I’ve now pretty much mastered making them—as long as I pay attention to what I’m doing, because a wandering mind is a ruinous thing. Getting things right—even a meal—feels really good, and while I could joke about the “dopamine hit” this activity actually really does help: Accomplishing a goal, especially one that results in good food, can absolutely increase dopamine levels in our blood.

When times feel bleak, as they have for me off and on over the past 18 months or so, succeeding at a small task—even a very small task, like making eggs—often ends up being the biggest help. It’s actually the main reason I talk about celebrating “small victories”: They matter.

I think it’s deeply embedded in human nature to not see what’s positive and to instead focus on worries, dreads, and possible dangers. I think we all do that, at least sometimes, and I certainly do it, too. It’s like ignoring the beautiful sunny tropical ocean beach we’re standing on because off at the distant horizon we see dark clouds and storms. We ignore what’s right in front of us and instead worry that the far-off storm may turn and hurl itself right at us, even though it may never do that.

When times are especially rough, we’re more likely to have this happen, even repeatedly. This is why celebrating small victories is so important: Making a point of focusing on good, positive things can help break the miasma of negativity, maybe not at first, and maybe not individually, but the benefits of celebrating positive things, especially repeatedly, makes it easier to break the negativity loop.

This has been on my mind a lot lately, not the least because I wanted natural, non-pharmaceutical approaches to help me cope better with the occasional rough times I was experiencing, and I pretty much managed that. My daily walking routine helped, and so does spending time with family or friends, and, maybe especially, playing with Leo. But celebrating small victories, especially repeatedly, has definitely played an important part.

I first realised this when I was a young boy, though not for this purpose. I used to write “to do” lists for projects (some things have never changed…), most memorably for tidying my bedroom. I realised that instead of writing “tidy bedroom”, it worked better to write small tasks, like, “clean top of dresser”, or for a bookcase I might even put tidying each shelf as a separate task. Then, as I checked off each completed task, I got lots of check marks on the list, and that, in turn, encouraged me to keep going to check more tasks off the list until the whole thing was done. Without knowing it, I was celebrating small victories over and over until they led to an even bigger accomplishment, the completion of the whole job.

Many (many…) decades later, the lessons I learned in childhood still matter, and so does celebrating small victories. I don’t always succeed in doing that, but sometimes I do, and that makes the difference.

Which brings me back to those eggs this morning. I took the photo, something I often do simply for practice alone, which is why I don't share them. I began to think that such photos were too shallow, which figures since I’ve backed away from posting much of anything on social media. That’s where the mistake is.

Because of all the things I said earlier—especially about celebrating small victories—me not sharing this photo (or the many others) means I was not celebrating small victories, and that was a mistake. To be clear, it's not important that I have a small victory, however, plenty of other people are looking for reasons to be hopeful, and me hiding mine under a bushel does no service to them—or me, actually.

Sometimes, it’s not about the eggs, and sometimes it is, and it’s really not up to me to determine which it is. This is about more than photos of food, it’s about giving hope and an example to others when we can, yes, but it mostly means celebrating the small victories we get. Today I had one, and it was about eggs. Tomorrow? No idea.

The non-birthday birthday holiday thing

Today was the first day of the work week for most New Zealanders, as it is every year at this time. That’s because the first Monday in June is the King’s Birthday public holiday, which means this past weekend was a three-day holiday weekend. It used to be the last public holiday until Labour Day at the end of October, but now we have Matariki (also known as “Māori New Year”) which comes between the two, and this year it will be on Friday, June 20

Technically, the holiday is actually the “Reigning Monarch’s Birthday” or some such (that’s what it was called in my various employment contracts), because it’s not their actual birthday. The late Queen of New Zealand, Elizabeth II, was actually born on April 21, and her successor and son, King Charles III, was born on November 14. I have a hunch that while most New Zealanders know that the first Monday in June is just a public holiday, I doubt all that many know when the monarch’s actual birthday is. For some unknown reason, I somehow memorised King Charles’ actual birthday, but I could never remember the exact birthday of our late queen, aside from the fact she was born in April. So, yay me? Yeah, I’ll go with that.

King’s Birthday is one of two pubic holidays on which honours are handed out (the other is New Year’s Day), but it’s a werid process. Technically, anyone can nominate someone (other than themselves) online. The nominations go to a special committee chaired by the Prime Minister of the day (currently the National Party’s Chris Luxon). This year, additional committee members include the leaders of the parties in Luxon’s coalition, Winston Peters of NZ First and David Seymour of Act. The other members of the committee are from all three parties in the coalition.

