A series of unfortunate events - 28/08/06

LOCAL NEWS

Well, after saturation coverage the Boobs on Bikes parade went ahead on Wednesday. Diana went, because everyone at work went. Didn't sound like it was remotely worth the fuss. Great publicity for the dodgy expo, though.

An Invercargill parachutist went mental in his car and went off a 15m drop. Broke a couple of bones and knackered the car. Rescue services were none too impressed.

Very big news locally was the when a 17 year old remand prisoner was beaten fatally in the back of a paddy wagon. He was there because he had taken his mothers car without permission, and they felt that pressing charges would teach him a lesson.. Worse still, they refused bail as they thought a few nights in prison would give him more of a lesson. In the paddy wagon, there were 11 witnesses and one perpetrator. Or 10 witnesses and two perpetrators. As usual, the dead youth is a great loss, loved by everyone, etc, but seriously disliked by 12 other remand prisoners. I would hate to think how much guilt they have. Their final act as parents was to authorise the turning off of life support for him in hospital, possibly a better decision than the first two, but part of a rather unfortunate trio of events. Chubb Security were in charge of the van, and I would sue them if I was a parent (mind you, I think the parents need to be sued as well).

More rain in Wellington has resulted in a commuter train derailment (no injuries, I don't think). More houses have been evacuated due to mud slides.

Taito Philip Field is under threat again, the MP was recently "cleared" of allegations of dubious behaviour.

WORLD NEWS

We got to see the Olaf Wiig video about a hundred times, then we had the countdown to the deadline set by the kidnappers. He was finally released over night, thank goodness - no more Anita on the telly.

REAL SPORT

Hannah's water polo team were playing an under-strength Glen Eden team but were also missing a key player themselves. The Glen Eden team pulled away to a 9-3 win but lost by default because they were using too many ring-in players. The Glen Eden team is very strong this year.

Rory had a school game against Kaipara College, the team that got very nasty last time we played them and the game had to be stopped when one of their players was ejected for misconduct. This time it wasn't so bad, the game was very tight, no score in the first quarter, 1-1 at half time. Springs pulled ahead to 3-1 end of third and in the dying seconds the Kaipara team scored again but it wasn't enough and Springs won 4-3. Rory scored first and last goals, but he didn't think he was playing particularly well.

Hannah played for the 13th D2 soccer team on Saturday because they were short a couple. Hannah scored in the first half and was on her way to score again (only the goalie to beat) when the ref blew the whistle for half time, was very cheap. So they had a 1-0 lead at the end of the first. In the second half the wind came up and they were playing into it, they just couldn't get out of their own half. The opposition scored twice to beat them 2-1. Hannah was happy, though, she played well and worked very hard. The girls were quite happy she was there to help.

SPORT

The All Blacks won 45-26 against South Africa in Pretoria on Saturday night. Some serious injuries resulted from the game, about four ABs are out for a while.

I hadn't really noticed that the premier league has started again in the UK. Man Utd beat lowly Watford 2-1, Liverpool beat West Ham 2-1, Man City beat Arsenal 1-0 (without a stiff arm to anyone's head). Chelsea beat Blackburn 2-0.

We didn't win as many medals as expected at the rowing champs. There was only one gold, and the Evers-Swindell twins came third, which is a major surprise after winning gold four times in a row.

Auckland lost to Wellington in the rugby, I am really not keeping track of it all.

The Warriors won, the four point penalty for exceeding the salary cap would mean they had a chance of making the playoffs still, but they don't now.

MY SAD LIFE

Can I just say that I haven't received any chocolate yet. I am most disappointed.

Spring cleaning has been happening in the house, again. We reorganised a few areas including the bookcase, the entertainment cabinet, the DVDs and Cds, took a while. The kitty play house that Hannah and I built a good year or two ago had to be disassembled, which was a bit sad. We've managed to put the PS2 and Xbox into the cabinet so they don't hang out into the room like they did.

