Fatal cricket in Western Australia, while the Pakistanis work on their fatal politics and New Zealand plays death toll racing - 31/12/07

Farewell, goodbye, and amen, 2007 is basically knackered and we have to get used to a new date. I hate this interim period where you talk about "this year" and nobody knows whether you mean this year we are in or this coming year. We handle tomorrow and yesterday okay, you’d think we'd be able to cope.

LOCAL NEWS

It was a white Boxing Day in Upper Hutt, one person reckoned the hail was knee-deep. That's a heck of a lot of hail.

We seemed to have more drownings that road fatalities, meanwhile people seemed to get more carried away overseas (see below).

Four men tried to drown themselves in an over full IRB with a 2hp motor that conked out as the Waikato river was pushing them towards the bar. They had no life jackets or anything. One of their rescuers thought they were the stupidest people he'd seen in 30 years of rescuing. They were so embarrassed they failed to collect their sick boat, although it was probably stolen.

A clever 25 year old woman climbed a 1.8 metre fence, jumped in a covered swimming pool, and drowned herself. I think that makes the seventh drowning since Christmas Day. The road toll is slightly ahead at eight. Could be an interesting contest.

The New Years honours have been handed out. They are dull as ever, and all the sort of people you'd think had already got one. It seems that you get one if you were a politician or have been in the public eye for some other reason. Stupid concept.

A security review has revealed that Helen Clark's house has been tagged while under observation from the secret service and burglars hid on her section when being chased after being caught in the act. Good stuff.

Novovirus has hit 30 scouts at a jamboree in Christchurch. That would be a lot of fun. Camping AND rampaging disease. Wouldn't want to be on latrine duty there. Meanwhile, Legionella has been detected at a couple of Auckland buildings.

WORLD NEWS

A beach cricket game in Perth got pretty serious when someone murdered another player.

In Seattle, Washington, someone went postal and took out six people. Well, technically, one of the victims was a postal worker so the murderer went for A postal and took out a few others on the way.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Friday could spell chaos in Pakistan. It gave us plenty of news for a few days.


SPORT

Well, the Black Caps won the first ODI against Bangladesh and then did so again in the second, although Duckworth Lewis got involved I don't think it really changed the result. Last game today.

Meanwhile, the boxing day test in Melbourne was over in four days and the Aussies showed that they are the best and 2nd is daylight. India didn't stand a chance. It has to be pretty boring for Australians if they know they are going to win (15 in a row now).

Chelsea had a 4-4 draw with Villa on Boxing Day, three players were red-carded, Chelsea won 2-1 on red cards. Man Utd beat Sunderland 4-0, Wigan beat Newcastle 1-0, Spurs beat Fulham 5-1 and Liverpool scraped home 2-1 over Derby. Arsenal had a 0-0 draw with Portsmouth (think it was Portsmouth).

Over the weekend, Spurs continued their high scoring theme with a whopping 6-4 win over Reading. Man Utd shocked everyone (who cared) by losing 1-2 to West Ham, after being 1-0 up, Chelsea beat Newcastle 2-1, and Arsenal beat Everton 4-1 in a game with ten men on each side.

MY SAD LIFE

Christmas passed pretty quietly around our place. In fact the whole week has been pretty quiet. Rory disappeared to Coromandel with Maddie on Thursday. Diana sent him a text saying "you having fun? You eaten all their food yet? Been on a blo-cart? Missing us?". The reply was "Yes. No. No. Naaah." Such eloquence. I am sure food is lasting longer around here. There was discussion of him sleeping in tent with Maddie. I am pretty surprised her parents allowed it but realistically I am not sure I would want to share a room with him, and he's my son.

Hannah and I have been swimming pretty regularly, went four times this week. In the heat it is quite nice to cool off, and it has been quite hot.

We have managed to see some people this week, like the Bambis, Goodins, and Coshs. In between we've been doing a few jobs around the house, nothing very inspirational. Diana and I did manage a walk around the Western Springs lake on Thursday. Diana has been trying to fumigate Rory's room so that it doesn't reek like teenage boys armpits. I am not sure that is remotely feasible.

One thing that wasn't humdrum was that we did go explore a large Russian sailing ship Pallada that was in port, it was big (holds passengers and crew of about 180). There wasn't much info about, other than some about the Pacific Fishery in Cyrillic (so, pictures, basically). The Soren Larson was parked next to it and completely dwarfed by it.

Diana and Hannah went to a movie, while I went to the main city library. The Monty Python sketch comes to mind. They have rearranged things and now the novels take up a tiny amount of space and it feels like they have done little more than squeeze them in, afterthought style, after they made room for the teens, kids, computer games, dvds, magazines, and display of native nose rings from upper Gambia. "Funny, you've got a lot of books here"………….

Diana did buy a couch on Boxing Day, two actually, but they are both the same. They arrive later this week. All part of the vicious circle of death that was started by getting the new table, because nothing matches. The next item needing replacing in the coffee table. I am really not looking forward to finding out what else doesn't go.

Hannah bought a bikini this week, which is a bit of a difference from what she wears swimming at the pool (two pairs of togs, it's a polo thing, her and Rory both feel undressed if they wear only one, even for training or just swimming). She is cleaning the cars in it as I write this.

We leave for a holiday on Friday, I am hoping I can get connect to outside world to send next Monday's edition. I may have got around to New Year's resolutions by then.

Haven't heard from Jono yet, where are you, you bugger? Come see the new couches (they are now arriving today).

Paul's still in Singapore, and very quiet.

Parkinson's sufferers feel at home in Gisborne, Hannah gets surprised - 24/12/07

LOCAL NEWS

Sizable quake near Gisborne on Thursday night was the answer to all the prayers of local news services experiencing pre-Christmas lethargy and a paucity of actual news (which doesn't normally stop them). Couple of buildings collapsed, one elderly lady died. There were a couple of aftershocks over a couple of days, one was big but not that big.

Nasty tourist bus crash up north where a bus load of oldies got rolled by an out of control dune buggy, no fatalities but not a good end to a day out.

The dreaded electoral reform act was passed into law. The Herald continues to say how bad it is. At first impression it doesn't seem to be a biggie, but it's not good.

A survey shows the majority of apprehended felons have dodgy substances in their bloodstream. Hardly surprising. I thought the theory was people mostly did burglary to fund drug habits?

The local Burger King got smacked for showing a ceramic coffee cup in their advertisements but supplying coffee in a paper cup. Good job. Kind of funny, when you think about it. If they never serve it in a proper cup then the ad is a complete misrepresentation.

We've had a flurry of "shame it was at Christmas" stories. Dumping kittens or losing a loved one in a car accident is not worse at Christmas, it's bad regardless. How come nobody cares when it happens at Easter or on Queen's Birthday? It's just vacuous and repetitive.

A gang of badly behaving santas forced a cinema to close in Christchurch. Terrible thing, giving Santa a bad name (remember Santa is an anagram of Satan).

WORLD NEWS

We had a weird story about how the Queen is now the oldest Monarch that England has ever had but she must have started late because she has about eight years to get the longest reign.

SPORT

The cricket happened. We don't discuss it. Aussie are good. New Zealand are not. Why have any coverage of it at all? Why even play the game, we know they are crap. Now we have Bangladesh coming. Not surprisingly they beat New Zealand in a 20/20 game. If we lose to them can we stop having so much coverage of the cricket?

Liverpool had a 4-1 win over Portsmouth for Christmas, Arsenal beat Spurs 2-1, Man Utd beat Everton 2-1 and Chelsea snuck past Blackburn 1-0.

MY SAD LIFE

Hannah had her graduation on Wednesday, her last day as an intermediate school kid. They had the graduation dance afterwards, and she got dressed up for the occasion. There were lots of tears, the crocodile was exhausted. I helped her find shoes on Tuesday, but I don't think she liked them.

Speaking of shoes, we also got some shoes for me. They are pretty far out, Nike Air Force Ones in two tone brown and orange. Ten things you can say about them:
- if I walk through vomit, it won't show on the shoes, even if there is diced carrots in there (which is could because they can induce vomiting and are basically a cure for not being bulemic)
- at least nobody will think I am gay, gay people have taste
- the advantage of being tall is I am a long way from the shoes
- they came with free sunglasses, ear plugs, and a health warning
- I can leave my fly undone and nobody will notice
- I did try to donate them to the salvation army, but they turned me down
- Somewhere, there is a blind person that is missing their shoes
- If I leave them in the sun, they should fade sufficiently in 18 months so that I could leave the house in them
- I can leave them anywhere and the risk of them being stolen is zero (although there is a very high risk they could be binned)
- If they were a horse, they would have been shot
- At least when I wear them people know to not ask me for fashion advice

Thursday night, Hannah had a surprise birthday party. What's that, you say? Her birthday was actually three months ago? That's the perfect way to ensure it's a surprise. We've been busy, okay? We took her to Prego, our favourite restaurant, sat down, then her friends popped out of nowhere. We left them to it, they had dinner together. We sat at another table, the other side of a chimney so we weren't hovering (couldn't even see them). The waiter kept us informed, which was exceedingly useful (in terms of how they were going with mains etc) and he passed messages to them (like that they could have hot chocolates with their dessert). He also told us that Hannah had ordered a latte and we got it modified to decaf. I think they really enjoyed it, probably first time any of them had been to dinner without an adult at the table. We left the restaurant about ten minutes before them, bumped into Allan and Jaqui who were celebrating their 32nd wedding anniversary (32 years, crikey). We returned to pick them up and take them home. I think it was unusual enough to be considered a good event. They then stayed over night and proceeded to use each other as Barbie dolls and did each others hair.

Friday night we staggered up to the local garage for the Christmas party. Rory brought Maddie, Raf, and Cassidy, although they were a bit nervous about all the grown ups and disappeared. Then they showed up finally, had three beers each (not large ones, but they inhaled them and they were 6.3%, made by local brewer who we've known for a long time) and disappeared again. Graham Brazier sang some songs, which makes sense because what else do you do with songs? (apart from write them and download them)

We went to another local barbecue on Saturday night with some of the regulars, mostly ex-Rangitoto College people. Went to see some lit up houses on the way home, which were nearly as impressive as the much vaunted Franklin Road in Ponsonby, but less crowded and faster.

