Cooking tips

I'm a big fan of efficiency. My boss calls it "laziness", a virtue that he respects enormously - the ability to get results with the minimum possible investment.

Nowhere is this skill more important than in the kitchen. Despite the addition of our lovely Danske Møbler sideboard, space is still at a premium and we only have two saucepans. And when Susan starts to get hungry, her normally sunny disposition starts to cloud over, and getting calories into her becomes a time-critical exercise. I dread to think what she'd do if she were dining in Hell's Kitchen.

Thus it came about that last night, when I'd put the rice on and realised I hadn't hard-boiled the eggs as I'd intended, I came up with the bright idea of popping the eggs in with the rice. After all, I reasoned, it's all boiling water, isn't it? And rice requires ten minutes of simmering plus five to ten minutes of standing - that's surely enough time to get a nice hard-boiled result, yes?

For the record, it is. The eggs were perfect. There were only two drawbacks.

The first became apparent when the time came to hook the eggs out of the bed of quietly steaming rice. A spoon did that job nicely, but it also hooked a non-trivial amount of rice out with them, which immediately stuck like glue to the shell. I don't know why rice (Basmati, in case it makes a difference) is so adhesive to eggshell, but take it from me, there is an affinity there.

The second struck me when I contemplated the smooth, shiny whiteness of the freshly peeled eggs. Each egg showed a distinct patch of yellow to one side. Deprived of the tossing motion of the more conventional rapid boiling, the yolks had settled to one side. Not a disaster, merely a minor suboptimality.

I offer this finding in the spirit of furthering human understanding. My training as a process engineer tells me that your less brilliant ideas are just as worthy to be recorded as the best of them; that way, you (and others) will know, next time, without having to do the experiment again.

You're welcome.

All kinds of juvenile

Students have been in the news lately, and not for the right reasons. I remember when students made headlines by their exemplary work calling into question the advertising of well-established brands. Ah, those happy bygone days...

Last week, we heard a great deal more about the "Undie 500".

For those who have the good fortune not to know what that means, it's an annual event - a "tradition" - of students driving from Christchurch to Dunedin, to go on a pub crawl. Ostensibly it's an occasion for car enthusiasts to show off their lovingly maintained vehicles. But in the way of traditions, it's become so much more than that. Nowadays, to hear the media tell it, it's mostly about drunkenness and rioting in the streets. At the event a couple of weeks ago, some 80 people were arrested and 67 charged.

Politicians love it. The mayor of Dunedin - one Peter Chin, a typical local politithug - was quick to blame out-of-town students for the whole mess, conveniently ignoring the fact that most of those arrested actually lived in or around Dunedin. John Key, our Beloved Leader, seemed unsure whether he should be wringing his hands with sorrow, or gloating over lawbreakers facing the Awful Majesty of their comeuppance. He settled for deploring the "waste of their futures", as a result of graduating with a criminal conviction.

(Yeah, like any employer is going to care about some student misdemeanour... It's just another part of the Great Lie we tell kids, the lie of the "permanent record", that there's some kind of recording angel who knows the wrongs they do and will hold it against them at some unspecified later time. Absolute bollocks, of course. The truth is that almost nobody cares now, and even they will have forgotten by Christmas.)

And today comes the news of another fine tradition, this time from Lincoln University. (That's Lincoln the one-horse town near Christchurch, New Zealand, not Lincoln the historic county town in England. That Lincoln has a university that is, as far as I know, entirely reputable.) New Zealand's self-styled "specialist land-based" university held an Oktoberfest party (huh?) with a German theme. Nothing wrong with that, apart from the date. What got it into the news was the fact that an unspecified number of students turned up sporting Nazi uniforms, regalia and slogans.

"It was not an issue of racism or Nazi ideals, it was a lack of understanding," says student association president Megan Harte. She points out that some of the students were first years who may not have known what the "Holocaust was all about".

I feel for Ms Harte here. She clearly feels it's her job to defend the indefensible. Even so, this is pretty feeble stuff. Lincoln is a very "vocational" university: it doesn't even offer a course in "history" or anything like it. It's not clear why students of "Valuation & Property Management" should be expected to come out of university knowing much more about the Holocaust than when they went in.

Dear Mr Key, Ms Harte, Mr Chin, and countless other Kiwis: university isn't about learning facts and skills that will see you through your working life. Sure you might pick up some of those if you're lucky, but really you'd learn ten times faster by just going out to work. University is a nice sheltered environment where you go to grow up. The courses are just there to give you something to think about while you do it.

Troubleshooting your Rheem Integrity continuous-flow boiler

1. Is the gas connected to the boiler? If not, what is it connected to? This investigation should be undertaken by someone with a functioning sense of smell, and preferably without any naked flames.


