It's been cold, and wet. And quite cold. Bit short this week, sorry, been busy.
LOCAL NEWS
There was a relatively small fire at Pasadena Intermediate (a local school, we know heaps of kids that go there including kids in both Hannah and Rory's soccer teams).
Telecom lost two parts of it's network in the lower north island on Monday, which stuffed all sorts of things up. Mobiles were out in the South Island, EFTPOS failed, it was a mess.
An Australian tourist died when he went for a walk in sub-zero conditions in Fjordland, he was found buried in snow a few hundred metres from safety.
A man has been arrested for the murder of the dairy guy last week.
Helen Clark was ejected from the chamber this week, so Don Brash got ejected too (so she wouldn't get the limelight on her own). Electioneering is ramping up considerably.
WORLD NEWS
Princess Maxima, the wife of Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, gave birth to a baby girl on Sunday, who starts life as the third in line to the Dutch throne. Will Nissan name a car after the baby? Only time will tell.
Shane Warne has announced that he is separating from his wife Simone. I think it must be because she prefers bald men and he has been recently cured by some thing that he advertises. Does this mean we won't hear about his extra-curricular activities any more?
REAL SPORT
The water polo team started with Rory on the sideline in the first quarter, they conceded a goal but fought back to about 4-1 at the end of the first quarter. It just got worse for the other team from then on. Final score was 20-1, Rory got six goals. He was very happy. The opposition team had two players who were clearly experienced water polo players (we haven't seen many so far) and worked well but the rest of their team struggled. There is one grading game left. Don't think they will play either of the other unbeaten teams. They've now scored 91 goals in five games. I then coached Ponsonby Gold against Ponsonby Blue and despite Blue only having six players (a team is seven in the water) and Gold leading 3-1 in the first quarter, they lost 8-5. Gold hasn't won a game yet, and this was their big chance.
The weather caused all soccer to be cancelled. Meant Hannah's team missed out playing a team that they should have beaten and Rory's team missing out playing a team that should have beaten them.
SPORT
Well, Michael Campbell won the US Open Golf Tournament. This is very big news in a country like New Zealand. He is the second New Zealander to win a golf major (the last time was before I was born) and it is about as likely as an New Zealander winning a grand slam tennis event or New Zealand winning the World Cup in anything (except maybe rugby and netball). Ranked in one paper as the 3rd biggest sporting achievement in New Zealand, he is a shoo-in to win the sportsman of the year award.
The golf made the build-up to the first Lions test a bit muffled but it gained momentum. The game itself wasn't very close, although the atrocious conditions made open flowing rugby somewhat difficult. I don't remember seeing hail in a test match before. The final score was 23-3. Clive Woodward is whinging about how Brian O'Driscoll was taken out in the first minute, but I can't see that as being a deliberate All Black tactic.
New Zealander Sean Marks plays for the San Antonio Spurs, although wasn't playing in the finals, got a ring when they won the championship. Kind of slack in a way, you'd think they'd let all the players on their roster play at least a bit.
MY SAD LIFE
The name the baby competition hasn't done very well, so far. Frankly, I blame the parents.
We did the school tour with Hannah on Tuesday. She wanted Rory to take us but it was better to get someone else's view of the school. Phoebe is in Rory's class, and I know her from tennis. We got a female view of activities and I went places I have never been (I hang around there often enough, if you ask me).
Gavin returned from Ekatarinberg on Thursday, not Wednesday. Even though he told me he was arriving Wednesday. I managed to figure out that he didn't know what day it was and went to the airport at an ungodly hour on Thursday (and not Wednesday) to pick him up. I have to say that removing the chairs at the arrival area is a stupid thing to do. It was good for the arriving person's self-esteem to see a bunch of people waiting expectantly for you (as long as you didn't notice their disappointment as they all realised you weren't their mum/brother/long lost twin/main squeeze/parental unit/etc).
We went out to lunch for Diana's birthday. We got into her car, and I looked in the rear vision mirror and Ollie was sitting on the parcel shelf behind the back seat, seemed to want to come with us.
Elsie, Diana's Mum, has had some problems with her knee lately. This week she got a disabled parking permit, which means we can take her places in the car and park closer so she has less walking to do. On Saturday morning, to test it, I took Elsie and the kids out for a trip. We parked in three disabled spots, it was great.
Things I learned:
1 disabled parking is free and without time limit
2 they let other disabled people use the parks so they aren't always empty
3 if you have a disabled permit, you can still park in regular parks
4 they have them outside schools
5 but not outside libraries
6 being able to park right outside some shops can prove costly
7 but they can be a lot of fun.
We went to my mother's concert on Saturday. About twenty odd singers accompanied by a piano. The children weren't too keen, and I have to admit it wasn't high on my list either. However, it went quite well. Mum did a good job, in front of about 150 people. I really enjoyed the piano solo (not because there was no singing, but because it was a technical piece that the woman played very well). The kids were playing a funny hand game during it and I took a photo of them doing it on Mum's camera (talk about caught in the act). I noticed that lots of older women have short hair, like almost all of them.
We have lots of school tours this week for Rory. And a performance of Romeo & Juliet (he is half of Romeo). He had three rehearsals for the other show last week.
GAVIN'S EXPERIENCE IN RUSSIA (as interpreted by me)
He said the only piece of news he recognised in Russia was the words "Michael Jackson" and "not guilty" (interesting that they didn't translate the not guilty into Russian). Apparently half the top 20 music is regular music in English and the other half is Russian. He found very few people that spoke English in Ekatarinberg, and one that felt that speaking German would work because it was also a foreign language (even her friends thought she was mad, but she persisted. Gavin didn't even realise she was talking to him half the time because broken German in a Russian accent sounds pretty much like Russian to someone who speaks neither language). He has experienced the manly joy of being whipped with a stick in a bath house, and doing some whipping (although it is very hard work at 83 degrees Celsius). Some of his photos of grotty apartment buildings show what we should expect to see in Auckland in some areas where we have new grotty apartment buildings.
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