It was Jono's birthday on Sunday. I thought it sucked having a birthday in early December, but on Christmas Eve Eve is worse.

Brett is off to Truk for a diving holiday.

Funny how things change. Wrote the bit up top about things happening at Christmas and then Mum's friend Sue Casey died on Sunday. She'd been fighting a losing battle for a while, but it's still pretty sad. Just tricky with Christmas organising funerals.

A quiet weekend without Hannah in the house - 17/12/07

Is it just me or has bugger all happened in New Zealand this week?

LOCAL NEWS

A hair salon had a car driven by an elderly woman come through the shop window, nobody was hurt. They thought it was a mirror breaking before they saw the car in an unexpected place.

Convicted triple murderer William Bell got the bash in prison, and headed for hospital. Then turned out that it was an escape attempt, except his accomplice was waiting with weaponry at the wrong hospital, and the injuries were just a little too convincing. All quite bizarre, really. How they found a woman with a gun at North Shore hospital, I don't know.

Been some weird story about New Zealand First political party donated money to Starship but not sure how or why because it was a fine for election spending so I don't understand why they could give it to any old recipient. Starship gave it back. It's all quite confusing.

Two recent political polls show National are ahead of Labour, it's not really surprising. Labour have done their dash, too many things have really pissed people off.

A man died when a trench collapsed on him. Why do they ever get in them?

WORLD NEWS

Lots of coverage of a sentence handed down to nine men who raped a ten year old girl. They were all aboriginals, and most were also below the age of consent. No custodial sentences were given but some were given suspended sentences which required good behaviour for a year or so.

Oil spill in South Korea has been an environmental disaster, the cause was a real cockup too.

The Bali climate change conference was the biggest oxymoron of the decade. Thousands of people flying there to reduce emissions, sheesh.

The Spice Girls are playing in England. Many feared the reunion would happen, and it has. Their UK appearance has been increased from one to sixteen concerts. So much for reducing emissions. They were the first band in UK to get a gong from the Queen for their services to music for breaking up. I wonder is she will want it back?

Some odd news about Terri Irwin and Australia Zoo being in legal proceedings, not sure if it is bollocks or she's been naughty. Crikey!

REAL SPORT

Hannah had six polo games at the National tournament. General feedback is that she played pretty well. They won their first game beating Maranui 8-2, lost their second to Tauranga 4-6, drew the third 3-3 against Marist, beat North Harbour 12-4, Mountfort Park 8-1, and Rotorua 6-4. This put them 5th, which isn't bad I guess for a pretty young team, six of the eleven players will be there again next year.

The highlight for Hannah was being named as a trialist for the New Zealand under-15 girls team, thirty girls were named so there is a bit of a way to go but it is still quite an honour, especially as she will be u-15 for another year after this one.

Meanwhile the boys top team was expected to repeat the gold medal win from last year with five of the team from last year coming back. They had a shock loss in the semi-final, so ended up coming third.

Also, Hannah's other club team are playing in the B Nationals, and doing very well, having conceded two goals in their three games so far and scored about 40. Final is tomorrow.

SPORT

The Black Caps received an old fashioned towelling from the Aussies in a 20/20 game. Sportscasters tried to convince us that we had a chance but it was never going to happen. I stick to my previous view that they are underprepared and undercapable. We then lost the first ODI, then rain saved us in the second on Sunday. In South Africa they had an ODI shortened to 13 overs, how stupid.

Robbie Deans was confirmed as the Wallabies coach. I have a bad feeling about this. It made the news, a lot, before and after.

Wigan v Blackburn was a heck of a match, Wigan won 5-3, one guy red carded and two hat tricks. Man Utd beat Liverpool 1-0, didn't think they would win. Arsenal beat Chelsea 1-0.

MY SAD LIFE

Rory had activities days this week, not sure why they just don't send the kids home. He did paintball and windsurfing for two days. On a third day he went to the beach. Friday was prize giving, and what a total and utter waste of time that was (see below for general moan on the subject).

Hannah left for Wellington on Wednesday. I did not. Long story, but politics is completely lame and doesn't belong in sports clubs and I wasn't going to fork out $500 so someone could avoid offending someone else. Given that the potential offendee is largely offensive, it seems all the more ridiculous. This gave me more time at home than I was expecting, and was possibly a good thing. Hannah seemed to more than cope (like, I am not sure she would have noticed if I was there).

Rory and Maddie have been spending quite a lot of time together, but she was away in Christchurch for a wedding this weekend so he was at a bit of a loose end. This meant we dragged him along to Koos and Julie's barbecue on Saturday night, and he actually enjoyed himself. It was good to see everyone. Rory drove out there, actually got him doing a bit of driving over the weekend.

I mentioned the prizegiving earlier. Basically about 66% of the junior school got a prize. They called out each kids name (in alphabetical order), while they walked up they read out what they got prizes for (so if more than one, they got them all at once) and then they sodded off. So rather than calling out prize then winner, it was vice versa, which just seemed weird. The other problem was that some kids seemed to get a ton of prizes (Rory got four, three achievement in maths, media, and PE and application in English, application means effort, and god knows how he got the effort one because I am not sure there was a lot of effort involved) and others (one girl we know who is exceedingly hard working and talented) got nothing. So while they devalue the whole prize thing there is enough of a vestige of recognition to piss off those that have been weirdly unlucky. What a stupid concept. I have just about decided that prize givings are completely outmoded.

Saw Matt & Kristy on Sunday. Matt's cat Entrée died this week, she was a funny old thing, tended to moan a fair bit. Seemed quiet without her.

Hannah has graduation, prize giving, and a dance thing this week, when she returns from Wellington today. Rory has nothing at all, which is good because he needs to do some Christmas shopping.

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of us buying our first house. This is also the case for Ross and Kath who moved in to their first house the same day as us (well duh). I am not sure how this is possible because none of us are old enough for this.

Picked Hannah up from the airport. She was pretty tired, but pretty happy.

Lots of people leaving on an unplanned basis and both sides of water polo finals - 10/12/07

LOCAL NEWS

Double murder accused Chris Kahui was not wanted in a town away from Auckland when released on bail, again. He's not Mr Popularity.

A fourth person died from the motorcycle versus campervan crash last week. The Austrian driver of the campervan pleaded guilty to six charges. I wonder how many motorcycles you have to hit at once to get a strike?

Nicky Watson's dog has been found, although it is no longer alive. A sad end to a sad story.

The body in the suitcase guys got 18 1/2 years each.

The housing price boom appears to be over, with an actual drop in the average price of a house reported in November. It's long overdue.

A large sailing boat was missing on a trip from New Caledonia to Auckland with ten people on board. Wasn't looking good, but they found it safe and sound.

A 13 year old was killed by a car near Ohinewai.

An experienced female diver died in a simple dive, having done everything right. They don't know why.

Graham Henry was reinstated as All Black coach. I think it is a mistake. Robbie Deans is now expected to go to the dark side. This is also not good.

There were two fatal stabbings and a murder within an hour over the weekend, including one guy on his birthday. Quite bizarre.

Interesting set of conflicting stories this morning. Hydro-lake levels in South Island running low, and heavy rain warning for Fjordland.

WORLD NEWS

It is two months since Steve Fossett disappeared. Guess they won't find him. I am quite surprised they haven't. Perhaps he was abducted by aliens. It just went awful quiet, so I decided to check it out and there has been nothing for a while.

The teacher jailed for her students name a bear Mohammed was freed early. She really is a silly woman and her daughter looks like that guy from Little Britain.

Some woeful survey by AOL has labelled Pamela Anderson as the sexiest woman ever, what an awful waste of carbon emissions.

The mass shooting in Omaha, Nebraska raises an interesting question. If it happens often enough to become commonplace, it won't be news, and the perpetrators won't be famous. Like streakers. Wonder if not reporting it would work?

REAL SPORT

Relatively little sport this weekend. We did go to Tauranga for two games on Saturday, this was for Div B for Hannah. They won their semi-final 7-0 and their final 7-0. The final was Waitak B versus Waitak C, which was pretty unusual (Rory played in a B v C semi final a few years back where C just managed to beat B, but that was even more extraordinary and they got thumped in the final). Hannah scored one goal as goalie in the second game (putting the team 2-0 up, in dying seconds before half time, giving them a bit of breathing room) and another when out in the field in the final. Girls scoring goals from goal is exceedingly uncommon at that age. They conceded one goal in the whole competition, about nine or ten games.

Didn't go so well at the A finals on Sunday. They lost 1-3 in the first game and 0-3 in the second game. They were missing a key player, but it shouldn't have made that much difference. Hannah did pretty well in goal, making a number of saves but it is hard to win two games when your team scores only score one goal. The difference between the A and B results is marked, I suppose it is the calibre of the opposition, but you have to wonder how they would do against each other.

So Hannah finished the weekend having won both games in one playoff and none in the other. At least she got a medal for the wins.

SPORT

Still bugger all sport out there at the moment. Because of the World Cup there isn't any end of year tour to Europe for Southern rugby teams. Not that I would watch the rugby, anyway. But let's face it the cricket isn't great, either.

Middlesbrough beat Arsenal 2-1, Man Utd beat Derby 4-1, Newcastle had a win (2-1 over the Brummies), Liverpool lost 1-3 to Reading, Chelsea beat Sunderland 2-0.

MY SAD LIFE

My birthday was a bit of a non-event. Business as usual, really, other than some nice emails. Didn't even manage a lunch or anything. Did have nice dinner though.

Elsie, Diana's Mum, came over this week. She's being a guinea pig for an arthritis drug, so they had to give her a full medical exam. They were terribly worried that they couldn't find her medical records at the hospital, but it turns out she doesn't have any. They wanted a list of the drugs she's on but she isn't on any (except for the arthritis in one knee). She's doing pretty well for 85. They were pretty surprised she had no medical history to review and the last time she was in hospital was giving birth to Diana.

I got a toaster for my birthday, it is about two steps away from being a talkie toaster like in Red Dwarf. It has an LCD display, beeps when done, and has it's own IP address and blue tooth (okay, that bit is a lie, but just about).

Plans for the trip to Wellington need to be underway, as Hannah and I leave on Wednesday (back next Monday).

