Farewell, my dear friend Sergei. Taken far too soon.
Sergei trying to corral us for a photograph in London in 2015.
I’m pretty upset by this so rather than write a fresh tribute (which I will have to do in time in an official capacity), I’m going to quote from what I wrote to his widow, Ekaterina, with appropriate edits: ‘I am so deeply saddened by this terrible news since I found out on Wednesday night. Sergei was a great friend, colleague and ally. We have known each other since 2006 and I have always found him warm, helpful, and kind. Outside of Medinge Group he even helped another colleague of mine with navigating Russiaâs complex tourist visas! Even today I was looking for the name of a computer program in order to read some messages and realized that Sergei was the one who put me on to it! What will we do without Sergeiâs social media posts hashtagging #Medinge to keep us all informed?
âSince I have further to travel to visit friends in Europe, the last time I saw Sergei in person was in 2015 and I truly wish that that was not the final time.
â⌠Please know Sergei was loved the world over and it was a blessing to have known him.’
He is survived by his wife and their two daughters.
It brings me very little pleasure to do these calculations. After reading Umair Haqueâs January 24 piece on the UKâs poor response to COVID-19âat the time the country had, by his reckoning, the highest death toll per capita in the worldâI decided to feed in the numbers again, as of 9 a.m. GMT today. Here are the percentages of positive cases out of total tests done, based on the official figures. I know itâs not scientific, but it gives me a rough idea of whoâs doing worse and whoâs doing better, relative to the last set (December 7, 2020), and, I hate to say it, the slap-dash response by some countries is prolonging our pain as a planet.
Brazil 34¡50% â
Sweden 10¡66% â
USA 8¡42% â
Spain 8¡27% â
Italy 7¡51% â
France 7¡08% â
Germany 5¡62% â
India 5¡27% â
UK 4¡90% â
Russia 3¡82% â
KSA 2¡88% â
South Korea 1¡36% â
Singapore 0¡88% â
Taiwan 0¡56% â
Australia 0¡21% â
Hong Kong 0¡152% â
New Zealand 0¡146% â
He also notes that the UK was going to delay people getting their second vaccination shots. I hope the country has since changed its tune, but looking at the likes of Johnson and Hancock, who helped to gift the world the British mutation, I doubt they have the nous. Even my fifth form science will tell me this (original emphases):
Because science says so. Animal models already tell us that if the second dose isnât had within about a month, the immune cascade vaccines trigger fails to happen. Immunity doesnât result. Antibodies arenât developed ⌠Whatâs the upshot likely to be for Britain? The entire countryâs vaccination program is likely to fail. There are going to be a whole lot of people who get one dose, but not the second in time, and most of those people will not develop immunity. Do you know what happens when you cross a halfway vaccinated population with a fast evolving virus? Thatâs right, vaccine resistance. Britain already made itself a perfect petri dish for new strains of Covid â but what Britainâs doing right now is making it the perfect petri dish for deadlier, more infectious, and much, much more vaccine resistant strains of the virus.
I have dear friends there, at least one who is immuno-compromised, and this is, to put it bluntly, a shitshow. I’m glad their daily infection numbers have now fallen under 10,000, but all this needn’t have happened.
Finally found a page where you can order COVID-19 cases by different criteria, including total cases per million. Saves a lot of time trying to figure out where things are. Thereâs also an entry for the entire planet, which is very useful, as is updating the day at GMT +0. As expected, many small places (at the top are Vatican City, San Marino, Andorra, Luxembourg) have a higher per capita case figure.
Selected countries again:
Spain 2,549
Switzerland 2,276
Italy 1,982
France 1,259
Germany 1,088
USA 838
Sweden 607
UK 562
Australia 218
South Korea 198
New Zealand 197
Singapore 190 The world 143
Hong Kong 113
Saudi Arabia 59
Mainland China 57
Japan 23
Taiwan 15
India 2
You can also examine the graphs by both linear and logarithmic scales. I hadnât seen the latter for a while in the media.
