Back from Tauranga, ready for a rest - 24/04/06

It is Anzac Day tomorrow, the day we remember the fallen.

LOCAL NEWS

Apparently it is real nappy week. Oh good. Always important. Apparently disposables are not real, they are figments of our imagination. Let's not even go near the whole question of the actual cost of cleaning the cloth ones and how hard they are to put on, and how they leak and so on. Next week is apparently the international week for not eating figs. Give me strength. Who thinks of this stuff?

Arrests were made in the suitcase murder. As expected, a classmate of the student was involved, and it was a kidnapping that went wrong. His body is being flown back to China.

An arrest was also made in the case that was reopened regarding the murder of farmer Jack Nicholas two or three years ago.

Boys performance in the education system has been in the news. Seems like the pendulum has swung the other way.

Tiger Woods is in town for an unspecified reason. There have been press conferences, and various things. Tonight he is racing a stock-car in Huntly against Tana Umaga and other local celebs. Huntly will be buzzing.

An Australian judge has turned down an extradition order for two priests to face charges of molesting handicapped kids in the 70s. He doesn't think they would get a fair trial in a hick place like New Zealand where bush justice prevails. I find this particularly offensive. It is all very fine when the destination country is somewhere with death penalty or where they may lose a hand. I thought the UK was the only country that tried to act like nanny-state for New Zealand. We aren't bloody New Guinea or something.

It is Australia week. Bollocks to that. We think that having a week for Australia would make people biased.

Petrol prices are continuing rise, I filled my car with my first $100+ refill yesterday. That is going to start hurting people.

Road toll this weekend was worse than Easter, with two dying on a piece of road early on Sunday that we came over Sunday afternoon.

WORLD NEWS

The Solomon Islands erupted in rioting this week. Honiara, the capital, is a pretty crappy place and features at number 985 on the best cities to live list. I have spent time with a few people that have lived in Honiara and the general feeling is that it is not a nice place to visit and you wouldn't want to be buried there. Anyway, the media seemed to treat the whole thing as an Olympic medal table style competition between New Zealand and Australia as to how many soldiers, police, and nuns we sent and how many we had injured (police and soldiers, no nuns were hurt, but if a nun was hurt that would be worth like at least eight policemen, so a hurt nun would be like a gold medal).

REAL SPORT

Well, we had plenty of real sport. Hannah played 12 games of water polo over three days. Some were pretty short, admittedly. She didn't score any goals, but she was defending mostly, almost never went into the opposition half. She worked very well. She went into goal in one really tough game and did a credible job. She uses the same tenacious attitude she has in soccer.

Overall, the team won six games, lost six (they played one of the finalists twice, the other one once) and came 7th out of 16 teams. Pretty good effort. They had a couple of pretty weak players that didn't help. But they were the loudest team. Hannah certainly played her part in making the noise.

SPORT

I heard that the Crusaders managed a draw against the winless Force, interesting result. The Blues lost, think the Hurricanes lost. Don't know details.

Liverpool beat Chelsea in FA Cup semi-final and West Ham beat Middlesbrough.

Reasonably big news is that the men's hockey team won the world cup qualifying tournament. This was ironic in that for a while they were struggling to qualify (they needed to be in top five or something to qualify for world cup) that they made the semi-finals and then went on to win the tournament. They haven't won a decent tournament in 30 years.

Black Caps have second test end of this week, they lost pretty quick on last day in the last one.

Couple of V8 races at Pukekohe this weekend. There were a couple of crashes to keep people happy, some spectacular.

The Warriors now have two points, finally.

MY SAD LIFE

We actually went swimming three days in a row over Easter. The boy was pretty happy to be swimming again, even if with the cast. Despite two weeks off he is still faster and fitter than me. It is no fun being old and past it.

I forgot to wish Rory Hughes a happy birthday on Friday. Well, I didn't actually forget, I forgot to do it before we left home and was not connected on Friday so couldn't do it on the day, but I remembered on the day.

I was going to ask Jack for details of when he is due here, but Diana tells me she got details yesterday.

