An email from an old man - 06/12/04

Welcome to Paul and Rachel, who are working in a winter wonderland somewhere in the US, I think Paul is in Tahoe and Rachel is in Mammoth.

LOCAL NEWS

Two female cousins died when a tree was uprooted and landed on their car. Yet again the copywriters called this a "freak accident". This disappoints me. It might have been a low probability event, but it is safe to assume that when trees blow over near a highway that someone might get hurt if they are in the right place at the wrong time. A freak accident would be if the car swerved to avoid the tree, hit a power pole, which brought down half a dozen power poles, then an exposed cable lands on a pensioner's mobility scooter which then shoots off at speed and as he gets it under control is knocked off a bridge over a gorge by 4,000 litre water tank that had been blown off it's trailer at the top of the steepest hill in Dunedin.

A pod of pilot whales beached near Pauanui on the Coromandel, very soon after another pod beached in Tasmania. Seems awfully coincidental. One of them had dolphins as well, which is quite unusual.

A plane landed on an unplanned basis on Mt Taranaki. The weather had closed in which hampered searching. They eventually found them 20m from the summit, what a bugger. I guess they call that a "nearly miss" in piloting circles.

Bizarrely, the same day, a ute went through a wall and over a cliff in the Kaimais, dropped 250m, and the driver was nowhere to be seen. Again, weather hampered searching for him/her. We went past the scene on the way to Tauranga on Saturday, they still hadn't found anyone by then. As we had a look, we realised it would have been nearly impossible to drive through at the angle he did, accidentally (you would have to turn off to the rest area, corner, then swing around into the wall). The newspaper suggested the same thing subsequently. Driver not yet found.

A teacher accused of sexual assault of students was cleared on all counts. He's a bit grumpy.

Three young women who were jailled for something they were subsequently cleared of, were offered about $140,000 each in compensation. They want more. They were in jail for about eight months, and were 14 or so at the time so still studied. Not sure where I stand on this one, as it sounds like they weren't exactly squeaky clean and they may have got off on something of a technicality.

For some reason, the sacking of Team New Zealand's Tom Schnackenberg was considered major news on TVNZ, but nowhere else.

WORLD NEWS

Nasty little reverse-rambo event in US where a laotian immigrant hunted deer hunters and took out six of the eight of them. Seems to have been sparked by redneck remarks from the hunters, but the survivors outnumber him two to one.

Bob Geldof has committed another crime against humanity by redoing Band-Aid. I can't believe this is possible but the new version is actually worse than the original, and I don't recognise hardly anyone in the video. The only hope we have is that nobody plays this song on the radio.

REAL SPORT

Rory's team played two friendly games on Monday, and again on Thursday. They beat the Waitak B team then lost to the Waitak A team on Monday, on Thursday they lost to the Waitak A team and the Waitak Girls A team (narrowly). They became the Waitak B team for the tournament and the Waitak B team became the C team.

At the tournament, they scraped past the Waikato team 4-3, then beat the Marist team comfortably. The qualified top in their group. They played Waitak B/C in the semi-final and it was very confusing for everyone. The semi was very close and was 2-2 at full time, so they played a fifth quarter and finally won 4-2. They didn't play very well in that game, they expected they would win after beating that team twice before. The final was against Northsport, a team that beat Waikato 22-0, and were very good. It was never going to be close, down 0-3 in the first quarter, held at 0-4 at half-time, but the floodgates opened in the third and the final score was 1-12 (at least we got one off them). Four games in five hours, including a long semi-final, and the guys were stuffed. Rory's extra swimming paid dividends, he was still slogging hard in the last game. He slept in the car on the way home, and was a bit sunburnt (the venue was an outdoor pool). Coming second in the tournament wasn't too bad, they got silver medals.

SPORT

I didn’t want to mention cricket, but then the Black Caps pulled off a win against Australia in the first ODI, by the skin of their teeth.This gave them some much needed self-respect. When the slow guys did the sprint at the end of the test they did it in dodgy lycra outfits and it wasn't pretty.

Chelsea thumped Newcastle 4-0, Arsenal beat Birmingham 3-0, Everton had another win 3-2 over Bolton, Liverpool only managed a draw with Villa. Man Utd won 3-0 over Southampton.

The ABs beat the Barbarians but so what.

MY SAD LIFE

I took the Pajero out on Monday night to test Diana's theory about whether Meola Road's highest point is the Pt Chevalier end or the Westmere end. It didn't prove much. Paul (G), can you bring your GPS with you when you visit next and I can test it with that? It's a long story, and involves street direction nomenclature. At least it gives me something to think about. The kids and I did notice on Saturday that the street numbers start at the Westmere end, but that has nothing to do with elevation.

There was a lot of noise in the house at 2am Tuesday morning. Pandora had caught a mouse. Not sure if it was caught inside or out, hoping it was out. Ollie has a new collar and the bell is very noisy, he played with it at 4am. I didn't wake up, Diana did.

Went to a press do this week as a Dphoto person, not a PC World person. That was weird. A new guy from PC World sat opposite me, which was also weird.

I survived my birthday, and seem to be coping with fortyism. We went to dinner with Ross & Kath, Gavin, Bambi, Matt, Allan & Jacqui, and Peter & Michelle. I depressed them by pointing out that I have known more than half of them for more than half of my life. I also got a few emails and phone calls from all over the planet, but I have to say that a larger letter box was not required.

We drove to Tauranga on Saturday for a water polo tournament on Sunday. The weather wasn't good, and the venue is outdoor. The place we stayed was nice enough, one of the other players stayed in the same motel, David Hoskins (who was also in Team 2). They fooled around in the pool for a while, and we all played table tennis. In the morning we played more table tennis, then a round of mini-golf and then went off to the tournament.

Better go, have a good week. Only 19 days until Christmas.