About 26 hours ago, David and I had phoned our wonderful daughter to sing happy birthday to her - it is a tradition, and while David has quite a good singing voice and I can sort of carry a tune, we deliberately sing the birthday song off key and raucously. I think it's for effect and to make sure the kids don't think we are being mawkish and sentimental - heaven forfend!
As it was, this time because Kirsty has exhorted David to be concise in explaining stuff, he sang alone at double speed, and then I sang. Her response 'You two are dorks!' So obviously we did good!
Then 22 hours ago, we heard the good news that the number of COVID cases in the community for the previous day was 28, and all of them were of people who were close contacts of current cases, so all of them were already in isolation. The number of cases has dropped for the last 4 days out of five, so we were well pleased.
There was the case of a young man who was extremely distressed at having tested positive a day or so before and in his distress he absconded at about 1am from the MIQ hotel he and his family were in (he was sharing a room with his teenaged brother). When his mother called her sons' room in the morning, the teenager woke and realised his brother wasn't there. The mother immediately got in touch with the security staff and military who run the facility. The police were notified and the young man was found at his home. The good news was that he had walked home, had not had any contact with anyone on the way, had not visited anywhere, and had gone to bed when he got home.
So no risk to the community, but he has been charged, appeared in court through video link (a humane aspect - the video link was provided by the policeman who was keeping an eye on him in custody). There is distress for his family and a fairly substantial amount of scaremongering by the media with incomplete facts, guesses and speculation before the Deputy PM gave the complete picture at the 1pm briefing. And of course, the media had turned up at his home, so now, even if the name suppression is in place, anyone with Google Street View and a basic knowledge of the area can track the house down and be pricks to the family when they are allowed out of MIQ. And given he is not white, the racist abuse has already started.
And of course, a media beat up of the so called failures of the MIQ staff and processes. And as you know, the media are absolute experts at everything and they, alongsode the Opposition, could have done a MUCH better job and would never allow any slip ups. Of course they wouldn't!
And also a beat up of failures at the airport because 4 students had at various times broken Alert Level 4 rules and flown either out of Auckland to their home cities or back from their home cities to Auckland. Not one word of criticism of the students from the media even though one of the young women said she hadn't been aware of the rules (FFS!!!), not one word of criticism of their parents for allowing them to travel or not telling them of the rules or not stopping them or not reporting them (as the Samoan mother had done about her son's transgression). But criticism of the airport's security systems, of the government for not closing those gaps. Can anyone guess the difference between the young Samoan man and the students?
And then at 2pm, my new e-bike was delivered - it is lovely.
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You will notice it is RED. It currently doesn't have mudguards but Jeff Burnsie (Burnsie's Bikes Waikanae) will order them as soon as we are in Alert Level 2. We have ordered one the same but slightly larger (a Medium instead of a Small) for David from a dealer in the Hawke's Bay as Jeff had no more stock. We will go to collect it when we are back in Alert Level 2 and can cross regional boundaries.
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I did a few little rides without the e facility to get my balance back and to start getting familiar with it. I am still a bit chary of biking since my fall in Amsterdam back in 2007. Did you know that when crossing tram tracks on your bike in the rain, you need to approach them at right angles? Neither did I. If you don't, the back wheel slides into the tram track and off you go, face planting on the roadway. Not good. Painful. Messy. Black eye, Facial nerve damage which thankfully (and very unusually) healed, but only because I had a lot of massage and drainage work done on my head and face. So a fair amount of wariness about biking is still in my brain.
(Sunday morning: I have edited this section, based on information that has been released since I first wrote - I do not want to be promulgating misinformation. Edits are in italics.) And then at 5pm I noticed on my phone that there was a press conference with the PM and the Police Commissioner. It turns out there had been a lone wolf terrorist attack in an Auckland supermarket that afternoon. Because the man was unable to be imprisoned and was known (from 2016) to be a threat, and his refugee status was unable to be revoked and he was unable to be deported back to Sri Lanka (although that was under appeal and was due to be resolved about now) since his release from prison on remand 53 days prior to the attack, he had been under 24/7 close surveillance. So when he started attacking people in the supermarket with a knife he took from a shelf there, the police were already following him. They confronted him, warned him and then shot him dead. He was killed within 120 - 150 seconds of starting his rampage - the first victim must have been on his/her own and did not make any noise. So the police think that there was a 60 - 90 second period before they knew he was stabbing people. He critically injured three people, two have moderate injuries, I believe, and the other two were injured but not severely. At this point, none of the injured have died. Let's hope it stays that way and that they all make a full recovery. Apart from those critically injured, all of the others have been released from hospital and are recovering at their homes.
And of course, the racist vitriol will be all over social media. The man was ISIS inspired. But we can bet our boots that a segment of our society will blame all muslims.
I had a sleepless night - thinking about the people in the supermarket - staff and customers - and their terror, fear, fright and the acts of heroism. I thought too about the Special Tactics Group personnel who were on surveillance duty, and who had to follow him until he did something that he could be arrested for. They will be feeling that if only they had been closer they could have prevented injuries to others. But the man was surveillance savvy, so they had a distance they had to keep. They will also be feeling pleased that they did their jobs and prevented anyone else from being killed or injured. So a mixed bag for them. I thought too that our wonderful Prime Minister was probably also lying awake - at the press conference she was clearly really angry that the courts' interpretation of the law (and the law's shortcomings) had prevented this man from being in prison. She said yesterday that she had also looked with the legal people at whether he could be sectioned but apparently that remedy was not legally available either. And of course, since then, even though the legislation to fix this loophole/failing is just out of Select Committee, she is already being blamed by the media for not having done the work faster. And barely a mention that the current Leader of the Opposition was Justice Minister when the requirement for change was first mooted and she removed it from Crown Law's work programme. Although, to be fair, Kim Hill, a Saturday morning radio host did interview said LoO this morning, but her response was that it was a decision of Cabinet at the time and that it wasn't fair to be asked about things that had occurred 8 years ago...
And here's headline on Stuff right now: A terror attack that occurred while the Government was watching. And what is the implication in that?
And now it's not even noon, and my eyes are heavy as is my heart, I am unutterably angry, and I need to rest.
To try to get myself out of feeling so crappy, I have been out for a short bike ride - 20 minutes only. And most of it without the e function engaged to increase my leg strength. And when I had to stop at an intersection, I discovered my legs were struggling to work!
And what was worse was that the step counter on my phone doesn't work when it's in the back pocket of my jeans while I am biking - I need bike shorts so I can keep the phone in a leg pocket! What is the point of exercising if the effort is not being recorded!? I also need padded bike shorts to assist with the sore bum problem!
I am going to have a cup of tea, a couple of magnesium and some B vitamins and take myself back to bed for a bit. I need to retreat from the world for a while.