Funny week, quite short because Easter Monday off then left for Tauranga on Thursday afternoon. Not exactly a fun weekend away, but we did have some relaxation time. We went to the beach by Mount Maunganui on Friday afternoon. The kids made intricate sand castles then destroyed them. They were about to dig out a post and then I suggested they merely cover it in sand so that whoever tries to kick it over will suffer, which they thought was a great idea. I never thought they would finish it because it was a good metre high. They did, though, and while we had dinner up on the grass they kept going down to check on it. Saturday morning we went for a wander around downtown Tauranga, and across the footbridge attached to a rail bridge across the bay, which was something we hadn't done before.

The kids are on holiday, which means they get up late and do sod all. Diana is working today so I will try to take them somewhere interesting today (but not far from home, as I do have to do some work).

Mum returns from her Australian experience this week. Her camera was dropped by a friend so photography has been limited since then. At least with digital cameras you don't have to worry about exposing film.

RANDOMS ACTS OF POSTAGE

Brett is making a habit of sending small but interesting items in the post. I received one this week, which was a photo of me taking a photo of Greg the Takahe on Tiritiri Matangi island from a few months back. It is a pretty cool photo.

I am going to resolve to start committing random acts of postage myself. Getting things in the mail is pretty cool. Those of you interested in taking part, please send me your postal address.

The mysterious case of the mysterious case - 17/04/06

LOCAL NEWS

A murder case from 26 years ago was re-opened after the receipt of a letter on the subject.

Another case, about two years old, also got new information, the murder of farmer Jack Nicholas.

And yet another murder case was opened, literally, when a suitcase floating in the Waitemata Harbour was found to contain a body. It was a 19 year old Chinese English language student.

Nasty accident on Southern Motorway on Friday, one person died when his car was sandwiched between two large 4wds in a nose-to tail that involved about seven cars.

Big news all week was the electronic bank card skimming. It is thought a pair of Russians entered the country, and left just as their identity was becoming public. They seem to have read around 4,000 cards. Makes New Zealand look pretty bad, to be honest. A technological backwater, at best.

Somebody wants cats limited to one per household, and they should be chipped. Sometimes I can relate to the one per household bit. Don't think I mentioned the pile of feathers, a wing, and about a third of a body that I found on the bedroom floor recently. Ollie was the culprit, I am sure.

WORLD NEWS

The furore over Tiger Woods saying he "played like a spaz" has been quite strange. The fact that many newspapers changed the word to something else, despite supposedly quoting him, was even stranger.

REAL SPORT

No real Sport to report this week, due to holidays, etc.

SPORT

The Blues beat the useless Force (known as the spent Force) 39-8. That is three wins in a row for them but they are still well down the table. The Crusaders won, again. Hurricanes beat Highlanders and Chiefs beat the Stormers, I think. Waratahs beat the Brumbies.

Coach of the hapless soccer Knights, John Adshead, has resigned. We've been through the usual bollocks in the news about pressure to resign and how he was committed for three years, etc. They won about 1 game the whole season and were cold, motherless last. It was rubbish.

Australia prevailed over Bangladesh but it was a close thing, they only had three wickets left.

New Zealand is playing South Africa and is actually 50 runs ahead on first innings, which was completed by end of day two. Jacob Oram and Daniel Vettori scored the bulk of the runs.

I think there was soccer but I haven't found out about it.

MY SAD LIFE

It was nice having a short week, and another one this week and the week after too (we get Anzac Day next week).

The kids are on holiday so no homework which is nice.

Tuesday was Big Nana's funeral. It was a relatively subdued affair, with the after-match function at Tony and Marion's house. Saw a few people there that I haven't seen for a while. I wore a tie. Ross didn't.

On Wednesday Rory got his plaster cast replaced with a fibreglass one. He can swim now, and life is easier with showers and things.

Went to the Easter Show with Bambi, Sasha, and Paul on Friday. The sideshows are beyond belief, they are so lame and such a rip off. The concept of charging people more than the value of the prize, for a low chance to win the prize, and that the prize is something they rarely actually want (and if they win it, it may not make it home, or it will get moved and dusted for a couple of years and then thrown out) seems utterly ridiculous. And yet people pay $5 for the chance to throw a ball at a pile of skittles (or whatever, usually over in less than 60 seconds).

