A busy week, really.
LOCAL NEWS
A man failed to open his parachute this week. Instructors caught up to him, opened his chute for him (which was impressive if you ask me, must have been quick) but he was DOL (dead on landing). They think he suffered heart attack whilst he was counting "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, check".
Three Australians were caught with liquid cocaine in Auckland, en route to Australia from South Americas. Haven't heard how Mr Howard feels about these people yet.
The Halberg Sports awards were this week. Michael Campbell won the supreme award. Mel Tonks, rowing coach, won the coaching award but didn't show up (he doesn't approve of them, and to be honest I thoroughly agree). A rowing pair won the team award. I think sports awards and Oscars are stupid. These people get recognition enough without needing more.
A woman was raped in Auckland, then drove one of the rapists to the police station after he fell asleep in the car. Beyond belief but good on her for doing it. They are looking for the other guy, but I assume they know who he is given that his mate is in custody. They have not released a name or description of the man, which is interesting in itself.
There was a murder in sleepy Waihi Beach this weekend. The victim was hit with a paintball gun, but I don't think that was a murder weapon. I wonder, do they call it a manslaughter weapon if it is an accidental death?
The Catholic Church are whinging about C4 playing an episode of Southpark that depicts the virgin Mary. Get over it guys.
The sale of the army's old M113's has fallen through because the US has vetoed it. They could end up as scrap, which would be a crime.
A diamond encrusted gold Rolex sold on trademe for $8300 turned out to be a fake. It had Rolex innards but it was not a Rolex body and strap. Although the gold and diamonds were genuine, they were only worth about $3000. The buyer is a guy I know, Larry, who buys them here and sells them on eBay (and makes a good living out of it).
WORLD NEWS
I have a bit of a problem with Australian PM John Howard. He has come out with two things this week that I see as being mutually exclusive. He has said he doesn’t want our rehabilitated criminal boxer to take part in the Commonwealth Games (yes, that old story again) and yet he says he is going to fight hard to ensure that two Australians don't get their death sentence in Bali for drug tracking carried out. So he wants to continue to punish someone who has served their time, paid their debt to society, etc, but doesn't was to punish people who haven't. Ignoring the whole capital punishment thing, this seems to be a bit like double standards and he seems to think Australian law should apply to foreign nationals in foreign countries and his own nationals in foreign countries.
In a particularly deep and insightful moment, John Howard said the death sentence was a warning to other Australians. I wonder if they need a warning after Schapelle Corby and all her little friends have been in the news, but John thinks they do. I think John Howard has been hanging around GW too much.
As for Mr Cheney, shooting a colleague whilst inebriated is pretty sad.
The mudslide in the Philippines was particularly nasty. The clean-up will take ages.
REAL SPORT
Hannah appears to have joined the school cricket team, which is a surprise. Being a qualified level 1 coach I could offer to help. She did play club for about one season, a very long time ago.
Rory has signed up for the senior water polo team at his school. It is obviously a minor sport, but it is still kind of cool to be at a school ten days and make the senior team. There are two fourth formers in the team, too.
Rory had school swim sports this week. There were three groups, junior, intermediate, and senior. Despite being at the school a week, he was classed as an intermediate. Despite that he won the freestyle final, came second in breaststroke, and was in the winning 4 x 25 freestyle relay team.
Rory played his first Senior game on Sunday, against St Peters. It turned out to be a friendly because St Peters had to find two ring-ins to get seven, although the players didn't find out until the end. St Peters were ahead early in the game, 1-0, then 2-1. Rory scored first goal for Springs, and had another disallowed. Final score was 9-4 to Springs and Rory scored 5. Tom, who is the elder statesmen of Springs Water Polo was playing his last game for the season, he has a knee op on Wednesday that has him out for six months.
Been playing cricket with Hannah and Rory in the back yard, Hannah is trialling for the school cricket team. Finally Hannah and I went down to Walker Park and I bowled for about an hour. I was buggered.
Rory has three games next weekend and they both have a water polo camp the week after.
SPORT
Very big news this week is that the All Whites (New Zealand soccer team) are playing Brazil in Geneva in their warm up for the World Cup (Brazils not NZs).
The All Whites also beat Malaysia 1-0.
The Blues lost again. The Chiefs lost again. Canterbury won again.
New Zealand beat the Windies in the first ODI.
Liverpool knocked Man Utd out of the FA Cup, winning 1-0. Very sad.
I want the winter Olympics to finish, it interferes with breakfast TV. Australia won their first gold with a Canadian that isn't even sure where Australia is. Our curling team is giving everyone else at least one win.
MY SAD LIFE
Hannah got a certificate at assembly at school on Friday, and the headmaster asked her in front of the whole school if she was Rory's sister (which she seemed to think was embarrassing, but it made Rory happy). She is already teacher's pet with her English teacher.
Valentine's Day passed without major incident, other than Hannah getting a card from unwanted suitor Bon.
Despite our son yet again achieving god-like status for his feats in the pool, he is still human. On Friday he managed to spread about a litre of milk and half a litre of coffee over approximately 10% of the kitchen (quite a lot, really). It wasn't pretty.
Not sure if Koos is back from Hong Kong yet.
Did the ultimate geeky thing on Saturday. We went to see the first every Segway Polo game between New Zealand and the US. The thing that was most interesting to me was that Steve Wozniak is in the US team. Steve Wozniak was the inventor of the Apple computer and arguably the closest I would have had to a hero in my late teens. I went and said hello to him, that was cool. The game itself was pretty weird.
Saw Allan and Jacqui twice over the weekend, and Brett once. Bill Clinton and other former luminaries are visiting for some sort of speaking thing. Tickets are about $2000 each. Paul Chambers is escorting one of them, he could get Bill. I hope he doesn't ask him to sign a dry-cleaning ticket.
Allan and Jacqui are going to be quite nomadic in the next few weeks. Jacqui is off to Shanghai for work for a month, then comes back for a week and a half then goes to China for a holiday. The holiday was planned first. Allan is off to Sydney and Newcastle (which is practically Sydney).
Proud parent moment. The phone rang on Thursday night, while Hannah and Diana were out at the filming of an episode of a local dance talent thing. Rory answered. I heard him say "They are out at some f#$king dancing thing" to the person on the phone.". I asked who it was. He goes "Um, which Lisa are you?". He then sheepishly hands the phone to me, it was Julia's Mum, who I don't think I have ever heard say a cross word. He sheepishly passes the phone to me. I apologised and talked about how Hannah was getting to school the next day. Afterwards, Rory said "I thought it was Lisa Bamberger". That didn’t seem like much of a reason. I later spoke to Bambi, told him, he thinks Rory is in for an earful when he sees Lisa B next.
The dance thing Diana and Hannah went to was "So You Think You Can Dance". Hannah knows one of the choreographers and a contestant is from her dance school. They had a lovely time, but me and Rory were happy to miss that.
Diana went house hunting again with Paul, who is yet to find a house that suits.
Rory was having a text orgy with some alleged girl yesterday. Not happy about that. He doesn't even know whether it really is a girl.
Going to go have a lie down now.
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