This week's edition carries an insanity warning.( Anyone reading this may doubt my sanity.)
LOCAL NEWS
Police arrested a 52 year old man over the double murder in Feilding. Surprisingly, he was a sickness beneficiary.
Two women were found dead at a beach near Wellington, one in the water, the other one the shore. They turned out to be jointly accused of a murder, results will be interesting.
Worker in a dairy was shot and died in Morningside in central Auckland last night, this sort of thing is pretty rare in New Zealand. When I saw the paper and it said "dairy", I actually thought they meant a milk factory, but it was a convenience store.
The New Zealand High Commissioner to Canada has apologised for a number of derogatory comments made about early Maori, Asian migrants ignoring laws for gathering shellfish, and other things which although wild generalisations are not completely untrue. Interestingly, he wasn't required to return to New Zealand to apologise, but then wasn't allowed to come home for the funeral of Sonja Davies, who was a close friend of his. Interesting double-standard going on there.
Sonja Davies was remembered with a huge gathering of powerful women and a few token men.
Jonah Lomu is out of rugby for the season after hurting his shoulder at his comeback match. He needs to retire. There were tons of jokes about how he could play for the Maoris (because his new kidney came from a Maori).
Brian Tamaki held the ceremony to turn himself into a bishop. No news on promotion to pope or archbishop yet. Apparently his church takes EFTPOS.
New figures show that New Zealand is going from earning about $400m in carbon credits to owing $600m. That's quite a change. The Kyoto protocol is based on getting carbon output to 1990 levels, which is tricky for countries that have grown. You'd think a country like New Zealand with lots of trees would do okay, but apparently not.
WORLD NEWS
Michael Jackson was finally found not guilty. Not sure what to think. You'd think guilty verdicts take longer than not-guilty. One hopes he will keep his distance from small boys. It shouldn't be that hard for him to figure out.
Dutch for No is Nee (pronounced Nay), in case you were wondering (I know I was, thanks Heidi).
The Australian hostage in Iraq was freed.
Lots of news about the Whaling summit, where Japan was more, and New Zealand wants less. Not sure what I think about this, either way. You sort of think the whalers would want sustainable levels but not completely sure they will be that responsible.
REAL SPORT
Well, the water polo was one-sided again, although Rangeview scored two goals against them it was 20-2. The team is now averaging nearly 18 goals per game and one against. They play another pretty weak team this Friday, although they are actually fourth on the table.
Hannah's soccer team was facing the top of the table team. It was appalling conditions, heavy rain. Hannah is well and truly back, played very well. We conceded two goals in the first half, but kept them out in the second, final score 0-2.
Rory's team was 0-1 down in the first half, and then it all went horribly wrong, final score 0-6. The other team was very aggressive, the parents were hideous (I used a variation of the old pickup line when referring to one scary woman that bellowed from the sideline - "Hell must be missing a harridan."). Despite that, many of the lads enjoyed getting filthy in the rain and mud.
SPORT
The Lions won their midweek match against the Wellington team (also called the Lions, there were plenty of sad attempts at humour about that) 23-6. They beat Otago on Saturday night, convincingly in the end.
The first Lions test is this coming Saturday.
NSW beat Queensland to level state of origin 1-1.
The New Zealand Badminton team seem to now be called the "Black Cocks", which I just don't think is in good taste at all.
The Aussies are slowly building up to the Ashes series in England. The big news is that Bangladesh best them in a ODI. The Aussies scored 249/5, which seemed a tough enough target. They got there in the last over, with four balls to spare, in a nail biting finish (got a six on the first ball of the last over which made it easier). This came only a week or two after Warnie said that Bangladesh shouldn't be playing test cricket (which I have to admit I largely agreed with). The odds for them winning were like 180-1 and some guy put 20 quid on them.
The Aussies then lost to England in an ODI. Wonder if they are trying to improve the odds for the Ashes series?
Michael Campbell was leading the golf this morning, when I wrote this. Tiger Woods is breathing down his neck, two shots behind.
