A picture from the past with echoes present

On Saturday night Miang and I joined friends Linda and Stephen on their converted catamaran home moored at the Seaview Marina. The boat was previously a ferry carrying people to the "hole in the rock" at the Bay of Islands. Sadly we didn't take pictures then, probably being too distracted by the exciting Easter Egg hunt organised by Stephen's daughter Goldie.

By strange coincidence, a photograph from another boat-living friend emerged this week. This picture shows the then home of Joe Trodahl, third from the left, near the entrance hatch of his yacht moored in Chaffers Marina. Next to Joe is Margaret Brown, then Miang and me. On Joe's right is Sophia, daughter of Pablo Etchegoin, who stands precariously against the railing. Julian, Pablo's son, is sitting to my left at the back. Joe tells me the picture was taken (and clearly by his wife Margaret) on December 2 2006.

I sometimes look at such photos of myself in those days of blissful ignorance before my medical adventures, and with the wisdom of hindsight I think, "Silly fellow. You may look and feel well but don't you know what's growing inside you? Don't you realise that you need to book in for a colonoscopy?" I wonder if Pablo has similar feelings?

Kazuo Ishiguro wrote of "The artist of the floating world". Joe's 2006 life was that of "The scientist of the floating world". This is how life really can be in Wellington: rent free, no rates, and seagulls to keep you company. Personally, I prefer the landlubber's life.

The Crazy Optimist

I am living a strange life since the New Zealander of the Year Award. A deluge of speaking invitations from extraordinarily diverse groups and organisations has turned me into a sort of public entertainer.

I am not wasting this opportunity to get a message across with multiple captive audiences. Here are some examples: the Parliamentary Speakers Forum, the Salvation Army, secondary school careers advisors, the New Zealand Medical Students Association, World Class New Zealanders, the Labour Party Conference, Federated Farmers Conference, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Social Development. The Parliamentary Greens invited me, then uninvited me when I promised "tough love". What I am delivering is a 20 minute "stump speech" which I vary a bit according to the audience. Thanks to Wendy McGuinness of the "Sustainable Future Institute", the talk got filmed last week and with some IT magic, the powerpoint slides were incorporated to give the YouTube presentation below.

Given our present economic gloom, the talk title represents a degree of optimism bordering on lunacy, namely

"Sustainable economic growth for New Zealand: An optimistic myth-busting approach".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhCAyIllnXY

I should be so lucky

It's a grainy old picture, taken with my iphone, without a flash. But is a delight to me, and to my ego, being flanked by two lovely women.

Miang is "in the pink", and on my left is Lourdes, our Mexican friend of longstanding, at the end of her 7th trip to New Zealand, visiting her son Dafnis, a graphics designer at Magritek.

I first met Lourdes at a rheology conference in Mexico in 1991. We became collaborators and she visited my lab in Palmerston North several times, on the last occasion bringing Dafnis. He liked it so much here he decided to migrate to New Zealand.

Miang has visited Mexico several times, and on her last trip there, in 2010, was wonderfully cared for by Lourdes. Viva Mexico!

This wasn't supposed to be

Nearly a year ago, in early May 2010, Miang and I walked part of the skyline track on the Northern Walkway near Mount Kau Kau. I had just begun chemotherapy, and my oncologists had given me limited survival prospects. It seemed unlikely that I would last much beyond the end of the year, and Christmas 2010 seemed a remote and indistinct place, at best inhabited by a very sick Paul, with some visiting family in attendance.

Today we climbed up KauKau, and again walked the Skyline in perfect weather, this time completing a 3 hour circuit via Crofton Downs. I felt monstrously well, and couldn't help but reflect on all that had passed over the 12 months since last I was up there. What a year it has been, and how much I am aware of the pivotal transitions represented by the triple chemo course I took from April to August, which significantly reduced my tumour burden, and then the extraordinary surgery in Sydney, which, whatever the longer term outcome, has undoubtedly given me a new lease of life, beyond the expectations of early 2010.

I had spent the morning with medical students, opening their conference and participating in a panel discussion on healthcare. The afternoon in the sunshine high up above the city, with views to the South Island, was bliss. Now I have no anxiety about the end of this year.

That is not to say that I believe I will survive 2011. Indeed I have neither knowledge of, nor care about, my lifespan. This last year's experience has brought me to a state of mind where I enjoy each day, dismiss, and if necessary, walk away from, that which detracts from well-lived moments, and I know that my life's duration, as for all of humanity, is as uncertain as it is irrelevant.