The Goodin household continues to have excitement. Thomas fell over and chipped his front teeth on Saturday. Caitlin continues to visit Doctors on a regular basis.

Another thing I forgot to mention last week.

Rory's Social Studies teacher felt that a broken hand wouldn't stop him from writing. Was an interesting concept. Apparently his training in social studies qualified him to diagnose medical conditions. Because he had been able to write when he broke his arm in three places, this meant that Rory could also write with a broken hand. He proceeded to call him a "malingerer" and wrote the word on the board and had a class discussion about it. As you can imagine, we were less than impressed. Given that any attempts to write by Rory would cause more damage, the concept was quite ridiculous. We speculated as to whether the teacher was a graduate of the David Benson-Pope school of pupil humiliation. At least Rory is thick-skinned enough to handle it.

Less drama in our household, but more for others - 10/04/06

LOCAL NEWS

A teenager who stole a pet budgie from a primary school and microwaved it to death has been jailed. Not sure why he wasn't put in for five minutes on "high" to see how it felt.

Gareth Morgan, father of trademe millionaire Sam Morgan, has announced he is going to donate $47 million of his windfall to charity.

The new Governor General has been announced. He is Anand Satyanand, a Fijian Indian who has been a judge and ombudsman. He replaces Dame Silvia Cartwright (who is no relation to Hoss and Little Joe).

A man ran from police near Mt Wellington, escaped over the back fence onto the Southern Motorway. He was hit by a couple of cars before an ambulance finished him off.

The Fire Service made a press statement the next morning that they felt left out of the incident with the fugitive, and that other emergency services under value the Fire Service. Secondly, they suggested that the Ambulance service was not playing fair by creating their own customers to increase the need for their services.

A burglar in Rotorua has had a rough time. Whilst trying to escape the scene of a burglary, he punched a child (nice guy), over the fence he had an altercation with the neighbour, next door he was then attacked by a dog, over yet another fence he crawled under a house, through broken glass and got himself a few nice cuts. I think there was a fair amount of karma happening there.

A Northland man was found crushed under the road roller he had been operating. How he managed to get out of the drivers seat and under it is not known.

WORLD NEWS

I think the passing of Gene Pitney has been under-reported. As much as I don't like much of the style of his music his songs were often cleverly executed. And without him many people would never have heard of Tulsa.

GW seems to want to Nuke Iran. This can't be true. Nuking someone has not happened for a very long time, I think it would be a bad move.

There was something else that happened, but I cannot remember what it was. Early onset Alzheimer's perhaps (although Rory would say "early?).

REAL SPORT

Hannah has made team one for her school water polo team. Still not convinced that it is a very strong team.

Hannah's soccer team was playing Three Kings on Saturday, always a pretty handy team, they are a big club with good coaching staff. The girls played well, but conceded two goals with mistakes. The other team didn't actually score on their own. They nearly got one or two back but couldn't quite manage it, final score 0-2. Hannah played very well, very solid, fast, committed. We were very happy with her efforts. I refereed the second half, ran pretty hard, was knackered afterwards. And sore the next day.

Rory refereed Flippa Ball finals on Sunday, he seemed happy. Diana saw him refereeing (I have observed before). He certainly appears to be in his element. Haven't heard how Rory's school water polo teams did over the weekend.

SPORT

The Crusaders beat the Waratahs in a top of the table clash, winning 17-11. The Waratahs were top but because the Crusaders have already had their bye they were behind by one point. Now they are top. The Blues managed to squeeze out a win over the Stormers, the Chiefs drew with the Bulls 26-26, Highlanders just managed a win over the Force 25-22, the Force haven't won a game yet. The good thing about it being 14 now is that the Blues being 10th doesn't sound as bad as it did with 12.

Bangladesh are at 355/5 against Australia, their best result ever in a test match, will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Man Utd beat the Arse 2-0, Newcastle snuck a 2-1 win over Middlesbrough, Chelsea thumped West Ham 4-1, Liverpool got a 1-0 win over Bolton.