I don’t plan on blogging too many more of these updates. The Worldometers site has a pretty good table that doesn’t need me to extract the figures out. I think most of us are doing what we need to do to stay safe and there comes a point where the numbers cease to have as much meaning. Real lives are being lost and people aren’t numbers.
I have one colleague who has recovered from COVID-19, thankfully, and I am grateful that, unlike my first cousin once removed in New Haven, Conn., I do not know people who have been taken by this virus.
Above: Dementia Wellington’s support has been invaluable.
Today my father turned 83.
Itâs a tough life that began during the SinoâJapanese War, with his father being away in the army, and his mother and grandmother were left to raise the family on their land in Taishan, China.
In 1949, the Communists seized the property and the family had to start again, as refugees, in Hong Kong.
Ever the entrepreneur, during the Vietnam War, Dad and his business partner, an US Army doctor by the name of Capt Dr Lawson McClung, set up a mail-order business for deployed troops. As I recall it, Lawson said that he would be able to secure jobs for my parentsâmy late mother was a nurseâat his stepfatherâs hospitals in Tennessee. We either had a US green card, or one was merely procedural.
My mother realized we had family in Aotearoa and I remember going with her to Connaught Tower, to the New Zealand High Commission. I didnât know what it was for, but filling in the gaps it must have been to secure forms for immigration. As Plan Bs go, it was a pretty good one.
In 1976 came another move as we headed to New Zealand, originally on holiday, given that my grandfather had taken ill whilst here. As we flew in to Wellington, Dad pointed at the houses below. âThose are the sorts of houses New Zealanders live in.â I thought it was fascinating, that they didnât live in apartment blocks.
That first night here, on September 16, 1976, it was Dad who tucked me in, which at this point wasnât typical: it was usually my grandmother who did this. He asked if I wanted to see the two Corgi toy cars that my grandmother had bought me prior to the trip, which I could have if I behaved myself on the flights. I did. He took them out of the luggage and I had a brief look at them. This was an unfamiliar place but it was just a holiday and things would be back to normal soon.
It was during this holiday that word came that our immigration application had come through. My parents regarded our presence here as serendipitous. They neglected to tell their four-year-old son that plans had changed.
For the first 18 years of my life, I regarded âthe familyâ as being my parents and my widowed maternal grandmother, who lived with us ever since I could rememberâand I remember an awfully long time. We even had a photo taken around 1975â6 of the four of us, that I just remember represented everyone dearest to me.
As âthe familyâ lost one member to a stroke brought on by Parkinsonâs disease and complications from diabetes, and another to cancer, by 1994 it was just Dad and me.
At the beginning of the 2010s, Dad had a bout of shingles. By 2014 he was forgetting individual words, and I insisted he get checked out for dementia. Around the time of his 80th birthday, in 2015, the diagnosis from the psychogeriatrician was formal, although he could still speak with some stuttering and one or two words unreachable by his brain. The CT scans showed a deterioration of the left side of his brain, his speech centre. Within half a year there would only be one or two words per sentence that were intelligible.
The forms for an enduring power of attorney were drawn up as 2016 commenced. He was still managing, and he had his routines, but in mid-2018 we decided he should get some respite care.
He wasnât happy about this, and it took four hours of persuading, as well as a useful and staunch aunt, who got Dad to put on his shoes and head up with us to Ultimate Care Maupuia.
We had thought the second visit in late July would be easier but it took 19 hours over two days, an experience which we do not want to repeat.
Dad had lost the ability to empathize with us and was anxious and agitiated. While he insisted he could look after himself while home alone, there were signs over the last year that indicated he could not. He fell while having the âflu in mid-2017 and Amanda and I came to a house with all its lights off. We had no idea how long he had been down. By 2018 he would cry if left home alone. Even at his most insistent that he could look after himself, we returned after the first day of trying to coax him to Maupuia to find that he had not eaten.
