30 July 2007

If an idiot falls in parliament, does anybody care? - 30/07/2007

LOCAL NEWS

On Tuesday, a truck carrying some art for an exhibition caught fire and it was all destroyed.

Four climbers froze on Mont Blanc in a storm, one was a New Zealand woman so we heard about it a lot.

Awful story of systematic abuse of a three year old in Rotorua this week, including being hung on the washing line and put in the dryer. Four people, none of whom are the child's parents, have been charged. It's very, very weird.

Meanwhile, another Rotorua child, a baby, was admitted to Starship for similar reasons.

The relentlessly controversial David Benson-Pope (who fed tennis balls to students, etc) has lost his ministerial post in a situation where I wonder if he is actually guilty of anything (he threw a wobbly about the partner of a National Party press secretary working in a ministry, it was some git in that ministry that let her go).

The Finance Ministry blundered this week revealing information about some rules the Reserve Bank have about intervention in the currency market. The numbers were not released to the public, at least.

It is thirty years since the free music rag "Rip It Up". Couldn't ever be bothered reading it, to be honest. Reading about music is a bit like hearing about a painting in my book.

We are exporting bees to Canada, which surprises me because the varroa mite has decimated the local population. We seem to have more bumblebees than regular bees.

WORLD NEWS

England is still soggy, but starting to dry out a little.

The freed terrorist suspect Doctor in Australia has done an exclusive interview. He is very surprised a relative of his was involved in the failed terror attacks in England. Mohammed Haneef said that his family are usually more successful at what they do.

REAL SPORT

The coach of the Piranhas team retired this week so I am the coach now. They had another win, 6-4 over Rangby (a hybrid team that I won't try to explain). They have won both their games in champ round so far, which is great. Hannah's polo teams were yet again a bit shaky this week, with people still sick but numbers generally better. The Girls played St Marys and won comfortably 15-2. Then the Sharks played, against Glen Eden, which I thought we would struggle with but turned out we didn't, final score 10-1. Hannah scored a goal in both games but mostly defended.

Hannah was better for soccer, but not completely. She scored the opening goal from a free kick (same as last game). They won 4-0, same as last time they played this team.

Rory had a club game for the 16B team, but they only had six players (full complement in pool in seven). They were down 0-3, but clawed their way back and ended up levelling at 6-6, which was a gutsy effort for having no subs. Rory got one goal.

So the kids got a goal in all four of their games over the weekend.

SPORT

Russell Coutts signed up for Oracle BMW racing for the next America's Cup, so we heard a lot about that too.

The Warriors won again, this time over Newcastle Knights, 52-10. They are now in surprisingly good shape to make the playoffs.

Iraq beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the final of the Asian Cup (in soccer).

The rugby national provincial championship (NPC) kicked off this weekend. Auckland started slow but beat Counties 39-5, Wellington thumped Otago 68-7, Taranaki beat Tasman 29-17, Waikato beat Manuwatu 41-15, Northland drew 27-27 with North Harbour (meaning Harbour just got to hang on to the shield), Canterbury 34-3, Hawkes Bay beat Southland 41-13/

MY SAD LIFE

I continued to track my package for a few days. When it got bumped off a plane for space reasons I was very disappointed. Then it showed up that day anyway, which was very unexpected. Later I got an email telling me I had received it, which seemed superfluous somehow.

Rory's job has now increased to about four days a week, not taking huge amount of time but should be earning around $40/week. Not bad given that Cassidy and Priya often help him do it. But then they often go sell Priya's fundraising chocolate for fun, too, just to piss of some other guy selling chocolate that they don't really like.

Went to Western Springs College on school visit with Hannah on Tuesday. No idea what she thought. She doesn't give much away. We knew at least one kid in every class, often more (like four or five).

Diana's car got broken into on Tuesday morning and her cellphone was removed. Highly inconvenient and quite annoying. She was not happy that her little car was picked on, and I don't blame her.

I noticed a mathematical relationship whilst swimming on Wednesday. "While swimming?" you may ask. Well, because counting lengths is so dull, I do other things like ratios of done to undone to stem the boredom, and that night I was calculating squares of how many lengths I had left, so by the time I got to 46 I noticed a pattern. The difference between the squares of two consecutive numbers (like 46^2 and 47^2 is the two numbers added together). Not new, but fun to discover something while otherwise being utterly bored. Try it out, it is true. As for other things to do in the pool, I considered reciting elements of the periodic table but that's just sad. And counting in prime numbers is too tricky and I think I would lose count too easily.

Rory and Cassidy went under the house to run some ethernet cable for the move. They had a lovely time under there, found a bone, thought it was the remains of a person but I somehow doubt it. They took ages to get out after they were done. There was an awful lot of laughter and things from under there.

The move continues. It may sound like it is taking forever, because it is. We don't often get time for a concerted effort for a whole day, never in fact, and we are continuing to have to account for dependencies (I got power and phone installed last week, still need ethernet done and then I can finally move out). On the weekend I shifted a very small amount of stuff, mostly the focus was on installing more shelving, which took ages. As we do various items (like installing power points and shelving) we have to re-shift stuff. Some items have been moved ten times, which is just hopeless. Really looking forward to it being over.

Along with the move, there were several items of home maintenance required. Some mystery person killed the heated towel rail, tearing it off it's mountings. I found you could buy replacement ones, which I obtained (which, I would add, cost about half of the cost of a replacement unit with mountings) and installed. I also repaired the oven door (it was coming apart due to a lost screw). I am a regular handy man.

Hannah was quite unwell on Friday morning, so missed school again. She recovered sufficiently to play a low key role in polo, she didn't go in the water in the girls game until near the end of the second quarter.

Hannah had rehearsals for the show on Saturday, straight after soccer, and a club water polo muster on Sunday morning, so she's been pretty busy.

We dragged both the children out yesterday to the lake at Western Springs. Despite the usual moaning and groaning, they enjoyed themselves. Hannah and I walked home. Rory got a lift and got a start on homework.

So, tomorrow is the big day, Rory turns 15. Good grief. Once he gets his learners permit he is going to be starting driving. So not ready for that.

Message ends prematurely due to excessive tediousness.

No comments: