I’m pleased to report I’m returning to the workforce, and in IT too! The interview I had a few weeks back must have gone well as they invited me back for a second stage, then confirmed I’m the preferred candidate and finally, after a nervous few days waiting on reference checks, have now received the official offer and paperwork.

I’ll be starting on Tuesday 2nd June, the day after King’s Holiday, back at the same building in Petone I worked at for a number of years – small World! This time I’ll be on the ground rather than top floor so no views other than the car park, but on the other side of it no lift to wait for.

Very relieved to be out of the jobseeking process, it’s pretty brutal and inhuman these days. If the rest of the organization prove to be as nice as the people I’ve met so far I have high hopes this place will be fun and interesting to work for – fingers crossed!

I am writing this laid inside a large inflated plastic coffin being pumped with oxygen-rich air in the hope it will help with my drive to improve energy levels and drive.

It’s an odd sensation not dissimilar to coming in to land on a long haul flight, only not having to place trays in an upright position or try to put my shoes back on in a cramped space.

They give you some sweets to suck on to minimise the discomfort in the ears, otherwise it is just a case of whiling away an hour zipped into a tube in the side room of a pharmacy in Upper Hutt.

I have no idea if I will get out with a renewed sense of purpose and vigour or a slight headache, only time will tell. In the meantime I will suck in another sweet and ponder the universe for a while.

A job I applied for back in March and thought a dead end came back to life this week with the opportunity to interview. That in itself was a big boost to my confidence, given over 100 people had applied for the role through Seek.

I was determined to make the best of it and did a couple of days’ research on the company (which sounds exactly like the type of firm I’d like to work for), the people I’d be interviewed by and refreshing my Azure knowledge so I wouldn’t sound too rusty when tested. I also got my hair cut, polished my shoes, replaced the battery in my lucky watch and dusted down my best suit.

Having had a disastrous Teams interview a couple of months back I was worried I might come across badly or get stuck on one of the tricky STAR questions you get thrown at you. However the three people interviewing me were lovely, welcoming and gentle. They’d studied my CV closely, asked questions about achievements in other roles and I think I came over OK and not too eager.

The second half of the interview was a technical test, but more along the lines of “these symptoms have been detected, what would you do to troubleshoot” to get an idea of my thought processes and preferred testing tools. I waffled a bit but got there.

Came out feeling so much better, even if they didn’t give me the job at least they recognised my worth and experience as opposed to the mounting list of AI email rejections.

The good news is they’ve called me back next week for a second interview! No details on format but I’m hoping it’s a culture fit test to meet some of the team and give them the opportunity to see if I would be too weird / not weird enough to join them. Fingers crossed!

Having something to prepare for gave me a lot more energy too, which was encouraging – the supplements seem to have fixed my energy issues and I can’t wait to get stuck into a full day’s work again!

Ticked off another item on the Kiwi Bucket (Hat) List this week by seeing legendary 80’s band Split Enz live at the TSB Arena in Wellington.

As a bonus I skipped the support act in order to catch up with our South Island-residing friend Holly who happened to be in Welly for work, enjoying a glass of nice pink wine over a natter in the comfy Incontinental Hotel bar.

The seat was back row up in the Gods with a huge girder two seats away, but the mature crowd around me were well behaved (no standing up in front of me, no incessant chatter driving me to distraction) and I had a decent view of the band on stage.

The TSB Arena is better suited to hosting netball matches than major concerts — the drums echoing off the back wall on the quieter tracks — and would have benefitted from turning the volume up a bit, making them sound a bit “safe” and polite. Mind you given the original band members and most of the audience will have their Gold Cards it’s not surprising.

As expected the suits were natty, the songs were classics and the musicianship impeccable. Tim’s vocals weren’t quite there at times but made up for it in showmanship and banter with the crowd. A drunken dancing woman went from speaker surfing to full-on stage invasion and was tolerated kindly for a while, before getting dragged off stage by Security when the novelty wore off.

As with any gig I hung around at the back for the last couple of encore songs (they’d played all my favourites by then) then snapped up the last Pie-Eater sized T-Shirt from the merch stand and legged it back to the car to beat the traffic. 9/10.

Note for my folks: I’m assuming you’ve not heard of them (which is fair enough, not your decade) so here’s a sample!

Another week, another set of automated rejection emails. Even a place I worked at for 3 years and built half their infrastructure didn’t think it was worth interviewing me.

It’s pretty obvious that my IT career is toast now, thanks to the tanked economy, the obsession with rushing into adopting AI and having to be a developer to work in the industry.

Ah well, it was a good gig for 35 years and almost got me to the retirement fnish line.

Now switching focus on whether I can – and want – some other kind of office job, or whether something completely different would appeal.

There is going to be something I can do for the remaining few years of work, just got to decide what I want and convince whoever I need to that I can do the job.

Am I wrong or does this appeal more than an ice cream?

Have just refilled the cotton bud box and it is all higgledy piggledy – am going to show The Duchess and see if she can live with knowing this chaos exists within her house. I will put good money on her spending the next 30 minutes painstakingly repacking this box so they are all neatly stacked…

Couple of examples of how heavy the rains have been this weekend (with more to come). Penny loves the water so she’s just happy to get out!

Last weekend MetService had all kinds of weather warnings in place for a cyclone bearing down on New Zealand. The news was full of reminders to be ready. The outcome? A bit of a downpour and some wind. As they say down here “a bit of a fizzer”.

Now we’ve got a major weather event going on, centered on the middle of the island with Wellington taking the brunt with 77mm of rain in one hour. Very little warning, catching everyone on the hop a bit.

Glad to be up on the hill at the moment, no flooding at The Duchess Manor but down in Hutt Valley and Wellington there has been a State of Emergency raised with lots of roads blocked, “don’t travel” warnings issued and lots of griping at MetService on social media.

One small upside is that we had originally postponed our ferry trip to see friends on the South Island from last weekend (which would have sailed just fine as it happens) to this weekend, but due to them having other people staying I pushed it out further to November. Now the ferry company has cancelled all sailings for the next 24 hours so we wouldn’t have made it back and been stuck on the South Island!

What started out as an April Fools joke has turned into a reality – IKEA are producing a limited edition Chupa Chups lolly that takes like their cafe meatballs! Huh?! Can 2026 get any stranger?