LOCAL NEWS
The NZ$ is rocketing upward against the US, it is nearly at 74c. Paul's a jammy bugger, really. It has been trading in sort of 60-70c for a while.
A psycho woman from Oamaru is now the pinup girl for the anti-smacking league. After going to court for beating one kid with a riding crop, she's now off to court again for another beating. She has posted a video of herself on Youtube defending her actions. It's quite surreal.
Big fuss this week about redundancies at TVNZ in the news department. To be honest, many of the jobs lost make me wonder what they actually did all day (like the sports reader for Breakfast who does bugger all other than say the same thing three times in 90 minutes). There is concern that the high standard of reporting will suffer, I however can't see how it could possibly get any worse.
Story Part 1 A woman in Papakura was raped and viciously attacked by a guy in a suit during the day. He sounded like he was dressed like a Mormon. I never trusted those buggers.
Story Part 2 Later turned out he was posing as a plain-clothes cop. Funny, after recent stories in the news you'd think cops would be the last person you'd let in to your house.
Story Part 3 Police reveal she was telling fibs and they are charging her with making a false statement. Not a good result. How she convinced them she was "viciously" attacked, I don't know. 30 investigators worked on it for three days before they realised it was false.
Speaking of police, they have tasered 13 individuals since they began using them, one of which was a pitbull. I am not sure that making a pitbull angry is a good plan. There was no mention of how it reacted.
Meanwhile, we appear to have had an actually rape in Hastings, a 12yo girls on her way home after a dance competition (krumping, whatever that is) at a school. Her parents thought she was tucked up in bed, at a relatives house.
We had a "This is your life" thing this week on Jonah Lomu, what a waste of space. He's 31, never really delivered what he promised, then showed himself to be suffering from kidney problems. Why bother? No wonder they are cutting costs and staff on TVNZ.
Some woman has been reported as having been approached by scammers on her cellphone as having "won a prize", she smelled a rat when they wanted some visa details to cover some costs. Not much of a prize. Stupid article. No wonder they are cutting down on journalists.
A moth larvae was found in an apple exported to Taiwan which is impacting on our apple exports.
A 64 year old man collapsed and died at the end of a 2.8k king of a bays swim at Takapuna. This does not inspire me to attempt the feat.
WORLD NEWS
Soft-tissue found in T-Rex thigh bone has revealed similarities to chickens. I wonder if T-Rex's woke the neighbours in the mornings?
There seems to be some disquiet in Russia, Mr Putin seems to be unpopular. There is talk of some states wanting to break away from Mother Russia.
REAL SPORT
Hannah had another soccer friendly on Saturday. She scored one goal, the team lost 2-4. They have a bye this coming weekend, first game of the season. What a pain.
Hannah played for Rory's social league polo team (I didn't because I carefully left my togs on the bed). They won about 7-2, Rory got three. Rory played an extra game for another team (we didn't see the game).
SPORT
The dream run at the World Cup was ended for the Black Caps by Sri Lanka. Not over yet but suddenly they seemed very fallible. A few days later they comfortably beat South Africa, basically winning a semi-final spot. Last Super 8 game is against the unbeaten Australians.
The minnows in the Super 8 are playing each other now, Bangladesh versus Ireland. Bangladesh look to be in trouble, if they lose they will be last equal bottom, but at least Ireland will have one win in Super 8.
Man Utd thumped AS Roma 7-1 in the second Champs League leg, now three England teams are in the semi-finals, but not Arsenal because they are crap.
Hurricanes beat the Cheetahs 37-15. The Chiefs thumped the Force 64-36, they aren't enjoying themselves in NZ. The Blues lost 25-32 to the Sharks, they kept three All Blacks on the bench until it was too late. Waratahs beat the Reds 26-13, Bulls beat the Stormers 49-12.
Arsenal beat Bolton 2-1, Liverpool drew 0-0 with Man City, Portsmouth continue their giant killing ways beating Newcastle (who are struggling, it has to be said).
Man Utd beat Watford 4-1, and Chelsea beat Blackburn 2-1 in FA Cup semi finals, so Man Utd face Chelsea in final.