Ollie has been a right pain in the rear in a number of respects, he caught three birds this week, and a skink. He has also been waking us up in the night.

The trip to Tauranga was pretty smooth but five plus hours driving in one day is a bit much (although I know Ross and Kath do half that every day going to work).

This weekend just gone was the anniversary of the chlorine poisoning affair. The weekend before was Gavin and Yana's first wedding anniversary (the 1st December I think). Maria is making early crawling attempts, she is five months old.

We seem to be having sewerage issues again, when it rains it is worse. It's not good. In fact, it's no go. The plumber has just been, much to my relief (read in to that whatever you may). We just can't tell if we have a long term problem, but we are all go again (yay).

Rory had the rest of his exams this week. He did well in maths, but got marked pretty savagely in English (got an "achieved" for one question because he chose a movie that wasn't on the list of two that wasn't actually in the question but stated in class when he wasn't there, he got "excellence" for the other two questions, and that is a bit of a crock). The NCEA style marking gets a Gay+ from me, I just don't see how people can get something out of "Merit" and "Excellence", what's wrong with 83%?

I swam 4ks this week. Haven't been swimming enough lately because of various things getting in the way so been sneaking off during the day, because things are quietening down for the end of the year. I think I am back in the zone, can knock off 50 lengths in just under half an hour. It was a struggle a couple of weeks ago.

Hannah has about four days left of being an intermediate kid. She has orientation at the new school tonight. I will attend to wave water polo flag as we need a bit of a recruitment drive.

Motorcycle gang takes on campervan and comes second, knives in the playground, the end of intermediate polo - 03/12/07

Had a few non-stories in the news this week

LOCAL NEWS

Well, late Monday night police had found a body in Christchurch. They took a while to confirm the identity but everyone knew who it was going to be. Then they apprehended someone and charged them with Emma Agnew's murder despite not naming the body, so we worked that bit out.

Meanwhile, fire-fighters found an elderly woman bound hands and feet in a burning house. Not nice. Police reckoned it look a professional crochet circle hit.

A real estate agent got stalked after someone took a liking to her. Can't say many people are too concerned. Real estate agents are scum. Sure, it's not nice, but if you are going to put about a photo-shopped photo of yourself and a mobile number you are really making it easy. I feel like we are stalked by the whole bloody industry with all the dodgy personalised messages they send us.

We are having a run on incidents with drink driving mums being apprehended with 1-6 toddlers unbuckled in the car. About four so far. Funny how news media latch on to themes.

The step-daughter of clothing designer Trelise Cooper has been done for using P. Yet another celeb offspring story. We are still getting Millie Holmes things now and again.

Cleavage legend Nikki Watson has lost her Chihuahua. This made a prime time news, where she was interviewed live (although live is not really apt given that she is clearly not far from brain death). She said she must have called out for it a million times. "You're hoarse?" says the interviewer. "No, my dog" she replied. Very sad. A t-shirt saying "All this and brains too" would be illegal for her to wear under the trade descriptions act.

Helen Clark was sprung texting during a speech by the Queen. Not good form, exceedingly embarrassing in fact. However, her polling with youth increased because a) she was cool enough to be able to text, and b) she was cool enough to "dis" the Queen. But let's face it, Helen seems to be pretty sure that she is the most important person on the planet so I can't see her being too concerned either way. She has since denied the whole thing and it has died off a bit.

The electronic media let themselves down this week by reporting that 0800 DAY OFF was all the IRD staff had to do to get a day off. Meanwhile, everyone got told that they still had paperwork to complete when they returned to work so the whole thing was a load of bollocks.

A knife incident at Hannah's school was reported in the paper on Saturday. He was threatening to use it on a girl at school on Friday. He also posted threatening messages on Bebo pages of two other girls, including Hannah. Both Hannah and the other girl were at polo on the day on the event. He has been expelled, but he will be attending Hannah's school next year.

A two year old drowned in a public pool in Auckland. I would personally like to see the adult that was supposed to be supervising the child be charged, but suspect that won't happen. There are signs around every pool about ages of kids at which they must be monitored by a parent or person over certain age. I am surprised it doesn't happen more often.

Nasty accident with campervan and a bunch of motorcyclists. Three died, several were injured.

10 medals, including nine Victoria Crosses, were stolen from Waioru War Museum. Pretty cynical theft, not very nice. Now being described as a crime against the nation.

WORLD NEWS

Some stupid woman was jailed for 15 days for letting her students call a teddy bear Mohammad in an Islamic country. Why the students were not charged, I don't know. She wrote a letter to the parents telling them, silly cow.

Friday was international computer security day. Not sure why we need one and if anyone cares. Meanwhile an New Zealander was revealed to have been part of a botnet scam ring that has cost people $26m. We are so proud.

REAL SPORT

We had another weekend with plenty of sport. I won't call it big because that would suggest it was more than the weekend before or after and that might not be true. It started Thursday morning and finished Sunday. We drew our first game, lost the second two, which put us out of contention for the championship and we qualified bottom of our group. We then proved that our group was pretty tough by beating the bottom two of another group then beating the top qualifier from the other side of the draw to make the final against a team we lost to in group play. We managed to reverse the previous result beating them 2-1 to win the A Grade plate. It showed that our group was a pretty tough group to be in if the bottom qualifier could beat everyone else from the bottom half of all four groups. Shame we didn't get a crack at anyone else in top half of the other groups.

So, that's the end of Hannah's intermediate polo career. It is likely Rory will be coaching the top team at Ponsonby next year, so it is not off the radar completely.

Final junior high school games were on Sunday night. Avondale defaulted midweek so the boys didn't have a game. Then MAGS couldn't field a team so the girls won by default as well. Disappointing but low stress.

So, only eight games this weekend, and I think Hannah has about four next weekend which is practically nothing, although two are in Tauranga.

SPORT

The biggest sport this week was the David Beckham led LA Galaxy against the local Phoenix team. Over 31,000 people attended. LA Galaxy won 4-1 but I don't think anyone cared about the result. Becks was in the news all week.

The Black Caps confounded everyone by levelling the series by winning the second ODI quite comfortably. They then lost the third, but not ignominiously.

Liverpool smacked Bolton 4-0, Spurs lost to Birmingham 2-3, with Robbie Keane scoring both goals then getting red carded so he did the classic hero to zero thing. Chelsea and Arsenal had wins, Man Utd play Fulham tonight.

MY SAD LIFE

On Tuesday, we wiped our mortgage. We still have an overdraft, but there is no longer a mortgage being paid all the time. It was pretty cool. About three weeks before the 20th anniversary of us buying our first house. Pretty scary to think it has been hanging over our heads that long. We also expect the OD to grow when we do things like replace the roof, if a contractor ever shows up to give us a quote. We got a letter from the bank, and then two days later they wanted to give us visa cards, which seemed kind of ironic.

Rory sat his NCEA Level 1 Science exam on Wednesday. Who knows how it went. Not sure he is very good at studying. No idea who he gets that from.

Another first for Rory. He cut himself shaving. Although he cut his ear, and I don't think he was actually shaving his ear. The good news is that it's not like anyone could see his ears anyway, they are lost in the hair. Maybe that's how it happened.

Hannah and Diana went to see the show "We Will Rock You" on Thursday night, they seemed to enjoy it. Rory and I stayed home, which was quiet but dull.

In between games on Friday, we took the team to Mission Bay where they frolicked in the fountain and the sea. We then took them to Bastion Point and they frolicked in the pond and then did other random things. They needed to let off a bit of steam, it was good for them.

It is my birthday today, and Charles' birthday tomorrow. It is also the fifth anniversary of toll free portability going live. Not bad for a system we designed a long time ago.

Movember ended on Friday, and on Saturday morning the beast was removed. I am almost back to normal, well, what I call normal.

Been doing a few things around the house in my spare time. Cleaning surfaces ready for spraying to get rid of flies, even painted a couple of things that didn't look any better after cleaning. Very domestic, it's annoying how things get tatty over time and you don't always notice. The problem is the list seems to get longer, rather than shorter.

Less than a month until Christmas, big wins at Intermediate polo - 26/11/07

LOCAL NEWS

The controversial Electoral Funding Bill was rehashed rather quickly and released this week. It seems to have slightly nicer styled jack boots and the swastikas are now painted a friendly pink colour.

Clint Rickards can now prove that he is not a bent cop. He resigned on Thursday so now he is a bent civilian.

They still haven't found the missing tall woman Emma Agnew, who happens to be deaf. They have searched the rubbish dump and scoured a nearby river with divers.

You have to wonder what is going on in some families. A 14 year old girl had her eyes gouged in an attempt to banish the devil. She is a cousin of the woman who died a month ago when she was drowned in front of her family. This is beyond belief and out of control.

Two ferry workers were crushed between a pole and a ferry at Devonport. They suffered broken bones.

Woeful weekend on the roads with ten dead. Not even a long weekend. One accident killed 15 year old twin girls at Western Springs near us. Another probably shouldn't count because it was an elderly man who had a heart attack and hit a parked car.

Helen Clark is in Uganda at the moment. After Idi Amin, haven't they suffered enough? Perhaps she is at a zombie reunion, I don't know.

You won't believe this but the whole Ben and Olivia murder thing has been raised as seriously needing to be re-investigated. It's about ten years since they disappeared.

Meanwhile Taito Philip Field is having his day in court today, actually wanting to have to the trial to clear his name before the election. He could actually be innocent, you know.

WORLD NEWS

The cruise ship that hit the iceberg was in the news for a few days. It was interesting because there were New Zealanders on board.

Kevin Rudd is now the prime minister of Australia, John Howard ousted quite predictably and ignominiously. You gotta know when to fold, as the song goes.

Ian Smith, the former Rhodesian Prime Minister (not the New Zealand wicket keeper), died this week. Some felt he didn't do a good job, but looking at how Mugabe is running things, perhaps he did okay.

SPORT

England will not be at Euro 2008. What a shocker. Have to support another team now, which is a shame. I don't know why I want England to win, but maybe one day they will.

The black caps narrowly lost the first ODI.

The men's hockey team did okay against Australia, but blew a 3-1 lead in the last game to draw 3-3.