After the committee reviews the list (according to some sort of process), the prime minister makes a recommendation to the King of New Zealand, and he then approves the honours list, as the saying goes, “on the prime minister’s advice”. Put another way, it’s kind of a rubber stamp. Naturally, there are problems with this system.

First, and most obviously, it’s controlled by the government of the day. Traditional, National Party-led governments reward business people, and Labour Party-led governments tend to reward teachers and union/worker organisers. Both tend to reward community organisers, as well as folks in the arts, and sport, though ratios may vary between the two.

I always read through the entire list of folks getting an honour (Related: This year’s full list of King’s Birthday Honours), and I seldom recognise very many names. Whenever I raise an eyebrow at an honours list, it’s inevitably a National Party-led government that’s created it. This year was no different.

The one that jumped out at me was them honouring Ruth Richardson, a neoliberal’s neoliberal, who was Finance Minister from 1990 to 1993 in the Fourth National Government led by Jim Bolger as Prime Minister. She was the first female to hold the position, which absolutely is notable—or, it would be if she hadn’t been so absolutely awful. Darien Fenton, a former Labour Party Member of Parliament, summed it up well on her Facebook page:

Ruth Richardson did untold damage that our country wears til this day. But 30 years on, she is still boasting about it: "I have always worn those reforms that I championed as a badge of honour, and the restoration of New Zealand's fortunes made it worth it. So I guess this award thirty years down the track is a recognition of that work." Nicola Willis [the current National Party Finance Minister and Deputy Leader of her party] is following in her tradition.

Richarsons’s 1991 "Mother of all Budgets" drastically cut benefits to “encourage employment”, but it led to an explosion in income inequality and poverty, and general hardship for the poorest New Zealanders. It wasn’t until 2016 that there was a small effective increase under National, and then Labour largely restored pre-1991 funding levels 2020-21. Richardson’s policies were so toxic that National barely won re-election in 1993 (they had a one seat majority in those pre-MMP days), and she was fired from the Finance Minister role, so she decided to resign from Parliament rather than accept a different Cabinet position, thus forcing an expensive by-election on NZ taxpayers, which, in my opinion, is the ultimate “fuck you” from a selfish, arrogant, and narcissistic politician.

New Zealand still hasn’t fully recovered from the damage done by the 1991 Budget, nor from the neoliberal takeover of Labour before that which also caused huge damage to New Zealand. The architects of Labour’s awful neoliberal policies natually joined with Richardson to establish the expressly neoliberal Act Party, and neither they not Act have wavered from their war against working people in favour of the rich—leopards really don’t change their spots, apparently.

All of this just underscores why the honours process should never be under the control of the government of the day: Partisanship always gets in the way. I think that a ministerial committee (made up of non-political career ministry workers) should review all nominations and make recommendations to the government of the day that they can either accept or reject. Ideally, that should be it—the politicians shouldn’t be allowed to add strictly partisan nominees, but maybe they could be allowed to add a certain number (5?) of lower-level honours. In my opinion.

While I’m a huge fan of public holidays—especially because they matter in New Zealand—I’m like most New Zealanders in that, for me, the King’s Birthday public holiday is nothing more than a three-day holiday weekend. Honestly, I don’t even care about the Honours List, even when I think one includes people who shouldn’t be honoured. After all, people who have opposite political beliefs from mine probably think the same of lists put out by a Labour-led government. It is the way of things.

So, a three-day holiday weekend was had. Happy us!

Related: "King's Birthday Honours: Dai Henwood, Tim Southee and Jude Dobson among those recognised" – RNZ

Leo is eight

Today is a very important day on my calendar: Today is my best friend Leo’s 8th birthday! He’s still as awesome as ever, of course, and has no idea what a birthday even is, but I know, and I’m glad to celebrate it on his behalf.

We got together with some of the family for lunch today, which had nothing to do with Leo’s birthday, of course, but he got to go, too, so it was still a treat for him. Later, he got special dinner, as he always does. In between those two, he spent a lot of time sleeping—I think his lunchtime adventure wore him out!

As I said last year, “Leo came to live with us just before his first birthday, but his Daddy Nigel only got to celebrate two of Leo’s birthdays. Nigel would be so very happy to see what a happy boy Leo is these days. I feel both happy and honoured to have spent all seven of Leo’s birthdays with him.