The second day was when I called everyone I could think of to find a way to get to respite, since we werenât going to be around to look after him.
You name it, I called it, Age Concern aside. Dementia Wellington, the police, the rest home, Wellington Free Ambulance, Driving Miss Daisy, Care Coordination, Te Haika, and so on. I spoke to 11 people that day.
Te Haika said that the issue wasnât mental, but legal, which was about as useful as telling an American Democrat that Donald Trump was the Messiah.
Driving Miss Daisy said that I wasnât in their area but a colleague was, not that I ever heard back from that colleague.
Dementia Wellington, the police, and Free Ambulance were brilliant, as was my lawyer, Richard Brandon of Brandons. Our GPs at Kilbirnie Medical Centre were also excellent.
The up shot was that Free Ambulance could take Dad if the enduring power of attorney was enacted, and that would take a declaration of mental incapacity by the GP, which was duly written. He was also good enough to prescribe some medication to calm Dad down.
However, because it wasnât an emergency situation, there was no telling when Free Ambulance could come by.
It did make me glad that they were one of the charities I gave to this year.
However, you donât ever imagine a situation where you effectively drug your Dad to be able to put his jacket on and take him to a rest home for respite care. I felt like part of the Mission: Impossible team, except the person being drugged wasnât a Ruritanian dictator, but someone on the same side. When I say Mission: Impossible, I donât mean that series of films with Tom Cruise, either.
On September 16, 1976, you didnât think that in 42 yearsâ time your Dad would have dementia and youâd need to break a promise you made years ago that you would never put him in a home.
You also feel that that photo of âthe familyâ has been decimated, that youâre all alone because the last adult in there isnât around any more for you to bounce ideas off and to have a decent conversation with.
I realize I hadnât been able to do any of that with Dad for years but it feels that much more painful knowing he canât live in a place he calls home presently.
And you also realize that as a virtually full-time caregiver who has cooked for him for yearsâand now you know why I didnât reenter politics in 2016âthat his condition really just crept up on you to a point where what you thought was normal was, in fact, not normal at all.
You also realize that the only other time he was compelled to leave his home without his full volition was 1949, by a régime he had very little time for through most of his lifetime. You donât expect to be the next person to have to do that to him, and thereâs a tremendous amount of guilt that comes with that.
Earlier this week, our GP reissued his letter in âForm 5â (prescribed under the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988), which I drafted, since these procedures arenât altogether clear. It makes you wonder how people without law degrees might cope. Tomorrow I will meet with Care Coordination and see if Dad can be reassessed based on his current condition. He was only very recently assessed as not needing long-term care so it will be interesting to see if they accept that he has deteriorated to this extent. Iâm not a Mystic Meg who can make a prediction on this.
The rapidity of Dadâs changeâone which he himself noticed, as years ago he would complain that his âbrain felt different today compared to yesterdayââhas been a surprise to us, although mostly he is happy at Maupuia and interacts positively with the staff. Itâs not all smooth sailing and there are days he wonders when he can come home.
And I find some solace in that his father, and his mother-in-law, wound up in care for less. My grandfather had PTSD from the war and was unable to cook for himself, though even at the end he was bilingual (being educated in the US) and had successfully quit smoking after 70 years. My grandmother needed care because of her insulin injections but was also mentally fit.
But part of me expected that Iâd see it through with Dad to the end, that these rest homes were some western thing that separated families, and here is part of that immigrant experience.
The reason you didnât see as many Chinese New Zealanders on welfare wasnât down to some massive savingsâ account, but a certain pride and stoïcism in being to keep it to yourself. Youâre in a strange land where thereâs prejudice, and thatâs often enough for families to say, âF*** everyone else, weâre getting on with it and doing it ourselves.â
And thatâs what we did as âthe familyâ. We fought our own battles. Dad was once a helluva correspondent whose letters used words like proffer and the trinity of ult., prox. and inst., and plenty of officials got the sharp end of his writing. When Mum got cancer we brought in our own natural medication because westerners couldnât fathom that the same stuff cleared my grandfatherâs liver cancer in 1976 and healed several other members in the whānau. Dad sacrificed everything to try to save Mum and that was the closest example I had of what youâd do for someone you love.