2. Is the power connected? Jiggle the plug into the socket a bit. Try plugging in something else, like a lamp, to test it. If you bring down one of your nice bedside lamps for this purpose, try not to scratch it on the wall en route.


3. Is it a weekend? If so, don't bother calling around gas fitters. Everyone in the Auckland area who has the first clue how these things work, also has better things to do with their weekends. Good for them. You can get by without hot water for a day or so.


4. Are you sure about the power?


5. Don't take the cover off. I mean it.


6. If you conducted the test described in (2), try the boiler again now. Then try running an extension lead out from inside the house. An ordinary, lightweight lead will do - it only has to power a bit of basic electronics, nothing heavy-duty. Connect the boiler to a socket you know is working, and try the hot water again.


7. It was the power, wasn't it?


8. In your bathroom, probably on the ground floor, there's a socket like those shaver outlets you get in hotels, with an orange LED plus blue and green buttons cryptically labelled "Test" and "Reset". When you press "Test", the orange LED should go out. When you press "Reset", it comes back on.


9. For no very obvious reason, these buttons control your boiler. If the LED is out, the boiler won't work, even though the socket outside appears to be turned on.


10. I know, I know.


11. If you absolutely must call Rheem:
    1. You should know, it'll cost you at least $100.
    2. A man will come and look at the boiler. He will be perfectly civil and informative, and yet somehow contrive to make you feel like a drooling idiot.
    3. He will take the cover off - revealing an incomprehensible mess of wiring that will make you glad you didn't take the cover off - and re-invoke the last few error codes by following a high-tech procedure requiring a retractable ballpoint pen.
    4. These codes will all say "Ignition failure", which means "out of gas". I think it's the only error code there is.
    5. Feel free to discuss the weather, sports, any home improvement projects you may have in mind with this man. He's perfectly friendly once you get to know him.
    6. There's also a water filter, which he'll check if he's feeling thorough, but since the water comes directly from the mains, it's vanishingly unlikely - under normal operation - that the filter will ever have anything to do
    7. That'll be $100 please.
    
    
12. If you need to call an electrician, that'll be closer to $200. For that fee, he'll tell you about the trip switch in the bathroom.

And that's the lessons I learned this last four days. Provided to you, the faithful reader, for free. Such are the joys of home ownership.

The kill

A few days ago, I wrote that we were over house hunting. The searching and the researching and the devoting every weekend to trekking the length and breadth of the city - all this we've been doing since September. Enough already.

And last night, we nailed it.



It was an auction, which I know as an opportunity for either heartbreak or cutting observation, depending on how much you care about the house. We did care about this one. It's the nicest house we've seen in a couple of months, it's in the right area and the right nominal price range...

It's amazing, the things my mind does to me when it's under pressure.

I made use of all the experience I gained at our first attempt to buy at auction. Set a high limit, as high as you can bear; position yourself at the back, where you can see the other bidders; don't bid first, but when you do get going, don't hesitate.

Setting a high limit was easy. The CV was so comfortably within our range that I couldn't believe bidding would go too high for us. But psychology is a funny thing. As we sat in the packed café, waiting for the auction to begin, I kept thinking about resale value, running costs, opportunity costs - all the reasons why we might be paying too much. Was it worth what we'd agreed? - and could we afford it? - really? - really really? Six percent of 400,000 is 24,000 - plus 20,000 to repay, that's 44,000 in the first year, and then Susan is going to have to get the bus to work, that's not a calculation I want to be doing in my head, certainly not now, but I can't stop myself.

Sitting at the back was all very well, but as the place filled up I realised two things. One was that we'd been trumped by people standing behind the back, out on the street and leaning in through the windows. The other was that with ten rows in front of us, we risked invisibility. But one has to have faith in the auctioneer - it's not in his interest to overlook anyone.

Most of the people are not unlike us - young-ish couples, presumably looking for a place to start a family. Directly in front is a pretty Asian woman in her 20s, wearing jeans so low-slung that they're practically a wardrobe malfunction in progress. I avert my eyes, resolving not to fall for this obviously deliberate distraction. To our right I overhear the agent talking to a mother-daughter team - the daughter a straight-haired blonde woman, animated and pretty, but showing signs of the sun-induced premature aging that characterises most white New Zealanders. So they've got their sights on our house too.

A couple of rows in front is a blond guy whom I stigmatise instantly as a wannabe yuppie. He's sipping white wine, wearing the bottom half of a cheap suit, and has just eaten a cake with whipped cream. His figure suggests that he's slightly too fond of cream with his cakes - a professional man in his 20s should be slimmer than that. On his lap is a folder labelled "Congratulations on your new vehic..".

