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.
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