Spent a chunk of the week trying to get the PC going (still). Finally gave up, about five times ("I'll just try this one thing and then give up" - Not very self-delusional at all, really). Eventually I really did give up, about Wednesday night, and put a new graphics card into the PC that I did not want to ruin by loading games on. It worked, and still does, so Rory and I finally got to invade Poland, repel the communist hoard, bomb England, and destroy the heavy water plant somewhere in Norway.

Rory and a few cronies spent Friday at our place working on their "playstation tan", as they had a teacher only day at school.

Rory has bought himself an Xbox 360 on trademe (last night), after discovering a game he really likes on a friends one. He was trawling auctions for ages over the weekend. I suppose it is better than all the hassle with PCs and games.

Diana has been working hard on an assignment, which she managed to finish between visits to dodgy events.

Judy had took a tumble on Friday night, whacked herself in the head. The next day she got nine stitches in her forehead for a rather nasty gash about three inches long. She asked the doctor to take a bit in while he was at it, he did his best. She hasn't lost her sense of humour, which is a good thing.

I sent to letters as a consumer the week before last, one to Sealord when I found a piece of plastic tape in a can of tuna, the other a letter to Wendys wondering when they would reply to my letter of the 29th of May. I received responses from both of them but I have to say the Wendys response was barely sufficient to cover the value of what I had not been supplied in the first place.

We still have coffee machine #3 sitting in a box waiting to fulfil its destiny…… (Numbers #1 and #2 produced disgusting coffee).

Hannah's dance exams are over, thank goodness. Our activity levels are dropping fast with no soccer or dancing this week and a reduced dancing schedule from next week. She should found out what team she is in for club polo this week.

RANDOM ACTS OF POSTAGE

I received a revenge attack from Heidi in the form of a fluffy donkey from Guernsey, which was very cool. I don't understand why post companies don't promote this concept. Maybe I will talk to New Zealand Post.

TEN YEARS AGO

Gavin got a new PC, a Pentium with 40Mb of memory. I was jealous. Paul Holmes was at his grandstanding best trying to interview wanted fugitives, but police arrested the man before he got to be on the telly. A woman was shot twice in the arm by police after a hostage drama in Avondale.

The Maori Queen has died, end of the soccer season for Hannah - 21/08/06

LOCAL NEWS

On Tuesday, the Maori Queen (Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu) died at age 75. She was "Queen" for forty years. Not all tribes agreed, but there you go. So, for our sins, we have had nothing on the news but live crossing to the marae outside the gate, we've had a summary of the speakers inside, we’ve been subjected to speculation about her successor, told about road closures today, and it's all happened over and over again. The weird thing is that Maori royalty is decided by committee, it is not hereditary. Her successor was announced just now, one of her sons, so I suppose it is looking a little bit hereditary.

The Tongan King isn't in good shape either, it looks like Pacific Royalty would be dropping like flies for a while.

Olaf Wiig, a New Zealand cameraman was kidnapped in Gaza, although the media seem to feel he is more important because he is married to Anita McNaught, a former New Zealand TV person who also now works for Fox in Europe. It is quite interesting to see Anita being interviewed, half presenter half victim. He has been missing nearly a week.

The army crashed another unimog and lost another soldier.

Another slip in Wellington. Oriental Parade this time, very steep area. We seem to have houses sliding all over, they reckon 300 slips in Wellington (many quite minor, but still). It's not this bad normally.

Election overspending from the Labour Party seems likely to result in them passing retrospective legislation to make it legal. On every level, I find such a concept completely offensive. When a lawmaker breaks the law and then changes the law, that is completely wrong. It really doesn't feel far from election fixing and annexing neighbouring countries. I am deeply disturbed by this, and yet cannot see what can be done about it.

A missing Victoria University student was found floating in Wellington Harbour. It really didn't sound like he would be found alive.