When youâre deep in the situation, rationality goes out the window and youâre on autopilotâand often it takes serious situations, like two daysâ angst and stress of trying to get someone into respite care, to make you think that staying at home isnât the best for someone who did, even though he wonât admit it, thrive under rest home care.
We know that if we left it even later, it would be even tougher to get Dad into care and he would resist his new surroundings more.
Todayâs lunch at Maupuia was curried beef on rice in recognition of Indian Independence Day, a much nicer meal than what I might have made for Dad.
He has staff to hug and laugh with even if I have no idea where heâs putting his dirty undies.
And while aphasia means he hasnât made any new friends yet, I have faith that heâll do well given the circumstances.
Itâs those circumstances that mean the situation we find ourselves in, with Dad at the home, is one which weâll roll with, because, like 1949 and 1976, forces outside our control are at play.
Iâd love to make his Alzheimerâs go away given that I already lost one parent prematurely.
My mind goes to a close friend who recently lost her mother, and her father was killed in a car crash around the time my Mum died. Basically: not all of us are lucky enough to have both our parents peacefully go in their sleep. Many of us are put through a trial. And thereâs a real reason some of us have been hashtagging #FuckAlzheimers on Twitter, if out of sheer frustration.
For those who have made it this far, here are the points I want you to take away.
⢠Immediately upon finding out your parent has dementia, get your enduring power of attorney sorted out, for both property and personal care.
⢠Dementia Wellington is an excellent organization so get yourself along to the carer support groups, second Monday of every month. Dementia New Zealand canât help at this level.
⢠Care Coordination has been very helpful and their referral to Dementia Wellington proved more effective than phoningâhowever, I should note that the organization changed for the better between Dadâs original diagnosis in 2015 and how they are today.
⢠You do need âForm 5â from your GP or someone in a position to assess your parentâs mental capacity to kick off the enduring power of attorney.
⢠Itâs OK to cry, feel emotionally drained and ask your friends for support. Itâs your parent. You expected to look after them and sometimes you need to let others do this for everyoneâs good. It doesnât mean you love your parent any less. It also doesnât mean you are placing yourself or your partner above him. It just means you are finding the best solution all round.
Dad is still “there”, and he recognizes us, even if he doesnât really know what day it is, canât really cook for himself, and doesnât fully understand consequences any more. Iâm glad I spend parts of every day with him while Iâm in Wellington. And while this wasnât the 83rd birthday I foresaw at the beginning of the year, he is in a safe, caring environment. I hope the best decision is made for him and for all of us.
My late mother was a nurse. Before she was a midwife at Wellington Women’s Hospital, she was a staff nurse in wards 21 and 26 at Wellington Hospital.
From what I remember, ward 21 was first, which meant she was working there some time between 1976 and 1978. This is a letter that she received from a Sheila Mahony. When I first blogged, I assumed it was from a patient, but a quick search suggests that there was a Sheila Mahony who was a supervisor there. I don’t know the story behind this, but between the lines you can work out that the kindness expressed here is typical of nurses. The letter is dated December 23, so this was likely in response to a gesture Mum made in the spirit of Christmas.
Some time during May, Autocade exceeded 13 million page views. I canât tell you the exact day, since it wasnât a milestone that weâre socialized into noticing: I just happened across it one evening last week. Itâs currently on 3,665 model entries, the latest being the Porsche 944. Admittedly, we haven’t added the premium brands as quickly as some mainstream ones.
