Why aren’t we in Sendai?

COVID-19. That’s why

This week, we were supposed to be in Sendai (the wife’s home town) as part of a seven week journey around Japan. But we’re not. Instead we’re stuck here in covid-free Aotearoa while the rest of the world goes mad.

The airline cancelled our flights to and from Japan months ago, but due to quirks of history, the Consumer Protection Act does not cover the sale of air tickets. Consequently the airline is not obligated to refund the price of the tickets. Instead it has given us a credit that must be used by December 2021 to purchase tickets for flights to be completed by December 2022.

Legally, they’re only required to provide tickets for a single journey to the same destination: the airline pocketing the difference if the fare is less or charging the difference if the fare is more. Instead they are “generously allowing” us to purchase tickets for multiple flights up to the value of the credit to any destination they serve.

Given that the airline has already stated that after the pandemic is over, they’ll be a regional carrier instead of a world wide international carrier, and it’s very unlikely that they will ever resume passenger flights to Japan, there’s nothing generous about their offer.

How many short haul journeys within New Zealand or to Australia would it take to spend the credit from a return business class fare between New Zealand and Japan? Somewhere between 20 and 50 domestic trips or between 10 and 20 trips to Australia. All to be taken by by the end of 2022. I think not.

The airline is using its legal “right” to make ticket holders bankroll them through the pandemic. Who is going to bankroll the ticket holders?

I’m pleased that we hung onto the tickets until the airline cancelled the flights, because had we cancelled them, there would have been no credit, let alone refund. But I’m still holding out for a change of heart that will allow us to get most, if not all, of our money back.

Unemployment down during COVID-19 pandemic

Kia ora!

It’s official! Unemployment is down in the second quarter of 2020 (4%) compared to the first quarter (4.2%). What’s more, hourly earnings are up 3%. Great news isn’t it?

But don’t let statistics fool you. It all depends on how the raw data is collected and how it is interpreted. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the source of official unemployment figures are taken from nationwide household surveys and the criteria for being unemployed includes actively seeking employment over the previous four weeks or due to start a new job within the next four weeks. Actively seeking employment means you have approached potential employers for the purpose of gaining employment. For example, applying for an advertised job, sending in a CV or making contact with a potential employer.

As this country was in various COVID-19 alert levels during the second quarter, including five weeks of full lockdown apart from essential services, it’s hardly surprising that meeting the requirements for being classified as unemployed was difficult, if not impossible to achieve. Thankfully, the surveys collect more data that can be used to identify trends and the real situation. All this information is available on the Stats NZ website, and summarised in COVID-19 lockdown has widespread effects on labour market.

While the number of those who are classified as unemployed fell by 11,000, the number of people not in the workforce rose by 37,000, no doubt swelled by the large numbers of Kiwis returning from overseas. Perhaps more significantly, the number of hours worked fell by a record breaking 10% and underutilisation of the workforce rose by 1.6% – another record.

Underutilisation is defined as all those unemployed and

underemployed – those who are employed part time (working fewer than 30 hours a week) and have both the desire and availability to increase the number of hours they work

available potential jobseekers – people who would like a job but are not currently actively seeking one; for example, a university student who has just graduated and wants a job but is not actively applying for one yet

unavailable jobseekers – people who are currently looking for a job but are not available to start quite yet; for example, a mother who has recently been looking after a child and in the next month will be able to start working again.

^{https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/covid-19-lockdown-has-widespread-effects-on-labour-market}

This graphic from the Stats NZ website summarises the real picture:

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  ^{Stats NZ – licensed for re-use under a Creative Commons 4.0 International Licence}

What the graphic doesn’t show is how the pandemic has impacted some sections of society. 90% of those who have lost jobs are women, mostly from lower paid positions. This also explains why national average earnings have risen. Minorities are also disproportionately represented as they too are more likely to be in lower paid jobs.

The government is actively promoting large infrastructure projects where jobs are typically male dominated, but has done little for the tourism, hospitality and retail sectors where significantly more females than males are employed. Tourism and hospitality are the hardest hit mainly due the our borders remaining closed to overseas visitors.

Wage subsidies introduced to lessen the impact of the pandemic cease at the end of this month, and no doubt that will have a flow on effect on employment over the coming months. I expect the data presented for the third quarter will look much worse.

The question I ask is how much of the downturn is directly attributable to the effects of the NZ lockdown, and how much is attributable to the global economic downturn resulting from the pandemic and how other jurisdictions have responded. As this country is highly reliant on international travellers visiting our shores, I can’t see our fortunes improving until such time as overseas visitors no longer present a hazard to our population. And on that we are entirely reliant on other nations getting the virus under control within their borders.

It sooths me

At times when I sense a migraine is on its way, I often find comfort in music. I’m not sure if it has any effect on the course of an attack, but it keeps me in the presence. By this I mean that my awareness of self does not disappear.