A man convicted of running over a 24 year old woman has been jailed for 18 years minimum, while there are moves afoot to change sentencing to try and reduce numbers in prison.

Dunedin students celebrated the undie 500 (a race in underwear) with a riot on Saturday night and a clash with police.

Lots of violence over the weekend. A man died after being dragged 2km under a car, a woman was hit by two cars (boy racers) and died, a man died after an altercation outside a bar on Saturday night, it wasn't great, really.

Survey announced that public servants pays are rising faster than private sector. This combined with the fact that we have had 14,000 additional public servants in the last seven years and you have a seriously bloated public sector.

WORLD NEWS

The arrest of a really creepy guy for the murder of the 6yo beauty princess Jonbenet Ramsey about ten years after the event was quite big news. The whole child beauty thing is dodgy to the core.

REAL SPORT

Hannah's water polo mixed team, the Sharks, lost 5-7 on Friday night. We have too many players that can't actually play in a position they are asked to. There are three boys that can but the other three are rubbish, too much testosterone and no listening.

The girls team played St Dominics, who had beaten the Ponsonby 3rd Div team 14-0 earlier in the evening. The Ponsonby 3rd Div team includes three girls who play in the girls team so they were keen to extract some revenge. This came pretty quickly, with the Ponsonby girls scoring a couple of goals early, but the opposition staying in the game with a few goals themselves. It was a high scoring affair, Hannah worked pretty hard and score five goals, the final score was 15-7.

It was the last game of the season for Hannah's soccer team. The Dudettes (still hate the name) were playing a team well down the table, but nothing is certain. They scored fairly early in the first half, were 2-0 up by half time but that was down hill so I thought it might be a struggle in the second. They must have spent the first ten minutes of the second half in opposition territory but couldn't score. Finally after nearly conceding a goal they scored at the other end. About ten minutes from the end they scored their last goal, making it a healthy 4-0 win. They finish the championship round of the season with 6 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses. Fourth on the table guaranteed, third equal on points but fourth on goal difference.

Rory had two water polo games on Saturday, I missed the first one because I had to get Hannah to a dance practice. They drew 5-5. In the second game, they won 6-1. Rory scored the first goal.

SPORT

The All Blacks just managed to beat the Wallabies 34-27 at Eden Park. Lote Tuqiri has already been given a five match ban for dodgy tackle on Ritchie McCaw, who seemed to have been a target for most of the game.

Tall Blacks are struggling at the basketball world champs, although they play Angola today (where you get selected for the team of your choice if you have the normal number of arms and legs).

The Warriors beat the Storm 24-20 but it doesn't really matter.

Last golfing major of the year is in progress, Tiger Woods is just ahead of some guy.

Legendary cricket umpire Darrel Hare has managed to offend Pakistan during the cricket test against England. The Pakis wouldn't come out after tea, then when they did come out the umpires weren't there. The match has been abandoned and England have won, bet the Pakis are not happy.

MY SAD LIFE

Diana has read a book on 14 year old boys by Celia Lashlie, which frankly doesn't seem quite the bible that Diana thinks it is. Anyway, she continues to read us excerpts and then quote from it. Rory isn't too happy and I am getting sick of being quoted a woman who thinks she understands what makes boys tick. Hell, men don't even get it half the time. Whilst some things may be a little insightful, a lot of it appears overly generalised.

I am still coughing. Not really badly but enough to be annoying. I am drinking lots of water to help (little sips, often). People are beginning to think I have a bladder problem. I think it is now five weeks since it started.

Rory got his hair cut on Tuesday. It was pretty drastic. 55 grams of hair removed, he went from looking like a wookkiee to a convict (he got a number 1, after not having it cut hardly at all for a good year or more). All the lads in his class have had their extreme hair cuts.

Me and the kids washed the outside of the house on the weekend, only took a couple of hours (didn't do all of it, just the two sides in shadow). It looks heaps better, it really needed it. And the kids cooperated without nagging (although still pretty slow). They seem to have realised that resistance is futile.