Since Iâve kept a log of this since the siteâs inception (for reasons unknown to me now!), hereâs how the traffic has progressed:
March 2008: launch
April 2011: 1,000,000 (three years for first million)
March 2012: 2,000,000 (11 months for second million)
May 2013: 3,000,000 (14 months for third million)
January 2014: 4,000,000 (eight months for fourth million)
September 2014: 5,000,000 (eight months for fifth million)
May 2015: 6,000,000 (eight months for sixth million)
October 2015: 7,000,000 (five months for seventh million)
March 2016: 8,000,000 (five months for eighth million)
August 2016: 9,000,000 (five months for ninth million)
February 2017: 10,000,000 (six months for tenth million)
June 2017: 11,000,000 (four months for eleventh million)
January 2018: 12,000,000 (seven months for twelfth million)
May 2018: 13,000,000 (four months for thirteenth million)
In other words, it has had more visitors in the last four months than in the same period prior to that. If the June 2017âJanuary 2018 period was anomalous, then we could say that Autocade is getting progressively more traffic.
Incidentally, Nissan, in both Australia and New Zealand, stopped selling passenger cars (apart from the 370Z and GT-R) last year, but it was only recently I came across their explanation. I had thought it was supply and demand, that people were heading into trucks, crossovers and SUVs more, but the official explanation is that Nissan knew about new Euro 5b emissionsâ regulations and couldnât be arsed to meet them.
There are some supply and demand issues here: Nissan claims they were small volume, and the Pulsar âwas mostly sold directly as a rental.â
Still, to turn away even the rental market and hand it over to someone else doesnât make sense, especially as a well understood rule in marketing is that it costs a lot more to get a new client than it does to retain an existing one.
Thereâs no way Nissan didnât know of this impending change, and itâs a shame it has exited a sector which it once sold very well in (remember the Sunny, or Datsun 120Y, of the 1970s?). With Renault New Zealand even more patchy in passenger-car sales, Renault Nissan Mitsubishi could find itself with a very small footprint here with passenger cars, especially as petrol prices hit their highest level yet. I’ve seen one sign where 95 octane is going for above NZ$2¡40 per litre, and I paid a few cents shy of that last week.
There are Qashqais and X-trails everywhere here, and maybe the group is perfectly happy with the economies it gets with those modelsâ Renault MĂŠgane IV platform. And we’re not exactly a massive market.
It just seems a bit short-sighted to me.
On February 14, 2008, my cousin Paul’s son Harold was shot and injured at a school shooting at Northern Illinois University. From memory, it was the fifth that week. Today, he wrote a letter to survivors and students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who endured their day of horror on February 14, 2018, the 18th school shooting this year.
He has given me permission to share the below. My apologies for the size of the files: they are the ones I have access to.
Transcribed, it reads:
To fellow students and survivors,
I wish this letter was written under better circumstances. I wish this letter was written as purely formal, as rainbows and unicorns show up in the sky. But alas, the sad truth is I am writing this as now we are part of a family, that should never have been.
Before explaining and encouraging further, let me explain who I am first.
My name is Harold Ng, on 02/14/2008, I was at Northern Illinois University, in Cole Hall, when a mass shooting occured at 3pm. I was sitting in the back row, when shots were fired. On my way out of Cole Hall, was when I was hit by scrapnel and pellets. I survived and have been coping with the tragedy since. Your incident happened approximately one hour before ours, on our 10th year anniversary. And as I once like you; together we have to comprehend the horror. I am know reaching out to you to teach you from one survivor to another to learn together and teach you all what I have acquired over the years of how to cope with this tragedy.
And together we can become stronger.
Side note; Florida my 2nd home, I left IL and stayed with you for six years before; moving back my heart mourned when the Pulse nightclub shooting and now it mourns for you as well.
I know how hard this can be, but keep your head up; each day we live another day, and know that we can make a difference. Each dawning moment, each breath, live it like it’s your last.
