I had wondered whether I could get to the end of the year without blogging. It’s not like there’s been nothing to talk about – since my last post an election has been fought and decided, there have been terrorist attacks, APEC, new Governments and in my case, an ad-hominem attack from a pompous and, by all accounts, increasingly mad old rent-a-quote.
I almost blogged when I was on tenterhooks over the protests at Bangkok airport. No, I have no particular interest in the democratic process there, but I was sitting on two return tickets, no travel insurance (I’d wanted to read the fine print before signing up) and watching my summer plans disappear in a revolution fought between two groups wielding different-coloured hand clappers. Fortunately, my optimism was well-founded, and a week later the airport cleared out before a blog was written.
I got really close to blogging over Act’s attempts to relitigate the science of climate change, and then something happened at Select Committee that I don’t quite understand and now am I somehow ingratiated to Peter Dunne for throwing that out before it even got started, and how poorly drafted was the Act’s coalition agreement where it can lose such battles before the ink’s even dry?
And all of a sudden Summer’s here, and I could have written about scootering around this great city, fantastic Sundays drinking off my hangover on Cheltenham Beach, diving for scallops off Rakino Island, or catching snapper in the Gulf. But that sort of thing doesn’t really translate well into words, and I’ll leave pictures of men holding big fish to the fellas at fishing.net.nz
So now it’s three sleeps to go until I take off for about six weeks (having now added a side-trip to Tokyo into the equation), and I’ve still got a tonne of work to finish up, the house to tidy, bags to pack and so forth, so even blogging this much seems like a reckless way to spend my time. But I couldn’t have my last blog for the year be a Halloween story, and I’m not sure whether I’m going to have the time, resources or inclination to blog from Laos or Cambodia. There will certainly be tales and photos galore when I get back, but you’ll forgive me if I end up waiting until then, yeah?
It’s been a big year with a lot of change, both personally, nationally and globally. I don’t really know how to sum it all up, not in one pithy sentence. But before I go, I’d like to at least acknowledge this guy, because he is awesome. Shame about his intended victim's cocaine-quick reactions.
Happy holidays y’all.