Through it all we wait quietly, patiently. Susan's body language is defensive, but I consciously adjust mine to be more open, and tell myself that I feel better for it.

Our house is first in the running order. The auctioneer mikes up, introduces himself and runs through the selling points, just in case we've forgotten why we came, then asks for opening bids. I know how this bit goes - no-one wants to open the bidding, everyone sits silently. But not tonight. "Two hundred!", shouts the yuppie in a Chardonnay-fuelled voice.

The auctioneer evidently knows the man - that's probably how the parasite got his money, I reflect bitterly - and accepts the offer with more than good grace. The ice broken, several bidders dive in - I can't see them all, there's a column in the way - but bidding quickly escalates to $360k.

Here the auctioneer develops a mischievous streak, calling "Going once, twice, three times" without a pause. Half a dozen hands shoot up - mine among them, but I don't think he saw it - doesn't matter anyway, bidding is going again.

At $440k there is another pause. Maybe this one's for real. After decently waiting for the third call, I put my hand up. At $450k we drop to $5000 increments. At $460k, my opponent bids $1000; the auctioneer invites me to do likewise, but the hell with that, we'll be here all night, I've got to land a knockout punch. "Sixty-five!", I yell. "Sixty-six!" "Seventy!"

There we stop. I start daring to hope we've finished, but I know we haven't. After a theatrical pause while the agent "consults the vendor", the auctioneer announces that the reserve has been met and the house will be sold.

At which the other bidder tries again - another $1000. It takes until $480,000 to shake the bastard.

But it's done. And finally - for the first time in almost eight months - we can look forward to a settled future. We can spend our weekend doing something we actually want to do.

"So - more open homes this Saturday? Just to gloat?" I suggest jokingly to Susan on the way out.

She seems alarmingly keen on the idea.

Darth Google

A few of weeks ago now, I installed a new widget on this page that records where (it thinks) my readers are located, where they come from, and what links they click when they're here.

It's fascinating reading, although slightly dispiriting that I don't get visited nearly as often as I should. But among other things, it lets me see what people were searching Google for when my blog popped up.

An uncommon lot of people - well, half a dozen at least - seem to have been drawn here by the picture included in my unflattering review of Watchmen. I wonder if they were disappointed when they didn't find a full online version of the comic. (If so, tough. I don't support digital piracy.)

Recently there was some poor sap from Miami searching for "the science of karma", and they were apparently so disappointed that they must've complained to Google, because my post of that name currently doesn't show up at all in a search for that phrase.

Then last week there was someone searching for "Mr Darcy is all politeness" (without quotes). I wonder what they were looking for.

I know what they found, though. Apparently, if you Google for a random text from Pride & Prejudice, the number one result you get is the "Google Books" edition of the text.

I don't know if you're familiar with Google Books. It's a stupid idea, the misbegotten offspring of an idiot's compromise between Google and the major publishers whereby Google gets to "publish books" online. By way of throwing a bone to the copyright Gestapo, Google agreed to leave out some pages in these works, the theory being that people should be allowed to search the text online but not able to read it. The choice of pages omitted depends on what you searched for. (It also, I've discovered in the course of researching this, varies from one day to the next. Last week I could page all the way through the book, with some random omissions such as p.145; this week, it's skipping directly from p.60 to the back cover.)

The irony being, of course, that Pride & Prejudice is not a copyright work. Not unless Jane Austen lived to be 200 years old, anyway. Anyone can reproduce this text as many times as they like; rewrite, repackage, adapt, perform, distribute, sell, loan or hire it, or any original work they may derive from it, completely at will. That's how Wordsworth Classics (Google's edition) were entitled to publish it in the first place; for them now to assert copyright over the text is indefensible, and should be illegal if it's not already.

But I digress. My real point here is that no human being in their senses would search for the Google Books edition of this work, because it's fecking useless. Instead, they could look for the Gutenberg version, which is easier to read, easier to search, and complete. And one hundred per cent legal to distribute in every country I know of, unless of course it meets someone's idea of obscenity...

And yet that page doesn't show up at all in the first page of Google results when searching for the text.

Ten years ago, Google became famous for its motto: "Don't be evil". "Evil" was always somewhat nebulously defined, but it was commonly understood as contrasting with Microsoft's standard operating practice of abusing every part of its business to give various (arguably) unfair advantages to every other part, generally at the expense of its own users. But it's hard to see the above Google result in any other light. The top result for the search is the one that's least useful for the user, and most profitable for Google.

There's such a thing as "too green"

One of the nice things about living on the 15th floor of an apartment building is: we don't get much bothered by insects. To be sure they can climb that high - but why bother, when there's so much richer pickings at ground level?