While migraine pain can be debilitating, other effects of an attack can create a surreal sensation where I feel I am no longer within my body, have no conscious control over it, and can only observe a shell which may or may not be able act human-like. It’s being aware of no feelings or emotions. No pain, although I am aware that the shell trembles with pain. No happiness nor sadness nor fear nor joy. Nothing. I’m not even aware of of sensations of light, sound or touch, although the shell reacts in fear or pain to them. The shell even responds to words spoken to it by others. But I, the observer, do not hear the words, only know that the shell is being spoken to, and it slowly, reluctantly tries to make an effort to respond. I’m aware that the shell is confused and disorientated. I feel no pity or compassion, no empathy at all towards the shell. I’m merely a detached and numb observer compelled by some force to hover nearby and observe, while mists of darkness come and go.

In all my 68 years I have never experienced a bad or frightening dream nor a nightmare. Apparently everyone gets them occasionally, or so I’m told. But then, I have no memory of any dreams since my mid teens, certainly not since I finished secondary school. I mentioned this fact when I was undergoing counselling for pain management, and after I had attempted to describe how I sometimes experience the “out of body” described above. The counsellor made the comment that those experiences must be more terrifying than any nightmare.

That puzzled me then as it still does today, as I’m not aware of any emotion at all during these episodes, and at lucid moments like now, I am, at best, ambivalent. I have no feeling or emotion about what happens to me during an attack. I feel no more about the attacks than I do about the fact that some ponds are deeper than others. I’m certainly not conscious of any fear or trepidation about an inevitable attack. Migraines come and go, just as night-times come and go.

While I don’t have dreams I have momentary glimpses that are very dreamlike (from what I remember of dreams), but they have turned out to be actual moments during a severe migraine attack, where the darkness momentarily lifts. For example I remember one dream-like set of scenes where there’s a moment of watching a person walking down a street knowing it’s important for them to be somewhere but not knowing where that is. There’s a flash where a person is sitting on a flower bed with people milling around, and another very short scene where bright lights come and go and a person is wanting to escape. There’s also a picture of a smart phone login screen, and a visually blank scene where somebody or somebodies are asking a person for a name (possibly that person’s name) but the questioning is relentless, not giving the person an opportunity to formulate an answer, let alone give it. There’s a recollection of a breeze and of bells ringing. There’s an awareness of something pressing all around an arm and another where wires are being attached to a torso. These were all actual events during one attack where apparently I was picked up by the police in a somewhat disorientated and confused state and taken to the hospital in a nearby city.

I’m not sure if music really keeps me in the present and out of the fugue-like state, but I can say that as long as I can hear the music, I am aware of the emotions that music can evoke. No, that’s not quite right. I feel the emotions. And I want to hold onto them. Here’s two very different pieces of music that are typical of what keeps the surrealism at bay during the early stages of a migraine attack. They might surprise you.

I find gentle soothing music, tends to draw me into that surreal state, but if I get past the window where that state might take hold, and a more typical migraine evolves, then such music played very softly does help provide some relief from the incessantly throbbing headache.

The Kiwi Rite of Passage

Taking an OE, or Overseas Experience, has become a characteristic activity of Young Kiwis over the last fifty years. Young New Zealanders head overseas for an extended period, usually immediately after graduating university, although often before beginning (and sometimes instead of undertaking) tertiary study. It has become such a social norm, that failing to show some work experience or extended stay overseas on one’s CV can put one at a disadvantage in job applications. Colloquially termed The Big OE, it’s estimated, that at any one time, one in five kiwis are living or travelling overseas. To make up for this “loss”, we have a high immigration rate. One in four New Zealand residents are immigrants.

So what lures young Kiwis to foreign shores?

A sense of adventure? Its been argued that the reason NZ had such a high rate of military volunteers during the first and second world wars was that young men saw it as the only opportunity they would have for an adventure in a foreign land. There’s no doubt that our isolation and small population makes other places seem more enticing and exciting.

Seeking one’s roots? Aotearoa New Zealand is a young country, and there would be very few individuals who don’t have at least one parent, grandparent or great grand parent who was born overseas. Depending on which branch of the family tree I follow, I am a second generation, third generation, fourth generation or fifth generation New Zealander. My wife is an immigrant, as is my daughter-in-law. In that respect, I’m a typical kiwi. Young people today have a greater interest in their roots than do people of my generation and have a genuine interest in where their family came from.

Career prospects? Kiwis are often highly sought after, particularly where the reputation of our work ethic and “can do” attitude precedes them. There’s certainly no denial that overseas there are pay scales and career opportunities that we can only dream about here. On returning home, that experience gives them a distinct advantage in the job market.

