I was trying to do this week's email without sarcasm. I am not sure I managed it. No prizes will be awarded for highlighting any sarcastic elements.
LOCAL NEWS
It was revealed by professional stirrer Winston Peter, that an Iraqi diplomat who served under Saddam Hussein has been living in NZ for a year. His visitor's permit was revoked by the immigration service. Then, on Tuesday, Winston revealed the man's name under privilege in Parliament. Funny thing was, when Winston named him, he wasn't who they thought he was. This meant there were TWO dodgy Iraqis floating around, and possibly more. The Government reacted by closing the office in Bangkok that seemed to be issuing visas to just about anybody, but was under pressure over their inability to prevent this happening and undertook a review of the last two years visas issued.
The number of dodgy Iraqi immigrants increased to about five during the week. Meanwhile the whole local Iraqi community were divided between those who felt like victims of a new witch hunt and those that didn't want the instruments of Saddam in New Zealand, the place they came to in an effort to escape those very people. Two were subsequently found to be kosher. Winston then announced one of them was a former Palace Guard. It has to be said that this was the money shot for Winston, he is getting heaps of profile and it is likely to ensure he returns to Parliament and may even be an influence in the next government
A Dunedin policeman boosted the profile of the force when he rescued two children and their mother from a house fire. The Fire Service were a little bit miffed and are considering their options, including responding to 111 police calls (it would be easier for them to beat the police to most of them).
A post plane crashed over Taranaki on Tuesday night (a metroliner), which was somewhat disturbing for me flying to Wellington with that news on the radio. It sounds like it exploded mid-air.
A six day bus strike started in Auckland on Thursday. The roads and trains were very busy.
Our favourite MP, John Tamihere, left two young cats behind when he moved house and eleven days later they were rescued by the SPCA and had to be put down. So not only is he a loud mouthed braggart, but he doesn't care about animals either. Yet again it becomes obvious this man is utterly selfish and has no regard for others.
Former Red Squad Commander and MP, Ross Meurant, put his dreaded long baton on trademe for sale with a starting price of $10,000 - which was just silly. It got lots of publicity, then the auction was withdrawn.
An arsonist dwarf was jailed for two and a half years (one year per foot of height). His main defence for causing $400,000 worth of damage at two Waikato schools was that people would stare at him and that hurt his feelings. Perhaps that would have happened less if he didn't cross-dress or suffer from Tourette's syndrome.
A New Zealander was arrested in connection with the Bali nine from Australia (drug smugglers).
It was revealed this week that a new asthma inhaler has enough alcohol in it to create a false positive in a drink driving test. It wears off pretty quickly but could cause some problems.
Duck hunting season started, with a father shooting his son (but only just, one shotgun pellet got the boy in the face, near the eye). The man's license and gun have been taken, but given that birdshot has about 20-30 pellets, you have to wonder if one pellet ricocheted or something. Another man drowned whilst trying to recover the duck he had shot, call that one a draw or perhaps a small victory for the ducks.
A fisherman was so excited about catching two fish at the same time that he slipped and fell into the water and drowned whilst trying to haul them in.
WORLD NEWS
The election in England continued to get coverage. The explosion at a UK embassy in New York seemed to be a bit of a non-event, nobody was hurt. Then Tony Blair was re-elected on his birthday, isn't that sweet.
This really upsets me. New research says that hydro-power dams emit more greenhouse gases than oil-powered generation. The reason is that rising and falling lake levels cause vegetation to rot, which then releases CO2. Firstly, not all hydro dams are in places like Brazil with vegetation to the waterline (many NZ ones are up high in barren mountains where there is very little flora) but this ignores the fact that most dams are in places where there were lakes anyway and the rotting would happen anyway because lake levels can go up and down naturally and well-managed dams don't vary the water level much more. The whole idea of suggesting that we should use petrochemical generation in favour of hydro is bizarre.
This week, another Metroliner went down in North Queensland, with passengers on board, a few days after the one in Taranaki. Fifteen people died. I wouldn't fly in one of them right now.
Japan has started making beer from dried peas to avoid taxes and make the beer a lot cheaper.
It is sixty years since the end of the war in Europe. GW managed to offend the Russians, I suppose it must be their turn.
REAL SPORT
The girls were absolutely shocking at training this week, so chatty it wasn't funny. It made me nervous about the game. They did okay in the first half, but only 0-0 at half time. They faded again in second half and conceded two pretty soft goals. Final score 0-2 and they really aren't playing up to where they were a couple of weeks ago. I am wondering if they could end up second div, which would be a real shame.
The boys were playing away, but just down the road from the girls and two hours later so I had time to get there to see the whole game. I handled subs and strategy and moved a couple of players into different positions to see how they would go. 0-0 at half time, same as Hannah's game. We broke through and scored in the second half and pressured them hard. Billy missed two shockers that he should have got, then Rory put a large one over his head, Billy went around the goalie then just escorted it in to the goal. He knew that if he touched the ball it was likely to go flying into our goal at the other end so Rory got his first goal of the season (from about half way). Final score 2-0 win, and a good result, they needed the win. They had an official ref, who pinged people for calling "mine" which drove us nuts (but is the rule).
Rory's first school water polo game is this Friday. We enrolled him for club water polo on Sunday. The starts in June.