MY SAD LIFE
I coached the Year 8 team at the inter-school soccer on Tuesday. They lost the first game 0-1, and as they only had two pool games I thought that meant they would be out regardless of the result in their second game. They won that 2-0, which was surprisingly enough to get them through as top of their group (the team they beat beat the team they lost to). They then won the semi-final 2-0. In the final they conceded a goal and then were down 0-1, but equalised with a great corner from Rory. They lost in golden goal extra time, which was pretty sad, they were sooo close. I took Rory and three others back to school, stopped at the supermarket and gave them some money to buy themselves an ice cream. After about ten minutes, I was beginning to worry so I went in. They were at the checkout, using a ladies card to get a discount, and had bought two, two litre containers of ice cream, and some plastic spoons! Little buggers. They ate some on the bench outside the supermarket and then gleefully ate the rest whilst sitting outside the classrooms (see, this is the kicker, they not only got to eat an excessive amount of ice cream, but they couldn't go back to class until they were finished). It was so funny, I couldn't bring myself to tell them off. They even gave me change.
Hannah had her dance exam on Tuesday. She got honours (sounds like almost everyone did), it's good she didn't miss out completely. Rory got a call-back for the auditions, where he struggled with saying the word "Irish" and went into welsh-accent. He got the part he wanted, Dandy Dan, which is one of the lead parts.
From the "even I can't believe I am that sad" department. Diana and I had a debate some time ago about what constituted the top end of Meola Road. She seemed to think it was obviously the Westmere end. I thought that there wasn't one but if there was it was the Pt Chevalier end. She then (foolishly) said that her reasoning was that it was higher at the Westmere end, and I had to take the contrary view (I am her husband, that is my job). Well, despite getting Paul to bring his GPS over in January (we forgot to do it) and being unable to measure accurately enough with the altimeter in Diana's car, I finally did it with a GPS this week (I know, let it go, Rob). Well, turns out the Pt Chevalier Road is about three metres higher (32 to 29) than the Westmere end. So I was right. I did admit to Diana that I was actually surprised and thought it was going to be pretty close or maybe the other way around. All this to point out that sometimes the "top" of a given road isn't necessarily obvious to everyone (are we talking altitude or distance from CPO?).
Rory had a school dance, the theme was "bling". He went covered in shiny chains. He looked like a very pale and skinny version of Mr T. On Sunday, Thomas wore it all and said "Yo, my dog" (we all thought he said "oh my god" at first). The Goodins seemed in good shape, we had coffee with them on Sunday morning, Ross' cough has improved (so has mine).
We went to Muriwai with Koos and Sjaan on Sunday, Diana got to ride in Koos' new car. It's a silver one. As usual, kids didn't want to go, made a big fuss, then had a lovely time there. We played giant mega-vortex darts, which involves making a giant dartboard on the sand and throwing the vortex from the top of a sand dune. We made a ladies one as well (because Hannah and Diana throw like girls, a bit like ladies tees in golf). It was silly, but fun.
Gavin is still in Ekatarinberg. Sounds like there aren't many English-speakers there (not like Holland, for example). He's due home on Wednesday. My camera seems to be okay. If he brings any of those nesting doll things back, I will leave him at the airport.
It is Diana's birthday this Thursday. I guess I have to find a present or two.
Heidi, I did remind Koos that he should be posting your present any day now. Didn't seem to take any notice.
Hannah has a school tour of Ponsonby Intermediate tomorrow. Life has become incredibly hectic. The schedule for dancing, rehearsals for the show, showcase (a thing at Rory's school), water polo, soccer, school visits (for both children) and so forth seems overwhelming. I might have to go have a bit of a lie down.
RANDOM PHRASE OF THE VAGUELY INDEFINITE TIME PERIOD
Well, I used to do a word of the week, but that got to be dull. Not sure how often this will happen, hence the title.
In the car, on the way back from Muriwai, I wondered aloud whether anyone would ever use the phrase "under exaggerated" which seemed oxymoronic, at best. Well, I googled the phrase and there are 1010 instances of it on the internet so I suppose it does get used. However, the phrase "over exaggerated" has more than 32,000 and remove the space and you pick up another 8,000. This is sad, given that exaggerated already means "over stated" you would think adding the "over" to it would make little difference.
I apologise for the excessive use of speech marks in that.
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