I know that sounds bad, but the truth it should be taken as the strongest form of encouragement ever. Think of it as a chance to step out of the comfort zone and be who you really want to be, forget what the world and your parents want, but do what you want. By being yourself, you grow stronger and create a legacy, because they (the victims) weren’t able to.
Over time I have learned a lot of things and I would like to share them, so that we can overcome this chaos together.
1) Bond together as one, even though I am a whole generation ahead of you, together we will fight the fight.
2) Never forget who you are; and as survivors we shall not let a tragedy define who we are; define the school; or define the location.
3) LIVE. INSPIRE, and create a legacy.
The thing that worked for me was being around the people you love; I also took time to blog, and journal about how why? when? what? this will help cycle through all emotions and feelings and each specific moment; from journaling and blogging I have been able to write a book about my experience. I also started making YouTube videos which has some comedic stuff, but also some serious Vlogs as well. Do things you may never have done or thought about doing. Find a hobby; hobbies are always good when coping with tragedy.
One last thing to note: Please give yourself adequate time to heal; it varies from person to person, and for some it could be a long time, but do not rush it by all means.
If you wish to talk further I extend my resources to you. The best way to reach me would be through Facebook and twitter. I will provide you with all my links below.
Above: Simon Anholt, giving a talk at TEDSalon Berlin.
Out today: my friend Simon Anholtâs Good Country Index, with the Netherlands taking the top spot from Sweden, which drops to sixth. New Zealand is in 17th, failing in prosperity and equality, and in cultural contribution (previously we had been 5th and 12th). On the plus side, we are doing reasonably well in health and well-being, and in science and technology. Itâs a challenge for us as we arenât keeping up with certain aspects of the game by international standards. Have a readâit’s all properly referenced and sourced.
As one of HM the Queen’s loyal and humble servants, I wish her a happy 90th birthday and include this YouTube video of one of her most memorable moments of recent times. A bit of the ‘Dambusters March’ can’t go wrong, either. It shows the Queen to have a particularly good sense of humour.
Holly Jahangiri kindly nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award. I doubt I’d win, as I don’t follow the rules. I’m not even entirely sure what I’d win. But the questions seem a fun thing to do, especially now that I’ve decided to minimize my time on Facebook in favour of the blogosphere again (roll on 2006, but without the arseholes!). These are:
Thank the person who nominated you.
Answer the 11 questions youâve been asked.
Nominate 11 other bloggers, making sure to let each one know that they are nominated.
Ask the nominees 11 questions.
Thank you, Holly, I’ll do the first two. I don’t believe in asking others to do these Q&As, but if you’re reading this and would like to join in, please feel free to.
In the spirit of blogging goodwill, and helping out someone who has bravely given up Facebook (and its subsidiaries) for Lent, the 11 questions, and my answers, follow.
What is your favourite drink?
I’ve become more teetotal as I get older. I’d have to say a mango nectar.
Where is your hometown?
I hail from Kowloon, Hong Kong, but Wellington, New Zealand is my home.
Do you prefer sweet, sour, bitter or savoury flavours?
We can discount savoury from the get-go and this might apply to a lot of people of Chinese descent. I don’t mind something slightly bitter.
What is your favourite song?
Depends on the mood I am trying to get in to. There’s not a single one. That’s like asking someone what their favourite typeface is.
Where do you find inspiration for your blog posts?
Anywhere. Just whatever takes my fancy at any given point.
Are you a minimalist or a collector?
A collector.
What colour is your suitcase?
Boring: it’s black.
Which trees do you like the best?
PĹhutukawa (metrosideros excelsa) always bring a smile to my face.
Do you have a day job as well as blogging?
Yes. Surely there can’t be many full-time bloggers left? I’d expect they’ve all become “social media experts” by now.
What is your favourite smell or scent?
This is like that song question, isn’t it? I can’t limit myself to one.
Do you prefer to eat meat or vegetables?
I prefer fruit to both.
I don’t know if that’s revealed anything. A Voigt-Kampff test might have been more insightful.