• It was my first year as a fully registered teacher, and I've got a permanent position at the school where I'm teaching.
• As such, it was my first year doing a full professional appraisal (and said appraisal went well).
• All of the kids made progress, and most of them passed National Standards. Some of them did really, really well.
• My living arrangements may have gone a little sour earlier in the year, BUT this led to me moving into a nicer flat in a nicer neighbourhood, a lot closer to work, and fully furnished for a bit of extra cash.
• I was published (twice!).

By gar, it's bin awhile! There's been a crapload afoot here in the darkest Antipodes, and I haven't been online spouting my arbitrary opinions about it. Wassup with that?

Auckland's Karangahape Road (known to locals as "K' Road") is a funny old place. It has a long-time seedy reputation for it's streetwalkers, massage parlours and dirty book shops (it's still home to the country's oldest strip club) but is also known for its second-hand shops, cafes, ethnic restaurants, art galleries and nightlife, as well as a hub for the local LGBT community. If you want to check out some alternative music, get a tattoo, dig up some interesting fashion accessory or chill out and smoke a hookah, K' Road is probably worth a visit. (I go there to buy comics, myself.)

Now, if you frequently walked along the north side of K' Road, just by the Queen Street intersection, chances are you saw Margaret at some point. She'd usually be sitting on one of the wooden benches by the footpath, just outside St Kevin's Arcade. She was a bit rough-looking - wild curly grey hair, wrinkles, bright red lips and a sour expression. She'd usually be smoking a cigarette, bummed off a passer-by. She might ask you for one, or for bus money, and by all accounts you'd get an earful if you turned her down. She never asked me for anything, though I passed her several times. Despite the fact I had no idea who she was, she was a regular feature of my visits to K' Road. She was almost always there when I walked by, and if she wasn't I wondered where she'd got to.

Turns out Margaret (no known last name) was one of Auckland's best-known "street people". At 62, she'd been occupying that bench by St Kevin's for at least twenty-five years. A few people who lived and worked in the area "sort of" knew her, many others knew of her. She was a permanent fixture of an iconic street, one of those people who almost qualifies as a local landmark. Most people assumed she was homeless, but she wasn't. She was just someone with nothing much to do but sit and watch the world go by, and for whatever reason she'd chosen that bench on K' Road as the place to do it.

Last week, while hurriedly browsing the paper on my way to work, I read that Margaret had died. I was surprised how sad I felt about the passing of this scary old woman who I'd never spoken to, but it seems I'm not the only one. The story has been covered in various local papers, many people on K' Road have expressed their sadness that she's not around any more, and she's popped up on a blog or six as well.

I passed by her bench today, wondering if I'd see some sort of tribute. There were no flowers or cards to be seen (if they were there, they've since been cleared away) but there was one message - a piece of graffiti scrawled across the back of the bench that simply read: RIP MARGARET - YOU WERE ALRIGHT. For a place like K' Road, you won't find a much more fitting tribute than that.

Funny old world, really. You don't always have to be "somebody" to leave your mark on a place and be remembered. Sometimes you just have to be there.

This time, I actually have nothing to say. I come only to post these, and then quietly depart...

Every now and then, you come across something online that makes you sit back in your chair, take a breath and go, "Wow." It's not often that thing happens to be a trailer for a video game, much less a video game about zombies, but this is one of those things. It's a teaser trailer for the upcoming Dead Island, which - in the space of a three-minute video - employs pathos, violence, tragedy, gore and some very clever time-fracturing to tell the story of a family caught up in the midst of the zompocalypse. Frankly, it's brilliant stuff.

Let me put it like this: trailers for zombie horror games are not supposed to make you cry. This one might.

(It's also R18 and pretty bloody, so be warned.)