The lure of bright city lights? Sure, why not? World wide, there are over sixty cities with populations larger than our entire country, and if you include metropolitan areas, that number swells to 100. I have a distinct dislike for it, but most young people seem to crave for the excitement that can be found where the lights are brightest.

Economising? Strange as it may seem, this is a factor. New Zealand is very isolated geographically, and to get anywhere outside the country is expensive and takes a long time. The cost of travel to and from foreign destinations is relatively high compared to the cost of living there. So why not cram as much into one journey as possible by making it last a year or three?

There’s no doubt a myriad of other reasons, including that fact that this country and even its biggest cities just too quiet or dull for some. But eventually most return, sometimes with a new partner in tow to set up a new family. For although it’s an expensive place to live in, there’s no better place in which to raise a family.

A beneficial outcome of such a significant number of our young adults spending an extended period abroad is that they experience a wide variety of cultures different from their own. This means that on return they are, generally, more accepting, tolerant and appreciative of alternative cultures and life styles found within Aotearoa New Zealand. And that can only be a good thing.

So our rite of passage is the Big OE. What’s the rite of passage where you live?

Internet? What Internet?

As I mentioned in my previous post, accessing the Internet in Japan was problematic. On board the cruise ship, WiFi was free, but that only provided access to on board facilities. Internet access was expensive. I made the decision to purchase 10 hours of access which set me back US$200. I shouldn’t have bothered. Communication by smoke signals would have been faster and more reliable. Frequently the network went down, and while down it was impossible to log off, meaning the clock kept on counting down the time I had left.

On board, the transfer rate was very slow. Who remembers dial-up internet of the early 1990s? That was fast compared to what I could get, even when the ship was in port. I found it better to go onshore and seek out a WiFi hot spot. But even then I frequently ran into problems.

WiFi hot spots are to be found everywhere in Japan, but most seem to require a subscription with a service provider to use for anything other than a very short trial period. Often the amount of personal information that had to be divulged even to use the trial period was too much for my comfort, and I’d abandon the sign up process. Those that really were free often had very little bandwidth, and weren’t much better than on the ship. I noticed too, that many of the hot spot providers required the use of a smart phone that had been purchased in Japan. Foreign purchased phones simply would not work.

The best connections I found were in restaurants, shopping centres and railway stations. Hotels and inns were a mixed lot. It seemed that the bigger the place was, the less reliable the Internet connection. There were two factors here. In large establishments the WiFI signal strength could be patchy, and while it might be strong in the lobby or dining rooms, it frequently was very weak in our room. The other issue was bandwidth.

I swear that the larger the establishment, the smaller the capability of the router. We stayed at a number of small inns with as few as five guest rooms. Here I could get speeds approaching the ADSL speeds at home. But in larger places, data transfer slowed to a snail’s pace, especially in the evenings. Even achieving 1KB/sec in some places was an achievement. Talk about being frustrated! I abandoned all hope of blogging, and managing my part time online business became a nightmare.

I use Google Photos to automatically sync pictures and videos taken on my phone to the cloud and my other devices. By the time we left Japan, less than 5GB of the 32GB I’d taken had been uploaded. A similar amount uploaded while we waited for a connecting flight at Auckland Airport. The rest uploaded by the time we woke the next morning.

We don’t have a fast connection at home: 10MB download and 1MB upload, but it still seems fast compared to what I experienced in Japan. I don’t know how unique my experience with the Internet in Japan is, but both my daughter and her husband had similar experiences. Perhaps we were just unlucky.

Speaking of Internet speeds, I really must hurry up and choose a high speed fibre provider. After all, there’s been fibre running right past out gate for more than a year now. Most providers charge no more, and frequently less than I’m paying for my copper ADSL service. The only problem I’m having is choosing which provider to go with. Soooo many of them, and every one of them has numerous plans. Contract or no contract? With or without phone line? 100MB or 1GB? With or without Netflix? Metered or unmetered? According to one comparison website, I have 1,960 different plans to choose from. Help!!

Where’ve you been?

I have recently returned to Aotearoa New Zealand after an absence of seven weeks. During that time, I made a startling discovery. I miss the blogosphere when I can’t reach it!

Before leaving these shores, I had convinced myself that Internet access would not be a problem. I would be able to manage my part time business/hobby, and keep up with the numerous blogs I follow while I frittered away my children’s inheritance on a luxury holiday. But it was not to be.

So where have I been?

Japan – home for the first 24 years in the life of my wife. The trip was divided into three legs:

1. A 17 day cruise around Japan with excursions to Korsakov in  Russia, and Busan in South Korea plus a few days in the Tokyo area either side of the cruise.
2. A short stay at Sendai, my wife’s home town.
3. An exhausting 14 onsen (Japanese inns with volcanic hot springs) in 15 days.