MY SAD LIFE

Brett had his birthday on Friday. It was the golden anniversary of his birth. I popped over to see him on Sunday, and made room in his fridge for him by drinking a couple of his beers. He is living in a nice flat in Westmere amongst some mega-houses. I saw Allan and Jacqui there too, Jacqui is off to China again (this time with Nicola and Emma for a holiday) on Wednesday.

My mother is off to Ayers Rock and Sydney for the next three weeks. I may have to learn how to make chocolate pudding.

Diana took Rory to Middlemore, as planned, on Monday. They were there for six and a half hours. The surgeons spent around ten minutes looking at the x-ray but didn't actually look at Rory's hand. Medicine is just plain weird. It is a week since I have been to an A&E.

Kathryn's grandmother, Nana, died on Friday. She was not in great shape, but her passing is sad nevertheless. I used to get on pretty well with her, she reminded me a bit of my Great Aunt (Dell, who was a favourite of mine despite her poor record with cats, who died in about 1990). Her funeral is Tuesday.

Friday was not a great day in the Clare family. Trixie, Tony and Marion's dog, didn't make it back from the vets. She was also getting on. When Rory was little he called her "fikiss".

And poor little Caitlin Goodin is back in a cast. So is Peter Smith's daughter who now has one to her armpit. And I forgot to mention that Marissa got stitches. What an accident-prone bunch of children.

Julie had a little off-road altercation with a tree in the car this week. Koos wants to borrow the Pajero. Am wondering if I should fit bull-bars first. Julie was shaken but not hurt seriously (although inconvenienced by whiplash). He returns from Hong Kong tomorrow.

Busy week for Hannah, we had to go see her perform in her school showcase thing on Thursday. She was up first, so we should have gone home early. Never have I seen Shakespeare so throttled as it was in the third and final act of the evening. Her soccer team was filmed for Studio 2 on Tuesday night, they will be on TV tonight I think around 4:30pm. She also had a movie night on Saturday night with four of her friends. What a noise. They seemed happy, I suppose.

Rory and I went swimming on Sunday while Hannah was doing training. He didn't actually swim, just eggbeated while I swam (it is what they do to stay afloat in water polo and sync swimming). He had to hold his right hand in the air, sometimes resting it on the top of his head. He was pretty happy to be back in the water, he gets a new cast on Wednesday, we are hoping for something that can get wet.

Well, last week was kind of weird. I missed a couple of things:

-when I was called about Rory and his eye at school, Diana was out at Muriwai with her class and the bus broke down, so they were late getting back. It meant I had to pick up Nanny from town, but I was near town anyway with Rory at the A&E, so it worked out.

-Rory had another story read out on the radio (we missed it, forgot about it) and scored another $150 for the privilege. He didn't seem to think that buying his parents dinner was a worthwhile use of funds. It was read by Wing, the Asian lady who thinks she can sing who was on Southpark once.

The theme this week should be hand-eye coordination....... - 03/04/06

Today is the world day of prayer. Say one for my sanity, if you get the chance.
Sorry about the dodgy stuff…..

LOCAL NEWS

In another example of Darwinian evolution in action, a teenage boy crawled under his house, played with petrol, and burned himself to death. I think he was sniffing the petrol, and it was so good he decided to have a cigarette afterwards. Either way, he did the gene pool a favour.

Harmeet Sooden returned home. The exclusive interview arranged by his family was ignored by him and all bets were off. They got to keep the handout and he stayed out of the public eye.

Tony Blair visited us. And his wife was there to lend a hand and keep an eye on him. I don't think she charged anyone this time (she charged $100k or something for a speech at a charity dinner last time she was here).

That bloody awful rape case is over. Shame the coverage isn't.

Testing of soil in Auckland play centre's has found the soil to be contaminated with nasties. Rory went to one of them. Not sure what we are supposed to do about it, but we don't exactly have time to consider it right now.

Russell Crowe has been here this week, no reported phone throwing but in trouble because he was smoking in a place of work.

WORLD NEWS

A New Zealand and English team have identified what they say is the source of the Nile. It is now a hundred odd miles longer than previously thought. They got one of their guys shot by Ugandan rebels on the way.