REAL SPORT

Well, on Friday the finals night was upon us, finally. Firstly, I have to get Rory's juniors through a 5-8th playoff game, which they won about 8-2. Rory scored two. The intermediate kids were all pretty excited and very nervous. Our first game was the girls final, against Rangeview who were unbeaten through this year, won last year, and I don't think they lost last year either. Anyway, the girls went in and did the business, 4-0 up at half time, final score was a healthy 8-2 win. We were very pleased, and I got a swim in the celebration.

Then the Marlins, Rory's team, won 6-2 again to avoid the wooden spoon. The Piranhas had their final, it was closer than I was expecting, but we still lost 1-5. This made them runners-up which was still good. Finally, the Sharks played in the Div 1 final. This was an exceedingly tight game, with the other team having one particularly talented player who is prone to brain fades. The Sharks worked hard to give him little room, and they did pretty well before he was ejected for a brutality (punching Miranda Chase in the head, like I said, brain fades). At 4-4 we got a penalty, Hannah took it, and put us up 5-4. We defended to see out the game and take the win. I got another swim, and the team, the girls who played in both finals especially, were delighted. Afterwards we went to Wendy's to celebrate and made a bit of a mess.

Hannah scored one goal in the girls final and two in the Div 1 final, including the winner from a penalty (no pressure). She worked very hard, but it was only the beginning of the weekend.

I won't bore you with the details of the rest of the games, but in summary, Hannah played five club games in 24 hours. She was pretty tired at the end of it. They won four games lost one. She played pretty well, spent a lot of time in goal. For posterity - Teal v Waikato B 19-0, Gold v Waikato 7-3, Teal v Tauranga B 15-1, Gold v Tauranga 6-7, Gold v Marist Blue 11-1.

I finished the weekend with the junior girls playing Albany at the bloody awful millennium stadium. There were two flipper ball games going on in the pool next door, whistles going everywhere and so much noise nobody could hear a thing. Albany defaulted because they didn't have a team, so we leant them a couple of players and then they beat us 4-3. Junior boys and girls have one more game each this weekend, but Hannah has North Island Intermediates tournament starting Thursday. I think that means about eight games this weekend starting Tuesday.

MY SAD LIFE

An unusual moth sat on my window in front of where I sit on Thursday. It hung around a bit. On Friday there were two. They were trying to be one, if you know what I mean. I don't remember seeing them ever before, this particular type. They are called Magpie moths. They were there for ages. I took photos. Is that wrong? Then one left, and the other one stayed. Perhaps it was tired.

Got a bizarre letter from the power company this week. Because we don't have heavy use devices, they can't turn them off, so we pay more. See, if we don't have heavy use devices, then they don't need to turn them off, so we are good citizens all the time. They don't seem to understand why their approach sounds so ridiculous to me. But if I bought a spa pool then I would qualify. Lunatic.

Rory has theoretically been studying for his science exam this Wednesday. Not sure how much he has actually done. He hasn't been particularly useful, although he did rearrange his room (as an alternative to study). He finally drove out to West Wave for the first time, somewhere we go at least three or four times a week.

Ross rang me at home on Saturday, and asked where I was. I am worried about him.

It is Ben Tucker's birthday tomorrow. Seven years old. Congrats, Ben.

I saw Sarah this week, who is pregnant with twins. She reckons she can still reach the keyboard at work. I reckon she uses a pointy stick. She's healthy though, which is good. They are due end of January.

Movember ends this Friday, I am not sure how quickly I am going to shave mine off but I suspect it could be pretty soon after that. I look like an old git balancing a dead piebald ferret on my top lip.

Next Monday is my birthday, so I have re-installed the larger letter box in anticipation of all the gifts. It is a small shed on a stick with a very large slot.

Well, I don't know how I find the time to do this these days, which could be a feasible excuse for the lack of quality, but then again it's never really had quality anyway, has it?

My hovercraft is full of eels - 19/11/07

I would like to hope this is the first blog you have ever read with that particular subject. If yes, another first for me. If no, I will very disappointed. I couldn't think of anything else. Google the title and you will be amazed how many times it appears.

LOCAL NEWS

The herald went all political with front page editorials on a new bill around advertising and spending that could influence election outcomes. The whole thing is pretty dodgy.

A person dressed as a panda was hit by a car on Tuesday in Christchurch. This is a terrible shame because people dressed in panda suits are becoming endangered species, worldwide. Many would see that as a good thing.

A 20 year old deaf woman went missing on Thursday in Christchurch after liaising with someone who was going to buy her car. The car showed up, burnt out, which is not a good sign. I am not sure I approve of her constantly being referred to as "deaf woman". They don't talk about "fat woman" or "angry woman". It seems wrong.

Lots of excitement about the screening of Nai Yin Xue on America's Most Wanted, he's the guy that abandoned his daughter in Melbourne and left his wife in the boot of his car.

WORLD NEWS

A gunfight in Sydney outside a restaurant (who denied it was outside their restaurant) was also outside Penny's shop. She wasn't there at the time but staff were and one had a gun pointed at her. She was taken away by police for questioning and a change of undies.

Bangladesh got a bit wet and lots of people died, the death toll is 2,000 and rising faster than the water level. It's not that unusual.

The Japanese whaling fleet have left for the southern ocean. I don't really understand why people don't just go and torpedo their ships.

REAL SPORT

Had six games to manage on Friday night. Hannah's first was ten minutes before Rory's, so they ran concurrently. Hannah's team were in semi final for div 1, they won 9-3. Rory's team were playing Rutherford with a little help from four kids from two other schools. It ended as a 3-3 draw, Rory gave three cheers for Rutherford, Green Bay, and Glen Eden at the end, which I think got the message across. It isn't really fair having ring-ins playing like that, and certainly not within the rules.

Then the Marlins played, the team Rory coaches, who had to start without him because his game was still going. They were playing off for 5th and 6th, in best of two. They won comfortably in the end but made it hard work. The Rangby team then played, with all but one being Ponsonby kids, the cruised to a 12-0 win. Then my Piranhas played in semi final, needed a win to make final, which they made very hard work of but managed to score with 20 seconds left to win 3-2.

Finally, the girls played in their semi-final, which they won 9-2 against St Dominics. So, Friday night went pretty well. Mostly about getting three teams into the finals, which we did. Big night next Friday, our last night of Intermediate polo after four years.

Hannah's Gold club team had a pretty easy win on Sunday, 8-3 over Northsport B.

The Springs Junior Girls played a team that didn't show up, which was pretty annoying.

SPORT

The Silver Ferns lost 38-42 to Australia in World Cup Netball final. Nobody likes losing to Australia.

The Black Caps lost by an innings plus, again. Woeful. You’d barely know it was on and I think I know why. The only good news is that they can't lose by over an innings in the coming ODIs, although you never know.

England has a big game against Croatia to qualify for Euro 2008, this Wednesday. A draw should be enough but Rooney and Owen are both out with injury.

MY SAD LIFE

Well, my car cost $800 on Monday for just a service, funny how you always need to redo something (brakes, plugs, and so on). Then the ignition died on Thursday and I had to get towed home from Taylors, about 2km away. Being towed is not what I would call fun, considerably harder than driving. This is especially true when the car has power steering and power brakes and no power and the car in front is a sodding great big ute you can't see past. Cars are a pain. You sort of keep thinking it’s not that old then you realise it is ten years old and practically a junker.

Emma turned 21 this week, and had the big party on Saturday night. Was good do, but we couldn't stay too late because Rory had people staying. Emma looked fabulous, hair was done, the whole nine yards. Adam, her BF, made a good little speech. He said she wasn't always there to catch him when he falls, but she's good at taking him to the hospital (he did a dive off a balcony and smashed his leg a few weeks ago and did the speech from crutches). It was pretty funny.

Rory had three friends and Maddie stay on Saturday night. The three friends were basically there to legitimise Maddie's presence. She talked him into shaving off his sideburns, so he looks weird now. They behaved pretty well, which is good, so I got some sleep. Hannah was also home and kept an eye on them.

Rory and I had a go at my car's paintjob, trying to use cutting compound to improve the paintwork. At first it wasn't looking promising, but it improved. Of course, it isn't going anywhere at the moment so the exercise could be completely futile.

Hannah was in a weird mood on Sunday, so I took her out and somehow I ended up buying her a shirt in a geek store. Hmmmmm.

Giving it to Gordon and one for Jesus - 12/11/07

The explanation of the title comes at the end of Real Sport.

LOCAL NEWS

A children's toy, called Bindeez, includes a large number of plastic beads. If swallowed, the glue coating the beads releases a banned drug into the system. Why kids would swallow excessive quantities, I don't know, I presume there are rules about what age should be playing with them. They have been removed from stores. Why they were named after Steve Irwin's daughter, I don't know. Why they didn't get sick from licking their fingers or eating after using the beads without washing their hands, I don't know. The press were woefully thin on substance on this subject. They did not mention whether the stuff tasted nice, either.

The whole fireworks thing went sort of smoothly but there were a number of incidents that were pretty bad, arsons and personal injury.

Another Darwinian moment when a west Auckland teen accepted some cake from a complete stranger, ate it, then got sick. The cake was thought to be laced with drugs. Perhaps it contained Bindeez glue?

The man in charge of the boat where two kids drowned back in April was charged under maritime law this week. The whole thing was bizarre, where they were taking on water, hit rocks at speed, and the kids who noticed the water never got out.

A 22 year old Wainuiomata woman was drowned in her own lounge in front of 40 relatives in an exorcism designed to lift a Maori curse. I guess we will never know if it worked. Will be interesting to see if charges are laid.

Another not great weekend on the roads, four dead, none near swimming pools.

A man was enveloped in a ball of flame when he lit a paraffin lamp in an army tent at an armistice day commemoration in Cambridge.

A fire in a fibreglass factory last night wasn't so good. Fibreglass resin is really nasty, even when not on fire.

WORLD NEWS

We had more arrests in Fiji. A few more beatings of those in custody, but nothing fatal.

A scrap in Perth this week between Maoris and Aborigines resulted in a Maori dying. Is that a race war?

The mass shooting in Finland was most un-Finlike. The Shooter saved taxpayers money by dying of his self-inflicted wounds. The news kept saying he broadcast his intentions on Youtube "just hours before". I don't really get that. Did they expect more notice?