This simple logistical defence has served us well for more than three years, but in the past month or so it's broken down. A small community of tiny fruit flies has, apparently, found the evolutionary niche that is our level of the atmosphere. These things are barely bigger than mosquitoes, but very visible and annoying. No matter how rigorous our food hygiene precautions, every time I look around, there are half a dozen of the little buggers kicking back on the walls, cupboard doors or other surfaces around the apartment.



Weary of spending my evenings stalking them with a rolled-up Property Press, this weekend I invested in a can of Raid. Just a small can. After all, it's a small apartment and these are small flies...

Last time I bought this stuff was in England, and I was at ground level, dealing with much nastier brutes drawn in by the inimitable scent of catfood. Then, the can seemed like a weapon of such evil sorcery that I felt quite guilty about using it. I'd point it in the general direction of the offenders, give a brief squirt, and a baneful haze would spread through the room. Within two minutes, flies would be woozily swatting themselves against the window or simply twitching on the carpet. For a day or more, the whole house would be almost completely insect-free.

But either Raid has changed its formula, or the Kiwi version is chemically engineered to be environmentally benign - because these flies don't seem to be impressed at all. If I get close enough they'll circle away irritably, as if to say "Hey, man, don't muss the antennae!", but for the most part they'll sit there noncholantly and lap it up. Since Sunday I've pretty much emptied the can, and I've yet to see a single fly killed by it.

On the plus side, the spray doesn't have the miasmic chemical stench that I remember from it.

Message to S C Johnson: I like the "odourless" quality. Well done there. But I'm not so keen on the "non-toxic" aspect.

The vision thing

"The TV keeps turning itself off," complains Susan.

Well, it often does that just after you turn it on. Particularly if you get impatient and try to press the button a second time before it's completely on. But of course, women don't understand technology.

"Be patient", I advise her. She scowls at me impatiently and jabs the button again.

The little LED on the front of the set is blinking, that means it's turning on. The screen lights up. The screen goes black. The silly girl must have pressed the button again. Exuding manly competence, I grab the control and press the button firmly. We wait.

In due time the screen lights up once more. It's showing a pretty but vague rainbow-like pattern, and no sound. Probably a close-up. Then it goes black.

"But I didn't press it!", I whimper. Evidently my technological grasp has slipped again. Susan looks at me pityingly.

Closer investigation shows that pressing the controls on the set itself gives the same result. And there's a suspiciously powerful aroma of ozone, with overtones of molten plastic, from the back of the set.

So now we have a whole new battery of problems. Try to get the TV repaired, or get rid of it? Get a new one, or live without for a while? Decisions, decisions.

Naturally, I know the only sensible thing to do is to get a new TV. But my lib'rul conscience won't let me rest at that point. I have to look into getting the old TV fixed, or failing that, disposing of it properly. In our world of political correctness gone mad, hurling it from the balcony is frowned upon. Especially by the people directly below.

I gather facts, canvas opinions...

"It'll cost $32 to have it recycled, if you deliver it to us - if we have to pick it up, it's $45" - that's the electronics waste disposal experts on the North Shore. They sound nice, and surely $45 is a small price for the smug glow of ecological responsibility.

"$55 to diagnose the fault in three business days. But we'll deduct it from the cost of fixing it. If we can find the parts." - that's the TV repair shop's quote. Before I can ask if it covers disposal costs, I'm interrupted by an estate agent on the other phone.

"Sell it on TradeMe. I got $3 for my broken vacuum cleaner last week." - that's Sarah's suggestion, and it's not a bad one. Get someone to pay to take it away? Ingenious.

Then I start looking into new TVs, and that's when the panic really hits me.

"You need an HDCP connector," says my boss, John the gadget freak. But none of the offerings on Dick Smith's website mention "HDCP" at all. They're all about "HDMI" instead.

Surely the Internet can help me. Someone must know the relationship, if any, between HDCP and HDMI? Sure enough, Wikipedia to the rescue:

"beginning with HDMI CTS 1.3a, any system which implements HDCP must do so in a fully-compliant manner"

Hmm. A little more opaque than I was hoping for, to be honest, but I think it means that a TV with an HDMI connector specified to version 1.3a or later will be able to accept HDCP input.

Back to Dick Smith. What versions of HDMI are implemented on these TVs? Not specified. Not specified. 1.2, that's no good. 1. Just '1'? - good grief, how prehistoric is that, might as well be throwing paint at the wall... Ah, this one's 1.3 - hmm, does that imply "1.3a", or is "a" a step beyond the basic "1.3"? Where did this bloody alphabet soup come from anyway? - whatever happened to the days when you just plugged an aerial lead into the back of your TV?

By now the set has been sitting in the back of my car for almost two days. I'm taking it to the repair shop this afternoon.

Auction without tears

I think I've worked out why house auctions are so depressing. Apart from the obvious casino stench of fear and disappointment and greed, obviously.