Watched the rugby on Saturday night with Brett while we slapped his PC around.

Hannah has two dance exams this week, jazz and tap. Life will be easier once they are over.

Rory and I spent a chunk of Sunday trying to get a PC going to play a few games we both like. Although it was looking good about 7pm last night it all turned to custard. I am very pissed off and Rory is quite disappointed.

TEN YEARS AGO

The All Blacks won their first ever test series in South Africa. David Lange gave his last speech in Parliament. I sat a Compaq exam (my last, I think, never really used them to be honest). Ross had his tonsils taken out and wasn't happy.

I didn't mention the Jonbenet Ramsey thing, so it can't have been that big here.

I was still building the playground in the back yard. It would have been visible from space but Google Earth wasn't around then.

Well, that about sums it up for me.

Another pair of twins die, lots of rain, quiet weekend in sport - 14/8/06

Possibly a bit light but have to leave early for work.

LOCAL NEWS

Big fuss about some New Zealand wool being used for tennis balls in the US Open. What a load of bollocks.

Plenty of heavy rain continued. Big landslips in Kelson, Upper Hutt this week due to rain. Flooding in Christchurch.

900 people have got in trouble for trying to save moment by registering their cars as hearses. If they are fined it will cost a lot more than their saving.

An unnamed former Warrior and Kiwi has been charged with sexual violation. Whoever he is, he maintains his innocence.

Twin three month old girls died in Wellington on Sunday. There still has been no arrest in the Kahui twins case. It is beyond bizarre.

WORLD NEWS

Dean Jones learned that the microphone is always on when he referred to a South African player as a terrorist during a commentary in a cricket test. Some things you should always say with the voice in your head.

We got the continuous stream of updates and news and latest details on the arrests in the UK and the liquid explosives. I think very soon people won't be allowed on planes to the US.

REAL SPORT

Only real sport this weekend, apart from training, was Hannah's soccer. I didn't really enjoy the lead up to the game. There was a cock-up in field scheduling so we started half an hour late. The opposition parents were particularly stroppy. They gave Rory a ton of crap when he refereed in the first half, and then a parent told me off for telling Rory not to take any notice of them. Apparently, they were allowed to harass the ref but I wasn't allowed to give him support, which was complete bollocks. I was not happy. It doesn't happen a lot but some parents haven't a clue about what kids sport is about (although it probably shouldn't be too different to what professional sport is about).

They were playing the team below them on the table. The coach changed a few things around, put Hannah in defence and a girl who defends a lot towards the front. They had to defend pretty hard, but they got to put some pressure on the other team as well. They were 1-0 up at half time, and turned in to the wind and up hill. Much more defending in the second half. Hannah was very resolute, managed to clear a certain goal on the line. Finally, the full time whistle went, full time 1-0. Not completely sure but think they can't do worse than come fourth in the championship now.

One more game in the season for them.

SPORT

No tri-nations rugby this weekend, not sure why.

The Warriors won a game but nobody cares, they can't make the final.

The new rugby provincial championship continues. Waikato beat Canterbury 36-22, Tasman thumped Manawatu 43-0, Auckland beat Taranaki 29-3, North Harbour beat Bay of Plenty 25-7.

MY SAD LIFE

There have been reports of random drive-by prunings in Pt Chevalier. It appears that my mother can leave no rose unpruned.

Went mad this weekend, bought a couple of shelves and tried to reorganise my office a bit. Rory helped, but wasn't keen on it. Took a fair amount of motivation. We made some good progress but I have quite a bit left to do.

Big week for the kids, Hannah made the speech finals at school, a good result for her. I went along on Wednesday and watched the finals. Hannah came fourth, the only year 7 to get a place. She had a tough act to follow with Rory winning two years running.