NZer Johnny Reid won the A1 GP feature race in Shanghai. They should come second for the season, Germany going to win for certain I think with one race to spare.
America's Cup challenger series starts tomorrow.
The Warriors had a win, making it three from five so far.
MY PHILOSOPHY ON CONSUMERISM
Sorry, bit of a rant here. The controversy with GSK and Ribena recently has opened an old wound. People seem to fail to understand a very basic truth (that I hold to be self evident), which goes like this:
1. Businesses just want to make more money, therefore they want to sell more product at greater prices.
2. Consumers want to spend as little as they can on what they buy so that their dollar goes further.
So, basically we have two opposing requirements. With that in mind, I don't really understand why either party is ever surprised about the actions of the other.
I have been looking at advertising in newspapers recently. If you bought one of everything on sale in an average newspaper, you would end up lipo'd, botox'd, have a range of chemical and herbal remedies for things polite people don't discuss (given that I am not normally considered to be particularly polite, I wonder why I have not discussed them?), three air conditioning units, borrowed money, invested money, bought some curtains, bought two rugs (one for the house, one for my head), took four overseas holidays including a cruise, and bought two new cars. I think advertising is a concept that has lost it's way in very many respects.
Anyway, had an interesting talk with a chap this week who told me that his family bought almost everything they needed on trademe (New Zealand version of eBay), with the possible exception of groceries. He quoted examples like a set of bunks for the kids, which they sold for nearly the same amount when they got sick of them, which saves them considerable amounts of money. Everyone knows the premium that is lost when you drive a car out of the showroom, so changing your buying habits to let someone else take that hit makes an awful lot of sense. Perhaps it is time for the consumer to fight back.
MY SAD LIFE
Kids are on holiday this week, and were last week. Hannah had a few friends over for a movie, disappeared for the night on Thursday. Rory's existence has been revealed to the Priya's parents (so he has been "outed"). Her mum laughed. He spent the day over there a couple of times, and both parents were there, so they seem okay with it, which is good. He has even confessed of her existence to one of the lads (who's response was "what's a girl?").
I finally decided to upload my regular emails to a blog site. It's going to all be at:
http://robs-sad-life.blogspot.com/
I have loaded a sample up there (67 so far, not many). I can't believe how many times I have said the same thing at the end of these emails. I am woefully unimaginative. I guess 500 odd different methods of signing off are a bit hard to come up with.
It is Ross and Kath's 19th wedding anniversary today. I guess congratulations for Ross and a long service medal and sympathy card for Kathryn are in order.
Tomorrow would have been my fathers 69th birthday.
Paul and Roger's Nan died on Wednesday, not unexpected. Was a pretty big week for Olwyn, our thoughts were with you. Paul didn't know this, but I used to have little chats with her when I rang and nobody else was home, it was a while ago now.
I went to the Blues game with Koos at North Harbour stadium. It wasn't the best game ever, but it got us out of the house.
I did something fairly dubious yesterday. Rory wanted to come with me and Paul to see the movie 300, but it was R16. Moving on from the dodge we pulled for Hannah to get in to R13 movie, I photographed his student ID, and tweaked it and printed it off. It was pretty easy, it has to be said. Not sure I want to be drawn into debate about the ethics and legality of it. In theory, it was a victimless act (not like doing a drivers license or something). What I will say is that the movie theatres are woefully useless at enforcing this rule and they are kidding themselves with their processes and pissing off the honest people. Rory's told everyone he knows and my coolness rating has doubled (on a scale of 1-10 I have gone from 0.2 to 0.4).
On Sunday, a water polo team mate of Rory's proudly announced that it was his birthday today, and in recognition of turning 15, he and his father got drunk and threw up (Zane managed three times). It seemed very, very, sad. He doesn't see a lot of his father, but this just doesn't seem right.
Diana and Hannah are off to visit the Goodins knitting factory, Lothlorian, today in Pukekohe, Paul is tagging along too.
POT WATCH
I know I haven't mentioned this lately, because there has been sod all to mention, but we have movement in in the five sad plant pots - one of the avocados. This caused great joy with Hannah and I. Nobody else seemed very interested, most surprising.
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