REAL SPORT

Rory had a tournament this weekend. We won first game 11-5 against Mt Roskill, wasn't really ever close. Rory and I went to watch Mt Roskill play the other team in our pool. They won 7-3 against Mt Roskill. I thought we could beat them. Rory got player of the game.

Friday morning we played Takapuna. Rory and I went to watch them play the night before so we knew what to expect. We beat them 6-5 to give up top qualifying spot in our group. Rory got player of the game, again. Then we beat Liston 5-4, who were second in their group. Marcella got player of the game. We never got any more they didn't seem to give them out at the Sacred Heart Pool.

The final group game was against another top qualifier, Hutt International, who beat Liston 9-1, so I thought we would have a tough game. We got on top of them early and maintained a lead throughout the game, winning 11-8. This got us top spot on our half of the draw, playing second from the other group in the semi-final.

It didn't go well in the semi-final, down 0-3, clawed our way back to 2-3 but couldn't catch Kristin. This put us into playoff for 3rd and 4th versus St Patricks Silver Stream. We were down early, 0-2 but came right and finished comfortably ahead 9-6. Nice to finish with a win. Hutt International, the team we beat on our side of the draw, won the final beating Kristin 7-0. Not one team was unbeaten in our competition.

At the end of any game, the teams give three cheers for the opposing team, one for the ref, and sometimes one for themselves. In this tournament, we finished with "One for Jesus". Interesting. They decided after the first win that they should continue with it. Another thing that became a tradition in the tournament, was figuring out who Gordon was (in the movie "There's only one Jimmy Grimble", Gordon's father manages the team in one game and just yells "Give it to Gordon" the whole time.) Therefore, the best player on the opposing team became Gordon. We would decide who we felt the Gordon was and then call out "8 is Gordon" or whatever. Sad but funny, a little. Should have said "One for Gordon" at the end of each game.

We then had a game for the boys and girls at same time in adjacent pools. The boys lost 3-8 to Avondale, the girls lost 1-10 to St Marys B. We were all knackered.

SPORT

The Melbourne Cup happened, again. A horse came first, again. The winner had a tenuous link to New Zealand, again. I really don't get how we all become obsessed with horse racing for about two days a year.

Man Utd beat Blackburn 2-0. Spurs won 4-0 against Wigan, Chelsea drew 1-1 with Everton. West Ham thumped Derby 5-0.

The Black Caps lost by a mere 358 runs in the first test against South Africa. Nobody sensible had any expectations at all, they are woefully underprepared and under strength. It seems The "caps" bit now officially stands for capitulators, I think.

The Silver Ferns played Malawi (fair dinkum, they really did) in their opening world cup match. It was about 80-20 or something. Cricket, Rugby, and Netball all have the same problem with world cups, the world is not big enough to have decent pool matches.

MY SAD LIFE

Diana had her exam on Tuesday, seemed to go okay, think she's happy for it to be over.

In between games on Friday, the manager and I took the team plus Hannah to Big Boys Toys. Hannah learned to pole dance. Hmmm, not sure I am too happy about that. The kids had a lovely time, sumo wrestling, climbing ropes, shooting each other with lasers, and so on. The lady on the Durex stand happily told me and Jane about what interesting additives their products now had, and we quietly said that it was all very interesting and we would both be sure to share that information with our respective spouses. To be honest, I am not sure some of it was something that I would feel completely comfortable discussing with my own wife (pretty sure Diana wouldn't want to know, actually). Meanwhile, the team were busy covering each other in some stuff that warmed up when you blow on it (yuck). The school van was decorated with up to 100 air freshening things, it looks quite Christmassy. Most of the free stuff was condoms, cough lollies, window cloths, and posters.

The WSC school sports dinner was Friday night. The build up for it was excruciating, it was a mission squeezing it in during the tournament. The guy running it was not knowing what time we would get there (results from each game dictated when the next would be). We did arrive just in time for the dinner, which was nice. We missed out on about an hour of speeches, which was nice. Rory got MVP for junior polo, a swimming prize, and a hockey stick spot prize, which was nice. The Senior Polo team got team of the year, which was pretty cool. Water polo has arrived at Western Springs.

I don’t really feel like I have seen much of Hannah over the last couple of days, she only came to one of the games, so she had a pretty quiet weekend at home.

I have been reading about Benjamin Franklin because of the crossword puzzle. He was a busy chap. He never patented any of his inventions because he felt he benefited from the inventions of others. Also been reading about Darwin, and watched the movie about the Hillsboro monkey trial (called "Inherit the Wind", I think Gene Kelly stole the show).

It is Helen's birthday today. It is Caitlin's birthday tomorrow (7, right?). It is also Elsie's 85th birthday tomorrow.

We did manage to visit Goodins for their barbecue on Sunday between games. The family was all there plus some of the regulars including Mr and Mrs Batenberg. Kath said they had heard from Charles and he is actually alive.

In amongst water polo, Rory has been writing a speech and icing his hand. Meanwhile, Hannah has a project thing due on Friday that was also being worked on.

This week Hannah has a touch tournament tomorrow and athletics on Wednesday. I may try visiting work today, I need the rest.

More chaos on roads, fireworks mayhem, an escaped axe murderer, and ice cream is bad for you - 05/11/07

Weather was glorious on Saturday, we drove home from the pool along the waterfront, it felt like summer. Then it all went horribly wrong and it feels like winter again.

Lots of bad news and tedium this week, sorry.

LOCAL NEWS

We had a car hit a train and kill the driver, and two trucks explode closing state highway 1 near Horotiu on Tuesday. Wednesday we had a warehouse on fire in Takapuna closing a major artery. Another fire last night burned out the historic Carlton Bowling club near the Domain.

It didn't get better on the roads, with seven dying over the weekend. That's a bad holiday weekend toll, but it was a regular weekend.

Meanwhile, a dental clinic was stolen in the Waikato. A mobile one. It was recovered without the equipment. I'm sorry, I just can't see how you could take a joy ride in a mobile murder house. Although I suppose it brought joy to those who were due to visit it. I take it back, it was a joy ride, for far more than usual. Perhaps the whole thing was a Robin Hood-style thing, but I doubt it.

There was a cabinet reshuffle, has been coming for ages, we were totally bored before it was announced and utterly indifferent afterwards. Then the Labour Party had their conference, much chest beating was done, tax cuts were suggested, meanwhile the country carried on without remotely caring. I don't think it's just me, I suspect most of the electorate has had enough of politicians.

12 year old girls and buses just don't mix. A week after the girl in Christchurch was blown in front of one, some nice kids squirted acid at a girl as they went past in a bus. The damage will require surgery, not good.

On Wednesday an 18 month old was run over and killed in an accident in Wairoa.

A convicted axe murderer escaped custody this week, but was recovered in a couple of days. The official line was that he "betrayed the trust of the wardens". Interesting. I mean, he murdered his wife, so he isn't considered a threat to the general community, but anyone serving a life sentence is likely to want to escape more than someone on a shorter stretch.

Ice cream is now more bad for you than previously thought, this A1 milk they talk about is even worse in ice cream. Yeah, right, whatever.

Fireworks went on sale later this year (for about four days instead of ten), but we still had noise and chaos over the weekend. A public display injured a couple of punters, too. I just don't see the point in them at all. Helen Clark described the area near her house as being like living in Afghanistan (she did specify I city, I forget which). I actually agree with her on something. I must need a lie down.

With Movember kicking off this week, we had news that a high percentage of New Zealand women prefer men to not have a moustache. A higher percentage of men prefer their women without a moustache. Is that a double standard? I don't know.

A couple of New Zealand soldiers were injured in Afghanistan after one of them accidentally discharged his weapon inside an armoured Humvee.

WORLD NEWS

There were reports on Friday that a man in Sydney was killed for watering his lawn. I am not entirely sure of the motive, but this does seem excessive. Surely lawn-watering is not yet a capital offence in Australia?

Meanwhile, a Canberra student is allowed to smoke at school due to the stress of exams.

There was a supposed failed assassination attempt in Fiji, not sure how much credibility it has.

REAL SPORT

Hannah's Sharks beat Rangeview 7-3, in a pretty tight game. Then the Ponsonby Girls utterly thumped Glen Eden 14-1. I think Hannah scored three goals between the two games. Rory's Marlins lost 6-7 in golden goal extra time. My Piranhas lost 3-8 against St Dominic's who are very tough and I think in the wrong division.

Rory's Western Springs junior boys played Massey and won 7-2 I think. Rory injured his hand skateboarding, didn't play much, didn't score but helped defend.

Hannah's Waitak Teal (2nd) team played Marist C, it wasn't pretty. 15-0 win, but there is a girl in that team (Olivia) that used to terrorise Hannah at school so it was a little bit of justice. Hannah got one goal, she was in goal for half the game. Her Waitak Gold team beat Mountfort Park A 10-2.

The Western Springs Junior Girls played St Mary's C and won 6-1. The dreaded Olivia scored the only goal against us, grrrr.

So, eight games over the weekend, we won six, lost two. Could be worse.

SPORT

Arsenal drew 2-2 with Man Utd, Gallas scored one for both teams. Portsmouth thumped poor old Newcastle 4-1, Chelsea beat Wigan 2-0. Liverpool had 0-0 bore with Blackburn.

I turned on the TV on Friday night to find a boxing match in progress between New Zealand hopeful Shane Cameron and some big African American called Friday. It was brutal and awful. Cameron's face got shredded and was knocked out in the 12th. It was like a slow motion car accident. I can't believe it is still allowed.

Great Britain beat the Kiwis 44-0 in the 2nd test. Not good. More like a fast motion car accident, as compared to the boxing.

Meanwhile the New Zealand cricket team lost to South Africa A in a warm up to losing against South Africa next week.

MY SAD LIFE

Rory fell off a skateboard and hurt his right hand on Tuesday. Eight days out from the first water polo tournament that Western Springs has ever been to. It's not that good yet, as coach and father I am not impressed.

Forgot to mention Thomas turned nine on Saturday 27th. He rang us on Saturday to tell us what he did with his birthday money, he bought the Transformers DVD, Rory was very jealous. Meanwhile, Kathryn has a special day on Thursday.