SPORT
Liverpool beat Chelsea to meet AC Milan in the Champs League final later in the month. Man Utd drew with West Bromich Albion 1-1, what a crap team. Everton beat Newcastle 2-0, Chelsea beat Charlton 1-0, Man City beat Villa 2-1, Fulham beat Blackburn 3-1 and both teams had a man sent off. Same thing happened in Crystal Palace Southampton game (two sent off at same time) but they drew 2-2.
Hurricanes beat the Blues (for the first time ever, in their 9th encounter) 22-10, the Blues are effectively out of running for semis and the Hurricanes are in. The Waratahs beat the Reds for the first time in Super 12, 27-8. The Crusaders beat the Highlanders 27-13 so Crusaders are in the semis. The Brumbies must be really crap this season because they had a 28-28 draw with the Chiefs who are crap (I think they both made the semis last season).
Johnny Wilkinson is now coming with the Lions.
MY SAD LIFE
There was a power cut in our area on Monday night. It was first one for quite some time, not sure the kids even remember having one. Much more impact at night. We lit a couple of candles but it was still dark. Must have tried to turn on lights as I went into rooms about three or four times, despite knowing the power was off. Hannah and I went swimming, first I rang the pool and they still had power. It gave us a chance to see how widespread it was, was basically all of Pt Chevalier and Mt Albert to New North Road. The traffic lights were out at the end of Pt Chev Road, which was interesting. It came back on soon after we got home. Diana and Rory were lying on the bed listening to HHGTTG on the iPod with one earphone each, as they couldn't read.
There was another power cut for some houses on Saturday night, when a youth munted a power pole on Pt Chev Road, it didn't affect us, but the power pole isn't too happy.
Baycorp is a local company that tracks your credit worthiness in New Zealand. The law has changed and people are now allowed to check their credit records to check what they contain. I printed off the form and sent it off a while back. This week I found out who has checked up on me and what they have on me. It was largely correct, although it had some iffy information about my address. At least in my case, big brother hasn't got things wrong.
Vodafone announced free texting on weekends for the next year or so. As a result, all day Saturday was a constant stream of text noises from phones wherever I went. The kids went mad and I think Rory sent me more than fifty (most saying the same thing). I am sure Vodafone will regret the move, I know I do.
We went to Allan and Jacqui's for dinner on Saturday, got a reasonably rare chance to talk with Paul and Emma as well (and Rachel made a very brief appearance). Even our kids stayed in the room, rather than disappearing to watch telly or do something on a computer, which was nice.
Instead of taking the Mums out to lunch for Mother's Day, the kids and I made lunch at home. We made a menu, Rory was the waiter, Hannah was supposed to be the lead cook, but I ended up doing most of the cooking (it wasn't very complicated). We offered things we knew we could do, plus something that we couldn't (but we had run out of). It was nice, although the weather wasn't quite up to it and it was a bit cold on the deck. For dinner, Hannah made the pancakes we were planning on having at lunchtime, and that was really nice.
Rory is home sick today.
My trip to Wellington went well, after I got home I looked up the Minister on the internet and found out who he was (he was addressed as "Minister" the whole sodding time. I was very careful with my coffee on the plane and refused to eat anything for lunch on the basis that I might spill something on my nice new white shirt. The presentation went well, and was largely uneventful until the trip home, which you can read about now in:
WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU CROSS A SENIOR MOMENT WITH A BLONDE MOMENT?
A: About fifteen minutes of sadness. On Wednesday, on my way home from Wellington, I got to the airport early and wanted to bump my flight to one earlier. The lady looked at my ticket and helpfully pointed out that an hour earlier would still be eleven months from now. Turned out that while I did fix the date of the flight down, I failed to notice the return flight was for the 4th of April (2006). My excuse was that the session timed out and I had to re-do it twice while I looked for my airpoints card. The good news was that I was well outside the 24 hours minimum to change my ticket. Anyway, while I was trying to sort this out, I couldn't find my cellphone. I had been on the phone in the taxi, then got off it and while paying I had my wallet, credit card, pen, receipt, and all out at once and in the confusion I think the phone must have slipped out of my pocket as I was getting out. So I was thinking about tracking down the taxi, the receipt didn't have the company name on it, and I didn't remember the name on the cab or the name of the driver. I rang the phone, didn't hear it, so figured I didn't have it. Rang it again so the driver could answer it. Then I realised the taxi probably went down below to pick up another fare, so once my ticket was sorted I was going to go looking for the taxi. Then, I remembered that I had put the phone on vibrate after the call, so the driver wouldn't hear it. I worked through how I could just go to the Vodafone store in the airport, get a new phone and sim, and it would back to normal by the time I landed in Auckland. I was going through the implication of losing all the phone numbers stored in my phone as well, which was going to be a mission. Once I got my new boarding pass (this was going on with paying for new ticket and getting seat near Susan (a fellow presenter who thought the whole thing to be hilarious) I realised that if it was on vibrate, it could actually be in my bag, so I looked harder and there the bloody thing was. We went to the bar, I bought Susan a wine as hush money, and got myself a beer. I think I had earned it, sort of.
ANOTHER SENTENCE I WASN'T EXPECTING TO SAY
"Excuse me, where would I find some black tights? Not for me, they are for a friend."
(don't ask)
Have a good week, make sure you check any flights you booked on the internet.
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