On Tuesday we got garbled news from Rory that he had won a medal in the University of NSW English exam. This is a pretty good result. High Distinction is awarded to top 1% of results, medals to selected people in that group. There is a ceremony in Wellington on 5th December. The text he sent misspelled Wellington. He says it was only a text, but really.

The soccer rep team people were pretty good about Hannah pulling out, she should have an opportunity to go into the Centre of Excellence first term of next year.

Diana went to Sheep World with her class on Friday, she said it was better than you might think (it had to be from where I sit).

We had dinner with Paul, Gavin, and Yana on Saturday night. Diana hadn't seen Yana since she returned, although I popped in on Monday night this week when picking Rory up from the pool.

The Goodins seem to be coping with their commute to Pukekohe.

MY SAD WIFE

She's been stuck with me for 18 years as of yesterday (she made me say it that way round).
Send sympathy cards (in the form of chocolate) to:
Rob Clarke
Pt Chevalier
Auckland
New Zealand

Have a good week.

Not a lot of success in real sport, nothing really attention grabbing anywhere, really - 07/08/06

We have had considerable amounts of rain over the weekend.

LOCAL NEWS

A tropical illness was admitted to a Brisbane hospital suffering from an attack of Winston Peters. Unfortunately the attack was fatal for the illness but Winston survived. He thought a spider bit him on the butt.

There is a case running about some guy that was vomiting in the bushes near a gas station and was attacked by a police dog. He seems to have reason to have been very sick and in public, but the dog handler thought he was acting suspiciously. He lost a lot of blood, and was lucky to survive.

A woman that lost her uterus in some sort of accident is having ACC pay for a surrogate to have a baby for her. Interesting. I wonder if someone could get a concert pianist to play for them if they lose a finger? The ACC seems to continually lurch between being mind bogglingly useless at helping with the fundamentals but incredibly willing and forthcoming when it comes to the bizarre. They wouldn't pay for dental work for a friend of ours that bit on an olive stone in a Greek salad when all the previous olives had been stoneless because it was reasonably foreseeable that there might be a stone in any given olive. The accident of forgetting to bite carefully was not considered an accident and if it had been a piece of gravel and not an olive stone he would have been covered. Meanwhile, a couple who has additional children because a vasectomy was not successful get the entire education and outgoings of the resulting offspring funded by ACC (and probably all successive offspring of those offspring will be similarly funded).

There were a lot of fatalities on the road this weekend, about ten. The rain contributed I think.

Somehow a family got swept off the road in floodwaters in the North (did I mention it has been wet?).

A ten YO schoolgirl died near Clevedon when she got off a school bus and stepped onto the road in front of a truck.

Some trademe users have been caught out by a standard phishing scam. I cannot believe there are people out there that aren't aware of this technique. I have probably received about six or seven phishing emails, mostly for banks, all of which I do not bank with. Nobody legit ever asks for you password in an email. Ever.

An New Zealand man involved in that nasty drug trial thing in England back in March now appears to have cancer. Not sure that there is any proven direct causal relationship but it is implied.

WORLD NEWS

Iraq isn't getting much coverage. The rebels will have to step up the violence to get some media attention.

Fidel Castro is not well, but improving. No mention has been made of whether he was suffering from an attack of Winston Peters.

China wants to stamp out people laughing at "Chinglish" signs (where Chinese has been translated into dodgy English that native speakers consider humorous). There will be less laughter in the world.

REAL SPORT

Not as much real sport as a normal week. Rory was not well so didn't play for his club team.

Hannah's water polo team lost 2-5 to Liston. She played well, don't think she scored, played for defence. The girls team did not play.

Rory's club team won 4-3 on Friday night, and 6-4 in Hamilton on Saturday.