REAL SPORT

Rory's Junior team lost 9-12 on Friday night. Despite only having one good eye, Rory got quite a few goals, maybe 6 or 7. I missed the game because of work.

Hannah had her intermediate water polo trial on Saturday. There were a ton of kids (about 40), I don't know for sure yet, but I think she is going to be in team 1. This may not be a good thing. The standard of the team is not that high (but it is early in the season yet). I think she will probably be quite a strong player in the team, she is fitter than most. I think the girls are better than the boys at the moment.

Hannah's soccer team had their first game of the season. They played reasonably well, Hannah was defending and did a great job although she isn't happy about defending. They lost 1-2, was 1-1 for a while. Both the other teams goals were against the run of play, but it is only grading so not the end of the world.

Rory's Senior team were playing Kings B on Sunday. It was very tight, only 1-1 at the end of the second quarter. Things picked up in the third, Rory equalised with a showy backhand goal at 3-3, but whacked his hand into an opposition head on the follow through. He asked to be subbed and stayed off the rest of the game, they lost 3-6. Then I took Rory to the A&E, again.

SPORT

The Blues enjoyed a rare win over the Bulls. Hurricanes lost to the Crusaders, who have now beaten all other New Zealand teams. Crusaders are almost winning the competition at the moment (Waratahs have one more point, but have played one more game and lost one, Crusaders are unbeaten).

The Warriors have won a second game, they are now on zero points for the season.

Man Utd won, Chelsea drew, but are still seven points clear at the moment. Chelsea have a handy lead, but Man Utd have their eye on them. Not sure you could call it exciting yet. Arsenal thumped Villa 5-0. Newcastle had a much-need win over Spurs 3-1.

Hong Kong Sevens were this weekend. Fiji beat New Zealand in the semi-final. England won.

MY SAD LIFE

My Friday afternoon was ruined with a phone call from Rory's school (I always hate getting phone calls from school) to say that he had been hit in the eye with the projectile from a pen-gun (you know, you pull a bic pen apart and you can shoot the plastic knob end off with the spring). So I had to get from Glendowie to Western Springs. En route, I rang the doctor, asked whether they were busy or I should go to the A&E. They said I should go to them. Half an hour after we got there, I asked what our chances of being seen were, and they told me they were really busy and only had one doctor. I subtly pointed out that perhaps they could have told me than an hour earlier and left to go to the A&E clinic, which was practically empty. One of the forms I had to fill out was his details and that of his mother, apparently the father is not important to the ACC. His eye was fine, perhaps just a little scratched, and we got some gunk and left.

Saturday was surprisingly free of medical personnel.

Sunday afternoon, I had to take Rory out to do refereeing at the pool, so I did my lengths (in record time, 28 minutes for 50), went to the gun show next door (which was not that exciting), and mooched around Henderson in the rain for an hour and a half. Then as we left the pool we saw Diana and Hannah arrive for her training. On the way to the pool, I said to Rory that I would quite like to go home after the game and watch a nice movie.

Later on Sunday, post injury, we went back to the A&E. I had to fill out one less form (because he hadn't got any new mothers since Friday). We saw the same doctor as on Friday, who resisted the urge to say "I told you so" (he did say Rory shouldn't play water polo for the weekend, and let's be honest, he was right). We then had to go to another A&E that had its radiology section open, got an x-ray. We then went to the A&E next door to the x-ray to find out what happens next. It was broken, the index finger metacarpal, below the knuckle. He was put in a temporary plaster and we were given instructions for today. He is going to the specialist unit at Middlemore this morning. Diana has had to take the day off work to take him. He could be out of water polo for six weeks, which could hurt his preparation for the Pan Pacs.

It is my business partner Peter Smith's birthday today.

I have forgotten to mention that Katie broke her arm, I think nearly two weeks ago now. Told Diana last night. Oops.

Koos is still in Hong Kong, I think, I wonder if he went to the Sevens?

Oh, and when we did finally make it home, after 7pm, we did watch a nice movie. Kill Bill 1. The bride pulls someone's eye out with her hand (sorry, but she does).

Well, better go. I hope everyone had a better week than Rory did.