30 Anita Ave, Mt Roskill, was too big for us. Five bedrooms plus rumpus. What would we want with so much space? But it's in pretty good shape, nice area, has a large living room and beautiful views. If we could get it at a bargain price, it'd be - well, a bargain.

Prowling around the rooms before the sale, I felt a distinct chill in the region of my feet. That is, of course, what you get if you lay carpet directly on a concrete floor with no underlay. But it's also what happens when you're thinking of paying every penny you can scrape up, for a house that's in urgent need of new windows.

Back in the living room, we had ample chance to see just how spacious it was as more people filtered in. The family, their friends and extended family, neighbours panting with anticipation to see how much they could get for their own houses, or perhaps - more charitably - simply wanting to get an early view of their own new neighbours. Estate agents, drawn to the money like flies to a cowpat. And quite possibly a couple of random passers-by, sheltering from the rain.

Among this crowd - easily forty people - the actual bidders were easy to spot. They were the ones who were looking about appraisingly (as I was), sizing up the crowd (as I was), checking the terms of sale for last-minute alterations (three paragraphs about vendor liability had been crossed out). There was a tall, patriarchal Indian man, about my age; an attractive Malaysian couple, with older relatives in tow; a Pacific family (I have yet to learn the ethnic tells that allow one to distinguish between Maori, Fijian, Samoan and other related peoples); and a vaguely Latinate-looking pakeha couple.

And all of these people, myself included, had the same body language: uncommunicative, defensive, as if trying to cut themselves off from all distractions and focus only on not getting screwed.

Proceedings began punctually at noon. The auctioneer rattled through the documents (excusing the crossings-out), reassured us what a wonderful house it was and how happy the current owners had been here, and tried to open the bidding at $400,000.

I wondered if I'd heard correctly. The CV of the house was $495,000, and it was surely going for more than that. What's the point of starting so low? I looked around at the other bidders. They looked at me. They looked at each other. Nothing happened.

The auctioneer was quite unfazed, sticking to her figure. "Come on, you have to agree it's a bargain at that price, don't worry, you'll be in no danger of buying, won't someone offer me - thank you, madam!" The Malaysian woman had cracked, and raised her hand.

Now she wanted increments of $10,000. I looked at the bidders. They looked at each other. The auctioneer was shouting $400 for the second time when the pakeha guy raised his hand.

Good grief, this was painful.

The hell with tactics, I thought, we'll be here all day. I started bidding. $420, 440, 460, 480, 500. There we paused. For a moment I wondered if I'd actually bought it. Oh please god no...

$510. The Malaysian girl wasn't done yet. Now it was out of my hands; I heaved a sigh of relief.

With me out of the bidding, the Indian man took over, offering increments of $5000, then $2500. Progress was still slow, but not as agonising as the beginning. We watched, dispassionately, as the bidding crept up to $550, then one more step... Finally, it seemed, we were done. So that's what this house was worth. The auctioneer kept talking. One of the agents tried to get me back in, but that wasn't going to happen.

"I can't sell it at that price", announced the auctioneer.

I was surprised, and a little disappointed. I'd liked the family, and found it sad to see how greedy they were being - more than 10% above CV, in a declining market? Please. It's not like you've maintained it so immaculately...

The custom is that, at this point, the final bidder gets to haggle with the vendor one on one. I don't know what the procedure is for that, but I had no wish to hang around and find out. We slipped through the crowd, found our bearings in the huge sea of shoes by the entrance, and set out to get on with our weekend. My heart, I found, was lighter for knowing that the place was hopelessly out of reach.

Very different from the last time we tried to buy at auction. We are indeed hardened house-hunters now. Tougher, more efficient, more ruthless. And yet I can't help feeling we've lost something.

Where's the heart? What happened to the love? For all that we've been seeing "better" houses, I can't recall the last time I walked into one and thought "Yes! I want this place!"

I miss it.

House hunting, week (enough)

We're getting better at house hunting. I mean, we haven't yet reached the point where we can go to the right place and sit in a hide and the perfect house just comes up and eats grains out of our hands, but we've definitely improved from our early lumbering attempts to chase them down across the open savannah. Of the seven places we saw this weekend, three are quite livable, and one of those is (probably) surprisingly cheap.

But we still make mistakes.

One place we almost missed, on Sunday, by not double-checking the address. Two open homes at the same time within ten houses of each other - what are the odds? Still, we wasted most of the timeslot looking round the wrong place - an architectural embarrassment crammed into not enough land behind some rustic takeaway shops. Emerging into the sunlight, Susan leafed again through the details we'd printed out. "Did you see a fireplace?", she asked innocently.