That's still true now that I’ve spent all eight of his birthdays with him. Something else I wrote last year is also true:

Today I also trimmed the fur around his eyes a little bit. Every year on his birthday he’s always being groomed, about to be groomed, or was just groomed. Who am I to buck tradition? He didn’t seem to mind.

Leo still makes every day better, simply by being—whether he’s making me laugh, or just looking at me while I talk to him as if he completely understands what I’m saying. He still loves playing “the chase game” where we take turns chasing each other around the house. He also still loves the toy rabbit I gave him last year.

There are times when I feel bad about how I don’t look after him as well as I should, but I could say the same thing about myself or the house or pretty much anything else. But, like I always say, each day presents us with a new opportunity to do better and be better. Leo deserves to get only my best, and I know one day he will. In the meantime, every day is better because he’s in it. I kinda think he’s rather fond of me, too.

Happy Eighth Birthday, Leo!

Related:

Leo is seven – 2024
Leo is six – 2023
Leo is five – 2022
Leo is four – 2021
Leo is three – 2020
Leo is two – 2019
Leo is one year old – 2018
Another new addition – The post in which I announced Leo joined our family
All blog posts tagged “Leo” – All the posts in which I’ve talked about him

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 8

Well, this is rather embarrassing—or, it would be if it mattered. This post was supposed to be published last week, but I got totally confused about the dates, and missed it. On the other hand, the same song was also Number One this week in 1985, too, so, it’s all good, I think.

On May 25, 1985, “Everything She Wants” (video up top) by British pop duo Wham! reached Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100”, and remained there for the following week, too. The song was a Double A-side released with “Last Christmas”. It was the band’s third consecutive million-selling number-one hit in the USA, and was the fourth single from their second album, Make It Big.

I remember this song very well, and I liked it. While I personally always thought the song’s meaning is pretty obvious, the Wikipedia areticle to linked to above quotes George Michael’s explanation, which is quite detailed:

It's a lyric about a man who is six or eight months into a marriage which obviously isn't going well. He's faced with the 'happy' news of an arriving baby. So he's in that situation where he can't back out. [The song] talks about the situation [in which] many men find themselves, working really hard to support a family… and see it as a kind of trap. It's a situation I've seen. It's not the kind of thing I usually write about. Our lyrics are usually a lot closer to the kind of pop lightweight lyric we enjoy, but it's a departure, and I think it worked.

I think that in those days I heard the song on the radio more often than I saw the video, though of course I did see it. In any case, as is so often true about pop songs and me, I liked the overall sound of the song, the arrangement, and the vocals. George Michael was an amazing singer, in my opinion.

“Everything She Wants” reached Number 7 in Australia, Number 5 and Canada (Gold), Number 6 in New Zealand, Number 2 in the UK (Gold), and Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100”, and also reached Number One on the USA’s Cash Box “Top 100” chart, and Number One on Radio & Records “Contemporary Hit Radio” chart. The song was certified Gold in the USA.

The album Make It Big reached Number One in Australia (Platinum), Canada (6x Platinum), New Zealand (Platinum), in the UK (4x Platinum), and on the USA’s “Billboard 200”. It was Certified 6x Platinum in the USA.

This series will return next week—no, for real!—with a brand new Number One single for the week of June 8, 2025.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1985” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 1 – February 2, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 2 – February 16, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 3 – March 12, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 4 – March 30, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 5 – April 13, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 6 – May 11, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 7 – May 18, 2025

Winter again. Again.

Today is the first day of Winter in the Southern Hemisphere (or this part of it, anyway). Winter is absolutely my least favourite season (I don’t like it all, but I don’t want to provoke it by say that…). On the bright side, three months to Spring?

The image above is what I posted on my personal Facebook, something similar to what I do every year. While I have that “tradition”, any season isn’t necessarily like it was in other years. This year, NIWA is predicting the temperatures will be warmer than average. We’ll still have cold snaps, of course, but, overall, the temperatures should be at least somewhat higher than usual. Apparently, this is happening because sea temperatures around New Zealand and 1 to 4 degrees Celsius higher than normal for this time of year. In fact, researchers have found that the oceans around New Zealand are warming faster than anywhere else. This, in turn, leads to more severe weather, rainfall in particular. [see also 1News’ weatherman Dan Corbett’s look at our coming winter weather, advising us “Get ready for a wild ride”. So, yay.

I suppose maybe it’ll give me stuff to blog about, so there’s that, I guess. Yeah, but I still prefer the other three seasons.