Helen J's birthday is next Monday. Have you set a date yet?

Brett has now been living in Melbourne a year, as of last Wednesday. Seems like longer, somehow.

Despite being too old for it, both the kids did trick or treating this week. After considerable drama, Hannah went before polo training, Rory went later (going early was better). Rory had one older lady say this to them:
A) you're too old, B) you're costumes aren't any good, C) I gave all my lollies to my grand kids, and D) it's too late.
To which Rory responded:
Well, the good news is you still know your alphabet.

Rory and the gang took his iPod with them with speakers and played "Monster Mash" in a loop. They had fun, hung around here afterwards. Maddie also visited on Sunday.

Mum returned from her south island trip this week, she was away for nearly three weeks.

Paul has bought himself a new camera, the Canon 60D. Scumbag.

Hannah is now going to learn to play the acoustic guitar. We went to have a look at them on Saturday and somehow we bought one. It's black. She can play a few tunes already because of what she has been doing on the electric guitar.

I am doing the Movember thing, not obvious that there is a moustache there yet, haven't decided on a style yet. Possibly the Mark Sainsbury, the David Boone perhaps, I don't think the Zorro is quite my style. Or I could just go for the more understated Helen Clark look, but I am not pale enough.

This coming week we have the North Island Secondary School tournament starting Thursday, and the Western Springs Sports Dinner on Friday night.

Over the weekend, I went to five different pools. A personal best for me.

Diana has an exam tomorrow, so she's at home studying.

Bad week for light aircraft, a bad case of wind, bad boys in parliament, bad luck for a small boy - 29/10/07

Consider this a bad week for some people and puns.

LOCAL NEWS

Terribly sad story this week about a mother of a ten month old who died of a blood clot, had the baby in bed with her, and smothered her son. Feel pretty sorry for the father, who was at work at the time. Adding to the tragedy, the photo of the woman and her baby was utterly hideous.

A rock with a swirl that supposedly looks like the virgin mary went on trademe for a ridiculous price. Who really cares.

Nasty freak accident where a 12 year old girl and her bike were lifted by a gust of wind in Christchurch into the path of a bus and killed. It must be that bus people are always concerned about. And of course, the deceased was an amazing person, vibrant and vivacious, etc, etc. Yeah, only the good die young, we've heard the song.

We also had a much-publicised punch up between cabinet minister Trevor Mallard and National MP Tau Henare after Henare made some comments about Mallard's personal life. Really pretty woeful.

A man's body was found in a burnt out car in a car park. The neighbours heard burnouts (as in squealing tyres, doing doughnuts). They made no puns about burnouts causing fire. They also didn't explore that someone else may have lit the car then did burnouts while it burned.

There seemed to be two or three light plane crashes and things this week, they all merged in to one. Some people died, some didn't, some were lucky, others weren't.

Auckland City Council are getting flak today for spending a million dollars on a new logo. To be fair, and I do not like councils, the million is probably mostly the cost of the new letterhead and other stationery which they aren't buying until they run out of existing so isn't really new cost.

A Christchurch man dragged a neighbour out of his burning house. He went in three times to retrieve him, and was in hospital for five hours afterwards.

Breakfast TV host Paul Henry described the coming cabinet reshuffle as rearranging the deckchairs, with old deckchairs and dodgy fabric. I like it.

We’ve continued to have stories about the terror raids and arrests. We've had protests and all sorts. It's rubbish.

WORLD NEWS

We got the updates on the California fire all week with the usual human uninterest stories and the politicians hugging the victims. Paul said it was pretty smoky.

A New Zealander is being chased by British police in relation to an attempt to defraud the bank of England out of $75 billion. Quite a lot, really.

Somebody has been trying to blackmail a low ranking British Royal but their attempt has been foiled.

REAL SPORT

Hannah scored the opening goal in the first game on Friday night, they made hard work of it but won 6-3. The Marlins, (the team Rory coaches), then just won their game 6-5 (they don't win many). Then Rangby won and the Piranhas (that I coach) won their game comfortably against Glen Eden 2. Good night, four wins from four.

On Saturday, Hannah had a Gold team club game. After the last one, a 10-0 loss, I was not looking forward to it. They were playing Marist A, and just won 4-3. Hannah did okay in goal.

Sunday Hannah played for Teal, she played half in goal and half in the water. They won 11-0 against Mountfort Park. Bit sad.

SPORT

There doesn't feel like much sport is happening at the moment.

The Kiwis lost to Great Britain 14-20 in the league test.

Liverpool drew 1-1 with Arsenal, Chelsea slapped Mac City 6-0 (ouch), Man Utd fared better than their neighbours beating Middlesbrough.

The Phoenix soccer team and Breakers basketball team both lost while playing in their respective Australian leagues.

MY SAD LIFE

For a while, on day three of Armageddon I was sitting there wondering what the heck I was doing there and so forth. Then I was needed for a couple of things (had to paint Matt's hair and eyebrows green, as you do), and I helped Hugh and Sarah on their stand for a bit, and so I was enjoying myself again. The kids finished with a bang, scoring a variety of items from posters and stickers to bags. They were particularly happy, and I admit that I did enjoy it, although I am finding some aspects pretty tedious now.

The freezer returned to us on Tuesday morning. I have never seen Diana so excited about an appliance. I shall have to consider some form of refrigeration equipment for future birthdays. Perhaps freezer packs or ice cube trays….

Tuesday morning, before school. Conversation with Rory.
Me: Have you asked Cassidy if he minds if you go out with Maddie?
Rory:
Me: You have, haven't you…
Me: Are you going to ask Maddie out?
Rory:
Me: You already are! I knew it!
Rory: (who was brushing his teeth at the time)

Now, it does not hurt now and again to put the fear of Dad into the children and make them realise that their parents are a) not stupid and b) possibly psychic and c) that attempting to hide anything from them really isn't a long term plan and it could easily backfire.

Of course, by Wednesday, the whole school knew. It was common knowledge amongst the van load of polo players I took to training. Everyone I know who knows them approves, so it will be very interesting. It's kind of nice. No pressure or anything.

Tuesday was a big day because we also got a new table (for a very low price, like cost of shipping), so there was more moving around. The unforeseen implication of a new table is that Diana now wants new lounge furniture to match. Every silver cloud has a grey lining, eh?

Rory got his new iPod on Friday so he was in geek heaven. I gave him a hard drive with the family MP3s on it, which contains about 160gb of music.

We actually managed to fit in some work around the house between polo games on the weekend. We filled the garden bin for the first time in about three months. Some cleaning and tidying things were done that were badly overdue.

LESSON FOR THE WEEK

Make sure you have a nice photo of yourself that you don't mind going in to the paper, should something unexpected occur. It's like the wearing clean underwear thing, but much more important.

Local terrorism exposed, and arguments over bollocks - 22/10/07

Sometimes there isn't much because I've been busy, sometimes because there isn't much worthy of note. This week is a little 50/50, I feel.

LOCAL NEWS

Not sure if I mentioned this last week but last Monday police arrested a range of people from various activist groups on firearms charges with speculation of terrorism related charges. They had Molotov cocktails and napalm, not exactly things you have a legitimate need for. People were bailed and unbailed, we had speculation of whether police jumped the gun, and the common response was that they'd look really stupid if these guys did something and police had to confess knew about it. It dominated the week. You really can't imagine how many ridiculous stories have been floating around. Maori Party Co-Leader Pita Sharples told us that arresting Maori for possessing napalm and other weapons put back race relations ten years. Meanwhile, everyone else felt that a) his comment probably had a similar effect, b) it put his credibility well in to the negatives, and c) that a bunch of militant Maoris with kalashnikovs and training camps didn't exactly help race relations in either direction.

There were a flurry of little earthquakes in the south island, and then it snowed on Thursday.

A stag's testicles became news. Some sheik shot it (the stag) on safari but they wouldn't let him have the bollocks because they wanted them for AI.

There were lots of nasty fatal car accidents this week. A motor cyclist went through a steel cable median barrier the hard way, called a cheese cutter by motor cyclists, you can imagine what happened. Would be good reason to stay away from them on a mother bike, you would think.

There were also many other accidents. A whitebaiter was swept out on the west coast and drowned, a trainee guide died while rafting, and eight people in a van near the Turoa ski field were hurt when it rolled down a 40 metre bank.

Tokelau, a set of three islands of 1400 people is voting on independence from New Zealand. They seem upset about it. They seem to think we aren't looking after them enough, so becoming independent will help that somehow. I don't really get it.

WORLD NEWS

As part of the plan for the election, John Howard announced tax cuts. I think he is leaving it too late, and the Labour Party here might learn from that.

Meanwhile the body of a boy was found floating in a Sydney pond in a suitcase.

REAL SPORT

We only had one polo game over the weekend, Junior Boys lost 4-9 to Westlake B. Rory got two or maybe three goals.

SPORT

Auckland beat Wellington 23-14 in the final.

South Africa beat England, again, 15-6 in World Cup final, Argies beat France, again, for 3rd. Bit odd with both games being repeats of earlier games.

Bizarre local derby between Liverpool and Everton. Liverpool won 2-1, scored all the goals. An own goal, and two penalties from red cards, Everton finishing with nine men. Villa v Man Utd not much better, Villa led 1-0 then was losing 1-3 before two red cards and finally lost 1-4. Chelsea and Arsenal both won their games.

MY SAD LIFE

Hannah had her interview for high school, was a bit of a non-event. However there were noises about her going to MAGS to play for their team and that made things messy, but maybe next year. We'll see.

Big pow wow at Rory's school about water polo on Thursday. The lady who seems to think she's in charge still doesn't get it.

Spent the weekend at Armageddon so far. Full day on Saturday, not so much yesterday. Went to a talk by Chris Judge who is Teal'c on "Stargate SG-1". Rory asked him to raise an eyebrow and say "indeed". The whole audience clapped at the question. We then went to a talk from Ellen Muth, who plays Georgia Lass in "Dead Like Me". She said there was a movie coming in summer 2008 US time. She wasn't quite as relaxed as Chris Judge, and seemed very like her screen character. The kids both basically disappeared for the day on Saturday with friends. One of Rory's friends drank 12 free energy drinks. Will be going back again today.