Hannah's soccer team were playing the top of the table team on Saturday. They scored first, which was good, but the opposition equalised just before half time. In the second half, Hannah went into goal, which I think was a really stupid idea. She had a sore arm from a vaccination and she is too important out in the field. She worked hard, booted the ball away a few times. One of the goals was very difficult for her to get near, the other was impossible. She had a lot more work to do than the goalie in the first half (not surprisingly). They lost 1-3. The normal goalie was away, she has been away both times we played this team. Not impressed about that either.

Hannah went to an U12 water polo training session on Sunday afternoon, then lurked with two other girls from school that play in her school team. They seemed quite happy (we had to wait a little while for Rory's game).

Rory played for school on Sunday night, he was feeling better. He played reasonably well, scored four goals, but the team lost 6-10. I think it is their last team in this league.

SPORT

The Silver Ferns thumped South Africa 94-25 in netball on Monday night.

Sri Lanka did manage to beat South Africa after their record breaking partnership. Those sort of games usually mean the pitch is tame and no result is likely, but Mulliah Murilitherran chucked his way through the batsmen, taking six wickets.

The Wallabies just beat the Boks in the tri-nations, which just keeps going on and on.

New Zealand Junior men's rowing eight won gold in world champs in Amsterdam. The women quadruple sculls came second.

MY SAD LIFE

Well, the letter arrived for Hannah from Soccer 2 about the Auckland Rep team. I was not allowed to open the letter, which was a bit rough. Anyway, she has been accepted for the "centre of excellence squad" which isn't quite the rep team yet (one final step away). Acceptance is to be written on the back of a cheque for $150 without knowing when the squad training is. She was very pleased, and I don't blame her, we were very pleased for her too. However, after serious consideration she is not going to take part in it. There are three trainings a week and they clash with dancing, school polo games, and club polo training. For her to do justice to the soccer, everything else would suffer. We felt pretty bad about it, but we gave her the choice, and she understands. If she wants to have a go at rep soccer next year we can reduce something else first.

Snuck off work on Friday and went to the museum with Brett to see the Vikings exhibit. It was good, but I think more swords and armour stuff would have been good. Ideal time to go, we arrived just as the school trips were leaving. There was only about six people in there when we went. One weird thing was an automated warning message every time we pointed to something on a map or anything (as our hand went over the security area). Some may consider me to be a little picky but I observed two things that were wrong on labels at the museum. One described the range of a torpedo as 3486 metres or 6000 yards (6000 yards is actually 5486.4 metres) the other was a large heading that said ANZACSs (given that ANZAC is singular, I am not sure it warrants an additional capitalised S). No wonder people hate me proofreading things. Perhaps Chinese officials should start making fun of English signs done by English speakers that are crap as revenge.

So the fallout from Rory's sleepover continued. Two of the attendees did not come to school for three days and then Rory was off school Thursday and Friday. Diana is not keen on repeating the exercise. Did not help that one of the attendees was sick and made everyone else sick.

We saw the Goodins briefly on Sunday. They take charge of their new company today. It manufacturers knitwear using mohair and possum mix. The stuff feels really nice, and is mostly sold to tourists. However, they do make brown cardigans, something that I can't handle. The company is called Lothlorian and is based in Pukekohe, which is a looong way from home.

Allan is off to the US (can't remember where, East Coast I think) for about three or four weeks). In four weeks, I believe the Goodins will have drive the equivalent of a flight to the US in commuting to Lothlorian. However, on the plus side they won't have been given any airline food, been strip searched by security, or risk deep vein thrombosis.

Found a cheque in Rory's homework diary. It was dated May. Then we looked at the diary. It hasn't had any entries made in it since early May. Talk about sprung.

One thing that I have been doing is using Google Earth to find places we have been. Can't find Heidi's house in Rotterdam, or Koos's either. Have found where I stayed in London, Mum's apartment, Penny's house, Judy's, a bach we stayed at in January, the West Wave pool (my second home), Gavin's house, all sorts. Can see our trampoline in the back yard of our house. Google Earth is a lot of fun.

I guess that about sums it up for the moment. Might do some news from 1996 next week.