Our real objective was a short dash up the road, which we reached just in time to find the agent politely bidding her last visitors farewell. But we were in no mood to take hints. Charging in like a SWAT team, we breezed through the house in three minutes flat. It was worth seeing.

Other highlights:

Nestled on the southern slopes of One Tree Hill is the bustling suburb of Royal Oak. The house on Turama Road is astonishingly ugly, has very little land, and is in urgent need of a new kitchen and bathroom - but surprisingly roomy on the inside, and cheap. Worth considering.

1/87 Te Kawa Road is a pleasant enough house, but as usual some idiot has attached a massive deck covering more than half the garden. What's left is a vertiginous patch of ferocious vegetation that looks like it's stolen from the set of an Indiana Jones movie.

Our second visit to a house we saw last week in the rain. In sunlight, the problems became more obvious - most notably, the fact that the master bedroom faces onto a fairly noisy road. Still, there's such a thing as double glazing.

One place where road noise is not an issue is 305 West Tamaki Road. As we made our way down the rugged driveway, my strong impression was that the cicadas were starting something. Here, the soothing summer accompaniment to lazy days outside was transformed into something more like a civil defence siren. If a tsunami ever does strike this part of the coast, let's hope it happens at night.

The house itself was very pleasant - 1970s construction (I'm guessing), with a few issues around uneven floors, but good sized rooms and garden.

The cicadas followed us all day, right across to the tail end of Mt Eden Road, where the house we'd come to see had conveniently been sold to save us the trouble of looking around it. So thoughtful.

All in all, our hit rate has improved markedly. We chose to call it a successful weekend.

Three kinds of stupid

You're probably aware of the "Dunning-Kruger effect", although maybe not by that name. It's the psychological effect that shields us all from the ego-devastating realisation of how incompetent we are. It's why we're all, privately, sure that we'd be good at things we know nothing about, like designing websites or running restaurants.

I discovered this the other day while researching incompetence. It's a diverting piece of research. But it's not the kind of incompetence I wanted to write about. As I might have expected of myself, I successfully researched the wrong thing.

Every comic and wannabe from here to eternity has a stock of lines about how some intelligent, articulate, middle-aged professional spends hours trying to figure out their video/voicemail/laptop/Roomba/toaster, while their six-year-old kid only has to sneeze at it to make it sit up and perform tricks that would, in more enlightened times, have got the little brat burned as a witch and serve them right. But only Scott Adams, to my knowledge, has proposed a complete pseudoscientific theory of this widely-observed effect.

Adams (in one of his books, not available online) posited the idea of an "incompetence threshold" - a measure of our own capacity to be defeated by something that's supposed to be simple. This threshold, he says, rises a little with every year of our lives as the world around us grows more complicated, until we reach the point where we're completely flummoxed by tasks that would've seemed trivial to our pre-teenaged selves. And as each new generation grows up in a more complex world, they redesign tasks on the assumption of more complexity, and the "correct" way to complete these tasks slowly grows ever-more-infuriatingly opaque to older people.

Take recycling, for instance. Today's kids seem to have no difficulty at all with the rule that certain types of plastic - identifiable by the number stamped on the base - go into certain bins, and that's the end of it. But me, I can't stop thinking: "How clean does it need to be? Am I supposed to peel the labels off first? How do I know if the lid is the same plastic as the bottle? Can I put the bottles in a bag? What kind of bag?", and when I actually ask about these, or the myriad other questions that no-one seems to have mentioned, I'm made to feel as if I'm personally responsible for muddying the clarity of the basic message.

And so, more and more often, I find myself guessing the answers and hoping for the best. I'm deeply grateful that, for now at least, my wife handles most of the recycling - but, Adams's theory tells me, it's only a matter of time before she's as out of her depth as I am now.

Adams belongs to the Muntz school of philosophy: "people are acting stupid, ha ha". (Although in fairness, he does say that people aren't, on the whole, really stupid - it's just that, in certain circumstances and from certain perspectives, they appear that way.) Another famous blogger, Joel Spolsky, takes a different angle on the same issue. Spolsky, more constructively, tries to explain what it is that makes people seem so stupid, and how to help them.

Spolsky is in a minority. Laughing at people is always more fun than trying to understand or help them. It is, fortunately for us all, an influential minority - because people who think of incompetence as a problem to be solved, rather than a character flaw to be ridiculed, tend to get things done. In politics, however, it doesn't do so well. "Don't laugh, it's not his fault" is an inherently elitist thing to say.

What started me on this train of thought was my own experience, last week, of trying to comment on Nodressrehearsal's blog. Because my valued friend NDR has disabled "anonymous" comments on her blog, you need to sign in either with a LiveJournal account, or with something called "OpenID", which lots of sites, including Blogspot, support.