On Sunday, Rory drove us both to and from Armageddon. This was very much a first. We are making an effort to get him in the car because it just hasn't happened much lately. I think we will just have to make him drive virtually everywhere he needs to go.

Also on Sunday I went and did an hour of talkback with Alice Worsley to help her out, used to do it once a month, about three years ago now. Was easy enough, despite the cough.

We had dinner with Allan and Jacqui on Sunday night. The puppy is now larger than her mother. Emma's 21st birthday party is in mid-november.

Hannah and Josie are still like twins. Hannah stayed at Josie's on Saturday night. They have the same pajamas now.

Strange lasagne and is there life beyond water polo - 15/10/07

A frantic week, hence this is not war and peace.

LOCAL NEWS

Roger Kahui (not a close relation of the hapless Chris Kahui) was sentenced to prison for long enough that he won't need a change of address card before he dies, if you know what I mean. The man is a shockingly recidivist offender and has racked up over 100 years worth of jail time since 1985.

The mega-welfare fraudster got 5-8 years for his efforts, and Social Welfare got more back than he cost. His investments had grown, so the $3.x million he stole had grown to over 4. The judge observed that he could have become a millionaire without the fraud.

The government confessed to an $8+ billion surplus. It does sound like this is a purely profit-oriented figure and capital investment has to come out of that. I think maybe they need to report it differently so it doesn't sound so excessive. Perhaps a revision of some of the accounting methods would be appropriate.

All of a sudden All Black Doug Howlett was in disgrace, I am not sure what he did exactly, but he was inebriated at the time, at a hotel or outside a hotel, in London.

A 24 year old runner was killed by a hit and run and u-turn driver (those are ones that get attack of guilts and come back eventually). She was allegedly over the limit as well. The mother of the guy found out by looking for him when he didn't return as expected, although emergency services had already arrived.

John Banks has been elected as Auckland's new mayor. Great. Just what we needed, a re-tread. We were over-exposed to little snippets of lots of winning mayors all over the country. Given that only about 40% bothered to vote you have to wonder why anyone considered it interesting.

WORLD NEWS

Nasty traffic accident in California, ten people hurt, two dead, five trucks messed up.

Eight out of nine spelunkers drowned in a cave flood in Thailand.

John Howard is having a final go at re-election in Australia. It doesn't look good so far. He says that although everyone hates him they know him. Nice opening line.

REAL SPORT

Hannah was playing in the Tim Sonderer Memorial Tournament, involving about 40 teams. She was nominated captain, which she was very pleased about. We had a very girl-heavy team (six girls, four boys) playing in the open group (there was a girls comp too, but then the boys would have missed out), first two games were against boy only private school teams (Kristin and St Kentigern School). They won the first game 5-3 against Kristin, who were never close, and weren't too happy about being beaten by a bunch of girls. They then say Kristin beat St Kentigern, which was dangerous because they relaxed. However, they beat St Kentigern 3-2 qualifying top in their group, making the rest of the weekend considerably tougher.

Rory had a junior school game on Friday, and although he was cramping up a bit in the pool he was pretty devastating, scoring four goals for the 8-3 win.

Hannah's team struggled in the top six playoffs, losing both games. They both ended up being not close, losing 3-6 in the first and 2-7 in the second. In the second game, Hannah scored both goals, against a team predicted to make the final.

On Sunday, they were in control at 4-2 but just fell off in defence and ended up drawing 5-5 in the playoff for 5th/6th. Hannah scored one goal.

Then she had a club game, not pretty, against a team that has had an U16 season together already. They were taken apart, 0-10 loss. Not an ideal start for Hannah as goalie, but they need to score a goal to win.

Hannah's final act of the weekend was to help the western springs junior girls against Corran School, who were employing about every dodgy and pro tactic in the book. They lost 1-5. She scored the only goal and was in goal for one quarter.

Rory then had a game at 8pm, last one of the day on Sunday. They played Liston, 2-2 end of first quarter but we clawed back to win 9-3. Rory got two.

So, nine games, four wins, four losses, and a draw. I saw eight of them. Hannah played in seven. Big weekend.

SPORT

Wellington made it to the final after beating Canterbury 26-21. Auckland did similarly by thumping Hawke's Bay 38-3.

A soccer world cup qualifier between New Zealand and Fiji was postponed after Foreign Affairs wouldn't let the goalie in because of a link to the Fijian army. Fifa seem to have disadvantaged our team by depriving us of a home game because of Fiji's dodgy army. Interesting conundrum.

New Zealand driver won both races in A1 GP this weekend in the Czech Republic.

The Kangaroos thumped New Zealand 58-0 in a centenary league test.

No premiereship soccer because of Euro qualifiers. I think England and Scotland both had wins but don't remember who against.

The Poms play the Boks in the Rugby final, so it is guaranteed another team will have won it twice after that match.

MY SAD LIFE

I started this week thinking that I didn't have a lot happening until Friday. I was very wrong. I had to have things for tournament sorted Monday night before everyone disappeared to camp Tuesday. I then continued to live hand to mouth the whole week, operating on a very just in time basis. All deadlines were met, but it was pretty close for some things.

Mum is off touring the South Island, had a bumpy ride across Cook Strait but they made it. She's there for about three weeks.

It is Paul's birthday tomorrow. Well, tomorrow in New Zealand, Tuesday for him in San Diego. 40, is it, mate?

We had Miranda Chase stay with us this weekend, while her Mum was in Brisbane. She's in Hannah's soccer team for club and school, and polo team for club and school. We got to have her Mum's lasagne on Sunday and it was very good (Rory ate it despite there being eggplant and mushroom in it). To be honest, I don't think I ever met a lasagne I didn't like. The girls went to a party on Saturday night but were home at a reasonable hour.

Hannah was at camp Tuesday to Friday. I visited Wednesday so she could open a letter from Soccer 2, she made the 24 girl squad but can't stick with it because training conflicts with polo. Miranda also made the squad, and can't stay in it. Kind of a shame really, many kids would be rapt to make the squad.

Rory had some friends over Saturday night for a geek fest with linked Xboxes. They didn't sleep until 4am. Wasn't happy. That wasn't the deal. He had to have a sleep on Sunday before his polo game. He has not done any driving this week, although we really didn't have much of a chance.

A politics in sport issue came to a head on Sunday night at the junior girls game where the self-appointed acting manager tried to inflict her will upon the team. The coach, me, refused to budge and continued in a very business like manner. Could be interesting, she wasn't happy.

The girls have stayed home today to recover, which is what I am also trying to do (okay, I didn't actually play in any games but I was knackered by the time I got home at 8:45 on Sunday night. I did manage a swim between two games on Sunday, even if it was a small swim (20 lengths).

The Rugby World Cup is over before it begins for New Zealand, hard to find mention of anything else - 08/10/07

Not as long as it should be, be grateful.

LOCAL NEWS

A young man disappeared, who's car was found burned out a long way from home. We had vacuous questions of his father like "Are you worried?". Then he showed up in Wellington on a bus. Police charged him with wasting police time.

TV3 have had a battle over advertising on Sunday mornings because three very big world cup rugby games are on when advertising is banned on Sunday mornings. They have tried to side-step it a little but they are pushing their luck. The reality is the fine is considerably less than the advertising revenue. Apparently New Zealand is only country in the world with an ad ban on Sunday mornings, and exemption is possible but not granted. Of course, now, nobody cares.

Continuing on the police shooting people theme, they had a Rottweiler set upon them this week, and fired 12 shots at it, all of which missed. This time, they were hassled for being bad shots. Suggestions that a taser would have been better used seem ridiculous given that they are single-shot devices that are less accurate than pistols (so how many tasers would they have needed?).

Weather caused some issues Tuesday and Wednesday. We seemed to just stay ahead of it, thankfully. We were about the fourth to last car to get out of Milford Sound, the road stayed closed for about two days afterwards.

A maori woman is trying to get her husband declared "taonga" which would allow him to stay in the country. A taonga is like a national treasure, covered by the Treaty of Waitangi, and would be exempt from deportation. It's all quite odd, he's been done by police for domestic violence, the immigration people seem to take a dim view of the whole thing.

The national Rock, Paper, Scissors champion was found. He is off to Canada for the world champs. Sheesh. At least if he wins, we might have something to be happy about.

WORLD NEWS

The rather belated inquest into Diana and Dodi's deaths has begun. All a bit old, it is ten years since it happened, but we are getting hammered with updates daily. Finding relevence is quite a struggle.

REAL SPORT

Rory's team at U18 Nationals battled away, although losing 4-5 to Marist B was their best result before playoffs. Rory scored their first goal, which was cool. In the end they came tenth out of, um, ten. It was okay, though. I think Rory learned quite a bit and it was certainly a good workout.

This coming weekend we have an intermediate tournament, the first U14A girls game, and three college junior games. Not busy, noooo, not busy.

SPORT

Well, the rugby world cup is over before it really started for the All Blacks. The first time they played a semi-decent team they've lost. Aussie are out too. That's all I have to say.

Auckland beat Taranaki and the Magpies (Hawkes Bay) beat Waikato 38-35 in the provincial rugby. Finding it in the papers is not easy.

Arsenal beat Sunderland 3-2, Blackburn beat the Brummies, Man Utd thumped poor old Wigan 4-0.

MY SAD LIFE

Well, we travelled to Te Anau, went to Milford Sound on Tuesday, and came home Wednesday. The trip to Te Anau was uneventful, we had time to wander around it a bit. We taught the kids to play 500, which was interesting. I told them how my Uncle Chris taught me, and how he reached across the table, grabbed me by the collar, and said, slowly, but quite forcefully "Why didn't you call your ace?". We ended up playing 500 in many exotic places, while we waited for boats, planes, and so forth.

The trip to Milford Sound was 116ks, which they warned is would take two and a half hours. It didn't, but we got snowed on through the pass which was a bit exciting. We stopped to see Keas (big native parrots, famed for eating cars) on the way down. We then spent a couple of hours cruising the sound, seeing lots of rock and waterfalls (there are 13,000). On the return leg we went into this deep water observatory thing that lets you see creatures that normally live a lot deeper in the water (but can survive only 5 metres down because of the light filtering effect of the layer of fresh water on top). While on the cruise we found out that the road out was closing at 5:30, so I was pretty anxious to get out of dodge. We made it without too many problems, but it was still snowing up at the Homer tunnel, and there was a lot more snow around as we came through. It was also snowing in more places than on the way out to Milford Sound. We made it back safely, and saw only one car coming the other way the entire return trip.