The cruise

The great thing about cruises is that it’s like booking into a hotel but finding yourself in a different location each day. No hassle with packing bags, or booking and catching public transport, or finding somewhere decent to eat. The bad thing about cruises is that you find yourself in a different location every day, and after a while, the food, even though it’s of an extremely high quality, becomes a little too predictable and monotonous. (I can’t say anything bad about not having to pack bags every day).

We had brief visits to many parts of Japan that my wife had never been to, some of which will become destinations in future visits to Japan when/if they eventuate. We would have liked to have spent longer at some locations, but time, tide and cruise ships wait for no man.

We were accompanied on the first two legs of our holiday by our daughter, her husband, and their three children. Some excursions we did as an extended family, others we did by ourselves, and on occasions when a migraine got in the way, my daughter or grandchildren would take my place.

What in the world possessed North Americans to call the main course of a meal an entrée? To avoid confusion among passengers, the cruise English language menu referred to the courses at dinner as Starters, Mains, and Desserts. Each day there was a different choice of 5 or 6 starters, 5 or 6 mains and 5 or 6 desserts. There was another 15 or so dishes that were available every day. The menu started to repeat itself after the tenth day.

What I like about cruise dining is that one is not limited to just one starter, main and dessert each meal, but one can eat as many dishes as one wants. I typically had 2 or 3 starters, occasionally 2 mains and often finished with 2 desserts. My son-in-law, not to be out done, at one meal consumed every starter, including one starter twice, 3 mains and at least 2 desserts! I had visions of being able to roll him off the ship at the end of the cruise, but of course he was unable to maintain such an appetite for long.

Highlights of the cruise? There were many memorable occasions, but not always of the pleasant kind. In particular, the visit to Korsakov was rather sobering. One had the feeling that life was kind of hopeless. Everything was run down and people had that kind of resigned look in their eyes which said life was grim and not likely to get any better. Our Russian guide more or less confirmed this by stating than many Russians have moved to Sakhalin Island due to the low cost of living only to discover the low cost of living comes with even lower wages (around US$2000 per year) and find it impossible to earn enough to leave.

On the other hand I can claim another Kiwi victory over the Aussies!  On an excursion to the Kushiro Marshlands in Hokkaido, we found ourselves in a bus with 4 Australian couples, and another 8 passengers of assorted nationalities. At the visitor centre, we were fitted out with lifejackets and wet weather gear for a canoe ride through the marshlands. As each canoe held a maximum of eight people plus a guide, we seemed to naturally divide ourselves into three groups: Our extended family of 7; the eight Australians; and the rest.

We spent spent a wonderful time exploring. Nature there was very different to what we experience in Aotearoa New Zealand. I think everyone in all three canoes were enthralled by the experience. However it all changed on the last leg of the return journey shortly after we entered a large lake. We had just finished watching a flock of ravens harassing an eagle, and were slowly starting to paddle towards the visitor centre in the distance, when we heard the the sound of a canoe approaching from behind at full throttle, eight paddles dipping in and out of the water in unison. Then we noticed that they were paddling to the chant of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie”.

They were fully aware that we were Kiwis and that their action would be like a red flag to a bull. Naturally we responded. They had caught us by surprise, and they were a good boat length ahead by the time we got up to speed. I’m sure they were confident they could beat us to shore 800 metres away as they had the benefit of surprise and had a crew of eight adult paddlers ranging from their mid twenties to their mid fifties. Our canoe consisted of six paddlers as my wife was unable to paddle due to back problems: three children (5, 8 and 11 years old), Two adults in their forties and myself in his late sixties.

The guides were clearly perplexed by what was a mad race for the shore. We had an advantage here as both my wife and daughter speak Japanese. As we made ground on the other canoe, my wife and daughter explained to our guide the nature of the rivalry between Kiwis and Australians. It wasn’t long before were were paddling neck and neck and over the sound splashing of paddles and gasping breath as we each jockeyed for the lead, we could hear our guide explaining the insanity of antipodeans to the other and it was very evident by their laughter that they both though were were all quite mad.

Slowly we drew ahead, pain in arms and back almost reaching breaking point, and when we were some 200 metres from shore we had about a two boat length lead. At this point the Australians realised that that there was no possibility of beating us and abandoned the race. We on the other hand were out to prove a point and continued on at the same pace until there was no more water under the keel much to the consternation of our guide.

I’ll cover other aspects of the trip in future posts. In many respects, it was a journey of discovery. Those discoveries being mostly about myself, some quite surprising. If I can make sense of some of them I might share them on this blog. That is if I can find the courage to do so.

All in all, the seven weeks away from home went too quickly, but I was really pleased to get back home. There’s something about the comfort of familiarity that eventually overtakes the excitement of adventure. At least it’s that way for me.