Now, I already have more Internet service accounts with more people than I can easily count, and I'd really like to minimise the number of these I create. So I decided to create an "OpenID" account, in the hope that it might also serve for other purposes someday.

And this was the task that defeated me. It seems to me that the powers behind "OpenID" haven't read or understood Spolsky's book. In a distracting environment, with lots of things to do at once, the task of signing in to a LiveJournal site with an OpenID proved to be beyond me.

It was quite a shock to learn that my incompetency threshold has reached the point where I am officially incapable of leaving a comment on NDR's blog, but it's just something I have to live with.

House buying: third attempt

In sensible countries (read: home), when you want to make an offer for a house, you phone up the agent and tell them, and they phone the vendor and tell them, and the vendor laughs and suggests another figure, the agent calls you back, and nothing gets put in writing until you've agreed on the price.

In New Zealand, nothing will do but you must make the offer in writhing[1] and the vendor countersigns it. This complicates things not a little, because typically you and the vendor are not in the same room.

[1] genuine typo which seemed oddly appropriate.

More, the writhing must be on an appropriate legal form, which is a closely-typed ten-page document with your signatures on page 6 and various other details filled in elsewhere and initialled right up the wazoo. I understand lawyers are comfortable with documents like this, and estate agents love them because of the sense of mystery and intimidation they create, but to most of us they're just annoying.

So it was that we had two visits from an estate agent last night. Not my first choice of house guests. But the cafes were closed, and one must be civil.

It was with a mixture of embarrassment and satisfaction that I noted the spilled takeaway on the floor of the lift as I escorted her up. I don't think it had been eaten before spilling, but it was hard to be sure.

She sat in the least comfortable chair and went, in tedious detail, through the standard contract terms that "the vendors" wanted to change. Personally I don't believe the vendors gave a damn' about these things (mostly, whether five working days was a reasonable time to get a builder's report, or whether we should be allowed seven working days as I'd originally suggested), but she needed something uncontroversial to talk about before getting down to brass tacks. (Negotiating 101: make sure your wedge has a thin end.)

Then she showed us the vendor's counter-offer: $475,000, a piffling $7000 below the original asking price. (Which, the agent assured us, was an extremely reasonable price. Never had a vendor been so earnestly pressed to keep their expectations reasonable, never was a house better priced to sell. She knows some agents like to pad their prices upwards, but she could not countenance such a practice. Incidentally, had she mentioned that the market has almost completely recovered?)

I sat and thought for a long time. Then I decided: time to see if they're serious about selling. In one stroke, I increased our offer from $430k to $450k.

"What's your limit?", asked the agent. Hoping, presumably, I'd forget that her job is to squeeze as much out of me as she can. "Because if I keep running back and forth with these small changes..."

"That's not a small change," I interrupted her.

She backpedalled hastily, muttering some non-apology about the multi-million dollar deals she's apparently accustomed to making, and went off to plague sundry other people, including our vendor.

Two hours later she was back. I brought her up in the same lift, she sat in the same chair and showed us the new offer.

I couldn't find it at first. There was so much writing, crossing out and initialling on the front page of the form that the number was not easy to see. Eventually I tracked it down: $470,000.

"Forget it," I said. "I made a big concession, I was looking for a reasonable movement back from them; if they're not prepared to make that, then we're just not going to reach an agreement."

She remonstrated a little for form's sake, but I think she could see she was wasting her breath. I wondered if she'd tried to talk the vendors into making a bigger concession; if so, presumably she'll be in a better position to pressure them next time. Pretty soon we thanked each other politely for our time, and she saw herself out.

I just hope she got the same lift again on the way down.

House hunting, year 2

It's curious, how different people's perceptions can be.

Looking out of the upstairs window from 4/33 Rukutai Street, Susan -- already unsympathetic -- muttered to me: "There's a stagnant stream outside."

There was indeed one of those water features that estate agents persist in calling "a stream", but look to me more like a poorly-finished ditch. I pointed it out to the agent.

"What's the problem? We're well above sea level here," he shrugged.

"Sea level be damned," I retorted. "What about mosquito level?"

"Ah, that's only a problem with stagnant water. That out there, that's running water."

I looked again at the water. A lethargic 'skater twitched its way across the surface.

"That's running, is it?"

Babbling, burbling, gurgling, rushing -- all of these would be entirely false descriptions. Truer descriptions would feature terms such as "ochre", "fecund" and, I felt, quite possibly "leprous". This water wasn't running, it wasn't even sauntering, I seriously doubted if it so much as got out of bed.

Have I mentioned what lying bastards estate agents are?

Job ads

"How would you interpret it when a job is described as 'always exciting'?", Susan asked me this morning.

"To me, that sounds like 'overworked and terminally disorganised'."