Wednesday we awoke to find it snowing outside the motel and Hannah went out to frolic. There was considerably more snow in evidence along the return journey to Queenstown. Bad weather caused delays in flights so we played 500 in the airport while we waited for our plane to land. We haven't played since we got home, which is a shame (but then again, I am not sure I've seen Hannah more than 15 minutes at a stretch since we got back).

We got back late Wednesday night, and Rory started playing in U18 Nationals the next day. He was in the B team, mostly younger players, and they were not expected to win many games.

We spent most of the weekend going to pools. We did see the Bambis on Sunday in between games. Life is kind of returning to normal, but Hannah leaves on camp tomorrow so house will be quiet.
Rob

RUGBY, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING

I didn't want to harp on about it but some things need to be said. Ever since the build up and disappointment in 1999, also against France, I have never checked in emotionally to the All Blacks and the World Cup. The national approach to it is excessive, all media convince us every four years that we will win it, and then tell us how distraught we are afterwards. Today, the newspapers are unreadable, the breakfast shows (both of them) are unwatchable. Post match analysis is not wanted, not by me, and I don't think I am alone. I don't need people telling me how upset I am, because I am not. Sooner or later they (the press) need to realise that they do not remotely speak for all of us and an ever decreasing percentage actually care about rugby at any level.

That'll do for now, sermon ends.

Travel diary, a win in the polo nationals - 01/10/07

Haven't seen a lot of news, so I have had to make some up. It's short, so therefore you can be grateful.

LOCAL NEWS

The only paper we saw this week had a cover story of a woman who was told to cover up her cleavage at the Christchurch Casino. She was a big girl, and I think they were concerned someone might park a bicycle there. Not sure it was worth the front page but I guess it might have sold a few papers. The woman, however, was mad, I don't understand why she'd want to share her embarrassment with the world.

Bad day on roads on Friday, four died in three separate events.

A bad day in Christchurch on Thursday for a man who was shot by police. He went mad with a hammer. I am not sure I sympathise too much. Someone said "why did you shoot my friend?" and another policeman replied "because we aren't paid enough to risk coming home in a box", which I thoroughly agree with. It's all very fine for your average member of the public to demand that police don't use force, but they aren't putting their life on the line, and news pieces quoting them saying so are rubbish.

Ruapehu had a very small eruption but it kept everyone (in the news journalism industry, at least) entertained, especially as a man was crushed by a rock and his amputations and kidney failure was watched with indecent interest.

An Australian tourist who lost his arm after an accident here is being charged with something relating to the accident. Seems unfair, somehow.

A car being chased by police hit a house in Invercargill.

WORLD NEWS

GW thinks the childrens will learn stuff what you teach them.

A 24 year old man has married an 82 year old woman in Argentina. Yuck.

REAL SPORT

Seems a long time ago, but they won their last pool match then went on to the semi-final, which was bizarre. They tied at 5-5 at full time but won 8-5 in extra time against Hutt. In the final it was close but they got a lead about 2nd quarter and hung on to it to win 8-7 over Northsport, the team that beat them by one goal in regional final.

SPORT

Despite not being exactly rugby mad, I am pretty annoyed how my preferred news web site seems to have lost provincial rugby while the rugby world cup is on. I can tell Southland lost 17-19, for example, but not to who.

I managed to see the end of the Auckland v Canterbury game, despite power cut, who won to take the Ranfurly Shield.

The Wellington Phoenix beat Perth Glory 4-1 for their first home win of the season, after about four or five games, so not before time.

MY SAD LIFE

Koos and Heidi's mum, Pam, had a fall last Monday and broke her lower arm. I know sod all else because I keep forgetting to call when I am somewhere with coverage. Sounded pretty serious. I hope she's on the mend, guys.

Well, after the final on Tuesday afternoon we headed for the hills We stayed in Arthur's Pass at a place called Bealey, woke to see snow capped mountains all around us. We drove down to Franz Josef the next day, say a glacier, but not very close. We then went to Fox glacier, got closer. We stopped at a picturesque little beach where a guy rides his fishing boat on a cable to get past the breakers. We walked up the beach a bit and looked for greenstone. We stayed Thursday night in Haast, very small township, where Hannah befriended a cat that she called Gordon. Friday we got to Arrowtown, where we stayed for three nights. Along the way we have stopped to see a variety of waterfalls, valleys, streams, pools, lakes, rocks, and so forth. Rory seems to have taken over my camera, which is interesting.

The availability of cellphone signal and internet on our travels has been quite variable. In Bealey, there was free wireless, which was great (because there was no cellphone coverage, except for two days a year during the coast to coast), in another place you got ten minutes for $1 on their PC that could do limited browsing and had no copy-paste function, which was hopeless and not cheap. In Arrowtown there was a wireless network, that wasn't too near so access was limited and had to use the vodem.

On Saturday we went to an animal park where you could feed things. Donkeys, pigs, horses, goats, thars (type of goat), yak, and other things. Sunday we went to Wanaka and saw the Warbirds museum (fighter aircraft, about five or so), a transport and toy museum, and a place called "Have a shot" where we did a weird air-powered gun battle thing. I shot Hannah in the stomach, didn't mean to, felt awful. Afterwards, we went and played a round of frisbee golf, an interesting game, far more appealing than regular golf.

Overseas not safe for New Zealanders, GW knows something Nelson doesn't, and the great mime falls - 24/09/07

LOCAL NEWS

Monday all hell broke loose with a young girl (dubbed "Pumpkin" because she was wearing the brand) abandoned by her Father in Southern Cross train station in Melbourne, that the Australian news services took great delight in describing as a "New Zealander". He left Melbourne for the US. During the week we got more information and it developed further. He was a Chinese immigrant, the mother (still living, if living was the right word, in New Zealand somewhere) was missing. It then turned out an older daughter from a previous marriage was also missing and there was a documentary on the man about that which seemed quite bizarre. Then they found the elder daughter, alive. By the end of Wednesday they had found the mother of the three year old, not alive. It wasn't really a surprise. We'd heard that the man had visited the police and picked up his passport and a sword, which wasn't a good sign. We got more news every day, three pages in the paper every day.

Meat processing company Affco was slapped with a bill for one million dollars for a workplace injury. The injury occurred when an employee was sitting in a mate's car at lunch time, the mate was mongrel mob, and the employee got shot in a drive-by by black power people (could be the other way around, I forget). So somehow employers appear to need to ensure their staff don't talk to dodgy friends when on a break and need to have bullet proof fences around their car parks.

We are now allowed to have armed air marshals on our aircraft. Great. Now I feel secure.

Things got nasty in New Plymouth over the weekend with a pedestrian killed and a stabbing, both involving boy racers (let's be honest, ALL boys with cars are boy racers).

Weird news that air quality around schools near busy roads. Can't say I would have every expected that, but one child care centre isn't allowed to open.

A world record was set, swimming 224 metres under water, in West Wave, but using a mono-flipper.

Small earthquake near Haast this morning, we are going there soon.

Some guy predicted a headline for the Christchurch press, sealed it in an envelope five days prior. It wasn't completely correct but it was right subject, stated in different way.

Dodgy ubercop Rickards has now been charged with ten employment offences, he's been suspended on full pay for three years.

WORLD NEWS

GW Bush announced the death of Nelson Mandela, who refused to cooperate by being dead. What a legend. Comedy show writers must tear their hair out, this guy makes them all look like crap.

A disease called bluetongue has hit in UK which kills cows and sheep.

A New Zealand boy fell from a fourth floor hostel window in London, and a New Zealand man was beaten to death in Nairobi.

Marcel Marceau has died, aged 84. He had no last words.

REAL SPORT

On Tuesday, Hannah was called aside at the Coerver training (this is an academy style thing they run for keen players). She was asked to join up to an invitation only elite group. As you can imagine the attitude towards soccer took something of an improvement. Not sure she can manage it logistically, because the time is likely to conflict with school polo, but she was pretty happy.

First game for the U16 Nationals was against Northsport B, expected to be a pretty easy game but they made hard work of it, winning 10-5. Rory got a reasonable amount of game time and played a lot better than many of them.

Second game, against Maranui (Wellington) they won 17-1, Rory got himself a goal. Third game was against Waikato, who were depleted because two of their players can't play on Sunday, so they had no subs.

SPORT

The cricket 20/20 world cup seems to be far more interesting than the rugby world cup but I am not really keeping track. The Black Caps beat England on Wednesday and basically made the semi-finals. Then they lost to South Africa and basically didn't make the semi-finals, awaiting result of South Africa v India. India won so they made the semis, then got knocked out.

The rugby world cup continued but so what? All Blacks dressed the same as Scotland and won 40-0. Stupid.

Man Utd beat Chelsea 2-0.

Manly will play Melbourne Storm in the grand final.

Golfer Michael Campbell came fourth in British Masters.

MY SAD LIFE

Well, the pool was open again this week. Haven't been able to swim for about two weeks or so. Made up for it by swimming three nights in a row.

Hannah and I picked up Penny and the boys from airport on Wednesday night. We saw them a bit over a couple of days before we all went to Christchurch for the tournament.

Hannah went to a party on Friday night, which didn't go well. We got a call saying she was at home and going to Georgia's. We picked her up from there and found out someone had been smoking cigars. Hannah and four friends were very uncomfortable with this and left. 13 year olds smoking cigars does seem a little odd, but we were quite surprised at how serious the girls took it.

Was a long day on Saturday, left for airport around 7:45, got to motel at 12, couldn't get in to room until 1:30. Watched three water polo games at QEII, which is huge, took some photos. Made it back to motel for a while, then drove half way to airport, returned to supermarket, then off to airport to collect Diana and Hannah at 10:15pm.

I have taken quite a few photos of the water polo, Diana reckons I have taken enough.

We should have a semi final tonight and hopefully a final tomorrow afternoon.