I have finally negotiated my exit plan from UoW. I will continue full time without teaching until 24 June, then fully retire. Clean exit. I will keep an honorary position. The honorary will give me library, zoom, etc. This will see three of my students through while I am there, allow me to complete grant proposals, set up my two honours students who will then write up with the help of Michael and Lee. Vance and Chris will have 18 months to go, but I expect to support them through the battery spinout. The battery spinout with spin, or not, circa July. If either of my Marsdens gets up, they will have to rehire me! In the mean time I get to spend winter in Sydney, perhaps becoming involved with Saluda, who now have full FDA approval and another $125M of VC.

I read Lee Server's biography of Ava Gardner. He is a superb biographer, interesting, accurate, detailed, complete, perceptive, adding no opinions or bias. Ava was a superb woman, earthy, passionate, brooking no bullshit, and giving full-scale deflection on every measure of sexy: truly 'the most beautiful animal of the 20th century'. I have watched a lot of her old films lately, though all agree that neither still nor movie captured what you felt in the flesh. She `looked like a goddess, walked like a cat', and radiated physical presence.

In a number of previous essays I have documented the unravelling of Waikato. Two days before the Christmas shutdown, the VC sent an email to all non-union staff, offering them a $500 bonus if they would forego pay rises next year. Does not take a pocket calculator to see that this is very bad value. Later communication suggested that if staff did not specifically opt out, they would default to accepting the offer by 21 January. In comparison, Auckland U gave every member of staff a no-strings $2k thank you bonus for the effort to get through lockdowns. Waikato's VC quickly backed out of his position saying he did not intend it that way, which nobody believes. Meanwhile we have discovered more and more staff who work from home because their company computers are nearly useless; we hear that over a third of staff in IT left last year. Technicians in Science seem to be finding jobs elsewhere. The dean of engineering "will not renew his contract", and there are stories of dancing in the corridors at this news (in his defence he was powerless and seemed happy to be out, but many felt unsupported). We are told that the PVCs have given up asking the VC for things. We have said every year it could not get worse, and yet it does. Enough.

The Shawshank Redemption remains the #1 movie of all time on IMDb. The acting is good, but not spectacular. The film was nominated but won no academy awards. What I believe it has, that ranks it, is simply this magnificent, ingenious, successful redemption. Ava's life started out scorchingly magnificent through luck and natural gifts, but then declined over the years until she barely did B movies, and her body wore out. She spent most of her life in a slow decline. The Shawshank guys spent most of their lives way down on account of evil and misfortune, but they were working diligently and planning to earn their redemption. My life seems to have consisted of me on the up-and-up, but the places I have worked falling into decline. For me, it has been redemption by jumping ship.