"How about 'always interesting'?"

"That would mean 'you'll be on your own because we neither know nor care what this job really involves, but we think it's important because the last guy asked some pretty sharp questions'."

I like to keep bedroom talk polite.

House hunting, week 15 (ish)

In the first blush of enthusiasm, we'd set out to hunt six, eight or even more houses each day at weekends. It was exhausting, particularly since neither one of us knew our Auckland geography from our elbows. We'd start off in Mt Wellington, trek across to Epsom, down to Mt Roskill or Hillsborough, back up again to Grey Lynn...

(You might want to glance at Google Maps if you want to follow along, but it doesn't really matter. All you need to know is that these places are all about 15 minutes apart, and we were viewing houses at half-hourly intervals. Those were full and rich days.)

Susan, who was navigating, would often close her eyes during the tedious bits (i.e. most of Auckland). But I was driving, and if I adopted the same policy I thought there might be side effects. So I took to unilaterally varying the routes, to see more neighbourhoods and give me a change of scenery. Of course that meant she had to stay awake too, but you can't make an omlette...

This precaution on my part helped us both to reach the same point of exhaustion at about the same time. Which was a relief. We took a couple of weekends off, we fled the country, and when we got back we settled into a steady rhythm. Now we try to schedule no more than four houses per day, and seldom more than two in any half-hour period.

Today's tour began in Meadowbank, a suburb so exclusive that until today I was only dimly aware of it. One finds it by starting from the upmarket shopping district of Newmarket, travelling through the genteel suburb of Remuera until it turns into leafy St Johns, then taking one of the unmarked and unprepossessing turns that leads into the forbidding turf of Meadowbank itself. F/120 Gowing Drive, when one gets there, is very finely calculated to uphold the tone of the neighbourhood by putting off nearly, but not quite, everyone. It's one of 20 or so houses on a single patch of land; it has a railway track running past the back garden, which itself is low enough to be prone to flooding when the Purewa Creek bursts its banks; and worst of all, it has a driving range under the house itself.

Susan was put off when we went upstairs to the kitchen (Kiwis often put their kitchens on the top floor, I don't think they know any better, poor things) and found she had to stand on tiptoes to peer over the counter. I refrained from telling her how cute she looked.

I was put off when I wandered around the upper landing, and found myself walking downhill. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer floors that are level.

In short, the house was perfect for a tall, sociable, amphibious, golf-loving train-spotter who's not too fussy about the finish of their building. Scratch one.

Next stop was the more down-to-earth, neighbourly suburb of One Tree Hill, which has become something of a favourite of ours. It seems to offer more promising combinations of house, land and neighbourhood than any other area we've tried. 8 Tuata Street was the best new offering we saw today, featuring a quiet, leafy street, a decent kitchen and small but welcoming entertaining space, and a tiled and modern bathroom. But no bath, and no room to add one.

Scratch two.

The third offering was in Ellerslie, our second visit to an address I'm not going to publish here because there's an outside chance we might buy it. It's a pleasant enough house, but suffers from a mild case of Auckland Developer Syndrome (not to be confused with Kiwi Builder Syndrome, on which I'll probably have occasion to rant at a later date).

Show an Aucklander a house with a backyard big enough to accommodate anything larger than, say, an agoraphobic goat, and what they see is at least four lots of prime building land. And if you make the mistake of only building two houses, each with a reasonable patch, the next owners will just subdivide it again. It's like a cancer, splitting and destroying the land. (I just wish they had the sense to build upwards more often. If land is so damn' precious, then why do less than half the homes in Auckland come with stairs?)

This particular house does feature stairs, and a garden about the size of a two-lane bowling alley. And a patio door that opens onto the neighbour's driveway. No, really.

Last on today's itinerary was 19/27 Birdwood Crescent, Parnell. Parnell is a dream of a place to live: central yet peaceful, a buzzing, Bohemian community, rich in academics, artists and modest inherited wealth. (We passed a house that actually did keep a goat in its backyard, possibly as some kind of test of land area.) 27 Birdwood Crescent was, at one time -- probably within living memory -- a stunning, although slightly vertiginous, patch of land, backing down towards the Domain, offering a placid and uplifting view of the Auckland Museum. Then someone decided to concrete the whole thing over, divide it into something more than 30 separate lots and build a shoebox on each.

Scratch three. When this place comes to its senses and appoints me dictator, the former owner of 27 Birdwood Crescent is going to have some very hard explaining to do to the Inland Revenue, the kind of explaining where he ends up considering himself lucky to be allowed to sleep on a park bench.

Another day, another washout.

On the plus side, I can now find my way from Ellerslie to Parnell without any navigational aids at all. If you want to learn your way around a city, buy a house.